Under somewhat similar provocation, the great Montalembert, from the tribune in the Chamber of Peers, told certain Frenchmen: “We are the sons of the Crusaders, and we fear not the progeny of Voltaire.” And we, Catholics of the United States, say to these gentlemen who seek to inaugurate another Know-Nothing campaign, that here in America we are neither strangers nor new-comers of yesterday.
We came in the caravels of Columbus, we came with the Cartiers and the La Salles, the Brébœufs and the Jogues, the Joliets and the Marquettes, with the men whose blood of martyrdom moistened the soil of New York, with the men whose bones had mingled with the savannas of the South and the prairies of the West long before Plymouth Rock was heard of. We came—not with the Hessians of George—but with the army of Rochambeau and the fleet of De Grasse, with the arms of Catholic France and the gold of Catholic Spain, to aid our American struggle for liberty. The largest fortune risked in signing our Declaration of Independence was a Catholic fortune. As Catholics, we have proved our devotion to our country in three wars. The ranks of our army and the ships of our navy are full of our people, and if, at this moment,
you undertake to blot the names of Catholic officers from naval and army registers, you will be compelled to deface entire pages. We are of all the walks of life, from the humblest to the highest, pursuing our legitimate business, and fulfilling our duties as citizens, fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers. We have schools, seminaries, and colleges successfully active, increasing in number and usefulness, and only not entirely filled with Catholic pupils because of the great number of youths sent to them by non-Catholic parents. We are merchants, bankers, editors, clerks, mechanics, artists, farmers, lawyers, physicians, legislators, and laborers. We fill professors’ chairs and seats on the judicial bench. We have among us thousands of cultivated men and refined and elegant women, the peers of any in the land. We are, as a body, good and law-abiding citizens. We respect ourselves. We mean to be respected. And we protest against the bigoted and senseless denunciation and caricature of our faith in the pretended exposure of fictitious plots against the institutions and liberties of our country.
There exists evidently, among the Know-Nothing writers referred to, some faint appreciation of these facts, and, with labored display of politeness, they seek to turn the difficulty by reference to “respectable citizens,” appeals to “intelligent Romanists” (thus designating us, in their clumsy courtesy, by a nickname), and such declarations as “we do not in any just sense accuse all adherents of that church of hostility to our institutions” (“our institutions!”) We distinctly decline to accept any such qualification or apology. So far as our religion is concerned, we are all, lettered and unlettered, rich and poor, on a footing of
perfect equality. The lady in the parlor and the servant in her kitchen abide by the same religious observances, the rich banker and his poorest clerk hold precisely the same faith, and the wealthy merchant and his drayman out there in the street, kneel at the same altar. We are aware that all this is “horridly ungenteel,” but it is an old habit of our people. Eighteen hundred years ago and more, we were assured that the poor we have always. And we have them. They never leave us, and are not likely to. Poor-houses came in with the Reformation, and then poverty first became disgraceful. For poverty, and, yet more, for the shame of poverty, the needy and wretched cannot enter elegant Protestant conventicles.
And now that we have seen the nature and complexion of the attempted revival of Know-Nothing violence, it may be asked, Who are the men who promote it, creating prejudice, fostering bigotry, inflaming religious rancor, arraying neighbor against neighbor, and endangering the peace of the community? Have they a special mission from on high? Are their scribes inspired writers? Or, perchance, are the antecedents of those publishers and proprietors such as to have established a character for pure patriotism and disinterested virtue so pre-eminently superior as to authorize them to set themselves up the self-constituted guardians of American liberty and evangelical Christianity?
We propose to examine these questions in the light of the printed record of the responsible proprietors of the Journal of Civilization. To that printed record we shall strictly confine ourselves. And in taking the first step toward the fulfilment of our duty, we regret that circumstances will compel the revelation of some
AWFUL DISCLOSURES.
The excitement and violent denunciation of Catholicity produced many years ago by the publication of an infamous book said to have been written by one Maria Monk are still remembered among us, as well as the thorough exposure of its utter falsehood, made by Colonel Stone of New York, and other Protestant gentlemen.
The book was entitled The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, and from its title-page purported to be published by Howe and Bates. Howe and Bates! Who were Howe and Bates? There was none to make reply. For neither to the book trade nor in the flesh were “Howe and Bates” ever known of mortal man.