Chapter LVI…

Chapter LVI

PUBLIC ACTS OF SIMONY—THEFTS AND BRIGANDAGE OF BISHOP O’REGAN—GENERAL CRY OF INDIGNATION—I DETERMINE TO RESIST HIM TO HIS FACE—HE EMPLOYS MR. SPINK AGAIN TO SEND ME TO GAOL, AND HE FAILS—DRAGS ME AS A PRISONER TO URBANA IN THE SPRING OF 1856 AND FAILS AGAIN—ABRAHAM LINCOLN DEFENDS ME—MY DEAR BIBLE BECOMES MORE THAN EVER MY LIGHT AND MY COUNSELOR.

A month had hardly elapsed since the ecclesiastical retreat, when all the cities of Illinois, were filled by the most strange and humiliating clamors against our bishop. From Chicago to Cairo, it would have been difficult to go to a single town, without having, from the most respectable people, or reading in big letters, in some of the most influential papers, that Bishop O’Regan was a thief or a simoniac, a perjurer, or even something worse. The bitterest complaints were crossing each other over the breadth and length of Illinois, from almost every congregation:

“He has stolen the beautiful and costly vestments we bought for our church,” cried the French Canadians of Chicago. “He has swindled us out of a fine lot given us to build our church, sold it for $40,000, and pocketed the money, for his own private use, without giving us any notice,” said the Germans.

“His thirst for money is so great,” said the whole Catholic people of Illinois, “that he is selling even the bones of the dead to fill his treasures!”

I had not forgotten the bold attempt of the bishop to wrench my little property from my hands, at his first visit to my colony.

The highway thief who puts his dagger at the breast of the traveler, threatening to take away his life, if he does not give him his purse, does not appear more infamous to his victim than that bishop appeared to me, that day. But my hope, then, was, that this was an isolated and exceptional case in the life of my superior; and I did not whisper a word of it to anybody. I began to think differently, however, when I saw the numerous articles in the principal papers of the State, signed by the most respectable names, accusing him of theft, simony and lies. My hope, at first, was that there were many exaggerations in those reports. But they came thicker, day after day, I thought my duty was to go to Chicago, and see for myself, to what extent those rumors were true. I went directly to the French Canadian church; and to my unspeakable dismay, I found that it was too true that the bishop had stolen the fine church vestments, which my countrymen had bought for their own priest, for grand festivals; and he had transferred them to the cathedral of St. Mary for his own personal use. The indignation of my poor countrymen knew no bounds. It was really deplorable to hear with what supreme disgust, and want of respect, they were speaking of their bishop. Unfortunately, the Germans and Irish people were still ahead of them in their unguarded, disrespectful denunciations. Several spoke of prosecuting him before the civil courts, to force him to disgorge what he had stolen; and it was with the greatest difficulty that I succeeded in preventing some of them from mobbing and insulting him publicly in the streets, or even in his own palace. The only way I could find to appease them was to promise that I would speak to his lordship, and tell him that it was the desire of my countrymen to have those vestments restored to them.

The second thing I did was to go to the cemetery, and see for myself, to what extent it was true or not that our bishop was selling the very bones of his diocesans, in order to make money.

On my way to the Roman Catholic graveyard, I met a great many cart-loads of sand, which, I was told by the carters, had been taken from the cemetery; but I did not like to stop them till I was at the very door of the consecrated spot. There, I found three carters, who were just leaving the grounds. I asked and obtained from them, the permission to search the sand which they carried, to see if there were not some bones. I could not find any in the first cart; and my hope was that it would be the same in the two others. But, to my horror and shame, I found the inferior jaw of a child, in the second; and part of the bones of an arm, and almost the whole foot of a human being, in the third cart! I politely requested the carters to show me the very place where they had dug that sand, and they complied with my prayer. To my unspeakable regret and shame, I found that the bishop had told an unmitigated falsehood when, to appease the public indignation against his sacrilegious trade, he had published that he was selling only the sand which was outside of the fence, on the very border of the lake.

It is true that, to make his case good, he had ordered the old fence to be taken away, in order to make a new one, many feet inside the old one. But this miserable and shameful subterfuge rendered his crime still greater than it had at first appeared. What added to the gravity of that public iniquity, is that the Bishop of Chicago had received that piece of land from the city, for a burial ground, only after they had taken a solemn oath to use it only for burying the dead. Every load of that ground sold then, was not only an act of simony, but the breaking of a solemn oath! No words can express the shame I felt, after convincing myself of the correctness of what the press of Chicago, and of the whole State of Illinois, had published against our bishop, about this sacrilegious traffic.

Slowly retracing my steps to the city from the cemetery, I went directly to the bishop, to fulfil the promise I had made to the French Canadians, to try to obtain the restoration of their fine vestments. But I was not long with him without seeing that I would gain nothing but his implacable enmity in pleading the cause of my poor countrymen. However, I thought that my duty was to do all in my power to open the eyes of my bishop to the pit he was digging for himself and for us all Catholics, by his conduct.

“My lord,” I said, “I will not surprise your lordship, when I tell you that all the true Catholics of Illinois, are filled with sorrow by the articles they find, every day, in the press, against their bishop.”

“Yes! yes!” he abruptly replied, “the good Catholics must be sad indeed to read such disgusting diatribes against their superior; and I presume that you are one of those that are sorry. But, then, why do you not prevent your insolent and infidel countrymen from writing those things! I see that a great part of those libels are signed by the French Canadians.”

I answered: “It is to try, as much as it is in my power, to put an end to those scandals that I am in Chicago, to-day, my lord.”

“Very well, very well,” he replied, “as you have the reputation of having great influence over your countrymen, make use of it to stop them in their rebellious conduct against me, and I will, then, believe that you are a good priest.”

I answered: “I hope that I will succeed in what your lordship wants me to do. But there are two things to be done, in order to secure my success.”

“What are they?” quickly asked the bishop.

“The first is, that your lordship give back the fine church vestments which you have taken from the French Canadian congregation of Chicago.

“The second is, that your lordship abstain, absolutely, from this day, to sell the sand of the burying ground, which covers the tombs of the dead.”

Without answering a word, the bishop struck his fist violently upon the table, and crossed the room at a quick step, two or three times; then turning towards me, and pointing his finger to my face, he exclaimed in an indescribable accent of rage:

“Now, I see the truth of what Mr. Spink told me! you are not only my bitterest enemy, but you are at the head of my enemies. You take sides with them against me. You approve of their libellous writings against me! I will never give back those church vestments. They are mine, as the French Canadian church is mine! Do you not know, that the ground on which the churches are built, as well as the churches themselves, and all that belongs to the church, belongs to the bishop? Was it not a burning shame to use those fine vestments in a poor miserable church of Chicago, when the bishop of that important city was covered with rags? It was in the interest of the episcopal dignity, that I ordered those rich and splendid vestments, which were mine by law, to be transferred from that small and insignificant congregation, to my cathedral of St. Mary, and if you had an ounce of respect for your bishop, Mr. Chiniquy, you would immediately go to your countrymen and put a stop to their murmurs and slanders against me; by simply telling them that I have taken what was mine from that church, which is mine also, to the cathedral, which is altogether mine.

“Tell your countrymen to hold their tongues, and respect their bishop, when he is in the right, as I am to-day.”

I had, many times, considered the infamy and injustice of the law which the bishops have had passed all over the United States, making every one of them a corporation, with the right of possessing personally all the church properties of the Roman Catholics. But I had never understood the infamy and tyranny of that law so clearly as in that hour.

It is impossible to describe with ink and paper the air of pride and contempt with which the bishop really in substance, if not in words, told me:

“All those things are mine. I do what I please with them, you must be mute and silent when I take them away from you. It is against God Himself that you rebel when you refuse me the right of dispossessing you of all those properties which you have purchased with your own money, and which have not cost me a cent!”

In that moment I felt that the law which makes every bishop the only master and proprietor of all the religious goods, houses, churches, lands and money of their people as Catholics, is simply diabolical: and that the church which sanctions such a law, is antichristian. Though it was, at the risk and peril of every thing dear to me, that I should openly protest against that unjust law, there was no help; I felt constrained to do so with all the energy I possessed.

I answered: “My lord, I confess that this is the law, in the United States; but this is a human law, directly opposed to the Gospel. I do not find a single word in the Gospel which gives this power to the bishop. Such a power is an abusive, not a divine power, which will sooner or later destroy our holy church, in the United States, as it has already mortally wounded her in Great Britain, in France and in many other places. When Christ said, in the Holy Gospel, that He had not enough of ground whereon to lay His head, He condemned, in advance, the pretensions of the bishops who lay their hands on our church properties as their own. Such a claim is an usurpation and not a right, my lord. Our Saviour Jesus Christ protested against that usurpation, when asked by a young man to meddle in his temporal affairs with his brothers; He answered that “He had not received such power.” The Gospel is a long protest against that usurpation; in every page, it tells us that the Kingdom of Christ is not of this world. I have myself given $50 to help my countrymen to buy those church vestments. They belong to them, and not to you!”

My words, uttered with an expression of firmness which the bishop had never yet seen in any of his priests, fell upon him, at first, as a thunderbolt. They so puzzled him, that he looked at me, a moment, as if he wanted to see if it was a dream or a reality, that one of his priests had the audacity to use such language, in his presence.

But, soon, recovering from his stupor, he interrupted me by striking his fist again on the table, and saying in anger:

“You are half a Protestant! Your words smell Protestantism! The Gospel! the Gospel!! that is your great tower of strength against the laws and regulations of our holy church! If you think, Mr. Chiniquy, that you will frighten me with your big words of the Gospel, you will soon see your mistake, at your own expense. I will make you remember that it is the Church you must obey, and it is through your bishop that the church rules you!”

“My lord,” I answered, “I want to obey the church. Yes! but it is a church founded on the Gospel; a church that respects and follows the Gospel, that I want to obey!”

These words threw him into a fit of rage, and he answered: “I am too busy to hear your impertinent babblings any longer. Please let me alone, and remember that you will, soon, hear from me again, if you cannot teach your people to respect and obey their superiors!”

The bishop kept his promise. I heard of him very soon after, when his agent, Peter Spink, dragged me, again, a prisoner, before the Criminal Court of Kankakee, accusing me falsely of crimes which his malice alone could have invented.

My lord O’Regan had determined to interdict me; but not being able to find any cause in my private or public life as a priest, to found such a sentence, he had pressed that land speculator, Spink, to prosecute me again; promising to base his interdict on the condemnation which, he had been told, would be passed against me by the Criminal Court of Kankakee.

But the bishop and Peter Spink were again to be disappointed; for the verdict of the court, given on the 13th of November, 1855, was again in my favor.

My heart filled with joy at this new and great victory my God had given me against my merciless persecutors. I was blessing him, when my two lawyers, Messrs. Osgood and Padcock, came to me and said: “Our victory, though great, is not so decisive as was expected; for Mr. Spink has just taken an oath that he has no confidence in this Kankakee Court, and he has appealed, by a change of venue, to the Court of Urbana, in Champaign County. We are sorry to have to tell you that you must remain a prisoner, under bail, in the hands of the sheriff, who is bound to deliver you to the sheriff of Urbana, the 19th of May, next spring.”

I nearly fainted when I heard this. The ignominy of being again in the hands of the sheriff, for so long a time; the enormous expenses, far beyond my means, to bring my fifteen to twenty witnesses such a long distance of nearly one hundred miles; the new ocean of insults, false accusations and perjuries, with which my enemies were to overwhelm me again; and the new risk of being condemned, though innocent, at that distant court; all those things crowded themselves in my mind, to crush me. For a few minutes, I was obliged to sit down; for I would have, surely, fallen down, had I continued to stand on my feet. A kind friend had to bring me some cold water, and bathe my forehead, to prevent me from fainting. It seemed that God had forsaken me, for the time being, and that He was to let me fall powerless into the hand of my foes. But I was mistaken. That merciful God was near me, in that dark hour, to give me one of the marvellous proofs of his paternal and loving care.

The very moment I was leaving the court with a heavy heart, a gentleman, a stranger, came to me and said:“ I answered: “I am much obliged to you for your sympathetic words; but would you please allow me to ask your name?”

“Be kind enough to let me keep my incognito here,” he answered. “The only thing I can say is, that I am a Catholic like you, and one who, like you, cannot bear any longer the tyranny of our American bishops. With many others, I look to you as our deliverer, and for that reason I advise you to engage the services of Abraham Lincoln.”

“But,” I replied, “who is that Abraham Lincoln? I never heard of that man before.”

He replied: “Abraham Lincoln is the best lawyer and the most honest man we have in Illinois.”

I went, immediately, with that stranger, to my two lawyers, who were in consultation only a few steps from us, and asked them if they would have any objections that I should ask the services of Abraham Lincoln, to help them to defend me at Urbana.

They both answered: “Oh! If you can secure the services of Abraham Lincoln; by all means do it. We know him well; he is one of the best lawyers, and one of the most honest men we have in our State.”

Without losing a minute, I went to the telegraph office with that stranger, and telegraphed to Abraham Lincoln to ask him if he would defend my honor and my life (though I was a stranger to him) at the next May term of the court at Urbana.

About twenty minutes later, I received the answer:

“Yes, I will defend your honor and your life at the next May term at Urbana.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.”

My unknown friend then paid the operator, pressed my hand, and said: “May God bless and help you, Father Chiniquy. Continue to fight fearlessly for truth and righteousness, against our mitred tyrant; and God will help you to the end.” He then took a train for the north, and soon disappeared, as a vision from heaven. I have not seen him since, though I have not let a day pass without asking my God to bless him. A few minutes later, Spink came to the office, to telegraph to Lincoln, asking his services at the next May term of the Court, at Urbana. But it was too late.

Before being dragged to Urbana, I had to renew, at Easter, 1856, the oil which is used for the sick, in the ceremony which the Church of Rome calls the sacrament of Extreme Unction, and in the Baptism of Children. I sent my little silver box to the bishop by a respectable young merchant of my colony, called Dorion. But he brought it back without a drop of oil, with a most abusive letter from the bishop, because I had not sent five dollars to pay for the oil. It was just what I expected. I knew that it was his habit to make his priests pay five dollars for that oil, which was not worth more than two or three cents.

This act of my bishop was one of the many evident cases of simony of which he was guilty every day. I took his letter, with my small silver box to the Archbishop of St. Louis, my Lord Kenrick, before whom I brought my complaints against the Bishop of Chicago, on the 9th of April, 1856. That high dignitary told me that many priests of the diocese of Chicago had already brought the same complaints before him, and exposed the infamous conduct of their bishop. He agreed with me that the rapacity of Bishop O’Regan, his thefts, his lies, his acts of simony, were public and intolerable, but that he had no remedy for them, and said: “The only thing I advise you to do is to write to the pope directly. Prove your charges against that guilty bishop as clearly as possible. I will myself write to corroborate all you have told me, for I know it is true. My hope is that your complaints will attract the attention of the pope. He will probably send some one from Rome to make an inquiry, and then that wicked man will be forced to offer his resignation. If you succeed, as I hope, in your praiseworthy efforts to put an end to such scandals, you will have well deserved the gratitude of the whole church. For that unprincipled dignitary is the cause that our holy religion is not only losing her prestige in the United States, but is becoming an object of contempt where-ever those public crimes are known.”

I was, however, forced to postpone my writing to the pope. For, a few days after my return from St. Louis to my colony, I had to deliver myself again into the hands of the sheriff of Kankakee county, who was obliged by Spink to take me prisoner, and deliver me as a criminal in to the hands of the sheriff of Champaign county, on the 19th of May, 1856.

It was then that I met Abraham Lincoln for the first time. He was a giant in stature; but I found him still more a giant in the noble qualities of his mind and heart. It was impossible to converse five minutes with him without loving him. There was such an expression of kindness and honesty in that face, and such an attractive magnetism in the man; that, after a few moments’ conversation, one felt as tied to him by all the noblest affections of the heart.

When pressing my hand, he told me: “You were mistaken when you telegraphed that you were unknown to me. I know you, by reputation, as the stern opponent of tyranny of your bishop, and the fearless protector of your countrymen in Illinois. I have heard much of you from two priests; and, last night, your lawyers, Messrs. Osgood & Paddock, acquainted me with the fact that your bishop employs some of his tools to get rid of you. I hope it will be an easy thing to defeat his projects and protect you against his machinations.”

He then asked me how I had been induced to desire his services. I answered by giving him the story of that unknown friend who had advised me to have Mr. Abraham Lincoln for one of my lawyers, for the reason that “he was the best lawyer and the most honest man in Illinois.” He smiled at my answer, with that inimitable and unique smile, which we may call the “Lincoln smile,” and replied: “That unknown friend would surely have been more correct had he told you that Abraham Lincoln was the ugliest lawyer of the country!” And he laughed outright.

I spent six long days at Urbana as a criminal, in the hands of the sheriff, at the feet of my judges. During the greatest part of that time, all that human language can express of abuse and insult was heaped on my poor head. God only knows what I suffered in those days; but I was providentially surrounded, as by a strong wall, when I had Abraham Lincoln for my defence. “The best lawyer and the most honest man of Illinois,” and the learned and upright David Davis for my judge. The latter became Vice-President of the United States in 1882, and the former its most honored President from 1861 to 1865.

I never heard anything like the eloquence of Abraham Lincoln, when he demolished the testimonies of the two perjured priests, Lebel and Carthevel, who, with ten or twelve other false witnesses, had sworn against me. I would have surely been declared innocent, after that eloquent address, and the charge of the learned Judge Davis, had not my lawyers, by a sad blunder, left a Roman Catholic on the jury. Of course, that Irish Roman Catholic wanted to condemn me, while the eleven honest and intelligent Protestants were unanimous in voting “Not guilty.” The court, having at last found that it was impossible to persuade the jury to give a unanimous verdict, discharged them. But Spink again forced the sheriff to keep me prisoner, by obtaining from the court the permission to begin the prosecution de novo at the term of the fall, the 19th of October, 1856.

Humanly speaking, I would have been one of the most miserable of men had I not had my dear Bible, which I was meditating and studying day and night, in those dark days of trial.

But, though I was then still in the desolate wilderness, far away yet from the Promised Land, my Heavenly Father never forsook me. He many times let the sweet manna fall from heaven to feed my desponding soul, and cheer my fainting heart. More than once, when I was panting with spiritual thirst, He brought me near the Rock, from the side of which the living waters were gushing to refresh and renew my strength and courage.

Though the world did not suspect it, I knew from the beginning, that all my tribulations were coming from my unconquerable attachment and my unfaltering love and respect for the Bible, as the root and source of every truth given by God to man; and I felt assured that my God knew it also. That assurance supported my courage in the conflict. Every day, my Bible was becoming dearer to me. I was then constantly trying to walk in its marvellous light and divine teaching. I wanted to learn my duties and rights. I like to acknowledge that it was the Bible which gave me the power and wisdom I then so much needed, to fearlessly face so many foes. That power and wisdom I felt were not mine. On this very account, my dear Bible enabled me to remain calm in the very lion’s den; and it gave me, from the very beginning of that terrible conflict, the assurance of a final victory; for every time I bathed my soul in its divine light, I heard my merciful heavenly Father’s voice saying, “Fear not, for I am with thee.”

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Chapter LVII

BISHOP O’REGAN SELLS THE PARSONAGE OF THE FRENCH CANADIANS OF CHICAGO, POCKETS THE MONEY, AND TURNS THEM OUT WHEN THEY COME TO COMPLAIN—HE DETERMINES TO TURN ME OUT OF MY COLONY AND SEND ME TO KAHOKIA—HE FORGETS IT THE NEXT DAY, AND PUBLISHES THAT HE HAS INTERDICTED ME—MY PEOPLE SEND A DEPUTATION TO THE BISHOP—HIS ANSWERS—THE SHAM EXCOMMUNICATION BY THREE DRUNKEN PRIESTS.

The Holy Scriptures say that an abyss calls for another abyss (abyssus abyssum invocat). That axiom had its accomplishment in the conduct of Bishop O’Regan. When once on the declivity of iniquity, he descended to its lowest depths, with more rapidity than a stone thrown into the sea. Not satisfied with the shameful theft of the rich vestments of the French Canadian Church of Chicago, he planned iniquity, which was to bring upon him, more than ever, the execration of the Roman Catholics of Illinois. It was nothing less than the complete destruction of the thriving congregations of my French Canadian countrymen of Chicago and St. Anne. The removal of the French-speaking priest of Chicago from his people, as well as my removal from my colony, were determined.

Our churches were, at first, to be closed, and after some time sold to the Irish people, or to the highest bidder, for their own use. It was in Chicago that this great iniquity was to begin.

Not long after Easter, 1856, the Rev. Mons. Lemaire was turned out, interdicted and ignominiously driven from the diocese of Chicago without even giving the shadow of a reason, and the French Canadians suddenly found themselves without a pastor.

A few days after, the parsonage they had built for their priest in Clark street, was sold for $1,200 to an American. The beautiful little church which they had built on the lot next to the parsonage, at the cost of so many sacrifices, was removed five or six blocks southwest, and rented by the bishop to the Irish Catholics for about $2,000 per annum, and the whole money was pocketed, without even a word of notice to my countrymen.

Though accustomed to his acts of perfidy, I could not believe at first the rumors which reached me of those transactions. They seemed to be beyond the limits of infamy, and to be impossible. I went to Chicago, hoping to find that the public rumor had exaggerated the evil. But alas! nothing had been exaggerated!

The wolf had dispersed the sheep and destroyed the flock. The once thriving French congregation of Chicago was no more! Wherever I went, I saw tears of distress among my dear countrymen, and heard cries of indignation against the destroyer. Young and old, rich and poor among them, with one voice, denounced and cursed the heartless mitred brigand who had dared to commit publicly such a series of iniquities, to satisfy his thirst for gold and his hatred of the French Canadians.

They asked me what they should do; but what could I answer? They requested me to go again to him and remonstrate. But I showed them that after my complete failure, when I had tried to get back the sacerdotal vestments, there was no hope that he would disgorge the house and the church. The only thing I could advise them was to select five or six of the most influential members of their congregation to go and respectfully ask him by what right he had taken away, not only their priest, but the parsonage and the church they had built and transferred them to another people. They followed my advice. Messrs. Franchere and Roffinot (who are still living) and six other respectable French Canadians were sent by the whole people to put those questions to their bishop. He answered them:

“French Canadians: You do not know your religion! Were you a little better acquainted with it, you would know that I have the right to sell your churches and church properties, pocket the money, and go eat and drink it where I please.”

After that answer they were ignominiously turned out from his presence into the street. Posterity will scarcely believe those things, though they are true.

The very next day, August 19th, 1856, the bishop having heard that I was in Chicago, sent for me. I met him after his dinner. Though not absolutely drunk, I found him full of wine and terribly excited.

“Mr. Chiniquy,” he said, “you had promised me to make use of your influence to put an end to the rebellious conduct of your countrymen against me. But I find that they are more insolent and unmanageable than ever; and my firm belief is that it is your fault. You, and the handful of French Canadians of Chicago, give me more trouble than all of my priests and my people of Illinois. You are too near Chicago, sir; your influence is too much felt on your people here. I must remove you to a distant place, where you will have enough to do without meddling in my administration. I want your service to Kahokia, in my diocese of Quincy; and if you are not there by the 15th of September next, I will interdict and excommunicate you, and forever put an end to your intrigues.”

These words fell upon me as a thunderbolt. The tyranny of the bishop of my church and the absolute degradation of the priest whose honor, position and life are entirely in his hands, had never been revealed to me so vividly as in that hour. What could I say or do to appease that mitred despot? After some moments of silence, I tried to make some respectful remonstrances, by telling him that my position was an exceptional one; that I had not come to Illinois as his other priests, to be at the head of any existing congregation; but that I had been invited by his predecessor to direct the tide of emigration of the French-speaking people of Europe and America. That I had come to a wilderness which, by the blessing of God, I had changed into a thriving country, covered with an industrious and religious people. I further told him that I had left the most honorable position which a priest had ever held in Canada, with the promise from his predecessor that, as long as I lived the life of a good priest, I should not be disturbed in my work. As I soon perceived that he was too much under the influence of liquor to understand me, and speak with intelligence, I only added:

“My lord, you speak of interdict and excommunication! Allow me to respectfully tell you that if you can show me that I have done anything to deserve to be interdicted or excommunicated, I will submit in silence to your sentence. But before you pass that sentence, I ask you, in the name of God, to make a public inquest about me, and have my accusers confront me. I warn your lordship that if you interdict or excommunicate mu without holding an inquest, I will make use of all the means which our holy church puts in the hands of her priests, to defend my honor and prove my innocence. I will also appeal to the laws of our great Republic, which protects the character of all her citizens against anyone who slanders them. It will then be at your risk and peril that you will pass such a sentence against me.”

My calm answer greatly excited his rage. He violently struck the table with his fist, and said:

“I do not care a straw about your threats. I repeat it, Mr. Chiniquy, if you are not at Kahokia by the 15th of next month, I will interdict and excommunicate you.”

Feeling that it was a folly on my part to argue with a man who was beside himself by passion and excess of wine, I replied:

“With the help of God, I will never bear the infamy of an interdict or excommunication. I will do all that religion and honor will allow me to prevent such a dark spot from defiling my name, and the man who does try it, will learn at his own expense that I am not only a priest of Christ but also an American citizen. I respectfully tell your lordship that I neither smoke, nor use intoxicating drinks. The time which your other priests give to those habits, I spend in the study of books, and especially of my Bible. I found in them not only my duties but my rights; and just as I am determined, with the help of God, to perform my duties, I will stand by my rights.”

I then immediately left the room to take the train to St. Anne.

Having spent a part of the night praying God to change the heart of my bishop, and keep me in the midst of my people, who were becoming dearer and dearer to me, in proportion to the efforts of the enemy to drive me away from them, I addressed the following letter to the bishop:

TO THE RT. REV. O’REGAN, Bishop of Chicago.

MY LORD:—The more I consider your design to turn me out of the colony which I have founded and of which I am the pastor, the more I believe it a duty which I owe to myself, my friends and to my countrymen, to protest before God and man against what you intend to do.

Not a single one of your priests stands higher than I do in the public mind, neither is more loved and respected by his people than I am. I defy my bitterest enemies to prove the contrary. And that character which is my most precious treasure you intend to despoil me of by ignominiously sending me away from among my people! Certainly, I have enemies, and I am proud of it. The chief ones are well known in this country as the most depraved of men. The cordial reception they say they have received from you, has not taken away the stains they have on their foreheads.

By this letter, I again request you to make a public and most minute inquest into my conduct. My conscience tells me that nothing can be found against me. Such a public and fair dealing with me would confound my accusers. But I speak of accusers, when I do not really know if I have any. Where are they? What are their names? Of what sin do they accuse me? All these questions, which I put to you last Tuesday, were left unanswered! and would to God that you would answer them to-day, by giving me their names. I am ready to meet them before any tribunal. Before you strike the last blow on the victim of the most hellish plot, I request you, in the name of God, to give a moment’s attention to the following consequences of my removal from this place at present.

You know I have a suit with Mr. Spink at the Urbana Court, for the beginning of October. My lawyers and witnesses are all in Kankakee and Iroquois counties; and in the very time I want most to be here to prove my innocence and guard my honor, you order me to go to a place more than 300 miles distant? Did you ever realize that by that strange conduct you help Spink against your own priest? When at Kahokia, I will have to bear the heavy expenses of traveling more than 300 miles, many times, to consult my friends, or, be deprived of their valuable help! Is it possible that you thus try to tie my hands and feet, and deliver me into the hands of my remorseless enemies? Since the beginning of that suit, Mr. Spink proclaims that you help him, and that, with the perjured priests, you have promised to do all in your power to crush me down! For the sake of the sacred character you bear, do not show so publicly that Mr. Spink’s boastings are true. For the sake of your high position in the church, do not so publicly lend a helping hand to the heartless land speculator of L’Erable. He has already betrayed his Protestant friends to get a wife; he will, ere long, betray you for less. Let me then live in peace here, till that suit is over.

By turning me away from my settlement, you destroy it. More than nine-tenths of the emigrants came here to live near me; by striking me you strike them all.

Where will you find a priest who will love that people so much as to give them, every year, from one to two thousand dollars, as I have invariably done. It is at the price of those sacrifices that, with the poorest class of emigrants from Canada, I have founded here in four years a settlement which cannot be surpassed, or even equaled, in the United States, for its progress. And now that I have spent my last cent to form this colony, you turn me out of it. Our college, where 150 boys are receiving such a good education, will be closed the very day I leave. For, you know very well the teachers I got from Montreal will leave as soon as I will.

Ah! if you are merciless towards the priest of St. Anne, have pity on these poor children. I would rather be condemned to death than to see them destroy their intelligence by running in the streets. Let me then finish my work here, and give me time to strengthen these young institutions, which would fall to the ground with me.

If you turn me out or interdict me, as you say you will do, if I disobey your orders, my enemies will proclaim that you treat me with that rigor because you have found me guilty of some great iniquity, and this necessarily will prejudice my judges against me. They will consider me as a vile criminal. For who will suppose, in this free country, that there is a class of men who can judge a man and condemn him as our Bishop of Chicago is doing to-day, without giving him the names of his accusers or telling him of what crimes he is accused.

In the name of God, I again ask you not to force me to leave my colony before I prove my innocence, and the iniquity of Spink, to the honest people of Urbana.

But, if you are deaf to my prayers, and if nothing can deter you from your resolution, I do not wish to be in the unenviable position of an interdicted priest among my countrymen. Send me, by return mail, my letters of mission for the new places you intend trusting to my care. The sooner I get there, the better for me and my people. I am ready! When on the road of exile, I will pray the God of Abraham to give me the fortitude and the faith he gave to Isaac, when laying his head on the altar, he willingly presented his throat to the sword. I will pray my Saviour, bearing His heavy cross to the top of Calvary, to direct and help my steps towards the land of exile you have prepared for your

Devoted Priest,

C. CHINIQUY.

This letter was not yet mailed when we heard that the drunkard priests around us were publishing that the bishop had interdicted me, and they had received orders from him to take charge of the colony of St. Anne. I immediately called a meeting of the whole people and told them: “The bishop has not interdicted me as the neighboring priests publish; he has only threatened to do so, if I do not leave this place for Kahokia, by the 15th of next month. But though he has not interdicted me, it may be that he does to-day falsely publish that he has done it. We can expect anything from the destroyer of the fine congregation of the French Canadians of Chicago. He wants to destroy me and you as he has destroyed them. But before he immolates us, I hope that, with the help of God, we will fight as Christian soldiers, for our life, and we will use all the means which the laws of our church, the Holy Word of God, and the glorious Constitution of the United States allow us to employ against our merciless tyrant.

“I ask you, as a favor, to send a deputation of four members of our colony in whom you place the most implicit confidence, to carry this letter to the bishop. But before delivering it, they will put to him the following questions, the answers of which, they will write down with great care in his presence, and deliver them to us faithfully. It is evident that we are now entering into a momentous struggle. We must act with prudence and firmness. Messrs. J. B. Lemoine, Leon Mailloux, Francis Bechard and B. Allaire, having been unanimously chosen for that important mission, we gave them the following questions to put to the bishop:

1st. “Have you interdicted Mr. Chiniquy?

2nd. “Why have you interdicted him? Is Mr. Chiniquy guilty of any crime to deserve to be interdicted? Have those crimes been proved against him in a canonical way?

3rd. “Why do you take Mr. Chiniquy away from us?

[Our deputies came back from Chicago with the following report and answers, which they swore to, some time after before the Kankakee court.]

1st. “I have suspended Mr. Chiniquy on the 19th inst., on account of his stubbornness and want of submission to my orders, when I ordered him to Kahokia.

2nd. “If Mr. Chiniquy has said mass since as you say, he is irregular and the pope alone can restore him in his ecclesiastical and sacerdotal functions.

3rd. “I take him away from St. Anne, despite his prayers and yours, because he has not been willing to live in peace and friendship with the Revs. Messrs. Lebel and Cartevel.

[The bishop, being asked if those two priests had not been interdicted by him for public scandals, was forced to say, “Yes!”]

4th. “My second reason for taking Mr. Chiniquy from St. Anne, and sending him to his new mission, is to stop the law-suit Mr. Spink has instituted against him.

[The bishop being asked if he would promise that the suit would be stopped by the removal of Mr. Chiniquy, answered: “I cannot promise that.”]

5th. “Mr. Chiniquy is one of the best priests in my diocese, and I do not want to deprive myself of his services. No accusation against his morality has been proved before me.

6th. “Mr. Chiniquy has demanded an inquest to prove his innocence against certain accusations made against him; he asked me the names of his accusers, to confound them. I have refused to grant his request.

[After the bishop had made these declarations, the deputation presented him the letter of Mr. Chiniquy. It evidently made a deep impression upon him. As soon as he had read it, he said:]

7th. “Tell Mr. Chiniquy to come and meet me to prepare for his new mission, and I will give him the letters he wants, to go and labor there.

FRANCIS BECHARD, (Signed) J. B. LEMOINE, BASILIQUE ALLAIRE, LEON MAILLOUX.”[E]

-----

Footnote E:

Those gentlemen, with the exception of Mr. Allaire, are still living, 1886.

-----

After the above had been read and delivered to the people, I showed them the evident falsehood and contradictions of the bishop when he said in his second answer: “If Mr. Chiniquy said mass since I interdicted him, he is irregular, and the pope alone can restore him in his ecclesiastical functions,” and then in the seventh, “Tell Mr. Chiniquy to come and meet me to prepare for his new mission, and I will give him the letters he wants to go and labor there.”

The last sentence, I said, proves that he knew he had not interdicted me as he said at first. For, had he done so, he could not give me letters to administer the sacraments and preach at Kahokia before my going before the pope, who alone, as he said, himself, could give me such powers, after he (the bishop) knew that I had said mass since my return from Chicago. Now, my friends, here is the laws of our holy church, not the saying or the law of a publicly degraded man, as the Bishop of Chicago: ‘If a man has been unjustly condemned, let him pay no attention to the unjust sentence; let him even do nothing to have that unjust sentence removed.’ (Canon of the Church, by St. Gelase, Pope.)

“If the bishop had interdicted me on the 19th, his sentence would be unjust, for from his own lips we have the confession, ‘that no accusation has ever been proved before him; that I am one of his best priests; that he does not want to be deprived of my services.’ Yes, such a sentence, if passed, would have been unjust, and our business, to-day, would be to treat it with the contempt it would deserve. But that unjust sentence has not even been pronounced, since, after saying mass every day since the 19th, the bishop himself wants to give me letters to go to Kahokia and work as one of his best priests! It strikes me, to-day, for the first time, that it is more your destruction, as a people, than mine, which the bishop wants to accomplish. It is my desire to remain in your midst to defend your rights as Catholics. If you are true to me, as I will be to you, in the impending struggle, we have nothing to fear; for our holy Catholic church is for us; all her laws and canons are in our favor; the Gospel of Christ is for us; the God of the Gospel is for us; even the pope, to whom we will appeal, will be for us—for I must tell you a thing which, till to-day, I kept secret, viz.: The Archbishop of St. Louis, to whom I brought my complaint, in April last, advised me to write to the pope and tell him, not all, for it would make too large a volume, but something of the criminal deeds of the roaring lion who wants to devour us. He is, to-day, selling the bones of the dead which are resting in the Roman Catholic cemetery of Chicago! But if you are true to yourselves as Catholics and Americans, that mitred tyrant will not sell the bones of our friends and relatives which rest here in our burying ground. He has sold the parsonage and the church which our dear countrymen had built in Chicago. Those properties are, to-day, in the hands of the Irish; but if you promise to stand by your rights as Christian men and American citizens, I will tell that avaricious bishop: ‘Come and sell our parsonage and our church here, if you dare!’

“As I told you before, we have a glorious battle to fight. It is the battle of freedom against the most cruel tyranny the world has ever seen. It is the battle of truth against falsehood; it is the battle of the old Gospel of Christ against the new gospel of Bishop O’Regan. Let us be true to ourselves to the end, and our holy church, which that bishop dishonors, will bless us. Our Saviour, Jesus Christ, whose Gospel is despised by that adventurer, will be for us, and give us a glorious victory. Have you not read in your Bibles that Jesus wanted his disciples to be free, when He said: ‘If the son of man shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.’ Does that mean that the Son of God wants us to be the slaves of Bishop O’Regan? ‘No!’ cried out the whole people.

“May God bless you for your understanding of your Christian rights. Let all those who want to be free, with me, raise their hands.

“Oh! blessed be the Lord,” I said, “there are more than 3,000 hands raised towards heaven to say that you want to be free! Now, let those who do not want to defend their rights as Christians and as American citizens, raise their hands. Thanks be to God,” I again exclaimed, “there is not a traitor among us! You are all the true, brave and noble soldiers of liberty, truth and righteousness! May the Lord bless you all!”

It is impossible to describe the enthusiasm of the people. Before dismissing them, I said:

“We will, no doubt, very soon witness one of the most ludicrous comedies ever played on this continent. That comedy is generally called excommunication. Some drunkard priests, sent by the drunkard Bishop of Chicago, will come to excommunicate us. I expect their visit in a few days. That performance will be worth seeing, and I hope that you will see and hear the most amusing thing in your life.”

I was not mistaken. The very next day, we heard that the 3rd of September had been chosen by the bishop to excommunicate us.

I said to the people: “When you see the flag of the free and the brave floating from the top of our steeple, come and rally around that emblem of liberty.”

There were more than 3,000 people on our beautiful hill when the priests made their appearance. A few moments before, I had said to that immense gathering:

“I bless God that you are so many to witness the last tyrannical act of Bishop O’Regan. But I have a favor to ask of you, it is that no insult or opposition whatever will be made to the priests who come to play that comedy. Please do not say an angry word, do not move a finger against the performers. They are not responsible for what they do, for two reasons:

“1st. They will probably be drunk. “ The priests arrived at about 2 o’clock P. M., and never such shouting and clapping of hands had been heard in our colony as on their appearance. Never had I seen my dear people so cheerful and good-humored as when one of the priests, trembling from head to foot with terror and drunkenness, tried to read the following sham act of excommunication, which he nailed on the door of the chapel:

The Reverend Monsieur Chiniquy, heretofore curate of St. Anne, Colonie of Beaver, in the Diocese of Chicago, has formally been interdicted by me for canonical causes.

The said Mr. Chiniquy, notwithstanding that interdict, has maliciously performed the functions of the holy ministry, in administering the holy sacraments and saying mass. This has caused him to be irregular and in direct opposition to the authority of the church, consequently he is a schismatic.

The said Mr. Chiniquy, thus named by my letters and verbal injunction, has absolutely persisted in violating the laws of the church, and disobeyed her authority, is by this present letter excommunicated.

I forbid any Catholic having any communication with him, in spiritual matters, under pain of excommunication. Every Catholic who goes against this defense, is excommunicated.

(Signed) ✠ ANTHONY,

Bishop of Chicago, and Administrator of Quincy.

Sept. 3rd, 1856.

As soon as the priests, who had nailed this document to the door of our chapel, had gone away at full speed, I went to see it, and found, what I had expected, that it was not signed by the bishop, neither by his grand vicar, nor any known person, and consequently, it was a complete nullity, according to the laws of the church. Fearing I would prosecute him, as I threatened he shrank from the responsibility of his own act, and had not signed it. He was probably ignorant of the fact that he was himself excommunicated, ipso facto, for not having signed the document himself, or by his known deputies. I learned afterwards, that he got a boy 12 years old to write and sign it. In this way, it was impossible for me to bring that document before any court, on account of its want of legal and necessary forms. That act was also a nullity, for being brought by three priests who were not mentis compos, from their actual state of drunkenness. And again, it was a nullity, from the evident falsehood which was its base.

It is alleged that the bishop had interdicted and suspended me on the 19th of Aug., for canonical causes. But he had declared to the four deputies we had sent him: “That Mr. Chiniquy was one of my best priests, that nothing had been proved against him,” consequently, no canonical cause could exist for the allegation. The people understood very well that the whole affair was a miserable farce, designed to separate them from their pastor. It had just, by the good providence of God, the contrary effect. They had never shown me such sincere respect and devotedness as since that never-to-be-forgotten day.

The three priests, after leaving, entered the house of one of our farmers, called Bellanger, a short distance from the chapel, and asked permission to rest a while. But after sitting and smoking a few minutes, they all went out to the stables. The farmer finding this very strange, went out after them to see what they would do in his stables: to his great surprise and disgust, he found them drinking the last of their whiskey. He exclaimed: “Is it not a shame to see three priests, in a stable, drinking rum?”

They made no answer, but went immediately to their carriage and drove away as quickly as possible, singing with all their might, a bacchanalian song! Such was the last act of that excommunication, which has done more than anything else to prepare my people and myself to understand that the Church of Rome is a den of thieves, a school of infidelity and the very antipodes of the Church of Christ.

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Chapter LVIII

ADDRESS FROM MY PEOPLE, ASKING ME TO REMAIN—ADDRESS OF THE PEOPLE TO THE BISHOP—I AM AGAIN DRAGGED AS A PRISONER BY THE SHERIFF TO URBANA—PERJURY OF THE PRIEST LEBELLE—ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S ANXIETY ABOUT THE ISSUE OF THE PROSECUTION—MY DISTRESS—NIGHT OF DESOLATION—THE RESCUE—MISS PHILOMENE MOFFAT SENT BY GOD TO SAVE ME—LEBELLE’S CONFESSION AND DISTRESS—SPINK WITHDRAWS HIS SUIT—MY INNOCENCE ACKNOWLEDGED—NOBLE WORDS AND CONDUCT OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN—THE OATH OF MISS PHILOMENE MOFFAT.

The Sabbath afternoon after the three drunken priests nailed their unsigned, unsealed, untestified, and consequently null sentence of excommunication, to the door of our chapel, the people had gathered from every part of our colony into the large hall of the court-house of Kankakee City to hear several addresses on their duties of the day, and they unanimously passed the following resolution:

“Resolved. That we, French Canadians of the County of Kankakee, do hereby decide to give our moral support to Rev. C. Chiniquy, in the persecution now exerted against him by the Bishop of Chicago, in violation of the laws of the church, expressed and sanctioned by the Councils.”

After this resolution had been voted, Mr. Bechard, who is now one of the principal members of the parliament of Canada, and who was then a merchant of Kankakee City, presented to me the following address, which had also been unanimously voted by the people:

“DEAR AND BELOVED PASTOR:—For several years we have been witnesses of the persecution of which you are the subject, on the part of the bad priests, your neighbors, and on the part of the unworthy Bishop of Chicago; but we also have been the witnesses of your sacerdotal virtues—of your forbearance of their calumnies—and our respect and affection for your person has but increased at the sight of those trials.

“We know that you are persecuted, not only because you are a Canadian priest, and that you like us, but also because you do us good in making a sacrifice of your own private fortune to build school-houses and to feed our teachers at your own table. We know that the Bishop of Chicago, who resembles more an angry wolf than a pastor of the church, having destroyed the prosperous congregation of Chicago by taking away from them their splendid church, which they had built at the cost of many sacrifices, and giving it to the Irish population, and having discouraged the worthy population of Bourbonnais Grove in forcing on them drunken and scandalous priests, wants to take you away from among us, to please Spink, the greatest enemy of the French population. They even say that the bishop, carrying iniquity to its extreme bonds, wanted to interdict you. But as our church cannot, and is not willing to sanction evil and calumny, we know that all those interdicts, based on falsehood and spite, are null and void.

“We therefore solicit you not to give way in presence of the perfidious plots of your enemies, and not to leave us. Stay among us as our pastor and our father, and we solemnly promise to sustain you in all your hardships to the end, and to defend you against our enemies. Stay among us, to instruct us in our duties by your eloquent speeches, and to enlighten us by your pious examples. Stay among us, to guard us against the perfidious designs of the Bishop of Chicago, who wants to discourage and destroy our prosperous colony, as he has already discouraged and destroyed other congregations of the French Canadians, by leaving them without a pastor, or by forcing on them unworthy priests.”

The stern and unanimous determination of my countrymen to stand by me in the impending struggle is one of the greatest blessings which God has ever given me. It filled me with a courage which nothing could hereafter shake. But the people of St. Anne did not think that it was enough to show to the bishop that nothing could ever shake the resolution they had taken to live and die free men. They gathered in a public and immense meeting on the Sabbath after the sham excommunication, to adopt the following address to the Bishop of Chicago, a copy of which was sent to every Bishop of the United States and Canada, and to Pope Pius IX:

“TO HIS LORDSHIP, ANTHONY O’REGAN OF CHICAGO:—We, the undersigned, inhabitants of the parish of St. Anne, Beaver settlement, seeing with sorrow that you have discarded our humble request, which we have sent you by four delegates, and have persisted in trying to drive away our honest and worthy priest, who has edified us in all circumstances by his public and religious conduct, and having, contrary to the rules of our holy church and common sense, struck our worthy pastor, Mr. Chiniquy, with excommunication, having caused him to be announced as a schismatic priest, and having forbidden us to communicate with him in religious matters, are hereby protesting against the unjust and iniquitous manner in which you have struck him, refusing him the privilege of justifying himself and proving his innocence.

“Consequently, we declare that we are ready at all times as good Catholics, to obey all your orders and ordinances that are in accordance with the laws of the Gospel and the Church, but that we are not willing to follow you in all your errors of judgments, in your injustices and covetous caprices. Telling you, as St. Jerome wrote to his Bishop, that as long as you will treat us as your children, we will obey you as a father; but as soon as you will treat us as our master, we shall cease to consider you as our father. Considering Mr. Chiniquy as a good and virtuous priest, worthy of the place he occupies, and possessing as yet all his sacerdotal powers, in spite of your null and ridiculous sentence, we have unanimously decided to keep him among us as our pastor; therefore praying your Lordship not to put yourself to the trouble of seeking another priest for us. More yet: we have unanimously decided to sustain him and furnish him the means to go as far as Rome, if he cannot have justice in America.

“We further declare that it has been dishonorable and shameful for our bishop and for our holy religion to have seen, coming under the walls of our chapel, bringing the orders of the prince of the church of a representative of Christ, three men covered with their sacerdotal garments, having their tongues half paralyzed by the effects of brandy, and who, turning their backs to the church, went into the house and barn of one of our settlers and there emptied their bottles. And from there, taking their seats in their buggies, went towards the settlement of L’Erable, singing drunken songs and hallooing like wild Indians. Will your lordship be influenced by such a set of men, who seem to have for their mission to degrade the sacrados and Catholicism?

“We conclude, in hoping that your lordship will not persist in your decision, given in a moment of madness and spite; that you will reconsider your acts, and that you will retract your unjust, null and ridiculous excommunication, and by these means avoid the scandal of which your precipitation is the cause. We then hope that, changing your determination, you will work for the welfare of our holy religion, and not to its degradation, in which your intolerant conduct would lead us, and that you will not persist in trying to drive our worthy pastor, Rev. Charles Chiniquy, from the flourishing colony that he has founded at the cost of the abandonment of his native land, of the sacrifice of the high position he had in Canada: that you will bring peace between you and us, and that we shall have in the Bishop of Chicago not a tyrant, but a father, and that you will have in us not rebels, but faithful children, by our virtues and our good example. Subscribing ourselves the obedient children of the church.

“THEOPILE DORIEN, “DET. VANIER, “J. B. BELANGER, “CAMILE BETOURNEY, “STAN’LAS GAGNE, “ANTOINE ALLAIN,

J. B. LEMOINE, N. P., OLIVER SENECHALL, BASILIQUE ALLAIR, MICHEL ALLAIR, JOSEPH GRISI, JOSEPH ALLARD,

“And five hundred others.”

This address, signed by more than five hundred men, all heads of families, and reproduced by almost the whole press in the United States, fell as a thunderclap on the head of the heartless destroyer of our people. But it did not change his destructive plans. It had just the contrary effect. As a tiger, mortally wounded by the sure shots of the hunters, he filled the country with his roaring, hoping to frighten us by his new denunciations. He published the most lying stories to explain his conduct, and to show the world that he had good reasons for destroying the French congregation of Chicago, and trying the same experiment on St. Anne.

In order to refute his false statements, and to show more clearly to the whole world the reason I had, as a Catholic priest, to resist him, I addressed the following letter to his lordship:

ST. ANNE, KANKAKEE COUNTY, ILLS.,

September 25, 1856.

“RT. REV’D O’REGAN:—You seem to be surprised that I have offered the holy sacrifice of mass since our last interview. Here are some of my reasons for so doing.

“1st. You have not suspended me; far from it, you have given me fifteen days to consider what I should do, threatening only to interdict me after that time, if I would not obey your orders.

“2nd. If you have been so ill-advised as to suspend me, for the crime of telling you that my intention was to live the live of a retired priest in my little colony, sooner than be exiled at my age, your sentence is ridiculous and null; and if you were as expert in the jure Canonico as in the art of pocketing our money, you would know that you are yourself suspended ipso facto for a year, and that I have nothing to fear or to expect from you now.

“3rd. When I bowed down before the altar of Jesus Christ, twenty-four years ago, to receive the priesthood, my intention was to be the minister of the Catholic Church, but not a slave of a lawless tyrant.

“4th. Remember the famous words of Tertullian, ‘Nimia potestas, nulla potestas.’ For the sake of peace, I have, with many others, tolerated your despotism till now; but my patience is at an end, and for the sake of our holy church, which you are destroying, I am determined with many to oppose an insurmountable wall to your tyranny.

“5th. I did not come here, you know well, as an ordinary missionary; but I got from your predecessor the permission to form a colony of my emigrating countrymen. I was not sent here in 1851 to take care of any congregation. It was a complete wilderness; but I was sent to form a colony of Catholics. I planted my cross in a wilderness. In a great part, with my own money, I have built a chapel, a college and a female academy. I have called from everywhere my countrymen—nine-tenths of them came here only to live with me, and because I had the pledged word of my bishop to do that work. And as long as I live the life of a good priest I deny you the right to forbid me to remain in my colony which wants my help and my presence.

“6th. You have never shown me your authority (but once) except in the most tyrannical way. But now, seeing that the more humble I am before you, the more insolent you grow, I have taken the resolution to stand by my rights as a Catholic priest and as an American citizen.

“7th. You remember, that in our second interview you forbade me to have the good preceptors we have now for our children, and you turned into ridicule the idea I had to call them from Canada. Was that the act of a bishop or of a mean despot?

“8th. A few days after you ordered me to live on good terms with R. R. LeBelle and Carthavel, though you were well acquainted with their scandalous lives, and twice you threatened me with suspension for refusing to become a friend of those two rogues! And you have so much made a fool of yourself before the four gentlemen I sent to you to be the witnesses of your iniquity and my innocence, that you have acknowledged before them that one of your principal reasons for turning me out of my colony was, that I had not been able to keep peace with three priests whom you acknowledged to be depraved and unworthy priests! Is not that surpassing wickedness and tyranny of anything recorded in the blackest pages of the most daring tyrants? You want to punish by exile a gentleman and a good priest, because he cannot agree to become the friend of two public rogues! I thank you, Bishop O’Regan, to have made that public confession in the presence of unimpeachable witnesses. I do not want to advise you to be hereafter very prudent in what you intend to do against the reputation and character of the priest of St. Anne. If you continue to denounce me as you have done since a few weeks, and to tell the people what you think fit against me, I have awful things to publish of your injustice and tyranny.

“As Judas sold our Saviour to his enemies, so you have sold me to my enemy of L’Erable. But be certain that you shall not deliver up your victim as you like.

“For withdrawing a suit which you have incited against my honor and which you shall certainly lose, you drag me out from my home and order me to the land of exile, and you cover that iniquity with the appearance of zeal for the public peace, just as Pilate delivered his victim into the hands of their enemies to make peace with them.

“Shame on you, Bishop O’Regan! For the sake of God, do not oblige me to reveal to the world what I know against you. Do not oblige me, in self-defence, to strike, in you, my merciless persecutor. If you have no pity for me, have pity on yourself, and on the church which that coming struggle will so much injure.

“It is not enough for you to have so badly treated my poor countrymen of Chicago—your hatred against the French Canadians cannot be satisfied except when you have taken away from them the only consolation they have in this land of exile—to possess in their midst a priest of their own nation whom they love and respect as a father! My poor countrymen of Chicago, with many hard sacrifices, had built a fine church for themselves and a house for their priest. You have taken their church from their hands and given it to the Irish; you have sold the house of their priests, after turning him out; and what have you done with the $1,500 you got as its price? Public rumor says that you are employing that money to support the most unjust and infamous suit against one of their priests. Continue a little longer, and you may be sure that the cursing of my poor countrymen against you will be heard in heaven and that the God of Justice will give them an avenger!

“You have, at three different times, threatened to interdict and excommunicate me if I would not give you my little personal properties! and as many times you have said in my teeth, that I was a bad priest, because I refused to act according to your rapacious tyranny!

“The impious Ahab, murdering Naboth to get his fields, is risen from the dead in your person. You cannot kill my body, since I am protected by the glorious flag of the United States; but you do worse, you try to destroy my honor and my character, which are dearer to me than my life. In a moral way you give my blood to be licked by your dogs. But remember the words of the prophet to Ahab, ‘In this place where the dogs have licked the blood of Naboth, they shall lick thy blood also.’ For every false witness you shall bring against me, I shall have a hundred unimpeachable ones against you. Thousands and thousands of religious Irish, and generous Germans, and liberty and fair-play-loving French Canadians, will help me in that struggle. I do not address you these words as a threat, but as a friendly warning.

“Keep quiet, my lord; do not let yourself be guided by your quick temper; do not be so free in the use of suspense and interdicts. These terrible arms are two-edged swords, which very often hurt more the imprudent who make use of them than those whom they intend to strike.

“I wish to live in peace with you. I take my God to witness, that to this day I have done everything to keep peace with you. But the peace I want is the peace which St. Jerome speaks of when, writing to his bishop, he tells him:

“‘It is no use to speak of peace with the lips, if we destroy it with our works. It is a very different way to work for peace, from trying to submit every one to an abject slavery. We, also, want peace. Not only we desire it, but we implore you instantly to give it. However, the peace we want is the peace of Christ—a true peace, a peace without hatred, a peace which is not a masked war, a peace which is not to crush enemies, but a peace which unites friends.

“‘How can we call that peace which is nothing but tyranny? Why should we not call everything by its proper name? Let us call hatred—what is hatred. And let us say that peace reigns only when a true love exists. We are not the authors of the troubles and divisions which exist in the church. A father must love his children. A bishop, as well as a father, must wish to be loved, but not feared. The old proverb says, One hates whom he fears, and we naturally wish for the death of the one we hate. If you do not try to crush the religious men under your power they will submit themselves to your authority. Offer them the kiss of love and peace and they will obey you. But liberty refuses to yield as soon as you try to crush it down. The best way to be obeyed by a free man is not to deal with him as with a slave. We know the laws of the church, and we do not ignore the rights which belong to every man. We have learned many things, not only from experience, but also from the study of books. The king who strikes his subjects with an iron rod, or who thinks that his fingers must be heavier than his father’s hand, has soon destroyed the kingdom even of the peaceful and mild David. The people of Rome refused to bear the yoke of their proud king.

“‘We have left our country in order to live in peace. In this solitude our intention was to respect the authority of the pontiffs of Christ (we mean those who teach the true faith). We want to respect them not as our masters, but as our fathers. Our intention was to respect them as bishops, not as usurpers and tyrants who want to reduce us to slavery by the abuse of their power. We are not so vain as to ignore what is due to the priests of Christ, for to receive them is to receive the very one whose bishops they are. But let them be satisfied with the respect which is due to them. Let them remember that they are fathers, not masters of those who have given up everything in order to enjoy the privileges of a peaceful solitude. May Christ who is our mighty God grant that we should be united not by a false peace, but by a true and loyal love, lest that by biting each other we destroy each other.’

[Letter of St. Jerome to his bishop.]

“You have a great opinion of the episcopal power, and so have I. But St. Paul and all the Holy Fathers that I have read, have also told us many things of the dignity of the priest (alter Christus Sacerdos). I am your brother and equal in many things; do not forget it. I know my dignity as a man and a priest, and I shall sooner lose my life than to surrender them to any man, even a bishop. If you think you can deal with me as a carter with his horse, drawing him where he likes, you will soon see your error.

“I neither drink strong wines nor smoke, and the many hours that others spend in emptying their bottles and smoking their pipes, I read my dear books—I study the admirable laws of the church and the Gospel of Christ. I love my books and the holy laws of our church, because they teach me my rights as well as my duties. They tell me that many years ago a general council, which is something above you, has annulled your unjust sentence, and brought upon your head the very penalty you intended to impose upon me. They tell me that any sentence from you coming (from your own profession) from bad and criminal motives, is null, and will fall powerless at my feet.

“But I tell you again, that I desire to live in peace with you. The false reports of LeBelle and Carthevel have disturbed that peace; but it is still in your power to have it for yourself and give it to me. I am sure that the sentence you say you have preferred against me comes from a misunderstanding, and your wisdom and charity, if you can hear their voice, can very easily set everything as it was two months ago. It is still in your power to have a warm friend, or an immovable adversary in Kankakee County. It would be both equitable and honorable in you to extinguish the fires of discord which you have so unfortunately enkindled, by drawing back a sentence which you would never have preferred if you had not been deceived. You would be blessed by the Church of Illinois, and particularly by the 10,000 French Canadians who surround me, and are ready to support me at all hazards.

“Do not be angry from the seeming harsh words which you find in this letter. Nobody, but I, could tell you these sad truths, though every one of your priests, and particularly those who flatter you the most, repeat them every day.

“By kind and honest proceedings you can get everything from me, even the last drop of my blood; but you will find me an immovable rock if you approach me as you have already done (but once) with insult and tyrannical threats.

“You have not been ordained a bishop to rule over us according to your fancy, but you have the eternal laws of justice and equity to guide you. You have the laws of the church to obey as well as her humblest child, and as soon as you do anything against these imperishable laws you are powerless to obtain your object. It is not only lawful, but a duty to resist you. When you strike without a legitimate or a canonical cause; when you try to take away my character to please some of your friends; when you order me to exile to stop a suit which you are exciting against me; when you punish me for the crime of refusing to obey the orders you gave me to be the friend of three public rogues; when you threaten me with excommunication, because I do not give you my little personal properties, I have nothing to fear from your interdicts and excommunication.

“What a sad lot for me, and what a shame for you, if by your continual attacks at the door of our churches or in the public press, you oblige me to expose your injustice. It is yet time for you to avoid that. Instead of striking me like an outcast, come and give me the paternal hand of charity, instead of continuing that fratricidal combat, come and heal the wounds you have made and already received. Instead of insulting me by driving me away from my colony to the land of exile, come and bless the great work I have begun here for the glory of God and the good of my people. Instead of destroying the college and the female academy, for the erection of which I have expended my last cent, and whose teachers are fed at my table, come and bless the three hundred little children who are daily attending our schools.

“Instead of sacrificing me to the hatred of my enemies, come and strengthen my heart against their fury.

“I tell you again, that no consideration whatever will induce me to surrender my right as a Catholic priest and as an American citizen. By the first title you cannot interdict me, as long as I am a good priest, for the crime of wishing to live in my colony and among my people. By the second title, you cannot turn me out from my home.

“C. CHINIQUY.”

It was the first time that a Roman Catholic priest, with his whole people, had dared to speak such language to a Bishop of Rome on this continent. Never yet had the unbearable tyranny of those haughty men received such a public rebuke. Our fearless words fell as a bombshell in the camp of the Roman Catholic hierarchy of America.

With very few exceptions, the press of the State of Illinois, whose columns had so often echoed the cries of indignation raised everywhere against the tyranny of Bishop O’Regan, took sides with me. Hundreds of priests, not only from Illinois, but from every corner of the United States, addressed their warmest thanks to me for the stand I had taken, and asked me, in the name of God and for the honor of the church, not to yield an inch of my rights. Many promised to support us at the court of Rome, by writing themselves to the Pope, to denounce not only the Bishop of Illinois, but several others, who, though not so openly bad, were yet trampling under their feet the most sacred rights of the priests and the people. Unfortunately those priests gave me a saddening knowledge of their cowardice by putting in their letters “absolutely confidential.” They all promised to help me when I was storming the strong fortress of the enemy, provided I would go alone in the gap, and that they would keep themselves behind thick walls, far from shot and shell.

However, this did not disturb me, for my God knows it, my trust was not in my own strength, but in his protection. I was sure that I was in the right, that the Gospel of Christ was on my side, that all the canons and laws of the councils were in my favor.

My library was filled with the best books on the canons and laws passed in the great councils of my church. It was written in big letters in the celebrated work, “Histoire du droit canonique.” There is no arbitrary power in the Church of Christ,—Vol. iii., page 139.

The Council of Augsburg, held in 1548 (Can. 24), had declared that, “no sentence of excommunication will be passed, except for great crimes.”

The Pope St. Gregory had said: “That censures are null when not inflicted for great sins or for faults which have not been clearly proved.”

“An unjust excommunication does not bind before God those against whom it has been hushed. But it injures only the one who has proffered it.”—Eccl. Laws, by Hericourt, c. xxii., No. 50.

“If an unjust sentence is pronounced against any one, he must not pay any attention to it; for, before God and his Church, an unjust sentence cannot injure anybody. Let, then, that person do nothing to get such an unjust sentence repealed, for it cannot injure him.”—St. Gelace—The Pope—(Canoni bin est.)

The canonists conclude, from all the laws of the church on that matter, “That if a priest is unjustly interdicted or excommunicated he may continue to officiate without any fear of becoming irregular.”—Eccl. Laws, by Hericourt, c. xxii., No. 51.

Protected by these laws, and hundreds of others too long to enumerate, which my church had passed in every age, strengthened by the voice of my conscience, which assured me that I had done nothing to deserve to be interdicted or excommunicated; sure, besides, of the testimony brought by our four delegates that the bishop himself had declared that I was one of his best priests, that he wanted to give me my letters to go and perform the functions of my ministry in Kahokia: above all, knowing the unanimous will of my people that I should remain with them and continue the great and good work so providentially trusted to me in my colony, and regarding this as an indication of the divine will, I determined to remain, in spite of the Bishop of Chicago. All the councils of my church were telling me that he had no power to injure me, and that all his official acts were null.

But if he were spiritually powerless against me, it was not so in temporal matters. His power and his desire to injure us had increased with his hatred, since he had read our letters and seen them in all the papers of Chicago.

The first thing he did was to reconcile himself to the priest LeBelle, whom he had turned out ignominiously from his diocese some time before. That priest had since that obtained a fine situation in the diocese of Michigan. He invited him to his palace, and petted him several days. I felt that the reconciliation of those two men meant nothing good for me. But my hope was, more than ever, that the merciful God who had protected me so many times against them, would save me again from their machinations. The air was, however, filled with the strangest rumors against me. It was said everywhere that Mr. LeBelle was to bring such charges against my character that I would be sent to the penitentiary.

What were the new iniquities to be laid to my charge? No one could tell. But the few partisans and friends of the bishop, Messrs. LeBelle and Spink, were jubilant and sure that I was to be forever destroyed.

At last, the time arrived when the Sheriff of Kankakee had to drag me again as a criminal and a prisoner to Urbana, and deliver me into the hands of the sheriff of that city. I arrived here on the 20th of October, with my lawyers, Messrs. Osgood and Paddock, and a dozen witnesses. Mr. Abraham Lincoln had preceded me only by a few minutes from Springfield. He was in the company of Judge David Davis, since Vice-President of the United States, when I met him.

The jury having been selected and sworn, the Rev. Mr. LeBelle was the first witness called to testify and say what he knew against my character.

Mr. Lincoln objected to that kind of testimony, and tried to prove that Mr. Spink had no right to bring his new suit against me by attacking my character. But Judge Davis ruled that the prosecution had that right in the case that was before him. Mr. LeBelle had, then, full liberty to say anything he wanted, and he availed himself of his privilege. His testimony lasted nearly an hour, and was too long to be given here. I will only say that he began by declaring that “Chiniquy was one of the vilest men of the day—that every kind of bad rumors were constantly circulating against him.” He gave a good number of those rumors, though he could not positively swear if they were founded on truth or not, for he had not investigated them. But he said there was one of which he was sure, for he had authenticated it thoroughly. He expressed a great deal of apparent regret that he was forced to reveal to the world such things which were not only against the honor of Chiniquy, but, to some extent, involved the good name of a dear sister, Madame Bosse. But as he was to speak the truth before God, he could not help it—the sad truth must be told. “Mr. Chiniquy,” he said, “had attempted to do the most infamous things with my own sister, Madame Bosse. She herself has told me the whole story under oath, and she would be here to unmask the wicked man to-day before the whole world, if she were not forced to silence, at home, from a severe illness.”

Though every word of that story was a perjury, there was such a color of truth and sincerity in my accuser, that his testimony fell upon me and my lawyers and all my friends as a thunderbolt. A man who has never heard such a calumny brought against him before a jury in a court-house packed with people, composed of friends and foes, will never understand what I felt in this the darkest hour of my life. My God only knows the weight and the bitterness of the waves of desolation which then passed over my soul.

After that testimony was given, there was a lull, and a most profound silence in the court-room. All the eyes were turned upon me, and I heard many voices speaking of me, whispering, “The villain!” Those voices passed through my soul as poisoned arrows. Though innocent, I wished that the ground would open under my feet and bring me down to the darkest abysses, to conceal me from the eyes of my friends and the whole world.

However, Mr. Lincoln soon interrupted the silence by addressing to LeBelle such cross-questions that his testimony, in the minds of many, soon lost much of its power. And he did still more destroy the effect of his (LeBelle’s) false oath, when, he brought my twelve witnesses, who were among the most respectable citizens of Bourbonnais, formerly the parishioners of Mr. LeBelle. Those twelve gentlemen swore that Mr. LeBelle was such a drunkard and vicious man, that he was so publicly my enemy on account of the many rebukes I had given to his private and public vices, that they would not believe a word of what he said, even upon his oath.

At ten P. M., the court was adjourned, to meet again the next morning, and I went to the room of Mr. Lincoln with my two other lawyers, to confer about the morning’s work. My mind was unspeakably sad. Life had never been such a burden to me as in that hour. I was tempted, like Job, to curse the hour when I was born. I could see in the faces of my lawyers, though they tried to conceal it, that they were also full of anxiety.

“My dear Mr. Chiniquy,” said Mr. Lincoln, “though I hope, to-morrow, to destroy the testimony of Mr. LeBelle against you, I must concede that I see great dangers ahead. There is not the least doubt in my mind that every word he has said is a sworn lie; but my fear is that the jury thinks differently. I am a pretty good judge in these matters. I feel that our jurymen think that you are guilty. There is only one way to perfectly destroy the power of a false witness—it is by another direct testimony against what he has said, or by showing from his very lips that he has perjured himself. I failed to do that last night, though I have diminished, to a great extent, the force of his testimony. Can you not prove an alibi, or can you not bring witnesses who were there in the same house that day, who would flatly and directly contradict what your remorseless enemy has said against you?”

I answered him: “How can I try to do such a thing when they have been shrewd enough not to fix the very date of the alleged crime against me?”

“You are correct, you are perfectly correct, Mr. Chiniquy,” answered Mr. Lincoln, “as they have refused to specify the date, we cannot try that. I have never seen two such skillful rogues as those two priests! There is really a diabolical skill in the plan they have concocted for your destruction. It is evident that the bishop is at the bottom of the plot. You remember how I have forced LeBelle to confess that he was now on the most friendly terms with the Bishop of Chicago, since he has become the chief of your accusers. Though I do not give up the hope of rescuing you from the hands of your enemies, I do not like to conceal from you that I have several reasons to fear that you will be declared guilty and condemned to a heavy penalty, or to the penitentiary, though I am sure you are perfectly innocent. It is very probable that we will have to confront that sister of LeBelle tomorrow. Her sickness is probably a feint, in order not to appear here except after the brother will have prepared the public mind in her favor. At all events, if she does not come, they will send some justice of the peace to get her sworn testimony, which will be more difficult to rebut than her own verbal declarations. That woman is evidently in the hands of the bishop and her brother priest, ready to swear anything they order her, and I know nothing so difficult as to refute such female testimonies, particularly when they are absent from the court. The only way to be sure of a favorable verdict to-morrow is, that God Almighty would take our part and show your innocence! Go to Him and pray, for He alone can save you.”

Mr. Lincoln was exceedingly solemn when he addressed those words to me, and they went very deep into my soul.

I have often been asked if Abraham Lincoln had any religion but I have never had any doubt about his profound confidence in God, since I heard those words falling from his lips in that hour of anxiety. I had not been able to conceal my deep distress. Burning tears were rolling on my cheeks when he was speaking, and there was on his face the expression of friendly sympathy which I shall never forget. Without being able to say a word, I left him to go to my little room. It was nearly eleven o’clock. I locked the door and fell on my knees to pray, but I was unable to say a single word. The horrible sworn calumnies thrown at my face by a priest of my own church were ringing in my ears! my honor and my good name so cruelly and forever destroyed! all my friends and my dear people covered with an eternal confusion! and more than that, the sentence of condemnation which was probably to be hurled against me the next day in the presence of the whole country, whose eyes were upon me! All those things were before me, not only as horrible phantoms, but as heavy mountains, under the burdens of which I could not breathe. At last the fountains of tears were opened, and it relieved me to weep; I could then speak and cry: “Oh! my God! have mercy upon me! thou knowest my innocence! hast thou not promised that those who trust in thee cannot perish! Oh! do not let me perish, when Thou art the only One in whom I trust! Come to my help! Save me!”

From eleven P. M., to three in the morning I cried to God, and raised my supplicating hands to his throne of mercy. But I confess to my confusion, it seemed to me in certain moments, that it was useless to pray and to cry, for though innocent, I was doomed to perish. I was in the hands of my enemies. My God had forsaken me!

What an awful night I spent! I hope none of my readers will ever know by their own experience the agony of spirit I endured. I had no other expectation than to be forever dishonored, and sent to the penitentiary next morning!

But God had not forsaken me! He had again heard my cries, and was, once more, to show me His infinite mercy!

At three o’clock A. M., I heard three knocks at my door, and I quickly went to open it. “Who was there? Abraham Lincoln, with a face beaming with joy!”

I could hardly believe my eyes. But I was not mistaken. It was my noble-hearted friend, the most honest lawyer of Illinois!—one of the noblest men Heaven has ever given to earth! It was Abraham Lincoln, who had been given me as my Saviour! On seeing me bathed with tears, he exclaimed, “Cheer up, Mr. Chiniquy, I have the perjured priests in my hands. Their diabolical plot is all known, and if they do not fly away before the dawn of day, they will surely be lynched. Bless the Lord, you are saved!”

The sudden passage of extreme desolation to an extreme joy came near killing me. I felt as suffocated, and unable to utter a single word. I took his hand, pressed it to my lips, and bathed it with tears of joy. I said: “May God forever bless you, dear Mr. Lincoln. But please tell me how you can bring me such glorious news!”

Here is the simple but marvellous story, as told me by that great and good man, whom God had made the messenger of his mercies towards me:

“As soon as LeBelle had given his perjured testimony against you yesterday,” said Mr. Lincoln, “one of the agents of the Chicago press telegraphed to some of the principal papers of Chicago: ‘It is probable that Mr. Chiniquy will be condemned; for the testimony of the Rev. Mr. LeBelle seems to leave no doubt that he is guilty.’ And the little Irish boys, to sell their papers, filled the streets with the cries: ‘Chiniquy will be hung! Chiniquy will be hung!’ The Roman Catholics were so glad to hear that, that ten thousand extra copies have been sold. Among those who bought those papers was a friend of yours, called Terrien, who went to his wife and told her that you were to be condemned, and when the woman heard that, she said, ‘It is too bad, for I know Mr. Chiniquy is not guilty.’

“‘How do you know that?’ said her husband. She answered: ‘I was there when the priest LeBelle made the plot, and promised to give his sister two-eighties of good land if she would swear a false oath—and accuse him of a crime which that woman said he had not even thought of with her.’

“‘If it be so,’ said Terrien, ‘we cannot allow Mr. Chiniquy to be condemned. Come with me to Urbana.’

“But that woman being quite unwell, said to her husband, ‘You know well I cannot go; but Miss Philomene Moffat was with me then. She knows every particular of that wicked plot as well as I do. She is well; go and take her to Urbana. There is no doubt that her testimony will prevent the condemnation of Mr. Chiniquy.’

“Narcisse Terrien started immediately: and when you were praying God to come to your help, He was sending your deliverer at the full speed of the railroad cars. Miss Moffat has just given me the details of that diabolical plot. I have advised her not to show herself before the Court is opened. I will, then, send for her, and when she will have given, under oath, before the Court, the details she has just given me, I pity Spink with his perjured priests. As I told you, I would not be surprised if they were lynched: for there is a terrible excitement in town among many people who from the beginning, suspect that the priests have perjured themselves to destroy you.

“Now your suit is gained, and to-morrow, you will have the greatest triumph a man ever got over his confounded foes. But you are in need of a rest as well as myself. Good-bye.”

After thanking God for that marvellous deliverance, I went to bed and took the needed rest.

But what was the priest LeBelle doing in that very moment? Unable to sleep after the awful perjury he had just made, he had watched the arrival of the trains from Chicago with an anxious mind, for he was aware through the confessions he had heard, that there were two persons in that city who knew his plot and his false oath; and though he had the promises from them that they would never reveal it to anybody, he was not without some fearful apprehensions that I might, by some way or other, become acquainted with his abominable conspiracy. Not long after the arrival of the trains from Chicago, he came down from his room to see in the book where travelers register their names, if there was any newcomers from Chicago, and what was his dismay when he saw the first name entered was “Philomene Moffat!” That very name, Philomene Moffat, who some time before, had gone to confess to him that she had heard the whole plot from his own lips, when he had promised 160 acres of land to persuade his sister to perjure herself in order to destroy me. A deadly presentiment chilled the blood in his veins! “Would it be possible that this girl is here to reveal and prove my perjury before the world?”

He immediately sent for her, when she was just coming from meeting Mr. Lincoln.

“Miss Philomene Moffat here!” he exclaimed, when he saw her. “What are you coming here for, this night?” he said.

“You will know it, sir, to-morrow morning,” she answered

“Ah! wretched girl! you come to destroy me?” he exclaimed.

She replied: “I do not come to destroy you, for you are already destroyed. Mr. Lincoln knows everything.”

“Oh! my God! my God!” he exclaimed, striking his forehead with his hands. Then taking a big bundle of bank notes, from his pocket-book, he said: “Here are one hundred dollars for you, if you take the morning train and go back to Chicago.”

“If you would offer me as much gold as this house could contain, I would not go,” she replied.

He then left her abruptly, ran to the sleeping-room of Spink, and told him: “Withdraw your suit against Chiniquy; we are lost; he knows all.”

Without losing a moment, he went to the sleeping-room of his co-priest, and told him: “Make haste—dress yourself and let us take the morning train; we have no business here, Chiniquy knows all our secrets.”

When the hour of opening the court came, there was an immense crowd, not only inside, but outside its walls. Mr. Spink, pale as a man condemned to death, rose before the Judge, and said: “Please the court, allow me to withdraw my prosecution against Mr. Chiniquy. I am now persuaded that he is not guilty of the faults brought against him before this tribunal.”

Abraham Lincoln, having accepted that reparation in my name, made a short, but one of the most admirable speeches I had ever heard, on the cruel injustices I had suffered from my merciless persecutors, and denounced the rascality of the priests who had perjured themselves, with such terrible colors, that it had been very wise on their part to fly away and disappear before the opening of the court. For the whole city was ransacked for them by hundreds, who blamed me for forgiving them and refusing to have my revenge for the wrong they had done me. But I thought that my enemies were sufficiently punished by the awful public disclosures of their infernal plot. It seemed that the dear Saviour who had so visibly protected me, was to be obeyed, when he was whispering in my soul, “Forgive them and love them as thyself.”

Was not Spink sufficiently punished by the complete ruin which was brought upon him by the loss of the suit? For having gone to Bishop O’Regan to be indemnified for the enormous expenses of such a long prosecution, at such a distance, the bishop coldly answered him: “I had promised to indemnify you if you would put Chiniquy down, as you promised me. But as it is Chiniquy who has put you down, I have not a cent to give you.”

Abraham Lincoln had not only defended me with the zeal and talent of the ablest lawyer I have ever known, but as the most devoted and noblest friend I ever had. After giving more than a year of his precious time to my defense, when he had pleaded during two long sessions of the Court of Urbana, without receiving a cent from me, I considered that I was owing him a great sum of money. My other two lawyers, who had not done the half of his work, asked me a thousand dollars each, and I had not thought that too much. After thanking him for the inappreciable services he had rendered me, I requested him to show me his bill, assuring him that, though I would not be able to pay the whole cash, I would pay him to the last cent, if he had the kindness to wait a little for the balance.

He answered me with a smile and an air of inimitable kindness, which was peculiar to him:

“My dear Mr. Chiniquy, I feel proud and honored to have been called to defend you. But I have done it less as a lawyer than as a friend. The money I should receive from you would take away the pleasure I feel at having fought your battle. Your case is unique in my whole practice. I have never met a man so cruelly persecuted as you have been, and who deserves it so little. Your enemies are devils incarnate. The plot they had concocted against you is the most hellish one I ever knew. But the way you have been saved from their hand, the appearance of that young and intelligent Miss Moffat, who was really sent by God in the very hour of need, when, I confess it again, I thought everything was nearly lost, is one of the most extraordinary occurrences I ever saw. It makes me remember what I have too often forgotten, and what my mother often told me when young—that our God is a prayer-hearing God. This good thought, sown into my young heart by that dear mother’s hand, was just in my mind when I told you, ‘Go and pray, God alone can save you.’ But I confess to you that I had not faith enough to believe that your prayer would be so quickly and so marvellously answered by the sudden appearance of that interesting young lady, last night. Now let us speak of what you owe me. Well!—Well!—how much do you owe me? You owe me nothing! for I suppose you are quite ruined. The expenses of such a suit, I know, must be enormous. Your enemies want to ruin you. Will I help them to finish your ruin, when I hope I have the right to be put among the most sincere and devoted of your friends?”

“You are right,” I answered him; “you are the most devoted and noblest friend God ever gave me, and I am nearly ruined by my enemies. But you are the father of a pretty large family; you must support them. Your traveling expenses in coming, twice, here for me from Springfield; your hotel bills during the two terms you have defended me, must be very considerable. It is not just that you should receive nothing in return for such work and expenses.”

“Well! well!” he answered, “I will give you a promissory note which you will sign.” Taking then a small piece of paper, he wrote:

He handed me the note, saying, “Can you sign that?”

After reading it, I said, “Dear Mr. Lincoln, this is a joke. It is not possible that you ask only fifty dollars for services which are worth at least two thousand dollars.”

He then tapped me with the right hand on the shoulders and said: “Sign that; it is enough. I will pinch some rich man for that and make them pay the rest of the bill,” and he laughed outright.

When Abraham Lincoln was writing the due-bill, the relaxation of the great strain upon my mind, and the great kindness of my benefactor and defender in charging me so little for such a service, and the terrible presentiment that he would pay with his life what he had done for me, caused me to break into sobs and tears.

As Mr. Lincoln had finished writing the due bill, he turned round to me, and said, “Father Chiniquy, what are you crying for? ought you not to be the most happy man alive? you have beaten your enemies and gained the most glorious victory, and you will come out of all your troubles in triumph.”

“Dear Mr. Lincoln,” I answered, “allow me to tell you that the joy I should naturally feel for such a victory is destroyed in my mind by the fear of what it may cost you. There were, then, in the crowd, not less than ten or twelve Jesuits from Chicago and St. Louis, who came to hear my sentence of condemnation to the penitentiary. But it was on their heads that you have brought the thunders of heaven and earth! nothing can be compared to the expression of their rage against you, when you not only wrenched me from their cruel hands, but you were making the walls of the court-house tremble under the awful and superhumanly eloquent denunciation of their infamy, diabolical malice, and total want of Christian and human principle, in the plot they had formed for my destruction. What troubles my soul, just now, and draws my tears, is that it seems to me that I have read your sentence of death in their bloody eyes. How many other noble victims have already fallen at their feet!”

He tried to divert my mind, at first, with a joke, “Sign this,” said he, “It will be my warrant of death.”

But after I had signed, he became more solemn, and said, “I know that Jesuits never forget nor forsake. But man must not care how and where he dies, provided he dies at the post of honor and duty,” and he left me.

Here is the sworn declaration of Miss Philomene Moffat, now Mrs. Philomene Schwartz:

State of Illinois,} s.s. Cook County }

“Philomene Schwartz being first duly sworn, deposes and says: That she is of the age of forty-three years, and resides at 484 Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago; that her maiden name was Philomene Moffat, that she knew Father LeBelle, the Roman Catholic priest of the French Catholics of Chicago during his lifetime, and knows Rev. Father Chiniquy; that about the month of May, A. D. 1854, in company with Miss Eugenia Bossey, the housekeeper of her uncle, the Rev’d Mr. LeBelle, who was then living at the parsonage on Clark street, Chicago, while we were sitting in the room of Miss Bossey, the Rev. Mr. LeBelle was talking with his sister, Mrs. Bossey, in the adjoining room, not suspecting that we were there hearing his conversation, through the door, which was partly opened; though we could neither see him nor his sister, we heard every word of what they said together, the substance of which is as follows—Rev. Mr. LeBelle said in substance, to Mrs. Bossey, his sister:

“‘You know that Mr. Chiniquy is a dangerous man, and he is my enemy, having already persuaded several of my congregation to settle in his colony. You must help me to put him down, by accusing him of having tried to do a criminal action with you.’

“Madame Bossey answered: ‘I cannot say such a thing against Mr. Chiniquy, when I know it is absolutely false.’

“Rev. M. LeBelle replied: ‘If you refuse to comply with my request, I will not give you the one hundred and sixty acres of land I intended to give you; you will live and die poor.’

“Madame Bossey answered: ‘I prefer never to have that land, and I like better to live and die poor, than to perjure myself to please you.’

“The Rev. Mr. LeBelle, several times, urged his sister, Mrs. Bossey, to comply with his desires, but she refused. At last, weeping and crying, she said: ‘I prefer never to have an inch of land than to damn my soul for swearing to a falsehood.’

“The Rev. Mr. LeBelle then said:

“‘Mr. Chiniquy will destroy our holy religion and our people if we do not destroy him. If you think that the swearing I ask you to do is a sin, you will come to confess to me, and I will pardon it in the absolution I will give you.’

“‘Have you the power to forgive a false oath?’ replied Mrs. Bossey to her brother, the priest.

“‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘I have that power; for Christ has said to all his priests, “What you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and what you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”’

“Mrs. Bossey then said: ‘If you promise that you will forgive that false oath, and if you give me the one hundred and sixty acres of land you promised, I will do what you want.’

“The Rev’d Mr. LeBelle then said: ‘All right!’ I could not hear any more of that conversation, for in that instant Miss Eugenia Bossey, who had kept still and silent with us, made some noise and shut the door.

“Affiant further states: That some time later I went to confess to Rev. Mr. LeBelle, and I told him that I had lost confidence in him, He asked me why? I answered: ‘I lost my confidence in you since I heard your conversation with your sister, when you tried to persuade her to perjure herself in order to destroy Father Chiniquy.’

“Affiant further says: “That in the month of October, A. D. 1856, the Rev’d Mr. Chiniquy had to defend himself, before the civil and criminal court of Urbana, Illinois, in an action brought against him by Peter Spink; some one wrote from Urbana to a paper of Chicago, that Father Chiniquy was probably to be condemned. The paper which published that letter was much read by the Roman Catholics, who were glad to hear that that priest was to be punished. Among those who read that paper was Narcisse Terrien. He had lately been married to Miss Sara Chaussey, who told him that Father Chiniquy was innocent; that she was present with me when Rev’d LeBelle prepared the plot with his sister, Mrs. Bossey, and had promised her a large piece of land if she would swear falsely against Father Chiniquy. Mr. Narcisse Terrien wanted to go with his wife to the help of Father Chiniquy, but she was unwell and could not go. He came to ask me if I remembered well the conversation of Rev’d Mr. LeBelle, and if I would consent to go to Urbana to expose the whole plot before the court, and I consented.

“We started that same evening for Urbana, where we arrived late at night. I immediately met Mr. Abraham Lincoln, one of the lawyers of Father Chiniquy, and told him all that I knew about the plot.

“That very same night the Rev’d Mr. LeBelle, having seen my name on the hotel register, came to me much excited and troubled, and said, ‘Philomene, what are you here for?’

“I answered him, ‘I cannot exactly tell you that; but you will probably know it tomorrow at the court-house!’

“‘Oh, wretched girl!’ he exclaimed, ‘you have come to destroy me.’

“‘I do not come to destroy you,’ I replied, ‘for you are already destroyed!’

“Then drawing from his portmonnaie-book a big bundle of bank-notes, which he said was worth one hundred dollars, he said: ‘I will give you all this money if you will leave by the morning train and go back to Chicago.’

“I answered him: ‘Though you would offer me as much gold as this room can contain, I cannot do what you ask.’

“He then seemed exceedingly distressed, and he disappeared. The next morning Peter Spink requested the court to allow him to withdraw his accusations against Father Chiniquy, and to stop his prosecutions, having, he said, found out that he, Father Chiniquy, was innocent of the things brought against him, and his request was granted. Then the innocence and honesty of Father Chiniquy was acknowledged by the court after it had been proclaimed by Abraham Lincoln, who was afterwards elected President of the United States.

“(Signed) PHILOMENE SCHWARTZ.[F]

“I, Stephen R. Moore, a Notary Public in the County of Kankakee, in the State of Illinois, and duly authorized by law to administer oaths, do hereby certify that, on this 21st day of October, A. D. 1881, Philomene Schwartz personally appeared before me, and made oath that the above affidavit by her subscribed is true, as therein stated. In witness whereto, I have hereunto set my hand and notarial seal.

“STEPHEN R. MOORE,

“Notary Public.”

-----

Footnote F:

That lady is still living, 1886, and at the head of one of the most respectable families of Chicago, residing at 482 Milwaukee Avenue.

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Chapter LIX

MOMENT OF INTERRUPTION IN THE THREAD OF MY “FIFTY YEARS IN THE CHURCH OF ROME,” TO SEE HOW MY SAD PREVISIONS ABOUT MY DEFENDER, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, WERE TO BE REALIZED—ROME THE IMPLACABLE ENEMY OF THE UNITED STATES—SHE WANTS TO CONQUER AND RULE THEM, IN ORDER TO DESTROY ALL THEIR RIGHTS, PRIVILEGES AND LIBERTIES.

When it became evident, in 1851, that my plan of forming a grand colony of Roman Catholic French-speaking people on the prairies of Illinois was to be a success, D’Arcy McGee, then editor of The Freeman’s Journal, official journal of the Bishop of New York, wrote me to know my views, and immediately determined to put himself at the head of a similar enterprise in behalf of the Irish Roman Catholics. He published several able articles to show that the Irish people, with very few exceptions, were demoralized, degraded and kept poor, around their groggeries, and showed how they would thrive, become respectable and rich, if they could be induced to exchange their grog shops for the fertile lands of the west. Through his influence, a large assembly, principally composed of priests, to which I was invited, met at Buffalo, in the spring of 1852. But what was his disappointment, when he saw that the greatest part of those priests were sent by the Bishops of the United States to oppose and defeat his plans!

He vainly spoke with a burning eloquence for his pet scheme. The majority coldly answered him: “We are determined, like you, to take possession of the United States and rule them; but we cannot do that without acting secretly and with the utmost wisdom. If our plans are known, they will surely be defeated. What does a skillful general do when he wants to conquer a country? Does he scatter his soldiers over the farm lands, and spend their time and energy in ploughing the fields and sowing grain? No! He keeps them well united around his banners, and marches at their head, to the conquest of the strongholds, the rich and powerful cities. The farming countries then submit and become the price of his victory, without moving a finger to subdue them. So it is with us. Silently and patiently, we must mass our Roman Catholics in the great cities of the United States, remembering that the vote of a poor journeyman, though he be covered with rags, has as much weight in the scale of power as the millionaire Astor, and that if we have two votes against his one, he will become as powerless as an oyster. Let us, then, multiply our votes; let us call our poor but faithful Irish Catholics from every corner of the world, and gather them into the very hearts of those proud citadels which the Yankees are so rapidly building under the names of Washington, New York, Boston, Chicago, Buffalo, Albany, Troy, Cincinnati, etc. Under the shadows of those great cities, the Americans consider themselves as a giant and unconquerable race. They look upon the poor Irish Catholic people with supreme contempt, as only fit to dig their canals, sweep their streets and work in their kitchens. Let no one awake those sleeping lions, to-day. Let us pray God that they may sleep and dream their sweet dreams, a few years more. How sad will their awakening be, when with our outnumbering votes, we will turn them, forever, from every position of honor, power and profit! What will those hypocritical and godless sons and daughters of the fanatical Pilgrim Fathers say, when not a single judge, not a single teacher, not a single policeman, will be elected if he be not a devoted Irish Roman Catholic? What will those so-called giants think of their matchless shrewdness and ability, when not a single Senator or member of Congress will be chosen, if he be not submitted to our holy father, the Pope? What a sad figure those Protestant Yankees will cut when we will not only elect the President, but fill and command the armies, man the navies, and hold the keys of the public treasury? It will then be time for our faithful Irish people to give up their grog-shops, in order to become the judges and governors of the land. Then our poor and humble mechanics will leave their damp ditches and muddy streets, to rule the cities in all their departments, from the stately mansion of Mayor of New York, to the humble, though not less noble position of teacher.

“Then, yes! then, we will rule the United States, and lay them at the feet of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, that he may put an end to their godless system of education, and sweep away those impious laws of liberty of conscience, which are an insult to God and man!”

D’Arcy McGee was left almost alone when the votes were taken. From that time, the Catholic priests, with the most admirable ability and success, have gathered their Irish legions into the great cities of the United States, and the American people must be very blind indeed, if they do not see that if they do nothing to prevent it, the day is very near when the Jesuits will rule their country, from the magnificent White House at Washington, to the humblest civil and military department of this vast Republic. They are already the masters of New York, Baltimore, Chicago, St. Paul, New Orleans, Mobile, Savannah, Cincinnati, Albany, Troy, Milwaukee, St. Louis, San Francisco, etc. Yes! San Francisco, the rich, the great queen of the Pacific, is in the hands of the Jesuits!

From the very first days of the discovery of the gold mines of California, the Jesuits had the hopes of becoming masters of these inexhaustible treasures, and they secretly laid their plans, with the most profound ability and success. They saw, at once, that the great majority of the lucky miners, of every creed and nation, were going back home, as soon as they had enough to secure an honorable competence to their families. It became then evident, that of those multitudes which the thirst of gold had brought from every corner of the world, not one out of fifty would fix their homes in San Francisco. The Jesuits saw at a glance, that if they could persuade the Irish Catholics to settle and remain there, they would soon be the masters and rulers of that golden city, whose future is so bright and so great! And that scheme, worked day and night with the utmost perseverance, has been crowned with perfect success.

The consequence is, that while you find only a few Americans, Germans, Scotch and English millionaires in San Francisco, you find more than fifty Catholic Irish millionaires in that city. Its richest bank (Nevada Bank) is in their hands, and so are all the street railways. The principal offices of the city are filled with Irish Roman Catholics. Almost all the police are composed of the same class, as well as the volunteer military associations. Their compact unity, in the hands of the Jesuits, with their enormous wealth, make them almost supreme masters of the mines of California and Nevada.

When one knows the absolute, abject submission of the Irish Roman Catholics, rich or poor, to their priests; how the mind, the soul, the will, the conscience are firmly and irrevocably tied to the feet of the priests, he can easily understand that the Jesuits of the United States form one of the richest and most powerful corporations the world ever saw.

It is well known that those fifty Catholic millionaires, with their myriads of employees, are, through their wives, and by themselves, continually at the feet of the Jesuits, who swim in a golden sea.

No one, if he be not a Roman Catholic, or one of those so-called Protestants who give their daughters to the nuns, and their sons to the Jesuits to be educated, has much hopes, where the Jesuits rule, of having a lucrative office in the San Francisco to-day.

The Americans, with few exceptions, do not pay any attention to the dark cloud which is rising at their horizon, from Rome. Though that cloud is filled with rivers of tears and blood, they let it grow and rise without even caring how they will escape from the impending hurricane.

It is to San Francisco that you must go to have an idea of the number of secret and powerful organizations with which the Church of Rome prepares herself for the impending conflict, through which she hopes to destroy the schools and every vestige of human rights and liberties in the United States.

In order to more easily drill the Roman Catholics and prepare them for the irrepressible struggle, the Jesuits have organized them into a great number of secret societies, the principal of which are: Ancient Order of Hibernians, Irish American Society, Knights of St. Patrick, St. Patrick’s Cadets, St. Patrick Mutual Alliance, Apostles of Liberty, Benevolent Sons of the Emerald Isle, Knights of St. Peter, Knights of the Red Branch, Knights of the Columskill, The Sacred Heart, etc., etc.

Almost all these secret associations are military ones. They have their headquarters at San Francisco; but their rank and file are scattered all over the United States. They number 700,000 soldiers, who, under the name of United States Volunteer Militia, are officered by some of the most skillful generals and officers of this Republic.

Another fact, to which the American Protestants do not sufficiently pay attention, is that the Jesuits have been shrewd enough to have a vast majority of Roman Catholic generals and officers, to command the army and man the navy of the United States.

Rome is in constant conspiracy against the rights and liberties of man all over the world; but she is particularly so in the United States.

Long before I was ordained a priest, I knew that my church was the most implacable enemy of this Republic. My professors of philosophy, history and theology had been unanimous in telling me that the principles and laws of the Church of Rome were absolutely antagonistic to the laws and principles which are the foundation-stones of the Constitution of the United States.

1st. The most sacred principle of the United States Constitution is the equality of every citizen before the law. But the fundamental principle of the Church of Rome, is the denial of that equality.

2nd. Liberty of conscience is proclaimed by the United States, a most sacred principle which every citizen must uphold, even at the price of his blood. But liberty of conscience is declared by all the Popes and Councils of Rome, a most godless, unholy and diabolical thing, which every good Catholic must abhor and destroy, at any cost.

3rd. The American Constitution assures the absolute independence of the civil from the ecclesiastical or church power; but the Church of Rome declares, through all her Pontiffs and Councils, that such independence is an impiety and a revolt against God.

4th. The American Constitution leaves every man free to serve God according to the dictates of his conscience; but the Church of Rome declares that no man has ever had such a right, and that the Pope alone can know and say what man must believe and do.

5th. The Constitution of the United States denies the right in any body to punish any other for differing from him in religion. But the Church of Rome says that she has a right to punish with the confiscation of their goods, or the penalty of death, those who differ in faith from the Pope.

6th. The United States have established schools all over their immense territories, where they invite the people to send their children, that they may cultivate their intelligence and become good and useful citizens. But the Church of Rome has publicly cursed all these schools, and forbidden their children to attend them, under pain of excommunication in this world and damnation in the next.

7th. The Constitution of the United States is based on the principle that the people are the primary source of all civil power. But hundreds of times, the Church of Rome has proclaimed that this principle is impious and heretical. She says that “all government must rest upon the foundation of the Catholic faith; with the Pope alone as the legitimate and infallible source and interpreter of the law.”

I could cite many other things, proving that the Church of Rome is an absolute and irreconcilable enemy of the United States; but it would be too long. These are sufficient to show to the American people that Rome is a viper, which they feed and press upon their bosom. Sooner or later, that viper will bite to death and kill this Republic.

This was foretold by Lafayette, and is now promulgated by the greatest thinkers of our time.

The greatest inventor, or rather the immortal father of electric telegraphy, Samuel Morse, found it out when in Rome, and published it in 1834, in his remarkable work, “Conspiracies Against the Liberties of the United States.” The learned Dr. S. Irenæus Prime, in his life of Prof. Morse, says: “When Mr. Morse was in Italy, he became acquainted with several ecclesiastics of the Church of Rome, and he was led to believe, from what he learned from them, that a political conspiracy, under the cloak of a religious mission, was formed against the United States. When he came to Paris and enjoyed the confidence and friendship of Lafayette, he stated his convictions to the General, who fully concurred with him in the reality of such a conspiracy.”

That great statesman and patriot, the late Richard W. Thompson, Secretary of the Navy, in his admirable work, “The Papacy and the Civil Power,” says: “Nothing is plainer than that, if the principles of the Church of Rome prevail here, our constitution would necessarily fall. The two cannot exist together. They are in open and direct antagonism with the fundamental theory of our government and of all popular government everywhere.”

The eloquent Spanish orator, Castelar, speaking of his own Church of Rome, said, in 1869, “There is not a single progressive principle that has not been cursed by the Catholic Church. This is true of England and Germany, as well as all Catholic countries. The Church cursed the French Revolution, the Belgian Constitution and the Italian Independence. Not a Constitution has been born, not a step of progress made, not a solitary reform effected, which has not been under the terrific anathemas of the Church.”

But why ask the testimony of Protestants or Liberals to warn the American people against that conspiracy, when we have the public testimony of all the bishops and priests to prove it? With the most daring impudence, the Church of Rome, through her leading men, is boasting of her stern determination to destroy all the rights and privileges which have cost so much blood to the American people. Let the Americans, who have eyes to see and intelligence to understand, read the following unimpeachable documents, and judge for themselves of what will become of this country, if Rome is allowed to grow strong enough to execute her threats.

“The church is of necessity intolerant. Heresy, she endures when and where she must, but she hates it, and directs all her energies to destroy it.

“If Catholics ever gain a sufficient numerical majority in this country, religious freedom is at an end. So our enemies say, so we believe.”—The Shepherd of the Valley, official journal of the Bishop of St. Louis, Nov. 23, 1851.

“No man has a right to chose his religion. Catholicism is the most intolerant of creeds. It is intolerance itself. We might as rationally maintain that two and two does not make four, as the theory of Religious Liberty. Its impiety is only equalled by its absurdity.”—New York Freeman, official journal of Bishop Hughes, Jan. 26, 1852.

“The Church is instituted, as every Catholic who understands his religion believes, to guard and defend the right of God, against any and every enemy, at all times, in all places. She, therefore, does not, and cannot accept, or in any degree favor liberty, in the Protestant sense of liberty.”—Catholic World, April, 1870.

“The Catholic Church is the medium and channel through which the will of God is expressed. While the state has rights, she has them only in virtue and by permission of the Superior Authority, and that authority can be expressed only through the church.”—Catholic World, July, 1870.

“Protestantism has not, and never can have, any right, where Catholicity has triumphed. Therefore, we lose the breath we expend in declaiming against bigotry and intolerance and in favor of Religious Liberty, or the right of man to be of any religion as best pleases him.”—Catholic Review, June, 1865.

“Religious Liberty is merely endured until the opposite can be carried into effect without peril to the Catholic Church.”—Rt. Rev. O’Connor, Bishop of Pittsburgh.

“The Catholic Church numbers one-third the American population; and if its membership shall increase, for the next thirty years, as it has the thirty years past, in 1900, Rome will have a majority, and be bound to take this country and keep it. There is, ere long, to be a state religion in this country, and that state religion is to be the Roman Catholic.

“1st. The Roman Catholic is to wield his vote for the purpose of securing Catholic ascendancy in this country.

“2nd. All legislation must be governed by the will of God, unerringly indicated by the Pope.

“3rd. Education must be controlled by Catholic authorities, and under education, the opinions of the individual, and the utterances of the press are included, and many opinions are to be forbidden by the secular arm, under the authority of the church, even to war and bloodshed.”—Father Hecker, Catholic World, July, 1870.

“It was proposed that all religious persuasions should be free and their worship publicly exercised. But we have rejected this article as contrary to the canons and councils of the Catholic church.”—Pope Pius VII., Encyclical, 1808.

Every one knows that one of the first and most solemn acts of the present Pope Leo XIII., was to order that the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas should be taught in all the colleges, seminaries and universities of the Church of Rome throughout the whole world, as the most accurate teachings of the doctrines of his church. Well, on the 30th of Dec., 1870, I forced the Rt. Rev. Foley, Bishop of Chicago, to translate from Latin into English, before the court of Kankakee, and to swear that the following law was among those promulgated by St. Thomas as one of the present and unchangeable laws of the Church of Rome:

“Though heretics must not be tolerated because they deserve it, we must bear with them, till, by a second admonition, they may be brought back to the faith of the church. But those who after a second admonition, remain obstinate in their errors, must not only be excommunicated, but they must be delivered to the secular power to be exterminated.”—St. Thomas Acquinas Summa Theologia, vol. 4, p. 90.

After the Bishop had sworn that this was the true doctrine of the Church of Rome, expressed by St. Thomas, and taught in all the colleges, seminaries and universities of the Church of Rome, I forced him to declare, under oath, that he, and every priest of Rome, once a year, under pain of eternal damnation, is obliged to say, in the presence of God, in his Breviarum (his official prayer-book) that that doctrine was so good and holy, that every word of it has been inspired by the Holy Ghost to St. Thomas.

The same Bishop Foley was again forced by me, before the same court of Kankakee, to translate from Latin into English, the following decree of the council of Lateran, and to acknowledge, under oath, that it was as much the law of the Church of Rome to-day, as on the day it was passed, in the year 1215:

“We excommunicate and anathematize every heresy that exalts itself against the holy orthodox and Catholic faith, condemning all heretics, by whatever name they may be known, for though their faces differ, they are tied together by their tails. Such as are condemned are to be delivered over to the existing secular powers to receive due punishment. If laymen, their goods must be confiscated. If priests, they shall be degraded from their respective orders, and their property applied to the church in which they officiated. Secular powers of all ranks and degrees are to be warned, induced, and, if necessary, compelled by ecclesiastical censure, to swear that they will exert themselves to the utmost in the defence of the faith, and extirpate all heretics denounced by the church, who shall be found in their territories. And whenever any person shall assume government, whether it be spiritual or temporal, he shall be bound to abide by this decree.

“If any temporal lord, after having been admonished and required by the church, shall neglect to clear his territory of heretical depravity, the Metropolitan and Bishop of the Province shall unite in excommunicating him. Should he remain contumacious a whole year, the fact shall be signified to the Supreme Pontiff, who will declare his vassals released from their allegiance from that time, and will bestow his territory on Catholics, to be occupied by them, on condition of exterminating the heretics and preserving the said territory in the faith.”

“Catholics who shall assume the cross for the extermination of heretics, shall enjoy the same indulgence, and be protected by the same privileges as are granted to those who go to the help of the Holy Land. We decree further that all those who have dealings with heretics, and especially such as receive, defend and encourage them, shall be excommunicated. He shall not be eligible to any public office. He shall not be admitted as a witness. He shall neither have the power to bequeath his property by will, nor to succeed to any inheritance. He shall not bring any action against any person, but any one can bring action against him. Should he be a judge, his decision shall have no force, nor shall any cause be brought before him. Should he be a lawyer, no instruments made by him shall be held valid, but shall be condemned with their authors.”

Cardinal Manning, speaking in the name of the Pope, said: “I acknowledge no civil power; I am the subject of no prince; and I claim more than this. I claim to be the supreme judge and director of the consciences of men. Of the peasants that till the fields, and of the prince that sits upon the throne; of the household that lives in the shade of privacy, and the legislator that makes laws for kingdoms. I am sole, last, supreme judge of what is right and wrong. Moreover, we declare, affirm, define and pronounce it to be necessary to salvation to every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff!!”—Tablet, Oct. 9, 1864.

“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.”—Brownson’s Review, May, 1864.

“For our own part, we take this opportunity to express our hearty delight at the suppression of the Protestant Chapel in Rome. This may be thought intolerant; but when, we ask, did we profess to be tolerant of Protestantism, or to favor the question that Protestantism ought to be tolerated. On the contrary, we hate Protestantism. We detest it with our whole heart and soul, and we pray our aversion for it may never decrease.”—Pittsburgh Catholic Visitor, July, 1848, official journal of the Bishop.

“No good government can exist without religion, and there can be no religion without an inquisition, which is wisely designed for the protection and promotion of the true faith.”—Boston Pilot, official journal of the Bishop.

“The Pope has the right to pronounce sentence of deposition against any sovereign, when required by the good of the Spiritual Order.”—Brownson’s Review, 1849.

“The power of the church exercised over sovereigns in the middle ages was not a usurpation, was not derived from the concessions of princes or the consent of the people, but was and is held by divine right, and whoso resists it, rebels against the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.”—Brownson’s Review, June 1851.

The council of Constance, held in 1414, declared: “That any person who has promised security to heretics shall not be obliged to keep his promise, by whatever he may be engaged.

“It is in consequence of that principle that no faith must be kept with heretics, that John Huss was publicly burned on the scaffold, the 6th of July, 1415, in the city of Constance, though he had a safe passport from the Emperor.”

“Negroes have no rights which the white man is bound to respect.”—Roman Catholic Chief-justice Tany, in his Dred-Scot Decision.

“If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the hands of the Catholic clergy.”—Lafayette.

“If your son or daughter is attending a State School, you are violating your duty as a Catholic parent, and conducing to the everlasting anguish and despair of your child. Take him away. Take him away, if you do not wish your deathbed to be tormented with the spectre of a soul which God has given you as a sacred trust, surrendered to the great enemy of mankind. Take him away, rather than incur the wrath of his God, and the loss of his soul.”—Western Tablet, official paper of the Bishop of Chicago.

All the echoes of the United States, are still repeating the same denunciations against our public schools made by Mgr. Capel, a prelate attached to the household of the Pope. That Roman Catholic dignitary has not only passed again the sentence of death against the schools of the United States; but he has warned the Americans that the time is not far away when the Roman Catholics, at the order of the Pope, will refuse to pay their school tax, and will send bullets to the breasts of the government agents, rather than pay it. “The order can come any day from Rome,” said the prelate. “It will come as quickly as the click of the trigger, and it will be obeyed, of course, as coming from God Almighty, himself!”

The Catholic Columbian, edited under the immediate supervision of the Rt. Rev. Bishop of Columbus, Ohio, says: “Secular (government) schools are unfit for Catholic children. Catholic parents cannot be allowed the sacraments, who choose to send their children to them, when they could make use of the Catholic schools.”

“The absurd and erroneous doctrines, or ravings, in defense of liberty of conscience, are a most pestilential error, a pest of all others, to be dreaded in the State.”—Encyclical Letters of Pope Pius IX., Aug. 15, 1854.

“You should do all in your power to carry out the intentions of his holiness, the Pope. Where you have the electoral franchise, give your votes to none but those who assist you in so holy a struggle.”—Daniel O’Connell.

“Catholic votes should be cast solidly for the democracy at the next election. It is the only possible hope to break down the school system.”—Toledo Catholic Review.

“It is of faith that the Pope has the right of deposing heretical and rebel kings. Monarchs, so deposed by the Pope, are converted into notorious tyrants, and may be killed by the first who can reach them.

“If the public cause cannot meet with its defence in the death of a tyrant, it is lawful for the first who arrives, to assassinate him.”—Suarez, Defensio Fidei; Book VI., chap. 4, Nos. 13-14.

“See, sir, from this chamber, I govern, not only to Paris, but to China; not only to China, but to all the world, without any one knowing how I do it.”—Tambriorini, General of the Jesuits.

“A man who has been excommunicated by the Pope, may be killed anywhere, as Escobar and Deaux teach, because the Pope has an indirect jurisdiction over the whole world, even in temporal things, as all the Catholics maintain, and as Suarez proves against the King of England.”—Bussambaum—Lacroi, Theologica Moralis, 1757.

The Roman Catholic historian of the Jesuits, Cratineau Joly, in his Vol. II., page 435, approvingly says: “Father Guivard, writing about Henry IV., King of France, says: ‘If he cannot be deposed, let us make war; and if we cannot make war, let him be killed.’”

The great Roman Catholic theologian, Dens, puts to himself, the question: “Are heretics justly punished with death? He answers: ‘St. Thomas says: Yes! 22, question 11, Art. 3. Because forgers of money, or other disturbers of the state, are justly punished with death; therefore, all heretics who are forgers of faith, and, as experience testifies, grievously disturb the State.’

“This is confirmed, because God, in the Old Testament, ordered the false prophets to be slain, and in Deuteronomy it is decreed that if any one will act proudly, and will not obey the commands of the priests, let him be put to death.

“The same is proved from the condemnation of the 14th article of John Huss, in the Council of Constance.”—Dens, p. 88, Tome II., Dublin, 1834.

“That we may, in all things, attain the truth. That we may not err in anything, we ought ever to hold, as a fixed principle, that what I see white, I believe to be black, if the superior authorities of the church define it to be so.”—Spiritual Exercise, by Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits.

“As for holy obedience, this virtue must be perfect in every point, in execution, in will, in intellect, doing which is enjoined with all celerity, spiritual joy, and perseverance; persuading ourselves that everything is just, suppressing every repugnant thought and judgment of one’s own, in a certain obedience, should be moved and directed under Divine Providence, by his superior, just as if he were a corpse (Perindi acsi cadaver esset) which allows itself to be moved and led in every direction.”—Ignatius Loyola, Spiritual Exercise.

“If the Holy Church so requires, let us sacrifice our own opinions, our knowledge, our intelligence, the splendid dreams of our imagination and the sublime attainments of human understanding.”—Pope Gregory XVI., Encyclical, Aug. 15th, 1832.

“No more cunning plot was ever devised against the intelligence, the freedom, the happiness and virtue of mankind, than Romanism.”—Gladstone, Letter to Aberdeen.

“The principal and most efficacious means of practicing obedience due to superiors, and of rendering it meritorious before God, is to consider that, in obeying them, we obey God Himself, and that by despising their commands, we despise the authority of the Divine Master.

“When, thus, a Religious receives a precept from her prelate, superior or confessor, she should immediately execute it, not only to please them, but principally to please God, whose will is known by their command.

“If, then, you receive a command from one who holds the place of God, you should observe it as if it came from God Himself. It may be added that there is more certainty of doing the will of God by obedience to our superiors than by obedience to Jesus Christ, should He appear in person and give His command.

“St. Philip used to say that the Religious shall be most certain of not having to render an account of the actions performed through obedience, for these, the superiors only, who command them shall be accountable.”—Saint Ligouri, The Nun Sanctified.

“In the name and by the authority of Jesus Christ, the plenitude of which resides in His Vicar, the Pope, we declare that the teaching that the earth is not the centre of the world, and that it moves with a diurnal motion, is absurd, philosophically false, and erroneous in faith.”—Decree of Pope Urbain XIII. (signed) by Cardinals Felia, Guido, Desiderio, Antonio, Belligero, and Fabricius.

In consequence of that infallible decree of the infallible Pope, Galileo, in order to escape death, was obliged to fall on his knees and perjure himself, by signing the following declaration on the 22nd of June, 1663:

“I abjure, curse and detest the error and heresy of the motion of the earth around the sun.”

In obedience to that decree, the two learned Jesuit astronomers, Lesueur and Jacquier, in Rome, only a few years ago, made the following declaration: “Newton assumes, in his third book, the hypothesis of the earth moving around the sun. The proposition of that author could not be explained, except through the same hypothesis; we have, therefore, been forced to act a character not our own. But we declare our entire submission to the decrees of the supreme Pontiff of Rome against the motion of the earth.”—Newton’s Principia, by Fathers Lesueur and Jacquier, vol. iii., page 450.

“A Catholic should never attach himself to any political party composed of heretics. No one who is truly, at heart, a thorough and complete Catholic, can give his entire adhesion to a Protestant leader; for in so doing, he divides his allegiance, which he owes entirely to the church.”—Univers, the official Catholic paper of the Bishops of France, Mar. 28th, 1868.

“Would he (the priest) be warranted in withholding any sacrament of the church from a man by reason of his preferring one candidate to the other! Absolutely speaking, he would; because a priest is not only warranted, but bound to withhold, the sacraments from a man who is disposed to commit a mortal sin!!”—Bishop Vaughan’s address to the Catholic Club at Salford, England, Jan. 2nd, 1873.

“Our business is to contrive:

“1st. That the Catholics be imbued with hatred for the heretics, whoever they may be, and that this hatred shall constantly increase, and bind them closely to each other.

“2nd. That it be, nevertheless, dissembled, so as not to transpire until the day when it shall be appointed to break forth.

“3rd. That this secret hate be combined with great activity in endeavoring to detach the faithful from every government inimical to us, and employ them, when they shall form a detached body, to strike deadly blows at heresy.”—Secret Plans of the Jesuits, revealed by Albate Leon, p. 127.

Henry IV., King of France, after being wounded by an assassin sent by the Jesuits, said: “I am compelled to do one of these two things: Either recall the Jesuits, free them from the infamy and disgrace with which they are covered, or to expel them in a more absolute manner, and prevent them from approaching either my person or my kingdom.

“But, then, we will drive them to despair and to the resolution of attempting my life again, which would render it so miserable to me, being always under the apprehension of being murdered, or poisoned. For these people have correspondence everywhere, and are so very skillful in disposing the minds of men to whatever they wish, that I think it would be better that I should be already dead.”—Sully’s Memoirs, tome ii., chap. iii.

“Let us bring all our skill to bear upon this part of our plan. Our chief concern must be to mould the people to our purposes. Doubtless, the first generation will not be wholly ours; but the second will nearly belong to us: and the third entirely.”—The Secret Plan, page 127-128.

“The state is, therefore, only an inferior court, bound to receive the law from the superior court (the church) and liable to have its decrees reversed on appeal.”—Brownson’s Essays, pages 282-284.

“The Jesuits are a military organization, not a religious order. Their chief is a general of an army, not the mere father abbot of a monastery. And the aim of this organization is: POWER. Power in the most despotic exercise. Absolute power, universal power, power to control the world by the volition of a single man. Jesuitism is the most absolute of despotisms; and at the same time the greatest and the most enormous of abuses.”—Memorial of the Captivity of Napoleon at St. Helena, by General Montholon, vol. ii., p. 62.

“The general of the Jesuits insists on being master, sovereign, over the sovereign. Wherever the Jesuits are admitted they will be masters, cost what it may. Their society is by nature dictatorial, and therefore it is the irreconcilable enemy of all constituted authority. Every act, every crime, however atrocious, is a meritorious work, if committed for the interest of the Society of the Jesuits, or by the order of its general.”—Memorial of the Captivity of Napoleon at St. Helena, vol. ii., p. 174.

In the allocution of Sept. 1851, Pope Pius IX. said:

“That he had taken that principle for basis: That the Catholic religion, with all its votes, ought to be exclusively dominant in such sort that every other worship shall be banished and interdicted!

“You ask if the Pope were lord of this land and you were in a minority, what he would do to you? That, we say, would entirely depend on circumstances. If it would benefit the cause of Catholicism, he would tolerate you; if expedient, he would imprison, banish you, probably he might even hang you. But be assured of one thing, he would never tolerate you for the sake of your glorious principles of civil and religious liberty.”—Rambler, one of the most prominent Catholic papers of England, Sept. 1851.

Lord Acton, one of the Roman Catholic peers of England, reproaching her bloody and anti-social laws to his own church, wrote: “Pope Gregory VII. decided it was no murder to kill excommunicated persons. This rule was incorporated in the canon law. During the revision of the code, which took place in the 16th century, and which produced a whole volume of corrections, the passage was allowed to stand. It appears in every reprint of the Corpus Juris. It has been for 700 years, and continues to be, part of the ecclesiastical law. Far from being a dead letter, it obtained a new application in the days of the Inquisition; and one of the later Popes has declared that the murder of a Protestant is so good a deed that it atones, and more than atones, for the murder of a Catholic.”—The London Times, July 20th, 1872.

In the last council of the Vatican, has the Church of Rome expressed any regret for having promulgated and executed such bloody laws? No! On the contrary, she has anathematized all those who think or say that she was wrong when she deluged the world with the blood of the millions she ordered to be slaughtered to quench her thirst for blood; she positively said that she had a right to punish those heretics by tortures and death.

Those bloody and anti-social laws, were written on the banners of the Roman Catholics, when slaughtering 100,000 Waldenses in the mountains of Piedmont, and more than 50,000 defenceless men, women and children in the city of Bezieres. It is under the inspiration of those diabolical laws of Rome, that 75,000 Protestants were massacred, the night and following week of St. Bartholomew.

It was to obey those bloody laws that Louis XIV. revoked the Edict of Nantes, caused the death of half a million of men, women and children, who perished in all the highways of France, and caused twice that number to die in the land of exile, where they had found a refuge.

Those anti-social laws, to-day, are written on her banners with the blood of ten millions of martyrs. It is under those bloody banners that 6,000 Roman Catholic priests, Jesuits and bishops, in the United States, are marching to the conquest of this Republic, backed by their seven millions of blind and obedient slaves.

Those laws, which are still the ruling laws of Rome, were the main cause of the last rebellion of the Southern States.

Yes! without Romanism, the last awful civil war would have been impossible. Jeff Davis would never have dared to attack the North, had he not had assurance from the Pope, that the Jesuits, the bishops, the priests and the whole people of the Church of Rome, under the name and mask of Democracy, would help him.

These diabolical and anti-social laws of Rome caused a Roman Catholic (Beauregard) to be the man chosen to fire the first gun at Fort Sumter, against the flag of Liberty, on the 12th of April, 1861. Those antichristian and anti-social laws caused the Pope of Rome to be the only crowned prince in the whole world, so depraved as to publicly shake hands with Jeff Davis, and proclaim him President of a legitimate government.

These are the laws which led the assassins of Abraham Lincoln to the house of a rabid Roman Catholic woman, Mary Surratt, which was not only the rendezvous of the priests of Washington, but the very dwelling-house of some of them.

That woman, gifted by God to be an angel of peace and mercy on earth, was changed by those laws into a bloodthirsty tigress; for she had smelt the blood which, everywhere, comes from the robe, the hands and the lips of the priest of Rome.

Those bloody and infernal laws of Rome nerved the arm of the Roman Catholic, Booth, when he slaughtered one of the noblest men God has ever given to the world.

Those bloody and anti-social laws of Rome, after having covered Europe with ruins, tears and blood, for ten centuries, have crossed the oceans to continue their work of slavery and desolation, blood and tears, ignorance and demoralization, on this continent. Under the mask and name of Democracy, they have raised the standard of rebellion of the South against the North, and caused more than a half million of the most heroic sons of America to fall on the fields of carnage.

In a very near future, if God does not miraculously prevent it, those laws of dark deeds and blood will cause the prosperity, the rights, the education, and the liberties of this too confident nation, to be buried under a mountain of smoking and bloody ruins. On the top of that mountain, Rome will raise her throne and plant her victorious banners.

Then she will sing her Te Deums and shout her shouts of joy, as she did, when she heard the lamentations and cries of desolation of the millions of martyrs burning in the five thousand auto-da-fes she had raised in all the capitals and great cities of Europe.

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Chapter LX

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, DRAWN FROM THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST—ROME CANNOT THRIVE AND STAND IN THE UNITED STATES WITHOUT DESTROYING THEIR PRINCIPLES OF FRATERNITY, EQUALITY AND LIBERTY, WHICH ARE THE FOUNDATION OF THE REPUBLIC—MY FIRST VISIT TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN TO WARN HIM OF PLOTS I KNEW AGAINST HIM—ROMISH PRIESTS CIRCULATE THE NEWS THAT HE WAS BORN IN THE CHURCH OF ROME—LETTER OF THE POPE TO JEFF DAVIS—MY LAST VISIT TO THE PRESIDENT—HIS ADMIRABLE REFERENCE TO MOSES—WILLING TO DIE FOR HIS NATION’S SAKE.

EQUALITY AND FRATERNITY OF MEN PROCLAIMED BY CHRIST.

“Be ye not called Rabbi. For one is your Master, even Christ. And all ye are brethren.” (Math. 23:8.)

“God is no respecter of persons. But in every nation, he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him.” (Acts 10:34-35.)

“Jesus called them unto him and said: Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them:

“But it shall not be so among you. But whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister: And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.

“Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and give his life a ransom for many.” (Math. 20:25-28.)

PRINCIPLES OF LIBERTY PROCLAIMED BY CHRIST.

“If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed, and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.” (John 8:32.)

“The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.” (Luke 4:18.)

“Where the Spirit of God is, there is liberty.” (2 Cor. 3:17.)

TOLERANCE AND LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE PROCLAIMED BY CHRIST.

“And they did not receive him (Christ) because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem. And when his disciples James, and John, saw this, they said: Wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, even as Elias did?

“But he turned and rebuked them, and said: Ye know not what spirit ye are of.

“For the Son of Man is not come to destroy man’s life, but to save them.” (Luke 9:53-56.)

“Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it, and smote the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant’s name was Malchus.

“Then said Jesus unto Peter, put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it? For all they that take the sword, shall perish with the sword.” (Matt. 26:52. John 18:10.)

It is no wonder that the people of Judea, filled with admiration at these sublime doctrines of equality, fraternity, liberty and tolerance, should exclaim. “Never man spake like this man!”

Is it on those admirable principles that the Church of Rome is founded? No! for she has, thousands of times, proclaimed that her mission was to destroy them all, even if she had to wade in the blood of those who support them.

But just as the Catholic Church is not only the very antipodes and the most implacable enemy of those admirable doctrines and principles, so the constitution of the United States, is the ripe fruit of this divine seed, sown by the Son of God himself in the bosom of humanity, eighteen hundred years ago, to save the world.

Yes, in reference to those principles of fraternity, equality, liberty and tolerance, the constitution of the United States is to the Gospel of Christ what the fruit is to the tree which has given it. And this is the verdict given by the whole world, the Church of Rome excepted.

Why is it that the poor, the bruised, the wounded and the oppressed from every land, turn their eyes, their hearts and their steps, towards this country? It is because all the echoes of heaven and earth have told them that the United States Republic is, par excellence, the land of fraternity, fair-play, equality and liberty, as the Saviour of the world has revealed them.

The Pope of Rome and his Jesuits know this better than any one. Hence, their constant and supreme efforts to destroy this Republic. Believing and preaching that it is their duty to exterminate the individuals who differ from them in religion, they assume that it is their duty to destroy the governments and the nations who refuse to submit to their yoke, when they can do it safely.

The mission of Rome being, to teach that the inferior, the people, must obey his superior, just as the corpse obeys the hand which moves it, or as the stick obeys the arm which directs it, she knows well that she cannot fulfill her mission, and attain her object so long as this government of a free, sovereign people, stands; she is, then, bound to oppose, paralyze and destroy that government when she finds her opportunity.

With lynx’s eye, she watched that opportunity: and with anxiety and rage she spied from her cradle the onward march of this young giant Republic. She knew that it was in the bosom of every true citizen of the United States to propagate those accursed, (by her) principles of equality, fraternity and liberty, all over the world. She saw that the irresistible influence of those principles were felt on the most distant nations, as well as on the poor, miserable, Irish people, she was keeping under her heavy and ignominious yoke; she understood that there was a real danger for her very existence, if those principles would continue to spread; that her slavery star would go down as the liberty star would rise on the horizon. In a word, Rome saw at once that the very existence of the United States was a formal menace to her own life. Already she had seen the chains of two millions of her Irish slaves melted at the simple touch of the warm rays of liberty which had fallen from the stars and stripes banners. From the very beginning, she perfidiously sowed the germs of division and hatred between the two great sections of this country, and she felt an unspeakable joy when she saw that she had succeeded in dividing its South from the North, on the burning question of slavery. She looked upon that division as her golden opportunity. To crush one party by the other, and reign over the bloody ruins of both, has invariably been her policy. She hoped that the hour of her supreme triumph over this continent was come. She ordered her elder son, the Emperor of France, to keep himself ready to help her crush the North, by having an army in Mexico ready to support the South, and she bade all the Roman Catholic bishops, priests and people to enroll themselves under the banners of slavery, by joining themselves to the party of Democracy. And everybody knows how the Roman Catholic bishops and priests, almost to a man, obeyed that order. Only one bishop dared to disobey. Above everything, it was ordered to oppose the election of Lincoln at any cost. For, from the very first day his eloquent voice had been heard, a thrill of terror had gone through the hearts of the partisans of slavery. The Democratic press, which was then, and is still now, almost entirely under the control of the Roman Catholics, and the devoted tool of the Jesuits, deluged the country with the most fearful denunciations against him. They called him an ape; a stupid brute, a most dangerous lunatic, a bloody monster, a merciless tyrant, etc., etc. In a word, Rome exhausted all her resources of language, she ransacked the English dictionary to find the most suitable expressions to fill the people with contempt, hatred and horror against him. But it was written in the decrees of God that the honest Abraham Lincoln should be proclaimed President of the United States, the 4th of March, 1861.

At the end of August, having known from a Roman Catholic priest, whom, by the mercy of God, I had persuaded to leave the errors of Popery, that there was a plot among them to assassinate the President, I thought it was my duty to go and tell him what I knew, at the same time giving him a new assurance of gratitude for what he had done for me.

Knowing that I was among those who were waiting in the ante-chamber, he sent immediately for me, and received me with greater cordiality and marks of kindness than I could expect.

“I am so glad to meet you again,” he said: “you see that your friends, the Jesuits, have not yet killed me. But they would have surely done it, when I passed through their most devoted city, Baltimore, had I not defeated their plans, by passing incognito, a few hours before they expected me. We have the proof that the company which had been selected and organized to murder me, was lead by a rabid Roman Catholic, called Byrne; it was almost entirely composed of Roman Catholics; more than that, there were two disguised priests among them, to lead and encourage them. I am sorry to have so little time to see you; but I will not let you go before telling you that, a few days ago, I saw Mr. Morse, the learned inventor of electric telegraphy; he told me that, when he was in Rome, not long ago, he found out the proofs of a most formidable conspiracy against this country and all its institutions. It is evident that it is to the intrigues and emissaries of the pope, that we owe, in great part, the horrible civil war which is threatening to cover the country with blood and ruins.

“I am sorry that Prof. Morse had to leave Rome before he could know more about the secret plans of the Jesuits against the liberties and the very existence of this country. But do you know that I want you to take his place and continue that investigation? My plan is to attach you to my ambassador of France, as one of the secretaries. In that honorable position, you would go from Paris to Rome, where you might find, through the directions of Mr. Morse, an opportunity of reuniting the broken threads of his researches. ‘It takes a Greek to fight a Greek.’ As you have been twenty-five years a priest of Rome, I do not know any man in the United States so well acquainted as you are with the tricks of the Jesuits, and on the devotedness of whom I could better rely. And, when once on the staff of my ambassador, even as one of the secretaries, might you not soon yourself become the ambassador? I am in need of Christian men in every department of the public service, but more in those high positions. What do you think of that?”

“My dear President,” I answered, “I feel overwhelmed by your kindness. Surely nothing could be more pleasant to me than to grant your request. The honor you want to confer upon me is much above my merit; but my conscience tells me that I cannot give up the preaching of the Gospel to my poor French-Canadian countrymen, who are still in the errors of Popery. For I am about the only one who, by the Providence of God, has any real influence over them. I am, surely, the only one the bishops and priests seem to fear in that work. The many attempts they have made to take away my life are a proof of it. Besides that, though I consider the present President of the United States much above the Emperors of France, Russia, and Austria, much above the greatest kings of the world, I feel that I am the servant, the ambassador of One who is as much above even the good and great President of the United States, as the heavens are above the earth. I appeal to your own Christian and honorable feelings to know if I can forsake the one for the other.”

The President became very solemn, and replied:

“You are right! you are right! There is nothing so great under heaven, as to be the ambassador of Christ.”

But, then, coming back to himself, with one of his fine jokes, which he had always ready, he added:

“Yes! yes! You are the ambassador of a greater Prince than I am; but he does not pay you with as good cash as I would do.”

He then added: “I am exceedingly pleased to see you. However, I am so pressed, just now, by most important affairs, that you must excuse me if I ask you to give your place to one of my generals who is, there, waiting for me. Please come again, to-morrow, at ten o’clock, I have a very important question to ask you, on a matter which has been constantly before my mind, these last few weeks.”

The next day, I was there, at the appointed hour, with my noble friend, who said:

“I could not give you more than ten minutes, yesterday, but I will give you twenty, to-day; I want your views about a thing which is exceedingly puzzling to me, and you are the only one to whom I like to speak on that subject. A great number of Democratic papers have been sent to me, lately, evidently written by Roman Catholics, publishing that I was born a Roman Catholic, and baptized by a priest. They call me a renegade, an apostate, on account of that; and they heap upon my head mountains of abuse. At first, I laughed at that, for it is a lie. Thanks be to God, I have never been a Roman Catholic. No priest of Rome has ever laid his hand on my head. But the persistency of the Romish press to present this falsehood to their readers as a gospel truth, must have a meaning. Please tell me, as briefly as possible, what you think about that.”

“My dear President,” I answered, “it was just this strange story published about you, which brought me here, yesterday. I wanted to say a word about it; but you were too busy.

“Let me tell you that I wept as a child when I read that story for the first time. For, not only my impression is, that it is your sentence of death; but I have from the lips of a converted priest, that it is in order to excite the fanaticism of the Roman Catholic murderers, whom they hope to find, sooner or later, to strike you down, they have invented that false story of your being born in the Church of Rome, and of your being baptized by a priest. They want by that to brand your face with the ignominious mark of apostacy. Do not forget that, in the Church of Rome, an apostate is an outcast, who has no place in society, and who has no right to live.

“The Jesuits want the Roman Catholics to believe that you are a monster, an open enemy of God and of his Church, that you are an excommunicated man. For, every apostate is, ipso facto (by that very fact) excommunicated. I have brought to you the theology of one of the most learned and approved of the Jesuits of his time, Bussambaum, who, with many others, say that the man who will kill you will do a good and holy work. More than that, here is a copy of a decree of Gregory VII., proclaiming that the killing of an apostate, or an heretic and an excommunicated man, as you are declared to be, is not murder; nay, that it is a good, a Christian action. That decree is incorporated in the canon law, which every priest must study, and which every good Catholic must follow.

“My dear President, I must repeat to you here what I said when in Urbana, in 1856. My fear is that you will fall under the blows of a Jesuit assassin, if you do not pay more attention than you have done, till now, to protect yourself. Remember that because Coligny was an heretic, as you are, he was brutally murdered in the St. Bartholomew night; that Henry IV. was stabbed by the Jesuit assassin, Revaillac, the 14th of May, 1610, for having given liberty of conscience to his people, and that William the Taciturn was shot dead by another Jesuit murderer, called Girard, for having broken the yoke of the Pope. The Church of Rome is absolutely the same to-day, as she was then; she does believe and teach, to-day, as then, that she has the right and that it is her duty to punish by death any heretic who is in her way as an obstacle to her designs. The unanimity with which the Catholic hierarchy of the United States is on the side of the rebels, is an incontrovertible evidence that Rome wants to destroy this republic, and as you are, by your personal virtues, your popularity, your love for liberty, your position, the greatest obstacle to their diabolical scheme, their hatred is concentrated upon you; you are the daily object of their maledictions; it is at your breast they will direct their blows. My blood chills in my veins, when I contemplate the day which may come, sooner, or later, when Rome will add to all her other iniquities, the murder of Abraham Lincoln.”

When saying these things to the President, I was exceedingly moved, my voice was as choked, and I could hardly retain my tears. But the President was perfectly calm. When I had finished speaking, he took the volume of Bussambaum from my hands, read the lines which I had marked with red ink, and I helped him to translate them into English. He, then, gave me back the book, and said:

“I will repeat to you what I said at Urbana, when for the first time you told me your fears lest I would be assassinated by the Jesuits. ‘Man must not care where and when he will die, provided he dies at the post of honor and duty.’ But I may add, to-day, that I have a presentiment that God will call me to him through the hand of an assassin. Let His will, and not mine, be done!” He then looked at his watch, and said: “I am sorry that the twenty minutes I had consecrated to our interview have almost passed away; I will be forever grateful for the warning words you have addressed to me about the dangers ahead to my life, from Rome. I know that they are not imaginary dangers. If I were fighting against a Protestant South, as a nation, there would be no danger of assassination. The nations who read the Bible, fight bravely on the battle-fields, but they do not assassinate their enemies. The Pope and the Jesuits, with their infernal Inquisition, are the only organized power in the world which have recourse to the dagger of the assassin to murder those whom they cannot convince with their arguments, or conquer with the sword.

“Unfortunately, I feel more and more, every day, that it is not against the Americans of the South, alone, I am fighting, it is more against the Pope of Rome, his perfidious Jesuits and their blind and blood-thirsty slaves, than against the real American Protestants, that we have to defend ourselves. Here is the real danger of our position. So long as they will hope to conquer the North, they will spare me; but the day we will rout their armies (and the day will surely come, with the help of God), take their cities, and force them to submit; then, it is my impression that the Jesuits, who are the principal rulers of the South, will do what they have almost invariably done in the past. The dagger or the pistol of one of their adepts, will do what the strong hands of the warriors could not achieve. This civil war seems to be nothing but a political affair to those who do not see, as I do, the secret springs of that terrible drama. But it is more a religious than a civil war. It is Rome who wants to rule and degrade the North, as she has ruled and degraded the South, from the very day of its discovery. There are only very few of the Southern leaders who are not more or less under the influence of the Jesuits, through their wives, family relations and their friends. Several members of the family of Jeff Davis belong to the Church of Rome. Even the Protestant ministers are under the influence of the Jesuits without suspecting it. To keep her ascendency in the North, as she does in the South, Rome is doing here what she has done in Mexico, and in all the South American Republics; she is paralyzing, by a civil war, the arms of the soldiers of Liberty. She divides our nation, in order to weaken, subdue and rule it.

“Surely we have some brave and reliable Roman Catholic officers and soldiers in our armies, but they form an insignificant minority when compared with the Roman Catholic traitors against whom we have to guard ourselves, day and night. The fact is, that the immense majority of the Roman Catholic bishops, priests and laymen, are rebels in heart, when they cannot be in fact; with very few exceptions, they are publicly in favor of slavery. I understand, now, why the patriots of France, who determined to see the colors of Liberty floating over their great and beautiful country, were forced to hang or shoot almost all the priests and the monks as the irreconcilable enemies of Liberty. For it is a fact, which is now evident to me, that, with very few exceptions, every priest and every true Roman Catholic is a determined enemy of Liberty. Their extermination, in France, was one of those terrible necessities which no human wisdom could avoid; it looks to me now as an order from heaven to save France. May God grant that the same terrible necessity be never felt in the United States! But there is a thing which is very certain; it is, that if the American people could learn what I know of the fierce hatred of the generality of the priests of Rome against our institutions, our schools, our most sacred rights, and our so dearly bought liberties, they would drive them away, to-morrow, from among us, or they would shoot them as traitors. But I keep those sad secrets in my heart; you are the only one to whom I reveal them, for I know that you learned them before me. The history of these last thousand years tells us that wherever the Church of Rome is not a dagger to pierce the bosom of a free nation, she is a stone to her neck, and a ball to her feet, to paralyze her and prevent her advance in the ways of civilization, science, intelligence, happiness and liberty. But I forget that my twenty minutes are gone long ago.

“Please accept my sincere thanks for the new lights you have given me on the dangers of my position, and come again, I will always see you with a new pleasure.”

My second visit to Abraham Lincoln was at the beginning of June, 1862. The grand victory of the Monitor over the Merrimac, and the conquest of New Orleans, by the brave and Christian Farragut, had filled every heart with joy; I wanted to unite my feeble voice to that of the whole country, to tell him how I blessed God for that glorious success. But I found him so busy that I could only shake hands with him.

The third and last time I went to pay my respects to the doomed President, and to warn him against the impending dangers which I knew were threatening him, was on the morning of June 8th, 1864, when he was absolutely besieged by people who wanted to see him. After a kind and warm shaking of hands, he said:

“I am much pleased to see you again. But it is impossible, to-day, to say anything more than this. To-morrow afternoon, I will receive the delegation of the deputies of all the loyal states, sent to officially announce the desire of the country that I should remain the President four years more. I invite you to be present with them at that interesting meeting. You will see some of the most prominent men of our Republic, and I will be glad to introduce you to them. You will not present yourself as a delegate of the people, but only as the guest of the President; and that there may be no trouble, I will give you this card, with a permit to enter with the delegation. But do not leave Washington before I see you again; I have some important matters on which I want to know your mind.”

The next day, it was my privilege to have the greatest honor ever received by me. The good President wanted me to stand at his right hand, when he received the delegation, and hear the address presented by Governor Dennison, the President of the convention, to which he replied in his own admirable simplicity and eloquence; finishing by one of his most witty anecdotes. “I am reminded in this convention of a story of an old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion, wisely, ‘that it was not best to swap horses when crossing a stream.’”

The next day, he kindly took me with him in his carriage, when visiting the 30,000 wounded soldiers picked up on the battle-fields of the seven days battle of the Wilderness, and the thirty days battle around Richmond, where Grant was just breaking the backbone of the rebellion. On the way to and from the hospitals, I could not talk much. The noise of the carriage rapidly drawn on the pavement was too great. Besides that, my soul was so much distressed, and my heart so much broken by the sight of the horrors of that fracticidal war, that my voice was as stifled. The only thought which seemed to occupy the mind of the President was the part which Rome had in that horrible struggle. Many times he repeated:

“This war would never have been possible without the sinister influence of the Jesuits. We owe it to Popery that we now see our land reddened with the blood of her noblest sons. Though there were great differences of opinion between the South and the North, on the question of slavery; neither Jeff Davis nor any one of the leading men of the Confederacy would have dared to attack the North, had they not relied on the promises of the Jesuits, that, under the mask of Democracy, the money and the arms of the Roman Catholics, even the arms of France, were at their disposal, if they would attack us. I pity the priests, the bishops and the monks of Rome in the United States, when the people realize that they are, in great part, responsible for the tears and the blood shed in this war; the later the more terrible will the retribution be. I conceal what I know, on that subject, from the knowledge of the nation; for if the people knew the whole truth, this war would turn into a religious war, and it would, at once, take a tenfold more savage and bloody character. It would become merciless as all religious wars are. It would become a war of extermination on both sides. The Protestants of both the North and the South would surely unite to exterminate the priests and the Jesuits, if they could hear what Professor Morse has said to me of the plots made in the very city of Rome to destroy this Republic, and if they could learn how the priests, the nuns, and the monks, who daily land on our shores, under the pretext of preaching their religion, instructing the people in their schools, taking care of the sick in the hospitals, are nothing else but the emissaries of the Pope, of Napoleon, and the other despots of Europe, to undermine our institutions, alienate the hearts of our people from our constitution, and our laws, destroy our schools, and prepare a reign of anarchy here as they have done in Ireland, in Mexico, in Spain, and wherever there are any people who want to be free, etc.”

When the President was speaking thus, we arrived at the door of his mansion. He invited me to go with him to his study, and said:

“Though I am very busy, I must rest an hour with you. I am in need of that rest. My head is aching, I feel as crushed under the burden of affairs which are on my shoulders. There are many important things about the plots of the Jesuits that I can learn only from you. Please wait just a moment, I have just received some dispatches from General Grant, to which I must give an answer. My secretary is waiting for me. I go to him. Please amuse yourself with those books, during my short absence.”

Twenty-five minutes later, the President had returned, with his face flushed with joy.

“Glorious news! General Grant has again beaten Lee, and forced him to retreat towards Richmond, where he will have to surrender before long. Grant is a real hero. But let us come to the question I want to put to you. Have you read the letter of the Pope to Jeff Davis, and what do you think of it?”

“My dear President,” I answered, “it is just that letter which brought me to your presence again, day before yesterday. I wanted to come and see you, from the very day I read it. But I knew you were so overwhelmed with the affairs of your government, that I would not be able to see you. However, the anxieties of my mind were so, that I determined to go over every barrier to warn you again against the new dangers and plots which I knew would come out from that perfidious letter, against your life.

“That letter is a poisoned arrow thrown by the Pope, at you personally; and it will be more than a miracle if it be not your irrevocable warrant of death. Before reading it, it is true that every Catholic could see by the unanimity of the bishops siding with rebel cause, that their church, as a whole, was against this free Republican government. However, a good number of liberty-loving Irish, German and French Catholics, following more the instincts of their noble nature, than the degrading principles of their church, enrolled themselves under the banners of Liberty, and they have fought like heroes. To detach these men from the rank and file of the Northern armies, and force them to help the cause of the rebellion, became the object of the intrigues of the Jesuits. Secret and pressing letters were addressed from Rome to the bishops, ordering them to weaken your armies by detaching those men from you. The bishops answered, that they could not do that without exposing themselves to be shot. But they advised the Pope to acknowledge, at once, the legitimacy of the Southern Republic, and to take Jeff Davis under his supreme protection, by a letter, which would be read everywhere.

“That letter, then, tells logically the Roman Catholics that you are a bloody tyrant! a most execrable being when fighting against a government which the infallible and holy Pope of Rome recognizes as legitimate. The Pope, by this letter, tells his blind slaves that you are an infamous usurper, when considering yourself the President of the Southern States; that you are outraging the God of heaven and earth, by continuing such a bloody war to subdue a nation over whom God Almighty has declared, through his infallible pontiff, the Pope, that you have not the least right; that letter means that you will give an account to God and man for the blood and tears you cause to flow in order to satisfy your ambition.

“By this letter of the Pope to Jeff Davis you are not only an apostate, as you were thought before, whom every man had the right to kill, according to the canonical laws of Rome; but you are more vile, criminal and cruel than the horse thief, the public bandit, and the lawless brigand, robber and murderer, whom it is a duty to stop and kill, when we take them in their acts of blood, and that there is no other way to put an end to their plunders and murders.

“And, my dear President, the meaning I give you of this perfidious letter of the Pope to Jeff Davis, is not a fancy imagination on my part, it is the unanimous explanation given me by a great number of the priests of Rome, with whom I have had occasion to speak on that subject. In the name of God, and in the name of our dear country, which is so much in need of your services, I conjure you to pay more attention to protect your precious life, and not continue to expose it as you have done till now.”

The President listened to my words with breathless attention. He replied:

“You confirm me in the views I had taken of the letter of the Pope. Professor Morse is of the same mind with you. It is, indeed, the most perfidious act which could occur under present circumstances. You are perfectly correct when you say that it was to detach the Roman Catholics who had enrolled themselves in our armies. Since the publication of that letter, a great number of them have deserted their banners and turned traitors; very few, comparatively, have remained true to their oath of fidelity. It is, however, very lucky that one of those few, Sheridan, is worth a whole army by his ability, his patriotism and his heroic courage. It is true, also, that Meade has remained with us, and gained the bloody battle of Gettysburgh. But how could he lose it, when he was surrounded by such heroes as Howard, Reynolds, Buford, Wadsworth, Cutler, Slocum, Sickles, Hancock, Barnes, etc. But it is evident that his Romanism superseded his patriotism after the battle. He let the army of Lee escape, when it was so easy to cut his retreat and force him to surrender, after having lost nearly the half of his soldiers in the last three days’ carnage.

“When Meade was to order the pursuit, after the battle, a stranger came, in haste, to the headquarters, and that stranger was a disguised Jesuit. After a ten minutes’ conversation with him, Meade made such arrangements for the pursuit of the enemy, that he escaped almost untouched, with the loss of only two guns!

“You are right,” continued the President, “when you say that this letter of the Pope has entirely changed the nature and the ground of the war. Before they read it, the Roman Catholics could see that I was fighting against Jeff Davis and his Southern Confederacy. But now, they must believe that it is against Christ and his holy vicar, the Pope, that I am raising my sacrilegious hands; we have the daily proofs that their indignation, their hatred, their malice, against me, are an hundredfold intensified. New projects of assassination are detected almost every day, accompanied with such savage circumstances that they bring to my memory the massacres of the St. Bartholomew and the gunpowder plot. We feel, at their investigation, that they come from the same masters in the art of murder, the Jesuits.

“The New York riots were evidently a Romish plot from beginning to end. We have the proofs in hand, that they were the work of Bishop Hughes and his emissaries. No doubt can remain in the minds of the most incredulous about that bloody attempt of Rome to destroy New York, when he knows the easy way it was stopped. I wrote to Bishop Hughes, telling him that the whole country would hold him responsible for it, if he would not stop it at once. He, then, gathered the rioters around his palace, called them his ‘dear friends,’ invited them to go back home peacefully, and all was finished! so Jupiter of old used to raise a storm, and stop it with a nod of his head!

“From the beginning of our civil war, there has been, not a secret, but a public alliance, between the Pope of Rome and Jeff Davis; and that alliance has followed the common laws of this world’s affairs. The greater has led the smaller, the stronger has guided the weaker. The Pope and his Jesuits, have advised, supported, and directed Jeff Davis on the land, from the first gun shot, at Fort Sumter, by the rabid Roman Catholic, Beauregard. They are helping him on the sea, by guiding and supporting the other rabid Roman Catholic pirate, Semmes, on the ocean. And they will help the rebellion when firing their last gun to shed the blood of the last soldier of Liberty, who will fall in this fratricidal war. In my interview with Bishop Hughes, I told him, ‘that every stranger who had sworn allegiance to our government by becoming a United States citizen, as himself, was liable to be shot or hung as a perjured traitor, and an armed spy, as the sentence of the court martial may direct. And he will be so shot and hanged accordingly, as there will be no exchange of such prisoners.’ After I had put this flea in the ears of the Romish bishop, I requested him to go and report my words to the Pope. Seeing the dangerous position of his bishops and priests when siding with the rebels, my hope was that he would advise them, for their own interests, to become loyal and true to their allegiance and help us through the remaining part of the war. But the result has been the very contrary. The Pope has thrown away the mask, and shown himself the public partisan and the protector of the rebellion, by taking Jeff Davis by the hand, and impudently recognizing the Southern States as a legitimate government. Now, I have the proof in hand that that very Bishop Hughes, whom I had sent to Rome that he might induce the Pope to urge the Roman Catholics of the North at least, to be true to their oath of allegiance, and whom I thanked publicly, when, under the impression that he had acted honestly, according to the promise he had given me, is the very man who advised the Pope to recognize the legitimacy of the Southern Republic, and put the whole weight of his tiara in the balance against us, in favor of our enemies! Such is the perfidy of those Jesuits. Two cankers are biting the very entrails of the United States, to-day: the Romish and the Mormon priests. Both are quietly at work to form a people of the most abject, ignorant and fanatical slaves, who will recognize no other authority but their supreme pontiffs. Both are aiming at the destruction of our schools, to raise themselves upon our ruins. Both shelter themselves under our grand and holy principles of liberty of conscience, to destroy that very liberty of conscience, and bind the world before their heavy and ignominious yoke. The Mormon and the Jesuit priests are equally the uncompromising enemies of our constitution and our laws; but the more dangerous of the two is the Jesuit—the Romish priest, for he knows better how to conceal his hatred under the mask of friendship and public good; he is better trained to commit the most cruel and diabolical deeds for the glory of God.

“Till lately, I was in favor of the unlimited liberty of conscience, as our constitution gives it to the Roman Catholics. But now, it seems to me that, sooner or later, the people will be forced to put a restriction to that clause towards the Papists. Is it not an act of folly to give absolute liberty of conscience to a set of men who are publicly sworn to cut our throats the very day they have their opportunity for doing it? Is it right to give the privilege of citizenship to men who are the sworn and public enemies of our constitution, our laws, our liberties, and our lives?

“The very moment that Popery assumed the right of life and death on a citizen of France, Spain, Germany, England, or the United States, it assumed to be the power, in the government of France, Spain, England, Germany, and the United States. Those states then committed a suicidal act by allowing Popery to put a foot on their territory with the privilege of citizenship. The power of life and death is the supreme power, and two supreme powers cannot exist on the same territory without anarchy, riots, bloodshed and civil wars without end. When Popery will give up the power of life and death which it proclaims as its own divine power, in all its theological books and canon laws, then, alone, it can be tolerated and can receive the privileges of citizenship, in a free country.

“Is it not an absurdity to give to a man a thing which he is sworn to hate, curse and destroy? And does not the Church of Rome hate, curse and destroy liberty of conscience, whenever she can do it safely?

“I am for liberty of conscience in its noblest, broadest, highest sense. But I cannot give liberty of conscience to the Pope and to his followers, the papists, so long as they tell me, through all their councils, theologians and canon laws, that their conscience orders them to burn my wife, strangle my children, and cut my throat when they find the opportunity!

“This does not seem to be understood by the people, to-day. But sooner or later, the light of common sense will make it clear to every one, that no liberty of conscience can be granted to men who are sworn to obey a Pope, who pretends to have the right to put to death those who differ from him in religion.

You are not the first to warn me against the dangers of assassination. My ambassadors in Italy, France and England, as well as Professor Morse, have, many times, warned me against the plots of the murderers whom they have detected in those different countries. But I see no other safeguard against those murderers, but to be always ready to die, as Christ advises it. As we must all die sooner or later, it makes very little difference to me whether I die from a dagger plunged through the heart or from an inflammation of the lungs. Let me tell you that I have, lately, read a passage in the Old Testament which has made a profound, and, I hope, a salutary impression on me. Here is that passage.”

The President took his Bible, opened it at the third chapter of Deuteronomy, and read from the 22nd to the 28th verse.

“22. Ye shall not fear them; for the Lord your God shall fight for you.

“23. And I besought the Lord at that time, saying:

“24. O Lord God, thou hast begun to show thy servant thy greatness, and thy mighty hand; for what God is there, in heaven or in earth, that can do according to thy words, and according to thy might!

“25. I pray thee, let me go over and see the good land that is beyond Jordan, that goodly mountain, and Lebanon.

“26. But God was wroth with me for your sakes, and would not hear me: and the Lord said unto me, let it suffice thee: speak no more unto me of this matter:

“27. Get thee up unto the top of Pisgah, and lift up thine eyes westward and northward, and southward and eastward, and behold it with thine eyes: for thou shalt not go over this Jordan.”

After the President had read these words with great solemnity, he added:

“My Dear Father Chiniquy, let me tell you that I have read these strange and beautiful words several times, these last five or six weeks. The more I read them, the more, it seems to me that God has written them for me as well as for Moses.

“Has he not taken me from my poor log cabin by the hand, as he did of Moses in the reeds of the Nile, to put me at the head of the greatest and the most blessed of modern nations, just as he put that prophet at the head of the most blessed nation of ancient times? Has not God granted me a privilege, which was not granted to any living man, when I broke the fetters of 4,000,000 of men, and made them free? Has not our God given me the most glorious victories over our enemies? Are not the armies of the Confederacy so reduced to a handful of men, when compared to what they were two years ago; that the day is fast approaching when they will have to surrender.

“Now, I see the end of this terrible conflict, with the same joy of Moses, when at the end of his trying forty years in the wilderness; and I pray my God to grant me to see the days of peace and untold prosperity, which will follow this cruel war, as Moses asked God to see the other side of Jordan and enter the Promised Land. But, do you know that I hear in my soul, as the voice of God, giving me the rebuke which was given to Moses?

“Yes! every time that my soul goes to God to ask the favor of seeing the other side of Jordan, and eating the fruits of that peace, after which I am longing with such an unspeakable desire, do you know that there is a still but solemn voice, which tells me that I will see those things only from a long distance, and that I will be among the dead, when the nation, which God granted me to lead through those awful trials, will cross the Jordan, and dwell in that Land of Promise, where peace, industry, happiness and liberty will make everyone happy, and why so? Because he has already given me favors which he never gave, I dare say, to any man in these latter days.

“Why did God Almighty refuse to Moses the favor of crossing the Jordan, and 'entering the Promised Land? It was on account of his own nation’s sins! That law of divine retribution and justice, by which one must suffer for another, is surely a terrible mystery. But it is a fact which no man who has any intelligence and knowledge can deny. Moses, who knew that law, though he probably did not understand it better than we do, calmly says to his people: ‘God was wroth with me for your sakes.’

“But, though we do not understand that mysterious and terrible law, we find it written in letters of tears and blood wherever we go. We do not read a single page of history, without finding undeniable traces of its existence.

“Where is the mother who has not shed tears and suffered real tortures, for her children’s sake?

“Who is the good king, the worthy emperor, the gifted chieftain, who have not suffered unspeakable mental agonies, or even death, for their people’s sake?

“Is not our Christian religion the highest expression of the wisdom, mercy and love of God! But what is Christianity if not the very incarnation of that eternal law of divine justice in our humanity?

“When I look on Moses, alone, silently dying on the Mount Pisgah, I see that law, in one of its most sublime human manifestations, and I am filled with admiration and awe.

“But when I consider that law of justice, and expiation in the death of the Just, the divine Son of Mary, on the mountain of Calvary, I remain mute in my adoration. The spectacle of the crucified one which is before my eyes, is more than sublime, it is divine! Moses died for his people’s sake, but Christ died for the whole world’s sake! Both died to fulfill the same eternal law of the divine justice, though in a different measure.

“Now, would it not be the greatest of honors and privileges bestowed upon me, if God, in his infinite love, mercy and wisdom, would put me between his faithful servant, Moses, and his eternal Son, Jesus, that I might die as they did, for my nation’s sake!

“My God alone knows what I have already suffered for my dear country’s sake. But my fear is that the justice of God is not yet paid: When I look upon the rivers of tears and blood drawn by the lashes of the merciless masters from the veins of the very heart of those millions of defenceless slaves, these two hundred years: When I remember the agonies, the cries, the unspeakable tortures of those unfortunate people to which I have, to some extent, connived with so many others, a part of my life, I fear that we are still far from the complete expiation. For the judgments of God are true and righteous.

“It seems to me that the Lord wants, to-day, as he wanted in the days of Moses, another victim—a victim which he has himself chosen, anointed and prepared for the sacrifice, by raising it above the rest of his people. I cannot conceal from you that my impression is that I am the victim. So many plots have already been made against my life, that it is a real miracle that they have all failed, when we consider that the great majority of them were in the hands of skillful Roman Catholic murderers, evidently trained by Jesuits. But can we expect that God will make a perpetual miracle to save my life? I believe not. The Jesuits are so expert in those deeds of blood, that Henry IV. said that it was impossible to escape them, and he became their victim, though he did all that could be done to protect himself. My escape from their hands, since the letter of the Pope to Jeff Davis has sharpened a million of daggers to pierce my breast, would be more than a miracle.

“But just as the Lord heard no murmur from the lips of Moses, when he told him that he had to die, before crossing the Jordan, for the sins of his people, so I hope and pray that he will hear no murmur from me when I fall for my nation’s sake.

“The only two favors I ask of the Lord, are, first, that I may die for the sacred cause in which I am engaged, and when I am the standard-bearer of the rights and liberties of my country.

“The second favor I ask from God, is that my dear son, Robert, when I am gone, will be one of those who lift up that flag of Liberty which will cover my tomb, and carry it with honor and fidelity, to the end of his life, as his father did, surrounded by the millions who will be called with him to fight and die for the defence and honor of our country.”

Never had I heard such sublime words. Never had I seen a human face so solemn and so prophet-like as the face of the President, when uttering these things. Every sentence had come to me as a hymn from heaven, reverberated by the echoes of the mountains of Pisgah and Calvary. I was beside myself. Bathed in tears, I tried to say something, but I could not utter a word.

I knew the hour to leave had come, I asked from the President permission to fall on my knees, and pray with him that his life might be spared; and he knelt with me. But I prayed more with my tears and sobs than with my words.

Then I pressed his hand on my lips and bathed it with my tears, and with a heart filled with an unspeakable desolation, I bade him Adieu! It was for the last time!

For the hour was fast approaching when he was to fall by the hand of a Jesuit assassin, for his nation’s sake.

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