_Boy_ (interrupting). Oh! but I likes to ax questions, and it ain’t no sort of use you telling us it’s wrong to lie—nobody at ‘ome ever told me _that_—if yer don’t say who said it, ‘cause I ain’t bound to mind what _you_ say, is I? [_Teacher_ checks the indignant “Indeed you are” that rises to his lips, arrested by the terrible and conscientious thought whether it be not a new and strange form of denominationalism for the teacher to make his own dictum infallible in matters of morality. Would not this be to elevate into a living, personal dogma an unsectarian teacher?—a singular clash, surely. Teacher shivers at the bare idea. Soliloquizes: How can I meet this knock-down reasoning? These Arabs are so rebellious, so perverse; why must they ask so many questions, and require to know the why and wherefore of everything? (Glances at the clock.) Ah! thank my stars, the time is almost up! but this dodge won’t do every time. I’m afraid I shall have to give up the whole thing as a bad job.] (Aloud.) We have only five minutes more to-day, lads, so you must let me finish the chapter without asking any more questions. (Boys relapse into indifferent silence. Curtain falls.) In conclusion, we insist that the state shall obey its own constitution, and let religion alone. In purely state institutions, the consciences must be left free, and no experiments with religion can be tried. Every child in such institutions must enjoy liberty of conscience and free access to its own ministers and sacraments. If any sect undertakes to help the state to do its work, by establishing reformatories, protectories, and asylums for its own children, excluding all other religions and the children of other religions, we shall not object to its receiving a just _per capita_ from the state; and under this system we claim the same and no more for purely Catholic institutions doing the work of the state in respect to Catholic children. If, however, sectarian, unsectarian, or non-Catholic institutions receive support from the state, and receive the children of the Catholic Church and of other persuasions, they must be conducted upon the same principle with state institutions, and in them “no law respecting the establishment of a religion” must be made or enforced, but the most perfect liberty of conscience must prevail. We ask no special favors for ourselves or our church; all we claim is perfect equality before the law and the state, and the full benefit of that fair play which we extend to others. DANTE’S PURGATORIO. CANTO SEVENTH.