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The Day-Star of Freedom, BQR for April 1856

         THE DAY-STAR OF FREEDOM. 

                                        From  Brownson's Quarterly Review for April, 1856.

 

 THIS long title very accurately describes the purpose and character of the very interesting volume before  

us,—a volume marked by much patient research, minute information, and kindly feeling.  It is a monument  

erected to state pride, and is well calculated to keep alive the flame of patriotic feeling in the breast of  

the Marylander. Each of the older states has a history of its own, which ought not to he lost in the history  

of the Union,—a local history, full of incident not unmingled with romance, which it is well to rescue from  

oblivion, and which must be studied by every one who would become acquainted with the scenes and events, the  

acts and the influences that have formed the peculiar, though diversified character of the American people.  

We smile at some of the pretensions put forth by Mr. Davis in behalf of his native state, but we thank him,  

nevertheless, for his contribution to early colonial history, and assure him that we appreciate and respect  

his motives, while we are pleased with his good-natured gossip about the "Pilgrims" of Maryland, both as an  

American and as a Catholic.

 

 The assumption that the Maryland colony was "the Day-star of American Freedom," enables the author to 

give a poetical title to his volume, but it has very little historical foundation. We should not make that  

assumption exclusively for any one of the colonies, and, least of all, for a colony which, however  

respectable in itself, exerted no leading influence on its sister colonies. Never in our colonial days was  

Maryland the heart and soul of the Anglo-American colonies. We have a high esteem for the first settlers of  

Maryland, and in elevation of character, nobility of sentiment, and private and domestic virtue, they were  

unsurpassed, if not unrivalled, by the first settlers of any other colony; but we cannot learn from history  

that they were propagandists that they sent out missionaries and teachers to the other colonies, or that  

these were induced by their efforts or example to adopt the free institutions they founded. Even if Maryland  

had the advantage of priority of time, we could not award her the claim Mr. Davis sets up in her behalf. The  

leading colonies—those which exerted the greatest influence in moulding others, and determining the character  

of American institutions were unquestionably Virginia and Massachusetts. Maryland, in her general colonial  

action, followed Virginia, and even now belongs to the Virginia family of states. We say not this in  

disparagement of Maryland, to which we are attached by the strongest of ties, but in vindication of simple  

historical truth.

 

  But the first government of Maryland was not founded on the distinctive principles of American freedom. It  

was a feudal government; and the charter instituting it provided for a colonial aristocracy by  

subinfeudation. It recognized religious toleration; but toleration is not a principle of American freedom.  

The American principle is religious liberty, not religions toleration. The charter secured to the freemen of  

the colony a voice in the government, and so far it was democratic; but the general spirit and tendency of  

the colonial constitution were to an aristocracy, into which it would have developed, if a political  

aristocracy could have taken root in our New World, colonized by English commoners. But without underrating  

the popular character of the Maryland charter government, it certainly was not so democratic as the  

government of the Plymouth colony, or that of Massachusetts Bay, the northern source of American freedom, as  

Virginia was the southern. We, however, are not disposed to enter further into this question. Comparisons,  

as Dogberry says, are odorous. Few of the colonists, we apprehend, except those of New England and New  

Netherlands were in our present American sense, republicans when leaving the mother country, but nearly  

all gradually became so; and when the struggle came for national independence, none were more patriotic or  

more ready to devote themselves to the cause of American liberty than those of Maryland. She holds an  

honorable place in the Union, and has contributed her full share to the glory and prosperity of the  

republic.

 

  Mr. Davis shows very clearly and conclusively that the act of the colonial assembly authorizing religious  

toleration was passed by Catholics, and that its merit, be it more or be it less, belongs to members of our  

church. It was the first instance of religions toleration by legislative enactment on this continent. He  

shows, also that it was faithfully observed so long as the Catholics remained in the ascendency, and was  

violated, or repealed, as soon as the Protestants became predominant. We think this fact highly creditable  

to the Catholic colonists of Maryland; but we think too much has been made of it by our Catholic friends in  

arguing against those who accuse the church of being unfavorable to religious liberty.    Nothing is more  

fallacious than to argue from the conduct of individual Catholics to the Catholic Church. In treating of  

Protestantism we must argue from the conduct of individuals; for it has no authoritative standards, and  

recognizes the right of private judgment. Protestantism varies with each individual Protestant, and is for  

each what he holds it to be. We have really no means of ascertaining what it is, but the profession and  

conduct of individual  Protestants. With Catholics, however, the case is widely different, since  

Catholicity is of catholic, not private interpretation. It is authoritatively and publicly defined, and  

individuals are to be tried by it, not it by them. Till we have determined the church's authorized teaching  

on the subject, we can no more infer, from the acts of Lord Baltimore and his colonial assembly, that she  

favors, than from the severities of Louis XIV. against the Huguenots that she opposes, religious toleration.  

As an historical fact, and as illustrative of their personal views and character, the conduct on this  

delicate question of the Catholic settlers of Maryland, is interesting, and worthy of commemoration; but as  

touching the question of the tolerant or intolerant principles of the church, we consider it, with all  

deference to our Maryland friends, as quite unimportant.

 

 But, passing over this, we must beg leave to remark, that toleration is not liberty, and the act of the  

Maryland assembly does not assert religious liberty. It tolerates all Christian denominations holding to  

divinity of our Lord, and belief in the ever adorable Trinity; but it does not recognize this liberty as a  

right prior to, and independent of, the civil power. The civil power grants or confers the right; it does not  

recognize it as an existent right which the state cannot take away, and which it is bound to respect and  

protect for each one and all of its citizens. In this respect, the Puritans of Massachusetts really went  

further in the assertion of religious liberty than the Catholics of Maryland.   Maryland was not founded  

exclusively by Catholics, or for Catholic purposes. It seems pretty evident that the majority, a very large  

majority, of the first settlers were Catholics; but there certainly were several Protestant settlers who  

came over in the Ark and Dove. It was no part of the plan of the first or the second Lord Baltimore to found  

a Catholic colony. His plan was to found a colony in which Catholics, then oppressed and persecuted in  

England, might profess their religion in peace, and enjoy equal rights and privileges with any other class  

of citizens. Neither aimed at anything more; and whatever might have been their abstract convictions as  

Catholics, it is evident that, as founders of a colony, they could claim no exclusive privileges for the  

church, and must concede to Protestants of the so-called orthodox sects what they attempted to secure to  

the followers of their own religion.    Intolerance, or exclusion, would have been in direct violation of  

their plan, directly opposed to the very idea of   such a colony as they contemplated.    But the case was  

different with the Puritans.    They had no intention of founding a general colony, open to settlers from  

all creeds and nations. They had their peculiar notions of Christianity. Right or wrong, true or  

false, they were theirs; and they fled to the wilderness in order to found a community in which they could  

enjoy them in peace and tranquility.    They did not invite those who differed from them to join with them  

in their enterprise; they professedly excluded them.    They sought not to enforce their peculiar views upon  

others; but they thought they had, as against others, the right to hold. them for themselves, and to found  

a state for themselves and their children in accordance with them, and from which all others should be  

excluded.    They were not persecutors in principle.    They did not deny to others the liberty they claimed  

for themselves;   they only denied to those who differed from them the right to come and settle in their  

community. What they did when persons of different notions came among them, was, to warn them off.     

If they did not go, they sent them out of the colony; if they returned, they punished them, not for their  

heresies, but for being found in a colony from which they had been banished. Their right to do so depends on  

their right to be Puritans. If they had a right to be Puritans, they had the right to found in the  

wilderness a Puritan commonwealth, and to exclude from it all non-Puritans. You may or you may not approve  

their policy, but you cannot say that they were persecutors, any more than you are a persecutor for  

turning out of doors a troublesome fellow that you do not choose to have in your house. Their condemnation  

is, that they were Puritans; not that, being Puritans, they did as they did.

 

 But aside from this notion of founding an exclusive Puritan commonwealth, the New England Puritans  

asserted, what the Catholics of Maryland in their Toleration Act did not assert, the absolute independence  

of the church, and the incompetency of the state in spirituals, the foundation of all true religious  

freedom. In the Puritan commonwealth the magistrates had no authority in any spiritual matter, and whenever  

they had to act on a matter which involved a spiritual question; they were bound to take the decision of  

that question from the ministers, the alleged expounders of the word of God. The incompetency of the state  

in spirituals was a fundamental principle with the old Puritans; and this is the fundamental principle of  

that religious freedom, not granted, but recognized, by the American people in their institutions. It is the  

Puritan doctrine of the spiritual incompetency of the state and the freedom and independence of the  

church, rather than the doctrine of toleration of the Maryland assembly, that has prevailed, and become  

incorporated into the fundamental institutions of the country.

 

 We are quite willing to concede this, Catholic as we are, because the Puritan doctrine thus far, save in  

its application, was borrowed from the church and is unquestionably that of the Holy Scriptures. The  

pretence that religions liberty was first understood and applied by Lord Baltimore and his colonists, we  

look upon as ridiculous, notwithstanding it is supported by names we cannot but respect. We believe there  

was an emperor of Rome, named Constantine, sometimes, Constantine the Great, usually reckoned as the first  

Christian emperor. Well, this Constantine issued an edict, giving liberty to Christians, and allowing at the  

same ' time the free exercise of the old worship to the pagans. Constantine, if we mistake not, lived some  

time before Lord Baltimore, There is a very strong assertion of religious liberty in its true sense earlier  

still, which it is not well to overlook. Certain magistrates commanded Peter and John, apostles of our Lord,  

to teach no more in the name of Jesus. These refused to obey, and answering, said: " If it be just in the  

sight of God to harken unto you rather than unto God, judge ye." We have a profound respect for Lord  

Baltimore and the Maryland colonists, and cherish in many respects the memory of our Puritan ancestors, but  

both came quite too late into the world to be regarded as the inventors either of religious liberty or of  

religious toleration.

 

 The question of religious liberty, though always asserted by the church, has, we concede, been more fully  

recognized by our government than by any that had preceded it. The modern political world holds as to most  

of its principles from the ancient Roman world.    In that old world, under paganism, the civil power and  

the spiritual were united and vested in the same hands.    Caesar was imperator, or supreme civil ruler,  

and pontifex  maximus, or supreme pontiff, and the temporal government has always, down to the American  

revolution, had a tendency to perpetuate  the union of the two powers in the person of Caesar, and has  

warred almost constantly against the separation and independence of the spiritual authority.    It has  

struggled almost without interruption to rule men's souls as well as men's bodies, and to be supreme in  

spirituals as well as in temporals.  It has never willingly recognized the freedom, of religion, and has  

seldom been forced to do more than to concede it as a favor, as a franchise, not as a right, anterior to  

the state, and which it is bound to recognize and protect.    It would never unequivocally confess its own  

incompetency in spirituals, and leave all spiritual questions to be settled by the church or individual  

conscience.   Hence it has seldom left conscience free, and accountable to God alone.   It has sometimes  

left it free as to some points, but seldom, if ever, free throughout.   This has caused the existence of  

religious tyranny and oppression.    When the church existed alone as the only religion, she was oppressed  

by the state, and when there were various sects existing along with her, then she, or some one of them, was  

favored by the state and the others were tyrannized over by it, though in general she far more

than they.

 

 Among the American colonists the first to protest energetically and practically against this assumption of  

spiritual authority on the part of the state, were the first settlers of New England, the rigid old  

Puritans.  They left England and her church to get rid of the tyranny exercised by the state over conscience.  

So far were they from suffering the state to "oppress conscience, they, not having the true religion, ran  

to the opposite extreme, and tyrannized through their associated churches over the state. Lord Baltimore and  

his colonists, without disavowing the right of the state to exercise spiritual authority, did, as a fact,  

in the name of the state, grant freedom to Catholics and trinitarian Protestants. The American revolution  

came in time, and with it American independence. In organizing the government and founding the republic, or  

rather a confederacy of republics, the principle of the incompetency of the state in spirituals was  

recognized, and frankly conceded. This is the case with the federal government, and with all the state  

governments, except that of New Hampshire, which is officially Protestant, and only tolerates the Catholic  

religion. Here for the first time, we will not say, has religions liberty been asserted, or toleration  

conceded; but has the state frankly, fully, and unequivocally abandoned the reminiscences of pagan Rome,  

and acknowledged its own spiritual incompetency. In doing this it leaves religion perfectly free, and  

therefore fully and distinctly recognizes religious liberty as a right of American citizens, and its duty  

to protect it.

 

 The practical question which it has been attempted to solve by an appeal to the early colonial history of  

Maryland is, Does the church approve this religious liberty, and is she satisfied in her own case with its  

simple protection by the state?  That she approves it is evident from the fact that she has always asserted  

it, demanded it, and never ceased by all the means in her power to struggle for it, as her whole history  

shows, and as her enemies allege even as a fact against her. That she asks no more of the state than the  

simple protection of this liberty, is evident again from the fact that she allows no conscience to be  

forced, claims to be a kingdom complete in herself, and to possess, without going out of herself, all the  

positive means necessary to fulfill her mission, and forbids through her doctors and councils the forcing  

of any one, by other than moral means, to receive the faith. All she asks is her freedom to be herself, and  

protection against material violence, which is more than she has ever had, except in a particular locality  

for a brief time. The church has just concluded a concordat with the emperor of Austria, with which she  

seems quite content; but a careful analysis of that concordat will show that she has less from Austria  

than is promised to her by the fundamental law of the American state. If she has in Austria certain  

advantages that she has not here, they are more than compensated by certain concessions made to the  

government.

 

 What can the church want that our fundamental law, if observed, does not secure her? In the first  

place she exists here by right, and not by sufferance; and in the second place, the government is bound to  

protect her in the free and full enjoyment  of that right. But the sects exist here by the same right  

so far as the state can take cognizance of it. Be it so. The recognition and protection of their  

right does not interfere with her enjoyment of her right. If she employ violence against them, the state  

is no doubt bound to protect them against her; but that does not disturb her, because she has no disposition  

to use violence against them. But must not she ask the state to suppress them? If they deny her  

equal right, and by their physical violence seek to prevent her from peaceably enjoying that right, she  

undoubtedly will ask the government to protect her; and it already acknowledges its obligation to do so.  

Beyond, she asks nothing of the government against sects, here or anywhere; for, if they oppose her only by  

moral or spiritual weapons, she holds that she is perfectly competent to defend herself.   Against the  

moral action or moral influence of heretics the church has never appealed to the secular arm, and she has  

appealed to it only against their violence, their spoliation, usurpation of her property, desecration of  

her churches and altars, and riotous or murderous attacks on Catholics. We venture to say then, without                

fear of contradiction, that if our government will recognize and protect the religious liberty it asserts,  

she will ask nothing more of it, although it do precisely as much for the sects as it does for her. If  

then the principle held by the American people, and incorporated into our institutions be the 

principle of religious liberty, there can be no question that the church approves religious liberty and asks  

nothing more.

 

 In this reasoning we assume that the government in recognizing religious liberty, declares simply its  

incompetency in spirituals, not its hostility to religion. The American state is not an infidel or a  

godless state, nor is it indifferent to religion. It does not, indeed, as the state, profess any particular form of 

 Christianity, but it recognizes the importance and necessity of religion, and its obligation to respect and protect the  

religion of its citizens. It does not assume that it has the right to ignore their religion, and pursue a  

policy of its own, regardless of its effect on the forms of religion they profess. In all spiritual  

questions the teachings of the church, in dealing with Catholics, and of each sect in dealing with its  

members, is its law in so far as protecting the claims of one is compatible with those of the others. The  

state must recognize and protect the doctrine and discipline of the church in all cases where they exact  

of it nothing inconsistent with the equal rights of the sects. This obligation to protect the religion of  

the citizen, in so far as it demands nothing against the equal rights of others, rests on the principle  

that all citizens are equal before the state. Our government is founded on the principle that all men  

have certain inalienable rights, which they do not hold as grants from civil society and revocable by it,  

but from a source above and anterior to it. These rights are, in some cases, enumerated and prefixed to  

the constitution of the state in what is called a “bill of rights," which the government is bound to  

recognize, to protect, and, when occasion demands, to vindicate against the domestic or the foreign  

aggressor. These rights, again, are equal, equally the rights of all citizens; and among them is the  

right of each citizen to choose his own religion, and to worship God according to the dictates of his own  

conscience, providing he does nothing, under plea of conscience, contra bonos mores, and to interfere with  

the same right in others. Hence my religion is my right, my property as a citizen, not dependent on the  

will of the state, but, so far as I am concerned, my liberty and its law. The state is bound to protect  

me in the free, full, and peaceable enjoyment of my religion, because it is bound to protect me in the free,  

full, and peaceable enjoyment of all my rights, held independently of its concessions, and not subject to  

its will. For this reason, it must recognize the entire freedom, and afford full protection to my church  

according to her own constitution, doctrine, and discipline. It is my right, an element of my liberty,  

and, therefore, of its duty. As the Catholic Church, it can claim nothing from the state; but as the  

church of American citizens, it can claim full freedom and protection. The principle is my equal rights  

as a citizen. If my church is not protected, or if not placed on a footing of perfect equality with the sects,  

my equal rights as a citizen are denied me, and the boasted equality, recognized as the American  

principle, is outraged. My equality is denied in the denial of the equality of my church. I have the  

right, within the limits already mentioned, to have whatever I hold sacred respected and protected by the  

state.The same, undoubtedly, may be said by any Protestant citizen in regard to his peculiar form of  

Protestantism. Though a Protestant, he has the same rights before the American state that I have as a  

Catholic, because he is equally with me a citizen, with the same rights with mine, and may demand protection  

for his religion to the same extent, and on the same ground. He can demand nothing on the ground that he is  

a Protestant, but can demand perfect equality for his Protestantism on the ground that his right as an  

American citizen is equal to that of any other American citizen. If he asks a special favor for his  

Protestantism, or the aid of the state to use it against my equal rights as a Catholic, the state cannot  

conform to his wishes; but so long as he keeps within the limits of equality, asking only what is equal, he  

has the right, as well as I, to the respect and protection of the government.

 

 This conceded, it is not correct to say, that our government has no religion, or is free to treat all  

religions with indifference; for it is bound by the religion of the citizen, which it must recognize and  

protect; and against which it has no right to perform any act, whether that religion be Catholic or  

Protestant. Some of our friends, very few of them, indeed, misinterpreting the relations of the state to  

religion in former times, and not finding our government making a formal profession of religion, have joined  

with the enemies of religion in representing our government, whether state or national, as an infidel, an  

irreligious, or a godless government. This is not true, if we look either to its principles, or to the  

intentions of its founders. According to its principles, the religion of the citizen is its religion, in  

so far as the religion of one citizen does not exclude that of another; and according to the intentions of  

its founders, it is bound to maintain the freedom of all religions, and defend each in all its  

peculiarities for those who embrace it, against all physical, material, or legal violence. That it always  

does so in practice, we do not allege. It departs from the principle on which it is founded, and violates

its duty, when it refuses in the case of Catholics to protect the Catholic law concerning matrimony and  

divorce; and when it refuses to allow the Catholic Church to hold and manage her own temporalities  

according to her own laws and discipline. But in these matters it falls into a practical error, which may  

be corrected without any change in the constitution of the state, and without professing a peculiar state  

religion. The aberrations of some of our state governments on this subject, as unconstitutional as they  

are unequal, are the result of false and unjust suspicions, borrowed from the jealous  and arbitrary  

governments of  the Old World, and of the strong anti-Catholic sentiment of the majority of the American  

people, which at times gets the better of their sense of justice,  and their fidelity to equal rights.    

They are to be lamented, no doubt; but who expects perfection from human frailty? The church knows  

how to wait, and she knows that she is never in this world to expect that even her own children will never  

place any obstacle in her way, or refuse her the freedom which she has the right to demand.

 

 The doctrine of the obligation of the  government to avoid doing anything against the religion of the  

citizen, and to protect everyone in the free and full enjoyment of his religion, whether Catholic or  

Protestant, is widely different from the doctrine, that the state ignores all religion, recognizes no  

religious rights, and is free to pursue its own policy in utter contempt of the consciences of its citizens  

which, unhappily, not a few among us are beginning to regards as the American doctrine of religious  

liberty. The government has never adopted this tyrannical doctrine, and it is to be devoutly hoped that  

it never will, for it is the denial, not the assertion, of religious liberty. It is the doctrine of the  

old French Jacobins, of Sardinian and Spanish spoliators of the church, of European red-republicans, and of  

American  Know-Nothings. It is the liberty of infidelity and the slavery of religion, as repugnant to  

the principles formerly avowed by the American Protestants, as to those always insisted on by the  

Catholic Church. It emancipates the state from all moral law, from all obligation to maintain individual  

rights, and is neither more nor less than political atheism. It is our frequent and earnest protest  

against this immoral and damnable doctrine, that has led some of our readers to infer that we are opposed to  

religious liberty, and are claiming for our church a state sanction, and which has in certain quarters  

created such an outcry against us. Unhappily, there are comparatively few   who have any clear,  

profound, and just understanding of the real significance of religious liberty. The phrase "religious  

liberty" is popular, and men use it and hear it, without attaching to it any precise meaning. Few,  

moreover, in this fast age will stop to listen to any explanations of its real import. Religious   

liberty means that religion has rights; and rights, if we have a government, which government is bound to  

respect and vindicate against all gainsayers. But so little is this considered, that our Know-Nothings  

have the impudence to profess themselves the defenders of religious liberty in the same breath that they  

avow their intention to exclude Catholics from office, and to deny them, on account of their Catholicity,  

equal rights as citizens: what can better prove, that they know not or heed not the meaning of the words  

they use, and that religious liberty with them, means, if any thing, the denial of religious liberty, and  

the absolute right of the state to trample on the conscience   of the citizen? They have the still  

greater impudence, too, to call themselves Americans, and par excellence, the American party. The great   

boast of Americans is, that their government is founded on the equal right of all men, and that it protects  

the equal rights of all its citizens. But what dearer or more sacred right than the right of conscience?   

And can a government be said to protect our rights, when it denies us the right to profess and freely enjoy  

our own religion? The assertion of the independence and supremacy of the church as the representative  

of the spiritual order, is nothing more nor less than the assertion of religious liberty, and the obligation  

of the government to respect and maintain that liberty. When we say we have a right before the state to  

choose and practice our own religion, and that our freedom is not a grant or concession of the state, and  

revocable by it; what is it we say but that it is a right held independently of the state, of which it  

cannot deprive us, and which limits its authority over us, and which, by its own constitution, it is bound  

to maintain for us? It is then higher than the state, the supreme law for it. The supreme law for the  

American state,—not a law which it has enacted, but a law imposed upon it by a supreme Lawgiver, by eternal  

justice itself,— is the obligation to recognize and maintain all the rights of the citizen as a man. The  

supremacy we claim for religion, is the supremacy included in this law,—the supremacy of right. It does not affect 

the independence and supremacy of the state in the temporal order;  it only asserts for it a subordination to the 

spiritual order, which it itself acknowledges, and must acknowledge, if it proclaims religious freedom as  

distinguished from religious toleration, or acknowledges any original and inalienable right in the citizen.  

If those who have raised the outcry to which we have referred, had understood the meaning of religious  

liberty, and had had the least regard for it, they would have seen that we went no further than the  

American people themselves go in their fundamental law.   

 

 We are no alarmists, but we think the doctrine  which floats in the popular mind under the name of  

religious liberty bodes danger to religious liberty itself. Protestantism is combining with itself so  

many other isms, and proving itself so impotent to preserve a high moral and religious sense in the  

people, that it is fast bringing all religion and all morality into disrepute Men are becoming so  

disgusted with the fanaticisms into which it degenerates, that they are in danger of forgetting the rights  

of conscience, of looking upon religion as a nuisance, and of coming to the conclusion that it has no  

rights, and is worthy of no protection. Public men are growing tired of keeping up the show of outward  

respect where they have no internal respect, and are longing to be free, and to think and speak as they  

feel. The course of the Protestant parsons for a few years past has lost them the respect of high-minded  

and honorable statesmen, and made them feel that they must look solely to the state, and in one of the  

slang phrases of the day—" let religion slide". This feeling is becoming very general, and  

Protestantism, and for the moment, all religion with it is falling into contempt. It ceases to be  

regarded as respectable, and a few more Hiss Legislatures will give it its coup de grace. It is powerless,  

save as it inflames popular passion and prejudice against Catholics and Catholicity. The number who  

have lost all traditional respect for religion is so large, that we fear lest public sentiment should re- 

assert the absolute independence and supremacy of the civil order, and deny all religious liberty as a  

right. We hope it will not be so, both for the sake of the interests of religion and of the country.     

But it can be prevented only by frequent discussions of the real ground and significance of religious  

liberty. 

 

 Mr. Davis has said many things which may tend to soften the hostility just now manifested towards our  

religion, but he does not go deep enough into the subject, nor put the defence of religious liberty on  

the right ground. Many of our own friends do not much better, and seem to confound religious liberty with  

religious indifference.  The people are all in a hurry, and have no time to study, no time to think. They  

are  following blindly their instincts, some good, some bad; and few look forward beyond tomorrow. We  

see little human help on which we can rely. The good are passive, the bad alone are active; the wise are  

silent, and the foolish alone speak. Crime is spreading at a fearful rate, and confidence of man in man  

is everywhere shaken.  What the upshot will be, no man can foresee. If the conservative spirit of the  

country does not revive, and if our citizens cannot be induced to rally to the support of our institutions,  

to the defence of the great American principles of government, it will be bad enough.

 

 But we will not despair. When things are at worst they sometimes mend. The church and two or three  

millions of Catholics are here, and it cannot be in vain. Thoughtful men, alarmed for the country, and  

tired of isms, are struck with the generally conservative spirit and sound public judgments of Catholics,  

and are beginning to inquire the cause. “You are right," said to us the other day the chief justice of  

one of our southwestern states, himself a Protestant. “Nothing but the Catholic Church can save the  

country.   Protestantism cannot do it, because it is not an institution, and is itself carried away by the  

wild radical spirit of the times. Your church can do it, for she is an institution, and an institution  

that does not rest on popular opinion." The church can do it, we add, if listened to, not only because  

she is an institution, but a divine institution, upheld by God himself as the medium through which he  

dispenses his grace, his divine assistance, to individuals and nations. Here is the ground of our hope.     

After all, the opinion on public matters of Catholics, though apparently unheeded, does make itself felt,  

and gradually, but surely, becomes that of the country.   It makes its way through much opposition and  

contempt, no doubt, but make its way it does. We must then, as Catholics, redouble our exertions to  

correct the false doctrines which have already gained too much currency, and to form on all public matters  

a sound and just public judgment. The hearts of all true patriots will second our efforts, and God, we  

may humbly hope, will give them success.