ce of our common school system,
at the public charge, open to all the children and free from
partisan or sectarian control. If you and I differ, it is
only as to what is the best means of accomplishing these
ends. If you think that they are best accomplished by secret
societies, by hiding from the face of day, by men who will
not acknowledge what they are doing, and by refusing public
employment to men and women who think on these subjects exactly
as we do, but whose religious faith differs from ours, then
I don't agree with you. I think your method will result
in driving and compacting together, in solid mass, persons
who will soon number nearly or quite fifty per cent. of the
voting population of Massachusetts. Nothing strengthens
men, nothing makes them so hard to hear reason, nothing so
drives them to extremity in opinion or in action as persecution
or proscription.

On the other hand, my method is the method of absolute freedom
and of pure reason. The Catholic boy, who has grown up in
our common schools, who had formed his youthful friendships
with his Protestant classmates, whose daughter or sister,
as he grows older, is employed as a teacher, will very soon
be attached to our common school system as we are ourselves.
He will be required, as he gets property, to pay his share
of his support. He cannot ask to be exempt from a tax to
which all Protestants cheerfully submit, whether their own
children be in the schools or not, and he will not easily
be made to give his consent to paying twice. The American
Spirit, the Spirit of the age, the Spirit of Liberty, the
Spirit of Equality, especially what Roger Williams called
"Soul Liberty" is able to maintain herself in a fair field
and in a free contest against all comers. Do not compel her
to fight in a cellar. Do not compel her to breathe the damp,
malarial atmosphere of dark places. Especially let no member
of the Republican Party, the last child of freedom, lend his
aid to such an effort. The atmosphere of the Republic is
the air of the mountain top and the sunlight and the open
field. Her emblem is the eagle and not the bat.

I am faithfully yours,
GEORGE F. HOAR.

After the publication of the foregoing letter, I received
one from Theodore Roosevelt, who was holding a high office
in New York City, then at the beginning of his illustrious
political career. He expressed his hearty sympathy and approval,
and offered to lay aside everything els