THE REPUBLIC IN DANGER. aforesaid Reed. But, upon being released, said | town: affording the first instance of such a spec- Martin then declared he was a Roman Catholic, and vowed to God to cut off the head of any person who said he should not carry arms. After which, said Martin called for some drink, and drank of it with Dealey and Reed; and one of his toasts was, 'Damnation to the committee and their proceedings.' "Your petitioner has prosecuted them as law directs. But as the times appear to be very troublesome, and numbers of enemies, both to the Protestant interest and the present cause, are lurking amongst us, your petitioner hopes that you will inquire into such parts of their transaction as concerns the public; and your petitioner, as in duty bound, shall ever pray. MICHAEL HUBART. "SECRET, tar and feather him.* "Passed the Secret Committee, and ordered to be put in execution.t "On the back of the petition is written, in the real hand writing of William Henry Drayton, the chairman of the Secret Committee, the following, viz.: LOCHLIN MAKTIN, 1 The result is thus stated by Drayton, p. 273: 44 Now I am confident that the unfortunate beings who were thus selected to undergo this ludicrous and disgraceful punishment," endured it, not because they were guilty, but because they were of the class of mad dogs. Just think, for a moment, of the apprehensions of the sweet and veracious Michael Hubart, that in the year 1775, the "enemies to the Protestant interest" Protestant judge, and a Protestant jury, and were so numerous in this city, as that a Protestant prosecutors, and there could be none other, would be afraid to punish a Catholic malefactor!!! Only imagine the heroism and prowess of so formidable an array as Dealey and Martin, compelling so his friends in so large a city, to save his good a Protestant as Hubart, surrounded by precious life upon such ignominious terms!! Only figure to yourself the terror which pervaded the Protestant forces of this good city when the redoubted Martin brandished his glittering cutteau!!! But how fallen are the mighty! How fickle is Dame Fortune! The During the events which took place about, this time, and of which mention has been made, laurels had not yet faded on the brows of it is of some consequence to observe that in the the victors ere the chaplets are torn from course of June of this year (1775), Laughlin their heads; and that "Protestant interest" Martin, and James Dealey, having behaved in a which was so feeble, and which had so very improper manner respecting the general many enemies, boldly leads them, in unrecommittee and their proceedings, as well as resisted triumph, covered with their clucking specting the association; and having threatened Michael Hubart with death, unless he begged their pardon for having justified the conduct of the committee, he sent a petition respecting the affair to the committee of correspondence of Charlestown. This committee immediately transferred it to the secret committee of five, who, having considered the same, ordered both Martin and Dealey to be tarred and feathered. The order was promptly put in execution by suitable agents; and they were both stripped of their clothes, tarred, feathered, and carted through the streets of Charles This order is in a disguised hand, supposed to be that of William Henry Drayton, chairman of the Secret Committee. This certificate is also in a disguised hand, supposed to be that of Edward Weyman, one of the members of the Secret Committee. To land, and be discharged, upon his expressing his contrition in the most public man a hand is lifted to avenge the insult; not an Now, my friends, notwithstanding the eftify negroes, Roman Catholics, and Indians, fort of the notable Michael Hubart to idenand to exhibit the Roman Catholics and savages as leagued for the massacre of Christians, I apprehend you will believe with me that, in all likelihood, this was another of Mr. Weyman's devices, "calculated to arrest public attention and to throw odium on the British administration." Thus the process is natural and easy from nicknames to ill-treatment, from degrada- I remain, my friends, Charleston, S. C., August 1, 1831. LETTER IV. B. C. Θερσίτης δ' ἔτι μενος αμετροεπὴς ἐκολώα, HOMER. MY FRIENDS-I will not assert that the object of our evangelical opponents is to procure Roman Catholics being tarred and feathered; on the contrary, I believe they have no such object. But I do state that I believe their intention in continuing the use of nicknames is, first, to bring Catholics into contempt; and secondly, to deprive them of sympathy, and to excite against them suspicions of the worst kind and subject them to unmerited distrust, and to its natural consequences. lic?" The mouth-piece of the brotherhood will tell him that it is, and will call the Catholic beast. Let him view the pictures drawn of the intemperate in all the associated publications; let him ask what is the object of the writers, of the preachers, of the societies; is it not to cover intemperance with the contempt, and the disgust, and the hatred of the community? When, therefore, we are told by the same associates "that Popery should be noticed in connexion with intemperance," is it not their intention to cover Catholics with the contempt, and the disgust, and the hatred of the community? Yet these are your men of sublime charity! These your men of tender mercy! These your men who oppose bigotry! These the only men who seek to preserve our republican affections! Look around, my friends, review your Catholic neighbours, and ask yourselves do they deserve this contumely? Are they justly exposed to this hatred? We have seen the manner in which they were treated previous to the Revolution, in what were then the colonies. I have given you only a few specimens: I can, if necessary, multiply them to disgusting satiety. Then they were charged by the legislative bodies, by the popular assemblies, and by individuals, with a slavish spirit, with perfidious designs, with leaguing with negroes and savages for the extermination of Christians, to the destruction of freedom. It is not for me here to say, how they behaved in the contest. In their own address to President Washington, they tell him, "Whilst our country preserves her freedom and independence, 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 our common exertions for her defence, under your auspicious conduct." Upon those grounds they asserted, respecting those equal rights of citizenship, "we expect the full extension of them from the justice of those states which still restrict them." Besides the unjust and improper restricThe editor of the Telegraph, besides using tions against Catholics, which yet are to be the nomenclature which I have before ex- found in the constitutions of New Jersey hibited, tells his readers that "Popery should and of North Carolina, and those of some be noticed in connexion with intemperance." of the New England States; the latter of Let any person who possesses self-respect which have been since repealed, the folas a man, or any portion of religious senti-lowing were then the 12th and 13th secment, ask himself what is the estimation in tions of the constitution of South Carolina: which the drunkard should be held. Let him view the body unnerved, the countenance bloated, the eye dull, the dress slovenly, and covered with the stains of vomit: contemplating this personification, let him ask, "Is that the representation of a Catho "12. No person shall be eligible to a seat in the Senate unless he be of the Protestant religion." 13. No person shall be eligible to sit in the House of Representatives unless he be of the Protestant religion." THE REPUBLIC IN DANGER. These have been repealed, and South Carolina at present, not only has the letter of her constitution, but the spirit of her legislature and of her other departments, kind, liberal, and just. None had better opportunities of appreciating the conduct of the Catholics than General Washington possessed; and his answer to the address contains the following paragraph. "As mankind become more liberal, they will be more apt to allow, that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community, are equally entitled to the protection of the civil government. I hope ever to see America amongst 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 accomplishment of their Revolution, and the establishment of their government; or the important assistance which they received from a nation in which the Roman Catholic faith is professed." One of the Catholics who subscribed that address, and who received that answer, yet survives. Isolated in his grandeur, he raises his modest head amidst the graves of all his companions, linking together the past and the present generations; all the affections which we would transmit to the venerable fathers of our republics converge in him, and through him are conducted to them; well has his life been devoted to the practice of virtue, nobly has his fortune been pledged for the benefits of myriads yet unborn; he has seen nearly a century pass away, and his honour is yet untarnished and sacred. And will America permit his departure to be embittered by the proclamation, that because of his profession and practice of the religion of the Alfreds, of the Augustines, of the Dorias, of the Tells, of the Ambroses, of the Fenelons, of the vindicators of Magna Charta, of the heralds of Christianity, of the discoverers of this continent; that, because he is a member of that church which preserved literature and civilized the world, the venerable Charies Carroll shall be classed with the most degraded portion of our sots by unappeasable and domineering bigotry? Yet, is not this the effort which is made? Again, my friends, I call upon you to look to your Catholic neighbours; and ask -do they deserve such a stigma as this? It is true that few of their names are to be found upon the lists of what are called "temperance societies."-Yet it does not follow that they are intemperate. Others might have been actuated by the same motives which influenced him who addresses you, when he declined the invitation to enrol his name. He never was, and trusts in God, that he never will be intemperate : I believe, my friends, that for such reasons as these, few Catholics have joined or are likely to join these societies. I have also heard several members of other churches say, that they would not enter such associations; because they looked upon them to be, only means used for extending the influence, and upholding the power of what is intended to be a "religious party in politics." But it will be said that this is not the ground upon which "Popery should be noticed in connexion with intemperance"-for the very essay itself is too plain to be misunderstood; it is the intrinsic baseness of "for next to the fire which Popery itself that places it on a level with power intemperance; burns out reason and conscience, that is to be dreaded which stupifies conscience, and blinds understanding, and withholds the only light which can guide human reason aright, and makes the whole man a superstitious slave to the impositions of a crafty priesthood." I believe I need take no trouble now to show that the object of the saints is to bring Catholics into contempt; for what can be more contemptible than a body whose consciences are stupified, whose understandings are blinded, and who are the superstitious slaves of a crafty and deceitful priestfarther Need I enter into any hood? examination to show that the object is to deprive us of sympathy, to excite suspicion, and to subject us to distrust when we are exhibited as objects of dread? And who is the man that thus denounces not only half a million of his fellow-citizens, but the vast majority of the Christian world? The denunciation is against the Roman Catholic Church, which numbers in its communion considerably upwards of one hun Ib. p. 74. take a stool, and standing upon that stool, you "If you cannot reach a book off a shelf, you are able to reach down the book; the stool are there gifts; grace alone, many times cannot reach down such a notion in divinity, as it is able to do by the help of gifts: gifts are given for the help of grace; they are the handmaids of grace, and they bring forth sweetly upon the knees of grace."-Bridge's Sermon before the Lord Mayor, 1653, pp. 49, 50. "I do not boast, but I speak it to his glory, that God vouchsafed to take up his lodgings in so vile, so contemptible, unswept, ungarnished a room as this unworthy cottage of mine; but it well's learned, devout, and conscientious exercise was his will, and I am thankful for it."-Cromheld at Sir Peter Temple's upon xiii. Rom. 1. 1649, p. 3. dred and fifty millions of the civilized popu- | it, and fall to, and much good may it do you."lation of the globe. And by whom? By the mouth-piece of one of the smaller divisions of the modern separatists from the church of ages. I do not wish to write unkindly; I would not write offensively of any one of the religious societies which cover our territory; but it is necessary often to bring those who are ignorant or forgetful, to the contemplation of facts. If the doctrines of the Catholic Church stupify the conscience, how has it happened that the best works, for the direction of conscience, that are found amongst our separated brethren, who boast so much of their light, are garbled imitations of the Catholic writers, only deteriorated by their omissions? How has it happened that in the works of Catholic writers, before the unfortunate secession of Luther, all the great maxims of piety and morality are so conspicuous? How has it happened, that in the bosom of the Catholic Church they have been studiously preserved, zealously enforced, continually expounded, and nobly reduced to practice? It is true, that the Gersons, the Kempises, the Bourdaloues, the Fenelons, the Rodriguezes, the Granadas, the Francises of Sales, the Massillons, the Gothers, the Challoners, and men of that description, wrote in the plain and intelligible language of common sense, and of fervid piety, that whilst they enlight ened the conscience, they did not shock the taste, nor disgust the understanding, though they won upon the heart. Their mode of stupifying the conscience was not indeed similar to that of the holy men who would sweep our church with their besom of de 46 'Ye know, dear saints, that the sweet spirited nightingales, and robin red-breasts cannot endure cages, but will soon die ; nor can precious souls be cooped up, or kept in durance under any form whatsoever, but they must be left free to fly up and down in Christian_liberty."Epistle Dedic. to John Rogers's Bethshemesh, p. 47. "Let any true saint of God be taken away in the very act of any known sin, before it is possible for him to repent: 1 make no doubt or scruple of it but he shall be as surely saved as if he had lived to have repented of it."-Prynn's Perpetuity of a Regenerate Man's Estate, p. 431. "The child of God in the power of grace doth perform every duty so well, that to ask pardon for failing either in the matter or manner of it, is a sin; it is unlawful to pray for forgiveness of fall, he can, by the power of grace, carry his sin sins after conversion; and if he does at any time to the Lord, and say, here 1 had it, and here I leave it."-Fifty Propositions taken from Brierly's Mouth, prop. 19. These, I acknowledge, are not the maxims by which the conscience of a Catholic is enlightened. He must be guided by the great rules of moral truth as revealed by God, and expounded and testified by the great bulk of the Christian world, in communion with the successor of that Apostle, to whom Christ declared, that upon that rock (Peter) would he build his church, against which the gates of hell should never prevail; that church founded and established in doctrine, after Christ, by the Apostles, upon whom the Holy Ghost descended, to lead them into all truth, and which truth was to continue for the guidance of the Christian people, as the pillar of the cloud and fire remained to bring Israel into the land of promise. The fervent, faithful disciples of the early ages, the martyrs and their companions, gave to our predecessors the sacred volume which contains these maxims, together with the comment of their writings, and of their conduct. Scattered through thousands of churches, in every habitable portion of the globe, the zealous people preserved the deposit with religious celestial influence. fidelity under the powerful protection of the Occasionally, proud men, and sometimes weak men, at other times, corrupt men, went out from this body, censured for using novelties which could not be tolerated, because of their in THE REPUBLIC IN DANGER. compatibility with the original truth. The writings, the institutions, and the recorded conduct of those men who in their days were acknowledged to have comprehended and taught the true doctrine and practice revealed in the sacred volume, exhibited to the inquirer in the midst of the fluctuations of opinion, what was the correct rule for his conscience. What the Basils, the Gregorys, the Chrysostoms, the Augustines, the Ambroses, the Cyrils, the Jeromes, have taught from the sacred record, is that which guides the Roman Catholic to-day: this he prefers to the lucubrations, the conjectures, the anxieties, the experience, the backslidings, and the contradictions of "nightingales, and robin red-breasts," who wander to and fro in the full enjoyment of their powers of aberration. And yet we are told of this religious writer that the vast majority of the Christian world, guided by such means in the exposition of the sacred text are "stupified in their consciences!!!" By whom has his been illustrated? He has had the spirit poured forth upon him. He has been a man of prayer, and he has been taught by heaven. am ready to admit, that "could we see a spirit of prayer poured down upon us, I would not question but that God would open the bottles of his mercy and rain down upon us a blessing in abundance." (Sclater's sermon, Oct. 13, 1658, p. 60.) But the spirit of prayer and its form are two very different things. And it is not by saying, "Lord, Lord," but by doing the will of the Father, that man is to obtain a blessing. The will of the Father is, that we obey the Saviour, and the Saviour commanded us to hear that tribunal which he established, and whose ministers he sent with a commission to teach he did not command us to destroy the tribunal, and first proclaiming unrestricted freedom under the pretext of unproved inspirations, then endeavour to subject others, under the semblance of an underived commission. My friends, I have deviated from my plan in making this skirmish against the position that Catholics have their "consciences stupified," my object was not so much to combat the assertion, as to show the aim of the writer. I shall not therefore dwell at present upon the refutation of his other charges. "That the understandings of Catholics are blinded," and that they are the "superstitious slaves of a crafty priesthood," as also the charge that this priesthood is guilty of "impositions." I shall merely ask upon what are these charges based? It would seem from his article that the only reason he vouchsafes to give is, that the Catholic Church" withholds the only light which can My friends, "if by multiplying the streams and branches my stay may be a little longer than ordinary, I beforehand beg your pardon and patience, withal entreating the sharpening of your appetites, that you may eat of this pleasant fruit which grows upon these branches and drink of the waters of life which flow from these streams; and having your souls refreshed, I shall then dismiss you to that love feast which is prepared for your bodies."-Nat Hardy's Sermon before the city of London, at their yearly feast in St. Paul's. May 27, 1658, p. 3. I have the honour to remain, Charleston, S. C., August 8th, 1831. LETTER V. B. C. MY FRIENDS:-If you inquire what could be the ulterior objects which the editor of the Southern Religious Telegraph sought in bringing Catholics into contempt and hatred: That production informs you I will refer you to his own production for the answer. of what I admit to be a fact; and I am gratified beyond measure at its development. The Catholics as they become better known, |