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against the discipline and authority of our schools,-a rebellion which might gratify the ambition or aid the far reaching designs of the priest, but could only end in the ruin of those misguided children, who were at once their tools and their victims. These are the regulations, and this is their history.

And now, since it so plainly appears that my client was justified in punishing this deliberate and wilful rebellion against these rules so long established, so long acquiesced in, so long a part of our invaluable public school system, the counsel for the prosecution are forced to take the ground that these laws and regulations themselves are illegal and unconstitutional.

The Court cannot have forgotten the very able and learned opening argument of the counsel for (the prosecution. The Issue is plainly made by him, that the regulations which I have read are illegal and unconstitutional, and therefore I cannot avoid it or refuse to meet it, if I would. His general argument, if I understand it correctly, is this:

Our Constitution declares that every citizen shall have full liberty to worship God according to his own conscience.

The statutes of 1852 require that children should, for at least three months in the year, attend some public school.

All citizens are taxed for the support of public schools, and therefore, have equal rights in them.

To require the scholars to repeat the Ten Commandments infringes upon their liberty of conscience, and the rule is, therefore, unconstitutional.

Any attempt to enforce an unconstitutional law is illegal, and any punishment whatever, for a refusal to obey such a law, is illegal.

If these arguments are sound and unanswerable, then the Bible must indeed be banished from our schools forever.

If a Catholic child not only has a right, but is bound by law to attend school; if, because all citizens are taxed, he has the rights which are now claimed, and if what he chooses to call his scruples of conscience, are to be obeyed-then he is not obliged to recite nor to hear the Ten Commandments; he is not obliged to repeat nor to hear the Lord's Prayer; he is not obliged to read the Protestant Bible nor to hear it read;either would offend his Catholic scruples-all are violations of his liberty of conscience.

This is indeed a great question-the greatest and gravest question, in my judgment, which this Court will ever be called upon to determine; and as it is now for the first time presented here, it is fit that it should be seriously and solemnly discussed, and that it should be met and decided upon those broad principles of justice and law which will satisfy all good citizens of every sect and race, all who love and are willing to obey our laws. No one who knows and cherishes the history of our country, no one who watches now, with fear and hope, the dark and threatening signs of the times,-no one who reflects upon those essential qualities, those cardinal virtues in the citizen, upon which alone a republican government can be founded, and by which alone it can be sustained,-but must feel and know that this is a question, the importance of which cannot be overrated or exaggerated;-a question which must be met boldly, fearlessly, and with entire frankness ;-a question which requires very plain dealing, and justifies very plain speaking also.

My own wish is to avoid all extreme grounds, and to avoid all questions which will widen the threatened breach between our citizens. I chiefly desire to speak to the complainant, who has been instigated to bring this case before the court, and to his brethren and friends. I speak to the alien, the emigrant, and the exile, who have found refuge here from the wrongs and oppressions of the Old World. I appeal to them at once, and forever, to abandon as most dangerous and most injurious to the true welfare of their children, the counsels of those who would array them in opposition to the laws, who would teach them to separate their children from those free schools where all meet beneath the same roof, speak the same tongue, learn from the same books and enter together the great republic of letters.

I appeal to them, to disabuse their minds of the prejudice that their liberty of conscience is to be invaded or violated. No intelligent Catholic parent really believes it or fears it for a moment. I appeal to their own cherished hopes and wishes for the welfare of their children whom they love. I appeal to their experience of past years, and to the bitter lessons of these past few days. I ask every parent to look back upon his own life, upon his own daily sorrows and regrets that a free school was

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never open to himself, and then to decide whether he will sacrifice his children also-whether he will dare, at the bidding of priest or politician, to leave his offspring in the shadow of that same darkness; and sadden and darken their lives by the same cloud of ignorance which has overshadowed all his own weary, hopeless days.

Unless I can support and sustain these rules as consistent with freedom of conscience-as consistent with the purest spirit of religious toleration; unless I can show to our adopted citizens, our adopted brethren, that side by side our children can consistently and properly receive the education which the laws give freely and equally to all-unless they can join their little hands, and lift their young hearts in common prayer to the Father of the fatherless, then these regulations will no longer be defended or justified by me.

Need I deny the unjust charge that the laws of our free Commonwealth are hostile or severe, to our adopted citizens? Need I say that ours are no inhospitable or unfriendly shores?

Every western breeze that finds it unseen path over the wide Atlantic, bears an invitation across the ocean, welcoming the exile and the alien, the poor and oppressed of every clime, to the land of the free. Our freedom is our birthright and our inheritance; broad as our land, free and unfettered as the wind, which sweeps from one ocean to the other. And this our birthright and inheritance which our fathers purchased with their blood, we offer to all and willingly share with all. In the Old World the inheritance of the people is the heavy burden of that feudal system, under which the lands and the titles, the wealth and the power are held by the nobles, and transmitted to their children generation after generation. The sons of the soil are bowed down by labor, and the sweat of their toil drops upon fields they can never hope to win or claim as their own.

Learning there is the inheritance of the rich only, and is not for the poor; they must bend their backs and bow down towards the earth, nor dare to look upwards to the broad sunlight of God's eternal sky; they must bow down their hearts and minds to endless, hopeless toil, nor seek to share in the eternal light of learning and knowledge, which God has given for all his children. The holy stars may shine forever in that far-off sky, but dark clouds are floating there between. They must not

look up to that serene sky, must not look up to those far-off stars; their life must be submission and despondency, not aspiration.

What wonder then that every white-winged vessel which leaves the Old World bears its band of emigrants and exiles, looking forward toward the promises of the West; toward the hopes and promises of that beautiful clime which they dream of far away beneath the vanishing glory of the sunset-looking forward to a new home-to a freer land-to a brighter sky. And when the long voyage ends at eventide,-when at sunset, the stately ship furls its white sails in our fair harbor, they see before them in the western sky the golden gates of their new world, the golden gates of the new El Dorado-not the fabulous clime of rivers flowing over golden sands which tempted avarice in earlier days, but the true El Dorado of men -a land where the soil is free-where the laws are equalwhere the sunshine of liberty and of learning glows for all, blesses all. The emigrants of to-day, do not come as conquerors like the adventurers of an earlier time. They do not come the soldiers of a foreign prince, to extend his dominion, or plant his standard on our free shores. They come as friends, as guests; they come as freemen. The emigrants of to-day do not bear the banners of Castile and Aragon. The Oriflamme of France does not float above their heads, nor does the meteor flag of England lead them onward now, but in the western sky float the banners of the Almighty, blazoned there in the purple and gold of sunset, and inscribed thereon, in letters of living light, is the sacred word of liberty.

But there is a voice of warning as well as a voice of welcome for the emigrant and the exile who leaves the Old World, with its wrongs and its memories behind him. As he is borne along over the wild wide ocean he can bury there all memories of the tyranny and oppression which made life a burden. He has left behind the heavy yoke of poverty, the despair of ignorance, the degrading distinctions of birth, the unequal laws which with every rising and every setting sun made him feel the bitter truth of the curse, "in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life."

A new life opens before him on our wave-worn shores. Here is a new home where the laws are equal for the poor and for the

rich.

Here he can win wealth and honor. Here he can be one of the citizens, one of the rulers; here education and honor and power and wealth are open to all; and in the free air, the new life, the loftier aims, the higher aspirations of the New World, all the wrongs and sorrows of the past can be forgotten. But as he buries beneath the dark waves the sad memories of the Old World, let him find a little room there for his chains also.

There is ample room beneath our wide free sky for all races, for all sects, for all churches. The stately towers of the Roman cathedral, and the plain white spires of our New England meeting-houses, pointing from the quiet graves of our fathers heavenward, need never encroach one upon the other. There is room for all beneath our wide blue sky.

We give the widest toleration to all nations, to all creeds, all opinions; but there is one power, one tyranny which cannot cross the ocean, and that is the tyranny of one man, whether his head is encircled with the monarch's crown, or the bishop's mitre. Bury those heavy chains, then, beneath the dark waves, and as the waters close over them, forget the bondage as well as the sorrows of the past.

Ours is a government of the people-a government of men, but of free men-and that dark and dangerous power, which, under the guise of religion, would grasp the sceptre of the State, can never, never be tolerated here. That plant is not native to our clime-it can never flourish in our free soil-its breath is poisonous to our laws, and death to our liberties—the dream must never for one moment be indulged, that one man, whether he speaks from the Vatican or from the altar, is to rule the destinies of our free people, or to dictate their laws.

We received that warning long ago, in the farewell address of him, whom we love to name as the father of our country. It was Washington who said to us: "Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government." Our liberties are our inheritance, and neither foreign power or foreign influence can lay sacrilegious hands upon them-sacred alike from the warrior's sword and from the priest's influence.

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