We promised in our last number to pay our respects to an infamous calumny about Rome, the capital of the Christian Church, and seat of the Sovereign Pontiffs, Vicars of our Lord Jesus Christ upon earth.

This calumny has been extensively circulated. We have found it in each one of the works at the head of this article, and we suppose it has been repeated in many others which have not fallen under our observation; for our "evangelical" journals, as they style themselves, and a large portion of the secular press, seem to have very loose notions of morality where the Catholic Church is concerned. Every story to her disadvantage will be sure to please their public, or to supply the want of argument, and therefore it is seized upon with eagerness and repeated over the length and breadth of the land. It matters little to them whether it be true or not, so long as it answers the purpose. It is enough for them that somebody or other has started it, without inquiring who it was, or whether he had any right to make such a statement. It is also quite immaterial how improbable the story may be, or what contradictions it may involve, or out of what ingenious inferences, by putting this and that together, it may be constructed; it suffices that it be something injurious to the Catholic religion, and at once the end sanctifies the means; and God, they seem to think, will easily wink at any breach of the commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor," when that neighbor is only a papist. Besides, the appetite of the public for this sort of thing seems to be so insatiable that they are deemed ready to swallow any thing, however it may outrage common sense or probability; and therefore they do not fear any loss of reputation if they are detected in the circulation of the falsehood. Corporations are said to have no souls, and the reverend editor of a religious periodical easily seems to absolve himself from any obligation which Christian charity or even decency would seem to impose upon him, in regard to the papist, whom he readily classes with the infidel or the pagan.

The calumny we are about to refute furnishes us with an apt illustration of these remarks. It wears on its face an air of extreme improbability. It is to this effect: that in Rome nearly three fourths of all the children born are illegitimate.

This is simply incredible. When we read of half the children in Stockholm, in Protestant Sweden, or in Vienna, in Catholic Austria, being illegitimate, we can scarcely believe the naked statement. Without disputing the official figures, we look to see if there is no way of explaining this anomalous state of things—if the reality corresponds with the appearance. The large excess in the number of births in proportion to the population, and the existence of a large foundling hospital, as in Vienna, used by the poorer inhabitants of the country around even to a considerable distance, would lead us to a sounder conclusion in regard to its social state than the bare inspection of the figures. But the supposition that three fourths of all the children born in Rome or any other city, Protestant or Catholic, are illegitimate, is too exaggerated to be entertained for a moment. It seems to find ready credence, however; probably through some such mental process as this: "Catholics are corrupt and vicious. Rome is the chief of all Catholic cities, and therefore the most corrupt and vicious of all, and no story of its corruption is too big for belief. The more incredible for any other place, the more worthy of belief for Rome."

But let us come more to details about this statement in regard to Rome. We quote from Mr. Seymour's book:

"In the Italian statistics of Mittermaier we have the number of exposed infants received in Il S. Spirito, Il Conservatorio, and other establishments of this class. The number received during a series of ten years amounts to 31,689. This total distributed among the ten years gives as the mean, the number of 3160 infants exposed annually in the city of Rome."

He goes on to say that according to Bowring, an agent of the British government, the population of Rome was 153,678, and the total number of births was 4373. Hence we have,

Total number of births,4373
Total number of foundlings,3160

And we are left to infer that there were only 1213 lawful children born in Rome in that year.

To make a still closer deduction from his premises, we should take his remark that the population of Rome should be taken at the mean of 130,000, instead of 153,678. The mean number of births corresponding to this would be 3700; hence, in strictness, we should have,