Church, has latterly shown evident signs of admitting that Neo-Malthusian practices, which are so habitually made use of in France, must at least be acknowledged to be morally innocent. Thus, in 1870, the Vatican Council was implored by a French priest, Dr. Friedrich, to reconsider its judgment on conjugal prudence: “and not to cause the damnation of so many millions of souls by letting the directors (confessors) lay upon their consciences, commands or prohibitions impossible to observe. It will be our duty (he exclaims) to search in the holy books alone for condemnation of the act in question; if it be found to be forbidden neither by the decalogue nor by the other laws of God contained in Holy Writ, nor by the apostles, nor by the commands of the Church assembled in Council General, nor by the Pope speaking _ex cathedrâ_, we shall say it (conjugal prudence) cannot be condemned by anyone.” Dr. Friedrich continues: “A learned and holy devotee of a very austere Order says: ‘I have studied this case with all the powers of my intelligence and of my conscience, and I have come to this formal conviction, that we are on the wrong track. To my mind, this act is enormously below the smallest mortal sin, and it is enormously lessened by all the motives that provoke it, real motives of health, even of interest, of family, &c.’” Lastly, he informs us that Rome has enjoined on confessors to question very little and to dwell as little as possible upon this subject. Surely, after this, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh might hesitate! What Rome has done, other churches might surely do; and I am pleased to say that many excellent members of the English Establishment are inclined to side with the Malthusian League in its earnest recommendation to all classes of the community to replace the heartrending positive checks to population—war, pestilence, and famine—and the torturing agonies of prolonged celibacy, which Dr. Bertillon’s statistics show to be so inimical even to longevity, by the far more humane and rational plan of early marriage conjoined with very much smaller families than are at the present time the fashion among all classes. Some check to population we must submit to; and there is not the slightest doubt in my own mind that the morality of the near future will look upon the production of large families in European states as the most anti-social of all the actions of a citizen. Then, and not till then, will indigence disappear from the face of all civilised society. [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES