them were once
my comrades. I know what they think. I know what they feel. I would
beg your committee to consider very earnestly this question before
bringing to bear against these people the sovereign power of the
State. They love their State. Many of them have loved their country to
the peril of their lives. They live on the little farms that their
fathers literally hewed out of a resisting wilderness.

"Not through prejudice or ignorance are they opposing this development,
which will in the end be for the good of the whole region. They are
opposed to this bill before you because it would give a corporation
power to drive them from the homes they love, and that without fair
compensation.

"They are opposed to it because they are Americans. They know what it
has meant and what it still means to be Americans. And they know that
this bill is directly against everything that is American.

"They are ever ready to submit themselves to the sovereign will of the
State, but you will never convince them that this bill is the real
will of the State. They are fighting men and the sons of fighting men.
They have fought the course of the railroad in trying to get options
from them by coercion and trickery. They have been aroused. Their
homes, poor and wretched as they often are, mean more to them than any
law you can set on paper. They will fight this law, if you pass it. It
will set a ring of fire and murder about our peaceful hills.

"In the name of high justice, in the name of common honesty, in the
name--to come to lower levels--of political common sense, I tell you
this bill should never go back to the Senate.

"It is wrong, it is unjust, and it can only rebound upon those who are
found weak enough to let it pass here."

The Bishop paused, and the racing, jabbing pencils of the reporters
could be plainly heard in the hush of the room.

Nathan Gorham broke the pause with a hesitating question which he had
been wanting to put from the beginning.

"Perhaps the committee has been badly informed," he began to the
Bishop; "we understood that your people, sir, were mostly Canadian
immigrants and not usually owners of land."

"Is it necessary for me to repeat," said the Bishop, turning sharply,
"that I am here, Joseph Winthrop, speaking of and for my neighbours
and my friends? Does it matter to them or to this committee that I
wear the badge of a service that they do not understand? I do not come
before you as the Catholic