is infused into the minds of Papists. But let that O'Connell take heed,
lest the fate of Dante, once as good a Roman Catholic as himself, should
overtake him. Apropos, Corporal Brownson, Bishop Fenwick's mouth-piece
in Boston, makes a boast of the fact that Dante was a Roman Catholic,
and assures us that he was an honor to the Popish Church. I wonder
whether the Corporal has ever read Dante's poem on Hell? If he has,
I would advise him to have written on the door of every Popish
confessional, that caution which Dante recommended to be posted on
its portals. I have not a copy of Dante in my possession, but it was
something to this effect, "_Pause before you enter this gate_" This
caution should be written in large letters upon the door of every Romish
confessional in the civilized world. I can assure those who enter that
accursed tribunal, that they may as well enter the hell described by
Dante. I owe an apology to the public for the frequent mention of the
name of Brownson, in these pages; but he has proved to me so great and
prolific a source of mixed sadness and merriment, that I could not avoid
frequent allusion to his name. I verily believe that were it not for
him, I could scarcely write the present volume.
"Without thee [Corporal Browson ] nothing lofty could I sing; Come,
then, and with thyself thy genius bring."
The Corporal, I understand, is now lecturing in Philadelphia, on the
_infallibility_ of the Romish church,--and the simple purity of its
_democratic form of government_.
According to Brownson, who never utters a word until it is first
approved by the Roman Catholic bishops in the United States, no form
of government should be allowed, but such as that now established and
sanctioned by the Pope of Rome. The Pope's subjects, and they alone, as
Brownson assures us, are fit to bear aloft the standard of liberty. No
hands should be permitted to touch or embroider the flag of freedom, but
those of chaste nuns and sisters of charity in the Popish church; and
no arms should be allowed the honor of defending that flag, but the
valorous ones of those who have been pardoned their sins at the holy
tribunal of confession. Is this really the state of things? If so,
thrice welcome the sisters of charity amongst us, and ten thousand
welcomes to those Popish patriots who have confessed their sins and been
pardoned by their priests. But what if the government of the Court of
Rome should be found not to be, in reality, all that our Popish bishops
recommend, and all that Brownson represents it? What if it should be
found that the Pope is not an angel, and that his government is far
from being perfect? How would it be if his Royal Holiness the Pope, were
proved to be a weak and licentious old profligate, unable to rule, and
unwilling to obey? What if his government were proved to be one of the
most corrupt, avaricious, tyrannical, that ever existed upon earth? This
would entirely change the position of affairs, and could not fail to
tinge with a blush the cheeks of our citizens who are weak enough to
listen to the ranting declamations of the hired infidel Brownson. I have
before me the last number of the Westminster Review, a work of
great talent and popularity, widely differing in tone and style, and
respectability, from a thing called Brownson's Democratic Review. The
reader will easily pardon me for quoting a few extracts from it,
which will tend to throw some light on the beauties of that Popish
republicanism which the bishops of the Catholic church are desirous of
introducing into the United States. I beg the particular attention of my
readers to it. There is more of good sense, sound judgment, truth, and
good taste, in it, than in all the _clishmaclaver_ which has been issued
from the Popish presses and Jesuit quarterly reviews in the United
States, during the last half century. "We are not here to treat of the
Pope, that nominal head of the State--all-powerful for evil--absolutely
impotent for 27 good. As a general rule, he may be set down as an old
imbecile, thrust into power by a faction of the Cardinals, who share
among them the spoils; or as a veteran trafficer in ambition, who
settles with his electors the price of his elevation to the Papacy, and
who is compelled, at the risk of his life, to observe the conditions of
the compact. The real chief is the Secretary of State--_Sacretario di
Stado_--this is he who is the leader of the faction in the conclave. He
stands above all authority. He is supposed to receive the responses of
the Papal oracle, and to utter them in the name of laws. A few strokes
of the pen, forwarded to a tribunal, enable him to annihilate, without
publicity, statutory enactments." How would our Western citizens,
Wolverines, Suckers, Hoosiers, and Squatters, like such a Secretary
of State? How would the citizens of Tennessee, and Illinois, like such
gentlemen, as Secretaries for their respective States? How many votes,
reader, do you suppose such a man would receive, were he a candidate
for re-election as Secretary of State, in Vermont or New Hampshire?
Very few, I apprehend; and yet the infidel Brownson, who is a native of
Vermont--if I am correctly informed--is trying to establish amongst us
a religion which would force upon us the duty of supporting such
characters for the highest offices in our government.
"Next to the Secretary of State," continues the Westminster Review,
"comes a Cardinal. His titles confer upon him the Presidency of the
Apostolic Chamber, and the management of the customs and the mint....
His titles would lead one to infer that the general direction of the
postal department was intrusted to him, though he has nothing to do with
it The posts are under a separate and independent jurisdiction.... More
definite in duty, but equally unaccountable as to performance, is the
Treasurer General, who completes a supreme triumvirate of the Papal
States. He is the real minister of finance, though with the usual rule
of misrule, several branches of that head are entirely independent He
attends to the collection of the revenue, and appoints the provincial
receivers; he contracts loans, and orders the sale of public property.
_He never gives account to any one of his administration, nor of the
distribution of the funds that enter the treasury; neither has any one a
right to demand an account_. He can only be dismissed from his office by
being promoted to the office of Cardinal; he then leaves on his desk a
key, supposed to be that of the treasury, being the only formality that
is indispensable." This is taking the responsibility, with a vengeance!
The reason why the Popish Church gives this unlimited power to the
secretary of her treasury, deserves peculiar notice. Americans should
view it closely. All Protestant governments and Protestant countries
should examine it attentively. The Pope and his government are aware
that if their Secretary of the Treasury were compelled to give a correct
account of the monies he received, and the uses for which they were
appropriated, their plans, their bribes, their subornation of
witnesses, their intrigues, and various modes of overthrowing Protestant
governments and Protestant churches, could not fail to be discovered,
and then the Unanimous voice of mankind would cry aloud, Down v with
Popery! down with the Beast! down with the old harlot of Rome! If
the Pope's treasurer were compelled to account for the millions upon
millions which Jesuits and Popish priests wring from the hard earnings
of mankind, the Romish church could not exist an hour longer, and there
is not a Protestant government upon earth, that would allow within its
jurisdiction a Popish college, bishop, seminary, nunnery, or monk-house.
Were the treasurer of the Romish church obliged to give a fair account
of the uses to which he appropriated the funds received and expended by
him, Americans could soon know where Bishop Hughes of New York receives
the vast sums of money which he has been expending for several years
back, in erecting colleges and nunneries, into which he may decoy the
children of Protestant Americans. It would then be known where Bishop
Purcel of Ohio, obtained the funds with which he clandestinely, and
without giving them any notice, purchased the buildings occupied by the
Misses Beecher and others, in the city of Cincinnati, as a seminary
for the education of young ladies. The Popish Bishop Hughes of New York
never owned a dollar of his own; it is but a few years since he was
employed as a gardener in the college of Georgetown or Emmetsburg, I
forget which. Bishop Purcel of Ohio was equally poor and destitute; but
now these right reverend Jesuits have at their command any amount of
money which they in their judgment may deem necessary to proselytize
American heretics, and overthrow their republican form of government.
Could we but know how the treasurer of the Pope disposed of the funds of
his church, the Jesuit Bishop Fenwick of Boston, could no longer conceal
from the citizens of Massachusetts, where he found means to build a
Popish college at Worcester; to which, I understand, he soon intends
adding an extensive nunnery and a Foundling' Hospital, in which
fatherless orphans, or rather the bastard children of Jesuits, are to be
provided for.
It is sound policy, in the Popish Church, not to require from the Pope's
treasurer, any account of the mode or manner in which he disposes of
the funds entrusted to his charge. And I cannot withhold from them due
credit for this admirable stroke of policy, wicked and demoralizing as
it is in reality.
"Yet lower, beneath the class of principals and subalterns, swarms, as
reptiles in filth, a hideous race, not to be hinted at in good society,
but whose abnormal existence must be proclaimed in our effort to
make intelligible the nature of papal government--a race of varlets,
parasites, prostitutes, trafficers in vice, legions of familiar demons,
who crawl from the basement to the very summit of the edifice. The
celibacy of the clergy,--the occupiers of every avenue to power,--is the
source of their influence....... For ages past, the interior corruption,
and the power exercised at Rome by domestics and women of gallantry, has
been notorious; but before the time of Pius VI. (Pius died only about
fifty years ago) the profligacy of the priests, though more brazen,
had not, in general at least, stained the family hearth. The natural
children of Popes Cardinals, and Bishops, impudently recognized, by
their elevation to the highest dignities, were not the offspring of
their neighbors' wives.... At a later period, the depravity general in
Europe, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the examples set
by Cardinals Richlieu, Mazarin, and Alberoni, and the morale of theology
disseminated by Jesuits,--masters in the art of inciting the human
passions, to turn them in the end to their own account, and of fostering
covert infamy, to lord it over their penitents by the possession of
their secrets (in the confessional,)--taught, by Roman Cardinals and
Bishops, that it was more convenient, and less scandalous, to insinuate
their seduction, where it was the interest of all parties to conceal
it," The Westminster Review is good authority upon any subject; but I
have adopted a general rule, in my controversy with Papists, never
to quote from Protestant authorities, except when I know, of my own
knowledge, that the facts stated by them are true, and susceptible of
proof. This is not--as the reader may easily imagine--because I doubt
the veracity of Protestant writers, but because Jesuits will persuade
their followers, that my statements are only a repetition of _old lies_,
fabricated by heretics. I have unqualifiedly accused the Roman Catholic
priests and bishops of this country, and elsewhere, of using the
confessional for the infamous purpose of seducing, females. I have
charged upon nunneries, that they were nothing better than legalized
houses of prostitution, and established among us, by the Pope of
Rome and his bishops, for the sole purpose of affording them better
opportunities and greater security in their immoralities and high-handed
profligacies; and I appeal to Americans, of all denominations, whether
I have or have not established my charges against them. I ask any
well-read American, who is acquainted with the private history of
Cardinal Richlieu, whether he was not one of the greatest profligates of
his day? Is it not well known, that Cardinal Mazarin was so notorious a
profligate, that no man's wife was safe in his society, or proof against
his political influence and extravagant expenditures. He was Prime
Minister to Louis XIV. of France; he had, in his gift, nearly all the
offices under the government; and it was well understood, throughout
all France, that it was perfectly useless for any man whose wife was
not young and beautiful, to apply to him for office. There is not to
be found, a well informed man, who has not read the life of Cardinal De
Retz, and who does not know that his house, and his soirees, were places
of rendezvous for gay women, and especially for that portion of them
whose character for chastity was not the best Let it be observed
here, that the parish priests and cures were all in the pay of these
Cardinals, and employed to procure and select for them, through the
confessional, the most beautiful and desirable women in Paris; and
faithfully did these Popish _pimps_ discharge their commissions.
But still, the Jesuits of this country, and that miserable outcast
mouth-piece of theirs, Brownson, talk of the _infallibility_ of the
Romish Church, and the superior beauties of its democratic form of
government. Can it be possible that the enlightened Republicans of the
United States, have patience to listen to the diatribes of this man
against Protestant governments and Protestant Churches? Yet so it is;
and I have not the least doubt, that many of the indignant expressions,
which I make use of in speaking of him and Jesuits, will be found fault
with, as they have been before, by many of the mawkish sympathizers with
Popery, in the United States.
There are to be found, among the good and virtuous of our Protestant
people, many who think that I should use milder language than much of
that contained in my books,--that some of it is too harsh,--that it
shows a bad spirit, a bad temper, and is--_pro tanto_--an indirect
evidence, that I possess not a Christian feeling towards Popery or its
advocates. That I am not what a Christian ought to be, in thought, word,
and deed, 1 will freely admit. But those sympathizers, whether Infidels
or Christians, who think that I should use milder language in my
controversy with Papists, know but very little--as I have often told
them before--of the spirit and elements of Popery, or the mode of
warfare adopted by its Jesuits; and hence it is, that whenever they
themselves enter the lists of controversy with Popish priests, and
Jesuit presses, they are invariably and ingloriously defeated. I would
ask these gentlemen, who find fault with the apparent asperity of my
language, whether they could, collectively or individually, silence
the howlings of a northeast storm by softly whistling Yankee Doodle, or
humming Hail Columbia? When they can do this--but I doubt much if it can
be done sooner--then they can silence scurrilous Jesuits in their abuse
of Protestant religion, and check the efforts of the Popish presses in
the United States, by using mild, charitable, and gentlemanly language,
in all controversies with them. The fact is, Protestants and Protestant
theologians too, must alter their mode of warfare with Papists.
The Popish press in the United States, has always endeavored, and never
failed in the attempt--as far as I know--to place our Protestant presses
in a position of defence. A single thrust from their journals, inflicts
a wound which requires months to heal; the prescription alone, which
is necessary for a cure, occupies whole columns of our presses and
periodicals, and thus they have a great advantage over their Protestant
opponents. I have never given them this advantage, and until my
Protestant fellow laborers in the glorious cause of religion and civil
rights, follow my example, in their controversies with Papists, they may
as well 'pile arms' at once, and retire from the arena. I have carried
the war with Papists, into Africa, but not until all overtures for peace
proved ineffectual. I have inflicted upon them wounds, which it will
require some time to heal. The result has shown the policy of my
course towards them. It is scarcely twelve months, since _repeal
meetings_,--which in reality were meetings held for the ill-disguised
purpose of overthrowing the Protestant Church and government in this
country,--were held in every hall and place of public meeting in our
cities. I have exposed the covert intentions of those meetings, in pure
Saxon language. I have called the priests and Jesuits who encouraged
them, as well as the presses which advocated them,--traitors, and
enemies to religion and the civil rights of our people. What has been
the consequence? We scarcely hear now, of a _repeal 27* meeting_. Its
advocates have been silenced, and they are obliged to abandon the cause,
or support it under some other name or title, which I understand they
are doing now, in Boston, under the infamous disguise of taking up
contributions for the starving Irish. The Popish bishops, finding
me rather a troublesome customer, and well versed in Jesuitical
fencing,--parrying and thrusting with as much skill and precision as
they themselves, having been taught in the same school with them, and
by the same masters,--have come to the wise conclusion, that they had
better let me alone, and tacitly admit the truth of every accusation
which I have brought against them. They seem, however, resolved to die
hard, and recently commissioned the notorious infidel Brownson to defend
them, and, if possible, to exculpate them from the enormous and vile
crimes of seduction and treason, which I have brought against them.
I fondly hoped that when this Brownson took the field in defence
of Popery, some of those meek, bashful theologians, and editors of
religious journals, who think my language too harsh, would come against
him and his Jesuit masters. There is not a scurrilous epithet in the
English vocabulary, which Brownson and his Jesuit masters, have not
applied to Protestants and Protestant presses. He has encouraged, by
advice of Jesuits, treason to this government, by recommending the
government of the Pope, as a better and more republican system; and
still, I find--much to my regret--that there-is not a single Protestant
divine in the country, or a single Protestant periodical--as far as I
can discover--willing to raise his voice or publish an article against
him. They all seem alive to the paramount necessity of finding fault and
condemning what they term cheap literature, as calculated to demoralize
the community. Eugene Sue, and Michelet, are special objects of their
censure. It was only the other day, that an orthodox clergyman, who
holds a high station and receives a high salary from his church,
delivered, in New York, a philippic of nearly two hours' length, against
Eugene Sue's "Wandering Jew," and concluded with a Jeremiad, bemoaning
that so many copies of it should have been distributed in the book
stores in New York. "The work,"--observed this learned but mistaken
lecturer,--"is flooding the country." Very true, it is flooding
the country; but is not Popery flooding the country? Are not Jesuits
flooding the country? Are not Popish concubines, denominated nuns and
sisters ters of charity, flooding the country? Is not Brownson, the
Pope's Agent, flooding the country with infidel principles and treason
against our government? Which of these floods does the reverend
gentleman to whom I allude, prefer? He is now fairly between Scylla and
Charybdis; he must fall upon one; and which does he choose? The Popish
flood, which Eugene Sue is trying to dam, or the flood occasioned by
the sale of the Wandering Jew in New York and elsewhere? The former is a
torrent which flows forever; the latter--even if it were destructive for
the moment, is but a land flood, that may cover the meadows to-day, but
disappear on the morrow. _Utrum horam mavis accipe_. Let the reverend
lecturer, and those who maintain similar opinions of modern and
anti-Popish writers, take their choice.
There is no proportion, I apprehend, to be found between the zeal of
those lecturers and their knowledge of human nature. The fact is, that
very few of them have travelled far into the regions of general science;
each seems to be confined within the circle of his own creed, and many
of them vainly endeavor to lay the foundations of morality much higher
than the existence of moral agency itself. They resemble, in a great
measure, some of those ancient philosophers who supposed that the
essences of things existed before the things themselves made their
appearance, or could assume any shape or form. For instance, they
imagined the essence of black and white, red, blue, pink, &c., had
existence before there was any such thing as color. There were many
philosophers who supposed that the essence of square and circle existed
before there was any such thing as form. Many of our modern moralists
and lecturers upon morality are little less extravagant in their ideas;
and if they do not check their imaginations and unmeaning deviations
from common sense, in some of their public lectures, they must soon
share the fate of those ancient dreamers to whom I have alluded.
Lecturers now-a-days must recollect that men are permitted to
exercise--and that freely--their own judgment. We find it very difficult
to accompany many of our speakers in their extraordinary flights to the
regions of morality, in which the common sense and sound doctrine of
moral agency, are entirely lost sight of. The lecturer who would condemn
the efforts of Eugene Sue to arrest the progress of Jesuitism, shows
but a very limited knowledge of this world, and impliedly denies the
efficacy of human agency. He will soon find that his own efforts to
impede the progress of Popery will prove ineffectual; they will be lost
in those regions of fanciful perfection which his own imagination has
created. Theologians of all denominations are peculiarly apt to run into
extremes; many of them take certain standards of morality, which cannot
be defended, and which need not be sustained, and they are very apt to
pronounce all who differ from them to be in error, when in fact charity
and good sense demand from them a frank acknowledgment, that though
they themselves may be right, it does not follow that others are wrong.
Eugene Sue condemns not only the religious doctrines of Jesuits, but
severely censures their political creed. He holds the latter up to the
world as dangerous and destructive to the happiness of the human kind.
He knows man, in every state of society, and he writes to convince him
in each. He is well versed in the elements of political government,
and knows that it is upon the preservation and maintenance of it in a
healthy form, that the happiness of man, in this world, depends. It is
therefore perfectly idle, and worse than idle, for those lecturers who
perhaps have no other ideas of the moral and political duties of man
than those which they have learned from Baxter's Saint's Rest, Four Fold
State, or his Crook in the Lot, to declaim against Eugene Sue, or any
other man, whose better experience in the world teaches him to pursue a
different course in trying to accomplish the same object. Let it not
be supposed that I mean to speak disrespectfully of Baxter, or that a
thorough knowledge of his works and writ* ings would prove useless to
any one; but no man of sense or prudence could suppose for a moment,
that he was a match for Jesuits, or that a knowledge of his and similar
works would enable any lecturer to encounter Jesuits on the field of
controversy.