The consequence was that, throughout the whole Christian world, all religious, literary, and charitable institutions enjoyed large revenues, and there was no need of applying to the generosity of the common people for contributions.
After the successful invasion of the barbarians, the same system held good; and history records how richly endowed were the churches built, the monasteries founded, the universities and colleges opened, by the once ferocious Franks, Germans, or Northmen even, tamed and subdued by the precepts and practices of Christianity.
We know how the immense wealth, which had been devoted to such holy purposes by the wise generosity of rulers or rich nobles, became in course of time an eyesore and object of envy to the worldly, and that the chief incentive to the `~ Reformers" for doing their work of 11 reformation" thoroughly was the prospect of the golden harvest to be reaped by the destruction of the Catholic Church.
But the very large amounts required to satisfy the aspirations introduced into the heart of humanity, by the religion of Christ, may give us an adequate idea of what Christian civilization really costs. It is foolish to imagine a sane man really believing that those generous founders of pious institutions, who devote by gift or bequest, such large estates and revenues to the various
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We cannot afford to transfer any more of his experiences among the Irish. From all his accounts, they are the same in London as everywhere else, most firmly attached to Catholicity, and, as a general rule, most exemplary in the performance of their religious obligations.
It is fitting, however, to give the conclusion of a long description of what he saw among them while visiting them in the company of a clergyman: "The religious fervor of the people whom I saw was intense. At one house that I entered, the woman set me marvelling at the strength of her zeal, by showing me how she continued to have in her sitting-room a sanctuary to pray every night and morning, and even during the day when she felt weary and lonesome."
II. Passing from religion to morality, let us look at this writer again: "Only one-tenth, at the outside, of the couples living together and carrying on the costermongering trade (among the English) are married. . . . Of the rights of legitimate or illegitimate children, the English costermongers understand nothing, and account it a mere waste of money to go through the ceremony of wedlock, when a pair can live together, and be quite as well regarded by their fellows without it. The married women associate with the unmarried mothers of families without scruple. There is no honor attached to the married state and no shame to concubinage.
"As regards the fidelity of these women, I was assured that in any thing like good times they were rigidly faithful to their paramours; but that, in the worst pinch of poverty, a departure from this fidelity—if it provided a few meals or a fire—was not considered at all heinous."
Further details may be read in the book quoted from, which would scarcely come well in these pages, though quite appropriate to the most interesting work in which they appear. From the whole, it is only too clear that the class of people referred to is profoundly immoral and corrupt, their very poverty only hindering them from indulging in an excess of libertinism.