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% Journal griiotci) to lljc Interests of tbe Catljoltc Cljurd) in tlje Confeierate states. 44 M1 TT Id GIAD TIT M TUIT M I N VAGI NA M E T I>E U S PACTS KR 1 T TIdCU M. ’ ’ VOL. I. <the pacificator: A JOURNAL DEVOTED TO THE INTERESTS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THK CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA. And containing, in addition to Catholic intelligence front all parts of the world, Tiilcv, Poetry, (Jenoral News, and Miscel laneous Articles. Published every Saturday Morning • f/ fiia.y AT THK FOLLOWING IIATKS : One Copy One Year - - sl-5 00 (too Copy Six Months - - - SOO *,*ne Copy Three jjlonths - * 500 Single Copies - - - - - 050 A liberal discount made to the Trade. WALSH & KlsO^iE, Editors and Pibli.siikrs. ADVERTISING RATES. Transient Advertisements, Five Dollars per Square of Ton Lines. X liberal deduction will be made to those who advertise by the month.' • An Address to the People of tie United States in Behalf of Peace. BY A CATHOLIC DIVINE. Fdlow Christians and Friends : I take up my argument with you where i left it at my last communica tion. 1 proved to you that the war, on -your side, was unjust, upon all the principles of sound theology and juris prudence. This is, indeed, the chief consideration in reference te war. But, were the war as just and equitable as it is unjust and iniquitous, we have another important view to take in this matter, in connection with the second purt of my theme: An decentf Is it becoming ? Is the war in accordance with propriety and decency, even if it were not reprobated by justice ? __ «*ency and propriety are "‘essentially distinct from justice. Thus, in the well-known parable of our Lord, the man who had been forgiven the enor mous sum of ten -thousand talents had certainly a strict right of justice to the few pence that his lellow-servant owed him ; but decency and propriety re quired hint not to urge his claim of a ievr pence, when he had been forgiven *o great a sum. Thus, also, the adul terers whs brought the guilty woman to our Lord, felt that decency and pro priety did not allow them to cast the first stone at her, and they wentaway. # I will begin with the name you give to the Southern people, who defend their rights by force of arms. Yo.u call them Rebes s. Is it not. in yon, an open breach of all decency and propriety to call them so ? How un fortunate is the selection of the name on your part! You have made it your business, from the beginning of you* existence as a nation, to encourage, to promote, to exsite, and when this was out of your power, at least to praise, admire, and almost deify ail rebels, true rebels, in all countries. That name of rebel was sweet music in the ears of all the people, save a small portion of sober, judicious persons; and now, forgetting all your former principles and theories, you brand with this name of rebels the Southern peo ple, as if guilty of a most heinous crime, How-comes this sudden change :>f ideas and convictions ? A wonder ful emuxrsirm indeed has been operated in you; yesterday, rebellion was a noble deed, the test of patriotism, was an exalted virtue, was everything that is beautiful; and, to-day, it is a crime, a meanness, an infamy, to be put down by lire and sword. Remember the evations you gave to LaFayette some forty years ago. lie was a "rebel, an arch-rebel, having pulled down, or rather aided in pulling down, a govern ment, net of 80, but of niGre than 800 rears standing; and so deeply rooted was rebellion in his heart, that, in 3830, he was also most efficient in a rebellion that broke the Government es .Charles X, of France, a government formed and sanctioned bv the solemn approbation of all Europe. You have not forgotten the wave of approbation of that rebellion of 1830, which rolled from one end of the country to the i other. Kossuth was another rebel who did all he could to make bis rebellion succeed, but in vain. Ido you not i praise him, exalt him to the skies, and compensate him by all sorts of civic demonstrations for his failure? Re-, member Lopez, too, who lost his life by the garotte in Cuba, and under went the fate of a felon by the hands of the hangman. Had he not obtained all his men from this country, the native soil of rebellion, revolution, freebooting and filibustering ? and was not all possible encouragement given to him by the press and the public opinion in this country, so weakly op posed by the official acts of authority that they were scarcely anything above a nonentity. And about Garibaldi; he lias offered his services to you ; you would have willingly accepted them, if untoward circumstances had not prevented it. Can there be a rebel in the more true and literal acceptation of the word, than a man who invaded, with an armed force, a peaceable ter ritory, and overthrew the existing gov ernment, without the remotest shadow even of a pretext ? Sti 11, he was eulo gized and praised as a great man, be cause he succeeded at least in one re bellion, having failed in others. How can, then, the people of the United States, with any show of decency and propriety, assail and pursue, with so much rage and such relentless revenge, a so-called rebellion which is really no rebellion at all, and is ouly the legiti mate exercise of powers not forbidden ’by the Constitution, and admitted as valid by at least some of the wisest heads of the country? Why, now, my friends, hate rebellion so much, when you halt: been all the time applauding to the echo at all real rebellions? Why now pursue, with such implac able rage, acts incomparably and un questionably more innocent than those of LaFayette, Lopez, Kossuth and Gar ibaldi, which have obtained your un bounded applause, received your warmest congratulations, and enlisted your most sincere sympathies? All! tied punishes you with the very tiling that has been tin object of your re "peated sins. God wishes to show to the world the emptiness, the hypocrisy, the treachery of the support you have always given to real and unwarrant able rebellions. Here, then, we find in your way of acting, the verification of what the Prophet says: “Iniquity lias lied to itself.” God chastises you with the rod which you loved so much, which you praised so highly, which you extolled as the nec plus ultra of houor and glory, and you repine, you murmur, you fall into paroxysms of rage, you shod torrents of blood. O. the folly! O, the inconsistency of man ! So much for the name of rebel. It is very unbecoming in you to give mch an appellation to Southern soldiers; but let us pass from the name to the rSality. They are rebels, you say, and against whom ? The name of rebel is a patent absurdity in a Republic; {he people are sovereign. Can a man lea rebel against himself? the peo | pie rebelling against themselves ? This is a contradiction in terms. But you mean rebellion against the Union. But they, themselves, formed the Union, and they cannot have rebelled against the Union without having re belled against themselves. The word rebel has, therefore, no meaning, unless you say that the South has rebelled against the North. But here again the folly and absurdity of the expression shows itself in all its strength; the South owed no allegiance to the North. Georgia owes nothing to Massachu setts; Virginia owes nothing to New York. A claim of Massachusetts and New York over Georgia and Virginia is something which has not even been thought of, and is too futile to need a serious confutation. But, admitting they arc rebels, is it not against all decency and propriety, in you, to at tack and fight them with such viru lence—you who are also rebels, but far worse rebels than they are ? What are the United States, but a successful rebellion against Great Britain? The bonds that united the colonies to Great Britain were incomparably stronger, and of longer date, and of more re spectable standing than those which united Georgia and Virginia to Massa chusetts and New York. The colonies owed allegiance to the Crown ; there could not he a shadow of doubt about it; they had received from the Crown the very charter that made them col onies : their officers held their power from the Crown; and that state of things had lasted for Massachusetts AUGUSTA, GA., OCTOBER 15, 1861 and Virginia, and many other colonies, more than a hundred years. Compare these bonds with those that united the States together. Virginia had re ceived nothing from Massachusetts. Georgia owes no allegiance to New York ; they had formed a voluntary Union ip which all the parties had equal rights, and no one party could claim superiority or dominion over the other. The Union lasted, as an experi ment, for a little more than eighty years I ask you, then, with what decency can you maintain that you were right in rebelling against Great Britain and severing your union with her, and that the South was wrong iu abjuring a short-lived Union, made of compara tively very loose and very brittle bands? I now, likewise, make a comparison between the wrongs complained of in both cases. The colonies complained that they were taxed without their ■consent. This was the original griev ance. But it is a mere peccadilo, when placed before what the South com plained of: The Fugitive Slave Law, torn up by you, in the face of the Union; their servants, possessed by lawful titles, taken away from them ; and the beginning of an armed coali tion to free all slaves, and put arms into their hands in order to kill their masters. As to the wrongs of which the Declaration of Independence makes a long recital, and which were the consequence of the first wrong al ready mentioned, they do not weigh a feather in the scale, compared with the wrongs to which the Southern people have been subjected from the begin ning of this unnatural struggle ; their territory invaded; their servants en ticed and seized forcibly; their ports closed; murder, arson, pillage, and devastation, in every fiendish and hellish shape, inaugurated every where; and streams of human blood reddening the soil of every State that claimed its inalienable rights. Hence, it is a perfect enigma for the people of Europe that the United States, born of rebellion scarcely excusable, should now devote all their power, energy and strength, in blood and money, to stifle a so-called rebellion, incomparably more excusable in itself, and pro voked by incomparably greater in juries. How can you, in decency and pro priety, ask the Southern people to go back to the Union with you? If the reasons that have been the first cause of the war were as futile as they are strong, even then you can not now in sist upon Union any more. There is now an inseparable stream of blood be tween the two sections of the country; you have robbed them, made them exiles and prisoners, snatched their servants from them, made a vast num ber of widows and orphans over the land, and filled every place with blood. Are these claims to another Union? Good sense spurns the very idea of it; the plainest notions of propriety loudly declare that such antagonistic elements cannot be united again. It is supreme ly shocking and revolting in you to solicit the hand and alliance of those whose fathers, brothers, and sons you have butchered! Put then an end to a war which is so absurd, so unbecoming, so unnatural, and which decency alone requires you to stop, if justice did not command it imperiously. Cease to call our people •Rebels; having made yourselves the champions aftd advocates of all rebel lions. llow indecorous is this word in your mouth ! You. born of rebellion ! Remember the apologue: “ You walk very crookedly,” said mother Crab to her young ones. “ Oh! ma! look at yourself.” Cease to aim at the subju gation and extermination of your for mer associates. The present revolution is the legitimate child of that of 1776. How revolting, is it not, to see a moth er seeking to destroy her own offspring? How insane, is it not, to find fault with Those who follow your own example, find walk on the very same road upon fivhich you stand? If you wish the South to return to you, begin then to recant all your false theories of revolu tion, independence, freedom and radi calism ; go back to the Union you had with Great Britain. She will receive you yet as a prodigal child ; then turn anew leaf altogether—be now steady and inflexible in putting down all at tempts at upsotting the powers that be; preach obedience, submission, re spect lor authority; proclaim, every where, that you arc sorry for your past errors, so as to repair the scandal you have given to the world by your alli ance with Jacobins, Sans-culottes, Car bonairs, etc., etc. But I hear you telling me, we are tin; best Government in the world ; re hellion against other governments is good, but against ours is bad. A nice {distinction. indeed! A curious dis crimination! Much like the principle iif swindlers, that it is right for them to swindle others, but outrageous to be swindled by any body. But I wish to examine a little this assertion of yours which you have repeated to satiety: We are the best Government in the world. If boasting, indeed, could give the qualifications you boast of, it would be for you a secure possession ; for you have been boasting about it long enough and loud enough, perhaps, to make fools believe it. But remember, that in boasting you are second to none, except perhaps to the Chinese, among whom it would be worse than heresy to say that China is not the first nation in the world. There is a class of persons that have been exceedingly loud and obstreporous about this supposed ex cellence of the American Government, and its fancied pre-eminence over all other modes of political union. The outlaws, banditti, sans-culottes, and Jacobins, of all countries, have been unanimous in this assertion, and, in deed, the Government of America is the one that will decidedly suit best malefactors of all sorts, for impunity s cheaper in America than in any part of the world. Murder, swindling, injus tice and frauds of all sorts, licentious ness in all its hideous excesses, can pretty easily escape detection, glide, away unnoticed, and, with bails arid other subterfuges, elude punishment. The use of revolvers and other such nice pieces of personal and gentle manly accoutrement, has become so common in your streets, that it is scarcely a matter of curiosity and ex citement. If it be this that constitutes the best Government in the world, then you have it; but I pray you, keep it for yourselves, and may God preserve your neighbors' from this, the best of Gov ernments ! Good sense tells everybody that the great objects of Government arc to protect the life, property, honor and other possessions of citizens from un just aggression'. The best Government is that which gives the greatest securi ty to those possessions ; the worse Go vernment is that in which a citizen is not adequately protected, and is at the mercy of violent and unjust aggres sors." The best Government is that iu which public officers discharge their duty faithfully and conscientiously, so as "to maintain order every where. Electioneering is a poor way of secur ing these competent arul faithful and conscientious officers. Electioneering shows very well those who are anxious for the office, but does not show those who are qualified for it. To ascertain, then, where is the best Government, we must ask those who have lived under different Governments to inquire where good and honest peo- ple find a greater security and protec tion for their life, their property and other possessions. Those who have lived in Canada, or England, or France, will, I believe, tell you that life and property are far more secure in those countries than in the United States, and, if they are sincere and upright, they will, I think, tell you that the ingredient which predominates in the United States is a certain liberty or freedom of doing wrong, which is no liberty at all. but licentiousness, and is totally different from true lib erty ; as the Scripture says, “ tan guam liberi non habentes malitise vela men libertatem,” “as free, and not as making liberty a cloak for malice.”— 1 Pet. The goodness of a Government shows itself by its permanence and stability. The Government of Englantl has now lasted for several centuries; if we reckon from the Norman conquest, it has lasted !more than eight hundred years. The Government of France, before it was destroyed by the dissemi nation of the principles which formed the U. S. Government, had lasted much longer. The Government of other countries of Europe had lasted, even in the worse cases, several centuries The Government of the Turks.althongh NO. I ! tottering now and upheld by adventi | tiotts stays, still has lasted more than j four hundred years, from the time that Constantinople 101 l into their hands. T\ hat a strange contrast with the best Government in the world! That Lest of Governments could not last one hun dred years ; it could not last the natu ral life of many aged persons. Some have lived to see the birth and burial of the Union. That Union has coinfe to an end, not from extrinsic causes of ruin, but from internal causes of decay; not from external attacks, but from in ternal dissensions. It must then have been*rotten from the beginning: and a very accelerated decay it must have been, or the galloping consumption. The present war lays bare the weak ness and the inadequacy of the Ameri can Constitution ; it did not say where the ultimate sovereign power resided, anfl therefore it had in its very birth an efficacious and powerful germ of dissolution ; what has happened proves it. The Constitution did not say what mode of redress the several States had, in case their interests were slighted or assailed. It did not say what mode should bo pursued against contuma cious States. It has left the decision of these important points to the coun sels of party spirit, supported by can non and bayonets. Such, in general, is the nature of paper Constitutions made beforehand in advance of events. From the time that the old Government of France was upset, there have been some dozens of Constitutions, all assert ed to bo sacred and inviolable, and all violated and trampled under foot a short while after their birth. So much then on the Lest Govern ment in the world. The present war goes far to show that it is a far greater approximation to the truth to say that it is the worse Government in the world. The aets of tyranny and barbarity that have been sanctioned by the public authority, and the assumption of all kinds of powers by unscrupulous and jicrogant officers, place that assertion In a very clear light. It lias been con troverted among ancients and moderns which is the best form of Government, the Monarchical, the Aristocratic,or the Democratic. Aristotle has discussed' that question, and so have subsequent logicians and moralists. The downfall of the great Western Republic, to gether with the horrors that have ac companied it, will supply the advocates of monarchical superiority with anew argument which it will ,be very hard to confute. In our view, the goodness of ;i Government does not depend very materially on its form, whether Monar chical,or Representative,or Democratic. It depends chiefly on the morality of the people ; and, alas 1 that element is sadly deficient in many places. God grant that it be not more deficient in tlie United States than in other parts of the world ! To return to our origi nal question—my friends, you of the North say your Government is the best in the world. The South tells you to keep it for yourselves, if you find it so, But they find it the worsjjj Government in the world for them, because it al lowed you to trample with impunity on the laws of the Union, and to rob the South of its servants, and to monopolize the best commercial and pecuniary in terests of the country, to their great detriment and annoyance. All these your Government the very wnrsp in the world for them. Charity begins at home. You must al low your neighbors to practice a prin ciple which you admit with them. People wish to be saved from th ■ consequences of their vices, but not from their vices. To the child, every bit of wood is a gilded flower rod, on which fancy can bud hundred-leaved roses. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee calls Sheridan’s I army “ Harper’s Weekly,” because it | reaches Harper’s Ferry once a week. J Mrs. Partington wants to know why Captains don’t have their ships properly i nailed while in port, instead of waiting i to tack them up at sea. ; In the gardens of a certain noble j man’s country house, there happened ! to be fixed up, at different spots, paint j ed hoards with the request, “Please ; not to pluck the flowers without leave.” ; Some wag got a paint brush, and add ed an s to the last word.