Volume 8 — The Catholic View Of Public Education In The United States.

[We republish the following article from The American Educational Monthly, with the permission of the editor, on account of the importance of the subject, the intrinsic value of the article, and to aid in giving it a wide circulation. ED. C. W.]

It would be wholly superfluous to address an argument to any portion of the American people upon the absolute necessity of popular education. Upon that point there is no diversity of opinion. The fundamental principles of our social system rest upon it as a corner-stone; such as, that government derives all of its authority, under God, from the consent of the governed; the people possess the sovereignty; public officers are only public servants; the multitude rules by representation; Congress, the President, and the Courts are the people—without the people they have no existence; constitutions and laws are but the well-ordered expression of the public will, at all times revocable, in an orderly manner, and binding upon each citizen as the will of all, unless the popular decree be against the law of God, when, of course, it bind's no man's conscience. Hereditary rights, class privileges, ancient social divisions, and distributions of power have all disappeared, or rather, have never existed here. Even in Colonial times, the Crown was almost a myth, and cast but a shadowy reflection into the deep waters of the Hudson and the Mississippi, as they rolled on to the sea from the illimitable forests where the moccasined hunter was then as free as the Red Indian had been for unrecorded centuries. The Revolution of '76 changed the government, but really left the cardinal points of our American civilization very much as it found them. In fact, our political education is traceable back to the days of Alfred and Edward the Confessor; for the Norman king gave us no concession in Magna Charta which was unknown to Saxon liberty. In our Republic we have only drawn out these principles to their extreme conclusions. We have gone back to the original hypothesis, that society is an association of equal rights for mutual protection; and that power, under God, belongs to the whole body of corporators—that is, the multitude. From this postulate we are obliged to pass immediately to the axiom that there can be no fit administration of power without knowledge. Knowledge may be acquired in several ways. The most direct and impressive is experience. Alcuin was master of books; but Charlemagne was master of men. The great emperor could not read, but he possessed the wisdom to govern. Who shall say that he was not "educated" in the highest sense of that vague term? And yet, it is very clear that knowledge gained only by the slow accretions of experience will not answer the wants and rapid movements of such a republic as ours in the age of steam and electricity. Each generation must be trained from the cradle, and made to possess, enlarge, and transmit to its successor all the accumulated knowledge of its predecessor. As no atom of matter perishes, but is for ever recombining and reproducing; so every true idea and sound moral sentiment must be made the inheritance of society, and never cease to exert its power for good among men. Not that moral truth can ever change; for it is now precisely what it has been from all eternity; nor is it better understood by the divine to-day, than it was by Moses when he came down from the mountain; but the multitude may be made more fully to comprehend and reverence it. Christianity, although specially revealed and miraculously propagated, did not suddenly conquer and civilize barbarous peoples. It has been eighteen hundred years struggling with the powers of darkness and the corruption of the human heart; and yet, alas! how very, very far removed are not even the most polished nations from the severe standard of Christian perfection! See the tyrannies, the oppressions, the cruelties, the wars, the pride, the luxury, the folly and deceit which fill the fairest parts of the earth with mourning, and drag mankind down into the slough of sin and sorrow! To be sure, there is a certain stereotyped class of saints and philosophers who cry aloud, "Compare our enlightened era with the rude times of the crusaders; or place the nineteenth alongside of the ninth century; and let the celestial light of our civilization shine down into the abysses of monkish superstition!" We shall, nevertheless, refuse to close our eyes to those stupendous sins which have supplanted the violent crimes of our ancestors. We shall see how their robber-sword has been put aside for our forger's pen; how their wild foray has given place to our gigantic stock speculation or bank swindle, which sweeps widows and orphans, by the ten thousand, into utter poverty and despair; how their fierce lust has been civilized into the decorous forms of the divorce courts; how their bold grasping of power has been changed into the arts of the whining demagogue; how their undisguised plunder of the public treasure in times of civil commotion has been superseded by the adroit peculation and covert bribery of our times of peace; how their courageous, rude anger has vanished before the safer and more efficacious process of concealed hatred, nestling, like the scorpion, among the roses of adulation. We certainly shall be obliged to remember these things, to the great reproach of our times, and in serious dread of the future; and we shall feel anxious to go to work to find the cause and the remedy. We are all agreed that education, that is, knowledge and moral training, cannot be dispensed with for an hour—that no nation can be governed safely, much less govern itself at all, without a clear head and a sound heart—that, if governed as a dumb brute, it will kick against the pricks, fly in the face of its hard master, and dash out its foolish brains against the stone wall! It will sing the Marseillaise and cover its garments with the blood of kings and aristocrats; until, having spent its fury, it will return to its crust and shout "Vive l'Empereur!" Should it attempt to govern itself, it will become the prey of the infamous men who are the spawn of its own passions. Without knowledge, the nation is either a silent sepulchre, where all hopes are buried, or a raging sea, where they are quickly wrecked. Knowledge, then, it must have. But what knowledge? Shall we say, knowledge of the arts? Ask Phidias and Praxiteles if the arts saved Greece! Shall we say, polite literature? Ah! let the mournful chorus of Sophocles, AEschylus and Euripides give utterance to the sad cries of those old pagan hearts for a higher virtue than the sublimest tragedy could teach them! Shall it be the eloquence of the orator or the wisdom of the legislator? We shall hear in the Philippics how vainly the master of orators appealed to a degenerate race, and we shall read in the closing annals of Athens and Sparta how utterly the wisdom of Solon and Lycurgus had failed to save polished and warlike states from the penalty which God has affixed to the crimes of nations. Shall we take refuge in human philosophy? Socrates and the divine Plato had cast off the degrading superstitions of paganism, and had proclaimed to their intellectual countrymen the eternity and unity of God, and the immortality of the soul of man. They had most earnestly enjoined upon them the sanctity of all the natural virtues—temperance, industry, patience, courage, honesty, benevolence, patriotism, continence, filial duty, conjugal fidelity; but what did their philosophy avail? Why did it not save the Grecian states? They went down into the night upon which no sun ever again shone! Their Roman conquerors seized upon the rich treasures of their knowledge. The Senate listened with rapture to the wisdom of the old Hellenic sages translated by Cicero into the noble Latin tongue. Virgil and Livy sought to inspire the Roman heart with grand ideas borrowed from the Greek masters. What did it all avail? The Roman republic had practised the natural virtues as fully as unregenerated man is capable of doing by the power of vigorous and cultivated reason. What did it avail? They, too, went down into the tomb of dead nations; and a few broken columns remain to mark the seat of their world-wide empire! It is very manifest, then, that intellectual culture, even when carried to the highest development of which men are capable, can never subdue their passions, nor enable them to uphold the civilization to which they may have attained in the freshness of their national life. If this were not so, then we could not clearly perceive the necessity of the Christian revelation. If man was self-sustaining, he would not require the arm of God to lean upon. The apothegm of the Greek sage, "Know thyself," was a dead letter. It was precisely to teach a man how to know himself that our Saviour came. And this is the whole knowledge! No poetry, oratory, history, philosophy, arts, or sciences could teach that, else the world would have learned it four thousand years ago, and the primitive races would not have perished. Even under the Christian dispensation, and in very modern times, men and nations have failed to know themselves, because they turned their backs on Christ and placed their hopes in human science and natural virtue. And so we have seen an enlightened nation in our day deify humanity, refuse to adore God, and prostrate itself before a harlot, as the high-priestess in the apotheosis of Reason! We have seen an antichristian conspiracy, formed of the most learned, eloquent, witty, and fascinating men of modern Europe, exerting the highest arts of genius to repaganize the world. We have seen science, rudely torn from religion, waging an insane war against the peace of society. That terrific phase of blasphemous infidelity has passed from our immediate view; but has it left nothing more dangerous behind? We think it has. The mass of mankind shrank with horror from the defiant blasphemy of Voltaire; and they recoiled with alarm from the ruin caused by his teachings. We love liberty; but we dread license, anarchy, chaos. Man is, also, naturally religious. Long after he had forgotten the traditions of the patriarchs and had lost God in the night of heathen idolatry, he still clung to

"The instinct of old reverence!"

and his wretched soul yearned after its Creator.

The false worship of Greece and Rome was the inarticulate cry of a lost people for that true worship which was promised to the Gentile at the appointed time. False and hideous as it was, who will not say that it was far preferable to atheism? It was only when the Epicurean philosophy had destroyed the faith of those people, that they cast off all moral restraint, and were swept away in the torrent of their vices. Man is naturally religious; and therefore the world will not long patiently tolerate the presence of blatant infidelity. The danger is not there. He who goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, knows very well that mankind is more easily seduced under the forms of virtue than by gross sin. His incarnate agents on earth know this too. Hence we find all the world covered over with gossamer nets of seduction! The press teems with books and journals, not confessedly infidel, yet working in the interests of infidelity; fanning the passions and exciting the morbid sensibilities of youth; teaching religious indifference under the pleasing garb of liberality; holding up the discipline of the church as hostile to personal freedom; depicting the doctrines and ceremonies of the Christian religion as trammels upon mental activity and intellectual progress; arraying the laity against their pastors; insisting that to be a humane man, an honest and industrious worker, a faithful friend, a good husband and father, a patriotic citizen, is to be all and to do all that the highest Christian morality can require or the welfare of the human race demand; asserting that the specific dogmas of the Christian faith, with perhaps one or two exceptions, are not essential, and may be rejected without concern; receiving with indifference and polite complacency either the divinity or the humanity of Christ; and accepting him as a God-Saviour, a man-prophet, or a harmless, self-deluded impostor, as your fancy may please to dictate; in a word, deifying man, and making this world, with its wealth, its pleasures, its pride and pomp, its power and magnificence, its civilization and nationalities, the sole object of his anxiety and love. Such, we say, is the growing evil of this nineteenth century, which is so scornful of the "dark ages;" an evil infinitely more subtile and destructive than the rage or gibes of Voltaire. This poison has gone through the chilled blood of renegade old men, destroying the religious vitality which had sustained their faith from the baptismal font to the very edge of the grave; how must it not, therefore, affect the hot veins of inexperienced youth, whose generous impulses are their greatest peril! See how, in those European revolutions gotten up by avowed enemies of religion, the students of the universities flock to the standards of infidelity, with the seductive cry of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!" They enlist, with enthusiasm, under what they believe to be the consecrated banner of inalienable human rights—their young, sympathetic hearts are justly moved by the sufferings of the toiling millions caused by unequal laws—their sense of justice and human brotherhood is outraged at the sight of domineering classes who monopolize the blessings of government—they see very clearly all the existing wrongs, but they do not see the practicable and wise remedies; and when they hear prudent voices counselling patience, and reminding them that the evil works of centuries, like old forest trees, have deep roots, and cannot be rudely torn out of the bosom of society without endangering its life, they cry out in their enthusiasm, "These are the voices of the enemies of the people, the voices of priests and aristocrats, away with them to the guillotine!" Only too late do they experience the retribution which God invariably visits upon those who presumptuously seek to drive the chariot of his Providence!

Not one word of what we have said is inapplicable to our own land. We live, move, and have our whole being in the midst of these same perils. Steam, electricity, commerce, and emigration have made us a part of the great European family. Every throb of their heart is felt in our own bosom. We are of their blood and civilization. We have their laws and their religion. We are nurtured by their science and literature. From us they have received more thorough ideas of democratic freedom, but from them we have derived all else that constitutes the intellectual life of man. It would be the height of folly in us to despise the lessons of their experience. Our children should be carefully instructed in all of it. They have a difficult task to perform in perpetuating our institutions as they were shaped by the fathers of the Republic. They must be well trained in the knowledge necessary for that purpose. From what has already been said it will be at once understood that we do not mean human science alone, nor principally. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.

This brings us to the consideration of the immediate subject of this article; which can now, we think, be briefly stated; inasmuch as the foundation has been properly laid, if our views are correct as to the principles which we have presented.

Enlightened rulers all over Europe have been profoundly impressed with the lessons of this and the last century. It was once believed by monarchs that to enlighten their subjects would be to imperil their thrones. It is now very clearly seen that "the divinity which doth hedge a king" has long ceased to be an oracle to the people. The French emperor erects his dynasty upon popular suffrage. Hereditary right has come down from its ancient pedestal to accept from the people the confirmation of its authority. It is now too evident for further doubt that no ruler can rule modern nations by any appeal to the mausoleum of his ancestors. The garish light of the sun has penetrated every royal tomb, and has altogether annihilated the mystery which once filled the hearts of nations with awe and unquestioning obedience. Public opinion now rules the ruler. Kings and their ministers have now to elect between intelligent and virtuous opinion on the one hand, or revolutionary passions on the other. The wisest of them, therefore, are hastening to educate the people; and they are striving above all things to make such education distinctly Christian, and not simply moral; for they well remember the fate of all nations who have staked their salvation upon the sufficiency of the natural virtues. While kings are doing this to preserve the shadow of their royalty from the aggressive spirit of the age, we, in this chosen land, are doing or aiming to do the same thing, in order that we may rear successive generations of virtuous and enlightened heirs to the rich inheritance of our constitutional democratic freedom. Ours should be much the easier task; as we labor for no dynasty, but strive only to make a nation capable of self-preservation. We are no less in earnest than the kings; and we may surely examine their work and see what is good in it. The kings tried the pagan idea of intellectual culture adorned with the glittering generalities of moral philosophy; and they added to it the maxims of the Christian gospel, whenever that could be done without getting entangled in the conflicting creeds of the numerous sects. The school was like Plato's lecture-room, only that the sacred voice of the evangelist was heard occasionally in such passages as do not distinctly set forth faith and doctrine, about which the scholars could differ. Sectarianism, as it is called, had to be excluded, of course, in a mixed system of popular education, wherein freedom of conscience was conceded to be a sacred right and proselytism was disavowed. The result was twofold: first, tens of thousands of children were deprived of distinct religious instruction and doctrinal knowledge; and secondly, in countries where the Roman Catholic population was large, though in a minority, other tens of thousands were left without secular education, because their parents would not permit them to be brought up in habits of indifferentism, which means practical infidelity, or trained in knowledge hostile to their religious faith. Prussia, though she is the very embodiment and representative of Protestant Europe, soon came to the conclusion that this would not do—that education must be Christian—that it must be doctrinal and conducive to religious practices—that, as all could not or would not believe alike, each should have full opportunity to be reared in his own faith, to learn its doctrines and to fulfil its duties and discipline—and, therefore, that enlightened government established the denominational system, giving to each creed practical equality before the law, a separate school organization, (wherever numbers made it practicable,) and a ratable share of the public school-fund; reserving to the government only a general supervision, so as to secure a faithful application of the public money, and to enforce a proper compliance with the educational standard. The public schools are organized so that every citizen shall obtain the complete education of his child, in the faith and practice of his own church. All difficulties have disappeared, and perfect harmony prevails.

In France, by the last census, the population was thirty-seven millions, divided about as follows: 480,000 Calvinists, 267,000 Lutherans, 30,000 of other Protestant sects, and 73,000 Jews; the remaining thirty-six millions being either practically or nominally Catholic. Although the dissenters from the national faith are less than one million, that government has provided for them, at the public expense, separate primary schools, where each sect is at full liberty to teach its own doctrines. There are likewise three seminaries for the higher education of Lutherans and Calvinists.

Austria also supports schools, colleges, and universities for a Protestant minority.

The British Government has likewise adopted the same principle of public education for the Catholics and the Protestant dissenters of England; while, with her traditional and malignant hatred of the Irish people, she still denies them the justice which she extends to all of her other subjects, at home or in the colonies, even to the Hindoos and Mohammedans of her Indian empire!

And thus the most powerful and enlightened nations have decided that Christian civilization cannot be maintained upon pagan ideas; and that the safety of every commonwealth depends upon the Christian education of the people. They have also clearly seen that doctrines, discipline, morals, and "the religious atmosphere" must be kept united, and made to penetrate and surround the school at all times; and that, however greatly the Christian denominations may differ from each other, or even err in their belief, it is far better for society that their youth should be instructed in some form of Christian doctrine, than be left to perish in the dreary and soul-destroying wastes of deism. Experience has proved to them that moral teaching, with biblical illustrations, as the piety of Joseph, the heroism of Judith, the penitence of David, will not suffice to establish the Christian faith in young hearts, or to quiet the doubts of inquiring minds. The subtle Gibbon, mocking the cross of Christ, will confront the testimony of the martyrs with the heroes of pagan history. Voltaire did the same for the French youth of the last century, to their destruction. No. The experience of wise governments is this: that morals must be based upon faith, and faith made efficient in deeds of practical virtue; for faith worketh by charity. And another experience is this, which is best given in the very words of the eminent Protestant statesman and historian, M. Guizot: "In order to make popular education truly good and socially useful, it must be fundamentally religions. I do not simply mean by this, that religious instruction should hold its place in popular education and that the practices of religion should enter into it; for a nation is not religiously educated by such petty and mechanical devices; it is necessary that national education should be given and received in the midst of a religious atmosphere, and that religions impressions and religious observances should penetrate into all its parts. Religion is not a study or an exercise to be restricted to a certain place and a certain hour; it is a faith and a law, which ought to be felt everywhere, and which after this manner alone can exercise all its beneficial influence upon our minds and our lives." The meaning of which is, that not a moment of the hours of school should be left without the religious influence. It is the constant inhalation of the air which preserves our physical vitality. It is the "religious atmosphere" which supports the young soul. Religion cannot be made "a study or an exercise to be restricted to a certain place and a certain hour." It will not do to devote six days in the week to science, and to depend upon the Sunday-school for the religious training of the child. M. Guizot is right. The enlightened governments of Europe have accepted his wisdom and reduced it to practice in their great national school-systems.

Now, the Catholics of the United States have said no more than that; have asked no more than that; and yet, a wild cry of anger has been raised against them at times, as though they were the avowed enemies of all popular education. They pay their full quota of the public taxes which create the school-fund, and yet they possess, to-day, in proportion to their wealth and numbers, more parochial schools, seminaries, academies, colleges, and universities, established and sustained exclusively by their own private resources, than any other denomination of Christians in this country! Certainly this is no evidence of hostility to education! And why have they made these wonderful efforts, these unprecedented sacrifices? It is because they believe in the truth uttered by M. Guizot. It is because they believe in the truth established by all history. It is because they believe in the truth accepted and acted upon by enlightened men and governments of this age. It is because they know that revealed religion is to human science what eternity is to time. It is because they know that the salvation of souls is more precious to Christ than the knowledge of all the astronomers. It is because they know that the welfare of nations is impossible without God. And yet, they fully understand how religion has called science to her side as an honored handmaid; how learning, chastened by humility, conduces to Christian advancement; how the knowledge of good and evil (the fruit of the forbidden tree) may yet be made to honor God, when the sanctified soul rejects the evil and embraces the good. Therefore the Catholic people desire denominational education, as it is called.

That is the general view of the question; but there is a particular view, not to be overlooked, and which we will now briefly consider.

The most marked distinction between pagan and Christian society is to be found in the relations which the state bears to the family. Scarcely was the Lacedaemonian boy released from his mother's apron-string, when the state seized him with an iron hand. The state was thenceforth his father and his mother. The sanctities and duties of the family were annihilated. Body and soul, he belonged to the Moloch of Power. Private conscience was no more than a piece of coin in circulation; it was a part of the public property. Christ restored the family as it existed in Adam and Eve. Christian civilization denies that the state can destroy the family. The family is primary; the father the head; the mother the helpmate; the children in subjection, and for whom the parents shall give an account to the Father in heaven. The Christian state has no authority, by divine or human appointment, to invade this trust. It has, therefore, no mission either to coerce conscience or to dictate the education of it. It is the duty of the state in every way to facilitate, but it cannot arbitrarily control the mental and moral training of the people's children. That right and that responsibility are domestical, and belong to the parent.

Now, the Catholic parent is aware that there are between his creed and all others the widest and most irreconcilable differences, and that it is impossible to open the New Testament, at almost any page, without forthwith encountering the prime difficulty. To read the Bible, without note or comment, to young children, is to abandon them to dangerous speculation, or to leave them dry and barren of all Christian knowledge. In mixed schools there is no other recourse; because it is impossible to make any comment upon any doctrinal teaching of Christ and his apostles, without trenching upon the conscientious opinions of some one or other of the listeners. "The Father and I are one;" "The Father is greater than I;" here at once we have the Unitarian and the Trinitarian at a dead-lock!" This is my body;" "It is the spirit which quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing;" here we have the primitive Lutheran, who believed in the real presence, (consubstantially,) and his Calvinistic coadjutor in reform squarely at issue! "Unless you be born again of water and the Holy Ghost," etc.; here we have the Baptist and the Quaker very seriously divided in opinion. Nevertheless, widely as they differ the one from the other, there is a fundamental assimilation between all the Protestant sects, which may render it possible for them to unite in one educational organization; and yet, we find many of the most enlightened and earnest among the Protestant clergy of America now zealously advocating the denominational system, such as we find in the European countries above referred to. They believe that education should be distinctly based upon doctrinal religion; and they are liberal enough to insist, that, by natural right, as well as by the constitutional guarantees of our free country, no doctrine adverse to the faith of a parent may lawfully be forced or surreptitiously imposed upon his child. It is well known, however, that, between the Catholic faith and all Protestant creeds, there is a gulf which cannot be bridged over. It would, therefore, be simply impossible to adopt any religious teaching whatever in mixed schools without at once interfering with Catholic conscience. No such teaching is attempted, as a general rule, we believe, in the public schools of the United States; and hence we have only a vague announcement of moral precepts, the utter futility and barrenness of which we have already alluded to. Catholics, agreeing with very many enlightened and zealous Protestants, believe that secular education administered in that way is not only vain, but eminently pernicious; that it is fast undermining the Christian faith of this nation; that it is rapidly filling the land with rationalism; that it is destroying the authority of the Holy Scriptures; that it is educating men who prefix "Reverend" and affix "D.D." to their names, the more effectually to preach covert infidelity to Christian congregations; that, instead of the saving morality of the gospel of Christ, which rests upon revealed mysteries and supernatural gifts, it is offering us that same old array of the natural virtues or qualities which pierced, like broken reeds, the sides of all heathen nations. And more than this, Catholics know by painful experience, that history cannot be compiled, travels written, poetry, oratory, or romance inflicted upon a credulous public, without the stereotyped assaults upon the doctrines, discipline, and historical life of their church. From Walter Scott to Peter Parley, and from Hume, Gibbon, and Macaulay, to the mechanical compilers of cheap school-literature, it is the same story, told a thousand times oftener than it is refuted; so that the English language, for the last two centuries, may be said, without exaggeration, to have waged war against the Catholic Church. Indeed, so far as European history is considered, the difficulty must always be insurmountable; since it would always be impossible for the Catholic and Protestant to accept the same history of the Reformation or of the Papal See, or the political, social, and moral events resulting from or in any degree connected with those two great centres and controlling causes. Who could write a political history of Christendom for the last three hundred years and omit all mention of Luther and the Pope? And how is any school compendium of such history to be devised for the use of the Catholic and Protestant child alike? And if history be philosophy teaching by example, shall we expel it from our educational plan altogether? Or shall we oblige the Protestant child to study the Catholic version of history, and vice-versa? Certainly, it is quite as just and politic to oblige the one as the other! Shall the "majority" control this? Who gave "majority" any such power or right? With us, the "majority" controls the "state;" and we have seen that the "state" becomes a usurper when it attempts this! We are quite sure that, if the Catholics were the "majority;" in the United States, and were to attempt such an injustice, our Protestant brethren would cry out against it, and appeal to the wise and liberal examples of Prussia and England, France and Austria! Now, is it not always as unwise, as it is unjust, to make a minority taste the bitterness of oppression? Men governed by the law of divine charity will bear it meekly, and seek to return good for evil; but all men are not docile; and majorities change sides rapidly and often in this fleeting world! Is it not wiser and more politic, even in mere regard to social interests, that all institutions, intended for the welfare of the people, should be firmly based upon exact and equal justice? This would place them under the protection of fixed habit, which in a nation is as strong as nature; and it would save them from the mutations of society. The strong of one generation may be the weak of the next; and we see this occurring with political parties within the brief spaces of presidential terms. Hence we wisely inculcate moderation and justice in political majorities, under the law of retribution.

Profoundly impressed with these views, and impelled by this commanding sense of duty, our Catholic people have created a vast network of schools over the country, at a price which the world knows little of—the sacrifice which the poor man makes, who curtails the wheaten loaf that he may give to his child the spiritual bread! Ah! how many humble cottages and dreary tenement-houses could testify to that! There are six millions of them here now; and still they come, from the deserted hearths beyond the seas. They are upright, industrious, and love the new land like the old! In war, they shoulder the musket; in peace, they are found filling every avenue of labor and enterprise. They contribute millions to the public revenue, and hundreds of millions to the productive industry of the country. Their own welfare and the highest interests of the country demand that their children and their children's children should be well instructed in secular learning, and thoroughly grounded in moral and religious knowledge. As we have shown, they cannot avail themselves of the public school system, as now organized, though they contribute largely to its support by their taxes. They do not desire to interfere with that system, as it seems at present to meet the wants, or at least the views, of their Protestant fellow-citizens; and they are, therefore, not "opposed to the common schools" in the sense in which they have been represented to be. They simply ask that they may be allowed to participate in the only way open to them, that is, by the apportionment to them of a ratable part of the fund, in aid of their existing schools, and of such others as their numbers, in any given locality, may properly enable them to establish, subject to the limited supervision of the state, as we have before explained. We need go no further than Canada to witness this system operating harmoniously and to the best advantage. The argument generally used against it is, that this would destroy the unity and efficiency of the whole. Why is it not so in Prussia, Austria, France, England, and the British Colonies? Besides, the Catholic populations in this country are very much aggregated, as in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Brooklyn, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee, and in the large agricultural settlements throughout the North-Western States. Certainly, in such localities there could be no difficulty. It is contemplated by the school law that all these are to be educated. Then, why can they not be permitted to organize separate schools, as in the countries referred to? Such organization would be an integral part of the whole system; and the cost would be precisely the same. In fact, we learn from the Reports of Assistant Superintendents Jones and Calkins, made to Hon. S. S. Randall, the City Superintendent, and also from his Report made to the Hon. Board of Education, in December, 1866, that the school room provided in the city of New York (especially in the primary department) is altogether inadequate; and yet we know that tens of thousands of Catholic children could easily be cared for, if the means were afforded those who, even now, with the scantiest resources, are erecting parochial schools all over the city.

It would be impossible in a brief article to enter into details. Our purpose has been rather to set this question before a liberal public in its great leading aspects, as we are quite willing to trust to the wisdom and experience of our legislators to devise the proper plan and specifications. They will be at no loss for precedents. The statute-books of half a dozen countries may be consulted profitably. All we ask is, that this momentous question may be candidly considered and justly and generously disposed of. We hope that the day has gone by when such a question as this shall be met with passionate declamation or the obsolete cry of "no popery." Disraeli has failed to stem the tide of popular reform in England by reviving the insane clamor of Lord George Gordon. The world has outgrown such narrow bigotry. Vital questions, affecting the conscience and the rights of multitudes of men, and deeply involving the welfare of nations, must henceforth be settled by calm and just decisions. Christendom will tolerate nothing else now. And surely, this free and wise Republic will not be the last to put into practice those principles of equality before the law, justice, and generous confidence in human nature, which it published to all the down-trodden nationalities of the earth, almost a century ago, over the signatures of Hancock, Livingston, and Carroll of Carrollton.