Protestants flatter themselves that, if our children go to the same school with Protestant children, and associate freely with them, they will lose their attachment to the religion of their parents. In individual cases this may indeed happen; but as a general rule this early mingling of our children with those of Protestants will, we apprehend, be found to have a contrary effect. Our children, when they grow up, will have, in spite of all we can do, to live and associate more or less with Protestants; and whatever precautions we take in their childhood, some day they will have to become acquainted with them, and to learn what they have to say against Catholicity. To keep them in the faith by keeping them from all contact with heresy is entirely ont of the question in a country like ours; and nothing, as far as we can discover, is gained by delaying this inevitable contact to a late period of life. Those foreigners, we have observed, who have grown up in ignorance of Protestants and Protestantism, are precisely those who, on coming here, are the most liable to fall away. An Irishman from the parts of Ireland where Protestants abound, and who has encountered them daily from his childhood up, is seldom if ever found to apostatize on coming to the United States; but, unhappily, we cannot say as much for those who come from those parts of Ireland where there are few or no Protestants. Children are while young strongly disposed to adhere to the religion of their parents; and if, before they have begun to speculate on their own account, and beforethey have begun to experience the perturbations of passion, they have become familiarized with Protestants, heard and answered their objections as a child may hear and answer them, there is comparatively little danger of their ever in after-life being seduced from the church. Protestantism has no novelty for them, and therefore no power to attract them.

Moreover, the impression the Catholic child gets of Protestants from his parents is seldom wholly true, for the child transfers the horror of Protestantism with which they have inspired him to Protestants personally, and fancies that they must be as deformed, as horrible, and as revolting in their ordinary appearance and in the ordinary relations of secular life as his parents have painted Protestantism itself. One day he becomes personally acquainted with Protestants, finds them not ill-looking, decidedly human in their appearance, intelligent, active, amiable, and perhaps even affectionate.

He is surprised; he sees the picture he had formed in his own mind is false, and that he has been deceived, and, as he concludes, by his parents. His confidence in their judgment is then weakened, and he is prepared to listen to what his Protestant friends have to say. Now comes the danger. He finds himself ignorant of the objections which Protestants urge against our religion, and quite unprovided with answers to them, for no one can understand the answer to an objection till he knows practically the objection itself. Now, if he had known Protestantism from his infancy, learned from early childhood these objections in the form in which children state and understand them, and been furnished, in proportion as his mind needed and could receive them, with the proper explanations and answers, he would not have been in a moment's danger. Since Catholics and Protestants must live together, this early mingling of Catholic and Protestant children at school, if proper pains be taken by Catholic parents and pastors to instruct their children, will work more good than injury to our religion. The Protestant party will lose much of their prejudice, and the Catholic party will grow up with a firm and robust faith, proof against every trial, and which no contact with heresy in after-life can shake.

Another effect will be produced, alike fatal to the hopes of non-Catholics. Their present strength against Catholics in this country to a great extent depends on the fact that the majority of Catholics are foreigners, with un-American tastes, habits, and manners. Our children, if educated in the public schools, will at a very early age become americanized, and be able to feel that they are "to the manner "both "born" and bred. They will imbibe a free and manly spirit in face of non-Catholics, and hold up their heads, and speak out in the bold and energetic tone of free-born Americans. The church will then cease to be a foreign church here; it will be nationalized, and Catholicity become an integral element in the national life. The Catholic population will assume their rightful position, and have their due moral weight. This will be a gain to the Catholic cause of no little importance, for we can assure our non-Catholic friends that their belief that to americanize is to protestantize is wholly unfounded. We do not place American nationality, in itself, above other nationalities, but it is undoubtedly the best nationality for Americans, and Catholicity will become strong here in proportion as the Cath

olic population is thoroughly nationalized, and has none of the prejudices to encounter common to every native against foreigners.

Looking as calmly as we can on all sides of the question, we are firmly convinced that the common schools are upon the whole an advantage rather than a disadvantage to us as Catholics. Of course, they are not all we could wish, they are not what we would have if we were able to do as we would, but they are by no means as dangerous to us as nonCatholics in their anti-popery zeal persuade themselves. We are and must be, in all the relations of secular life, mixed up with Protestants, and such are the circumstances of the country that our safety consists in having our children early inured to the rough and tumble of American society as it is. Here we cannot expect them to grow up Catholics through simple social influences, or to be protected in the faith by the fostering care of the government, or by its vigilance in excluding all contact with heresy. The faith of our children must be early exercised to habits of self-defence. Catholicity here can be no hot-house plant. It is and cannot but be exposed to all weathers. But this need not encourage the hopes of non-Catholics, or discourage us; for if parents will only do their duty and pay some little attention to domestic education, and study to set a good example before their children, it will only take the deeper root and attain a hardier growth. Here, if not everywhere else, the Catholic, save in his dependence on the church and her sacraments, must learn to stand alone, and early acquire what the Germans call Selbstständigkeit, or a stand-up-tiveness-onone's-own-feet. Faith and piety may be injured by toomuch nursing, and a Catholic people may lose its faith by the too great pains of secular society to keep them ortho-dox. For those who have not a vocation to the religious life, the great study should be to form a sturdy Catholic character, that may be trusted in some measure, with God's grace, to itself. They who are to live in the world, must be formed to withstand the world and to be able in whatever straits they are placed to do something to help themselves. The times when a Catholic community could be guarded by the civil power, as the shepherd guards his flock by his watch-dog from the wolves, have passed away, perhaps never to return, and the great body of Catholics everywhere, as under the pagan emperors of Rome, must now be early accustomed to feel that they are left to

the providence of God, the vigilance of their pastors, and to their own resources; and the earlier we prepare our people in this country to face the errors and dangers to which they are exposed, the better will it be for them and the better for religion. Taking this view of the subject, we are very far from regarding the common schools, even if we are obliged to avail ourselves of them, so long as they are no worse than they now are, as likely to do us any permanent injury as Catholics.

Our readers will perceive that we have not entered into the question as to the propriety, where practicable, of establishing and supporting exclusively Catholic schools for our children, for on that point we suppose there is no difference of opinion among Catholics. We have studiously avoided saying any thing of the movement of Catholics to substitute purely Catholic schools for the public schools of the country, because it is a question that belongs exclusively to the pastors of the church, and with which we as a layman have, in our judgment, no right to meddle. It is a matter of ecclesiastical administration, and ecclesiastical administration we do not regard as a proper subject of editorial comment. Where Catholic schools are practicable, judged to be so by the pastor, and required by him, they must be instituted and supported as a matter of course, and no one would rejoice more than we to see such schools established for all the children of the land. But our purpose in this article has been to consider the common school system from the point of view of non-Catholics, and to show that their hopes of its anti-Catholic operation are probably doomed to disappointment. We do not wish to recommend the common schools to Catholics, that is not within our province; but we do wish to have Protestants understand that we do not fear those schools, though we may not prefer them. All we say is, that we think these schools, in our own city and state,-we say nothing of them elsewhere, are far better than none, far better than any we are ourselves at present able, in a sufficient number for all our children, to institute in their place; and that, however objectionable we may feel it to be obliged to send our children to them along with Protestant children, the education acquired in them is far better than none at all, or that of the streets.

We do not, indeed, set so high a value on common school education as some do, but it will not do for Catholics to neglect it, and they must strive with all their might, either

in the public schools or in parochial schools, to have all their children receive a good common education. Common school education is the order of the day, one of the pets of the times, and Catholics have enough in this country to weigh them down in our non-Catholic society without the additional burden of being thought to oppose it. Every age has its own fashions and its own wants, and in what is not of religion and dogma, it is useless for Catholics to stand out. Our children have got to take their stand in American society with others, and it is our duty to do all in our power to enable them to do so with as little disadvantage as is possible with fidelity to our holy religion. When all others are educated, it will not do for us to suffer our children to grow up in ignorance. To the mass of our children, who will have to labor for a living, an education in our colleges and academies would be a positive disadvantage; but a plain, practical, common school education, at least in the present state of society, is well nigh indispensable. We do not ask the poor washer-woman to slave herself to death to give her son a collegiate education, which will very likely place him in a false position through life, but we do ask her to do her best to give him, either in a Catholic or a public school, a good practical, common-sense education. Leaving to the bishops and clergy to designate the schools, we would urge upon our Catholic friends the high importance of giving their children a good secular education. The times, the country, and religion alike demand it; and we would insist on it, if for no other reason, to prove to nonCatholics that the ignorance which they complain of, and which we cannot deny, in many foreign Catholics, is due, not to their religion, but to their political and social condition in their native country. But while urging secular education, we would not by any means forget religious education, without which secular education has, and can have, no value.