"'We come next to a very painful and important point, and shall get away from it as soon as possible. The proportion of illegitimate births to the total number of births, is, in Ireland, 3.8 per cent. In England, the proportion is 6.4; in Scotland, 9.9. In other words, England is nearly twice, and Scotland nearly thrice worse than Ireland. Something worse has to be added, from which no consolation can be derived. The proportion of illegitimacy is very unequally distributed over Ireland, and the inequalities are such as are rather humbling to us as Protestants, and still more as Presbyterians and as Scotchmen. Takings Ireland according to registration divisions, the proportion of illegitimate births varies from 6.2 to 1.9. The division showing this lowest figure is the western, being substantially the province of Connaught, where about nineteen-twentieths of the population are Celtic and Roman Catholic. The division showing the highest proportion of illegitimacy is the north-eastern, which comprises or almost consists of the province of Ulster, where the population is almost equally divided between Protestant and Roman Catholic, and where the great majority of the Protestants are of Scotch blood and of the Presbyterian Church. The sum of the whole matter is, that semi-Presbyterian and semi-Scotch Ulster is fully three times more immoral than wholly Popish and wholly Irish Connaught—which corresponds with wonderful accuracy to the more general fact that Scotland, as a whole, is three times more immoral than Ireland as a whole. There is a fact, whatever may be the proper deduction. There is a text, whatever may be the sermon; we only suggest that the sermon should have a good deal about charity, self-examination, and humility."'
So that, after all, now that the truth is at last out, the "Romish priests and the Romish party" have no reason to be ashamed of it. Probably their reason is best known to themselves; for it would puzzle any one else to devise any earthly reasons why they should oppose the publication of the Registrar's Report, so honorable to the Catholic people of Ireland.
Mr. Bacon is "happy to announce" that, as a result of the attack of The Catholic World, a new edition of Seymour's book, with its opening chapter, is soon to appear. So, all the old calumnies and falsehoods are to be circulated with redoubled activity, and the commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor," conveniently be thrust aside. The statistics of London are to be reproduced, while those of England are kept in the dark. Paris is to be compared with London, to produce, as Mr. Bacon says, "an overwhelming effect on the mind of the Protestant reader," while not a word is to be breathed of England and France. Five Italian cities are still to be compared with five English, to show that the Italian Catholics are four times as depraved as the English Protestants, while the rate of illegitimacy in all Italy is considerably less than that of England.
And the tell-tale official reports of the census of Scotland, of Catholic and Protestant Prussia, are to be passed over in complete silence. The countries of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, are to be offset by provinces of the Austrian empire in which, as we showed in The Catholic World, a grinding law of the government hinders us from getting any real knowledge of the statistics of illegitimacy, and while the whole empire shows a rate smaller than any of those different countries. But we are tired of this disgusting enumeration of the fraud and trickery of the Rev. M. Hobart Seymour. The republication of his book cannot hurt us, and only tends to increase the growing distrust on the part of the public of the thousand and one calumnies so unscrupulously circulated concerning Catholics.
We have only to add that The New Englander very appropriately finishes its article against us by bringing out a very infamous falsehood of Mr. Seymour's about the morality of the city of Rome, which we shall not fail to pay our respects to in the next number of The Catholic World.
Sick.
My brother, o my brother! how my heart,
Uncertain, sad, doth yearn for thee to-day!
And my deep soul her earnest prayer doth say,
That God not yet will loose the fearful dart;
Not yet, sweet mercy, call on thee to part,
Prepared so scantily for the long, long way;
Nor till his lamp lights with her blessed ray
The narrow line along the shadowy chart.
Dear Lord, a stranger, far away he lies,
Where fevered pestilence about him leers;
His breath the yellow death! And yet my cries
Are not for that loved body whose weak sighs
First warmed her breast—'tis nine and twenty years—
The soul, poor soul 'tis needs these prayers and tears.