The spirit of Connecticut is well expressed in the words of the address sent by the colony to King William of Orange, on his accession: "Great was the day when the Lord who sitteth upon the floods did divide his and your adversaries like the waters of Jordan, and did begin to magnify you like Joshua, by the deliverance of the English dominions from popery and slavery." We wonder how the taciturn Hollander received this effusion of Connecticut? There is nothing more to add on the situation of the Catholics in the land of the "blue laws."
In Massachusetts it will be no surprise to hear that "every form of Christianity, except the Roman Catholic, was enfranchised."
This short sketch is eloquent enough with reference to the position in which the poor Irish immigrant found himself on landing on the shores of the New World. His faith he found proscribed as severely almost as in his own country. He was compelled to conceal it; and, even had he been free to make open profession of it, he could find no minister of his creed tolerated anywhere. The country was a perfect blank as far as the ceremonies of his religion went. In his native land he knew where to find a priest; he was advised of the day and of the precise place where he might assist at the sacred mysteries of his religion; and, were it in the cave or on the mountain-top, in the bog or the morass, he knew that there he could adore and receive his God as truly and as worthily as in the magnificent domes looking proudly to heaven under Catholic skies. But in British North America, except in a few counties of Maryland, where the true faith had once been openly planted and taken root, where some clergymen of his own creed were even still to be found, though forced to conceal, or at least not expose themselves too freely, he knew that elsewhere it was useless for him to inquire, not only for a sacred edifice where he might go to thank his God on landing, but even to look for a priest should he find himself at the point of death.
At the present day it is almost impossible to give any details and move the reader by a picture of the complete spiritual destitution of the Irish immigrant in his new home. Here and there, however, we meet, in reading, facts apparently insignificant in themselves, which at first sight seem to have no connection whatever with the subject on hand, yet which, with the aid of reflection, throw quite a flood of light on it, as convincing as it is unexpected. Take, for instance, the following:
"In the last year of the administration of Andros in Massachusetts," says Mr. Bancroft, "the daughter of John Goodwin, a child of thirteen years, charged a laundress with having stolen linen from the family. Glover, the mother of the laundress, a friendless immigrant, almost ignorant of English, like a true woman, with a mother's heart, rebuked the false accusation. Immediately, the girl, to secure revenge, became bewitched. The infection spread. Three others of the family, the youngest a boy of less than five years old, soon succeeded in equally arresting public attention. . . . Cotton Mather went to pray by the side of one of them, and, lo! the child lost her hearing till prayer was over. What was to be done? The four ministers of Boston and the one of Charlestown assembled in Goodwin's house, and spent a whole day of fasting in prayer. In consequence, the youngest child, the little one of five years old, was 'delivered.' But if the ministers could thus by prayer 'deliver' a possessed child, there must have been a witch. The honor of the ministers required a prosecution of the affair; and the magistrates, William Stoughton being one, with a 'vigor' which the united ministers commended as 'just,' made 'a discovery of the wicked instrument of the devil.' The culprit was evidently a wild Irishwoman, of a strange tongue. Goodwin, who made the complaint, 'had no proof that could have done her any hurt;' but the 'scandalous old hag,' whom some thought 'crazed in her intellectuals,' was bewildered, and made strange answers, which were taken as confessions, sometimes, in excitement, using her native dialect. . . . It was plain the prisoner was a Roman Catholic; she had never learned the Lord's Prayer in English; she could repeat the Pater Noster fluently enough, but not quite correctly; so, the ministers and Goodwin's family had the satisfaction of getting her condemned as a witch and executed."
The position of this poor woman, who had never openly declared herself a Catholic, but which fact the people were led to infer from various circumstances, expresses the condition of all Irish immigrants at the time. A further fact recorded by the same historian shows what the feeling toward Catholics was at the time in Massachusetts:
"The girl, who knew herself to be a deceiver, had no remorse, and to the ministers it never occurred that vanity and love of power had blinded their judgment."
The reason was plain: Glover was a Catholic. How could the girl be expected to feel remorse for having brought about her death? How could the ministers feel the least concern because their "vanity and love of power" had effected the hanging of such a creature?—"a vessel of wrath," in any case; a "predestined reprobate," beyond doubt, whose ignominious death on earth and eternal punishment afterward were "a true source of joy in heaven and an increase of glory for the infinite justice of God, " if there was any truth in Calvinism.
Another fact, as suggestive as the above, is found in McGee's "Irish Settlers in America:" "The first Catholic church that we find in Pennsylvania, after Penn's suppression of them in 1708, was connected with the house of a Miss Elizabeth McGauley, an Irish lady, who, with several of her tenantry, settled on land on the road leading from Nicetown to Frankfort. Near the site of this ancient sanctuary stood a tomb, inscribed, 'John Michael Brown, ob. 15th December, A. D. 1750. R. I. P.' He had been a priest residing there incognito."
Miss E. McGauley was not poor, like Glover. On coming to America with some of her tenantry, she secured herself beforehand against the difficulty of practising her religion; and, knowing well that no priest was to be found in the country, she brought one with her. All the remainder of his life did this minister of God reside in her house incognito, keeping the ministry intrusted to him for the service of all a profound secret. He never attempted, probably, to enlighten his prejudiced and ignorant neighbors; the knowledge of his character and the benefits arising from his presence were confined to the lady of the house and her faithful tenantry. Even after his death the secret was still kept, and only the cabalistic characters "R. I. P." remain to tell an intelligent reader that he was neither Quaker nor Protestant; and, probably, tradition alone, preserved doubtless in the neighborhood, could assure us that he was a priest.