It is not, therefore, for political or military reasons that we demand universal education, whether by the general government or under the state governments. We demand it, as far as practicable, for other and far higher reasons. We want it for a spiritual or religious end. We want our children to be educated as thoroughly as they can be, but in relation to the great purpose of their existence, so as to be fitted to gain the end for which God creates them. For the great mass of the people, the education needed is not secular education, which simply sharpens the intellect and generates pride and presumption, but moral and religious education, which trains up children in the way they should go, which teaches them to be honest and loyal, modest and unpretending, docile and respectful to their superiors, open and ingenuous, obedient and submissive to rightful authority, parental or conjugal, civil or ecclesiastical; to know and keep the commandments of God and the precepts of the church; and to place the salvation of the soul before all else in life. This sort of education can be given only by the church or under her direction and control; and as there is for us Catholics only one church, there is and can be no proper education for us not given by or under the direction and control of the Catholic Church. But it is precisely education by the Catholic Church that Mr. Wilson and his party do not want, do not believe in, and wish to prevent us from having even for our own children. It is therefore they demand a system of universal and uniform compulsory education by the authority and under the direction of the general government, which shall effect and maintain the national unification proposed, by compelling all the children of the land to be trained in national schools, under Evangelical control and management. The end and aim of the _New Departure_, aside from certain business interests, is to suppress Catholic education, gradually extinguish Catholicity in the country, and to form one homogeneous American people after the New England Evangelical type. Of this there can be no reasonable doubt. The Evangelicals and their humanitarian allies, as all their organs show, are seriously alarmed at the growth of Catholicity in the United States. They supposed, at first, that the church could never take root in our Protestant soil, that she could not breathe the atmosphere of freedom and enlightenment, or thrive in a land of newspapers and free schools. They have been disappointed, and now see that they reckoned without their host, and that, if they really mean to prevent the American people from gradually becoming Catholic, they must change fundamentally the American form of government, suppress the freedom of religion hitherto enjoyed by Catholics, and take the training of all children and youth into their own hands. If they leave education to the wishes and judgment of parents, Catholic parents will bring up their children Catholics; if they leave it