226

THE CHURCH AN ARISTOCRACY.

ber. In its light the peasant and the monarch stand on the same level. Now the simple reason why the lower classes hate the Church of England is, that it reverses the entire spirit of Christianity. It opposes the progress of the democratic principle, in which they and the world are so deeply interested. It is the most oppressive aristocracy in England. Its exclusiveness and pomp equal that of the nobility; while the tithes and taxes it wrings from the poor man, who is struggling to live, render it more obnoxious than the hereditary Aristocracy itself. Wherever new churches rise, new burdens are created for the people around them. And the clergyman who issues his warrants on Saturday, to force the collection of his tithes, is not very likely to win the poor man's heart to love of that Saviour who came to preach the Gospel to the poor, without money and without price.*

institutions for the poor; and especially do we want religious institutions for the poor; and it is partly because we have in our towns no Church, no religious ministers, and no effective religious ministration for the masses of the poor, that they are still in so wretched a condition."

* In Ireland this oppression is not borne with so much moderation. England has been obliged to keep a standing army there to execute her injustice. Lord John Russell declared, that without this army not a penny would be collected from a single Catholic in Ireland for the support of the Church.

The Irish blood is often too hot to submit tamely to these violations of home and property; this enormous tax to support what they most bitterly hate. Who

land, there are nine hundred and forty-one churches and stations; in Scotland, one hundred and ninety-one, making in all, one thousand, one hundred and thirty-two. Thus, there is an increase of thirty-four churches in England, during the year. There are also fifty-eight monasteries in England. There are none avowedly as yet in Scotland. There is an increase during the year, of two of these institutions. There are one hundred and eighty-seven nunneries in England, and fourteen in Scotland; in all, two hundred and one, showing an increase during the year, of five in England, and of one in Scotland. There are ten colleges in England and two in Scotland, which is the same number as last year. Cardinal Wiseman, in order to illustrate to his audience at Mechlin, the progress of his operations in London, showed the number of churches, nunneries, monasteries, hospitals and orphanages, for 1829, 1851 and 1863, and, bringing down these figures, so far as we can with certainty, to the present date, we see the more readily, the steady and rapid progress which the Church of Rome is making, especially in the metropolis of the kingdom:

Years.

1829

1851

1865

Churches.
29

46

117

Nunneries.
1

9

31

Misterius 0

2

15

SLAUGHTER BY THE CHURCH.

227

I wage no war against Episcopacy, nor against the religious doctrines of the Church of England. Nor do I apply any of

that ever read it, has forgotten the slaughter of Rathcormac? Having procured a military force from the government, Archdeacon Ryder headed the troops himself, and led them down to the cottage of widow Ryan, to force the collection of £5 tithes, which she had not paid because she could not. It was regarded by the populace as a barbarous cruelty upon a poor widow, and they pressed him to desist. "He gave orders first to draw swords, next to load, and at last to fire. He was obeyed. Nine persons were killed, and as many wounded."

There were 2,900 Catholics in the parish, and only twenty-nine Protestants, and half of these were members of the Archdeacon's family. The tithes of the parish were between $7,000 and $8,000 a year. The "Minister of the Cross" shot down more persons than his whole congregation amounted to, exclusive of his own family! The heart-sickening details of the widow searching among the dead bodies for her son, her finding him with his mouth open and his eyes set in the fixedness of death, the closing of his eyes, and the arranging of the body in the decency of death, amid the blood where he lay, are all too terrible to be minutely described! Another widow had two sons killed in this ecclesiastical slaughter. "When their lifeless, but still bleeding bodies were brought into her house, she threw herself on them, and exclaimed, in Irish, 'They are not dead, for they are giving their blood.'" And when the terrible truth forced itself on her that her noble boys were no more, she went mad!

This bloody massacre was to get £5 worth of corn, due to the Archdeacon for tithes. Stanzas have been composed to commemorate the bloody scene, which shall yet be sung at the funeral of the Church Establishment in Ireland. The last verse runs thus

"The widow knelt, and she muttered low,
'On the men of Rathcormac, wo! wo! wo!'
The curse of the widow who shall bear:
God of the childless, hear her prayer!"

He will hear it, or the Bible is a fable, and Heaven a lie. The song will be incorporated in the barbaric literature of the lower classes of Ireland. The fearful tragedy shall be handed down from generation to generation, making each Irishman a sworn Hannibal to the English Church until it is overthrown. It shall yet ring in their wild battle cry as they pour on their foes. That murder scene shall be emblazoned on their banner, and nerve many a heart to deeds of wilder strength, long after the descendants of him who committed it shall have crumbled to dust. Cowered by the tremendous physical force that continually frowns on them, they remain silent. Yet each of these deeds of oppression and murder is treasured up in their hearts, handed down from father to son, and waits the day of vengeance! Whether Ireland shall ever be free and independent or not, we cannot tell, but that she will have a bloody reckoning with England, unless her oppressive hand is removed, we cannot doubt.

228

AN UNAMERICAN AMERICAN BISHOP.

my remarks on the Church of England to the Episcopal Church of this country. That Church I honor. But the unholy alli

* Among the rare instances in which American citizens in foreign countries have disgracefully turned their backs on the spirit and principles of their Institu tion, was a distinguished American Bishop of the Episcopal Church. At a sumptuous banquet of Prelates of the Church of England, the following toast was proposed in honor of the guest-the American Bishop:

"The Right Reverend Dr. -, Bishop of America," with three times three."

and the Church in

In a speech replying to this toast, the Bishop says: "The Church in America stands unsupported, unconnected with the State. I need not draw any comparison. I hold it to be your great privilege that your Church and State are connected, and inseparably connected, as I believe and hope, in God's name, for ever." (Cheers.)

How the Bishop could thus coolly record his own shame, his falsehood to his country, and his puerile servility to the prelates who flattered him, is to me quite astonishing. I make no comments on this strange paragraph. I only say to those of my countrymen who regard a union of Church and State as one of the greatest calamities that could befal us, Keep your eye on such men !

Yet all this, anti-republican as it is, we could have passed without notice, and only pitied the bigotry and servility displayed in it. But there is one thing not to be pardoned, and which will awaken the indignation of every man who has a drop of the blood of the l'uritans running in his veins. In a speech made by the Bishop in St. Mary's Hall, Coventry, is found the following remarkable passage, which I have taken the liberty to underscore:

"I have lived in a land peopled by those who emigrated from this country. It is the fashion to call some of them the Pilgrim Fathers-men who fancied themselves somehow straightened in the enjoyment of religious liberty-who, in the claim of greater freedom in God's worship and service, set out for distant shores, and planted themselves in a region now called New England: I enter not into the inquiry as to the character of these men, the justice of their com plaints, or the motives for their proceedings-I will accord to them all that charity can ask. They went from here, as they thought, and truly believed, the true followers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; preaching, as they thought, the very principles of the Reformation-but without a Church-without a Liturgy-with no transmitted authority from God to administer in holy things.”

The result of this sacrilegious invasion of the prerogatives of the Church, he makes to be the prevalence of “Unitarianism, Atheism, and Pantheism, in New England."

Now, I venture to say, that no native-born American, for the last seventy years, has dared to utter so contemptible a sneer at the Pilgrim Fathers; and yet he is "willing to accord them all that charity can ask." And what "charity," Sir Bishop, do the Pilgrim Fathers ask of you? Charity! No other Ameri

INSULT TO THE PILGRIM FATHERS.

229

ance of the Church with the State-the corruptions and oppressions that have grown out of that union, and, above all, the

can has been found so false to his country, and those who left him the rich heritage he enjoys, as not to render them a proud and cheerful reverence. Charity from a Bishop of the Church of England to the Pilgrim Fathers!

You say it is the fashion to call some of them Pilgrim Fathers, intimating, in no obscure language, that it is the soubriquet of the ignorant and the superstitious. You add, "Men who fancied themselves somehow straightened in the enjoyment of their religious liberty." A fancy indeed, that cost them dear. The war-whoop of the Indian-the roar of the wintry storm-a desolate unpeopled continent, methinks were a sad relief from fancied wrongs.

Poor, credulous, superstitious men, to leave the bosom of the mother church, whose slightest fault was that she was a dry nurse! You" will enter into no inquiry as to the character of these men." Indeed! You will in charity forbear-with that species of insinuation which is the worst calumny's best weapon -lest painful truths should be divulged! Meek minister of Christ, how much you can overlook even when you cannot forgive! But seriously, Sir Bishop, do you venture at this day to wag your mitred head at the "Mayflower," as she struggles along the middle Atlantic, surrounded by all the terrors of the midnight storm? Can it be that insulting fling was meant for that frail, yet Godprotected vessel, as she rocks in Massachusetts Bay-her icy deck crowded with men kneeling in solemn covenant with God, who, alas! had given them "no authority to minister in holy things." Poor deluded men! under "fancied" wrongs they had fled to our inhospitable wilderness, and having "no authority to minister in holy things" they must live without Christianity. No cathedrals -no rich livings-no widow's tithes-no poor man's church rates-no fines on the renewal of leases-no fox-hunting clergy-no starved curates-and above all, no Bishops deriving their authority from St. Peter through all the Popesnone of these things to constitute them a Church of the living God!

You have the honor, sir, of being the first one who has sneered at the Pilgrim Fathers, while enjoying the priceless privileges of moral and political liberty won by their blood. Far from my humble pen the presumption of undertaking to defend these noble men! There are their graves, but the dead are not in them they live in the hearts of their countrymen. Around them cluster the noblest associations of freedom. The civil and religious liberty they left us we hold and will hold forever, though there are found men in our midst so false to their birth, so servile to foreign despotism, as to talk depreciatingly of them, and fulsorely, in a company of English hierarchs, about the glorious privilege of a union of Church and State !

66

False-hearted American !—unworthy priest! Leave, then, a country which reveres the Pilgrims, and abhors an "Established Religion" you esteem SO great a privilege," and go back to the government you so congenially reverethe institutions you so affectionately eulogize, and spend your sympathizing

230

THE CHURCH MUST GO DOWN.

Church as an enemy of the interests of the working classes; as an adversary of the spirit of liberty in England, will have my uncompromising opposition.

There are many reasons why the Establishment is odious to the British people—many reasons why the poor hate, and will continue to hate it-many reasons why it should go down. It is one of the last strongholds of Feudalism; and whatever may be the fate of the Government, the Establishment must be swept away, just as the Corn Laws were, and for the very same reason. It is a strong bulwark I know; it has gathered round it the patronage, the wealth, and the power of ages; and it will struggle hard before it gives over the conflict. But it is now drawn into the field, and there is no retreat from the final battle; neither is the issue doubtful. For a spirit has been awakened in our times among the masses, which has always in past times been confined to a few—a spirit which will not brook the despotism that has hitherto controlled the world—a spirit that clamors for change, because change is necessary to the advancement of the race; a spirit which has given birth to the grand improvements which have marked the progress of modern civilization, and which is determined to blot out every vestige of that vast prison-house, in which humanity has slumbered in darkness and chains for thousands of years.

prayers for a Tory ministry which you boast your Church brought into power, for they will in return plunder the poor of the realm, and tax the starvation of dying thousands and tens of thousands, to fill the insatiate pockets of the order, of which nature so admirably fitted you to be a member and an ornament!

I have thus spoken of the Bishop's remarks, to show the spirit of aristocratic hatred to free institutions that pervades the Established Church. If these be its exhibitions in an American, nurtured and bred in the principles of liberty, overcoming even the love of his native land, what ought we to expect from those who are instructed in the principles of aristocracy, strengthened by love of country? Just what has been described in the body of this work-oppression of the poor-contempt of their rights-worldliness and irre'igion. In England we fear them not. In this country, as that Bishop will find, a mitred head can poorly sustain the withering scorn the sons of the Pilgrims will pour on their heads, for such base betrayal of them in the land of their oppressors.