useless to talk of adopting Protestantism under the pretext that it is favourable to civil and political liberty, to diffusion of modern ideas and science. [Sidenote: No sufficient evidence that Protestant countries are more moral than Catholic.] There remains the consideration of public morality in France. But it is impossible to demonstrate that the morality of Protestant people is superior to that of Catholics; nay, in respect to a certain number of items, statistics tend rather to prove the contrary, if anything can be proved of morality by statistics. Drunkenness, for example, is a much less terrible scourge among Catholic peoples who inhabit climates in which alcohol constitutes a much smaller temptation. Illegitimate births are much more frequent in Germany than in France; no doubt because of the laws that regulate marriage. The average of crimes and offences is not very variable from country to country, and such variations as there are, are attributable to difference of climate, of race, of greater or less density of population, and not to differences of religion. To-day, on account of the increasing perfection of means of communication, vice tends to find its level. Vices spread like contagious diseases: everyone whose system is in a state which is favourable to poison becomes contaminated, to whatsoever race or whatsoever religion he may belong. The effect of any given religion upon the morality of any given people is certainly not to be overlooked, but it is altogether relative to the character of the people in question, and proves nothing as to the absolute moral quality of the religion itself. Mohammedanism is of great service to barbarous tribes, because it prohibits drunkenness, and travellers generally agree as to the moral superiority of Mohammedan tribes as compared with tribes converted to Christianity; the first are composed of shepherds and relatively honest merchants, the second are composed of drunkards, whom alcohol has transformed into beasts and pillagers. Does it follow that we must all become converted to Mohammedanism, or even that the prohibitions of the Koran, all-powerful as they are over the savage mind, would act with the same force upon a drunkard of Paris or of London? Alas, no! and in the absence of any such possibility one may take refuge in this means: sobriety is even more important for the masses of the people than continence, its absence borders more nearly on bestiality; moreover the labouring man and especially the peasant possesses less opportunity to run to excesses of incontinence than of drink, for the simple reason that women cost more than drink. Even among the followers of Mohammed, the poor are obliged to restrict themselves to one wife. [Sidenote: And religion is not the sole factor that determines morality.]