PUTNAM'S DEFENCE.
Our readers will remember, we presume, that Putnam's Magazine for July last contained an article which attracted some attention, under the title of "Our Established Church," and to which we replied in our number for the August following; the same magazine for last month, in an article entitled "The Unestablished Church," comes out with its defence, of which we should be uncivil not to take some notice.
The July article, written in an unsuccessful vein of irony, was directed against the honor both of the church and the city and State of New York, and was designed to show that the church, grasping at wealth and power, and skilfully availing herself of political passions and party divisions, had obtained from the State and city governments endowments for herself and subventions for her educational and charitable institutions out of all proportion to any granted to similar Protestant institutions. We replied that the endowments are imaginary, for the church here is unendowed; that the subventions are greatly exaggerated; that several alleged had never been made, while others said to have been made to Catholic were in fact made to Protestant institutions; and that Catholics had never received a tithe of what was requisite to place them on an equality in regard to subventions from the public with non-Catholics. The Magazine, though with exceeding ill grace, concedes nearly all that we denied, abandons its assumption that ours is the established church, confesses that it is unestablished, and disputes us, except with sneers and exclamation-points, only in regard to two statements in our reply, one of which is of no importance, and the other is one in which it is decidedly, not to say maliciously wrong.
The two points disputed we proceed to dispose of. The Magazine charged the corporation of the city with granting leases of valuable sites for Catholic institutions for a long term of years at a merely nominal rent. We replied that only one such lease had been granted since 1847, which is not technically exact, and we overlooked the fact that the lease for the site of the Catholic Orphan Asylum between Fifty-first and Fifty-second streets bears the date of 1857; but by the Magazine's own showing, though technically a new lease, and so recorded, it was really only a change in the tenure of the old lease. Catholics had held and occupied the site under a lease from the city, and at the same rent as now, for years before 1847. So much for the first point.
The Magazine charged that the State paid out, in 1866, for benefactions under religious control $129,025.14, of which $124,174.14 went to the religious purposes of the Catholic Church. Not being able to find any proof of this, and regarding the unsupported statement of the writer as presumptive evidence of falsehood rather than of truth, we let the charge pass without any attempt at a specific refutation. The Magazine reiterates the statement, and refers to the report of the comptroller of the State. We have the comptroller's report before us; we have examined and reëxamined it; but we do not find the statement in it or any thing to warrant it; and it has been more than once pronounced on the highest authority, and proved to be a forgery, as the Magazine well knows or is inexcusable for not knowing.
We did not meet this statement for the first time in Putnam's Magazine. It had been previously made, and we supposed sufficiently refuted in the journals, especially in the Utica Herald, whose editor, Mr. Roberts, had been a member of the Legislature and of the committee of ways and means in 1866. Mr. Roberts under his own name, pronounced it a forgery. For honest and fair-minded men this was conclusive. But the charge was embodied in an anonymous memorial, and laid on the desks of the members of the New York State Convention, held in 1867 and 1868, and was again pronounced in open debate a forgery, without a single voice being raised in its defence. The Hon. Mr. Cassidy, of the Albany Atlas and Argus, declared it false from beginning to end. The Hon. Mr. Alvord, the distinguished member from Onondaga County, did the same. The Hon. Erastus Brooks, member of the Convention from Richmond, and one of the editors of the New York Evening Express, would not go quite so far, but regarded it as an admirable example of one of the many ways of telling a lie. He exposed its disingenuous character, by showing that the $8000 stated in it to be appropriated to St. Mary's Hospital, Rochester, was expressly declared in the statute making the appropriation to be for the support of soldiers under the supervision of Dr. Backus, the surgeon of the post. The soldiers were supported and taken care of in St. Mary's Hospital, as the only proper place, in the judgment of the military authorities, that could be obtained. Mr. Brooks also gave, as another instance of the disingenuousness of the statement, its omission to count $25,000, appropriated to a Protestant institution in Elmira, we suppose for a similar purpose. Mr. Alvord not only pronounced it false from beginning to end, but, statute in hand, showed from the act of the Legislature itself, which he read, that instead of appropriating for charitable purposes nearly $130,000, it appropriated only $80,000, to be divided among the several counties according to their assessed valuation.[143] What has become of our friend, the Rev. Leonard W. Bacon, who sometimes writes for Putnam, and who has such delicate scruples about Protestants using forged documents against Catholics?
So much has been said about the partiality of the Legislature to the Catholic Church that it may be well to look at the conditions on which it grants and distributes its aid to charitable institutions. The act of 1866, so bitterly denounced, appropriates from the State treasury $80,000 for orphan asylums, to be apportioned to the several counties according to their assessed value, and distributed to the several asylums according to the number of inmates received and cared for in them respectively, without the slightest reference to the fact whether they were Catholic or Protestant. Nothing could be fairer, and if Catholic asylums received more of the benefaction than those under the charge of non-Catholics, it was simply because they received and cared for a larger number of orphans. We see no ground of complaint here against either the Legislature or the church. It is very possible that Catholics have a larger number of orphans in proportion to their population than have non-Catholics, and it is not unlikely, also, that they are more ready to make sacrifices for their support.
In the list of benefactions of the State to Catholic institutions in 1866, the Magazine places the item of $78,000 to the Catholic Protectory. This was a special grant to enable the society to purchase a site and erect suitable buildings for its purpose. This protectory corresponds very nearly to the Protestant societies for the protection and reformation of juvenile delinquents, and which the State is accustomed to aid by its benefactions. The appropriations for its support are justified on the ground that it is of great public utility and protection of the public from a class of destitute children not unlikely, if not taken care of, to grow up vicious and criminal, to fill our alms-houses, our jails and penitentiaries. The community at large, rather than the church specially, is benefited, and there is no good reason why grants for its support should be objected to or regarded as made for special Catholic purposes. The only thing that a Protestant can object to, if any charitable institution is to receive aid from the State, is, that by aiding a Catholic protectorate to take care of and reform destitute children of Catholics without the loss of their Catholic faith, it so far fails to aid Protestants to bring them up in Protestantism, or, what is perhaps worse, in no religion.
As a matter of course, Putnam's Magazine dwells on the public grants to certain Catholic schools in this city. We do not deny those grants. We conceded and defended them in our former article, and the Magazine has in no respect invalidated our defence; it has only stared and sneered at it. Give us either schools to which we can send our children, or divide the schools equitably between Catholics and Protestants, and we will solicit no special grants of the sort. As it is, neither the city nor the State gives back by way of subvention to our schools more than a pittance of what it takes from us for the support of schools to which we cannot with our Catholic conscience send our children. If the State taxes the whole community alike for the support of public schools, it is bound to provide schools for Catholics as well as Protestants, and for both such as leave the conscience of each free, sacred, and inviolable. If it refuses to do so, the least that it can do is to make liberal grants to the schools Catholics are obliged to establish for themselves.
What we have thus far said disposes of the Magazine's statistics, and sufficiently relieves the State from the charge of discriminating in favor of Catholics, as well as the church from the charge of intriguing for special favors. She has never asked or received any special favors from the Legislature. The other matters in the article merit no special reply. The writer attempts to be witty, but succeeds only in being abusive. Wit does not appear to be his strong point, and his attempts at it only provoke a smile at his expense. His strong point is hatred of the church. He hates her with a hatred equal to that of the wicked Jews for our Lord whom they crucified between two thieves. Her very presence annoys him; her independence enrages him; and nothing appears able to appease him but her subjection to the state, and the subjection of the state to the intolerant Protestantism of which he is a mouth-piece.