IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) // 1.0 1.1 11.25 titU. 12.5 ^ 13i 12.2 li i u U |,.6 1 ^ # // ^1 w ■'I ^ 4Vv ^>. y /j^ Hiotogrephic Sciences Corporation TWO D18COUBSE8 ON THE KEI^ATIOXS Ol' IRELAND AND AMERICA. By THOMAS D'ARCV MCGEE, ^ AUTHOR OF **THE REFURMATinx IN IKKI.AKP," " IKtSII SETfLllKS fS J- ^0 \- AMKKICA," KTC, KTC. • t J 1ISCO'"KRrRS OK T,II R J 9"M !• A S S, ^ • I* '" . ' ''•.'» i' ' - . ^ '' • • ' , . ' • ' ' I , , > ^ ' - • » . ; 5 J ■> ' < ' I 1 « J J ■ ] . , ;..BOSp.T.QN.: .., ;^ ,, 21, 23, & 25 Frankt.im Street. 18 5 5. € ,). •• • • • • • • :•• • • •• •• • • • • • • « • • • •• • • • •'• Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by PATRICK DONAIIOE, la tlte Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetta. STEBEOTTFED AT THE BOSTON ITEREOTVPE rOCNDBT. /^ '^Xgi-L DEDICATION. u AT THE FEET OP p ;. MARY, IMMACULATE, THE EVER-BLESSED MOTHER OF GOD, UNDER WHOSE AUSPICES AMERICA WAS DISCOVERED AND EXPLORED; -WHOSE INTERCESSION OUR PIOUS PREDECESSORS ALWAYS INTOKED WHOM THE CHURCH HAS GIVEN US ^$ '§iAxmm 0f % InM Slates ; I OFFER THIS LITTLE BOOK, •^•, IN DEEP HUMILITY. All Socls Dat, 1854. ,T» INTRODUCTION. The following Discourses, delivered during the lecture season, 1853-54, first at New York, and subsequently, in part or whole, at Boston, Cincin- nati, Washington, and Baltimore, were thought, by several of those who heard them, worthy of publi- cation in a permanent form. When I state that among those who so judged there were many prelates, distinguished for acquirements and judg- ment, and others well versed in our American history, I trust the reader will believe that the publication has not been dictated "by a merely per- sonal presumption on my par '■.. The object of the author is stated in the three propositions with which the first discourse opens. The authorities on which ho relies are quoted in 1« (5) i I 6 INTRODUCTION. the foot notes in tlioso instances whero thoro wag danger of a dispute as to facts. In the Appendix, certain documents which could not be inserted in the body of the work, will bo found unabridged. They arc of high interest in themselves, and essen- tial to this argument. With the humble request that the work may be taken as a sketch, or synopsis, or stop-gap, and no more, I commit it to the just judgment of the American public. \ ^ CONTENTS. . HISTORY OP AMERICA. PAOI I. Columbus and the Discovery, 9 II. The Successors of Columbus 2O III. The Aborigines and Missionaries, 39 IV. The Catholics and the Revolution 68 V. The Church in the Republic, 90 -^ • THE RELATIONS OF IRELAND AND AMERICA. I. Historical Relations, . . 112 v. II. Actual Relations, 13q y ^ APPENDII I. The Will of Christopher Columbus, 157 II. Letter and Bull of Pope Alexander VI. in Relation to the Discovery of America, \i\ 0) ■rMiSi^SSZZiii 8 CONTEXTS. HI. Apostolic Letter of Pope Paul III., A. D. 1537, declaring the American Indians to be rational Creatures, . . 179 IV. Spanish Form of taking Possession 182 V. The Jesuits in Canada, 186 VI. Address of the Boman Catholics of America to George Washington, and his Reply, 194 VII. An Account of the blessed Catharine Tegahkouita, illus- trating the Influence of Christianity on the domestic Life of our Indians, ....*... 199 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. % I. -COLUMBUS AND THE DISCOVERY. I HAVE publicly announced for some time that I am prepared to prove in these discourses three propositions, to wit : — First. — That the discovery and exploration of America were Catholic enterprises, undertaken by Catholics with Catholic motives, and carried out by Catholic cooperation. Second. — That the only systematic attempts to civilize and Christianize the aborigines were made by Catholic missionaries. Third, — That the independence of the United States was, in a great degree, established by Catho- lic blood, talent, and treasure. If I succeed in establishing these three propo- sitions, — as I believe I shall succeed, — may we not hope that the offensive tone of toleration and supe- riority so common with sectarians will be hereafter abated ; that more merit will be allowed to the ages before Protestanti.sm, which produced all the '%- 10 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. great oceanic discoverers ; that a more respectful style may be used in speaking of Spain and Italy — the two arms of European civilization first extend- ed to draw in and embrace America ? If I can show — as I believe 1 can — that since its discovery America has never been wholly broken off from its Catholic commencement, — that saints, popes, cardinals, and all the religious orders are associated inseparably with its annals, — then may I not hope to satisfy you, and through you to per- suade your children, that the church is no stranger, no intruder, neither unknown nor untried here, but that as certainly as it Is the oldest institution in Europe, so it is the oldest in America ? With your indulgence we will follow the chrono- logical order. We will begin with Columbus and his successors, pass next to the missions among the Indian tribes, and then to the revolution and con- stitution of the United States. It is not easy to cast back the imagination four centuries. Can you conceive what Europe was be- fore Luther? or can you imagine America before Columbus? On this side no better vessel than a birch canoe burdened the waters, and the boldest native navigator rarely ventured beyond " the Nar- rows." North of the rude villages of the Natchez no towns were known ; but over the land wandered a race, red, naked, barbarous, broken into petty tribes, unlearned in even the alphabet of civilization, Beasts of prey disputed with the wild huntsman tht. game his flint-bead arrow overtook ; and chance i f COLUMBUS AND THE DISCOVERY. 11 [ " -> Bov timber fattened on the soil the Indian knew not how to cultivate. Can you imagine this conti- nent so savage, so sylvan as it then was — so every way unlike what it has since become? Turn, then, to the other side. Behold Europe four centuries since. How unlike the Europe of to-day 1 Printing had just been discovered ; the ocean was as yet a mystery ; Protestantism had not emerged ; the Turks had lately taken Constantinople ; the men of trade, enrolled in exclusive guilds, pursued the arts of peace in the intervals of war ; the Italian cities were the centres of that traffic which had not yet remoxed its outposts into Holland or England ; Commerce, shivering amidships in her open boat, steered from cape to cape, dropping her anchor with the evening, to weigh it with the dawn ; walled and battlemented cities stretched along the seas and rivers, swarming with a laborious and believing generation. Above all rose Rome, mother and mis- tress of Christian nations, patron of every science, protector of every art, preserver of every relic of enlightened antiquity. . > Under the fair sky of Italy, Christopher Colum- bus, the son of a Genoese wool comber, was born in the year of our Lord 1435. At the celebrated Uni- versity of Pavia, endowed by Charlemagne and fos- tered by the popes, he received some degree of education. At fourteen years of age he was at sea ; at twenty-four, captain of a galley for Rene of Anjou, who claimed to be King of Naples and Jeru- salem. In the year 1470 he made his home in the nrt'woian"**' 12 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. i> • port of Lisbon, where he married, had a son born to him, and became a widower. Here he dwelt four- teen years, (interspersed by voyages into the north of Europe,) maintaining himself while on shore as a maker and peddler of maps. It was an age of uncommon hardihood and specu- lation. In geographical science three persons de- serve especially to be named as precursors of Co- lumbus and the modern era — Cardinal D'Ailly of France, Paulo Toscanelli of Florence, and Prince Henry of Portugal. Cardinal D'Ailly is considered by Humboldt the restorer of geographical science. His learning and virtues had raised him from a very humble origin to the councils of his king and the dignity of car- dinal. Among many political cares and employ- ments he made time to pursue his favorite studies, of which the Imago Mundi remains in evidence. This work is supposed to have been of service to Columbus. Prince Henry of Portugal proved that princes might enrich their states as much by science as by arms. Led by his love of experimental study, he erected a palace at Algarves, on Cape St. Vincent. It combined the attractions of a court with the uses of an academy. Here he erected an observatory, entertained teachers of every art, and studied under them as humbly as any of his guests or dependants. He had chosen in early youth as a motto, " The talent to do good," and passed all his life be- tween study and prayer. Under his auspices the f1 » • COLUMBUS AND THE DISCOVERY. IS I ( y if 1 f Azores were discovered and Africa partially cir- cumnavigated. He died soon after Columbus came to Lisbon, leavini? Portugal at the head of the mari- time enterprise of the age. Paulo Toscanelli occupied a humbler rank in life, but a higher place in science. He was a master of what remained of the ancient learning and an enthusiastic experimentalist. The canons of the great Church of St. Mary, in Florence, had given him the use of their tower for an observatory. There, raised as far above the populous city in space as in spirit ; where the sweet incense stole up to the sky, saluting him as it ascended ; where the solemn bells pealed out the hours around him, — he wrote encouraging letters to Columbus and devised that conjectural chart of the Atlantic which accom- panied the admiral in his first voyage. The Tus- can died two years before his friend had been ena- bled to test in practice their common design. At the court of Portugal there arose no successor to Prince Henry. Emmanuel, called "the wise," had little faith in the learned letters and conjectural charts exhibitcl by the Genoese sailor. After ex- hausting every hope, Columbus quitted Lisbon for the court of Spain, where he was destined, not with- out long delay and severe trials, to find the patron- age he had sought so long. It was in the year 1485 that Columbus came into Spain, where he spent seven years of negotiation and uncertainty before he was enabled to enter on a first voyage. From his arrival in Spain it is easy %'! 14 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. to demonstrate the Catholic character of the man and the enterprise. American and British works on the discovery (even including the exquisite biog- raphy by Mr. Irving) do not bring out boldly the high religious character of either. I will endeavor ,^ to show wherein that character lies, by classifying the proofs as they relate to the admiral's intentions, to his first friends, to his conduct of the enterprise, and his estimate of it after he had succeeded. The admiral might be called for his age, or in- deed for any age, a learned layman. His letters show an acquaintance with the Christian fathers, particularly St. Ambrose and St. Basil ; and with the Scriptures, especially the prophetical books and the Psalms of David. With Marco Palo, Cardinal D'Ailly, and other cosmographical wri- ters he was familiar. But what gives the most decided tinge to his character is his enthusiastic devotion, his full conviction that he was an instru- ment in the hands of God. He saw visions ; he heard heavenly voices ; his dreams were prophetic. In Hispaniola, as he lay sick, and off the disastrous coast of Veragua by night, he heard a voice, which said to him, " God will cause thy name to be won- derfully resounded through the earth, and give thee the keys of the gates of ocean, which are closed with ' strong chains." * His son and biographer, speaking doubtless on hints received from the admiral, ob- serves that the name Columbus rightly signifies a • Humboldt's Examen Critique de I'Histoire de la Geographic, t. iii. p. 234. ^ i I COLUMBUS AND THE DISCOVEUY. 15 / f dove, as of one ordained " to carry the olive branch and oil of baptism over tlie ocean, (like Noah'3 dove.) to denote the peace and union of the heathen people with tlie cluirch after they liad been shut up in the ark of darkness and inlidelity." Nor is his own frequent testimony wanting to prove that ho considered himself as a special agent of divine Prov- idence. In his capitulation with the Spanish sov- ereigns * he expressly stipulated that the gains aris- ing from the discoveries were to be dedicated to the ransom of the holy sepulchre. In his letter to Pope Alexander after his first voyage, he repeats that such was still his purpose. " It was," says Mr. Irving, " meditated throughout the remainder of his life, and solemnly provided for in his will." f What intention could be more Catholic than this? A desire to rescue the holy sepulchre from the pollu- tion of MahoniQtanism was the pious passion of the believing ages. That passion Columbus shared as deeply as St. Bernard, or St. Louis, or Godfrey, or Pope St. Pius. He belongs by right to the suc- cession of the crusaders, and is every way worthy of their company. It is no slight evidence of the religious character of the admiral that his best friends were found in the order of St. Dominic. " The purse of the worthy friar, Diego de Deza," (tutor to Prince Juan,) sus- tained him in adversity ; % and when, in despair, ho * Concluded on the Vega of Grenada, April 17, 1492. f See Appendix No. I. for this characteristic document. J Irving, vol. J, 16 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. I /; was about to quit Spain forever, at the convent of La Rabida ho found a friend in the prior, Juan Perez, who brought him back to confidence and suc- cess. Leaving the disheartened suitor to rest him- self among his monks, the prior, " saddling his mule at midnight," departed for the court and gained audience of Isabella. When he had urged with all his eloquence the suit of his friend, " I will assume the undertaking for my own crown of Castile ! " exclaimed the illustrious lady. " I will pawn my jewels to defray the expenses of it if the funds in the treasury should be found inadequate I " The Dominican returned rejoicing to La Rabida. Co- lumbus retraced his .steps to the court ; and the expedition was at last decided on. Here let us pause. The previous conference at Salamanca is often ridiculed for its want of cosmo- graphical knowledge and denounced for its bigoted adherence to the letter of the Scriptures. It might help to mitigate our contempt for the past to sup- pose a foreign shipmaster or mapmaker of the present day expounding a new geographical theory to one of our own academies. If the Spaniards were not before their age, they were at least not beyond instruction ; for we are told that in this very con- ference Columbus " brought over the most learned men of the schools " to his side. It is known that several high officials, as the Treasurers Quintanilla and St. Angel, were his warm partisans at court. Yet granting — which is not the fact — that his novel theories met most opposition from churchmen, .*,>ii. COLUMBUS AND THE DISCOVEUY. 17 what Avould that prove but that they were stic- klers for the letter of tlie Scriptures? Churchmen have certainly desired to reconcile Rciencc to the sacred writings ; and for this are they to be accused of enmity to hoth ? Those who would fain fabricate another fiction like Galileo's persecution will find the facts too stubl)orn and the light too strong for thera in the case of Columbas. In the foreground of American history there stand these three figures — a lady, a sailor, and a monk. Might they not be thought to typify Faith, Hope, and Charity ? The lady is especially deserv- ing of honor. Years after his first success the ad- miral wrote, " In the midst of general incredulity the Almighty infused into the queen, my lady, the spirit of intelligence and energy. While every one else in his ignorance was expatiating on the cost and inconvenience, her highness approved of it on the contrary, and gave it all the support in her power." And what were the distinguishing quali- ties of this foster mother of American discovery ? Fervent piety, unfeigned humility, profound rever- ence for the holy see, a spotless life as daughter, mother, wife, and queen. " She is," says a Protes- tant author, " one of the purest and most beautiful characters in the pages of history." Her holy life had won for her the title of " the Catholic." Other queens have been celebrated for beauty, for magnifi- cence, for learning, or for good fortune ; but the foster mother of America alone, of all the women of liistory, is called " the Catholic." Ivi .'> * 18 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. As to tho conduct of the undertaking, we have first to remark, that on the port of Palos the origi- nal outfit depended ; and Palos itself depended on the neighboring convent. In the refectory of La Rabida the agreement was made between Columbus and the Pinzons ; from the porch of tho Church of St. George the royal orders were read to the aston- ished townsfolk. The aids and assurances of re- ligion were brought into requisition to encourage sailors, always a superstitious generation, to embark on this mysterious voyage. On the morning of their departure a temporary chapel was erected with spars and sails on the strand ; and there, in sight of their vessels riding at shortened anchors, the three crews — numbering in all one hundred and twenty souls — received the blessed sacrament. Rising from their knees, they departed with the benediction of the church, like the breath of heaven, filling their sails. The admiral had placed himself under the special protection of our Blessed Lady. His own ship was called the Santa Maria de la Concepcion. In his cabin lay the charts drawn up in the Church of St. Maria Maggiore at Florence. The first and last known land they touched at proved to be St. Mary^s, in the Azores. The second island discovered was called La Concepcion, (the first being properly called San Salvador.) The whole fleet, " according to invariable custom," sang the Salve Regina every evening as the sun went down.* These are very remarkable facts i| • This exquisite hymn is thus usually translated : — i COLUMBUS AND THE DISCOVERY. 19 of themselves ; but they become still more so when we remember that the see of Rome only a few years since, at the unanimous request of our own prelates, declared this part of the new world under the special patronage of the same Blessed Lady. Co- lumbus, in his piety, had been beforehand with the bishops in choosing for America its august pa- troness. On the night before the discovery of the first land, after tlie Salve Regina had been chanted, ac- cording to his biographers, the admiral made an impressive address to his crew. This speech must have been one of the most Catholic orations ever delivered in the new world. It has not been re- corded ; it can never be invented. We can, indeed, conceive what a lofty homily on confidence in God and his ever Blessed Mother such a man so situat- ed would be able to deliver. We can imagine we see him as he stands on the darkened deck of the Santa Maria, his thin locks lifted by the breeze al- ready odorous of land, and his right hand pointing onward to the west. We almost hear him exclaim, " Yonder lies the land ! Where you can see only night and vacancy, I behold India and Cathay ! The " Hail, O Queen, O Mother of mercy ; hail, our life, our comfort, and our hope. " We, the banished children of Eve, cry out unto thee. To thee we send up our sighs, groaning and weeping in this vale of tears. " Come, then, our advocate, and look upon us with those thy pity- ing eyes, " And, after this our banishment, show us Jesus, the blessed fruit of thy womb. " O merciful, pious, sweet Virgin Mary ! " '^>^: '% 20 CATHOLIC IIISTOIIY OP AMERICA. darkness of tlio lioui* will pass away, and with it tlio ni^lit of nations. Cities more beautiful than Seville, countries more fertile than Andalusia, aro off yonder. There lies the terrestrial paradise, watered with its four rivers of life ; there lies the golden Opliir, from which Solomon, the son of Da- vid, drew the ore that adorned the temjde of the living God ; there we shall find whole nations un- known to Christ, to whom you, ye favored compan- ions of my voyage, shall be the first to bring ' tho glad tidings of great joy' proclaimed * of old by angels' lips to the shepherds of Chaldea.' " But alas I who shall attemi)t to supply tho words spoken by such a man at such a moment, on that last night of expectation and uncertainty — the evo of the birthday of a new world ? Columbus and his companions landed on tho morning of the 12th of October, 1492, on the littlo island which they called San Salvador. Threo boats conveyed them to the shore : over each boat floated a broad banner, blazoned with " a green cross." On reaching the land the admiral threw himself on his knees, kissed the earth, and shed tears of joy. Then, raising his voice, he uttered aloud that short but fervent prayer, which, after him, all Catholic discoverers were wont to repeat. It is in these words : " Lord God, eternal and omnipotent, who by thy divine word hast created the heavens, the earth, and the sea, blessed and glorified be thy name, and praised thy majesty, who hast deigned, by me, thy humble servant, to t 3 I COLUMllUy AXD THE DISCOVKIIY. liavc that saorod uiuno made known niul preached in tlii.s oth(?r part of tlio world.'' * The nomenclaturo u.nod by tho great discoverer, like all his aci , is csseutiully Catholic. Neither lii.s own nor his patron's name i.s precii)itatcd on capo, river, or island. San Salvador, Santa Trini- dada, San Domingo, San Nicholas, San Jago, San- ta ^Earia, Santa Marta, — these are the mementoes of his first success. All egotism, all selfish policy, was utterly lost in the overpowering sense of being but an instrument in the hands of Providence. After cruising a couple of months among the Ba- hamas, and discovering many new islands, ho re- turns to Spain. In this homeward voyage two tempests threaten to ingulf his solitary ship. In the darkest hour he supplicates our Blessed Lady, his dear patroness. Ho vows a pilgrimage barefoot to her nearest shrine, whatever land ho makes — a vow punctually fulfilled. Safely ho reaches the Azores, tho Tagus, and tho port of Pa- les. His first act is a solemn procession to the Church of St. George, from which the royal or- ders had been first made known. Ho next writes in this strain to the Treasurer Sanchez : "Let pro- cessions be made, let festivals bo held, let churches * The original praj'cr, as given by Irving, from the Tablas C/irono- logicas of Padre Clementc, reads thus : — "Doraine Deus astcrne et omnipotens, sacro tuo verbo ccchim, ct terram, et mare creasti ; benedleatur et glorificctur nomen tuum, lau- detur tua majestas, quaj dignita est per humilem servum tuum, ut ejus sacrum nomen agnoscatur, et pncdicatur, in hac altera muudi parte." CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. be filled with branches and flowers ; for Christ re- joices on earth as in heaven, seeing the future re- demption of souls." The court was, at the time, at Barcelona ; and thither he repaired with the living evidences of his success. Seated on the royal dais, with the aborigines, the fruits, flowers, birds, and metals spread out before them, he told to princes his wondrous tale. As soon as he had ended, " the kin^ and queen, with all present, prostrated them- selves on their knees in grateful thanksgiving ; while the solemn strains of the Te Deum were poured forth by the choir of the Royal Chapel as in commemoration of some great victory." * " To place beyond any supposition of doubt the Catholicity of this extraordinary event, one evi- dence is still wanting — the official participation of the sovereign pontiff. That it had from the outset. On the 15th of March, 1493, Columbus reached Palos. On the 9th of May following Pope Alexan- der issued the famous bull, inter cetera.f In this bull, after reciting the relations of the Spanish sov- ereigns to the holy see, the pope proceeds to speak of the late discovery in these words : — " We have heard to our great joy that you have proposed to labor and use every exertion, that the inhabitants of certain islands and continents remote and hitherto unknown, and of others yet undiscov- ■ * * Prescott — Ferdinand and Isabella. t See Appendix No. II. for this document in full ; also for Count do Maistre's commentary upon it. As the first Papal bull concerning America, it is worth consideration. COLUMBUS AND THE DISCOVERY. 23 ? ered, be reduced to worship our Redeemer and pro- fess the Catholic faith. Till now you have been fully occupied in the conquest and capture of Gre- nada, and could not accomplish your holy and praiseworthy desires nor obtain the results you wished. You sent, not without the greatest exer- tions, dangers, and expense, our beloved son Chris- topher Colon, a man of worth and much to be com- mended, fit for such business, with vessels and car- goes, diligently to search for continents and remote and unknown islands on a sea hitherto never nav- igated ; who finally, with the divine assistance and great diligence, navigated the vast ocean, and discovered certain most distant islands and conti- nents which were previously unknown, in which very many nations dwell peaceably, and, as it is said, go naked and abstain from animal food," &c. On this recital the required sanction was condi- tionally given, the conditions being that the Span- iards should not trespass on discoveries already made by the Portuguese or any Christian power ; that they should not search for land within one hundred leagues west and south of the Cape de Verds, already possessed by Portugal ; and that they should " send to the said islands and continents tried men, who fear God, learned, and skilful and expert to instruct the inhabitants in the Catholic faith and teach them good morals." In accordance with the requirements of the pope, there sailed in the second voyage of Columbus tho 24 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. %ii Right Rev. Bernardo Buyl, or Boyle, vicar apos- tolic for the new world, accompanied by twelve priests. The life of this ecclesiastic is less known than otherwise might be expected did we not learn that, after less than a year in the Island of Hayti, he joined in a cabal against the admiral, and returned to Spain, where he died. He seems to have been one of those who precede the apostles of nations, but are not destined themselves to be apostles. He is, however, to be remembered as having consecrated the first Christian church in the new world, on the feast of the Epiphany, 1494 ; as having founded the mission of Hayti ; and as the first representative of the holy see in this region of the earth. His name and acts, obscure as they have become through time and negligence, do, nevertheless, supply the last conclusive link of evidence to the Catholic character of American dis- covery. y^_ It is time to part with the illustrious sailor who has hitherto occupied us exclusively. His charac- ter transcends praise, as his achievements baflie de- scription. He resembles not remotely Adam stand- ing alone in the new creation, or Noah steering for the emerging peaks of Ararat. He stands in space the patriarch of the Atlantic isles and coasts ; and all may see, who look upon him closely, that the prayers of our church move his lips in gratitude, while its cross overshadows him wherever he goes. "What a lesson the life of that first European Amer- , ican teaches ! How -well did he unite faith and sci- . * COLUMBUS AND THE DISCOVERY. 25 . * I ence, the pious and the practical virtues ! Tn tho presence of Columbus no modern can boast a superi- or love of progrcrss ; but his prog'ress was not of the kind that leaves religion altogether out of sight : — Toil, and pain, Famine, and hostile element", ^nd hos+s Embattled failed to check him in his course — Not to be wearied, not to be deterred, Not to be overcome." Such was his career. But, with all the energy and courage of the American nature as it now is, he united the simplicity of the Catholic and the pa- tience of the apostle. In one sentence we may say, that, of all the laymen who have lived or who lie buried in the new world, he was probably the best, as he is certainly the most illustrious, from the sin- gular and incomparable nature of his achievements. i i 11. -THE SUCCESSORS OF COLUMBUS. If It might plausibly be objected that the character of a single actor, however eminent, is not enough to stamp its own religious impress on so vast an enterprise as the discovery of America. I admit the plausibility of the objection ; and, as the plausi- ble is often mistaken for the real, it is necessary to forestall this fallacious escape, from the conclusion we have just arrived at. The success of Columbus stimuUted not only Spain, but all Europe, to oceanic enterprise. In this new career France may d'^pute the second place with Portugal ; England comes next ; Holland and Sweden last. The captains under all these powers were Catholics ; the observances and spirit of each expedition were Catholic ; the forms used by other nations in taking possession or in founding colonies were copied after Spain, and of course were Cath- olic. A little attention to the principal facts in each case will prove this to be an accurate de- scription of the whole series of discoveries. The Spaniards themselves were the first to fol- low up their own work. Alonzo de Ojeda and Vasco Nunez de Balboa are the chief of the Spanish (26) t'jl 1 1 I' THE SUCCESSORS OF COLUMBUS. 27 'i ■i captains after Columbus. There are a score of others, very eminent in their day ; but these two represent the whole order. Ojeda is a character history has loved to paint. Intrepid even to rash- ness, he well knew how to employ diplomacy when force fell short. A cavalier accomplished at all points, a courtier outshining all others of his age, every historian of American enterprise follows his career with willing praise. lie was the discov- erer of much of the coast of Terra Firma and the founder of the colony of San Sebastian. His courage, his disasters, his politic shifts were long to tell. In his lirst voyage (1499) he was accom- panied by Americus Vespucci, a Florentine, who wrote an account of the expedition, and whose now forgotten book gave its auchor's name to the new world. For ten years Don Alonzo continued his American adventures, and at last died, a baffled, broken-hearted wight, at San Domingo, old in troubles rather than in years. The character of this captain was above all things remarkable for his enthusiastic devotion to our Bless'^d Lady. Bishop Las Casas relates that he always carried about him a little Flemish painting of the Mother of God, which, when wrecked on hostile coasts or bewil- dered in pathless wilds, he was wont to fasten against the next tree, then kneel before it and de- voutly offer up his prayers. Once, having almost perished, toiling through the morasses along tho coast of Cuba, he made a vow to erect a chapel to Our Lady at the first village he should meet, and 28 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMEltlCA. there deposit his picture for the veneration of all comers. Tliis vow he lived to fullil ; and the Ma- donna of Ojeda was long' held sacred by the Indians of Cueybai.* AVheu at last death overtook him, (' ♦ The subsequent story of Ojocla's picture is thus related by Mr. Irving : " Being recovered from his sult'erings, Alonzo de Ojeda pre- pared to perform his vow concerning the picture of the Virgin ; though sorely must it have grieved him to part with a relic to whicli he attrib- uted his deliverance from so many perils. He built a little hermitage, or oratory, in the village, and furnished it with an altar, above which he placed the picture. He then summoned the benevolent cacique and explained to him, as well as his limited knowledge of the language or the aid of interpreters would permit, the main points of the Cath- olic faith, and especially the history of the Virgin, whom he repre- sented as the Mother of the Deity that reigned in the skies and the great advocate for mortal nma. " The worthy cacique listened to him with mute attention ; and though he might not clearly comprehend the doctrine, yet he conceived a pro- found veneration for the picture. The sentiment was shared by his subjects. They kept the little oratory always swept clean, and deco- rated it with cotton hangings labored by their own hands and with various votive offerings. They composed couplets, or areytos, in honor of the Virgin, which they sang to the accompaniment of rude musical instruments, dancing to the sound under the groves which surrounded the hermitage. *' A further anecdote concerning this relic may not be unacceptable. The venerable Las Casas, who records these facts, informs us that he arrived at the village of Cueybas some time after the departure of Ojeda. He found the oratory preserved with the most religious care as a sacred place, and the picture of the V^irgin regarded with fond adoration. The poor Indians crowded to attend mass, which he per- formed at the altar ; they listened attentively to his paternal instruc- tions, and at his request brought their children to be baptized. The good Las Casas, having heard much of this famous relic of Ojeda, was desirous of obtaining possession of it, and offered to give the cacique in exchange an image of the Virgin which he had brought with him. The chieftain made an evasive answer, and seemed much troubled in mind. The next morning he did not make his appearance. " Las Casas went to the oratory to perform mass, but found the ".liar li THE SUCCESSORS OF COLUMBUS. 29 9' II tlic Christian cavalier desired liis body to be buried in the porch of the nearest church, " that every one 'svho entered miglit tread upon his grave." Vasco J^unez, a bankrupt gentleman of Balboa, after holding some minor offices in the colonies, found himself, in the year 1512, governor of a set- tlement called Santa Maria, on this side the Isth- mus of Darien. Receiving from an Indian of the interior a report of the existence of a great sea to the west, ho resolved, with a handful of men, to go in quest of it. On foot, through tangled woods and fetid marshes, through craggy passes and hos- tile tribes, he forced his way for five and twenty days. At length he came in sight of a mountain top, from which, he was told, the ocean was visible. Halting his men on the slope, he advanced alone to the summit ; and there, as he beheld the vast Pacific Sea spreading leagues away towards the south, he fell upon his knees in an ecstasy of joy and poured forth the full fervor of his Catholic heart to God. What a subject for contemplation, the glory and the humility of Balboa at that hour I Much as we may stripped of its precious relic. On inquiring, he learned that in the night the cacique had fled to the woods, bearing off with liim his be- loved picture of the Virgin. It was in vain that Las Casas sent mes- sengers after him assuring him that he should not lie deprived of tlie relic, but, on the contrary, that the image should likewise be presented to hira. The cacique refused to venture from tlie fastnesses of the forest ; nor did he return to liis village and replace the picture in tlie oratory until after the 'lepavture of the Spaniards." — Las Casas, Hist. Ind., cap. 61, manuscript. Ilerrera, Hist. Ind., decad. i. lib. ix. cup. 15. Q * 4 80 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. admire his zeal and courage in tlio exploration, still more ought wo to honor the deep sense of devotion whicli seized him on seeing for the first time, and alone, one of God's most wonderful works. The isthmus he governed is no longer a wilderness nor the Pacific a blank waste of waters. Cities aro there ; commerce is there ; wealth is there. Tho dream of Columbus is almost realized ; and the trade of India will yet be brought that way to Europe. Crowds of eager adventurers checker the land with new routes, and both oceans are alive with ships ; but few of all who have to thank God for homes or fortunes on the Pacific shore have the moral courage to cast themselves, like Vasco Nunez, on their knees and render their first homage to the Lord of land and sea, the Giver of wealth and of conquest. Farther southward still, the Portuguese discov- erers, Cabral and Orellana, carried on the work of exploration. Finally, on the utmost southern capo the pious Magellan planted the cross. In all the Portuguese voyages, the same religious characteris- tics prevail as in those of the Spaniards. At the north we once more meet with the Italian genius in Verazzano and the Cabots. From the Chesapeake Bay to Massachusetts they coasted the continent, entered its rivers, and erected crosses on cape after cape. The Cabots were in the service of England ; but as yet England was Catholic, and the creed of an Italian vras no insuperable bar to his employment. This section of the continent, ' THE SUCCESSORS OP COLUMBUS. 81 which now prides itself on its peculiarly Protestant antecedents, was thus found and dcscribcu by our predecessors in the faith a full century before the Puritan or the Quaker had yet dreamed of colonizing in the new world. Still farther north we come upon a new manifes- tation of Catholic energy and piety — the French discoveries. Verazzano was in this service ; but he perished at sea on his second voyage, and his fame has been eclipsed by that of Jaques Cartier, discoverer of the St. Lawrence and founder of Quebec. He is the leader of an illustrious band — the Champlains and La Salles. It is proper to make some brief mention of each of these person- ages. Cartier sailed on his first voyage from St. Malo on the 20th of April, 1534 ; and on the 24th of July following he erected a cross, thirty feet high, on the shores of Gaspe Bay. Like all the rest of the early captains, he was a man of real piety. In the Cathedral of St. Malo he received the blessed sacrament and the benediction of the church on his departure and return from each voyage. His discoveries he generally named after the saints on whose festivals they were made. St. Laurent, L'Isle de I'Assumption,* St. Croix, the St. Charles River, St. Roques, mark the series of his successes and the spirit of the man. He especially held it fortunate that he had discovered " the begin- ning of Canada " on " the vigil of the Blessed Vir- gin," his " star of the sea " also. * Now Anticosti. i's* 32 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. Cbamplain, tlic most distingiiislicd of tlie succes- sors of Carticr, sailed for the St. Lawrence in the year 1603. For two and thirty years he continued the indefatifz:able explorer of the north-west. " To him," says Mr. Warburton, '" belongs the glory of planting Christianity and civilization among the snows of thet«e northern forests." * " Champlain," says Mr. Bancroft, " considered the salvation of one soul as of more importance tlian the conquest of an empire." He was the navigator of the Upper St. Lawrence, the discoverer of the lake that bears liia name, and of the Lake St. Sacrament.f He was the founder of many towns, the patron of all the mis sions, the friend of the Indians, the first and the best governor of New France. Robert, Cavalier La Salle, as the first explorer who navigated Ontario, Erie, Michigan, and Huron, deserves to bo enumerated with the great captains. A native of Rouen, early employed in the colonies, he had been instigated by the reports of missiona- ries to seek through the northern lakes a passage to the Gulf of Mexico. Building a schooner on the Cayuga Creek, he ascended the lakes in 1679 chant- ing the Te Deum Laudamus. Carrying his boats overland from the Miami to a branch of the Illinois River, he forced or found his way into the Upper Mississippi. For many years, with most heroic con- stancy, this soul of fire and frame of iron was do- voted to the task of opening routes between the * Warburton's Conquest of Cunada, vol. i. p. 96. t Now Lake George. 'i. ]; I '"^ THE SUCCESSOnS OF COLUMBUi, m \i Gulfs of St. Lawrence and of Mexico, until he per- ished in his enterprise by the hands of two of his own unworthv followers, on an excursion into Tex- as, in 1C87. The Catholic character of La Salle is marked in every act of his life. lie undertook nothing without fortifying himself by religion ; he completed nothing without giving the first fruits of the glory to God. He planted the cross wherever he landed even for an hour ; he made the western desert vocal with songs, hymns of thanksgiving, and adoration. He is the worthy compeer of De Soto and Marquette ; he stands sword in hand under the banner of the cross, the tutelary genius of those great states which stretch away from Lake Ontario to the Rio Grande. Every league of that region he trod on foot, and every league of its water he navi- gated in frail canoes or crazy schooners. Above his tomb the northern pine should tower ; around it the Michigan rose and the southern myrtle should mingle their hues and unite their perfumes. The career of La Salle forms a perfect counter- part to that of the illustrious De Soto, who, leaving behind him Cuba, of which he was captain gen- eral, landed at Tampa Bay, in the year 1539, to ex- plore the mainland. For three years, without sup- plies, he pursued his plans, traversing poisonous swamps and burning sands, rafting bayous and ford- ing rivers, unwearied, but not unworn. He saw his men perish around him month after month ; he was incessantly assailed by the hardy natives of the re- gion ; he knew that repose and riches awaited him -? ■* \^:- I 84 CATHOLIC HISTORY Of AMERICA. in Cuba or in Spain ; but ho scorned to turn back or to confess a failure. At last, by the great river he had discovered, in the shadow of the cross ho had planted, he died ; and the loyal remnant of his once proud company buried his body by night in the midst of the stream, lest the savages should devour it. Thus perished Don Hernando de Soto, in all great qualities the equal of the most illustri- ous explorers ; thus he fell in the wilderness, and the sorrowing Mississippi took him in pity to her breast. British books of history in general have present- ed only two figures — Cortez and Pizarro — as the successors of Columbus, and all their actions have been painted in pitch. American history has been more just. Irving, Bancroft, and above all Pres- cott, have done justice to the noble Spanish nation, and even to Francisco Pizarro. Mr. Prescott pref- aces his History of the Conquest of Peru by an anal- ysis of the civilization of the lucas. That civiliza- tion, poetized by the infidel Marmontel, will be found to rest on fundamental laws repugnant to all Chris- tian ethics. Its worship was a perpetual human sacrifice ; its people were held in the darkest igno- rance ; the laws requiring the Inca always to marry his sister established incest as the condition of le- gitimacy. Such was the system ; and the Inca Pi- zarro overthrew was undoubtedly one of the most sanguinary that ever sat on the golden throne of Manco Capac. That guilty civilization, I know, does not justify the cruelties of its conquerors ; it would » 4 11 THE BUCCESSOUS OP COLUMllUS. 85 4^ justify a stroni^ find swoopino^, l)ut not a bloody nnd l)orli(lioiis }>oli('y, rfuch an iii jioiicrul lM/,arro pur- Huod. i>ut it i.s not honost to coiiiound him with Cortoz. In his History of the Con(|UC9t of Mexi- co, vhe distiuji;uished American historian han shown that the alleged excessive cruelties of Cortez havo been much exagirorated ; nor is it p()ssil)le to look on the present po])ulation of ^lexico and believo that at any time exterminntion of the natives was the policy of the conquerors. The native race still remain to testify by their overwhelming* numbers to the {,'eneral humanity of their Spanish invaders. But, whatever may be said on this head, I confess I cannot sec much I'cscmblance in the characters of Cortez and Pizarro. Cortez, a don by rank, a law^yer by education, landed on the Mexican coast in the spring of 1519, and in the autumn of 1521 sat an unquestioned con- queror in the oft-quoted " halls of the Montezumas." The most brilliant campaigns which the new world has seen were fought by him in three short summers. Cortez w^as not only, like the rest, brave as a Castil- ian, but he was a very able, and perhaps an origi- nal, statesman ; he was, besides, a true Spanish ora- tor and a graceful and powerful writer. His burning the ships, as soon as he had landed, to cut off every chance of retreat ; his coup d'etat in seiz- ing the person of the Aztec emperor ; his conqucGt of his rival Narvaez, and incorporation into his own ranks of the very men sent to capture him, — evince genius of a high order. In some qualities ,'-v 36 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. 1i)( he is, perhaps, the greatest character that ever stood on the soil of the new world, either at the north, or the south, or the centre. Of the conqueror of Peru it is impossible to speak in terms of forbearance. Base by birth, and unfor- tunate in all his early career, he landed with some two hundred men on the Pacific coast, in 1532, to undertake the conquest of Peru. He succeeded, not by a series of fierce battles or wise precautions, but by the coup of Caxamalca. In one year he had seized the Inca, executed him, and divided fifteen and a half millions of gold and silver spoils between the crown and his own followers. He died in 1541, by the hand of an assassin, in his palace at Lima, after having reached the rank he so much coveted — Viceroy of Peru. Between him and Cortez there are more points of difference than of resemblance. The main likeness is in this — that both with small forces conquered populous regions in the same age and quarter of the world. But Hernando Cortez was the first, was an original, and had many pecu- liar difficulties to overcome. The Aztec policy and paganism were of hardier growth than the Peruvi- an ; the resistance of Mexico was more formidable than that of Cuzco or Quito. Cortez was a schol- ar, a cavalier trained in the old Spanish school ; he was naturally generous and merciful, if we judge him by facts, not by the prejudiced portraits of Eng- lish historians, who have never forgiven Spain for the Armada ; or by French infidels, who have never forgiven her for her orthodoxy. THE SUCCESSORS OF COLUMBUS. 87 PizaiTO, on the other hand, is an exception to all the Spanish captains. Born a bastard, he was reared a foundling ; untaught to read or write, the stand- ing target of faction, with no true friends but his own wit and courage, he triumphed by cruelty ; he fell by assassination. I say that he is no fair type of tlie class I speak of : he stands alone, and owes his sad celebrity partly to the fact that he does stand alone. Unlike Nunez in humanity, un- like Cortcz in statesmanship, unlike De Soto in chivalry, he cannot be correctly said to belong in spirit to the first discoverers ; nor can it be shown that he formed any school of his own. I would fain make this distinction clearly understood, for the sake of the truth of history. While I have not felt free to denounce the whole Spanish race for the sins of some of their first chiefs and settlers, neither must you understand me as justifying all their actions. Their colonial sys- tem was unquestionably very liable to abuse, as ^ may show when I come to contrast it with the French system, in the missionary period of this history. I speak at present only of the first cap- tains ; and I solemnly protest against accepting a Pizarro or an Ovando as a representative of the Catholic leaders of American discovery. Ojeda, Vasco Nunez, Cortez, De Soto, Cabot, Cartier, Champlain, La Salle, — why are they forgotten or unstudied ? In all tliat distinguishes human nature — as courage, energy, fortitude — they were con- spicuous ; in piety, virtue, integrity, they will bear "4 38 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. comparison witli any equal number of the world's great men. Pizarro is not of them — Ovando is not of them. They were not free from faults ; but neither did their faults outnumber their virtues. They were a brood of eagles, emigrating farther and farther into the wilderness as population sounded from behind. Most of them died in the regions they had marked out for their own. None of them fared better than Columbus — none of them ruled in their posterity. In the islands or on Terra Firma, with two exceptions, their unknown graves are scattered in solitary places, and the names they dreamed to make immortal are now almost unknown. " The last have become first, and the first have become last." V III.-THE ABORIGIA^ES AND MISSIONARIES. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, North America — to which we will hereafter con- fine the subject — was claimed in parcels by Spain, Prance, England, and Holland. The exact civil boundaries of each power at that period cannot be traced, from their constant fluctuations and the fre- quent disputes between the parent countries. In the present discourse we shall consider each religion in its relations to the aborigines. The Catholic colo- nies come first in order of time. Let us ask at the outset. Was the colonial system of Spain or France favorable, or the reverse, to missionary enterprise ? I have no hesitation in saying that the Spanish system was unfavorable, and that most of the re- ligious good done in New Spain was done not only without, but against, the influence of the Spanish crown. Ferdinand of Arragon, a thorough world- ling in politics and in philosophy, after the death of " the Catholic " wrung by concordat from Rome the nomination of all the bishops, and, through the bishops, of all the cures of New Spain. He already held its whole soil in fee for the crown ; he now claimed and obtained, on certain conditions, tho (39) 40 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. right to control and farm all its ecclesiastical rev- enues. Practically these concessions made him the head of the Spanish American church — an evil headship, from the effects of which that church has never recovered. Further : his claiming the per- petual fee of the soil was unfavorable to the free emigration of a European laity. It was favorable only to the emigration of officials or the exporta- tion of convicts. As Dr. Robertson remarks, " The colonies were kept in a state of perpetual pupilage," while " the prisons of Spain were drained " to re- cruit them. We learn, hardly without surprise, that, " sixty years after the discovery of the new world, the number of Spaniards in all its provinces is com- puted not to have exceeded Jif teen thousand J'* Thus royal avarice defeated itself and created innumera- ble impediments for religion. The colonial svstem of France was much more favorable to missions than the Spanish system. The king had originally granted the viceroyalty of New France to the Prince of Conde, who in 1620 sold it to the Marshal de Montmorenci ; from whom again it was purchased by Henry de Levi, Duke de Ven- tadour, at the time a novice of the company of Jesus. Richelieu transferred it again to a company called the Company of one Hundred Associates, under whom both Acadia and Canada began to flourish. But throughout, though the French crown claimed the fee of the soil, its policy was always to • Robertson's America, book viiiv p. 92. .■•* THE ABORIGIXES AND MISSIONARIES. 41 grant large tracts to pcigncurs — a policy not unfavor- able to the settlciuent of new colonies. The bish- ops also had seigueurial rights, but were, especially during* the long reign of Louis XIV., directly de- pendent on the crown. Some of tlic religious houses — as the Sulpicians of Montreal — had similar rights, and were thereby enabled to undertake distant en- terprises and to found extensive establishments for educational purposes. It is true nevertheless, both of New France and New Spain, that the religious orders, unaided and unendowed by the parent state, effected more than the secular clergy and their am- ply endowed establishments combined. Wc have already seen that, within tAvo months after Columbus's return, the pope had charged the Spanish sovereigns, in the bull inter cetera^ to send out to the newly-discovered countries " tried men, who fear God, and skilful and expert to instruct the inhab- itants in the Catholic faith and teach them good morals." Julius II. and all subsequent popes were equally zealous for the salvation of the same race, of which the memorable bull of Pope Pa- 1 III., issued in 1537, declaring them to be rationa. crea- tures, entitled to all the sacraments of religion, is a crowning proof.* Columbus himself was most desirous for the conversion of the Indians, in which, desire he was cordially seconded by Queen Isabella. " She was filled," Fays Mr. Irving, " with a pious zeal at the idea of effecting such a work of salva- ♦ See Appendix No. III. 4* 42 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. tion." For the six Indians first presented at court she stood godmother. " Isabella, from the first," adds Irving, " took the most warm and compassion- ate interest in the welfare of the Indians. She ordered that great care should be taken of their religious instruction ; that they should be treated with the utmost kindness ; an'd enjoined Columbus to inflict signal punishment on all Spaniards who should be guilty of outrage or injustice towards them." On the second voyage, twelve zealous and able priests, under the Right Rev. Bernardo Boyle as vicar apostolic, commenced the work of religion by consecrating a chapel at Isabella, in Hayti, on the feast of the Epiphany, in the year of our Lord 1494. That is the historical date of the Catholic religion in the new world. The new vicar apostolic did not long remain, as we have before said, in Hayti : after a year's sojourn he sailed for Spain, and did not re- turn. The seven following years the islands were left without any regular ecclesiastical head, until, in 1501, Bishop de Espinal, "a venerable and pious man," with twelve Franciscan fathers, was sent out to conduct the missions. In the next year Father Bartholomew Las Casas, a Dominican, entered on the American mission. *' The whole of his future life, a space exceeding sixty years, was devoted to vindicating the cause and endeavoring to meliorate the sufferings of the natives. As a missionary he traversed the wilderness of the new world in vari- ous directions, seeking to convert and civilize them ; as a protector and champion he made several voy- t THE ABORIGINES AND MISSIONARIES. 43 ages to Spain, vindicated their wrongs before courts and monarclis, wrote volumes in their behalf, and exhibited a zeal, and constancy, and intrepidity worthy of an apostle. lie died at the advanced age of ninety-two, and was buried at Madrid, in the Church of the Dominican convent of Atocha, of which fraternity he was a member." * Upon one of Las Casas's complaints of injustice to the Indians, (A. D. 1516,) a commission, composed of Hieronymite monks, was sent out by the regent, Cardinal Ximenes, to inquire into the grievances of tlie aborigines. This commission is a remarkable link in our chain of evidence. All historians speak in the highest terms of the discretion and justice of the Hieronymites. " The exercise of their powers at San Domingo made a great sensation in the new world, and for a time had a beneficial effect in checking the oppressive and licentious conduct of the colonists."! The same illustrious cardinal " peremptorily " rejected, according to Robertson, applications for licenses to import African slaves into the colony — thus honorably connecting his name by a double service to humanity with our earliest civilization. We may mention here another historical Domini- can — Father Olmedo, chaplain to Cortez. Mr. Prescott represents him as the good genius of the expedition ; as wise as benevolent ; " beautifully illustrating in his conduct the precepts which he * Irving's Columbus, vol. iii. ; Appendix, p. 416. t Irving, vol. iii. p. 237. 44 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. !'■ taujxlit ; " as one who, " if lie followed the banners of the warrior, it was to mitigate the ferocity of w^ar, and to turn the triumphs of the cross to a good account for the natives themselves, by the spiritual labors of conversion." After the conquest of the city tlie same author adds, " The missionaries lost no time in the good work of conversion. They be- gan their preaching through interpreters until they had acquired a competent knowledge of the language themselves. They opened schools and founded col- leges, in which the native youth were instructed in profane as well as Christian learning." Twenty years after the conquest Father Toribio " could make the pious vaunt that * nine millions of converts had been admitted within the Christian fold.' " In the much diminished territory of Mexico as it is, there were, in 1850, four millions of Indian Christians, practical or nominal, two millions of mixed race, and one million three hundred thousand of European descent. If populousness be, as Lord Sacon says, a test of civil society, the preservation of the aborigi- nes may certainly be called so, and be adduced as a proof of Spanish tolerance. The aborigines are still there ; they are not exterminated ; they are Christians, w4io live more or less up to that high and holy standard ; they present in Mexico, at this hour, a living monument of the saving spirit of Catholic civilization.* * In £1 lecture on Mexico, delivered at St. Patrick's Church, Buffalo, on the 25th of September, 1853, by the venerable Bishop Tiraon, who had lately passed sonio months in that country, he observed, — THE AIJOIIIGINES AND MISSIONARIES. 45 Conncctod "witli the INIexiean missions, I miglit mention those of the J esuits m Calilbrniii wliich still ha])pily exist, and wliieli were the only centres of civilization '. ^forc-thc discovery of tlic gold mines. Anciently California vras included under the name of Mexico, and is, I presume, comprised in the general results I have given. One fact peculiar to that region ought, however, to be mentioned. Father Picola, who was there a century and a half ago, was not unaware of the treasures it contained. " I have no dourbt," he wrote to the Mexican govern- ment in 1702, " that most valuable mines might bo discovered in many places were they but sought for ; since this country is under the same physical influ- ences as Cinaloa and Sonora, which are so richly veined with tbo precious metals." He had no doubt gold was there ; but for his part he was better em- ployed than to prospect for it — unlike those Episco- palian ministers of our own day whoso mining zeal and missionary languor have been so eloquently de- m "An evil now, as formerly, exists in Mexico, and might account for much relaxation of discipline. Bishops are too few ; it is morally and physically impossible for them to fulfil the duties of their office. France has seventy-seven bishops and fourteen archbishops ; Ireland, ■with seven millions of Catholics and a territory not more extensive than a single diocese of Mexico, has four archbishops and twenty-four bishops ; and Mexico, with se-cn or eight millions of Catholics and a territory so vast, has only one archbishop and nine bishoprics, with actually only six bishops, the former incumbents being dead. Of tho last four bishops of Guadalajara, but one, during a very long adminis- tration, was able once, and only once, to visit all his diocese ; the other three visited but a small part ; the whole four died on the visit — one a3 he completed it, the others as they labored along it." ■■^V^M^I 4' t;i<-, aissions in Maine, both by the fathers last mentioned and by P. P. Vincent, and Jaquos Bigot and M. Thury, were made the subject of detailed inquiry. In no part of the new world do the Jesuits appo- ;• to more advantage, [After the above note was wri'ten, we learned with sincere pleasure that Mr. John Gilmary Shea had a work in the press, in which the American missions — including, of course, those of Maine — will be treated of very fully.] 64 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. ' f the three Lallemands, the two Mambres, the two Bi- gots, and the two Le Moynes. Many a noble house in Europe might almost have forgotten that it had such sons, when some of those " edifying letters," now so precious to our history, would find their way to the parental roof. The very names of the wri- ters would then sound strangely in the homes of their fathers, and a new generation would ask, in wonder, the date of their departure from France or Spain. Let me not be thought to overstate the results of the Catholic missions among the red men. I argue only that systematic attempts were made. I full well know that barbarian life will not yield up its habits in one, nor two, nor three generations. I know, also, there were many special impediments in the way of the first* apostles to the Americans. France and Spain were unfortunately at war the greater part of the period I have been describing. They were not only at war with each other, but at feud with Rome. During the entire reign of Louis XIV. no French bishop visited the chair of Peter. Under the attractive or repulsive action of Protes- tantism, Catholic states were becoming less Catho- lic up to the hour of the French revolution. More- over, on this continent, the captains of those powers and of England did not hesitate to employ the In- dian in war on his own conditions. The expulsion of the French from Canada in 1760, the suppression of the JesuUs in France in 1763, and their Roman suppression ten years later, were so many obstacles ^'■1 THE ABORIGINES AND MISSIONARIES. 65 to a systematic and cstablit^hecl success at tlio north.* But a great and generous beginning had been made from Canada to Mexico. A Protestant tourist in Canada, speaking of the Jesuits before the suppression, says, " Tliey do not care to become preachers to a coni; rogation in the town or country, but leave those places, together witli the emoluments arising from them, to the (secular) priests. All their business here is to convert the heathen : and with that view their missionaries are scattered over every part of tlie country. Near every town and village peopled by converted Indians are one or two Jesuits, wiio take great care that they may not re- turn to paganism, but live as Christians ought to do." t " Simply to call these people religious," says Mr. Irving of certain Rocky Mountain Indi- ans, " would convey but a faint idea of the deep hue of piety and devotion which pervades the whole of their conduct. They are more like a nation of saints than a horde of savages." I Speaking of those of New Spain, Baron Von Humboldt says, " The Indians of the missions have the manners of our peasants." § Even -when the missions were no longer supplied with priests, the relics and tradi- * The Bishop of Quebec employed Priests of the Mission to supply the place of the Jesuits, by whom the good light was still kept burn- ing at Tadousac, Lorette, Bccaucourt, St. Francois, Sault St. Louis, &c. The return of the black robes was, however, a godsend to the poor natives, who have ever since been chiefly attended by them. f See Appendix No. V. for other testimony to the same effect. X Irving's Adventures of Bonneville. § Humboldt's Personal Narrative, vol. iii. p. 235. G * w 66 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. \l tions of Christianity were fondly cherished. John Wesley found the doctrine of the Trinity of the Godhead among the Chicasaws ; and three several times tribes from Oregon despatched messengers to St. Louis, to ask their American father to provide them with "black robes." In some tribes this spirit seems to have been imperishable ; others, when the clergy were no longer with thera, returned to their idols — a thing hardly to be wondered at. I have thus maintained my second proposition. I have shown you that the greatest names of mod- ern Catholicity are bound up in the story of the In- dian race. I have mentioned the missions of the Jesuits, Dominicans, Carthusians, Franciscans, Rec- ollets, and Vincentians. I might almost assert that every Catholic order is represented in the history of this continent. "Why be at war with history? The Jesuits are there, in the outer gate of all our chronicles. Speak them civilly as you pass on. For us, cold compliments are not enough. Our blood warms at witnessing their heroic virtue, and we are compelled to raise our voices in evidence of our homage. They were the first to put the forest brambles by ; they were the first to cross the thresh- olds of the wigwams of every native tribe ; they first planted the cross in the wilderness, and shed their blood cheerfully at its base. Shall we not study their lives nd recall their words ? Shall we not figure them on canvas and carve them in mar- ble? Shall we not sing the song of their triumph, and teach it to our children's children, until the re- Vi ^f^jL^' vo ^'». could bo enforced may lio seen in the melancholy story of the expulsion of the Acadians. A fate hardly less cruel befell the Catholics of Maryland. The founder of that colony, in whom its proprietorship had been vested by James I., without condition, though well knowing his Catho- licity, had voluntarily thrown it open " to all who believed in Jesus Christ." He had even drafted oaths, binding his deputies and their council not to interfere with any man's conscience. The Episco- palian, excluded from New England, had a home in Maryland and a seat in its assembly : the Puritan, driven from Virginia, sat at the same council board with the Episcopalian.* This constitution worked * *' It is certainly very honorable to the liberality and public spirit of THE PROPRiETAUY that he should have introduced into his funda- mental policy the doctrine of general toleration and equality among Christian sects, (for he does not appear to have gone further,) and have thus given the earliest example of a legislator inviting his sub- jects to the free indulgence of religious opinion. This was anterior to the settlement of Rhode Island, and therefore merits the enviable rank of being the first recognition among the colonists of the glorious and indefeasible rights of conscience." — Story's Com. on Constitutio7i, book i. ch. be. sec. 106. •* Calvert deserves to be ranked among the most wise and benevo- lent lawgivers of all ages. He was the first in the history of the Christian world to seek for religious security and peace by the practice of justice, and not by the exercise of power ; to plan the establish- ment of popular institutions with the enjoyment of liberty of con- science ; to advance the career of civilization by recognizing the right- ful equality of all Christian sects. The asylum of Papists was the spot where, in a remote corner of the world, on the banks of rivers which as yet had hardly been explored, the mild forbearance of a pro- prietary adopted religious freedom as the basis of the state." — Ban- croft, vol. i. p. 244. For some account of the rise and progress of re- ligious toleration in the colonies and states, see Appendix No. Vlf 7 74 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. well until the English revolution had its proscriptive parody in all tiio provincoa. A rising* of the Protes- tant portion of the colony auticipatod an order from Lord l^altimorc in England to acknowledge the new sovereigns. Those who originated the rising called a convention, aftd sent an address to King William, full of accusations of Lord iJaltiiaore, and praying him to send them a royal governor. A royal governor was sent ; and, in 1G92, an assembly con- vened by this governor established the church of England as the legal religion of the province, as- sessed the counties for church rates and ministers' money, and declared Catholics incapable of hold- ing office. In this and the next reign severer penal- ties were inflicted ; and, that they miglit not increase from without, laws forbidding Catholics to emigrato to the colony were periodically reunacted.* In no part of British America, while it remained British, * In 1704 an act entitled " An Act to prevent the Growth of Popery ■within this Province " passed. In 1707 anortier act was passed, suspending some of its provisions until her majesty's pleasure was signified therein. And in 1718 the act of the Parliament of Great Britain, passed in the cl"venth and twelfth years of "William III., entitled " An Act for the further preventing the Growth of Popery," was declared by act of general at nbly of the province to be in force in all its provisions in the province. Sec. 1 provides a reward of one liundrcd poimds to any one who shall "apprehend mid take" a Popish bishop, priest, or Jesuit, !ind prosecute him " until convicted of saying mass, or of exercising any other piirt of the office or function of a Popish bishop or priest." Sec. Z ix\^icis perpetual imjirisonment on any Popish bishop, priest, or Jesuit that shall say mass or exercise any function proper to such bishop, priest, or Jesuit ; or on any person professing the Catholic religion who shall keep school, or educate, or govern, or board any youth. n THE CATHOLICS AND THE REVOLUTIOX. 75 f 4 tiocd wo expect to iii,.l any better troatnioiit for Catliolics. Neither can we suppose those who did remain were of any neeount in tlic great mass of France and England, of which this continent was ])artly the Fpoil, and often the theatre, from tho rci*>. • '. 'V. II I 4 ie \* CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. of George III. ; that finally it was the French alli- ance, as much as a sense of justice in the leading men, which at length insured equal rights to our predecessors. These being the circumstances, how magnanimous was the conduct of the Catholic col- onists 1 how entirely superior to all selfishness I They took thought only of the common cause ; they turned their eyes away from their own wrongs, to fix and fasten them on the wrongs of their country. Such patriotism as they displayed, if not proportionate in amount to that of the majority of the revolutionists, was at least equal in its disinter- estedness to either Puritan or Virginian heroism. May I add the testimony of the highest authority on this subject ? When Washington was first presi- dent, he used these words in reply to the " Address of the Roman Catholics of the United States : " "I presume that your fellow-citizens will not forget the patriotic part which you took in the accom- plishment of their revolution and the establishment of their government, or the important assistance they received from a nation in which the Roman Catholic faith is professed."* This testimony who shall gainsay ? These are the words of a man who never uttered a falsehood ; of a patriot the most jealous of making distinctions between citizens ; of a witness who had the best opportunity of judging, and who possessed the best • For the Address and Reply, see Appendix No. VI. 1 THE CATHOLICS AND THE REVOLUTION. 87 judgment. I could call other witnesses ; but Wash- ington's testimony will be admitted as enough. It can stand alone. I have already shown, on the authority of Chief Justice Marshall, that it is probable Canada might have been one of the original states of the Union but for the impolicy of General Arnold and the bigotry of a portion of the first Congress. How much we have lost or gained by that error is a mere matter of speculation, and we are dealing not with opin- ions, but with facts. I have called attention to Marshall's testimony, showing what he calls " the favorable disposition of the Canadians" towards the common cause, and to account for the fact why a province peculiarly Catholic was not brought into the confederacy. The truth is, the " old thir- teen" were not very anxious to have her, and the Canadians were not slow in discovering their aversion. On this last proposition I have only to add, that the Catholic colonists were no less zealous for the establishment of the federal constitution than they had been for the expulsion of the English. They desired unity not less than- /iier^y V and desiring it ardently, they wrought for it untiringly. Among the names with which the constitution was pro- mulgated, few had a more respectable share in its preparation than Thomas Fitzsimon, of Pennsyl- vania, and Daniel Carroll, of Maryland, a native and a naturalized Catholic. Mr. Fitzsimon, like 88 CATHOLIC HISTOIIY OF AMEllICA. ili I mopt men of his religion in Washington's time, was a federalist, and so adverse to what were 'ailed "French principles" that he refused to bo made ac- quaint 1 with some of the Irish democots who emigrated to this country after 1798. lie was a merchant of Philadelphia, a skilful financier, and one of the principal authors of our commercial legislation. In the ii; eful nature^ of his public ser- vices his name ranks with Robert Morris and Jonathan Goodhue, and as such is entitled to bo mentioned with respect b^ our own generation. We have thus far borne out tlic argument from the discovery of Columbus to the presidency of Washington. Here I might well dismiss the sub- ject, having proved all I undertook to prove, namely : — First. — That the discovery and exploration of America were Catholic enterprises, undertaken by Catholics with Catholic motives, and carried out by Catholic cooperation. Seooxd. — That the only systematic attempts to civilize and Christianize the aborigines were made by Catholic missionaries. Third. — That the independence of the United States wafi, in a great degree, established by Catho- lic blood, talent, and treasure. . _ But it is necessary for the completeness of the subject, though not for further proof of these prop- ositions, to trace the growth of the church within the republic. The history of seventy years, rapidly THE CATHOLICS AND THE REVOLUTION. 89 rehearsed, will give us ample cause for encourage- ment ; and wlien wu compare the prospects of our faith to-day with what they were a century ago, wo will, I think, find new reasons to bo thankful for tho impartial guaranties of that admirable constitutiou under which it is our hai)pincs3 to live. 8* w 11 w \l ni .^^... IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 4 A ^/ M K, ^6 1 1 1.0 HtKf Ki ^ ME 1.25 |l.4 |l.6 L »" ► *^ VQ 7; '/ ^ PhotDgraphic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, NY. 14580 (716)672-4503 ^1> .r V.-THE CHURCH IN THE REPUBLIC. ., u I I I As one returning to his own country observes with freedom every side of the land, until, drawing near his birthplace, he becomes suddenly silent, so might we, if there were no public obligation to the contrary, prefer to avoid speaking on the growth of the church in this republic. But even a summa- ry like the present, which would stop at the era of our national constitution, must leave much to sur- mise, and therefore something to censure. I enter- tain, I trust, due reverence for the pious dead, whether departed yesterday or a thousand years ago — a sentiment which teaches me to render to their virtues even more honor than I would to their persons if they still lived, but which also forbids me to offer chance-plucked poppies of panegyric on their graves. There is no subject on which Americans generally are apt to be more eloquent than the growth of their country. It is, indeed, provocative of such outbursts. The amplifying power of words in this case falls short rather than exceeds. "We have no terms capable of expressing how much material progress has been made in less than a century. (90) t4 THE CHURCH IN THE REPUBLIC. > 91 Thirteen sovereign states converted into tliirty-two ; France and Spain removed from the continent ; Eng- land tolerated ; savage nations exterminated or transplanted beyond the range of civilized life ; a commerce created, which contends in every sea for the first rank ; three millions become four and twen- ty ; long iron ways laid down from ocean to ocean ; these are the wonderful material conquests of this republic. It is not possible to exaggerate their greatness, except by attributing to them moral causes which had no share in their success. It was said of old, empire comes from the North. On this continent it was necessarily so. Just as Europe was about to enter on the great wars of the French revolution, this country started into national life, with a hardy, intrepid, and, for colonies, a com- pact population of three million? ; while all the other white inhabitants north of the isthmus did not count, taken together, half as many. With double numbers, with the impetus of revolutionary success, with native institutions, the timely growth of the soil and the climate, with northern necessities, with "Washington for chief magistrate, the United States began their political career. It is none of my pur- pose to detail the story of national conquest. I point to the lofty ranges of events, stretching from east to west, from north to south, and, having done so, I entreat the eye to descend a little, and to mark along the habitable line of the mountains, and in the deep valleys Opening up the interior, and across the plains that lie between, another institution, tf" 92 CATH,OLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. ' every where present, and every where victorious ; I mean the Catholic church. This institution, like the principles of the Amer- ican government, preceded by centuries the independ- ence of the country. It however developed itself here coordinately with the republic, and its growth was proportionate from the fiist to the growth of the state. The only parallel, humanly speaking, to the increase of the American state, is the still great- er increase of tlie American church. And if, in studying the history of the former, we are surprised at the number of wise, gifted, and famous men, crowded into so short a term of years, in the histo- ry of the latter, we shall find no scarcity of sancti- ty, nor of ability, nor of names " not born to die." In the character of the first archbishop and the first president we. find many points of personal re- semblance, which we cannot think either trivial or fanciful. Born about the same period in adjoining states, of parents who ranked among the aristocra- cy of the provinces, each endowed with decided talents for governing himself and others, both were called to high but dissimilar authority at the first commencement of a new state of society. In the wise forethought, the disin'. :ed demeanor, the grave courtesy, and the ardea. patriotism of Arch- bishop Carroll and General Washington there is a striking similarity. To American Catholics, tho character of their first chief pastor can never be- come old, nor tiresome, nor unlovely, any more thai> the character of Washington can to citizens of all denominations. ! • -^y THE CHURCH IN THE REPUBLTC. 93 John Carroll, third son of Daniel Carroll, an Irish emigrant, was born at Upper Marlboro', Mary- land, on the 8th of January, 1735. Sent to Europe to be educated, he studied under the Jesuits of St. Omer's and Liege ; was ordained in 1771 ; was a pro- fessor at Liege when his order was suppressed in France, in 1773 ; spent two years in England, in the family of the disfranchised Catholic peers, Lords Stourton and Arundel; and returned to Maryland just as the revolutionary war broke out. He was then in his fortieth year. His connection with the first Cath- olic families of Maryland and Virginia, his French urbanity and English experience, gave him a social influence which no previous missionary could expect to exercise. From the first, like all his relatives, he warmly espoused the cause of the colonies against George III., and his private letters to his English friends are often occupied with^a zealous but amia- ble defence of the side he had chosen.* His agency in the Canada mission of 1776 I have treated al- ready in speaking of the revolution, and it is un- necessary to rehearse it here.f What most concerns us now, is the action taken by the Catholic clergy in America consequent on the revolution. Hitherto they had been under the control of " the vicar apostolic of the London dis- trict," who governed them through his vicars. The revolution had hardly closed when, in 1783, they '■*■ * Biographical Sketch of Archbishop Carroll, by John Carroll Brent, Esq., pp. 44-46. t See ante, p. 80. 94 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. applied to the holy see to give them a new superior, and nominated Dr. Carroll for that dignity. In the next year Pope Pius VI. answered their unanimous application, and confirmed their choice. From 1784: the separate organization of the American church may be dated, as that of the country may be dated from 1776. From 1790, when Dr. Carroll was or- dained its first bishop, its more regular government commenced, as that of the country did, with the adoption of the federal constitution, in 1789. Dr. Carroll has left on record, among a list of reasons why the revolution was favorable to the establish- ment of religion, the four following ; — " I. The leading characters of the first assembly, or congress, were, through principle, opposed to every thing like vexation on the score of religion ; and as they were perfectly acquainted with the max- ims of the Catholics, they saw the injustice of per- secuting them for adhering to their doctrines. " II. The Catholics evinced a desire, not less ar- dent than that of the Protestants, to render the provinces independent of the mother country ; and it was manifest that, if they joined the common cause and exposed themselves to the common dan- ger, they should be entitled to a participation in the common blessings which crowned their efforts. "III. France was negotiating an alliance with the United Provinces ; and nothing could have re- tarded the progress of that alliance more effectual- ly than the demonstration of any ill will against the religion which France professed. THE CHURCH IN THE REPUBLIC. 95 " IV. Tlio aid, or at least the neutrality, of Can- ada was judged necessary for the success of the en- terprise of the provinces ; and, by placing the Cath- olics on a level with all other Christians, the Cana- dians, it was believed, could not but be favorably disposed towards the revolution." He adds that " it was not till after the war that the good effects of freedom of conscience began to develop themselves." And in a letter to one of his English friends, written in 1783, he says, " An im- mense field is open to the zeal of apostolic men — universal toleration throughout this immense coun- try, and innumerable Roman Catholics going and ready to go into the new regions bordering on the Mississippi, perhaps the finest in the world, and im- patiently clamorous for clergymen to attend them." * The apostolic men sighed for by the first bishop were soon vouchsafed to him. When we come to make their acquaintance, we are again struck with surprise to find them mostly French. To that illus- trious nation it was given to supply a second crop of missionaries to this continent. The revolution which shook down so many noble roofs, and in- gulfed so many holy things, in France, flung out upon England and America the choicest spirits of the French church. Strange and wonderful are the decrees of Providence ; for who could think that to a Mirabeau or a Danton the Ohio and the Penob- scot should be indebted for Christian apostles ? Let * Brent's Sketch of Archbishop Carroll, p. 67. CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. J* i 1/ US select from the west and the east a representa- tive of the latter French missionaries in America, and study them with due attention. Benedict Joseph Flaget was born in the com- mune of St. Julien, in Auvergne, France, on the 7th of November, 1763. After his studies and ordina- tion he sailed from Bourdeaux for Philadelphia, with the Rev. Messieurs Chicoisneau, David, and Badin, in the year 1792. On reaching Baltimore he was despatched to the distant mission of Vincennes — since the revolution, no longer supplied from Que- bec. He crossed the Alleghanies in a wagon, made some stay at Pittsburg, descended the Ohio in a flat boat, and so entered on his labors. For fifty- seven years (from 1792 till 1849) this apostolic man continued his mission in the south-west, as priest, vicar general, and bishop. His early visits usually count by hundreds of miles, and his routes were often known only to himself. Where, in the begin- ning, he could not find a confessor without under- taking a week's journey, he lived to see two arch- bishops and eight bishops presiding over a numer- ous clergy and an innumerable laity. Often his only chancel had been the bower of some tall tree, and his only altar a rock by the wayside. His first congregations were some half-lost Indians, or almost equally neglected French, or a few Irish soldiers from a frontier post, under Clarke or Wayne. It was his lot to live in two ages of the American church. In half a century he had seen many changes in the west, but none so profound nor so important i THE CHURCH in the republic. 97 i. as he had himself, under God, been instriiniental in working.* A not less amiable representative of the French clergy is found contemporaneously at the cast in the person of the Abbe Cheverus, first bishop of Bos- ton, afterwards Cardinal of Bourdeaux. This emi- nent person, born at Mayenne on the 28th of Janu- ary, 1768, fled from the irreligious revolution to England. There the invitation of the Abbe Mati- gnon, pastor of Boston, reached him : having accept- ed it, he reached his future see on the 3d of Octo- ber, 1796. In 1803 he had the happiness to see the first church consecrated in Boston ; and in 1808 Pius VII. raised him to the dignity of bishop. For fifteen years he continued the chief pastor of all the Catholics of New England, until recalled to still higher dignities in his native land. The story of those years can never be fully told. With a zeal that never flagged, this bishop united an humility that never slept. He shrunk from all conversation of himself, and did good always by stealth. On some occasions he was discovereci by the sweet odor of liis good works. His annuui visits to the long shepherdless savages of Maine ; his prodigies of charity performed in the alleys of the city during times of pestilence ; his heavenly meekness of de- meanor on all occasions, — were vividly remembered * The life of this admirable person — the first bishop of the -west — has been beautifully written by his third coadjutor and worthy succes- sor, Bishop Spalding. Louisville: Published by Webb & Levering, 1853. 9 / '98 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. as long as one of his contemporaries rcmaiucd in New England.* While to France belongs the glory of contributing a majority of the most venerable prelates and zeal- ous missionaries to the newly-formed church in this republic, the neighboring state of Belgium has claims on our gratitude hardly less honorable. To her we owe the Badins, De Neckcr^s, and Nerinxkes among the dead, and their worthy successors among the living. Italy, also, sent her model of a bishop in Dr. Rosati ; Spain, her sainted Varella ; while from Russia we derived Father Demetrius Gallitzin, prince and priest. In proportion to their numbers, the native Catholics always contributed their rep- resentative share to the councils of the church, such as Drs. Neale and Eccleston, Archbishops of Baltimore, and the two Bishops Fenwick, who left indestructible monuments of their piety and wisdom in Ohio and Massachusetts. The church of Ireland, partially emancipated by the state in 1793, had shown the greatest zeal in the restoration of its own discipline, and, after a gen- eration, began to send out many missionaries. Its new seminaries swarmed with candidates for holy orders, and, incomplete as they were, produced a su- perabundant clergy. Of those who found their way into America it would be impossible to give a list. ■fe -J ii i II * In 1823, after twenty-seven years on the American mission, he re- turned to France and was made Bishop of Montauban ; in 1826, Arch- bishop of Bourdeaux ; in 1836, cardinal. On the 19th of July, the same year, he expired ; on the 26th he was interred in the cathedral. >" ■: .3. ■■> ■fw- i THE CIIURCU IN THE REPUnLIC. 99 AVlicn, in 1808, Pope Pius VII. erected Boston, Bardstown,* New York, and Pliiladclpliia into sees, two Irish ecclesiastics, Drs. Egan and Conca- nen, were nominated to the last-named cities. With one exception in each place, both sees have since been filled by ecclesiastics of Irish birth. Among our venerable dead, the most distinguished Irish name is that of the hrst bishop of Charleston. John England was born in Cork, September 23, 1786, educated at Carlow seminary, and consecrat- ed for Charleston in 1820. He died in the city of his see on the 11th of April, 1842, after twenty- two years of the most various and distinguished services to religion in America. Nature had en- dowed this eminent prelate with a vast capacity and a temperament insatiable of labor. His only rest was change of work. History, politics, criti- cism came as familiar to his pen as theology or philosophy. He was equally happy as orator and writer ; and though the hurried fragments he threw off for the periodical press are often provokingly sketchy, they display workings of a powerful mind, inspired by a great soul. He was the first of our . prelates who desired +o bind the bays of literature round the brows of the young American church. All the leisure hours he could conscientiously spare from the visitation of his immense diocese he gave to study and composition. It was a generous re- gion, and the rage of the sects had not yet been * Translated to Louisville hy Papal rescript in 1841. "•OTVMNH 100 CATHOLIC UISTOUY OP AMEIUCA. inflamed to fury. Ilin fame difTusod itsdf from city to city, 80 tliat whcrovcr ho preached all clansca gathered to listen. In New Orleans the theatre was deserted for the church ; in Boston the children of the Puritans monopolized the cathedral ; in Ken- tucky the backwoodsmen escorted him in admiration from village to village ; in Washington the congress invited him to address the representatives of the nation assembled in the Capitol. All who heard were edified ; the poor understood, the scholars were instructed. With the generous disregard of the body natural to men of his genius, he wore out his powerful constitution in the fifty-sixth year of his age, leaving behind him a memory which assur- edly shall not die. We started with a parallel between the growth of the American state and church. In 1790 the state counted less than three millions, the church some fifty thousand ; in 1820 the state had increased to nearly ten millions, the church to perhaps one and a half ; in 1840 the state was seventeen millions, the church (according to Bishop England) about three millions. In the half century, while the state had more than quintupled, the church had multi- plied a thousand fold I The state had added Louis- iana, Florida, and the north-western territory to its domain ; the church had simultaneously embraced them in her jurisdiction. Congress legislated for the tribes beyond the Rocky Mountains, governing from ocean to ocean ; the provincial councils had relations as widespread and;, cares as extensive ; ! I \l THE CllUnCII IN THE lUOl'UnLlC. 101 Congress had swelled to four tiinc.H its original numbers; the couneils had iucroarfcd as much in proportion within half the titno. To our own day wo need not push the par'allel ; it is of more conse- quence to inquire into the causes of so marvellous an increase. Of the new territory which had come into tho Union since tho beginning of tho century, every square mile had been ruled by a Catholic power and was stamped with a Catholic character. Wo havo left far behind all question of priority in Maine, Ver- mont, western New York, Michigan, and Maryland. I speak now of. what was once " the Illinois coun- try," of Louisiana, of Florida, and Texas ; let mo add also New Mexico and California — regions which now make'more than half the whole area of tlie country. From whom were these regions de- tached ? From France, Spain, and Mexico. What was their character when they peaceably submitted to your laws ? A Catholic character certainly. Their original contingent of population, Indian, half- breed, or white, could not havo fallen short of a million ; and tho natural increase o'i that million may have been, since their acquisition, thirty per cent. I do not wish to overstrain such conjectural statistics ; I give them out mainly as probable ap- proximations to the uncertain truth. From Catholic governments has come all our in- crease of territory, while emigration has been a chief source of our increase in numbers. If the popula- tion over which Washington presidc*d had quad- 9 * 102 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. II rupled in two generations, we would have found but twelve millions in 1850, where we find twenty-four millions. We would then have ranked after Prus- sia and Spain, and before Turkey and Brazil, insteac* of ranking where we do. Whence came the other twelve millions ? From without ; from emigration ; from the increase of emigrants this side of Washing- ton's presidency. In kind, as in quantity, this emigration was ma- terially more valuable than any the colonial times had known. Its uniform poverty was its most use- ful quality. There was an immense work of physi- cal development to be quickly done, for which work an emigration of laborers was the prime require- ment. A proprietary, or company emigration, like that to Plymouth or Baltimore, could never have supplied this element, at once mobile and uncostly. It was needful it should be an unorc^anized emif^ra- i tion, in order that it might be more easily enlisted and drafted off to its distant stations. The Ger- man villagers, who march iu compact procession from the ship's side to the far west, do better for Jiemselves, but not-for the country. A steady sup- ply of cheap labor, a force which could be freely moved from point to point of national development, w^hich could content itself to camp in shanties, and to turn its hand to any thing, however we may ^- think of the wisdom of those who composed it, was the great want of this republic in the last half cen- tury ; and that want Catholic Ireland supplied. Native capital and native schools gave it captains i THE CHURCH IN THE REPUBLIC. 103 ' I ■ and paymasters ; but the Irish were the rank and file, and they did the work. I have spoken of the material value of the Irish emigration to the state : let us consider it a moment in a religious point of view. The first Irish emigrants, or exiles rather, had failed to implant Catholicity in British North Amer- ica. In retired spots of Barbadocs and Jamaica, Maryland and Pennsylvania, certain favored fami- lies, sprung from that stock, had retained the tra- ditions of their fathers ; a few had the happiness never to be totally deprived of the sacraments ; but the vast majority had, in the absence of church and priest, fallen insensibly away. From the Eng- lish till the American revolution, this is the sorrow- ful story of three generditions. A better day had come with our present constitution, and the second outpouring from Ireland was not destined to be religiously barren. The same properties which made the Irish poor essential to the growth of the new state, made them most serviceable to the exten- sion of the new church. Their poverty, in the eye of faith, clothed them in raiment richer than kings ; for, of all its titles, Christianity has still rejoiced most to be called " the religion of the poor." Our Lord and his apostles, — were they not poor ? Tho saints and servants of God in all ages, — did they not glory in poverty ? Who can forget those thrilling •words, " The poor you have with you always " ? Into America, destined to become the most prosper- ous nation tho earth had seen ; where wealth was to •4?. 104 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. H be the rule, and poverty the exception ; where gold was to circulate through all classes, rather than be shut up as an idol in temples where merchants wor- ship, or lavished with Assyrian wastefulness on the palaces of effeminate princes, — among this rich democracy, unsightly clans of strangers — poor, ig- norant, despised, but believing in and obeying God — were to bring, wrapped up in their rags or hidden in their bosoms, the supernatural seed, whose growth was predestined to take the place of the natural forest. Admire the wonderful things God works with the humblest instruments. The Puritan possessed all New England — its cornfields and villages, its falling and flowing waters, its soil and its miner- als. He planned factories, modelled ships, pro- jected new routes of intercourse. Outcast Cath- olics came to his gate, asking for work and wages. They were welcome ; they had arrived in good time. One was sent to the ship yard, another to the mill, a third to the railroad. As their masters looked on approvingly at their work, they dreamed not that every man there was fulfilling a double purpose — " rendering to Caesar the things that are Cassar's, and to God the things that are God's." They dreamed not that the carpenter's axe was shap- ing out, not only stanchions and ribs of ships, but altars and crosses. They dreamed not that the com- mon lal^orer in the field, girt with the sower's sheet, ' was casting mysterious mustard seed upon New Engr land soil. When the mill agent paid over his hard- 1 .\\ THE CHURCH IN THE REPUBLIC. 105 ': I \ •■ earned wages to the operatives, little he dreamed that on the morrow a part of that Puritan capital would go to build a Popish church, or pay a priest, or to erect a Catholic school, an orphan asylum, or a college. Yet so it had been ordered. The Puri- tan was to become rich ; and the Catholic in his poverty was to come after him, to win wages from him by industry, and to erect in the land of the Puritan, with the money of the Puritan himself, the cross the Puritan had so long rejected. Out of New England the same Providence is manifested. The merchants of New York desired to unite Lake Erie to the Hudson, for their own profit. An army of Catholic laborers is marshalled along the line. They penetrate from end to end of the great state. Their shanties spring up like mush- rooms in the night, and often vanish like mists in the morning. To all human appearances, they are only diggin;^ a canal. Stump orators praise them as useful spades and shovels, who helped on the great work of — making money. But looking back to-day, with the results of a third of a century before us, it is plain enough those poor, rude, and homeless men were working on the foundations of three episcopal sees, were choosing sitep. for five hundred churches, were opening the interior of the state to the empire of religion, as well as of com- merce. >' : . The same tale may be told of the mines of Penn- sylvania, Illinois, and Lake Superior. They ar^ the catacombs of the church in their several, ?;igigfens. ... ^ 106 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. in unwholesome damp, in caTernons darkness, in life-shortening toil, uncheered by air or sun, the Irish and German miner has wrought not for himself only, but for the church. Reckless, profane, intemperate he may sometimes be, but beyond almsgiving never. Ask the* missionary of a mineral district if he has found those workers in lead and iron hard or stolid men. Have they preferred natural dark- ness to heavenly light? Has their unenviable lot made them callous to the call of charity, or in- sensible to the love of God ? He will tell you that among those, sons of earth, those familiars of dark- ness, he has often met the tcnderest piety, the most fervent faith, and the noblest generosity towards religion. In the humbler regions, in the corn-growing country, in the river towns of the south-west, among " the 'long-shore men " on the Atlantic, our religion has found her readiest resources. Never was there a church which could so truly be called the church of the poor and of the people. No Constantine, no Clovis, no royal apostle like St. Olaf or St. Eric has been here. The alms of the poor laid the broad foundation, the mechanics raised the walls, the ser- vants adorned the sanctuaries. This is the true glory and true history of the church in America — a glory and history most largely shared by her Irish children. Great material works they will leave behind them, but far greater moral consequences ; cathedrals, not canals, shall be their witnesses with posterity ; the church in the new world shall be their enduring monument. *^'^^^ . / THE CHtmCII IN THE REPUBLIC. 107 The last complete exhibition of the extent of the church in this republic was the national council which assembled in Baltimore on the 9th of May, 1852. It was presided over by the illustrious and most reverend Francis Patrick Kendrick, ablegate of the holy see. Eight archbishops, twenty-six bishops, and one mitred abbot, with their several chaplains and theologians, were present ; the prel- ates of Oregon, California, New Mexico, and the Indian territory included. The jurisdiction of that august assembly extended wherever our flag flies. In all the requirements of Christian rulers, — in piety, learning, wisdom, energy, eloquence, address, — the least partial observer must have admitted them "to be well qualified. Those who looked deeply at that august array, gathered from the four winds, representing the Indian, Spanish, French, American, German, and Irish populations of the continent, must have felt how truly it deserved to be called Catholic. Sixty years before, Dr. Carroll summoned his synod in that same city. He was then the only bishop in this republic. His three vicars, the president of his local seminary, and six- teen priests came at his invitation. The older missionaries thanked God they had lived to see the wonderful things they saw. If it had been possible so far to prolong the span of human life, if the venerable Carroll C9uld have lived to see this sight, his reason might have doubted its reality. He had sung the song of triumph, exulting in his day ; but how much more would he rejoice if he had lived 108 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. to witness the council over which Archbishop Ken- drick presided I With his thorough knowledge of the past history of religion in America, he would have said, " The Invocation of our Blessed Lady by those first voy- agers was not in vain. Not in vain was the blood of the holy martyrs shed on the Penobscot, the Mo- hawk, at the Sault Ste. Marie, at Natchez, and in Florida. Not in vain did the children of St. Igna- tius and St. Dominic cross the Atlantic ten genera- tions ago to found an American church. It is founded ; it stands ; and it shall stand I " Ay, it shall stand, — - " Moored in the rifted roc^, Proof to the tempest shock ; Deeper it strikes, the louder it blows ! " • I It shall stand ; and successive generations, gath- ered in the shelter of its gigantic wings, may well wonder why it was ever hated, or feared, or misun- derstood. They will need no lecturer to tell them then of the Catholic history of North America ; they will learn it in the songs of their mothers, in the stories of their fathers, from pictures on their walls, from statues in the streets, from their earliest school books and earliest associates. This is no distempered dream. If half a century has done so much for the church in the republic, why may not another half do as much more, if the fault be not our own? , . . ' = One lesson we must learn ourselves and teach our I THE CHURCH IN THE REPUBLIC. 109 * I children. It is, to know our antecedents ; to glo- ry in our predecessors in the faith ; to be ever ready- to explain, but never to apologize, for the faith of our fathers. True, our American predecessors for the most part belong not to your nationality nor to mite ; they are Italians, Spaniards, Frenchmen. True that none among us may inherit the blood of the Catholic queen or the pious admiral ; yet do they belong to us and we to them. Catholicity rec- ognizes nationalities only to unite them. We are alike members of a corporation that cannot die. They are united to antiquity as we are to them ; the first born of our household saw Christ ; our last born shall see Antichrist. Mystical bonds bind us together, stretching far away beyond the grave of the past and the cradle of the future. As one in faith and in sacrifice, Time shall know us, and pass us on into Eternity. In her mature age the Catholic church begot America, before Protestantism was born in a by- way of Germany. The heart of our Holy Mother has always yearned for this Benjamin of her house- hold. The most illustrious Catholics have taken the deepest interest in American affairs : to mention St. Francis Borgia, and St. Francis Regis, Cardinal Ximenes, Bishop Las Casas, Queen Isabella, Colum- bus, De Soto, and Champlain, were enough. Many others are almost equally worthy of commemora- tion among us ; but the roll would be long to call, and their services God alone can requite. From the beginning of her civilized existence, '• 10 ^ 110 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. America owes every thing to Catholicity, to Saxon England, to orthodox France, to pious Spain ; above all, to Rome. Every order in the church, from the mendicant friar to the pope on his throne, has had a hand in your development. In the church, by children of the church, the very arts and means were made by which America was discovered and explored. Geography rescued by monks from the hands of Vandals ; astronomy nourished in the clois- ters and cathedrals of the middle ages ; missionary memoirs of distant lands leading timorous Commerce in the wake of fearless Christianity ; the discovery of the compass by a Neapolitan ; the sacred shield of the church held over peaceful travellers and all men of science who sought not to give the lie to God, — these are debts which America owes to the Catholic church. Did ever ocean enterprise appeal in vain to the sanction of that church which claimed to teach all nations? Inquire of JPortugal and Spain. Did ever lawful commerce find an enemy in Rome ? Look to the code of Amalfi, the excom- munication against those who waylaid merchants, to the favor shown the Hanseatic league, to Pisa and to Venice ; above all, look to the life of Columbus. This continent discovered, who are its bravest pioneers — the men of trade, or the men of faith ? What light is that we see shooting through the in- terior forest, tempting the student's eye to follow ? Before the fire of the trapper's gun struck down his woodland game, before the edge of the exile's axe had caught a ray of western sunshine, a mild and V THE CHURCH IN THE IlEPUBLIO. Ill l steady light is perceptible in the primitive forest ; and by its friendly aid we discover the Indian kneeling before the pine-tree cross, while " the black robe " pours on his humbled head the waters of re- generation. Colonization commences, and the church steps in to arbitrate between Christian princes ; to protect the outraged savages ; to declare the moral obliga- tions of sovereignty ; to preach peace, and justice, and mercy in the van of armies, in the camps of conquerors, in the councils of ambitious settlers and speculators from Europe. Go learn of the Catholics who colonized on the St. Lawrence, the Wabash, the Potomac, and the Apalachicola, two centuries ago, the unity of the human race, the true brotherhood of man, the just foundation of equal rights. And when our own republic assumes its separate state and proclaims its independent will, how promptly Rome concedes it a separate episcopacy I how tenderly she fosters it! how proudly she ca- resses it! Our history in America, my dear friends, is noble and encouraging. Its more frequent study must make us love the country better, and the ch"vch not less. It must also help to inspire that easy and habitual sense of social right so necessary to enable us to discharge gracefully all the obligations good citi- zens owe to a good government. THE RELATIONS OF IRELAND AND AMERICA. -TWO DISCOURSES. i.W I. -HISTORICAL RELATIONS.* .',14 If, ladies and gentlemen, the present exciting po- litical discussion about the place and position of foreigners in the United States is to be deplored, it is rather on account of the tone and temper than of the subject matter of the discussion. No political question can be more worthy the attention of a great and fast-spreading commonwealth than the elements which compose it and give it vigor, the foreign admixtures it receives, the influences which act on it from within or from without. It is only ' when the examination becomes an angry argument, when men fail in mutual courtesy and in the self- I * Some repetition of ideas presented in the last discourse on the Catholic history v/iU be detected in this and the following lecture ; but as the subject is here treated from a new point of Tiew, and with fuller details than would be proportionate in the previous discourses, we hope the courteous reader will forgive a few repetitions which could not weU be avoided. " . '' (112) IIISTOUICAL RELATIONS. 113 p03scsHion becoming tlios^o who dcbato, not for tri- umph, but for truth, that Hiicli discussions turn to public pests, and call aloud for quarantine regula- tion. I may have some views to advance to-night which are not generally acceptable ; I shall have to state some facts not currently quoted ; but I trust my words will be without olVence to any honest man : and as to the proofs, let them speak for themselves. I desire to advance no claims which the facts will not warrant ; and the public shall bo the judge be- tween the facts and the conclusions I may draw. The United States, as they stand to-day, have had two main sources of population — the colonial popu- h tion as it existed at the date of the revolution, and extraneous additions since the revolution. If we arc to analyze the first period, we must be guided by the state papers, colonial and British ; by local histories and memoirs of new settlements ; by that series of historical documents in which every state of the old thirteen is still able to trace its origin with tolerable accuracy. > In all our colonial memoirs we find the cardinal defect of European history ; they are the story of the few, told by the partisans of the few ; they go to exalt great names, not to show the social condition of the many. The proprietary system, under which the colonization first began, necessarily gave the turn of panegyric to all those first accounts ; for family pride was not thrown overboard in the outer voyage. In every history of Virginia, it is easy to 10* .114 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA, find who was colonel or who wag councillor to the governor ; in every history of Massachusetts, it is equally easy to find who " was a gentleman in good circumstances, that camo out with Governor Win- throp," but not so easy to ascertain who was tho eon of the nameless mechanic, or common cultivator, without whoso presence hero there could have been no Massachusetts and no Virginia. Of two classes in our original population it is next to impossible to find any record ; I mean tho convicts and the redcmptioners. Did these classes leave no descendants ? Or are we to account for , the modern silence in relation to them on tho prin- ciple of that mistaken pride of pedigree, in which not even the Spaniard or the Magyar exceeds some of our republicans ? If family pride conceals tho true or invents a false origin for its American tree, it is as ignorant as it is inconsistent. It ought to be thought no disgrace to descend from men who yvcre ^convicts under the barbarous English penal code of the seventeenth century ; a code which pun- ished OYCi' four hundred different offences with death ; a code which, under Cromwell's commonwealth, ex- ecuted three thousand unfortunate wretches for witchcraft ; a code which, in the absolute days of the Stuarts, made, and even till our own day makes, the shooting of a partridge a capital felony. Those among us who claim to be of tlie best families boast that their ancestors were fugitives from British law as it formerly existed. What advantage can the fugitive claim over the convict, except the advantage I HISTORICAL RELATIONS. 115 of escape over eonviction ? It is altogether a ques- tion of time and of terms, not at uU of real diflfcr- cncc or of ncceHHfiry superiority. The coiivict elass in our colonial population was largo in tho seventeenth century ; and though its mortality was immcuse, its increase was not wholly cut off. It was in the year 1G19, I believe, that King James I. shipped tho first cargo of convicts to Virginia, consijting of one hundred souls. Tho custom was continued annually till tho early part of tho reign of George III., notwithstanding tho frequent remonstrances and sometimes the success- ful opposition of tho free settlers. In six years after the first transportation nine thousand convicts had arrived in Virginia ; but such were tho hard- ships to which they were exposed, that only eighteen hundred, or twenty per cent, of tho whole, remained in the colony. It is not necessary, I repeat, to sup- pose this unhappy class to be composed of criminal offenders ; the English gallows did its work too thoroughly for that. Insurgent peasants who re sisted the enclosure of common lands, minor offend- ers, and at some periods political offenders, were those usually sentenced for life "to his majesty's tobacco plantations in America." The Irish policy of the lord protector was depop- ulation, and during his ten years' iron rule a vast number of our people were " transported beyond seas." The republican commissioners appointed by him to report on the condition of Ireland, recom- mended in 1652, among other measures, " that Irish- 1,4 m \\- M 116 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. i!'! I'll women, as being too nuincroiis now, aiid therefore ex- posed to prostitution^ (the hypocrites!) he sold to mer- chants, and transported to Virginia, New England, Jamaica, or other countries," where, of course, they could not be exposed to such temptation. Sir Wil- liam Petty states that six thousand boys and women were shipped to the West Indies alone ; Bruodin, another contemporary, sets down the entire number transported in Cromwell's ten years at one hun- dred thousand souls ; a manuscript in the late Dr. Lingard's possession set the total at sixty thousand. The whole white population in British America, at that time, was not as many more. The pretended Popish plots in Charles 11. 's reign • the revolution of 1G88, which fell so heavily on Ire- land ; the laws of William restricting Irish manu factures ; and the laws of Anne extirpating Catholic worship, — directly operated to drive a part of every Catholic generation out of Ireland. The present Earl Fitzwilliam (than whom no English statesman has a better collection of Irish statistics) has stated the number of expatriated " Irish operatives " in the reign of King William at one hundred thousand. A large proportion of these entered the military service of the Catholic powers of the old continent, where France, Spain, Austria, and even Russia, still cherish with affection traditions of their Irish sol- diers. What proportion of the total found their way to xVmeriea, I am unable to discover. That the number was large, we may infer from tlie general statements of our best local historians. Bozniau tH ?#i " \ HISTORICAL RELATIONS. 117 naentions tlie Irish insurrection of 1041 as liaving " affected the population of tlie province " of Mary- land. " Of all other countries," says Dr. Ilainsay, in his History of South Carolina, " none has fur- nished the colony with so many inhabitants as Ire- land. Scarce a ship sailed from any of its ports for Charleston that was not crowded with men, wo- men, and children." In North Carolina, 'the de- scendants of early Irish emigrants played a princi- pal part throughout the last century ; in Pennsyl- vania, if Holmes's statistics for 1729 do not form a very exceptional case, the arrivals from Ireland were almost ten to one to those from the rest of Europe, being five thousand six hundred and fifty-five Irish to six hundred and fifty-six from all other coun- tries. Among these emigrants were some of fallen fortune and good education. The Moores, Lynches, Burkes, and Rutledges, Avho figure in the history of the Carolinas, were of the best blood of Catholic Ireland. Another class became successful mer- chants ; as the Moylans, Sheas, Meases, and Dela- neys, of the port of Philadelphia. Others still be- came noted as teachers ; as Thomas Neil, mentioned in the Ilistojy of Wyoming, and the father of the Sullivans — one of the most honorably distinguished families in the revolutionary history of New Eng- land. A large portion of the early Irish emigrants probably belonged to the class called, in colonial phrase, redemptioners. These were persons unable to pay their own passage out ; who bound themselves 118 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. by contract to serve a certain period here, to redeem their passage. Like the convicts to the tobacco plantations, it is impossible now to collect the sta- tistics of the northern redemptioners. They were a numerous class, and some of the most honored names in our history were redemptioners. Secretary Thompson was ono ; Matthew Thornton was one ; the parents of Major General and Governor Sulli- van were redemptioners* There is another remarkable class of Irish emi- grants previous to the revolution ; I mean " the Scotch-Irish." These began to emigrate in consid- erable numbers about the beginning of the last century. Mr. Dobbs, M. P. for Armagh at that * By the British Emigration Commissioners' report for 1854, we find that the same practice — which they erroneously call " a new princi- ple " — has been introduced into the economy of Australian emigra- tion. They report : — " In New South Wales a new principle has been introduced of great importance, and which, if it succeeds, will effect a considerable change in the position of the emigrants selected and sent out by this board. The object of this change is to make the emigration to a great extent self-supporting. With this view, the price of passage to a firs:t-clas3 emigrant is fixed at thirteen pounds, and to the second class at fifteen pounds, and these amounts are required to be paid by or on account of each emigrant either in this country or in the colony. " To carry out the scheme, an act was passed by the legislature, providing that all emigrants sent out at the expense of public funds should, before embarkation, enter into an agreement with us either to repay the amount still remaining due from them within fourteen days of their arrival in the colony, or to take service for t^o years with an employer, who should undertake to repay that amount out of their ac- cruing wages. But a power is reserved to the emigrant to terminate such agreements after the first twelve months, by giving three months' notice, and paying up the unpaid instalments of the passage money." HISTORICAL RELATIONS. 119 •■ \ , period, stated the average number at three thousand a year. Hillsboro' county, New Hampshire, Ulster county, New York, western Pennsylvania, and west- ern Virginia, were their chief settlements. They were a frugal, hardy, intrepid race of Sdoticized Celts. They have givuu niaiiy illustrious names to this nation. Montgomery, Stark, Reed, Maxwell, McDowell, and Jackson arc all derived from tho stout Scotch-Irish. They are more easily found in our history than their Catholic or old Irish contem- poraries, because they are always met in groups ; because their kirk was encouraged and our church ■was proscribed before the revolution ; because they "wore frequently proprietors, and our class were generally laborers, without any fixed abodes or church organization. I honor and admire the thrift- ing and ambitious Scotch-Irish ; but I do not believe that they at any time constituted the numerical majority, nor even a half, of the Irish in America. My first argument is this — that from the reign of James I. till the revolution, a period of one hun- dred and fifty years, there were always Irish in America ; that in Cromweirs time, especially, an immense infusion of that race took place ; that having no special religious organization, and occu- pying no exclusive ground, they got mingled up from the start into the very being of the old (;olo- nial population ; and that the revolution was com- menced by a people, not numerous even then, who must have had almost, if not quite, as much Irish blood in them as any other blood. To make it 'ii 120 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. plainer still, let me say," in the language used in 1843 b}" Mr. Conrad, of Pliiladelpliia, that Ireland is historically, I will not say, with him, " the moth- er country," but one of the parent sources of our native population. I leave it to the curious in figures to calculate her precise contingent ; I am content to show that she had her share in the popu- lation from the first, as she has now, and that the current theory which derives our national life, and therefore our national obligations to the past, sole- ly from the Anglo-Saxon stock, is historically false, besides being politically fatal to the true greatness of America. It may be objected that the very fact of hav- ing to argue the question of our origin at this late day makes against my first conclusion. I d'eny that it does so. Fifty years ago it stood in no need of argument in the majority of the states ; it never entered the heads of our predecessors here that their countrymen would be treated as intruders after their time, and ingratitude be shown to the dead to cover over injustice to the living. They made no books out of their exploits ; they preferred no posthumous claims upon national remembrance. The names of Hand, Moylan, Barry, Fitzsimons, and the brave O'Briens, of Machias, were almost forgotten, when I, myself, rescued- them from the moth and mildew and the studied neglect of sec- tional bookmakers. The work of historical retri- bution has only begun ; but with the blessing of God it will be followed up, until we show our ■\ HISTORICAL RELATIONS. 121 4^^ • 1 boastful Anglo-Saxon theorists that the race they thought politically dead in Europe had a resurrection in America, and that from America it can still send its strong voice across the waves, to tell our mother- land to be of good cheer, for the day of her deliv- erance also will assuredly come round. I pass from the colonial to the revolutionary period — that stirring and brilliant generation, which began with the non-importation agreement, and ended with the federal constitution. Many details are not necessary here, for this subject is familiar to you all. Let me briefly remind you of Ireland's relations with Amei'ica at that trying period. And while I recall the facts, so glorious to the people to whom I belong, do not misunder- stand me. We ask no gratitude on account of the past ; but we invoke the past to rebuke the injus- tice of the present. We call on the dead, not for patronage, but for reference ; and we would desire nothing better for our cause than that the august form which led them living might arise in the front rank of the solemn inquest, and seal the gen- eral verdict with the supreme authority of Wash- ington. At the period of the first rupture between the colonies and Great Britain, Ireland contained above four million inhabitants, and the colonics less than three millions. Ireland had a local legis- lature, whose proposed acts had first to pass the King's Privy Council ; in 1782 this restriction was first removed. Abroad, besides the Irish in the 11 »t* i mi !5't !, 122 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. colonies, there were two remarkable sets of Irish- men, officers in the French service, and writers and orators in England. What was the relation of the Irish classes towards the American cause ? One of uniform friendship, of enthusiastic admiration, of practical and powerful cooperation. Wq will speak first of the parent stock. By a singular concurrence, Ireland and America began clamoring at the gates of British power for redress at one and the same time. Both began with the navigation act, with taxation, and free trade ; both advanced by degrees to declarations of political sovereign^v — America in '76, Ireland in 1780; both obtained the recognition of their demands the same year, from the same ministry and the same monarch. This identity of causes produced identity of feeling ; identity of feeling led to open acts of sympathy and correspondence ; the double diver- sion thus effected was mutually beneficial. Ameri- ca's resistance gave Ireland an opportunity to pro- pose her ultimatum. ; and Ireland's ultimatum helped to hasten the recognition of America's independ- ence. Let me quote a few authorities for this exposi- tion. In 1771 Dr. Franklin visited Dublin, of which visit he writes to Thomas ' Gushing, of Bos- ton : " Before leaving Ireland, I must mention that, being desirous of seeing the principal patriots there, I staid till the opening of their parliament. I found them disposed to be friends to America, in which I endeavored to confirm them, witxi the ex- , ;>• i I HISTORICAL RELATIONS. 123 pectation that our growing weight might in time be thrown into their scale, and, by joining our inter- est with theirs, a more equitable treatment from this ration (England) might he obtained for them as well as for us." When, in 1775, the Continental Congress resolved openly to cast oif the yoke, they directed addresses, among others, to " the Irish people." Their lan- guage, on this occasion, is remarkably fraternal and sympathetic. Let me quote a few sentences : — " And here " (they write) " permit us to assure you that it was with the utmost reluctance we could prevail upon ourselves to cease our commercial con- nection with your island. Your parliament had done us no wrong ; you had ever been friendly to the rights of mankind ; and we acknowledge with pleasure and with gratitude that your nation has produced patriots who have nobly distinguished themselves in the cause of humanity and America." This address, to be found among the papers of that congress, is dated July 28, 1775, and signed John B.A'S COCK, president. .. - While the congress that issued this address was still sitting in Philadelphia, the Parliament at Dub- lin and London were hardly less occupied with American affairs. In Dublin the patriots were still in a minority, though every day added to their ranks. In the session of '75, Henry Grattan, then in his twenty-ninth year, entered Parliament for the first time. In that session the question of voting troops for America came up, the king having made a requi- M ml M \f^ 124 CATHOLIC HISTOUY OF AMERICA. ■ i'l sition for four tliousand men. This tlic patriots Avarmly opposed, but for tlic time tlie Castle party prevailed. Session after session tliey renewed their opposition in voting the supplies, and in '79 they had a majority. Lord Buckinghamshire, then vice- roy, in his official despatches to the government at London speaks of the patriots of that day as " the American party," as inspired by " French and American influences." In the British House of Lords, the Earl of Chatham, in his own forcible style, declared ** Ireland to be American ; " and in Burke's Bristol speech, the same notorious sympathy of sentiment between the countries is taken for granted. In the London Parliament, and throughout the war, the illustrious group of whigs of Irish birth — Sheridan, Barre, Tierney, Fitzpatrick, but above . all Edmund Burke -r- gave a powerful moral sup- port to the colonial cause. Burke's first work was on the European settlements in America. He had been agent of the Province of New York in the early stages of the contest ; he continued the friend of Franklin and Laurens, and the enemy of Lord North's measures, till its close. Consider the moral weight of such speeches as Burke delivered from such an eminence as the great council of the British empire. His magnifi- cent genius looked down upon the earth with the scrutiny and the elevation of a pure spirit. Be- neath him, at his hand, lay Hindostan, with all its rivers and cities ; his glance pierced the densest HISTORICAL RELATfOXS. 125 ;3 jungles of Africa ; Europe Avas all H 'liar to liini, and in its wildest mood lie s\\ uni^ it round again into the old orbit ; on America he had long fixed those studious eyes which searclied through all ages and regions for worthy subjects on which to employ his powers. Dignified as was the attitude of the colo- nics, it became still more so in his description ; for the amplification of virtue was the favorite office of his genius. Great as any occasion might be, ho was always greater ; he spread over an immense subject like the sun over our earth, visited every side of it with impartial fervor, leaving nothing to be imagined but the source of his inspiration, and nothing to be desired but its perpetual manifes- tation. Do I need quotations to sustain this eulogy? There is not a schoolboy in the land but can give you Burke's speeches on American taxation and con- ciliation. The greatest orator that ever used our tongue as his weapon, he ushered independent Amer- ica into history in two orations, which nothing of antiquity excels and nothing since his time has equalled. The Irish brigade in the French service, in '75, was one of the most famous military bands in Eu- rope. According to the Due do Feltre, four hun- dred thousand Irish soldiers died in the service of France in the last century — a fact which gives national importance to that military emigration. "When the Franco-American alliance was first moot- ed, the entire brigade volunteered for America ; but 11* ,ii 126 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMKRICA. France was not yet resolved on war. A number of their officers were, however, sent out witli Admiral de Ternay, (liinisclf of that race,) and Count do Rochambeau, who brought over six thoii?and French troops. I need but refer to the names of the Dil- lons, — who afterwards died so gallantly in defence of Mario Antoinette, — of Count Philip Roche- Fermoy, of the imprudent but generous inspector general Thomas Conway, of the Marquis McMahon, and other distinguished French-Irish officers who served in the last campaigns of the revolution, and the survivors of whom formed in one of those two files between which Cornwallis marched with empty scabbard out of Yorktown. Of the part taken by the Irish in the colonies I need hardly remind you. They were at Bunker's Hill under Stark and Reed ; at Quebec with Mont- gomery ; at Saratoga with Gates ; at Flatbush with Sullivan and Hand ; at Stony T'oint with Wayne and Moylan ; at Trenton and the Brandywine with Washington ; at Eutaw Springs with Greene ; at Savannah and at Yorktown. To use the words of the venerable George Washington Parke Custis, " They were distinguished in every action of the V war. At sea, the affair at Machias Bay, called by Mr. Fennimore Cooper " the Lexington of the seas," was fought under the brothers O'Brien ; some of the crew and officers of Paul Jones were Irish ; the leading part taken by Commodore Jolm Barry, in the organization of the first navy of the United HISTORICAL RELATI(5i|s^ 127 States, is now familiar to you all. This Irish Cath- olic won for himself the proud title of father of the United States navy. On the peace cstablisli- ment, previous to 1801, we find Captains Barry, McNeil, Barron, Mullowncy, and James Barron ; Lieutenants Ross, McElroy, McRea, O'Driscoll, Byrne, Somers, McCutchcn, and McClelland ; i\rid- shipmen McDonougli, Roach, Carroll, Maj^ralh, Fleming, Hartigan, Ilennessy, Dunn, O'Brien, Wiii^^li, Blakely, T. McDonough, T. Moore, C. Moore, Ros- sitter, McConnell, Blake, Kearney, and Casey — all Irish, by birth or parentage. In the civil service of the republic, during the revolution, we have Charles Thompson, the Clin- tons, Thomas Fitzsimons, of Philadelphia, the three Carrolls, the Lynches, father and son, and the brothers Rutledge — men who took part in every civil labor during the contest, from the first volun- tary associations till the establishment, in 1789, of the federal constitution. It thus appears that all the available Irish talent in Europe and America, military and parliament- ary, was cheerfully employed in the service of America during her struggle for independence. Lot me repeat here what I said of the colonial period, that I have not adduced these facts to found on them any claim to national gratitude at the present day. The Irish in America, in this generation, want no national gratitude ; we ask only fair play, only the truth of history, for the honor of our race and the instruction of our children. II, m m 128 CATHOLIC IIISTOiii' 01' AMKUICA. *» Wo liMVO conducted tliis inquiry to the period of "Washington's presidency, 171)0. Another, genera- tion brings us to our own times, to 1820. In tlieso tliirty years tlie growth of America was unex- ampled ; the north-west began to be peopled ; Flor- ida and Louisiana were added to our territory ; eight now states were admitted ; and the population increased from three to ton millions. The policy of acquisition and extension was inaugurated by President .TelTerson and liis party, to which the ma- jority of the citizens of Irish origin always be- longed. They are entitled to whatever credit is due those who sustained that policy against tho powerful opposition of the old federal party. Jef- ferson and Madison have cheerfully given them that credit in their correspondence ; and the former, so early as 1794, points out, in a letter to the latter, the Irish element as one of the chief resources of the anti-British and anti-aristocratic party. I am not going into the merits of that or any other l)arty ; I say only that the country has thriven un- der democratic direction, and that the credit is duo to tliosc who filled its ranks, and firmly sustained its chiefs, while their line of policy was as yet an experiment. In two departments the Irish, fi'om 1790 to 1820, I'ondered America important services — on her pub- lic works and in the war with England. That war ■was declared by Congress on the recommendation of a committee, four of whose members were of Irish parents or Irish birth ; and Calhoun was their chair- 1 UISTORICAL RELATIONri. 129 a man. Of the familiar events of the war it is not necessary to say much : you all know of what stock Crogan, and Brady, and McComb, and Riley, suid McDonough, so distinguished in the north-west, were : you all know Jackson, and Carroll, and Coft'ee, and Butler, of the decisive battle of Nt'W Orleans. I do not dwell on these familiar names, but merely ask you to add them to the account which I have undertaken to lay before you. Let me call your attention to the fact that in this war adopted citizens born in the British domin- ions fought at an immense disadvantage ; since by the prince regent's proclamation of October, 1812, all such persons were warned that, if taken prison- ers, they would be treated as " rebels." President Madison and the officers of the American army could only apply in their favor the law of retalia- tion, which, in the well-known case of General Scott and the Irish prisoners in Canada, was found to be efficacious. Whoever will look carefully through the annals of the second English war will find that the threats of the prince regent did not deter the Irish part of the citizen soldiery from doing their duty by their adopted country. The war of 1812 was, in fact, the adopted citizens' war ; a war in de- fence of the rights of the naturalized, on sea or on shore ; a war against New England's prejudices as well as Old England's power ; and a war large)y indebted to captains and men of Irish descent for its glorious termination. Even if it is a sore spot, I cannot overlook the conduct of the most Anglican !?'i V -t,- 130 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. i part of the United States — Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts — in that contest. Their famous " Hartford convention " has not yet entirely faded from the public meniory. They formed a " peace party," helpful only to the enemy ; they rang their Boston bells for British victories, and tolled them for their own ; they denied that the president could delegate his power over the local militia to officers commissioned by him ; they gave every obstruction to their own forces, and every aid to the enemy short of overt acts of treason. The war of 1812 was fought, against all the Anglican influences on this soil, by the true Americans, native and naturalized ; none of its laurels, none of. its solid results, belong to the Anglican faction which has always existed here, and chiefly in New Eng- land. The public works of the United States have been done on so gigantic a scale, and in so short a space of time, that they deserve to be classed as historical events. In 1790 the western boundary of the Mid- dle States was still the Blue Ridge. The Cumber- land Road, the Erie, and the Chesapeake and Dela- ware Canals, were as yet unattempted. These great works were mainly done by Irish hands ; and it is now known that the Erie Canal was designed and surveyed by Christopher Colles, of Dublin, long be- fore it was adopted, by De Witt Clinton as the project of his life. The Middlesex Canal in Massa- chusetts owed as much to Governor Sullivan as the Erie Canal did to Governor Clinton ; and the first ^ HISTORICAL RELATIONS. 131 1 railroad New England had was mainly tlio work of Patrick Traccy Jackson, of Boston, a venerable citizen of Irish descent, whom I myself remember to have seen. I claim the merit of the head work as well as tho handwork in these undertakings. The first claim may be ungratefully forgotten, but it can never be disproved. The second claim will not be ques- tioned. I claim that the first highways which crossed the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies were the work of the Irish Hercules -i- the true pine bender and path preparer of the new world. Ireland alone, from 1790 to 1820, could have sup- plied the necessary labor force for opening up the continent. If the native population had increased thirty per cent, in that generation, — in other words, if each family averaged three children, — the whole native population in 1820 would be short of six millions, instead of nearing ten / What proportion of the other four millions Ireland contributed, after '98 and " the union," I cannot ascertain, for neither in British nor American ports were the statistics of emigration recorded before 1819. That Ireland did supply the hands which led Lake Erie down- ward to the sea, and wedded the stormy Chesa- peake to the gentle Delaware, and carried the roads of the east out to the farthest outpost of the west, we know from every repOrt on our public works. I have said that Ireland alone could and did supply that indispensable element of labor. The native popu- lation of six millions would still haf e lived within 11 i ) '! il 132 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. their old limits, rather than take pick and spade, lodge in shanties, and obey a boss. Foreign labor was needed ; and that labor must be disorganized at home, that it might be more readily reorganized here. It should be cheap, mobile, and hardy ; it should be sufficiently apt to pick up new habits of work, and to apprehend quickly verbal directions ; it should know enough of English to comprehend its captains. In the Irish emigration alone these several dispositions were combined. It has been the lot of the Irish laborer to make roads for Ger- mans to travel on ; to fill the purse in the native's pocket ; to advance every body's fortune farther than his own. • . r Do I complain of this ? Am I ashamed of it ? God forbid. Honest hand labor is the most hon- orable employment of man. Every other profes- sion owes something to its pretensions, something to sleight, or show, or the credulity of its clients. Of the lawyer, the doctor, the editor, the mechanic even, this is true ; but the honest workman, who puts his conscience into his work, and can point to the result and say, " There is my contract ; examine it ; see if I have not done every thing I under- took," — he can make a prouder boast, and take a higher moral stand, than almost any member of a learned profession. If the labor emigration is a fact true of Ireland and America for two hundred years, it is not peculiar to American history nor to the Irish race ; and though it has its sad side, it has also its halo* of glory. You who make the term HISTORICAL RELATIONS. 133 foreigner a reproach to us, — who are you ? Chil- dren or grandchildren of foreigners. And we, — who are we ? The parentage of native generations, destined to rule this continent in conjunction with your children's children. In one sense we are all foreigners to America ; European civilization is foreign to it ; white complexions are foreign to it ; the Christian religion is foreign to it. The term conveys no stigma to the well-informed mind. The man of reading and reflection knows that at one time or other it was true of all humanity — true of the first man, as it may be of the last. The history of our race is a history of emigration. In Asia Eden was ; but beyond Eden the world lay. The first emigrants were that sad pair who travelled into the outer darkness, lighted by the glare of the fiery sword threatening at their backs. When their ears no longer caught the rustling of the trees of paradise, or the flow of its living waters, they felt themselves truly emigrants : — I' '* Some natural tears they shed, but dried them soon ; The world was all before them, where to choose A place of rest, and Providence their guide." Upon what consolation did our first parents rest ? Upon labor and upon hope, " Go forth and fill the earth and subdue it," and the promised Mes- siah. Since then, the story of their posterity has been the same. Westward with the sun they trav- elled from the first, keeping on earth an apparent parallel to his apparent course. The cities of Enoch, I m 12 ', i ■! ! 134 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. \- !i ■Jil Babylon, Nineveh, Tyre, Thebes, Carthage, Rome, — what are they ? Landmarks and tidemarks of the endless emigration. In the days before history, in the mountain mists of tradition, we see the dim forms of pioneers and leaders, carrying their tribes from old homes to new homes, over mountains and across straits, and through the labyrinth of the primeval wilderness. All mythology is a story about emigrants ; and the tale did not end when Hercules set up his pillars at the Strait of Gades, and forbade his descendants to tempt the exterior ocean. In the dawn of classic light we see man- ' kind with darkened and troubled brows, gazing out to the forbidden west as they lean against those pillars. The fearless Phoenician came, and swept by without slacking sail or heeding Hercules ; he went, and came, and went, disenchanting mankind of their fears. The Romans talked of having reached the earth's ultima : and so Europe rested for ages, in full belief of the Roman geography. At last Columbus rose, that inspired sailor, who, dedicating his ship and himself to the protection of the Blessed Virgin, launched fearlessly into the undiscovered sea, and introduced the n«w world to the acquaintance of the old. After Columbus we came, borne onward by the destiny of humanity, in obedience to the primitive charter of our race — " Go forth and fill the earth and subdue it ; and in the sweat of your brow you shall earn your bread." The Irish emigrant stands on this high ground j and, so standing, he can look the past fearlesslyin ^t^r IIISTOIIICAL RELATIONS. 135 the face. He has no cause to be ashamed of his predecessors liere. If they founded no exclusive J^ew Ireland^ the blood of no exterminated Indian tribe rises in judgment against them ; if they were sole proprietors of no province, neither have they to answer for enslaving the African. They were here, subordinates in power, but principals in labor. They could say, and we may say for them, that in no department of American development have the Irish mind and the Irish arm been unfelt. We have given the Union, in this century, its greatest specu- lative and its greatest practical statesman — John C. Calhoun and Andrew Jackson ; we have given the Union two vice presidents, nine signers of the Dec- laration of Independence, . six authors of the Con- stitution, ten major generals to its army, and six commodores to its navy. In science, in authorship, in oratory we have been represented, as well as in digging, and delving, and carrying the hod. We can look History in the face ; and, putting our hands upon any part of the fabric of the state, we can say, as a people, This was jtartly our work. Such, as I read the record, are the historical relations of Ireland and America. With God for our guide, and our own labor for our dependence, we may defy the designs of faction, and look as fear- lessly to the future as proudly to the past. I 1^. ., II. -ACTUAL RELATIONS. On the last evening I had the honor to stand in this place, I showed, I believe conclusively, that the Irish emigration was no new fact in American lils- tory ; that it was as old as the planting of white population in this country ; that on the historic account between Ireland and America, down to the year 1820, there was an apparent balance — and I believe a real one — due from this new nation to that ancient island. At the same time I disclaimed altogether the intention of raising a claim to na- tional gratitude on that historic basis. I strove to bring out the facts partly as a set-off to present injustice, but mainly as a lesson, important for your native-born children and mine to learn. . I propose to-night, ladies and gentlemen, with your indulgence, to consider the actual relations subsisting in our generation between the land of our birth (of mine at least) and this new land of our adoption. I fear you may find the subject a dry one ; but I trust to the natural interest we all feel in our own times and fortunes to enable me to carry you through to the end of the argument. I find these actual relations open to four divisions. (136) ACTUAL RELATIONS. 137 ^,. 1. That whicli rcixards the bare statistics of popu- lation. 2. Tliat which concerns American com- merce and development. 3. The political ; and, 4. The religious relations of America and Ireland. We have each Irish and American decennial census sinc'e 1820, and the recent British and Amer- ican Emigrant Commissioners' reports, to help us in our inquiry into the movement of population be- tween the countries. In 1821 Ireland contained six million six hundred eighty-seven thousand three hundred and six souls. In 1841 eight million one hundred seventy-five thousand one hundred and fifty-four souls, or a home increase of less than twenty-five per cent. ; that is to say, less than an average of five children to two families. In 1851 the same country had fallen back to six million five hundred fifty-one thousand nine hundred and seventy souls, or less than it contained thirty years before. The increase of one entire generation was thus lost to that afflicted land. What might that increase be ? If it were in the ratio of the increase in the thirty years before 1820, — which included a sanguinary civil war and two years of famine, — it ought to have been at least thirty-three per cent., giving in 1850 a total of ten million instead of six and a half ! Here are, between the years 1820 and '50, three million and a half of the Irish people to be ac- counted for. If we allow the cholera of 1832 and the famine of 1847 to have swept away a million by death, (and a million is a large allowance,) there ■ .12* 138 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. still remain two million five hundred thousand souls to be accounted for, most of whom are be- lieved to be at present living in America. In the decade from 1820 to 1830, the British gov- ernment was active in depleting the Irish popula- tion. They gave every encouragement, including a pecuniary bonus, to emigrants for their own colonies — the Cape of Good Hope, Sydney, and Canada. In those ten years tlie whole governmental emigration from what is perversely called " the United King- dom" was one hundred fifty-four thousand two hun-? dred and ninety-one souls; in the next decennial peri- od, down to 1840, it was two hundred seventy-seven thousand six hundred and ninety-six souls ; and in the last the increase, including Australia, was du- plicate. Taking these figures together, we have two thirds of a million of emigrants who, under the auspices of the British government, left British ports between the years 1830 and 1850 to settle in." British dependencies. If of this total one half were Irish, we would still have two million two hundred thousand of their countrymen to locate somewhere on the globe ; and this number is not, I imagine, very far from the direct contribution of Ireland to the American population within the pres- ent generation.* * In their report for 1854, the British commissioners of emigration state that tlie total number who have emigrated in the thirty-nine years between 1815 and 1853, inclusive, has been three million seven hun- dred ninety-three thousand five hundred and twenty-nine ; but that of these two million one hundred twenty-one tliousand three hundred and V-\ ACTUAL RELATIONS. 139 i Speaking' of population, wc should distinguish tho kind as well as the quantity. On inquiry from per- sons long " gaged in the passenger trade, I have been invariably told that four fifths of all those emigrating from Ireland arc adults. This modifies essentially all after calculations in relation to that class. In our native population, the proportion of adults to minors is, from the short average of human life, not more than one third. Ilencc, so far as adult labor and service are involved, two million and a half of emigrants yield as many hands as six million of tho native population. This is an im- portant consideration, and I will ask you to bear it in mind hereafter. This is a people already reared,. each individual of which, if born here, would have consumed a thousand dollars' worth of food, clothing, and other necessaries before he or she could have become a maker of money. The first cost of a million of people to this state of society must be fully a thou- sand million of dollars between infancy and adult age ; and to that amount, and far more than that, our adult emigration has enriched the United States. For the five years ending in '53, there are registered of Irish emigrants to this country alone above a million, of whom, according to my informants in t: i 11 m\ seyenty-threc, or more than eleven twentieths, have emigrated during the seven years ending on the 31st of December, 18o3. Now, of this total, at least two thirds, over two niillion five hundred thousand, were Irish, of whom the greater part came to the United States — a strong proof of the coirectness of the calculation in the text. HO CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. the ])asscnger trade, four rirfliF", or eight hundred thousand, were adult?. We have been accustomed to a complaint from certain quarters that this is a pauper emigration — that this country is overrun with foreign paupers. What are the facts? The comniMtation tax, which must be paid on every for- eigner, adult or infant, is two dollars per head for young and old, and amounted last year to upwards of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars on emi- grants from British ports alone, and must have been as much more on the German emigration. Now, the total number of persons born abroad, — of all nationalities, — who received alms in any or all our states during last year, was sixty-eight thousand, being less than .ten per cent, of the whole number arrived ; thus giving for the expense of each — the commutation tax being so set apart according ,to law — not less than twenty-two dollars a head — an amount, it is needless to say, far more than suf- ficient to save the native public from any poor tax specially levied on account of emigrants.* Another distinction to be considered is, that gen- * I deny, however, that the sixty-eight thousand " foreigners " en- tered as receiving relief in our poorhouses, in 1853, can all be properly called emigrants. A large proportion of them have spent years here, been naturalized, been worked out in the service of the commonwealth. On this and similar topics there is a very free and easy alternation of terms in vogue. The bravo soldier is an American ; the same soldier, if he deserts, is " a foreigner ; " the gallant fireman or seaman is a fellow-citizen ; but his brother, if detected in any thing disgraceful, becomes suddenly " a foreigner." Against this unfair substitution of terms common honesty cries out. -^•Ml ACTUAL IIFJ-ATIONS. 141 erally the European cmigranls who come licrc are ro- bust, inured to j)hysical hibor, and contented to keep at it. There arc very few of them alllicted with dys- pepsia, or debility, or inipotcncy. They arc not given to shout for a doctor if their little fingers ache, nor to shrink from frost or fire, mud or mad- der. Whether they settle on new lands or encamp upon public works, they must pay their way from the beginning. There is no bankruptcy among them ; the emigrant cannot fail while his health holds good ; he expends as he earns ; his cash is the brisk- est in circulation — for it no sooner passes into his possession than it is partitioned among all who live by trading in the necessaries of life. In the period of which we have been speaking, while Ireland lost one third of all her people, this country had advanced from less than ten million to more than twenty-three ! Supposing the native family to average three children, the natural in- crease would have reached but to fifteen, leaving eight million to be otherwise accounted for. The census of 1850 furnishes no solution of this prob- lem ; but the census of 1850 is no authority. It would have the world believe that there are now but two million of men of foreign birth in this re- public ; w^hereas the statistics of emigration show that for the last ten years alone more than that number of Irish people landed on these shores. Were there no foreigners here before 1 840 ? Are there no French, no Italians ? Are not the Germans and Scandinavians, taken together, more numerous it ' • ( U2 CATIIOJ.IC IIISTOUY OF AMEUICA. still than the Irish? Ami yet this census Avould have the world believe tliere are but two million of foreigners altogether in the U'niieLl States 1 If it had set them down at six million of all nationali- ties, it would have been nearer the mark. As to the effects of emigration on American com- merce and internal develoi)mcnt, there is no need for argument, though there is ample material for illustration. No one denies that to the influx of cheap labor, during the last thirty years, the United States owe their four thousand miles of canal and fourteen thousand miles of railroad. No one de- nies that the states which encouraged emigration, and pushed forward public worlcs, arc the states which now feed and clothe the country. Ohio, In- diana, and Illinois, thirty years ago, were second or third-class states ; now they stand next after New York and Pennsylvania, before Massachusetts and Maryland, and beside old Virginia. The value of foreign labor to the north-west, the last thirty years, defies computation. Last year it was shown by Chicago papers that the eaij-loyment of ten thou- sand men for one year, on the Illinois Central Rail- road, had enhanced the value of the public lands in that state seventeen million dollars — a fact from which the curious may calculate of how much value a million of men, laboring for thirty years for the state and themselves, may have been. " This," said Benjamin Franklin nearly a century since, " is a country of labor : " " and such," said Matthew Cary forty years ago, " it remains till this day." Another •11 ACTUAL llELATIONH. 143 high authority in political economy, A(hnu Smith, defines "the annual labor of every nation" to bo "the fund whicli originally supplies it witli all tlio conveniences and necessaries of life." If we apply these maxims to our sul)jcct, they will help us to Borao sound conclusions. This whole continent may, in fact, be considered as the raw material out of which the nation itself was, a few years ago, to bo manufactured ; the factors were both natives and emigrants ; and as roads, bridges, canals, and crops must precede the full triumph of civilization over barrenness, so here, as every where else since the world began, the foreigner has been the civilizer. Compare the present value to society and the world of an acre of Ohio wheat land with the utter usc- lessness of that same acre when the Miami Indian had his wigwam there, and you will see how real and how general a benefactor to his race the foreign laborer has been. In that delightful harmony of interests which, however often deranged by human perversity, does still pervade the world, the culti- vation of a new territory on any side of the earth affects every inhabited region. The shower that falls on the Alleghanies gladdens the hearts of men beside the Clyde ; and the farmer in Indiana be- comes the feeder of the mechanic in Manchester. . I am not able to say what proportion of the pur- chasers of our public lands, during the last few years, were men of foreign birth ; but I will, for argument's sake, suppose it to be one fourth. From 1833 to 1850 there were some seventy-seven million Jt; 'i t I? '" V ''I % f, M I I 144 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. acres sold for about one hundred million dol- lars. If foreigners bought a fourth part, they had in sixteen years paid into the United States treas- ury twenty-five million dollars, or above a mil- lion and a half a year. They had become proprie- tors of some twenty million acres of land, upon which they had paid into the several skites the taxes imposed by each ; which, in the aggregate, must amount to some millions per annum. They have given freights to the lake and ocean shipping to an incalculable amount, especially since the repeal of the British corn laws ; they have kept afloat a larger tonnage on the lakes than the whole of the foreign trade yet employs. Manufacturing had profited no less than agricul- ture by emigration. All along the Merrimac and Connecticut you may hear the Irish accent ; in the bowels of the earth, through Pennsylvania, Illinois* and Michigan, you meet it every where. We have the statistics of our manufactures for 1850, and we find from them that the capital employed was rated at five hundred and thirty million dollars ; that the raw material used was valued at five hundred and fifty million ; and the annual product at ten hundred and twenty million. The number of hands employed exceeded a million, and their aggregate wages were two hundred and forty million dollars. Let me suppose again, for the sake of argument, that even one fourth of these hands were foreign born ; they then contributed a fourth to the annual production, or above two hundred and fifty million dollars ACTUAL RELATIONS. 145 per annum ; at the same time they earn and expend a fourth of the aggregate wages, or sixty million ; thus contributing to the commonwealth, in this one department of labor, not less than three hundred million per annum. It appears that no American interest gains so directly by emigration as the ocean shipping. I assert that the passenger trade, more than any other, has built up the merchant marine of New York. To this trade your Marshalls, Minturns, Grinnells, Collinses, and Thompsons owe their fleets of packet ships. Let us suppose the passenger trade had not existed. I ask any man, who has any knowledge of the subject, if he believes even one of our great Liverpool lines would have paid. If, like the ships which carry British subjects out to Australia, our ships had to return in ballast, or with quarter freight, after discharging their cotton or flour, would it pay ? I have no hesitation in saying it can be proved that our merchant marine has doubled its tonnage since 1836, mainly because it was always certain of a speedy home freight on the other side of the Atlantic. Take the average number of passengers brought out by a packet ship to be four hundred and fifty. The prices have ranged, the last few seasons, from fifteen to twenty-five dollars per head. Such a ship will make three trips per year ; and deducting, say ten per cent., the entire passage money goes to the owners. On this calculation, such a ship will av- erage for her owners in twelve months, on passen- gers alone, twenty thousand dollars — more than ] 111 V. I'M tii;- -■ ■!'";li ■I'f 146 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. I I i. 1 the interest on her first cost and her whole running expenses combined. We sometimes hear our friends in the shipping business grumbling, and declaring that the passenger business " don't pay." In future, to 'quote a sea proverb, "they may tell that to the marines." If, to-day, the United States is the sec- ond commercial power in the world, it is certain she owes that position as much to the immense emi- gration of Irish, all embarked in her shipping, as to any other single cause. Let me reverse the picture, and inquire if Ireland has benefited commercially as well as America. Alas I no. These fleets that crowd the Atlantic pass by the Irish coast as if it were infected. They enter no Irish harbor except when beaten in by angry storms. They compel the Irish peasantry to meet them on British soil, to transship themselves at the Mersey. Ireland has not had the consolation, in parting with her children, of placing them with her own hands under their new flag. Some years ago, in this city, you may remember the abortive efl'orts made to establish a line of steamships be- tween New York and Gal way ; you may remem- ber the tricks played on us by Wagstaff and Ear- num, and the fate of the Viceroy, cast away on the coast of Nova Scotia. Explain it as we may, by British intrigue, force of habit, or shortness of sight, America has left Ireland as a country out of her commercial charts, while Ireland has been almost exhausted to increase production in America. Do not suppose that I complain of this. I do not. i ACTUAL RELATIONS. 147 I l)lame only the Irish in Ireland and the Irish in America, who have not had practical patriotism enough to establish direct intercourse between them- selves since their separation. -. Though the drafts of America on Irish popula- tion have not served Ireland commercially, but the contrary, I am sure such was never the design of any party in this republic. The political sympathy of this people has always been with the land of Burke and O'Connell, and, notwithstanding recent signs of national change, I do believe is with her still. In the emancipation struggle ending in 1829, in the repeal agitation of 1843, in the projected in- surrection of 1848, the heart of America was on the side of Ireland. One proof of this, open to no ex- ception, was given during the famine of 1846-7, when the Jamestown and Macedonian, freighted with charity and manned by mercy, carried the starry flag into the darkness and desolation of the Irish night. That event never shall be forgotten by the Irish heart. Besides the national sympathy which great occa- sions only can call out, there has been another bond of brotherhood — the constant family care of the emigrants themselves for those thev left behind. As men escaping to a rock throw ropes to those still on a wreck, so, sioce the famine especially, the Irish here have worked, not for themselves alone, but for their kindred left behind. We have the re- cent returns of the British Parliamentary Commis- sioners for the monetary remittances of this class, \ ! 148 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. which, in '48, were four hundred and sixty thou- sand pounds ; in '49, five hundred and forty thousand pounds ; in '50, nine hundred and fifty-seven thou- sand pounds ; in '51, nine hundred and ninety thou- sand pounds ; in '52, one million four hundred and four thousand pounds ; and in '53, one million four hundred and thirty-nine thousand pounds ; or in all, during the five years previous to the present, a total of more than twenty-eight million dollars. And this only includes the money orders payable in Ireland or England ; it does not include the price of passages paid at New York for persons emigrating, nor remit- tances by band, nor enclosures of cash. If we esti- mate these other contributions at one third the amount of the money orders, we have thirty-seven million dollars earned for Ireland by her emigrants during the last five years — a fact unprecedented in the relations of colonies and mother countries. Not only has the private generosity of the Irish here been beyond parallel, but their liberality to institutions of religion and learning in their native land has been beyond praise. There has been hardly a church built in Ireland the past few years to which there were not contributions from Amer- ica. The new university, about to be opened at Dublin on St. Malachy's feast, has received its largest endowment from the children of the exodus ; and the new Cathedral Church of Armagh — of Armagh, the city of St. Patrick I — has been, or will be, equally their debtor. Though Ireland has not yet gained commercially or politically by her rcla- ACTUAL EELATIONS. 149 tions with America, there is every reason to hope that, socially, she may hereafter gain much by tho enlarged means and better position of her generous and unforgetful children in the new world. I have shown the balance of material gain in numbers, in development, and in commerce to be, up to the present, in favor of this country. Let me add, that the moral and religious gain has been also great to the republic. By the census of 1850, the •whole number of what are called " communicants " of all our churches does not exceed six million, of whom within a fraction of tivo million are set down as Roman Catholics. If these statistics are any thing near the mark, one third of all the pro- fessed believers in Christianity in this republic are Catholics. Even if men do not regard this fact with Catholic eyes, they cannot in reason deny that religion is necessary for us all ; that, especially where the civil power is weak, the moral force ought to be strong ; that the strength of moral force lies in exact dogmas and posi.ive principles ; that, therefore, whatever occasion has added two million of positive believers to the population of this republic, has conferred on it a benefit and a blessing, "better than gold — yea, than fine gold." Looking at it merely as a social agent, the church in America is of the utmost importance. To her appertains the science of theology — the soul that originally informed the framework of our civiliza- tion. Her doctrine is a system within which the grandest intellects have found ample range; her 13* n n : g 150 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. spirit is one of true progress and real conservatism ; one which looks to truth, and not to popularity ; to all time, and not to the passion or fashion of the hour. As a mistress of philosophy, as a bulwark of order, as a stay of law, the Catholic church is, so- cially, the most important of all religious institu- tions to the peace and harmony of this confederation. Its silent power attracts to ft all studious minds ; and, by attraction or repulsion, its presence is felt in every pulse and at every pore of American society. To us Catholics it is much more than a great social institution. It is the pillar and ground of truth. It is the work of God, and partakes of the attributes of its Author. Its decrees are justice itself, its mercy inexhaustible, its love inexpressible, its glory incomprehensible. All other institutions which exist on earth the soul of man can fathom without fear ; but this divine foundation is rooted in the eternal tides ; and he who seeks with his paltry plummet to fathom them, seeks confusion and his own shame. It partakes, even in space, of the magnificence of its Maker. The morning sun, as he steps forth out of his chamber in the east, salutes it first of earthly objects ; and the noonday sun looks down and cries, " Lo, it is here also ! " and the evening sun, as he passes away into the farthest west, lingers a while upon its turrets, and pays a parting visit to its altars. To us it is the church of our fathers, the church of our exile, the church of our children. It is poetry, it is history, it is art, it is society, it is truth ACTUAL RELATIONS. 151 itself. No wonder, then, that every attack upon it sounds in our ears as a profanation ; no wonder wo should prefer to hear every wrong" the passions of the mob can plan or execute rather than for one moment to doubt or deny that holy church. To others of our fellow-citizens, what we so honor is detestf^lile ; what we so love to contemplate is to til- ax. osore and an ulc "w hat we venerate as immaculace they stigmatize as adulterous. It is very certain that such opposite beliefs cannot co- exist without collision. There will be, there must be, collisions. There is only one way to avoid them — for either party to affect a dishonest indif- ference to dogma, a criminal impartiality between truth and. falsehood. This, I trust, neither of us shall do. But then, how can we avoid coming into collision with our fellow-citizens? I repeat, we cannot always avoid it. No manly man, not to say sincere Christian, can pass through the world without conflicts of opinion and belief. From boy- hood to old age we all have such battles to fight ; but there is no necessity among men, members of the same commonwealth, that they should be phys- ical^battles. So long as we discharge our duties to the state, who has any right to arraign us in the name of the state ? Neither has the state itself any right to arraign us in the name of religion ; for the American state is of no religion. As to our public conduct, we challenge inquiry and comparison ; as to our private conscience, we permit no human power to sit as umpire there. We shall worship, m 152 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. and pray, and teach our cliildrcn, and clioosc our translation of the Scriptures, and endow our church, as conscience dictates ; and not all the forces of earth and hell combined can compel us to the con- trary. To those others who seem disposed at present to try the experiment of a popular persecution of Catholics, if the voice of reason still could reach them, I would say, Go down Chatham Street.* Go down Chatham Street, and observe its Jewish in- habitants. There is a race which has stood the per- secutions of eighteen centuries ; yet their numbers to-day are said to be the same they were at their dispersion, and half the thrones of the world are their mortgaged chattels. Has persecution con- verted the Jew? And is the Christian, with so many additional sources of spiritual strength, — is he likely to yield before it ? Look to a more modern instance. For three hundred years the exclusively Protestant govern* ment of Great Britain persecuted the Irish, Scotch, and English Catholics. It stripped them naked of every right ; it confiscated their lands, seized their churches, closed their schools, treated them as out- laws in their own land. With what result ? After three hundred years of an experiment, carried on with a diabolical tenacity and skill, the rusted chains gave way ; their greatest soldier declared ♦ In these and the previous discourses, some local allusions will be understood by remembering that they were originully delivered ia New York. ACTUAL RELATIONS. 153 I tlic sword could not avail ; their subtlest statesman renounced all hope in intrigue or intimidation. So, in the year 1829, a strong man from the west, by name O'Conncll, pushed apart the doors of the Brit- ish senate, and ushered the Catholics of that erapiro into their long-vacant seats. What do the present conspirators against their Catholic fellow-citizens hope to gain by persecu- tion ? Did the burning of the Philadelphia churches injure it in that city ? Will the sack and sacrilege of Newark injure most — those who committed, or those who suffered, the wrong ? Will that dreadful scene the other night at Ellsworth change the tenets of any Catholic? That was a scene to stir the most lukewarm blood, when a hundred armed ruf- fians stole in the darkness of midnight upon the retreat of a poor Swiss priest, stripped him beneath the northern sky, and committed their nameless out- rages upon his defenceless person. I say, no man of any creed can think of such an outrage without feeling his blood boil, and his arm erect itself to strike the ferocious midnight rabble down. The Irish Catholics in America have been chiefly instrumental in bringing this unpopular religion into the country, and they must be prepared for the con- sequences. They stand here, in their highest rela- tion to the destiny of America, as church builders. They have paid back the money of the Puritan by acclimating the cross in the atmosphere of the Pu- ritan. They have made it known that the 25th of December is Christmas day, and that God is to be m il v',-!^ 1 I'll is 'if jtj-.i 154 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. honored in bis saints. They have practically brought to the American mind the idea that marriage is a holy sacrament, not a civil contract. In their small catechism, they have introduced the profound- est system of Christian philosophy. All this they have done out of their poverty, but not without ex- citing derision, scorn, envy, jealousy, and fear — the whole tribe of the meaner passions of human na- ture. A tree of that size does not lift itself aloft without catching the gale, nor strike its strong roots round it without disturbing the earth. Contemporaneously with their religious activity they have pushed their personal fortunes, becoming citizens, and insisting on their civil rights. This people, so long oppressed at home, show some bold- ness here in pretending to any political existence. Some Americans take offence at their presumption in this respect — " they were a subject class in Great Britain, and oughc to be so here ; " it is very well for them to be permitted to eat their pudding in peace ; to claim equality is audacious. Tell us, ye professors of equality, ye apostles of progress, is this your progress, is this your equality? If so, give me the undisguised tyrant, who acts as he speaks, and speaks before he strikes, instead of such mobs as would fain make themselves our masters. Here I may well close. Whoever lives to see the end of this century may be in a position to fin- ish the subject. DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OP THE li! '4 - I n i CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. ,:';|i -!l' I v. 1 (155) 'ini [ -i:! APPENDIX. NO. I. THE WILL OP CHRISTOPHER COLUMLT^S. [For the followng translation of this characto-l;.!' document, wc .'O indebted to Washington Irving's Life of C ^um'us, vol. iii. p. 444, Putnam's (New York) edition, 1819.] « In the name of the Most Holy Trinity, who inspired me with the idea, and afterwards ma<^e it perfectly clear to me, that I could navigate and go to the Indies from Spain, by traversing the ocean westwardly ; which I com- municated to the king, Don Ferdinand, and to the queen, Doiia Isabella, our sovereigns ; and they were pleased to furnish me the necessary e* i ■; inent of men and ships, and to make me their admiral over the said ocean, in all parts lying to the west of an imaginary line, drawn from pole to pole, a hundred leagues} west of the Cape de Verd and Azore Islands ; abo appointing me their viceroy and gov- ernor over all continents and islands that I might discover beyond the said line westwardly, with the riglit of being I 'i 158 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. succeeded in the said offices by my eldest son and liis heirs forever ; and a grant of the tenth part of all things found in the said jurisdiction; and of all rente and revenues arising from it ; and the eighth of all the lands and every thing else, together with the salary corresponding to my rank of admiral, viceroy, and governor, and all other emol- uments accruing thereto, as is more fully expressed in the title and agreement sanctioned by their highnesses. And it pleased the Lord Almighty that in the year 1492 I should discover the continent of the Indies and many islands, among them Hispaniola, which the Indians call Ayte, and the Monicongos, Cipango. I then returned to Castile to their highnesses, who approved of my under- taking a second enterprise for further discoveries and set- tlements ; and the Lord gave me victory over the Island of Hispaniola, which extends six hundred leagues, and I conquered it and made it tributary; and I discovered many islands inhabited by cannibals, and seven hundred to the west of Hispaniola, among which is Jamaica, which we call Santiago, and three hundred and thirty-three leagues of continent from south to west, besides a hundred and seven to the north, which I discovered in my first voyage, together with many islands, as may more clearly be seen by my letters, memorials, and maritime charts. And as we hope in Gou that before long a good and great revenue will be derived from the above islands and conti- nent, of which, for the reasons aforesaid, belong to me the tenth and the eighth, with the salaries and emoluments specified above ; and considering that we are mortal, and that it is proper for every one to settle his affairs, and to leave declared to his heirs and successors the property he \ jsseeses or may have a right to : Wherefore I have con- f'. APPENDIX. 159 .1 I i eluded to create an entailed estate (mayorazgo) out of the said eighth of the lands, places, and revenues, in the man- ner which I now proceed to state. In the first place, I am to be succeeded by Don Diego, my son, who in case of death without children is to be suc- ceeded by my other son Ferdinand ; and should God dis- pose of him also without leaving cliildren, and without my having any other son, then my brother Don Bartholomew is to succeed ; and after him his eldest son ; and if God should dispose of him Avithout heirs, he shall be succeeded by his sons from one to another forever ; or, in the failure of a son, to be succeeded by Don Ferdinand, after the same manner, from son to son successively, or in their place by my brothers Bartholomew and Diego. And should it please the Lord that the estate, after having con- tinued for some time in the line of any of the above suc- cessors, should stand in need of an immediate and lawful male heir, the succession shall then devolve to the nearest relation, being a man of legitimate birth, and bearing the name of Columbus, derived from his father and his ances- tors. This entailed estate shall in no wise be inherited by a woman, except in case that no male is to be found, either in this or any other quarter of the world, of my real lineage, whose name, as well as that of his ancestors, shall have always been Columbus. In such an event, (which may God forefend !) then the female of legitimate birth, most nearly related to the preceding possessor of the estate, shall succeed to it ; and this is to be under the conditions herein stipulated at foot, which must be understood to ex- tend aa well to Don Diego, my son, as to the aforesaid and their heirs, every one of them, to be fulfilled by them ; and failing to do so, they are to be deprived of the succession, I i 'M Ml* f b ' i 160 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. for not having complied with wluit shall herein be ex- pressed, and the estate to pass to the person most nearly related to the one who held the right ; and the person thus succeeding shall in like manner forfeit the estate, should he also fail to comply with said conditions ; and another person, the nearest of my lineage, shall succeed, provided he abide by them, so that they may be observed forever in ^ the form prescribed. This forfeiture is not to be incurred for trifling matters, originating in lawsuits, but in impor- tant cases, when the glory of God, or my own, or that of my family may be concerned, which supposes a perfect fulfilment of all the things hereby ordained ; all which I recommend to the courts of justice. And I supplicate his holiness, Avho now is, and those that may succeed in the holy church, that if it should happen that this my will and testament has need of his holy order and command for its fulfilment, that such order be issued in virtue of obe- dience, and under penalty of excommunication, and that it shall not be in any wise disfigured. And I also pray the king and queen, our sovereigns, and their eldest born, Prince Don Juan, our lord, and their successors, for the sake of the services I have done them, and because it is just, that it may please them not to permit this my will and constitution of my entailed estate to be any way altered, but to leave it in the form and manner which I have ordained, forever, for the greater glory of the Almighty, and that it may be the root and basis of my lineage, and a memento of the services I have rendered their highnesses ; that, being born in Genoa, I came over to serve them in Castile, and discovered to the west of Terra Firma the Indies and islands before mentioned. I accordingly pray their highnesses to order that this my privilege and testa- APPENDIX. 161 ment be held valid, and be executed summarily and with- out any opi)osition or demur, accordln;:; to the letter. I /«lso pray the grandees of the realm and the lords of the council, and all others having administration of justice, to be pleased not to suffer this my will and testament to be of no avail, but to cause it to be fulfilled as by me ordained ; it being just that a Jioble, who has served the king and queen and the kingdom, should be respected in the dispo- sition of his estate by will, testament, institution of entail or inheritance, and that the same be not infringed either in whole or in part. In the first place, my son Don Diego, and all my suc- cessors and descendants, as well as my brothers Bartholo- mew and Diego, shall bear my arms, such as I shall leave them after my days, without inserting any thing else in them ; and they shall be their seal to seal withal. Don Diego my son, or any other who may inherit this estate, on coming into possession of the inheritance, shall sign with the signature which I now make use of, which is an X with an S over it, and an M wnth a Roman A over it, and over that an S, and then a Greek Y, with an S over it, with its lines and points as is my custom, as may be seen by my signatures, of which there are many, and it will be seen by the present one. He shall only write "the admiral," whatever other titles the king may have conferred on him. This is to be understood as respects his signature, but not the enumera- tion of his titles, which he can make at full length if agree- able, only th3 signature is to be " the admiral." The said Don Diego, or any other inheritor of this estate, shall possess my offices of admiral of the ocean, which is to the west of an imaginary line, which his high- 11* 1^1 ; rl '^M 162 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. } i I »ii ness ordered to be dravn, running from pole to pole a hundred leagues beyond the Azores, and as many more beyond the Cape de Verd Islands, over all which I was<^ made, by their order, their admiral of the sea, with all the preeminences held by Don Henrique in the admiralty of Castile, and they made me their governor and viceroy perpetually and forever over all the islands and main- land discovered, or to be discovered, for myself and heirs, as is more fully shown by my treaty and privilege as above mentioned. Item : The said Diego, or any other inheritor of this estate, shall distribute the revenue which it may please our Lord to grant him in the following manner, under the above penalty : — First : Of the whole income of this estate, now and at all times, and of whatever may be had or collected from it, he shall give the fourth part annually to my brother Don Bartholomew Columbus", Adelantado of the Indies ; and this is to continue till he shall have acquired an income of a million of maravadises for his support, and for the services he has rendered and will continue to render to this entailed estate ; which million he is to receive, as stated, every year, if the said fourth amount to so much, and that he have nothing else ; but if he possess a part or the whole of that amount in rents, that thenceforth he shall not enjoy the said million, nor any part of it, except that he shall have in the said fourth part unto the said quantity of a million, if it should amount to so much ; and as much as he shall have of revenue beside this fourth part, what- ever sum of maravadises of known rent from property or perpetual offices, the said quantity of rent or revenue from property or offices shall be discounted, and from the said APPENDIX. 163 million shall be reserved whatever marriac^e portion he may receive 'svith any female he may espouse ; so tliat, whatever he may receive in marriage Avith his Avife, no deduction shall be made on that account from said million, but only for whatever he may acquire, or may have, over and above his wife's dowry ; and when it shall please God that he or his heirs and descendants shall derive from their property and offices a revenue of a million arising from rents, neither he nor his heirs shall enjoy any longer any thing from the said fourth part of tlie entailed estate, which shall remain with Don Diego, or whoever may inherit it. Item : From the revenues of the said estate, or from any other fourth part of it, (should its amount be adequate to it,) shall be paid every year to my son Ferdinand two millions, till such time as his revenue shall amount to two millions, in the same form and manner as in the case of Bartholomew, Avho, as well as his heirs, are to have the million or the part that may be wanting. . Item : The said Don Diego or Don Bartholomew shall make out of the said estate, for my brother Diego, such provision as may enable him to live decently, as he is my brother, to whom I assign no particular sum, as he has attached himself to the church, and that Avill be given him which is right : and this to be. given him in a mass, and before any thing shall have been received by Ferdinand my son, or Bartholomew my brother, or their heirs, and also according to the amount of the income of the estate. And in case of discord, the case is to be referred to two of our relations, or other men of honor ; and should they disagree among themselves, they will choose a third person as arbitrator, being virtuous and not distrusted by either party. f* I 'i n 164 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. Item : All this revenue wliicli I bequeath to Bartliolo- rng^w, to Ferdinand, and to Diego, shall be delivered to •:'• iSrf received by them as prescribed under the obligation OFueing faithful and loyal to Diego my son, or his heirs, they as well as their children ; and should it appear that they, or any of them, had proceeded against him in any thing touching his honor, or the prosperity of the family, or of the estate, either in word or deed, whereby might come a scandal and debasement to my family and a detri- ment to my estate, in that case nothing further shall be given to them or him from that time forward, inasmuch as they are always to be faithful to Diego and to his successors. Item : As it was my intention, when I first instituted this entailed estate, to dispose, or that my son Diego should dispose for me, of the tenth part of the income in favor of necessitous persons, as a tithe, and in commemoration of the almighty and eternal God, and persisting still in this opinion, and hoping that his high Majesty will assist me, and those who may inherit it, in this or the new world, I have resolved that the said tithe shall be paid in the manner following : — First : It is to be understood that the fourth part of the revenue of the estate which I have ordained and directed to be given to Don Bartholomew, till he have an income of one million, includes the tenth of the whole revenue of the estate ; and that as in proportion as the income of my brother Don Bartholomew shall increase, as it has to be discounted from the revenue of the fourth part of the entailed estate, that the said revenue shall be calculated, to know how much the tenth part amounts to; and the part which exceeds what is necessary to make up the mil- ""■*""*'*w1&3iaiieiuri_ . n ; APPENDIX. 173 all, as if they were here inserted word for word, and suf- ficiently expressed, that you may lawfully possess and en- joy ; and you ought in all things, as if all those things were specially granted to you, your heirs and successors aforementioned, which by the authority and apostolic tenor of the present letters, by a gift of special favor, we grant ; and those in all things and for all things to you, your heirs and successors aforementioned, we extend likewise and amplify, and to the same in due manner and form perpet- ually grant, notwithstanding constitutions and apostolic ordinances, and all those things which were granted in let- ters to the kings of Portugal. Given at Rome, at St. Peter's, A. D. 1493, 5th of May, first year of our pontificate. Alexander VI.* THE BULL "INTER CETERA DIVINE MAGISTRATE BENEPLACITA OPERA," &c. Alexander, bishop, servant op the servants OF God : To our beloved son Ferdinand, King^ and to our beloved daughter Isabella, Queen, of Castile, Leon, Arragon, the Sicilies, and Granada : Most illustrious per- sonages, health and apostolic benediction. Among the many works pleasing to the divine Majesty and desirable to our hearts, this particularly prevails, that • The illustrious civilian, Count Joseph de Maistre, in his work en- titled " The Pope," thus speaks of this bull of Alexander : — "A century before the time of the celebrated treaty of Westphalia, a pope, who presents in his own person a melancholy exception to that long aeries of virtues by which the holy see has been honored, pub- lished the famous bull which divided between the Spaniards and the 15* i I f f' 11 i,^ 174 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. the Catholic faith and Christian religion, especially in our times, niay be exalted, amplified, and every where dif- fused, the salvation of souls procured, and barbarous na- tions subjugated and made obedient to the faith. Hence when we were raised by the divine clemency, though of little merit, to the holy chair of Peter, knowing you to be true Catholic kings and princes, as indeed we have al- ways known you to be, and as you have also by your il- lustrious deeds made yourselves known as such to the whole world; nor did you merely desire to be such, but you have also used every effort, study, and diligence, sparing no fatigue, no cost, no danger, even shedding your own blood, and devoting your whole soul and all your energies to this purpose, as your conquest of the kingdom of Granada from the tyranny of the Saracens in our days, with such glory to the divine name, testifies ; we are induced, not un- worthily, and we ought, to grant to you those things favorably and spontaneously by wliicli you may be able to prosecute this undertaking, so holy and praiseworthy to the immortal God, and that you may daily increase more Portuguese those territories which the enterprising genius of discov- ery had tUready given, or might afterwards give, to the two nations in the Indies and in America. The finger of the pontiff traced a line on the globe, which the two nations agreed to consider as a sacred boundary, which ambition should respect on either side. " Nothing more grand cuiild have been witnessed than the two peo- ple thus submitting such differences as then existed between them, and such as might afterwards occur, to the disinterested decision of the common father of all the faithful, and so substituting the most im- posing arbitration for interminable w: rs. It was a great happiness for humanity that the pontifical dignity had yet sufficient influence to obtain this remarkable consent ; and the noble arbitration was so wor- thy of a true successor of St. Peter that the bull ^ inter cetera' ought to belong to another pontiff." APPENDIX. 175 and more in fervor for the honor of God and the propaga- tion of the kingdom of Christ. We have heard to our great joy that you have proposed to labor and use everv exertion, that the inhabitants of certain islands and continents remote, and hitherto un- known, and of others yet undiscovered, be reduced to wor- ship our Redeemer and profess the Catholic faith. Till now you have been fully occupied in the conquest and capture of Granada, and could not accomplish your holy and praiseworthy desires nor obtain the results you wished. You sent, not without the greatest exertions, dan- gers, and expense, our beloved son Ciiristopher Colon, a man of worth and much to be commended, fit for such business, with vessels and cargoes, diligentl} to search for continents and remote and unknown islands on a sea hith- erto never navigated ; who finally, with the divine as- sistance and great diligence, navigated the vast ocean, and discovered certain most distant islands and continents which were previously unknown, in which very many na- tions dwell peaceably, and, as it is said, go naked and ab- stain from animal food, and, as far as your ambassadors can conjecture, believe there is one God, Creator, in heaven, and seem suffioicntly ;i.)t to embrace the Catholic faith, and might be imbued vith good morals, and have every reason to believe that, if instructed, tlie name of our Lord and Savior Jesup^ Christ may easily be established in the said islands and continenis ; that in these islands and continents already have been found gold, spices, and many other articles of value of different kinds and qualities. E very thing being diligently considered, especially for the exaltation and diifusion of the Catholic faith, (as it be- booveth Catholic kings and princes,) according to the cus- I 'a i 1 176 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. torn of your ancestors, kings of illustrious memory, you have proposed to subjugate the aforementioned islands and continents, with their inhabitants, to yourselves, with the assistance of the divine goodness, and reduce them to the Catholic faith, and that the said Christopher Colon may construct and build a fortress on one of the principal islands of sufficient strength to protect certain Christians who may emigrate thither. We therefore very much commend in the Lord this your holy and praiseworthy intention ; and that you may bring it to the proper end, and by it establish the name of our Lord in those parts, we strenuously exhort you in the Lord, and by your baptism, by which you are obli- gated to the apostolic mandates, and by the bowels of the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ we earnestly exact of you, that, when you undertake and assume an expedition of this kind, you do it with a humble spirit, and with zeal for the orthodox faith ; and you must wish, and ought to induce, the people living in those islands and continents to receive the Christian religion ; and let no dangers, no fatigues, at any time deter you, but entertain hope and faith that Almighty God may crown your efforts with happy suc- cess. To enable you more freely and more boldly to assume the undertaking of such an enterprise, by the liberality of our apostolic favor, motu projmo, and not at your re- quest, nor by the presentation of any petition to us on this subject for you, but of our pure liberality, and from the certain knowledge and plenitude of apostolic power, we grant to you and your heirs, and your successors, kings of Castile, Leon, &c., and by the present letters give for- ever, all the islands and continents discovered aod to be \ I APPENDIX. 177 disicovered, exploi-ed and to be explored, towards the west and south, forming and drawing a line from the arctic pole, that is the north, to the antarctic pole, that is the south, whether the islands or continents discovered or to be discovered lie towards India or towards any other part, which line is distant from one of the islands vulgarly called Azores y Cabo Verde one hundred leagues west and south ; so that all the islands and continents discovered or to be discovered, explored or to be explored, beyond the aforementioned line towards the west and south, not ac- tually possessed by other kings or Christian princes be- fore the day of the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ last past, from which the present year 1493 commences, when any of the said islands are discovered by your emis- saries or captains, we, by the authority of Almighty God, given to us in St. Peter as vicar of Jesus Christ, which au- thority we exercise on earth, assign you and your heirs and said successors all the dominions over those states, places, and towns, with all rights, jurisdiction, and all their ap- purtenances, with full, free, and all power, authority, and jurisdiction. We make, constitute, and depute, discerning nevertheless by our donation concession and assignment of this kind, that the rights cannot be understood to be taken away from any Christian prince who actually pos- sessed such islands or continents before the aforementioned day of Christ's nativity, nor are to be deprived of them. We moreover command you, by virtue of holy obedi- eijce, (as you have promised, and we doubt not from your great devotion and royal magnanimity that you will do it,) that you send to the said islands and continents tried men, who fear Gor! learned and skilful, and expert to instruct the inhabitants in the Catholic faith and teach them good hi i ) 178 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. morals, using proper diligence in the aforementioned things and we forbid every one, under pain of excommunication ipso factOf no matter what may be his dignity, — even imperial, royal, — state, order, or condition, to act contrary to this our mandate. And we severely forbid any one to go to the islands or continents discovered or to be discovered, explored or to be explored, towards the west or south, be- yond the line drawn from the arctic to the antarctic pole, one hundred leagues from one of the islands commonlv called Azores y Cabo Verde, towards the west and south ; and let no one, for trade or any other reason, presume to ap- proach without your special license or that of your heirs and successors aforementioned, notwithstanding constitu- tions or apostolic ordinances, or any thing contrary to it ; trusting God, from whom empires, and dominations, and all good things proceed, will direct your actions if you pros- ecute this holy and praiseworthy object — hoping that short- ly your labors and efforts may obtain a most happy termi- nation, and redound to the glory of all Christian people. Given at Rome, at St. Peter's, in the year of our Lord's incarnation 1493, 9th of May, and first year of our pon- tificate. Alexander. \\- \\ ■i 1 •: .%-.^^'\* IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 1.1 1.25 ISO *^^ M9H £ US 12.0 1.8 U 111.6 V] /a "''^ /^ '^ '/ Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. MS80 (716)872-4303 4. ^ \ \\ '^ ^ ■^^ 1^ 1\ ^«^ 184 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. Ml ' t I I men sent among tliem to preach and teach our holy faith ; and these of their free and cheerful will, without any con- dition or reward, became Christians, and continue so to be. And his mjyesty received them kindly and benignantly, and ordered that they should be treated" like his other sub- jects and vassals. You also are required and obliged to do the same. Therefore, in the best manner I can, I pray and entreat you that you consider well what I hare said, and that you take whatever time is reasonable to under- stand and deliberate upon it, and that you recognize tho church for sovereign and superior of the universal world, and the supreme pontiff, called pope, in her name, and his majesty, in his place, as superior and sovereign king of the islands and terra firma by virtue of said donation, and that you consent that these religious fathers declare and ; preach to you the foregoing. And if you shall so do, you will do well, and will do that to which you are bounden and obliged ; and his majesty, and I in his name, will re- ceive you with all due love and charity, and will leave you your wives and children free from servitude, that you may • freely do with them and with yourselves whatever you please and think proper, as have done the inhabitants of the other islands. And besides this, his majesty will give you many privileges and exemptions, and grant you many favors. If you do not do this, or wickedly and intention- ally delay to do so, I certify to you that, by the aid of God, I will forcibly invade and make war upon you in all parts and modes that I can, and will subdue you to the ' yoke an\ obedience of the church and of his majesty; and I will take your wives and children and make slaves of " them, and sell them as such, and dispose of them as his ms^esty may command ; and I will take your eflfects, and APPENDIX. 185 will do you all the harm and injury in my power, as vassals who will not obey or receive their sovereign, and who re- sist and oppose him. And I protest that the deaths and disasters which may in this manner be occasioned will be the fault of yourselves, and not of his majesty, nor of me, nor of these cavaliers who accompany me. And of what I here tell you, and require of you, I call upon the notary here present to give me his signed testimonial. .. 16* 11 hi m NO. V. THE JESUITS IN CANADA. * [For the services of the Jesuits in Canada to the cause of Indian civil- ization, before their suppression by France, I refer the reader to the following testimonies, gathered together in Warburton's Conquest of Canada, vol. ii. p. 276.] " The Jesuits are commonly very learned, studious, and are very civil and agreeable in company. In their whole deportment there is something pleasing ; it is no wonder, therefore, that they captivate the minds of the people. They seldom speak of religious matters ; and if it happens, they generally avoid disputes. They are very ready to do any one a service ; and when they see that their assistance is wanted, they hardly give one time to speak of it, falling to work inimediately to bring about what is required of them. Their conversation is very entertaining and learned, so that one cannot be tired of their company. Among r ■! the Jesuits I have conversed with in Canada, I have c found one who was not possessed of these qualities in a very eminent degree. They do not care to become preachers to a congregation in the town or country, but leave these places, together with the emoluments arising from them, to the priests. All their business here is to convert the heathen ; and with that view their missionaries (186) \v m APPENDIX. 187 are scattered over every part of the country. Near every town and village peopled by converted Indians are one or two Jesuits, who take great care that they may not return to paganism, but live as Christians ought to do. Thus there are Jesuits with the converted Indians in Tadoussac, Lorette, Be9ancourt, St. Franpois, Sault St. Louis, and all over Canada. Tiiere are likewise Jesuit missionaries with those who are not converted, so that there is com- monly a Jesuit in every village belonging to the Indians, whom he endeavors on all occasions to convert. In winter he goci on their great hunts, where he is frequently obliged to suffer all imaginable inconveniences, such as walking in the snow all day, lying in the open air all winter, lying out both in good and bad weather, lying in the Indian huts, which swarm with fleas and other vermin, &;c. The Jesuits undergo all these hardships for the sake of convert- ing the Indians, and likewise for political reasons. The Jesuits are of great use to their king ; for they are fre- quently able to persuade the Indians to break their treaty with the English, to make war upon them, to bring their furs to the French, and not to permit the English to come among them. There is much danger attending thcoc ex- ertions ; for, when the Indians are in liquor, they some- times kill the missionaries who live with them, calling them spies, or excusing themselves by saying that the brandy had killed them. These are the chief occupations of the Jesuits in Canada. They do not go to visit the sick in the town ; they do not hear the confessions, and attend to no funerals. I have never seen them go in procession in honor of the Virgin Mary or other saints. Everybody sees they are, as it wex'e, selected from other people on ac- count of their superior genius and abilities. They are 188 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. here reckoned a most cunning set of people, who general- ly succeed in their undertakings, and surpass all others in acuteness of understanding. I have therefore several times observed that they have enemies in Canada. They never receive any others into their society but persons of very promising parts, so that there are no blockheads among them. The Jesuits who live here are all come from France,-and many of them return thither again after a stay of a few years here. Some who were born in Can- ada went over to France, and were received among the Jesuits there, but none of them ever came back to Cana- da. I know not what political reason hindered them. During my stay in Quebec, one of the priests, with the bishop's leave, gave up his priesthood and became a Jesu- it. The other priests were very ill pleased with this, be- cause it seemed as if he looked upon their condition as too mean for himself." — Kalmy in PinkertoUf vol. xiii. p. 648. " The RecoUets are a third class of clergymen in Can- ada. They have a fine large dwelling house here, and a fine church where they ofiiciate. Near it is a large and fine garden, which they cultivate with great application. " In Montreal and Trois Rivieres they are lodged in al- most the same manner as here. They do not endeavor to choose cunning fellows among them, but take all they can get. They do not torment their brains with much learn- ing ; and I have been assured that, after they have put on their monastic habit, they do not study to increase their knowledge, but forget even what little they knew before. At night they generally lie on mats, or some other hard mattresses. However, I have sometimes seen good beds in the cells of some of them. They have no possessions ■t , U <• APPENDIX. 189 here, having made vows of poverty, and live chiefly on the alms which people give them. To this purpose the young monks, or brothers, go into the houses with a bag, and beg what they want. They have no congregation in the country, but sometimes they go among the Indians as mis- sionaries. " In each fore, which contains forty men, the king keeps one of these monks instead of a priest, who officiates there. The king gives him lodging, provisions, servants, and all he wants, besides two hundred livres a year. Half of it he sends to the community he belongs to ; the other half he reserves for his own use. On board the king's ships are generally no other priests than these friars, who are therefore looked upon as people belonging to the king. When one of the chief priests * in the country dies, and his place cannot immediately be filled up, they send one of these friars there to officiate while the place is vacant. Part of these monks come over from France, and part are natives of Canada. "There are no other monks in Canada besides these, except now and then one of the order of St. Austin, or other who comes with one of the king's ships, but goes off with it again. . • " The priests are the second and most numerous class of the clergy in this country ; for most of the churches, both in towns and villages, (the Indian converts excepted,) are served by priests. A few of them are likewise mission- aries. In Canada are two seminaries : one in Quebec, the other in Montreal. The priests of the seminary of Mon- treal are of the order of St. Sulpitius, and supply only the • Pasteur. .4 190 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. congregation on the Isle of Montreal and the town of the same name. At all the other churches in Canada the priests belonging to the Quebec seminary officiate. The former, or those of the order of St. Sulpitius, all come from France ; and I was assured that they never suffer a native of Canada to come among them. " In the seminary at Quebec, the natives of Canada make the greater part. " In order to fit the children of this country for orders, there are schools at Quebec and St. Joachim, where the youths are taught Latin, and instructed in the knowledge of those things and sciences which have a more immediate connection with the business they are intended for. " However, they are not very nice in their choice, and people of a middling capacity are often received among them. "They do not seem to have made great progress in Latin ; for, notwithstanding the service is read in that language, and they read their Latin breviary and other books every day, yet most of them find it very difficult to speak it. .. "All the priests in the Quebec seminary are conse- crated by the bishop. Both the seminaries have got great revenues from the king ; that in Quebec has above thirty thousand livres. All the country on the west side of the River St. Lawrence, from the town of Quebec to Bay St. Paul, belongs to this seminary, besides their other posses- sions in the country. They lease the land to the settlers for a certain rent, which if it be annually paid according to their agreement, the children or heirs of the settlera may remain in an undisturbed possession of the lands. W I' I ii ^^k APPENDIX. 191 " A piece of land three ai*pent9 * broad, and thirty, forty, or fifty arpents long, pays annually an ecu,t and a couple of chickens, or some other additional trille. In such places as have convenient waterfalls they have built waterraills or sawmills, from which they annually get considerable sums. The seminary of Montreal possesses the whole ground on which that town stands, together with the whole Isle of Montreal. 1 have been assured that the ground rent of the town and isle is computed at seventy thousand livres, besides what they get for saying masses, baptizing, holding confessions, attending at marriages and funerals, &c. All the revenues of ground rent belong to the seminaries alone, and the priests in the country have no share in them. But the seminary in Montreal, consist- ing only of sixteen priests, has greater revenues than it can expend ; a large sum of money is annually sent over to France to the chief seminary there. The land rents belonging to the Quebec seminary are employed for the use of the priests in it, and for the maintenance of a num- ber of young people who are brought up to take orders. The priests who live in the country parishes get the tithe from their congregation, together with the perquisites on visiting the sick, &;c. In small congregations, the king gives the priests an additional sum. When a priest in the country grows old, and has done good service, he is some- times allowed to come into the seminary in town. The seminaries are allowed to place the priests on their own estates, but the other places are in the gift of the bishop." — Ibid. i * A French acre. t A French coin, value about a crown English. 192 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. " After the conquest of Quebec, the British government prohibited the religious male orders from augmenting their numbers, excepting the priests. The orders were allowed to enjoy the whole of their revenues as long as a single in- dividual of the body existed; then they reverted to the crown. The revenue of the Jesuit Society was upward of twelve thousand pounds per annum when it fell into the possession of the government. It had been for sev- eral years enjoyed solely by an old father, who had sur- vived all the rest. He was a native of Switzerland ; his name, Jean Joseph Casot. In his youth he was no more than porter to the convent ; but, having considerable merit, he was promoted, and in course of time received into the order. He died at a very advanced age, in 1800, with a high character for kindness and generosity : his large in- come was entirely employed in charitable purposes. The lands belonging to the Jesuits, as well as to the other re- ligious orders, are by far the best in the country, and pro- duce the greatest revenues." — Lamherfs Travels in Can- ada, vol. i. p. 59. " The Jesuits, who in the early settlement of the coun- try were merely missionaries, obtained a patent (Petits Droits des Colonies Franpaises, vol. ii. p. 441) by which they acquired a license to purchase lands and hold prop- erty as in France. The property the Jesuits possessed in this country in after times was acquired by grants from the kings of France ; by grants from the Company of New France ; by gifts from individuals ; and by purchase." — Smith's History of Canada^ vol. i. p. 27 ; Weld, p. 249. Smith estimates the revenues of the society, when, after P. Casot's death, they reverted to the crown, at only six- teen hundred pounds per annum. Weld comes nearer to APPENDIX. 193 the statement of Lambert. lie visited Quebec in 1796, four years before P. Cnsot's death, and states that the great possessions of the Jesuits had centred in him, and amounted to ten thousand pounds per annum. It is to be remembered that in 1704 the order of Jesuits was abol- ished by the King of France, and the members of the so- ciety became private individuals. " The college of the Jesuits at Quebec was long con- sidered as the first institution on the continent of North Americap for the instruction of young men. The advan- tages derived from it were not limited to the better class of Canadians, but were extended to all whose inclination it was to participate in them ; and many students came thither from the West Indies. From the period of the expulsion of the Jesuits from the states of Europe, and the consequent abolition of their order on that continent, this establishment, although protected by the British gov- ernment, began rapidly to decline. " When, by the death of the last Canadian Jesuit, the landed property devolved to the crown, it was designed by the sovereign as a recompense for the services of the late Lord Amherst, who commanded the troops in North America at the time of the conquest of Canada, and who completed the reduction of that province under the British government. The claim of these estates has been olin- quished by his successor fop a pension. The revenue arising from them has been appropriated by the legisla- ture of Lower Canada for the purpose of establishing in the different parishes schools for the education of children. The Jesuits' college is now converted into a commodious barrack for the troops." — Heriot's Canada, p. 30. 17 i m I V • I.I NO. VL ADDRESS OP THE ROMAN CATHOLICS OF AMERICA TO GEORGE WASHINGTON, AND IHS REPLY. [After Washington's accession to the presidency, the corporate bodies, ciTil societies, &c., presented him addresses of congratulation. For the following address and reply, we are indebted to Benjamin Rus- lell's Legaciea of Waahimjton, (Boston, 1801 ;) also to Sparks's Lifo and Writinga of Waahitigton, vol. xii.] I 1 Sir : We have been long impatient to testify our joy and unbounded confidence on your being called, by a unanimous vote, to the first station of a country in which that unanimity could not have been obtained without the previous merit of unexampled services, of eminent wisdom, and unblemished virtue. Our congratulations have not reached you sooner, because our scattered situation pre- vented the communication and the collecting of those sentiments which warmed every breast. But the delay has furnished us with the opportunity, not merely of presaging the happiness to be expected under your administration, but of bearing testimony to that which we experience. It is your peculiar talent, in war and in peace, to afford security to those who commit their protection into your hands. In war you shield them from the ravages of armed hostility ; in peace you establish public tranquillity (194) APPENDIX. 105 by the justice and moderation, not less than by the vigor, of your government. By example, as well as by vigi- lance, you extend the influence of laws on the manners of our fellow-citizens. You encourage respect for religion, and inculcate, by words and actions, that principle on which the welfare of nations so much depends — that a su- perintending Providence governs the events of the world and watches over the conduct of men. Your exalted maxims and unwearied attention to the moral and physi- cal improvement of our country have produced already the happiest effects. Under your administration, America is animated with zeal for the attainment and encourage- ment of useful literature ; she improves agriculture, ex- tends her commerce, and acquires with foreign nations a dignity unknown to her before. From these happy events, in which none can feel a warmer interest than ourselves, we derive additional pleasure by recollecting that you, sir, have been the principal instrument to effect so rapid a change in our political situation. This prospect of national prosperity is peculiarly pleasing to us on another account ; because, whilst onr country preserves her freedom and in- dependence, we shall have a well-founded title to claim from her justice the equal rights of citizenship, as the price of our blood spilt under your eyes, and of our com- mon exertions for her defence, under your auspicious conduct — rights rendered more dear to us by the remem- brance of former hardships. When we pray lor the preser- vation of them where they have been granted, and expect the full extension of them from the justice of those states which still restrict them, when we solicit the protection of Heaven over our common country, we neither admit, nor can omit, recommending your preservation to the singu- I I \ I V. 196 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. lar care of divine Providence, because we conceive that no human means are so available to promote the welfare of the United States as the prolongation of your health and life, in which are included the energy of your exam- ple, the wisdom of your counsels, and the persuasive elo- quence of your virtues. In behalf of the Roman Catholic clergy, J. Carroll. In behalf of the Roman Catholic laity, Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, ,1 Daniel Carroll, • f' Thomas FiTzsiMMONS, ■ DoMiNicK Lynch. To which Washington returned an answer as follows : — THE ANSWER TO THE ROMAN CATHOLICS IN THE . UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Gentlemen '. While I now receive with much satisfac- tion your congratulations on my being called by a unan- imous vote to the first station of my country, I cannot but duly notice your politeness in offering an apology for the unavoidable delay. As that delay has given you an op- portunity of realizing, instead of anticipating, the benefits of the general government, you will do me the justice to believe that your testimony of the increase of the public prosperity enhances the pleasure which I would otherwise have experienced from your affectionate address. I feel that my conduct, in war and in peace, has met with more general approbation than could reasonably have \\ APPENDIX. t f 197 been expected; and I find mjself disposed to consider that fortunate circumstance in a great degree resultinor from the able support and extraordinary candor of my fel- low-citizens of all denominations. The prospect of national pi-osjlerity now before us is truly animating, and ought to excite the exertions of all good men to establish and secure the happiness of their country in the permanent duration of its freedom and independence. America, under the smiles of a divine Providence, the protection of a good government, and the cultivation of manners, morals, and piety, cannot fail of attaining an uncommon degree of eminence in literature, commerce, agriculture, improvements at home, and respect- ability abroad. As mankind become more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as wor- thy members of the ci^rrimunity sire equally entitled to the protection of civil go^ ernment. I hope ever to see Amer- ica among the foremost nations in examples of justice and liberality; and I presume that your fellow-citizens will not forget the patriotic part which you took in the accom- plishment of their revolution and the establishment of their government, or the important assistance which they received from a nation in wliich the Roman Catholic faith is professed. ^^ I thank you, gentlemen, for your kind concern for me. While my life and my health shall continue, in whatever situation I may be, it shall be my constant endeavor to jus- tify the favorable sentiments which you are pleased to ex- press of my conduct ; and may the membei-s of your so- ciety in America, animated alone by the pure spirit of 17'* 198 CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. Christianity, and still conducting themselves as the faithful subjects of our free government, enjoy every temporal and spiritual felicity. G. "Washington. (..;»;,: f IW- m'i 1 NO. VII. AN ACCOUNT OF THE BLESSED CATHARINE TE- GAHKOUITA, ILLUSTRATING THE INFLUENCE OP CHRISTIANITY ON THE DOMESTIC LIFE OF OUR INDIANS. ■:.: ,:-■ The marvels which God is working every day, through the intercession of a young Iroquois female who has lived and died among us in the odor of sanctity, have induced me to inform you of the particulars of her life, although you have not pressed me in your letters to enter into de- tail. You have yourself been a witness of these marvels when you discharged there with so much zeal the duties of a missionary ; and you know that the high prelate who governs this church, touched by the prodigies with which God has deigned to honor the memory of this holy maiden, has with reason called her the Genevieve of New France. All the French who are in the colonies, as well as the In- dians, hold her in singular veneration. They come from a great distance to pray at her tomb ; and many, by her intercession, have been immediately cured of their mala- dies, and have received from Heaven other extraor- dinary favors. I will write you nothing, my reverend father, which I have not myself seen during the time she was under my care, or which I have not learned (199) 200 {■_ CATHOLIC HISTORY OF AMERICA. of the missionary M'ho conferred on her the rite of holy baptism. Tegahkouita (which is the name of this sainted female about whom I am going to inform you) was born in the year 1656, at Gandaouague, one of the settlements of the lower Iroquois, who are called Agniez. Her father was an Iroquois and a heathen ; her mother, who was a Chris- tian, was an Algonquin, and had been baptized at the village of Trois Rivieres, where she was brought up among the French. During the time that we were at war with the Iroquois she was taken prisoner by these Indians, and remained a captive in their country. We have since learned that thus, in the very bosom of heathenism, she preserved her faith even to her death. By her marriage she had two children, one son and one daughter, the latter of whom is the subject of this nan*ative, but she had the pain to die without having been able to procure for them the grace of baptism. The small pox, which ravaged the Iroquois country, in a few days removed her husband, her son, and herself. Tegahkouita was also attacked like the others, but she did not sink as they did under the violence of the disease. Thus, at the age of four years, she found herself an orphan, under the care of her aunts, and in the power of an uncle who was the leading man in the settlement. The small pox had injured her eyes ; and this infirmity having rendered her incapable of enduring the glare of light, she remained during whole days shut up in her wig- wam. By degrees she began to love this seclusion, and at length that became her taste which she had at first endured only from necessity. This inclination for retirement, so contrary to the usual spirit of the young Iroquois, was the ■A' APPENDIX. 201 principal cause of her preserving her innocence of life while living in such scenes of corruption. When she was a little older, she occupied herself at home in rendering to her aunts all those services of which she was capable, and which *were in accordance with her sex. She ground the com, went in search of water, and carried the wood ; for such, among these Indians, are the ordinary employments of females. The rest of her time she spent in the manufacture of little articles, for which she possessed an extraordinary skill. By this means she avoided two rocks which would have been equally fatal to her innocence — idleness, so common there among her own sex, and which is the source of an infinite number of vices ; and the extreme passion they have to spend their time in gossiping visits, and to show themselves in public places where they can- display their finery ; for it is not necessary to believe that this kind of vanity is confined to civilized nations. The females of our Indians, and espe- cially the young girls, have a great taste for parading their ornaments, some of which they esteem very precious. Their finery consists of cloths which they buy of the Eu- ropeans, mantles of fur, and different kinds of shells, with which they cover themselves from head to foot They have also bracelets, and collars, and pendants for the ears, and belts. They adorn even their moccasons, for these personal ornaments constitute all their riches ; and it is in this way, by the different kinds of garments, that they mai'k their rank among themselves. ' The young Tegahkouita had naturally a distaste for all this finery, which was appropriate to her.sex ; but she could not oppose the persons who stood to her in the place of father and mother ; and to please them, she had sometimea m n I I, 202 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. i recourse to these vain ornaments. But after she became a Christian she looked back upon it as a great sin, and expiated this compliance of which she had been guilty by a severe penance and almost continual tears. M. de Thracy, having been sent by the government to bring to reason the Iroquois nations who laid waste our colonies, carried the war into their country, and burned three villages of the Agniez. This expedition spread terror among the Indians, and they acceded to the terms of peace which were offered them. Their deputies were well received by the French, and a peace concluded to the advantage of both nations. We availed ourselves of this occasion, which seemed a favorable one, to send missionaries to the Iroquois. They had already gained some smattering of the gospel, which had been preached to them by Father Jogues, and partic- ularly those of Onnontague, among whom this father had fixed his residence. It is well known that this missionary received there that recompense of martyrdom which well befitted his zeal. The Indians at first held him in a severe captivity and mutilated his fingers, and it was only by a kind of miracle that he was able for a time to escape their fury. It seemed, however, that his blood was destined to be the seed of Christianity in that heathen land ; for, having had the courage, in the following year, to return for the purpose of continuing his mission among these people who had treated him so inhumanly, he finished his apostolic career amid the torments they forced him to endure.* . . * The history of Father Isaac Jogues is full of romantic interest. He was the first to carry the cross into Michigan and among the yil« lages of the Mohawks. On his return from the Falls of St. Mary, escorted by some Huron braves, they were taken by a war party of the m t . APPENDIX. 203 The works of his two companions were crowned hy the 'game kind of death ; and it is without doubt to the blood of these first apostles of the Iroquois nation that we must ascribe the blessings which God poured out on the zeal of those who succeeded them in this evangelical ministry. The Father Fremin, the Father Bruyas, and the Father Pierron, who knew the language of the country, were chosen to accompany the Iroquois deputies, and on the part of the French to confirm the peace which had been granted them. They committed also ^P the missionaries the presents which the governor made, that it might facili- tate their entrance into these barbarous regions. They happened to arrive there at a time when these people are accustomed to plunge into all kinds of debauchery, and found no one, therefore, in a fit state to receive them. This unseasonable period, however, procured for the young Te- gahkouita the advantage of knowing early those of whom God wished to make use to conduct her to the highest degree of perfection. She was charged with the task of Mohawks. His companions were all put to death with the usual at- tendants of savage cruelty, but not before Jogues had baptized two of them, who were neophytes, with some drops of water he found cling- ing to the broad blade of an ear of Indian corn they had thrown to him. After suffering every cruelty, and being obliged to run the gant- let through three villages, he was, in 1642, ransomed by the Dutch at Albany and set at liberty. He then sailed for France, to obtain per- mission from the pope to celebrate the divine mysteries with his mu- tilated hands. The pope granted his prayer, saying, " Indignum esset Christi martyrum Christi non libere sanguinem." On his return to the Mohawks for the second time, he was at once received as a pris- oner and condemned to death as an enchanter. He approached the cabin where the death festival was kept, and, as he entered, received the deathblow. His head was hung upon the palisades of the village, and h?3 body thrown into the Mohawk River. — Bancroft, vol. iii. p. 138. -I 204 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. H- ii !i lodging the missionaries and attending to their wants. The modesty and sweetness with which she acquitted her- self of this duty touched her new guests ; while she on her part was struck with their affable manners, their regularity in prayer, and the other exercises into which they divided the day. God even then disposed her to the grace of bap- tism, which she would have requested if the missionaries had remained longer in her village. -^ ; < The third day after their arrival they were sent for to Tionnontoquen, where their reception was to take place : it was very pompous. Two of the missionaries established themselves in this village, while the third commenced a mission in the village of Onneiout, which is more than thirty leagues distant in the country. The next year they formed a third mission at Annontague. The fourth was established at Tsonnontouan, and the fifth at the village of Goiogoen. The natives of the Agniez and the Tsonnon- touans are very numerous, and separated in many different villages, which is the reason why they were obliged to in- crease the number of the missionaries. At length Tegahkouita became of a marriageable age, and her relations were anxious to find a husband for her ; because, according to the custom of the country, the game which the husband kills in the chase is appropriated to the benefit of his wife and the other members, of her fam- ily. But the young Iroquois had inclinations very much opposed to the designs of her relations. She had a great love of purity even before she knew the excellence of this virtue, and any thing which could soil it ever so little im- pressed her with horror. When, therefore, they proposed to establish her in life, she excused herself under different pretexts, alleging above all her extreme youth, and the lit- tle inclination she had to enter into marriage. '* >l APPENDIX. 205 The relatives seemed to approve of these reasons ; but a little while after they resolved to betroth her when she least expected it, and without even allowing her a choice in the person to whom she was to be united. They, there- fore, cast their eyes upon a young man whose alliance ap- peared desirable, and made the proposition both to him and to the members of his family. The matter being set- tled on both sides, the young man in the evening entered the wigwam which was destined for him and seated him- self near her. It is thus that marriages, are made among the Indians ; and although these heathen extend their dis- soluteness and licentiousness to the greatest excess, there is yet no nation which in public guards so scrupulously that outward decorum which is the attendant of perfect modesty. A young man would be forever dishonored if he should stop to converse publicly with a young female. Whenever marriage is in agitation the business is to be settled by the parents, and the parties most interested are not even permitted to meet. It is sufficient that they are talking of the marriage of a young Indian with a young female to induce them with care to shun seeing and speak- ing with each other. When the parents on both sides have agreed, the young man comes by night to the wig- wam of his future spouse and seats himself near her ; which is the same as declaring that he takes her for his wife and she takes him for her husband. Tegahkouita appeared utterly disconcerted when she saw the young man seated by her side. She at first blushed, and then, rising abruptly, went forth indignantly from the wigwam ; nor would she reenter until the young man left it. This firmness rendered her relatives out- They considered that they had in this way 18 rageous. 206 CATUOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. V received an insult, and resolved that they would not be dis- appointed. They, therefore, attempted other stratagems, which served only to show more clearly the firmness of their niece. Artifice not having proved successful, they had recourse to violence. They now treated her as a slave, obliging her to do every thing which was most painful and repul- sive, and malignantly interpreting all her actions, even when most innocent. They reproached her without ceas- ing for the want of attachment to her relations, her un- couth manners, and her stupidity ; for it was thus that they termed the disUke she felt to marriage. They attributed it to a secret hatred of the Iroquois nation, because she was herself of the Algonquin race. In short, they omitted no means of shaking her constancy. The young girl suffered all this ill treatment with un- wearied patience, and without ever losing any thing of her equanimity of mind or her natural sweetness; she ren- dered them all the services they required with an attention and docility beyond her years and strength. By degrees her relatives were softened, restored to her their kind feel- ings, and did not further molest her in regard to the course she had adopted. At this very time Father Jacques de Lamberville was conducted by Providence to the village of our young Iro- quois, and received orders from his superiors to remain there ; although it seemed most natural that he should go on to join his brother, who had charge of the mission to the Iroquois of Onnontague. Tegahkouita did not fail to be present at the instructions and prayers which took place every day in the chapel ; but she did not dare to dis- close the design she had for a long time formed, of becom- APPENDIX. 207 ing a Christian ; porlmps because she was restrained by fear of her uncle, in whose power she entirely was, and who, from interested motives, had joined in the opposition to the Christians ; perhaps because modesty itself ren- dered her too timid, and prevented her from discoveruig her sentiments to the missionary. But at length the occasion of her declaring her desire for baptism presented itself when she least expected it. A wound which she had received in the foot detained her in the village whilst the greater part of the women were in the fields gathering the harvest of Indian corn. The missionary had selected this time to go his rounds and in- struct at his leisure those who were remaining in the wig- wams. He entered that of Tegahkouita. This good girl, on seeing him, was not abl^ to restrain her joy. She at once began to open her heart to him, even in presence of her companions, on the earnest desire she had to be ad- mitted into the fold of the Christians. She disclosed also the obstacles she had been obliged to surmount on the part of her family, and in this first conversation showed a courage above her sex. The goodness of her temper, the vivacity of her spirit, her simplicity and candor caused the missionary to believe that one day she would make great progress in virtue. He, therefore, applied himself particularly to instruct her in the truths of Christianity, but did not think he ought to yield so soon to her entrea- ties ; for the grace of baptism should not be accorded to adults, and particularly in this country, but with great care, and after a long probation. All the winter, therefore, was employed in her instruction and a rigid investigation of her manner of life. It is surprising that, notwithstanding the propensity / 208 CATHOLIC HISTORY OP AMERICA. these Indians have for slander, and particularly those of her own sex, the missionary did not find any one but gave a high encomium to the young catechumen. Even those who had persecuted her most severely were not backward in giving their testimony to her virtue. He, therefore, did not hesitate any longer to administer to her the holy bap- tism which she asked with so much godly earnestness. She received it on Easter day, in the year 1G76, and was named Catharine ; and it is thus that I shall call her in the rest of this letter. The only care of the young neophyte was now to fulfil the engagements s)ie had contracted. She did not wish to restrict herself to the observance of common practices, for she felt that site was called to a more perfect life. Be- sides the public instructions, at which she was present punctually, she requcvsted also particular ones for the reg- ulation of her private and secret life. Her prayers, her devotions, and her penances were arranged with the utmost exactness, and she was so docile to form herself according to the plan of perfection which had been marked out for her that in a little time she became a model of virtue. In this manner several months passed away very peace- ably. Even her relations did not seem to disapprove of the new course of life which she was leading. But the Holy Spirit has warned us, by the mouth of Wisdom, that the faithful soul which begins to unite itself to God should prepare for temptation ; and this was verified in the case of Catharine. Her extraordinary virtue drew upon her the persecutions even of those who admired her. They looked upon a life so pure as being a tacit reproach to their own irregularities ; and, with the design of discredit- ing it, they endeavored by divers artifices to throw a taint . APrENDTX. 209 upon its juirily. Uiit tlui conrKlt'iici' wliiri.->ed wh<'n they learned a moiniint after that it was the. hody ol' Catlia- rinc, who had just expired. Tiiey iininedialely retraced their steps, and, casting tlieinselvi's on their knees at her feet, recommended themselves to her pr.iyers. They even wished to give a puhlic evidence of the veneration they had for the deceased hy imme