It may as well be distinctly understood, once and for all, that we cannot consent that our children shall receive secular education without religious training; and that we understand very well that such religious knowledge as we desire them to possess cannot be imparted by those who are hostile to us. We intend also to teach them to respect and uphold all the rights, social, political, and religious, of their fellow-citizens, upon the plain injunction of the Scriptures that they shall do unto others precisely as they would have others do unto themselves. At the same time we will teach them to love and revere their ancient mother church, as the custodian for fifteen hundred years of that Bible which she is falsely accused by this tract of "_fearing;_" as the munificent patroness of every art and the mistress of every science; as the friend and supporter of liberty when united to order and justice; as the enemy of pride, license, and disobedience to lawful authority; as the guardian of the sanctity of marriage against the pagan concupiscence of the divorce courts; as the sword of vengeance uplifted over the heads of the child-murdering destroyers of populations; in fine, as the hope and future salvation of this republic and all its precious endowments of personal manhood, honor, virtue, and faith, and all its national institutions of self-governing popular sovereignty, equal rights, and faithful citizenship, based, not upon infidel revolutionary "_fraternity_," but upon a noble Christian brotherhood. Certainly, even if we were mistaken in our estimate of the fruitfulness and power of the Catholic faith, it would be no less an evidence of our sincere patriotism, that we are anxious to impress upon the children of the church the conviction that in faithfully serving their country they are only obeying the commands of their religion. {127} As we do not intend that our children shall be either untaught or mistaught in regard to this sublime knowledge and duty, we shall insist on educating them ourselves, with or without receiving our just share of the public taxes, to which we do contribute very largely, the declaration of the Bible House tract to the contrary notwithstanding. We have devoted more space to this first, class of objectors than they could claim from our courtesy, because we believe that they nominally represent many honest men who will cheerfully admit the truth when they see it.