I am sorry to be obliged to make the reply, that in America
the Catholic clergy have never identified themselves with the
antislavery cause, but in their influence have gone with the
multitude.
I have received numerous calls from members of the Old French
Abolition Society, which existed here for many years. Among these I
met, with great interest, M. Dutrone, its president; also M. ----, who
presented me with his very able ethnological work on the distinctive
type of the negro race. One gentleman, greatly distressed in view of
the sufferings of the negro race in America, said, naively enough, to
Mrs. C., that he had heard that the negroes had great capability for
music, dancing, and the fine arts, and inquired whether something
could not be done to move sympathy in their behalf by training them to
exhibit characteristic dances and pantomimes. Mrs. C. quoted to him
the action of one of the great ecclesiastical bodies in America, in
the same breath declining to condemn slavery, but denouncing dancing
as so wholly of the world lying in wickedness as to require condign
ecclesiastical censure. The poor man was wholly lost in amazement.
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