From
The Spice of Life, essay entitled "Anti-Religious Thought in the Eighteenth Century":
Take the determining example of the Spanish Inquisition.
The Spanish Inquisition was Spy Fever. It produced the sort of
horrors such fevers produce; to some extent even in modern wars.
The Spaniards had reconquered Spain from Islam with a glowing
endurance and defiance as great as any virtue ever shown by man;
but they had the darker side of such warfare; they were always
struggling to deracinate a Jєωιѕн plot which they believed
to be always selling them to the enemy. Of this dark tale
of perverted patriotism the humanitarians knew nothing.
All they knew was that the Inquisition was still going on.
And suddenly the great Voltaire rose up and shattered it with a hammer
of savage laughter. It may seem strange to compare Voltaire to a child.
But it is true that though he was right in hating and destroying it,
he never knew what it was that he had destroyed.
Yes, folks, here a Catholic author is saying that Voltaire was right to hate and destroy the Inquisition ( as an idea ). Ugh. However, Chesterton cloaks his near-heretical ideas in the feeling that most modern men have, that the Inquisition sometimes went too far and was too brutal.
But look at what he really says, or implies. He implies that the Spaniards were wrong to be paranoid about a Jєωιѕн plot, when in reality they were right, as Spain at that time was plagued with marranos. He also implies that this plot was all in their imaginations. Yet Chesterton lived at a time when the Jєωs were well-known to have taken over almost all financial power, and when modernism and other heresies were running rampant. The radical break between intransigent Catholic Spain and the incipient nєω ωσrℓ∂ σr∂єr of the Masons under which Chesterton lived, it would seem, would be hard to ignore for someone as intrigued by history as Chesterton. Therefore, the plot had been proven real.
Are you telling me he was unaware of this?
Also, for someone who prides himself on his literary style, it's amazing how this guy very rarely chooses the right word. Why "perverted patriotism"? Firstly, we're talking about men who were defending the Church above and beyond defending their country -- so it is not patriotism that is in question. Secondly, even if the Inquisitors did go too far at times, which I have no opinion about, not being psychic and not having lived through it, how does that make what they did "perverted"?
What terrible writing. He says "perverted patriotism" where, even from his own point of view, he really means "excessive religious zeal."
You will see this with Vatican II authors and with Ratzinger himself. They are prolix yet extraordinarily inexact. This guy's writings are so garbled and sloppy. He is so fixated on being clever that he ends up writing things that are outright stupid.