cerned, the workings of the Public School System have proved, and do prove, highly detrimental to their faith and morals." A Catholic authority, in Boston, asserts in the "Advertiser" of that city, that "Catholics would not be satisfied, with the Public Schools even if the Protestant Bible and every vestige of religious teaching were banished from them. . . . They will not be taxed either for educating the children of Protestants, or for having their own children educated in schools under Protestant control."

The "Tablet," of New York, states the whole Papistical theory of the subject, by asserting that "education itself is the business of the spiritual society alone, and not of secular society. The instruction of children and youth is included in the sacrament of orders, and the State usurps the functions of the spiritual society when it turns educator. The secular is for the spiritual, is subordinated to religion, which alone has authority to instruct man in his secular duties, and fit him for the end for which his Creator has created him. The organization of the schools, their entire internal arrangement and management, the choice and regulation of studies, and the selection, appointment, and dismissal of teachers, belong exclusively to the spiritual authority."

The "Catholic Telegraph" says, "It will be a glorious day for Catholics in this country when, under the blows of justice and morality, our School System shall be shivered to pieces."

The "Freeman's Journal" says, "Let the Public School System go to where it came from-the devil. We want Christian schools, and the State cannot tell us what Christianity is." "This country has no other hope, politically or morally, except in the vast and controlling extension of the Catholic religion." And it exclaims, "This subject contains in it the whole question of the progress and triumphs of the Catholic Church in the next generation in this country. Catholics! let us all act together! Let us all read and listen to the same sentiments, that we may know how to act together!'

The Romanist journals of the country are generally rife with such declarations; they are utterances of ecclesiastical barbarism amid American enlightenment and liberty. Their recent boldness has rendered their opinions distinct and intelligible to the American people. For years they have been vague, but

growingly emphatic. Archbishop Hughes made formidable efforts to impair the Common School System in New York city. For nearly half a century the struggle went on, till, in 1869, the Romanist party "succeeded in getting a single section inserted in a general law embracing various subjects, under which this denomination has received from the public treasury a sufficient amount to pay the salaries of all its clergy in the city for 1869."* This desecration of the public money, consecrated to education, is chiefly attributable to the management of Mr. Tweed, who, in the Senate of the State, has tried for some time to get set apart, for Roman Catholics, a portion of the School Fund, but failing in this, succeeded, with the co-operation of other politicians, the last year, in "inserting in the city Tax Levy a clause giving over $200,000 to sectarian schools; and having secured this, they were able to procure the selection of a person to divide this sum, who-waiting until the State election had passed, so that the public might not be offended at a critical moment by his apportionment -gave to twenty-five Roman Catholic schools $153,800, and to twenty-eight Protestant schools $61,107."

The Act by which this bad deed was done provides that "an amouut equal to twenty per cent. on the Excise moneys received for said city in 1868, shall be distributed for the support of schools educating children gratuitously, who are not provided for in the Common Schools."

The Act is of permanent application, the appropriation being not dependent on the Excise receipts, but only rated by those of 1868.

This abuse of the public money could be hopefully, and ought to be immediately and sternly, contested in the courts. The appropriation is for schools educating children "not provided for in the Common Schools;" but are not all the children of the city so provided for? The Special Committee, appointed by the Board of Education, September 15, 1869, say in their Report of October 6, 1869: "The Committee caused to be made a thorough examination into the seating capacity of the school buildings in the city of New York. The average attendance for the year ending December 31, 1868, was 86,154, while the number of seats is 125,987, showing an excess of seats over the

• Hiram Ketchum, Esq., in New York Evening Post for January 17, 1870.

average attendance of 39,833. This clearly shows that no additional school buildings will be required during the year 1870, and for some years to come." According to this statement, the 20,000 children, in these aided sectarian schools, are amply "provided for" by the 39,833 vacant seats of the Public Schools of the city. The distributor of the funds, under the new Act, has, therefore, rendered himself liable to the charge of maladministration.

The proofs that this misappropriation of the public funds— the hard-earned and over-taxed money of the people-is a Papistic measure, are too glaring to be denied; they are prima facie. It is but one in a series of misappropriations which has extended through years.

In 1846 the city government of New York gave to the Romanists, for one dollar, four hundred and fifty feet (450 feet) of the Fifth Avenue end of the block of ground adjoining the last and between Fifty-first and Fifty-second streets; and then in 1857, for one dollar a year rent, gave this sect the rest of this block; thus practically donating the whole block running through from Fifth to Fourth Avenues, which block is now estimated to be worth a million and a half dollars, ($1,500,000.)

In 1852 they gave to the same sect the fee of a whole block of ground running from Fifth to Fourth Avenues, and from Fiftieth to Fifty-first streets, by changing a lease into a fee, for the sum of eighty-three dollars and thirty-two cents, ($83 32 ;) and then, in 1864, paid the same sect twenty-four thousand dollars ($24,000) for the privilege of extending Madison Avenue across this block; and also made this sect a donation of eight thousand nine hundred and twenty-eight dollars and eightyfour cents, ($8,928 84,) to pay all assessments on the block for opening Madison Avenue. A moderate estimate of the present value of this block of ground is one million and a half dollars, ($1,500,000.)*

In 1863 were distributed to religious bodies $105,000; of this sum $97,500 were given to Roman Catholic, while but $7,500 went to Protestant institutions.

* "Abstraction of Moneys from the Public Treasury for Sectarian Uses," published by the New York Union League, 1870, and signed by Prof. Francis Lieber, as Chairman of Committee.

In 1864 $70,000 were given to the Romanists; in 1865 $100,000.

In 1866, out of $129,025 appropriated by the State, $124,174 were given to the Romanists; all except $4,851.

In 1867 the Legislature gave $80,000 to the Society for the Protection of Catholic Orphans, and in the same year the Common Council of the city gave $120,000, most of which was appropriated to the Romanist Schools.

Besides the enormous sum given from the city treasury to this denomination in 1869 for schools, other sectarian appropriations were made amounting to more than half a million,* ($528,742 47,) and of this aggregate the Romanists received the egregiously disproportionate share of $412,072 26, leaving for the Methodists less than $3,075, for the Baptists less than $3,000, and for all Protestants but $116,680 21.

These are startling facts. They should rouse the whole patriotic population of New York. A more flagrant abuse never arrested the attention of our citizens. "It began," says the New York Union League, "under the specious form of begging from the city treasury a few dollars for some deserving charity controlled and owned by some one of the several hundred religious sects into which our people are divided. It has in a few years made such gigantic strides that it now abstracts from the city treasury, of the money raised by general taxation, half a million dollars annually, and uses the greater part of this sum to destroy our system of Public Schools." We have been virtually endowing Ropery in New York city. De facto we have here a union of Church and State, for Romanism has become practically a politico-ecclesiastical institu

*Of the appropriations made in 1869, the following are the figures, showing the total amount voted to each sect:

tion among us; it not only usurps our municipal powers by its intolerable corruptions at the polls, but it appropriates to itself our public treasury, and meanwhile fills our prisons, pauper houses, and other charitable establishments.* The appropriations of the city government "to certain religious sects, and their peculiar institutions," says the Union League Committee, "exceed those of any other city in Christendom." The small proportional Protestant appropriation, in these instances, is but a disguise of the real intent of the unpatriotic management which originated the misappropriation.

Most of the Romanist institutions receiving this aid are educational establishments, and their use of the public treasury is, throughout, an indication of the hostility of Romanism to the American Common School System. This hostility is inherent in Romanism. In the famous "Syllabus " of the reigning Pope, education by the State, aside from the Church, is expressly denounced. That barbarous document has shocked the moral sense and the common sense of Europe. It strikes at almost every essential principle of modern civilization, but at none more fundamental than this. Meanwhile Europe is practically repudiating this ecclesiastical interference with so momentous a guarantee of national well-being-of national existence. Even Austria, under the reform policy of Count Beust, has thrown off the Concordat, and wrested her education from the control of the Papal priesthood. Italy itself repels it. England, heretofore without a national system of education, after wasting millions for sectarian schools, finds this policy insupportable, and is rapidly advancing toward independent, impartial State education. Shall the New World retrograde before the Papal hierarchy at this

*The "New York Herald" gave, lately, the following list of city appointments held by Romanists: "The Sheriff, Register, Comptroller, City Chamberlain, Corporation Counsel, Police Commissioner, President of the Croton Board, President of the Board of Aldermen, President of the Board of Councilmen, Clerk of the Common Council, Clerk of the Board of Councilmen, President of the Board of Supervisors, five Justices of the Courts of Record, all the Civil Justices, all but two of the Police Justices, all the police court clerks, three out of four Coroners, two members of Congress, three out of five State Senators, eighteen out of twentyone members of Assembly, fourteen out of nineteen of the Common Council, and eight out of ten of the Supervisors! The Papal Church thus controls in New York city, first, the taxation of city property; and, second, the appropriation of the millions of revenue received from taxation."