and their Bishop. The trustees were dumfounded. Their old arguments utterly failed them. They had depended on terrorism, and they found threats of disaster had no terrors for the fearless newcomer. Foiled in their hopes of intimidating the new pastor, the trustees fell back on the chance of winning over Dr. Conwell to their side. To this end they entered into correspondence with the aged prelate, and he weakly consented to meet them to discuss the situation. But the negotiations came to nothing, and, seeing no hope of effective resistance in any quarter, the trustees made a virtue of necessity and sent in notice of surrender. On the 28th of May Bishop Kenrick re-opened St. Mary's for Divine service, and so the memorable episode terminated for the time. It is to Dr. Kenrick, undoubtedly, that the Church in the United States owes its emancipation from the strangulating system of trustee dictatorship. He was the Perseus who first conceived the true way of freeing the noble captive from chains forged by her own children. Others had essayed the task before him, but had failed for want of acumen and steadfastness of purpose; both these qualities were united in his character with that wisdom and perspicuity which instantly perceived the proper moment when conciliation, to secure victory, must take the place of demonstrated power. This happy combination of attributes is conspicuous in his own account of the circumstances of the surrender. The garrison desired some little concession in return for the laying down of arms, and he was wise enough to yield to a desire not altogether unreasonable from a human point of view. His memorandum on the subject shows how, even though still battling with intermittent fever, he maintained all his firmness and clearness of mental vision. In his letter to the congregation of St. Mary's announcing the removal of the interdict, the Bishop ex THE BISHOP BECOMES NATURALIZED. 75 plained the reasons why he conceded anything to the trustees. It was the provision of the Baltimore Council regarding the appointment of pastors which influenced him. This declares that these be made "So as to meet not only the wants but the wishes of the people, so far as the conscientious convictions of the prelates and the just desires and expectations of meritorious clergymen will permit." Although he regarded portions of the trustees' communication as "highly objectionable," the Bishop, considering that they by that instrument explicitly disclaimed all right of interference in pastoral appointments and removals, felt himself unable to withhold any longer from the congregation the consolation of worshiping in their church. To terminate forever the danger of a recrudescence of such trouble, Bishop Kenrick took steps to change the system of investment of property left to the Church. His first proceeding was to qualify himself for the position of devisee. This is the explanation of the entry recorded in the Diary under date 29th June, 1831: "Civis Americanus factus sum Philadelphiæ." All bequests were now to be vested in the Bishop; the existing ones, vested in the trustees, he left undisturbed so long as these respected the episcopal authority. These arrangements he caused to be duly promulgated in Philadelphia and its vicinity; in distant parts of his diocese he was yet to have some trouble ere he could get them likewise established there. The only really formidable difficulty he was destined to encounter in the establishment of this salutary rule throughout was at Pittsburg. There we find him in December of the same year confronting and defeating a fresh trustee combination in regard to the renovated St. Paul's Church. In this case the combination appeared still more formidable than its counterpart in Philadelphia, inasmuch as it had the support and sympathy of the Catholic people at large. The times were crude, and crude notions on the law of right and wrong prevailed among the half-educated people who formed the backbone of the Catholic laity of that day. On his arrival in the city to preside at the opening of the church for Divine service, the Bishop found that a body of trustees had been appointed and that they had taken steps to obtain a charter. Instantly he put a veto on the proceedings. The trustee system had already wrought mischief enough, he told the congregation; he would have no more of it; the church must be conveyed to him, in trust, or not opened at all. The sense of proprietorship at once took offense. When the Bishop announced his resolve, it was received sullenly but silently, because it was the voice of authority, which permits no rejoinder, which spoke. But outside the episcopal presence the news was discussed with heat and obstinate recalcitrancy. AND HARDSHIPS OF EARLY TRAVEL-FOUNDA One remarkable fact in relation to those exciting days is the total absence of any note of complaint or repining on the Bishop's part. Not a murmur of complaint wells up from his Diary: everything is set down as if it were an impersonal matter of business in which a third party, and not himself, was the principal actor. The hardships of travel, even, are hardly alluded to in the memoranda. Yet these were sometimes as formidable, in their own way, as any encountered by Xenophon's Ten Thousand as told in the "Anabasis." Hassard's Life of Archbishop Hughes cites some interesting examples of their inconveniences. In one case the author tells how when Bishop Kenrick and Dr. Hughes were scrambling over the rugged track called a road from Loretto to Newry, the baggage, which contained the episcopal insignia in mitre and crozier, had been jolted out of the wagon unperceived by the travelers or driver. When the loss was discovered the Bishop seemed inclined to let it go rather than put any one to the trouble of going back to seek the property. But the sturdier Dr. Hughes was not so easily reconciled to the situation. He would set out himself in search of it, and in due time he returned triumphantly with the exploring party, and assisted, as he himself jocularly put it, in restoring his mitre to Bishop Kenrick. The latter appears to have availed himself of the stage coach wherever possible, for we find him jotting down how he traveled from one place to another "in curru publico," but most of his traveling appears to have been over paths innocent of any general conveyance. An interesting note in this connection is the entry regarding his departure from Pittsburg for Brownsville, the date being December 24, 1831. "Navicula vaporis viae procedente" is what he wrote the first mention of a steamboat we find in the chronicle. Another entry notes that the Bishop rode one day twenty miles through the forest to the town of Morrinsville, having for guide one "Duo. Keating, qui ibi diversorium et mercium officinam tenet." Another day we find him quitting Newry in the midst of a violent rain-storm: "imbribus continuis lugubri." It is little wonder that he said, when speaking of his scattered diocese: "Some of these missions need the gift of tongues and a health of iron." People of many nationalities made up the sparse congregations, and the missionaries who visited them were equally diverse. At the outset the Bishop enumerated four French priests, three Germans, two Belgians, twenty-one Irish, one Livonian, one Russian, one Englishman and three Americans. This number he found entirely inadequate to the needs of his vast diocese; hence one of his first thoughts was how to provide an ecclesiastical seminary wherein young men might be trained, under his own eye, for the polyglot work of his Babel-like pastorate. At the very beginning of his ministry we find him imbued with this idea and laying down its embodiment in embryo. He had, through the ungenerous action of St. Mary's trustees, been excluded from his proper episcopal residence and been compelled to rent a house for himself. The building was on Fifth street, and though he knew not whence the funds were to come to maintain it, trusting solely in God, he began to put his idea into shape there. The upper portion of this house he immediately devoted to his purpose, taking in a couple of theological students |