With what utter disregard for the rights of conscience the infidel and atheistic faction coolly avows its purpose to enforce a secular and irreligious education upon all the people—a system known to be no less antagonistic to the spirit of our democratic institutions than hostile to the religious convictions of Catholics as well as Protestants! What loud outcries and stormy denunciations echo from certain popular pulpits when this faction demands the expulsion of the Bible from the public schools! Is any person cool in the midst of this confusion? Is there any class of citizens which looks to the common good and adheres to the principle of equal regard for religious rights and education free for all? There are such persons. There is such a class. Those are they who never shrink from avowing their principles, and whose principles are always right, in spite of temporary unpopularity—the representatives of the Catholic Church of America.
When the excitement of the hour has died away, and the schemes of politicians to gain power by fastening upon the country a system fatal to liberty, and radical in its assault upon the spirit of our government, have met their just fate, then we shall receive the honor due to those who have defended the country from the danger of adopting partisan measures aimed against a certain class of citizens.
We hope to live to see the day when there will not be a child in the whole land capable of instruction who shall not receive a thorough education, fitting him to be a patriotic citizen of our country, and, at the same time, in nowise interfering with his religious duties. The present system signally fails to accomplish this. Those who so strenuously uphold its organization and attempt to make it compulsory upon all are hostile to the genius of our institutions and fanatical in their zeal. That they are not lovers of education is evident from their own ignorance of facts. That they are in earnest when they charge Catholics with hostility to education we can scarcely believe; for we hear from the same lips hints and warnings against Catholic success in education. We hear also that the Catholic Church is growing, and, unless something is done to stop her, she will convert all the Protestants in the country; and, still at other times, that she is an effete and worn-out thing which cannot live through the century in a free republic. At one time Catholics are derided as idiots; at another represented as deep and insidious conspirators. There is scarcely anything which is not affirmed or denied of them, according as it suits the mood of their revilers. If our people were cooler and more dispassionate, we should find all those calumnies answering one another. As it is, we are constrained to pay them more or less attention, though the nature of the testimony against us scarcely allows us to take up more than one point at a time.
If Catholics or Methodists or Episcopalians or Baptists can give a better and a cheaper education, we see no reason why the state should interfere with those who choose to avail themselves of it. Let the state set up any standard it may choose, or make it obligatory; Catholics will cheerfully come up to it, no matter how high it may be, provided equal rights are allowed to all. The government has a right to demand that its voters shall possess knowledge. It has no right to say how or where they shall acquire knowledge. The government is bound by public policy to promote education. This is to be done by stimulating in this department the same activity which has made Americans famous in other branches of social economy, by encouraging spontaneous action, and not by an ill-judged system of “protection” of one kind of education against another, or by creating a state monopoly. Bespeaking candor and due respect on the part of those who may differ from us, we take our stand on what we conceive to be the true American ground, and are willing to abide by the consequences—fair play, universal culture, obligatory knowledge, non-interference of the state in religion, and free trade in education.
SUGGESTED BY A CASCADE AT LAKE GEORGE.
Not idly could I watch this torrent fall
Hour after hour; not vainly day by day
Visit the spot to meditate and pray.
The charm that holds me in its giant thrall