The clamor against the party on account of its Catholic leaders and supporters means only that the outs are anxious to become the ins. The party out of power in the State would as willingly receive the votes of Catholic citizens as does the party in power, and when in power it did, we believe, more for Catholics than the party now in power has ever yet done, though it, doubtless, promised less. Catholics have never had any reason for giving their votes to the Democratic party but that, in doing so, they followed, very disinterestedly, their honest political convictions.
The pretence of Protestants that Catholics in or out of office act politically under the dictation of their clergy, and in reference to Catholic interests as such, is too notoriously false to mislead anybody. Those prominent politicians, in or out of office, who happen to be Catholics,
are the last men in the world to listen to the dictation of the clergy or to act in obedience to the orders of their church, and they take infinite pains to prove that their religion has nothing to do with their politics, in order, we suppose, to escape the suspicion of being influenced in their political conduct by regard for Catholic interests. Their party standing is more to them than their Catholic standing, and they consult rarely the wishes or interests of their church, and usually only the wishes and interests of their party and its leaders. All the offices in the state or nation might be filled by Catholics, the constituencies remaining unchanged, without any more advantage accruing to the church than if they were all filled by Protestants. Catholics and Protestants alike, when in office, consult their constituencies, and act in the way and manner they judge most likely to secure votes to themselves or their party.
The fact is, Catholicity has never placed any man in city, state, or nation in office, and never yet has any man in our country been elected to office because he is Catholic. The Catholics who are in office under the municipal, state, or federal government, in congress, in the state senate, or the assembly, are there not because they are Catholics, but because they are Democrats or Republicans, or because they are of Irish, German, or some other foreign origin, and have or are supposed to have influence in securing the so-called “Irish vote,” the “German vote,” or the “foreign vote”—distinctions which should have no place in American politics—not because they are Catholics, and supposed to be devoted to Catholic interests. There is an “Irish vote,” a “German vote,” a “foreign vote,” but no “Catholic vote,” and, the constituencies remaining
the same, Catholic interests would be just as safe in the hands of American Protestants as in the hands of Catholics elected to office, not for their Catholicity, but for their real or supposed influence with our naturalized fellow-citizens; and perhaps safer, because Protestants would be less likely to be suspected of acting under Catholic influence, and therefore could act more independently.
It is, we think, a mistake on the part of our politicians who are Catholics, whether in or out of office, to be so anxious not to be suspected of acting under Catholic influence and in view of Catholic interests. The church asks only what is just, only to be protected in the possession of the equal rights before the state, guaranteed to her by the constitution of the state, and which are not always respected by the popular sentiment of the country. The care which politicians take to show themselves independent in their political action, if Catholics, gains them no credit, and a frank, open, straightforward, and manly course would gain much more respect for themselves and for their religion. Indeed, their sensitiveness and over-caution on this point tend to excite the very suspicion they would guard against, or the suspicion that their conduct is diplomatic, and that they have some ulterior purpose in reserve which they artfully and adroitly conceal. The church is supposed by Protestants to be the very embodiment of craftiness and dissimulation, always and everywhere intriguing to get the control of the secular power, and to wield it in her own interest regardless of all rights and interests of the citizen who happens not to be Catholic. Hence, every Catholic politician is suspected beforehand of craft, intrigue, of crooked and underhand ways, lacking frankness, openness, and straightforward
honesty. The only way to repel this false and unjust suspicion is for such Catholics as are politicians to show in an open and manly manner that neither they nor their church have any sinister purpose, and that in being devoted to her interests and acting under influence as good Catholics, they have nothing to conceal, and no ends to gain for her incompatible with their plain duty as American citizens, or which they fear or hesitate to avow in the face of all men. The best way to quell a wild beast is to look him steadily in the eye, and show that you do not fear him.
But to return to the question more immediately before us. If the press and the executive had looked at the subject from the point of view of common sense, as a simple question of right and wrong, without prejudice against Catholics or in favor of Protestants, and without any wish to charge or acquit any party of being under Catholic influence, they could not, it seems to us, have failed to see that liberty was violated in permitting, not in prohibiting, the Orange procession. Party or sectarian prejudices obscured the judgment, and many lives of innocent persons were lost in consequence.
It is contended by some that if a procession of Catholic Irish in honor of St. Patrick is allowed, the Orange procession of the Protestant Irish should also be allowed; either permit both, or prohibit both. The celebration of St. Patrick’s Day as a festival of the Catholic Church, which it is, even by a public procession through our streets, if peaceable and orderly, is a right guaranteed in the freedom of the Catholic religion under our constitution and laws, and so far differs totally from the Orange procession. As a purely Irish national festival, it can be celebrated here only by courtesy, as is St.
George’s Day by the English, St. Nicholas’s Day by the Dutch, or St. Andrew’s Day by the Scotch; for no foreign nationality has any right on American soil; otherwise, American nationality would not be independent and supreme on American territory. No foreign national festivals in commemoration or honor of events and interests or sentiments foreign to American nationality and interests and sentiments, can be publicly celebrated here except by indifference, courtesy, sufferance, connivance, national comity, or international treaty.