meeting-houses were brought into requisition. Yet, with all these appliances, there were hundreds of small, isolated congregations who seldom were enabled to hear Mass oftener than once a month, and in many cases less often, one priest having to attend four or five such missions in rotation.
But the clergy had other and scarcely less sacred duties to perform. Such heterogeneous masses of humanity huddled together for weeks in the foul holds of rotten emigrant vessels, where was germinated the seeds of disease sown by famine and pestilence, could not but bring infection to our shores. From Gros Isle in the St. Lawrence, and along the Atlantic seaboard to New Orleans, the deadly ship-fever polluted the atmosphere, and hundreds who, flying from starvation, had braved the dangers of the ocean, found that they had endured those hardships only to die within sight of the promised land. One prelate and several heroic priests fell victims to the dire pestilence, but others were found equally zealous, not only to soothe the last moments of the dying with the consolations of religion, but to comfort and care for the helpless survivors.
At the beginning of the second half of the century we find the Catholic population of the country estimated at two and a quarter millions, the clergy at eighteen hundred, or one to every thirteen hundred of the laity, while the number of dioceses had increased to thirty-three.
Had immigration entirely ceased at that time, and the growth of the Catholic population been limited to its natural increase, the labors of the priesthood in ministering to the spiritual wants of so large and scattered a body would have more than
taxed the energies of a less devoted class of men; while the pecuniary resources of the laity, always so generously expended in the building of churches and asylums, could have to a certain extent borne the unusual draft on their means which the exigencies of the times demanded. But it did not cease. On the contrary, it continued for many years with augmented volume. The causes which had impelled such vast multitudes to renounce home and country for ever were still active. From 1850 to 1860 the immigration from Europe was reported as follows:
| From Germany, 950,000; ¼ Catholic, | 237,000[159] |
| From France and other Catholic countries, 105,000; ¾ Catholic, | 78,750 |
| From Ireland, 1,088,000; 9⁄10 Catholic, | 979,200 |
| Total in ten years, | 1,294,950 |
Thus another million and a quarter were added to the church in America, making a grand total at the end of this decade of four and a half millions of souls under the charge of 2,235 priests, or one for every 2,000 persons. Thus we see that, though the priesthood had received an accession of 435 members in ten years, the labors of each individual had been almost doubled.
Incredible as these figures may seem, the next decade showed little diminution in amount. From 1860 to 1870 the Catholic immigration, calculating on the above basis, may be set down as follows:
| From Germany, | 268,000 |
| “ France, etc., | 51,000 |
| “ Ireland, | 841,000 |
| Total in ten years, | 1,160,000 |
If to this reinforcement be added those who have come among us since 1870, we find that the past fifteen years have increased the Catholic census by about one and a half millions from abroad, and materially helped to bring it up to what, on the best authority, it is said to be in this year of grace, 1876—seven millions, or about one-sixth of the entire population.