a plurality of votes. The state abuses its authority if it sustaing, the common schools as they are with a view of detaching our children from their Catholic faith and love. If Catholics cannot retain, their Catholic faith and practice and still be true, loyal, and exemplary American citizens, it must be only because Americanism is incompatible with the rights of conscience, and that would be its emnation, not the condemnation f Catholicity. No nationality can override conscience; for conscience is catholic, not national, and is accountable to God alone, who is above and over all nations, all principalities and powers, King of kings and Lord of lords. But the assumption in the objection is not true. It mistakes the opinion of the American people individually for the constitution of the American state. The American state is as much Catholic as it is Protestant, and really harmonizes far better with Catholicity than with Protestantism. We hold that, instead of decatholicizing Catholic children, it is far more necessary, if we are to be governed by reasons of this sort, to unmake the children of Protestants of their Protestantism. We really believe that, in order to train them up to be, in the fullest sense, true, loyal, and exemplary American citizens, such as can alone arrest the present downward tendency of the republic, and realize the hopes of its heroic and noble-hearted founders, they must become good Catholics.

But this is a question of which the state can take no cognizance. We have under its constitution no right to call upon it to aid us, directly or indirectly, in unmaking Protestant children of their Protestantism. Of course, before God, or in the spiritual order, we recognize no equality between Catholicity and Protestantism. Before God, no man has any right to

be of any religion but the Catholic, the only true religion, the only religion by which men can be raised to union with God in the beatific vision. But before the American state, we recognize in Protestants equal rights with our own. They have the same right to be protected by the state in the freedom of their conscience that we have to be protected by it in the freedom of ours. We should attack the very freedom of conscience the state guarantees to all her citizens, were we to call upon it to found or to continue a system of public schools, at the public expense, intended or fitted to detach Protestant children from the religion of their parents, and turn them over to be brought up in the Catholic religion. We should prove ourselves decidedly un-American in so doing. Yet, we regret to say, this is precisely what the non-catholic majority, inconsiderately we trust, are doing; and, if the popular ministers of the several sects, like Dr. R. W. Clark, Dr. Sheldon, Dr. Bellows, Henry Ward Beecher, and the sectarian and secular press have their way, they will continue to do to the end of the chapter to us Catholics. They probably are not aware that they belie the Americanism they profess, and abuse the power their superiority of numbers gives them to tyrannize over the consciences of their fellow-citizens. This strikes us as very un-American, as well as very unjust.

We place our demand for separate schools on the ground of conscience, and therefore of right--the right of God as well as of man. Our conscience forbids us to support schools at the public expense from which our religion is excluded, and in which our children are taught either what we hold to be a false or mutilated religion, or no religion at all. Such schools are perilous to the souls of our children; and we dare avow,

even in this age of secularism and infidelity, that we place the salvation of the souls of our children above every other consideration. This plea of conscience, which we urge from the depth of our souls, and under a fearful sense of our accountability to our Maker, ought to suffice, especially in an appeal to a state bound by its own constitution to protect the rights of conscience for each and all of its citizens, whether Protestant or Catholic.

One thing must be evident from past experience, that our children can be brought up to be good and orderly citizens only as Catholics, and in schools under the supervision and control of their church, in which her faith is freely and fully taught, and her services, discipline, and influences are brought to bear in forming their characters, restraining them from evil, and training them to virtue. We do not say that, even if trained in Catholic schools, all will turn out to be good practical Catholics and virtuous members of society; for the church does not take away free-will, nor eradicate all the evil propensities of the flesh; but it is certain that they cannot be made such in schools in which the religion of their parents is reviled as a besotted superstition, and the very text-books of history and geography are made to protest against it; or in which they are accustomed to hear their priests spoken of without reverence, Protestant nations lauded as the only free and enlightened nations of the earth, Catholic nations sneered at as ignorant and enslaved, and the church denounced as a spiritual despotism, full of craft, and crusted all over with corruption both of faith and morals. Such schools may weaken their reverence for their parents, even detach them from their church, obscure, if not destroy their faith, render them indifferent to religion, indocile to their parents, disobedient to

the laws; but they cannot inspire them with the love of virtue, restrain their vicious or criminal propensities, or prevent them from associating with the dangerous classes of our large towns and cities, and furnishing subjects for the correctional police, our jails, penitentiaries, state prisons, and the gallows.

We are pointed to the vicious and criminal population of our cities, of which we furnish more than our due proportion, as a conclusive argument against the moral tendency of our religion, and a savage howl of indignation, that rings throughout the land, is set up against the legislature or the municipality that ventures to grant us the slightest aid in our struggles to protect our children from the dangers that beset them, though bearing no proportion to the aid granted to nonCatholics. Yet it is precisely to meet cases like ours that a public provision for education is needed and supposed to be made. Protestants make the great mistake of trying to cure the evil to which we refer by detaching our children from the church, and bringing them up bad Protestants, or without any religion. The thousand and one associations and institutions formed by Protestant zeal and benevolence for the reformation or the bringing up of poor Catholic children, and some of which go so far as to kidnap little papist orphans or half orphans, lock them up in their orphan asylums, where no priest can enter, change their names so that their relatives cannot trace them, send them to a distance, and place them in Protestant families, where it is hoped they will forget their Catholic origin, all proceed from the same mistake, and all fail to arrest, or even to lessen, the growing evil. They necessarily provoke the opposition and resistance of the Catholic pastors, and of all earnest Catholics, who regard the loss.

It is necessary to understand that the children of Catholics must be trained up in the Catholic faith, in the Catholic Church, to be good exemplary Catholics, or they will grow up bad citizens, the pests of society. Nothing can be done for them but through the approval and coöperation of the Catholic clergy and the Catholic community. The contrary rule, till quite recently, has been adopted, and public and private benevolence has sought to benefit our children by disregarding, or seeking to uproot, their Catholic faith, and rejecting the cooperation of the Catholic clergy. The results are apparent to all not absolutely blinded by their misdirected zeal.

The public has not sufficiently considered that by the law excluding our religion from the public schools, the schools as established by law are Protestant schools, at least so far as they are not pagan or godless. We do not suppose the state ever intended to establish Protestantism as the exclusive religion of the schools; but such is the necessary result of excluding, no matter under what pretext, the teaching of our religion in them. Exclude Catholicity, and what is left? Nothing of Christianity but Protestantism, which is simply Christianity minus the Catholic Church, her faith, precepts, and sacraments. At present the state makes ample provision for the children of Protestants, infidels, or pagans; but excludes the children of Catholics, unless we consent to let them be educated in Protestant schools, and brought up Pro

testants, so far as the schools can bring them up.

Now, we protest in the name of equal rights against this manifest injustice. There is no class of the community more in need of free public schools than Catholics, and none are more entitled to their benefit; for they constitute a large portion of the poorer and more destitute classes of the community. We can conceive nothing more unjust than for the state to provide schools for Protestants, and even infidels, and refuse to do it for Catholics. To say that Catholics have as free access to the public schools as Protestants, is bitter mockery. Protestants can send their children to them without exposing them to lose their Protestantism; but Catholics cannot send their children to them without exposing them to the loss of their Catholicity. The law protects their religion in the public schools by the simple fact of excluding ours. How then say these schools are as free to us as they are to them? Is conscience of no account?

We take it for granted that the intention of the state is that the public schools should be accessible alike to Catholics and Protestants, and on the same risks and conditions. We presume it has had no more intention of favoring Protestants at the expense of Catholics, than Catholics at the expense of Protestants. But it can no longer fail to see that its intention is not, and cannot be realized by providing schools which Protestants can use without risk to their Protestantism, and none which Catholics can use without risk to their Catholicity. As the case now stands, the law sustains Protestantism in the schools and excludes Catholicity. This is unjust to Catholics, and deprives us, in so far as Catholics, of all benefit to be derived from the public schools supported at the public expense. Were

the law to admit Catholicity, it would necessarily exclude Protestantism, which would be equally unjust to Protestants. Since, then, Catholicity and Protestantism mutually exclude each other, and as the state is bound to treat both with equal respect, it is not possible for it to carry out its intention and do justice to both parties, but by dividing the schools, and setting apart for Catholics their proportion of them, in which the education shall be determined and controlled by their church, though remaining public schools supported at the public expense, under the provisions of a general law as now.

This would be doing for its Catholic citizens only what it now does for its Protestant citizens only; in fact, only what is done in France, Austria, and Prussia. The division would enable us to bring all our children into schools under the influence and management of our pastors, and to do whatever the church and a thoroughly religious education can do to train them up to be good Catholics, and therefore orderly and peaceful members of society, and loyal and virtuous American citizens. It would also remove some restraint from the Protestant schools, and allow them more freedom in insisting on whatever is doctrinal and positive in their religion than they now exercise. The two classes of schools, though operating separately, would aid each other in stemming the tide of infidelity and immorality, now setting in with such fearful rapidity, and apparently resistless force, threatening the very existence of our republic. The division would operate in favor of religion, both in a Catholic sense and in a Protestant sense, and therefore tend to purify and preserve American society. It would restore the schools to their original intention, and make

them, what they should be, religious schools.

The enemy which the state, which Catholics, and which Protestants have alike to resist and vanquish by education is the irreligion, pantheism, atheism, and immorality, disguised as secularism, or under the specious names of science, humanity, free-religion, and free-love, which not only strike at all Christian faith and Christian morals, but at the family, the state, and civilized society itself. The state has no right to regard this enemy with indifference, and on this point we accept the able arguments used by the serious Protestant preachers and writers cited in the number of The Christian World before us against the exclusion of the Bible and all recognition of religion from the public schools. The American state is not infidel or godless, and is bound always to recognize and actively aid religion as far as in its power. Having no spiritual or theological competency, it has no right to undertake to say what shall or shall not be the religion of its citizens; it must accept, protect, and aid the religion its citizens see proper to adopt, and without partiality for the religion of the majority any more than the religion of the minority; for in regard to religion the rights and powers of minorities and majorities are equal. The state is under the Christian law, and it is bound to protect and enforce Christian morals and its laws, whether assailed by Mormonism, spiritism, free-lovism, pantheism, or atheism.

The modern world has strayed far from this doctrine, which in the early history of this country nobody questioned. The departure may be falsely called progress, and boasted of as a result of "the march of intellect;" but it must be arrested, and men must be recalled to the truths they

in her own faith, and train them to be good Catholics. There is a recrudescence of paganism, a growth of subtle and disguised infidelity, which it will require all that both they and we can do to arrest. Fight, therefore, Protestants, no longer us, but the public enemy.*

THE NEW ENGLANDER

The reply of the New Englander to our articles of September and October last is bristling with the most palpable and absurd mistakes. We call them "mistakes" through the utmost stretch of Christian charity, for there is really no excuse to be made for them. We cannot excuse them by allowing either their author or the editors of the New Englander the benefit of the plea of ignorance; for they were bound to inform themselves on a grave matter which they profess to treat of; nor that of haste and carelessness. They have had at least three months for a reply, and were at liberty to take three months more, if necessary; and to plead carelessness in such a matter is equivalent to a confession of culpable negligence and want of moral principle.

They were bound by the principles of the Christian religion not to exaggerate or convey in any way a worse impression of their fellow-Christians than the exact truth would war

New Englander, January, 1870. Article entitled, "Moral Results of the Romish System."

Handbuch der vergleichenden Statistik. Leipzig.

1868.

Historisch-politische Blätter. Neuntes Heft, Munich. 1867. Article entitled, "Allgemeine und confessionelle Statistik in Preussen."

rant, according to the words of St. Paul, "Charity is kind, thinketh no evil,

. is not puffed up;" which we might paraphrase in this way: Is not pharisaically inclined to exalt one's self at the expense of one's neighbor, or at the sacrifice of the truth. The New Englander has made use of every artifice; and, trusting to the unsuspecting ignorance or uncritical spirit of the community, of a shameful perversion of the truth to effect this unworthy and unchristian object. We speak severely because it

* We desire to call attention to another point which could not be discussed in the foregoing article, and to which we can at present only allude in the briefest manner. Large sums of money have been granted

by legislatures to universities and colleges which are controlled by the clergy of different Protestant denominations, in which they teach their religious opinions without restraint, and which they make, as far as they

can, training-schools for their theological seminaries. Now, if the outcry against any grant of public funds to schools in which the Catholic religion is taught is taken up and sustained by Protestants, it follows that they must advocate the total secularization of all in

stitutions, without exception, which enjoy any state

subsidies, and, if they wish to keep control of religious instruction in any of the above-mentioned colleges, must refund to the state every thing which they now possess by grant from the state, and give up all claim to receive any further endowments. Catholics would never disendow or despoil these Protestant institutions, even if they had full power to do it; but if the party of infidelity ever gains, by the help of Protestants, full sway over our legislation, the latter may prepare themselves for a wholesale spoliation.