VIII. The education of the people has never been seriously attempted, except in carrying a flimsy old musket. The Indians, who form the great bulk of the population, do not vote. This would involve a slight cultivation of the Indian's intellect, and he does not know what might happen to further embitter his lot if he were to discover to his rulers that he had a mind. He is perhaps the slyest of animals--more sly than a fox, more obstinate than an English mule, and as timid as a squirrel. IX. The marriage law is disgracefully abused and neglected for a country which boasts that its religion is that of the Holy Roman Apostolical. Civil marriage is illegal, and ecclesiastical marriage but little observed, except among the Estratocracia, the sugar-boilers, and such as mix in European society. The subject is one always difficult for a traveller to handle. To speak plainly and publicly of what has been acquired in private on this matter would justly provoke displeasure and disgust, and would not fail to be misrepresented or misunderstood. It may, however, be said, that if marriage be a public virtue, large numbers of the Peruvians of the Manure Age are not virtuous. X. Of the great public works in Peru, the chief during this time has been a penitentiary, and a railway to the moon not yet finished, all built by foreigners and with English money. Emigration was one of the most important transactions of the Golden Age. There has been no serious attempt at promoting either emigration or immigration: the migration of the native races is absolutely beyond the control of the government. XI. Of deleterious occupations and XII. The use of gold, all that need be said is that each man in Peru does what he likes in his own eyes, and what is allowed in the most enlightened land under the sun: and in this regard she sins in the universal company of the wide world; but the comparison with the Golden Age is not on that account the less painful. XIII. Incontinence is general, and the number of illegitimate children greater than those born in wedlock. The crime punishable by the terrible death awarded to it in the Golden Age has disappeared, for reasons which need not be further noticed. XIV. The scandals of the Temple or the Church have likewise changed in their character. I have known a bishop of the Peruvian State Church, sworn to celibacy, whose illegitimate children were more numerous than the years of his life. I have known a parish priest who had living in several houses more than thirty children by several women. All Peruvian ecclesiastics are supposed to live celibate lives, bishops, priests, monks and nuns; and if they do not, the irregularity is winked at, nor is public morality shocked, however grossly and notoriously immoral the lives of these persons may be.