Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/68

48 to obtain victims for the sacrificial altars of their gods. This ghastly levy ceased with the introduction of Malintzin's religion, and he brought no hitherto unfamiliar horror as a substitute for it.

Some writers have even essayed to parallel the cruelties incident to the procedure of the Inquisition, and the executions after sentence by that tribunal, with the human sacrifices of the Aztecs. Without here embarking upon an investigation of the methods of the Inquisition, it may, in strict justice, be pointed out that, as far as Mexico was concerned, the researches of the learned archaeologist, Garcia Icazbalceta, have shown that during the two hundred and seventy years of its existence in that country, the number of persons delivered to the secular arm for execution was forty-seven (Bibliografia Mexicana del Siglo, XVI., page 382). Moreover the Indians were exempt from molestation for they were expressly defined as being outside the jurisdiction of the Holy Office.

Except the independent Tlascalans, all the other peoples of Anahuac were held in stem subjection by the Aztec emperor; heavy taxes were collected from them, human life was without value, torture was in common use; their sons were seized for sacrifice, their daughters replenished the harems of the confederated kings and great nobles, so that Cortes was welcomed as the liberator of subject peoples, the redresser of wrongs. He had procured them the sweets of a long nourished, but despaired of, vengeance, and, though it was but the exchange of one master for another, they tasted the satisfaction of having squared some old scores with their oppressors. The conquest completed, Cortes bent all his efforts to creating systems of government under which the different peoples might live and prosper in common security, and, with the disappearance of the need for them, the harsher methods also vanished. Few of his cherished intentions were realised, however, and the power which would have