this our readers will gather some idea of what popular education can cost, even with the best management. It is well known that the Catholic people, through their church organizations, and by the unpaid assistance of their religious orders, such as the Christian Brothers, possess peculiar advantages, which enable them to conduct the largest and best-arranged schools at the smallest possible cost. Why will not the state permit us to do it? Or, rather, why will not the state do us the justice to reimburse the actual expenses which we make in doing it? For it is a thing which we have already accomplished to a great extent. Suppose that the city of New York was now educating the nineteen thousand children who attend our schools; at $19.75 each, it would cost $375,250; or at $8.50 each it would cost $161,500, this last sum being sixty thousand dollars more than we pay for the same! {135} We have shown, however, that this calculation cannot be made to rest upon the basis given by the board, when you come to institute a comparison between the expenditures for the public schools and for ours. We are willing, nevertheless, to rest our claim even upon such a contrast as those figures show; and we ask the tax-payers of New York whether they are willing to follow the lead of our adversaries and add a few hundred thousand dollars extra to the annual taxes, for the satisfaction of doing us injustice? It is universally conceded that the school-rooms of New York are dangerously over-crowded; and the Board of Education finds it almost impossible to meet the growing necessities of the city. There are still thousands of Catholics and Protestants unprovided for. Give us the means, and we will speedily see that there is no Catholic child in New York left without the opportunity of education. We will do this upon the strictest terms of accountability to the state. We will conduct our schools up to the highest standard that our legislators may think proper to adopt for the regulation of the public school system. We shall never shrink from the most rigid official scrutiny and inspection. We shall only ask that, whilst we literally follow the requirements of the state as to the course of secular education, we shall not be required to place in the hands of our children books that are hostile to their faith, or to omit giving to their young souls that spiritual food which we deem to be essential for eternal life. In all sincerity and truth we must say, that we have not yet heard an argument which could shake our faith in the justice of our cause; and that it will ultimately prevail, by the blessing of Providence, we cannot possibly doubt; for, we have an abiding confidence in the integrity and generosity of the American people. ---------- The Omnibus Two Hundred Years Ago.