Excerpt from Documents Relating to the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown

What then is the question it It is: whether, by force of the social compact, there exists a duty on the part of the body politic to protect the property of its citizens and, if that duty exists, whether it does not - in a case where protection has failed in the manner and degree and under the circumstances peculiar to this case - draw after it a solemn public duty to make reparation of what has been destroyed? In other words, the question is, granting the duty of protection, whether that duty does not involve the duty of indemnification, in a case of public violence, breaking forth in unrestrained fury upon the citizen, sweeping his property out of existence, and leaving him without a shadow of redress, either against the local community where the outrage occurs, or against those who permitted it to be done.

In order rightly to consider this question, the people of the commonwealth ought to be possessed of the facts of the case. In order to consider it fairly and without prejudice, and to feel kindly and impartially towards those immediately interested, the people should know that impressions once industriously spread abroad, affecting the purity of the institution, are wholly false, and that a great, undeserved and cruel wrong - far exceeding the work of the mob itself - has been done to the good name of individuals and the honor of a sect, by such impressions. In order to consider the question intelligently and in its true legal and moral bearings, the people should have before them the existing state of their own laws at the time of this outrage, the state of the laws at the present day, and some discussion of the legal doctrine ap plicable to the subject. For the purpose of meeting these wants, the following documents are now re-published.

This republication is not made at the instance or by the funds of Roman Cath olics. Up to the time when this pamphlet will issue from the press, there is not a single Roman Catholic, in this city or elsewhere, who is aware that it is about to be published. Indeed, that sect of our fellow citizens, for eight years, have maintained a dignified, but sorrowful reserve, upon this subject. They are not connected with, or responsible for any present movement. The wound inflicted on them is too deep, and their self respect is too great, for them to be active promoters of any measure of justice. They may and do grieve that the commonwealth should. Be so tardy in its action in this behalf, or that those who guide its councils should bestow no thought upon their wrongs; but they are as silent as they are grieved, pondering many things in their hearts.

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