Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/369

 learned treatise, in 1859, statistics prove the existence in France of 370,018 infirm persons, of whom the greater number were evidently condemned to celibacy by the very fact of their infirmity. On the other hand, it is probable that among the beggars, properly so called, there is a large proportion of celibates, without counting the infirm; now in 1847 there were 337,838 beggars in France.

To these lists of unwilling celibates must be added, especially, the virile population in the army, the mortality in which was, as we well know, double that of the civil population. Now, on the 1st January 1852, the French army counted 354,960 men. To these matrimonial non-values, contributing a larger tithe to sickness and death, must be further joined the celibates from religious vows. The census shows 52,885 of the latter. Without any ill-feeling towards the Catholic clergy, we may be allowed to hold the opinion that the very fact of a man's vowing himself to celibacy—that is to say, of setting at nought the desires of nature and the needs of the society of which he forms a part—merely for metaphysical motives, often implies a certain degree of mental inferiority. The special statistics of the little ecclesiastical world are not published in France; but M. Duruy having once had the happy thought of ascertaining from the judicial pigeon-holes the number of crimes and misdemeanours committed by the members of religious orders engaged in teaching, compared with those of lay schoolmasters, during a period of thirty months, the result of the inquiry showed that, proportionally to the number of schools, the former were guilty of four times as many misdemeanours and twelve times as many crimes as the latter. Short as the period of observation was, this enormous difference gives matter for reflection, although it may not have the value of a law.

But the principal causes which influence matrimony are the greater or less facility of existence, and the extreme importance attached to money. As a general rule, life and death tend to balance each other, and the populations whose mortality is great have, as compensation, a rich birth-*