Uploaded March 2025 | Updated September 2026, 50 minutes ago
Henry F. Brownson gave a speech at Notre Dame University in 1897. His dad, Orestes, was and still is buried in the crypt in the Basilica at Notre Dame. Orestes was considered one of the two best thinkers of the 19th century by some intellectuals. Henry may have exceeded his dad in many respects. In this talk Henry condemns equality and democracy. Of course many of the American founding fathers also condemned democracy. But with Lincoln and the northern victory America was put on a fast track toward communism and capitalism in the name of universal suffrage and equal rights of man. Henry said this only means that the very few will own and control most everything. Henry agrees with John Wesley and John Fletcher and his dad, Orestes, that the destructive idea that all authority emanates from the people is totally at odds with the Word of God. All authority emanates from Jesus Christ and all government authority is from God not man. Henry says the only hope for a “popular” government like America is for grassroots Christian revival. The government will only be as good as the people.
In the beginning of his speech Henry says:
Our fathers proclaimed that all men are created equal, and made equality the basis of the state. That all men are created equal is not true in an absolute sense, but only in the sense that they are created equally men, with equal natural rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, unless forfeited by crime.
We have abolished rights of primogeniture and entails, and by our statutes of distribution provided for the equal division among the heirs of the estate of every one dying intestate, thus preventing the growth of an hereditary aristocracy, and approaching equality.
Whether this, which weakens the family and makes us a nation of individuals rather than a nation of families, is wise or unwise legislation, I will not now undertake to decide. I will only say that the ambition of transmitting to heirs a family name inherited from a long line of noble and distinguished ancestors on which one can look back with a just pride, is a powerful incentive to honor and virtue. In our country, except in rare instances, the family expires when the husband and father dies. We, as a people, have no ancestors, no family traditions, no homestead that has remained in the same line for generations and around which cluster all the family associations and recollections.
We have not hereby secured the equality sought, or, if we have secured it on one side, it has been lost on another. We have substituted the equality created by primogeniture and entail by joint stock companies and corporations, which are far more influential and exert for more power over legislation, political economy, industry and the laboring classes than the most powerful and wealthy families of a nation ever did.
orestesbrownson.org/equality-and-democracy-a-speech-given-at-notre-dame-in-1897-by-henry-f.-brownson-the-son-of-orestes-brownson.html
Henry F. Brownson gave a speech at Notre Dame University in 1897. His dad, Orestes, was and still is buried in the crypt in the Basilica at Notre Dame. Orestes was considered one of the two best thinkers of the 19th century by some intellectuals. Henry may have exceeded his dad in many respects. In this talk Henry condemns equality and democracy. Of course many of the American founding fathers also condemned democracy. But with Lincoln and the northern victory America was put on a fast track toward communism and capitalism in the name of universal suffrage and equal rights of man. Henry said this only means that the very few will own and control most everything. Henry agrees with John Wesley and John Fletcher and his dad, Orestes, that the destructive idea that all authority emanates from the people is totally at odds with the Word of God. All authority emanates from Jesus Christ and all government authority is from God not man. Henry says the only hope for a “popular” government like America is for grassroots Christian revival. The government will only be as good as the people.
In the beginning of his speech Henry says:
Our fathers proclaimed that all men are created equal, and made equality the basis of the state. That all men are created equal is not true in an absolute sense, but only in the sense that they are created equally men, with equal natural rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, unless forfeited by crime.
We have abolished rights of primogeniture and entails, and by our statutes of distribution provided for the equal division among the heirs of the estate of every one dying intestate, thus preventing the growth of an hereditary aristocracy, and approaching equality.
Whether this, which weakens the family and makes us a nation of individuals rather than a nation of families, is wise or unwise legislation, I will not now undertake to decide. I will only say that the ambition of transmitting to heirs a family name inherited from a long line of noble and distinguished ancestors on which one can look back with a just pride, is a powerful incentive to honor and virtue. In our country, except in rare instances, the family expires when the husband and father dies. We, as a people, have no ancestors, no family traditions, no homestead that has remained in the same line for generations and around which cluster all the family associations and recollections.
We have not hereby secured the equality sought, or, if we have secured it on one side, it has been lost on another. We have substituted the equality created by primogeniture and entail by joint stock companies and corporations, which are far more influential and exert for more power over legislation, political economy, industry and the laboring classes than the most powerful and wealthy families of a nation ever did.
orestesbrownson.org/equality-and-democracy-a-speech-given-at-notre-dame-in-1897-by-henry-f.-brownson-the-son-of-orestes-brownson.html
