[From the Knoxville Whig.]

TO STEPHEN TRIBBLE.

VILLAINOUS SIR:--Letters from my friends in the West inform me that you are making a full team in the service of the Devil, Locofocoism, and crime, in portions of Missouri and Kentucky! You have recently held forth in Charleston, a pleasant post-village, the capital of Mississippi county, Missouri, about six miles south-west of the "Father of Waters!"

In that town you undertook to inform the good people, the Circuit Judge being present, _who I am_, and to demonstrate that I am not ent.i.tled to credit in any thing I say! You claimed to have once lived in East Tennessee--to know the people and the country--and to have known William T. Senter and James Y. Crawford, two other Methodist preachers, whose _pedigrees_ you pretend to give!

Mr. Senter was an able man--a moral and upright man--and a Whig Representative in Congress, from the District you represented _in the jail of Sullivan county_, for a long time previous to your being _branded in the hand and on the cheeks_, for MANSLAUGHTER, the particulars of which I will remind you of before I close this familiar letter! Mr. Senter could have gone to Congress longer, but voluntarily retired. Mr. Crawford was a brother-in-law to Mr. Senter, and was a preacher of respectable talents, and in good standing in his Church.

They are both in their graves, beyond the reach of your malice, where the sound of your infamous voice, and the words of your lying tongue, can never penetrate their ears! But I am still above ground, daily kicking, and making war upon the Locofoco Paupers and Foreign Catholics, as well as Native Traitors, with whom you are a.s.sociated, and with whom you act in politics. I acknowledge myself to be game for you to hunt down!

You are now a _Campbellite preacher_ as well as a _Sag Nicht Missionary_; and the garb of religion you wear, gives a degree of weight to your falsehoods and slanders, among strangers, that they otherwise would not have. The idea of "_Stev Tribble_," who ingloriously fled from this country for crimes he could not meet in open court, being a preacher, and itinerating through the West, "in search of the lost sheep of the house of Israel," is so ridiculous, as scarcely to be believed at all, although there is no doubt but what he has been regularly installed in Kentucky, and now has the "care of souls."

Why, you unmitigated old villain, your whole career, from your "youth up," has been one of crime and revolting blackguardism. While a boy and a young man, where Hoss's school was taught in Washington county, your vulgar conversation, immoral practices, indecent habits, and blackguardism, disgusted the entire neighborhood, and rendered you so odious that no decent family would board you! All the waters of the far-famed _Jordan_, in the palmiest days of that bold stream, were not sufficient to wash your sins away! If the Lord Bishop of London were to _immerse_ you as often as "seventy times seven," in the waters of "bold Jordan," and in the name of the holy Trinity, you would still remain what you were when you fled from this country to avoid the extreme penalty of the law--one of the greatest scoundrels for whom Christ died!

Yourself and half-brother _Havron_ were confined in Blountville Jail, for the murder of _William Humphreys_, a promising young man, whom you brutally a.s.saulted and murdered in open daylight in the streets of Kingsport, in Sullivan county, and without provocation! _You_ were tried and convicted of _manslaughter_, and branded in the _hand_ and on the _cheek_. After being branded, you _bit the letters out of your hand_, and _clawed them out of your face_, but the _scars_ are to be seen in both. Indeed, I have been written to, to know why these scars are on your face! I take this method of answering those inquiries; and publishing them in my "Whig," which has a circulation of 5,000, and our "Campaigner," which circulates 7,000 copies, I shall be able to introduce you to as many persons as may have heard you preach my funeral.

While in the Blountville Jail, with your half-brother, Havron, whose blow killed Humphreys, after you had weakened him, you caught hold of the jailor, Montgomery Irvin, and held him in a scuffle, when he entered the room with your dinner, until Havron made his escape. Havron would have pulled hemp, had he not escaped; and had our penitentiary system existed at that time, you would have been sentenced for life! But you would not have remained there longer than the past summer, as we have a Governor who pardons out all such men, and has more sympathies for them than any other Executive Officer in the nation. You have a half-brother who is a Sag Nicht member of our Legislature, and a great friend and supporter of our Governor and his foreign a.s.sociates, and he could have turned you out and procured for you an office if you had remained. But then you followed the teachings of "the spirit" of Sag Nichtism, in leaving between two days, and emigrating to Kentucky, as many precious souls would never have "heard the word," or had their sin washed away, but for you!

In an unmentionable and disgraceful enterprise, you became possessed of a _broken leg_, and were mean enough to abscond without paying the bill of your physician, Dr. Patton, whose unremitting attention saved you from your grave, and from the clutches of the Devil, sooner than the old fellow was prepared for your reception! If you had the honor of a first cla.s.s thief, you would pay this medical bill out of the proceeds of the first public collection you take up, either in Missouri or Kentucky. And if you suffer it to go unpaid until your infinitely infernal career is wound up, the Day of Judgment will disclose the manner of your breaking your leg! If I were you, I would sooner pay this bill now, than to be asked in the great day how my leg was broken!

Disgraced as you are, unprincipled and villainous, you have gone into Kentucky, taken upon yourself "holy orders," and married a wife, imposing most shamefully upon the family into which you married. The woman you have thus imposed upon, would be justifiable now, in the eyes of both G.o.d and man, in forsaking you and applying for a divorce. And no court or jury would refuse her application, when made acquainted with your character.

It is a remarkable fact--one that I desire to call, not so much to your notice, as to the notice of the public generally--that while all the members of this Foreign Democratic party are by no means villains, dest.i.tute of principle; yet, all the a.s.sa.s.sins, cut-throats, thieves, and hypocrites in the country have crowded into the ranks of that party!

Fawned upon, fostered and pampered by the villainous leaders, demagogues, and tricksters of the party, who need the services of all such scavengers, you are encouraged to act with them. These leaders, who are really no better than you are, _generously_ admit you to a fellowship, and _courteously_ acknowledge all such abandoned rascals to be their equals! Such men, to a great extent, now const.i.tute the free-democracy of the country--they desecrate the ballot-box--disgust decent men wherever they come in contact with them--blaspheme the name of G.o.d--and swear that they will either rule or ruin the country!

But, Sir, it was said of a certain man in the Scriptures, that he was a "sinner above all the sinners that dwell in Jerusalem." So it may in perfect truth be said of you, that you are a scoundrel above all the scoundrels in the hateful ranks of Sag Nichtism. You deserve, for your depraved course of life, a greater punishment than you have received or are likely to receive in this life. The guilt of foul calumny, of the most black and odious kind, attaches to every sentence uttered by your lying tongue. Guilt, the offspring of fiend-like malice, shamefully false, deeply corrupt, and badly matured: perfidy, dishonesty, and rank poison--hot incense of murder, theft, inhuman spoliation, and deep, dark forebodings of d.a.m.nation have been rooted and grounded in your heart, for lo! these many years! Dark despair, endless death, inexpressible misery, manifold, and worse than death, follow in the ghastly train of your crimes, and riot in your corrupt bosom, as with infernal drunkenness of delight! The record of your deep depravity, of your utter want of principle, and of your ten thousand villainous exploits, is _stereotyped_ upon the burning sands of eternity, and stamped on the imperishable walls of the _rotunda_ of the Devil's h.e.l.l, to which you are driving at railroad speed! In upper East Tennessee, where you are known, it would disgrace an _Algerine Bandit_ to sit and hear you pretend to preach! _You_ pretend to preach Christ and him crucified, and _immerse_ persons in the name of the Trinity! Shrouded in the _sackcloth and ashes_ of disgrace, enclosed in a _vault_ filled to the brim with _buried and putrefied venality_, and steeped to the very nose and chin in crime, how dare you attempt to preach!

I repeat, you vile slanderer of the living and the dead, that, in justice to the cause of G.o.d and of civilization, I will keep spread the unfurled banner of your infamy on every breeze, and cause it to float in the atmosphere of every State in this Union, until your very _name_ becomes a mockery and a by-word! And I call upon the people of Kentucky and Missouri to ring the loud knell of your infamy, from steep to steep, and from valley to valley, until their swelling sounds are heard in startling echoes, mingling with the rush of the criminal's torrent, and the mighty cataract's earthquake-voice!

W. G. BROWNLOW,

_Editor of the Knoxville Whig._

June 7th, 1856.

AN EXPOSE OF ROMAN CATHOLICISM.

The following articles, setting forth the DESIGNS and TENDENCY of Romanism in the United States, appeared in the "KNOXVILLE WHIG" of May and June, 1856, and will speak for themselves. The writer has opposed the Papal Hierarchy for twenty years; and in a series of articles, now filed in a number of the "JONESBOROUGH WHIG," published _sixteen years ago_, he _predicted_ that the very state of things we are now realizing would come upon us as soon as the year 1860, and that the party calling itself by the revered name of _Democrat_, would identify itself with political Romanism!

THE CATHOLIC QUESTION.--NO. I.

The American Party and the Religious Test--The Louisiana Delegation and the Gallican Catholics--The vote of the Philadelphia Convention to admit the Louisiana Delegates--The American Councils in Louisiana--Catholics proper cannot be true citizens of a Republic.

It is sometimes said by the Anties, that the American party, at their late Philadelphia Convention, dismissed the Catholic Question from their platform, and that they admitted into their Council a Catholic Delegation from Louisiana. We were in that Convention, from the hour of its opening until its final close, and we deny both statements. The fifth and tenth sections of the platform adopted at Philadelphia, and for which we voted, are in the following words, and they express all our platform says upon that subject:

5th. No person should be selected for political station, (whether of native or foreign birth,) who recognizes any allegiance or obligation of any description to any foreign prince, potentate, or power, or who refuses to recognize the Federal and State Const.i.tutions (each within its sphere) as paramount to all other laws, as rules of political action.

10th. Opposition to any union between Church and State; no interference with religious faith or worship, and no tests oaths for office.

The American party was against political Romanism--against all who acknowledge any allegiance to a foreign Prince, Potentate, or Power; or who acknowledge any authority on earth, higher and more binding than the Const.i.tutions of our States, and General Government. And those who are familiar with the temporal a.s.sumptions of Popery, and the political intrigues of the Order of Jesuits, can have no other feelings than those of disgust, upon hearing the Locofoco demagogues of the country cry out against the American party for their opposition to the poor Catholics!

Against Popes confined to _Rome_, we make no war; but against Popes usurping civil and spiritual authority, in America, we protest most solemnly, and intend to make war, unrelenting and unceasing war!

The Louisiana Delegation, five in number, were _two_ Methodist--_one_ Old School Presbyterian--one Episcopalian--and the other, Mr. Eustes, a member of Congress, not a member of any Church. Those gentlemen presented their credentials for admission, and they were objected to, because Roman Catholics were admitted into the Order by the Louisiana State Council. A warm debate ensued, on a motion to admit the Delegation, on their credentials, which finally prevailed, by yeas 67, nays 50, many of the members having left for their lodgings, because of the lateness of the hour, and of their fatigue. _We_ were in favor of their admission, and so was Mr. Nelson, of East Tennessee, and we both claim to be _ultra_ Protestant, if the reader please.

The "Catholicism" of Louisiana, we wish it borne in mind--that is the Gallican wing of the Church--is a very different species of "Catholicism" from that of our Irish and German Hierarchy taught in this country, under the training of Archbishop Hughes and Monseigneur Bedini, the Pope's villainous Nuncio. The French Gallican Church has so little respect for the Pope of Rome, that when the King of Sardinia was in Paris, less than twelve months ago, though he was under the interdict of a Papal Bull of excommunication from Pius IX., the Gallican Archbishops of Pius, and other Priests a.s.sociated with them, visited him regularly, and tendered him unbounded courtesies and honors. The Gallican wing of the Catholic Church of France is liberal, as well as hostile to the insulting claims and pretensions of the Pope. But it is diluted still more with liberality, and with opposition to these claims of the Pope, among the French Creoles of Louisiana. Most of them, though Roman Catholics by name, from being educated in the forms of the Roman Church, have just about as much respect for Rome, and confidence in the Pope, as we have, and G.o.d knows that is very little. They denounce Papal Bulls, interdicts, and Nuncios. They throw off all temporal and spiritual allegiance to the Pope--the civil authorities of the United States with them are supreme--they are American born--and hence, our platform does not exclude them, and consequently they were admitted at Philadelphia, or, which is the same, their representatives.

In 1652, under Louis XIV., the Gallican clergy met in Paris, and adopted the following point: "That the Pope has no power, of _Divine right_, to interfere with the temporal affairs of independent States." Thus, the Catholics of Louisiana rejecting the doctrine of the temporal power of the Pope, are not proscribed by the American party. They const.i.tute a sound portion of the American party.

Mr. Lathrop, a Presbyterian Elder, and a Delegate from Louisiana, read to the Convention from the ritual of the subordinate organizations of the American party of Louisiana, and showed that, while it admitted those to membership who professed the Roman Catholic religion, IT REQUIRED OF THEM THE DENIAL OF ALLEGIANCE TO ANY TEMPORAL AUTHORITY NOT COGNIZABLE IN THE STATE AND UNITED STATES CONSt.i.tUTIONS; and from each secured a pledge, UPON OATH, that they would not divulge the secrets of the Order! He defended the Louisiana Catholics, as being true Americans, recognizing no civil or spiritual power in their Priests, and resisting every attempt, whether by a Bishop or Priest, to interfere with the inst.i.tutions of our country. He cited cases which had occurred in Louisiana, of controversies between the Clergy and Laity, for the control of Church property, and the decisions of courts over which Gallican Catholic Judges presided, in favor of t.i.tles and control vesting in Trustees, the Laity. He showed that the native Catholics of Louisiana were the friends of common schools, and the advocates of popular education. He proclaimed aloud that the native Catholics of his State recognized no persons as proper depositaries of office, who acknowledged an allegiance to any person, civil or ecclesiastical, superior to that of the laws and Const.i.tution of our country. He proclaimed that the Nuncios of the Pope of Rome hated these Louisiana Catholics, with a more perfect hatred than they did the "apostle heretics" called Protestants! This speech was received with unbounded applause, the question was called, and, as we have before stated, it was sanctioned, very properly too, by a vote of 67 to 50!

The American party not only advocate religious toleration, but religious liberty, which is a very different thing. Toleration is not the word in our vocabulary--it does not express enough, because it implies the right to _permit_ or _prohibit_. We contend for LIBERTY, the meaning of which is, that men are not responsible _to each other, to Popes, Bishops, or Priests_, for their religious opinions or practices, and that consequently religion is not a subject of toleration.

The Catholics, proper, have taken an oath of allegiance to the Pope of Rome, a "foreign prince, potentate, and power," and their obligations to him are higher, more sacred, and more binding, than any obligations they can take upon them to support the laws and Const.i.tution of this country. These are the men that we refuse to vote for, or put in office.

They are not and cannot be true Americans. The oaths of the priests bind them to war upon all Protestant sects, and upon all Republican powers of Government. These oaths bind them to the foot of the Papal Throne; and with these oaths upon their souls, they cannot be true citizens of this Republic without perjury. And if guilty of perjury, the State prison should be their residence.

In our next, we shall consider this subject more at length, in connection with the oath of allegiance to our country, and the Catholic evasion of that oath.

THE CATHOLIC QUESTION--No. 2.

Ambiguous terms in swearing--The case of Judge Gaston--Temporal power of the Pope--Catholic authorities in Europe--The spirit of the Catholic press in America!

We are told by the Democratic sympathizers with the Catholics, that all Catholic emigrants to this country take an oath of allegiance to the United States upon becoming naturalized. Yes, they do, and the oath after it is taken, has no more weight with them, than has a regular-built Know Nothing speech.

Here is a paragraph from SANCHEZ, the highest authority in the Catholic Church, Pope Pius only excepted. This writer, "by authority," shows how this oath of allegiance is evaded by a mental reservation:

"It is lawful to use ambiguous terms to give the impression a different sense from that which you understand yourself. A person may take an oath that he has not done such a thing, though in fact he has, by saying to himself it was not done on a certain day, or before he was born, or by any other similar circ.u.mstances, which gives another meaning to it. This is extremely convenient, and always very just, when necessary to your health, honor or prosperity."

Here, then, we have it from the highest Catholic authority, that Catholics are absolved from all allegiance to this government, because they take the oath of allegiance without committing perjury, by the holy process of a mental reservation--the use of "ambiguous terms," setting forth one thing while they swear another! We have no doubt that Chief Justice TANEY, a devoted Catholic of Baltimore, and now at the head of the Supreme Court of the United States, took his oath of office requiring him to support the Const.i.tution, with this same mental reservation. We have no doubt that those Catholic Judges upon the Federal Bench in several States in the Union, and those Catholic Attorney Generals, appointed to office by Mr. Pierce, so understood their oaths of office, and of allegiance! And the practice of Post-Master General Campbell, a bigoted Catholic, and a member of the order of Jesuits, proves that he so understood his oath to support the Const.i.tution. As true Catholics, they are bound to swear with this mental reservation, because they could not owe allegiance to a government of "heretics," such as they believe ours to be. As Catholics, they are bound to overthrow our Const.i.tution, and aid in the destruction of our government.

It is a matter of history that when the Legislature of North Carolina elected Judge GASTON to the Supreme Bench in that State, he hesitated as to whether he would take the oath or not. And why? He was, although an able man, and in all the private relations of life a most excellent man, a decided and devoted Roman Catholic. This is not all. The oath of a Judge in that State, which is not common in other States, requires the man taking it to avow his belief in the Protestant religion. Judge Gaston asked for a few days to consider--he went instantly to Baltimore, as was believed, to consult the Catholic Bishop, who then resided there--obtained a dispensation, as was supposed--wrote back that he would accept the office--returned, was qualified, and to the day of his death was on the Bench! This affair ill.u.s.trates Romanism. And what Rome was, she is, and always will be. Can Rome change? Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?

Here is what Philopater, an approved Catholic authority of the first grade, says, touching the principle in controversy:

"All theologians and ecclesiastical lawyers affirm that every Christian government, as soon as it openly abandons the _Romish faith_, is instantly degraded from all power and dignity: all the subjects are absolved from the oath of fidelity and obedience which they have taken, and they may and ought, if they have the power, to drive such government from every Christian State, as an apostate, heretic, and deserter from Jesus Christ. This certain and indubitable decision of all the most learned men is perfectly conformed to the most apostolic doctrines."

Our Locofoco advocates of Romanism deny that the Pope lays claim to the supremacy charged by the American party. On this point, we desire that the Catholics may speak for themselves. One of their standard writers, FARRARIS, in his Ecclesiastical Dictionary, a work endorsed by their Council of Bishops and Cardinals, under the article headed "Pope," uses this emphatic and expressive language: