Part 10

This practice of domestic _espionage_, we all know, is common in every country where auricular confession is taught and practised; but it is carried on more generally here, in proportion to the number of Roman Catholics, than in any other country in the world; and the reason is obvious. It is said that Jews never cheat each other; this is not because they will not cheat as well as others. The reason is, they will not trust each other. They are always on the watch, or, as Yankees would express it, on the "look-out" for each other. Neither is it because other countries or other people are less disposed to indulge in this species of espionage than we are, that they have less of it: it is because Catholic countries and Catholics will not trust each other. They are on the _qui vive_ in all matters of intrigue, whether in domestic or national affairs, whether in morals or politics. But poor Jonathan, with all his smartness and all his cleverness, is probably the most gullible biped that crawls upon this earth. I have known some poor servant-maids and servant-men, who did not seem to have an idea beyond a Hottentot, who, after one month's proper training in the confessional by a Romish priest, could wheedle them out of all they possessed, except their money; and never have I known a Romish confessor, not even the simplest Reverend Yahoo from the bogs of Ireland or flats of Holland, who could not filch from them whatever money he wanted for any given purpose.

The cunning of Americans, their knowledge of human nature and of things in general, cannot be mentioned in the same category with the craft and knowledge of man which Jesuit priests and confessors possess. This is exemplified even in the case of American missionaries. Send an American missionary to France, to Spain, or to any Catholic country, and without aid from home he will starve. He has no Roman Catholic to come to confession to him, to give him money to build a church for him; he has no servant-maid or servant-man, through whom he can persuade, to give him ten or twelve dollars for saying mass; no dying man or woman will send for him, and pay him well for taking out of his pockets a set of _oil stocks_, for the purpose of greasing them over, commencing on the forehead, the tip of the nose, eyelids, the lips, the breast, the loins and the soles of the feet. He has no one to send for him and pay highly, for putting his hand in his breeches pocket and pulling out a box full of _gods_, viz., wafers made of flower and water, and giving him one of them. No. He has none, of these resources; he starves amongst them until bread is sent to him from home. Talk of Yankee cunning! He is a simpleton compared with a Jesuit. A Jesuit comes amongst us, or he goes to any Protestant country, without a dollar, but he never travels without his jackals, male and female. He brings with him his lay sisters and his lay brothers; they soon scent out prey for him; they hire themselves, as servant men and women, to Protestant Yankees, and the first intimation we have of a Jesuit missionary amongst us, is the alarm of some rich-toned bell, which we hear from the steeple of a church built for him by Protestant Yankees. In place of sending home for money to support him, as the American missionary has to do, a Jesuit is sending home money to pay the passage of others to come out and help him. He is purchasing some of the most valuable real estate that Protestant Yankees own, with Yankee money, and writes home to his royal holiness, the Pope, that Americans are a simple, gullible people. "Persevere," says the Jesuit in America to his Pope; "already have you three millions of faithful troops from your own faithful allies of France and Spain and other Roman Catholic friendly governments, among them. Besides this, holy father, your holiness will bear in mind that many of those American heretics, are deserting their own churches and joining us; and above all, most holy father, you will remember,--and I pray you will graciously condescend to take note of it,--that these Americans are all politicians, all fond of offices and would kiss your----!!!!! as well as your toe, if your subjects will only aid them in keeping their offices, which, I am happy to inform your holiness, we are very willing to do, until we have numerical strength enough to turn all the heretical wretches out, and fill up their places with your faithful subjects. This, with the aid of the blessed Virgin Mary, we shall be able to accomplish in a very few years. Press on, most holy father; your subjects are coming in thousands per day. Send dispatches to your royal brothers of Austria, Prussia and Spain; urge upon them to send us help, and the glorious cause of your holy spouse, the infallible church, the Queen of heaven, will triumph.

"Write to the greatest layman living, Daniel O'Connell, whom your holiness intends shall receive from your hands a crown as king of Ireland; urge upon him the necessity of sending over to the United States all the repealers he can spare. Let him persuade the Irish, that the union was the cause of all their grievances,--that they would have nothing to complain of, if the union were repealed. Let not your faithful son, D. O'Connell, ever allude to the fact,--the poor Irish would never dream of it,--that the union is not quite fifty years old, and that, for seven hundred years before its existence, the Irish were much more quarrelsome, clamorous, litigious than they are now. It won't do to let them know this; repeal would lose all its charms, and the greatest layman living, would become,--between you and myself and the holy Virgin Mary,--what he really is, the greatest scoundrel and the biggest poltroon living. These heretical Americans are trying to cause a division between your son Daniel O'Connell and your subjects. Poor dolts! How little they know about us. We know what we are about Your son need only go regularly to confession, and attend mass in some public place, such as at a mass meeting of repealers, and nothing can separate your subjects from him. I trust the move which we made the other day in New York, through your faithful subject Lord Bishop Hughs, was highly satisfactory to your holiness. Your royal holiness will be graciously pleased to remember, that the first murmurings of repeal thunder, proceeded from the city of New York, through that humble, pious and zealous servant of the infallible church, the Lord Bishop Hughs. He was among the first to call the people together, and, under pretence of desiring repeal in Ireland, he told them to organize, to weigh well their own power and influence in the political balance. He advised them to give their support to no man but a repealer, and very judiciously instructed his confessors in private, that it should be given only to those who were most favorable to your holiness' spouse, the infallible church. He succeeded well. The American heretics swallowed the bait; the President of the United States for the time being, was the first political gudgeon he caught. Next followed two young spawns of his. They shouted repeal throughout the country. Your subjects promised to elect the three of them presidents in succession; but when the hour of election came, as in duty and by oath of allegiance to your holiness bound, we acted as we thought would best serve the interest of our holy church."

This may all seem like romance; but is it so? Do not facts within the knowledge and almost view of my readers, prove that it is the very reverse? Who is there that does not know, that does not recollect, or that can forget the events and circumstances of the last election for President of the United States? Who is there that does not recollect the part, which repealers played in that election? Can any man who has paid the least attention to passing events, forget the conduct of Bishop Hughs of New York or of Bishop Fenwick of Boston, or of any other bishop (Romish bishops) of the United States, during the last political eventful year? Who ordered the Irish Catholics to turn out with a banner bearing upon it the treasonable inscription, "Americans shan't rule us"? Bishop Hughs of New York. Did not a band of traitorous repealers, calling themselves democrats, parade the streets of New York, Buffalo and other cities, under the jurisdiction of the Lord Bishop Hughs, shaking this banner in the very faces of American citizens, hurraing for Daniel O'Connell and repeal? Did not this bishop Hughs order several hundred stands of fire-arms to be placed in the Roman Catholic churches of New York, with a view of firing upon the citizens should they even dare to show any dissatisfaction, at these traitorous proceedings? Has not this Bishop Hughs been in close correspondence with the traitor O'Connell, ever since he sounded the first note of repeal? And is not this demagogue Hughs at this very moment corresponding with the confessors of Daniel O'Connell, and the other leaders of repeal in Ireland? Yes, I assert it,--he is. There is a continuous line of correspondence, as I have stated in my recent book on Popery, between the Propaganda in Rome, the Romish bishops of Ireland, Daniel O'Connell, and the Romish bishops of the United States. The Propaganda of Rome is the muddy and polluted source from which the various streams of treason, which are inundating our country, have proceeded. Their course is a sinuous one; their gyrations are intricate in the extreme. It takes in France, Austria, Russia, Switzerland, the Netherlands; in fact all civilized Europe, besides South America and Mexico; its fountain in Rome, and emptying itself in the United States. Yet we now hear this Lord Bishop Hughs telling his subjects in New York and elsewhere,--telling what, my readers?--will you believe it, should I inform you? Or will you not think me trifling with you, and sporting with a grave subject? He tells his subjects now, after doing all the mischief he could, after exciting family against family, after creating disunion, dissension and discord, after exciting peaceable fellow-citizens to imbrue their hands in each other's blood, that he entirely disapproves of Daniel O'Connell; that he believes him a _monarchist_, and that it is the duty of Papists to stand by the government that protected them. This is unquestionably the boldest piece of impudence, and the most clumsy attempt at imposition upon the credulity of Americans, that has ever been attempted in this country. It has no parallel in the history of Popery in the United States; and if ever there was a time or an occasion which calls upon Americans to vindicate their honor, and fling from them with indignation the imputation of being credulous dupes, now is the day and now is the hour. What is this insolent upstart Hughs,--who but the other day as another expresses it, "was pitchforked from the potato-field into a palace,"--that he dares thus insult the common sense of the free-born citizens of America? He, a foreigner, a foundling for aught we know, nursed and fed by Jesuits into manhood, their slave and their tool, how dare he insult the very country that gives him an asylum? how dare he outrage the feelings of the very people that give him bread to eat, and clothes to his back? I will give you, Americans, some idea of who he is, and who his brethren of the Popish mitre are. They are individuals--and the Lord Bishop Hughs is preeminently conspicuous among them,--who, stript of the false splendor which circumstances and place throw around them; who, if deprived of the drapery and mimic glories of Popery, in which holy mother, the church, has enveloped them, would appear among the meanest and most despicable members of society. Such men may be borne with, while they abstain from insulting the common sense of the people; but when their arrogance, insolence and vanity presume to trample upon the rights of the people, and ridicule the understanding of the community, they deserve something more than commiseration.

When, in the plenitude of their vanity, they cease to be content with the profits of office and the free exercise of their religion, and dare insinuate aught disrespectful to the understanding of their benefactors, they cease to be objects even of toleration. In ages of ignorance, the trappings of Popery may strike with awe. Those ages are gone by; and if Americans are true to themselves, they will never revive in this country, notwithstanding the insolent efforts of this Lord Bishop Hughs. This reverend bully has long bid defiance to the unarmed arguments of Americans. He will not condescend to listen to the American theologian, who brings into the arena of religious controversy, truth without a sword, and fair argument unbacked by bowie-knives and clubs; he will not stoop to such a mode of warfare. No. This clerical rake would, if he could, Gothicize this nation of freemen. He would extinguish, if he could, among Americans, the light of learning and philosophy. Nay, he would, and he has been trying to, raise from the putrid pools of ignorance and superstition, fogs and evaporations, and clouds and mists, sufficiently thick to hide from the eyes of Americans the pure, the brilliant, and the glorious light even of the Bible itself. It is not enough for him that his subjects should consider him their official superior; it is not enough that some poor foreigners,--and I blush to own it,--even Americans, should look upon him and his brethren as their superiors in the church, but they are required also to consider them their superiors in wisdom and virtue, though they know them to be Jesuits. Papists, whether foreigners or Americans, are, even in the United States, little better than living automatons and self-acting tools, for the corrupt agents of his royal holiness, the Pope.

Can this be? the reader will say. Can it be, that man, created a free agent, living in a free country, and governed by equal laws,---can he be made to obey the word of command given by ja Popish bishop, as a wild beast would the lash or the whip of the keeper of a menagerie? It is so, reader; and particularly with every human being, male or female, who goes to confession. I care not how intelligent he may appear to be, or what his acquirements or accomplishments may be; if he is weak enough, fool enough, or hypocrite enough and mean enough to go to confession to a Romish priest, he deserves not the name of a freeman. He who bends the knee to a Romish priest, and asks him to forgive his sins, submitting to such restrictions or discipline as the priests may be pleased to impose upon him, becomes a degenerate being. Take, for instance, a bird, one of the feathered citizens of the open air; take a lion, a proud denizen of the boundless forest; compare him with one of those tamed, broken-down and whipped into obedience, by the keeper of a menagerie, and how strongly, how painfully marked is the contrast. Their very looks bespeak their degradation. How great is the contrast between those who have broken loose from obedience to nature's laws, to the degrading servitude of obedience to man. But the contrast is not greater nor their fall more humiliating, than that of the man or woman, who exchanges that obedience which he or she owes to reason, to pure religion, and the divine law of the gospel, for the degraded servitude required from them by Popish priests and confessors.

Let us suppose a whole people thus tamed, thus broken, thus snaffled, bitted and bridled by skilful Popish riders and Jesuit jockeys, will they not soon lose all ideas of liberty, morals and individual man liness? Will they not soon be ready to exclaim, in the language of inspiration, "Why died I not from the womb?"

But let us return to the Lord Bishop Hughs, of New York, and his sudden conversion from repeal and O'Connellism. As I have stated before, it is the boldest stroke that ever has been made to deceive a whole nation. Nothing equal to it, that I know of, in modern history, except perhaps, it may be that of the Jesuit Rodin, which we find related in the Wandering Jew. The only difference between the Jesuit Hughs and the Jesuit Rodin, is this,--that Rodin's audacity, hypocrisy and treachery, were practised on a small scale, when compared with that of this modern Jesuit, Lord Bishop of New York.

There is, however, a strong similitude between these two illustrious individuals. I need not inform my readers,--as I believe they have all read the Wandering Jew,--that Rodin was a Jesuit, commissioned by the society of Jesuits in Rome, to act as its agent, ES with full powers to secure for the society of Jesus, it is nicknamed by them, an immense estate, belonging, in law and in justice, to a French family of the name of Rennepont. He was empowered to secure this property to the society, but he must use no violence. It must be done solely by the play of action, hypocrisy and deception. The reader will remember, as we are informed in the Wandering Jew, that the Rennepont family had to fly from France, after the king of that country, at the instigation of the Pope, and by a violation of the most solemn compact, had broken the edict of Nantz, which secured to the Protestants the quiet possession of their property. After fighting their way through blood and Popish butcheries, this noble family, with thousands of others, had to fly from their homes, friendless and pennyless. Only a few escaped the bloodhounds of Popery. Their wives and daughters were dishonored, and, as we were told upon good authority, their helpless infants were dashed against the corners of houses, and their brains scattered upon the pavements. Nothing was left them. They had to seek refuge in distant lands; they went east and west, north and south. Many of their descendants are now living in some of the Southern States of this confederacy.

The general of the Jesuit order in Rome discovered that some of the descendants of the Rennepont family had survived the disasters of the times, and held in their possession proofs sufficient to establish claims to their patrimonial rights. The Jesuits determined to defeat them, and if the reader's curiosity induces him to learn by what means they endeavored to do so, and what agents they employed to effect it, let him read the account given of the whole transaction in the Wandering Jew, by that inimitable writer, Eugene Sue. They will find in that work proofs of the wickedness of Jesuits. They will find that auricular confession is something even worse than I have described it. I have not talent to give a sufficiently accurate picture of this diabolical Popish invention.

Lord Bishop Hughs has been for several years lecturing through the State of New York, as every man who has read the leading newspapers of the country must know; he has represented O'Connell as one of the greatest and best men of the day, and one of the most persecuted of men by the British government. O'Connell and genuine Popery are almost synonymous terms with this lord bishop. As I have stated above, he tried to enlist,--and has actually succeeded,--all foreign Papists, and a vast number even of Americans, in the cause of O'Connell and Irish repeal. Wherever this lord bishop went, dissension and anarchy followed in his train; but mark him now. Mark the course of this Bishop Hughs for the last few years, and you will be struck with the exact similitude which in every feature exists between itself and that of Rodin. The readers of the Wandering Jew will recollect that Rodin established a press in Paris, for the ostensible purpose of inculcating truth, and advancing the public good. The title of this press was, "Love your neighbor." The editor was one Nini-Moulin, a notorious drunkard, ignorant and profligate in the extreme, and, personally, irresponsible, either in a pecuniary or moral point of view. If sued for any libellous matter contained in this press, nothing could be recovered from him, because he had nothing. If thrown into jail for the immorality of the act, he could not suffer in his reputation, because he had none to lose; he may continue editor still, and all that was necessary, was that Rodin should supply him with something to eat and drink. For the amusement of my readers, I beg to give a brief description of the editor of Rodin's paper. 1 take it from that given by one who knew him, who was the mistress kept by this editor of Rodin's paper, one Rose-Pompon. She thus describes the editor--"A face as red as a glass of red wine, and a nose all covered with pimples, like a strawberry." Rodin, describing him, gives a different character altogether. He says that "Nini-Moulin is a very worthy man, though, perhaps, a little fond of pleasure" Here is a precious specimen of Jesuitism and Popish morality; a man living notoriously with a woman of the town, bearing upon his face the marks of drunkenness and profligacy, is pronounced by a Romish priest to be a very worthy man, though perhaps a little fond of pleasure.

Suppose Rodin and Nini-Moulin were amongst us here, in the city of Boston, or in the city of New York,--who is there that would not shrink from a contact with either? The Jesuit Bishop Hughs, of New York, and his brother Fenwick, of Boston, have presses in each of those cities, and the wretches who ostensibly conduct them, are, in point of fact, of no higher or more worthy character than Rodin's editor, Nini-Moulin. No man, who opposed Jesuitism in Paris, or who was even suspected of being inimical to it, escaped the abuse of Rodin's journal. The fairest characters were blasted by it; it defamed and bespattered with its scurrility, some of the most honorable and high-minded citizens, while the artful and cowardly hypocrite himself was hidden from observation. Is it not so with Hughs, of New York, Fenwick, of Boston, and the whole tribe of Popish bishops throughout the United States'? No man is safe, no character is spared from the virulence of the presses which they own. Witness the Truth Teller, of New York, owned by Bishop Hughs,--though, like Rodin, he denies the ownership of it,--what can be more vile than the language of that press? It declares that "Americans shan't rule us--Papists" It has for years been spewing forth its malicious tirades against Protestant Americans, while the real author of this scurrility, Bishop Hughs, is skulking behind the bush.

But I will tear off that masquerade dress which nides the moral deformities of this man; and I trust that all Protestants will sustain and pardon me, in holding him, and not the Nini-Moulins who conduct his press, responsible for its contents. Let no Protestant notice the miserable beings who are the reputed editors of the Truth Teller, Bishop Hughs' organ; let the bishop himself be held responsible.

The Jesuit bishop of Boston, Fenwick, another Rodin, has also a press called the _Pilot_, apparently edited by a silly-looking, Irish jackanape. Let not Bostonians notice the abuse which this paper has heaped upon them for years; or if they do, let them hold Bishop Fenwick responsible for it; he is the real author of its contents, and not the little brainless gander, its reputed editor.

I might quote a thousand instances of the similarity of thought and deeds which governed, and which now govern, the whole body of Romish priests. But enough. It is time that Americans should vindicate their honor.