retreats and attend various missions among the Indians. One of the most flourishing missions of the Jesuits is that of Sandwich among the Chippeways, opposite Detroit, in the Toronto diocese. The Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent of Paul, for the care of the sick and the instruction of the poor; and the Magdalen Sisters of the Good Shepherd, for the direction of abandoned women, have lately been established in Montreal.

SOUTH-AMERICA.-The members of the Society of Jesus are daily pouring into South-America. The Spanish Fathers, exiles from their native soil, have commenced missionary establishments, especially among the Indians, in Chili, Paraguay, Uraguay, Montevideo and Columbia. A zealous and devoted band of Italian Jesuits have penetrated into the interior of the immense empire of Brazil, and are, according to late intelligence, very successful among the Aborigines of that country. The central missionary establishment is called Villa Pacifica. The Belgian Government has commenced a Colony on the Island of Santa Catharina near the east coast of Brazil: upon the request of that Government a Jesuit Priest is always the pioneer-missionary of her colonies.

ITALY.-Rome.--His Holiness has published a very interesting document against the Bible societies and especially against the efforts of the Christian League of New-York, in disseminating throughout Italy, corrupt versions of the Bible and pernicious works, such as D'Aubigne's History of the Reformation. We refer our readers to the document itself which we publish at length in this month's number of our Periodical.

Mr. Pierce Connolly, formerly the Episcopal clergyman of Natchez and a convert to the Catholic faith, has determined to embrace the holy ministry and intends to enter the Noviciate of the society of Jesus. He is at present in the College of the Nobles at Rome. His lady has voluntarily entered the Convent of the Nuns of the Sacred Heart on Monte Pincio.

ENGLAND.-Manchester.-We have accounts of the Confirmation of 3,021 persons in one week, by the Right. Rev. Dr. Sharples, Bishop of Samaria, and Coadjutor of the Lancashire District at St. Wilfrid's Hulme, and St. Augustine's Manchester; 450 of whom were converts, all of great respectability, and many of superior education and position. On the 30th was laid the foundation-stone of the Catholic Church dedicated to St. John, at Salford. The Bishop was attended by the Catholic clergy and gentry of the neighborhood, all the guilds and Temperance societies attached to the churches in Manchester and neighborhood, and by the children of the Sunday schools of Manchester and Salford, amounting in number to 5,459 boys and girls, including those of the guilds.-Tablet.

ASIA.-China. Notwithstanding the hundreds of martyrs, who lately fell by the fury of persecution in Corea and Cochin-China, daily new missionaries leave the continent of Europe to fertilise the Asiatic soil with the dew of the Gospel. A number of Priests of the Congregation of St. Vincent of Paul, of the Society of Jesus, and of the Society of Foreign Missions have lately de

parted for the celestial Empire. The Vicar Apostolic of Pondicherry writes to his Grace, Dr. Carew, Archbishop of Calcutta, that he had lately received a letter from Bishop Perocheau, Vicar Apostolic of Sutchuen in China, dated 1st September, 1843, who states that in the course of that same year, twentytwo thousand two hundred and ninety-two infant children of infidel parents had been baptised, when they (the infants) were dangerously ill. Of this number thirteen thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine died after baptism, and are now happily in Heaven praising God and praying for China. A society called "the Angelic," has been formed lately in that vicariate. It consists of persons appointed to baptise, some of whom travel continually from one district to another, and others remain stationary. The Society of the Holy Infancy of Jesus, lately established in Belgium and France by the Rt. Rev. Dr. Janson, Bishop of Nancy, for the purpose of redeeming the children of China, exposed to destruction by their inhuman parents, has lately made is first offering of charity, and remitted twenty-five thousand francs from Paris to the Asiatic Missionaries for that truly philanthropic, charitable and christian purpose.

APPROBATION.

THE CATHOLIC CABINET is published with my approbation, and appears to me calculated to promote the interests of the Catholic Religion in this Diocese.

PETER RICHARD, Bishop of St. Louis.

This is a theme upon which the changes have been so long and so often rung that it would appear exhausted. Whenever occasion offered to decry the doctrine and the government of the Holy Catholic Church, (the Cheshire cheese of so many godly people) no expense was spared to point out in glowing colours the blind submission of its poor, deluded, priest-ridden members. The tyrany of Popes, the intolerance of the Inquisition, and the despotism of Catholic governments have been exhibited in every possible light to prove that the poor Papist, as he was politely styled, dared not call his soul his The idea that the faith of the Catholic was a reasonable service, appears never to have entered the noddles of the ministers of charity, who were so deeply interested in his welfare, spiritual and temporal, or, if such an idea knocked for admittance, it found a host of more profitable notions to refuse it ingress. The theme exhausted! Would to God it were! and that we had not occasion to use as an argumentum ad hominem, the declarations, the declamation, assertions, and reproaches of those who appear to have monopolized all the liberality and all the religion extant.

own.

Late events have indeed furnished the Catholic with abundant reason for reflection on this subject. He cannot forget how long Liberty of Conscience has been the favoured watchword of the enemies of his faith, how often he has been taunted with his servility, because he chose to bow in humble submission to the will of God, rather than follow the guidance of his own wandering imagination, or than yield to the suggestions of his own deceptive judgment; and remembering all this, he is apt to look around in order to see how far the practice of those who mocked at him squares with their professions, how much liberty they are disposed to grant to others, and how far they have been successful in trampling down intolerance.

No reasonable, reflecting man will ever believe that with the noisiest of those, whose cry was Liberty of Conscience, there was any thing like sincerity. It was long ago proved that the cry served for the purposes of designing, am

bitious men, whose end was to reach that very power to control the conscience which they seemed so loudly to condemn. We need not have recourse to the startling facts which have so lately occurred, to convince us that intolerance was but thinly covered by the loud professions of the enemies of the Catholic faith. Should it have fallen to the lot of any of my readers to have witnessed the defection of any individual from the Protestant ranks, he will have also observed the malicious, cold blooded persecution by which this individual was followed, especially if he selected his retreat in the bosom of our Church. How often have the tender ties of kindred been rudely rent asunder, when some member of a family, using the privilege which he had been taught to claim, withdrew himself from the profession of what the light of heaven, or, if you please, his own judgment, taught him to be error, to embrace the truth, and to unite himself to the Church of eighteen hundred years. Where, then, is the boast of freedom of conscience, of the right of following one's own private judgment? It dwindles away to a mere convenient theory, to empty declamation, serving only to cloak the deep rooted malice of sectarian hatred.

For many years, this spirit of intoleranoe was restricted to such instances as I have alluded to above. It would not have done for those who claimed to have fled from persecution, to carry on a wholesale retaliation at once. True, in the land of steady habits, in the enlightened colony of Massachusetts, a little retail business had been attempted upon poor old women, and the inoffensive Quakers. But, whether it was that the individuals who distinguished themselves in thus promoting liberty of conscience did not find their exploits so loudly canonized as they were led to expect, or that some little interest, which will, in spite of every thing, control, from time to time, the actions of the people of that civilized region, the persecution came to an end.

For a short period after the establishment of our Independence, and under the broad ægis of our Constitution, that peace which it secured to the professors of every religion appeared to work tolerably well. The remembrance of the efficient aid afforded us in the struggle of our revolution, by a Catholic power and many a Catholic hero was too vivid, for a time, to admit of the open denunciations to which we became afterwards subjected. True it is, that a surly growl could now and then be heard from some Calvinistic pulpit, on witnessing the equal privileges which the Catholic was permitted to enjoy. True it is, that in some of the States of the union, where Calvinistic counsels prevailed, constitutions were framed which shut out the Catholic from State offices and dignities. But the sectarian discontent was little heeded, and in some of those States, the virtues of distinguished professors of our faith, served to render the legalized intolerance a dead letter.*

The first great public display of hostility to Liberty of Conscience was re

North Carolina, for instance, from which State the estimable Judge Gaston was elected to Congress.

served for that privileged spot, where it had so early distinguished itself in a small way. It was within sight of that rock, upon which the amiable Pilgrim fathers, the victims of English persecution, first set their feet in landing upon this continent. It was in the neighbourhood of that Bunker's hill, where new pledged Liberty first gave a serious check to oppression; it was not far from that Fanieul Hall, where she was first cradled; it was in the vicinity of that polished city, in which so many well deserved tributes had been paid to the virtues of a Matignon and a Cheverus, that the torch of religious persecution burned so bright, as to awaken the whole union from the slumber of fancied security. A community of poor, but accomplished females, devoting their lives and energies to the cause of education, and to the sevice of their God, were driven, in the night, by the incendiary, armed with a firebrand furnished by religious hatred, into a world from which they had retired, and which they had renounced, to seek a shelter, amidst strangers, and where their religious faith was enough to close the door against them.

Never was the cry of Liberty of Conscience more loudly vociferated than after this disgraceful event. Every press, with but few exceptions, teemed with invectives against the perpetrators of this cowardly deed; and when from time to time, its remembrance was renewed, by the refusal of the legislature of Massachusetts to cause the property, they wantonly destroyed, to be paid for, the same sentence of denunciation was repeated from press to press. The Catholics were not called upon to utter the language of condemnation at this trying crisis. There was a superfluity of the article already made to their hands; and they weakly, perhaps, although confidently supposed, that there was abundant security against a repetition of like scenes in the indignation and sympathy of their Protestant fellow citizens.

The quiet submission of the Catholic under this high handed outrage, there was every reason to suppose, would have gained him some credit with the enemies of his religion, would have secured to him the undisturbed enjoyment of that Liberty of Conscience to which he had an undisputed title. Yet after the lapse of but a few years, it was discoved that there was something dangerous in this submission, and that it could arise from no other motive, than a deeply laid scheme to destroy the liberty of our country. Thus is it ever with the restless spirit of religious persecution. It waits for no event or acts to justify its proceedings. It is sufficient for it, that those against whom its efforts are directed, gain the approbation of the wise and good, and slowly, and silently succeed in removing the veil of prejudice from the eyes of those who had been deceived.

And here, the writer cannot help observing the wonderful consistency of those who have carried on a war which has led of late to such deplorable results. It had been a stereotyped charge against the Catholics, that they were the enemies of education. It had been asserted, and re-asserted, that it was the policy of the priests to keep the people in ignorance. This assertion