ou desire to please them,
rather than serve the interests of your country or Church. To take the
stump, or the pulpit, in defence of _Frank Pierce_ and his corrupt
administration, would be a pleasant talk to you, who have been, all your
life-time, an inveterate Locofoco in politics, and "a profound thinker"
in favor of its iniquitous measures and principles. In your early
political training, you have been swayed by interest and popular favor,
and in most cases at the expense of truth, just as you now are, in your
mad vindication of Romanism. A tool for others to work with, till you
have found yourself in a condition to use such tools as you yourself
have been, you are now a trimmer and weathercock, leading on men of less
sense than yourself, to such distinction as interest and ambition may
dictate!
Sir, you take the ground, throughout, that there is no danger of
Catholics in this country, and that they do not seek to establish their
religion. Here is a specimen of your logic:
"Thank God no religious sect can tyrannize over another in this
country, so long as they all respect the Federal Constitution.
Until we see, then, the Catholics treating that instrument with
disrespect, it is madness to entertain fears of them and worse
than madness to form combinations against them."
Now, sir, the foregoing statement is untrue, and in making it you could
not have been sincere. You are a man of too much sense, and of too much
information, to believe what you are wickedly trying to palm upon
others. Brownson's Quarterly Review, the most able, as well as the most
authentic organ of Catholicism in the United States, employs the
following language to the American people--mark it:
"_Are your free institutions infallible?_ Are they founded on
_Divine right_? This you deny. Is not the proper question for
you to discuss, then, _not_ whether the Papacy be or be not
compatible with republican government, but whether _it be or be
not founded in Divine right_? If the Papacy be founded in
Divine right, it is supreme over whatever is founded only in
human right, and then your institutions should be made to
harmonize with it: not it with your institutions!!! The real
question, then, is not the compatibility or the incompatibility
of the Catholic Church with _democratic institutions_, but, Is
the _Catholic Church the Church of God_?
"Settle this questio
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