J[ohn] T[homas] to Frederick Douglass, July 8, 1853
(Omitted by Accident.)
Letter from our Corresponding Editor.
HOMER, July 8th, 1853.
F. DOUGLASS: DEAR SIR:—I have been
sick, and I am now rusticating here for
health. I am so far improved, that I propose
to write a rambling letter. I arrived here
yesterday, and found old Homer wonderfully
impressed by a visit of Mrs. Bloomer. She
has made a broad mark here, and through
Cortland, indeed, on the temperance ques-
tion. She lectured twice at Homer, and is
to do so to-night at Scott. The people are
alive with curiosity and delight to see and
hear the woman who has given name to the
new style of dress, and whose literary and
moral enterprize is so well known to fame.
The people of Harford, in this county, call-
ed her to deliver a Fourth of July oration,
which, we are told, she did to a great audi-
ence, and to admiration. It is rather prom-
ising when women are called to deliver
Fourth of July orations. Of course they
"take the shine off" from the men in this
regard; for they speak from the heart, in the
spirit of freedom, or innocence and truth-
the ideal of the Revolution. Men have lost
their character. Intemperance, gluttony,
noise, and debauchery, are the manifesta-
tions of their respect for the boasted work
of their fathers. There is nothing spiritual
about them. They are sunk to the lowest
materialism.
Just think of Syracuse laying a tax of a
thousand dollars upon the property of the
city, to be expended on the 4th of July for
the benefit of demagogues and grog-shops.
The city of Rochester, Buffalo, &c., raising
still larger sums, according to their wealth,
for the same purpose! Doing it, too, with-
out any authority from their charters, with-
out law—a mere act of usurpation and literal
tyranny, by which they (the demagogues)
propose to blind, and stultify, and corrupt
the people with their own funds which they
covertly steal from them. When we speak of
the unclothed, unshod, unfed, houseless,
wandering wretches of every age and sex in
the city, we are told "the city government
is not a charitable institution." No indeed.
You may be sure of that. But if it is to
usurp power, and tax the people without au-
thority, for Heaven's sake let it be on the
side of charity. If the city institutions steal
the money of the people, let them devote it to
aid, not to corrupt and destroy these people.
Women would do so, and for that reason, at
this moment, are better exponents of Hea-
ven's wisdom and mercy, than men. But
the women are not alone on the side of tem-
perance, liberty and right. There are some
men, determined, brave and wise as women,
for the salvation of our familites and coun-
try, O, that they were numerous—that we
were all so, and we should not have to wait
until next Spring, or another year for the
Maine Law.
Horace Greeley, at Albany, writes that he
sees a chance for the Maine Law to pass this
session, but that its enactors will have to go
into effect in the Spring, or a year hence—to
the end that the next Legislature may re-
peal it. They will not submit it to the peo-
ple, because they are assured the people
would affirm it, and that would cut out the
hope of its repeal. They are politicians,
and therefore the enemies of the Maine Law.
They pass it, if they pass it at all, by the
external pressure of public opinion, and with
the hope that misfortune may befall it.
Have you noticed, "the Church Property
Bill," which the Legislature lately consider-
ed and disposed off for the present? It is
worthy your attention. It reaches all that
is excitable, stormy and passionate, as well
as all that is soberly interesting in politics
and religion in this country. The bill is
defeated, you know. That defeat but com-
mences the war. Says the N. Y. Tribune:
"Gentlemen opposite! You have beaten us
this time; but your triumph will not endure.
We shall meet you at Philippi!"
There is much significancy in that remark.
This bill was introduced into the Senate by
Mr. Tabor, a Whig. It provides, I under-
stand, that the Catholic church shall hold
property as other churches do, by their
Bishops, as trustees thereof. For the life of
me I cannot see that is puts the Catholic on
any higher ground than the Episcopal Meth-
odist or the Church of England. At any-
rate, its provisions do but secure property
to the Catholics, to be held according to their
creed and arrangements. And now the days
of war are let loose. The sectarian passion
is up to the highest bent. The banner is
boldly unfurled, the Rubicon is passed, Actium is fought, and preparations are making
for Philippi. Oh, what folly! If our dema-
gogues would release all the inebriates by a
brush of the Maine Law, and all the slaves
by an abolition act, as the means of helping
one side or the other of these sects, some
good might come of it. But we fear it will
draw no such blessings in its train. It is a
mere revival in our country of the sectarian
war of Europe. It is the Catholic against
the Protestant. But it will do good. It will
go through the ordeal of public discussion
here, and be disposed of according to Amer-
ican ideas of right. Perhaps it is necessary
the doctrines of right should be discussed in
this direction, before they be visible and
practicable in another direction. It is a
new power, and, of course, will distract the
old Hunker organisms of the country; and
at this stage we can scarce predict the re-
sult. If the people would meet it cooly, and
act like Christians, discarding sectarian and
party passions, it could be disposed of in an
hour. Indeed, in such case, there would be
no strife. It is simply a war of passion, of
prejudice, selfishness and ambition. It is
altogether anti-Christian and sectarian.—Justice, in the eye of true religion, is due,
alike, to Catholic and Protestant, pagan and
infidel.
Among the belligerent symptoms that
cover the face of all the earth, you notice, of
course, this sectarian manifestation. It has
taken the circuit of the world, and swords
gleam and bayonets bristle, and armies swarm,
and navies are changed with thunder the
world over, to place the nations in a proper
religious position. Church and state, relig-
ion and politics, everywhere, have become
convertable terms. Go to Constantinople.—On the one hand, the Emperor of Russia, in
the name, as he loudly pretends, of 50,000,000 of Greek Christians in his dominions,
demand the rule of 12,000,000 of like Chris-
tians from under the Turkish sceptre. The
Latin church, stirred by this insolent demand
throughout Catholic Europe, flies to arms.—And here is a new thing under the sun.—Protestant England, in spite of the treach-
erous and infamous Aberdeen, for the first
time unites with the Catholic powers, and
rushes with them to the mouth of the Dar-
[illegible] intercept the progress of Greek
power. They appeal on both sides to [the?]
sectarian prejudices of Europe and Eastern
Asia, and are alive for a bloody sectarian
fight, the fiercest of modern times, because
the poor dupes fancy their religion is in-
volved.
Well, it is scarcely less true in China and
the United States. Our government, through
the Washington organ, congratulates Mr.
Walker upon being the American represen-
tative to Christian China, while it meditates
professedly the conquest of the continent as
the means of purifying it of paganism and
Catholicism. The Greek religion centres in
the Czar—the Catholic religion in the Pope—the Protestant religion, on one side of the
water, in the British Queen, and on the other
side in the President and Congress, and the
people follow after, voluntarily, or by com-
pulsion, all for spoils.
But there are those, and not a few, in Eu-
rope and in this country, whose religion is
their own, and who have no respect for po-
litical Christianity. There are a couple of
men in London (Kossuth and Mazzini) who
have an electric telegraph fastened to their
hearts which runs through all Europe, con-
necting them with millions of men and women
upon which this armed power rests, who are
waiting with untold anxiety the report of
the first cannon in this sectarian war, to rise
and tumble the sects and the whole system
of tyranny which presses them into a heap
of ruins. It is beautiful to see these villan-
ous powers face each other in their wrath,
while they tremble for fear of the volcano
that groans beneath their feet. The state of
things in the United States, if less perilous,
is scarcely less delicate. Uncle Tom's Cabin
may be used as a key to unlock the dun-
geons of Europe, before it opens the great
American prison house; but the day is at
hand for the deliverance of the peon, the
serf and the slave. It makes no delay.—May God speed its progress!—J. T.