Scotland might be supposed by our Protestant friends to be high up on the list, having always been so completely under the influence of the pure gospel of Calvin and Knox; but the rate for Scotland is 10.1.
In the Lowlands, where Presbyterianism carried all before it, the rate is from 10 to 15. In the Highlands, which remained to a considerable extent Catholic, the average is 5.6.
Supposing the immorality of the large cities, Protestant and Catholic, to be the same, though it is pretty sure the Catholic are much the best, and confining our comparison to the mass of the rural population, which is the fairer test, and the countries would stand in the following order, beginning with the most favorable:
| Sardinia | Catholic |
| Ireland | Catholic |
| Holland | Mixed |
| Spain | Catholic |
| Switzerland | Mixed |
| Tuscany | Catholic |
| Catholic Prussia | Catholic |
| Belgium | Catholic |
| France | Catholic |
| Sicily | Catholic |
| Austria | Catholic |
| England | Protestant |
| Norway | Protestant |
| Protestant Prussia | Protestant |
| Scotland | Protestant |
| Denmark | Protestant |
| Sweden | Protestant |
| Hanover | Protestant |
| Iceland | Protestant |
| Saxony | Protestant |
| Wurtemberg | Protestant |
Thus, to sum up, the Catholic countries of Europe, perhaps without an exception, are above the Protestant, if the number of illegitimate births is accepted as a criterion of morality. Could we get the statistics of infanticide, and of a still more common and destructive crime, foeticide, and add them to the above, then we could form a more just idea of the benefit the Catholic religion, with her divine ordinance of Confession, has conferred on the human race. But of course it is impossible to determine with exactness the amount of this crime which hides itself in profound darkness; we can only conjecture from sure indications that it is one of fearful magnitude.
We need not go abroad; the evidence is at our own door. Take the State of Rhode Island as a specimen. The number of children annually receiving Catholic baptism exceeds the half of all the children born in the State, although the Catholic population does not exceed the third part; in other words, there are two Protestants to every Catholic, and yet there are more Catholic children born than Protestant. Illegitimacy is almost unknown among Catholics, and the birthrate is at least 1 to 25, which demonstrates that criminal abortion cannot exist to any extent worth speaking of. The birth-rate among Protestants is i to over 50. What becomes of the children who ought to be born? Let Dr. Storer speak: [Footnote 38] "Hardly a newspaper throughout the land that does not contain their open and pointed advertisements. … The profits that must be made from the sale of the drugs supposed abortifacient, may be judged from the extent to which they are advertised and the prices willingly paid for them." "We are compelled to admit that Christianity itself, or, at least, Protestantism, has failed to check the increase of criminal abortion." [Footnote 39] To the same effect we have a writer in Harper's very anti-popery Magazine: "We are shocked at the destruction of human life upon the banks of the Ganges, as well as on the shores of the South Sea Islands; but here in the heart of Christendom, foeticide and infanticide are extensively practised under the most aggravating circumstances. … It should be stated that believers in the Roman Catholic faith never resort to any such practices; the strictly Americans are almost alone guilty of such crimes." And Bishop Coxe, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, has published to his people the following: "I have hitherto warned my flock against the blood-guiltiness of ante-natal infanticide. If any doubts existed heretofore as to the propriety of my warnings on the subject, they must now disappear before the fact that the world itself is beginning to be horrified by the practical results of the sacrifices to Moloch which defile our land."
[Footnote 38: Criminal Abortion, p. 55.]
[Footnote 39: Page 69.]
How is it with Protestant England? Dr. Lankester, one of the coroners of London, declares that there are 12,000 mothers in London alone, guilty of infanticide. [Footnote 40] In Prussia, Mr. J. Laing says that, "Chastity, the index virtue of the moral condition of the people, is lower than in almost any part of Europe." [Footnote 41] Let us look at home. Our attention has been so diverted to the vice and immorality of our Catholic neighbors, that we have begun to imagine ourselves the most moral, the most virtuous, the most enlightened people on the face of the earth, while, in reality, we are fast getting to be the most corrupt and abominable. It would be well to call to mind a little oftener the saying of our Lord, "First pull the beam out of thine own eye, and then thou shalt see clearly to pull the mote out of thy brother's eye."