CHAPTER XXIII.

THE TOWN-MEETING.

Before allowing her husband to go to the town-meeting, Mrs. Yorke had given him a word of admonition, not the usual wifely charge to keep himself out of danger, but an exhortation to justice and reason.

“Justice and reason!” he exclaimed. “Why, for what else have I been contending, Mrs. Yorke?”

“True!” she answered gently. “But may it not be possible that there is more cause than you will allow for this upheaval, and that it is not a superficial excitement which can be easily soothed or beaten down? These sailor friends of ours have told me that, when the water is dimpled and green, it has a sand bottom, and, when it is black and easily fretted into foam, there are rocks underneath. Now, this anti-Catholic excitement is dark and bitter enough to show that there is some fixed obstacle, which breath, though it be ever so wisely syllabled, will not remove.”

“So there is,” Mr. Yorke replied promptly. “The devil is there.”

“Charles, the devil, or human weakness, lurks under the surface of every side of every question,” his wife said with earnestness. “Good men are not entirely good, nor bad men utterly bad. There are men, and not ignorant ones, either, who have engaged in this movement from an honest conviction that there is need of it. They may be prejudiced and short-sighted, but they are” worthy of a patient, if not a respectful, hearing. My wish is that to-night you would be in no haste to speak, and that, when you do speak, you would address the real meaning of the trouble, and not the miserable froth on the surface.”

What man likes to be told that he is not reason personified, especially by his wife? Not Mr. Charles Yorke, certainly. But the little lady was not one to be scouted, even by her liege lord, and he heard her respectfully to the end. Manhood must be asserted, however, and he compensated himself for the mortification after a manner that is often adopted by both men and women: he first absurdly exaggerated the charge made against him, and then answered to that exaggeration.

“I am much obliged to you, my dear, for explaining the matter to me,” he said with an air of meekness. “I am afraid that I cannot stop to hear more, for it is time to go. But I will remember your warning, and try not to make a fool of myself.”

Nine women out of ten would have made the reply which such a pretence is calculated to call forth--a shocked and distressed denial of having had any such meaning, a senseless begging pardon for having been so misunderstood, and a final giving up of the point, and temporary utter humiliation and grief, followed later, on thinking the matter over, by a mental recurrence to their abandoned position, and a disenchanting conviction that men are sometimes artful creatures, after all, and 739 only to be pleased by flattery.

Mrs. Yorke was not to be so entrapped. She accepted her husband’s submission with perfect tranquillity, as though she believed it both proper and sincere, and laughed a little as he went away. “My poor Charles!” she said, looking after him with tender indulgence.

Those little faults are so endearing!

The hall where the meeting was held was filled in every part; a dense mass of people struggled up or down the two flights of stairs leading to it, and a throng of men obstructed the street outside. Edith Yorke had been in the lane to see a sick woman, and, hearing that Miss Churchill also was in the neighborhood, had lingered longer than was prudent, hoping for her company home. Starting off alone, at last, she soon found herself in the midst of this crowd. They surged about her, muttering insults and maledictions on “that Catholic Rowan girl,” and seemed every moment on the point of stopping her. Not far in advance was Miss Churchill. An enthusiastic boy threw a stone at her, and the teacher wiped from her cheek a stain of blood where it struck. Edith held her head up, and walked straight on, looking neither to the right nor left, and, whatever ruffianly intention any one may have had, those who looked in her face stood aside, and kept silence while she passed. If the spirit that hardened her brow to the likeness of marble, shone in her eyes, and curved her red lips with a still scorn, was less Christian humility than natural loftiness, it was at least no petty pride, and it needed but the sense of actual personal danger to change it to supernatural lowliness. Her conviction, “They dare not touch me!” prevented the advent of that martyr-spirit which brings with it every virtue.

Humility is a flower that grows on the mountain-tops of the soul, and is reached only by striving and endeavor. That is not true humility which the mean heart plucks in the lowlands, calling on God ‘twixt swamp and slough; nor does the child’s hand bear it, nor yet does it shadow the untried maiden’s brow, over her lowered eyelids. We must come out above the belt of pines and the gentian meadows, we must scale the dizzy track where to look down is destruction, and face the bitter cold of the glacier, and, over all, we shall find that exquisite blossom, its pure blue drooped earthward under the infinite blue of heaven.

Therefore we claim not humility for Edith, for she was not wise enough for that, and she was too true and brave for its counterfeit; but she had that scorn for meanness and tyranny which is one of the first milestones on the road to humility.

While his niece was walking unprotected through the crowd without, Mr. Yorke was in the hall, seated near the platform, on which were all the ministers, and the prominent Know-Nothings, several of the latter town-officers. One after another spoke, and was loudly applauded. The excitement and enthusiasm were immense. Mindful of his wife’s charge, Mr. Yorke restrained his indignation, and listened attentively, sifting out what was essential in this commotion and common to all its participants. As he listened, the vision of a possible future of his country appeared before him, and made the hair rise on his head. He saw the anarchy and bloodshed of a religious war more terrible than any war the world had seen--a massacre of innocents, a war of extermination. This was possible, was probable, was inevitable, unless 740 men would listen to reason. And why would they not? He weighed all that was said, carefully attending to the most revolting and worthless arguments, and under all that foam and roar saw the one rock. However different might be the principles and feelings of those anti-Catholic speakers, they all converged, consolidated, and struck fire on that one point.

It was not that they were fanatic, for fanaticism cannot exist without some strong religious conviction, and by far the largest number of them had no religious belief; while many interpreted religious freedom to mean freedom from religion. It was not that they were intolerant of any man’s simple belief. The majority were more likely to laugh at faith than to be angry with it. Indeed, their scepticism made them incapable of practising real religious toleration, for that is to bear, without any manifestation of resentment, that your neighbor shall tacitly scorn what you hold sacred; a virtue most difficult to the faithful, but comparatively easy to the sceptic. It was not that they cared for its own sake whether the Bible was read in school or not, for the larger number of them never read it at home, many quoted it only in mockery, and every one denied the truth of some of its most plainly uttered tests. In short, the rock on which this tempest rose and dashed was a deadly fear and hatred, not of the Catholic Church, but of the Catholic clergy. The only question which interested these men in connection with any Catholic dogma was, How much temporal influence will it give to the priest? The supernatural side they cared not a fig for. To their minds it was impossible that a Catholic priest should be a truthful, plain-dealing, straightforward man. He shuffled, evaded, intrigued. His aim was less to christianize the world than to govern it, less to enlighten than to direct.

Let us give the Know-Nothings and their sympathizers their due. Bad as they were, slanderers and law-breakers, and absolutely irreligious for the most part, the worst fault of many of them was that they knowingly used bad means to what they believed to be a good end. There was some sincerity in the movement, though it was, at its best, irrational, inconsistent, and un-American, as alien, indeed, to our republic as it charged the church with being. They believed that the Catholic clergy acquire power by insidious means, and that, once in power, they will destroy all that makes our dear country the abode of freedom and equal rights, and the bountiful home where all the starving, shivering exiles of other lands may feed and warm themselves. Once prove that the church is friendly to the republic, and the vertebra of their opposition is broken.

Mr. Griffeth was the only one of these speakers who cleared the question from the _débris_ of personal slander and misrepresentation of doctrine.

“You mistake, gentlemen,” he said, “if you think that the doctrines of the Catholic Church are either ridiculous or bad. Such an opinion would show you ill-informed or incapable of comprehension. On the contrary, they are glorious. But they are such as can be safely preached and enforced only by saints and angels, or by men of such exalted holiness as the world seldom sees. In the hands of weak men, they may be, and have been, perverted to base uses. The dogma of the Infallibility of the church is a crown of living gold on the head of the mystical Spouse, and a mantle of cloth of gold about her form; but 741 the priest has drawn the shining folds about his own human shoulders, and made it a sin to criticise _him_. Confession, which I proclaim to be, in its essence, one of the most comforting and saving institutions that ever existed, they can and do use to learn the secret workings of society and obtain power over individuals. I need not detain you to go over the list, for all are the same. It is St. Michael’s sword in the hands of Satan.

“No, gentlemen, it is not because their theology is bad that I say, Down with the church! It is because its fair niches and shrines harbor thieves, and robbers, and tyrants--because, though the pope can sit there enthroned, with his lofty tiara, and the bishops stand with mitres, and the priests lift their haughty foreheads, the people cannot walk erect as God made them to walk, but must crawl on the pavement like worms. And therefore, though the walls of the temple were of jasper, its pillars of malachite, its ceiling of sapphires, its pavements of beaten gold, and its gates like the gates of the New Jerusalem, I still would cry, Down with the temple!

“From the time when peoples first began to crystallize upon the face of the earth, God has looked out from heaven, and asked each in turn, ‘Where shall my children find peace, and freedom, and room to grow?’ and each in turn has answered, ‘Here, Lord!’ lying to his face. And in his own time, after patient waiting, the Almighty has stretched forth his hand, and has effaced the boundaries of that perjured nation, and touched her people with blight. The kingdoms of old lied to the Lord, and they have perished; and in our own day there is a wavering and tottering in the battlements that wall the nations in.

“One hundred years ago, America rose up and made the covenant: Here, Lord, shall thy children find peace and freedom, and here shall they grow to the stature of the perfect man and woman! It is for us, brethren, to see that the pact is kept. It is for us to watch that the oppressor gains no foothold here, lest we perish for ever. For there is no Phœnix among the kingdoms of earth, from whatever cause they die. When a nation lies in the dust, it rises no more, save to walk, a ghost, in the dreams of its orphaned children. Ireland, Poland, Hungary,--they sleep the sleep that knows no waking. They are in the past, with Greece and Rome, with Babylon and Nineveh:

‘Youthful nation of the West, Rise, with truer greatness blest! Sainted bands from realms of rest, Watch thy bright’ning fame!’

“Brethren, when we in turn shall join that company of silent watchers, God forbid that we should hear rising from our beloved land such a lamentation as went up for that ruined city of the East: ‘Nineveh is laid waste! who will bemoan her? She is empty, and void, and waste; her nobles dwell in the dust; her people are scattered upon the mountains, and no man gathereth them.’ For the sake of humanity, may God forbid!

“There is now but one name written in living characters on the future, and that name is America. It was writ in blood by our fathers, and accepted in fire by the God of nations. Palsied be the hand that would quench one letter of that sacred legend!”

During the loud applause that followed, Mr. Yorke mounted the platform.

Had they not known that he was soon to leave them, and had not his manner been quite unlike what he had shown on former occasions of this 742 sort, they might have refused to hear him. As it was, a reluctant and impatient silence was accorded. Some listened, doubtless because they wished to be exasperated, and hoped for another pretext for outbreak. But he looked like one who fully appreciates the strength of his opponent, and does not hope for a speedy victory.

“Gentlemen,” he said, with a certain grim emphasis on the word, “after Mr. Griffeth’s pyrotechnic display of eloquence, I cannot hope that my words will not fall with a dull sound on your ears. He has gone up like the rocket, and I must come down like the stick. I promise, however, to be brief, and to speak to the point. First, I thank him for having spoken like a gentleman, and left the subject clear enough for a gentleman to touch. On all that preceded him, I have but two comments to make. Concerning the attacks on the personal character of the Catholic clergy, I will only say, ‘Set a thief to catch a thief!’ To the misrepresentations of their creed, I would say, theologians should be better educated than to make them sincerely, and honest men should not fear to tell the truth, even of a foe.

“I come, then, to Mr. Griffeth’s argument: that these men, simply from human weakness, not from personal depravity, have always abused their power, and, being men, always will abuse it, and that, therefore, we must, in self-defence, either banish them from the country, or deny them the rights of citizenship; their doctrines all the time being perfect, or, at least, tolerable.

“I am not here to defend the character of the Catholic clergy. I know well that your deep-rooted prejudice will not yield to any word of mine or theirs. They must live down your enmity with what patience they may; and the day will come, believe me! when the still, small voice of those lives that have been consecrated to God will silence and put to shame the blatant accusation and pseudo-patriotism which now overwhelm it. Whatever may have been proved against some, the whole world knows that that clergy has given for its admiration many a model of Christian behavior, and that among its missionaries have been, and are, men worthy to stand beside Peter, and Paul, and John--men enamored of the things of God, and dead to the attractions of earth. If it be true that you can find Judases in their company, it is equally true that apostolical laborers are not found outside of their fold. It may still be the apostolical church, though one in twelve were a Judas.

“This part of the question is, however, irrelevant. We stand here, if we are worthy to speak, for principle, and not for men. If the faults of partisans are to be used as an argument against an institution, no institution on earth can stand, and Protestantism and freedom must shake to their foundations.

“Assuming, though, that his assertion is true, and that the clergy have always been the enemies of freedom and enlightenment, though that would be strong circumstantial evidence against their future trustworthiness, still the conviction which he invokes is too grave and arbitrary for so just and enlightened a judge as our country promises to be. But I deny the truth of his premises, and, since proof is out of the question in this place, set my bare denial against his bare assertion.

“But if his assumption and conclusion were both true, if these men were untrustworthy, and if we had therefore the right to refuse them 743 equality, we are still bound to give that refusal, not with the howling of wild beasts, not with mobs and threatenings, but decently, and according to law, or we are ourselves unfit to be trusted with that freedom which we deny to them.

“No, I am not here to prove that the clergy of the Catholic Church are all saints, or even all good men; but I am here to say that, hate them as you may, you cannot, in these United States, under the constitution, you cannot with impunity persecute them, nor deprive them of any of the privileges which that constitution guarantees to them as rights. ‘Work in secret,’ do they? ‘Undermine,’ do they? And from whom does this accusation come? What of that society in which this movement takes its rise?--that society which now dominates the land, stirring up riots from Maine to Louisiana, making laws and changing laws, and setting the off-scouring of the earth in our high places? What of those lodges where men assemble to concert measures for governing the country, yet where no citizen can enter without the pass-word and oath of secrecy? Josiah Quincy, Senior, of Boston, a man whose name carries as much weight as any name here in this hall, has said of these same societies, ‘_The liberties of a people are never more certain in the path of destruction than when they trust themselves to the guidance of secret societies. Birds of the night are never birds of wisdom.... They are for the most part birds of prey. The fate of a republic is sealed when the bats take the lead of the eagles._’ Our atmosphere is black with these same bats!

“To Mr. Griffeth’s parting anathema, I respond, ay and amen! Palsied be the hand that would quench one letter of that sacred legend! But whose is the hand that threatens it in this town? Is it Father Rasle, who asked a right of you, and, when you refused it, asked it of the law--in a neighboring town, mark, there being no law here!--and when the law refused it, submitted in silence? Is it the few hundreds of harmless Catholics among you, not one of whom has raised a hand in violence? Or is it your brutal mobs, who have insulted both priest and people, destroyed their property, and threatened their lives? Think of this, citizens! If the laws are dear to you, keep them! If you love freedom, do not practise tyranny! If you claim to be an intelligent people, think for yourselves, and do not let demagogues do it for you! Who is he who truly loves and honors his country? Not that man who holds its constitution to be a pretty myth, fine to quote, but impossible to act upon; but he who demands that its most generous promise shall be fulfilled, and is not afraid that in sincerity will be its destruction.

“Mr. Griffeth has uttered his war-cry, ‘Down with the church!’ and you have applauded it with enthusiasm. While I have listened to-night, there has risen before my vision the possible demolition of another edifice--a demolition which is inevitable, if such counsels are to prevail. Our fathers raised in this land a temple to civil and religious liberty, and pledged to its support their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. That was no empty pledge, for the structure was cemented with their blood from corner-stone to pinnacle. And the genius whom they enthroned in the centre was no idol of wood and stone, to be used as a puppet by the designing, but a living creature. She was strong, and pure, and generous, and she had eagle’s eyes. She opened her arms to the world. She feared no alien foe, for 744 her strength could be shorn and her limbs manacled only by her own renegade children. It is you are her foes. These narrow and violent counsels which pretend to protect, do contradict her; the manacles which you forge for others, will fetter her; with the violence which you do to others, will her strength be shorn; and the spirit which you obey under her name will dethrone her. But do not fancy that you can blind and make sport of her with impunity. The time may come when that insulted spirit will take in her mighty arms the pillars of the nation, and pull it down in ruin on your heads. No, the foe is not the orphan she has cherished, nor the stranger within her gates, but the children she has nourished at her bosom.

“Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If any, speak; for him have I offended.”

When Mr. Yorke went home that night, though it was late, he found his wife and Betsey waiting for him at a turn of the road. He expressed no surprise nor disapprobation, but walked slowly homeward with them.

“What have they done?” Mrs. Yorke asked. She perceived that her husband’s arm trembled.

“Nothing can stop their running but themselves,” he answered. “They must fall by their own speed.”

“They listened to you?” she asked.

“Yes, they were civil, and even applauded a little. But what of that? In spite of all that I could do, they have passed a resolve, passed it unanimously, that, if Father Rasle comes here again, they will give him a suit that is not to be bought at the tailor’s.”

“What does that mean?” was Mrs. Yorke’s wondering question.

“You little goose! it means tar and feathers! Well, don’t let us talk any more about it. I am done with words.”

“Edith got into the crowd to-night,” Mrs. Yorke said, “and they were impudent. She took it very quietly then, I think, but after she got home she was quite hysterical. I thought the child would sob herself to death.”

“She had no business to be out,” her uncle exclaimed. “Neither had you and Betsey. How do you know what they may do?”

“You are right, dear,” she said soothingly. “In future, we will stay in the house, and you will stay with us.”