Letter to President Wilson

March 17, 1913.
The Honorable Woodrow Wilson,
President of the United States,
Washington, D. C.
Your Excellency:
Called by an observant, appreciative, and admiring people to the highest office in the world’s gift, you have, in a career of singular and significant success, proceeded from position to position; advanced from responsibility to responsibility, ever justifying in your friends ‘ estimation the tribute paid to traveler of old: Coelum non animam mutant qui trans mare currunt.(Latin for “Change their climate, but not the soul of those who run across the sea.” — Google translate.)

Places, indeed, you have changed, but wherever duty has laid command on you, a remarkable fixity of purpose has animated your resolves, guided your determinations, and ennobled your successes.

You have, sir, as college professor and as president of a great university, inspired the flower of American youth with the worship of loftiness in ideals and purity in practice. You have stimulated ambition, fostered courage, developed righteousness, enlarged generosity, and directed way unerringly as well as invitingly to success untarnished by malevolence, unclouded by injustice.

You have as Governor of one of America’s historic Commonwealths shown firmness, foresight, and constructiveness in dealing with the complex problems of popular self-government constantly arising under our political system. To one feature in particular of your administrative methods, I may be permitted to refer. For American citizenship you hold reverential regard; for American citizens, both as individuals and en masse, you prove ready to use all Constitutional powers in you vested as safeguards against bosses and bossism. No citizen, however humble, suffering from injustice of any character, has been, so far, by you given deaf ear. You have, in your magnificent inaugural address, made appeals and defined principles which are at once an inspiration and an augury. Take, for instance, the following:

The firm basis of government is justice, not pity.
The first duty of law is to keep sound the society it serves.
The feelings with which we face this new age of right and opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like some air out of God’s own presence, where justice and mercy are reconciled and the judge and the brother are one.

Again, these words of warning : There has been something crude and heartless and unfeeling in our haste to succeed and be great.

Then, the forceful declaration dictated by fearless introspection:

Our life contains every great thing and contains it in great abundance. But the evil has come with the good, and much fine gold has been corroded.

I rejoice, Mr. President, to find you in such thorough accord with your illustrious predecessor and fellow-Virginian, George Washington, who said:

I know that as, on one side, no local prejudices, no separate views or party animosities must misdirect the comprehensive and equal eye, which ought to watch over this great assemblage of communities and interests; so, on another, the foundations of our National policy must be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality and the pre-eminence of a free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens and command the respect of the world. There exists in the economy of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness and between duty and advantage.

With the immortal Jefferson, you believe:

Equal and exact justice to all men of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations ; the support of the State Governments in all their rights; the preservation of the general Government in its whole Constitutional vigor; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principles of Republics from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of person. This road alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.

Side by side with the solemn, undying utterances of these early chieftains in American statesmanship will history place your own matchless definition of National duty and of individual obligation:

At last a vision has been vouchsafed us of our life as a whole. We see the bad with the good, the debased and decadent with the sound and vital. With this vision we approach new affairs. Our duty is to cleanse, to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the good, to purify and humanize every process of our common life without weakening or sentimentalizing it. There has been something crude and heartless in our unfeeling haste to succeed and be great. Our thought has been that ” Every man look out for himself; that every generation look out for itself,” while we have reared giant machinery which made it impossible that any but those who stood at the levers of control should have a chance to look out for themselves!

With striking and gratifying stress, as well as unanimity the American press receives your inaugural declarations as expressions of a patriotism above question; of promise above doubt; of determination without hint or suggestion of failure. Beginning with my home city, I find, sir, The Cincinnati Post writing:

In his inaugural address to-day the new President is like a reborn Lincoln.

For the first time in our generation, the Nation is asked by its elected head “to count the human cost” of greed and reckless ambition; TO PUT MEN AND WOMEN AND LITTLE CHILDREN BEFORE MERE DOLLARS.

Thus does the counsel of William Jennings Bryan, rejected with seeming scorn in 1896, become in 1913—a very brief time as time is measured in history—the will of the majority. For, make no mistake, the country is back of this appeal. Back of it so sincerely, with such firmness of determination, that no new outpouring of predatory money can debauch its purpose, no trickery or intrigue long delay the accomplishment of its aims.

The New York Times gives stately form to a general sense of approval:

No President of the United States, in any utterance, ever sounded a higher or clearer note of aspiration and idealism than Woodrow Wilson in his inaugural address yesterday. It is perhaps the most carefully studied, concise, and deeply moving expression that has yet been given to the new ideas which have become a force in our politics. The address will make a profound impression upon the American people and upon the friends of progress and of this Republic throughout the world. The people of this country will be inspired by the President’s word; inspired, we hope, with a resolve to do their part in accomplishing the noble purposes to which he dedicates and devotes his administration ; inspired, too, with confidence in their new President. Mr. Wilson speaks as a just man, as a man moved with the desire and with the intention to see that justice is done among men.

The Republican New York Tribune tenders congratulations in terms truly fitting:

President Wilson is to be congratulated on the scope and tenor of his inaugural address. The speech is creditably full of “vision and ideals.” It breathes a sincere desire to help the country forward, to protect and uplift the weak and those of narrowed opportunity, and to give free scope to the feelings of the new age which seek to bring into the conduct of human affairs a larger measure of mercy and justice.

Filled with hope, the New York Sun defines its attitude very cheerfully: We quote five words from President Wilson’s inaugural:

“We shall restore, not destroy.”

This is the promise, the pledge, the platform. If the promise is kept, the pledge redeemed, the platform obeyed, the administration now beginning with the good-will and good wishes and best hopes and reserved judgment of all of Woodrow Wilson’s fellow-citizens will be in the truest sense progressive, and in the truest sense conservative; and what more could any patriotic American desire?

Not to be outdone by Eastern contemporaries, the Chicago Tribune adds:

The inaugural address of President Wilson is an utterance singularly lofty in tone and felicitous of phrase. It is less a State document than an invocation, a prayer, and in that sense Americans of all parties will devoutly respond, Amen.

At any rate, the new President has made an appeal to his fellow-countrymen which will touch their loyalty and bring the cordial wish that he may cap high aspiration with noble achievement.

From cold and classic New England come the Boston Globe’s cordial acknowledgments:

The voice is the voice of a prophet and a leader. It remains to be seen whether the hand is the hand of a strong man, equal to the greatest task in the world.

Animated, sir, by the conviction that you are both prophet and leader, I call attention respectfully to the intolerable injustice on me personally, and through me, on the American public, as set forth in the columns of The Menace, a paper of National standing and circulation.

Jesuitical influences have, sir, busied themselves in protecting a Romanist offender and perpetuating the outrage by that Romanist offender on an anti-Romanist American citizen, unafraid of publishing the unhallowed personal experiences of twenty-one years of priestly life, the execrable purposes and stupendous crimes of Vaticanist agents and representatives. Persona gratissima is Postmaster Monfort of Cincinnati to the Jesuits, as The Commercial Tribune, Cincinnati, February 6, 1913, very fully establishes.

The Jesuit colony in Cincinnati is, sir, one of the oldest and most successful of that crafty order’s establishments in the United States. It lavishes no such attentions as those extended so munificently to Postmaster Monfort without such strong motives as recognition of services done the Order; hope of further favors for proteges, such as the profane, obscene, and blasphemous Hurney ; expectation of continued injury and outrage to be visited upon anti-Romanist citizens like myself through complacent postoffice officials.

When Hurney offered me grossest insult, he was, sir, clerk in the Mailing Division of the Cincinnati Postoffice; he was therefrom assigned, about December 1, 1912, to Station I, Avondale; he now, I am credibly informed and have reason to believe, comes to the General Postoffice every day from Avondale to serve for eight hours, in sorting all mail going to Avondale, a leading suburb of Cincinnati, of which mail he is during these hours in full control.

It would from all this seem, to ordinary observer, that outrage and insult upon inoffensive and unoffending American citizens by Roman Catholic postoffice officials establishes for the offender strongest claim to protection, advancement, and reward.

The true attitude of the Romanism we have in our midst is, sir, denned with great emphasis and overpowering lucidity by the Rev. David S. Phelan, LL. D., Rector of Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish, St. Louis, Mo., editor of The Western Watchman, official organ of Archbishop Glennon, active candidate for a “red hat” and high place among the “princes of the Church.” Editor Phelan enjoys not only the confidence of Cardinal that-would-be Glennon, but proudly points to the encomium of Cardinal Satolli, who declared him “the Dean and Senior of the Roman Catholic journalists of the United States.” The citation I offer from Editor Phelan ‘s assaults on American citizenship, on American loyalty, on American brotherliness, on the basic principles of the American Declaration of Independence, has never been disavowed by any higher Church authority; nor explained away, even in smallest measure, by its own author. The utterances of Priest-Editor Phelan are, therefore, the official declaration of war on American institutions by the Papal System in the United States. Why does Papal Delegate Satolli praise Phelan? Because Phelan is doing the will of his master in the Vatican. Why does Glennon of St. Louis so ardently co-operate with Phelan and make use of Phelan ‘s journalistic activities! Because Phelan is a person of importance, a scribe of value in the Roman System; a very Daniel come to judgment, valuable, indeed, in Glennon ‘s campaign for a cardinal’s hat.

The citation referred to above is taken from a copyrighted sermon which appeared in The Western Watchman, June 27, 1912, nnder the heading “Catholics Are Royal Now; They Will Be Divine,’ ‘ and which sermon was delivered by Priest-Editor Phelan on Sunday, June 30, 1912. He says:

We of the Catholic Church are ready to go to the Death for the Church. Under God, she is the supreme object of our worship. Tell us that we think more of the Church than we do of the United States; of course we do. Tell us we are Catholics first and Americans or Englishmen afterwards ; of course we are. Tell us, in the conflict between the Church and the civil government we take the side of the Church; of course We do. Why, if the Government of the United States were at war with the Church, we would say to-morrow, “To hell with the Government of the United States;” and if the Church and all the governments of the world were at war, we would say, “To hell with all the governments of the world. ‘ ‘ They say we are Catholics first and Americans decidedly afterwards. There is no doubt about it. We are Catholics first and we love the Church more than we love any and all the governments of the world; and we love the Church more than we love our fathers and mothers, we love the Church more than we love our own children. Why? Because we are children of the Church of Jesus Christ, and He says, “Unless you leave father and mother, sisters and brothers, kinsfolk and acquaintances for My sake, you are not worthy of Me.” I love the people of America; I love the people of every nation; I glory in their loyalty ; but let the governments of the world steer clear of the Catholic Church; let the emperors, let the kings, and the Presidents not come in conflict with the head of the Catholic Church. Because the Catholic Church is everything to all the Catholics of the world, they renounce all nationalities where there is a question of loyalty to her. And why is it the Pope is so strong? Why is it that in this country, where we have only seven per cent of the population, the Catholic Church is so much feared? She is loved by all her children, and feared by everybody. Why is it the Pope is such a tremendous power? Why, the Pope is the ruler of the world! All the emperors, all the kings, all the princes, all the Presidents of the world to-day are as these altar boys of mine. The Pope is the ruler of the World. Why? Because he is the ruler of the Catholics of the world, the Catholics of all the world, and the Catholics of all the world would die for the rights of the Pope. He is the head of the Church, and they would die for the Church. And the Church is the Church of Jesus Christ, and they need not have any misgivings on that score ; there need be no misconceptions there—the Catholics of the world are Catholics first and always; they are Americans, they ‘are Germans, they are French, or they are English afterward.

In the self-same sermon Priest-Editor Phelan, “the Dean and Senior of the Roman Catholic journalists,” spokesman-in-chief of Vaticanism, so declared and crowned with becoming papal laurels by Cardinal Satolli, bastard son of Leo XIII, and envoy extraordinary as well as minister plenipotentiary of the Vatican in the United States, goes on to state:

And even when Protestants come into the Church they find it profitable to say they are converts because they know the weakness of Catholics. The truth is, Catholics to-day look up to Protestants ; and to paraphrase the words of the first Pope, I repeat, “Look down on Protestants; yes, look down on them.” The poorest Catholic boy in this parish is a prince compared with the best Protestant boy in this city. Look down on them all. We, the children of the inheritance; we, the children of God, have a right to look down upon the plebeians of heresy and infidelity. Now, I tell you this is true in America, where we are all free and equal.

Defending the infamous “Motu Proprio” Decree of Pius X, Priest-Editor Phelan writes in his paper, January 25, 1913:

What hypocrites those Protestants are! Rowdies they always were ; but hypocrisy is now their most pronounced trait. Pius X did not retreat before the frenzy of the embattled Lutherans of Germany ; .he will not yield to the clamors of the hypocrites now. People are speaking for the pope, and some of them very close to him. We are assured that the privilegium fori does not apply to Germany, or to States with concordats. Don’t mind all such statements.

Pius X—Phelan to the contrary notwithstanding— yielding to the demand or command of Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, did, soon after the issuance of the “Ne Temere” decree, declare it inapplicable to Germany. Had our Government taken due steps to inform the world that any man in these United States declaring a legal American marriage null and void would be visited with sternest punishment, no Ne Temere papal legislation would break up American homes or bastardize American children born in lawful American wedlock.

The attitude of Priest-Editor Phelan towards America and American institutions is in strictest accord with papal fulminations. In his Encyclical dated at Rome, December 25, 1891, Pope Leo XIII said:

The American Republic under Protestant rulers is with the worst enemies of the Church. . . . This Republic, having seized upon the lands discovered by Christopher Columbus, a Catholic, and usurped the authority and jurisdiction of the Supreme Head of the Church, the United States is filled with obscure heretics. The Catholics have been oppressed and the preachers of iniquity established.

With deep sorrow we are now constrained to have recourse to the arm of justice, and are obliged to take action against a Nation that has rejected the Pope as head of all Church and State Governments.

The imminence of the issues raised in my work, ” Romanism—A Menace to the Nation,” and alluded to but briefly in this letter, urges an emphatic appeal to you, Mr. President, to arrest, without harshness or injustice to any section of our very much mixed population, the Romanizing— the Jesuitizing—of this Republic. Two recent incidents offer proof very conspicuous and truly alarming of Romanistic efforts in this fateful direction, aided and abetted, unfortunately, by a man eminent in American public life. In the Roman Catholic organ of this city, The Catholic Telegraph, March 6, 1913, there appears this very striking narrative: :

Me. Taft and the K. of C.

One of the last private functions attended by Mr. Taft was a reception given to him by the Knights of Columbus, last Saturday evening, in their hall on E Street. The building was packed. An address of welcome, of appreciation, and of farewell was delivered by one of the eloquent members of the fraternity. The President, in his reply, said:

“I am very much touched by the cordial and altogether too nattering tone of your welcome .and of your kindly farewell. I am going to a humble station to work out as best I can the problem of supporting a family and of doing as well as you can for other people. You have no motive—I can conceive of none, except that of good-will, good fellowship, and sincerity.”

He then urged that the Constitution should be safeguarded, because it represents a thousand years of struggle for liberty protected by law, and he made a plea for the independence of the judiciary, because, finally, the courts are the guardians of our rights under the Constitution. He was frequently applauded.

At the conclusion of his impressive address he put this sentiment and signature on a large steel portrait of himself, which will be framed to adorn the council hall:

“For the Knights of Columbus of Washington, D. C, with heartfelt gratitude for their cordial farewell.
“W. H. Taft.
“March 1, 1913.’

His visit will long be remembered by the Knights in Washington.

What a heritage, sir, Mr. Taft has left you! The Knights of Columbus have been long dear to his heart. Addressing that body at Portland, Oregon, October 12, 1911, Mr. Taft stated:

Instead of being a reason why you can not be patriotic, loyal sons of the United States, willing to yield up your lives if occasion calls, the fact that you are members of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States is an assurance that you are such patriotic, loyal citizens.

If, sir, it is the cheerful duty of Romanists, as Priest-Editor Phelan so clearly states it to be, to say, ‘ ‘ To hell with the United States’ should the United States dare differ from the Vatican — “To hell with all the governments of the world’ ‘ should the Government declare independence of the papacy—then strange, indeed, must be your predecessor’s view of patriotic loyal citizenship. The truly loyal and patriotic American citizen is loyal to America first, last, and all the time, regardless of desire, decree, edict, or ukase of foreign pontiff, kaiser, czar, or potentate of any dignity or description whatever.

You are, sir, a son of old Virginia, a State which made such generous sacrifices of blood and treasure for the doctrine of State Eights. The war between the States did not eliminate that doctrine from American political economy, but gave it more permanency through a clearer, more definite and enduring definition.

Enemy of that basic American principle of government is the Roman Catholic Church, the powerful ally of organized alcoholic endeavor in every State of the Union where liquor selling and liquor drinking have foothold, legal or illegal. To that Church, so closely tied up as to its financial interests and property development with the liquor trade, wholesale and retail, Mr. Taft paid, in the closing days of his reactionary and retrogressive administration, marked homage — testified to very fully by The Catholic Telegraph, already cited:

The bill, introduced by Representative Edwin Y. Webb, of South Carolina, to prohibit the interstate shipment of intoxicating liquors from “wet” into “dry” States to be used in violation of the local prohibition law, which passed both Houses of Congress by large majorities, was, on February 28th, vetoed by President Taft, who said:

“After giving this proposed ^ enactment full consideration, I believe it to be a violation of the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution, in that it is in substance and effect a delegation by Congress to the States of the power of regulating interstate commerce in liquors, which is vested exclusively in Congress,”

Mr. Taft supported his veto with citations of Supreme Court decisions and with an opinion by Attorney-General Wickersham confirmatory of the holding that the bill is unconstitutional.

Two hours after the veto was signed the Senate passed the bill again by a vote of 63 to 21, and on March 1st the House passed it again by a vote of 244 to 95.

So it is now law, and will remain law until a case can be decided by the United States Supreme Court.

No blow more lethal at States’ Rights, at the social security and moral uplift of Southern homes especially, could have been struck than the Taft veto of the Webb liquor bill. How the Bacchanalian cohorts of Rome’s ” loyal and patriotic” citizens applauded the President’s action! How zealously will this same element of moral turpitude and decay labor to induce the Supreme Court of the Nation to tear down the barrier, so honorably set up by Congress, between the homes of the South and the forces of liquor and lust!

What manner of men the Jesuits are is attested by a writer of National fame, Hon. R. W. Thompson, former Secretary of the Navy, who, in his celebrated work, “The Footprints of the Jesuits,’ ‘ openly charges that infamous body with the poisoning of Pope Clement XIII:

The impracticable demands of the Jesuits had brought on such an issue between the spiritual and the temporal powers as to leave no ground for concessions on the part of the sovereigns, so long as they were persisted in. They were bound to maintain their own temporal powers within their dominions, or else allow the Jesuits to rule over them according to their pleasure. To this they could not submit without absolute degradation. However strange it may now appear that the pope did not see this sooner, it should be regarded as creditable to him that, when he did see it, he bowed his head humbly before the pelting storm, and yielded to a necessity he could not avoid. Due credit should not be withheld from the man who does right, even at the last extremity, especially when, as in this case, after Clement XIII decided to change his course, he went to the extent of promising the sovereigns that “he would pronounce the abolition of the society in a public consistory,” and leave the Jesuits to suffer the consequences of their own folly. Having made up his mind to this, a day was appointed for the performance of the solemn act of signing the death warrant of the Jesuits. But this postponement led to a result which had not been dreamed of—one that furnished new evidence of the capacity of the Jesuits for intrigue. During the night preceding the day appointed for the public ceremony of announcing the abolition of the Jesuits, Clement XIII was suddenly seized with convulsions and died, leaving the act unperformed, and the Jesuits victorious. Cormenin, writing in France, where the Jesuits are better known and understood than here, records this event in these terse and expressive words: “The Jesuits had poisoned him. 9 ‘—pp. 223, 224.

The Jesuits put up a vigorous fight to elect a, successor to Clement XIII friendly to their society. The story of their failure is thus impartially recited:

It required three months to elect a successor to Clement XIII. The cardinals were divided into two parties—one supporting the Jesuits, and the other the Governments of France, Spain, and Portugal, united in opposition to them. The former desired to subject all civil governments to Jesuit dominion; the latter insisted that the Church and the State should each remain free and independent of the other in its own domain. After innumerable intrigues—such as are familiar to those who manipulate party conventions—the latter party triumphed by the election of Ganganelli, a Franciscan monk, who took the name of Clement XIV, and entered upon the pontificate in 1769.—Idem, p. 225.

To Pope Clement XIV, Mr. Thompson pays just tribute:

He was greatly esteemed for his virtues, and possessed a conspicuously noble character and a mind well and thoroughly disciplined. That he was a man of profound ability is abundantly shown by his letters, which have been preserved and published, and whieh contain many passages of exceeding eloquence and beauty. He was far better prepared, therefore, to form intelligent and impartial conclusions upon the evidence concerning the Jesuits than Clement XIII, because, apart from his qualifications, he was not under the dominion of undue prejudices. — Idem, p. 225.

Clement XIV courageously ordered the continuance of the investigation of the charges made against the Jesuits, already entered upon, till it should be completed, and determined that the questions involved should be decided according to right and justice.

This [says Mr. Thompson] was due to the sovereigns, to the public, and especially to the Church. Cormenin says he was suspicious of being dealt with like his predecessor, and that he took the necessary precautions to guard against it by substituting a faithful monk for the cook of the Quirinal, so as to guard against the possibility of poison. Howsoever this may have been, he persevered in his course with the courage of a man who fears no evil when in the faithful discharge of duty. Eesolved, however, not to act with undue haste, but to have all matters brought full before him, together with the evidence bearing upon them, he continued the investigation for the period of four years, so that when his final decision was made the world should be convinced that it was the result of calm deliberation and honest conviction. He says of himself that he “omitted no care, no pains, in order to arrive at a thorough knowledge of the origin, the progress, and the actual state of that regular order commonly called the Company of Jesus ;” and Ranke, the great historian, says he “applied himself with the utmost attention to the affairs of the Jesuits;” and adds that “a commission of cardinals was formed, the arguments of both sides were deliberately considered,” before his conclusion was announced. No greater deliberation and no more serious reflection could have been bestowed upon any question. The evidence was carefully inspected and everything duly considered. The scales were held at equipoise until the preponderance of proof caused the beam to turn against the Jesuits, when he was constrained by a sense of duty to the Church, to Christianity, to the public, and to his own conscience, to announce the result which gave peace and quiet to the nations and joy to the great body of Christians throughout Europe. This he did, July 21, 1773, by issuing his celebrated bull, “Dominus ac Redemptor”—called by the Jesuits a brief — whereby he decreed “that the name of the company shall be, and is, forever extinguished and suppressed,” that “no one of them do carry their audacity so far as to impugn, combat, or even write or speak about the said suppression, or the reasons and motives of it ; ” and that the said bull of suppression and abolition shall “forever and to all eternity be valid, permanent, and efficacious.” — Idem, pp. 226, 227.

Of what did Pope Clement XIV find the Jesuits guilty? He declares that, charged with things “very detrimental to the peace and tranquillity of the Christian Republic” by various sovereigns who had from time to time complained of them, Pope Sixtus V had found accusations against them “just and well founded.” He enumerates eleven popes, including Benedict XIV, who had “employed, without effect, all their efforts’ ‘ to provide remedies against the evils they had engendered. He accuses them of opposition to other religious orders; charges them with ” great loss of souls, and great scandal of the people,” with the practice of ” certain idolatrous ceremonies, ‘ ‘ with the use of maxims which the Church had “proscribed as scandalous and manifestly contrary to good morals;” with “revolts and intestine troubles in some of the Catholic States;” and with “persecutions against the Church” in both Europe and Asia.

Clement furthermore cites the fact that Innocent XI had forbidden “the company to receive any more novices;” that Innocent XIII felt obliged to threaten “the same punishment;” and Benedict XIV had decreed a general visitation and investigation of all their houses in the Portuguese dominions. Concluding that it would be “very difficult, not to say impossible, that the Church could recover a firm and durable peace as long as the said society subsisted,” Clement XIV pronounced final judgment in these impressive terms:

We deprive it of all activity whatever, of its houses, schools, colleges, hospitals, lands, and, in short, every other place whatsoever, in whatever kingdom or province they may be situated. We abrogate and annul its statutes, rules, customs, decrees, and constitutions, even though confirmed by oath, and approved by the Holy See or otherwise. In like manner we annul all and every its privileges, indults, general or particular, the tenor whereof is, and is taken to be, as fully and as amply expressed in the present Brief as if the same were inserted word for word, in whatever clauses, form, or decree, or under whatever sanction their privileges may have been conceived. We declare all, and all kind of authority, the general, the provincials, the visitors, and other superiors of the said society, to be forever annulled and extinguished, of what nature soever the said society may be, as well in things spiritual as temporal. — Idem, p. 231.

What happened to Clement XIV? Increased apprehensions as to the Pope’s personal safety followed the issuance of the bull, “Dominus ac Redemptor.”

The manner in which Clement XIII had met his death on account of the mere promise to suppress the Jesuits was [writes Mr. Thompson] well calculated to excite the fear that the same fate might befall Clement XIV in revenge for their actual abolition. Hence, all the avenues of approach to the pope were carefully watched, and the utmost precautions employed to guard against the possibility of poison. These were successful for about eight months, when a peasant woman was persuaded, by means of a disguise, to procure entrance into the Vatican and offer the pope a fig in which poison was concealed. Clement XTV was exceedingly fond of this fruit, and ate it without hesitation. The same day the first symptoms of severe illness were observed, and to these rapidly succeeded violent inflammation of the bowels. He soon became convinced that he was poisoned, and remarked: “Alas! I knew they would poison me, but I did not expect to die in so slow and cruel a manner I” His terrible sufferings continued for several months, when he died, ‘ i the poor victim, ‘ ‘ says Cormenin, “of the execrable Jesuits.” — Idem, pp. 227, 228.

Refusing to remain suppressed, the Jesuits finally succeeded, after forty-one years of intrigue, calumny, intimidation, and venality, in having their Society revived and restored by solemn decree of Pope Pius VII, one of the most reactionary pontiffs that ever filled the papal see. Pius conferred on the Jesuits the right to exist as an Order throughout the world, thereby approving and indorsing their vilification of his “infallible” predecessor, Clement XIV. He declared that his decree of restoration should be “inviolably observed,” and that it should “never be submitted to the judgment or revision of any judge.” He further commanded that “no one be permitted to infringe, or by audacious temerity to oppose any part” of his decree, declaring that any one guilty of disobedience thereto “will thereby incur the indignation of Almighty God and of the holy apostles Peter and Paul.”

Sworn enemies of civil and religious liberty, of popular self-government, and of all the beneficent influences of the Reformation, the Jesuits, immediately upon their restoration, got busy in striking their hardest blows at freedom of speech, of the press, and of religious belief. Encourage, did they actively, the alliance between the papacy and the monarchs of Europe, because both stood for the union of Church and State as the surest guarantee for the preservation of monarchism. Going to Rome, they enjoyed the plenteous patronage of the papacy, and their cunning hand is seen clearly in the Congress of the “Holy Alliance” at Verona, where the pope and allied sovereigns pronounced themselves, in the most solemn form, that they would continue to prevent the establishment of popular governments, and would unite all their energies in preserving the monarchial institutions where they existed, and in re-establishing them where they had been set aside by the people.

It was this Jesuitical declaration of the Holy Alliance which called forth the Monroe Doctrine, that every liberty-loving American should cherish as a second Declaration of Independence.

Acquiring complete domination in the councils of the Church, the restored Jesuits induced Gregory XVI, immediate predecessor of Pius IX, a pontiff of our own day, to denounce the “poisoned sources” which produced “that false and absurd or rather extravagant maxim that liberty of conscience should be established and guaranteed to each man,” and to anathematize the liberty of the press as “the most fatal liberty; an execrable liberty, for which there never can be sufficient horror.” He finally inculcated the duty of “constant submission to princes.”

It was Jesuitical intrigue and influence which railroaded the infamous dogma of papal infallibility through the Vatican Council. Leo XIII, a product of Jesuitical training and education, has again and again declared that the American people are doomed to rapid decay and ultimate ruin unless they reunite themselves with the Holy See of Rome and obey the pope and his successors, occupying the place of Christ on earth!

Well does Mr. Thompson indicate that a man must be stupid if he can not, and willful if he will not, see that, according to the religious doctrines announced by Pius IX and Leo XIII—omitting other popes—all the great fundamental principles of our Government and all the laws enacted to preserve them are held to be impious, and so in violation of the divine law that they may be rightfully resisted whenever the pope sees fit to command resistance. The Papal System condemns as violative of divine law these fundamental principles of free American institutions; the separation of Church and State; the freedom of conscience and of religious belief; the liberty of speech and of the press; the subjection of ecclesiastics to laws like other citizens; the people as exclusive depositaries of political power; the refusal to concede to the pope the potential power of conferring upon bishops and clergy the prerogative right to manage Church property in contravention of the civil laws ; and last, but far from least, the American Public School System established all over this Republic.

The effect of the papal infallibility dogma is thus defined by a Romanist writer, Very Rev. Thomas Canon Pope, in his authoritative work, The Council of the Vatican:

The Council will vindicate its authority over the world and prove its right, founded on a divine commission, to enter most intimately into all the spiritual concerns of the world, to supervise the acts of the king, the diplomatist, the philosopher, and the general; to circumscribe the limits of their speculative inquiries; to hold up the lamp which is to light their only path to knowledge and education; to subjugate human reason to the yoke of faith; to extinguish liberals, rationalists, and deists by one stroke of her infallibility. Infallible dogma is a brilliant light, which every intellect must recognize, whether willingly or reluctantly. . . . The Church claims its right to enter the world’s domain, and recognizes no limits but the circumference of Christianity; to enforce her laws over her subjects; to control their reason and judgment; to guide their morals, their thoughts, words, and actions, and regard temporal sovereign’s, though entitled to exercise power in secidar affairs, as auxiliaries and subordinates to the attainment of the end of her institution, the glory of God, and the salvation of the immortal souls of men. — p. 11.

Your Administration is already preoccupied with the serious problems arising from disturbed conditions in Cuba, Mexico, and the Central American Republics. With the celebrated Leon Gambetta, of France, who, soon after the disastrous Germanic war, into which the French prelacy and priesthood had plunged that country in 1870-1871, uttered plaintive cry of warning, America may be at early date obliged to exclaim, “Le clericalisme, voila I’ennemi.”

The hand, sir, of the clerical disturber and white slaver is at work in Latin America to create conditions inimical to American interests in all this hemisphere, and particularly to American rights in re the Panama Canal. Synonymous are, in Latin America, the terms “las- Americanos’ ‘ and “los fanaticos.” Eome teaches Latin American youth to hate from earliest infancy this America of ours, as the land of hidebound heresy and of ancestral hostility to Latin civilization. Notorious is the fact that the priesthood of Spanish American countries advises the sending of sons land daughters of wealthy families to Europe that these susceptible young folk of Latin blood may be spared the contamination of close association with heretic American boys and girls!

So far is the antagonism of Central and South American clerics carried to our American schools that even Romanist schools of approved orthodoxy in the United States are considered perilous to youthful Latin Americans. The very atmosphere of these United States is considered unhealthful for the perpetuation of any of the Romanist superstitions, unfortunately too prevalent in the countries to south of us.

Bear in mind, should Americans, the prophecy of General Lafayette, reared and educated a Roman Catholic:

“It is my opinion that if the liberties of this country—the United States of America—are destroyed, it will be by the subtlety of the Roman Catholic Jesuit priests, for they are the most crafty, dangerous enemies to civil and religious liberty. They have instigated most of the wars of Europe.”

Responsible is this same accursed agency for unsettled conditions at present in America. Mexico, rent in sunder, its smoking ruins drenched in blood; Central America, torn by sanguinary fanaticism, brother fighting brother and father fighting sons ; Brazil, menaced with a revolution of Romanist priestly origin to restore the empire under an Orleanist Catholic prince; Venezuela, and various other Latin States, disturbed, distracted, and oppressed by priestcraft, greed, and superstition: all give evidence, painful and portentous, of papal activities and aggression.

The coldness and hostility of Latin American States towards this Republic is, sir, I say it without fear of contradiction, due in controlling measure to the influence of the Roman prelacy and priesthood. The property holdings of the Church in Spanish America are enormous—in Mexico its real property alone is valued at $200,000,000.

Nothing the priests of Spanish America fear so much as an ingress of American trade; an adoption of American educational methods; an advent of the American free school, free press, and free speech; an election of America’s cult of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as rights inalienable of all men, born free and equal. Better, in priestly view—ten thousand times better— superstition, degradation, internecine conflict, with inevitable, oft-recurring seasons of slaughter and rapine, than the establishment of permanent free republican institutions on the American model, with fullest liberty of conscience guaranteed to all, offering adequate instrumentalities for the suppression of conventual, clerical, and prelatical White Slavery systems. We guard sedulously and rigidly against cholera and bubonic plague, but cholera and bubonic plague are blessings compared with White Slavery as it flourishes under the aegis of Romanism from Montreal to Montevideo.

In my book, “Romanism—A Menace to the Nation/ ‘ I charge that the Roman Catholic Hierarchy of Chicago profit very largely from contributions of gamblers, saloonkeepers, and white slave keepers, particularly so as a result of the work of the Vice Commission recently held in that city. I have it on the very best authority — authority that can not be disputed—that this Commission was manipulated and controlled by Roman priests. It serves to furnish them with most valuable information which they could not obtain through the Confessional or otherwise. Such information in the hands of the Roman Hierarchy affords a new and rich species of graft —Vice Commission Graft. The Vatican System thrives on ignorance, vice, and crime. No wonder the priests and prelates hope to establish similar Vice Commissions in the large cities throughout the country!

White Slavery is nowhere, sir, so rampant and audacious as in Roman Catholic countries. What Protestant city is the equal of Paris, Vienna, Naples, or Rome itself, in patronage of prostitutes and prostitution! “What Protestant country tolerates such irreverence for and disregard of the marriage vow as the Latin countries of Europe and America?

Illegitimacy is nowhere more prevalent than in Roman Catholic lands, both in the New and Old Worlds. Why? Because the priesthood holds not marriage in honor, nor womanhood in veneration.

You are, sir, to be asked by the Illinois Senate Commissioners to aid in the fight against White Slavery. The purity of your private life, the profound and abiding regard you inherit from Southern and Presbyterian blood for stainless family hearthstones, your record as educator and reformer, entitles you to leadership in such a movement. Tied up, should you not be, in slightest degree with Rome-bound and priest-ridden schemes of social reform, whether these schemes be indorsed by civic or State authorities.

The Roman priesthood has been in control of Latin America for four centuries. Where does prostitution more unrestrainedly flourish? Nowhere, save perhaps in the Latin countries of Europe, where for seven centuries or more priestly licentiousness has vitiated the very atmosphere and tainted every avenue, social and civic.

No, sir, no; Rome may not be permitted to inject her pernicious personality into the war on White Slavery. White Slavery is one of her most potent agencies of graft and gain—”Ubi Roma ibi infamia”—a war on White Slavery, with yon, sir, for chief, on the side of personal and domestic purity, can permit of no alliance or inmixtion with papal intrigue or priestly bestiality.

The greed, the aggressiveness, the intolerance of Romanist designs upon America has never been in recent years more deliberately, definitely, defiantly expressed than by the ” Right Rev.” Edward J. Hanna, Auxiliary Bishop of San Francisco, to the Knights of Columbus. Bishop Hanna wants all of this country, fenced in with a papal wall of granitic intolerance, for pope and prelacy of Rome. I call, sir, your especial attention to the menacing words of this Roman propagandist. Not Loyola, in his most sanguine hope and enthusiastic purpose to subject the world to papalistic absolutism and bloodthirsty cruelty, ever thought out a plan more carefully or delineated it more cold-bloodedly than does this ardent envoy of the reactionary Pius X detail his claim for Roman Catholic domination, in temporals and in spirituals, over this free Republic. Here are Hannahs words:

This country is ours by inheritance. The world was given to Christ for His inheritance. Truth always has a claim where error can not come. The Holy Roman Catholic Church brought the truth to America, and as we are the inheritors of the earth, this glorious country is ours by right—it ought to be ours by right-—by right of fighting and by right of conquest.

This country was found by a great Catholic — the man after whom our order has been named. The Catholics have made this as great as it is because we hold in our power and grasp the high principles that go to make greatness. We found this country and we have made it great. America is ours because we found it and because we have conquered it.

And what a noble inheritance it is! God’s country, with its valleys and its mountains, its rivers and its oceans—and the Kingdom of Christ stretching from sea to sea. This is our inheritance, and it is your duty as Knights of Columbus to hold and to keep that inheritance which we found, won, and are making our own.

Were any non-Romanist citizen to utter sentiments so seditious and so perturbing, he were surely called to task, if not incarcerated, at the instance of Knights of Columbus or other prelatical agencies. Roman prelates, priests, laymen are allowed a license of speech menacing social tranquillity and civic order throughout the Union.

What a perversion of historic truth Bishop Hanna’s utterly untenable, because unveracious, statement that the Roman Catholic Church alone brought the Gospel truth to America? What little of truth it has brought, sir, is so darkened and distorted by priestly corruption, lechery, greed, and cruelty as to handicap the saving power of these few Christian messages of upliftment which papist monks, Jesuits, and priests have occasionally professed solely to cover crime, rapacity, and other infamy.

The pure Gospel message, delivered by men of pure purpose and sainted life, never degrades. It uplifts, purines, blesses, and strengthens peoples saved by its touch. The Eoman message of lust and loot degrades and decimates1 every land it afflicts with pernicious presence and activity. Those parts of America, from Quebec to Quito, where Eomanism has acquired domination suffer to this day from its deadly and deadening touch; those parts which have accepted the Christian message of the Eeformation, the sublime, Godgiven tidings of purification, of enlightenment, of disenthralment of the benign and loving Jesus, have from Mexican line to Arctic Circle prospered and advanced. No, no, Mr. Hanna! America is not of the pope’s domain. It is, as you, Mr. President, know, the land of the free and the home of the brave, free to worship God as conscience, not papal despotism and darkness, may dictate. Not one State in this Union—not even New Mexico, so long under the ban and bane of Eomanistic semi-barbarism — may be, by a proud, fearless, and God-loving, Bible-reading people, suffered to become a Calabria or a Quebec, the only spots on earth where papalism to-day enjoys undisputed sway and shuts out light of Gospel, grace, and freedom.

Such, sir, is the foe that I have denounced and exposed, boldly and unanswerably, in my book, “Romanism—A Menace to the Nation.” Such the foe that, fastening itself on the postal service of this free country, exercises through complacent officials inquisitional powers.

I mail, under separate cover, copy of the book, “Romanism—A Menace to the Nation/ ‘ so generously lauded by people, press, and pulpit.

My purpose, Mr. President, is not to acquire mere personal gain or personal fame. A purer and, I would fain believe, better ambition impels me. My purpose is to live up to standard well set by Henry Van Dyke:

There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher. There is a nobler character than that which is merely incorruptible. It is the character which acts as an antidote and preventative of corruption. Fearlessly to speak the words which bear witness to righteousness and truth and purity; patiently to do the deeds which strengthen virtue and kindle hope in your fellow-men; generously to lend a hand to those who are trying to climb upward ; faithfully to give your support and your personal help to the efforts which are making to elevate and purify the social life of the world — that is what it means to have salt in your character.

The whole question resolves itself, sir, into this plain formulary: Is this a Government of the people, by the people, for the people, or a Government of the pope, by the pope, for the pope?

Bearing on my standing as author and publicist, let me cite: Pages 693, 694, 695, 696, 697, 698, 699, and 700 of my book, ” Romanism— A Menace to the Nation.”

With all respect for you personally, and for the great office the Nation has called you to fill, I ask respectfully that the matter of my complaint against postoffice clerk Hurney, now before the Postoffice Department of the United States, be brought to speedy decision. My earnest wish is, Mr. President, that you may be blessed and strengthened throughout your official life, and ever after, by the Almighty Father, whose Book your lips on inauguration day touched at these sublime and comforting words:

And I will walk at liberty: for I seek Thy precepts.
I will speak of Thy testimonials also before kings, and will not be ashamed.
And I will delight myself in Thy commandments, which I have loved.
My hands also will I lift up unto Thy commandments, which I have loved: and I will meditate in Thy statutes.

I have the honor to be, sir,
Very respectfully,
Jebemiah J. Cbowlby.

DIVISION OF IN REPLYING
SALARIES AND ALLOWANCES MENTION INITIALS AND DATE
Post Office Department
FIRST ASSISTANT POSTMASTER GENERAL
Washington

Mr. Jeremiah J. Crowley, Marcn U> 1913.
619 Johnston Building, Cincinnati, 0.
Sir:
The receipt is acknowledged of your letter of the 22d instant, addressed to the President [Taft], and referred to this Office for action, in reply to which I beg to state that your complaint has been sent to a postoffice inspector for a full and complete investigation, who no doubt will call upon you for any additional facts to substantiate the charges which you may be able to give him.

Upon receipt of his report you will be promptly advised of the action taken.
Respectfully,
Daniel C. Roper,
First Assistant Postmaster General.

Hon. Daniel C. Roper, March 25, 1913.
First Assistant Postmaster General,
Washington, D. C.
Dear Sir:
Mr. Charles Gr. Swain, postoffice inspector, called on me to-day in reference to my alleged complaint “as to the destruction of mail.”

My complaint in the letter addressed to President Taft, on February 22d last, and repeated in a letter to President “Wilson, dated March 17th, had to do exclusively with the outrageous insult and injury offered me by one Hurney, a postoffice clerk. That, sir, is the one subject of complaint from me now before your Department, and I do respectfully ask for early investigation and judgment thereon.
Respectfully yours,
Jeremiah J. Crowley.

DIVISION OF IN REPLYING
SALARIES AND ALLOWANCES MENTION INITIALS AND DATE
C. F.
Post Office Department
FIRST ASSISTANT POSTMASTER GENERAL
March 28, 1913.
Mr. Jeremiah J. Crowley,
619 Johnston Building, Cincinnati, 0.
Sir:
I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 17th instant, which the President [Wilson] has referred to this Office, relative to your complaint against Clerk Hurney, of the Cincinnati, Ohio, postoffice, for using disrespectful language. In reply I beg to state that the matter was referred to a postoffice inspector for a thorough investigation on March 14th, and your letter just received has been forwarded for consideration in connection with the case. Respectfully,
Daniel C. Roper,
First Assistant Postmaster General,

Up to the moment of this book’s going to press no redress has been vouchsafed me by the Government at Washington for the grievous wrong recited in the foregoing letters to Presidents Taft and Wilson.

Our Washington statesmen are, it may be, too busy attending requiem high masses for deceased Roman Catholic rulers to attend to administrative duties on behalf of the American people. Observe the subjoined, from The Catholic Telegraph, Cincinnati, April 24, 1913:

[Catholic Press Association.]

Washington, April 23d.—The President of the United States went to Mass on April 18th in St. Matthews Church, this city. The Holy Sacrifice was offered for the repose of the soul of Gen. Manuel Bonilla, the late President of Honduras. Msgr. Lee officiated, assisted by Msgr. Russell, Msgr. Mackin, and other priests. Vice-President Marshall, Secretary of State Bryan, other members of the Cabinet, the majority of the Diplomatic Corps, members of Congress, and other distinguished personages were also present. The Guardians of Bigotry and all the other bogus “patriotic” societies will have a fit when they learn that President Wilson was officially present at the celebration of Mass in a Catholic Church.

Americans who bow not before the idols of popery may well ask—Are our Presidents and Vice-Presidents, our Cabinet officers and the Judges of the Supreme Court, our Senators and Representatives placed in office to play part so subservient and so dastardly servile to Rome’s foulest purposes? Rome is now egging on Japan to annex Mexico, seize on the Philippines, on Hawaii and Alaska, to wipe off the United States of America from the map of the world’s great powers. While our Presidents are attending mass the Jap and other foreign emissaries in America are busy stealing plans from the Navy Department and studying every weak spot in our National armor, to report thereon promptly and fully to hostile governments.

Rome, hating a free, popular government like that of America, is ready to coalesce with Jap or any other agency—pagan, atheistical, or professedly Christian—to destroy our Nation. The following pages constitute a searchlight of unerring power and accuracy on Romish intrigue and diabolism.

The neglect of the United States Government to do me even elementary justice in the Hurney matter is paralleled exactly by the dilatoriness of the Iowa State authorities in adequately punishing my assailants at Oelwein, June 12, 1913, and by the cruel and callous refusal of Pittsburgh’s (Pa.) police system to investigate a robber’s forcible entrance to my apartment at the Hotel Henry, when he abstracted a watch especially valuable by reason of the memories it suggested. What form of brutal outrage must I next await?

Jeremiah J. Cbowley.
Cincinnati, 0., August, 1913.