And now words fail. Of the mother, by consent or by her own hand, imbrued with her infant’s blood; of the equally guilty father, who counsels or allows the crime; of the wretches who by their wholesale murders far out-Herod Burke and Hare; of the public sentiment which palliates, pardons, and would even praise this so common violation of all law, human and divine, of all instinct, of all reason, all pity, all mercy, all love, we leave those to speak who can. We have next to prove— II. ITS FREQUENCY, AND THE CAUSES THEREOF. Though we cannot at once, and in exact figures, show the yearly amount of criminal abortion in this country, statistics on the subject being necessarily imperfect or wanting, we may yet arrive at an approximate result. This is done by an easy and reliable process of induction, the several factors of which, each of itself rendering probable the conclusion, tend, when combined, to make it almost absolutely certain. We are to consider, in this connection, the evidence afforded by— I.—The comparative increase of population. II.—The published records of still-births. III.—The number of arrests, or trials for abortion. IV.—The published number of immediate maternal deaths. V.—The pecuniary success of abortionists, and abortion-producing nostrums. VI.—The comparative size of families in present and past times. VII.—The experience of physicians—direct from applications for abortion and actual cases, and indirect from their results. Several of these points are as yet almost wholly uninvestigated. They are stated, therefore, with care, as bearing decidedly on the question at issue, and as tending to provoke still further research. To go into an elaborate comparison of our national and state censuses with themselves, past and present, with each other, and with those of similar communities abroad, involving, as it would do, intricate calculations regarding the effect of emigration from state to state, and from nation to nation, the increase of urban population, and the frequent decrease of rural, is not our present intention, nor is it necessary. By considering this point in connection with that immediately succeeding it, with which it is intimately related, its bearing and importance will at once be seen.