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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 
 
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NJlIlOIjlL DANGEI} IN MUjM 
 
 OR 
 
 KELIGION AND THE NATION. 
 
 Rev. I. J. LANSING, A.M., 
 
 Author of " Romanism and the Kefublic.'* 
 
 >NS51894 
 
 ARNOLD PUBLISHING ASSOCIATIO 
 BOSTON. MASS. 
 
 Copyrighted. 
 
 X'^^ '^w 
 
 iv 
 
1 H& LltoK-rtAV^ 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 THE READER. 
 
 1!I1U yOU"Ll!liy address, one of twelve, in the hope that your 
 interest will be awakened in this effort to bring to the light the 
 Komanism that boldly, by its most trusted leaders, declares its 
 purpose to capture this country for the Papacy, and couples its 
 word with a determined effort to undermine and destroy our Public 
 Schools ; to have Parochial Schools, under some guise, supported 
 by the State; to obtain the public moneys for its various institu- 
 tions, and in general to corrupt and weaken our distinctively 
 American and Protestant life by entering as a Church into Munici- 
 pal, State, and National Politics. 
 Read the titles of these patriotic addresses, and then — 
 
 1. Send us a silver dime for any two of thenif as 
 sample copies t or 
 
 2. Send us the names of five to ten persons tvho 
 believe in our Public School Si/stem and in the 
 American Idea of Separation of Church and State, 
 and no appropriations for Sectarian Institutions, or 
 
 3. Avail yourself of one of our Special Offers, or 
 subscribe to the Envelope Series, and so help us to 
 scatter these clean, strong, reliable publications all 
 over our land, this Columbian year, when every effort 
 is being tnade to glorify the Church that has cursed 
 Europe for twelve centuries under the name of 
 Christianity With the most unspeakable despotism, 
 known to history ; and 
 
 MAT GOD SPEED THE RIGHT. 
 
RELIGION AND THE NATION. 
 
 I WISH to speak to you this afternoon on Religion 
 and the Nation, and I have chosen three texts from 
 the Holy Scriptures which show their relationship. 
 In Psalms xxxiii. 12 we read, " Blessed is the nation 
 whose God is the Lord ; and the people whom he hath 
 chosen for his inheritance." In Psalms xxii. 28, "For 
 the kingdom is the Lord's : and he is the governor 
 among the nations." While in Matthew xxviii. 19 our 
 Lord says, " Go ye therefore, and teach all nations." 
 
 The star of Bethlehem is no more the adequate 
 symbol of Christ's presence in the world. For one 
 radiant point, shining out into the gloom of night, is 
 not sufficient to indicate the diffused light of his 
 presence who came to be the Sun of righteousness. 
 To-day the fitting type of Christ, in the world, is the 
 radiant sun, as he mounts toward the zenith, illumi- 
 nating every place and disclosing everything upon 
 the upturned hemisphere. So Christ and Christ's 
 truth are not to be directed merely to minute personal 
 affairs, but are to be applied in the largest way to 
 matters of the greatest magnitude. Therefore it is 
 that this day, in a land whose birthright I would not 
 exchange for a birthright in any other nation under 
 heaven, and in concord with the Christian Church, 
 
 1 
 
2 Rellylon and the Nation. 
 
 which has attained a purity and efficiency exceeding 
 that of any former time, in harmony with teachers 
 who, on this holy day and every day, plead for truth, 
 I lift my humble voice to make some application of 
 the religion of Jesus Christ and of the truth of God 
 to the affairs of this nation. 
 
 By religion, 1 mean the great principles which 
 relate to God and his law and to the human soul in 
 its deepest convictions, acts, and necessities. By the 
 nation, 1 mean that organization of men which, undei' 
 the divine law, as a civil state, has to do with the 
 moi*al and temporal welfaie of humanity, which ren- 
 ders progress possible, which protects the weak, which 
 upholds all virtue, and seeks the common good. To 
 be more specific, when I speak of religion and the 
 nation, I mean to speak of the religion of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ : that religion which we have from the 
 Holy Scriptures, which tells us of God and of Jesus 
 Christ his vSon, who came into the world to save 
 sinners ; that Gospel which teaches us of the Holy 
 Spirit and of right dispositions, which telLs us that a 
 human chaiacter should bring forth, as fruits of the 
 Holy Spirit, '' love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentle- 
 ness, goodness, meekness, faith, and temperance ; " 
 that religion Avhose law is, " Thou shalt love the Lord 
 thy God with all thy heart, and thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor as thyself ; " that religion whose trinity of 
 graces is faith, hope, and charit}^ ; that religion whose 
 law of human progress is that we should '' add to 
 faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowl- 
 edge temperance, and to temperance patience, and to 
 patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kind- 
 
Religion and the Nation. 3 
 
 ness, and to brotherly kindness charity." And of 
 that religion I speak in its application to this nation — 
 to this nation with its marvellous physical configura- 
 tion, with its wonderful origin, its equally remarkable 
 colonization, its institutions, and its struggles. So, 
 then, to apply the religion of Christ to the United 
 States of America, in which we live, and to show its 
 relation thereto, is my purpose. 
 
 I. And the first proposition which I present, as 
 worthy of your attention, is this : That religion 
 
 HAS A VERY INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE 
 NATION. 
 
 1. In saying this, I but quote the opinion of the 
 fathers and founders who laid the corner-stone of this 
 government. This is not an atheistic State, and never 
 will be till it is totally changed from its earlier and 
 present conditions. In the cabin of the Mayflower 
 the Pilgrim Fathers, on the 11th of November, 1620, 
 entered into this voluntary compact : " In the name 
 of God, amen : We, whose names are underwritten, 
 the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign King James, 
 having undertaken, for the glory of God and advance- 
 ment of the Christian faith, and honor of our king 
 and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the 
 northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents, 
 solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and 
 one of another, covenant and combine ourselves 
 together into a civil body politic, for our better or- 
 dering and preservation and furtherance of the ends 
 aforesaid : and, by virtue hereof, to enact, constitute, 
 and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, 
 constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall 
 
4 Religion and the Nation. 
 
 be thought most convenient for the general good of 
 the colony. Unto which we promise all due submis- 
 sion and obedience." " Here," says Bancroft, " was 
 the birth of popular constitutional liberty." The 
 founders of this country were devoted to religion ; 
 were seeking " the glory of God and the advancement 
 of the Christian faith." 
 
 In the writings of the fathers and founders of the 
 republic, there has been a most constant recognition 
 of these principles. In their confession of the divine 
 presence and the divine guidance, there is an accord- 
 ance as of the Psalms of a nation. The recognition 
 of the origin and continuity of the nation in God is 
 repeated in the inaugurals of the Presidents. The 
 words of its great citizen, Franklin, which reached 
 to the foundations of political thought, in the most 
 critical hour of the convention of the representatives 
 of the people for the formation of the constitution, 
 were as follows : " We have been answered in the 
 sacred writings, that except the Lord build the house, 
 they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this : 
 and I also firmly believe this, that without his concur- 
 ring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no 
 better than the builders of Babel." President Wash- 
 ington said in his first inaugural, '' No people can be 
 bound to adore the hand which conducts the affairs 
 of men more than the people of the United States." 
 Thomas Jefferson, often misquoted as an unbeliever, 
 said at the close of his inaugural, " I shall need, too, 
 the favor of that Being, in whose hands we all are, 
 who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native 
 land, and planted them in a country flowing with all 
 
Religion and the Nation. 6 
 
 the comforts and the necessaries of life ; who has 
 covered our infancy with his providence, and our 
 riper years with his wisdom and power, and to whose 
 goodness I ask you to join in supplications with me." 
 The last inaugural of President Lincoln shows that 
 the preserver of the republic was no less devoted to 
 God than its founders. Its whole thought was 
 gathered up in the recognition of One whose judg- 
 ments are true and righteous altogether. And the 
 words of Gladstone, and Disraeli his great antagonist, 
 representatives of our great mother nation, are a like 
 expression of the truth, that the foundation of con- 
 stitutional liberty in Great Britain, as the foundation 
 of the national life of these United States, is laid in 
 firm and devoted recognition of religion. 
 
 2. Such is also the truth of the Holy Scripture, 
 as I have read it in these texts, which are merely 
 selected from hundreds of others. A holy nation 
 was chosen first, out of all the peoples of the earth. 
 Its prophets and preachers were statesmen and 
 diplomatists ; its principles were principles which 
 every student of political life tells us are the most 
 fundamental to the welfare of any and every state. 
 No nation has ever existed on the face of the earth that 
 took better care of the poor, that provided better for 
 the welfare of the people at large, that afforded greater 
 liberty, than the state of the Hebrews in the early cen- 
 turies. Our Lord recognizes the same great truth 
 when he sends his disciples to teach the nations ; to not 
 merely teach individuals, but to saturate society with 
 his truth. What we find, therefore, in revelation 
 confirms the opinions and actions of the fathers of 
 
6 Religion and the Nation. 
 
 this republic, and assures us that in the divinest ideal 
 of the State, religion and the nation are very closely 
 allied. 
 
 3. When we come to consider certain great facts in 
 the history of this nation, they can never be separated 
 from religious considerations. Suppose for a moment 
 we survey the marvellous territory on which we live, 
 comparing it with Canada, or Mexico, or South 
 America, or any European land. If a man has any 
 conception of Providence, if he believes at all in the 
 ordering hand of God, as did Franklin, Washington, 
 Jefferson, and Lincoln in the above quotations, he 
 must think that only divine providence could have 
 preserved this marvellous virgin continent for a na- 
 tion, singular and unlike all other nations in its foun- 
 dation, in its purpose, and hitherto in its progress. 
 Separated from all neighbors who might contend 
 against us, with treasures the vastest and most won- 
 derful, with every facility, to grow unhindered, we 
 have here an evidence of that divine goodness which 
 seemed to reserve for constitutional liberty and human 
 development the fairest portion of all the earth. 
 
 4. When we reflect on the foundation and birth of 
 this nation, we perceive that it was born of conscience 
 and of religious faith. Whether we behold the 
 English Pilgrims, who came from over the sea to our 
 shores that they might have freedom to worship God, 
 and to found a free church in a free State ; whether we 
 consider the Dutch, who confirmed the principles of 
 liberty and gave its institutions to our Pilgrim fore- 
 fathers, and who laid the foundations in New York, 
 of a State like that which they had wrested from 
 
Religion and the Nation. 1 
 
 Philip the Second and the Duke of Alva ; whether 
 we observe the genial spiritual graces of the soul in 
 the reverent and peace-loving Quakers who in Penn- 
 sylvania reared a State which, at its beginnings, was 
 essentially religious ; or dwell on the Swedes in Del- 
 aware, the English in Virginia and Georgia, and the 
 Huguenots in South Carolina, — the whole line of 
 these early colonists, who, fleeing from superstition 
 and oppression in the Old World, made of their lives 
 the beginnings of this republic, is a line radiant with 
 conscience, glorious with piety, splendid with faith. 
 
 5. Not only is this true, but it is also true that the 
 institutions which have Ibeen founded in this nation 
 are peculiarly related to religion in their character and 
 purpose. 
 
 Remarking on the institutions which make us a 
 nation, I should name first a free 'church in a free 
 State, existing without the trammels of civil author- 
 ity. I should comment on a free school, which cannot 
 be thought of without a free church : no free school, 
 no free church ; no free church, no free school. I 
 should speak of that remarkable symbol of pure de- 
 mocracy, the town meeting, which is more realty 
 democratic than almost any other organization that 
 we have known in the political history of our land. 
 These institutions of our country, all standing around 
 and defending the home, seem to possess in their 
 nature the essential necessity of religion. Where else 
 but in religion did our fathers get the idea of free 
 thought, free conscience, free discussion, free intelli- 
 gence, free education, and pure morality ? 
 
 6. The struggles of this nation have been likewise 
 
8 Religion and the Nation. 
 
 very largely efforts that had a peculiar religiousness 
 in their character. Our wars have not been for con- 
 quest of territory, or for the overthrow of other 
 states. At first our fathers, in the colonial days, con- 
 tended for their homes against the Indian and the 
 French. Later the Revolutionary struggle was with 
 Great Britain for the right to a free manhood, a reli- 
 gious principle of which the Bible is full. When in 
 1812 there was another contention with Great Britain, 
 it was in order that American men on the seas might 
 be as free as American men on the land. And when 
 finally there came the fearful burden and struggle of 
 civil war, it was once more tRe birth-throe of liberty, 
 that we might be rid of the curse, which, despite our 
 Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, 
 had come upon us in the form of African slavery. 
 So the struggles of the nation seem to me to be very 
 intimately related to religion, and to arise from noble 
 rather than from selfish principles. 
 
 7. But further than this, there is, as I may say, a soul 
 in every nation. Until you have travelled to foreign 
 parts, and know the difference with which men regard 
 the government in other lands and in this, you can- 
 not realize what it means to be an American. There 
 is a moral purpose in a nation, a moral life, a moral 
 drift, a moral thought. I almost said there was a soul 
 in a nation. And if there is, the soul of this nation 
 is essentially moral and religious. If I were to ask 
 what is the leading thought and purpose of America, 
 I should find it in that text around the old Liberty 
 bell, which rang on the first Fourth of July, whereon 
 you read, " Proclaim liberty throughout all the land 
 
Religion and the Nation. 9 
 
 to all the inhabitants thereof." The thought of 
 America is the thought of humanity ; the largest 
 privilege for man under law ; the protection of the 
 weak, the uplifting of the lowly, universal benevo- 
 lence. Friends, there is a ground-swell in America, 
 which, as the feet of men from other shores touch our 
 soil, lifts them. (Applause.) They who have come 
 from afar have felt this, and know that it is true. 
 The moral trend and purpose of this nation is so dis- 
 tinctively religious that it may be said we cannot 
 think of the nation as divorced from religion. 
 
 8. But there is another view of this same truth 
 which impresses me profoundly to-day : that is, that 
 the perils of our country are equally the perils of reli- 
 gion; that the enemies of our country are equally 
 the enemies of true religion ; that the antagonists of the 
 United States of America are just as much the antag- 
 onists of the Christian Church in the broad sense of 
 the word Christian. 
 
 I think that I can show this very plainly, and that 
 the proposition, though it may seem startling, can be 
 proven exactly true. Find me a foe of this nation 
 to-day, anywhere, and I think I can find you in that 
 same foe the antagonist of the religion of Christ. 
 There is a linking and blending together of religion, 
 not the church as an organization, but religion and 
 the nation, such that their enemies are identical. 
 You can understand that there may be a state, a 
 nation, which true religion would antagonize. I 
 should say, for instance, that true religion in Russia 
 would be in antagonism to the present tyrannous 
 form of government. You can understand that there 
 
10 Religion and the Nation. 
 
 may be a state so vile, and in it a religion so false, 
 that the two are mutually destructive, and that the 
 destruction of either is no loss to mankind. But 
 assuming that the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ 
 is the best religion of the world or the ages, I think 
 it is plain that whatever is antagonistic to it, and at 
 the same time antagonistic to this nation, is not good 
 in itself nor good in its influence. 
 
 In illustration and proof of this I ask : What are 
 some of the manifest foes of this nation to-day, which 
 make us tremble when we think of our country's 
 future ? 
 
 I may not name those which you regard as the 
 most important, but let me mention three or four. 
 
 1. An evident foe of this nation is drunkenness 
 and the liquor traffic. I speak of this not in detail, 
 but in the broadest aspect. As a producer of crime, 
 where it has a dreadful supremacy ; as a creator of 
 vice, where it has unparalleled power, — it is more than 
 manifest that drunkenness and the liquor traffic are 
 hostile to the nation. If crime is a nation's enemy, 
 if vice is a country's curse, then the traffic which cre- 
 ates them is equally so. Also from the standpoint 
 of economics and wealth, drunkenness and the liquor 
 traffic are foes of the nation to this extent, that, 
 as Gladstone says, more than war or pestilence or 
 famine or all combined, they have impoverished 
 society. 
 
 From the economic standpoint this foe is every- 
 where destructive. There is not a man who by 
 drunkenness lowers his own ability for production 
 and his own capacity for consumption, but what by 
 
Religion and the Nation. 11 
 
 just so much diminishes the nation's wealth and his 
 own. And we know that this curse does both. 
 
 Moreover, as rehited to politics, the saloon is gov- 
 erning cities so far, and cities are governing the State 
 to such an extent, that we all see there is peril here. 
 When the votes of cbunkards control America, her 
 doom is sealed. As you observe, therefore, this an- 
 tagonist, this foe which strikes every holy thing in 
 the nation a deadly blow, which debases every man 
 and woman and child, every institution and interest, 
 who is not impressed with the fact that it is at the 
 same time the antagonist of the Christian religion ? 
 Is there any doubt in the mind of any person here 
 that among the most pronounced of the hindrances 
 and foes of ^Christianity, the church, and virtue is this 
 same traffic ? 
 
 2. Another of the perils of this nation to-day is from 
 unrestricted immigration. Everybody is thinking 
 about it and talking about it more than they have at 
 any time since you can remember. We all recog- 
 nize the desirability of having multitudes of men 
 come from other lands to develop the enormous re- 
 sources of our country. There is room on our vast 
 areas for hundreds of millions of souls. We want 
 America for Americans, but we want Americans for 
 America just as much. (Applause.) We want people 
 here who are the right kind of people, fit to be citi- 
 zens. But it is noticeable that of the 430,000 immi- 
 grants who came into this country at the port of New 
 York last year, and of the five and a quarter millions 
 who have come in since 1881, there are many wholly 
 unfit for citizenship in the United States. So low 
 
12 Religion and the Nation. 
 
 has the quality of immigrants fallen that many of our 
 thoughtful people are saying, that we have become 
 the dumping-ground of Europe. The New York Sun 
 of Dec. 31, 1891, says that a hundred thousand of the 
 people who landed at that port alone last year ought 
 to have been sent back on the steamers that brought 
 them. 
 
 Two weeks ago to-morrow I read in a New York 
 paper that on the day before twenty-one Italian 
 criminals had landed there at one time, of whom two 
 were murderers, the others all convicts ; and although 
 the two murderers had been arrested, even they were 
 likely to be permitted to stay. Now, add to this the 
 fact, which is very well known, that these immi- 
 grants furnish so large a preponderance of the crimi- 
 nals and paupers, and you can see how dangerous is 
 this immigration to America. I find that Frederic H. 
 Wines, who is the special agent and expert appointed 
 by the Census Bureau of the United States on Statis- 
 tics of Paupers and Crime, quoted in the North Ameri- 
 can Review for April, 1892, says that of the 43,000 
 penitentiary convicts reported June 1, 1890, whose 
 birth and parentage are known, one-third were foreign 
 born, and a great many more were born of foreign 
 parents on these shores. While numbering less than 
 one-sixth of the population, the foreign born furnish 
 one-third of the criminals in penitentiaries. The 
 Secretary of the Department of Public Charities and 
 Correction of the city of New York says that " the 
 superintendent of the workhouse expresses the opin- 
 ion that 90 per cent of the native born committed 
 are the children of foreign parents, and doubtless 
 
Religion and the Nation. 18 
 
 this is true of other institutions." This is an ominous 
 showing, making nearly two-thirds of our criminals 
 of immediate foreign extraction. We dwell upon it 
 to make perfectly clear that if people so vicious and 
 so incapable are brought here and are naturalized and 
 begin to govern America, they are a great menace to 
 the nation. 
 
 Now, I ask you is it not equally true that these 
 same undesirable and degraded immigrants to whom 
 I have referred are the enemies of true religion? 
 Where is the New England Sabbath since they came 
 here ? and where is the public virtue in municipalities 
 as compared with former days since these became the 
 makeweight of our national politics? I have no 
 hesitation in saying that to-day the adamantine wall 
 against the progress of the Christian Church and 
 Christian morality in this country is very largely the 
 foreign people, with ideas immoral and dangerous. 
 And I am amazed that when this is the fact we do 
 not dare to carry the truth of God to them for fear 
 that their tyrants, clerical or political, will not like it, 
 and may curse us for so doing. (Applause.) 
 
 3. But again, another of the antagonists of America, 
 which at the same time is an antagonist of true 
 religion, is corrupted politics. Well may we awaken 
 and look about us to see how dangerous a foe this is. 
 When selfish politicians for mere gain, and political 
 rings for mere plunder, are controlling so many of 
 the municipalities of this country, well may we 
 awaken and reflect. Take, for example, the city of 
 New York, our metropolis, great in numbers and 
 great in wealth, but the shame of America as she 
 
14 Religion and the Nation. 
 
 stands to-day in the political world. When an emi- 
 nent clergyman, a month and a half ago, lifted up his 
 voice in the Madison Square Presbyterian pulpit in 
 New York City, and denounced the government of 
 the city of New York as a government of thugs, 
 thieves, and criminals, declaring that the worst thing 
 you could say of them was to write their actual history, 
 and that this would be dangerously near to obscenity, 
 many of the conservative pulpits and the conservative 
 people wondered that Dr. Parkhurst allowed himself 
 to be so sensational. Some of the newspapers 
 abused him, Tammany Hall threatened him, the 
 Grand Jury reproved him. He waited, collected 
 overwhelming proofs, and a month from that time, in 
 his pulpit and before the Grand Jury and the public, 
 not only verified all that he had said and demon- 
 strated it, but much more. And this one man has 
 done more to scare the dive-keepei^ and the criminals, 
 the gamblers and the prostitutes of New York than all 
 their police for the last twelve months. The Grand 
 Jury since then declare that the whole police force of 
 New York City is bribed by criminals with from seven 
 to ten million dollare a year. What the brave minister 
 said was true. When I speak of corrupt politics, what 
 more need I say to those who love their country than 
 that to-day, by the verdict of a prominent non-partisan 
 committee of the Bar Association of the city of New 
 York, it is averred and proved that the man who has 
 lately been appointed to be a judge in the Court of 
 Appeals of the State of New York, the highest court 
 in the State, is at this present moment deserving of 
 State's Prison for a crime against the election laws. 
 
Religion and the Nation. 15 
 
 and is in his present position as a reward from the 
 Governor of the State for the perpetration of that 
 crime. If there is any deeper damnation for corrupt 
 politics than this, where will you find it ? When the 
 judiciary of great States, governors and senators, the 
 police and the executive of the great cities of this 
 country (for how much better is Chicago, and how 
 much different are Boston and Brooklyn and Balti- 
 more ? ) — when these have been made thus corrupt, 
 may not the nation recognize in them the most dan- 
 gerous perils from political debauchery? But are 
 not these at the same time the antagonists of true 
 religion? Can you imagine true religion in unity 
 with this type of debauchees? Can we not agree 
 with Dr. Parkhurst when he says, speaking of his 
 own work, '' From the very commencement of my 
 ministry here, I confess that to be of some encourage- 
 ment and assistance to young men has been my great 
 ambition. There is little advantage in preaching the 
 gospel to a young man on Sunday if he is going to 
 be sitting on the edge of a Tammany-maintained hell 
 all the rest of the week." In harmony with this 
 truthful and sagacious utterance, I am ready to say 
 that if all the preachers in this country would let 
 alone metaphysics for a week, all the 'isms and 'ologies, 
 take off their coats and pitch into the scamps, official 
 and otherwise, in our communities, they would do 
 more to save the young men than by any other process 
 I can think of. (Applause.) Not that I think the 
 ministers ought to become police, but I think we 
 ought to have relief from the curse of utterly shame- 
 less, selfish, demagogic politics, even if ministers have 
 to accomplish it. (Applause.) 
 
16 Religion and the Nation. 
 
 4. Again, a great enemy of our country is illiteracy, 
 and it is not more an enemy of the nation than it is 
 of true religion. You know that a very large num- 
 ber of people have come to these shores who cannot 
 read and write. Many of them are voters, and 
 enough of these cannot read their ballots, so that in 
 their ignorance their votes are bought and sold like 
 sheep in the shambles. An ex-president of the 
 Board of Education of New York city says : " Four- 
 fifths of all our criminals are uneducated. It costs 
 S29.40 per annum to educate a child in a grammar 
 school in this city, and fllO per annum to maintain 
 a criminal in the penitentiary." It is cheaper to 
 educate him, is it not ? 
 
 There is a very close and dangerous relation be- 
 tween illiteracy and crime — a relation generally 
 known and conceded. 
 
 Dr. William T. Harris, United States Commissioner 
 of Education, in an address on '' Compulsory Educa- 
 tion in Relation to Crime and Social Morals," says : 
 " Statistics collected by Dr. E. C. Wines show that 
 in France the number of persons under arrest from 
 1867 to 1869 was 444,133, of whom 442,194 were 
 roported as unable to read, making over 95 per cent. 
 Of the illiterates there was an average of one arrest 
 for each 41 persons, but only one arrest for 9,291 
 persons who could read." While this seems too 
 large a disproportion for America, yet all agree that 
 compulsory education does act as a preventive of 
 crime. 
 
 The illiterate are the prey of every vice. They are 
 endangered by every temptation, as those who are 
 
Religion and the Nation. 17 
 
 educated and trained cannot be : and of them there 
 is a host in this country. 
 
 Do you not see that this foe of the nation is also 
 hostile to true religion ? Is there any harmony be- 
 tween true religion and mental stagnation ? Is not 
 the whole spirit of the Old and New Testaments the 
 spirit of a new intellectual as well as spiritual birth? 
 Does not true religion offer itself to us in a Book 
 that needs to be read, and is not one of the first 
 duties of Christianity to teach a man to think, to 
 acquire information, to study, and to reason ? Surely 
 this is as true as any axiom. 
 
 I have thus shown that religion and the nation are 
 very intimately related, because the foes of one are 
 the enemies of the other. I come now to apply this 
 principle to a form of religion which claims the right 
 to control this nation. 
 
 II. The Roman Catholic^ or Papain Church in the 
 United States of America is in league to a large extent 
 with these foes of the nation, and therefore should not 
 he pe7'mitted to govern this country as it proposes to do. 
 Of the Roman Catholics of this country as indivi- 
 duals, I speak with entire respect : many of them are 
 noble and pious people, better than their creed. I 
 do not denounce them personally, nor bear them any 
 ill-will, but I speak of the system at large when I 
 say the ecclesiastics of the Roman Catholic Church in 
 this country are claiming America, and I am here to 
 enter my protest and to say that their claim ought 
 not to be allowed. 
 
 1. Now, first, they claim it. Let me give you a few 
 facts to certify to this. There is a book, a souvenir 
 
18 Religion and the Nation. 
 
 of the Baltimore Congress of the Roman Catholic 
 Church, entitled " Three Great Events in the History 
 of the Catholic Church in the United States," pub- 
 lished in Detroit, Mich., and which contains the 
 addresses made on the occasion of the Congress, of 
 the Centennial Celebration, and of the dedication of 
 the Roman Catholic University in November, 1889. 
 Here are some of the statements made in those ad- 
 dresses : "It can hardly be doubted," says Dr. Brown- 
 son, who writes the introduction, " that this is destined 
 to be a Catholic land." Bishop Ireland says : " A 
 magnificent future is before the church in this country 
 if we are only true to her and to the country and to 
 ourselves. Our work is to make America Catholic. 
 Our cry shall be God wills it, and our hearts shall 
 leap with crusader enthusiasm. We know the church 
 is the sole owner of the truths and graces of salvation. 
 The conversion of America should be ever present in 
 the minds of Catholics in America as a supreme 
 duty from which God will not hold them exempt. 
 The importance of the possession of America to the 
 cause of religion cannot well be over-estimated. 
 The church triumphant in America, Catholic truth 
 will travel on the wings of American influence. 
 The American people made Catholic, nowhere shall 
 we find a higher order of Christian civilization." 
 " Why, the broad seal of the Catholic Church is 
 stamped forever upon every corner of the continent," 
 says Daniel Dougherty, their great lawyer orator. 
 This, of course, implies right of possession. Edmund 
 F. Dunne says : " Why, then, should we not love this 
 land ? Is it not ours ? Is it not Columbia, daughter 
 
Religion and the Nation. 19 
 
 of Catholic thought, of Catholic wealth, of Catholic 
 courage ? Is not the whole country really a Catholic 
 land, and is it not under the care of Catholic saints ? 
 Are not their holy names borne by more than three 
 hundred American cities ? " And so on. These are 
 only samples of the all-pervading sentiments en- 
 dorsed repeatedly by that great representative Roman 
 Catholic body. 
 
 2. And now, ladies and gentlemen, I raise this 
 question : What is the relation of the Roman Catholic 
 Church, as such, to each of the four enemies of the 
 American nation of which I have spoken — drunken- 
 ness, undesirable immigration, corrupt municipal poli- 
 tics, and illiteracy? 
 
 If they claim America, are they right in that 
 claim ? Are they the people in whose hands the 
 future of America should lie ? Are they friends of 
 the nation, or in league with its worst foes ? 
 
 3. What is the relation of the Roman Catholic 
 Church at large, to drunkenness and liquor-selling ? 
 The relation of their people, many of whom are very 
 unfortunate in this respect, to the curse of strong 
 drink is well described by one of their priests, the 
 Rev. M. F. Foley of De Land, California, who writes 
 in the Catholic Mirror^ which is Cardinal Gibbons 's 
 own paper. He says : " Go into our prisons, our re- 
 formatories, our almshouses ; go into our great 
 asylums where numbers of children are being 
 reared, in what must necessarily be a hot-house 
 atmosphere, to face the storms of life. Go into the 
 crowded tenements of our great cities, into their 
 lowest dens and dives; see the misery, the squalor, 
 
20 Religion and the Nation. 
 
 reigning there ; see the men and women, low and 
 besotted ; see the little ones dying as flies in the fetid 
 air, or, worse, living to poison the nation's moral 
 atmosphere ; in a word, see degradation in its most 
 repulsive forms. In these abodes of crime, of pov- 
 erty, of misery, you will find thousands of Catholics. 
 Ask what has brought to prison and almshouse, to 
 reformatory and orphanage, to dive and brothel, so 
 many children of the Church. Trumpet-toned comes 
 back the answer : ' Drink, drink.' " Thus he says, 
 and very eloquently, that many of them are the vic- 
 tims of this dreadful traffic. But, says one, there 
 are temperance societies among the members of the 
 Roman Catholic church which are doing an excellent 
 work. Concerning these societies, I quote still from 
 Father Foley, in the Catholic Mirror^ when he says : 
 " What is the attitude of Roman Catholic 3^oung 
 men on the temperance question ? This is important, 
 as the future of America is in their hands — one of 
 such grave importance that I give the following 
 statement. The following resolution was twice voted 
 down by the Catholic Young Men's National Union, 
 which held a convention recently in Philadelphia: 
 ' Resolved, That the Catholic Young Men's National 
 Union, viewing the saloon as pre-eminently the 
 source of evil to young men, use its utmost influence, 
 and urge upon the societies connected with it to use 
 their utmost efforts, to prevent Catholic young men 
 from visiting saloons. And also to discountenance 
 by all means possible the drinking customs of society." 
 " That resolution was deliberately and decisively 
 voted down twice in the Catholic Young Men's 
 
Religion and the Nation. 21 
 
 National Union." In other words, not to read what 
 he very fully explains, their National Temperance 
 Society did not and would not say that they discour- 
 aged young men from going to the saloon or drink- 
 ing. Temperance men they are, so they claim. Then 
 why would they not endorse this resolution ? What 
 kind of temperance men are those who will not op- 
 pose the saloon ? I ask further, what other church 
 than the Roman Catholic Church would have done 
 what they did when their great cathedral was build- 
 ing in New York, before it was dedicated, when dram- 
 selling on a very large scale was permitted and 
 encouraged in that house in order to make money to 
 finish it ? 
 
 I do not desire to lay upon them any greater re- 
 sponsibility than should be put there ; but I ask 
 this other question : Has the Roman Catholic Church 
 ever struck the saloon as it has struck the common 
 schools? (Applause.) Has it ever threatened to 
 take away the sacraments from the people who fre- 
 quent saloons or sell liquor ? It has done that with 
 reference to the common schools. Why not the saloons ? 
 Do they hate free schools more than saloons ? The atti- 
 tude which they hold toward their people is such that 
 probably, if excommunication or withholding the 
 sacraments were threatened, they might keep them 
 out of the saloon ; but it has never been done. Now 
 this I say before this community and before this 
 intelligent audience : If that church has power to 
 protest against and smite the liquor curse and does 
 not do it, it is because it is in sympathy with it in 
 some way or other. Who sell the liquor mostly in 
 
22 Religion and the Nation. 
 
 in this city and elsewhere ? What names mostly are 
 on the saloon signs? (Sensation.) Are these liquor- 
 sellers in good standing in that communion? Could 
 they be in any other? If not, I raise the question 
 why is it that this mighty ecclesiastical organization 
 has not taken the stand which that resolution which 
 they voted down in their temperance society took in 
 reference to the saloon ? The friend of the liquor 
 traffic is not the friend of this nation. (Applause.) 
 
 4. But again, as to the immigration that is coming 
 to this country, and which is so very undesirable; 
 where does it come from ? 
 
 When I look over the list of immigrants, and I 
 have several lists here indicating the nationality of 
 those who come to this country, I ask myself, who of 
 these are dangerous to the country ? Are they the 
 immigrants who come from England, from the north 
 of Ireland, from Scotland, or from Sweden, Norway, 
 and Denmark ? Are these the most undesirable im- 
 migrants we have? Or are we most afraid of the 
 immigrants who come from Italy, from Bohemia, 
 from Poland, from Hungary, from Austria, from 
 France, from Ireland, from the Province of Quebec ? 
 Which do we think of as being more dangerous to 
 our civilization? Which furnish the paupers and 
 criminals in such large proportion ? Now, you know, 
 and everybody knows who knows me, that I have 
 positively not one particle of dislike to a man of any 
 nationality ; I care not what his color is, or of whom 
 he was born, or where he saw the light, or whether he 
 has a dollar or a million ; a man is a man for all 
 that. But I want to know this, where do the immi- 
 
Religion and the Nation. 23 
 
 grants come from who are so imperilling America 
 to-day ? 
 
 You know the answer as well as I. Almost all 
 these immigrants whom we fear were under the abso- 
 lute dominance of the Roman Catholic Church in the 
 lands where they formerly lived, and a very large 
 share of them are its superstitious devotees to-day. 
 Hungary is Roman Catholic ; Austria and Poland 
 also ; Italy, though it is fast drifting into infidelity ; 
 Ireland, except Ulster ; France and Quebec. And we 
 know that when these people come here they are flee- 
 ing from tyranny — a tyranny which their own church 
 has fostered in those lands ; but when they are here 
 they are the people whom we wish had not come, un- 
 less they are going to be different from what they were 
 at home. Not because they are Roman Catholics, not 
 because they are of this or that nationality, but be- 
 cause they are dangerous to intelligence, virtue, 
 sobriety, and liberty. (Applause.) These papal peo- 
 ples are not good enough to rule America. (Great 
 applause.) 
 
 5. I proceed to raise another question. Municipal 
 misgovernment is an antagonist of our country. Has 
 the Roman Catholic Church any relation to this 
 municipal misgovernment ? I return again to the city 
 of New York as an illustration and answer. Almost 
 every officer of that city is a loyal devotee of Rome. 
 On the 2d of last March the birthday of Leo XIII. 
 was celebrated, and the mayor of the city of New 
 York was present in his official capacity. When 
 Archbishop Corrigan came in, the mayor, Hugh J. 
 Grant, fell on his knees, in the presence of the audi- 
 
24 Religion and the Nation. 
 
 erice, before the archbishop, and kissed his hand in 
 token of reverent submission. The executive head of 
 the city of NeAV York thus did homage to the arch- 
 bishop. The real mayor of the city of New York is 
 Archbishop Corrigan. (Sensation.) And when Dr. 
 Parkhurst scourges Tammany Hall, he lays his lash 
 almost every time on the backs of the adherents of 
 Archbishop Corrigan and the Papacy. (Great ap- 
 plause.) Twenty-five years ago there were six ad- 
 herents of the Roman Catholic Church in the city 
 council of Boston ; to-day I believe there are about 
 fifty. Is that government purer to-day than it was 
 then, or otherwise ? I say calmly and truly that if 
 the Papists of this countr}^ and the questions which 
 they bring into politics were out of politics, we should 
 have scarcely any difficult problem in the politics of 
 our Northern States. It Is the truth — you know 
 it is — the living truth, that this corruption came 
 in with them, and that they fatten on it. Surely 
 such politicians are not fit to control this nation. 
 (Applause.) 
 
 6. Now, finally, take the matter of illiteracy. When 
 these illiterate people come to the United States, one 
 would suppose that everybody who has a spark of 
 humanity or patriotism would try to educate them. 
 But first I want to know where 'these people come 
 from, how come they to be illiterate, and how are 
 they going to get the ability to read? I hold in my 
 hand a little book in which is a table furnished by 
 the Bureau of Education of the United States. It 
 gives a list first of eight Roman Catholic countries 
 and then of eight Protestant countries. They have 
 
Religion and the Nation. 25 
 
 just about an equal area in square miles, and just about 
 an equal population, 148,000,000 in one case, and 149,- 
 000,000 in the other, and what is the fact in regard 
 to relative illiteracy ? In the Roman Catholic coun- 
 tries sixty out of every hundred cannot read and 
 write ; in the eight Protestant countries only four out 
 of every hundred people cannot read and write. That 
 is to say, the proportion of illiterates in those Roman 
 Catholic countries is fifteen times as great as in those 
 Protestant countries. These are official figures, and 
 indisputable. Does this mean anything to you? 
 Does it not suggest a potent cause of illiteracy ? 
 
 When the Roman Catholic Church boasts of its 
 educating, I allow that the education of the aristocracy 
 has been an object of their attention in all European 
 countries ; but show me the country where they have 
 educated the common people, either in Europe or on 
 the Western Continent? When these people come 
 here we suppose that they come because our country is 
 more desirable than theirs. What has made it so? 
 We should therefore suppose that the Roman Catholic 
 hierarchy would do its best to make our free schools 
 influential to lift up these illiterate and teach them 
 to read, as it has our native population. On the con- 
 trary, while Rome furnishes us a very large prepon- 
 derance of our illiterates, she is the only force in these 
 United States that openly, defiantly, and continuously 
 fights our free schools. (Applause.) The only one ! 
 
 She says America is hers, puts forth the most 
 strenuous efforts to grasp and to hold it; but if I 
 understand the truth, the church whose relation to 
 the liquor traffic is too largely of toleration and com- 
 
26 Religion and the Nation. 
 
 plaisance, if not positive support ; whose relation to 
 undesirable immigration is such that she to a great 
 extent monopolizes it ; whose relation to bad munici- 
 pal politics is such that she has to be allowed a most 
 disgraceful prominence ; whose relation to illiteracy is 
 such that she furnishes most of the illiterate immi- 
 grants, and at the same time she alone antagonizes 
 the free common schools, which are the only agency 
 that ever made the common people able to read, — I 
 say, when I hear her claim, and note the facts, I pro- 
 test that this papal church is not good enough to 
 control America. (Continued applause.) 
 
.^ 
 
 COLUMBUS AND AMERICA. 
 
 "Beware of false prophets." So speaks our 
 Lord, in Matthew 7th chapter, 15th verse. 
 
 "Beware of false prophets." Why? Because 
 they tell lies. Because they tell lies in the name of 
 religion and of God; for the office of the prophet is 
 to speak forth and teach the word of God. No man 
 can do as much harm as he who utters falsehood in 
 the name of religion, for thereby he appeals to the 
 highest, most responsive sense in humanity, namely 
 their religious sense ; and if through this they are 
 deceived, men are carried farther astray than by any 
 other faculty or teacher. Therefore Christ, knowing 
 that the greatest possible disaster comes through 
 religious teachers who, in the name of God, wilfully 
 state what is false, warns people in that age, and in 
 every age, to beware of them. 
 
 Scarcely less should we beware of those who tell 
 us falsehood as though it were history, who looking 
 backward, as the prophet looks forward, recite as 
 though it were fact, romance and fiction as the annals 
 of a past time. For the history of past times is 
 highly important as teaching us how to live in the 
 present; and of all the gifts of God to human intel- 
 ligence, few are more useful than a knowledge of 
 
 27 
 
28 Columhus and America. 
 
 the past. Great deeds of former centuries thrill us, 
 in our own age. The patriot of to-day fights his 
 country's battles with Leonidas in the pass of Ther- 
 mopylae, with Charles Martel on the fields of France, 
 with the heroes of Bunker Hill and the defenders of 
 Lucknow. The Christian starts and thrills again as 
 he seems to stand beside Stephen defying the council, 
 Paul before Agrippa, Savonarola before the tyrants 
 of Florence, intrepid Luther in the Diet of Worms, 
 or Cranmer at the stake holding his right hand in 
 the fire. 
 
 So important is truthful history in the inspiratioD 
 which it gives to us of the present time, that false 
 allegations, told as though they were history, may 
 lead a nation and a generation astray. Everywhere 
 the Old Testament lays great stress on the impor- 
 tance of Israel's past history as a corrective and 
 guide of their present conduct and policy. That 
 keen observer and great statesman, Bismarck, is often 
 quoted as saying that the saddest thing he saw in 
 France in 1870, was the false teaching of history in 
 the schools of France by clerical teachers, because 
 he knew that it was but sowing dragons' teeth, which 
 would in the end bring sorrow to a nation. 
 
 There are people who are afraid of true history; 
 and when you find any so afraid, it is because they 
 are consciously building on falsehood, and are afraid 
 the error will be disclosed. The struggle in the 
 Boston public schools over Swinton's history was 
 ominous of the great fact that clerical usurpation, 
 like civil usurpation, cannot stand on truthful his- 
 tory, and is always afraid to have it taught. This 
 
Papal Claims and Historic Fact. 29 
 
 is the chief reason why history is not taught in the 
 national schools of Ireland, and accounts for the 
 clerical protest against it. 
 
 In presenting to you for your consideration state- 
 ments which are to no small degree historical, I am 
 moved thereto by the claims of certain representa- 
 tives of Papal Rome, who, in considering the dis- 
 covery of this country by Columbus, base on that 
 discovery claims which are false in history and false 
 in their forecast. And this I undertake to do 
 because I do not know who will tell you unless I do 
 here, to beware of these false prophets who are en- 
 deavoring to subvert the future of America by invent- 
 ing a false history of her past. 
 
 We are in the four hundredth year since Christo- 
 pher Columbus sailed from Palos and discovered the 
 little island of San Salvador, and afterwards the 
 larger islands of the West India group. Already 
 this great historical event has taken a fresh hold 
 upon the public mind, and is stirring popular senti- 
 ment. Recently this platform has been occupied by 
 those who have lauded and honored the illustrious 
 name of Columbus. Already the nations have inter- 
 changed courtesies with reference to celebrating the 
 finding of the New World; and we of the United 
 States have named what promises to be the greatest 
 of all the exhibitions of human art and handicraft in 
 the history of mankind, the Columbian Exhibition. 
 So important is this fourth centennial, and so great 
 is the notice which it attracts, that it cannot fail to 
 have a powerful influence upon the sentiments of our 
 population and upon the history of our nation. 
 
30 Columbus and America. 
 
 I. Romanist Claims. 
 
 On the fact that Christopher Columbus was a 
 Roman Catholic have been based, by certain of his 
 co-religionists, some very extraordinary claims. 
 
 1. We have been told that he was a pious Catholic, 
 and that his crew were Roman Catholics, that the 
 sovereigns who favored his expedition %ere Roman 
 Catholics, that he came here for the planting of that 
 faith, and that he here celebrated the rites of that 
 form of worship. In connection with these state- 
 ments we are further told that the cause and reason 
 of the finding of the New World, and of ' all its sub- 
 sequent great development, was Catholicity, that is, 
 the Roman Catholic system. We have further been 
 told that the consequences which have followed from 
 the discovery of the New World and the founding 
 of this great Republic of the west, are due entirely 
 to Catholicity, as they call Romanism, and the in- 
 ference has further been drawn, that because of these 
 alleged facts, the Roman Catholic religion has cer- 
 tain rights in this country which no other religion 
 has, and that by right it ought to control our terri- 
 tory and our people, because that territory was origi- 
 nally discovered by the representatives of that faith. 
 That you may see that I have not overstated these 
 claims in the slightest degree, I shall quote from 
 an eminent representative of the Roman Catholic 
 Church, his exact words, delivered under such cir- 
 cumstances as to have received practically the in- 
 
Papal Claims and Historic Fact. 31 
 
 dorsement of the whole Roman Catholic Church in 
 this country. 
 
 2. In November of the year 1889, at the Congress 
 of the Roman Catholic Church held to celebrate its 
 centennial in the city of Baltimore, where the prin- 
 cipal prelates and most distinguished laymen of that 
 church were present, Daniel Dougherty, Esq., known 
 throughout this country as a brilliant and eloquent 
 orator, made a speech by invitation, in the presence 
 of the Congress, which received their fullest indorse- 
 ment. Mr» Dougherty not only uttered the senti- 
 ments above outlined (which I am about to quote 
 from the memorial volume published by the Roman 
 Catholics on that occasion), but in the midst of the 
 greatest enthusiasm, after he had spoken, he received 
 a vote of thanks from the assembly. You therefore 
 see that they practically adopted his words as their 
 own. Mr. Dougherty says, " The shadow of an im- 
 posing event begins to move. The people of the 
 United States, ay of the hemisphere, are about to 
 celebrate the 400th anniversary of the discovery of 
 America. We heartily rejoice in this resolve. That 
 tremendous event, — with reverence I may say the 
 second creation, — the finding of a new world, and 
 the vast results that have flowed to humanity, can be 
 traced directly to the Roman Catholic Church, and 
 the Roman Catholic Church alone. Protestantism 
 was unknown when America was discovered. Let 
 the students and scholars search the archives of Spain 
 and the libraries of Europe, and the deeper the re- 
 search, the more glory will adorn the brow of Catho- 
 licity. It was a pious Catholic who conceived the 
 
32 Columbus and America. 
 
 mighty thought. It was when foot-sore and down- 
 hearted at the porch of a monastery, that hope dawned 
 on him. It was a monk who first encouraged him. 
 It was a cardinal who interceded with the sovereigns 
 of Spain. It was a Catholic king who fitted out the 
 ships. It was a Catholic queen who offered her 
 jewels as a pledge. It was the Catholic Columbus 
 and a Catholic crew that sailed out upon an unknown 
 sea, where ship had never sailed before. It was to 
 spread the Catholic faith that the sublime risk was 
 run. It was the hymn to the blessed mother that 
 each night closed the perils of the day and inspired 
 with hope the morrow. It was the holy cross, the 
 emblem of Catholicity, that was carried to the shore 
 and planted on the new-found world. It was the 
 holy sacrifice of the mass that was the first, and for 
 long years the only Christian worship on this con- 
 tinent. . . . Why, the broad seal of the Catholic 
 Church is stamped forever upon the four corners of 
 the continent! " 
 
 3. For these statements and these claims, with 
 more like them, and equally felicitous in expression, 
 Mr. Dougherty received the thanks of the Congress. 
 
 Moreover, the Roman Catholic papers with which 
 I am familiar, for the last year have reiterated over 
 and over again the same declarations, claiming that 
 Romanism deserves the glory for the finding and 
 founding of this continent, and that it therefore has 
 superior rights of recognition and control. Their 
 design is evidently to impress the millions who fol- 
 low their standard, not only with the greatness of 
 their church and their system but also that they have 
 
Papal Claims and Historic Facts. 33 
 
 the right of dominating the territory and the peoples 
 of this nation. It is, therefore, eminently desirable 
 that we should get a full and correct idea of the 
 history to which they refer. In the spirit of the 
 best historical writing which is now coming into 
 vogue, which is properly supplanting the romance 
 that is sometimes substituted for history, and by the 
 aid of the latest searchers of the original sources of 
 information and truth, I undertake to analyze, and I 
 may so far premise as to say dispute, the statements 
 above made, and the inferences drawn by the Papacy 
 and its representatives. 
 
 II. Claims Reviewed. 
 
 Let us contrast with the facts, the statements of 
 the orator which have been read in your hearing. 
 
 1. I might say, however, before that contrast is 
 begun, that if all that Mr. Dougherty said were 
 proven true, I cannot see that the just inference 
 would be that the Roman Catholic Church of right 
 ought to control this country. Suppose we should 
 say that some hundreds of years ago the Toltecs occu- 
 pied Mexico, and that portion of territory now known 
 as New Mexico, in our own country : then that the 
 Aztecs, another race, came down from the north and 
 discovered the Toltec country; therefore, by right, 
 the Aztecs and their descendants forever ought to 
 rule over the land which they discovered. Would 
 that be good reasoning ? I think not. And yet the 
 Aztec civilization in Mexico was of an order to rival 
 that which was brought thither by Cortez and the 
 
34 Columbus and America, 
 
 Spanish Roman Catholics, after the discovery of 
 America by Columbus. 
 
 2. Mr. Dougherty says that all the glory of this 
 country can be traced directly to Catholicity and the 
 Roman Catholic Church, and to the Roman Catholic 
 Church alone. Now, I should like to inquire what 
 in the Roman Catholic Church it was that inspired 
 Columbus, whether it was their polity or their faith? 
 And studying the institutions that have grown up in 
 this country, I beg to ask whether our free civil con- 
 stitution sprang out of the Roman Catholic Church, 
 either its polity or its faith? Where is there any 
 analogy to the free constitution of this republic in 
 any of the doctrines or any portion of the polity of 
 the Roman Catholic Church? If we, a republic of 
 such magnitude, have been born of the Roman Catho- 
 lic faith, it is marvellously strange that no other 
 republic in all history was ever born of that church. 
 Every effort of the South American and Mexican 
 peoples to become free republics she has opposed, 
 and the Roman Catholic Church to-day is the most 
 dangerous foe of 'those republics, and of our own, 
 though they claim that she gave them birth. 
 
 3. And what idea of Christopher Columbus did 
 we owe to the Roman Catholic Church ? He believed 
 that there was a passage westward to Asia, but that 
 belief was shared by Aristotle and Strabo and Seneca 
 two hundred years,^»d more before the Christian era. 
 He believed thit the world was round, and yet we 
 find the Pythagoreans teaching that the world was 
 round, six centuries before Christ. We find that 
 Aristotle taught it four centuries before Christ. We 
 
Papal Claims and Historic Facts. 35 
 
 find that Oicero the orator, van d Pliny the historian, 
 and Ovid and Virgil the poets, of an era contempo- 
 raneous with the birth of Christ, all believed that 
 the earth was round. We find, moreover, that two 
 hundred years before the Christian era. Crates formed 
 a globe ten feet in diameter, to show the sphericity 
 of the earth. Now, I do not suppose that even Mr. 
 Dougherty T^ould claim Aristotle and Pythagoras 
 and Cicero, Pliny and Ovid and Virgil, Crates and 
 Seneca, as Roman Catholics. Perhaps that is a little 
 beyond even his extraordinary power as a claimant. 
 
 4. He says that Protestantism at that time, that 
 is, in 1492, was totally unkriowh. It is a fashion for 
 Roman Catholics to say that Protestantism had its 
 birth at the time of Martin Lutfier; and if they de- 
 finie Protestantism as beginning with Martin Luther, 
 of course they will have to say that, there was none 
 before. But surely the apostolic church was not 
 Roman Catholic, and most surely from the beginning 
 of its usurpations until now, there have been mil- 
 lions who have entered their protest against the as- 
 sumptions of the Papacy. " Where was your church 
 before the days of Luther? " asked a Pq.pist of a Prot- 
 estant. "Where yours is not now, in the word of 
 God," was the ready answer; ^and a truthful answer 
 it was. The assertion of Mr. Dougherty and Roman 
 Catholics that there was no Protestantism at or be- 
 fore 1492 is monstrous in the ligl|t of history. 
 
 In 1329 the people of the city of Frankfort-on-the- 
 Oder resisted the Papacy and their ecclesiastics, 
 until they were put under the ban of excommunica- 
 tion for twenty-eight years. Were they not Protes- 
 
36 Columbus and America. 
 
 tants? Abelard and the University of Paris two 
 centuries before that entered their protest against the 
 usurpation of Home, both in theology and govern- 
 ment. The Waldenses, named from Peter Waldo, 
 who died in 1179, have always been the objects of 
 Roman Catholic hatred and persecution, as was their 
 founder, because of their love of a purer faith. 
 Surely 1170 is somewhat earlier than 1492. Wick- 
 liffe, "the morning star of the Reformation," was 
 born in 1324, and was sufficiently obnoxious to the 
 Roman Catholic Church, so that a hundred years 
 afterward, in 1428, the ashes of this man who loved 
 the Bible and hated the Pope were not permitted to 
 rest in their grave, but were taken up by priests, and 
 scattered in the river Swift, thence passing by the 
 Avon and the Severn to the sea. Was this indig- 
 nity put upon his remains because he was a Roman- 
 ist or a Protestant? Chancellor Gerson, a great light 
 of the Middle Ages, one of the greatest names in the 
 history of France, struck with all his might against 
 the errors and assumptions of the Papacy. Savona- 
 rola uttered his protest in Florence, and was burned 
 in 1475, seventeen years before Columbus discovered 
 America: he was the representative of a very large 
 following. (There might have been more Protes- 
 tants in those times if there had been fewer inquisi- 
 tions, dungeons, and stakes.) Dr. John Lallier of 
 the Sorbonne, a man of most distinguished ability, 
 gave his utterance against the Papacy in 1475, and 
 was burned in 1498 for stating: what he did. I wish 
 I had time to read you all that he said. Let. me 
 read a few words: "All the clergy have received 
 
Papal Claims and Historic Fact. 37 
 
 equal power from Christ. The Roman Church is 
 not the head of other churches. You should keep 
 the commandment of God and of the apostles; and 
 as for the commandments of bishops and all the 
 other lords of the Church, they are but straw. They 
 have ruined the Church by their crafty devices. The 
 priests of the Eastern Church sin not by marrying, 
 and I believe that in the Western Church we should 
 not sin were we also to marry." Is that Papist or 
 Protestant doctrine? But this man was turned to 
 ashes in 1498 by the fires of Papal Rome. John 
 of Wesalia died in a dungeon because he uttered 
 his sentiments concerning Rome in the following 
 manner: "He whom God is willing to save by the 
 gift of his grace will be saved, though all the priests 
 in the world should wish to condemn and excom- 
 municate him. And he whom God will condemn, 
 though all should wish to save him, will neverthe- 
 less be condemned." Is that a Roman Catholic or 
 a Protestant declaration? John Wessel, who, on 
 account of his great learning, was called the " Light 
 of the World," born probably in 1400, long before 
 the time of Columbus, gave utterance to sentiments 
 even stronger than these when he says, "Nothing 
 is more effectual to the destruction of the Church 
 than a corrupted clergy. All Christians, even the 
 humblest and most simple, are bound to resist those 
 who are destroying the Church. We must obey the 
 precepts of doctors and of prelates only according 
 to the measure laid down by St. Paul (1 Thess. v. 
 21), that is to say, so far as 'sitting in Moses's seat,' 
 they teach according to Moses." And he utters 
 
38 Columbus and America. 
 
 another sentiment which I must read. Hear him: 
 "The Popes may err. All human satisfactions are 
 blasphemy against Christ, who has reconciled and 
 completely justified the human race. To God alone 
 belongs the power of giving plenary absolution. It 
 is not necessary to confess our sins to the priest. 
 There is no purgatory unless it be God himself, 
 who is a devouring fire, and who cleanseth from all 
 impurity." 
 
 All this antedates Columbus. So also Bohemians 
 had sent missionaries before the discovery of Amer- 
 ica, into many countries of Europe to carry the doc- 
 trines of Wickliffe. The Protestants in many lands 
 out-numbered the Papists, and in those lands the 
 inquisition had no force, while the Greek or Byzan- 
 tine Church, and the old Armenian Church, a little 
 farther east, never bowed their neck to Rome, even 
 when monarchs undertook to force them to do so. 
 
 These are but a few of hundreds of facts of history 
 concerning" the Christians who have withstood Rome. 
 In view of these, when a speaker, in the presence of 
 an intelligent American audience, says that there 
 were no Prostestants and no Protestantism prior to 
 1492, either he does not know history, or else he 
 intentionally deceives. It is true that there was 
 always the most determined effort on the part of 
 Rome to crush by her tyranny and persecutions those 
 who protested against her: it is true that the stake 
 and the flame were everywhere. John Huss was 
 burned in Constance in 1415,- so was Jerome, soon 
 afterward. I have stood beside their monuments, 
 where they were tortured to death by the Romish 
 
Papal Claims and Historic Fact. 39 
 
 Council of Constance seventy-five years before Co- 
 lumbus discovered America. Is Romanism Christian 
 which deals thus with preachers of a pure Gospel? 
 Nay. Nor could she, even with the bigoted fierce- 
 ness of past or present times, suppress the truth 
 which she hated. 
 
 5. Columbus, says the orator, was a pious Catho- 
 lic. That is true: he was. He desired a crusade: 
 said he was going to get wealth in the New World 
 in order to carry on a crusade in the Holy Land ; 
 and in the latter part of his life he claimed to 
 be inspired, and -to be fulfilling the vision of the 
 apocalypse as one whom God had sent to take the 
 Holy Sepulchre. 
 
 6. He says that a monk befriended him (at the 
 monastery of Santa Maria de la Rabida). That is 
 true ; but it is also true that many men went into 
 monasteries m that time in' order that, hidden from 
 persecution, they might dare-to think without the 
 likelihood of being slaughtered for their opinions; 
 No doubt many a man of great ability sought refuge 
 there in order to find quiet and to save his life. 
 
 7. A Catholic queen, he says, pledged her jewels. 
 This is a romantic invention, for history discredits 
 it wholly, since her jewels were probably already 
 pledged for the prosecution of the war against the 
 Moors. 
 
 8. He says it was a Catholic crew that sailed with ' 
 Columbus. Perhaps you know the fact thafhe got 
 many of his crew out of the prisons, because^ dther 
 sailors would not embark. Nevertheless, I do*lbot 
 know that being in prison is to their discredit, 
 
40 Columbus and America. 
 
 because a good many most excellent men were put 
 in prison in those days, by the Roman Catholic 
 Church; and although these were prisoners, and 
 came out of the penitentiaries that they might sail 
 with Columbus, it does not follow that they were 
 bad men. However, if they were good Catholics, 
 then they were bad men, else they would not have 
 got into jail ; if they were good men, it was because 
 they were Protestants, and put in on account of 
 their faith. (Applause.) 
 
 9. He says that the purpose of Columbus was to 
 spread the Catholic faith ; but as I read with extrem- 
 est care the history of Columbus, I find that his cry 
 everywhere is not for the conversion of the natives, 
 but for gold — gold — gold. I hold in my hand an 
 abstract given by Washington Irving, and repeated 
 by Mr. Justin Winsor in his recent "Life of Colum- 
 bus," of the agreement entered into by the sovereigns 
 Ferdinand and Isabella on the one hand, and Chris- 
 topher Columbus on the other. Not a word is said 
 in it about the salvation or conversion of the natives: 
 it is all about the honors which Columbus shall ac- 
 quire, the proportionate part of the treasure that he 
 shall have and that the monarchs must receive as a 
 return for his possible discoveries. I will not stop 
 to read, for fear of wearying your patience, the four 
 distinct statements to the above effect which are 
 made in this agreement. 
 
 When the New World was found, everywhere the 
 cry of Columbus and the men with him was for gold ; 
 so that, as says Benzoni, the contemporary historian 
 of the voyages, "at length the natives used to take 
 
Papal Claims and Historic Fact. 41 
 
 up a piece of gold and cry, 'Behold the Christians' 
 God. '" This was the idea which they received of the 
 piety of Columbus and his followers. When Colum- 
 bus undertook to place on the neck of a chief in the 
 West India Islands the cross as the sign of the 
 Christian faith, this poor man had seen so much of 
 the cruelty of the Spaniard, that he declined to take 
 it, on the ground that it represented tyranny and 
 cruelty. Such was the idea the natives received of 
 the faith of the explorers and conquerors. 
 
 Thus all the statements of the distinguished ora- 
 tor, before the Catholic Congress, I have passed in 
 review, and you see in the light of history about how 
 much truth there is in them. Only the least impor- 
 tant of his allegations are facts. 
 
 But let me proceed to his claims and inferences 
 with farther facts. 
 
 III. Rome desiees the Entire Ceedit and Re- 
 sponsibility OF what Coluivibus was. 
 
 This is their demand: Catholicity did it all they 
 say. Catholicity made him what he was, therefore 
 Catholicity is responsible for all that he was. Very 
 good, so be it. What was he? that is the question. 
 Now I am going to tell you some facts from his 
 biography. 
 
 1. Before he came to Portugal, his history is 
 uncertain. But in 1484 Columbus married in that 
 country a woman of excellent character, so far as we 
 know, whose father and grandfather were persons of 
 some distinction. Columbus deserted this woman 
 
42 Columbus and America. 
 
 and her- children, taking with him only one of them, 
 his son' Diego, when he went to Seville. He never 
 saw her again, and did nothing for her support. 
 He himself says, if his own word can be trusted, m 
 a letter which he wrote in the latter part of his life, 
 as much as I have just now stated. 
 
 2. He barely escaped arrest at the frontier, when 
 he left Portugal, because of some unknown crimes 
 which he had committed. What those offences were 
 we cannot tell; but we do know that the king of 
 Portugal on the 20th of March, 1488, wrote him a 
 letter saying that if he would come back, the crimes 
 of which he was guilty would not be charged against 
 him, whatever they were. In 1487 Columbus, the 
 pious Catholic, took for a mistress Beatrix Enriquez, 
 and she bore him a son Ferdinand, who is one bi- 
 ographer of his father. This woman also he shortly 
 forsook and left without support. All that Colum- 
 bus was, Mr. Dougherty says, is due to Catholicity, 
 and all that he did sprang from that Church. Let 
 us inquire farther. 
 
 3. A reward of ten thousand maravedis and a 
 silken jacket was promised to the man that should 
 first discover land on the earliest voyage of Colum- 
 bus. It is the opinion of the most careful biogra- 
 phers and historians, that land was first discovered 
 by a poor sailor, and that Columbus claimed and 
 took the reward, in violation of every principle of 
 honesty. Moreover, it is in harmony with the well- 
 known avarice and cupidity of Christopher Columbus 
 that he should )io that very thing. There is a pain- 
 ful story of the poor sailor who was cheated of the 
 
Papal Claims and Historic Fact. 43 
 
 deserved reward, that lie afterwards joined the Mo- 
 Kammedans, hoping to find in the followers of the 
 f^lse prophet a degree of honor that he had failed to 
 find in the followers of the Pope. (Applause.) All 
 tha^ Columbus was, he was made by Catholicity, says 
 the fcatholic Congress, indorsing its orator. 
 
 4. But he had scarcely landed in the West Indies, 
 before he proposed to enslave the natives of those 
 unfortunate islands. Queen Isabella was somewhat 
 opposed to this, and resisted it for a time ; but it was 
 not long, because enslavement was urged again and 
 again in the letters of Columbus, before five hun- 
 dred of those natives were sent as slaves to Spain. 
 He sent five ship-loads at various times, and was the 
 father of the slave-trade in North America. Untold 
 horror and inhumanity resulted, carrying with them 
 an awful infamy for Columbus. To prove that 
 Catholicity did it, such were the sentiments of his 
 time, that Las Casas, a noble Roman Catholic priest 
 of great humanity and of true piety, says that' the 
 priests, the large share of them, and the most promi- 
 nent, were in favor of the enslavement of the natives, 
 and that they co-operated Avith Columbus in bringing 
 it about. (Sensation.) 
 
 5. Moreover, cruising along the southern coast 
 of the island of Cuba, Columbus took it into his 
 head (he was a man of extraordinary imagination) 
 that he would assert that he had found the continent 
 of Asia, and he therefore compelled all his sailors 
 and officers to swear that they had sebn the conti- 
 nent of Asia, under the following penalty: if the 
 sailors ever denied that it was the fact, they were to 
 
44 Columbus and America. 
 
 have their tongues torn out, and if the officers denied 
 it, they were to be fined ten thousand maravedis 
 apiece. That is to say, Columbus, the pious Catlio- 
 lic, compelled his officers and sailors to make affi- 
 davit to a lie, under the most horrible penalties, and 
 so sent word home, when he was on the south side of 
 the island of Cuba, that he had found Asia. Catho- 
 licity has all the credit of Columbus and his deeds, 
 does it? If they had claimed less, they would have 
 shown greater wisdom. 
 
 6. Furthermore, it is a well-known fact that Co- 
 lumbus was extremely cruel. His cruelty destroyed 
 the lives of a third of the inhabitants of San Dom- 
 ingo in two years. The first vicar apostolic, an 
 officer of the Roman Catholic Church, who was sent 
 out to the West Indies in the interests of religion, 
 could not endure Columbus's cruelty to the natives, 
 and left and went home for that reason. Put it on 
 record as he did. 
 
 It was Columbus who, in order to get gold, com- 
 pelled the forced service of these poor people in the 
 mines, a forced service, known in Spanish phrase as 
 repartimientos^ concerning which the best historians 
 say it wrought the utmost degradation and ruin 
 upon those unfortunate inhabitants. Even the poor 
 natives reproved Columbus for his cruelty; and at 
 length, to show the extraordinary dishonesty of the 
 man who certainly had some great excellences, the 
 Admiral defrauded the king and queen of Spain 
 out of part of what he had promised them, giving as 
 the flimsy excuse, that he did not tell them about the 
 pearls which he had, because he wanted to wait until 
 
Papal Claims and Historic Fact. 45 
 
 he had more gold. This they did not seem to find 
 an altogether satisfactory excuse, and the sons of 
 Columbus were hooted in the street because of the 
 dishonesty of their father. 
 
 7. To speak according to history, not according to 
 the romantic ideas of Mr. Dougherty, when Mr. 
 Justin Winsor, the librarian of Harvard College, 
 sums up the life of Columbus in a very extraordinary 
 paragraph, in a history of vast research and compre- 
 hensiveness, he says, " We have seen a pitiable man 
 meet a pitiable death. Hardly a name in profane 
 history is more august than his: hardly another 
 character in the world's record has made so little of 
 its opportunities. His discovery was a blunder: 
 his blunder was a new world : the New World is his 
 monument. Its discoverer might have been its 
 father: he proved to be its despoiler. He might 
 have given its young days such a benignity as the 
 world likes to associate with a maker: he left it a 
 legacy of devastation and crime. He might have 
 been an unselfish promoter of geographical science : 
 he proved a rabid seeker for gold and a vice-royalty. 
 He might have won converts to the fold of Christ 
 by the kindness of his spirit: he gained the execra- 
 tions of the good angels. He might, like Las Casas, 
 have rebuked the fiendishness of his contemporaries: 
 he set them an example of perverted belief. The 
 triumph of Barcelona led down to the ignominy of 
 Valladolid, with every step in the degradation pal- 
 pable and resultant." And yet of all this Mr. 
 Dougherty, the Congress, and the Roman Catholic 
 papers, affirm that " Catholicity " deserves the sole 
 
46 Columbus and America, 
 
 credit. Let them have it, if they insist on , so 
 doing. 
 
 8. Catholicity has all the credit, furthermore, of 
 Ferdinand and Isabella, and Ferdinand and Isabella 
 founded and favored the Inquisition in Spain. It 
 must have the credit of all that was done at that 
 time, because there were no Protestants then, at least 
 none to found an Inquisition. From 1481 to 1498, 
 Torquemada, the chief inquisitor of Spain, burned 
 eight thousand people at the stake, by the direct 
 command of that great cardinal whom Mr. Dough- 
 erty praises, called " the third king " of Spain, the 
 Cardinal Mendoza. If eight thousand were burned, 
 how many, perished in dungeons, how many died a 
 wrelfched death, torn from their homes, despoiled of 
 theifi fortunes, tortured and starved? All this he 
 claims too, and we will admit the claim, if he still 
 wishes to make it. 
 
 But does Rome deny the responsibility of the dis- 
 honorable and immoral deeds of Columbus? Does 
 she deny the responsibility for the founding of the 
 Inquisition? Does she deny the deeds of Torque- 
 mada in Spain? Then if she does deny it, and it 
 will be to her credit if she does, notwithstanding 
 the rash claims of her prelates and orators, if she 
 does deny it, let her not claim that Rome has vastly 
 superior rights to all others in this country because 
 these pious Catholics discovered one of the West 
 India Islands. (Applause.) 
 
Papal Claims and Historic Fact. 47 
 
 IV. Now FOR A Few Facts about the Dis- 
 covery OF America. 
 
 I do not propose to enter upon even a sketch of the 
 life of Columbus. I have designed only to bring 
 facts to bear upon the great claims which are made 
 for him. It was an age of brave sailors, of awaken- 
 ing intellect, an age when art and science and true 
 religion may have been said to have had their new 
 birth. There were navigators before Columbus as 
 daring as he : there were others, his contemporaries, 
 no less so, among the Portuguese, the Genoese, 
 the Welsh, the English, and the Spanish. Columbus 
 sailed from Palos on the 3d of August, 1492, and 
 discovered, on the 12th of October of the same year, 
 it is believed. Cat Island, now called San Salvador. 
 He never saw the continent. of North America. So, 
 if discovery gives the right of domination, what 
 right grows out of his discovery so far as these 
 United States are concerned? He did not discover 
 the continent of America until after an English- 
 man, or rather a Florentine sailing under the Eng- 
 lish flag, had done it; for we know that Columbus 
 discovered the continent of South America on the 
 2d of August, 1498, when John Cabot, sailing 
 under the English flag, had discovered the continent 
 of North America on the 24th of June, 1497. I have 
 no desire whatever to detract from the real and just 
 fame of Columbus ; but as a matter of fact the great 
 navigator never obtained any rights of discovery on 
 the main land of North or South America, and if 
 
48 Columbus and America. 
 
 Rome has any rights here, founded on anybody in 
 the age of discovery, none of those rights can be 
 founded upon Christopher Columbus. 
 
 Who did discover the continent of North America ? 
 Many very intelligent and able people in Boston 
 combined to raise a monument to Lief Ericsson, who, 
 they believe, discovered North America in the ninth 
 century, about six hundred years before the time of 
 Columbus. I do not know whether he did so or not, 
 though I incline to believe that the weight of testi- 
 mony favors the Norsemen. There are stories and 
 traces out of which investigators construct such a 
 probability. Moreover, a Welsh navigator, Madoc 
 by name, took a colony to the west, and never came 
 back, in the twelfth century. And as I have already 
 stated, the Cabots, John Cabot the father, and Sebas- 
 tian the son, discovered North America on the 24th 
 of June, 1497, which was more than a year before 
 Columbus found the mouth of the Orinoco in the 
 northern part of South America. 
 
 I said at the beginning, that it seemed all impor- 
 tant at a time like this that whatever strength there 
 is in history should stand for the truth as against 
 false claims. The false prophets get all their stand- 
 ing from being false historians. They invoke reli- 
 gion both for the past and the future. But religion 
 cannot sanctify falsehood. Is there not something 
 astounding in the fact that at a Congress represent- 
 ing the Roman Catholic Church her great preacher, 
 Archbishop Ireland, should face the Protestants of 
 this land and the world Avith the deliberate declara- 
 tion that " As a religious system Protestantism is in 
 
Papal Claims and Historic Fact. 4l9' 
 
 hopeless dissolution, utterly valueless as a doctrinal, 
 or moral power ; " that her silver-tongued orator 
 should assert as fact that "American Roman Catho- 
 lics have silently submitted to wrongs and injustices 
 and outrages in manifold shapes from time imme- 
 morial ; " that again and again prelates and laymen 
 should affirm that we owe about all our civilization 
 to the Jesuit fathers. But it was thus that the twelve 
 hundred members of this Congress recorded them- 
 selves. Do we not well to consider the words of our 
 Lord? 
 
 Let me now say in closing : this country has been 
 known to Europeans since the discovery by Colum- 
 bus of the West India Islands in 1492. All that 
 part that he had direct relations to, namely the West 
 Indies and Brazil, and the northern part of South 
 America, have had a history ever since, far different 
 from that of the United States of North America. 
 The Spaniard in America has not figured as a bene- 
 factor, whether we follow Cortez in Mexico, where 
 he supplanted a false religion by a religion scarcely 
 less cruel, or Pizarro in Peru, where rnuch the 
 same was true, — the religion of the Incas being 
 better than the religion of Pizarro, less bloody, less 
 cruel, less a curse to mankind, — while the Spaniards 
 in Florida were as little benefactors as were those in 
 the West Indies, in Mexico, and in South America. 
 
 In October, 1492, two days or so before Columbus 
 saw land, the prow of his vessel being turned by the 
 Gulf Stream current somewhat to the northward, he 
 was bearing on in a direction that would have 
 brought him to the Carolina coast. His brave and 
 
50 Columbus and America. 
 
 experienced lieutenant, Pinzon, seeing a flock of 
 parrots flying southward, begged Columbus, who 
 was in great uncertainty, to turn his vessel's course 
 to the south-west. Columbus yielded to his protes- 
 tations, and bore away to the southward. Thus, in 
 the order of an infinitely wise Providence, the Span- 
 iard landed on the scattered islands of the West 
 Indies, rather than on the virgin coast of the Caro- 
 linas. Thus the inscrutable wisdom of Almighty 
 God saved from Spanish devastation the land in 
 which we live, saved it from the domination of an 
 idolatrous and cruel religion. Thus infinite wis- 
 dom, that on little pivots swings the doors of great 
 centuries, mercifully diverted the Spanish fleet from 
 the shores of our country, and left this virgin conti- 
 nent to be found, upbuilt, and glorified by English 
 Protestantism. (Applause.) 
 
 
SPANISH ROMANISM AND ENGLISH PROTESTANTISM 
 
 ON THE WESTERN CONTINENT. 
 
 I AM to speak to you this afternoon on Spanish 
 Romanism and English Protestantism on the West- 
 ern Continent. As from a hill-top one surve^^s 
 through a glass the vast and varied landscape, so 
 from the heights of history, through the glass of di- 
 vine truth, I desire with you to survey one of the 
 vastest of all the eras of national and religious life 
 which has ever transpired upon this planet. That 
 portion of the Holy Scriptures through which we 
 shall look, consists of two rej)resentative statements, 
 the one made by the statesman-prophet Daniel, the 
 other by the unequalled apostle to the Gentiles. 
 In the 4th chapter of Daniel's prophecy and the 
 l7th verse, addressing Nebuchadnezzar, he says, 
 " To the intent that the living may know that the 
 Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giv- 
 eth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it 
 the basest of men." The passage from the apostle 
 to the Gentiles is where, in the Acts of the Apostles, 
 xvii. 26, addressing the Athenians, he says, " God 
 hath made of one blood all nations to dwell on the 
 face of the earth, and hath determined the times 
 
 51 
 
52 Spanish Romanism cmd English Protestantism 
 
 before appointed, and the bounds of their habita- 
 tion." 
 
 1. The doctrine taught by the prophet Daniel is 
 that whatever the eddies or the currents of human 
 history, God is supreme overall, and that sometimes, 
 in the order of his providence, he permits nations to 
 set up over them the basest of rulers, in order that 
 by their experience Avith bad rulers and bad laws 
 they may learn thus not to try the experiment again, 
 and that unrighteousness is not for the advantage of 
 any people ; as he permitted the Israelites to set up 
 Saul as king, for which they had occasion always 
 to be sorry: so, says Daniel, the supreme ruler of 
 men and nations, who taketh up the isles as a very 
 little thing, and counts "the nations as the small 
 dust of the balance," raises up to supreme places, at 
 times, me nof ignoble character, that He may teach 
 through them, to all coming generations, how futile 
 it is to attempt by unrighteousness to prosper either 
 nations or men . While St. Paul, in harmony with 
 what I said to you on last Sunday, surveying the 
 providential placing of men in all portions of the 
 earth, says, if I may paraphrase. These people are 
 not here by chance: they have not been placed in 
 their various geographical locations by accident; but 
 that God who made the unity of men perfect in their 
 original creation, has prescribed a diversity of zones 
 and lands and shores where they may work out the 
 experiment of civilization to the boundaries of their 
 habitations, in order that by drawing lines along 
 these boundaries, men, in studying nations, may see 
 how infinitely superior some are to others, and may 
 
On the Western Continent. 53 
 
 then inquire the reason for such inequality, for the 
 better regulation of their constitutions, their politics, 
 and their conduct. 
 
 2. The vast movements of God's providence are 
 as well worth studying as the small. A man who 
 calls himself a Christian, with grave and solemn 
 visage reproving me, said on last Monday, "Why 
 didn't you preach Christ on Sunday?" I said, 
 "Were you there on Sunday night? Then my 
 discourse was all concerning Christ." He said, 
 "No; but I didn't think you preached Christ on 
 Sunday afternoon." I suppose all the use that man 
 has for Christ is to have Him wait on him (laugh- 
 ter), but my thought of Christ is that he is the King 
 of nations, the Son of God clothed with power, and 
 that I preach Christ when I point to his footsteps in 
 history, as much as when I point to his footsteps in 
 your house or in your heart. On a nation, which 
 God regards as a very little thing, he looks with the 
 same grace or the same wrath as on a man; and 
 taking a whole continent for the arena, taking na- 
 tions and races as the characters, taking centuries as 
 the time, and colossal national results as the conse- 
 quences, I desire to-day, in your presence, to review 
 the workings of the two great systems of religion 
 that are disputing for precedence in this country, 
 that you may clearly and judicially decide which of 
 them should control and have the right of way. 
 
 3. The arena is a continent, the Western Conti- 
 nent. Did you ever think that on this Western 
 Continent, like a jewelled girdle crossing its broad 
 front, the United States of America is really the only 
 
54 Spanish Romanism and Engliah Protestantism 
 
 prosperous nation among all its political divisions ? 
 that all but English Canada are Roman Catholic, 
 save only the United States of America; and that, 
 without exception, apart from the United States of 
 America, all these nations are abject and degraded ? 
 Mexico, the states of Central America, Brazil, the 
 United States of Colombia, Peru, Chili, Argentina, 
 Uruguay, — there you have all the rest of the conti- 
 nent, save that which lies to the north of us, which 
 is half Protestant, half Papist; while in the face of 
 angels and men is thrust through the geographical 
 centre of North America a free Protestant republic, 
 to show the world the contrast between Romanism and 
 Protestantism. (Applause.) 
 
 I. The conditions under which this vast test of 
 religions was tried are of the most thrilling charac- 
 ter. The period following 1492, when Columbus 
 discovered San Salvador, was the period of coloni- 
 zation in this country: abroad it was a period of 
 astonishing revolution and agitation. 
 
 1. From 1492, one hundred and fifty years being 
 counted, you have movements in Europe of the great- 
 est magnitude. Shakspeare and Tasso among the 
 poets ; Henry the Eighth, Charles the Fifth, Philip 
 the Second, and Elizabeth among the rulers; Luther, 
 Calvin, and Zwinglius among the reformers, are a 
 few of its personages. The Spanish people, at the 
 time of the discovery of America, and for quite a 
 time later, were the leading people of Europe; a 
 powerful, proud, bold race, not inferior in any re- 
 spect, so far as I know, to any race on the continent. 
 The Jews had brought their enterprise, and the 
 
On the Western Continent. 55 
 
 Moors their culture to Spain ; and though they were 
 driven out with fire and sword, and were fiercely- 
 tortured by the Inquisition, the Spanish Empire was 
 mighty, almost dominant. 
 
 2. Romanism, in the early part of the sixteenth 
 century, and in the last part of the fifteenth, was 
 practically in full control of Europe. She had 
 everything her own way : its monarchs were her ser- 
 vants ; her will was the law of states ; the popes were 
 the arbiters of nations. St. Peter's church was just 
 begun. The Pope wanted money for it, and all 
 Europe was taxed to furnish the same. The sellers 
 of indulgences had gone into the Germanic and all 
 other states in Europe, and the sale of indulgences 
 was as much a business as the sale of wheat or cloth. 
 One-third of the revenues of Germany was poured 
 over the Alps into the lap of the Pope, and riches 
 and splendor abounded in the palaces of the bishops 
 and prelates, while poverty prevailed among the 
 ranks of the people. 
 
 3. Luther was born nine years before the discovery 
 of America by Columbus. About the time when 
 Cortez made the conquest of Mexico, Luther made 
 the conquest of Germany, and the Reformation was 
 in full swing. The massacre of St. Bartholomew 
 occurred in 1572, scarce half a century before the 
 pilgrims landed at Plymouth. The Dutch Republic 
 rose and resisted the power of Philip II. and the 
 Duke of Alva; won its liberty under the masterly 
 direction of William the Silent, who in turn fell 
 before the bullet of a Jesuit assassin. The Swiss 
 Reformation convulsed that little republic, and laid 
 
56 Spanish Romanism and English P rotestantism 
 
 the foundations of those Protestant states which 
 from that time until this have been incomparably 
 superior to all the other states of the Swiss confed- 
 eration. Ignatius Loyola was born, the Jesuits were 
 incorporated, and the counter reformation, deforma- 
 tion I might say, was begun. The Inquisition 
 flourished in Spain, as it had flourished in the Middle 
 Ages in France and in Germany. 
 
 4. Such is the merest suggestion of the vast events 
 of which Europe was the theatre at the time when 
 the Western Continent was discovered and colonized. 
 This western world was unknown: its gates were 
 just opening. At the mouth of its vast rivers the 
 navigators saw such floods as to infer that they came 
 from great distances and drained wide areas. The 
 populations of the western world were scarcel}^ 
 imagined, and were uncounted. Here were civili- 
 zations in the north and in the south. The city of 
 Mexico at that time was great and populous, having 
 as is supposed sixty thousand householders. The 
 Incas in Peru had already built cyclopean structures 
 as great as any that the world has ever seen. There 
 was civilization on this continent. The Five Na- 
 tions in the Mohawk Valley of the State of New 
 York had a barbarous form of life, but a na- 
 tional unity and administration far removed above 
 savagery. 
 
 Here, then, is the arena for the great experiment. 
 On this continent these European nations were to 
 have an opportunity of testing their forms of faith 
 and civilization. What a spectacle is this to look 
 upon! Romanism, having the start, is to have a 
 
On the Western Continent. 67 
 
 chance in North and South America over these 
 wonderful lands, and with these pliable peoples, to 
 show what she will make of them. And Bible 
 Protestantism also is to have its opportunity at the 
 same time. Spain stands, in the title of my dis- 
 course, for other nations as well, which were strictly 
 Romanist : for Portugal, which was foremost in dis- 
 covery and colonization, for France also, which was 
 scarcely behind ; while English Protestantism stands 
 as well for the Protestantism of the Dutch, who 
 were associated with the English, and the Swedes to 
 the northward, who also had an important part in the 
 colonization of this country. 
 
 The experiment was made. Spain, France, Por- 
 tugal, brought hither their institutions and colonized 
 despotism, their cruel and their formal semi-pagan 
 faith. The English, with the Dutch to help them, 
 and the Swedes co-operating, colonized here ; estab- 
 lishing constitutional liberty, biblical knowledge, 
 pure morality, and freedom for man. 
 
 II. I desire you to look with me for a moment at 
 the conquest of this country, and the beginnings of 
 this colonization. 
 
 1. You cannot find, with the Spanish on the one 
 hand, and the English on the other, any such differ- 
 ences of race or nationality or climate as shall ac- 
 count for the different results of their labors on this 
 continent. The only possible way to account for 
 the difference in what they brought to pass, is by the 
 religious faith which dominated them. Spain, dis- 
 covering the country first, had the first opportunity 
 for colonization. 
 
58 Spanish Romanism and English Protestantism 
 
 2. Let us look at ihe work of the Spanish Roman- 
 ist in America. 
 
 1. You know what Columbus did in the West 
 Indies : you know that he became the ravisher and 
 despoiler of the country, as I told you on last Sab- 
 bath. He had hardly won the admiralty for which 
 he struggled so long, before the daring Cortez, a 
 Spaniard, was not only ready to follow but go be- 
 yond him in the conquest of the New World. 
 With a company of followers as hardy as their 
 chief, he invaded Mexico, and having scuttled his 
 ships at Vera Cruz, advanced toward the capital of 
 that remarkable empire. In the year 1521, after a 
 series of desperate encounters, the Montezumas 
 yielded their throne to the Spaniards, and Cortez 
 was master of the land. The Spanish found a 
 people who dwelt in great houses and large commu- 
 nities, who had a bloody religion, as cruel as that of 
 the Spaniards themselves, and they supplanted the 
 decapitation of the Aztec on the great pyramid, 
 with the burning of the Aztec in the public square. 
 
 Ten years later Pizarro, who was as brave as Cor- 
 tez, had gone south to the domain of the Incas, and 
 1530 or 1533 finds him practically master of the 
 very centre of South America. There, in the midst 
 of walls and houses and temples which have been the 
 wonder of subsequent times, Pizarro arrested the 
 lawful ruler of the country, promised him his liberty 
 if he should furnish a large amount of gold, and at 
 length, after receiving sixteen millions of money as 
 the price of his ransom, treacherously betrayed him 
 to death. 
 
On the Western Continent. 59 
 
 2. The southern peoples to whom the Spaniards 
 went were far superior to those of the north. Who- 
 ever reads the history of the Aztec and the Inca 
 civilization, knows full well that these people were 
 somewhat civilized at least, and might, undoubtedly, 
 from the gentleness of th ir manners and their sin- 
 gular susceptibility to the influence of the white man, 
 have become far superior to the North American 
 Indian, under anything like a wise and kind policy. 
 Such were the beginnings of Spanish conquest and 
 colonization. 
 
 3. The English came a century and a half later. 
 Their first settlement was at Jamestown in 1607. 
 A rather weak colony was this. They seemed to 
 have but little idea of what they came for, except 
 to find release from the burdens of the old world, 
 and it was not long before they were divided by 
 internal dissensions, and so decimated with various 
 hardships that they hardly represented the spirit of 
 English colonization. But 1620 saw another sight. 
 On the rocky shores of Cape Cod, landed the men 
 who brought the Holy Scriptures, the constitutional 
 compact, and the purpose to have truth and right- 
 eousness prevail wherever they had control. New 
 York developed very shortly after, or may have been 
 said to precede the Plymouth colony, in that the 
 Dutch made their explorations about the year 1610, 
 bringing from the fields of Holland the traditions 
 of liberty which they had shared with the Pilgrims 
 in Leyden, and the purpose to resist tyranny which 
 had animated their great leader, William of Orange. 
 The Quaker Penn, shortly after this, came to Penn- 
 
60 Spanish Romanism and English Protestantism 
 
 sylvania and laid the foundations, in a peaceful pur- 
 chase and a serene Christian faith, of the most pacific 
 colony that was ever planted on North American 
 shores. The Swedes, fresh from the wars in which 
 they had been led by Gustavus Adolphus and his 
 grandson Gustavus Vasa, both champions of Protes- 
 tantism, had undertaken, also, to begin in Delaware 
 and New Jersey a new state on the principles which 
 they had inherited from Protestant traditions and 
 struggles. Here on the one hand you see the Prot- 
 estant in the hard and unfriendly north, on the other, 
 the Spaniard in the genial and fruitful south, with 
 their opportunities to work out the experiment for 
 which they had come. Evidently the Spanish had 
 the best chance : they had the earliest start, the finest 
 country, were richest in minerals, and had the most 
 civilized native populations. 
 
 III. What principles did these two bring to the 
 planting of America, principles of which we are now 
 reaping the results? The fundamental ideas of the 
 Spaniard and of the Englishman were the funda- 
 mental ideas of Romanism and Protestantism. 
 
 1. The Spaniard, catching the spirit of the popes, 
 desired more than everything else, gold. Every- 
 where this was his cry. For this he enslaved the 
 natives and sold them in European markets ; for this 
 he forced them into the mines where they perished 
 miserably; for this he decimated the native popula- 
 tions everywhere with fire and sword. Gold and 
 silver were everywhere the Spaniard's cry. 
 
 2. Then wherever he went he founded the Inqui- 
 sition : that had been his engine of bigotry at home, 
 
On the Western Contiiient. 61 
 
 and he set it up here in this land. There is not a 
 capital in South America which is as old as Spanish 
 colonization and rule, but what has Inquisition 
 buildings ; while in the city of Mexico it is scarcely 
 thirty years since these chambers of horrors were 
 seized by the government and appropriated to the 
 purposes of education. Three centuries that Inqui- 
 sition prevailed, wherever the Spanish Romanist 
 had dominion. By it he here burned men as they 
 had burned them in Seville and Madrid. Forty- 
 eight were burned at one time in the plaza of Mex- 
 ico. One hundred were burned and thousands 
 scourged for their faith in the Lima Inquisition by 
 the Spanish Romanists. 
 Romanists. 
 
 3. They built costly churches, as Romanism builds 
 everywhere. The people in hovels, the priests in 
 palaces! The cathedral in Lima cost nine millions 
 of dollars ; that in the capital of Honduras cost five 
 millions of dollars. In the old Spanish American 
 towns to-day, with their hovels all around them, are 
 supported the most matchless church structures for 
 splendor and for costliness to be found on this con- 
 tinent. A single chandelier in a little Mexican 
 church cost sixty thousand dollars, and the people 
 who bought it, whose money bought it, earn twenty- 
 five cents or less a day. The cathedral in Mexico 
 was ninety years in building. Indulgences were 
 everywhere sold. Masses were everywhere said. 
 Priests were continually giving absolution. Con- 
 fessions were being taken without ceasing. These 
 were the fundamental ideas of the Spaniard, to 
 which all but the lust of gold Avas subservient. 
 
^>2 Spanish Momanism and Eyiglish Protestantism 
 
 4. What were the fundamental ideas of the Prot- 
 estant English? Religion had its controlling place 
 with them all and always, but it was a very different 
 type of religion from that of the Spaniards. 
 
 The religion of the English Protestant made 
 him free. There are no Inquisition buildings in the 
 United States. None were ever built by Dutchman 
 or Swede or Englishman. Their religion did not 
 embrace the idea of suppressing free opinion. The 
 small amount of persecution on which so many of our 
 liberal friends ring a hundred changes here in this 
 State, when they scarcely raise their voice against 
 the awful curse of Roman Catholic persecutions, — 
 the little persecution in this State was as a drop to 
 an ocean, compared with that which the Spanish 
 Romanist everywhere forced upon the natives. I 
 suggest that the people who have so much to say 
 against the Puritans for their narrowness, folly, and 
 bigotry in the small amount of persecution of which 
 they were guilty in this country, should turn their 
 attention to the real persecutors of the world, who 
 have cursed by religious hate and torture every land 
 on the face of the earth. (Applause.) Everywhere 
 the English Protestant opened the free school. He 
 built a church, but it was plain and comparatively 
 poor. So humble were these structures that there is 
 scarcely a Protestant church in this country which 
 has survived the period of colonization . The people 
 built homes, and then they built meeting-houses and 
 schools. Everywhere there were schools for the com- 
 mon people. Rome founded choice schools for the 
 aristocrats: she trained some of the people to a very 
 
\ On the Western Continent. 63 
 
 high point of culture, but the large majority of the 
 common people were left in intellectual darkness. 
 
 The English Protestant, instead of transporting 
 the spirit of despotism to these shores, brought with 
 him the idea of government by the people, and that 
 such rule could only be properly exercised in con- 
 nection with the diffusion of general intelligence. 
 It is true that the curse of slavery was tolerated by 
 these Protestant Englishmen, sad to say. But if 
 you balance the slavery of the Romanist Spaniards 
 over against the slavery of Protestant Englishmen, 
 and so leave slavery out of the account, bad as it is, 
 there remains an awful balance against the Roman 
 Catholic religion and the Roman Catholic Spaniard 
 in the lands of Central and South America. (Ap- 
 plause.) 
 
 IV. Thus were the seeds planted. These were 
 the ideas laid down, these were the institutions 
 begun, three centuries ago in this country, some of 
 them longer ago than that. Down under the forms 
 of national and social life these religious ideas began 
 to take root. They have grown with the centuries, 
 and what do they present us as their consequences 
 to-day ? 
 
 1. The Spanish colonies up to this very hour are 
 the theatre of constant bloodv revolution. Where- 
 fore ? Because the people are trying, as they have 
 been trying for three hundred years, to throw off the 
 tyranny whi^h was imposed upon them by the Span- 
 iard. Everywhere, even this very month, the South 
 American and Central American Republics are trem- 
 bling under the convulsions of those struggles for 
 
64 Spanish Romanum and English Protestantism 
 
 liberty which man can never forego, however abject 
 his condition. In Mexico, that magnificent country, 
 sixteen times as large as the State of New York, in 
 the short space of sixty-two years there were fifty- 
 two presidents, one emperor, and one regency, every 
 one of which terminated with violence, with disorder, 
 and with revolution. They know nothing of a stable 
 government. Moreover, just as soon as . liberty gets 
 a foothold, its strenuous and most intense enemy in 
 all those countries is the Roman Catholic hierarchy. 
 They foster and favor revolution and intrigue to 
 create war, expecting to profit in the general con- 
 fusion. To-day the greatest antagonist of the repub- 
 lican government of Mexico is the archbishop of 
 Mexico and his priests. We know that Rome 
 fosters revolution. Tell me why the Pope of Rome 
 alone, of all the rulers in this world, gave his hand to 
 Jefferson Davis when the latter was trj- ing to break 
 up this free republic? He was simply following 
 out their policy everywhere and always. In this 
 presidential year, perhaps because they like to print 
 it, the papers are telling us that the Pope is growing 
 liberal; and a prominent archbishop now in Rome, 
 who wants very much, it is said, to be cardinal, tells 
 us what a large public spirit now controls the Vati- 
 can ; but a thousand years of history tell us to beware 
 of the tiger's paw, however soft (applause), until we 
 know that his claws have been cut off. (Great 
 applause.) 
 
 2. These people, the fruit of Spanish American 
 colonization, are everywhere illiterate. There are 
 not only very few free schools, but those which have 
 
On the Western Continent. 65 
 
 been established have been planted in defiance of 
 the continual opposition of the priests. For in- 
 stance. Chili, with which Ave had a little unpleas- 
 antness not long ago, and which is, except Argentina, 
 perhaps the most prosperous nation in South America, 
 Chili shows us one child in school out of twenty- 
 five of her population. One person in seven only 
 can read; only one person in eight can write. And 
 Chili is, as I say, almost the brightest product of 
 Spanish American civilization to the south of these 
 United States. 
 
 3. The immorality of the peoples in Spanish 
 Roman Catholic countries is universally known. In 
 Chili the legitimate births out of ninety thousand 
 are only sixty-eight thousand, while between twenty- 
 one and twenty-two thousand are illegitimate. In 
 Ecuador seventy-five per cent of the children are 
 born out of wedlock; and Ecuador is the most 
 thoroughly under the control of the priests of any 
 country in South America. What is the reason for 
 this immorality? We are told that there are very 
 few marriages there, for tbe reason that the charge 
 made by the priests is so great that the people in 
 their poverty cannot afford to have the ceremony 
 performed; and j^et, wherever the governments have 
 undertaken to introduce civil marriage so that by 
 law poor people could be married and their children 
 be born in wedlock, the governments have, in every 
 case, been cursed and excommunicated by the repre- 
 sentatives of the Roman Catholic Church. In Mex- 
 ico M. Biart states that " the priests are forcing the 
 poor to live in concubinage by exacting from them 
 
66 Spanish Romanism and EnglisJi Protestantism. 
 
 for the marriage ceremony a sum which the Mexican 
 laborer could not earn in five years, and very recent 
 authorities say that the peon who is married by a 
 priest becomes practically a part of the estate for life 
 of the landlord who lends him the needed sum for 
 marriage by the church. The marriage fees de- 
 manded by the priests in Chili were twenty-five 
 dollars until the government took a hand in it and 
 reduced them to twenty-five cents (laughter), and 
 now the priests refuse to marry the people unless 
 at a price which they cannot afford to pay. So the 
 governments marry them, and the priests curse them. 
 4. Passing from this sad picture of immorality, I 
 look at the poverty of the people. Recollect that 
 in our survey we are sweeping a great territory and 
 looking upon many nations, from the Rio Grande 
 to Cape Horn, and from the Pacific to the Atlantic. 
 You will observe that the people everywhere are 
 lamentably poor. In Mexico, desiring to develop 
 the country, the government some time ago oifered 
 fifty dollars for every immigrant that would come, 
 and promised, in addition, that they would support 
 the immigrants until they secured work (while 
 the United States is almost prepared to offer fifty 
 dollars to every one that will stay away, for a while 
 at least). (Applause.) I ask you why it is that 
 Mexico bids in vain for immigration, while we are 
 perplexed to know what we shall do with the mul- 
 titudes who come here ? Why do not the European 
 Romanists, if they love the pope and the control of 
 the Roman Catholic hierarchy, why do not they go 
 to Mexico, to Central America, to Brazil, and to all 
 
On the Western Continent. 67 
 
 these countries that want them so much? Ah, in 
 their hearts they do not love the Pope: in their 
 hearts they love liberty, they love progress, they 
 love prosperity. (Sensation.) And that is why, 
 thank God, a great many of them are here this after- 
 noon, because they believe in manhood and in God 
 (applause) more than they believe in the priest or 
 the Pope; because they want what the Bible and 
 Protestantism have made here, and what Romanism 
 has never afforded in any nation of the world. And 
 when I see them coming to this country, I stand as 
 their friend and say. Come ; but do not come to make 
 us like those lands of the south, over which the 
 papacy has had such complete control. 
 
 Fifty years ago the Church of Rome in Mexico 
 owned, through charitable grants, three-fifths of the 
 wealth of the city. The income of the Bishop was 
 greater than that of the Queen of England. One- 
 tenth of the product of the country went to the 
 clergy. In 1850 the value of church property was 
 estimated at 1300,000,000, one-third the value of the 
 nation. The annual income of the church of the 
 city of Mexico was 120,000,000, while that of the 
 republic was only 118,000,000. This immense 
 wealth, it must be remembered, was wrung from 
 the slender purses of the poor. 
 
 Take the little state of Guanajuato in Mexico, out 
 of whose mines eight hundred millions of dollars in 
 silver have been taken, and the people there are 
 working for forty cents a day. In Ecuador, a man 
 is glad to get six cents a day working as a potter, 
 twelve cents a day working as a hat-maker, and 
 
68 Spanish Romanism and English Protestantism 
 
 twenty-five cents a day working as a silk manufac- 
 turer. Romanism always impoverishes the laborer. 
 The wages in all these countries show how hard it is 
 for a man to live ; and yet a very large proportion of 
 what they earn goes into the hands of the priests, 
 even now, while their poverty grows upon them 
 apace. 
 
 5. Moreover, the papacy is so manifestly unfriendly 
 to the prosperity of the people, that in all these South 
 American states when there is a revolution, when 
 they do rise in favor of free government, the people 
 invariably strike first at the church, as their worst 
 enemy. A priest cannot openly wear his cassock in 
 Mexico. Parochial schools are forbidden in Mexico 
 now, while they are fostered in the United States. 
 Guatemala abolished both monasteries and convents : 
 we help support them. San Salvador elects its own 
 priests: popes and bishops appoint them in Massa- 
 chusetts. Costa Rica and Argentina expel all 
 priests that interfere in common-school education: 
 we put them at the head of our tables at banquets, 
 on our library committees, and often on our school- 
 boards. (Sensation and applause.) Brazil, poor 
 old Brazil, abolished the monasteries in 1870, and 
 well she might, for it is not yet a year since I read 
 in one of the daily papers of this city, a letter from 
 a gentleman who had been travelling in that country, 
 who said Brazil showed us in the Roman Catholic 
 Church the most utterly corrupt institution on the 
 face of the earth. That was current news in one of 
 the papers that we read every morning. So you note, 
 and cannot fail to be impressed with the fact, that 
 
On the Western Continent. 69 
 
 everywhere when freemen rise they know their ty- 
 rants and repudiate them ; and the tyrant which they 
 first strike, from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn, is 
 the Roman Catholic Church. 
 
 6. Turn now to see what is the fruit of English 
 Protestantism on this Western Continent. I do not 
 ask you to be prejudiced in favor of the United 
 States. Everybody I suppose loves his own country 
 best, and is somewhat blind to its faults. But, 
 ladies and gentlemen, no man is so blind but that 
 he can see that for all the purposes of humanity and 
 civilization, the United States of America to-day is 
 worth all the rest of the Western Continent. (Great 
 applause.) What of the stability of our government 
 here, compared with the upheavals there? For a 
 hundred years and more this government has stood, 
 growing to-day in the affections of the people faster 
 than ever before. One mighty Civil War only; and 
 twenty-five years after, as the other day in a Southern 
 State, when a friend of mine presented a company, 
 many of whom had been Confederate soldiers, with 
 the old stars and stripes, men who had but one arm, 
 and lost the other fighting against the flag in '61, 
 raised the remaining arm to swing their hats for a 
 banner which presents to them a better nationality 
 than we ever had before. (Great applause.) To- 
 day, if a foreign squadron should land on our South- 
 ern coast, it would not need a man from the north 
 to drive it off and send it home again. The men of 
 the late confederacy are the men of the nation to-day, 
 and the stability of our government was never so 
 sure as it is this blessed hour. (Great applause.) 
 
70 Spanish Romanism and English Protestantism 
 
 What of the schools of learning among the people, 
 what of the average intelligence, what of the average 
 morality of the United States of North America? 
 When such men as De Tocqueville and Bryce come 
 here to study our institutions and our people, men 
 who take the broadest possible sweep in their survey 
 of the nation, they unhesitatingly pronounce the 
 people of this country the happiest, the best governed, 
 the most truly and intelligently religious, and the 
 most moral on the face of the earth ; and in so saying, 
 they have the statistics of the archives of all govern- 
 ments to support them. The wealth and progress of 
 the country exhilarates us at every turn. We protest, 
 and well we may, against the poverty of the poor 
 that is brought about in any case by the avarice of 
 the rich ; but the vile " sweat-shops " of New York 
 and Boston, against whose low wages we are so 
 indignant, furnish about four times the wages that 
 are paid to the laborer in the Spanish Romanist 
 countries, south of the Rio Grande. The people 
 in this country who are the worst off are better off 
 than the common people of those countries. They 
 have no middle class there. They have a few aristo- 
 crats and a horde of peons. Here, about all in the 
 country that is good for anj^thing is the middle class. 
 (Applause.) A little would-be aristocracy, certainly 
 not the cream of the nation, and a class from Euro- 
 pean Romanist countries, whom I don't know as we 
 can ever lift up ; but, God helping us, we will try, 
 until the last and lowest man in America is a man. 
 (Applause.) I know we have a hard task. I know 
 there are people dumped in here from Europe who 
 
On the Western Continent. 71 
 
 are very vile, but in the face of this Christian audi- 
 ence, I say, though we may be slow in doing it, we 
 will try until the Pole and the Bohemian and the 
 Austrian and the Hungarian and the Italian, all 
 degraded by ecclesiastical tyranny are all lifted up and 
 ennobled. God help us, it is worth working for ! 
 (Great applause.) 
 
 V. A few words to draw the suitable inference 
 from this survey, and I have done. We have looked 
 upon the policy and principles, the seed-sowing and 
 the harvest of Romanism and Protestantism on this 
 Western Continent. Romanism tried its experiment 
 with supreme external advantages for success. The 
 mightiest nations of Europe at the time behind it, the 
 grandest areas in the world before it, and people to 
 civilize if they would civilize them ; to Christianize 
 if they would Christianize them. The supreme 
 experiment of Rome on the Western Continent has 
 ended in supreme failure. (Applause.) Its supreme 
 opportunity has terminated in supreme overthrow. 
 The papacy can never point with pride to its three 
 hundred years of influence on Mexico, Central Amer- 
 ica and the South American states. 
 
 Protestantism also had its opportunity. That op- 
 portunity has not been fully met. Protestantism is 
 not as pure as I would God it were, nor has it done 
 all that we know it might have done ; but this may 
 with truth be said, that the supreme opportunity of 
 Protestantism on this Western Continent has issued, 
 up to date, in the supremest national success that was 
 ever known in the history of the world. (Great 
 applause.) We might have done better: we ought 
 
72 Spanish Romanism and English Protestantism 
 
 to have done better ; but when we marshal the nations 
 from the Yellow Sea to the Atlantic shore, and be- 
 tween the two poles ; when we order them and draw 
 them up in line, the easy headship of all the nations 
 is in this republic. (Applause.) 
 
 And now what are we asked to do? We are asked 
 to forget the lessons of history, to forget the experi- 
 ment of Romanism on this continent, and to give her 
 the command of this republic. After she has done 
 what she has done in Mexico, in Central America and 
 South America, we are asked to let her do it here. 
 To forget history, to forget God, to forget experience, 
 and to let the Pope rule in these United States. 
 What is our duty when such a demand is made ? It 
 is our duty to read the lesson of the past, to survey 
 the face of the present, and to prophesy the future, 
 and to hold fast what our fathers gave us, for God 
 and for the race. If we sink in the general ruin, 
 who will rise in this continent of the west to give 
 hope to liberty and the world? Now is the hour, 
 now is the time and the place for us to repudiate the 
 claims of a system of religion that has darkened and 
 blighted so large a portion of the western world. 
 (Great applause.) 
 
 This Easter Sabbath morning, at a quarter-past ten 
 o'clock, I heard the fire-alarm sounding. My little 
 boy came rushing up to the study, and said, " Papa, 
 the fire is right here on Prescott Street." From my 
 window I looked out. A great building was send- 
 ing forth from its roof vast clouds of smoke and 
 columns of fire. I looked upon it for an anxious 
 moment, then bethought me of the brave men in this 
 
On the Western Continent. 73 
 
 city who are always ready to meet emergencies like 
 this. They had heard the alarm before me. And ere 
 I thought of them, they were at the place of danger. 
 It was but a few moments before I saw a stream flash- 
 ing like silver, arching here and there through the 
 smoke from the top of a neighboring building, — a 
 jet of water from the steam fire-engine. Then up 
 went a ladder on this side, up went one on that, and 
 through the smoke, and almost into the fire, climbed 
 firemen higher and higher. They were on the roof ; 
 they had dragged up after them their hose, and ad- 
 vanced to, apparently into, the fire. Shrouded in 
 smoke, as the wind changed, they worked. I thought 
 they would suffocate. A hole was cut in the roof ; 
 then, so great was the outburst of the ingulfing 
 smoke and fire, that I thought they must have perished, 
 and that the roof had fallen in ; but as the wind 
 blew the smoke aside, ten minutes after, there they 
 were, pygmies in size, giants in daring, their coats 
 shining wet, and the streams of water pouring at 
 short range into the fiery gulf below and around 
 them. As I gazed, my throat was choked, my eyes 
 ran over with tears. And I thought, " Will these 
 brave men dare all that to save a little property ? 
 Will they do that for their credit as firemen, just to 
 save that factory ? " 
 
 And then I thought again of my country. I 
 thought of the dark clouds of smoke which burst out 
 here and there, revealing to us dangerous fires which 
 smoulder and blaze within. I thought how here and 
 there an alarm-bell rings, and a few who love their 
 country hasten to the rescue. And I said to myself, 
 
74 Spanish Ro7nanism and English Protestantism. 
 
 Well may men advance into the very fire of persecu- 
 tion ; well may they be shrouded in the smoke of 
 malicious epithet and slander ; well may they be lost 
 to human praise or vision — ay, may even sink into 
 the fiery gulf below, which Jesuitic hate prepares, 
 rather than let this republic perish (applause) ; and 
 there alone, with my eyes on heroes in action^ my 
 thoughts on time and eternity, while the preachers 
 were telling in their Easter sermons of the risen 
 Christ, my convictions had a new birth, and I vowed 
 again to God that, with truth to pour on these papal 
 pretensions, I would climb to the place of peril, and 
 face the fire, that I might help to save my country 
 or, if needs be, perish in the struggle. (Loud and 
 long-continued applause.) 
 
DESPOTISM IN CHURCH AND STATE 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF ROMANISM. 
 
 The words of our Lord in the Gospel according 
 to St. Mark, the tenth chapter, beginning at the 
 thirty-fifth verse : — 
 
 "And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, 
 come unto him, saying. Master, we would that thou 
 shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall desire. 
 
 " And he said unto them. What would ye that I 
 should do for you ? 
 
 " They said unto him. Grant unto us that we may 
 sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left 
 hand, in thy glory. 
 
 " But Jesus said unto them, Ye know not what ye 
 ask : can ye drink of the cup that I drink of ? and 
 be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized 
 with? 
 
 "And they said unto him. We can. And Jesus 
 said unto them, Ye shall indeed drink of the cup 
 that I drink of; and with the baptism that I am 
 baptized withal shall ye be baptized : 
 
 " But to sit on my right hand and on my left hand 
 is not mine to give ; but it shall be given to them for 
 whom it is prepared. 
 
 75 
 
76 Despotism in Church and State. 
 
 "And when the ten heard it, they began to be 
 much displeased with James and John. 
 
 " But Jesus called them to him, and saith unto 
 them, Ye knoAV that they which are accounted to 
 rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them ; 
 and their great ones exercise authority upon them. 
 
 '' But so shall it not be among you : but whoso- 
 ever will be great among you, shall be your minister : 
 
 " And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall- 
 be servant of all. For even the Son of man came 
 not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to 
 give his life a ransom for many." 
 
 1. This is my text. On last Sabbath, reviewing 
 a period of history measured by centuries, surveying 
 the entire western hemisphere, North, Central, and 
 South America, observing the nations that had been 
 founded respectively by the Romanist Spaniard, and 
 by the Protestant Englishman, we were forced to the 
 conclusion that the work of the latter in the period 
 of colonization and development had given us by 
 far the better type of nationality. And when we 
 farther inquired, history presented us the picture of 
 a score of down-trodden and degraded nations on 
 this continent, and only one single nation and part 
 of Canada showing the highest characteristics of 
 national life. We saw that from Mexico to Cape 
 Horn, all the Romanist peoples whose governments 
 the Spaniard created were characterized by lack of 
 progress, by poverty, by illiteracy, by immorality, 
 and by incessant change and revolution in their civil 
 state. And we found that in these respects the 
 United States of America, which are certainly the 
 
Despotism in Church and State, 77 
 
 fruit of English, Dutch, and Swedish Protestantism, 
 displayed the highest degree of literacy, morality, 
 piety, wealth, progress, and stability, of any nation 
 on the Western Continent, and, perhaps, of any 
 nation in the world. 
 
 2. Having taken this survey, and come to this 
 conclusion, it was a gratification to me, only a day 
 or two since, to find that our conclusions were 
 indorsed by a famous Roman Catholic authority, — 
 a writer known by the assumed name of Pomponio 
 Leto, who was, if not a member of the Vatican 
 Council, thoroughly informed of all its proceedings, 
 and who wrote the letters which constitute the book 
 which I hold in my hand, during the Vatican Council 
 in 1870. In February of that year he wrote as fol- 
 lows concerning the work of Romanism through the 
 Spanish, in America. He is pleading for attention 
 on the part of the Vatican Council to the great 
 matters and concerns of national life, and he says, — 
 
 " What part did the Catholicism of Torquemada " 
 (you will remember him as the chief inquisitor of 
 Spain) "and of Philip II. take in the grand dis- 
 covery and colonization of those new countries which 
 are the glory of the last two centuries ? Who has 
 profited by the work of Christopher Columbus and 
 of Amerigo Vespucci? What has Catholicism, fol- 
 lowing, though more quietly, in the same track of 
 discovery, effected in North America, — a country 
 entirely free, in which all religions emulate one 
 another? And, again, in Australia ? These two parts 
 of the world came into being, as it were, in a moment, 
 through the diffusion and expansion of the European, 
 
78 Despotism in Church and State. 
 
 and, therefore, Christian race ; and what part in the 
 miracle can be attributed to Catholicism ? Has not 
 the Catholic Church, on the contrary, reason for sad 
 meditation on the spectacle presented by Mexico, and 
 the other unhappy republics of the South, which are 
 entirely under her sway ? Here one would think are 
 plenty of subjects well-deserving the whole attention 
 of the Catholic hierarchy assembled in Rome ; for 
 such facts may be more or less appreciated, may be 
 understood in one sense or another, and attributed to 
 this or that cause ; but their existence cannot be 
 denied, and, therefore, they ought to be considered." 
 
 He makes further statements, still stronger, of the 
 same import, and closes his letter with these words : 
 " It is a true picture of the state of things prevail- 
 ing at the present day in all communities governed 
 by the Ultra-Catholic rSgime<, though, of course, 
 varying in different countries according to their re- 
 spective conditions. We find in them many churches, 
 but few schools ; more devotion than virtue ; more 
 passion than judgment ; general intolerance, and 
 scanty prosperity, with fluctuations of submission 
 and rebellion. They are characterized everywhere 
 by a craving for authority, — whether in a convent 
 or a sect, — but without any appreciation of the real 
 nature of authority, which is 'alternately adored with 
 servility and subjected to outrage." 
 
 In truth none can differ from these conclusions, save 
 they who dispute history. But now as we turn from 
 the picture of facts to the principles underlying 
 those facts, there remains to us a new course of 
 observation and reasoning. 
 
Despotism in Church and State. 79 
 
 3. Two ideas prevail in government, the first selfish 
 and despotic, the second generous and free. The first 
 was illustrated in the disposition and request of 
 those disciples of our Lord who aspired to prominence 
 without regard to fitness, and who desired to control 
 without reference to service. Our Lord says to 
 them. This is the general way of the world, but this 
 is not my way. No man can have place in God's 
 kingdom unless he is fit for it, and his fitness for it 
 lies in his power of service. Therefore, if any man 
 among you will be great, let him be the servant of 
 the rest ; and the man that serves most sliall be the 
 prince in the kingdom of God. In other words, in 
 the passage which I read in the Gospel according to 
 St. Mark, Christ condemns wholly the method of des- 
 potic and tyrannical government, and places over 
 against it the idea which only finds its realization in 
 a free republic of equal men co-operating with one 
 another for tlie common good. It is these two prin- 
 ciples that I desire this afternoon with you to review. 
 The principle of a selfish despotism, an absolute 
 monarchy, contrasted with the free constitutional 
 republic, which is its contradictory ; and I trust it 
 can be done in such a way that you will be inter- 
 ested and profited. 
 
 4. You know that there are countries on the face of 
 the earth, and have been for many centuries, the rule 
 of which is totally different from that of our own. 
 These countries we call despotisms, or absolute mon- 
 archies, and they present the antipodes of that kind 
 of government under which we have experienced our 
 advantages and found our progress. Russia and 
 
80 Despotism in Church and State. 
 
 Turkey and Persia, and African tribes and nations 
 to-day are the remnants of such despotisms, which 
 once prevailed over most of the world; while you 
 find such nations as Germany and Italy gradually 
 emerging with a constitutional monarchy which is 
 largely despotic ; England with an aristocracy left, 
 which is a trace of that form of absolutism ; and our 
 own country, with Switzerland and some other repub- 
 lics of the world, endeavoring to work out in free 
 mutual service that idea of government concerning 
 which our Lord spoke in commendation. I wish, 
 therefore, now to contrast these two general ideas of 
 government, and my object in so doing will be very 
 clear before I have done. 
 
 I. What is a despotism, and what are its principles 
 and effects ? For if I show you that it is the purpose 
 and effort of a large body of thoroughly trained and 
 disciplined men to revolutionize our form of govern- 
 ment in this republic, and to give us instead a thor- 
 oughly contradictory form, I really think that you 
 will take a profound interest in the conclusion. 
 What are the principles which underlie a govern- 
 ment like Russia or Persia or Turkey ? 
 
 1. The first of all the things assumed is that 
 the ruler is chosen by Heaven, not by the people : 
 God has given him a divine right to control men. 
 His rights are first and regal : theirs are secondary 
 and servile. The people have, under a despotic 
 form of government, what the ruler grants, and 
 no more. He can take all they have without 
 asking the privilege from any. He commands 
 them, their persons and their property. The des- 
 
Despotism in Church and State. 81 
 
 potic ruler says, " Our kingdom, our people, our 
 state, our rights;" as Louis XIV. said, "I am the 
 state." The despot, and those creatures who are near 
 him, make the laws. These laws the people must 
 obey. Under a despotism the people exist for the 
 ruler, not the ruler for the people. The ruler's 
 money is not the people's money, but the people's 
 money is the ruler's money. The ruler's person is 
 not the property of the people, but the people's per- 
 sons are the property of the ruler. Everything 
 centres in him and around him. Life, liberty, and 
 happiness are at the ruler's mercy. 
 
 2. These are the principles. What do they show 
 when they are wrought out ? What are some of the 
 effects of despotic government in the history of the 
 world? Mark well these effects. First of all you 
 have a royal house embracing all that I have just 
 described. Then you have an aristocracy very rich 
 and powerful, consisting of the few only who are 
 nearest the king. You have in this aristocracy 
 a vast amount of immorality. No aristocracy ever 
 existed on this earth under a despotism but was vile, 
 because thej^ do not recognize the people below them 
 as men ; and the peoples who have enslaved another, 
 have violated almost all the commandments of the 
 Decalogue, just because they take this view of the 
 people whom they enslave, that- they are not entitled 
 to human rights. The aristocrat who debauches the 
 peasant and his family, or takes his property, or 
 destroys his life, does not consider that he has vio- 
 lated the rights of the oppressed party. So you have 
 an immoral aristocracy under a despotism. People 
 
82 Despotism in Church and State. 
 
 are very far separated through these castes, as I have 
 already intimated. The aristocracy live on the 
 people, and out of the people's work, and while they 
 toil not, neither do they spin, yet they have the 
 wealth, the power, and the pleasure. 
 
 The people under a despotism may be oppressed in 
 every way. In their private affairs they are sub- 
 jected to constant police espionage. Every govern- 
 ment that tends to a despotic form may interfere with 
 the business of every man, and no man's house is his 
 castle except under a constitutional government. 
 The people are all heavily taxed. The little which 
 they earn is divided with the government, which 
 gets an undue share, and their burdens are enormous. 
 They are uneducated, and always illiterate. Why ? 
 Because they could not be the creatures of a tyrant 
 if they were educated. Therefore, no despotism 
 ever educates the common people, and never will. 
 For the education of the people makes such a form 
 of government impossible. The people are greatly 
 restricted in their communications and movements. 
 They cannot go where they will. There are thou- 
 sands of Russians who would gladly have fled from 
 Russia within the last five years, only that they were 
 forbidden to go out of the communities in which they 
 lived, and all the power of the army and the police 
 of the empire prevented them from removing from 
 that village or that region. Under a despotism, if 
 there be a press, that press is muzzled. Only three 
 or four days ago we had it stated that in Russia a 
 decree had been issued to the effect that : Any person 
 giving knowledge of the army, or facts concerning it, 
 
Despotism in Clntreh and State. 83 
 
 to anybody outside of Russia, would be liable to 
 serve seven years in solitary confinement in a fortress, 
 and then be sent for the remainder of his life to the 
 mines of Siberia. And George Kennan tells us in his 
 valuable papers and illustrations in the Century mag- 
 azine that it is a common thing for a censor of the 
 press in Russia to blot out column after column, and 
 page after page, from the newspapers, simply because 
 the caprice of the government insists upon suppress- 
 ing facts and truth. 
 
 All tyrannies have great armies. How, do yon 
 say, are those armies recruited ? From the people, 
 though sometimes from a foreign people. How is it 
 possible to recruit the people thus to become their 
 own tyrants ? For the reason, that to be a soldier is 
 not only to live easier than a peasant, but it is to 
 give a chance for the exercise of the natural savagery 
 of the human heart. You find, therefore, these great 
 armies in all despotisms holding down the people, 
 debauching their morals, and trampling on their 
 rights. 
 
 The courts are a mockery of justice, servilely 
 registering the will of the ruler. The prison systems 
 are all of the crudest sort. Scenic displays are used 
 on a vast scale to keep the people quiet so that they 
 shall not think. There is no Sabbath which is used 
 as a holy day under any despotic form of government. 
 Religion is made an engine of the state, and, as I 
 have already intimated, in the person of the ruler is 
 concentrated all the power and control over religion 
 as well as politics. 
 
 Now this is but a feeble portrayal of the actual 
 
84 Despotism in Church and State, 
 
 facts under a despotic government, and yet the little 
 finger of such a tyranny you and I would resent with 
 our hearts' best blood. (Applause.) It is simply in- 
 tolerable to men who have, as have we, a free ances- 
 try and a free country. 
 
 II. On the other hand, let me call your attention 
 to the peculiarities of a free constitutional govern- 
 ment as contrasted with a despotism, of which free 
 constitutional government Christ announced the prin- 
 ciple in the text which I have taken, and of which 
 you and I, fortunately, enjoy the favor and oppor- 
 tunity. What is characteristic of a free constitutional 
 government, a republic or a democracy like our own ? 
 
 1. First, the people, by their representatives gath- 
 ered together, have collected and formulated those 
 maxims and first principles of government which 
 make their constitution. This constitution consists 
 of the broadest general laws, under which they pro- 
 pose to live ; and a constitution is very slowly modi- 
 fied, because, at the beginning, they have put into it 
 their very best intelligence, and under it allow the 
 very largest liberty. For example, in the Constitu- 
 tion of the United States, aside from other general 
 principles of almost equal value, we have the first 
 amendment saying, " Congress shall maka no law re- 
 specting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting 
 the free exercise thereof," — a very broad principle, 
 under which all minor legislation concerning religion 
 lias to be enacted, and to which it must be conformed. 
 All laws which are made in a constitutional republic 
 are of necessity referred to the constitution, and if 
 they are in harmony with it, they can exist ; and if 
 
Despotism in Church and State. 85 
 
 they are contrary to it they cannot, for the law must 
 conform to this primordial constitutional law. There- 
 fore there can be no irresponsible or reckless legisla- 
 tion under a free government. Moreover, all the 
 laws in such a republic are made by the people or by 
 the representatives of the people. They elect the 
 legislators, and empower them, and say what they 
 shall do, and how they shall do it. Their courts, also, 
 are their own creation, and those courts are compelled 
 to judge according to the constitution and the laws. 
 All who rise to positions of high authority in a con- 
 stitutional government rise from the people. They 
 have their place by their election and will. The 
 people put them up, and under the constitution 
 they take them down. Now it is under God, and 
 only under God, have any people this right to 
 govern. All must be done in subordination to His 
 law. For example, the law of God is plainly a 
 law of morality. No people, therefore, have a right to 
 form a constitution which defies the law of moralitj^ 
 or does not demand that consideration for one's fel- 
 low-citizens which the Ten Commandments embody. 
 2. What are some of the effects of a constitutional 
 government? What are some of the consequences 
 that grow out of this system of mutual service? 
 No aristocracy inherits any special privilege, and laws 
 are just and equal because one man is worth as 
 much as another. The common welfare, not the wel- 
 fare of any class, is the purpose of the state ; and 
 if ever a constitutional government forgets that all 
 the people are its care, and legislates for a class 
 against the common welfare, it violates its first prin- 
 
86 Despotism in Church and State. 
 
 ciple. Under a free constitutional governmenl the 
 people are exalted. They are educated because edu- 
 cation is a necessity. If one man has a treasure of 
 knowledge, he recognizes the right of another man to 
 the very same treasure. Therefore, all republics, in 
 order to permanence, attend at once to the education 
 of the masses of the people. No army is necessary, 
 except a very small one to take care, as police, of the 
 worst elements of society. Religion is entirely free 
 to the conscience, and must be, unless there be a reli- 
 gion, or what claims to be a religion, which violates 
 every principle of virtue and righteousness. Under 
 a free constitution all religions have rights. The 
 press is free, within very generous limitations. The 
 people's movements are unrestricted. They come 
 and go as they please. People wonder why it is that 
 we Americans are the greatest travellers in the world. 
 It is because it is nobody's business whither or when 
 we go. (Applause.) We go when we please and 
 where we please. 
 
 The penalties of the law are all administered with 
 reference to the amelioration of the condition of 
 society, and not out of vengeance or hatred for 
 those who have fallen under its ban. Everywhere 
 there is diffused a growing and general prosperity. 
 Prosperity, like the water, seeks a common level ; 
 and the tendency in a free constitutional govern- 
 ment is for the prosperity of the few to become the 
 prosperity of all, so that the vast fortunes which are 
 gathered up by a few in one generation, are gen- 
 erally distributed in one or two more, and the general 
 level of the people is raised. 
 
Despotism in Church and State. 87 
 
 These are a few of the visible results which show 
 the eminent superiority and the remarkable con- 
 trast between despotic and free government. 
 
 Now, my friends, I have generalized enough, and 
 am ready to call your attention to a specific fact. As 
 I have spoken of despotisms and the conditions of 
 people under them, have you not recognized, all of 
 you, precisely the conditions which we found by the 
 study of their history to exist in all the Mexican, 
 Central American, and South American states ? Do 
 you not see by this general survey of the principles 
 underlying all despotisms that a people under this 
 form of tyranny must be in precisely the condition 
 in which we found the Spanish American nations on 
 this continent? And, moreover, in reviewing the 
 characteristics and results of a free constitutional 
 government, do you not see that the natural, neces- 
 sary, and inevitable consequences are precisely such 
 as we have in our own country ? We have here in 
 our land, which is so much more prosperous than all 
 the rest, as we were saying last Sabbath, the results 
 of free constitutional government, as in those lands 
 we have the results of despotic government. And 
 do you- not remember that it became very plain to us 
 last Sabbath that the cause of the different condition 
 of Central and South American peoples from those of 
 the United States of North America lay in Romanism? 
 And now we find that the difference between these 
 states and our own is the outgrowth of despotic prin- 
 ciples. What is your conclusion ? That Romanism 
 and despotism do the very same thing ; that Roman- 
 ism is despotism, always and everywhere. (Loud 
 applause.) 
 
8S Despotis77i in CJmrch and State, 
 
 This is the result of our reasonings, but we do not 
 rely solely on one method of proof. 
 
 III. We propose to show further that Romanism 
 as a government, in theory and in practice, is despotic ; 
 and in order that you may know that I do not speak 
 without careful thought, I beg to give you a valuable 
 quotation to substantiate my position. To-day, turn- 
 ing over tlie leaves of a book, long after my discourse 
 was prepared, I found a compendium of that remark- 
 able and well-known dissertation on '' Protestantism 
 and Catholicism in their relation to the Liberty and 
 Prosperity of Nations," written by the great Professor 
 Laveleye of Lidge, himself a Roman Catholic, or rather 
 a Galilean French Catholic. (I give it in condensed 
 form, certifying to its absolute accuracy.) This dis- 
 tinguished professor, who had studied the histor}^ of 
 all nations, says, contrasting Protestantism and 
 Romanism, " Christianity is favorable to liberty ; 
 Catholicism is its mortal enemy. So its infallible 
 head affirms, and history supports his assertion. At 
 first a democratic republic, the church became aristo- 
 cratical, then a constitutional monarchy. To-day 
 she realizes the ideal of the most absolute despotism 
 conceivable. If civil society seeks to mould herself 
 on the model of religious (papal) society, she must 
 be subjact to a despotic government." . . . 
 
 '' The Reformation, on the other hand, being a re- 
 turn to Christianity, tended to give birth to republi- 
 can and constitutional institutions." I am glad to 
 bring you this strong statement to certify to the 
 broad thought of a prominent Catholic, who told the 
 truth, as so many of them do not and dare not do. 
 
Despotism in Church and State. 89 
 
 Now when I speak of the Papal system as despotic, 
 let me still further explain that I am speaking of it 
 not as a religion in the sense that you use the word 
 religion, for Komanism is not a religion in the sense 
 in which you use the word. Romanism is a govern- 
 ment, a system of government. Every man under its 
 heel knows that, as does every student of its claims. 
 You and I, when we think of religion, think of it as 
 being possible to be lived and taught and enjoyed 
 under any form of constitutional law, but Romanism 
 is a form of control, and of government, not merely 
 of rehgious sentiment, feeling, or life. Therefore, 
 when we speak of it as a despotism, we mean precisely 
 what we mean when we talk of Russia or Persia as a 
 despotism. We mean that it is a form of despotic con- 
 trol, having all the marks of a despotism in the civil 
 state. Now let me call your attention to some of its 
 claims, as it explains itself. I often regret that I have 
 not the time to fully vindicate all my propositions by 
 quotations from Roman Catholic authorities, for I say 
 nothing here on any occasion but what is certified to 
 by the facts in Roman Catholic constitutions, and by 
 Roman Catholic authorities. 1. What are the claims 
 of Romanism as a system? I do not identify the 
 Roman Catholic here this afternoon with the system. 
 He may be a thoroughly good Christian, and is en- 
 titled to the most brotherly treatment from me and 
 from you, whether he is a Christian or no. But when 
 I talk of the Romanist system, I talk of that despotism 
 which tries to crush him, and tries to crush us all. 
 (Applause.) 
 
 What, then, are its claims? It claims absolute 
 
90 Despotism in Qhurch and State. 
 
 supremacy over all nations ; over all rulers, kings, 
 queens and presidents. It claims absolute authority 
 over all legislators and all legislation, and all law and 
 all courts of law, claiming to be the highest and final 
 court. There is no legislature which has a right, ac- 
 cording to Romanism, to legislate in any way con- 
 trary to her will. It claims absolute authority over 
 every individual, whether he be Romanist or Protes- 
 tant. It asserts despotic control of all social relations, 
 claiming to have the sole and only right to create the 
 family or dismember it. 
 
 It claims supreme authority over all the utterances 
 of men, whether those utterances be in books or 
 periodicals, or in the form of vocal speech. It denies 
 absolutely every man's right to say or to print any- 
 thing, excepting what it indorses and what it controls. 
 It denies, further, all right of private opinion and judg- 
 ment, asserting its right to control all opinion, all 
 judgment, all conscience, all feeling and action, 
 however private. All this may be proven from 
 the highest authority, from the Encyclical and the 
 Syllabus of Pope Pius IX. More than I have said, 
 Rome claims. It claims to be as supreme over men 
 as God is, representing Him, and, therefore, having 
 absolute right of control over everything and every- 
 body in this world. To give you proof that this is 
 true, I have here on the table (I brought the book 
 for its moral effect) a book in which the Encyclical 
 and the Syllabus of Pope Pius IX., shortly before he 
 was declared infallible, are given in full. I have 
 looked over this Encyclical and Syllabus, and the 
 numbers which I have on the paper before me are the 
 
Despotum in Church and State. 91 
 
 numbers of the Propositions in the Syllabus, and 
 these are the condensed statement of them. It 
 will take but a few moments to read, and it is of 
 importance that you should know that these are the 
 claims of Romanism as stated by its infallible head 
 and sole authority. 
 
 In his Encyclical, first of all, Pope Pius IX. in- 
 dorses all the popes who went before him. Never 
 did a man do a more risky thing, for if ever earth 
 saw hell turned inside out, it was in the case of the 
 lives and conduct of many of those popes. How- 
 ever, he gave them his indorsement and approval. 
 (Laughter and applause.) He asserts in the Ency- 
 clical his right to rule over peoples, nations, and sov- 
 ereigns ; the right of the church, and the duty of the 
 state, to punish all violators of Romanism; he de- 
 nounces liberty of conscience : declares that civil 
 government has no right to interfere with saints' 
 days (though they may number one hundred and 
 fifty or two hundred, as they do in Italy) ; he declares 
 that the civil power is subordinate to the church ; he 
 curses all secret societies. Outside of faith and morals 
 as well as within that realm, he demands obedience 
 to the Church of Rome : declares that happiness pro- 
 ceeds always and only from the Papacy ; that sover- 
 eigns should submit to the Papac}^ ; and closes his 
 Encyclical with a remarkably pious appeal to Mary 
 as the queen of heaven and the mediatrix between 
 God and men. 
 
 Passing to the Syllabus, these are some of its prop- 
 ositions. I give the numbers so that you may look 
 them up for yourselves. 
 
92 Despotism in Church and State. 
 
 Proposition 15. Free profession of religion is de- 
 nied, and those who affirm the right to it are cursed. 
 (A curse goes with every one of these propositions. 
 And a curse is sure to go also with obedience to all 
 the Papal commands.) 
 
 Proposition 17. In Rome alone is salvation. 
 
 Proposition 18. Protestantism is not true religion. 
 
 Proposition 19. Civil power may not limit the 
 church's claims. (That is, the church can claim any- 
 thing it pleases, and the state has no right to limit 
 its authorit}^) 
 
 Proposition 23. Rome has never exceeded her 
 rights and powers in anything that she has done. 
 (To those who know Roman Catholic history that is 
 an astonishing statement.) 
 
 Proposition 24. Rome has the right to avail herself 
 of physical force (to compel obedience to her com- 
 mands). 
 
 Proposition 26. She has in herself the right to prop- 
 erty, to acquire and possess it, regardless of civil 
 law. 
 
 Proposition 27. Her ministers should control tem- 
 poral affairs. 
 
 Proposition 42. Civil law should not prevail over 
 ecclesiastical law. 
 
 Proposition 47. In schools, Rome should have the 
 control. 
 
 Proposition 52. Governments have no right to de- 
 termine at what age people shall become monks and 
 nuns, or to control their actions as to becoming such. 
 And again — 
 
 Proposition 53. Government has no right to let 
 
Despotism in Church and State, 93 
 
 those monks or nuns break their vows. (That is to 
 say, the poor girls who are buried in convents, this 
 government has no right to help, not if they want to 
 get out ever so much. This is the Papal claim.) 
 
 Proposition 54. Kings and queens are not superior 
 to the church, or exempt from its jurisdiction. 
 
 Proposition 55. Church and state ought to be 
 united. 
 
 Proposition 73. Civil marriage (that is, the kind 
 that you and I have had, all of us that were not mar- 
 ried by a Catholic priest) is not a true marriage. 
 
 Proposition 77. Romanism, excluding all other re- 
 ligions, should be the religion of the state. And 
 again — 
 
 Proposition 78. Freedom of worship is denounced. 
 
 And the Pope says finally, in the 80th and last 
 proposition, that he is not reconciled to progress and 
 civilization as we have it in modern times, and never 
 will be. I am inclined to think that civilization and 
 progress will go on whether he is reconciled or not. 
 (Applause.) 
 
 But now, Dr. Von Dollinger says that all these 
 propositions, the word of the Infallible Pontiff, every 
 Roman Catholic must receive or be guilty of heresy. 
 They are the infallible word of the infallible authority ; 
 and when Dr. Von Dollinger himself, after teaching 
 for forty-seven years in the university of Munich, the 
 man most eminent for learning in the entire Roman 
 Catholic Church, — when he declined to accept these 
 infallible dicta, he was excommunicated, and he him- 
 self says tliat his life was thus put at the mercy of 
 any would-be assassin and fanatic in the Roman 
 
94 Despotism in Church and State. 
 
 Catholic communion. This Avas what excommunica- 
 tion meant to this eminent man. 
 
 Now, further, they extend their commands over 
 everybody and everything. Direct censures are ad- 
 ministered to all men if they resist, and punishments 
 are threatened if they decline to obey. Rome ad- 
 mits no rival, no equal whatever, in any realm, 
 whether in authority, legislation, courts of law, con- 
 science, opinions, property; she tolerates no rival, 
 she admits no counter-claim. 
 
 2. All this follows naturally from her assumptions. 
 She claims all her authority directly and immedi- 
 ately from God, precisely as every tyrant and despot 
 has been wont to do in the history of the last twenty 
 centuries, and that no other power on earth has 
 like authority from God, — none whatever. Rome 
 has all this authority, and no one else has it. Conse- 
 quently there is no other authority in the world that 
 is divine as the authority of the Roman Catholic 
 Church is divine. As to the amount of the authority 
 of Rome, the quality and quantity, she herself alone 
 can tell how much of it there is ; for nobody knows 
 how much God gave her, except herself, and there- 
 fore she alone can define the limits of her power. If 
 she says she has authority in any case, nobody can 
 contradict it, because she knows from divine inspira- 
 tion. Such is her theory. All this applies to all 
 men, to all governments, to all courts, to all legis- 
 latures, to all peoples. The Papal government is 
 wholly irresponsible to anybody : I repeat, the Pope 
 of Rome is wholly irresponsible to anybody. The 
 people cannot correct the church if they think it 
 
Despotism in Church and State, 95 
 
 goes wrong, because, first, it never can go wrong, 
 and second, if it does, it is none of the people's 
 business. 
 
 3. The method of Romanism agrees with its theory, 
 for it proceeds to carry out the same effectually in 
 action. The Pope is the centre of all, an absolute 
 ruler. Dr. Dollinger says in his Declarations and 
 Letters which I have here in hand, from which 
 I would be very glad to read freely, that the 
 Pope has absolute authority over all governments, 
 a dominion which extends over them in secular 
 and political matters. He says on page 35 of his 
 Letters, that the Pope's testimony concerning him- 
 self is final. That is, whatever he says about himself 
 you have to believe under pain of heresy. Hither- 
 to the Catholic has said, " I believe this or that doc- 
 trine on the testimony of the whole church of all 
 times, because she has the promise that she shall 
 exist forever, and always remain in possession of the 
 truth." But henceforth the Catholic will have to 
 say, " I believe because the Pope, who has been 
 declared infallible, commands it to be taught and 
 believed." Further, he says that the reason why he 
 is excommunicated and cursed himself, is because 
 he "will not certify his belief in the omnipotence 
 and infallibility of the Pope." And finally he de- 
 clares that included in the infallibility of the Pope is 
 the " whole fulness of power over the whole church, 
 as well as over every individual layman, — a power 
 which is at the same time to be truly episcopal, 
 and again specifically Papal ; which is to include in 
 itself all that affects faith, morals, duties of life, and 
 
96 Despotism in Clmreh and State, 
 
 discipline, and which can, without any mediation 
 whatever, seize and punish, bid and forbid every one, 
 the monarch as well as the laboring man." The 
 Pope is the despot of all. 
 
 You ask how is the Pope made ? He is chosen 
 by the college of cardinals, of whom there are sev- 
 enty, nearly all Italians. Who makes the cardinals ? 
 The Pope. Who makes the Pope ? The cardinals. 
 A close corporation, as you see. (Applause.) Who 
 appoints the bishops? All the bishops are made by 
 the Pope, and although the priests of a diocese have 
 the privilege of nominating three, it happens that 
 the Pope has the right to make anybody bishop whom 
 he pleases, whether nominated or not, as he did in 
 Brooklyn the other day. Moreover, the bishops make 
 and appoint the priests, and place them in full con- 
 trol in their respective parishes. Every priest is 
 completely at the mercy of the bishop, and the people 
 at the mercy of the priest. For the people are 
 enjoined to obey the priests as if the priests were God 
 Himself, under threat of direst penalty here and 
 hereafter. They are absolutely at the mercy of the 
 priests. The people cannot select their priests, 
 they cannot appoint their priests, they cannot send 
 away their priests. It is all in the hands of the 
 bishop ; and the only thing which seems left to the 
 people is obedience. 
 
 Priests and ecclesiastics are declared amenable to 
 no earthly authority except the Pope. There is a 
 constant protest on the part of Roman Catholic 
 authorities against having priests tried by any 
 except an ecclesiastical court. And this absolute 
 
Despotism i7i Chui'ch and State. 97 
 
 tyranny is of divine right, whatever the character 
 of any or all of the popes or priests who exercise 
 it, from the earliest to the present. Resistance 
 is rebellion ; and I affirm to 3^ou solemnly, here 
 and now, from my long and careful researches, that 
 there is no crime which Romanism regards with so 
 much displeasure as disobedience to the priests, the 
 bishops, and the Pope. No crime against morality 
 can be compared to it in enormity, either in their 
 estimation or in their displeasure and vengeance. 
 
 But going beyond all other despotisms that ever 
 existed in the historj^ of mankind, Romanism follows 
 the unfortunate object of its wrath into the world to 
 come, and there confines him at the pleasure of its 
 priests in penal fires, or liberates him at the will of 
 the priests, through gifts of money and masses, so 
 holding in chains the unfortunate humanity over 
 which it claims dominance, even in eternity. 
 
 In kind its effects are identical with, and in meas- 
 ure far in excess of, the Avorst tyranny that ever 
 existed on the face of the earth. It is rich : the peo- 
 ple are impoverished. It is debauched : the people 
 are degraded morally. It favors classes, and every- 
 where prostrates the masses. It exercises espionage 
 in the confessional over every home and every 
 family. It destroys liberty and prosperity, — let 
 nations and centuries be the witnesses. It creates 
 superstition and infidelity, and destroys the con- 
 science over which it claims control. 
 
 Need I say, then, as I close, that in the Papacy is 
 an antagonist to free constitutional government of 
 the strongest and most hostile character ? Can you 
 
98 Despotism in CJiurch and State. 
 
 see how the government of these United States can 
 ever agree with a system like this ? Shall we suc- 
 cumb to it ? Shall we yield to its claims ? Shall we 
 permit its control in all these departments where it 
 makes such imperious demands ? Is there not an 
 emergency upon us, every one, at this hour, when its 
 chief ecclesiastics declare that they intend to make it 
 dominant in America ? Is not this an hour for con- 
 sideration, for stud}^, for reflection, and for nourishing 
 our souls in strength to resist its impudent claims ? 
 
 There is room in this country under our free con- 
 stitution for every nationality, for every race, for 
 every color of men that will keep the law. There is 
 room for every form of religion in the United States 
 of America which does not antagonize the govern- 
 ment. But there is no room within the limits of 
 our territory or under our constitution for any form 
 of despotism. (Applause, renewed and prolonged.) 
 
ROME'S DESPOTIC INTOLERANCE OF 
 FREE OPINION. 
 
 My present discourse is a continuation of that of last 
 Sabbath, and needs no other text than that in which 
 Christ so plainly showed the difference between the 
 absolute despotism which lords it over men to their 
 hurt, and that co-operative association of men in free 
 constitutional government, which is so highly benefi- 
 cial and so much to their welfare. You will re- 
 member that on last Sabbath, after showing what are 
 the principles underlying despotic forms of govern- 
 ment, we contrasted their effect upon those nations in 
 which they prevailed with that of free institutions, 
 and made it plain that these principles were destruc- 
 tive of the common welfare. Then having found 
 that those lands in which Romanism is dominant 
 show all those marks of prostration which are the in- 
 variable results of despotic control, we concluded that 
 this church was a system of governmental despotism, 
 and showed that in its methods, in its principles, and 
 in its results, Rome was nothing less than a genuinely 
 despotic power. 
 
 You will remember also that in the course of this 
 argument, it was made plain that the intellectual life 
 of the people was especially under the iron hand of 
 
 99 
 
100 Homers Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion. 
 
 despotism, that the education of the common people 
 was never a part of the policy of a tyrannical govern- 
 ment, and that in no land on the face of the earth, 
 where her power has been controlling, has Rome ever 
 educated the common people. On the present occa- 
 sion I wish to pursue still further and more at large 
 this subject of the domination and control of Romanism 
 over the intellectual powers, and to show that despotic 
 intolerance of free opinion, with repression of free 
 expression of such opinion, is a part of her policy. 
 
 We have recently said a good deal in regard to the 
 Spanish-American countries of the western world. 
 Permit me to read you a remarkable utterance con- 
 cerning those countries, in support of the principles 
 which I have just recited. " In New Spain " (that is 
 Mexico, Central and South America) " the tribunals 
 of the Inquisition, which held their sessions at Mexico, 
 Lima, and Carthagena, spent most of their energies in 
 examining and anathematizing books. No books, 
 wherever produced or in whatever language, were 
 permitted to go into circulation till they had been ex- 
 amined by the commissioners of the Holy Office. 
 The crime of selling a forbidden book incurred for the 
 first offence prohibition to the seller to deal in books 
 for two years, banishment from the place where the 
 business had been carried on, and a fine of one hun- 
 dred ducats. A repetition of the offence brought a 
 heavier punishment. As the fines went into the cof- 
 fers of the Inquisition, there was a strong temptation 
 to find in the books examined heresy, immodesty, or 
 disrespect of the government. No one was at liberty 
 to use a catalogue of books which he received from 
 
Mome^s Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion. lOl 
 
 abroad till he had sent it to the Holy Office, which 
 was not bound to restore it. Private individuals were 
 liable to domiciliary visits from the commissioners of 
 the Inquisition, in search of prohibited books, at any 
 hour of the day or night. Permissions to read con- 
 demned books were most generally given to priests 
 and monks, but this liberty did not extend to all 
 books. The Spanish Index expurgatorius might vie 
 in comprehensiveness with the Roman : in 1790 it 
 contained no less than five thousand four hundred 
 and twenty authors. Is it any wonder that a people 
 whose intellect was thus stunted and repressed has, 
 even to our time, shown a deplorable incapacity for 
 self-government?" (Lindsay's "Rome in Canada," 
 p. 344.) This will account in large part for the abject 
 condition of those states which we have described 
 quite recently. 
 
 But further than this, the doctrine of the control 
 of the church over the mind is carried to such an ex- 
 traordinary extent that the Jesuits have invented a 
 theory that it is necessary, in order to show reverence 
 for the church, to sacrifice the intellectual powers. 
 I have here Dr. Bollinger's statement ("Declarations 
 and Letters," p. 98) in his discussion of the council of 
 1870. " When the Jesuits formed the plan of having 
 the papal absolutism raised to an article of faith in 
 Church and State, in doctrine and adminstration " 
 (and by papal absolutism he means the doctrine of 
 infallibility), " they invented, as is well known, the 
 so-called saerificio delV intelletto, and assured their 
 adherents and disciples, nay actually convinced many, 
 and among them even bishops, that the most beautiful 
 
102 Rome's Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion. 
 
 homage due to God, and the noblest Christian heroism, 
 consists in a man's renouncing his own mental judg- 
 ment, his self-acquired knowledge, and self-gained 
 power of discernment, and in throwing himself in 
 blind faith into the arms of the infallible ' magis- 
 terium ' as the only sure source of religious knowl- 
 edge. In the eyes of countless numbers this Order 
 has, it is true, to a great extent succeeded in raising 
 mental sloth to the dignity of a religious meritorious 
 sacrifice, and sometimes in moving even men, who 
 by their general education would certainly have been 
 well capable of instituting such an historical investi- 
 gation, to a renunciation of it." In other words, it is 
 almost an article of faith in the Roman Catholic 
 Church that the independent use of the mind accord- 
 ing to its own laws is a demerit, and that the sacrifice 
 of your reasoning powers is an act of goodness and 
 piety toward God. 
 
 With such a theory before us, stated in such em- 
 phatic and impressive language, let us proceed to 
 consider the 
 
 I. General principles coNCERNiNa freedom 
 
 OP THOUGHT AND OF EXPRESSION WHICH OUGHT 
 TO GOVERN OUR LIVES. 
 
 1. It is not necessary in America and in the presence 
 of an audience like this to dwell at length on the 
 general doctrine of freedom of thought and freedom 
 of expression. We recognize that the human mind 
 was made to see and to know truth and the God 
 of truth, and while the mind's activities are along 
 certain lines known as the laws of thought, the whole 
 universe is open to its inquiries. The knowledge of 
 
Rome's Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion. 103 
 
 truth comes through observation, research, compari- 
 son, through reason, and divine revelation, and in all 
 these directions the mind must, and of right ought to 
 be, entirely free to pursue its inquiries subject only to 
 the truth. For gaining this truth the human mind 
 may well put forth its utmost efforts, nor does it ever 
 attain its highest excellence save in the ardent pur- 
 suit thereof. The truth may relate to physics, as in 
 the case of Galileo who discovered that the earth 
 moved round the sun rather than that the sun moved 
 round the earth : it may relate to government, as in 
 the case of the fathers of our country whose faith 
 was that a government of the people, for the people, 
 and by the people, was better than the government of 
 a king : it may relate to religion, as when in the time 
 of our Lord the full perfection of Judaism came forth 
 in the better faith of Christianity. But whatever be 
 the subject of thought, the mind has a right, God- 
 given, to think; and I may say where it has a right, 
 it also has a profound obligation. For they have not 
 understood religion at all who suppose that it is to 
 suppress the activity of the human mind : it is rather 
 to enlarge and direct it. 
 
 2. In all pursuits where the mind is moving freely, 
 there comes interchange with other minds. Free 
 expression is just as natural as free thought. So 
 conversation and all verbal utterance, printing and 
 writing, and all forms of books and periodicals, liter- 
 ature as well as thought, speech as well as ideas, 
 ought to be absolutely free. I say that it ought to 
 be free when in the pursuit of truth. There is a 
 kind of literature that undoubtedly ought to be sup- 
 
104 Rome's Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion. 
 
 pressed, whicli merely panders to passion and does 
 not intend to exhibit truth. There is a sort of speech 
 which is contrary to good morals, and so is contrary 
 to good law, but it is not the speech of men who are 
 searching after truth and endeavoring to elucidate it. 
 3. The result of the suppression of free speech 
 and free opinion is always hypocrisy. Let a man 
 feel that he dare not say what he thinks, because 
 priests and ecclesiastics object, and he will be likely 
 to become a hypocrite in matters of religion. When 
 a man is forbidden to think and speak in matters of 
 religion, he is almost sure to repudiate that religion ; 
 and my sympathies are with him when he does it, 
 for I believe the human mind is better free without a 
 religion that represses it, than it is under that religion, 
 however superstitiously devoted to it. If free it will 
 surely seek religion ; if suppressed, it will repudiate 
 the oppressor. But truth will always overthrow 
 error. All it wants is a free field. The reason why 
 prejudice controls so largely, why selfish men try to 
 suppress the thought of others, is because they have 
 not faith in truth. When men have faith in truth, 
 they need not fear error ; for truth is like the light, 
 and error is like the darkness. However deep the 
 pall that is spread by error over the mind, the rising 
 of the sun of truth will drive away those shadows 
 and give brightness instead of blackness. It will 
 broaden, therefore, our views of truth, to let error do 
 its worst, only let the friends of truth have oppor- 
 tunity for its defence. Let error come into the field 
 if it will, and show cause why it should exist. But 
 let us note that, as a matter of fact, nearly every one 
 
Rome's Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion. 105 
 
 who goes forth in this world to tell the truth is met 
 not by truth and by argument, but by repression and 
 denunciation. 
 
 4. Where is the man who has ever risen up with 
 truth which was contrary to the practices of his age and 
 time, who has not been met with indifference, with 
 slander, with denunciation, and with persecution ? 
 Do we not know that the Jewish people persecuted the 
 prophets and stoned them that were sent unto them ? 
 And why was this ? Because, misinterpreting their 
 religion and loving iniquity, they had settled down 
 into superstition and immorality. It has been so in 
 every age and among every people. The prophets of 
 a better day, the men who come telling the truth, 
 always run the ploughshare through old wrongs and 
 hoary abuses, and are met by those who are profiting 
 by such wrongs, with hatred and antagonism, and 
 often with death. How was it in the case of our 
 Lord himself ? Was it because he spoke falsely that 
 men desired to crucify him ? I read only this very 
 day that Count Tolstoi, the distinguished Russian 
 philanthropist and author, because he had spoken in 
 favor of humanity to starving Russians, had been or- 
 dered by the government to remain on his estates, not 
 being permitted to go among the people or to speak the 
 truth about the famine. Why ? Had he not spoken 
 the truth? Ought not the famine-stricken peasan- 
 try of Russia to have a voice ? Ought not some one 
 to speak for them ? But the truth is this : if the world 
 knows the tyranny of the Russian czar, the whole world 
 will protest against it, and it does not suit the despots 
 to have Tolstoi tell the truth or go off his estates 
 
106 Rome's Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion. 
 
 endeavoring to improve the condition of the dying 
 people of Russia whom the Government starves. It 
 is the old, old story. Everywhere, in every land, in 
 every clime, at every time, despots, political and ec- 
 clesiastical, rather than have free thought and free 
 expression of the truth, will repress and destroy and 
 murder if they can, those that see and tell the truth. 
 
 II. Following this wicked principle, Rome has 
 always undertaken to suppress those who did not 
 think and speak as they were told to think and 
 speak by pope and priests. Now the theory^ practice^ 
 and policy of Rome is, as I have already said, to 
 suppress free thought and free expression. This 
 is not merely their course in the past, but it is just 
 as true in the present. I hold in my hand an utter- 
 ance of the Roman Catholic Review, a leading 
 paper in the city of New York, very recently made. 
 It says (the date is the 5th of September, 1891, and 
 this is editorial and therefore official), " Members 
 of the Catholic Church cannot consistently judge 
 for themselves, either in faith, in morals, or in eccle- 
 siastical arrangements. If a man persists in judg- 
 ing for himself, and following his own inclination 
 in opposition to the judgment of the Church, he is 
 not a loyal Catholic." That is the doctrine of Rome 
 in America in 1891 and 1892. 
 
 1. The theory of Rome which represses free 
 thought and free speech is that they have all the 
 truth. If any man says, I have truth, and it is not 
 something which the Roman Catholic Church has, it 
 is false, and because false should be suppressed. No 
 matter whether it is Galileo saying that he has found 
 
Rome's Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion. 107 
 
 out that the earth moves, — or Father McGlynn say- 
 ing that he has found out that public schools are bet- 
 ter than parochial, — or Father Lambert saying that 
 there are laymen who are as competent to judge of 
 truth as bishops. It will interest you to know that 
 Rome does not suppose you Protestants to have the 
 truth at all. Is Protestantism truth ? I heard a 
 man say the other day that Rome held a great many 
 of the doctrines which we hold, but he forgot that 
 Rome does not admit that. She insists that we have 
 not the truth, that all non Romanists are infidels. 
 Let me read from one who is prominent in that com- 
 munion and who has a right to speak. Mgr. Gaume, 
 a great authority in the church in Canada, in a 
 catechism of the syllabus which has the approbation of 
 the bishops and of the pope, defines modern Liberal- 
 ism as a sect which pretends to conciliate the modern 
 spirit with the spirit of the church. " Having asked 
 what are the special points on which Liberalism asks 
 this conciliation he replies : ' liberty of conscience ; 
 liberty of worship ; liberty of the press ; the seculari- 
 zation of politics.' To the next question comes the 
 reply : the Church can never accept such concil- 
 iation because 'in sanctioning liberty of conscience 
 and equality of worship, the Church would lose her 
 reason for existence, since it is apparent to the whole 
 world that there is only one true religion.' " That 
 is to say, they cannot tolerate any conscience or any 
 other authority than their own. "'Heresy,' says 
 Father Giovanni Perrone, Professor of Theology at 
 Rome, ' being a crime against the State, ought to be 
 proceeded against by the civil power and the Inquisi- 
 
108 Rome's Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion. 
 
 tion.' " That is, it has no right to exist. You and 
 I ought to be suppressed in all our religious life by 
 the civil State. 
 
 2. Father Braiin, a Jesuit priest in Canada, in a 
 work highly approved by Canadian bishops, says, — 
 
 " It is customary to regard Protestantism as a reli- 
 gion which has rights. This is an error. Protestant- 
 ism is not a religion : Protestantism has not a single 
 right. It is a rebellion in triumph ; it is an error 
 which flatters human nature. Error can have no 
 rights : rebellion can have no rights," etc. 
 
 The Pope is declared, by the bishops of Quebec, to 
 be the supreme legislator, that is to say over all 
 legislators, he determines what is right, and if they 
 permit liberty of worship and he denies it, why they 
 are wrong and he is right. Moreover, I find the as- 
 tonishing statement made by a prominent Roman 
 Catholic paper in the city of Rome, that the Pope is 
 the supreme judge, the chief justice in all judicial 
 affairs. Let me read precisely the statement which 
 they make. The Civilta of March 18th, 1871, says, 
 " The Pope is the chief justice of the Civil Law. 
 In him the two powers, the spiritual and temporal, 
 meet together as in their head ; for he is the vicar of 
 Christ, whc is not only Eternal Priest, but also King 
 of kings and Lord of lords : " and a little farther 
 on : " The Pope, by virtue of his high dignity, is at 
 the head of both powers." — that is, both legislative 
 and judicial. He is the supreme court, and therefore 
 what he says is judicially final. Now, those who do 
 not submit to this ecclesiastical court are subjects of 
 excommunication ; for I have here, and might read, 
 
Rome 8 Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion. 109 
 
 the distinct statement of the bishops of Canada, that 
 if a layman cites an ecclesiastic before any civil 
 court that layman is subject to excommunication. 
 Why? Because those ecclesiastical courts have 
 supreme rights, and therefore the civil courts have no 
 rights over ecclesiastics to hear or judge causes. 
 
 When this supreme authority acts in matters of 
 opinion or expression it must be obeyed. For ex- 
 ample, as to the Index which proscribes books as not 
 being proper to be read on account of opinions con- 
 demned by the papacy : the papal claim is, that if a 
 book is put on the Index, not only has no Romanist 
 a right to read it, but . no Protestant has a right to 
 read it. That is to say, if there are books in our 
 library which are on the Index (and a great many 
 of them are) you as Protestants have no right to 
 read those books because you are forbidden by the 
 Pope of Rome. That is the theory of the Church, 
 and they cannot hold any other theory, inasmuch as 
 they assume that they have all truth and we have 
 none but what they indorse. 
 
 3. When it comes to the matter of tolerance or 
 intolerance, I must give you the benefit of their exact 
 statements. I find that in relation to Protestantism 
 statements are made like the following. The Abbe 
 Paquet, who was Professor in the University of Laval 
 in Canada, says, " To say that it is possible to find 
 salvation in different religions, whether they be called 
 Catholic, Greek schismatic, Lutheran, or Calvinistic, 
 this is religious or theological toleration." In the 
 mouth of an individual, this doctrine, the students are 
 told, is blasphemous and absurd. Ou the lips of a. 
 
110 Homes Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion. 
 
 sovereign or the administrators of a government, it is 
 an error and an impiety. Everywhere and at all 
 times the principle of religious toleration is to be a 
 subject of ecclesiastical censure. 
 
 In "Plain Talk about the Protestantism of To- 
 day," a Catholic book published in Boston, we find 
 expressions like these : " The freedom of thinking is 
 simply nonsense. . . . Freedom of thought is the 
 soul of Protestantism. ... It is the same with lib- 
 erty of conscience. . . . The Catholic Church alone, 
 in the midst of so many different sects, avers a pos- 
 session of absolute truth, out of which there cannot 
 be true Christianity: she alone has a right to be, she 
 alone must be, intolerant. She alone will and must 
 say, as she has said through all ages in her councils, 
 " If any one saith or believeth contrary to what I teach, 
 
 which is truth, LET HIM BE ANATHEMA ! " 
 
 I might read to you for an hour the authoritative 
 statements of Rome to the effect that you have no 
 right to think, and have no right to be a Protestant, 
 and have no right to hold any of the forms of religion 
 or truth that you hold, unless you get that right 
 through the sanction of the Pope. 
 
 III. But now comes the question as to what 
 Rome would do in this country if she had the oppor- 
 tunity. If we were simply discussing a Romanism 
 that had ceased to exist, if we were bringing to your 
 attention ideas that were old and long since outworn, 
 then our time might be better employed. But if 
 Romanism to-day holds precisely the position she 
 has always held; if she would, provided she had 
 the power in this country, do precisely as she has 
 
Rome's Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion. Ill 
 
 always done, and as she now claims the right to do ; 
 if the United States would be Mexicanized provided 
 Romanism had the power to do it ; if we should be- 
 come like Spain and Central America provided Rome 
 had control, — then there is certainly reason enough 
 why we should consider and remonstrate. This I 
 believe to be the fact ; and I bring you certain very 
 recent cases to show that Roman Catholicism is in- 
 tolerant to-day in these United States, both of free 
 thought and free expression. 
 
 1. The first case that I will cite is that of the 
 learned Dr. Von Dollinger, of Bavaria, who died 
 January 10, 1890. He was born in 1799, was or- 
 dained a priest in 1822, was made a professor of 
 church history and theology shortly after, and for 
 the space of nearly seventy years was the leading 
 light in the great university at Munich. Though a 
 Catholic, in 1851 he advocated the separation of 
 church and state, and in 1861 advised the Pope to 
 abandon the temporal power. When the attempt 
 was made to create the doctrine of papal infallibility 
 in 1869, Von Dollinger remonstrated against it. The 
 final result of his remonstrances was, that he was 
 excommunicated, and that he died outside of the 
 Roman Catholic Church, being one of the founders of 
 what was called the Old Catholic Church in Ger- 
 many, a return to the primitive Christianity. From 
 his " Declarations and Letters " we readily gather 
 the grounds of his resistance to papal Rome and the 
 grounds on which he was excommunicated. 
 
 All he claimed was the right to think, and to speak 
 according to his thought of the truth. He gives the 
 
112 Rome's Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion, 
 
 following reasons, among hundreds of others, why- 
 papal infallibility should not be made a law and 
 dogma of the Church. He says it was unknown for 
 many centuries ; that Thomas Aquinas introduced it 
 in the thirteenth century and supported it by forger- 
 ies, — and over and over again he affirms that many 
 of the doctrines of Rome rest on forged documents 
 and lying testimonies, and that any fair spirit of 
 historical research will find that their very founda- 
 tions are thoroughly honey-combed by these false- 
 hoods. He declares when Pope Agatho, 680 A.D., 
 claimed infallibility by perverting Luke xxii. 32, 
 there was no acceptance of it. Historically the doc- 
 trine is erroneous, because some of the popes have 
 been heretics, as for instance the pope Honorius, who 
 was condemned for heresy. Intolerance and the 
 suppression of all other faiths since the thirteenth 
 century has been demanded as a duty, and he says it 
 would be lifted to the rank of a dogma hereafter if 
 this dogma of infallibility is affirmed. Infallibility, he 
 says, demands the sanction of the Inquisition by all 
 Roman Catholics. The preponderance of scholarship 
 is all against papal absolutism. The Jesuits are its 
 champions : these champions always rested their case 
 on false testimony. It was opposed by the University 
 of Paris for 400 years. He remonstrates that the 
 Vatican council of 1870 Avas not free ; that the order 
 of business was prepared by the Pope, and that the 
 bishops had no opportunity to freely express them- 
 selves ; and then he goes on to say that he will prove 
 the new decrees contrary to the constitution of th« 
 civil state as well as the Church. 
 
Rome's Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion. 113 
 
 After he had spoken thus his bishop threatened 
 that he jvould exercise his power against him. 
 Whereupon Dollinger says, " If you intend to make 
 use of your Episcopal power over me, I may still, I 
 think, hope that it is the best, the noblest, the most 
 beneficial attribute of that power, and the one the 
 most Christlike, I mean the teaching office, that you 
 will prefer to exercise upon me first. Should I be 
 convinced by evidence and facts, I herewith bind 
 myself to make a public recantation." But the 
 power of teaching was the very last that they 
 thought of exercising against him. The bishop 
 threatens to employ certain severity against the 
 learned and reasonable professor, to which he answers 
 that he cannot be a hypocrite, that he has thoroughly 
 re-examined all his positions, that he is satisfied of 
 their truth, and that the falsity of the doctrine of 
 infallibility is proved to a demonstration. He will 
 not, as many bishops have done, perjure himself and 
 give his sanction to what he knows and they know 
 to be false. 
 
 Then he challenges the bishops to come and debate 
 with him on this matter; and the only conditions that 
 he desires are that the words spoken may all be 
 taken down, and that "a man of scientific training 
 of my own choice may be present at the conference." 
 The archbishop refused to have the question pre- 
 sented in debate, on the ground that it would put the 
 voice of history above the edict of the Church! 
 That is to say, if a man prove the doctrines of Rome 
 absurd from history, it would raise history above the 
 Church ! How strange it seems to a lover of truth, 
 
114 Rome's Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion, 
 
 to have such an objection as this presented to fi-ee 
 debate. The archbishop declares that to reject in- 
 fallibility is heresy, that excommunication will fol- 
 low. Von Dollinger noted the threat, but stood 
 firm, and then the greater excommunication was 
 pronounced against him. Fourteen times they 
 reported that the old hero had surrendered and had 
 given up to the Pope, and fourteen times he stood 
 forward and said the report was false ; that as long 
 as his intellect remained clear, and as long as he 
 knew truth from falsehood, he would resist the doc- 
 trine of papal infallibility. The Vatican decrees lie 
 had proved false to a demonstration ; and he said that 
 having taught for about sixty years the truth against 
 papal infallibility, he could not deny that history 
 was true, on the sole authority of the Pope of Rome. 
 When some suggested that he was deranged, he 
 offered to prove to them whether or not he knew 
 what he was about in any fair way. He refused to 
 change his faith, and says that the Church regarded 
 this as a greater crime than immorality. If he had 
 done something outrageous in the line of morals, 
 Rome would have forgiven him ; but because he 
 would not change his faith, at the dictate of the 
 Church, they would not tolerate this grand old man 
 within its communion. He was excommunicated ; 
 and he says that in that excommunication, they made 
 it possible for any fanatic to kill him with the sanc- 
 tion of the Church. 
 
 This was since 1870, and in the case of one of the 
 most eminent scholars in the world. Is Rome's 
 method outworn? Has she ceased to persecute free 
 
Momes Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion. 115 
 
 opinion ? Certainly not. And except the police of 
 Munich had given warning and protection to tHis 
 their most eminent citizen, he says he would have 
 been murdered because excommunicated ; and for 
 the same cause they assured him, in their infinite 
 , charity, that when he died he would be condemned 
 to go to h^ll forever ! 
 
 Facts like these, occurring before our eyes, we must 
 not pass over. All that this man wanted was the 
 truth. And the answer was that. When the Pope 
 says that a thing is true, it is true. How absurd ! 
 
 2. But come to a case in our own country. Von 
 DoUinger's offence was true thought in a matter of 
 theological opinion. You all know the case of Dr. 
 McGlynn. Dr. McGlynn is now in middle life. 
 Born of Irish parents, educated in the common 
 schools, he studied nine years in Rome, came back to 
 the city of New York and became a priest. From 
 the first, he was distinguished by his urbanity, his 
 eloquence, and his love of the people. A few years 
 ago, when the effort was made to build parochial 
 schools all over this country, Father McGlynn, at 
 that time pastor of St. Stephen's Church, in New 
 York, said that in his opinion the public schools were 
 better for the children, and he declined to give his 
 influence and his efforts to the erection of parochial 
 schools. This was his first offence. His next offence 
 was, as a champion of temperance, to go on the plat- 
 form with Protestant ministers, as with Mr. Beecher 
 and Dr. Crosby, and plead for temperance. This was 
 an offence against Tammany Hall and Rum rule in 
 New York, and was afterwards urged against him by 
 
116 Rome's Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion. 
 
 Archbishop Corrigan. But finally, in the great citv 
 of" New York, observing the woes of so many thou- 
 sands of people who suffer, and wondering what 
 could be done to relieve them. Father McGlynn 
 thought that some modification of the social and 
 property system would be an advantage. He did not 
 dictate. He came on to the platform and said what he 
 thought in the way of persuasion. He spoke in favor 
 of a certain social system which was not revolution- 
 ary, simply a modification of the present order. And 
 this in loyal devotion to the common welfare. All 
 this was extremely hateful to the Church, and Father 
 McGlynn was summoned to Rome. He knew what 
 that meant. He knew that if he went to Rome he 
 would be suppressed and his manhood trampled 
 under foot, whether truth was on his side or not. He 
 declined to go. He was excommunicated, and driven 
 out of his church in New York, and almost every 
 Sabbath now for some years. Father McGlynn, before 
 vast audiences in New York and elsewhere, has been 
 preaching the truth as he understands it. His old 
 parish is divided in twain. Not very long ago the 
 finances of this parish were so low that they had a 
 fair in the interests of the church, and sold liquor 
 freely at this fair to make money to keep up its spir- 
 itual interests (laughter); but Father McGlynn does 
 not believe in that sort of thing. (Applause.) He 
 is to-day an outlawed priest. Why? Because he 
 entertains different ideas of education and of social 
 life from those which are entertained by the Pope of 
 Rome. That is in America, and he an American citi- 
 zen, as prominent as the most prominent priest in 
 
Romes Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion. 117 
 
 this city ; but he is an ecclesiastical outlaw, under 
 doom of perdition, because he will not think on edu- 
 cational and social questions as he has been com- 
 manded to think. 
 
 3. Now let me call your attention to another case 
 totally different, and yet alike in this respect, that 
 Eome will not tolerate truth or manhood against her 
 commands. Dr. Richard Lalor Burtsell was the inti- 
 mate friend of Father Mc Glynn, a man of large 
 learning, and especially distinguished for his knowl- 
 edge of theology and canon law. Dr. Burtsell natur- 
 ally advised somewhat with Dr. McGlynn as friend 
 with friend. Some four years ago, in February, 1888, 
 a man named John McGuire, being present at one of 
 Father McGlynn's meetings, before the meeting was 
 opened, fell suddenly dead. John McGuire had 
 owned a lot in Calvary Cemetery, which is under the 
 care of Archbishop Corrigan, and of course at his 
 death his children desired to place his body in that 
 cemetery. Archbishop Corrigan of New York inter- 
 fered, saying that all who were attending Dr. Mc- 
 Glynn's meetings were excommunicated, and because 
 they were excommunicated could not be buried in 
 consecrated ground. So John McGuire's children 
 brought a suit-at-law against the archbishop, to com- 
 pel him to permit them to bury their dead in their 
 own lot in Calvary Cemetery. Dr. Burtsell was a 
 witness on that occasion, and in the course of his 
 testimony he said that to deny to McGuire the right 
 of sepulture in his own lot in Calvary Cemetery was 
 contrary to the canon law. George Bliss, Esq., the 
 counsel for Archbishop Corrigan, questioned the wit- 
 
118 Homes Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion. 
 
 ness closely, and finally called him a rebel against 
 the Church. Now, when Dr. Burtsell declared, in 
 accordance with his knowledge of canon law, a 
 simple matter of fact, that Corrigan was wrong and 
 that McGuire was right, he began to suffer persecu- 
 tion, and to-day, having been removed from his beau- 
 tiful church in New York, he is at Rondout, on the 
 Hudson. His offence was that, as a witness in court, he 
 told the truth about the canon law. He had no right 
 to tell that truth, it seems, when it militates against 
 the will of the Church. Is this freedom, or slavery ? 
 
 Monsignor Preston at that same trial said that 
 Roman Catholics must obey their bishops whether 
 right or wrong. This excited amazement in the court^ 
 and the question was repeated ; and Monsignor Pres- 
 ton answered, " They must obey, right or wrong." He 
 was asked whether a priest was bound to obey the 
 canon law, or the orders of his superior, when the two 
 conflicted ? " He should obey the orders of his 
 superior," said Mr. Preston. " Whether right or 
 wrong ? " asked the lawyer. " Whether right or 
 wrong," was the startling answer of the Vicar Gen- 
 eral of New York. 
 
 4. The case of Father Lambert of Waterloo, New 
 York, and his bishop, McQuaid, of Rochester, is 
 equally in point. Father Lambert had been twenty 
 years a priest in Waterloo, was a man of unusual 
 scholarship and character, so that Protestants and 
 Papists alike believed in him. Publishing a paper 
 in Waterloo he criticised the action of a bishop in 
 allowing a poor insane priest to be taken to the poor- 
 bouse, fell under ecclesiastical censure, soon found 
 
Rome's Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion. 119 
 
 himself the object of persecution, was taken away 
 from his church, denied a parish, was left out in the 
 cold, you might say, to starve. What was his 
 offence ? He had criticised one in authority, gained 
 the day with him in argument, and when both 
 finally went to Rome, while it was decided that 
 McQuaid must give him some sort of a church, the 
 bishop was upheld. No one must criticise authority 
 in the Roman Catholic Church. His subsequent 
 history has been a painful one, and will no doubt con- 
 tinue to be so. 
 
 5. But is the press of this country free, so far as 
 Rome can control it ? I have here a letter written 
 hj Archbishop Corrigan to the editor of the Catholic 
 Herald ; and that you may know precisely the atti- 
 tude which the prelates and priests of Rome take 
 toward the press, let me read. This is in 1887. 
 
 452 Madison Ave., New York, 
 April, 13, 1887. 
 
 Editor and Propeietoe of Catholic Herald : 
 
 Gentlemen, — By this note, which is entirely private, and not 
 to be published, I call your attention to the fact that the Third 
 Plenary Council of Baltimore, following the leadership of Leo 
 XIIL, has pointed out the duties of the Catholic press, and 
 denounced the abuses of which journals styling themselves Catho- 
 lic are sometimes guilty. "That paper alone," says the Council 
 (decree No. 228), " is to be regarded as Catholic that is prepared to 
 submit in all things to ecclesiastical authority." 
 
 Later on it warns all Catholic writers against presuming to 
 attack publicly the manner in which a bishop rules his diocese. 
 For some time past the utterances of the Catholic World have 
 been shockingly scandalous. As this newspaper is published in this 
 diocese, I hereby warn you that if you continue in this course of 
 conduct, it will be at your peril. 
 
 I am, gentlemen, yours most truly, 
 
 M. A. CoEEiGAN, Archbishop of New York. 
 
120 Homers Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion. 
 
 That is to say, if the editor offends the archbishop, 
 it is at his peril. What will Corrigan do ? What is 
 the peril ? Why, he will simply outlaw and boycott 
 the paper and ruin the publisher. That is the way 
 it is done. 
 
 But here is another case, that of Owen Smith and 
 Archbishop Elder, of Cincinnati, which illustrates the 
 attitude of this church to a free press. Our extracts 
 are from the New York Mail and Express^ and we 
 give the correspondence quite fully that there may 
 be no mistaking the attitude of Roman Catholicism 
 to an untrammelled press. 
 
 Cincinnati, O., July 27, 1889. 
 Owen Smith, Esq., Publisher of the Catholic Telegraph: 
 
 Bear Sir, — In the Catholic Telegraph of July 18 appeared an 
 article, copied from another paper, criticising a supposed action of 
 the bishops in the last Provincial Council of Cincinnati. It was 
 on the editorial page and in editorial type, in the first column. 
 
 In the issue of July 25 appeared two original articles, likewise 
 among the editorial matter, of which the first was calculated to 
 bring odium both on the administration of the diocese and on a 
 number of the clergy ; referring individually to one of the most 
 meritorious and most venerable priests among us. The second ar- 
 ticle contained some sentences injurious to the clergy of the dio- 
 cese, and even unfavorable to the memory of the dead whom it was 
 intended to eulogize. 
 
 On a previous occasion I drew your attention to the admonitions 
 addressed by the Sovereign Pontiff to Catholic journalists about the 
 spirit that must guide them and the transgressions they must 
 avoid. Since then the third plenary council of Baltimore has for- 
 bidden, in very strong language, that either clergy or laity should 
 assail any ecclesiastical persons, particularly those who are in ec- 
 clesiastical dignity, by offensive words in the public papers or 
 other publications. It declares that those who publish such things 
 are "disturbers of the peace, enemies of ecclesiastical authority, 
 and promoters of most grievous scandal." 
 
 Now, then, in discharge of my duty as Archbishop of Cincinnati, 
 
Rome 8 Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion. 121 
 
 I call on you to publish in the Catholic Telegraph of this coming 
 week (Aug. 1), in the usual place and type of editorial matter, a 
 declaration of your regret for each of the three articles mentioned 
 above ; your retraction of all injurious assertions contained in 
 them ; and your express promise that hereafter you will not allow 
 anything to appear in the paper which may contravene either the 
 admonition of the Sovereign Pontiff or the prohibition of the 
 Council of Baltimore. 
 
 It will be necessary to let me see the declaration and promise be- 
 fore it is published, that I may be satisfied of its sufficiency. 
 
 In case you should not think proper to comply with this require- 
 ment, it will become my duty to take what other measures may be 
 needed to abate the scandal. 
 
 Very respectfully, your servant in Christ, 
 
 William Henby Elder, Archbishop of Cincinnati. 
 
 Cincinnati, O., July 29, 1888. 
 Most Rev. W. H. Elder : 
 
 Most Beverend Dear Friend, — Yours of the 27th inst. is 
 received and contents noted. In reply would say that, owing to 
 the nature of the articles referred to, I do not consider myself com- 
 petent to speak on the subject, and for the further reason that I am 
 now under the care of a physician and have been for the last three 
 weeks. I will therefore say to your Grace that the columns of my 
 paper are open to you to say what you please in regard to the arti- 
 cles referred to over your signature. 
 
 I would respectfully call the attention of your Grace to the fact 
 that the publication of the Catholic Telegraph is the only means 
 of support for myself and family. Your most obedient servant, 
 
 Owen Smith, Per George A. Sturm. 
 (Dictated by Owen Smith.) 
 
 Cincinnati, O., July 29, 1889. 
 OvTEN Smith, Publisher Catholic Telegraph : 
 
 Dear Sir, — Your favor of this date is received. I sympathize 
 sincerely with you in your sickness. But the offence given to reli- 
 gion makes necessary a prompt reparation. And a bodily ailing 
 need not hinder a well-disposed man from making honorable 
 amends for an injury done, whether intentional or unintentional. 
 Tou can spare yourself the labor of writing by simply publishing 
 
122 Homes Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion. 
 
 in full my letter of the 27th inst. in the editorial columns, and fol- 
 lowing it immediately by these or equivalent words: — 
 
 " As publisher of the Catholic Telegraph I hereby comply with 
 the requirements of the above letter. I regret the appearance of 
 the articles referred to. I retract (or, if you choose, ' disavow ') 
 all the injurious assertions and inferences contained in them ; and 
 I make the required promise, which I will keep loyally and honor- 
 ably as long as I am connected with the paper." Sign your name. 
 
 In oifering me the use of your columns, you forget our respec- 
 tive positions. I am not arguing a case as litigant; I am giving 
 judgment as bishop. Whether any of the things said in these arti- 
 cles are true or false, the publishing of them is an act which the 
 Council of Baltimore prohibits as disturbing of peace, hostile to 
 ecclesiastical authority, and productive of grievous scandal. As 
 bishop of the diocese, then, my duty requires me to adhere to my 
 demand that a sufficient reparation — of which I am to judge — be 
 made in the first issue of the paper Aug. 1. 
 
 I would be very sorry to lessen in any degree the support of your- 
 self and your family. It is for yourself to judge whether you 
 choose to gain that support by conducting a Catholic paper, accord- 
 ing to the rules and the spirit of the Catholic church. If you so 
 conduct your paper as to disturb the head, assail authority, and 
 give scandal, you surely do not expect that your family should be 
 a valid plea for the bishop to give the sanction of his silence. 
 Eather ought the interests of your family to plead with yourself, 
 and induce you to so conduct your paper as to merit the support of 
 loyal Catholics and the blessing of God. 
 
 Very respectfully, your faithful servant in Christ, 
 
 William Henby Elder, Archbishop of Cincinnati. 
 
 Thereupon the poor sick editor, knowing full well 
 that the threat of his high mightiness meant an entire 
 boycott of his paper unless he did so, submits at the 
 foot of the decree in the following language : — 
 
 I cheerfully subscribe my name to the following disavowal so 
 kindly dictated by his Grace: — 
 
 "As publisher of the Catholic Telegraph, I hereby comply with 
 the requirements of the above letter. I regret the appearance of 
 
Homers Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion. 123 
 
 the articles referred to. I retract (or, if you choose, 'disavow') 
 all the injurious assertions and inferences contained in them, and 
 I make the required promise, which I will keep loyally and honor- 
 ably as long as I am connected with the paper." 
 
 Owen Smith. 
 
 A card also appeared from Rev. D. O'Meara, who 
 had edited the paper during Mr. Smith's illness, as 
 follows : — 
 
 A CAED. 
 
 It appears that our article "In Memoriam," published in last 
 week's edition of the Telegraph, has given offence to the arch- 
 bishop and some of the priests of the diocese. The words com- 
 plained of, as far as we can learn, are: " Almost all the priests of 
 the diocese are looking for big parishes. There is no concealing 
 the fact. It seems to be a perfect mania among them," etc. 
 
 With regard to these words, or any other words in the article re- 
 ferred to, supposed to give offence to anybody, we beg to retract 
 and make an apology. We do so for the sake of charity and good- 
 will among brethren, and to avoid scandal. The words were used 
 merely as one of those little pleasantries which are sometimes un- 
 avoidable in all hastily written articles. No offence was intended, 
 and it is deeply to be regretted that an offence was taken. Of the 
 rest we have nothing to say. 
 
 D, O'Meara, Pastor of St. Andrew^ s. 
 
 July 31, 1889. 
 
 Here you perceive that freedom of the press is 
 absolutely forbidden, and no sooner does a Roman 
 Catholic editor print anything that the authorities of 
 the Church do not approve, than he is threatened and 
 compelled to retract. 
 
 Let me give you another instance. Bishop 
 Gilmour of Cleveland, now deceased, who was once 
 a Presbyterian, had some difficulty in 1889 with 
 certain priests in his diocese, one of whom was 
 named Quigley, the "other Primeau. The Catholic 
 
124 Rome's Despotic Intolerance of Fi'ee Opinion. 
 
 Knight^ a Roman Catholic paper published in Cleve- 
 land, took the side of the priests. Bishop Gilmour 
 was very much offended. Finally he excommunicated 
 the editor of the Catholic Knight and all his readers 
 and subordinates. Bishop Gilmour, for some reason 
 or other not getting all that he desired in the contro- 
 versy, wrote a letter to Archbishop Elder of Cincin- 
 nati about the way in which Rome was treating the 
 case, and protesting very earnestly against it. The 
 editor of the Catholic Knight obtained the letter, got 
 it into court, and finally had it printed. It was a 
 letter that any man might write who was a free man 
 and wanted his rights. Why did Bishop Gilmour 
 tremble when the letter Avas thus made public in 
 which he had found fault with Rome, retract what he 
 had said in a letter which reads as follows : '' Last 
 week the Catholic Knight published a copy of a 
 private and confidential letter written by me to the 
 Archbishop of Cincinnati, and by an oversight read 
 in the Court of Common Pleas, Toledo, Ohio. The 
 court stenographer, James E. Emery, pledged his 
 word that no one would ever get a copy of said let- 
 ter from his notes, and the court forbade its use in 
 the suit before the court. To prevent as much as 
 possible the evil intended by the publication of this 
 letter through the malice of Joseph J. Greeves and 
 his clique of clerical counsellors and backers, I hereby 
 and by these presents withdraw every word in said 
 letter of apparent disrespect to Rome, and every word 
 that could be construed as a doubt of Rome." Signed, 
 " Richard Gilmour, Bishop of Cleveland, October 16, 
 1890." That is recent enough, is it not, to show us 
 
Rojne^s Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion, 125 
 
 the relation in which these men, even bishops, stand 
 to the papal power. They are all slaves, and they 
 get their satisfaction by making slaves of those below 
 them. 
 
 But I have already detained you too long. My 
 only purpose was to make it perfectly clear from 
 recent history and from indubitable proofs that the 
 attitude of Rome toward free thought and free speech 
 is an attitude absolutely despotic and repressive. I 
 have only begun on my proofs : I have at hand as 
 many more, and they are equally convincing. We 
 ourselves are suffering from the suppression of legiti- 
 mate facts in this very city because of the dread of 
 the Papal power by our newspapers and people. 
 
 There has been founded by Roman Catholics in this 
 country what is called the " Apostolate of the Press," 
 an association whose business it is to get control of 
 the papers of this country. They openly announce 
 it. There is proof enough of their success. I glory 
 in their courage. I wish Protestants had as much, — 
 and if we have not the spirit to maintain our inde- 
 pendence, let them trample upon us until the spirit 
 of our fathers wakes in us. (Applause.) 
 
 Why do people question as to whether one has a 
 right to speak plainly and truthfully concerning this 
 despotic Papal power? Why do timid Protestants 
 tremble before the possible boycott of Romanism? 
 Why is one's name thought to be almost synonymous 
 with fanatic if he tells the historic and eternal truth 
 concerning this hoary despotism ? It is because the 
 heel of Rome is on us, even here in Massachusetts. 
 It is because freedom of opinion and freedom of 
 
126 Rome's Despotic Intolerance of Free Opinion. 
 
 speech are in peril here and to-day. It is because the 
 community is careless, and Rome is gaining the 
 ascendency. I say to you in the name of history 
 which never falsifies, in the name of truth as clear as 
 the sun in heaven, that the despotic power claimed 
 by Rome is forever incompatible with free intelligence 
 and with its free expression. (Applause.) 
 
THE INQUISITION, AN ESSENTIAL 
 PART OF PAPAL DESPOTISM. 
 
 Text: Proverbs xii. 10. '' The tender mercies of the wicked are 
 cruel." 
 
 The name of the Roman Catholic Inquisition has 
 been a symbol of unspeakable cruelty for many cen- 
 turies. It has always been, and must always be, a 
 part of that despotic system which assumes to dictate 
 to conscience, to thought, to word, and to deed. 
 
 Cruelty is declared in our text to be the mark of 
 wickedness. No cruelties in the history of the most 
 savage of mankind can surpass those which Roman 
 Catholic hierarchies, in the name of the gracious re- 
 ligion of Christ, have perpetrated on mankind. Not 
 the fierce savagery of the American aborigines ; nor 
 the human sacrifices of the Mexican Aztecs ; not the 
 slaughters of Druidic priests, nor the fierceness of 
 Cossacks on the steppes of Russia ; neither the bar- 
 barities of ancient Scythians nor of modern Persians, 
 the bloodthirstiness of the Moors, nor the reckless 
 cruelty of African savages ; nor the utter disregard 
 of human suffering shown by Asiatic despots — have 
 equalled, in the diversity of methods employed to 
 inflict human suffering, or in the numbers of those 
 
 127 
 
128 The Inquisition. 
 
 who have fallen victims to their cruelty, the recorded 
 but unspeakable horrors of the Roman Catholic 
 Inquisition. 
 
 Every savage art, the utmost ingenuity of torture, 
 disregard of every principle of justice in apprehend- 
 ing, confining, interrogating, torturing, and killing 
 its victims, have been employed, with the studied and 
 pitiless improvements of centuries, and practised 
 without remorse or apology, to enslave the mind, the 
 conscience, and the heart of the world. 
 
 It is not my purpose so much to review the volu- 
 minous history of Romish cruelty, scattered as it is 
 through ages of time and through the annals of 
 many nations, as it is to show that this dread and 
 horrid tribunal is inseparable from the papal govern- 
 ment ; that it is, therefore, a present as well as a past 
 part of the machinery of that church, and must re- 
 main such in the future ; that the church in itself is 
 responsible for all that the Inquisition has ever done, 
 being herself its originator, procurer, and executor ; 
 and also that the ascendency of Rome means the as- 
 cendency of persecution in its various forms, in order 
 to the establishment of its authority. Therefore such 
 ascendency should be resisted by every lawful and 
 proper means by any people who cherish freedom. 
 
 Why should I tell you of a history with which the 
 whole world is familiar? Why dwell on the dread 
 figures which sum up the overthrow and desolation 
 of nations ? I might repeat that in the first eighteen 
 years of the Spanish Inquisition, under Torquemada, 
 10,220 persons were burned, and 97,000 imprisoned, 
 banished, and reduced to want. "In the Nether- 
 
The Inquisition, 129 
 
 lands, under the Emperor Charles Y., who was not a 
 bigot, and before Philip II. began harsher measures, 
 the victims of the Inquisition, burned, strangled, 
 buried alive, were estimated at from a minimum of 
 50,000 to a maximum of over 100,000;" 100,000 
 Albigenses were tortured and burned to death, — 500 
 men, women, and children being buried alive on sus- 
 picion of heresy at one time ; by the revocation of 
 the Edict of Nantes 700,000 Christian people were 
 exiled from France ; by the massacre of St. Bartholo- 
 mew, 70,000 were slaughtered without mercy. The 
 Inquisition in Peru tortured to death 100,000 victims. 
 And these are but suggestions and instances of the 
 uncounted thousands upon whom were perpetrated 
 the revolting atrocities devised by the Pope and his 
 prelates. 
 
 Read in Limborch's " History of the Inquisition " 
 the story of its origin seven hundred years ago, of its 
 establishment and progress in France, Spain, Italy, 
 Portugal, Poland, Sicily, Sardinia, Germany, Hol- 
 land, and other parts of the world. It describes its 
 ministers and methods, its vicars, assistants, notaries, 
 judges, and other officials ; the power of the inquisi- 
 tors, and their manner of proceeding. It unveils 
 their dread tribunal, opens their blood-stained records, 
 describes their dungeons, the secret tortures they in- 
 flicted, the extreme, merciless, unmitigated tortures, 
 and also the public so-called " acts of faith," or burn- 
 ing of heretics. No secrets could be withheld from 
 the inquisitors ; hundreds of persons were often 
 apprehended in one day, and, in consequence of in- 
 formation resulting from their examinations under 
 
130 The Inquisition. 
 
 torture, thousands more were apprehended. Prisons, 
 convents, even private houses, were crowded with 
 victims ; the cells of the Inquisition were filled and 
 emptied again and again ; its torture-chamber was a 
 hell. The most excruciating engines were employed 
 to dislocate the limbs of even tender women. Thou- 
 sands were burned at the stake. The gospel was 
 gagged and crushed, and Christ himself, in the per- 
 sons of his members, subjected to the anguish of a 
 second Golgotha. 
 
 Of this terrific enginery of government, kept in 
 operation so long as the Pope held sway over any 
 territory which he could govern as he liked, I wish 
 to show not the past history so much as its present 
 necessity, in order to the execution of Rome's plans. 
 I purpose to show exactly from their own words, 
 laws, and usages, what the papal church believes, 
 employs, and practises, in the way of cruelty to 
 humanity, under the guise of tender mercy and con- 
 cern for their souls. For, with a revolting hypocrisy, 
 all that she has ever done has been done under the 
 claim that she represents the merciful Christ, and is 
 doing his will under his immediate orders. 
 
 The papal principles demand the Inquisition ; the 
 principle of unchangeableness ; of authority, as they 
 define it ; of infallibility, which justifies all the record 
 of the past as being indisputably right, and also the 
 present laws of the church. To the proof of this I 
 now address myself. 
 
 I have briefly glanced at the history of the Inquisi- 
 tion. I shall show most fully that it was originated, 
 justified, and supported by the popes and prelates. 
 
The Inquisition. 131 
 
 This being shown, you see at once that according to 
 to the papal claim, that the church is always the 
 same : they not only approved of all this past con- 
 duct at the time, but insist on holding the same rela- 
 tion to it now that they have ever done. It is the 
 church that has repeatedly defined heresy and de- 
 clared it to be worthy of death. It is the approved 
 officers of the church who have asserted their author- 
 ity to put to death all heretics. The inquisitors and 
 their familiars have been officers whom the church 
 has appointed, supported, blessed, and canonized. 
 The buildings of the Inquisition, its dungeons, its 
 instruments of torture, were and are the property of 
 the church. So, then, if the church is unchangeable, 
 as they everywhere assert, what they have been they 
 are now ; what they have done they would do to-day ; 
 justifying their past, they would make it present; 
 and the only escape from this conclusion is for them 
 to repudiate their dogmas, their popes, their laws, 
 and their history. 
 
 The Roman Catholic Church, asserting the prin- 
 ciple of authority over all persons and in all respects, 
 enforces that authority by claiming to be, and being, 
 utterly intolerant of all other religions and opinions. 
 " Since the thirteenth century, no principle or doc- 
 trine has been enforced with greater emphasis and 
 more frequently repeated by the popes in their circu- 
 lar letters, bulls, and enactments, than the doctrine 
 that it is a divine commandment and sacred duty 
 of every monarch and every government to make 
 use of the power that is given them for suppress- 
 ing those who avow a different creed, and to permit 
 
132 The Inquisition. 
 
 no freedom in matters of faith and divine service. 
 Tlie dogma of infallibility is at the same time a dec- 
 laration of the divine truth of the doctrine that 
 Catholic princes and states, so far as they possess 
 the necessary power, are also bound, as a matter of 
 conscience, to tolerate no other but the Catholic con- 
 fession, as far as possible to keep back from official 
 positions those who differ from it, to undermine their 
 Christian associations, and finally to extirpate them." 
 " Intolerance is to be enforced Avherever there is the 
 power to enforce it. A measure of toleration may 
 be allowed wherever the government is not strong 
 enough to withhold it." They officially declare that 
 the state is not judge in matters of religion, and 
 when it allows civil liberty of worship, it usurps 
 a right which belongs to the spiritual power. To 
 authorize the liberty of different forms of worship 
 is called immoral. The archbishop of St. Louis is 
 reported to have uttered these words : — 
 
 " Heresy and unbelief are crimes, and in Christian countries, as 
 in Italy and Spain, for instance, they are punished as other 
 crimes." 
 
 From a Roman Catholic paper called the Shepherd 
 of the Valley^ St. Louis, is taken this sentence : — - 
 
 " Protestantism of every kind. Catholicity inserts in her cata- 
 logue of mortal sins. She endures it when and where she must; 
 but she hates it, and directs all her energies to effect its 
 destruction." 
 
 The Boston Pilots under its late editor, who has 
 been so unduly extolled by Protestants, made this 
 announcement : — 
 
 *' There can be no religion without the Inquisition, which is 
 wisely designed for the promotion of the true faith." 
 
The Inquisition. 133 
 
 Pope Pius IX. says, — 
 
 " The absurd and erroneous doctrines, or ravings in defence of 
 liberty of conscience, are a most pestilential error, a pest of all 
 others most to be dreaded in a state. Cursed be those who assert 
 the liberty of conscience and worship, and all such as maintain 
 that the church may not employ force." 
 
 The maintenance of the authority here claimed 
 can never exist without all the cruelties of the In- 
 quisition. 
 
 Moreover, on the fundamental dogma of the infal- 
 libility of the Pope is based the fullest justification of 
 the Inquisition. If the present pope of Rome is in- 
 fallible, its past popes have been equally so ; and their 
 deeds have, therefore, the fullest sanction and justifi- 
 cation. If, then, they created, maintained, and encour- 
 aged the Inquisition, it is as wholly justifiable as any 
 dogma of their faith. And that they did this we 
 now proceed to show. 
 
 Pope Paul IV., who was as energetic as he was 
 cruel, published a brief on the 15th of February, 1558, 
 charging Valdez, the Grand Inquisitor of Spain, to 
 destroy " utterly all Protestants and friends of Prot- 
 estantism, though they might be bishops, archbishops, 
 cardinals, nuncios, or barons, counts, dukes, princes, 
 kings, or kaisers." So ran the words of His Holiness. 
 And Valdez carried them out but too willingly. 
 
 Pope Clement XI. preached a general crusade in 
 1702, and granted plenary absolution to all who should 
 take up arms for the extermination of ^' this cursed 
 and loathsome brood," the Protestants of France. Thus 
 the salvation of Roman Catholic murderers was made 
 to depend on their slaughter of protesting Christians 
 who denied the falsities of Romanism. 
 
134 The Inquisition. 
 
 Pope Eugenius IV. began his reign in 1431 by 
 causing a crusade to be preached against the Bohe- 
 mians thrc^ghout all Europe, so that an end, " once for 
 all, might be made of the heretics." The inducements 
 offered the crusaders were great. Not only were they 
 authorized to rob and plunder, but even " commanded 
 to do so as a pious duty." They did their horrible 
 work, assured that the uprooting of heresy was a 
 work agreeable to God, performing deeds so dreadful 
 that the tongue refuses to describe them. 
 
 Innocent III., greatest of the popes, unless it were 
 Gregory VIL, in the first of his pontificate, despatched 
 his legate, Reiner, to Spain and the southern prov- 
 inces of France, charging him with an encyclical let- 
 ter to all the princes, barons, bishops, etc., prescribing 
 the sternest measures against the heretics. As a pre- 
 liminary step, he at once commanded the arrest of 
 every known heretic, and the confiscation of their pos- 
 sessions. The children of a heretic were made to 
 share their parents' ruin. The house in which a here- 
 tic had taken refuge was, by the same decree, com- 
 manded to be razed to the ground. " No one, from 
 mistaken charity, shall give succor or aid to one of 
 the accused, under penalty of incurring suspicion of 
 sharing his sin. The nearest ties of biood or friend- 
 ship shall be held no ground for excuse. An oath 
 sworn to an heretic shall be null and void, for no one 
 is bound to hold faith with, but rather in every way 
 to deceive, mislead, and circumvent him." 
 
 " In a long series of bulls and decrees," says Von 
 Dollinger, "more than fifty popes established the insti- 
 tution of the Inquisition, or the Sacred Office. They 
 
The Inquisition. 135 
 
 restored it only a few yeaps ago, after it had been 
 suppressed in papal states by the Interregnum, and 
 but recently they have again extolled it on occasion 
 of the canonization of some inquisitors. For several 
 centuries they enforced the rule that whoever per- 
 sisted in differing from the church doctrine in a 
 single article, was to be punished by death; they 
 sanctioned the principle that a relapsed heretic, that 
 is, one who has been convicted of differing for the 
 second time from the doctrine of the church, was to be 
 executed, even if he recanted. Should the infallibility 
 of popes be proclaimed"(he was writing this before 
 1870), "it would self-evidently extend to the whole 
 province of morals as well as to that of dogmas. 
 It would be impossible to suppose that a pope had 
 ever stood by a principle that was reprehensible from 
 a moral point of view, that he had ever issued an 
 immoral decision, or instituted a proceeding that con- 
 tradicted Christian ethics. No Catholic might under 
 these circumstances either dare to say or think that 
 the institution of the Inquisition was an error, or that 
 the laws for it given by the popes had at times been 
 immoral. " Nevertheless," he adds, " a glance at 
 modern literature shows that nowadays, at all events 
 outside of Italy, no one dares any longer to defend 
 the institution as it really was, or the laws and 
 principles given and set up for it by the popes." 
 
 From all this action of popes, we are forced to 
 one of two alternatives ; either that the popes are 
 not infallible, or else, being infallible, as Romanism 
 declares, they prove the Inquisition to be right, justi- 
 fiable, necessary, and to be perpetuated. For what 
 
136 The Inquisition. 
 
 has been the order of the church is still its standing 
 law. 
 
 Ecclesiastical persecution is declared in the Roman 
 Catholic law of to-day to be a duty. Every bishop 
 who takes the full pontifical oath has to swear that he 
 will, to the utmost of his ability, persecute and exter- 
 minate every heretic. Persecution is also enjoined as 
 a duty upon private persons. 
 
 Pope Urban II., in 1088, decreed, and it is embodied 
 in the canon law of Rome, as follows : — 
 
 ' ' Those are not to be accounted murderers or homicides who, 
 when burning with love and zeal for their Catholic mother against 
 excommunicated Protestants, shall happen to kill a few of them." 
 
 When the canon law was revised by a commission of cardinals 
 under Pope Gregory XIII., in 1580, this decree was left in, and was 
 made an article of faith. It is now de fide and part of the unal- 
 terable law of the church of Rome. 
 
 Pius IV., when the government of Lucca had 
 enacted a law offering a reward of three hundred 
 crowns and the reversal of any sentence of outlawry, 
 or the power of transferring any such pardon, to all 
 persons who should succeed in murdering any of the 
 Protestant refugees who had fled from that city, 
 described it as a " pious and praiseworthy decree, 
 piously and wisely enacted, and that nothing could 
 redound more to God's honor, provided it was thor- 
 oughly carried into execution." 
 
 The penalty of death for heresy was pronounced 
 by so many popes, confirmed and repeated so many 
 times, and carried into execution so many more, that 
 it seems almost useless to adduce further proofs of 
 their responsibility ; but I must beg to quote a por- 
 
The Inquisition. 137 
 
 tioii of the Bull in Coena Domini^ used in the annual 
 cursing, on the anniversary of the institution of the 
 Lord's Supper. Pius V. and Urban VIII. ordained 
 that it should be read on each Maunday Thursday 
 from every Roman Catholic pulpit in Christendom. 
 On that day, all who doubted a single article of faith, 
 according to the maxim of canon law, as well as all 
 who refused absolute obedience to the Pope's author- 
 ity, were anathematized in language part of which is 
 as follows : — 
 
 '* Cursed, banned, in the name of God, the Father, Son, and 
 Holy Ghost, and in that also of the blessed St. Peter and St. Paul, 
 shall be, firstly, all Hussites, Wickliffites, Lutherans, Zwiuglians, 
 Calvinists, Huguenots, Anabaptists, Trinitarians, Unitarians, and 
 all and every other heretic. Secondly, all those who give any suc- 
 cor or aid to any heretic, comfort him, shelter him, or show him 
 countenance in any way. 
 
 " Thirdly, all who buy, read, print, or disseminate, or favor in any 
 way, any religious book published without the sanction of the apos- 
 tolic throne. 
 
 " Fourthly, all universities, colleges, and cathedral chapters on 
 their appealing to a Council. 
 
 "Fifthly, all who may offer any let or hindrance to expediting of 
 money and necessaries, etc., etc., to the papal court, or who seques- 
 trate its revenues ; further, those also who lay taxes on the clergy, 
 though they be kings or kaisers ; those who meddle in ecclesiastical 
 affairs or plans under papal jurisdiction ; those who offer any resist- 
 ance to the commands of the popes, his legates or nuncios. Fi- 
 nally, all who obey not the representatives of St. Peter as it would 
 behoove them to obey God himself." 
 
 This notorious bull originated undoubtedly with 
 the arrogant Boniface VIII. It was enlarged and 
 perfected by Urban V., Julius IL, Paul III., Gregory 
 XIIL, and especially by Pius V. and Urban VIII., 
 and as late as 1864, in the States of the Church, and 
 
138 The Inquisition. 
 
 in Rome especially, it was proclaimed on the appointed 
 anniversary in every church. 
 
 We have thus proved that the Inquisition, in all 
 respects, in its worst features, is an essential part of 
 the Romish Church and of papal procedure, demanded 
 by its claims, its assumed authority, the infallibility 
 of its popes, and its standing laws. And that this 
 conclusion is absolutely true, we now propose to 
 prove by showing that up to present times^ the Inqui- 
 sition is a part of the machinery of the church. 
 
 It was in full operation, so far as the Pope's author- 
 ity could enforce it, up to the year 1809, when it was 
 annulled by Napoleon Bonaparte, together with all 
 the mediaeval machinery of the temporal power. But 
 in 1814, upon the restoration of the papacy, the holy 
 father at once applied himself to resuscitate the 
 Inquisition. In August, 1814, a General Inquisitor 
 was appointed, and the institution of the Inquisition 
 constituted as the supreme judicial tribunal of the 
 Holy Office. Its spies soon spread through the land, 
 penetrated every family circle, and all, on the slight- 
 est cause for suspicion, were at once seized and thrown 
 into dungeons of the sacred tribunal. The offences 
 under its cognizance were specified, as " blasphemy, 
 immorality, disrespectful conduct toward the church, 
 non-participation in its festivals, neglect of its fasts, 
 and especially abandonment of the true faith." 
 
 A general edict, on the 4th of May, 1829, set forth 
 that all persons possessing books of an heretical char- 
 acter, or by writers of known heretical tendencies, 
 whether said books were kept in their own or other 
 persons' domiciles, should be " dealt with as those who 
 
The Inquisition. 139 
 
 had fallen from the faith." We learn by the same 
 edict that any person "who should give cause of 
 offence by act or word, or threaten so doing, to any 
 of the familiars, witnessess, accusers, or spies of the 
 Inquisition," should thereby come within its jurisdic- 
 tion ; and the Pope directed positively all his police, 
 gendarmes, and public employees to assist the servants 
 of the Holy Office in securing such offenders. 
 
 To fill up the measure of horrors. Pope Pius VIII. 
 decreed that whosoever heard a word of blame uttered 
 against the Holy Office, the Inquisition, but still more, 
 whosoever witnessed an offence against its judicial 
 authority without at once denouncing, that is, report- 
 ing that which he had heard or seen, should thereby 
 become amenable to the same penalty as though 
 guilty of the original offence. These spies and agents 
 of the Inquisition were exempt from the jurisdiction 
 of the civil courts, so that if taken in the act of com- 
 mitting the most flagrant crime, the Grand Inquisitor 
 could demand the person of his agent, and, under pre- 
 tence of judging the case himself, at once set him at 
 liberty by a free pardon. Remember that this was 
 within the present century. 
 
 As punishments, the Inquisition employed, as we 
 learn by a regulation dating May, 1856, " excommu- 
 nication and confiscation, banishment, imprisonment 
 for life, application of the lash, and secret execution 
 in heinous cases ; " and this Inquisition flourished in 
 the Pontifical States up to 1870. While the rulers of 
 France, Germany, and Portugal refused the applica- 
 tion of the Pope to set up the Inquisition in their do- 
 minions, Ferdinand VII. of Spain obeyed the behest 
 
140 The Inquisition. 
 
 of Rome, and in 1814 established the Holy Office in 
 all its ancient glory. It was formally dissolved by 
 Cortez in 1820 ; re-established in Spain by the reac- 
 tionary party in 1826, and finally abolished in 1835. 
 
 Gregory XVI. inaugurated it in Sardinia, Modena, 
 and Tuscany, where it remained until 1859, existing 
 last of all in Rome itself, from which let us hope it 
 has forever departed. 
 
 But, bear in mind that in our own time Perrone, 
 Professor of theology at Rome, demands that the 
 Inquisition exist to try heretics ; while an excellent 
 authority informs us that in a modified form the de- 
 crees of the Inquisition are in force in the Province 
 of Quebec at this very hour. 
 
 To this demonstration by immediate present his- 
 tory, of the full indorsement of the Inquisition by the 
 popes, must be added yet another. While these in- 
 quisitors are justly held in execration by all merciful 
 and right-minded people, they have been canonized 
 and extolled by the popes, and that very recently. 
 
 Von Dollinger tells us : " Only very recently, at an 
 opening meeting of the Consistory, Pius IX. delivered 
 a eulogy on the Inquisition, and declared it to be 
 a beneficial and genuinely ecclesiastical institution. 
 On the 29th of June, 1867, Pius IX. in St. Peter's 
 Church, which was magnificently decorated for the 
 occasion, formally canonized Pedro Arbues, one of 
 the inquisitors of Spain, who for his fierce and cruel 
 persecuting, in association with Torquemada, was 
 stabbed at the altar by his exasperated and suffering 
 victims, on the 17th of December, 1485. Pius IX. 
 recommended all Spaniards to honor this man in 
 
The Inquisition. 141 
 
 future as a pattern of Christian virtues, and now with 
 other saints they may invoke him to pray for them." 
 
 Commenting on this shocking event, Von Bollin- 
 ger says, " If I were now to give the Pope assurance 
 of my submission to the Roman see, should I not 
 have to give expression also to my most submissive 
 adhesion to the eulogy on the Inquisition and to the 
 canonizing of Dom Pedro de Arbues?" He certainly 
 would, as all Roman Catholics must. 
 
 Could you ask any more ample proof that the In- 
 quisition, the inquisitors, their cruelty, their blood- 
 shed, and all their horrible deeds, are commendable 
 in the minds of the highest dignitaries of the Roman 
 Catholic Church ? To fix the responsibility, more 
 complete proof than this is needless ; and so I pass to 
 make clear an additional fact which is most important 
 to our understanding of the attitude of the Romish 
 Church. That fact is, that the church itself is respon- 
 sible for the Inquisition and all its horrors. Some of 
 its apologists have endeavored to show that not the 
 church, but the secular power, was the executioner of 
 heretics. This is the merest subterfuge, and is far 
 more false than true. The secular power, when com- 
 pletely under th6 domination of the papacy, executed 
 its behests, because it dared not do otherwise ; and no 
 human government has ever instituted any persecu- 
 tions which can equal in bloodthirstiness those of the 
 Church of Rome itself. It was the church which ori- 
 ginated and sanctioned the Inquisition. The church 
 acted as police and procurer of victims, and delivered 
 these victims to the executioner. If not wielding 
 the axe, or piling the fagots, the church compelled 
 
142 The Inquisition. 
 
 others so to do, under pain of suffering in like man- 
 ner. The papal church originated the Inquisition. 
 It was not the outgrowth of the national character of 
 the several centuries in which it mostly flourished. 
 Here we have a bull of Pope Urban IV. in 1261, in 
 which he emphatically warned the general of the 
 Dominicans, the great persecuting order of the 
 church, never to forget that the authority to perse- 
 cute heresy did not necessarily reside in the order 
 itself, but had been bestowed by the Pope and could, 
 therefore, at any moment be withdrawn. Thus this 
 infallible pope claimed to be the source of all the 
 persecuting authority. 
 
 Pope Urban VIII. persuaded King Louis XIII. 
 to attempt the destruction of Protestantism, and 
 wrote to the king of France expressing his hope 
 that he " would utterly uproot all the remaining 
 heretics in the country." Goading all monarchs by 
 direst threats to the utmost cruelties against Protes- 
 tants was characteristic of all the popes. They 
 exulted in the bloody work of their tools and minis- 
 ters. 
 
 When the town of Beziers was taken by the papal 
 troops in 1209, and one of the most revolting massa- 
 cres the world ever witnessed was directed by papal 
 legates, 7,000 victims were burned alive, 60,000 died 
 within the city. Those who knelt to entreat mercy 
 of the conquerors were ruthlessly butchered ; and 
 amidst the burning of houses, the horrible violation 
 of females, the wild riot and plunder, the monks who 
 accompanied the army gathered in the market-place 
 to sing a hymn of thanksgiving to God. While 
 
The Inquisition. 143 
 
 Europe was filled with horror at this savage victory, 
 Innocent III., the great pope who ordered it, and his 
 devoted clergy, rejoiced over this holocaust with 
 exceeding joy, declaring that " the beginning of the 
 end of heresy had dawned." 
 
 The horrible massacre of St. Bartholomew in 
 France, in 1572, whose victims numbered not less 
 than 70,000 persons, was an occasion for extraordi- 
 nary joy on the part of Pope Gregory XIII. Im- 
 mediately on receiving the news, he summoned the 
 cardinals to proceed in solemn procession to St. 
 Peter's to give God thanks, while the cannons of St. 
 Angelo thundered and the streets of Rome were 
 illumined by bonfires. A great jubilee and plenary 
 indulgence was appointed by the holy father in his 
 joy on receiving the head of Admiral Coligny, which 
 had been preserved in spirits by order of the king, 
 Charles IX., while he further rewarded his dear son 
 with the title of " Most Pious." He also caused 
 a medal to be struck and a painting to be executed 
 in honor of the massacre, and he issued a bull to 
 Charles IX., urging him " to persevere in so pious 
 and wholesome a measure till his once most religious 
 kingdom should be thoroughly purged of blasphe- 
 mous heresies ; " subsequently, he urged the Emperor 
 Maximilian to deal with his heretical subjects as the 
 king of France had done. 
 
 It was a direct papal command which set on foot 
 the fearful ravages of the Roman Catholic crusaders 
 in Bohemia. Moreover, that victims might be ob- 
 tained to satisfy the bloodthirsty monsters of the 
 Pope, Innocent VIII., in a bull, April 3, 1487, ordered 
 
144 The Inquisition. 
 
 all princes and rulers to seize and deliver to the In- 
 quisition of Spain all fugitives who should be desig- 
 nated to them, thus extending the arms of the Holy 
 OfBce throughout the whole of Christendom, and 
 practically outlawing all refugees. Fortunately, the 
 princes, more humane than the Pope, refused to obey 
 this order. 
 
 Can popes shift the responsibility of these dire 
 massacres upon other shoulders than their own when 
 they have forced secular princes to destroy heretics, 
 and have ordered armies and nations " to take up 
 arms against offenders," who, as Pope Innocent III. 
 said of the heretics of France, were " no better than 
 unbelievers of the East, and, beyond question, far 
 more noxious " ? By a special bull, this pope granted 
 plenary indulgence, both for the past and the future, 
 to all, whether knights or peasants, who should enter 
 the field against the Albigenses, enjoined these war- 
 riors to sack and spoil all the towns and villages in 
 the land of the unbelievers, and promised to reward 
 barons and knights with its broad lands and fair 
 castles. 
 
 So the popes furnished victims as well as exe- 
 cutioners. Ay, and the church became itself the 
 executioner. No catalogue can be made of papal 
 crimes. Even after the restoration of Pius IX. in 
 1850, the horrors committed at Perugia by the papal 
 mercenaries were as dreadful as any of the Middle 
 Ages. No quarter was given. The mother was 
 massacred with her unborn child ; and when all re- 
 sistance to the Pope on the part of the insurrection 
 had ceased, and those among the rebels capable of 
 
The Inquisition. 145 
 
 bearing arms had left the city, the slaughter of the 
 helpless multitude left behind commenced, and the 
 atrocities committed exceeded the worst ever perpe- 
 trated by Austrian pandours. Women and young 
 girls were foully violated, and then impaled alive, or 
 thrown from the house windows to be caught on 
 bayonets, or they were transfixed with lances and so 
 dragged through the streets. Mothers with their 
 babes were thrown into oil casks, which were then 
 set on fire. Yet Pope Pius IX. thought not of laying 
 ban or interdict on the brutal leader of his troops, 
 the Swiss Captain Smidt, but, on the contrary, ap- 
 pointed him, for his heroic conduct in this affair, to 
 the rank of general of brigade ! And this, remem- 
 ber, was only forty years ago. 
 
 I have not recited these details of horrible persecu- 
 tion, past and present, without a motive, which may 
 well stir your minds to-day. This motive is not to 
 arouse your resentment against Roman Catholic peo- 
 ple, for many of those who thus suffered at the hands 
 of the papacy were nominal members of the Roman 
 Catholic Church, and multitudes now members of 
 that church would shrink with horror at being par- 
 takers in the bloody deeds which have been instigated 
 and carried out by their inquisitorial superiors. But 
 my motive has been to make clear to you the great 
 and all-important fact that Rome's despotic sway, 
 which she would set up over this country, has always 
 included, as a necessary part of her governmental 
 machinery, the searches, spies, arrests, imprisonments, 
 confiscations, tortures, burnings, of the Inquisition, 
 and, worse than all these, and resulting from them, 
 
146 The Inquisition. 
 
 the consequent suppression of the intellectual life 
 and progress of the people. 
 
 It is for you to determine whether an institution 
 so repugnant to all justice, so destructive to all pros- 
 perity, so fatal to all aspiration, so diabolical and 
 contradictory to the spirit of Christ, shall have any 
 place with you and your posterity. 
 
PERSECUTION AND PROPERTY. 
 
 I WILL take for my text one of those remarkably 
 condensed statements of universal truth of a most 
 practical and comprehejisive character with which the 
 Holy Scriptures abound. It is found in 1 Tim. vi. 
 10 : '' The love of money is a root of all evil." 
 
 The pictures of the Roman Catholic Inquisition 
 which have been di-awn by a hundred historians re- 
 veal to us one of the most terrible chapters in human 
 history. No pen nor tongue can with any degree of 
 adequacy portray, or even suggest, the dreadful cruel- 
 ties on the one hand, and the agonizing sufferings on 
 the other, of those who carried on the Inquisition 
 and of those who suffered under it. 
 
 They reduced cruelty and torture to a science, 
 ordering its processes with diabolical malignity. 
 Here are some extracts from the " Sacro Arsenale," 
 Bologna, 1665, a handbook of the procedure of the 
 Inquisition. 
 
 " CXXVI. Torture should begin with those most 
 suspected, and, if they be a man and woman, is to begin 
 with the woman, as the more timid and frail ; and if 
 all are males, then with the youngest and feeblest.'^'' 
 
 "CCIV. The sons of heretics do not incur the 
 penalties enacted against them, provided they judi- 
 
 147 
 
148 Persecution and Property. 
 
 ciously disclose to the Holy Tribunal the heresy of 
 their parents and secure their imprisonment." 
 
 " CCXXI. A true Catholic is bound to denounce 
 heretics, even if he have promised, pledged his faith, 
 and sworn to them not to disclose them ; such promise 
 or oath being of no force or obligation." 
 
 " CCLXXVI. The doctors (and with good reason) 
 hold the crime of heresy to be so atrocious, that they 
 account heresy incurred through ignorance as worse 
 than murder committed with treachery." 
 
 The cruelty of these and similar ordinances which 
 Rome has never repudiated, and which she still avows, 
 is only too obvious. 
 
 The catechism of the Council of Trent, asserting 
 the right to punish heretics, involves the third canon 
 of the Fourth Council of Lateran, which canon orders 
 all secular princes to extirpate every heretic in their 
 states ; and in the event of failure to comply with 
 this injunction, such princes are to be excommunicated, 
 their subjects released from their oath of allegiance, 
 and their territories to be given over to the Catholics, 
 who are to destroy the heretics, and possess the coun- 
 try as their reward, besides acquiring, in virtue of 
 their exerminating zeal, all the indulgences granted 
 to the Crusaders in Palestine. 
 
 This is still unrepealed and unrepented; indeed, 
 there is a similar clause in Paul IV.'s bull, '' Cum Ex 
 Apostolatus officio," of 1559, with this further touch, 
 that heretics are " to be deprived of every consolation 
 of humanity," all of which is expressly part and parcel 
 of the law of the papacy to this day. 
 
 A question which has often occurred to you and to 
 
Persecutioji and Property. 149 
 
 me, and which I doubt not arose in many minds on 
 last Sabbath, when the Inquisition was the subject of 
 our thought, is this : What motive can account for all 
 this horrible cruelty ? What inspiration, from what- 
 ever source, could enter into a human being which 
 would transform him into so ferocious a creature that 
 he would become a party to cruelties like these ? 
 What motive could cause a combination of men, who 
 by some means or other were the leaders and con- 
 trollers of the world for a long period of time, for 
 successive centuries, in the name of the gracious and 
 gentle Saviour of mankind, to take delight in tortur- 
 ing to death their fellow creatures ? This question 
 had never been thought about by me so much as 
 during the last four months. It has gained addi- 
 tional interest from the fact that of course the hun- 
 dreds of thousands of people who were the victims 
 of the Inquisition were absolutely hostile to it, and 
 did all in their power to oppose it. They tried by 
 their lives and their words to resist persecution and 
 to enlighten their persecutors. Moreover, there was 
 always a vast company of people who sympathized with 
 these persecuted ones, — their relatives, their fellow 
 citizens who knew their worth, the better minded 
 conservative people of the time and of the church ; 
 and yet against the strongest possible opposition of 
 these, who were generally a minority though not al- 
 ways so, with relentless and despotic hand, the Pope 
 and his agents carried forward, for the space of at least 
 eight hundred years, all the diabolical and destructive 
 machinery of the Inquisition. 
 
 1. You might suppose that religious bigotry and zeal 
 
150 Persecution and Property. 
 
 could account for the Inquisition, that the hatred 
 which men entertain toward those of another faith was 
 the cause thereof. I seriously question this. I very 
 much doubt whether men become so antagonistic to 
 their fellows on account of religious hatred, because 
 others hold to a different religion, and I much more 
 doubt whether people who hold slightly varied shades 
 of Christian belief, that is to say who hold in modified 
 form the same theory and doctrine, could ever by reli- 
 gious bigotry become so hostile to one another as to 
 perpetrate on their neighbors the worst of all tortures. 
 I do not believe that religious bigotry, taking it in the 
 large historical survey, can account for the Roman 
 Catholic Inquisition. 
 
 2. And certainly it was no spirit of beneficence. It 
 was not because certain in the Roman Catholic church 
 thought that others had varied from them slightly in 
 opinion and must be brought back to entertain the 
 same opinion. There was no fear on the part of those 
 who persecuted lest the slightly changed opinions of 
 the persons whom they persecuted should issue in the 
 destruction of their faith and the ruin of their souls. 
 
 It has been said by some who have surveyed the sur- 
 face of this great problem that men were burned at 
 the stake by Roman Catholic priests and inquisitors, 
 in order that they might be saved from burning in 
 hell, and therefore some who have a very strong an- 
 tagonism to the doctrine of hell have said, " You may 
 charge upon that doctrine the Inquisition, since the 
 endeavor to save the souls of the people who were per- 
 secuted was made by their persecutors that they might 
 not be plunged into remediless hell." But I cannot 
 
Persecution and Property. 151 
 
 find, as I study the history, that this is an adequate rea- 
 son or cause, because very generally those who were 
 persecuted, tortured, starved and burned, were told 
 that they were going to hell after all that they had 
 suffered, and that remediless torture awaited them in 
 the future world after the church had tortured them 
 in this. Persecution was not, therefore, intended to 
 be a saving process. 
 
 3. Nor can you account for the Inquisition on the 
 ground of national or tribal hatreds and feuds, for 
 although it was sometimes true, as when the crusaders 
 of the Pope ravaged Bohemia and France, and when 
 the Duke of Alva scourged Holland, that a difference 
 of nationality was in part the basis of the savagery of 
 the persecutors, it yet remains true that oftentimes 
 the sufferers were persecuted by their own fellow 
 countrymen, by their own fellow townsmen, by their 
 own kindred and relatives. So when I am asked to 
 concede to the national hatreds of the time the occa- 
 sion for the Inquisition, I confess that I do not find it 
 so, nor do I believe that they were influential to any 
 other than a small degree. 
 
 4. Were the persecutions of the Inquisition, then, the 
 result of the effort of political and priestly tyrants 
 to retain unbroken control over the people whom they 
 ruled, whether in ecclesiastical or civil affairs ? Is it 
 not true that despotic princes, whether of the church 
 or the state, see with alarm the rising spirit of liberty 
 and undertake, as far as in them lies, to repress it by 
 the destruction of those leaders who rise up and think 
 for themselves ? It is true that despots do act in this 
 way at times ; but you never knew, I think, a succes- 
 
152 Persecution and Property. 
 
 sion of rulers through a period of eight or ten cen- 
 turies, in many lands and under many forms of 
 government, to make such an attempt, or to find an 
 adequate reason for the wholesale slaughter of their 
 choicest subjects in the enlightenment of the minds of 
 the people who were under their government. And 
 if tyrants do try by severity to retain their rule, why 
 is it ? what is the selfish principle at the foundation ? 
 Is it that they may have a hundred or a thousand or 
 ten thousand more obedient subjects ? or is there back 
 of all the despot's terrific onslaught on the up-risings 
 of liberty, another motive which I am about to dis- 
 close, one which I cannot doubt is fundamental in 
 this whole matter of the Inquisition and the religious 
 persecutions of the Roman Catholic church. Often- 
 times when the civil ruler hesitated to employ force 
 against the people, and was willing that they should 
 think and that they should worship according to the 
 dictates of their consciences, the ecclesiastical despots, 
 representatives of the Pope, insisted that these rulers 
 should crush the rising spirit of their people under 
 penalty of themselves being excommunicated, and of 
 losing their wealth, their thrones, and their empires. 
 
 5. I propose to show on this occasion what I do 
 not know to have ever been extendedly shown on 
 any former occasion, that the moving cause of the 
 Inquisition of the Roman Catholic church was very 
 largely that lust of wealth, that spirit of avarice, that 
 unbridled selfishness, which undertakes, whether in 
 the highway robber or in the ecclesiastical robber, to 
 plunder men of their possessions in order to enrich . 
 the plunderer. I believe I can show, not that the 
 
Persecution and Property. 153 
 
 other motives were wholly inoperative, but that the 
 fundamental motive of the Romish hierarchy for all 
 these centuries has been avarice and the lust of gain. 
 
 Now I can bring this so near to this audience that 
 you can see that it is a living question of the present 
 hour. What damnable spirit out of hell could entice 
 in the city of New York on Sunday, May 8, 1892, five 
 thousand people to pay a dollar apiece to see a bit of 
 a mummified human body ofiicially declared to be 
 part of the arm of " St. Ann, Mother of the Virgin 
 Mary and grandmother of God," unless it was the 
 very spirit which says, '^ Your money or your life," 
 whether in the massacre of Beziers or St. Bartholomew, 
 the Exile of the Huguenots, or from the lips of the 
 highway robber on the dark road ? (Applause.) 
 
 6. "Love of money," said the inspired man, "is a 
 root of all evil." Where would the rum traffic be if 
 it were not for this love of money ? We argue that 
 the appetites of men are depraved, and that they will 
 have liquor ; but you find the liquor maker and vender 
 creating the appetite everjr^here in those who have 
 it not, for love of money. Where would prostitution 
 be but for the love of money and what it brings ? 
 
 Not even the powerful natural appetites of the race 
 could nourish the dark deeds of debauched humanity, 
 if it were not that gold and profit are the price and 
 product of this monstrous evil. And gambling, 
 whether on the horse-race at our Agricultural Fair, 
 or at Coney Island and Guttenburg, or where young 
 men in their clubs play cards for stakes of ten or 
 twenty cents, or the millionaires of New York for ten 
 or twenty thousand dollars, — I say where would 
 
154 Persecution and Property. 
 
 gambling be if it were not for the love of money ? 
 Where would be the oppression of the poor ? Where 
 would be human slavery ? Where the traffic in the 
 bodies and souls of men? Where falsehood and 
 lying? Where business dishonesty? Where the 
 thousand ills that afflict mankind, if the love of 
 money were subordinated and a more generous prin- 
 ciple prevailed ? 
 
 We saw Columbus on the West India islands en- 
 slaving the people and selling them for money, com- 
 pelling forced service in the mines, and decimating 
 the inhabitants of those fair islands of the Caribbean 
 Sea. But Columbus was doing there only what the 
 church was doing at home at that very time, plunder- 
 ing and abusing myriads of men for the purpose of 
 acquiring their property. We saw Cortez in Mexico 
 stretching the son of Montezuma on burning coals 
 that he might be forced to tell where was concealed 
 the treasure of the Aztecs ; but Cortez learned to do 
 this from the priests of Spain, who had been doing it 
 for two hundred and fifty years. 
 
 We saw Pizarro imprisoning the Inca of Peru until 
 the room in which the Ruler was shut up was filled 
 with sixteen millions of treasure, then cruelly killing 
 him and taking the ransom ; and while we condemn 
 his cruelty, we must remember that the nation of 
 which he was a representative, under the dictates of 
 the only religion which he knew, was doing the same 
 with Protestants and with Roman Catholics who 
 erred at all from the papal creed, and had been mur- 
 dering thousands for gold during centuries. 
 
 When, therefore, I survey the horrors of Spanish 
 
Persecution and Property. 155 
 
 invasion and colonization in this country, I see the 
 original cause of it in the dread cruelty and universal 
 plundering of the papal power, as it ruled supreme 
 over Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, and parts of Ger- 
 many. 
 
 I. And now to proceed to some of the proofs that 
 property was a chief purpose of persecution, that it 
 should be the first thing on which to lay emphasis, 
 when surveying this question in the light of the many 
 histories and by comparing them. In all histories of 
 the Inquisition a certain word frequently recurs to 
 show the policy of the papal church. Laws are adjusted 
 to regulate the meaning and definition of that word, 
 and it is as common as the word heresy itself. That 
 word is CONFISCATION, or the taking away from its 
 owners of property and putting it into the treasury 
 of the church, as a portion of the penalty for heretical 
 opinions. This word, I say, is very frequently re- 
 peated, and wherever repeated is full of a significance 
 which I did not formerly dream was in it. 
 
 1. I find one of the ablest historians of the Inquisi- 
 tion, Henry C. Lea, saying in a paragraph of great 
 moderation, considering how large is his information: 
 " This greed for the plunder of the wretched victims 
 of persecution is peculiarly repulsive as exhibited by 
 the Church, and may to some extent palliate the 
 similar action by the State in countries where the 
 latter was strong enough to seize and retain it. The 
 threats of coercion, which at first were necessary to 
 induce the temporal princes to confiscate the property 
 of their heretical subjects, soon became superfluous, 
 and history has few displays of man's eagerness to 
 
156 Persecution and Property. 
 
 profit by his fellow's misfortunes more deplorable 
 than that of the vulture which followed in the wake 
 of the Inquisition to batten on the ruin which it 
 wrought." 
 
 I find him saying again : " We therefore are per- 
 fectly safe in asserting that but for the gains to be 
 made out of fines and confiscations its work would 
 have been much less thorough, and that it would have 
 sunk into comparative insignificance as soon as the 
 first frantic zeal of bigotry had exhausted itself. This 
 zeal might have lasted for a generation, to be followed 
 by a period of comparative inaction, until a fresh 
 onslaught would have been excited by the recrudes- 
 cence of heresy. By confiscation the heretics were 
 forced to furnish the means for their own destruc- 
 tion. Avarice joined hands with fanaticism, and be- 
 tween them they supplied motive power for a hundred 
 years of fierce, unremitting, unrelenting persecution, 
 which in the end accomplished its main purpose." 
 That is in the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, which 
 closed somewhere about the middle of the fourteenth 
 century. 
 
 2. The most thrifty people were generally the per- 
 secuted people. This was not always so, for I do 
 not pretend to give avarice as a reason which covers 
 every specific case. The Waldenses were not rich, 
 the Albigenses were. But in general the people who 
 think for themselves have the mental force which 
 makes them more industrious than others and more 
 prosperous. It therefore follows that independent 
 thought and true piety are generally associated with 
 worldly prosperity, and when you come to examine 
 
Persecution and Property. 157 
 
 the history of the persecutions of Papal Rome, 
 whether personal or general, you find that it was the 
 best people who were the objects of her assault. The 
 Huguenots of France, about whom you have so often 
 heard, are declared in the Schaff-Herzog Encyclo- 
 paedia, the latest and best of its kind, to have been 
 the most industrious and intelligent people in France. 
 From four hundred thousand to a million French 
 Huguenots, no one knows exactly their numbers, 
 who were exiled from France by the revocation of 
 the edict of protection known as the Edict of Nantes, 
 went to all the lands of the world as most welcome 
 immigrants. They were kindly and gladly received 
 in Holland, Germany, and England, and promised 
 that they should have from eight to twelve years' 
 residence without taxation and that the burdens of 
 citizenship should be laid upon them very lightly, 
 on account of their superior character and capacity, 
 because the Huguenot of France was the best citizen 
 that France had. All the nations were glad to take 
 them in, and to give them a place and a home, not 
 only for humanity's sake, but for the riches which 
 they brought, the intelligence which they distributed 
 in society, and the service which they rendered as 
 citizens. These people were only representatives of 
 the myriads who were persecuted. The Jews of 
 Spain, who had turned to Christianity in the four- 
 teenth and fifteenth centuries, are said by the his- 
 torians to have been the flower of Spain. They had 
 intermarried with the nobility, they were people of 
 large intelligence and extraordinary business capacity, 
 the foremost people of the Peninsula. They had so 
 
158 Persecution and Property. 
 
 much legal knowledge, so many of them were in high 
 places, that when the Inquisition assailed them witli 
 its terrors, they we-re able to make resistance in many 
 ways, paying out large sums of money for legal pro- 
 ceedings on the part of their famous lawyers who 
 thus attempted to withstand the tide of persecution, 
 but all in vain. They offered at one time to Ferdi- 
 nand and Isabella, six hundred thousand crowns of 
 gold if the monarchs would save them from the exile 
 which one horrible edict had put upon them. So 
 vast was their wealth that thej^ may be said to have 
 been the treasurers of Spain. But when they offered 
 this great sum of money to be relieved from persecu- 
 tion, the persecutors with Torquemada at their head, 
 knowing full well that they could get more by con- 
 tinuing to persecute, refused it ; and the much lauded 
 Ferdinand and Isabella, at the very time when Colum- 
 bus discovered San Salvador, in that very year, 1492, 
 were in league with the church confiscating uncounted 
 millions of the property of their best subjects and 
 inflicting a blow upon Spain from which she has not 
 recovered to this day. 
 
 3. I ought to pause here, perhaps, to raise the 
 inquiry why it was that so many of these persons 
 who were seized for heresy had no just form of trial 
 whatever. I have raised that question to myself 
 more than once. Why was every principle of ordi- 
 nary legal procedure violated, and every principle 
 of justice set at naught, in dealing with them ? If 
 they were guilty, it could have been found out, if 
 those who persecuted desired to find it out by honest 
 methods. But you find a singular lack in all the proc- 
 
Persecution and Property. 169 
 
 esses of the Inquisition of anything which savored 
 of justice. Inquisitors were utterly regardless of 
 justice. Why ? Because, as I have learned, they 
 had resolved to plunder their victims, they cared not 
 whether they were heretics or not, whether they were 
 innocent or guilty, any more than the highway robber 
 cares whether the victim whom he grasps, plunders, 
 and murders, is good or bad, so he gets his gold. 
 
 If these victims had been guilty of all that was 
 charged against them, they would have been innocent 
 of any wrong doing. If every one of all the charges 
 had been true, they could have lived in this city 
 among our most respected citizens. Nothing evil 
 could truly be said against them. In what did the 
 crime of heresy consist? What were the charges 
 which were made against these members of society 
 and the church that sent them to their death, and 
 gave their property to the church and state ? I cannot 
 detail all the charges called, in general, heresy, — but 
 I have most of them here before me as they were for- 
 mulated by the chief inquisitor of Spain under papal 
 direction. Look, my friends, and see what the infalli- 
 ble intelligence of the papal church has declared to 
 be crimes worthy of the most dreadful sufferings 
 which can be inflicted ! I take them from a general 
 list which I hold in my hand. '' If they know or 
 have heard, that any one has said, defended, or be- 
 lieved that the sect of Luther or his followers is good, 
 or that he has believed and approved any of its con- 
 demned propositions : to wit : — 
 
 That it is not necessary to confess sins to the priest, 
 since it is sufficient to confess them before God ; 
 
160 Persecution and Property. 
 
 That neither pope nor priests have power to ab- 
 solve from sins ; 
 
 That the true body of our Lord Jesus Christ is 
 not in the consecrated host ; 
 
 That we ought not to pray k) saints, nor ought 
 there to be images in the churches ; 
 
 That there is no purgatory, nor any necessity to 
 pray for the deceased ; 
 
 That any one, althougli not a priest, may hear 
 another in confession, and give him the communion 
 under the two kinds of bread and wine ; 
 
 That the pope has no power to grant indulgences 
 and pardons ; 
 
 That clerks, friars, and nuns may marry ; 
 
 That there ought not to be friars, nuns, nor monas- 
 teries ; 
 
 That God did not institute the regular religious 
 orders ; 
 
 That the state of marriage is more perfect than 
 that of unmarried clerks and friars : 
 
 That it is not a sin to eat flesh on Fridays, in Lent, 
 and on other days of abstinence ; 
 
 If they know, or have heard say^ that any one has 
 held, believed, or defended various other opinions of 
 Luther and his followers, or that any one has left the 
 kingdom to be a Lutheran in other countries." 
 
 Can you see any crime in these things? can you 
 see damage in them? can you see danger in them? 
 And yet to assent to any one of these truths involved 
 the loss of all one's goods, his liberty, his life, and 
 the infamy as well as the plunder of his children. 
 Now can you account, in your reason, for so fearful 
 
Persecution and Property. 161 
 
 consequences coming from such innocent opinions 
 without believing that plunder was the purpose of 
 persecution? Do you suppose that the persecutors 
 thought that these men were dangerous or injurious 
 to society? I do not believe that they did. Their 
 minds were made up on another basis. 
 
 4. The church profited by all these persecutions. In 
 some cases the property of the heretic was divided 
 into three parts : the church took one part, the inquisi- 
 tors a second part, and the third part was given to 
 the treasury of the country in which the heretic lived. 
 In other cases it was divided into two parts, of which 
 the church took one part, and the inquisitors the 
 other. And in other cases it was left as a unit, and 
 the church took it all. 
 
 Besides, this is in perfect harmony with the known, 
 the well-known, avarice of Rome, to which I have 
 already alluded. I am going to ask and answer the 
 question, at a later date, why purgatory was in- 
 vented, why indulgences, why masses, why relics? 
 I cannot do that to-day ; but when I say that Rome's 
 confiscations were entirely in harmony with all her 
 policy, I state the simple truth. (Applause.) I give 
 the reason for her course and her conduct. The In- 
 quisition is only a small part of the whole system by 
 which a multitude of priests live by plundering their 
 fellows, and live in luxury while their victims live in 
 poverty. 
 
 II. But I now enter upon the details of the method 
 of the Inquisition in confiscating the property of its 
 victims. There was great prominence given in the 
 minds of all persecutors, to this matter of property, as 
 
162 Persecution and Property. 
 
 you will see by this fact first of all, that the popes 
 themselves took the initiative, and ordered the con- 
 fiscation of the goods of heretics. 
 
 1. You find that Pope Innocent III., who is in such 
 honor in the Roman Catholic church as one of the 
 greatest of their popes, takes the following attitude. 
 He says, "In the lands subject to our temporal ju- 
 risdiction we order the property of heretics to be con- 
 fiscated ; in other lands we command this to be done 
 by the temporal princes and powers, who, if they show 
 themselves negligent therein, shall be compelled to 
 do it by ecclesiastical censures. Nor shall the prop- 
 erty of heretics who withdraw from heresy revert to 
 them, unless some one pleases to take pity on them. 
 For as, according to the legal sanctions, in addition to 
 capital punishment, the property of those guilty of 
 treason is confiscated, and life simply is allowed to 
 their children through mercy alone, so much the more 
 should those who wander from the faith and offend 
 the Son of God be cut off from Christ and be de- 
 spoiled of their temporal goods, since it is a far greater 
 crime to assail spiritual than temporal majesty." 
 
 You find also that in a bull of Pope Innocent IV. 
 he directs the rulers of Lombardy to confiscate with- 
 out fail the property of all who were excommuni- 
 cated as heretics, or receivers, defenders, or assistants 
 of heretics. Pius IX., in his encyclical of 1864 which 
 I have read in your hearing, commends the action of 
 all his predecessors, says there is no fault to find with 
 it or them : therefore he too, and all those who trust 
 in him, make themselves in some degree responsible 
 for these same opinions. 
 
Persecution and Property. 163 
 
 Sometimes the Protestants were banished from the 
 lands in which they lived and those lands were given 
 to Roman Catholics, as in the case of the diocese of 
 Salzburg at the close of the Thirty Years' War. 
 Twenty-two thousand people were forced to leave 
 their homes, solely because they loved the truth and 
 liberty. Their Roman Catholic neighbors were told 
 not to help them by buying their lands or their 
 houses, for they should have them without purchase, 
 and so they did, while these poor people hastened to 
 find a more merciful government; and began again, 
 in utmost poverty, a new race for life, but not until 
 their money and their children as their houses and 
 lands had been ruthlessl}^ taken from them. In the 
 case of the Jewish converts in Spain, they were 
 given from March, 1492, to the last day of July, 
 about four months, to forsake all they had, and who- 
 ever assisted them in any way was considered equally 
 guilty with them of the crime of heresy. This was 
 evidently done in order that the government might 
 seize upon their property and enrich itself by their 
 plunder and spoliation. We have a most pathetic 
 record of how these Jews pleaded for a little time that 
 they might by any means turn their lands into money 
 and have somewhat to live upon as they went away. 
 All mercy was denied them. They hastened to the 
 seaports, meeting incredible hardships. Crowded 
 into vessels, without even food enough to eat, they 
 launched on the Mediterranean, many of them starv- 
 ing, and being thrown overboard as they voyaged, 
 in the hope of finding some government which would 
 show them a humanity which the papal church has 
 never shown. 
 
164 Persecution and Property. 
 
 2. The confiscations were sure, relentless, and avari- 
 cious. A careful inventory was made of the goods of 
 every man whom they arrested. Even the debts 
 Avhich were owing him were taken into the account, 
 and these were made also the property of the church. 
 The Inquisition was the real confiscator. But to go 
 still farther, and to show how bent the church was on 
 robbery, observe that when suspicion fell upon a man 
 and he was arrested, the Inquisitors and their officers 
 did not wait for his conviction, but instantly upon 
 his arrest took all his goods, everything which he 
 had, and turned his family out of doors utterly de- 
 spoiled. Among the horrors of the Inquisition which 
 have never been dwelt upon, so terrible were its other 
 deeds, is this, that just as soon as the owner, the 
 father of the family and the owner of property, 
 was arrested, his family had no place to lay their 
 heads. Whoever took them into his house, or gave 
 them food, or sheltered or clothed them, was himself 
 considered an object of suspicion. His property was 
 seized, his goods were forfeited. Ay, friends, if the 
 husband of your daughter had been seized in the 
 night, not knowing his accuser or his crime, and 
 hurried off to the dungeons of the Inquisition in the 
 darkness, and she at midnight had come to you be- 
 cause the inquisitors had seized her house, — if she 
 had come with her baby in her arms, and her little 
 ones crying at her knees, and you had taken her into 
 your house, and sheltered her, you would have been in 
 the prisons of the Inquisition before the next night, 
 and all your property, and all that of any who showed 
 you mercy, would have been taken from you. Families 
 
Persecution and Property. 165 
 
 of suspected heretics, to every degree of kinship, 
 who even showed them sympathy or pity, were thus 
 robbed of their possessions. I ask you now, not why 
 the church was inhuman, but I ask you why it was 
 that in every case the first thing which they did after 
 seizing the person of a man was to confiscate all that 
 he had. We gaze on the Vatican and its treasures of 
 art to-day. For hours and days I have wandered 
 through its splendid halls, or have stood under the 
 dome of St. Peter's and admired its splendor; but 
 these treasures of the papacy and all its magnificence 
 are the treasures of robbery, taken from infancy and 
 from age through centuries of oppression by the 
 foulest and most monstrous system of injustice that 
 this world has ever seen. (Applause.) 
 
 3. With these gains in view the Inquisitors 
 bribed people to present testimony against those 
 whom they would. I was telling you not very long 
 ago of Dom Pedro de Arbues who was cannonized as 
 a saint by Pius IX. only a few years ago. It was 
 common and current talk in Spain that this inquisi- 
 tor paid liberally for testimony against heretics, and 
 there is every reason to believe that this was a com- 
 mon practice of Inquisitors. Suppose you find your- 
 self to-day in a state of comparative prosperity, and 
 there is a bribe offered to any man who will charge 
 you with expressing any of these opinions condemned 
 by the church. There are plenty of people who 
 would accept the bribe. One goes to the inquisitor 
 and says, " I have heard this man say he did not be- 
 lieve that the body and blood of Christ were in the 
 mass." That is enough. A reward is given to this 
 
166 Persecution and Property. 
 
 person out of your substance ; the rest, including 
 your life, goes to the church. And with such bribes 
 the wonder is not that many were betrayed, but that 
 many more were not. My friends, there is honor in 
 humanity still, and under fearful temptations, men 
 have proved that there was good in them. They 
 have often kept the honor which priests have tried to 
 destroy. The greatest debaucher of humanity that 
 this world ever saw, in my opinion, is this same 
 Roman Catholic hierarchy. (Applause.) 
 
 4. Debtors were tempted to discharge their debts 
 by accusing those to whom they owed money. A 
 spendthrift who had taken ten or fifteen thousand 
 dollars of your money and wasted it, who was 
 pressed by you for payment, might denounce you to 
 the Inquisition, and all that you possessed would be 
 taken from you. You would never know your 
 accuser. Sometimes you may have wondered why it 
 was that the most sacred relations of life were not 
 proof against the Inquisition, but listen to this : 
 Wives were told again and again that their right of 
 dowry depended on their fidelity to the church, and 
 if they married a man knowing that he entertained 
 any heretical opinions, or if after they found out that 
 he entertained heretical opinions they lived with 
 him more than forty days, — if they did not denounce 
 and betray him to the Inquisitors, they lost their 
 right of dowry, and so they were stripped of all their 
 property too, however good Catholics they were. 
 A woman who may have heard her husband say that 
 he did not think it was necessary to venerate the 
 relic of St. Ann, or any other miserable old bone 
 
Persecution and Property. 167 
 
 declared sacred by lying priests, may have denounced 
 him to the Inquisition solely that she in her fear 
 might have something to live upon when he was 
 gone, rather than to wait until others denounced him 
 and her right of dowry and all beside went into the 
 general treasury of the church. 
 
 In many cases where commutations were offered in 
 money by accused persons they were accepted, and in 
 some cases a regular business sprang up of men who, 
 being told that they were likely to be denounced, 
 went to the inquisitors and gave a portion of their 
 property to save themselves from more terrible conse- 
 quences. 
 
 5. In the case of the dead, have you not wondered 
 why it was that oftentimes the priests took up the 
 ashes of the dead and showed indignity to them? 
 Let me tell you why it was done in many cases. If a 
 man died supposed to be in communion with the 
 church, and it was afterwards believed that he was a 
 heretic through any slander whatever, no matter how 
 long after his death, all the property of which he died 
 possessed, in whose hands soever it was found, might 
 be seized. You may have taken the last sacraments 
 of the church, and died a good Roman Catholic so far 
 as anybody knew. Forty years, fifty years, a hun- 
 dred years after, it might be said that you were a her- 
 etic. Then you would be tried, although a hundred 
 years dead. Your property would be traced, all your 
 heirs and their heirs would be found, and the last 
 penny which they had would be taken by the Roman 
 Catholic church. There was no limit to the years 
 which might intervene between death and such 
 
168 Persecution and Property. 
 
 a trial, and the result was that in numberless cases 
 people who supposed themselves secure in their 
 possessions were deprived of them without any pro- 
 cess of law but the processes of the Inquisition, on the 
 ground that such property was once a heretic's. 
 
 Moreover, it was a principle of papal law that no 
 heretic could give a legal title to anything that he 
 sold. You might have bought of me twenty years 
 ago a piece of property, and I might have conveyed 
 it to you in due legal form. At the expiration of 
 twenty years, some one might accuse me of having 
 been a heretic at the time of sale. If so, I could not 
 transfer you that property legally ; then it was taken 
 from you and no restitution made. 
 
 Was there ever a more devilishly ingenious system 
 of robbery since the world began ? I do not believe 
 that ever any Hindu potentate under Asiatic skies 
 had so much satanic ingenuity in his mode of taxing 
 and plundering his people as this discloses. And yet 
 this is the holy Roman Catholic infallible church. 
 (Applause.) And this is the master of more people 
 in Worcester to-day than you and I are willing to 
 admit, not only Roman Catholics but Protestants. 
 (Applause.) This is the history that our timid peo- 
 ple are indorsing. This is the papacy for which they 
 are building parochial schools. I am not charging 
 the Roman Catholic people, God knows, with this 
 villany. They are the ones who have suffered, as 
 well as other protesting Christians. They are the ones 
 who have been plundered for over a thousand years 
 and are being plundered to-day. They are the ones 
 that were cheated and robbed of thousands of dollars 
 
Persecution and Property. 169 
 
 in New York last Sunday for a sight of a bit of bone. 
 They are the ones whose priests go up and down the 
 church aisles in this city and compel them to give 
 whether they want to or not. I plead for them. I 
 plead for a manly Protestantism to stand up for the 
 Roman Catholics who are being trampled down. 
 Help them, men of sense and humanity ! (Applause.) 
 IV. But I must hasten to a close. What were the 
 consequences of this system of papal plunder ? Com- 
 merce and industry were ruined, business of all sorts 
 was prostrated. I read from one of the ablest histori- 
 ans of our time, from whom I have already quoted : 
 " In addition to the misery inflicted by these whole- 
 sale confiscations on the thousands of innocent and 
 helpless women and children thus stripped of every- 
 thing, it would be almost impossible to exaggerate 
 the evil which they entailed upon all classes in the 
 business of daily life. All safeguards were with- 
 drawn from every transaction. No creditor or pur- 
 chaser could be sure of the orthodoxy of him with 
 whom he was dealing; and, even more than the prin- 
 ciple that ownership was forfeited as soon as heresy 
 had been committed by the living, the practice of pro- 
 ceeding against the memory of the dead after an in- 
 terval virtually unlimited, rendered it impossible for 
 any man to feel secure in the possession of property, 
 whether it had descended in his family for genera- 
 tions, or had been acquired within an ordinary life- 
 time. Though some legists held that proceedings 
 against the deceased had to be commenced within five 
 years after death, others asserted that there was no 
 limit, and the practice of the Inquisition shows that 
 
170 Persecution and Property. 
 
 the latter opinion was followed. The prescription of 
 forty years' possession by good Catholics was further 
 limited by the conditions, that they must at no time 
 have had a knowledge that the former owner was a 
 heretic, and, moreover, he must have died with an un- 
 sullied reputation for orthodox}^, — both points which 
 might cast a grave doubt on titles." 
 
 1. As I said, commerce and industry were pros- 
 trated. No more perfect system could be devised for 
 ruining a country than the system of the Inquisition, 
 not merely for the blood it spilled, not merely for the 
 dungeons it filled, not merely for the children that 
 it orphaned, and the terror which depopulated prov- 
 inces, but for the plunder of the possessions of the 
 people which became at once the property of the 
 church and of the state. 
 
 You have sometimes raised the question why it is 
 that Spain and Portugal and Italy are so prostrate, — 
 the South American republics, Mexico and Central 
 America, and Quebec also, — why they are so poor and 
 bankrupt. Their people have natural intelligence, 
 they work very hard, they appreciate life as other 
 people do. By what process were they ruined? I 
 am showing you how Rome ruins all prosperity : how 
 she ruined it in all these lands you can see for your- 
 self in the light of to-day. 
 
 And now, within the last fifteen years, again and 
 again within the last forty, we are told that the In- 
 quisition would be a good thing for America. Ro- 
 man Catholic publishers and authors in New England 
 publish the work of LeMaistre, in which he states 
 that it is a very desirable institution to plant in every 
 
Persecution and Property. 171 
 
 country, and they distinctly indorse this opinion ; and 
 wherever Romanism is, as I showed on last Sabbath, 
 there the Inquisition is set up. 
 
 2. I want a word with our men of property. The 
 rich men who escaped from Rome's avarice in former 
 times, escaped by paying very liberally into her treas- 
 ury and by becoming associate persecutors of others. 
 The rich men of this country are all objects of 
 priestly covetousness, and the wealth of this country 
 they would be glad to have as they had the wealth of 
 Mexico thirty years ago, holding a full third if not 
 half of all property in their own hands. Men who 
 have money cannot spend their wealth better than 
 by resisting the inroads of this power. If you expect 
 your children to keep what you leave them, make it 
 impossible for Romanism to rule this nation. 
 
 3. A word with the prosperous citizens of the mid- 
 dle class. Why is it that Rome has no middle class 
 in any land where she has full sway ? Because the 
 middle class are really the people who have the 
 wealth of the country, they are its industrious, intel- 
 ligent, prosperous workers. There is no middle class 
 in Mexico nor Central America, and there are none 
 in Italy. There was none in Spain, — there is none 
 now. The very rich are there and the very poor. 
 What is the destruction of the middle class ? 
 
 I might answer by asking what is the source of its 
 prosperity ? 
 
 Education, intelligence, protected industry, honor, 
 truth, pure religion, these are the allies of the people, 
 these create the middle class. I appeal to the middle 
 class of America. I ask you to notice that the Ro- 
 
172 Persecution and Property. 
 
 manism which our papers said last Monday morning 
 was to control half of our population in 1930, is the 
 agency which blots out the middle class. There is no 
 opportunity for you to go up in fortune and become 
 the millionaires ; you have got to go down and be the 
 slaves when Rome comes into power. Are you ready 
 to do it ? Putting on her screws wherever she can, 
 as in the case of the Knights of Labor some years ago, 
 when they were numerous and powerful, Rome en- 
 deavors to squeeze out the life-blood of a nation's 
 wealth and to turn it to gold in her treasury, while 
 she turns and turns again the omnipresent enginery 
 which a little while ago was red hot persecution, 
 and in a little while would be again, if she had her 
 way unhindered. 
 
 The boycott is a Roman Catholic institution. 
 There are business men on our streets to-day who are 
 afraid of it and have told me so. They hold their 
 trade and their money by their silence and acquies- 
 cence to Romish oppression and threats. It is only 
 the shadow of the Inquisition stalking by, and threat- 
 ening to seize the heretic's property if he does not 
 bow submissively to the church. 
 
 All that we have said to-day will be made much 
 clearer on next Sunday, when I put over against it a 
 background of still larger proof. 
 
 Thus I have given you some of the principles which 
 have forced the submission of men to the Papacy and 
 have continued the existence of the Roman Catholic 
 church. Some of the most evil things in this world 
 have had the longest life. Slavery has endured for 
 centuries because those who enslave men think that 
 
Persecution and Property. 173 
 
 they make wealth by it. Other curses of our own 
 and former times have seemed to almost outlast the 
 race which they are ruining, although we know how 
 exceedingly evil they are. Do not infer because the 
 Roman Catholic church is old and still exists, that 
 therefore it is good or that God favors it. The devil 
 lives, and hosts of people follow him still in defiance 
 of the good God. But let us believe that however 
 long wrong endures, however hoary robbery grows, 
 however high the treasure of plunderers is piled, how- 
 ever blasphemy attempts to dethrone God, the avenger 
 who sits in the Heavens enthroned will laugh at their 
 presumption, for He knows that their calamity and 
 overthrow draweth nigh. (Great Applause.) 
 
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PAPAL GREED OF WEALTH. 
 
 I RESUi^iE the general subject where I left it on 
 last Sunday, taking the same text, with an additional 
 one ; viz., 1 Timothy, 6th chapter, 10th verse : " The 
 love of money is a root of all evil ; " adding to it this 
 from the lesson which I read in Acts, the 8th chap- 
 ter, from the 18th to the 21st verses: "And when 
 Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles' 
 hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them 
 money, saying. Give me also this power, that on 
 whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy 
 Ghost. But Peter said unto him. Thy money perish 
 with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of 
 God may be purchased with money. Thou hast 
 neither part nor lot in this matter ; for thy heart is 
 not right in the sight of God." 
 
 The use of money in several ways recorded in 
 Bible history is clearly subject to most severe cen- 
 sure. Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, taking money 
 for the service which his master had done Naaman, 
 gets the gold by falsehood, and the leprosy with it as 
 a mark of God's displeasure. Judas Iscariot, because 
 he was a thief, sold his Lord, the incarnate righteous- 
 ness, for thirty pieces of silver, and became forever 
 infamous. Simon the magician, proposing to buy 
 
 175 
 
176 Papal G-reed of Wealth, 
 
 spiritual power, represents the spirit of all who deem 
 that the gifts of God can be purchased with money. 
 These incidents indicate, as do a thousand passages 
 of Holy Writ, how utterly inconsistent it is with the 
 spirit of Christ either to passionately love money, or 
 to barter for it, or pretend to barter for it, spiritual 
 good. If the Holy Scriptures have set their seal on 
 any one thing so markedly that we cannot doubt 
 their meaning, they have sealed this as a truth for- 
 ever, that avarice and greed, selfishness and a grasp- 
 ing spirit, are totally inconsistent with true religion. 
 
 On the previous occasion, at such length that I 
 trust the proofs were adequate, I showed to this 
 audience that a moving cause of the Inquisition of 
 the Roman Catholic Church has been its greed of 
 gold. Those of you who heard the facts and argu- 
 ments were satisfied that they revealed the true spirit 
 of Romanism ; but I was the more sure that it was 
 true, because, behind all then said, I had in mind a 
 clear historical survey of the entire policy, spirit, 
 and intent of the Roman Catholic hierarchy for the 
 last thousand years, and that vision reveals this 
 hierarchy as bartering for money everything of 
 which they declare themselves possessed, and show- 
 ing, not merely in the Inquisition, but in every day's 
 work, in every year's life, and in every century's 
 career, that greed of money is a paramount considera- 
 tion with its leading spirits and directors. This let 
 me prove to you on the present occasion. 
 
 You will not suppose that I deny that a great many 
 of the priests of the Roman Catholic Church are men 
 of noble generosity, — but they do not control that 
 
Papal G-reed of Wealth. 177 
 
 church. I am talkmg not about individual Roman 
 Catholics, but about the entire policy of the church, 
 when I cite it before the bar of Christianity as 
 branded with a covetousness and lust of gold which 
 is wholly inconsistent with the Christian spirit. In 
 order to demonstrate this, I propose to name to you a 
 few of the articles which Rome offers for money. On 
 so sordid a theme I cannot suppose that I shall be able 
 to speak with any very great eloquence. If I should 
 recite to you in detail the articles which are for sale 
 in a retail store, you, as merchants, might be commer- 
 cially interested, but in general you would hardly ex- 
 pect to find the recital of such a catalogue thrillingly 
 interesting. However, I think I can interest you, 
 even in the details of the Romish shop ; for the 
 Italians call the Roman Catholic Church a shop, 
 because they have so much on sale, and the French 
 have a proverb that Romanism is the "religion of 
 money." 
 
 I. I propose first to speak very briefly, reserving 
 more for a later time, of the obvious wealth of the 
 churchy naming a few out of the multitude of facts. 
 
 1. Dr. Edward McGlynn says that the present 
 Pope is worth a hundred million dollars. Dr. 
 McGlynn lived nine years in Rome, and is a very 
 intelligent man. I am not inquiring where the Pope 
 obtained this wealth. I shall inquire later. Is not 
 this a pretty good sum for the so-called vicar of 
 Christ, the representative of Peter the fisherman, to 
 have by him ? Pope John XXII. was the son of a 
 cobbler. He was not in office for a long period, and 
 his pontificate was during the great schism, when the 
 
178 Papal Cf-reed of Wealth. 
 
 revenues of the church were jnuch smaller than 
 usual ; but he managed, in the period of his official 
 life, to get so much, that at his death he left eighteen 
 millions of ducats, and valuables to the amount of 
 seventeen millions more. He had no ancestral 
 wealth. 
 
 2. The Jesuits, the dominant society in the Roman 
 Catholic Church, are bound by a vow of poverty ; but 
 when in 1772 the order was abolished by the decree 
 of the Pope, their property amounted to two hundred 
 millions of dollars. They had been in existence 
 about two centuries and a half. In the state of Paraguay 
 the Jesuits set up a patriarchal government about the 
 year 1610, and carried it on for a century and a half. 
 The people lived in mud hovels, the Jesuits in 
 palaces. The people got enough to barely sustain 
 nature, the Jesuits took the rest. And when they 
 weie abolished, in that little state the one mission of 
 San Ignacio Mini was possessed of twenty-seven 
 million dollars, and there were thirty such missions 
 in Paraguay. Garneau, a Roman Catholic Canadian 
 historian, says that the Jesuits are trying to make a 
 Paraguay of Canada. 
 
 3. In Canada the order of the Sulpicians is said to 
 be richer than the bank of Montreal, which is one of 
 the great financial institutions of North America. 
 The largest property holder in Montreal, with one 
 exception, is the church. The endowments, tithes, 
 dues, and so forth of the Roman Catholic Church in 
 Canada were estimated fifteen years ago at a capital 
 value of fifty millions of dollars. In the province of 
 Quebec, property of the church otherwise taxable,, 
 
Papal Cri^eed of Wealth. 179 
 
 now exempt, is estimated at a hundred million 
 dollars. 
 
 4. There have been times in the history of England 
 when the revenue of the Pope from England was 
 greater than the revenue of the king. That was one 
 thing which caused the quarrel between the Pope and 
 Henry VIII. Henry VIII. wanted the revenues for 
 himself. You know the Papists are always affirming 
 that Henry VIII. was a desperately bad character, 
 who broke with the papacy because he wanted to 
 divorce his wife and marry another, and they assume 
 great virtue to the Pope as denying the divorce. 
 But the truth is, the papal legate came to England 
 with the permission for divorce in his pocket, which 
 the Pope was willing to give for a consideration ; but 
 Henry would not pay the consideration, ^nd took the 
 matter into his own hands, declaring his independence 
 of Italian control. 
 
 Where the church is rich, as I have often said, the 
 people are poor. There is a current proverb in 
 Mexico, that all the small change of the state goes 
 into the open door of the church. I need not ad- 
 dress myself to the task of proving the poverty of 
 the people of those countries where the church is 
 powerful. For later I shall show that in the mat- 
 ter of real estate, the Roman Catholic Church has 
 seized and held so much, that almost every natior 
 in the world has been compelled to confiscate her 
 property for the sake of the people. What I have 
 already said is merely preliminary to a further ques- 
 tion, which is this : — 
 
 II. By what means did the church gain this wealth ? 
 
180 Papal G-reed of Wealth. 
 
 How did the papal government come to be so rich ? 
 How did it become a " shop " to the Italians, and a 
 " silver religion " to the French ? I answer, by what 
 it sold. But some one may object, " It is harsh to 
 affirm that the church has made sale of sundry spirit- 
 ual privileges, offices, relics, and the like ; say, rather, 
 that the people gave these benefits to the church in 
 gratitude for what the church gave to them." But the 
 money has been forced from the people by threaten- 
 ing, bargaining, and deception. It has not been a 
 free-will offering. The Roman Catholic Church 
 (though it did not deliver the goods) has sold sal- 
 vation to millions of people for centuries of time, 
 and does so to-day. In confirmation of this let me 
 speak somewhat in detail of the facts. 
 
 I. There is scarcely anything related to religion of 
 which a Roman Catholic becomes possessed without 
 paying something. 
 
 1. Beginning with infancy, baptism is conferred 
 at a price. I do not know what the fees are in all 
 parts of the world, but I have here what are called 
 the '' Faculties of a priest," really a license, or certif- 
 icate, to perform the functions of a priest, in Ottawa, 
 Canada, in which the fee for baptism is set at one 
 dollar ; and it is directed that for this and other ser- 
 vices he shall send what fees he collects regularly to 
 the bishop, if he expects to retain what are called 
 " these faculties." In a neighboring town, a man 
 tells me he paid five dollars for his child's baptism, 
 and was told that ten would be more acceptable. 
 
 2. After his baptism, as the Roman Catholic grows 
 up, the thing which is sold to him oftenest is the 
 
Papal G-reed of Wealth. 181 
 
 mass or masses. What are these ? In brief, they 
 say that the consecrated wafer becomes the body, 
 blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ, and this 
 they sell for a price. When a Roman Catholic dies, 
 his friends are told that he has gone to Purgatory, a 
 place of suffering. The question of how to get him 
 out is a question which the priest answers. It is by 
 having some priest manufacture God in the mass 
 many times, and offer the same as a sacrifice. In 
 proportion to the amount of money paid is the num- 
 ber of masses said. Christina, Queen of Spain, re- 
 cently left enough for five thousand masses for herself, 
 and five thousand for her husband. Thus rich people 
 have a good deal better chance than poor people to 
 get out of Purgatory. 
 
 In the Assembly of Florence in 1787, a Roman 
 Catholic divine alleged that the number of privileged 
 altars and masses in the diocese of Florence empow- 
 ered to release one soul from Purgatory at each cele- 
 bration, was so large, apart from the vast number of 
 plenary indulgences, as to exceed the ratio of deaths 
 each day, while the same proportion held good 
 throughout the whole Catholic world. Therefore, 
 there must be a surplus of masses. Purgatory must 
 be empty, and the indulgences are a long way in 
 advance of any possible demand on its space. And 
 yet, the priests continually tell their people that 
 Purgatory is full, and getting out is very uncertain. 
 Moreover, a high mass costs variously, sometimes ten, 
 sometimes twenty-five dollars ; a low mass cost in 
 Canada, the last I knew, a dollar. So many of these 
 masses are sold for souls in Purgatory, that the 
 
182 Papal G-reed of Wealth. 
 
 priests in Canada and the United States cannot say 
 them all, for generally a priest is permitted to cele- 
 brate only one mass in a day. So the masses for 
 which these Canadian and American priests get a 
 dollar, they send to the poor priests on the Continent 
 of Europe, who agree to say them for twenty-five 
 cents, while these home priests keep the other seven- 
 ty-five cents, which is a very fair commission. 
 (Laughter.) In 1889 the poorer class of priests in 
 Rome made a protest, very like a " strike," because 
 the price of a mass was reduced from twenty to 
 sixteen cents. They appealed to the people to help 
 them in their fight for the other four cents, and the 
 people laughed, which was a very proper thing to 
 do. It seems very much like selling Christ, does it 
 not, to say with the priest, "I now make Christ for 
 your friend in Purgatory for one dollar, or for twenty- 
 five dollars, or for twenty-five cents, as the case 
 may be? I offer him up — that is, I eat him up, 
 and that soul in Purgatory is helped on the way 
 out." Judas Iscariot was reverent when he sold 
 Christ compared with these. (Applause.) 
 
 3. Closely related to the masses are what are 
 known as indulgences. These are in brief, a remis- 
 sion of the temporal and Purgatorial penalties of 
 sin. Indulgences do not promise, generally, to save 
 people from final perdition if they are persistently 
 bad, though indulgence sellers have repeatedly 
 promised this ; but all along the road after death, 
 indulgences are supposed to be very helpful. This 
 whole matter of indulgences is very fully discussed in 
 a most extraordinary pamphlet which I hold in my 
 
Papal Q-reed of Wealth. 18 
 
 Q 
 
 hand, written by the very eminent historian, Henry 
 C. Lea. It is entitled, " Indulgences in Spain," and is, 
 as are all of Mr. Lea's studies, a most careful citation 
 of original documents and undeniable authorities. 
 Here we learn that indulgences were frequently sold 
 on the credit system ; but they did not help the buyer 
 unless he intended to pay. If a person gets an 
 indulgence by misrepresenting the amount of prop- 
 erty which he has, if he is rich, and ought to pay 
 more, and says he is not rich, and pays less, the 
 indulgence is not good for anything. This is a 
 shrewd way of getting a high price for spiritual 
 goods. We find Pope Boniface IX. selling indul- 
 gences, and then withdrawing them and selling them 
 over again, which is a somewhat singular way to 
 speculate. Pius VII., as late as 1778, sold these 
 indulgences in Spain, and to this very day they are 
 freely sold there. The opponent of* Martin Luther, 
 Hieronymus Emser, admits that priests and monks 
 were " greedy and shameless in their sale of indul- 
 gences," which is perfectly obvious to everybody. 
 The profits of these sales were enormous. Henry 
 TV. of Castile received in four years, as profit on the 
 indulgences sold in his kingdom, one hundred million 
 dollars. In 1519 Leo X., trafficking with the Spanish 
 king, agreed to take twenty-four thousand ducats a 
 year as his share of the profits of sales in that realm. 
 Charles V. had a sharp conflict with Popes Leo and 
 Adrian as to the price of a Bull of Indulgence which 
 he desired them to issue for his dominions. They 
 wanted two hundred thousand ducats a year, which 
 he said he would not pay, and finally they comprom- 
 ised on a smaller sum, and issued the Bull. 
 
184 Papal Greed of Wealth. 
 
 I might read from the reports of the ambassadors 
 of Venice at the Spanish court of the enormous 
 revenues annually received for the sale of indul- 
 gences, sometimes as high as six hundred thousand 
 ducats a year, which was divided between the church 
 and state. Philip II. of Spain, who received as 
 a part of his income the wealth of this Wes- 
 tern Continent, obtained about as much money for 
 the sale of indulgences to his people as from taxes 
 and the discovery of gold in the New World. The 
 traffic in indulgences was thoroughly organized, its 
 officers consisting of delegates, commissioners, receiv- 
 ers, treasurers, preachers, and other officials. The 
 preachers, who were to persuade the people to take 
 indulgences, were paid by a commission on their 
 sales. They were selected for their ability, and were 
 compelled to do their utmost to sell, for if the 
 preacher failed, to go to a village where he might 
 have gone, he was fined thirty ducats ; and if a pastor 
 was remiss in inviting these pardoners, as they were 
 called, to come to his diocese, he was excommunicated. 
 Merchants and bankers made advances on indul- 
 gences which were to be sold, and were in the hands 
 of the government, precisely as financiers now make 
 advances on bonds as collateral. The territory over 
 which these preachers were sent was divided into 
 circuits. When a bull had been sold it could not be 
 taken back, though the buyer might wish to return 
 it ; and if a seller took it back, he was fined thirty 
 ducats for so doing. When the travelling salesmen 
 came to a town to preach about indulgences, and to 
 urge the people to buy them, all business was sus- 
 
Papal G-reed of Wealth. 185 
 
 pended. This suspension was enforced, though a 
 great hardship. Everybody was compelled to go and 
 hear, and every effort was made to compel them to 
 buy. If anybody failed to leave his work and go 
 and listen to the preacher who solicited him to buy 
 indulgences to get his friends out of Purgatory, or to 
 save himself from Purgatory, he was excommuni- 
 cated. 
 
 These bulls were so valuable as property that 
 great pains were taken to keep from counterieiting 
 them, as in the case of bank-notes. They were made 
 in the monasteries, and very carefully guarded. 
 Among the abuses in connection with their sale, we 
 have the fact that the people were often compelled 
 to take them for fear of the Inquisition, the con- 
 fessors making it necessary for them to buy, with the 
 alternative of being denounced to the inquisitors. 
 Great and sore poverty came upon the people as a 
 result, and when, because too poor to pay cash, the 
 people were compelled to buy on credit, the most 
 pitiless rigor was exercised in enforcing payment 
 from them. A whole community would be put 
 under an interdict; that is, all excommunicated, 
 if there were people in it who had bought indul- 
 gences and had not paid, or could not pay. The 
 property of the officers of the counties, personal and 
 public, was seized from them if they did not put 
 forth their utmost efforts to make debtors who had 
 bought indulgences pay the debt. Intermitted for a 
 time, in 1720 the whole machinery was restored. 
 Again, in 1802, the most active efforts were made to 
 enforce it. The business was renewed by Pius IX., 
 
186 Papal Greed of Wealth. 
 
 the last Pope before the present one, who announced 
 a complete exemption from the pains of Purgatory 
 for people who would take these indulgences. Re- 
 peated bulls for the same soul were advised by 
 Pius IX., so that they might be sure to be effective. 
 Pius IX. granted a bull for this traffic to go on from 
 1878 to 1890, and stipulated the money price for this 
 concession. In 1859 the revenue was estimated in 
 Spain at three million pesetas. The receipts fell off 
 in 1874. The present price of an indulgence for the 
 poor is fifteen cents ; the same for the dead. For 
 the higher classes ninety cents is charged, and for 
 retaining unlawful gains, twenty-three cents. And 
 from these the gross annual revenue for the living 
 and the dead is about three and a half million pesetas, 
 the cost in Spain to-day of bulls of indulgence, which 
 are sold there now under the sanction of the Roman 
 Catholic Church. 
 
 But pardon me if I now leave this interesting sub- 
 ject, for if I spend as much time as this ou each of 
 their wares, I shall never finish. 
 
 4. Another way which they have of insuring sal- 
 vation is by jubilees. The first jubilee was appointed 
 by the Pope in 1340, and they have kept them up for 
 revenue ever since. The jubilee was originally in- 
 tended to occur at the expiration of each one hun- 
 dred years, but the first jubilee brought the church 
 so much money that they reduced the time to fifty, 
 then to thirty-three, and then to twenty-five years, 
 and having had a jubilee in 1851 they had another in 
 1857, an interval of only six years. At the first 
 jubilee a million and a quarter pilgrims went to 
 
Papal Greed of Wealth. 187 
 
 Rome. For what did they go? Because at that 
 time the Pope sent word to all the world that no 
 indulgences would be granted to people unless they 
 came to Rome to get them, and all churches which 
 had special power, under the church law, to sell in- 
 dulgences were denied that privilege during the year 
 of jubilee. At that jubilee, in the shrines of St. Peter 
 and St. Paul, there were deposited, says Cardinal 
 Capitan, fifty thousand gold florins in coppers, obvi- 
 ously the gifts of the poor. From this you may 
 judge what was given by the rich. Everybody who 
 lived in the vicinity of Rome was expected to stay in 
 the city thirty days, those who came from a distance 
 to stay fifteen days, and of course all that they spent 
 in the city was for the enriching of the papal power. 
 Persons who could not go to Rome in the year of 
 jubilee must pay as much money to the Pope as they 
 would have spent in going to Rome, and agents were 
 sent out all over Europe to collect the money which 
 these people would have spent in going to Rome. 
 The effect of these pilgrimages on the morals of the 
 people was horrible. No picture can ever be painted 
 which will truly reveal what a sink Rome became in 
 the years of jubilee. Still this is even yet a papal 
 method of raising money by promising salvation. 
 
 Other pilgrimages to various places are made use 
 of in the same way. Lourdes in France, Knock in 
 Ireland, and in Canada whither the famous relic of , 
 which we were talking last Sunday has gone to the 
 shrine of St. Anne de Beaupre, are all encouraged by 
 the church as places of pilgrimages, so as to make 
 money out of pilgrims who throng to them. 
 
188 Papal Greed of Wealth 
 
 These sales I have called the sale of salvation, 
 because baptisms, masses, and indulgences are deemed 
 essential to salvation. 
 
 II. But, similar to these, there are sales which I 
 may call privileges, which are not immediately, 
 though secondarily, connected with salvation. 
 
 1. Among the privileges which the Church of 
 Rome sells freely are marriage dispensations. There 
 are certain kinships, or blood relationships, that people 
 sustain one to the other, which make it impossible for 
 them to marry unless the church permits them so to 
 do, by granting a dispensation. Nevertheless, any 
 one can marry whomsoever he likes, provided he buys 
 the privilege of the Pope. Bishop Scipio de Ricci, 
 of Italy, says that the whole business is " a shameful 
 traffic." The Council of Trent decreed that a "Pope 
 can dispense in any degree of relationship, whether 
 it is forbidden by the divine law or not." I hold in 
 my hand a copy of the rules relating to marriage dis- 
 pensations in Ottawa, Canada. If you want to marry 
 your first cousin, or your second cousin, or your aunt 
 or your uncle, or any other relative, I can tell you 
 just how much it would cost you there. I read from 
 the Faculties of a priest, granted him in 1874 : — 
 
 Index of fees for dispensations of matrimony in the 
 diocese of Ottawa. 
 
 For dispensation of 1 of the banns $2.00 
 
 " " "2 " " 4.00 
 
 " " " 3 *' " 10.00 
 
 " " " 4th degree of consanguinity and 
 
 affinity 10.00 
 
 *' " " the 4th degree simple, with the 
 
 3d degree of mixed consan- 
 guinity and affinity .... 12.00 
 
Papal Greed of Wealth. 189 
 
 For dispensation of 4th degree with the 3d mixed . 11.00 
 
 " " "3d degree simple 14.00 
 
 " " " 3d degree mixed 18.00 
 
 " " "3d degree mixed with the 2d . 24.00 
 
 '' '* " 2d simple 40.00 
 
 ** " " impediment of spiritual affinity 4.00 
 
 " " " " " public decency 2.00 
 
 (I should think the whole matter of dispensations 
 at a price would come under that head, — impedi- 
 ment of public decency.) (Laughter and applause.) 
 
 For dispensation of impediment of prohibited time 4.00 
 
 This note is appended in Latin (I read the transla- 
 tion). " The fees for these dispensations shall be 
 sent promptly every year to the secretary of the 
 bishop." When Prince Amadeo, the brother of the 
 present King of Italy, desired to marry his niece a 
 few months ago, he paid the Pope twenty thousand 
 dollars, according to current report, to get the privi- 
 lege, or dispensation. 
 
 2. Another privilege which they have on sale is 
 that of getting out from under the excommunication 
 when you are under it. Frederick of Trinacria paid 
 Boniface VIII. one thousand ounces of gold to be 
 relieved from the ban. The Emperor Frederick 11. 
 paid Gregory IX. one hundred thousand ounces of 
 gold. The pious zeal of this Pope was followed by 
 Clement V., who fulminated a bull of excommuni- 
 cation of quite unexampled character against the 
 Republic of Venice for having refused to pay him 
 fealty in the form of twenty thousand ducats, for the 
 city and province of Ferrara it had lately conquered. 
 They finally gained relief from that excommunica- 
 
190 Papal Greed of Wealth. 
 
 tion by paying the Pope a hundred thousand ducats. 
 So you see the excommunication business was made 
 very fruitful of gain. I suppose there are many 
 people in this city this very day who, rather than be 
 excommunicated by the church, would pay all they 
 are worth, such is their horror, their superstitious 
 horror, of the power of the Pope. (Sensation.) 
 
 3. Still farther, as related to marriage, we have 
 seen that large fees have been exacted by priests in 
 different countries, so that people of necessity must 
 remain unmarried until governments relieved them 
 by passing civil marriage laws. In Chili, as I told 
 you, they were twenty-five dollars, reduced by the 
 government to twenty-five cents. They were so high 
 in Paraguay that only three legitimate children were 
 
 , born out of every hundred when the Jesuits con- 
 trolled everything. What the present fee is in the 
 American States I do not know exactly. But we 
 know that all other than churchly marriages are cursed 
 by Rome, so that the priests may keep the revenue 
 they demand. 
 
 4. The canonization of saints is costly. The 
 Chevalier Gay says in his little pamphlet on the 
 Future of Romanism, that it costs about ten thou- 
 sand dollars to be canonized as a saint. I should 
 think it would cost a great deal more than that in 
 most cases. Ten thousand dollars in money added 
 to such characters would scarcely gild them. 
 
 5. There is another kind of taxation which has 
 been rife in the church at various times, called the 
 penitential taxes. For these taxes, privileges of 
 committing certain crimes are granted. There is a 
 
Papal G-reed of Wealth. 191 
 
 well-known papal tax-list which absolves men from 
 various kinds of crime (eighteen different kinds are 
 mentioned), provided they pay a penitential tax, so- 
 called, to the Pope. These crimes include simony^ 
 murder by a priest, parricide, incest, arson, and so 
 forth. 
 
 The German Roman Catholic princes in the days 
 of Adrian VI. complained in reference to the state 
 of things in Germany, which resulted from these 
 methods of relieving people of sin. In an appeal 
 called the " Hundred Grievances of the German 
 Nation," sent forth by the Diet of Nuremberg in 1523, 
 they desired the Pope to notice, " How license to sin 
 with impunity is granted for money. How more 
 money than penitence is exacted from sinners. How 
 bishops extort money from the concubinage of priests." 
 They declared, " that by means of these purchasable 
 pardons, not only are past and future sins of the living 
 forgiven, but also those of such as have departed 
 this life and are in the purgatory of fire, provided 
 only something be counted down. Every one, in 
 proportion to the price he had expended in these 
 wares, promised himself impunity in sinning. Hence 
 came fornications, incests, adulteries, perjuries, homi- 
 cides, thefts, rapine, usury, and a whole hydra of 
 evils." These Roman Catholics and princes thought 
 the papal methods bad for the morals of the people, 
 and prove it by much more in exact accord with 
 the quotation just cited. 
 
 It has always been true that the papacy has per- 
 mitted people who make gain unlawfully to keep it, 
 provided they pay a certain tax. I find, for instance, 
 
192 Papal Greed of Wealth. 
 
 that moneys obtained for false witness, for cheating 
 in gambling, for cheating in weights and measures, 
 money obtained under false pretences, the wages of 
 prostitution, and many other things were permitted 
 to be kept, provided the person who had these unlaw- 
 ful gains would pay a tax to the church. This is so 
 well substantiated that it is beyond doubt or ques- 
 tion. It is interesting to know that two very able 
 authors, among the best in the Old World and the 
 New, tell us that the robbers of the Campagna were 
 in league with the priests, and paid to the church a 
 portion of the fruits of their robberies for the absolu- 
 tion which they received. 
 
 6. A recent traveller in Mexico tells us, that in 
 Guadalupe the beggars go to the priests with a part 
 of what they gain by begging, and in that way keep 
 on good terms with them. The priests are their 
 partners. And why are you shocked at that? 
 What do the professional Roman Catholic beggars in 
 America do with what they get? What do the 
 black-hooded nuns who come into your stores do with 
 the fruits of their begging ? They certainly do not 
 spend it on dress, and by their features I should 
 judge they do not spend it on food ; but these pro- 
 fessional beggars, of whom this country is getting too 
 full, are begging for the church, for the priests. In 
 the city of Washington they have the run of the 
 departments ; they can go where you could not go, 
 soliciting the clerks, the employees of the govern- 
 ment, everybody, to give money. It is said by one 
 who has given the subject close investigation, that if 
 any clerk in Washington refuses money for the 
 
Papal Q-reed of Wealth, 193 
 
 papacy when these black-hooded nuns ask it, he is 
 a marked man, and often is suddenly discharged be- 
 cause he has offended them, and for no other known 
 reason. ^ It is further said that scarcely does a con- 
 gressman arrive in Washington before he is set upon 
 by them, with the determination to extort money from 
 him. Does this startle you ? Why ? There are 
 merchants in Worcester who would not dare to turn 
 these same beggars out of their stores without giving 
 them what they ask, for fear of the boycott. (Loud 
 applause.) So when I state that the beggars of 
 Guadalupe in Mexico are said to be in league with 
 the priests, I have simply gone too far out of our 
 country to find my illustration, for the Romish beg- 
 gars of this city do it, the beggars of Massachusetts, 
 of the United States. 
 
 7. Lotteries, jou know, are pronounced criminal 
 by the laws of this government. We have just had 
 a great struggle over the Louisiana lottery, because it 
 was debauching the whole country, and have forced 
 that gigantic scheme of robbery to discontinue its 
 work. But lotteries are everywhere operated by the 
 Roman Catholic Church, as in Mexico and Canada. 
 In Peru, also, the bull-fights and cock-fights are some- 
 times used as a means of obtaining money under 
 churchly sanction. In Canada millions of dollars' 
 worth of lottery tickets are sold by the church. I 
 have seen one of those tickets within the last four 
 years, bought by a friend at a church door in Mon- 
 treal. The Grand Lottery of the Sacred Heart, 
 fifteen years ago, was offering $272,782 annually in 
 prizes. A special lottery charter is granted by the 
 
194 Papal Greed of Wealth. 
 
 Dominion Parliament to the province of Quebec for 
 church and educational or charitable purposes. Such 
 associations being classed as criminal under the gen- 
 eral law of the Dominion ! Rome is privileged in 
 crime by this enactment. Lotteries are all con- 
 demned by the law of the United States, but when 
 do the Roman Catholic Churches have a fair in this 
 city or State without lotteries and gambling ? There 
 is in their methods as much chance as there is in any 
 game at cards. A distinguished priest in our city 
 puts up his trotting horse, encouraging his parish- 
 ioners to guess on the weight of the horse at so much 
 apiece, so getting much more than the value of the 
 horse. A cane, a sword, a scarf, a gold watch, any 
 one of a hundred things, is used in the raffle, which 
 is a lottery on a small scale ; the tickets are sold far 
 and wide to get money for the church. And I am 
 ashamed to say that Protestant churches will adver- 
 tise similar things, — small theatres, cheap shows, and 
 the like, take a fee at the door, and degrade public 
 sentiment to make money with which to support 
 religion ! I should feel freer in talking about the 
 lotteries of the Roman Catholic Church if we were 
 as pure from kindred methods as we ought to be. 
 (Applause.) Perhaps you think I should have fin- 
 ished the catalogue of this Romish store and its sales. 
 I wish I had, but much more remains to which to 
 call your attention. 
 
 8. Amulets, charms, scapulars, medals, are all sold 
 to-day for money, in untold quantity. I can give 
 you the names of some of them, so that you can buy 
 one if you want to. I have not time to describe 
 
Papal G-reed of Wealth, 195 
 
 their alleged magical powers. The Carmelite scapu- 
 lar, the Cord of St. Francis, the Medal of St. Joseph, 
 the Medal of St. Benedict, the Agnus Dei, the 
 model of St. Peter's chains, the model of a garment 
 of the Blessed Virgin, the waters of Lourdes, etc. ; 
 while Pius IX. says that a priest can make just as 
 good holy water as they can find anywhere, so this is 
 also to be sold for its power to charm. 
 
 In the Nev/ York Independent^ within the last year, 
 Father Alfred Young, of the Paulist fathers, has 
 written column after column to prove that it is right 
 and wise to sell medals, which are put in watering 
 troughs to keep cattle from getting sick, and to be 
 used to protect people from sickness, storms, acci- 
 dents, death, etc. All which articles are sold to-day 
 in this place and in all places where Rome can keep 
 the people ignorant enough to buy them. Father 
 Durngoole gained hundreds of thousands of dollars 
 for what he calls his children's orphanages, by selling 
 these things. He had an annual income equal to 
 that of Yale University last year. Did not you sup- 
 pose that our generation had outgrown such folly? 
 that, unlike the Indian who carries his little fetich, 
 we had sense enough to know that a bit of flannel on 
 the neck would not save us from being struck by 
 lightning? Did you not suppose that we had ad- 
 vanced from such infantile superstition ? And yet 
 this is part of the religion of the holy Roman Catho- 
 lic Church. And I have not the slightest doubt that 
 there are people in this audience now with scapulars 
 on. (Great sensation.) 
 
 9. But the trade in relics is another part of Rome's 
 
196 Papal Gi^eed of Wealth. 
 
 store-keeping. Enough of the true cross has been 
 sold to make seven or eight large trees, and they in- 
 vented the theory that it multiplied like the loaves 
 of bread and the fishes. (Laughter.) There are extant 
 at least three heads of John the Baptist. There are 
 two holy coats ; and it was last year that one of these 
 holy coats was worshipped at Treves, and hundreds 
 of thousands of pilgrims went to see it, to be healed 
 of their disorders. One pope says that this is the 
 holy coat, while Argenteuil in France has another 
 holy coat. But now I must indulge myself in read- 
 ing to you a little about these relics. Last Sunday I 
 was speaking to you of the relics of St. Anne dis- 
 played in New York. You know that relic has gone 
 out of this country to Canada. Is that the reason 
 why we have had terrible rain-storms and floods? 
 (Laughter.) On yesterday morning we read that 
 this relic had brought to the church in New York 
 sixteen thousand dollars, and Archbishop Corrigan, at 
 whom the mayor of New York looked up from his 
 knees on a public platform, says that twenty-five 
 thousand people have visited and venerated or wor- 
 shipped this relic of St. Anne ! 
 
 But I want you to know just where to go to get 
 the best thing in the matter of relics, so I will give 
 you some special directions about one famous saint : 
 " The body of the Apostle St. Bartholomew is de- 
 clared in the Roman Breviary and Martyrology to have 
 been translated from Benevento to Rome by the 
 Emperor Otto II L and is alleged to be entire. It is 
 attested by bulls of Alexander III. and Sixtus V. 
 But the church of Benevento alleges that the entire 
 
Papal Greed of Wealth. 197 
 
 body of St. Bartholomew is there stilly and produces 
 bulls to that effect from Leo IX., Stephen IX., 
 Benedict XII., Clement VI., Boniface IX., and Urban 
 V. (all infallible, you know), the earliest of which 
 popes reigned fifty years after the death of Otto III. 
 Here, then, are tivo entire bodies ; but Monte Cassino 
 claims the possession of a large part of the body, and 
 so does Reims. There are, besides, three heads: one 
 at Naples, one formerly at Reichenau, and a third at 
 Toulouse; two crowns of the head at Frankfort and 
 Prague ; part of the skull at Maestricht; a jaw at Stein- 
 field; part of a jaw at Prague; two jaws in Cologne, 
 and a lotver jaiv at Murbach ; an arm and hand at 
 Gersiac ; a second arm., with the flesh, at Bethune ; a 
 third arm at Amalfi ; a lai'ge part of a fourth arm at 
 Foppens ; a fifth arm and part of a sixth at Cologne ; 
 a seventh arm at Andechs ; an eighth arm at Ebers ; 
 three la7'ge leg or ar^n bones in Prague ; part of an 
 arm at Brussels ; and other alleged portions on the 
 body, not reckoning trifles like skin, teeth, and hair, 
 in twenty other places." That is the relic business. 
 There seems to be a good many of that saint. He 
 has heads and arms enough for the Hindoo god. 
 (Great laughter.) " Again, that one handkerchief 
 with which St. Veronica is said to have wiped the 
 face of our Lord, thereby imprinting His likeness 
 upon it, is shown in seven different places. They are 
 Rome, Turin, Milan, Cadouin, Besancon, Compi^gne, 
 and Aix-la-Chapelle. Four papal briefs attest that 
 at Turin, and fourteen the one at Cadouin." Our 
 historian says, " These are, no doubt, extreme in- 
 stances ; but there are many very similar, and they 
 
198 Papal G-reed of Wealth. 
 
 admirably illustrate the uncertainty of relic-worship ; " 
 and yet the church sanctions it. If poor, superstitious 
 people were doing it, simply, I should not laugh at 
 them : I should be sorry for them ; but the Pope, the 
 cardinals, the archbishops, the bishops, the priests, 
 know these frauds, and still they perpetrate them on 
 the people for money. (Applause.) 
 
 3. A word as to the purchase of officers : — 
 III. The archbishops' pallium, which was formerly a 
 cloak, but is now a band of woollen, the badge of official 
 rank, used to be sold for .thirty thousand gold florins. 
 Ever}^ man who came into the archbishopric must 
 have a new one. At Salzburg, in the seventeenth 
 century, they had to buy the pallium three times, 
 because their archbishops died, and it cost them thirty- 
 three thousand ducats every time. The city of May- 
 ence, from the twelfth to the seventeenth century, 
 paid out three millions of florins for the same decora- 
 tion. The Council of Basle denounced the whole 
 business of pallium selling as illegal. It is carried 
 on up to the present time, although no certain price 
 is fixed on it as then, but it is awarded, and a present 
 is expected, a very thin disguise for bribery and sale. 
 It is also true that bishops used to buy promotion, 
 and I doubt very much if any bishop gets a place now 
 without paying liberally for it. 
 
 2. There was yet another mode of selling the 
 Episcopal office. Taking a bishopric now occupied, 
 in anticipation of the death of the present incumbent, 
 the Pope sells his bishopric to another man, and pos- 
 sibly to another while the first is alive, to be entered 
 upon at his decease, so that these '' letters of rever- 
 
Papal Greed of Wealth. 199 
 
 sion" as they were called, were held by many, and by 
 all sorts of people who could pay for them. Any- 
 body who could pay was an eligible candidate. And 
 "letters of reversion " had a market value. 
 
 3. Among the taxes of the church are the tithes, 
 which have added much to her revenue, and do still. 
 In Canada one twenty-sixth of all grains and farm 
 products must go to the church, and the farmer must 
 deliver it at the church house. 
 
 The Protestant tenants of Roman Catholics must 
 pay this tithe, and if a person does not raise grain he 
 must pay in money. 
 
 The church gets a great amount of money from 
 celibate priests who, not having relatives, at death 
 leave their money to the church. This is one reason 
 why they were compelled to be celibates. 
 
 4. Peter's pence is taken to-day. It was an enforced 
 tax in England and in all Northern Europe for a long 
 time. Every householder had to pay so much to the 
 Pope, in proportion to his income. Of late years, we 
 have had this matter of Peter's pence re-originated. 
 The present Pope having only eleven thousand rooms 
 in his house, and about ten or eleven thousand people 
 to wait on him, more or less, is so much a prisoner 
 that the church is urging to have Peter's pence be 
 taken up all over the world ; and considerable of the 
 money which you sent to help starving Ireland went, 
 no doubt, in the way of Peter's pence to Rome. 
 (Applause.) 
 
 5. A great deal of money is obtained through 
 forged wills. The history of this mode of making 
 gain began early and continues to this day. As early 
 
200 Papal G-reed of Wealth. 
 
 as 364 the Emperor Valentinian made a law against it. 
 The priests used their power at the deathbed to secure 
 the valuables and treasures of those whom they con- 
 fessed and absolved; and in Roman Catholic countries 
 many families are left in poverty by this priestly 
 manipulation of estates. 
 
 6. A good deal of the money which the Roman 
 Catholic Church is getting in this country is being 
 taken out of the treasury of the United States. For 
 Indian schools, they have taken in the last few years 
 about two millions of dollars. The utmost that has 
 been taken by other bodies is as follows : The Pres- 
 byterians have taken two hundred and eighty-six 
 thousand ; the Congregationalists one hundred and 
 eighty thousand ; the Episcopalians one hundred and 
 two thousand ; the Friends one hundred and forty 
 thousand ; the Methodists thirty-three thousand ; 
 while the Baptists (God bless them !) have never taken 
 a cent — not a cent. (Applause.) One of the no- 
 blest things in the history of the Baptist Churches in 
 this country is that, determined to keep church and" 
 State separate, they have refused the bribe which has 
 been offered them, and have never taken one dollar 
 from the treasury of the United States for Indian 
 contract schools. Last week the Methodist General 
 Conference, representing this great church, much 
 larger than the Roman Catholic, having taken inadver- 
 tently thirty-three thousand dollars of government 
 money for Indian schools, — the General Conference 
 unanimously declared that they never would take 
 another dollar. (Applause.) It will be only a little 
 while before the other churches do the same. And 
 
Papal Greed of Wealth, 201 
 
 you observe Romanism has taken nearly three times 
 as much as all the other churches put together out of 
 the United States Treasury. 
 
 7. Another way by which they are getting money 
 is from the public-school funds. In these cases the 
 church takes the money which is paid to the teachers, 
 and as a result is greatly enriched thereby. Only the 
 too great length of the present address prevents my 
 showing you how they are receiving public funds for 
 the support of Roman Catholic parochial schools. 
 The reformatories and orphanages of the church, 
 wherever the State gives them money, are money- 
 making institutions : a very small part goes to the 
 support of the orphans, and a very large part to the 
 support of the priesthood. 
 
 I have but a moment in which to draw the lesson 
 from these facts. Simon the Sorcerer was innocent 
 compared with the papacy. All I have not told you, 
 for want of opportunity. But I wanted you to know 
 of just what the Roman Catholic Church is making 
 the sales, by means of which she has gathered her 
 enormous wealth in this and other countries. I want 
 to ask you if you think this organization is the 
 Church of Christ ? In the Protestant church I know 
 of notliing which is sold except the pews, and I think 
 there is a growing feeling against this. This is also 
 done in the Roman Catholic Church. No Protestant 
 minister insists on even a marriage fee ; he takes 
 whatever is given him, without comment, and some- 
 times he gets nothing at all. Sometimes he gets a 
 handsome fee, but in every case it is voluntary. But 
 all baptisms, all funerals, all visitations, are entirely 
 
202 Papal Greed of Wealth, 
 
 free. The finances of Protestantism seem to me in 
 general to be managed honestly and after a spirit 
 which is in total contradistinction to that of the 
 Roman Catholic Church. You and I are called upon 
 to judge whether with our consent this church, with 
 these methods of defrauding the people and leaving 
 them in poverty, ought to be dominant and come to 
 supremacy in this country. My purpose here to-day 
 has not been to ridicule the people who are the 
 dupes of priests, but to awaken at once your grati- 
 tude to Almighty God for your better estate, and your 
 most strenuous efforts that the people who are being 
 bled of such vast sums of money may, by the diffusion 
 of knowledge and truth, be delivered from superstition 
 and bondage into the glorious liberty of the children 
 of God. (Applause.) 
 
GOVERNMENTS COMPELLED TO CONFIS- 
 CATE THE PROPERTY SEIZED BY 
 THE PAPAL CHURCH. 
 
 Of those who obtain money by fraud and by wrong- 
 doing, the Bible speaks thus in the Epistle of St. 
 James, at the beginning of the 5th chapter, " Go to 
 now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries 
 that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted 
 and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and 
 silver is cankered ; and the rust of them shall be a 
 witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it 
 were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the 
 last days. 
 
 " Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped 
 down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, 
 crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are 
 entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Ye 
 have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton ; 
 ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaugh- 
 ter. Ye have condemned and killed the jast; and he 
 doth not resist you. 
 
 " Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of 
 the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the 
 precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for 
 
 203 
 
204 government Confiscation. 
 
 it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye 
 also patient ; stablish yonr hearts : for the coming of 
 the Lord draweth nigh." 
 
 Slowly but surely God rights the wrongs of this 
 world : slowly but certainly the plunderers of man- 
 kind are forced to give up their ill-gotten wealth: 
 glowly, but without fail, the thrones of tyranny are 
 undermined, and slaves become freemen. Of this we 
 have illustrations on every hand, none more manifest 
 than in the history of the gathering and the dispersion 
 of the wealth of the great ecclesiastical organization 
 whose spirit we are considering. 
 
 In the former discourse, I detailed the various re- 
 ligious privileges, advantages, and offices for which the 
 priest receives money, including taxes, tithes, seizures, 
 etc., through disposing of which, during all these 
 centuries, the papal church has acquired wealth. 
 The impression created upon your minds by the some- 
 what extended description of their methods must have 
 been, first, that the papacy has many and very ex- 
 traordinary ways of getting hold of the money of the 
 people ; secondly, that many of its devices are clearly 
 and scandalously fraudulent; but thirdly, that not- 
 withstanding the unjustifiableness and the dishonesty 
 of their methods, they have nevertheless so far de- 
 ceived society as to have acquired enormous wealth. 
 None of those things of which I spoke to you on last 
 Sabbath, for which the papacy receives money, are 
 properly salable ; neither baptisms nor marriage dis- 
 pensations, nor masses nor indulgences ; while peni- 
 tential taxes, lotteries, amulets, charms, medals, 
 scapulars, and relics are obviously worthless frauds 
 
Government Confiscation. 205 
 
 on the ignorant. At the close of the last service a 
 gentleman handed to me a Roman Catholic medal 
 which some one had given to him. A friend, formerly 
 a Roman Catholic, to whom I showed it, said, "I 
 wore one of those for years." The aggregate of ma- 
 terial and art spent on that medal would not be worth 
 more than a cent — I should think they ought to be 
 bought two for a cent — (laughter), but probably 
 twenty-five or fifty cents was paid for such a medal, 
 and the profits went into the treasury of the church. 
 There are other things mentioned in the previous dis- 
 course where the disproportion of value is infinitely 
 greater ; where the thing sold is worth absolutely less 
 than nothing, and where the price paid is very great : 
 the people would in every way be better off without 
 any of those things. (Applause.) And I raise the 
 question here to-day whether the priests in such 
 transactions are not evidently obtaining money under 
 false pretences. That question has been judicially 
 raised in Italy, and I think will ultimately be con- 
 sidered all over the world. 
 
 1. For example, is it not plainly a fraud, an in- 
 tended fraud, to take money for masses and indul- 
 gences for souls in purgatory, even when the priests 
 believe in purgatory ? We have the fact beyond all 
 question that many of the masses promised and paid 
 for are never said. This has been proven in the 
 French courts. The priests in some countries, unable 
 to say all the masses which they promise to say, farm 
 them out, and those to whom they send them, who 
 agree to say them, fail to do it. What is the attitude 
 of the church toward those who have thus paid for 
 
206 G-overnment Confiscation. 
 
 masses and not received them? Does she reimburse 
 them? Never. She has deceived the people with 
 false representations, and appropriated their money. 
 Moreover, remember the fact which was mentioned 
 before, that more masses are agreed to be said than 
 there are persons who die. Therefore there are more 
 masses promised than there is any need of, even for 
 those who believe in purgatory. How can a church, 
 if it professes any honesty, take money for more 
 masses than as many as would professedly take out 
 of purgatory the people who are in it? Moreover, 
 when the masses are said, they are frequently, as I 
 have many a time seen, said with a levity which 
 verges on blasphemy. Go into the churches in 
 France and Italy, where the poor priests are saying 
 masses for the souls, perhaps, of the people of this 
 city, and you will observe that the priest is dirty, his 
 mien is careless, the boys about him who are helping 
 him are often full of laughter and mischief, and 
 there is nothing to suggest, even if one believed in 
 the mass, that the intention of the priest is such as to 
 make it avail anything. Surely, if fraud was ever 
 manifest, it is proven in cases like this. 
 
 2. It is equally true that money is obtained on 
 false pretences for the relics, medals, amulets, charms, 
 which are useless, foolish, and valueless, and known 
 to be so by the people who sell them. Do you doubt 
 the fact that Archbishop Corrigan knew concerning 
 the so-called relic of St. Anne first, that it was no 
 part of the body of the late St. Anne ; second, that 
 there probably never was such a person as this St. 
 Anne ; and third, that it could not by any means do 
 
Government Confiscation. 207 
 
 a particle of good to the people who worshipped it? 
 You know and I know that Archbishop Corrigan and 
 the priests of New York must, in reason, perfectly well 
 understand that this relic and its exposure was fraud 
 and folly from beginning to end. Yet they took six- 
 teen thousand dollars from the poor, ignorant people 
 for looking upon and venerating it in the city 
 of New York, knowing perfectly, so far as can be 
 seen, that they were robbing them and giving them 
 no value for their money. This goes on incessantly, 
 under papal sanction. 
 
 The same may be said of the scapulars and the 
 medals, the amulets and the charms, the strings, the 
 girdles, and the rosaries which are constantly sold 
 within the Roman Catholic Church. Those who sell 
 them can but know that they are not good for any- 
 thing : those who buy them do not. I believe, there- 
 fore, that they are legally liable for action to recover, 
 as selling things under false pretences. 
 
 3. At the same time the taxes, tithes, and moneys 
 from public treasuries are used, as many cases show, 
 for the hurt and disadvantage of the people whose 
 money is taken from them. Within the last week in 
 the current news, — not in Worcester papers, I be- 
 lieve, but in papers Avhich give us the news, — it has 
 been stated that in the city of New York an orphan- 
 age or protectory has been drawing money from the 
 State for children who are not in the orphanage, and 
 never were. They have one hundred and ten dollars 
 a year for every child whom they support ; but it is 
 charged that they have counted falsely, and taken 
 money for children who never were in their institu- 
 tion. Is not that fraud ? If not, what is it ? 
 
208 Government Confiscation. 
 
 I. There are other fraudulent methods by which 
 the papacy gains wealth besides those which I men- 
 tioned two weeks ago. You have all heard of the 
 temporal power of the Pope. The temporal posses- 
 sions of the Pope included the city of Rome and 
 adjacent territory, and in earlier centuries a very 
 large amount of territory in the central, southern, and 
 northern portions of Italy. The loss of the temporal 
 power of the Pope has been the subject of a great 
 deal of animated protest among Roman Catholics for 
 the last twenty years, and at the Baltimore Centennial, 
 in 1889, the entire Congress of American Catholics 
 protested that the Pope ought to have restored to him 
 his temporal power. Moreover, conventions are en- 
 couraged and held in many places in Europe in the 
 interest of the restoration of the temporal power ; 
 that is, of the territory which the Pope as prince once 
 owned and ruled over. The temporal power, that is 
 to say the territory over which the Pope ruled, was 
 originally obtained by the most barefaced fraud on 
 the part of the popes and priests. What was the 
 method of that fraud ? 
 
 1. Why, in the middle of the eighth century, the 
 pope of Rome brought forward a document which he 
 declared had been given by Constantine the Great, 
 granting to the Pope certain territory and possessions. 
 That document, the alleged donation of Constantine, 
 was a forgery. There is not a Roman Catholic histo- 
 rian to-day who dares defend it, and yet the whole 
 fabric of the papal temporal power was built up 
 upon it. Concerning this great deception, I quote 
 from a work of great reliability wherein Dr. Dol- 
 
Grovernment Confiscation. 209 
 
 linger says, '' That previous to the middle of the 
 eighth century there is not a trace to be found of the 
 donation which has since become so famous." And 
 he shows that while from time to time many canonists 
 and theologians have maintained its verity, in order to 
 found upon it a universal dominion of the Pope, yet 
 that after Baronius, one of the most distinguished of 
 the church annalists, pronounced it a forgery, " all 
 these voices which had shortly before been so numer- 
 ous and so loud became dumb." The fact is, that no 
 writers who have proper regard for their veracity 
 now maintain the truthfulness of this donation of 
 Constantine. Dean Milman calls it " a deliberate 
 invention," a '' monstrous fable," and a " forgery as 
 clumsy as it is audacious," Reichel characterizes it 
 '' as an ignorant blunder and a falsehood — a falsehood, 
 however, let it be borne in mind, which faithfully re- 
 flects the thoughts and feelings of the age which gave 
 it birth." So just as though a forged deed or a 
 forged will had been made the basis of an individual's 
 possession of any property, the forged '' Donation " 
 was made the basis of the temporal power which 
 all Romanists to-day are complaining has been taken 
 from the papacy which stole it. (Applause.) 
 
 2. Add to this that by means of a most extraordinary 
 forgery, the papacy obtained from Pepin, King of 
 France, twenty cities in the year 754. How was 
 that done ? Let me read from Dr. Littledale, a dis- 
 tinguished Chui^ch of England clergyman, and a 
 writer of equal learning and candor, whose " Plain 
 Reasons against joining the Church of Rome " you 
 would do well to read. '• In 754 Pope Stephen III. 
 
210 Government Confiscation. 
 
 forged a letter (still extant) in the name of the 
 Apostle St. Peter, and sent it to Pepin, King of 
 France, calling on him to come to the defence of the 
 Pope and the city of Rome against the Lombards, 
 which he accordingly did, and bestowed on the 
 Pontiff a great territory, containing more than twenty 
 cities, the first beginning of the temporal power. 
 Fleury, in recording this event, describes it as an 
 artifice without parallel before or since in church 
 history. " That is how the pope first became king." 
 To-day I was reading the text of this forged letter 
 affirmed by the Pope to have been written by St. Peter, 
 the Pope acting as letter carrier between St. Peter 
 and. Pepin, and by which he gained the twenty cities ! 
 If you desire to see the letter you can find it in 
 Bowling's '' History of Romanism," page 169, where 
 it is quoted from Bower, who unearthed the whole 
 matter from the original manuscript in the Imperial 
 library of Vienna (Codex Carolinus, espistle III., 
 p. 92). If these were the whole of the papal forgeries 
 and deceptions in the matter of landed possessions, 
 they would certainly be sufficient to prove that they 
 never held the temporal power by any just right. 
 
 3. But, besides, it is generally believed in the case 
 of Matilda of Tuscany, who died on the 24th of July, 
 1115, and who had been apparently living in unlaw- 
 ful relations with Pope Gregory VII. for many years 
 (and the proofs seem to me to be adequate), that her 
 vast possessions came to be the property of the church 
 by the medium of a forged will. For know at least this 
 in regard to it : though she died in 1115, nothing what- 
 ever is heard of the alleged will when, seven years 
 
Goverwfhent Confiscation. 211 
 
 later, Pope Calixtus signed the Concordat with the 
 German Emperor at Worms ; though at this time, 
 had there been any such document, it must surely 
 have come to light. Still we know that not a word 
 was spoken of this will. It was first mentioned by 
 Pope Honorius in 1124, ten years after Matilda's 
 death; and finally, Innocent III., who was a mighty 
 pope and a great ruler, in 1199, nearly a hundred 
 years after the death of the countess, managed to 
 get hold of her vast domain by asserting, probably 
 falsely, that she had left a will making the Pope her 
 heir. Another will probably forged was declared 
 to have been given the Roman See by King Louis, 
 the son of Charlemagne. Though said to have been 
 given in the year 817, it was never heard of until the 
 thirteenth century. Four or five hundred years had 
 passed when the popes came forward and said that by 
 the will of King Louis nearly all of southern Italy 
 had been given them. In 817, at the time it was 
 alleged to have been given, the territory in question 
 was the property of the Emperor of Constantinople. 
 So you can see that it was one of the clumsiest of all 
 the forgeries, and yet in that age the great authority 
 of the popes made this property their own. Those of 
 you who have read German and Italian history know 
 that habitually the popes fostered all manner of strife 
 between princes, in order that they might profit by 
 those contentions and so gain the property of the 
 princes when they came to a settlement — the old case 
 so often repeated in story and proverb of those lawyers 
 who, in helping to divide a property, get it all. 
 
 4, This exhibition of fraud and forgery through all 
 
212 Grovernment Confiscation. 
 
 the history of the church is in entire harmony with 
 the whole Roman Catholic system of morality, since 
 it abounds in lies. Canon Ffoulkes withdrew from 
 the Church of Rome in 1870, and in a series of ser- 
 mons telling why he left it, he says, " Gradually the 
 conviction dawned upon me that this wondrous sys- 
 tem, such as it exists in our day, was a colossal lie, 
 a gigantic fraud, a superhuman imposture, the most 
 artistically contrived take-in for general credence, for 
 lasting hold, for specious appearance, ever palmed 
 upon mankind." 
 
 This view he expands and reaffirms Avith an abun- 
 dance of facts to demonstrate the truthfulness of his 
 words. Let me quote once more from the eminent 
 Dr. Little dale, when he says concerning Roman 
 Catholic untrustworthiness, " Nevertheless, the Roman 
 Church, which professes to worship Him Who has 
 said, ' I am the Truth, ' is honey-combed through and 
 through with accumulated falsehood : and things 
 have come to this pass, that no statement whatever, 
 however precise and circumstantial, no reference to 
 authorities, however seemingly frank and clear, to be 
 found in a Roman controversial book, or to be heard 
 from the lips of a living controversialist, can be taken 
 on trust : nor accepted indeed without rigorous search 
 and verification. The thing may be true, but there 
 is not so much as a presumption in favor of its prov- 
 ing so when tested. . . . Nor can this be wondered at, 
 when it is remembered that Ligouri, the most author- 
 itative teacher of morals in the Roman Church, lays 
 down that equivocation, of which he specifies three 
 kinds, is certainly lawful at all times, and that by the 
 
Government Oonfiseatmi. 213 
 
 common agreement of all casuists, and may be con- 
 firmed with an oath, for a just cause, any cause being 
 just which aims at retaining any good things that are 
 useful to body or spirit. . . . And this broad fact as to 
 . the nature of the now accredited Moral Theology of 
 Rome, emphasized by the very low standard of vera- 
 city amongst Roman Catholic populations, is the com- 
 plete refutation of a claim, often loudly made, that 
 the Church of Rome is the one divinely appointed 
 channel through which the Holy Ghost exercises His 
 functions of Ruler and Teacher." He points us to 
 abundant and indisputable proofs from Roman Cath- 
 olic authorities, distinctly and unequivocally proving 
 that they have falsified history, falsified portions of 
 the canon law of the church, falsified the martyrology 
 and the fathers, and degraded the system of morality 
 to coincide with their practices, and that they have 
 built up a structure of untruths which is so monstrous 
 that it is not in human power to properly character- 
 ize it. " The controversial and theological writings 
 of Roman divines perfectly swarm with falsehoods," 
 which fact is manifest on every hand. Of Liguori, 
 whom Rome by solemn proclamation made a Doctor 
 of the Church, classing him with Augustine, Ambrose, 
 etc., Dollinger says, " He was a man whose false 
 morals, perverse worship of the Virgin, constant use 
 of the grossest fables and forgeries, make his writings 
 a storehouse of errors and lies." But why expand 
 upon an indictment so fully proven ? 
 
 I know not where to begin or where to leave off, 
 so abundant are the proofs of the frauds by which 
 Rome has built up her power, and gained her riches. 
 
214 Government Confiscation. 
 
 5. I turn to another volume equally reliable, and 
 beg you to notice the following comment on the False 
 Decretals : " It is marvellous to contemplate the origin 
 and progress of such a structure of fraud and wrong, 
 to observe the popular degradation which it wrought 
 out, as the means of securing the triumph of the 
 papacy, and to see the patience with which the world 
 now tolerates the insolent ambition which demands 
 its reconstruction in the name of God and humanity. 
 This language is not too harsh. The pretence set up 
 in these false and forged decrees deserves condemna- 
 tion in even harsher and severer terms. They were 
 designed to secure to the priesthood the most perfect 
 impunity, and to place them so far above the people 
 as to put it out of the power of the latter even to 
 complain at their oppressions. They allow a bishop 
 or ]3riest to commit any crime he pleases, — murder, 
 robbery, rape, or seduction, — and deny his responsi- 
 bilit}^ to the laws of the country where he resides, or 
 to any other law but that which the Pope may enact. 
 They command the members of the Roman Catholic 
 Church to conceal and cover up whatsoever crimes 
 they may commit, rather than bring disgrace upon the 
 church. They pronounce as unworthy of belief all 
 who are not members of that Church, so as to render 
 the conviction of a bishop or priest impossible upon 
 their testimony before the court of Rome, even for 
 the most outrageous offences. They, in fact, author- 
 ize and license whatsoever a bishop or priest shall do, 
 although he may drag his clerical robes into the very 
 filth and mire of profligacy, prostitution, and vice." 
 
 And every word of this summary is proven by the 
 
Grovernment Confiseation. 215 
 
 citations and unimpeachable testimonies which pre- 
 cede it. 
 
 6. As a further illustration of the method by which 
 the papacy obtains property, I might cite the history 
 of their getting possession of the Island of Montreal 
 in Canada. It was owned by a French gentleman 
 named M. de Lauson. The priests went to him and 
 told him that they had received a command from 
 heaven to establish a hospital on the Island of Mon- 
 treal, and sought the cession of it from the owner. 
 He declined to let them have it. Whereupon the 
 Jesuits invented the story that when Christ said, 
 " Where can I find a faithful servant ? " the Virgin 
 Mary took one of these priests by the hand and led 
 him to the Divine Son, who received him on her 
 recommendation, and gave him a ring with an inscrip- 
 tion and orders about the community he was to 
 establish in Montreal Island. Armed with this 
 authority, he was able to so use his influence as to 
 persuade the owner of the property to give it up to 
 the church. To-day they hold their possessions in 
 that city by this barefaced fraud on a superstitious 
 man. If it is wrong to take advantage of a child who 
 knows nothing, to secure what he has by treachery 
 and deceit, then it is wrong for these Roman Catholic 
 priests and bishops to gather the rich properties of 
 the world into their hands by deceiving the people 
 whom they have kept in a state of childhood, denying 
 them the cultivation which would. make them able to 
 take care of themselves. (Applause.) By such a 
 system, by the most persistent and fraudulent ex- 
 ercise of it, the Roman priests come to have extraor- 
 
216 Government Confiscation, 
 
 dinary possessions of houses, lands, and gold in all 
 parts of the world. It is said on good authority, 
 says ''The American Citizen," that Archbishop 
 Williams of Boston has vested in his name twenty- 
 one millions iu church property ; the Roman Catholic 
 Archbishop in Chicago controls forty-one millions 
 of property; the Cleveland bishop, sixteen millions; 
 while Archbishop Corrigan holds in his own name 
 more than fifty millions of dollars in church property. 
 
 7. The priests make a specialty of becoming con- 
 fessors to those who have wealth. Here is a young 
 heiress who, it may be, is to have millions as her in- 
 heritance. Occasionally we read of such a one sur- 
 rendering everything, putting on the robe of a nun, 
 and going into a convent. You never see a story like 
 this but has a tragedy in it. 
 
 Imagine the slim}- courses, the serpent-like trails, 
 the fraudulent procedure, the months and years of 
 trickery, by which the astutest men in the world, 
 ti"ained especially to influence women, gain the affec- 
 tions and confidence of a religious young girl, get 
 her to go into a nunnery, and deed her property to the 
 church. She may get sick of her attempt to please 
 them, may, in fine, leave the nunnery, but she never 
 gets back her property. When the renowned nun of 
 Kenmare, a most remarkable woman, Miss M. F. 
 Cusack, left the Roman Catholic Church, a few 
 years since, although she had been distinguished for 
 years for her devotion and her works of charity, 
 she could not gfet one dollar of the fortune which as 
 a guileless girl she had put into the hands of the 
 priests when she was deceived into entering the con- 
 
Grovernment Confiscation, 217 
 
 vent. When the God of justice reckons with those 
 who have deceived the young and the innocent and 
 have stolen their wealth after this manner, I would 
 a thousand times rather be Lazarus than to be a 
 bishop, an archbishop, or a pope. (Loud applause.) 
 
 II. Permit me to refer briefly to the enormous 
 acquisitions which the Romish Church has gained by 
 these means. You will recur to what I have formerly 
 stated as to the riches of the papacy, though in 
 those statistics I have given you only a glimpse. 
 I shall hurriedly, for lack of adequate time, state 
 to you, but only suggestively, what they have obtained 
 by these means. 
 
 1. As early as the fourth century the greedy priests 
 of Italy had gained one-third of the soil of that fair 
 peninsula. The jubilee, of which I told you on a for- 
 mer occasion, took, it was estimated, one-third of the 
 currency of Europe to Rome. Blackstone, the great 
 English Jurist, tells us that the Roman Catholic 
 priests gained one-third of the property of the British 
 Isles. One-fifth of that property was in the hands of 
 the monks and nuns. In 1360, says an eminent his- 
 torian, the Pope's revenue from England was three 
 times that of the king. Not only was this true in our 
 mother-land, but it has been true much nearer home. 
 
 2. In Ecuador to-day one-fourth of the property of 
 the country belongs to the bishop. There is a Cath- 
 olic church for e\evy one hundred and fifty people. 
 Ten per cent of the people are priests, monks, or nuns. 
 Two hundred and seventy-two days out of the three 
 hundred and sixty-five days of the year are feast days 
 or fast days. Priests control the government and 
 
218 Crovernment Confiscation. 
 
 dictate the laws. Three children out of every four 
 born are illegitimate. Laborers get from two to ten 
 dollars a month. There are no wagons outside of the 
 capital city, because there are no roads. There is no 
 literature. There is not a mail rout in all the 
 country. In Chili one-third of the property belongs 
 to the church, and they have a singular way there of 
 having the saints nominally hold property. St. Domi- 
 nic has an income of more than a million dollars a 
 year from his estates, for which he is not taxed a 
 penny. The government therefore gets nothing for 
 protecting it. The priests get it all. 
 
 In Mexico, in 1857, one-third of the real estate (I 
 wish you would take notice of the meaning of these 
 figures. 1 am quoting now from the Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica) belonged to the church ; also three hun- 
 dred seventy-five million dollars' worth of other 
 property in that poor little country. A recent trav- 
 eller in Mexico says that three-fourths of the prop- 
 erty was owned by the priests. 
 
 3. In Canada one-quarter of all the lands was the 
 property of the church at the time of the English 
 conquest, — that was long ago : more than eight mil- 
 lion acres they had gotten into their hands in the 
 comparatively brief space of time between the settle- 
 ment by the French and the conquest by the Eng- 
 lish. There were two hundred and forty convents in 
 Canada, of which one hundred and sixty were in 
 Quebec, in 1875. Many of them are very rich, all 
 of them rapidly growing in wealth. 
 
 The author of "Rome in Canada," page 345, says, 
 "If, in spite of the statutes of Mortmain, the English 
 
Government Confiscation. 219 
 
 monasteries once got within their grasp one-fifth 
 part of the lands of the kingdom, what might not 
 have been done in Canada before a like restraint was 
 put npon the acquisitions of the French clergy? An 
 ArrSt of the Council of State, November 26, 1743, 
 gives us the answer. In the Declaration of Louis 
 XIV. prefixed to the ArrSt, the king, after stating 
 what he has done for the religious orders, proceeds to 
 tell what they have done for themselves. In virtue 
 of their privileges, they had acquired such consider- 
 able properties that it became necessary to put a 
 limit to their acquisitions; and in the year 1703 
 instructions were given that each of the religious 
 orders of the West Indies should not be at liberty to 
 possess more land than Avould employ one hundred 
 negroes. But this restriction, the King distinctly 
 states, was disregarded, and a new prohibition was 
 issued in the form of letters patent, August, 1721, 
 that no acquisition, either of houses or lands, should 
 be made by these orders without the king's express 
 permission in writing, under penalty of escheat to the 
 domain of the crown." 
 
 Remember that the above facts are not exhaustive, 
 only illustrative, since the like has been true of all 
 other countries of South and Central America, the 
 West Indies, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Austria, Poland, 
 Bohemia, and Hungary. What a picture you have 
 here ! All these vast properties had been taken 
 from the people. All claimed and claim exemption 
 from taxation ; for, as I shall show you next Sun- 
 day, the Roman Catholic Church is everywhere 
 absolutely hostile to the taxation of any of its 
 
220 Government Confiscation, 
 
 estates. All this property, when once obtained by 
 the church, is inalienable ; that is, they do not sell 
 it. A gentleman in a neighboring city told me that 
 within a few months a distinguished bishop, just 
 deceased, having bought a tract of property adjacent 
 to a gentleman's estate, refused to sell a very small 
 slip which would straighten the line between them, 
 and would seem to have been of no other value, say- 
 ing, "We buy property, but we never sell." All 
 these lands and goods of Rome are inalienable, being 
 held by the church perpetually for revenue. And in 
 all the countries where the papacy has gained this 
 enormous wealth, as you know and have often heard, 
 the people are poor. 
 
 4. The church's property has given governments 
 much concern, because they have been seriously 
 embarrassed in carrying on their work by the with- 
 drawal of revenues to the church, and every one of 
 the countries that I have named has taken occasion to 
 look into the matter of church property with a view 
 to inquiring how the government could escape from 
 the embarrassment of having such vast holdings in 
 the hands of a hostile ecclesiastical power. And 
 please to take note, that in every case, this movement 
 to inquire into the right of the Roman Church to hold 
 so great wealth, has been made when the people 
 were rising in hope of freedom, and seeking to throw 
 off the tyranny of ages. Not the hand of plunder- 
 ing rulers has been laid on the church, but the hand 
 of an impoverished and indignant people, who, 
 struggling for liberty in the midst of awful poverty, 
 have found their extortioner and demanded that he 
 disgorge his prey. (Applause.) 
 
Government Confiscation. 221 
 
 III. We come now to the kernel of this discussion. 
 The property of the Romish Church, thus acquired, 
 has been confiscated by the governments of most 
 countries. You may well be startled when I use 
 this ominous word, which indicates the hostility of 
 the church and the struggle of the State. Such has 
 been the insatiable greed of priests and bishops, such 
 their enormous acquisitions of land and of wealth, 
 that the only recourse of government has been to 
 take it away from them by force, since they first took 
 it by fraud from the people. 
 
 1. When by various priestly devices great amounts 
 of money have been taken from their people, the rulers 
 have protested. They have protested because the 
 people have been ' impoverished, and the government 
 crippled. We may admit that there may be cupidity 
 and covetousness on the part of rulers, sometimes 
 on the part of peoples, but it is theirs as against 
 the greater greed of the prelates of the Romish 
 Church. 
 
 Following this protest of governments and peoples 
 has come the compulsory seizure of the property of 
 the church both by monarchical and popular gov- 
 ernments. 
 
 2. In Mexico in 1857, the property of the church 
 was taken away by the young republic. In Guate- 
 mala, in 1843, their president abolished convents and 
 monasteries, and confiscated the property. There 
 was a reaction led by the priests and this work was 
 overthrown ; but thirty years later, President Bar- 
 rios did the same, and in 1873 all the church prop- 
 erty of Guatemala passed into the hands of the 
 
222 Government Confiscation. 
 
 government. In Costa Rica, under President Guardia, 
 monasteries and nunneries were confiscated, the arch- 
 bishop of the country was expelled, and the confes- 
 sional was thrown open, and made public by law 
 (would it were so in this country I), and Costa Rica 
 took a step forward toward the enfranchisement of 
 her people. (Applause.) 
 
 In Venezuela President Blanco did the same. The 
 monasteries were turned into hospitals and school- 
 houses. They drove out the nuns and the Jesuits, 
 threw open the cemeteries to everybody that they 
 might bury their dead without priestly interference, 
 and turned the great Carmelite monastery into a uni' 
 versity. 
 
 In Uruguay the religious houses were abolished on 
 account of the treason of their occupants. President 
 Santos first established free schools, then civil marriage, 
 and when the priests resisted compelled them to cease 
 from preaching because they taught treason, and 
 then expelled the monks and nuns from the country, 
 and gave the property to the people from whom it 
 had been stolen. (Applause.) 
 
 3. When in Italy, in 1883, I was told that no new 
 monks or nuns wei'e being made throughout the 
 country. There were many monasteries which had 
 become the property of the government and were 
 entirely empty so far as their former tenants were 
 concerned. In some monasteries there were old 
 monks, supported by the government, permitted to 
 live there the remnant of their days, but the able- 
 bodied had been sent out to earn their living as 
 honest people have to do. So in Italy to-day, because 
 
Government Confiscation, 223 
 
 the people and their rulers have found it necessary 
 in order to give the people a government, the 
 monasteries and other religious houses are the prop- 
 erty of the state, and no more monks or nuns are to 
 be made. In 1889 there was passed in Italy a bill 
 called '' Opere Pie," a bill concerning the work of 
 piety or beneficence as related to the distribution of 
 charitable bequests. Vast funds had been obtained 
 by the Roman Catholic Church for the ostensible 
 purposes of charity ; but when the government came 
 to inquire into the use of these moneys, it found that 
 a very large proportion of them remained in the 
 hands of the priestly trustees, and was not applied to 
 the relief of the people for whom they were originally 
 given ; whereupon, in 1889, the government of Italy 
 took into its care church property, the income of 
 which was twenty-seven millions of dollars, put it 
 into the hands of laymen as trustees, and ordered the 
 priests to let them alone and keep their hands off, so 
 that this income might be given to those for whom 
 it was originally left in an honest distribution, as it 
 had not been for many years. 
 
 4. It is safe to say that in all these cases of confis- 
 cation of church property, the hearts of the people 
 are with their rulers : how else could it have been 
 done ? And yet I would fain believe that all over 
 the world people are growing more truly religious ; 
 but the evident justice of getting back what had been 
 unlawfully taken from them has grown upon the 
 popular mind, until these poor struggling peoples 
 have had reason enough to inquire why they should 
 be the slaves and why priests should be the masters. 
 
224 Government Confiscation. 
 
 So they have assisted the government in taking back 
 this property, the confiscation of which undoubtedly 
 was just. 
 
 IV. Let us now briefly consider why the confisca- 
 tion of the property of the Roman Catholic Church 
 is based on justice. 
 
 1. There are two grounds on which a government 
 may justly take the property of public or private 
 owners. First, in war, the property of the enemy 
 may be taken in order to weaken the enemy and to 
 save the life of the government. This is justified by 
 the principle that it is the right of government to 
 exist and to destroy the power of its enemies who 
 would overthrow it. Moreover, in peace it is right 
 and proper for courts representing the government 
 to take property which has been obtained under false 
 pretences and by fraud and restore it to its rightful 
 owners. This right is founded on essential justice. 
 
 2. The confiscation of the Roman Catholic property 
 is amply justified by both these principles. For first 
 of all, in fact, the church has shown itself to be the 
 enemy of the people. No government, in modern 
 times, has been so injurious as the rule of the popes 
 in Italy and of the priests throughout tlie world. 
 Read the history of papal states to prove this affirma- 
 tion. Everywhere the attempt to form a free govern- 
 ment by and for the people has been met by the 
 papacy with opposition and hostility. Therefore, as 
 the enemies of free government hostile to the well- 
 fare of the people, it has been right for their property 
 to be confiscated, that their power of doing harm 
 might be weakened. Moreover, in theory, they 
 
G-overnment Confiscation. 225 
 
 always claim superiority to the civil power; that 
 government can set no bounds to their acquisition of 
 property ; that civil rulers have no jurisdiction over 
 their holdings ; that any jurisdiction on the part of 
 the secular government over the possessions of the 
 church is a sacrilegious usurpation. So by this 
 means, you have in every country where the Roman 
 Catholic Church is powerful, a state within a state, a 
 power ;ivithin a power, a kingdom within a kingdom, 
 and that ecclesiastical kingdom utterly denying the 
 jurisdiction of the civil powers over it. If that is 
 not treason, tell me what treason is. (Applause.) 
 
 3. Confiscation has been justified, as I have already 
 said, by the fact that a very large proportion of the 
 property is gained by deceit and fraud. In ordinary 
 business, if an article represented to be valuable by 
 the seller, is proved worthless by the purchaser, he 
 can recover the purchase price ; and under the laws of 
 every civilized state, if the Roman Catholics should 
 bring action to-day against the priests for the money 
 which they have paid for their masses, their indul- 
 ences, their marriage dispensations, amulets, scapulars, 
 charms, and the like, they ought to recover it by any 
 fair application of the laws of equity. (Applause.) 
 False representation, fraud, deceit, durance and threat- 
 enings, of the Roman Catholic Church should invali- 
 date its title to much, if not all, of its property. I think 
 I may say from my reading and research, that in all 
 the lands where the property of the church has been 
 taken by the government, it has been applied for the 
 good of the people, and that it is doing much more 
 good now than it was in the hands of the priests. So, 
 
226 Government Confiscation. 
 
 on the one hand, you have the church defrauding the 
 people, and on the other the people taking back their 
 lawful goods which had been rent from them by the 
 church. 
 
 V. May I draw a lesson or two for the information 
 of America from facts of such momentous impor- 
 tance ? 
 
 1. We cannot thoughtfully suppose that the prob- 
 lem of other nations will not become the problem of 
 our own government. They are superstitiously blind 
 who imagine that America is not to deal with the 
 questions which have involved the welfare of all 
 other nations. The same conditions prevail in the 
 United States of America as have prevailed in other 
 lands. The same hierarchy is here, with the same 
 principles, the same grasping greed, the same polity, 
 the same articles for sale, the same assumptions 'of 
 superior rights, the same claims, and the same fraudu- 
 lent methods. 
 
 2. The possessions of Romanism in the United 
 States of America are very large and rapidly growing. 
 The best properties in great cities are continually 
 passing into their hands. All over this country they 
 are gaining riches by selling all their wares. They 
 are also acquiring property by gaining political con- 
 trol. An illustration of this is in point. On Fifth 
 Avenue, next to the great cathedral in New York, 
 opposite the residence of William H. Vanderbilt, is a 
 Roman Catholic orphanage, the ground of which is 
 worth a great sum of money. It was leased from the 
 city some years ago for nine hundred and ninety-nine 
 years, at a rental of $1.00 a year. William. H. Vander- 
 
Grovernment Confiscation. 227 
 
 bilt desired to erect there a museum, and offered at 
 once to build the same and to endow it with five 
 millions of dollars. The curator of the museum of 
 Cambridge, England, said that with five million dol- 
 lars' endowment, as proposed by Mr. Vanderbilt, it 
 would be the richest museum in the world, and that 
 in fifty years the proposed museum would contain all 
 the collections and antiquities in the world worth 
 having. When Mr. Vanderbilt made the proposition, 
 the question was whether the Roman Catholic Church 
 would relinquish its hold upon the land. They 
 utterly refused so to do. So says the I^ew York Sun,, 
 which tells these facts in the issue of December 14, 
 1885. That refusal lost to the city of New York the 
 finest museum in the world, because the Roman Cath- 
 olic Church buys or steals, but never sells. (Applause.) 
 
 3, By votes of moneys obtained from the legislators 
 under their control, devoting people's wealth to sec- 
 tarian institutions, Romanists are adding very largely 
 to their possessions. We have had a fight in the 
 Massachusetts legislature during the last winter to 
 keep ten thousand dollars out of the Carney Hospital, 
 a Roman Catholic sectarian institution, as closely sec- 
 tarian as it can well be. Yet I do not know that I 
 have seen in a public print of this city of Worcester 
 one remonstrance against giving them this large 
 amount of the people's money. 
 
 So all over the country, by pressure and threats, 
 upon people, papal and Protestant, by holding tena- 
 ciously the theory of the non-taxability of their church 
 property, by influencing officials so that they keep 
 their justly taxable property as far as possible without 
 
228 G-overnment Confiscation. 
 
 taxation, by all these means, they are gaining great 
 wealth in the United States of America. Some limit 
 must be put on the rapacity of priests. We have 
 public benefactors of great liberality, who are doing 
 much for the country, but they are not the prelates 
 of Rome. The country will do well while it has time 
 and strength to inquire by what right Rome gains 
 and holds this great wealth. Not because we desire 
 the wealth, but because we want the people to have 
 what is their own, we protest against the possession 
 of the enormous riches which the Roman Catholic 
 Church unjustly is gathering to herself in the United 
 States of America. (Applause.) 
 
TAXATION OF CHUUCH PROPERTY. 
 
 How our Lord Jesus Christ regarded the matter 
 of the assessment and payment of taxes to the civil 
 government, you may learn from Matthew xvii., be- 
 ginning with the 24th verse : " And when they were 
 come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money 
 came to Peter, and said, Doth not your master pay 
 tribute? He saith, Yes. And when he was come 
 into the house, Jesus prevented him, saying. What 
 thinkest thou, Simon? of whom do the kings of 
 the earth take custom or tribute ? of their own chil- 
 dren, or of strangers ? Peter saith unto him. Of 
 strangers. Jesus saith unto him, Tlien are the chil- 
 dren free. 
 
 "Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go 
 thou to the sea, and cast a hook, and take up the 
 fish that first cometh up ; and when thou hast opened 
 his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that 
 take and give unto them for me an(i tliee." 
 
 1. In our survey of history we have learned that 
 the Roman Catholic Church, by oppression and by 
 the most fraudident methods, has obtained from igno- 
 rant people an immense and almost unlimited amount 
 of wealth. We have also learned that so menacing 
 
 229 
 
230 Taxation of Church Property, 
 
 have these great possessions become to the nations of 
 the world, that in numerous instances the govern- 
 ments, after investigating their use, have taken them 
 from the church and distributed them, according to 
 their best idea of beneficence, among the people. In 
 other words, nearly all civilized governments have 
 found it necessary to confiscate the property of the 
 Roman Catholic Church. We have come to a point 
 in our discussion most interesting to us; namely, 
 What are we going to do in our own country in 
 regard to the property of the Roman Catholic 
 Church? Naturally, if we are to save ourselves 
 from the disasters and the impoverishment which 
 have stricken other lands, we must do something to 
 preserve ourselves from falling into the same condi- 
 tions. It seems to me that the first thing necessary 
 to do in order that our people may not become as 
 the people of other lands, is that we, as far as is pos- 
 sible, so enlighten them, that they will not pour 
 their money into the treasury of the Roman Catholic 
 Church ; so that they will not, out of their supersti- 
 tion, pay for worthless and useless trumpery those 
 vast sums of money which leave them impoverished 
 and in many cases a charge upon the State. Our first 
 and plainest duty is the enlightenment of the people. 
 Our second duty is to restrain by direct means the 
 rapacity of the priests. 
 
 2. How this can be done is a question of the great- 
 est importance ; and in order that we may erect a safe- 
 guard between the priests and the people whom they 
 despoil, I am inclined this afternoon to assert and 
 to maintain the g-eneral principle that it is our duty, 
 
Taxation of Church Property. 231 
 
 and indeed our only recourse as a nation, to tax the 
 property of the Roman Catholic Church. 
 
 The general matter of taxation is one of very pro- 
 found interest. The importance of it to government 
 is so fundamental that we may say civilization rests 
 upon it, or at least could not exist without it. . The 
 amounts of money which are taken by the govern- 
 ment from the people for governmental support are 
 very large, so large that their magnitude would make 
 the question of taxation sufficiently important to 
 command a hearing from all thoughtful minds. The 
 principles which underlie taxation are of the greatest 
 moment, and too profound to be considered in a dis- 
 cussion as brief as this. With the history of taxa- 
 tion and with these principles I cannot deal on the 
 present occasion, but in general I may say that taxes 
 are a late development of civilization, and that, as we 
 have them now, they have only come into vogue 
 within comparatively recent centuries. 
 
 Secondly, that in general they should be levied in 
 an equitable manner, so that none of the people will 
 be distressed, and so that all of the people will con- 
 tribute in just proportion to the support of the gov- 
 ernment. Thirdly, that the laying and regulation of 
 taxes is intimately related to the liberties of the peo- 
 ple. The method of taxation was practically the 
 occasion of the American Revolution, and is so fun- 
 damental in the history of English liberty that the 
 Magna Charta was demanded and obtained from 
 King John, by the barons, with the purpose not only 
 of securing personal liberty but of relieving all prop- 
 erty from unjust and capricious taxation. It is 
 
232 Taxation of Church Property. 
 
 customary, at the present time, for the community 
 to speak slightingly of those people who in our com- 
 munities are studying most carefully the subject of 
 taxation. I do not know of any class who are mak- 
 ing this a special study to such a degree as those who 
 are known by the name of " single tax men," and yet, 
 whether they are right or wrong in their conclusions, 
 they deserve the very greatest credit and sympathy 
 for their investigations and researches. For one of 
 our leading authorities on political economy has said 
 that no man who has any regard for the liberties of 
 the people will be indifferent to the matter of 
 taxation. 
 
 3. Having said thus much in a more general 
 way, your attention is now called to the fact that our 
 Lord, in the Gospel narrative which I read, at least 
 gives evidence of his sanction to two or three simple 
 principles. First, he was taxed as other people were 
 taxed under the law. Second, he paid that tax and 
 did not seek to evade it. Third, while he did not 
 sanction the methods of the Roman government to 
 which he paid the tax by paying it, nevertheless he 
 seems to me to have clearly countenanced the princi- 
 ple that civil government is deserving of the support 
 of all men, and that the best of men are not too good 
 to do their part towards sustaining the government 
 of the country in which they live. Not attempting, 
 therefore, to draw from the example of the Christ 
 anything which is not in it, not assuming to give his 
 sanction to any special form of taxation or civil 
 government, I only wish the incident to pass for 
 what it is worth, as indicating that he supported the 
 
Taxation of Church Property. 233 
 
 civil government by paying his proportional part of 
 its taxes. 
 
 4. I propose to show on this occasion that the 
 Koman Catholic Church should pay its part toward 
 the support of the government. The alternatives as 
 related to that church, as we learn from an historical 
 survey, are these : either to permit oppression on her 
 part, because she will certainly tax the people very 
 heavily if permitted to do so ; or to regulate her prop- 
 erty by confiscation, which nearly all these govern- 
 ments of which I have spoken have been compelled 
 to do in order to relieve themselves of her oppression ; 
 or, as the third alternative, and it seems to me the 
 only one left, taxation, by which we can prevent to 
 some extent the oppression, and through which it is 
 possible that confiscation may be avoided. In bring- 
 ing these views into a clearer light, I call your atten- 
 tion first to the certainty, — 
 
 I. That the Roman Catholic Church in this coun- 
 try is bent on the acquisition of unlimited wealth. 
 
 1. I infer this from the fact that the Roman Catho- 
 lic Church here, is the Roman Catholic Church of 
 Europe and of the world. The church here is 
 a foreign hierarchy, controlling American citizens. 
 This church, its rulers claim, never changes, and there 
 are no evidences whatever of its having changed in 
 the purpose to acquire money. Having, therefore, 
 stripped of their goods the populations of other lands, 
 it is obvious to m.e that they are intending to do it 
 here ; because, with their minds set on the acquisition 
 of enormous wealth, they have never repudiated any 
 of the methods which they have heretofore employed 
 
234 Taxation of Church Property, 
 
 and are giving every evidence that they intend to 
 apply them in this country as elsewhere. 
 
 2. Moreover, the methods of the Roman Catholic 
 Church, many of which I have revealed in this series 
 of discourses, are her methods to-day. Everything 
 that she has ever sold she sells now. Every method 
 by which she has extracted money from the people 
 she applies to them to-day. There is not one of all 
 the operations by which Rome has taken money from 
 the people but what she is now actively using in the 
 United States of America, with the exception of the 
 worst forms of inquisitorial proceeding. 
 
 3. Moreover, she has succeeded to a very large 
 degree already in obtaining the wealth which she 
 seeks. Of this we have ocular demonstration. Wher- 
 ever you look, on every hand, the Roman Catholic 
 Church property is multiplying rapidly. A delegate, 
 speaking in the Methodist Episcopal General Confer- 
 ence in Omaha the other day, said he would like to 
 call the attention of the Conference to the fact that 
 where we get church lots the Roman Catholic Church 
 gets blocks ; whole city blocks, he says, entire squares, 
 — and by some means or other, not only gets but 
 holds them against all comers. 
 
 It is more than obvious to anybody who has trav- 
 elled through this country, that in the west, even more 
 than in the east, the Roman Catholic Church is gath- 
 ering to herself very large properties. We have no 
 means of knowing how much she does possess, for 
 there are no returns made which would give us a 
 basis for that knowledge. A great deal of the prop- 
 erty which Rome is now getting, is coming directly 
 
Taxation of Church Property. 235 
 
 or indirectly out of the public treasury. For may I 
 not say that when we are supporting a very large 
 number of her criminals and paupers in public institu- 
 tions and from the public treasury, what we are pay- 
 ing for their support is to no inconsiderable extent 
 taken from us by the peculiar usages of the Roman 
 Catholic Church, which has deprived these dependent 
 ones of the means of self-help ? 
 
 4. Not only are her possessions great, as we have 
 evidence, but she has avowed her determination to 
 gain large riches in this country. Of this, there is 
 the most ample proof. In the Dominion of Canada, 
 which is so near to us now politically and otherwise 
 that nothing which occurs there is a matter of indif- 
 ference to us, I find the following statement of Rome's 
 attitude concerning "wealth." "The doctrine is" (that 
 is the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church now in 
 vogue in Canada) ; " that the interference by the civil 
 power in the administration of ecclesiastical property 
 is a sacrilegious usurpation, a manifest and revolting 
 absurdity besides being a folly as great as it would 
 be for the same authority to undertake to make the 
 course of the stars dependent on its will. The church 
 alone," the modern doctrine runs, " has a right to 
 legislate on the subject of tithes : the rules it makes 
 are strictly obligatory, and the civil power has nothing 
 to do with this or any similar matter. It is permitted 
 to do one thing only, and not only permitted but com- 
 manded, if it desires to exercise its legislative power 
 with regard to ecclesiastical property ; and that is, to 
 promulgate, as laws of the State, the laws of the 
 church in a like matter ; to use every means at its 
 
236 Taxation of Church Property. 
 
 disposal to put tliem into execution and cause them 
 to be observvvd." 
 
 " The Abbe Pelletier contends that the church's 
 right of possession is one which the civil power can- 
 not limit." 
 
 In a Avord of explanation concerning the above state- 
 ment, we merely remark that the Roman Catholic 
 Church in theory demands that the civil government 
 shall carry out all the church's laws with reference 
 to the acquisition of property; and the law of the 
 Roman Catholic Church as to the acquisition of prop- 
 erty is, that she will take all she can get, without any 
 interference whatever from anybody in the world. 
 
 5. That I have not exaggerated their attitude and 
 purpose, I read to you as concerning church prop- 
 erty in our own country, from the pastoral letter 
 of the second Plenary Council of Baltimore in 
 1866, — the part which I read is a portion of the 
 article concerning church property. The council 
 says, " We have still to lament that in many of 
 the States we are not as yet permitted legally to 
 make those arrangements for the security of church 
 property which are in accordance with the canons 
 and discipline of the Catholic Church." What do 
 they lack in our own State, for example ? What is 
 desired by them in the State of Massachusetts? 
 They have very large liberty of acquisition, fully 
 as great as that enjoyed by any institution, corpora- 
 tion, or individual in the State. 
 
 They keep their people very largely poor. We 
 support their criminals, paupers, beggars, insane, 
 illiterate, saloon-keepers, etc. What more do they 
 
Taxation of Church Property. 237 
 
 want ? More property, — that is what they want. 
 (Applause.) " We are aware of the alleged grounds 
 for this refusal to recognize the church in her cor- 
 porate capacity, unless on the condition that in the 
 matter of the tenure of ecclesiastical property she con- 
 form to the general laws providing for this object." 
 (They remonstrate that they are asked to conform to 
 the general laws on the subject of the acquisition of 
 property. Your church has had no occasion to re- 
 monstrate. The church to which I belong has had 
 no occasion to remonstrate. What is there in the 
 laws in reference to the acquisition of property 
 against which the Baltimore Plenary Council of the 
 Roman Catholic Church remonstrates ?) They say, 
 " These laws, however " (that is the laws of the 
 States), "are for the most part based on principles 
 which she cannot accept without departing from her 
 practice from the beginning, as soon as she was per- 
 mitted to enjoy liberty of worship. They are the 
 expression of a distrust of ecclesiastical power, as 
 such; and are the fruit of the misrepresentations 
 which have been made of the action of the church 
 in past ages. As well might the civil power pre- 
 scribe to her the doctrines she is to teach, and the 
 worship with which she is to honor God, as to im- 
 pose on her a system of holding her temporalities 
 which is alien to her principles, and which is bor- 
 rowed from those who have rejected her authority." 
 And furthermore they say, " In at least one of these 
 United States (Missouri), laws have been passed 
 by which all church property, not held by corpora- 
 tions, is subjected to taxation ; and the avowed object 
 
238 Taxation of Church Property. 
 
 of this discriminating legislation is hostility to the 
 Catholic Church. In concluding these remarks, we 
 merely refer to the attempt made in that State to 
 make the exercise of the ecclesiastical ministry de- 
 pend on a condition laid down by the civil power." 
 
 That matter in the State of Missouri was simply 
 this : After the war the State government, according 
 to law, required the churches to give some evidence 
 of loyalty, and the Roman Catholic Church resented 
 it, as intimating that she had not exclusive control 
 over her own property. 
 
 After this Plenary Council had sent its action to 
 the Pope at Rome, the Pope sent back an answer, 
 which I read in part. It was directed to Archbishop 
 Spaulding of Baltimore : — 
 
 " He " (that is the Pope), " has directed me to ex- 
 press directly to your amplitude, and through you to 
 all your colleagues, his great pleasure, and to request 
 you to thank them for the interest they have taken, 
 and still take, in defending the Holy See^ and in vindi- 
 cating its contested rights. Moreover, his holiness 
 has learned with satisfaction that the papal loan is 
 succeeding also through the co-operation of the Amer- 
 ican episcopate." You notice the emphatic commen- 
 dation is about church property, and the protest of 
 the council in having civil law control their actions 
 or estates. The Pope was also very much interested 
 in the papal loan. The truth is, the action of the 
 Baltimore Council, approved by the Pope, virtually 
 declares that all laws by which church property is 
 the subject of civil observation, inquiry, or control 
 are contrary to the laws of the church of Rome ; in 
 
Taxation of Church Property, 239 
 
 other words, they solemnly protest that they will 
 have no law whatever in regard to their possession 
 of church property except their own. This is a pre- 
 cise statement of their attitude. That attitude can 
 never be consistent with the principles of civil gov- 
 ernment, — never. (Applause.) 
 
 6. Thus they are paving the way for unlimited 
 acquisition of church property; and as years ago 
 they obtained a third of the property of the British 
 Isles, and as to-day they hold a quarter of the prop- 
 erty of the state of Ecuador, and a third of that of 
 Chili, and as in 1857 they held more than a third 
 of the property of Mexico, they now propose to get 
 all the property of the United States which they can, 
 and to hold it in defiance of the civil government. 
 They themselves so declare, both in their acts and in 
 their theory. 
 
 One very careful student of the Roman Catholic 
 Church in this country says that she now has two 
 hundred and fifty million dollars' worth of property, 
 but there are no means known to me of verifying 
 such statement. The census of 1890 shows that 
 their own estimate of the value of their churches 
 is 1118,000,000 and over. This does not include 
 schools, convents, monasteries, real estate, etc. 
 
 7. Such acquisitions as they are making in this 
 country have been in all lands where they have 
 gained them, first of all by the impoverishment of 
 the people. I need not go over that ground again. 
 You know that where the Roman Catholic Church is 
 rich, there the people are poor. Moreover, through 
 its wealth it has invariably been a menace to the 
 
240 Taxation of Church Property, 
 
 State. That I demonstrated on last Sunday when I 
 showed you that so menacing have been its posses- 
 sions, that the State has been compelled to take them 
 in order to maintain the existence of civil govern- 
 ment. What have been the experiences of other 
 lands must become facts in this, especially as they 
 enter politics to gain this property, — threatening, 
 cajoling, and debauching laws, courts, and legisla- 
 tors, in securing the possession of it, and claiming 
 authority paramount to all other in holding, using, or 
 disposing of it. 
 
 II. Not to dwell longer on the certainty that what 
 has transpired in other countries will come to pass 
 here unless by some means we interfere, I submit that 
 in view of these certainties they ought to be re- 
 strained from gaining this property. How shall they 
 be restrained ? 
 
 1. First, by exposing all their methods and making 
 intelligible to all the world their designs. The 
 study of their history, to which we are giving atten- 
 tion in these afternoon meetings, may be the pivotal 
 point of the salvation of the United States of Amer- 
 ica. (Applause.) The methods of this great power 
 which is aggrandizing itself, need to be clearly laid 
 open. When the public know what they are doing 
 and designing, there will be raised a storm of indig- 
 nation. All over this country there has been an up- 
 rising against the methods of AVall Street, and a 
 protest from the Farmers' Alliance and from multi- 
 tudes of thoughtful people against the wrecking of 
 railroads and the speculation in stocks which is a 
 result. Such agitation is entirely legitimate. The 
 
Taxation of Church Property, 241 
 
 understanding of the methods of many of these spec- 
 ulators condemns their practices. But, sirs, Wall 
 Street is a cooing dove compared with the rapacious 
 vulture of the Roman Catholic Church. (Loud ap- 
 plause.) And what I propose is that the veil be 
 torn from their methods, and that everybody freely 
 look in on this great system which has wrecked Aot 
 railroads but nations ; which has struck its blow not 
 at private treasuries only, but which has impoverished 
 the treasuries of governments and of generations of 
 mankind. 
 
 2. I would, therefore, in addition to exposing their 
 methods, value justly and fairly all their possessions. 
 I would throw open to the light all their religious 
 houses. I would look into all their treasuries, and I 
 would estimate at a fair valuation every dollar of 
 their real estate. One reason for so doing is that 
 under the guise of being Roman ecclesiastics, many 
 of their priests acquire enormous amounts of personal 
 property for which they are not taxed. A friend of 
 mine in a Western city told me only a little while 
 ago, that he discovered (he is a minister, doing 
 kindred work to that of Dr. Parkhurst in New York) 
 that the Roman Catholic bishop resident in that city 
 owned as his own private property one block of build- 
 ings in that city worth a hundred thousand dollars, 
 for which he did not pay one dollar of tax ; and the 
 minister called together some of the leading gentle- 
 men of the city and of his own church, who resolved 
 that either the country should know it or the bishop 
 should value his property and pay the tax, which 
 they proceeded to have done. I want you to tell me 
 
242 Taxation of Church Property. 
 
 how it is that poor ignorant boys, passed by charity 
 through the theological seminaries of the Roman 
 Catholic Church, without ever doing a stroke of 
 work except taking the money of the people, die 
 possessed of hundreds of thousands of dollars, which 
 they give to the church or by will to other ecclesias- 
 tics. And much of their property, so far as I can 
 learn, is never declared to the assessors, and is not 
 taxed. 
 
 3. I would compel them to support the State, for 
 the sake of establishing the principle that the Roman 
 Catholic Church is not supreme in this country ; that 
 instead of the nation paying tribute to the church, 
 the church shall pay tribute to the nation (loud ap- 
 plause) ; and if one or the other of them is to be 
 poor, the one that is rich shall be the beneficent gov- 
 ernment of the United States. (Applause.) At 
 present, the church saps and does not support the 
 nation. I would tax them, in order that she may 
 support it. But proceeding still farther, and giving 
 still additional reasons why Rome should be taxed, 
 I observe that while this taxation will accomplish 
 the above ends in part, it will accomplish a great 
 deal more. 
 
 4. If we tax the Roman Catholic Church, by so 
 doing we can discover whether or not they are loyal 
 to this country. They profess loyalty. They pro- 
 fess too much to be really, confidently relied upon ; 
 their professions of loyalty are loud, their claims in 
 regard to this country are very large. What they 
 have done to make good those professions has not 
 yet been great. You will see in their papers every 
 
Taxation of Church Property. 243 
 
 little while that the Revolution was fought very 
 largely by Irish Roman Catholics ; but the truth is, 
 the Irishmen of the Revolution who fought for the 
 nation were almost all Protestants, contrary to the 
 Romanist claim. You will see them affirming that 
 in the Civil War the battles of the country were 
 mainly fought by Roman Catholics, and by Roman 
 Catholics from Ireland ; but the truth is, when you 
 examine the figures from the War Department, there 
 were comparatively few of them in the army, and 
 more of them deserted in proportion than of any other 
 nationalities in the army. (Applause.) The records 
 of the War Department show that of the Irish popu- 
 lation only nine (9) per cent enlisted in the Union 
 Army, and that among these seventy-two (72) per 
 cent deserted: more than ten times the proportion of 
 British, and fourteen times the number of native de - 
 serters. And this I say, not to reflect on the Irish 
 race. I love the Irish people, but Rome has de- 
 bauched them, and those of them that are under 
 Rome are not the best representatives of their noble 
 race. In proportion as they are emancipated, in that 
 proportion they show the glory of their character, 
 the vigor of their understanding, and their value as 
 citizens. But the facts about their fighting our bat- 
 tles are impudent misstatements, as are most Roman- 
 ist claims and if they insist on lying about it, they 
 will compel us to tell the truth. (Applause.) 
 
 5. I would tax the Roman Catholic Church, again, 
 because she is getting more advantages in this 
 country to-day than in any other country of the 
 world. So they themselves admit. A recent pope 
 
244 Taxation of Church Property. 
 
 of Rome has said that there was no countiy in which 
 he was so much a pope as in America; and they all 
 allow that America is giving them very great advan- 
 tages. So did Spain. How did they repay her ? By 
 tearing out her vitals. So did Italy. How did they 
 compensate her for their privileges? By holding 
 her in chains for a thousand years. France also 
 extended facilities to the Roman Catholic Church. 
 How did they reward her ? By making religion a 
 travesty of truth, and turning France to infidelity. 
 At present they are having very great advantages in 
 this country. Very well. In order that Ave may 
 not repeat upon us the history of other prostrate peo- 
 ples, let her pay for what she gets, as far as possible. 
 (Applause.) 
 
 6. Moreover, it seems to me reasonable that this 
 should be demanded because the advantages of the 
 Roman Catholic Church in the United States are not 
 advantages to the nation. I have spoken of this so 
 fully that I need only to state it. Also, because his- 
 tory shows that we must have either taxation or con- 
 fiscation in this matter of ecclesiastical usurpation. 
 I would adopt the gentlest means first. If we have 
 taxation, I think we may avoid confiscation. If we 
 do not have taxation, I believe confiscation is inevita- 
 ble; for this nation, like all nations, will come to a 
 death grapple with her internal foes, and as she has 
 done once, so will she do again : when the United 
 States grapples with her foemen, those foemen are 
 doomed to overthrow. (Applause.) 
 
 7. One other reason for taxation which I would 
 give, is that a very considerable amount of the prop- 
 
Taxation of Church Property. 245 
 
 erty of the Romish Church is business property, used 
 for purposes of direct revenue. I here cite to you a 
 proof of this statement in Canada, which interested 
 me very greatly. Please to notice the connection 
 in which it occurs. " In the session of the Quebec 
 Legislature, 1876 and 1877, the Sisters of Providence 
 obtained the passage of an Act by a large majority — 
 the vote was forty against thirteen, — giving them 
 authority to carry on every kind of manufactures in 
 the convent." Why should a factory carried on by 
 a corporation pay a tax for its property and its pro- 
 duct, and a factory carried on under the name of a 
 convent or a monastery go free of taxation, both as 
 to its property and its product? Let any working 
 man answer me that. If they make revenue by the 
 manufacture of goods, where they make that revenue 
 there they should be taxed on manufactures and on 
 manufacturing property. Moreover, for revenue in 
 this country they do worse than that. " In King's 
 County (New York) during the five years from 1871 
 to 1876, the cost to the people of the county from 
 the pauperizing of children, seven hundred and 
 twenty of whom were found to have both parents liv- 
 ing, was reported as having risen from $40,000 to 
 $172,000, at a price for each child so large that Com- 
 missioner Ropes said that the over-crowded asylums 
 farmed out those whom they had no room for. The 
 proportion in different asylums, as reported, was : 
 Roman Catholic 1,298 ; all Protestant denomina- 
 tions, 266 ; Jewish, 17." Thus obtaining from the 
 State, payments for the support of orphans, they 
 crowd these houses with children both of whose 
 
246 Taxation of Church Property, 
 
 parents are living, and gain from the government a 
 disproportionate sum for their support, the Roman 
 Catholics having more than five to one of the pro- 
 portion ; and they make these institutions a source 
 of revenue, pouring the money into the hands of the 
 priests. Such orphan asylums as that should be 
 taxed. (Applause.) 
 
 III. But some one will say, if the Roman Catholic 
 Church is taxed, all the churches should be. Propos- 
 ing to deal with this question in the most absolute 
 spirit of fairness, I am ready to consider this claim. 
 Is this the alternative? 
 
 1. If the Romish Church is taxed, ought all the 
 other churches to be ? 
 
 First, I will say there are peculiarities of the Ro- 
 man Catholic Church whicli suggest that it might 
 justly be taxed when other churches were not. Some 
 of these already have been disclosed, but I will men- 
 tion two or three such peculiarities, in addition to 
 those which I have already named. 
 
 1. Tlie Roman Catholic Church, unlike any other 
 church in this country, is an alien church, whose 
 official authority, supervision, and direction, policy 
 and purposes come from Italy. It is not an Ameri- 
 ican church. It is not an Italian cliurch. It is a 
 mediaeval church, with its headquarters in Rome. 
 Its officers are appointed by the prince to whom they 
 swear allegiance, not elected by the people of this 
 country. Further than this, all its property is 
 owned by these same ecclesiastics, who owe their 
 allegiance to a foreign power. Still further, all its 
 surplus revenues go to that official head outside of 
 
Taxation of Ohurch Property. '24cJ 
 
 the country, who has never been a friend to the 
 government of the United States. Claiming inde- 
 pendence, as it does, of the civil power, having its 
 officials only loyal to a foreign power, pouring its 
 revenues into the treasury of a foreign power ; in 
 these respects it is entirely unlike any other church, 
 and it seems to me can justly be considered a subject 
 for special legislation on the ground of its manifest 
 unlikeness to all other communions. 
 
 2. Moreover, a second reason why the Roman 
 Catholic Church, being unlike all other churches, 
 might justly be taxed, is this, that there is no other 
 church which has made so many paupers and so 
 many criminals to be supported by the government 
 of this nation and of the several States as the Roman 
 Catholic Church. Go where you will, to prison, 
 penitentiary, insane asylum, orphanage, hospital, you 
 find a very large disproportion of the money which 
 the country is spending for the indigent and criminal 
 classes is spent for people first who have been made 
 poor by the Roman Catholic Church in other coun- 
 tries or in this country, and second, for people who 
 are now kept poor in its communion. Therefore, I 
 say, because they cost so infinitely more than any 
 other church, there is a reason why special legisla- 
 tion should exact of them something for the support 
 of their own dependent and criminal people. (Ap- 
 plause.) 
 
 3. Moreover, I add to this another reason, based on 
 their manner of holding property. They are unlike 
 any other church in this, that their property is not 
 held by corporations and trustees of the people who 
 
248 Taxation of Church Property. 
 
 gave money for the purchase of the real estate or for 
 the erection of their edifices. Their property is not 
 the property of the people, as is the property of 
 the Episcopalian, Methodist, Baptist, Congregation- 
 alist, and all the other Protestant churches. The 
 property of these churches, given by the people, is 
 owned by the people. They can repair it, or mort- 
 gage it, or sell it under the law. But the property of 
 the Roman Catholic Church is held by the bishops in 
 trust for the Pope. It is personal property, not the 
 property of trustees or of the people. And when I 
 find that these owners use it for their aggrandize- 
 ment, at the expense of the people ; when I find that 
 they dispose of it personally by will, that they can 
 sell it or not sell it as they like, — then I say that in 
 this respect, being totally unlike any other church, 
 they might properly be the subject of special legisla- 
 tion, even if other churches were not. 
 
 4. And again we may say the Roman Catholic 
 Church, unlike any other church, transacts a very 
 large Avholesale and retail business in certain articles, 
 for money, and as a business it ought to be taxed 
 (applause) as other churches ought not to be. By 
 the way, I have the latest news from Ste. Anne this 
 morning. Twt) hundred thousand people bowed 
 down to the relic of flesh and bone in New York, 
 and instead of sixteen thousand dollars, the figure 
 last reported which they paid to see it is twenty 
 thousand dollars, the lowest figure that is now named 
 as the tribute of superstition to knavery. I say that 
 any institution which does a show business like this, 
 where there is no expense and all profit, ought to pay 
 a tax on receipts. (Loud applause.) 
 
Taxation of Ohurch Property. 249 
 
 IV. Nevertheless, after showing these marked pecul- 
 iarities which would justify the taxation of Roman- 
 ism, I am now coming to the point where your 
 interest, hitherto general, will be personal. If it 
 is necessary in order to be just, if it is necessary in 
 order to be honorable, if it is necessary in order to 
 be equitable, that the power of Roman Catholic 
 rapacity shall be restrained by taxation only when 
 the acquisition of all other churches and their prop- 
 erty is subject to taxation, then I say let all church 
 property everywhere be taxed. (Loud applause.) 
 I accept the alternative. All the churches are re- 
 ceiving unparalleled benefits under the Constitution 
 and the laws of this free republic, and for my part I 
 should be glad as a church member to do my part, 
 out of the religious treasuries for the maintenance 
 of a country which I love next to the church of 
 Jesus Christ. (Loud applause.) 
 
 1. Other denominations than the Roman Catholic 
 are also in danger of amassing undue wealth, though 
 the danger is not so imminent. It is a patent fact, 
 which they might well retort upon us, that Trinity 
 Church in New York City is probably the richest 
 religious corporation in America, if not in the world ; 
 while the collegiate churches of the Reformed Church 
 in New York are likewise possessed of very large 
 revenues. There is danger, my friends, lest covet- 
 ousness should come in upon Protestant communions, 
 and I should be willing to do all in my power, not 
 merely theoretically but practically, to prevent us 
 from falling into the same snare which has been the 
 curse of the Roman Church. 
 
250 Taxation of Church Property, 
 
 2. Worship should not be a matter of State support. 
 I judge that there are none of us here who are pre- 
 pared to say that we believe the State ought to support 
 the church or the churches. There are lands in which 
 this is still done, but it is not according to the genius 
 of our people, and is contrary to our Constitution. 
 If the government is not to subsidize the church, 
 if the State shall not support with its revenues an 
 ecclesiastical institution, then we might well inquire 
 whether the government should remit the just taxes 
 on church property as a part of church support, and 
 so, indirectly, pay great sums out of the pockets of all 
 the people to please a part of them. There are many 
 people prejudiced against the churches to-day because 
 they think that they should be taxed, and so pay a 
 portion of the expenses of government. All just 
 cause for such prejudice should be removed. 
 
 I would like you to notice that the principle which 
 I here announce, that the support of the church ought 
 to be entirely apart from the treasury of the State, has 
 been vindicated by the Baptists and Methodists very 
 I'ecently. For they have practically said, " Although 
 we need money for the education of the Indians, we 
 will not take one dollar out of the treasury of the 
 United States, as a matter of principle ; and in so 
 resolving, they have virtually declared that they see 
 very great danger in any union of church and State 
 by which State funds support the church; and if this 
 danger is so imminent that they will not take money 
 out of the treasury for the support of their schools, 
 why should they take it out of the treasury of the 
 nation for the support of their churches, through 
 exemption from taxatioii ? 
 
Taxation of Church Property, 251 
 
 3. The amount of church property in this country 
 in Protestant hands is now counted by hundreds of 
 millions. There are multitudes of poor property 
 holders who would be relieved in the matter of taxa- 
 tion if the church property, assessed at a fair valua- 
 tion, should be taxed. You can see this very plainly. 
 Here is a rich congregation which builds a church 
 worth half a million dollars, and can well afford to do 
 so ; here is a poor congregation in the same city whose 
 church cost ten thousand dollars, — and they are 
 numerically as great as the other. If that five hun- 
 dred thousand dollars, and that ten thousand dollars 
 were added to the assessed valuation of the real 
 estate of the municipality, the rich people who are 
 now occupying the splendid church would simply pay 
 their proportion of taxation for their privileges, while 
 the poor people would be relieved in just that propor- 
 tion. When the valuation of property is increased, 
 then the rate of taxation on a dollar is diminished. 
 Therefore, the large increase of valuation through a 
 property of half a million being added to the muni- 
 cipal wealth in its assessment, relieves the purse of 
 every poor man in that municipality by diminishing 
 the rate of taxation. 
 
 4. If the church would freely consent to have its 
 property valued and taxed, I have no doubt that it 
 would very much raise the moral tone of society by 
 so doing. Studying recently a book on taxation, a 
 very carefully written treatise, I found this astounding 
 statement repeated over and over again, — that it is 
 a common thing for men otherwise reputable, to make 
 false oatJis with reference to their property, so as to 
 
252 Taxation of Church Property. 
 
 avoid taxation ; that in every State in the Union most 
 serious trouble results from the fact that men try to 
 cover up their property instead of paying on it what 
 is justly due. Of course this is dishonest and im- 
 moral. Let me bring forward a kindred case, and 
 show you where the church could exalt truth and 
 honesty. Here is a city lot or block, worth a great 
 deal of money and constantly increasing in value. 
 It is owned by a church. On a little corner of the 
 lot the owners build a very small chapel. That 
 makes it technically church property for church uses, 
 so they maintain and hold all that valuable land 
 without paying any tax to the government. The 
 man of dull moral sense, who is a member of that 
 church, cannot see any reason why if the church does 
 so, he should not do something equivalent. In my 
 humble opinion, if all the churches in this country 
 would come forward in a manly way, declare all their 
 property, and ask to have it fairly taxed, they would 
 do more to bring up the moral standard of men who 
 make false oaths in reference to property, than by 
 almost any amount of preaching honesty. (Applause.) 
 
 A very large percentage of personal property now 
 escapes taxation altogether, which is to the disadvan- 
 tage of all. 
 
 I think I could show, if I had time, that consenting 
 to taxation, on the part of the churches, would not 
 increase the expenditure of their members for gov- 
 ernment, and would, on the other hand, equalize 
 taxation throughout all the municipality or the State, 
 and lessen the tax-rate. 
 
 In 1875, in a message to Congress, President Grant 
 made this remarkable statement: — 
 
Taxation of Church Property. 253 
 
 " In 1850, 1 believe, the churcli property of the 
 United States which paid no tax, municipal or State, 
 amounted to 187,000,000. In 1860 the amount had 
 doubled. In 1870, it was $354,483,587. In 1900, 
 without a check, it is safe to say, this property will 
 reach a sum exceeding $3,000,000,000. So vast a 
 sum, receiving all the protection and benefits, of 
 government, without bearing its proportion of the 
 burdens and expenses of the same, will not be looked 
 upon acquiescently by those who have to pay the 
 taxes. In a growing country, where real estate en- 
 hances so rapidly with time as in the United States, 
 there is scarcely a limit to the wealth that may be 
 acquired by corporations, religious or otherwise, if 
 allowed to retain real estate without taxation. The 
 contemplation of so vast a property as here alluded 
 to, without taxation, may lead to sequestration with- 
 out constitutional authority, and through bloodshed. 
 I would suggest the taxation of all property equally." 
 
 V. Having thus announced the positive reasons 
 for taxation of church property, I wish to meet 
 fairly those who will bring forward objections to tax- 
 ing the property of the church. Tliose objections I 
 very much respect, for it is a matter of which we 
 have thought very little. We are driven to this 
 emergency, perhaps, as a war measure. We were not 
 ready to emancipate the slave, until the only hope 
 of this nation lay in his freedom. When General 
 Fremont was ready to declare the slaves in Missouri 
 free early in the war, the country said, " Not ready," 
 and even the great emancipator Lincoln said, 
 "Not ready," but there came a time when in the hot 
 
254 Taxation of Church Property, 
 
 fires of war the shackles of the slave melted. It may- 
 be we have not thought it to be immediately desir- 
 able that the property of churches should be taxed ; 
 but we have come to a time of emergency. The 
 peril of other nations is over-shadowing our own 
 land, decided and wise measures need to be taken ; 
 and to lead to united action these objections need 
 to be calmly and thoughtfully considered. When I 
 have stated a few of them, and answered them, I have 
 done. 
 
 1. Some of you will say, our churches are for the 
 public good, and, because for the public good, there- 
 fore they should not be taxed. In the city of New 
 York during the war, was formed the strong patriotic 
 organization known as the Union League. Noble 
 men joined themselves together to give the country 
 an evidence of their devotion and loyalty, and to 
 stand behind the government in its herculean work. 
 They built a most magnificent building on Fifth 
 Avenue. That building is the headquarters of the 
 Union League Club to-day. The building and the 
 club are a public benefit, and yet, although they have 
 done so much for the nation's welfare, I do not sup- 
 pose they ever thought of asking exemption from 
 taxation on the ground that they were a public bene- 
 fit. But, says one, the churches are so much a public 
 benefaction that what they do ought to be considered 
 an equivalent for what they receive in the w^ay of pro- 
 tection. I answer, this hall is a public benefaction, 
 and I do not know (I speak with great carefulness), 
 that any church edifice in the city of Worcester has 
 done more for the intellectual and moral elevation of 
 
Taxation of Church Property. 255 
 
 the city than this magnificent hall. It is a public 
 benefit, an honor to the men who projected it long 
 ago, and who open it so freely to the public use. 
 But I do not think any member of its corporation 
 ever thought of asking that the property of the 
 Mechanics' Association should be exempt from taxa- 
 tion, because it is a public benefit, and is used for 
 public advantage. Why, then, should we ask exemp- 
 tion for church edifices? 
 
 2. But another says, churches are freely thrown 
 open to all ; they are public property, and therefore 
 they should not be taxed. I answer, they are cer- 
 tainly owned by somebody else than the public. 
 They are owned by their congregations, and held by 
 the officers of those congregations. They are not 
 public property, therefore, in the technical and exact 
 sense. And, moreover, if you say that they are thrown 
 open to everybody, that all the people can go to them 
 freely, I say with shame and confusion of face, would 
 God that they were, but as a matter of fact, Ave know 
 that the churches are very largely so exclusive that 
 everybody knows who is wanted there, and who is 
 not. (Applause.) Would I be a better Christian if 
 I should evade the truth in the presence of this 
 congregation, and deny the fact that many of our 
 churches are social clubs, pure and simple, with a 
 religious bias ? (Applause.) They do not want the 
 poor, they do not want the ragged, they do not want 
 the dirty, they do not want the lowly, they do not 
 welcome the people whose social standing is doubt- 
 ful ; and when such people come, they are treated as 
 Jesus Christ himself in peasant garb would be 
 
256 Taxation of Church Property. 
 
 treated, if it were He, and they did not know who 
 He was. He and they would be thrust together into 
 the lowliest place. Why, sirs, one of the most mon- 
 strous things in the history of religion is that the 
 churches are not open to the public in such a sense 
 that many people who respect themselves do not go 
 to them, because they cannot go and respect them- 
 selves ; and I could pour out bitter tears here because 
 it is true. The churches maintain the caste spirit. 
 You can rate the property value of men by their 
 seats in the church, — these in the broad aisle,^ those 
 in the back seats, and others in the galleries. The 
 uncovering of the shame of the church is most pain- 
 ful to me, but truth demands that we say that the 
 churches are not the property of the public to such 
 an extent that it should be a reason why they be 
 exempted from taxation. (Applause.) Indirectly, 
 they are for the benefit of all ; no doubt that is true. 
 So is a factory indirectly for the benefit of all ; so is 
 a private school indirectly for the benefit of all ; so 
 is every man's property which is well kept and 
 honestly earned, indirectly for the benefit of all, but 
 can that be alleged as a reason why the factory, the 
 private school, and the private house and grounds be 
 exempt from taxation ? 
 
 3. It is further objected that these church members 
 have been already taxed in their private capacity, 
 and that, therefore, they should not pay a further 
 tax in this benevolent work of the church. If they 
 have paid their taxes in their private capacity as 
 individual holders, why should they not now pay 
 their taxes in their corporate capacity as joint-hold- 
 
Taxation of Church Property, 257 
 
 ers of property ? By this method, as I have already 
 said, poor people would be very much relieved ; 
 indeed, rich people would pay less on their property 
 than now they pay, if taxes were levied on all 
 property alike. 
 
 4. But another says, being religious they ought 
 not to be taxed. You have an idea that there is a 
 kind of sacrilege in taxing churches, because they 
 are religious. Perhaps you are religious : is that any 
 reason why you should not be taxed ? Perhaps you 
 do your business and hold your property conscien- 
 tiously as a Christian. Have you ever pleaded exemp- 
 tion on that ground ? Well, but, says one, these are 
 religious in the large sense, they are religious insti- 
 tutions. So is Mormonism, and yet the other day 
 the United States took a very large portion of the 
 property of that very religious Morman Church, 
 amounting to a million dollars or more, and applied 
 it for the education of the Mormon youth under the 
 direction of the government. The government prac- 
 tically confiscated the property of this religious or- 
 ganization, and by so heavy a tax they made it serve 
 the cause of education. I appeal to history that the 
 Mormon Church is not such a blot on the history of 
 time as is the Roman Catholic Church. Do you say 
 that the Mormons have murdered men, and point to 
 the Mountain Meadow massacre ? I hear the gurgle 
 of rivers of blood shed by Rome. Do you say that 
 the Mormons have countenanced vice by their sys- 
 tem of polygamy ? Read the histories of centuries, 
 to tell you how celibate priests, monks, and nuns 
 have violated all morality. Do you say that the 
 
258 Taxation of Church Property, 
 
 Mormons have oppressed the people by exacting 
 tithes ? Turn to South America, and see how Rome, 
 by her exactions, has enslaved the intellect, plun- 
 dered the treasury, and depraved the principles of 
 the nations. No, the fact that any church is reli- 
 gious is not a reason why it should not be taxed. 
 The reason must be some other than this, and the 
 sufficient reason I think does not exist. 
 
 5. If churches are taxed, says one, thinking the 
 matter over broadly, then educational endowments 
 would have to be taxed. All our colleges having large 
 accumulations of funds which are used for the sup- 
 port of education would necessarily pay taxes on their 
 property. If we are going to tax church property we 
 would have to tax educational property. I answer, 
 educational endowments are taxed already in many 
 cases. For example, Johns Hopkins University is 
 supported largely by Baltimore and Ohio Railroad 
 stock. That stock is taxed ; nor do I see any reason 
 in the world why educational institutions should not 
 be taxed, saving those which belong to everybody, are 
 supported by everybody, and are freely open to every- 
 bod}^, as are the public schools. 
 
 6. But, one replies, if you tax educational institu- 
 tions you will have to tax charitable institutions, pri- 
 vate hospitals, orphanages, and the like ; and they 
 think they find in this an insuperable objection to 
 taxation such as I propose. My friends, is it any 
 more oppressive to tax a private hospital than it is to 
 tax a private physician on his own personal property ? 
 Suppose many physicians combine. Their work is 
 not wholly philanthropic. They receive a revenue 
 
Taxation of Church Property. 259 
 
 from the institution and should pay tax. But, one 
 says, here is an orphanage (and I have told you how 
 Rome abuses orphanages and makes them minister to 
 her gains), and, say they, we shall have to tax all 
 orphanages if we tax Roman Catholic orphanages. I 
 reply, yes; well may we do so, and why not? Yonder 
 on a humble street is a poor widow left with four 
 orphans under her care. Her little house is worth a 
 thousand or fifteen hundred dollars. That is an 
 orphanage which if any are to be exempt from taxa- 
 tion ought to be. (Applause.) Has anybody ever 
 pleaded that the small property of poor widows and 
 orphans may be exempt from taxation ? If not, then 
 why should not the property where a hundred orphans 
 are cared for by people whose aggregate property 
 amounts to millions, do something for the nation 
 which will care for those orphans from now until the 
 time when they enjoy the larger privileges of mature 
 citizenship ; befriending them through the whole 
 course of their lives ? (Applause.) 
 
 I have touched upon every objection which I have 
 time to note this afternoon, and I think I have made 
 clear that for the sake of so great a principle, and of 
 so important a result, all the churches might well and 
 profitably submit to taxation, ay, and welcome it 
 gladly, unless they propose also, which I do not be- 
 lieve, to become the oppressors of the people, when it 
 is their duty to give them liberty and salvation. 
 What should be exempt from taxation ? The things 
 which are the common property of all, as I have just 
 said, and which the public all freely and equally use. 
 
 With all that has been and might be advanced to 
 
260 Taxation of Cliurcli Property. 
 
 justify such a conclusion, I believe that the churches 
 would be ready to bear their part in the support of 
 the government. Rome alone would resist to the last. 
 Of Canada, Lindsay says ("Rome in Canada," p. 365), 
 that the laity are feeling the burden of the immunity 
 from taxation which the church enjoys, and have 
 raised the question of taxing it. " Already the epis- 
 copate is on the alert, and has made a sign which shows 
 that it intends to resist the change with all the power 
 it can command. In a circular issued in November, 
 1875, the seven bishops on the strength of their united 
 authority, instruct the priests that if the municipali- 
 ties or other civil authorities speak of taxing the 
 property of the church and of the religious commu- 
 nities, the priest is to communicate the fact to the 
 bishop, under pain of excommunication." No blow 
 strikes to the vitals of Rome like enlightening her 
 people and diminishing her revenues. Rome Avould 
 resist taxation with excommunication. Rome alone 
 would protest that taxation could never be permitted 
 without a sacrifice of her laws and rights. Rome 
 alone would resolve that it should not be, since her 
 taxation would be her death. So be it. (Applause.) 
 If it be death to any church, Roman or otherwise, to 
 help support this government by fair taxation, then let 
 it die. (Applause.) But, as I believe, by standing 
 squarely for the principle, we can protect the nation, 
 upbuild religion, emancipate the people, and check- 
 mate the rapacity of the priests. (Applause.) 
 
NO. XI. CHURCH AND STATE: THEIR 
 TRUE RELATIONS. 
 
 " Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how 
 they might entangle him in his talk. 
 
 And they sent out unto him their disciples with the 
 Herodians, saying. Master, we know that thou art 
 true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither 
 carest thou for any man : for thou regardest not the 
 person of men. 
 
 Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou ? Is it law- 
 ful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not ? 
 
 But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, 
 Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites? 
 
 Show me the tribute money And they brought unto 
 him a penny. 
 
 And he saith unto them. Whose is this image and 
 superscription ? 
 
 They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto 
 them. Render therefore unto Caesar the things which 
 are Caesar's : and unto God the things that are God's. 
 
 When they had heard these words they marvelled, 
 and left him, and went their way." 
 
 In speaking to-day upon the subject of Church and 
 State in their mutual relations, I take for mv text the 
 
 261 
 
262 Church and State: their True Relatio7is. 
 
 words at which the Pharisees marvelled, when they 
 had undertaken to entangle the Lord Jesus Christ 
 in his talk : " Render therefore unto Caesar the things 
 which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are 
 God's." 
 
 1. By the progress of our thought, which I believe 
 has been so connected that what has followed has 
 come in orderly sequence from the premises going 
 before, we on last Sunday urged that the only possible 
 way by which the government of the United States 
 could check the rapacity of the priests and protect 
 the interests of the people was to lay a tax on the 
 property not only of the Roman Catholic Church, but 
 in order that equity might prevail and objection 
 might not justly be offered to so doing, that it should, 
 in the exercise of its administrative functions, lay a 
 tax on the property of all the churches. The suprem- 
 acy of the government in matters of property must 
 of course be assumed from its right to levy such tax, 
 and the relation of the church and the state can in 
 part be inferred from such an act on the part of the 
 government. 
 
 2. That this relationship is a matter of serious con- 
 cern you may infer from the fact that the recent na- 
 tional Republican Convention at Minneapolis inserted 
 in its platform a plank in which it expressed with 
 emphasis its belief that the church and state ought 
 to be kept separate. This does not mean, as I under- 
 stand them, that the church should be excluded by 
 or from the state, or that the church should attempt 
 to exist independently of the state, but that church 
 and state should so coexist and harmonize that 
 
Church and State: their True Relations. 263 
 
 neither should trench upon the rights of the other, 
 and that both should conserve the very highest 
 temporal interests of the people. Plainly that con- 
 vention would have made no such deliverance if there 
 had been no occasion for it. Still more obviously is 
 it evident that unless they had believed that there 
 was danger of the church and the state coming into 
 relations which would militate against the welfare of 
 the people, they would have made no pronouncement 
 concerning them. A deep-seated fear exists in the 
 minds of the people of this country, born of their in- 
 telligence and their knowledge of human history, lest 
 the civil liberties which we enjoy, and which are as 
 priceless as they are excellent, may somehow be 
 filched from us ; and an equal fear exists on the part 
 of our people who know how through many centuries 
 the nations have struggled against religious tyrants, 
 lest somehow that rare and marvellous religious free- 
 dom which we enjoy in this country should likewise 
 be lost us. There never has been an hour in the his- 
 tory of the American state or in the history of Chris- 
 tianity in the United States, when the people would 
 not rally, if they really began to fear that civil or 
 religious liberty were in any wise imperilled: for 
 I believe as a principle more settled than the rocks 
 of our hills, more firmly ingrained than the phrase- 
 ology of our Constitution, there has been born into the 
 American people a purpose to be free. (Applause.) 
 That purpose takes form as the exigencies of the time 
 suggest, but you can wrench from us anything sooner 
 than our consent to be tyrannized over, whether in 
 the state or in the church. 
 
264 Church and State : their True Relations. 
 
 Our fear is based on the history of nations. We 
 know somewhat of the sufferings of humanity and 
 the struggles of government in other lands. We 
 know that where the church has been tyrannous it 
 has been degraded, and the same is true of the state. 
 We have a conviction that the separation of their or- 
 ganized governments and heads is for the general 
 good. We never want the time to come in this coun- 
 try when a priest shall be President, or when a Presi- 
 dent shall be priest. 
 
 3. Our Lord, in the words which I have taken, 
 said more than I could explain in an hour's speaking. 
 He did not contrast the civil government with the 
 ecclesiastical government. He did not say, " Render 
 to the head of the civil state what belongs to the 
 head of the civil state, and to the head of the ecclesi- 
 astical hierarchy what belongs to the head of the 
 ecclesiastical hierarchy," but he said, in the support 
 of civil government, " Render to the ruler, as 
 embodying the government, what is his due, but 
 have personal relations with God in matters of reli- 
 gion, and directly to him, not through a Csesar or a 
 pope, — render to God the things that are God's." 
 (Applause.) 
 
 The civil state is undoubtedly included in the 
 divine administration. The duty of reverencing 
 rulers is laid down as a part of human duty ; but 
 I do not find Christ anywhere teaching that there is 
 any ecclesiastical order which has such relation to 
 us as has the civil order, but that, on the contrary, 
 we are to perform our duties to God direct and our 
 duties to man partly through contact and association 
 and partly through the civil state. 
 
Cliurch and State: their True Relations. 265 
 
 I. The relations of church and state have been a 
 matter of profound interest among men for centuries. 
 1. Three views have prevailed. The first, of the 
 supremacy of the church, its absolute authority over 
 the civil government. The second view is the su- 
 premacy of the state, its absolute precedence over 
 the ecclesiastical order. The third view is that of 
 the reciprocal independence of both, which involves 
 the absolute authority of neither the one nor the other. 
 All three methods have been tried, and tried through 
 extended years. The doctrine of the supremacy ot 
 the church is the doctrine wherever the Romap 
 Catholic Church has had or now has power. The 
 doctrine of the supremacy of the state was adopted 
 by the Reformers and the churches of the Reforma- 
 tion as a reaction and protest against the cause of 
 the sufferings which they had endured at the hands 
 of a supreme hierarchy. The doctrine of the recip- 
 rocal independence of church and state has not, so 
 far as I know, ever had a field for complete exercise 
 except in the United States. I find that writers who 
 discourse upon this great theme suggest the United 
 States of America as the country where the recipro- 
 cal independence of the church and state is having 
 its most noted illustration. You will notice in 
 your reading of modern European history the word 
 Concordat now and then, and undoubtedly many of 
 you know that a Concordat is a sort of treaty of 
 peace between the Roman Catholic Church and the 
 civil government, by which they undertake so far as 
 they can, through mutual concession, to live in con- 
 cord. There is a Concordat between the French 
 
266 Church and State : their True Rdations, 
 
 government and the church made by the first Napo- 
 leon, broken and afterward restored ; between the 
 Austrian government and the Roman Catholic 
 Church made by Franz Joseph ; and these Concordats 
 are only an indication of the endeavor of civil gov- 
 ernment to get along peaceably with that church 
 which claims supreme authority. Slowly but surely 
 the supremacy of the Roman Catholic hierarchy is 
 departing from it. 
 
 2. I cannot on this occasion undertake a philosophi- 
 cal discussion of the relations of church and state in 
 all their profoundest significance. It would be of 
 very great interest. In order to do it I should need 
 a volume instead of a sermon. It would be neces- 
 sary carefully to define what is meant by the church ; 
 the essence, the organization, the government, the 
 rights and the duties of the church. It would be 
 equally necessary correctly to define the state ; what 
 we mean by it, geographically, governmentally, con- 
 stitutionally, and in all ways. Detailed considera- 
 tions of the function of the one over against the 
 other among the same people might well call for the 
 most varied historical information and proof. Upon 
 this profound general question I cannot enter. I 
 will narrow the scope and perhaps intensify the 
 interest by considering the actual relations of the 
 church and the state in this nation, not considered 
 abstractly but practically. 
 
 II. The churches of the United States are cer- 
 tainly related to the state. 1. The religious census 
 of the United States, just taken, shows us that there 
 axe about one hundred and forty different denomina- 
 
Church and State : their Ti'ue Relations. 267 
 
 tions and religious organizations in the country, 
 which have their own peculiarities. Of this one 
 hundred and forty separate bodies, I suppose, count- 
 ing out the communistic societies, it may be said that 
 somewhat more than a hundred are religious denom- 
 inations of one sort and another. Of these bodies of 
 religious people, united together by religious ties, 
 and administering to the spiritual instruction of the 
 country and of the world, we may say that most of 
 them are in no conflict whatever with the civil gov- 
 ernment, either of the nation at large or of the 
 States in which they live. Neither their creeds nor 
 their sense of duty bring them into any conflict with 
 the laws which as citizens they have assisted to make 
 and which as citizens they help to support. In mat- 
 ters of church control, of discipline, of morals, of 
 education, of holding property, of civil duty, of civil 
 allegiance, in fact, in all details of life, they are prac- 
 tically at one with the state. As to the principles 
 which these churches announce, they are not gener- 
 ally found challenging the Constitution or the laws. 
 They are not, as bodies, seeking to control politics. 
 It would be very difficult to say on which side politi- 
 cally are the majorities of the various religious de- 
 nominations, taking the whole country at large. 
 They are interested in all public questions, but they 
 are never found dictating a political party j^licy. 
 They utter themselves, for instance, concerning the 
 treaties of the United States as excluding the Chi- 
 nese. They speak their mind on the liquor traffic. 
 They declare their convictions on all questions of 
 the public welfare, but you do not find that they 
 
268 Church and State : their True Relations. 
 
 formulate a political policy or that they attempt 
 as bodies the control of the national legislation. 
 These churches, of a hundred denominations, so 
 varied in many of the minor principles of their 
 church life, and some of them quite at variance in a 
 portion of the larger matters of church administra- 
 tion, are almost all found to harmonize with the gov- 
 ernment in that they regard the public welfare as a 
 matter of great and common interest. They en- 
 deavor to increase the security and safety of all 
 people in the state. They hold in high esteem the 
 morality which the civil law undertakes to support. 
 They foster morality and virtue as the civil state 
 does, and more. They are profoundly interested in 
 the enlightenment and education of the people and 
 take strenuous measures to assist therein. They 
 labor for the maintenance of high character in all the 
 relations of life and in all departments of human 
 activity. In these respects, I say, they seem not in 
 antagonism but in entire harmony with the state, 
 while they represent the best, the most progressive, 
 and the most enlightened portion of the population. 
 
 2. In general, I may say, there is no apprehension 
 that they will ever do the government any harm. The 
 voice of the Republican convention at Minneapolis, 
 with reference to the relation of church and state, has 
 not in it any thought that the large majority of these 
 churches will ever give the government any trouble 
 whatever. They know that they will not. Occupy- 
 ing the attitude which they do, the relations of these 
 churches to the state are rather matters of philosophi- 
 cal inquiry than of practical urgency. I might raise 
 
Church and State: their True Relations. 269 
 
 the question Here before all the varied forms of Chris- 
 tian belief which are represented in this audience to- 
 day, what interest have you in considering the rela- 
 tion of the Baptist Church as an organization to the 
 state ; or of the Congregationalist, or the Episco- 
 palian, or the Methodist ? Your interest is merely 
 theoretical. You know the relation of these churches 
 to the state, and you know, be you Republican, Demo- 
 crat, or Prohibitionist, that the planks in the platforms 
 protesting against the union of church and state have 
 nothing whatever to do with these churches, either 
 with their statutes or their civil life or their religious 
 ideas, their administration or their discipline. The 
 question, then, is being very rapidly narrowed down. 
 
 3. I promised you a practical discussion. We can- 
 not have it concerning these denominations in gen- 
 eral : but among the religious organizations classed as 
 churches in this country, there are two which have 
 raised the gravest fears and awakened the most serious 
 doubts in the minds of all intelligent and thoughtful 
 people. One of these is Mormon, the other is Ro- 
 man. When this plank of the platform of politicians 
 and statesmen is made, it does not intend to go out- 
 side of these two. (Applause.) 
 
 And when you think of the relation of church and 
 State in this country as having in it anything to fear 
 or anything to dread, your thoughts never go outside 
 of those two. The Mormon Church has given us a 
 great deal of trouble. It has assumed to have direct 
 revelation from heaven and that nobody should inter- 
 fere with it in carrying out those directions however 
 immoral. Its head was the president and civil ruler 
 
270 Church and State : their True Relations. 
 
 of all its members. It set up a domestic morality of 
 its own which was immoral. It exacted tithes of its 
 people which were oppressive. It favored the idea 
 of blood atonement, and murdered those of its mem- 
 bers who could not be otherwise forced to follow its 
 dictates. It assaulted settlers and even the troops of 
 the United States. It educated its children only in 
 the tenets of the church and not to make them 
 good citizens. This church, this Mormon Church in 
 a distant part of our country, was believed and is be- 
 lieved to be dangerous to the common welfare. The 
 general government has legislated concerning it. 
 They have tried to diminish the power of its hierarchy. 
 They have legislated against its immorality. They 
 have taken away its property and its tithes. They 
 have set up schools in order to make its people intelli- 
 gent. Still there is very grave apprehension as to the 
 influence of Mormonism throughout the country. 
 And Utah is not a State to-day solely and only because 
 the pressure of the moral and religious sentiment of 
 America is so strong against the admission as a State 
 of the territory governed by hierarchs and favoring 
 the violation of the laws of the United States. 
 
 3. The Roman Church also has done all these 
 things. Scattered more widely, it has not yet received 
 special attention from the government, but it has given 
 special attention to the government. It also claims 
 direct revelation from heaven, perfect, absolute, and 
 dictatorial. It also claims the supremacy of its lead- 
 ing priests and hierarchs over all civil rulers and 
 affairs. It also gives us in its moral theology an 
 amount of obscenity, and in the celibate life of its 
 
Church and State: their True Relations. 271 
 
 priests and nuns an amount of immorality, which is 
 apparent to any student of history and startling to 
 every lover of the home. It also oppresses the people 
 who are under its care and enriches itself by despoil- 
 ing them. It also, in a hundred cases, has left the 
 people illiterate, and would in this country neglect to 
 teach them if there was not money for priests in paro- 
 chial schools. (Applause.) It is this curse and the 
 other, but mostly this, which is the object of the 
 thought of our statesmen when they look to the dan- 
 ger which may arise from the union of church and 
 state. Are you afraid here of the probable influence 
 of Mormonism on this part of the country ? No, I 
 think not. So then, to be practical, this discussion, 
 in order to have relations to you, must be narrowed 
 down still farther, and to this point. The question 
 is : Shall Romanism rule the United States, or shall the 
 United States rule Romanism? This question I pro- 
 pose to discuss. 
 
 III. The Roman Catholic Church is in conflict 
 with the state at many points. We have now been 
 in existence as a nation something over a hundred 
 years, and I think we know pretty well what we want 
 in our civil government. We have carried out to an 
 extent our Constitution, have legislated through this 
 century and have crystallized quite a little, have 
 gained in intelligence no doubt very much, are rising, 
 I think, in moral tone, have learned more about the 
 history of the world, and I may say, addressing an 
 audience of intelligent American citizens in this old 
 Bay State, that the state knows about what it wants. 
 It knows also about what it does not want. 
 
272 Church and State: their True Relations. 
 
 1. We do not want a state church supported from 
 the public treasury : of that we are sure. (Applause.) 
 Neither state funds nor state control are best for 
 churches in European or American countries. But 
 disestablishment is sure to come, and we all favor 
 such severance of the church from the state. We 
 know that we do not want any church in this country 
 supported by the state. 
 
 We do not want a church which owes supreme 
 allegiance to a foreign ruler : we are very certain of 
 that. The doctrine of James Monroe that we do 
 not want European powers on this continent is not 
 more firmly fixed in the minds of the American peo- 
 ple than this kindred proposition, that we do not 
 want a church which owes supreme allegiance to a 
 foreign head. We know that we do not want any 
 of our citizens under an absolute monarchy. I am 
 just as much interested in having the humblest Irish 
 boy in this country a freeman as I am in having my 
 own boy a freeman. (Loud applause.) An abso- 
 lute monarchy is not good enough for any boy on 
 American soil whom I ever looked in the face. 
 (Applause.) We do not want a church which 
 exacts of its officers an oath that they will obey a 
 foreign ruler. The Roman Catholic Church exacts 
 that oath of its bishops and its priests if not of its 
 members. For I am sure we agree on this, no oath 
 of allegiance will be tolerated in America to any 
 other than the American state. (Applause.) 
 
 We do not want a church which takes its politics 
 from Rome. Mgr. Preston, before a court of law in 
 New York City, says, " Every Roman Catholic must 
 
Church and State : their True Relations. 273 
 
 take his politics from Rome." We are just as cer- 
 tain as we were before he said it, that we do not 
 want anybody in this country to take his politics 
 from Rome. 
 
 We do not want a church which in matters of 
 common law refuses to submit to the civil govern- 
 ment. We do not want a church which attempts to 
 over-ride by force or by fraud what it does not agree 
 with. We do not want in this country a church 
 which opposes the widest diffusion of the kind of 
 education among the people which will make them 
 fit to be citizens of the American Republic. We do 
 not want a church which demands for her priests 
 that they be exempt from the action of the common 
 law and be tried only by ecclesiastical courts. No 
 matter who is the priest, he is only a man, and as a 
 man, the courts of the United States are good enough 
 to judge him for this world. (Loud applause.) 
 
 We do not want, we know we do not want in this 
 country, a church which assumes the right to nullify 
 the laws and which affirms that this or that law shall 
 be null and void, as Pius IX. affirmed in the case of 
 half a dozen countries, some on this continent and 
 some in Europe, within the last thirty years. We 
 do not want a church in this country that is resolved 
 to change the laws in violation of the liberties of the 
 people, in order to enhance her own power. 
 
 2. We do not desire in our territory any organiza- 
 tion which does any of these things, whether it is a 
 church or not ; and yet we are no less certain of the 
 fact that every one of these things which we do not 
 want in this country is part of the fundamental law 
 
274 Church and State : their True Uelations. 
 
 and purpose of the Roman Catholic Church. In 
 matters of education, of allegiance, of jurisdiction, 
 of property, the Roman Church, like the Mormon 
 Church, has taken a position in absolute antagonism 
 not only to this government as such, but to any form 
 of government like our own ; and if the Mormon 
 Church by its attitude is in real conflict with the 
 government of this country, much more is the 
 church whose dictator and whose divinity sits en- 
 throned on the shores of the Tiber. 
 
 IV. Moreover, as I discuss the relation of church 
 and state, that is, the relation of the Roman Catho^ 
 lie Church to the American state, I am prepared to 
 avow and defend a principle as broad as this : No 
 interest is represented by the government of this 
 country which would be safe in the hands of the 
 Roman Catholic hierarchy. I repeat and emphasize : 
 No interest is represented by the government of this 
 country which is or would be safe in the hands of the 
 Roman Catholic Church. 
 
 Manifestly there are interests which are common 
 to us all. Some of us are rich and some of us poor ; 
 of some of us it may be said that we tremble on the 
 verge of age, and of others that we are faltering on 
 the threshold of youth ; some of us are uneducated, 
 others of us are trained to the highest point of which 
 our minds are capable. But whatever we are, and 
 whatever our personality or our peculiarities, there 
 are profound interests common to us all which are 
 an essential part of the national and civil life, and 
 these things, which are so obvious as to be beyond 
 debate, which are so dear as to be beyond price, 
 
Church and State: their True Relations. 275 
 
 would not be safely administered if in the hands 
 of the Roman Catholic Church. 
 
 1. Would freedom of the person be safe under her 
 jurisdiction ? Ask the Inquisition, not the Inquisi- 
 tion of three hundred yeare ago, but the Inquisition 
 of 1870, which enlightened Italy at that time stamped 
 under foot. Ask the history of the states where 
 Rome has had supreme sway, the papal states as they 
 were when Victor Emmanuel entered Rome, when 
 every free man was likely to be taken out of his bed 
 at night by the spies of the papacy, and without trial 
 or jury incarcerated for an indefinite time in the dun- 
 geons of the church. 
 
 Would freedom of opinion be safe in this country 
 if the Roman Church had power ? Ask the Index, ask 
 the thousand anathemas of the church, ask the history 
 of the .Montreal Institute, the Institute Canadien, 
 where but a few years ago the church fought with 
 all its might and intensest bitterness against an or- 
 ganization which had for its purpose the cultivation 
 and enlightenment of men, because they had avowed 
 toleration of opinion as one of their principles. 
 Would freedom of opinion be safe \\dth the bishops, 
 with those who excommunicated Von Dollinger, with 
 Archbishop Corrigan persecuting McGlynn, with 
 Bishop McQuaid pursuing Lambert, with Bishop 
 Elder threatening Editor Owen Smith ? Would free- 
 dom of opinion, I ask, be safe in the hands of these 
 hierarchs. (Sensation.) 
 
 2. Would freedom of conscience ? Ask the sylla- 
 bus of 1864, the infallible word of the infallible pope. 
 When did ever freedom of conscience thrive under 
 
276 Church and State : their True Relations. 
 
 Romish despotism? Ask the myriads of Roman 
 Catholic people who have no conscience of their own, 
 but simply the conscience of the priests for their guide, 
 whose ideas of morals are made up on what is told 
 them, and who have no more idea of personal con- 
 science as you have it than they have of liberty as 
 you define it, or truth as you hold it. 
 
 Would education be safe in the hands of the Roman 
 hierarchy ? Ask the countries which she has educated. 
 Ask the children of Spain and of Italy, of Portugal, 
 of France, of Austria and of Hungary, of Mexico and 
 South America. The great educational interests of 
 this Republic are of more concern than its tariff or all 
 its material productions ; but those interests, so vast 
 and so glorious, can never be intrusted safely to the 
 Roman Catholic Church. (Applause.) 
 
 Can we trust them to govern the family and regu- 
 late marriage ? Ask Chili, ask Ecuador, ask Peru, ask 
 Mexico. Can we intrust to them the care of the 
 family ? May we not well pause to consider a recent 
 tragedy in these United States menacing to every 
 home, which is, I doubt not, fresh in the minds of many 
 of you. When Walker Blaine died, many of you were 
 deeply saddened for the sake of his father, who leaned 
 on this promising son, already illustrious and giving 
 promise of a brilliant future. When the married 
 daughter so quickly followed her brother to the tomb, 
 we all, irrespective of every sentiment but that of ten- 
 der humanity, felt a deep sorrow for the most brilliant 
 man in American citizenship, who alas ! was not re- 
 moved by high station from the bereavements of our 
 common lot. When last night we heard that Emmons 
 
Church and State : their True Relations. 277 
 
 Blaine also was dead, I do not doubt that many a 
 man who criticised the illustrious father a fortnight 
 ago went home with wet eyes when he thought of 
 that father's heart breaking under this almost unbear- 
 able loss. Yet the heaviest blow which has fallen on 
 that illustrious man in all these years has been not 
 the death of his dear ones, nor the disappointments 
 incident to a political career, but that when his 
 youngest son, a mere lad, buoyant and careless as 
 many a lad might be, was led by a Roman Catholic 
 girl some years his senior to a Roman Catholic priest 
 in the city of New York, that priest, consulting the 
 archbishop of New York, who will never forgive James 
 G. Blaine that he is not a Roman Catholic, the arch- 
 bishop directed his priest to pierce the very heart of 
 that family by performing a marriage ceremony for 
 which the youth was in no wise fitted. The priest 
 could have telegraphed the father, and learned in a 
 half -hour of time whether his consent would be ac- 
 corded. This he well knew, but I believe that Arch- 
 bishop Corrigan desired the marriage of young Mr. 
 Blaine in order that he might annoy, insult, abuse, 
 and degrade if possible, one of the greatest men that 
 America ever had and one of its most prominent fami- 
 lies. (Applause.) When I heard it, I wrote his 
 father to that effect, that he might know that among 
 many American hearts there were some who knew 
 the inveterate hatred of these celibate hierarchs to the 
 family which repudiates them, and I said to him that 
 in Mr. Blaine's person and Mr. Blaine's family they 
 struck a blow at every citizen and family of the nation. 
 Could we trust the family to them? God forbid. 
 (Applause.) 
 
278 Church and State: their True Relations. 
 
 3. Could we trust the finances of the country to 
 them? As well trust Captain Kidd and Jack Cade 
 with your money I (Applause.) How have they ad- 
 ministered the finances of countries ? They have 
 made them bankrupt. Laveleye, the great French 
 Catholic, says in his remarkable essay on the Roman 
 Catholic and Protestant nations, that the relation of 
 Romanism to the finances of nations is one of injury 
 and disaster. He says while English three per cents 
 are at ninety-two, French three per cents are at sixty 
 only ; while the funds of the Dutch, the Prussians, 
 and the Swedes are at par (the government funds), 
 those of Austria, Italy, Spain, and Portugal are lower 
 by from thirty to fifty per cent. Wall Street knows 
 if it would speak, the Bank of England knows if it 
 would declare, the great political economists of the 
 world know if they would affirm, that when Rome 
 undertakes to handle their finances she ruins the 
 people and destroys their credit. Could the nation 
 trust Rome with its money? 
 
 How as to public improvements, suppose we left to 
 them the improvement of our surroundings in the 
 state ? They would leave us like Ecuador, where they 
 have not a road for a wagon outside Guayaquil, the 
 capital. Could we trust to them the literature of the 
 country, and to their censorship? Why, Laveleye 
 says you may notice that the literature of Roman 
 Catholic countries is in moral tone far below the lit- 
 erature of Protestant countries. He contrasts the lit- 
 erature of France and of England, shows us how vile 
 is the one and how elevated the other. We cannot 
 trust the literature of the land to them. No ; for 
 
Church and State: their True Melations. 279 
 
 when their theology is so obscene that no man dares 
 to print it in English, what can you expect of their 
 literature ? (Applause.) 
 
 Shall we trust them the government in any sense ? 
 Can we ? I observe that in the latest and best ency- 
 clopaedia of religious knowledge which has been pub- 
 lished, the Schaff-Herzog, it is distinctly stated as 
 to government, that in the papal states where the 
 Pope had his own way entirely, the government was 
 just as bad as it could possibly be. And this is true. 
 
 4. You may ask any history, past or present, what 
 practical beneficence has the Roman Catholic Church 
 worked that she should be supreme in this nation. 
 They lift their hands and vow that they will be 
 supreme here. When they are supreme in this coun- 
 try, there will remain of the national fabric only 
 ashes, not even fire ; for the blood of freemen will 
 have quenched even the coals of the conflagration. 
 (Loud applause.) 
 
 V. But I must hasten, for I see that the hour flies 
 rapidly. The claims of the Church of Rome, on which 
 she bases her right to rule, are false claims. You 
 may observe that I repeat somewhat that I may sum 
 up what I have said hitherto. You know that every 
 lawyer before a jury (and I am reasoning with you as 
 a jury of the American people) must needs repeat 
 sometimes in order to come to just and impressive 
 conclusions. So I reiterate that the claims of Rome to 
 be supreme are false claims. They affirm that they 
 alone represent God on earth in his proper right to 
 rule. I would undertake to support another proposi- 
 tion much more readily than that : I think I could 
 
280 Church and State : their True Relations. 
 
 prove that the Roman Catholic rule is direct from the 
 devil, not from God. (Applause.) I am certain that 
 they can never prove it to be from God. Put it on 
 grounds of history, of reason, or of revelation, on what 
 they have done and produced, and the devilishness 
 of it is clear while the godliness of it is invisible. 
 (Applause.) 
 
 Shall the state be supreme over the church ? they 
 cry ; and Americans hesitate because they have not 
 thought that question over very seriously. But I am 
 ready to answer that when the state is more moral than 
 the church, the state should be supreme over the 
 church. There was a time when the churches of the 
 South in these United States defended human slavery 
 even with their lives. Which was the more moral, the 
 state which abolished slavery, or the churches which 
 sustained it ? Undoubtedly the state. Which, then, 
 by every law of humanity, ought to be supreme ? 
 The state. No one can dispute this proposition and 
 be reasonable. The church, they say, should be 
 supreme in the training of the young. That depends 
 entirely on how it trains them. In Mexico the church 
 had a chance to train the young and left them illiter- 
 ate. Then the state took it up and taught them to 
 read and write. Which had a right to supremacy, the 
 church which had neglected them, or the state which 
 taught them? Ask the intelligence of mankind at 
 large. I think I may say that the state, using the 
 term for the very broadest thought of civil govern- 
 ment, and taking the world at large, has done more 
 for the education of the young than the church, 
 including all churches, save as they have been an 
 
Church and State : their True Relations. 281 
 
 inspiration to the state. Certainly civil government 
 has done much more to educate the people than has 
 the Church of Rome. 
 
 They say that the church has a right, as represent- 
 ing God, to all the world's wealth, declaring that it 
 is all his ; they avow the church to be his heir and 
 assignee which ought to have it all. But you will 
 notice that, in trying to be just and merciful, many 
 nations of the world have taken away the property of 
 the church in order that it might be used in a really 
 benevolent and godlike way ; and in so doing, as they 
 have taken it and distributed it, they certainly have 
 shown more of the spirit of God than the church in 
 seizing and holding it. The Romish principles are 
 wrong, distinctly erroneous and false. I believe in 
 the right of the best to rule ; and if the state is a 
 great deal better than the church, as this American 
 state is infinitely better than the Roman Catholic 
 Church, then I say the state shall rule. (Applause.) 
 
 The church, say they, is divinely ordered and should 
 therefore govern the state; for, to the inferential 
 idea, the state is not thus divinely ordered. But when 
 this divinely ordered church governed the papal states 
 and made everybody in them as wretched as they 
 could be, except the priests and criminals, where 
 were the evidences that it was a divine government ? 
 And this day I believe there are more signs of God's 
 presence in the government of the old State of Mas- 
 sachusetts, more evidences that God is in this civil 
 order, than there ever have been evidences that God 
 was in the government of any state under papal con- 
 trol ; and I tell you, my friends, when you know what 
 
282 Church and State : their True Relations. 
 
 kind of a legislature we have, that is saying a good 
 deal. (Laughter.) 
 
 Thus her assumptions, one after another, can be 
 shown to be entirely fallacious. 
 
 VI. There are harmonies between the church and 
 state which ought to exist, and cause them mutu- 
 ally to help each other and mankind. They are 
 both of divine origin, I may say, speaking of the 
 church at large. The church proper is not the 
 mechanical organization of any denomination, but the 
 obedient followers of the Lord Jesus Christ in every 
 denomination and outside of every denomination. 
 The citizen and the Christian of any church and 
 state unite in the same person, and perform duties 
 incumbent on man toward his fellow, uniting in the 
 same man the loyalty of the citizen with the devotion 
 of the saint. The state is not organized for the ex- 
 press purpose of teaching religion ; the church is : 
 and both practise the law of God in human inter- 
 course, as the one labors for the adjustment of their 
 conditions here, and the other adds to that, labor and 
 effort for their highest welfare hereafter. 
 
 Church and state cannot coexist when the church 
 stands for the few and the state for the many : when 
 the church stands for despotism and the state stands 
 for democracy, it is not possible that the two should 
 agree or accord. When the church grows rich, and 
 the nation grows poor 'as a consequence, the church 
 and state cannot coexist. When the church annuls 
 the laws which the nation makes, they cannot agree 
 together. When the church educates not for citizen- 
 ship in independent action, but only for obedience in 
 
Church and State: their True Relations. 283 
 
 subordinate action, the two are diametrically opposite. 
 When the church claims to declare the dictates of 
 heaven and realizes less virtue, she cannot claim for 
 herself supremacy over the more virtuous state. When 
 the church rulers, as rulers, declare their ascendency 
 over the elected rulers of the state, and demand the 
 allegiance of state rulers to them, the church and 
 state cannot coexist. When the church, any church, 
 undertakes a monopoly of all religion, demands the 
 state moneys for its support, and drives out all other 
 forms of relief, then church and state cannot exist 
 together. Professor Laveleye tells us that the 
 Romish priests all over Europe are resolved that they 
 will never submit to the government of the state, and 
 they are therefore fomenting and preparing, as rapidly 
 as they can, one of the most terrific revolutions in the 
 annals of history. Having resolved that the church 
 shall again be supreme as in mediseval times, so far as 
 possible, they are working with assiduity and in- 
 genuity as great as it is dangerous, to precipitate a 
 conflict in which, while the nations are broken, the 
 church shall rise to supremacy again. He might 
 truly have said that the same is being done by the 
 priests in this nation. The marshalled forces of the 
 papal power have organized for the conquest of this 
 country. They have carried the outworks. They 
 have captured our great cities. As Fort Sumter fell, 
 so the cities of America have fallen into the hands of 
 the papacy. As Fort Sumter falling roused the 
 nation, I would that these cities in their degradation 
 might rouse us again. As yet we have taken it calmly, 
 
284 Church and State: their True Relations. 
 
 idly, indifferently. Rise, freemen, rise, and make 
 the principles of the Constitution of the United States 
 forever supreme over the assumptions of any tyrant 
 on these western shores. (Loud and repeated 
 applause.) 
 
ROME'S AVOWED PURPOSE TO 
 CONTROL THE STATE. 
 
 The subject of my discourse to-day is : The 
 Avowed Purpose of the Papacy to Rule this Nation: 
 Her Success, especially in Great Cities. Very closely 
 allied to this topic is the holy word which you will 
 find in Psalms xii. 2 : " The wicked walk on every 
 side when the vilest men are exalted." 
 
 1. The opening sermon of this series was on Reli- 
 gion and the State, in which I endeavored to show 
 how intimately true religion is connected with our 
 national life, and how antagonistic to that life is false 
 religion. Then proceeding through a brief outline 
 of the history of the colonial period of the Western 
 Continent, I showed how Spanish Romanism had 
 ruined the native peoples and laid the foundation of 
 weak and disorderly states, while English Protestant- 
 ism had laid the broad basis for a magnificent em- 
 pire of liberty. With careful reasoning and abun- 
 dant historical proofs, I then proceeded to point out 
 the identity of the papal method of government with 
 the worst kind of despotism, and to show that the 
 Inquisition, as an agency of that tyranny, was an 
 
 absolute necessity of the papal system of government, 
 
 285 
 
286 Rome's Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 
 
 and had continued to be used by it just as long as it 
 had control. I then found one of the springs of the 
 Inquisition in the papal greed of gold, and disclosed 
 to you, with much pains-taking and care, that the 
 avarice and rapacity of the priesthood had been with- 
 out bound ; and then in our farther survey, in demon- 
 stration of priestly covetousness, we learned that 
 every civilized government where the papacy once 
 had power had been compelled, sooner or later, to 
 confiscate the property which it had unlawfully 
 acquired ; and I suggested that such would be the 
 inevitable outcome in this country, unless by taxation, 
 as a more lenient measure, we in some way stayed 
 the rapacity of the priests, and by enlightenment 
 prevented the people from yielding their substance to 
 the hierarchy. Last Sabbath I undertook briefly to 
 define some relations of church and state, noting 
 some of those principles in our government which 
 can never but be dominant, and others which are 
 contending with those for the supremacy. It is my 
 purpose now, in a perfectly logical sequence, as 
 approaching the culmination of this entire series of 
 truths, to show you that the papacy has fully avowed 
 its purpose to exercise supreme power over the gov- 
 ernment of this country, and that this avowal, so far 
 from being a mere wordy threat, has already been 
 put into very remarkably active operation, and has 
 been carried to a visible success. 
 
 2. No text more than this which I have chosen, 
 could illustrate more completely the great truth 
 which has been repeatedly brought out in all these 
 discourses. " The wicked walk on every side when 
 
Rome's Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 287 
 
 the vilest men are exalted." The lamentable moral 
 condition, or rather immoral degradation, the vicious- 
 ness and wickedness of all papal countries, show 
 how the wicked walk abroad, and by inference sug- 
 gest that the rulers who control them, and who give 
 them free opportunity for the exercise of their lusts 
 and evil desires, must be among the vilest of men. 
 Approached from the other side, namely, from the 
 standpoint of the rulers, the truth is obvious, that 
 where those in positions of high authority are vile, 
 there the people on every side will ultimately 
 become wicked. There is an intimate relation be- 
 tween the vileness of rulers and the wickedness of 
 peoples, and a corresponding influence of the wicked- 
 ness of peoples in encouraging the vileness of rulers. 
 I do not hesitate to say with a frankness which is 
 re-enforced by myriad facts, that the exceeding moral 
 wickedness of the cities of all papal countries is a 
 proof of the vileness of their rulers ; and that the 
 hierarchy of Rome, as rulers of the people, have 
 never deserved the commendation which belongs to a 
 high morality, either social, financial, or political. 
 Having stated this with such clearness that I do not 
 think you can mistake my meaning, I call upon you 
 now at the opening of this discourse to remember so 
 far as you can all that they have done, all the depths 
 to which they have degraded the peoples whom they 
 have governed, as a perfect vindication of a character- 
 ization which would seem to be too severe, unless you 
 had hitherto been made perfectly aware of the facts 
 which support it. 
 
 I desire at this time to show that their prin- 
 
288 Rome's Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 
 
 ciples, which have been applied elsewhere, are 
 avowedly in the direction of the control of this 
 Republic ; that their purposes are not disguised, but 
 are announced; that the material which tliey have 
 at hand in this country with which to accomplish 
 their purposes is altogether in accord with the text, 
 and compatible with their designs and purpose, and 
 then to show you finally, that they have already 
 made good their avowals and their boasts, to an ex- 
 tent which might well alarm any but the proudest, 
 the most conceited, the most indifferent, and the 
 most ignorant of American citizens. 
 
 I. The principle of the full control of the state by 
 the Pope is freely declared by the Roman Catholics. 
 1. The great Von DoUinger, at the time when the 
 infallibility decree was pending, said, '' If the in- 
 fallibility of the popes be raised to a principle of 
 faith, another doctrine that has been maintained by 
 the popes since Gregory VII. will also receive the 
 force of a dogma ; namely, the doctrine of the sub- 
 mission of monarchs and kingdoms to the dominion 
 of the Holy See, — a dominion which extends over 
 secular and political matters. Every Catholic 
 Christian is thus bound to believe, as a doctrine 
 revealed of God, and which must be taught in every 
 catechism, that the popes possess an absolute power 
 over all princes and authorities ; over all states and 
 commonwealths ; and that by their sovereign power 
 they can interfere at discretion in all state affairs, 
 depose princes, annul laws, and regulate war and 
 peace. Pope Boniface VIII. 's Bull, ' Unam Sanc- 
 tam,' is a solemn dogmatic decision, addressed to 
 
Homes Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 289 
 
 the whole church, and declares a belief in all this to 
 be a condition of everlasting salvation. This doc- 
 trine was confirmed by Leo X. at the Synod of the 
 Lateran, and a whole series of papal decrees is 
 founded upon it." 
 
 Yon Dollinger, as most of you know who have 
 heard this series of discourses, was the most eminent 
 scholar and historian in the Roman Catholic Church 
 at the time when he wrote these words. 2. The 
 Romanists affirm the supremacy of the Pope as 
 strongly as the popes themselves have proclaimed it. 
 They declare, without any hesitation, the duty of the 
 people to resist the laws of the nation if those laws 
 are contrary to those of the church. Pope Leo XIII. 
 says, " Furthermore, in politics, which are insepar- 
 ably bound up with the laws of morality and reli- 
 gious duties, men ought always and in the first place 
 to serve, as far as possible, the interests of Catholi- 
 cism." Do you get the full force of this claim? "As 
 soon as they" (that is the interests of Catholicism) 
 "are seen to be in danger, all differences should 
 cease between Catholics. The (papal) church can- 
 not grant its patronage or favor to men whom it 
 knows to be hostile to it; who openly refuse to 
 respect its rights ; who seek to break the alliance 
 established by the nature of things between religious 
 (papal) interests and the interests of the civil order. 
 On the contrary, its duty is to favor those, who, hav- 
 ing sound ideas as to the relations between church 
 and state, wish to make them both harmonize. These 
 principles contain the rule according to which every 
 Catholic ought to model his public life. It must be 
 
290 Homes Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 
 
 considered a duty by Christians (Roman Catholic) 
 to be ruled and guided by the authority and leader- 
 ship of the bishops, and especially of the Apostolic 
 See. Man's duties, what he ought to believe and 
 what he ought to do, are by divine right laid down 
 by the church and in the church by the Supreme 
 Pontiff. 
 
 " If the laws of the state are in open contradiction 
 with the divine law" (that is with the law of the 
 church), "if they command anything prejudicial to 
 the church, or are hostile to the duties imposed by 
 religion, or violate in the person of the Supreme 
 Pontiff the authority of Jesus Christ, then, indeed, 
 it is a duty to resist them and a crime to obey them." 
 
 3. What are some of the laws of the church which 
 the Pope declares it is a duty to enforce in the face 
 of all states ? I will read from the canon law of the 
 Roman Catholic Church, as taught by Dr. G. F. Von 
 Schulte, professor of Canonical Law at Prague, 
 which contains the following declarations : — 
 
 " IV. The Pope has the right to give countries 
 and nations which are non-Catholic to Catholic 
 regents, who can reduce them to slavery." 
 
 " Y. The Pope can make slaves of those Christian 
 subjects whose prince or ruling power is interdicted 
 by the Pope." 
 
 " VII. The Church has the right to practise the 
 unconditional censure of books." 
 
 " VIII. The Pope has the right to annul state laws, 
 treaties, constitutions, etc. ; to absolve from obedi- 
 ence thereto, as soon as they seem detrimental to 
 the rights of the church or those of the clergy." / 
 am reading the law of the Roman Catholic Church. 
 
Rome's Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 291 
 
 " IX. The Pope possesses the right of admonishing, 
 and if needs be of punishing, the temporal rulers, 
 emperors, and kings, as well as of drawing before the 
 spiritual forum any case in which a mortal sin occurs. 
 
 "X. Without the consent of the Pope no tax or 
 rate of any kind can be levied upon a clergyman, or 
 upon any church whatsoever." Two Sunday^s ago 
 I was telling about the desirability of taxing church 
 property. Did you know that you cannot tax the 
 church property in this country without the consent 
 of the Pope ? (Laughter.) 
 
 "XI. The Pope has the right to absolve from 
 oaths, and obedience to the persons and the laws of 
 the princes whom he excommunicates." 
 
 " XIII. The Pope can release from every obliga- 
 tion, oath, vow, either before or after being made." 
 
 " XIV. The execution of papal commands for the 
 persecution of heretics causes remission of sins." 
 
 " XV. He who kills one that is excommunicated is 
 no murderer in a legal sense." 
 
 Cardinal Manning, in Donahoe^s Magazine of De- 
 cember, 1888, says, " It is an obligation to obey the 
 civil ruler ; but if the civil ruler shall make a law 
 hostile to (papal) faith we must then be Catholics 
 first and citizens afterwards." In volume III. of 
 Ecclesiastical Sermons, page 83, this same cardinal 
 asks, " Why should the Holy Father touch any mat- 
 ter in politics at all? For this plain reason, be- 
 cause politics are a part of morals. Politics are 
 morals on the widest scale." Moreover, Cardinal 
 Manning gives his indorsement to a book prepared 
 for the use of the Roman Catholic colleges and 
 
292 Rome's Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 
 
 schools, by the Rev. F. X. Schouppe, of the Society 
 of the Jesuits, which says (p. 278), "The civil laws 
 are binding on the conscience only so long as they 
 are comformable to the rights of the Catholic 
 Church." And further, Vicar-General Preston, in a 
 sermon preached in New York, January 1, 1888, made 
 this announcement : " Every word Leo speaks from 
 his high chair is the voice of the Holy Ghost, and 
 must be obeyed. To every Catholic heart comes no 
 thought but obedience. It is said that politics is not 
 tvithin the province of the Church, and that the 
 Church has only jurisdiction in matters of faith. 
 You say, ' I will receive my faith from the Pontiff, 
 but I will not receive my politics from him.' This 
 assertion is disloyal and untruthful. You must not 
 think as you choose : you must think as Catholics. 
 The man who says, ' I will take my faith from Peter, 
 but I will not take my politics from Peter,' is not a 
 true Catholic. The Church teaches that the Su- 
 preme Pontiff must be obeyed, because he is the 
 vicar of the Lord : Christ speaks through him." 
 
 The same doctrine was uttered by priest Bodfish, 
 at a hearing in the State House of Massachusetts, 
 held between the 20th of March and the 25th of 
 April, 1889. In answer to a question by Governor 
 Long, who said, " You are bound to receive, believe, 
 and disseminate the word of the Pope ? " he said, 
 " Yes sir," having fully explained it before in terms 
 like the above. Moreover, in the encyclical letter of 
 November 7, 1885, Leo XIII. thus speaks : " Every 
 Catholic should rigidly adhere to the teachings of 
 the Roman Pontiff, especially in the matter of mod- 
 
Rome's Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 293 
 
 em liberty, which, already under the semblance of 
 honesty of purpose, leads to destruction. We exhort 
 all Catholics to devote careful attention to public 
 matters, and take part in all municipal affairs and 
 elections, and all public services, meetings, and 
 gatherings." Then they ought to be here, in this 
 hall. (Laughter.) "All Catholics must make 
 themselves felt as active elements in daily political 
 life in countries where they live. All Catholics 
 should exert their power to cause the constitutions 
 of states to be modelled on the principles of the 
 (Roman Catholic) Church." Perhaps I have read 
 enough of that to make it perfectly clear to you 
 that their principles are distinctly and unequivocally 
 avowed. 
 
 4. Now I ask you, in the name of common sense, 
 why do not the American people believe statements 
 like these, when we tell them that therein are em- 
 bodied the principles and purposes of the papacy ; 
 and why do some of you permit my word to be called 
 in question without contradiction, when I have never 
 assumed to state more than has been avowed by 
 the canonical law, the councils and the popes ? (Ap- 
 plause.) I speak forth the words of truth and sober- 
 ness, and that man is a coward or a knave who 
 calls names instead of furnishing most ample con- 
 tradiction by citation and argument, if such there be. 
 (Applause.) Paul said, '^ I am not mad," but if he 
 had lived now I do not know but he would have got 
 mad just because he used his reason. (Applause.) 
 
 5. Further than this, let me read ypu where Leo 
 XIII. in his encyclical of January 10, 1890, declares 
 
294 Rome's Avowed Purpose to Control the State, 
 
 that " politics are inseparably bound up with the 
 laws of morality and religious duties." This declara- 
 tion is ex cathedra^ and therefore infallible the end 
 of controversy to all good Roman Catholics. But 
 the revised Statutes of the United States declare 
 (a little American law may be put in contrast with 
 papal demands) : " The alien seeking citizenship 
 must make oath to renounce forever all allegiance 
 and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or 
 sovereignty, in particular that to which he has been 
 subject." The Roman Catholic profession of faith, 
 having the sanction of the Council which met at 
 Baltimore in 1884, contains the following oath of al- 
 legiance to the Pope : '' And I pledge and swear 
 true obedience to the Roman Pontiff, vicar of Jesus 
 Christ, and successor of the blessed Peter, prince of 
 the Apostles." Behold the law of the Republic set 
 at naught by the Romish Council ! The Pope claims 
 absolute authority over states, legislatures, laws, and 
 politics. The Roman Catholic swears allegiance to 
 the Pope in all these respects. Hold that steadily in 
 your mind. 
 
 Moreover, the supremacy of the Pope is not con- 
 fined to politics ; but, to show you the breadth of his 
 claims, allow me to give one further quotation from 
 his infallible statements. " Familiar Explanation of 
 Catholic Doctrine," by Rev. M. Miiller, published by 
 Benziger Bros, in 1888, is a Roman catechism, used 
 in the parochial schools, bearing the imprimatur of 
 Cardinal Gibbons, and strongly commended by many 
 Roman prelates. The following extracts are from 
 No. IV. of the series. "The Pope could not dis- 
 
Homes Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 295 
 
 charge his office as the teacher of all nations unless 
 he were able with infallible certainty to proscribe and 
 condemn doctrines, logical^ scientific^ physical^ meta- 
 physical^ or political of any kind, which are at vari- 
 ance with the Word of God " (which does not mean 
 the Bible, but means the word of the Pope), "and im- 
 peril the integrity and purity of the faith" (that is 
 the papal faith), " or the salvation of souls" (which 
 word salvation of souls, of course, is used in their 
 very peculiar sense, as brought about by priests). 
 
 6. These avowals of the papacy have been put in 
 practice in Canada to a degree to which they have 
 not as yet been practically applied here. The inter- 
 ference of priest and Jesuit in Canadian politics has 
 come to be much more open than it is in American 
 politics as yet, though we are rapidly nearing their 
 standard and action. On September 22, 1875, the 
 seven bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in Can- 
 ada issued a pastoral letter on the eve of a pending 
 election, in which they gave certain advice, entirely 
 comformable to all which I have read and cited above, 
 to all their priests and to all their people throughout 
 the Dominion of Canada. These bishops claim abso- 
 lute political control. They claim that the priests 
 should direct their parishioners how to vote. They 
 declare that the priests should name the candidate, 
 and should direct the people whom to support and 
 whom to reject ; and the sole basis of their favor or 
 hostility was to be the friendliness or the* hostility 
 of these various candidates to the papal church. 
 Bishop Rogers, of Chatham, one of them, claimed the 
 absolute right of the church, through its pastors, to 
 
296 Rome's Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 
 
 direct all politics ; and declared that there was no pos- 
 sible independence in the matter, in which he was 
 fully supported by the united pastoral. The bishop's 
 letter was approved at Rome. All these facts and 
 statements, cited in detail, I hold in my hand, with 
 date and place and name extendedly drawn out. 
 The Roman authorities commended the bishops. 
 What happened as a result? The electors in Canada 
 were threatened with excommunication if they 
 should vote differently from what the priests di- 
 rected; and when these matters were brought before 
 the courts after the election, it was there, under oath, 
 made clear that in some cases the priest had told his 
 people that he and not the elector was responsible 
 for the vote cast : they must vote as he dictated. 
 It was further sworn to by many electors that they 
 voted under the threat of excommunication, and be- 
 lieved that they would be damned in hell if they 
 voted differently from what the priests had com- 
 manded them. Mgr. Gaume, of Canada, who issued a 
 catechism concerning liberalism, by which is meant 
 the doctrine in Canada which rejects the excessive 
 claims of the papacy, affirms all the above principles 
 as I have read them, and the archbishop of Canada 
 had the impudence to recently write to a British 
 peer telling him that the church held the balance of 
 power in Canada, and that it would direct that power 
 according to its preferences : let the home govern- 
 ment take notice. 
 
 7. The above principles are announced with entire 
 unreserve all over the world as the purpose of the 
 papacy. Leo XIIL, as I have already read in your 
 
Rome's Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 297 
 
 hearing, in 1885 commands the people that they g-ive 
 especial attention to politics. " All Catholics must 
 make themselves felt as active elements in daily 
 political life in countries where they live. If Catho- 
 lics are idle, the reins of power will easily be gained 
 by persons whose opinions can surely afford little 
 prospect of welfare. Hence, Catholics have just 
 reason to enter into political life : having in mind the 
 purpose in introducing the wholesome life-blood of 
 Catholic wisdom and virtue into the whole system of 
 the state. All Catholics who are worthy of the name 
 must work to the end, that every state be made conform- 
 able to the Christian model we have described." That 
 prominent Catholic authority, Dr. Brownson, in his 
 Review for July, 1864, declared : " Undoubtedly it is 
 the intention of the Pope to possess this country. In 
 this intention he is aided by the Jesuits and all the 
 Catholic prelates and priests." Father Hecker in his 
 last work, published in 1887, says : "The Catholics 
 will outnumber, before the close of this century, all 
 other believers in Christianity put together in the 
 republic." Then he warns us to look out for what 
 they will do. In 1853 the editor of the Freeman's 
 Journal, D'Arcy Magee, undertook to get the priests 
 of this country to do what they could to take the 
 poor Irish Roman Catholics out of great cities, and to 
 spread them over the fertile lands of the West ; but, as 
 one of the priests of that time present in the Buffalo 
 Convention tells us, they all opposed this idea, saying 
 their policy w^as not to scatter but to bring together 
 their forces in the great cities, and at strategic points 
 to make the assault which would issue in the downfall 
 
298 Home's Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 
 
 of American liberty. That convention was held n early- 
 forty years ago, and they have been as good as their 
 word since, as you and I will see before my address 
 closes. 
 
 8. Manifestly in all this, there is great peril to the 
 nation. May I quote a word from a most eminent liv- 
 ing English historian, namely, James Anthony Froude, 
 who, discoursing on the subject "What a Catholic 
 Majority could do in America," says, " Every true Cath- 
 olic is bound to think and act as his priest tells him, 
 and a Republic of true Catholics becomes a theocracy 
 administered by the clergy. It is only as long as 
 they are a small minority that they can be loyal subjects 
 under such a constitution as the American. As their 
 numbers grow, they will assert their principles more and 
 more. Give them the power, and the Constitution 
 will be gone. A Catholic majority, under spiritual 
 direction, will forbid liberty of worship, and will try 
 to forbid liberty of conscience. It will control edu- 
 cation : it will put the press under surveillance : it 
 will punish opposition with excommunication, and 
 excommunication will be attended with civil disabili- 
 ties." Surely the calm and learned opinion of a great 
 historian is deserving of consideration, especially 
 when he speaks in harmony with all that we know 
 from a thousand years of history. 
 
 II. But some of you listening have been saying, 
 " What if these are their principles ? They can never 
 apply or enforce them." Have you considered what 
 material they have for enforcing them ? Have you 
 considered the army which is at their back in their 
 attempt to make these ideas practical ? If not, bear with 
 
Homes Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 299 
 
 me while I marshal that army before you. You know 
 the character of the following of the Roman Catholic 
 priests in this city. You know how the priests 
 and their people follow the bishop. You know how 
 those bishops and their dioceses follow the cardinals, 
 and you know that the cardinals are the creatures of 
 the Pope. These are the officers and the privates of 
 their army of aggression. Let us look at the agents 
 by whom they hope to win their victories and accom- 
 plish their purposes. 
 
 At the head of these are the Pope, the cardinals, 
 the archbishops, the bishops, and the priests. The 
 rank and file who obey them are a vast host. 
 
 1. First of all they rely in this countrj^ for the 
 accomplishment of their purposes to subordinate the 
 state on foreigners : on not merely those who were 
 born in foreign countries, but those who are essentially 
 foreign in every respect. The present transplanting 
 of the French Romanist from the Province of Quebec 
 into New England and the United States is one of 
 the marvellous movements of the last few years. One 
 of the most distinguished doctors of divinity in New 
 England has recently written an article in one of our 
 leading magazines, in which he distinctly says that 
 the coming of these hosts of Canadians is believed to 
 be a part of the direct purpose of the priests to subvert 
 civil government in this country, and he is not an 
 alarmist either. This opinion is entertained by intel- 
 ligent Canadian Protestants and French Protestants 
 in the United States. There are said to be four 
 hundred thousand French Canadians in New England, 
 and a million and a quarter in the United States. 
 
300 Rome's Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 
 
 Almost all of them are papists. Nearly every one of 
 them is a follower of the priests. It is not easy to 
 tell accurately how many there are, but there is no 
 difficulty in determining where they stand in this 
 great conflict. The Ninety-third Annual Report of 
 the Home Missionary Society of the State of Massa- 
 chusetts reveals the following among other facts 
 about French Canadians in the State of Massachusetts. 
 Here is a table taken from the French Guide of the 
 United States, which shows us that in this, our own 
 Worcester County, there are at least six towns in 
 which the French Canadians number from fifty to 
 sixty-one per cent of the entire population. " Take 
 a group of nine towns in Worcester County, — Doug- 
 las, Webster, Spencer, Southbridge, Sutton, Brookfield, 
 West Boylston, North Brookfield, and Millbury, — 
 and, out of a total population of 41,395, there are 20,642 
 French Canadians, or one-half. Add Worcester and 
 Fitchburg, with a joint population of 106,692, and 
 3^ou have added 19,819 French Canadians, so that 
 your proportion is still more than one-quarter. It is 
 twenty-seven per cent. It is believed, upon reliable 
 information, that these figures give an understatement 
 of the number of French Canadians. These figures 
 give some sense of the proportions of the French 
 Canadian problem — a problem that will grow on our 
 hands as the years go on. And it does not concern 
 Massachusetts alone of the New England States ; for 
 while by these figures, which are probably too small, 
 we have 7 1-2 per cent French Canadians, Maine has 8 
 per cent. New Hampshire 12 per cent, Vermont 9 1-2 
 per cent, Connecticut 3 7-10 per cent, and Khode Island 
 
Rome's Avowed Purpose to Control the State, 301 
 
 10 4-5 per cent. As a whole, tlie percentage in New 
 England is 7 4-5 per cent. 
 
 " These are relied upon as a part of the foreign 
 army of the Pope in the United States. But suppose 
 you turn to the great cities, and observe the national- 
 ity of the people who are in them controlled politi- 
 cally by the priests and their servants. In the city 
 of New York, Mayor Hewitt declares, in a message 
 which he himself prepared, that according to the 
 census of 1880, 39 1-2 per cent of the people were 
 foreign born, and an additional 40 1-2 per cent were 
 born of foreign parentage ; in the city of New York, 
 therefore, he says more than 80 per cent of the people 
 are foreigners. There are thirty-seven nationalities 
 speaking eighty different dialects." All these are 
 voting according to their numbers. See the enor- 
 mous power of foreigners in New York, many of whom, 
 I admit, are good and reliable American citizens, but 
 many of whom are not; and a large proportion are 
 the blind slaves of the papal purposes. 
 
 2. Not only do the priests confidently rely upon the 
 foreigners, but they as confidently rely on the illiter- 
 ate. Three-fourths of the French Canadians cannot 
 read and write. They are therefore all the more 
 reliable for priestly purposes. What are the facts 
 about illiteracy as fostered and exploited by the 
 priests of Rome ? There are numerous Roman 
 Catholic countries which have been such for centuries 
 that are more illiterate than China. In China fifty per 
 cent are illiterate, but in Hungary fifty-one per cent, in 
 Chili seventy-three, in Poland ninety-one, in Mexico 
 ninety-three, in Spain eighty, in Venezuela ninety, in 
 
302 Homers Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 
 
 Brazil eighty-four, in Portugal eighty-two, — so many 
 out of a hundred people cannot read and write. 
 Rome has to rely upon the people who cannot read 
 and write for her power. (Applause.) This is why 
 she hates our common schools. (Great Applause.) 
 
 3. But does Rome rely on the illiterate, she also re^ 
 lies upon the criminals. I say this without hesitation, 
 because it is abundantly capable of proof. I am only 
 afraid that I shall give you so much proof as to weary 
 you. As illustrative of the walking of the wicked on 
 every side when the priests are exalted : " A recent 
 number of M Solfeo, an Italian journal of prominence, 
 furnishes the following statistics: In 1870, that is 
 before Rome was the capital of the kingdom of Italy, 
 there were in the city (for a population of 205,000 
 inhabitants) 2,469 secular clergy, among cardinals, 
 bishops, prelates, and cures; 2,766 monks and 2,117 
 nuns ; in all, 7,322 religious of both sexes. The 
 number of births reached in the same year to 4,378, 
 of which 1,215, were legitimate, and 3,163 illegiti- 
 mate ; the illegitimates, therefore, being in the pro- 
 portion of 75.25 per 100 of the total of births. Com- 
 paring Rome with other capitals of Europe, it results 
 that, for every 100 legitimate births, there are illegiti- 
 mate : in London, 4 ; in Paris, 48 ; in Brussels, 9 ; in 
 Rome, 143. Nor in regard to capital crime did the 
 Pontifical states occupy a favorable position before 
 they were annexed to Italy by King Victor Emanuel. 
 The statistics corresponding to the latest years of the 
 Pontifical government show that there was committed 
 one murder in England for every 187,000 inhabitants; 
 in Holland, one for every 168,000; in Russia, one for 
 
Rome's Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 303 
 
 every 100,000 ; in Austria, one for every 4,113 ; in 
 Naples, one for every 2,750 ; and in the estates of the 
 Pope, one for every 750." Compare that with the 
 187,000 of England. " A recent English paper says 
 that the Roman Catholics in Scotland are less than 
 one-twelth of the population, yet this one-twelth fur- 
 nishes one-third of the criminals. In England and 
 Wales, the Roman Catholics are one-twentieth of the 
 population ; but the Roman Catholic prisoners are one- 
 fourth of all prisoners." This is merely introductory 
 to an array of figures which I have here, gathered and 
 indorsed by so eminent an authority as the late Dr. 
 Littledale of the Anglican Church. (See " Little- 
 dale's Plain Reasons, Against joining the Church of 
 Rome," pp. 203, 4, 5, as follows :) 
 
 " On December 31, 1877, there were 4,289 criminal 
 Protestant children detained in English reformatories, 
 and 1,346 Roman Catholic ones, more than 24 per 
 cent; in Clerkenwell prison, during 1877-8, there 
 were 1,395 Roman Catholics out of 8,930, more than 
 16 per cent ; in Wandsworth, 1,006 Roman Catholics 
 out of 6,472, nearly 16 per cent ; in Coldbath Fields 
 during 1877, 23 1-4 per cent. The ratio in Manches- 
 ter for 1877-8-9 has been 43 per cent ; in one of the 
 Liverpool jails 50 per cent and upwards ; and in the 
 other, for 1871-79, 67 per cent of Roman Catholic 
 prisoners, more than double all others together, the 
 ratio of Roman Catholics in Liverpool, where they are 
 denser than anywhere else in England, being 27.1 per 
 cent in 1881. In Scotland, Roman Catholics are about 
 8 1-2 per cent of the population, chiefly collected 
 in Dundee and Glasgow. Their ratio of criminals in 
 
304 Rome's Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 
 
 the jail of Dundee was 38 per cent; and in Glasgow 
 44 1-3 per cent, in 1879. In Ireland, where Roman 
 Catholics are 76.6 per cent of the population, their 
 share of the crime in 1881-2 was 33,424 convicts out 
 of a total of 38,968, or 86 per cent, which included, 
 moreover, nearly all the serious offences, as the 
 remaining 14 per cent consisted almost exclusively 
 of petty offenders. In the Dominion of Canada 
 Roman Catholics are much less than half the total 
 population, the census of 1881 returning 1,791,982 of 
 them out of 4,324,810, say 44 per cent ; but in 1880 
 they had 10,286 criminals, against 9,304 of all other 
 denominations, or 52 per cent of the total. The fig- 
 ures are more remarkable in the province of Ontario, 
 where there were in 1881 almost equal numbers of 
 Roman Catholics and Anglicans --320,839 of the 
 former and 366,539 of the latter. But the Roman 
 Catholic criminals in 1880 were 4,152, as against 
 1,944 Anglicans ; much more than double the nat- 
 ural ratio. In Prussia, where the Roman Catholics 
 are one-third (33.3 per cent) of the whole popula- 
 tion, and not so relatively poor as in England, they 
 produced, in 1870, 52.6 per cent of the criminals 
 brought to trial; in 1871, 56.7 per cent; in 1872, 
 56.3 per cent; in 1873, 58.2 per cent; in 1874, 57 
 per cent ; in 1875, 63.5 per cent ; in 1876, 67.5 per 
 cent; in 1877, 60.7 per cent ; in 1878, 63.7 per cent. 
 What is more, a heavier proportion holds for the 
 graver crimes. In 1878 the Roman Catholic murder- 
 ers charged were 18.7 per cent more than the Prot- 
 estant ones ; homicides were 53.5 per cent ; assaults, 
 with fatal results, 38.6 per cent ; poisoning, 100 per 
 
Rome's Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 305 
 
 cent ; serious and repeated cases of theft, 30 per cent ; 
 robbery and extortion, 36 per cent ; common larceny, 
 49.8 per cent ; in excess of the Protestant criminals. 
 In The Netherlands, where the Roman Catholic ele- 
 ment is over one-third of the population, there were 
 (omitting all petty offenders), in 1877, 4.85 criminals 
 in every thousand Protestants, but 5.34 in every 
 thousand Roman Catholics ; in 1878 the figures 
 were : Protestants, 4.87, Roman Catholics, 5.27 ; in 
 
 1879, Protestants, 4.78, Roman Catholics, 5.39; in 
 
 1880, Protestants, 4.73, Roman Catholics, 5.29." In 
 Australia the following witness is borne by Sir 
 Archibald Michie, Q.C., Agent-General for Victoria, 
 and formerly Attorney-General there, in his " Read- 
 ings in Melbourne," p. 194 (London, 1879) : "In 
 nothing are Mr. Hayter's statistics more interesting 
 than in the tables showing the relative number of 
 arrests and convictions among the different religious 
 sects. The Roman Catholics are on a most unenvi- 
 able eminence in this respect. ' In proportion to 
 their numbers in the community,' writes Mr. Hayter, 
 'the Roman Catholics supplied more than twice as 
 many arrested persons as the Protestants, and more 
 than three times as many as the Jews and the 
 Pagans. In view of a similar proportion, fewer Prot- 
 estants were committed for trial than were members 
 of any other of the sects distinguished. The total 
 number of criminals executed from 1861 to 1876 was 
 forty-one . . . Twelve of these forty-one were of the 
 Church of England, twenty-one were Roman Catho- 
 lics, two Presbyterians, three Wesleyans, and three 
 Pagans. Thirty-six were cases of murder, and the 
 
306 Homers Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 
 
 residue capital cases of other kinds.' Now, bearing 
 in mind that the proportion of the Catholic popula- 
 tion to the Protestant was for many years less than a 
 fourth, the above statement is a very startling one. 
 No census has been taken since 1871 ; but the esti- 
 mated number of all the Protestants in the year 1876 
 was 610,469, and of the Roman Catholics, 198,067. 
 The Roman Catholics thus, even now, number only 
 between a third and a fourth of the population. In 
 the United States, the comparative results are alleged 
 to be of the same character, but the system of prison 
 returns does not admit of tabulating them." 
 
 These are most striking and threatening figures ; 
 they show that everywhere Romanism is prolific of 
 crime, that where the papacy rules conscience is 
 debauched, morality degraded, and criminality en- 
 couraged by the policy of the Roman Catholic 
 Church. And when, therefore, I say that Rome 
 relies in this great warfare against our liberties on 
 criminals whom she has made such, I state facts 
 without passion which are borne out by the statistics 
 of the world. 
 
 4. Take a view in our own State of Massachusetts, 
 for we want to know the facts near home as well as 
 far away. Of 665 prisoners in the State Prison of 
 Massachusetts in 1885, 312 were Irish. I see no 
 reason in the world why the Irish people should be 
 criminal, excepting that they are debauched by pop- 
 ery. The Irishmen of the north of Ireland, of Ulster, 
 of the cities of Belfast and Londonderry, being 
 largely Protestants, are not prolific in criminals. 
 When I speak of the Irish Roman Catholic crimi- 
 
Rome's Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 307 
 
 nals of Massachusetts and read these figures, God 
 knows I have no race prejudice. The Irish people 
 are as dear to me as any people in the world, but 
 when I see them turned into criminals by a false 
 system of religion, I may state the facts and resent 
 the causes. (Applause.) 
 
 In Massachusetts in 1885, of 3,426 in prisons, 1,377 
 had one or both parents born in Ireland ; of 3,246 in 
 prisons, only 257 had both their parents born in Mass- 
 achusetts ; of 8,394 paupers, 5,320 had Irish parents ; 
 of 122,263 illiterate, 13,898 were native born, while 
 108,365 were foreign born. Nineteen per cent of the 
 people in Massachusetts in 1885 who could not read 
 and write were Canadian, fifty-five per cent were 
 Irish, and only two and eight one-hundreths of the 
 illiterates of Massachusetts were born of parents 
 who were natives of this State. Do I not say well, 
 when I survey even our own State, that the Roman 
 Catholic Church is depending on the least compe- 
 tent and least moral elements of society to govern 
 the state, which she has avowed her purpose to rule, 
 and that she makes and marshals law-breakers to 
 annul our laws? 
 
 5. But they are also relying on something else ; 
 on what? They are relying on military societies, 
 which they are forming all over this country, under 
 the sanction of the priests. 
 
 Do you want to know the names of some of them, 
 military and semi-military ? The Ancient Order of 
 Hibernians, Irish American Society, Knights of St. 
 Patrick, St. Paul's Cadets, Apostles of Liberty, 
 Knights of the Red Branch, Knights of St. Peter, 
 
308 Rome's Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 
 
 Benevolent Sons of the Emerald Isle, Knights of 
 Columbkill, the Clan-na-Gael, which has a horrible 
 history in this country ; and of late they are relying 
 to some extent on the Knights of Labor, in so far 
 as they have given their allegiance to Cardinal Gib- 
 bons and the Pope. In our own city there are 
 military companies composed exclusively of Irish 
 Roman Catholics and armed with Winchester rifles. 
 I want to ask you if our militia are armed with Win- 
 chester rifles ; and if they are not I want to know who 
 gave these Winchester rifles, the best arms in the 
 military service, to the Irish Roman Catholics? 
 May I ask who would give Winchester rifles to 
 Methodists and Congregationalists, if they should 
 arm for the public defence ? If I were, as I am not, 
 a member of the Order of United American Mechan- 
 ics, I would buy guns and learn how to use them 
 (Loud aj^plause), not because I desire to precipitate 
 conflict, but for the precisely opposite reason, be- 
 cause I desire to make conflict impossible by furnish- 
 ing a national police who are not in subordination to 
 the Pope of Rome. (Applause.) When I observe 
 these military and semi-military companies ; when I 
 know that a very large proportion of the police of 
 great cities are of the same nationality, in the same 
 ecclesiastical relation, and all dominated by the 
 priests, I see in it all a fixed plan to precipitate a 
 catastrophe for American liberty. (Applause.) 
 
 But, you say, what does all this amount to? I 
 answer, it amounts to this, that Gregory XVI. said 
 there was no place in the world where he was pope 
 so much as he was in America. Pius IX. uttered 
 
Homers Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 309 
 
 the same sentiment. Leo XIII. confidently relies 
 upon the same supposition. It reminds me, friends, 
 that in every other land on the globe the Roman 
 Catholic hierarchy is looked upon with suspicion, and 
 watched as an enemy, save in the United States, 
 where it is blind-folding the people and arming the 
 assassins of liberty. (Sensation and cheers.) Well, 
 you say, all this in way of preparation. 
 
 III. What have they accomplished ? That is what I 
 will now tell you. We know something of what they 
 have done in other lands. We know how they obstruct 
 government in other countries, and furnish untold 
 trouble for those who are endeavoring to bring in 
 light, liberty, and righteous law. What have they 
 done ? " When in May, 1851, New Grenada pro- 
 claimed religious toleration, and subjected the clergy 
 to the secular courts, Pius IX., in the allocution 
 ' Acerbissimum,' of September 27, 1852, pronounced 
 the laws to be null and void, and threatened heavy 
 ecclesiastical penalties on all who should dare to en- 
 force them. . . . When, in 1855, Mexico adopted a 
 constitution embodying the same principles, Pius, in 
 the allocution 'Nunquam fore,' December 15,1856, 
 annulled the Constitution and forbade obedience to it. 
 When, about the same time, Spain made an effort in 
 the same direction, the allocution ' Nemo vestrum,' 
 of July 24, 1855, similarly abrogated the obnoxious 
 provisions. Even a powerful empire like that of Aus- 
 tria fared no better when, in December, 1867, it decreed 
 liberty of conscience and of the press, and in May, 
 1868, adopted a law of civil marriage ; for the allocution 
 ' Nunquam certe,' of June 22, 1868, denounced all 
 
310 Rome's Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 
 
 these as atrocious laws, and declared them to be void 
 and of no effect." All this, be it remembered, tran- 
 spired in modern times, within the memory of young 
 men here present. I need not advert to Canada, but 
 pass directly to our own country. What have they 
 done ? 
 
 1. They have already secured control of all the 
 strategic points in America. Notice in New York 
 city where everything is subordinate to the papacy, 
 politically, morally, and financially. The mayor, 
 Hugh J. Grant, publicly knelt to Corrigan, the arch- 
 bishop, before a great audience, in a public hall, in 
 March of 1892, and kissed the prelate's hand, in token 
 of submission. This Mayor Grant, says the New 
 York Times^ cannot compose and write a respectable 
 English letter to save his life. A list of the munici- 
 pal officers of the city of New York shows to what an 
 extent they have gained control. From the New 
 York Mail and Express^ November 7, 1888, I read : 
 "The Roman Catholics have taken the city. Their 
 hand was in the sale of the Coogan party to Hugh J. 
 Grant. The}^ already have every member of the 
 Board of Tax Commissioners. They have for years 
 had and still have the control of the Board of 
 Aldermen. They have the Mayor, the Sheriff, the 
 Comptroller, the Counsel to the Corporation, the 
 whole Board of Tax Assessors, the Commissioner of 
 Public Works, the Superintendent of the Street 
 Cleaning Department " (I should think so from the 
 looks of the streets) (Laughter), " the Clerk to the 
 Board of Aldermen, the Superintendent of the Bureau 
 of Elections, several of the Justices of the Supreme, 
 
Rome's Avowed Purpose to Control tJie State. 311 
 
 Superior, and Common Pleas Courts, the control of 
 the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, the ma- 
 jority in many of the ward boards of School Trus- 
 tees, a large portion of the Board of Education, the 
 control of the Department of Charities and Correc- 
 tions, the majority in the police force, the control of 
 the Fire Department, of the Board of Street Open- 
 ings, the whole of the Armory Board, the Register 
 of Deeds, the Commissioner of Jurors, one half of 
 the Commissioners of Accounts, Supervisor of the 
 City Record, the Collector of the Port, the Sub- 
 Treasury, majority of the Commissioners of the Sink- 
 ing Fund, the majority of the delegation in Congress 
 and in the State Senate and Assembly." Is not New 
 York in their power ? 
 
 What is the character of some of these officers ? 
 You have all heard, I suppose, the names of some of 
 them as bosses, criminals, etc. In political conven- 
 tions they have been very prominently before the 
 country for the last two weeks, for what New York 
 State may do politically means what the bosses of 
 both parties are going to do in the city of New York, 
 and these bosses are all on their knees to the Roman 
 Catholic power. Commenting on the personal char- 
 acter of these rulers, the New York World says, 
 " Thomas Dunlap, a commissioner of jurors, with a 
 salary of fifteen thousand dollars a year, began life as 
 a dog-catcher, gained influence as a rum-seller, and 
 passed from a gin-mill to a position where he practi- 
 cally has charge of the jury-system of the city. Four 
 aldermen keep one or two saloons each, and two of 
 them keep ' bucket-shops ' and ' all-night ' dens. Rich- 
 
312 Rome's Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 
 
 ard Crocker, coroner, with twelve thousand dollars a 
 year, has been a prize-fighter, and only escaped con- 
 viction for the crime of murder through his influence 
 in Tammany counsels." " Richard Flanigan, another 
 coroner at twelve thousand dollars a year, has been a 
 prize-fighter and is a gambler. Jerry Hartigan, 
 another member of the committee, has been tried for 
 murder. The list might be extended, but a few shin- 
 ing examples suffice to show what a city may expect 
 which allows itself to be governed " by the Roman 
 Catholic hierarchy. As to the financial management 
 which they give to the city of New York, we have it 
 stated that within a few years, the Roman Catholics 
 have obtained three and a half million dollars worth 
 of real estate from the city, without purchase or pay- 
 ment ; that in eleven years they have received $6,000,- 
 000 ; that in 1868 they took 1710,000 ; in 1879, |693,- 
 000 ; that in seventeen years they have received 
 nearly 111,000,000. The late distinguished Rev. Dr. 
 Crosby had a worthy son, a representative at Albany, 
 who says that about $600,000 annually are taken from 
 the treasury of the State of New York appropriated to 
 the following denominational uses : $25,000 to Jews, 
 $65,000 to Protestants, $510,000 to Roman Catholics. 
 The taxes in the city of New York are greater per 
 capita than in any other great city in the world, so 
 far as I know. In that city under papal government 
 the cost per capita is more than $36.00, in Brooklyn 
 less than $11.00 (I give the even dollars ; I have the 
 cents also here, but you need not mind the cents when 
 Rome's hand is in the treasury, for she does not count 
 them), in Albany $13.00, in Philadelphia $16.00, in 
 
Rome 8 Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 313 
 
 Buffalo 110.00, in Baltimore 110.00, in Cincinnati 
 $14.00, in Cleveland 18.00, in Chicago 116.00, in 
 Detroit fll.OO, in St. Paul $6.00, in Milwaukee |6.00, 
 in St. Louis $14.00 ; and in London it costs $7.50, 
 only one-fifth of what it costs in New York ; in Paris 
 $5.40 one-seventh of the New York rate, in Berlin 
 $7.35, per capita about the same as London. This 
 is what they are doing, what they have already done, 
 a glimpse of their financiering with taxpayers. You 
 wanted to know what they accomplish ; I am telling 
 you. We know that the influence of New York city 
 has been final and controlling in national politics. 
 Of this I need not speak at length on the present 
 occasion. The great political parties have both, in 
 their recent conventions, declared for Home Rule in 
 Ireland ; I hope they have not declared for Rome 
 Rule in America. (Applause. ) It looks very much 
 as if they had. 
 
 2. But now for Boston, our own imperial Boston, the 
 Boston which we glory in as the modern Athens, 
 which is in danger of becoming modern Cork (Ap- 
 plause) ; the Boston which we remember as associated 
 with the earliest struggles of American liberty, and 
 which may be associated with its latest conflicts ; the 
 Boston which we once thought of as possessing the 
 most eminent names of the foremost citizens and lead- 
 ing literary men of the country ; the Boston of Samuel 
 Adams and Warren and Hancock, of Charles Sumner 
 and Wendell Phillips. (Applause.) What of Boston? 
 The population in 1848 was 128,000 ; it then had sixty- 
 five police. The population in 1888 had increased/ot^r 
 fold, and the police had to be increased thirteen fold. 
 
314 Rome's Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 
 
 This tells you something of the kind of people who 
 are filling it up. It is because Boston population has 
 changed greatly and is very different to-day from 
 what it was formerly that this great addition to its 
 police has been made necessary. How about the 
 government of the city of Boston, the men and the 
 money? Twenty-five years ago, in 1866, when Mr. 
 F. W. Lincoln was mayor of the city of Boston, there 
 were but six Roman Catholics in the city government- 
 To-day there are over fifty such. Forty years ago 
 nearly all the money which was paid out of the 
 public treasury was paid to officers with American 
 names and Protestant lineage. To-day, of about six 
 million dollars paid out of the treasury, nearly five 
 and a half million is paid to Roman Catholics, in 
 sums varying from six thousand dollars a year down 
 to day wages. Four thousand and more of the 
 employees of the city of Boston are Roman Catholics, 
 who pay tax to the priests. Boston to-day is almost 
 a Roman Catholic city. In 1888 Mayor O'Brien 
 closed its public library on St. Patrick's Day. This is 
 very suggestive, for saints' days and all which they 
 involve have closed up the public intelligence of 
 many a nation, and would do the same in this coun- 
 try if Rome had its way. 
 
 3. But what I have said of Boston is just as true 
 of New England at large. What I have said of 
 Massachusetts is the peril through all this little clus- 
 ter of sister States. Bonahoe's Magazine for June, 
 1888, calls Connecticut an Irish commonwealth, and 
 says the Irish are in practical control of the state. As 
 they said it in the way of boast, it cannot be offensive 
 
Rome's Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 315 
 
 for me to state it as a fact. As you might infer from 
 the name, Donahoe's Magazine is edited by an Irish- 
 man and a Roman Catholic. This article names the 
 members of the legislature, the mayors, and members 
 of the city government in the nine cities of Bridge- 
 port, Hartford, Meriden, Middletown, New Britain, 
 New Haven, New London, South Norwalk, and 
 Waterbury. I had those names before me when I 
 made these notes which I am reading. Proceeding, it 
 says, " Let the grand roll of the towns be called, and 
 let further evidence be adduced to show that in Con- 
 necticut at least, the term New England has become 
 a misnomer, and that the term New Ireland has in- 
 controvertible claims to present and future recogni- 
 tion." Further, in a later issue. May, 1889, it says 
 that the Roman Catholic is the leading form of wor- 
 ship in New England. It quotes Boston and its 
 officers as proof ; says that Holyoke and Springfield 
 are all officered by Irish, from mayors to justices of 
 the peace. Rhode Island is one-half Irish by birth 
 and extraction, and three-fifths of its population for- 
 eigners. New Haven is officered mostly by Irish. 
 New England is no longer New England. Ah, you 
 say, I cannot believe that. But you cannot deny 
 facts; and I think the facts are as stated by them. 
 Here is further proof. The superintendent of the 
 religious census of the United States, in an article in 
 the June number of the Forum, 1892 (p. 532), says, 
 "There are a million communicants in the Catholic 
 church in those six states (New England), against 
 230,000 in the Congregational churches. This is one 
 of the striking results of immigration and migration ; 
 
316 Rome's Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 
 
 for while immigration has brought Catholics in, mi- 
 gration has taken Congregationalists out to other 
 parts of the country, particularly to the great West. 
 New England is Roman Catholic." These are 
 the words of the superintendent of the religious census 
 of the United States, based on figures. You ask 
 what Roman Catholics have done : this is my answer. 
 The Roman Catholic strength in the territories is 
 such that in the remaining territories of the United 
 States they have four times the strength of the Prot- 
 estants. In California, as compared with the Prot- 
 estants, they are about four to one. You ask what 
 they have done. They have avowed their purpose to 
 control ; what have they done ? They have done as 
 they promised. They have captured every strategic 
 point in the United States ; they have subjugated 
 our cities ; they have throttled our newpapers ; they 
 have debauched our politicians ; they have robbed 
 our treasuries ; they have stabbed our common 
 schools ; and are advancing to complete control in 
 this nation as fast as they can ; for what I have said of 
 New York and of Boston and of Connecticut cities, 
 is true in large proportion of Baltimore, of Chicago, 
 of Cleveland, of Milwaukee, of Washington in the 
 District of Columbia, and of many another city of the 
 United States. I do not object to the nationality of 
 any man, as I have often said ; but while I live I 
 shall object to the control of the papacy in this Re- 
 public. (Applause.) 
 
 The story of Samson is full of suggestion. Con- 
 secrated to God from his birth, he let grow his luxu- 
 riant locks as a sign of his devotion to Jehovah. He 
 
Homers Avowed Purpose to Control the State. 317 
 
 was the hope of his nation and the scourge of her ene- 
 mies. The love of ease and the lust of pleasure led 
 him to lay his head in a harlot's lap. She treacher- 
 ously sought for the secret of his power for many a 
 day, but in vain. At length she learned it; and when 
 she had sheared from his head the only sign left to 
 show that he recognized, even in his sin, a divine 
 allegiance, she cried with the voice with which she 
 had lulled him to sleep, now a voice of terrible 
 threatening, " The Philistines be upon thee, Sam- 
 son." And blind and chained, the last hope of Israel 
 ground in the prison-house, while his enemies made 
 sport. Only at his death was he avenged. The Ameri- 
 can Samson, with the locks indicative of a divine 
 allegiance on his mighty head, has been seduced from 
 highest aims and noblest purposes, as they were 
 handed down to him by the fathers, and drawn aside 
 for gold and ease and political power, has laid his 
 head in the Roman harlot's lap. There she soothes 
 him with honeyed lies, enchains him with her lasciv- 
 iousness, and beguiles him with her designs. And 
 though he knows that she has brought low Spain and 
 Italy and Portugal and Austria, though he knows 
 that she has made Mexico to grind, a slave and blind, 
 and has put out the eyes of all the South American 
 states, — knowing all this, confident in his mighty 
 strength, he still carelessly rests his head on her 
 knees. No sooner shall she have sheared away the 
 locks of his majesty, but she proposes to cry to the 
 illiterates, the foreigners, the criminals, the hierarchs, 
 "Enter;" and to him, her victim, no more the giant of 
 the West, she will hiss, " The Philistines be upon 
 
318 Rome's A-Vowed t*urpose to Control the State. 
 
 thee, Samson." Anticipating her foul purposes, mind- 
 ful of the fathers who gave him birth, remembering 
 his high destiny and the duties he owes to the world, 
 we rush into the presence where he lies in ignominy 
 listening to the poison distilling from her lips, and we 
 cry, " The Philistines be upon thee, Samson." Thank 
 God he has not yet lost his crown or his manly 
 power 1 Methinks I see him leaping up from his 
 dangerous dalliance, rising to a majesty which no na- 
 tion on this earth has yet attained. He shakes him- 
 self unshackled as he bounds to his feet. The glow 
 of intelligence is in his eye, the warnings of history 
 ring in his ears, the voice of God thrills in his heart, 
 and grasping the weapons that a freeman knows how 
 to use, I believe that the already alarmed and stir- 
 ring Samson of the West will crush the papacy for- 
 ever, and in her overthrow emancipate the world. 
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