+-------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's note: | | | |Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. | | | +-------------------------------------------------+ THE INEVITABLE CRIMES OF CELIBACY: THE VICES OF CONVENTS AND MONASTERIES, PRIESTS AND NUNS _By_ THOS. E. WATSON _Author of "The Story of France," "Napoleon," "Life and Times of Andrew Jackson," "Life and Times of Thomas Jefferson," "The Roman Catholic Hierarchy," Etc._ THOMSON, GA.: 1916. Press of THE JEFFERSONIAN PUB. CO. Thomson, Ga. The Inevitable Crimes of Celibacy: The Vices of Convents and Monasteries, Priests and Nuns. CHAPTER I. When any species of wrong-doing can wear the disguise of righteousness, the blindest among us can see how dangerous that kind of crime may become--how hard to prove, punish and put down. There are immense Arabian plains where nomad robbers have practised their profession, from a time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary; yet those plains and the nomad bands that pitch their tents beneath the Oriental sun remain very much as they were in the days of Abraham. But where robbery has disguised itself _as Law_, and one class has aimed the law-making machine at the others, saying "_Stand and deliver!_" whole regions have become deserts, and great peoples have been blotted out. In fact, the highwayman, the cattle-lifter and the pickpocket have never in the least affected the destinies of nations. The pirate and the buccaneer have never been able to destroy the commerce of the seas, beggar provinces, and change noble harbors into neglected pools. It is when the robbers intrench themselves in Parliaments, Reichstags and Congresses, and the robbery takes the form of "Law," that spoliation becomes destructive. Bank laws and money-contraction laws beat down more victims than armies. Protective Tariff "laws," infinitely more ruinous than all the Lafittes and Captain Kidds, drive the American flag from the seas, while on land they make a thousand Rockefellers, Carnegies, Morgans, Guggenheims, McCormicks and Armours, at the same time that they are casting millions of the despoiled out of house and home. There are realms where religious mendicancy keeps to the primitive forms of the beggar's bowl and pouch. It is the free-will offering. In these countries of voluntary tributes, religious feeling has branched into the fewest channels, has lost the least of its original force, and maintains today its most impregnable position. But where the priestly caste was able to intrench its mendicancy in Law, and arrogantly say to the laity, "_Pay me one-tenth of all thou hast!_" religion was first to well-nigh lose its beauty and its strength, and like, the Rhine, almost disappear into the intricate morasses of subdivisions.