CHAMBERS AND HIS ACCOMPLICES CONDEMNED TO DEATH—ASKED ME TO PREPARE THEM
TO MEET THEIR TERRIBLE FATE—A WEEK IN THEIR DUNGEON—THEIR SENTENCE OF
DEATH CHANGED INTO DEPORTATION TO BOTANY BAY—THEIR DEPARTURE FOR
EXILE—I MEET ONE OF THEM, A SINCERE CONVERT, VERY RICH, IN A HIGH AND
HONORABLE POSITION IN AUSTRALIA IN 1878.
A few days after the strange and providential night spent with the
repentant thieves, I received the following letter signed by Chambers
and his unfortunate criminal friends:
“DEAR FATHER CHINIQUY:—We are condemned to death. Please come and help
us to meet our sentence as Christians.”
I will not attempt to say what I felt when I entered the damp and dark
cells where the culprits were enchained. No human words can express
those things. Their tears and their sobs were going through my heart as
a two-edged sword. Only one of them had, at first, his eyes dried, and
kept silent; Chambers, the most guilty of all.
After the others had requested me to hear the confession of their sins,
and prepare them for death, Chambers said: “You know that I am a
Protestant. But I am married to a Roman Catholic, who is your penitent.
You have persuaded my two so dear sisters to give up their Protestantism
and become Catholics. I have many times desired to follow them. My
criminal life alone has prevented me from doing so. But now I am
determined to do what I consider to be the will of God in this important
matter. Please, tell me what I must do to become a Catholic.”
I was a sincere Roman Catholic priest, believing that out of the Church
of Rome there was no salvation. The conversion of that great sinner
seemed to me a miracle of the grace of God: it was for me a happy
distraction in the desolation I felt in that dungeon.
I spent the next eight days, in hearing their confessions, reading the
lives of some saints, with several chapters of the Bible as the Seven
Penitential Psalms, the sufferings and death of Christ, the history of
the Prodigal Son, etc. And I instructed Chambers, as well as the
shortness of the time allowed me, in the faith of the Church of Rome. I
usually entered the cells at about 9 A. M. and left them only at 9 P. M.
After I had spent much time in exhorting them, reading and praying
several times, I asked them to tell me some of the details of the
murders and thefts they had committed, which might be to me as a lesson
of human depravity, which would help me when preaching on the natural
corruption and malice of the human heart, when once the fear and the
love, or even the faith in God, were completely set aside.
The facts I then heard very soon convinced me of the need we have of a
religion, and what would become of the world if the atheists could
succeed in sweeping away the notions of a future punishment after death,
or the fear and the love of God from among men.
When absolutely left to his own depravity, without any religion to stop
him on the rapid declivity of his uncontrollable passions, man is more
cruel than the wild beasts. The existence of society would simply be
impossible without a religion and a God to protect it.
Though I am in favor of liberty of conscience, in its highest sense, I
think that the atheist ought to be punished like the murderer and the
thief—for his doctrines tend to make a murderer and a thief of every
man. No law, no society is possible if there is no God to sanction and
protect them.
But the more we were approaching the fatal day, when I had to go on the
scaffold with those unfortunate men, and to see them launched into
eternity, the more I felt horrified. The tears the sobs and the cries of
those unfortunate men had so melted my heart, my soul and my strong
nerves, they had so subdued my unconquerable will, and that stern
determination to do my duty at any cost, which had been my character
till then, that I was shaking from head to feet, when thinking of that
awful hour.
Besides that, my constant intercourse with those criminals, these last
few days, their unbounded confidence in me, their gratitude for my
devotedness to them, their desolation and their cries when speaking of
their fathers or mothers, wives or children, had filled my heart with a
measure of sympathy which I would vainly try to express. They were no
more thieves and murderers, to me, whose bloody deeds had at first
chilled the blood in my veins; they were the friends of my bosom—the
beloved children whom cruel beasts had wounded. They were dearer to me
than my own life—not only I felt happy to mix my tears with theirs, and
unite my ardent prayers to God for mercy with them, but I would have
felt happy to shed my blood in order to save their lives. As several of
them belonged to the most reputable families of Quebec and vicinity, I
thought I could easily interest the clergy and the most respectable
citizens to sign a petition to the governor, Lord Gosford, asking him to
change their sentence of death into one of perpetual exile to the
distant penal colony of Botany Bay, in Australia. The governor was my
friend. Colonel Vassal, who was my uncle, and the adjutant-general of
the militia of the whole country, had introduced me to his Excellency,
who many times had overloaded me with the marks of his interest and
kindness, and my hope was that he would not refuse me the favor I was to
ask him, when the petition would be signed by the Bishop, the Catholic
priests, the ministers of the different Protestant denominations of the
city, and hundreds of the principal citizens of Quebec. I presented the
petition myself, accompanied by the secretary of the Archbishop. But to
my great distress, the governor answered me that those men had committed
so many murders, and kept the country in terror for so many years, that
it was absolutely necessary they should be punished according to the
sentence of the court. Who can tell the desolation of those unfortunate
men, when, with a voice choked by my sobs and my tears, I told them that
the governor had refused to grant the favor I had asked him for them.
They fell on the ground and filled their cells with cries which would
have broken the hardest heart. From those very cells we were hearing the
noise of the men who were preparing the scaffold where they were to be
hanged the next day. I tried to pray and read, but was unable to do so.
My desolation was too great to utter a single word. I felt as if I were
to be hanged with them—and to say the whole truth, I think I would have
been glad to hear that I was to be hanged the next day to save their
lives. For there was a fear in me, which was haunting me as a phantom
from hell, the last three days. It seemed that, in spite of all my
efforts, prayers, confessions, absolutions and sacraments, these men
were not converted, and that they were to be launched into eternity with
all their sins.
When I was comparing the calm and true repentance of the two thieves,
with whom I spent the night a few weeks before in the carriage, with the
noisy expressions of sorrow of these newly converted sinners, I could
not help finding an immeasurable distance between the first and the
second of those penitents. No doubt had remained in my mind about the
first, but I had serious apprehensions about the last. Several
circumstances, which it would be too long and useless to mention here,
were depressing me by the fear that all my chaplets, indulgences,
medals, scapulars, holy waters, signs of the cross, prayers to the
Virgin, auricular confessions, absolutions, used in the conversion of
these sinners, had not the divine and perfect power of a simple look to
the dying Saviour on the cross. I was saying to myself, with anxiety:
“Would it be possible that those Protestants, who were with me in the
carriage, had the true ways of repentance, pardon, peace and life
eternal in that simple look to the great victim, and that we Roman
Catholics, with our signs of the cross and holy waters, our crucifixes
and prayers to the saints, our scapulars and medals, our so humiliating
auricular confession, were only distracting the mind, the soul and the
heart of the sinner from the true and only source of salvation, Christ!”
In the midst of those distressing thoughts, I almost regretted having
helped Chambers in giving up his Protestantism for my Romanism.
At about 4 P. M. I made a supreme effort to shake off my desolation, and
nerve myself for the solemn duties God had intrusted to me. I put a few
questions to those desolated men, to see if they were really repentant
and converted. Their answers added to my fears that I had spoken too
much of the virgins and the saints, the indulgences, medals and
scapulars, integrity of confession, and not enough of Christ dying on
the cross for them. It is true, I had spoken of Christ and his death to
them, but this had been so much mixed up with exhortation to trust in
Mary, put their confidence in their medals, scapulars, confessions,
etc., that it became almost evident to me that, in our religion, Christ
was like a precious pearl lost in a mountain of sand and dust. This fear
soon caused my distress to be unbearable.
I then went to the private, neat little room, which the gaoler had
kindly allotted to me, and I fell on my knees to pray God for myself and
for my poor convicts. Though this prayer brought some calm to my mind,
my distress was still very great. It was then that the thought came
again to my mind to go to the governor and make a new and supreme effort
to have the sentence of death changed into that of perpetual exile to
Botany Bay: and without a moment of delay, I went to his palace.
It was about 7 P. M. when he reluctantly admitted me to his presence,
telling me, when shaking hands, “I hope, Mr. Chiniquy, you are not
coming to renew your request of the morning, for I cannot grant it.”
Without a word of answer, I fell on my knees, and for more than ten
minutes I spoke as I had never spoken before. I spoke as we speak when
we are the ambassadors of God in a message of mercy. I spoke with my
lips. I spoke with my tears. I spoke with my sobs and cries. I spoke
with my supplicating hands lifted to heaven. For some time, the governor
was mute, and as if stunned. He was not only a noble-minded man, but he
had a most tender, affectionate and kind heart. His tears soon began to
flow with mine, and his sobs mixed with my sobs; with a voice, half
suffocated by his emotion, he extended his friendly hand, and said:
“Father Chiniquy, you ask me a favor which I ought not to give, but I
cannot resist your arguments, when your tears, your sobs, and your cries
are like arrows which pierce and break my heart. I will give you the
favor you ask.”
It was nearly 10 P. M. when I knocked at the door of the gaoler, asking
his permission to see my dear friends in their cells, to tell them that
I had obtained their pardon, that they would not die. That gentleman
could hardly believe me. It was only after reading twice the document I
had in my hands that he saw that I told him the truth.
Looking at the parchment again, he said: “Have you noticed that it is
covered and almost spoiled by the spots evidently made with the tears of
the governor. You must be a kind of a sorcerer to have melted the heart
of such a man, and have wrenched from his hands the pardon of such
convicts; for I know he was absolutely unwilling to grant the pardon.”
“I am not a sorcerer,” I answered. “But you remember that our Saviour
Jesus Christ had said, somewhere, that he had brought a fire from
heaven—well, it is evident that he has thrown some sparks of that fire
into my poor heart, for it was so fiercely burning when I was at the
feet of the governor, that I think I would have died at his feet, had he
not granted me that favor. No doubt that some sparks of that fire have
also fallen on his soul and in his heart when I was speaking, for his
cries, his tears and his sobs were filling his room, and showing that he
was suffering as well as myself. It was that he might not be consumed by
that fire that he granted my request. I am now the most happy man under
heaven. Please, make haste. Come with me and open the cells of those
unfortunate men that I may tell what our merciful God has done for
them.” When entering their desolated cells I was unable to contain
myself. I cried out: “Rejoice, and bless the Lord, my dear friends! You
will not die to-morrow! I bring you your pardon with me!”
Two of them fainted, and came very near dying from excess of surprise
and joy. The others, unable to contain their emotions, were crying and
weeping for joy. They threw their arms around me to press me to their
bosom, kiss my hands and cover them with their tears of joy. I knelt
with them and thanked God, after which I told them how they must promise
to God to serve him faithfully, after such a manifestation of his
mercies. I read to them the 100th, 101st, 102d, and 103d Psalms, and I
left them after twelve o’clock at night to go and take some rest. I was
in need of it after a whole day of such work and emotions.
The next day, I wanted to see my dear prisoners early, and I was with
them at 7 A. M. As the whole country had been glad to hear that they
were to be hanged that very day, the crowds were beginning to gather at
that early hour to witness the death of those great culprits. The
feelings of indignation were almost unmanageable, when they heard that
they were not to be hanged, but only to be exiled for their life to
Botany Bay. For a time, it was feared that the mob would break the doors
of the gaol and lynch the culprits. Though very few priests were more
respected and loved by the people, they would have probably torn me into
pieces when they heard that it was I who had deprived the gibbet of its
victims, that day. The chief of police had to take extraordinary
measures to prevent the wrath of the mob from doing mischief. He advised
me not to show myself for a few days, in the streets.
More than a month passed before all the thieves and murderers in Canada,
to the number of about seventy, who had been sentenced to be exiled to
Botany Bay, could be gathered into the ship which was to take them into
that distant land. I thought it was my duty, during that interval, to
visit my penitents in gaol every day, and instruct them on the duties of
the new life they were called upon to live. When the day of their
departure arrived, I gave a Roman Catholic New Testament, translated by
DeSacy, to each of them to read and meditate on their long and tedious
journey, and I bade them adieu, recommending them to the mercy of God,
and the protection of the Virgin Mary and all the saints. Some months,
later, I heard that, on the sea, Chambers had cut loose his chains and
those of some of his companions, with the intention of taking possession
of the ship, and escaping on some distant shore. But he had been
betrayed, and was hanged on his arrival at Liverpool.
I had almost lost sight of those emotional days of my young years of
priesthood. Those facts were silently lying among the big piles of the
daily records, which I had faithfully kept since the very days of my
collegiate life at Nicolet, when, in 1878, the Rev. George Sutherland,
Presbyterian minister, of Sydney, invited me in the name of the
noble-hearted Orangemen and many other Christians of that great country,
to go and lecture in Australia. They accompanied their invitation with a
check of £100 for the traveling expenses from Chicago to that distant
land, and I accepted their kind invitation.
Some time after my arrival, when I was lecturing in one of the young and
thriving cities of that country, whose future destinies promise to be so
great, a rich carross, drawn by two splendid English horses, driven by
two men _en livre_, stopped before the house where I had put up for a
few days. A venerable gentleman alighted from the carriage and knocked
at the door, as I was looking at him from the window. I went to the
door, to save trouble to my host, and I opened it. In saluting me, the
stranger said: “Is Father Chiniquy here?”
“Yes, sir,” I answered. “Father Chiniquy is the guest of this family.”
“Could I have the honor of a few minute’s conversation with him?”
replied the old gentleman.
“As I am Father Chiniquy, I can, at once, answer you that I will feel
much pleasure in granting your request.”
“Oh, dear Father Chiniquy,” quickly replied the stranger, “is it
possible that it is you? Can I be absolutely alone with you for half an
hour, without any one to see and hear us?”
“Certainly,” I said; “my comfortable rooms are upstairs, and I am
absolutely alone there. Please, sir, come and follow me.”
When alone, the stranger said: “Do you not know me?”
“How can I know you, sir,” I answered. “I do not even remember ever
having seen you.”
“You have not only seen me, but you have heard the confession of my
sins, many times; and you have spent many hours in the same room with
me,” replied the old gentleman.
“Please tell me where and when I have seen you, and also be kind enough
to give your name: for all those things have escaped from my memory.”
“Do you remember the murderer and thief, Chambers, who was condemned to
death in Quebec, in 1837, with eight of his accomplices?” asked the
stranger.
“Yes, sir; I remember well Chambers, and the unfortunate men he was
leading in the ways of iniquity,” I replied.
“Well, dear Father Chiniquy, I am one of the criminals who filled Canada
with terror, for several years, and who were caught and rightly
condemned to death. When condemned, we selected you for our father
confessor, with the hope that through your influence we might escape the
gallows; and we were not disappointed. You obtained our pardon; the
sentence of death was commuted into a life of exile to Botany Bay. My
name in Canada was A——, but here they call me B——. God has blessed me
since in many ways; but it is to you I owe my life, and all the
privileges of my present existence. After God, you are my saviour. I
come to thank and bless you for what you have done for me.”
In saying that, he threw himself into my arms, pressed me to his heart,
and bathed my face and my hands with tears of joy and gratitude.
But his joy did not exceed mine, and my surprise was equal to my joy to
find him apparently in such good circumstances. After I had knelt with
him to thank and bless God for what I had heard, I asked him to relate
to me the details of his strange and marvellous story. Here is a short
_resume_ of his answer:
“After you had given us your last benediction, when on board the ship
which was to take us from Quebec to Botany Bay, the first thing I did
was to open the New Testament you had given me and the other culprits,
with the advice to read it with a praying heart. It was the first time
in my life I had that book in my hand. You were the only priest in
Canada who would put such a book in the hands of common people. But I
must confess that its first reading did not do me much good, for I read
it more to amuse myself and satisfy my curiosity, than through any good
and Christian motive. The only good I received from that first reading,
was that I clearly understood, for the first time, why the priests of
Rome fear and hate that book, and why they take it out of the hands of
their parishioners when they hear that they have it. It was in vain that
I looked for mass, indulgence, chaplets, purgatory, auricular
confession, Lent, holy waters, the worship of Mary, or prayers in an
unknown tongue. I concluded from my first reading of the Gospel that our
priests were very wise to prevent us from reading a book which was
really demolishing our Roman Catholic Church, and felt surprised that
you had put in our hands a book which seemed to me so opposed to the
belief and practice of our religion as you taught it to us when in gaol,
and my confidence in your good judgment was much shaken. To tell you the
truth, the first reading of the Gospel went far to demolish my Roman
Catholic faith, and to make a wreck of the religion taught me by my
parents, and at the college, and even by you. For a few weeks, I became
more of a skeptic than anything else. The only good that first reading
of the Holy Book did me was to give me more serious thoughts and prevent
me from uniting myself to Chambers and his conspirators in their foolish
plot for taking possession of the ship and escaping to some unknown and
distant shore. He had been shrewd enough to conceal a very small, but
exceedingly sharp saw, between his toes before coming to the ship, with
which he had already cut the chains of eighteen of the prisoners, when
he was betrayed and hanged on his arrival at Liverpool.
“But if my first reading of the Gospel did not do me much good, I cannot
say the same thing of the second. I remember that, when handing to us
that holy book, you had told us never to read it except after a fervent
prayer to God for help and light to understand it. I was really tired of
my former life. In giving up the fear and the love of God, I had fallen
into the deepest abyss of human depravity and misery, till I had come
very near ending my life on the scaffold. I felt the need of a change.
You had often repeated to us the words of our Saviour, ‘Come unto me all
ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest;’ but, with
all the other priests, you had always mixed those admirable and saving
words with the invocation of Mary, the confidence in our medals,
scapulars, signs of the cross, holy waters, indulgences, auricular
confessions, that the sublime appeal of Christ had always been, as it
always will be, drowned in the Church of Rome by those absurd and
impious superstitions and practices.
“One morning, after I had spent a sleepless night, and feeling as
pressed down under the weight of my sins, I opened my gospel book, after
an ardent prayer for light and guidance, and my eyes fell on these words
of John, ‘Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the
world!’ These words fell upon my poor guilty soul with a divine,
irresistible power. With tears and cries of an unspeakable desolation, I
spent the day in crying, ‘O Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the
world, have mercy upon me! Take away my sins!’ The day was not over,
when I felt and knew that my cries had been heard at the mercy-seat. The
Lamb of God had taken away my sins! He had changed my heart and made
quite a new man of me. From that day, the reading of the Gospel was to
my soul what bread is to the poor, hungry man, and what pure and
refreshing waters are to the thirsty traveler. My joy, my unspeakable
joy, was to read the holy book, and speak with my companions in chains
of the dear Saviour’s love for the poor sinners; and, thanks be to God,
a good number of them have found Him altogether precious, and have been
sincerely converted in the dark holds of that ship. When working hard at
Sydney with the other culprits, I felt my chains to be as light as
feathers when I was sure that the heavy chains of my sins were gone; and
though working hard under a burning sun from morning till night, I felt
happy, and my heart was full of joy when I was sure that my Saviour had
prepared a throne for me in His kingdom, and that He had brought a crown
of eternal glory for me by dying on the cross to redeem my guilty soul.
“I had hardly spent a year in Australia, in the midst of the convicts,
when a minister of the Gospel, accompanied by another gentleman, came to
me and said: ‘Your perfectly good behavior and your Christian life has
attracted the attention and admiration of the authorities, and the
governor sends us to hand you this document, which says you are no more
a criminal before the law, but that you have your pardon, and you can
live the life of an honorable citizen, by continuing to walk in the ways
of God.’ After speaking so, the gentlemen put one hundred dollars in my
hands, and added: ‘Go and be a faithful follower of the Lord Jesus, and
God Almighty will bless you and make you prosper in all your ways.’ All
this seemed to me as a dream or vision from heaven. I would hardly
believe my ears and my eyes. But it was not a dream, it was a reality.
My merciful Heavenly Father had again heard my humble supplications;
after having taken away the heavy chains of my sins, He had mercifully
taken away the chains which wounded my feet and my hands. I spent
several days and nights in weeping and crying for joy, and in blessing
the God of my salvation, Jesus the redeemer of my soul and my body.
“Some years after that, we heard of the discoveries of the rich gold
mines in several parts of Australia.
“After having prayed God to guide me, I bought a bag of hard crackers, a
ham and cheese, and started for the mines in company with several who
were going, like myself, in search of gold. But I soon preferred to be
alone. For I wanted to pray and to be united to my God, even when
walking. After a long march, I reached a beautiful spot, between three
small hills, at the foot of which a little brook was running down toward
the plain below. The sun was scorching, there was no shade, and I was
much tired, I sat on a flat stone to take my dinner, and quenched my
thirst with the water of the brook. I was eating and blessing my God at
the same time for His mercies, when suddenly my eyes fell on a stone by
the brook, which was about the size of a goose egg. But the rays of the
sun were dancing on the stone, as if it had been a mirror. I went and
picked it up. The stone was almost all gold of the purest kind! It was
almost enough to make me rich. I knelt to thank and bless God for this
new token of his mercy toward me, and I began to look around to see if I
could not find some new pieces of the precious metal, and you may
imagine my joy, when I found that the ground was not only literally
covered with pieces of gold of every size, from half an inch to the
smallest dimensions, but that the very sand, in great part, was composed
of gold. In a very short time, it was the will of God that I could carry
to the bank particles of gold to the value of several thousand pounds. I
continued to cover myself with rags and have old boots on, in order not
to excite the suspicion of any one on the fortune which I was
accumulating so rapidly. When I had about £80,000 deposited in the
banks, a gentleman offered me £80,000 more for my claim, and I sold it.
The money was invested by me on a piece of land which soon became the
site of an important city, and I soon became one of the wealthy men of
Australia. I then began to study hard and improve the little education I
had received in Canada. I married, and my God has made me father of
several children. The people where I settled with my fortune and wife,
not knowing my antecedents, have raised me to the first dignities of the
place. Please, dear Mr. Chiniquy, come and take dinner with me,
to-morrow, that I may show you my house and some of my other properties,
and also that I may introduce you to my wife and children. But let me
ask the favor not to make them suspect that you have known me in Canada,
for they think I am an European.” When telling me his marvellous
adventures, which I am obliged to condense and abridge, his voice was,
many times, choked by his emotion his tears and his sobs, and more than
once he had to stop. As for me, I was absolutely beside myself with
admiration at the mysterious ways through which God leads his elect, in
all ages. Now, I understand why my God had given me such a marvellous
power over the governor of Canada, when I wrenched your pardon from his
hands almost in spite of himself, I said: “That merciful God wanted to
save you, and you are saved! May his name be forever blessed.”
The next day, it was my privilege to be with his family, at dinner. And
never have I seen a more happy mother, and a more interesting family.
The long table was actually surrounded by them. After dinner, he showed
me his beautiful garden and his rich palace, after which, throwing
himself into my arms, he said: “Dear Father Chiniquy, all those things
belong to you. It is to you, after God, that I owe my life, all the
blessings of a large and Christian family, and the honor of the high
position I have in this country. May the God of Heaven for ever bless
you for what you have done for me.” I answered him: “Dear friend, you
owe me nothing, I have been nothing but a feeble instrument of the
mercies of God toward you. To that great and merciful God alone be the
praise and the glory. Please ask your family to come here and join with
us in singing to the praise of God the 103d Psalm.” And we sang
together: “Praise the Lord, O my soul, and let all that is within me
praise His holy name.
“He hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to
our iniquities.
“For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward
them that fear him.
“As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our
transgressions from us.
“Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that
fear Him.”
After the singing of that hymn, I bade him adieu for the second time,
never to meet him again except in that Promised Land, where we will sing
the eternal Alleluia around the throne of the Lamb, who was slain for
us, and who redeemed us all in His blood.