But a more diabolical crime against all law, natural, human, and divine, is the system, so prevalent in some sections of this country, of mothers depriving their inchoate offspring of existence even on the very threshold of their entrance into the world. So unnatural is this offence that it is beyond the power of language to reprobate it adequately, and in charity we hope that the guilty votaries of ease and fashion, who perpetrate such horrible atrocities, do not realize the full turpitude of their acts. We had long refused to believe that such a violation, not only of God's law, but of the strongest and most beautiful instincts of our nature--the parent's love for her child--existed to any great extent, but we have been so often assured of it by physicians and other reputable persons conversant with such matters, that we have been forced to admit as true the existence among us of a crime that would disgrace the veriest savage. We are assured that in certain localities, which we shall not particularize, the evil is not only widespread but is growing into a custom, and this extraordinary fact is adduced as one of the reasons why the children of native-born parents are so few in proportion to those of foreigners. If we were to look for a primary cause for such barbaric criminality in merely human motives, we should fail to find one at all commensurate with the enormity of the guilt. The wish of married women to be freed from the care of young children, so that they, being unincumbered by household duties and cares, may participate in outdoor pleasures, attend the opera, the theatres, concerts, and ball-rooms, has been advanced with some force as one of the reasons; but this is not sufficient, for we find the heinous practice prevailing in remote towns and villages where no such attractions are presented. The laws of civil marriage and of divorce, as recognized in most of the states of the Union; that curse of what is called modern civilization; that fatal legacy handed down to us by the "Reformers," has much to answer for in this respect. Protestantism has reduced the holy sacramental bond of matrimony beneath the level of a limited co-partnership, degraded the nuptial contract below the most trivial commercial obligation, annihilated its responsibilities, destroyed its safeguards, and even wishes to go further--to ignore the very shadow of marriage, from which it has long since taken the substance. The purchase of a piece of land or the delivery of a bale of goods is now attended with more ceremony than that sacred rite at which our Saviour himself attended in Galilee and at which he performed his first miracle! How deeply has humanity been made to suffer for the bestiality of Henry Tudor and the apostasy of the monk of Augsburg! Is it any wonder then that a link, so thoughtlessly accepted and so lightly worn, should be as unceremoniously sundered, and that the woman, who does not know but on