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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 49

Boston Should Settle the Question

Boston Should Settle the Question.

When designing men are plotting mischief and breeding hate and rancor, it is well for Boston to furnish this useful lesson to other parts of the country.

To you, men of Boston, to the intelligence and honesty of Massachusetts, and especially of Boston, I in my character of Catholic American citizen appeal in behalf of the rights of parents for dispassionate consideration of this subject; confident that, if not heeded to-day, the day is not distant when it will be considered. I have said it before, I say it again, that the settlement of this great question, affecting the future welfare and stability of the Republic, must come from Boston and Massachusetts. It is more creditable, in the mean time, for us to suffer, to be punished and persecuted, than for American citizens to be the persecutors. The rights you would maintain at any cost for yourselves, I beseech you not to deny to the humblest citizens in the land, however help page 59 less they may seem. For large numbers, who have few to speak for them, I plead before you. Your interests and theirs, as fellow-citizens, are bound together as one. Our country is with unparalleled quickness becoming one of populous cities. These centres of population, notwithstanding extraordinary efforts to counteract the danger, are nurturing street-Arabs, wild youths, bands of trained depredators on others' property, hosts of corrupt, demoralized inhabitants. Peaceable and order-loving citizens are bound for their own sake to look to the danger, call to their assistance every available agency, and engage the services of all who can work in this vast and difficult field. In vain will they develop vigor and power of body in the young, and brighten and quicken the intellect, if the cunning of the one, and the passions and appetites that spring from the other, be not held in subjection by the elevation and strengthening of the heart.