William Brownlow - Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture;

Reverend Sir: – I see a pastoral address of yours, to "Methodist Know-Nothing Preachers," going the rounds of the Locofoco Foreign Sag Nicht papers of the South, occupying from four to six columns, according to the dimensions of the papers copying. I have waded through your learned address, and find it to be one of more ponderous magnitude than the Report made to the British House of Commons, by Lord North, on a subject of far greater interest! And as I am one of the class of men you address, notwithstanding your great advantage over me in point of age and experience; and as no one has made a formal response to your pious warnings , it will not be deemed insolent in me to take you up.

My first acquaintance with you was in 1847, at an Annual Meeting of the Georgia Conference, held in Madison; and although the impressions made upon my mind by you, on that occasion, were any thing but favorable to you, as a man, still, I am capable, as I believe, of doing you justice. I supposed you then to be the rise of sixty years, certainly in your dotage and among the vainest old gentlemen I had ever met with. You obtained leave, as I understand, by your own seeking, to deliver a lecture to the Conference, upon the subject of correctly reading and pronouncing the Scriptures . I was in attendance, and listened to you with all the attention and impartiality I was capable of exercising. I thought it a little presumptuous for any one man to assume to teach more than one hundred able ministers how to read and pronounce the inspired writings; and the more so, when I knew that several of the number were presidents and professors in different male and female colleges, and that many others of them were graduates of the best literary institutions in the South. Still, my apology for you was, that you was a vain old gentleman, and that to listen to you, respectfully, was to obey the Divine teaching of one who has taught us to "bear the infirmities of the weak." Your samples , both of reading and pronunciation, were amusing and novel to me. And so far as I could gather the prevailing sentiment, it was, that to adopt your style would render the reading of the Scriptures perfectly ridiculous.

In your address to "Methodist Know-Nothing Preachers," I discover that you are still the man you were at Madison, in 1847: you have a great deal to say about yourself , and make free use of the personal pronoun I! I advise — I believe — I am satisfied — I will not agree — I warn and caution — I fear, or I apprehend, etc. To parse the different sentences in your partisan harangue syntactically, little else is necessary but to understand the first person singular , and to repeat the rule as often as it occurs: a peculiarity which characterizes every paragraph in your labored address. Beside, the frequent use of the pronouns I , me , my , mine , etc., too frequently occur to be worth estimating. And it will be seen, upon examination, that not merely the verbiage, but the sentiment, is thus egotistic throughout, exhibiting a degree of arrogance and self-importance, only to be met with in a Clerical Locofoco , used by bad men for ignoble purposes. To carry out the idea of your vanity , you say in the winding up of your address:

"And now, brethren, have I or Mr. Wesley hit upon one good reason why you should not have joined the Know-Nothings? If either of us have, then I beseech you to come from among them. If we have not, there is yet another in reserve which, if it does not prevail will show – or prove to my satisfaction at least – that if an angel from heaven were to denounce your order, you would cleave to it still."

Any other man but yourself would, from considerations of modesty , have given John Wesley the preference, in this connection, and come in as second best . But no, you are first in place , and, in your own estimation, in importance likewise, as a religious teacher.

I have no doubt you consider yourself a much greater man than John Wesley ever was; and in proof of this, I need only cite what you have said in reference to Mr. Wesley's opposition to Romanism:

"Even good old John Wesley caught the spirit of the times, and wrote that letter, from which it appears he thought if the Catholics got into power, they would abuse Protestants. What abuse they could have heaped on them, greater than they heaped on Catholics, short of cutting their throats, I cannot conceive."

The only superior you acknowledge is Cardinal Wiseman, a bigoted Roman Catholic, and you seem to knock under to him quite reluctantly, and not without informing the public that you have been a laborious student for forty years, and " a profound thinker ." Here is your praise:

"I have been a pretty severe student for near forty years, and a laborious, if not profound thinker for a long time; but when I compare myself in intellectual stature with that man, I shrink in my own estimation to the insignificance of a mite."

So much by way of noticing vanity. You are a literary and theological star of the first magnitude! You are an encyclopedia of the learning, science, patriotism, and religion of the country! Sir, if you possessed a little more sheep-faced modesty , and could exhibit a little less of lion-headed impudence than you do, you would be a much more useful, not to say successful minister of the New Testament!

Sir, you have taken the field in opposition to Know-Nothingism, professedly through your deep and abiding concern for Christianity, and the interests of Methodism. You say:

"You cannot surely be so weak as to suppose you can crush Romanism by Know-Nothing agencies; but you have almost ruined Methodism by them already.

"Now the ruler of this nation is spoken evil of by your party continually, and therefore, in the judgment of Wesley, I might stand up in the pulpit and defend him."

The truth is, you are influenced alone by partisan political feelings; and occupying a position in a Mississippi College, in the midst of Fire-eating Disunion Progressive Democracy, you desire to please them, rather than serve the interests of your country or Church. To take the stump, or the pulpit, in defence of Frank Pierce and his corrupt administration, would be a pleasant talk to you, who have been, all your life-time, an inveterate Locofoco in politics, and "a profound thinker" in favor of its iniquitous measures and principles. In your early political training, you have been swayed by interest and popular favor, and in most cases at the expense of truth, just as you now are, in your mad vindication of Romanism. A tool for others to work with, till you have found yourself in a condition to use such tools as you yourself have been, you are now a trimmer and weathercock, leading on men of less sense than yourself, to such distinction as interest and ambition may dictate!

Sir, you take the ground, throughout, that there is no danger of Catholics in this country, and that they do not seek to establish their religion. Here is a specimen of your logic:

"Thank God no religious sect can tyrannize over another in this country, so long as they all respect the Federal Constitution. Until we see, then, the Catholics treating that instrument with disrespect, it is madness to entertain fears of them and worse than madness to form combinations against them."

Now, sir, the foregoing statement is untrue, and in making it you could not have been sincere. You are a man of too much sense, and of too much information, to believe what you are wickedly trying to palm upon others. Brownson's Quarterly Review, the most able, as well as the most authentic organ of Catholicism in the United States, employs the following language to the American people – mark it: