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Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · October 16, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 41

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An Unwarrantable Attempt.

By Editor

THE SENTINEL is not partisan in any sense, and, therefore, upon the reference to the Republicans in the following extract from the Sun, we have nothing to say. We print the item solely for the value of the point which it makes so clearly, without reference one way or the other to the Republicans, as such:—
“I think,” said Governor Hoard in a speech delivered at Waukesha, the day after the Milwaukee election, “I see the interest of the American State hanging in the balance in the discussion, and I wish to see exhibited the patriotism that knows enough to defend the house in which it lives. This law may be imperfect, but what new law is not? It may require to be perfected, but we should stand by the right of the State to prescribe the secular education of the State.” Unfortunately for Governor Hoard and the Republicans, the Bennett bill undertakes to prescribe what shall be taught in schools supported by religious bodies and private means, and not by public taxation. The position of the opponents of the Bennett bill is clearly defined by Mr. George Brumder, proprietor of the Germania, the organ of the German Lutheran Church. “It is not,” he says, “because the Lutherans are adverse to the teaching of English in the Lutheran schools, that we oppose the law, but simply because the State attempts to dictate to us what we shall teach in our private schools.”
The Republicans are raising the cry of the State against the Church, and they are taking the rather ticklish course of representing the opposition to the Bennett bill as the work of Catholics, Lutherans, and foreigners generally. In reality the opponents of the bill are fighting for the good and sound principle that the State shall mind its own business. They are not attacking the common schools. They are defending private and parochial schools, and they are resisting the unwarrantable attempt of the State to direct the instruction in institutions which it does not support.”