aid not long ago:

"This is too large a circumstance to be covered by the Latin phrase, 'De
minimis non curat lex.' These Catholics (paying their proportion of the
taxes) are constrained, every year, on conscientious grounds, to yield
to others their right to one-third of the school-money, a sum averaging,
at the present time, about $200,000 every year. That is to say, these
people are _punished_ every year, for believing as they do, to the
extent of $200,000; and to that extent those of us who send our children
to these excellent common schools _become beneficiaries of the Catholic
money_. What a shame for Protestants to have their children educated for
money robbed from Catholics! Mercantile life is supposed to cultivate,
in some, a relish for hard bargains. But if it were a business matter,
and not a matter of religious concern, could business men be found
willing to exact such a pecuniary advantage as this? I think it would
shock the secular conscience!"

The State, in creating _free schools_, is like the Turkish Bashaw's mode
of making pork cheap. He first compelled the Jews to buy it at a rate
fixed by himself; but the Jews had no use for it, so it was left for
every one to pick up at will. Indeed, what is a school worth when a man
will pay a premium to be exempt from sending his children to it? The
State, boasting of its splendid Public Schools, is also like that poor
fellow who wore a gold watch and boasted of it. "Where did you get it?"
he was asked. "I got it as a present," he answered. Then he related how
one day he met with a rich man: "I knocked him down," he said, "put my
foot on his throat, and said: 'Give me your watch, or I kill you.' So he
gave it to me." "Pay your taxes for the erection and support of our
Public Schools," says the lord State to the poor and to the rich, "or I
sell your property." What a shame! The Catholics ask no favor, but they
insist on their rights. In this country, whose discoverer was a
Catholic--in this country, where the principle of religious toleration
was first established by a Catholic nobleman, the famous and chivalric
Calvert, Earl of Baltimore--in this country, whose people are largely
indebted for their freedom to the armed cooeperation and generous aid of
Catholic France--in this country, whose constitutional freedom has been
struck down by the malevolent Puritanism _which in one breath declares
that Catholics are opposed to education, and in the next insists that
th