"It is our true policy, then, to absorb and rule over the Republic of the North. To make our Church the secret spring of its Government; to gradually and without exciting suspicion, mould every one of its institutions to our own purposes; to control the education of its people, and bend the elective franchise to our will. Is not this our object?" Again the Legate signified assent. "And this must be done, by making New York the center of our system. New York is in reality, the metropolis of the Continent; from New York as from a common center, therefore all our efforts must radiate. From New York we will control the Republic, shape it year by year to our purposes; as it adds nation after nation to its Union, we will make our grasp of its secret springs of action, the more certain and secure; and at last the hour will come, when this Continent apparently one united republic, will in fact, be the richest altar, the strongest abiding-place, the most valuable property of the Church. Yes, the hour will come, when the flimsy scaffolding of Republicanism will fall, and as it falls, our Church will stand revealed, her foundation in the heart of the American Republic; her shadow upon every hill and valley of the Continent. For you know," and his eye flashed, "that our battle against what is called Democracy and Progress, is to be fought not in the Old World, where everything is on our side, but in the New World, where these damnable heresies do most abound." "True," interrupted the Legate, thoughtfully; "the New World is the battle-field of opinions. Here the fight must take place." "You ask how our work is to begin? Here in New York we will commence it. Hundreds of thousands of foreigners of our faith arrive in this city every year. Be it our task to plant an eternal barrier between these men, and those who are American citizens by birth. To prevent them from mingling with the American People, from learning the traditions of American history, which give the dogma of Democracy its strongest hold upon the heart, to _isolate_ them, in the midst of the American nation. In a word, the first step of our work is, to array at the zealous _Foreign_ party, an opposition to an envenomed _Native American_ party." "This you have commenced already," said the Legate,--"it was in Mexico, that I heard of Philadelphia last summer--of Philadelphia on the verge of civil war with Protestants and Catholics flooding the gutters with their blood, while the flames of burning churches lit up the midnight sky."