66

We told the minister to omit everything except the pledges to each other that we should be faithful, and cherish and love, in sickness or health, until death should us part. After the ceremony we went for a walk, and sat on the grass, and with God as a witness we made our oral marriage contract, which was the result of our observations. We agreed we must bear and forbear; that whatever was right for one was right for the other; that we should have no companions that were not congenial to both; that if we quarrelled we must make up before going to sleep, no matter what the cost to our pride; that we should have absolutely no secrets from one another; that our liberties should be governed by no rules, but that we should observe wherein we had a tendency to criticise other married people and profit by our observations; that it was no sin to express our affection to each other, and that we should be jealous of an opportunity of reminding each other of this agreement in any of its details."

I

CONCLUSION

T now becomes the duty of our state to enact laws (for self-preservation alone) as to property

or other qualification for its ignorant voters, as

have other states and countries, or in a few years its government will be in other hands. Also, to consider the enactment of laws similar to the following, which some countries, ruled by Rome for centuries, but now free from its power, found necessary to enact for self-preservation, viz.: (1) The use of church bells is restricted to calling the people to religious work; (2) clerical vestments are forbidden in the streets; (3) religious processions are strictly forbidden; (4) pulpit discourses advising disobedience to the laws are forbidden; (5) gifts of real estate to religious institutions are unlawful unless designed exclusively for the institution; (6) abrogation of law permitting any religious associations to acquire landed property; (7) the state does not recognize monastic orders nor permit their establishment. Monks shall be made to earn their own living. The association of sisters of charity is unlawful and should be suppressed in the republic, and Jesuits are expelled and may not return. (In Mexico it was found the ultimate object of sisterhoods was not religion, but, instead, the subjugation of the people to a foreign despotism that has its seat at Rome. Eleven

hundred and thirty Jesuits were expelled from Mexico in 1870, many of whom are in our country, of which the people of the United States should take due notice.) (8) Matrimony is a civil contract, and is to be duly registered: religious service may be added; (9) cemeteries are under civil inspection, and open for burial of all classes and creeds; (10) no one can sign away his liberty by contract or religious vow; (11) the abolition of censorship of books; (12) education in the public schools is free and compulsory. The government should decree, declaring all briefs, bulls, and rescripts from the court of Rome void in the United States, unless sanctioned by the government. No foreign power should be allowed to busy itself with the education of our children. Education in the public schools should be free and compulsory for all. Parochial schools should be disbanded. No religious services in public schools should be allowed, and the schools should be absolutely free from Protestant or Roman Catholic influences; sisters of charity, or women representing any religious organization may not be allowed to enter public buildings or stand outside of any buildings for the purpose of collecting money from its followers, violation of such law when enacted to be punishable by fine or imprisonment, or both. The confessional, being the chief means by which the church holds the minds and actions of her devotees at her disposal, and the most perfect scheme the ingenuity of man could devise for turning men and women into the degraded tools of a rapacious and designing power, and through

which the "system" is enabled to inform itself of whatever transpires in every household where its followers reside, or have business relations, make it the best spy system in the world. This constitutes one of the principal dangers that confront the liberty of the citizen, togetherwith "purgatory," the gold mine of priests, who, through the false claims that they can rescue souls from purgatory, and have the keys of heaven and hell, in return for such promises receive enormous sums of money from their superstitious and ignorant followers. These channels, and the sale of indulgences, together with the large amounts of money collected by the sisters of charity, have brought into the coffers of the " system" such enormous amounts of money that its managers are daily becoming more audacious in asserting the claims of what is called the church, and enables them to support an increasing army of priests and sisters of charity now seen on our streets engaged in their respective avocations. The above has nothing whatever to do with religion, but, on the contrary, is the work of men in the remote past scheming for money, power, and personal aggrandizement, which is handed down to this generation as a good paying business, and should be viewed from this standpoint only in determining what measures are to be taken for its suppression and obliteration. The church now attempts through one of it dignitaries to read lectures to the state, which makes its own laws, talks of resisting the state if it interferes in what he is pleased to call its "God

given rights," and for the first time in the history of our country throws down this ultimatum, the first rebellious steps of a plan smouldering for years in the breast of Rome and now carried into execution by its representatives in this country. What is the new doctrine that these apostles are to preach to us? This unholy alliance; for the purpose among other things of breaking down the public school system, the principles and policies of the state, the cherished ideals of a free people, which stand for American independence, and repudiation of imperialism and Roman despotism. In vain you cry for peace. It is idle to attempt evading the issue; silence means cowardice. What step will you require of the state to educate its women, whose withdrawal from the clergy to the extent men have now done, the "faith," would in a single decade find itself on its last legs marching rapidly down hill to its grave. Once let the nature of the confessional and the true history of convents and monasteries be known to the people of the United States and the righteous indignation of an outraged public would quickly blast this den of incipient sacerdotalism. If Rome's morale be higher than it was in the fourteenth century it is because her hand is forced by Protestantism. We not only want more plain talk and less fireworks, but action is now required. The same practices, the same money gatherers will go right on the same as before until, like Mexico and France, the people will rise up in their might and force this money getting organization to the wall, compel obedience to the