Most of the Catholics are poor, and they have no chance of taking a part in the government unless it be open to all the citizens.
They constitute a minority, and all rights must be respected in order to insure to them the free exercise of their own privileges.

These two causes induce them, unconsciously, to adopt political doctrines, which they would perhaps support with less zeal if they were rich and preponderant.
The Catholic clergy of the United States has never attempted to oppose this political tendency, but it seeks rather to justify its results.

The priests in America have divided the intellectual world into two parts: in the one they place the doctrines of revealed religion, which command their assent; in the other they leave those truths which they believe to have been freely left open to the researches of political inquiry.
Thus the Catholics of the United States are at the same time the most faithful believers and the most zealous citizens.
It may be asserted that in the United States no religious doctrine displays the slightest hostility to democratic and republican institutions.

The clergy of all the different sects hold the same language, their opinions are consonant to the laws, and the human intellect flows onwards in one sole current.
I happened to be staying in one of the largest towns in the Union, when I was invited to attend a public meeting which had been called for the purpose of assisting the Poles, and of sending them supplies of arms and money.

I found two or three thousand persons collected in a vast hall which had been prepared to receive them.