Both the civil and the religious governments which they had were the best for the people.  But what was suited to Massachusetts would not be fit for England or France.  See how our government has insensibly drifted towards a strong central power.  What must be the future necessities of such great cities as New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago,—­where even now self-government is a failure, and the real government is in the hands of rings of politicians, backed by foreign immigrants and a lawless democracy?  Will the wise, the virtuous, and the rich put up forever with such misrule as these cities have had, especially since the Civil War?  And even if other institutions should gradually be changed, to which we now cling with patriotic zeal, it may be for the better and not the worse.  Those institutions are the best which best preserve the morals and liberties of the people; and such institutions will gradually arise as the country needs, unless there shall be a general shipwreck of laws, morals, and faith, which I do not believe will come.  It is for the preservation of these laws, morals, and doctrines that all governments are held responsible.  A change in the government is nothing; a decline of morals and faith is everything.

I make these remarks in order that we may see that the rise of a great central power in the hands of the Bishop of Rome, in the fifth century, may have been a great public benefit, perhaps a necessity.  It became corrupt; it forgot its mission.  Then it was attacked by Luther.  It ceased to rule England and a part of Germany and other countries where there were higher public morals and a purer religious faith.  Some fear that the rule of the Roman Church will be re-established in this country.  Never,—­only its religion.  The Catholic Church may plant her prelates in every great city, and the whole country may be regarded by them as missionary ground for the re-establishment of the papal polity.  But the moment this polity raises its head and becomes arrogant, and seeks to subvert the other established institutions of the country or prevent the use of the Bible in schools, it will be struck down, even as the Jesuits were once banished from France and Spain.  Its religion will remain,—­may gain new adherents, become the religion of vast multitudes.  But it is not the faith which the Roman Catholic Church professes to conserve which I fear.  That is very much like that of Protestants, in the main.  It is the institutions, the polity, the government of that Church which I speak of, with its questionable means to gain power, its opposition to the free circulation of the Bible, its interference with popular education, its prelatical assumptions, its professed allegiance to a foreign potentate, though as wise and beneficent as Pio Nono or the reigning Pope.