It would not be difficult, by adopting M. de Laveleye’s mode of reasoning, to turn his whole argument on this point against his own position. Whether or not national wealth, we might say, is evidence of orthodox Christian faith, there can be no doubt but that the Christian religion is favorable to even the temporal interests of the lowest and most degraded classes of society. Its doctrines on the brotherhood of the race and the equality of all before God first inspired worthy notions of the dignity of man. Then the sympathy which it created for the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed naturally set men to work to devise means for the relief of human misery. It is to its influence that we must ascribe the abolition of slavery, the elevation of woman, and the thousand ministries which in Christian lands attend on the wretched and the weak.
We must infer that those nations in which this influence is most powerful—which, in other words, are most truly Christian—will have, in proportion to their population, the smallest class of human beings cursed by the worst plague known to modern civilization, bearing with it, as it does, a threefold degradation, moral, physical, and social. We of course refer to pauperism.
Now, in England, from whose wealth M. de Laveleye would infer the superiority of her religion, we find that this pauper class, compared with the whole population, is as 1 to 23; whereas in Ireland, which is poor—and, according to this theory, for that reason under the ban of a false religion—there is but 1 pauper to 90 inhabitants; in other words, pauperism is four times more common in England than in Ireland. Now, whether we refer this fact to England’s wealth or to England’s religion—and in M. de Laveleye’s opinion they are correlative—our conclusion must be either that the influence of the Christian religion, which necessarily tends to promote the temporal well-being of the most degraded classes of society, is less felt in England than in Ireland, or else that national wealth is hurtful to the interests of these same classes, and consequently opposed to the true Christian spirit; and in either case we have Catholic Ireland more fairly Christian than Protestant England. We would not have our readers think for a moment that we are seriously of the opinion that our argument proves anything at all. We give it merely as a specimen of the way in which the reasoning of this pamphlet may be turned against its own conclusions, though, in fact, we have done the work too respectably.
We cannot forget, if M. de Laveleye does, that, of all sciences, the social—if, indeed, it may be said as yet to exist at all—is the most complex and the most difficult to master. The phenomena which it presents for observation are so various, so manifold, and so vast, our means of observation are so limited, our methods so unsatisfactory, and our prejudices so fatal, that only the thoughtless or the rash will tread without suspicion or doubt upon ground so uncertain and so little explored.
M. de Laveleye himself furnishes us an example of how easily we may go astray, even when the way seems plain.
“Sectarian passions,” he writes (p. 11), “or anti religious prejudice have been too often imported into the study of these questions. It is time that we should apply to it the method of observation and the scientific impartiality of the physiologist and the naturalist. When the facts are once established irrefragable conclusions will follow. It is admitted that the Scotch and Irish are of the same origin. Both have become subject to the English yoke. Until the XVIth century Ireland was much more civilized than Scotland. During the first part of the middle ages the Emerald Isle was a focus of civilization, while Scotland was still a den of barbarians. Since the Scotch have embraced the Reformation, they have outrun even the English.… Ireland, on the other hand, devoted to ultramontanism, is poor, miserable, agitated by the spirit of rebellion, and seems incapable of raising herself by her own strength.” The conclusion which is drawn from all this, joined with such other facts as the late victories of Prussia over Austria and France, is that “Protestantism is more favorable than Catholicism to the development of nations.”
We may as well pause to examine this passage, which, both with regard to the statement of facts and to the interpretation put upon them, fairly represents the style and method of the pamphlet before us.
“It is admitted that the Scotch and Irish are of the same origin.” This is true, as here stated, only in the sense that both are descended of Adam; and hence it would have been as much to the point to affirm that all the nations of the earth are of the same origin. The Scots were, indeed, an Irish tribe; but when they invaded Caledonia, they found it in the possession of the Picts, of whom whether they were of Celtic or Teutonic race is still undecided. The power of the Scots themselves declined in the XIIth century, when Scotland fell under the influence of the Anglo-Norman Conquest, and the Celtic population either withdrew towards the north, or, by intermarriage with the conquerors, formed a new type; so that the people of that country are even yet divided into two great and distinct stocks differing from each other in language, manners, and dress.
“Until the XVIth century,” continues M. de Laveleye, “Ireland was much more civilized than Scotland. During the first part of the middle ages the Emerald Isle was a focus of civilization, while Scotland was still a den of barbarians.” Now, it was precisely in those ages in which Ireland was “a focus of civilization” that the Catholic faith of her people shone brightest. It was then that convents sprang up over the whole island; that the sweet songs of sacred psalmody, which so touched the soul of Columba, were heard in her groves and vales; that the sword was sheathed, and all her people were smitten with the high love of holy life and were eager to drink at the fountains of knowledge. It was then that she sent her apostles to Scotland, to England, to France, to Germany, to Switzerland, and to far-off Sicily; nor did she remit her efforts in behalf of civilization until the invading Danes forced her children to defend at once their country and their faith.
But let us follow M. de Laveleye: “Since the Scotch have embraced the reformed religion, they have outrun even the English.… Ireland, on the other hand, devoted to ultramontanism, is poor, miserable, agitated by the spirit of rebellion, and seems incapable of raising herself by her own strength.”