In the same pamphlet from which we have quoted is also another "Document," designated "No. 4," embodying what purports to be a report made to the "State Council of Political Reform" in 1870 by "the Committee on Endowment and Support by the State of Sectarian Institutions." This "report" contains, among other quotations from Aristotle, Washington, Jay, De Witt Clinton, Chancellor Kent, Milton, Lord Brougham, Guizot, and Horace Mann, many of which are so generally known and accepted as to have become truisms, one notable extract from Thomas Jefferson, which embodies very nearly all that Catholics desire and are contending for. Jefferson says: "A system of general instruction which shall reach every description of our citizens from the richest to the poorest ... give it to us in any shape." This is what _we_ ask. We make no war; we have no "plan of attack" upon the public schools, as charged upon page 5 of this Document No. 4; our chief desire is simply that expressed in the words already quoted from Thomas Jefferson; and, with the "sectarians," we deny that the system now in use is sufficiently "general" to accomplish the purpose intended, or that it can be called a general system while it excludes any class whose positive religious convictions must necessarily be daily interfered with by what is called an "unsectarian" method of instruction. We believe, as did the Puritan fathers, that a knowledge of and an obedience to the divine government are essential in fitting each child "to be a citizen of a free and tolerant republic." We believe in our right to say how and by whom such knowledge shall be given and such obedience shall be taught, and we also believe that we are quite as competent to determine our methods and to select our teachers as is any political party now in being or ever likely to be. We are quite as strongly opposed to the establishment of any "state religion" as this self-elected body of political reformers are or affect to be; and, to quote and apply to this body the words of "Document No. 4," "we cannot yield one jot or tittle of their demand, for it involves a principle to us sacred and vital. It means the union of church and state." And we refer to history for the proof that the Catholic has never been a state church, but has been more frequently found in antagonism to the civil power than in alliance with it; always on the side of liberty and the rights of the people; shielding them from oppression, even to the deposing of unjust rulers; enforcing their rights, even to the extent of aiding to make war upon tyrants; and yet, despite this teaching of history, we are told (on page 8 of the Document first referred to), under the pretence of saying why we "make war upon the public schools," as follows: "But a single sect is taught by its head, a foreign and despotic ecclesiastical prince, that the civil authorities in a republic have not the right to direct and control the course of study, and the choice and appointment