Words would be wasted in dwelling on this point. There is not a member of the state who has not the law, as it were, born in his blood. No man ever dreams of interfering with the worship of another. Catholic church and Jewish tabernacle and Methodist meeting-house nestle together side by side, and their congregations come and go, year in year out, and worship, each in its own way, without a breath of hindrance. Conversion or perversion, as it may be called, on any side is not attempted, save at any particular member’s good-will and pleasure. Each may possibly entertain the pious conviction that his neighbor is going directly to perdition, but he never dreams of disputing that neighbor’s right of way thither. And the thought of a state official or an official of any character coming in and directly or indirectly ordering the Catholics to become Methodists, or the Methodists Jews, or the Jews either, is something so preposterous that the American mind can scarcely entertain it. Yet, strange as it is painful to confess, just such coercion of conscience is carried on safely, daily and hourly, under our very noses, by State or semi-state officials. Ladies and gentlemen to whom the State has entrusted certain of its wards are in the habit of using the powers bestowed on them to restrain “the free exercise of religious profession and worship,” and not simply to restrain it, but to compel numbers of those under their charge to practise a certain form of religious profession and worship which, were they free agents, they would never practise, and against which their conscience must revolt. This coercion is more or less generally practised in the prisons, hospitals, reformatories, asylums, and such like, erected by the State for such of its members or wards as crime or accident have thrown on its hands. Besides those mainly supported by the State, there are many other institutions which volunteer to take some of its work off the hands of the State, and for which due compensation is given. In short, the majority of our public institutions will come within the scope of our observations. And it may be as well to premise here that our observations are intended chiefly to expose a wrong that we, as Catholics, feel keenly and suffer from; but the arguments advanced will be of a kind that may serve for any who suffer under a similar grievance, and who claim for themselves or their co-religionists “the free exercise of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference.” If the violation of this article of the constitution to-day favors one side under our ever-shifting parties and platforms, it may to-morrow favor the other. What we demand is simply that the constitution be strictly maintained, and not violated under any cover whatsoever.