Offences against property are almost exclusively in the hands of our English criminals, if we except the horse-stealing of the Southwest. Our most expert pickpockets, our most dexterous sneak-thieves, daring highwaymen, and scientific burglars come from London, many of whom have served her Majesty for a term of years in her penal colonies, and are so well known to the detectives of the British metropolis that they have sought new fields of enterprise in this country. They have been preceded or accompanied by prize-fighters, gamblers, and keepers of low dens called concert-saloons. The former they make the partners in their labors and gains, and in the latter hot-beds of infamy they find shelter and concealment. It may be said that this class of crimes is far less reprehensible than those above enumerated, and so they would be were it not that highway robbery and burglary sometimes terminate in the taking of human life. Still, it must be said in justice that we hear of very few cases of wilful homicide being perpetrated by the English among us, though, like the French, suicide is not unknown to them, but arises from different causes. The Briton "shuffles off this mortal coil" through moroseness and despondency; the Gaul gaily prepares to smother himself with carbonic acid gas from a morbid sentimentality, and a contempt for the precious gift of life which he is about to throw away.
Now, if all these offences were simply infractions of the municipal law, we would naturally look to our legislatures, our courts, juries, and sheriffs for their prevention or punishment, but they are not only that, but breaches of the divine law, and we must depend likewise on the efficacy of moral suasion to prevent if not to correct them. Public opinion can do much to repress crime, the legislative, administrative, and judicial branches of our various local governments, each in its sphere, might effect far more good; but it is on the teachings of true Christianity alone, and all the consequences that flow from it, that we must rely if we wish to stem the tide of misery, vice, and outrage which are fast surging over every portion of our fair land. The strong arm of the civil power is potent to punish when the crime has been committed, but weak indeed to prevent its perpetration. This higher and nobler duty is reserved for religion, and for religion alone. It is well enough to make concise and exact punitive laws, though this is not always done; and to administer them fearlessly, honestly, and intelligently, though the reverse is generally the case; still, experience has taught us that wise enactments and impartial judges have very little power to stay the promptings of bad hearts or repress the temptations ever presenting themselves to men of vicious habits or defective moral training. The church, and only the church, can rule the mind and heart of man, can train him from his infancy, before he knows or is responsible to any civil law, can strengthen him with the graces of the sacraments, arm him with the most potent of all weapons against sin—prayer—place constantly before his eyes the certainty of everlasting bliss or eternal damnation, keep him in the "narrow path," and thus prevent the possibility of his being an enemy to society and an outcast of heaven.
Next to the church comes the school. The importance of education to the well-being of society can never be overstated. It may be well said that it is in the school-room the seeds of vice or virtue are first sown, it is there that the future benefactor or the enemy of his kind commences his career in life, and it is upon the proper or vicious method of teaching which he receives as a boy depends mainly his future course in the world. No wonder, then, that the Catholic Church is so desirous of superintending the training of those little ones who by the sacrament of baptism have been made children of God and heirs to the kingdom of heaven; that the zealous parish priest should mourn over the loss of hundreds of the youth of his congregation, who, taught in Protestant or infidel schools, have fallen away from the faith to plunge into sin and vice. Is he to be blamed if he exhausts every resource and strains every nerve to establish for his people a school where their offspring will be guarded from worldly contamination, and trained in all the beautiful morality of Catholic doctrine? Few seem to understand the comprehensive meaning of the word education. The mere acquisition of worldly knowledge is not education, the development of the highest intellectual powers is not education, but only a part, and a secondary part at that, of a complete education; for without inculcating morality, justice, a high sense of honor, a noble disregard for self, and a sympathy for the suffering and unfortunate, you curse man with a disposition that is its own Nemesis, with unlawful desires that "make the food they feed on," and simply enlarge his capacity for doing evil.
That this is the result of our present common-school system cannot well be gainsaid in view of the general spirit of peculation and corruption which prevails in those very portions of the country where such schools are most numerous and best attended and supported. And this view is not ours alone. Already we find the secular press, hitherto the strongest opponents of denominational education, clamoring for a reform in our method of public instruction. "We must have," says a leading daily paper of this city, "a higher system of morals taught in our public schools"; though the writer does not condescend to say how morals can be taught without religion, or who are to be the teachers. Is it the fagged-out teacher who tries to earn his salary by the least possible labor, and who perhaps, in this respect, is as deficient as the children themselves; or is it the trained priest or the lowly Christian Brother, who has devoted himself heart and soul to the service of God and of his creatures, and whose reward is not of this world?
Our common schools, with some modifications, are decidedly a New England invention, but none the worse for that, for the early settlers of that much-abused region, whatever may have been their other faults, were neither an irreligious nor an immoral people. On the contrary they were deeply imbued with a sense of the dignity of religion and a reverence for its ministers, according to their limited and erroneous but honestly entertained ideas; and being all of one way of thinking, they established schools, at the public expense it is true, but they took care that their peculiar theological notions should go hand-in-hand with secular teaching. The minister, the elder, or the deacon generally united with his clerical office that of schoolmaster, and the morals as well as the intellectual qualities of the pupils were sedulously developed and cultivated. Now all this is changed. The foundation upon which the public-school system was built has crumbled into dust, and the superstructure cannot and ought not to stand longer. Our country is now composed of many nationalities, believing in various creeds, and the task of educating the rising generation should be remitted to each denomination to take care of and instruct its own members. If we want to inculcate true lessons of morality and integrity, to stop bribery, forgery, perjury, dishonesty, infanticide, and homicide, we must change our system of education, or it is possible that society, laboring under so heavy a burden of sin and dishonor, will in the near future be crushed to pieces.
But for the adult immigrants who have never felt the baleful influence of our public schools, what is the remedy? For the Germans we would say, a more general attendance at divine service. They are pre-eminently an organizing people: why do not those good German Catholics who are so constant in their devotions establish more societies, with a view to induce their erring compatriots to give up at least a portion of that time now wholly devoted to pleasure to the worship of God? This would be a work of great charity, and if earnestly undertaken would doubtless be successful. The panacea that lies before our Irish fellow-citizens is temperance—that observed, we venture to say that they will be found among the most moral and orderly portion of our population. In this connection we are glad to observe the untiring energy exhibited by prominent laymen to organize and unite temperance societies, and the encouragement given them by priests and bishops. Our Irish friends must not forget that not only the honor of their native land and the prosperity of their children in that of their adoption depend on their good conduct and sobriety, but that, to a great extent, the Catholic Church in America is contemned or revered in proportion as they act against or in harmony with her doctrine and discipline. If woe be denounced against whosoever gives scandal, a blessing is also promised to those who, by their actions, glorify the name of God.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] New York Times, May 13, 1873.
[15] Father Mathew: A Biography. By John Francis Maguire, M.P. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1871.