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 manifests itself in the multiplication of the race.