institutions, while they know, and often from personal observation too, that the people of the Papal States are the most degraded, and the farthest removed from freemen, of any other government of the world; and that in all Papal countries, oppression and decay are paramount, just in proportion as they acknowledge the influence of the Romish power.

To the ingenuous American mind, these strange misrepresentations of history for the purpose of defending the Roman Church are hard to understand, and they can only be accounted for on- the principle, that that Church seizes upon the imagination and the will of its adherents, and blinds them to the plainest truths, and makes them unresisting instruments for the propagation of the most pernicious

errors.

In no Romanist country is there any real religious toleration; seveneighths of our emigrants are brought up and educated to believe that such toleration is an unpardonable sin. Sunken in poverty, and suffering from the severest oppression, they leave their native countries and seek a home on American soil; but, do they leave behind them the errors of their early education? Are they forever freed from the presence and baleful influence of their political priests?__ Certainly not. So far from this being the case, we find the Jesuit follows in their footsteps, and, taking advantage of the freedom of Protestant institutions, manages to exert a power over the minds and consciences of our immigrant population, as perfect as if they lived under monarchical governments. The American, perceiving this evil, and noticing its political character, denounces it from the stump, through the press, and attempts to counteract it at the polls; instantly the cry is raised by the wily Jesuit and the office-seeking demagogue, of religious intolerance, and people, who never breathed one breath of Christian charity, who, as an act of religious faith, denounce all who differ from them as heretics and heathen-people who are prepared, at any moment they can grasp the power of the State, to punish freedom of thought with imprisonment and death, go forth in the highways and byways denouncing American citizens,

who desire to protect the purity of their institutions from the evils of this foreign influence.

In America alone is enjoyed in the fullest sense the right to worship God according to the dictates of the conscience. Americans conceived and put in practice such toleration; but while it is freely enjoyed here by the Romanists, and demanded as a right, still it is not accorded to Americans in Romanist countries, and this illiberal spirit finds advocates and meets with justification in the organs of Romanism, and the gross inconsistency seems to be unnoticed.

The Island of Cuba is the resort of hundreds and thousands of our citizens, either as mariners, merchants, or invalids; among the latter are many who visit the island to die, and yet to this day there is no Protestant chapel, nor clergymen to give spiritual instruction. Any attempt to hold Protestant service calls forth the interference of the police; and it was only recently that an English Bishop, visiting Havana, was denied the privilege of celebrating religious service in the house of the British Consul.

There is no American Protestant chapel in Mexico, and it would be impossible to establish one.

In Italy, the central country of Romanism, with the exception of the Pope-denounced kingdom of Sardinia, no religious service could be held by an American Protestant minister, unless it were in the house of the American Consul, and under the American flag.

In Romanist Spain and Austria, the war upon Protestants amounts to a total exclusion under all circumstances.

In Portugal, the penal code, promulgated as recently as 1852, punishes with imprisonment and fine all who engage in acts of worship not of the Romanist religion.

American Protestants are exposed to insult and maltreatment in Mexico, Central America, all South America, Cuba, Porto Rico, Spain, Portugal, Austria, and nearly all of Italy, if they do not kneel when they meet a procession bearing "the Host," although they may conscientiously deem the act idolatrous, and contrary to the word of God. The records of every year are filled with details of outrages

perpetrated, for the reason above given, upon Americans travelling abroad.

The right, in many Romanist countries, of quietly depositing in the mother earth the remains of the dead, is denied to American Protestants, and the living have had to carry the deceased many hundred miles, to find a resting-place under the ægis of less bigoted governments. Where the privilege is granted, it is attended, as in some parts of Italy, with the degrading condition that the burial shall take place at unseasonable hours—and American Protestants have been unceremoniously thrust into the earth as if they were brute beasts, to avoid exhumation and insult from the imbruted populace, who were thus inflamed against the religion of the deceased by the bigoted priests.

A few years ago, a highly respectable American merchant had the misfortune to lose a beloved wife, whom he had taken to the Island of Cuba for the restoration of her health. Abandoned by all the people who surrounded him, he was compelled in an obscure spot to dig a grave with his own hands, and with difficulty succeeded in procuring the help of two negroes, to assist him in the melancholy task of consigning all that was once so cherished to its mother earth; and yet these Africans, pagan-born and besotted in ignorance, had been taught to fear for their lives, if it were known to the authorities they had assisted in the "burial of a heretic!”

Mr. Wise, late U. S. minister to Brazil, states, that Mr. Tudor, our Chargé to that government, the successful negotiator of a treaty of amity and commerce, and the representative of the greatest Republic in the world,—was indebted to the British legation for a sanctuary for his corpse, and but for this charity, the Romanist government of Brazil would probably have spurned the body of Mr. Tudor from its dominions, the hatred of heretics extending even into the grave. Mr. Wise establishes himself in his new residence, he has his family around him, he has been accustomed to advocate and to grant religious toleration. He is the minister plenipotentiary of a great nation, and should command respect; but the Sabbath comes,

he hears the bells chiming for church, dismay seizes upon him and his household, and he exclaims, in the true sense of his deprivation, "Where am I and my family and American friends to attend Divine worship? There is no ground here consecrated for us! We are reminded on this Lord's day of our homes in our own blessed, happy land of universal tolerance in religion, but here, by treaty in a land of commercial friends, we have no religious allies, and are indeed 'strangers in a strange land! If their God is our God, their country is not ours to worship in!"

In all Protestant countries, Romanists enjoy the liberty of religious worship. Everywhere they may fill not only magisterial, but even political offices. O'Connell, the champion of that Church, was a member of the British Parliament! Examples of the same liberality can be found in the governments of Prussia, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, and the United States. Toleration is the fundamental spirit of the organic law. Not an example can be quoted where the religious worship of the Romanist Church is impeded in a Protestant country, as that of the Protestant is, in Rome, Naples, Florence, Milan, Madrid and Lisbon, and the South American States.

The mass of the people of France are tolerant, but the Roman clergy are restless under their loss of power, and watch with unceasing energy to restore their fortunes by giving their influence to the usurper of the nation's liberties. Napoleon III. found the priests his most willing tools, and the first to forgive his falsehoods and his perjuries.* Their political influence was bought at the price of the imperial recognition of their religion; the effect is already felt. Without any repeal of fundamental laws, Protestantism is discouraged, its schools under various pretexts successively suppressed, and its publications prohibited.

In Austria, all Protestant meetings require the sanction of the police; the government thus prevents them, without appearing to

"May he (Louis Napoleon) be blessed, this man of God, this great man, for it is God who has raised him up for the happiness of our country."-Bishop of Chalons' Address to his Clergy, September, 1854.

prohibit; and those persons who have presumed to publish or propagate the Bible, have been banished at the instigation of the Romish clergy.

In Spain but one religion is professed, and none other is permitted in any shape. To be a Spaniard implies necessarily to be a Romanist. He who dares to forsake that faith is by law banished, lest the poison of his heresy should spread contagion, while those who have tempted him from his early faith are liable to imprisonment. Hitherto the traveller was looked upon as an exception; but as Spain decays in political power, as she sinks into contempt among the family of nations, Papacy grasps her soul more firmly, and her priest-ridden government decrees, that even the "traveller" is no longer permitted "to profess any but the Romanist religion;" and the American Protestant, while residing in Spain, must hide his religious sentiments, and, when dead, must be cast as some foul thing into an obscure, and, by the Spanish people, what is considered a dishonored grave.

Tuscany is notorious, and Naples infamous for its intolerance. The Madiai persecution, which roused the sympathy of the Protestant world, and yet found defenders among the foreign Papists of this country, is but a single instance of many, that, in spite of the secrecy of Jesuit police, and the depths of Italian dungeons, find their way before the judgment-seat of enlightened Christendom. Naples, where nature appears in its most glorious forms, and where man alone is base, Naples, which in days of yore coped with the haughty Pontiffs of Rome, the decrees of the Council of Trent, and trampled upon Papal Bulls,—now lies prostrate in the dust. Violent, bigoted, and profligate, her people violate every precept of morality, yet observe every ceremonial of religion. They are the degraded vassals of intolerance, without alleviation, and without hope.

At last we penetrate into the "imperial city," and reach Rome itself. If other countries have admitted unjustifiable Papal claims, if other countries have harbored the Inquisition, it was here the haughty thunders were launched. Here intolerance reigns supreme. Here it had its birth, here it has made its throne. Here it was that