"SHOW ME THE DIMENSIONS OF A KNOW NOTHING, AND I WILL SHOW YOU A HUGE REPTILE, UPON WHOSE NECK THE FOOT OF EVERY HONEST MAN OUGHT TO BE PLACED."—[Speech of ANDREW JOHNSON, at Manchester.

"THEY ARE LIKE THE HYENA, AND COME FROM THEIR LAIR AFTER MIDNIGHT TO PREY UPON HUMAN CARCASSES."—[Speech of ANDREW JOHNSON, at Manchester.

"I WOULD AS SOON BE FOUND IN THE CLAN OF JOHN A. MURRELL AS IN A KNOW NOTHING COUNCIL."—[Speech of ANDREW JOHNSON, at Manchester.

The blackguard and calumniator using this language, was elected by a majority of two thousand votes: that majority being cast by Foreigners and illegal voters; and consequently, his competitor, COL. GENTRY—than whom there is not a more talented, patriotic, and honorable gentleman in Tennessee—was fairly and justly elected. This, then, is the language used by the Governor of Tennessee, towards a majority of the legal voters of the State! Under these circumstances, we made the speech that follows, to an immense crowd on the Square: the correspondence preceding which, will explain itself:

NASHVILLE, Oct. 10th, 1855.

W. G. BROWNLOW, ESQ.:

Dear Sir:—The undersigned, having heard your speech on the Square, last night, respectfully request that you embody the substance of the same, and publish it in the Knoxville Whig. The desire to see it in print is very general; and those who heard it approved its severity, without it were such as were bitter against the American party.

Your friends, CHARLES G. SMITH, JOHN MORRISON, F. M. BURTON, ROBT. S. NORTHCUTT, SAML. DAVIS.

NASHVILLE, Oct. 13th, 1855.

MESSRS. SMITH, MORRISON, AND OTHERS:

Gentlemen:—Your note requesting me to publish the substance of my remarks on the Square, last Tuesday night, has been received, and I would have replied sooner, but for my absence at Shelbyville. I have now made the same speech at Clarksville, Nashville, and Shelbyville; and my only regrets are, that my engagements prevent me from delivering the same speech at every point in this State, where Gov. Johnson held me up as the "High Priest of the Order," and argued therefrom the want of respectability for the Order. In addition to your request, I have had verbal applications from many gentlemen to publish my remarks—gentlemen who have been mild and moderate throughout their political course. I shall, therefore, comply with your request and theirs, at my earliest convenience.

I hold that no man's position in life should shield him from the rebukes he may merit by his bad conduct; and as for the present Governor of Tennessee, his wholesale abuse of the American party, towards whose members, without a single exception, he has indulged in language which ought not to be tolerated within the precincts of Billingsgate, no epithet is too low, too degrading, or disgraceful, to pay him back in.

Respectfully, &c.,

W. G. BROWNLOW.

FELLOW-CITIZENS:—The occasion which has called you together to-night, is the special appointment of our young friend, Mr. Crowe, to whose eloquence we have all listened with pleasure. I have made no appointment to speak here; nor have I prompted the loud and long calls made upon me, this evening, by this large Nashville audience. I shall speak to you; but not upon the issues of the late canvass, nor upon those of the approaching canvass of 1856. I will discuss Andrew Johnson and E. G. Eastman; and if they are in the assembly, I hope they will come forward and take seats on this stand, that I may have the pleasure of looking them full in the face, as I denounce them in unmeasured terms: which is my purpose to-night, let the consequences be what they may!

On a memorable night in August, after it was understood that Andrew Johnson was reelected to the office of Governor, a procession was formed in Knoxville, composed of the worst materials in that young and growing city—such as drunken, red-mouthed Irishmen, lousy Germans, and insolent negroes, with three or four men of respectable pretensions thrown in, to exercise a controlling influence over these bad materials. This riotous mob halted in front of my dwelling, in East Knoxville, and groaned and sang for my especial benefit: all which was natural enough—as they had triumphed over me in the election of a Governor. I took no offence at their rejoicing over the election of Gov. Johnson, as I told them; and for the reason, that I knew them to be of that class of men who would actually need the exercise of the pardoning power, at the hands of the present Governor, to release them from the penitentiary, before his present term of service would expire!

From my humble dwelling, this beautiful procession marched to the Coleman House, on Gay street, yelling like devils, and insulting the inmates of every house they passed. "Huzza for Andy McJohnson!" exclaimed one. "Three cheers for Andy O'Johnson!" exclaimed another. While, to cap the climax—"Well done, my Johnsing and the White Bastard," (meaning Basis,) exclaimed a drunken negro! Halting in front of the Coleman House, the Governor elect mounted a goods box, and under feelings of great excitement, hatred, and malice, delivered a speech abusive of the whole American party, excepting none, in coarse, bitter language, in a style peculiarly his own—adapted alone to the foul precincts of Billingsgate—rounding his periods with a diabolical and infernal grin, alone suited to a display of oratory by a land pirate!

I reported this slanderous speech—not in as offensive style—as it was delivered; for his looks and grins no man can report on paper. I also wrote the substance of what he said to Major Donelson, in a letter, of which I shall have something more to say before I leave this stand. Just here, I will repeat what the Governor did say, and what I reported him to have said in my paper. I wish this large audience to hear me distinctly, and to recollect the points I make; for I shall wind up on the Governor and his miserable tool, Eastman, with a degree of severity you have not been accustomed to, but which shall be warranted by the facts in each case.

Gov. Johnson said this new party of self-styled Americans professed to have organized with a view to purify and reform the old political parties. A beautiful set, said he, to reform! The Order of Know Nothings was composed of the worst men in the Whig and Democratic parties. As a sample of these men, he pointed out Andrew J. Donelson, by name—exclaiming as often as twice, Who is Andrew J. Donelson? He is a soured, office-seeking, disappointed politician, who has been kicked out of the Democratic party. To illustrate his views more fully, he told the crowd to imagine a large gang of counterfeiters out there! and an equally large gang of horse-thieves out yonder! Take from these two companies the worst men in their ranks, form a third party of these, and you have a representation of this Know Nothing party. This was a beautiful party to propose reform, or to speak of other parties being corrupt! He was interrupted repeatedly; and I think I may safely say, among hands, they gave him the d——d lie fifty times! James M. Davis, a respectable mechanic, asked him if he would say that to Major Donelson's face? He replied, that he heard the hissing of an adder, or a goose, and went through with certain stereotyped phrases you have all heard from his lips. This call upon him by Mr. Davis was not named in my newspaper report, nor in my letter to Major Donelson. Indeed, I did not anticipate a denial of his abuse.

Now, fellow-citizens, it was in this connection, as well as in the most offensive language, that Gov. Johnson introduced the name of Andrew J. Donelson, repeating it more than once, emphasizing upon it, and repeating it with scorn and bitterness. This is the report, in substance, I made of his speech through my paper, and in a letter I addressed to Major Donelson. And to the truth of my report, there are one hundred respectable gentlemen in Knoxville who will make oath upon the Holy Bible. There are now a half-dozen respectable gentlemen in this crowd who were in the street at Knoxville on that occasion, and heard every word the Governor said, and will sustain me in my account of it. Among these I will name Messrs. White and Armstrong, members of the House, Senator Rogers, Col. James C. Luttrell, and Mr. Fleming, the editor of the Knoxville Register.

Well, gentlemen—and I am proud to have an opportunity of vindicating myself before so large a Nashville audience as this is—I say Major Donelson came to Nashville, after receiving intelligence of the abuse of the Governor, and was seen walking these streets with a large and homely stick in his hand, looking grum, as any gentleman would do under the circumstances. The friends of Gov. Johnson seeing what would likely be the result of this affair, asked for, and very properly obtained that letter, with a view to laying it before their slanderous and abusive Executive officer, that he might lie out of what he said about an honorable and brave man; and thereby avoid the disgrace of a cudgelling! Did he lie out of the scrape? He did: aye, he ingloriously lied out of what he had said—leaving Major Donelson no ground for any difficulty with him: although the Major had a right to suppose that any man base enough to make such charges, would have no hesitancy in lying out of his disreputable and cowardly abuse. I therefore pronounce your Governor, here upon his own dunghill, an UNMITIGATED LIAR AND CALUMNIATOR, and a VILLAINOUS COWARD, wanting the nerve to stand up to his abuse of better men than himself!

But it will be said that the Governor proves me a liar, by a citizen of Nashville, who was present at Knoxville and heard his speech. That is so, but I prove both him and his witness liars, by a multitude of witnesses who were also present, and who are gentlemen of the first standing. But who is it that testifies that I have lied? It is E. G. Eastman, the editor of the Sag Nicht organ in this city. And who is E. G. Eastman? He is a dirty, lying, and unscrupulous Abolitionist, from Massachusetts, who once conducted an Abolitionist paper either in that State, or the State of New Hampshire. He was brought out to this State to lie for the unscrupulous leaders of his party. He is paid for telling and writing falsehoods, and would, if the interests of his party required it, and a consideration were paid him in hand, swear lies as readily as he would write them down for publication. He is a poor devil, as void of truth and honor as he has shown himself to be of courage and resentment. He edits a low, dirty, scurrilous sheet; and, like his master, Gov. Johnson, never could elevate himself above the level of a common blackguard. No epithet is too low, too degrading, or disgraceful to be applied to the members of the American party, by either of these Billingsgate graduates. Decent men shun coming in contact with either of them, as they would avoid a night-cart, or other vehicle of filth. As some fish thrive only in dirty water, so the Nashville Union and American would not exist a week out of the atmosphere of slang and vituperation. A fit organ, this, for all who arrange themselves under the dark piratical flag of Andrew Johnson and his progressive Democracy. I am the more specific in reference to Eastman, because I understand he is in this assembly!

But, fellow-citizens, I am not yet through with this Knoxville speech of the Governor. Maj. Donelson visited Knoxville, one month after this slanderous speech was made against him; he visited there upon the invitation of the American party, to address a Mass Meeting. I waited upon Maj. Donelson, upon his arrival, and found him at the house of Doct. Curry. I told the Major that I was tired of having questions of veracity between me and Governors and Ex-Governors of Tennessee, and that I desired that others should state to him what had been said by the Governor. Accordingly, different gentlemen, citizens of character, informed him that they were in the crowd and heard Johnson, and that he did say all that was attributed to him, both in the letter he had received from me, and in the two Knoxville papers. Consequently, when Maj. Donelson made his speech next day, he denounced the Governor as a miserable calumniator, and refuted his villainous charges, in a manner becoming the occasion, and with a frankness which carried with it a conviction of its truth, and gave satisfaction to his numerous friends.

And now, gentlemen, I take occasion to state, that there is no longer an adjourned question of veracity between me and Johnson and Eastman. The issue is between Johnson and Eastman, on the one hand, and various respectable gentlemen of Knoxville, on the other hand. Either the Governor and his man Friday have basely lied, or a number of the citizens of Knoxville and vicinity, have testified to what is false. I assert, once more, that the Governor and his dirty Editor have lied out of the villainous abuse the former heaped upon better men than himself. And if their friends are willing to see them remain under the charge, the American party are satisfied with the settlement of the question.

Fellow-citizens, while I am on the stand, I will notice some other points personal to myself. And before I enter upon these, I will call your attention to the wholesale abuse of the Governor, of some thirty-five or forty thousand voters in Tennessee. In his Murfreesboro' speech, he asserted that "the Devil, his Satanic Majesty, presides over all the secret conclaves" held by the Know Nothings, and that "they are the allies of the Prince of Darkness." I quote from his printed speeches from memory, but it will be found that I quote correctly. In that same speech, he asserts that all Know Nothings are "bound by terrible oaths to fix and carry a lie in their mouths!" In his Manchester speech, I believe it was, he called all members of the new party "Hyenas," and "huge reptiles, upon whose neck the feet of all honest men ought to be placed." And in this same speech he says he "WOULD AS SOON BE FOUND IN A CLAN OF JOHN A. MURRELL'S MEN, AS IN A KNOW NOTHING COUNCIL!"

What an imputation upon nearly one half of the legal voters of Tennessee! He has used the most odious terms his limited knowledge of the English language would enable him to employ, to deride, defame, insult, and blackguard every man who has joined the new party, or dares to act with them in politics. In the plenitude of his bitter and supercilious arrogance, Andrew Johnson has indulged in language against the entire American party, which would not be tolerated within the precincts of Billingsgate, or the lowest fish-market in London. And from Johnson to Shelby counties, during the entire summer, this low-flung and ill-bred scoundrel, pursued this same strain of vulgar and disgusting abuse. And whether speaking of the most enlightened statesman, the purest patriot, or the most pious clergyman, he pursued the same strain of abuse. With him, a vile demagogue, whose daily employment is to administer to the very worst appetites of mankind, no virtue, no honor, no truth, exists anywhere, but in the breasts of such as are either corrupt enough or fool enough to follow him, and a few malignant falsifiers who worship at his shrine. He is a wretched and vile caterer to the morbid foreign and Catholic appetite of this country. "It is a dirty bird that fouls its own nest," says the proverb; and it applies to this man Johnson with as much force as to the dirtiest of the feathered tribe.

"Where is the wretch, so lost, so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, MY NATIVE LAND!"

He now disgraces the Executive Chair of this gallant State. Most of God's creatures, human and brute, have an attachment to "HOME, SWEET HOME;" but here is a contemptible and selfish demagogue who discards all such feelings, and would transfer his country and home to strangers and outlaws, to European paupers and criminals, if he could thereby receive a temporary election, or receive a pocket-full of money. For such a wretch I have no sympathy, and no feelings but those of scorn and contempt, and hence it is that I speak of him in such terms.

On every stump in Tennessee, he held me up as "the High Priest of the Order," representing Col. Gentry as my candidate. Since I came to Middle Tennessee, I have been informed that he pointed to the fancied fact that I was the head of the Order, as an evidence of its utter want of respectability. Turning up his nose, and grinning significantly, he would inquire, Who is William G. Brownlow?

Now, gentlemen, since he makes this issue of respectability with me, I will accept it. Since he throws down the glove, I will take it up, and I will show you that he is the last man on God's green earth to call in question the respectability of other men, or their families! It would be both cruel and unbecoming in me to speak of what the dishonest and villainous relatives of Gov. Johnson have done, if he conducted himself prudently, and did not abuse others with such great profusion. I am not aware of any relative of mine ever having been hung, sent to the penitentiary, or being placed in the stocks. I have no doubt that persons related to me, directly or remotely, have deserved such a fate long since. There is not a man in this vast assembly who can say, and tell the truth, that he has no mean kin. Can Gov. Johnson say so? Rather, can he say he has any other kind? He is a member of a numerous family of Johnsons, in North Carolina, who are generally THIEVES and LIARS; and though he is the best one of the family I have ever met with, I unhesitatingly affirm, to-night, that there are better men than Andrew Johnson in our Penitentiary! His relatives in the Old North State, have stood in the Stocks for crimes they have committed. And his own born cousin, Madison Johnson, was hung in Raleigh, for murder and robbery! I told him of this years ago, in Jonesboro', and he denied it, and put me to the trouble of procuring the testimony of Gov. John M. Morehead to prove it! The Governor was petitioned to pardon Madison Johnson, and declined, as he knew he suffered justly. This explains why this scape-gallows has been so bitter against Whig and Know Nothing Governors. They have been so unfeeling, as to suffer his dear relatives to pull hemp without foothold, when a jury of twelve honest men have said that they deserved death! Is he not one of the last men living to talk about a want of respectability on the part of any one? Certainly he is!

Well, gentlemen, Johnson is again the Governor of Tennessee; but if he could be mortified, he would have the mortification to know that he is the Governor with a majority of the legal native votes of the State cast in opposition to him. We all committed one capital blunder in the late canvass, and that alone defeated Gentry, and elected Johnson. We copied from the Book of Pardons a list of FORTY-SEVEN names of culprits pardoned out of our State Prison by Johnson—some for negro-stealing, some for counterfeiting, house-breaking, rape, and other Democratic measures—more pardons than all his "illustrious predecessors" ever granted. In copying this list, we said to the voters of the State that Johnson had spoken his honest sentiments when he said he preferred being among a clan of Murrell men, to being found in a Know Nothing Council; and in the same breath we assured them that if Gentry was elected, he would let all such rascals stay in prison as long as the courts of the country decreed they should. And while thousands of honorable, high-minded men voted for Johnson, under the lash of party, or because they were blinded by his glaring demerits, it is not to be disguised that all the petit larceny and Penitentiary men in the State voted for him. There never was a time in Tennessee when there were not five thousand voters who either had been stealing, or intended to steal! These would naturally look to where they would find a friend, in the event of their being overtaken by justice. In the person of Andrew Johnson, they felt assured of "a friend indeed, because a friend in need." He had publicly told them that he preferred the company of Murrell men to the society of the most respectable lawyers, doctors, preachers, farmers, and mechanics in the State, who met in certain councils. The fact of his turning so many Murrell men out of the State Prison, and of his having been raised up in such society, left no doubt of the sincerity of his profession!

In conclusion, fellow-citizens, if Gov. Johnson cannot lawfully canvass the State a third time for the office he now fills, I hope the Legislature will legalize such a race by a special act, and I propose to be the candidate against him. I will show the people of the State in his presence, from the same stand, who are Murrell men, and who are not able to look honest men in the face!

If I have said any thing to-night offensive to your Governor, or any of his friends or understrappers in this city, they know where to find me. When I am not on the streets, I can be found at No. 43, on the lower floor of Sam Scott's City Hotel, opposite the ladies' parlor. I shall remain here for the next ten days only, and whatever punishment any one may wish to inflict upon me, it must be done in that time. I say this, not because I seek a difficulty, but because I don't intend it shall be said that I made this speech and took to flight!

I thank you, gentlemen, for the patience with which you have heard me in a matter personal to myself, and I hope you are prepared to acquit me of lying in the Donelson case, although Gov. Johnson and Editor Eastman bear testimony against me. I thank you, and now bid you good night!

* * * * *

We beg leave to add, that in March, 1842, Andrew Johnson laid hold of us in a speech in Blountville, when we were in Jonesborough, distant twenty miles. He held up a picture or drawing of us, and accompanied it with many abusive remarks. In turn, we held him up in the Whig of the 29th of the same month, and gave his pedigree in full, and with it a representation of his cousin Madison Johnson, under the gallows in Raleigh!

The first Monday in April following, Johnson spoke in Jonesborough, and denied most solemnly that he ever had a relative by the name of Madison Johnson—denied that a man of that name had ever been hung in Raleigh—and asserted that the man hung there in 1841 was by the name of Scott—a nephew, he said, of General Winfield Scott! This bold denial, made in the presence of a large and anxious crowd, overwhelmed us for the time being, as Johnson was raised in the vicinity of Raleigh, and had learned his trade there. He was supposed to know, and for the moment we were branded with falsehood. To aid him in his war upon us, the "Jonesborough Sentinel," Johnson's organ, came out upon us, and noticed his denial of our charge and his speech, in an article of which the following is an extract:

"Brownlow said, some time back, that Col. Johnson had a cousin hung in North Carolina. The Colonel developed the fact the day he used up or skinned Brownlow alive in Jonesborough, that instead of its being his cousin, it was the nephew of Gen. Winfield Scott, now a quasi Coon candidate for the Presidency. Brownlow is so silent!"

After this, the Sentinel noticed us again, and this notice drew out WESTON R. GALES, the then editor of the Raleigh Register, in the following:

EDITORIAL COMPLIMENTS.

"We find the following editorial in the 'Jonesboro' (Tenn.) Sentinel,' a Locofoco print, in relation to the editor of the 'Jonesboro Whig:'

"BROWNLOW made an awkward attempt last week to caricature a person who was hung some years ago in North Carolina, whom he termed the cousin of Col. JOHNSON. But it turns out to have been the nephew of Gen. WINFIELD SCOTT, a distinguished Coon leader. Poor BROWNLOW!—it ought to be his time next. Wonder how many hen-roosts he robbed last summer?"

"We have nothing to do with whose time it is to be hung next, nor with the number of hen-roosts robbed, nor by whom robbed, but we will take occasion to correct the 'Sentinel' as to the person hung here 'some years ago.'

"In the spring of 1841, a man named MADISON JOHNSON was hung in this place for the murder of HENRY BEASLEY, but we were not aware that he was any relation of Col. JOHNSON, if it be meant thereby Col. R. M. JOHNSON, of Kentucky. He was, however, connected with A. JOHNSON, the candidate for Congress in the Jonesboro' District, MADISON and he being first cousins.

"The last man hung in this place by the name of SCOTT, was MASON SCOTT, in 1820, and if the 'Sentinel' means to reflect upon the Whig party by saying he was a nephew of Gen. WINFIELD SCOTT, a 'distinguished Coon leader,' we are willing for him to indulge in such misstatements.

"IF THE 'SENTINEL' HAD TAKEN THE TROUBLE TO CONSULT MR. A. JOHNSON ON THE SUBJECT, HE WOULD HAVE SATISFIED HIM OF THE FACTS, AS HE WAS IN THIS CITY ABOUT THE TIME MADISON WAS EXECUTED."

It will be seen, that while Johnson was uttering his solemn but false denial at Jonesborough, he knew he was lying, for he was in Raleigh "about the time Madison was executed!"

But we told our friends to hold on, to have patience, and to give us time, and we would make good our charge. Accordingly, in the same issue in which we brought out this extract from the Raleigh Register, we published the following letter from Gov. MOREHEAD, in answer to one we had written him:

RALEIGH, 24th April, 1843.

[EXECUTIVE OFFICE.]

"DEAR SIR—I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of yours of the 14th inst., requesting me to inform you what was the name of the man hung in Raleigh in the spring of 1841.

"His name was MADISON JOHNSON. His case was taken to the Supreme Court, and you will find it reported, December Term, 1840, vol. 1st, page 354, Iredell's Reports.

"He was hung for the murder of Henry Beasley. A strong effort was made to procure a pardon for him; but believing his case a clear murder, I refused to grant it.

"The only man named Scott that was ever convicted of murder at this place, was Mason Scott, in 1820.

"You will find his case reported in the reports of the Supreme Court, January Term, 1820, 1st Stark's Reports, page 24.

"I am not aware that any other man named Scott was ever convicted of a capital offence in this county.

"I have the honor to be

"Your most ob't serv't,

"J. M. MOREHEAD."

"Rev. W. G. BROWNLOW."

In conclusion, after this letter appeared, and Johnson was elected, he sent an appointment to Raleigh, for a speech—attended there, and blackguarded and vilified "Morehead and Brownlow" for two hours. He made the letter of Morehead the pretext for his abuse, but the real cause was the Governor's refusal to pardon his cousin. Johnson was there to procure his pardon, and brought every appliance to bear within his power, but the North Carolina Governor was inflexible in the discharge of his sworn duty! We do not make the point against Johnson that he has mean kin, only so far as it may offset his abuse of others, for who of us are without mean kinsfolks? But our point is, his deliberate lying before a Jonesboro' audience!



From the Knoxville Whig of Dec. 1, 1855.]

GOVERNOR JOHNSON'S THANKSGIVING DAY.

As the sixth of the present month has been set apart by our Governor, to be observed as a day of prayer and thanksgiving to Almighty God for his numerous and unmerited mercies conferred upon the people of our State and nation; and as it is desirable that the different sects shall act in concert on the occasion, and at least pray "with the understanding," that is to say, appropriately, we have been at the trouble to prepare a form of prayer for the occasion. This we do in no irreverend spirit, but in all candor and sincerity, after this wise:

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, in whom we live, and move, and have our being: we, thy needy creatures, render thee our humble praises, for thy preservation of us from the beginning of our lives to this day of public thanksgiving, and especially for having delivered us from all the dangers and afflictions of the year about to close. By thy knowledge, most gracious God, the depths were broken up during the past seed-time and harvest, and the rains descended: while by night the clouds distilled the gentle dew, filling our barns with plenty: thus crowning the year with thy goodness, in the increase of the ground, and the gathering in of the fruits thereof. And we beseech thee, O most merciful Father, give us a just sense of this great mercy: such as may appear in our lives, by an humble, holy, and obedient walking before thee all our days!

To thy watchful providence, O most merciful God, we are indebted for all our mercies, and not any works or merit of ours; for many of us entered into the scramble to elevate to the Executive Chair of the State the present incumbent, with a perfect knowledge that he had abused thy Son, JESUS CHRIST, our Lord, on the floor of our State Senate, as a swindler, advocating unlawful interest: we knew that he had voted in Congress against offering prayers to thee: we knew that he had opposed the temperance cause, which is the cause of God and of all mankind: we knew that he had vilified the Protestant religion, and slandered the Protestant clergy, defending and eulogizing the corruptions of the Roman Catholic Church, throughout the length and breadth of our State; yet such was the force of party ties, O most mighty God, that we went into the support of our INFIDEL GOVERNOR blind, and, by our zeal in his behalf, gave the lie to our professions of piety, rendered ourselves hateful in the eyes of all honest and consistent men, meriting a degree of punishment we have never received! We do most heartily repent, O merciful God, for these shameful sins: we humble ourselves in lowest depths of humility, and ask forgiveness of a God whom we have justly provoked to anger, and the forgiveness of our insulted brethren, whom we have wickedly blackguarded, to the great injury of the cause of Christ!

O most merciful God, who art of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, turn not a deaf ear to our supplications on this day, because the day has been set apart by a Governor who really does not subscribe to the Christian religion; does not attend Divine service; who swears profanely; and has insulted Heaven and outraged the feelings of all pious Christians, by teaching the blasphemous sentiment that Christianity is of no higher or holier origin than his Democracy! Have mercy, our Father and God, upon that portion of this congregation who have endeavored to find peace to their souls by travelling along the "converging lines" of a spurious Democracy, in search of the foot of "Jacob's Ladder," and give them repentance and better minds! And do thou, O God of pity, show all such, that instead of ascending to heaven on an imaginary "Ladder," they are chained fast to the Locomotive of Hell, with the Devil for their Chief Engineer, the Pope of Rome as Conductor, and an ungodly Governor as Breakman; and that, at more than railroad speed, they are driving on to where they are to be eternally punished by Him whom thou hast appointed the Judge of quick and dead, thy Son JESUS CHRIST, our Lord. Amen!



[From the Knoxville Whig of May 24, 1856.]

THE FOREIGN SPIRIT ILLUSTRATED.

The following correspondence will explain itself, whilst it will serve to show the spirit which governs this Bogus Foreign Catholic Democracy:

RICHMOND, April 21, 1856.

REV. AND DEAR SIR:—It cannot be unkind in me, though personally unknown to you, to address you on a subject in which our peace as citizens is alike concerned. I see in the Fincastle Democrat of 18th inst. what purports to be a review of an article of yours in the Knoxville Whig of 5th inst., in which I suppose, from the remarks contained in the Democrat, I have been very, very severely handled by you, for an offence I never committed. You will allow me to say, sir, that I have no recollection of ever writing or speaking a disrespectful word of you in all my life, but, on the contrary, have frequently spoken approvingly of much you have written. Such being the fact, you will not be surprised to learn how deeply I regret that the purest innocence on my part has failed to be a protection against personal abuse. That you have been misled by some person, is to my mind very plain, and if, through the influence of another, you have inflicted a wound upon one that never harmed you, nor ever designed to harm you, is it not within the range of a generous nature—of an honest man—to repair the injury by at once giving up to the injured party the name of the deceiver, or publish him to the world as authority for the assault, and let him assume its responsibilities?

In a change of circumstances, I should feel bound, by the honor of a man, to do that much, and in my present relation to the case I ask nothing more. It is perhaps due to you to be informed, that I have not seen your article, nor do I know a word it contains, and it is due to myself to say that I knew nothing of the article in the Democrat assailing you, till I saw it in print some hundred of miles from home, where I have not yet arrived after an absence of nearly two months. On the subject of dues, I may add that it is due to the public that the name of the deceiver be given them. I of course suppose him to be a man of great personal courage, ready to assume all his own responsibilities. In conclusion, permit me to say, that any effort on your part to aid in concealing the hand that uses the dagger in the dark, will detract largely from the estimate I have placed upon your character, as a man without hesitation or fear, when the claims of justice are presented. My address is Fincastle, Botetourt Co., Va., and I am very respectfully,

S. D. HOPKINS.

* * * * *

KNOXVILLE, May 21st, 1856.

REV. S. D. HOPKINS:

SIR—Through the weakness, mismanagement, and culpable remissness of the contemptible Jesuit now at the head of the Post Office Department, and his numerous lackeys—all of whom you sustain in their politics—a letter written by you one month ago was received a few days since, while I was absent at a Know Nothing Convention, aiding my political brethren in placing before the people of this Congressional District an electoral candidate, to aid in the great Christian and patriotic work of overthrowing the corrupt, profligate, unprincipled, Foreign Catholic Bogus Democratic party, of which you are a member, and in the service of which you are an editor! But my delay in replying to your letter shall be atoned for in the length and plainness of my reply.

It is true, sir, that I published an editorial in my paper, of some severity against you; but the article was in reply to a low, cowardly, and abusive editorial against me in the "Fincastle Democrat," of which you are the editor. And "you will allow me to say, sir," that at the time this attack was made upon me in your paper, I never had said a word about you or your paper in my life, either "good, bad, or indifferent;" and "if through the influence of another you have inflicted a wound upon one that never harmed you, is it not within the range of a generous nature—of an honest man"—to repair the injury by taking back the article, and apologizing through the same medium for the injury? If, however, you believe you have not "been misled by some person," and have done me no more than justice in that abusive article, hold on to it. Having made oath that the horse is fifteen feet high, allow of no correction!

In all frankness, you must permit me to say, that I believe you expected to find in the office on your return to Fincastle, a letter from me demanding your authority for admitting into your paper such an article against me, who, as you very well knew, up to that hour had never said one word, publicly or privately, against you or your paper. I think you concluded to take the start of me, and thus to forestall me, by writing from Richmond some twenty-four hours before you would arrive at home!

In your paper of the 18th of April, issued only three days before this letter was written at Richmond, an editorial of half a column appears, in which your paper styles me a "notorious blackguard"—a "bullying blackguard"—an "unwanted and lying man"—who "is mean enough to lie, cheat, or even steal"—a man "wearing the garb of righteousness to serve the Devil in;" and in the same article, the case of a Locofoco editor, who was involved in a shooting scrape on account of his attack upon a lady, is actually attributed to ME! Although you are a Reverend Methodist Preacher, and a grave and dignified Steam Doctor, conducting one of the organs of the Foreign and Anti-American party in Virginia, you must pardon me for saying, as I now do, that in calling upon me for my authority for what I had said in reply to the unmitigated abuse of your paper, you have proven to my mind, that if you do not possess the cool and collected impudence of the Devil, you are at least possessed of the lion-headed impudence of an unprincipled Sag Nicht partisan, hired to do the dirty work of an equally unprincipled and dirty organization!

But it is due to the history of this controversy that I should say, this second attack upon me sets forth that you are from home, and that "the Junior is responsible for the article." This might be credited, if, on your return home, you had protested against such abuse, but it seems from your silence to have met with your heart's approval, and gave "general satisfaction," at least to you! It is true that you were absent at the time of both these publications, but it does not follow, as a matter of course, that you were not the veritable author, and that they did not find their way to the "Democrat" office at the same time and in the same way that your "Baltimore Correspondence" got there. The "Junior," as he styles himself, claims the fraternity; and were it not that he is too well known in Fincastle for any sane man to believe that he wrote the articles, he might have the credit (if credit there be attached to it) of so low, malicious, and lying articles. But he is known in Fincastle to be a brainless man, and to be incapable of writing a paragraph on any subject. He is known to have no use of language, and to be incapable of applying epithets to any one. So that, if you did not write these articles, they were manufactured at "Irish Corner," in Fincastle, your "Junior" not being able to do it, for the reason that he is wholly incapable. My opinion is, that the articles were manufactured by the "Great Mogul" of the Anti-American party in your town, and if he will only avow himself the author, I will make some disclosures upon him that will make him wish himself back in "Swate Ireland," where he "lives, and moves, and has his being;" no disclosures are necessary—his books, and his person, damn him to everlasting infamy. He has the filthiest-looking mouth, and the most offensive breath, of any man in the Valley of Virginia. No man who knows him will meet him square on the pavement, or place himself in a position, if it can be avoided, of meeting a breeze from that great reservoir of all nastiness, his mouth! It is really a wonder how any human being can LIVE, and emit all the time a stream of such overwhelming and uninterrupted STENCH! You must permit me to christen this man as the But-Cut of Original Sin, and the Upper-crust of all Nastiness!

It may not set well upon your stomach, that being a "Minister of the Gospel, and having the care of souls," I should seem not to place implicit confidence in your denial of any participation in this unprovoked war upon me. I will be candid with you, and though it is possible for me to be mistaken in my views, still, if I am, I am honestly deceived. I have no confidence in the moral honesty and Christian integrity of any Protestant Preacher, of any denomination, in this country, who openly arrays himself against the American party, and takes the side of the Catholics, Foreigners, and self-styled Democrats associated with them. Nor will I hear one such preach or pray, if I know him to be such, and can get out of his hearing. The growing light and improvements of this age forbid that an intelligent and pious man and minister should identify himself with that party. And the fiery genius, corrupting tendencies, and uncompromising intolerance of that party, are rapidly driving good and true men out of the party.

There never was a time since the division of parties in this country, when I had so little confidence in what is called the Democratic party as at present; and as at present organized and constituted, I believe it to be the most corrupt organization. It is made up of the odds and ends of all factions and parties on the continent, and is one of the most anomalous combinations of fanaticism, idolatry, prostitution, crime, and absurdities conceivable! The isms composing the party of which you are a member, are: Abolitionism; Free-soilism; Agrarianism; Fourieritism; Millerism; Radicalism; Woman's Rightsism; Mobism; Mormonism; Spiritualism; Locofocoism; Higher-Lawism; Foreign Pauperism; Anti-Americanism; Roman Catholicism; Deism, and modern Sag Nichtism! All this tide of fanaticism and error, originating North of Mason and Dixon's Line, went for Pierce in the last Presidential contest: they are with that party now, against the American party; and it is bad company in which to find a Protestant minister! Yet, miserable Protestants hesitate not to commend these enemies of the natural rights of man, and of the Christian religion, as being just as good Christians as their neighbors!

"Oh! judgment, thou hast fled to brutish beasts; And men have not their reason!"

But, Doctor, why were you at Baltimore? Why, sir, during the past year, you and other conscientious Methodists took it into your heads to arraign a young man who was travelling your circuit, Mr. Hall, and, for the Church's good, to have him expelled, whose great sin was that he was a Know-Nothing, or sympathized with the Order! The authorities of the Church, after a patient hearing of the whole case, pro and con, acquitted the young man. You followed him up to the Annual Conference, as the representative of and attorney for Sag Nichtism. The Conference acquitted the young preacher again, and sent him to an enlightened circuit in Maryland. This so offended you, and your patriotic, not to say pious associates, that, for the Church's good, they resigned their stewardship in the Church, and were so offended at the course of the Presiding Elder, Rev. M. Goheen, than whom there is not a more modest, unassuming, conservative Christian gentleman in the Valley of Virginia, that, at a recent Quarterly Meeting there, they refused to attend church, or to hear him preach. This is just the spirit that actuates your party, everywhere.

You demand of me the name or names of such person or persons as have given me information in reference to you. Reconsider this demand, if you please, and ask yourself if, under all the circumstances, it is not a cool piece of impudence. I have published nothing about you upon the authority of others, but upon my own authority and responsibility. You suspect some of your neighbors for writing to me, and hence you make this demand. It is true, I have friends in Fincastle, and some of these write to me, and when I publish any thing about you, or any one of your associates, and give these friends of mine as authority, I will give you their names, if called upon to do so; or I will assume the responsibility myself. What I have said in reply to the wicked, slanderous, and cowardly assault upon me, in the dirty paper controlled by you, I have said upon my own responsibilities, as a man, and as a member of the same Church to which you belong; and whether my "peace as a citizen" is preserved or destroyed, I am not the man to be intimidated or driven from my position. My failure to give you the names of any citizens of your vicinity, who may have written me private letters, relating to your war upon young Hall, the Circuit Preacher, "will detract largely from the estimate you have placed upon my character." This I am sorry to hear, as I do not wish to fall below the "estimate" placed upon my character in the two issues of your paper, now before me! This would be reaching "a lower deep," as the poet classically styles it!

Now, sir, I have a letter from a town in Virginia, not far distant from Fincastle, written by a gentleman of as "great personal courage" as you or myself, who states, that a gentleman who was present at the trial of Rev. Mr. Hall, heard you make the assertion, on that occasion, that you alone were responsible for all the editorials that appeared in the "Democrat," and that the "Junior" partner was not! If you think proper to make an issue with this gentleman, you can have his name!

I am, Dr. Hopkins, your humble servant,

W. G. BROWNLOW,

Editor of the Knoxville Whig.



[From the Knoxville Whig.]

TO STEPHEN TRIBBLE.

VILLAINOUS SIR:—Letters from my friends in the West inform me that you are making a full team in the service of the Devil, Locofocoism, and crime, in portions of Missouri and Kentucky! You have recently held forth in Charleston, a pleasant post-village, the capital of Mississippi county, Missouri, about six miles south-west of the "Father of Waters!" In that town you undertook to inform the good people, the Circuit Judge being present, who I am, and to demonstrate that I am not entitled to credit in any thing I say! You claimed to have once lived in East Tennessee—to know the people and the country—and to have known William T. Senter and James Y. Crawford, two other Methodist preachers, whose pedigrees you pretend to give!

Mr. Senter was an able man—a moral and upright man—and a Whig Representative in Congress, from the District you represented in the jail of Sullivan county, for a long time previous to your being branded in the hand and on the cheeks, for MANSLAUGHTER, the particulars of which I will remind you of before I close this familiar letter! Mr. Senter could have gone to Congress longer, but voluntarily retired. Mr. Crawford was a brother-in-law to Mr. Senter, and was a preacher of respectable talents, and in good standing in his Church. They are both in their graves, beyond the reach of your malice, where the sound of your infamous voice, and the words of your lying tongue, can never penetrate their ears! But I am still above ground, daily kicking, and making war upon the Locofoco Paupers and Foreign Catholics, as well as Native Traitors, with whom you are associated, and with whom you act in politics. I acknowledge myself to be game for you to hunt down!

You are now a Campbellite preacher as well as a Sag Nicht Missionary; and the garb of religion you wear, gives a degree of weight to your falsehoods and slanders, among strangers, that they otherwise would not have. The idea of "Stev Tribble," who ingloriously fled from this country for crimes he could not meet in open court, being a preacher, and itinerating through the West, "in search of the lost sheep of the house of Israel," is so ridiculous, as scarcely to be believed at all, although there is no doubt but what he has been regularly installed in Kentucky, and now has the "care of souls."

Why, you unmitigated old villain, your whole career, from your "youth up," has been one of crime and revolting blackguardism. While a boy and a young man, where Hoss's school was taught in Washington county, your vulgar conversation, immoral practices, indecent habits, and blackguardism, disgusted the entire neighborhood, and rendered you so odious that no decent family would board you! All the waters of the far-famed Jordan, in the palmiest days of that bold stream, were not sufficient to wash your sins away! If the Lord Bishop of London were to immerse you as often as "seventy times seven," in the waters of "bold Jordan," and in the name of the holy Trinity, you would still remain what you were when you fled from this country to avoid the extreme penalty of the law—one of the greatest scoundrels for whom Christ died!

Yourself and half-brother Havron were confined in Blountville Jail, for the murder of William Humphreys, a promising young man, whom you brutally assaulted and murdered in open daylight in the streets of Kingsport, in Sullivan county, and without provocation! You were tried and convicted of manslaughter, and branded in the hand and on the cheek. After being branded, you bit the letters out of your hand, and clawed them out of your face, but the scars are to be seen in both. Indeed, I have been written to, to know why these scars are on your face! I take this method of answering those inquiries; and publishing them in my "Whig," which has a circulation of 5,000, and our "Campaigner," which circulates 7,000 copies, I shall be able to introduce you to as many persons as may have heard you preach my funeral.

While in the Blountville Jail, with your half-brother, Havron, whose blow killed Humphreys, after you had weakened him, you caught hold of the jailor, Montgomery Irvin, and held him in a scuffle, when he entered the room with your dinner, until Havron made his escape. Havron would have pulled hemp, had he not escaped; and had our penitentiary system existed at that time, you would have been sentenced for life! But you would not have remained there longer than the past summer, as we have a Governor who pardons out all such men, and has more sympathies for them than any other Executive Officer in the nation. You have a half-brother who is a Sag Nicht member of our Legislature, and a great friend and supporter of our Governor and his foreign associates, and he could have turned you out and procured for you an office if you had remained. But then you followed the teachings of "the spirit" of Sag Nichtism, in leaving between two days, and emigrating to Kentucky, as many precious souls would never have "heard the word," or had their sin washed away, but for you!

In an unmentionable and disgraceful enterprise, you became possessed of a broken leg, and were mean enough to abscond without paying the bill of your physician, Dr. Patton, whose unremitting attention saved you from your grave, and from the clutches of the Devil, sooner than the old fellow was prepared for your reception! If you had the honor of a first class thief, you would pay this medical bill out of the proceeds of the first public collection you take up, either in Missouri or Kentucky. And if you suffer it to go unpaid until your infinitely infernal career is wound up, the Day of Judgment will disclose the manner of your breaking your leg! If I were you, I would sooner pay this bill now, than to be asked in the great day how my leg was broken!

Disgraced as you are, unprincipled and villainous, you have gone into Kentucky, taken upon yourself "holy orders," and married a wife, imposing most shamefully upon the family into which you married. The woman you have thus imposed upon, would be justifiable now, in the eyes of both God and man, in forsaking you and applying for a divorce. And no court or jury would refuse her application, when made acquainted with your character.

It is a remarkable fact—one that I desire to call, not so much to your notice, as to the notice of the public generally—that while all the members of this Foreign Democratic party are by no means villains, destitute of principle; yet, all the assassins, cut-throats, thieves, and hypocrites in the country have crowded into the ranks of that party! Fawned upon, fostered and pampered by the villainous leaders, demagogues, and tricksters of the party, who need the services of all such scavengers, you are encouraged to act with them. These leaders, who are really no better than you are, generously admit you to a fellowship, and courteously acknowledge all such abandoned rascals to be their equals! Such men, to a great extent, now constitute the free-democracy of the country—they desecrate the ballot-box—disgust decent men wherever they come in contact with them—blaspheme the name of God—and swear that they will either rule or ruin the country!

But, Sir, it was said of a certain man in the Scriptures, that he was a "sinner above all the sinners that dwell in Jerusalem." So it may in perfect truth be said of you, that you are a scoundrel above all the scoundrels in the hateful ranks of Sag Nichtism. You deserve, for your depraved course of life, a greater punishment than you have received or are likely to receive in this life. The guilt of foul calumny, of the most black and odious kind, attaches to every sentence uttered by your lying tongue. Guilt, the offspring of fiend-like malice, shamefully false, deeply corrupt, and badly matured: perfidy, dishonesty, and rank poison—hot incense of murder, theft, inhuman spoliation, and deep, dark forebodings of damnation have been rooted and grounded in your heart, for lo! these many years! Dark despair, endless death, inexpressible misery, manifold, and worse than death, follow in the ghastly train of your crimes, and riot in your corrupt bosom, as with infernal drunkenness of delight! The record of your deep depravity, of your utter want of principle, and of your ten thousand villainous exploits, is stereotyped upon the burning sands of eternity, and stamped on the imperishable walls of the rotunda of the Devil's Hell, to which you are driving at railroad speed! In upper East Tennessee, where you are known, it would disgrace an Algerine Bandit to sit and hear you pretend to preach! You pretend to preach Christ and him crucified, and immerse persons in the name of the Trinity! Shrouded in the sackcloth and ashes of disgrace, enclosed in a vault filled to the brim with buried and putrefied venality, and steeped to the very nose and chin in crime, how dare you attempt to preach!

I repeat, you vile slanderer of the living and the dead, that, in justice to the cause of God and of civilization, I will keep spread the unfurled banner of your infamy on every breeze, and cause it to float in the atmosphere of every State in this Union, until your very name becomes a mockery and a by-word! And I call upon the people of Kentucky and Missouri to ring the loud knell of your infamy, from steep to steep, and from valley to valley, until their swelling sounds are heard in startling echoes, mingling with the rush of the criminal's torrent, and the mighty cataract's earthquake-voice!

W. G. BROWNLOW,

Editor of the Knoxville Whig.

June 7th, 1856.



AN EXPOSE OF ROMAN CATHOLICISM.

The following articles, setting forth the DESIGNS and TENDENCY of Romanism in the United States, appeared in the "KNOXVILLE WHIG" of May and June, 1856, and will speak for themselves. The writer has opposed the Papal Hierarchy for twenty years; and in a series of articles, now filed in a number of the "JONESBOROUGH WHIG," published sixteen years ago, he predicted that the very state of things we are now realizing would come upon us as soon as the year 1860, and that the party calling itself by the revered name of Democrat, would identify itself with political Romanism!

THE CATHOLIC QUESTION.—NO. I.

The American Party and the Religious Test—The Louisiana Delegation and the Gallican Catholics—The vote of the Philadelphia Convention to admit the Louisiana Delegates—The American Councils in Louisiana—Catholics proper cannot be true citizens of a Republic.

It is sometimes said by the Anties, that the American party, at their late Philadelphia Convention, dismissed the Catholic Question from their platform, and that they admitted into their Council a Catholic Delegation from Louisiana. We were in that Convention, from the hour of its opening until its final close, and we deny both statements. The fifth and tenth sections of the platform adopted at Philadelphia, and for which we voted, are in the following words, and they express all our platform says upon that subject:

5th. No person should be selected for political station, (whether of native or foreign birth,) who recognizes any allegiance or obligation of any description to any foreign prince, potentate, or power, or who refuses to recognize the Federal and State Constitutions (each within its sphere) as paramount to all other laws, as rules of political action.

10th. Opposition to any union between Church and State; no interference with religious faith or worship, and no tests oaths for office.

The American party was against political Romanism—against all who acknowledge any allegiance to a foreign Prince, Potentate, or Power; or who acknowledge any authority on earth, higher and more binding than the Constitutions of our States, and General Government. And those who are familiar with the temporal assumptions of Popery, and the political intrigues of the Order of Jesuits, can have no other feelings than those of disgust, upon hearing the Locofoco demagogues of the country cry out against the American party for their opposition to the poor Catholics! Against Popes confined to Rome, we make no war; but against Popes usurping civil and spiritual authority, in America, we protest most solemnly, and intend to make war, unrelenting and unceasing war!

The Louisiana Delegation, five in number, were two Methodist—one Old School Presbyterian—one Episcopalian—and the other, Mr. Eustes, a member of Congress, not a member of any Church. Those gentlemen presented their credentials for admission, and they were objected to, because Roman Catholics were admitted into the Order by the Louisiana State Council. A warm debate ensued, on a motion to admit the Delegation, on their credentials, which finally prevailed, by yeas 67, nays 50, many of the members having left for their lodgings, because of the lateness of the hour, and of their fatigue. We were in favor of their admission, and so was Mr. Nelson, of East Tennessee, and we both claim to be ultra Protestant, if the reader please.

The "Catholicism" of Louisiana, we wish it borne in mind—that is the Gallican wing of the Church—is a very different species of "Catholicism" from that of our Irish and German Hierarchy taught in this country, under the training of Archbishop Hughes and Monseigneur Bedini, the Pope's villainous Nuncio. The French Gallican Church has so little respect for the Pope of Rome, that when the King of Sardinia was in Paris, less than twelve months ago, though he was under the interdict of a Papal Bull of excommunication from Pius IX., the Gallican Archbishops of Pius, and other Priests associated with them, visited him regularly, and tendered him unbounded courtesies and honors. The Gallican wing of the Catholic Church of France is liberal, as well as hostile to the insulting claims and pretensions of the Pope. But it is diluted still more with liberality, and with opposition to these claims of the Pope, among the French Creoles of Louisiana. Most of them, though Roman Catholics by name, from being educated in the forms of the Roman Church, have just about as much respect for Rome, and confidence in the Pope, as we have, and God knows that is very little. They denounce Papal Bulls, interdicts, and Nuncios. They throw off all temporal and spiritual allegiance to the Pope—the civil authorities of the United States with them are supreme—they are American born—and hence, our platform does not exclude them, and consequently they were admitted at Philadelphia, or, which is the same, their representatives.

In 1652, under Louis XIV., the Gallican clergy met in Paris, and adopted the following point: "That the Pope has no power, of Divine right, to interfere with the temporal affairs of independent States." Thus, the Catholics of Louisiana rejecting the doctrine of the temporal power of the Pope, are not proscribed by the American party. They constitute a sound portion of the American party.

Mr. Lathrop, a Presbyterian Elder, and a Delegate from Louisiana, read to the Convention from the ritual of the subordinate organizations of the American party of Louisiana, and showed that, while it admitted those to membership who professed the Roman Catholic religion, IT REQUIRED OF THEM THE DENIAL OF ALLEGIANCE TO ANY TEMPORAL AUTHORITY NOT COGNIZABLE IN THE STATE AND UNITED STATES CONSTITUTIONS; and from each secured a pledge, UPON OATH, that they would not divulge the secrets of the Order! He defended the Louisiana Catholics, as being true Americans, recognizing no civil or spiritual power in their Priests, and resisting every attempt, whether by a Bishop or Priest, to interfere with the institutions of our country. He cited cases which had occurred in Louisiana, of controversies between the Clergy and Laity, for the control of Church property, and the decisions of courts over which Gallican Catholic Judges presided, in favor of titles and control vesting in Trustees, the Laity. He showed that the native Catholics of Louisiana were the friends of common schools, and the advocates of popular education. He proclaimed aloud that the native Catholics of his State recognized no persons as proper depositaries of office, who acknowledged an allegiance to any person, civil or ecclesiastical, superior to that of the laws and Constitution of our country. He proclaimed that the Nuncios of the Pope of Rome hated these Louisiana Catholics, with a more perfect hatred than they did the "apostle heretics" called Protestants! This speech was received with unbounded applause, the question was called, and, as we have before stated, it was sanctioned, very properly too, by a vote of 67 to 50!

The American party not only advocate religious toleration, but religious liberty, which is a very different thing. Toleration is not the word in our vocabulary—it does not express enough, because it implies the right to permit or prohibit. We contend for LIBERTY, the meaning of which is, that men are not responsible to each other, to Popes, Bishops, or Priests, for their religious opinions or practices, and that consequently religion is not a subject of toleration.

The Catholics, proper, have taken an oath of allegiance to the Pope of Rome, a "foreign prince, potentate, and power," and their obligations to him are higher, more sacred, and more binding, than any obligations they can take upon them to support the laws and Constitution of this country. These are the men that we refuse to vote for, or put in office. They are not and cannot be true Americans. The oaths of the priests bind them to war upon all Protestant sects, and upon all Republican powers of Government. These oaths bind them to the foot of the Papal Throne; and with these oaths upon their souls, they cannot be true citizens of this Republic without perjury. And if guilty of perjury, the State prison should be their residence.

In our next, we shall consider this subject more at length, in connection with the oath of allegiance to our country, and the Catholic evasion of that oath.



THE CATHOLIC QUESTION—No. 2.

Ambiguous terms in swearing—The case of Judge Gaston—Temporal power of the Pope—Catholic authorities in Europe—The spirit of the Catholic press in America!

We are told by the Democratic sympathizers with the Catholics, that all Catholic emigrants to this country take an oath of allegiance to the United States upon becoming naturalized. Yes, they do, and the oath after it is taken, has no more weight with them, than has a regular-built Know Nothing speech.

Here is a paragraph from SANCHEZ, the highest authority in the Catholic Church, Pope Pius only excepted. This writer, "by authority," shows how this oath of allegiance is evaded by a mental reservation:

"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 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."

Here, then, we have it from the highest Catholic authority, that Catholics are absolved from all allegiance to this government, because they take the oath of allegiance without committing perjury, by the holy process of a mental reservation—the use of "ambiguous terms," setting forth one thing while they swear another! We have no doubt that Chief Justice TANEY, a devoted Catholic of Baltimore, and now at the head of the Supreme Court of the United States, took his oath of office requiring him to support the Constitution, with this same mental reservation. We have no doubt that those Catholic Judges upon the Federal Bench in several States in the Union, and those Catholic Attorney Generals, appointed to office by Mr. Pierce, so understood their oaths of office, and of allegiance! And the practice of Post-Master General Campbell, a bigoted Catholic, and a member of the order of Jesuits, proves that he so understood his oath to support the Constitution. As true Catholics, they are bound to swear with this mental reservation, because they could not owe allegiance to a government of "heretics," such as they believe ours to be. As Catholics, they are bound to overthrow our Constitution, and aid in the destruction of our government.

It is a matter of history that when the Legislature of North Carolina elected Judge GASTON to the Supreme Bench in that State, he hesitated as to whether he would take the oath or not. And why? He was, although an able man, and in all the private relations of life a most excellent man, a decided and devoted Roman Catholic. This is not all. The oath of a Judge in that State, which is not common in other States, requires the man taking it to avow his belief in the Protestant religion. Judge Gaston asked for a few days to consider—he went instantly to Baltimore, as was believed, to consult the Catholic Bishop, who then resided there—obtained a dispensation, as was supposed—wrote back that he would accept the office—returned, was qualified, and to the day of his death was on the Bench! This affair illustrates Romanism. And what Rome was, she is, and always will be. Can Rome change? Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?

Here is what Philopater, an approved Catholic authority of the first grade, says, touching the principle in controversy:

"All theologians and ecclesiastical lawyers affirm that every Christian government, as soon as it openly abandons the Romish faith, is instantly degraded from all power and dignity: all the subjects are absolved from the oath of fidelity and obedience which they have taken, and they may and ought, if they have the power, to drive such government from every Christian State, as an apostate, heretic, and deserter from Jesus Christ. This certain and indubitable decision of all the most learned men is perfectly conformed to the most apostolic doctrines."

Our Locofoco advocates of Romanism deny that the Pope lays claim to the supremacy charged by the American party. On this point, we desire that the Catholics may speak for themselves. One of their standard writers, FARRARIS, in his Ecclesiastical Dictionary, a work endorsed by their Council of Bishops and Cardinals, under the article headed "Pope," uses this emphatic and expressive language:

"The Pope is of such dignity and highness, that he is not simply man, but, as it were, God, and the vicar of God. Hence the Pope is such supreme and sovereign dignity, that, properly speaking, he is not merely constituted in dignity, but is rather placed on the very summit of dignities. Hence, also, the Pope is rather father of fathers, and he alone can use this name, because he only can be called father of fathers: since he possesses the primacy over all, is truly greater than all, and the greatest of all. He is called most holy, because he is presumed to be such. On account of the excellency of his supreme dignity, he is called bishop of bishops, ordinary of ordinaries, universal bishop of the Church, bishop of diocesan, of the whole world, divine monarch, supreme emperor, and king of kings."

PETER DENS, of Maynooth College notoriety, whose "Theology" is the highest Catholic authority known this side of the Vatican at Rome, gives entire the Bull of Pope Sixtus V. against the King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde, whom he styles the sons of wrath. In this Bull, issued in the year 1585, he says:

"The authority given to Saint Peter and his successors, by the immense power of the eternal King, excels all the power of earthly kings and princes. It passeth uncontrollable sentence upon them all. And if it find any of them resisting God's obedience, it takes more severe vengeance on them, casting them down from their thrones, however powerful they may be, and tumbling them down to the lowest parts of the earth, as the ministers of aspiring Lucifer."

Here is what Daniel O'Connell said so late as 1843, and he was a true Catholic and a true exponent of this faith:

"You should do all in your power to carry out the intentions of His Holiness the Pope. Where you have the electoral franchise, give your votes to none but those who will assist you in so holy a struggle.

"I declare my most unequivocal submission to the Head of the Church, and to the hierarchy in its different orders. If the Bishop makes a declaration on this bill, I never would be heard speaking against it, but would submit at once unequivocally to that decision. They have only to decide, and I close my mouth: they have only to determine, and I obey. I wish it to be understood that such is the duty of all Catholics."—Daniel O'Connell, 1843.

Here comes one of the Pope's organs in France:

"A heretic, examined and convicted by the Church, used to be delivered over to the secular power and punished with death. Nothing has ever appeared to us more necessary. More than one hundred thousand persons perished in consequence of the heresy of Wickliffe; a still greater number for that of John Huss; and it would not be possible to calculate the bloodshed caused by Luther; and it is not yet over."—Paris Univers.

"As for myself, what I regret, I frankly own, is that they did not burn John Huss sooner, and that they did not likewise burn Luther; this happened because there was not found some prince sufficiently politic to stir up a crusade against Protestants."—Paris Univers.

But here is the Pope himself arguing with the authorities already quoted:

"The absurd or erroneous doctrines or ravings in defence of liberty of conscience, is a most pestilential error—a pest, of all others, most to be dreaded in a State."—Encyclical Letter of Pope Pius IX., Aug. 15, 1852.

Now, let us hear their organs in our own country:

"Heresy and unbelief are crimes, and in Christian countries, like Italy and Spain for instance, where all the people are Catholics, and where the Christian religion is an essential part of the law of the land, they are punished as other crimes."—R. C. Archbishop of St. Louis.

"For our own part, we take this opportunity of expressing our hearty delight at the suppression of the Protestant chapel at Rome. This may be thought intolerant, but when, we would ask, did we ever profess to be tolerant of Protestantism, or favor the doctrine that Protestantism ought to be tolerated? On the contrary, we hate Protestantism—we detest it with our whole heart and soul, and we pray that our aversion to it may never decrease. We hold it meet that in the Eternal City no worship repugnant to God should be tolerated, and we are sincerely glad that the enemies of truth are no longer allowed to meet together in the capital of the Christian world."—Pittsburg Catholic Visitor, 1848.

"No good government can exist without religion; and there can be no religion without an Inquisition, which is wisely designed for the promotion and protection of the true faith."—Boston Pilot.

"You ask, if he (the Pope) were lord in the land, and you were in a minority, if not in numbers, yet in power, what would he do to you? That, we say, would entirely depend on circumstances. If it would benefit the cause of Catholicism, he would tolerate you—if expedient, he would imprison you—banish you—possibly, hang you—but be assured of one thing, he would never tolerate you for the sake of the 'glorious principles' of civil and religious liberty."—Rambler.

"Protestantism of every form has not and never can have any rights where Catholicity is triumphant."—Brownson's Quarterly 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."—Ibid.

"I never think of publishing any thing in regard to the Church without submitting my articles to the Bishop for inspection, approval, and endorsement."—Ibid.

In view of the foregoing, and other facts and arguments which we will hereafter present, we cannot be mistaken in our views of Roman Catholicism. We cannot tamely surrender our dearest rights as Protestants, without a struggle. We cannot cry peace, peace, when there is no peace!

"Protestantism, of every kind, Catholicity inserts in her catalogue of moral sins; she endures it when and where she must; but she hates it, and directs all her energies to effect its destruction."—St. Louis Shepherd of the Valley.

"Religious liberty, in the sense of a liberty possessed by every man to choose his religion, is one of the most wretched delusions ever foisted on this age by the father of deceit."—The Rambler, 1853.

"The Church is of necessity intolerant. Heresy she endures when and where she must, but she hates it, and directs all her energies to its destruction. If Catholics ever gain an immense numerical majority in this country, religious freedom is at an end. So say our enemies. So say we."—Shepherd of the Valley.

"The liberty of heresy and unbelief is not a right.... All the rights the sects have, or can have, are derived from the State, and rest on expediency. As they have, in their character of sects hostile to the true religion, no rights under the law of nature or the law of God, they are neither wronged nor deprived of liberty, if the State refuses to grant them any rights at all."—Brownson's Review, Oct., 1853, p. 456.

"The sorriest sight to us is a Catholic throwing up his cap, and shouting, 'All hail, Democracy!'"—Ibid, October, 1852, pp. 554-8.

"We think the 'masses' were never less happy, less respectable, and less respected, than they have been since the reformation, and particularly within the last fifty or one hundred years, since Lord Brougham caught the mania of teaching them to read and communicate the disease to a large proportion of the English nation; of which, in spite of all our talk, we are often the servile imitators."—Shepherd of the Valley, Oct. 22, 1853.



THE CATHOLIC QUESTION—No. 3.

The Catholic Church supreme over all authorities—Meddling in Political Contests—Brownson's Review and the Boston Pilot reflecting the sentiments of that Church—Protestants advocating Romanism—The Nashville Union in 1835.

The Anti-American, Foreign-loving, Catholic admirers of the Locofoco school of politics, everywhere seek to frighten native Protestant citizens with the bugbear cry of religious proscription. But let Americans and Protestants watch with increased vigilance both the Roman and Locofoco Jesuits around them. To call the damnable and accursed system of political intrigue practised for past centuries by the Roman Church by the term Religion, is a solemn mockery of the hallowed word. Religion teaches love and obedience to God, and the legally constituted authorities of the country. Romanism teaches fear of and obedience to a crowned potentate called the Pope, and opposition to all Protestant governments, as worthy to be cast down to hell! The one tends to free and ennoble the soul: the other to enslave and debauch every faculty of man's nature which likens him to the Almighty! The one is republican: the other is barbaric, and at war with every principle of free government!

The American party does oppose and denounce Romanism as a political system at war with American institutions; and we here ask candid men to weigh the evidence we shall adduce to sustain this charge. We shall quote none other than Roman Catholic authority—the organs of Romanism—so as out of their own mouths to condemn them. Brownson's Review is the accredited organ of Romanism in the United States. He ostentatiously parades the names of the Archbishops and Bishops on the cover of his Review, to give it the stamp of authority, and asserts in the work:

"I NEVER THINK OF PUBLISHING ANY THING IN REGARD TO THE CHURCH WITHOUT SUBMITTING MY ARTICLES TO THE BISHOP FOR INSPECTION, APPROVAL, AND ENDORSEMENT."

Let us then look to his pages for an exposition of the doctrines of his Church. In the January number for 1853, he says:

"For every Catholic at least, the Church is the supreme judge of the extent and limits of her power. She can be judged by no one; and this of itself implies her absolute supremacy, and that the temporal order must receive its laws from her."

The uniform practice of the Church of Rome has been, and still is, to assert her power—not in words, but in deeds—to GIVE OR TAKE AWAY CROWNS—to depose ungodly rulers, and to absolve their subjects from their "horrible" OATHS OF ALLEGIANCE!

Again, in the July number for 1853, Brownson says:

"The Church is supreme, and you have no power except what you hold in subordination to her, either in spirituals or in temporals.... You no more have political than ecclesiastical independence. The Church alone, under God, is independent, and she defines both your powers and hers."

"They have heard it said from their youth up that the Church has nothing to do with politics; that she has received no mission in regard to the political order."

"In opposing the nonjuring bishops and priests, they believed they were only asserting their national rights as men, or as the State, and were merely resisting the unwarrantable assumption of the spiritual power. If they had been distinctly taught that the political authority is always subordinate to the spiritual, and had grown up in the doctrine that the nation is not competent to define, in relation to the ecclesiastical power, its own rights—that the Church defines both its powers and her own, and that though the nation may be, and ought to be, independent in relation to other nations, it has, and can have, no independence in the face of the Church, the kingdom of God on earth: they would have seen at a glance that support of the civil authority against the spiritual, no matter in what manner, was the renunciation of their faith as Catholics, and the actual or virtual assertion of the supremacy of the temporal power."

In the same number, page 301, he says:

"She (the Church) has the right to judge who has, or has not, according to the law of God, the right to reign: whether the prince has, by his infidelity, his misdeeds, his tyranny and oppression, forfeited his trust, and lost his right to the allegiance of his subjects; and therefore whether they are still held to their allegiance, or are released from it by the law of God. If she have the right to judge, she has the right to pronounce judgment, and order its execution: therefore to pronounce sentence of deposition upon the prince who has forfeited his right to reign, and to declare his subjects absolved from their allegiance to him, and free to elect themselves a new sovereign."

We might multiply authorities of this kind on this point, to an almost indefinite extent, from the debate between Bishop Hughes and Mr. Breckenridge, and the controversy between Hughes and Erastus Brooks, but it is wholly unnecessary.

As early as 1844, the Catholics took their stand as a body in the arena of political strife; and the illustrious CLAY and the virtuous FRELINGHUYSEN were the victims of their particular hostility. Mr. Frelinghuysen was the President of the Board of Foreign Missions, and this was made the excuse for the bitter animosity of the Catholic press, and of the clergy and membership of the Catholic sect, against Mr. Clay. Brownson, in his July number for 1844, in the very heat of the contest, thus assailed Mr. Clay:

"He is ambitious, but short-sighted. He is abashed by no inconsistency, disturbed by no contradiction, and can defend, with a firm countenance, without the least misgiving, what everybody but himself sees to be a political fallacy or logical absurdity.... He is no more disturbed by being convinced of moral insensibility, than intellectual absurdity.... A man of rare abilities, but apparently void of both moral and intellectual conscience.... He is, therefore, a man whom no power under that of the Almighty can restrain; he must needs be the most dangerous man to be placed at the head of affairs it is possible to conceive."

The Boston Pilot, another Catholic organ, published under the eye of the Bishop, discloses the same plot, in its issue for the 31st of October, 1844, only six days before the election! Here is what this organ said:

"We say to all men in the United States, entitled to be naturalized, become citizens while you can—let nothing delay you for an hour—let no hindrance, short of mortal disease, banish you from the ballot-box. To those who are citizens, we say, vote your principles, whatever they may be—never desert them—do not be wheedled or terrified—but vote quietly, and unobtrusively. Leave to others the noisy warfare of words. Let your opinions be proved by your deliberate and determined action. We recommend you to no party; we condemn no candidate but one, and he is Theodore Frelinghuysen. We have nothing to say to him as a Whig—we have nothing to say to Mr. Clay or any other Whig, as such—but to the President of the American Board of Foreign Missions, the friend and patron of the Kirks and Cones, we have much to say. We hate his intolerance—we dislike his associates—and shudder at the blackness and bitterness of that school of sectarians to which he belongs, and amongst whom he is regarded as an authority."

Protestants! do you hear that? Old Line Whigs! do you hear that? If so, do you think that Americans are warring upon civil and religious liberty, when they take an oath that they will rebuke such infamous sentiments? These appeals of Brownson, Hughes, and the Pilot, had the effect to defeat the Clay ticket in New York, and that State lost him his election. The Catholics were all at the polls, and voted for Polk and Dallas. On the 9th of November, 1844, Frelinghuysen wrote to Mr. Clay as follows:

"More than 3,000, it is confidently said, have been naturalized in this city (New York) alone since the first of October. It is an alarming fact that this foreign vote has decided the great questions of American policy, and contracted a nation's gratitude."

And after they achieved the victory of 1844, Brownson came out with this avowal:

"Heretofore we have taken our politics from one or another of the parties which divide the country, and have suffered the enemies of our religion to impose their political doctrine upon us; but it is time for us to begin to teach the country itself those moral and political doctrines which flow from the teachings of our own Church. We are at home here, wherever we may have been born; this is our country, and as it is to become THOROUGHLY CATHOLIC, we have a deeper interest in public affairs than any other of our citizens. The sects are only for a day; the Church for ever."

When Gen. Cass made his speech in the Senate, in 1852, in favor of free worship and the rights of conscience for Americans abroad, reflecting on the Catholics by name, Brownson came out in his October number, and said:

"We are glad to see Gen. Cass laid on the shelf, for we can never support a man who turns radical in his old age."

In the same number, Brownson continues:

"The sorriest sight to us is a Catholic throwing up his cap and shouting, 'All hail, Democracy!'"

This too at the very time he was supporting the Democratic party in the Presidential contest! He would sooner have heard the cry, "All hail, Catholicism!" and he was only using Democracy as an instrument to advance his primary wish!