Religious liberty is openly and positively denied in the New York House of Refuge, as will be seen from their own “Report of Special Committee to the Managers of the House of Refuge,” 1872; from which it appears, at pp. 21, 22, that the religion of the house consists in “Christian worship in simple form, and Gospel lessons in Sunday-schools,” and that the “inmates are brought into the _same_ chapel for public worship,” and that “the whole regimen of the house,” including of course the religious part, “is devised and pursued with careful attention to the _wants of the inmates, but is not submitted to the control of themselves or their friends_.” As Americans we have been taught from our infancy that liberty of conscience is the dearest right of the American citizen. We learned in our college days that even “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”; but we now learn that what the highest legislative power in the nation, and what no state legislature, can do, the managers of the New York House of Refuge have done and are now doing: they have made a law respecting the establishment of a religion in the House of Refuge, a public institution—a religion which they have called variously “Christian worship in simple form,” “Gospel lessons,” “Unsectarianism,” “The Broad Principles of Christianity”—and have forbidden the free exercise of any other religion. Even if all Christians were united in this worship and in these principles, have Jewish citizens no rights under the Constitution? As citizens of the State of New York, we have learned from the state constitution and Bill of Rights “that the free exercise and practice of religious profession and worship without discrimination or preference shall _for ever be allowed to all mankind_.” Chancellor Kent, in his _Commentaries on American Law_, says that “_the free exercise_ and enjoyment of religious profession and worship may be considered as one of the _absolute rights of individuals_, recognized in our American constitutions and secured to them by law.”[4] And Story, in his _Commentaries on the Constitution_, maintains in equally strong terms “the freedom of public worship according to the dictates of one’s conscience.”[5]