r and the oppressed, and compels the hereditary master to kneel
before the spiritual tribunal of the hereditary bondman. To this day,
in some countries where negro slavery exists, Popery appears in
advantageous contrast to other forms of Christianity. It is notorious
that the antipathy between the European and African races is by no
means so strong at Rio Janerio as at Washington. In our own country this
peculiarity of the Roman Catholic system produced, during the middle
ages, many salutary effects. It is true that, shortly after the battle
of Hastings, Saxon prelates and abbots were violently deposed, and that
ecclesiastical adventurers from the Continent were intruded by hundreds
into lucrative benefices. Yet even then pious divines of Norman blood
raised their voices against such a violation of the constitution of the
Church, refused to accept mitres from the hands of William, and charged
him, on the peril of his soul, not to forget that the vanquished
islanders were his fellow Christians. The first protector whom the
English found among the dominant caste was Archbishop Anselm. At a
time when the English name was a reproach, and when all the civil and
military dignities of the kingdom were supposed to belong exclusively
to the countrymen of the Conqueror, the despised race learned, with
transports of delight, that one of themselves, Nicholas Breakspear,
had been elevated to the papal throne, and had held out his foot to be
kissed by ambassadors sprung from the noblest houses of Normandy. It was
a national as well as a religious feeling that drew great multitudes to
the shrine of Becket, whom they regarded as the enemy of their enemies.
Whether he was a Norman or a Saxon may be doubted: but there is no doubt
that he perished by Norman hands, and that the Saxons cherished his
memory with peculiar tenderness and veneration, and, in their popular
poetry, represented him as one of their own race. A successor of Becket
was foremost among the refractory magnates who obtained that charter
which secured the privileges both of the Norman barons and of the Saxon
yeomanry. How great a part the Roman Catholic ecclesiastics subsequently
had in the abolition of villenage we learn from the unexceptionable
testimony of Sir Thomas Smith, one of the ablest Protestant counsellors
of Elizabeth. When the dying slaveholder asked for the last sacraments,
his spiritual attendants regularly adjured him, as he loved his soul,
to emancipate his