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 Another Random Document on
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the French governors, but neither your predecessors nor your
ministers ever spoke to me of Prayer or of the Great Spirit. They saw
my furs, my beaver and moose skins, and of these alone they
thought; these alone they sought, and so eagerly that I have not
been able to supply them enough. When I had much, they were my
friends; but only then. One day my canoe missed the route; I lost
my way, and wandered a long time at random, until at last I landed
near Quebec, in a great village of the Algonquins,[171] where the
Black Gowns were teaching. Scarcely had I arrived, when one of
them came to see me. I was loaded with furs, but the Black Gown of
France disdained to look at them. He spoke to me of the Great
Spirit, of heaven, of hell, of the Prayer, which is the only way to
reach heaven. I heard him with joy, and was so pleased with his
words that I remained in the village to hear him. At last the Prayer
pleased me, and I asked to be instructed. I solicited baptism, and
received it. Then I returned to the lodges of my tribe, and related all
that had happened. All envied my happiness, and wished to partake
of it. They, too, went to the Black Gown to be baptized. Thus have
the French acted. Had you spoken to me of the Prayer as soon as
we met, I should now be so unhappy as to pray like you; for I could
not have told whether your Prayer was good or bad. Now I hold to
the Prayer of the French; I agree to it; I shall be faithful to it, even
until the earth is burnt and destroyed. Keep your men, your gold,
and your minister. I will go to my French father."
The required aid was obtained from the French governor; workmen
were sent from Quebec, and the church was built soon after the
peace. "It possesses a beauty," says the missionary, "which would
cause it to be admired even in Europe, and nothing has been spared
to adorn it." Subsequently two little chapels were erected, about
three hundred paces from the chapel, by workmen obtained
probably from Boston; and these chapels are probably what
Hutchinson in 1724 alludes to as having been "built a few years
before by carpenters from New England." One of them was
dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, the other to their guardian angel.
There, in his new church and chapels, with the aid of rich vestments
and sacred vessels given by some of his friends, and with the
seraphic music of forty innocent Indian boys, all dressed in cassocks
and surplices, F. Rale conducted the solemn offices of the church in
the wilderness with a splendor and beauty not unworthy of more
favored lands. The processions on Corpus Christi were quite unique
and beautiful. On these occasions the church and chapels were
ornamented with the trinkets and fine work of the squaws, and
burning tapers made by the Indians from the wax berries growing
on their own native shores, and were thronged with ardent and
sincere worshippers—the simple children of the forest gathering
around the Holy of Holies, and presenting a scene in which angels
themselves might love to mingle.
The following account of F. Rale's daily life cannot but prove
interesting: "He rose at four, and, after meditation, said Mass at
daybreak, which all the Indians heard, and during it chanted their
prayers aloud; at its close he generally, on week-days, made a short
exhortation, to inspire them with good thoughts, then dismissing
them to the labors of the day. He then began to catechise the
children and the young; the aged, too, were there, all answering
with the docility of children. Then, after a slight meal, he sat in his
chamber to despatch the various matters laid before him—their
plans, their troubles, domestic disquiets, or intended marriages—in a
word, to direct them all. Towards noon he would go to work in his
garden, and then split his wood to cook his little mess of hominy; for
this may be said to have been his only food. Wine he never tasted,
even when among the French.
"After this frugal repast, he visited the sick, and went to particular
cabins to give instruction where it was more needed; and if a public
council or feast was to take place, he must be present; for they
never proceeded to the one without first hearing his advice, nor to
the other without his blessing on the food, which was ready to be
placed on the bark plates, which each one brought, and with which
he immediately retired to his cabin.
"The evening was left him to say his Breviary and give some time to
prayer and reading; but this was so often intrenched upon that at
last he made it a rule never to speak from before evening prayer till
after Mass on the following day, unless he was called to a sick-bed."
[172]

In the course of a few years, the free spirit of the Indians began to
grow impatient under the encroachments of the whites. Not only
their hunting-grounds, but even their fields for cultivation, were
circumscribed. A conference with Gov. Shute was held at
Georgetown in August, 1717, but it was evident that redress for the
Indians formed no part of the governor's designs. He refused to
treat with them otherwise than as subjects; he would not
acknowledge their natural liberty nor their hereditary title to their
hunting-grounds; nor would he fix a boundary beyond which the
encroachments of the white men should not extend. They were told,
however, that the English wished them to become of one religion
with themselves; an English Bible was given to them, and the
governor told them that the Rev. Mr. Baxter, who accompanied him,
would become their teacher and pastor. Thus it seems that the
governor with one hand presented them a Bible, and with the other
grasped their lands. When a letter from F. Rale, pleading in behalf of
his children, was handed to the governor, he treated it with great
contempt. "He let them know," says Hutchinson, "that he highly
resented the insolence of the Jesuit."[173] Another mock treaty was
now entered into by the aid of interpreters. F. Rale always protested
against it as fraudulent, and announced to the New Englanders that
the Norridgewocks did not recognize it. He never ceased his paternal
efforts in behalf of his Indians, and repeatedly addressed letters to
the governor and other leading men of New England, demanding
justice for them.[174]
Having tried every means of gaining over the Indians to their cause
in vain, the New Englanders next attacked them in the point which
seemed to attach them more than any other to the French; this was
their religion. The Rev. Mr. Baxter, a minister of ability and education,
as well as of an ardent zeal against Popery, undertook to evangelize
the Abnakis. "Thus," says Bancroft, "Calvin and Loyola met in the
woods of Maine." The Protestant minister established at Georgetown
a school, which was supported by the government, and, by means of
every attraction and inducement which he could present to them,
endeavored first to gain the children. But their hearts had already
been too deeply impressed with religion by the Catholic missionaries
to receive the Prayer from any person other than the Black Gown.
He then endeavored, but with the same result, to gain his point by
addresses and harangues to the parents, the chiefs, and braves of
the tribe. "He next assailed the religion of the Indians. He put
various questions concerning their faith, and, as they answered, he
turned into ridicule the sacraments, purgatory, the invocation of
saints, beads, Masses, images, and the other parts of the Catholic
creed and ritual."[175]
F. Rale saw at once that he must meet the danger thus threatened
to the faith of his flock. He addressed a respectful letter to Mr.
Baxter, covering an essay of one hundred pages, in which he
undertook to defend and prove, "by Scripture, by tradition, and by
theological arguments," those tenets and practices of the Catholic
Church which the minister had endeavored to ridicule. In the letter
enclosing the essay he remarked that the Indians knew how to
believe, but not how to dispute, and the missionary felt it to be his
duty to take up the controversy in behalf of his neophytes. Mr.
Baxter's reply treated F. Rale's arguments as puerile and ridiculous.
Finding, however, that his mission was a fruitless one, Mr. Baxter
returned to Boston. The correspondence did not cease here; but,
after Mr. Baxter's return to Boston, the letters turned upon the purity
of their Latinity, rather than the theology of the respective
controversialists. F. Rale remained at his post, the faithful guardian
of his flock.
The grievances of which the Indians had been long complaining still
remained unredressed. In 1719 another conference was held, but
with no better result than the previous one at Georgetown. Fresh
causes of resentment were added. Some Indians entered an English
house to trade, when suddenly they found themselves surrounded
by a force ten times stronger than their own. When about to cut
their way through, their arms were arrested by a request on the part
of the English for a parley, and they were told that the English only
wished to invite some of their number to visit the governor at
Boston. Four chiefs consented to go, and, when they arrived, they
were detained as hostages, to secure the payment of a large ransom
demanded by the English for damages sustained by them from
depredations committed by the tribe. The prisoners appealed to their
countrymen for relief, and the ransom was accordingly paid; but
even then the English refused to release them. A conference was
invited by the governor, but this was done merely to prevent an
immediate rupture. At the designated time, July, 1721, the chiefs,
accompanied by F. Rale; La Chasse, the superior of the missions;
Croisel, and the young Castine, repaired to Georgetown, but the
governor did not meet them there. La Chasse then drew up a letter
in Indian, French, and English, setting forth the claims of the
Indians, and sent it to Gov. Shute. No notice was ever taken of it.
In December, 1721, the English seized the young Castine, son of the
Baron de Castine by an Indian wife, and a great favorite with the
Abnakis. "The ungenerous and unjust arrest of this young man,"
says Dr. Francis, "incensed to the highest degree the countrymen of
his mother, among whom he had always lived."
Still, the Indians refrained from retaliation. Another act of aggression
soon followed; a detachment of two hundred and thirty men,
towards the end of 1721, or early in 1722, were sent to seize the
Catholic missionary. As this party entered the Kennebec, two young
braves, hunting near the shore, saw them, and, after following them
for some distance unobserved, struck into the woods and gave the
alarm at Norridgewock, which was then nearly deserted. Scarcely
had F. Rale time to consume the consecrated host on the altar to
save it from sacrilege, and secure the sacred vessels. He fled
precipitately to the woods, impeded as he was by the painful
condition of the wounds received in the severe fall he had received
as related above. The English arrived in the evening, and, having
waited till morning, pursued him to the woods. They carefully
scoured every place, and at one time came within eight steps of
their intended victim, and yet passed away without seeing him,
though only half concealed behind a small tree. The pursuers then
returned disappointed to Norridgewock, where they pillaged the
house of God and the missionary's residence, and then retired,
carrying away with them everything belonging to F. Rale—his desk,
papers, inkstand, and the Abnaki Dictionary, which he had
commenced at St. Francis in 1691. He suffered the extremes of
hunger while thus in the woods, flying from the pursuit of his
enemies; yet his courage and resolution remained firm and cheerful.
So great were the dangers that threatened him at every moment
that his affectionate neophytes, and even his superior, advised him
to retire for the present to Quebec. He always answered: "God has
committed this flock to my care, and I will share its lot, being too
happy, if permitted, to sacrifice my life for it." In a letter to his
nephew he asks: "What will become of the flock, if it be deprived of
its shepherd? I do not in the least fear the threats of those who hate
me without cause. 'I count not my life dear unto myself, so that I
may finish my course with joy,' and the ministry I have received of
the Lord Jesus."
While thus the object of deadly pursuit on the part of the English
colonists, F. Rale enjoyed the purest consolation in the love and
affection of his devoted flock. On one occasion, while he was
accompanying them on a hunting party, they suddenly perceived
that he was missing, and the report was started that the English had
broken into his cabin and carried him off. Their grief was only
equalled by their fury, and at once the braves began to prepare for
an effort to rescue their pastor at the hazard of their lives. Two of
their number, however, afterwards went to his cabin, and there they
found him, writing the life of a saint in their own language.
Transported with joy, they exclaimed: "We were told that the English
had carried you off, and our warriors were going to attack the fort,
where we thought they had doubtlessly imprisoned you!" "You see,
my children," replied the father, "that your fears were unfounded;
but your affectionate care of me fills my heart with joy; it shows you
love the Prayer." But as some of the warriors were starting, he
added: "Set out, immediately after Mass, to overtake the others, and
undeceive them."
On another occasion he was with them at a great distance from
home, when the alarm was given that the English were within a few
hours' march of the encampment. All insisted on his flying back to
the village. At daybreak he started with two Indians as his escort.
The journey was long, the provisions were out, and the father had
for his only food a species of wood, which he softened by boiling. In
crossing a lake, which had begun to thaw, he narrowly escaped
being drowned himself in his effort to assist another. Saved from this
danger, he was not the less exposed to death from cold. On the
following day they crossed the river on broken pieces of ice, and
were soon at the village. He was welcomed back by a sumptuous
feast, consisting of corn and bear's meat; and when he expressed
his astonishment and thanks for such a banquet, the Indians replied:
"What, father! you have been fasting for two days; can we do less?
Oh! would to God we could always regale you so!" But while he was
thus feasting, his children elsewhere were mourning over his
supposed death. His deserted cabin on the shore led some, who
knew nothing of his flight, to believe that he had been killed. One of
these erected a stake on the banks of a river, and to it attached a
piece of paper-birch bark, on which he had drawn with charcoal a
picture of some English surrounding F. Rale, and one was
represented cutting off the Black Gown's head. When the main body
of the Indians came that way, and saw the pictorial writing, its
meaning sank deep into their hearts, and they were overwhelmed
with grief. They tore out the long scalp-locks from their heads, and
then sat on the ground around the stake, where they remained
motionless and without uttering a word till the next day. Such was
their mode of manifesting the most intense grief. But what must
have been their joy, when, on returning to the village, they saw their
beloved father reciting his Office on the banks of the river!
It would appear, from a letter in the Massachusetts Historical
Collections, attributed to F. Rale, that he accompanied the expedition
that destroyed Berwick. It is quite evident, from what has been
related of the determination of the English to destroy him, and of
the repeated efforts they made to accomplish that deadly purpose,
that F. Rale would not have been safe at Norridgewock or anywhere
apart from the main body of his people. It is not likely that his
devoted children, who saw his danger, and were solicitous for his
safety, would permit him to remain behind, exposed to the constant
attempts of his enemies upon his life. His presence in the expedition
against Berwick was enough, with his enemies, to confirm their
charge that he led them on to war against the English. The truth is,
their own pursuit of him rendered his presence there justifiable, as
necessary for his own safety, if it were not justifiable on the ground
that he was their chaplain in war as in peace, and that his presence
among them was more necessary for the religious consolation of the
dying, as well as for moderating, by the counsels we have already
seen him giving them, the usual cruelties of war. It does not become
his accusers, however, to dwell upon this charge, who themselves
have boasted of the warlike feats of the Rev. Mr. Fry, who scalped
and killed his Indian in Lovell's expedition, and was killed fighting in
the thickest of the engagement.
It has already been seen how the Indians were, by repeated injuries,
driven at last to take up the hatchet. When once at war, they
prosecuted it with terrible energy and destructive fury. And though
their humanity on several occasions contrasted with the cruelty of
their civilized antagonists, the young settlements of New England
suffered much at their hands during this contest.
In the summer of 1724, hostilities on the part of the Indians had
begun to moderate, and peace was already spoken of between the
respective parties. But this did not restrain the fury of the English.
On the 23d of August an expedition of little over two hundred,
consisting of English and their Mohawk allies, rushed suddenly from
the thickets upon the unconscious village of Norridgewock. The first
notice the Indians received was the rattling of the volleys of their
assailants among their bark cabins. Consternation seized upon the
inhabitants; the women and children fled, but the few braves who
were then at the village rushed to arms to defend their altar and
their homes. The struggle was indeed a desperate one. F. Rale,
when he perceived the cause of the excitement in the village, knew
that himself was the chief object of the enemy's pursuit. Hoping,
too, to draw off the fury of the assailants from his neophytes upon
himself, he went forth. No sooner had he reached the Mission Cross,
where the fight was raging, than a shout of exultation arose from
two hundred hostile voices, and, though a non-combatant, a
discharge of musketry was immediately levelled at his venerable
form. Pierced with balls, he fell lifeless at the foot of the cross.
Seven principal chiefs lay dead around their saintly pastor and
devoted father. The battle was now over, but the victory seemed too
easy for the victors; they approached to wreak further vengeance
upon the lifeless form of F. Rale. They hacked and mutilated the
corpse, split open the head, broke the legs, and otherwise brutally
disfigured it. Then proceeding to the house of God, the assailants
rifled the altar, desecrated the sacred vessels and the adorable Host,
and then committed the church to the devouring flames. After the
English had retired, some of the orphaned flock of Norridgewock
returned to their desolated home; they first sought for the body of
their good father, and, having found it, they piously interred it
beneath the spot where the altar stood.
After reading the incidents of the life of F. Rale, the reader would be
astonished to peruse the accounts given by New England writers.
But the latter bear on their face the evidence that they were the
result, not of candid investigation, but of the bitterest partisan
prejudice. There may be some explanation of their tone, though no
voucher for their accuracy, in the fact that Penhallow derived his
accounts from interpreters, who were known not to be faithful.
Charlevoix and De la Chasse knew F. Rale personally, and they give
us the strongest assurances of his innocence, his sanctity, and his
many heroic virtues. M. de Bellemont, Superior of the Sulpician
Seminary at Montreal, entertained so exalted an opinion of his
merits that he did not hesitate to apply to him the words of S.
Augustine: "Injuriam facit martyri, qui orat pro eo."
The accounts hostile to F. Rale have been derived chiefly from
Penhallow, who was actuated by the strongest party feeling. A single
specimen from his pen will show how he felt towards the person, as
well as the religion, of F. Rale; it contains a repetition of the old
calumny about the merit of destroying heretics, which no educated
person would in our day repeat: "We scalped twenty-six besides M.
Rale, the Jesuit, a most bloody incendiary, and instrumental to most
of the mischiefs done us by preaching up the doctrine of meriting
salvation by the destruction of heretics. He even made the offices of
devotion serve as incentives to their ferocity, and kept a flag on
which was depicted a cross surrounded by bows and arrows, which
he used to hoist on a pole at the door of his church when he gave
them absolution previous to their engaging in any warlike
enterprise." Now, the flag that awakened so much horror in the
breast of the New England chronicler was a simple Indian Sunday-
school banner, than which nothing could have been more innocent.
F. Rale, artist as well as priest, had decorated his Indian church with
pious paintings executed by himself, to excite the piety and zeal of
his neophytes. Amongst other similar representations, suitable for
pleasing the simple tastes of the natives, was the flag in question,
ornamented with the cross and the arrow, emblems of the faith and
of the country. A glance would have convinced any passer-by that it
was the banner of an Indian church, and no sensible person in our
day could object to see such an one used by the Indians of Florida,
Oregon, or other hostile Indian country within our territory or
bordering on our frontier.
Dr. Francis, who in his life of Rale follows by preference the New
England accounts, sums up his estimate of our missionary's
character as follows: "But whatever abatements from indiscriminate
praise his faults or frailties may require, I cannot review his history
without receiving a deep impression that he was a pious, devoted,
and extraordinary man. Here was a scholar, nurtured amid European
learning, and accustomed to the refinements of one of the most
intellectual nations of the Old World, who banished himself from the
pleasures of home and from the attractions of his native land, and
passed thirty-five years of his life in the forests of an unbroken
wilderness, on a distant shore, amidst the squalid rudeness of
savage life, and with no companions during those long years but the
wild men of the woods. With them he lived as a friend, as a
benefactor, as a brother; sharing their coarse fare, their disgusting
modes of life, their perils, their exposures under the stern
inclemency of a hard climate; always holding his life cheap in the toil
of duty, and at last yielding himself a victim to dangers which he
disdained to escape. And all this that he might gather these rude
men, as he believed, into the fold of the church; that he might bring
them to what he sincerely held to be the truth of God and the light
of heaven."
Mr. Bancroft thus describes the life and character of the subject of
this memoir: "At Norridgewock, on the banks of the Kennebec, the
venerable Sebastian Rale, for more than a quarter of a century the
companion and instructor of savages, had gathered a flourishing
village round a church, which, rising in the desert, made some
pretensions to magnificence. Severely ascetic—using no wine, and
little food except pounded maize, a rigorous observer of the days of
Lent—he built his own cabin, tilled his own garden, drew for himself
wood and water, prepared his own hominy, and, distributing all that
he received, gave an example of religious poverty. And yet he was
laborious in garnishing up his forest sanctuary, believing the faith of
the savage must be quickened by striking appeals to the senses.
Himself a painter, he adorned the humble walls of his church with
pictures. There he gave instruction almost daily. Following his pupils
to their wigwams, he tempered the spirit of devotion with familiar
conversation and innocent gaiety, winning the mastery over their
souls by his powers of persuasion. He had trained a little band of
forty young savages, arrayed in cassock and surplice, to assist in the
service and chant the hymns of the church; and their public
processions attracted a great concourse of red men. Two chapels
were built near the village, one dedicated to the Virgin and adorned
with her statue in relief, another to the guardian angel; and before
them the hunter muttered his prayer on his way to the river or the
woods. When the tribe descended to the seaside in the season of
wild fowl, they were followed by Rale; and on some islet a little
chapel of bark was quickly consecrated."
The scene so peaceful, so happy, so beautiful, in the days of F. Rale,
that it has been appropriately called one of "nature's sweet
retirements," is described by the poet Whittier after the rude hand of
war had blasted its beauty and destroyed its altar and its priest, as it
appeared to some Indian warriors who revisited the field after the
battle, in the following lines:

"No wigwam smoke is curling there,

The very earth is scorched and bare;
And they pause and listen to catch a sound
Of breathing life, but there comes not one,
Save the fox's bark and the rabbit's bound;
And here and there on the blackened ground
White bones are glistening in the sun.
And where the house of prayer arose,
And the holy hymn at daylight's close,
And the aged priest stood up to bless
The children of the wilderness,
There is naught but ashes sodden and dank,
And the birchen boats of the Norridgewock,
Tethered to tree, and stump, and rock,
Rotting along the river-bank!"

FOOTNOTES:

[165] Indian name Kanghéssanak; botanical, Umbilicaria Muhlenbergii.

[166] Francis' Life of Rale, in Sparks.
[167] Maine Hist. Soc. Collections, v. i. p. 339, and Shea.
[168] Francis' Life of Father Rale.
[169] Smith's History of New York.
[170] Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, v. viii. p. 258.
[171] Sillery.
[172] Shea.
[173] Francis's Life of Rale.
[174] Chalmers.
[175] Francis's Life of Rale.
FROM EGYPT TO CHANAAN.
My God, while journeying to Chanaan's land,
For peace I do not pray;
Nor seek beneath thy sheltering sweetness, Lord,
To rest each circling day.
I cry to thee for strength to struggle on,
But do not ask that smooth the way may be;
Sufficient for thy servant 'tis to know
That earth's bleak desert ends at last with thee.

When heavenly sweetness floods my heart, dear Lord,

I magnify thy name;
When desolations weigh my spirit down,
I bless thee still the same.
Keep me, O God! I cry with streaming eyes,
From love of earth and creatures ever free:
Far sweeter are than Eden's fairest blooms
The blood-stained blossoms of Gethsemani.

I do not ask of thee that loving friends

Should wander by my side,
Or that my hand should feel an angel's touch,
A guardian and a guide.
But, Israel's God, do thou go on before,
An ever-present beacon in the way;
A fiery pillar in dark sorrow's night,
A cloudy column in my prosperous day.

I do not ask, O Master dear! to lean

My head upon thy breast;
Nor seek within thy circling arms to find
An ever-present rest.
I beg from thee that crown of prickly thorn
That once thy sacred forehead rudely tore;
And I will press those crimsoned brambles close
To my poor heart, and ask from thee no more.
But when, at length, my scorched and weary feet
Shall reach their journey's end,
And I have gained the longed-for promised land
Where milk and honey blend;
Then give me rest, and food, and drink, dear Lord;
For then another pilgrim will have past,
As thou didst, o'er the wastes of barren sand
From Egypt into Chanaan, safe at last.
 THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1873.
Will a new year ever dawn? is the question that must present itself
in some shape or form to the one who glances at the records of the
years as they go by. Eighteen hundred and seventy-three of them
have passed since that song was heard at midnight on the
mountains of Judea, "Glory in the highest, and on earth peace"; yet
to-day the chant is as new and strange as it then was. There is no
pagan Rome, but there is a Christian Germany; the dead ashes of
the divine Emperor Tiberius were long ago blown about the world,
but the divine Emperor William lives; there is no Herod, but there is
an Emanuel, whose name is as characteristic of the man as the word
Eumenides of what it was intended to represent. Who shall say that
there are no Pilates still, who would fain wash their minds of
conviction and their hands of the blood of Christ with a little water?
Are none living who cast lots for his seamless garment? Every
person, everything existing at the birth and death of Christ, has its
living counterpart to-day; which is to say that human nature is still
human nature; that the last chapter of the world's history has not
yet been written; and that, beautiful and sublime as parts of it may
be, "the trail of the serpent is over it all."
The year now closing is bigger with portent than event, as far, at
least, as events touch humanity at large. A glance at the principal
states of the world, east as well as west, though with a drowsier
movement in the Orient, will bring before the eye many of the same
symptoms throughout; more or less of transition, of rapid and often
violent national change, which naturally shows itself among peoples
of a thousand creeds in the relation of the governed to the
governing, of the individual to the state. On this subject there are
two extremes—personal absolutism, on the one hand, and
communism, on the other. Both are equally disastrous to humanity,
both are opposed to the law of Christ; hence the believer in the law
of Christ, the individual who founds and builds his life and that of his
family on the law of Christ—the Christian, the Catholic—is equally
objectionable to both, and alike an object of hatred to Prussian
imperialism and French liberalism. We are living in dangerous times;
the world seems at the crisis of a fever. God in his mercy grant that
it pass safely, and that the patient awake from the long delirium to
its senses and the road to recovery, however slow and toilsome!
In American history the year of our Lord 1873 will probably be
known as, thus far at least, pre-eminently the year of scandals. Early
in this year, the Congress of the United States, as if in emulation of
the example set by some of our state legislatures and municipal
corporations, did, in the now famous Crédit Mobilier transaction,
furnish a chapter apart in the annals of political malfeasance and
corruption. It shocked and shook the confidence of the nation. The
out-going Vice-President escaped impeachment by a vote so narrow
as to imply a conviction of his guilt; his successor entered with the
shadow of the same offence on his character. The rank-and-file were
worthy of their leaders. Men stared blankly in each other's faces, and
asked whether such a thing as honor existed in political life. The
result showed itself in general apathy at the elections, while the tide,
such as it was, turned again to the opposite party.
Corruption, fraud, embezzlement—embezzlement, corruption, fraud!
Such are the chief headlines which the future historian will find in
the national annals during this year of grace. The same story is as
true of private individuals as of our public and representative men.
The fashionable crimes of the year—always after murder and
suicide, of course—have been embezzlement and defalcation on the
part of gentlemanly and well-educated bank and insurance officers.
A batch of American citizens gave us a world-wide celebrity by their
long trial, ending in conviction and severe punishment, for
astounding forgeries on the Bank of England; so that it is doubtful,
as matters stand, which epithet would convey the severest
imputation on character—"As honest as a cashier," or "As honest as
a member of Congress."
The early spring was signalized by, perhaps, one of the last efforts of
the Indians against the whites. A small band of Modocs, under the
leadership of their chieftain, "Captain Jack," who seemed to have
had serious causes of complaint, after considerable negotiation,
resolved to die in harness rather than wait for what, to them, was a
lingering death on a narrow reservation. They commenced
operations by treacherously murdering Gen. Canby, a brave officer,
and a peace commissioner, during a peace parley. Retiring to their
caves, which afforded them an admirable shelter, they for a long
time maintained a successful resistance to the United States forces
despatched to destroy them, inflicting severe loss on the troops. So
successful was Captain Jack's battle that at one time it was feared
the other tribes would rise and join him. Run to earth at last, he
surrendered with one or two companions who remained faithful.
After due trial, they were taken and hanged. A poor issue for a
Christian government!
Troubles loomed in Louisiana. Faction contended with faction for the
government at a sacrifice of many lives. When blood once flows in
civil strife, it is hard to tell where or when it will stop. As civil war
threatened, and as Congress was not sitting, President Grant was
compelled to resort to the expedient of ordering in the United States
troops, not only to preserve the peace, but to sustain one of the
parties in power. The country looked with a natural jealousy on this,
at the time, apparently necessary movement; for if all civil quarrels
are to be decided by federal bayonets, centralization and consequent
personal government must sooner or later ensue. At the same time,
it is impossible to allow local contests to be fought out vi et armis. If
the states cannot conduct their internal affairs in a civil fashion and
in the spirit of the constitution, there is apparently no medium
between centralization and disruption.
The South was making rapid strides towards commercial recovery;
the cotton crop for the year was excellent, as, indeed, were the
crops generally; but the recent financial disasters have crippled trade
as well as commerce. People will neither buy nor sell. Stock lies idle
in the market; large business firms close or suspend, and the
farmers cannot forward their products; so that the country is faced
by a long winter with nothing to do, aggravated by a bad business
season, for which the strikers of the preceding year have themselves
partially to blame; and all ostensibly because one large banking firm
suspended payment!
The only remedy for everything is a restoration of confidence among
all; but that is the precise thing that is slow to come. The money
market has been in the hands of commercial gamblers and tricksters
so long that, with our paper money, which in itself is demoralizing,
commercial gambling seems to be the acknowledged and legitimate
line of business. Honest men cannot contend with a world of rogues.
American credit has suffered terribly. If in political affairs it be true,
as Prince Bismarck assured the world no later than last March, that
"confidence is a tender plant, which, once destroyed, comes never
more," it is doubly true in matters affecting a man's pocket.
There is something ominous as well as startling in this sudden
collapse of all business, all commercial transactions, in a young,
wealthy, powerful country such as this, in consequence of the failure
of one or two men. It could not be unless the roots of the evil that
wrought their failure had taken wide and deep hold of the national
heart. There are dangers more immediate and more fatal than
Cæsars or centralization threatening our republic. There is
something like a rotting away of the national virtue, purity, and
honor which in themselves constitute the life of a nation. When we
find dishonesty accepted as a fact, or a state of affairs rather,
against which it is hopeless to contend; when we find money
accepted as the lever which Archimedes sought in vain, and that
money itself based on nothing—paper—taken on trust, which does
not exist, we have arrived at a state very nearly approaching to
national decay, and it is high time to look to our salvation. This can
be brought about only by an adherence to the doctrines of
Christianity, an education of our children in the laws of Christianity,
so as to save at least the coming generation. Only one thought will
save a nation from dishonesty: the consciousness that a dishonest
action is a sin and a crime against Almighty God. When that doctrine
is taught and enforced in our public schools, and impressed indelibly
on the plastic mind of innocence, the generation will grow up
honest, true, and manly. While perfectly aware that reasoning of this
kind will scarcely be appreciated "on the street," nay, would not even
be understood, that is no reason why prominence should not be
given it by those who have the future of their country at heart. The
generation that grows up without a Christian education will not know
the meaning of such words as private or commercial morality.
The history of the year in Europe is told in a sentence written long
before Rome was founded: "The kings of the earth stood up, and
the princes met together, against the Lord and against his Christ." In
Germany, the work of the construction and consolidation of the new
empire is advancing bravely. The new German Empire is founded on
a military code strengthened by penal statutes, executed with all the
promptness, vigor, and rigor of military law. The great feature of the
year has been the passing of the ecclesiastical bills, into the
particulars of which question it is unnecessary to enter now, as it
has already been dealt with at length in The Catholic World.[176] The
present aspect of affairs may be summed up in a sentence: To be a
Catholic is to be a criminal in the eyes of the state.
Every Catholic society of men, and women even, living in community
together, have been expelled from Prussian territory within the year,
for the simple reason that they were Catholics. As an excuse in the
eyes of this keen, honest, liberal world of the XIXth century for such
an outrage on human liberty, the government which boasts as its
head Prince Bismarck, whose very name has become a byword for
sagacity and foresight, contents itself with no better reason than
that these quiet men and women, whose lives are passed out of the
world, are a danger to the nation that conquered Austria and
France; and the keen, honest, liberal world finds that reasoning
sufficient. To be logical, the government should expel all the
8,000,000 Catholics in Prussia, or the 14,000,000 in the Empire, who
are left behind; for there is not one shade of difference in the
Catholicity of the societies expelled and that of the vast body
remaining. But as it would be a difficult undertaking bodily to expel
14,000,000 of human beings from an empire, and as it would be a
costly proceeding in the end, the half a dozen or more men who
legislate for this vast empire of 40,000,000 do the best they can
under the circumstances, and strain their ingenuity to devise means
for purging Catholicity out of the souls of this vast body, as though
the religion of Jesus Christ were a fatal disease and a poison.
Consequently, the first thing to do was to change the Prussian
constitution, which guaranteed religious freedom independent of
state control. By an alteration in Articles XV. and XVIII., religion was
brought under complete subjection to the state: Prince Bismarck
being compelled to pack the Upper House with his creatures in order
to secure a majority for the measure. It passed, and its result, as far
as the Catholic Church is concerned, is easily told.
Catholic bishops, the successors of the apostles, may no longer
exercise apostolic jurisdiction without permission from a Protestant
government. A Catholic bishop may not excommunicate a rebellious
Catholic without permission from a Protestant government, under
the severest penalties.
A Catholic bishop must, under pain of the severest penalties,
acknowledge a schismatic as a priest; retain him in his parish, pay
him a salary, and allow him to say Mass and preach false doctrine to
his Catholic congregation.
A Catholic bishop may not, under the severest penalties, ordain a
Catholic priest, unless the candidate for holy orders receive the
approval of Protestant government officials.
Catholic seminaries, where students for the Catholic priesthood are
trained, must accept the supervision of a Protestant official and the
programme of education prescribed by a Protestant government,
which has declared war against their religion. If the bishop does not
accept these conditions, the seminary is closed.
Catholic candidates for holy orders cannot be exempted from military
service; the term of military service embraces a period of twelve
years.
Catholic candidates for orders may not be admitted to holy orders
before passing three years at a state university under the lectures of
Protestant or infidel professors. On their entrance to the university
they must matriculate to the satisfaction of those professors, and on
leaving it they must pass a rigorous examination, also to the
satisfaction of those professors.
A Catholic bishop may not appoint to or remove a Catholic priest
from any parish without the permission of the Protestant
government. If he does so, the marriages celebrated by such a
priest are not recognized by law, and the children are consequently
illegitimate in the eyes of the law! This too under a government
which recognizes and encourages by every means in its power civil
marriages, without the form of any religious ceremony whatsoever.
Surely this is an Evangelical power!
Such, in brief, is a sketch of what these ecclesiastical bills mean. The
sketch, hasty and incomplete as it is, requires no comment. A
running comment is kept up every day, as readers may see for
themselves, by cable despatches announcing penalties inflicted upon
this bishop and that for refusing to obey laws that not only the
Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and the apostolic writings forbid him,
under pain of losing his soul, to obey, but against which the heart of
any man with an ounce of freedom and honesty in his nature must
revolt as from a foul offence. But the cable tells not a tithe of the
story. Every penalty of the law in all the cases mentioned above has
been and is being rigorously, nay bitterly, enforced; and a milder
mode of treatment is scarcely to be looked for from the recent
return of Prince Bismarck to the Prussian premiership, with full
control this time over the cabinet.
It is difficult, in these days and in this country of all others, to write
or speak with calmness of this cool assumption of absolute power
over soul and body—the souls and bodies of 40,000,000 of human
beings whom God created—by one or two men, and of its
hypocritical justification by appeals to the Deity himself.[177] It is still
more difficult to speak or write with calmness of the undisguised or
ill disguised approval which such barbarous enactments have evoked
in free America in the columns of Protestant religious or quasi-
religious journals. Is religious freedom one thing here and another
thing in Germany? Or is this country indeed, as some allege, ripe for
absolutism?
The spirit that would wipe out the church of Christ if it could, that
stifles every breath of religious freedom, naturally and as a matter of
course laughs at such a thing as pretensions to political freedom in
any sense. Consequently, it was no surprise to see, in the face of the
protest of the majority, the civil as well as foreign polity of the states
that compose this German Empire, scarce yet two years old,
transferred to the bureau that sits at Berlin. These states were free
three years ago, governing themselves by their own laws. They must
now be ruled internally as well as externally by the laws of the
empire, that is to say, by Prussia; for the imperial chancellor is the
Prussian premier, with full control over the cabinet. In a word,
Germany is to be Prussianized. Prince Bismarck is no lover of half-
measures. Already it was decreed, in spite of opposition, that the
Prussian military code should serve for the whole empire. The bill for
the organization of the imperial army retains the main features of
the former organization. The term of military service is fixed at
twelve years, and, as already seen, not even the orders which
indelibly stamp a man as the consecrated priest of God, can save
him from becoming a man of war.
Now, this one item of itself is sufficient to condemn this government
in the eyes of humanity. What is the meaning of the words, "twelve
years of military service"? Prussian military service is no playing at
soldiers, be it remembered, like our militia here or in England. The
average life of a man in these days probably does not much exceed
thirty-six years. Yet in this new German empire the men who go to
compose its 40,000,000 of human souls are compelled to devote
one-third—the best twelve years of their lives—to what?
To serve in the armies of a tyrannical despot, who styles himself
"William, by the grace of God"—to spend those best twelve years of
their lives in learning the most expeditious method of killing their
fellow-Christians! And that is what the glorious German Empire
means.
What wonder that Germans should already fly in such numbers from
this glorious and consolidated empire as to cause the same
government that forbids freedom of religion to prohibit freedom of
emigration? As all the world has seen, the German government is
compelled to throw every obstacle in the way of its subjects to
prevent their flying to this country. Does that betoken soundness,
and a government grateful to the people? In the face of that one
fact, it is needless to call to mind the riots that have continued at
intervals throughout the year in various parts of the country, and the
cruelty with which they were put down. What wonder that, even in
the face of a military power, the Catholic party, persecuted as it is,
should have gained, on Protestant concession, a small but decided
increase on the vote of last year? What wonder that the liberty of
the press should be attacked, and the journals that dared to publish
the Papal Allocution confiscated?
It has been alleged all along that Catholics have been the foes of the
unity of Germany. The allegation is utterly false. It is alleged by the
Prussian government that they conspire against the empire, from the
bishops down. Give us the proofs, say the Catholics; lay your finger
on the words or the acts of conspiracy. The government refuses to
take up the open, manly challenge. It knew that its charge was
false. But had it, by any chance, been true, who shall say that a
government that enforces such barbarous laws as those above
given, which is compelled to resort to force in order to keep its
subjects in the country, which compels every man to devote the best
part of his life to preparation for war, whose revenues go only to
swell vast armaments and fortify frontiers, which denies not only all
religious but all political freedom—practically one and the same thing
—is not a curse rather than a blessing to mankind? The German
Empire, as it stands to-day, is nothing else than a rampant, military
Prussian despotism—a danger not only to its sister nations in
Europe, but to the world.
In Italy the story is much the same; and the wonder is the
sufferance, in these days of vaunted enlightenment and freedom, of
the utter violation and disregard on the part of governments of every
human right, even to the seizure of private property. The bill for the
appropriation by the state of church property passed through the
Italian parliament. These fine words, "appropriation," "parliament,"
"debates," in this "house" and in that, seem to throw dust in the
eyes of men who, when their own property is touched, are
particularly keen-sighted, though the "appropriation" go not beyond
a single dollar. This high-sounding measure simply means that the
Italian parliament has forcibly taken possession of three millions'
worth and upwards of property to which, in the face of earth and
heaven, it had not one jot, one tittle, one shade of claim in any
form.
Three years ago, the present Italian parliament—Italian by courtesy
—was not known in Rome. The Pope was as much a sovereign as
Victor Emanuel. The withdrawal of the French troops left the
Sovereign Pontiff defenceless, and let in the King of Sardinia.
Unprovoked and uninvited, he took violent possession of the slender
remnant of the Papal States left to the Pope, and proclaimed himself
King of Italy—the Pope still remaining on the soil which his
predecessors owned and governed before the race of Victor Emanuel
existed. Under the Papal rule, certain religious corporations—the
religious orders and societies—rented, purchased, or owned certain
property. The property belonged to those corporations as surely and
as sacredly as property can belong to any man or body of men. Of
course, when this Italian government laid its sacrilegious hand on
the domain of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, it was scarcely to be
expected that, with the example of Henry VIII. of England and,
more recently, of William of Prussia before its eyes, it would stop
short at the property of religious corporations. Consequently, we
hear of a bill for the appropriation of this private property by the
state. It is debated, and, after the usual objections to what is
already a foregone conclusion, the property is seized by the state,
and the owners turned adrift over the world.
When men, and by no means admirable men, calling themselves
governments, play thus fast and loose with every vested right,
Catholics are told, because they are so bold as to defend their own,
that they are and, cannot be other than disloyal to that nowadays
obscure thing, a state! The Vicar of Jesus Christ lifts up his voice,
and, after his many warnings, pronounces the solemn sentence of
major excommunication on all who have had hand, act, or part in
these sacrilegious transactions, which the science of jurisprudence
itself condemns utterly—and free men, with sound ideas on the
rights of property, whatever may be their opinion on the rights of
religion, find in his utterances insolence or ravings.
Treasures of art, libraries that are historical relics, relics of the
sainted dead, all that the monasteries and convents held, flood the
Italian market, and are bought up "for a song"; while the property
itself is up at auction to the highest bidder. And what has this
government done for the country? Has it, in a manner, justified its
seizure by improving the condition of the people?
It only needs to read any of the Roman correspondents of the
English or American press to know that never did brigandage exist in
a more flourishing condition in Italy than since the entry of Victor
Emanuel into Rome. Many Protestant correspondents, be it
remembered, intimate plainly enough that the authorities wink at the
brigands. Capture, of course, is made once in a while; but so
occasionally as only to serve "pour encourager les autres." But, after
all, there is no barometer like a man's pocket; and the rise and fall
of taxation is a very safe indicator of the state of the political mart.
On this point a little comparison will be found instructive.
The New York Herald, in the spring of this year, in an article entitled
"The Debts of the State—Important Questions for Taxpayers,"
mentions, as the revelation of "a startling fact," that "the aggregate
debt of the several counties, cities, towns, and villages of the State
of New York, for which the taxpayers are responsible, exceeds two
hundred and fourteen million dollars. This is more than ten and a
half per cent. upon the assessed valuation of all property in the
State.... If to this total debt of the subdivisions of the State be added
that of the State itself, ... we have as the entire corporate debt of
the State $239,685,902—almost twelve per cent. of the whole
assessment of property." "This is a heavy encumbrance upon every
man's and every woman's estate. It has grown out of a long course
of reckless abuse of power, too lightly confided to legislative and the
various representative bodies which control the State in its several
divisions. Lavish extravagance has been too often authorized in
expenditures for the public account, by men who carefully guard
their private interests and credit, and it is no secret that many of the
burdens imposed upon the taxpayers have enriched those who made
the appropriations. How are these onerous obligations to be met? Or
are they to be paid at all?"
It is doubtful whether many of the taxpayers in New York State will
feel inclined to call in question the strictures here involved. At all
events, the ex-Tammany chieftain has recently been consigned to
the penitentiary. Turn we now to the taxation in Rome since the
commencement of the Emanuel régime. A Herald correspondent,
who was despatched to describe the death of our Holy Father, and
the election of his successor, and, finding his time heavy on his
hands—as the Pope, in the face of an outraged world, refused to die
before his Master called him—collected and sent back the following
little items:
Comparative Table of Taxes on an Annual Income of 70,000
Lire (Francs) paid in 1869 to the Pontifical Government,
and in 1873 to the Italian Government.
TAXES PAID TO THE
PONTIFICAL
GOVERNMENT.
Francs. Per Cent.
State taxes on property
467.20
in Rome,
State taxes on property
248.75
in the country,
Total, 715.95 or 1.02279
Communal taxes on
864.95
property in Rome,
Communal taxes on
613.70
property in the country,
Total, 1,478.65 or 2.11236
Total of all taxes paid
under the Pontifical 2,194.60 or 3.13515
Government,
TAXES PAID TO THE
ITALIAN
GOVERNMENT.
State taxes on property
6,250
in Rome,
State taxes on property
940
in the country,
Total, 7,190 or 10.62857
Communal taxes on
4,650
property in Rome,
Communal taxes on
651
property in the country,
Total, 5,301 or 7.57286
Income taxes on 59,497
7,854 or 11.22
f
 7,854 or 11.22
francs
Mortmain taxes on total
2,800 or 4.00
of 70,000 francs,
Mortmain on buildings
which give no rent, but 1,500 or 2.14286
are taxed,
Total of all taxes paid
under the Italian 24,645 or 35.56429
Government,
SUMMARY.
Increase of
Taxes
Pontifical Italian
under
Government. Government.
Italian
Gov't.
Per Cent. Per Cent. Per Cent.
State tax—real estate, 1.02 10.63 9.61
Communal and
2.11 7.57 5.46
provincial taxes
Income tax, — 11.22 11.22
Mortmain, — 4.00 4.00
Mortmain on buildings
— 2.14 2.14
not paying rent,
Total, 3.13 35.56 32.43
This schedule refers
only to clerical property.
This is an increase of 32½ percent., or, not including the extra tax
on mortmain property, 28½ per cent., within, at the time of writing,
about two years.[178] Would the taxpayers of New York, who are
presumably more wealthy than those of Rome, consider such an
increase of taxation as that in two or three years "a startling fact"?
And what is there to show for it? Absolutely nothing. All sorts of fine
schemes for improvement of the city and such like are in existence—
upon paper; unfortunately, they remain there. There is a grand new
opera-house to be built, however. That is something. And then those
royal visits to Austria and Germany must have cost something. And
Victor Emanuel himself and his worthy son Humbert lead rather
expensive lives. In the account of New Year's Day at Rome, a
twelve-month since, we find the president of the chamber
requesting his majesty to take more care of his health. And his
majesty in response acknowledges the necessity of so doing, while
he assured the president that arrangements existed which would
ensure that the unity and liberty of Italy would in no case be
endangered.
And here the Roman correspondent of the London Times, who, like
most special correspondents of that journal, hates the Pope and the
Papacy with a solid Saxon hatred that not even what is passing
under his own eyes can remove, furnishes us with a little further
information on the same point:
"The rigorous exaction of the taxes, referred to in former letters, has
been a great element of discontent, especially in the south, which
has suffered in many respects from the formation of the Italian
kingdom. The only chance of rescuing the country [What country?—
The exchequer of Victor Emanuel.] from its severe financial
difficulties and probably from bankruptcy, was in such an exaction,
but it has not the less pressed very cruelly on many needy classes.
And it must be owned that, instead of seeking to soothe the
sufferings of the taxpayers, Signor Sella has rather increased them
by his cynical mode of treatment. People think it bad enough to be
mulcted until they have scarcely enough left to live upon, and are
not in a mood to be made game of also"—and much more in the
same strain.[179]
Of the banishment of the religious orders and societies from Italy,
which recently came into effect, the same only can be said as of the
German expulsion. Our Holy Father, in receiving the generals of the
various religious orders on January 2, said in reply to their address:
"It is the third time during my life that religious orders have been
suppressed. These corporations have always been the support of the
church, and it is a dispensation of God that they should from time to
time undergo such vicissitudes. This is a secret of Providence which
I may not unravel, but I strive to see whether an angel may not be
coming to aid the church. I do not say that I desire the destroying
angel who visited the host of Sennacherib in order to save the
chosen people of God. No, I have not that thought. I wish for an
angel who might convert all hearts. We are in exile; we must come
before God with the powerful arm of prayer, in order to obtain, if not
what we wish, at least some assuagement of our misfortunes."
At the beginning of summer the world was excited by a rumor of the
Pope's sickness unto death, and it was curious to observe the effect
of the rumor upon the non-Catholic world. Pius IX. has already seen
more than "the years of Peter." He has sustained in his own person
the trials of Peter. But whatever the end may be which Jesus Christ
has reserved for the close of the glorious career of his true Vicar,
Pius IX. will leave this world, his soul borne up on the prayers and
blessings of two hundred million hearts, while his name will for ever
shine resplendent on the glittering scroll of the successors of Peter.
"On his return from Versailles, M. Thiers was greeted at the railway
station by a crowd which was awaiting him there with loud cries of
Vive M. Thiers! Vive le Président!" So runs a despatch from Paris on
New Year's Day, 1873. How oddly it reads now! Le Président est
mort: Vive le Président! M. Thiers is politically as dead as he that
was laid in his quiet grave at Chiselhurst in the first month of the
year. It almost requires a strained effort of the mind to recall the fact
that a short year ago M. Thiers was the master of the situation in
France, receiving deputations and congratulations on New Year's,
and talking of his presidential visit to the Vienna exhibition. A quiet
but significant little despatch of the same date may partly explain
the rapid collapse of M. Thiers: "Many persons of political distinction
left their names at the residence of the Orleans princes." The Catholic
World for last January, in its review of the year 1872, said on the
French question: "But Thiers cannot last, and what is to follow? The
country would not bear the rule of the man of Sedan.... The speech
of the Duc d'Audiffret-Pasquier, on the army contracts, killed
Napoleonism for the nonce. We can only hope for the best in France
from some other and nobler sprout of former dynasties; we cannot
foresee it."
It is needless to tell here the story of how M. Thiers was overthrown,
or to comment on it, beyond the timeworn illustration that as a rule
it is a radical mistake for any one man to set himself up as a
necessity for a nation; yet such a mistake is the commonest indulged
in by rulers (in esse or in posse, as may be). In the midst of intense
excitement in that most excitable of capitals, Paris, Marshal
MacMahon was summoned by the majority of the Assembly to
succeed M. Thiers. He placed himself as an impersonal instrument in
the hands of the government, promising by the aid of "God and the
army" to guarantee peace. He chose a conservative government.
Order has been kept. The last farthing of the indemnity to Germany
has been paid, and the last German soldier has quitted France.
A volume might be written on those few words—the indemnity has
been paid: the last German soldier has quitted France. There is
nothing but silent wonder for this marvellous feat, which in its way
casts into the shade even the German conquest of France. A nation
whose armies were one after the other shattered in a few months,
an empire destroyed, an emperor led into captivity; its great
fortresses beaten down, its capital besieged and taken twice over,
first by the foe, after by its own soldiers from the hands of its
suicidal children; two provinces, rich and fair, with their cities and
peoples, amounting to a million and a half, taken away; its raw levies
scattered into mist at a ruinous waste of life and money; its
government overthrown and the entire national system overturned,
so that men turned this way and that, and nowhere found a ruler.
Men, money, provinces, cities, emperor, empire, rulers—all gone;
commerce destroyed, the heart of the nation sore with resentment
and stricken with sorrow: and all this crowded into a few months!
Yet within less than three years this fickle, false, degenerate French
nation—for such was the general character attributed to it after the
late war—has restored its armies, has maintained peace, although
even yet it can scarcely be said to have a permanent government,
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