Much has been said and written of the licentiousness of the French, which may, in part at least, be due to the fact that they, more than any other people, have known how to make vice attractive by taking from it something of the repulsive coarseness which naturally belongs to it, but must also be ascribed to the feeling that they are Catholic, and therefore sensual. But let us examine the facts on this subject. We again bring Laing forward as a witness. “Of all the virtues,” he says, “that which the domestic family education of both the sexes most obviously influences—that which marks more clearly than any other the moral condition of a society, the home state of moral and religious principles, the efficiency of those principles in it, and the amount of that moral restraint upon passions and impulses which it is the object of education and knowledge to attain—is undoubtedly female chastity. Will any traveller, will any Prussian, say that this index-virtue of the moral condition of a people is not lower in Prussia than in almost any part of Europe?”[9] Acts which in other countries would affect the respectability and happiness of a whole family for generations are in Prussia looked upon as mere youthful indiscretions. But let us take the statistics of illegitimacy, which is a method of discussing the question made popular among Protestants by the Rev. Hobart Seymour in his _Evenings with the Romanists_. The number of illegitimate births in France for every hundred was, in 1858, 7.8; in the same year in Protestant Saxony it was 16; in Protestant Prussia, 9.3; in Würtemberg (Prot.), 16.1; in Iceland (Prot.) (1838-47), 14; in Denmark (1855), 11.5; Scotland (1871), 10.1; Hanover (1855), 9.9; Sweden (1855), 9.5; Norway (1855), 9.3. Catholic France, then, judged by this test, stands higher than any Protestant country of which we have statistical reports, except England and Wales, where the percentage was, in 1859, 6.5; but England and Wales are below other Catholic countries, and notably far below Ireland. The rate of illegitimacy in the kingdom of Sardinia (1828-37) was 2.1; in Ireland (1865-66), 3.8; in Spain (1859), 5.6; in Tuscany, 6; in Catholic Prussia, 6.1. In Scotland there are, in proportion to population, more than three times as many illegitimate births as in Ireland; and in England and Wales there are more than twice as many, and in Protestant Prussia the percentage is a third greater than in Catholic Prussia.[10] If chastity, to use Laing’s expression, is the index-virtue, the question as to the comparative morality of Protestant and Catholic nations may be considered at an end. Lecky’s words on the Irish people have often been quoted, to his own regret we believe.