Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/141

 find it is the dominant power, and pay court thereto that they may rise by its help. They love Slavery itself; it is an institution thoroughly congenial to them, consistent with the first principles of their Church. Their Jesuit leaders think it is "an ulcer which will eat up the Republic," and so stimulate and foster it for the ruin of Democracy, the deadliest foe of the Roman hierarchy.

Besides, most of the Catholics are the victims of oppression,—poor, illiterate, oppressed, and often vicious. Their circumstances have ground the humanity out of them. No sect furnishes half so many criminals—victims of society before they become its foes; no sect has so little philanthropy; none is so greedy to oppress. All this is natural. The lower you go down the coarser and more cruel do you find the human being.

I am told there is not in all America a single Catholic newspaper hostile to Slavery; not one opposed to tyranny in general; not one that takes sides with the oppressed in Europe. There is not in America a man born and bred in the Catholic Church, who is eminent for philosophy, science, literature, or art; none distinguished for philanthropy! The water tastes of the fountain.

Catholic votes are in the market; the bishops can dispose of them—politicians will make their bid. Shall it be the sacrifice of the free schools? of other noble institutions? In some States it seems not unlikely.

I do not think our leading men see all this danger. But the baneful influence of the Church of the dark ages begins to show itself in the press, in the schools, and still more in the politics of America. Yet I am glad the Catholics come here. Let America be an asylum for the poor and the down-trodden of all lands; let the Irish ships, reeking with misery, land their human burdens in our harbours. The continent is wide enough for all. I rejoice that in America there is no national form of religion;—let the Jew, the Chinese Buddhist, the savage Indian, the Mormon, the Protestant, and the Catholic have free opportunity to be faithful each to his own conscience. Let the American Catholic have his bishops, his archbishops, and his Pope, his Jesuits, his convents, his nunneries, his celibate priestshood of hard drinkers, if he will. Let him oppose the public education of the people; oppose the press, the