suffrage can never be made to
appear to the American people as any thing like so great a grievance as
was slavery.

Besides, in all the States that did not secede, Catholics are a
numerous and an important portion of the population. Their increasing
numbers, wealth, and education secure them, as much as the majority may
dislike their religion, a constantly increasing influence, and it is
idle to leave them out in counting the future of the country. They
will, in a very few years, be the best and most thoroughly educated
class of the American people; and, aside from their religion, or,
rather, in consequence of their religion, the most learned,
enlightened, and intelligent portion of the American population; and as
much as they have disliked the abolitionists, they have, in the army
and elsewhere, contributed their full share to the victory the nation
has won. The best things written on the controversy have been written
by Catholics, and Catholics are better fitted by their religion to
comprehend the real character of the American constitution than any
other class of Americans, the moment they study it in the light of
their own theology. The American constitution is based on that of
natural society, on the solidarity of the race, and the difference
between natural society and the church or Christian society is, that
the one is initial and the other teleological. The law of both is the
same; Catholics, as such, must resist both extremes, because each is
exclusive, and whatever is exclusive or one-sided is uncatholic. If
they have been backward in their sympathy with the government, it has
been through their dislike of the puritanic spirit and the humanitarian
or socialistic elements they detected in the Republican party, joined
with a prejudice against political and social negro equality. But
their church everywhere opposes the socialistic movements of the age,
all movements in behalf of barbarism, and they may always be counted on
to resist the advance of the socialistic democracy. If the country has
had reason to complain of some of them in the late war, it will have,
in the future, far stronger reason to be grateful; not to them, indeed,
for the citizen owes his life to his country, but to their religion,
which has been and is the grand protectress of modern society and
civilization.

From the origin of the government there has been a tendency to the
extension of suffrage, and to exclude both birth and private