Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-04-20

as essential prerequisites to the issuance of
the permit 1t is more than surprising
that any of the medical schools should be
found actively at work, as they are, en-
deavoring to secure the repeal of the New
York law.
ANOTHER ASSAULT UPON THE SCHOOLS.
The Wisconsin issue is about to be re-
peated in Illinois. In the latter State
there is law that provides, in substance,
that children between the ages of and IA
years shall attend for at least sixteen
weeks some public school in the city, town
or district in which they reside, unless it
shall be shown to the satisfaction of the
School Board that they have attended for
| like period of time private day school
in which reading, writing, arithmetic,
United States history and geography are
taught in the English language.
/ Since the Milwaukee election the Ger
man Lutheran Synod of Illinois has as
sembled, and passed long string of edicts
or resolutions, Illuminating the thunders of
! the Church against this reasonable and
| patriotic law. The manifesto denounces
| the law as an Infringement upon the guar
anteed rights of the people, as an assault
upon liberty of conscience and the free
exercise of religious profession and wor-
ship; as interference with the natural
| rights of parental authority to direct the
education of the child as the parent wishes.
and as an encroachment upon the parental
| right to control the religious education of
the children. So the manifesto runs on
interminably. What do these foreign
| priests imagine are the rights and
privileges of the people of the United
States as an aggregation composing ma
ton, and providing for orderly govern
ment? Is it their idea that liberty is
license, and that the State has no right to
conserve the intelligence of its citizens in
the interests of virtue and law-abiding?
In what way does the teaching of English
in reading, writing and United States his
tory, infringe the assured right to worship
God according to the dictates of con-
science? Wherein is the conservation of
the ability to read the laws and compre-
bend the Constitutions of the States an
invasion CT the paternal right to train the
child religiously?
We have been told by these same priests
and their followers that the schools should
be made means for the teaching of religious
truths because the parents have not, or
will not take the time to instruct their
children in morality; that the schools
have the children FIVE days in the week
and the church but one day, therefore the
school funds should be divided among the
denominations and sects, and each be given
charge of the education of such children
as the parents may choose to send, and as
result the whole free and un-denomina-
tional school system be abandoned. Now,
however, and in the very teeth of this
claim, we are told by the Illinois Luther
ans that to recognize only such schools as
teach four or five branches in the English
tongue, is interference with the parental
right to religiously instruct the child.
These priests really propose that the
Polish, the German and the Bohemian
shall take the place of the English Ian
guage; that the rising citizen shall come
to maturity SO prejudiced against his coun-
try that he shall hold its very language in
contempt, for such education as they insist
upon must have that result.
The place for these foolish spiritual
leaders is anywhere outside the boundaries
of the United States. a people who are
unwilling to adopt our tongue in the sys-
TEN of education, are unfit to reside with
US or be blessed with the privileges of citi-
zenship. The Republican party is re-
sponsible for the legislation complained of,
and we trust that it will stand true to it.
not only in the States of Illinois and
Wisconsin, but that it will insist that the
English instruction clause shall be in
serted in the school law of every State in
the Union. Uuder this sign it can afford
to do battle with the enemies of the free
school system. If it must come to this,
that the issue in the government of this
country is to be between alienism and ig-
| norance on the one hand, and common
school education and Americanism on the
other, patriotic people and those compre-
hending true liberty will not find difficulty
in arraying themselves on the American
side. If the German religionists in the
West continue to insist upon such follies
as the Lutheran Synod has been guilty of,
the necessity for putting up the bars'
may be greater than we had supposed.
We have reason to believe that all this
contention about English in the schools
has been Jesuitically promoted by deeply
designing influences as an entering wedge
to still more serious ASSAULT that the
scheme is to commit one of the great DO
pditiS W VIC ucW tnaI 1t
may the more easily be brought into sery-
ice for the abolition of the unsectarian
schools altogether. This belief is enter
tanned by not few of the party that it is
sought to entrap. Here we have leading
Democratic journals such as the Chicago
Herald, the Philadelphia Record, Louis
vile Coaricr-Ionnai, and others, denounc-
ing the proposition to commit the party
to the position assumed by the Lutherans
and the Catholics in Wisconsin, and more
recently the Democratic Mayor of Madi-
son, Wisconsin's capital city, has an
nounced that he will "back the Republi-
cans to the last ditch" in their defence of
the Bennett law. Others of the Demo-
cratic party are seeking safety in silence
and non-commission, and shrewd leaders
are doing their utmost TO prevent marty ey-