But, if republican institutions based on equal rights are necessary to secure the freedom and independence of the church, the freedom and independence of the church, on the other hand, are no less necessary to the maintenance of such institutions. I say, _of the church_, rather than of religion, because I choose to speak of things in the concrete rather than in the abstract, and because it is only as concreted in the church that the freedom and independence of religion can be assailed, or that religion has power to protect or give security to institutions based on equal rights. The church is concrete religion. Whether there is more than one church, or which of the thousand and one claimants is the true church, is not now the question. The answer of the Catholic is not doubtful. At present I am treating the question of equal rights, and asking no more for the church before the state than for the several sects. Of course, I recognize none of the sects as the church, but I am free to say that I regard even the lowest of them as better for society than any form of downright infidelity. There is something in common between Catholics and the sects that confess Christ as the Son of God, incarnate for our redemption and salvation, which there is not, and cannot be, between us and those who confess not Christ at all. But this is a digression. {9} Equal rights must have a foundation, something on which to stand. They cannot stand on the state or civil society, for that would deny them to be rights at all, and reduce them to simple privileges granted by the state and revocable at its will. This is precisely the error of the European liberals, who invariably confound right with privilege. All European society has been, and still is to a great extent, based on privilege, not right. Thus in England you have the rights--more properly, the privileges or franchises--of Englishman, but no rights of man which parliament is bound to recognize and protect as such. There is no right or freedom of conscience which the state must respect as sacred and inviolable; there is only toleration, more or less general. In the new kingdom of Italy there are the privileges and franchises of Italians, and, within certain limits, toleration for the church. Her bishops may exercise their spiritual functions so long as they do not incur the displeasure of the state. The supremacy of the state is asserted, and the ecclesiastical administration is at the mercy of the civil. It is so in every European state, because in none of them is the state based on equal rights. The United States are the only state in the world that is so based. Our political system is based on right, not privilege, and the equal rights of all men.