We can show, also, in an entirely different way, by the official census of Rome, the absurdity of the statement of Seymour, and that in the most conclusive manner. In the Civilta Cattolica of 21st of December, 1867, we have the census of the population and the number of births for the year 1866; also a tabular statement of those for a period of ten years, ending 21st of April, 1867.
From these we find the present population to be 215,573; the number of the legitimate births for the year from Easter, 1866, to Easter, 1867, was 5739, and adding thereto the still-born, 6120. The average annual number of births in an average population of 197,737, excluding the still-born, was 5657 legitimate, for the decennial period. Adding the still-born, we have an annual average of over 6000 legitimate births.
Now, if we consider that in Rome there is a large class of the population who belong to the clergy, who do not marry; a large body of military; the Jews, whose children of course do not appear in any baptismal register, from which the number of annual births is made out; we may set down the average productive part of the population, corresponding to the population of any other city, at an average of not more than 175,000. From this number, according to the general vital statistics of the civilized world, we must look for from 6300 to 6400 annual births. Take from this the number of annual legitimate births stated above, and there remains no margin for any large number of illegitimate births. Any one can see that it is a moral impossibility that they should exceed three or four hundred.
The same thing can be made out by means of the number of the married, which is accurately taken every year. In April, 1867, there were 30,471 married women in Rome. Now, how many children could be expected to be born annually from that number? We can approximate very nearly to this by considering the census of the kingdom of Italy, as given in the Civilta Cattolica of 20th of June, 1868. From this we find that for about 4,297,346 married women there were about 900,000 births, which gives us one yearly for every five married women, very nearly. Applying this proportion to Rome, we should have of 30,471 married women, 6094 births. The actual number, including still-born, was, as we have seen, 6120.
The Civilta Cattolica says, "This proportion of 28.3 of legitimate births for every one thousand of the population speaks very well for a capital city." And so it does; it shows, what we have always understood them to be, that the Romans are as virtuous and moral as any people of the world.
In passing, we commend to the Rev. Mr. Bacon the figures of the official census of the kingdom of Italy, from which we find the percentage of illegitimacy for 1863 to have been 4.8; for 1864, 5. It is to be observed that there is somewhat of a deterioration in this last year, perhaps owing to the success of the efforts of the Bible and tract societies to throw the pure light of "gospel truth" on this hitherto benighted land. The rate of illegitimacy in Scotland, which Mr. Laing, in his Notes of a Traveller, calls the most religious Protestant country in Europe, is double that of Italy, the country most thoroughly Catholic.
And we ask, moreover, of Mr. Bacon, the direct question, What is the honesty of representing the relative chastity of England and Italy as 5 to 21, when the real proportions are 6.4 to 5? It may do very well to charge Brother Hatfield and Brother Prime, when you have your own good name to vindicate against their charges, with gross unfairness in controversy; but we consider your adroit shirking of all the statements of The Catholic World, on the plea of an error found in a quotation from The Church and World, as quite as dishonorable as any thing you have charged against them. Your persistence in repeating calumnious statements, and spreading them out as you do among readers who will not see the refutation, will give you and your friend, Mr. M. Hobart Seymour, an unenviable notoriety among the worst calumniators of the Catholic religion who have as yet appeared. You have repeated, some time ago, that most infamous calumny of the Tax-book of the Roman Chancery, so amply refuted by Bishop England; but although it has been called to your notice, you have never had the grace to apologize. The old maxim seems to have been, "Lie as hard as you can, and lay it on thick, for it will all be believed," and hence we had our Maria Monks and our Brownlees. Now the tactics are to be changed, and the maxim seems to be, "Let there be some semblance of truth mixed with the lie, so that it may sink deeper; let the calumny be sugared over with professions of 'fair play,' and it will work with better effect;" and hence come such things as the Moral Results of Romanism, by Messrs. Seymour and Bacon, the "model controversialists."
To come back to Rome. The Civilta Cattolica tells us that the census has been taken in the same way since the sixteenth century. The total number of births, 4373, of Bowring, were then the total of legitimate births, not the absolute total. The number of 3160 foundlings received turns out to be the number of orphans—some of them 80 years old, for all we know; for some are cared for as long as they live—and other destitute or abandoned children. And thus this beautiful piece of "mosaic work," intended to exhibit the horrible vice of Rome to the gaze of an admiring and astonished public, falls to pieces. Instead of the anomalous state of things in which each married couple in Rome would have on an average one child in the space of 25 years, they are found to be quite as prolific as other people, and quite as virtuous. Rome, in respect to offences against chastity, is probably the most orderly and decent city of its size in the world. Maguire says:[20]
"The returns (criminal) embrace all kinds of crime.... And among the rest they comprehend a class of offenders who, in some countries—for instance, in France—are under the control as well as sanctioned by the police authorities, and in others defy almost all authority or restraint whatsoever. I allude to women of depraved character, not one of whom is to be met with in the streets of Rome, which may accordingly be traversed with impunity at any hour of the evening or night by a modest female without the risk of having her eyes and ears offended, as they are in too many cities of our highly civilized empire. Offenders of this class are at once made amenable to the law, and committed either to the Termini, or to the institution of the Good Shepherd, where the most effectual means of reformation are adopted, and in very many instances with success—both institutions being specially under the care and control of religious communities."
It is the fashion to decry Rome—to represent her population as cowed down and discontented with their government; to this the reception which Garibaldi with his war-cry of "Rome or death"—though he lived to see another day, after all—met with from the Roman people, is a sufficient reply: or to say that they are miserably poor or degraded; to this, Count de Reyneval, in his report to the French minister for foreign affairs, says: