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NOTES.

1 Peter Richard entered Maynooth College and matriculatea there in 1827. As a student he soon became distinguished for his talents and close application. He read much outside the curriculum of college studies. His tender piety, and especially his devotion to the Holy Mother of God, gave great edification to the professor and to his fellow-students. During his term the Very Rev. Bartholomew Crotty was president over the college, and the Very Rev. Michael Montague was vice president. As an instance of great courtesy and kindness towards his fellow-students, the former parish priest of St. Michan's, Dublin, Canon James McMahon, used to relate that when he entered Maynooth as a freshman, he accosted Peter Richard, then a stranger to him, by asking for some information which he required. Not only was it most readily given, but his services were immediately placed at the disposal of the newcomer, by helping him not only to arrange his room and furniture, but also to instrucţ him in the varied routine of college life and the duties he should have to perform. This casual acquaintance led to a close and friendly intimacy during the time spent by them together in Maynooth, and afterwards when both had been engaged on missionary work.

2 The paper ceased to exist about the middle of June, 1954. The cessation of The Shepherd was a real loss to Catholic literature. Few, if any, papers had been more ably edited. An important fact in connection with The Shepherd of the Valley was the mistaken meaning attached to the words: "When the Catholic religion shall have become the religion of the country, religious toleration will come to an end. So say our religious adversaries, so say we." And then the learned editor went on to explain his meaning, which was to the effect that the unlimited religious license which attacked the very foundations of religion and society could not be tolerated by a Church that professed to be the unerring Church of Jesus Christ. Still, notwithstanding Mr. Bakewell's explanation, quite a deal of religious venom was excited over the matter. The Archbishop was held as responsible for the utterance, and the attention of the United States Senate was called to it. Senator Malloy, of Florida, tried to explain it satisfactorily, but for a time it

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rankled. When the Shepherd of the Valley died, it was succeeded by another aspirant for the barren honors of Catholic literature, a paper called the Leader. This was edited by the distinguished convert and scholar, Dr. Jedediah V. Huntingdon, and was marked by great ability and boldness. There was yet another paper to come, the Catholic News Letter, and one of the regular contributors to this was the eminent historian and scholar, John Canon O'Hanlon, who taught for several years in the seminary at Carondelet, and spent many more in the Missouri mission.

Much ingenuity was displayed by a malignant press in distorting the language of the Shepherd of the Valley, and this process of hate-sowing was kept up for many years. It culminated at length in the following letter from the author of the article to the late esteemed proprietor of the Catholic Standard (Philadelphia):

St. Louis, January 1, 1886.

Dear Mr. Hardy: During a recent visit to St. Louis you called upon me and showed me certain extracts from some religious newspapers (so-called), attributing to the Most Rev. Archbishop Ryan certain atrocious sentiments in regard to persecution for religion's sake, said to have been formerly published by him in the Shepherd of the Valley. You suggested that I should put in writing, for publication, what I then said to you about this matter. This I was unwilling to do, because I conceive it to be of little or no use, and because I dislike in any way to put my name in the papers in connection with this or any other matter. You showed me that my name had been publicly connected with the paragraph, and suggested that I should write something in self-defense. As to that, I am quite indifferent. However (as this is a dies non), against my own judgment I comply with your request, and you may make such use of this letter as you choose.

The extracts which you showed me are the revival of a very old "gag." About 1853-4, at the time of the Know-Nothing agitation, many papers throughout the United States published the following as an extract from the Shepherd of the Valley, and then attributed the language to the venerable prelate who was then, and who now is, Archbishop of St. Louis; he, of course, was not Archbishop Ryan:

"If Catholics ever attain, which they surely will, though at a

distant day, the immense numerical majority in the United States, religious liberty, as at present understood, will be at an end."

Shortly afterwards a new edition of "Gavin's Master-Key to Popery," or "Maria Monk's Revelations," or some such delectable storehouse of anti-Catholic lies, was published, and this story about the views of the Archbishop of St. Louis on the incompatibility of the spread of the Catholic religion in America with the continued existence of religious liberty, together with the extract, as above, which was given as his published language, was put into the appendix, and thus embalmed for preservation, to be used as occasion might serve in the antiCatholic controversy. The extract, until the war, was regularly trotted out at intervals, but since then has, I believe, until lately been forgotten.

The facts are these. The Shepherd of the Valley, a weekly paper, was edited and published by me, in St. Louis, from January, 1852, to July, 1854. I was then a very young man. It was not unusual at that time for Catholic Bishops to permit Catholic papers in their dioceses to print, at the head of the editorial column, some form of words to the effect that the paper was published with the approbation of the Ordinary of the diocese. It was well understood by Catholics that this implied no more than that the Bishop considered the paper harmless, or perhaps likely, on the whole, to do more good than harm. So far as the Archbishop of St. Louis was concerned, except this formal approbation, he never wrote a line for the paper whilst I had it, never saw it until it was in print and, I dare say, hardly ever opened it. He was as entirely innocent of any connection with it, except so far as stated above, as was the President of the United States. All its editorial matter I wrote myself, and I thought as little of consulting His Grace as to what I should say or publish as I did of consulting the Grand Turk. The paper was in no sense the Archbishop's organ. What I said in it had no special significance. I was perfectly free and had a great deal too much respect for the Archbishop to think of taking up his time with anything concerning my paper. I was, as I have said, a very young man, and he was one of the most learned and (putting aside his sacred office), to my mind, one of the most venerable of men. He was very good and gracious to me when, at very rare in

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tervals, I called to see him; but he never, I believe, gave me the slightest hint as to the conduct of my paper, except that once or twice he expressed disapproval of the character of some selected matter, but purely as a matter of taste.

The paragraph inserted above from the Shepherd of the Valley was by me, and formed part of an editorial which appeared in that paper in 1852. It was, however, followed by these words: "So say our enemies," which the controversialists wholly omitted.

It is manifest, from what I have said, that no prelate of the Catholic Church can be charged with persecuting sentiments on account of this paragraph; and that as far as for my humble self, it is about as fair to impute, on account of them, any such sentiments to me as it would be to say that King David was an atheist because he uses this language in the 14th Psalm, "There is no God;" though he puts these words-as I did the words which caused this rumpus-into the mouths of the enemies of the Church.

However, in my case, after saying, "so say our enemies," I added, "so say we." But the next words are, "But in what sense do we say so?" and I then go on to show that religious liberty is generally misunderstood for total indifference for religion, and that in this case religious liberty is approved by no one, Catholic or Protestant, who has any belief in religion at all.

For my own part, I always had a great dislike to persecution. I have known many Catholics, Bishops, priests and laymen of all classes. To my best recollection and belief, I never heard any one of them express any sentiments on the subject of persecution for religion's sake which would seem to favor it; I have often heard Catholics, both lay and clerical, express a great horror of it. I know, as certainly as I am sitting here, that if Catholics were ten to one in the United States, or if they ever become so, there would be no attempt at persecution; or if there were, it would be regarded as criminal by the moral theologians and the rulers of the Church. "Non est religionis religionem cogere" is, I believe, the language of St. Augustine, and I have always understood it to be an accepted maxim of Catholic morals. Bad men will do bad things and unjust things, of course; and the mob is tyrannical; and there will always be a large proportion of bad men in the Church, or she would not be the Church described in the prophecies and in

the Gospel. An unpopular minority is apt to suffer in a popular government; but under no circumstances would it be considered right by Catholics that a Catholic government should punish any man for adhering to the religion of his ancestors, or to try to drive men to hypocrisy and sacrilege by external violence applied on account of religious belief.

I am sure that I never said, and I never thought, that governments are justified in enforcing an outward conformity, against conscience, to a dominant religion. No such sentiments ever appeared in any paper with which I was ever connected, except to be reprobated. No Bishop or Archbishop ever published anything whatever on the subject of religious liberty in any paper in St. Louis to my knowledge, and the atrocious sentiments attributed to the editor of the Shepherd of the Valley never appeared in that paper except to controvert them.

There is a class of controversialists who are very unscrupulous. It is quite useless, I think, to reply to these. Time flies and things pass. I suppose few people now remember the beginnings of the Tractarian movement, and the doughty Dr. Hook, sometime Vicar of Leeds. He was a famous "churchman" in his day, and wrote books which no one thinks of reading now. He undertook to defend the Tractarians; and a sermon of his made a great noise when I was a boy. I burned it up with other precious tracts which I once delighted in reading, most of which, I confess, I now look upon (to adopt from Coleridge) as the "superfoetation" of folly. I had this sermon in my hands this morning, and it was the following note to it which put me in mind of writing to you. Altering a word or two, it may be applied to the class of controversialists who circulate this old persecution story. The race, it seems, is not extinct of those who think that the end justifies the means:

"Perhaps there never was devised by men who profess to call themselves Christians a system of attack more wicked than that which is adopted by many who assail these tracts. Of the persons who are supposed to write them, lies the most ridiculous are invented, industriously circulated and willingly believed. And where an attempt is made to refute the tracts themselves, false extracts are made, and they are represented as asserting the very errors which they in express words reprobate. This is actually done by men who not only call them

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