When they were first projected, and for some years after they were generally introduced, their advocates insisted that they would promote virtue and morality, as well as intellectual development.

There were, however, among the " Evangelical " or " Orthodox" Protestants, a very large number of hard-headed folks who believed otherwise, particularly among the Germans of the interior counties of Pennsylvania. They justified their opposition to undenominational public schools by the homely and pithy maxim, that "the more fully you instruct children in secular knowledge, unaccompanied with religious training, the greater rascals you will make them." Their opposition was overcome; but that their declaration has a foundation in fact, experience has fully proved.

The failure of the public schools to train their pupils in good morals and virtuous habits, along with secular instruction, is so evident that, contrary to the very arguments which were used when the public schools were first projected and introduced, their defenders now assert that it is no part of the purpose and object of public schools to teach morality or train their pupils in virtuous habits; that their purpose includes nothing more than that of imparting secular knowledge and promoting intellectual development.

This is a virtual acknowledgment of the entire failure of the present public school system to do the work it was originally instituted to do. The State taxes its citizens for the support of public schools, in order that, through them, the rising generation may be trained up, not simply to be intellectually smart and keen and sharp, but that they may become good citizens, law-abiding, moral, virtuous members of society, and thus may strengthen the State and add to public prosperity and welfare.

We repeat, therefore, that, in acknowledging that the public schools, on their present basis, cannot, efficiently, teach morality and train their pupils to virtuous habits, the supporters and defenders of the present system virtually confess that it is a failure, as regards its original purpose—the training up of good, virtuous citizens.

Moreover, this acknowledgment is a wholesale condemnation of the public schools. It is a virtual denial, too, of the right of the State to tax its citizens, and appropriate even a single dollar to support such a system.

The sole, the only plea of right the State can put forward for sustaining any public school system of education, is that that system trains up better, not "smarter" citizens; that it makes the children more virtuous, as well as more intelligent. If the system fails in accomplishing this, it fails entirely, as regards its proper and legitimate purpose.

And, if it fails in this, as we contend the present public school system has notoriously and confessedly failed, then the tens of millions and hundreds of millions of dollars that, throughout our States and Territories, are annually expended in supporting our present ineffective, one-sided, godless system of public schools, is worse than wasted. We go further even than this, and assert that the present school system is simply a machine for practically deChristianizing and un-Christianizing the children, and for training up a generation of intellectually smart, quick, keen, law-evading, and law dis-obeying citizens.

This is a sufficient answer to the assertion that a denominational school system would involve greater expense. It would not, at all events, be an utter failure, as regards its moral results, as the present school system confessedly is.

The money that would be expended upon it, be the amount greater or smaller than that which now is expended in supporting our present public school system, would not be expended for useless purposes, so far as the public welfare is concerned. It would not be expended in training children into men and women indifferent as to religious belief and obligations, practical infidels, regardless of law and of the obligations of divinely revealed religion. For, however widely we, as Catholics, may differ from, and oppose each and all of the Protestant sects, we freely and unhesitatingly acknowledge that the wide and irreconcilable differences of their doctrinal tenets do not reach to a denial of the divine origin of Christianity, nor to a denial of the fact of a divine revelation. And "each and all" Protestants who can and do train their children in this belief, do a better work, beyond all comparison, than citizens who give up their children to a system of instruction and training which tends, practically, to make them disbelievers in any divinely revealed religion, and which thus destroys, in their minds, every substantial basis of morality.

How much of all the vast waste of public money, under the present un-Christian, secular, materialistic, atheistic system of public instruction would be saved by the introduction of positive religious, denominational instruction and training, we leave to others to compute. Suffice it to say that there would be an immense saving in police expenses, in criminal court expenses, in prison expenses.

Thus far we have been arguing the question on the concession that the cost of the proposed denominational public school system would be greater than that of the present system of undenominational public schools. But, in fact, we deny the concession. Our actual contention is that the cost of the proposed system would be no greater, and perhaps less, than that of the present system, while

the moral results for the good order and welfare of society,would be infinitely greater.

In the first place, the distribution of the public school fund would be taken almost entirely out of the sphere of partisan politics. The extent to which practical "jobbery" and favoritism on account of partisan preferences are practised, in connection with the administration of the present public school system, is known to be very great. Under the proposed system, it could scarcely exist.

In the second place, the public school fund would be more fairly and equally distributed, as between the wealthy and the poor. It was not originally intended that the public schools should be so graded up into high schools and technical colleges, and should include so extensive a course of accomplishments as to satisfy the wants of the wealthy few. The public schools were professedly designed to be "common schools," that is, schools whose arrangements and selection of studies should be sufficient for the common needs of the public as a whole, and should not go beyond them.

Yet, as they are now practically administered, the greater amount of the money raised from taxation for the support of the public school system, goes to sustain departments and arrangements, and to pay for instruction in special studies and accomplishments, of which only the wealthy few can avail themselves, while to the "masses," to the vast majority of the people, these expenditures are not of the slightest benefit. Not only, indeed, are they of no benefit to them, but they absorb an inordinate part of the public school fund. They constantly provide for the wealthy few the most efficient teachers the public schools are able to furnish, and the most complete educational apparatus that money can procure, while the children of the masses of the majority of the people of the United States must put up with the remnants; the crumbs that fall from the public school table, inferior school buildings, inferior school apparatus, inferior school-teachers.

Under a "denominational" school system these abuses, this gross injustice, would be measurably prevented, and the administration of the public school fund would be more strictly confined to the professed original purpose and object, the education of the children of the "masses," of the majority of the people, in rudimental, useful, practical, solid branches of knowledge.

Thirdly, under a "denominational" public school system there would be tens and hundreds of thousands of citizens, not only Catholic citizens, but also non-Catholic who could conscientiously avail themselves of it, but who, under the existing system, conscientiously refuse to send their children to the public schools. From considerations referring to the moral training of their children, they now

send them to private schools, or other educational institutions than those sustained by the public school funds, while at the same time they are compelled to pay their quota of public school taxes. From this double burden these citizens (forming, in the aggregate, a large part of the people of our country), would be relieved.

We have answered, we think, all the objections that, with any seeming right or reason, can be brought against a denominational school system.

We return, therefore, to the leading idea with which we started out. It is that "Evangelical" or "Orthodox" Protestants are simply "cutting their own throats," in supporting an undenominational or “unsectarian" public school system. Or, to change the figure of speech, they are strangling the "churches" of which they are respectively members, by the "undenominational" or unsectarian education of their children, under the present public school system.

Whether "Evangelical" or "Orthodox" Protestantism could or could not resist, for a century or two longer, the solvent of its own inherent self-contradictions, it must be perfectly obvious to all keenly observing and logically reasoning Protestants that it cannot resist the unmistakable tendency of the public school system to propagate mere rationalism, naturalism, and practical materialistic atheism. That is, Protestantism cannot resist this tendency unless Protestant parents withdraw their children from public undenominational schools, and establish Evangelical Orthodox Protestant schools.

But this Protestant parents will not do. They (or vast numbers of them) would be glad to have such schools and to send their children to them. But they will not consent to bear the double burden of paying school taxes under the existing system and also incurring the expense of separate distinctive denominational schools. They lack the necessary faith, the necessary confidence in the certainty and truth of their convictions, the necessary religious zeal and spirit of self-sacrifice.

As regards Catholics, the result is and will be different. Between them and the upholders of purely secular education, the issue has been definitely made, argued, and decided. The Catholic Church has declared, and the Catholics of the United States, as elsewhere, intelligently and conscientiously accept the declaration, that mere secular education is godless education, and that Catholic children shall not be subjected to its demoralizing influences. Already half a million of the children of Catholics have been withdrawn from the public schools and are being trained up as Christians-as CATHOLICS, in distinctive Catholic schools. Year by year, month by month, nay, day by day, the number of these

schools and of their pupils is increasing, and the time is not far distant when a Catholic church or parish that has not connected with it a Catholic school will be an exceptional instance.

The battle between secular schools and Catholic schools for Catholic children has been fought and won, and won in favor of the Catholic side of the contention. We do not deny that the victory bears heavily on Catholics as regards dollars and cents. They must pay their public school taxes and, at the same time, pay all the expenses of sustaining Catholic parochial schools and other Catholic educational institutions.

But the Catholics of the United States have counted the cost and are prepared to pay it. It is unjust that they should be thus doubly taxed and burdened. Yet they will submit to the injustice. rather than have their children demoralized, de-Christianized, and practically infidelized. It is not the first, nor the second, nor the third instance of unfairness and injustice, that as law-obeying, peace-preserving citizens of the United States, Catholics have had to endure. As the ancient fish-wife, of Boston, when remonstrated with, by a spectator, for skinning live eels, replied, "It does not hurt them, they are used to it," so the Catholics of the United States are "used" to suffering injustice for the sake of religion and of their religious obligations.

But with Protestants the case is different. They will not pay public school taxes and at the same time incur the expense of supporting distinctive denominational schools. Yet without such denominational schools for the instruction and training of Protestant children, it is as certain as that day succeeds night, that each and all of the Protestant sects will lose their identity and their distinctive existence, and will dissolve down into mere undogmatic, undistinctive, vague, rationalistic naturalism.

Our conclusion is that in sustaining and defending of the present "undenominational" system of public school education, “Evangelical," orthodox Protestantism is simply working out its own destruction.