But we are asked what shall be done with the large body of citizens who are neither Catholic nor Protestant? Such citizens, we reply, have no religion; and they who have no religion have no conscience that people who have religion are bound to respect. If they refuse to send their children either to the Hebrew schools or the Catholic schools, or, in fine, to the Protestant schools, let them found schools of their own, at their own expense. The constitutions of the several States guarantee to each and every citizen the right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience; but this is not guaranteeing to any one the freedom of not worshipping God, to deny his existence, to reject his revelation, or to worship a false God. The liberty guaranteed is the liberty of religion, not the liberty of infidelity. The infidel has, under our constitution and laws, the right of protection in his civil and political equality; but none to protection in his infidelity, since that is not a religion, but the denial of all religion. He cannot plead conscience in its behalf, for conscience presupposes religion; and where there is no religious faith, there is, of course, no conscience. It would be eminently absurd to ask the state to protect infidelity, or the denial of all religion; for religion, as we have said, is the only basis of the state, and for the state to protect infidelity would be to cut its own throat. These are, we believe, all the plausible objections that can be urged against the division of the public schools we demand; for we do not count as such the pretence of some over-zealous Protestants that it is necessary to detach the children of Catholics from the Catholic Church in order that they may grow up thorough Americans; and as the public schools are very effectual in so detaching them, and weakening their respect for the religion of their parents, and their reverence for their clergy, they ought on all patriotic grounds to be maintained in full vigor as they are. We have heard this objection from over-zealous Evangelicals, and still oftener from so-called Liberal Christians and infidels; we have long been told that the church is anti-American, and can never thrive in the United States; for she can never withstand the free and enlightened spirit of the country, and the decatholicizing influence of our common schools; and we can hardly doubt that some thought of the kind is at the bottom of much of the opposition the proposed division of the public schools has encountered. But we cannot treat it as serious; for it is evidently incompatible with the freedom of conscience which the state is bound by its constitution to recognize and protect, for Catholics as well as for Protestants. The state has no right to make itself a proselyting institution for or against Protestantism, for or against Catholicity. It is its business to protect us in the free and full enjoyment of our religion, not to engage in the work of unmaking our