The fact is, Catholicity has never placed any man in city, state, or nation in office, and never yet has any man in our country been elected to office because he is Catholic. The Catholics who are in office under the municipal, state, or federal government, in congress, in the state senate, or the assembly, are there not because they are Catholics, but because they are Democrats or Republicans, or because they are of Irish, German, or some other foreign origin, and have or are supposed to have influence in securing the so-called “Irish vote,” the “German vote,” or the “foreign vote”--distinctions which should have no place in American politics--not because they are Catholics, and supposed to be devoted to Catholic interests. There is an “Irish vote,” a “German vote,” a “foreign vote,” but no “Catholic vote,” and, the constituencies remaining the same, Catholic interests would be just as safe in the hands of American Protestants as in the hands of Catholics elected to office, not for their Catholicity, but for their real or supposed influence with our naturalized fellow-citizens; and perhaps safer, because Protestants would be less likely to be suspected of acting under Catholic influence, and therefore could act more independently. It is, we think, a mistake on the part of our politicians who are Catholics, whether in or out of office, to be so anxious not to be suspected of acting under Catholic influence and in view of Catholic interests. The church asks only what is just, only to be protected in the possession of the equal rights before the state, guaranteed to her by the constitution of the state, and which are not always respected by the popular sentiment of the country. The care which politicians take to show themselves independent in their political action, if Catholics, gains them no credit, and a frank, open, straightforward, and manly course would gain much more respect for themselves and for their religion. Indeed, their sensitiveness and over-caution on this point tend to excite the very suspicion they would guard against, or the suspicion that their conduct is diplomatic, and that they have some ulterior purpose in reserve which they artfully and adroitly conceal. The church is supposed by Protestants to be the very embodiment of craftiness and dissimulation, always and everywhere intriguing to get the control of the secular power, and to wield it in her own interest regardless of all rights and interests of the citizen who happens not to be Catholic. Hence, every Catholic politician is suspected beforehand of craft, intrigue, of crooked and underhand ways, lacking frankness, openness, and straightforward honesty. The 124 only way to repel this false and unjust suspicion is for such Catholics as are politicians to show in an open and manly manner that neither they nor their church have any sinister purpose, and that in being devoted to her interests and acting under influence as good