Reading Time: 89 minutes

CHAPTER I. JESUIT INFLUENCE.

An American gentleman was passenger on board a merchant ship, bound from London to Rio de Janeiro. There were among the passengers Englishmen, Germans, Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Portuguese; but the person we refer to was the only American. Between himself and the English gentlemen, there were frequent discussions about politics, to which such of the other passengers, as could speak English, would listen, sometimes taking a part. Of course, our American was a great friend to the institutions of his own country; and defended republican forms of government, freedom of the speech and of the press, the vote by ballot, and all the other elements of popular sovereignty through thick and thin. Assailed on every side, he found his office of champion of freedom no sinecure. Every calm morning and every pleasant evening witnessed a new controversy on the deck or in the cabin; but he manfully held his ground against a host of adversaries; and being fluent in speech, strong in argument, skilled in logic, and full of lively and sarcastic humor, he generally came out of the debate with honor, taking care always to terminate the action at precisely the right moment, and to quit the field with flying colors.

Among the persons who listened with the greatest attention to these debates, was a’ lean bilious looking old Frenchman, who always took care to be present, and who showed by his look and manner, that he was deeply interested in politics, although he never by any chance uttered an opinion or made a remark on political subjects, in the general circle of the passengers.

In point of fact, this man was a Roman Catholic priest, a Jesuit of high standing, who was going to some station in South America, in obedience to an order from his superior. He was a cosmopolite indeed.

Though not much past the middle point of life, he was rather aged in appearance, in consequence of the great variety and extent of the missions which he had performed in all quarters of the world, and in every kind of climate. From Canada to Calcutta; from the breezy heights of the Andes to the unwholesome marshes of Java, by sea and by land, in season and out of season, this man had journeyed on the secret errands of his order. Speaking fluently a dozen different languages, and possessing the most perfect power of dissimulation, as well as the most thorough devotedness to the church, and those carefully trained habits of obedience, which are so essential to the character of an able and faithful Jesuit, he had at length become one of the most accomplished men of his age.

As he listened to the conversation of the American passenger, he could not help noticing, that he was gradually making converts to republican views. Many of these passengers, he observed, sought private interviews with the American; and by careful eavesdropping, he ascertained that their object was to ask questions about his country, and gain information respecting the actual working of the American attempt at self-government. When the passage was nearly over, the Frenchman happening to be alone with the American, in a retired part of the deck, where their conversation could not be overheard, commenced a quiet chat with him. Addressing him in English, which he spoke with ease and precision, he thanked him with apparent cordiality, for the entertainment he had derived from his conversation or rather eloquent haranguing to the other passengers, during the voyage. He professed to have enjoyed their debates very greatly; and gave the American due credit for his wit, his logic, his humour, his address, and his unbounded good nature.

The American was much pleased at his compliments; for he had conceived a great respect for this silent and attentive auditor, and, in fact, had, in his own secret mind, set him down as a hopeful convert to Americanism; he thanked him, therefore, with much feeling, for his good opinion; at the same time disclaiming any merit, for success in defending a truth so self-evident, as that which is expressed in these few words — that a nation ought ‘ to govern itself, and that by the popular vote of its own citizens.

” This,” said the Jesuit, with a quiet smile, “you suppose to be the system of your own country.”

“I do not suppose it,” said the American, “I know it.”

“Now,” said the Jesuit, “listen to me a few moments and I will tell you what I know. Your president is elected by the conclave of cardinals at Rome, the same who elect the pope. Your people nominate the candidates. Our confidential agents select from the number, the one whom they believe to be the most favorable to the interests of the church. His name with those of the other candidates is reported to the cardinals and the pope. When their decision is announced to the confidential friends of the pope and the cardinals, in the United States, they send forth their orders through the priests; and the whole Roman Catholic vote is thrown for the candidate who is favoured by the church. He, of course, is always elected. Your parties are so equally divided on politics, that this Roman Catholic vote, which is cast on purely religious considerations, is always sufficient to turn the scale.”

The American looked rather blank at this announcement. He was quite taken aback. Especially was he staggered by the recollection that the candidate for the presidency, who was sustained by the Irish and German votes, was generally successful. He courteously thanked the Jesuit for the valuable information which he had communicated, and during the short remainder of the voyage, he abstained from talking politics and gave himself up to reflection.

Let us also reflect a little on the Jesuit’s story. Perhaps it was a hoax, or a mere idle brag, intended to annoy and mortify the American.

But is not the main point of his declaration true? Is it not true that in many very essential points this country is governed by foreign influence? Is it not even highly probable that Roman Catholic prelates have a voice in the selection of candidates for very high as well as low offices, even for that of the president himself. Was not Mr. Polk, a man of no mark as a statesman and comparatively unknown to the country, elected in opposition to Henry Clay, immeasurably the most able and popular man in the United States; and was not this accomplished by the Roman Catholics voting against him en masse, because he was suspected, and only suspected of favouring the native American movement?

Was not the present postmaster general, a man without ability or antecedents, appointed to his important office in consequence of pledges given to Roman Catholic leaders; and has he not appointed thousands upon thousands of Roman Catholic deputy post masters, and required the appointment of Roman Catholic clerks? .

With such facts as these stirring us in the face, what reflecting American can fail to perceive that in this direction at least the machinery of our government is to a certain extent directed by the agents of a foreign power, the liege subjects of the Pope of Rome?

The movers of this foreign political machinery in this country are the members of two secret societies. One is composed of the regular Roman Catholic priests, always and every where a secret society. The other is the Society of Jesus, as it is profanely called — in other words the Society of Jesuits. All history, past and present, gives assurance, that these precious gentlemen are not too scrupulously pious to take a hand in the game of politics.

We will give the character of the Order of Jesuits in the words of one of the ablest and best-informed historians of the present day.

“In the sixteenth century, the pontificate, exposed to new dangers more formidable than had ever before threatened it, was saved by a new religious order, which was animated by intense enthusiasm and organized with exquisite skill. When the Jesuits came to the rescue of the papacy, they found it in extreme peril; but from that moment the tide of battle turned. Protestantism, which had, during the whole generation, carried all before it, was stopped in its progress, and rapidly beaten back from the foot of the Alps to the shores of the Baltic. Before the order had existed a hundred years, it had filled the whole world with memorials of great things done and suffered for the faith.

“No religious community could produce a list of men so variously distinguished; none had extended its operations over so vast a space; yet in none had there ever been such perfect unity of feeling and action. There was no region of the globe, no walk of speculative or of active life, in which Jesuits were not to be found. They guided the councils of kings. They deciphered Latin inscriptions. They observed the motions of Jupiter’s satellites. They published whole libraries, controversy, casuistry, history, treatises on optics, Alcaic odes, editions of the fathers, madrigals, catechisms, and lampoons. The liberal education of youth passed almost entirely into their hands, and was conducted by them with great ability. They seemed to have discovered the precise point in which intellectual culture can be carried without risk of intellectual emancipation;- Enmity itself- was compelled to own that, in the art of managing and forming the tender mind, they had no equals. Meanwhile they assiduously and successfully cultivated the eloquence of the pulpit. With still greater assiduity and still greater success they applied themselves to the ministry of the confessional. Throughout Catholic Europe the secrets of every government and almost every family of note were in their keeping. They glided from one Protestant country to another under innumerable disguises, as gay cavaliers, as simple rustics, as Puritan preachers. They wandered to countries which neither mercantile avidity nor liberal curiosity had ever impelled any stranger to explore. They were to be found in the garb of Mandarins, superintending the Observatory at Peking. They were to be found, spade in hand, teaching the rudiments of agriculture to the savages of Paraguay. Yet, whatever might be their residence, whatever might be their employment, their spirit was the same, entire devotion to the common cause, implicit obedience to the central authority.

“None of them had chosen his dwelling-place, or his avocation for himself. Whether the Jesuit should live under the Arctic circle or the equator, whether he should pass his life in arranging gems and collating manuscripts at the Vatican, or in persuading naked barbarians in the southern hemisphere not to eat each other, were matters which he left with profound submission to the decision of others. If he was wanted at Lima, he was on the Atlantic in the next fleet. If he was wanted at Baghdad, he was toiling through the desert with the next caravan. If his ministry was needed in some country where his life was more insecure than that of a wolf where it was a crime to harbor him, where the heads and quarters of his brethren, fixed in the public places, showed him what he had to expect, he went without remonstrance or hesitation to his doom.

“But with the admirable energy, disinterestedness, and self-devotion which were characteristics of the society, great vices were mingled. It was alleged, and not without foundation, that the ardent public spirit which made the Jesuit regardless of his ease, of his liberty, and of his life, made him also regardless of truth and of mercy; that no means which could promote the interest of his religion seemed to him unlawful, and that by the interest of his religion he too often meant the interest of his society. It was alleged that in the most atrocious plots recorded in history, his agency could be distinctly traced; that, constant only in attachment to the fraternity to which he belonged, he was in some countries the most dangerous enemy of freedom, and in others the most dangerous enemy of order. The mighty victories which he boasted that he had achieved in the cause of the Church were, in the judgment of many illustrious members of that Church, rather apparent than real. He had, indeed, labored with a wonderful show of success to reduce the world under her laws, but he had done so by relaxing her laws to suit the temper of the world. Instead of toiling to elevate human nature to the noble standard fixed by divine precept and example, he had lowered the standard till it was beneath the average level of human nature. He gloried in multitudes of converts who had been baptized in the remote regions of the East; but it was reported that from some of these converts the facts on which the whole of the theology of the gospel depends had been cunningly concealed, and that others were permitted to avoid persecution by bowing down before the images of false gods, while internally repeating Paters and Aves. Nor was it only in heathen countries that such arts were said to be practised. It was not strange that people of all ranks, and especially of the highest ranks, crowded to the confessionals in the Jesuit temples, for from those confessionals none went discontented away. There the priest was all things to all men. He showed just so much rigour as might not drive those who knelt at his spiritual tribunal to the Dominican or the Franciscan Church.

“If he had to deal with a mind truly devout, he spoke in the saintly tone of the primitive fathers; but with that very large part of mankind who have religion enough to make them uneasy when they do wrong, and not religion enough to keep them from doing wrong, he followed a very different system. Since he could not reclaim them from guilt, it was his business to save them from remorse. He had at his command an immense dispensary of anodynes for wounded consciences. In the books of casuistry which had been written by his brethren, and printed with the approbation of his superiors, were to be found doctrines consolatory to transgressors of every class. There the bankrupt was taught how he might, without sin, secrete his goods from his creditors. The servant was taught how he might, without sin, run off with his master’s plate. The pander was assured that a Christian man might easily earn his living by carrying letters and messages between married women and their gallants. The high-spirited and punctilious gentlemen of France were gratified by a decision in favour of dueling. The Italians, accustomed to darker and baser modes of vengeance, were glad to learn that they might, without any crime, shoot at their enemies from behind hedges. To deceit was given a license sufficient to destroy the whole value of human contracts and of human testimony. In truth, if society continued to hold together, if life and property enjoyed any security, it was because common sense and common humanity restrained men from doing what the Society of Jesus assured them that they might with a safe conscience do. So strangely were good and evil intermixed in the character of the celebrated brethren; and the inter-mixture was the secret of their gigantic power.”

Such is the character of the Jesuits drawn by an impartial hand. Such is the secret society organized and in full activity in these United States. Such is the force of foreign trained bands engaged in the work of establishing Jesuit ascendancy in this country, as firmly as it is already established in many countries in Europe.

How shall their designs be resisted and defeated? We answer, by Hawk Eye’s method of stopping a conflagration on the prairie — namely— by ” making fire fight fire.” We must oppose to them, an order of free Americans, well organized, numerous; extending through the whole country, acting under one impulse, and fixed in one resolve — that Americans shall rule America.

It is in vain that we oppose to the machinations of of a secret and widely diffused order, the proceedings of open political assemblies, who publish all their proceedings and all their intentions in the newspapers. Politics may well be compared to war in the matter of strategy. If your enemy knows your intentions, you are in perpetual danger of defeat. If you abandon the power of secret action, you abandon, at the same moment, all chance of success. If you would save the institutions of your country from the sacrilegious hands of Jesuit priests, you must “make fire fight fire.” You must retain the power of sometimes taking your deadly enemy by surprise.

What some of. the designs of the Jesuits are with respect to this country is fortunately known by their acts and the declarations of the journals under their control. To eradicate the whole system of public instruction as at present organized; to control the elections, by using the Roman Catholic votes ” to turn the scale;” and to make the whole country a Roman Catholic country, in which free thought, and free speech are crimes, punishable with imprisonment and death, may seem to some very bold designs to entertain with respect to this country. But these designs are by no means too daring for Jesuit priests, as their public declarations show. To defeat them we must begin now, before they have advanced further; and we must oppose them vigorously, sincerely, and, above all, systematically.

As a commentary on the readiness with which the Jesuits change their professions to suit emergencies, now, as well as formerly, we quote the following curious transaction of the year 1854.

THE KING OP NAPLES AND THE JESUITS.

Turin, Dec. 6. — A curious quarrel has lately broken out between the Neapolitan government and the Jesuits of that kingdom. It appears that the latter had been in the habit of teaching that the Pope was superior to all the other sovereigns of the earth, and the former has, for some unexplained reason, quite recently thought proper to regard this not very novel doctrine among Eoman Catholics,, as highly revolutionary. The consequence was, that M. Mazza, the Director of Police, sent for Padre Giuseppe, the chief of the Jesuits, the other day, and told him they must discontinue this practice, and should recollect that in 1848 they were sent out of the country in carriages;; “but if these things continue,” said the worthy minister, “the government will kick you out of the kingdom.” ” Noi vi caeceremo a calci,” were the precise words. The reverend father, much distressed at the result of this interview, hastened back to his convent; and lost no time in compiling the following protest, which was published at Naples a day or two after —

To his Royal Majesty Ferdinand II, of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

Sacred Royal Majesty-

Sire — With much surprise we have heard our sentiments doubted regarding absolute monarchy; we, therefore, think it necessary humbly to submit our views in the present page.

Majesty, we not only in olden time, but also recently, on our re-establishment in 1821, until the present day, have always inculcated respect, love, and ‘devotion for the King our Lord, for his Government, for the form of the same — that is, absolute monarchy.

This we have done, not only from conviction, but also because the doctors of the company, who are Francesco Suarez, the Cardinal Ballarmine, and many other theologians and publicists of the same, have publicly taught absolute monarchy to be the best form of government.

This we have done, because the internal economy of the company is monarchical, and therefore we are by maxim and by education devoted to absolute monarchy, in which Catholicism, by the wisdom and zeal of a pious King, can alone have secure defence and prosperity.

Majesty, that we both think, and believe, and sustain that absolute monarchy is the best of governments, is demonstrated by the damage, we sustained in the year 1848. We were the victims of Liberalism, because all Liberals were and are well persuaded also, that the Jesuits are the supporters of absolute monarchy.

These things, oh, Majesty! are well known, and Liberals would more easily believe that the sun would not rise tomorrow, than admit that the Jesuits could favor them; and therefore every time they attempt a revolution, their first object is to despoil the Jesuits.

For this reason the Liberals, by an inviolable canon of their law, will not admit a Jesuit, or one who is affiliated to the order, among them.

In fact, the Jesuits in the Kingdom of Naples have always taught it to be unpardonable to make revolutions for the purpose of changing the absolute monarchy, which the reigning dynasty has always maintained.

If this should not be sufficient not to be thought Liberals, we humbly pray your Majesty to point out what further we ought to do to be believed decided absolutists.

Certainly the Jesuits have never been, at any time, or in any place, accused of Liberalism; and what motive should they have for not loving and defending the absolute government of the august monarch Ferdinand II., who has covered them with benefits?

Finally, Majesty, of this sovereign beneficence we have made no other use than for the good of Christian morality and Catholicity, and the reigning dynasty, to profess immutable fidelity to the absolute monarchy, to which we declare ourselves always devoted, and we hope your Majesty will graciously permit us to confirm this sentiment at your Majesty’s feet by word of mouth.

The present page is signed by me, by my “Fathers councillors” (Padri Consultori,) and all others present, in the short time there has been for collecting their signatures; and if your majesty desires the signatures of all the Jesuits of this province of Naples, they can be speedily obtained. In so much, we who sign this are a full guarantee for their devotion by all proof to the absolute monarchy.

Giuseppe Maria Paladini,
della Compagnia di Gesu Provinciale,
(and 23 others:)

Collegio del Qesu Nuovo Wapoli, Nov. 21.

It would be curious and instructive, says a contemporary, to discover what are the convictions, the doctrines, and the teachings of the numerous Jesuit schools in our own country; to what extent they instill poison into the minds of American youth; and whether they contradict the profession of faith of their European and Neapolitan brethren. What say the Roman Catholic clergy in the United States to the above truly Jesuitical petition? Can we hope that they will contradict or condemn these principles, so expressed? Do they agree with the Fathers, or have they been favored with some new and contradictory light?