Now, this, the great objection to our Order, comes from men who belong to Lodges of Free Masons and Odd Fellows, and who have taken all the binding oaths attached to the different degrees of these respective Orders! The same objection is urged against the American party, by men who belong to the Order of Sons of Temperance, who have deemed a rigid secret organization necessary to combat successfully a domestic evil! It is urged in bitterness against the Order, by demagogues and partisans, who have acted for years with the secret political conclaves of their respective parties, who have held their meetings with closed doors—kept their places of meeting a profound secret—and when they have adjourned, they have enjoined secrecy upon all present! Last, but not least, this secret feature is urged against the American organization by the vile apologists for the Catholic Church, and its corrupt Priesthood and membership, in this country. These demagogues know that the Roman Catholic Church is a secret society, directed by a talented, designing, and villainous HIERARCHY—absolutely controlled by an anti-Republican Priesthood, to a degree which has never been exercised by any political party in the known world! The Confessional is a secret tribunal, before which every member of that Church is required to make known, not only immoral actions, but every thought and purpose of the heart, and upon pain of incurring the anathema of the Church, which is equivalent to a sentence of eternal damnation! The corrupt order of JESUITS, the infamous society of SAN FEDESTI, and the infinitely infernal society of IRISH RIBBON MEN—these are all oath-bound societies of the Catholic Church, connected directly with the horrid operations of the "Holy Inquisition."

Now, I put the question to any man of reason and common sense, if Roman Catholics and their patriotic Democratic admirers and advocates, in this country, are not the last men on earth who should object to the secret doings of the order of Know Nothings, even if their secrecy were kept up? Every Roman Catholic in the known world is under the absolute control of a secret society, by considerations not only of a temporal, but of an ETERNAL WEIGHT!

But I am not done with these Democratic opposers of SECRECY. The Convention which formed the Constitution of the United States, sat in the old State House in Philadelphia, with closed doors, from the 25th of May to the 17th of September, wanting only eight days of four months. That body of men had a Doorkeeper and Sergeant-at-arms, both under oath, to keep their doors barred, and all their proceedings a secret. So says Mr. Jefferson's biography! And such men as Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Harrison, Hancock, Hopkins, and others, composed that body! During the war of the Revolution, General Washington, Generals Lee, Wayne, Marion, and others, organized a secret American Society, with its branches extending from North to South, having their passwords, signs, and grips, and writing to each other in figures, and "an unknown tongue," as the Know Nothings have been doing, and all, too, with a view to oppose Foreign intrigues and oppressions! It is as well known as any political truth, that General WASHINGTON, at the time of his death, was the President of the Cincinnati Society, a secret political society, in which, we see it stated on unquestionable authority, no man was eligible to membership unless he was a native American. The Columbian Order, known as the "Tammany Society," was a secret political society, and highly influential, and maintains its existence to this day, and without danger to the liberties of the country. Gen. SAM HOUSTON publishes to the world that himself and Gen. JACKSON were members of this Society. What say the anti-Americans to all these facts? Do they believe that Gen. Washington, or Jackson, would have united with any association or order not purely American? Would either have entered into any political league, when secrecy was enjoined, if he had not approved of the principle of secrecy in political associations? Never! From the characters of Washington and Jackson—the sacrifices they made for their country, united with their fervid patriotism, and their known preference for every thing American, I do not doubt for one moment, that if they were both now living, they would unite with the veritable Order of Know Nothings!

I believe the hand of God to be in this very movement, and as much in the secrecy of it, in the outset, as in any other feature. I regard the movement as one growing out of a great crisis in the affairs of our country, and a precursor of a sound, healthful, and vigorous nationality, and which will ultimately prevent the liberties of this country from being destroyed, by the machinations of such demagogues and factionists as now seek to excuse Romanism, and fellowship Foreign Pauperism. Secret societies are only dangerous to despots and tyrants, and history shows that these above all others have made war upon them. They have denounced and proscribed Masonry in every quarter of the globe, where they have had the power. The Pope, with the aid of his Cardinals, has crushed the ancient order of Free Masons in his dominions. There is not a Masonic Lodge in Italy. In our own country, not a single Catholic is to be found associated with the order of Free Masons; and why? Masonry is founded upon the Bible, and requires the reading of the Protestant Bible in all its Lodges, and this don't suit Romanism. We state these general and historical facts, without knowing any thing of our own knowledge of Masonry.

In the young and growing city of Knoxville, it is within our own knowledge, that many of the Irish Catholics attached themselves to the Order of the Sons of Temperance, with a view, as they said, of throwing around them the wholesome restraints of the Order. On the first visit of a priest to the city, commonly called "Father Brown," these Irish Catholics began to drop off one by one, until not one of them is now in the Order, and most of those who were, are daily seen drunk in our streets. Indeed, some of them in withdrawing had the candor to acknowledge that the priest required them to do so! And why? Because, in all the Divisions of the Sons of Temperance here, we have the Protestant Scriptures read, and have Protestant prayers offered up. This don't suit the Church of Rome!

I have the honor to be, very truly and frankly,

W. G. BROWNLOW.



TO THE RIGHT REVEREND AARON V. BROWN, M. S.

SIR:—I have received by mail a pamphlet copy of your "Letter to the Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers, Itinerant and Local, of the Methodist Episcopal Church South," covering twenty-eight octavo pages. I thank you for a copy of your Pastoral address; and I am happy to be able to infer from its teachings that you have made a profession of religion, before taking upon yourself "Holy Orders." I suppose the time of your conversion, you date back to the memorable period when you "saw sights" on Mount Pisgah, and had conferred on you the degree of Modern Seer, and entered upon the duties of "High Priest" of Democracy! As I am one of the parties addressed, and the customs of the Church and the country require a response to so grave a document, I have felt it incumbent upon me to perform the task. I may style this the Last epistle of Aaron, the Priest, and illustrious Chief of Foreign Catholic Sag Nicht Locofocoism!

My first impulses were, upon reading your address, to call for your credentials, and to examine into your authority for assuming to dictate to the entire Ministry of the Southern portion of the Methodist Church. You must either enter the Ecclesiastical ring under the imposition of the hands of BISHOP SOULE or Andy Johnson. If BISHOP SOULE ordained you for the Ministry, and set you apart as the Lieutenant-General of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, the presumption is that he examined you on doctrinal points, and upon all questions affecting the government of the Church, as was his duty, and is our custom, and that he found you orthodox! It follows, as a matter of course, that you renounced your heresy you advocated in the Hartford Convention, held at Nashville, and that you obtained forgiveness for that and numerous other "sins of omission and commission"—aye, for the whole catalogue of your inward and outward iniquities, which so eminently disqualified you for the work of the Ministry! But if Andy Johnson ordained you for the work, of which there is no sort of doubt, the Church South, through me, protests against your authority, and utterly refuses to submit to your teachings. Our Church does not agree with Johnson on the "White Basis" issue, or the great question of slavery; and in proof of this, I cite to the fact of her separation from the North, in 1844, upon this very question. She has within her bounds of communion, rich men and poor, educated and uneducated, and is unwilling to unite with him in arraying the poor against the rich, or the unlearned against the learned. Nor does our Church believe that Jesus Christ was a Locofoco, as Johnson asserts in his Inaugural, and held that Christianity and Democracy, in converging lines, led to the foot of Jacob's Ladder, and thence to heaven, via Mount Pisgah, from whose lofty summit you first beheld the promised land!

It therefore follows, that, in presenting yourself as a spiritual leader in the Church, called to the work, as you have been, by Andy Johnson, your case is fully met by a quotation from Job:

"Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them."

A second passage, from the Book of Jeremiah, meets your case, and leaves no doubt that the inspired Prophet had you in his eye:

"We have heard the pride of Moab, (he is exceedingly proud,) his loftiness, and his arrogance, and his pride, and his haughtiness of heart.

"I know his wrath, saith the Lord; but it shall not be so; his lies shall not so effect it."

To be candid with you, Gov. Brown, I regard your address, under all the circumstances, as a display of the most brazen-faced assurance and the most unmitigated impudence I ever met with in my life! I have known for years that you were capable of great presumption, but in this insolent and dictatorial address you surpass yourself—you positively out-Herod Herod! In the whole history of the country, and of parties, I venture the assertion, that a parallel piece of impudence, and downright bold-faced assurance, cannot be pointed to, as the act of any partisan. It is really past all belief, if I had not your production before me. But more of this hereafter.

Copies of your pamphlet were distributed through the aisles and seats of the Annual Conference room in Nashville, and have been sent all over the South, to members of other Conferences. Your proof-sheet was seen ten days before the meeting of the Middle Tennessee Conference, and your "work of faith and labor of love" was ready for distribution when the Conference first convened, but you held it back till the Conference was ready to adjourn, and to a period so late, that a reply, if one had been deemed necessary, could not be made. This was cowardly, and in keeping with your political tactics and code of morals. In saying that this was in keeping with your code of morals, I allude to the Woodberry affair.

I shall now take up your address, Governor, and wade through its twenty-eight pages of double-distilled Sag Nichtism, sublimated impudence, and concealed advocacy of Romanism, mixed up with contradictions, false assertions, and glaring absurdities, as it is, from beginning to end. In the opening paragraph, you predicate your right to instruct the "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers" of the entire Church, South, upon the real or assumed fact, that you are "The son of a now sainted father, who for forty years ministered at your altars, the co-laborer of that noble band of Christian ministers, who, under Asbury and Coke, founded your Church in America!"

Alas, that any "sainted Father" should be represented by so degenerate a son—an irreligious son—not a member of any Church—but having the hardihood, in the face of those who know the facts, to disguise himself in the priestly robes of a "sainted Father"—like an ass in a lion's skin, to bray out against better men than himself, or, like a wolf in sheep's clothing, to steal into the fold, where that Father was accustomed to minister in holy things, and with soft and honeyed words, and hypocritical teachings, and Satan-like misrepresentations, seek whom he may devour! You tell the "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers," that you really "approve" their "creed," and, what is still more soul-cheering, you have "witnessed their growth and progress for years, with the highest satisfaction." This is very condescending in the "son of a now sainted father!" It is quite flattering! But these "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers," would receive all this with a greater degree of allowance, if they did not believe that your generous patronage, so lavishly bestowed upon them and their "creed," was prompted by a principle of which selfishness is the soul! They believe, and so express themselves in conversation, that your forced smile of approbation, your reluctant eulogy, have both been wrung from you, because you are a sycophantic partisan suitor for patronage, in the way of votes for your party. These Clergymen whom you address, think it a great pity that the "son of a now sainted father" should exhibit so much "satisfaction" at witnessing their prosperity, in theory, and manifest not one particle in practice. They think that you would be in your proper place, to be found among the mourners, instead of the teachers in their Church; and that it is high time, considering your age in life, and the extent of your iniquities, that you should be found upon your knees, in an altar full of fresh straw, at an old-fashioned Camp-Meeting, asking the pious to pray for you, and God, for the sake of the forty years labors of "a now sainted father," to have mercy upon you, and save your sinful old soul from that death that never dies.

Why, Sir, the Devil himself would blush to perpetrate such an act of arrogance as you have done, in thus volunteering your advice to the "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers," of the Methodist Church. An old political party hack, who is not now, and never was, a member of any Church—an intriguing old sinner, who never even attends Church, and who, in this respect, shows that he neither fears God, respects the Christian Sabbath, nor "approves the creed" of any orthodox denomination, to be lecturing a numerous body of Clergymen, as to what they ought or ought not to do, it is the culmination of all that is called effrontery! The "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers" of the Methodist Church, wish the evidence of your conversion to God, before they consent to obey you, as "having the rule over them." Your approval of their "creed," and the "satisfaction" with which you have witnessed their progress, is not sufficient to satisfy their doubting minds, as long as you continue to ride into Nashville on Sabbath, and retail political slang at the INN, or read Sag Nicht papers at the Union Office, to the neglect of the house of God, and the evil example set before young men, against the statute in such cases made and provided! We must, as Ministers, hear you relate your experience, in a regular class-meeting. Nay, more, knowing your raising, and your ability to "deceive, even the very elect," we must see you down upon your marrow-bones, surrounded by noisy and zealous officials, pounding you on the back, and exclaiming, as in the days of your "sainted father," Pray on, Aaron! We must hear you groan—we must see your sinful old bosom heave—we must witness the falling of big tears, as you publicly confess and manfully repent of your misdeeds—of the whole catalogue, of all the inward and outward iniquities of your past life—your sins of omission and commission, which God knows are more numerous than the hairs upon your old sinful head! I say we must see all this, and even more, before we can have faith in your teachings, as big as even a grain of mustard seed!

But you are the "son of a now sainted father"—you derive great "satisfaction" from the "growth and progress" of Methodism—you "approve" the Methodist "creed"—and hence, a glorious future awaits the Methodist Church: provided always, that her "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers" hearken to and obey your teachings, a thing they are very certain not to do, in the matter under consideration. It is a melancholy fact, that many of the sons of Methodist, and other Ministers, are very wicked and unpromising men; and it is equally true, and certainly notorious, that where they turn out to be sinners, they are sinners above all offenders, dwelling either at Jerusalem or elsewhere! I have no hesitancy in pronouncing you as hard a case, in a moral point of view, as ever came before the Church, and the only appropriate reply her ecclesiastical dignitaries can make to your address, is to appoint a day of fasting and prayer to God, for your conversion, to be observed throughout her borders. I now, as the appointed organ of the Church, set apart the first day of January, 1856, and I pray you, as one desiring the salvation of your soul, to be in the spirit and in a proper frame of mind on that day! Humble yourself before God—tell him that you were in error in stealing the livery of Heaven to serve the Devil in! Tell him that you are an old worn-out political hack—that you have grown gray in the service of sin—that during the whole of a somewhat eventful life, your labors have been in the dirtiest pools of party politics—that you have been insincere and unscrupulous in all your teachings and acts—that you stand before the people of Tennessee publicly branded by eight respectable and reliable citizens of Wilson county, as a falsifier in the Know Nothing controversy of the past summer—and that you are sorry for having come forth steeped to the nose and chin in political profligacy, to lecture grave Clergymen upon subjects you ought to set at their feet and learn lessons about! Tell your God, what he doubtless knows, that though the "son of a now sainted father," you are as full of devils as ever Mary Magdalene was—that like the "Imps of Sin," in Milton, these "yelp all around" you—that this is no reflection upon a "now sainted father," whose seeming neglect of your early training grew out of his continual absence from home, as is the case with most Methodist Preachers,—aye, tell your God, that once out of this scrape, you will never be caught in another of the kind! You say,

"From the foundation of our government, it has been a conceded and settled doctrine, that the various religious denominations should not, as such, intermeddle with the political contests of the day. No instance is now remembered where they have done so!"

This is a remarkable sentence, and partakes of the nature of your Wilson county assertions! The history of the Church, and of the world, contradicts every word of the foregoing, and demonstrates that the "settled doctrine" of the Catholic Church, has ever been, as it still is, to "intermeddle with the political contests of the day." I will trouble you with two instances in which "religious denominations, as such," have been guilty of what you deny. The Albany (N. Y.) State Register, a paper which usually does not say what it cannot maintain, states that ARCHBISHOP HUGHES has issued a mandate, commanding all Catholics in the Albany District, in the exciting State election now coming off, to cast their votes for Mr. Crosby for the Senate. But Roman Catholics, you falsely tell us, never "intermeddle with the political contests of the day:" O no!

The other "instance now remembered," is the one in which you were a candidate for a seat in the Legislature of Tennessee, in the county of Giles: this was, according to my recollection, in 1831, or a quarter of a century ago. At that time, there was a small Manual Labor School in Giles, which had been incorporated by the Legislature, and at the head of which was a Presbyterian. The gentleman who ran against you, if not a member of the Presbyterian Church, "approved" their "creed," and "witnessed their growth and progress for years with the highest satisfaction." You charged upon the stump that the Presbyterians were seeking to establish their religion by law, to unite Church and State—appealed to the Methodist and Baptist to put them down by electing you, with a promise that you would check their march by counter-legislation—and you were elected upon this issue. At the same time, as the oldest inhabitants of Giles know, there were not fifty Presbyterians in the county! But "no instance is remembered" in which one sect has intermeddled with another—O no! You say:

"In the mutations of parties in this country, a new one has lately arisen, to which, I apprehend, more of the Methodist ministers have attached themselves, at least in the State of Tennessee, than might have been expected. This party, known as the Know Nothings, is so peculiar in its organization, that it seems strange to me that any minister or professor of religion should be willing longer to continue in it."

Your apprehensions are well-founded, when you suppose that a very large proportion of the Methodist ministers in Tennessee are either members of this new party or sympathize with it. And, sir, more of the ministers of other denominations than you seem to be aware of, have either attached themselves to this party, "in the mutations of parties," or act with it, and endorse its aims and objects, than you have yet dreamed of! And "it seems strange" to these ministers, and thousands of the purest and best laymen in the Protestant ranks, "that any minister or professor of religion should be willing longer" to oppose the principles of this party, or array themselves under the black flag of Papal Rome, and of the pauper emigrants with whom she is flooding our land! But, sir, the object of your Address is, to persuade if you can, and if not, to drive, by motives of fear, the Clergy of the Methodist Church from their position on this great American and Protestant question. Alas, how little does the "son of a sainted father" understand the material he attempts to work upon! Methodist ministers are free men, the equals of other moral and upright men in heroic virtues, and far in advance of that of politicians in Tennessee who believe parties in religion, as in politics, are only "held together by the cohesive power of public plunder," and who assume to direct public opinion from a principle, of which selfishness is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end! Sir, the violence, bitterness, and the very inflammatory tone, not to say language, of your Gallatin, Lebanon, and Columbia speeches, are enough, it seems to me, to nauseate every good and conservative citizen, and to disgust every "Bishop, Elder, and other Ministers, Itinerant and Local, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South." Even in this Address, you insult these ministers on every page. I see not how any preacher, with a true Protestant and American heart in him, can read this address of yours through, without rising up from his seat and saying: "I have voted with this Anti-Protestant and Anti-American party for the last time."

In warning Methodist ministers to withdraw their sanction and approbation of Know Nothingism, you say:

"I therefore call upon them this day to come out of these lodges, and never return to them: at all events, never return to them until all secrecy, all their bits of red paper, (indicating blood, even by the selection of color,) all their signs and signals, are utterly abolished and dispensed with. I call upon them to do this, and to do it forthwith—by their hopes of heaven—by their obedience to the word of God—by their allegiance to the Constitution and laws of their country—to come out from any party which has adopted a mode and plan of organization so fatal to the peace of society, and the progress of true religion."

What egotism! You call upon them! You make a freer use of the personal pronoun I, than even old Parson Longstreet, the Know Nothing slayer of Mississippi. To parse your different sentences syntactically, nothing else is necessary but to understand the first person singular, and to repeat the rule. Not only your verbiage but your sentiment is thus egotistic throughout!

Your appeal to the ministers to come out of this organization, on the ground of its secrecy, is a species of demagoguism, the more disgusting when it is considered that you are a Free Mason, and have, by all the arts and blandishment of your nature, sought to induce ministers to go into that organization. But, then, there is no violation of law or the Constitution in Masonry—"fatal to the peace of society and to the progress of true religion"—no, nothing! Understand me: I am not opposed to Masonry.

On this subject of the Romish creed, which you excuse, and even advocate, you admit that there are "alleged abuses," which have prompted the Protestant Churches to unite themselves with this new Order! Then you insultingly tell these Churches this tale:

"But they ought to have remembered, that even a virtuous indignation can never justify proscription and persecution: these bring no remedy to the real or supposed evils, but are sure to increase and aggravate them. These errors in faith, and abominations in practice, if they really exist, were known to the Wesleys, and Cokes, and Asburys, who founded your Church: to the Lees, the Bruces, the Capers, the Logan Douglasses, the Summerfields, and the Bascoms, who subsequently extended and adorned it. But they never proposed to kindle, in this enlightened age of Christianity, the consuming fires of RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION."

Now, sir, every distinguished "founder" of the Methodist Church you have named, from WESLEY to BASCOM, has written and preached against the "errors in faith, and abominations in practice," of the Romish Church, and they each and all have taken this very ground upon the religious issues. I have heard three of these men preach, and I am familiar with the writings of the rest, and know whereof I speak.

You intentionally deceive and misrepresent the American party, when you charge that they seek to proscribe one class of our citizens—that they desire to interfere with the rights of conscience—and to say how men should worship God. Why don't you inform your readers that Archbishop Hughes, and other Catholic Bishops, were the first to introduce religion into political discussion in this country? This would not suit your purposes—it suits your objects, taste, and inclination better, to slander the American party by wholesale, and to charge upon its members the atrocities committed by your foreign and pauper allies. We only choose to vote against them, and to vote for American-born citizens and Protestants: which is as much our right, as it is the right of these foreign Catholics to vote against and proscribe American Protestants. For this, you and your villainous associates exhaust the whole vocabulary of Billingsgate upon the American party. What is their offence? Why, they simply place certain questions before persons desiring to act with them, which they think, at least, may affect the national welfare, and before the people of the Union, and ask their opinion of these questions at the ballot-box. The American party has always denied, and I again reiterate the denial, that we do, at all proscribe, or in any way interfere with, any class of our foreign citizens, save that we propose to send convicts from European prisons back to their own native and infamous dens, as fast as they land here—but these are not citizens of ours. I appeal to our Platform, and our Book of Constitutions, and I offer to any man a handsome reward—any man who will produce in either a statement containing the proscription you falsely charge against us. I now say, Gov. Brown, either do this, or cease your empty vaporing against the proscriptive features of our system, as you are pleased to style it. You declaim most lustily in favor of religious liberty for Catholics, which you know we do not propose as a party to interfere with; and this you plead for at the altar of Methodist "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers," who know there is no religious liberty for Protestants where Catholics have the power to prevent it! You plead in the most plaintive tones for the rights of foreign Catholics to be sworn into good citizens in less than one year after they land here, but do not seem to remember the American Protestant wives and children, who have to subsist on charity during our severe winters, in consequence of their husbands and fathers being elbowed out of employment by the competition of foreign pauper laborers!

Sir, the American party, if in power, would put a stop to that proscription from office that has always characterized the party with which you act, and which has made the present Administration so very and so justly odious to the country. Proscription, indeed! Was there ever such glaring and actual proscription for the sake of religious and political creeds committed as by the present Administration? The infamous Sag Nicht party with which you act, and of which you are a leader and a High Priest, though the "son of a now sainted father," has applied the political guillotine to almost every man in office who has dared to differ with them in their high estimate of foreign paupers and Catholic vagabonds, in many instances turning out native-born Protestants, and filling their places with foreign Catholics. And yet, with a degree of effrontery that throws the Devil far into the shade, you turn round and charge the American party with proscription, and ask the "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers," of the Methodist Church, "by their hopes of heaven—by their obedience to the word of God—and by their allegiance to the Constitution and laws of their country," to come out from a party so proscriptive! Why, sir, you out-Herod old Herod himself! Your teachings contrasted with your practice, would cause a crimsoned negative to settle on the cheeks of old Pilate! And still you are the "son of a now sainted father"—you "approve" the "creed" of Methodism, and have "witnessed its growth and prosperity for years, with the highest satisfaction!"

You quote from the Declaration of Independence, to show that toleration should be extended to Catholics and foreigners, and then insultingly add, as if you supposed no Methodist minister had ever perused the writings of Mr. JEFFERSON:

"These are the words of Mr. Jefferson, but the immortal sentiment springs directly from the word of the living and true God. No: persecution at the stake, or by exclusion of Catholics from office, is not the weapon to be wielded by the Protestant Churches."

You know that the notes of warning given to his countrymen by the sage of Monticello, and the great APOSTLE of American Democracy, are in harmony with the doctrines of the Know Nothing party. But you choose to conceal this fact from the "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers" of the Methodist Church, in the vain hope that their numerous pressing and official engagements will not allow them time to look up the documents. In Mr. Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, written in 1781, and published in 1794, pages 124-5, I find the following Know Nothing doctrine:

"But are there no inconveniences to be thrown into the scale against the advantage expected from a multiplication of numbers by the importation of foreigners? It is for the happiness of those united in society to harmonize, as much as possible, in matters which they must of necessity transact together. Civil government being the sole object of forming societies, its administration must be conducted by common consent. Every species of government has specific principles. Ours, perhaps, are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe. It is a composition of the freest principles of the English constitution, with others derived from natural right and natural reason. To these nothing can be more opposed than the maxims of absolute monarchs. Yet from such we are to expect the greatest number of immigrants. They will bring with them the principles of the government they leave, imbibed in early youth: or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion with their numbers, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its directions, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass. I may appeal to experience during the present contest for a verification of these conjectures. But if they be not certain in event, are they not possible? are they not probable? Is it not safer to wait with patience twenty-seven years and three months longer for the attainment of every degree of population desired or expected? May not our government be more homogeneous, more peaceable, more durable?"

Again, Mr. JEFFERSON, whilst our Minister to the Court of St. Cloud, addressed a letter to JOHN JAY, dated November 14, 1788, in which he uses this language:

"With respect to the Consular appointments, it is a duty on me to add some observations, which my situation here has enabled me to make. I think it was in the spring of 1784, that Congress (harassed by multiplied applications from foreigners, of whom nothing was known but on their information, or on that of others as unknown as themselves) came to the resolution that the interest of America would not permit the naming of any person, not a citizen, to the office of Consul, or Agent, or Commissary. Native citizens, on several valuable accounts, are preferable to aliens, or citizens alien-born. Native citizens possess our language, know our laws, customs and commerce, have general acquaintance in the United States, give better satisfaction, and are more to be relied on in a point of fidelity. To avail ourselves of our native citizens, it appears to me advisable to declare, by standing law, that no person but a native citizen shall be capable of the office of Consul. This was the rule of 1784, restraining the office of Consul to native citizens."

In 1797, Mr. JEFFERSON drafted a petition to the Legislature of Virginia, on behalf of the citizens of Amherst, Albemarle, Fluvana, and Gouchland Bounties, in which he uses the following language:

"Your petitioners further submit to the two Houses of Assembly, whether the safety of the citizens of this Commonwealth, in their persons, their property, their laws and government, does not require that the capacity to act in the important office of Juror, Grand or Petty, civil or criminal, should not be restrained in future to native citizens, or such as were citizens at the date of the Treaty of Peace which closed our revolutionary war; and whether ignorance of our laws, and natural partiality to the countries of their birth, are not reasonable causes for declaring this to be one of their rights incommunicable in future to adopted citizens."—Jefferson's Writings, Vol. IX., page 453.

Now, Sir, answer me in candor, are you not ashamed of having quoted Mr. JEFFERSON, and of having so basely misrepresented his position on this great American question? Did not Mr. JEFFERSON propose to carry his opposition to foreigners much farther than the American party now do?

But, you vile old demagogue, though "son of a now sainted father," I am determined you shall not escape the indignant powers of those "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers," whom you have wickedly sought to deceive. It is known to you, and to the world, in what veneration all American Democrats hold the Virginia Resolutions of 1798 and '99, and the fame of Mr. MADISON, who was the ruling spirit of that session of the Legislature. That Legislature passed the following Resolution, which you may find by consulting Henning's Statutes at Large, Vol. 2, New Series, page 194:

"That the General Assembly, nevertheless, concurring in opinion with the Legislature of Massachusetts that every Constitutional barrier should be opposed to the introduction of foreign influence into our National Councils,—Resolved, That the Constitution ought to be so amended that no foreigner, who shall have acquired the right, under our Constitution and laws, at the time of making the amendment, shall hereafter be eligible to the office of Senator or Representative, in Congress of the United States, nor to any office in the Judiciary or Executive. Agreed to by the Senate, Jan. 16, 1799."

I shall next consider two extracts from your Address, under one general head, relating to the temporal power of the Pope. You say:

"But the genius of sophistry may fly to the rescue of Know-Nothingism, by pretending that it is not on account of his religion that the Catholic is to be excluded from office, but because he is subjected, not merely to the spiritual but the temporal dominion or jurisdiction of the Pope. No error has been wider spread than this."

Again:

"A late distinguished Senator from Georgia, (Mr. Berrien,) in a recent address to the public, has copied a letter of Mr. Wesley, which may require a few observations. That letter was dated in January, 1780. All its conclusions were founded on the ASSUMED AND POPULAR OPINION of that day, that the Pope did claim a civil jurisdiction beyond his own dominions—that he could absolve the subjects of other governments from their oaths of allegiance, and that there was a principle in one of the tenets of that Church, that Catholics were justified in not keeping faith with heretics. Against these ASSUMED AND POPULAR OPINIONS, the Catholics of England in that day, as they now do in this country, were solemnly protesting."

This is a modest way of giving Mr. Wesley the lie, but it is nevertheless quite direct, and is the more surprising, as it comes from the "son of a now sainted father," who was a follower of Wesley, a "co-laborer of that noble band of Christian ministers" he was instrumental in starting out into the world—aye, the son of a "father who, for forty years, ministered at the altars" this same Wesley erected! In holding up John Wesley as the vile calumniator of the Catholic Church in England, it is well enough, Governor, to be modest about it, and cautious in the selection of your words, as you are addressing a class of men who believe in John Wesley, as a faithful man of God, and one incapable of misrepresenting the Catholics of England, the Pope of Rome, or any other sect or individual! John Wesley ministered at the sacred altars of religion for more than sixty years; he had with him the power of God, and the witness that he pleased Him; and the last words he uttered, with his hands clasped, and his eyes raised toward heaven, were these: "The best of all is, God is with us!" And yet the sons and grandsons in the gospel, of this venerated and sainted man of God, are insulted in Tennessee, by being told by an impertinent old sinner, and a vile old party hack, that he was A LIAR, while living, and the slanderer of the Catholic Church, now that he is no more! If Mr. Wesley "assumed" falsehoods in reference to the Romish Church in England, he either did it in ignorance, or with a guilty knowledge of the fact. He was a man of too much learning and information for his friends to get him out of such an indictment under a plea of ignorance. He is therefore, though dead, A WILFUL LIAR, according to "Ex-Gov. A. V. Brown," for the Governor goes on to argue the cause against him, and, on page 19 of his address, quotes Catholic authority to prove him a liar! Shame on the "son of a now sainted father," and on the holy seer of Pisgah! O! Aaron, thou priest of corrupt Democracy, you need not endeavor to gull "bishops, elders, and other ministers," with your whining cant, while you thus traduce their great spiritual head, who, under God, taught them the lessons of salvation!

Gov. Brown, go with me, as one of the admirers of John Wesley, to the humble dwellings of the miners of Cornwall, to the homely tents of the colliers of Kingswood and Newcastle, and to the equally humble workshops of the manufacturers of Yorkshire, in England, who are rejoicing in God their Saviour that a Wesley was ever born into the world, and ask them if they believe him capable of slandering the Catholics! Go with me among the backwoodsmen of North America, and examine them in their lone tents—go among the honest and virtuous settlers on our Western frontiers, amid the interminable forests of the far off West, whose thousands are brought into the fold of Christ, through the instrumentality of Wesleyan ministers, and ask them if they think the founder of their Church was a wilful liar!

Go with me to the rich pastures and luxuriant harvest-fields of your own native Middle Tennessee: enter the neat cottages and stately mansions of that glorious division of our State, and ask the intelligent and educated females, who are rejoicing in God, in hope of future and eternal life, through the prayers and sermons of Wesleyan ministers, as instruments in the hands of God, if they believe the founder of their Church was a wicked calumniator! Go to the islands of the sea, to the burning sands of Africa, and ask the benighted converts from heathenism, through the instrumentality of Wesleyan ministers, if they believe the venerable founder of their Church was a man of truth!

Enter the dwellings of the rich and fashionable planters of the South—ride around their sugar and cotton plantations, among the sable sons and daughters of Africa, and witness the blessed fruits of the pious life, Christian integrity, and triumphant death of John Wesley! Come over to East Tennessee, Governor, and enter the log-cabins of the virtuous, happy peasantry of the "hill country," and ask them whether they believe Mr. Wesley or your Catholic authorities, touching the temporal power of the Pope of Rome!

Alas! Gov. Brown, the Reformation dawned with LUTHER in Germany, but the sun of its glory rose with Methodism in England; the first streaks of Protestant light were seen on the horizon of the sixteenth century, but the meridian sun of the Reformation dawned in all his brightness on the Wesleys and Whitefield! But America has been the land of the glory and triumph of the doctrines of the man you labor to convict of the awful sin of lying!

But you deny that the Pope of Rome, in temporal matters, claims what Mr. Wesley attributed to him in the letter copied by Senator Berrien. You also deny that the Popes claim and have exercised the right to interfere with matters of government, and the right to absolve their followers in other countries, and under other governments, from their allegiance to such rulers and governments. I will proceed to vindicate Mr. Wesley, and, by the proof, saddle the lie on you! Whilst John was King of England, he had the "Magna Charta," the great charter securing, among other things, the right of trial by jury, wrung from him at the point of the bayonet. This great charter was annulled by Pope Innocent. Here is the proof:

"While the king was employed in the siege of Rochester, he received the pleasing intelligence, that according to his request the charter had been annulled by the pontiff. Innocent, enumerating the grounds of his judgment, insists strongly on the violence employed by the barons. If they really felt themselves aggrieved, they ought, he observes, to have accepted the offer of redress by due course of law. They had preferred, however, to break the oath of fealty, which they had taken, and had appointed themselves judges to sit upon their lord. They knew, moreover, that John had enrolled himself among the crusaders; and yet they had not scrupled to violate the privileges which all Christian nations had granted to the champions of the cross. Lastly, England was become the fief of the holy see; and they could not be ignorant that if the king had the will, he had not at least the power, to give away the rights of the crown, without the consent of his feudal superior. He was therefore bound to annul the concessions which had been extorted from John, as having been obtained in contempt of the holy see, to the degradation of royalty, the disgrace of the nation, and to the impediment of the crusade. At the same time he wrote to the barons, re-stating his reasons, exhorting them to submit, requesting them to lay their claims before him in the council to be held at Rome; and promising that he would induce the king to consent to whatever might be deemed just or reasonable, to take care that all grievances should be abolished, that the crown should be content with its just rights, and the clergy and people should enjoy their ancient liberties."—Lingard's History of England, vol. ii., page 71.

Will it be said that this was not interfering with temporal matters? Will it be said that the right of trial by jury was a spiritual matter? Will it be said that the tyranny of King John, and his oppressions, of which the barons justly complained, were spiritual matters? No sensible advocate of Romanism will say this!

The next instance of an interference by the Pope in temporal affairs, to which I shall call your attention, Governor, is his excommunication of Elizabeth, Queen of England. She was immediately preceded on that throne by her sister Mary, who was a Catholic. For no other reason than that Elizabeth was a Protestant, and would not submit her rights and kingdom to the control of the Pope, Pius V. thundered forth at her devoted head the following anathema, from his throne at the Vatican, situated at the foot of one of the seven hills upon which Rome is built:

EXCOMMUNICATION AND DEPOSITION Of QUEEN ELIZABETH OF ENGLAND.

"Pius, etc., for a future memorial of the matter. He that reigneth on high, to whom is given all power in heaven and on earth, committed one Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, out of which there is no salvation, to one alone upon the earth, Peter the Prince of the Apostles, and to Peter's successor, the Bishop of Rome, to be governed in fulness of power. Him alone he made prince over all people, and all kingdoms, to pluck up, destroy, scatter, consume, plant and build, etc. But the number of the ungodly hath gotten such power, that there is now no place left in the whole world which they have not essayed to corrupt with their most wicked doctrines. Amongst others, Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England, a slave of wickedness, lending thereunto her helping hand, with whom, as in a sanctuary, the most pernicious of all men have found a refuge; this very woman having seized upon the kingdom, and monstrously usurping the place of the supreme Head of the Church in all England, and the chief authority and jurisdiction thereof, hath again brought back the same kingdom to miserable destruction, which was then newly reduced to the faith, and to good order. For having by strong hand inhibited the true religion, which Mary, the lawful queen, of famous memory, had, by the help of this See, restored, after it had been formerly overthrown by King Henry VIII., a revolter therefrom, and following and embracing the errors of heretics, she hath removed the royal council, consisting of the English nobility, and filled it with obscure men, being heretics; hath oppressed the embracers of the Roman faith, hath placed impious preachers, ministers of iniquity, and abolished the sacrifice of the mass, prayers, fastings, distinction of meats, a single life, and the rites and ceremonies; hath commanded books to be read in the whole realm, containing manifest heresy, etc. She hath not only contemned the godly requests and admonitions of princes concerning her healing and conversion, but also bath not so much as permitted the Nuncios of the See to cross the seas into England, etc. We do, therefore, out of the fulness of our apostolic power, declare the aforesaid Elizabeth, being heretic, and a favorer of heretics, and her adherents in the matter aforesaid, to have incurred the sentence of anathema, and to be cut off from the unity of the body of Christ. And, moreover, we do declare her to be deprived of her pretended title to the kingdom aforesaid, and of all dominion, dignity, and privilege whatsoever; and also the nobility, subjects, and people of the said kingdom, and all others which have in any sort sworn unto her, to be for ever absolved from any such oath, and all manner of duty or dominion, allegiance and obedience; as we also do, by the authority of these presents, absolve them, and do deprive the same Elizabeth of her pretended title to the kingdom, and all other things aforesaid. And we do command and interdict all and every one of the noblemen, subjects, people, and others aforesaid, that they presume not to obey her, or her admonitions, mandates, and laws; and those who shall do the contrary, we do innodate with the like sentence of ANATHEMA.

"Given at St. Peter's at Rome, in the year 1569, and the fifth of our pontificate."—Dowling's History of Romanism, p. 564.

One more: Sixtus V. thunders his bull of excommunication at this same Queen of England—incites Philip of Catholic Spain to make war against her country—and graciously gives the British Isles to Philip! Here is the bull of Pope Sixtus:

"We, Sixtus the Fifth, the universal shepherd of the flock of Christ, the supreme chief, to whom the government of the whole world appertains, considering that the people of England and Ireland, after having been so long celebrated for their virtues, their religion, and their submission to our see, have become putrid members, infected, and capable of corrupting the whole Christian body, and on account of their subjection to the impious, tyrannical, and sanguinary government of Elizabeth, the bastard queen, and by the influence of her adherents, who equal her in wickedness; and who refuse, like her, to recognize the power of the Roman Church: regarding that Henry VIII. formerly, for motives of debauchery, commenced all these disorders by revolting against the submission which he owed to the Pope, the sole and true sovereign of England; considering that the usurper Elizabeth has followed the path of this infamous king, we declare that there exists but one mode of remedying these evils, of restoring peace, tranquillity, and union to Christendom, of re-establishing religion, and of leading back the people to obedience to us, which is, to depose from the throne that execrable Elizabeth, who falsely arrogates to herself the title of Queen of the British Isles. Being then inspired by the Holy Spirit for the general good of the Church, we renew, by the virtue of our apostolic power, the sentence pronounced by our predecessor, Pius the Fifth and Gregory the Thirteenth, against the modern Jezebel: we proclaim her deprived of her royal authority, of the rights, titles, or pretensions to which she may lay claim over the kingdoms of Ireland and England, affirming that she possesses them unlawfully and by usurpation. We relieve all her subjects from the oaths they may have taken to her, and we prohibit them from rendering any kind of service to this execrable woman; it is our will, that she be driven from door to door like one possessed of a devil, and that all human aid be refused her; we declare, moreover, that foreigners or Englishmen are permitted, as a meritorious work, to seize the person of Elizabeth and surrender her, living or dead, to the tribunals of the inquisition. We promise to those who shall accomplish this glorious mission, infinite recompenses, not only in the life eternal, but even in this world. Finally, we grant plenary indulgence to the faithful who shall willingly unite with the Catholic army which is going to combat the impious Elizabeth, under the orders of our dear son Philip the Second, to whom we give the British Isles in full sovereignty, as a recompense for the zeal he has always shown toward our see, and for the particular affection he has shown for the Catholics of the Low Country."—De Cormenin's History of the Popes, p. 262.

Here is what Macaulay, a reliable historian, says of the baneful effects of Romanism:

"From the time when the barbarians overran the Western Empire to the time of the revival of letters, the influence of the Church of Rome has been generally favorable to science, to civilization, and to good government. But, during the last three centuries, to stunt the growth of the human mind has been her chief object. Throughout Christendom, whatever advance has been made in knowledge, in freedom, in wealth, and in the arts of life, has been made in spite of her, and has everywhere been in inverse proportion to her power. The loveliest and most fertile provinces of Europe have, under her rule, been sunk into poverty, in political servitude, and in intellectual torpor, while Protestant countries, once proverbial for sterility and barbarism, have been turned, by skill and industry, into gardens, and can boast of a long list of heroes and statesmen, philosophers and poets. Whoever, knowing what Italy and Scotland naturally are, and what four hundred years ago they naturally were, shall now compare the country round Rome with the country round Edinburgh, will be able to form some judgment of the tendency of Papal domination. The descent of Spain, once the first among monarchies, to the lowest depths of degradation, the elevation of Holland, in spite of many natural disadvantages, to a position such as no commonwealth so small has ever reached, teach the same lesson. Whoever passes, in Germany, from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant principality, in Switzerland from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant canton, in Ireland from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant county, finds that he has passed from a lower to a higher grade of civilization. On the other side of the Atlantic the same law prevails. The Protestants of the United States have left far behind the Roman Catholics of Mexico, Peru, and Brazil. The Roman Catholics of Lower Canada remain inert, while the whole continent round them is in a ferment with Protestant activity and enterprise."—Macaulay's History of England, vol. i., p. 37.

I must be permitted to add, just here, that in 1848, when the people of France expelled Louis Philippe from the throne in Paris, and established a Republic, the present old drunken, goutified debauchee, Pope Pius IX., hurled at the French nation a fearful bull of excommunication, and denied them the right of revolution! Was this interfering in temporal matters? But no longer ago than the year 1854, this same old vagabond, Pope Pius, issued orders absolving his followers from all allegiance to the Sardinian Government, because that government chose to abolish the infamous monasteries, which had been so long supported at the expense of an oppressed people! Was this not interfering in temporal matters? I could multiply authorities, Governor, to an indefinite extent, sustaining Mr. Wesley's views, and falsifying all you say, but this would swell my reply beyond what I intended in the outset. Let me call your attention to Brownson's Review, for July, 1853, where you will find all this power, and even more, claimed for the Pope, over temporal sovereigns and their subjects, the world over! This Review is the acknowledged organ of Archbishop Hughes, the head and front of the Catholic Church in North America.

You state that our Declaration of Independence absolved from every possible obligation to the Pope in temporal matters. Your language is:

"The moment it was read and proclaimed from old Independence Hall in Philadelphia, obedience in temporal matters, if it ever existed, ceased for ever, as to every native-born son in America."

You further add that the Constitution of the United States set aside all temporal power of the Pope in this country, and that if any doubts remain, the finishing touch is given by the following oath of naturalization, taken by our naturalized citizens:

"I do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States, and that I do absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, or state, or sovereignty whatever."

Sir, do you suppose that the "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers," whom you have the impudence to address, are all fools? Do you suppose they are men of no reading or information? If they know any thing, they certainly know that the oath of naturalization they, the Catholics, take, weighs no more with them than a feather. A Catholic can evade the force of any oath, by a mental reservation. Here is what Sanchez says, the very highest Catholic authority, whose teaching, including this interpretation of oaths, has been endorsed by the Council of Trent:

"It is lawful to use ambiguous terms to give the impression a different sense from that which you understand yourself. A person may take an oath that he has not done such a thing, though in fact he has, by saying to himself it was not done on a certain day, or before he was born, or by concealing any other similar circumstances; which gives another meaning to it. This is extremely convenient, and always very just, when necessary to your health, honor, or prosperity."

In addition to this, let me tell you, if you never before knew the fact, that Judge Gaston, a distinguished Jurist, and a gentleman of excellent character, though a rigid Roman Catholic, of North Carolina, was appointed to a seat upon the Supreme Bench of that State. The Constitution of that State, unlike those of almost all other States, requires every Judge to take an oath, among other things, that HE BELIEVES IN THE TRUTH OF THE PROTESTANT RELIGION. Mr. Gaston asked time to think over the matter—he repaired to the Archbishop at Baltimore, doubtless obtained a dispensation—wrote back to Raleigh from there, that he would take the oath—returned, and in due time solemnly swore that he believed in the truth of the Protestant Religion. He died in Raleigh, one of the Judges of the Supreme Court—but lived and died a Roman Catholic!

During the past month, in this city, W. G. McAdoo, the Attorney General for this Judicial Circuit, had some Irish Catholics brought before the Grand Jury, to testify in cases of unlawful gaming and the retailing of ardent spirits. The Clerk swore them on a common English Testament, and they returned to the Jury room, and testified that they knew of no cases! The Attorney for the Commonwealth then procured the Catholic Douay Bible, with a large Cross upon its outside, swore them upon this—sent them in, and they disgorged, telling of various cases, and enabling the Jury to find bills against even some of their own folks! An oath, then, is nothing with strict Roman Catholics, who believe their Priests can absolve them from the obligations of any and all oaths. For notwithstanding your denial of the fact, it is notoriously true, that the members of the Catholic Church believe their Priesthood to exercise, by Divine right, the power to fix and determine their eternal destiny. Nay, every Roman Catholic in the known world is under the absolute control of the Catholic Priesthood, by considerations not only of a temporal, but an eternal weight. This is what gives their Priesthood such power and influence in elections; an influence they are using in every State, against the American party. And it is this faculty of concentration, this political influence, this power of the Priesthood to control the Catholic community, and cause a vast multitude of ignorant foreigners to vote as a unit, and thus control the will of the American people, that has engendered this opposition to the Catholic Church. It is this aggressive policy and corrupting tendency of the Romish Church; this organized and concentrated political power of a distinct class of men; foreign by birth; inferior in intelligence and virtue to the American people, and not their religion and form of worship, objectionable as these are known to be, which have called forth the opposition of the American party to the Catholic Church.

But, sir, you occupy several pages in copying and commenting upon the several oaths administered to the members of the American party—oaths which, as you tell us, are revolting in their character, and lead to the indiscriminate proscription of all foreigners. I meet all your conjectures and wild speculations in reference to these several oaths and obligations, by saying, just here, that I have taken them all, and that they express my sentiments and feelings to the very letter; and I am willing, for the remainder of my days, to go before an acting Justice of the Peace, for the county of Knox, and have all three of these oaths administered every Monday morning, upon the "Holy Bible and Cross."

You have failed, in your zeal to advocate Romanism and oppose the American party, to tell the "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers," whom you address, that we resort to our oaths and obligations to combat successfully the most powerful oath-bound organization the world ever knew. The oath of every Roman Catholic Bishop and Archbishop binds him to absolute and unquestioned obedience, not only to the present Pope but to his successors, "canonically coming in," and to "oppose and persecute" all who do not submit to his authority! The oath of every Priest binds him to the Church of Rome "as the chief head and matron above all pretended Churches throughout the whole earth," and to "further her interests more than his own earthly good." The oath of the Jesuit binds him to the Pope, as "Christ's Vicar-General," by "all the saints and hosts of heaven," and to "denounce and disown any allegiance as due to Protestants, or obedience to any of their inferior magistrates or officers." The oath of the San Fedisti, a secret Order established by the Papal government in 1821, binds them to sustain "the Papal altar and throne, and to exterminate heretics, without pity for the cries of children, or of men and women." The oath of the Irish Ribbon Men, an Order established by the Papal government, and introduced into this country by Bedini, the Pope's Nuncio, but a few years ago, binds him "to extirpate all heretics, and all the Protestants, and to walk in their blood to the knees." Is it not time to take the alarm, Governor, and to combine to resist all these secret oath-bound associations, which now threaten us with the loss of all that freemen and Protestant Christians hold dear on earth?

It is a matter of utter astonishment to find a great political party in this country, most of whom are native-born Protestants, taking sides with a foreign Church, whose designs against this country, according to the avowals of the Duke of Richmond, lately Governor-General of Canada, are of the most wicked and fearful character! Speaking of this government, the Duke said in a public address, on our northern border:

"It will be destroyed: it ought not, and will not be permitted to exist. The curse of the French revolution, and subsequent wars and commotions in Europe, are to be attributed to its example; and so long as it exists, no prince will be safe upon his throne; and the sovereigns of Europe are aware of it, and they have determined upon its destruction, and have come to an understanding upon this subject, and have decided on the means to accomplish it; and they will eventually succeed, by SUBVERSION rather than conquest. All the low and surplus population of the different nations of Europe will be carried into that country. It is and will be a receptacle for the bad and disaffected population of Europe, when they are not wanted for soldiers, or to supply the navies; and the governments of Europe will favor such a course. This will create a surplus and majority of low population, who are so very easily excited; and they will bring with them their principles, and in nine cases out of ten adhere to their ancient and former governments, laws, manners, customs, and religion, and will transmit them to their posterity; and in many cases propagate them among the natives. These men will become citizens, and by the Constitution and laws will be invested with the right of suffrage. Hence, discord, dissension, anarchy, and civil war will ensue; and some popular individual will assume the government, and restore order, and the sovereigns of Europe, the emigrants, and many of the natives, will sustain him. The Church of Rome has a design upon that country; and it will in time be the established religion, and will aid in the destruction of that Republic. I have conversed with many of the sovereigns and princes of Europe; and they have unanimously expressed these opinions relative to the government of the United States, and their determination to subvert it."

The monarchs of Europe, says the Duke of Richmond, will aid in sending us a surplus of "low, excitable, bad, and disaffected men," who will bring with them their principles, and will adhere to their foreign notions of government, laws, manners, customs, and religion—and that religion Catholic; and yet you, the "son of a now sainted father," of Protestant raising, have the brazen effrontery to call upon the "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers" of an American Protestant Church to aid you, your corrupt party, and the monarchs of Europe, in destroying both our government and Church!

Sir, it is passing strange that Protestant Christians and their children should be found side by side with you, Bishop Hughes, Gov. Johnson, and the thousands of bad men who are seeking to build up a Roman Hierarchy in this free country of ours! What do you promise the country and yourselves, if Romanism proves successful in this contest? The history of the past informs us that Rome has slain 1,000,000 of Albigenses and Waldenses; 1,500,000 Jews, in Spain; 3,000,000 Moors, in Spain. France will never forget St. Bartholomew's Night, when 100,000 souls perished in Paris alone! The blood of Protestants has fertilized the soil of England, Germany, and Ireland. I mean by this, that enough of Protestant blood has been shed to enrich all the poor lands of England, Germany, and Ireland, if it were properly distributed. In all, the authentic records of the Romish Church show, (and of this she makes her boast,) that she has put to death SIXTY-EIGHT MILLIONS of human beings, for no other offence than that of being Protestants in their religious faith! Average each person slain at four gallons of blood, and medical writers say a healthy person yields more, and it makes TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-TWO MILLIONS OF GALLONS!—enough to overflow the banks of the Mississippi, and destroy all the cotton and sugar plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana!

But you argue, in your blasphemous publication, that this is no longer a characteristic of the Romish Hierarchy. Why is it not? Has she ever changed for the better? When did she ever renounce these doctrines and practices? Never, no, never! Hers is the same tyrannical system now—where she has the power—that it always has been, and always must be, in the very nature of things! It is her boast, and the boast of her standard authors, that she is always right, and knows no change! And wo to this land of ours, if ever Rome gets the ascendancy here! Her whole system is adverse to our Republican institutions, and she hesitates not to declare it! Brownson says in his Review:

"Let us dare to assert the truth in the face of the lying world, and, instead of pleading for our Church at the bar of the State, summon the State itself to plead at the bar of the Church, its divinely constituted judge."

No wonder, sir, that the American people are aroused! Such bold and startling avowals are calculated to arouse and unite the somewhat divided bands of Protestant Christians; to wake up a host of Luthers, Calvins, Cranmers, and Wesleys; to bind together "the heretics condemned in a mass." The very latest thing I have seen is the "Pastoral Letter" of the Bishops of the Province of St. Louis, just issued. That document explicitly says:

"We maintain the superiority of the spiritual over the temporal order. We maintain that the temporal ruler is bound to conform his enactments to the Divine law. We maintain that the Church is the supreme judge of all questions concerning faith and morals; and that in the determination of such question, the Roman Pontiff, Vicar of Jesus Christ, constitutes a tribunal from which there is no appeal; and to whose award all the children of the Church must yield obedience."

Now, sir, after this authoritative and official announcement, I don't want to see any more of your wire-drawn distinctions between spiritual and temporal allegiance to the Pope. These Bishops say that both are alike binding. Nor do I want to see any more of your malignant efforts to fix the lie upon Mr. Wesley, for affirming in Europe, during the past century, what the Bishops of the United States have announced, in a Pastoral Address, in the present day!

Pope Pius IX. has, by a special act, made the Virgin Mary the special patron of these United States; but the Protestants of this country have also made a decree, and that decree is, that Jesus Christ, and not the Virgin Mary, shall be the patron of these United States.

And I am happy to have it in my power to inform you, notwithstanding the influence of your Address, that the "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers" of the Methodist Church, both North and South, are ready to make a common, determined, prayerful effort to save our native land from the threatened slavery of submission to the decisions of the Council of Trent, and the equally corrupt conventions of Progressive Democracy!

Assuming what is notoriously false—that the Know Nothings are in favor of all measures fatal to the South, and destructive to the Constitution—you ask on page 25 of your infinitely infernal Address:

"What if a proposition be pending to repeal the Fugitive Slave Law—the Kansas and Nebraska law—the rejection of a State asking admission into the Union, because its constitution may tolerate slavery?"

You know, sir, that the 12th Plank in the Philadelphia Platform of the American party is a safer guaranty upon this slavery question, and the perpetuity of existing laws, than is to be found anywhere in the creeds of political parties. Here it is in full:

"The American party having arisen upon the ruins, and in spite of the opposition of the Whig and Democratic parties, can not be held in any manner responsible for the obnoxious acts or violated pledges of either; and the systematic agitation of the slavery question by those parties having elevated sectional hostility into a positive element of political power, and brought our institutions into peril, it has therefore become the imperative duty of the American party to interpose, for the purpose of giving peace to the country, and perpetuity to the Union. And as experience has shown it impossible to reconcile opinions so extreme as those which separate the disputants, and as there can be no dishonor in submitting to the laws, the National Council has deemed it the best guaranty of common justice and of future peace, to abide by and maintain the existing laws upon the subject of slavery, as a final and conclusive settlement of that subject in spirit and in substance.

"And regarding it the highest duty to avow their opinions upon a subject so important, in distinct and unequivocal terms, it is hereby declared as the sense of this National Council, that Congress possesses no power, under the Constitution, to legislate upon the subject of slavery in the States where it does or may exist, or to exclude any State from admission into the Union, because its Constitution does or does not recognize the institution of slavery as a part of its social system; and expressly pretermitting any expression of opinion upon the power of Congress to establish or prohibit slavery in any Territory, it is the sense of the National Council that Congress ought not to legislate upon the subject of slavery within the Territories of the United States, and that any interference by Congress with slavery as it exists in the District of Columbia, would be a violation of the spirit and intention of the compact by which the State of Maryland ceded the District to the United States, and a breach of the national faith."

In the "wild hunt" for territory by the progressive Democracy, and their efforts to settle our Western lands with foreigners who are to a man Free Soilers and Abolitionists, the South has more to fear than from all other considerations. What is Gov. Johnson's iniquitous Homestead Bill, but a bid for foreigners? He proposes to give to the heads of families one hundred and sixty acres of land, thus hiring all the convicts and paupers of Europe to come and settle in our Western States and Territories! Sir, but let your progressive, sublimated, double-distilled, converging-lines, Johnsonian Democracy bring into this Union one million of Spanish Papists—black, brown, sorrel, and tawny—under the guise of acquiring Cuba for the South: let them bring eight hundred thousand French and English Papists, under the name of acquiring Canada for the North: let them bring two millions of Mexican Papists—brown, tawny, red and black, being a mixture of all colors and all nations—under the specious pretence of "extending the area of freedom"—let all this be done—and your party, made up of native traitors, and foreign vagabonds, and Catholic paupers, are aiming at it—let it be done, I say, and farewell to liberty, and all that is sacred in this country! With five millions of Papists in our midst—four millions and a half being of foreign birth, and four millions speaking a foreign language—all taught from infancy to hate and detest Protestantism as a crime—an American party would become an absolute political necessity. Well do the Free Soil papers comprehend this matter. Hear the infamous but influential Chicago Tribune, one of your Douglass organs—one of your foreign Catholic organs. I quote from the paper itself:

"It is now a well-attested fact, that Atchison is a member of the Superior Order of the Spangled Banner, or Know Nothings, and that his infernal villainy in Kansas has been carried on under the protection and patronage of the lodges in Western Missouri. This is a matter that all men in the North should understand, that Northern voters may be exceedingly cautious how they give countenance or support to an Order that, in any of its phases or localities, is capable of producing such results. It is further said, that the members of that Kansas Legislature, now outraging all sense of right and justice by their devilish enactments, are the chosen men of the affiliated Know Nothings in Missouri and Kansas, who back then up in whatever thing they do. Atchison and his gang are the friends of the Order, and through it and Southern Know Nothing support they are sure that their efforts to establish a despotism in the Territory, if necessary, at the point of the bayonet, will be successful. These facts account for many things heretofore inexplicable, and they develop the true reason of the hostility of the border-ruffians to the foreign immigration that would, under other circumstances, people that vast and fertile country west of the Missouri."

Thus it appears that a host of lousy foreigners, fresh from the emigrant ships, in which they are brought over to this country as ballast—having the right to vote conferred upon them by an infamous progressive Democratic feature in the Kansas Bill, were expected to get the control of affairs in Kansas. It further appears, however, that Senator Atchison and his pro-slavery associates supposed that, though fresh from their farms, and crossing the line of their State into the new Territory, they too had the right to vote without being naturalized in Kansas. Hence, in the estimation of this Sag Nicht organ at Chicago, a great outrage is committed upon Germany, Ireland, and Italy!

Sir, you need not lay the flattering unction to your soul, that you can drive the clergy generally from the noble stand they have taken upon this great question. Nor need you suppose, for one moment, that the American party are conquered, though defeated in several States in the recent elections. The party will remain true to its ends. Though it fail to command office, it cannot fail to exercise large power. Office is not always strength; but sometimes, nay, frequently, as in the case of the present Administration, weakness, as time will prove! The aim of the American party is, by fair party means, to correct a great social evil and political wrong; and if they cannot do that, to mitigate the evil and the wrong; if they cannot do that, to prevent its further increase; and if neither can be done, why, then I confess to you, the party will have failed. But, sir, if such a failure take place, rest assured that the "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers" of the Methodist Church, South, will not help to bring about such a failure! We can afford to let such minions of party as you are, rave and rant, and publish their expositions, and issue their warnings to Churches: they will all serve to swell our ranks. All true American hearts, not chained to the car of party, or bound down by the cords of plunder, think alike upon the great questions that have called the American party into existence. Little do we regard the slanders of the pensioners of party. Let their speeches and publications teem with wholesale slanders of our creed: the political jockeyism of these thimble-riggers, as in your own case, is too apparent!

From Maine to the shores of the Pacific the country is convulsed with intense excitement upon this subject. Shall Americans govern themselves, or shall Foreigners, unacquainted with our laws, and brought up under monarchical governments, rule? Shall those who are temporally and spiritually subject to a foreign prince be our legislators, post-masters, foreign ministers, and military leaders, and change our laws as they are directed by the Pope of Rome? Such results the American party have set out to prevent. The present excitement will not cease; true Americans and Protestants will labor and pray until our distracted country shall be redeemed from the influence of civil and ecclesiastical tyranny.

Now, Governor, I have noticed all your charges, arguments, and appeals, but one, and that is the allegation that Methodist clerical Know Nothings are conspirators. Your argument is—and I wish to represent you correctly—"The offence of conspiracy is not confined to the prejudicing of a particular individual; it may be to injure public trade, to affect public health, or to violate public policy."

You cite Blackstone's Commentary, and other English Law Books, to satisfy the Clergy as to the law of conspiracy. This done, you overwhelm them with this sage and logical conclusion:

"The gist of the offence of conspiracy consists in a confederacy to do an unlawful act, and the offence is complete when the confederacy is made."

I will concede, for the sake of the argument, that this is sound law, and that yours is a logical deduction. Nay, I will concede more—I grant that it is an unlawful act for native Americans, and Protestant Christians, whether ministers or laymen, to resolve, or swear, as we Know Nothings have all done, that we will not vote for Catholics and Foreigners for public offices! I take the ground you do, that a man's vote is not his own, and that it is only to be disposed of by the leaders of the party with which he may act!

And now, if you and I, both great men, and Doctors of Law, are correct in laying down the law, and the privilege of voters in this free country, what an infamous body of conspirators the Democrats are, and have always been! For a quarter of a century, they have conspired to keep the Whigs out of office—have succeeded in doing so most of that time—and have kept thousands of them who are poor from becoming rich! More recently, they have conspired with Abolitionists, Free Soilers, Fourierites, Spiritualists, Roman Catholics, Irish, French, and German paupers, and all manner of European convicts, to keep the American party out of office, and have succeeded in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Texas, and other States—thereby depriving the Americans of "lots" of money and honors, both of which they need, and both of which are their birthrights!

The "Bishops, Elders, and other Ministers," whom you address, in opposition to the great sin of conspiracy, would more cheerfully unite with you to enforce law and order, and to prosecute offenders, but for the fact that the Abolition wing of your party once conspired against them, to deprive their wives, children, widows, and orphans, of their lawful portion of the great Book Concern in New York, and they were compelled to punish the conspirators, at great expense, however, in the District and Supreme Courts of the United States!

But, Sir, upon the subject of oaths, you are eloquent, apt in your quotations of Scripture, and evince great learning in the legal profession! You charge that "Know Nothingism is both unchristian and unlawful, because of its oaths, which have no Scripture warrant for their administration!" One of your quotations from the Bible is this: "Swear not at all: neither by heaven, for it is God's throne: nor by the earth, for it is his footstool." Your mind has undergone a great change upon the subject of oaths and hard swearing, since the 21st of June, 1845, when you delivered your celebrated "Mount Pisgah" speech at Athens. You then advised the people of the State to administer "horrible oaths," and to swear by the "heavens," aye, "God's throne." But then you were a Know Nothing. Here is what you say in your revised copy of that memorable speech:

"Go up with me in imagination and stand for awhile on some lofty summit of the Rocky Mountains. Let us take one ravishing view of this broad land of liberty. Turn your face toward the Gulf of Mexico: what do you behold? Instead of one lone star faintly shining in the far distant south, a whole galaxy of stars of the first magnitude are bursting on your vision and shining with a bright and glorious effulgence. Now turn with me to the west—the mighty west—where the setting sun dips her disk in the western ocean. Look away down through the misty distance to the shores of the Pacific, with all its bays, and harbors, and rivers. Cast your eyes as far as the Russian Possessions, in latitude fifty-four degrees and forty minutes. What a new world lies before you! How many magnificent States to be the future homes of the sons and daughters of freedom! But you have not gazed on half this glorious country. Turn now your face to the east, where the morning sun first shines on this land of liberty. Away yonder, you see the immortal old thirteen, who achieved our independence; nearer to us lie the twelve or fifteen States of the great valley of the Mississippi, stretching and reposing like so many giants in their slumbers. O! now I see your heart is full—it can take in no more. Who now feels like he was a party man, or a southern man, or a northern man? Who does not feel that he is an American, and thankful to Heaven that his lot was cast in such a goodly land? When did mental vision ever rest on such a scene? Moses, when standing on the top of Mount Pisgah, looking over on the promised land, gazed not on a scene half so lovely. O! let us this day vow that whatever else we may do, by whatever name we may be called, we will never surrender one square acre of this goodly heritage to the DICTATION of any king or potentate on earth. SWEAR IT! SWEAR IT! my countrymen, and let HEAVEN RECORD THE VOW FOR EVER!"

In conclusion, Governor, suffer a few words of advice, and I will bring this letter, already too long, to a close. You are advanced in years, nay, you have grown gray in the service of sin, and political intrigues; and at most you have not long to live. Cease your political aspirations, and turn your attention to future and eternal things! You have been a member of our State Legislature; subsequently, a member of Congress; and more recently the Governor of our State; honors and stations, to say the least of it, equal to your merits and talents!

As a true "son of a now sainted father," from whom you have been separated for many years, so demean yourself in future, that you may not be separated, world without end! Humble yourself before God; confess your numerous sins; and instead of lecturing God's ministers upon the subject of party politics, ask them, with tears in your eyes, to pray for you! Exercise a living faith in Christ, who came down from heaven, and made upon the cross a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world. Thus obtaining forgiveness, cease your Sunday discussions on political subjects; attend at the house of God, and set an example to other ungodly Sag Nichts, and lead a new and different life!

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

W. G. BROWNLOW,

A Local Methodist Minister.



GOVERNOR JOHNSON AND EDITOR EASTMAN.

On the 9th of October, 1855, and while the Legislature was in session at Nashville, we delivered a speech to an immense crowd on the Public Square; which, after certain preliminary remarks, we will give to the public, just as it was spoken. The reason why the call was made on us to deliver the speech was, that we had, the previous weeks, delivered the same, in substance, at Shelbyville and Clarksville, and the American party at Nashville hearing of it, and approving what was said, desired us to repeat it; and, to be candid, we desired to repeat it there and then!

Mr. Wise, of Virginia, gained great notoriety, in the spring of 1855, by his abuse and blackguardism, heaped upon the American party. He was successful; and Johnson, of Tennessee, whose ambition was to gain a more infamous notoriety, profiting by the example of Wise, plunged into the lowest depths of Billingsgate, and piled his vulgar epithets upon the party indiscriminately. Wise, then, like all inventors and originators, has had numerous imitators, and among the most successful of these are Johnson, of Tennessee; Stephens, of Georgia; and Clingman, of North Carolina. But as an adept in low Billingsgate slang, coarse blackguardism, and as a slanderer and maligner of better men than himself, Johnson has excelled his patron, Wise, and left far in the shades of the distant caverns of abuse, both Stephens and Clingman!

To prepare the public mind for the degree of severity we used in reference to the Governor of the State, we will introduce as many as five different extracts from his speeches, in his late canvass for Governor, at Murfreesboro' and Manchester; as reported by his partisan organ, the Nashville Union, and his pliant tool, its Abolition editor, E. G. Eastman:

"THE DEVIL, HIS SATANIC MAJESTY, THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS, WHO PRESIDES OVER THE SECRET CONCLAVE HELD IN PANDEMONIUM, MAKES WAR UPON ALL BRANCHES OF CHRIST'S CHURCH. THE KNOW NOTHINGS ADVOCATE AND DEFEND NONE, BUT MAKE WAR UPON ONE OF THE CHURCHES, AND THUS FAR BECOME THE ALLIES OF THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS."—[Speech of ANDREW JOHNSON, at Murfreesboro'.

"A DENOMINATION LIKE THIS, TO SET UP AS THE GUARDIANS OF THE RELIGION AND MORALS OF THE COUNTRY! A DENOMINATION BOUND TOGETHER BY SECRET AND TERRIBLE OATHS: THE FIRST OF WHICH, ON THE VERY INITIATION, FIXES AND REQUIRES THEM TO CARRY A LIE IN THEIR MOUTHS."—[Speech of ANDREW JOHNSON, at Murfreesboro'.