a Unitarian, to be a board or committee of superintendence. They agreed upon a selection of reading lessons from both translations of the Scriptures, and, by means of a system of restrictions and qualifications, carefully arranged, providing for distinct methods and times of religious instruction, they were able to construct a union, not godless or negative, but thoroughly Christian in its character, and so to draw as many as 500,000 of the children into the public schools; conferring thus upon the poor neglected and hitherto oppressed Irish, greater benefits than they have before received from any and all public measures since the conquest.

I can not go into the particulars of this adjustment, neither is it necessary. Whoever will take pains to trace out the particular features of the plan, will see that such an adjustment is possible. Enough is it for the present to say, that what has been can be, and that if there is a real and true desire in the two parties to this coming controversy, to settle any plan that will unite and satisfy them both, it will be done. It may never be done in such a manner as to silence all opposition or attack from the ultra Protestant party on one side, and the ultra Catholic on the other. Bigotry will have its way, and will assuredly act in character here, as it has in all ages past and does in Ireland now. The cry will be raised on one side, that the Bible is given up because it is read only at the option of the parents, or because only extracts from it are read, though the extracts amount to nearly the whole book, or because they are, some of them, made from the Catholic and some from the Protestant version; whereas, if only this or that catechism were taught, with not a word of Scripture, no complaint of a loss of the Bible would be heard of, or if the Psalter translation were read, instead of the Psalms, it would be regarded as no subject of complaint at all. On the other, the Catholic side, it will be insisted that the church authority is given up, though every word and teaching is by and from it, or that religion itself is corrupted by the profane mixtures of a Protestant proximity and intercourse. Probably the bigots, on both sides, will have much to say, in deprecation of the "godless system of education," and

yet there will be more religious teaching, and more impression made of true religion, by that cordial and Christian adjustment of differences, which brings the children of two hostile bands together, in this manner, than by whole days and weeks of drill and catechism in separate schools.

There is a great deal of cant in this complaint of godless education, or the defect of religious instruction in schools, as Baptist Noel, Dr. Vaughan, and other distinguished English writers, have abundantly shown. It is not, of course, religious instruction for a child to be drilled, year upon year, in spelling out the words of the Bible, as a reading book—it may be only an exercise that answers the problem how to dull the mind most effectually to all sense of the Scripture words, and communicate least of their meaning. Nay, if the Scriptures were entirely excluded from the schools, and all formal teaching of religious doctrine, I would yet undertake, if I could have my liberty as a teacher, to communicate more of real Christian truth to a Catholic and a Protestant boy, seated side by side, in the regulation of their treatment of each other, as related in terms of justice and charity, and their government as members of the school community, (where truth, order, industry and obedience are duties laid upon the conscience, under God,) than they will ever draw from any catechism, or have worn into their brain by the dull and stammering exercise of a Scripture reading lesson. The Irish schools have a distinct Christian character, only not as distinctly sectarian as if they were wholly Protestant or wholly Catholic. They are Christian schools, such as ours may be and ought to be, and, I trust, will be, to the latest generations, nor any the less so that they are common schools.

Neither is it to be imagined or felt that religion has lost its place in the scheme of education, because the Scriptures are not read as a stated and compulsory exercise, or because the higher mysteries of Christianity as a faith or doctrine of salvation, are not generally taught, but only the Christian rules of conduct, as pertaining to the common relations of duty under God, What is wanting may still be provided for, only less adequately, in other places; at home, in the church, or in

lessons given by the clergy. It is not as when children are committed to a given school, like the Girard College, for example, there to receive their whole training, and where, if it excludes religion, they have no religious training at all.

I do then take the ground, and upon this I insist, as the true American ground, that we are to have common schools, and never to give them up, for any purpose, or in obedience to any demand whatever-never to give them up, either by formal surrender, or by implication; as by a distribution of moneys to ecclesiastical and sectarian schools. The state can not distribute funds, in this manner, without renouncing even a first principle of our American institutions, and becoming the supporter of a sect in religion. It may as well support the priests of a church, as support the schools of a church, separated from other schools, for the very purpose of being subjected to the priests.

But while we are firm in this attitude, and hold it as a point immovable, we must, for that very reason, be the more ready to do justice to the religious convictions of all parties or sects, and to yield them such concessions, or enter into such arrangements as will accommodate their peculiar principles and clear them of any infringement.

But it will be objected by some, that while this should be done, if there were any thing to hope from it, there is really no hope that our concessions or modifications will be of any avail, and therefore that they should not be made at all; for they will only so far abridge the value of our schools without yielding any recompense for the loss. Then let us offer the modifications, offer any terms of union that can be offered without a virtual destruction or renunciation of the system; and then if they are not accepted it will not be' our fault. I very much fear they will not be, that an absolute separation of the Catholic children from our schools is already determined, and that no revision of the sentence can be had. Still it is much for us to take away every excuse for such a determination, and every complaint or pretext by which it is justified.

Then, having done it, we can take the ground explicitly, and clear of all ambiguity, that they who exclude themselves are not Americans, and are not acting in their complaints or agitations, on any principle that meets the tenor of our American institutions. Nothing will be more evident, and they should be made to bear the whole odium of it. If to keep their people apart from the dreaded influence of Protestant Christianity, they were to buy townships of land, or large quarters in our cities, to be occupied only by Catholics, walled in by their own by-laws, and allowing no Protestant family, or tradesman, or publican, to reside in the precinct—no one to enter it without a pass; and then to come before our legislatures in petition that we will distribute moneys to support their roads, and pay their constables and gate-keepers; they would scarcely do a greater insult to our American society than they do in these separations from our common schools, and the petitions they are offering to be justified and rewarded in the separation.

But we tax them, it will be said, for the support of the common schools, and then, receiving no benefit from the tax they pay, they are obliged to tax themselves again, for schools of their own. It is even so, and for one, apart from all resentment, I rejoice in it; unless they have grievances put upon them by the organization of our schools, such as justify their withdrawal. We tax the Quakers for defect of military service, and bachelors who have no children, and we ought, much more, to tax the refractory un-American position taken by these Catholic strangers, after we have greeted them with so great hospitality, and loaded them with so many American privileges. If now they will not enter into the great American institution, so fundamental to our very laws and liberties, let them pay for it, and measure their deserts by their dissat isfactions. If they will be foreigners still among our people, let them have remembrances that interpret their conduct to them in a way of just emphasis.

Meantime let us be sure also of this, that a day is at hand. when they will weary of this kind of separation, and will visit on their priests, who have required it, a just retribution.

One generation, or possibly two, may bear this separation, this burden of double taxation, this withdrawal of their children from society and its higher advantages, to be shut up or penned as foreign tribes in the state, thus to save the prejudices of a discarded and worthless nationality; but another generation is to come who will have drunk more deeply into the spirit of our institutions, and attained to a more sufficient understanding of the hard lot put upon them, in this manner, by a jealous and overbearing priesthood. Then comes a reaction, both against them and their religion; then a flocking back to the schools to reap their advantages; and it will be strange if the very measure now counted on as the means of their preservation, does not, of itself, become one of the strongest reasons for the alienation of their children from it. Of this we may be quite sure, and it ought not to be any secret to them, that their children of the coming time will at last find a way to be Americans; if not under the Pope and by the altars, then without them.

Neither let it be said that this is a matter which lies at the disposal of politics, and that our political demagogues will sell any thing, even our birthright as a people, to carry the vote of a campaign. The experiment has just been tried in Detroit, with a most signal and disastrous failure. In cases where the issue touches no religious interest or feeling of the Protestants, and the Catholics can be gained to throw a casting vote on one side or the other, the politicians will not deal so absurdly, if they consent to buy that vote by some great promise, and I have so little confidence in many of them, under the prodigious temptations of a canvass, as to have it for granted, that they will stick at nothing which is possible. But here, thank God, is one thing that is impossible, and whatever politician ventures on the experiment, will find that he has not worked his problem rightly-that if Catholics can be often united and led in masses to the vote, so Protestants will sometimes go in masses where they are not led, save by their principles. That our legislatures can not and will not be gained to allow the ruling out of the Scriptures, and all religious instruction from the schools, as in New York city,