Our American school system must be preserved and the enemy should be made to know that we are ready to defend it with purse and pen, with head and with heart, and, if need be, with the sacrifice of life. (Applause.)

"The sword, extreme of dread!

Yet, when upon the freeman's thigh 'tis bound,
While for his altar and his hearth,

While for the land that gave him birth,
The war drum rolls, the trumpet sounds,

How sacred is it then!"

FRANCE, TO RISE, MUST SEPARATE THE SCHOOL FROM THE CHURCH.

Gambetta. of France, said, in a speech delivered in 1871: "The only way France is to retrieve her place in Europe, is to improve and strengthen her internal position. The most pressing and urgent of all reforms is a comprehensive measure of general education, which would finally abolish the class distinctions which unfortunately exist.

66 * * I am not only for the separation of the church and State, but for the entire separation of the schools and churches. I consider this not only a question of political but of social order. Let religious education, whether Catholic, Jewish or Protestant, be given in religious temples according to the choice of parents; but let not the Catholics, with their claims to exclusiveness, have anything to do with the propagation of necessary knowledge, which it is the State's duty to see imparted to every citizen."

And if this was true of France, a necessity on which depended its future, it is doubly true of our country today. Our American school system, I repeat, must be preserved.

It has been truly said that "ignorance is the mother of devotion," whose natural products are bigotry and intolerance. With the intellect obscured and the reason enthralled, the individual becomes a mere machine, susceptible of being used by unscrupulous men for the aggrandizement of ambitious rulers, or to accomplish any object, however wicked.

Such being the inevitable consequences of ignorance, it becomes our obvious duty, in order that this country may escape

so terrible a calamity, to provide for the general education of all the youth. To attain this end, it is proper that the State should take charge of the instruction of all its children. (Applause.) Not only in all matters that will fit them for business life, but also to provide for their moral training, in order that they may not, by becoming criminals and paupers, become a burden to the State.

THE STATE MUST EDUCATE.

The American policy is that the property of the State shall educate the children of the State. This benefits equally the rich and the poor; this gives educational advantages to all; yet it costs almost twice as much to support our police and police courts and punish crime, as it does to educate our children. Statistics show that eighty per cent of the crime committed in the United States and elsewhere is committed by the ignorant classes.

In view of this fact, is it not wisdom to make ample provision for the education of the masses? Indeed, it is the only way we can save ourselves.

Our government must advance one step farther in education

al interests

MAKE PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION COMPULSORY!

If ignorance endangers our liberties and increases our taxes, then the government has a right to require all to be educated, and educated in our common schools. (Applause.)

Prussia and many of the German States have tried this system for years with the very best results. Our government for its own safety must resort to this, and very soon.

There are many Protestants, I fear, who do not know what the name Protestant means. Protestants have ceased to be protesters. But Romanists have not ceased to Romanize; they know how to work in the new world; their tricks and trickery have not been found out here as in Europe.

THE ENEMY WE MUST MEET.

The Roman Jesuit priests, who are the foes of our common schools, hold allegiance only to a foreign potentate, from whom

they have received orders to destroy the public schools, and subvert our educational system. Nice fellows, these, to talk about their rights!

These Fathers (?) fathers in every sense save that they have not the care of the children. (Sensation.) A foreign band representing the interests of a foreign power, without any domestic affection or social ties, have disclosed enough of their infernal designs to put all the friends of liberty and of our loved land upon their guard. We are not at all fearful of the struggle which we must soon meet. They have opened their batteries on Bunker Hill, the very citadel of our liberties. They will yet learn that they are on the wrong side of the

water.

Let us stand invincibly by our common school system. There is no nobler product of American civilization. There is no stronger rampart around our public liberty and order. There can be no surer proof of our national decadence than its sacrifice.

Solomon said: "There is a time for everything under the sun; a time to plant and a time to pull up, a time to build and a time to pull down." And so there was a time when we welcomed everybody that might immigrate to this country; when we threw open our gates, and said: "Come, come, come, we have room for all.” We think the time has come when our nation should cry "Halt!" Our weakest point and our greatest danger now lies in our open gates. (Applause.) At the rate of the arrivals in New York city last week, the number for the year would amount to 500,000, and it is not the time when they come in the largest numbers.

To me this land is before and above all others, and I have no statement of which I am prouder-other than that I am a Christian than that I am an American citizen. (Great applause.)

We have heard men speak of the Irish-American, the German-American, the Scottish-American and the English-American. But there should be no such words in our vocabulary "English-Americans," "German-Americans," "RussianAmericans," or "Irish-Americans." We say to all who come to our shores, Leave your differences and your prejudices where

as

you left your poverty! Patrick's Day and the 12th of July must be swallowed up in the 4th of July!

We want no street parades in this country with green flag, orange flag, red flag or black flag; only the flag of all others, the dearest and the best, the brightest and the most God-like -the Star Spangled Banner!

"Long may it wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave."

"Columbia welcomes to her doors

The Gentile and the Jew,

And finds a home upon her shores

For men of every hue;

She asks not what their creed may be,

Nor if in prayer they fall;

Yet while she gives them Liberty,
One Flag must cover all.

The Christian may enjoy his creed
Beneath the Stripes and Stars,
The heathen praise his wooden god,
And Juggernaut his cars;

All freely here may meet in peace,
In Freedom's ample hall,

But all rebellious wars must cease,
One Flag shall cover all.

The petty flags of clique or clan—
Of feuds of foreign birth,
Should not insult the hope of man-
Our Flag-the best on earth;
Let factious banners pass away,
Nor prove fair Freedom's pall,

Oh heed Columbia's words today-

وو

ONE FLAG MUST COVER ALL. (Applause.)