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AUG 1 3 1955

CHRISTIAN

FREE SCHOOLS

THH RIGHT OF PAREM > TO PROVlDti 1
EDITATION FOR THEIR CHILDREN
WITHOUT LET OR HINDRANCE.

The iSuBjKCT Discussed

B. J. McQUAID,

Bisnoi' II! Rochester.

[VTOV \Mn \I)VKRTTS1-.R TRESS,

! >>()-,

FREQUENT requests for copies of the following lectures which could not be
furnished because not in print, have suggested the advisabihty of publishing in
book form the two lectures given in Rochester and the one in Boston, together with
articles which appeared in the North American Review and the Forum.

The aim of the author has been to address an audience of his fellow American
citizens, as an American speaking to Americans, on a subject of importance to all
classes in the community, and that concerns even the future welfare of the Republic.
It has not been his purpose to assail State Schools, or Schools without religious instruc-
tion and enforcements, for those who prefer such schools, much as he may lament the
absence of the religious element ; nor has he sought to limit or impede the spread of
education among the people. His purpose has been to uphold the rights of parents
who seek for religious instruction, training and enforcements in the schools to whos
care they entrust the education of their children.

It is quite possible to arrange a system of State Schools, and another of parental
Schools, which will secure to each all just demands, without the sacrifice of inalienable
rights. As a help to a proper understanding of the question these pages are presented
to the consideration of their readers.

The authorities quoted in these papers are for the most part American and non-
Catholic. These, more than the ablest Catholic theologians and writers, are likely to
enlist attention.

Political parties are responsible for much of the misconception existing in the
American mind with regard to the attitude of Catholics toward State Schools. The
lessons of the last Wisconsin election, and the statistics of schools, public and private,
as found in the census of 1890, are grave studies for politicians and others.

Religious bigots who assert that our liberties and government are in danger from
Christian Free Schools and the Catholic religion, are not deserving of notice.

In the hope that the facts and argumeats here presented may help remove unnec-
essary fears and apprehensions, and demonstrate to our American fellow-citizens that
the ambition of Catholics is to further the cause of the people's education, without
doing wrong to any class in the community, a respectful hearing is asked.

FIRST LECTURE.

{As reported for the Union and Advertiser, December gth, i8yi.)

In Corinthian Hall last evening, in response to the invitation
of a large number of our citizens, Bishop M'Quaid discussed the
question of Popular Education from a Catholic standpoint.
About half-past six o'clock the people began to assemble, and
before half-past seven, the hour announced for the commence-
ment of the discourse, the Hall was literally jammed and the
doors had to be closed, leaving a large crowd outside unable to
*^ain admission. Such was the pressure that the drop curtain had
to be raised and the theatrical stage in the rear of the lecturer's
desk given up to those who could find sitting or standing room
upon it. No admission by the doors was possible after half-past
seven, and many hundreds who came to hear had to go away
without hearing. The disappointed, however, will find their
satisfaction in reading at their leisure the full report of the Union
given below.

At the appointed time Bishop M'Quaid made his appearance
upon the rostrum accompanied by a large representation of our
American, German and Irish Catholic fellow-citizens, including
some dozen or more of the clergy of those nationalities. There
were also upon the stage as listeners several Protestant clergy-
men, one at least of whom took occasion at the close to declare
his. hearty concurrence in the demand for Christian free schools.
Owing to the crowd and the efforts to pack the vast audience into
the best shape possible, it was long before sufficient order could

be obtained to enable the Bishop to proceed. And not till he had
spoken some time did perfect quiet prevail. The time occupied
in delivery was two hours; and during the delivery repeated
rounds of applause attested the fact that the assemblage was
decidedly in accord with the Bishop's views.

Bishop M'Quaid spoke as follows:

My best thanks are due to the gentlemen whose invitation
has given me this opportunity of addressing my fellow-citizens on
the all important subject " Christian Free Schools."

Some estimate maybe formed of the importance of the subject
from the fact that there are in the State of New York one million
five hundred thousand children of school age ; as also from the
vast pecuniary interests at stake, as the State alone in its Public
and Normal Schools, Academies, and for educational purposes,
expends more than ten millions of dollars annually; whilst the
Universities, Colleges, Christian Free Schools and private schools
of every description disburse a sum of money running into
millions.

Pecuniary considerations, however, dwindle into insignificance
when comparison is made with those higher interests that concern
the future welfare, prosperity and permanence of our Republican
institutions. A people who are to govern themselves need virtue
and morality much more than intellectual knowledge to appreciate
and preserve the form of self-government. Hence it is so truly
said that a Republic needs moral and virtuous citizens.

Influenced by motives of political self-preservation the various
States of the Union have sought from time to time to devise and
establish systems of common schools for all their children. With
the consent of a majority of the people, common schools for
secular education, as it is called, have been organized in all the
States.

New York State has as general, broad and liberal system of
Public Schools as any other in the Union. Whilst the system of
schools now existing has many opponents, some of whom deny
the right of the State to educate children any more than to feed

and clothe them, the vast majority concede the right to the State
to impart an intellectual education to all who choose to avail
themselves of the boon.

There are two points almost universally accepted. The first
is the primary and natural right of parents to procure for their
children the best education they can, (and no education is worth
having that leaves out religious culture,) and their duty to guard
and protect the minds and hearts of their offspring, in their years
of tender and confiding trustfulness from every danger to morals,
virtue and good principles.

The second conceded point is the want of right in the State
to interfere in the religious teaching of parents or children, con-
fining itself strictly and solely to secular knowledge, and excluding
absolutely all religious instruction.

We shall see before the close of this address that when the
State professes to impart an education purely secular and free
from all religious teaching she lays claim to do an impossible
thing; that if she could give such an education it would be a
great misfortune to the children, to the family and to the State;
that the attempt to do it is doing great harm, and inflicts great
injustice upon those parents who are hindered by the interference
of the State from providing for their children the description of
religious training which best enables them to satisfy the dictates
of conscience.

The present system of Public Schools in this State professes
to exclude all religious exercises. We are often told that this is
the American system, and that it is very impertinent for for-
eigners to wish to bring religion into schools against the American
idea. So far as any system of public schools can be said to have
an American idea, the idea will be found to be " Education based
on religious instruction."

The first schools established in New York City and in many
places of the State were religious denominational schools. These
schools were supported by the churches with which they were
connected and by their patrons. Religious exercises formed a

part of the daily duties of the class room. The early founders
of this Republic were not able to understand how they could
bring up their children in the knowledge, love and service of God
by banishing the Bible, prayer and religious exercises of every
kind from the school. Hence religion was reverenced and its
duties attended to in all institutions of learning in the country.
The American system of education in its incipiency, and for a
long while, was one founded on Bible teaching and religious
exercises. The present system is un-American, anti-American.

In the year 1801; some benevolent gentlemen of New York
City seeing that many children did not attend any of the
Parochial schools, came together to establish a " Free school for
the education of such poor children as do not belong to or are
not provided for by any religious society." The first schools of
this new organization were put in operation by the generous con-
tributions of benevolent individuals, but their benevolence soon
took the form of taxation and from helping in the cause of
education they soon absorbed, through State support and gen-
erous taxes, all schools of their standard, effectually crushing
and driving out of existence the Parochial schools which they had
been formed to assist. As in the earlier days, a great deal of
religious teaching was given in the schools of the Public School
Society, the various denominations of the city did not object
strenuously to this gradual absorption of Parochial schools into
the monopoly of the Public School system. Indeed the first free
schools provided for the religious instruction of the children
through the instrumentality of the different sectarian denomina-
tions of the city.

Prayer, Bible reading and the singing of religious hymns
formed part of the exercises of the public schools of New York
until 1840, at which time began the famous discussion " on the
rights of Catholics in relation to the public schools." Besides, in
those days, the attacks upon Catholics by the teachers and pupils
were frequent and annoying; the reading books contained much
that was offensive to Catholics, who, few in number and poor in

this world's goods, were looked upon almost with contempt and
were barely tolerated. They had only a small number of schools
of their own, and perhaps not over five thousand children in
Catholic schools in the entire State. I may here remark that the
German emigration had scarcely begun at that date.

Before the controversy had got fairly under way, and before
the violent and fanatic bigotry of the masses had been excited.
Gov. Seward in his annual message to the Legislature, in 1840,
inserted these remarkable words :

" The children of foreigners, found in great numbers in our
populous cities and towns, and in the vicinity of our public works,
are too often deprived of the advantages of our system of public
education, in consequence of prejudices arising from differerence
of language or religion. It ought never to be forgotten that the
public welfare is as deeply concerned in their education as in that
of our own children. I do not hesitate, therefore, to recommend
the establishment of schools in which they may be instructed by
teachers speaking the same language with themselves and pro-
fessing the same faith."

Gov. Seward speedily gave way before the clamor and mis-
representations that assailed him. His motives were kind and
just ; his views were correct ; but he was in advance of the people.

John C. Spencer, Secretary of State, described by S. S.
Randall, in his history of the " Common School System," as a
remarkable man, " possessed of transcendent intellectual endow-
ments and unimpeachable moral worth. * * * pos-
sessed of a mind gigantic in its comprehension and microscopic
in its accuracy," made a report to the Legislature of 1841, in
which, whilst stating clearly and boldly the difficulties of a gene-
ral system of education in a conimunity divided up into many
religious denominations, gave the only solution that is possible:

" On this principle of what may be termed absolute non-inter-
vention may we rely to remove all the apparent difficulties which
surround the subject under consideration. In the theory of the
Common School law which governs the whole State except the

city of New York, it is fully and entirely maintained ; and in the
administration of that law it is sacredly observed. No officer
among the thousands having charge of our Common Schools
thinks of opposing by any authoritative direction respecting the
nature or extent of moral or religious instruction to be given in
our schools. Its whole control is left to the free and unrestricted
action of the people t'hemselves in their several districts. The
practical consequence is that each district suits itself, by having
such religious instructions in its school as is congenial to the
opinions of its inhabitants. * * * if there is not

entire fallacy in all these views — if the experience of twenty-five
years derived from the school districts of the interior is not
wholly worthless — then the remedy is plain, practical and simple.
// is by adopting the principle of the organization that prevails in
the other parts of the State, which shall leave such parents as
desire to exercise any control over the amount and description of
religious instruction which shall be given to their children, the
opportunity of doing so. This can be effected by depriving the
present system in New York of its character of universality and
exclusiveness, and by opening it to the action of smaller masses,
whose interests and opinions may be consulted in their schools,
so that every denom,ination may freely enjoy its ' religious profes-
sion ' in the education of its youth."

These wise, statesmanlike and truly American views of John
C. Spencer had to give way before the ignorance and religious
bigotry then dominant in the State. Whciiever a time comes for
the settlement of the school question upon an equitable basis we
shall have to go back to something like what John C. Spencer
proposed in 1841. Instead of leaving the control of schools to
parents, the State has stepped, in as absolute master, monopo-
lized education by levying ten millions of dollars to be used in its
own way, in its own schools, driven away almost all competition
and trampled down unfeelingly the humble endeavors of poor
parents, who, in this land of freedom and equal rights, presume
to educate their loved ones with that " amount and description of

religious instruction " which conscience tells them is good, expe-
dient, necessary.

And now that the common school system has triumphed over
every competitor and ten millions of dollars are annually expended
for educational purposes, what is the education which the State
offers its children ?

I shall ask two State Superintendents of Public Instruction
to answer that question. Their authority will not be disputed.

Henry S. Randall, in his report to the Legislature in 1854,
wrote :

" In view of the above facts, the position was early, distinctly
and almost universally taken by our Statesmen, Legislators and
prominent friends of education — ^men of the warmest religious
zeal, and belonging to every sect — that religious education must
be banished from the common schools, and consigned to the
family and the church. If felt that this was an evil, it was felt
that it was the least one of which the circumstances admitted.
Accordingly, the instruction in our schools has been limited to
that ordinarily included under the head of intellectual culture,
and to the propagation of those principles of morality in which
all sects, and good men belonging to no sect, can equally agree.
The tender consciences of all have been respected. We have seen
that even prayer — that morning and evening duty which man
owes to his Creator — which even the pagan and savage do not
withhold from the gods of their blinded devotion — which, con-
ducted in any proper spirit, is no more sectarian than that homage
which constantly goes up from all nature * * *

has been decided by two of our most eminent superintendents as
inadmissible as a school exercise within school hours, and that
no pupil's conscience or inclination shall be violated by being com-
pelled to listen to it. * * * I believe that the holy
scriptures, and especially the portion of them known as the New
Testament, are proper to be read in school by pupils who have
attained sufificient literary and mental culture to understand their
import. I believe they may, as a matter of right, be read as a

class-book by those whose parents desire it. But I am clearly of
the opinion that the reading of no version of them can be forced
on those whose conscience or religion objects to such version."

This very year a gentleman residing in one of the neighbor-
ing villages of this county, whose child had been made to stand
outside the school room, during the reading of the Bible,
because it objected to that reading, appealed for justice to Mr.
Weaver, the present Superintendent of Public Instruction, and
received the following answer :

"Albany, February ii, 1871.
Sir : — The laws of this State do not require pupils in the
Common Schools to participate in religious exercises of any kind,
and neither teacher nor trustee has power to compel any pupil to
unite in such exercises. According to the construction of the
law established by the Department many years ago, the teachers
may engage in such exercises before or after school hours, with
such pupils as choose to attend. See Code of Instruction, 349,
354. Your obedient servant,

Abram B. Weaver,

Superintendent."

The New York Tribune of November 25, 1869, in replying to
an attack of the Episcopalian, would give up the Bible in New
York city, where the law seems to permit its reading, as the only
means of defending the Comipon School system against the
assaults of Catholics.

As I prefer to let others speak, it will be pleasant to hear
what a secular newspaper has to say of a system of education
that dispenses with prayer, the reading of the Bible except as a
class book for its literary merits, and religious exercises of any
kind.

The New York World, September, 1871. commenting on a
remarkable address of Gov. Brown, of Missouri, says:

" The truth is that the mistake of means in our system of
education arises from a perversion of ends. On account of the

1 1

recency of its establishment our school system answers much
more nearly than those of older countries to what are considered
by the majority of modern men the chief end of man in our time.
That end is to get on in life ; to make money, and to gain what
money brings. To that purpose the present system is entirely
adequate. * * * Human happiness is no longer de-
fined in the words of the Catechism, ' to glorify God and to enjoy
him forever,' nor even ' to live through the whole range of facul-
ties,' but to get a fortune. * * * And our present system
of education is thoroughly fit to attain it. To turn the hearts of
the whole community from its present courses Mr. Brown and
his co-workers will find to be a long job ; but until it is done a
right system of education cannot be established."

There is a picture of the education furnished by the State of
New York to its children. It is calculated to show them how to
get and spend money ; and its highest morality is some worldly
wisdom culled from old Pagan authors, or a literary class-bonk
called the Bible.

Down to these depths of religious degradation have the
Christian people of the State fallen. We Catholics believe that
they forsook their earlier system of education to keep us from its
advantages and to hurt our church. They have hurt themselves
as Christians and honest men ; they have emasculated education
of all that gives it vitalizing power ; they have helped to place
the canker-worm of infidelity in the body politic, through the
children ; we have suffered in a JSecuniary way, and because, like
good citizens, we suffer when the country suffers.

Let us now examine the subject under another aspect. The
present system of Godless education has been fastened on the
State by the religious people of different denominations. Surely
we shall find the principle of " education without religious instruc-
tion " a cardinal one in all the Protestant churches,

Alas ! theory and practice are not always in accord. I shall,
therefore, be obliged to exhibit to you the sad spectacle of preach-
ing going one way, and practice suiting itself to circumstances.

The preaching of the leading men in the churches of the
country is excellent, and its application to the higher classes is
the same ; they preach differently to the poor. Here are my
authorities:

Thirty presidents of American colleges assembled at Oberlin,
Ohio, to attend the second annual meeting of the Central College
Association, an organization designed to promote collegiate and
higher education, and destined to operate in the Western States,
and I think down as far as Tennessee. Ex-President Finney — to
Americans this gentleman is well known — addressed the meeting
and laid down the principle that "religion must be taught. The
highest judicial authority had decided the Christian religion to be
the religion of the land." At the close of the session they passed
three resolutions, two of which I will give you :

" Resolved, That we note with pleasure the evidences of in-
creasing interest in the literary, scientific, and especially the
religious education of the youth of our land ; believing, as we do,
that education not based upon Christian truth is of questionable
value.

" Resolved, That we commend these interests to the sympa-
thies, prayers and liberality of Christian people and congrega-
tions, that our schools may be increasingly useful as fountains
not only of sound instruction but also of earnest, elevated piety,"

I wish you to notice that the testimonies I am bringing
forward are principally from men high in their churches, in
charge of colleges and busy in educating the children of the
wealthy. But, if the children of the wealthy, whose parents have
education, have time, have means at home to attend to their
religious instruction, need all the religious training that is here
spoken of by these gentlemen and by others, how much more do
the children of the poor, the children of the masses, the children
of the American people, need it f* They who are gathered into
our colleges and universities, are but a handful compared with
the millions covering the land that are to be found in our schools
and places of elementary learning.

Dr. Anderson, President of the Rochester University, a
gentleman whose life has been devoted to the training of
young men, who stands high in his profession in this city in
which he hves, and whose reputation as an educator is known I
might say all over the country — a man who has a wonderful gift,
as I understand, of influencing the minds of others; who can
draw young men to him, who can fashion and direct their ways
of thought, who can mould and form their characters, Dr. Ander-
son, one of the first men in the Baptist Church in these United
States, addressing the Baptist Educational Convention in the
city of New York, says :

" Happily, I need not say much upon the subject of moral
and religious education in colleges. By far the larger part of our
colleges have been founded by religious men, and by prayer and
faith consecrated to Christ. * * * I would only call
attention to that kind of moral and religious influence which
may be called spontaneous or incidental."

He speaks now of colleges and universities. Ten times more
do we need such teaching in our schools — down where the people
are, than in our colleges where the select few of the rich are to
be found. Again he says :

" With the element of Christian faith in head and heart, it is
impossible for an earnest teacher to avoid giving out constantly
religious and moral impulses ajid tJiought. He must of necessity set
forth his notions abotit God, the souL conscience, sin, the futvre life
and Divine Revelation'^

I endorse most heartily these correctly expressed views and
sentiments of Dr. Anderson. They show how profound, how
deep is his knowledge of the boy heart, and how well he under-
stands the influence that must of necessity go out from the mind
and the heart of every earnest teacher to work upon the plastic
and susceptible hearts and minds of his young pupils, fashioning
and forming them for their future welfare in the world. The
Doctor goes on :

" If he promises not to do so he will fail to keep his word "
—these are true words — or his teachings in science or literature,
or history will be miserably shallow and inadequate. Our notion
of God and the moral order form, in spite of ourselves, the base
line which affects all our movements and constructions of science,
literature and history. Inductions in physics, classifications in
natural history, necessitate a living law, eternal in the thought of
God. * v{- ■» All instruction unfolding the laws of science,
literature and history should be permeated with the warmth, and
light and glory of the Incarnate Redeemer."

" Incidental Instruction ! " Here is the power of the teacher.
The fact is, if you take a number of boys to instruct them, and
dose them too largely with set forms of religion, you will do
them harm. But if you go to work in Dr. Anderson's way — by
incidental instruction — you may be sectarian, but you will make
your scholars religious and just what you please :

" Incidental instruction in morality and religion, then," says
the Dr., " ought to be the main reliance of the Christian Teacher.
The ends of a Christian school while working by its own laws and
limitations, ought not to be essentially differetit from a Christian
church.''

Note well these words of the Doctor which I repeat :

" The ends of a Christian school ought not to be essentially
different from a Christian church."

I would like to ask here what we shall call those schools that
are not Christian ? Can a school be called Christian in which all
religious exercises are forbidden ? The Doctor continues.

" The principles we have thus indicated are universal in their
application. If the Christian teacher must make the elements of
his religious faith color all his teaching, the same must be true of
the unchristian teacher. * '" * There is no good think-
ing that is not honest thinking. There is no good literature or
art which is not the spontaneous outflow of the deepest elements
of the moral and intellectual life. If parents wish their children

educated in Christian primiples, they must seek out honest. Christian
men to be their Teachers.''

I thank God that put it in the mind of Dr. Anderson to give
such clear testimony in favor of sound CathoUc views with
regard to the education of the young.

There is nothing like variety.

You have heard the testimony of the thirty presidents and
then that of Dr. Anderson, and now we shall give ear to B. Gratz
Brown, Governor of the State of Missouri, a great politician and
statesman. You will notice that these gentlemen are speaking
on occasions when loose talking will not answer. Dr. Anderson
addressed the Baptist Educational Convention ; the thirty presi-
dents of colleges were united at a Teachers' Convention. They
are men advanced in years, of serious thought, speaking on serious
questions, and their words are not to be taken lightly, like those
of the writer in a newspaper who has to throw off his column
per day.

Gov. Brown addressing the seventh National Teachers'
Convention in St. Louis in August last, said :

" It is a very customary declaration to pronounce that educa-
tion is the great safeguard of republics against the decay of
virtue and the reign of immorality. Yet the facts can scarcely
bear out the proposition. The highest civilizations, both ancient
and modern, have sometimes been the most flagitious. Now-a-
days, certainly, your prime rascals have been educated rascals."

I know you would be angry if I said this, but I am merely
quoting from this gentleman, and if you go to Auburn, Sing
Sing and other prisons, and examine some of the criminals con-
fined there, you will find that there is truth in the Governor's
words. Again :

"And it is at least doubtful whether education in itself, as
now engineered, and confined merely to the acquisition of knowl-
edge, has any tendency to mitigate the vicious elements of hu-
man nature, further than to change the direction and type of
crime."

That is, without this education the crime might be of a low,
mean and sensual order, but the educated criminal has attained a
higher grade of crime. And again :

" This is not alleged, be it understood, of moral culture or
religious instruction, but simply of the education of the intellect
as it really obtains. * * ^ X say therefore, frankly,
that whilst an earnest advocate of education, believing that
knowledge is power, confessing that true advancement can only
repose upon education, yet it is only a self delusion to mis-state
the question and blind our eyes to what it does effect, by claim-
ing for it what it does not by any necessity accomplish. "

This speaks for itself and I need add nothing I strayed off
from my regular authorities this time in quoting Governor
Brown ; now we will return home and call before us the Rev. Dr.
Peck, President of the Board of Trustees of the Syracuse Uni-
versity, just at your door, and a gentleman well-known all
through this part of the country, Addressing the East Genesee
Conference at the city of Elmira, August, 1870, he says :

" The hope of our country is the Christian religion, the put-
ting of it where it is not, and the allowing no man to take it
away from where it is."

Very plain Anglo Saxon that ;

" I charge not upon the Cornell University that it is infidel ;
but I state the fact. It has chosen its own ground. It is nega-
tive in religion."

And because it is negative it is therefore infidel, according
to Dr. Peck. Evidently they are not teaching Dr. Peck's form
of Christianity at Cornell University.

" Our institution is for positive Christianity, such as comes
from the Holy Bible, such as Methodists will approve ; that
which will influence your children to come to Christ. "

I like that plain Anglo Saxon style.

"If you want anything else don't put me on the Board of
Trustees, nor ask me to give anything. These are your princi-

pies. God forbid that you should change them or seek to adjust
them to the liberal religion of the day."

And this is the ground upon which the Syracuse University
has been established — " opposition to the liberal religion of the
day." Yet we American, Irish and German Catholics must send
our children to schools negative and infidel in their teaching, or
pay double taxes. Oh, no ! Dr. Peck, of the Methodist Epis-
copal Church, has given us the right views, and we hold to them.

But he is not alone in his position.

The Rev. Dr. Steele, Vice-President of the Syracuse Univer-
sity, in his inaugural address in Syracuse August 31st, 1871, de-
claring to Syracuse and the country the intent and purposes of
that University, and the mode of instruction to be followed
there, spoke as follows ;

" A far more important and much discussed question is the
relation of University culture to religion."

And we poor people who belong to the crowd are told that
we must lay aside religion, which must not enter into our educa-
tion. Yet young men who have left their mothers' apron-strings,
and are able to do for themselves, need the restraining influences
of religion, need direct Christian teaching in order to make them
good men ; but the poor —let them go to their schools and be
infidels if they have a mind to:

*' We are not disposed to evade a question so vital, nor do
we wish to assume any equivocal attitude before the public on
this subject. Here we do not wish to innovate upon the general
usage of American colleges which has prevailed with scarcely an
exception from the day that Harvard opened its doors to the
sons of the Pilgrims, 235 years ago,"

Rev. Dr. Steele here tells us that the prevailing usage of Ameri-
can colleges for the last 235 years — and very few of us wish to go
back any further than that — has been to join secular education
and religious culture :

" This mother of our colleges, by the appointment of a
chaplain and by his required attendance upon daily prayers and

public worship twice upon the Sabbath, reflects the almost uni-
form practice of the Universities and Colleges of our country.
* * * It has been found that those who have been
trained under the influence of mere mundane motives by the
exclusive development of the earthward side of their nature to
the neglect of the spiritual part, and by the use of ideas devoid
of the high spiritual qualities which religion affords, have been
destitute of that strength, symmetry, beauty and usefulness
which made the lives of those who have thrown open the sky-
light of the soul, the spiritual nature to the transfiguring power
of religious truth and spiritual influences, and who have been
moulded by a culture vitalized and guided by the spirit of God.
" In the second place it is requisite to true culture by' the
aid which it affords to the moral of the student. There are sys-
tems of religion in which morals are divorced from religion.
Such is not Christianity. * * " So long as the Bible
is the acknowledged foundation of our civilization, our civil and
criminal codes of law, and so long as its spirit and teachings are
requisite to the existence of self-government and of tree institu-
tions, it should have a place in the common school, the high
school, the seminary, the university, as an influence necessary to
conserve good order and pure morals.

" In the third, religion is- necessary to culture by the aid
which it affords."

Now, you will notice that this school question has great dif-
ficulties in it, and what is wanted is that we come together, dis-
cuss them, and if possible, find a solution of them. I desire
with all my heart the substantial welfare of the people, and the
permanence of this form of government. We cannot have any
other form of government — no other would do in this land of
ours, and my whole soul is in its success and stability, and I feel
anxious and uneasy when I see principles laid down and sys-
tems taking deep root among us that are derogatory to a repub-
lican form of government, and are likely in future to do harm.

I may fatigue you with long readings from others, but I de-
sire this evening to bring out the sentiments of very estimable
gentlemen— ministers, college presidents and editors— on the
necessity of religious education in schools and colleges.

The Journal of Commerce, of New York, thirty years ago,
was the strongest and most violent opponent of Catholics in
asking for their rights in this matter of school education. The
Journal of Commerce of 1870 is quite another paper, although
as staunchly Protestant as ever. In an article bearing date
May II, 1870, after saying that Catholics would not be satisfied
with the exclusion of the Bible from the common schools, it
asks :

" Would it satisfy Protestants ? For ourselves we frankly
answer no ! Our first and chiefest objection sprang of the grow-
ing inattention to the religious culture of the young in their
daily lesson in the class."

Yet we hear it said continually that children go into the
class room merely to learn reading, arithmetic, geography, &c.,
and here we have the sentiments of the Journal of Commerce,
a most able and influential paper, the writers of which are men
of thought and education, who carefully weigh what they say
— showing that religion must go into the daily recitations of the
class. The article continues :

" Where the common school system won its chiefest laurels,
and achieved its highest success, all scholastic learning was based
upon the fundamental truths of religion, and the Gospel teach-
ings were the only sanctions of faith and practice. The dissent-
ers were so few in numbers that their rights were never respected,
and the great majority being substantially of one faith consented
to this sectarian intolerance. The system was wrong, because if
the support came from the State bound to universal toleration, it
ought not to force any religious system upon the child of a single
objector ; but the method was right, because without the sanction
of religion there can be no proper training of the young in any
branch of instruction ; and the school where this is excluded is a

heathen nursery. It is all in vain to say that geography, arith-
metic, grammar, history, botany, &c,, may be taught as sciences
without any necessary connection with religion true or false ; and
that the baptism of faith can be given to all these acquirements
by exercises in the family and at the church, having no mutual
relations with the school room."

All these gentlemen — Dr. Anderson, Dr. Peck, Dr. Steele,
and the thirty presidents — tell us the same story with regard to
the rich; and if the rich with all their advantages of books, many
intellectual and moral associations, pleasant friends and instruct-
ive conversation, the family's minister visiting their homes,
listening to eloquent discourses in the church, &c., if, with all
these advantages the children of the rich, even in the study of
botany and the sciences, need religious culture, need the " inci-
dental instruction," spoken of by Dr. Anderson, how much more
is it needed by the laborer's child, whose mother rises early in
the morning and toils for her family while others are still in
their beds, who, when the school hour comes, hurries off her
child with scarcely time to say " God bless you ; " who, all day
long labors on, busy in many ways to keep things together and
eke out a bare subsistence ; whose father, in summer's heat and
winter's cold, the year in and the year out, for some paltry pit-
tance of a few shillings, in health or failing strength, like a
machine that must stop only when it is worn out, works from
morning until night, and has, perhaps, neither time, nor strength,
nor patience to sit down with his children to supply the deficien-
cies and short-comings of the school and church.''

It is the children of these poor people, who will make or
mar the future of this mighty Republic. They constitute the
numbers, they bring vigor and brightness of intellect, as well as
strength and endurance of body to make powerful and energetic,
if not virtuous and God fearing citizens. How, I ask, can these
children find in the dingy apartment cjJled their home, from such
toil-worn and harassed parents, that amount of religious culture
and instruction,which the State says shall not be given in the school,

and which these gentlemen, speaking candidly for the members
of their own churches, say, is essential for the education of the
young? The article continues:

" The mind is not governed by laws which allow for such
separations and distinctions."

" Good men will come to acknowledge this in time and will
see that instead of excluding the Bible from the school, the great
need of the race is in its systematic daily study in the formation
of mind and character. * * * As Protestant from

the most earnest convictions, we believe that nothing has con-
tributed so much to the extension of the Roman Catholic organi-
zation and influence in this country, as the partial persecutions
it has received from those conscientiously opposed to it.

" Give Catholics their full rights ; ask nothing of them you
would not willingly concede if you were in their place."

Just what we are standing before the whole world to-day
asking for.

" Extend to them even a liberal courtesy, as believing that
if they hold to some errors, they are not heathen or infidel."

We are Christians, we believe in Christ, we believe in the
Bible as a divinely inspired Revelation, we believe in One God
and Three Divine Persons, we believe in the Incarnate Redeemer;
that Christ our Lord gave His blood to save us ; we believe in
heaven and hell, and a world to come ; we believe in sin — and
now pray tell us what else the Protestant believes ?

In my anxiety to show that Catholics are not alone in regard-
ing as defective and faulty the education given in the Common
Schools, because separated from religion, I must beg your patient
attention to another distinguished authority. This time it is no
other than Dr. Coxe, Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church
in V/estern New York. In a book called " Moral Reforms," page
135, he lays down the following positions as the proper ones to
be taken by the members of his denomination. With the assist-
ance of Dr. Coxe, and the entire Episcopal Church following the

lead of their Bishop in favor of Christian schools, our holy cause
must necessarily make great headway.

These are the positions to be held by churchmen, according
to Dr. Coxe :

" I. Secure to every human being the best education you
can provide for him."

Let the very beggar in the streets of your city have the best
education you can provide for him, but because he is poor do
not tell him to be content with stones when he asks for bread.
Let our country be able to say to the world that it is a land in
which no one, rich or poor, is left without the very best education
that can be provided for him :

" IL Where you can do no better utilize the common schools,
and supplement them by additional means of doing good.

" III. But where you can do better, let us do our full duty
to our own children, and to all children, by gathering them into
schools and colleges thoroughly Christian."

Many of the Presbyterians agree with Dr. Coxe on this
question of Christian schools. In 1850 Rev. Mr. Young, pastor
of the Presbyterian congregation in Warsaw, N. Y., wrote to Mr.
' Torgan, superintendent of common schools :

"The Presbyterian congregation, in this town, regarding the
State plan of common school education as incompetent to secure
that m.oral training of their children which is indispensable to a
proper direction and use of the intellectual faculties — established,
some eighteen months since, within the bounds of School District
No. 10, a parochial school, to be instructed by such teachers only
as profess religion. '• * * In the progress of our
school we find that evangelical religious truth sanctifies education
as well as all other things with which it is connected ; and that
our children have made more rapid and effective progress in
intellectual attainments than formerly— but the ' Free School
Law' passed by our last legislature has invaded our sanctuary,
and we fear is about to thwart our purposes.

" We might have supposed that these principles of toleration
which secure to the religious denominations respectively the
privilege of worshiping God according to their respective views,
and which excuse them from supporting those of a contrary belief,
—that these principles would at least allow them the same toler-
ation in the education of our children. But such toleration is
now by legislative enactment denied us; while we are subjected
to such onerous taxes for the support of common schools as are
equivalent to an actual prohibition from carrying out our views,
conscientiously entertained."

To quiet Rev. Mr. Young and the Presbyterian congregation
of Warsaw, the superintendent of schools judged it expedient in
reply to say :

" Shall the great body of Roman Catholics in the State be
exempted from their share of the general tax for the support of
Public Free Schools, aud the money raised upon the residue of
the taxable property of the State be paid over to teachers em-
ployed by ///^/r respective churches, whose duty it shall be to 'in-
corporate into their system of daily instruction ' the peculiar
tenets of their religious faith."

We have listened to the utterances of distinguished men in the
leading Protestant denominations, and if we take up the statistics
of educational establishments in the country, we shall find that
all the denominations of Christians are putting forth great exer-
tions to found and endow Universities, Colleges, Seminaries and
Academies — institutions for the higher studies of the wealthier
classes. Catholics also found and establish Colleges and
Academies for the rich members of their church, but their
principles are as good and applicable for the poor as for the rich.
Here is where we find the difference between them and the
various Protestant denominations.

Whilst the latter have written wisely, learnedly and beautifully
on the absolute necessity of religious instruction in schools and
colleges where the young are to be educated, they make the

application of their principle only in behalf of their rich com-
municants. Catholics, on the contrary, have put forth their
strength in behalf of their poor children. These need religion
and all its helps in the church, and at the fire-side, but still more
in the school which is the child 's church.

There are at the present time not far from one hundred thous-
and Catholic children in the Christian Free Schools of the State of
New York, and there are over four thousand children in the
Catholic schools of Rochester. These children are the children
of the people ; among them are children whose fathers' bones lie
bleaching on the battle fields of the late war. Among them are
many whose mothers' little earnings can ill be spared from the
family's support.

If to-day we have one hundred thousand children in our
schools, ten years hence that number in all probability will be
doubled. For the past thirty years, since the first serious dis-
cussion of the right of religion to be in the schools, when we had
very few Catholic schools in the State, we have been too busy
providing church accommodation for our ever-increasing mem-
bers to give that earnest attention to our schools which they
merit.

In the years to come we shall be more occupied with school
building and with the education of our children than the erecting
of churches, although this work will not be permitted to stand
still.

A plan or system of schools which excludes one hundred
thousand children of the very classes in whose behalf Free Schools
are supposed to be maintained, cannot be said to be a success.
Schools that are carried on upon a basis so thoroughly defective
as these in this city of Rochester, which are able to gather within
their walls no more than 5,500 children in daily average attend-
ance, whilst a portion of its citizens, who are unwilling to separate
religion from education, can show an average daily attendance of
4.000 in special schools of their own, can scarcely be called Com-
mon Schools for all.

It is, we know well, the system which the majority of our
fellow citizens have adopted, but we have yet to learn that
majorities, even if all-powerful, are infallible, or that minorities
have no rights, or that a system that falls back in its ultimate
defense when logic, sound sense and fair play have stormed all
its positions, on the mere power of numbers, is a system that
deserves to be permanent.

Much is said about sectariajiisni, sectarian schools and sectarian
institutions. Indeed, you have only to mention the name to dis-
turb the equanimity of many of our worthy fellow-citizens. It is
singular how little attention they have given the subject, and
how completely, blinded by the prejudices and feelings of their
early education, they lose sight of reason, sound logic and fair
play.

Two authorities will sufifice to show what is truly meant by
sectarian.

My first authority is John C. Spencer, Secretary of State and
Superintendent of Schools, who in his report to the Legislature
of New York in 1840 said :

" To this plan objections have been made that it would enable
different religious denominations to establish schools of 2i sectarian
character, and that thereby religious dissensions would be aggra-
vated, if not generated. It is believed to have been shown that
there must be some degree of religious instruction, and that there
can be none without partaking more or less of a sectarian char-
acter ; and that even the Public School System has not been able,
and cannot expect to be able, to avoid the imputation. The
objectto7i itself proceeds on a sectarian principle, and assumes the
power to control that which is neither right nor practicable to
subject to any domination. Religious doctrines of vital i7itercst
will be inculcated, not as theological exercises, but incidentally, in
the course of literary and scientific instructions; and who will under-
take to prohibit such instruction."

" It is believed to be an error to suppose that the absence of
all religious instruction, if it were practicable, is a mode of avoid-

ing sectarianism. Oft the contrary, it would be in itself sectarian;
because it woiild be consonant to the views of a particular class, and
opposed to the opinions of other classes. Those who reject creeds
and resist all efforts to infuse them into the minds of the young
before they have arrived at a maturity of judgment which may
enable them to form their own opinions, would be gratified by a
system which so fully accomplishes their purposes. But there
are those who hold contrary opinions ; and who insist on guarding
the young against the influence of their ov/n passions and the
contagion of vice, by implanting in their minds and hearts those
elements of faith which are held by this class to be the indispen-
sable foundations of moral principles. This description of per-
sons regard neutrality and indifference as the most insidious forms
of hostility. It is not the business of the undersigned to express
any opinion on the merits of those views. His only purpose is
to show the mistake of those who suppose they tnay avoid sectarian-
ism by avoiditig all religious instruction ^

Another who has discussed this question of sectarianism with
force and great plainness of speech, is the Rev. Dr. Spear of
Brooklyn, in the columns of the Independent, thus :

" It is quite true that the Bible, as the foundation of religious
belief, is not sectarian as between those who adopt it ; but it is
true that King James' version of the Holy Scriptures is sectarian
as to the Catholic, as the Douay is to the Protestant, or as the
Baptist version would be to all Protestants, but Baptists. It is
equally true that the New Testament is sectarian as to the Jew,
and the whole Bible is equally so as to those who reject its author-
ity in any version. * * * There is no sense or candor
in a mere play on words here. It is not decent in a Protestant
ecclesiastic, who has no more rights than the humblest Jew, vir-
tually to say to the latter : ' You are nothing but a good-for-
nothing Jew ; you Jews have no claim to be regarded as a reli-
gious sect, or included in the law of State impartiality as between
sects which Protestants monopolize for their special benefit. Away
with your Jewish consciences. You pay your tax-bills and send

your children to the Public Schools and we will attend to their
Christian education.' It is not decent to say this to any class of
citizens who dissent from what is known as Protestant Christian-
ity. It is simply a supercilious pomposity of which Protestants
ought to be ashamed. It may please the bigotry it expresses,
but a sensible man must either pity or despise it. In the name
of justice we protest against this summary mode of disposing of
the school question in respect to any class of American citizens.
It is simply an insult."

We are frequently told by our non-Catholic friends that
really we have no just cause of complaint ; that if the State takes
our taxes, it gives us in exchange schools for our children to
which we can send them, if we please, that if we do not choose
to patronize these Public Free Schools, we have no one to blame
but ourselves.

This argument is readily accepted by those whom it suits.
It does not answer us. In the first place, if we are not to go
back to the days of pagan Sparta and resign all control of our
children to the State, it will not be denied that parents have the
natural right and duty to provide for their children the best edu-
cation they can. Not many will question this right and duty ; it
is generally acted on by all parents who have the means to pay
taxes and at the same time provide education, other than State
education, for their children in seminaries, colleges and private
establishments, in harmony with the religious views and wishes
of their patrons ; it is acted on by others, not so able to bear
double taxation, but who are willing to make great sacrifices to
fulfil a conscientious duty. There are others who are not able to
provide for their children the kind of education which they would
wish to give their offspring, because the State inter\'enes, and by
taking a portion of their small resources, and by establishing with
a lavish expenditure of the public funds, rival and competing
schools, has rendered well nigh impossible the fulfilment of a
bounden parental duty, and to this extent, is guilty of a gross
wrong to many of its citizens.

There are citizens then who complain with truth and reason
on their side that the legislation of the State operates unfairly
and wrongfully, depriving them of equal rights. They might
provide for their children the kind of education they deem suita-
ble, and they, and not the State, are the judges of what that
education ought to be, if the State did not tax them for the
education of other people's children, or, if the State did not put
religion under a ban and interdict, and make laws discriminating
in favor of education without religious instruction, and against
the efforts of its poorer citizens who prefer education with all the
helps, influence and sacred spirit which religion alone can give.

The men who are advocating the establishment of Colleges
and Universities for the training of Baptists, Episcopalians, Pres-
byterians and Methodists, surely will not discountenance the
humbler efforts of their poor fellow citizens who .seek for their
children in the simple week-day school, that religious knowledge
joined to secular learning, which alone gives hope of forming the
character to morality and virtue.

What is good and useful in the College, is good and useful in
the School ; what is right for the rich is right for the poor. No
rich man loves his child with more fondness, nor seeks its future
advantage for this world and the next with more sincerity than
does the plain mechanic, or humble laborer in his simple cottage.

The fallacy of unsound argument is in time detected by the
people, and the play upon words, under cover of which many are
deceived, ceases to avail.

Hence, whilst for a long time, sectarianisut meant only Cath-
olicism, and could be used as a battle cry to rally the unthinking
or malicious bigotry of the crowd, now that it is coming to mean
any aspect of religious teaching, or the plain reading of the Bible,
without note or comment, sensible men will begin to ask,
"Where is this going to end?"

I have rrever yet heard an honest argument to disprove or
invalidate the views of John C. Spencer or Rev. Dr. Spear on

this question of sectarianism. And 1 have no hesitation in assert
ing that the sectarianism prevailing in the public schools of this
State is as objectionable to a large class of citizens as any other
form of sectarianism that could be introduced.

It is the sectarianism of no religion, of infidelity ; it is the
sectarianism of those who have no form of religious belief, or are
indifferent to all forms; it is a sectarianism that being in a
majority plays the tyrant with fearful injustice. Listen to its
cry which it passes for an argument : " If we give these religious
people what they want, if we help sectarian schools, in their sense
of sectarianism, what is to become of us?"

It was the sectarianism of no-religion which broke down the
religious denominational schools in New York city, and all over the
State in the first years of this century. And it is the religious
people of the different Protestant denominations who with one
breath blow hot and cold knowing that education without religious
instruction is harmful, and yet trembling lest such a true doctrine
might help the Catholics.

Here are two resolutions passed by a Convention of Metho-
dist ministers held at Syracuse, this very week :

" Resolved, That we, as a convention, insist upon the moral
element in the instruction afforded in our common school system,
and especially the teaching of the moral system of Bible Christi-
anity, which is the foundation of our civil law.

" Resolved, That the time has come when the constitution
of the State of New York should be so amended as to prohibit
peremptorily the appropriation by State or municipal authority of
public funds for the support of sectarian schools, and we hereby
solemnly and urgently petition the next Legislature to inaugurate
the action by which this amendment may be secured."

To understand what these gentlemen of the Methodist
Church mean by the moral element, and the teaching of the moral
system of Bible Christianity, we must listen to the explanations
given by these same reverend gentlemen. Rev. Mr. Jones, of
Ilion, said : " Our right to sustain and control them [the public

schools] was found in their Christian origin. He argued that
moral culture must come from drill, and this must be given in
childhood and in school. After a passing denunciation of politi-
cal corruption, he said the teacher would not have to deal with
the intellect alone. The state, in assuming to act in loco parentis,
could not refuse to take care of the spiritual education of the
children. Teachers must not be allowed to substitute the
demoralizing doubtings of irreverent speculation for the grand
saving truths of divine inspiration, whose essentials long ago
became, and by the blessing of God shall continue to be the
unwritten creed of this great American people."

Dr. Peck is already on record. He wants none of your milk-
and-water Christianity — your liberal religion that means nothing;
he wants the religion that will bring men to Christ — the religion
that will suit the Methodists.

At this same Convention in Syracuse, Rev. Mr. Taylor
ventured to say that Methodists did not wish to teach religion in
the common schools, but, upon being taken to task for the utter-
ance of such a heresy, and it was called a heresy by two of his
brother ministers, he quickly explained and joined hands with
Rev. Mr. Flack, who said that if the terrible heresy presented by
Mr. Taylor should prevail, he would not hold his place a day as
principal of a place of learning.

There is great confusion of ideas in these resolutions and
speeches of the Methodist ministers. They call for a constitu-
tional amendment to prohibit the giving of money to sectarian
schools, and at the same time, and in the same breath, insist that
the public schools shall teach religion, Bible Christianity, etc.
To clear up the difficulty, to get at what is in their minds, substi-
tute Catholic for sectarian and you will let in a ray of light, if not
of honest-mindedness.

And so, in this whole controversy, from its origin to this day,
whenever you hear a religionist of any kind speaking of secta-
rianism, when you reach what is in his mind, you discover that it
is the spectre of Catholicism that frightens him.

After what you have heard from me this evening, many may
be anxious to know what do these CathoHcs really mean, and
what is it they want — what are their views upon this great subject
of education. In the first place, we are in favor of education for
the people. We are in favor of the most general system of
education that can be devised. We favor a system that will
bring in all the children of the State. But we do not favor a
system that gives them a defective, injurious, poisonous educa-
tion. Hence, since under the present system formed by the State
we cannot take our stand upon the platform with our fellow
citizens, we retire to one of our own. We build school houses
and establish schools. I think that here, in this city of Rochester,
we need not fear comparison with the public school houses of
the city. Here are the two school houses of St. Joseph's, the
largest school houses in the city ; the school house at the Cathe-
dral on Frank street ; the very large and beautiful school house
of St. Peter's congregation ; and the not so large but more
beautiful school house of the Immaculate Conception. We
build school houses, large, spacious, roomy, well ventilated, well
provided with all the appliances for imparting instruction. We
supply teachers and books. And I would not fear, although
in these schools religion holds the first place, like a beautiful
goddess presiding over all — I would not fear to bring out the
children of all these schools and place them side by side with the
children of any other schools in the city for examination in those
secular branches which we are told are so valuable. We know
their value. And while these branches are studied in our schools,
we wish to bring in the beautiful handmaid of religion to help
the child and improve i:s mind, to mould its young heart, and to
draw the mind and heart to God. Our schools furnish the chil-
dren all the other schools do, and, furnishing this education,
doing the very thing for which the State collects taxes and sup-
ports schools, we ask, and rightly and justly we ask, why it is that
the money must all go in one direction and none oi it come
where so many of the children are to be found receiving the

education the State means they shall have, and receiving at the
same time that interdicted thing called religion ? But whilst we
claim these rights for ourselves we are equally strong in our con-
victions that the same rights belong to others. That whilst
we bring religion into our schools and mean always to have
religion there, we say to our non-Catholic fellow-citizens, bring
into your schools whatever of religion you have — bring in prayer
and religious singing and Bible reading. These means of good
you hold as sacred and precious; we would much prefer good
Protestants of any kind to infidels and deniers of all revelation ;
we thank God for any and all truth, wherever we find it. If but
the beginning of truth to-day, we pray God that this small begin-
ning of truth may grow into the fullness of all truth.

I do not propose to tell my fellow-citizens of this State this
evening how they are to meet this subject. Little by little, next
year, ten years hence if you please, the question will be settled
upon a fair and just basis, without any more of those disastrous
compromises which in the past have made the subject so diffi-
cult. Among those who have their children in our schools are
foreigners from all the countries of Europe — Germans, and Swiss,
and French, and Irish. These people come here to a land of
liberty, and we tell them what a glorious country it is ; and we
can never exaggerate in praising the beauty, glory and advant-
ages of this noble country. We tell them of all its many
blessings ready for every poor down-trodden European who
comes to our shores. But when these foreigners come they
bring with them their consciences — they bring with them the
religion in which they were born and educated, and that religion
they prize more than the advantages the country offers, that reli-
gion they prize beyond all earthly gain. Shall we tell them that
when they come to this country they may look after their own re-
ligion as they please in their own churches, but their children the
State will take care of, and the State will see that no religious
instruction is given them ? Some of them come from Prussia,
where the State most cautiously guards the religious interests of

all. There are schools for Catholics and in those schools religion
is attended to with the greatest care under the supervision of
the parish priest. There are Protestant schools and the children
are carefully instructed and trained in their religious duties by
the ministers of parishes to which they belong. There the Jews
have equal advantages. In republican Switzerland we have the
same wise, just and equitable arrangment. In great Britain these
schools for all kinds are favored and encouraged by the govern-
ment. In Ireland, it happened that years ago, in those earlier
days when the poor people were trying to emerge from a slavery
of hundreds of years, they gladly accepted any boon of educa-
tion the government gave them, and the government gave them
one very much like the one we have in this country, secular edu-
cation without religion — religion before and after school hours,
but no God in the school. And this very year, almost this very
month, although all through the land there were none but Cath-
olics, the teachers and children Catholics, because God had been
told to stand at the door of the school house, the Bishops of
Ireland have passed condemnation upon these schools, and they
insist that the schools shall be schools in which shall be found
the cross upon which their Saviour died — schools in which the
exercises may be opened in the name of the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Ghost, in which the children may go upon their knees
and adore the great and good God that made them.

I am not here this evening to find special fault with the
common schools on any other score than the single one of ban-
ishing religion from them. If I were to do so I might take up
the statement of Prof. Agassiz. Not many papers care to pub-
lish it. It is too terrible a thing to state.

But people say, "If you Catholics have schools, and our
taxes go there, we shall be supporting Popery." I would like to
know who pay the taxes. I always thought when the tax
gatherer came around, he did not stop long to examine whether
the dollars were Catholic or Protestant. That objection, I think,
amounts to but very little. If the taxes do help us in our

Catholic schools, perhaps it will be the Catholic money that
comes there.

Now what is the meaning of my speaking here this even-
ing ? I came here as an American citizen, speaking to Ameri-
can people. I have no other country. I come before the Ameri-
can people loving the country as dearly as any one else can. No
one ever traveled through Europe who held his head higher and
with more pride, or who more frequently spoke out in praise of
this country than I did when there a year ago. After my God
and my religion, my country is the dearest object of my life. I
feel to-night in my heart the blot and disgrace that is upon the
country by the wrong and unjust system of public schools that
is now upheld in the land simply and solely by the potver of the
majority. I do not wish to say a single unkind, hard or threat-
ening word. I come this evening to ask a fair discussion — to
ask my fellow citizens to look at this great question without
prejudice, without bigotry, having dispelled those unfortunate
clouds that have been in their minds for so many years past. If
no discussion can be permitted — if from first to last we can hear
but the words, " we will it, we have made the law and the law
shall stand, and the might of the majority shall prevail in spite
of justice and of truth," then I would say that ten or twenty
years hence the issue will not be with the gentlemen from Ire-
land and Germany, although their right to stand here is as good
as the right of any man in the country — the issue will be with
the children of these men from European countries. They are
the children we are educating in our schools- -into whose minds
and hearts there will be planted deeply the true American feel-
ing and principle that whilst they ought always to be good and
law-abiding citizens they ought also to cherish with all the power
of their souls the thought and the feeling that they should not
submit to injustice or wrong one day longer than is absolutely
necessary. It will be an unfortunate condition of things if this
great and vital question of the education of the people finds no
solution through reason, common justice and fair play, but must

abide as it is until the majority is found on the side of justice
and right. And whenever that majority — when the youth of
to-day, come to be the men of ten years hence, you will find that
American and Irish and German Catholics, on. this question, will
stand as one man in defence of their rights, in claiming them, in
asking for them, and by those means which the constitution and
the laws of the State place in their hands, in obtaining them.
But how much better for us all to come together, brothers as we
are, in this mighty and glorious country which the good Lord
has given us, and discuss these matters — talk them over, without
permitting prejudice and bigotry to stand in our way ; for if they
do stand in the way, they will stand in the way of the
glory and stability of this country whose future God only knows.
It is the duty of all citizens to labor with a good heart, a clear
mind, an earnest soul, to do all they can in building up and
strengthening, and making still more glorious, this great Ameri-
can people.

SECOND LECTURE.

[,4,v reported for the Union and Advertiser, March i6, /Sj2.^

A Plan Outlimed for State Control and Supervlsion of

Common Schools in Harmony with Parental

Prerogative.

Bishop McQuaid delivered last night in Corinthian Hall a
second lecture on the question of Popular Education, a full re-
port of which is presented below. This lecture is supplemental
to the former one, and outlines a plan which would restore State
education to the original limits of the Common School, and,
while ensuring State control and supervision, would be in har-
mony with parental prerogative. This plan is understood to be
acceptable to the large body of citizens and tax payers who pro-
test against and will not use, even though compelled to pay for,
the present system, and it is deserving of respectful and serious
consideration. The two lectures, it was announced, will immed-
iately be published together in pamphlet form.

Bishop McQuaid spoke as follows :

Whilst seated in this Hall a year ago, listening to the silvery
tones of Wendell Phillips declaiming upon the power of the pul-
pit, the press and the rostrum, my mind was struck by the picture
which he drew of the capabilities of the latter to educate the
people.

There are questions which touch conscience most deeply and
belong of right to the pulpit, but which under certain aspects may
be more fitly discussed in the Mall than in the Church. Of this
nature is the subject now under consideration.

As an American citizen I again stand before my fellow citi-
zens to examine, discuss and agitate a subject which concerns the
State in its corporate organization as well as each individual mem-
ber thereof. The discussion and agitation demand calmness,
plain talk and fair play. When the agitation ends in a settlement,
that settlement will be based on truth, equal rights and common
justice. If in the intervening years between the present moment
and that time of settlement, be they few or many, some disput-
ants should forget their own dignity, or the respect due to others,
every outburst of temper, misrepresentation, or dealing in abusive
and vulgar language will recoil upon the offender. Thank God
it is characteristic of the American people to treat with disfavor
the unfair and ill-tempered controversialist who misrepresents or
distorts the facts and arguments of his opponents.

So far as the comments of the press elicited by the lecture on
"Christian Free Schools" have come under my notice, there is no
reason for complaint on personal grounds, however much the
writers may have failed to argue against the positions taken in
the lecture, contenting themselves with reiterating the determina-
tion of the American people to maintain the school system just
as it is in spite of all that can be said against it. The newspapers
have at least a vague perception that Catholics are citizens, and
that in time their rights as such may come to be recognized, and
when recognized may be found to be equal to those of other
classes of citizens.

Some of the ministers of churches in this city in total forget-
fulness of Christian Truth and Charity, have labored to show
forth how bitter and spiteful are sectarian hate and jealousy.
iVIy work is not with such men, and dismissing them and their
whole^budget and bundle of futile topics and questions as in no
way appertaining to the subject now before us, it is sufficient to

3«

say that their arguments and statements will be in order when-
ever the right of Catholics to live in these United States comes
up for serious discussion.

In pleasing contrast with such ebullitions of uncharitable-
ness are the fair, calm and sensible utterances of other ministers
in this city and elsewhere. They do not agree with us on all
points, but they give expression to their dissent in the language
of gentlemen ; they give the non-religionist the hope that all
Christian pulpits are not given over to gall and bitterness and all
manner of unkindness.

Thanking editors and ministers for every fair statement and
every honorable attack made on the positions taken in the lect-
ure on " Christian Free Schools," I proceed to explain my views
more fully, and mark out more accurately and strengthen the
positions already taken.

Fault has been found with the lecture because it did not lay
down a plan of Common Schools to be established in place of
the existing system against which such weighty objections are
brought. The object of that lecture was to show serious and
radical defects in the present system. Just now it is more im-
portant CO know that there are defects and to understand their
nature than to discuss and devise plans for remedying those de-
fects. Yet the lecture sufificiently indicated the only basis of a
plan that would give satisfaction, because justice, to all classes of
citizens. In endorsing the views of John C. Spencer whose
words were quoted, I said : " Whenever a time comes for the
settlement of the school question upon an equitable basis, we
shall have to go back to something like what John C. Spencer
proposed in 1841." His words will bear repetition : '' It is by
adopting the principle of the organization that prevails in other
parts of the State which shall leave such parents as desire to ex-
ercise any cofitrol over the amount and description of religious
instruction which shall be given to their children the opportunity
of doing so. This can be effected by depriving the present sys-
tem in New York of its character of universality and exclusive-

ness, and by opening it to the action of smaller masses, whose
interests and opinions may be consulted in their schools, so that
every denomination may freely enjoy its religious profession in the
education of its youth."

In other words John C. Spencer has placed education where
it belongs — under the control of parents. There is no talk of
church or church organization. A little attention to the meaning
of words will show how senseless is the talk about Church and
State, State Religion, etc. In countries in which all the people
were of one religious belief the union of Church and State was
possible, and they mutually aided each other. As the people
changed their creed, or many fell off from the national religion,
it took time to adapt the laws and government to the changed
condition of religious belief and practice. All governments,
Catholic and Protestant, made strenuous efforts to hold their
subjects faithful to the established Church, to impede the intro-
duction of the new form of worship, and to bring back the dissent-
ers by the strong arm of power. In the monarchial or republi-
can countries of Europe, the practical union of Church and State
exists only by the slenderest thread and for the advantage of the
latter. Even in countries whose inhabitants still, for the most
part, profess the same creed, this union of Church and State is
very weak, and day by day is giving way before the exactions
and encroachments of civil rulers. With the lessons of modern
history before us, and what is transpiring under our very eyes,
how. I ask, is it possible to establish a union of Church and State
in a country like ours, divided up into a hundred sects ? or what
is worse, having a majority of its population in the ranks of prac-
tical, if not avowed infidelity? It is not the possibility of union
of Church and State which we have to dread. It is the tyranny
of no-religion, of open infidelity, which, not content to have its
own way, in the education of its own children, must compel every
citizen, every parent, to accept the negative, defective, unchris-
tian, infidel education for his children, which it, being in a

majority, helped by the Evangelical churches, mercilessly imposes
on its believing fellow citizens.

The danger now before us is in the threatened union of State
and Infidelity, or union of State and Church of Infidelity. A
Church is a body of people united in a common belief, and the
Infidel Church is made up of all who believe in no-religion, no
revealed truth, no rule of spiritual life to prepare for the world to
come. This church is no phantom of the imagination ; it has its
leaders, its organs of thought, its halls, its newspapers and litera-
ture ; it has life, activity, untiring energy, great aggressiveness ;
its allies, found among professing Christians, as well as within its
own fold, are the more dangerous, because concealed, and often-
times, help the cause of infidelity without intending to stab
Christianity to the heart. Among the allies of infidelity are all
who bring discredit on the religion of Christ, by affecting indif-
ference with regard to His explicit and positive teachings.

These good gentlemen of the infidel way of thinking seem
to forget that any one has rights but themselves ; they are not
satisfied to have " purely secular " education for their own chil-
dren, they must, in a spirit of despotism incomprehensible in a
free country, did we not know what strange things are done in
the sacred name of liberty, labor to make other citizens, having
equal rights with themselves, forego the dearest privilege of
parents to educate their children with that amount dii\d description
of religious instruction which they may deem expedient. Mr.
Abbott of Toledo, editor of the Index, a great light among the
believers in no-belief, at a Convention in Syracuse in December
last, spoke in this strain : " There is good in Christianity, but its
fundamental idea — being founded on the will of Christ — is not
consistent with liberty. It is enough to say to a Christian, ' It is
the will of God or of Christ,' to satisfy him of a duty. But this
is not sufficient." Exactly so. It is not sufficient for a child
that does not believe in God, or in Christ ; but Christians do
believe in God and in Christ as God, and they know no higher
law than thislw>ll of God, nor do they care to form the consciences

of their children on any other basis than that of lovinp^ submis-
sion to the will and law of God.

Parents have the natural and divine right to educate their
children ; this right imposes a duty to provide for their offspring
the best education they can. All educators of eminence speak
of religious training as the chief part of a child's education, and
agree in asserting that the teaching of morals is an essential part
of the merest elementary education. Some, puzzled to know
how to teach morals without religion, join the two, and say that
all education ought to include morals and religion. We see how
they embarass their cause by such admissions when they do not
mean to be logical and consistent, and we vainly hope that com-
mon sense will lead them to take their stand with us. There is
no midway in this problem of education. They must either teach
their children morals and religion in such way, with such forms
and by such instrumentalities as they possess, or throw over
religion altogether, and substitute for it and God's law some such
law as " Honesty is the best policy," or a selection of the emi-
nently natural reasons for being a good boy furnished by Herbert
Spencer and other writers of his class.

George Washington, whose name may possibly carry weight,
even with those who reject the Bible, while they endorse Herbert
Spencer, in his Farewell Address, makes use of this significant
language : " Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to
political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable sup-
ports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism,
who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happi-
ness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The
mere politician equally with the pious man, ought to respect and
cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections
with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, ' Where
is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense
of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments
of investigation in the Courts of Justice?' And let us with cau-
tion indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained

without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of
refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and
experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can
prevail in exclusion of religious principles."

We might rest satisfied with these warning words of Wash-
ington, and adduce no other authorities to add to their weight,
but, as the friends of the " Godless " schools admit the necessity
of teaching morality provided it be divorced from religion, it is
expedient still more to strengthen this position.

You cannot teach Christian morality without introducing
religion. The Christian religion forms and directs the conscience.
You cannot instruct a child in the Christian religion without
telling it who Christ is, what He said and did, why He suffered
and was put to death, nor can you read the simplest narrative of
His life without provoking in your hearers the desire to ask ques-
tions. To say that the pupil shall not be permitted to ask ques-
tions, or the teacher to answer them, is manifestly absurd. With
the asking and answering of questions concerning Christ, you
introduce into the school the teaching of the Christian religion in
some form, with such coloring, neutral or positive, as may be in
the teacher's mind. The Rev. A. D. Mayo of Cincinnati,
Unitarian Minister, presents this view of the case in the following
strong and striking language : " It is easy to elaborate a ' secular '
theory of education in the closet, where an ideal boy can be placed
in a spiritual vacuum, and developed according to an exclusive
mental system. * * '- Now, the effort to control
and educate such a miniature republic on ' secular ' or purely
intellectual principles is a job compared with which harnessing
Niagara to turn the spindles of a cotton mill would be a cheerful
enterprise. You have no place there to set up your fine ma-
chinery that shall isolate the intellectual power and handle it so
delicately that the religious and moral susceptibilities may not be
disturbed. You have no time there to demonstrate how much of
a child is mind, how much is soul, and how much is animal. The
clock strikes nine: and you are facing fifty full-blooded uproari-

ous, Western boys, seething down from a mob to a school, and
what do you propose to do with this tremendous fact? An
American argus, with its hundred eyes, glares right into your
face ; pierces through your shams ; pokes fun at your fine theories,
and cries out, 'What do you want of me ? ' To say that the
teacher does not need every resource of religious and moral
power, save the ecclesiastical and theological, for which children
care nothing, to govern and educate this community, is to mock
at all educational experience and declare ourself utterly ignorant
of human life."

The Rev. Doctor will not take it amiss if some children of a
larger growth should happen to poke fun at his " fine mental
theory" of religion, that is neither "ecclesiastical nor theological."
Further on I shall have something to say of this new attempt to
get around the difficulty of not divorcing morality from religion
by divorcing religion from theology.

In sustainment of my proposition that religion cannot be
eliminated from education, I will give the words of the " Demo-
crat and Chronicle," of this city, in the ablest reply to my lecture
that has come under my notice. In a carefully prepared article
in its issue of December 23, 1871, it strives to answer the chief
objection to the present Common School, and yet makes the
following admissions : " There are at least three broadly diver-
gent channels of thought, into which every thinker drifts, arid
which convey every teacher worthy the name. And while, in its
highest aspect, the thought of the world may be above the com-
prehension of youth, and not required to be communicated
to them in their early education ; yet, on the other hand, so
interwoven are all our relations, that it is impossible to avoid
directing the youngest in one or the other of these channels, from
the moment they first begin to think. The conception which the
Romanist has of the universe, differs decidedly from that of the
advanced Evangelical mind, as that in turn differs from the purely
Scientific Religionist. How is a teacher to avoid coloring his
instruction by the sentiments he cherishes ? The theological idea

—that is, some view of the power which dominates in the
universe^ — is inseparable from any intelligent educator's course of
instruction. Yet in order to keep out the clashings and differ-
ences which agitate the purely theological world, we exact of our
teachers that they shall do that which in the nature of things is
impossible, if they are competent for the task, — hold convictions
regarding the structure of the universe, and man's relations to it
and its moving cause, and yet keep its rudimentary principles to
himself while necessarily dwelling upon subjects inseparably con-
nected with them. Of course there are some elementary branches
— as arithmetic, grammar, etc.. in the instruction of which no
such difficulty presents itself ; but the moment the student ad-
vances from these he engages in studies interwoven with the
universe, and in their investigation he must necessarily follow one
of the three forms of thought we have mentioned. And, what
is more significant to Catholic and Protestant, is the fact that the
more thoroughly a teacher succeeds in excluding all tincture of
the theological idea, the more surely will he succeed in drifting
into the third channel of thought which divides the thinking
world ; and hence it is that the Catholic holds our system to be
' Godless.' The same problem enters into the question of morals.
We are apt to respond to the charge that our Common School
system is ' Godless ' in theory, at least, by saying that sound
morality is inculcated. Yet the system of morals prevalent in the
three schools of thought so widely diverge that they are irrecon-
cilable ; and, if we omit, as we practically do, the moral relations
between man and his Maker, we again encounter the objection of
the Catholics that our schools are ' Godless.' * * •jf-

The position taken by Bishop AIcQuaid, that the Common School
.system is, in its theory, devoid of the religious idea, and in its
tendency unsatisfactory to any religionist of every persuasion, we
admit. The position, also, that the State ought not to undertake
to educate children in antagonism to the faith of their parents,
we also concede."

As we are contending for principles, and as the Democrat
and Chronicle concedes substantially our main positions, we can
afford to be indulgent over the harsh language with which the
editor closes his article. The writer, who has a fine philosophi-
cal mind, should, however, consult Dr. Anderson upon the
greater or less danger to the faith and morals of the very young,
such as are found in our Common Schools. The Doctor will
tell him that the tender and plastic mind receives impressions
before it has knowledge and intelligence to repel dangerous and
insidious teachings and suggestions ; he will learn furthermore
that a sneer, a cold look, a curl of the lip from an unbelieving
instructor, may chill, if it do not kill, the simple and budding
faith of the child ; that a mother's anxious and loving care to
instil into the mind and soul of her darling a spirit of love, trust
and reverence may be rendered vain by the blight of indifference
for sacred and religious things that falls upon a school from which
God has been excluded, or in which He can be spoken of only in
bated breath ; nor will the Doctor forget to tell him that yet
more subtle and insidious is the danger that arises from the tone
of the school, such as prevails where the boys, ever ready to be
a law to themselves, have ruled that it is unmanly, girlish, soft,
to be religious, and that this danger is greater in young boys
such as frequent our Common Schools, than it is in more advanced
pupils whose intelligence and reason enable them to withstand
human respect and false pride.

After clearly stating that all teaching will necessarily run in
one of three channels — the Catholic, the Protestant or the Infidel
— the writer with strange inconsistency and disregard of justice
maintains that it shall run in the Protestant channel. It is true
he only stands by the practice of the schools in Rochester which
are to all intents and purposes Protestant schools. They are
opened daily by the reading of the Protestant Bible, praying and
religious singing ; and this is done in direct contempt of the laws
of the State of New York, which forbid religious exercises of any
kind within school hours. The Democrat and Chronicle is surely

able to perceive that the time is not far distant when, if no Cath-
olic call for the observance of the law, there will be found others
to demand the complete secularization of the schools as the law
directs. According to the theory of the Democrat the channel
of thought in religion and morals along which the pupils of our
Common Schools will then be conveyed will be the Infidel one.
They have the " secular " system out West, and though the
country is only in its infancy they are becoming annoyed at the
young heathens which their schools are turning out. In the
fifteenth biennial report of the Superintendent of Public Instruc-
tion to the General Assembly of Iowa, the Hon. A. S. Kissell
discourses as follows : "The painful fact is, that the great mass
of instruction now provided our youth — except perhaps the ram-
bling and imperfect methods adopted in our Sabbath Schools —
is a practical denial that any such value attaches to our national
religion. We may listen all day to the exercises of any of our
most efificient schools, and hear often enough excellent advice
given to the pupils with reference to the importance of a generous,
noble and virtuous character ; we may be satisfied that the rules
and discipline of the school are administered in such way as to
secure habits of order, industry and good behavior ; but we can-
not help feeling that essentially the same feat might have been
achieved in ancient Athens, as in our modern Boston, which
stands so conspicuously as a representative city in Christendom.
Somehow here, in this nursery of our nation, in the public
schools, a perpetual libel is filed against the religion we adopt.
Must these schools have no h'gher standard than refined heathen-
ism could furnish ? * * * Will it not be ill-timed
and futile to urge upon the adult, that of which, during all the
years of his early training, he heard nothing, and which was so
effectually denied or ignored in the course of his training, that,
but for the reputed Christian character of the teacher, and the
devotional exercises with which his school was opened, he would
not have known that the formation of his character had any con-
ceivable dependence on such an influence."

The remedy for this lamentable condition of religious train-
ing in the schools of a Christian country is, according to the lion.
Mr. Kissell "To teach Christianity stripped of its theological
amplifications," " Make the life and sayings of the Great Master
the subject of formal historical study in the school-room," " Put
the child in possession of the central fact of the Christian
scheme."

I would like to see Mr. Kissell and the Rev. Mr. Mayo stand
before a crowd of Western school boys and answer their questions
about Christ and the Christian scheme without becoming " Theo-
logical," or even extending into "theological amplifications."
Theology, I always thought, meant speaking about God. To
avoid theology or theological instructions then, you must avoid
speaking of God. I would like to hear Mr. Mayo explain the
words of St. John, " In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word
was made flesh," and not be " ecclesiastical or theological ; " or
even tell those boys what St. Paul meant by " One Lord, one
faith, one baptism,'' or what Christ was thinking of when He
gave the commission to His apostles which we find in the
close of St. Matthew's Gospel, " Going, therefore, teach ye all
nations : baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all
things whatsoever I have commanded you : and behold I am
with you all days, even to the consummation of the world."

Did Christ mean what he said ? Have his commands and
promises been kept ? And if so, how and when ? It would help
the solution of this educational problem to hear either of these
gentlemen give a straightforward and intelligible answer to these
and other queries concerning Christ, His character. His office.
His mission. His work, His death, —to such queries as might arise
in the mind of any clever, bright Western boy, pondering over
the sayings and doings narrated in the Gospels, and do so with-
out trenching on ground " ecclesiastical or theological." Then
if 'there is a morality without religion, or a religion without God,

or that is neither ecclesiastical nor theological, and yet all suffi-
cient for the young, why cannot these gentlemen tell us what it
is, define it, make known its teachings, give its credentials, and
introduce it among the parents of the children ? It will soon
supplant the thousand and one sects that remain " ecclesiastical
and theological."

We have a right to ask the upholders of the present system
of Common Schools to explain what is meant by State " Secular "
education. Does it mean reading, writing and arithmetic?
Does it propose to furnish its children with no more than the first
and simplest tools of education to be used in opening the way to
a higher standard ? Or does the State undertake to provide
educational facilities up to the highest point for all who may
choose to make use of them ? That this last is not a chimerical
idea, but is working its way through the heads of the great army
of school teachers, I will give a passage from a paper read by
the Hon. Newton Bateman, of Illinois, at the National Educa-
tional Convention, held in St. Louis, in August, 1870 : " The ques-
tion for American statesmen is not how /tU/e, but how muc/i can
the State do for the education of her children ; that the one
thing most precious in the sight of God, and of good men, is the
welfare and growth of the immortal mind, and that to do this,
legislatures should go to the verge of their constitutional powers,
courts to the limits of liberality of construction, and executives
to the extremes of official prerogatives. I believe that an Amer-
ican State can and should supplant the district school with the
high school, and the high school with the university, all at the
public cost — exhibiting to the world the noblest privilege of the
country — a model free school system ; iotus teres atque rotiuidus"

Superintendent William Harris, at the same Convention, said :
'' The government of a republic must educate all its people, and
it must educate them so far that they are able to educate them-
selves in a continued process of culture, extending through life.
This implies the existence of higher institutions of public educa-
tion.''

Similar utterances are heard from time to time in different
parts of the country in Teachers* Institutes, and educational
conventions. But facts are stronger than words. The common
school has already its high school, its free academy, its normal
school, its college of New York and its Cornell university, — the
crowning glory of the system. So much has been accomplished
in the last few years! What daring imagination will venture to
picture the history of the next twenty years ? We cannot stop
and halt in the work. There is no reason now why the high
school and free academy should not be found in every village and
town of the State ; there is no reason why normal schools should
not cover the land ; — they are so convenient for giving a superior
education to many at the cost of the State ; — there is no reason
why there should not be a Cornell university in Buffalo, in Roch-
ester, in Syracuse, in Schenectady, in Hamilton, in Canton, in
Clinton, in Geneva, as well as in Ithaca. Let the State of New
York, so mighty and so opulent, establish universities for the peo-
ple everywhere, without regard to cost. So great a State cannot
sit down to count pennies when it is a question of equal
rights to all. The people want universities, as they have schools,
'* without sectarian bias," " that will be an antidote for bigotry
and sectarianism ;" " that will bring the children of all denomi-
nations together during the formative period of their lives."
" Denominational schools (colleges and universities), are essen-
tially narrowing in their tendencies and influence, upon the
minds of youth. They encourage the very natural disposition
in human society to divide into classes, while the common schools
(colleges and universities), are peculiarly democratic. The lat-
. ter foster toleration ; the former encourage bigotry and clan-
nishness and those who would increase their number at the ex-
pense of common schools are enemies of toleration. People
who confine their children within the associations of their own
church retard them in culture and contract their mental and
moral powers. In after years they have to unlearn what has been
industriously instilled into their minds by sincere but narrow

minded instructors, if they ever become broadly sympathetic and
charitably tolerant towards the many who will always think dif-
ferent from them."

Thus the arguments agairist denominational schools tell with
equal force against denominational academies, colleges and uni-
versities. The people's children taught and trained in the com-
mon schools to despise all bigotry and " narrow-minded intole-
rance," reject as beneath their enlightened standard denomina-
tional colleges, and as they have a right to the highest education
in the best institutions, they demand the establishment of Cor-
nell universities all along the line, from Buffalo to New York.
How long, I may be permitted to ask, will the Baptist, Metho-
dist, Universalist, Presbyterian and Episcopal colleges survive
the establishment by the State, with unlimited State funds, of
rival and competing non-sectarian universities ? Yet the right of
the people to demand a full supply of non-sectarian colleges
and universities, in view of the principles enunciated by the ad-
vocates of the common school system, cannot be questioned.

Why should the State hold its hand when the work is only
half done? The college and university but lay the foundation
for life's work. That work is found in the professions. It is
important for the people to have sound lawyers and skillful and
well instructed physicians and surgeons. Why should not the
State furnish the very best schools of law and medicine, just as
it proposes to found schools for the arts, sciences and trades ?
The State offers to be father to its children, and it ought to do its
full duty to all.

In this arraignment of the State there is another neglect of
duty still more serious for which it should be taken to task. The
advocates of the common school system justify the action of the
State in assuming to educate its children in public schools on the
plea of economy. It is cheaper, they say, to build schools than
poor-houses and prisons. Education makes a people moral, and
a moral people will keep out of prisons and poor-houses. The
same argument has equal weight in behalf of the establishment

of institutions — churches, for helpiftg people to remain moral and
virtuous. The boy soon forgets his lesson, and the State that
has undertaken to keep him out of prison and poor-house by-
making him moral must go on with its work and provide its ward
with churches on a broad principle of morals and free from all
"sectarian hate" and unpleasantness. It is true this work be-
longs to the denominations, but the denominations have failed
to do their full work, and what they have done is not well done.
They have not a sufificient number of churches; the expense
attending them is too great for the poor; even the rich turn from
them; they are " too narrow-minded and bigoted ; " they hinder
" the unification of the nation ; " " encourage the very natural
disposition in human society to divide into classes ; " " retard
culture and contract mental and moral powers."

Then, as a people must be moral to keep out of the poor-
house and the prison, why should not the State for its own wel-
fare and in a spirit of economy found and support institutions —
call them churches, if you pl-ease — for the instruction of the whole
body of the people in morals and such rules of life as will help to
keep them independent of State bounty and support, except in
the matter of education and morals. Under this beneficent and
paternal care the wards of the State will be provided with noble
halls, and whilst orators of refinement and culture and the highest
attainments are discoursing eloquently and pleasantly to them,
the " bitterness of sectarian hate " will be seduously excluded.
The Hon. Mr. Bateman, State Superintendent of Public Instru(?-
tion in Illinois, says : " The discords, bitterness, antagonisms
and dogmatisms of religious sects are the shame and scandal of
Christendom, and a libel and burlesque upon the teachings of
Christ, and the shame, scandal, libel and burlesque are only
intensified by saying that these hideous things are inevitable
among Christians." The national religion, without a creed, now
about to be inaugurated with all the wealth of the State at com-
mand, will remove all these scandals from the churches as it has
driven them out of the schools. Its religion, having in view only

the moral welfare of its subjects, — its children will not be sectarian
or denominational, but broad, liberal, " full of simplicity and love,
including all the moral maxims and ethical principles that men
deem valuable ; " " it will exalt God, and holiness and truth only ; "
" it will have nothing to do with the devices of men ; " under it
"whoever loves truth and obeys Jesus Christ is an heir of heaven
whether he has any human certificates to that effect or not."
These are the arguments of the common school advocates by
which they justify the secularization of education. Upon the
introduction of this common, free, national religion, it is proba-
ble that denominational churches and institutions for the incul-
cating of moral truths under sectarian control will survive but a
limited period of time. There may be some who will protest
against this meddling and interference on the part of the State,
but the ready supply of arguments used to defend the common
school system will be at hand to justify the State in furnishing
instruction for the people in the interests of morality, good
citizenship, the unity of the nation and economy. Here is the
language of one of the Apostles of the new creedless religion,
Mr. Abbot of the Index : " In his mind's eye he saw the time
when there should be no churches, but men would worship every-
where ; but all should be brothers. There may be halls of
culture and fixed ways to advance humanity, but they will need
no church." What a choice but comprehensive expression.
" Fixed ways to advance humanity." Of course, they will be
fixed, very determined, very positive, very arbitrary. We have
one of the " fixed ways to advance humanity " in the present
common school system.

At the same convention at which Mr. Abbot foreshadowed
the future national religion, the Rev. Mr. Towne gave a specimen
of the manner in which he taught religion that was not sectarian
to the inmates of the House of Correction at Detroit : " They do
recognize a divinity in man — the Creator clothes the creature man
with this divinity. It is said God descended into humanity
through the Lord Jesus. Why not say it of all men? The true

Christ as sent to us from God, is in Nature. Wherever love is,
there is the Christ also. The humane then is religion. Men may
be religious according to their humanity." This is not sectarian,
but is good, sound, State or National religion.

I am not straining my argument for effect. — Greater changes
have flowed from smaller and weaker beginnings. The daily and
untiring literary labors of armies of Commissioners, State and
County Superintendents, teachers almost numberless, and hosts
of others, working on the same line, with a united will and pur-
pose, will not find it a herculean task to disseminate their ideas
all over the country, and establish this " fixed way to advance
humanity."

We are told that there shall be no change in the present sys-
tem. But when we ask them to tell us what is this system, they
are not able to agree among themselves. They cannot say if it
is "education with religious instruction," or " education purely
secular and without religious instruction of any kind."

In New York State the law reads that there shall be no re-
ligious exercises of any kind in any of the public schools of the
State, outside of the city of New York, within school hours. If
I have misunderstood or misstated the law, the Hon. Mr.
Weaver, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, will, when
consulted on the subject, correct the mistake. The practice in
most of the schools, and notably here in Rochester,* is to ignore
the law, and in utter disregard of the rights of a minority, for
the majority is made up of Evangelicals, to have that amount of
Bible reading, praying and the singing of hymns which seems
pleasing to them.

Passing on to the State of Ohio, we discover that " our com-
mon schools cannot be secularized under the constitution of Ohio."
" It is a serious question," says Judge Hagans, " whether as a
matter of policy merely it would not be better that they were,
rather than offend conscience ;" and he then decided that the

* Since the above was written, Rochester has put Bible readinif. prayer anil reliif ious
exercises out of her schools.

resolutions of the Cincinnati Board of Education, forbidding re-
ligious instruction and the reading of religious books were " un-
constitutional and void."

Journeying still further West, to Missouri, we find that the
law and the practice are against religious instruction of any kind
in that State. They are pushing secularism to its extreme limit.

Coming back to the Atlantic sea-board, in the little State of
New Jersey, the public schools are conducted on the principle of
imparting religious instruction that is thoroughly and essentially
Protestant in character. Lest the Protestant teaching in the
schools should not be sufficient, the State Superintendent of
Public Instruction, whose salary is paid by Catholic and Protest-
ant, is careful to furnish the school districts with lists of books
for public school libraries containing the works of the most bitter
anti-Popery authors.

No less discordant are the newspapers in their opinions on
this question of religion in the schools. Thus, the Rochester
Democrat and Chronicle holds that " it would be folly to sacri-
fice the Bible." The Rochester Express calls for secular educa-
tion without sectarianism, but does not give its opinioh of the
practice of the Rochester schools to give religious instruction in
contravention of the State law. The New York World favors as
much religion in the schools as will give the pupil a salutary fear
of the gallows and State prison : " It (the State) undertakes to
give the child such, knowledge as shall put him in the way of
earning his living and shall make him afraid to get it by murder
or robbery." " But he may be greedy, scheming, unscrupulous,
and altogether objectionable as a human being. The State takes
no account of that, but turns him over to the church to have his
depravities chastened out of him." The New York Herald is in
favor of having the Bible in the schools — is not particular about
the version, and prefers that the reading should consist of only
' a short Psalm, a few Proverbs or something akin." The New
York Tribune gives up the Bible as the only means of defending
the Common School system with consistency. The Albany

Morning Express defends " secular " education free from any
sectarian bias. " The occasional exceptions but prove the rule,
which may, at any time it is infringed, be enforced by an appeal
to the proper authorities." This means that the infringement of
the rule forbidding religious exercises may be stopped here in
Rochester whenever an appeal is made to the proper authorities.
The Troy Daily Times, in an article most courteous and moderate,
whilst strongly upholding the common school system, says : " We
do not think that religious training is needful in the schools,
* * * * The true function of the common school is to teach
the rudiments of useful knowledge : to fit the child for acquiring
the learning to meet the practical duties, which require a decent
degree of intelligence and some technical knowledge." I am
afraid the Troy Times will not advocate the establishment of ad-
ditional Cornell universities at the public expense. The Utica
Herald also sides with those who would remove the Bible from
the schools.

When we leave the Press to come under the Pulpit the disa-
greement does not end. Ministers of religion are not of one
mind on this vital question of religion or no religion in the com-
mon schools. There is no difference of opinion among them
with regard to the education to be given to the sons of the
wealthier classes who frequent academies, colleges, seminaries and
universities. These are to receive a religious training in denomi-
national institutions. Rev. Mr. Mann and Rev. Mr. Saxe of
this city, and Rev. Mr. Spraeker of Albany speak out in favor of
secular education without religious instruction or Bible reading.
Other clergymen in this city and elsewhere are equally loud in
calling for the reading of the Bible, prayer and the singing of
hymns. The Rev. Dr. Clark of Albany, in a pamphlet that has
obtained the endorsement and warm approval of the Rev. Dr.
Wm. B. Sprague of Albany, of the Rev. Dr. Andrew P. Pea-
body, of Harvard College, of the Rev. Dr. Isaac Ferris, Chan-
cellor of the New York University, and of the Hon. Ira Harris,

LL. D., late United States Senator and Chancellor of the Roch-
ester University, gives the views of the evangelical denomina-
tions who constitute the more numerous body in the community,
and who give tone and direction to the commom schools.

Rev. Dr. Clark and the others with him say : " Our fathers
built this nation on the Bible. This sacred volume they placed
in the family, the church and the school. They knew what every
intelligent man knows, that the chief fact about any nation and
itsrulingpower, is its religion. * * * The ignorance,
the superstition, the temporal desolation, the spiritual fetters,
the crimes, the wretchedness in these countries, ( Italy, Spain
and Mexico) are the outgrowth of Romanism. Our fathers de-
sired to create on this soil a nation of which God would be the
soul and center ; the radiating point of influence that would
shape our government, character, schools, families, literature, and
mould the whole social and domestic condition of the people.
They had the sagacity to see that their success in this work de-
pended upon having the children and youth in the land educated
as God would have them educated, in the principles and duties
unfolded in His Holy Word. If we are to have a Christian
nation, it must be by force of Christian ideas instilled into the
hearts of the young. * * * It is clear from the
history of the free school system of America that it had its
origin in the desire to maintain the truths of the Bible in the
hearts of all the people. The Bible is, in fact, its source. *

* * To remove, therefore, the Bible and its sacred
principles from our system of education, would be to take from
that system its very soul, its life-giving power. How, then, can
any one call the Bible, that reveals to us ' religion,' a sectarian
book? * * * If it is opposed to Romanism, it is not
because it is a Protestant book, but because it is God's book, the
light of which, if permitted to shine, would sweep all the dark-
ness, and errors, and iniquities of Romanism from the earth.
* * * The Bible has never injured them (the Catho-
lics) or their children. It damages Popery ; it does not damage

them. * * * It has been a matter of congratulation
in years past, on the part of many Protestants, that so many
Roman Catholics are coming to this country, that they might
thereby be brought under evangelical influences ; that we might,
in the spirit of kindness and good-will, offer them a pure gospel :
that seeing and experiencing the temporal blessing of a land filled
with Bibles, they might be induced ' to search the Scriptures,"
and discover that the truths therein contained are profitable both
for this life and the life to come." After quoting Rev. Mr. Matti-
son's statement that in twelve years one million nine hundred and
ninety thousand Romanists had left the Catholic Church, he pro-
seeds to say : ** Of the correctness of this statement I have no
means of determining; but this we do know, that multitudes
have yielded to the influence of our institutions, and that the
most effectual agency in this work has been our admirable public
school system. . >

For the great medium through which we reach these classes
with ideas and influences essential to qualify them to become
good American citizens, is the public school system. We reach
them through other instrumentalities — through our churches,
Sabbath schools, and missionary enterprises ; but our great hope
in the work of enlightening, Christianizing, and Americanizing
these masses, is through the system of public instruction founded
by our fathers." "A school without the Bible educates them
(the children) in the fatal fallacy that the State has nothing to
do with religion. It leads them to infer that it is expedient and
safe to have a school without a God, it is equally expedient and
safe to have the family and society without a God."

We do not forget the words of the Rev. Nicholas Murray,
Presbyterian clergyman, spoken at a May Anniversary meeting
in New York, to the effect that whilst it was useless for them (the
Protestants) to trouble themselves about the conversion of the
adult emigrant Catholics, between the two stones of the mill, the
Bible and the common schools, they would grind Catholicity out
of their children.

How well satisfied they are with the working of the system,
we may learn from the sermon of a Presbyterian divine of this
city, preached on the 17th of December, ' 1871 : " Nay, there is
a great deal of religion in our schools. Not in outward form,
perhaps, but it is there. Our Saviour compared religion to salt ;
and salt in well cooked food does not so much lie in crystals on
the surface or in lumps which you crush between your teeth, but
is diffused through the whole man. And in our schools, from
the ringing of the bell up to a recitation in the Anabasis, there is
scarcely one thing that is not toned and shaped by the religion
of our blessed Lord."

These extracts are long, but as they reflect the views of
many of those who are opposed to us, it is right to give them.
The spirit and motives of the evangelical party are brought out
in plain language by the Rev. Dr. Clark. His words and sug-
gestions coincide with the practice of the party represented by
him, as the experience of Catholics tells us. Honest-minded
men among our non-Catholic citizens will see that there is great
cause for complaint of the injustice and wrong of the common
school system, as it works against parents and citizens, whose
views and feelings on religious subjects are not in harmony with
those of the evangelical churches. We frankly confess that whilst
very few of our children are drawn off to any of the evangelical
churches, large numbers of them are weaned from their own
religion and go to join the ever increasing ranks of unbelievers in
any system of religion.

But our evangelical friends have taken a false position on this
question which they are loath to quit. While they persist in
attempting impossible things the battle is going on in favor of
indifferentism and infidelity. As the combat thickens, the third
party (the Catholic) quietly withdraws from the field, leaving
evangelicalism to perish beneath the load of inconsistencies and
fine philosophical theories which it chose to assume. There is
hope that before the battle ends some of the evangelical denomi-
nations will see their mistake, discard false theories and go back

to their original teachings and practices. Already the Baptist
denomination, one of the most numerous in the country, is
sounding the alarm. You have not forgotten the remarkable
language of Dr. Anderson at a National Baptist Convention
in New York city, in April, 1870. In May, 1871, the New-
England Baptist Educational Convention was held in Wor-
cester, Mass. The work of that convention may be summed
up in the resolution passed by the convention, recommending
the establishment of at least one academy in each New England
State for the education of children of the Baptist denomination.
The necessity for these academies is found in " the defects of the
public schools."

In the same month the Western Baptist Educational Con-
vention met in Chicago. In the same sense and to the same
purpose did the Reverend gentlemen speak in this convention.

The Convention of Southern Baptists, which met in Marion,
Ala., on the 12th of April, 1871, having representatives from
Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and
Kentucky was even more decided and outspoken on the trouble
in upholding the Baptist denorftination. An address was deliv-
ered by Rev. Theo. Whitfield on the advantages of education in
denominational colleges. In the course of the discussion which
followed, the opinion was expressed by Dr. Poindexter, Professor
Davis and Rev. E. B. League, that " the tendency of the common
school system was to foster infidelity^' and that " the only hope is
Christian education in our own schools.'*

Whilst there is then great diversity of opinion among Legis-
lators, Editors and Ministers respecting the imparting or with-
holding of religious instruction in the common schools there is
yet another class who deny the right of the State to meddle in
the education of children. Nor is this class insignificant in
numbers or in influence. Furthermore, it is a class that from a
variety of causes is daily growing in numbers and in influence.
As the wealthier classes see the failure of the present system to
embrace the great mass of the children, to bring about the

promised economy, to diminish the number of paupers and
criminals, they begin to ask, Has not a mistake been made ?
What right has the State to assume the duty of parents ?

When such questions are being asked, does it not behoove
the friends of the common school system to examine if some
arrangement cannot be aimed at by which all can come under the
working of the system in a way satisfactory to citizens of every
class? Many who now attend private and religious schools,
being deprived of their share of the taxes, will be compelled to
join hands with the discontented wealth and capital of the
country. This is not idle talk or foolish threat. You have only
to step outside your own circle to learn that the elements of
opposition are strong and growing. Every act of injustice, every
day of injustice, adds to the strength of that opposition.

Rev. Mr. Mann tells us with great fairness that " it must be
owned when we are told that in this city somewhere about one-
third as many children are being educated in the Catholic
schools as in the public schools, and that in so direct and costly
a way almost the entire Catholic population repudiate the public
school system, for the support'of which they are taxed equally
with others, it must be owned that the thing is not working
justly. Facts like these are too significant to be overlooked.
And as we inquire into the cause of such a state of things, the
sense of its injustice deepens. It has ever been thought of
questionable morality to tax for the support of the public schools
a rich man who never patronizes them, preferring to keep a tutor
in his own house ; but we have got over that on the plea that
property has an interest in education, and that the rich, for their
own protection, must see that the poor are taught. But here is
a large class who, in the main, are not rich, and who, from con-
scientious scruples of opinion, as they say, about religion, with-
draw from the public schools, and do their part for the education
of the poor in other institutions. When it is a rich man, who,
for the sake of style, declines the benefit of the free school for
his children, we say, justly enough perhaps, ' Let him go ! Let

him pay for his pride as dearly as he pleases ! ' But the case is
somewhat different when the common people, from a sense of
religious duty, mistaken or not as you please, pass by what they
are compelled to pay for, and voluntarily pay over again to
obtain the thing conscience requires."

The Hon. Gerrit Smith represents a large and increasing
party, who maintain that governments should leave education
alone. He says: "It (the government) is certainly no more fit
to have a part in shaping and controlling the school than in
shaping and controlling the church — and the sound arguments
against its meddling with the church are, in the main, sound
arguments against its meddling with the school. * * *
No less is the parent's right to choose the kind of school than
the kind of church for his children. Roman Catholics, and many
Protestants also, are content with no school which is not posi-
tively and directly a religious one. Hence their opposition to
the government school, which rests on an evil compromise — a
compromise requiring the elimination from the school of all
religion and use of all Bibles. * * * Xhe government
school has always, and necessarily, been a bundle of compromises ;
and now we are, but too probably, nearing the climax com-
promise of its divorcement from religion. Just here let me say
that the fchool is far worse than worthless which, taking a child
at its most plastic age, declines, nevertheless, to have a part in
forming its religious character. * * * But we are told
that one of the wise objects of the government schools is to pre-
vent the getting up of sectarian schools. Our answer is, that it
is no more the proper office of government to hinder the multi-
plying of sectarian schools than the multiplying of sectarian
churches; and that the people are to be left as free to multiply
the one as the other. * * ''^ Government can never do
more for its people than protect their persons and property. If
thus protected they cannot prosper, then all the governments on
earth cannot suffice to make the imbeciles prosper."

In the same sense and with equal expHcitness did the late
Rev. Dr. John C. Lord, Presbyterian Clergyman of Buffalo, in
1853, speak out on this subject: " Now the great objection
which I have to the State Schools is, that they cannot teach
religion. And, in my view, religious training should accompany
all other teaching. God has not committed to Governments the
work of education. The civil magistrate has other duties to per-
form ; has no divine warrant to turn teacher or to superintend
education. This is not a matter to be passed upon at the polls.
Where the Church is united with the State she may derive some
benefit from the State and allow the State to conduct her affairs.
But in this country there is no union of Church and State. What
right has the State to educate my child ? The State may admin-
ister justice, build canals and railroads, incorporate banks, and
perform civil functions, but it has no right to establish a system
of public schools, which compels, in fact, the great mass of the
community to have their children educated there or not at all.
I wish my children educated ' in the nurture and admonition of
the Lord,' and not in the nurture of the State. So do Christians
in general, if the truth were known. But the State throws obsta-
cles in the way by its taxation and its great public establish-
ments."

The Rev. Dr. Lord being a consistent and earnest Presbyte-
rian, followed the teaching of his church. The Presbyterians of
America, at their General Assembly (1848), passed the following :

" Resolved, Tnat this General Assembly, believing that the
children of the church are a trust committed to the church by the
Lord Jesus Christ, and having confidence in the power of Chris-
tian education to train them, with the divine blessing, ' in the
way they should go,' do cordially recommend their congrega-
tions to establish primary and other schools, as far as may be
practicable, on the plans sanctioned by the last Assembly —
of teaching the truths and duties of our Jioly religion in connection
with the usual branches of secular learning^

Dr. Lord did not see how Presbyterians could hold to the
teaching of his own church when the State usuroed the work of
Imparting education " purely secular," without "religious exer-
cises of any kind."

The Journal of Commerce of New York, in a series of arti-
cles, advocates the abandonment of the province of education by
the State, and its relinquishment to the family and to religious
and charitable zeal and effort, by arguments which the friends of
the present system will find great difficulty in answering. Among
other things, it says : " Th-e issue, however, does not lie in the
direction taken by the latter. It is probably between the school
system as it is and its total abandonment, and tfie substitution of
private instrumentalities, of course including church organiza-
tions, for State control. Our own preference of these alternatives
has been more than once stated in these columns. But the agita-
tion against the Bible and that in favor of introducing German,
drawing, and other ornamental or professional branches of educa-
tion into the common schools tend to hasten the conclusion we
have advocated, namely ; the abandonment of the work of educa-
tion to private enterprise, charitable or otherwise, under such
State supervision as may be necessary to prevent abuses."

These authorities are brought forward to prove that there
are many who favor the total abolition of the present system of
the State schools. Nor is their opposition based on whim or
fancy ; they have strong arguments to sustain their views, and it
will not suffice to treat them with contempt.

Parents who are not pleased with state education because
" purely secular," are politely requested to furnish schools and
teachers for the instruction of their children after the ordinary
school hours. They object to comply with this advice for several
reasons. If they must furnish schools and teachers to do a part
of the work, they may as well provide them to do the whole
work. Sunday Schools are very good so far as they go, but they
do not go far enongh. Every one with his eyes open can see
what efforts are needed to bring into the Sunday Schools the

children even of the classes that have home instruction and
require the Sunday School least of all ; while the children whose
homes are wanting in religious training and who do not obtain it
in the state schools, are the ones most frequently absent from
the Sunday Schools.

A serious and fatal objection to the proposition that the
churches shall provide religious instruction for the children of the
various denominations after school hours lies in the well-known
law of human nature, that what becomes tiresome and annoying
is not received with advantage. A child that has been restrained
all day and kept at its books of secular learning will look with
horror at the additional task imposed on its flagging and exhausted
energies at the close of a hard day's work. We must not make
religion distasteful to our children, even to please our friends of
no-religion. Besides, an authority fully competent to speak on
this question has decided that such a proposal cannot be enter-
tained. The Medical College of Middlesex, Mass., has authorized
the publication of the following facts as the opinions of its
members :

I. No child should be allowed to attend school before the
beginning of its sixth year.

II. The duration of daily attendance — including the time
given to recess and physical exercises — should not exceed four
and a half hours for the primary schools ; five and a half for other
schools.

III. There should be required no study out of school —
unless at high school ; and this should not exceed one hour.

The friends of the majority, wherever the law of New York
state excluding the Bible, etc., is enforced, have a happy way of
securing religious instruction for their children, without creating
disgust by tacking on religious exercises after school hours, by
having religious exercises before the opening of the classes, when
the mind is fresh and vigorous. They admit our principle of the
necessity of religious instruction for children, and secure its ad-
vantages for their own, in their own form of worship and belief,

in school houses built by the taxes of all, and by the aid of
teachers paid by general taxation. When the American people
determine to recognize principles and equal rights for all, they
will not be driven to expedients and subterfuges that are neither
manly nor honest.

The Sunday school may be serviceable in supplementing the
deficiencies of the week-day school, although it is well known
that Sunday schools to prove attractive to the children that need
them most, give a great deal of everything except religion. The
good little boys and girls always go to Sunday school, but they
are not the ones who threaten danger to our institutions, and
whose future is a source of anxiety to all lovers of our country.
The dangerous class is made up of boys and girls, full of life and
vigor, whose homes are uninviting, with little of God and religion
in them, who keep away from Church and Sunday school, and
who, finding no religious instruction in the week-day school to
form their conscience on the law of God, know only the law of
the gallows and the State's prison.

The people are beginning to find out that the magnificent
promises of the system are kept to the ear only. Already in our
neighboring city of Buffalo, the Superintendent of education, in
his annual report for 1870, complains of the preference manifested
by parents for private schools : " The increase of the number and
attendance of pupils at private schools, during the past ten years,
is a subject for serious consideration. Formerly, the public
schools monopolized almost entirely the education of our youth ;
but, at the present time, private and religious schools are attended
by nearly 25 per cent, of those who are of the school age. It is
an interesting question, to ascertain the causes which have led to
this diversion of pupils to other channels." It is more than an
" interesting question " — it is a question of vital importance affect-
ing the welfare of the state and the interests of the whole people.
When these causes are ascertained, among them the chief one will
be found to be that in Buffalo, one-half of its population agree
with the late Rev. Dr. Lord that the State has no right to educate

their children. Buffalo had in her public schools a daily average
attendance of only 'eleven thousand children, whilst the whole
number attending public, private and religious schools, according
to the report of the Commissioner of Education, approached
twenty thousand. If the diligent enquirer into the causes which
are leading parents to prefer private and religious schools to
those of the State will do us the favor of coming to Rochester,
he will get some light on the subject when he. learns that whilst
the Commissioner of Education reports twelve thousand five
hundred and eighty-six children in attendance in all the schools
of this city, there are not many more than five thousand in daily
average attendance in the public schools. We have four thous-
and and more in our Christian Free Schools ; the balance may
be found in the private schools of which, as I am informed, there
are about fifty.

The annual report of the Board of Education of New York
City for 1870, proves conclusively that, notwithstanding the
enormous expenditures for the public schools, they have failed to
win the confidence and patronage of the public. This report
gives 109,554 as the average number on register for the grammar,
primary, colored and corporate schools, and 92,355 as the average
daily attendance. Yet the Commissioner of Education reports
155,603 as the number attending public, private and religious
schools in New York City. To educate the 109,554 favored
children the city paid $2,733,591.58. Yet it is well known that
there are in the " Christian Free Schools" of that city over 20,000
children of the very class in whose favor the principle of State
taxation for educational purposes finds its chief justification,
whilst the number of children attending no other school than
that of the street is as great to-day, relatively to the whole num-
ber of children in the city, as it was in the days of denominational
schools as far back as 1805.

But to understand the full beauty of this system which thus
punishes the parents of twenty thousand children for religion's
sake, let us take a look at what is called the College of New York.

6/ '

This college reports for the year ending June 30, 1870, seven
hundred and ninety six pupils, of whom four* hundred and thirty-
eight left or were dismissed for various reasons in the course of
the year, and thirty were graduated. To give the three hundred
and fifty-eight pupils who remained to the close of the scholastic
year a suitable education there were required a President, with a
salary of $4,750, a Vice-President, with a salary of $4,250, thirteen
Professors, each having a salary of $3,750, a Librarian, receiving
an equal amount, Tutors, Assistants and officers of various kinds,
costing altogether for faculty and employes, $104,535.22.

Other payments increased the expense of educating these
three hundred and fifty-eight pupils, in a grand palatial building
already paid for, to $120,111.57. Yet because, for very shame's
sake, a partial instalment of justice was dealt out to the schools
in which the twenty thousand poor children were gathered, a
howl is heard all over the land. We have learned, I hope, one
great lesson from the past, namely to ask and demand justice and
equal rights, and not favors or boons. Nor to dwell too long in
the metropolis of the State, let us return to Rochester. If we
have no *' College of New York," we have a Free Academy and
nineteen common schools, costing for the year ending March 27,
1871, one hundred and thirteen thousand three hundred and
seventeen 56-ioO'dollars, to educate a few more than five thous-
and children. The Superintendent of Education in Rochester
shows quite satisfactorily that here it costs only $13.58 for tuition
per pupil in daily average attendance, whilst in Boston it costs
$21.85, on the same basis, demonstrating conclusively how-
economical we are at the expense of our teachers, paying $400 in
Rochester, where they pay $700 and $800 in Boston.

An illustration of the practical working of the system will
bring it home to every, taxpayer in the city. In the northwest
corner of the town stands Public School house No. 17. On the
corner of Saxton and Campbell streets, almost within the shadow
of this school-house, lives a poor man, Jeremiah Callaghan, owner
of a lot and small cottage, whose city tax for the present year was

$ro.29, one-fifth of which (that being about the proportion of
city taxes needed for the support of the city schools,) he paid for
the education of his neighbors' children in No. 17, to which he did
not send his own children, because he sent them to the Cathedral
Free School. On Saxton street, not far from No. 17, lives
Joseph Gradel, whose city tax bill amounted to $47.95, one-fifth
of which went for the education of his neighbors' children in No.
17, to which he did not send his children, because he sent them
to Saints Peter and Paul's Parochial school. On the west of No.
1 7 lives George Nunn, who paid $33, one-fifth of which went for
the education of his neighbors' children in No. 17, to which he did
not send his children, because he sent them to the Holy Family
Parochial School.

If one of these children of Callaghan, Gradel or Nunn, in a fit
of ill-temper, should tauntingly say to one of its companions of
the neighborhood, "Oh, my father pays for your education, your
father'doesn't pay for mine!" could we accuse the child of un-
truthfulness, however much we might censure its want of polite-
ness and amiability ?

Any citizen of Rochester can take his city tax bill, divide the
amount by five and thus learn how much he contributes directly
towards the support of the Common Schools, whether he makes
use of them or not.

When this question is fairly looked at and is brought home to
every one; when the injustice of the present system, so opposed
to all American notions of fair play and equal rights, is realized
by the people, then may we hope for a change. The taxes paid
by all will be enjoyed by all, no matter what a man's religion may
be; it will not be possible to continue a system that favors one
class in the community and works against another.

The Chicago Evening Post of December 26, 1871, heads an
article "Hands Off!" and calls upon us "to let the public school
system alone." It forgets, however, to tell the State to keep its
hands out of our pockets. Unless we live under the veriest
despotism ever known, the r/^/// to just and equitable taxation.

and the right of all citizens to discuss the justice of that taxation
has not been taken from us. No people are so sensitive to dis-
cussion as they who are conscious of wrong.

But besides those who oppose common schools on the
grounds that governments have nothing to do with education and
that the taxation is unjust, there is another party growing up and
increasing in numbers, who assert that the public schools have
failed to accomplish the work that was claimed for them. No-
where in the United States has the system found greater develop-
ment than in Boston. Its school houses are the largest and most
expensive; its teachers, the best paid; its course of study, cover-
ing much and yet defective. If I were to sit in judgment on the
common school system and point out its inherent defects my
opinion would make little impression. With all due deference,
therefore, to the invitation of a Presbyterian Minister of this city
to visit and examine the schools of Rochester, I prefer to give
the carefully prepared judgment of one whose standing in the
country cannot be questioned. The Twenty-Seventh "Annual
meeting of the Massachusetts State Teachers* Association was
held in Boston in October last. Professor Agassiz read a paper
before this meeting, the first part of which paper we find con-
densed as follows in the Teachers' Journal of Boston : "We were
too proud of our success, and too confident of the excellence of
our school system. It had accomplished much but it had failed
to give the people that culture necessary to the maintenance of
republican institutions. * * * * Classes and

schools were too large, and the teachers too few. The large
school-houses reminded him of barracks for soldiers, rather than
places where children are to be taught. Large schools demand
a discipline which produces a uniformity which cramps and
represses many scholars. * * * * The text-books
are defective, and are mostly made by men who write as a trade
rather than from knowledge." But if the Professor had reason
to complain of the shortcomings of the public schools in these
parts of the system, his cry of distress over the lamentable results

of the moral training is heartrending. The substance of the
second part of the Professor's paper is found embodied in an
editorial article of the Boston Herald of October 20, 1871. "Year
after year the Chief of Police publishes his statistics of prostitu-
tion in this city, but how few of the citizens bestow more than a
passing thought upon the misery that they represent. Although
these figures are large enough to make every lover of humanity
hang his head with feelings of sorrow and shame at the picture,
we are assured that they represent but a little, as it were, of the
actual licentiousness that prevails among all classes of society.
Within a few months, a gentleman (Prof. Agassiz) whose scientific
attainments have made his name a household word in all lands,
has personally investigated the subject, and the result has filled
him with dismay, when he sees the depths of degradation to
which men and women have fallen, he has almost lost faith in
the boasted civilization of the nineteenth century. In the course
of his inquiries he has visited both the well-known • houses of
pleasure ' and the ' private establishments ' scattered all over the
city. He states that he has a list of both, with the street and
number, the number of inmates, and many other facts that would
perfectly astonish the people if made public. He freely conversed
with the inmates, and the life histories that were revealed were
sad indeed. To his utter surprise, a large proportion of the
'soiled doves' traced their fall to mfluetices that met them vi the
public schools, and although Boston is justly proud of its schools,
it would seem from his story that they need a thorough purifi-
cation. In too many of them the most obscene and soul-
polluting books and pictures circulate among both sexes. The
very secrecy with which it is done throws an almost irresistible
charm about it, and to such an extent has the evil gone that we
fear a large proportion of both boys and girls possess some of
the articles, which they kindly (?) lend each other. The natural
results follow, and frequently the most debasing and revolting
practices are indulged in. And the evil is not confined alone to
Boston. Other cities suffer in the same way. It is but a few

years since the second city in the Commonwealth was stirred
almost to its foundations by the discovery of an association of
boys and girls who were wont to indulge their passions in one of
the school-houses of the city, and not long ago another somewhat
similar affair was discovered by the authorities, but hushed up
for fear of depopulating the schools. These facts demonstrate
that parents and guardians do not do their whole duty by those
committed to their care."

Only the other day it came out that in one of the public
schools of Williamsburgh over one hundred vile and immoral
publications were taken from the children frequenting that school.

Yet when parents and guardians wish " to do their whole
duty by their children," and withdraw them from these "barracks"
and the danger of such contamination, placing them in schools
possessing their confidence, they are met by the pulpit and the
press, and denounced in unmeasured terms as " sectarian," " nar-
row-minded and bigoted," " un-American,' etc.

Just here some one may say to me that education, " purely
secular," being an excellent antidote against crime, is all that the
State requires in her function of preserving the peace and pro-
tecting persons and property. Indeed, the friends of the com-
mon school system manifest great anxiety to convince the world
that this description of education lessens crime, and they arrange
figures to prove their assertion, much to their own satisfaction.
They all overlook the important fact that there are crimes, not
merely speculative, or simply irreligious, that corrode and destroy
human life and society, of which the criminal laws take no cogni-
zance, and which do not enter into the tables of the statisticians.
I might here enumerate many such crimes of whose frequency we
are daily reminded by the press.

To prove that " education without religion " or purely secu-
lar does not keep men from even the crimes punished by the
State, I will give you some strong and trustworthy authorities.
John Falk, founder of the first House of Reform for juvenile

offenders, said : " Of what use or advantage to the Common-
wealth are rogues that know how to read, to write or to cypher?
They are only the more dangerous. The acquirements mechani.
cally imparted to such men, can serve only as so many master
keys put into their hands to break into the sanctuary of
humanity."

Ex-Mayor Bigelow of Boston, on a public occasion, said :
"At the rate with which violence and crime have recently
increased, our jails, like our alms-houses, will scarcely be adequate
to the imperious requirements of society." Ex-Governor Clif-
ford, in a letter to a gentleman of West Newton, Mass., used the
following remarkable language : " I have a general impression
derived from a long familiarity with the prosecution of crime,
both as Attorney General and District Attorney, that the merely
intellectual education of our schools in the absence of that moral
culture and discipline, which in my judgment ought to be an
essential part of every system of school education, furnishes but
a feeble barrier to the assaults of temptation and the prevalence
of crime; indeed, without this sanctifying element, I am by no
means certain that the mere cultivation of intellect does not
increase the exposure of crime by enlarging the sphere of man's
capacity to minister, through its agency, to his sensual and cor-
rupt desires. I can safely say, as a general inference drawn from
my own somewhat extensive observation of crimes and criminals,
that as flagrant cases and as depraved characters have been exhib-
ited amongst a class of persons who have enjoyed the ordinary
elementary instruction of our New England Schools, and, in some
instances, of the higher institutions of learning, as could be
found by the most diligent investigation among the convicts of
Norfolk Island or of Botany Bay."

No later than the 28th of February, 1872, the New York Even-
ing Post gives its testimony on this subject in the following
words :

" It is a popular theory that ignorance is the parent oi crime.
That there is a fallacy in this is, however, proved by some figures

presented in the report of the Inspectors of the State Peniten-
tiary in Western Pennsylvania. Of the four hundred and eighteen
inmates of this institution there are only forty-seven who can
neither read nor write, and forty-four who can read only, while
those who can both read and write number three hundred and
twenty-seven. That is to say the proportion of illiterates among
these prisoners is actually considerably less than the proportion
of them among the whole adult population of the Northern
States taken together. The same seems to be true of the other
prisons. The reports from Auburn Prison, in this State, and
from the prison at Columbus, Ohio, also show that the vast
majority of criminals have received a fair education. The diffi-
culty seems to lie in a misunderstanding of the term * education.'
It is construed to mean the mere elements of intellectual instruc-
tion without regard to home influences and moral training."

And if we examine every jail, penitentiary and prison, from
the Atlantic to the Pacific, we shall not find one inmate that did
not know that the crime for which he was incarcerated was pun-
ishable by the laws of the State, and that if caught and convicted
he would be made to suffer the prescribed penalty of the law.
Yet having expelled God, the Bible, prayer and religious exer-
cises of any kind from the common schools, or keeping them in
the schools in violation of the law, the training of our children is
brought down to the " purely secular," or intellectual standard,
spiced with a salutary fear of the gallows and the State's prison.

These are ugly truths, but they do not cease to exist because
we try to shut our eyes to their existence.

After all this fault finding with the common school system,
you have the right to ask. What can you propose as a substitute ?

Strictly speaking, it is not the office of a Republic to meddle
in educational matters. One of the chief merits of a Republic is
that it leaves the people to govern themselves, so that they do
not interfere one with another. That government is the best
which governs the least. Under such an arrangement the people
would take education into their own hands, and it would be

better looked after, and at less cost. To say that republicans
will not avail themselves of the advantages of education only as a
charity is a libel on republicanism ; and when we see one hun-
dred thousand children of the poorest class of the community
educated by their parents, who at the same time pay taxes for
the education of their neighbors' children, the charge is a calumny.

But the plan of State aid for education is so generally accept-
able that no change need be looked for. My own preference is
strongly in favor of having the State continue to aid educational
institutions, provided it can do so with justice to all parties — with
favor to none.

A plan that would least of all disturb the present system has
been proposed by Elihu H. Shepard of St. Louis. In a com-
munication to the Missouri Republican, February 22, 1872, he
says : " I have mentioned in one of the foregoing chapters of
this work the interest and active part I took in the establishment
of the public schools of the city. It has placed St. Louis in
advance of any city in the world for facilities for acquiring a good
education. It has stimulated the opening of large, well-managed
parochial schools in all parts of the city by different societies,
which are building, or have built, magnificent edifices for educa-
tional purposes, and filling them with the most profound and able
teachers of their respective societies for the instruction of their
younger members, according to their own tastes and desires.
Their success has been very remarkable, for it has been done
without one dollar's aid from the public treasury, while every
taxable member of these societies has been contributing to the
support of the St. Louis public schools without much complaint.
The time has now come for a small, and I think a very just and
necessar)' change, and I intend to advocate it with the same
pertinacity I did the school tax from its commencement to the
present time, and will continue. A legislative act will be neces-
sary to make the change, and it can be accomplished with almost
imperceptible action, but with most easy and praiseworthy justice
and entire satisfaction. The board of directors of the St. Louis

public schools is already an incorporated body and is well known
as such. Each society that has a literary edifice erected and has
been in operation one public school scholastic year, can become
incorporated and thereby enabled to ask and receive from the
county treasurer such sum as has been paid in as public school
tax by members of that particular society and placed to its credit
by the person paying the tax and making his wishes known.

"Should action on this subject be much longer delayed,
while we see such crowds flocking to parochial schools of different
denominations, we may expect to see a combined oppositior
formed against the present taxation that will endanger the labors
of so many years."

Although the plan of Mr. Shepard is open to some objec-
tions, it would satisfy those persons who sneeringly tell us
Catholics that our share of the taxes is so small that we are de-
pendent on the charity of others ; it would also quiet those other
citizens who fear lest any of their money should be used for the
support of " Popery." Whenever it is arranged to give us back
the money paid by us for the support of schools, we will accept
it as a just settlement, build school-houses for our children and
educate them without troubling the State or our fellow-citizens.
To be told to go about our business and not grumble, when our
money is taken from us for the education of our neighbors*
children, is too much for poor human nature. As we have never
heard any one say that under similar circumstances he would feel
happy, it is not surprising that we are somewhat miserable.

I would respectfully submit that the State continue to aid in
the education of its children, define and describe the amount of
education it is disposed to pay for, specify the conditions under
which it will pay for that education, determine the annual sum
per capita to be paid for it, and then pay that amount for that
education wherever it finds it under the conditions imposed,
whether it be in a large school or a small one, private or public,
religious or purely secular.

State education will necessarily be restricted. There is no
good reason why it should include more than the elementary
branches of an English education, namely, Reading, Writing,
Arithmetic, Geography and the History of the United States.
When you pass beyond this limit the field is boundless ; you
cannot stop short of a University education. Under this plan
the State will have dealings with the people — its citizens. It will
be for them to say if they will have religion — the higher branches
— a classical course — the refinements of a polished education in
the schools to which they send their children. If they want more
than the State agrees to pay for, let them pay what additional
sum they please for their religion and accomplishments. The
State will take cognizance of what it pays for and nothing else.

Many silly things have been said in reference to the agitation
of this question. To listen to some people one would suppose
the right of " Free Speech " had come to an end ; that a public
question in which all are interested should not be discussed ; that
the right of arbitrary taxation alone remained in a Republic the
essence of whose life is the will of the people, founded in law and
justice ; that our young Nation which cast off its swaddling-
clothes so quickly and so completely, is already as hide-bound by
a system, because it is a system, as any old, shriveled up Euro-
pean despotism that has been growing with its pet systems for
centuries past.

We have been invited to leave the country ; there have
been fearful mutterings of bloodshedding and war to the knife.
Yet no one has been hurt, if some people's folly has been
exposed. There is talk, they tell us, of a " No-Popery " party.
Well, we have seen " No-Popery " times, the Native American
party and the Know-Nothing party. We have passed through
all these crucibles. Can any one point out in what way, in any
degree, the Catholic Church has been injured by any or all of
these outbreaks of insensate bigotry? The commotions but
serve to call attention to the claims of the Church, induce think-
ing men to inquire into the nature of these claims, and end by

giving the Church large harvests of earnest and sincere converts.
- We propose, with God's help, to continue this discussion—
this agitation. We hope in time to enlist in it the sympathy and
labors of many. It presents a fine field for the talents and
abilities of our young men. In its study they will instruct them-
selves and learn how to instruct others. It is the work of the
coming years. All other questions pale before it. If we are not
to educate our children in our own faith, churches of more
perishable material would be in order ; these solid structures in
brick and stone, arising on every side, would only stand as
monuments of the folly of a race that so dealt in material things
that it could not preserve for a few generations a faith handed
down to it by persecuted ancestors who had treasured it lovingly
and steadfastly in thatched chapels during centuries of hardship
and martyrdom. Build school-houses then for the religious
training of your children as the best protest against a system of
education from which religion has been excluded by law.

Every consideration — every principle of American love of
liberty and fair-play, calls upon us to resort to all legitimate and
well-known means of influencing and changing the public mind.
Our American friends and neighbors would despise us and hold
us as unworthy the blessings of self-government, if with all the
lessons of the past before us, we did not make use of these means
to help our cause. We have the press, the rostrum and the news-
paper. Our documents must be circulated by the hundred
thousand ; they must reach all classes in the community. The
present system could not go on a year if the people fully under-
stood all its workings and saw without prejudice the injustice
inflicted on large classes of citizens. When the parents of the
five thousand children attending the common schools of Rochester
come to realize the fact that their children are receiving their
education at the expense of their neighbors, whose children are
educated in other schools ; that these neighbors are poor men
and poor women, in the same walk of life as themselves, struggling
day by day to earn a moderate living, shame and proper self-

respect will cause them to be unwilling recipients of what has
the look of a charity, and a charity at the expense of their mates
and companions in the shop, the store, the factory and the field.
This spirit of self-respect, so strong in all Americans joined to their
innate love of fair-play and equal rights, will cheer us on in our
work of diffusing a knowledge of all sides of the question among
our fellow-citizens.

I believe that many are held back from helping up through
a dread that Catholics are not, for some cause or other, whole-
souled Americans, and that some allegiance to a foreign power
stands in our way of becoming identified with the country and
its institutions. We know how false and unfounded is this accu-
sation and we must labor to disprove it.

It is hard, I admit, to be called on to do this when we can
point to such a record as we have already made in the country.
George Bancroft bears this testimony to our beginnings in
Maryland : " Under the mild institutions and munificence of
Baltimore, the dreary wilderness soon bloomed with the swarming
life and activity of prosperous settlements ; the Roman Catholics,
who were opposed to the laws of England, were sure to find a
peaceful asylum in the quiet harbors of the Chesapeake ; and
there too, Protestants were sheltered against Protestant intolerance.

At the close of the war of the Revolution, George Washing-
ton, having received a letter of congratulation from CatHplic citi-
zens, wrote in reply : " I hope ever to see America among the
foremost nations an example of justice and liberalty, and I pre-
sume that your fellow-citizens will not forget the patriotic part
which you took in the accomplishment of their revolution and
the establishment of your government or the important assist-
ance which they received from a nation in which the Roman
Catholic faith is professed."

In the war of 1812, and in the late war to preserve the Union,
Catholics did their full duty side by side with their fellow-citizens.
When soldiers were wanted to fight for the country, men did not
stop to inquire if they were sectarian or Catholic, but if they

79 •

loved their country and were ready to die in defence of its liber-
ties. Our strongest and boldest advocates will yet be found out-
side our own body, and they would soon show themselves but
for our own supineness and lethargy.

The positions taken by me in this and the preceding lecture
may be summed up :

Parents have the right to educate their children.

It is wrong for the State to interfere with the exercise of
this right.

By the establishment of Common Schools at the expense of
all tax-payers, the State does interfere with this right, especially
in the case of poor parents who find it a burden to pay double
taxes.

It is for parents and not for the State to say how much or
how little religious instruction they wish their children to receive.

The channel of thought in the Common Schools of this
State is either the Protestant or the " Godless."

Wealthy Protestants educate their children in denomin-
ational academies, seminaries and colleges.

Common Schools are losing favor with the people who pre-
fer private and religious schools.

Education " purely secular," or without religious instruction,
does not lessen crime.

Large schools — "barracks" — especially without religious
safeguards, are more than dangerous.

The State should limit the education which it is willing to
pay for to the elementary branches of an ordinary English edu-
cation, say what such an education is worth, and then pay for it,
whenever it finds it under proper conditions.

The State will have nothing to do with churches, but only
with parents and schools.

The discussion is a legitimate one for American citizens in a
country of free speech, and no one needs to loseliis temper.

It is absurd to discuss the question of intolerance abroad
while we have such a glaring instance of intolerance at home.

No permanent settlement of this question is possible but one
that recognizes the equal rights of all citizens.

We may trouble the politicians by our agitation. So much
the better. It will give them a subject to exercise their ingenuity
on worthy of their time and talents. Europeans come here to
study our educational institutions. Let us have it in our power
to show them a system of schools that embraces all the people,
while sacredly guarding the heaven-born right of parents to
control the instruction and training of their offspring. We shall
have but sorry work to show them, if we can do no more than
point out weak imitations of imported systems — systems so
defective and unjust that over one-half the children of a town
seek in private and religious schools, without the supervision of
the State, an education in harmony with the views and feelings
of their parents.

th:e:

PUBLIC SCHOOL QUESTION

AS UNDERSTOOD BY K CATHOLIC AMERICAN CITIZEN.

A LECTURE

DKLIVEREI) liY

B. J. 1XI<3QXJjPs.IID,

BISHOP OK ROCHESTER,

BEFORE THE FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION (FREE THINKERS)

OF BOSTON, AND AT THEIR REQUEST, IN HORTICUL-

TUKAL HAT.L, ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON,

FEBRUARY 1 3, 1 876.

LECTURE.

I WISH to say that I am here as a Catholic American citizen,
speaking only for myself and my country, and in no way respon-
sible for Mexico, South America, Spain, or any other country in
the world.

The school question is engrossing more and more the atten-
tion of all classes in the country. Pres. Grant devotes a portion
of his annual message to the subject, and calls for yet larger con-
sideration of it by the legislatures of the States. Politicians worry
and fret over it, not knowing how the current may chance to run,
and consequently which course they should take. Ministers and
editors, from pulpit and press, flood the country with their learn-
ing and wisdom, well spiced with warnings and threats to all who
dare differ from them. And yet the last to be heard and con-
sulted is the one to whom the settlement of the question first and
finally belongs, — the parent of the child.

THE SCHOOL QUESTION TO BE SETTLED BY PARENTS.

The father may listen to well-meant good advice ; his fears
may be excited by denunciations of impending peril for himself
and offspring ; laws may be enacted to interfere with his natural
rights ; he may be mulcted through his purse, and harassed in
many ways; his neighbors may turn against him: — ^yet, in
despite of all, the responsibility of the education of his child falls
on him, and on no one else. He may be assisted in his work by
others, if so he will, but in accordance with his will and choice,
and not according to the conscience of his neighbors or of his
fellow-citizens.

PARENTAL RIGHTS BEFORE STATE RIGHTS.

Parental rights precede State rights. Indeed, as the Decla-
ration of Independence has it, governments are instituted to
secure man's inalienable rights ; and among these are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. A father's right to the pursuit of
happiness extends to that of his children as well. This happiness
is not restricted to material and earthly enjoyment, but reaches
to every thing conducive to joy, pleasure, contentment of mind
and soul, in this world and the next, if the father believes in a
future life.

PARENTAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES ACCORDING TO COMMON LAW.

Parental rights include parental duties and responsibilities
before God and society. The common law is explicit on this
point, as Blackstone and Kent assert, "A parent may, under
circumstances, be indicted at common law for not supplying an
infant child with necessaries." (Chitty on Blackstone.)
" During the minority of a child .... the parent is absolutely
bound to provide reasonably for his maintenance and education;
and he may be sued for necessaries furnished, and schooling
given, to a child under just and reasonable circumstances."
(Kent's Com., Vol. II., p. iv.; lee. xxix.)

THE COMMON LAW DEFINED BY JUDGE LEWIS.

The rights of parents are strongly and clearly defined by
Judge Ellis Lewis, in "Commonwealth v. Armstrong, Lycoming
County, Penn., August session, 1842," The judge, having sent
his decision to Chancellor Kent, received in reply an approval of
its correctness, and of the reasoning on which it was based. In
this opinion Judge Lewis says, "The authority of the father
results from his duties. He is charged with the duty of main-
tenance and education The term * education ' is not limited

to the ordinary instruction of the child in the pursuits of litera-
ture : it comprehends a proper attention to the moral and
religious sentiments of the child. In the discharge of this duty.

it is the undoubted right of the father to designate such teachers
either in morals, religion, or literature, as he shall deem best cal-
culated to give correct instruction to his child." In sustainment
of his opinion, the judge quotes from Horry, professor of moral
philosophy, from Dr. Adam Clark, from Paley, and from Dr.
Wayland, who in his Moral Philosophy writes, ** The right of the

parent is to command : the duty of the child is to obey The

relation is established by our Creator. . . .The duty of parents is
to educate their children in such a manner as they (the parents)
believe will be most for their future happiness, both temporal
and eternal .... With his duty in this respect, no one has a right
to interfere .... While he exercises his parental duties within
their prescribed limits, he is, by the law of God, exempt from
interference both from individuals and from society." After
citing these authorities and various passages of the Sacred Scrip-
tures, the judge goes on to say, '* It is the duty of the parent to
regulate the conscience of the child by proper attention to its
education ; and there is no security for the offspring during the
tender years of its minority, but in obedience to the authority of
its parents in all things not injurious to its health or morals."

BY THE SUPREME COURT OF WISCONSIN.

The Supreme Court of Wisconsin, in 1874, went so far in
maintenance of parental rights, that it gave to a father the right
to decide for his son what branches of elementary studies em-
braced in the school curriculum he should not follow against the
will and decision of the teacher and the school committee. The
court based its judgment on these indefeasible parental rights
embodied in the common law.

DOES THE CHILD BELONG TO THE STATE?

It is the Christian view of parental rights and duties which
is here given. It is presented under the supposition, that, however
great in these United States the diminution of Christians in point
of numbers, there may be left enough to constitute an important

part of the population, with rights warranted by the natural, the
divine, and the common law, worthy of consideration. The doc-
trine coming into vogue, that the child belongs to the state, is
the dressing-up of an old skeleton of Spartan Paganism, with its
hideousness dimly disguised by a thin cloaking of Christian mor-
ality. The most despotic governments of Europe illustrate the
fruits of the doctrine, by making every one of their subjects an
armed soldier, for the butchering of fellow creatures in neighbor-
ing states, under the forms of legalized warfare.

THE EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN'S AUTHORITY FOR PARENTAL

DUTIES.
The evangelical Christian who believes in the revealed word
of God reads in the sacred book the teachings of his Master on
the respective duties of parent and child, and regards these teach-
ings as the law of his life : —

" Children, obey your parents in the Lord ; for this is just.

* ' Honor thy father and thy mother ; which is the first commandment with a promise.

" That it may be well with thee, and thou mayst be long-lived on earth.

" And you, fathers, provoke not your children to anger ; but bring them up in the
discipline and correction of the Lord." — Eph. vi. 1-4.

" Children, obey your parents in all things ; for this is well-pleasing to the Lord."
— Col. iii. 20.

THE CATHOLIC CHRISTIAN'S AUTHORITY.

The Catholic Christian, taught to hear the church which is
commissioned to teach all divine truths with infallible certainty,
learns that he cannot neglect the care and education of his children
without grievous sin ; that their religious instruction demands his
chief thought ; and that to expose them to danger in faith or
morals, in schools or elsewhere, would bring on him the just anger
of God, and punishment hereafter. He knows that an education
which excludes God, and is confined to material thoughts and
interests, is one of which for his children he cannot approve.
HOW THE CATHOLIC CONSCIENCE IS FORMED.

On the natural law, and on the law divinely revealed and
presented to him by God's chosen agent, the Church, the

Catholic forms his conscience. He does not expect that his con-
scientious convictions in matters of religion will please others ;
no more is he pleased with the professed creeds of the majority
of his fellow-citizens. These form their conscience on grounds
satisfactory to them ; he forms his on grounds still more satisfac-
tory to him. " The divine law," says Newman, *' is the rule of
ethical truth, the standard of right and wrong ; a sovereign, irre-
versible, absolute authority in the presence of men and angels."
" The divine law," says Cardinal Gousset, " is the supreme rule of
actions. Our thoughts, desires, words, acts, all that man is, is
subject to the domain of the law of God ; and this law is the rule
of our conduct by means of our conscience. Hence it is never
lawful to go against our conscience."

"Conscience," says Newman, "is not a long-sighted selfishness,
nor a desire to be consistent with one's self ; but it is a messenger
from Him who, in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil,
and teaches and rules us by his representatives. Conscience is
the aboriginal vicar of Christ, a prophet in its informations, a
monarch in its peremptoriness, a priest in its blessings and ana-
themas; and even though the eternal priesthood throughout the
Church could cease to be, in it the sacerdotal principle would
remain and would have sway."

The theory of freedom of conscience guaranteed by the
Constitution as a right is conceded to the Catholic by secularist
and evangelical. The wording of the Constitution, and our loud
boasting at home and abroad of liberty of conscience as a special
privilege of democratic government, demand this concession.
Theory and practice clash. The Constitution rules that all shall
be free to follow the dictates of conscience, provided there is no
encroachment on the freedom of others. The majority of the
people rule, by the power of numbers, that a large majority shall
not be free to educate their children according to their conscience.

THE CATHOLIC CONSCIENCE SHOULD BE FREE.

Having proved that the Catholic conscience is founded on
the natural and the revealed law, protected in its right by the

common law and the Constitution of the United States, the claim
that Catholic parents should be untrammelled in the exercise of
parental duties brings me to the consideration of school educa-
tion as affecting this conscience.

It is conceded by free religionists, by the ablest of the
secular press, by many representative ministers of the evangelical
churches, and by large numbers of the people, that to tax Catho-
lics, Jews, and Infidels for schools in which the Bible is read and
religious exercises are held, is a wrong, an act of injustice, a form
of tyranny. So, understanding the case, the cities of Troy,
Rochester, Cincinnati, and Chicago, have forbidden religious
exercises of any description in their common schools. This is a
confession that would not have been made thirty years ago. It
is a partial reparation of the past. Especially is it a warning to
boards of education in other places to cease inflicting this mode
of religious persecution on citizens who object to any kind of
religion, or to the peculiar kind prevailing in their schools. Mr.
Beecher says, " It is not right or fair to tax Catholics or Jews for
the support of schools in which the Bible is read." His congre-
gation applauded the saying. If it is not right, it is wrong, and
Catholics who are thus taxed are, to the extent of the taxes they
pay, punished — persecuted for religion's sake.

INFRINGEMENT OF CONSCIENCE IS PERSECUTION.
Judge Taft, in giving his opinion in the Superior Court of
Cincinnati, in the case of Minor €t al. vs. Board of Education of
Cincinnati, expressed his judgment as follows : " We have this
unequivocal evidence of the reality of their conscientious scruples,
that when they have paid the school tax, which is not a light one,
they give up the privilege of sending their children, rather than
that they should be educated in what they hold to be, and what
without the adoption of one or both of these resolutions must be
fairly held to be, Protestant schools. This is too large a circum-
stance to be covered up by the Latin phrase, de minimis non curat
lex, to which resort is sometimes had. These Catholics are con-
strained every year to yield to others their right to one-third of

the school money, a sum of money averaging not less than
$200,0CX) every year, on conscientious grounds. That is to say,
these people diVe punished every year for believing as they do, to
the extent of $200,000 ; and to that extent those of us who send
our children to these excellent common schools become beneficia-
ries of the Catholic money. We pay for our privileges so much
less than they actually cost."

I quote this distinguished authority to justify the exceed-
ingly strong accusation made a moment ago.

THE STATE HAS NO RIGHT TO EDUCATE.

The Catholic, however, is equally unwilling to transfer the
responsibility of the education of his children to the State. His
conscience informs him that the State is an incompetent agent to
fulfil his parental duties. While the whisperings of his conscience
are clear and unmistakable in their dictates, it pleases him to
hear what others, non-Catholics, have to say on this important
aspect of the subject.

The late Gerrit Smith, whose character as an able and fear-
less philanthropist I need not dwell on, in a letter of Nov. 5, 1873,
to Charles Stebbins of Cazenovia, and intended for publication,
says, ** The meddling of the State with the school is an imperti-
nence little less than its meddling with the Church. A lawyer,
than whom there is not an abler in the land, and who is as emi-
nent for integrity as for ability, writes me, ' I am against the
Governments being permitted to do any thing which can be
intrusted to individuals under the equal regulation of general
laws.' But how emphatically should the school be held to be the
concern and care of individuals instead of the Government ! It
is not extravagant to say that Government is no more entitled to
a voice in the school than in the Church. Both are, or ought to
be, religious institutions ; and in the one important respect that
the average scholar is of a more plastic and docile age than the
average attendant on the Church, the school has greatly the
advantage of the Church."

The views of Gerrit Smith and of the Catholic parent coin-
cide in a remarkable degree.

HERBERT SPENCER ON THE SAME SUBJECT.

Another authority will, I trust, be equally acceptable to my
hearers. Herbert Spencer, in the chapter on National Education
in " Social Statics," thus writes : " In the same way that our
definition of State duty forbids the State to administer religion
or charity, so likewise does it forbid the State to administer
education. Inasmuch as the taking away by Government, of more
of a man's property than is needful for maintaining his rights, is
an infringement and therefore a reversal of the Government's
function toward him, and inasmuch as the taking away of his
property to educate his own or other people's children is not
needful for the maintaining of his rights ; the taking away of his
property is wrong." Mr. Spencer then goes on to prove his pro-
position, and refute objections brought against it by various
classes of objectors, thus: "The reasoning which is held to
establish the right to intellectual food will equally well establish
the right to material food ; nay, will do more, — will prove that
children should be altogether cared for by the Government. For
if the benefit, importance, or necessity of education be assigned
as a sufficient reason why government should educate, then may
the benefit, importance, or necessity of food, clothing, shelter, and
warmth be assigned as a sufificient reason why Government should
administer them also. So that the alleged right cannot be estab-
lished without annulling all parental authority whatever." The
destruction of parental authority, and the uselessness of mere
intellectual education as a preventive of crime, are the chief
points he makes against State interference with schools.

THE JOURNAL OF COMMERCE ON THE SAME.

" The only remedy," says the "Journal of Commerce" of

New York, " we see in the future for the evils which are admitted,

is to be found in the entire separation of the educational process

from State authority. If this has been found wisest and best in

matters of religion, why not in relation to all forms of education ?
Youth needs the higher sanction of religion in every department
of culture ; and this cannot be secured in a State school where
there is no State church."

It can scarcely be said that the interference or non-interfer-
ence of the State in school education is an open question. By
concession on the part of the large majority of the population,
liberty to interfere is granted. This liberty in no way includes
the right so to take part in the education of children that the
just and inalienable rights of parents shall be sacrificed. I have
dwelt on the argument of parental rights because the assumption
of the State to control education, and the indifference of many
parents to this assumption, encourage the supposition that all the
right is in the State, and none in the parent.

COMMON SCHOOLS BEGAN ON A RELIGIOUS BASIS.

In the gradual establishment of State schools, the element of
religious instruction always had a place of honor. The Constitu-
tions of your New England States, and in a very remarkable
degree those of Massachusetts and Connecticut, recognize God,
religion, virtue, and morality. The departure of modern methods
has been from the old and sound ways of the founders of the
Republic, both as respects the religious element in the education
of the young, and the duty of parents to bear the burden of their
children's education. The Western States copied the Constitu-
tions of the older States, and, like them, included morality and
religion as essential parts of a sound education ; but, falling into
the prevailing error, learned to exclude God and religious instruc-
tion from their schools.

HAS EDUCATION YET DECREASED CRIME?
Now, hear their piteous lamentation : " Did not the advo-
cates of our free school system," says Mr. Hopkins, Superintendent
of Schools in Indiana, " promise the people, that, if they would
take on their shoulders the additional burden of taxation for its
support, the same would be lightened by the diminution of crime }

Is there any perceptible decrease of crime in Indiana? Is there
any reasonable probability that there- soon will be? It is* be-
coming a grave question among those who take comprehensive
views of the subject of education, whether this intellectual culture
without moral is not rather an injury than a benefit. Is it not
giving teeth to the lion, and fangs to the serpent ? That is the
true system of training which adapts itself to the entire complex
nature of the child. No free government can safely ignore this
grave subject, for nations that lose their virtue soon lose their
freedom." Here is a remarkable statement by a friendly pen in
the hand of the chief official of the educational department of
Indiana, whose testimony, therefore, must be admitted as of
great weight. Mr. Hopkins has been reading the newspapers of
the day, and, startled by the revelations of crime among the
intellectual and educated classes, who use the advantages of
school learning the better to defraud creditors, embezzle trust
funds, rob banks, form conspiracies to cheat the Government, and
sell ofificial honor for personal gain, is seeking some explanation
of a condition of public and private morals that cannot continue
without destroying the liberties of the Republic. He has hit on
the right starting-point. Let him go on with his investigations,
and fear not to disclose his discoveries.

WHAT IS SECULARISM?

Our argument is now with the secularists pure and simple.
They point to their work accomplished, and bid us to the feast
of rejoicing. We do not answer to the call, and stand ready to
give the reason that is in us.

What is meant by secularism in schools ? President Grant
defines it to mean the exclusion from the schools of the teaching
of any religious, atheistic or pagan tenet. Evidently the Presi-
dent has never been a school teacher, or has never tried to teach
any thing save the multiplication table to a bright, intelligent
boy, brought up in a Christian family on the plan here laid down.
Commanding armies, handling a hundred thousand armed men,
is child's play in comparison. God, Christ, sin, conscience,

religion, heaven, hell, would meet him at every turn ; and to
flank them successfully, without insinuating a Christian, a pagan,
or an atheistic tendency of thought, would give him more
trouble than he experienced in outflanking the strongest army
that ever met him on his onward marches.

" The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle," a stanch and
zealous defender of secularism, gives its explanation as follows :
" Strictly speaking, a secular school should not inculcate the
belief in an overruling Providence."

The teacher who honestly means to teach according to the
principles of secularism will find himself in continual embarrass-
ment. If he but mention the name of God, of Christ, with
reverence, he leads his briglit pupils to infer that such a being
exists ; if he evades a question about God, he indicates doubt ;
if he speaks the name with a sneer on the lip, or a shrug of the
shoulders, he inculcates to young, impressible minds his contempt
for such a belief. Secularists must not attempt to escape the
logic of their own demands. They ask, in the language of the
President, the exclusion of all religious, atheistic, and pagan
tenets from State schools ; and where this doctrine lands them
they must be pleased to stand. They scout the idea that merely
excluding the Bible means secularism. This is the vain hope
of evangelicals, and that with this concession they will be left
free to make compilations from the Bible — elegant extracts — to
keep up appearances. They do not comprehend the nature of
the controversy. The dread of " popery " blinds them. They
will not be let off without swallowing in all its bitterness this pill
which they have helped prepare.

EVANGELICALS OBJECT TO THE TERM " GODLESS."

Yet some evangelical friends have been wrathy with me and
others for designating the common schools, according to the new
law, as Godless. I do not wish them to be Godless ; it is not the
fault of Catholics that they are becoming Godless. To leave our
non-Catholic fellow-citizens free to settle the question of religious

instruction in the schools to their own satisfaction, Catholics all
over the country have provided, or they are providing, school
accommodation for Catholic children, that the religious influences
in these schools may be in harmony with the religious convictions
of their patrons. Hardly had we made room in our own schools
for all our Catholic children in the city of Rochester, than the
board of education of the city, with little ceremony, put the Bible
and all religious instruction out of the public schools. It was this
board that made the schools under their care, in reality if not in
name, Godless.

LIBERAL CHRISTIANS AND SECULARISTS.

The liberal Christian, led on by Henry Ward Beecher and a
large body of clergymen of various evangelical denominations,
fancies that morals can be taught, like good manners, on no higher
ground or motive than the one of propriety or expediency.
When interest, passion, the heart's cravings, outweigh propriety
and expediency, morals thus taught go by the board.

The free religionist is at least consistent ; consistency is more
than the liberal evangelical Christian can claim. The former
rejects the idea of a God-Creator, revelation, and all supernatural
truths. He is justified in asking that his child shall not have its
mind tinctured with such errors during school hours. He is
resolute to drive out of the schools which he is taxed to support,
and to which he sends his children, the sectarianism of evangeli-
calism ; and he is equally determined to plant in them his pet
doctrine, the sectarianism of secularism. It is the usual reading
of history, that bodies of religionists never see themselves as
others see them.

The religionist. Catholic and Christian, holding to divine and
fixed truths, claims the right to impart a knowledge of these
truths to his child in the school to which he sends it for education.
The free religionist having no such truths to communicate to his
child, insists that his fellow-citizens shall not be allowed to use
the school-house for instruction in positive religion, because he

sends his child to the same school. Thus, practically, he ostra-
cizes the religion of the Christian, which is positive, and main-
tains his own, which is negative. All the gain is on the side of
the free religionist, whose system of morals is so transcendental,
and out of the reach of the masses, that it is valueless for practical
good. Both call for the teaching of morals, and each in his own
sense. The evangelical bases his notions of morality on the
natural and revealed law ; the free religionist, or secularist pure
and simple, on the natural law, and as he conceives it. The latter
would exclude the Sacred Scriptures and all positive religious
teaching from the schools. Evangelicals are divided into two
classes. One class would retain the Bible as a text-book of
instruction in morals, as a sign of the Christianity of the schools,
and as a mode of religious worship. They argue, with much
truth, that if, owing to the neglect of parents at home, the insuf-
ficiency of the Sunday school and church to reach the children
most in need of religious teaching, it be not imparted in the
week-day school, it will never be imparted. Another class of
evangelicals remit the Bible and all teaching of morals on religious
grounds to the family, the Sunday school and the church ; and
join hands with the free religionists in prohibiting the name of
God, of Christ, and of his teachings in the school. The least
logical is this liberalized Christian evangelical who professes to
teach morals without the authority in which he claims to believe.
There is some justification for the stand taken by the former
class of evangelicals and by free religionists; there is none for
the position assumed by evangelicals who hold principles by which
they care not to abide. The liberalized Christian and the free
religionist assert that to be possible, which in the nature of
things is not possible. The teacher does not exist who, in his
schoolroom, can so divest himself of his own religious or irre-
ligious ideas that no influence, direct or indirect, shall go out
from him to his pupils. His very best efforts to escape the
suspicion of sectarianism will only serve to tinge his teaching
with indifferentism toward all religion ; thus unintentionally.

perhaps, responding to the wishes of the free rehgionist. Scud-
ding from Scylla, he is wrecked on Charybdis, or vice versa.

On what ground, we may now ask, does either protest
against the peculiar religious teachings of the other in State
schools ? Both are shocked that their taxes should be used to
propagate religious creeds in which they do not believe. Neither
has a word to say about the wrong perpetrated on the Catholic,
whose taxes are used without stint to carry on a system of schools,
from which he is kept out by their dominant evangelicalism or
indifferentism.

A TRIANGULAR CONTEST.

Thus, as some declare, a triangular contest is inaugurated.
"The Albany Argus" of Nov. 30, 1875, in reviewing a sermon
of the Rev. Dr. Darling, in which the reverend doctor insists on
keeping the Bible in the common schools, and because this is a
Christian country, remarks, " Who shall decide ? Shall the schools
be secularized ? Shall they be exclusively Christian, after the
Darling model ? Shall room be allowed for the McQuaid pattern
of schools pervaded by Christian influences ? The school question,
then, does not bisect the community. It is a triangular contest,
with the Darlings and McQuaids as allies and yet as antagonists;
and with the secularists receiving strong support from Protestant
pulpits, beside the partial support they receive from arguments
such as are advanced by Dr. Darling." Three parties there are
beyond doubt ; but the contest can scarcely be called triangular.
It is rather a struggle of three in one line, with the Catholic party
in the middle. Each of the others has a hand in his pocket,
taking his money to support schools to which he cannot in con-
science send his children. If he but opens his mouth to complain,
a din of angry sounds deafens him, and he gets more knocks than
pence. His right to a conscience is admitted when his conscience
conforms to the dictates of others. A few years ago his claim of
conscientious convictions on the Bible question was derided. Now
it is allowed. To-day he claims to educate his child in schools in

harmony with his religious convictions. Neither contending
party gives him heed. All point to the common schools, and
while quarrelling among themselves as to what they are, and what
they ought to be, bid him take them as they are, and as they
have made them, or go his way, build his own schoolhouse, and
please himself. This is moderate language ; rougher and much
less civil is what he hears. Strange to tell, however, no word is
said of sending after him his money paid in school taxes. The
ordinary principles of commercial honor are disregarded. The
justice and equity required by the Constitution of Connecticut
are ignored. Instead of justice the Catholic receives insults.
" His money! It is the State's money, public money belonging
to the State treasury, Protestant money. Be thankful that a
generous people permits you to be blessed by the school advan-
tages brought to your door."

WHO PAYS THE SCHOOL TAX?

Thus the poor Catholic, who may perchance have a little
common-sense, hears, in the midst of loud talk about rights of
man and rights of conscience, that his conscience is not his own,
and the freedom offered him is somebody else's freedom ; that
his school taxes take on a special Protestant blessing as they drop
into the common treasury, and may not come out without the
odor of evangelicalism perfuming them. In downright derision
he is asked, what taxes he pays ? is he not a poor laborer, without
a home he can call his own, a mere tenant-at-will ? are not the
taxes paid by the rich landlord ? Simple and guileless the son of
toil may be, and untutored in political economy, the laws of
demand and supply, the intricacies of direct and indirect taxa-
tion ; but his memory reminds him that when last the landlord
called he was told that, as taxes and assessments had been so
much increased, a trifle would have to be added to the rent. The
same unpleasant remark met him in the grocery, the meat-shop,
the shoe-store ; wherever, indeed, he went to purchase the sim-
plest necessaries of life. Anxious to learn how it was that the

taxes had been augmented, he talked with his neighbors, and
after many inquiries discovered that new and costly schoolhouses
had been built, salaries of teachers and ofificials had been added
to, and the sum of incidentals grown out of all proportion. A
further study of the subject revealed the fact that one-fourth of
all moneys raised by taxes in his town was needed for public
schools. He then learnt why his rent was raised. He was not
so dull that he could not comprehend, after the practical experi-
ence thus obtained, that the consumer and producer pay the
taxes. The landlord the manufacturer, the seller draws the check
in payment of the tax-bill ; but the consumer and producer fur-
nish a large part of the money with which to make good the
check.

FALSE STATEMENTS AND ASSUMPTIONS.

This subject of State school education is overloaded with
unfounded assumptions and incorrect statements. A prominent
public man, clergyman, politician, or editor has scarcely given
utterance to a plausible plea, when, by the grand chorus of lesser
oracles it is taken up and repeated, until it sounds like an accepted
axiom.

WHAT IS SECTARIANISM?

The greatest abuse of language is in the popular meaning of
the word " sectarian." On the frenzied brain of many it acts like
the cry of " mad dog " in a crowded street. Who inquires into
its signification ? Light thrown on it would only weaken its
power for mischief. The analyzation of the word by John C.
Spencer, Secretary of State of New York, and one of the ablest
lawyers the State has produced, dissects it thoroughly, and
exposes the erroneous sense in which it is used. After saying
that " Religious doctrines of vital interest will be inculcated, not
as theological exercises, but incidentally in the course of literary
and scientific instructions," and that such teachings are sectarian,
he goes on to say, " It is believed to be an error to suppose that
the absence of all religious instruction, if it were practicable, is
a mode of avoiding sectarianism. On the contrary, it would be

in itself sectarian, because it would be consonant to the views of
a particular class, and opposed to the opinions of other classes.
* * * His only purpose is to show the mistake of
those who suppose they may avoid sectarianism by avoiding all
religious instruction."

INCONSISTENCY OF THE EVANGELICAL.

Great confusion of ideas and grievous injustice result from
this misapprehension of the sense of sectarianism. No one de-
claims so loudly against sectarianism as your intensely religious
evangelical. Even when demanding that the Bible shall be read,
and that his general form of Protestantism shall fill the school-
house, by some obliquity of mental vision peculiar to his class he
startles the country by his frantic cries of danger to the public
schools through sectarianism. Is this honest, or is it hypocritical?
If the prejudices in which he was born and bred so confuse and
blind his intellect that he cannot see a self-evident truth, his
blunder may be charged to mistaken honesty. But what accum-
ulated injustices spring out of his blunder !

BENIGNITY OF THE SECULARIST.

Then up rises the secularist, with benign countenance and
gentle words, to reprove the evangelical for wrong done to the
poor Catholic sectarian, and in the name of peace and concilia-
tion, and as a settlement of all difficulties, to offer his gift of
secularism pure and simple. It is not courteous to examine gifts
too closely; but, as this one is bought partly with Catholic
money, it must be borne with, that, before accepting the present,
the Catholic turns it round on every side, scrutinizes its shape,
its color, and its substance, to make sure that in it no danger
lurks concealed. To the Catholic secularism is as much sectarian
as evangelicalism.

AN AMERICAN'S RIGHT TO AGITATE.

A false statement, and one daily heard, is that to ask for a
calm talk on the merits and demerits of the existing system of

schools, means no less than an attempt to favor ignorance,
impede education, and break down all schools. It is an Ameri-
can's right to argue, find fault, discuss, agitate. Agitation is
healthful; in this particular instance, it quickens the building of
Catholic schoolhouses. A Catholic is the last one to be taunted
with want of love for education. He has only to point to his
schools dotting the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific. All
other classes put together do not equal him in number and
eflficiency of Christian Free Schools. Yet he is only at the
beginning of his work.

NO DANGER FROM THE POPE.

Another incorrect statement is, that to allow parental rights,
as demanded by the natural, the divine, and the common law, is
to hand over the country to the pope and the Catholic Church,
When the bigots of the country will permit the Government to
deal with its citizens, the parents of the children, as equity and
justice require, the liberties of the Republic will meet no danger
from the Catholic Church or the pope. It is this bugbear of
*' popery " which bewilders and frightens people.

EXTENT OF COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION.

It is not decided what is meant by a common-school educa-
tion. It is anything from A B C up to a finished university
course, including professional studies except theology. Pres.
Grant restricts it to the rudimentary branches of learning. Pres.
Eliot of Harvard University, in " The Atlantic Monthly " of last
June, makes this statement: "Suppose, for example, that the
State requires of all children a certain knowledge of reading,
writing, arithmetic and geography, such as children usually
acquire by the time they are twelve years of age. It is not un-
reasonable, though by no means necessary, that the community
should bear the whole cost of giving all children that amount of
elementary training, on the ground that so much is necessary for
the safety of the State ; but, when the education of a child is
carried above that compulsory limit, it is by the voluntary act of

ICX3

the child's parents, and the benefit accrues partly to the State,
through the increase of trained intelligence among the population,
but partly also to the individual, through the improvement of
his powers and prospects."

Many of the secular newspapers agree with the above author-
ities, in limiting a common-school education to the simplest ele-
mentary branches. Such a restricted education answers for rural
districts, in which a more extended course of studies is impossible.
Tie down the curriculum of studies to the rudimentary branches
of reading, writing, arithmetic and geography, in villages, towns,
and cities, and in ten years' time the system of common schools
will be abandoned. The ambition of all centres of population is
to elevate the standard of common school education, until the
town that cannot boast of its grammar school, and its high school,
or day college, drops behind its sister towns in the race for
advanced education at the public expense. The normal school,
with its pretentious title, is another device for placing within the
reach of large numbers, guiltless of any thought of following the
teacher's profession, an education such as in former years could
be had only in denominational academies and seminaries. To
such an extent has this crowding-out of academies and seminaries,
generally under denominational control, and supported by church
organizations and private patrons, gone on, by the substitution
of union schools, high schools, normal schools, free colleges,
living on the bounty of the common treasury, that many denom-
inational institutions have ceased to live, and others are only
gasping for breath.

UNLIMITED EXPANSION OF THE SYSTEM.

Let us listen to two other authorities giving their opinion of
the scope of common school studies. Henry Ward Beecher may
be pitted against Pres. Grant, and Supt Philbrick of Boston
against Pres. Eliot. " The common schools," says Mr. Beecher,
"should be so comfortable, so fat, so rich, so complete, that no
select school could live under their drippings." In his annual

lOl

report for 1874, Mr. Philbrick writes, '* Our public schools are
maintained on so liberal a scale, and their influence so largely
predominates, that the private schools exert no appreciable effect
upon their character." Boston has its system of Latin schools,
normal schools, high schools, grammar schools, to demonstrate
the absurdity of Pres. Grant's expectation that the rudimentary
branches would satisfy the American people. Mr. Philbrick gives
statistics to show, that, while in 1830 there were in Boston 7,430
children in the public schools, there were in private schools 4.018 ;
but in 1873, with an addition of 200,000 to the population, there
were in public schools 35,930, and in private schools only 3,887.
Neither enumeration includes the 5,000 children in Christian free
schools supported by parents of the Catholic religion.

WHY THEY DIFFER.

When the aim of the argument is to catch popular applause,
we boast of a system of schools that brings to every child in the
land a knowledge of the rudimentary branches of learning. When
we wish to conciliate and win the patronage of well-to-do citizens
in cities and towns, we impress on their minds the economy of
obtaining superior education, including ancient and modern lan-
guages, and all the accomplishments, under the State arrange-
ment, rather than in private schools. The public school system,
as advocated by many to be imposed on all the citizens of this
Republic, is nothing else, in my judgment, than a huge conspiracy
against religion, individual liberty and enterprise, and parental
rights. It is a monopoly on the part of the State, usurping to
itself the entire control of the teacher's business, driving out com-
petition, herding the children together in large numbers, working
all alike as so many bits of machinery, instead of having them in
smaller family and neighborhood schools, acting on the children
according to individual character, by teachers more immediately
under the control of parents.

Various causes work to push school taxation to an unbearable
degree. Friends of common schools, taking advantage of popular

I02

sympathy, urge outlays of money for houses, apparatus, books,
novelties of every kind, and increased salaries of teachers, so that
tax-payers are at last asking to know what was the original con-
tract, and where these enormous expenditures are to end ; they
are also looking for results, and comparing notes with other
countries. Mr. Philbrick of Boston, when in Vienna, did not
discover that our lavish disbursements of a good-natured people's
money had given us a high rank in school progress, as compared
with European countries, except in our primary schools.

COSTLINESS OF COMMON SCHOOLS.

But business men long ago learned that no job was so ex-
pensive as a government job ; and no wonder that they are now
turning their attention to this monopoly of State education, as a
financial interest of general and deep concern in these hard times.
There are others who can give figures and statistics of school
work beside State and city superintendents of public schools.
The Cincinnati correspondent of " The New York Daily
Bulletin," a paper strictly commercial, writes under date of Jan.
17, 1876:

" Our schools, the best of our institutions, represent, for
instance, fully as much miseducation as education ; and the boards
having charge of them are, compared with other bodies, least re-
gardful of proper economy, because they act under a popular,
and therefore the least analyzed, public feeling. If you will ex-
amine, you will find that, of all taxes, school taxes have for that
reason increased fastest. Compare our school expenses with
those of any German state, and you will find that ours cost more
and perform least. The heaviest taxed German state for these
purposes is Hesse Cassel ; it taxes 34 cents per head, and it
makes up 7)^ per cent, of all the taxes levied. Now, there are
levied for school purposes in Cincinnati $774,894, which is full
$2.50 per head, and is about one-sixth of all the taxes, or 16 per
cent. In Hesse Cassel the tax includes libraries, universities, and
art schools ; with us it includes only the schools up to high

>03

schools, and a ^ood part of their expense is borne by trust funds.
As to the culture, the German schools reach a larger proportion
of the youth of the State, and are very thorough from the lowest
to the highest grade, the teachers being much better qualified
than ours. Had I taken Saxony or Baden, both more economical
and efficient than Hesse Cassel, the comparison would have been
still more against us. Zurich, the highest taxed city in Europe
for these objects, takes but 54 cents per head, and there school
taxes are one-fifth of all taxes ; but there also it includes libraries,
a university, polytechnicism, lyceums, and common schools ; and
surely no city on earth has a superior culture than this city."

Strongly as this writer puts his case, he fails to do it justice ;
for he omits to state that more than half the children of the city
in schools are in parents' schools, or denominational and private
schools. In New York City, school taxes are four dollars per head
for each one of its million inhabitants; and large numbers of its
children are in other than State schools. Boston, which has a
less number of pupils in private and religious schools, shows a
marked increase in the per capita cost. In 1873, ^^r teachers and
incidental expenses, not including new schoolhouses, the cost per
head of its two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants was $5.52 ;
and, including the buildings, it reached nearly $7, These figures
are for tax-payers.

Let me say to you just here, that if the scheme of higher
education extending from the elementary school up to a full
university course, now broached, be attempted to be carried out
in its fullness and universality, all the revenues of all your cities,
towns, and States, and all the revenues of these United States,
will not suffice to pay the cost.

Intelligent, wise, earnest parents, and friends of sound educa-
tion, will watch with interest the gradual unfolding and develop-
ment of the State system of schools. Their attention will be
given to this crushing-out of denominational schools for the hum-
bler classes of society, to see in it the inexorable destruction of all
denominational seminaries, academies, colleges, and universities.

I04

STATE COLLEGES TO CRUSH OUT DENOMINATIONAL COLLEGES.

This policy is foreshadowed in the proposed National Univer-
sity scheme. I am not drawing inferences from my imagination.
The address of Pres. White of Cornell University, delivered at
Detroit, in August, 1874, lacks nothing in openness and direct-
ness of speech. Among other points, it contains these : " It is
in view of such a meagre growth in over two hundred years, under
the prevailing system, that I present the following as the funda-
mental proposition of this paper :

" The main provision for advanced education in the United
States must be made by the people at large, acting through their
National and State Legislature, to endow and maintain institutions
for the higher instruction, fully equipped and free from sectarian
control.

" But I argue next, that our existing public sclwol system leads
us logically and necessarily to the endowment of advanced
instructio7i"

To show his utter contempt for the rudimentary education
called for by President Grant, Mr. White thus expresses his con-
viction : " The preliminary education which many of our strongest
men received leaves them simply beasts of prey. It has simply
sharpened their claws and tusks ; but a higher education, whether
in science, literature, or history, not only sharpens the faculties,
but gives him new exemplars and ideals." President White and
Herbert Spencer both require very advanced education before
morals, under this new dispensation, avail to make a man better.

NO COLLEGES BUT STATE COLLEGES.

Mr. White's address is not a string of propositions and argu-
ments without conclusions. Here is one :

" Next, as to State policy, I would have it go in the same
direction as heretofore, but with a liberality and steadiness show-
ing far more foresight. I would have each of those States build
up higher, upon the foundations laid by national grants, their
public institutions for advanced instruction as distinguished from
private sectarian institutions.

105

" I would have each State build up one institution under its
control, rather than the twenty under the control of conferences,
and dioceses, and synods, and consistories, and presbyteries, and
denominational associations of various sects."

There can be no mistake about the learned President's
meaning, nor is one denominational organization omitted from his
comprehensive catalogue. He advocates secularism, pure and
simple, in our colleges and universities, paid for by taxes levied
on the laborers, mechanics, and farmers of the country. He ex-
cludes from State aid all institutions in which any religious tenet,
even the existence of an overruling Providence, is taught. If, on
the establishment of these secular State colleges, their authorities
should permit the reading of the Bible, as a book of spiritual or
religious truths of more value than the Koran, it will be the
cheerful duty of the Liberal League to protest against the abuse
and infraction of the law, as the League protested in Philadelphia,
" The use of the Bible in the public schools is a violation of the
recognized American principle that the State and Church ought
to be absolutely separate."

HOW WILL THE EVANGELICALS LIKE IT?

What will the members of the New England Baptist Educa-
tional Convention, assembled in Worcester, Mass., who recom-
mended the establishment of at least one academy under Baptist
control in each of the New England States, say to this arrange-
ment ? What will their brethren assembled in Chicago, and rep-
resenting the Western States, think of it ? How will the South-
ern Baptists who met in Marion, Ala., and who declared that
" the only hope is Christian education in our schools," like a pol-
icy destined to overshadow and destroy denominational high
schools, academies, and colleges as it destroyed denominational
elementary schools? These three conventions were held in 187 1.
Pres. Andrews of Denison University, O., has the advantage of
four years' experience and observation, since the holding of these
conventions. He has seen the clouds gathering ; he has heard

io6

the mutterings of the brewing storm ; the signs in the heavens
tell him, that, when that storm bursts, it will be over the heads of
denominational colleges. " The proposed reform," says Pres.
Andrews, " will involve religious complications. Higher educa-
tion cannot be separated from religion. Atheists will not pay
taxes to support theistic instruction, nor theists atheistic. But
to put higher instruction into the hands of the government is not
only impolitic, but wrong in principle. * -k- « 'pj^^

government should hold the same relation to higher education
that it does to religion. Further, religion is essential to higher
culture, and the State cannot teach religion. It is injustice to
those opposed to Christianity. Christianity is the natural ally of
culture. Finally intellectual culture without religion cannot
build character. The great need of the nation is moral force.
The divorce of culture and religion is forced and unnatural."
Does Pres. Andrews hope to avert the storm by his weak voice ?
Does he dream of holding the inner line of fortifications, protect-
ing his higher education, after abandoning to the enemy all the
outposts ? When elementary schools, in which the foundation of
sound Christian morals is laid, were given over to secularists at
their first bidding, resistance to the advancing foe became im-
possible.

WHAT THE METHODISTS THINK.

In 1873. the Methodist Episcopal Church, in the quadrennial
address of its bishops, thus put itself on record : " We do not
hesitate to avow that we regard the education of the young as
one of the leading functions of the Church, and that she cannot
abdicate in favor of the State without infidelity to her trust and
irreparable damage to society. The reasons for occupying this
ground, which inhere in the very nature of this interest, and in
the relation of children to the Church, all are intensified by the
antagonism of modern science, and the outcasting of the religious
element from all the school systems fostered by State legislation.
It is not ours to dispute with Ca;sar ; but, fully persuaded that
the salt of religious truth alone can preserve education, we feel

107

that the responsibilities of the Church grow with the progress of
society and the demands of the age,"

WHAT MAKES THE METHODISTS CRAZY.

Other authorities of high standing in the Methodist denomi-
nation might be cited in favor of reHgious teaching in schools.
It is but fair to state that the mention of any system of schools
under which common justice might be meted out to Catholic
parents, suffices to drive the whole body of Methodist preachers
and hearers frantic, crazy. The Baptists are not much less intol-
erant. Secularists may therefore count on their assistance in
ousting from the schools the very name of the Christians' God.
The professed principles of these religious sects avail nothing
against their avowed hatred of the Catholic Church and Catholics.

WHO SUPPORT CHURCHES?

The various evangelical sects yielded up the contest for reli-
gious education in common schools almost without a struggle.
It is said that the children, whose education is not advanced
beyond the elementary branches of learning, do not in time
become pew-holders and supporters of churches. These efficient
aids to church support are found in the classes which pass through
denominational schools of a higher grade. Round these all the
forces of evangelicalism will rally to uphold the right of parents
of the respectable class to provide religious education for their
children. Certainly the zeal, the labors, the munificent gener-
osity, of the evangelical denominations, to build and endow acad-
emies and colleges deserves unbounded praise. But when the
State opens its plethoric treasury to establish secular colleges,
with allowances of freedom not possible in sectarian institutions,
the struggle will be short and decisive. This is not prophecy ;
it is history.

WHAT KILLS EVANGELICAL COLLEGES?

The once flourishing Methodist College at Lima, N.Y., dwin-
dled to insignificance, and moved to Syracuse to escape death.

io8

shortly after the opening of Cornell University. About the same
time, Hobart College, under the control of the Episcopal Church,
began to lose students, until now, notwithstanding large endow-
ments, the fingers of the two hands would almost suffice to count
them. The Presbyterian Seminary of Geneseo closed its doors
when a State normal school in the same village opened its classes.
The Baptist Academy of Brockport became a State normal school
to escape death. Other places have the same history. The at-
mosphere of these normal schools is still redolent with evangel-
icalism, but it is only on sufferance ; at the first demand of Jew
or atheist the names of the God, Creator, and Christ will be ban-
ished, praying and hymn-singing stopped.

I now leave Evangelical Christians to ponder over Pres.
Grant's demand that no religious tenet shall be taught in State
schools, and this new definition of non-sectarianism.

SECULARISTS ARE IN GREAT GLEE

over their progress. They look forward to speedy and complete
success. Their victory in common schools carries them triumph-
antly along to State secular universities. Indeed, they might
begin their song of triumph, if not for complete accomplishment,
then for rapid advancement. Only one foe stands undismayed
before them. It is the Catholic parent who permits no one to
come between him and his child. The father is a Christian,
prizing his faith more than his purse or the world's esteem; reso-
lute to transmit to his offspring the precious boon of religion in
its purity and brightness, undimmed by the jeers and scoffs and
calumnies of unbelievers ; he will not permit his children to
breath an atmosphere of infidelity. Others may think and say
that he is wrong: he knows that he is right. He meddles not
with others. He listens to much counsel from well-meaning
friends. They tell him it is a glorious privilege for his boy to
be the equal and companion of a rich man's son. It may happen
— it often happens — that he cares no more for the rich man's son
than for the rich man himself. They point to the palatial school-

ICX)

house, grand and gorgeous in all its appointments; to the teachers,
learned and accomplished. They tell him all these shall his son
enjoy, without price or pay, if he will but intrust his boy's edu-
cation to the State, which loves to play foster-father to its child-
ren. The poor man's poverty gnaws into the bone under the
proffered bribe ; his mind dwells on the temporal advantages so
enticingly offered ; he loves his child, and he believes in an over-
ruling Providence, a God, Creator, Supreme Master of the uni-
verse ; he believes in a world to come, and cherishes the hope
that, after this life, he and his boy shall be reunited with the
blessed in heaven. Under the coarse coat and rough exterior of
many a day-laborer there beats a heart of honest manliness that
would scorn to be the beneficiary of any man's aid. He pays for
his child's education; he hates to pay for a superior education for
his richer neighbor's son. There is a laudable pride in this spirit
of independence and self-reliance, the very virtues upon which
the Republic depends for its existence.

c He can conceive of no true happiness except as his life con-
forms to the teachings and will of his God. His thoughts of
happiness for himself are bound up with those of his child. His
child's happiness for this world and the next interests and deter-
mines his actions at home, in its play, in school, and in church.
He is concerned about its lessons, but still more about every in-
fluence bearing on the direction and formation of mind and char-
acter. Like Herbert Spencer, he knows that mere intellectual
education will not form character ; and, like Pres. White, he
holds that the preliminary education which many receive " only
sharpens claws and tusks, and makes beasts of prey." To guard
against such dangers, this father, whose religion is real and living,
made up of doctrines to be known and believed, and of observ-
ances and practices to be faithfully followed, dares not before
God and his conscience neglect to train his son in these observ-
ances, make him familiar with their use, and fill his mind and
soul with love and reverence toward them. How will it be with
his boy, if the school fail to come to his aid, or, what is worse,

operate disastrously, by positive or negative teaching, upon his
soul? What will be the future of that boy if the atmosphere he
breathes at school be filled with doubt, sneers, negation? There
is not in this audience one father, who, if he believed in a life to
come, of happiness or misery eternal, would take any unnecessary
chances with regard to his child's education and school life. If
you judge the rest of the world only from your standpoint of
belief, the brave struggle of a Catholic poor man to obtain a
Christian education for his child will continue to be an enigma,
and lead to acts of injustice.

AGREEMENTS AND DISAGREEMENTS.

Catholics and secularists agree on some points, and differ on
others.

They agree that education is an important factor in the
making of an intelligent citizen, and is therefore very desirable.
They do not agree in the character of the education necessary to
make this good citizen. The Catholic points to his personal sac-
rifices in time, labor, and money, to secure for h?s children edu-
cation in the sense in which he understands it. The secularist
bids us look at what the State has done for him. He cannot
demonstrate the earnestness and sincerity of his convictions and
preaching by what he has done. He pays, it is true his share of
public taxes. So does the Catholic. The secularist insists that
there shall be State schools after his plan, according to his con-
victions, paid for by taxation from which no one shall be exempt,
while all shall be obliged to drink at his well of knowledge, such
as it is. A Catholic argues that the secularist's notion of educa-
tion was never strong, never attained to the power of a principle,
or he would have withdrawn his children from schools in which
they were taught what he might be pleased to call the super-
stitions of evangelicalism. As between the two, on the head of
personal sacrifices in furtherance of the cause of education, the
Catholic has an advantage over the secularist in demonstrating
the courage of his convictions.

Ill

Both agree that instruction in morals in some form is essential
for the right education of youth. They differ in their understand-
ing of what is meant by morals, and as to the authority by which
such teaching should be inculcated. The secularist rises no
higher in his conception of morals than the temporal well-being
of the child, and "the doing of acts conducive to general enjoy-
ment." Rev. A, D. Mayo, Unitarian minister, calls this policy
"a materialistic naturalism and a philosophical fatalism."

SECULARISTS TEACHING MORALS.

The helplessness of the secularist as a teacher of the people
is best described by Herbert Spencer in " First Principles : "
" Few, if any, are as yet fitted wholly to dispense with such
(religious) conceptions as are current. The highest abstractions
take so great a mental power to realize with any vividness, and
are so imperative on conduct unless they are vividly realized,
that their regulative effects must, for a long period to come, be
appreciable on but a small minority. . . .Those who relinquish the
faith in which they have been brought up, for this most abstract
faith in which religion and science unite, may not uncommonly
act up to their convictions. Left to their organic morality,
enforced only by general reasonings imperfectly wrought out and
difficult to keep before the mind, the defects of nature will
often come out more strongly than they would have done under
their previous creed." No one is better entitled to a hearing on
the side of the secularists than Herbert Spencer. How far they
are able to provide a code of morals for the training of the young
in substitution of that of the Christian religion, he has clearly
stated. The child accepts its lessons in science and morals on
authority. The secularist child has no other authority than that
of the teacher, supplemented and enforced by its parents. Hence
the necessity of harmony of thought between parent and teacher.
But " moral goodness," to be effective even in the secularist's
idea, demands vividness of conception beyond the power of
attainment on the part of children, since few of their parents can

112

rise to its realization. In other words, the teaching of morals in
a secularist's school is all but impossible.

STANDARDS OF MORALS DIFFER.

The secularist's standard of morals differs in material points
from that of the Catholic. The former, in admitting the law of
divorce, consents to a disruption of ties that alone guarantee the
sacredness and unity of the family ; permits passion, pleasure, and
self-will to have their way in defiance of that law of self-restraint
and patience under trials and difficulties necessary to hold the
family together, at least for the children's sake. The Catholic
can address the secularist in the words of the eloquent Bishop of
Orleans : " It is not so much my church which they would destroy
as your home ; and I defend it. For all those things which are
the supreme objects of your desire, — reason, philosophy, society,
the basis of your institutions, the subject of your books, the
sanctity of your hearts, the morals of your children, — these are
the things which I defend, and which you throw away in crown-
ing those who would destroy them."

A Catholic's code of morals embraces the teachings of the
Bible, interpreted by the Church. It does not end with teach-
ings ; it has ordinances, sacraments divinely instituted to give
grace, supernatural power, with which to resist temptation, over-
come passion, escape from sin. Your denial of these truths does
not lessen a Catholic's faith in them, nor weaken his conscience
with regard to them.

You may remember Henry Ward Beecher's last Thanksgiving
sermon, and the picture he drew of the condition of morals in the
Brooklyn schools, in which were teachers who held their positions
by the sacrifice of their virtue to school commissioners. You
may also have heard that Thomas W. Field, superintendent of
schools in the same city of Brooklyn, in his annual report of four
or five years ago, gave a fearful account of the prevalent im-
morality. This report was suppressed by the board of education,
on the principle, I suppose, that the whole truth must not always

1 1

be spoken. Is it any wonder that Catholic parents ask that they,
and not politicians, shall have the choosing of their children's
teachers? You have not forgotten the article in "The Boston
Herald " of Oct. 20, 1871, giving the substance of Prof. Agassiz'
address before the Massachusetts State Teachers' Association.
Again, I say, is it any wonder that Catholic parents, hearing
these confessions, even under a stringent policy of silence and
concealment, lose faith in the State system, and provide schools
of their own at sacrifices worthy of martyrs? I cite these in-
stances in no spirit of exultation, but of regret ; and it therefore
gives me pleasure to say that the character of the teachers of
Boston stands too high to come under such imputations.

THE STATE CANNOT TEACH RELIGION.

Catholics and secularists agree that a State without religion
cannot teach religion. Therefore, say the latter, let there be no
religious teaching. Therefore, say the former, let there be relig-
ious teaching in the schools by those who can impart it in har-
mony with the parents' belief. These say furthermore, that, when
Massachusetts had religion, she was careful that religion, and
morality through religion, should be taught in our schools. It is
claimed that Massachusetts gained her most distinguished honors
from men educated under religious influences in school, at home,
and in church ; but that now she is consuming her capital, with-
out putting any of it at interest. The shadow of religious teach-
ings still lingers around her schoolhouses. Shall it be that her
future men of note are to be no more than shadows of those that
went before them ?

MORALS WITHOUT RELIGION.

The secularist maintains that all the knowledge of morals a
child need possess may be obtained in a State school without
religion. This is true of that species of morals which fails to rec-
ognize God, and which has no foundation in supernatural motives.
The Catholic does not admit that morality based on pure selfish-
ness is of much worth, or that it will avail a child in the moment

114

of temptation. In this clashing of opinions and beliefs, which
shall give way, is there to be room but for one ? Shall it be the
Catholic ? He appeals to the Constitution of Massachusetts, and
to the religious element still abiding in its population. The new
condition of educational aims is vastly different from that of
fifty years ago. He claims that his higher standard of morality,
the nobler motive on which it is inculcated, its adaptability and
acceptableness to children (waiving for a moment its divine
origin and character) entitles him to have the education of his
children permeated and completed by a strong infusion of relig-
ious instruction in schools. He contends for the rights and best
interests of his own children. He does not dispute the wishes
of others, nor seek to impose on them the adoption of his system.
He loudly asserts, that in every important point, except costli-
ness of buildings and expensiveness of teachers, Catholic schools
are superior to State schools. They are more thorough in secu-
lar studies, there is less cramming, and less multiplicity of use-
less branches of learning ; the duties and responsibilities of citi-
zens are brought home to parents, where they belong, fostering
a spirit of self-reliance, without dependence on public charity ;
and all in an atmosphere of religion and morality such as the
patrons of the school desire, and are willing to pay for. I am
not speaking of the beginnings of a Catholic school in some poor
neighborhood. As well might you liken a country school with
its fifteen or twenty scholars under a schoolmistress at three or
four dollars a week, to one of your Boston high schools.

CATHOLICS ASK NO FAVORS.

While the Catholic asks no favor, no privilege, no special
prerogative, no right that he does not concede to others, the sec-
ularist on the contrary, in the name of liberality, falls into aston-
ishing illiberality. All must yield to him. He has broken down
the evangelical ; he will subdue the Catholic. He will concede
no rights to others, save the one of bending to his will, if that
can be called a right which is the result of sheer force, through

the power of a prejudiced and unrelenting majority. The Cath-
olic wants to know why his right to have schools for his children,
in which the tone of religious thought shall be Catholic, is not as
valid as the right of evangelicals and secularists to have schools
for their children in which the tone of thought shall be evangel-
ical or indifferent to any religion. It must not be lost sight of,
in this argument, that our rights go where our money goes. A
Catholic's money goes into the schools, and his rights go with it.
An inalienable right is infringed upon, is curtailed, is cut off
altogether, when he appears at a schoolhouse door, leading his
son by the hand, only to find at its threshold the emblem
or sign of a hostile creed, or, what is worse in his belief, the
chilling atmosphere within of doubt, negation, or an ignoring of
the God-Creator, Sovereign Lord and Master, and final Judge of
man's thoughts, words, and acts, for whom it has been the
father's duty to instil into his child's mind and heart the most
tender love and reverence.

HOW SOME ARE SAVED.

No one need tell me that I exaggerate and picture from
fancy, nor yet again that there are illustrious instances of boys
and girls that have passed through the common schools without
inhaling the poisonous atmosphere of which I speak. I do not
deny the fact. These easily counted exceptions but prove the
rule. The prayers, the watchful care, and unceasing devotion of
capable and pious parents, must count for much in the saving of
these few. Again, there are schools, in which the majority of the
children and many of the teachers being Catholics, a diluted
Catholic atmosphere floats about the school-house, rendering less,
in some degree, the danger of losing Catholic faith and morals. If
we ourselves cannot see this danger, ministers and editors, in
sermons, addresses, and editorials, kindly point it out, and
bespeak our attention. Their zeal and ardor are aroused to new
endeavor in the charitable hope of hurting " Popery." The
thought lends courage to their hearers. " It will de-Romanize

ii6

the children," says one. "The Bible and the common schools
will grind out the Catholicity of the children," says another.
Similar expressions might be multiplied without end. Fore-
warned is for the wise to be fore-armed. It was only when the
Bible in the schools had ceased to be the question in dispute
that the Bible was put on the cold side of the door.

WHAT RAISES THE STORM.
There is small hope that justice, or even patient and unbiased
hearing of our grievances, will be accorded, when, as soon as a
voice is raised in behalf of God-given rights, forty thousand
pulpits ring with bitter invectives, gross misrepresentations, and
appeals to the lowest passions of those who gather around them ;
when politicians, (not statesmen) catch up the cry, and trading
away all principle, if they ever had any, ride into office in the
fury and madness of the hour. Secret societies, that have yo
often proved political sepulchres for unprincipled demagogues,
lend their help.

The darkest and fiercest hour of the storm is that which pre-
cedes its breaking. We take courage, then, from the extreme
and unbridled fury of the hour, and from the violent language
used in defiance of good taste, reason, brotherly kindness, and
all regard for just rights.

LEADERS CHANGE.
The people will yet become disgusted with the unreasonable-
ness and changeableness of their leaders. A few years ago they
were told to stand by " the Bible in the schools," to " strike down
any one who dared raise a hand against it ;" that "to die for it
would be a glorious martyrdom." Secret societies were formed
for its protection. Now, editors and ministers frankly confess it
was all a mistake ; that our liberties do not depend on keeping
the Bible in the schools ; that to do so is illogical, wrong, unjust
to Catholics, Jews and infidels. There has been no more power-
ful advocate of the Bible in the schools than Dr. J. G. Holland,
who, in this month's " Scribner," admits that "the compulsory

117

reading of the Bible was to the Catholic, to the Jew, to the
atheist, a grievance, a hardship, an oppression." '* For ourselves.'
he says, " we must confess to a change of convictions on this
matter. ... If we do away with the grievance of the Catholic, we
do away with his claim ; and we mark out for Catholic and Prot-
estant alike the path of peace to walk in side by side." The
doctor does not seem to understand the nature of our claim. It
is not to deprive Protestants of their Bible in their schools : it is
to educate Catholic children in Catholic schools with our own
money, under State supervison if you please. We do not want
Protestant money, nor any State money that was not taken from
our purses. We want not one dollar for pope, bishop, or priest
not one cent for our church/ We do not desire the doing-away of
common schools : we are establishing schools all over the country
on a thoroughly democratic basis. We are striving for a stretch-
ing of a hide-bound system. We wish it to be more directly
under parental control, more economically managed, restricted to
its proper function of elementary education, and violating no con-
scientious duty of parents. It is just as likely that a few years
hence the people will be told that education belongs to parents,
and that if the State interferes it must be in accordance with the
wish of parents. When communism becomes rife and bold, prop-
erty owners may be willing to discuss principles only to learn
that they are reaping as they sowed. Some heads take in truth
slowly, others only by trepanning.

FAIR PLAY EXPECTED FROM FREE RELIGIONISTS.
We are justified in expecting fairer treatment at the hands of
free religionists. If we may trust Herbert Spencer as a worthy
exponent of this class, toleration in its widest sense is a funda-
mental dogma of their creed: "Our toleration should be the
widest possible ; or, rather, we should aim at something beyond
toleration, as commonly understood. In dealing with alien beliefs
our endeavor must be, not simply to refrain from injustice of
word or deed, but also to do justice by an open recognition of

ii8

positive worth. We must qualify our disagreement with as much
as may be of sympathy" (First Principles).

From scientists and free religionists, then, we may expect the
same rights they claim for themselves. As they would not' con-
sent to our forcing their children into schools under Catholic in-
fluences, direct or indirect, so they will not ask that our children
shall be forced into schools under objectionable influences. As
they do not permit us to decide upon the truth or untruth of
their religious opinions, so they will not seek to decide for us
upon our doctrines. Here comes in the apparently insurmount-
able obstacle to an amicable settlement of this vexed question.
Each one of the disputants, except the Catholic, wants to make
all others bend to his plan, or way, or system, seemingly satisfied
that he alone is right. The Catholic, on the contrary, says. Let
each one have his own plan ; and with an even start, and on equal
ground, let it be seen which party, the evangelical, the scientist,
or free religionist, or the Catholic, can make the greatest sacrifices,
accomplish the most work in the most satisfactory manner, for
the thorough religious and secular education of all the children
they can bring under their control.

NO RELIGION IN A BANK.

Free religionists, and the large class of Christian religionists
represented by Henry Ward Beecher, answer, Religion has no
place in the State school ; and, with it kept out, the school is as
free to one class of religionists as to another, and equally so to
Jews and infidels. To illustrate this theory, they say that as
there need be no religion in a bank, a shop, or a business ofifice,
so there need be no religion in a school. This is as strong a justi-
fication as they can bring.

The comparison fails for want of resemblance between the
things compared. A man goes into the bank, the shop, the office.
A boy goes to the school. The bank, the shop, the office, has
for its object the transaction of its own special material business.
The school deals with the boy's mind and heart ; is a place set

119

apart for the forming, disciplining, educating of the young, by
trained and skilled manipulators of the intellect and emotions.
The young look up to these teachers with sentiments of respect
and often of reverence ; nor are they capable of analyzing and
judging the influences brought to bear on them. They are in the
school six hours a day, for five days in the week, ten months in
the year. They are justified in voting all schooling, in excess of
these long hours, a bore. They who go into a bank, or any other
place of business, are men grown, fully competent to judge of
insidious or open attempts to prejudice their minds on points of
religion or morals. These business offices are not monopolies
like the State school, and their proprietors know the danger of
meddling with their customers' religious opinions. The example
of a man asking for a Bible in a hat-shop has not yet occurred ;
and, when it does occur, it will be met by calling in a policeman
to arrest an escaped lunatic. But a child asking a teacher to tell
it something about God, Christ, the redemption, sin, or a life to
come, would ask a proper question, entitled to an answer from a
competent teacher. Much as our opponents may be pleased to
protest against religion in State schools, it is there, and in some
shape it^will be there till the end of time. I am not speaking of
evangelical schools, but of schools purely secular, in which there
is no Bible, no text book of religion, no prayer, no hymn; and yet,
in this expurgated and shrivelled-up school, the teaching will be
for or against religion, as the teacher happens to be. His chil-
dren do not come to him to buy bills of exchange, or boots, or
hats, but to acquire knowledge, to learn, to take in, through open
eyes and ears, information concerning the things it sees, and the
truths and facts of which it hears. Pres. Anderson, of Rochester
University, is an authority in educational methods and means, of
great weight wherever known. He exhibits this power of the
teacher in a few striking passages, thus: —

PRESIDENT ANDERSON ON INCIDENTAL INSTRUCTION.
"With the element of Christian faith in head and heart, it is impossible for an
earnest teacher to avoid giving out constantly religious and moral impulses and thoughts.

I20

He must of necessity set forth his notions about God: the soul, conscience, sin, the
future life, and divine revelation. If he promises not to do so he will fail to keep his
word, or his teachings in science or literature or history will be miserably shallow and
inadequate. .. .Incidental instruction in morality and religion, then, ought to be the
main reliance of the Christian teacher. The ends of a Christian school, while working
by its own laws and limitations, ought not to be essentially different from a Christian
church. The principles we have thus indicated are universal in their application. If
the Christian teacher must make the elements of his religious faith color all his teaching,
the same must be true of the unchristian teacher. . . .There is no good thinking that is
not honest thinking ... If parents wish their children educated in Christian principles,
they must seek out honest Christian men to be their teachers."

Here in a few words is the plainly spoken judgment of an
experienced teacher. It is true, Pres. Anderson is contending in
behalf of higher education in colleges and seminaries. But I do
not hesitate to say, with no small experience as an educator, that
in elementary schools, where young minds are dealt with, the
incidental teaching in morals and religion is of vastly greater
extent and effect. They who assert so boldly that children of
inquisitive and unfolding minds can frequent schools for secular
learning, without being influenced by the dominant religious tone
of the school and the teachers, speak without warrant.

THE MULTIPLICATION TABLE.

As meaningless an illustration is that in which the multipli-
cation table plays a part. There is no religion, they say, in the
multiplication table. I never heard any one say there was, while
it is not unknown that there may be religion, or antipathy to
religion, in him who teaches the table, as well as in the place in
which it is taught. A Sneer at '' popery " requires no allusion
to figures or ciphering, unless when the years of the Apocalypse,
or the coming of Antichrist are under discussion.

A COMMON LANGUAGE.

But, after all, the vexed question of religion aside, see the
gain to the Republic by giving a common language to all its
children, through the common schools. Then why, if that is a
gain, provide a teacher of German wherever a few German chil-
dren are found, or, where there are many, give them a school

121

with German as its language, as in Erie, Penn. ? There is room
for any thing and every thing except religion.

DOES THIS SYSTEM ABOLISH CASTE?

Anyhow, it cannot be denied, we are told, that the common
schools bring all classes of children to the same level, make them
men on equal ground, and sit side by side on the same benches.
This speech belongs to the demagogue and the electioneering
stump. The level spoken of may be found in rural districts and
small towns ; it is quite unknown in large cities in practice, while
no one denies the beauty of the theory.

It is well known that in cities the rich, as a rule, live in
neighborhoods where no poor man can have his home. When
there is danger of contact, the rich man sends his daintily nur-
tured and well-clad child to a private school. There are public
schools in New York and Brooklyn, whose pupils come solely
from the comfortable classes. What an advantage to the pride
of so many admirers of common schools, that thirty thousand
children of laborers and mechanics in New York, and twenty
thousand in Brooklyn, are educated in Christian free schools ! It
makes access to the public schools so much the more pleasant.
Why is it that so many thousand children receive their ele-
mentary education not in the public schools, but in the schools
of the Children's Aid Society, under evangelical influences? Is
it not beyond doubt that if in New York City the compulsory
law were to be enforced, and all the children now running the
streets, and all the children now in the Aid Society's schools, and
all the (:;hildren now in the Catholic free schools, were to be
marched into their district public schools, an almost equal
number of well-dressed children would be marched out? If in
any school the influence of money and good society predominates,
the poor will quit it for shame's sake;if patched pants and calico
dresses rule, the rich will go out for pride's sake. You will find
truer democracy in the Christian free schools of New York than
in the common schools.

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SCHOOL HOURS AND SCHOOLMASTERS.

The week-day school, we are told, is not the place for teaching
religion ; there are hours enough for these lessons at home and on
Sunday. This advice comes with a bad grace from Boston, since
the Medical College of Middlesex has laid down these two rules
among others; " The duration of daily attendance, including the
time given to recess and physical exercises, should not exceed
four and a half hours for the primary schools." "There should
be required no study out of school for children of the primary
schools."

A more serious consideration is that of compelling parents
to be schoolmasters to their children. It is cruel to put this task
on backs already overburdened. Father and mother toil like
slaves from morning to night. Do their mentors think of the
early rising, the hasty breakfast, the long hours of wearying and
exhausting labor, of the fatigued frame that at the coming on of
night seeks needed rest ? We are not speaking in favor of clerks,
merchants, and professional men. They can speak for themselves
and their requirements; their friends are numerous, intelligent,
and active. Legislation always takes their circumstances and
wants into account.

It is among the laboring and mechanic classes that a numer-
ous progeny is found. The mother sees to her household and
the wants of her many children. Her education in book-learning
may be defective ; and, if she undertook to compete with the
trained schoolmistress, her deficiencies might become known to
her young ones. Time, strength, capacity — all are wanting.
Yet she is reminded, if she reads the newspapers, that one minister
and another devote their time to set and formal religious instruc-
tion of their children, out of school, in the evenings, on the
Saturdays, and with special care on the Sundays; and she is
piously advised to do the same. These learned, eloquent, leisured
clergymen put themselves on a par with the hard-working mason
and the humble washerwoman. It is, I say, an unworthy mock-
ery oi these respectable bread-winners, day-workers, or betrays

123

profound ignorance of their conditions and daily occupations.
These poor people pay their taxes to have others in whom they
have confidence, whose religious convictions harmonize with their
own, relieve them of a duty they feel incompetent to perform.
The Sunday-school and the Church remain. Good children go
to Sunday school ; those whose home are least Christian in spirit
and teachings keep clear of it. Besides, who would be satisfied
to have his child put off with one lesson a week in any of the
rudimentary branches belonging to the common school ? Yet
the lesson of lessons, the law and will of God as manifested to
his creatures, by which character is formed and moral principles
are well established, may be satisfactorily learned in the short
hour of a Sunday-school.

Parents need the Church and the best services of the clergy-
man on Sunday more than their children, that they may not
forget the lessons of their youth.

THE SPECIAL ADVANTAGES OF CATHOLIC SCHOOLS.

It seems more than unreasonable to-ask Catholic parents to
forego advantages attainable in and through Catholic schools, —
advantages far superior to any offered by State schools.

First, Catholic schools instruct in all the useful branches of
a sound English education.

Secondly, They are more economical, costing no more than
one-fourth or one-third the expense of supporting State schools ;
and commanding at the lowest possible price, merely food and
clothing, one of the most expensive necessities of the age and
country, — skilled and trained intellectual labor.

Thirdly, Their teachers are devoted to their work of teaching
as a life-work ; study every day, and waste no time in idle visits
and foolish amusements.

Fourthly, These teachers are in sympathy with the religious
faith of the patrons of their schools.

Fifthly, Parental schools alone will stand the test of logic ;
they are consonant to sound democratic republican doctrines;

124

they make possible the inculcation of morality by the authority
of a divine Lawgiver ; they respect the natural rights of parents,
and meddle with and infringe on no one else's rights.

They are a necessity demanded by the circumstances of the
times, and the demoralized condition of the country, as well as
for the future welfare of the Republic. It is our common country,
belonging not to one man more than to another. He is the best
citizen, no matter where he was born, who loves it most and
labors in his sphere of life, according to his ability, with purest
motives, for the honor and prosperity of the Union. He would
be a renegade and base betrayer of his country, who, believing
that morality on a religious foundation was essential to the safety
and continuance of the government, should consent to withhold
from children all possible means of growth in sound moral princi-
ples and conduct.

RIGHTS OF MINORITIES IN OTHER COUNTRIES.

The experience of every civilized nation of Europe is against
the suicidal career that we are entering on. No difificulty is found
in countries whose inhabitants are of different religious beliefs, in
arranging a system of schools for all. Though some of these
countries are spoken of as despotic in character, their despotism
never goes so far as to interfere with the religious convictions of
Catholic, Jew, or evangelical. At least Catholic Canada, our
immediate neighbor. Catholic Belgium, Catholic France, Catholic
Bavaria, and Catholic Austria, respect the parental rights of the
minority, with a sense of justice we would do well to study. The
wisdom and good sense of the world are not concentrated in the
American people.

THE QUESTION MUST BE SETTLED.

This question, thanks to various causes, is now fairly before
the country for discussion and settlement. To shelve it by con-
stitutional amendments will be no lasting settlement. Consti-
tutional enactments in contravention of parental rights not trans-
ferred to the State are worth the parchment on which they are

125

written, and no more. This is not an original idea. I have
picked it up in Boston. This lesson was taught to the nation by
the settlement of slavery.

POLITICAL PARTIES.
The agitation, I must confess, is embarrassing to both polit-
ical parties ; much more so, however, to political aspirants who
fear pitfalls, and are anxious lest they bury all their hopes in
graves of their own digging. One party is rushing along on its
path of injustice, because popular clamor impels that way; the
other, half willing, half unwilling, does not dare say a word in
opposition, for it, no more than the other party, has statesmen
for leaders, while politicians abound. We are accused of an alii- ,
ance with one of these parties. The party that forms an alliance,
open or covert, with any religious body in these United States,
proclaims its own folly and signs its own death-warrant. The
leaders of the Catholic body are neither fools to trust any politi-
cal party, nor knaves to seek privileges and favors over the relig-
ious denominations of the country by such unworthy and dis-
honorable means. No prominent politician believes the absurd
imputation. It is a sop thrown to Cerberus, to bigotry. We seek
equal rights for all, favors for none. Until correct principles
obtain recognition, this question, affecting the interests of mil-
lions of citizens, will remain a cause of controversy and disturb-
ance. Thirty years of patient submission have brought us
scarcely a kindly word ; and the condition of helotism into which
we have been falling is regarded by many as fitting and proper,
and by others as right and just. There is a sound maxim in the
American mind, that any class suffering from disabilities and a
violation of rights should resort to established methods for a
rectification of these wrongs, and that a class that does not care
enough to seek a remedy for its sufferings may be left to nurse
its grumblings in private, without thought or attention from
their fellow-countrymen.

While, therefore, we do not feel disposed to waste gratitude
on the Democratic party for favors never received, and owe no

126

more to the Republican party, we have only contempt for the
hangers-on of both parties, who would have us hold in abeyance
the assertion of our rights, lest this ofifice-seeker or another should
be embarrassed. Catholics are learning to breakaway from both
parties, watch events, and treasure in their memories the brave
words and deeds of politicians who, taking advantage of a
momentary outbreak of bigotry and religious hate, write a record
which a few years hence they would give their right hand to
blot out.

CHARGES AGAINST THE SYSTEM.

We charge upon the system of State schools, as now carried
in these United States, the perpetration of manifold injustices
and the upholding of false principles.

First, It is an infringement of parental rights and duties, in-
asmuch as it compels poor people who educate their own children
for conscience' sake, to help educate their richer neighbors'
children.

Secondly, It cruelly oppresses poorer citizens by giving to
their richer neighbors' sons not simply an elementary education,
but an education sufificient to earn their living by means of a
learned profession. To put both on an equal footing, poor chil-
dren should be taught a trade at the expense of the State.

Thirdly, The State does not know what its system should
be. In some States, the education is restricted to rudimentary
studies ; in others, it extends to a university course. Some States
allow a qualified amount of evangelical teaching ; others, profess-
ing to exclude all religion, permit any except the Catholic.
These are the inconsistencies and hypocrisy of the system.

Fourthly, It is narrow, contracted, limited in its scope, afraid
of rivalry, and incapable of the very function for which it was
established. Its right to educate is denied by its admission that
it cannot educate in the true sense of the word.

Fifthly, It stultifies itself ; for, beginning on a religious basis,
and acquiring its chief renown by the fruits of its first work, it
would end by banning and barring all religious beliefs, even "the
existence of an overruling Providence."

127

Sixthly, It establishes a monopoly of a business best left to
individual enterprise and the immediate control of parents.

Seventhly, The principles on which it is justified will justify
with greater force the claim of the communist to labor and bread.

ADMIT THE WRONG, AND CHANGE THE SYSTEM.

After so much fault finding with the existing system of
common schools, it is not out of the way to ask what system is
proposed in exchange. My object is not to propose plans and
systems, but to argue that the present one is radically wrong, and
needs amendment. Until the American people admit the failure
of the system as it now is, no change need be looked for. Once
admitted, they will be quick to bring about a change. They will
either throw education directly and compulsorily on parents,
paying only for those unable to pay for themselves, or they will
so broaden the system that all can come under it without the
sacrifice of conscientious rights. This plunging into secularism
is only the cowardice of the politician who fears to face the con-
sequences of sound logic, common-sense, equal rights, parental
prerogatives, and a secretly nourished hatred and conspiracy
against the Catholic Church. To put off justice in deference to
the expediency of the hour, is the way of the politician : the
statesman announces his principles, and stands or falls by them.
Truth is old ; it is ever new ; it endures forever.

FULL DISCUSSION AND FAIR ARGUMENT.
I appear before you at your request. On one point at least
we agree. It is your good pleasure to listen to arguments in
favor of principles and doctrines with which you do not agree
because in your judgment they are not sound. You do not, on
that account, question my honesty of purpose, my sincerity of
conviction, or my love of country. Perhaps the speaker of this
afternoon and his hearers are as wide apart on this question as
any two individuals in the country. Yet we have come together,
— I, to address you in plainness of speech, not wanting, I trust,
in courtesy ; you, to listen patiently and attentively.

128

BOSTON SHOULD SETTLE THE QUESTION.

When designing men are plotting mischief and breeding
hate and rancor, it is well for Boston to furnish this useful lesson
to other parts of the country.

To you, men of Boston, to the intelligence and honesty of
Massachusetts, and especially of Boston, I, in my character of
Catholic American citizen, appeal in behalf of the rights of parents
for dispassionate consideration of this subject; confident that, if
not heeded to-day, the day is not distant when it will be consid-
ered. I have said it before, I say it again, that the settlement of
this great question, affecting the future welfare and stability of
the Republic, must come from Boston and Massachusetts. It is
mor^ creditable, in the mean time, for us to suffer, to be punished
and persecuted, than for American citizens to persecute. The
rights you would maintain at any cost for yourselves, I beseech you
not to deny to the humblest citizens in the land, however helpless
they may seem. For large numbers, who have few to speak for
them, I plead before you. Your interests and theirs, as fellow-
citizens, are bound together as one. Our country is with un-
paralleled quickness becoming one of populous cities. These
centres of population, notwithstanding extraordinary efforts to
counteract the danger, are nurturing street Arabs, wild youths,
bands of trained depredators on others' property, hosts of corrupt,
demoralizing inhabitants. Peaceable and order-loving citizens
are bound for their own sake to look at the danger, call to their
assistance every available agency, and engage the services of all
who can work in this vast and difficult field. In vain will they
develop vigor and power of body in the young, and brighten and
quicken the intellect, if the cunning of the one, and the passions
and appetites that spring from the other, be not held in subjec-
tion by the elevation and strengthening of the heart.

HELPERS IN THE WORK.

We offer to do a work for our own poor, which you yourselves
confess you cannot accomplish. We possess, in our religious

129

orders of Brothers and Sisters, armies of skilled teachers volun-
tarily consecrated to the work of laboring among poor children,
and instructing them in secular learning, while grounding them
in virtue and morality. They are ready to spend their lives in
this work of highest love and self-sacrifice ; they can reach the
hearts of these children of poverty; they can calm turbulent
passions, and teach self-restraint, love of order, and respect for
the rights of others.

The large cities need the services of these workers and
teachers. It is unwise, it is worse, to cast them off, in view of
the non-success of common schools to reach thousands of poor
children ; it is unwise to assert principles, that, logically carried
out, lead to communism ; it is dangerous unto madness to hinder
the influences of religion from reaching to the lanes and by-ways
of our crowded cities ; it is sowing discord, and engendering
heart-burnings, to trample on the just rights of any class in a
Republic.

Parental rights, involving parental duties imposed by the
natural and the revealed law, sanctioned and upheld by the
common law and the Constitution, cannot be persistently disre-
garded without danger and detriment to the nation.

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES.

In a few words let me resume and give some conclusions
logically deducible from the facts, statements, and arguments
.submitted to you in this paper.

In a Republic whose citizens are of different religious beliefs,
who are voters needing intelligence, who are parents breeding
races of freemen, the following principles are primary and vital :

1. The non-interference of the State in religious matters, in
church or in school.

2. Compulsory knowledge, through parents' schools, under
parents' control, and at their cost.

3. Free trade in education, or no monopoly of the teacher's
profession.

130

RELIGION IN schools;

The ill-considered rashness with which the old system of
public education was discarded to make way for one new and
untried, here or elsewhere, is beginning to torment its victims.
Not every change is an improvement. But the spirit of u'nsta-
bleness and change is the spirit of our age and country. In the
name of progress, change is demanded in religion and education,
as in habits and fashion. Changes in religion have multiplied
sects. Some call this a gain. Radical changes in methods of
school management leave us to-day without instruction in the
simplest truths of Christianity — without the most elementary
code of morals, on a foundation of Christian authority. Moralists
esteem this a loss.

So far has the experiment of eliminating religion from even
primary schools been pushed, that these have become truly
'' Christless and Godless." This change is recent. It is only
within a few years — within a generation — that the old methods
of disciplining the young in morals and religion have been made
to yield to the new ones resting on expediency, good manners,
and supposed worldly advantage. The beginnings of the change
were gradual ; within the last ten years advocates of the exclusion
of all religious teaching have been loud, urgent, imperative and
successful. The demand to secularize education admits of no
question. It is a curious fact, but not the less true, that the
American people have been trained down to this low standard by

*This article appeared originally in the North American Review for April, \i
and is here republished with permission.

131

the very ministers who now clamor for a return to the old ways.
A hearing on the merits of the question that would not have been
conceded yesterday, can be had to-day, because thoughtful men,
not ministers or politicians, amazed and disappointed at the first-
fruits of the common schools, after years of trial and lavish
expenditures of money, anxiously ponder over and seek light
upon the moral and social problem of the future of our children
in cities and towns. These fair-minded men ask, and, by the
necessities of the hour, they are justified in asking. Can a republic,
of all forms of government, endure, whose children, for genera-
tions, are educated in schools without religion, without God ?

To understand the character and extent of the change which
has come over our system of schools, and to show the moorings
from which it has broken loose, and the rock on which it has
stranded, it is worth while to examine the early history of the
establishment of public schools in the State of New York. What
is true of this State is, in some degree, true of all the States.
The founders of the public-school system were men strongly
imbued with religious ideas, and profound reverence for God's
law, as they found and understood it in the Bible. State consti-
tutions assumed that the people were Christians, and that their
children should be educated as Christians. Virtue, morality, and
religion were claimed as essential to the existence of a republican
form of government. So long as the American people remained
evangelically Protestant in church forms and belief, public schools
were conducted as schools biblically Protestant. A large infusion
of religious teaching and influence pervaded them. And thus
the parents, the children, the teachers, and the public officials
were in accord, and the virtue and morality contemplated by the
State constitutions, and deemed in the highest degree essential
to the bringing up of law-abiding citizens, were secured.

The first free school not in connection with a church society
was founded in New York City in 1805. Its trustees issued an
address, from which the following words are taken : " It is pro-
posed, also, to establish, on the first day of the week, a school

132

called a Sunday-School, more particularly for such children as,
from peculiar circumstances, are unable to attend on the other
days of the week. In this, as in the common school, it will be a
primary object, without observing the peculiar forms of any
religious society, to inculcate the sublime truths of religion and
morality contained in the Holy Scriptures." After several years
of work, its trustees, of whom DeWitt Clinton was president,
published an address to the parents of the children in attendance
on this school, in which this paragraph is found : " The trustees
of the New York free school, however desirous they may be to
promote the improvement of the scholars in school learning, to
qualify and fit them for the common duties of life, cannot view
with an eye of indifiference the more primary object of an educa-
tion calculated to form habits of virtue and industry, and to
inculcate the general principles of Christianity," etc. When this
Free School Society was, in 1825, merged in the Public School
Society, the same leading idea of a morality based on Scriptural
teachings was continued. In pursuing this course, the managers
were in harmony with popular sentiment and the religious views
of the vast majority of their patrons. Indeed, the non-Catholic
church schools ceased to be necessary, and were for the most part
abandoned. The new schools were satisfactory to non-Catholic
religionists, whose prejudices, however, were so intense and
blinding that they failed to understand why Catholics were
unwilling to accept what pleased them.

The ideas prevailing in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont,
New Hampshire, and New York, on the subject of the training
and education of the young, found their way into the constitu-
tions and school statutes of the new States of the West. The
Bill of Rights of Ohio is a fair sample of all. Its third section
reads : " Religion, morality, and knowledge being essentially
necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind,
schools and the means of instruction shall forever be encouraged
by legislative provision not inconsistent with the rights of con-
science." This was not intended to be a fine phrase with which

•33

to adorn the statute-book. It meant that religion and morality
should be imparted to children in State schools hour by hour,
with instruction in all branches of needful secular knowledge, by
teachers of correct morals and Christian belief. It was further-
more strictly enjoined that great care should be used in the selec-
tion of Christian teachers.

In thus prescribing a plan for the management of schools,
these early evangelical Christians, and the political States whose
constitutions and statutes they molded and shaped, showed
remarkable harmony with the prescriptions of the Catholic Church
on the same subject. It is an incontrovertible fact that the
founders of the American Republic believed that religion could
not with safety be divorced from secular education, and of neces-
sity ordained that the tone, ideas, and practices familiar to
parents in churches should be conserved in the schools to which
they intrusted their children.

In consonance with the same idea, the Catholic Church holds
that the religion which is good for parents in the Church ought
to be good for their children in the school, and in what is known
as the Syllabus, expresses her mind on this subject. She con-
demns as an error the following proposition : " Catholics may
approve of a plan of education withdrawn from Carholic faith
and the authority of the Church, and which concerns itself only
with natural sciences, and the worldly ends of social life, solely,
or, at least, primarily." Just as evangelical Protestants hold that
religious knowledge should accompany secular learning in schools
for evangelical children, so Catholics claim, in full accord with
the Syllabus, that Catholic children should be indoctrinated in
the teachings of the Bible by teachers of the same faith as their
fathers ; and, furthermore, since virtue, to become habitual, needs
practice and daily use, they claim that their children should be
made familiar with the observances and duties ordained by Christ,
and always preserved and enforced in the Catholic Church.

That the truth and wisdom of the Syllabus are appreciated
by non-Catholics, may be learned from what follows.

134

In 1869, the Rt. Rev. A. Cleveland Coxa published " Moral
Reforms," a book made up of pastoral letters addressed at various
times to members of his church. In instructing his communi-
cants, he seems to catch the very spirit of the Syllabus, and thus
gives three rules for their spiritual guidance :

"i. Secure to every human being the very best education you can provide for him.

'•2. When you can do no better, utilize the common schools, and supplement them
by all additional means of doing good.

"3. But where we can do better, let us do our full duty to our own children, and
to all children, by gathering them into schools and colleges thoroughly Christian."

In thus explicitly laying down the law, Bishop Coxe inter-
prets correctly the mind of the Protestant Episcopal denomina-
tion. In a General Convention held in New York City, the
following resolution was adopted : " Resolved, That the bishops
and clergy be most earnestly requested to bring this subject to
the attention of the members of this Church, that they remind
the people of their duty to support our own schools and colleges,
and to make education under the auspices of the Protestant
Episcopal Church superior in all respects to that which is afforded
in other institutions."

The Presbyterians, in General Assembly, " recommend their
congregations to establish primary and other schools, on the plan
of teaching the truths and duties of our holy religion in connec-
tion with the useful branches of secular learning." In the same
sense, all classes of evangelical religionists speak out from time to
time. Now, it is the Congregationalists in the "Advance," of
Chicago ; then it is the editor of the " Methodist," the chief organ
of the Methodists. The latter, in an editorial, says: "Again, a
firm and genial Christian tone pervading a school, by warming
the heart, stimulating conscience, and strengthening and bracing
up all the better elements of one's nature, is eminently calculated
to predispose the pupil to faith as well as to virtue." But of all
denominations, the Baptists have put themselves on record as
most decidedly opposed to schools from which religious teaching
and influences have been excluded. It is certainly gratifying to

135

Catholics to know that Protestants, in reality, agree with them
regarding the necessity of religious teachings and observances in
children's schools, even if they do not live up to their belief.
Many of the secular newspapers re-echo the language of the
pulpit. Notable among them is the " Journal of Commerce,'' of
New York City.

But after such strong expressions on the part of State Legis-
latures in the past, and on the part of conventions and assemblies
to-day, what are the rights of religion in State schools, in the year
of the Lord 1881 ? New York State has made as great progress
in the eliminating of every shade and semblance of religious
instruction and usages from its common schools as any other
State in the Union. The ruling of its department of public
instruction is precise and peremptory. Mr. Randall, in making
known decisions of his predecessors in the office of superintendent
of public schools, uses this language : " In view of the above
facts, the position was early, distinctly, and almost universally
taken by our statesmen, legislators, and prominent friends of
education — men of the warmest religious zeal, and belonging to
every sect — that religious education must be banished from the
public schools, and consigned to the family and the church.
* * * We have seen that even prayer — that morning
and evening duty which man owes to his Creator, * * *
has been decided by two of our most eminent superintendents as
inadmissible as a school exercise within school hours, and that no
pupil's conscience or inclination shall be violated by being com-
pelled to listen to it." When Bishop Coxe asks that the Bible
shall not be excluded from State schools, it is evident he is not
aware of these rulings of competent authority.

The above is the law for the State of New York. The city
has a special law by which the reading of the Bible is retained in
its schools. In many State schools the Bible is still read, in a
very perfunctory way, it is true, but any dissentient has only to
demand its exclusion to be gratified, for under the above law the
Bible has no place in a State school. The custom adopted in

136

some schools, of keeping young children, not criminals, shivering
on the cold side of a door while Bible-reading is going on within
the school-room, or the substitute gravely suggested by a high
dignitary, of inflicting on the helpless innocents "the listening to
the reading of State constitutions and sundry municipal laws,''
may be commendable for nicety of persecution, and as a refine-
ment on past methods, but it is out of place in Am'irica. The
clauses in the constitutions guaranteeing civil and religious liberty
would elicit curious comments from the young martyrs, freezing
and tortured for conscience sake. The American people will not
tolerate unnecessary mental suffering of children because theii
elders cannot agree on a system of schools adapted to the moral
and intellectual needs of all classes. It is not the children's fault
that American Christians are divided into numberless sects,
" working out into manifold abuses, rivalries, and even conflicts."
It has been shown what is the teaching of the Catholic
Church with regard to the exclusion of religion from schools ; it
has also been demonstrated by the utterances of the highest
authority in several Protestant denominations, how great is the
agreement between them and Catholics. It is proper now to
note how these two bodies accept the decision of political authori-
ties by which every tittle of religious instruction is excluded from
school-rooms. When Catholics proposed a compromise with
evangelical Christians by which equal rights might be secured to
all without the sacrifice of an inestimable blessing, a majority of
their non-Catholic fellow-citizens confronted them with angry
looks and fierce determination to listen to no reasonable remon-
strance, even, but to enforce unrelentingly the establishment of
free schools all over the State, in which neither prayer nor the
Bible should be tolerated. The uselessr^ess of contending against
an overpowering majority, not in the best humor, on a question
that had found its way into the arena of politics, was soon appa-
rent. With sadness of soul they gave up the attempt to arrange
with their fellow-citizens a system of schools, that, securing uni-
versal education, might do so without sacrificing essential princi-

137

pies, and without disregarding most sacred rights of parents and
children. Between Catholics on one side and evangelicals on the
other, infidels, agnostics, secularists, and Jews stepped in and
captured the field.

To Catholics it became clear that if they meant to transmit
the faith of their baptism to their offspring, if they believed that
Christ's religion was worth living for, if they held that God should
not be driven out of the school-house, and that the virtue, mor-
ality, and religion essential to a republican form of government
were to be perpetuated, they would have to establish a system of
schools for their own children, under their control, and at their
cost. The outlook, from a temporal point of view, was forbid-
ding, and, except to men of the martyr spirit, without a ray of
hope along the horizon. Crowds of poor immigrants flocking to
our shores for shelter from oppression and the miseries of the
Old World, intent on finding a patch of ground and a roof as a
home, had no treasures to offer for the erection of educational
buildings. And, even if the buildings were up and ready for
occupancy, whence should come the army of skilled instructors,
with God and the love of God's little one's in their hearts, to
undertake, on a sudden, the training of these thousands of the
poor of Christ ? But, the time for words and discussion having
passed, that for action and work had come. As the cause was
God's, Catholics put their trust in Him.

Abandoning all hope of help from their fellow-citizens. Cath-
olics are now providing satisfactory schooling for their children
all over the country. What Bishop Coxe and the 'Convention of
Protestant Episcopal Bishops entreat their followers to procure
for the children of their church members, has been placed within
the reach of the poorest member of the Catholic Church. The
irreligious and secular world will judge religionists by their deeds,
rather than by resolutions and rhetorical speeches at conventions.
In some sections of the country, in Massachusetts, for example
Catholics have held back from establishing Catholic schools in
the hope that their neighbors, the majority, would listen to reason

138

and agree upon a plan by which all classes of citizens might be
secured in their rights. These hopeful people are losing hope.
The ministers and the politicians will not permit the people to
exercise their common sense and act in accordance with their
natural impulses of justice and fair play.

To understand the amount of educational work accomplished
by the Catholics of the United States, a few statistics will be
useful. According to " Sadlier's Directory" for 1881, there were
in Christian free schools, of a grade corresponding with the com-
mon or State schools, 423,383 children, whose education in State
schools would have required $6,164,456.16, computing the cost
at the average per scholar estimated by the Commissioner of
Education for 1878 — a large annual saving in favor of non-Catho-
lic tax-payers. New York State had 270 Christian free schools,
attended by 80,429 pupils.

In New York city there are fifty-seven Catholic churches
under the care of resident pastors. Of these parishes thirty-two
have Christian free schools. Special reports for 1880 have been
received from twenty-three of these parishes. They had an aver-
age attendance of 21,550 scholars. The great majority of the
teachers were brothers and sisters of different religious orders.
The amount paid for tuition alone was $100,928.16; for books,
$8,638.93 ; for janitors, $8,397.00 ; for sundry expenses, coal,
repairs, etc., $27,147.50. The estimated value of these twenty-
three school-buildings, including ground and furniture, is placed
at $1,501,300.00, omitting the cost of residences for teachers. As
tax-payers in New York City pay for tuition at the rate of $20.30
for each child in its grammar and primary schools, they are saved
$437,465.00 annually by these twenty-three Christian free schools.
In a few years the parishes whose school-buildings are insufficient
to receive all children whose spiritual care is on the conscience of
the pastor, will have erected larger ones ; and the other parishes
not yet provided with these necessary school-churches for children,
because of heavy indebtedness incurred in erecting expensive
churches for parents, and because in some neighborhoods fine

139

music is held of more account than the care of the young, will
also have joined their sister parishes in a noble rivalry to work
with whole-heartedness, as the Syllabus and the Church teach, in
gathering into Christian schools, from which the great thought of
the life to come is not excluded, all the children of the flock.
Priests and people who do not believe as the Church teaches
have lost the faith. Priests and people who fail to live up to
their faith because of heavy sacrifices to be made are unworthy
of membership in a Church that demands of her disciples heroic
sacrifices to preserve the faith. It is then only a question of time
when there will be ample school room in every Catholic parish
of New York City for all children having a right to a Christian
education.

As the above figures refer to schools in the great metropolis,
others, relating to a much smaller city and in the rural districts,
may be of interest. In Rochester there are eleven parishes, ten
of which have Christian schools. In these there was, in 1880, an
average attendance of 4391 scholars. To teachers the amount
paid was $14,152.39. As it cost the taxpayers of Rochester, in
'879, $1 1 7.387.57 to pay teachers for 8017 children, or at the rate
of $14.64 per scholar, simple arithmetic tells us that the 4391
scholars in Christian free schools saved non-Catholic tax-payers
$64,284.24 for teachers, not to speak of additional expenses for
buildings, coal, repairs, etc. Catholic school-houses in Rochester
are valued at $250,000. It is a costly price to pay for religion's
sake, but it is well worth this, and more !

We turn now to our non-Catholic friends, believers in Chris-
tianity, and ask, What have you done for the religious and moral
education of your young? It is well known that educational
establishments for the wealthier members of your flocks, in which
religious and secular education are combined, are worthy of all
praise, and bespeak the zeal of ministers and the liberality of
laymen ; but what have you accomplished for the poor children
of your denomination, in view of the utter failure of the public

140

schools ? How have your congregations responded to the admon-
itions and entreaties of the General Assembly and the Protestant
Episcopal Convention ?

The weakest suggestion of a reform is the demand to replace
the Bible in the public schools. The uselessness of the Bible as
a mere reading-book was demonstrated long ago. As a teacher
of morals and religion, it needed the living voice of a competent
instructor to explain its meaning and enforce its authority and
precepts, thus turning the school into a church. As a sign of
antagonism to Catholics, it has ceased to play a part, for Catho-
lics are no longer there to note the intended insult, or to heed
the fumbling and crumpling of its pages by irreverent scholars.
Bible-reading that teaches no dogma to children's minds is like
trying to feed their bodies with dry husks. Theology without
dogma may be adapted to the " Church of the Future," of which
the agnostics are preparing to be the high-priests, but it is now
an unknown quantity.

It is profound reverence for the Bible which induces Catho-
lics to object to it in schools as an ordinary reading-book. Yet
more do they object to its use in the hearing of their children
when the teacher is one whose sympathies and belief are opposed
to their faith. The school-master may never speak a word
adverse to Catholic doctrine, and yet exercise a pernicious influ-
ence over the minds and hearts of Catholic children. The power
of personality in the teacher is strongly placed before his hearers
by the Rev. Dr. Hall, Presbyterian minister in New York City.
In a Sunday sermon he says : " You cannot detach absolutely
the person of the teacher from the thing taught. One may ask.
What can religion have to do with algebra ? Now, if you could
get teaching without personal influence, that might be true. But
you cannot," etc. Earnest and devout Christians see that much
of the growing contempt for the Sacred Scriptures is due to
unwise and indiscriminate reading by young school-children,
whose attention is called to passages suggestive of evil by per-
verted companions, or to its cold, hesitating, half-hearted, mechan

141

ical reading by skeptical masters. Personal influence is often
more active and seductive on the play-ground than in the school-
room. Catholics desire the exclusion of the Bible and of religion
from schools to which, for the time being, they are compelled to
send their children, in default of schools of their own. They
grieve to see the exultation of secularists and infidels over the
easy victory evangelicals have permitted them to win. The
secularists, not Catholics, wave aloft the banner of triumph.

It will require a stronger argument than imputed lack of
patriotism on the part of Catholics to re-introduce the Bible into
the public schools, such as is offered by Bishop Coxe. This stale
and decrepit calumny raises a blush on the cheeks of some, and
flashes fire from the eyes of others. It may do for the hustings
on voting day, but it is unworthy of attention from serious and
just men, who know the historical record of Catholics on every
battle field from 177610 1865.

Such a cruel innuendo could be thrown out only by one who
wrote of "Romanists:" "Their arithmetic is wonderful, and
their moral theology concerning oaths allows the widest exercise
of imagination in making out returns and reports."" The writer
of this sentence would be barred as a juror in any court of Chris-
tendom, were this question on trial. The country is full of
American Catholic citizens who smile at inane distinctions in
their membership, kindly suggested by non-Catholic friends.
These Catholics, so loyal and so true, may fearlessly challenge
comparison with their maligners m all that proves devotedness
and fidelity to the country and the constitution.

The taunt that when Catholics become the majority they
will not tolerate others, may be relegated to the same category
of popular claptrap good for electioneering times, but not to be
flung out when men are seriously discussing how best to secure
the stability of our common country. Should Catholics at any
time, and in any part of the country, grow to be the majority,

*" Moral Reforms," by A. Cleveland Coxe.

142

they will take delight in placing the minority on a footing of
equality with themselves, even as the French Canadians, forty
years ago, being then a large majority of the inhabitants of Lower
Canada, settled this question of schools, in its morai and religious
aspect, by conceding to the Protestant minority every privilege
and claim asked for. It is an unfortunate suggestion to offer
that to keep Catholics from practicing intolerance toward a Pro-
testant minority, it is advisable for a Protestant majority to be
intolerant toward a Catholic minority.

The belief is growing day by day that the public schools, as
now constituted, are failures. Richard Grant White cries aloud
only what is in many minds. It is distressing to be obliged to
admit that the idol of our national worship is a false god ; that
education in earthly things, solely or primarily, does not make
good citizens ; that unbounded expenditures of money bring no
adequate return ; that the very principle of State pupilage is
radically defective, and worse, is highly dangerous, fostering, as
it does, the most cankerous social and political evil of the age —
Communism. It demands renewed efforts on the part of teachers
and superintendents, paid officials of the schools, to keep the
people from seeing these truths.

When the people of New York state were cajoled into the
^ree-school system, with its denial of parental control, the promise
yas held out to the anxious tax-payers that increased taxation for
schools would be followed by lessened taxation for alms-houses,
prisons, and lunatic asylums. The former will cost less, so said
partisans of the new system. Has the promise been kept ? Our
educated rogues are shrewder, and escape with greater facility
from the meshes and restraints of the law, but our houses of
correction are multiplying out of all proportion to increase of
population ; and lunatic asylums. State and county, cannot keep
pace in number and accommodation with the demand made on
them by victims of shattered brains and morals. The increase of
crimes, not alone of crimes which send their perpetrators to jail.

143

but of crimes which destroy the fountain of life, and the start-
ingly progressive multiplication of divorces destroying all hope
of Christian families, the prop and mainstay of a republic, alarm
ministers and laymen, and justify the verdict of " Failure."
Schools that won sympathy on the plea of providing a plain
education for plain people have spread out into high schools,
academies, colleges and universities. Normal schools give a pro-
fessional training to young men and women who, for the most
part, have no thought of following a teacher's career, for the
compensation usually given is not commensurate with their
expectations. Notwithstanding unlimited expenditures of public
money, complaint is heard that instruction in the elementary
branches of learning falls short of what the people have a right
to expect, and " Failure " is written again.

But when in large cities, such as New York and Rochester, a
third of the children turn from the open door of the public school,
on conscientious grounds, and seek schooling in other buildings,
put up and paid for by citizens the least able to open their slim
purses to a second tax-gathering, it becomes a duty to proclaim
the existing system a " failure," and a cruel wrong. The " fail-
ure " is more evident when separate schools are needed for colored
children, banned for the accident of color. It is yet more marked
when the system requires poor schools, under the Children's Aid
Society, to make room for those who suffer from the misfortune
of poverty. But when a system of free schools, that seventy-five
years ago began an assault on private and church schools for the
alleged reason that there are some few children uncared for, and
monopolized the teacher's work and profession by the power of
the general treasury, to-day has to admit that there are adrift and
untaught in the streets of one city from ten to .twenty thousand
children of the very class in whose behalf State charity finds its
justification, acknowledgment of "failure" becomes more than
a necessity.

By way of help to a return to correct principles and methods,
some truths are here indicated :

144

First. We forgot Amerian traditions when religion was
driven out of the schools.

Second. We forgot them when the State was allowed to step
in between the father and his child.

Third. We forgot them when we imported European ideas
of paternal government, and began the breeding of communistic
social heresies.

Fourth. No nation, not Christian in belief and morals, can
flourish in our civilization.

Fifth. Virtue and morality, to become a habit of life, need
the teaching and disciplining of the school, as well as of the
church and family.

Sixth. Knowledge does not lessen vice. Will and con-
science, helped by God's law and grace, restrain passions and evil
inclinations.

Seventh. Since the State has no religion, and cannot teach
morals on the authority of Divine truth, its incapacity to educate
is beyond doubt.

The sooner we return to sound principles, the same on which
the founders of the Republic built and prospered, the easier will
it be to repair the mischief of the last few years, and the greater
and more reasonable will be the hope of the stability of our
institutions. If our people were one in religious belief and wor-
ship, the question of schools would present no difficulty. The
only obstacle to a just and righteous settlement is the unwilling-
ness of the majority to concede to the minority rights that are
heaven-born, that are the very life of a republican form of gov-
ernment, and that guard and uphold the consciences of every
class in the community.

145

RELIGIOUS TEACHING IN SCHOOLS.'

The system of state schools, or public or common schools, is
a subject of interesting and profitable discussion. The temper
in which it is carried on to-day is an improvement on the methods
of fifty years ago. The change from the violent and domineering
style once common, now rare, gives hope of an ultimate and
satisfactory settlement. The interests at stake are too momentous
for the Republic's welfare and peace, as well as for the just rights
of millions of its citizens, to be left much longer in abeyance.
Besides, the number of just-minded and reasonable Americans is
rapidly increasing. With the dying out of the senseless bigotry
of a past generation, the atmosphere is purified of thick and un-
healthy vapors disturbing to mind and soul.

In 1840, William H. Seward and John C. Spencer, leaders in
the old Whig Party but statesmen far in advance of the times,
proposed an equitable arrangement for the conduct of schools, by
which the fair wishes and demands of the state, of religious and
secular corporations, and of individuals should be fully heeded
and subserved. They proceeded on the supposition that the main
object in view was the education of the children of the people on
the broadest and most just basis, and without the erection of
barriers for the exclusion of masses of children greatly needing
help. The excitement which ensued showed the uselessness of
discussion during a tehipest of unreasoning, invective and angry
passions. The moment for argument had not come.

*This article appeared originally in the Forum of December, 1889, and is here
republished with permission.

146

During the summer of the present year two conventions met.
One, the assembly of school teachers, held its session at Nash-
ville ; the other, a gathering of clergymen for the most part, and
belonging in tone of thought to a generation of fifty years ago
congregated at Saratoga. The Nashville convention invited two
eminent Catholic ecclesiastics to address its body. Their papers
on the need and advantage of religious instruction in the schools
were listened to with attention and respect. The Saratoga con-
vention proved, to the shame of civil and religious liberty, that
the age of persecution for the sake of conscience had not passed.
The sentiments to which its members, lay and cleric, gave ex-
pression, in speech and resolutions, are annoying to law-abiding
citizens, but harmless, because inoperative, dead. Their desire to
rivet a wrong and to perpetuate a deplorable injustice, is made
manifest. No discussion is possible with such men. A few years
more will see the extinction of the race.

To come to an understanding as to a system of school
education that will answer the requirements of the state without
sacrificing the just rights of individuals, the points of agreement
and divergence should be carefully considered. Roman Catholics
and Evangelicals of all denominations (and they are the vast
majority of our population) hold that their children should receive
a religious education and training. There is satisfactory unanimity
of sentiment on this point. The divergence begins with regard
to the amount of this religious instruction, the basis on which it
should be given, and the place in which it should be imparted.
Catholics maintain that, conjointly and in harmony with religious
teaching in the family and the church, there should be regular
lessons in religion in the every-day school ; that these lessons
should be on a doctrinal basis, and to the extent of a child's
capacity to absorb a daily lesson in religious truths. Less im-
portant subjects in secular learning require daily study and
explanation. Evangelical Christians are divided in sentiment.
Protestant Episcopalians hold, as Bishop Coxe, of Western New
York, testifies, that " they should do their full duty to their

147

children by gathering them into schools and colleges thoroughly
Christian." The establishment and maintenance of academies'
and colleges by Episcopalians for the thoroughly Christian educa-
tion of their children, verifies the correctness of the Bishop's
statement. Presbyterians in their general assemblies, and Baptists
and Methodists in conferences and synods, are equally explicit on
this question. These various ecclesiastical bodies illustrate the
sincerity of their public utterances, so far as the education of the
children of their wealthy members is concerned ; they fail lament-
ably when the education of the children of their poorer co-
religionists is in question. Rev. Dr. Kendrick, in the Forum for
September, concedes that " morality cannot be inculcated in the
most effective manner without religious enforcements; " and yet,
when Catholics, in schools of their own, because there is no place
for them in state schools, choose to educate their children where
morality can be most effectively inculcated with the help of
'• religious enforcements," he pronounces their choice a luxury,
for the enjoyment of which they ought to be mulcted.

There are men to-day who lose their wits when the specter
of Jesuitism or Romanism dances before their affrighted imagina-
tions. It is hard to reason with these disturbed but well-meaning
gentlemen. They speak and write of Italy and Ireland, when
others are studying American problems; they write of "dump-
ing" European criminals on American shores, when serious men
are planning how best to keep down the breeding of criminals in
our large cities ; they picture the Pope in the supposed act of
nullifying our national laws, when citizens to the manner born
ask that our laws shall not ride rough-shod over parental and con-
scientious rights. It is hard to carry on reasonable discussion
with men sure of their personal infallibility; with men whose
thoughts and ideas are warped by the battle cries of fifty years
ago. Thoughtful men do not to-day fall down before the state
school system as before a fetich to be blindly worshiped. It is a
system of schools thoroughly Godless, in name and in law, estab-
lished and maintained by the state for the secular education of

the children of the people who are satisfied with a partial, ineffec-
tive, and unjust arrangement, and who are willing to accept
pecuniary aid from poor neighbors for their offspring's schooling.
Catholics are unceasingly hectored about their attempts to over-
throw and destroy the state school system. Attention is thus
drawn away from real dangers altogether inherent in the system
itself. It is a system liable to blunders innumerable, to insufifi-
ciency of accomplishment, and to the perpetrating of injustices.
Any blunder in the system that deprives a notable number of
children of its advantages, defeats the end of its existence ; any
radical principle essentially faulty in its nature, becomes a source
of mischief and danger; any part of its working machinery that
rasps the just rights of others, will one day throw the whole es-
tablishment into confusion ending in ruin.

1. There are at the present time considerably more than
606,000 Catholic children in the parochial schools of the United
States. Surely this can be called a notable number. The parents
of these children are unwilling to deprive their offspring of an
effective Christian education. They prove the sincerity of their
convictions by bearing patiently with the sacrifices they are called
on to make, and revel in the " luxury " of suffering for the sake
of conscience. It is an aggravation of the wrong done them to
question their earnestness and sincerity.

2. A radical principle underlying the state school system is
its unadulterated communism. The assertion that the state has
the right to educate at the common expense one class of children
to the practical exclusion of another class, is communism in its
worst form. Every argument adduced to justify it in relieving
parents, in one line of duty, of burdens they are able to carry,
may be brought forward to relieve them in other lines of duty.
It is the duty of a father, who is not a pauper, to feed, to clothe,
to shelter, and to educate his children. The state, in the name
of humanity, does for parents only what they are unable to do
for themselves. Chicago people are as logical as Herbert Spencer,
and deduce from the principle of state schoolism the justification

149

of state tailorism. Children in Chicago who plead that they
cannot go to school for want of suitable clothing, are supplied by
that city of socialistic tendencies with state trousers, frocks, and
shoes. Herbert Spencer, in " Social Statics," argues:

" If the benefit, importance, or necessity of education be
assigned as a sufficient reason why government should educate,
then may the benefit, importance, or necessity of food, clothing,
shelter, and warmth be assigned as a sufficient reason why gov-
ernment should administer these also."

When parental responsibility abdicates in favor of govern-
mental responsibility, encouragement is lent to mendicancy, and
the breeding of pauperism begins. Shutting our eyes to this un-
welcome truth does not make it less a truth. Having drifted
away from the sound practices of our American forefathers, who
believed in paying for the education, secular and religious,, of
their children, we find ourselves swept along in a flood of perni-
cious political principles.

3. Another radical defect in the system of state schools, is
that it takes a poor man's hard-earned dollars to help richer
neighbors provide their children with an education that will fit
them for their life work, for college, for a profession. The state
school has ceased to be a school for an elementary education.
There was a time when friends of state schools had much to say
about the Republic's need of an elementary education for the
children of the masses. It is a mockery of the truth to talk, in
these days, of an elementary education in any of our cities or
towns. The system embraces everything from a kindergarten to
a college. It needs only two other provisions to be perfect — a
nursery for babes and a university for the state's pauperized pets.
Kindergartens are for children too young to go to school, but
troublesome to keep in the house, whose parents are willing to be
relieved of maternal and home cares for a few hours in the day,
at the expense of the state. Why not provide cradles, baby
wagons, and attendants? Advocates of state paternalism run
mad, such as Edward Bellamy, call for the highest curriculum of

ISO

studies up to eighteen and twenty years of age, and " a sufficient
state provision for the support of the children of indigent parents
while at school."*

The original and primary danger to the state school system
is found, then, not in the assaults of any class in the community,
but in its own manifold and inherent defects. Catholics are not
antagonizing it ; they are leaving it severely alone.- They do not
abuse its teachers or their pupils. Catholics know, especially
here in Rochester, that its teachers are most estimable ladies and
gentlemen, and that the pupils of the state schools are no worse
than other children whose religious training is relegated to an
hour's Sunday-school instruction, while arithmetic and spelling
get five hours in a week. Evangelicals, in despair of ever making
the system of state schools religious in their sense, hopelessly
abandon it to the care of the sects of secularists, Ingersollists, and
open and avowed infidels, while concentrating all their energies
and pecuniary resources on academies and colleges for the educa-
tion of the children of their rich parishioners. Catholics and
German Lutherans are the only believers in Christianity who are
logical and consistent. These have convictions and they live up
to them, even if in doing so they have to spend money. They
are not counted among the rich in this world's goods. Yet a
venerable Christian minister of the gospel declares that when this
gospel, which Christ said was to be preached to the poor, who
had the first right to it, was to be taught in the school-room, it
was a "luxury" for indulgence in which the poor were to be
made to pay. Christ's teachings and men's do not always run in
the same channel. Catholics are not complaining. It is easier,
far easier, to suffer a wrong than to persecute. They ask to be
left in peace. They are willing to pay with their own money for
the " luxury " of religious teaching which their children enjoy.
It is the wrong-doers, they who take poor people's money for
their personal gain, who keep up disturbing and angry lamenta-

*See the Nationalist for July, 1889.

151

tions. A coachman pays for the schooling of his own boys ; he
helps educate in state schools his master's children. Is it any
wonder that the questionings, answers, and comments that follow,
throw the state school system out of gear? As an instance, it
may be stated that here in Rochester, during the past summer
months, neighbors' boys, Catholic and Evangelical, were playing
together, as rightly they might. After their play they entered
into a discussion of great social and economic questions not un-
worthy the consideration of eminent statesmen. A Catholic boy
informed his evangelical playmate, a pupil in a state school, that
while his Catholic father helped pay the other's tuition, the latter
paid nothing for the Catholic boy's education. With the natural
impulse of a warm-hearted and generous youth, the lad repelled
the imputation on his and his father's sense of honor and justice,
and appealed to the Catholic boy's father, a lawyer, to contradict
his son's charge, for in his honest heart it did not seem possible
that such a gross wrong could be perpetrated. The party ad-
journed to the lawyer's house and submitted the case. When
the truth without exaggeration was made clear to the fair-minded
boy, that he was the recipient of another boy's charity through
his father, he was abashed and hung his head for very shame.
So it will be with coming generations, who will listen to no silly
twaddle about Ireland, Italy, and Spain, about the Pope, the
Inquisition, and danger to our liberties. An American inquisi-
tion, persecuting by legal pecuniary taxation, will be more hateful
in their eyes than any that history tells of, for this last form will
have a flimsy covering of sham and hypocrisy for a cloak.

It may be said in reply that the whole amount of taxes paid
into the common treasury by Catholics, is, owing to their poverty,
too trifling to be noticed. Here is opened up the significant
question of taxation. Consumers are the chief tax-payers.
When the city or state swells the tax roll for increased schools
and teachers, the landlord, the baker, the butcher, the dry-goods
man distribute a portion of the increase on tenants and con-
sumers. In western cities, where clerks, mechanics, and laborers

152

own their dwellings, a direct tax is paid on the real estate, and
an indirect tax through others, who, from the goods they sell to
their customers, derive a share of the taxes they pay. This tax
money is called state money. The state collects and distributes
it. It is still the people's money. A man's rights go where his
money goes. Much of this money is used for the maintenance of
schools from which a large minority of citizens is barred out by
disenabling conditions, arbitrary, illogical, and punitive.

There is another aspect of the case which renders a Catholic's
hardship not quite as unbearable as at first sight it appears, while
for non-Catholics who use the state schools the injustice done to
the former is grosser and more apparent. Again I shall introduce
Rochester to illustrate my point.

The last printed report of the Rochester public schools is for
1887-88. Their pupils numbered 12,302. For the same period
the parochial schools counted 5,849, or more than 47^ per cent,
of the number in the state schools. The total city tax levy for
1887 was $1,254,239, of which $252,00 was for the schools — or
nearly 21 per cent, of the general city taxes was for the schooling
of its specially-favored 1 2,302 children. Hence, were the Catholics
to disband their parochial schools, and throw their 5,849 children
on the city, school taxes would have to be increased more than
47^^ per cent., or more thap $119,600, without counting the cost
of the fourteen or fifteen new school-houses, together with lots
on which to build them, furniture, etc. If any Catholic or non-
Catholic taxpayer of Rochester wishes to know how much is saved
to his pocket by the maintenance of parochial schools, let him
take his city tax bill, divide it by five, and he will have a little
less than the amount which he pays for educating the children
now in its state schools. If he then add 48 per cent, to this
amount, he will have what he would be obliged to pay were our
children, now in parochial schools, educated in state schools, at
the same proportionate expense. In other words, the non-
Catholic tax-payer saves 48 per cent, of one-fifth of his entire tax
bill, that is, nearly one-tenth of it; and the Catholic tax-payer

153

saves the same amount, less what he contributes to the support
of his parochial school. Is it any wonder, then, that Catholics
are not fretting or worrying over the absence of their children
from state schools ? The injustice inflicted on them by those who
take Catholic money for state schools is, however, none the less
grievous.

The pretext for this punishment is that our schools are sec-
tarian. Heaven bless the mark ! And what are theirs ? It is a
cry as senseless as a mischievous school boy's cry of " mad dog"
on a crowded street. It strikes terror and scatters the timorous..
Sensible men know that sectarianism is a two-edged sword ; it
cuts more ways than one. In the New York constitutional con-
vention of 1866, it was proposed to submit to the people an
amendment prohibiting all help to sectarian institutions. The
sense in which " sectarian " would be understood by learned
judges in the last court of appeal being pointed out by some of
the shrewder members of the convention, the subject was quietly
dropped. If it could be construed to mean only *' Romanism "
and " Romanists," all would work well ; but should it appear to
carry the meaning given to it by John C. Spencer, secretary of
State and superintendent of public instruction, there was danger
of such an amendment hurting more than Romanists. Secretary
Spencer, in his report to the New York Legislature of 1841,
wrote :

" Religious doctrines of vital interest will be inculcated, not
as theological exercises, but incidentally in the course of literary
and scientific instruction ; and who will undertake to prohibit
such instruction ? * * * It is believed to be an error
to suppose that the absence of all religious instruction, if it were
practicable, is a mode of avoiding sectarianism. On the contrary,
it would be in itself sectarian ; because it would be consonant to
the views of a particular class, and opposed to the opinions of
other classes."

Secretary Spencer secures listeners where Catholics can get
no hearing. The sectarianism of Ingersoll, of Secularists, of

154

Agnostics, of Evangelicals, is repugnant to Catholics ; but they
loathe with supreme contempt the sectarianism of those who
pretend that their particular development of sectarianism, their
views, their opinions, are so milk-and-watery (the power for good
as a religious force being washed out of them) that they ought to
be acceptable to all other sectarians. It is hard for Catholics to
believe in the sincerity of men who put forward this silliness about
sectarianism. By what right does the state hand over one dollar
of Catholic money to maintain sectarian schools of the Ingersoll,
the secularistic, the avowed infidel, or the evangelical type, while
it refuses to give back to Catholics, for their so-called sectarian
schools, a portion of their own money ?

Rev. Dr. Kendrick laments that his fellow citizens of Pough-
keepsie have a correct sense of justice, and desire to deal fairly
with their Catholic townspeople. It is greatly to their credit.
They are not, however, the first in the country to rise above the
bigotry of former days. Indeed, there are many towns and vil-
lages in this and other States where the same honest fairness has
been observed for many years past, with even broader views of
justice and a kindlier spirit. Still, many Catholics doubt the
advisability of the " Poughkeepsie plan." It has advantages and
disadvantages. It smacks of a union of state and church which
in a country like ours is not desirable. To some degree it weakens
and deadens the Catholicity of our school-rooms. Because, for-
sooth, Catholics who have leased to the state, school buildings,
for use during the allotted daily school hours, choose before and
after such hours to occupy them, at their own expense, for lessons
in religion — for those " religious enforcements " without which
" morality cannot be effectively inculcated " — Rev. Dr. Kendrick
i^ prompted to say :

" Five minutes, or one minute, before the stroke of the
regular school bell, they [the school buildings] may be the scene
of religious exercises such as are not simply forbidden in the
course of teaching prescribed by the state, but are actually offen-
sive, in some of their features at least, to the vast majority of

155

the American people. From lessons enforcing the worship of
the Virgin Mary * * * the pupils pass — perhaps
without breaking ranks, or special tokens of transition- -to their
secular lessons."

The same performance takes place in innumerable state
schools, unavoidably frequented by Catholic children. Evangeli-
cal prayers, hymns, and Bible lessons are enjoyed, morality is
effectively inculcated through "religious enforcements," and the
pupils pass, without breaking ranks, to their secular lessons.
Catholics do not complain, except when those of their children
who have come a few minutes before the regular school hour, are
kept waiting at the door in the rain, snow, and cold, while their
school companions have the luxury of evangelical prayers and
warmth within. What does the school of Dr. Kendrick want ?
Must our school buildings be put on a par with saloons on elec-
tion day ? No liquor can be sold within a certain distance of a
polling booth. Shall it be enacted that God shall not be named,
and no religious exercises be held, within a certain distance of a
state school-house? When religious exercises can no longer be
held within state school-houses, either before or after the hours
for secular lessons, it will be time for Christians to abandon them
to the sole use of infidels of every stripe. Then Sunday-school
work will become inoperative, and empty churches and vacant
pulpits will cover the land.

Rev. Dr. Kendrick again writes :

" When, however, we are confronted with the demand that
the public school fund be split up and parceled out among the
various churches, the spirit of concession should be replaced by
the spirit of inflexible resistance."

Keeping in mind the scandals occasioned by the Bethel Baptist
Church of New York City in 1820-21, which appropriated state
school money for Baptist-church extension, the Doctor has cause
for alarm. Catholics do not ask for a division of the school fund.
Indeed, they fear the state. They ask simply for their own
money, unjustly taken from them for the education of the

156

children of infidels and Evangelicals. Be this amount much or
little, it is theirs by every principle of common justice, and this,
and not one dollar of any one else's money, they ask for. If this
arrangement cannot be effected, then let the state pay for results
in secular education, in any school, parochial, private, or corporate,
furnishing the state with the requisite conditions of buildings,
furniture, and competent and certificated teachers, and instructing
pupils in such branches of secular learning as the state may re-
quire. If one or the other of these plans is not acceptable to the
majority of the American people, then let us return to funda-
mental principles and throw the burden of schooling children on
parents, where it rightly belongs. We ought by this time to see
how dangerous it is to break away from sound principles in
running democratic institutions.

Three objections are raised in opposition to the teaching of
secular branches of learning in parochial schools, no matter how
rr ,'ch inspection there may be on the part of the state : i. These
parochial schools fail to inspire their pupils with a patriotic love
of country. 2. They are not up to the standard of state schools
in secular learning. 3. They keep the children of a neighbor-
hood from commingling one with another, and thus destroy the
homogeneity — excuse the word — of the nation, something very
desirable, so it is said.

It is hard to be called on to reply to the first objection. It
is false and cruel. Only they who are inimical to Catholics on
any and every pretense adduce it. Why are not some proofs
furnished in sustainment of so wicked a calumny.? A sufificient
answer to this heartless aspersion on our honor as citizens, would
be to invite these calumniators to visit our cemeteries and look
on the tiny flags waving over the graves of patriots who died for
their country's preservation. Members of the Grand Army of
the Republic do not speak thus of their brothers in arms.

The second objection is equally false. It is not true that the
standard of education in our parochial schools is not as high as
that in state schools. In the city of Rochester both systems are

157

well established, and are in fair and amicable competition. It is
true that parochial schools are not victims to the vagaries of
cranks. The latter are not permitted to run our schools, nor are
these under the domination of school-book publishers. Nor are
they " loaded down " with music, modern languages, the
mechanical arts, savings banks, and military drill. They give that
which they propose to give, a good elementary education. As an
illustration of the truth of my contention, I cite what takes place
in Rochester. Regents of the University of the State of New
York send out to all schools, state, parochial, and private, that
ask for them, sets of examination papers. The answers to these
papers must have 75 per cent, of correctness in each branch of
study. State school children are examined in their usual school
buildings and before familiar teachers. Parochial school children
are examined in the City High School and before strangers. The
average age at which the latter graduate is fourteen years and
two months ; that at which the former graduate is over fifteen
years. Another circumstance to be noted is the number entering
the graduating class in September, and the number passing the
regents' examination in June. In September of 1887, 18 entered
the graduating class of the Cathedral School, and 22 that of the
Immaculate Conception. All passed the examination in June,
1888. State school No. 4, in the same quarter of the city, had 28
in its graduating class at Christmas time, having already sifted
out many that had entered it in September ; and of these, only
18 stood the regents* test in June. We are not able to give the
average number of points gained by the graduates of each school,
as these are not published. What is accomplished in Rochester
is a fair sample of successful results in other parochial schools oi
the State of New York. It may be asked. Why is the average
age of the graduating pupils of the parochial schools so much
lower than that of those in state schools ? These children, for
the most part of Irish and German parents, inherit sound and
vigorous constitutions ; they are not spoiled by injudicious and
unhealthful feeding ; they go to few night parties, if to any, and

158

are consequently well rested in the morning, and fresh for another
day's work ; they have an object to work for, as they know that
their future rests in large degree with themselves and the use they
make of their early opportunities for study and self-advancement.
No one will say that Celtic and Teutonic intellects are thick and
slow of perception.

If our schools failed in secular studies, the blame could not
be imputed to our teachers. These are mostly brothers and
sisters who have consecrated their lives to educational work.
With them it is a life work. Generally bright and intelligent
when they enter a religious community, by daily study under
competent teachers in normal schools, they prepare for the ofifice
of instructors. Their studies are kept up years after entrance
into the school-room, under the guidance of the most capable of
their body. There is no time lost in talking over the fashions ;
none in paying or receiving visits. Theatres and operas are not
for them. Why should they not be, what they are, first-class
teachers ? Some members of these communities are sent abroad
to acquire what there is worth knowing in European normal
schools, together with a fluency in speaking foreign languages.

The flurry at Haverhill last spring, the agitation that ensued,
and the disposition manifested by some to bring the power of
the state to bear heavily on our work, serve an excellent purpose.
They warn the superiors of convents that the teachers they send
into the school-room must be thoroughly equipped in all that
could by any possibility be demanded of them. In this sense
the trials of the past will prove a blessing.

The third objection to parochial schools is that they hinder
the commingling of the children of a neighborhood on the school
playground, and thus fail to foster democratic equality. " Demo-
cratic equality " is a phrase with- which to fool gudgeons. The
wealthy of a town congregate in an aristocratic neighborhood,
and right there will be found a state school, from which children
of poverty will be, by force of circumstances, excluded. Thus
the latter are deprived of social elevation through social com-

159

mingling. Where this separation of rich and poor cannot be ob-
tained in a district whose inhabitants are of both classes, the
abolition of the recess removes all dangers of contact between
the classes except in the class-room. It is in parochial schools
that the democratic notion of friendly equality is best carried
out. The religious brotherhood of man is taught and practically
lived up to in these schools. We are ready for other objections,
only let them contain a bit more of common sense.

The building of school-houses and the gathering into them
of our Catholic children, are going bravely on all over the United
States, especially in Massachusetts. Now that the Bostonians
are fairly aroused, we may look to them for largeness and thor-
oughness of plans in educational achievement. They will accept,
I am sure, no compromise by which the religious element in their
daily tasks can be lessened. They will do their best to turn out
good citizens and good Christians.

Catholics hold a proud position in the face of their fellow-
citizens, though it is one for which they are heavily fined by state
schoolism. In state schools : i. Their parental rights and duties
toward their children are infringed upon. 2. Their children's
rights to a moral education and training by " religious enforce-
ments " are seriously interfered with. 3. The natural depend-
ence of children on parents is weakened. 4. The double taxation
to which parents are subjected is irritating, unjust, and cruel ;
it is a hinderance to mutual esteem and to a kindly spirit among
fellow-citizens. 5. They are made to suffer for the sake of con-
science. It is not necessary to tell us again that somebody else's
conscience ought to suit us.

It is, in some measure, compensation for our wrongs to be
able to hold up our heads and to glory ip our self-imposed
sacrifices. It is ennobling to stand on a true American platform,
and to enunciate principles such as the founders of our Republic
knew and upheld. We believe in parental rights, and in the
right of a child to a moral and religious training by the help of
" religious enforcements ; " we believe in all that tends to make a

i6o

young man self-reliant and self-supporting ; we believe in general
education, as is shown by our school-houses honestly built, and
their pupils honestly maintained, without a cent of help from the
state ; we believe that a truly religious man will be an upright
and worthy citizen. We detest state paternalism and state
pauperisin.

i6i

Eecent Utterances, of Which a Few are Here Given, Indicate a
Marked Change in Public Sentiment on this Subject of State
Schools and Christian Free Schools.

Dr. John BaSCOM, in the Forum of March, 1891, says:
* * * Not only must the parochial school be sustained
at the expense of those who establish it, but its supporters must
also pay their proportion for the maintenance of the public
schools, even when the work in their own school is accepted by
the public as a just equivalent of its own work. This gives us,
using language broadly, taxation without representation. The
support of two sets of schools is thrown on the conscientious
tax-payer, and he is told that his redress lies in giving up a
method to which his convictions have led him.

* * -s **■}«• *

The underlying principle which sustains the public in its
interference is thus covered up and lost sight of in the unfortu-
nate circumstances of its application. This principle, that it
may not bear the appearance of tyrannical intermeddling, should
be accompanied by the principle that all instruction that is ac-
cepted in the place of public instruction shall have the same
rights as public instruction. Those who are adequately educat-
ing their children under the inspection of the state should not be
called upon to bear exactly the same burdens as if they were in
neglect of this duty, or to render the duty twice over — once in a
way conceded by the state and once in a way ordered by it.
The intrinsic injustice of our existing policy has been concealed
from us by the accidental, changeable and capricious impulses

1 62

which have hitherto given rise to private schools, and by the fact
that, for the most part, they have been established by the well-
to-do simply in defense of class feeling. Now that the parochial
schools express a religious conviction — no matter how mistaken
that conviction may be — are closely and extendedly united with
themselves, and are the chosen means of those v/ho can ill en-
dure a double expenditure, the bearings of this public policy are
entirely altered. The sense of injustice will deepen year by
year, the religious sentiments which underlie the parochial school
will be fed by the very opposition which they meet, and the pub-
lic feeling arrayed against these schools will itself become an
intolerant sentiment, of belief or unbelief, associated with re-
ligion.

* 4«- «• * * * *

A large view of the objects to be gained, a wide, sympa-
thetic grasp of existing conditions, and a clear sense of justice,
will be able to find a way, and an ever-widening way, through
present perplexities. Our public policy must show itself flexible
— fully capable of freest adaptations. Bigotry may pertain to a
too inflexible insistence on a method intrinsically desirable, as
well as to a method in itself inadequate and narrow.

President Eliot of Harvard at Boston College :
The Wholesome Variety of American Schools. — The
fourth of the entertainments under the patronage of the Young
Men's Catholic Association of Boston College was given in the
College Hall on Tuesday evening, January 19, being a lecture by
Charles W. Eliot, LL.D., President of Harvard College, on " The
Wholesome Variety of American Schools and Colleges." He was
introduced by Thomas Mullen, President of the Association, and
spoke in substance as follows:

I am to speak to you to-night of a subject which touches
education and religion. I want to speak to you of the variety of
American schools and colleges. In the first place there are the

1 63

public schools and colleges supported by the state ; then there
are the endowed institutions. Of the endowed institutions, the
first are the denominational, which were Protestant institutions
in this country. Let me say here that a denominational school
should command our respect. It enables parents to have their
children brought up and instructed in that mode of teaching
which they cherish. President Eliot then referred to the semi-
denominational and the undenominational, or poly-denomina-
tional institutions, of which Harvard was the nearest example of
the latter class, declaring that this form of institution is a pre-
cious one in American society.

He spoke strongly in favor of private schools, and declared
that the privilege of parents to direct the education of their
children is a most sacred one, and one of the most precious of
human rights. Continuing, he said that the great variety of
educational institutions in this country is of advantage, because
of the wholesome competition which invariably arises among the
institutions. Endowed and private institutions are freer and
more flexible than the public schools. To make a change in a
public school system requires the consent of a great many per-
sons. The institutions that are leading the way at this mo-
ment in educational reform do not, as a general rule, belong to
the public schools. The American public school is undergoing a
new sort of trial. It has been forced, in my opinion, into an un-
natural and untenable position. It has been forced into the
position of secularization. It has been made to appear as a
school from which religion is excluded. The Roman Catholic
Church desires that moral and religious education go together.
I do not believe that religion can be relegated to Sunday. And
you cannot separate religion from history, science, philosophy.
It is everywhere in human thought and speech. Let us apply to
the American schools the same policy which the American State
applies to the American Church — perfect freedom in all things
and the enjoyment of many privileges, including exemption from

164

taxation. Let the American public schools do likewise, and the
great source of discord will be dried up in the American people.
— Boston Pilots January, 1 892.

Protestant Testiniomy.

We find in the Catholic Universe, of Cleveland, of February,
1892, what follows:

Treating of the school question a short time ago, Rev. W.
H. Piatt, a Protestant minister of San Francisco, had the follow-
ing to say :

" Secular schools may aim only at the Church of Rome
but

THE GUN SHOOTS BACKWARD

and hits only the Church of the Protestant. Let the question
come up fairly and squarely. Every citizen should be earnestly
in favor of any system of education that includes religion, and
as decidedly opposed to all that excludes it. Who is for pagan
civilization over Christian civilization ? The Puritans who set-
tled the eastern part of this country were neither ' Jews, Turks,
nor infidels,' but Calvanistic Christians. The cavaliers who set-
tled Virginia and the South were of the English Church. The
Roman Catholics were in Maryland.

It was Christian enterprise, Christian intelligence. Chris-
tian courage, and Christian money and blood which

FOUNDED THIS REPUBLIC,

and Christians claim a chief interest here. If we are in danger,
it is from our own religious indifference, not from the growth of
Romanism."

* * * * •Sfr * *

First — Secular schools in the interest of Protestantism is a
fatal blunder. Protestantism no less than Romanism, needs for

i65

its influence and permanence the religious training of the young.
Children are not born religious or moral, but are to be brought
up " in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." Religion was
a daily instruction with the Jews in their best condition. They
were diligent to teach the commandments of God to their child-
ren, to talk of them as they sat in their houses and when they
walked by the way, when they lay down, and when they rose
up, and to write them on the posts of their houses, and on their
gates.

It is not sufficient that the State educate during the six
days of the week and the Church only one day. The Christian
religion is a religion not only for Sunday, but for every day.
Can the Church permit her children to live in the atmosphere of
the world all the days of the week, have their associations with
children of unbelievers, pursue their studies in schools where no
positive religious influence confronts them, and expect all will
be made right by an hour of religious instruction on Sunday?
*******

Second — If secular schools were intended to destroy Roman
Catholicity, they are signal failures. Protestants have honestly
deluded themselves with the idea that secular schools, giving
universal education and enlightenment (in which, in order not
to offend any religious creed, even if they please none, religion
should be excluded) would destroy the Roman Church. But
do they do this ?

WAS THERE EVER A GREATER MISTAKE?

They are unnecessary to keep Protestants out of the Roman
Church, and they certainly do not convert the Roman Catholics
into the Protestant Church. On the contrary, as they educate
the young in no religion, but out of all churches, they destroy
the Protestant Church, not the Roman. That church makes the
most of its circumstances, but never abdicates its mission.
*******

It is alleged that the three contestants for the control of our

1 66

civilization are Romanism, Protestantism and Secularism. As
to Protestantism, it is only a question of time when our present
system of public schools will render it a dead factor.

Third — If secular schools are designed to break down all
religion, they are a crime against civilization. It is not ventur-
ing too much to say that society will see, in the end, that while
these schools were not so intended, they will have the effect, and
are even novv^ used by the enemies of religion to undermine faith
and establish general scepticism. Protestantism has already felt
their chilling influences. The Jews favor them because they let
Christianity, which they hate tremendously, alone ; the infidel
favors them because they insiduously break down all religion,
from whose discipline he resolves to escape ; the Protestant
favors them because, he thinks, they destroy the power of the
Roman Church, and secular enlightenment is better than Roman
ignorance. But this Protestant mistake is a fatal one. The
sword is not even two-edged. It has but one edge, and it is
drawn across the heart of Protestantism. Rome has nothing to
do with these schools, but carries on her own institutions all the
same as if secular schools did not exist. The whole bearing of
this mistake is on Protestantism, and yet Protestants seem un-
able and unwilling to see it.

On the first of February, 1892, the Methodist ministers of
Rochester and neighborhood discussed the question of denomi-
national schools. Apparently, their praise was in favor of de-
nominational education for the favored classes in academies,
seminaries and colleges. When John Wesley left the university
and city churches he went among the miners, and wherever the
poor were to be found, to bring them all the religion he had
himself.

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