be in a more healthy state if there were a greater indifference to politics amongst us?”
“No,” replied he; “I know of no indifference which is healthy, except indifference to money. The church has a great duty to perform in politics. It is to menace, to thwart, to interfere. The Catholic statesman is a sort of priest. He does out in public the secular work of the retired and praying priesthood; and he must not be deserted by those spiritual men whom he is arduously, wearily, and through evil report conscientiously representing.”
Could modern publicist ever utter words more squarely tallying with the circumstances of our own times?
We have followed our hero only to the performance of his first acts in the great drama in which the Ruler of nations had appointed him to bear such important parts. Charles Carroll, in his adjuncts and circumstances, as regards both his cast of religion and politics, stood alone among his peers. Much he had to destroy ere he could build. But he addressed himself to his work with well-appointed tools, a clear mind, a steady hand, a glowing heart, and an immovable reliance in Him who hath said that “unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it; unless the Lord keep the city, he watcheth in vain that keepeth it” (Ps. cxxvi.) Thus appointed, he never faltered. On, on he advanced, step after step; stretching forth himself to those things that were before him, he pressed towards the mark, until he had received the prize.
More than onescore years and ten he labored as man never did labor for the well-being of his
country. When he had reached the sixty-fourth year of his life, and only then, he rested; he unbuckled his armor and laid it down, to enjoy the blessings which his own heart and mind had drawn on America. How beautifully were his talents apportioned, in equal distribution—thirty years of study in the best schools of Europe; thirty years of the most faithful service in the greatest work that it ever was the lot of man to be engaged in; thirty years of unruffled peace in the bosom of his family, in the home of his youth, which became the Mecca of the people, as a writer calls it—a shrine of wisdom and goodness! There “the patriarch of the nation” taught two generations; he laid before their appreciative minds the principles and inspired their grateful hearts with those sentiments of Christian polity of which he himself was such a shining ornament and faithful embodiment.
We well remember how, in days long passed away, old men who had known him in the days of his manhood were wont to speak of him; how that heart, so noble and so pure, fondly watched the healthy growth of that tree of liberty to plant which he himself had lent a strong hand. These men would tell how the ripe and veteran statesman felt as much zest in the enjoyment of surrounding events as when, a boy and a youth, he applied himself to literary studies, or pursued the more arduous acquisition of scientific lore in the halls of philosophy or in those of law and jurisprudence. His was an equanimity of character seldom witnessed in man. And that placid, calm bearing which made his countenance the mirror of a soul preserved in patience and perfect in self-control never forsook him to the very last
hours of his life. A very old member of the Company of Jesus, a professor and superior of the Georgetown University, has more than once related, within hearing of the writer, that the appearance of Charles Carroll riding into the college enclosure, on a docile and yet lively pony, when the great patriot had already overstepped the fourscore years of life, conveyed the impression of a youthful and innocent old age, so full of charm and gravity, pensiveness and gayety, authority and condescension, that it was felt indeed, but could not be described. It was the reflection of a past without reproach, and of a future without fear. His very carriage, the manner of his conversation, were an embodiment of his last words: “In the practice of the Catholic religion the happiness of my life was established!” Holy words! Sublime expression of the hopes of Christianity! May the example of such a man never fail, and be for ever the mould in which the young American spirit should be cast! Providence seems to have granted him so long an existence because he was the purest of the Revolutionary patriots, and he wished his example to last the longest!
After his death no page was ever written to vindicate his character or plead in behalf of one single shortcoming! No word of merciful forgiveness was heard at his grave. His peers, his descendants, had naught to forgive. With one voice of acclamation from one end of the country to the other, amid wreaths of unspotted lilies and fragrant roses, his name was emblazoned on the fair escutcheon of the American nation as the name of
THE CHRISTIAN KNIGHT WITHOUT FEAR AND WITHOUT REPROACH.