by means of the
confessional. Every one knows that the spiritual slavery and degradation of
the Irish woman has no bounds. After she has been enslaved and degraded,
she, in turn, has enslaved and degraded her husband and her sons. Ireland
will be an object of pity; she will be poor, miserable, riotous,
blood-thirsty, degraded, so long as she rejects Christ, to be ruled by the
father confessor planted in every parish by the Pope.

Who has not been amazed and saddened by the downfall of France? How is it
that her once so mighty armies have melted away, that her brave sons have
so easily been conquered and disarmed? How is it that France, fallen
powerless at the feet of her enemies, has frightened the world by the
spectacle of the incredible, bloody, and savage follies of the Commune? Do
not look for the causes of the downfall, humiliation, and untold miseries
of France anywhere else than in the confessional. For centuries has not
that great country obstinately rejected Christ? Has she not slaughtered or
sent into exile her noblest children, who wanted to follow the Gospel? Has
she not given her fair daughters into the hands of the confessors, who have
defiled and degraded them? How could women, in France, teach her husbands
and sons to love liberty, and die for it, when she was herself a miserable,
an abject slave? How could she form her husbands and sons to the manly
virtues of heroes, when her own mind was defiled and her heart corrupted?

The French woman had unconditionally surrendered the noble and fair citadel
of her heart, intelligence, and womanly self-respect, into the hands of her
confessor long before her sons surrendered their sword to the Germans at
Sedan and Paris. The first unconditional surrender had brought the second.

The complete moral destruction of woman by the confessor in France has been
a long work. It has required centuries to bow down, break, and enslave the
noble daughters of France. Yes; but those who know France know that that
destruction is now as complete as it is deplorable. The downfall of woman
in France, and her supreme degradation through the confessional, is now _un
fait accompli_, which nobody can deny; the highest intellects have seen and
confessed it. One of the most profound thinkers of that unfortunate
country, Michelet, has depicted that supreme and irretrievable degradation
in a most eloquent book, "The Priest, The Woman, The Family;" and not a
voice has been raised to deny or