We no longer wonder that the hovels of the suffering poor should swarm with children; but the analogies of the animal kingdom encourage us to believe that social and industrial procedures, which convert these children into Christians and launch them in the path of a general prosperity, will itself tend to reduce the ratio of their increase by a method more expedient than those of war, pestilence, or famine.
In conclusion: If the first of these natural methods of checking population be adapted to the world of the fall—a world of selfishness and sin—the other method is adapted to the world of the redemption—a world of Christian co-operation and love of our neighbor. By the first method, population is reduced so effectively that the most agreeable portions of the earth's surface remain almost untouched by human culture. When, by the triumph of true religion, wars and their consequences cease to vex humanity, population may increase until it covers the area of the habitable globe, without danger of starving itself, without sinking into pauperism. The numerical population of the world may increase while its actual ratio of propagation is diminished, and is harmonized with its capacity of production. Such is the logic of charity, which in relieving suffering aims at the spiritual elevation of character and the permanent protection of mankind.
New Publications.
History Of Louisiana: The American Domination.
By Charles Gayarré.
New York: William J. Widdleton. 1866.
This is a handsome 8vo volume of 693 pages, of which 250 are devoted to the story of the defence of New Orleans by General Jackson, and 60 pages to a sketch of leading public events from 1816 to 1861. The first chapter opens thus:
"On the 20th of December, 1803, the colony of Louisiana had passed from the domination of Spain into that of the United States of America, to which it was delivered by France after a short possession of twenty days, as I have related in a former work," (History of Louisiana, Spanish Domination.)
It is to be regretted, we think, that this relation of the cession is not given in the volume before us. The causes, the antecedents, the inevitable necessity of the cession, are all practically American, and, therefore properly the subject for the opening chapter of the "American Domination."
We have not seen Mr. Gayarré's preceding volume, but presume he has well told the story of the cession. It is an interesting one. Martin's History of Louisiana was very meagre on that point, and gave, if we remember correctly, little else than the text of the treaty. True, Martin's book was completed some forty years ago, when the author had not at hand the materials that now exist. Barbé Marbois's work was not then published.