to the ear
of the sleeping "Mother of Mankind" deadly insinuations of disobedience
and rebellion, just as freedom in religion--the serpent so unworthily
abhorred by New England Puritanism--was a divinely chartered and
precious privilege of mankind long before the founding of Rhode Island
colonies or the birth of Roger Williams. The vagaries and fantasies of
freedom, its excesses, outrages, and crimes, are something fearful to
contemplate, but freedom is, has been, and must ever continue to be, the
essential condition of human power and excellence. It has ever been the
madness of men--and madness that could not claim the poor excuse of
method--to think of cutting down the tree of liberty, and still hope to
retain the benefits and blessings of its shade.

The statistics of marriages, as compared with those of population, would
seem to indicate that there is an increasing unwillingness on the part
of men or women, or both, to take upon themselves the responsibilities
of wedded life. Whether because of the increased expense of living due
to the development of luxurious tastes, and the selfishness which
results; or the difficulties in the way of securing remunerative and
constant employment; or because of other reasons, the sly god seems to
have lost something of his former power. Perhaps the chief cause lies
with the young men, who dare neither to face the cares of matrimony
themselves, nor to ask others to do so. Whatever there is of cowardice
in this matter, we do not believe that it can, as a rule, be charged
upon the women of America, without regard to their station in life. It
is claimed that in Massachusetts, of every 1,000 inhabitants in
1850-1860, 21 married, now only 17; that in Connecticut, while the
population has increased 56 per cent during the last decade, marriages
have increased but 34 per cent; that in Providence, R.I., while the
number capable of marrying was in the last decade 115 percent greater
than in the decade preceding the war, the number who married was only 77
per cent greater; and that in Ohio, while, in 1850-1880, the inhabitants
had increased 37 per cent, the number of marriages had advanced only 26
per cent.

* * * * *

Mistakes go in pairs. It was a mistake for a body of Protestant
ministers to meddle in the matter of the succession to a generalship in
the army, and it is a mistake for the _Catholic Standard_ to make this
the occasion for invidious statements