Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal / Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published

by Maria Monk

Did he not state that he was acquainted with her by the name she bore in the nunnery, Sainte Eustace.

Did he not declare that he was commissioned by Lartigue, Phelan, Dufresne, Kelly, and the Abbess of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery at Montreal, to obtain a possession of her, that she might be sent back to the abode of the Furies?

Did he not offer her any thing she pleased to demand, provided she would reside with the Ursulines of this city?

Did he not also declare that he would have her at all risks, and that she could not escape him?

Did he not persevere in this course of action, until he was positively assured that she would not see him, and that the Priest Conroy should not have access to Maria Monk?

Was not the priest Kelly, from Canada, in New York at that period, prompting Conroy; and did not that same Kelly come on here expressly to obtain possession of Maria Monk, that he might carry her back to the Hotel Dieu Nunnery, there to murder her, as his accomplices have smothered, poisoned, and bled to death other victims of their beastly licentiousness?

All these questions are implied in Maria Monk's statement, and they involve the highest degree of crime against the liberty, rights, and life of Maria Monk, and the laws of New York, and the charge is either true or false. Why does not the Priest Conroy try it? Why does he not demonstrate that he is calumniated, by confronting the Authoress and Publishers of the book before an impartial jury. We are assured that the Executive committee of the New York Protestant Association will give ten dollars to any Lawyer, whom Mr. Conroy will authorize to institute a civil suit for libel, payable at the termination of the process. Will he subject the question to that scrutiny? Never. He would rather follow the example of his fellow priests, and depart from New York. Many of the Maynooth Jesuits, after having fled from Ireland for their crimes, to this country, to avoid the punishments due to them for the repetition of them in the United States, and to elude discovery, have assumed false names and gone to France; or in disguise have joined their dissolute companions in Canada.

It is also a fact, that the Priest, named Quarter, with one of his minions, did visit the house where Maria Monk resides, on the 13th day of February, 1836; and did endeavor to see her alone, under the false pretext of delivering to her a packet from her brother in Montreal; and as an argument for having an interview with her without company, one of the two impostors did protest that he had a parcel from John Monk; which "he had sworn not to deliver except into the hands of his sister in person." Now what object had Mr. Quarter in view; and what was his design in going to her residence between nine and ten o'clock at night, under a lying pretence? Mr. Quarter comes from Canada. He knows all the Priests of Montreal. For what purpose did he assume a fictitious character, and utter base and wilful falsehoods, that, he might have access to her, with another man, when Maria Monk, as they hoped, would be without a protector? For what ignoble design did he put an old Truth Teller into a parcel, and make his priest-ridden minion declare that it was a very valuable packet of letters from John Monk? That strange contrivance requires explanation. Did Priest Quarter believe that Maria Monk was in Montreal? Did he doubt her personal identity? Does not that fact alone verity that all the Roman Priests are confederated? Does it not prove that her delineations are correct? Does it not evince that the Papal Ecclesiastics dread the disclosures?

4. The great ultimate test which the nature of this case demands. Challenge of the New York Protestant Association.—It is readily admitted, that the heinous charges which are made by Maria Monk against the Roman priests cannot easily be rebutted in the usual form of disproving criminal allegations. The denial of those Priests is good for nothing, and they cannot show an alibi. But there is one mode of destroying Maria Monk's testimony, equally prompt and decisive, and no other way is either feasible, just, or can be efficient. That method is the plan proposed by the New York Protestant Association.

The Hotel Dieu Nunnery is in Montreal. Here is Maria Monk's description of its interior apartments and passages. She offers to go to Montreal under the protection of a committee of four members of the New York Protestant Association, and in company with four gentlemen of Montreal, to explore the Nunnery; and she also voluntarily proposes that if her descriptions of the interior of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery are not found to be true, she will surrender herself to Lartigue and his confederates to torture her in what way they may please, or will bear the punishment of the civil laws as a base and wilful slanderer of the Canadian Jesuit Ecclesiastics.