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RELIGION CONSIDERED AS A POLITICAL INSTITUTION, WHICH POWERFULLY CONTRIBUTES TO THE MAINTENANCE OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC AMONG THE AMERICANS.
North America peopled by Men who professed a democratic and republican Christianity.—Arrival of the Catholics.—For what Reason the Catholics form the most democratic and the most republican Class at the present Time.
Every religion is to be found in juxtaposition to a political opinion, which is connected with it by affinity. If the human mind be left to follow its own bent, it will regulate the temporal and spiritual institutions of society upon one uniform principle; and man will endeavour, if I may use the expression, to harmonize the state in which he lives upon earth, with the state he believes to await him in heaven.
The greatest part of British America was peopled by men who, after having shaken off the authority of the pope, acknowledged no other religious supremacy: they brought with them into the New World a form of Christianity, which I cannot better describe, than by styling it a democratic and republican religion. This sect contributed powerfully to the establishment of a democracy and a republic; and from the earliest settlement of the emigrants, politics and religion contracted an alliance which has never been dissolved.
About fifty years ago Ireland began to pour a catholic population into the United States; on the other hand, the catholics of America made proselytes, and at the present moment more than a million of Christians, professing the truths of the church of Rome, are to be met with in the Union. These catholics are faithful to the observances of their religion; they are fervent and zealous in the support and belief of their doctrines. Nevertheless they constitute the most republican and the most democratic class of citizens which exists in the United States; and although this fact may surprise the observer at first, the cause by which it is occasioned may easily be discovered upon reflection.
I think that the catholic religion has erroneously been looked upon as the natural enemy of democracy. Among the various sects of Christians, Catholicism seems to me, on the contrary, to be one of those which are most favourable to the equality of conditions
