CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GIFT OF 3 1924 070 708 551 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924070708551 HELIGIOIS^ ^ISTD SCHOOLS. NOTES OF HEARINGS BEFOEB Ij.;E jy. COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION ^NJ) LABOR, UMIXED STATES SENATE, Friday, February 15, .1889, eM Friday,. Februaj-.t 22, 1889, JOINT RESOLUTION (S. E. 8G) PROPOSING AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES RESPECTING ESTAB- LISHMENTS OF RELIGION AND FREE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. WASHINGTON: GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 1889, 12053 1 RELlGIOx^^ AND SCHOOLS. Friday, February 15, 1889. The committee met at 10 o'clock a. m., in tlie Senate reception room. Present: Senators Blair (chairman), Palmer, Wilson, and George of the committee, and Senator Chandler. There appeared before the committee Eev. T. P. Stevenson, of Phila- delphia, corresponding: secretary of the National Eeform Association ; Rev. James M. King, D. D., of !N"ew York, representing the American Branch of the Evangelical Alliance ; Eev. George K. Morris, D. D., of Philadelphia; Rev. W. M. Glasgow, of Baltimore; Rev*. J. N. McQurdy, D. D., of Philadelphia ; O. R. Blackall, M. D., of Philadelphia, and Will- iam S. Morris, M. D., of Philadelphia. The Chairman (Senator Blair). The hearing this morning is upon the joint resolution (S. R. 86) proposing an amendment to the Constitu- tion of the United States respecting establishments of religion and free Ijublic schools, which is as follows: Besolved hy the Senate and Souse of Mepresentatives of the United Stales of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following amendment to the Constitution of the United States be, and hereby is, proposed to the States, to become valid when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the States as provided in the Constitution : Akticle — . Section 1. No State shall ever make or maintain any law respecting an establish- ment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Sec. 'i. Each State iu this Union shall establish and maintain a system of free public schools adequate for the education of all the children living therein, between the ages of six and sixteen years, inclusive, iu the ccmmon branches of knowledge, and in virtue, morality, and the principles of the Christian religion. But no money raised by taxation imposed by law or any money or other property or credit belonging to any municipal organization, or to any State, or to the United States, shall ever be appropriated, applied, or given to the use or purposes of any school, institution, corporation, or person, whereby instruction or training shall be given in the doctrines, tenets, belief, ceremonials, or observances peculiar to any sect, denomination, organi- zation, or society, being, or claiming to be, religious in its character, nor shall such peculiar doctrines, tenets, belief, ceremonials, or observances be taught or inculcated in the free public schools. Sec. 3. To the end that each State, the United States, and all the people thereof, may have and preserve governments republican inform and in substance, the United States shall guaranty to every State, and to the people of everj' State and of the United States, the support and maintenance of such a system of free public schools as is herein provided. Sec. 4. That Congress shall enforce this article by legislation when necessary. 3 RELIGION AND t-CHOOLS. ARGUMENT BY REV. T. P. STEVENSON. Hev. Mr. Stevenson. Mr. Cbairmau and members of the committee, a public meeting- iu support of this measure was held in the city ot Philadelpliia on the 11th of December l.'ist. The call for the meetiug was signed by nearly one hundred of the leading citizens of Philadel- phia, including such names as those of Messrs. Francis W. Kennedy, George M. Troutman, B. B. Comegys, presidents of banks; Jay Cooke, ot national reputation; Philip C.Garrett, late chairman of the State Com mis- sion on Charities and Correction; John B. Garrett, vice-president ot the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company, and others. The list is a thoroughly representative list of our best citizens. At this meetingapermanent committee was appointed to draught a me- morial to the two houses of Congress and to take such action from time to time as might further the adoption of the proposed constitutional amendment. This memorial I herewith submit, bearing the signatures of one hundred of the leading citizens of Philadelphia, including, besides the names I have already referred to, such names as that of George S. Graham, the district attorney of Philadelphia, and through you we de- sire that it be presented to the Senate of the United States. The Chairman. It is now submitted for the first time ? Mr. Stevenson. AVe bear it this morning. The Chairman. The memorial will be presented to the Senate and also inserted in. the record at this point. The memorial is as follows : To the Senate and House of Bepresentatives of the JJnitid Stairs in Ccvgrcis asscmlUd This memorial, on belialf of citizens of Pbiladelphia, showelli, two grave dangers threaten at this hour the American system of common schools — the alheislio tendency in education and the strenuous demand for a division of the school funds iu the in- terest of sectarian or denominational schools. Through the tormer tendency,the reading of the Christian Scriptures and the offer- ing of prayer have been forbidden in the schools of some of our principal cities, ■while one at least has gone so far as to throw out of her schools every text-book con- taining any reference to God. This attempt to exclude all leligious ideas from the instruction given in the public schools we hold to be unphilosophical and inimical to the public good, because it neglects the moral faculties, which are the most impor- tant faculties of man, and the right exercise of which is most important to the state, and because it does not correspond to the character of the institutions for which the conmion school is designed to prepare the citizens of this Kepublic. On the other hand, to accept the proposal for a division of the school funds would be for the state to destroy the whole school system, which we have built up with so much care and at such vast expense; to renounce all responsible or effective control of the work of educati»n ; and to become a mere tax-gatherer for the sects. The one great argument by which this proposal is sustained is that Christian parents cannot accept for their children an education which, while ostensibly neutral, is virtually hostile to religion. The adoption of the secular theory of education, therefoie, so far from reconciling those who advocate the division of the funds, only stimulates them to fresh efforts, and supplies them with fresh argumeiiis against the public schools. These two adverse tendencies, therefore, assist each other, and between them there is danger that our school system may perish or be seriously crippled at the very time when it is most urgently needed ; for, more than any other single in- stitution, it maybe regarded as the digestive organ of the body politic, through which we assimilate to the national chaiacter the foreign elements which every year brings in increasing volume to our shores. Against both these dangers we shall provide most effectively by simply keeping our school system on the foundations where it was placed by our fathers. We believe that the time has come when constitutioual safeguards ought to be erected in the nation's fundamental law around this most precious institution. We have therefore observed with pleasure the introduction of a joint resolution uow pending before one of your honorable bodies (Senate Resolution 86), proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States which, while it recognizes the Christian character RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. and purpose of ouv system of public education, forbids the apttropriation of public inouey to any school or institution in which the peculiar doctrines or ceremonials of nuy religious sect or denomination are practised or taught ; and we earnestly pray that you will speedily submit this or some similar amendment to the legislatures of the several States for their approval. In this connection we are reminded that General Grant, when President, recom- mended to Congress the passage of an amendment to the national Constitution "pro- hibiting the granting of any school funds or school taxes, or any part thereof, either by legislative, municipal, or other authority, for the benefit or in aid, directly or in- directly, of any religious sect or denomination." The Republican national conven- tion, at Cincinnati, June 15, i876»recoramended " an amendment to the Constitution of the United States forbidding the application of any public funds or property for the benefit of any schools or institutions under sectarian control." The Democratic national platform, adopted in the same year at Saint Louis, declared for the main- tenance of the public schools "without prejudice or preference for any class, sect, or creed, and without largesses from the Treasury to any." A joint resolution to this etfect, introduced into the House of Representatives by the Hon. James G. Blaiue, was adopted in that body by au almost unanimous vote. Amended in the Senate by the addition of a proviso that it should not be constrned against the reading of the Bible in the schools, it was adopted there by a vote of twenty-eight to sixteen, or a little less than the requisite two-thirds. The danger is now more manifest, the need is more urgent, than then. The lapse of a dozen years has strengthened every argu- ment which was then employed in support of this measure. ' At a largely attended public meeting, the call for which was signed by a large number of the leading citizens of Philadelphia, the undersigned were apj^ointed a committee to act for their fellow-citizens in this matter. In support, therefore, of tlie desired action, we lay before you this memorial, and beg leave also to submit the resolutions adopted at the aforesaid meeting, which are as follows: "Resolved, That this nation, in its origin and history, is Christian. Our colonial compacts of government and charters, our State constitutions and statutes, our com- mon law, our days of fasting and thanksgiving, our State and national institutions and usages generally, have given our political being a marked and distinct! ve Christian character. "lieaolvecl, That the type of Christianity which has characterized onr State and national life is that which secures to our people an open Bible, the right of private judgment, freedom of speech and of the press, and tbe entire independence of our Government as against all foreign domination, whether eoclesiMstical or civil. The sovereign people and their government are not amenable to spiritual pontiffs or civil potentates!, but to God and Ws law. "Mesolved, That our common schools, as one of the most important institutions of our country, should.correspond to the Christian origin, history, and character of the Kepublio itself. Our schools Should teach the history of 'our country and the charac- ter of our institutions, our laws, and the reasons for them, the prerogatives and re- sponsibilities of the sovereign people and their Government, and the loyalty due, uuder God, to the authority of our own rulers. The Bible ought not only to bte reail, but tanght, in all the schools. The public schools must prove a failure if they do not Train our rising generation to be honest, virtuous, and loyal citizens. Such ti-aiuiug, as the ordinance for the Territory of the Northwest and Washington's farewell ad- dress assures ns, can be found only in the principles of religion. "Resolved, That while onr schools are and should be Christian, no preference or ad- vantage should be given toany onesect ordenomination in connection with the jmblic schools. Above all, no sect can justly or fairly claim any portion of the public money for the support of its own sectarian schools. ^ "Resolved, That against the demand made by a portion of our Roman Catholic fellow-citizens for a division of the school fund, there is this additional and invinci- ble argument: that the teaching of that church concerning the supremacy of the Roman Pontiff as the infallible vicegerent of Christ over governments aud nations as well as individuals, in all matters of faith and morals, is directly subversive of the Ijrinciples of liberty on which the Republic has been founded ; and to endow or sup- [Ibrt from the public treasury schools in which this doctrine is taught would be to provide means for the subversion of our free institutions. "Resolved, That in both these respects our school system should be kept on the foundations on which it was placed by onr fathers. We seek no change, and we will withstand all attempts to revolutionize, m either of these features, our system of l)ublic education. ' "liesohed. That we approve of the general features of the constitutional amend- ment now pending in the Senate of the United States ' respecting establishments of religion and free public schools,' in that, while it recognizes tbe Christian character and purpose of our system of education, it forbids th6 appropriation of public money 6 RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. •to any school in wliich tlie peculiar tenets or ceremonials of any religious sect or de- nomination are practised or taught. "JResolved, That a commitlee of nine be appointed by this meeting to co-operate -with the National Reform Association in its further etlbrts in behalf of tliis or any ■similar measure which may be directed to Il)e same ends, and 1 hat this committee shall have power to add to its numbers." E. C. Matlack, W. W. Barr, John Alexander, C. R. Blackali., _ John Lucas, William Waterall, James Morrow, T. P. Stevenson, CommUtee. Philadelphia, , 188-. The Chaiuman. The following petition, signed by 3,228 citizens of Massachusetts, is now before us: To the honorable Senaie and Maniers of the Eouf^e of Representatives, at Washmgton, D. C: We, the undersigned, citizens of Massachusetts, sensibly impressed with the im- portance of education among the people of our land, in the conservation of our Gov- ernment and the liberties which we so richly enjoy ; believing also, as expressed in a late public gathering of patriotic citizens of Boston, in old Paneuil Hall, that "ji hasnoio become iiecessarii io gnardwell the public 'school, as the palladium of our liberty; " and being persuaded also that this desired protection will be more lully effected by a provision in the fundamental laws of the land (as urged upon Congress by that emi- nent and patriotic citizen General Grant while in the Presidential office), would re- spectfully petition your honorable bodies to speedily frame such article — for submis- sion to the legislatures of the several States, for their approval or rejection — as will ])ievent the interference of any religious sect with the " common-school system," or the appropriating of any of the " public funds for sectarian uses ; such a measure as this being, in our judgment, the only safeguard against religious encroachments, such as now threaten our time-honored and truly endeared methods of teaching and training our youth fur the duties and responsibilities of American citizenship, to the end also that there may be preserved to us and transmitted to our children's chil- dren "a government ol the people, by the people, and (or this people." Eev. Mr. Stevenson. The memorial of citizens of Philadelphia em- bodies the resolutions which were adopted at the public meeting to which I have referred. Those who apjiear before you this morning are Eev. Dr. King, of New York, representing the American branch of the Evangelical Alliance, whose work has been A^ery largely ibr promotion of religious freedom ; and the l^ational Eeform Association is here repre- sented, which has been organized to maintain the existing Christian feat- ures in the American Government and promote the influence of Chris- tianity in our civil life. It is but just to sa^i^' tha,t sonic few of those whom we represent ao not desire to be understaod as supporting that part of the proposed amendment which proposes that the United letates shall guaranty the support of a system of education in the States. Details such as that we leave to be wrought out by your committee and by the houses of Con- gress. Senator George. Are you opposed to that third section ? * Eev. Mr. Stevenson. No, sir; we are not opposed to it. Senator Geokge. But you do not advocate it '? Eev. Mr. Stevenson. No, sir ; wi. do not advocate it. Senator George. You are neutral on that point 1 Hev. Mr. Stevenson. We are neutral on that point. There are three great features of the proposed amendment which command our sujiport. The first is, that " no State shall ever make or maintain any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibit- EELIGION AND SCHOOLS. 7 Ing the free exercise thereof." We regard the presence of this clause with great satisfaction, because it disavows for us and for all who may lend their support to this measure, all disposition to favor a union of church and state. There is no feature of American institutions which has our hearty approval more than that which separates the church from the state as two distinct and clearly independent organisms, hold- ing indeed certain mutual relations to each other, but each doing its own work in its own way without control or interference on the part of the other. Senator GEOKaE. Do you know of any State in which there is any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free ex- ercise thereof? Eev. Mr. Stevenson. There is no State which has any such law to- day, but establishments of religion did continue in some of the States, as in Massachusetts, for example, for many years after the first amend- ment to the national Constitution was adopted, which says that Con- gress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. While there is no State which has an establishment of religion, all the States are free to set up religious establishments if they shall choose. Senator Geokge. Is it not a fact that in every one of the State con- stitutions now there is a provision in words similar to that? Eev. Mr. Stevenson. That may be, yet if Utah obtained admission to the Union there is nothing to prevent her establishing the Mor- mon hierarchy and endowing the Mormon temple out of the State treas- ury; and if the Territory of New Mexico were admitted, as is proposed by pending legislation, there is nothing to hinder her from establishing the church with which the majority of her citizens are known to be con- nected as the established church of the State of New Mexico. Senator Geokge. Then, the practical point you make is as to appre- hensions from Utah and New Mexico ? Eev. Mr. Stevenson. We regard this as a measure of wise, practical statesmanship, not simply as a matter of sentiment, but as demanded by the exigencies of the hour. Senator George. What exigenciesdemand it? Explain that. That is the \ery gist of the whole thing. What exigencies demand the, in- corporation of that provision in the Federal Constitution ? Eev. Mr. Stevenson. The possibility of establishments of religion, either formal establishments or virtual establishments of religion, by difterent States. Senator George. Is there any movement in any State looking to thatenil? Eev. Mr, Stevenson. No, sir; none that we know of. Senator George. Do you know of any society, organization, or party organized for the purpose of attaining that end? Eev. Mr. Stevenson. Yes, sir; a large portion of our fellow-citizens, we believe, do desire and seek for what is equivalent to the establish- ment of a religion. Senator George. Who are they, and what is the specific point from which vou infer that they seek the establishment of a religion in a State? Eev"Mr. Stevenson.' The proposal which is pressed for the division of the school fund between the seCts is, in our judgment, an establish- ment virtually of a religion of sects. Senator George. Where is that proposal; in what States does that obtain ? , c x Eev. Mr. Stevenson. The proposal has been made m the State ot Pennsylvania, from which I come. 8 * EELIGION AND SCHOOLS. Senator George. Where else ? _ Kev. Mr. Stevenson. It lias been made in the State of New York i Senator Geoege. ^^here else"? Rev. Mr. Stevenson. It is made to-day throughout the United States. Bishop Ohatard, of Indiana, said recently in the city of Saint Louis that the Roman Catholic Church pays to-day $9,000,000 for the compensation of teachers in parochial schools, and that that whole sum ought to come back to them out of che public treasury, and will come back to them as soon as reason and justice shall prevail in themmdsot the American people. They have 3,024 parochial schools. Senator Geoege. The Catholics have? ,tt, i Rev. Mr. Stevenson. The Roman Catholic Church has established 3,024 parochial schools, which is aboiit one-half the number of Roman Catholic churches in the United States. Senator Geoege. In the whole Union f Rev. Mr. Stevenson. In the whole Union, and under the penalties of ecclesiastical discipline they are constraining their members to withdraw their children from the public schools and to send'them to the schools established by the church. Senator Geoege. Then the establishment of religion which is threat- ened comes from the demand on the part of the Roman Catholic Church that the taxes paid by the members of that church shall be set apart by the State in which they live to the support of schools un- der the control of the Catholic Church f Rev. Mr. Stevenson. Yes, sir. Equally hearty is our support aud advocacy of the second section of the proposed amendment, that every St^jte shall establish and maintain a system of public schools adequate for the instruction of its children between, the ages of six and seventeen years " in the common branches of knowledge and in virtue, morality, and the principles of the Chris- tian religion." This proposes to embed in our fundamental law one of the best-considered aud most universally-approved features of our so- cial system. Ignorance on the part of the citizen anywhere is a na- tional peril, and the nation has the right to provide against it. If it be objected that the nation has not the right to constrain in this mat- ter the free action of the States, then we reply that the Constitution is the free and voluntary compact between the people of the States in reference to the General Government and its functions and its action, and by this it is simply proposed to amend that compact by the con- current action of the people of all the States, so as to provide for this great, this vital common interest. There are many who do not distinguish between the separation of church and state, and the divorce of the state from religion, and we therefore regard with especial favor the distinct recognition of the ihristian religion in connection with our system of public education. In support of this provision we desire to say that it is in harmony with the great body of the laws, institutions, and governmental usages of the American people. Our institutions bear broad and deep the im- press of the Christian religion. The morality which is enforced by our laws is Christian morality. The offenses which we restrain aud pro- hibit by law throughout the nation are offenses under the moral staud- ards of the Christian religion. For example, we have laws on the statute books of nearly every State against blasphemy. Those laws guard the sacred names of the Christian religion from profanation. We have laws which guard the sacredness of the Sabbath, the first day of the week, the sacred day of the Christian religion. Our laws for RELIGION' AND SCHOOLS. 9 the defense of social purity, for the suardianship of the family, have been conformed to the Christian standards, though not with absolute consistency. Senator George. Except in cases of divorce? Ker. Mr. Stevenson. Except in cases of divorce, as we have admit- ted. Senator Geoegb. There is a very wide divergence from Christian standards there. Rev. Air. Stevenson. There is a very wide divergence from Chris- tian standards, and yet it is the Christian type, of the family which we have aimed to establish and maintain by our laws touching that subject in this country. Now, our schools should conform to the institutions of the country. They should prepare the citizens to obey the laws, and to participate in tlie administration of the Government. They should inculcate the gen- eral principles which have been regarded in the framework of our Gov- ernment. If there is any sense in which we are a Christian nation, and in which this is a Christian Government, in the same sense and to the same extent our schools ought to be Ch^'istian. Those who object to the recognition of the Christian religion in con- nection with our system of public education ought to object, in con- sistency, to every Christian feature in our civil, our national life. They ought to seek the obliteration of every feature of our civil institutions which bears the impress of Christianity. Thej- ought to join in the ' demands of liberalism which were formulated many years ago by one of the acutest minds of our country, and which are in these terms : We (lema)j(l that churclies aud other ecclesiastical property shall no longer be ex- eiiijit from taxatiou. We demand that the employment of chaplains in all institutions supported hy pub- lic money shall be discontinued. That is, from the houses of Congress, from all our State legislatures,* all our penitentiaries and reformatory schools, the Army aud Navy, and all other institutions supported by public money. We demand that all religions services now sustained by the Government shall be abolished, and especially that the use of the Bible in llie public schools, whether ostensibly as a text-book or avowedly as a book of religions worship, shall be pro- hibited. We demand that the appointment by the Presiilent of the United States or by the governors of the various States of religions festivals and fasts shall wholly cease. We demand that the judicial oath in all departments of the Government shall he aliolished. We demand that alllaws'directly or indirectly enforcing the observance of Sunday as the Sabbath shall be repealed. We demand that all laws looking to the enforcement of Christian morality shall be abvoga.ted, and that all laws shall be conformed simply to the requirements of natural morality. We demand that not only in the Constitution of the United States aud of the several States hut also in the practical administration of the same, no privilege or advantage shall be conceded to Christianity or any other special religion;; tliat our entire politi- cal system shall be foundeif and administered on a purely secular basis, and that, whatever changes shall prove necessary to this end shall be consistently, unflinch- ingly, aud promptly njade. Senator Geoegh. Whose language is that? Eev^JIr. Stevenson. These are the demands of liberalism, the plat- form of the Liberal League of the United States. Senator George. About how many adherents have they, as far as you can understand'? Itev. Mr. Stevenson. I do not know. 10 EELIGION AND SCHOOLS. Senator George. Is not the number very trifling? Rev. Mr. Stevenson. No, sir; tUey have a vast indefinite foilowiug. While those who may be formally members of the Liberal League may be comparatively few, they represent a certain well-defined trend in American thought, one side of the great controversy which is upon us as to what shall be the relation of the American nation and the Amer- ican Government to Christianity. Senator George. Do you really apprehend that those persons who stand on that platform which you have read are sufficient in numoers or ill importance to carry out the objects which they have ? Do you not think that the virtue and intelligence of the great mass of the Ameri- can people of all the churches is sufficient to meet and overthrow in the forum of debate and on pure reason the liberalists to whom you have alluded 'i liev. Mr. Stevenson. Most certainly I do. That is why we join the issue here to-day and wherever the opportunity is afforded us. But we judge of the peril, of the need of the discussion of this subject, by the IDractical successes which they have gained and are gaining. For in- stance, they have availed to prohibit the reading of the Scriptures in the ])ublic schools in the cities of Cincinnati, of Chicago, of Saint Loui.*, of San Ffancisco, of Rochester, N. Y., and a multitude of smaller places. Senator GEORGE. Did not that come from the Catholics ? Eev. Mr. Stevenson. No, sir ; by no means. Senator George. It did not ? Rev. Mr. STEVENSON. These two forces were joined together in their assault upon the public schools. Senator George. It is a combination between liberalism and Catholi- cism "? Eev. Mr. Stevenson. Between liberalism and Catholicism. Senator George. In each one of those cities was not the mass of the liberal army, you might call it, furnished by the Catholics 1 Rev. Mr. Stevenson. I think not. Senator George. You think not? Rev. Mr. STEVENSON. No, sir; in my judgment it was not. As an illustration of what education could become and will become under this secular ])rogramme, I would cite the state of affairs in the city of Chi- <;ago to day, where not only has the reading of the Bible been prohibited in the schools, but the offering of prayer, even the recitation of the Lorci's i)rayer. Senator George. In the common schools ? Rev. Mr. Stevenson. Y'es, sir; in the common schools. Senator George. I'ou say that is the rule in Chicago '! Rev, Mr. Stevenson. That is the rule in Chicago, where they Jiave gone so far as to throw out of the schools every school book which con- tains any reference to God, where, for example, Guyot's Physical Geogvaphy was thrown out from the public schools because it teaches that tlie globe bears evidence of design in being adapted as a habita- tion tor man. Senator George. That is atheistical, then? Rev. Mr. STEVENSON. Yes, sir. A design implies a designer, and a designer is a creator, and that is a religious idea which can not be taught under the rule of the seliool board of Chicago. Senator George. Then in Chicago the atheists seem to have im- pressed their views upon the schools. It is i)ure atheism? Rev. Mr. Stevenson. So it seems. Two years ago last June, when ithe high school on the West Side was about to have its commencement. RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. 11 they secured the First Congregational Ohurcb as the most suitable building in the vicinity for the commencement exercises. The graduat- ing class asked that Eev. Dr. Goodwin, pastor of the church, be invited' to open the exercises with prayer. The principal told them that it could not be allowed under the rules of the school board of Chicago. They carried their request to the board of education :iud received the same reply, and they were not allowed to have a word of prayer on. ■commencement day. The superintendent of public education for the' State of New York has decided — three superintendents of education have decided — that the Bible has no legal standing in the common school system of the State of New York. I think that, as a simple ^question of law, the superintendent of education is mistaken. The history of the common school sj'stem of New York, and of the legislation in reference to it, will justify our claim that the Bible has a legal place in the schools of that State, but the fact shows what I have already referred to as the •drift and the trend of affixirs under the influence of the atheistic or sec- ular theory of education. We desire to say further, in reference to that point, that such educa- tion is, in our judgment, unpbilosophical and contrary to the true idea of education. Education pertains to the whole man. Education is the drawing out or development of the faculties of the human being. There is earnestly pressed today a demand for physical training, for the cult- ure of the hand and the eye, manual training in our public schools. That demand is based upon the fact that these are human faculties and powers which ought to be educated for the good of the citizen and of the state of which the citizen is apart. So, too, we hold that the con- science, the power to distinguish between right and wrong, is one of the faculties of the human soul; that it is pre-eminently important among the faculties, for it is the regulative faculty on whose right ac- tion the right and beneficent action of all other faculties depends ; and any system of education which is adapted to cultivate the mind or to train the intellectual or the physical powers, and which leaves out of view the moral nature, provides a distinct peril for the state in which that education is maintained ; for knowledge is power, and an increase of knowledge and of other powers apart fro'n' the cultivatiou of the moral sense only iaiperils the state bj the addition of power to its citizens. Such education further seems to us to be unfair. The neutrality wliich it proposes is a false and deceitful neutrality. It is proposed in this foiiu : Let US leave out of the school those things in reference to which American people e of foreign advance in the opposite directiop, would prepare the way for domestic quarrels between such antag-' onistic and irrecouciliable elements, and here comes the necessity for ^ the same restraint on the States in regard to religion which the first amendment to the (national) Constitution imposed on Congress. ' Already new States of gigantic extent are waitings for admission. The Dakotas, Montana, and ^Vashington are at the door of Congress, and soon Utah, New Mexico, Idaho, Wyoming, and Arizona will demand recognition, with the possibility of the multiplication of States by the division of those admitted, and perhaps by the addition of Canada, Mexico, and Central America. These new features in our history, with their peculiar creeds, customs, and constitutions, demand some corre- sponding change in the Constitution to make it meet the new require- ments and to continue us in the future, as in the past, a united, homo- * Washington Gladden in "America." Chicago, January 31, 1889. RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. 21 geneous people, the citizens of an undivided republic, the United States of America. However divided into States, however varied our State institutions, it is for the interest and honor of all that we raise an edu- cated people, with a common system of training for American citizens, and that that training should be- marked by the Christian ethics to which we owe our high civilization and which are only guaranties of civil and religious liberty. Let one State establish schools inculcating the Mormon faith and polygamy,'of socialism, communism, or the gospel of dynamite, or by persons holding allegiance to some foreign potentate and acting under foreign direction and to carry out a foreign and per- haps anti-American policy — in every and all of these cases our free sufirage becomes our greatest danger, the easy instrument for our over- throw, and it becomes clear as the sun at noonday that American edu- cation and American suffrage must go hand in hand. Few, comparatively, of the newly arrived foreigners speak our lan- guage; fewer still understand or appreciate our institutions or the Chris- tian and philanthropic spirit that Inspired them. It is difficult to instruct them or to establish sympathetic relations ; they are apt to fall into the hands of political managers of one party or another, and soon they find that, strangers as they are, they wield the political power, and thus, in- stead of their coming to learn and xiractice our principles, they under- take to rule, all unfitted as they are by their hereditary instincts and foreign education to understand the blessings of free institutions. CHEISTIANITy A PART OF AMERICAN LAW. There has never heea a period — said Mr. Justice Story in his inaugural address as the Dane professor in 1829— in which the common law did not recognize Christianity as lying at its foundations. It repudiates every act done in violation of its duties of perfect obligation. It pro- nounces illegal every contract offensive to its morals. » * * The error of our Government, it has been asserted, is in reality of a different character ; it tolerated nothing but Christianity. Another judicial writer, Chief- Justice George Shea, of the marine court of the city of Kev York, in quoting these words of Story in an address on " The Kature and Form of the American Grovernment founded in the Christian Keligion,"* delivered before the General Theological Seminary of the United States (April 18, 1882), said : story might haVe added to this enumeration that laws in pursuance of the spirit of the Constitution prohibit, under penalties, the name of God being publicly blas- phemously uttered,+ and will not allow the name of God to be wantonly or openly re- viled to the annoyance of believers and bad example to the public. The sacredity of the Lord's Day is acknowledged, and contracts made on that day invalidated. The conscience of each public servant is bound by "that adamantine chain, an oath," to the throne of God, in the legislative, the judicial, the executive departments; from the President of the United States, from the Chief Justice of the United States down to the humblest officer in the nation. State, municipality, or village. The Constitu- tion expresses in these visible signs the substantial idea ; it makes the reality of its Christian character ; and it finally and affirmatively declares in express terpis that the enactments which compose the Constitution were "done * * * in the year of our Lord 1787." It was the deliberate issue of religious traditions, circumstances, convictions, and acknowledgments. And then comes the other great fact of our history, that — the original thirteen States inherited and continued in legal succession and ampli- tude of jurisprudence the common law, and as to the courts of the national Govern- * Boston, Houghton, Mifflin & Col, 1883, pp. 60-64. t The People v. Ruggles, 8 Johnson, 290, 29a. 22 RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. ment, their limitations concern snbjects of jnriscliotion, and not tlie applicability, within that jurisdiction of the common law* — of which Kent says : It is the oomraou jurisprndenoe of the United States and was brought with them as colonists from England and established here.t The Christian character which has, from the beginning characterized our common schools, and which properly belongs to the schools of a Christian people, is thus alluded to by the Evangelical Alliance in a re- cent circular to the American people : Touching the management of our common schools, on the purity of whose teaching depends the character of the nation, this Alliance would respectfully and earnestly entreat all who would maintain in their purity and beneficence our American institu- tions, to have a constant eye to the schools in their own immediate neighborhood; to cherish them with affectionate and jealous care ; to guard them from partisan and sectarian minipulation ; to see that the teachers are fitted for their work morally as well as intellectually, and that they worthily appreciate the grandeur of their task in training children for their high duties as American citizens. They should clearly understand that while those duties are based upon the broad, tolerant Christianity which our country holds to be, in a modified sense, a part of American lawt — the Christianity revealed in the Bible, and whose divine origin and birth are judicially recognized — a Christianity not founded on any particular tenets, but Christianity with liberty of conscience to all men : the Christian ethics and influence thus author- ized and demanded in our schools, must never be narrowed or perverted in our State institutions, and least of all in our public schools, by the admission of denominational dogmas or doctrines, or of decrees or maxims at variance with American rights, American principles, or American law ; or inconsistent with the fundamental Ameri- can principle of a complete separation of church and state. The American public school, with the Christianizing and mollifying influence of the Golden Eule and the spirit of equal rights, civil and re- ligious freedom, and of the high responsibility of American citizens, blending the children of different races, bringing those who repesent the » lower civilization of foreign lands under the gentle and elevating in- fluence of the children of American citizens inheriting the blood and the spirit of the founders of the Republic — these are the features that induced Henry Ward Beecher to say, and we all feel how much of truth there is in the remark, that "children of all the nationalities of the world enter our public schools and come out Americans." * C. J. Shea's address, pp. 63, 54 ; and Story's Commentaries on the Constitution, pp. 140, 141. t Kent's Commentaries, p. ."543. t ■' It is well settled," says President Dwiglit, of the Columbia College Law School, "by decisions in the courts of the leading States of the Union, that Christianity is a part of the common law of the State." The judicial authorities bearing on this point are of the highest authority and em- brace the opinion of C. J. Kent, in the Euggles case, concurred in by Judges Smith Thompson, Ambrose Spencer, William Van Nes", and Joseph C. Yates," of the supreme court of the State of New York ; and that of Mr. Justice Allen and his associates, Clark and Sutherland, J. J., in the case of Liudemullei-; of Chief-Justice Clayton, of Dela- ware, in the case of Chandler; of the supreme court of Penusylvania,"]n Updegraph t'. The Commonwealth; of Chief-Justice Story, in Vidal i). Girard's Executors ; and in Story's " Commentaries on the Constitution." They are generally alluded to also by Chief-Justice Shea in his " Nature and form of the American Government founded in the Christian Religion," Boston, 1883 ; in Dr. James M. King's "Religion and the State," Phillips & Hunt, New York, 1886, quot- ing also Daniel Webster, President Dwight, and Dr. Woolsey ; and in " Church and State in the United States ; or, the American Idea of Religious Liberty and its Prac- tical Effects," by Phillip Schaft; D. D., LL. D., American Historical As'sociation, Vol. < II, No. 4, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1888, with elaborate passages from the leading opinions referred to ; and also from Dr. Franklin, Dr. Francis Lieber Jude-e Thomas M. Cooley, and Chief-Justice Waite. ^ Some authorities and information touching the organized attempt to subvert the common schools and religious freedom may be found in the documents of the Alliance Nos. XX, XXIII, and xxiv. RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. 23 We all know what need we have of calm, intelligent, deliberate wisdom for the discussion and decision of ttie difficult and exciting questions that are constantly arising in one shape or another between capital and labor, and which are now used by astute politicians and wire-pullers to arouse and influence the passions of the populace, and to create prejudice and doubt, hate and fear, and to enable cliques and party managers to guide the tumult they have helped to create in furtherance of their aims for wealth and power. For the sake of economy of time I ask permission to leave with you a printed address on "Eeligion and the State," in which the history and character of the public schools are discussed, and proof is adduced to establish the fact that we are a Christian but not a sectarian nation ; and that purely secular instruction of, the youth in preparation for the duty of citizenship has in it the elements of imminent peril. Appended to' this address will be found a digest of judicial decisions and opinions bearing upon the relation of Christianity to our State aind national gov- ernments. I have also prepared an argument to prove that the great peril to our civil and religious liberties is to be found in the aggressions of Jesuitical Romanism, with its abject submission to a foreign power, and its uncom- Ijromisiug hostility to the public schools. JESUIT ATTEMPTS TO MISREPRESENT AND BLACKEN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. Their declaration that the public schools are infidel In principle is in absolute violation of the truth of history and in contempt of judicial decisions that Christianity is a part of American law. Our morals and religion as a people are declared by our courts to be those of Christian- ity, and Christian morality has always formed a part of our common- school education. But the ultramontanes demand the right to teach their denominational dogmas, and we draw the line at sectarian teach- ing, and exclude all the doctrines on which Christians differ. But this rule does not exclude the teaching of the Ten Commandments or of the Golden Eule, or of the perfect morals inculcated in our Saviour's teach- ings, especially in His sermon on the mount. The Jesuit fallacy on this point has been shared by others whose ar- guments, based upon apatent fallacy, ignore the long array of judicial decisions, and have sometimes been deluded into almost admitting that Christian morals can not be taught in our public schools, while under our judicial decisions their teaching becomes the plainest of duties. In New York, for instance, and other States where by the constitution of the State or by special statute one may be indicted and punished for saying " in the presence of divers good and Christian people, etc., of and concerning the Christian religion and of and concerning Jesus Christ certain false and blasphemous words in contempt of the Christian religion and in contempt of the law of the State," would it not be ab- surd to contend that the State was forbidden in the public schools to let the children know anything of the Christian religion which was a part of its law and for blaspheming which they would be punished? An elaborate work on "Public-School Educatioa" by the Eev. Michael Miiller, of which a new and revised edition has been published in New York by D. & J. Saddlier & Co., with indorsements by P. T. Baiter, Bishop at Alton, and by other Eoman Catholic authorities, says : The moral character of the public schools in many of our cities has sunk so low that even courtesans have disguised themselves as school-girls in order the more surely to ply their foul vocation. * * » 24 RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. Yet the Tivicketl, detestable, irreligious system, diabolical in its origin and subser- vience of all political, social, and religious order, is imposed by tbe State upon an Christian denominations, whether they approve of i^ or not. Now,, tbe State has no right ■whatever to force such a godless system upon its subjects. JESUIT ATTEMPTS TO DEIVE, THE BIBLE FEOM THE SCHOOLS. The Ultramontanes have used every effort to drive the Bible from our public schools, where from the early colonies it has had its honored place. The chief argument used by its opponents was that there was an essential difference between the Douay translation and that of King James, and that it was unfair to compel Eoman Catholic children to listen to a translation which their parents and spiritual teachers be- lieved to be erroneous ; and to this argument no little weight was given by those most anxious to retain the Bible as " the noblest of classics— the book of the ages — the word of God." The controversy resulted not in the exclusion of the Bible by law, but in its exclusion from certain schools, and the objection based upon a supposed erroneous translation or of sectarian selection of passages was thus definitely disposed of by the Freeman's Journal, November 20, 1869 : If the [Roman] Catholic translation of the Books of Holy Writ, which is to be found in the houses of all our better educated [Roman] Catholics, were to be dis- sected by the ablest Catholic theologians in the land, and merely lessons to be taken from it, such as [Roman] Catholic mothers read to their children; and with all the notes and comments in the popular edition, and others added with the highest [Rpman] Catholic indorsement ; and if these admirable Bible lessons, and these alone, were to be ruled as to be read in all t\ie public schools, this would not diminish in any substantial degree the objections we [Roman] Catholics have to letting [Roman] Catholic children attend the public schools. So that the one great effort to make the schools heathenish and God- less came from the Ultramontanes themselves ; and they backed it by the Jesuitical and groundless argument, first, that the state has no right to teach Christian morality in the public schools ; and next, that the state has no right to educate at all excepting by the ijermission and with the approval of the Pope. In a paper in the [Roman] Catholic World, for September, 1875, on " The rights of the [Koman] Church over education," the third proposi- tion says : The superintendence and direction oi the public schools, as well those wherein the mass of the people are instructed in the rudiments of human knowledge as those wherein secondary and higher instruction are given, belong of right to the [Roman] Catholic Church. She alone has the right of watching over the moral character of those schools ; of approving the master who instructs the youth therein ; of control- ling their teaching, and dismissing, without appeal to any other authority, those whose doctrines or manners should be contrary to the purity of the Christian doc- trine. This so-called "Christian doctrine" includes, as now taught in the Jesuit test-books, many of the doctrines which the [Eoman] Catholic Church, by the brief of abolishment issued by Pope Clement XIV, con- demned as immoral and scandalous, and which, in their demoralizing influence, naturally lead to the startling proportion of vice and crime which marks the statistical results of the Ultramontane schools in America as compared with those of the public schools j and it is easy to imagine the extent and character of the revolution which such a transfer of the education of our youth from the state to the ecclesiasti- cal power of Eome, and such an utter transformation of its character would effect in the future of our Eepublic. RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. 25 DE. BROWNSON'S TESTIMONY TO THE LOW CIVILIZATION OP THE CATHOLIC COLONY IN NEW YOEK. "By their fraita shall ye know them," said our Lord to His disciples; by our fruits non-Catholics do and -will judge our Church. * » » The worst governed cities in the Union are precisely those in which Catholics are the most influential in the elections, and have the most to do with municipal affairs. We furnish more than our share of the rowdies, the drunkards, and the Yicious population of our larger cities. The majority of the grog-sellers in this city of New York are Catholics, and the por- tions of the city where grog-seXlhig, drurtkenness, and filth most abound are those chiefly inhabited by Catholics, and ive scarcely see the shghtest effort made for a reformation. In ordinary life we do not find Catholics more honest, more truthful, more conscien- tious than the non-Catholic community. * * » We expected to find Catholics willing always to pay homage to truth and justice, liberal and tolerant in matters of opinion, rigid and uncompromising in matters of faith. We have found them in but too many instances the reverse. We have found people whose ancestors during four- teen hundred years have been Catholics, wlio have yet to be taught the simplest prin- ciples and precepts of Christian morality, and icho scarcely have any conception of duty, except going to confession and receiving Holy Communion. We have found those who seem to think if they escaped the censure of the priest, they need give themselves no further trouble. * « • Yet in moral culture and general intelligence the Cath- olic population are below the better class of non-Catholics. Dr. Brownson's ijicture of tbe training in the parochial schools, and the thought of the Jesuit morality taught in the present Koman Catholic text-books, leave no further explanation necessary of the statistics gathered from the census of 1870, as collated by Mr. Dexter A. Haw- kins, and in whicli it is believed no error has been shown to exist. It seems that there are furnished to every ten thousand inhabitants — By- Illiterates. Paupers. Criminals. Homan Catholic schools Public schools of tweiit.v-one States Public schools of Massachusetts . -. 1,400 360 71 410 170 160 75 11 It was also shown that in the State of ISTew York the Roman Catholic parochial-school system turned out three and a half times as many pau- pers as the public-school system. THE ALLOWANCE OF A CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE EN- LARGES PAUPERISM AND INCREASES TAXATION. This was strikingly illustrated after the passage in 1875 of the chil- dren's law, promoted by the Charities Aid Association for the removal of pauper children from the poor-houses to asylums, with an amend- ment against which that association protested " as being contrary to the traditions and usages of this country in recognizing religious dis- tinction in State legislation." It provided that such children should be sent to asylums or reformatory institutions controlled by persons of the same faith with the parents of the children. This provision, violating the American principle, " No connection be- tween church and state," and the approved rule that the State shall educate only in its public schools, and never in sectarian institutions, and that the money of the people should be expended in fitting the children for their duties as American citizens, and not in teaching the religious dogmas. of rival sects, increased largely the pauperism which the original bill was intended to arrest. This naturally resulted from the fact that each additional pauper entitled the sectarian institution which secured him to a new bounty. In Kings Opunty, for example, 26 RELIGION AND SCHOOL.S. the number of children subject to removal increased the first year ™o^® than 100 per cent., and it rose from 348 in 1875 to nearly 1,600 iu 1880. The proportion in difi'ereut asylums being given — Roman Catholic ^'nrr Protestant • ■^™ Jewish ^' Of the children, 720 vrere represented as having both parents living; so that hundreds of families had been broken up and children removed from the care of their parents to be maintained in sectarian schools and boarding-houses at the public expense. The cost to the people of Kings County rose in five years from $40,000 to $172,000, at $110 for each child, a price so large that Commissioner Eopes said that the over- crowded asylums farmed out those whom they had no room for. The importance to tax-payers of the absolute avoidance of the religious question in the management of the public charities, is shown also by a comparative table published by the State board of charities, which ex- hibits the contrast in this respect between the cities of Philadelphia and New York. In Philadelphia, for thirty years from 1850 to 1880, the increase of population had been 135 per cent, and the increase in the cost of charities 112 per cent. ; while in New York, during the same period, the increase in population has been 134 per cent, and the in- crease in the cost of charities 539 per cent. THE HOSTILITY OP THE JESUITS TO AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS. The testimony of statesmen, political economists, and historians, who have never been charged with the odium theologioum, warns us as a peo- ple to beware of the Jesuits and ultramontanes. Lafayette, himself of the Eoman Catholic faith, whose devotion to the young Eepublic whose freedom he assisted to establish and of which he was made a citizen and whom Washington regarded as a son, said : If anything disturbs your liberties look out for the invisible hand of the Jesuit. Adam Smith, the great political economist, said : The Church of Rome is the most formidal)le combination that was ever formed against the authority and security of civil government; as well as against the lib- erty, reason, and happiness of manliind. Dr. Robertson, the accomplished historian, said of the Church of Eome: The implicit submission to all her decrees which the Roman Church extracts, pre- pares and breaks the mind for political servitude. Their system of superstition is the firmest foundation of civil tyranny. (Robertson, History of Scotland, p. 59, Edin- burgh, 18^9.) Mr. Gladstone, with an extensive learning and a practical experience and wisdom that give force- to his grave counsels, said of the ultra- motane authority : (Vaticanism, p. Ill)— "Tliat its influence is adverse to freedom in the state, the family, and the individual;" and (p. 119) "In the ohnrchos subject to the Pope, clerical power, and every doctrine and usage favorable to clerical power, have been developed ; while all that nurtured freedom, and all that guarantied it, have been harassed and denounced, cabined and confined, attenuated and starved ; " and again (p. 95), " To secure rights has been, and is, the aim of tbe Christian civilization ; to destroy them, and to establish the resistless, domineering action of a purely central power, is the aim of the Roman policy." However amiable may be the personal character of the present Pope, his policy as the Sovereign Pontiff is in direct opposition to the funda- mental principles of the American Government. RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. 27 In bis Encyclical (Tablet, Nov. 14, 1885) Leo XIII again expressed his approval of the Syllabus. He denounced the Eeformatioh as " the origin of the recent principle of tmbridled liberty^" he repudiates the idea of "equality;" or that. "each man should be allowed /reeZ?/ to thinlc on whatever subject he pleases;" and he conflemned any Gov- ernment in which " every one will be allowed to follow the religion lie prefers." In a letter addressed to the Cardinal Vicar, under date March '26, 1879,' he asserts : "That he understands the liberty and dignity of the Koman Pontiff to signify removing from Eome the means of prac- ticing and propagating whatever in the opinion of the Eoman Church is heretical ; and that, if he possessed the liberty he claims, lie loould employ it to close all the Protestant schools and places of worship in Eome." (Times, April 11, 1879.) The minister of public instruction in France, under Grambetta, uttered not merely his own judgment, but also that of the great statesman himself, when he said : The Jesuits, wherever tliey have found an opportunity, have provoked a civil war. They recognize no civil or political obligations to the state which are not subordi- nate to their order, of which they must be the final judges. They corrupted the youth for three hundred years. They countenanced debauchery, theft, incest, rob- bery, and murder, and teach as morals a set of doctrines which strike at the very - foundation of human society. They have lieen hunted like rattlesnakes out of every Christian country in Europe, even out of Eome itself, and in other places have been put under the ban of the church. The Abbex Arnault, in the same vein, asks this significant question : Do you wish to excite troubles, to provoke revolution, to iiroducethe total ruin of your country, call in the Jesuits. ULTRAMONTANE BOASTS OF THEIR RAPID INCREASE OF WEALTH, AND ITS EXPLANATION. Father Hecker, in his ingenious pamphlet on the " Catholic Church iu the United States " (New York, 1879), remarks that — The Catholic Church in the Republic fi.nds her strength in relying for lier material support Upon the piety of her faithful, and the spirit and generosity with which her children respond to this tesc of the sincerity of tliat faith is an example which has a meaning at this moment for the whole Christian world. It certainly has a meaning for the tax-payers of America, and espe- cially of New York and other large cities, when we examine the finan- cial statistics which enabled Father Hecker to boast (p. -;2) that the , wealth of the Eoman Catholic Church had increased from $9,256,758 in . 1850, to $26,774,119 in 1860, and to $60,985,565 in 1870 ; and he added that while in the last decade "the wealth of the whole country gained 86 per cent., the Catholic Church gained 128 per cent." The figures giv-en by Mr. Hawkins show that in 1869 nearly $800,000 were paid to it by Mr. Tweed, the master thief in New York politics; and that from 1869 to 1885' Eoman Catholic institutions got from the treasury of New York $10,915,371.81. (See paper by General E. E. Hawkins in the American Citizen, February 9, 1889.) Dr. Brounson says: We often boa:st of the progress of our religion in this country, but we deceive our- selves. As yet the church has made little or no progress in converting the American people, and what we call her progress is only the augmentation of the foreign colony. Catholic missions to the American people have not yet been opened. The missions in the country are to the foreign colony of Catholics settled here. No doubt a few con- ' verts are made, but they number, all told, we should judge, not a tithe of the per- versions of Catholics that take place. Besides, as we have jnst intimated, the ma- jority of these converts join the foreign colony, become far more assimilated to the 28 RELIGION AND SCHOOLS, foreign colonv tlian Catholic foreigners settled here do to the American people proper. So that in reality our Catholic progress consists not in Catholicizing, but in foreign-' izing the country, * * » But Mtherto the church has been presentecl to us not as 1ho Catholic Church, but as a foreign church. We need the Catliolicity but not the foreiguism, for that foreigu- ism -which Catholics bring with them and perpetuate iu their foreign colony is un- Catholio and antagonistical to the Ameyioan idea, and has thus far done more injury lo our American order of chilizaUon than the Catholicity they also bring has yet done to aid it. The spread of Catholicity associated with the foreign civilization throughout the country, would destroy the American order of civilization and reproduce m our New- World that of the Old World, on which ours is, in our j augment, a decided advance. The American people see this, and hence the little or no progress of the Catholic religion among them. THE FOECE OF GRANT'S SUGGESTION. But the culminating argument in behalf of the amendment is that which General Grant suggested to the Army of the Tennessee at Des Moines, September 29, 1876, when he said : If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividingline will not be Mason's and Dixon's; but it will be between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other. And with that possibility in the near future, can we hesitate at the wisdom of an amendment which will securely place the public-school system on the side of patriotism, intelligence, and Christianity, arrest the effect inspired by a foreign potentate and organized by his agents in our own to array the schools on the side of superstition, ambition, and ignorance ? Could there be greater folly than to divide our nation with antagonis- tic schools, teaching patriotism in the one and disloyalty in the other? The Jesuits hope to accomplish their ends by corrupting our legisla- tures by a deal of votes for principles ; and some of them seem also to anticipate the war whose possible shadow suggested to Grant his words of wisdom. Three years later, on the 24th of May, 1879, the Catholic Herald is quoted as saying : That a most dreadful conflict, an awful conflict, between the power of good and evil, is in the near future, and that the fate of the Republic depends upon the result. Eome has not failed to provide in advance convenient rules for such an event. She is not content with claiming power to '' amend and to cancel the civil laws or the sentences proceeding from a civil court when- ever there may be collision with the spiritual weal," but that — She has the faculty io cJieck the aiuse of the executive and of the armed forces, or even to prescribe their einpJoyment ivhenever the requirements for the protection of the Christian faith may require it. In this view the organization of regiments under ultramontane guid- ance may not be without significance, and orders from Eome checking the abuse of the executive and the armed forces, and prescribing the employment of the Government troops may present a novel incident unprovided for in the tactics of the American army, but not unworthy the thought of statesmen capable of arresting such foreign interference by preserving the integrity of the American school. Great injustice has been doubtless done to the liberal and loyal American Eoman Catholics by the unlimited boasts of the IJltramon- tanes, intimating that every Irishman was in heart favorable to the ultramontane schemes. This idea seemed to be convej-ed by the late Archbishop Lynch, of the Ilomau diocese of Toronto, who, in a letter to Lord Eandolph Churchill, quoted in the New York Churchman of April RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. ' 29 2, 1887, declared that "the Irish vote is a great factor in America;" that " the power of their organizations is increasing every day;" that " they hold already the balance ofpotcer in Presidential and other elections^ A further remark of the Archbishop is of national and almost world- wide interest in view of the Irish question, and of the part which our Eepublic and our Irish fellow-citizens are expected to play in accom- plishing the foreign policy of the Vatican. His Grace said: Should a misunderstanding happen between England and the United States, Can- ada would in a few days be overrun by American troops. It would cost that Eepub- lic -very little, as Irish-American military organizations would supply very largely both men and money. There is no reason to suppose that our citizens, native or adopted, of whatever faith, who are sincerely loyal to American principles and in- stitutions are ready to back the ultramontanes in involving the Eepub- lic in a war with England, or in undermining the public schools and religious freedom. The New York Herald, edited by a gentleman of the Eoman Catholic faith, whose princely generosity to the poor of Ireland entitles him to their eternal gratitude, and to whom the Eoman Catholic missions in America have been largely indebted, has given to the ultramontanes of New York the frankest warnings. It said (October 14, 1880) : The people have an opportunity to see just what sort of an institution the [Eoman] Catholic Church is in politics, and to understand what a farce it would be to jiretend that free government can continue where it is permitted to toucli its hand to politics. This is a Protestant country, and the American i^eople are a, Protestant people. They tolerate all religions, even Mohammedanism, buttliere are some points in these tolerated religions to which they object, and will not permit, and thi* vice of the [Roman] Catholic Church, by which it has rotted out the political institutions of all countries where it exists, which has made it like a flight of locusts everywhere, will be properly rebuked here when it fairly shows its purpose. The article added an assurance that the Herald was " in the fullest possible sympathy with American opinion on this important topic;" and a few days later (October 30, 1880), the editor, recurring to this subject, wrote: "In all it then said the Herald has the sympathy of many loyal and devoted [Eoman] Catholics." But the loyal Koman Catholics of whatever nationality are unable by themselves to stem the Jesuit tendencies now dominant in their church; and Congress in approving and recommending the amendment will take a step that will tend to perpetuate our institutions and secure the hap- piness of our people; but the first personstobebenetitedby the amend- ment will be the Eoman Catholic children who are now prevented from attending the public schools. It is time to end in the American Eepublic all foreign decrees against our public schools like that issued by Bishop McClosky at Louisville, Ky., January 3, 1880, in these words: Now,ji is our will and command that when there is a Cathoac school in the parish parents and guardians in such place should send their children or wards who are under nine years of age to such Catholic schools ; and we hereby direct that the obli- gation-be enforced under the pain of refusal of absolution in the sacrament and pen- ance. 30 RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. ARGUMENT OF REV. GEORGE K. MORRIS, D. D,, OF PHILADELPHIA. Eev. Dr. Moeeis. Mr. Chairman, tlie responsibility of addressing the committee on this important matter was thrown upon me at so iate a period that I have not been able to reduce anything to writing and I shall limit myself to a single remark or two. ' I ask your attention to the fact that on this matter of the proposed constitutional amendment the country stands divided principally along a line indicated by the evangelical church bodies on the one side and the Eoman Catholic Church on the other; but this must be said with some qualitications. There are some members of the evangelical churches, a very limited number, who do not see eye to eye with the great masses of these churches upon this point for reasons which they may be trusted to advance, and, on the other hand, the Eoman Catholic Church is not a unit iu its demand. What has been spoken of as the ultramontane element in that church is at the bottom of this agitation. We have no means of ascertaining how large a proportion of the entire Catholic Church they represent; but we are quite confident that they represent the most skillful, the most adroit, the most powerful, the most ener- getic, and the most determined ; that they are inspired by the Jesuit Society which is abroad in America, and whose subtile workings may be recognized in more ways than one as touching the political life of our great country. There are, however, very many Eoman Catholic citizens who have no sympathy with the movement and who never willingly send their chil- dren to parochial schools, but who do so under angry protest when com- pelled by the spiritual authority which they dare not openly resist, and who, as soon as the grip of the priest is relaxed, permit their children to fall away from the parochial school, whose curriculum is limited and unsatisfactory, and to go again to our public schools. ITow, the fact tha;t the public sentiment of the United States stands di- vided along the line suggested gives importance to the question as to the relative strength of the two bodies — the body demanding respectfully the adoption of this amendment on the one side, and the body which, if united in their objections, would stand on the other side as oppos- ing it. According to the latest statistics, in the year 1886 the Eoman Catholic population was 7,200,000. That estimate includes every man, woman, and child of the Catholic faith in the United States of America at that time, and does not admit of the addition of 50 per cent, nor any other per cent, in order to include other persons of Eoman Catholic sentiment not members of the Eoman Catholic Church. You will need to remember, Mr. Chairman, that the Eoman Catholic method of estimatijig the number of members differs from that of the evangelical churches. All their children are baptized into the church, and every person of the Eoman Catholic faith is a member of the Eoman Catholic Church and is so enumerated and reported, while, on the other Land, the evangelical churches count only communicants, persons who profess the actual experience of religion; they distinguish in their enumeration between those who believe the doctrines, who accept the creeds of the several evangelical churches, and those who are strictly members or communicants in the church. Along that line the Eoman Catholics in 1886 were represented to be 7,200,000 citizens, including children. The evangelical population at RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. 31 that time — not the church membership simply, but the population — numbered 42,646,279. To give you an idea of the relative growth of these two bodies who are before you or will be, allow me to state that in the sixteen years im- mediately preceding 1886 the Eoman Catholic population increased by the number of 2,000,000, while the evangelical population increased 19,289,293. So that in 1870 the evangelical population was 60^ per cent., while in 1886 it was 73 per cent. ; an increase of 12 J per cent, in sixteen years. The Romanists have gained since 1870 more than in the previous fourteen years 12 per cent., while the evangelical population in the same time have gained 87 per cent. I have called your attention to these statistics because political con- siderations have very much to do with the decision of these questions in a country like ours, where the majority on all questions, it is con- ceded, is entitled to rule. Senator George. Your idea is that the' Eoman Catholics are not gaining in proportion to the others ? i Eev. Dr. Morris. That is distinctly and clearly shown by thesa statistics. The Chairman. You count men, women, and children? X Eev. Dr. Morris. In all cases. The Chairman. And entirely regardless now of what is called ex- periencing religjion ? Eev. Dr. Morris. Yes, sir; in each case, Catholic and evangelical, we give the population, those who entertain the doctrines of the church. The Chairman. In that do you count all who are Catholics on one side and all who are not Catholics on the other? Eev. Dr. Morris. No, sir. We count all who are Catholics on the one side and all who are of the evangelical faiths on the other side. The Chairman. How large a residuum or fraction is remaining which makes up the entire people ? Eev. Dr. Morris. Unfortunately I have not prepared myself upon that. The Chairman. How manv did you estimate the evangelicals num-. bered in 1886 ? Eev. Dr. Morris. Forty-two million six hundred and forty-six thou- sand two hundred and seventy-nine. The Chairman. And the Catholics? Eev. Dr. Morris. The Catholic population 7,200,000. The Chairman. Forty-two and seven-tenths per cent.? Eev. Dr. Morris. Nearly 43 per cent. The Chairman. The total being 50,000,000 in 1880, the gain between 50,000,000 and the true populatiou in 1886 would represent all the other classes who belong to no church whatever? Eev. Dr. Morris. The atheists, those who entirely reject the Chris- tian faith. The Chairman. You substantially include everybody in the evangel- ical estimate except the Catholics? Kev. Dr. Morris. I have not looked closely into that question. The Chairman. There were 50,000,000 of people in 1880, and in 1886 there mav have been 58,000,000 perhaps. Eev. Dr. Morris. Yes ; I understand that this estimate allows for the population which is supposed to be purely atheistic, rejecting all Christian faiths. They are comparatively a small number. Senator George. Exclusive of the Mormons, too ? 32 EELIGION AND SCHOOLS. Eev. Dr. Morris. No, not the Mormons. They would be evangeli- cal in one sense. ■ • i i ^ Senator Palmer. Yon assume all who are not atheistic and wno are not Catholic to be evangelical '! Eev. Dr. Morris. Yes, sir ; pretty nearly so. , The Chairmak. You include all who are knowu as agnostics per- haps as evangelicals, then ? , Eev. Dr. Morris. The agnostics, properly speaking, are so small in number, that they have scarcely entered into the computation. The Chairman. But the fact seems to be that there is a great body of people who are not communicauts of churches, who have no special, active, afiflrmative faith la the evangelical ■ creeds or lu Eoman Catholi- cism, which, I suppose, is very nearly one-third of our people ; 1 thmk it is. Senator Palmer. The agnostics are a rebgious people, more so than many of our people. The Chairman. Mr. IngersoU is an agnostic. He leads a type ot agnosticsm in the country. Senator Palmer. He is atheistic. The Chairman. He is an agnostic. Senator Geor&e. That raises a very interesting question as to what is the Christian religion. Eev. Dr. Morris. There are statistics showing that there are nearly twenty millious of American citizens who are members of Christian churches, from which it would appear that much less than one-third of our people are unbelievers. Senator George. What becomes in your calculation about church membership of the Baptist children of what are called the Pedo-Bap- tists '? Eev. Dr. Morris. I estimate no person as a member of an evangeli- cal church whose name has not been entered upon the church roll. Senator George. After arriving at the years of discretion ■? Eev. Dr. Morris. After the years of discretion have arrived, and by his own act. Senator George. Though he may have been baptized in infancy'? Eev. Dr. Morris. Though he may have been baptized in infancy. To resume, this growing minority— that is, this minority growing back- ward, becoming more and more a minority — present this claim for a di- vision of the school fund, and the great mass of what remains of the population — that is, the great mass of American citizens — are opposed to this division of the school fund as demanded by the ultramontane^ side of the Catholic Church. Senator George. Those figures, I suppose, are assuring to us poli- ticians, that in getting after the Catholics and all that sort of thing we are not getting in a minority ? Eev. Dr. MoRRis. Well, sir; you are at liberty to make a very wise inference from the facts which are before you without comment so far. And, now, that brings us to a consideration of the peril arising to the country from the method adopted by this minority, this acute, adroit, determined, and united minority, to accomplish their purposes. They seek to secure them not so much by the American method of in- telligent agitation before the great jury of the public, presenting the facts and discussing the principles in the open light of broad day, but by political methods, at the handling of which they are adepts. Senator George. Let me ask you a question there. Is not this pro- RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. 33 posed amentlment and are not these proceediugs here rather an imita- tion of what is charged against the Catholics, of obtaining their ends by political methods ? Rev. Dr. Morkis. It would be very strange sir, if we would not fol- low an enemy into any battle-field to which he might resort to accom- plish his purposes. We admit t^iat, and you will see why, perhaps, in a moment or two further on. They seek by political methods to accom- plish their purposes, and I ought to say, in the opposition we are making to the demands of the Ultramontanes we are not actuated at all by an- tagonism to the Eoman Oatholio faith nor to Eoman Catholics as Chris- tians. We are very careful in our dealings, so far as I am familiar with the matter, to avoid anything calculated to stir up denominational bit- terness in the masses of our people. Let me say we believe in the reli- gious character of the religious Eoman Catholic and have not a word to say against the Eoman Catholic Church as a church. We must mention its name here, but in doing it, so far, at least, as I am concerned and those whom I know myself to represent in sentiment are concerned, we mention the name without ecclesiastical bitterness. There is no ill- feeling towards the church as a church. We are entirely willing that the Eoman Catholic Church shall stand on terms of perfect equality in this great, free country of ours, and shall have its say on every grea^ question, and we are entirely willing that it shall press its claims by le- gitimate methods before the public and win the fight if it can. We seek to arouse no hostility toward that church as a church, but if we can succeed in showing, as I think the facts which have been laid before you tend very strongly to show, that any measure of this church or of any other church, if any other church were concerned, is inimical to the best interests of the country, then, aside from ecclesiastlcism, we would be justified in antagonizing the intent of the church as to that measure. Now, we hold that the Eoman Catholic Church is pursuing a measure which is destructive of the best interests of this great country, and therefore without regard to its faith at all, but with sole reference to the political method that it is pursuing, we meet it here. Outside of this conflict I should be glad to meet with Catholics, with Catholic priests, as dtizens of this country, and as believers in the same Lord Jesus Christ, and as lovers of the same God, on terms of Christian fra- ternity. We have not been educated to regard with superstitious hor- ror the Eoman Catholic as a Christian, but on the other hand we hold that both their aim and their method of pursuing it are productive of perils that ought to alarm every true patriot. Senator George. Let me ask you a question right there. You regard the purposes to which you have alluded of the Eoman Catholic Church as so essentially a part of that ecclesiastical organization that it is not . likely to be abandoned, except by the destruction of the church 1 Eev. Dr. Morris. IsTo, sir ; it is not an essential part of the church at all, as we look at it from the outside, and as we are taught, as I have been taught by some who profess to speak from an inside view, but it represents, as I have said, the Jesuitical element in that church. There are Eomanists loyal to their church who believe that it is a mistake, and who will feel that the church as a church is stronger before the nation when this thing shall have been settled. As to the question of methods, Mr. Chairman, they pursue this con- flict by carrying the question, the religious question and the ecclesias- tical question, into ward and county and city politics. They are intro^ 12053 3 34 RELIGIOX AND SCHOOLS. (lucing a religions or ecclesiastical line into party politics iu a luauuer that is not only calculated to stir up religious animosities, but that has actually done so, and that is destined to do so more and more, creating inconceivable bitterness. In New York Gity— I am not a resident of that city, but I used to be, and I am interested in it as the metropolis of our country, and I read with some interest what goes on there, and 1 know as a result of the attempts of this church to secure similar meas- ures, measures involving the same purposes and intended to accomplish the same ends before the legislature at Albany, they have aroused a degree of political bitterness that is simply appalling and that will produce results, if it be not arrested, that no man can calculate, and the agitation following which the country can not afford to sustain. Now if this amendment shall pass it will remove the question out of politics. It is a question that politicians have cause to fear. So long as it remains as a live political question, it will seriously disturb polit- ical calculations, but if this amendment is adopted and the whole thing is removed entirely from politics, that settles it, and the country be- comes quiet. There may after that be agitation along other lines, but so far as politics are concerned there is an end of the battle and polit- ical forces may marshal themselves along the lines of questions of state of great importance without fear of being disturbed by the mandate of a foreign pontiff. We understand very well, and it might as well be stated here; that there are great masses of voters in the United States whose ballot is determined by the Eoman pontifi'. Senator Geokge. Do you mean to say that the Eoman pontiff, through his ecclesiastical agencies, dictates to Eoman Catholics of this country the ticket which they shall vote ? Eev. Dr. Moeris. I mean to say that I have information, which has come to me in common with other citizens, and there is the clearest reason for assuming that fact, that while I would hesitate to put it in that dis- tinct form, yet there might be no reason to hesitate to say that the po- litical machinery of that church is so perfect, its relation to the polit- ical actions of its members is so complete, that there is not the slightest danger that the political action of any large number of its members shall in any case run counter to the will of the pontiff. Senator George. You speak of the "political machinery" of the church. Is that a deliberate expression? Eev. Dr. Morris. Not as it would be interpreted by politicians, but the machinery of the church controlling political machinery in the State — there is a confessed relation between the two. Senator George. Do you mean that their ecclesiastical machinery has been jjerverted to the control of politics! Eev. Dr. Morris. Yes, sir; that is the idea. The Chairman. Do you mean, doctor, that that is a perversion, or . that it is a political machine organized for political as well as religious ends, and attaining religious ends through political agencies as well as religious ? Eev. Dr. AIorris. I mean both. That is to say, when you think of the Eoman Catholic Church as a church, it is a perversion as claiming to be a church; it is a perversion of what belongs to a church ; but when you think of the Eoman Catholic Church as a branch of a great state, claiming to cover the whole world, governed by an Italian priest, then it is not a perversion, but the simple normal action of that church. Senator Wilson. Does it not all spring from the claim of temporal power "? RELIGION AND- SCHOOLS. 35 Rev. Dr. Moekis. It all springs from the claim of temporal power, to •which I have referred without using the term. Senator GtEOBGe. You mean that the ecclesiastical organization of the church, taken in connection with the claims of the church — some gentleman has alluded to it here — as to infallibility and all that sort of thing, necessarily makes it a political machine? Eev. Dr. Morri^. Necessarily so. This Eomaa pontiff, as you have heard it read, says, or it has been said for him by his representative : I acknowledge no civic power. I am tlie subject of no prince, and I claim more than that : I claim, to be the supreme judge and director of the consciences of men ; of the peasant who tills the iield, and the prince who sits upon the throne ; of the household who sit in the shade of privacy, and of the legislature that makes laws for kingdoms. I am the sole supreme judge of what is right and wrong. Senator George. Who made that declaration for him? Eev. Dr. Morris. You -will find it in Dr. Schaff's History of the Vat- ican, and it was made by Cardinal Manning. The Chairman. He is speaking for the Pope'? Eev. Dr. Morris. He is speaking for the Pope. He impersonates himself as the Pope. ^ The Chairman. That is Cardinal Manning's idea of the power and nature of the papacy? Eev. Dr. Morris. Yes, ^ir. When he says, " I claim to be the su- preme judge and director of the consciences of men," we see very clearly •a justification for the charge so often made that he claims the right to decide how a man's conscience shall tell him to vote ; and in everything that touches the interests of the Eoman Catholic Church we are sure that the Eoman pontiff will not slumber. In minds that are strongly inclined to demand fair play — and to the honor of American citizens I am glad to say they are nearly all for fair play — there will arise objections in looking upon the surface of this question that perhaps the Eoman Church has not a fair show and perhaps this division of the school fund is requisite in order that the church shall be dealt fairly ■with. If that could be shown, Mr. Chairman, my mouth would be closed from this time forward. 1 ask nothing that is unfair to any citizen, not to say any organization. Senator George. Are you aware that the Eomish Church, as it is sometimes called, is claiming in this country any larger proportion of the school fund than is paid into the public treasury by members of that church ? How is that ? I do not understand it. Eev. Dr. Morris. I have considered that question since I came into the room this morning, and am not able to recall any data for a judg- ment ; but my memory, running back over earlier agitations, does not touch any limitation to the demand, that is, that it shall include only the amounts paid in by Eoman Catholic tax-payers. Of course, unless it does that it is atrociously unfair, for the reason that as a churcli they are hopelessly in the minority, and as a people they are the child-bear- ing peoi)le of the country, and they have a number of children entirely out of proportion to the other citizens, the native citizens. Senator George. You mean they are more prolific ? Eev. Dr. Morris. That is claimed to be the fact. They pay a pro- portion of the taxes that is scarcely worth naming in comparison with the taxes paid by the evangelical population. But while that is an important question it is not the consideration on -which alone we antagonize this movement. We antagonize it because it has in it the germ of the destruction of the public school, and we 36 RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. regard tbe public school as the great assimilator of the offspriug of immi- grants. The public school is the only means by which the children of populations coming from every quarter of the Old World are assimi- lated. They are thrown together ou the campus and in the school, they look into each other's faces, they exchange thought one with the other in the public school, and the next generation of our immigrants is Ameri- can. In my city of Philadelphia you will see this process going on among the Italian children. You will go by the school there and see a few Italian children dressed as they have been accustomed to dressing in Italy set upon by a few thoughtless American childreti, laughing at what is peculiar in'their dress, and the Italian child, not enjoying being teased, on the morrow comes dressed like any American boy. That is the assertion of a principle which is as deep as the springs of human nature. Senator George. This is a very important subject and I want to understand you. You have given a great deal of thought to it and I have not given it much. Your argument is, then, that there is still another objection, a very fundamental one, to the separate schools of the Eoman Catholics, for the reason that when they are thus kept sep- arate it prevents that contact and intermingling of foreign Roman Catholic children with the American children which is necessary to give them a healthy, proper idea of American institutions '? Rev. Dr. Morris. That is a very good way to put the thought that was in my mind. Senator Wilson. It interrupts the assimilating process ? Eev. Dr. Morkis. Yes, sir; it entirely destroys it when you destroy the public schools. Senator George. I should like to know if you would go a step fur- ther. As this assimilation is so essential — I admit that, and I admit the necessity of assimilating different races in this country in order to have a homogeneous people — would you take this further step in order to secure this great good ; would you have compulsory attendance at the public schools "? Eev. Dr. Morris. Well, sir, I would hesitate to put myself on record as answering that question without qualification, but I will not hesitate to say that my opinion has always been that attendance upon the pub- lic schools ought to be compulsory. I am not prepared to go into a careful analysis of the reasons that would lead me to that conclusion, but in answer to that question that is my opinion. Senator George. The reflections to/which you have given expression in relation to assimilation, when applied to a community in which there is a large infusion of foreigners, would constitute in my mind the strong- est argument, probably, I have ever heard urged in favor of compulsory attendance. Eev. Dr. MoRRis. Yes, sir; it so presents itself to my mind. Senator George. I do not admit that it is a conclusive argument, however. Rev. Dr. Morris. As time is passing I will simply say a word further about the question of fairness. The Chairman. I should like to ask you one question before you leave on that particular topic, and that is, if the claim of Catholics be granted that they shall take from the general fund raised by taxation that proportion which belongs to them numerically, or upon the basis of their actual payment into it, and they have parochial schools, is or is not that the necessary commencement of the general establishment of denominational schools 1 RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. 37 Eev. Dr. Moeris. That is what is in my mind as underlying the claim I have made that this movement will destroy the public schools. The Chairman. And for that additional reason, then? Eev. Dr. Morris. Yes, sir. Senator GEORaB. The Baptists, the iMethodists, and other denomi- nations probably might assert the same claim 'I Eev. Dr. Morris. Yes, sir. The Chairman. Suppose they do that, what becomes of the mass of children who are so unfortunate as to belong to no church whatever ? Eev. Dr. Moeris. That raises a problem v*y diflcult of solution, and one the proportions and importance of which ought to give the country pause in view of this proposed division of the public-school fund. Senator Wilson. It is only another argument in favor of the equality you advance, however ? Eev. Dr. Morris. Yes, sir. Now, the Methodist, the Presbyterian, and other denominations have tenets peculiar to themselves as churches. They do not ask that these tenets shall be taught in the public schools. They establish schools of their own. There is the Sabbath-school, then we have the church schools and the seminaries, and we are founding them at private expense all over the country, and are caring for the in- doctrinating of our children in the peculiar doctrines which we esteem important. Now, is it unfair to say that the Catholic Church shall be prevented from drawing on the public funds to establish the doctrines that are i)eculiar to it as an ecclesiastical organization"^ Is it unfair to say that the Catholic Church shall stand upon precisely the same level before the public as an ecclesiastical organization as that upon which all the other denominations stand ; that they may teach their doctrines in the private Sunday-schools, in their parochial or private schools, or schools and seminaries, such as they are at liberty to found, just as the other denominations are doing ? The argument of fairness is entirely on the side of the adoption of this amendment. To permit the division of the public school fund is*Unfair to the other denominations for reasons that Lave been suggested in a variety of forms here to-day. To adopt this constitutional amendment is not unfair in its operations in any degree or in any sense to the Eoman Catholic Church. It is as American citizens, loving the prin- ciple of equality, favoring what is right for all alike, that we ask you to adopt this constitutional amendment. Senator G-EORaE. Allow me to ask you another question of some im- portance to my mind. I find on the second page of this amendment, in lines 16 and 17, the words "principles of the Christian religion," as in dicating a part of what is to be taught in the common schools, in public schools of the country Eev. Dr. MORRiS; Please read the connection. I have a different copy here. Senator George. I will read it all : Section -2. Each State in this Union sball establisli and maintain a system of free public seliools adequate for the educatiou of all the children living therein between the ages of six and sixteen years, inclusive, in the common branches of knowledge, and in virtue, morality, and the priuciples of the Christian religion. The question I want to propound is this : Having regard to the seven - millions of our fellow-citizens who belong to the Catholic Church, are not their principles, or is not their religion of such a character, if I may use that term, that teaching all the principles of the Christian religion as we Protestants understand them, would be in their judgment a 38 RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. teaching in contravention of what the Catholic Church teaches as the true religion 1 Eev. Dr. Morris. By no means. The Catholic Church is committed by all its history and by all its teachings to precisely the same funda- mental principles of the Christian religion as those which are held by the Evangelical churches. Tour question would relate to ecclesiasticism. They claim that the teaching of these fundamental truths by any other authority thau the papal authority is out of harmony with the princi- ples of their church, with ecclesiasticism. For us as a Government to grant that, is to recofuize the Eomau Catholic Church as the state church. Senator George. Is it not a fundamental principle of the Catholic religion that the Pope is the true successor of St. Peter, to whom was given the keys of heaven and earth imd the power to bind and to loose, which includes, as L understand it, the power of absolution given by one man to another of his sins'? Xow, is not that fundamental in the Catholic Church ? Kev. Dr. Morris. It is fundamental in the teachings of the Catholic Church, but it is not a fundamental principle of the Christian religion even as they would claim. Senator George. Eight on that point we Protestants take the anti- podes. We say that each responsible creature is to be dealt with between himself and his God, and is responsible to his God and to nobody else,' and nobody can bind him but God and nobody can loose him but his God. As I understand it, that is our idea. Eev. Dr. Morris. Your question is an important one, and it is funda- mental. Senator George. If we pass this amendment every Protestant in this country would teach it as fundamental to the child that " you are a child of God, and you are responsible to Him for your conduct; He will save you or he will allow you to be condemned" — I will put it in that way — " according to the way you may perform your part in life." I can Bot express it in the very elegant and precise language of the theologiaps, but I have got that idea ; it is fundamental with me at any rate and would be fundamental with us, and yet, if I understand the subject, which I may not, because I have not given a great deal of at- tention to these ecclesiastical matters — ' Eev. Dr. Morris. You have a very clear conception of the point be- tween us. Senator George. If I understand it, the Catholic hierarchy, the Catholic priests, the Catholic Pope, the Catholic organization takes ex- actly the reverse position. So that now, to bring it to a point, if this amendment should be adopted and if you go to teaching in the common schools of this country what you understand to be fundamental and which I understand to be fundamental principles of Christianity, then would there not be a very just claim on the part of the conscientious Catholic that his children ought not to be sent to a school which teaches what he regards as fundamental heresy ; and if his children were ex- cluded on that ground, would there not come then, with some plausibility, the claim that he should be exempt from the burdens of taxation to keep up these schools ? I have thought that out to show some of the difficulties that occur in my mind. The Chairman. Before that question is answered I will call atten- tion to the amendment. Treating the amendment by a single clause or a sentence among those who are interested in its support gets them into infinite trouble. The amendment does not require the teaching of RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. 39 the principles of the Christian religion without limitation. It is only the great body of the principles of the Christian religion upon which all agree, the fundamental principles. When you come to that which is peculiar to sect, or to one or two sects, and which is disagreed to by others, it is specifically and emphatically excluded, and that is the main purpose of the entire instrument, if it should be adopted, to guard against the application of public funds to instruction in sectarianism. Immediately after that clause, " and the principles of the Christian re- ligion," the amendment goes on to limit the force of the expression, as it would be, if the clause stopped at that point : But no money raised by taxation imposed by law or any money or other property or credit belonging to any municipal organization, or to any State, or to the United States, shall ever be appropriated, applied, or given to the use or purposes of any school, institution, corporation, or person, whereby instruction or training shall be given in the doctrines, tenets, belief, ceremonials, or observances peculiar to any sect, denomination, organization, or society, being, or claiming to be, religious in its char- acter, nor shall such peculiar doctrines, tenfets, belief, ceremonials, or observauces be taught or inculcated in the free public schools. Xow, take the illustration suggested by the Senator of the belief in papal infallibility, as to the Pope's interposition between God and human beings as a necessary Siamese linls; of connection. That is a tenet, doc- trine, or teaching peculiar to the Catholic Church, disapproved and de- nied by every other sect of the entire class of sects who go to make up the adherents of the Christian faith, and is expressly excluded by the amendment. The principles of the Christian religion not thus excluded, whether they be peculiarities of the Methodists, of the Catholics, or others, the principles of the Christian religion which the amendment as a whole requires to be taught in the public schools. That is my view of the amendment, and I think by reading the entire clause you may perhaps be aided in your reply to the question. Eev. Dr. Morris. Well, Mr. Chairman, I have already covered the ground, I think, in saying there are great fundamental principles of the Christian faith to which the Eoman Catholic Church is committed by its history and by its present teaching, such, for instance, as the ex- istence of God, the justice of God, the omnipotence of God, the omni- presence of God, and the other attributes of the Deity, the birth and death and resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, the in- spiration of Holy Scripture, and salvation by faith is conceded, though there are points of difference when we come to that, but Christ as the source of salvation is recognized by the Eoman Catholic Church as by us. ]S"ow, when you saj^ in this amendment " the fundamental principles," or "the i)rinciples," which mean the fundamental principles of the Christian religion, you are using a term which is guarded and is modified. In other principles the Methodist Church differs from the Baptist Church, and the Presbyterian from the Episcopalian, and all frou^ the Catholic. All the respects in which we differ, the one from the other, are not required to be taught by this amendment in the public schools of the land. The question is a very important one, and I am glad it has been asked, for it will have very much to do with the decision of this question. 40 RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. ADDITIONAL REMARKS BY REV. JAMES M. KING, D, D., OF NEW YORK CITY. Rev. Mr. King. I will take but a moment to state that I proposed, if an opportunity offered, to say that the body of men whom I represent, -with great unanimity of sentiment would be very glad to have an ad- ditional word in this amendment. Senator George. Where? Eev. Mr. King. We should like to have not only a prohibition against all sectarian appropriations to institutions and churches, but to all in- stitutions under sectarian control. By that we mean this : This conten- tion is not, with us i^ the State of New York and in some other States of the Union, a contention simply against the aggressibns of Eomanism. This amendment with that addition would strike many Protestant schools and Protestant institutions, and I, for one, and the body of men that I represent, want to see the day come when Protestantism as well as Romanism shall never get a dime or a dollar of public money of any kind for the support of its institutions. In the State -of ISTew York during the past year, I can answer the question as to the relative proportion of money that Romanism received for the support of its institutions as touching on the fairness of the case referred to by a member of your committee. I received from Albany, the day before leaving my home, a response to a request 1 sent to Al- bany as to the appropriations for the past year to various institutions, not only where people are helped who are hurt and sick, but where children are instructed, and these are the figures: Out of the treasury of the State, the municipality, and excise funds of the city of I^Iew York during the year, the Jews received $166,000, the Protestants $516,000, and the Roman Catholics received $988,000. Not one-half of the institutions that are for the relief of human suffering are under Roman Catholic control or patronage, and yet that is the ratio. We have reason to suppose that Romanism would get a pretty fair ratio in other directions if it made the attempt. The point I make is that every school, every academy, every in- stitution in the different States under denominational control shall be cut off from public moneys by an amendment that has added to it a section in which that prohibition is secured. Senator (jBOEGE. You would exclude hospitals 1 Rev. Dr. King. I would exclude everything that was under denom- inational control. The Chairman. Educational or other? Eev. Dr. King. Yes, sir; and I would have every church paying its taxes just as jjrivate citizens do theirs. The Chairman. On church property 1 EeV. Dr. King. Yes, sir; I believe in the absolute separation of church and state. The Chairman. I want to say to the committee that Dr. Dnnn, of Boston, with a delegation, desire to be heard on this same subject one week from to-day, and I suppose they will be here at that time, and the hearing will go on in this room. That will be the day of the regular meeting of the committee. Mr. Corliss, of Battle Creek, Mich., is present and desires to be heard in opposition to the amendment, but as Mr. Corliss is stopping in the city, I presume it will be as convenient to him to come in a week from today. EELIGION AND SCHOOLS. ' 41 Mr. OoELiss. At your pleasure. Tbe Ohaieman. What church are you connected with ? Mr. Corliss. I represent the Seventh Day Adventists. The committee adjourned. Friday, February 22, 1889. The committee met at 10 o'clock a. m. in the Senate reception-room. Preseut: Senators Blair (chairman) and Payne, of the committee. There were also present Kev. Dr. Philip S. Moxom, Eev. Dr. James B. Dunn, Eev. Dr. J. O. Corliss, Kev. Dr. J. H. Beard, and others. The Chairman (Senator Blair). As several of the members of the committee have other committees to attend this morning, it may be that they may not be present with us for a little while ; and meantime we may as well begin. ISo doubt other members of the committee will be here later, and can ask such questions as may .occur to them. We will now hear Dr. Moxom, of the Committee of One Hundred, of Boston. ARGUMENT OF REV. DR. PHILIP S. MOXOM, OF BOSTON. Kev. Dr. Moxom. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee : I will present, first, a petition which comes especially from Massachusetts: To the honorahle Senate and Members of tlieHouae of Eepresentatives, at Washington, D. C. : We, the undersigned, citizens of Massaoliiisetts, sensibly impressed "witli the im- portance of education among the people of our land, in the conservation of onr Gov- ernment and the liberties which we so richly enjoy ; believing, also, as expressed in a late public gathering of patriotic citizens of Boston in old Faneuil Hall, that " it has now become necessary to guard well the public school as the palladium of our lib- erty ;" and being persuaded also that this desired protection will be more fully efl'ected by a provision in the fundamental laws of the land (as urged npon Congress bj' that eminent and patriotic citizen, General Grant, while in the Presidential office), would respectfully petition your honorable bodies to speedily frame such article, for submis- sion to the legislatures of the several States lor their approval or rejection, as will prevent the interfere^cc of any religious sect with the " common-school system," or, the appropriating of any of tlie " public funds" for sectarian uses, such a measure as this being, in our judgment, the only safeguard against, religious encroachments, such as now threaten our time-honored and truly endeared iiietliods of teaching and train- 'a ;iouers will ever pray, etc. It is scarcely necessary to enter into any argument at length on the important relation which the (jommon-school system of America sustains to the well being of the state. It is one of tbe demonstrated proposi- tions that the integrity and strength of the Union as a whole depend upon the intelligence of the people; that tbe morality of the people depends upon their iutelligence, and that that institution which comes closest to the life of the nation as an educational force is tbe character- istic common school of America. Now, sir, this institution is threatened. Tbe threatening is not new. There has been from a certain quarter opposition, carried on through a good many years, and opposition that grows more bold, more resolute, more systematic,' and moreidetermined as time goes on. This opposi- tion emanates substantially from a single quarter. A twofold process 4^ RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. is going ou, as facts which will be brought out before this committee will fully prove. In the first place an effort is now making, aud it has been making, es- pecially in our large cities, on the part of a certain religious sect which is a unit in its opposition to the public schools of America, to gain pos- session, bv political methods, of the forces and instruments of our school system. In a number of cities this effort has been to a certain degree successful. It was so far successful in Boston that every important committee pertaining to the management of the public schools in the city was in the hands of the representatives of this sect. The effort is making, through the control of these schools, to secure such a degrada- tion of the public-school system as will weaken its hold upon the publlte at large. That effort has been successful to such an extent that quite a large number of people, through dissatisfaction with the sanitary con- dition of school buildings, and dissatisfaction with tlie management, or rather the mismanagement of the schools, have withdrawn their chil- dren from the public schools and put them into private schools, and so, to a certain extent, have grown indifferent to the public schools. Side by side with this apparently systematic effort to pull down the existing systems is another effort to build up a rival and hostile system of parochial schools. These parochial schools are entirely under the control of the Eoman Catholic Church and are administered by priests. S'ot only are the teachers in the parochial schools in absolute'subjection to this sect, but fhe methods of instruction and the text-books from the lowest grade to the highest are entirely formed and shaped as to their method of treating facts, as to their statement of assumed facts of his- tory, and as to their methods of inculcation, by the spirit of this sect. The text-books used in these schools almost universally are text-books whose misstatements of history are so gross that if they were not so serious they would be so ludicrous as to raise a laugh over the whole country. Specimens of those text-books and selections from them will be submitted to this committee. The Chairman. You can have them incorporated into your remarks, if you desire. You can point them out later on and have them incor- l^orated. Rev. Dr. MoxoM. I shall be glad to do so, for I do not wish unnec- essarily to consume the time of the committee. We come from the presence of a definite, specific struggle with these influences that I have outlined : on the one hand the effort to possess and to degrade the public schools ; on the other hand, the effort to build up not only a rival system but a hostile system — a system that, in its methods and spirit, from beginning to end,is positively antagonistic to the institu- tions of our American nation, to the principles which underlie the Con- stitution, and to the principles on which qur whole structure of citizen- ship and liberty is built. This opposition is not disguised. It is not occult simply. It is not secret. It has many secret channels through which it works, but the purpose is openly avowed by the representa- tives of this sect who put themselves in the attitude and adopt the methods of a political power. It is as a political power that I speak of this sect. With any man's religion we, as a committee, have nothing to do ; nor has the Committee of One Hundred had anything to do with any man's religious faith. But with the ecclesiastical system that in- trudes itself upon the political lifcand functions of the people we have to do ; for it is through the use of political%ieans and forces that this sect has accomplished what it has accomplished toward the degrada- tion or destruction of our school system. Eev. F. T. MoCarty (S. J.), in EELI6I0N AND SCHOOLS. 4^ a lecture wMch was jjublished in the Boston Journal, December 23,. 1887, said: GOVERXJIEKTS HAVE XO EIGHT TO EDUCATE. There is no state ■wliicli has ever received the commission to educate. " God never gave a commission to any state to educate. « • » It is not the interest of tlie in- dividual or of the family to have the state as an educator. * » * They will talk about this being an American and national institution ; it is a national fraud. There are some eight millions of Catholics in the United States now. They protest against this institution, and their protest is enough to make it evident that this legal system of education is illegal. * » * In the synod which was held within the past year and a half in this diocese, the Archbishop expressly declared that in all parishes Cath- olic schools loere to iehuilt; that thej' ■\vere to be built as soon as possible; that they ware to be under way at all events within two years, and if a pastor having ability to build such schools failed to do it, ic would give sufficient canonical cause for his re- moval from that parish. This is the utterance of the highest ecclesiastical authority iu this State of Massachusetts. • Coupled with this effort is the open, explict, repeated denunciation of the schools . B ut that subject will be set clearly before you by an other rep- resentative of the committee. More than that, the ultimate object which is aimed at in the building of the parochial schools is to demand and se: cure — I will say simply, to secure, because the demand has already been made — an appropriation from the public funds for the support of schools which are, in the supreme sense of the word, sectarian, and so to tax the whole public for the support of a religions body, which is confessedly a sect, comprising but a segment of the people, a sect that^ even when every member that can possibly be brought into its numbers is counted, is relatively small as compared with the whole population of this country. Mr. Chairman, all the representatives of all other religious denomi- nations and the representatives of the various classes of society, regard- less of their religious proclivities, are united in their judgment ou this- question ; that it would be an assault upon the fundamental liberties of the people, that it would be a fundamental denial of the principles on which our whole civic structure is based, to allow such an appropria- tion of public funds to sectarian uses as amounts to a union of the church and the state. We come here to enter our plea for two things which are- yet one. One is the constitutional preservation of our American com- mon school system inviolate from intrusion on the part of any religious sect whatever. The second is, a constitutional barrier against any possible concession that looks toward the perilous and disastrous union of ecclesiastical organization in any way with the organization of our Government, State or National. Speaking, therefore, on behalf of the citizens of Boston, on behalf of the citizens of Massachusetts, and, we believe, on behalf of the vast majority of the citizens of this country, we press this petition, that there may be added to the Constitution an amendment that shall forever pro- hibit encroachment upon that institution which lies at the foundation of oui" civic and moral life as a people; that institution which is the support of our political integrity, the American common school ; and an amendment that shall forever prevent the union of church and state in any one of those obscure and subtle ways in which this union is practicably accomplished to-day. I could appeal to facts. I could bring before you facts from the mu- nicipal governments of Boston, New York, and other cities, Vhere the hand of a religious sect has been thrust deep into the public treasury, and where not thousands but hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars of the taxes which the people have paid have been drawn forth 44 RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. and appropriated exclusively to tbe furtherance of an ecclesiastical organization. A single specimen of these facts I submit in the following statement: SOME OF THE HEAL ESTATE GIVEN BY THE CITV OF NEW YOEK TO THE EOMISH CHURCH. The oatliedral block, and tlie block iu the rear, \yhich has a small brick chapel ou it, were obtained from the city as follows: 1. The church got possession oi a lease from the city at a nouiiual annual rent. 2. When forfeited for "Oi-P^iy"'®"* "' *"'*' rent the city waived the forfeitures, and, on payment by the church of |83.32, con- verted the lease into a fee. 3. This lot, 800 feet long, running from Fifth to Fourth avenues, had no frontage on Fiftieth street, but was cut off from that street by a strip 10 inches wide on Fifth avenue, and 5 feet 6 inches wide on Fourth avenue. The city made an even exchange with the church of this freehold strip for a much smaller'leasehold strip on the block above. This gave the church the whole block- now, by the extension of Madison avenue through it, two blocks ; and then the city paid the church $24,000 for said extension of tbe avenue, and also gave it $8,928.84 to pay an assessment, thus making substantially a donation of these two blocks- worth now, without bnildings, at least $1,500,000, and a gift in money of $32,928.84. The city also gave the church the block above this, from Fifth to Fourth avenues, now two blocks, by two leases for ninety-nine years, at $1 a year rent. These two blocks, without buildings, are worth now at least another $1,.500, 000. The city, for $1 a year, gave to the archbishop for the " Sisters of Mercy " half a block of land on Madison avenue, between Eighty-first and Eighty-second streets. This, without buildings, is worth now at least $200,000. Tbe city, for $1 a year, gave for the " Sisters of Charity " a whole block of land on Lexington avenue, between Sixty-eighth and Sixty-ninth streets. This, without buildings, is worth now at least $300,000. ' Total, five and a half blocks of land in the best part of the city, worth $3,500,000. MONEY DONATED PROM THE CITY OF NF.W YORK TO THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH, 1869 TO 1885, INCLUSIVE. New York Catholic Protectorv $3,491,582.57 Foundling Asylum of Sisters of Charity 2, 872, 474. 69 Institution of the Sisters of Mercy, ) Sisters of Mercy, V 846,230.95 Institution of Mercy, ) St. Elizabeth HosiJital Dispensary 5,836.00 Society St. Vincent de Paul of City of New York 80, 530. 50 St. Vincent Industrial Home for Girls ^ 8,547, 00 St. Vincent Home for Boys 5, 975. 00 St. Vincent de Paul Orphan Asylum 21,445. 43 Free School of St. Vincent de Paul 7, 642. 00 St Vincent's Hospital CO, 692. 00 St. Vincent's Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum 15, 000. 00 Free School of St. Vincent... 2,500.00 Home for Aged of Little Sisters of the Poor 39,600.00 St. Stephen's Home for Children 205,061.24 St. Stephen's Orphan House 17,244.43 St. Stephen's Home 2,150.00 St. Francis's HosiMtal 78,911.75 St. Francis's Male Parochial School 3,750.00 St. Francis's Female Parochial School 4,2.50.00 Eoman Catholic Orphan Asylum 306, 504. 80 Sisters of St. Dominic Asylum 265, 916. 17 Sisters of St. Dominic 25, 72'i. 90 House of the Good Shepherd 297, 983. 36 Miss, of Im. Virgin for Protec. I-I. and D. Children 3(IH ,532.15 Missionary Sisters of Order of St. Francis 16l! 02.3. 06 Sisters of the Holy Cross 750.00 Home of Onr Lady of the Rosary 6, 125. 25 Asylum of Dominican Convent of Our Lady of the Rosary 65^698.63 St. Joseph's Home for the Aged 46' 154. 57 St. Joseph's Industrial Home for Destitute Children 173* 638." 97 St. Joseph's Orphan Asylum 3."' 463.87 St. Joseph's Improv'd Institution for Deaf Mutes Li^l' 792! 69 St. Joseph's Hospital of the Poor of St. Francis 1 l' 800.00 KELIGION AND SCHOOLS. 45 St. James's Home : §49,457.38 St. Ann's Home 19 301.24 St. Agatha's Home '. 7'975!71 St. Michael's Home ]" ...'.'.'. ..'.'.'...'.'.'." 2'504."l5 Associatiou for Befrieudiug Children and Young Gii'ls!..!.. '."'...." 57* 352! 4;} Baby's Shelter and Day Nursery 1,310.00 Day Nm-sery and Lodging House for Respectable Women '. '266! 00 1869 TO 1872, IXCLUSIVE. [In consequence of the exposures made there was a large falling off after 1872.] St. Joseph's Church 5 266.58 St. Joseph's Parish School, Manhattanville 12,' 954! 00 St. Joseph's Parochial Male School elsss! 00 St Joseph's Parochial Female School ! 6! 852! 00 Sisters of St. Joseph Io'o0o!o0 St. Joseph's Industrial School '90o!o0 St. Joseph's German-American Industrial School 828. 00 German Free Schools of St. Joseph's Church, One hundred and twenty- fifth street and Ninth avenue 420.00 St. Joseph's Home 12, OOo!oO Convent of the Sacred Heart Io!o0o!o0 Charily Week-day School, Academy of the Sacred Heart 6,170.00 House of Mercy, Bloomingdale , 12, 500. DO Church of the Dominican Fathers 5,.'549.46 Dominican Church, Lexington avenue 7,000.00 School of St. Nicholas, Order St. Dominic 6,800.00 St. Nicholas School 16,700.00 St. Nicholas Church 364.60 St. Patrick's Orphau Asylum 8, 153. 44 St. Patrick's Cathedral i 17,857.68 St. Palrick's Cathedral School 19,830.00 St. Patrick's Orphan Asylum, Mott and Prince streets 15, 000. 00 St. Bridget's School 58,168.00 St. Bridget's Church 5,000.00 Sister Helena 4,317.85 St. Teresa's School 22,135.00 St. Teresa's Church 1,280.00 School of St. Teresa's Chapel 5,000.00 In aid of school attached to St. Teresa's Church 5,000.00 St. Ann's Parochial School 9,890.00 St. Ann's Church, Eighth street 2,173.33 St. Peter's Free School :.. •- 17,015.00 German-American School, St. Peter's Church 1,500.00 German-American Free School - 18,456.00 St. Paul's Church Parochial Schools .5,316.00 Free School of St. Mary's Assumption Church 840. 00 St. Lawrence Church 1,500.00 St. Lawrence Parish School 15,118.00 St. Mary's School 55,122.00 St. Mary's Church, Grand street ; 400.00 School oftheMost Holy Redeemer 38,688.00 St. Michael's Parochial School 10,462.00 In aid of school attached to St. Michael's Church 5,000.00 St. Michael's School 5,000.00 St. Gabriel's School 34,840.00 Church of Transfiguration 387.75 Transfiguration Free School 39, .596.00 St. James's Parochial Male School 12,900.00 St. James's Parochial Female School 31,548.00 St. James's Church 800.00 School of Our Lady of Sorrow 22,400.00 St. Columba Charity and Week-day School 23, 966. 00 Ciiuroh of the Holy Innocents 1, 124.50 St. Andrew's Church j 2,014.02 Church of the Immaculate Conception 5,182.43. School of the Immaculate Conception 38,878.00 Church of St. Paul the Apostle 10,004.64 German- American School, Nineteenth ward 5,850.00- 46 RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. Chnroh of St. Bouiface $06o.,0 St. John the Evangelist Free School for Girls *^. 048. 00 Parish School Church of the Nativity a ,2 iRoman Catholic Church, Second aveuue Second and Third streets 645. 4o Church of the Holy Cross 8,565.35 Parochial School Church of the Holy Cross 1,372.00 Church of Holy Name, or St. Matthew 463.12 Church of the Assumption 918.26 €hurchof St. John the Baptist 1,035.31 Parochial School of St. John the Baptist 1,560.00 Free School of Sisters of Notre Dame 1.296. 00 Free German School 13,080.00 <3termau Mission Association 15, 000. 00 College of St. Francis Xavier 7,272.00 St. Peter's 1,012.90 St. Columba Church .' 1,987.28 Church of the Covenant 652. 60 Church of the Nativity 645.45 Church of the Epiphany 765. 71 School of Bethlehem 770.00 St. Boniface Church School 4,270.00 St. Patrick's Free School 7,384.00 St. Francis Xavier Male School 3,861.00 St. Francis Xavier Female School 21,370.00 Sacred Heart Female Academy 3,000.00 Church of the Annunciation 3,174.00 Church of the Annunciation School 7,372.00 St. Gabriel's Male School 7,449.00 St. Gabriel's Female School 27,591.00 St. Alphonsus's School 8,524.00 Church of the Holy Redeemer 1,000.00 School of St. Francis of Assisi 8,140.00 School of the Holy Cross 9,744.00 Sohool of the Nativity 700.00 School of St. Chrysostom 2,165.00 "Orphan Asylum, Prince and Mott streets 10,000.00 Sisters of St. Mary's 3,000.00 School of the Order of Sisters of St. Dominic 5,600.00 ■Other Roman Catholic Institutions, New York City 202,095.00 Some of the Protestant religious denominations receive a small donation from the public treasury in this city for their charities ; but they are opposed to the whole business, as recognizing the principle of a union of church and state, and would be glad to have each tub stand on its own bottom — that is, each church support its chari- ties with its own money, and not with the money of others ; but the Roman Catholics oppose it. This, sir, we believe to be a very grave menace to our liberties and a very grave violation of onr principles. But when we understand, as we must, even if we take a superficial view of the case, that the end sought is sought at the cost of the destruction of so vital an institution as the American common school, we do not see how any American citi- zen, who is moved simply by the motives and impulses of common patri- otism, can fail to rise in protest against this, and can fail to demand that a bulwark may be raised, an effectual and impassable bulwark, against encroachments of this sort, which already have become so nu- merous and ominous. We are here to represent the thoughts and feel- ings of those who are our constituents and the constituents of the gen- tlemen who here assist in making the laws of the country. Statements supporting what I have said with reference to the posi- tion of the Roman Catholic church to our public-school system will be presented by Dr. Gray. A r6sum6 of the whole question, with a state- ment of facts concerning the struggle to preserve our public schools ih Boston, will be made by Dr. Dunn. I think I may close my remarks here. Dr. Moxom submitted the following extracts from a pamphlet written EELIGION- AND SCHOOLS. 47 by him, published by the Committee of One Huudred, of Boston, en- titled "American Common Schools vs. Sectarian Parochial Schools:" THE GROUND* OF THE COMMON SCIJOOL. The common sobool is an expression of the idea that the state has the right to as aurae the functions of i)ublic education. -Has the stale a rlgki to educate? This the advocates of the parochial schools emphatically deny, except under such limitations as practically reduce the function of the state to the task of providing the cost of education. Father Conaty, of Worcester, Mass., at the opening of a new parochial school in Jamaica Plain last July, said : "The state as educator of its citizens is a relic of barbarism." The Tablet, a Roman Catholic journal, declares : "We hold education to be a function of the church, not of the state; and in our •case ■we do not and will not accept the state as educator." A Papal encyclical says : "XLV. The Romish church lias a right to iuterfere in the discipline of the public schools, and in the arrangement of the studies of the public schools, and in the choice of the teachers for these schools." "XLVII. Public schools open to all children for the education of the young should be under the control of the Romish church, and should not be subject to the civil power, nor made to conform to the opinions of the age." Similarly The Catholic World says: "The church asserts and defends these principles, and she flatly contradicts the as- sumption on the part of the state of the prerogative of education, and determinedly opposes the elfort to bring up the youth of the country for purely secular and tem- poral purposes. * * « While the state has rights, she has them only in virtue and by permission of the superior authority, and that authority can only be ex- pressed through the church." (Vol. 2, p. 439.) Many more quotations might be given as evidence of the Romanists' denial that the state has any right to educate, but these will suffice for the present. The common school stands or falls with the right of the state to educate. Now, in a republic, at least, the state is not a thing apart from the people. Materially it is the commonwealth. Politically it is the lohole people exercising the functions of self-con- servation and self-government. The state ij the organic people, and as such has not only rights, but also duties — for rights and duties are always correlatives. The ground of the common school is the right and duty of the state to educate the whole people to such extent as will secure the preservation of the state and the full develop- ment of its life. Popular intelligence aud popular morality are vitally related to each other. They are practically inseparable. Both intelligence and morality are essential to the preservation of the state. No dangers to the integrity and develop- ment of the state that can possibly arise are equal in magnitude to the dangers that spring from these twin evils, ignorance aud immorality. The right of the state to educate its citizens is the right of self-preservation. But mere self-preservation does not exhaust the right or duty of the state. The right to live carries with it the right to seek and to attain the ends of life through growth along the lines of true national development. This is but to say that the state, equally with the individual, is under obligation to live and to unfold its powers to the utmost for the good of the world. To the question, then, "Has the state a right to educate?" we may answer: Yes; the state not only has the right, but it also is under obligation, to educate its citizens in just so far as is necessary to secure the two great ends of self-conservation and self-development. Daniel Webster is credited with saying that— " The power over education is one of the powers of public police belonging essen- tially to the Government. It is one of the powers the exercise of which is indispens- able to the preservation of society with integrity and healthy action ; it is the duty of self-protection." To put the answer still more explicitly, we may say : 1. The state must educate because political efficienci/ and strength are dependent upon gen- eral intelligence. The conservative and guiding forces of a republic are not outside and above the peoplt».they are in the people; in the minds and wills of the many who by their opinions and their votes determine what shall be the character and policy of the government. Wide-spread ignorance is a perpetual invitation to an- archy with its torch on the one hand and despoti.sm with its sceptre on the other. In tliis country, it is the ignorance of many voters which makes opportunity for the demao-0"-ue and the political charlatan and corruptionist. 48 RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. '2. The Ktate must educate hccnuse commercial and industrial prosperitij and matcnal progress of crerij sort depend on general intelligence. Education produci^s tliritt, sliui, and enterprise. The mastery of material resources is an intellectual triumpb. Au ignorant people is an unprogressive and impoverished people. Tho necessity ot gen- eral education to economic prosperity appears most clearly when we examine ttie re- lation of intelligence to efficiency in labor and to general thrift. Walker, in his 1 o- litical Economy, says: ■ j. ir i. • " Intelligence is a most powerful factor in industrial efficiency. Ihe intelligent is more useful than the unintelligent laborer: (a) Because he requires a tar shorter ap- prenticeship. * * * (6) Because he can do his work with little or no superin- xeudeuee. » * * (c) Because he is less wasteful of his materials. ^^ (rt) Because he readily lea?ns to use machinery, however delicate or intricate. (Pol. Econ., pp. 52',53.) • ^ r ^^ In 1870, tho Commission of Education, at Washington, sent out a series ot oarelully drawn, comprehensive, and searching questions to the great centers of labor in all parts of the United States. These centers were so selected as to represent every kind of labor, from the rudest and simplest up to the most skilled. Tho object of the ques- tions was to determine tho relative productiveness of literate and illiterate labor. The answers brought to light the following facts: . ,, i '1) That an average free common-school education, such as is provided m all tho States where the free common-school has become a permanent institution, adds 50 per eenr. to the productive power of the laborer, considered as a mere productive machine. (■2) That the average academical education adds 100 per cent. (3) That the average collegiate or university education adds from 200 to 300 per cent, to the worker's average annual productive capacity, to say nothing of the vast increase to his manliness. With equal clearness and cogency statistics demonstrate that education is the surest preventive of pauperism, and that the expense of providing and applying in season this preventive would not be one-tenth of that now brought upon society by pauperism. A careful examination of the census of the British Isles indicates that, other things being equal, pauperism is in inverse ratio to the degree of education given to tho mass of the people. That is, as education increases pauperism decreases, and as education decreases pauperism increases. The board of charities for the State of New York, in the report for 1877, gives the following significant facts : The total number of paupers examined over sixteen years of age, exclusive of un- teaohable idiots, was 9,855. Of these, 6,937, or more than 70 per cent., were substan- tially illiterate; and of tliis number 3,10jB could neither read nor write, and 1,447 could read only. In 1870 a special investigation was made in fifteen States, of 7,398 inmates of alms- houses and infirmaries. Of these, 4,327, or nearly 59 per cent., could not read and write; while in those fifteen States the average percentage of illiterates was only (> per cent, of the whole population. From this 6 per cent, came that 59 per cent, of the paupers. Similar results are obtainable from the census of almost every country in Europe or America. It seems to be well established that, even under our present industrial system, an illiterate person is from twenty to thirty times as liable to become a pauper and au expense to the community as one who has received a common-school education. 3. The state must educate because the integrity and health of the nation depend on its morality, and morality is vitally dependent on diffused intelligence. Occasionally a doubt is expressed as to the importance of education to the moral well-being of a people, but a careful study of facts destroys the doubt. Moreover, education is not simply an intellectual process ; it is also a moral process. The very effort to acquire knowledge necessarily involves a degree of moral discipline. It is the rule that the moral life of individuals as well as of communities riaea pari passu with a rise in in- tellectual life. But merely intellectual training is only a part of education, which, properly defined, and to some extent exemplified in our common-school system, is an unfolding of the whole nature. Speaking of a very great, if not the greatest, problem of our times, President Wool- sey has said : "The laboring class [if uneducated] will have no mobility, will be in the power of the employer, will have no hope of bettering its couditioij^'f life by change of place, [and] will be given to low pleasures. Crime and ignorance go together, and the prospect for the children of such a class is dark indeed. For the industry, morals, loyalty, and quiet of this class, for the safety of all classes, some kind of education is necessary." (Pol. Sci., i, 227.) The abundant statistics on the relation of crime to illiteracy which already have been gathered teach an unmistakable lesson. Some of these statistics I give from the EELIGION AND SCnOOLP. 49 accumulations made by Senator Blair, of New Hampshire, to whom I am much in- debted forthn statistical material in this paper. In the six New England States, in 1870, oniy 7 per cent.' of the inhabitants above ten years of age were unable to read and write ; yet this 7 per cent, produced 80 per cent, of the criminals. That is, the proportion of criminal illiterates to criminal lit- erates was as 53 to 1. This fact sufficiently vindicates the moral eifect of the New England system of public education against Cardinal Antonelli's implied charge. Mr. Dexter A. Hawkins, of New York, has shown from the United States census of 1870 the comparative number of illiterates, paupers, and criminals to every 10,000 inhabitants, produced respectively by the.Eoman Catholic parochial school, the pub- lic schools in twenty-one States, and the public schools in Massachusetts. The fol- lowing table is significant, to say the least : To every 10,000 inhabitants there were produced — By- Illiterates. Paupers. Criminals. 1,400 350 7L «0 170 49 160 75 11 In the State of New York, in 18 SO, the illiterates produced eight times their propor- tion of the criminals in that State. In the city of New York, in 1870, among the illit- erates one crime was committed for every three persons ; while among those who had received a common-school training, even as far as the elementary branches, there was only one crime to every twenty-seven persons. That is, the ignorant classes in that city produced nine times as many criminals as they would have produced if they had been educated in the common schools. A carefnl examination of statistics gathered from twenty States, gives the follow- ing average result* : (1) One-sixth of all the crime in the country is committed by persons wholly illit- erate. , „ (2.) One-third of the crime in the country is committed by persons wholly or sub- stantially illiterate. • (3) The proportion of criminals among the illiterate is on the average ten times as great as it is among those who have received at least the elements of a coucmon- school education. 4. The state mwt educate lecanse the distrttution of wealth is as yet so unequal that a majonty of the people want the means to provide adequate facilities for education. The, total wealth of the United States was estimated in 1880 to he a little more than |43,- €00,000,000. If this were equally distributed among the people the amount per capita would be about $750. As a matter of fact, the majority have much less than |750 per capita, and multitudes have no wealth at all, save that which is represented by their power to do unskilled labor. Under any system of private schools, a large proportion of the people would be left without any education save that furnished by tlie home and the streets. Private benevolence, though it is more abundant in this country perhaps than in any other, can not meet the needs of the people. Nor would the moral efleot of education provided solely by private benevolence be as good as is the moral effect of the common-school system, which is immediately created and supported by practi- cally the whole people, and thus produces in the people at large the wholesome sense of self-help. , . ^ j ^ a 5 The state must educate because many people want the motive to educate. Appreci- ation of the necessity and value of education rises with the rise of individual mtel- liaence A problem with which the state must deal, is the intellectual and moral inertness of the ignorant and bestial and, in low forms, vicious class. In general this class lacks the internal motive to educate. In simple self-defense the state must apply to such the stimulus of an external motive. To prevent crime, which is as much its function as to suppress crime, it must prevent the needless production of criminals bv forcibly dissipating that ignorance which is the largest source of criminal life. The eanitAT of laws compelling the attendance of children at school during certain ^.. A.-, jifp i^ based not only on the sovereign right of the state to protect ftself, but also on the duty of the state to conserve the rights of its defenseless sub- iects and wards. The parental right of control over children is not absolute. It has certain clear moral limitations. The father who will not give his children at least an elementary education infringes upon fundamental rights of those children which * 6 ^And finallu^the state must educate iecavse only under state control can there he an eau'able and equitable distribution of the means and instruments of education. Fiivate be- nevolence and individual enterprise inevitably favor certain sections. But the need 12053 4 50 RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. of educational opportunities and facilities is universal. The state knows no favoritism. The poorest wards in our cities are as well provided with buildings, instruments, and teachers as the richest wards. At least this is approximately true ; and this princi- ple of equable distribution belongs radically to the idea of the common school. To sum up this part of my argument : The ground of the American common school is the right and the duty of the state to provide for aud as far as possible to secure atleast an elementary education of all the people, irrespective of locality, social stand- ing, and economic condition. The right and the duty of the state to educate are sufficiently demonstrated by the right aud the duty of the state to protect and conserve and develop itself as a national body comprehending the whole people. Whoever questions this right questions the fundamental right of the people to self-government. The common school is a natural and signiticant expression of the genius of democracy. It is rooted in the necessities of that state in which love of liberty and reverence for law combine to form the organic and conservative principle of permanent democratic society. The parochial school is based on the assumptions that the Roman Catholic Church is the infallible representative of God on earth ; that the end of education is to make obedient and capable servants of the church ; and, therefore, that the church must have supreme control of the means and methods of education. The state, if it carries on popular education at all, must do it under the control and direction of the ordained representatives of the church. From this position the Roman Catholic hierarchy has never receded. In this position it stands to-day as uncompromisingly in the United States as in Spain. Whatever slight adaptations .to their environment in this land the Roman clerics may have felt compelled to make, they certainly never have made any concession in their avowals of principle. American institutions have only super- ficially modified official Roman Catholicism. Its essential spirit is unchanged and un- changing. That I may not be suspected of misrepresenting, something I do not fear from any intelligent and well-instructed Roman Catholic, I will quote from official authorities. In the ninth article of "A Full Catechism of the Catholic Religion," may be found the following: "45. By whom is the divine doctrine always preserved pure and uncorrupted ia the Church ? ^ "By the Infallible Teaching Body of the Church. "46. Who compose this Infallible Teaching Body? "The Pope and the Bishops united with him." , This alleged "Infallible Teaching Body" explicitly, consta;ntly, and consistently affirms the principle that the Roman Catholic Church is the supreme authority in education. The Catholic Review for April, 1871, said : " We deny, of course, as Roman Catholics, the rights of the civil government to educate ; for education is a function of the spiritual society as much as preaching." A Catholic Dictionary, edited by William E. Addis and Thomas Arnold, a standard and conservative work, bearing the nihil olatat of Edward S. Keogh, censor, and the imprimatur of Henry E. Manning, cardinal archbishop of Westminster, declares that; " The first and highest authority in all that regards education is the church. With. her sanction it should be commenced, and under her superintendence it should be con- tinued." The article on " E^ducation," from which I quote, recognizes three authorities in education, namely, the church, the state, and the parent ; but it entirely subordinates the state and the parent to the church, so that really there is but one authority. " The claims of the state," says this article, " become unjust and oppressive when, ignoring the still more sacred right of the church to secure in education the attain- ment of man's highest end, it compels or tempts Catholics to place their children in schools which the ecclesiastical authority has not sanctioned. Catholic parents," it continues, " are bound to see that the teaching in the schools to which they send their children has ecclesiastical sanction, and to resist all attempts to make them patronize schools without that sanction." The ends of education, the article thus defines : "Education has three principal ends— the first religious, the second political, the third domestic ; but among these the religious end takes the lead and dominates ovec the other two, on account of its intrinsically greater importance. And since, as ex- plauied above, we can not walk securely in religion one step except in unison with and obedience to the church, every well-instructed Catholic understands that the church must preside over the education of Catholics at every stage and in every branch so far as to see that they are sufficiently instructed in their religion." In the Roman Catholic idea of education, religion and God are identified with the Roman Catholic Church ; reverence for the churchy therefore, and unquestioning de- RELIGION AND SCHOOLS. 51 Totion to ber interests, are the chief ends at -which education aims. The purpose of the parochial schools is not to educate, in the broad and high sense in which the modern cultivated mind conceives that word, but to make iirml.v loyal and obediently docile Roman Catholics. Patriotism, knowledge of history and science, culture and skill are secondary to knowledge and service of the church. The one thing insisted on and emphasized above all others is the absolute, infallible authority of the church. The Roman Catholic idea of education determines, of course, the character of the text-books which are used in the parochial schools, and the character as well of the teachers in those schools. The whole system of parochial education is organized about religiou, not as a spiritual and universal principle, but as defined by the doc- trines and expressed in the organization and ritual of the Church of Rome. It re- mains for us to consider SOME OP THE PKACTICAL RESULTS WHICH THE SPIRIT AND METHODS OF THE PARO- CHIAL SCHOOL MUST PRODUCE. The regulative principle of parochial-school training being the infallible authority of the church, it must follow that this system — 1. Destroys mtelleolual liberty. The pursuit of knowledge and the search for truth can not be disinterested when the mind works under the rule of such a principle as that of papal infallibility. The facts of history can not be critically investigated and impartially weighed, for they can not be suffered to contradict this principle. The phenomena of nature, also, must be studied subject to interpretations of the world which are ecclesiastical and dogmatic. The mind is not toned up and stimu- lated to a full and systematical development ; for it is compelled to fit a certain un- yielding mold. The conception of the infallible authority of a human organization not only fetters the mind by setting limits to inquiry, but also prevents that unflinch- ing sincerity in thinking without which intellectual liberty is both meaningless and impossible. • 2. The principle of parochial-school training j)romote8 alms to be given sboiild be sent to Rome to help complete the great Cathedral of St. Peter, then beiDg bnilt. Tetzel, superior of the Dominicans, was appointed to preach this Jubilee throughout Germany, which greatly displeased Luther, because of the slight, as he supposed, that had thus been thrown ujion the Angustinians by not inviting them to preach the Jubilee." (p. 300.) Still again : " With the exception of ' The Bible Alone as the Rule of Faith,' Luther and Calvin but repeated the heresies of Huss and Wyclifie and the earlier heresiarohs. Calvin adopted the heresies of Pelagius on gi-ace and original sin." (p. 301.) This last statement will be interesting to theologians. We are told : "John Knox died in 157-2, revered by the Scotch, but known in history as the ' Enffian of the Reformatiou.' " (p. .302.) Comparing Catholicism with Protestantism, the bishop says: "To make converts, Catholicity has ever appealed to reason; Protestantism, like Mohammedanism, to force and violence. • * * Protestantism began with 'an open Bible and Free Interpretation,' and has ended [sic | in division and disbelief. By the above principle everyone becomes judge of what he will or will not believe. Hence, amongst Protestants there are almost as many religions as there are individuals, the churches divided and torn into pieces, ending in infidelity and Mormonism. On the other hand. Catholicity remains ever the same, because Catholicity is truth, and truth changes not." (p. 304.) From Gazeau's " Modern History " I quote but two or three selections. These will serve as samples of the whole. On the Inquisition, the author says: "Ferdinand and Isabella, honored by the Holy See with the title of 'Catholic Sovereigns,' resolved to prove themselves worthy of it by maintaining among their subjects the faith in all its purity. To tlTis end they had revived the ancient tribu- nal of the Inquisition. * • » Its chief aim was to detect every crime and delin- quency in religious matters, especially among the converted Jews and Moors, many of whom simply professed conversion, and were often secretly engaged in treason- able practices. If the accused was found guilty and manifested some repentance, lie was sentenced to make a public reparation, or act of faith. Auto-da-fe, holding a lighted taper in his hand. If he persisted in his eiror he was handed over to the eecdlar arm, and lay judges pronounced sentence and applied the laws of the state. The Spanish Inquisition, like all human institutions, was not always restricted ■within just limits, and the Head of the Church more than once interposed his au- thority ; but if, later, other sovereigns made of this tribunal a political instrument, Ferdinand should not be censured tor confiding to it the mission of prosecuting infi- dels who by their saorilegions profanations were subjects of scandal to Catholics." (p. 42.) Of Luther we are told : "Wicked men are always disposed to rebel against authority. The sale of indul- gences and the word 'reform' were simply made the pretext by the able but un- principled Luther for the outburst of the storm that was to devastate Europe and break up the spiritual unity of Christendom." (pp. 62, 63.) Concerning the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day, the author says : "As to the solemn Te Deum sung at Rome by order of Pope Gregory XIII, it was done under the impression that the massacre was begun on the partof theCalvinists, that the King's party acted in 8elf-d«fense, and that the affair grew out of an unsuc- cessful conspiracy against the French Government and the Catholic Church. This Te Deum belonged to the same category as the one sung shortly before for the victory gained at Lepanto over the Turks." (pp. 106, 107.) Of Alva's mission to the Netherlands, the author says : "The King of Spain resolved to wreak signal vengeance on the 'Beggars' [the Pro- testant confederates of Breda]. His most experienced general, Alvarez of Toledo, Duke of Alva, entered the Netherlands at the head of twenty thousand men and pur- sued the rebels with extreme severity. It is asserted that out of hatred to the new- governor nearly one hundred thousand of the inhabitants went voluntarilv into exile." (p. 119.) ^ The dominant purpose of these text-books is to exalt and glorify the Roman Cath- olic Church, and to this end the truth of history and the moral lessons which history is meant to convey are shamelessly sacrificed. Nor is this the worst result of such dishonest teaching. Those who are taught are wronged in the deepest way, by having essential falsehood incorporated with all their thinking upon human experi- ence and human destiny. At best, history is imperfect, but, as the record of human experience sincerely set forth, it is the wisest teacher of each generation as it comes on the, stage of life and action. To make the record not only still more imperfect hut even dishonest and false, is a crime of the first magnitude." ' EELIGION AND SCHOOLS. 53 3. A third result of parochial-school training is, naturallv, the development of an in- teriseand bigoted sectariaiiiim. lu the ninth article of "A Full Cateoiiism of the Cath- olic Eeligion" may be found the following: (64) If the Catholic Church is to lead all men to eternal salvation, and has, for tnat purpose, received from Christ her doctrine, her means of grace, and her powers, what, for his part, is every one obliged to do ? ° ' r , *v,"^''f^^^°^^ *^ obliged, under pain of eternal damnation, to become a member of tne Catholic Church, to believe her doctrine, to use her means of grace, and to sub- mit to her authority." No real knowledge is given of any church other than the Roman. Protestants are condemned and villified. Religious liberty is represented as a deadly error, and the claims ot the Roman church are set forth as absolutely supreme. The result of such teaching can be of but one sort. As there is no fairness in the instru,;ti