ung men and women are suitable,
are intelligent, liberal persons, attached to the school system,
I want some of them to be employed as teachers. I don't wish
to exclude them from my political support when they are Republicans
and agree with me in other matters, because of their religious
faith. Nor do I wish to exclude them from being public school
teachers, if they will keep their particular religious tenets
out of their instruction, because of their religious faith, any
more than I would have excluded Phil Sheridan from his office
in the army, or would have refused to support him for any
public office, if he had been nominated for it. Further,
I want to state and advocate my opinions in the face of day,
and you may be sure that I shall do this without flinching
before anybody's threats or anybody's displeasure or indignation.
You, on the other hand, I understand, want to go into a cellar
to declare your principles. You want to join an association
whose members are ashamed to confess they belong to it; many
of whom, without apparently forfeiting the respect of their
fellows, lie about their membership in it when they are asked
about it. You want to mass together the whole Catholic population
of Massachusetts to the support of their extreme and wrong-
headed priests, if any such can be found.

The difference between us is a difference of methods in accomplishing
the same result. I think your method would overthrow the
common school system, would overthrow the Republican Party,
and would end by massing together all the Catholic voters,
as proscription always does mass men together, to increase
and strengthen that political power which you profess so much
to dread.

When O'Neill, the young Catholic soldier of Worcester, lay
dying, he said: "Write to my dear mother and tell her I die
for my country. I wish I had two lives to give. Let the
Union flag be wrapped around me and a fold of it laid under
my head." I feel proud that God gave me such a man to be
my countryman and townsman. I have very little respect for
the Americanism that is not moved and stirred by such a story.
If O'Neill had left a daughter who had her father's spirit,
I would be willing to trust my child or grandchild to her
instruction in secular education in the public school, even
if the father had kissed with his last breath the cross on
which the Saviour died, or even if the parting soul had received
comfort from the lips of Thomas Conat