Public School Education Part 7

he was asked. "I got it as a present," he answered. Then he related how one day he met with a rich man: "I knocked him down," he said, "put my foot on his throat, and said: 'Give me your watch, or I kill you.' So he gave it to me." "Pay your taxes for the erection and support of our Public Schools," says the lord State to the poor and to the rich, "or I sell your property." What a shame! The Catholics ask no favor, but they insist on their rights. In this country, whose discoverer was a Catholic--in this country, where the principle of religious toleration was first established by a Catholic n.o.bleman, the famous and chivalric Calvert, Earl of Baltimore--in this country, whose people are largely indebted for their freedom to the armed cooperation and generous aid of Catholic France--in this country, whose const.i.tutional freedom has been struck down by the malevolent Puritanism _which in one breath declares that Catholics are opposed to education, and in the next insists that they shall be deprived of the means necessary for its maintenance_--in this country, I say, we Catholics are ent.i.tled to equal rights, and to a fair share, to a just apportionment of the annual amount raised by taxation for the support of our charitable and educational inst.i.tutions.

We ask only what is fair, what is just, what is right; and we base our demand upon principle, and not upon the ground of favors granted or received.

If the State taxes us, as a religious and Christian people, for the education of our children, it must give us a Christian education. If it cannot, or will not do that, it must cease to tax us, and leave the education of our children to ourselves. If the Christian gives to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, he has a right to demand of Caesar that he allow him to give to G.o.d what belongs to G.o.d.

Again, the Const.i.tution says, "That no person shall be compelled to erect, support, or attend any place of public wors.h.i.+p, nor support any minister of the gospel, or teacher of religion," etc.; and it says, "That no private property ought to be taken or applied to public use without just compensation." Now let us apply these const.i.tutional principles to State-schools, and see if our compulsory support of them is not violative of our const.i.tution as well as common law. Why is it "that no person shall be compelled to erect, support, or attend any place of public wors.h.i.+p, nor support any minister of religion"? Simply because he "don't want to"; and he don't want to, "because it is against his conscience"; and "no human authority," says the Const.i.tution, "can control or interfere with the rights of conscience"; that is all the reason, and no other. The State believes that all places of wors.h.i.+p, and ministers of the gospel, are good; but, knowing that there is a difference of opinion among the people on that subject, wisely leaves such matters to their choice, and will not take private property for public use without compensation. Why, then, is private property taken for Public Schools without compensation? We cannot use them in conscience, and we have seen there is no lawful power or authority to "control or interfere with conscience." I ask, then, if I am not right in stating that our compulsory support of an odious and infidel system of Public Schools, against our conscience and against our consent, is not far worse than the support of any form of church establishment?

Moreover, according to the Const.i.tution, "No preference can ever be given by law to any church, sect, or mode of wors.h.i.+p." This section is often quoted as the authority and reason for excluding religious teachings from the Public Schools; but, strange enough, it is flagrantly violated by the present system, giving a _preference by law_ to the _unbelievers_, and thereby discriminating against the believers of all sects and denominations. For, after all, there can be but two churches, or, if you please, sects, in the eye of the State--the believers and unbelievers. To the former belong the various Christian denominations, and to the latter those who deny and _protest_ against all religious faith and belief. Those certainly are the last, and for that reason, if for no other, are the _best or worst_ (as people may choose to view them) sect. It is, then, this last product, this "_caput mortuum_" of all sects and believers of every shade and kind, that is favored by the no-belief system of education.

"Though the State may not give any preference to any church or sect," it is not, on that account, authorized to ignore and reject all; but, on the contrary, is obliged in justice to a.s.sist all or none, as, by this course alone, it avoids giving preference to any. This is what the law contemplates, and the only course that comports with reason and justice.

If it suits the _last sect_--the _unbelievers or no-believers_--to exclude morals or religion from schools, all right; let them keep on as at present. But if it suits the various other churches or sects to modify the system to suit their conscientious views and beliefs, to apply their own proportion of the school tax for that purpose, it is their undeniable and lawful right.

There is one view in which the public will agree in regard to the Public Schools: it is that they cost too much money. For the management of the G.o.dless Public Schools there is a costly array of "Commissioners," and "Inspectors," and "Trustees," and "Superintendents," and "Secretaries of Boards," and "Central Officers," all in league with "Contractors," to make "a good thing"--so-called--out of the plan. We have, now, contractors for buildings and repairs, contractors for furniture, contractors for books, contractors for furnaces, contractors for fuel, contractors even for pianos, and all making money out of it. The "Boards" that give the contracts do not make any money by way of commissions, do they? Ah! you know full well that hundreds of thousands of dollars are annually spent or squandered in running these Public Schools, and which are recommended, in a particular manner, for their _economy_!

But aside, for a moment, from these _Public Schools_, so numerous, so costly, so grand and imposing in their exterior, managed by a little army of high-paid professors, teachers, superintendents and a.s.sistants, costing the people of every city and State hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, there is another army, yea, a volunteer army, not commissioned or paid by the State, but by a greater power--G.o.d--who, for His love, and that uncomparable reward which only G.o.d bestows, devote themselves to teaching, instructing, training and educating the poor, the needy, the orphan, the houseless, the homeless, the forlorn, the despised, as well as the more favored of the earth. These make no grandiloquent printed reports in costly binding; they have no official stenographers or reporters to noise their proceedings in "morning papers"; they have no "Polytechnic Halls," fitted up with pretentious libraries, and all the surroundings of upholstery, and heating and cooling apparatus; but winter and summer, early and late, they keep the even tenor of their way with an "_eye single_" to their humble and laborious duties.

In nearly all the cities of America, in those busy and worldly centres of traffic and trade, of luxury and wealth, with their average of good and evil, virtue and crime, this "_volunteer army_" distributes itself noiselessly, quietly, and as it were obscurely, not heralded nor preceded by the emblems of pomp or worldly power, but nevertheless making its conquests and a.s.serting its quiet influence in lanes and alleys, gathering up the little children, taking them to its camps, and instructing and educating them in the service of G.o.d and society.

You may have seen, in some of those cities, that long line of little boys or girls, two by two, extending to the length of a block or more; you may have observed how regularly they are a.s.sorted, the tallest in first, and ranging down to the little ones, whose busy feet are trying to keep up with the column. You may also have noted the order and silence (so unusual among children), and your attention was arrested, and perhaps you know not how all this order in this beautiful panorama was brought about. Well, with these boys you may have observed two men, one at the head, the other at the foot of this long line. If you saw this for the first time you may have wondered, and I suppose been even amused, at the figure and costume of those men;--the broad-brimmed hat, the long, strange-fas.h.i.+oned robe, the white collar, the collected air and mien, all bespeak the _Christian Brother_. These men, nevertheless, are "profoundly learned in all the sciences of the schools." They have abandoned home, family, friends, and have devoted themselves, merely for a scant support, to the education of the young.

If, on the other hand, the long line are girls, you may have observed two ladies; one at the head, the other at the foot. You will at a glance conclude they are not of the world. Their costume is of the homeliest cut and quality, but scrupulously clean; there is a something about their very presence that impresses you with reverence and respect, and you must be a very hardened sinner indeed if you did not feel the better of having even their shadow fall upon you. These silent, collected, but impressive women are "_Nuns_" of one order or another. They, too, have left all to serve G.o.d in the persons of these little children. They have made sacrifices greater than the world can appreciate or understand, and which only the Divine Master can reward. Their whole life is a silent but an eloquent sermon, their whole conduct the gospel in action. You will remember they are women like others of their s.e.x, and mayhap have been flattered and petted, and once filled with the natural vanity and expectations of their s.e.x; but all these they have put _behind_ them, and henceforth and forever their walk, and life, and conversation is with G.o.d, and in the service of His little ones. Now it will be easily seen that the personal influence of such men and women over the life and manners of children, must be immensely beneficial. It is granted that the influence of father and mother is potential for good or evil. So it is with teachers. Children are shrewd observers, and are apt to take some one as a prototype and exemplar. This one they copy as near as may be. These "Christian Brothers," and "Nuns, or Sisters," are good models; they teach the children to pray in the best of all ways--by praying themselves first; they try to impress on these tender souls sentiments of love, obedience, and respect to their fathers and mothers, and, above all, their duties to our dear Lord. They accompany them to His altar on Sundays and holy days, beginning and ending all their daily lessons with a little prayer or devotion. For the rest, they give them, in their schools, a plain, practical education.

Every day (we are told) there are instances of men slipping from the high rounds to the lowest one in the ladder of wealth. Business men find themselves engulphed in the sea of financial embarra.s.sment, from which they emerge with nothing but their personal resources to depend upon for a living. Clerks, salesmen, and others find themselves thrown out of employment, with no prospect of speedily obtaining places which they are competent to fill, and with no other means of gaining a livelihood. How many men are there in every city to-day, some of whom have families dependent on them for support, who bewail the mistake they made in not learning useful trades in their younger days? There are hundreds of them. There are men in every city who have seen better days, men of education and business ability, who envy the mechanic, who has a sure support for himself and family in his handicraft. Parents make a great mistake when they impose upon the brain of their boy the task of supporting him, without preparing his hands for emergencies.

No matter how favorable a boy's circ.u.mstances may be, he should enter the battle of life as every prudent general enters the battle of armies: with a reliable reserve to fall back upon in case of disaster. Every man is liable to be reduced to the lowest pecuniary point at some stage of his life, and it is hardly necessary to refer to the large proportion of men who reach that point. No man is poor who is the master of a trade.

It is a kind of capital that defies the storm of financial reverse, and that clings to a man when all else has been swept away. It consoles him, in the hour of adversity, with the a.s.surance that, let whatever may befall him, he need have no fear for the support of himself and his family.

Unfortunately a silly notion--the offspring of a sham aristocracy--has, of late years, led many parents to regard a trade as something disreputable, with which their children should not be tainted. Labor disreputable! What would the world be without it? It is the very power that moves the world. A Power higher than the throne of the aristocracy has enn.o.bled labor, and he who would disparage it must set himself above the Divine principle, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread!" A trade is a "friend in need"; it is independence and wealth--a rich legacy which the poorest father may give to his son, and which the richest should regard as more valuable than gold.

Now what kind of education is necessary for a tradesman to carry on business successfully? Only a plain, practical education; that is to say, that kind and amount of knowledge of daily ordinary use and appreciation. It is reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar, and geography, and possibly a knowledge of the German language, sufficient to speak it.

If we look around we will see that all the important and every-day duties of life are carried on by the use of industry, common sense, reading, writing, and arithmetic.

And it might almost be said that the failures are to be ascribed, in part, if not to over-education, at least to the common misdirection of acquirements, accompanied with the vague ambition and desires which they invariably excite, but rarely serve to satisfy. Why, I could find, for instance, in the history, management, and success of every newspaper editor, a living proof of my proposition. Not that I leave it to be inferred that there is not, in these newspapers, the evidences of every kind of acquirements and ability; but that the founders within my knowledge, and those who have made it the _power_ and _success_ that it is, have worked with these ordinary instruments. But why give one instance when there are so many on every side--so much so that the success of what is called the learned cla.s.s is so rare, that it must be put among the exceptions.

As to those who are able, and desire further information, they can have it to any extent at the colleges, convents, academies and higher schools.

Many of our "dissenting brethren," of the various denominations, are equally diligent, according to the measure of grace and light given them, to bring their children up in Christian morals and education. They have their own schools, and support them, or they send their children to Catholic inst.i.tutions, and will not have them tempted or corrupted by the evil influences, moral, social, and intellectual, that emanate and surround those "_whited sepulchres_"--the G.o.dless schools--as the miasm emanates and surrounds the pestilent marsh. In all these schools the children are carefully trained in Christian practices, prayers, and religious duties, as well as taught a good, plain, practical course of studies. In fact, they are truly _educated_; while in the Public Schools they are simply instructed, as you might irrational animals, according to their instinct. The Jews also teach and bring up their children in the religion of their fathers, at their own expense; so that more than one-half are, fortunately for themselves, and fortunately for society, the good order and well-being of the State, educated outside of immoral and dangerous pest-houses. It is on this element of our population that the future of the State depends; for if we are to have a sound public conscience and a controlling conservative influence in public or private affairs, we must, under G.o.d and His Church, obtain it from a true Christian education.

At these parish schools, supported by voluntary aid, the expenses of pupils per year is under seven dollars; at the Public Schools, it is, I am informed, about thirty-two dollars; so that it costs about four times as much to give the poor, miserable, shallow, infidel instruction in the Public Schools, as it does to give a good Christian education in the denominational ones; or, in plainer language, to educate 20,000 children in denominational schools saves to tax-payers not less than the _small sum_! of $500,000.

"If thy right hand scandalize thee, cut it off and cast it from thee; for it is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish, rather than thy whole body be cast into h.e.l.l."--(Matt. v. 30.) By the present Public School system, the State scandalizes the family, because it usurps the rights and duties that belong alone to parents; it scandalizes the tax-payer, because it takes money from him which it has no right to take; it scandalizes society, because, instead of teaching virtue, it teaches vice; it scandalizes the young men and the young women, because, instead of inspiring them with love for Christianity and their religious duties, it inspires them rather with contempt for religion, and turns them into actual unbelievers, and thus destroys the very life of society and the basis of every government; it scandalizes all nations, because there is not, and there has never been, any nation inculcating education without religion.

By its present system of education, the State has weakened, and will finally break up and destroy, the Christian family. The social unit is the family, not the individual; and the greatest danger to American society is, that we are rapidly becoming a nation of isolated individuals, without family ties or affections. The family has already been much weakened, and is fast disappearing. We have broken away from the old homestead, have lost the restraining and purifying a.s.sociations that gathered round it, and live away from home in hotels and boarding-houses. A large and influential cla.s.s of women not only neglect, but disdain, the retired and simple domestic virtues, and scorn to be tied down to the modest but essential duties--the drudgery, they call it--of wives and mothers. We are daily losing the faith, the virtues, the habits, and the manners, without which the family cannot be sustained. This, coupled with the separate pecuniary interests of husband and wife secured, make the family, to a fearful extent, the mere shadow of what it was and of what it should be. What remains of the family is only held together by the graces and virtue of women. But even this last hope is fast breaking down, by the great facility of obtaining a divorce _a vinculo matrimonii_--a facility by which the laws of most of the States of the Union grant to l.u.s.t the widest margin of license, and legalize concubinage and adultery. Now when the family goes, the nation goes too, or ceases to be worth preserving. G.o.d made the family the type and basis of society; "male and female made he them."

By its present system of education, the State makes war on G.o.d and His Christ, and says, with Lucifer, "Non servio"; and this is the daring rebel against G.o.d and His law, that would claim the innocent children of the Christian family as its own; teach them its false maxims, promising them, as Satan, its master, did the Saviour, riches, and honors, and power, if they will but fall down and wors.h.i.+p it. How incomprehensibly strange it is, that good men and women who profess Christianity, and acknowledge the obligations of its commandments, should give ear to this tempter, instead of saying, "Get behind me, Satan," and, "Thou art a liar and a cheat from the beginning." The State, in this subject of education, represents the world; and religion, as well as experience, teaches us its folly, its wickedness, its treachery and its ambition. "The State promises bread and gives a stone." It promises wealth, and honor, and gives taxes, slavery, and degradation. It is blind, and it attempts to lead; it is ignorant, and it offers to teach and direct the young. It will not receive the law, and it claims the right to give it. It arrogates the "_higher law_," and "_would be as G.o.d_." There is the danger; and it is against this the fight must be made, if we would not surrender our civil and religious freedom, our temporal and eternal happiness.

Surely it is time for all good Christians of America to cry out to our rulers, "And now, O ye rulers, understand; receive instruction, you that judge the earth."--(Ps. ii. x.) Do not force any longer upon a Christian nation an educational system which produces such results; do not train any longer our children without religion--to infidelity, and consequently to revolution. Do not teach the youth of America any longer to reject G.o.d and His religion; they will not be long faithful to you if you make them unfaithful to the faith of their fathers. You, and all the cla.s.ses in society who delight in seeing the influence of religion weakened or destroyed, never seem to realize, until it is too late, that you are sure to be the especial victims of your own success. The man who scorns to love G.o.d and His law, how shall he continue to love his neighbor? The man who has said "there is no G.o.d," is he not on the point of also saying "l.u.s.t is lawful," "property is robbery"? If you raise instruments to deny G.o.d and to do away with all religious principles, G.o.d will use these very instruments to do away with you also.

Your Pagan system of education will ultimately overturn all order in the land. Among ancient Pagan nations, where the poor were comparatively ignorant--where they did not know their rights--it was easy to hold them in bondage; but now things have changed. Discontent in the lower order of society can no longer be smothered. Education has become general; and, unfortunately, the very element, without which education is often a curse, is omitted. Religious education has been separated from secular instruction. Without religion, the poor are unable to control their pa.s.sions, or to bear their hard lot. They see wealth around them, and, unless taught by religion, they see no reason why that wealth should not be divided amongst them. Why should they starve, while their neighbors roll in splendor and luxury? If the poor were ignorant, they would not, perhaps, notice all the sad privations of their state; they would not, perhaps, feel them so keenly. But they are partially educated, and "a little learning is a dangerous thing."

They know their power, and, not having the soothing influence of religion to restrain them, they use their power. They have done so in France and elsewhere, and if they do not always succeed in producing revolution, and anarchy, it is only the bayonet that prevents them. Such is the abyss that yawns beneath the feet of our country, and into which the advocates of _education without religion_--perhaps some of them unconsciously--seek to precipitate us, by continuing to force upon this Christian nation an anti-Christian, an anti-American system of education.

Surely the grievance is not simply an affair of taxes, or so much money unjustly levied and collected. This we might bear, as we have to do in other cases of injustice, for righteousness' sake. But we have a duty to G.o.d, ourselves, and our children. We recognize the office and obligations of the State as _temporal ruler_, but we do not acknowledge in it an absolute and _unconditional_ authority. We do not admit the doctrine of _pa.s.sive obedience_. We will not and cannot surrender the education of our children to its dictation and control, for that is a trust placed in our hands by a higher power, and for which we will have to answer, at the last day, on our salvation. I ask--am I right in all that I have said upon the State and its G.o.dless system of education? If I am, then I think I have a right to ask for a verdict of "Guilty." If there are still some who cannot see that I am right, then let them, without delay, be operated upon for _amaurosis_. But then, in G.o.d's name, is it not high time to inquire what should be done to correct the system, and stop the torrent of its evil influences? This is a great question; it demands a speedy and satisfactory solution. The interests it involves are commensurate with time and eternity.

CHAPTER XI.

REMEDY FOR THE DIABOLICAL SPIRIT AND THE CRIMES IN OUR COUNTRY.

Men look around, and ask, Where is the remedy for the so wide-spread corruption of all cla.s.ses of society? This is a most important question.

It is not difficult for a Christian to answer it. A skilful physician, who wishes to cure his patient, endeavors first to remove the cause of the disease. So, in like manner, if we wish to stem the torrent of the evils that flood the land, we must stop the source from which they flow.

Now the leading men and the most prominent journals of New York and New England, confess that the greater part of the wide-spread immorality in our day and country is to be traced to the separation of religion from the instruction in our Public Schools.

Governor Brown, addressing the Seventh National Teachers' Convention in St. Louis, in August last, said: "It is a very customary declaration to p.r.o.nounce that education is the great safeguard of republics against the decay of virtue and the reign of immorality. Yet the facts can scarcely bear out the proposition. The highest civilizations, both ancient and modern, have sometimes been the most flagitious. Nowadays, certainly, your prime rascals have been educated rascals."

And indeed if we go to Auburn, Sing Sing, and other prisons, and examine some of the criminals confined there, we will find that there is truth in the Governor's words.

Do the managers of the Erie Railway lack any kind of intelligence that could be communicated in a common school? Are not those pests, the Was.h.i.+ngton and Albany lobbies, rather _too_ knowing? Had not those blood-suckers, the shoddy-ites and army contractors, an average common school education? Do not the "gold rings" and the "whiskey rings" know how to read and write? Were not Catiline of old, and Aaron Burr and Benedict Arnold of more recent times, men of intelligence? Were not the parties to the recent tragedy, two of whom Mr. Beecher united in unholy wedlock, pa.s.sable enough in point of merely intellectual cultivation?

Mephistopheles was a person of surprising accomplishments, and the ablest debates in literature are those which Milton puts in the mouths of the grand synod of devils in Pandemonium. Byron was a prodigy of intelligence; but, whether Mrs. Stowe's revolting accusation be true or not, he was certainly a profligate.

No one, certainly, gifted with ordinary power of observation, will ascribe crime solely to ignorance, nor will such a one fail to see that a large cla.s.s of the most audacious and dangerous offenders of both s.e.xes are educated, nay, over-educated, according to the Public School standard.

The Boston Daily _Herald_, of October 20th, published the following as an editorial article:

"Year after year the Chief of Police publishes his statistics of prost.i.tution in this city, but how few of the citizens bestow more than a pa.s.sing thought upon the misery that they represent! Although these figures are large enough to make every lover of humanity hang his head with feelings of sorrow and shame at the picture, we are a.s.sured that they represent but a little, as it were, of the actual licentiousness that prevails among all cla.s.ses of society. Within a few months, a gentleman[F] whose scientific attainments have made his name a household word in all lands, has personally investigated the subject, and the result has filled him with dismay; when he sees the depths of degradation to which men and women have fallen, he has almost lost faith in the boasted civilization of the nineteenth century. In the course of his inquiries he has visited both the well-known 'houses of pleasure'

and the 'private establishments' scattered all over the city. He states that he has a list of both, with the street and number, the number of inmates, and many other facts that would perfectly astonish the people if made public. He freely conversed with the inmates, and the life-histories that were revealed were sad indeed. To his utter surprise, a large proportion of the 'soiled doves' _traced their fall to influences that met them in the Public Schools_; and although Boston is justly proud of its schools, it would seem, from his story, that they need a thorough purification. In too many of them the most obscene and soul-polluting books and pictures circulate among both s.e.xes. The very secrecy with which it is done throws an almost irresistible charm about it; and to such an extent has the evil gone, that we fear a large proportion of both boys and girls possess some of the articles, which they kindly (?) lend to each other. The natural result follows, and frequently the most debasing and revolting practises are indulged in.

And the evil is not confined alone to Boston. Other cities suffer in the same way. It is but a few years since the second city in the Commonwealth was stirred almost to its foundations by the discovery of an a.s.sociation of boys and girls who were wont to indulge their pa.s.sions in one of the school-houses of the city; and not long ago another somewhat similar affair was discovered by the authorities, but hushed up for fear of depopulating the schools."

"That the devil is in the _Public Schools_, raging and rampant there among the _pupils_ as well as among the _teachers_, no one can well doubt who has sent a little child into them, as guiltless of evil or unclean thoughts as a newly fallen snowflake, and had him come home, in a short time, contaminated almost beyond belief by the vileness and filth which he has seen, and heard, and learned _there_."--(Hathe Tyng Griswold, in _Old and New_, for March; or _Boston Pilot_, April 6, 1872.)

A celebrated physician of this country says in his book, "Satan in Society," as follows:

"The evils and dangers of the present system of educating and bringing up the boys and girls of our country, are too obvious to require minute description. Irreligion and infidelity are progressing _pari pa.s.su_ with the advance guards of immorality and crime, and all are _fostered_, if _not engendered_, by the _materialistic system of school instruction_, and the consequent wretched training at home and on the play-ground. The entire absence of all religious instruction from the school-room is fast bearing fruit in a generation of infidels, and we are becoming worse even than the Pagans of old, who had at least their positive sciences of philosophy, and their religion, such as it was, to oppose which was a criminal offence. To those who would dispute this somewhat horrible a.s.sertion, the author would point to the published statistics of church attendance, from which it appears that of the entire population but a very small proportion are habitual church-goers. Deducting from these, again, those who attend church simply as a matter of fas.h.i.+on, or from other than religious motives, and there remains a minimum almost too small to be considered, abundantly sustaining our charge. The disintegration of the prevalent forms of religious belief, the rapid multiplication of sects, the increase in the ranks of intellectual sceptics, the fas.h.i.+onable detractions from, and perversions of, the Holy Scriptures, acting with the influences already mentioned, may well cause alarm.

"But we have not only the removal of the salutary restraints of religious influence from our popular system of education; we have the promiscuous intermingling of the s.e.xes in our Public Schools, which, however much we may theorize to the contrary, is, to say the least, subversive of that modest reserve and shyness which in all ages have proved the true aegis of virtue. We are bound to accept human nature as it is, and not as we would wish it to be, and both Christian and Pagan philosophy agree in detecting therein certain very dangerous elements.

Among the most dangerous and inevitable is the s.e.xual instinct, which, implanted by the Creator for the wisest purposes, is, perhaps, the most potent of all evils when not properly restrained, r.e.t.a.r.ded, and directed. This mysterious instinct develops earlier in proportion as the eye and the imagination are soonest furnished the materials upon which it thrives; and, long before the age of p.u.b.erty, it is strong, and well-nigh ungovernable, in those who have been allowed these unfortunate occasions. The boy of the present generation has more practical knowledge of this instinct at the age of fifteen, than, under proper training, he should be ent.i.tled to at the time of his marriage; and the boy of eleven or twelve boastfully announces to his companions the evidences of his approaching virility. Nourished by languis.h.i.+ng glances during the hours pa.s.sed in the school-room, fanned by more intimate a.s.sociation on the journey to and from school, fed by stolen interviews and openly-arranged festivities--picnics, excursions, parties and the like--stimulated by the prurient gossip of the newspaper, the flash novels, sentimental weeklies, and magazines, the gallant of twelve years is the libertine of fourteen. That this picture is not overdrawn, every experienced physician will bear witness.

"And as for the Public School-girls, they return from their '_polis.h.i.+ng schools_'--these demoiselles--cursed with a superficial smattering of everything but what they ought to have learned--physical and moral wrecks, whom we physicians are expected to _wind up_ in the morning for the husband-hunting excitements of the evening. And these creatures are intended for wives! But _wives_ only, for it is fast going out of fas.h.i.+on to intend them for _mothers_--an 'accident' of the kind being regarded as'_foolish_'!

"We a.s.sert, then, that the present system of education, by its faults of omission and commission, is directly responsible, not, it is true, for the bare existence, but for the enormous prevalence of vices and crimes which we deplore; and we call upon the civil authorities to so modify the obnoxious arrangements of our schools, and upon parents and guardians to so instruct and govern their charges, that the evils may be suppressed, if not extinguished."

The attempt to prepare man for his duties in social life with morals and religion left out, is not only a failure, but a crime. Yes, it is not only a failure, but a crime of such magnitude, that society has already begun to suffer its consequences in a demoralization and _general libertinage_ of the most shameful kind. This education without religion and morals is the poisoned fountain from which flows, and will flow, if not purified by adding the essential elements now omitted, the impure streams of all kinds of vice. If G.o.d is despised, governments will be trampled on; if G.o.d's law is hated, the laws of men will be violated; man will see only his own interest, his neighbor's property will only whet his appet.i.te; his neighbor's life will be only a secondary consideration; he would, according to his creed, be a fool not to shed blood when his interest requires it; his fellow-men become imbued with his principles--anarchy succeeds subordination--vice takes the place of virtue--what was sacred is profaned--what was honorable becomes disgraceful--might becomes right--treatises are waste paper--honor is an empty name--the most sacred obligations dwindle down into mere optional practices--youth despises age--wisdom is folly--subjection to authority is laughed at as a foolish dream--the moral code itself soon becomes little more than the bugbear of the weak-minded--crowns are trampled under foot--thrones are overturned--nations steeped in blood, and republics swept from the face of the earth.

Yes, continue a little longer to educate the greater part of the community according to the present system of the Public Schools, and rest a.s.sured we shall soon have a h.e.l.l upon earth--society will be stabbed to the heart by the ruffian a.s.sa.s.sin called _G.o.dless Public School education_--it will reel, stagger, and sink a bleeding victim to the ground, expiring, like the suicide, by the wound itself has inflicted. I truly believe that if Satan was presented with a blank sheet of paper, and bade to write on it the most fatal gift to man, he would simply write one word--"G.o.dless schools." He might then turn his attention from this planet; "G.o.dless Public Schools" would do the rest.