The first Napoleon, the restorer of order and religion in France, influenced, at the time, merely by human considerations, and speaking only as a wise lawgiver, and not as a practical Christian, insisted upon the necessity of making the precepts of religion the basis of education in the university, whose halls had echoed the blasphemous unbelief of the disciples of Voltaire.
At our very door, we have likewise the judgment and example of our Canadian neighbors, demonstrating the feasibility of connecting secular education with the most thorough instruction in the doctrines and practices of the different churches. Such opinions and facts should have some weight with our friends here who are fearful of the proposed experiment.
We know, by our own personal experience, that young men educated at the exclusively Catholic College of Mt. St. Mary's, in Maryland, and other young men, graduates of Yale and Princeton, where Catholics are rarely if ever seen, meet afterward in the world of business or politics, and immediately learn to value each other according to intrinsic personal worth, and to exchange all the mutual courtesies and discharge all the reciprocal duties of social life. It is the same with Catholics and Protestants educated together at the many Catholic colleges in the United States, where the Catholic pupils are nevertheless invariably instructed, with the utmost exactness, in all the doctrines and practices of their church. There are thousands of such living witnesses throughout the country, ready to attest the correctness of our statement. It proves this, (what we know to be true without the proof,) that the education received by Catholics at their own schools, whilst rigidly doctrinal, uniformly inculcates charity, urbanity, and every duty of good citizenship. There is not, therefore, and never can be any difficulty, on the part of Catholics, to meet their Protestant fellow-citizens in all the relations of life, private and public, with the utmost frankness, fraternity, and confidence, provided that they are not repelled by harshness or chilled by distrust. Their religion teaches them that such is their duty. Certainly, if such happy results are realized even in England, Prussia, and Austria, where all barriers, whether social or religious, are traditionally more difficult to surmount, how can it be that we must expect animosities to be engendered under the free action and the liberal intercourse of our republican society?
We must, therefore, consider the fear expressed by this first objection as wholly groundless. But even were it otherwise, what then? Should we, therefore, sacrifice to such an apprehension the far more momentous considerations that our republican, self-governing community can never safely trust itself in the great work of perpetuating the liberties of a Christian nation without planting itself upon the morality of the Gospel; that the revealed doctrines of Christ are the foundation of his moral code, and that to practise the one faithfully the people must be taught to believe the other firmly; and that religion so taught, as M. Guizot admirably expresses it, "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 that "national education should be given and received in the midst of a religious atmosphere!"
What would the advantage of a more perfect amalgamation or unification of citizenship avail us, if, to obtain it, we were to strike from under our institutions the only solid basis upon which they can rest with any hope whatever of being able to withstand the rude shocks of time, to which all mortal works are subject, and which destroyed the grandest structures of pagan power, solely because they rested upon human wisdom and human virtue, unaided by revealed religion and supernatural grace? We cannot, therefore, admit any force in the first objection.
As to the second: How can the harmony or efficiency of the school system be disturbed by permitting a school to be organized for Catholic children in any district or locality where the requisite number may be found to render it practicable, in accordance with the general policy of the law? It is presumed that the law contemplates the education of all these children, and we cannot see that the harmony of the system consists in putting them into any one school-room rather than another. It is not proposed to withdraw them from the general supervision of the state, or to deny to the state the authority to regulate the standard of education, and to see that its requirements are complied with. This is done in every one of the countries of which we have spoken. No one is so unreasonable as to expect that separate schools shall be organized where the number of pupils may be below a reasonable uniform standard; as it is not proposed to increase the expense of the system. On the contrary, as far as concerns the education of our Catholic children in the city of New York, we propose to reduce the cost considerably, as we shall explain before we close this article. It is said that the several Protestant denominations may demand the same privilege. Suppose that they do. If they have a sufficient number of children in any particular locality for the proper organization of a separate school under the law, and are willing to fulfil its requirements, how can the general system be impaired by allowing them to do so? This is the condition annexed to the privilege in all those countries which have adopted this liberal policy. The proposition seems too plain for argument. When a college contains five hundred boys, two hundred may be classed in the higher division, three hundred in the lower, and each may have separate playgrounds and recitation halls. So, if a district contains two hundred of one faith, and three hundred of another, or of several other creeds, surely the two hundred may be organized into one school and the three hundred into another, or into several others, according to the standard of numbers, as may be required by the law. The whole question, therefore, is purely one of distribution, not at all above the capacity of a drill-sergeant! The same number of children would be educated, probably in the same number of schools, and at the same cost, as now. The course of secular education prescribed by the state could be rigidly enforced in all such schools without assailing the conscience of any one, because we suppose that the state would not object that Catholics should learn English history from Lingard, whilst others might prefer Hume and Macaulay. We presume that there would be no disagreement in regard to reading, writing, arithmetic, mathematics, natural philosophy, and those things which constitute the general studies of primary and high schools. It is only with such that the state has any right to intermeddle, and it is only such that the state professes to secure to its pupils. The state may say, "The public welfare requires that the citizens of a self-governing nation shall receive sufficient intellectual culture to enable them to discharge their duties understandingly;" but the state has no right to say that its pupils shall take their knowledge and form their opinions of the great moral events of history from D'Aubigné or from Cardinal Bellarmin. It was this that troubled the great Catholic and Protestant governments of Europe, until experience discovered to them the simple solution of the difficulty which we are so earnestly endeavoring to commend to the acceptance of the American people. Have we not at least a right to expect that our motives will not be misrepresented; and that we shall be believed when we say that we are not hostile to the public schools, but, on the contrary, most earnestly anxious to secure for them the widest usefulness and the greatest efficiency. We know that that cannot be if religion be excluded; and that it must be excluded where so many conflicting creeds confront each other.
As to the third: If it were true that the Catholic people contributed almost nothing to the school fund, as is no doubt sincerely believed by some who are not disposed to do us injustice, a very serious question would, nevertheless, be suggested by such a statement as this, which we copy from the article in The Chicago Advance already referred to: "Our American population is principally Protestant, partly Romish, slightly Jewish, and increasingly rationalistic or infidel." Now, it is unquestionably true that the infidels in this country can count but very few amongst their number who ever knelt at a Catholic altar. Still, it is the theory of our opponents that ignorance is, in itself, the source of all evil, and the parent of impiety. It would certainly, therefore, be a terrible calamity for the country if the children of six millions of Catholics were deprived of education because their fathers paid no taxes! To educate them would be unanimously regarded as a public necessity; just as our police authorities remove contagion at the public expense. If this view of public economy be true, (and we need not dispute it in this argument,) then it follows that the question of educating the Catholics is altogether independent of what they do or do not contribute to the treasury. Educated they must be; but suppose that they steadily refuse to receive the knowledge offered, except upon the condition that their consciences shall not be violated, and their parental responsibilities disregarded, by subjecting their children to a training inconsistent with the spirit of their religion; how then? Will you consign the six millions to what you call the moral death of ignorance, and suffer their carcasses to putrefy upon the highway of your republican progress, poisoning the fountains of your national life? Or will you prefer, in the spirit of your institutions, to respect their conscientious opinions, and to enable them, in the manner we have already indicated, to coöperate with you in the full development of your great and noble policy of universal popular education?
But, is it true that the Catholic people have no substantial claim as tax-payers? Such might have been the case twenty-five years ago; but every well-informed man knows that it is not so now. Wealth, amongst the Catholic population, may perhaps be less perceptible, because it is more diffused than it is amongst some other bodies of our citizens; but no man who is familiar with the cities of New York, Brooklyn, Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee, and all others, from the sources of the Mississippi to the Gulf, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, or with the Catholic farm-settlements of the Western States, can shut his eyes to the fact that our Catholic people are thrifty and well-to-do in the world; and that very many of them possess large wealth. A member of the British Parliament, in a recent work upon the Irish in America, has demonstrated this by undeniable statistics. The same is true of Catholics here of all other nationalities. We have not the time nor space, neither is it necessary, to go into the details of this question. We suppose our readers to be intelligent and well-informed, and that they can readily recall to their minds the facts which substantiate the truth of our assertion.
Are there those, sharp at a bargain, who will say, "Well! the Catholics have the resources to educate themselves, and are doing so now; let them continue the good work without calling upon the state for any portion of the public funds, to which they contribute by their taxes"? The dishonesty of such a proposition is shown in the simple statement of it. It is true, as we have said over and over again, that the Catholic people, after paying their taxes to the state, have, with a generous self-sacrifice amounting to heroism, established all over this country more universities, colleges, academies, free schools, and orphan asylums than have ever been founded by all the rest of the nation through private contributions. A people capable of such great deeds in the cause of civilization and religion are not to be despised, can never be repressed, and certainly should not be denied justice, when they ask no more!