"3dly. I assert, that the late scandalous production against the Catholic Clergy of Montreal and the Catholic institutions there, is a tissue of false, foul, designing, and scandalous misrepresentation. 1st. Because upon strict examination into all its bearings, it has been so proved upon the solemn oaths of a magistrate and others concerned. 2dly. Because it is no way consonant to reason or common sense to say that those living at a considerable distance, and avowedly hostile to the Catholics and their religion, should feel so interested in the matter? as the Catholics themselves, who are vitally concerned, and who had every facility of discovering any impropriety; who are zealous of the purity of their religion and its Ministers. 3dly. Because the loud cry of all the inhabitants of every denomination, from the well-known integrity, the extraordinary piety, the singular charity and devotedness of the Catholic Clergy, came in peals of just wrath and well-merited indignation on the heads of the degenerate monsters who basely, but ineffectually, attempted to murder the unsullied fame of those whom they deservedly held, and will hold, in the highest estimation.
"T. B. McMahon, Missionary."
Now this letter alludes to testimony legally given, as substantiating the charges against me. What testimony is intended? Any new testimony? If so, where, and what is it? I never heard of any, of any description, except what I have inserted on the preceding pages, unless I except the violent, unsupported, and inconsistent assertion in newspapers, before alluded to. Has any testimony, legally given, been produced, which neither the Catholic Diary, nor any other Catholic paper, has either inserted or alluded to? No. The Missionary, McMahon, must refer to the Montreal affidavits; and since he has expressed his opinion in relation to their credibility and weight, I request my readers to form their own opinions, as I have put the means in their power.
It may, perhaps, appear to some, an act displaying uncommon "concern" in my affairs, or those of the Convent, for Father McMahon to take the pains to write on the subject from Canada. I know more of him and his concerns than the public do; and I am glad that my book has reached him. Happy would it have been for him, if he could prove that he did not leave Sherbrooke from the day when I took the Black veil, until the day when I cast it off. There are many able to bear witness against him in that institution (if they have not been removed), and one out of it, who could easily silence him, by disclosures that he has too much reason to apprehend.
But to return—I assure my readers, then, that this book contains all the testimony that has been brought against me, so far as I can ascertain.
The extensive publication of the Montreal affidavits (for they appeared in the Roman Catholic papers, and were circulated, it is believed, very generally through New York), for a time, almost entirely closed the newspapers against me. My publishers addressed the following letter to the editor of the N. Y. Catholic Diary, and waited on him with a third person, to request its publication in his next paper, but he declined. He expressed doubts of my being in the city, and intimated a wish to see me; but when they acceded, he refused to meet me anywhere but at his own residence!
The same letter was then offered to other editors in New York, and even sent to Philadelphia for publication, but refused. It appeared on the 29th of February, in the Brooklyn Star, thus introduced:—
Extracts from the Long Island Star of Feb. 29th.
"Since the publication of our last paper, we have received a communication from Messrs. Howe and Bates, of New York, the publishers of Miss Monk's 'Awful Disclosures.' It appears that some influences have been at work in that city, adverse to the free examination of the case between her and the priests of Canada; for thus far the news papers have been almost entirely closed against every thing in her defence, while most of them have published false charges against the book, some of a preposterous nature, the contradiction of which is plain and palpable.
"Returning to New York, she then first resolved to publish her story, which she has recently done, after several intelligent and disinterested persons had satisfied themselves by much examination that it was true.