A WELL-TIMED IMPOSTURE

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 9, 1 March 1900, Page 4

A WELL-TIMED IMPOSTURE

Such were the auspicious beginnings of Mrs Slattery'a evil trade — that of sham ex-nun. The moment of the publication of Maria Monlt was well chosen. The Eastern States were at the time passing through one of those fanatical outbursts against the Catholic Church which were 1 afterwards revived by the secret Knownothing organisation in the fifties and by the A. P. A. during the course of the present decade. In August of the previous year (l^lU) the report had been circulated — the coinage of a foolish or malicious brain — that a nun was being detained against her will in the Ursuline Convent, Charlestown (Massachusetts), and wa- pining i' 1 an underground dungeon. It was the old, old story that, with a certain class of gullibles, has never lost its vitality and eternal freshness. The flame of feeling was fanned by infamous tales of vice on the part of those holy religious whose souls and lives were devoted to God's service. One or two preachers — may God forgive them ' — lent their wind-power on the Lord's Day. August 10, I^:H, to rouse and strengthen the brewing storm of public hate against the Ursuline community. On the following night a ferocious mob, blinded by the foulest calumnies, enraged by the harangues of the clerical incendiaries, flung themselves without warning upon the dwelling of ten defenceless nuns and of the sixty helpless children under their care. A providential fear or panic gave momentary pause to the mob and allowed the defenceless women and children just time to escape. The rioters finding that, contrary to their fears, the place was undefended, entered the building. They spent several hours in carefully ransacking every room. They then deliberately set the building on fire. Broken furniture, books, curtain--, vestments, and altar ornament were pilei up in the middle of the several rooms and set on fire A copy of the Hible was. thrown in derision on top of the first fir<3 as it blaze 1 up. Whan miraing came the fine convent was a mass of blackened ruins. The rioters next burned down the bishop's house, farm buildings, and their contents. Not content with this ' they burst open the tomb of the establishment, rifled it of the sacred vessels there deposited, wrested the plates from the coffins, and exposed to view the mouldering remains of their tenants. 1 Such is the .substance of the report of the Committee of Protestant gentlemen of position and influence who were appointed at a public meeting in Boston, and who publicly investigated this disgraceful outrage, cleared the nuns of an infamous charge, and endeavoured to bring the perpetrators of the crime to justice. In the la^t-rnentioned purpose, however, they tailed only one of the Charlefetown miscreants was ever made amenable to the law. The rest were all acquitt°d by sympathetic jurors m the face of overwhelming evidence of their This scandalous miscarriage of justice led to a swift spread of anti-Catholic fury, which extended from Charlestown. Massachusetts, to Charleston. South Carolina There, too, an attack was organised on the local convent with a view to its destruction. Word went round of the preparations of the mob. A gallant band of Irishmen rallied to defend the menaced convent. They took up their positions, well armed and ready. An Irish bishop passed round their ranks at night. He coolly examined the flints and pans of their rifles to see that there should be no 'miss-fires' and that the cowardly assailants of defenceless women should, in South Carolina, at least, meet with their deserts. The mob were quite ready to fight women. They went home aud stayed at home when. to their terror and disgust, they found that they had to deal with a stern and determined band of well-armed and chivalrous fellows who were prepared to shed their blood in defence of the noble and self-sacrificing women whom an American Protestant officer in the Civil War styled ' God's army on earth.' It was in the near wake of this tornado of anti-Catholic feeling that the rogue Hoyte and his fellow-conspirators edit°d and republished as the work of Maria Monk an indecent old pamphlet that had appeared in its English dress 'M\ years before the birth of thenotorious fallen woman of Montreal. This calumny long drawn out was, in its new shape, first published on October 1 1, 1 s:i.">, in a vile muck-rake news-sheet in New York called the Protistant Vindicator — a paper which was as great a disgrace to the decent journalism of the period as are, at the present day, those organs of the Orange Society, the I ictnnan Standard, of Melbourne, and the Protestant Jianner, of Sydney. Three months later, in January, IH3G, the story appeared in pamphlet form. As Hoyte and his fellow-reprobates had anticipated, the publication of tin tensational tale created great excitement. The pamphlet had an enormous sale. The conspirators' pockets were well lined with the proceeds of their infamous swindle. They subsequently wrangled over the spoils, and two of them admitted the falsehool of the

whole story. It, however, suits the purpose alike of the prurient who revel in a filthy tale for its own sake, and of the happily diminishing number of blind and unreasoning bigots who would not believe good of Catholics were even the God of Truth to confirm it by special revelation. To these two classes the Slattery's appeal for the shekels which, as Truth points out, are the whole and sole object of their wandering crusade of slander. The lewd will relish their calumnies irrespective of their truth. As to the blind — the Slatterys can only make them a little more blind.