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direction the opportunities of obtaining a Catholic education. For is not the state of the country generally, and of the manufacturing districts in particular, viewed by every thinking man with horror for the present, and with alarm for the future? And is it not confessed by intelligent Protestants, that the Catholic Church alone can influence the masses of the poor? Mr. J. Kay, travelling Bachelor of the University of Cambridge, and brother to the able secretary to the Committee of Council on Education, in his work on The Education of the Poor in England and Europe, published in 1846, writes as follows:

And yet what are we doing? Behold us, in 1846, with one of the most demoralised and worst educated people in Europe; with the greatest accumulated masses in the world; with one of the most rapidly increasing populations in the world behold us, I say, in 1846, developing our productive powers still further, giving the most tremendous stimulus to our manufactures and our population-resolved to turn the north into one vast city-to collect there the labourers of the world, and to leave them wholly without a religion! Not only are we fearfully careless of the best interests of our brethren; not only are we acting as if we were ourselves convinced that our religion was a lie; but we are blind, cursedly blind, to the absolute necessities of the commonwealth. Why the very heathens would have laughed our policy to scorn. . . . The contrast between the religious character of the people in populous districts of our own country, and in the Catholic countries of Austria, the Tyrol, and some of the Swiss cantons, is almost inconceivable to those who have not witnessed it. In Lancashire I have attended many of our churches, and of the chapels of the Dissenters, in the vain hope of finding out where the operatives worshipped; but my search was vain, and I firmly believe that I speak quite within limits when I say, that of the poor operatives themselves, not one in every hundred now attends either church or chapel belonging to the Episcopal Church or to the orthodox Dissenters. Their ordinary custom is to spend one-half of the Sunday in bed, resting after the toils of the week, whilst their evenings are spent in alehouses, listening to seditious conversations, and reading together exciting papers of revolutionary and infidel principles; whilst in the countries of which I have spoken, I do honestly declare, notwithstanding that I deplore the errors of their religion, that the religious and reverential character of the poor was most striking and most delightful. . . . . I do not mean to say that Protestantism is inconsistent with order; I thank God I am not yet forced to believe that; but I do believe, and all Protestant countries are a proof of what I say, that Protestantism with an uneducated people is decidedly inconsistent with social tranquillity. What I mean is, that none but the lowest forms of Protestantism will ever affect an ignorant multitude, but that Catholicism is particularly designed for such a multitude; and what I do wish is, that if we may not have an educational system, whereby to fit our people for the reception of Protestantism, that we might again have Roman Catholicism for the people; believing, as I do, that it is infinitely better that the

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people should be superstitiously religious, than that they should be, as at present, ignorant, sensual, and revolutionary infidels.. I repeat again, that the people of the manufacturing districts of this kingdom have no religion. They are not fitted for the reception of Protestantism, or if they are so in a few cases, it is only for the reception of a corrupted and corrupting phasis of it; and we have taken from them the only religion capable of influencing them in their present state.'

"It is thus that a Protestant addresses Protestants. And shall we Catholics, who know that ours is the only religion which is suited not merely to an ignorant multitude, but to the wants of all mankind, of all ages, ranks, and nations; shall we be wanting in our exertions to restore to our countrymen what has been taken from them? This boon we shall give them most easily, most thoroughly, by means of education."

Nothing short of the conversion of England to the Romish "faith" will satisfy the ambitious projectors of this education movement, which is to work wonders by means of images of the Madonna, and of the chanting of the mass; and, lest any of our readers should be incredulous as to the rapid success anticipated from the appliances which the educational system of the "Catholic Poor-School Committee " will bring to bear upon the untutored multitudes in our land, we subjoin a most edifying description of the success of the Popish Gospel in New Zealand and in Australia, which, in a letter addressed to The Catholic School by the Vicar Apostolic of the Western district, is held up as a pattern of what we may expect to see in England :—

"In the year 1840 I assisted at a Mass for catechumens in New Zealand. Having but recently been cannibals, these dusky children of mere fallen nature had not been instructed in the nature of that same Last Supper of love and sacrifice which we have above recorded, and at which they now assisted, nor would they be until near the end of their long course of preparation and instruction. All they knew was, that it was the highest and divinest mode of worship and prayer. Led by another priest, they sang hymns to Christ as God,' whilst Christ himself, unknown to them, was sacrificed before them. And how their singing did thrill through us strangers! So intent was their attention, their look so fixed and elevated, so energetic and piercing their firm and powerful voices; so possessed of their nature seemed the work they were about. Singing has in all times been the great coadjutor of the missionary. The venerable Archbishop of Sydney had at one time, and probably may still have, a person entirely devoted to the teaching of singing in the free-schools of his metropolitan city. I have seen nearly a thousand young girls, in white garments, kneeling in concentric

4 Report, pp. 54, 55.

circles round the steps of the high altar of his cathedral church, singing hymns of thanksgiving after a great act of religion. Those who saw the recollection and the evident fervour, and who heard the multitudinous harmony of that young virgin chorus, as they chanted to the Lamb upon that altar slain, declared that this spectacle could not be realized by any description to those who had not witnessed it. And one said thoughtfully to me, 'What a hope for this land, to see the future mothers of its people trained in this way!' We have not yet witnessed such scenes in England, and yet we have much better means for realizing them.”

Fired by such a prospect as this, we can hardly feel surprised at the climax of enthusiasm with which the Poor-School Committee concludes its address of March, 1848:

"Never was a grander cause; never a better opportunity. The Catholics of Great Britain will not mar the one, nor neglect the other. They will neither disgrace their faith, nor turn away from the poor. Placed under the special patronage of our Blessed Lady, and led by their bishops, they will act promptly, unitedly, generously, decisively; and they will succeed"."

It will no doubt occur to our readers to ask, whether the Vicars Apostolic and the " Catholic Poor-School Committee” may not have reckoned without their host; and not a few probably will view with feelings of contempt, rather than of apprehension, this scheme for Romanizing England under the auspices of the Committee of Council. Though not disposed to raise a cry of alarm on the subject, and confident that if the true Church of Christ in this land be but permitted to put forth her energies with that efficiency which the great body of her clergy are longing to impart to her, the devices of the Popish faction will come utterly to nought, we cannot but call to mind that there is such a thing as judicial blindness, as judicial blindness, "the strong delusion," even to believing in a lie.' Nor can we shut our eyes to the fact that startling symptoms of that "strong delusion" are perceptible in the conduct of those who have practically the power to determine what degree of countenance and support shall be given to the machinations of Popery by the State, out of the funds, and in the name, of the nation. To that conduct, as it is exhibited in the documents before us, we shall therefore now, in conclusion, turn our attention.

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The whole tone and spirit of the language held on the subject by the Popish bishops and their Poor-School Committee, is conclusive as to the position which they occupy in relation to the

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Committee of Council: not that of humble suitors for the bounty of the State on such terms as the State may see fit to impose, (which is the position assigned to the Established Church by the Committee of Council and its partisans,) but that of arrogant claimants upon the public Exchequer, peremptorily demanding aid on such terms as they themselves deem proper to dictate. It is the boast of the Romanists, constantly, advisedly, reiterated and obtruded upon the Committee of Council, that from these terms there is to be no abatement made, no compromise of the essentially Popish character of the whole work, no toleration of State interference with that character. The system proposed for this country is placed in contrast with the mis-called “National” System in Ireland: "the English and Irish systems," we are told, are "as wide as the poles asunder"." It is not a combined plan of education, in which the Romish hierarchy are to act concurrently with the State for a common purpose, that is contemplated; the avowed object is to "render available to Catholic purposes the parliamentary grant for education." A determination is expressed by the Poor-School Committee to "forego every advantage, rather than endanger the religious character of their schools;" and this determination, together with "the growing importance and the vast numbers of the British Catholic body," and "the jealousy of undue State interference which is common to every class of religionists throughout the country,' are calculated upon as so many "guarantees that Government will not venture, or, if the attempt be made, will not be allowed to tamper with the freedom of education"."

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The principal plea relied on by the Romish party in support of their claims, is to represent the refusal of State assistance for the promotion of Popish education as an injustice and a grievance. Thus in a resolution adopted at a public meeting at York, to whose proceedings we have already adverted, the following language occurs:

"That this meeting, repeating most emphatically its sense of the injustice done to the Catholics of Great Britain, by being hitherto solely excluded from the parliamentary grant for education, voted from funds to which they equally with others have contributed, calls upon her Majesty's ministers to redeem the pledge given in the last parliament of a tardy act of justice, by an immediate recognition of the rights of Catholics to their full share of any funds voted by Parliament for education'."

Nor is this outcry confined to the complaint of non-participation,

Catholic School, No. VI. p. 85. 9 Report, p. 13.

8 Report, p. 45.
1 Report, p. 46.

hitherto, in the parliamentary education grant. It is a significant fact, indicative of the designs and hopes of the Romanists, at this time, that in the "Joint Pastoral" in which they order collections to be made for meeting by grants from their own body the proffered grants of the Committee of Council, the Vicars Apostolic resort to the same charges of spoliation which in Ireland preceded the attacks upon the property of the national establishment. There can be no question as to the real scope and tendency of such a statement as the following, put forth at the present moment in connexion with an appeal to the Roman Catholic body for pecuniary contributions, and with a boastful announcement of the concessions made by the Committee of Council::

"We beg to remind you that one of the most insidious and most dangerous persecutions the Church of God ever sustained, was that which was devised by the apostate emperor Julian. He thought it was impossible to destroy the Catholic religion so long as her members. were well educated, and so long as the Church could array in her defence her Gregories and her Basils. Hence this persecutor framed a decree, unexampled before his time in the annals of tyranny, which, under the severest penalties, forbade all Christians, or Galileans-as he impiously called them-to attend the schools of grammar, &c. The insidious scheme of the apostate Julian was again adopted in the reign of Elizabeth, in order to decatholicise this our native country. The noble and well-endowed universities and public schools, erected and endowed by our Catholic ancestors, were then seized upon, and rigorously closed against all adherents to the ancient faith. Nor was this severe privation deemed sufficient. Catholics were forbidden, under severe penalties, either to provide an education for their children at home, or procure it for them in foreign lands. It was then enacted, that if any Catholic should keep or maintain a schoolmaster, he should forfeit 10l. per month, and the schoolmaster should suffer imprisonment for one year; that Catholics directly or indirectly contributing to the maintenance of Catholic seminaries beyond the seas, should forfeit their lands and possessions, and be consigned to prison during the pleasure of the sovereign; and that no Catholic should send his child for education beyond the sea, without special license, under forfeiture of one hundred pounds for every such offence.-Vide Statutes, 23 & 27 of Elizabeth.

"Dearly beloved brethren and children in Jesus Christ, the Catholics of the British Empire have great reason to lift up their hearts in gratitude to Him who is the Ruler of kingdoms and of empires, and to thank Him that this cruel persecuting state of things no longer endures and disgraces our land. We rejoice to see that our holy religion is once more spreading its branches over this kingdom-that many and illustrious converts have lately returned to the bosom of the Catholic Church; that many new chapels have in all directions been lately erected, and

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