294 



LIFE IN MONTREAL. [Chap. VII. 



had been reported that this excess of mortality arose from the 

 Foundling Hospital, in charge of the Soeurs Grises (see p. 189), 

 and that about 2000 children died annually in it ! It proved 

 that upwards of 600 foundlings did die — about 92 per cent, 

 of the whole : this was not greater than in some similar insti- 

 tutions, though twice as great as in good asylums. Philip was 

 supplied with the needful statistics by the Sisters : " Even this 

 religious city cannot provide ladies more willing to do this 

 most loathsome of works, and more devoted to the service 

 which they thus offer to our common Saviour ! " Loathsome 

 indeed it must be, when we read the statistics of the " condi- 

 tion" in which the infants were received — a terrible evidence 

 how sin and shame harden the heart.* If the mortality were 

 only among these children, since their lives were not desired, 

 their death might not have touched the selfish : and as they 

 received baptism, it would be generally supposed that they 

 were secure of a heavenly life, if deprived of an earthly one ; 

 but it proved that, after deducting these foundlings, 29*9 per 

 cent, of children under one year died in Montreal ; while only 

 17 '4 per cent, of the same age died in Boston. The greater 

 cold in Montreal would not account for it ; for the coldest 



by Mr. Watt, he referred to his reply in the "Gazette" of November 29, 

 1869, to Mr. Watt, who had pointed out a few errors ; but the main deduc- 

 tions remained unshaken. 



* In 1873 Philip wrote to the " Gazette " stating that in the previous year 

 410 infants, of whom about 93 per cent, died, were from Montreal city. He 

 refers to a picture in "The Illustrated London News" "of the Chinese tower, 

 into which those heathens cast their children by the hundred : " and asks 

 how the 820 wicked parents in Montreal, who dread the judgment of their 

 fellow-citizens, will face their children whom they devoted to death, before 

 the Judgment- Seat of Christ. But " Were the eight hundred and twenty 

 unnatural parents the only citizens of Montreal who practised the damning 

 lusts of impurity ? Let us take warning : no unclean person can enter 

 into the kingdom of Heaven. Most of these eight hundred, a few years 

 ago, were sweet innocent boys and girls. Little by little they learnt to turn 

 the most sacred functions of their nature to their pleasure, and then to 

 their shame ! Perhaps their parents gave them no warning : their teachers 

 gave no true knowledge : other boys and girls instructed them in evil. Let 

 there be light ! Let not Satan have all the teaching to himself, in the 

 Press, in the streets — aye, in the school, even in the nursery. Let Christian 

 parents be pure themselves, and instruct their children in purity : let those 

 whom the Lord has lent to our care be foreivarned and forearmed^ before the 

 tijne of special temptation comes." 



