in the Diocese of Newark. He was born in Germany, November 2, 1823. He is now dead, but we have not any information with regard to the time or place. The records of the Newark Diocese of course contain it. Finally, the Rev. Theophilus Charaux completes the group. Father Charaux was born in France, April 19, 1830, and entered the Society in 1852. He is still living, though in very feeble health; but up to a year or so ago he was the beloved Spiritual Father in St. Mary's College, Montreal. After leaving Fordham he was Professor in New York, Superior General of the Mission, and when a new adjustment of the Provinces was made, withdrew to Canada, where he has remained ever since. This of course did not constitute the entire teaching staff of Fordham in those days, when, in spite of the difficulties of the times, they had nearly two hundred pupils. We miss in the picture, for example, the distinguished Father William Stack Murphy, who was Vice-President, and the equally famous Father Gresslin, the Professor of Philosophy. He probably would not submit to such vanities as daguerreotypes. Nor does Father Regnier, the treasurer, appear. Whether it was because of the size of the plate or for some other reason, the professors who were yet scholastics were left out. They were Hippolytus Lory, John Conlon, Michael Costin, and Anthony Knebel. There were also several laymen, viz., Frederick Christie, John Hughes, Patrick J. O'Grady, and Patrick McKernan. It is curious how historical documents often fail at the point where they are most needed. In verifying these lists we find, to our surprise, that the Catholic Directory which we have in our hands for 1860 makes no mention whatever of the Diocese of New York. At the back of the book, however, we find a notice of St. John's College, Fordham, with the complete faculty list. Why was New York omitted, while Brooklyn and Newark are listed? There is no gap in the pagination of the Directory. Was there a row with the publishers, or was there neglect in sending the report in proper time, or is our edition a freak? CONSTITUTIONAL FREEDOM OF RELIGION AND THE REVIVALS OF RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE. BY PETER CONDON. II. In a preceding article we undertook to show the attitude and temper of the colonists in matters of religion down to the time when they gained their independence and had organized a government by whose fundamental law religious freedom was guaranteed forever throughout the land. Of all the thirteen colonies which came into the confederacy, there was not one but had at some period or other of its existence proscribed those who professed the Roman Catholic faith. In some of the colonies there had been penal laws, copied from those of England, forbidding and punishing the practice of the Catholic religion, while in others Catholics, although tolerated, were nevertheless taxed for the support of a state church which they could not recognize and which taught that their religion was both superstitious and idolatrous and a menace to the safety of the State. Although subject to all the duties and burdens of citizenship, they were denied its privileges, were politically disfranchised, and socially ostracized. Everywhere the temper of the colonists, taken as a whole, was either positively hostile to Roman Catholics, or was pityingly tolerant of a class which seemed too insignificant to excite apprehension as to its possible future strength or influence. But the trend of events during the period of the Revolution favored the principle of religious freedom. In Virginia, where the state church was most firmly entrenched and where conformity to the state religion was most severely enforced, the discontent of the colonists found relief in Jefferson's famous act "for establishing religious freedom," passed in 1785, mainly through the exertions of the Presbyterians, Baptists, and Quakers, and after a contest which had lasted for several years. This act provided "that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatever; nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities." Although Virginia was the only Protestant colony to pass such a law previous to the enactment of the Federal Constitution, her example undoubtedly sustained and encouraged the colonists elsewhere who were contending for freedom of conscience, and furnished a precedent for the acts which later on were passed dissolving the union of church and state in New York and other colonies in which the Protestant Episcopal Church was predominant. Moreover, the patriotic services of Catholics in the War for Independence, and the invaluable aid which had been furnished by Catholic France, whose officers had shared with our own the honors of the English surrender at Yorktown, must have weakened, if they did not eradicate, the waning spirit of religious intolerance. Men who share the hardships and privations of war in defence of their homes and their country with others are not apt to nurse religious animosity against their companions in arms. It is a noticeable fact that on the close of the war the most virulent hostility to Catholics and foreigners proceeded from the Tory colonists of New York and New England, who had made little, if any, sacrifice for the cause of liberty, whose sympathy for the mother country was but ill concealed, who had kept the royal arms on their churches and recited public prayers for the king against whom the patriots were then contending, and who would have bartered the independence of their country for the restoration of the crown and the supremacy of their once-established church. This bare outline may serve to recall the attitude of the colonists, varying according to place and circumstance, toward the principle of religious freedom at the beginning of our national history; and it was under these conditions that Catholics came into the enjoyment of that right to freedom of conscience which had been assured to them equally with the rest of their fellow citizens when the Constitution was adopted. No exact statement can be made of the number of Catholics resident within the colonies at the time when the government was organized, but the best estimates indicate that they hardly exceeded 35,000 souls. Dr. Carroll in 1785 had reported to the Propaganda that the total Catholic population numbered 25,000. In a carefully considered article in Le Correspondant, translated in the first volume of the Catholic World, the writer, speaking of the year 1789, says: "The number of the faithful may be set down as 16,000 in Maryland, 7000 or 8000 in Pennsylvania, 3000 at Detroit and Vincennes, and about 2500 in Southern Illinois; in all the other States together they hardly amounted to 1500. In a total population of 3,000,000 they numbered about 30,000, and of these 5500 were of French origin." There were 100 Catholics in Boston, and a considerable body of Catholic Indians in Maine, who had helped the colonists in their fight for liberty,* while in New York the number of Catholics is stated by Shea to have been "inconsiderable."† But the census of 1790, the first taken, by the government, gave the total population of the United Colonies as 3,929,214. And as this total population largely exceeds the estimate of the writer last quoted, we may believe that he has understated the number of Catholics, and that the estimate of 35,000 souls is not excessive. As against this sprinkling of Catholics there remained a population of over three and a half millions, some of whom indeed professed no religion, while the majority consisted of Presbyterians, Quakers, Puritans, Lutherans, Baptists, Huguenots, and adherents of the Church of England. Of these last some 30,000, or nearly as many as the whole body of Catholics, had de *See Catholic Record for May, 1875, p. 60. † History of the Catholic Church, etc., Vol. II., p. 264. ported themselves at the peace of 1883, some back to England, others, and by far the greater part to the two Canadas. These voluntary exiles had never had any real sympathy with the patriots of the Revolution in their struggle for freedom; in their eyes freedom of religion was rank heresy, and rather than forego their state church and their allegiance to the British crown they chose to give up their homes and to withdraw from a people which had cast off both the one and the other. Much of this Tory element, however, remained and became identified with the Federal Party, whose activities for a period of twenty-five years and until the close of the War of 1812 occupy a large place in the political history of the nation. We shall have occasion to see how the followers of this party strove to preserve the political ascendency of Protestantism in the States both by Federal legislation affecting the naturalization of emigrants and by preventing legislation in their respective States for the relief of Catholics from their religious disabilities, which was necessary to give effect to the liberal spirit and purpose of the Constitution. As a result of this obstructive policy Catholics, although free to practise and support their own religion, yet remained for many years disfranchised by the law in many of the States and subject to tax for the support of public Protestant worship, as was the case in the Carolinas, New Jersey, and in various of the New England States. Speaking of these ultra-Federalists, Thomas Jefferson wrote to Lafayette, June 16, 1792, that "a sect has shown itself among us who declare they espoused our new Constitution, not as a good and sufficient thing in itself, but only as a step to an English Constitution, the only thing good and sufficient in itself in their eyes."* These men never accepted the principle of freedom of religion and made no secret of their antipathy to foreigners. Their deference to the Constitution was merely outward and formal, and the history of the party until it sank into oblivion, following the treasonable Hartford Convention of 1814, shows that its spirit was both un-American and intolerant. *Morse's Life of Jefferson, p. 115, |
