text:  In Spain owing in part to the hospitality natural to unsettled times and a simple people in part to the few strangers who visited the Peninsula inns were for a long time almost unknown and the occupation of an innkeeper who sold what his countrymen were delighted to give was considered degrading: so dishonourable indeed was it looked upon that where an executioner could not be found to carry the sentence of the law into effect upon a criminal the innkeeper was compelled to perform his functions: therefore the innkeepers like usurers and other persons who follow a pursuit hostile to public opinion were profligate and rapacious