Part I., Chapter 17.) Indeed, the cautious Zurita, borrowing, probably,

from the same authorities, cites the latter number. (Anales, tom. v. fol. 9.) Mariana, who owes so much of his narrative to the Aragonese historian, converting, as it would appear, these 170,000 individuals into families, states the whole in round numbers, at 800,000 souls. (Hist. de EspaƱa, tom. ii. lib. 26, cap. 1.) Llorente, not content with this, swells the amount still further, by that of the Moorish exiles, and by emigrants to the New World, (on what authority?) to 2,000,000; and, going on with the process, computes that this loss may fairly infer one of 8,000,000 inhabitants to Spain, at the present day! (Ibid., ubi supra.) Thus the mischief imputed to the Catholic sovereigns goes on increasing in a sort of arithmetical progression, with the duration of the monarchy.

Nothing is so striking to the imagination as numerical estimates; they speak a volume in themselves, saving a world of periphrasis and argument; nothing is so difficult to form with exactness, or even probability, when they relate to an early period; and nothing more carelessly received, and confidently circulated. The enormous statements of the Jewish exiles, and the baseless ones of the Moorish, are not peculiar to Llorente, but have been repeated, without the slightest qualification or distrust, by most modern historians and travellers.

[156] In the two closing Chapters of