White's book was published in 1826. Like "Pope, or President," published in 1859, it is now out of print. Only at long intervals may you see a copy advertised in the catalogues of Old-book stores. _Some_ agency has been most active in destroying anti-Catholic books, and keeping them out of our Public Libraries. Consider this sentence in Hume's "History of England," Vol. II., p. 592. "Monstrous disorders are therefore said to have been found in many of the religious houses, _whole convents of women abandoned to lewdness_; signs of abortions procured, _OF INFANTS MURDERED_, of unnatural lusts between persons of the same sex." Did poor Margaret Shepherd, or Maria Monk make any accusations that were worse than these which we find in a standard history of England? In Aubrey's "Rise and Growth of the English People," the indictment against the convents and the monasteries is equally severe. See Vol. I., p. 80 and 81. In Lecky's "History of European Morals," we have exactly the same arraignment of this unnatural and polluting system. In Bower's "History of the Popes," in Hallam's "Constitutional History of England," and in every trustworthy account of the system of enforced celibacy we have the same horrible, _but natural_, description of the lives led by those full-sexed members of both sexes, who cannot mate legally and decently, but who are given access to each other under cover of night, behind the curtain of thick walls, and with the assurance that, _so long as no scandal leaks out_, no notice will be taken of what is done inside the "holy" brothel. The very language in which the virgin girl is made to pledge herself as "the spouse of Christ," is so abominably obscene and suggestive that it is bound to plant impure curiosity in her mind--and, with a girl, _impure curiosity_ is the lure to the fall. Not especially wishing to be again indicted for quoting the Pope's nasty language, I will forbear. Even in the Latin, it is so vile, lewd, lascivious, filthy, _and nasty_, that I marvel how any white woman, under any circumstances, can allow a beast of a man to use that language to her, _and not slap his face_. The language is quoted in "Pope, or President," pages 86 and 360. The "Nun Sanctified," of "Saint" Alphonsus Liguori, and the Theology of Peter Dens will give the reader a fairly correct idea of what sort of a slave the priests make of a woman, _after_ she has been ensnared into taking the black veil. In the famous investigation of the convents of Tuscany, in 1775, one of the nuns gave testimony which, is singularly piquant and unique. Besides, it remained uncontradicted. The name of the witness was Sister Flavia Peraccini. After telling of many escapades she had witnessed inside the convents, and of many merry times the priests and the nuns had with one another, Sister Flavia Peraccini deposed--