Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/473

447 DEATH OF ALONSO DE AGUILAR. 447 VII. and merchandise regularly prohibited ; and, finally, chapter that they might emigrate to any foreign country, except the dominions of the Grand Turk, and such parts of Africa as Spain was then at war with. Obedience to these severe provisions was enforced by the penalties of death and confiscation of prop- erty.^* This stern edict, so closely modelled on that against the Jews, must have been even more griev- ous in its application.^^ For the Jews may be said to have been denizens almost equally of every country ; while the Moors, excluded from a retreat among their countrymen on the African shore, were sent into the lands of enemies or strangers. The former, moreover, were far better qualified by their natural shrewdness and commercial habits for dis- posing of their property advantageously, than the simple, inexperienced Moors, skilled in little else than husbandry or rude mechanic arts. We have nowhere met with any estimate of the number who migrated on this occasion. The Castilian writers pass over the whole affair in a very few vv^ords ; not, indeed, as is too evident, from any feelings of dis- approbation, but from its insignificance in a political view. Their silence implies a very inconsiderable amount of emigrants ; a circumstance not to be 31 Pragmalicas del Reyno, fol. 7. but this edict was so obviously sug- ^2 Bleda anxiously claims the gested by that against the Jews, credit of the act of expulsion for that it may be considered as the Fray Thomas de Torquemada, of result of his principles, if not di- inquisitorial memory. (Coronica, rectly taught by him. Thus it is, p. 640.) That eminent personage " the evil that men do lives after had, indeed, been dead some years; them."