Papal Intrigues—Catholic Persecution—Protestant Persecution—Catholics in the Revolutionary War—In the late Rebellion—Catholic Enmity to Civil and Religious Liberty— An Alliance formed for the Subversion of the American Republic—The Duke of Richmond’s Letter—Catholic Immigration—Progress of Catholicism—Its Consequences—The Republic in Imminent Danger—Union Only Means of Salvation— Conclusion.
That the papal pretensions have been a fruitful source of the seditions and wars which, like successive tornadoes, have swept in fearful rapidity over Christendom, the records of history furnish the most unquestionable evidence; yet still no one will venture the assertion that popish machinations have been the sole cause of political discords. Treason and popular disaffection have revolutionized and annihilated government after government long before the throne of St. Peter was established; yet since that unfortunate period it cannot be denied, that whenever the causes of civil or foreign war became active, the sacerdotal monarchs have inflamed or soothed them according to the dictates of their interests. Through their intrigues the exterminating sword of Charlemagne compelled the Saxons to be baptized; and that of Otho I. compelled the Danes to accept the same rite. Through their intrigues Clovis was induced, by his Catholic wife, to consent to be baptized; and his troops who had followed him to the field of slaughter, were led to follow him also to the baptismal fount. By the same means Ethelbert, who wished to marry Bertha, daughter of Carobert, King of Paris, was persuaded to agree to matrimonial stipulations allowing her, upon becoming his wife, to bring her bishop with her, and permitting him to establish a Catholic church in the kingdom for her convenience. By the same artful means Ethelwolf was led to confer on the clergy the tithes of all the produce of the land; Alfred the Great, to expel from his kingdom all the Danes that refused to be baptized; Edward to accept the title of saint and confessor in lien of an heir to his throne, and to consent to abstain from nuptial congress with his queen; Edward IV. to promulgate a law committing to the flames all persons convicted of the heresy of the Lollards; and Mary I., a person of good natural qualities and administrative abilities, to imprison Protestant bishops for high treason, to confine princess Elizabeth in the tower, to execute Lady Jane Gray and her husband Guilford Dudley, to provoke the insurrections of Cave and Wyat, to commit to the flames two hundred and twenty-seven of her innocent subjects, and to render herself a terror to her nation. By the same disgraceful and impertinent intrigues the reign of Queen Elizabeth was perpetually disturbed with efforts to overthrow her government. The popes excommunicated her; denied her legitimacy; endeavored to supplant her with Mary Queen of Scots; induced the French to support Scotland in a rebellion against her government; created a sedition in the north; incited Spain to promote a conspiracy against her, assisted by Florentine merchants, the Bishop of Ross, and the Scotchmen residing in England; and when all these efforts proved abortive, to organize a conspiracy to have her assassinated by Anthony Babbington. By the same disastrous intermeddling the reign of Queen Ann was disturbed with efforts to restore the succession to James the Pretender, the pope’s tool for the recovery of England; under that of George I. the Duke of Marleborough was led to proclaim the Pretender in Scotland; Cardinal Alberoni, minister of Spain, to form an alliance in his favor with Russia, Sweden, France and Spain; and Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, to engage in a conspiracy for the same object. Similar papal machinations have interfered with the peace of France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Sweden, Russia, Poland, China, Japan, Egypt, Abyssinia, and of many other governments, all of which were fearfully productive of sedition, anarchy, war and revolutions.
Besides these intermeddlings with the national affairs of all governments, the Catholic church assails all non-Catholics with the most execrable persecution, openly when she dares, secretly when she must. In her fiendish malice she counsels the violation of every principle of justice, of every obligation of humanity, of all contracts, of all pecuniary engagements, of all oaths, and urges as a duty the persecution and extermination of all unbelievers, by means of corporeal punishment, by imprisonment, banishment, murder, fire, swords, racks, stakes and scaffolds. Hear the truth of these assertions from the sanctified lips of the holy mother herself:
“The Catholics believe that the Pope’s authority is not only ministerial but supreme, so that he has the right to direct and compel, with the power of life and death.”—Ecc. Jacob. Mag., But. Reg. Oppos. c. 138.
“Two swords were given to Peter, the one temporal, the other spiritual.”—Bernard de Corned. Lib. 4: c. 3.
“She (the church) bears, by divine right, both swords, but she exercises the temporal sword by the hand of the prince, or the magistrate. The temporal magistrate holds it subject to her order, to be exercised in her service, and under her direction.”—Bronsons Rev., Jan., 1854.
“Both swords are in the power of the Pope, namely, the spiritual and the temporal sword; but the one is to be exercised by the church, the other for the church; the one by the hands of the priest, the other by the hands of the king and the soldiers, but as the sword of the priest.”—Pope Boniface, Corp. Jur. Con. ed. Bocher, tome 11: p. 1139.
“Civil contracts, promises, or oaths of Catholics with heretics, because they are heretics, may be dissolved by the Pontiff.”—Pope Innocent X., Caron. 14.
Engagements made with heretics and schismatics of this kind, after such have been consummated, are inconsiderate, illegal, and in law itself is of no importance, (although made, per chance, by the lapse of those persons into schism, or before the beginning of their heresy), even if confirmed by an oath, or one’s honor being pledged.”—Pope Urban VI., Bymer 7: 352.
“Though sworn to pay he may refuse the claims of a debtor who falls into error or under excommunication. The debtor’s oath implied the tacit condition that the creditor, to be entitled to payment, should remain in a state in which communication would be lawful.”—St. Bernard, Maynooth Report, 260.
“There are various punishments with which ecclesiastical sanctions and imperial laws order heretics to be punished. Some are spiritual, and effect the soul alone; others are corporeal, and effect the body… Among the corporeal punishments, one which very much annoys heretics is the proscription and confiscation of their property.”—Alphonso ae Castro, cap. 5: p. 98.
“Another punishment,” says he, “is the deprival of every sort of preeminence, jurisdiction and government, which they previously had over all persons of all conditions; for he who is a heretic is, ipso jure, deprived of all things.”—Ib., cap. 7: p. 1055.
“The last punishment of the body for heretics,” he informs us, “is death, with which we will prove, by God’s assistance, heretics ought to be punished.”—Ib. i cap. 12: p. 123.
But it will be said that Protestants have been guilty of persecution as well as Catholics. This assertion is unquestionably true. We confess, with regret, that Protestantism, although she admits the right of private judgment, has proved a foe to civil and religious liberty, But unlike Catholicism, she has made concessions; reluctantly, indeed, but still she has made them. Guizot confesses that her practice has necessarily been inconsistent with her profession of toleration. She, however, claims not, like Catholicism, to be the source and supreme controller of all political power; nor to be the sole disposer of crowns and kingdoms; nor has she elaborated a policy, adopted a systematic course of measures, and organized a clerical force for the acquisition of supreme and universal temporal and spiritual dominion. She has no central head, with spies penetrating all domestic and national secrets, and communicating to it the information they have acquired. She has no political-machinery ramifying every part of Christendom, and acting in concert for the promotion of her interests. She has no convents, nor nunneries; nor monastic vows; no father confessors; no religious confessional; no religious orders, no military knights; and no spiritual guides. She imposes no oaths of allegiance on her priests, requiring them to adopt every available method of subjugating all government under her authority. She has no inquisition, no rack and torture for her opponents; no pretensions to absolve subjects from their oaths of allegiance; no interdicts to alarm superstitious minds by the suspension of religious worship in disaffected kingdoms. She has never interfered between rulers and their subjects, concocting treason, fomenting sedition, and producing anarchy. She has never organized armies for the extension of her dominion, and for the subjugation of kingdoms to her authority. She has never butchered whole cities for unbelief, nor in one day put one hundred thousand heretics to death. She has done none of these things, yet her hands are not unstained with innocent blood. Would they were. Henry VIII., of England, persecuted with equal severity those who believed in the pope’s right to temporal power, and those who disbelieved the other dogmas of Catholicism.
The Church of England, under Charles I., inflicted the most atrocious punishment on the Irish Catholics; under James I., on the Puritans; and under Elizabeth, it oppressed both Catholics and dissenters with tyrannical measures, and illiberal disabilities. The Puritan Cromwell persecuted both Catholics and Episcopalians. In Ireland he wasted the Catholics with fire and sword; in Scotland he put whole garrisons of dissenters to death; and as his schemes for obtaining the royal dignity suggested, persecuted Covenanters, Republicans, and Puritans. When Charles II. was elevated to the throne he deprived 2000 dissenting clergymen of their livings; and by his five-mile act prohibited them from approaching within five miles of their former parishes. But the rigor of Protestantism eventually relaxed its severity. Under William III. some of the disabilities which oppressed the dissenters were removed; and under that of George III. additional toleration was accorded. Still it must be admitted that the ablest agents in extorting these concessions to religious liberty were the Free Thinkers of that age. Yet the Quakers, always the most respectable body of citizens, and the professors of the most harmless of all creeds, were still punished with fines, confiscation, imprisonment and death. All who disbelieved in the holy trinity were also subject to similar persecutions. Not until 1813 did Protestant England cease to punish a belief in Unitarianism with imprisonment, and legal disabilities. John Calvin, at the head of the Consistory of Geneva, had John Guet beheaded on a charge of attempting to overthrow the doctrines of the Calvinistic church; and Micheal Servetus arrested and burnt alive for having attacked the doctrine of the holy trinity. Even in republic America, under the elevating influence of liberal institutions, the intolerant spirit of religious bigotry predominates more or less over the mind of the Christian republic.
In Massachusetts Baptists and Quakers were once fined, imprisoned, and burnt alive. In Virginia all Quakers that disbelieved in the holy trinity, and all persons that refused to have their children baptized were scourged, confined, banished or put to death. In Pennsylvania, under the charter of William Penn, all Atheists were excluded from official position. In Maryland disbelief in the holy trinity was declared to be a capital offence; and not until recently was any person, who professed not to believe in Christianity, unless a Jew, eligible to any office of trust or profit in the State; nor even to this day is any person eligible who disbelieves in a God. The statute books of every Protestant country bear testimony to the same illiberality. Humboldt, Cuviert Buffon, La Place, Gibbon, Voltaire, Hume, Jefferson, and other eminent scholars and patriots would, by the provisions of almost every State constitution in the Union, be debarred from filling the lowest office that they create. In fact the history of no religious sectary indicates it to be a bond of love, union, or concord. Every Protestant creed, sectary or conclave, is a perpetual source of mutual jealousy, animosity and persecution, The same intolerant spirit breathes its malignancy over the pages of the religious press. “If we are not Christians,” says the Church Union, “let us make no hypocritical pretensions of founding governments on Christian principles. If we are, I believe that they should predominate over our whole life; let us have them incorporated in the basis of our government, and the national policy shaped by them. Let no one hold an office of trust or profit whose life is not conformably thereto.” These holy ravings remind us of an attempt once made by the Puritans to incorporate the Bible into the British constitution. “The wrestlers with God,” as they called themselves were, deliberating upon a motion to repeal the laws of England, and substitute in their place the laws of Moses and the prophets. But Cromwell averted the calamity by a peremptory dissolution of parliament, and a command to “the wrestlers” to go home; nor did he think it prudent to call them together again. The religious politics of the Methodist Home Journal are similar in tone with that of the Church Union. This infuriated orthodox theologian says: “They that deny the doctrines of Christianity, ignore the basis on which our government is founded. Can they be regarded as citizens? Ought any man who holds to this position be admitted to—or permitted to hold Christian citizenship under this government? We hold that to be consistent with ourselves. Infidelity should not be tolerated in our country, much less encouraged by those who openly profess and teach its doctrines.” These assertions are the evident irrepressible ebullitions of innate treason to the republic. They ignore the basis on which our government is founded, and, according to the logic of this fanatic the sect that holds them ought not to be regarded as citizens, nor permitted to hold Christian citizenship under this government. But the knife with which this mad-man would cut his own throat Infidelity would wrest from him. The sacred basis of our government is equal political and religious rights. Had Methodism been chosen as the basis of our government, would a republic have been thought of? Never! Did not John Wesley, its founder and spirit, oppose the American revolution? Did he not write against it, preach against if, and labor publicly and privately to arrest its progress? Was there a man in England that inflicted deeper injury on the American cause? While English Infidels aided the struggle for independence with their pens, money and valor,—while English statesmen blushed at the barbarous conduct of their government,—this bigoted priest, a fugitive of justice from the State of North Carolina, defended it without shame or compunction. Even at this day Protestant priests have dared to assert that Infidels have no rights which they are bound to respect; but such miscreants have no rights, (for they surrender them by their assertions,) which any person is bound to respect. Such self-accursed, self-outlawed bigots, in conjunction with unprincipled demagogues and political aspiring judges, are to-day laboring to incorporate in the national constitution the fanaticism of the Church Union and of the Methodist Home Journal. When their holy treason shall have become a success, liberty will forsake her desecrated abode; despotism will occupy her temple; and, we fondly hope that, in the course of coming events the fanatics will not discover that they have legalized their own extermination. Had Constantine the Great, though frenzied with ambition and crimsoned with guilt, beheld the boundless ocean of gore which was destined to flow from an incorporation of Christianity with the civil power, and to roll its heavy surge over all future time, he would have been more obdurate than a fiend had he not cowled his head in horror at the frightful vision, and dropped in mercy the pen already inked to inaugurate the tremendous catastrophe. Yet how sickening is the thought that the example of this ambitious tyrant, loaded with the curses of ages, is now attempted to be imitated by Protestant priests, political judges, and United States officials. But thanks to nature, the play of the natural principles of liberty in the minds of some priests, have been too strong to be repressed by dogmatic creeds. Gloriously inconsistent with their principles, they have inscribed their names in imperishable honor on the scroll of liberty. Thankful for the few names blazoned there, freedom must drop a tear over the smallness of the number.
It will be asked, perhaps, notwithstanding the facts which have been adduced showing the political nature and designs of the Catholic church, what has the American republic to apprehend from it? It will be asked, Did not Catholics fight for the establishment of a free government in the revolutionary war? Did they not fight to defend it in the war of 1812? Did they not fight to preserve its unity in the late rebellion? No well informed person will answer these questions in the negative; and no candid person will fail to acknowledge the distinguished valor and liberality which they displayed on these occasions. Catholics are men; and the love of liberty is a natural principle of the human constitution. Ignorance may blind it; prejudice mislead it; and superstition overawe it; but when the natural vigor of its disposition is aroused it will assert its rights in defiance of creeds, shackles and stakes. It is not the nature, but the education of Catholics, and the religious despotism with which they are enthralled, that has so often deprived freedom of their homage and allegiance. The frequent opposition of Catholic princes to the policy and measures of the popes, the numerous leagues which they have formed, and the vast armies which they have raised in their support, abundantly show how often their reverence for the pope has been displaced by defiance to his authority, and contempt for his pretensions. The liberal minded people of France have, from an early date, boldly opposed the pope’s claim to temporal power. St. Louis IX., in 1269, declared in a pragmatic sanction, that the temporal power of France was independent of the jurisdiction of Rome. Charles VIII., of France, in a pragmatic sanction issued in 1433, asserted for France, in conformity with the canons of the Council of Basle, independence of Rome in all temporal matters. Louis XIV., in 1682 convened a national council of the clergy at Paris, which decided that the Pope of Rome had no power to interfere, directly or indirectly, in the temporal concerns of princes and sovereigns; that the usages of the French church are inviolable; that the authority of the general councils is superior to that of the pope; and that the pope is not infallible in matters of faith. The popes, by the means of bulls, have attempted to nullify these acts, but nevertheless they form the distinctive principles of the Gallican Church, and also of other Catholic churches in different; kingdoms of Europe. The Fenian order is another happy instance of the predominance which patriotism may gain, in the minds of Catholics, over their reverence for the church and its despotism.
If Catholics have at various times chastised the pope, deprived him of temporal authority, assaulted his person, imprisoned and deposed him, it is not surprising that they fought in the defence of the independence and freedom of America, No one that has an adequate conception of the papal policy, will be much astonished that the Catholics were prominent leaders in the revolutionary war. It was a cause in which the pope himself, in perfect consistency with his pretensions, might have personally engaged. The pope claims England as his fief, and denounces her kings as usurpers. The success of a revolt intended to deprive England of her colonies was as gratifying to his revenge as it was flattering to his ulterior designs on the colonies themselves. In a republic he could plant his machinery, build up at will his monastic penitentiaries, erect his strong castle-like and secret-celled churches, leisurely select and occupy eligible and strategic points for citadels, and collect from every kingdom his most faithful and reliable subjects. Bishop Hughes asserted that Catholicism was friendly to republics, for they allowed its free development. But the development of Catholicism involves the subversion of republics, and the establishment in their place of political and religious despotism.
The insincerity of any proposed attachment to the American republic by popes or priests, is attested by the very occurrence of the Southern rebellion. Had the pope and priests been opposed to it a Catholic rebel would scarcely have been known; and had not the Catholics North and South been in favor of the rebellion, it could not have taken place. That singular and unnecessary intestine collision, in which the South gained nothing but disgrace, the North nothing but depopulation and empoverishment, and at the mystery of which leading secessionists were so much puzzled that they declared it to be the effects of a general lunacy, was nevertheless in perfect harmony with the profound and masterly policy of the Roman See, which comprehends in its toils the events of ages, and from the first projection of a plot to its final consummation, shapes every intervening circumstance to the fulfilment of its grand design. The Catholics North supported the cause of the Union, and the Catholics South the cause of the rebellion with votes, money and men; the rebellion, therefore, was not contrary to the teachings of the church. The depopulation of the native element of the North, the influx of foreign Catholics, the creation of an oppressive national debt, the demoralization consequent on civil war, the engenderment of civil antipathies, and the supplanting of colored servants by white Catholic servants, were all known prospective results of the rebellion; were all in harmony with the papal designs; and to realize which the Catholics of the North, and the Catholics of the South were stimulated by their priests to meet each in deadly conflict.
But dismemberment could not possibly have been intended by the secret projectors of the rebellion. It was an impracticable idea. The geography of the country interposed to its success an insurmountable obstacle. It was also inconsistent with the papal designs. But monarchy was not an impracticable idea. It encountered no difficulty in the country’s geography. It was in harmony with the policy of the Roman See. The Catholic blood which was poured out in such torrents in the civil conflicts was not intended to effect dismemberment, but to create the elements conducive to the establishment of a monarchial government. Shortly after the close of the rebellion this soil, hallowed by the blood, and consecrated by the sepulture of millions of freemen, Catholic as well as non-Catholic, was attempted to be desecrated by the establishment of presses for openly advocating that execrable treason; and it has been asserted by the leaders of the late rebellion, that the civil war is not at an end; but that it will again break out, and then the battle field will not be the South, but every State, city and village in the Union. Perhaps they mean to intimate that it will be a repetition of the massacre on St. Bartholomew’s eve.
To those who fondly dream that the republic of America has nothing to fear from the pretensions of the Pope of Rome, and his loyal subjects, we submit the following extracts:
“Heresy (Protestantism) and Infidelity have not, and never had, and never can have any right, being, as they undoubtedly are, contrary to the law of God.”—Bronson’s Rev., Jan., 1852.
“Heresy (Protestantism) and unbelief are crimes, and in Christian countries, as in Italy and Spain for instance, where the Catholic religion is the essential law of the land, they are punished as other crimes.”—Bishop Kendrich.
“Protestantism of every form has not, and never can have any right, where Catholicism is triumphant; and therefore we lose all the breath we expend in declaiming against bigotry and intolerance, and in favor of religious liberty, or the right of any one to be of any religion, or of no religion, as best pleases him.”—Catholic Rev., Jan., 1852.
“Religious liberty is merely endured until the opposite can be carried into effect without peril to the Catholic world.”—Bishop O’Connor; of Pittsburg.
“If the Catholics ever gain, which they surely will, an immense numerical majority, religious freedom in this country will be at an end.”—Archbishop of St. Louis.
“Catholicity will one day rule America, and religious freedom will be at an end.”—Bishop of St. Louis.
“The Catholic church numbers one-third of the American population; and if its membership shall increase for the next thirty years as it has for the thirty years past, in 1900 Rome will have a majority, and be bound to take the country and keep it.”—Seeker.
“Should the said church go on increasing for the next twenty years, the papists will be in a majority of the people of the United States.”—William Hogan.
“St. Thomas Aquinas, in his second book, chapter 3, page 58, says: ‘Heretics (non-Catholics) may justly be Killed.’ But you will answer, there is no danger of this. They can never acquire them power in this country to sanction that doctrine. How sadly mistaken are you! How lamentably unacquainted with the secret springs or machinery of popery.”—William Hogan.
Quoting from an author Hogan writes:
“America is the promised land of the Jesuists. To obtain the ascendency they have no need of Swiss guards, or the assistance of the holy alliance, but a majority of votes, which can easily be obtained by the importation of Catholic voters from Ireland, Austria, and Bavaria…. I am not a politician, but knowing the active spirit of Jesuitism, and the indifference of the generality of Protestants, I have no doubt that in ten years the Jesuists will have a mighty influence over the ballot box, and in twenty will direct it according to pleasure. Now they fawn, in ten years they will menace, in twenty command.”—Synopsis, p. 106.
In the above quoted authorities we have a unanimous declaration of Catholic bishops, priests and periodicals, that the Catholic church is radically opposed to religious liberty; that she regards Protestants and Infidels as criminals; that whenever she obtains the political power she punishes them as such; and that the success of her policy and measures in this country has been sufficient to justify her expectation, that in 1900 she will be enabled to accomplish all her bloody and treasonable designs. That these hopes are not altogether chimerical, we have also the reluctant and alarming concessions of her opponents. Those who abuse liberty should be deprived of its benefits; and those abuse it most who take advantage of its generous indulgence to plot for its destruction. The rights of toleration subsist only by mutual consent; their obligations are reciprocal; and whenever the silent compact is violated by one party, the other is exonerated from its obligations. No man possesses a right which is not possessed by another; nor has he any authority for claiming for himself that which he does not concede to others. When, therefore, the Catholic priests proclaim that Protestantism in any form has no right where Catholicism is triumphant, they surrender their rights where Protestantism in any form is triumphant. When they assert heresy and unbelief are crimes, and where the Catholic religion is the essential law of the land, are punished as crimes, they authorize heretics and unbelievers to consider Catholicism a crime, and where heresy and unbelief are the essential law of the land, to punish Catholics as criminals. When they say that Catholicity will one day rule America, and then religious liberty will be at an end, they appeal to the instincts of self-preservation, and justify freemen in adopting any measure that is necessary to render their avowed treason and destructive designs abortive. They assail the fundamental principles of the Constitution, and forfeit all right to its protection. Neither Protestants nor Infidels may be disposed to avail themselves of the privileges of these concessions, while forbearance is a virtue; but they may be provoked to consider the further tolerance of the Jesuists in this country as inconsistent with the peace and stability of the republic.
As the treasonable designs of the Catholic priests are undeniable, it is important to understand by what means they expect to accomplish their infamous purposes. The subjoined letter of the Duke of Richmond, formerly Governor-General of Canada, will explain their policy, their system of measures, and the co-operation which they are to receive from the sovereigns of Europe. “It (the American republic) will be destroyed” says he, “it ought not, and will not be permitted to exist. The curse of the French revolution, and subsequent wars and commotions of Europe, are to be attributed to its example, and so long as it exists no prince will be safe on his throne, and the sovereigns of Europe are aware of it, and they are determined on its destruction, and they have come to an understanding on the subject, and have decided on the means to accomplish it; and they will eventually succeed, by subversion rather than by conquest. All the low and surplus population of the different nations of Europe will be carried into that country. It is, and will be, the receptacle of the bad and disaffected population of Europe, when they are not wanted for soldiers or to supply navies; and the governments of Europe will favor such a cause. This will create a surplus majority of low population, who are so very easily excited, and they will bring with them their principles, and in nine cases out of ten adhere to their ancient and former governments, laws, manners, customs and religion, and will transmit them to their posterity, and in many cases propagate them among the natives. These men will become citizens, and by the constitution and laws be invested with the right of suffrage. Hence discord, dissension, anarchy and civil war will ensue, and some popular individual will assume the government, restore order, and the sovereigns of Europe, the immigrants, and many of the natives will sustain him. The church of Rome has a design on this country\ and it will in time be the established religion, and it will aid in the destruction of the republic. I have conversed with many sovereigns and princes of Europe, and they have unanimously expressed their opinion relative to the government of the United States, and their determination to subvert it.” According to this admonitory letter an alliance has been formed by the European powers and the Pope of Rome, for the subversion of the American republic, the substitution of a monarchy in its place, and the establishment of Catholicism as the national religion. Had the Duke of Richmond been silent, still no well informed person could doubt that all the European sovereigns, whether Protestant or Catholic, would act upon the avowed principle of the Holy Alliance in their conduct with regard to North America. Would England consent, it may be asked, to ally herself with the papal despot? Why not? She has done so before; in the recent troubles of the Roman See she sent her war vessels to protect the pope; and she assented to the principles of the Holy Alliance, which was for the extinguishment of all freedom in Europe. The good sense of the English people would never have recognized a policy which inevitably involved their own destruction; but they are a cypher in the great account of the short-sighted government. That England heartily co-operates with the papal priests in their infamous work, may be learned from the subjoined extract of the Dublin Evening Mail, elicited by the news from America that certain teachers had been dismissed from a school of the West on account of their foreign birth, &c.: “The foreign birth and Roman Catholic proclivities of the teachers thus dismissed,” says he, “are sufficient evidence that they have been imported into the United States by the Church of Rome, with a view to pervert the secular education of the country to the purposes of proselytism. They are, in fact, emissaries of the College de Propaganda Fide, and have been trained and qualified, no doubt, by its education, to carry out abroad the principles it has been so successful in disseminating here in Dublin. The pope has not a more efficient free-handed institution at his back than the imperial parliament of the united kingdom, which spares no expense to furnish his holiness with zealous and well informed agents for the spreading of his dominion over the face of the globe. Does he require priests to publish and extend it wherever the English language is spoken, the halls and dormitories of Maynooth are enlarged, and their larder abundantly replenished to keep a constant supply of young ecclesiastics for his service. Do these in turn send home a requisition for more teachers to assist them in their work, the Chancellor of the Exchequer adds some ten thousand pounds for his yearly estimate for national education in Ireland, and continued re-enforcements of propagandists are thus maintained, in readiness to move in obedience to the call, whenever Rome may need their service.”
According to the Duke of Richmond’s letter, one of the means by which the tyrant of Rome and his colleagues have adopted for accomplishing the downfall of the government of the United States, is that of foreign immigration. Let us examine the operation of this device. The editor of the Louisville Journal, in discussing the question of foreign immigration, makes the following statement: “In 1850 our native white population was about 17,300,000. In the same year our foreign population was about 2,300,000. In 1852 the immigration was about 398,170. At that rate it would take only about six years to double the foreign population here in 1850. This is about five times our population’s increase, which is in a ratio of three or four per cent, per annum, while the increase of foreigners is from fourteen to sixteen per cent, on the census of 1830, 1840, and 1850.
“In 1852 our presidential vote was about 3,300,000. In 1848 it was about 2,880,000. In 1852 our foreign arrivals, as shown, were about 400,000, and 240,000 of these were males, thus showing that in one year, the arrivals of foreign males into this country, was nearly as great as the increase of our whole voting population during four years.”
IN THE UNITED STATES
The foreign arrivals by sea alone were—
"In 1850 315,333
"1851 403,828
"1852 398,470
"1853 400,777
From Canada and Mexico during the same
period about 700,408
2,118,408
It appears from the census of 1850 that the total aggregate of foreign population of the United States in 1849 was 2,210,829. If the tide of immigration has added but two millions to the number of the foreign population every four years since 1849, it must have amounted, in 1869, to 7,210,829.
All the immigrants are not, however, Catholics. Some are Protestants, some Infidels, and some Radical Republicans. The Turners, the Free Germans, and the members of the Revolutionary League are all firm friends of free governments. The proportion of Catholics among the immigrants, at a fair computation, is presumed to be about three-fourths of the entire number. They must, therefore, add to the Catholic numerical strength about 3,750,000 at every decade, besides the numerical augmentation of the Catholic church through the medium of foreign immigration, there are other appliances acting powerfully in its favor. “It is not long,” says William Hogan, “since I saw a-letter from the Catholic bishop Kendrick, of the diocese of Massachusetts, in which he informs the authorities of Rome that he is making converts of some of the first families in the diocese.”—Synopsis, p. 169. “I have often conversed,” says he, “with American Protestants on this subject, and regret finding many of them—especially those of the Unitarian creed—are strong advocates of popery, and in favor of its introduction among the people.” John L. Chapman, a Methodist clergyman, in a work written before the Southern outbreak, says in substance, according to my recollection, that a Methodist preacher cannot now address his congregation upon the subject of Catholicism with the same freedom he could formerly; that those who imagine a Methodist preacher can now utter in the pulpit, or at a tract or bible meeting, the sentiments of John Wesley respecting popery, are entirely mistaken; and that those who suppose that an editor of a Methodist periodical can now assail the errors of Catholicism without the loss of subscribers, are laboring under a great delusions. While the pulpits, revivals, and evangelical enterprises are making no converts of any account among Catholics, the confirmation services of the Catholic bishops show the great number of adult non-Catholics which they are adding to their church. The number of children kidnapped, and the extraordinary number confirmed by Catholic bishops, might suggest a suspicion that the church has not abandoned its historic mode of adding to its members. Every non-Catholic child educated in a Catholic school becomes a Catholic, or strongly biassed in favor of that church. We hear of Protestant priests, and sometimes of Protestant bishops, and of whole bodies of theological students becoming Roman Catholics.
It is an undeniable fact that the annual increase of the Catholic population far outstrips that of the non-Catholic population; and that at some future period its numerical strength will be capable of deciding in favor of the church every election that takes place. When that unfortunate hour arrives every policeman, councilman, mayor, judge, governor, delegate, congressman, senator, president, civil official, army or naval officer will be a Catholic. Then the non-Catholics will be powerless, and at the mercy of those who believe they have no rights. Then, by the secret operation of the papal machinery, one faction will be inflamed against another, and one section of the land against another. Then rapine, violence, assassination, sedition, massacre—everything that can render life and property insecure—will distract every state, city and village in the Union. Then, amid the anarchy and confusion thus produced, some Catholic tyrant will arise, and—the civil disorders subsiding at the bidding of the pope—will be proclaimed dictator. Supported by the Catholic and Protestant kings of Europe, he will abolish the republic, and establish in its place a Catholic monarchial government. Then, according to Bronson, heresy and Infidelity will be declared to have no rights. Then, according to Archbishop Kendrick, Protestantism will be declared to be a crime, and punished as such. Then, according to the archbishop of St. Louis, religious liberty will no longer be endured. Then, according to Hecker, the Catholic church will be bound to take the country, and keep it. Then inquisitions will be introduced, and stakes erected. Then the darkness of the middle ages will settle over the land. Then the school-houses, the colleges, the asylums, and the churches built with Protestant funds will be applied to Catholic purposes. Then the fortunes which non-Catholics have amassed will be confiscated. Then the territorial acquisitions of the Government, all its resources, all the advantages it has acquired by arms and treaties, its navy and its army, will become the property of the papal monarchy, and applied to its defence and extension, Then it will be the business of Americans, not to create magistrates, but to obey despots; not to share in the sovereignty of the government, but to toil in slavery to support an execrable despotism. Then liberty of speech and freedom of the press will be no more. Then the ecclesiastical dungeons, which the supineness of Americans have allowed Catholicism to erect among them, will be the homes and graves of freemen. Then will arise a government constructed of schemes for public plunder; where an aristocracy are privileged robbers; where moral worth and dignity are the helpless victims of power and injustice; where laws are made for subjects, not for rulers; and where the people are inherited by royal heirs, like so much land and cattle. Then will the monarchial demon, the God of slaves and aristocrats, seated on the people’s throne, with his feet on the people’s neck, quaff blood like water; and eye with scornful indifference the squalid millions whom he has doomed by an enormous taxation to huddle in hovels, without light or air, with clothing scarcely enough to hide their nakedness, with food scarcely enough to sustain life, or fire scarcely enough to keep them from freezing.
When the pope shall have succeeded in his attempts to establish such a monarchy over the American people, he will next proceed to enlarge its dominions by the annexation of Canada, Mexico, all South America, and all the Pacific and Atlantic islands. With such a dominion, such resources, such an army and navy, he will be master of the land and the ocean. He will then proceed to plunder and discrown the very kings that had assisted him in erecting his colossal power. He will then enforce, by the thunders of American monitors and war steamers, his claim to the crowns of England and Russia; his claim to be the disposer of all crowns; his claim to be the only monarch that ought to wear the token of royalty; in fine, his claim to the supreme temporal and spiritual monarchy of the world. Then England will awake, but it will be in the vengeful folds of a serpent crushing out her life. Then the European despots will awake, but it will be amid the crumbling of their thrones. Then the papal allies will awake, but it will be to find their limbs fettered, and the foot of the sacerdotal monarch placed in malignant triumph upon their necks. Then the world will awake, but it will be to find that it has suffered the extinction of the last star of liberty, and involved itself in a night of despotism without the hope of a morn.
But the spirit of freedom is immortal; its conflict with despotism will be eternal. Bolts, dungeons, shackles cannot confine it; racks, flames and gibbets cannot extinguish it. To annihilate it, the most formidable efforts of bigotry, the most ingenious arts of statesmen, the combined power of church and state, have been applied in vain. Though the blood of freedom’s sons have streamed in torrents, and the smoke of their stakes have darkened the face of heaven, yet their spirit has still walked abroad over the world. So it has been in the past; so it will be in the future. If the Catholic demon should massacre all the freemen in one age, they will rise up more powerful in the next; and successively as time rolls on, shake with their energy the accursed throne. Hence civil war will never cease, fields will eternally reek with gore, burning cathedrals and convents will illuminate the night, till the world, instructed by its past errors, will unite in a natural union for the extinguishment of Catholicism.
We have now alluded to the dangers which begin to blacken our political firmament. Can the storm be averted? We believe it can. A union of the Protestants, Jews, Spiritualists, Free Religionists, Infidels, Atheists, Turners, Free Germans, and of all non-Catholics, without regard to creed, race or color, on a basis of universal civil and religious liberty, with a judicious policy, and a corresponding system of measures, will prove adequate to the emergency. Such an organization, if sufficiently liberally constituted, might command the support of Gallic and Fenian Catholics. The life, liberty and welfare of all non-Catholics, if not, indeed, of the Fenians and Gallicans themselves, are in equal danger, and why should they not organize for mutual safety? Does prejudice forbid it? Millions of lives must be sacrificed if a union be not effected. Who would, then, hesitate to sacrifice a prejudice that it may be effected? A tyrant may demand concessions without rendering an equivalent, but freemen can not. Can Americans sleep in peace, while the clang of the hammers that are forging their chains are sounding in their ears, and the pillars which support their government are tottering over their heads? It seems impossible. Their obligations to their country, to posterity, to the world, demand union. Union or slavery; union or confiscation; union or the rack, the stake, the gibbet. One or the other is inevitable. Which do you now chose? A few more years hence you will have no choice.
Every citizen knows that under the present form of government his merits have rewards, and his industry has encouragements enjoyed by no people in any country, or under any other form of government. The poorest and the richest are here accorded equal chances, equal privileges; and an equal voice in selecting legislators, judges and rulers. They are equally untrammelled by legal impediments in seeking the highest positions in the government. Each citizen is an integral part of the sovereignty of the nation; he participates in its management, and shares its greatness and glory. It is a consolation enjoyed only by an American, that if fame nor fortune should gratify his ambition, he can still bequeath to his children a richer inheritance than that of either fame or fortune, the inheritance of a free government. Judging of the future by the past, it is his privilege to believe that the republic will continue to grow in power and greatness with each succeeding age, until the light of her glory shall fill the earth; until despots shall tremble before the majesty of the people; until the clank of slavery, and the groan of the oppressed shall no more be heard; and until the united world shall rise to the majesty and greatness of equal privileges, equal rights and equal laws.
Such are the blessings guaranteed, and the expectations warranted by the continuance of the republic; but monarchy, like a deadly blast, annihilates them all. With the liberty, it lays the greatness and glory of the nation in the grave. Intolerance will then re-establish its racks and torture. Industry will then be oppressed, and enterprise annihilated. This land, which has so long resounded with the song of liberty, will then reverberate with the clanking irons of servitude. This nation, which is now the wonder and glory of the earth; which is so powerful and prosperous; this nation will be no more. Her life and splendor will have departed with her freedom. History may record her eventful story; her sons may clank in chains around her tomb; future freemen may curse the degenerate sons who wanted the valor or unanimity to transmit to their posterity the government which they inherited from their ancestors; but these will not call her to life and glory again. Like a wave she will have rolled away; like a dream, she will have departed; like a thunder peal, she will have muttered into eternal silence. Like these she had but one existence, and that will then have ended.
