in and by him, it is only through God and in him that we love them. Thus charity is no human sentiment or af fection, like philanthropy or the natural love of our neighbor and brother; it is a supernatural virtue, springing from God, and sustained by his grace. The man who does not love his neighbor cannot love God, but rejects his love and violates the first law of his being. Every word and act of our divine Saviour, while engaged on earth in establishing his church, proves this, if there be need of external proof. Even after his work on earth was done, and he had ascended to his Father, he speaks to us through the mouth of S. Paul: "If I speak with the tongues of men and angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. And if I have prophecy, and know all mysteries, and all knowledge, and have all faith, so I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and should give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing."*

Philanthropy, on the other hand, is the love of man for the sake of man; in other words, humanitarianism. It is a human affection springing from natural motives. To alleviate human sufferings, and promote human pleasures and enjoyments, are its aims. Its object is the body rather than the soul, earth rather than heaven, time rather than eternity. Its motive power is sentiment or feeling rather than reason or religion. It is a sensitiveness to all human suffering, because suffering or pain is repulsive to human nature. Philanthropy is a virtue in the natural order, springing from human motives, and not a supernatural virtue springing

1 Cor. xiii. 1-3.

from religious motives and inspired by divine grace. Philanthropy is good in itself, for our human nature still remains; nature and grace are not antagonistic, and may co-exist; nature is dependent on grace to raise it to the supernatural state and transform it into charity. Charity includes philanthropy, as the greater includes the lesser. Philanthropy without charity is earthly in its aims, frequently rash and sometimes unjust in its measures, tyrannical in the exercise of power, and not unfrequently barren in its results.

Now, the church and the state are the organized representatives of these two virtues, the divine and the human. The church is a divine kingdom, and cultivates the divine virtue of charity; the state is a human kingdom, and cultivates the human virtue of philanthropy. The church is a supernatural body, and practises the supernatural virtue of charity; the state exists in the natural order, and practises the natural sentiment of philanthropy. The church is of heaven, and her greatest jewel, charity, is of heaven; the state is of earth, and the greatest of her merits is philanthropy, which is of earthly birth. The church is eternal, so is charity; the state is temporal, as is philanthropy. The church is of God, God is charity, so the church is charity; the state is of man, so is philanthropy. The rewards of the one are eternal; of the other, temporal. Charity is a Christian virtue, and can violate no other Christian virtue in adopting her measures; she cannot make the end justify the means; but philanthropy is a human virtue, and stops at no means necessary to attain its end. Abuses are not necessarily the results of philanthropy, for philanthropy, guided by even human reason, is capable of respecting the rights of God and men, and, when guided

*

What we have chiefly to deal with in this article are institutions of benevolence, which are either wholly public property, and such as, though conducted either by private individuals or by incorporated boards of citizen managers, yet receive large shares of the public funds for their foundation, buildings, or current support, and thus become, to that extent, public institutions, and as such liable to be inquired into and criticised by the state and its citizens who pay the taxes thus expended.

The state in our times and in almost every country undertakes the restraint and custody of the persons of idiots, lunatics, drunkards, and other persons of unsound mind, for their safety; of paupers, for their maintenance; and of minors, unprovided with natural guardians, for purposes of their education, reformation, and maintenance. It is not for us to discuss at length in this article the right of the state in any country to educate and reform minors, or, in other words, to assume the place of teacher and priest; for it cannot undertake to educate without assuming the place of teacher, and still less can the state undertake the work of reformation without usurping the sacred functions of the sacerdotal of fice. Our faith, our reason, and our convictions teach us that such offices belong not to the state, but to the

We had intended to give a brief outline of what the church has done from time to time for the various forms of human want, but found we could not do so in the present article without departing from the diversified character essential to a magazine. Such a sketch of the efforts made by the church, during her long history. to alleviate physical suffering, and for the moral elevation of the race, would almost be a history

of the church itself, inasmuch as the poor have always been her heritage, in accordance with our Lord's words. To the Catholic reader this

would have been unnecessary; and if this reference serves the purpose of inducing the candid non-Catholic to look into the record, a desirable end will have been accomplished.

places of restraint and punishment, and support and maintain them, both for the protection of the public, for the safety of the individuals themselves, and for purposes of philanthropy. Having done this, it is the duty of the state to leave free the consciences of its wards and prisoners, and to give every facility to the ministers of every church and religious persuasion to have free and unrestricted access to the children and prisoners belonging to those respective churches or persuasions. We claim this for ourselves as Catholics, and we leave the sects, the Jews, and every other society of religionists to claim the same for themselves. We are willing to make common cause with them for the attainment of our rights. That it is a charity for the state, or, more correctly speaking, a work of humanity, to assume the temporal care and provision for those unfortunate members of society who, either by their own fault, by the visitation of Providence, or by misfortune, are unable to take care of themselves, we are not disposed to deny at present, though even this belongs primarily to the religious duties of the individual, and, therefore, comes within the province of the church; and we know how well the church discharged this duty before the Reformation, and is doing it now. Yet we do not deny to the sects, to all men, and to the state, the right to perform good deeds and to practise the broadest philanthropy. Such at least seems to be one of the accepted works of government. We therefore accept such institutions and works as we find them, and we will view them in the same light in which our fellowcitizens generally regard them. As citizens, as Americans, we feel the same interest in them, experience the

same pride in them, and, as a question of property and public right, we hold them as a common heritage, in which we have the same interest and authority as our fellow-citizens. We are, therefore, equally interested in their proper management and good government, and we yield to none in our desire to promote their prosperity and success. There is no part of public administration more sacred or important, no function of the state so momentous, no public responsibility so awful, as this. Accepting them, as we do, as a part of our common property and united work, we shrink not from any effort for their good government and success, and, if need be, for their improvement, reformation, and correction. When properly conducted, we have nothing but praise for them; and if, on the other hand, they are mismanaged, the funds extravagantly applied; if they are made the instruments of cruelty, perversion, or despotism; if in them or any of them religious liberty is violated, and systems of proselytizing are carried on against Catholic children, or the children of the sects, or those of the Jewish Church, we as Catholics and as American citizens will speak out freely and boldly in denouncing them. We are not disqualified from doing this, either as citizens or Catholics; not as citizens, because they belong to us as much as to other citizens; our money is there with that of others; and the Constitution gives us liberty of speech and of the press, and guarantees to us "the right to assemble and petition for the redress of grievances not as Catholics, for we have as such the experience of eightteen hundred years of the most exalted works of charity; and because we claim for ourselves no special

* Constitution of U. S., Art. 1, of Amendments.

privilege over others, but are willing to concede to all what we claim for ourselves. No clamor will deter us from the exercise of this right, or from the performance of this duty. And whilst we cannot yield our rights to any one sect of Protestantism, we are equally determined, while respecting the rights of all Protestants, not to yield our constitutional rights to all the sects of Protestantism combined under the false and deceptive name of unsectarianism. We do not believe in ex-parte and sham investigations of public abuses in respect to public institutions, and we do not belong to, and are determined not to be deluded by, whitewashing committees of investigation and amiable grand juries. We are ever ready to praise, yet we shrink not from administering cen

sure.

The theory upon which governmental institutions are founded, and those established by private citizens or boards are assisted is, that of protecting society from a large, idle, ignorant, vicious population, by providing the means for the temporal relief and social improvement and correction of these classes, so as to bring them to the age of self-support in the case of children, to punish criminals, relieve the poor, and thus gradually return them all to society as sober, enlightened, honest, industrious, and thrifty citizens. For these purposes heavy taxes are laid on the citizens, immense piles of buildings are erected at the public expense, and such institutions are annually maintained or aided at enormous cost to the people. In our November, 1872, number, while admitting and praising the philanthropic motive which sustains these institutions, we regarded them "as really nuisances of the worst kind, so far as Catholic children are concerned, on account

of their proselytizing character. Moreover," we said, "in their actual workings they violate the rights both of parents and children, and we have evidence that these poor children are actually sold at the West, both by private sale and by auction. The horrible abuses existing in some state institutions are partly known to the public, and we have the means of disclosing even worse things than those which have recently been exposed in the public papers." It is difficult to perceive the success of such institutions as ameliorating or reformatory agents, for our public press is loaded every day with evidences of the enormous increase of crime and pauperism, and with dissertations on the causes of such increase. The public are naturally slow in believing that such institutions, upon which so much treasure has been spent, are failures. Such a reflection is an unpalatable one; it is humiliating to our pride, and damaging to the boasted progress of the XIXth century. It crushes our selfesteem to know that, of all places needing correction, our Houses of Correction need correction most; and that, of all institutions calling for the stern hand of reform, there are none that need so much reformation as our schools of reform. A religious paper called The Christian Union has given strong proof of its dislike to have the public eyes opened to these unpalatable truths, and we do not think we should have returned so soon to this subject but for a rather disingenuous article in that paper, couched in terms not calculated to convince the public that it derived its name from the practice or spirit of the virtue of Christian union, which, while challenging us to expose these wrongs and abuses, declared but too great a willingness to believe that these charges, so frequently

made in Roman Catholic journals, have already received thorough investigation and perfect refutation."

We complain that our Catholic children in institutions which are supported in whole or in part by public funds-funds, therefore, in which we have a common property with our fellow-citizens-instead of being allowed the instruction and practice of their Catholic religion, are taught Protestantism in its, to us, most offensive form, and are thus exposed to the almost certain loss of their faith. The facts upon which we base the charge have never been denied, but, on the contrary, they are openly admitted and announced. Protestants deny that they proselytize Catholic children so as to make them members of any distinctive sect, but they admit that Catholic teaching and practices are rigidly excluded, and yet that the children are taught a certain religion. Is it not evident that, if such religious instruction produces any result, it is to make these children cease to be Catholics, to become non-Catholics, to take the Bible as their only rule of faith, to reject the infallible teachings of their own church, and to accept the teachings of the institutions as all that is necessary for them to know? This is proselytism of the most offensive kind; our children are either made liberal Christians, or are placed in circumstances which inevitably lead to their joining one or other of the distinctive forms of Protestantism or lose all religion whatever. Wherever a chaplain is employed, he is either a Methodist minister, such as Rev. Mr. Pierce in the New York House of Refuge, or he is a Baptist, Episcopalian, or other sectarian minister. In many of these institutions, the religious instruction is under the direction of a lay superintendent, as in the Providence School of Reform. And here

we beg to give a piece of testimony showing how incompetent laymen are for religious instruction in public reformatories. The witness under examination was at the time one of the trustees of the Providence Reform School :

"Q. Have you any knowledge in relation to the distribution of religious books among the pupils, and their being taken away?

"A. I don't of my own knowledge; I furnished once one book of a religious character, and one only; I furnished it to the officer having in charge the devotional exercises on the girls' side; I gave that to the officer for his own use; it was given to him in consequence of considerable religious feeling that there was existing among the girls at the time; the girls were holding among themselves what they called prayer-meetings; the gentleman having in charge the devotional exercises said he felt utterly incompelent to conduct the devotions in suitable words," etc.

Religious liberty is openly and positively denied in the New York House of Refuge, as will be seen from their own "Report of Special Committee to the Managers of the House of Refuge," 1872; from which it appears, at pp. 21, 22, that the religion of the house consists in "Christian worship in simple form, and Gospel lessons in Sundayschools," and that the "inmates are brought into the same chapel for public worship," and that "the whole. regimen of the house," including of course the religious part, "is devised and pursued with careful attention to the wants of the inmates, but is not submitted to the control of themselves or their friends." As Americans we have been taught from our infancy that liberty of conscience is the dearest right of the American citizen. We learned in our college days that even "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof "; but we now learn that

what the highest legislative power in the nation, and what no state legislature, can do, the managers of the New York House of Refuge have done and are now doing: they have made a law respecting the establishment of a religion in the House of Refuge, a public institution -a religion which they have called variously "Christian worship in simple. form," "Gospel lessons," "Unsectarianism," "The Broad Principles of Christianity"—and have forbidden the free exercise of any other religion. Even if all Christians were united in this worship and in these principles, have Jewish citizens no rights under the Constitution ? As citizens of the State of New York, we have learned from the state constitution and Bill of Rights" that the free exercise and practice of religious profession and worship without discrimination or preference shall for ever be allowed to all mankind." Chancellor Kent, in his Commentaries on American Law, says that "the free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship may be considered as one of the absolute rights of individuals, recognized in our American constitutions and secured to them by law." And Story, in his Commentaries on the Constitution, maintains in equally strong terms "the freedom of public worship according to the dictates of one's conscience."t

But we are now told by the Managers of the House of Refuge that "delinquency has, under the law, worked some forfeiture of rights, and that neither the delinquents nor their friends for them can justly claim, while under sentence of the courts, equal freedom with the rest of the community who have not violated the law." Such was the