The more common objection urged is, that if separate schools are conceded to Catholics, they must not only be conceded to the Israelites, but also to each Protestant denomination. To the Israelites, we grant, if they demand them. To each Protestant denomination, not at all, unless each denomination can put in an honest plea of conscience for such division. All Protestant denominations, without a single exception, unless it be the Episcopalians, unite in opposing the division we ask for, and in defending the system as it is, which proves that they have no conscientious objections to the public schools as they are now constituted and conducted. The division to meet the demands of the Catholic conscience would necessitate no change at all in the schools not set apart for Catholic children; and the several denominations that are not conscientiously opposed to them now could not be conscientiously opposed to them after the division. We cannot suppose that any denomination of Protestants would consent to support a system of education that offends its own conscience for the sake of doing violence to the conscience of Catholics. Do not all American Protestants profess to be the sturdy champions of freedom of conscience, and maintain that where conscience begins there the secular authority ends? If the present schools do violence to no Protestant conscience, as we presume from their defence of them they do not, no Protestant denomination can demand a division in its favor on the plea of conscience; and to no other plea is the state or the public under any obligation to listen. If, however, there be any denomination that can in good faith demand separate schools on the plea of conscience, we say at once let it have them, for such a plea, when honest, overrides every other consideration.