A letter from Richard T. Merrick, Esq. of Baltimore, against uniting religion with politics


A LETTER
t

FROM

RICHARD T. MERRICK, Esq.

OF BALTIMORE,

AGAINST

BALTIMORE:
PUBLISHED BY MURPHY & CO.

JYo. 178 Market Street.

H. TAYLOR,, Sun Building.

1854.



Spec



CORRESPONDENCE.

Baltimore, 4th October
,
1S54.

My Dear Sir :
I have at various times heard conjectures as to your course

at the coming election for Mayor, and to-day felt authorized,

from conversations of late with you upon the subject, to contra-

dict a statement made in my presence that it was your purpose
to vote for the Know-Nothing candidate.

Allow me to say, that in the present unsettled condition of
the politics of the city, your name is used for purposes which I
do not believe you countenance or sympathise with, and to ask

from you an expression of your views upon the important ques-

tions which are now in political agitation.

I am, very truly, your friend and obedient servant,

WM. MEADE ADDISON.
Rich’d T. Merrick, Esq., Baltimore.

Baltimore City, Oct. 5th, 1854.

Wm. M.eade Addison, Esq., Baltimore.

My Dear Sir :

Yours of the 4th inst. has been received. Your contradic-

tion of the statement mentioned in your letter was an act of

friendship for which I am obliged to you. It is my intention
at the coming election to vote for Mr. Thom s.
The Whig party seems to have been disbanded. It certainly

will not appear in this municipal contest. It has passed from

the field of political action for the present.



4

Sinking from its exalted position, it is now called to secure,
not its own triumph, but the defeat of the Democratic party, by
a combination with a new organization of sudden growth in
the country and of the veiled and mysterious character.

If perfect ignorance as to the principles and purposes of this

new order had been effected by a more cautious observance of
secrecy—except that those purposes had reference to the gov-
ernment of the country, and that those principles were political

—I should even then have been entirely averse to any partici-
pation in a scheme proposing to degrade a great national party

to the condition of elevating to power a combination of men,

united by political sympathies and theories sacredly kept from

the scrutiny of the public view. Not only should I have felt

a sense of shame in thus prostituting a party which had claimed

a large share of my devotion, and which I had often eulogised
in the expression of my honest conviction of its exalted merits,
but I should have felt that I was degrading myself, as a man
and a citizen, in thus blindly surrendering my judgment by
using the elective franchise to give the power of the State to a

combination of men, the solemn dignity of whose silence could

not be broken even to inform their complaisant coadjutor what

disposition they would make of the trust he was so humbly

imposing upon them.

In a government such as ours, so intimately connected in its

administration with the people who ordain it, a common inter-
est coerces the presumption of a general wish for the common
welfare—and differences of opinion upon political subjects are
simply different conclusions of various minds as to the relative

efficiency of different principles to answer the universal demand

in securing the largest measure of national good.

Political theories thus formed seek light, not darkness—they
seek elaboration and modification and supremacy by hostile

conflict in open day, and winning adherents by the develop-

ment of their wisdom, abide the test of the popular judgment.

That party presents itself under unfortunate and' suspicious aus-

pices to the consideration of the citizens of the Republic, which

seeks to obtain authority in the Government by the solemn

mockery of a mysterious concealment. We can only account
for the cautious protection of their opinions and views from the



5

obtruding examination of the people upon whom they are to
act

;
on the supposition that those privileged to walk in the light

of their sacred knowledge feel that they possess no attractive

beauties for the public eye, and that exposure would only secure

for some disgusting deformity the odium or the derision of the

country.

We are in the present case more readily induced to this con-
clusion by what has been variously revealed as to the theories

of this new order. For tho’ binding its members to secrecy
by the ceremonial of oaths, probably administered in some

grave and imposing initiatory process, it is yet impossible that

an association so actively engaged in the arena of political con-

tests should not manifest some of its springs of action and ex-

pose in different ways its peculiar tendencies and objects.

It is true we know as yet but little, but that little is too much
of dangerous evil.

United by sentiments of animosity and inflamed by religious

fanaticism, the end and object of its being is the proscription of

the entire Catholic community under the pretence of a mea-

sure of national safety. Its existence has inaugurated the dark

principle of intolerant persecution in the country, now first
commended to its hideous tasks since a blessed peace closed
over the scenes of our revolution and the covenant of religious

liberty spread its protecting illumination about the sacred rights

of conscience.

This we are permitted to understand is one of the cardinal
principles and cohesive elements of this new combination.

Another is,—and I believe this completes the measure of
public information upon the subject,—a proscription of the
naturalized citizens of the country, and an extension of the

probationary period of the emigrant before admission to the

rights of citizenship.

I will not discuss this latter principle. It has exercised small

if any influence upon my judgment in considering the course
existing circumstances required me to pursue.

There is quite enough in the secret character and religious

element of this new combination of political economists and
speculators, to condemn it as the most unrighteous and danger-

ous faction upon our national annals. But I can scarcely be-



6

lieve that the period of its existence will be long or vigorous
$

but that born in the dark and nurtured in guarded seclusion, it

will die under the influence of the light into which it has ven-

tured partially to obtrude, and passing away forever leave
behind no record of its being.

This may reasonably be hoped from the sound sense and
justice of the people. The past, however, teaches us in many
instances of lamentable experience, that when the spirit of per-
secution is at work, a dangerous power is broke loose, which if

not restrained by the vigorous action of enlightened public opin-

ion may effect the most painful results to the peace and perma-
nency of the State.

I can see no justification for aiding to the growth of efficient

strength this beginning of confusion and wrong, in the argument

urged upon the whigs that it will secure a democratic defeat.

A singular confusion of ideas seems to prevail as to the triumph
which will correspond with this defeat.—Gentlemen regarding
the two organizations which have heretofore for some time

claimed public attention as the only parties of actual and recog-

nized authority in the political contests of the country, suppose

that the humiliation of the one is necessarily the exaltation of

the other.

They do not consider the power of the ally—not whom they
call in to aid in their warfare, but to whom they become subsi-
dized in a contest widely different from theirs, and of which he

is the front;—they do not reflect that ultimate triumph shows
him exalted to power with ail his obnoxious theories incorpor-

ated into the political system of the nation, and wielding civil

authority to secure their spread and permanency;—they seem to
forget that any more terrible and calamitous circumstance can

happen to the country than the triumph of an old political foe,

and surrendering themselves to animosities whose impetuous

ardor should be calmed by patrioiic reflection, blindly uphold

in an aspiring combination a principle which in itself they des-

pise and condemn.

A moment of deliberation and judgment will show to them
that they owe an obligation to the institutions of the country

before which all animosities must cease, and all feuds be quieted,

and ancient foes abandoning all smaller causes of difference,



7

submit themselves to unity of action for the preservation of the

proudest and dearest right secured by the Constitution of the

Union. Its high privileges could not be more endangered, and

surely no more perilous calamity could be imposed upon the

country, than in the rule of men united by religious fanaticism,
and combined for (he purpose of proscribing and disfranchising

a large portion of the American people for the crime of follow-

ing in religious matters, the dictates of conscience and the con-

clusions of judgment. To place civil authority in the keeping
of such a party, would be to establish the dominion of a power

imbued with the fierce and unholy spirit whose relentless and

embittered animosity has uniformly perverted to its vindictive

purposes the powers of government wherever it has been allowed

to wield them, and with equal certainty destroyed and broken

the harmony of society wherever it has been loosened upon it.

Indeed it is matter of amazement and humiliation, that in this

land and age there could be found any respectable number of

citizens willing to adopt as their political creed the harsh and

unchristian theory of a barbarous period, which peopletl Ame-
rica by its merciless pursuit, and was expunged forever from the

ethics of the world by the institution of her liberty. But such

is the fact, however humiliating it may be, and we are called to
preserve to our country what we had regarded as an established
and enduring principle of our government, drawn from the

highest and purest philosophy of the civil and moral relations

of man.

A philosophy which has dignified humanity, ennobled gov-
ernment, and purified religion and which leaving the con-

sciences of men untrammelled and free, without fear of civil
disabilities or civil penalties, rigorously enforces the enlightened

principle of the mutual independence of civil and ecclesiastical

power, and urges the great precept—that whilst man’s accounta-
bility to God in his moral relation is a subject sacred from civil
interference, he owes in his double relation of citizen and Chris-

tian, a faithful obedience to the ruling authority of his country.

That liberty of conscience is an inherent natural right, invi-
olable in view of an ordinary sense of justice and every politi-

cal and moral consideration, it cannot be necessary at this day

to argue. Referring to man’s ultimate destiny, it forms the



8

character of his relation with the supreme ruler and judge, and

any attempt to coerce his opinion and under the terror of civil

authority to restrain the perfect freedom of that moral agent

upon whose enlightened action depends an immortality, is a

desecration of the religion which holds among its tenets, that

free will was given to man that he might choose according to
its freedom, and conscience—that an inherent moral appreciation
might direct his election. This election in all that appertains

to it belongs to the kingdom of God—not man—and should be
sacred, alike from the control and influence of civil power and

the baser persecution of political faction.

I am aware that many jurists of Europe have drawn a dis-
tinction between ordaining a State religion and limiting all par-

ticipation in civil authority to its conformists—and the direct
restraint of freedom of conscience by coercive and penal enact-

ments
5
and whilst claiming the former to be a legitimate exer-

cise of sovereignty, they regard the latter as repugnant to justice

and reason, and in violation of a natural and inherent right of

humanity.

However correct this distinction may have been in view of
the organization of the governments under the protection of

whose institutions they wrote—and it is not necessary for my
purposes to examine it further—it is manifestly erroneous when
applied to a Republic, in which an equal participation in power

is a declared element of its character and a political right of its

citizens. In such a government, andN indeed in any, coercion

may be exercised as fully and bitterly by the deprivation of civil
franchises as by the infliction of any other penalty, and freedom

of conscience is necessarily restrained so long as civil disability

is incident to any religious conviction. Fully appreciating this

and intending to establish a government under whose glorious

and enduring power a mighty people might live and prosper,

secured in the inviolable sanctity of the inalienable right to en-

lightened liberty, the founders of the Republic provided in the

constitution by which its powers and character were to stand for-

ever defined, the perfect immunity of its citizens from civil dis-

ability on account of religious opinions.

This great principle, originating in the colony of Maryland

and there nurtured and developed, became the proudest ele-



9

ment of American freedom. Recognizing the solemnity of man’s

relation with another life, it elevated his dignity and ennobled

his duty in this. It threw about that relation a sacred protection

from fanatical invasion, whether it came in the shape of penal

enactments or political disfranchisement, and a merciless perse-

cution which had gloated in fraternal discord for ages, shrank

withering before it.

There is not in the constitution anywhere a more emphatic

declaration than in article VI relating to this subject. After

stating that various public functionaries shall be ce bound by oath

or affirmation to support the constitution” it concludes,

—

but

no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to

any office ofpublic trust under the United States.”

The citizens of a free country appreciating in full and noble
gratitude those who have bequeathed to them the blessed in-
heritance of such a government as ours—secured through such
vast privations, and erected and fortified with so much labor,

—

should feel the impulse of living according to its spirit and for

the preservation of its purity as the highest obligation for

the experience of its benedictions. They -should bow be-
fore it with respectful love—they should look to it as a mighty
power, in the permanency and vigor of whose existence was in-

volved their peace and happiness, and the peace and happiness

of those who should come after them. They should repress as
unrighteous and dangerous every attempt to cultivate and ex-

tend a public opinion and spirit not in harmony with its exalted

theories, and deprecating every manifestation of irrevalent dis-

regard for its sanctity, protect it with firmness and caution from

the first approaching step of a daring and reckless innovation.

But we have in this new party a combination of citizens
united upon a principle not only repugnant to justice and rea-

son, and against the most sacred right of man as recognized in
the philosophy of an enlightened civilization, but against the

spirit and letter of the federal constitution. They do not seek
to cure the distempers of the State and purify the administration

of its civil functions, or correct abuses and remedy evils, but

denouncing the inherent character of its organization they as-

sail a fundamental principle of the government. They can see
nothing in the mighty past—they can feel no power in the rigid



10

tests of experience—they can appreciate no force in the large and
growing prosperity of the country to satisfy a reliance upon

this constitution. The perfect safety of the nation—its un-
paralleled progress—its majestic growth—its stupendous glory
—the content and happiness of its people—can present to
them no sufficient assurance of the power and wisdom of

the present organic law. The liberty which it embodies needs
some new expedient for preservation—some additional pro-
tection from the danger of Catholic aggression. It is not safe,

it is not secure, and some new device is imperiously de-
manded to preserve the independence of Church and State, and

protect the civil from the adulteration of the religious power.

An experience through a period which has now reached
within only a few years the measure of a century has estab-

lished the wisdom and matured the authority of the constitu-

tion, and demonstrated its efficiency as it stands, to preserve

in the government the vigor and power of the great princi-

ple at whose imagined peril this new order professes such
alarm.

What has lately transpired to excite the serious and un-
pleasant apprehensions, and agitate the fears of these gentle-

men who seem now so much disturbed, they have not in-
formed the public. We are ignorant what new experience
they have discovered which falsifies so large a precedent

record.

But in any event the measure they propose seems singu-

larly inefficient for the accomplishment of the purpose con-

templated.

There being but a very small class of our people who do
not belong to one or the other of the great denominations,

the exclusion of all Catholics from office involves putting

none but Protestants in. In this view of the disposition of

political trusts, religion becomes a test of official qualifica-

tion and is demanded from the public fiduciary as a guar-

antee for the faithful discharge of duty.—It is no longer
excluded from the power of the State, but is one of its

elements here, as potential and active as in her dominion is

the established religion of England. Test acts, as stringent



11

as Parliament ever enacted or the fanaticism of Britain ever

maintained, are practically in force throughout this govern-

ment, and only bide the day of sufficient power to take their

place among the statutes. They exclude from office—they
mark the class fit to be the recipients of public trusts—they
elevate to authority and they degrade to disfranchisement—

-

and denying all merit in capacity—all claim in virtue, and
all excellence in patriotism, they establish religious belief as

the criterion of official ability and the measure of official

faith.

I must confess I am unable to appreciate the logic which
concludes that a principle necessarily leading to such a con-*

dition of things is a safe or expedient preservative of the

mutual independence of Church and State. I can see in it

nothing but corruption and danger, and ruin, for both the

one and the other. It wears to me the harsh appearance of
unchristian fanaticism and lawless persecution and political

depredation—and not the mild promise of purity in official
duty and protection in civil rights. It approaches the con-

stitution not to sustain it in the great and invaluable privi-

leges it secures to this people—but with a defiant and irreve-
rent opposition to break down its guards—to invade its
sanctity—deface its beauty—destroy its glory, and wither and
crush out its power.

And what grave and dangerous emergency is it that these
gentlemen would induce us to believe is upon us, thus agita-

ting the harmony and good feeling of society and demanding

these perilous expedients ?

Reposing in a profound political calm and experiencing

every blessing within the gift of a great government, stable,

permanent and just, we are suddenly aroused by the startling

revelation that our belief in the patriotism of a large class of

our fellow citizens is credulity, and our faith in the peace,

prosperity and security of the country is a delusion
;
that we

are surrounded by treason and in the midst of national peril

;

that enemies within are preparing the way for enemies from

without; and that the concealed treachery of a religious de-



12

nomination is about to immolate our liberty at the shrine of

the Vatican.

In repelling this grave charge, the Catholic,—(the object
of its infamy,)—invokes to bis advocacy the glory of his
country.

From the gray dawn of its morning twi-light to this hour
of its effulgent splendor, who has sacrificed to it with more
devotion, who worshipped it with intenser love—whose blood
has flowed more freely for its illustration, whose heart bounded

more nobly to the contests of its defense than his ? The

bones of his brethren and ancestors who have gone before

him in his now persecuted faith are upon every field on
which our banner wTas ever planted—their deeds are upon
every page of our history where deed of patriotism are re-

corded, and the glory of his country is—his own. They
have shared in the perils of winning it—they have partici-
pated in all the dangers of its defense—they have heightened
and brightened its lustre—and giving to him their high title
to this priceless inheritance of all our people, he has guarded

it through every moment with the vigilance of a devoted
freeman, and now invokes its power to repel the accusation
by which he is sought to be degraded. He claims no more
than others, but he claims equally with any

;
he seeks to

depreciate none, but he desires that none may depreciate

him
;
he makes no haughty demand in the spirit of inflated

pride, but he simply asks for justice, because he is perse-

cuted and wrong.

But of times even beyond the dawn of our national day,

history’s muse has kept a sacred memorial which shall be

honorable to his faith so long as religious freedom is cherished

among men. When driven from the world the refuge of its
safety was the shadow of a Catholic altar, where alone then

grew the olive, rising from a raging deluge of sectarian dis-

cord in holy promise of a covenant of peace. It stretched

forth its branches to the persecuted of America, and they

fled to the repose of its fragrant shade from every quarter,

pursued by every degree of religious animosity, and there

grew up about it under the auspices of Lord Baltimore, a



13

colony composed of all denominations of Christians, yet

equal in civil privileges ; of all forms of worship, yet united

by fraternal love ;—founding itself upon the great principles,
then first proclaimed,

—

of the inherent right to 'perfectfreedom

of conscience and the moral and civil wrong of political disa-

bility on account of religious conviction.

This was the commencement of Catholic history in America,

and this the germ of American freedom. There is not in

that history, from this its beautiful and auspicious beginning

down to the present time, the record of one single act to

justify or countenance the bold aspersion so recklessly cast

upon the members of that church.

They regard the Papal sovereignty over the domain of the

church in Italy as a purely political institution of that people

and not an emanation from ecclesiastical authority. Recognis-

ing the supremacy, of the religious head in religious matters,

they deny and repudiate his control in civil
;
they hold as a

matter of religious duty, obedience and faith to the laws of

the country as the only guarantee of civil peace and social

harmony; they regard allegiance to the nation in whose pro-

tection they live, as one of the first obligations they owe to

heaven
;
they consider the interference of the ecclesiastic in

civil affairs as a desecration of his high calling
;
they believe

the only voice which should be heard in the temple is “the

healing voice of Christian charity and reverencing the faith

of their ancestors in religion and politics, proudly point to

its illustrative monuments in the glorious record of the foun-

dation of the colony of Maryland.

The uniform conduct of clergy and laity throughout the
country has been in accordance with these views; and when
discord and agitation has disturbed the people and rancorous

animosity and excited passion has been inflamed, as lately

occurred at the North, to resist the execution of the laws, it

was this church, whose covert treason perils our national ex-

istence, that called its members to obey and defend the out-

raged authority of the country. From its pulpits everywhere
throughout the land goes forth to those who will hear it, the
moral precept of civil obedience as the paramount duty of the



14

citizen
;
and in its people everywhere that precept manifests

a calm and steady acquiescence in the supreme power of the

State. And if, indeed, ecclesiastical thunder ever rightfully
belonged to Rome for use in civil emergencies, its bolts
would seem to have been surreptitiously appropriated by some

of our dissenting brethren at the North, who in their parox-
ysms of indignant wrath fulminate them with indiscriminate

fury against the patriotism of our people, and the peace,

government and dignity of the Union. Unfurling from the

temple the banner of a higher law
,
they denounce as unchris-

tian the legislation of the country, in terms of invective culti-

vated for a different purpose and more suitable to less sacred

places, and threaten with the terrors of divine malediction

obedience to the sovereign law of the nation.

If such might stop in their career, and for a moment pause

to hear the traitor teach his flock their treason
,
they would

learn—that in his theology the higher law ordains the supre-
macy of civil power, and that in society and government,

instituted to promote the great purposes of peace and virtue

and happiness among men, obedience is the greatest glory

—

the noblest duty, and the highest law—and that to advise
resistance to the authorized enactments of national sovereignty

is offensive to Heaven—a desecration of the temple, and a
soiling of the white robe of the ministerial office.

It is through such plausible pretenses and such ridiculous

semblances that the peace and good feeling of society is to

be disturbed and religious bigotry is to gratify its heated ani-

mosities and its bad passions. And when under the auspices
of this new order, and through the influence of the fanaticism

so assiduously cultivated as a measure of political and Chris-

tian duty, and which is now spreading throughout the coun-
try, a disregard for the great principles of constitutional

liberty, and the rights of man should be so far engendered

—

and God forbid it ever should be!—as to effect the disfran-
chisement of the denomination now assailed, and the Catho-
lic, stricken down in civil rights should become in this great
government of freemen a servile pensioner for protection—

>

which of the other denominations that make up the mighty



2 3H8115

15

whole will next follow in the experience of political degrada-

tion ? Will not the competition of aspiring pride be lessened

yet a little more, and government confined to a class yet

more elect and holy and limited ?

Persecution having risen restored to full vigor by the per-

verted and misguided sentiment of the people, will not stop

at one small conquest but will seek new glories with which
to adorn its recovered strength.

Wherever it has gone forth in the world, like a mighty

tempest it has swept over society, and those who have loos-
ened it in the anxious hope of witnessing its devastations,

tremble to behold the overwhelming fury of a power beyond

their direction and control.

Vain for him is the teaching of all past experience; vain

the repeated manifestations of the destructive and relentless

animosity of human passions excited by religious prejudice

—

who does not appreciate as necessarily following in the tri-
umphs of this new order, a long line of social feuds and
embittered hatreds, and broken political privileges and count-

less evils and discords.

And who can see the end of this lamentable beginning?
The light of history thrown forward upon it reveals a scene

from which we gladly turn to a cheering belief in the still
propitious guardianship of the power which has watched

over the splendid progress of this country, and reposing a

calm faith in the high appreciation of our people for their sa-

cred rights and common justice, we feel that though the
passion of the indiscreet and the evil may for a time disturb
the peace of society—yet, returning reflection will quiet its
agitation, and awakened patriotism preserve our sacred priv-

ileges from the dangerous protection of this new order, whose
unholy spirit disguises its repulsive features by a seeming

solicitude fer the national welfare.

You have asked an expression of my views, and in accord-
ance with your request I have given them.

I am sir, respectfully, your obedient servant,

R. T. MERRICK.
WM. MEADE ADDISON, Es*. Baltimore City.



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