It so happens, too, that, outside of Protestants and Catholics, there is a large body of citizens who have their peculiar religious notions, represented by neither, yet who are voters and taxpayers. There are Jews, Swedenborgians, Shakers, Spiritualists, Deists, Pantheists, Positivists, Atheists, and multitudes who can hardly be said to have any settled faith on religious subjects. All these people are citizens, belonging to the State, if they do not to the Church; and they have as much proprietorship and right in the common school as the most devout Christian, whether he be Catholic or Protestant. The public school is the common property of the whole people, and not exclusively of any portion of them. The argument to show that no Christian should be taxed to support infidelity is just as good to show that no Deist should be taxed to support Christianity, unless we adopt the theory that one of the functions of civil government is to decide what religion is true, and then provide for its maintenance.

The discussion of the School question, as the reader will readily see from the simple statement of it, draws within its own circle the great question of the ages. It involves the whole subject of the province of civil government, considered in relation to religion. In the principles relating to it, and by which it is to be determined, it is one of the most elementary and far-reaching questions of human society. If the State may properly undertake the

work of religious propagandism anywhere or at any point of its action, then it may, in its discretion, do so everywhere. If religion comes within its sphere, then it has as much right to establish a State religion, and to teach and enforce it, as it has to establish a State prison for convicts. If we concede the principle, we must accept its consequences. The extent to which it shall be exercised is simply a matter of legal discretion. Dr. Ralph Wardlaw declares that "the province of the State in respect to matters of religion is that it has no province at all"; and if we adopt this view, then we must accept its consequences.

IV.

THE SCHOOL PROBLEM.

The attitude of religious sects, especially the Catholics and a portion of the Protestants, in respect to the public schools of this country, creates the necessity of inquiring in what way the difficulties that beset the system can be best solved.

One solution of the problem is to abandon the system altogether and remit the whole work of education to private and voluntary effort. The great objection to this view is that the remedy is far worse than the disease. The country can much more safely get along with the sectarian quarrel

about the public school, if there must be such a quarrel, than it can without the school. Popular education in some form, gratuitously afforded and managed by the State, has so many advantages, meets so large a sphere of wants, rests on so broad an experience of its utility, and is so intimately identified with the perpetuity, safety, and success of our republican institutions, that its total abandonment is not a thing to be thought of for a moment. Such a course, by involving a vast reduction of educational opportunities and entirely withdrawing them from a large number of the poorer classes, would be practically equivalent to a plan for lessening general intelligence. The statement of the idea supplies its own refutation. The necessity and wisdom of public schools are as thoroughly established in the convictions of the American people as the doctrine of liberty itself. The system is virtually a part of the doctrine. We, hence, spend no time in proving that it ought not to be abandoned in order to escape from the difficulties which attend its continuance.

A second solution of the problem, strongly urged by the Catholics and favored by some Protestants, is the distribution of the public school money, either the whole or a part of it, among religious sects, to be used by them for the support of their own denominational and sectarian schools. This idea is totally inconsistent with the public school system as at present organized, and would

in the end prove its destruction. Moreover, it would be exceedingly difficult, if not wholly impracticable, to make the distribution according to equity. How much should the Catholics receive? The number of children taught by them would not answer this question, since it would be no index to the tax paid by them, especially when we remember that the great majority of them pay no taxes at all. Their tax contribution is all that they could justly claim, unless it is proposed to educate their children in the Catholic faith with funds derived from other sources. The plan would add to the cost of education by an unnecessary increase of machinery, would lessen its opportunities in sparsely settled districts, and would almost certainly make the education inferior to that given in the public schools, with the single exception of the religious element. If the principle of distribution is good for Catholics, then it would be equally so for all the other sects; and if generally adopted, the public school would disappear altogether. So also the whole tendency of such a plan would be toward the disintegration, and not the unification of the American people, by planting elements of antipathy, antagonism and religious bigotry in the bosoms of children, unfriendly

the interests and duties of a common citizenship in after years. And, finally, the State through its taxing power would become the supporter and patron of religious sectarianism, and compel the people indiscriminately to pay the expenses thereof.

The proper answer to this distribution theory is a plump and unqualified negative. The money raised by general taxation belongs to all the people, and the State through its own agents should control its uses to the last dollar. It should open its schools to all children of suitable age, free of charge; and if Catholics or Protestants choose to have their children educated elsewhere, then this is their business, and not that of the State. The plea that they are thus subjected to a double taxation, and, hence, that the State ought either to give them a portion. of the school money or omit to tax them for school purposes, is false. Their self-imposed burdens for sectarian purposes are not taxation at all, and no reason for tax exemption. They choose to have it so, and, hence, they must patiently take the consequences. The State might just as well exempt those from taxation who for other than religious reasons choose to send their children to private schools at their own expense. The general public. surely cannot abandon or modify a good system to suit sectarian necessities or proclivities. The system should have in it no just ground of objection; and then it should be firmly maintained, whether Catholics or Protestants like it or dislike it.

A third plan is that of a supplementary system of religious teaching, added to the public school, by classifying the children according to the faith of their parents and giving the instruction, not in the regular school hours, but at a special period set