I am by no means certain-I very much fear that they will— but that they can ever become supporters and fund-holders to ecclesiastical schools, or be induced to give up common schools, I do not believe. Whatever politician or political party ventures on that experiment, will find that he has rallied a force manifold greater against him than he has drawn to his aid. A point so thoroughly un-American, so directly opposite also to the deepest convictions of the great Protestant majorities of the country, can not be carried, and, if pressed, will suffice to fix a stigma that is immovable upon any leader who is desperate enough to try the experiment. Here I will close. The subject is a painful one, and not any the less so that the line of our duty is plain. It can not be said by any, the most prejudiced critic, that our conduct as a people, to strangers and men of another religion, has not been generous and free beyond any former example in the history of mankind. We have used hospitality without grudging. In one view it seems to be a dark and rather mysterious providence, that we have thrown upon us, to be our fellow-citizens, such multitudes of people, depressed, for the most part, in character, instigated by prejudices so intense against our religion. But there is a brighter and more hopeful side to the picture. These Irish prejudices, embittered by the crushing tyranny of England, for three whole centuries and more, will gradually yield to the kindness of our hospi tality, and to the discovery that it is not so much the Protestant religion that has been their enemy, as the jealousy and harsh dominion of conquest. God knows exactly what is wanting, both in us and them, and God has thrown us together that, in terms of good citizenship, and acts of love, we may be gradually melted into one homogeneous people. Probably no existing form of Christianity is perfect-the Romish we are sure is not the Puritan was not, else why should it so soon have lost its rigors? The Protestant, more generally viewed, contains a wider variety of elements, but these too seem to be waiting for some process of assimilation that shall weld them finally together. Therefore God, we may suppose, throws all these diverse multitudes, Protestant and Catholic, together, in crossings so various, and a ferment of experience so manifold, that he may wear us into some other and higher and more complete unity, than we are able, of ourselves and by our own wisdom, to settle. Let us look for this, proving all things, and holding fast that which is good, until the glorious result of a perfected and comprehensive Christianity is made to appear, and is set up here for a sign to all nations. Let us draw our strange friends as close to us as possible, not in any party scramble for power, but in a solemn reference of duty to the nation and to God. I can not quite renounce the hope that a right and cordial advance on our part-one that, duly careful to preserve the honors of Christianity, concedes every thing required by our great principle of equal right to all, and as firmly refuses to yield any thing so distinctively American as this noble institution, identified with our history as the blood with the growth of our bodies will command the respect and finally the assent of our Catholic friends themselves. And since God has better things in store even for religion, than the repugnant attitudes of its professed disciples can at present permit, I would even hope that he may use an institution so far external to the church, as a means of cementing the generations to come in a closer unity, and a more truly catholic peace; that, as being fellow-citizens with each other, under the state, in the ingenuous days of youth and youthful discipline, they may learn how also to be no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints and of the household of God. ཀ་། |