No doubt much may be and is done by Sunday schools and home influences to supply the defects of the public schools; but by no means enough. The influence of the Sunday school, under the best possible management, in a community where the religious instruction is so scanty, the moral tones so low, as with us, is very restricted; and where the people are so generally devoted to the worship of Mammon or to fashion, so thoroughly engrossed in business or worldly pleasures, home influences in favor of religion are very feeble, and the amount of religious instruction given, except in a comparatively few families, is hardly worth counting. "Evil communications corrupt good morals," and the general tone of the American people is, in fact, practically irreligious. Probably a majority of the American population have never been baptized, and it is only by a stretch of courtesy that Protestantism can be called a religion for all religion is one and catholic, which Protestantism is not. The education given in the public schools can hardly rise above the average religion and morality of the majority; and those who regard that average as falling lamentably below the Christian standard, cannot be expected to be satisfied with it, or not to labor to raise by education their own children above it.

Chief Justice Dunne treats the question from beginning to end with rare practical sagacity, with a perfect comprehension of its legal and constitutional bearings, and with a vivid sense of justice. He evidently holds that, while the majority have the power, they are bound to exercise it justly, and that the majority have no more right than have the minority to do wrong. He believes that constitutions are mainly designed for the protection of individuals and minorities; and that the majority, under our form of gov ernment, are always able to protect themselves, and need restraints on their arbitrary will. He also holds that the -constitutional guaranties of religious equality before the law were intended to guaranty that equality, and, so far as the civil power is concerned, to place all religious beliefs and no-beliefs on the same footing. This is, no doubt, true, as regards the intentions of the framers of our constitutions, state and federal. But, since the rise of the abolition fanaticism, which culminated in our late disastrous civil war, constitutions, when restricting the power of the majority, have been treated as so much waste paper. Constitutions which are simply written on paper, or engrossed on parch

inent, and not embodied in the hearts and minds, and especially in the providential organization of the people of a nation, are as worthless, when they impose limitations on the power of the majority, as were the green withes with which the Philistines bound the stalwart limbs of Samson. We were as strongly opposed to negro slavery as was Wil-liam Lloyd Garrison or Wendell Phillips; and if we opposed, as we did, the abolition agitation, it was not from love of slavery, but because we believed the destruction of the constitution a greater evil than that which it sought to redress. Chief Justice Dunne evidently believes in the inviolability of the constitution, and its binding nature on the majority; he also believes in the obligations of justice, and addresses the ruling majority in Arizona and elsewhere, asif it were sufficient to prove a measure unjust and unconstitutional to induce them to reject it. But the majority of our countrymen can be moved by no argument of this sort. They cast constitutions to the winds, and scout the very idea of justice to those who lack the power to enforce it. They act on the maxim, "The strong are always right the weak are always wrong." They use fine phrases, and abound in generous professions and noble sentiments, while practising the most monstrous injustice; for a more monstrous injustice cannot be conceived than that of imposing a tax, and often a heavy tax, on the minority for the education of the children of the majority, and from which the children of the minority are excluded. There is nothing more outrageous, at least in principle, in Prince Bismarck's or Kaiser Wilhelm's treatment of Catholics in Germany.

It is no answer to this to say the schools are public, and as open to the minority as to the majority: for this is not true. The Catholic minority happen to have a conscience, which the advocates of these schools have not, and they cannot send their children to these schools without violating their Catholic conscience; and this fact closes them as effect-ually to us as if we were excluded from them by statute. The German bishops and priests, dispossessed, imprisoned, or exiled, are so only in obedience to their Catholic conscience. They could escape all persecution if they consented to violate their conscience, and submit to the infamous civil enactments made in contravention of the laws of God and of the church. It is barefaced mockery to tell us these schools are as free to us, the Catholic minority, as they are to the non-Catholic majority. It is no such thing, for they

have no conscience against them. The majority, as Chief Justice Dunne shows, impose upon us a triple tax. They tax us to provide for the education of the children of nonCatholics, in which we cannot share with a good conscience, and then compel us to erect school-houses, found and support schools at our own expense, often out of our poverty, for the education of our own children, and then tax these same school-houses and fixtures, while the public schoolhouses and fixtures are exempt from taxation. Can there be a more monstrous injustice? It needs only one step in addition, and that threatens to be soon taken, namely, to forbid us to have schools of our own, and to make attendance on the public schools compulsory. New York and New Jersey, and, perhaps, some other states, have already enacted laws making education compulsory, and it would be only carrying out the same policy to make it compulsory on us to send our children to the state, or the public, schools.

Mr. Henry Wilson, vice-president of the United States, and an honored and influential leader of the Republican party, published a few years since in the Atlantic Monthly a remarkable article headed, "The New Departure of the Republican Party," in which he proposed, as the policy of the party in the future, to place education under the control of the federal government, and to make it uniform throughout the Union, and compulsory. The proposition was taken up in congress, favorably entertained, and a committee was raised to which it was referred. Whether that committee, of which, if we recollect aright, one of the Hoars of Massachusetts was chairman, has made a report or not, we do not now recollect; but that a measure so manifestly unconstitutional, and so fraught with danger to the freedom of education and the rights of parents and guardians, as well as of the states, could have been seriously entertained for a moment by congress, shows but too clearly that abolitionism and the civil war have obscured the principles of what was once regarded as American freedom in the minds of representative Americans. What, perhaps, is still more alarming is, that we have heard no note of warning against the project from the usually vigilant opponents of the Republican party, and are therefore led to conclude that, on a question of this sort, Republicans and Democrats are united. Democrats and Republicans are not unlikely to be reconciled and made friends, as were Pilate and Herod, when Christ is to be crucified in the persons of Catholics.

There is a movement throughout the whole civilized world to banish religious instruction from the schools, and completely to secularize education, under the specious pretext of getting rid of superstition and the idle fears it generates. It began in the old French revolution, and was skilfully organized by the infamous convention that voted the death of the king, Louis XVI. With your genuine liberals, Christianity is simply superstition, and as such can be tolerated by no free and enlightened state, but is to be thoroughly uprooted and exterminated. The child at the earliest possible moment must be withdrawn from the priest and placed under enlightened, that is, infidel or heathen masters, who believe only in the earth, and surrounded by purely secular influences. The motive which operates with the majority in withholding justice from Catholics in this country is, unquestionably, consciously or unconsciously, the same that governed the French convention in its measures for secularizing education. As in France Protestants, Jansenists, and infidels joined together to the support of the convention against Catholics and the church, so do they unite in opposition to Catholics in supporting our public schools. The real motive for sustaining the system is the belief, that by it they may extirpate Catholic faith and worship from the land. It were fatuity, not charAty, to think otherwise. Finding that we are withdrawing our children from the public schools, and establishing at our own expense schools of our own, they see clearly that they must fail in their calculations, unless they go further and forbid us to establish Catholic schools, and compel us to send our children to the public schools. This is the immediate danger. Can it be averted?

It can hardly be averted by human means alone, but, with a firm reliance on divine assistance, we think, if Catholics will but be true to themselves, it can be averted; and even the modifications of the public-school system as now worked, which we as Catholics demand, can be obtained. It is true, we are for the present in a comparatively small minority of the whole population of the country, but a small minority united and determined, and demanding only what is reasonable and just, who must sooner or later obtain success. The discouraging fact is, that the Catholic minority are not united on this school question, and do not act as "one man." They take different views of what is needed; many amongst us are cold or indifferent to the subject, and do

not enter heartily into the movement for obtaining our rights. Some are engrossed in business, not a few are absorbed in politics, place the interests of their party above the interests of their religion, and dare not move lest they forfeit their chance for some petty office for themselves or for their friends. Catholics in this country have never been accustomed to act in concert as one body, and do not readily unite and concentrate their forces for a given object. They are one in faith and worship, but have never yet been one in striving to obtain their rights in relation to the public schools. In fact, there is on this subject no unity of purpose, and no concert of action.

The first step to be taken is, of course, to effect the union of the entire body of Catholics throughout the country, and to induce them to waive their petty differences and local interests, and to look at the paramount interests of the whole body. A great wrong is done us as Catholics and citizens, and we must unite, combine, if you will, and act with an eye single to its redress. If we do this, and labor perseveringly with the earnestness and zeal the greatness of the end demands, we shall in time gain our rights, and induce the majority so to amend the public-school system, that all classes of citizens can cheerfully support it, and share in its benefits. We demand only our rights; we have no wish to interfere with the rights of others, or to destroy or to impair the efficiency of the public-school system properly worked. We accept cordially the essential principle of the system, that is, the support of public-schools for all the children of the land, at the public expense, or by a tax levied equally upon all citizens. We only ask that we may have the portion of the fund which we contribute, to use in the support of schools under our management, and in which we can teach our religion, and make it the basis of the education we give our own children.

Now let us Catholics, all Catholics throughout the Union, unite as one man in demanding this amendment to the system, and listen to no compromise, and give our suffrages to no party and to no candidate for any office that refuses to do us justice, as was some time since recommended by the venerable bishop of Cleveland in a pastoral address to his diocesans; and we feel sure the majority will ere long be forced to concede our demand. We thought at the time the recommendation of the illustrious bishop premature and injudicious, but we think so no longer. We were not duly