Year: 1876

THE ANTI-CATHOLIC MOvEMENT--


GRAnT AND THE CHURCHES.


Grant started the school movement in
the hope Of utilizing it as an agent to help
his third term scheme, and Blaine seized
upon it as lever to hoist him into the
nomination as Cincinnati. Everybody
knows that the State Constitutions and the
people of the States are the only safe
guardians Of the common schools, and that
any interference with them by the Federal
legislation must lead to the worst results.
The House of Representatives to remove
this subject from the field Of national con-
troversy, passed the Blaine amendment al
most unanimously. 1t was reported from
the Democratic committee on the Judici-
ary with short section reserving to the
States the rights they had always exercised.
This was what the Republican leaders and
aspirants for Office did not want, and when
it went to the Senate the Republican lead
ers Of that body put their wits to work to
invent substitute that would keep the is
sue alive, and reported a proposition which
would take the schools and the charitable
institutions entirely out Of the hands of
the people, and put them under the guar
dianship of huctuating partisan majorities
in Congress. Every Jacobin leader in the
Senate wished to bring religion into party
politics and to subject the common schools
of the country to corrupt combination Of
Congress. Nothing is. clearer than that
the substitute of the Senate was trick de
signed by its offensiveness to provoke the
opposition OF the Democrats and all can
did men. Will there not be an outburst
Of indignation at this partisan enormity :?
Will not the country see and understand
that the purpose of the movement and the
nature Of the plan was to deprive the peo-
pie of the States the right to direct their
own schools and public institutions.
Neither Of the Jacobin leaders who parti-
cipated in this affair, were actuated by
principle or had the remotest concern for
the object of their pretended zeals


The dayis past when war of sectarian-
ism can be inaugurated and carried out.
Sectarian influence weakens day by day as
impartial readers augment and as liberal
journals increase. The very persons who
fret most about the common schools are
the most Ignorant and illiteratc, and those
who are most horror stricken lest the bible
should not be read in the common school,
never read it. Not one-tenlh of the Amer
lean people are church members, and not
one-half Of them are earnest or honest in
their religious belief. 10 the largest num-
ber Of American church goers the churches
arc club houses, where the men go through
habit and the women to show their clothes.


The warning of our pious ~ Chief Ex-
ecutive against untaxed property, intimat-
ing that the accumulated real estate of the
churches may yet lead to bloodshed, does
not frighten anybody. The untaxed value
Of the churches, compared with that of the
bonds and that of the interest, not only
saved through All unequal system of col
lecting revenues, but actually enjoying
bounties paid them by the same process
are SO very small that it is scarcely worth
his Excellency's while to be frightened,
at them, and we advise him to possess his
pious q? soul in peace, ,as divine Providence
will not fail us in the crowning glory Of
self government and common schools.
Should the threatened sectarian fight and
shedding Of blood come off, as predicted
by our pious (?) Excellency, there is a COM
fort in knowing that it will be confined to
very limited number. A very large
mass Of our people will scarcely be aware
Of the fact that old ladies in and out of
petticoats were clawing in theological
way over the bible and school question.
Had Ms Excellencv confined his anxiety
op ths hbies school, church and tax ques-
tion IN hh great imaginative mind a
couple Of yssn longer, he might have been
gathered 70 his fathers without a pebsive
pabiip kAoss xhsf volcanic firss,wsrs


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