Looking around the world today, it is easy to measure the progress of the different peoples by the degree in which they have attained religious liberty. The strictly Catholic countries, where least light has penetrated, and where the right of the church to control the lawmaking power and to dominate public education has been longest recognized, are precisely those most backward in all the essentials of civilization; and in each of these lands, any uprising of the people on behalf of liberty and progress is invariably accompanied by an open war against the special privileges of the church. Thus France and Portugal have found it impossible to win and hold their fundamental liberties except by shaking off the ecclesiastical yoke; and in these lands the clerical element is foremost in the evil work of plotting the restoration of the monarchy and the annihilation of the rights of man. In Mexico, the priesthood has been fully recognized as the most deadly enemy of the people. In Spain, the founder of secular education, Francisco Ferrer, was brutally murdered at the behest of the clerics; and their associates in this and every land have not ceased to spread abroad lies that are intended to blacken his memory and to excuse his assassins. The anti-clerical and republican movements in Spain and Italy go hand in hand. The United States of America started right in theory, although it has not been always firm and loyal to the democratic principle. Observing the evils of a state church, as they had existed in Europe and in the American colonies, our forefathers wisely incorporated into the federal Constitution strong provisions intended to save our land from religious tyranny. By this fundamental document, the right of political organization is expressly derived from the people, and not from any supposed divine sanction. No recognition of any religious doctrine appears anywhere in the instrument. To make perfectly clear the democratic purpose of the Constitution, a bill of rights, consisting of eleven amendments, was added as a condition of the ratification of the instrument by the original states. To the eternal honor of the framers of this bill of rights, the first words of its first article are: "_Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof_." The Constitution itself contains the no less highly significant clause: "_No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States_."