New national era. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1870-1874, 1872-10-10

'ovely features III las political career most
likely to on,lcar him &c thc majority Of their
party. Bat, instead Of limiting the contest
to the sphere where il properly belongs, they
have unfurled the bannor Of religious fanati-
cism. First, the Tribune, in the way OF init
nation, remarked that Mr.. Herman, on the
ground OF his religion, would be q strong
candidate among the Irish voters, and actu-
ally they are circulating ticket on which
his name is seen encircling a cross, thus con-
verting the Gubernatorial contest into cru
SADIE for the true faith! If they themselves
were devout Catholics, aliens, or lately nat
uralized citizens, not yet duly inbued with
the spirit of our Institutions and laws, which
expressly forbid any religious discrimination
or religious issue, we could easily excuse
them. Fanaticism, intolerance, and parti-
sanshp for religions sake, are among the
imported evils, the fruits of monarchical and
ecclesiastical rule, with which we have to
bear the best we can, and whose cure we
have to leave to time and to the powerful
influence Of our own free institutions; but
no such excuse, however, can be urged in
behalf of the highly enlightened gentlemen
who are running the Greeley
machine in New York. Some of them-the
Tribune foremost-have frequently declared
their unmtigated condemnation of the ten
dency to establish religious tests and create
religious dissensions they have not the
slightest preference for Catholicism in itself;
yet they appeal to the grossest prejudices
and the most dangerous proclivities of a null
titude that is, anyhow, but too easily in
famed! How truly Jesuitical this is. And
yet, suppose everything else being equal,
Mr.. Herman were Protestant, and General
Dix the Catholic, can any one doubt that the
same Democratic and sorehead Greeley men
would quite as earnestly appeal to the mar
row orthodoxy of bigoted Protestants, and
raising kind of no-Popery" cry, would
try to fiighten them with terrible pictures Of
the ascendency which Catholicism would OBJ
tain in the State through tho election of a
Catholic candidate? This, at least, was done
| in 1856, when the Democrats used the rumor,
which they themselves had started, that
Fremont was Catholic, as handle to make
capital against him; and We have not the
slightest reason to assume that they have
since become moro truthful and scrupulous.
They work like ferry-boats, forward and
backward, with the same facility.
Thus far we have no inclination to be.
little our friends talents for nice tricks and
stratagems; there is only the drawback to
it that they overdo in their desire to unite
| the people Of all creeds and shades against
the Republican party, and, instead of being
satisfied with enlisting the sympathics of the
Irish Catholics, attempt to make the ferry
move in two directions at one and the same
time. While on one side the Irish heart i:
| fired, Mr.. Horatio Seymour lately appealed
to the enlightenment and the tolerant spirit
Of an audience, mostly composed Of Protest
ants, urging them to vote for the Catholic
candidate, IN return for the liberation shown
by the Catholics in voting, year after year
for Protestant! Did Mr.. Seymour mean
| to assert that the Catholics ever voted for 6
Protestant against another Protestant be-
cause of his religion, and irrespective of his
| party? The proposition is too sublimely ant
transparency absurd TO be accepted by ar
audience of the lowest average intelligence
and in this respect 1t is not at all Jesuitical