cease not to cry: 'Courage !' It is true that several curse us, but it is because they are forced to do it. Many keep silent for fear of their masters, but their prayers and sympathies are for us. The bishops will see, sooner or later, that in order to retain their power on earth, that power must be founded, as in heaven, upon justice and truth.

"When the priests of Canada, to please the bishops, contrary to their convictions, have degraded their own sacerdotal character in my person; when they have burned the effigy of the proscribed, having no more the glorious privilege of burning his body; when the father whom, by the grace of God, I have snatched from an abyss, cursed me; when this dear young man who has, so many times, blessed me, because I have shown him the gospel, the way of honor and virtue, by removing the stumbling block of intemperance offered to his weakness, has been forced to curse me; when that poor woman, who, by the grace of God, owes me the bread she eats, and the few days of holy felicity she has enjoyed upon earth, has cursed me; when this fine little child, who has so many times blessed my name, because Go made use of me to give him back a father, has cursed me, there will be a silence of sorrow in Canada, around my proscribed name.

"Then a reaction will take place. A great prestige will be destroyed. A great power, holy and benevolent in its origin, but fallen by its excesses, will be destroyed. God grant that, in the midst of those ruins, there may be no tears, no blood !!

"This is not prophecy, it is history. Yes, let the Canadian clergy open the records of the past, and they will find where their blind and demoraliz ing obedience to the bishops, leads them and their good and generous people, if not to infidelity and atheism.

"You advise me, dear Mr. Brassard, o put myself in the canonical ways; but have I not already done so ? Have not the bishops of Canada told you that the letter signed by me, has already placed me in that position?

"Has not Mr. Desaulnier said, In your presence, to my people and myself at St. Anne.

"Sign this act, and if the bishop does not take away his sentence of excommunication, I will say to him: 'It is not Mr. Chiniquy, neither his people, who wish a schism; they have done what religion and honor commanded them; it is the bisnop of Chicago who makes the schism.'

"What have we gained by taking that public step? Nothing, but to be cruelly and shamefully betrayed.

"Was not Jesus Christ betrayed only once by Judas? Do not then expect that we will be stronger than the Son of God. The bishops of Canada, by their emissary, have already betrayed us, of which you have been witness. The people and missionary of St. Anne do not feel strong enough to present their cheek again to the smiter.

"In spite of the clamors which rise around us, we are convinced that we may be good Cathʊics, without submitting to that degradation twice.

"The bishops of Canada want you to speak. Very well! My dear Mr. Brassard, I, also, implore you to speak. In the name of the friendship which has united us for forty years, I implore you to tell the truth. Did you not, after reading the document which the bishop of Chicago commanded me to sign, as the only condition of peace, say to me:

"My dear friend, you can not sign such a writing without lying and dishonoring yourself forever?' And behold! to-day you cry to my brethren to destroy and abandon me, when you know that the position in which I stand is but the result of my refusal to sign a most infamous, lying and degrading document.

"These things, and many others which you know, would serve wonderfully to open the eyes of the people upon the awful abuse of power of which certain bishops are, every day, guilty. This would aid to unmask certain modern divinities who pretend that we cannot go to heaven without their permission; who preach that it is not the blood of Jesus Christ, but a certain passport, of which they hold the patent, which assures us a place among the elect of God. A sentence founded upon a public lie, and which was resisted, can not constitute a schism. Christian men who, like the Catholics of Chicago, Kankakee and St. Anne, resist iniquity, may be condemned by men, but not by God.

"I was not suspended on the 19th of August, and so, I could exercise the holy functions of my ministry the following morning and after. It is the church which assures us of this, through her greatest theologians. As it is not enough to say: 'My God!' My God!' to be saved; so it is not enough to cry: You are lost! you are lost!' for one to be lost. The Son of God, who gave his life to save man, gave us a thousand proofs, that the salvation of our soul has a foundation more certain than the capricious will of a sinful being. He has given to no one the power to save or condemn, according to his pleasure. If some bishops and priests believe this, it is not the faith of the people of Chicago, Kankakee and St. Anne.

"I will tell you again, my dear Mr. Brassard, that if, in order to obey the bishop of Montreal, you should strip me of the little honor which surrounds my name in Canada, I shall still never forget the good you have done Yes! command my friends to betray me, to trample me under their feet, to turn away from me in horror: Never will you be able to weaken my sentiments of respect and gratitude for you!

me.

"I will still love ar.d bless you; for I know the hand which forced yours to do so. I will always know that your own heart was first struck and wounded by the blows they commanded you to give to your friend and son in Jesus Christ.

"C. Chiniquy."

The effect of that letter upon Mr. Brassard was still more powerful than I had expected. It forced him to blush at his own cowardice, and to ask me pardon for the unjust sentence he had

passed upon me to obey the bishop. Here are the parts of the letter bearing upon that subject:

St. Roch, 29 Mai, 1857.

MONCHER CHINIQUY:-"Je suis plus convainen que jamais que tu n'as jamais ete interdit legalement, depuis que j'ai appris par Monseigneur de Montreal, que l'eveque de Chicago t' a interdit de vive voix, dans sa chambre; ce que Ligoury dit etre nul te de nul effet."

I am more than ever convinced that you have never been legally interdicted, since Bishop Bourget told me that Bishop O'Regan had interdicted you privately, "viva voce" in his private room. Ligoury says that it is a nullity and that it can have no effect. I beg your pardon for what I wrote against you. I have been forced to do it. Because I had not yet sufficiently condemned you, and that my name, which you were citing in your writings, was giving you too much power, and a too clear condemnation of Bishop O'Regan, the Bishop of Montreal, abusing his authority over me, forced me to sign that document against you. I would not do it to-day if it were to be done again. Keep silence on what I tell you in this letter. It is all con fidential. You understand it.

Your devoted friend,

L. M. Brassard.

No priest in Canada had more deservedly enjoyed the reputation of a man of honor, than Mr. Brassard. Not one had ever stood so high in my esteem and respect. His sudden and unexpected fall, filled my heart with an unspeakable sadness. I may ray that it snapped the last thread which held me to the church of Rome. Till then, it was not only my hope, but my firm conviction, that there were many honest, upright priests in that church, and Mr. Brassard was, to me, the very personification of honesty.

How can I describe the shock I felt when I saw him, there, in the mud, a monument of the unspeakable corruption of my church!

The perfidious Delilah had seduced and destroyed this modern Sampson, enchained, as a trembling slave, at the feet of the new implacable Moloch, "the authority of the bishop!" He had not only lost the fear of God, and the respect he owed to himself, by publicly declaring that I was guilty, when he knew that I was innocent, but he had so completely lost every sentiment of honesty, that he wanted me to keep secret his declaration of my innocence, at the very moment he was inviting my whole coun

try, through the press, to abhor and condemn me as a criininal! I read again and again the strange letter. Every word of it was destroying the last illusions which had concealed from my mind, the absolute and incurable perversity of the church of Rome. I had no hard feelings against this last friend whom she had poisoned with the wine of her prostitutions. I felt only a profound compassion for him. I pitied and forgave him from the bottom of my heart. But every word of his letter sounded in my ears as the warning voice of the angel sent to save Lot from the doomed city of Sodom. "Escape for thy life. Look not behind thee; neither stay thou in all the plain. Escape thou to the mountain, lest thou be consumed!"

Chapter LXIV.

I WRITE TO POPE PIUS IX. AND TO NAPOLEON, EMPEROR OF FRANCE, AND SEND THEM THE PUBLIC DOCUMENTS PROVING THE BAD CONDUCT OF BISHOP O'REGAN—CARDINAL BIDINI ORDERED TO INVESTIGATE THE BISHOP CALLED TO ROME, IS FORCED TO RESIGN, AND BECOMES A BANKER— BISHOP SMITH, OF DUBUQUE, NAMED ADMINISTRATOR OF THE DIOCESE OF CHICAGO—GRAND VICAR DUNN SENT TO TELL ME OF MY VICTORY AT ROME—I GO TO DUBUQUE TO OFFER MY SUBMISSION TO THE BISHOP.

I

HAD not forgotten the advice given me by Archbishop Kenrick, of St. Louis, April 9, 1856, to address my complaints to the Pope himself. But the terrible difficulties and trials which had constantly followed each other, had made it impossible to follow that advice. The betrayal of Mons. Desaulnier and the defection of Mons. Brassard, however, had so strangely complicated my position, that I felt the only way to escape the wreck which threatened myself and my colony, and to save the holy cause God had entrusted me, was to strike such a blow to our haughty persecutor that he could not survive it. I determined to send to the Pope all the public accusations which had been legally proved and published against the bishop, with the copy of the numerous and infamous suits which he had sustained before the civil courts, and had almost invariably lost, with the sentences of the judges who had condemned him. This took me nearly two months of the hardest labors of my life. I had gathered all those documents, which covered more than 200 pages of foolscap. I mailed them to Pope Pius IX., accompanied by only the following words: "Holy Father, for the sake of your precious