Note 134 — THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES. A RETROSPECT.

Let us pause to observe that this change in the spirit of legislation marks also the decline of that spirit of bigotry which inspired it in the first place. The spirit of bigotry, however, still survives, though it be less aggressive than formerly. It outlives the melioration of charters, and dies hard. When it shall have reached that stage of feebleness to which the natural generosity of our countrymen will sooner or later reduce it, we may then hope to follow where Canada has led in her laws concerning education. The pompous protection now afforded by states and municipalities to their necessarily infidel school will disappear to give way to measures of solicitude for the equal education of all, Catholic and infidel, Protestant and Jew, without injustice to any man’s religion or any man’s resources. The unfortunate precedent afforded by the theocratic government of New England, and which has been so blindly followed by other states, in assuming to educate instead of aiding education—even this disorder in our republicanism may be healed, if congress do not meanwhile (as appearances threaten) strengthen the hands of state absolutists by its largesses; or, if it do not, by an act of still greater usurpation than the states have been guilty of, consign the task of popular education to the care of the general government.