[131] “God never denies grace to one who does what he can.”
[132] An old monastic site (alas!), so named from the donor, the Kaiser Charlemagne.
[133] Phædri Fabulæ, Fab. IX., Asinus et Leo Venantes.
[134] 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.
[135] Thus Protestant bigotry probably lost us Canada, as it gained us—must we say it?—the treason of Arnold. The bigotry of Arnold revolted at the alliance with France, because it was an alliance with Catholics. His disgust was heightened by the liberality of feeling which began to be manifested by his countrymen towards Catholics. The co-operation of Catholics, native and foreign, in the cause of our National Independence, was so marked that it may well have embittered a patriot of his calibre, and indeed it infuriated him to that degree that he preferred to sell his country rather than serve a cause which was so largely sustained by those whose religion he hated. Does not Arnold live in successors? To say nothing of others, who were the Know-Nothing patriots who preferred to disgrace the national name by destroying the memorial-stone contributed by Pius IX. to the Washington Monument, rather than that its shaft should preserve the evidence of the respect of a Pope for the memory of our Pater Patriæ?
[136] Dr. Rock, Hierurgia.
[137] Introd. to Legends of the Monastic Orders (p. 25).
[138] Dr. Rock, Hierurgia.
[139] Roma Sotterranea.
[140] Palmer’s Early Christian Symbolism.