dependent will be its vote. The
stronger the source of government, the stronger the government. If
the "bayonets that think" are the most potent, the "ballots that
think" are the most beneficent.

Every victory which our nation has won has been a victory of the
public schools and a death knock to Catholicism. They have been the
nursery not only of our statesmen, but of our patriots and soldiers.
They are an American institution and are destined to live as long as
the republic survives. There is no other American institution that
American people would sooner fight for and die for than that which
secures an educated and intelligent nationality. Let us maintain
inviolate our public schools to the end that our nation may ever be
the home of liberty, "the land of benedictions."

In the unbounded universe of God's domain there are manifold
diversities, and yet there is an essential unity that binds the world
together; there is a common point where all matter unites.

As there is great freedom and diversity permitted in the unity of
nature, so, in our country of religious and political freedom, we
must grant the greatest latitude possible to the individual
conscience in personal, religious and civil rights consistent with
good government. But that there must be a code of morality common to
all as the basis of our civilized jurisprudence, in which the rights
of all center or unite and are equally protected, every reasonable
mind must admit. But where do we get our ideas of what is morally
right, and what is morally wrong, as the basis of our common law and
jurisprudence? What book or books contain the best code of morals? We
answer, the Bible. For the excellency of the morality of the Bible
has been admitted by the most distinguished men who have opposed its
supernatural revelation, among whom are Gibbon, Byron, Carlyle, Lord
Bollingbroke, Napoleon Bonaparte, Goethe and Renan. Thomas Jefferson,
speaking of Christ as a teacher, said: "He set forth the sublime
ideas of the Supreme Being, aphorisms and precepts of the purest
morality."

Catholicism says: "No Bible shall be taught in the public schools,"
but demands that she be allowed to proclaim her dogmas.

Benjamin Franklin, five weeks before his death, said of Christ: "I
think His system of morals, and His religion, as He left them, are
the best the world ever saw or is likely to see." The services of the
Bible in behalf of human rights and freedom, and in reforming and