granted to Philip, the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, a dispensation for polygamy, rather than lose his support, while Clement VII., Pope of Rome, refused a like dispensation to Henry VIII., King of England; that this same Henry, who was acknowledged at the time as the head of the Church of England, divorced two wives and beheaded two others; and that even here, in our own New England, when the Puritans had absolute power, they ordered delicate Quaker women tied to a cart-tail and whipped upon the bare back, and others hung, for no other reason than that they chose to worship God in a different way from themselves. A somewhat careful study of the rise and progress of all religions, and of all religious sects, convinces us that bigotry, intolerance, and persecution are alike common to all whenever they hold absolute power, and that in this respect the Catholics are no worse than others. And yet, while saying all this, no less in justice to ourself than to them, we must not overlook the fact that Catholicism is the religion of a large majority of the sovereigns and princes of Europe; that absolutism (and consequent opposition to anything like a representative form of government, or the liberty of the press) is one of its cardinal principles of faith and practice; that, being so largely supported by European sovereigns, it would naturally be disposed to aid them in any way within its power; and that to aid them in overthrowing our representative form of government, and our boasted liberty of the press, would be no violation of their own cherished principles, but in exact accordance therewith. Hence in all our calculations as to influence and power, without having the least prejudice against the religion of the Catholics, we must invariably put them down as in favor of absolutism, and as only using, in this country, the name democracy (which means the reverse of absolutism) as a cloak to their real sentiments. Of course in this we only refer to the bishops, priests, and few educated laymen of the Catholic Church; for, as to the great mass of its adherents, they merely follow the dictum of others, without knowing or caring about the meaning of names, and would vote under any name, or for anybody, if only told to do so by their church officials.