IN RETREAT.

“O satis nunquam celebrata tellus!Dulce solamen, requiesque cordis!Cœlitum sedes procul a profaniTurbine vulgi!”

“O satis nunquam celebrata tellus!

Dulce solamen, requiesque cordis!

Cœlitum sedes procul a profani

Turbine vulgi!”

—O land that can never be sufficiently praised! Sweet consolation, repose of the heart! Haven sheltered from the tempests of a profane world!

IN RETREAT.

“Break, my heart, and let me die!Burst with sorrow, drown with love!...Lord, if Thou the boon deny,Thou wilt not the wish reprove.” ...Whence that piercing, burning ray,Seem’d to reach me from the lightWhere, behind the Veil, ’tis day—Where the Blessèd walk by sight?Thine, ’twas thine, O Sacred Heart!Mercy-sent—that I might seeSomething of the all Thou art,Something of the naught in me.Ah! I saw Thy patient loveWatching o’er me year on year;Guarding, guiding, move for move—Always faithful, always near:Saw Thy pardon’s ceaseless flowEvermore my soul bedew;Washing scarlet white as snow,[169]Sere and blight to morning-new:Saw this self—how weak, how base!—Still go sinning, blundering, on;Thankless with its waste of grace,Wearied with the little done.Then I murmur’d: “O my King!What are all my acts of will?Each best effort can but bringFailure and confusion still!“This poor heart, which ought to burn,Smoulders feebly; yet may dareOffer Thine one last return—One fond, fierce, atoning prayer?“Let it break, this very hour—Burst with sorrow, drown with love!For if Thou withhold thy power,Thou wilt not the wish reprove.” ...Pass’d that moment: but, as fallLovers’ whispers, answer’d He;“Dailydie[170]—with thy Saint Paul.Die to self—and live to Me.”September, 1877.

“Break, my heart, and let me die!Burst with sorrow, drown with love!...Lord, if Thou the boon deny,Thou wilt not the wish reprove.” ...

“Break, my heart, and let me die!

Burst with sorrow, drown with love!...

Lord, if Thou the boon deny,

Thou wilt not the wish reprove.” ...

Whence that piercing, burning ray,Seem’d to reach me from the lightWhere, behind the Veil, ’tis day—Where the Blessèd walk by sight?

Whence that piercing, burning ray,

Seem’d to reach me from the light

Where, behind the Veil, ’tis day—

Where the Blessèd walk by sight?

Thine, ’twas thine, O Sacred Heart!Mercy-sent—that I might seeSomething of the all Thou art,Something of the naught in me.

Thine, ’twas thine, O Sacred Heart!

Mercy-sent—that I might see

Something of the all Thou art,

Something of the naught in me.

Ah! I saw Thy patient loveWatching o’er me year on year;Guarding, guiding, move for move—Always faithful, always near:

Ah! I saw Thy patient love

Watching o’er me year on year;

Guarding, guiding, move for move—

Always faithful, always near:

Saw Thy pardon’s ceaseless flowEvermore my soul bedew;Washing scarlet white as snow,[169]Sere and blight to morning-new:

Saw Thy pardon’s ceaseless flow

Evermore my soul bedew;

Washing scarlet white as snow,[169]

Sere and blight to morning-new:

Saw this self—how weak, how base!—Still go sinning, blundering, on;Thankless with its waste of grace,Wearied with the little done.

Saw this self—how weak, how base!—

Still go sinning, blundering, on;

Thankless with its waste of grace,

Wearied with the little done.

Then I murmur’d: “O my King!What are all my acts of will?Each best effort can but bringFailure and confusion still!

Then I murmur’d: “O my King!

What are all my acts of will?

Each best effort can but bring

Failure and confusion still!

“This poor heart, which ought to burn,Smoulders feebly; yet may dareOffer Thine one last return—One fond, fierce, atoning prayer?

“This poor heart, which ought to burn,

Smoulders feebly; yet may dare

Offer Thine one last return—

One fond, fierce, atoning prayer?

“Let it break, this very hour—Burst with sorrow, drown with love!For if Thou withhold thy power,Thou wilt not the wish reprove.” ...

“Let it break, this very hour—

Burst with sorrow, drown with love!

For if Thou withhold thy power,

Thou wilt not the wish reprove.” ...

Pass’d that moment: but, as fallLovers’ whispers, answer’d He;“Dailydie[170]—with thy Saint Paul.Die to self—and live to Me.”

Pass’d that moment: but, as fall

Lovers’ whispers, answer’d He;

“Dailydie[170]—with thy Saint Paul.

Die to self—and live to Me.”

September, 1877.

Men who are by no means optimists are apt unconsciously to allow themselves to get a dim impression that the world is becoming better, more kindly, more charitable, and that we are approximating a time when, by the pure influences of increased material appliances and “well-regulated human nature,” the hatreds and strifes both of nations and sects will have measurably ceased. The delusion is a pleasant one, but it is none the less a delusion, and will not endure the slightest contact with the sharp edge of fact. In this nineteenth century, notwithstanding the peace society, more human beings have lost their lives by war than in any other since the advent of our Lord. In this, the freest, the most prosperous, and, so far as the masses are concerned, the best-instructed of all Christian countries, we have but had breathing time since one of the bloodiest civil wars on record. In the lull (protracted by war and its results) many Catholics seem to have become in likemanner possessed with an undefined notion that the people who made the Penal Laws and executed them have become imbued with a milder spirit toward the church; that Know-nothingism is a thing of the past, the virtue of the cry of “No Popery” dissipated, and the fell spirit of the Native American party utterly extinct.

Those who think thus will see cause to awake from their dream on examining the volume whose title heads this article. In October, 1876, a Joint Special Committee of three senators and three members of the Lower House sat in San Francisco for the purpose of procuring testimony in regard to the advisability of restricting or abolishing the immigration of Mongolians to this country—a question which has been for some time exciting at least a considerable section of the inhabitants of our Pacific coast. Whether truly or falsely we cannot say, but the impression is produced that the Catholic, and more particularly the Irish Catholic, population of California has ranged itself in hostility to the Chinese. If this be true we should be very sorryfor it, knowing full well that by any such action foreigners of all sorts, more especially Catholics, are simply supplying whips of scorpions with which they will be lashed on the outburst of the next campaign (under whatsoever name it may be known) conducted on principles of hostility to them. On its face it looks altogether likely that so plausible a movement as this opposition to the Chinese should take with a laboring class not very well posted in the principles of political economy, and we know that the large majority of white laboring people are in San Francisco Catholic, while certainly a great many of them are Irishmen. Their priests are too few and have too much to do to give them lectures on Say, Smith, and Ricardo; and it is no part of their duty, still less would it be a pleasure, to instruct them how they shall view purely political issues, whether local or national. Repeating, then, that we cannot but deem it a terrible blunder for their own sakes, and utterly against their own real interests, that these people should so range themselves against the influx of the Chinese, we have certainly no right to dictate to them how they shall vote or on what side they shall exert any influence they may have; and we must add that they seem to err (if error there be) in very good company, and plenty of it, since both political parties have in their national platforms endorsed the views said to be held by the Irish Catholics of California, as did also both Republicans and Democrats in the last campaign of the Golden State.

This report contains the sworn testimony on the subject at issue of one hundred and thirty witnesses; but we only call attention to theevidence of some of the preachers, and that, too, not on the general merits of their testimony or concerning Chinese immigration at all, but on account of the Vatinian hatred which they have gone out of the way to display towards Catholics, and the deadly venom they exhibit towards Irishmen especially. For just as women are sometimes most bloodthirsty during a war, far outdoing in rancor the combatants themselves, so would preachers seem to be the least charitable of the human species—to have, as Dean Swift well remarked, “just enough religion to make them hate, and not enough to make them love, one another.” The first of these worthy representatives of Christian charity and disseminators of the truth is a certain Rev. O. W. Loomis, in the employ of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, who takes occasion to say: “Unlike some others who come to America, as we have been told (and who manage to get to the ballot-boxes very soon), they [the Chinese] are not sworn to support any foreign hierarchy and foreign ecclesiastical magnate who claims the whole earth as his dominion” (p. 417). While the English of this sentence is very far from clear, yet the animus of the whole is so patent that he must needs be a very stupid fellow indeed who does not perceive that Catholics are aimed at. Whether Mr. Loomis “has been informed” that Catholics come to America, or that they reach the ballot-boxes early, or that they are sworn to support a foreign hierarchy, or that the Chinese are not under such obligations, is far from being as limpid as “bog-water,” and it is to be hoped that, in his instructions to his neophytes, he seldom degenerates into such want ofperspicuity; still more would it be desirable that he should confine himself more strictly in his usual ministrations to the truth and to matters within his own knowledge than he does when before the committee and on oath.

It is distinctlyfalsethat Catholic foreigners, in coming to this country, make a business of getting to the ballot-boxes any sooner than the law allows them to do. It is equally mendacious, if he means to assert the same thing of any one set of Catholics as a specific nationality. If the statement were as true as it is false, scurrilous, and malicious, that “man of God” could not possibly know more than a few individual instances, and could not predicate the fact as true of a whole nationality, any more than the writer (who happens to have known in his life four instances in which young Americans voted without having attained their majority) would be justified in slanderously describing the young men of the United States as in the habit of perjuring themselves in order to anticipate the right of elective franchise. But our friend, though on oath, never blinks—in fact, he has, while on oath, gone out of his way to drag in the above statement, and is only prevented from taking the bit in his teeth and careering madly over the whole plain of anti-Catholic bigotry by being checked peremptorily with the information furnished him by Representative Piper: “That is entirely foreign to the matter at issue.”

As to the assertion that Catholics swear allegiance to the Pope in any sense that would interfere with their fealty to any temporal rule or government, its absurdity has been so often, so ably, and so clearly demonstrated that it is only personsof the third sex who at this day pretend to believe it. We will give even Mr. Loomis credit for appreciating the distinction between the loyalty which his people owe to the confession of faith, their synods and presbyteries, and that which they owe to the government of the land. We wish we could in conscience credit him with as much candor as ability and knowledge in the premises; for a great deal of his testimony proves him to be by no means one of those persons whom we pass by as being entitled to a “fool’s pardon.” Did it never occur to this man, and to others of his way of thought or expression, that this oath or obligation of two hundred million Catholics must be of very little avail—might, in short, quite as well not have been taken—if its only result is to land the Pope here in the fag end of the nineteenth century, in the Vatican, without an acre of land over which he can exercise temporal jurisdiction, while Catholics all over the world, with the numbers, the power, and the means to restore him, if they had but the will, lie supinely by, not making a move, either as governments or as individuals, in his behalf? That bugbear is too transparent for use; people can no longer be scared by it; it is high time to excogitate another and a more plausible one, if you are still bent on war with the Pope. For our own part, we would recommend the propriety of a change; but that change should be to the culture of Christian charity, the practice of the golden rule, not forgetting the commandment which people of Mr. Loomis’ persuasion call theninth. Ah! Mr. Loomis, hatred springs apace fast enough among men without any necessity for its culture on thepart of professing religious teachers.

Again, the same professor of the doctrine that “the earth is the Lord’s,” that “we are all his children,” and that “we are all one in Christ,” announces: “I was a Native American on principle, and I believe that America should belong to Americans” (p. 464). This is bad, in our opinion, but it is English, it is intelligible, and it is no doubt true as an utterance of his individual sentiment. The set of principles referred to have twice been adjudged by the voice of the American people, and condemned on both occasions as anti-American, opposed to the genius and traditions of our people, and subversive of the aims which made us one of the foremost nations of the earth. Mr. Loomis, or any other man, has an inherent right to believe in them, if he so list; but we question much his discretion in dragging his enunciation of political principles into his sworn evidence on the Chinese question, and we doubt much whether a knowledge that such is his belief would be calculated to enhance the regard of the Chinese, among whom he states that he is an evangelist, for either the philanthropy or the hard sense of their coryphæus.

That there may be no doubt about the intensity of his virulence against the church, he returns to the charge; and, strangely enough, it is the same committeeman that now goads him on who, on the previously-mentioned reference to foreign hierarchs, stopped his mouth by stating that his opinions on that subject were not at issue in the examination.

“Ques.You spoke about these Irish as people coming here who have swornallegiance to some foreign potentate. To whom have you reference?

“Ans.I refer to the Roman Catholics.

“Ques.Do you, then, think Chinese immigration less dangerous to our institutions than that of Roman Catholics?

“Ans.I think so; decidedly less. The Chinese do not purpose to intermeddle with our religious rights. They have no hierarchy. They are not sworn to support any religious system. They are mixed up at home. They have no one religion. They may be Mahometans.

“Ques.You think they are less dangerous than European Christians of a certain persuasion?

“Ans.I think they are less dangerous than Roman Catholics.

“Ques.Are they less dangerous than Europeans?

“Ans.Whether they be Europeans or of any other nationality, providing they are Romanists.

“Ques.Suppose the Chinese should become Catholics; then they would become dangerous?

“Ans.I think so.

“Ques.The Roman Catholics are not Christians, then?

“Ans.They are Christians, but not Protestant Christians. They are Roman Catholic Christians. I make a wide distinction between Protestants and Romanists” (p. 469).

Thus this man, professing himself an ambassador of Christ, deliberately puts himself on record as holding that pagans who know nothing of Christ’s atonement, and who, in his phrase, worship idols, are preferable to those who have had invoked upon them the name of God in baptism, who believe in the Divinity, bow at the name and hope to be saved by the merits of Jesus. Could the spirit of the most malevolentodium theologicumgo further? Would such an assertion be believed of any ignorant communist, much less of one who claims to be a minister of Christ, were it not contained in print in the report of a Congressional committee? If the man believes so little in the influenceof the religion of the Saviour whom he preaches as his statement would indicate, it is his duty at once to resign, and relieve the society which supports him of the burden of a salary which he cannot conscientiously earn. “Believe,” said the apostle, “in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved!” “Not enough,” says Rev. Loomis; “you must be additionally a Protestant, or a belief in the Saviour will profit you no whit.” Has any man yet ever had a clear definition of that term, “Protestant”? Thomas à Kempis and St. Vincent of Paul, St. Augustine and St. Charles Borromeo, the glorious cohort of martyrs and confessors, would be dangerous citizens of the United States compared with Ah Sin and Fan Chow! This is certainly information of an unlooked-for kind, and the man competent to impart it does not usually hide his light in the dreary pages of a Congressional committee’s report. He says himself that he has been a missionary since 1844. By consequence he must have attained to a good age, and the great wonder to us is that a man of such astoundingly original views has not heretofore made his mark upon an age always anxious “to see or hear some new thing.”

The assertion that Catholics purpose to interfere with the rights of Protestants or other unbelievers, implied in the statement that the Chinese have no such intention, is both too indefinite and too futile for discussion. Catholics in all countries, but more especially in English-speaking countries, have for the past two hundred years had all they could manage to be allowed to follow the dictates of their own faith, free of legal pains and penalties, to have any time to spare for concocting plans againstthe civil or religious rights of others. In the only English-speaking state that they founded they established liberty of conscience, which statute was abolished by the friends of Mr. Loomis just as soon as they had the power.

But Mr. Loomis assigns reasons in favor of the superior desirability of pagan over Christian immigration, and the prominent ones seem to be that they have essentially no religion—or rather, that they have fifty; that they have no hierarchy; that, in fact, they do not support any religious system—to sum it up, that they aremixed up at home! How ill does not the adversary of mankind brook the distinctive unity of the church of God! Like Pharao’s magicians, everything else he can counterfeit or imitate; but the unity of the church is too much for him. Common sense teaches the most ignorant, that if our Saviour founded any church at all he foundedone, and not four hundred jarring and jangling conventicles. Probably this is the gravamen. The Catholic, strong in the oneness of his church, and stanch in the conviction that everything not of it must be a sham emanating from the father of lies, will not be perverted by Mr. Loomis, charm he never so wisely; while, on the other hand, a lot of pagans, especially of pagans who were “considerably mixed up at home,” might furnish grist for Mr. Loomis’ peculiar gospel mill, with due toll for the miller. As with the apostle before, so this preacher now differs with the Saviour, who said and thought that there should be “one fold and one Shepherd.”Absit blasphemia!but the sects all differ widely both from the Master, his apostles, and the church, with which he promised to abide for ever.

Lest, however, any Catholic should lay to his soul the flattering unction that his American birth might eliminate him from the general unfitness of Catholics for citizenship in the United States or from an entire appreciation of the institutions of his native country, Mr. Loomis is very careful to inform us that it does not matter whether they be Europeans orof any other nationality; if they are Catholics, they are not so fit for immigration to this country, still less for the exercise of citizenship, as if they were “heathen Chinese.” Here is a man who declaims against Catholics and denounces them for purposing to interfere with the rights of those who disagree with them in religious views, and in the same breath argues the unfitness of a population of possibly nine millions for citizenship in his own country, they being at the time all residents, mostly citizens and largely natives, merely because they belong to the old religion—the religion of Charles Carroll of Carrollton. “Resolved,” said the meeting, “that the earth belongs to the saints.” “Resolved,” added the same body, “that we are the saints.” Did it ever by chance occur to our friend of decidedly original, if limited, intellect that Senator Casserly lives in his own town, and is looked upon, with some reason, as a representative man, very well posted upon American institutions, and that it would be very hard to persuade the people of the United States of any latent disability on the part of that senator to appreciate or support them? Mr. Loomis makes a great distinction between a Catholic and a Protestant, and no doubt the difference is considerable; but the chasm is by no means as great as that which separates the Christianfrom the bigot, and it is hard for us to put Mr. Loomis in the ranks of the former.AbeatLoomis.

Rev. W. W. Brier, after describing himself as “a Presbyterian minister by profession, who makes his living by raising fruit,” proceeds thus:

“Ques.Would a reasonable restriction of Chinamen be an advantage or not?

“Ans.If a restriction is to be made in respect to China, it ought to be made upon people who are far worse for us than Chinese. I would trade a certain nationality off for Chinamen until there was not one of the stock left in trade” (p. 575).

Other portions of his evidence show that he herein refers to the Irish as inferior to the Chinese. How he regards the latter is shown by his response to the suggestion of a possible danger resulting from the presence of sixty thousand Chinamen in the State, without any women of their kind, viz.:

“Ans.The fact is, they are laborers, and I regard them very much in the light I do any other thing we want to use—horses, mules, or machinery” (p. 577).

When asked if he would be willing to give the Chinese a chance to overrun California, he says:

“Ans.Why not? As well as to give the Irish a chance! My real opinion is that we would be better off without any more foreigners (p. 580).

“Ques.Are you quite willing there shall be no laws to prevent this State from becoming a Chinese province?

“Ans.My opinion is that there is a great deal worse class of foreigners in our land, who have all the rights of citizenship and everything else” (p. 581).

That a man saturated to the heart’s core with such bitter prejudices against any portion of God’s children should have, under any circumstances, engaged in the work of saving souls may seem strange,and we shall not here go into the explication, which would detain us from our subject; but it is by no means surprising that such a person should fail of success as an evangelist and devote his time and prejudices to fruit-raising. He describes himself as a successful fruit-grower, and we have good authority for believing that “no man can serve two masters.” Not that he has given up preaching by any means; for he tells of his ministering in the vineyard, which means with people of his stamp delivering on Sunday an essay or so something after the fashion of a screed from theSpectator, and taking leave of all practical religion till the next Sunday. Of the ministrations of the Catholic priest—going in and out daily among his parishioners, preparing this one for death, comforting that one bereaved, advising and warning the vicious, alleviating want and encouraging all—he knows as little as his own mules. It appears by his evidence that he hires at times as many as sixty-five or seventy Chinamen, and, as he confessedly regards them in the same light as so much machinery, it is by no means to be wondered at that he should prefer men who will submit to be so regarded. The Chinaman possibly may, certainly the Irishman will not; and, upon the whole, we should think very much less of an Irishman if he had proved a favorite with such a specimen fossil as Rev. Brier. The Irishman is quick, full of life, strong, prone to resent an insult, courageous, and of all men least likely to allow himself to be trampled upon, ignored, or regarded in the same light as the mules and horses about the place. Further, it is more than likely that, in an encounter of wit with an Irishman,Rev. Mr. Brier would not come out first; and it is a dead certainty that Brier’s view of religion would appeal as little to the Irishman’s sympathies as it probably does to those of the reader. Taking, then, everything into account, we are not surprised that this person should not like Irishmen, but we do wonder that he should not have the grace to conceal the hypocrisy involved between his own ostensible profession on the one side, and his utter disregard of the dignity of humanity, of the value of the human soul, on the other. Under such shepherds it is no wonder that the flock becomes scattered, and, while we do not wish well to Protestantism at any time (for individual Protestants we entertain the most kindly feelings), it would be impossible for us to wish the system worse than that the watchmen upon the walls of the fortress founded by Luther and Calvin may all have the osseous heart, the hypocritical profession, and the eocene brain of Rev. Mr. Brier. Calvinism is disintegrating very rapidly, in all conscience; it needs but a few more years of the ministrations of such reverend gentlemen as this to give it the finalquietus.

Why, even Chinamen have in this century been touched by the progressive spirit of the age. They emigrate, are found in California, the Sandwich Islands, Australia, Singapore, etc. They have opened their ports to foreigners, and are sending their young men to be educated both in the United States and in Europe. And here we have the Rev. Mr. Brier—who would build up in these United States a Chinese wall of exclusion, who would have Japan and China return to their ancient policy of non-intercourse,and who, if he had his way, would cause this great country to join them—who says deliberately that the United States would be “better off without any more foreigners.” He is a credit to the college that educated him, the State that bred him, and the religion he professes!ExeatBrier.

Rev. S. V. Blakeslee is an orthodox Congregational minister, acting now as editor of thePacific, which he describes as “the oldest religious newspaper on the coast.” Contrary to the former two ministers, he is bitterly opposed to Chinamen, and is only less rancorous against them than he is against the hated Irish Catholics. We give parts of his examination, omitting much that would but lead us over ground already trodden:

“Ques.Is there any other class of foreign labor that you think has a tendency to render labor disreputable?

“Ans.Yes, I mean all whom we regard as inferior; to whom we consign the work—all who are really inferior.

“Ques.What race would you put in that category?

“Ans.If I were to mention names, I believe the Americans generally regard the Irish as very much inferior; yet I believe if the priests were out of the way, if Romanism were out of the way, the Irish would be equal to any people on earth. As it is, they are inferior in intelligence, inferior in morality” (p. 1035).

In another portion of his testimony he complains that the people of his town (Oakland), with forty thousand inhabitants, have by no means the supply of Congregational and other Protestant churches which in the East would be considered necessary, and is asked:

“Ques.There are many Catholics, are there not?

“Ans.Oh! Catholics can hardly be said to go to church. They do not go tolisten to a sermon; they do not go to get instructed (p. 1037).

“Ques.Do the Irish assimilate with the American people?

“Ans.They do, if they are Protestant; but the priests mean to keep them separate, and mean to keep them as a power in America under their control” (p. 1041).

As to his knowledge of Catholic practice and belief, the following will suffice, viz.:

“Ques.Have you as much prejudice against an American or German Catholic as against an Irish Roman Catholic?

“Ans.If you ask, is my judgment more in approval of an American or German than of an Irish Catholic, I should say it was, because I do not find that the priest can control the German as he can the Irish Catholic.

“Ques.Does the priest control them for evil or for good?

“Ans.I think that a great many priests teach them that the end justifies the means, and that to tell a lie for mother church is honest.

“Ques.Did you ever hear one preach that?

“Ans.Well, they were so near it—it’s all the same, probably; but they did not use those words.

“Ques.Have you heard them preach?

“Ans.No, sir; they don’t preach much. They will stand a long time, going through a performance, and ring a little bell for a man to rise and kneel down, and then they will rise up again, but they don’t preach much!”

The reader will observe the marked contempt with which those to whomwe consign the workare regarded as beingreally inferior. Why, in the eyes of this exponent of Christian doctrine and republican practice, labor, and those who do it, are quite as disreputable as used to be, in their own region, a class known aspoor white trash. Now, from the conditions of this world in which we are placed, there can never, by any possibility, come a time (as there never has hitherto been one) in which it will not be incumbent on two-thirds ofearth’s inhabitants to earn theirbread in the sweat of their brow. It is God’s decree, man’s destiny, and a large proportion of the one-third who in any age of the world have managed to exempt themselves from the consequence of thefiatof the Omnipotent in respect to labor, have done so by taking advantage of the honesty or simplicity of their fellow-men. They or their ancestors must have converted to their own use more than their share of the soil, the common heritage of the human race and the source of all wealth. There are not wanting at this day those who consider the laws which perpetuated the right to such original seizures unjust, and it is just such despisers of the laborer and appropriators of his work as this reverend gentleman who unwittingly give the greatest occasion for discontent to those who fancy themselves aggrieved by the existing condition of things. We are neither communists nor agrarians, but we see that, even in this happy country, it will be very possible to convert the laboring class into such by subjecting them to the scorn of such men as this witness, causing them to feel that they are regarded as really inferior, and incidentally exciting the envy which the sight of ranches of seventy-six thousand acres of land in the hands of one individual is calculated to produce. Such contempt of the laborer is un-American, to say nothing of its entire lack of Christianity, and to us it seems that no men of any nationality or religion could be so injurious to the real interests of any country as those entertaining it. We do not say that we wouldtradethe Rev. Mr. Blakesleefor a Chinaman, but we hope and believe that there are few Americans of his wayof thinking in regard to labor, and trust that soon there will be none ofthat stockleft. The preamble to the Declaration of Independence must have long ceased to be remembered, and Christianity will be in her last throes, ere such views shall obtain; and we have confidence in the permanence of this republic, with an abiding faith that God will be with his church.

We will not bandy words with Mr. Blakeslee as to his opinion that Americans generally regard the Irish asinferior in intelligence and morality. It is one of those lump statements which impulsive or prejudiced men sometimes make about a whole nation in the heat of conversation, but which seldom find their way into sworn testimony. We are American to the manner born, and we not only do not believe the fact, but, so far as both reading and intercourse with our countrymen have enabled us to form an opinion, we should assert the direct contrary. There is, we well know, about all our large cities a class corresponding to the “hoodlums” of San Francisco (and we are sorry to add that they are nearly all Americans) who fancy that their mere accidental birth upon this soil has not only elevated them above all other nationalities, but raised them above the necessity of work. We can lay no stress on the opinions of this class. By all other Americans not influenced by hatred of the church, and, indeed, by many who do not regard her favorably, we have always heard remarked (and statistics will prove) the almost entire immunity of the Irish from the crime of fœticide; their large generosity to their friends and relatives, as proved by the proportionately larger amounts of money yearly transmittedby them to the old country; their unconquerable industry; the chastity of their women, though, by their condition in life, more exposed to temptation than perhaps any other body of females in the world. It is denied by nobody that where a soldier is wanted the Irishman is always on hand, and that he compares very favorably with the soldier of any other nation. As to intelligence, Mr. Blakeslee must surely be poking some mild fun at us under the sanctity of his oath. If he had ever tried to get the advantage of the most illiterate Irishman in conversation, if he had ever heard or read a true account of the result to any one who did so, he would not, for shame’s sake, appear making the wild assertion that the Irishman is deficient in intelligence. The common experience of any local community in the United States will at once brand the statement with its proper stamp, for which three letters are quite sufficient.

But here comes the real gist of Mr. Blakeslee’s charge of immorality and stupidity against the countrymen of Swift and Burke, of Wolfe Tone and O’Connell, of Moore and John of Tuam. “If,” says he, “it were not for Romanism, they would be in course of time a very excellent people.” In other words, if they would cease to be what they are, if they would sit under the ministrations of Rev. Blakeslee and his like, if they would now give up the religion from which centuries of persecution and penal laws have failed to dissever them, they might finally come to have as thorough-paced a contempt for labor and as strong a belief in the inferiority of the laborer as this reverend gentleman himself. “Paddy,” says Mr. Blakeslee, “you area Papist, you are an idolater, you are very immoral, and you have very little sense. Will you be good enough now to become a Congregationalist?” The Irishman’s blood boils, fire flashes from his eye, the church militant is roused in him, and away runs Rev. Blakeslee, more than ever convinced of the inferiority of the mean Irish and their imperviousness to the charms of Protestantism!

Among the ephemeral sects of the day, depending, as they do, on the temporary whims or idiosyncrasies of the individuals who “run them,” there is apt to arise a fashion in morality, so that it is something not unlike fashion in ladies’ dress—very different this season from what it was the last. Now, these sects are loud and noisy, making up in vehemence for what they lack in numbers, logic, and authority. Just now, and for some years past, the sin which it is the fashion to decry to the neglect of all others is that of drunkenness, which the church has always held to be a great scandal amongst men and a sin against the Almighty. But, while the church has received no new light on the subject, the various sectaries have erected “drinking” into the one typical, the sole crying vice, the incorporation of all the other sins. A man is now practically “a moral man,” provided he does not use liquor; and no other crime, short of murder, is, in the eyes of the Protestant community, so damning as is addictedness to drink. There is no doubt but that, in the early part of this century, liquor was drunk by the Irish to too great an extent. There is just as little doubt that a great change for the better has come over the Irish in this regard, and that the good workis still going on. But the Irish at no time exceeded the Scotch in their consumption of liquor, nor did they ever equal either the Danes or Swedes, both thoroughly Protestant nations. But if you give a man a bad name you may as well hang him; and the same holds good of a nation. It suited the sectarian temperance orators to select the Irish as the “shocking example” among nations, and falsely to attribute the exaggerated drunkenness which they represented as then existing to the influence of the church. Such a cry, once well set going from Exeter Hall and the various Ebenezer chapels, is not easily quelled; and as it is much easier for most men to take their opinions ready made than to frame them for themselves, there does remain on the minds of a large number of people a lurking distrust of the sobriety of the individual Irishman, and a general belief that drunkenness is his peculiar and besetting national vice. The statistics of the quantity of ardent spirits consumed in Ireland since the year 1870, as compared with the quantities used in England, Scotland, or Wales, will convince any one who desires to know the truth; and we are not writing for those who are content to defame a people by the dishonest repetition of a false cry. These tables prove that, man for man, the consumption referred to is in Ireland not so much as in Scotland by over three gallons, in England by nearly two gallons, and in Wales by a little less than in England. So long, however, as Sweden overtops the consumption of the highest of them by the annual amount of two and a half gallons per man, and Catholic Ireland holds the lowest rank as a consumer of ardent spirits, we have no hopethat it will “suit the books” of sectarian temperance agitators to call attention to the facts. It is much easier to defame than to do justice, and by this craft many people nowadays are making a livelihood. Yet this false charge of a vice which betrays by no means the blackheartedness involved in many others—which, bad as it is, is by no means so heinous as defrauding the laborer of his hire, swindling the poor of their savings, watering stocks, accepting bribes, etc., etc., and which is not even mentioned in the decalogue—is the only one that could at any time have been charged with a decent show of plausibility against the Irish as a nation, or against the individual Irishmen whom we have in this country. We ourselves must admit that we thought there was some truth in it, till we searched the statistical tables to find out the facts, and we here make to the Irish people theamende honorablefor having misjudged them on the strength of the cry of sectarian demagogues.

Going to church can, in the mind of Mr. Blakeslee, mean only one thing—i.e., going to hear a sermon—and so he says that “Catholics can hardly be said to go to church.” Certainly the prime object of a Catholic in going to church is notto listen to a sermon, nor should it be so. It is hardly worth while to attempt to enlighten a man like Mr. Blakeslee, who himself habitually sheds light from both pulpit and press; but if we are to take the knowledge he seems to possess of the Catholic Church as a specimen of the information he diffuses on other points, what rare ideas must not his hearers and readers attain of matters and things in general! Yet he is a man who professes to have made a theological course,which should involve not only the study of the doctrines and practises of his own sect, but also, to some slight extent, of the remaining sects of Protestantism, to say nothing of the church on which two hundred million Christians rest their hopes of salvation. He knows no more of the celebration of the Blessed Eucharist in the Church of Rome than to describe it as “going through a performance and ringing a little bell for a man to rise and kneel down”; and yet the fellow does not hesitate to announce what is the doctrine and what the practice of the church—nay, to hold himself forth as a champion against her tenets, as though he were divinely commissioned to instruct thereon. To see ignorance is at all times unpleasant; blatant ignorance combined with assumption of knowledge is doubly nauseous; but the supereminent degree of loathing is only excited when ignorance or conceit of knowledge elevates itself into the chair of the spiritual guide and denounces what it in no whit understands.Be these thy gods, O Israel?Surely it is not to hear the lucubrations of men of this stamp that any sane people would go to church. We can only wish to the sheep of such a pastor increase of knowledge, decrease of prejudice, and an enlarged ability to tell truth on the part of their shepherd! We repeat that Catholics do not go to church primarily or solely to hear a sermon. But they do go there to join in spirit at the celebration of the divine Sacrifice, to pray to God for grace to assist them through life, to make and strengthen good resolutions, and to obey the command of the church. We all believe that the devout hearing of one Mass is far more valuable than the hearing of all the sermonsever delivered or printed since the sermon on the Mountain of Beatitudes; and we lay no stress whatever on the best formulæ of words ever strung together by the ingenuity even of the most pious and learned of mere men, when compared with the expiatory sacrifice of Christ’s body and blood, instituted by him and celebrated, not merely commemorated, by the priest to whom he has given the power. Should it ever happen—and as the mercy of God is infinite, and his ways past finding out, it is not impossible—that this poor deluded man should be brought to a knowledge of the truth, with what shame and confusion of face would he not read his ignorant and impudent travesty of the worship of God in his church!

If there be, as there doubtless are, other Protestants who get their instruction about Catholics from Mr. Blakeslee and his like, and who believe with this witness that thepriests mean to keep them(the Catholics)as a power in Americaunder their (the priests’) control, it would not be, and is not, worth our while to attempt to argue the point with such. They will so believe, like the relatives of Dives, though one rose from the dead to confute them. Ephraim is joined to his idols; let him alone! But we appeal to the Catholic voters of this country, of American or foreign birth, to answer: Has your bishop or parish priest ever undertaken to dictate to you how you should vote? Has your vote, on whatever side given, interfered in the slightest degree with your status in the church? Do you know of a single instance in which one or the other of these things has taken place? We cannot lay down a fairer gauge. If these things take place they cannot occur without the knowledge ofthose among whom they are done and upon whom they are practised. They are Americans, and it is a free country. Long ere this would the country have rung with the proof, had any such been forthcoming. Mr. Blakeslee’s lying charge meant, if it meant anything, that Catholics were to be kept apart as a political power; for neither we nor any other Catholic desires or hopes otherwise than that the church,as a religious body, shall, till the end of time, be kept separate and apart from all the sects of Protestantism, which we believe to be heresy and schism.

One would naturally always rather give an adversary the credit of having honestly mistaken the facts than be obliged to consider him a wilful slanderer and falsifier. But there are circumstances in which the assertion made is so patently false, or has been so often thoroughly refuted, that, though the heart would fain take refuge in the former course, the brain refuses to accept any but the latter. Such a case occurs where Mr. Blakeslee says that “a great many priests teach them that the end justifies the means, ... that to tell a lie for mother church is honest.” Every Catholic who has learned his catechism knows that this is not so. We believe thatheknew it was not so when he said it, but that his own innate malevolence against the church, and the spirit of the father of lies speaking through him, compelled him to the utterance of this vile slander. For which great sin may God forgive him: he stands in sore need of it.

But after all, if Satan is so easily caught on a cross-examination as he on this occasion allowed his servant to be, we need not stand inmuch dread of his lies. The same man whose lips are not yet dry from sayingon oaththat the priests teach their people to tell lies, when asked if he ever heard any single priest so teach, shuffles out of it thus—his own words need no comment from us:

“Ans.Well, they were so near it; it’s all the same,probably! They didn’t use those words!

“Ques.Have you ever heard them preach?

“Ans.No, sir!

We, on the contrary, think that it was not all the same “probably,” and heartily thank his satanic majesty for his negligence in failing to inspirit his servant with the knowledge that, in order to be believed, in swearing as to what priests preach in their sermons, it is necessary to be able also to swear that the witness has heard at least one such sermon.ValeatBlakeslee.

Other preachers testified; and when the question arose as to Catholic foreigners, more especially Irish Catholic, all betrayed the cloven hoof, though some veiled their hatred in much more seemly words than did others. It had been our intention to examine their testimony, in so far as it touched the church,seriatim; but further reflection induces us to believe that from these few pages the reader can learn sufficiently the depth of the ignorance and the extent of the hatred of these blind leaders of the blind. If the reward in heaven be exceeding great to those whom all men shall hate, revile, and despitefully use, surely the glory of Catholics, and of Catholic Irishmen especially, will be great in the next world; for certainly they are not loved of men in this.

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