This, and this alone, can effectually arrest the progress of Popery in these United States. No Papists can complain of this, and no honest man will object to it. Such a law is not at variance with our constitution; it prevents no man from worshipping God according to the dictates of his own conscience. On the contrary, it only guaranties even to the Papist, in still stronger terms than our constitution now does, the right of worshipping God as he pleases, and relieves him from the degrading obligation of being obliged to worship him according to the dictates of the conscience of a foreign tyrant, the Pope of Rome, and his insolent minions in this country.
I believe there is not even an Irish Catholic in this country who will not support such a law. A little reflection will satisfy them that nearly all the evils they suffer, and have borne patiently for centuries back, have been brought upon them by the Church of Rome. They will soon perceive, if they only take the trouble of examining the question, that there is not, and never was, such a system of general, permanent, and unlimited slavery, as that to which the Romish church has reduced them. It is irreconcilable with happiness, good order, public and private tranquillity; and there cannot possibly exist a more singular anomaly, than to see a whole people willing to Submit to such a system, and preferring it to the rational freedom which they enjoy in this country.
Far be it from me, and foreign indeed is it from ray thoughts, to say, or do, or write anything that may injure the true welfare of the poor Irish Catholics. I would serve them, and, in the full flow of my affection for them, I would beg of them to pause and look seriously into their condition. The year before last, 1843, the Irish people paid to O'Connell twenty-eight thousand pounds. This was called the O'Connell tribute. In the same year, they paid repeal rent, amounting to the enormous sum of seventy-eight thousand five hundred pounds sterling; amounting in all, to one hundred and six thousand five hundred pounds British money. The above, I take from the accounts and estimates of the repeal journals. Let us add to the above sum the amount which the Irish in the United States have sent over to Ireland, and some idea may be formed of the grinding tyranny which the Romish church and her agents exercise over their deluded victims here and elsewhere.
Under these circumstances, is it not my duty, is it not the duty of every friend of humanity, to appeal to the good sense of the Irish, to their "sober second thought," and ask them, why submit to such imposition as this? Why not resist these tyrannical exactions of the Church of Rome? For they know well, that it is not Irish repeal or American repeal, that the Pope and his priests have in view; but church repeal. What have the Irish received in exchange for the vast sums which they have given, and the blood which they have shed, to effect this Irish, or rather church repeal, and the loss of that confidence and esteem, which they might otherwise have from Americans? Nothing. Emphatically nothing. Suppose they succeeded in overthrowing the constitution; suppose they reduced to sad reality the words of their daring and treasonable motto, "Americans shan't rule us" and the American constitution were trampled under their feet; suppose the "Protestant heretics of the United States" were extirpated and exterminated, qui bono, whose advantage would it be? Would it be yours, poor, warm-hearted, but deluded Irish Catholics? Would your new Popish rulers give you a better constitution? Would your new Popish signers to your constitution be men of more piety, liberality, or patriotism, than the signers of the Declaration of the Independence of these United States? Let the civilized world answer the question. I shall not record it. It should be registered only in heaven.
Poor Papists! You are not only slaves, but you are denied the privilege of choosing your own master. Your task-master, the Pope, and his overseers the bishops, will not even allow you to choose your own teachers, or have priests of your choice. They will not even give you a voice in the choice of your pastors. Do you call this freedom of conscience? A bishop, some insolent tool of the pope, tells you to build a church; puts his hand in your pockets, takes out the last dollar some of you have, builds a magnificent chapel, and when you want a priest, whom you believe most competent to instruct yourselves and your children, you cannot have him; and if you insist upon your just right to choose him, you are told by your tyrant overseer, the bishop, to be silent, or he will lock up the church, and curse you, and every one belonging to you. Call you this freedom of conscience? Call you this the right of worshipping God according to the dictates of your own conscience? Yes. Such is your infatuation. I ask you, Irish Papists, whether I am exaggerating or even discoloring the truth, in what I here state?
About the year 1818, the Roman Catholics of Norfolk, Virginia, had for their priest a man supposed by them to be among the best of the order. They wished him continued among them; but their bishop would not allow it; and when they murmured, he threatened to curse them; they sent a remonstrance to the Pope of Rome, but he did not deign to notice it; they had to submit. Here was liberty of conscience with a vengeance! The Roman Catholics of Philadelphia, New Orleans, Charleston, and New York, sent similar remonstrances to his royal holiness, the Pope; but in place of redress, he reprimanded them for their insolence, and threatened to curse them, if they exhibited any further symptoms of contumacy; and they crouched like so many whipped spaniels, perfectly content with the privilege of paying out their money and building magnificent churches for the Pope's agents.
A similar case occurred in this city of Boston, if I am correctly informed, only a short time ago. A large majority of one of the most respectable Roman Catholic congregations in this city, wished to have x for their pastor, a priest whom they believed to be a man of talents; but their Bishop, Fenwick,—a practical Jesuit, with talents below mediocrity, but possessing all the craft, cunning and intrigue of his order,—had the unparalleled assurance to tell them that they should not have the pastor of their choice; that they had no voice in the matter; that he was the church within the limits of his diocese; that they who did not hear the church "were worse than heathens and publicans;" and that if they did not shut up their mouths, he would shut up their church at once, and curse them if they became contumacious. Is this freedom of conscience? And yet we hear this very majority,—this insulted, downtrodden majority,—talk of the right of worshipping God according to the dictates of their own conscience. Shameful proceedings these, in a free country! Base tyranny over a generous people! Why not say to this would-be despot, Fenwick, we acknowledge you our bishop; we will hear to any objections which you have to make against the pastor of our choice; but if you have none to make, we shall have him; the church is our property; and you and your interdicts, curses and all such "raw-heads and bloody-bones," may go to Rome; we want you not in a free-country. No longer shall we submit in blind obedience to you, or to a foreign Pope.
The great mass, of Irish Catholics, on whom the arts of delusion and chicanery are chiefly practised, do not understand the meaning of the word freedom. They are taught by priest and Jesuits in the confessional, to misapply that term altogether. Freedom or liberty means in its true sense, a faithful and conscientious adherence to law and the constitution of the country in which we live, and of which we are members. It is the obedience of duty, and anticipates compulsion. It is not a blind obedience, such as that taught by Popish priests, and which favors the extension of their power. Priests and bishops would, if they could, limit the comprehensive term, liberty, to the privilege of bowing to his holiness the Pope, and building churches for him. But even Papists are beginning to doubt the legitimacy of this application of the term, and I am much mistaken if there are not, even now, thousands of them in the city of Boston, New York, and elsewhere, who will unite with Americans in petitioning Congress to pass a law, making it treason, in any man in the United States, whether native or foreigner, to hold any correspondence, or to avow any allegiance of any kind or under any name or title, spiritual or temporal, with the Pope of Rome, knowing as they do that he is a temporal potentate. Let the whole people, Christian League, Natives, Odd-fellows, Freemasons, Whigs, Democrats, Conservatives, and all unite in one great, national petition to the Congress of the United States, and in one fervent and loud prayer to the God of mercy, that he may give the said Congress a correct view of their duty, and cause them to hear and grant our prayer. This, with such improvements as wiser heads may suggest, is the course I would advise to be pursued in the present posture of our national and moral condition. The time seems propitious; our executive is said to be a Christian. God send he may prove so, and that the blandishments of office may not blind him to a sense of his duty to God and his country!