THE PRIESTS AND THE CHILDREN.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 3125, 12 February 1872, Page 3

THE PRIESTS AND THE CHILDREN.

" Eugene Lawrence '* writes in Harper's Weekly as follows:—

No more alarming fact appears in the condition of our city—nofceTOn the gross corruption of its rulers, and the total decay of public morality— than that its free-school system has received a fatal blow. Its children are ceasing to attend school. Each yeas the usual increase in attendance has been three or four thousand, but since 1869 it has scarcely been as many hundred. Population, advances, but the number of pupils in the public schools remains nearly unchanged.. Should this condition, of things continue, it is easy to see that in a few years the system of general education must sink into decay> and wholly fail to supply that basis of intelligence and virtue upon which all fr.ee governments must rest.

To destroy our free schools, and perhaps our free institutions, has been for many years the constant aim of the extreme section of the Romish Church. The Romish Church has become identified with the society of Loyola ; the Jesuits rule at Rome; the daring and aggressive spirit of that singular body has found a suitable instrument in the Irish Catholics; the Irish Catholics govern New York. Such is the unhappy condition of our free city that the priestly influence which has been cast off j Avith abhorrence in all foreign lands:—except, perhaps, in distracted France—has thrown its blight upon the very sources of our ad- I vancing intelligence and prosperity. In j Italy a vigorous free-school system has been introduced in defiance of the intrigues of the priests cr the anathemas of the Pope. In Rome itself, beneath the shadow of the Vatican, education is open to all. Spain ie slowly imitating Italy. And it is scarcely three years since fifteen hundred schoolmasters, the most valuable and progressive portion of the Austrian population, met in an assembly at Vienna, and demanded from their Government the perfect freedom of the public schools. Their request was granted ; education was relieved from the intolerable burden of priestly interference ; the Pope in vain hurled anathema or allocution against the rising intelligence of the people. But while Vienna, Madrid, or Rome have, with signal courage, defied the spiritual and temporal power of their former tyrants, the Irish Catholicß, the last adherents of the infallible Pope, have made haste to lay New York at his feet. Of all the great capitals, ours is the only one that is priest-ridden. The Jesuits and the Irish appoint our Mayor and Controller, our Judges and Police Commissioners, the Board of Aldermen, the Board of Education ; and the results of this Catholic rule have become apparent in such enormous peculation, such a wide system of daring robbery,, such a rapid growth of crime, such rulers and such officials, as have scarcely been known in the worst governed capitals of Europe. The poor are ground down by an intolerable taxation ; corrupt officials, in uucounted numbers, plunder the people at will; the Romish Church grasps its full share of the spoil. In Madrid, Rome, and Florence, so recently the centres of priestly intolerance, the indignant people have confiscated the ill-gotten gains of the Church, sold monasteries, convents, Jesuit colleges, and abbey lands, and applied their proceeds to the relief of the embarrassed nation. In New York, within a few years, Romish colleges and convents, churches, hospitals, cathedrals, have sprung up in startling numbers, and were paid for, either secretly or openly, from the already bankrupt, treasury of the city. Already we need a Henry VIII. to break up our monasteries, and may well imitate the example of Italy or Spain. Yet, had our priestly rulers spared our children, Aye might have exercised some patience. They might take our money, did they leave us any hope for the new generation. There is—or there was-—no more cheering sight than one of our crowded public schools, where a thousand children might often be seen, happy, hopeful, intelligent; learning from careful teachers neatness, good order, and self-control, as well as grammar or spelling, and, Avhether taken from the cellar or the dram-shop, being swiftly transformed into decency and morality. The public school Avas a centre of light and progress in the least reputable quarters of the city. Nor lias any expense or foresight been spared to make this part of our civic institutions as perfect as we could devise. Nowhere are finer school buildings, more costly appliances, or the inventions of eminent educators more zealously applied. Its commonschool system has done more for the Avellbeing and good order of our city than all its courts and judges, police or prisons : for the Avelfare of every community rests upon the education of its children.

But bitter is the hatred with which our Catholic rulers have ever looked upon the public school. Accustomed to control the ignorant masses of Ireland or of unreformed Italy and Spain, fearful that their people, if educated, would revolt from their tyranny, at least in political matters, the foreign priests and their American converts have for twenty years waged a ceaseless war against tha cause of education. Their papers teemed with denunciations of the common school system. They demanded that the method of instruction ialroduccd by our ancestors as the foundation of their free institutions, and rapidly advancing towards perfection

beneath the labonrs of eminent educators—a Henry Barnard or a Horace. Mann—shouJd be at once abandoned ; that denominational schools should be established, in which might be taught, at the pilblic expense, the politics of the Dark Ages or the worship of Mary; where republican institutions might be denounced, the foundations of freedom sapped and undermined at will ; where sect should be trained in hostility against sect, and possibly a tone of morality inculcated such as that which has now made the civic government of New York a' shame and a reproach to freemen.

They pursued their assault with f^rsistent audacity. Their first pretext was that, by law, some passages from the Holy Scriptures were directed to be read each morning in the public school. The more liberal .Catholics never objected, to so profitable a regulation ; but the Jesuitical faction exclaimed against it as a fearful insult. They required that the Bible should be wholly disused in popular education ; that the principle of papal Home should be adopted by American educators. They even boldly violated the express law, and in several Catholic schools the Bible has never been read for twenty years. Next thejr complained of history—not certainly without some cause, for history must be scarcely less palatable to the Jesuit than the Bible; and so successful were they in their appeal that'the grievance was redressed, and the study of history, it is stated by a teacher, has sunk to nothing in the New York schools. Text-books have Been re-written ; truth often modified or suppressed ; yet still our foreign rulers were never content. With their growing strength they gained the control of the Board of Education. That body, which had. once been made up of intelligent and honest citizens, was now composed, in great part, of the ignorant and' often the vicious ; of disreputable men who had gained influence iv corrupt politics ; of the least worthy section of the ruling party. The schools at once began to decline. Teachers were sometimes appointed wholly unfit for their duties, and from their small' salaries a considerable-bribe was often exacted by their avaricious patrons.- The office of teacher was,, in fact,, put up for sale. The discipline of the schools grew imperfect; the Protestant^ teacher was often made to feel the impertinences of his ignorant masters:

Triumphant and vigorous, the' extreme faction next resolved to create a- rival system. They established private schools- in different parts of the city ; they boldly demanded that they should be supported from the public funds. Nothing could now resist the influence of the priests. The city officials hastened to serve their masters^ and a law was passed by which a certain revenue was appropriated to the maintenance of private schools. The common, school system was, in fact, abandoned in principle, and seminaries established, wholly sectarian in character, where, at the expense of the city, children might be taught the doctrines of Loyola, or a blind obedience to a foreign Church.

And. now came the final blow. The priests had determined to take the control of the common schools from the peoi>le, and place it in the hands of a body of men wholly under their influence. If this were done, they modestly suggested, there would be an end of all controversy. In the Board of Education there were still several honest men, elected by the people, who were conscientious and resolute, who gave troiible, who must be put out of the way. This could be accomplished only by abolishing the Board altogether; The winter of 1871 came—the most memorable for painful and disgraceful incidents in the history of the city of New York. It was the culmination of the triumph of our priestly, rulers. A band of men, united at least in interest, ruled the city, and even the State, with a despotic power seldom equalled, who owed their offices to the priests. A. new charter was created making that power almost perpetual. The wealth of the city was wasted in enorrmous salaries to judges,, officials, and countless dependents—the faithful servants of the Romish Church ; and every Catholic institution, from the Protectory to the Foundling. Asylum, rejoiced ii* its. share of the plunder of the impoverished' city. In this turmoil of extravagance and corruption the Board of Education was swept away, and its powers-lodged in a new board of twelve men appointed by the Mayor.. It is stated that nearly all its members, hold office under the city government ; that the people have lost all control over the public schools ; that no, one can be appointed, a teacher who is without influence with theruling faction;, that the Bible is being rapidly excluded from all the Catholic schools,;; that an effort is apparent in several wards to. drive away the Protestant teachers ;• that in one school the children were found celebrat-. ing the Catholic feast of the Ascension; that since 1869 there has been a steady decline in. the numbers of the pupils, in the discipline and value of the schools. So faithful to its Romish masters is the new board that ft has excluded from its list of school-books most off the publications of an eminent publishing house because their periodicals have spared neither the Pope nor his New York vassals ; nor can it be doubted that the total ruin, of our comßaon-school system must be the final result of the continuance of our present rulers in power.

To save the children from the priests, therefore; to preserve from desecration, ondecay that generous system of instruction, devised by our fathers, which can alone teach equality and fraternity among all citizens; to save the foundations of our freedom— must now be the aim of every honest man. Against the enemies of the children, who will not help us? We claim the aid of every Protestant yet unbribed ;■ of every liberal Catholic who has seen with joy the emancipation of Austria, Italy,, or Spain from a spiritual tyranny ; of every German who, in his country's danger, felt the sincerity of republican sympathy j of the Irishman who has discovered with gratitude and joy that here at least he niay find a peaceful home, equality, and freedom, that his children may here rise by industry and virtue to any station they may deserve to win, that here he need feel himself no stranger. We claim the aid of the cultivated Romish priest to restrain the fanaticism of his unreflecting brethren, to check them in their mad crusade against the cherished institutions of their adopted home.

We might appeal even to the Romish Church itself to stifle the zeal of its political agitators before they lead it to its ruin. We have no hostility, as citizens, to any sect or any creed. We rebuke only the guilty. But for any sect or any party that forces upon us unworthy rulers, that seeks to embarrass the progress of education, that corrupts the sources of our civilization and fosters among us the dishonesty and the empty show of European courts, Aye are certain a fearful retribution Avill be found in the general indignation of the people. The common-school system is dear to every American ; and the schoolmaster is rising every day to new importance in the nation. He Avho offends either can not hope to escape unpunished.

One happy result may flow from our disasters. The fate of New York under its priestly rulers will serve as a warning to every city, town, or village from the Atlantic to the Pacific. No one need any longer turn to history to observe the effect of Romish influence. It lies before him ; our treasury rifled ; our credit shaken ; the poor labourer asking vainly for his honest wages day after day ; the rich official revelling in disreputable gains ; an enormous debt heaped iipon ns we know not how ; our schools decaying, our teachers cowering before their Catholic masters ; our press, when it ventures to complain, threatened with violence or insulted by offered bribes ; the interests of the city neglected, its honourable reputation gone. We may trust, too, that from our disasters and our humiliation a new spirit may arise among our people ; that economy, honesty, simplicity may return to ns ; that every vestige of the priestly rule may be swept away ; and that the citizen of New York may yet be suffered to speak the truth with as little danger of personal violence in his own city as/. 1 he were in Home, Madrid, or Vienna