THE STATE A ROBBER.—VIOLATION OF OUR CONSTITUTION AND COMMON LAW.
We have seen, so far, that the irreligious, godless system of the Public Schools tends directly to turn the youth of both sexes into the worst kind of infidels; to make them disregard good principles, and hold iniquity in veneration; to do away, not only with all revealed religion, but even with the law of nature; to make them practise fraud, theft, and robbery almost as a common trade; to make them regardless of their parents and of all divinely constituted authority; we have seen that this godless system of education is the most powerful means to create confusion, not only in religion, but also in government and in the family circle; to increase the number of apostates, and make of these apostates members of such secret societies as aim at the overthrow of governments and all good order, and Christian religion itself.
Truly, this godless system of education, if carried out to its logical consequences, will disrupt society, destroy the right of the Christian family entirely, bring back on the world the barbarism, tyranny and brutality of Pagan antiquity, and make slaves and victims of its children and their posterity forever!
Who does not feel most indignant at the State for having introduced such a godless system of education? And for the support of this system of education—of this prolific mother of children of anti-Christ—we are enormously tithed and taxed! Horrible!
I have shown that the State in America is Christian; that it cannot profess or play infidel. What right, then, has a Christian State to compel Christians to support infidel schools? Is not this compulsory support most violative of constitutional and religious rights? According to the Constitution of the State, "no human authority can control or interfere with the rights of conscience." Now, the direction and control of the education of our children is clearly not only a duty, but a "right of conscience." This right, of course, belongs to all denominations, whether few or many. By what authority, then, does the State impose an established system of education at our expense against this constitutionally guaranteed right of conscience? I would like to know wherein this differs from an established church, such as has been lately removed, after having been imposed for centuries by State supremacy on the Irish people, without their consent.
It is, in fact, much worse; for though the Episcopal Church was not in accordance with the religious belief of a majority, yet it was, nevertheless, a Christian Church of a sect of high orthodox pretensions. But these "Public Schools," for whose support we and all other Christian denominations are taxed, are, by their own confession, utterly irreligious. The early Christians refused to burn even a little gum-rosin (incense) before the Pagan idols, and preferred rather to go to the lions; but we Christians, in this late day, and in what is boastingly called "Free America," are forced to pay taxes to support what is worse than heathen idols—schools from which the name of God is excluded, and, to our shame, we submit.
Referring to the wrong done to Catholics who cannot, in conscience, send their children to these schools, Judge Taft, of Ohio, said not long ago:
"This is too large a circumstance to be covered by the Latin phrase, 'De minimis non curat lex.' These Catholics (paying their proportion of the taxes) are constrained, every year, on conscientious grounds, to yield to others their right to one-third of the school-money, a sum averaging, at the present time, about $200,000 every year. That is to say, these people are 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 beneficiaries of the Catholic money. What a shame for Protestants to have their children educated for money robbed from Catholics! Mercantile life is supposed to cultivate, in some, a relish for hard bargains. But if it were a business matter, and not a matter of religious concern, could business men be found willing to exact such a pecuniary advantage as this? I think it would shock the secular conscience!"
The State, in creating free schools, is like the Turkish Bashaw's mode of making pork cheap. He first compelled the Jews to buy it at a rate fixed by himself; but the Jews had no use for it, so it was left for every one to pick up at will. Indeed, what is a school worth when a man will pay a premium to be exempt from sending his children to it? The State, boasting of its splendid Public Schools, is also like that poor fellow who wore a gold watch and boasted of it. "Where did you get it?" he was asked. "I got it as a present," he answered. Then he related how one day he met with a rich man: "I knocked him down," he said, "put my foot on his throat, and said: 'Give me your watch, or I kill you.' So he gave it to me." "Pay your taxes for the erection and support of our Public Schools," says the lord State to the poor and to the rich, "or I sell your property." What a shame! The Catholics ask no favor, but they insist on their rights. In this country, whose discoverer was a Catholic—in this country, where the principle of religious toleration was first established by a Catholic nobleman, the famous and chivalric Calvert, Earl of Baltimore—in this country, whose people are largely indebted for their freedom to the armed coöperation and generous aid of Catholic France—in this country, whose constitutional freedom has been struck down by the malevolent Puritanism which in one breath declares that Catholics are opposed to education, and in the next insists that they shall be deprived of the means necessary for its maintenance—in this country, I say, we Catholics are entitled to equal rights, and to a fair share, to a just apportionment of the annual amount raised by taxation for the support of our charitable and educational institutions. We ask only what is fair, what is just, what is right; and we base our demand upon principle, and not upon the ground of favors granted or received.
If the State taxes us, as a religious and Christian people, for the education of our children, it must give us a Christian education. If it cannot, or will not do that, it must cease to tax us, and leave the education of our children to ourselves. If the Christian gives to Cæsar what belongs to Cæsar, he has a right to demand of Cæsar that he allow him to give to God what belongs to God.
Again, the Constitution says, "That no person shall be compelled to erect, support, or attend any place of public worship, nor support any minister of the gospel, or teacher of religion," etc.; and it says, "That no private property ought to be taken or applied to public use without just compensation." Now let us apply these constitutional principles to State-schools, and see if our compulsory support of them is not violative of our constitution as well as common law. Why is it "that no person shall be compelled to erect, support, or attend any place of public worship, nor support any minister of religion"? Simply because he "don't want to"; and he don't want to, "because it is against his conscience"; and "no human authority," says the Constitution, "can control or interfere with the rights of conscience"; that is all the reason, and no other. The State believes that all places of worship, and ministers of the gospel, are good; but, knowing that there is a difference of opinion among the people on that subject, wisely leaves such matters to their choice, and will not take private property for public use without compensation. Why, then, is private property taken for Public Schools without compensation? We cannot use them in conscience, and we have seen there is no lawful power or authority to "control or interfere with conscience." I ask, then, if I am not right in stating that our compulsory support of an odious and infidel system of Public Schools, against our conscience and against our consent, is not far worse than the support of any form of church establishment?
Moreover, according to the Constitution, "No preference can ever be given by law to any church, sect, or mode of worship." This section is often quoted as the authority and reason for excluding religious teachings from the Public Schools; but, strange enough, it is flagrantly violated by the present system, giving a preference by law to the unbelievers, and thereby discriminating against the believers of all sects and denominations. For, after all, there can be but two churches, or, if you please, sects, in the eye of the State—the believers and unbelievers. To the former belong the various Christian denominations, and to the latter those who deny and protest against all religious faith and belief. Those certainly are the last, and for that reason, if for no other, are the best or worst (as people may choose to view them) sect. It is, then, this last product, this "caput mortuum" of all sects and believers of every shade and kind, that is favored by the no-belief system of education.
"Though the State may not give any preference to any church or sect," it is not, on that account, authorized to ignore and reject all; but, on the contrary, is obliged in justice to assist all or none, as, by this course alone, it avoids giving preference to any. This is what the law contemplates, and the only course that comports with reason and justice. If it suits the last sect—the unbelievers or no-believers—to exclude morals or religion from schools, all right; let them keep on as at present. But if it suits the various other churches or sects to modify the system to suit their conscientious views and beliefs, to apply their own proportion of the school tax for that purpose, it is their undeniable and lawful right.
There is one view in which the public will agree in regard to the Public Schools: it is that they cost too much money. For the management of the godless Public Schools there is a costly array of "Commissioners," and "Inspectors," and "Trustees," and "Superintendents," and "Secretaries of Boards," and "Central Officers," all in league with "Contractors," to make "a good thing"—so-called—out of the plan. We have, now, contractors for buildings and repairs, contractors for furniture, contractors for books, contractors for furnaces, contractors for fuel, contractors even for pianos, and all making money out of it. The "Boards" that give the contracts do not make any money by way of commissions, do they? Ah! you know full well that hundreds of thousands of dollars are annually spent or squandered in running these Public Schools, and which are recommended, in a particular manner, for their economy!
But aside, for a moment, from these Public Schools, so numerous, so costly, so grand and imposing in their exterior, managed by a little army of high-paid professors, teachers, superintendents and assistants, costing the people of every city and State hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, there is another army, yea, a volunteer army, not commissioned or paid by the State, but by a greater power—God—who, for His love, and that uncomparable reward which only God bestows, devote themselves to teaching, instructing, training and educating the poor, the needy, the orphan, the houseless, the homeless, the forlorn, the despised, as well as the more favored of the earth. These make no grandiloquent printed reports in costly binding; they have no official stenographers or reporters to noise their proceedings in "morning papers"; they have no "Polytechnic Halls," fitted up with pretentious libraries, and all the surroundings of upholstery, and heating and cooling apparatus; but winter and summer, early and late, they keep the even tenor of their way with an "eye single" to their humble and laborious duties.
In nearly all the cities of America, in those busy and worldly centres of traffic and trade, of luxury and wealth, with their average of good and evil, virtue and crime, this "volunteer army" distributes itself noiselessly, quietly, and as it were obscurely, not heralded nor preceded by the emblems of pomp or worldly power, but nevertheless making its conquests and asserting its quiet influence in lanes and alleys, gathering up the little children, taking them to its camps, and instructing and educating them in the service of God and society.
You may have seen, in some of those cities, that long line of little boys or girls, two by two, extending to the length of a block or more; you may have observed how regularly they are assorted, the tallest in first, and ranging down to the little ones, whose busy feet are trying to keep up with the column. You may also have noted the order and silence (so unusual among children), and your attention was arrested, and perhaps you know not how all this order in this beautiful panorama was brought about. Well, with these boys you may have observed two men, one at the head, the other at the foot of this long line. If you saw this for the first time you may have wondered, and I suppose been even amused, at the figure and costume of those men;—the broad-brimmed hat, the long, strange-fashioned robe, the white collar, the collected air and mien, all bespeak the Christian Brother. These men, nevertheless, are "profoundly learned in all the sciences of the schools." They have abandoned home, family, friends, and have devoted themselves, merely for a scant support, to the education of the young.
If, on the other hand, the long line are girls, you may have observed two ladies; one at the head, the other at the foot. You will at a glance conclude they are not of the world. Their costume is of the homeliest cut and quality, but scrupulously clean; there is a something about their very presence that impresses you with reverence and respect, and you must be a very hardened sinner indeed if you did not feel the better of having even their shadow fall upon you. These silent, collected, but impressive women are "Nuns" of one order or another. They, too, have left all to serve God in the persons of these little children. They have made sacrifices greater than the world can appreciate or understand, and which only the Divine Master can reward. Their whole life is a silent but an eloquent sermon, their whole conduct the gospel in action. You will remember they are women like others of their sex, and mayhap have been flattered and petted, and once filled with the natural vanity and expectations of their sex; but all these they have put behind them, and henceforth and forever their walk, and life, and conversation is with God, and in the service of His little ones. Now it will be easily seen that the personal influence of such men and women over the life and manners of children, must be immensely beneficial. It is granted that the influence of father and mother is potential for good or evil. So it is with teachers. Children are shrewd observers, and are apt to take some one as a prototype and exemplar. This one they copy as near as may be. These "Christian Brothers," and "Nuns, or Sisters," are good models; they teach the children to pray in the best of all ways—by praying themselves first; they try to impress on these tender souls sentiments of love, obedience, and respect to their fathers and mothers, and, above all, their duties to our dear Lord. They accompany them to His altar on Sundays and holy days, beginning and ending all their daily lessons with a little prayer or devotion. For the rest, they give them, in their schools, a plain, practical education.
Every day (we are told) there are instances of men slipping from the high rounds to the lowest one in the ladder of wealth. Business men find themselves engulphed in the sea of financial embarrassment, from which they emerge with nothing but their personal resources to depend upon for a living. Clerks, salesmen, and others find themselves thrown out of employment, with no prospect of speedily obtaining places which they are competent to fill, and with no other means of gaining a livelihood. How many men are there in every city to-day, some of whom have families dependent on them for support, who bewail the mistake they made in not learning useful trades in their younger days? There are hundreds of them. There are men in every city who have seen better days, men of education and business ability, who envy the mechanic, who has a sure support for himself and family in his handicraft. Parents make a great mistake when they impose upon the brain of their boy the task of supporting him, without preparing his hands for emergencies.
No matter how favorable a boy's circumstances may be, he should enter the battle of life as every prudent general enters the battle of armies: with a reliable reserve to fall back upon in case of disaster. Every man is liable to be reduced to the lowest pecuniary point at some stage of his life, and it is hardly necessary to refer to the large proportion of men who reach that point. No man is poor who is the master of a trade. It is a kind of capital that defies the storm of financial reverse, and that clings to a man when all else has been swept away. It consoles him, in the hour of adversity, with the assurance that, let whatever may befall him, he need have no fear for the support of himself and his family.
Unfortunately a silly notion—the offspring of a sham aristocracy—has, of late years, led many parents to regard a trade as something disreputable, with which their children should not be tainted. Labor disreputable! What would the world be without it? It is the very power that moves the world. A Power higher than the throne of the aristocracy has ennobled labor, and he who would disparage it must set himself above the Divine principle, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread!" A trade is a "friend in need"; it is independence and wealth—a rich legacy which the poorest father may give to his son, and which the richest should regard as more valuable than gold.
Now what kind of education is necessary for a tradesman to carry on business successfully? Only a plain, practical education; that is to say, that kind and amount of knowledge of daily ordinary use and appreciation. It is reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar, and geography, and possibly a knowledge of the German language, sufficient to speak it.
If we look around we will see that all the important and every-day duties of life are carried on by the use of industry, common sense, reading, writing, and arithmetic.
And it might almost be said that the failures are to be ascribed, in part, if not to over-education, at least to the common misdirection of acquirements, accompanied with the vague ambition and desires which they invariably excite, but rarely serve to satisfy. Why, I could find, for instance, in the history, management, and success of every newspaper editor, a living proof of my proposition. Not that I leave it to be inferred that there is not, in these newspapers, the evidences of every kind of acquirements and ability; but that the founders within my knowledge, and those who have made it the power and success that it is, have worked with these ordinary instruments. But why give one instance when there are so many on every side—so much so that the success of what is called the learned class is so rare, that it must be put among the exceptions.
As to those who are able, and desire further information, they can have it to any extent at the colleges, convents, academies and higher schools.
Many of our "dissenting brethren," of the various denominations, are equally diligent, according to the measure of grace and light given them, to bring their children up in Christian morals and education. They have their own schools, and support them, or they send their children to Catholic institutions, and will not have them tempted or corrupted by the evil influences, moral, social, and intellectual, that emanate and surround those "whited sepulchres"—the godless schools—as the miasm emanates and surrounds the pestilent marsh. In all these schools the children are carefully trained in Christian practices, prayers, and religious duties, as well as taught a good, plain, practical course of studies. In fact, they are truly educated; while in the Public Schools they are simply instructed, as you might irrational animals, according to their instinct. The Jews also teach and bring up their children in the religion of their fathers, at their own expense; so that more than one-half are, fortunately for themselves, and fortunately for society, the good order and well-being of the State, educated outside of immoral and dangerous pest-houses. It is on this element of our population that the future of the State depends; for if we are to have a sound public conscience and a controlling conservative influence in public or private affairs, we must, under God and His Church, obtain it from a true Christian education.
At these parish schools, supported by voluntary aid, the expenses of pupils per year is under seven dollars; at the Public Schools, it is, I am informed, about thirty-two dollars; so that it costs about four times as much to give the poor, miserable, shallow, infidel instruction in the Public Schools, as it does to give a good Christian education in the denominational ones; or, in plainer language, to educate 20,000 children in denominational schools saves to tax-payers not less than the small sum! of $500,000.
"If thy right hand scandalize thee, cut it off and cast it from thee; for it is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish, rather than thy whole body be cast into hell."—(Matt. v. 30.) By the present Public School system, the State scandalizes the family, because it usurps the rights and duties that belong alone to parents; it scandalizes the tax-payer, because it takes money from him which it has no right to take; it scandalizes society, because, instead of teaching virtue, it teaches vice; it scandalizes the young men and the young women, because, instead of inspiring them with love for Christianity and their religious duties, it inspires them rather with contempt for religion, and turns them into actual unbelievers, and thus destroys the very life of society and the basis of every government; it scandalizes all nations, because there is not, and there has never been, any nation inculcating education without religion.
By its present system of education, the State has weakened, and will finally break up and destroy, the Christian family. The social unit is the family, not the individual; and the greatest danger to American society is, that we are rapidly becoming a nation of isolated individuals, without family ties or affections. The family has already been much weakened, and is fast disappearing. We have broken away from the old homestead, have lost the restraining and purifying associations that gathered round it, and live away from home in hotels and boarding-houses. A large and influential class of women not only neglect, but disdain, the retired and simple domestic virtues, and scorn to be tied down to the modest but essential duties—the drudgery, they call it—of wives and mothers. We are daily losing the faith, the virtues, the habits, and the manners, without which the family cannot be sustained. This, coupled with the separate pecuniary interests of husband and wife secured, make the family, to a fearful extent, the mere shadow of what it was and of what it should be. What remains of the family is only held together by the graces and virtue of women. But even this last hope is fast breaking down, by the great facility of obtaining a divorce a vinculo matrimonii—a facility by which the laws of most of the States of the Union grant to lust the widest margin of license, and legalize concubinage and adultery. Now when the family goes, the nation goes too, or ceases to be worth preserving. God made the family the type and basis of society; "male and female made he them."
By its present system of education, the State makes war on God and His Christ, and says, with Lucifer, "Non servio"; and this is the daring rebel against God and His law, that would claim the innocent children of the Christian family as its own; teach them its false maxims, promising them, as Satan, its master, did the Saviour, riches, and honors, and power, if they will but fall down and worship it. How incomprehensibly strange it is, that good men and women who profess Christianity, and acknowledge the obligations of its commandments, should give ear to this tempter, instead of saying, "Get behind me, Satan," and, "Thou art a liar and a cheat from the beginning." The State, in this subject of education, represents the world; and religion, as well as experience, teaches us its folly, its wickedness, its treachery and its ambition. "The State promises bread and gives a stone." It promises wealth, and honor, and gives taxes, slavery, and degradation. It is blind, and it attempts to lead; it is ignorant, and it offers to teach and direct the young. It will not receive the law, and it claims the right to give it. It arrogates the "higher law," and "would be as God." There is the danger; and it is against this the fight must be made, if we would not surrender our civil and religious freedom, our temporal and eternal happiness.
Surely it is time for all good Christians of America to cry out to our rulers, "And now, O ye rulers, understand; receive instruction, you that judge the earth."—(Ps. ii. x.) Do not force any longer upon a Christian nation an educational system which produces such results; do not train any longer our children without religion—to infidelity, and consequently to revolution. Do not teach the youth of America any longer to reject God and His religion; they will not be long faithful to you if you make them unfaithful to the faith of their fathers. You, and all the classes in society who delight in seeing the influence of religion weakened or destroyed, never seem to realize, until it is too late, that you are sure to be the especial victims of your own success. The man who scorns to love God and His law, how shall he continue to love his neighbor? The man who has said "there is no God," is he not on the point of also saying "lust is lawful," "property is robbery"? If you raise instruments to deny God and to do away with all religious principles, God will use these very instruments to do away with you also.
Your Pagan system of education will ultimately overturn all order in the land. Among ancient Pagan nations, where the poor were comparatively ignorant—where they did not know their rights—it was easy to hold them in bondage; but now things have changed. Discontent in the lower order of society can no longer be smothered. Education has become general; and, unfortunately, the very element, without which education is often a curse, is omitted. Religious education has been separated from secular instruction. Without religion, the poor are unable to control their passions, or to bear their hard lot. They see wealth around them, and, unless taught by religion, they see no reason why that wealth should not be divided amongst them. Why should they starve, while their neighbors roll in splendor and luxury? If the poor were ignorant, they would not, perhaps, notice all the sad privations of their state; they would not, perhaps, feel them so keenly. But they are partially educated, and "a little learning is a dangerous thing."
They know their power, and, not having the soothing influence of religion to restrain them, they use their power. They have done so in France and elsewhere, and if they do not always succeed in producing revolution, and anarchy, it is only the bayonet that prevents them. Such is the abyss that yawns beneath the feet of our country, and into which the advocates of education without religion—perhaps some of them unconsciously—seek to precipitate us, by continuing to force upon this Christian nation an anti-Christian, an anti-American system of education.
Surely the grievance is not simply an affair of taxes, or so much money unjustly levied and collected. This we might bear, as we have to do in other cases of injustice, for righteousness' sake. But we have a duty to God, ourselves, and our children. We recognize the office and obligations of the State as temporal ruler, but we do not acknowledge in it an absolute and unconditional authority. We do not admit the doctrine of passive obedience. We will not and cannot surrender the education of our children to its dictation and control, for that is a trust placed in our hands by a higher power, and for which we will have to answer, at the last day, on our salvation. I ask—am I right in all that I have said upon the State and its godless system of education? If I am, then I think I have a right to ask for a verdict of "Guilty." If there are still some who cannot see that I am right, then let them, without delay, be operated upon for amaurosis. But then, in God's name, is it not high time to inquire what should be done to correct the system, and stop the torrent of its evil influences? This is a great question; it demands a speedy and satisfactory solution. The interests it involves are commensurate with time and eternity.