September 25, 1856.
“Rt. Rev’d O’Regan:—You seem to be surprised that I have offered the holy sacrifice of mass since our last interview. Here are some of my reasons for so doing.
“1st. You have not suspended me; far from it, you have given me fifteen days to consider what I should do, threatening only to interdict me after that time, if I would not obey your orders.
“2nd. If you have been so ill-advised as to suspend me, for the crime of telling you that my intention was to live the live of a retired priest in my little colony, sooner than be exiled at my age, your sentence is ridiculous and null; and if you were as expert in the jure Canonico as in the art of pocketing our money, you would know that you are yourself suspended ipso facto for a year, and that I have nothing to fear or to expect from you now.
“3rd. When I bowed down before the altar of Jesus Christ, twenty-four years ago, to receive the priesthood, my intention was to be the minister of the Catholic Church, but not a slave of a lawless tyrant.
“4th. Remember the famous words of Tertullian, ‘Nimia potestas, nulla potestas.’ For the sake of peace, I have, with many others, tolerated your despotism till now; but my patience is at an end, and for the sake of our holy church, which you are destroying, I am determined with many to oppose an insurmountable wall to your tyranny.
“5th. I did not come here, you know well, as an ordinary missionary; but I got from your predecessor the permission to form a colony of my emigrating countrymen. I was not sent here in 1851 to take care of any congregation. It was a complete wilderness; but I was sent to form a colony of Catholics. I planted my cross in a wilderness. In a great part, with my own money, I have built a chapel, a college and a female academy. I have called from everywhere my countrymen—nine-tenths of them came here only to live with me, and because I had the pledged word of my bishop to do that work. And as long as I live the life of a good priest I deny you the right to forbid me to remain in my colony which wants my help and my presence.
“6th. You have never shown me your authority (but once) except in the most tyrannical way. But now, seeing that the more humble I am before you, the more insolent you grow, I have taken the resolution to stand by my rights as a Catholic priest and as an American citizen.
“7th. You remember, that in our second interview you forbade me to have the good preceptors we have now for our children, and you turned into ridicule the idea I had to call them from Canada. Was that the act of a bishop or of a mean despot?
“8th. A few days after you ordered me to live on good terms with R. R. LeBelle and Carthavel, though you were well acquainted with their scandalous lives, and twice you threatened me with suspension for refusing to become a friend of those two rogues! And you have so much made a fool of yourself before the four gentlemen I sent to you to be the witnesses of your iniquity and my innocence, that you have acknowledged before them that one of your principal reasons for turning me out of my colony was, that I had not been able to keep peace with three priests whom you acknowledged to be depraved and unworthy priests! Is not that surpassing wickedness and tyranny of anything recorded in the blackest pages of the most daring tyrants? You want to punish by exile a gentleman and a good priest, because he cannot agree to become the friend of two public rogues! I thank you, Bishop O’Regan, to have made that public confession in the presence of unimpeachable witnesses. I do not want to advise you to be hereafter very prudent in what you intend to do against the reputation and character of the priest of St. Anne. If you continue to denounce me as you have done since a few weeks, and to tell the people what you think fit against me, I have awful things to publish of your injustice and tyranny.