Awful Disclosures, Maria Monk [best motivational books TXT] 📗

it is a wicked and gross libel. Let him answer the following questions: Did he not frequently visit the house, and lurk about at various times, for longer and shorter periods, expressly to have an interview with Maria Monk?

Did he not state that he was acquainted with her by the name she bore in the nunnery, Sainte Eustace.

Did he not declare that he was commissioned by Lartigue, Phelan, Dufresne, Kelly, and the Abbess of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery at Montreal, to obtain a possession of her, that she might be sent back to the abode of the Furies?

Did he not offer her any thing she pleased to demand, provided she would reside with the Ursulines of this city?

Did he not also declare that he would have her at all risks, and that she could not escape him?

Did he not persevere in this course of action, until he was positively assured that she would not see him, and that the Priest Conroy should not have access to Maria Monk?

Was not the priest Kelly, from Canada, in New York at that period, prompting Conroy; and did not that same Kelly come on here expressly to obtain possession of Maria Monk, that he might carry her back to the Hotel Dieu Nunnery, there to murder her, as his accomplices have smothered, poisoned, and bled to death other victims of their beastly licentiousness?

All these questions are implied in Maria Monk’s statement, and they involve the highest degree of crime against the liberty, rights, and life of Maria Monk, and the laws of New York, and the charge is either true or false. Why does not the Priest Conroy try it? Why does he not demonstrate that he is calumniated, by confronting the Authoress and Publishers of the book before an impartial jury. We are assured that the Executive committee of the New York Protestant Association will give ten dollars to any Lawyer, whom Mr. Conroy will authorize to institute a civil suit for libel, payable at the termination of the process. Will he subject the question to that scrutiny? Never. He would rather follow the example of his fellow priests, and depart from New York. Many of the Maynooth Jesuits, after having fled from Ireland for their crimes, to this country, to avoid the punishments due to them for the repetition of them in the United States, and to elude discovery, have assumed false names and gone to France; or in disguise have joined their dissolute companions in Canada.

It is also a fact, that the Priest, named Quarter, with one of his minions, did visit the house where Maria Monk resides, on the 13th day of February, 1836; and did endeavor to see her alone, under the false pretext of delivering to her a packet from her brother in Montreal; and as an argument for having an interview with her without company, one of the two impostors did protest that he had a parcel from John Monk; which “he had sworn not to deliver except into the hands of his sister in person.” Now what object had Mr. Quarter in view; and what was his design in going to her residence between nine and ten o’clock at night, under a lying pretence? Mr. Quarter comes from Canada. He knows all the Priests of Montreal. For what purpose did he assume a fictitious character, and utter base and wilful falsehoods, that, he might have access to her, with another man, when Maria Monk, as they hoped, would be without a protector? For what ignoble design did he put an old Truth Teller into a parcel, and make his priest-ridden minion declare that it was a very valuable packet of letters from John Monk? That strange contrivance requires explanation. Did Priest Quarter believe that Maria Monk was in Montreal? Did he doubt her personal identity? Does not that fact alone verity that all the Roman Priests are confederated? Does it not prove that her delineations are correct? Does it not evince that the Papal Ecclesiastics dread the disclosures?

4. _The great ultimate test which the nature of this case demands.

Challenge of the New York Protestant Association_.—It is readily admitted, that the heinous charges which are made by Maria Monk against the Roman priests cannot easily be rebutted in the usual form of disproving criminal allegations. The denial of those Priests is good for nothing, and they cannot show an alibi. But there is one mode of destroying Maria Monk’s testimony, equally prompt and decisive, and no other way is either feasible, just, or can be efficient. That method is the plan proposed by the New York Protestant Association.

The Hotel Dieu Nunnery is in Montreal. Here is Maria Monk’s description of its interior apartments and passages. She offers to go to Montreal under the protection of a committee of four members of the New York Protestant Association, and in company with four gentlemen of Montreal, to explore the Nunnery; and she also voluntarily proposes that if her descriptions of the interior of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery are not found to be true, she will surrender herself to Lartigue and his confederates to torture her in what way they may please, or will bear the punishment of the civil laws as a base and wilful slanderer of the Canadian Jesuit Ecclesiastics.

When Lartigue, Bonin, Dufresne, Phelan, Richards, and their fellows, accede to this proposition, we shall hesitate respecting Maria Monk’s veracity; until then, by all impartial and intelligent judges, and by enlightened Protestants and Christians, the “Awful Disclosures” will be pronounced undeniable facts. The scrutiny, however, respecting Maria Monk’s credibility comprises two general questions, to which we shall succinctly reply.

1. Was Maria Monk a Nun in the Hotel Dieu Convent at Montreal?—

In ordinary cases, to dispute respecting a circumstance of that kind would be deemed a most strange absurdity; and almost similar to an inquiry into a man’s personal identity when his living form is before your eyes. Maria Monk says she was a nun, presents you a book descriptive of the Convent in which she resided, and leaves the fact of her abode there to be verified by the minute accuracy of her delineations of arcana, with which only the visiting Roman Priests and the imprisoned nuns are acquainted. That test, neither Lartigue nor the Priests will permit to be applied; and therefore, so far, Maria Monk’s testimony cannot directly be corroborated. It is however not a little remarkable, that no one of all the persons so boldly impeached by her of the most atrocious crimes, has, even whispered a hint that she was not a nun; while the priest Conroy has confirmed that fact far more certainly than if he had openly asserted its truth.

5. The Testimony of Mrs. Monk considered.—The only evidence against that fact is her mother. Now it is undeniable, that her mother is a totally incompetent witness. She is known in Montreal to be a woman of but little principle; and her oath in her daughter’s favour would be injurious to her; for she is so habitually intemperate, that it is questionable whether she is ever truly competent to explain any matters which come under her notice. Truth requires this declaration, although Maria, with commendable filial feelings, did not hint at the fact.

Besides, during a number of years past, she has exhibited a most unnatural aversion, or rather animosity, to her daughter; so that to her barbarous usage of Maria when a child, may be imputed the subsequent scenes through which she has passed. When appealed to respecting her daughter, her uniform language was such as this—“I do not care what becomes of her, or who takes her, or where she goes, or what is done to her, provided she keeps away from me.” It is also testified by the most unexceptionable witnesses in Montreal, that when Maria Monk went to that city in August, 1835, and first made known her case, that Mrs. Monk repeatedly declared, that her daughter had been a Nun; and that she had been in the Nunneries at Montreal a large portion of her life. She also avowed, that the offer of bribery that had been made unto her, had been made, not by Protestants, to testify that her daughter Maria had been an inmate of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery; but by the Roman Priests, who had promised her one hundred dollars, if she would make an affidavit that Maria had not been in that nunnery at all; and would also swear to any other matters which they dictated. Now there is little room for doubt, that the affidavit to the truth of which she finally swore was thus obtained; for she has not capacity to compose such a narrative, nor has she been in a state of mind, for a number of years past, to understand the details which have thus craftily been imposed upon the public in her name. When she had no known inducement to falsify the fact in August, 1835, before the Priests became alarmed, then she constantly affirmed that her daughter had been a Nun; but after Lartigue and his companions were assured that her daughter’s narrative would appear, then the mother was probably bribed, formally to swear to a wilful falsehood; for it is most probable, that she either did not see, or from intoxication could not comprehend, the contents of the paper to which her signature is affixed. Her habitual intemperance, her coarse impiety, her long-indulged hatred and cruelty towards her daughter, and her flat self-contradictions, with her repeated and public declarations, that she had been offered a large sum of money by the Montreal Priests, thus to depreciate her daughter’s allegations, and to attest upon oath precisely the contrary to that which she had previously declared, to persons whose sole object was to ascertain the truth—all those things demonstrate that Mrs. Monk’s evidence is of no worth; and yet that is all the opposite evidence which can be adduced.

6. Testimony in favour of the book.—Mr. Miller the son of Adam Miller, a well known teacher at St. John’s, who has known Maria Monk from her childhood, and who is now a resident of New York, solemnly attests, that in the month of August, 1833, he made inquiries of Mrs.

Monk respecting her daughter Maria, and that Mrs. Monk informed him that Maria was then a Nun! that she had taken the veil previous to that conversation, and that she had been in the nunnery for a number of years. Mr. Miller voluntarily attests to that fact. He was totally ignorant of Maria Monk’s being out of the Nunnery at Montreal, until he saw her book, and finally by searching out her place of abode, renewed the acquaintance with her which had existed between them from the period when she attended his father’s school in her childhood. See the affidavit of William Miller.

When Maria Monk made her escape, as she states, from the Hotel Dieu Nunnery, she took refuge in the house of a woman named Lavalliere in Elizabeth street, Montreal, the second or third door from the corner of what is commonly called “the Bishop’s Church.” Madame Lavalliere afterward admitted, that Maria Monk did arrive at her house at the time specified, in the usual habiliments of a Nun, and made herself known as an eloped Nun; that she provided her with other clothing; and that she afterward carried the Nun’s garments to the Hotel Dieu Nunnery.

After her escape, Maria Monk narrates that she went on board a steamboat for Quebec, intending thereby to avoid being seized and again transferred to the Nunnery, that she was recognised by the Captain, was kept under close watch during the whole period of the stay of that boat at Quebec, and merely by accident escaped the hands of the Priests, by watching for an unexpected opportunity to