16

with the dearly cherished principles of our Government,
With what surprise, in the presence of all these incidents of
our day, will the grave American Statesman hear of the "un-
lawful combinations" in which he has been assembled to council
with his native-born fellow citizens, to save from extinction and
adulteration those glorious memories which cluster around the
tombs of his ancestors, and that lofty privilege of American citi-
zenship which had come to him, along with these memoirs, as his
inheritance—at once the safe-guard and the pledge of his loyalty
to his country!

The Committee dispair, in the absence of information upon that
point, of being able to find either letter or spirit in any Constitu-
tion or law of this Country which was designed to rebuke the
purposes which have fallen under the executive censure.

In reference to that portion of the message which is intended to
express even a sharper reproof, upon what the Governer has char-
acterized as "intolerance and proscription" of religious opinions,
the Committee again recur to the 8th Article which they have
quoted above. That article announces resistance to the aggressive
policy, and corrupting tendencies of the Roman Catholic Church.
The mode of this resistance is pointed out. It is in the simple, le-
gal, authorized form in which an American citizen may resist
whatever he thinks an abuse in the body politic—resistance by the
constitutional weapon of the ballot-box and the equally constitution-
al exercise of the power of appointment. It is declared that this
resistance shall be made, by refusing to advance to any political
station, any man who holds, directly or indirectly, civil allegiance
to any foreign power whatever, civil or ecclesiastical.

If there be proscription or intolerance in this refusal, upon
whom does it operate? Upon the Catholic citizen of the United
States who does not acknowledge civil allegiance to a foreign
power? By no means. Nothing was further from the intention
of the National Council. The Committee are glad of the oppor-
tunity themselves to testify, in contradiction to a current slander
which is as widely circulated as the malice of enemies can carry
it, that it was because the American Party acknowledged and re-
spected the patriotism, fidelity and intelligence of the large body
of native born American Catholics, that they thought it necessary
to make the qualification contained in the article referred to.
They believed, and the Committee repeat it as their own personal