how can the general system be impaired by allowing them to do so? This is the condition annexed to the privilege in all those countries which have adopted this liberal policy. The proposition seems too plain for argument. When a college contains five hundred boys, two hundred may be classed in the higher division, three hundred in the lower, and each may have separate playgrounds and recitation halls. So, if a district contains two hundred of one faith, and three hundred of another, or of several other creeds, surely the two hundred may be organized into one school and the three hundred into another, or into several others, according to the standard of numbers, as may be required by the law. The whole question, therefore, is purely one of distribution, not at all above the capacity of a drill-sergeant! The same number of children would be educated, probably in the same number of schools, and at the same cost, as now. The course of secular education prescribed by the state could be rigidly enforced in all such schools without assailing the conscience of any one, because we suppose that the state would not object that Catholics should learn English history from Lingard, whilst others might prefer Hume and Macaulay. We presume that there would be no disagreement in regard to reading, writing, arithmetic, mathematics, natural philosophy, and those things which constitute the general studies of primary and high schools. It is only with such that the state has any right to intermeddle, and it is only such that the state professes to secure to its pupils. The state may say, "The public welfare requires that the citizens of a self-governing nation shall receive sufficient intellectual culture to enable them to discharge their duties understandingly;" but the state has no right to say that its pupils shall take their knowledge and form their opinions of the great moral events of history from D'Aubigné or from Cardinal Bellarmin. It was this that troubled the great Catholic and Protestant governments of Europe, until experience discovered to them the simple solution of the difficulty which we are so earnestly endeavoring to commend to the acceptance of the American people. Have we not at least a right to expect that our motives will not be misrepresented; and that we shall be believed when we say that we are not hostile to the public schools, but, on the contrary, most earnestly anxious to secure for them the widest usefulness and the greatest efficiency. We know that that cannot be if religion be excluded; and that it must be excluded where so many conflicting creeds confront each other.