If you don't get any nearer right in quoting
them than you do in quoting me, I don't believe that they
ever said any such thing. If they have, they never will
persuade any considerable number of Catholic laity in this
country, in this nineteenth century, to follow them. You may
perhaps induce the Catholic young men and women of Massachusetts
to believe there is something in what 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.
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