“i&ur lEgtefrttotyett Cfturr®

THE NOTORIOUS ARTICLE IS PUTNAM'S MAGAZINE, JULY, 1869.

TOGETHER WITH THE ARTICLE

“THE UNESTABLISHED CHURCH,”

(PUTNAM’S MAGAZINE, DECEMBER, 1869,)

IN WHICH IT 13

TRIUMPHANTLY REFUTED!

WITH AN EXPLANATORY AND EXCULPATORY PREFACE, AND SUNDRY

NOTICES OF THE CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

NEW YORK

:

G. P. PUTNAM & SON, 4th AVENUE AND 23d STREET.
1870.



1870. Publishers' Note. 388

EDITORIAL ANNOUNCEMENT.

The Publishers of Putnam's Magazine are extremely gratified at being able to

announce to its readers, that

Mr. Parke Godwin,

for mnny years editor of the New York Evening Post
,
has consented to assume the

responsible editorship of this periodical, beginning with the number for April.

It has hitherto, as is well known, been in the hands of the senior publisher, Mr.

G. P. Putnam, who finds that the increasing demands of his other engagements do

not allow him to devote to it that kind and degree of attention which the nature

of the occupation requires. He is therefore happy to relinquish the charge to one

who lias had such an ample experience in editorial management, who is so gene-

rally known as a writer of force and ability, and whose former contributions to the

First Series of Putnam's Monthly gave it a large part of its reputation and success.

Mr. Godwin will bo assisted by the several gentlemen who have hitherto kindly

lent us their aid, and will draw around him, besides, other gentlemen of talent and

culture, whose cooperation, we are assured, will give a new impulse to the

destinies, and a new elevation to the character, of the Magazine.

Having withdrawn from all other active professional labors, in order to complete

his History of France, Mr. Godwin will be enabled to devote his almost undivided

energy and care to this new enterprise, to which we need hardly tell the public he

will be certain to impart additional vigor, concentration, and individuality. At

the same time, the Publishers hope, by the larger opportunity that they will now

have of attending to its material interests, to render it more universally known,

and more and more worthy of popular acceptance. G. P. Putnam & Son.

Note by Mr. Godwin.

PUTNAM’S MAGAZINE has already attained a position so secure, that it re-

mains for the new management to promise merely to carry forward the work so auspi-

ciously begun. The aim of ife proprietors from the beginning has been to make it

a peri di cal worthy of our American literature, and particularly worthy of the great

metropolitan city in which it is published. Our intention is, to give a “force, con-

centration, and individuality,” as the publishers say above, to that generous and

noble purpose.

American literature has reached a maturity in which it tries to speak for itself;

and New York, the great central city in all other respects, must be made the central

city in this respect. We need no longer go abroad for our inspiration or our writers :

the days of provincial vassalage are past
;
and as in politics we are independent, as

in our social bearing we have struck out a new path, so in letters we must give

more and more evidence of a fresh, original, spontaneous, characteristic life. The late

events of our national history, which evinced so stupendous an energy in the na-

tional mind and heart, must be translated into speech, and come forth as genial

and peaceful arts. The splendid outbursts of intellect that followed the impulses

of the Persian war in Greece, or the crusading zeal of the church in France,

or the struggle of the city republics in Italy, ought to be paralleled here, where a

grander theatre has given scope for a grander development of the human forces.

(Seb Page 2 of Cover.)



3SsiaWf8&?*< WmvtDi”

THE NOTORIOUS ARTICLE IN PDTNAM'S MAGAZINE, JULY, 1869.

TOGETHER WITH THE ARTICLE

“THE UNESTABLISHED CHURCH,”

(PUTNAM’S MAGAZINE, DECEMBER, 1869,)

IN WHICH IT IS

TRIUMPHANTLY REFUTED!

WITH AN EXPLANATORY AND EXCULPATORY PREFACE, AND SUNDRY

NOTICES OF THE CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

NEW YORK:
G . P. PUTNAM & SON, 4th AVENUE AND 23d STREET.

1870.



c

<k tV\

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by

G. P. PUTNAM & SON,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District ofNew York.

TROW & SMITH BOOK MANUFACTURING COMPANT,

PRINTERS, STEREOTYPERS, AND ERECTROTYPERS,

46
,
46

,
50 GREENE STREET, NEW YORK.



NOTICES OF THE PRESS.

“ Startling at first
* * * fully justified by the array of facts which it

presents.” ‘^Who can find fault with the writer who, using plain terms, calls

this ‘ Our Established Church ?
’ ”

—

New York Evangelist.

“ May well make the reader grave who reads it with his mind as well as with

his eyes. It is admirably written, with a dignity that is not injured by the satire

that pervades it * * * .”

—

New York Tribune.

“ Too malicious for pleasantry, and too untrue for wit. * * * Sensational

writer.
* * * Attempts to be so ironical and so witty, and so readily sacri-

fices sobriety and truth to point. * * * Has disgusted all fair-minded and

moderate Protestants.”

—

Catholic World.

“ Full of serious facts, thoughtfully and powerfully presented.”

—

New York

Evening Post.

“ A new crusade against Catholicism.”

—

New York Herald.

“ which we trust every American will read.”

—

New York Evening Press.

“ I do not wish to review the article in Putnam
,
but claim the privilege of

correcting some of its misstatements.”

—

Bight Rev. B. J. McQuaid, D.D
.,
Bishop

of Rochester.

“ What do you propose to do about it ? ”

—

Idem.

“ A remarkable article.”

—

Cleveland Leader.

“ The author’s zeal * * * had got the better of his judgment. Some of

his errors were obvious
;

* * * but others, not so apparent, Bishop McQuaid,

of Western New York, points out. * * * The bishop is in a position to know
whereof he speaks.”—New York World.

“ Some boldly denounce the writer as a concealed enemy of religious liberty,

and an insidious friend of the Roman Catholic Church as a State Church.”

—

New

York Christian Advocate.

“ Most striking article * * * an anonymous attack * * * . The

essay is too ironical
;
perhaps it would be so, being ironical at all. To serve

efficiently any cause which depends for success on the support of a majority of

the legal voters, on its getting for adherents twenty-six electors out of every

‘ forty-nine fools and one wise man ’ in all the precincts, the popular orators and

advocates cannot be too careful to shun the fine-drawn and the subtle, and trust

to plain and direct statements and hard hammering of argument. The clever

writer in Putnam's certainly succeeds, however, in making an impressive case.”

—

The Nation.

“ We venture to predict a wide notoriety.”

—

Independent.

“ Its keen, withering irony, * * * the deep significance of its facts.”

—

Cleveland Herald.

“ Unworthy of notice.” “ It was a waste of time for Bishop McQuaid to have
answered the article.” * * * “ A feeble effort.”

—

New York Leader.

“ The incendiarism of the writer and his partisans does not lack for assur-
ance. * * * This writer and his friends, who can so coolly put forth state-
ments and observations that outrage the best moral sense of the present age.
* * * This man may scoff at the impersonal 1 people

;

’ he may gravely advise
to give up celebrating Washington’s birthday as ‘ cold and perfunctory,’ and



IV Notices of tiie Pkess.

substitute St. Patrick’s instead, but he had better wait till he secs it done.”

—

Lynn (Mass.) Transcript.

“ Perhaps the most important paper, political or social, which has appeared

in the last ten years.”

—

American Churchman, Chicago and Milwaukee.

“ A brilliant article.” * * * “ Caught publishing apocryphal statements
in regard to the Romish Church.”

—

American Presbyterian.

“ If we do not exceedingly mistake, almost any candid reader will see at

once that it is an honest and genuine Catholic paper. For ourselves, we have no

question about it. But its barefaced and demanding tone have rather overshot

the mark, it would seem
;
and Catholics now, disturbed at the premature audaci-

ty of their able brother, turn and deny that he is a Catholic at all
;
declaring

that, instead, the article is the feigned work of some designing Protestant 1 No
wonder ! ”

—

Lynn TranscHpt (a second article).

“ I have learned that the author of the article in Putnam's Magazine is a

Protestant, and his name is Parsons.”

—

The Rev. Patrick Strain
,
Pastor of St.

Mary's Church
,
Lynn, in his public controversy with the Transcript.

[The publishers of Putnam desire to suggest this conjectural theory of the

origin of the statement just quoted. It is related that a wayfaring countryman

of the Rev. Mr. Strain, reposing himself at midday at the side of the highway,

observed on the opposite side of the road a plain hewn stone, with a simple

inscription :

90

MILES

From Boston.

“ Poor old man,” ejaculated the traveller. “ So they buried him right here,

by the roadside ! And he was ninety years old, and his name was Miles, from

Boston ! ” We apprehend that, out of the statement by some ill-informed and
possibly malicious person, the author of our article, whatever his name, was “ a

Protestant Parson,” the very natural error of the pastor of St. Mary’s arose.]

“ Some one has contributed [to the December Putnam\ an ironical review of
‘ Our Established Church,’ but it is hard to tell sometimes which side the writer

is writing on.”

—

New York Observer.

“ More satisfactory ” [than the July article]. “ More cogent in its statement

of the case : * * * exposes very well the disingenuousness of the Catholic

World.”— The Nation.
“ Decidedly, not to say maliciously, w?rong.” * * * “-Regarding the un-

supported statement of the writer as presumptive evidence of falsehood rather

than of truth, we let the charge pass.” “ The writer attempts to be witty, but

succeeds only in being abusive. Wit does not appear to be his strong point, and

his attempts at it only provoke a smile at his expense.”

—

Catholic World, Janu-

ary, 1870.



PREFACE.

Vox emissa volat

!

The injurious speech, once set afloat upon the breeze,

is not easily recalled or limited in its career. Denial or refutation, too, toils

after it almost in vain. And if the calumny, or the ill-advised eulogy which

is sometimes more damaging than calumny, has happened to set in motion

the tongues of many men, refutation and denial may quite as well abide at

home and hold their peace.

Hopeless, therefore, of counteracting by silence the effect of an article

published last July, under the title, “ Our Established Church,” which has

achieved an unusual notoriety, the publishers of jPutnam’s Magazine make

this concession to the demand which has been made for a new edition. But

that with the obnoxious thing, wherever it goes, may go also the antidote,

and to vindicate also their own justice and fairness, the publishers send with

it into the world the searching review and sharp correction served out to it

in their Magazine for December last.

To the completeness of this confutation it should seem to be unnecessary

to add a word. But the same periodical (called the The Catholic World),

which was among the earliest and most eager in denouncing the “ Established

Church ” paper, strangely enough assails, if possible with greater vehemence,

the paper which controverts the former, and treats the same Church as

“ Unestablished.” It is hardly likely that, if we should give up another

dozen papers of Putnam to a surrejoinder to this latest pleading of the

World, we should get the case at last into a form entirely satisfactory to our

somewhat shrewish contemporary. But it is surely no more than fair that

we should utter a closing protest against certain misapprehensions of fact,

and certain misconceptions of the sentiments and purposes of ourselves, of

the author of our first paper, and of the author of our second, which are

indicated in the article, “ Putnam’s Defence,” in The Catholic World for

January.

We shall be permitted, then, in the first place, to declare positively and
solemnly that, while we know, far better than the “ Catholic Publication

Society ” can know, who the authors of the peccant articles of July and

December are, we are also as well convinced of their motives and feelings

regarding Jthe matters they discuss as we are of our own. The open and

palpable contradiction of their opinions, expressed as it is in the very titles

of their papers, we do not pretend to reconcile. But we do undertake to

assert, with the confidence of an intimate knowledge, that however those

writers may differ in their views of the position held by the Roman Catholic

Church in this State, it is a baseless assumption or wilful detraction to

attribute to either of them the malevolence which it is the main criticism of

The Catholic World to impute. We deny and denounce, with as much em-
phasis as the reverence due the clerical order will admit, the charge that

either article is “ written in an unsuccessful vein of irony,” or is “ directed

against the honor ” of the Church
;
that either writer “ attempts to be witty,



VI Preface.

but succeeds only in being abusive,” or “ hates ” the Church “ with a hatred

equal to that of the wicked Jews for our Lord whom they crucified between
two thieves

;

” while candor compels us to admit that both, while approving

the liberation of the Church, would yet insist on the crucifixion of the

thieves. We further concede, promptly and frankly, and with some sense
of humiliation, that it should be deemed a concession that “ wit is not the

strong point ” of either. And although we cannot agree with The Catholic

World that their “ strong point is hatred of the Church,” we might be at a

loss if required to say exactly what it was. Perhaps we should say, a pains-

taking but plodding investigation of facts, which they do not succeed in

agreeing how to explain
:
perhaps, in the case of the former, a somew'hat

extravagant and unregulated ecclesiasticism
;

in the case of the latter, we

might suggest, a new and over-liberal, though rare, type of American Galli-

canism.

When we have vouched our July number, as reprinted herewith, to wit-
ness that it did not “ condemn the Church as Our Established Church,” but,

on the contrary, commended and applauded it
;
and our December number

to witness that it did not “ condemn it as the Unestablished Church,” but

applauded and glorified it on the contrary, we have said perhaps enough in

vindication of the sentiments of our contributors, at least against attacks

from the Catholic side. To the violent and “ railing accusations ” that have

been brought against them from the opposite quarter, we have, at present, no

response to make. Assaults of that kind, from such sources, our writers

were bound to expect and to be prepared for. Their work could not be a

pleasant one to Protestants
;
and we are justified in saying that the measure

of favor, amounting sometimes almost to approbation, which these produc-

tions have met with among Protestants, has astonished no one so much as

the waiters themselves.

So much by way of repelling unfounded accusations against our con-

tributors in regard to their sentiments and motives. Before we go on to

reasseverate, even to iteration, their actual belief and expectation as to the

future of the Roman Catholic Church in this country, we are bound to dis-

pose of an issue or two of fact in the latest article in the World. Our July

article contained the statement that the State of New York, in 1866, out of

8129,025.14 paid to benefactions under religious control, gave 8124,174.14 to

our friends the Catholics. The Catholic World denied this
;

that is, it

alleged that it had no knowledge or information thereof sufficient to form a

belief. Our December article reaffirmed the statement, and referred to the

report of the State Comptroller for 1866, at pages 71 to 75, quoting there-

from the several items which made up the two totals, with the addition to

each of one sum of 81,000, which had been overlooked before. The Catho-

lic World now “ has the Comptroller’s report before it
;
has examined and

reexamined it, and does not find the statement in it, or any thing to warrant

it.”

This attack, we confess, staggers us. We can think of but two ways to
meet it: (1.) We have had the Comptroller’s report before us"; have ex-
amined and reSxamined it, and find the precise words and figures in it

already given; and beg leave again to refer to it, loc. cit. (2.) When it

was reported to Admiral Nelson, in the midst of the battle of Copenhagen,

that his commander-in-chief was flying the signal to retire from action, that

distinguished officer applied his glass to his blind eye, “ examined and re-

examined ” the mast-head of his superior’s ship, and deliberately concluded

that he did not find such a signal there, nor any thing that looked like it.*

* This “ little story ” is open to criticism on two grounds : it is not new, and it is not wholly to the

point against The Catholic World
,
because Lord Nelson's remark was really true.



Preface. Yll

We ought to add a word upon the same general subject. Our Paulist
brethren, who carry to such a degree the Pauline injunction, to be all things

to all men, that they must, in the course of events, become horribly uncivil

to somebody, observe that the statement quoted from the Comptroller’s

report “ has been more than once pronounced on the highest authority and

proved to be a forgery, as the Magazine well knows, or is inexcusable for not

knowing.” This is a very shocking accusation. The country is already too

familiar with bare unsupported charges against high public officers
;
but is it

possible that the Comptroller of this State can falsify his accounts in this

audacious and shameless manner, to the value of a hundred thousand dollars,

with no further penalty than an excoriation from The Catholic World?

There are his figures : were these moneys, then, never paid ? The Treasurer’s

report, too, agrees with the Comptroller’s
;
was the Treasurer, then, a con-

federate 1 It is true, the matter has not been suffered to pass altogether sub

silentio. “ The Hon. Mr. Cassidy ” (apparently of Greek descent, and prob-

ably of Buddhist faith), “ of the Albany Atlas and Argus
,
declared [the

statement] false from beginning to end.* The Hon. Mr. Alvord, the distin-

guished member from Onondaga county, did the same.” Just here
,
we think,

should come in the World’s ejaculation : “ For honest and fair-minded men

this was conclusive.” And we may well leave out the authority of Mr.

Roberts, of the Utica Herald
,
which unquestionably is weighty, to whichever

side it leans. Our interest in Mr. Roberts’ opinion was deep enough to move

us to inquire of him what his utterances upon this subject really had been

;

and we learn, somewhat to our relief, that he has not found fault with the

Comptroller’s report, and that he has pronounced neither that nor our statis-

tics “ a forgery.” This accusation, in fact, as applied to statistics, we suspect

is new with the World. We have heard of “ false” statistics before, as we
have heard, for example, of

u
forged ” Decretals. But when it is so easy to

falsify figures, it is a mere wantonness of crime to resort to forgery when the

poorest original invention would serve the purpose. And the able and dig-

nified leader, which Mr. Roberts sends us as the only thing he has published

which could give color to the invocation of his authority by the World, calls

nothing whatever a “ forgery,” but criticises certain statements, of which it

is enough to say that they are not our statements. To the Comptroller’s

report, then, so long as that official for 1866 keeps out of State’s Prison, we

still appeal
;
though, if the World shall continue to threaten us with that

severer punishment hinted at in calling upon “ our friend, the Rev. Leonard

W. Bacon, who sometimes writes for Putnam,” and who is a scourge of evil-
doers, we may be terrified into silence.

We proceed, now, to the final clearing up, we hope, of a subject of con-
tention in regard to which the general public appears to be exceedingly un-

informed, and which has only been plunged in deeper confusion by the

attempts of our warring contributors and of their hostile critics to throw

light upon it. The writer in July, after recounting several benefactions in

the way of land-grants from the municipal government of New York to the
Church he was pleased to speak of as “ Established,” proceeded : “ Upon

some part of this property, or upon another tract held by a like title and

upon similar terms, is in course of erection the new St. Patrick’s Cathedral,”

&c. A foot-note to this passage essays a bit of satire (although this writer
is singularly destitute of any ordinary sense of humor) upon an eminent

ethical writer, Mr. Parton, who, in the Atlantic for April, 1868, had extolled
“ the foresight of Archbishop Hughes in buying this tract at a time when

* It is to be regretted that no effort has been made to preserve a record of the views upon this sub-

{

'ect of the Hon. Terence McMaonis, Member of Assembly from the Sixth Ward of Kew York. It is
lardly doubtful, however, that they coincided, as they usually did, with those of the Hon. Mr. Cassidy.



viii Preface.

other purchasers would not
;

” and suggests that “ a willingness to risk one

dollar a year for a block of lots on Fifth Avenue, any time within fifteen

years, could hardly have been deemed a wild passion for speculation.” In

this indiscreet limitation of time to the past “ fifteen years ” was presented

the happy opportunity of that vigorous controversialist, the Bishop of Koch-

ester. When that venerable prelate shied his hat into the arena, it was just
here that he planted his first and most effective blow. “ The new St. Pat-

rick’s Cathedral ” (writes Bishop McQuaid to the newspapers) “ stands on

ground purchased by Catholics about sixty years ago, and ever since in their

possession. This fact spoils Parton’s compliment to the late Archbishop

Hughes’ foresight, and a nice bit of irony in Putnam's Magazine.” The

Catholic World
,
in August, repeated the bishop’s correction with emphasis

;

and the writer of “ The Unestablished Church ” enumerated the error thus

pointed out as one of the two ascertained errors in the earliest article. We
are able, now, to add, for the vindication of the bishop and the confusion of

his adversaries, the fact that the block on which the cathedral is rising,

bounded by 50th and 51st-streets and 4th and 5th Avenues, was formerly

known as Block No. 62 of the Common Lands, owned by the Mayor, Aider-

men, and Commonalty of the city of New York. That, on the 1st of May,

1799 (more than the bishop’s “ sixty years ago ”), this plot was leased (not

sold) by the city, for the annual rent of four bushels of wheat. But inasmuch

as a lease, even at so moderate a rental, was not thought convenient for build-

ing purposes, it was very simply converted into a fee by a release, on the

11th of November, 1852, from the Mayor, Aldermen, and Commonalty of

New York to “ The Trustees of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and James R. Bailey
and James B. Nicholson, new Trustees,” &c., of the city’s fee in the premises,

for the very considerable sum of 883.32. All these things—and how many
more of the same kind it would take an infinite amount of labor to discover

—are they not written in the Record-Books of the Register’s Office in the
City Hall Park 1 We venture to say that, if the author of “ Our Established
Church ” had known exactly what they were and where to find them, there

wrould have been less occasion given for contradiction to his loose and unveri-

fied guesses.

It must have been from a consciousness of having driven a hard bargain

with the “ Trustees” in extorting this 883.32, that w
rhen the city government

extended Madison avenue across this block in 1864 (not greatly to the detri-

ment of the property), it contributed no less than 824,000 in payment for

the strip of land necessary to be taken. If any one has difficulty in compre-

hending the economy of this way of doing business, we can only give the

familiar explanation of the Chatham-street merchant, to whom the rustic ex-

pressed surprise that he could make money by selling always “ below cost.”
“ I couldn’t, my friend, if I didn’t do so much of it.”

Before going further, we must do our Magazine an act of justice to its

consistency. Our Catholic neighbor errs in saying that it “ withdraws its

false statement as to the millions of property held in fee-simple by the five

bishops in the State.” Its statement in July was, that the millions of prop-

erty were owned, in great part, “ by one or another of five ecclesiastics.”

Under correction of the Bishop of Rochester, it admitted, in December, that

that dignitary had not received his share, which was owned by Bishop

Loughlin, of Brooklyn. And inasmuch as the original statement would have

remained unshaken if the Bishops of Albany and Buffalo had also complained

that the Brooklyn ecclesiastic had their shares as well, since the property

would still have been held “ by one or another of five ecclesiastics,” we have

not thought, and really cannot think, of “ withdrawing ” a statement so

absolutely correct. At the same time, we must admit that there is much



Preface. ix

force in the argument urged by the World in regard to the Catholic Religious

Society Law of 1863, that it only secures to “ the Church the free manage-

ment of her own temporalities.” This is, indeed, exactly what that law

effectually does
;
and it is what is done for no other than the Church by the

laws of this State, or, so far as we are advised, of any American common-

wealth. To no point heretofore has the legislation of New York at least

been more sedulously directed than to the absolute removal from the

churches of the control of the temporalities devoted to their use, and the

maintenance in every case of religious societies separate from and independ-

ent of the churches, and sometimes, as it has happened, antagonistic to them,

and subversive to their faith and order. We do not propose to vindicate this
system of legislation

;
very likely it may be quite the thing for the sects of

dissent
;
we merely recall the unquestionable fact, illustrated as it is every

year by instances of the property given and held for the religious uses of

one sect, being turned over to those of another by the action of a society

foreign to the church, and made up of whatever members of another church,

or of no church, or of a Tom Paine Club, may have attended worship there

for a year, and contributed to the expenses of the society. But does The

Catholic World really believe that the Act of 1863, in giving such control to

the Church, “ only secures to it equal rights with the sects 1 ” Does it fancy

that the Protestant Episcopal Church, which is, no less than the Roman

Catholic, a general organization extending throughout and far beyond the

limits of the State, and, no less than that, assumes to be a great spiritual

unit, “ controls the temporalities ” devoted to Episcopalian worship ? Does

it imagine to itself the Right Rev. Bishop Potter enforcing his pastoral

authority over St. George’s, in New York, by closing its doors upon the

flock which his shepherd’s crook has first expelled into the street 1 Or can it

frame the picture even of a Diocesan Convention, or of a General Conven-

tion—bodies of a higher legislative and administrative authority in that
Church than any known in the Roman Church this side of Rome—attempt-
ing a like “ control of temporalities ” in regard to St. George’s, or even

essaying to extinguish a candle at the altar of little St. Alban’s 1 Can it

conceive of any case in any non-Catholic sect where the spiritual body, call-

ing itself the Church, or the governing powers of it, however constituted,

can exercise the slightest legal authority over the property it uses 1 We
think not. We know it cannot. And just here is the difference. Just here
is the power the State grants the Roman Church, which it withholds from

every other Church. W e thank it for withholding
;
we do not complain of

it for granting
;
only, we congratulate the Church.

If to any reader the distinction between the spiritual body, the Church,

and the body corporate, the society, be so subtle as to evade him, or seem so

slight that he can see no importance in restricting the powers of either, let

him imagine the authorities of the former body, of whatever name, whether

its governing power be vested in a majority of communicants, or in a ses-

sion, or a convocation, or an uncontrolled chief or bishop, to seek to impose

some new dogma or oppressive discipline upon unwilling parishioners, whose

money, and their fathers’ money, has provided the land and buildings applied

to pious uses. Before the Act of 1863, in all churches—and now in all
churches but the Roman—the means of enforcing the spiritual decree are
spiritual means—argument, appeal, admonition. If these fail, the Church
yields, or, at worst, cuts off the disobedient, to worship God in their own

way in the house their means have procured them. Under the Act of 1863,
the subjects yield

;
the simple alternative to implicit obedience and submis-

sion is not merely the spiritual penalties so heavy in any ecclesiastical hands,

but the expulsion from all that they had paid for, built, and fancied that they



X Preface.

owned. What if the Catholic laity of New York were to a man hostile (as
we have not the least reason to suppose they are) to the dogma of infallibil-
ity ? Suppose even that the Vatican Council should refuse to decree it.

Suppose, then, that it should be announced, nevertheless, from the See of St.

Peter, under the usual damnatory clauses, as essential to salvation. No one
doubts where the five bishops of New York would be. No one has any
right to doubt that the fifty millions of church property in this State would

be as absolutely and irretrievably, and as utterly without control from the

million or two of Catholic laymen who have helped pay for it, at the disposal-
of an Italian prince, as the poorest rural Baptist chapel is under the power

of its unanimous congregation. We may even suppose a stronger case. We
arc at liberty to imagine the event that the voluntary contributions of the

faithful should no longer suffice, as heretofore, to maintain the disciplined

legions who protect the throne of the Sovereign Pontiff more successfully

against domestic dissent than against foreign aggression, and who are capable
of considerable severity when not too formidably opposed—Zouaviler in
modo, as well as fortiter in re—as appeared from the sack of Perugia in 1859.
No more effectual way could be devised for a sudden emergency of reinforcing
the Peter’s pence than to levy upon the church property of fifty millions in

this State a contribution of say ten per cent., to be raised by mortgages.

Our five bishops—or four, if they prefer—object (we mean to make the case
a strong one). By the speedy communication of the mails, or even the
quicker operation of the telegraph, a prompt and sweeping process of trans-

lation occurs. Our venerated archbishop finds himself promoted in a twink-

ling to the arch-diocese of New Archangel
;
and the present right reverend

bishops of Brooklyn, Albany, Rochester, and Buffalo are all given truly

apostolic work at the sees of El Medina, Timbuctoo, Terra del Fuego, and

Tananarivo, all in partibus, and five more submissive ecclesiastics from the

College of the Propaganda, if they could not be found nearer, are installed

in their places. By the instant operation of the Act of 1863, each one of

these five became instantly a member of every religious society in his dio-

cese, organized under it. Of course, he appoints a vicar-general to suit him
;

and if any parish priest is not fully to his mind, he replaces such by others

entirely satisfactory
;
and the new vicar-general and the new priests, becom-

ing at once, by force of the Act, members of the religious societies in place

of the old, it remains to arrange about two laymen who, with the other and

satisfactory three, constitute the entire board. It is enough to say, that the

dissent of such a minority could be of little avail
;
but if the moral effect of

unanimity be desired, the clerical three have only to wait until the corporate

year comes round, and to fill their places, as the Act provides, with two of

whose subservience there can be no question. Then let them execute their

mortgage, and remit the proceeds in gold or drafts, as the instructions from

Rome require. Is it not simple % And if any one objects, what of it ?

Exactly this fact it was upon which our July writer, in part, depended to

justify him in calling the Roman Church u Established
;

” the fact that the

Roman Church alone, among churches, had been favored by the State by

entrusting to it—to the spiritual body and the spiritual hierarchy—the abso-
lute control of its enormous endowments. And upon just this fact, too, did

the December writer, in part, rest in rebuking the former for his epithet,

since in no other land in Christendom has an established hierarchy the like

tremendous power. If compelled to arbitrate between them, we could hardly

say but both were right.

We have been saying a good deal thus far—perhaps too much—in excul-
pation of ourselves and our contributors. We are bound to add, before
sending the following papers again into the world, something in mere justice



Preface. xi

to the World
,
whose reputation for orthodoxy might suffer at Rome if the

accusations of our Magazine should reach there unaccompanied by the ex-

planations and excuses put forth in January. It is an act of judicial impar-

tiality, which we willingly perform, to give them full currency herewith.

“We are accused, because we say the Church here desires no establishment by
law—-for she has what is letter than such establishment—of contradicting the Sylla-
bus

,

and going against [sic] the supreme pontiff. We accept the Syllabus without

the slightest reserve
,
though probably not in the Magazine's sense.”

[This is doing very well, so far. We know, now, pretty well, where to
find the “ liberal Catholics ” of this country. The hint in the last six words

does not in the least becloud the matter. If our good friends will stand to

any sense the monkish Latin of that document can be twisted into, they will

give us the special satisfaction of knowing where they are.

We confess, at the same time, to some curiosity to know in what sense

—

whether “ the sense of the Syllabus,” or other—one Father ITecker, whose
name appears on the cover of The Catholic World, declared in a public lec-

ture, a year or two since, as reported in the newspapers, that “ there is, ere

long, to be a State religion in this country, and that State religion is to be

Roman Catholic.” Can the World explain ?]

“The Syllabus condemns those who demand the separation of Church and

State in the sense of the European liberals ; but not us for not requiring the Church

to be established by law as the State-Church.”

[We do not find the italicised words of limitation in the Syllabus. We
fancied, indeed, that that instrument had an Ecumenical character, and was as

keen for the dividing asunder of joints and marrow of Massachusetts or

Ohio schismatics, of Nestorian or Coptic heretics, as of “ European liberals.”

But as too great publicity cannot be given to a good thing, we repeat here,

in juxtaposition with the last extract, Damnable Errors Nos. 55 and 77.

55. That the Church must be separated from the State, and the State from the

Church.

77. That in the present day it is no longer necessary that the Catholic religion

shall be held as the only religion of the State
,
to the exclusion of all other modes of

worship.]

Those liberals mean, by the separation of Church and State, the independence

of the State, and its right to pursue its own policy, irrespective of the rights and

interests of religion. In that sense [not merely, therefore, it will be seen, in a

“ parliamentary ” or “ Pickwickian ” sense] we also condemn the separation, and

are continually warring against it as political atheism. But we deny that in that

sense, or in the sense of the Syllabus, we do or ever have advocated the separation of

Church and State. * * * An Act of the Legislature of the State or

the nation forbidding Christianity, or authorizing acts directly against it, would

be null and void from the beginning, and be treated by the courts as would be a

jus municipium [sic] in violation of the jus gentium.

We trust the readers of this pamphlet will not think us over-exact in
seeking to interpret the utterances of The Catholic World. In all earnest-

ness, we deem it difficult to exaggerate their importance. They come from

a class of writers whose fault has never been, these many centuries, a loose

and generous frankness
;
they touch upon matters of the last importance,

not merely in a religious view—for, upon that, Putnam’s Magazine has been
always careful not to touch in the slightest—but in a purely political aspect,
as they might appear to one who looked upon all creeds as alike false

;
they

are the forced expressions under the stress of public inquisition, and guarded

by the keenest caution of a tremendous power which hopes shortly to be

ready to act. Nor is the weight of this particular sentence impaired by the



xii PREFACE.

somewhat nebulous illustration at its close. Our clerical friends may write
bad Latin, if they choose

;
no sacerdotal prerogative is more firmly estab-

lished by the usage of centuries than that
;
and the less Latin the reader

knows, the more likely he is to understand what Cicero, though a Roman and
a lawyer, would never have guessed, that “jus municipium ” is used to mean
“ municipal law.” It is plain that the writer fancies that an American court,

if a State or Federal statute appears to contravene a principle of interna-

tional law, would hold it “null and void.” We imagine that this principle
of jurisprudence will startle the jurisconsult as much as the Latin phrase

alarms the linguist. But what is of far higher importance, what rises above

all trifling criticism, is the fact that here we have an authoritative announce-

ment, partial though it be, of the principle that shall guide our future Catho-

lic rulers. The people governed must await with profound anxiety the

decisions of that Catholic judiciary which is to say what the “ Christianity
”

is which legislation is not to contravene. We surmise that it will fare hard
with sectaries then.

We have left ourselves but little space—though more, perhaps, than we
need—to comment upon the latest observations of The Catholic World in
regard to the common school system. We had already observed, with some
regret, that our December writer had expressed somewhat earnestly a feeling

which is not so much a Protestant, or religious, as an American, or political

and social feeling, that our system of public education is a good thing, and a

thing to be maintained at any price. The existence and the earnestness of

this sentiment is not to be denied
;
but if the writer in December thinks it

useful to give expression to it, we are bound to differ with him. So far as

the State of New York is concerned, the system of public education is dead.
A system of sectarian education, sustained at public expense, but superior to
public interference, is established in its place

;
a system which received last

year, in the city of New York alone, $215,000 from a single fund (an annual
gift made perpetual by the statute authorizing it), besides large and numerous

subsidies from other public sources, and the strongest argument for the per-

manence of which is found in the fact that one quarter of the sum mentioned

was accepted by nonrCatholic schools.*"

* The details of these subventions in the city of New York in 1869, so far as we have been able to
ascertain them, we submit below. Our experience with the data extracted from the State Comptroller’s
report compels us to anticipate severe treatment for any thing we may offer in the way of figures. We
hasten, therefore, to admit that these statistics are imperfect, and that whenever we can learn of addi-
tional donations to like purposes, we shall be happy to correct our tables by inserting them.

TABLE OF MONEYS VOTED FROM THE PUBLIC TREASURY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK FOR

SECTARIAN INSTITUTIONS IN 1869.

Roman Catholic.

Sacred Heart Convent

Sacred Heart School

House Good Shepherd

House Good Shepherd

House Mercy.

Sisters Mercy

Sisters St. Dominic

Sisters St. Dominic

Asylum St. Dominic
Dominican Fathers

Dominican Church

St. Nicholas School ,

St. Nicholas School

St. Nicholas Church

St. Patrick’s Orphan Asylum ..

St. Patrick’s Cathedral

St. Patrick’s School

St. Patrick’s Orphan Asylum..

St. Bridget’s School

6t. Bridget’s Church.

Sister Helena

Sisters of St. Joseph

St. Joseph’s Church

St. Joseph’s Orphan Asylum...

trr‘

.$10,000

. 4,000

. 25,000

. 15,000

10,000

i06

5,000

2,774

3,500

6,800

5.000

364

8,153

8,928

8.000

5,000

23,540

5,000

4,317

5,000

2,071

5,000

$412,062.20

St. Joseph’s Parish School

St. Joseph’s Male School

St. Joseph’s Female School

St. Teresa’s School

St. Teresa’s Church

School St. Teresa’s Chapel

St. Teresa’s School

'St. Ann's School

St. Ann’s Church

St. Peter’s School

Ger. Am. St, Peter’s School
Ger. Am, Free School..
St. Lawrence Church. .

St. Lawrence Parish School.

St, Mary’s School

St. Mary's Church.

Sisters of Charity

Most Holy Redeemer School

St. Francis Female School

St. Francis Male School ....

St, Francis Hospital ,

St, Michael's School.. ..

St. ^lichaePs School

St. Michael’s School

$2,000

3,180

3,410

7,730

640

5,000

5,<00

1,500

208

5,000

1,500

14.000

1.500

5,000

20.000

200

70

11,000

4,250

3,750

5,000

2.500

5,000

5,000



Preface. xiii

We know that public schools, established
tinue to exist

;
that under some name and

under the ancient system, con-

fer some purposes

—

u
pauper-

St. Gabriel’s School $11,830

Church of Transfiguration 387

Transfiguration School 11,500

St. James’ Male School 6,000

St. James’ Female^School 7,000

St. James’ Church. 800

Our Lady of Sorrow School 8,000

St. Columbia School 6,120

Holy Innocents’ School 562

St Andrew’s Church 1,007

School of the Immaculate Conception 10,000

Church of St Paul 5,004

St Vincent de Paul School 2,540

German American School 3,150
St. Boniface Church 965

St. John’s School for Girls $2,140

Church of Nativity School 639
R. C. Church 645

Holy Cross Church. 2, 1 23
Holy Cross Church School 1,272
St. Matthew’s Church 463

Church of the Assumption 459
Church St. John the Baptist 533
St. Vincent’s Hospital 10,000

St. Vincent’s It. C. Orphan Asylum 15,000
St. Stephen’s Orphan House 5,000
St Stephen’s Orphan House 3,000
R. Burtsell, to taxes 22d-st. Church property 505
German School 5,000
German Mission Association 5,000

Protestant Episcopal

St. Barthomolew’s Church

St. Luke’s Hospital

St Lukes Hospital for Indigent Pemales. .

.

St. Luke’s Hospital Parochial School.

Incarnation Church

St. Phillip’s P. K. Church

St. Phillip’s Church

St. Paul’s Chapel School

Holy Trinity Church.

Trinity Church School

Trinity Chapel School

St. Timothy’s Church

St. Mary’s Church

School Church Redeemer

N. Y. Prot. Epis. Church

$29,335.09

$263 N. Y. Prot. Epis. Missionary Society

842 St. John’s Chapel School

5.000 Shepherd’s Fold

271 Holy Apostles’ Church

2,810 Sepulchre Church

290 St. Clement’s Prot Epis. Church
159 St. Mark’s Church

758 All Angels’ Church

1,270 All Saints’ Church

704 Church of Intercession
650 St. Mary’s Episcopal Church

1,785 St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Sisterhood.. .

.

257 Zion Church

1.000 Sheltering Aims School
1,200 Memorial Church.

$600

975

500

179

750

156

684

1,177

529

1,749

323

3,000

69

1,(00

370

Hebrew

Cong. Shearith Israel $940

Cong. Anslie Chesed 402

Hebrew School, No. 1 2,280
Polonies Talmud K. School 542

$14,404.49

Cong. B. Israel $68
Cong. Adireth El 191
Hebrew Benevolent Society Orphan Asylum 5,000
Hebrew Benevolent Orphan Asylum 5,000

Reformed (Dutch) Church,

Reformed Dutch Church $3,790
Reformed Dutch Church 6,748

Reformed Dutch Church 1,143

$12,630.86

N. W. Protestant Reformed Dutch Church.. $825
True Reformed Dutch Church 123

Presbyterian

Canal Presbyterian Church $130

Church of the Covenant 652

Mercer-Street Presbyterian Church 1,280

Manhattanville Presbyterian Church 1,724

Eleventh Presbyterian Church 384

84th-street Presbyterian Church 540

13th-street Presbyterian Church 208

Jane-street Presbyterian Church 145

Spring-street Presbyterian Church 414

$8,363.44

Harlem $88
Presbyterian Church, Ilouston-street 150
A Presbyterian Church 150
A Presbyterian Hospital 1,400
Mariners’ Church 311
United Presbyterian Church 292
United Presbyterian Church 162
Second Reformed Presbyterian Church 140
First Reformed Presbyterian Church 191

Baptist

Laight-street Baptist Church . . . .

,

Macdougal-street Baptist Church,

North Baptist Church

53d-street Baptist Church-

Abyssinian Baptist Church

$2,760.34

$L70 Berean Baptist Church
195 Baptist Church, Mad i son-street.

1,000 Olive Branch Baptist Church
637 Harlem Second Baptist Church
124

Methodist Episcopal.

M. E. Church, 22d-street $473
M. E. Church. 102

M. E. Church. 421
Sullivan-strcet M. E. Church 208

Bedford-street M. E. Church. S06

Forsyth-street M. E. Church 250

$3,073.63

Greene-street M. E. Church
Jane-street M. E. Church
John-street M. E. Church
Jane-street M. E. Church
Sullivan-street M. E. Bethel Church
Second Church of Evangelical Associatiou.

.

German Evangelical $2,027.24
German and English School $1,150 German Evangelical Church
German Lutheran St. Peter’s Church 476 German American School Society
German Lutheran Church 54

$150

175

100

209

$315

129

255

221

300

$216

131

Miscellaneous

N. Y. Magdalen Benevolent Society $5,000
Protestant Half-Orphan Asylum 3,054
Wayside Industrial Home 3,010
Tumverein School 3,800
School N. Y. Juvenile Society 4,336

An Evangelical Church 300
Grand Total

,$44,085.12

Mission Church, 2d-Av. 125th street $594
Dover-street Free School 2,000
Union Home and School 10,000
Union Home and School 7,000
Lying-in Asylum, Marion-street 5,000

,$528,742.47



xiv Preface.

schools,” as the Freeman's Journal proposes to call them—some of them
may long exist, is very possible; but the system is dead. We therefore
regard all excited discussion as to the details of management of the schools

as being as futile and out of date as a discussion as to the expediency of

matters of township administration unefer the colonial government of New
York. It is all very well to say we will remove the Bible* from the schools

;

no matter how valuable the tub we throw the whale, it will not save them.

The quotations our December writer gave from Catholic authorities, from

the Syllabus down, ought to have satisfied him that “ godless ” schools would

be no more tolerable to our Catholic rulers than schismatic ones. “ If they

insist,” says now The Catholic World
,

“ on having godless schools for their

children, they can have them
;
we cannot hinder them.” Cannot hinder them ?

But you will hinder them, if you can. Do not distrust your power. It is

hard to set a limit to the ability that has already accomplished so much.

For the will which is to direct it, let these recent utterances of the orthodox

press, added to those quoted in the following pages, be a sufficient declara-

tion
;
and let them, as they show the “ conscientious conviction ” of Roman

Catholic minds, that any school-system not under the control of the Catholic

Church is but a vestibule of Gehenna, furnish the abundant justification of

Roman Catholics for refusing, whenever the question shall come to them for

decision, to allow the funds of the State, even if they come from Protestant

taxpayers, to be turned to such atrocious uses.

From the “ New York Tablet,” November 20.

The School Board of Cincinnati have voted, we see from the papers, to ex-

clude the Bible and all religious instruction from the public schools of the city.

If this has been done with a view to reconciling Catholics to the common school
system, its purpose will not be realized. It does not meet, nor in any degree

lessen, our objection to the public school system, and only proves the impractica-

bility of that system in a mixed community of Catholics and Protestants.

The system of common schools, as now adopted in this country, is in the main
an imitation of the system decreed by the convention which sentenced Louis

XIV. to the guillotine, abolished Christianity, and declared death an eternal

sleep. The object of the convention was, by a system of godless schools, to root

out religion from the French mind, and to train up the French youth in absolute

ignorance or unbelief in any life beyond this life, and any world that transcends

the senses. If we adopt and carry out the same system, our American youth

must grow up thoroughly unbelieving and godless, as the order of the Cincinnati

Board of Education not directly foreshadows. Catholics will do well to be on

their guard against forming alliances to help them get rid of one evil by fasten-

ing on the country another and infinitely greater evil—the very evil the forever
infamous Convention sought with devilish ingenuity to fasten on France.

Exclude every sectarian exercise, and wholly secularize the schools
;
let them

teach nothing of religion, but be confined solely to secular education
;
what is

the result ? The system is even more objectionable than before.

Let the laws permit and encourage the establishment of denominational schools

—wherever any denomination may be sufficiently numerous to justify one—such
schools to be subject, of course, to State inspection, and be required to come up

to a prescribed educational standard, but to be wholly free in the department of

religious instruction. Let such schools receive their due proportion of the

public tax.

From the “ Tablet,” December 4.

We are not opposed to public schools supported by the State, if the State
provides schools for us in which we can teach our own religion

;
but we are

opposed to infidel, godless, or purely secular schools. So are we to infidelity,

and to Protestantism, but we cau only demand that, if the State chooses to tax

the whole community to support common schools, it is bound to provide Catho-

lics, and Protestants too, if they demand it, schools in which children can be

educated without violation of conscience.



Preface. xv

From the “Tablet,’’ December 18.

So far as Catholics, acting in concert with their pastors, are concerned, there

is no conspiracy in the case. We say openly, we do not believe in the system,

nor in any system which does not leave us free to educate our children in our

own religion
;
and we are strongly opposed to being taxed for the support of

schools in which we cannot do it.

From the “ Tablet,’’ December 25.

We demand of the State, as our right, either such schools as our Church will
accept, or exemption from the school tax. If it will support schools by a general

tax, we demand that it provide or give us our portion of the public funds, and

leave us to provide schools in which we can educate our children in our own

religion, under the supervision of our Church.

We hold education to be a function of the Church, not of the State
;
and in

our case we do not, and will not, accept the State as educator.

From the “ Freeman’s Journal,” November 13.

Education is not the work of the State at all. It belongs to families, and

should be left to families, and to voluntary associations. The school tax is in

itself an unjust imposition.

From the “Freeman’s Journal,” November 20.

We tell our respected cotemporary, therefore, that if the Catholic translation
of the books of Holy Writ, which is to be found in the homes of all our better-

educated Catholics, were to be dissected by the ablest Catholic theologian in the

land, and merely lessons to be taken from it—such as Catholic mothers read to
their children

;
and with all the notes and comments, in the popular edition, and

others added, with the highest Catholic endorsement—and if these admirable
Bible lessons, and these alone, were to be ruled as to be read in all the public

schools, this would not diminish, in any substantial degree, the objection we

Catholics have to letting Catholic children attend the public schools.

This declaration is very sweeping, but we will prove its correctness.

First : We will not subject our Catholic children to your teacher ! You ought
to know why, in a multitude of cases.

Second : We will not expose our Catholic children to association with all the chil-

dren who have a right to attend the public schools ! Do you not know why ?
There is no possible programme of common school instruction that the Catho-

lic Church can permit her children to accept. The Catholic Church claims no

power to force her instruction on the children of people not Catholic. But she

resists the assumption of whomsoever to force on the little ones of the Catholic

fold any system of instruction that ignores her teaching, according to which the

whole of this life is to fit children, and older people, for an eternal life.

It is not we who declare so. It is the Catholic Church. In the famous “ Syl-

labus ” of modern errors condemned by the Catholic Church, and which neither

bishop nor layman can dispute, without the reproach of rebellion against the

Church, is the following condemned, as against faith.

“ That Catholics may approve the plan for teaching youth in schools apart
from the inculcation of the Catholic faith, and from the control of the Catholic

faith
;
while such teaching regards only, or, at least, chiefly, the mere knowledge

of natural things, and the purposes of our social life here on earth.”

This proposition is condemned by the Catholic Church, and no Catholic is at

liberty to hold it. The Express
,
therefore, may understand how impossible it is for

Catholics ever to come to an agreement with persons not attached to any religion,

in regard to schools that she requires to be positively, and continually
,
dominated by

the Catholic religion.

From the “ Freeman’s Journal,” November 20.

The issue is not about the reading or not reading of the Bible in schools.
We insist upon having this apprehended and acknowledged. Bible read, or
Bible not read, in the public schools, cannot alter the objection of Catholics,

obedient to their faith, against the popular method of public schools. We insist
on having this recognized. It is the fact.

No Catholic, in a responsible position, will or can deny that schools, not sub-



XVI Preface.

jected to teachers, and to a discipline under the supervision of Catholic authori-

ties, are forbidden to Catholics for their children.

The movement to exclude the perfunctory gabbling over of some verses of

the Bible at the opening of schools is not a Catholic movement. If some Catho-

lics have engaged in it, it is as politicians, not as Catholics. They may wish to
embarrass non-Catholics, and set these by the ears. In this or that town or

village, if this be clone, it is none of our business to interfere with it. But if it

be attempted to make the whole Catholic public responsible for it, we denounce

the endeavor. It is not a Catholic proceeding. For our part, we object to it,

and believe it is calculated to put Catholics in a false position.

The Catholic position is so clear and simple that there is no excuse for mis-

representing it.

We do not want to force Catholic school instruction on any one.
We will not have school instruction, without the Catholic religion pervading

it, forced on our children.

We do not want our neighbors to be taxed for our Catholic schools.
We Catholics do not want to be taxed for schools we do not believe in, and

cannot use.

If all alike are to be taxed for the support of schools, which are not prop-

erly the business of the State, we hold that all and every portion of the tax-

payers ought to have the proportion of the money so raised applied in a manner

not repugnant to their convictions of what kind of schooling their children

should have.

From the “Freeman's Journal,” December 11.

The Catholic solution of this muddle about Bible or no Bible in schools, is

—

“hands off!” No State taxation or donations for any schools. You look to

your children, and we will look to ours. We don’t want you to be taxed for
Catholic schools. We don’t want you to be taxed for Protestant, or for godless
schools. Let the public school system go to where it came from—the devil. We
want Christian schools, and the State cannot tell us what Christianity is.



1869.] Oue Established Ohheoh. 17

OUR ESTABLISHED CHURCH.

Thirty years ago, a young English

gentleman, whose title-page described

him by the strangely composite style

of “ Student of Christ Church and M.

P. for Newark,” put forth a famous plea

for the maintenance of the national

Church in England and of the English

Church in Ireland. The subtle dialect-

ics, the fervid and urgent rhetoric of

the work, marking “ the rising hope of

those stern and unbending Tories who

followed, reluctantly and mutinously,”

the more cautious lead of Peel, main-

tained the loftiest views of the necessity

of an ecclesiastical department in every

State
;
and especially insisted upon the

continuance of the Protestant Estab-

lishment in Ireland, when that Estab-

lishment was more odious than to-day,

and to a greater proportion of the Irish

people. At the moment when we

write, that young scholastic-parliament-

ary champion of the Irish Church has

become the chief of an imperial minis-

try, the avowed purpose of whose exist-

ence is the dis-establishment of the Irish

Church. His Tory predecessor, when

he carried through a measure of Parlia-

mentary Reform so radical as almost to

frighten the Manchester men, did not

more squarely turn his back upon the

professions, than Mr. Gladstone has

upon the convictions, of a conspicuous

public life
;
yet Mr. Gladstone’s change

is nothing more than the stirring of a

chip in the great flood of opinion which

withiu his time has moved in that

direction over almost the whole of

Christendom. These thirty ye^rs, even

the last third of them, have seen some

tremendous and successful blows dealt

at ecclesiastical power. The advocates

of a godless or at least of a churchless

State have been having upon the whole

quite the best of it.

See Italy, the very chief and centre

of the Christian Church. When a new
“ liberal ” constitution was devised for

the Sardinian States in 1848, its first

article declared “the Apostolic and

Roman Catholic Religion ” to be “ the

only religion of the State.” Brave

words ! But they did not prevent that

very State from swallowing up, within

a dozen years, not merely the territories

of princes who held in fee of the Holy

See, but all save the barest remnant

of the provinces of the See itself; as

if they had not been indeed the pious

gift of Constantine
;
as if the historic

decretals were not their title-deeds.

And through the whole Italian king-

dom, in what plight is the holy “ re-

ligion of the State ” to-day ? With an

excommunicated king, imprisoned bish-

ops, every rood of church property con-

fiscated or “ secularized ” at a stroke,

the regular clergy driven by thousands

from their cloistered homes, Waldensian

chapels suffered to sprout like fungi

all over the peninsula, the standard of

the Church upheld only by the devout

but irregular men-at-arms that line

the highways of the southern half of it.

Look at that Austrian Empire, which

once was the “ Holy Roman.” Within

three years the concordat with the See,

sacred with more than the sanctity of

a civil treaty, is abrogated
;

all public

education wrested from the clergy, and

made as secular as Cornell University
;

the clerical sanction no longer essential

to valid marriage, nor orthodoxy to

burial in consecrated ground
;

the

Protestant Yon Beust, Chancellor and

almost Regent of the Empire
;
and

every form of heresy made practically

equal before the law to the faith of the

fathers and the councils.

Perhaps in skeptical France little bet-

ter was to be looked for : in France,

which has always had a loose way of

murdering its prophets, from the time

when Philip the Fair roasted the Tem-

plars
;
whose Church has always been

less Roman than Gallican
;

the note of

whose emblematic fowl has these many

centuries roused as painful emotions in



18 Putnam's Magazine.

the breasts of Peter’s successors as its

prototype could in the saint’s own

bosom
;
which with equal hand has

doled out to Catholic Church, Protes-

tant temple and Jewish synagogue their

due proportion of the public revenue,

without regard to abstract religious

truth. So that it can cause but a mild

horror when M. Rouher exclaims, as he

did but a few months ago in the Cham-

ber of Deputies, that “ the entire sep-

aration of the Church from the State is

but a question of time.”

Then the subjects even of “ Her Most

Catholic Majesty ” appear to esteem

that particular title as lightly as they

do the private virtues that have earned

for her at the hands of His Holiness

the honor of the Golden Rose. What

little ecclesiastical property remained

from the necessities of successive Most

Catholic monarchs seems sure now to

be swept into the revolutionary chest

;

and what with Bible-importations, pub-

lic prayer-meetings, and Sunday-schools,

Spain seems entering upon the same

career of Free Church infidelity upon

which France and Italy have made such

vast progress.

Add to this the late triumph in our

American Spain of the same cause, rep-

resented by the half-breed republican

Juarez, over the church-party of Mira-

mon and Maximilian
;
to say nothing

of such scattered incidents as the grad-

ual secularizing of the State in the

Swiss Cantons, and the protest against

a Protestant State-Church, which was

emphasized by the disruption of the

Scottish Kirk, and we might fairly con-

clude, with the Head of the Church in

his recent bull convoking the Council

General of the Vatican, that the uni-

versal separation of the Church from

civil government is at hand.

—“ We might conclude.” But if it
were permitted to hold, with the Port-

Royalists, that the Pope’s infallibility

does not extend to matters of fact, it

wculd be easy to show that His Holi-

ness has been misled by changes which

for the most part are limited to the re-

gions nearest to the Vatican. Here in

this Western empire, and especially in

[July,

the great commonwealth in which this

Magazine is published, the old State-

Church problem is receiving a new so-

lution, under new conditions. The ‘ex-

periments of an irreligious State, to

which there is so strong a tendency in

many countries to resort, has been thor-

oughly tried here. It succeeded to all

manner of Establishments—to a Dutch
Calvinistic State in New York, to a Con-
gregationalist State in Massachusetts

and Connecticut, to an English Episco-

palian State in Virginia, to a Spanish

Catholic in Florida, and it has been

somewhat widely regarded as a failure.

In fact, many of the upholders of the

old Establishments have never frankly

acquiesced in their displacement. Many

good reasons will be given you to-day

by old citizens of Connecticut, in favor

of the obsolete law by which every resi-

dent was bound to contribute to the

support of the Congregational Church

in his parish, primd facie
,
and until he

could show that some other body had

a better right to him. And to this day

public opinion in New Hamspshire has
not been brought to abolish that badge

of ecclesiasticism in its constitution

which requires the officers of the State

to be “ of the Protestant religion.”

If, then, we were really called upon,

here and to-day, to argue that the State

ought to “profess religion,” to main-

tain a Church, and to “ belong ” to it,

we need not explore far from our front-

doors to find our arguments. Certain-

ly plenty of them can be got from good

Yankees and good Protestants
;

and

early among them we should call upon

that body of single-minded clergy and

laymen who met in Philadelphia lately,

to heal our political disorders and es-

tablish the Deity upon a sound basis

by getting a recognition of him inserted

into the Federal Constitution. But

whatever may be the speculative interest

of this question, it is for us no longer a

practical one. Circumstances, and the

management of adroit churchmen and

judicious statesmen have saved our ex-

citable public the agitation of a pro-

tracted controversy upon the subject.

That impartial old croupier
,
our Des-



1869.] Oue Established Church. 19

tiny, has ceased his droning invitation

to us, “ Faites votrejeu, Messieurs.” The

wheel has turned : “ le jeu est fait

;

”

and almost before we guessed what was

at stake, we find ready to our hand,

and not yet too heavy on our neck, Our

Established Church.

Recognizing, then, the just limitation

of inquiry in the settlement of all ques-

tions in regard to the expediency of an

Establishment
;

recognizing also the

probable advantages there are in accom-

plishing great public events in the quiet

way in which this has been effected, it

may be worth while to take a strictly

historical and practical view of our Es-

tablishment; what it is, and how it

Game.

Here, then, in this commonwealth of

five million souls, the ancient Church

acknowledging the jurisdiction of the

Roman See, while it owns its duty of

caring for the whole people, claims from

one and a half to three millions within

its own immediate pale. Its sacerdotal

or clerical body, including under that

title the fraternities and sisterhoods de-

voted to whatever work of charity or

instruction, numbers not far from two

thousand, absolved from all secular and

domestic cares, consecrated to the sole

service of the Church and of religion,

organized in a true and stringent hier-

archy which is moved like a splendid

mechanism by the touch of the Primate

at New York. The surface of the State

is mapped out into nearly seven hun-

dred parishes, comprised in the arch-

diocese of New York, and the dioceses

of Brooklyn, Albany, Rochester, and

Buffalo. Nor is the parochial organiza-

tion of any one of these numerous divi-

sions deemed complete until it includes,

besides all needful lands, buildings, and

equipments for proper religious uses, a

whole educational system of free-schools

for boys and girls, and select schools for

such as can pay a price for a better

commodity, sufficient in capacity, if not

in excellence, to enable the entire Cath-

olic population to dispense with such

provision as the State may make for

the instruction of youth. Into these

schools are gathered, for an education

VOL. iv.—51

at least untainted by the reading of the

Protestant Bible, not many less than a

hundred thousand children. Of institu-

tions of a higher order, whether for edu-

cational, benevolent, sanatory, or strict-

ly religious purposes, whether called

asylums, hospitals, colleges, academies,

or convents, the number approaches, if

it does not pass, one hundred and fifty,

many of them established on a vast

scale, and endowed with splendid mu-

nificence. Of the money value of this

enormous landed estate, owned as it is

for the most part in fee-simple by one

or another of five ecclesiastics under no

accountability for their ownership to

any civil tribunal, no computation bet-

ter than a conjecture can easily be

made. The “ Catholic Directory ”

which has furnished imperfectly the

preceding data, is silent, for whatever

reason, upon this point. If, however,

we consider the great average size of

the churches, built as they are for the

finest effects of a stately ceremonial, as

compared with the mere preaohing-

houses of the Protestant sects : the

value of the well-chosen building-sites

in New York and the other cities, and

the immense costliness of the cathedrals

and greater churches
;

if we add in

almost every parish, the ground and

buildings of the parochial and other

schools
;
if we roughly guess the value

of the Provincial Seminary at Troy, of

St. John’s College at Fordham, of the

Sisters’ Academy at Yonkers, of St.

Mary’s Hospital at Rochester, of St.

Patrick’s Orphan Asylum on Fifth and

Madison Avenues
;
we may well assume

that $40,000 would be a low average

for churches, and $20,000 for other in-

stitutions
;
and upon such a basis the

aggregate worth of all this property

must reach from thirty to fifty millions

of dollars. ‘Whether such an endow-

ment, exclusive of all sources of annual

revenue by public largess or otherwise,

is adequate or not for the established

Church of a State of five millions, is a

question for the future.*

* The total “subvention,” in the year 1844, to

the Catholic Church in Prance (population, 35,000-

000, almost exclusively Catholic), from the nation-



^0 Putnam’s Magazine. [July,

Such, then, are the numbers, the high

organization, the hierarchical force of

this great body
;
such too, and out of

all proportion to the poverty of its

members and the recency of its growth,

its vast corporate wealth. That the

Church should grow in numbers was

but the plain and direct result of a series

of physical causes,—the construction
of our great public works, beginning

with the Erie Canal, to attract the most

faithful children of the Church
;

the

Irish famine to expel them
;

the mis-

government of many German States,

driving hither their population. That

the growing Church should be provided

in a reasonable degree with priests,

teachers, and places for Church service,

in spite of the extreme poverty of most

of its members, would have followed

from a less earnest zeal than they have

commonly shown. But this magnificent

expansion of solid wealth out of abject

penury calls for some clearer illustration.

Perhaps we may add our farthing-can-

dle’s ray of light.

Hardly sixty years ago the slender

*il treasury, departments, and communes was $9,-

000,000.

The entire endowment of the Irish Church, so

soon to be disestablished, for a population of near-

ly 6,000,000, is valued at .£17,000,000, or $85,000,-

000
;
which includes, however, in addition to the

olasses of property mentioned above, the value

of certain bountiful sources of revenue, capitalized

upon the basis of twenty years’ purchase. But

the disproportionately splendid endowment of

the Irish Church has been one of the chief grounds

of Catholic and dissenting complaint.

The reports of various charitable institutions to

the comptroller of the State, in 1868, show the fol-

lowing valuation of property owned by those

named, over and above their indebtedness. There

is no reason to believe that any of the institutions

has over-estimated its own property :

Homan Catholic Orphan .Asylum,

Brooklyn $161,231.43

Homan Catholic Orphan Asylum,

New York 235,000.00

St. Joseph’s Asylum, New York.... 127,000.00

Society for the Protection of Roman

Catholic Children, New York.. . . 205,760.09

St. May’s Hospital, Rochester 197,912.25

That agreeable writer, Mr. James Parton, in his

sympathetic paper in the Atlantic Monthly for

April, 1868,' is of the opinion that “Our Roman

Catholic Brethren ” own $50,000,000 worth of lands

and buildings in the diocese of New York alone.
This diocese includes only the southern comer of

the State, up to the 42d degree of latitude, and ex-

cludes Long Island. Mr. Parton appears to have

had access to excellent sources of information.

Catholic community of the Northern

States was deemed important enough

to require the services of three bishops,

who were thereupon established at Bos-

ton, New York, and Philadelphia. But
such became, before many years, the

effective operation of the physical causes

just specified, that when half that time

had passed, the number of adult males,

of inferior intelligence, but devoted

with enthusiasm to the Church, and

obedient to its clergy with the docility

of an ardent faith, had increased so that

their influence upon public affairs, un-

der a system which allots the same

quantity of political power to the brut-

ish man as to the enlightened, was worth

considering. Nor were there wanting

managers of public affairs quick to dis-

cern the uses of this instrument, if only

they might get their hands upon the

lever that controlled it. The way

seemed shoit and plain. Of two great

parties, one seemed made to attract,

without effort and by its very nature,

the suffrages of an alien class, of an ab-

ject caste, and of a Church largely held

in disfavor and apprehension
;

for it

made ostentatious and sonorous profes-

sion of its indifference to all such cir-

cumstances as qualifying the one essen-

tial fact of humanity. It was rather to

the leaders of the other party, which in-

cluded great numbers of those who

looked askance upon alienage, lowness

of degree, and Catholicity, that it

seemed needful to win such votes by

substantial evidences of good-will.

There arose, therefore, a generous com-

petition. What Democrats were ready

to do, out of the broadness of their

avowed principles, for this half-outcast

body, Whig managers were eager to do

by way of disclaiming the narrow pre-

judices confessed by thousands of their

followers. If Democrats were content

to acquiesce in whatever condition of

affairs should be accomplished by the

popular will, Whig statesmen recog-

nized the duty of foreseeing the inevi-

table, and of assisting it. If all the

efforts they put forth to this end, de-

voted and effective as they were—if the
relations of subservient amity which tne



1869.] Cue Established Oiiuech. 21

chief of these prescient managers had

maintained for a generation, through

much contumely, with that eminent

prelate who governed the Church in

New York—resulted in no great profit
to them or their party, it may help to

show that an instinctive affinity is

stronger than that gratitude which is

merely a sense of benefits already con-

ferred.

Not far from the year 1847, the dili-

gent explorer of our annual statutes

will find, almost for the first time, a

few donations for charitable purposes

quietly stowed away in the depths of

the “ Act-making appropriations for the

support of the government ” for the

current year. Here and there also be-

gin to appear special statutes for like

purposes
;

as for example, the Act in

1849 (chap. 279), appropriating $9,000

of money raised by general tax to the

Hospital of the Sisters of Charity, in

Buffalo. From this point, however, the

honorable rivalry of parties was pro-

ducing a like result to that which at-

tends the not dissimilar emulation of a

public auction. The bids rose one above

another with a boldness which possibly

was not diminished by the fact that

the bidders were offering what did not

belong to them. From year to year,

more and larger benefactions of this

class were found necessary t© “ the sup-

port of the government,” until in 1866

they had multiplied sufficiently to be

collected into a district “ Charity Bill,”

which has been annually enacted ever

since, as solicitously as if, like the Eng-

lish Mutiny Act, all our liberties de-

pended upon it. At the same time, and

by a movement almost precisely paral-

lel, the yearly statute-book has been en-

cumbered annually to a greater degree

with the enactments which authorize

the one for the city of New York, the

other for the precisely conterminous

county, the levy of such sums as the

State deems adequate for municipal

government, and which prescribe the

general objects for which they may be

expended. Exactly in like manner,

there begin to be discovered in these

“Tax Levy” bills, considerably less

than twenty years ago, the same germs

which have fructified so bountifully in

the general “ Charity Bill ” for the State

at large. By virtue of the enactment

last mentioned the State paid out dur-

ing the year 1866, for benefactions un-

der religious control, $129,025.49. Of

this a Jewish society received $2,484.-

32
;
four organizations of the Protestant

sects had $2,367.03
;
while the trifling

balance of $124,174.14 went to the re-

ligious purposes ©f the Establishment.

Looking, by way of variety, at the fol-

lowing year for data regarding the

strictly municipal gifts for like pur-

poses, we find from the last report of

the Comptroller of the city that during

1867 there was paid to Catholic eccle-

siastical institutions the sum of near

$200,000, aside from what may lie hid-

den in a vast total of more than a mill-

ion, of which the details can be found

only in the report of the “ Department

of Publie Charities and Correction.”

While there are other benefactions in

the list, hardly any are for objects hav-

ing even remotely a religious character,

and not one for a sectarian object. And

if the proportion thus indicated holds

good in the State and civic gratuities

of 1868, which exceeds, we can hardly

say by how much, the princely sum of

half a million,* it must be conceded

that the Church is in a fair way of ob-

taining its own, with, perhaps, a trifle

of what others might lay some claim

to.

But these figures do not fully indi-

cate the favor with which the Church

has been treated by her children in

official station, cooperated with as they

have been by the well-disposed outside

the fold.f The city of New York has

certain great corporate possessions,

* The State Comptroller reports as paid by the

State alone last year, to “ Orphan Asylums, &o.,”

$141,328.84, and adds that this sum is exclusive of

$201,000 appropriated by the “ Charity Bill.”

t It is in view of the constant disposition of our

civil State to deal kindly and even generously by

The Church that we cannot but deprecate, as need-

lessly irritating to non-Catholic citizens, and serv-

ing no useful purpose to the Church, such utter-

ances as the following from the leading Church

newspaper ofthis city. Speaking of a railroad bill

lately pending before the Hew York Legislature,

which would have necessitated the removal of St.



Putnam’s Magazine.22

which, if not downright wealth to the

owner under the management they have

received, contain at least, like Mrs.

Thrale’s brewery, “ tho potentiality of

wealth, beyond the dreams of avarice,”

30 far as such dreams had expanded in

Dr. Johnson’s time. Sad stories have

been hinted from time to time within

these few years past, of something like

scoundrclism in dealing with and get-

Peter’s Church, Barclay Street, the New York

Tablet says, in a recent number

:

“We will only say that the first stone of St. Pe-
ter’s Church taken down by a railroad would, in

our opinion, inaugurate such riots as New York

has not yet seen. This we shy by way of solemu

warning. Let the speculators try it, and they will

find what we say is true. St. Peter’s Church on

Barclay Street shall not be desecrated. That time-

honored fabric must stand. If the Catholics of

New York cannot protect St. Peter’s Church, and

preserve it for coming generations of their brethren,

they can do nothing. None would deplore more

than we any disturbances, or tumult, in this or

any other city
;
but we say, and say again, that an

unnecessary railroad shall not run where the most

dear and sacred of sanctuaries stands, while there

are Catholics in New York to prevent such a dese-

cration.”

Now no one whose memory reaches back to the

last year or two of the administration of our late

Archbishop will have the hardihood to question

the power of the ecclesiastical authorities to sum-

mon, at a single word a most ferocious mob, in

front of the archiepiscopal palace. And it is not

to be doubted that the silent consciousness in the

minds of the public and of the authorities, that

this tremendous power is held in leash every mo-

ment by our ecclesiastical rulers, does its part in

securing ready acquiescence in the wishes of the

Church. But we point to the unbroken record of

public legislation and administration in favor of all

Church interests, as an argument for adhering to

peaceful processes so long as these accomplish all

that every reasonable friend of our Establishment

can ask. We plead with our Catholic fellow-citi-
zen against the use of needless menaces that only

mortify the honorable pride, and exasperate the

feelings of a weaker party. Surely the events of

1863, are a sufficient warning that the sensitive

feelings of our Catholic public are not to be trifled

with
;
and those events are not so easily forgotten

that the lesson of them requires to be enforced

with threats. The power of the mob and the riot,

has, perhaps, been providentially placed in the

hands of the Church, in this unbelieving time and

nation, as the natural substitute for those more

spiritual weapons—the interdict and the excommu-

nication which seem to have lost something of their

ancient virtue. But this power should be held in

reserve as the ultima ratio of the Church. There

can be no good, and may be great harm, in thus

drawing it unnecessarily from the armory of the

Church, and brandishing it in the face of an un-

offending and compliant public. The idea, in the

present case, that a railroad ring, however wealthy

and adroit, could 6tand up, in the Albany lobby,

against the influence of the Established clergy, is

too absurd for comment.

[July,

ting rid of these vast properties,—the
ferries, docks, markets, and various

blocks and tracts of land,—on the part
of the New York government. It is
not for us to sit in judgment upon those

functionaries, nor to conjecture how

much of the municipal property, so far

from having stolen, they have, with the

high virtue of those who let not their

left hand know what their right hand

doeth—who “ do good by stealth, and
blush to find it fame ”—quietly devoted
to the pious uses of the Church. But

the last Comptroller’s report contains,

with regard to certain of the real estate

which yet remains on the island of Man-

hattan, some interesting avowals, by

which the city government is willing to

let its light so shine before men that

they may see its works, and glorify its

father, which is—no matter where. In
the schedule of city property subject to

payment of ground-rent (pp. 166-169,)

we find that the premises on “ 51st Street

and Lexington Avenue ” are leased to

the (Catholic) Nursery and Child’s

Hospital
;
that the lease is dated April

1, 1857, is perpetual, and for the annual

rent of One Dollar, which was three

years in arrear. That the property on

“ 81st and 82d Streets and Madison

Avenue ” is leased to the “ Sisters of

Mercy

;

51
that the lease (the date of

which is not given), is perpetual
,
and

the annual rent One Dollar, which,

however, had been paid until within

two years of the report. That the land

on “ 51st and 52d Streets, Fourth and

Fifth Avenues,” was leased April 1,

1857, to “ The Roman Catholic Orphan

Asylum,” perpetually
,

for the annual

rent of One Dollar. This sum, how-

ever, it is gratifying to observe, has

been fully paid to the end of 1867.

Upon some part of this property, or

upon another tract held by a like title

and upon similar terms, is in course of

erection the new St. Patrick’s Cathe-

dral, which is intended to be worthy

of its proud rank of metropolitan

church of this great commonwealth.*

* It is pleasant to find Mr. Parton, in the Jtlan-

tic for April, 1868, extolling the foresight of the

late Archbishop Hughes in buying this tract at a



1869.] Our Established Church. 23

From estimates of those competent to

appraise land in New York, it appears

that these blocks alone are worth not

less than $3,000,000 * It may be con-

cluded, therefore, that the city would

get the worth of this property, if it ap-

plied every payment upon the principal,

asking nothing for interest, in about

one million years.

Thus increasingly munificent in their

provision for the maintenance of a

church-establishment have been the rul-

ers of an American State, during a gen-

eration noted for the fiercest onslaughts,

in other lands, upon the sacred institu-

tions of antiquity, and in which scoffers

have pretended to discover more “ spir-

itual wickedness ” than pure spiritual-

ity in the “high places” of politics.

In so extraordinary a ratio, too, has

this devout allotment of the public

revenues increased, that what in 1849

was but about $13,000 and that given

but grudgingly, is grown to not far

from $500,000, in 1868, bestowed with

the frank generosity of those who give

of others’ goods. If some crabbed rus-

tic, the slowness of whose toilsome gains

begets a narrow curiosity concerning the

manner of disposing of them, or whose

sectarian jealousy sets him against the

Church of the Commonwealth, shall

reckon that this rate of increase, far be-

yond the increase of the Church, will

bring the annual gift to $10,000,000 in

1918, and to $80,000,000 in 1968, we

need only smile at his hedge-philoso-

phy. It i3 quite enough that these

benefactions should continue upon the

scale they have now reached for a few

years longer. Every year the Church

gains upon the sects. The generation

in which we are proud to be numbered,

assumes the burden of the ages. When

our children are men and women, the

State, perhaps, will have done giving

to the Church
;
perhaps it will have be-

time when otter purchasers would not. But a

willingness to risk one dollar a year for a block of

lots on Fifth. Avenue, any time within fifteen

years, could hardly have been deemed a wild pas-

sion for speculation.

The article referred to, and its successor in the

Atlantic for May, we may be permitted to cite pas-
sim, as pieces justijicatives for this paper.

* Probably this is much below the present value.

gun soliciting from the Church instead.

And the wild reaction of irreligion

which seems to be sweeping on as it

has before over Christendom—the spirit
which at different times has driven

even from every Catholic country the

Society of Jesus itself—should it then
reach this favored commonwealth, will

find the Church with all its agencies,

too strongly entrenched in the benefac-

tions of these years to be dislodged.

No State-Church, it may fairly be

said, fulfils the whole duty of its posi-

tion, which fails to grasp and superin-

tend the whole system of education.

No graver charge can be brought

against the Church of Ireland or the

Church of England than that with the

enormous means at their disposal, they

have suffered such vast populations to

be born, grow old, and die, in the dead-

ly darkness of ignorance that envelops

them from the cradle to the coffin. The

Church of New York, however its ene-

mies may malign it, will be free from

this sin. So far has it been conscious

of the duty, that it has not been con-

tent that the thing was done, unless

done by itself. The State was manag-

ing the matter in its own rude way.

Pretending, it is true, to exclude sec-

tarian teachings, it yet required the

Bible, which, when unaccompanied by

suitable comments, is confessedly a sec-

tarian book, to be read in its schools.

No better proof was needed that the

Church could not abdicate its duty.

Its efforts were, therefore, two-fold. It

sought to exclude sectarianism from

the public schools
;

it sought also to

make schools of its own which should

compete with the public ones, be main-

tained with the public money without

being responsible to the public, and in

time render the State schools superflu-

ous. That it does not lose sight of the

former object in the vast success of the

latter may be seen by observing the

names of candidates, at every municipal

election, for the Board of Education.

If an inborn reserve has kept back from

other positions the Celtic adherents of

the dominant faith, duty or skillful or-

ganisation crowds them into these can*



24 Putnam’s Magazine.

dietaries, if possible upon both the op-

posing tickets. But the grand and

ultimate object of its efforts is to make

schools of its own which shall crowd

out by degrees the public schools, until

the universality, which is the sole justi-

fication of the present scheme of public

education, shall palpably appear a mere

pretence of which common honesty must

demand the suppression
;
and in this

object, dearest to the Church’s heart,

she has received the most efficient aid

from aliens, and even from enemies.

The frantic Protestantism which, when

Protestants were stronger than now and

Catholics fewer, screamed itself hoarse

with demands that the schools should

be Protestant or nothing, because Pro-

testantism was right and “ Romanism ”

was wrong, and because it was the duty

of the majority to educate according to

its convictions, has furnished all the ar-

guments the Church can ask for, now

that it is about attaining its majority,

for demanding that the common schools

shall be Catholic or nothing. And when

that point is reached, if discussion shall

be in order, the mouths of the ultra

Protestants at least will be stopped

with their own hot words. Nor did

they less, when the combat was first

opening, furnish the occasion for the

aspiring politicians, of whom we have

already spoken, to concede in the name

of fairness and equity the preliminary

requirements of the Catholics. That

illustrious Whig who maintained per

tot disemmina the serenity of his friend-

ship with the Archbishop of New

York, little as the Archbishop could

perusade his friends to vote for Whig

candidates, deserves the honor of having

led the slow movement of events. If

they have reached his early advance

only after the lapse of thirty years, they

have yet followed him as truly as the

ultimate overthrow of the rebellion suc-

ceeded, after four years, his famous and

successive predictions that it was to

come “ in ninety days.”

In the annual Message, which ush-

ered in the year 1839, Governor Seward

is found speaking with great tender-

ness of our fellow-citizens of foreign

[July,

birth. “ We must secure to them,” he
says, “ as largely as we ourselves enjoy,

the immunities of religious worship.

And we should act no less wisely for our-

selves, than generously toward them,

by establishing schools in which their chil-

dren shall enjoy advantages of education

equal to our own, with free toleration

of their peculiar creeds and instructions.”

If the hardness of his people’s hearts in

1839 forbade their acting at once upon

counsel that was too “ advanced ” for

them, he was not dissuaded from re-

peating it in the Message of 1840.

“ The children of foreigners * * *

are too often deprived of the advan-

tages of our system of public education,

in consequence of prejudices arising

from difference of language or religion.

* * * I do not hesitate, therefore, to

recommend the establishment of schools

in which they may be instructed by

teachers speaking the same language

with themselves and professing the same

faith. * * * Occasions seldom of-

fer for a trial of our magnanimity by

committing that trust [of education] to

persons differing from ourselves in lan-

guage or religion.”' As magnanimity is

a virtue of the powerful, it may safely

be said that there will be even less fre-

quent occasion henceforth than when

Mr. Seward was Governor, for its exer-

cise by the Protestants of New York.

In 1841 and 1842, it is evident from

the tones of the Messages that the pub-

lic had shown itself unworthy of such

a leader. The rhetorical fervor which

distinguished even those early State-

papers of the since renowned Premier,

glows and coruscates as before from be-

ginning to end, through facts and fig-

ures, statements of finance, canals, and

commerce, the past, the present, and the

future
;
but the easy confidence of man-

ner is wanting in the paragraphs which

relate to the establishment of Roman

Catholic schools. At great length the

good Governor deprecates the criticism

which he has evidently incurred, and

defends his innocent proposal against

what seem to have been violent attacks.

He had suggested nothing worse than

“ employing for their instruction teach-



1869.] Our Established Church. 25

ers, who, from their relations toward

them, might be expected to secure their

confidence.” For himself, he “in-

dulged no apprehensions from the influ-

ence of any language or creed among

an enlightened people.” “ To me (lie

continues), the most interesting of all

our republican institutions is the Com-

mon School. I seek not to disturb, in

any manner, its peaceful and assiduous

exercises, and, least of all, with conten-

tions about faith or forms.”

To what degree this vehement effort

of the Church, with such helpers as

these to become independent of State

education, has hitherto been successful,

may be judged from the data already

given, as well as from the stately edi-

fices which in the parishes of every city,

rival or surpass the grandeur of the

State’s school-houses. Nor does the

Church longer stand, as once it did, in

the attitude (well as the attitude be-

comes Christ’s poor), of a mendicant at

the door of the State-House, asking for

gratuities toward the support of its

separate schools. It has already estab-

lished by action in the Supreme Court

the clear legal right of its orphan asy-

lums, numerous as they are, and lib-

eral as they are in the degree of be-

reavement required for admission to

their scholastic privileges, to an equal

participation in all moneys raised by

taxation for school purposes in the

State, in proportion to their number

of pupils.* It remains to be seen

whether so baleful a result will ensue

from this recent decision as was pro-

duced in Louisiana many years ago

by a humane enactment forbidding the

separation of slave children under five

years of age from their parents. The

number of colored orphans of less than

that tender age daily advertised for

sale in the New Orleans papers was
such as might have appalled a humani-

tarian who did not know the state of

the law.

Thus having begun with the demand

that public schools be made rigorously

secular
;
having then obtained that sec-

* St. Patrick's Orphan Asylum vs. Board of Ed-
ucation, Rochester.

tarian schools be supported by the State,

the only remaining step toward com-

plete ecclesiasticism in education is

now vehemently urged, that all secular

schools shall be abolished as mere sem-

inaries of atheism. Then, and then

only, in the view of The Catholic World,

for May, 1888, will public education be

put upon its true ground
;

* the ground

upon which so much has been done foi

universal education in Italy and Spain,

and from which that service has been

lately dislodged with violence in Aus-

tria and France. The demand here, in

short, is exactly what it is in Ireland,

where, as well as here, a timid Protes-

tant minority is trying to make what

terms it can. What some one says of

the attitude of the Irish Catholic bish-

ops toward Mr. Gladstone and his min-

istry, might be said as correctly of the

position of our New York Church.
“ The educational question is still plain-

ly one of the rocks ahead, as the bish-

ops insist on the public schools being

divided amongst the different religious

denominations, or, at all events, on

having a certain proportion of them, or

of the educational funds, handed over

to the Catholic clergy
;
in other words,

they seek what they seek here, and

would like to get everywhere, but what

every government in Europe, even in

Catholic countries, now denies them.”

Nor is the step a long or a difficult

one which separates the actual condi-

tion of affairs from the one longed for

as an ultimate settlement. Even while

we write, the Bill which shall do the

business, having been maturely consid-

ered by the Committee of the Senate on

“ Charitable and Religious Societies,”

has been reported favorably to that

body. Its first section, which contains

its substance is a simple provision that

“ Whenever there shall be or has been

established and maintained in any city

of this State any free school or schools

in which not less than two hundred

children have been or are taught and

educated gratuitously it shall be the

* See also an article in the American Educational

Monthly, for January, 1869, on “ TLs Oatholio View

of Ednoation in the United Statea.”



26 Putnam’s Magazine. [July,

duty of such city or of the Board of

Supervisors of the county of which such

city is a whole or a part, to make pro-

vision from year to year for the ex-

penses of such school or schools.”

It is not as deep as a well, nor as wide

as a door
;
but it is enough. Only let

it pass, and what the Church asks for

in vain in Ireland, what it has had

wrested from it in Austria and Italy, it

will have once and forever in New

York. Perhaps it will not pass—at
this session

;
but the Church can bide

her time. In some not distant year

parties may not be so. adjusted in the

Legislature as now. When the day

comes it may well be believed that the

discrimination which provided in the

last Senate that this particular commit-

tee should contain a majority of Cath-

olics, small as was their minority in the

Senate
;
which has provided in the pres-

ent Senate that a majority should be

made up of Catholics and certain allies

of the Protestant name who are ready to

maintain the great system of Catholic

schools by public largess, on condition

that their own- little scheme of sectarian

education may nibble at the crumbs that

fall from their master’s table
;
that such

discrimination will see that the inter-

ests of religion are cared for. And

whatever may be the difficulty and ex-

pense of passing the bill, it will be

harder yet to repeal it.

It might, perhaps, be worth while, if

any one should prefer mere superficial

or external signs of supremacy, to notice

a few such as may be found in the city

of New York itself. Not many a State-

Church in the present age imposes the

test of membership as a condition to

holding civil office. The Church in

Austria does not
;
in England it has not

for forty years
;

in France not for

eighty. It does not yet in New York.

How near it comes to it may be partly

guessed by any one who will look over

a list of New York elective officers with

the discriminating sense of him who

“ knew the stranger was an American

from his name, O’Flaherty.” If the in-

ference from nationality should be

deemed illusive, because not all Irish-

men are Catholics, let it be remembered

that the Catholics who are not Irish

will far more than make such an error

good. Such researches would show a

judiciary adorned with the names of

Shandley, Conolly, Hogan, and Dennis

Quinn, and would lead us into very

green fields of nomenclature
;
but some

one else has prepared, from better data

than mere names, the following summary

of Irish office-holders as they were at

the end of 1868 :

Sheri ff,

Register,

Comptroller,

City Chamberlain,

Corporation Counsel,

Police Commissioner,

President of the Croton Board,

Acting Mayor and President of the

Board of Aldermen,

President of the Board of Council-

men,

Clerk of the Common Council,

Clerk of the Board of Councilmen,

President of the Board of Supervi-

sors,

Five Justices of the Courts of Record,

All the Civil Justices,

All but two of the Police Justices,

All the Police Court Clerks,

Three out of four Coroners,

Two Members of Congress,

Three out of five State Senators,

Eighteen out of twenty-one Members

of Assembly,

Fourteen-nineteenths of the Common

Council, and

Eight-tenths of the Supervisors.

Nor would even a tabular statement

of office-holders, however complete, ful-

ly illustrate the influence of Our Church

upon politics, unless it could include

also all those non-Catholic officers or

candidates, from Justices of the Supreme

Court down—or up—who find it to
their interest to be liberal contributors

to Catholic charities or building-

funds, or promptly-paying pew-owners

in one or more Catholic churches.* So

far does the Church permit its favorite

* “ Our Roman Catholic Brethren, * who fur-

nished Mr. Parton with his data, have slily men-

tioned to him this source of support. See his papers.



1869.] Oue Established Chtjeoh. 27

dogma of justification by works to ex-

tend, even to those whose words frankly

deny the faith.

Nor do the officers of this great mu-

nicipality, whether of the Church, or

merely chosen by the Church trusting

in their fidelity, fail in any way to ad-

minister its affairs entirely to the

Church’s satisfaction. We have seen

already something of the open-handed-

ness which has bestowed millions in

value of the best lands belonging to the

city in perpetuity upon the dominant

Church. Not less faithfully are the

minor details of civic government con-

ducted in recognition of the broad

space which separates the sects from

the Establishment. The Mayor, Aider-

men, and Common Council might, in-

deed, be grieved, should Dr. Adams of

Madison Square, or Bishop Potter, or

Dr. Thompson of the Tabernacle, yield

to our common destiny
;
but their offi-

cial tears may flow only upon such an

occasion as Archbishop Hughes’ death

;

his funeral only may be graced by the

corporate presence, in countless car-

riages, with rich profusion of gloves

and scarfs. They might well be pleased,

should a new Trinity, or a new Church

of the Covenant, prepare to raise its

graceful outlines in grander proportions,

in some new quarter
;

but their cere-

monial joy may only be expressed by

their presence when the corner-stone of

St.. Patrick’s Cathedral is laid upon soil

which the city has granted for the pur-

pose. As our rulers desire still to be

tolerant, the sects of dissent may yet

find their way to their temples, in such

quiet as the streets may chance to afford

them
;

but to those of the Establish-

ment alone can it be permitted to cover

the pavements of a Sunday with the

dense processions and the crashing

brazen music of an ecclesiastical cere-

mony, closing the most public thor-

oughfares to other circulation, forbid-

ding access to other churches that hap-

pen to be upon the route, and suspend-

ing, by their clangor and clamor, what-

ever services such churches may be en-

deavoring to conduct. It is true that

by the strict letter of our hitherto unad-

justed law such proceedings are not

technically permissible—as could, per-
haps, be practically ascertained by sta-

tioning a brass band at the door of St.

Stephen’s during high mass, with in-

structions to play “Boyne Water” for

an hour unless earlier interrupted
;
but

the authority which is above literal

law, is evinced by the squads of uni-

formed police which march before the

processions of the Establishment, and

clear the way of mere travellers. How

beautiful was that vindication of the

ascendency of religion over worldly

interest which was telegraphed over the

country on the night of March 17 ! It

had been St. Patrick’s day, the patron

saint of the commonwealth. A train
of religious devotees, so long as to re-

quire from one to two hours to pass in

unbroken column any point, commem-

orated the holy day by marching
;
and

nothing, it was announced, marred the

harmony of the occasion but the crime

of a carman who sought to cross the

enormous line, but was terribly beaten

by the police
,
so that this life was de-

spaired of. What can have tempted

the carman (who should in some way

be connected with the Secular Carmen

of the old Romans), to his outrage,

does not appear from the report of the

Associated Press. Perhaps, among the

thousands whom this vast column de-

tained from their engagement, whether

to take a train or a steamer, or to take

up a note at bank, or to call a physi-

cian, or to reach a death-bed, this

worldly-minded man deemed his duty

to his load of goods more important

than the rest. But the sharp discipline

that he incurred may well remind us

of the scourging of the money-changers,

and forbid us to despair of the republic

whose defenders enforce so ethereal a

spirituality even in the most tumultu-

ous scenes of worldly traffic.*

* They manage these tilings better—or at least
differently— in Catholic France. We translate
Art. 45 of the Organic Articles of the Convention

[with the Pope] of the 26th Messidor, Year IX. “ISTo

religious ceremony shall take place outside of the

edifices consecrated to the Catholic worship, in

places where there are temples eon secrated to dif-

ferent worships.”



28 Putnam’s Magazine. [July,

Thus, while state-religions have been

toppling, and tumbling all over Chris-

tendom
;
thus, in this nineteenth cen-

tury of materialism and rationalism,

have the people of this anciently Pro-

testant State been settling upon eternal

foundations the Holy Catholic Church.

Not wilfully or consciously
;

“they

builded better than they knew.” While

for the most part they were wishing,

perhaps, no good to the Church of

Rome, trusting, perhaps, to some in-

tangible, “ spirit of republicanism,” or to

some imaginary, non-existent constitu-

tional safeguard against establish-

ments,* they were in fact endowing it

with wealth from the public treasury

to an amount adequate to its new pro-

motion, to be held and administered

under circumstances of freedom and ir-

responsibility which might be envied in

the Vatican itself. In no European

country, we say it with some confidence,

has the clergy of a Catholic establish-

ment its hands more nearly closed upon

the whole system of public education

than here in New York. Nowhere in

Europe is the hierarchy of an establish-

ment appointed by the Papal See in

such absolute independence of the civil

government as here. Even in the ages

called “ dark,” monarchs have preferred

long and savage wars to submitting to

the appointment of bishops in their

own dominions in whose nomination

they had no voice, and at this day the

weakest sovereign would hardly endure

it from the boldest Pope.

But if there is one thing more than

another in which the Church in New

York may boast itself as favored be-

yond its sisters in any Christian land,

it is the tenure by which it holds its

temporalities— those worldly posses-
sions without which a Church might,

indeed, be spiritual, but could hardly

sustain its unequal conflict with carnal

* The Federal Constitution prohibits Congress

alone from making a “law respecting an establish-

ment of religion.” The constitution of New York
contains no such prohibitions, although it seeks to

secure “the free exercise and enjoyment of religious

profession and worship, without discrimination or

preference.” Dissent is similarly protected in

most European countries.

powers. In this tenure of its property,

more than in all else, does it find a

strong grasp upon its laity, an inde-

pendence of civic government which

defies interference, and a perpetuity

which, distinctly protected as it is by

the State law and even by Federal Con-

stitution, may laugh at threatened

change. Churches before have been

richer
;
but their wealth only tempted

spoliation by governments. Before

Henry VIH., the “ dead hand ” of eccle-

siastical corporations, in spite of mort-

main statutes, held half the acres in the

kingdom
;
but it was seen that a “ Re-

formation ” would be a way of unclasp-

ing the hand, and distributing the

wealth
;
and the “ Reformation ” came.

The Church deemed itself rich enough

in France, in 1789; in Italy, in 1849.

in 1859, even so late as 1866
;
in Spain,

in the year just passed. But in all

those countries it was possible for the

State, convulsed with a great idea and

a great necessity, to declare these vast

estates to be only entrusted to the

Church for the execution of certain

public duties of education or religious

instruction, and by legislative act to

assume at once the duties it judged to

have been ill-discharged, and the funds

devoted to their exercise. On the other

hand, in Massachusetts, the estates

which from antiquity had been dedi-

cated to the Congregational Churches

once by law established, were quietly

transferred in hundreds of cases, half a

century ago, to the teaching of an op-

posite faith, by the simple action of a

numerical majority in each parish in

favor of the change.

But against every one of these various

forms of assault our church property

here is protected by its tenure, the laws

of the State, and the Constitution of

the United States. There is in each

parish a “ Religious Society,” as it is

called in the statutes, with its board of

trustees and everything convenient for

holding property. But it holds none.

It has been a convenience for the pur-

pose of raising money
;

it serves still as

a convenient executive organization for

the performance of certain parochial



1869.] Oue Established Church. 29

business. The owner of the church, its

land, its parsonage, its school-houses,

and all its multiform accessories, is

the Bishop of the Diocese in which it

stands. Nor must it be fancied that he

owns it in an official character, such as

that of the “ corporations sole ” of the

English law
;
or in any legal sense as

trustee, expressly or by implication.

No freeholder owns his plot of ground

more absolutely in his own right, with-

out responsibility or liability to account

to any man therefor, than John McClos-

key owns the church-property in the

Arch-diocese of New York, or S. Y.

Ryan that in the Diocese of Buffalo.

It may well be that the long accumulat-

ing dimes of ten thousand believers have

bought the ground and reared the

splendid structure, while the convey-

ance is made to the single ecclesiastic

who is overseer of a hundred flocks

;

but if no trust be expressed in the

grant (and none ever is), none, by our

law, can be implied. So far as the laws

of this commonwealth affect the case,

the owner of these vast estates may to-

morrow sell the schools for cotton-fac-

tories, the churches for skating-rinks,

and invest the proceeds in the dry-

goods trade. Can a nobler tribute be

paid to the fidelity of these prelates,

than to cite the fact that the due ad-

ministration of these many millions of

property depends solely, without the

protection of law, upon their personal

honor, invigorated by some ecclesias-

tical discipline and a little private per-

suasion ?

The simplicity of this tenure may be

illustrated by an example of daily oc-

currence. A congregation of poor Ger-
mans in the western) part of this State,

having expended $50,000 in buying

iand and building upon it a large and

beautiful church, desired to borrow the

small balance necessary for its entire

completion. Its priest, accordingly,

makes the formal application to a Sav-

ings Bank. The abstract of title pre-

sented for approval to the legal adviser

of the Bank, shows the various parcels

composing the tract centreing at last in

one John Timon, who is known extrin-

sically, though nothing on the record

shows it, to have been Catholic Bishop

of Buffalo. Next appears the will of

John Timon, devising all his property

to one John Loughlin. So John Lough-

lin, who happens to be Bishop of

Brooklyn, executes alone a mortgage

upon the land and buildings to the

Savings Bank; and no doubt before

this has delivered to Timon’s succes-

sor a quit-claim deed of all his vast

estates in western New York, or else

has executed a will which, like Bishop

Timon’s, transfers all his property at

his death to some other prelate, and

saves it from the doubtful orthodoxy

of those who might have been his law-

ful heirs.

We have not spoken of the trifling
part in this transaction played by the

“ trustees ” of the corporation. Under

the Act of 1863, which is one of the

latest steps taken in the legalization of

our State hierarchy, the function of

trustees so nearly disappears, that it

may safely be eliminated from the argu-

ment.

When we mention that provision of

the organic law of the United States

(Art. 1, Sec. 10, subd. 1,) wffiich pro-

hibits the interference with rights

which have accrued under- such ar-

rangements as these, it becomes evident

that the Church has nothing to fear

either from wild spoliation as under

Henry VIII., or from disestablishment

on grounds of expediency as in the

countries just named. Until a revolu-

tion which shall shatter the defences

of the national Constitution, no earthly

sovereignty has power to lay a finger

upon her splendid endowments
;
while

her security against the insidious

growth of heresy within her fold,

against such internal change as in Mas-

sachusetts made the ancient churches

Unitarian, and in New York has made

so many Congregational churches Pres-

byterian, is no less complete. As the

parish owns nothing, the majority or

the totality of the parish can be of no

more avail in directing the use of

church property than the fly that buzz-

es about the altar-candles. Outsiders,



30 Putnam’s Magazine. [July,

aliens to this Israel, look on with a cer-

tain interest at such an insurrection

against Episcopal authority as took

place the other day at Auburn. But

how can the result of such conflicts,

however violent or prolonged, be other

than it has already been in that “ Holy

Family ” Church—now once more a
Happy Family—submission and obe-
dience ? *

Since the main question seems to be

settled upon this basis, it may naturally

be asked, in the language of a New

York ecclesiastic to some earnest Pro-

testant who had murmured against the

actual state of things, “ What do you

propose to do about it ? ” Clearly,

every citizen, whether he fancies it or

not, is bound to ask himself the ques-

tion, and to find an answer. We do
not seek to supply the answer. We
would barely suggest that many things

yet remain, in our institutions, usages,

and laws, that are the product of a dif-

ferent state of things and are incongru-

ous with the present, and need modi-

fication and adjustment to fit the change

of circumstances. Whether it might

be worth while, in the absence of any

existing power having the interest and

the ability to counter-balance the power

of the Church—one of the greatest and
most useful labors of monarchs in every

other Christian land—to set up some

* The inhabitants of a certain French rural com-

mune, not many years ago, from Catholics became

for the most part, by a common movement, Pro-

testants. The church-property was at once trans-

ferred to them by the government, for Protestant

service. Whatever change of opinion might oc-

cur in New York, the church might defy such

an outrage against its rights of property. But if

a Pro+estant congregation should (or a majority

of it), tarn Catholic, the transfer would be easy

and rapid.

other sovereignty than that of the im-

personal “ people,” is a question upon

which our friends of the “ Imperialist ”

newspaper, and very likely a good

many zealous Protestants, might hold

the affirmative. Our own judgment

would be that it is too late for any

such expedient
;
and our only sugges-

tions would relate to minor matters.

It would no doubt be suitable, for ex-

ample, if not necessary, that the su-

premacy of the Church should be recog-

nized in our legal holidays. It would

not be difficult to observe the 17tli of

March, dear as it is to the heart of New

York, and cease the cold and perfunc-

tory celebration of the 22d of February.

It is already demanded that the State

and National Thanksgiving shall be

annually appointed for the 8th of De-

cember, which is the Feast of the “ Im-

maculate Conception of the Blessed

Virgin Mary,” being “ the Patronal

Feast of the United States.” Such

things may be trifles
;
but difference in

trifles produces discord
;

and discord

is enmity and war. “ A house divided
against itself cannot stand.” Even

those who find it impossible to reconcile

themselves to the new order of things as

desirable, may yet see the necessity of

deferring to it as actual and irreversi-

ble. While one large class of our citi-

zens is rejoicing over the momentous

but peaceful revolution of which we

have been the dispassionate historian,

can the other and dissatisfied class do

better than lay to their own hearts the

advice which they have lavished upon

the subjugated citizens of the rebellious

States, and since the change is an ao

complished fact, accommodate them-

selves with alacrity to their new rela-

tions, and make the best of it ?



POSTSCRIPT.

Since this article was printed, a more diligent examination of the “ Tax Levy Bills ” for

the city of New York, just passed by the State Legislature, discovers a provision for further

aid to the Established Church of New York, which calls forth, from the friends of the Catho-

lic religion, the most devout gratitude to the Providence that guides and overrules the move-

ments of legislative bodies, but which has excited, among the enemies of the Church, an

amount of vain rage and gnashing of teeth which it is painful to contemplate. A conscious-
ness of the strength of their position, however, enables our State Clergy, in peaceful disre-

gard of this foolish clamor, serenely to draw on the treasury for these truly magnificent

donations, and sing the quare fremuerunt gentes. The provision is in the form of a clause

providing for the distribution among certain private schools in this city of a portion of the

general school-moneys which will amount, it is estimated, to a quarter of a million or more.

It is understood that among the schools thus handsomely provided for, there is but an insig-

nificant number that are not “ sound upon ” what is coming to be considered “ the main

question.” This munificence occurred in “ the tail of the session,” as the most important

part of the legislative term is called. There are those who, in their paltry sectarian jealousy

at this noble act of religious generosity on the part of our imperial State, do not blush to

cay that if it had come to light earlier in the session, it would have been prevented from

passing. That this danger should have been escaped, and that this important measure

should, so to speak, have dropped into the legislature just at the only moment when it could

have passed, is only one in the long chain of wonderful and mysterious providences which

have attended the -whole course of legislation, by which the legal establishment and public

endowment of religion in our happy commonwealth has been so peacefully effected.



82 Putnam’s Magazine. [Dec..

THE UNESTABLISHED CHURCH.

An anonymous writer in the July

number of this Magazine, in an article

on “ Our Established Church,” which

attracted no little public attention and

comment, both favorable and unfavor-

able, was suffered to celebrate the Roman

Catholic Church as substantially the

Church by law established in this State

of New York; to illustrate the munifi-

cence of its governmental endowments,

and to glorify its quiet political suprem-

acy. Admiring, apparently, as well the

dazzling successes of that vigorous body

in this commonwealth, as the shining

qualities and the prudent measures

which have achieved success, this pre-

suming writer has sought to proclaim

upon the house-tops what the Church

would fain have continued to enjoy

uncriticised in cloistered seclusion. So

averse is the apostolic spirit, from

Peter, the first Pope, down through

Gregory VII. and Innocent III. and Leo

X., and all the gentle category, to a

bald ostentation where the welfare of

the Church is not to be advanced by it,

that we might well have guessed that

so zealous an advocate was but a vol-

unteer whose client would soon step

forward into the forum, disclaim his

authority, and decline to be concluded

by his facts or arguments.

Precisely this is what has occurred.

The Church of which this contributor

assumed to write has other ways of

expressing itself than through anon-

ymous writers in journals not avow-

edly Catholic
;
and it has promptly and

efficiently spoken to disavow the pre-

tensions which he has put forth for

it, and to denounce him with some por-

tion of the severity which he seems to

have deserved. We herein undertake
to show, from the highest Catholic

authority, how great were the errors of

the article entitled “ Our Established

Church,” published in this Magazine last

July. We may premise, too, that out

of much concurrent and competing tes-

timony, we select our refutation mainly

from two sources
:

(1). The letter which

the Bishop of Rochester (we are almost

compelled to add in partibus ivfidelium
,

from his statement of the position the

Church occupies), addressed to a local

newspaper, and through it

—

urbi et orbi

—to that city and the world
;

and

(2.) The Catholic World for August, in

its leading article, entitled, like the

paper to which it was a reply, but appar-

ently, unlike that, in an ironical spirit,

“ Our Established Church.” The autho-

rity of a great ecclesiastical dignitary,

like that of the chief magistrate of a

State, is too high to need certification

from any body
;
above all men, a Bishop

speaks ex cathedraI, even when he sends

his pastorals to a printing-office. Nor

can the oracular character of The Catho-

lic World any more be brought in ques-

tion, bearing as it does upon its very

cover the imprimatur of the Archbishop

and Primate of New York, of the Car-

dinal Prefect of the Propaganda, and

of His Holiness Pope Pius IX. himself.

We shall venture, therefore, after pre-
senting from these authorities the con-

futation of the article referred to, to pro-

ceed to exhibit from the same unques-

tionable sources the actual position of

the Church of Rome in this country in

relation to the sects w7hich surround it

and the State in which it exists.

The more painful part of the duty

which we have undertaken—the con-
tradiction of actual misstatements of

fact- is in a measure relieved by the

discovery that, as the result of the very

sharp criticism which has been applied

to the article in question by so many

unfriendly eyes, they are discovered to

be no more than two, or possibly three,

in number, aDd of no darker enormity

than these :

1. The site of the new Cathedral was

included, by an error of topography, in



1869.] The Unestablished Chueoh. 33

the magnificent grants of adjoining

property from the city to the Church.

2. By a like blunder the non-Catholic

“ Nursery and Child’s Hospital ” was

confounded with the Catholic Orphan

Asylum hard by.

We decline to admit the plea, which

might be made in behalf of these mis-

statements, that the block next north of

the Cathedral was the gratuitous gift of

the Common Council
;
that it is but a

step along Fifty-first-street from one to

the other of the children’s asylums thus

referred to
;
and that the Catholic one

is, in fact, a beneficiary in the manner

thus charged. Nor shall we admit as

extenuation any such straggling para-

graphs as this, produced from a late

newspaper

—

“ The sum of $8,928.84, due for assessment,

has been donated by the New York Common

Council to St. Patrick’s Cathedral.”

—for what the city does toward build-
ing the church does not go to show

that it gave the land for it. But with

some misgivings lest the case may only

be injured by such persistence, we ven-

ture to repeat this story about the

details of the Orphan Asylum business,

to which an air of authenticity is

given by the references to the public

records.

It seems, then, according to this story,

that in Book “ A ” of Deeds in the
Comptroller’s Office, at p. 271, is re-

corded a deed, with a “ covenant for

quiet enjoyment,” from “ The Mayor,

Aldermen, and Commonalty of New

York” to “ The Roman Catholic Orphan

Asylum Society ” (John Hughes, Presi-

dent), in that city. The consideration

expressed is One Dollar
;
the premises

are described as bounded north and

south by Fifty-second and Fifty-first

streets, west by Fifth Avenue (200 feet),

and extending easterly from Fifth Ave-

nue four hundred and fifty feet
;
being

a tract of between two and three acres,

and containing thirty-six city lots. In-

asmuch, however, as the writer now

put to the question had never alleged a

deed conveying full title to corporation

property, but only leases upon rents

reserved, we peremptorily object to the

statement of this instrument as being

the introduction of new and irrelevant

matter.

In the same office, however, in the

“ Book of Special Leases,” at p. 134,

is recorded a lease of the same date

with the deed just mentioned, by which

the grantors in that instrument lease to

the same Society the premises bounded

by Fifty-first and Fifty-second streets,

east by Fourth Avenue, and west by

the tract just described, “ during the

pleasure of the party of the first part

and their successors,” for the yearly rent

of One Dollar. This property is 200

feet by 375, or thirty city lots, and is

very cheap at a dollar a-year, but for

the precarious tenure at the pleasure of

the Corporation. This defect, however,

which at the worst it was hypercritical

to object to, was soon corrected. By

resolution of the Common Council, Oc-

tober 21, 1857, the Comptroller was

directed to lease the plot to the Society

“ so long as it shall be occupied for the

use of the Asylum,” at the same rent of

One Dollar a-year. The lease executed

in pursuance of this resolution bears

date December 31, 1857, and has been

on file in the Comptroller’s office since

May 11, in the year memorable for

Orphan Asylums, 1863.

This particularity, regarding only one,

it is true, of the statements in contro-

versy, certainly appears plausible. But

as we read in The Catholic World (p.

583) that “ only one such lease, that for

the House of Industry for the Sisters

of Charity, has been made in this city

since 1847,” we are forced to conclude

that the records are mistaken, thanking

that magazine at the same time for the

mention of the lease for the “ House of

Industry,” which the article in Putnam

had somehow omitted to notice. How

many and how serious are the similar

omissions, we very likely shall never

know
;

for the ways in which these

things are done are various and in-

scrutable
;
and many things which an

outsider may search for in vain, the

authorities of the Church can publish

or keep silent, as they choose.

3. The third and only remaining



34 Putnam’s Magazine. [Dec.,

error found in the paper in question, aside

from the fundamental and pervading

error of declaring the Church lawfully

established and adequately endowed,

consists in the statement that the land-

ed estate of the Church, valued at fifty

millions or more, is owned in great part

“ by one or another of five ecclesiastics.”

The Bishop of Rochester avows him-

self to be “ one of the five . . holding

property,” and proceeds to add that he

holds no property, but that a good deal

in his diocese is held instead by another

of the five, the Bishop of Brooklyn.

We fail to grasp the special importance

of this correction
;

it is enough that

Bishop McQuaid has made it. The

additional statement, that the four

owners of church property are engaged

in transferring it, more or less at their

leisure, to the religious societies organ-

ized under the Act of 1863, deserves,

however, even to our minds, fuller ex-

planation
;
and the same explanation

will serve to show why it was that the

successors of the Apostles have been

obliged hitherto, like the Apostles them-

selves, to add to “ the care of all the

churches” the charge of their tempo-

ralities.

Before 1863, the law of religious

societies in this State was a general

one, making no distinction between

Catholic, Methodist, or Hicksite Quaker

congregations. In all such organiza-

tions alike, the parishioners who attend-

ed the worship, who paid for the land,

the buildings, and the service, were

intrusted with the control of what they

paid for. With this arrangement the

sectaries, of whatever schism, are still

forced to content themselves
;
but it

hardly needs a bishop to explain that

it is incompatible with the spirit of the

Catholic Church. In 1863, therefore, a

year propitious for such enterprises, as

this city attested at midsummer, the

existing Act was passed (Laws of 1863,

chap. 45), applying, by its express

terms, only to Roman Catholic congre-

gations. It provides that in every

parish which chooses to organize under

it, the corporate body shall consist of

five trustees. These are the Bishop or

Archbishop of the diocese, the Vicar-

General of the diocese, the Pastor of

the church, all “ for the time being,”

and “ by virtue of their offices
;

” and

two laymen, members of the church,

appointed by the other three, and hold-

ing their places for one year. The

Vicar-General and Pastor may be re-

moved and replaced by others, at the

will of the Bishop, without a moment’s

notice
;
the two laymen are removable

every year, at the option of the other

three, or a majority of them. A better
arrangement to prevent the evils of

divided councils it is difficult to con-

ceive of
;
nor is it greatly to be wonder-

ed at that Bishop McQuaid should be

willing, as he says, to put the title to

the lots on which he is “ building the

Bishop’s house ” “ in the name of St.

Patrick’s Church Society,”—of whom,
he might add in the sententious manner

of Artemas Ward, “ I am which.” The

magnificent structure of hammered

stone, in size and splendor, if not in

name, a palace, which is fast rising

upon those lots, will no doubt be man-

aged quite to the satisfaction of its

occupant
;
and as the Bishop, we un-

derstand, notwithstanding what a stran-

ger would infer from the extent of his

new mansion, is not a man of family,

he cannot but be content with the ab-

solute control for life of all his estate,

and its undisturbed transfer at his death

(may it be distant
!)

to his successor.

When it is observed, moreover, that

the entire process for incorporating any

Roman Catholic congregation now or

hereafter existing, is, that the three cler-

gymen named select their two laymen,

that the five sign, acknowledge, and

file a certificate showing the name of

the proposed body corporate, and that

“ thereupon such church or congrega -

tion ” becomes “ a body corporate,” no

other member of the congregation than

those two needing to know one word

about it until it is done, it becomes

easier to understand why bishops, as

well as Catholic journals, prefer theii

existing conveniences to any “ establish-

ed ” arrangements that have yet been

contrived.



1869.] The Unestablished Chukoh. 85

Having thus clearly exhibited the

errors into which this writer has

fallen, it remains only, before setting

forth to our readers such positive results

as may be collected from the authorities

quoted,to complete our demonstration of

the main sin of inference and conclusion

of which he has been guilty. The Church

of Rome, then, is not by law “ establish-

ed ” in this State, and the writer might

have known it without waiting for the

sharp admonition of The Catholic World
,

or the Rochester rappings his knuckles

have incurred from Episcopal visitation.

Not that the fact, upon which that

journal insists so strenuously, that the

Catholics are only a minor part of the

population, has really any thing to do

with the question. A church-establish-

ment is only the more oppressive where

its adherents are but a minority. The

Established Church in England is the

Church of less than half the people, and

is bad enough, God knows; but the

same establishment in Ireland was the

Church of but a petty fraction, and

does not appear to have been the less

an establishment for that. The Estab-

lished Church is vastly in the minority

in Wales
;
and from the Scotch Estab-

lishment more than half the people are

Dissenters. But though the thing may

be possible enough, we need at present

only confess that it is not actual. A
simple reference to the Constitution and

the General Statutes of this State

would have shown this writer that

the word “Established,” or “Establish-

ment,” in connection with the Catholic

Church, or the phrases “ State Church,”

or “ Religion of the State,” are nowhere

to be found. With such assurances,

then, from such authorities, capped

with this final argument, we leave this

“ sensational writer,” whom “ even the

anti-Catholic Nation has rebuked for

his levity,” to such comfort as his schis-

matic conscience may allow him, for

the imposture he has practised upon

this Magazine, the Church, and the

World.

Deducing now, from the lectures the

Bishop and The Catholic World have

read us, such substantial lessons as they

seem to teach, we find following closely

in logical order upon the primary fact

that the Church of Rome is not estab-

lished here, some measure for determin-

ing how much that Church lacks of

being even fairly tolerated. So far

from having been the object of special

favors or lavish benefactions from the

governing bodies in the State, its

special distinction is found in the op-

pressive discrimination with which

hitherto Legislatures and Common

Councils have withheld from it all but

the barest fraction of what equity and

equality entitle it to. In establishing a

proposition so conflicting with the pre-

tensions put forth in the July number,

it is not insisted that any part of its

statistics of public largess to the Church

is incorrect. Exception is taken, indeed,

in the following form, to the estimate

mentioned below

:

“ The Magazine [Putnam’s] asserts ‘ the

State paid out, in 1866, for benefactions under

religious control, $129,025.49, ... of which

the trifling sum of $124,174.14 went to the

religious purposes of the Catholic Church.

We have not been able to find a particle of
proof of this, and the mode of reckoning

adopted by Putnam is so false, and its general

inaccuracy is so great, that in the absence of

specific proof we must presume it to be un-

true, and made only for a sensational effect.”

Now we concede the propriety of dis-

crediting a specific statement by alleg-

ing that the author is obviously in the

habit of saying the thing that is not,

and then using the statement thus dis-

credited to impugn his general veracity.

But since the statement, as we have

already said, is not distinctly denied,

and as it really will not affect the gen-

eral argument, it may do no harm to

mention, as the July writer’s voucher

for his assertion, the Annual Report of

the Comptroller of the ' State for the

year 1866, at pp. 71 to 75. And to

show that the writer did not, as The

Catholic World intimates, mistake such

names as “ The Five Points Gospel

Union Mission,” or “ The Young Men’s

Christian Association ” as belonging to

“ Catholic Institutions,” we subjoin

the official list* of their names and the

amounts of their subventions, so that,



36 Pdtnam’s Magazine. [Dec.,

the Protestant and Jewish being noted

by italics
,

it may be judged in how

many instances he has erred in his clas-

sification.*

But it is not necessary, it seems, to

dispute a single item of the contribu-

tor’s avowedly.fragmentary list of pub-

lic benefactions to the Catholic Church,

in order to show with what impious

cruelty politicians have combined to

persecute that Church, to trample it

under foot, to deprive it of its just

rights. Concede that every one of the

legislative and municipal grants alleged

by the “ sensational writer ” has really

been made
;
so far from proving favorit-

ism to the Church, they fall immeasura-

bly short of what that Church is enti-

tled to, and what The Catholic World

now squarely demands. The whole

estimate of the writer in Putnam is

based upon a radical misconception

of the relation of the Catholic Church

to all other religious bodies, and of the

comparative relations of that Church

and each of such bodies to the State

;

a misconception, however, largely preva-

lent without the pale. “ In this mat-

ter,” it seems, “ the Protestant mind

proceeds upon a sad fallacy. . . While

they call all grants and donations to

Catholic institutions sectarian, they call

none sectarian of all that [are] made

to Protestant institutions which are

not under the control and manage-

ment of some particular denomination

of Protestants
;

. . but this is a grave

error, and cannot fail to mislead the

public. All grants and donations made

to institutions
,
charitable or educational,

not under the control and management of

Catholics
,

are made to non- Catholics

;

346 04

24 62

500 00

777 59

1,304 87

2,189 21

2,576 74

4,340 63

2,505 71

310 52

1,007 48

318 90

9 25

26 21

89 40

423 04

238 75

180 07

267 62

104 11

213 90

345 51

118 42

156 22

448 72

500 00

1,000 00

1,000 00

8,949 84

1,646 10

2,484 32

8,845 14

2,000 00

500 00

1,000 00

1,000 00

2,000 00

1,008 00

78,500 00

Evangelical Lutheran
,
SI. John's Orphan Home

, Buffalo.

Free School of the Academy of the Sacred Heart, Manhattanville.

Le Couteulx, St. Mary’s Deaf and Dumb Asylum, Buffalo.

Do., Special Appropriation.

Orphan's Home and Asylum of the Protestant Episcopal Church, New York.
Protestant Half Orjthan Asylum, New York.

Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum, Brooklyn, 1S64.

Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum, Brooklyn, 1865.

Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum, New York.

Society for the Protection of Destitute Roman Catholic Children, New York.

St. John’s Catholic Orphan Asylum, Utica.

St. Joseph’s Orphan Asylum, New York.

St. Joseph’s Male Orphan Asylum, Buffalo.

St. Joseph’s German Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum, Rochester.

St. Mary’s Orphan Asylum, Canandaigua.

St. Mary’s Boys’ Orphan Asylum, Rochester.

St. Mary’s Orphan Asylum, Dunkirk.

St. Patrick’s Female Orphan Asylum, Rochester.

St. Vincent’s Female Orphan Asylum, Troy.

St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum, Albany.

St. Vincent’s Female Orphan Asylum, Buffalo.

St. Vincent’s Infant Asylum, Buffalo.

St. Vincent’s Male Orphan Asylum, Utica.

St. Vincent de Paul Orphan Asylum, Syracuse.

The Church Charity Foundation, Brooklyn, 1864.

The Church Charily Foundation, Brooklyn, 1865.

Troy Catholic Male Orphan Asylum.

St. Mary’s Orphan Asylum, Clifton. (Special Appropriation.)

St. Joseph’s Male Orphan Asylum, Buffalo. (Special Appropriation.)

St. Vincent’s Male Orphan Asylum, Utica. (Special Appropriation.)

Buffalo Hospital, Sisters of Charity.

Buffalo St. Mary’s Lying-in Hospital.

Jews' Hospital, and Hebrew Benevolent Society, New York.

Rochester St. Mary’s Hospital.

Rochester St. Mary’s Hospital. (Additional Special Appropriation.)

Providence (R. C.) Lunatic Asylum, Buffalo.

Buffalo St. Mary’s Lying-in Hospital. (Additional Special Appropriation.)

Church of the Immaculate Conception, New York.

St. Mary’s Church and School, New York.

St. Bridget’s Church School, New York.

The Society for the protection of Destitute Roman Catholic Orphan Children

(Special Donation, Chap. 647, Laws of 1866.)

$130,025 49



1869.] The Unestablished Church. 37

and, with the exception of those made

to the Hebrews, to Protestant institu-

tions. There are but two religions to

be counted, Catholic and Protestant.*

The true rule is to count on one side

whatever is given to institutions under

Catholic control and arrangement, and

on the other side all that is given for

similar purposes to all the institutions,

whether public or private
,

not under

Catholic control and management
;

” it

being of no consequence, let it be ob-

served, whether there is any religious

control whatever, whether simple athe-

ism or blank indifferentism governs

them, or whether they are the ordinary

non-religious institutions of the State

itself. In all these cases alike they

must be treated as Protestant concerns,

and the payments to them countervail-

ed by corresponding subsidies to the

Catholics. Inquiring upon this solid

and comprehensible basis, the World

finds “ that the total of grants made by

the State to charitable and other insti-

tutions,—including the New York In-
stitution [for] the Deaf and Dumb, the

New York Institution for the Blind, the

Society for the Deformation of Juvenile

Delinquents of New York, State Agri-

cultural College, State Normal School,

* We trust we shall he pardoned for intruding
into the province of a theological rather than a

literary Magazine, by expressing our misgivings

lest the use of this argument should prove to be a

polemic mistake on the part of Our Roman Catho-

lic Brethren. It maybe very true—we are inclined

to think that it is—that there is a substantial re-
ligious unity in Protestantism, and that its divis-

ions are really analogous to the divisions among

Roman Catholics, representing diversity in unity.

But then the contrary argument has often been

found extremely convenient and effective by Catho-

lic disputants—that Catholicism is one, and Pro-
testantism a mere jangle of diversities. We have
our fears lest the position here taken, that Protest-

antism is not many religions, but one, and Catho-

licism another, may involve the loss of a more im-

portant position in another part of the defences.

It may seem absurd in us to teach any thing of

the arts of controversy to such notable experts. It

is like the rhetorician who lectured Hannibal on

the art of war
;
or like the youth who attempted to

enlighten an aged relative on the method of get-

ting at the contents of an egg through a very slight

perforation of the shell. We presume that some
way will be suggested of getting over the difficulty

and holding both the opposite positions at once.

But suspecting that possibly the difficulty might

have been overlooked, we thought no harm in sug-

gesting it.

the [State] Western House of Befuge

for Juvenile Delinquents, State Lunatic

Asylum, the [State] Asylum for Idiots,

the Willard [State] Asylum for the In-

sane, academies, orphan asylums, &c.,

hospitals, c&d., colleges, universities, &c..

and miscellaneous
,
have

^

amounted, tor

twenty-one years, ending with 1867, to

%
$6,920,881.91. Of this large amount,

Catholics should have received for their

institutions certainly not less than one

million. Yet all that we have been able

to find that they have received out of

this large sum is a little less than $276,-

000
;
that is, not over one fourth of

what they were entitled to ; yet Putnam’s

Magazine has the effrontery to pre-

tend that our Church is favored at the

expense of Protestantism.” No wonder

then that Catholics, in the language of

the World, denying that they have

“ received any thing like their propor-

tion,” now “ demand for their institu-

tions their proportion of the subsidies

granted,” upon the grand and simple

basis of computation already laid down.

Nor is this demand, founded as it is in

equity, and backed by all the moral

and material influences which that great

body knows so well how to wield at

proper moments, one which parties or

people can afford to slight. The day

of reckoning appears to be come
;
the

bill is presented for payment
;
and the

State will have cause for self-gratula-

tion if the tremendous footing runs no

farther back than the twenty-three

years which show so grievous a debit

side of the account.

But this, unfortunately for the State,

is very far from showing what Signor

Mantilini describes as “ the demnition

total.” And it evinces a mature con-

fidence on the part of the Catholic

Church in its secure (though unestab-

lished) position
;
that its avowed and

most accredited mouth-piece should be

willing to arouse the most sensitive

prejudices of all non-Catholic citizens

by bringing in already its little bill for

the injuries it has suffered from that

form of oppression, most dear to the

average American, known as the Com-

mon-School System. Hereupon, we



38 Putnam’s Magazine. [Deo.,

Lave two lessons to learn from The

Catholic World

:

First, the measure of

compensation necessary to make good

the pecuniary damage to the Church

from the inequality of our adminis-

tration hitherto
;
Second, the form of

rearrangement which the Church now

demands, insists upon, and without

which it refuses to be at peace with the

State.

After the impressive tabulation we

have just repeated, the World goes on :

“ But we have not yet stated the whole case.

We do not kuow how many millions are ap-
propriated annually for the support of public

schools throughout the State
;
but in this city

the tax-levy, this year, for the public schools,

is, we are told, $3,000,000, or over. Catholics

pay their proportion of this amount, and they

are a third of the population of the city. . . .

The public schools are anti-Catholic in their

tendency, and none the less sectarian because es-

tablished and managed by the public authority

of the State. . . We count in the grants
and donations to Protestant institutions, the

whole amount raised by public tax
,
together

with that appropriated from the School Fund

of the State for the support of the public

schools. Thus we claim that Catholic charities

and schools do not receive, in grants and dona-

tions, a tithe of what is honestly or justly their

share, whether estimated according to their

numbers, or according to the amount of public

taxes for sectarian, charitable, and educational

purposes levied upon them by the State and its

municipalities.” *

* The wrong done by the July contributor was

in estimating the various appropriations and

grants to the Catholic Church as mere gifts, rather

than as “payments on account” of a just and

righteous debt, the overwhelming total of which is

hardly diminished, in a perceptible degree, even by

these magnificent contributions. Taking the esti-

mate of The Catholic World
,
we present its careful

and unprejudiced views of the financial relations

of the State to the (unestablished) Church for a

single year, in a form which will be clear to busi-

ness men, and which will show that under the

show of liberality we have really been treating her

with the most shameful injustice.

The State of New Yoek, to the Holt Roman
and Apostolic Chuech, Db.

To a due proportion of grants and do-

nations to Charities and Schools,

1866, being ten times the sum act-

ually paid. , . . . $1,251,741.40

Ca.

By cash, being less than “ a tithe of

what is honestly and justly their

share.” 125,174.14

In view of this lucid statement of

the rights of the Catholic Church, lan-

guage fails us fitly to characterize the

passion or folly of those who would

represent, as did the writer of “ Our

Established Church,” that the subsidies

heretofore bestowed upon that body

indicate that it “ is in a fair way of

obtaining its own.” When we consider

how vast are the sums consecrated (we

use the word in its French sense) dur-

ing the past thirty years to the Ameri-

can scheme of public education, and

remember that every dollar was spent

in downright hostility to the Roman

Church, and as truly for sectarian pur-

poses as if it had gone to pay the sala-

ries of Methodist ministers, we may well

conclude that all the benefactions

brought together by the offending

writer are less than “ a tithe ” of the

just claims of the Church, or of what

it now demands. Is there a politician

in the State who will oppose the

liquidation of so just a debt ?

But even more valuable than the

mere financial computation is the in-

formation the World gives us as to the

terms upon which the vexed question

of common schools may be permanently

adjusted. It is a mistake, in the first

place, to suppose that Catholics have

any objection to the system “ for non-

Catholics. If they wish the system for

themselves, we offer them no opposi-

tion. . . We oppose it not when intend-
ed for them, but only when intended

We will not undertake to compute the interest
to date. These revelations (for we confess they

are such to us) of the way in which the State of

New York has been running behind, year aftei
year, in its “honest and just” debts, are simply

appalling. Damaging as this statement may be

to the market value of State securities, we thank

The Catholic World for bringing it to the notice of

our public financiers. Pay as you go is a good

motto for States, as well as individuals, in dealing

with any creditor. But there are three sorts of

creditors in whose case it is specially appropriate

—

the Water company, which, in default of payment,

stops your water supply
;
the Gas company, which

turns oft’ your light at the street main ; and the

Church, which cuts off your sacramental grace

When complete religious liberty is established, at

last, and the Church is in a position to enforce hex

“ honest and just ” claims against thr* State, these

monstrous arrearages of more than a .million a-yeai

will put the latter at a terrible disadvantage.Balance still due for 1856. . 1,126,567.26



1869.] The Unestablished Chukoh. 89

for us, and we are taxed to support it.”

The ground of objection is, that there

can be no proper education which is

not religious, and that education be-

longs therefore not to the State, but to

the Church. This opinion amounts,

with Catholics, to a “ conscientious con-

viction.” “ Whether we are right or

wrong, is no question for the State or

civil authority to settle. The State has

no competency in the matter. It is

bound to respect and protect every citi-

zen in the free and full enjoyment of

the freedom of his conscience. We
stand before the State on a footing of

perfect equality with non-Catholics, and

have the same right to have our Catho-

lic conscience respected and protected,

that they have to have their non-Catho-

lic and secularized conscience respected

and protected. We do not ask the State
to impose our conscience on them, or to

compel them to adopt and follow our

views of education
;

but we deny its

right to impose theirs on us, or men to

carry out their views of education in any

degree at our expense. The Catholic con-

science hinds the State itself so far, but

only so far, as Catholics are concerned.

. . Its only just and honest course is to

abandon the policy of trying to bring

both together in a system of common

schools. ... As both are equal before

the State, it can compel neither to give

way to the other. This may or may not

be a disadvantage
;
but it is afact, and

must by all parties he accepted as such.”

If the State “ will, as it is bound to do,

respect and protect the rights of con-

science, or real religious liberty, the

only solid basis of civil liberty, it must

do as the continental governments of

Europe do, and divide the public

schools into two classes
;
the one for

Catholics, and the other for non-Catho-

lics. . . . Let the State appropriate to

Catholics, for the support of schools

approved by their Church, their propor-

tion of the School Fund, and of the

money raised hy public tax for the sup-

port of public schools. . . . This, if the

State, for public reasons, insists on uni-

versal education, is the best way of

solving the difficulty. . . Another way

would be, to exempt Catholics from the

tax levied for the support of the public

schools, and give to the schools they

maintain their proportion of the School

Fund held in trust by the State, and

leave Catholics to establish and manage

schools for their own children in their

own way, under the supervision and

control of the Church. Either way of

solving the difficulty would answer our

purpose, and we venture to say that one

or the other method of dealing with the

public school question will ere long have

to he adopted, whatever the opposition ex-

cited.”

Let it be assumed now that all the

proposed statistics of the contributor

in regard to public largesses are not only

correct, but are far below the actual

facts
;
they would yet be vastly inferior

to this authentic announcement of the

demands and determined purposes of

the Catholic Church, in significance to

the people of this and of all these Uni-

ted States. Right or wrong, the system

of free, public, universal education,

which has been developed from the

Puritan germs planted in New England

into the various forms, of identical

essence, in which it exists to-day in

every Northern State, is immeasurably

precious to the American heart. Grow-

ing up as it did in the midst of sects

warring certainly not less bitterly than

now, controlled, no doubt, in its infancy

in some Eastern States by the religious

bodies which until lately were “ estab-

lished ” there, it has yet been fortunate

enough to endure to a lusty and sym-

metrical maturity, which has enforced

respect and immunity from contending

factions. Nor is there wanting to non-

Catholic citizens, of whatever creed, an

enthusiasm of devotion to their school-

system, an unquestioning faith that it

is a principal cause of our material

prosperity, and moral as well as mental

eminence, and that without it our retro-

gression must be certain and swift,

which amounts, quite as strongly as the

Catholic view now presented, to a “ con-

scientious conviction.” It may be that

before the controversy is adjusted upon

either basis which our Roman Catholic



40 Putnam’s Magazine. [Doc.

brethren lay down as the only alterna-

tives for “ solving the difficulty ” raised

by themselves, a Protestant conscience

may assert its “ rights ” and demand

their enforcement by the State. There

is a non-Catholic conscience, we have

been told, which holds as fervidly to

the duty of the State to educate all its

youth, as the Catholic conscience to the

duty of the Church to prevent the State

from doing it. Right or wrong, per-

verted or corrupted as a Protestant con-

science may be, we have heard it said,

by those to whom modern history seem-

ed familiar, that it has often been firm,

resolute, enduring to the loss of all that

made life dear and of life itself, under

the sharpest tests the Catholic Church

has found occasion to subject it to.

This Magazine is not an organ of non-

Catliolics; it does not undertake to

assert, except as on the authority of The

Catholic, World
,
what “ must ” be done,

or “ will have to l>e ” adopted by the State.

But it is no arrogation of authority to

say, what every breeze bears upon its

wings, that a successful blow at the

American system of common schools

would thrill millions of non-Catholic

souls like a sacrilege. Still less do we

pretend to say that the zeal of Protes-

tants would be more effectual to-day in

protecting their school-houses, than it

has been many a time before in saving

their meeting-houses. We shall hardly

look for greater earnestness or devotion

than such as proved a poor defence to the

followers of Huss and Ziska, of Coligny

and Zwingli. But futile as “ the oppo-

sition excited ” may be, futile as The

Catholic World assures us it will be, we

look for no noiseless contact when “ the

Catholic conscience ” which must “ bind

the State” comes in collision, as it

moves to the overthrow of common

schools, with the Protestant conscience

which is bound to maintain them.

Possibly some one, Catholic or not,

as unauthorized as the late writer in

Putnam, may dispute our authority for

saying that the Catholic system de-

mands the overthrow of the school-sys-

tem, and may endeavor to accommodate

the alternatives of the World—the sup-

port of Church-schools by public taxa-

tion, or the exoneration from school-

taxes of all who under that inducement

choose to call themselves Catholics—to
the continued existence of common

schools. It is true that the World ap-

pears to contemplate the continued ex-

istence of “ secular schools ” under

State control,—continued, when the
State has cut itself off from revenues

for their support, or is engaged in sub-

sidizing private schools up to a destruc-

tive rivalry. How long the World con-

siders that the State would act as the

agent of religious sects to collect money

and distribute it among them
;
or on

the other hand would attempt to carry

on the partial task of educating, not all

children, but Protestant children, or

finally the children only of such parents

as should ultimately neglect to exempt

themselves from taxation by setting up

conscientious scruples, that able journal

does not take occasion to remark. We
respect its acuteness quite enough to

presume that it believes, as we do, that

it would not be long.

But the World refrains from saying,

what we feel bound to add, that no

Catholic can look with tolerance upon

the continuance even of a mutilated

and crippled common-school system.

Relieved though he may be as a Church-

man from its atheism, as a tax-payer

from its cost, he continues responsible

as a citizen and voter for its existence.

How can the Assemblyman from St.
Peter’s in Barclay-street vote for the

bill by which even Protestants are tax-

ed to sustain a system of which Arch-

bishop McCloskey says that its work-

ings, “ as far as Catholic children are

concerned, have proved, and do prove,

highly detrimental to their faith and

morals
;

” and the Bishop of Newark

that “ it is the greatest enemy of the

Catholic religion and of all dogmatic

truth ? ” Will he not, must not every

legislator, so much being granted, accept

the principles laid down by the Tablet

:

“ Education itself is the business of the

spiritual society alone, and not of secu-

lar society. The instruction of children

and youth is included in the Sacrament



1869.] The Unestablished Chueoh. 41

of Orders, and the State usurps the

functions of the spiritual society when

it turns educator. . . The organization

of the schools, their entire internal ar-

rangement and management, the choice

and regulation of studies, and the selec-

tion, appointment, and dismissal of

teachers, belong exclusively to the spirit-

ual authority.” If he turns to the Cath-

olic Telegraph of Cincinnati, the hon-

est legislator will find his last doubt re-

solved, for he will find, by the authority

of Archbishop Purcell, that the educa-

tion of common schools is “ elemen-

tary instruction in atheism and immor-

ality.” “ Halls of learning that are irre-

ligious, because no particular religion is

taught, must become the prolific sources

of national iniquity. The secular

school-system is a social cancer, presag-

ing the death of national morality, de-

vouring the little sense of religion that

Protestantism instils into its believers.

The sooner it is destroyed the better.” “ It

will be a glorious day for Catholics in

this country when, under the blows of

justice and morality, our school-system,

will be shivered to pieces. Until then,

modern Paganism will triumph.”

But we need not call in the inferior

evidence of newspapers and archbish-

ops, when the solemn declarations of

the Holy See itself are so clear and con-

clusive upon this very point : “ Melius

est petere fontes quam sectari rivulos.”

Until the American Church ceases to

be a dependency of the Roman Church,

it cannot discard or evade the infallible

authority of the Roman Bishop. If

any American Catholic should seek to

reconcile himself with American princi-

ples of education, let him hear how

those principles, as expressed below, are

denounced by the present Pope. The

quotation is from the famous “ Syllabus,”

or catalogue of “ The Principal Errors

of our Time,” appended to the Encycli-

cal of December 8, 1864

:

“45. That the entire direction of public

schools in which the youth of Christian States

are educated, save an exception in the case of

Episcopal seminaries, may and must appertain

to the civil power, and belong to it so far that

no other authority shall be recognized as hav-

ing any right to interfere in the discipline of

the schools, the arrangement of studies, the

taking of degrees, or the choice and approval

of teachers.

“ 47. That the most advantageous conditions

of civil society require that popular schools open

without distinction to all children of the people,

and public establishments destined to teach

young people letters and good discipline, and

to impart to them education, should be freed

from all ecclesiastical authority and interfer-

ence, and should be fully subjected to the civil

and political power for the teaching of matters

and opinions common to the times.

“ 48. That this manner of instructing youth,

which consists in separating it from the Catho-

lic faith and from the power of the Church,

and in teaching it above all a knowledge of

natural things and the objects of social life,

may be perfectly approved by Catholics.”

But, however it may have been in

1864, the American Catholics of 1869

are reasonably free from all these errors.

In this same Cincinnati, which in-

cludes—we can hardly say contains

—

the Telegraph
,

progress is reported.

The newspapers have been busy with

the details of recent negotiations be-

tween the Board of Education and “ the

authorities of the Catholic schools,”

which have reached a certain result.

The result is not much
;
mainly that “ no

religious teaching,” or the use “ of any

religious books, papers, or documents

[notably the Bible] shall be permitted

in ” the public school-houses. Naturally,

this contents neither the Telegraph nor

the Freeman's Journal of this city, both

of which denounce the capitulation as

a Catholic surrender. But their in-

flammation is surely unreasonable, and

might be injurious if a heated journal

were as dangerous to a great cause as to

a railroad-train. It is much that the

Church is treated with, at last, as co-

ordinate with the State, as having bel-

ligerent rights, and as being capable of

concluding compacts. From this to

final success, the way is short and

smooth. “ Chateau qui parle
,
femme qui

ecoute
,
va se rendrej Common Schools,

good-bye

!

We proceed now to a more pleasing
part of the task which the temerity of

this contributor has forced upon us.

We rescue from the comparative ob-
scurity to which the necessarily re-



42

stricted circulation of The Catholic

World might have condemned it, the de-

finition which the highest literary au-

thority, backed by the highest hierarchi-

cal authority, in the American Church,

puts upon the great watchword, Reli-

gious Liberty. Here, where the Church,

though not “ Established,” feels called

upon to disavow its desire to be, be-

cause it can do better
;
where its public

subventions, although they amount thus

far to less than the tenth of its just de-

mands, have reached an annual sum

which strikes tax-payers with dismay
;

where its foot is upon the neck of legis-

latures, its grasp upon the throttle of

all public education, it becomes a ques-

tion of more than speculative curiosity,

when the Church is heard to speak re-

spectfully of “ religious liberty,” what

it means by the phrase. When the

Church “ shall have its own again,” when

our legislation upon cults, like our leg-

islation upon schools, is adjusted to suit

the requirements ofthe “spiritual order
”

which “ is superior to the secular ” ( Gath.

World
,
p. 583), what will be the rights

and duties of citizens in non-conform-

ity ? These

:

“We understand by religious liberty

the freedom and independence of the

Church as an organic body?

See now how blessed a thing is a

definition ! Councils and prelates be-

yond the ocean have screamed them-

selves hoarse these hundreds of years

past, in decrying the pernicious modern

fantasy of religious liberty. Even the

most solemn of late utterances of the

Roman oracle, the same Encyclical and

Catalogue of Principal Errors already

quoted, sets this very Catholic World
,

unless its happy definition reconciles

the declarations of its August number

with the approval of the Pope upon

the cover, in a deplorable attitude of

schism and rebellion. For among the

most pernicious of those damnable

heresies we find held up to public ab-

horrence these

:

“
15. That every man is free to embrace the

religion be shall believe to be true, guided by

the light of reason.

“ 23. That the Church has not the power of

[Dec.,

availing herself of force, or of any direct or

indirect temporal power.

“ 55. That the Church must be separated

from the State and the State from the Church.

“ 77. That in the present day it is no longer

necessary that the Catholic religion shall bo

held as the only religion of the State, to the

exclusion of all other modes of worship.

“ 79. That it is false that the civil liberty of

every mode of worship, and the full power

given to all of overtly and publicly displaying

their opinions and thoughts, conduce more

easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the

people and to the propagation of the evil of

indifference.”

But the Church in America, as we

are daily assured, is a Church of prog-

ress, not of dead conservatism
;
of re-

publicanism, not of autocracy
;

of en-

lightenment and free schools, not of

middle-age darkness. In spite then of

trans-Atlantic formulas and precedents,

it could not but be the advocate of

religious liberty. How noble was the
conception which enabled it to main-

tain before the American people their

favorite principle rejected by the Euro-

pean Church, and yet maintain that

unity of doctrine, the loss of which is

schism, and all by a definition ! How
eagerly would the fiercest ultra-montane

welcome religious liberty, thus defined,

to France ! How gladly would the

whole Spanish clergy, to-day, which for

a year past has protested with all the

power of its lungs and with the added

force of muskets against the admission

of religious liberty under one concep-

tion, accept it in the American-Catholic

sense ! Nay, even in those sadly dimin-

ished provinces which own the sway

of the Head of the Church alone;

whose governors are bishops, and whose

ministers of state are cardinals
;
where

the Jew slinks timorously into the

Ghetto at night-fall lest the sbirri be

upon him
;
where the American may

pray to his unknown God with his

countrymen under the shelter of his

country’s flag, but not otherwise, and the

catacombs themselves no longer furnish

a secure retreat for dissenting worship-

pers
;
where else than here has true relig-

ious liberty “ the freedom and independ-

ence of the Church as an organic body,”

its highest and completest development ?

Putnam’s Magazine.



1869.] The Unestablished Church. 43

They err, then (and this is part of our

lesson from The Catholic World), who

tell us that the Church is an uncertain

and ductile thing, one thing in Naples

and another in New York, different in

the times of Hildebrand and Pius IX.

;

or who pretend that religious liberty is

a Protestant thing, or a new thing.

The Church in America to-day is as the

Church in Rome in the sixteenth cen-

tury
;

its accidents only are changed.

It does not accommodate its ancient

ideas to modern formulas
;

it takes

modern formulas and fits them (by a

definition) to its venerable ideas. “ Re-

ligious liberty,” as the American Church

now professes it, is the oldest of Catho-

lic principles. Religious liberty, as

thus defined, burned Savonarola in Flo-

rence and Huss at Constance. It was

to vindicate “ the freedom and independ-

ence of the Church as an organic body,”

that the Church maintained its Inquisi-

tion in Spain, and decreed the extirpa-

tion of the Albigenses in Languedoc.

In France this religious liberty, tempo-

rarily depressed by the Toleration

Edict of Nantes, lifted its head awhile

upon the revocation of that tyrannical

measure, only to be utterly swept away

in the flood of equality which has over-

spread that land since the Revolution.

Let us hope that among us this great

American principle, to which we are all

devoted, may be satisfied when it drives

home at sunset all the Hebrew brokers

in Wall-street
;
when Dr. Morgan Dix

begs a flag from the Prussian Consulate

to protect the matins and vespers at

Trinity
;
and when the Session Laws

are regularly sent down by the Gover-

nor, instead of only occasionally by the

committees, as now, for the approval or

rejection of the Archbishop of New

York
;
for then shall we approach near-

er than now to the entire “ freedom and

independence of the Church as an or-

ganic body.”

But the advanced and American

Catholicism which governs the Congre-

gation of St. Paul and The Catholic

World
,
this liberalism which is abreast

of the times, and seeks to make its

religion the religion of the future as

well as of the past, leaves us in no un-

certainty what shall be in that happy

day the fate of heretical creeds
;
when

“ real religious liberty,” as thus defined,

“ the only solid basis of civil liberty,” is

effectively maintained. The World has

already limited the duty of the State

to the protection of those religions only

“ not contra lonos mores” The quota-

tions we have but just made indicate

how “ detrimental to morals,” in the

Catholic view, the Protestant systems

are. This, of course, excludes them

from the toleration they might other-

wise claim
;
but their exclusion is nail-

ed and clinched by the avowal that

what Protestants “ call their religion is

a perpetual protest against what we

call religion,” is no religion at all there-

fore. Upon the whole, then, we can

discern in these latest utterances of

progressive Catholicism little ground

for the complacency with which many

Protestants are in the habit of regard-

ing the political supremacy of that

Church. Perhaps it might be worth

their while to consider whether there

be not color for the suggestion we have

sometimes heard, that the American

ecclesiastic of to-day, by virtue of the

very unestablished character of his

Church, of its exemption from State

control and responsibility to the State,

however lavishly subsidized by the

State, is an ultra-montane of a new and

singularly exaggerated type. Kings and

emperors elsewhere, by their arbitrary

interference, have succeeded in modify-

ing that implicit devotion to the for-

eign domination of a Pope which after

all is the highest badge of Catholicity.

There is no such disturbing influence

here
;
and what may be the full blos-

som and ripe fruit of this new and un-

pruned growth may be a curious ques-

tion now, and a practical one very soon.

We come now to the last, in the dis-

order in which we have brought them

together, but by no means the least in

consequence, of the principal conclu-

sions we find in the adverse criticisms

upon the July writer. Not only is the

Roman Church not formally “ establish-

ed ” in this country, but it protests, with



44 Putnam’s Magazine. [Dec.,

ull the solemnity that surrounds the

throne of a bishop and the press of the

Catholic Publication Society, that it

never, under any circumstances, can be

cajoled by the entreaties of a fond and

devoted State into becoming establish-

ed. “ Catholics have no notion,” says

Bishop McQuaid, “ of their Church

ever becoming ‘ the established Church,’

and they are just as certain that no

other Church shall ever assume to be

‘ the established Church ’ in these Uni-

ted States.” “ No Church,” says The

Catholic World
,

“ can be the established

Church here or elsewhere, unless it con-

cedes the supremacy of the State, and

consents to be its slave. This the

Catholic Church can never do. . . In

this country . . the civil authority has

recognized . . its obligation to protect

the adherents of each [religion] in the

free and full enjoyment of their entire

religious liberty. The State guarantees,

thus, all the freedom, and protection the

Church has ever secured elsewhere by

concordats. She much prefers freedom

to slavery, and her full liberty, though

shared with hostile sects, to the gilded

bondage of a State Church. She nei-

ther is the Established Church, nor can

she consent to become so”

We leave the Bishop and the Maga-
zine to distinguish, by the help of

another definition, if they will, the doc-

trines we have quoted from the damna-

ble heresies Numbers 15, 55, 77, and 79,

quoted above from the Syllabus. We
do not assume to judge another man’s

servants
;
to their own hierarchical Mas-

ter they must stand or fall. If indeed

we were reviewing the World as carping

critics, we might Socratically ask it

why the Catholic Church has not here-

tofore, where its word was law, en-

forced the preference just expressed,

shattered the “ gilded bondage ” which

we are told it abhors, and “ shared with

hostile sects ” the “ full liberty ” which is

so congenial and so sweet ? Is it despite

the choice of the Church, that it is

maintained to-day as the governmental

Church, with all the burdens and re-

sponsibilities which that position en-

tails, in so many European countries ?

Have our ears deceived us, and are the

churchly protests with which the wel-

kin has been ringing these few years

past from Naples, and Austria, and

Spain, protests against the establish-

ment of the Church, and not, as we

have been supposing, against the rude

severance of some of the “gilded”

chains that sustained it in its detested

elevation ? And why, we might ask if

we were controverting the World, does

not the Church at the Holy See itself,

where it is understood to be not with-

out influence upon legislation, accom-

plish that beneficent order which it so

much prefers, and extend to rival reli-

gions a participation in the freedom of

worship which seems to be now the

exclusive privilege of the Establish-

ment ? We can anticipate the answer
such questions would incur. The

Church in Europe is ready enough for

religious liberty, if it only knew, as well

as the Church in America does, what

religious liberty is, but as it supposes

it to mean that the Church is to have

only an equal chance with the sects, it

must perforce oppose it. The Church

in Europe would not cling so to estab-

lishment, if it only knew, as the Ameri-

can Church has learned, how all the

profits of establishment are to be had

without its inconveniences. And when

our Unestablished Church here in New
York, having secured from the State

the annual donation of ten times the

half million or more the State bestow-

ed upon it in 1869, and having annihi-

lated the State’s secular education, and

thus recovered here what it has lost in

every Catholic country in Europe, has

given actual demonstration of the ad-

vantages there are in non-establishment,

then we may expect to see the Spanish

clergy shouldering muskets for religious

liberty instead of against it
;
the Nea-

politan clergy disbanding their banditti

and signing petitions to Parliament for

disestablishment
;
and the Holy Father

himself detaching one circlet from his

triple crown, and begging the Homan

Senator and Council to regard him

only as the first of their clerical sub-

jects.



1869.] Crimson, Blue, and Gold. 45

The Church, then, can “ do better
;

”

so much better, in fact, that The Catho-

lic World hardly speaks too strongly in

saying it is “ insulted ” by being called

the State-Church. Let us not be above

learning from its bitterest enemies why

it is in this country at least as good as

established. Against the passage of the

Bill for the Disestablishment of the Pro-

testant Church in Ireland, fifty-three

peers protested, “ Because it is impossi-

ble to place a Church, disestablished

and disendowed, and bound together

only by the tie of a voluntary associa-

tion, on a footing of equality with the

perfect organization of the Church of

Rome, whereby the laity are made com-

pletely subservient to the priesthood,

the priests to the bishops, and the bish-

ops themselves are subject to the uncon-

trolled authority of a foreign potentate.”

Before this utterance of the peers, how-

ever, that shrewd disputant, Mr. Disraeli,

had said the same thing more sharply in

the Commons. The only way, said he, to

prevent ecclesiastical inequality in Ire-

land is to refuse to disestablish the Pro-

testant Church there. For the Roman

Catholic Church is already established

there “ as fully and completely as any

power, human or divine, can be estab-

lished. . . . The discipline, order, and

government of the Roman Catholic

Church are not voluntary. They are the

creation of the simple will of a sovereigr

pontiff, and do not depend at all on the

voluntary principle. . . I maintain, that

as long as His Holiness the Pope pos-

sesses Rome, the Roman Catholic reli-

gion
,
in whatever country it is found, is

an Establishment.”

Beati pacifcatores ! It is pleasant to

reconcile adversaries. If Bishop Me

Quaid and The Catholic World are right,

perhaps Disraeli and Derby may not be

far wrong. And while the meddlesome

July writer seems to have erred by his

public comments on the progress the

Church has made in the favor of legisla-

tors, perhaps his announcements are bad

only for prematurity. Perhaps his action

is like that of one who, when cunning

architects and sculptors have been for

years bringing to perfection the facade

of a gorgeous cathedral, encumbered

with scaffolds and hidden by canvas,

furtively, before the last blows are

struck and the last bas-reliefs set, de-

taching the screens that conceal it,

throws untimely to view the unfinished

work and the enraged artists, amid

grimy machinery and smutty workmen,

the rollers of logs and the pullers of

wires.





Putnam s Monthly Advertiser. 249

The New Volume of FATHER HYACINTHE’S WORKS ; Now Ready.

THE FAMILY AND THE CHURCH:
AND THE

Education of the Working Classes

;

A Series of Discourses by Rev. FATHER HYACINTHE, late Superior of the
Barefooted Carmelites of Paris.

Edited by LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON.

With an Introduction by Hon. John Bigelow, late U. S. Minister to France.

1 Vol. 12mo. #1.50.

Also, the Fourth Edition of

SPEECHES AND DISCOURSES
By Rev. FATHER HYACINTHE.

With SKETCH OF HIS LIFE,
By LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON. With Fine Portrait on Steel.

1 -Vo\. 12mo. Cloth.. #1.25.

“ The popularity of P6re Hyacinthe will doubtless secure for this volume a wide sale. Fortunately, its merits
are of a high order. A series of sermons richer in spiritual reach of thought has never come to our knowledge.
He has a fervor and felicity of expression, and also a philosophic turn of mind.”—Chicago Journal.

“ As a man and as a teacher he stands forth pure and undefiled in heart, as an example of self-sacrificing
devotion to his cause, of unselfish and incorruptible goodness of soul, he presents a type of individuality

;
seldom

to be encountered in the walks of life.”—Jewish Messenger.
“ The discourses will be found fully up to the high expectations formed from the great priest’s protests

against the trammels of Romish dogmatism.”—Rochester Democrat.
“ All the discourses are redolent with the wonderful eloquence of the Father.”—Portland Press.

“We heartily commend the book to all Christian families.”

—

Waterbury American.

G. P. PUTNAM &• SON have in press:

MEDl/CVAL
1

'

PICTURES,
Transferred from the German by JOHN O. SARGENT. Elegantly printed in 1 vol. small 4to.

II.

Miss Aikin’s QUEEN ELIZABETH.

The Court and Times of Queen Elizabeth.
By LUCY AIKIN. i vol. small 8vo.

“An admirable historical work, nearly as entertaining as a novel, and far more instructive than most histo-
ries.”—Edinburgh Review.

III.

Warton’s English Poetry.

THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY.
By THOS. WARTON. New edition, the 3 vols. Svo. all complete in 1 vol. small 8vo.

“A most curious, valuable, and interesting literary history.”—Lowndes.

TV.

A NEW VOLUME BY PARKE GODWIN, Esq.

A GERMAN PRIMER,
By M. TH. PREU : Being an introduction to the author’s First Steps in German. With Illustrations. 16mo.



Putnam s Monthly Advertiser. 247

THE NEW “HOUSEHOLD EDITION” OF

Bayard Taylor’s Writings:
lobe issued in MONTHL Y VOLUMES for subscribers to the set

\
at the low price

of $1.50 per volume
,
neatly bound in cloth.

The first two volumes will be :

VIEWS AFOOT; or, Europe Seen with. Knapsack
and. staff. i2mo. 506 pp. March 1st.

*
#
* Of this volume about 40,000 copies have been sold.

CENTRAL AFRICA; or, Life and Landscape from Egypt to the
Negro Kingdoms of the White Nile. i2mo. pp. 521.

The other volumes will follow in due course, viz.

:

EL DORADO
;

or. Adventures in the Rath of
Empire.

THE LANDS OF THE SARACEN.
GREECE AND RUSSIA.
HOME AND ABROAD.
INDIA, CHINA, AND JAPAN.
NORTHERN TRAVEL.
BY-WAYS OF EUROPE.
HANNAH THURSTON.
JOHN GODFREY’S FORTUNES.
THE STORY OF KENNETT.
JOSEPH AND HIS FRIEND.

%* In announcing a new impression of the WORKS OF BAYARD TAYLOR in a popular and cheaper
form, the publishers do not think it needful to quote the opinions of the critics as to their interest and literary

character. They would merely refer to what may be called the “ business standing ” of these works—which is

indicated by the fact that though the earliest volume, “ Views Afoot,” was published twenty-four years ago,

and most of the others are now fifteen years old, they are still called for, both separately and in sets, as among

the indispensables in American libraries and on the bookshelves of the family. Very few books, either of

Travel or Fiction, thus retain their place and continue bo long in demand, amidst all the active competition of

modern book-publishing, and the inference is not unreasonable that these volumes of Adventure in almost every

corner of the earth, possess some lasting interest and vitality which makes them worthy of a permanent place

in our literature. Mr. Taylor’s Novels were welcomed even more largely than the Travels, and we need only

quote the competent and impartial estimate of the best English critics in regard to them, viz.

:

“We have now to welcome ‘ Hannah Thurston,’ as an excellent addition to the list of such American tales
as Hawthorne’s, Longfellow’s and Mrs. Stowe’s.”

—

London Review.

“ If Bayard Taylor has not placed himself, as we are half inclined to suspect, in the front rank of novelists,
he has produced a very remarkable book—a really original story admirably told, crowded with life-like charac-
ters, full of delicate and subtle sympathies, with ideas the most opposite to his own, and lighted up throughout

with that playful humor which suggests always wisdom rather thau mere fun.’’

—

London Spectator.

“‘The Story of Kennett’ is delightful and refreshing reading
,
and a great rest after the crowded artistic

effects and the conventional interests of even the better kinds of English novels.”

—

London Spectator.

N.B.—All our Agents for the Knickerbocker Edition of IRVING’S WORKS,
will receive subscriptions for the “Household Edition” of BAYARD TAYLOR’S
COMPLETE PROSE WORKS, at the low price of $1.50 per volume.

The Regular Library edition of BAYARD TAYLOR’S WORKS may still be had.
Price $2.25 per vol. ; or in 13 vols. i2mo., $29.00 ; or in half-calf, $48.

G. P. PUTNAM & SON, 661 Broadway.



384 Putnam’s Magazine. [March, 1870.

New York City, in which the wealth, the trade, the enterprise of the entire

continent comes to a head, should also furnish an organ for the best intellectual as-

piration and achievement. It should bring together and reflect whatever is most

vital and peculiar in the whole country. We admit that, what Paris is to France,

what London is to Great Britain, New York can never be to the United States, nor

is it desirable that it should be, owing to our more diffusive and democratic meth-

ods
;
but we see no reason why New York, supported by the vast resources of the

interior, should not rival any foreign city, not only in the munificence of its provi-

sions for scholarship, but in its literary and artistic activity.

In Politics, while we shall sedulously avoid the small topics of party debate, we

shall all the more earnestly strive to give philosophic breadth, dignity, and manli-

ness to political discussion. Holding, with an intensity of conviction that it would

not be easy to express, the distinctive American principle that the single and supreme

function of all government is Justice, or the equality of rights among men, we shall

endeavor to enforce it with all our strength
;

and, as a necessary consequence, to

expose and overwhelm, without mincing words, the many fearful and odious

corruptions by which that sacred principle is still defeated. The venality of much

of our legislation, and the shameless imbecility and oppressiveness of many of our

schemes of taxation, cannot be too vehemently opposed.

So, in regard to religious questions, we shall keep clear of all topics of mere

sectarian controversy, of all points of dogma or discipline that may be still in dis-

pute between the different denominations of Christians; but the essential and

catholic principles of Christianity,—the highest truths, in our conviction, yet dis-
closed to mankind,—are susceptible of application to all human relations, to all
subjects that concern the welfare and progress of society

;
and one of our principal

aims shall be to apply these principles practically, so as to bring, to the extent of

our influence, public and private life into a complete and willing accord with

the sublime morality of the gospels. We shall claim for ourselves and exercise the
utmost freedom within these limits, without, we trust, giving offence to those who

may not always think as we do.

At the same time we shall not forget that the proper function of a Magazine is

to amuse as well as to instruct, or, rather, is to instruct by means of amusement

;

and we hope to gather, therefore, out of the intellectual life and culture of the re-

public, criticisms, sketches, tales, poems, etc., that shall he an adequate expression

of our new conditions and our abounding vitality. This, we are told, is the impos-

sible part of magazine editorship : our best mind, it is said, turns itself toward prac-

tical pursuits : Pacific Railroads are our epics, and the ring of hammers and anvils

our lyrics : while the finer arts—the arts in which all that is grand and beautiful
and subtle in a nation’s genius is embodied—are left to certain “delicate nobodies,”
as one of our cynical friends phrases it, who are without positive personality, and

confess to no higher inspiration than that of bread-winning for the moment.

If such were our notions we should despair, not only of our literature, but of the

Republic itself
;
for literature is but the outflowing of the national heart, and since we

have given of la^e such ample evidence that our heart is not dead, we need enter-

tain no fears of the answering capacities of the head. The flowers and fruits of

genius will come in their own way and time, if we who set ourselves to watch for

them are not too dull to recognize their coming, or too inhospitable to tender

them a generous welcome when they arrive. P. G.



2 52 Putnam s Monthly Advertiser.

“At the head of the Magazines of the day
.”—Norwalk Gasett*

“7're-eminent among the Monthlies.”—butiaio Com. Advertiser.

Putnam’s magazine—1870.
PUBLISHED BY THE PUTNAM MAGAZINE COMPANY.

[Among the Shareholders are Mr. Wm. Cullen Bryant, and several practical
business men.J

The Contributors include the ablest and most popular writers in every section.

We intend that this Magazme shall be

uWtde-awake
,
Pure

,
Practical

\
Entertaining

,

,

”

And such as an intelligentfamily “ camiot afford to do without.”

JEi^SOLID INFORMATION on all matters connected with the Worlds
Progress in Literature, Science, Art, Domestic Economy, the Art of
Living, the comforts of Travelling, Social Science, National Inter-
ests, and Individual Rights

—

will be specially cultivated and developed in
the pages of this Magazine.

Distinctive Features of Putnam’s Magazine,
Popular Papers on SCIENCE and NATURAL HISTORY; and

PRACTICAL INFORMATION for Every-Day Life, will be prepared spec-
ially for this Magazine by Prof. Schele de Vere

;
also, by Prof. Maury, Miss S.

Fenimore Cooper, Edward Spencer, Dr.
J. J.

Hayes, Russell Sturgis, Jr.
etc.

Stories and lighter articles, by Miss Alcott, Mrs. R. H. Davis, Mrs.

J.
G. Austin, Mrs. M. C. Ames, the authors of “ Too True,” “ The Stranded

Ship,” “ Still Life in Paris,” “ Fair Harvard.” Caroline Cheesebro,

Alice Cary, Lucy Fountain, Eliz. Stoddard, Edward Everett Hale,
and many others.

Important Themes connected with LITERATURE, HISTORY, and NA-
TIONAL PROGRESS, by Prof. Goldwin Smith, Parke Godwin, Prof. Tay-
ler Lewis, E. A. Duyckinck, Prof. Bascom, The author of “Our Establishes

Church,” Pres’t Chadbourne, Pres't Coppee, Prof. Hoppin, Charlton T.

Lewis, E C. Stedman, R. B. Kimball, R. H. Stoddard.

Social Topics—

I

ndividual Rights, Healthful Progress, etc., by

Frances Power Cobbe, Miss Cooper, Prof. M. C. Tyler, Prof De Verb.

European Affairs, Literature and Art. A comprehensive record in
each No. by Bayard Taylor. Also special contributions by G. M. Towle,

Mrs. Hawthorne, P. G. Hamerton, F. B. Goodrich, Karl Blind, Clar-

ence Cook, and other special contributors now in Europe.

Putnam’s Magazine.

—

“ Ttierevival oftheKing ofthe Ameriaan Monthlies

is an event of more than ordinary importance. No Magazine has ever appeared
on this side of the Atlantic of half the merit ^‘Putnam’s Monthly.’”—
Richmond (Va.) Enquirer.

Putnam’s Magazine.—

“

Right well have they redeemed their promise.”

—Nashville Daily Times.
Putnam’s Magazine.

—

“ The best Magazine
,
the worthiest periodical fruit

of American literary effort everyet seen on this side of the water.”
* * * *

The same old friend
\

and no spurious imitator greets us.”

—

St. Louis

Democrat.

Putnam’s Magazine.— The pioneer of American Monthlies in enterprise,
and theforemost in influence.”

—

Chicago Christian Times.

Putnam’s Magazine.

—

“ We hail in it a certain liberal
,
large-hearted style

,

as of a travelled man, and a freedom from, mannerism, cliqueism, and pro-

vincialism.”

—

Chicago Journal of Commerce.

“ The admirable plan of this publication takes in all topics of modern thought and study,

while every subject is invariably treated wtth ability
.”—Albany Evening Journal.