"The figures already quoted are most valuable, as they prove, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that national drunkenness is the chief cause of crime, and that sobriety is, humanly speaking, one of the best preservatives of the morals of a people."[15] When we recollect that during the years above reported the consumption of ardent spirits had decreased one-half, though the population had increased by at least a quarter of a million, the inexorable logic of the figures above quoted becomes irresistible--intemperance is a greater enemy of the Irish race than even her hereditary foe, England. With the Germans it is different. They are by no means given to indulgence in violent stimulants, though they, too, are a social people, fond of enjoyment and of their national beverage, beer; yet crime, and that of a very serious character, is not unusual among them, particularly the killing of females. And here again we have the evidence of the terrible havoc which the great rebellion of the XVIth century against the church and her authority has wrought in the social relations of mankind. Germany was the originator, the centre, and the main supporter of that revolt on the Continent of Europe, and, having been violently wrested from the seat of Catholic unity, has ever since been groping in the dark, oscillating between heathenism and transcendentalism, without stability or any sort of fixed principles. The blight of the Reformation, so called, has eaten into the very marrow of their family relations, and what would be deemed infamous for women of other countries to do, is considered among a certain class of this people, limited, it is true, a matter of course.