at those clergymen say.
They never will succeed in doing it themselves.

I don't think you will succeed in getting any considerable
number of the people of this country, who are able to read
and write, or to count ten on their fingers, to believe that, as
I am entering my seventieth year, I am actuated by any personal
ambition, in the counsel which I give my fellow citizens.
I don't think you will get them to believe that, if I were
so actuated, I should begin by saying anything which would
estrange a considerable number of the Protestant Republican
citizens of Massachusetts. I don't think you will convince
them that I am indifferent to the good will of so large a
portion of the American people as are said to be enlisted
in the ranks of the secret society to which you refer. If
you know as little of your Catholic fellow citizens as you
know of me, you have a good deal as yet to learn of the subject
of which you are speaking.

On the other hand, you may be quite sure I should be unwilling
to do injustice to any of my fellow citizens. They will hardly
need be assured that I would not lightly or unnecessarily
incur their disapprobation. But you may perhaps think it
pardonable that I should not be thoroughly informed as to
the principles, motives or conduct of a secret society. As
you have undertaken the duty of giving me information, will
you kindly answer for me the following questions:

1st. Is the organization to which you refer a secret organization?
Are its discussions in the face of day? Do the persons whose
political errors they especially oppose have an opportunity
to know their purposes and to be convinced by their arguments?
If the organization be in any respect secret, why is it deemed
necessary to maintain such secrecy in the United States of
America and at the close of the nineteenth century?

2d. Is it the custom of many persons who belong to it to
deny, when inquired of, that they are members of such an
association? And if this be true, does such a falsehood cost
them the respect and friendship of their associates or diminish
their influence in the order?

3d. Do members of the association, after joining it, retain
their membership in other political parties? Do they agree
together upon candidates for office or delegates to conventions
to nominate officers and then go into their party caucuses
to support such delegates agreed upon in secret, without consultation
with their political bret