Daily National Intelligencer

Purged from the foul sin and pollution of tolerating "the black calumnies which the reformation for these three hundred years back has contrived against the mother church." No! he would strike the axe to the root, and hew down the tree of evil-tasted fruit. No! he would grind to powder the "sowed serpents' teeth." and melt to liquid the "iron-harvest," and pour it burning on the soil of its growth, to scald away its life, and lustrate it of its poison! No more "anecdotes"-no more "calumnies" --no more "sneers"-no more "criticisms." should be heard against the holy Catholic Church! They all should be swept away by the besom of oblivion, and even pious Catholics would forget they had ever been—and, again unrestrained, they might turn earth into hell, and mock the divinity of Heaven to absolve its crimes! Such would be the conclusion of the American people, from the style and matter of the remarks in the National Intelligencer of the 12th inst. I do not say they should be considered as an evidence of what the whole Catholic character is; nay, I do hope it is not. But the application I will neither make nor restrain. But as to the production alluded to, it seems to have been written in the full frenzy of irritated feeling. It aims at wit, but its premature zeal has blunted its edge-it emits an excrescence that resembles the "cacoethes scribendi!"—but it is a crude matter so indelicately nauseous, that it disgusts public sensibility. The benevolence of the writer, if he had any, was forgotten in his malicious christian fury against Protestants. Not content to set down the Protestants as mere misguided creatures, he makes them say and do more things than even a common imagination can think of. He must surely have a Catholic canon book of calumnies, to have been able to cram so many into the mouths of the Protestants And if the itch for calumny is so violent in his blood, that he must be scratching, let him not remain here to be severely mercurialized and anointed for the contagion. —Let him leave this vile Protestant country, and not expose himself to the terror of the government, in exerting his benevolent mind to do away this vile and rotten reformation. Let him go to Catholic Italy or Catholic Spain, where he will have no calumnies, where he will have full freedom of conscience and of person. and where his eyes and ears will not be affected by cries and figures from the tortures of the rack and the horrors of the Inquisition—unless, forsooth, he happens not to close them. But above all, he had better not expose himself to the vile Protestant public in this country-a public notoriously given to slander—a public that uses the most "ignoble engine" to facilitate its base designs; or else, perhaps, he will sink into the grave so blackened by slander, that his Catholic brethren will not own him, and refuse to give him a posthumous absolution, and that would certainly be important to him-for, at the rate he judges of others, he will certainly need it for himself. But, as has been observed. his essay affords the best comment upon itself; for what is a more convincing proof of its absurdity and folly, than its being an appeal to a Protestant public for the truth of Protestant corruption and baseness? Or, was it necessary to convince the Catholics? If so. there is no surer evidence of the uncommon virulence of the writer, than that his own brethren do not agree with him. But if unnecessary to convert Catholics to his opinion, then he must believe they are as uncharitable as himself, and need no change! Unhappy man! unpleasant alternative! But how preposterous to appeal to Protestants! What? to a people whose religious faith he has declared rotten and corrupt at the bottom! Who love "calumny!" Who have uniformly rejected the infallible truths of the "mother church!" What? to appeal to those of whom he has expressed the most degraded and contemptuous opinions! How amazingly generous! How wonderfully modest! Yet taking it by his rule perhaps it is politic. hoping that out of so many who were ignorant and corrupt among the Protestants, he might at least find some, influenced in different ways, ignorant and corrupt enough to apostatize in favor of his sentiments, Oh, most christian! most charitable writer-to have the bold impudence to ask an American public to confess, by submitting to his attack; it is ignorant and corrupt in "the decaying and ruinous fabric" of its religious opinions-to confess it has invented calumny and propagated idle stories, to destroy a religion it has tolerated by its constitution; and which it continues to tolerate with an appropriate and liberal feeling of forbearance. But what is the religion this most christian, most gracious writer attacks? I will tell him. It is the "religion of our most glorious era!" The partner of our revolution; the faith of our noblest patriot; the religion of our convention of seventeen hundred and eighty seven; the religion which has granted and guaranteed to the Catholics the free and unmolested exercise of conscience! Yet it is "corrupt," most horribly "corrupt." It protects him--yet it is illiberal! Of the thousand calumnies and persecutions with which England has followed the unfortunate Catholics of Ireland. not one has been justified here; nay, they have been denounced not only as unjust, but as unnatural and illegal. To the unoffending Irish, the constitution of our rights has opened the bosom of our country. The Catholic exile, however friendless. finds a shelter and repose. No odious disqualifications have made his religion a pander to his ambition! He may be our hero in the army, and we would wreathe his brow with the laurel of honor if living, or, if dead, entomb his memory with the tear of regret! In the Cabinet, we will never deny his merit admittance; or, in the Senate, his wisdom its appropriate applause. In private life he may make himself respected and beloved; and in public employment he may rise to emolument, honor and fame! But let him not expect to see the Catholic who violates the obligation which tolerance imposes to be encouraged in degrading the religion to which he owes more, in this country, than to all the Popes, from the first to the present-and all the Catholic churches from Italy to India. No! he will not be encouraged! but suffered "to remain as a monument of safety," with which bigotted "opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it."

"Murus aheneus conscientia sana."

TULLY.

The Editors hope it is not necessary to say, that the tenor of the above article is such as makes them reluctantly consent to its publication, even by way of replication. They see their error in ever having admitted a communication on religious doctrinal points into their columns; and, so long as they preserve their senses, nothing of that description shall hereafter appear to provoke to action the most uncharitable feelings that belong to human nature.