Church and State in New York.
The new tax levy bill now before the legislature, was passed to a third reading in the Senate last evening. Senator Kennedy proposed as an amendment an additional section, providing: “That neither the Mayor and Commonalty of New York, nor the Board of Supervisors, nor the Board of Apportionment provided for in the bill, should appropriate any of the public money, or any property or credit of the city or county, to any private or sectarian school, or to any institution under the control of any religious denomination.”
This was opposed by Mr. Tweed as “unnecessary,” the legislature having struck out last year from the tax levy an appropriation for sectarian schools. It was plain, however, that the striking out of the appropriation when the legislature made the levy could not control the action of the Board of Apportionment created by the bill now pending; and Mr. Kennedy made this answer to him at once. But the majority of the Senate had determined not to deprive the New York ring of the power to use men's religious beliefs and passions for their own political ends; and the amendment was rejected, every Republican senator voting for it, and every Democrat against it. Are our future elections to turn upon questions of religious faith? If the whole community is to be taxed to instruct children in a particular creed, what becomes of our religious liberty? The moment this is done, the freedom of belief and of speech, which are the elementary principles of free government, disappears; and the church which can, by political unanimity and intrigue, secure office for its agents, becomes practically the established church of the community. Elections become dangerous by invoking the strongest passions and imperiling the clearest interests of men; and the conflict of religious opinions is degraded into a struggle for official power and favor.—Evening Post.