I am claiming moral and material aid against that Czar of Russia who is the most bloody persecutor of Roman Catholics.  The present Pope himself, before the revolution, when he was yet more of a High Priest than of an Italian Despot, and cared more about spiritual than temporal business, openly and bitterly complained in the councils of the Cardinals against that bloody persecution which the Roman Catholics have suffered from the Czar of Russia.  Now, considering that I plead for republican principles, to which the Reverend Father Jesuits should be here warmly attached, if they are willing to have the reputation of good citizens, and not to be traitors to your Republic, which affords to them not only the protection of its laws, but also the full enjoyment of all the privileges of your republican freedom;—­it is indeed a strange, striking fact, to see these reverend fathers here in a Republic so warmly advocating the cause of despotism, and so passionately persecuting the cause I humbly plead, which at the same time is the cause of political freedom and religious liberty for numerous millions of Roman Catholics throughout Europe.

As I am somewhat acquainted with the terrible history of that Order, I thought to find the explanation of this striking fact, in the historical ambition of that Order to rule the world—­this, their everlasting standard idea, to which they in all times sacrificed everything, and misused even the holiest of all religion, as an instrument to that ambition.  But here in St. Louis I got hold of a definite circumstance which makes the matter quite clear.

I hold in my hand the printed Catalogue of the Society of Jesuits in the province of Missouri, as they term your state.  Herein I see that amongst the thirty-five members officiating in the college of the Father Jesuits, in St. Louis, there are not less than eight Reverend Father Jesuits imported from Austria.  Now you see why I am so persecuted here.  This plain fact tells the story of a big book.

But amongst all that the reverend gentlemen oppose to me there are only two considerations to which the honour of my cause and of my nation forces me to answer in a few remarks.  They charge against me that my cause is hostile to the Roman Catholic religion, and to get the Irish citizens to side with them for the support of Russo-Austrian despotism they charge me that I am no friend of Ireland.

I. As to the Catholic religion—­I indeed am a Protestant, not only by birth, but also by conviction; and warmly penetrated by this conviction, I would delight to see the same shared by the whole world.  But before all, I am mortally opposed to intolerance and to sectarism.  I consider religion to be a matter of conscience which every man has to arrange between God and himself.  And therefore I respect the religious conviction of every man.  I claim religious liberty for myself and my nation, and must of course respect in others the right I claim for