Those who won this victory intended to provide against this seeming want of vigilance by means of some system of education, which should assimilate the principles and opinions of the people, as a perpetual bulwark against aggression. This would have been accomplished long ago if the paternal counsels of Presidents Washington and Madison had been heeded as they deserved to be,--that we should educate "our youth in the science of government,"[1] under the auspices and protection of national authority. Instead of this, we have considered ourselves sufficiently shielded by our system of public-school education, under State control, and have mainly relied upon this to fit our children for citizenship and self-government. Hitherto, we have not been seriously disturbed by the apprehension that it would result in failure, and for that reason it has been maintained with great popular unanimity. It is now, however, assailed with violence, and, manifestly, with the purpose of destroying it entirely. Hence, we are all required, by obligations we can not rightfully evade, to rest long enough from our active avocations to discover, if possible, why this is--what motives impel the assailants--and whether or no they desire to substitute other principles of government for ours, by turning us back upon a course we have solemnly repudiated. In addition to other works of like character but less ability, there is one, extensively circulated in this country, from the pen of a writer conspicuous for his learning and ability. The author asserts without disguise that what he calls "Catholicity"--that is, what the Roman popes taught when they were temporal monarchs--has been more beneficial to the world and more civilizing in its influences upon mankind than Protestantism, not alone in a social, but in a _political_, religious, and literary point of view. His argument proceeds from the Jesuit standpoint, and may be summed up in a single sentence,--that Protestantism has placed mankind in a far worse condition than they were when dominated over by papal kings.[2]