children of their Catholicity. The case is one of conscience, and conscience is accountable to no civil tribunal. All secular authority and all secular considerations whatever must yield to conscience. In questions of conscience the law of God governs, not a plurality of votes. The state abuses its authority if it sustains the common schools as they are with a view of detaching our children from their Catholic faith and love. If Catholics cannot retain their Catholic faith and practice and still be true, loyal, and exemplary American citizens, it must be only because Americanism is incompatible with the rights of conscience, and that would be its condemnation, not the condemnation of Catholicity. No nationality can override conscience; for conscience is catholic, not national, and is accountable to God alone, who is above and over all nations, all principalities and powers, King of kings and Lord of lords. But the assumption in the objection is not true. It mistakes the opinion of the American people individually for the constitution of the American state. The American state is as much Catholic as it is Protestant, and really harmonizes far better with Catholicity than with Protestantism. We hold that, instead of decatholicizing Catholic children, it is far more necessary, if we are to be governed by reasons of this sort, to unmake the children of Protestants of their Protestantism. We really believe that, in order to train them up to be, in the fullest sense, true, loyal, and exemplary American citizens, such as can alone arrest the present downward tendency of the republic, and realize the hopes of its heroic and noble-hearted founders, they must become good Catholics.