cannot expect to be acquainted with Spain without a sufficient knowledge of the powerful moral engines which are at work in that country; and they will, perhaps, find that a Spanish priest may have something to say which is new to them on the subject of confession.
“The effects of confession upon young minds are, generally, unfavourable to their future peace and virtue. It was to that practice I owed the first taste of remorse, while yet my soul was in a state of infant purity. My fancy had been strongly impressed with the awful conditions of the penitential law, and the word sacrilege had made me shudder on being told that the act of concealing any thought or action, the rightfulness of which I suspected, would make me guilty of that worst of crimes, and greatly increase my danger of everlasting torments. My parents had, in this case, done no more than their duty, according to the rules of their church. But, though they had succeeded in rousing my fear of hell, this was, on the other hand, too feeble to overcome a childish bashfulness, which made the disclosure of a harmless trifle, an effort above my strength.
“The appointed day came at last, when I was to wait on the confessor. Now wavering, now determined not to be guilty of sacrilege, I knelt before the priest, leaving, however, in my list of sins, the last place to the hideous offence—I believe it was a petty larceny committed on a young bird. But, when I came to the dreaded point, shame and confusion fell upon me, and the accusation stuck in my throat. The imaginary guilt of this silence haunted my mind for four years, gathering horrors at every successive confession, and rising into an appalling spectre, when, at the age of twelve, I was taken to receive the sacrament. In this miserable state I continued till, with the advance of reason, I plucked, at fourteen, courage enough to unburthen my conscience by a general confession of the past. And let it not be supposed that mine is a singular case, arising either from morbid feeling or the nature of my early education. Few, indeed, among the many penitents I have examined, have escaped the evils of a similar state; for, what a silly bashfulness does in children, is often, in after-life, the immediate effect of that shame by which fallen frailty clings still to wounded virtue. The necessity of confession, seen at a distance, is lighter than a feather in the balance of desire; while, at a subsequent period, it becomes a punishment on delicacy—an instrument to blunt the moral sense, by multiplying the subjects of remorse, and directing its greatest terrors against imaginary crimes.
“These evils affect, nearly equally, the two sexes; but there are some that fall peculiarly to the lot of the softer. Yet the remotest of all—at least, as long as the Inquisition shall exist—is the danger of direct seduction by the priest. The formidable powers of that odious tribunal have been so skilfully arrayed against the abuse of sacramental trust, that few are found base and blind enough to make the confessional a direct instrument of debauch. The strictest delicacy, however, is, I believe, inadequate fully to oppose the demoralizing tendency of auricular confession. Without the slightest responsibility, and, not unfrequently, in the conscientious discharge of what he believes his duty, the confessor conveys to the female mind the first foul breath which dims its virgin purity. He, undoubtedly, has a right to interrogate upon subjects which are justly deemed awkward even for maternal confidence; and it would require more than common simplicity to suppose that a discretionary power of this nature, left in the hands of thousands—men beset with more than common temptations to abuse it—will generally be exercised with proper caution. But I will no longer dwell upon this subject for the present. Men of unprejudiced minds will easily conjecture what I leave unsaid; while to shew a hope of convincing such as have made a full and irrevocable surrender of their judgment, were only to libel my own.
“From the peculiar circumstances of my country, the training of my mental faculties was an object of little interest with my parents. There could be scarcely any doubt in the choice of a line of life for me; who was the eldest of four children. My father’s fortune was improving; and I might help and succeed him with advantage to myself and two sisters. It was, therefore, in my father’s counting-house, that, under the care of an old trusty clerk, I learned writing and arithmetic. To be a perfect stranger to literature is not, even now, a disgrace among the better class of Spaniards. But my mother, whose pride, though greatly subdued, was never conquered by devotion, felt anxious that, since, from prudential motives, I was doomed to be buried for life in a counting-house, a little knowledge of Latin should distinguish me from a mere mercantile drudge. A private teacher was accordingly procured, who read with me in the evening, after I had spent the best part of the day in making copies of the extensive correspondence of the house.
“I was now about ten years old, and though, from a child, excessively fond of reading, my acquaintance with books did not extend beyond a history of the Old Testament—a collection of the Lives of the Saints mentioned in the Catholic Almanack, out of which I chose the Martyrs, for modern saints were never to my taste—a little work that gave an amusing miracle of the Virgin for every day of the year[10]—and prized above all, a Spanish translation of Fenelon’s Telemachus, which I perused till I had nearly learned it by heart. I heard, therefore, with uncommon pleasure, that, in acquiring a knowledge of Latin, I should have to read stories not unlike that of my favourite the Prince of Ithaca. Little time, however, was allowed me for study, lest, from my love of learning, I should conceive a dislike to mercantile pursuits. But my mind had taken a decided bent. I hated the counting-house, and loved my books. Learning and the church were, to me, inseparable ideas; and I soon declared to my mother that I would be nothing but a clergyman.
“This declaration roused the strongest prejudices of her mind and heart, which cold prudence had only damped into acquiescence. To have a son who shall daily hold in his hands the real body of Christ, is an honour, a happiness which raises the humblest Spanish woman into a self-complacent consequence that attends her through life. What, then, must be the feelings of one who, to the strongest sense of devotion, joins the hope of seeing the dignities and emoluments of a rich and proud Church bestowed upon a darling child? The Church, besides, by the law of celibacy, averts that mighty terror of a fond mother—a wife, who, sooner or later, is to draw away her child from home. A boy, therefore, who at the age of ten or twelve, dazzled either by the gaudy dress of an officiating priest—by the importance he sees others acquire, when the bishop confers upon them the clerical tonsure—or by any other delusion of childhood, declares his intention of taking orders, seldom, very seldom escapes the heavy chain which the Church artfully hides under the tinsel of honours, and the less flimsy, though also less attainable splendour of her gold. Such a boy, among the poor, is infallibly plunged into a convent; if he belongs to the gentry, he is destined to swell the ranks of the secular clergy.
“It is true that, in all ages and countries, the leading events of human life are inseparably linked with some of the slightest incidents of childhood. But this fact, instead of an apology, affords the heaviest charge against the crafty and barbarous system of laying snares, wherein unsuspecting innocence may, at the very entrance of life, lose every chance of future peace, happiness and virtue. To allow a girl of sixteen to bind herself, for ever, with vows—not only under the awful, though distant guardianship of heaven, but the odious and immediate superintendence of man—ranks, indeed, with the most hideous abuses of superstition. The law of celibacy, it is true, does not bind the secular clergy till the age of twenty-one; but this is neither more nor less than a mockery of common sense, in the eyes of those who practically know how frivolous is that latitude.[11] A man has seldom the means to embrace, or the aptitude to exercise a profession for which he has not been trained from early youth. It is absurd and cruel to pretend that a young man, whose best ten or twelve years have been spent in preparation for orders, is at full liberty to turn his back upon the Church when he has arrived at one-and-twenty. He may, indeed, preserve his liberty; but to do so he must forget that most of his patrimony has been laid out on his education, that he is too old for a cadetship in the army, too poor for commerce, and too proud for a petty trade. He must behold, unmoved, the tears of his parents; and, casting about for subsistence, in a country where industry affords no resource, love, the main cause of these struggles, must content itself with bare possible lawfulness, and bid adieu to the hope of possession. Wherever unnatural privations make not a part of the clerical duty, many may find themselves in the Church who might be better elsewhere. But no great effort is wanted to make them happy in themselves, and useful to the community. Not so under the unfeeling tyranny of our ecclesiastical law. For, where shall