Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/96

lxxviii ixxviii INTRODUCTION. iNTROD. revolutions in Castile, in which the adhesion of a faction was to be purchased only by the most ample concessions of the crown. — Such was the violent revolution, which placed the House of Trastamara on the throne, in the middle of the fourteenth century. But perhaps a more operative cause, than all these, of the alleged evil, was the conduct of those imbecile princes, who, with heedless prodigality, squandered the public resources on their own per- sonal pleasures and unworthy minions. The dis- astrous reigns of John the Second and Henry the Fourth, extending over the greater portion of the fifteenth century, furnish pertinent examples of this. It was not unusual, indeed, for the cortes, inter- posing its paternal authority, by passing an act for the partial resumption of grants thus illegally made, in some degree to repair the broken condition of the finances. Nor was such a resumption unfair to the actual proprietors. The promise to maintain the integrity of the royal demesnes formed an essential part of the coronation oath of every sove- reign ; and the subject, on whom he afterwards con- fallen. Capmany, in the preface lead, from the contrast it suggests to a work, compiled hy order of the of existing institutions to the freer central junta in Seville, in 1809, forms of antiquity, might well have on the ancient organization of the deterred the modern Spaniard from cortes in the different states of the these inquiries; which, moreover, Peninsula, remarks, that ^no au- it can hardly he supposed, would thor has appeared, down to the have received the countenance of present day, to instruct us in regard government. The hricf interval, to the origin, constitution, and eel- however, in the early part of the ehration of the CastiJian cortes, on present century, when the nation all which topics there remains the so inellcctually struggled to resume most profound ignorance." The its ancient liberties, gave birth to melancholy results to which such two productions, which have gone an investigation must necessarily far to supply the desiderata in this