CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXIII., No. 136.—JULY, 1876.

Copyright: Rev. I. T. Hecker. 1876.

SONNET.

THE CENTENARY OF AMERICAN LIBERTY.

BY AUBREY DE VERE.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES,

1776-1876.

The social conditions of life which have been developed in the European colonies of North America, though to a certain extent the result of the physical surroundings of the early settlers, are chiefly the freer growth of principles which had been active, for centuries, in the Christian nations of the Old World. The elements of society here, unhindered by custom, law, or privilege, grouped themselves quickly and spontaneously into the forms to which they were tending in Europe also, but slowly and through conflict and struggle. The great and most significant fact, that it was found impossible in the New World to create privileged classes, clearly pointed in the direction in which European civilization was moving. Another fact not less noteworthy is the failure of every attempt to establish religion in this country.

Though there is but little to please the fancy or fire the imagination in American character or institutions, it is nevertheless to this country that the eyes of the thoughtful and observant from every part of the world are turned. The Catholicity of Christian civilization has generalized political problems and social movements. Civilization, like religion, has ceased to be national; and the bearing of a people’s life upon the welfare of the human race has come to be of greater moment than its effect upon the national character. It is to this that the universal interest which centres

We are a commonplace and mediocre people; practical, without high ideals, lofty aspirations, or excellent standards of worth and character. In philosophy, in science, in literature, in art, in culture, we are inferior to the nations of Europe. No mind transcendentally great has appeared among us; not one who is heir to all the ages and citizen of the world. Our ablest thinkers are merely the disciples of some foreign master. Our most gifted poets belong to the careful kind, who with effort and the file give polish and smoothness, but not the mens divinior, to their verse; and who, when they attempt a loftier flight, grow dull and monotonous as a Western prairie or Rocky Mountain table-land. Our most popular heroes—Washington and Lincoln—are but common men, and the higher is he who is least the product of our democratic institutions.

Our commercial enterprise and mechanical achievements are worthy of admiration, but not so far above those of other nations as to attract special attention.

If to-day, then, the American people draw the eyes of the whole world upon themselves, it is not because they have performed marvellous deeds, opened up new realms of thought, or created higher types of character, but because their social and political condition is that to which Europe, whether for good or evil, seems to be irresistibly tending. Beyond doubt, the tendency of modern civilization is to give to the people greater power and a larger sphere of action. Every attempt to arrest this movement but serves to make its force the more manifest. This spirit of the age is seen in the general spread of education, in the widening of the popular suffrage, in the separation of church and state, and in the dying out of aristocracies. We simply note facts, without stopping to examine principles or to weigh consequences. Those who resist a revolution are persuaded that it will work nothing but evil, while those who help it on hope from it every good; and the event most generally shows both to have been in error. Our present purpose does not lead us to speculate as to the manner in which the general welfare is to be affected by the great social transformations by which the character of civilized nations is being so profoundly modified; but we will suppose that the reign of aristocracies and of privilege is past, and that in the future the people are to govern; and we ask, What will be the influence of the new society upon the old faith?

The essential life of the Catholic Church is independent of her worldly condition; and though we are bound to believe that she is to remain amongst men until the end, we are yet not forbidden to hold that at times she may to human eyes seem almost to have ceased to be; that as in the past Christ was entombed, the deletum nomen Christianum was proclaimed, in the future also the heavens may grow dark, God’s countenance seemingly be withdrawn, and the voice of

“But yet the Son of Man, when he cometh, shall he find, think you, faith on earth?” We may hope, we may despond; let us, then, dispassionately consider the facts.

First, we will put aside the assumption that it is possible to organize this modern society so as to crush the church by persecution or violence. In a social state, which can be strong only by being just, attempts of this kind, if successful, would inevitably lead to anarchy and chaos, out of which the church would again come forth with or before the civil order. We cannot, then, look forward to a prolonged and open conflict between the church and the civilized governments of the world without giving up all hope in the permanency and effectiveness of the social phase upon which we have entered. In the end the European states, like the American, must be convinced that, if they would live, they must also let live; since a modus vivendi between church and state is absolutely essential to the permanence of society as now constituted.

The question, then, is narrowed to the free and peaceable life of the church in contact with the popular governments which are already constituted or are struggling for existence; and it is in their bearing upon this all-important subject that the world-wide significance of the lessons to be learned from a careful study of the history of the Catholic Church in the United States becomes apparent. For a hundred years this church has lived in the new society, and all the circumstances of her position have been admirably suited to test her power to meet the difficulties offered by a democratic social organization. The problem to be solved was whether or not a vigorous but yet orderly and obedient Catholic faith and life could flourish in this country, where what are called the principles of modern civilization have found their most complete expression.

If we would understand the history of our country, we must not lose sight of the religious character of the men by whom it was explored and colonized. Religious zeal led the Puritans to New England, the Catholics to Maryland, and the Quakers to Pennsylvania; and among the Spaniards and the French there were many who, like Columbus and Champlain, deemed the salvation of a soul of greater moment than the conquest of an empire. We might, indeed, without going beyond our present subject, speak of the heroic and gentle lives of the apostolic men who, from Maine to California, from Florida to the Northern Lakes, toiled among the Indians, and not in vain, that they might win them from savage ways and lift them up to higher modes of life. The Catholics of the United States can never forget that the labors of these men belong to the history of the church on this continent; that the lives they offered up, the blood they shed, plead for us before God; and that if their work is disappearing, it sinks into the grave only with the dying race which they more than all others have loved and served. But in this age men are little inclined to dwell upon memories, however glorious. We live in the present and in the future, and, in spite of much cheap sentiment and wordy philanthropy, we have but weak sympathy with decaying races. We are interested in what is or is to be, not in what has been; and perhaps it is well that this is so. We have but

The early colonists of the present territory of the United States were as unlike in their religious as in their national characters. English Puritans founded the colonies of New England; New York was settled by the Dutch; Delaware and New Jersey by the Dutch and the Swedes; Pennsylvania by Quakers from England, who were followed by a German colony. Virginia was the home of the English who adhered to the Established Church of the mother country, and North Carolina became the refuge of the Nonconformists from Virginia; in South Carolina a considerable number of Huguenots found an asylum; and in Maryland the first settlers were chiefly English Catholics. Nearly all these colonies owed their foundation to the religious troubles of Europe. The Puritans, the Catholics, and the Quakers were more eager to find a home in which they could freely worship God than to amass wealth.

The religious spirit of New England, whose influence in this country, before and since the Revolution, has been preponderant, was as narrow and proscriptive as it was intense, and a gloomy fanaticism lay at the basis of its entire political and social system. The Puritan colonies were not so much bodies politic as churches in the wilderness. To the commission appointed to draw up a body of laws to serve as a declaration of rights, Cotton Mather declared that God’s people should be governed by no other laws than those which He himself had given to Moses; and one of the first acts of the Massachusetts colony was the expulsion of John and Samuel Browne with their followers, because they refused to conform to the religious practices of the Pilgrims. If dissenting Protestants were not tolerated in New England, Catholics certainly could not hope for mercy; and, in fact, they were denied religious liberty even in Rhode Island, which had been founded by the victims of Puritan persecution as a refuge for the oppressed and a protest against fanaticism. Though Mr. Bancroft, whose partisan zeal, whenever there is question of New England, is unmistakable, denies that this unjust discrimination was the act of the people of Rhode Island, it served, at any rate, so effectually to exclude Catholics that when the war of independence broke out not one was to be found within the limits of the colony.

Puritanism, more than any other form of Protestantism, drew its very life from a hatred of all that is Catholic. The office and authority of bishops, the repetition of the Lord’s Prayer, the sign of the cross, the chant of the psalms, the observance of saints’ days, the use of musical instruments in church, and Sabbath, the fasts and saints’ days of Catholics were in their eyes the superstitions of idolaters; and while they assumed the right to declare what is true Christian doctrine and to enforce its acceptance, they indignantly rejected the spiritual authority of the church, though historically traceable to Christ’s commission to the apostles.

The measures, therefore, which the colonies of New England took to prevent the establishment of the Catholic Church on their soil, were merely the expression of the horror and dread of what they conceived its influence and tendency to be. In 1631, just eleven years after the landing of the Mayflower, Sir Christopher Gardiner, on mere suspicion of being a papist, was seized and sent out of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, and in the same year the General Court wrote a letter denouncing the minister at Watertown for giving expression to the opinion that the Church of Rome is a true church. Three years later Roger Williams, whose tolerant temper has been an exhaustless theme of praise, joined with the Puritans in declaring the cross a “relic of Antichrist, a popish symbol savoring of superstition and not to be countenanced by Christian men”; and, in proof of the sincerity of their zeal, these godly men cut the cross from out the English flag. Priests were forbidden, under pain of imprisonment and even death, to enter the colonies; and the neighboring Catholic settlements of Canada were regarded with sentiments of such bigoted hatred as to blind the Puritans to their own most evident political and commercial interests. So unrelenting was their fanaticism that one of the grievances which they most strongly urged against III. was that he tolerated popery in Canada. In the New England colonies, down to 1776, the Catholic Church had no existence, and the same may be said of the other colonies, with the exception of Maryland and of a few families scattered through parts of Pennsylvania. In Maryland itself, where the principles of religious liberty, which now form a part of the organic law of the land, had been first proclaimed by the Catholic colonists, the persecution of the church early became an important feature in the colonial legislation. In successive enactments the Catholics were forbidden to teach school, to hold civil office, and to have public worship; and were, moreover, taxed for the support of the Established Church. The religious character of Virginia, though less intense and earnest than that of New England, can hardly be said to have been less anti-Catholic; and it is therefore not surprising that we should find the cruel penal code of the mother country in full vigor in this colony.

It would have been difficult to find anywhere communities more thoroughly Protestant than the thirteen British colonies one hundred years ago. The little body of Catholics in Maryland, in all about 25,000, who, in spite of persecution, had retained their faith, had sunk into a kind of religious apathy; and as their public worship had long been forbidden and they were not permitted to have schools, to indifference was added ignorance of the doctrines of the church. A few priests, once members of the suppressed Society of Jesus, lingered amongst them, though they generally found it necessary to live upon their own lands or with their kindred, and with difficulty kept alive the flickering flame of faith. Without religious energy, zeal, or organization, the Maryland Catholics were gradually being absorbed into mere worldliness or into the more vigorous Protestant sects; and, in fact, many of the descendants of the original settlers had already lost the faith. In this way the character of the old Catholic colony had been wholly changed; so that Maryland surpassed all the other colonies in the odious proscriptiveness of her legislation, levying the same tax for the introduction into her territory of a Catholic Irishman as for the importation of a Negro slave. The existence of the Catholic families there, and of the small and scattered settlements in Pennsylvania, if recognized at all by the general public, was looked upon as an anomaly, an anachronism, which, from the nature of things, must soon disappear. There is no exaggeration, then, in saying that the Revolution found the British provinces of North America thoroughly Protestant, with a hatred of the church which nothing but the general contempt for Catholics tended to mitigate; while the seeming failure of the Catholic settlement in Maryland, one hundred and fifty years after the landing of Lord Baltimore, gave no promise of a brighter future for the faith.

In the presence of the impending conflict with England political questions became supreme, and the Convention of 1774, in its appeal to the country, entreated all classes of citizens to put away religious disputes and animosities, which could only withhold them from uniting in the defence of their common rights and liberties. Though this appeal was probably meant to smooth the way for a more cordial union between New England and

The conduct of the Catholics in the war made, no doubt, a favorable impression, and the very important aid given to the American cause by Catholic France had still further influence in softening the asperities of Protestant prejudice; but, unless we are mistaken, we must seek elsewhere for the explanation of the clause of the federal Constitution which provides that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the United States”; as well as of the First Amendment, to the effect that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” These provisions were merely a part of a general policy, which restricted as far as possible the functions of the federal government, and left to the several States as much of their separate sovereignty as was consistent with the existence of the national Union.

This is evident from the fact that the federal Constitution placed no restriction upon the legislation of the different States in matters of religion, leaving them free to pursue the intolerant and persecuting policy of the colonial era; and, indeed, laws for the support of public worship lingered in Connecticut till 1816 and in Massachusetts till 1833, and anti-Catholic religious tests were introduced into several of the State constitutions. In New York, as late as 1806, a test-oath excluded Catholics from office; and in North Carolina, down to 1836, only those who were willing to swear to belief in the truth of Protestantism were permitted to hope for political preferment. New Jersey erased the anti-Catholic clause from her constitution only in 1844; and even to-day, unless we err, the written law of New Hampshire retains the test-oath.

The provision which denied to the general government all right of interference in religious matters was a political necessity. Any attempt to introduce into Congress religious discussions would have necessarily rent asunder the still feeble bands by which New England and the Southern States were held together. The reasons of policy which forbade the federal government to meddle with slavery applied with ten-fold force to questions of religion.

The First Amendment to the Constitution, of which we Americans are so fond of boasting, cannot, then, be interpreted as the proclamation of the principle of toleration or of the separation of church and state; it is merely the expression of the will of the confederating States to retain their pre-existing rights of control over religion, which, indeed, they could not have delegated to the general government without imperilling the very existence of the Union. Nearly all the leading statesmen of that day recognized the necessity of some kind of union

The year before the first battle of the Revolution no less than eighteen Baptists were confined in one jail in Massachusetts for refusing to pay ministerial rates; and yet John Adams declared “that a change in the solar system might be expected as soon as a change in the ecclesiastical system of Massachusetts”; and at a much later period Judge Story was able to affirm that “it yet remained a problem to be solved in human affairs whether any free government can be permanent where the public worship of God and the support of religion constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state.”

There is no foundation, we think, for the opinion which we have sometimes heard expressed, that the First Amendment to the Constitution was intended as an act of tardy justice to the Catholics of the United States, in gratitude for their conduct during the war and for the aid of Catholic France. It in fact made no change in the position of the Catholics, whom it left to the mercy of the different States, precisely as they had been in the colonial era. Various causes were, however, at work which, by modifying the attitude of the States towards religion, tended also to give greater freedom to the Catholic Church. The first of these was the rise of what may be called the secular theory of government, whose great exponent, Thomas Jefferson, had received his political opinions from the French philosophers of the eighteenth century. The state, according to this theory, is a purely political organism, and is not in any way concerned with religion; and this soon came to be the prevailing sentiment in the Democratic party, whose acknowledged leader Jefferson was, which may explain why the great mass of the Catholics in this country have always voted with this party. Another cause that tended to bring about a separation of church and state was the rapidly-increasing number of sects, which rendered religious legislation more and more difficult, especially as several of these were opposed to any recognition of religion by the civil power. And to this we may add the growing religious indifference which caused large numbers of Americans to fall away from, or to be brought up outside of, all ecclesiastical organization. The desire, too, to encourage immigration—which sprang from interested motives, and also from a feeling, very powerful in the United States half a century ago, that this country is the refuge of all who are oppressed by the European tyrannies—predisposed Americans to look favorably upon the largest toleration of religious belief and practice. There is no question, then, but the Catholics of this country owe the freedom which they now enjoy to the operation of general laws, the necessary results of given social conditions, and not at all to the good-will or tolerant temper of American Protestants. Let us, however, be grateful for the boon, whencesoever derived. At the close of the war which secured our national independence and created the republic the Catholic Church found herself, for all practical purposes, unfettered and free to enter upon a field which to her, we may say, was new. At that time there were in the whole country not more than forty thousand Catholics and twenty-five priests. In all the land there was not a convent or a religious community. VI., praying him to appoint a prefect-apostolic to preside over the church in the United States; and as the Holy See was already deliberating upon a step of this kind, Father Carroll was made superior of the American clergy, with power to administer the sacrament of confirmation. This was in 1784.

The priests, who at this time, for fear of wounding Protestant susceptibilities, thought it inexpedient to ask for a bishop, were now, after longer deliberation, persuaded that in this they had erred, and they therefore named a committee to present a petition to Rome, praying for the erection of an episcopal see in the United States. The Holy Father having signified his willingness to accede to this proposition, and it having been ascertained, too, that the government of this country would make no objection, they at once fixed upon Baltimore as the most suitable location for the new see, and presented the name of Father Carroll as the most worthy to be its first occupant. The papal bulls were dated November 6, 1789, and upon their reception Father Carroll sailed for England, where he was consecrated on the 15th of August, the Feast of the Assumption, 1790.

Events were just then taking place in France which were of great moment to the young church on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. The French Revolution was getting ready to guillotine priests and to turn churches into barracks; and M. Emery, the Superior-General of the Order of Saint Sulpice, who was as far-seeing as he was fearless, entered into correspondence with Bishop Carroll, in England, with a view to open an ecclesiastical seminary in the United States. The offer was gladly accepted, and the year following (1791) M. Nagot organized the Theological Seminary of Baltimore, and in the same year the first Catholic college in the United States was opened at Georgetown, in the District of Columbia. In 1790 Father Charles Neale brought from Antwerp a community of Carmelite nuns, who established themselves near Port Tobacco, in Southern Maryland. This was the first convent of religious women founded in the United States, the house of Ursuline nuns in New Orleans having come into existence while Louisiana was still a French colony. A few years later a number of religious ladies adopted the rule of the Order of the Visitation and organized a convent in Georgetown; and in 1809 Mother Seton founded near Emmittsburg, in Maryland, the first community of Sisters of Charity in this country, just one year after St. Mary’s College. In 1805 Bishop Carroll reorganized the Society of Jesus, and in 1806 the Dominicans founded their first convent in the United States, at St. Rose, in Kentucky. Two years later episcopal sees were established at New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Bardstown, with an archiepiscopal centre at Baltimore.

In this way the church was preparing, as far as the slender means at her command would permit, to receive and care for the vast multitudes of Catholics who began to seek refuge in the United States from the persecutions and oppressions of the British and other European governments. But her resources were not equal to the urgency and magnitude of the occasion, and her history, during the half-century immediately following the close of the Revolutionary war, though full of examples of courage, zeal, and energy, shows her in the throes of a struggle which, whether it were for life or death, seemed doubtful.

Like an invading army, her children poured in a ceaseless stream into the enemy’s country, and, arrived upon the scene of action, they found themselves without leaders, without provisions, without means of defence or weapons of heavenly warfare. Far from their spiritual guides, in a strange land, without churches or schools, the very air of this new world seemed fatal to the faith of the early Catholic immigrants; and when, yielding to the rigors of the climate or the hardships of frontier life, they died in great numbers, their orphan children fell into the hands of Protestants and were lost to the church. Their descendants to-day are scattered from Maine to Florida, from New York to California.

Bishop England, though inclined to exaggerate the losses of the church in this country, was certainly not mistaken in holding that during the period of which we speak, though there was an increase of congregations, there was yet a great falling away of Catholics from the faith in the United States.

Unfortunately, the want of priests and churches cannot with truth be said to have been the greatest evil, especially in the early years of the organization of the hierarchy. A spirit of insubordination existed both in the clergy and the laity. “Every day,” wrote Bishop Carroll, “furnishes me with new reflections, and almost every day produces new events to alarm my conscience and excite fresh solicitude at the prospect before me. You cannot conceive the trouble which I suffer already, and the still greater which I foresee from the medley of clerical characters, coming from different quarters and of various educations, and seeking employment here. I cannot avoid employing some of them, and soon they begin to create disturbances.” There were troubles and scandals in nearly all the larger cities, which in some instances were fomented by the priests themselves. The trustee system was a fruitful cause of disturbance, threatening at times to bring the greatest evils upon the church; especially as there seemed to be reason to fear lest the dissensions between the clergy and the laity might serve as a pretext for the intermeddling of the civil authority in ecclesiastical affairs. Except in the two or three colleges of which we have spoken, there was no Catholic education to be had; and for a long time the few elementary

Another unavoidable evil was the mingling of various nationalities in the same church, giving rise to jealousies, and frequently to dissensions; and to this we may add that the very people to whom above all others the church in this country is indebted for its progress met with peculiar difficulties in the fulfilment of their God-given mission. This fact did not escape the keen eye of the first bishop of Charleston.

“England,” he says, “has unfortunately too well succeeded in linking contumely to their name [the Irish] in all her colonies; and though the United States have cast away the yoke under which she held them, many other causes have combined to continue against the Irish Catholic more or less to the present day the sneer of the supercilious, the contempt of the conceited, and the dull prosing of those who imagine themselves wise. That which more than a century of fashion has made habitual is not to be overcome in a year; and to any Irish Catholic who has dwelt in this country during one-fourth of the period of my sojourn it will be painfully evident that, although the evil is slowly diminishing, its influence is not confined to the American nor to the anti-Catholic. When a race is once degraded, however unjustly, it is a weakness of our nature that, however we may be identified with them upon some points, we are desirous of showing that the similitude is not complete. You may be an Irishman, but not a Catholic: you may be Catholics, but not Irish. It is clear you are not an Irish Catholic in either case! But when the great majority of Catholics in the United States were either Irish or of Irish descent, the force of the prejudice against the Irish Catholic bore against the Catholic religion, and the influence of this prejudice has been far more mischievous than is generally believed.”[125]

We must not omit to add that many of the early missionaries spoke English very imperfectly and were but little acquainted with the habits and customs of the people among whom they were called to labor; while the five or six bishops of the country, separated by great distances from their priests, rarely saw them, and consequently were in a great measure unable to control or direct them in the exercise of the sacred ministry. The French missionaries, who in their own country had seen the most frightful crimes committed in the name of liberty and of republicanism, found it difficult to sympathize heartily with our democratic institutions; and from Ireland very few priests came, because the French Revolution had broken up the Continental Irish seminaries from which she drew her own supplies.

The purchase of Louisiana from France in 1803 added little or nothing to the strength of the church in the United States, since, owing to the wretched French ecclesiastical colonial policy, which did not permit the appointment of bishops, the Catholic population of that province, a large portion of whom were negro slaves, had been almost wholly neglected. What the state of the church was in Florida at the time of its cession to the United States may be inferred from the fact that in the whole province there was but one efficient priest, who at once withdrew to Cuba, and afterwards to Ireland, his native country. In the early years of the present century Protestant feeling in this country was much more earnest and self-confident than at present—in the Miscellany, which Archbishop Hughes called the first really Catholic newspaper ever published in this country, was founded; and fifty years after the consecration of Bishop Carroll there were but six Catholic journals in the United States.

Much else might be said in illustration of the difficulties with which the church has had to contend, and of the obstacles which she has had to overcome, in order to win the position which she now occupies in the great American republic. Enough, however, has been said to show that it would be difficult to imagine surroundings which, while allowing her freedom of action, would be better suited to test her strength and vitality.

The 15th of next August eighty-six years will have passed since the consecration of Bishop Carroll, and to this period the organized efforts of the church to secure a position in this country are confined. The work then begun has not for a moment been intermitted. In the midst of losses, defeats, persecutions, anxieties, doubts, revilings, calumnies, the struggle has been still carried on. Each year with its sorrows brought also its joys. The progress, if at times imperceptible, was yet real. When in the early synods and councils of Baltimore were gathered the strong and true-hearted bishops and priests who have now gone to their rest, there was doubtless more of sadness than of exultation in their words as they spoke of their scattered and poorly-provided flocks, of the want of priests, of churches, of schools, of asylums, of the hardships of missionary life, and of labors that seemed in vain. Still, they sowed in faith, knowing that God it is who gives the increase. Like weary travellers who seem to make no headway, by looking back they saw how much they had advanced. New churches were built, new congregations were formed, new dioceses were organized. On some mountain-side or in deep wooded vale a cloister, a convent, a college, a seminary arose, one hardly knew how, and yet another and another, until these retreats of learning and virtue dotted the land. The elements of discord and disturbance within the church grew less and less active, the relations

The danger, which at one time may have seemed imminent, of the estrangement of the laity from the clergy, disappeared little by little, and to-day in no country in the world are priest and people more strongly united than here. With the more thorough organization of dioceses and congregations parochial schools became practicable, and the great progress made in Catholic elementary education is one of the most significant and reassuring facts connected with the history of the church in the United States. The number of pupils in our parochial schools was, in 1873, 380,000, and to-day it is probably not much short of half a million, which, however, is even less than half of the Catholic school population of the entire country. But the work of building schools is still progressing, and the conviction of the indispensable necessity of religious education is growing with both priests and people; so that we may confidently hope that the time is not very remote when in this country Catholic children will be brought up only in Catholic schools. By establishing protectories, industrial schools, and asylums we are growing year after year better able to provide for our orphan children.

The want of priests, which has hitherto been one of the chief obstacles to the progress of the church, is now felt only in exceptional cases or in new or thinly-settled dioceses. A hundred years ago there were not more than twenty-five priests in the United States; in 1800 there were supposed to be forty; in 1830 the number had risen to two hundred and thirty-two, and in 1848 to eight hundred and ninety. In ten years, from 1862 to 1872, the number of priests was more than doubled, having grown from two thousand three hundred and seventeen to four thousand eight hundred and nine. The lack of vocations to the priesthood among native Americans was formerly a subject of anxiety and also of frequent discussion among Catholics in this country; but now it is generally admitted, we think, that if proper care is taken in the education and training of our youths, a sufficient number of them will be found willing to devote themselves to the holy ministry.

In 1875 there were, according to the official statistics of the various dioceses, five thousand and seventy-four priests, twelve hundred and seventy-three ecclesiastical students, and six thousand five hundred and twenty-eight churches and chapels in the United States. There were also, at the same time, thirty-three theological seminaries, sixty-three colleges, five hundred and fifty-seven academies and select schools, sixteen hundred and forty-five parochial schools, two hundred and fourteen asylums, and ninety-six hospitals under the authority and control of the Catholic hierarchy of this country.

One hundred years ago there was not a Catholic ecclesiastical student, or theological seminary, or college, or academy, or parochial school, or asylum, or hospital from Maine to Georgia.

Father Badin, the first person who ever received Holy Orders in the United States, was ordained in the old cathedral of Baltimore on the 25th of May, 1793, just eighty-three

In 1790 there was not a convent in the United States; in 1800 there were but two; to-day there are more than three hundred and fifty for women, and there are probably one hundred and thirty for men.

We may be permitted to refer also to the increase of the wealth of the church in this country, especially since this seems to be the cause of great uneasiness to the faithful and unselfish representatives of the sovereign people. The value of the property owned by the church in this country, as given in the census reports, was, in 1850, $9,256,758; in 1860, $26,774,119; and in 1870, $60,985,565. The ratio of increase from 1850 to 1860 was 189 per cent., and from 1860 to 1870 128 per cent.; while the aggregate wealth of the whole country during these same periods increased in the former decade only 125 per cent. and in the latter only 86 per cent. In 1850 the value of the church property of the Baptists, the Episcopalians, the Methodists, and the Presbyterians was greater than that of the Catholics, but in 1870 we had taken the second rank in point of wealth, and to-day we think there is no doubt but that we hold the first.

“Whatever causes,” says Mr. Abbott, in his recent article on The Catholic Peril in America, “may have contributed to this significant result, it is certain that among the chief of them must be reckoned exemption from just taxation, extraordinary shrewdness of financial management, and fraudulent collusion with dishonest politicians.”

Those who know more of the history of the church in this country than can be learned from statistical reports, or articles in reviews, or cyclopædias are aware that there are no possessions in the United States more honestly acquired, or bought with money more hardly earned, than those of the Catholic Church; and that her present wealth, instead of being due to special financial shrewdness, has in many instances been got in spite of great and frequent financial blundering; while the bishops and priests of America, with here and there an exception, have neither had nor sought to have any political influence, nor would they, if disposed to meddle with partisan politics, meet with any encouragement from the Catholic people. Their position with regard to the question of education is the result of purely conscientious and religious motives; and while claiming for Catholics the right to give to their children the benefit of religious training, they have everywhere and repeatedly given the most convincing proofs of their sincere desire to concede to all others the fullest liberty in this as in other matters; and though they cannot approve of that feature in the common-school system which excludes all teaching of doctrinal religion, they have never thought of pretending that those to whom it does commend itself should not be permitted to try the experiment of a purely secular education, provided they respect in others the freedom of conscience which is now a part of the organic law of the land.

With very few exceptions, Catholics have, throughout the whole

The property of the Catholic Church in the United States has not been exempted from taxation, except under general laws which applied equally to that of all other religious denominations; and though we can imagine nothing more barbarous, more hurtful to the progress of the national architecture and to the general æsthetic culture of the people, than a change in the policy which has hitherto prevailed, not in this country alone, but in all the civilized states of the world; nevertheless, if those who hold that religion has no social value succeed in revolutionizing legislation on this subject, the Catholics will not be less prepared than their neighbors to abide the issue.

A more interesting study than the wealth of the church is the growth of the Catholic population in the United States, though, in the absence of reliable or complete statistics on this subject, we are not able to give an entirely satisfactory or exact statement of the facts. The “number of sittings,” to use the phrase of the official reports, given in the United States Census, is of scarcely any assistance in determining the religious statistics of the country. The number of Protestant church sittings, for instance, was in 1870 19,674,548, whereas the membership of all the Protestant sects of the country was only about 7,000,000; and it is well known that, while in most Protestant churches many seats are usually unoccupied during religious service, in the Catholic churches the same seat is frequently filled by three, or four, or even five different persons, who take it in succession at the various Masses.

Ninety-one years ago Father Carroll set down the Catholic population of the United States at twenty-five thousand, and he may have fallen short of the real number by about ten thousand. In 1808, when episcopal sees were placed at Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Bardstown, the Catholic population had increased to about one hundred and fifty thousand. In 1832 Bishop England estimated the Catholics of the United States at half a million; but in 1836, after having given the subject greater attention, he thought there could not be less than a million and a quarter. Both these estimates, however, were mere surmises; Metropolitan Catholic Almanac for 1848, basing their calculations upon the very satisfactory returns which they had received from the thirty dioceses then existing in the United States, set down our Catholic population at 1,190,700, and this is probably the nearest approach which we can make to the number of Catholics in this country at the time the great Irish famine gave a new impulse to emigration to America. From 1848 down to the present day the increase of the Catholic population has been very rapid, it having risen in a period of twenty-eight years from a little over a million to nearly seven millions. The third revised edition of Schem’s Statistics of the World for 1875 gives 6,000,000 as the Catholic population of the United States, and the American Annual Cyclopædia for 1875 reckons it as more than 6,000,000; and from a careful consideration of the data, which, however, are still imperfect, we think it is at present probably not less than 7,000,000. This remarkable growth of the church here during the last thirty years must be attributed to various causes, by far the most important of which is beyond all doubt the vast immigration from Ireland; to which, indeed, we must also chiefly ascribe the progress of the church during this century in all other countries throughout the world in which the English language is spoken. No other people could have done for the Catholic faith in the United States what the Irish people have done. Their unalterable attachment to their priests, their deep Catholic instincts, which no combination of circumstances has ever been able to bring into conflict with their love of country; the unworldly and spiritual temper of the national character; their indifference to ridicule and contempt; and their unfailing generosity—all fitted them for the work which was to be done here, and enabled them, in spite of the strong prejudices against their race which Americans had inherited from England, to accomplish what would not have been accomplished by Italian, French, or German Catholics. Another cause of the more rapid growth of the church during the last quarter of a century may be found in the more thorough organization of dioceses, congregations, and schools, by which we are better able to shield our people from unhealthy influences, and thus year after year to diminish our losses; while the increasing number of converts to the faith helps to swell the Catholic ranks. Of 22,209 persons who were confirmed in the diocese of Baltimore from 1864 to 1868, 2,752, or more than 12 per cent., were converts; and our converts are generally from the more intelligent classes of Americans. The efforts to arrest the progress of the church, which now for nearly half a century have assumed a kind of periodicity, may be placed among the causes which have added to her strength. These attempts are made in open violation of the religious and political principles which are the special boast of all Americans, and the only arguments which can be adduced to justify them are drawn from fear or hatred. Whenever we have been

However this may be, there can be no doubt but the repeated and unprovoked attacks made upon the Catholics of the United States by fanatics and demagogues have helped to increase their union and earnestness; and this leads us away from the growth of the church in her external organization to the consideration of the development of her spiritual and intellectual life. And here we are at once struck by the similarity between her progress and that of the country itself, which has been diffusive at the expense of concentration and thoroughness. Nevertheless, no attentive observer can fail to be struck by the intense and earnest religious spirit by which the great body of the Catholics of the United States are animated, as well as the readiness with which they co-operate with their priests in promoting the interests of religion. Nowhere do we find greater eagerness for instruction in the truths of the faith, or greater willingness to make sacrifices in order to give to the young a religious education, than among the Catholics of this country. Our priests are, as a body, laborious, self-sacrificing, and disinterested, and are honestly struggling to make themselves worthy of the great mission which God has given them in America.

Our position in this country hitherto has turned the thoughts of our best minds to polemical and controversial writing, which, though useful and even necessary, has only a temporary value, since it is addressed primarily to objections and phases of belief which owe their special significance to transitory conditions of society and opinion. Controversies between Catholics and Protestants which forty years ago attracted general attention and produced considerable impression, would now pass unnoticed; for the simple reason that Americans, in the confusion of sects and religious opinions, have come to realize that Protestantism has no doctrinal basis, and is left to trust exclusively to religious sentiment. Dogmatic Protestantism is of the past, and the most popular preachers are those who appeal

During the hundred years of our independent life the external development of the church, like that of the nation, has been so rapid that all individual energies have to a greater or less degree been drawn to help on this growth. Another century, bringing other circumstances, with them will bring the opportunity and the duty of other work. A more thorough organization must be given to our educational system; Catholic universities mast be created which in time will grow to be intellectual centres in which the best minds of the church in this country may receive the culture and training that will enable them to work in harmony for the furtherance of Catholic ends; a more vigorous and independent press, one not weakened by want or depraved by human respect or regard for persons, must be brought into existence. We must prepare ourselves to enter more fully into the public life of the country; to throw the light of Catholic thought upon each new phase of opinion or belief as it rises; to grapple more effectively with the great moral evils which threaten at once the life of the nation and of the church. All this and much else we have to do, if our God-given mission is to be fulfilled.

And now we will crave the indulgence of our readers while we conclude with a brief reference to what we conceive to be the office which the Catholic Church is destined to fulfil in behalf of the American state and civilization.

De Tocqueville, in his thoughtful and singularly judicious treatise on American institutions, makes the following very just remarks:

“I think the Catholic religion has been falsely looked upon as the enemy of democracy. On the contrary, Catholicism, among the various sects of Christians, seems to me to be one of the most favorable to the equality of social conditions. The religious community in the Catholic Church is composed of but two elements—the priest and the people. The priest [126]

The generous sentiments which two centuries and a half ago led the Catholics of Maryland to become the pioneers of religious liberty in the New World, are still warm in the hearts of the Catholic people of the United States. We have even here been the victims of persecution, and it is not impossible that similar trials may await us in the future; but we have the most profound conviction that, even though we should grow to be nine-tenths of the population of this country, we shall never prove false to the principle of religious liberty, which, to the Catholics of the United States, at least, is sacred and inviolable. For our own part, we should turn with unutterable loathing from the man who could think that any other course could ever be either just or honorable.

The Catholics of this republic are deeply impressed with the inviolability of the rights of the individual. We believe that the man is more than the citizen; that when the state tramples upon the God-given liberty of the most wretched beggar, the consciences of all are violated; that it is its duty to govern as little as possible, and rather to suffer a greater good to go undone than to do even a slight wrong in order to accomplish it. For this reason we believe that when the state assumed the right to control education, it took the first step away from the true American and Christian theory of government back towards the old pagan doctrine of state-absolutism. Though we uphold the rights of the individual, we are not the less strong in our advocacy of the claims of authority. In fact, the almost unbounded individual liberty which our American social and political order allows would fatally lead to anarchy, if not checked by some great and sacred authority; and this safeguard can be found only in the Catholic Church, which is the greatest school of respect the world has ever seen. The church, by her power to inspire faith, reverence, and obedience,

A FRENCHMAN’S VIEW OF IT.[127]

M. Claudio Jannet has recently sent forth from the little town of Aix, in Provence, a work on the United States of the present day which may be both interesting and profitable to American readers. It does not appear that M. Jannet has visited the country whose moral, social, and political condition he sets himself to describe. His information has been gathered from books, pamphlets, and periodicals; his conclusions are the result of deliberation rather than the hasty observations of a tourist, and they are all the more valuable because they are not distorted by the usual blunders and prejudices which obstruct the vision of the average Frenchman in America. The European traveller, particularly the French traveller, finds many things in our country to shock his prejudices and offend his tastes. The discomforts of the journey, the harshness of the climate, the extravagance of living, the imperfections of our domestic economy, the general crudeness of our new and incomplete civilization, the press and hurry of business, the lack of æsthetic culture, the vulgarity of popular amusements—all these things put him out of the humor to be just. He dislikes the surface aspects of American life, and, with the best disposition in the world, he commonly fails to see what lies underneath. He fills his note-book with dyspeptic comments,

M. Jannet’s book has been evolved in this way. His industry in the collection of materials seems to have been remarkable; and if his judgment has not always kept pace with it, the instances in which he has been misled are fewer than we should have expected. For most of his mistakes he can show the excuse of an American authority. It does not become us, therefore, to find too much fault with him. We are rather disposed to overlook errors in the statement of particular facts, and consider the really valuable and novel points in his essay, with the moral which he wishes us to draw from it. We shall find in what he says abundant food for reflection, even when we believe him to be wrong.

He sets out with an attempt to show that the spirit of revolution has been waging incessant war for nearly a hundred years upon “the work of Washington,” and that the Constitution, as it was devised by the wise and conservative party represented by our first President, has been almost torn to shreds, and is destined to destruction by the aggressions of radicalism. M. Jannet’s references to “the school of Washington” seem rather odd to an American reader. We doubt whether there ever was a distinct political school to which that name could be properly applied; and it is not at all clear that there have been two well-defined and antagonistic political principles in conflict since the very foundation of the government, as Ormuzd and Ahriman, the spirit of good and the spirit of evil, waged perpetual warfare, in the Zoroastrian system, for the dominion of the world. The philosophical historian is fond of tracing in the revolutions of states and the development of political theories the steady growth of some fixed principle of action. But it is a specious philosophy which takes no account of accidents. M. Jannet has made the mistake of going too deep, and overlooking what lies right on the surface. He sees the spirit of radicalism, fostered by the influx of communistic and infidel immigrants from Europe, attacking the conservative safeguards originally established in our federal and State constitutions, assailing the rights of the States, extending the suffrage, sweeping the country into the vortex of uncontrolled democracy. “Popular sovereignty” is the watchword of this radical movement. “The doctrine of popular sovereignty,” says M. Jannet, “is based upon the idea that man is independent, and that consequently there can be no authority over him except with his own consent. This principle established, there can no longer be any question of limiting the suffrage by conditions of capacity, for the time being.” About the year 1850, according to our author, the heresy of “popular sovereignty,” otherwise the religion of revolution, obtained full headway, and the radical party, making skilful use of the anti-slavery sentiment which had hitherto been cultivated only by a small band of eccentric philanthropists, captured the masses of well-meaning, unreflecting voters. Liberty and emancipation were their watchwords; but their real purpose was only the supremacy of the mob. Slavery was the abuse which they pretended to attack, but they only feigned a horror for it in order to win over the small but zealous party of sincere abolitionists; their actual object was to abolish the federal Union with its limited powers, and set up a unitary democracy based upon the despotism of universal suffrage. “From the day when this party came into power by the election of Lincoln,” says M. Jannet, “nothing remained for the South but to take up arms to protect its rights against the projects already disclosed.” And he adds that the radical movement towards pure democracy “alone can explain the unheard-of ferocity with which the Northern armies fought, and the odious persecution which followed their triumph, and which still lasts, ten years afterwards.”

Thus the anti-slavery agitation was only an incident—and, indeed, M. Jannet seems not to regard it as a very important one—in the long, uninterrupted, deplorable decline of America from a moderately conservative federal republic to the despotism of an ignorant, centralized democracy. It can hardly be necessary to point out to American readers the serious mistake in M. Jannet’s theory. It is useless to look beyond slavery for an explanation of the changes wrought within the past fifteen years in the character of the American government. Mr. Seward was right when he declared that there was an irrepressible conflict between slavery and freedom. It had been gathering force for years when it broke into war in 1861; it had been the original cause of nearly all the encroachments upon the rights of the States which preceded the Rebellion, and it had made the very words “State rights” odious to a vast majority of the Northern people. The plain truth is that the only State right which the conservative and aristocratic party cared about maintaining was the right to hold human beings in bondage, and buy and sell them like cattle. They chose to identify a political theory with a hateful social institution, and it was only natural that, when the end came, theory and institution should go down together. The evil influence of slavery, however, ago. The “reconstructed States” became little more than vassal provinces, practically ruled at the seat of the federal government. In some cases, even after the military governors had disappeared and the States had been restored to representation in Congress, and nominally to their full powers of self-administration, we have seen soldiers sent from Washington to decide local election contests, legislatures dispersed at the point of the federal bayonet, and the verdict of the ballot rudely set aside by the President’s despotic order. The general course of legislation for the Southern States at Washington was inspired by the belief that the whole Confederacy was a hot-bed of insurrection and crime. Special laws were enacted to prevent the “rebel element” from acquiring that predominance in the Southern communities which naturally belonged to it, and to lift up the negroes to a political power to which they were not entitled by their numbers, and for which they were not qualified by character or education. The control of elections was taken away from the States by the Enforcement laws, and the ordinary police duties of preserving the peace were usurped by federal appointees under a strained interpretation of the statutes. An incident reported in Alabama during the political campaign of 1874 illustrates the extreme length to which federal interference was carried, and the ingenuity with which it was employed for merely partisan purposes. A Republican politician had been murdered in August of that year, and the perpetrators of the deed had not been discovered. The guilt was charged, however, upon several active Democrats, and just before the election they were arrested by a federal marshal and committed for

But of late the progress of the country towards centralization has been sensibly checked. The abuses of the past few years have been followed by a popular reaction. The temper of the South is better understood. The North begins to see the dangers of the course it has been following, and at the same time to feel ashamed of its injustice. And more than all else, the Supreme Court of the United States, in two able decisions, sweeps away a great mass of the most mischievous Enforcement legislation, and redefines the almost obliterated boundaries of State and federal authority. The judgment of the court in the Grant Parish and Kentucky cases marks an era in our constitutional history. It neutralizes a great deal of the evil consequences of the war period, and can hardly fail of a most salutary effect upon future legislation. When he has read it, even M. Jannet, perhaps, will take a more cheerful view of our condition.

But let us leave the historical part of M. Jannet’s book, and look at the picture which he draws of our actual condition. We do not purpose to criticise it. We shall let our readers correct errors for themselves, as they can easily do, while we content ourselves with showing them how the political and social aspects of our country impress an intelligent foreign student. M. Jannet is deceived sometimes; he takes too seriously the satire of “the American humorist Edgar Poë,” and the mixture of sarcasm and burlesque which he cites from “The gilded age by Mark Twain and Dudley”; but upon the whole he tells the sober truth. He gives a pretty exact account of our electoral system, and especially of our system of nominations, which practically prevents the people from voting for anybody except the favorites of a little knot of professional politicians assembled in a committee or ward meeting. As political struggles in the United States, he says, are not for the triumph of principles, but only for the possession of power, politics has naturally become debased, high-minded citizens have insensibly become disgusted with it, and at the same time the rising flood of universal suffrage has driven the wealthy classes out of political life. Between 1824 and 1840 the party organizations were definitively settled, and since then politics has been the exclusive appanage of politicians by profession. M. Jannet gives a very unpleasant sketch of this class of persons, and describes the machinery of manipulating conventions and setting up candidates with considerable minuteness and accuracy. Nor is it possible for us to read without mortification his account of the manner in which the professional politicians carry on the government:

“Such institutions leave the nation completely disarmed against corruption. No one, either in the executive or the legislative branch, has any interest in stopping it. We shall even see that,

We prefer not to follow M. Jannet in his brief recital of the Crédit Mobilier scandal, the Fremont affair, the Pacific Mail bribery, the operations of the Tweed and Erie Rings, the boldness of the lobby, the power of the railway corporations in politics, the pressure of enormous debts and taxes as the inevitable consequence of legislative venality, and the degradation of the judicial office. It is a horrible account, but it is not exaggerated. For all his statements—save, of course, some mistakes of secondary importance—M. Jannet can show good American authority.

In the face of all this disorder and corruption the best citizens, disgusted with political life, hold themselves every year more and more strictly aloof from it.

“Men of property, merchants, and manufacturers are injured by the mismanagement of affairs, and deplore it; but each one finds it for his individual advantage not to lose his time in trying to correct public evils. The country is still rich enough to bear the waste and rascality of a government which calls itself popular.… Even in these days there are certain influences of religion, race, or locality which sometimes bring honest and capable men into the local political assemblies; but the ruling trait of American democracy is nevertheless the ostracism of the upper classes and of eminent men. The consequence is that these classes become more and more dissatisfied with democratic institutions, and cast wistful eyes towards the constitutional government, in reality more free than theirs, which Great Britain and her colonies enjoy. From De Tocqueville and Ampère to Duvergier de Hauranne and Hepworth Dixon, all observers have been struck by this sentiment, not in general openly expressed, but sufficiently shown by the considerable number of distinguished Americans who pass the greater part of their lives out of the country.”

In this there is just a modicum of truth—less now, perhaps, than there was when it was written; for there is to-day an unmistakable tendency among our best citizens to resume that share in the management of public affairs from which they have too long suffered themselves to be excluded. But M. Jannet follows Hepworth Dixon in his stupendously absurd remarks on the “moral emigration” of the best men of America, and finds it a proof of distaste for democratic institutions that Washington M. Jannet, who has certainly read a great many American books, should not have perceived the dense ignorance which distinguishes this particular portion of Dixon’s New America perhaps above the rest of the book. M. Jannet has only to pause and reflect for a moment, and he will not accuse Diedrich Knickerbocker and the author of the Life of Washington and Rip van Winkle of neglecting his own country to lounge in Granada, nor blame the poet of Cambridge because he rhymed the “Golden Legend” as well as the story of Evangeline and Miles Standish. Hawthorne too, the most thoroughly national of American romancers, and Bancroft, who has spent a lifetime in the study of American history! Is it also to Mr. Hepworth Dixon that M. Jannet is indebted for the discovery stated in the following passage?

“Americans, even those who at heart are most disgusted with democracy, have a passionate love of their country, and look upon themselves as the first nation of the world. This patriotism, despite its exaggerations, is a great power for the country. Without precisely desiring the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, many enlightened Americans aspire to a stronger and more stable government under a republican form. I have been struck, in the intercourse that I have had with many of them, by the secret admiration with which the rule of Napoleon III. in its day inspired them. This rule, democratic in its origin, revolutionary in its principle, but favorable to the preservation of material order and the acquisition of wealth, agreed very well with their desire for additional security, and at the same time with their lack of principles. Sentiments of this kind—and they are wide-spread—are one of the greatest dangers that threaten American society.”

Of course the corruption which disgraces politics appears likewise in the private life of the people. The constant aim of the Yankee, says M. Jannet, is to make money.

“The love of money seizes the young man from the time of his adolescence, and does not let the old man allow repose to the evening of his life. Except in the old slave States, there is no class of people of leisure in America. From top to bottom of the ladder, all society is a prey to devouring activity. Its economical results are considerable; the rapid growth of the nation and its prodigious development in all the arts of material well-being are the fruits of this ardent labor which knows no rest. If the Americans love money, it is not for the sake of mere acquisition, but in order that they may give themselves up to the enjoyment of luxuries and launch into new speculations. Harpagon is a type which does not exist among them. Indeed, they generally lack those habits of patient economy which constitute the strength and the virtue of our old races of peasants and bourgeois. Their readiness to spend and their generosity in case of need equal their appetite for gain. One who fails to take account of this characteristic restlessness of American life will get but an imperfect idea of the private habits and public institutions of the people. In no country are ‘honors’ more eagerly sought after or is democratic vanity more freely indulged; but it must be confessed that ‘honor’ is interpreted among Americans, or at least among Yankees, in quite a different sense from that which is accepted in Europe. No man plumes himself upon disinterestedness. Magistrates, generals, statesmen, accept subscriptions of jingling dollars as testimonials of public

“The pursuit of wealth is the main-spring of material progress, but when it is carried to an extreme it misses the very object of its pursuit. The excessive love of money has developed in the United States a financial dishonesty which stains the national character and causes a great loss of the public property. Who has not heard of the great fires which so often destroy entire quarters of the large cities? They are often kindled by individuals who wish to conceal their bankruptcy or to get the amount of their insurance. These crimes affect a multitude of innocent persons and cause an increase in the rates of insurance; in short, it is the nation at large which pays for such frauds by an increase in the cost of all its products. It is the same thing with failures. They entail no dishonor, as they do in France; that is why they are so many.…

“The causes of this perversion of the moral sense are complex. Amid the almost infinite subdivision of Protestant sects there is no longer any religious teaching which addresses itself with authority to the mass of the nation. We do not take sufficient account of what Catholicism is doing in our country to maintain the fundamental ideas of morality even among men who during their lives remain strangers to its practices. The corruption of the public authorities and the inefficient administration of justice have also a great influence.… Moreover, we must take into consideration the very mixed character of the population. Even the native Americans are incessantly in motion. They transfer themselves from one end of the country to the other for the slightest of reasons, and thus they escape the salutary control of local opinion which, among stable populations, is one of the most powerful moral influences. The establishment of joint-stock companies for financial and commercial enterprises—an innovation which dates from about fifty years ago—has done a great deal to weaken the sentiment of responsibility.… If certain companies are honestly administered, a great number are made the occasion of shameless frauds. We see audacious speculators buying up a majority of the stock in order to make secret issues of new shares. This operation is called ‘stock-watering.’ It is estimated that between July 1, 1867, and May 1, 1869, twenty-eight railway companies increased their capital from $287,000,000 to $400,000,000. These shares only serve for stock-gambling, and woe to those who have them left on their hands! ‘It would appear,’ says an American writer, ‘that the railroad speculators have three

Alas! it is impossible to deny that these statements are substantially true. The discoveries of corruption in public life which have recently produced so much political excitement surprise nobody who has studied American society. This is a “representative” democracy; and though certain well-understood causes, which it would be out of place to discuss here, have long been at work driving the highest class of our citizens out of public employment, it is undeniable that as a general rule the morality of men in office is about on a level with that of the voters who put them there. When peculation and swindling become common in commerce, and a man who makes money is always treated with respect until he goes to the penitentiary, it is almost inevitable that there should be bribery in the cabinet and conspiracy in the antechambers of the White House. The stream cannot rise higher than its source.

But if we wish to understand the real condition of the American people, we must study it in the nurseries of all public virtue—the home, the school, and the church. With the first of these the woman question has a most intimate connection. De Tocqueville said that Americans did not praise women much, but daily showed their respect for them. Now, says M. Jannet, things have sadly changed. We have ceased to respect women, and we are always talking about their rights. There is a considerable party among us which not only insists upon the right of women to vote and hold office, but would make of them lawyers, physicians, and ministers of the Gospel, and give them the direction of industrial and commercial enterprises precisely as if they were men. M. Jannet confesses that American women, on the whole, show very little eagerness to play the new rôle which the modern social reformers have created for them; but the agitation, if it produces no practical results, has a very unhappy influence upon the female mind, and a bad effect upon female education. How fearfully the family relation has been impaired in America all intelligent observers know. The laxity and confusion of the marriage laws; the shocking frequency of divorce; the publicity given to scandalous and indecent investigations; the prevalence of the crime of infanticide, against which the press, the pulpit, and the medical profession have long exclaimed in horror; the growing inability or unwillingness of American women to bear the burden of maternity; the fireside and set her upon the platform.

That there is nothing in the American school system to supply the defects of American home education no Catholic will need to be assured. The whole system rests upon the principle that the school-teacher has nothing to do with the cultivation of the moral nature of his pupil. His duty is limited to the atlas, the copy-book, and the multiplication-table. The pretext upon which this rule has been adopted, says M. Jannet, is respect for all religious beliefs, but its real end is to create a generation without any positive religious belief whatever. Zealous Christians even among Protestants are not deceived by it. A report upon the state of schools in Pennsylvania in 1864 says: “The importance, not to say the absolute necessity, of religious education becomes day by day more apparent. If we wish to maintain our institutions, it is essential to raise the standard of character and to revive among our people the spirit of Christianity. The generation which will soon succeed us should not only be skilful of hand, stout of heart, and enlightened in mind, but it must learn also to love God and man and practise duty.” But unfortunately, continues M. Jannet, such remonstrances have proved unavailing, and the “unsectarian” system is now permanently established—a sad result for which the Protestant clergy is in great part to blame. Nearly all of them approve the system, in the belief that Sunday-schools will be sufficient for religious instruction; but “true Christians point out that this separation of the two branches of education tends to make religion regarded as something foreign to

Protestantism, far from checking these disastrous tendencies, has allowed itself to increase them; and even if it had the will to constitute itself the defender of the state and the family, it is torn by intestine divisions and driving rapidly towards disintegration. Yet M. Jannet does not quite give us up for lost. “The crisis which is now passing over the country and checking its material prosperity may be the signal for a reform, in forcing honest men to recognize the vices of their institutions and the corruption of their manners.” There are four influences which he hopes may combine to save us. These are, 1, the wisdom and energy of the people of the South, who, after ten years of persevering efforts, have at last begun to recover the direction of their local affairs, and to clear away “the ruins caused by the war and the domination of the Radicals.” 2. The success obtained by the Democrats, or rather the Conservatives, in the elections of November, 1874, and April, 1875—a success that will put an end to the despotism with which the Radicals have cursed the country for fifteen years. We give these two points for what they are worth; of course we do not believe that there is any such fundamental difference between the people of the North and the people of the South, the people who call themselves Republicans and the people M. Jannet imagines. 3. The great number of American families who, in the midst of corruption and disorder, have faithfully preserved the virtues and domestic habits which lie at the foundation of all prosperous society. 4. Lastly and chiefly, the marvellous progress of the Catholic Church.

We make no comment upon this portion of his essay, but we end our review with a few lines from his closing paragraph which it will do us Americans, at the beginning of our new century, no harm to take to heart: “In all countries, in all times, under the most diverse historical and economical conditions, the moral laws which govern human society are unchanging and inevitable. Founded upon the decalogue, nay, upon the very nature of God, the distinction between good and evil knows no mutation. Everywhere men are prosperous or unfortunate, according as they keep the divine law or break it.”

LETTERS OF A YOUNG IRISHWOMAN TO HER SISTER.

(FROM THE FRENCH.)

Orleans, January, 1867.

I hasten to tell you, my darling sister, of our happy arrival in the city of Joan of Arc. It was cold during this long journey, but I was so silkenly enveloped inside the elegant coupé which was René’s New Year’s gift to me that I did not feel it.

Ah! qu’un autre vous-même est une douce chose!—“How sweet it is to have a second self!” You know how often I used to say this at the Sacred Heart, and with what questioning eyes our Parisian companions were wont to regard the daughters of Erin. Our impassioned fondness for one another surprised them, and we said that doubtless in France people did not know how to love. Dearest, we have now learnt that the country of our adoption is as warm as our native land. What kind hearts have we not found here! I am glad, therefore, to remain here for the winter; besides, with René I cannot grow weary anywhere. Why, darling Kate, are you not with us? Prepare yourself for frequent letters, as I have the mania of a scribbling friendship, to the astonishment of my mother-in-law. True, my writing-desk accompanies me everywhere, and before all other pleasures I prefer that of conversing with you.

Our home is delightful for comfort and elegance. We—that is, René and I—occupy the second story. Our house is in the Rue Jeanne d’Arc, and I have only to go to the window to see the beautiful A tout seigneur tout honneur.[128] Let us, then, speak first of this marvel of stone; of this Gothic pile whose lofty towers excite the admiration of the artist. Dearest, shall I tell you? I felt myself more at home there than in any other church. I am not going to describe either the rich chapels or the splendid windows. In these first visits to Sainte-Croix my heart melted with joy at the thought that I am a Catholic. “Well, my little Irlandaise, and so you are enthusiastic about Orleans,” said René softly to me, on observing the flush upon my cheeks.

I have been shown also the statue of Joan of Arc in the Place du Martroi. This, however, I do not admire; it is not the young shepherdess of my dreams, but a robust maiden of vigorous mould on horseback. But the bas-reliefs!… These are magnificent, sublime! What memories! What a history!—put to death upon the soil of this same France which she had saved. My blood boils when I think of the cruelty of England.

We are quite a large colony here. I must introduce you, Miss Kate, into this family circle. You scarcely know my mother-in-law, having only had an occasional glimpse of her amid the solemnities of my marriage, and when you were thinking only of your Georgina. We orphans were all in all to each other—we who were then on the point of being separated. Dear, dear Kate! my alter ego, my idol, who, wholly possessed by the highest love, have willed to consecrate your youth and future to the service of our Lord in the persons of his poor; and now there are you in your coarse habit, while Georgina the worldly is adorning herself with the jewels which became you so well!

My mother-in-law, who is kindness itself to me, is a person of exceeding dignity; quite a mediæval châtelaine, with the noble bearing of the heroines of Walter Scott. Her piety is fervent, and, her sons tell me, just a little austere. Ah! dearest, what a blessing is such a mother as this. The breath of the present age has not passed over her dwelling; her children believe and worship; and I seem to behold in her a Christian of the early centuries or a Blanche of Castile. My four sisters-in-law are very kind to the last comer, your Georgina. You saw my brothers in Paris.[129] Mme. Adrien is a Belgian, lively and graceful, and as proud of her “jewels” as the Cornelia of antiquity. She has three sons, who are pupils of the Jesuit Fathers in the Rue des Postes, and whom we shall only see during the vacations. Her daughter Hélène, a superb blonde, worthy of inspiring a Raphael, has just completed her education at the Benedictines of ——. Mme. Raoul was born of a French family on the other side of the Rhine. Her two daughters, Thérèse and Madeleine, are my delight. I sometimes go and look at them sleeping, and then go to sleep Mme. Paul has four treasures: the dauphin, Arthur, and demoiselles Marguérite, Alix, and Jeanne, the pretty one who arrived last—all this little population, young, fresh, smiling, chattering, and roguish. Mme. Édouard, the most sympathetic of all, the most French, and the most attractive, who has been married three years, is rich in the sweetest little cherub that could flatter maternal pride.

Adieu, dearest; this is only a sign of life. I am tired with the expeditions of the day, and René reminds me that it is late. Be happy, my Kate, and help me to bless God for my happiness; I am so afraid of being ungrateful.

Your Georgina.

January, 1867.

Booksellers are abundant here, my dear; and René, who knows my weakness, daily brings me something new. I have just read Mme. Rosély, by Mlle. Monniot, a name dear to our youth. How much I should like to know this authoress! The mind capable of such conceptions must be a personification of virtue and devotedness. The thought occurred to me of writing to her. Dear busy one, you will not even open this book; and yet how much it would please you, it is so beautiful! What pleasure it gave me there to find Margaret again, become a sister of Bon-Secours![130] I visited yesterday two churches, St. Paul and Recouvrance, both newly restored. There are fine windows at St. Paul’s, but the colors are too vivid for my taste. To the right is a chapel nearly dark, and a black Virgin held in great veneration—Notre-Dame des Miracles. I shall often return thither. I prayed there with all my heart for you, for our friends, for our own Ireland. Recouvrance is a charming church, close upon the Loire. (Did I tell you of my transport on seeing the beautiful river about which I had written volumes in the upper classes?) The altar is surmounted by sculptures—Mary and Joseph finding Jesus in the midst of the doctors. This sanctuary is a casket. Around the side aisles are delicious little chapels, with frescoes by Hippolyte Lazerges. I will mention those of the baptistery—Moses striking the rock, and the Samaritan at Jacob’s well. The Samaritan is admirably fine in form and expression. I stayed long before it—this fair page of Scripture made to live, as it were; the Saviour teaching the truth to this sinful woman! Here are the most beautiful confessionals that can be seen, with exquisite little paintings—the father of the prodigal welcoming his son, and the good Shepherd recovering his sheep from among the thorns.

Your letter has just reached me. Thanks, Kate! How sweet and good a thing it is to be so loved! Fain would I shed around me some little of the happiness with which I am flooded. My mother-in-law is so kind as to let me share in her works of charity, and my good René accompanies me into the abodes of the poor. Oh! in these low streets what miseries there are, what repulsive Grandmother gives the signal for us to separate. René and I prolong the evening by reading together. With regard to René, I am full of remorse for having—quite inadvertently, however—neglected to enclose in my last letter the one which he had written to you, and which you must since have received. Oh! how excellent he is, this brother of yours; and how proud of him I am—so intellectual, so distinguished, so handsome, and, what is far better and worth all the rest, so pious! Every morning we go together to Mass at Sainte-Croix. The Masses of communion are said in an expiatory chapel before the image of the Mother of Sorrows. From an artistic point of view this chapel is an anachronism—a Greek marble in a Gothic church. But what peace reigns there, what recollection; and one can pray there so well! Orleans seems to me empty in the absence of its great bishop, now in Rome. Do you remember our enthusiastic exclamations while reading his excellent work on education? I am impatient to be presented to him, to speak to him of Ireland—of this people which he has justly called “a people of martyrs and apostles.”[131]

Have read the Souvenirs d’une Institutrice, by Mme. Bourdon. That isolation, those struggles against penury, that life so troubled and stormy, made a hymn of thanksgiving gush out of my heart to Him whose providence has ordained for me so different a destiny. “O fortune!” said the Solitary of Cayla, “what suffering dost thou not cause when thou art adverse!” Dear Kate, with all my heart I pity the poor, especially the mothers. René made a discovery yesterday—a young married couple in utter distress, owing to the illness of the husband. The young mother is wholly occupied in the attendance necessary to the sick man and to her new-born son, who might be well named Benoni, the poor darling! It does not possess even a cradle. How I wept while listening to the story of their last three months! We sent the doctor to them, and I felt the pleasure of a child in myself choosing whatever I thought needful for this family. Mary and Joseph must have been thus at Bethlehem. The poor woman had sold her furniture bit by bit, not venturing to beg or speak to any one of her troubles; and yer the charities here are admirably organized.

Lucy (Mme. Édouard) is coming with us to-morrow on a pilgrimage to Cléry; I shall pray there for my Kate, and for all whom we love. I go the round of the churches with Lucy; René carves, paints, or writes, and we have music together. My mother-in-law has given me a beautiful piano, one of Pleyel’s. Our brothers have excellent voices. Lucy and I play splendid pieces of Mendelssohn, Mozart, and Beethoven. What concerts, what harmonies, what an enchanted life! From eight o’clock in the evening until ten we work for churches or the poor. Don’t be uneasy, dear Kate, with regard to what you call the unsettled, aimless life of the world;

Do you remember our old mistress Annah, who invariably used to say upon quitting us, “My husband will scold,” at which we always laughed, little giddy ones that we were? I bow before your gravity, and kiss you a hundred and a hundred times.

February, 1867.

I am just come from St. Pierre du Martroi, where the Père Minjard has been preaching a sermon in behalf of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul—an institution shown by the eloquent orator to be a source of comfort to sorrows otherwise inconsolable, and also a preservative against a social danger. What a picture he drew of atheistic poverty—poverty without God! What eloquence! What a soul of fire! At last, under this austere Dominican habit, I have beheld a man of genius. Thought makes this manly countenance its abode, and here dwells intellect in its plenitude. His eyes sparkle at times with a lightning flash almost dazzling. Ah! dear Kate, what an absorbing discourse.

How exactly like yourself it is to be so interested in Benoni and his family! I scarcely venture to go there, the poor woman so overwhelms me with her thanks. In vain I tell her again and again that she is my sister, and that in giving her a little from my abundance I have done nothing more than my strict, rigorous, obligatory duty. She receives me as if I were an angel from Paradise. The young man is recovering his health, and the child his roses. Thanks to my good René, who is really the most generous of men, I have installed them in a commodious and airy apartment where everything is bright with sunshine. This morning the God of the Eucharist entered this truly sanctified dwelling. This little household is so religious, resigned, and thankful to a kind Providence that God must take pleasure in it as in a temple.

Our pilgrimage was charming. Lucy consecrated her baby to Our Blessed Lady; and how happy the little love appeared to be about it! The church of Cléry is of Gothic architecture, sufficiently remarkable, but how dilapidated, poor, and bare! I noticed a clock and a Christ which must be as old as the time of Louis XI.; a magnificent Way of the Cross; beautiful antique carving in a small chapel which is quite in a ruinous state. The black Virgin is Notre-Dame de Cléry, who shared with Notre-Dame d’Embrun the affection and the eccentric devotion of the son of Marie d’Anjou, in whose mind they represented two distinct persons; and were invoked (O blasphemy!) almost as witnesses of the atrocities and revengeful deeds of the sombre lord of Plessis-lez-Tours. The black Virgin is over the high altar. I had a couple of tapers placed before this miraculous image, one for my Kate’s intentions and one for my own. The tomb of Louis XI. and of Charlotte of Savoy is in the nave. By the side of the pulpit is a monument of black marble; four colonnades of white marble support the upper portion, also of the same St. Fiacre. The road is animated in spite of the season; there, too, is the river, the beautiful river, the river so eminently French. Besides, must not even the dullest landscape appear radiant when one is twenty years old, with a husband whom one adores, a golden future in prospect, and heaven itself in the heart? Kate dearest, I am faithful to my daily Te Deum; it is the only hymn that can express what I feel.

My mother-in-law gave a large dinner-party in the evening. I made myself resplendent … in simplicity! This, at least, is the encomium bestowed on me by René, who pretends that I was very much admired. I would not say this to any one but my sister. Great names were represented there; some of the greatest in France—names of chivalrous associations. How happily inspired was Mother St. Athanasius in making us read the chronicles of the middle ages! It is to my having done so that I am indebted for the most gracious smiles of two honorable dowagers to whom I spoke of the glorious and historical deeds of their ancestors. Edward sang with me Le fil de la Vierge;[132] and altogether la petite Irlandaise found the evening too short and the company too amiable. These kind brothers and sisters never weary of bringing me forward, placing me in the light, and making everybody love me; my mother-in-law calls me her lily, her heath-flower, her violet; and the children are wild about Aunt Georgina. Dear Kate, how ravishingly fair is the dawn of my existence as a young wife!

A fortunate meeting, dearie—namely, with Margaret W——, the beautiful Englishwoman, who is, she says, en passage here. I was at Ste. Croix, lost in my thanksgiving after communion, when a rustling of silk and lace reminded me that I was still on earth, and a musical voice with a slight English accent said in my ear: “C’est bien vous?—Is it really you, Georgina?” I raised my head and recognized our friend. We came out together. Margaret has since paid me a visit, and my mother-in-law asked her to spare a whole day to Georgina. All the family is won by the grace and lively wit of la belle Anglaise. She is on her wedding tour; her husband is very agreeable—an accomplished gentleman, with the manners and bearing (if you please) of a peer of England. Lady Margaret told us about her presentation at court. Queen Victoria is very fond of her. In the evening twilight[133] we found ourselves alone together; then, looking straight into my eyes, Margaret asked me: “Are you truly and perfectly happy, Georgina?” You may guess what was my answer. “So much the better; so much the better,” sighed the lofty lady; and then, blushing and with a full and beating heart, she confided to me her grief—her husband does not love her! And yet he had seemed to me full of thoughtful attention to her. “Ah! dear Georgina, if you only knew what I suffer. I love Lord William passionately. I believed in his love, and now I

René complained of my being melancholy after the departure of “the English.” I could not confide to him the secret of my friend. “Dear Georgina, has this fine bird of passage inspired you with her wandering propensities?” “You know very well, René, that with you I desire nothing.” “Smile, then, my lady, or I shall think you are ill; come, sing me ‘The Lake,’ to shake off your gloom.”[134]

My eyes will no longer stay open, dear sister; my tender affection to you.

February 17, 1867.

A heavenly day, dear Kate; all fragrant with holy friendship, and, still better, with divine love. Père Minjard preached a charity sermon at Ste. Croix on behalf of the schools in the East. We went en chœur,[135] as the twins say. What incomparable eloquence! Nothing so captivates me as the art of language. I was fascinated, and as if hanging on the lips of this son of Lacordaire. He took for his text, “We must rescue Christ. Christ is in danger.” In a sustained and always admirable style he showed us Christ, in peril in the Gospel, by false criticism; in peril in tradition, by false science; in peril in the church teaching, by false politics; in peril in the church taught, by false literature—all this is a social danger. Oh! what beautiful things, what sublime thoughts; I could have wished the sermon never to end, and felt myself living a life of intelligence in a higher region than I had ever dreamed of before. Here is one among other beauties: “In our hours of poetry and youth have we not all dreamed of the East, with its clearer sun, its balmier breezes, its holier memories?… Such is, in fact, the incomparable favor that Christ has granted us in leaving in our hands the destiny of his name and his works.” Would that I could transcribe to you this living harmony, this austere teaching, ardent and true! How splendidly he brought before us the ancient memories of that East from which everything we have has come to us; the grand and Christian souvenirs also of the Crusades, and of those ages of faith when men were capable of a passionate Mgr. Dupanloup were of exquisite delicacy: “And I say this with so much the more freedom because he to whom my eulogies would be addressed is not present.” What a picture, too, he drew of the debasement of our souls if we no more had Jesus Christ!