As already shown, nothing can be more completely and essentially a private matter than religion. Where the beliefs, words or acts of an individual do not affect the equal rights of any of his fellows, singly or collectively, the state can under no legitimate pretext interfere with them. Not only may it not interfere with the free exercise of any form of religious worship or the performance of any religious acts not properly prohibited on grounds of public policy independent of their connection with religion, but it is guilty of a flagrant denial of equal justice, if it shows the slightest partiality to any form of religious or anti-religious belief, or practices any discrimination against any such. It has no right to help or encourage any or all forms of religion, any more than to hamper or discourage them. The one thing to which they are all, from Roman Catholicism to Atheism, entitled to receive from the state on precisely equal terms, is protection in the peaceable exercise of their rights, involving full liberty to spread their respective doctrines at their own cost. No honest cult would ask for more, and no self-respecting school of thought would accept less. Whether any particular religion or religion as a whole thrives or decays, is none of the state's business. All it has to do is to give a free field to all, and let them succeed or fail in proportion to their own merits and their ability to convince men and women of their truth and of their claim to support at the hands of individuals. THE INEQUALITY OF EXEMPTIONS.