nce to any man's conscience, or ever thought of forcing any one to
accept the Catholic creed. To say the least, they were too wise to
attempt, thus to fill the church with hypocrites and secret enemies. Of
such there were already too many in those societies which shun the light,
and in the new world as actively as in the old intrigue and manoeuvre in
order to overthrow every regular and legitimately established government.
Even the republic of New Granada, which had been fashioned so much
according to their will, was far from perfect in their estimation, so long
as the church was not completely subject to the state. So early as 1847,
Pius IX. addressed a fatherly remonstrance to the President of the New
Republic. It was of no avail. The evil continued. Anti-Catholic
legislation was coolly proceeded with. In 1850 the seminary of Bogota was
confiscated. The following year bishops were forbidden the visitation of
convents. Laws were enacted requiring that lay parishioners should elect
their parish priests, and that canons should be appointed by the
provincial councils. The clergy were robbed of their proper incomes, and
the congress or parliament of the republic arrogated the right to
determine what salaries they should enjoy as well as what duties they
should fulfil. This surely was nothing less than to reduce the church to
be nothing more than a department of the civil government. The church
could not so exist. Its principle and organization were from a higher
source. The Socialists and secret plotters fully understood that they were
so, and that in this lay the secret of the church's power to promote
virtue and check the course of evil. It consisted, it appears, with their
ideas of justice and liberty, that the church should, if possible, be
deprived of this great and salutary moral power. So, whilst neither its
members, generally, nor its clergy desired radical and subversive changes
in the essential constitution of the church, the republican leaders
determined that it should be completely revolutionized. The bishops and
priests protested, with one voice, against such fundamental innovations.
The republicans, no less resolute, and, bent on their wicked purpose,
imprisoned and banished the clergy. One dignitary alone showed weakness.
He was no other than the Vicar-Caputular of Antioquia. Pius IX. charitably
rebuked him, and exhorted him to suffer courageously, like his brethren.
The persecution, meanwhile, was very sweepin