A SIGNIFICANT PROPOSAL.
By Editor
The feverish, restless spirit of the times, and the tendency of the age towards legislation, which interferes with the individual rights of conscience, are well exemplified in a proposal by the trustees of the Normal College of New Jersey of an amendment to the State constitution "prohibiting the establishment of schools the purpose of which is to withdraw pupils from the public schools." Of course the amendment is aimed directly at parochial schools, but great as is the evil of Romish opposition to our common schools, the remedy proposed by the trustees of the Normal College would be a great deal worse. It is right that the State should require every parent to afford his child an opportunity to acquire a good education in the common branches of knowledge, but to go farther than that and say that the child must be educated in this school, or in that, is a most unwarranted invasion of private rights. If Protestants, because they are in the majority, have a right to say that Catholic children shall be educated in the public schools, it must follow that where Catholics are in the majority they have the right to say that Protestants shall send their children to church schools. There are some things for which people are properly answerable only to God, and certainly the matter of giving religious instruction to, or of withholding it from, their children is one of those things. The State may require Catholics, or Presbyterians, or Methodists, and, in short, people of all denominations, to educate their children, but the moment it forbids the establishment of denominational schools, and requires that all shall send to the State schools, it strikes down religious liberty, and tramples upon the sacred rights of conscience.