“They are opposed to it because they are Americans. They know what it has meant and what it still means to be Americans. And they know that this bill is directly against everything that is American.
“They are ever ready to submit themselves to the sovereign will of the State, but you will never convince them that this bill is the real will of the State. They are fighting men and the sons of fighting men. They have fought the course of the railroad in trying to get options from them by coercion and trickery. They have been aroused. 111 Their homes, poor and wretched as they often are, mean more to them than any law you can set on paper. They will fight this law, if you pass it. It will set a ring of fire and murder about our peaceful hills.
“In the name of high justice, in the name of common honesty, in the name––to come to lower levels––of political common sense, I tell you this bill should never go back to the Senate.
“It is wrong, it is unjust, and it can only rebound upon those who are found weak enough to let it pass here.”
The Bishop paused, and the racing, jabbing pencils of the reporters could be plainly heard in the hush of the room.
Nathan Gorham broke the pause with a hesitating question which he had been wanting to put from the beginning.
“Perhaps the committee has been badly informed,” he began to the Bishop; “we understood that your people, sir, were mostly Canadian immigrants and not usually owners of land.”
“Is it necessary for me to repeat,” said the Bishop, turning sharply, “that I am here, Joseph Winthrop, speaking of and for my neighbours and my friends? Does it matter to them or to this committee that I wear the badge of a service that they do not understand? I do not come before you as the Catholic bishop. Neither do I come as an owner of property. I come because I think 112 the cause of my friends will be served by my coming.
“The facts I have laid before you, the warning I have given might as well have been sent out direct through the press. But I have chosen to come before you, with your permission, because these facts will get a wider hearing and a more eager reading coming from this room.
“I do not seek to create sensation here. I have no doubt that some of you are thinking that the place for a churchman to speak is in his church. But I am willing to face that criticism. I am willing to create sensation. I am willing that you should say that I have gone far beyond the privilege of a witness invited to come before your committee. I am willing, in fact, that you should put any interpretation you like upon my use of my privilege here, only so that my neighbours of the hills shall have their matter put squarely and fully before all the people of the State.