Fifty‐three peers protested against the disestablishment of the Protestant Church in Ireland, “because it is impossible to place a church disestablished and disendowed, and bound together only by the tie of a voluntary association, on a footing of equality with the perfect organization of the Church of Rome.” Mr. Disraeli had previously said the same thing in the House of Commons: “The discipline, order, and government of the Roman Catholic Church are not voluntary. They are the creation of the simple will of a sovereign pontiff” (if he means Jesus Christ, the phrase is Catholic), “and do not depend at all on the voluntary principle.... I maintain that as long as his Holiness the Pope possesses Rome, the Roman Catholic religion, in whatever country it is found, is an establishment.” In fact, there is a great deal of truth in these remarks. How, indeed, can undisciplined guerrillas contend against a well‐trained army of veterans? How can a number of voluntary associations, like so many insurance or stock companies, liable at any moment to disband, with no cohesive power, compete with a grand organization whose charter is divine, whose officers are divinely appointed, and whose laws bind in conscience in spite of adverse imperial, royal, or republican legislation? The peers were right; Mr. Disraeli is partially right. No sect or combination of sects can for any length of time, in a fair field, compete with the Catholic Church. Hence the cry of the sects in this country for state aid. The Catholic Church never asked for it except as a matter of justice or restitution. Whenever it was bestowed on her institutions, it was because they deserved it. If much was given to her, it was because her hierarchy or her religious orders, inspired by divine zeal, had founded and organized charitable institutions while the sects were asleep, lacking even in sufficient philanthropy, not to say charity, to provide for the wants of their own suffering members. The Catholic Church built and organized her asylums, schools, and other institutions, tried to support them, and did bravely support them, as she still does in this country, by the voluntary contributions of generous Christians, before the state gave anything. The sects did very little. They were too indolent, too deficient in vitality, to do much. They begged from the state. They threw the burden on the state; so that, whereas in Catholic times there were no state poor‐ houses, state asylums, or state charities, now they swarm. Protestantism is too cold a system to warm the hearts of men into life‐giving charity; so it depends, except in rare cases, on the state for the support of the poor and the orphans. The money is taken from the public treasury for the support of schools, asylums, and kindred institutions.(23) Such being the case, who can blame Catholics for receiving a portion of their own taxes to help their own institutions, mainly supported on the voluntary system?