Catholics. It makes Churchmen of the most intense type and developes the purely Church theory with immense efficiency.

The managers and manipulators of this organism-the persons who do the brain-work, and who are almost exclusively the clergy-understand very well that Catholicism in this country depends for its life and progress upon two conditions: first, a large and continuous importation of foreign-born Catholics; secondly, home production, by educating the children of Catholics into the faith of their parents and the faith of the Church. Take away either of these sources of supply, and especially the latter, and conversions to Catholicism from the outside world among the adult population would by no means replenish the losses by death. The clergy are too sagacious not to see that, on this soil and in this atmosphere, a school system in which their creed is not made a primary and elementary part of the education of Catholic children will not meet the stern ecclesiastical necessities of Roman Catholicism in these United States. Ignorance and despotic control are historically the strongholds of Catholicism. It is not, never has been, and until greatly modified never can be the religion of popular enlightenment. Surrounded as it is in this country by a predominant non-Catholic influence, and brought in contact with the institutions of free and independent thought, "the holy Roman faith" has a very hard battle to fight; and, hence, the most zeal

ous care over the education of Catholic children is with it a matter of life and death. This care it must give, or run the hazard of not being transmitted in the line of family descent. It must bring the children under its power in their earliest years; and anything that does not meet this necessity fails at a most vital point.

This statement of the question, as it respects Catholics, proceeds from no ultra-Protestant spleen against them, and no wish to call in question their sincerity or in the slightest manner to abridge their rights. We have no sympathy with, and hardly any respect for, that stupid and furious Protestantism which sees nothing good in Catholicism, and brands it as evil and only evil, and that continually. The best apology that can be made. for it is its sheer ignorance. Nor do we intend to place a low estimate upon the value of a religious education. On this point we heartily agree with the most strenuous Catholic, however widely we may differ from him as to what is such an educa tion, or as to the means by which it should be furnished. Nor, again, do we desire to curtail the privileges of the Catholic in the freest and fullest propagation of his own faith, by whatever means he chooses to adopt, in consistency with the laws of the land, provided always that he also chooses to pay his own bills. The law secures to him this right, in common with all other citizens, and defends him in its exercise. This is a free country

for Catholics, as well as for Protestants, and both. would do well to keep this fact in mind.

When, however, the leaders and teachers of the Catholic host make war upon our public school system because it does not answer their Church purposes; when they identify all true religion with the Catholic faith, as the sole measure and criterion thereof, and, hence, denounce all education as "godless" and "irreligious" that does not inculcate this faith; especially when they ask a subsidy from the school funds of the State or demand from the State a portion of these funds as the means of supporting schools one of whose prime objects shall be to teach Catholicism—yes, when this is the programme of the Catholic clergy and the Catholic press, there certainly can be no harm in looking at the philosophy of the movement. Such a programme, whatever may be its reasons in the minds and hearts of Catholics, or however necessary it may be for their purposes, brings before the American people a series of the very gravest questions. These questions are to be thoughtfully

considered.

We confront the whole programme, as an aggregate and in all its parts, with the generic proposition that the public school should be made. neither a Catholic nor a Protestant machine, any more than it should be made a Jewish, a Mormon, or an infidel machine. It should be a State machine, and this only, supported by general taxa

tion and conducted under the exclusive authority of the State; and this one principle furnishes an unanswerable reason why it should have nothing to do with the Protestant, as such, or the Catholic, as such, and should deal with both on precisely the same terms, knowing them only as citizens, and, hence, knowing nothing about them as religionists or about their respective creeds. This is the true theory of the American public school system, and to the theory the practice should conform. If there be anything in the practice inconsistent therewith, then let it be corrected, no matter who may be offended thereby. The Protestant has just as many rights in the public school as the Catholic, and no more; and the latter has in it just as many rights as the former, and no more. Either can send his children to this school, and have them there educated in the common branches of useful secular knowledge, at the public expense; and this is all that either should ask at the hands of the State.

Catholics, however, and, we regret to say, some Protestants, are not satisfied with such a plan of State education. The reading of King James's version of the Scriptures in the public schools is demanded by a certain class of Protestants; and to it the Catholic objects, as an offense to his conscience. What he wants is the Douay version; and this is just what these Protestants do not want, and would not for a moment tolerate. Though the Catholic claims that this kind of Bible-reading

shall be discontinued, yet his plan is much broader and deeper than the simple expulsion of King James's version from the public schools. What he wants is to have Catholicism formally and methodically taught to his children in the school which they attend; and, inasmuch as this cannot be done in the public school under present arrangements, he desires that the State should in some way so modify its system as to gain this end at the expense of the public. Such a division of the school funds as would give him a certain proportion thereof, and allow him to use it for the support of Catholic schools would just meet his wishes. This, or the nearest possible approach to it, is the ultimate point at which he aims.

The system of parochial schools after the Catholic model, is burdensome to those who have to pay its expenses; and, although Catholics, especially in large cities, have on this subject shown their faith by their works, still it would be a most welcome relief to them if the State would in some way secure to them the substantial ends of the parochial system without its charges-in a word, if the State would pay the bills and let them regulate the teaching. Such a plan would secure the whole end of the Catholic agitation about the public school, so far as the question of ways and means is concerned. The entire agitation converges at last to this one practical point: Shall Catholics pay the cost of their own ecclesiastico