ries. Of these the most nefarious was the sale of indulgences
for the perpetration of sin. Italian religion had become the art of
plundering the people.

For more than a thousand years the sovereign pontiffs had been rulers
of the city. True, it had witnessed many scenes of devastation for which
they were not responsible; but they were responsible for this, that they
had never made any vigorous, any persistent effort for its material, its
moral improvement. Instead of being in these respects an exemplar for
the imitation of the world, it became an exemplar of a condition that
ought to be shunned. Things steadily went on from bad to worse, until
at the epoch of the Reformation no pious stranger could visit it without
being shocked.

The papacy, repudiating science as absolutely incompatible with its
pretensions, had in later years addressed itself to the encouragement of
art. But music and painting, though they may be exquisite adornments
of life, contain no living force that can develop a weak nation into a
strong one; nothing that can permanently assure the material well-being
or happiness of communities; and hence at the time of the Reformation,
to one who thoughtfully considered her condition, Rome had lost all
living energy. She was no longer the arbiter of the physical or the
religious progress of the world. For the progressive maxims of the
republic and the empire, she had substituted the stationary maxims of
the papacy. She had the appearance of piety and the possession of art.
In this she resembled one of those friar-corpses which we still see in
their brown cowls in the vaults of the Cappuccini, with a breviary or
some withered flowers in its hands.

From this view of the Eternal City, this survey of what Latin
Christianity had done for Rome itself, let us turn to the whole European
Continent. Let us try to determine the true value of the system that was
guiding society; let us judge it by its fruits.

The condition of nations as to their well-being is most precisely
represented by the variations of their population. Forms of government
have very little influence on population, but policy may control it
completely.

It has been very satisfactorily shown by authors who have given
attention to the subject, that the variations of population depend
upon the interbalancing of the generative force of society and the
resistances to life.

By the generative force of society is meant that instinct which
manifest