displayed itself so brilliantly in the recent burning of the Catholic dwellings, seminaries, and churches in the city of Philadelphia.

We found this charge on Mr. Frelinghuysen's speech in Congress on the Sunday mail question, and on a book now lying before us, entitled "An Inquiry into the Moral and Religious Character of the American Government," (New York: Wiley & Putnam, 1838,) which, we presume, it will not be denied was written by him. This work is exceedingly declamatory in its character, and remarkably deficient in clear, distinct and definite statements; but no man can read it without feeling that its author would withhold all political rights, whether to vote or to be voted for, from all persons except members of what are called evangelical sects. "Has it not," it says, "become a cant among us, that as electors we have nothing to do with men's religious sentiments-no right even to inquire about them? Twenty gods, or no god, or the God that made the orld, is quite indifferent; Papists and Protestants are all one; Socinians, Jews and evangelical believers are all one; yes, and the tattooed cannibal of the South Sea, were he to honor our asylum of liberty by seeking a lot in its blessings, would enter at once into the same family circle of undistinguished and indistinguishable unity; free alike to live among us and to rise above our heads; for the doctrine is, that whoever is entitled to sit in the shade of the constitutional tower, has a right also to scale its walls." The meaning of this, vaguely as it is expressed, is not difficult to divine. It is "native Americanism" and "evangelicalism." The author, it is true, does not formally advocate a union of Church and State; nay, he, in words, expresses his dissent from such union; but he expressly contends for a "political religion," which, of course must be the test of political rights, and that this political religion must be the religion of the majority. He transfers, boldly and avowedly, to religious matters, the doctrine that the majority must govern, and that the minority must submit. It is true, he attempts to make a distiction between what he calls ecclesiastical Christianity, and the ethics of Christianity, but it is a distinction which can amount to nothing; for the ethics of a religious denomination are founded on its dogmas, and, in enacting the ethics, you do necessarily, by implication at least, enact the dogmas themselves. Enact what the majority define to be Christian ethics, and you necessarily enact the theology, christology, and anthropology of the majority, for these are the foundation and source of their ethics. The practical effect of Mr. Frelinghuysen's doctrine would be to establish the religion of the majority as the law, We see personified in the Whig candidates, modern feudalism, political profligacy, and canting, fanatical religious bigotry. Their success would be fraught with the most serious danger to our political institutions, to social equality, and to religious freedom. All is hazard. As matters now stand, all that is dear to our hearts, as freemen and as Christians, is involved in the approaching contest. We of the Republican party have committed many faults; we have on too many occasions proved ourselves unworthy of the sacred cause entrusted to our keeping; yet the all-beneficent Providence has not wholly cast us off, but graciously gives us one more opportunity to atone for past delinquencies, and to win new honors. The holy cause of political, social, and religious freedom is once more committed to our charge. The sacred deposit is placed in our hands, and at our hands will the Supreme Judge demand it. Every man of us must feel the sacredness of the trust, and remember that "the Lord seeth." There must be no cowards, no traitors, no laggards. A high and solemn duty rests on each one of us to rebuke political profligacy, and religious bigotry and fanaticism; to do all that man in honor and honesty may do to save this country, this chosen land of Providence, to the freedom of the human race, to make it the "home of virtue, an asylum to the oppressed, and a name and a praise in the whole earth."

The Boston Pilot of October 31, 1844, well known as a Roman Catholic organ, contained the following article::

"We say to all men in the United States entitled to be naturalized, become citizens while you can—let nothing delay you for an hour-let no hindrance short of mortal disease, banish you from the ballot-box. To those who are citizens, we say vote your principles, whatever they be-never desert them-do not be wheedled or terrified-but vote quietly, seriously and unobtrusively. Leave to others the noisy warfare of words; let your opinions be proved by your deliberate and determined action. We recommend to you no party; we condemn no candidate but one, and he is-Theodore Frelinghuysen. We have nothing to say to him as a Whig-we have nothing to say to Mr. Clay, nor any other Whig as such-but to the President of the American Board of Foreign Missions, the friend and patron of the Kirks and Coxes, we have much to say. We hate his intolerance-we dislike his associates-and we shudder at the blackness and the bitterness of that school of sectarians to which he belongs, and amongst whom he is regarded as an authority."

Read the following extract from Brownson's Quarterly Review of July, 1844, as a sample of their attacks. Speaking of Mr. Clay, then a candidate for the Presidency, Brownson says:

*

"He is ambitious, but short-sighted. *** He is abashed by no inconsistency, disturbed by no contradiction, and can defend with a firm countenance without the least misgiving what every body but himself sees to be a political fallacy, or logical absurdity. He is no more disturbed by being convicted of moral insensibility than intellectual absurdity. * * * A man of rare abilities, but apparently void of both moral * and therefore, a man whom no power under that of the Almighty can restrain, he must needs be the most dangerous man to be placed at the head of the government it is possible to conceive."

and intellectual conscience,

If it is wrong now to mingle religion with politics, why did this Romanist organ turn aside from its appropriate duties in 1844, to utter such slanders upon the character of Henry Clay?

The private correspondence of Mr. Clay, recently published, shows that, in the opinion of himself and his leading friends, his defeat was owing to the foreign vote that was arrayed against them. It will be seen, from the following extracts, that the apprehensions entertained by the American party are nothing new. In a letter, dated Buffalo, November 11, 1844, Mr. Fillmore writes to Mr. Clay as follows:

The Abolitionists and foreign Catholics have defeated us in this State. I will not trust myself to speak of the vile hypocrisy of the leading Abolitionists now. Doubtless many acted honorably but ignorantly in what they did. But it is clear that Birney and his associates sold themselves to Loco Focoism, and they will doubtless receive their reward.

Our opponents, by pointing to the Native Americans and to Mr. Frelinghuysen, drove the foreign Catholics from us, and defeated us in this State.

Writing on the same subject, John H. Westword, in a letter, dated Baltimore, November 28, 1844, says:

Then judge my deep mortification and disappointment to find the sailor's friend, the master spirit of the late war," the noblest Roman of them all," rejected by the American people, and such a man as James K. Polk placed in the Presidential Chair. Did I say American people? I recall that expression, for two-thirds of the native freemen of the United States are your fast friends. Yes, sir, we love you now better than ever; and when the name of Jackson and others of your vile traducers shall be forgotten, yours shall be remembered and live in the affections of all lovers of liberty.

It was foreign influence, aided by the Irish and Dutch vote, that caused our defeat. As a proof, in my native city alone, in the short space of two months, there were over 1000 naturalized.

In a letter addressed to Mr. Clay, by Theodore Frelinghuysen, dated New York, November 9, occurs the following paragraph:

More than 3000, it is confidently said, have been naturalized in this city alone, since the 1st of October! It is an alarming fact, that this foreign vote has decided the great questions of American policy, and contracted a nation's gratitude.

The strenuous efforts made by a Foreign Priesthood to obtain into their possession, and to exercise exclusive control over, all the property of their church; their attempt to exclude the Bible from the Public Schools, and to divide the School Fund of the States for sectarian purposes; and the haughty, domineering, insolent, and very often abusive language used by them towards all differing with them in religious sentiments, have done much to create public indignation against them, and produce hostile feelings towards all foreigners of their class. Thus a few years since the Freeman's Journal, well known to be under the control of Archbishop Hughes, boastingly informed the American people, that if Mr. Hastings, chaplain at the American Consulate in Rome, made a single convert, "he would be kicked out of Rome, though Mr. Cass (Jr.) should bundle up his traps and follow him." And the Pittsburg Catholic Visiter, referring to the same subject, expressed itself as follows:

"For our own part, we take this opportunity of explaining our hearty delight at the suppression of the Protestant chapel in Rome. This may be thought intolerant, but when, we would ask, did we ever profess to be tolerant to Protestantism, or to favor the doctrine that Protestantism ought to be tolerated? On the contrary, we hate Protestantism-we detest it with our whole heart and soul, and we pray that our aversion to it may never decrease. We hold it meet that in the Eternal City no worship repugnant to God should be tolerated, and we are sincerely glad the enemies of truth are no longer allowed to meet together in the capital of the Christian world."

So the celebrated Priest Brownson, in his Review, published such sentiments as the following:

"Heretofore, we have taken our politics from one or another of the parties which divide the country, and have suffered the enemies of our religion to impose their political doctrines upon us; but it is time for us to begin to teach the country itself those moral and political doctrines which flow from the teachings of our own church. We are at home here, wherever we may have been born; this is our country, as it is to become

thoroughly Catholic, we have a deeper interest in public affairs than any other of our citizens. The sects are only for a day; the church forever."

And in an oration delivered by him at St. Mary's College, he spoke of our Common School System as follows:

"The education we are laboring to give American children is only fitted to make them infidels, libertines, sharpers, and rogues."

And the Freeman's Journal, the New York Archbishop's organ, in a very recent article, expresses the confident hope that the time is near at hand, when the Roman Catholic church can educate its children, in its own way, at the public expense. The following is an extract from the article referred to :

Let the Albany Evening Journal put this potent argument of the Canadians alongside of its returns of the census which show the decrease of the agricultural population of this State, since the unlucky and un-American State 'free-school-law' went into operation.

"But, this done, we meet our Canadian neighbors with clean hands and with a strong heart. We say to them: We were the first, we have been the sternest and the deadliest enemy of the State 'free-school' oppression. But, we tell them that the whole Stateschool system is foreign and antagonistic to the American political institutions and traditions. It is abhorrent to the national sentiment and spirit. We tell them, again, that whatever is antagonistic to the national fundamental institutions and spirit of a living country needs only time and circumstances to eradicate. Passion has been stimulated to carry and to sustain the State-school law. But passion must soon cool. Reason and experience will come to the judgment of the question. Our opposition to the State-school system, will be seen to have been as truly for patriotism, as for religion. It will be a proud day for us, perhaps the proudest of our life,—for we shall live to

see it."

So many other instances might be produced, all calculated to cause excitement, and bring about not only a powerful opposition to their measures, but an overwhelming feeling of indignation against them and all connected with or sustaining them in their aggressive acts. One more must, however, suffice, and that is one related in a late number of the Nashville Gazette, as follows::

FATHER SCHACHT AND THE FREE SCHOOLS OF NASHVILLE.-On the first Sabbath of this month this Catholic Father commenced his assaults upon the free school system of this city, to be continued, we suppose, to the end. We have long expected to hear the first note of the Catholic anti-American war in this city sounded. What has been done in every other city we have expected to be done here. The priesthood and Catholicism in Nashville are imbued with the same spirit here as elsewhere-everywhere, at open war with the religion of Christ, the avowed and implacable enemy of republicanism, of civil and religious liberty and the foster parent of ignorance, superstition and intoler

Our reporter furnishes us with the following extracts from Father Schacht's charge to the Catholics of Nashville:

"The sisters' school commences in the morning, and I hope every Catholic will send his children. If PROTESTANTS ask if they may send their children to the sisters' school, tell them NO! unless they wish their children to become CATHOLICS. It is a Catholic school, and none but Catholics and those intended to become Catholics will be admitted. "The free school of the city will also be in operation, and I hope no Catholic child will ever be found in that school. We have a right to send there; you will have to help pay the school tax, but it is better to lose your money than lose your CHILD'S SOUL. The honorably begotten and the ill begotten will all meet and mingle at that school, and I hope no CATHOLIC will be found there!"

The disgraceful scenes at Hartford, which ended in the death of Father Brady; those in Newark, Philadelphia, Buffalo, and other places, originating in the attempts of Bishops to force congregations to surrender all control over their church property into the hands of these Bishops, and the arrogant and tyrannical conduct of the latter, might, in addition to what has already been cited, be mentioned as contributing largely to arouse so strong, indignant, and general a feeling among Americans against foreign influence in this country.

So in relation to every question between our country and any of the papal nations of the earth, this Foreign Priesthood, or those who speak for it, has been arrayed against our own, and that often in the most offensive and insulting manner. Thus Gen. Cass, for the sin of making a speech in the Senate in favor of free worship and of the rights of conscience for Americans abroad, was kindly commiserated for his "confusion of ideas," and the fear was expressed that his pleading would be treated as "driveling" by foreign States, in a public letter from Archbishop Hughes, of New York; and Brownson, in the October number of his Review of 1852, said:

"We are glad to see Gen. Cass laid upon the shelf, for we can never support a man who turns radical in his old age."

So of Mr. Everett. He, while Secretary of State, at the instance and with the approbation of President Fillmore, wrote a courteous and dignified note to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, requesting the release of the Madiais. For that mortal sin both were complimented thus by the Freeman's Journal on retiring from office; an occasion on which ordinary political antagonists, however hostile, make it a point to speak in terms of courtesy and respect :

"It does not escape the independent judgment of the Universe, that the administration NOW HAPPILY DEFUNCT, HAS BEEN AS BIGOTED AS IT HAS BEEN IMBECILE. The Universe congratulates the country upon having elected a statesman for President, and for permitting the Unitarian ex-preacher, late Secretary of State, to return to his pulpit to proclaim that Jesus is not God, and Mr. Fillmore himself, to become a village lawyer."