I. As to the Catholic religion—I indeed am a Protestant, not only by birth, but also by conviction; and warmly penetrated by this conviction, I would delight to see the same shared by the whole world. But before all, I am mortally opposed to intolerance and to sectarism. I consider religion to be a matter of conscience which every man has to arrange between God and himself. And therefore I respect the religious conviction of every man. I claim religious liberty for myself and my nation, and must of course respect in others the right I claim for myself. There is nothing in the world capable to rouse a greater indignation in my breast than religious oppression. But particularly I respect the Catholic religion, as the religion of some seven millions of my countrymen, to whom I am bound in love, in friendship, in home recollections, in gratitude, and in brotherhood, with the most sacred ties. And I am proud to say, that as in general it is a pre-eminent glory of my country, to be attached to the principle of full religious liberty without any restriction, for all to all, so it is the particular glory of my Roman Catholic countrymen not to be second to any in the world, on the one side in attachment to their own religion, and on the other side in toleration for other religions.
The Austrian dynasty having been continually encroaching upon the chartered right of Protestantism, who were those who struggled in the first rank for our rights? Our Roman Catholic countrymen! It was a glorious sight, almost unparalleled in history, but was also fully appreciated by the Hungarian Protestants. All of us, man by man, would rather sacrifice life, and blood, and goods, than to allow that a hair's breadth should be crushed from the religious liberty of our Roman Catholic countrymen.
Now, what position took the Roman Catholics of Hungary in our past struggle? There was not only no difference between them and the Protestants in their devotion for our country's freedom and independence, but they, according to the importance of their number, took in the struggle a very pre-eminent part. The Roman Catholic Bishops of Hungary protested against the perjurious treachery of the dynasty; many of them suffer even now for their devotion to justice, liberty, and right; and who is the Jesuit who dares to affirm that he is more devoted to the Catholic religion than the Bishops of Hungary? Our battalions were filled with Roman Catholic volunteers; Catholic priests led their faithful flocks to the battle field; our National Convention was composed in majority of Catholics—all the Catholic population, without any exception, consented to and cheered enthusiastically my being elected Governor of Hungary, though I am a Protestant. I had and I have their friendship, their devotion, their support; and when I formed the first Ministry of Independent Hungary, not only a full half of the new Ministry I entrusted to Roman Catholics, but especially I nominated a Roman Catholic Bishop to be Minister of public instruction, and all the Protestants of my country hailed the nomination with applause. Such is the cause of Hungary. Who dares now to charge me that that cause is hostile to the Roman Catholic religion?
But I am allied with Mazzini, with the Romans, and with the Italians; thus goes on the charge: and these cursed Italians are enemies to the Pope. Not to the Pope as High Priest of the Roman Catholic Church, but as despotic sovereign of Rome and his corrupted temporal government—the worst of human inventions. How long has it been a principle of the Roman Catholic religion, that the Romans should not be Republicans? and that the high priest of the Roman church should be a despotic sovereign over the Roman nation? and in that capacity be a devoted ally and obedient servant to the Czar of Russia, the sworn enemy and bloody persecutor of Roman Catholicism? Why, when in 1849, the French Republic sent an army against the Roman Republic to restore the Pope, not to his spiritual authority, because that was by nobody contradicted, but to his temporal despotism, the whole danger could have been averted by the Romans by becoming, en masse, Protestants. The idea was pronounced in Rome and not a single Roman accepted it. They preferred to struggle without hope of victory—they preferred to bleed and to die rather than to abandon their faith.
Now, who can dare to insult that people—who can dare to insult the Roman Catholics of Hungary, Croatia, Italy, Germany, Poland, France—who can dare to insult the thousands of thousands of Roman citizens of the United States—Senators, Governors, Judges—men of all public and private positions—who can dare to insult them, as hostile to their own religion, because they unite to support that cause which I plead? And because they side with republican freedom, with civil and religious liberty, against Russo-Austrian despotism?
Who can dare to affirm that he represents the Catholic religion, if three millions of Catholic Romans do not represent it? The Reverend Father Jesuits perhaps!
I take the liberty to say in a few words: They are that society which Clement XIV, the high priest of the Roman Catholic Church, abolished as dangerous to the Roman Catholic religion; they are those whom every Roman Catholic King excluded from his territories as dangerous to religion and social order; they are those, the ascendancy of whom has always been a period of disaster and confusion to the Roman Catholic church; they are those who now make an alliance or rather a compact of submission with the Czar of Russia, like that which evil-doers, according to the superstition of past ages, made with the evil spirit. And here, in free republican America, they plead the cause of Russian despotism; the cause of that Czar, who is the relentless persecutor of Catholicism; who forced the United Greek Catholics, in the Polish Provinces, by every imaginable cruelty, to abjure their connection with Rome, and carried out, at a far greater expense of human life than Ferdinand and Isabella or Louis XIV, the most stupendous proselytism which violence has yet achieved. More than a hundred thousand human beings had died of misery, or under the lash, as the Minsk nuns were proved to have been killed, before he terrified these unhappy millions into a submission against which their consciences revolted. Yet with this man, red with Catholic blood, and damned with the million curses of their co-religionists, the Rev. Father Jesuits are in alliance; and why? Because it is a characteristic of that Order, to be ambitious to rule the world. To achieve this, they have now made the Pope the obedient satrap of the Czar. Into the enormity of this, enlightened Catholics see clearly. Roman Catholics of Hungary, of Poland, of Italy, Germany, and France have understood this. Is it possible that those of this republic should less understand it? Why, in Italy and Rome itself, a majority of the Catholic clergy are hostile to the temporal authority of the Pope, and sympathize with Mazzini so generally, that of seventeen conspirators recently arrested for conspiring in favour of the Republic against Austria, sixteen were priests belonging to the humbler orders of the clergy.
Gentlemen, I am sorry to have to argue such a question in the United States. If it be indeed true, that amongst the Roman Catholics here an opposition is got up against our cause, let them remember that in opposing me, they oppose the independence and freedom of millions of Hungarian Catholics,—of Catholic Italy,—of the Catholic half of Germany, and of Catholic France; they are supporting the Czar, the most bloody enemy of their religion. Yet I am glad to be able to say, that not all the Roman Catholics here are opposed to me. I have warm friends and kind protectors among them. The gallant General Shields,—Mr. Downs, the Senator from Louisiana,—the warm-hearted Governor of Maryland,—Judge Le Grand at Baltimore, and many other of my kindest friends, are Roman Catholics. From New York onward, multitudes of Roman Catholics have shared the general sympathy. And why not? surely freedom is a treasure to every religious denomination whatsoever.[*]
[Footnote *: Some sentences have been added from the Pittsburg speech, at the end of which the same subject was treated.]
So much for the charge that the cause which I plead—the cause of millions of Roman Catholics—is hostile to the Roman Catholic religion. Should I be forced to enter upon this topic once more, I will take the heart-revolting history of those who have thus calumniated our cause, into my hands, and recall to the memory of public opinion the terrible pages of blood, ambition, countless crimes, and intolerance; but I hope there will be no occasion for it.