It is a trouble to her when the world comes to seek her in the depth of her retreat, and when some circumstance obliges her to appear before it again. She fears the glory of this life. She lives in the humility of the Lord, and is dead to the vanities of the earth. And this book which we have written, and which speaks so much of Bernadette, Sister Marie-Bernard will never read.
[39] This statue, made of fine Carrara marble, of life-size, was presented to the Grotto of Lourdes by two noble and pious sisters of the diocese of Lyons, Mesdames de Lacour. It was executed according to Bernadette’s particular instructions, by M. Fabish, the eminent Lyonnese sculptor. The Blessed Virgin is represented as Bernadette described her, with scrupulous regard to the smallest details, and rare talent in execution.
[40] Mgr. Laurence died at the Vatican Council in the winter of 1869-70.
THE RIOT OF THE TWELFTH.
We are late in our comments on the riot of the 12th of July last in this city, occasioned by the Orange procession in commemoration of the Battle of the Boyne; but as what we have to say relates to general principles rather than to particular facts, our remarks will have suffered little from the delay, and will stand a chance of being more carefully read and duly weighed than if made at an earlier day. The tragic event is not likely to be soon forgotten.
The secular press of the city have, as far as we have observed, with scarcely an exception, taken the ground that, however ill-advised might be the Orange procession, it was a right of the Orangemen, and the liberty of the citizen was infringed by the police order prohibiting it. The order was also an act of cowardice, as dictated by fear of a Catholic mob; and hence its revocation by the governor, and his excellency’s resolution to sustain the majesty of the law, and to protect the Orange procession by all the force, if necessary, at his command, was a firm and manly interference in behalf of liberty and law. The sectarian press of city and country see in the police order prohibiting the procession—dictated, it is assumed, by the Catholic clergy—only a proof of the hatred of the Catholic Church to liberty and republican institutions, and in the action of the governor, and the bravery of the military in firing on the crowd, and killing and wounding a large number of citizens, for the most part innocent, except
of idle curiosity, an assurance much needed, that Protestants have as yet even in this country some rights which Catholics are bound and can be compelled to respect.
The view taken by the sectarian press is ridiculous, as well as malicious. The Catholic Church was the victim of the riot, but her only responsibility for it was in warning her children against it, and bidding them to let the procession alone, and not to go near it. If she had been heeded, there would have been no riot, no disturbance. The question was not a Catholic question, and the church had nothing to gain by preventing the procession, still less by a riot to break it up. The pretence that the rights of Protestants are in danger from Catholics in this country, where the Protestants outnumber the Catholics as eight or ten to one, is too absurd to be even a passable joke. Do the sectarian journals count one Catholic more than a match for eight or ten Protestants? That were a greater compliment to us than we deserve. We are afraid the sectarian leaders have bad consciences, which make them cowards. Catholics cannot show the least sign of vitality, or make the slightest move for the practical possession of the equal rights guaranteed them by the constitution and laws, but they take fright, tremble in their shoes, and cry out: “Liberty is in danger!” the Pope is going to suppress American republicanism, strip Protestants of their rights, cut their throats, or reduce them to be “hewers of wood and drawers of water” to—the Jesuits.