Blaine at the Catholic University
By Editor
THE dedication services of the Roman Catholic University at Washington, D. C., were held the 13th inst. Prominent at the banquet were President Harrison, who sat at the left of Cardinal Gibbons, Secretaries Blaine, Tracy, Noble, Windom, and Rusk, and Attorney-General Miller. Among the toasts to "His Holiness, Pope Leo XIII," "Our Sister Universities" (not Protestant), "The Hierarchy of the United States" (the Catholic only), was a toast, "Our Country and her President." To this Secretary James G. Blaine responded, as follows:— "I come to represent the United States—not in any political sense, much less in any partisan sense, nor in connection with any church or sect; but to speak for all and the great freedom which we enjoy. I have made that statement in Protestant assemblies, and I am glad to make it in Catholic ones." How does Secretary of State Blaine represent the United States if not in a political sense. "Political" is "pertaining to government, policy, polity, or politics;" "pertaining to a nation or State; national; public; civil." If Mr. Blaine represented the United States at all, he did it as a public or civil or political official; and this before an organization which is intensely and always partisan and political. But it might be well to query, Who gave Mr. Blaine the right to represent the United States at a distinctively Roman Catholic convention, met for the purpose of honoring the Roman Catholic system of education, which is diametrically opposed to the free public schools of America—who gave Mr. Blaine this right or privilege? Would the President or his cabinet attend the services of any other distinctively denominational institution, say the Mormons or the Jews, for instance?