Note 285 — Chapter XXVII · SLAVERY

The attempts to represent the Roman Catholic clergy as ardent abolitionists (Cochin, L’abolition de l’esclavage, ii. 443; de Locqueneuille, L’esclavage, ses promoteurs et ses adversaires, p. 193) are certainly not justified by facts. Among the Catholics of the United States there were some advocates of emancipation, but their number was not large (Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slavery, 195 sq.; Parker, Collected Works, vi. 127 sq.). Dr. England, the Catholic bishop of Charleston, South Carolina, undertook in public to prove that the Catholic Church had always been the uncompromising friend of slave-holding (Parker, op. cit. v. 57). In Brazil it was common for clergymen not only to possess slaves, but to buy and sell them with as little scruple as other merchandises (da Fonseca, A esravidão, o clero e o abolicionismo, pp. 28, 33). Bishop Bouvier wrote (op. cit. p. 568):—“Servi autem dominis suis obedire, sortem suam patienter tolerare et officia sibi imposita fideliter exsequi debent, quoadusque libertas ipsis concedatur. Meminerint præsentem vitam esse momentaneam, futuram vero æternam.”