re acknowledged by Protestants, no
less than by Catholics. I subjoin the testimony of an able writer in the
New York _Tribune_, believed to be Bayard Taylor. This distinguished
traveller--a staunch Protestant--appeals to history, and speaks from
personal observation. He writes:

"Truth compels us to add that the oldest republic now existing is that
of San Marino, not only Catholic, but wholly surrounded by the especial
dominion of the popes, who might have crushed it like an egg-shell at
any time these last thousand years--but they didn't. The only republic
we ever travelled in besides our own is Switzerland, half of its cantons
or states entirely Catholic, yet never, that we have heard of,
unfaithful to the cause of freedom. We never heard the Catholics of
Hungary accused of backwardness in the late glorious struggle of their
country for freedom, though its leaders were Protestants, fighting
against a leading Catholic power avowedly in favor of religious as well
as civil liberty. And chivalric, unhappy Poland, almost wholly Catholic,
has made as gallant struggles for freedom as any other nation; while of
the three despotisms that crushed her, but one was Catholic."

Let us bring the subject home to our own times and country. Who, I would
ask, first reared in triumph the broad banner of universal freedom on
this North American Continent? Who first proclaimed in this new world a
truth too wide and expansive to enter into the head of, or to be
comprehended by, a narrow-minded bigot--a truth that every man should
be free to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience? Who
_first_ proclaimed, on this broad continent, the glorious principles of
universal freedom? Read Bancroft, read Goodrich, read Frost, read every
Protestant historian of our country, and you will see there inscribed,
on the historic page, a _fact_ which reflects immortal honor on our
American Catholic ancestry--that Lord Baltimore and his Catholic
colonists of Maryland were the _first_ to proclaim universal liberty,
civil and religious; the _first_ to announce, as the basis of their
legislation, the great and noble principle that no man's faith and
conscience should be a bar to his holding any office, or enjoying any
_civil privilege_ of the community.

What American can forget the names of Rochambeau, De Grasse, De Kalb,
Pulaski, La Fayette, Kosciusko? Without the aid of these noble Catholic
heroes, and of the brave troops whom they led on to