The fundamental and controlling reason or motive for the establishment and maintenance of parochial schools is the profound conviction on the part of all Roman Catholics, in which conviction clergy and laity are a unit, that the welfare of the state, the stability of the Union, the continuance of civil and religious freedom, and the lasting happiness of the individual depend upon the code and standards of morality, discipline, self-restraint and temperance taught by religion. The student of history well knows that social order and civilized society have always rested upon religion; that there has never been a civilized nation without religion; that free government has never long endured except in countries where some religious faith has prevailed, and that our own country for three centuries has been an essentially religious country, by which I mean that the great majority of citizens have been believers in God and in some Christian religion. When the Constitution of the United States was established, the Americans were a truly religious people, and as a whole held firmly to one form or another of Christian faith. It has been recently pointed out by Archbishop Ireland in the Cathedral of St. Paul that in those days, "to stay away from religious service on Sunday was to invoke upon one's self serious public criticism." It is quite true that the great majority of Americans were then Protestants, but they were a religious majority. The Catholics can never forget that they owe the blessing of the religious liberty and tolerance which they now enjoy to a generation that was overwhelmingly Protestant and that it was first granted at an epoch when religious liberty and tolerance were practically unknown in Europe, whether in Catholic or Protestant countries. Lord Bryce in his great work on "The American Commonwealth" has reviewed the influence of religion in this country, and has declared that "one is startled by the thought of what might befall this huge yet delicate fabric of laws and commerce and social institutions were the foundation it has rested upon to crumble away." That foundation he recognized to be religion, and he admonished us that "the more democratic republics become, the more the masses grow conscious of their own power, the more do they need to live, not only by patriotism, but by reverence and self-control, and the more essential to their well-being are those sources whence reverence and self-control flow."[69] Catholics believe that those sources of reverence and self-control are to be found in religion, and that if we sow in irreligion we shall reap in irreligion. Hence the firm and uncompromising determination of Catholic clergy and laity that thorough and efficient religious instruction, so far as lies in their power, shall be a vital and essential element in the education of every American Catholic child.