Chapter XVIII: Choosing the Path (9)

From the contemplation of these and other results of our common schools, in which piety and morality are supposed to be taught, the writer in the _Monthly_ concludes that it is better for us to “leave devotional instruction to those whose business it is--to parents and clergymen.”

Another writer, the editor of one of the most widely circulated of our sectarian weekly newspapers, also a decided advocate of the public school system as at present existing, puts forward among others the following novel argument for its perpetuity:

“We hold, therefore, that it is unnecessary and unwise to
disperse or redistribute our common school pupils in accordance
with the dogmatic or ecclesiastical leanings of their parents
respectively--that the inconvenience and cost of so doing would
immensely overbalance its benefits. We should need far more
schools; yet our children would have to travel much further to
reach one of the preferred theological stripe than at present.
We do not decide that soundness of faith is of little 435
consequence--far from it; we only insist that provision is
already made for theological instruction apart from our common
schools, and that there is no need of making such provision
within them. The Roman Catholic and the Protestant coincide with
respect to spelling and grammar; the Trinitarian and the
Unitarian are in perfect accord as to mathematics, at least in
their application to all mundane affairs. Then, why not allow
them to read and cipher from the same text-books on week-days,
and learn theology in their respective churches and
Sunday-schools on the Lord’s day? This seems to us the dictate of
economy, convenience, and good sense.”

Nearly every week similar effusions appear in the columns of the so-called religious press, in which are enunciated opinions and speculations as absurd as the above, and yet as varied as the clashing sects they profess to represent. On one point alone, and that a very suspicious one, are they agreed--in a general determination to reduce the children of the Catholics of this country under the sway of a system of public instruction which parents can neither encourage nor countenance. On the minor features of this system, with their usual want of unity, they widely dissent one from the other.

Now, whence this confusion of ideas about one of the plainest and most vital requirements of a free Christian people--education? Does it not lie in the utter misapprehension of what education really is? In pagan times, education was supposed to be the accumulation of knowledge for its own sake or for the superiority it conferred on its possessor over his less instructed fellows. It was of the earth, earthy. From a Christian point of view, its aim, primarily and principally, is to facilitate, by proper training and instruction, the attainment of our true happiness--the knowledge and observance of the laws of God here and eternal happiness hereafter. To the pagan, this world was everything, and consequently he utilized his knowledge for worldly advantage alone. For the Christian, education is merely a means to a great end, and, as eternal bliss is infinitely greater than any temporal enjoyment to him, the training of the soul, the immortal part, in the ways of religion is of paramount and incomparable importance. Secular education, when properly applied, should not be undervalued, inasmuch as we have duties in this life to be performed, to ourselves, our country, and our fellow-man; but it should be tempered and permeated, so to speak, with religious instruction, so that the learner, as his mental faculties expand with his years, may be gradually but constantly led to the knowledge of those divine truths which the church teaches her children, and his character thus be insensibly formed on a true Christian basis. If we admit, as every professing Christian is bound to do, that man’s chiefest object in life is the salvation of his soul, if “the knowledge of God is the beginning of wisdom,” it is the merest folly to suppose that this knowledge, so all-important in itself, can properly be imparted to our children after ordinary school-hours, when the young mind is fatigued and needs repose or recreation, or on one day out of seven, when so many distractions occur to call off the attention of most children. This would be to make religion distasteful, if not odious, to our boys and girls, and lead them to dread the recurrence of a day which, to them at least, should be one of gladness and innocent enjoyment. We do not underrate the value of parental advice and example, or ignore the benefits conferred on our rising population by pastoral instructions and Sunday-school training, but we assert the day-schools should also 436 take their part in supplying food to the ever-expanding and question-asking minds of the American youth.

The formation of character, one of the great objects of education, should be conducted on principles somewhat similar to those of domestic economy. We do not eat all the sweets at one time and the sours at another, the solids at one meal and the dessert at the next, but by a judicious admixture of both produce a savory and salutary combination which gives health and strength to the body. It may be said that mere secular education--such as geology, geometry, history, natural philosophy, botany, astronomy, etc., as taught in our common schools--presents no opportunity for moral instruction. Nothing can be more fallacious. That great master of dramatic literature, Shakespeare, whose knowledge of the springs of human action has seldom been equalled, has told us that we can find books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. Properly directed, the anatomy of the smallest insect, equally with the contemplation of the vast firmament with its countless planets and stars, may become a silent and involuntary prayer to the Creator of all things. There is not a force, physical or deduced, that is revealed to the mind of youth that ought not to be made to bear with it some conception of the unseen Power that presides over and governs the universe, and the teacher who neglects to place before the minds of his pupils the moral to be drawn from those symbols of the Creator’s almightiness does but half his work, and that the less nobler part. Leaving dogma and doctrine aside, are the generality of our public school teachers capable or disposed to thus draw from nature the beautiful lessons of God’s wisdom and power--lessons which no book can adequately teach, but which should be before one’s eyes from infancy to the grave?

Some persons speak of religion in connection with the education of youth as if it were a mere matter of sentiment or a holiday pastime, to be occasionally indulged in when the more serious duties of money-making and political advancement have been complied with. On the contrary, it is a matter of everyday life, controlling and guiding our intercourse with mankind individually as well as collectively, and as we are responsible for our actions every conscious moment of our life, so should it in one form or another be associated with our every pursuit and act. If this be true among full-grown men and women, is it not apparent that any system of youthful training that would dissociate religion from secular studies in early life would send into the world vicious or ignorant adults, who would either ignore altogether the practice of honesty, truthfulness, and morality, or who in their ignorance would make these great attributes of Christianity subserve their worldly interests and passions? Education, therefore, that would exclude religious instruction from our children during their hours of study, which is half of their young lives, is not education at all, at least in the Christian sense of the word. It may make them expert financiers or glib politicians, but it cannot make them upright, truthful, and benevolent citizens. In this regard, we agree with the writer in the _Congregational_ when he says, “We call attention in the outset to the immense difficulty, if it be not the absolute impossibility, of separating religious instruction from any practical system of public education.”

But we do not coincide with him in his estimate of the right and duty 437 of the state to provide this education. Granted that religion is an essential element in education, who is the proper authority to inculcate it? Clearly not the state, for, in our theory of government, the state knows no religion, nor under any pretence can it lay claim to any apostolic authority to preach and teach the Gospel to the nations. That is a power far anterior to and above all existing governments. That the state is or ought to be religious in the character of its acts cannot be denied, but this character should be derived from the teachings of the church to its individual members, and gives it no power to prescribe to the church what she should teach or allow to be taught, for the authority of the teaching church is from God, and that of the state from man. It is true that the common law framed by our Catholic ancestors recognized the laws of the church, as far as public morality and the observance of Sundays and holidays were concerned, as part of the law of the land, but it was never intended that the state should be placed above the church in matters spiritual, much less to make it the teacher and expounder of her doctrines. This innovation was one of the fruits of the “Reformation,” which, while professing to liberate the minds of men from spiritual thraldom and the authority of the popes, actually subjected their consciences and forms of faith to the whim of parliaments and the arbitrary _dicta_ of local lay tyrants. Even to this day, the House of Lords in England, composed as it is mostly of laymen, and those, too, not remarkable for their piety or morality, is the court of last resort to determine and decide what are and what are not the doctrines taught by our Holy Redeemer.

If the state claim the right to educate our children, that right cannot be derived from the natural law; for the state, being an artificial organization, cannot in its corporate capacity have any natural law. On the contrary, the natural law bestows the possession, care, and custody of the child on the parent, and the duty thus imposed cannot be relinquished or delegated without a manifest infraction of the first principles of that law. Besides, the state is only constituted to do for the citizen what he, from his want of ability, means, or strength, cannot do for himself. Its office is simply the administration of justice, retributive and distributive, and the enactment of laws to facilitate that object. All outside of that is simply usurpation, which may, and generally does, degenerate into tyranny. Whenever a state invades private reserved rights and oversteps the bounds of its legitimate duties, law and justice are not only brought into contempt, but enactments in themselves abstractly just are despised and evaded. The futile attempts to enforce certain sumptuary laws in this and other countries prove this conclusively.

Nor does the state derive its power to educate our children as it sees fit from the will of the people as expressed in the fundamental laws of the land. In the Declaration of Independence, it is clearly stated that among the _inalienable_ rights of mankind are life, liberty, and the pursuit of _happiness_. Now, who that has been blessed with children does not know that the care and custody, education and maintenance, of his offspring constitute the greatest happiness of his life, compared with which riches, honors, and fame dwindle into insignificance? One of the most powerful arguments against Southern slavery, now happily for ever abolished, was that it separated the child from its parent: but what is the value of freedom to me if, as 438 the _Congregational_ suggests, I must see my child forced into a common school, to listen to the reading of a Bible which I believe, at best, to be a mutilated and perverted copy of the Holy Scriptures, and be obliged to repeat prayers and hymns that too often, alas! are but blasphemies against the holy name of him who died on the cross for man’s redemption? In one case the body alone suffered, in the other the eternal salvation of immortal souls is imperilled. Even the framers of the constitution, that noble document about which so much is said and so little understood, having surveyed their work, and finding it defective in respect to providing guarantees for the perfect freedom of religion, hastened by an amendment to supply the deficiency. “Congress,” they ordained, “shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,”[100] and our own state, on November 3, 1846, by its constitution, emphatically declares that “the free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without _discrimination or preference_, shall for ever be allowed in this state to all mankind.” (Art. I. sec. 3.)

Does the state derive its authority to teach religion to our children from God? If so, where is its authority? The writer in the _Congregational_ evidently considers the Bible an authority on matters of faith and discipline. Yet we fail to find in the inspired writings any authority for the state of Massachusetts, or any other purely political corporation, to teach the doctrines of Christ. But, if the state have a right so to teach, it has a right also to decide what shall be taught, and this, of course, must depend on the character of the officials through whom the state for the time being acts; for as yet, unlike other and more favored Protestant countries, we have no fixed state religion, and must depend on the popular electoral vote for our faith and ideas of morality. We would like the advocates of religious teaching in schools, “the Bible, prayers, hymns, and piety,” to be more explicit on this point. Are our children to be taught religion according to the parliamentary doctrine of the Church of England, or the total depravity notions of the followers of Calvin; are they to be obliged to deny the divinity of Christ with the Unitarians, and eternal punishments with the Universalists? Are we, in fact, bringing children into the world to be liable any day to be indoctrinated into the vagaries of Methodism, Congregationalism, Presbyterianism, Muggletonianism, Mormonism, or any other of the thousand “isms” born of that fruitful mother of dissent, the much vaunted Reformation? Or are we to have them treated to a dose of each and every one in turn as the political wheel brings their professors to the surface? The idea seems perfectly absurd, and yet it is the logical consequence of the _Congergational’s_ position that the state can teach religion in its schools; for the state, being liable to be controlled at any time by any of the believers in the “isms,” must of necessity teach its own ism, and, having the sovereign authority, who can dispute its choice? But, says the writer in the _Congregational_, and those who agree with him, we do not violate the rights of conscience, we only advocate the reading of the Bible, “in which the Papist does not believe,”[101] prayers, hymns, and piety. Now, in 439 what does the religion of the Congregationalists consist, if not in these very matters which they would insidiously intrude on the attention of our children? Does any one believe, if the writer in question, or those who believe in his sentiments, had the control of our schools, that the prayers and hymns would be such as a Catholic child could conscientiously listen to? Would the Apostles’ Creed and the _Confiteor_ be among the forms, or would the _Stabat Mater, Ave Maria Stella_, in Latin or English, or any other of the beautiful appeals to the clemency and protection of the Blessed Mother which the church puts into the mouths and hearts of her little ones, find a place in schools presided over by the advocates of religion and piety, as prescribed by the law of 1826? And yet, we venture to say that more than one-half of the children who attend the public schools in the very city in which this _Quarterly_ is published are Catholics, and born of Catholic parents. Yet we are told that not only the morals, but the religion of our children is to be at the mercy of politicians, calling themselves the state, too often elevated to power by most corrupt intrigues. Is there anything particularly virtuous in the character of our legislators or the members of our board of education that would induce us to suppose that they were specially selected by Providence to teach his laws and expound his doctrines? And still, for all practical purposes, they are the state. They enact the laws, select the schoolbooks, appoint the teachers, and prescribe the course of study to be pursued. If their appointees leave out the Bible, prayers, hymns, etc., the schools become, in the language of the _Congregational_, the instruments of “sweeping away the political Protestantism of the land,” while, if they do enforce the observance of these religious exercises, we have a new set of apostles annually or biennially elected by political coteries to teach our children!

The three great sources of authority which all writers on the philosophy of government ascribe to the state are, then, wanting, to justify these assumptions of the advocates of the right of the state to teach religion to the children of its citizens, but the _Congregational_ still argues that it has a right to teach “morality and piety.” How are morality and piety to be taught without religion? What is its idea of morals abstracted from practical religion? Does the writer who adorns its columns believe that the end and aim of all true education is to promote man’s true happiness, and, if so, does he believe in a hereafter of eternal rewards and punishments, and how we are to earn the one and avoid the other? He knows as well as we do that, of some dozen leading Protestant sects in this country, not two are agreed on the essential Christian duty and faith of man necessary for his salvation. Who, then, is to decide but the state, which, as we have endeavored to prove, has neither a divine mission nor even human consent to interfere in spiritual matters? It may be said that the state does not decide these questions, but it does. Every hour devoted to a child’s instruction, relatively at least, involves the question of man’s true destiny; for the religious question, which is the question of man’s true destiny, sums up all other questions. As far as Catholics are concerned, they object to each and all such teachers, whether appointed by the warring sects or by the temporal authority. For example, the writer in the _Congregational_, though evidently an intelligent and accomplished 440 gentleman, would not be a very safe teacher in a school composed in whole or in part of Catholic children. Any person who could endorse as he does Draper’s absurd assertion that the _Imitation of Christ_ was the forerunner of the Reformation, call the illustrious Fénelon a Jansenist, style millions of his fellow-citizens by the cant epithets of “Romanists” and “Papists,” and coolly declare that Catholics do not believe in the Bible, is evidently unfitted to form a correct opinion on any religious subject, much less to be entrusted with the instruction of youth.

“But,” says the writer above quoted, “the safety of democracy requires compulsory education. The work cannot be entrusted to churches, or to corporations, or to individuals.” Now, this may mean very little or a very great deal. If it mean, as he hints in another part of his article, that the state has an absolute right to teach a particular religion or any religion at all in its public schools, and enforce attendance therein, for the preservation of our democratic form of government, we entirely dissent from his proposition. The very essence of a free government lies in its recognition of religious liberty and the natural rights of individuals, and our best guarantees of freedom rest on the fact that majorities, which for the time being represent the power of the state, all potent as they may be, cannot set aside the fundamental law, and dare not infringe on the civil or religious liberty of the citizen. No state could or ought to attempt an exercise of power so utterly despotic and foreign to the genius of our institutions.

We are aware that of late it has been customary to denominate our form of education as the American system, for the purpose, doubtless, of exciting public prejudice in its favor. The system is not by any means American in the national sense. It is purely local, and of Puritanical origin and growth. When the New England colonies by persecution and violence secured for themselves uniformity of worship, such as it was, they established schools, in which prayers, hymns, and piety were taught _ad libitum_, with all the raw-head-and-bloody-bones anti-Catholic fiction which the descendants of the Pilgrims mistook for veritable history. Being all of one mind, such a system of training could have no perceptible evil effect on the pupils; for, if they did not hear intolerance and falsehood in the school, they were pretty certain to hear them in the meeting-house. But times have strangely altered since then, as the writer in the _Congregational_ is forced to admit. “The reason our school system had to be modified,” he says, “was not that it was _per se_ right from the day it was enacted, but because the foreign immigration and the changes of time had produced an immense revolution in the religious spirit of the people, and required the readjustment of the civil creed in the school system.” In no sense, then, can this system of public education which is sought to be thrust upon us be called American, except, perhaps, as contradistinguished from that of England, France, Germany, Austria, and other so-called despotic countries, in all of which the denominational plan, more or less generally, prevails. In the latter two countries particularly, one Catholic and the other Protestant, the scheme of secular education has been tried and abandoned, and the wisdom of the new system has been proved beyond peradventure. If it be American to tax citizens for the support of schools and compel them to send their children to be called Romanists and idolaters, then is the 441 public-school system entitled to that distinctive appellation? We do not think that it is.

The state having no authority by the natural or divine law to assume control of the education of our children, by what other right can it claim it? Some may say, from political necessity, that the state, in order to protect its own interests, must see to it that a certain amount of intelligence is diffused among its supporters. Here the whole question comes up again. What is that intelligence which is necessary to the preservation and well-being of our free institutions? Is it a certain knowledge of mathematics, geography, and the physical sciences, or is it not probity, morality, and lawful obedience to the constituted authorities? Yet these are virtues that can only be taught through religion, and the state, having no religion, cannot teach them. Is it not for the general interests that we should have stalwart, healthy, well-fed, and sober citizens? And yet the state does not profess to enforce a general plan whereby every one should be provided with proper exercise, employment, medicine, food, clothing, and shelter. To do so would simply be to attempt to realize the utopian dream of the socialists; and still it would be no greater a usurpation of power than the design of furnishing our children with a general system of instruction, and, indirectly, with a uniform religion. If the state, as it ought to do, requires a certain amount of intelligence in its citizens, let it make the presence or absence of that knowledge the test of citizenship and the passport to places of honor and public confidence. The right to vote and hold office, for example, is not an inherent right, but depends on many qualifications, such as sex, age, nationality, freedom from crime, ability to support one’s self, and previous residence. Why not add ability to read and write intelligibly?

There are cases, however, in which we admit that the state has not only a right, but is in duty bound, to interfere with the disposition and education of children. When parents, either through poverty, misfortune, crime, or any other cause, are unable or unwilling to take proper charge of their children, the state, for its own protection and to save the community from the consequence of vice and idleness, is justified in taking care of them, for this does not violate the principle of civil polity that a state is constituted to do only for the citizen what he is unable to do for himself. Hence, the establishment of almshouses, asylums, nurseries, reformatories, and other benevolent institutions, which all wise governments provide as barriers against prospective crime and distress. But even in those exceptional cases, as much care as possible should be observed in following out the spirit of our free institutions, which are so strongly opposed to any interference in matters of conscience, even among the most humble and unfortunate.

But while we are combating the arguments of our Boston contemporary in favor of compulsory education, it may be said that no compulsion is used or intended to be used in this or many other states in the Union. This is a mistake; there is compulsion of the most practical kind. It is true that the officer of the law does not come into our homes and forcibly drag our children to school, but the tax-gatherer does so, almost as efficiently, if more silently. The masses of the people in this, as in most other countries, are poor. With the American Catholics this is peculiarly so. They are taxed to support the public 442 schools, and must either send their children there or pay for their education elsewhere. This double payment, in most instances, they cannot afford. How many tens of thousands of parents are there not among us whose scanty means will not permit them to indulge in the luxury of seeing their children instructed in the ways of true religion, and who are consequently compelled, if they desire even a primary education for their offspring, to send them to schools which they neither admire nor would select if they had a free choice!

We are accused of being hostile to the Bible. Such is not the fact, and those who make the assertion are well aware of its falsity. The Bible has always been an object of especial care and veneration in the Catholic Church. It is one of the sources of her authority and the muniments of her holy mission. What we object to is the profanation of its sacred character by unworthy and profane hands. It has repeatedly pained us to see even “King James’s Version,” imperfect as it is, scattered broadcast by the agents of the Bible societies in hotel and steamboat saloons, barbers’ shops, and bar-rooms, not to be read, but to be devoted to the meanest purposes of waste paper. The treatment of the holy book in some of our public schools is little better. If any person doubts that Catholics venerate and read the Bible, let him go to our large Catholic publishing-houses and see the numerous and splendid editions of the Old and New Testaments which are constantly being issued from their presses.

Though on principle we decidedly object to the reading of the Bible in our public schools, our greatest objection is to the schools themselves. We hold that the education that does not primarily include the religious element is worse than no education at all, and, we hold, also, that the state has no right to prescribe what form of faith, doctrine, or religious practice should be taught to the children of its citizens. We claim that Catholic parents have a right to demand that their children shall be educated by Catholic teachers, be instructed from Catholic books, and at all times, particularly during hours of study, be surrounded as much as possible with all the influence that the church, into whose bosom they have been admitted by baptism, can surround them. This can never be done in our public schools. However high the personal character of the teachers in those institutions, and whatever may be the peculiar merits of their discipline and success in turning out smart accountants and superficial thinkers, we maintain that, in the formation of character and the cultivation of the spiritual and better part of our nature, they have been and must necessarily be failures. What parent can read without a shudder the following extract from a Boston paper regarding the recent investigation of a _savant_ who, it is well known, is no friend to Catholicity or the teachings of the church:

“Professor Agassiz has of late given a portion of his valuable
time to an investigation of the social evil, its causes and
growth, and the result has filled him with dismay, and almost
destroyed his faith in the boasted civilization of the nineteenth
century. He has visited and noted down the houses of ill-fame
throughout the city of Boston, and has drawn from the unfortunate
inmates many sad life stories. _To his utter surprise, a large
number of the unfortunate women and girls traced their fall to
influences which surrounded them in the public schools._”[102]

It has been already stated, on the authority of the _Educational Monthly_, that in the State of Connecticut, the paradise of public 443 schools and nursery of public-school teachers, there is one divorce annually to every nine marriages, and now we have the unbiassed testimony of Agassiz, after mature examination of the malign influence of state schools in the sister state. Is there any reason to doubt that this sad state of morals exists in other cities, and may be traced to the same source, and, if so, is it not time that our public system of instruction, at least for females, should be discontinued?

But even in a material point of view our common schools have been far from a success. In the efforts, conscientious we must believe, to eliminate sectarianism from the school-books, the Board of Education and Trustees of our cities have almost destroyed their usefulness for any purpose. The primary rules of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and the elements of pure mathematics, can be taught with impunity, but, when the higher branches of study are reached, the religious question again comes up. Take geology, for example, that most interesting science, the abuse of which has led to more atheism than all the sophistries of Voltaire or Volney. As at present taught in our schools, without explanation or qualification, it cannot help being detrimental to the faith, and consequently to the morals, of the curious and undisciplined minds of the scholars. As to history, it is impossible, even with the most careful revision, to reproduce it without constant reference to disputed events and characters, regarding which Protestants and Catholics can never agree. Can we imagine a history of modern Europe, with the great facts of the civilization of the Old World by the church, the establishment of the temporal power of the Popes, the “Truce of God” and the Crusades in the middle ages, the great rebellion against spiritual authority--miscalled the Reformation--the penal persecution of the Irish Catholics, and the French Revolution left out? At best, such a book would be a sorry compilation of dates and miscalled facts, and yet to describe those great epochs in European history with any degree of accuracy would necessarily offend the opinions or prejudices of either Protestants or Catholics. If history be “philosophy teaching by example,” we must look for it somewhere else than in our public schools.

But, because we are opposed to the existence of common schools, are we therefore against popular education? On the contrary, the efforts of the humbler class of Catholics throughout the country to secure education for their children independent of state interference are almost incredible.

In this city alone twenty thousand children are annually taught in the free schools attached to the various churches, at an expense of a little over one hundred thousand dollars, independent of the thousands who attend the pay-schools of the Christian Brothers of a high grade.[103]

Let us now sum up in brief our objections to the further continuance of the present public school system:

I. All education should be based and conducted on true religious principles.

II. The state has no right to teach religion in its schools.

III. State or public schools without religion are godless.

IV. As such, they are incapable of forming the character of our children, or teaching them morality according to the Christian principle.

V. In endeavoring to avoid what is called sectarianism, they defeat 444 the ends of even mere secular education.

Now, it may be asked, What remedy do we propose for the evils which our public school system has already produced? What substitute are we prepared to offer that will both satisfy the demands of religion and the requirements of the state? We answer, by the establishment of denominational schools for Catholics, wherever practicable, under the supervision of the proper ecclesiastical authorities, and likewise for such of the sects as do not approve of mixed schools. How are these schools to be sustained? In either of two ways. If the state will insist on levying a general school tax, let it be divided _pro rata_ according to the number of pupils taught in each school: let the denominational schools have their proper proportion, and the mixed or non-religious schools theirs. The amount thus apportioned to the Catholic schools might be deposited with a board or other executive body, to be composed in whole or in part of clerics and laymen, and, if necessary, let the state appoint proper officials to see that accurate returns of attendance are made. The other way, which to our mind is much preferable, would be to abolish altogether the school tax, and throw upon the parents of all denominations or of no denomination the responsibility of educating their own children. Compulsory education may do very well in countries where the subject is but an automaton liable at any time to be moved by a despotic government, based on principles that the people are made for the government, not the government for the people, and where the acquired intelligence of the masses is merely used or misused for the benefit of a few hereditary rulers; but in a country like our republic, the strength of which lies in individual effort, and where wealth, fame, and honor are within the reach of every one, even the humblest who has energy and ability enough to win them, we can have no fear that parents, and, least of all, Catholic parents, will be derelict in their duty in respect to the proper secular education of their children. The struggles they have made and are making to support their free day-schools, despite the onerous tax with which they are burdened by the state, would be renewed with fourfold energy if that drain on their resources were removed.

The advantages to be derived from the adoption of either plan would be manifold and incalculable.

It would satisfy the conscientious scruples of those parents who 445 consider that they should not be required, directly or indirectly, to send their children to the public schools, as at present conducted. It would not only advance the material prospects of the pupil, by giving him a thorough education devoid of all the restrictions and mutilations which an attempt at fairness and the production of non-religious books have produced; while he would, gradually and without apparent effort, imbibe the true religious spirit that would be his guide and best defence in after life. It would also elevate the character of the teacher by placing him in his true position, midway between the divinely appointed minister of the Gospel, and the instructor of children in matters purely secular, and, by holding out to him a higher and nobler goal than that resulting from mere personal ambition or the hope of pecuniary reward, would doubly increase his zeal and efficiency. For the public generally, the change suggested would be equally salutary. The welfare of the state does not rest on piety alone, nor on mental intelligence alone, but on both acting together, the latter, of course, being subordinate to the former. No man, no matter what may have been his natural gifts, was ever less brave in action, less wise in council, less enterprising in commerce, or less loyal to his government, because he was taught from his infancy to regard the practice of religion as his first and principal duty. The desire of eternal happiness, as much an instinct of our nature as the mode of securing it, is the fruit of proper religious education, reacts on a man’s conduct even in matters exclusively pertaining to the things of the world, and compels him to a more steadfast and fearless course in the discharge of his civic duties.

But it would also have another and not less marked effect. It would rid the community of a host of officials, many of whom are incompetent, and some of whom, we are sorry to say, are corrupt, and it would also save the public treasury vast sums of money, much of which is now uselessly squandered. Who would believe that in this great city, where there is so much learning and public spirit, the Board of Education, consisting of twenty-one persons, is principally composed of liquor and billiard saloon keepers, horse dealers, retailers of articles used in the schools, and of that nondescript class called brokers? Yet this intellectual body exercises supreme control over the public schools of New York, and proposed this year to spend no less a sum than $3,150,000, or more than double the amount required for the same purpose eight years ago.[104] The way in which a portion of this money is spent may be inferred from a statement recently published in one of our daily newspapers, from which we extract the following paragraph:

“The next item is incidental expenses of the Board of Education,
including shop account, $60,000. What are ‘incidental’ expenses?
It means expenditures for which the items cannot be anticipated,
or of which it is not agreeable to furnish a statement; it means
simply a general fund to be expended by the clerks and officers
of the Board of Education as they think proper ‘incidentally.’
Among these ‘incidental’ expenses is what is known as a tea-room;
that is to say, the members have a supper or refreshments
furnished to them at their meetings, and as they choose to order.
This is never returned or charged under the head of tea-room, 446
supper, dinner, or board bill, but is covered up under the head
of postage-stamps or other ‘incidental’ expenses. How much of the
$60,000 goes in this way, it is, of course, impossible for us to
know.”

Is it any wonder, then, that, in view of such extravagant use of the public money, of which the above is only a specimen, the education of about one hundred thousand children, the average attendance at our public schools, should cost over three millions of dollars, or at the rate of thirty dollars _per capita_, while in the Catholic free schools one-fifth of that number are taught at an expense of one hundred thousand dollars, or at the rate of only five dollars a head, per annum?

Are the Catholics competent and prepared to assume the duties and responsibilities of the education of the vast number of children of their communion who now attend the public schools? Most decidedly. As to our ability to teach, we point with something like pride, certainly with satisfaction, to the success of our numerous colleges, seminaries, and convent schools, to the latter in particular, where are always to be found among the pupils a respectable minority composed of daughters of many of our most intelligent Protestant families. We call attention, also, to our twenty-four city free schools, now in full operation, many of which, though of recent origin, will compare favorably with the oldest of our common schools. Besides the professors of our colleges, who are constantly preparing young men for the ministry and for the scarcely less responsible duties of teachers, and such orders as the Christian Brothers, we have many trained lay instructors ready and anxious to devote themselves to the good work of Christian education. Then, again, there are numbers of Catholic teachers now in the public schools, male and female, many of whom we know personally, who would prefer to give their services exclusively to the training of children of their own faith if such an opportunity presented itself. Said one of this class, a teacher of over twenty years’ experience, on a late occasion to the writer, “If I dared, I would like to expose the dangers and absurdities of our school system; but I cannot, for I would surely be found out and dismissed, and then what would become of my wife and family? I wish we had separate schools for ourselves, and then I would feel like teaching even at a less salary than I now receive.”

We submit the consideration of this very grave and, in our mind, most important question to the serious consideration of our patriotic and reflective countrymen, no matter of what creed or opinion, having an abiding confidence in their sense of justice and equity. To the fanatical portion of the community who will not listen to reason, we have only this to say: Though you may pretend not to know it, and may even be unconscious of the fact, your instincts tell you that the present system of education saps the foundation of the Catholic religion, and it is for this reason you hold so tenaciously to it; but let us add, the system itself, being godless, undermines all religion and morality likewise. But such is your infatuation and hostility to our religion that to so undermine it you are willing to see your own faith, whatever that may be, ruined and wrecked as long as you can accomplish your object, and the next generation become atheists and sceptics, totally devoid of all faith. Holding the political power, and in spite of your boasted fair play and in defiance of the spirit of our free institutions, you are determined to uphold your system 447 and tax us for its support against our consciences, against religion, freedom, equal rights, and the spirit of American institutions. Your efforts to stretch the powers of our government, to the detriment of our natural, divine, and political rights, will ultimately end in your own confusion. They are more worthy of some half-crazed theorist or mad follower of Fourrier and the Communists than of a citizen of this great republic. The government that robs a parent of his rights and his children is neither free nor democratic, but is the aider and abettor of that system of free-lovism which is said to have originated in pagan Sparta, and has culminated in our own country at Oneida. But let it be understood that, as Catholics and free citizens, we proclaim our rights, shall resolutely defend them, asking for nothing which we are not willing to grant to others, and being content with no less for ourselves.

[100] Amendment proposed March, 1789.

[101] See page 587, October number of the _Congregational
Quarterly_, under the title “The State--Religion in its
Schools.”

[102] _The Pilot_, Nov. 4, 1871.

[103] For the benefit and edification of our readers, we
subjoin an official tabular statement of the attendance on,
and expenses of, the Catholic free day schools of the city
of New York for the present year:

Daily Annual
Location of Schools. attendance. Expenses
for the
support
of schools.

Nos. 272 & 274 Mulberry St., 1,100 $6,000
Barclay and Church Sts., 573 3,118
New Bowery and James Sts., 1,400 9,000
No. 29 Mott St., 1,225 5,745
Nos. 54 & 56 Pitt St., and 264
Madison St., 1,620 9,500
Nos. 8 & 10 Rutgers St., 1,050 5,000
Leroy St., 1,000 5,500
Nos. 300 & 302 East Eighth St., 1,600 7,000
Nos. 121 & 123, and 135 & 137
Second St., 1,420 5,970
Nos. 8 & 10 Thompson St., 240 2,000
No. 208 East Fourth St., 1,700 6,217
No. 48 Fourth Ave., 200 2,000
Nos. 511 & 513 East 14th St., 1,250 10,000
No. 32 West 18th St., and 111
West 19th St., 720 5,000
No. 118 West 24th St., and
236 West 26th St., 140 1,120
Nos. 333 & 335 West 25th St., 650 3,000
No. 209 West 30th St., and 211
West 31st St., 400 1,600
No. 143 West 31st St., 400 1,000
East 36th St., near Second Ave., 1,250 6,000
No. 309 East 47th St., 130 2,660
East 50th St. and Madison Ave., 350 1,000
East 84th St., near Fourth Ave., 560 4,000
West 131st St., and West
133d St., near 10th Ave., 320 1,000
West 125th St. and Ninth Ave., 130 1,000
------- ---------
19,428 $104,430

[104] The expenses of the Board of Education of this city
for six years have been as follows:
1863, $1,450,000
1864, 1,787,000
1865, 2,298,508
1866, 2,454,327
1867, 2,939,348
1868, 2,900,000

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ONE CHRISTMAS EVE IN LA VENDEE.

It was in ‘93--that horrible ‘93, whose very name makes our blood curdle and our hearts beat with a sense of terror and security, as when we gaze on the painted panorama of a battle-field or some scene of crime and danger and despair long since enacted, but brought vividly before us by the graphic power of eloquence or art. The words have a spell in them that fascinates us, and defies us to pass on without pausing to look upon the memories they evoke. Well, it is of this tragic ‘93 that I am going to speak. But not to describe its horrors. It only makes the frame of my story, a most veracious story, and full of the spirit of that wonderful epoch, where we see all that was noble and loveliest in humanity shine forth by the side of its most criminal and appalling aberrations.

It was Christmas eve fourscore years ago. The fertile soil of La Vendée, red-dyed by streams of patriot blood, was hidden under a deep quilt of snow. All the landscape slept as in a death-sleep under a pure white pall. Hills and plains were garmented in white. The snow had fallen heavily during the night, and its untrodden purity was as smooth and uniform as the blue of the winter sky, that looked down upon it and grew pale. The cottages that dotted the fair expanse hardly broke its uniformity, for they too were liveried in white, the roof thick thatched with snow, and the whitewashed walls only a degree less dazzling than the brightness of the ground. The hedges that divide the fields in La Vendée as in England were filled and covered with snow, and the hoar-frost like a fairy lace-work glittered and shone on the soft, unblemished surface, and the trees with rolls of snow resting on their bare gaunt arms held up clusters of icicles that sparkled like crystals in the tepid December sun.

The village of Chamtocé lay in this white landscape; and in the middle of the village stood the church, and close by the church the presbytery.

On the road that led from St. Florent to Chamtocé a young, lithe 448 figure was crushing the crisp white carpet with a long, elastic step. His face was concealed, the upper part of it by a cap drawn low over his forehead, and the lower part by a woollen scarf wound round his throat, swallowing up the chin and nose in its capacious folds. The weather was not cold enough to need this ostentatious display of _cache-nez_; true, _la nappe blanche de la Noël_ (white cloth of Christmas), as the peasants call it, was spread, but there was not a breath of wind, and it was not freezing. It had frozen during the night just enough to sprinkle the hoar-frost abroad and hang a thin fringe of glass from the roofs of the houses and deck the trees with icicles, but this was not what the Vendéans called freezing. The Loire pursued its journey majestically to the sea unchecked by the icy hand of the black frost, the cruel black frost, that had but to blow with its bleak breath for one night on the strong deep stream to paralyze its waters and chill their moaning into icy dumbness. So, the cold was not bitter. The traveller knew it, too, for on coming to a point of the road where it turned abruptly, and disclosed the church with its slim, gray belfry, and, on the rising ground beyond it, a windmill, still as spectre suspended midway between the white earth and the pale sky, he looked cautiously up and down the road, assured himself there was no one in sight, and then, raising his beaver cap, stood bare-headed in the attitude of a man saluting some object of love and veneration.

“Nearly four years since I knelt under the shadow of thy walls, and now I have come home, and thou dost greet me with the same unchanged, unchanging welcome!”

He replaced his cap, drew it low over his face, and continued his way.

“Home, did I say?” he muttered presently. “Have I still a home to come to? Gaston most likely is gone, fallen like the best blood of La Vendée in God’s and the king’s cause. And Marie!”

A sudden flush suffused the bronzed cheek. The pilgrim walked on with a quicker step, and was soon at the gate of the presbytery.

“Ah! here it is, just as I left it--the little wicket that opened so often with a ready welcome. A good omen to begin with!”

He pushed it and walked on. The door of the dwelling-house stood ajar; winter and summer it was never shut; he pushed it open, and knocked gently at a door on the left.

“Come in!” said M. le Curé.

And François Léonval entered and stood face to face with the only father he had known on earth. Nearly four years had passed since they had parted, and the old priest who had baptized him, and taught him, and wept with him beside his mother’s grave, was just the same as when he had left him, benign, cheerful, a trifle more bowed perhaps and a good deal whiter, but the same in everything else--nothing was changed within. He looked up promptly, closed his book, and then, with a glance where “charity that thinketh no evil” deprecated a certain vague mistrust, he said:

“What can I do for you, my boy?”

“Monsieur le Curé! mon père! Is this the welcome you give me?”

“François! my son! my best-loved!” And the old man held out his arms, and the two clasped each other.

“Ah! my son!” exclaimed the curé, when his emotion left him power to speak, “this is an hour worth suffering for; it pays me for many days 449 of anguish. Little did I dream to have such a joy before we met in heaven. My son! my boy! Blessed be God and Our Lady of Mercy, who have watched over you and brought you back to me! I never thought to see your face before I died!”

“And why not, mon père!” said François, laughing, and embracing him again; “you know the prodigals are sure to return sooner or later; besides, you promised to pray me safe home, and not to go to heaven till I came back to get your blessing. Did you forget your promise?”

“Forget it! Does a father forget his son? But you have travelled a long way; you will tell me all presently; but first you must have need of food and warmth. Victoire!”

The grim old gouvernante appeared, and on recognizing François her features expanded into a smile of genuine delight, and she embraced the young man with motherly affection, and overpowered him with questions that she never waited to hear answered, while she bustled about the table, running backward and forward to her kitchen, and making ready with all speed the very best her store could supply. The frugal meal was soon spread, and the curé, to whom, after the first outburst of joy had subsided, her presence was an unguessed relief, said with a sudden change in his voice and look that struck cold on François’s heart: