There came a period, even in the career of his immediate successor, when liberty itself seemed but a feeble sapling which a strong wind of stupid bigotry might avail to root out and cast away; while the chronicle of Bishop Fitzpatrick's episcopate contains the record of convents invaded under forms of law, and of both convents and churches sacked and burned by "Native American" mobs, who were secure of their immunity from punishment.

Such outrages, witnessed by the second and third Bishops of Boston, and the incessant conflict to which they were compelled with the bigotry which caused them and which protected their perpetrators, predisposed both them and their clergy to a distrustful attitude toward converts like Brownson and Hecker, in whom American traits of character were very conspicuous.

Dr.Brownson has recorded in _The Convert,_ p.

374, the fact that his entrance into the Church was delayed for months by his fear of explaining to Bishop Fitzpatrick the precise road by which he had approached it.

He says: "I really thought that I had made some philosophical discoveries which would be of value even to Catholic theologians in convincing and converting unbelievers, and I dreaded to have them rejected by the Catholic bishop.