Note 14 — THE SCHOOL QUESTION.[13]

We desire to call attention to another point which could not be discussed in the foregoing article, and to which we can at present only allude in the briefest manner. Large sums of money have been granted by legislatures to universities and colleges which are controlled by the clergy of different Protestant denominations, in which they teach their religious opinions without restraint, and which they make, as far as they can, training-schools for their theological seminaries. Now, if the outcry against any grant of public funds to schools in which the Catholic religion is taught is taken up and sustained by Protestants, it follows that they must advocate the total secularization of all institutions, without exception, which enjoy any state subsidies, and, if they wish to keep control of religious instruction in any of the above-mentioned colleges, must refund to the state every thing which they now possess by grant from the state, and give up all claim to receive any further endowments. Catholics would never disendow or despoil these Protestant institutions, even if they had full power to do it; but if the party of infidelity ever gains, by the help of Protestants, full sway over our legislation, the latter may prepare themselves for a wholesale spoliation.