Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/474

446 446 FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. PART higher ; as, for example, the international relations . '. then opened with the rest of Europe, which, whether friendly or hostile, were conducted by the monarch alone, who, unless to obtain supplies, rarely conde- scended to seek the intervention of the other es- tates ; the concentration of the dismembered prov- inces of the Peninsula under one government ; the immense acquisitions abroad, Avhether from discov- ery or conquest, regarded in that day as the property of the crown, rather than of the nation ; and, finally, the consideration flowing from the personal charac- ter, and long successful rule, of the Catholic sove- reigns. Such were the manifold causes, which, without the imputation of a criminal ambition, or indifference to the rights of their subjects, in Ferdi- nand and Isabella, all combined to swell the pre- rogative to an unprecedented height under their reign. This, indeed, was the direction in which all the governments of Europe, at this period, were tending. The people, wisely preferring a single master to a multitude, sustained the crown in its efforts to re- cover from the aristocracy the enormous powers it so grossly abused. This was the revolution of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The power thus deposited in a single hand, was found in time equal- ly incompatible with the great ends of civil govern- ment ; while it gradually accumulated to an extent, which threatened to crush the monarchy by its own weight. But the institutions derived from a Teu- tonic origin have been found to possess a conserva- tive principle, unknown to the fragile despotisms of