Autobiography of Seventy Years Part 62

This doctrine I stand by. And I stand by the further doctrine, as I stated at length in my address at Clark University, that the whole resources of the Commonwealth are pledged to their support, and that that is the bottom mortgage on every dollar of our property, and that no person can escape or be allowed to escape that responsibility. The difference between you and me is a difference of method. I want to get the 700,000 Catholics in Ma.s.sachusetts on our side. I want them to send their children to the public schools, to pay their share of the cost, and when their young men and women are suitable, are intelligent, liberal persons, attached to the school system, I want some of them to be employed as teachers. I don't wish to exclude them from my political support when they are Republicans and agree with me in other matters, because of their religious faith. Nor do I wish to exclude them from being public school teachers, if they will keep their particular religious tenets out of their instruction, because of their religious faith, any more than I would have excluded Phil Sheridan from his office in the army, or would have refused to support him for any public office, if he had been nominated for it. Further, I want to state and advocate my opinions in the face of day, and you may be sure that I shall do this without flinching before anybody's threats or anybody's displeasure or indignation.

You, on the other hand, I understand, want to go into a cellar to declare your principles. You want to join an a.s.sociation whose members are ashamed to confess they belong to it; many of whom, without apparently forfeiting the respect of their fellows, lie about their membership in it when they are asked about it. You want to ma.s.s together the whole Catholic population of Ma.s.sachusetts to the support of their extreme and wrong- headed priests, if any such can be found.

The difference between us is a difference of methods in accomplishing the same result. I think your method would overthrow the common school system, would overthrow the Republican Party, and would end by ma.s.sing together all the Catholic voters, as proscription always does ma.s.s men together, to increase and strengthen that political power which you profess so much to dread.

When O'Neill, the young Catholic soldier of Worcester, lay dying, he said: "Write to my dear mother and tell her I die for my country. I wish I had two lives to give. Let the Union flag be wrapped around me and a fold of it laid under my head." I feel proud that G.o.d gave me such a man to be my countryman and townsman. I have very little respect for the Americanism that is not moved and stirred by such a story.

If O'Neill had left a daughter who had her father's spirit, I would be willing to trust my child or grandchild to her instruction in secular education in the public school, even if the father had kissed with his last breath the cross on which the Saviour died, or even if the parting soul had received comfort from the lips of Thomas Conaty or John Power or John Ireland or Archbishop Williams.

When John Boyle O'Reilly, the Catholic poet, sang the praises of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, in that n.o.blest of odes, when he quoted in his preface from William Bradford and John Robinson and Robert Cushman, I was glad to hear what he said, especially when he quoted from the lips of the clergyman Robinson: "I charge you before G.o.d that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow the Lord Jesus Christ. If G.o.d reveal anything to you by any other instrument of His, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth by my ministry, for I am verily persuaded, I am very confident, the Lord hath more truths yet to break forth out of His Holy Word." I liked what he said. If I understand your former letter correctly, you didn't. That is where we differ. When John Boyle O'Reilly said, declaring the very spirit of New England Puritanism, and speaking of religious faith, "the one sacred revolution is change of mind," when he spoke these n.o.ble lines:

So held they firm, the Fathers aye to be, From Home to Holland, Holland to the sea-- Pilgrims for manhood, in their little ship, Hope in each heart, and prayer on every lip.

Apart from all--unique, unworldly, true, Selected grain to sow the earth anew; A winnowed part--a saving remnant they; Dreamers who work; adventurers who pray!

We know them by the exile that was theirs; Their justice, faith and fort.i.tude attest.

When he further said:

On the wintry main G.o.d flings their lives as farmers scatter grain, His breath propels the winged seed afloat; His tempests swerve to spare the fragile boat; Here on this rock and on this sterile soil, Began the kingdom, not of kings, but men; Began the making of the world again, Their primal code of liberty, their rules Of civil right; their churches, courts and schools; Their freedom's very secret here laid down-- The spring of government is the little town!

On their strong lines, we base our social health-- The man--the home--the town--the Commonwealth; Their saintly Robinson was left behind To teach by gentle memory; to shame The bigot spirit and the word of flame; To write dear mercy in the Pilgrim's law; To lead to that wide faith his soul foresaw--

I liked what he said. If I understand your former letter, you didn't. You don't want a man who differs from you saying or thinking such things. I want the whole 700,000 Catholics of Ma.s.sachusetts to believe what John Boyle O'Reilly believed, and to love and reverence the Puritan founders of Ma.s.sachusetts as he did, and I think my way is the way to make them do it.

You don't, if I understand you. You think the way to make good citizens and good men of them and to attract them to Protestantism, is to exclude them, their sons and daughters, from all public employment and to go yourself into a dark cellar and curse at them through the gratings of the windows.

I stated my religious faith and my ideas of the relation of our religious denominations to each other, in an address I delivered at Saratoga last year, of which I send you a copy, and which I hope, as you have kindly volunteered to send me so much of your opinion, you may perhaps be willing to read. It doesn't become me to say anything about it myself.

I am deeply sensible of its imperfections. It fails to do justice to what is in my own heart. But perhaps I may be permitted to say that within a few weeks after it was delivered, an eminent Catholic clergyman sent me a message expressing his delight in it. The most famous Episcopalian Bishop in the country said to a friend of mine that he had read it with great pleasure and that it sounded to him like the old times.

A Baptist minister, bearing one of the most distinguished names in the country, wrote me a letter, in which he said, as he read it, "At every sentence, I said to myself, Amen, Amen." An eminent Orthodox minister, Doctor of Divinity, read it aloud to his parish, in full, instead of his Sunday's sermon. And a very excellent and able Methodist minister wrote to me and said, "If that is Unitarianism, I am afraid I am a Unitarian." I think the time has come to throw down the walls between Christians and not to build new ones. I think the time has come to inculcate harmony and good will between all American citizens, especially between all citizens of the old Commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts.

You quote some expressions which you attribute to Catholic clergymen. If you don't get any nearer right in quoting them than you do in quoting me, I don't believe that they ever said any such thing. If they have, they never will persuade any considerable number of Catholic laity in this country, in this nineteenth century, to follow them. You may perhaps induce the Catholic young men and women of Ma.s.sachusetts to believe there is something in what those clergymen say.

They never will succeed in doing it themselves.

I don't think you will succeed in getting any considerable number of the people of this country, who are able to read and write, or to count ten on their fingers, to believe that, as I am entering my seventieth year, I am actuated by any personal ambition, in the counsel which I give my fellow citizens.

I don't think you will get them to believe that, if I were so actuated, I should begin by saying anything which would estrange a considerable number of the Protestant Republican citizens of Ma.s.sachusetts. I don't think you will convince them that I am indifferent to the good will of so large a portion of the American people as are said to be enlisted in the ranks of the secret society to which you refer. If you know as little of your Catholic fellow citizens as you know of me, you have a good deal as yet to learn of the subject of which you are speaking.

On the other hand, you may be quite sure I should be unwilling to do injustice to any of my fellow citizens. They will hardly need be a.s.sured that I would not lightly or unnecessarily incur their disapprobation. But you may perhaps think it pardonable that I should not be thoroughly informed as to the principles, motives or conduct of a secret society. As you have undertaken the duty of giving me information, will you kindly answer for me the following questions:

1st. Is the organization to which you refer a secret organization?

Are its discussions in the face of day? Do the persons whose political errors they especially oppose have an opportunity to know their purposes and to be convinced by their arguments?

If the organization be in any respect secret, why is it deemed necessary to maintain such secrecy in the United States of America and at the close of the nineteenth century?

2d. Is it the custom of many persons who belong to it to deny, when inquired of, that they are members of such an a.s.sociation? And if this be true, does such a falsehood cost them the respect and friendship of their a.s.sociates or diminish their influence in the order?

3d. Do members of the a.s.sociation, after joining it, retain their membership in other political parties? Do they agree together upon candidates for office or delegates to conventions to nominate officers and then go into their party caucuses to support such delegates agreed upon in secret, without consultation with their political brethren? If that be true, does it seem to you that that course is honest?

4th. Do you understand that any considerable number of Catholic laymen, in this country, accept the interpretation which you put upon the fifteen articles which you quote as principles of the Roman Catholic Church? Is it not true that the interpretation is absolutely rejected by the Catholic laity in general, and that they affirm for themselves as absolute independence of the Pope or of the clergy in all secular matters as you or I claim for ourselves in regard to Protestant clergymen?

5th. Are not Italy and France, two Catholic countries, to- day as absolutely free from any temporal power or influence of the Pope or the Catholic clergy as is Ma.s.sachusetts?

6th. I have had sent me a little leaflet, purporting to be the principles of the American Protective a.s.sociation, which you doubtless have seen. When you say, in your third article, that the American Protective a.s.sociation is "opposed to the holding of offices in the National, State or munic.i.p.al Government, by any subject or supporter of such ecclesiastical power,"

and in your fifth article, that you "protest against the employment of the subjects of any un-American ecclesiastical power as officers or teachers of our public schools," do you mean, or no, that no Catholic shall hold such National or State or munic.i.p.al office, and that no Catholic shall be a teacher in a public school? You don't answer this question by quoting the language of church officials in by-gone days or the intemperate language of some priests in recent times. It is a practical question. Do you or don't you mean to exclude from such office and from such employment as teachers the bulk of the Catholic population of Ma.s.sachusetts?

7th. Is it you opinion that General Philip H. Sheridan, were he living, would be unfit to hold civil or military office in this country? Or that his daughter, if she entertained the religious belief of her father, should be disqualified from being a teacher in a public school?

I have no pride of opinion. I shall be very glad to revise any opinion of mine and, as you state it, I shall be very glad to "know better in the future," if you will kindly enlighten me.

You and I, as I have said, have the same object at heart.

We desire, above all things, the maintenance of the principles of civil and religious liberty; and above all other instrumentalities to that end, the maintenance of our common school system, at the public charge, open to all the children and free from partisan or sectarian control. If you and I differ, it is only as to what is the best means of accomplishing these ends. If you think that they are best accomplished by secret societies, by hiding from the face of day, by men who will not acknowledge what they are doing, and by refusing public employment to men and women who think on these subjects exactly as we do, but whose religious faith differs from ours, then I don't agree with you. I think your method will result in driving and compacting together, in solid ma.s.s, persons who will soon number nearly or quite fifty per cent. of the voting population of Ma.s.sachusetts. Nothing strengthens men, nothing makes them so hard to hear reason, nothing so drives them to extremity in opinion or in action as persecution or proscription.

On the other hand, my method is the method of absolute freedom and of pure reason. The Catholic boy, who has grown up in our common schools, who had formed his youthful friendships with his Protestant cla.s.smates, whose daughter or sister, as he grows older, is employed as a teacher, will very soon be attached to our common school system as we are ourselves.

He will be required, as he gets property, to pay his share of his support. He cannot ask to be exempt from a tax to which all Protestants cheerfully submit, whether their own children be in the schools or not, and he will not easily be made to give his consent to paying twice. The American Spirit, the Spirit of the age, the Spirit of Liberty, the Spirit of Equality, especially what Roger Williams called "Soul Liberty" is able to maintain herself in a fair field and in a free contest against all comers. Do not compel her to fight in a cellar. Do not compel her to breathe the damp, malarial atmosphere of dark places. Especially let no member of the Republican Party, the last child of freedom, lend his aid to such an effort. The atmosphere of the Republic is the air of the mountain top and the sunlight and the open field. Her emblem is the eagle and not the bat.

I am faithfully yours, GEORGE F. h.o.a.r.

After the publication of the foregoing letter, I received one from Theodore Roosevelt, who was holding a high office in New York City, then at the beginning of his ill.u.s.trious political career. He expressed his hearty sympathy and approval, and offered to lay aside everything else and come to my aid, if I so desired. I need not say I took special pleasure in this letter, which disclosed so unmistakably the honest and brave heart of the man, who was then in his difficult office fighting wild beasts at Ephesus. But I did not need to accept his offer.

I was angrily denounced. But the leading Republican papers soon came to my support. The Republican political leaders generally, though quietly, approved what I had said and done.

The generous and just heart of the American people was stirred, and the result was that the movement, inspired by bigotry and intolerance, lost its force, languished for a year or two, and was little heard of afterward.

I dare say that the same causes which excited it may provoke a similar movement more than once hereafter. But I believe it will fail as that failed.

I know how p.r.o.ne men are, especially old men, in telling the story of their lives, to over-estimate the value and the consequence of the things in which they have taken a part.

But I think I am not extravagant in claiming that the overthrow of this dangerous delusion was of great value not only to the Republican Party, but to the cause of religious liberty in this country, and that the success of the A. P. A. would have been the destruction of both.

CHAPTER x.x.x THE ENGLISH MISSION

I may as well put on record here a matter which I suppose has never been made public. When in President Hayes's time Mr. Welsh resigned the English Mission, Mr. Lowell, then in Spain, was strongly recommended for the place. Mr. Evarts, Secretary of State, was quite unwilling to have Mr. Lowell appointed. I fancied that Mr. Evarts might have been influenced somewhat by his reluctance to appoint a Harvard man. He was an exceedingly pleasant-natured man, with no bitterness in him. But he entered with a good deal of zeal into the not unhealthy rivalry between the two famous Universities, Harvard and Yale. Of course I did not like that notion. President Hayes had an exceedingly friendly feeling for Harvard. He had studied at the Harvard Law School, and later had the degree of Doctor of Laws there. Mr. Lowell hesitated about accepting the duty. I said to the President: "In the matter of the English Mission, if Mr. Lowell declines, I have a suggestion to make which Mr. Evarts, I am afraid, won't like very well.

But I wish to ask you to consider it, Evarts or no Evarts."

My relations with both of them made this familiar and half- boyish style of dealing with so important a matter not unbecoming.

"I think President Eliot would be an excellent person for such a service. It is understood that he is somewhat out of health. I think if he should go to England for a year or two, and take a vacation from his duties at the College, it would reflect great credit on your Administration and on the country, and he would return to his duties at Harvard with renewed health and added reputation and capacity for usefulness." Mr. Hayes did not quite commit himself. But he expressed his very emphatic approval of the idea, and said he guessed it might be brought to pa.s.s. But I had, at his request, sent a cable to Mr. Lowell who was then in Spain, urging him to take the place. He was then hesitating, but finally, as is well known, consented.

I was on the friendliest terms with President Hayes. As I have already said he was good enough to offer me the office of Attorney-General, when the appointment of Devens to the Circuit Court was under consideration.

I had already, before that time, received from Mr. Evarts, Secretary of State, the offer of the English Mission, as I have said in another place, when Mr. Welsh resigned.

I may as well state here, although it belongs to a later time, that the offer was made to me again, by President McKinley.

I give the correspondence with President McKinley when he made me that offer:

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C.

September 13, 1898.

HON. GEORGE F. h.o.a.r (Confidential), WORCESTER, Ma.s.sACHUSETTS.

It would give me much satisfaction to appoint you Amba.s.sador to London. Will it be agreeable to you?

WILLIAM MCKINLEY.

September 14, 1898.

TO THE PRESIDENT, WASHINGTON, D. C.

I am highly honored by your confidence, for which I am grateful.

But I believe I can better serve my country, and better support your Administration by continuing to discharge the legislative duties to which I have been accustomed for thirty years, than by undertaking new responsibilities at my age, now past seventy- two. If it were otherwise, I cannot afford to maintain the scale of living which the social customs of London make almost indispensable to an Amba.s.sador, and I have no right to impose upon my wife, in her present state of health, the burden which would fall upon her. Be a.s.sured of my warm personal regard and of my desire to stand by you in the difficult and trying period which is before you.