estcraft. His work is well worth a reading; but
it is to be remembered by all who would do Mr. Draper justice that his
great antagonist is the Roman Catholic Church. Will she defend herself
against the charge of being in conflict with science? Is she in the way of
human progress? How does she compare with Protestants in morality and
virtue?

Let us give you a few figures, by the way of negative evidence, upon the
question of comparative morality, remembering that it is a sad necessity
of our nature to have to determine which of us has the least of moral
miseries in order that we may know which has the most of virtue. Let this
be as it may, these moral miseries show themselves under two principal
phases, acts of profligacy and acts of violence; corrupt manners and
assassinations. Here is what we read in Jonnes:

Assassinations And Attempts To Assassinate In Europe.

Protestant--Scotland, 1835, 1 for 270,000
Protestant--England, 1 for 178,000
Protestant--Low Countries, 1824, 1 for 163,000
Protestant--Prussia, 1824, 1 for 100,000
Catholic States--Austria, 1809, 1 for 57,000
Catholic--Spain, 1826, 1 for 4,113
Catholic--Naples, 1 for 2,750
Catholic--Roman States, 1 for 750

_Jonnes, vol. 2, p. 257._

Now, if we take the average, we have one assassination, or one attempt to
assassinate, for 180,222 inhabitants in the aggregate of the four
Protestant nations; and one assassination, or one attempt to assassinate,
for 16,153 inhabitants in the four Catholic nations; in other words,
eleven times more of these crimes among the Roman Catholic nations. The
contrast between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries in Spain is so
very striking, and is painted by a writer in such lively colors that one
is tempted to believe that the picture was intended to serve as a
demonstration.

"Spain is a dispossessed queen. For two hundred years and more diamonds
have been falling from her glittering crown. The source of her wealth,
well or ill-gotten, is exhausted forever. Her treasures are lost, her
colonies are gone; she is deprived of the prestige of that external
opulence which veiled, or, at least dissembled her real and utter poverty.
The nation is exhausted to such a degree, and has been so long unhappy,
that each individual feels but his own misery. His country has ceased to
exist for him. Even those time are gone when the guerillas called the
citizens to a