"Oh, God of mercy," she prays, "spare my child! Heaven is already full of light and gladness. Do not then take to heaven the light and joy of my heart. Thou art ever happy, O my God! do not then deprive me of my only happiness. God of compassion, O leave me the sweet babe whom Thou hast given me! my love, and all my happiness, is centred in him. Since he has come to me, the earth, and sea, and sky, the whole world around has grown doubly beautiful. The air seems filled with light, and song, and sweetness. Ah, do not take my child away, for when his tender body lies beneath the sod, my heart and life shall lie there with it, and this whole world shall grow dark and dreary as one vast gloomy graveyard. O God! remember I am yet so young. I am not used to tears. Deal gently with my poor weak heart! I have never yet known what it is to lose a friend, a relative, or beloved one. O God! shall, then, the first that teaches me the dread meaning of grave and shroud be my own, my first-born child? O Jesus, I conjure Thee, by Thy wounded Heart—wounded for love of me—do not crush my tender heart, for Thou hast made it tender. Thou hast made me a mother; oh, spare my darling child!"
Ah! who can measure the depth of the wonderful love of a mother's heart! But this natural love of a mother for her offspring, in order to be persevering and untiring, must be cultivated—must be ennobled and supernaturalized by religious education; otherwise this love will decrease, and be lost in the end, and with the loss of this love the Christian woman has lost her divine calling. Now as no religious education is imparted to the girls in the Public Schools, can we wonder to see thousands and thousands of them who have lost their divine calling—can we wonder that we hear of a countless number of unnatural crimes, committed under the veil of marriage, that are becoming so common at the present day? Dr. Storer, of Massachusetts, declares that increase of children in Massachusetts is limited almost wholly to the foreign population. Mr. Warren Johnson, State Superintendent of Common Schools in Maine, reports to the Legislature a decrease of 16,683, between the ages of four and twenty-one years, from the census of 1858. Total decrease from maximum of 1860 is nearly 20,000. Mr. Johnson asks: "Are the modern fashionable criminalities of infanticide creeping into our State community?" Dr. H. R. Storer, of Massachusetts, in 1859, declared that forced abortions in America were of frequent occurrence, and that this frequency was increasing so, that from 1 in 1,633 of the population in 1805, it had risen to 1 in 340 in 1849; and Dr. Kyle, of Xenia, Ohio, asserted that abortions occurred most frequently among those who are known as the better class; among church members, and those generally who pretend to be the most polite, virtuous, moral and religious. And, without mincing matters at all, this eminent physician boldly declares that "a venal press, a demoralized clergy, and the prevalence of medical charlatanism, are the principal causes of the fearful increase of this abominable crime." The paucity of children in the families of wealthy and well-to-do Americans has been publicly noticed and commented upon time and again; but the true cause thereof, if known, was carefully concealed. And can we wonder that the crime has descended from the highest to the lowest, and now pervades all classes of society? Statistics have been frequently published to show that in certain States of the Union, and in certain districts of those States, the births did not, and do not, equal the deaths; and were it not for the foreign population among us many of those districts, and not a few of those States, would be depopulated in a few years. Massachusetts and New York lead the van in this criminal record. Dr. T. A. Reamy, of Zanesville, Ohio, in 1867, wrote, that after a careful survey of the field he was ready to say that "to-day no sin approaches with such stealth and dangerous power the altars of the Church as fœticide; and, unless it can be stayed, not only will it work its legitimate moral depravity and social ruin, but (he believed) God will visit dreadful judgment upon us no less severe, perhaps, than He did upon the Cities of the Plain."
In 1865, Dr. Morse Stewart, of Detroit, Michigan, declared that few of either sex entered the marital relation without full information as to the ways and means of destroying the legitimate results of matrimony. And among married persons so extensive has this practice become, that people of high repute not only commit this crime, but do not even blush to speak boastingly among their intimates of the deed, and the means of accomplishing it.
Dr. Nathan Allen, of Lowell, Mass., at a meeting of the Social Science Association, Boston, entitled "Wanted—More Mothers," remarked "that the increase of population for twenty-five years has been mainly in cities and towns, and it will be found to be largely made up of foreign element; and in the smaller villages, chiefly American, the stock has hardly increased at all.
"We find there are absolutely more deaths than births among the strictly American children; so that, aside from immigration, and births of children of foreign parentage, the population of Massachusetts is really decreasing.
"Another fact developed by report is, that whereas, in 1765, nearly one-half of the population of Massachusetts was under fifteen years of age, it is believed that, at the present time, not more than one-fifth of the purely American population is under that age. In an equal number of American and foreign families, the births will be nearly three times as many in the latter as in the former. In some of the old towns, the records of a hundred years do not show a single instance of a married couple without children. The New York census of 1865 shows that, out of nine hundred and ninety-three thousand two hundred and thirty-six married women, one hundred and thirty-seven thousand seven hundred and forty-five had no children, and three hundred and thirty-three thousand only had one or two.
"In the small town of Billerica, there are ninety families with ten or more children; five of these had fourteen, and one twenty-one: the total in the ninety families is ten hundred and ninety-three. The birth-rates show that American families do not increase at all, and the inspection of the registration in other States shows that the same remark applies to all."
Many parts of Vermont are undergoing a gradual depopulation. Sandgate had a population of 1,187 in 1810, and 805 in 1860.
The town of Rupert had a population of 1,848 in 1800, which had diminished to 1,103 in 1860.
The town of Arlington was settled in the year 1762. In the year 1800 all the arable and pasturage land was occupied, and the inhabitants numbered 1,569. In 1830 the number had decreased to 1,207, and in 1860 to 1,146.
Mrs. A. B. Boone says, in her book "The Increase of Crime," "I have frequently heard women say 'I don't mind having one or two children, but no more for me.' When I first heard these expressions I thought it merely a joke, but eventually I found out they meant what they said, and I was amazed. And when these women do condescend to have one or two children, what sort of a lifelong inheritance are they giving their offspring? ill-health even unto death. Frequently I come in contact with women of thirty, and even twenty-five, so debilitated that they are far more fit for hospitals than to fill the sacred office of either wife or mother.
"I am sorry to add that the crime of child-murder is carried on to the greatest extent among the wealthy. In Cambridgeport, a medical lady informed me that she was continually applied to for this purpose, and always refused in the most decided manner; but, to her knowledge, one woman performed, on an average, from a hundred to a hundred and fifty cases in a week. And yet churches abound in this place.
"The Rev. Dr. Todd has written two most truthful lectures, one entitled 'Fashionable Murders,' and the other 'A Cloud with a Dark Lining.' His revelations with regard to the determination that the Americans evince not to have children, is fearfully true, more especially among the women.
"Speaking of having children, reminds me of a circumstance that happened some fifteen years ago. I had a letter of introduction to a lady who wished to engage my children to read at a party she was about to give. She received me with an air of melancholy politeness, at the same time informing me that the gathering was postponed, as dear little Fanny was 'real sick.' I saw a wine-glass and teaspoon on the table by the side of the sofa, which had a small blanket on it bound with sky-blue ribbon, covering up something that I supposed to be a sick child. I approached, and gently drew aside the blanket. I jumped back—it was a poodle-dog, whose black eyes winked
