earthly end, to be attained in this life. Man was not made for God,
and destined to find his beatitude in the possession of God his
Supreme Good, the Supreme Good itself. His end was happiness--not
happiness in God, but in the possession of the good things of this
world. Our Lord had said, 'Be not anxious as to what ye shall eat, or
what ye shall drink, or wherewithal ye shall be clothed; for after
all these things do the heathen seek.' I gave Him a flat denial, and
said, Be anxious; labor especially for these things, first for
yourselves, then for others. Enlarging, however, my views a little, I
said, Man's end for which he is to labor is the well-being and
happiness of man in this world--is to develop man's whole nature, and
so to organize society and government as to secure all men a paradise
on the earth. This view of the end to labor for I held steadily and
without wavering from 1828 till 1842, when I began to find myself
tending unconsciously towards the Catholic Church.'

"The reader will have seen by the extracts given that we were a party
full of enthusiasm. I was but fifteen when our party called Dr.
Brownson to deliver the lectures above mentioned. But my brothers and
I had long been playing men's parts in politics. I remember when
eleven years of age, or a year or two older, being tall for my years,
proposing and carrying through a series of resolutions on the
currency question at our ward meetings. As our name indicates--
'Workingman's Democracy'--we were a kind of Democrats. As to the Whig
party, it received no great attention from us. At that time its
chances of getting control of this State or of the United States were
remote. Our biggest fight was against the 'usages of the party' as in
vogue in the so-called regular Democracy embodied in the Tammany Hall
party. This organization undertook to absorb us when we had grown too
powerful to be ignored. They nominated a legislative ticket made up