The danger menacing our country does not lie with the foreigners, nor the Anarchists, nor in municipal mismanagement. Free institutions are jeopardized because the country is false to its principles in the case of one-half of its citizens. But back of this falsity away down to the depths of causes deep in the hidden darkness of men's minds, must we look for the source of this perennial wrong. To a person of thought this is easily found in early religious training. Men have not yet learned to regard woman as a being of equal creation with themselves; do not yet believe that she stands on a par with them in natural rights even to the air she breathes. In order to secure victory for woman we must unfetter the minds of men from religious bandage. We have petitioned legislatures and congress, we have appeared before committees with the best arguments founded on justice, we have educated men politically, and yet the victory is not ours because the teachings of the church have stood in the way. Now our warfare must be upon another plan, now we must free men from that bondage of the will which is the most direful form of slavery, now we must show the falsity of that reed upon which men lean. In the old anti-slavery times men did not hesitate to call the American Church the bulwark of American slavery. In like manner to-day we shall proclaim the Church--American, English, Greek, Protestant, Catholic--to be the bulwark of woman's slavery. Man trained by the church from infancy that woman is secondary and inferior to him, made for him, to be obedient to him, the same idea permeating the Jewish and all Christian churches, all social, industrial and educational life, all civil and religious institutions, it is no subject of astonishment, if one gives a moment's thought, that woman's political enfranchisement is so long delayed.

            In the State of Washington where suffrage for woman had in its territorial days been so long and so happily tried there were never better laid plans to bring about its defeat in the new constitution. Miss Hindman, who spoke throughout the territory in its favor, says there were three political parties in the field all as parties opposed to woman suffrage, even its old friends among men refusing to speak for it lest it should delay statehood; the churches also refusing to take it up or advocate it on the specious ground that it was a political question, whose ministers solitary and few who did favor it doing so not because of justice nor even because the basic principles of the nation demanded it, but "that woman might vote for temperance," or aid some plan of the church.

            It has not been without bitter resistance by the clergy that woman's property and educational rights have advanced. Woman's anti-slavery work--her temperance work, her demand for personal rights, for political equality, for religious freedom and every step of kindred character has met with opposition from the church as a body and from the clergy as exponents of its views.

            The St. Louis Globe-Democrat in an editorial of May 5, l888, said: "There is no more striking anomaly in the history of civilization than the fact that the churches have profited in the greatest degree by the devotion of women, and yet have been among the slowest of organized institutions to concede to the sex the rights and advantages which it has managed to obtain. Most of the work done for the improvement of woman's condition as a member of society has been accomplished, not without a certain measure of Church sympathy, but without distinct and aggressive Church support. We refer particularly to the removal of insidious legal restrictions, and the development of sentiments of justice and fairness with regard to woman's political interests, and her relation to the philosophy of general progress."

            Many insidious steps by both Catholic and Protestant prove the church now, as of old, the enemy of freedom. In l884, a Plenary Council, preceded by an encyclical from the Pope laying out its line of work, was held in Baltimore. The two points against which the effort of the church is now chiefly directed, are marriage and public schools. In its control of these two questions it has ever found its chief sources of power. The Pope's encyclical declared that "civil marriage must be resented by the whole Catholic world." The establishment of parochial schools, in every parish was also commanded within two years unless excused therefrom by the bishop.

            In compliance with papal demand the Plenary Council formulated decrees against marriage as a civil act, or as under civil authority; against marriage with a Protestant, and against evening marriages. The sacramental character of the rite was solemnly affirmed, the necessity of priestly benediction and nuptial mass enforced. But well knowing the immediate promulgation of its decrees would rouse public attention to its aim, these were held in abeyance until such times as the dignitaries of the church deemed best. Not until three years later were the canons upon marriage made known on the Pacific Coast, at which time the archbishop of San Francisco, the bishops of Monterey, Los Angeles, and Grass Valley, addressed a pastoral letter to the Catholics of that region condemning civil marriage as a sin and sacrilege, illegal, and a "horrible concubinage." Marriage with a Protestant was also forbidden, and marriage unblessed by a priest it was declared, subjected the parties to excommunication.

            When the territory about my own city of Syracuse was formed into a diocese, one of the first acts of its newly appointed bishop was a prohibition against evening marriages. Archbishop Ryan of Philadelphia has commanded the observance of these decrees in his diocese enjoining nuptial mass, &c. The bishop of Savanah, Ga., some time since issued an order prohibiting marriages after nightfall, and thus have these decrees been gradually brought to bear over different portions of the country.

            It must be remembered that the Baltimore council was a body composed wholly of celibates governed by the chief celibate, the Pope of Rome, and that it decided upon a question of which it possessed no practical knowledge. It must also be recollected that no woman's voice was heard in this council in regard to a relation in which as wife, she takes an equal, and as mother a superior part. The judgement of these celibate men was alone to decide upon the form, obligation, validity and permanence of marriage, the church threatening penalties for their non-observance. In the decrees upon marriage of this council and the preceding encyclical two points are especially to be borne in mind. First, that woman is the chief victim--not alone the question decided without her voice but its indissolubility pressing most heavily upon her. For it must be remembered that while the church asserts marriage to be an indissoluble sacrament, her past history shows it to have been in the power of man, of the husband, to secure that release from its bonds that has ever been denied to the wife.

            The second point not to be forgotten, is that the power possessed by the church during the middle ages was largely due to the control it had secured over domestic relations, and that no more severe blow has ever been inflicted upon it than the institution of civil marriage. This fact is well known to the church and its persistent effort to again secure control of this relation is for the purpose of once more acquiring the power it has lost in those countries where civil marriage exists. Wherever established by the state it has met with determined opposition by the church. Historians agree as to the power the church acquired by its hold upon marriage. Lecky says that when religious marriages were alone recognized they were a potent instrument in securing the power of the priesthood who were able to compel men to submit to the conditions they imposed in the formation of the most important contract in life.

            Draper also declares the secret of much of the influence of the church in the middle ages lay in the control she has so skilfully gained over domestic life. The authority of the church over marriage has always been especially prejudicial to woman; it is from teachings of the church, that in the family power over the wife is given to the husband. It is the church and not the state, to which the teaching of woman's inferiority is due: it is the church which primarily commanded the obedience of woman to man. It is the church which stamps with religious authority the political and domestic degradation of woman. It is the church which has placed itself in opposition to all efforts looking towards her enfranchisement and it has done this under professed divine authority, and wherever we find laws of the state bearing with greater hardship upon woman than upon man, we shall ever find them due to the teachings of the church.

            But while I have first referred to the encyclical of the Pope and the action of the plenary council, upon this question of marriage, Catholics are scarcely more greedy for power over this relation than are Protestants. The church has ever been a barrier to advancing civilization; when it was the strongest at the time spoken of, when it possessed the greatest control over marriage, civilization was at the lowest.

            The Protestant pulpit is only less dangerous than the Catholic to the liberties of the people in that its organized strength is less. The old medieval control of the family under and through marriage is now as fully the aim of the Protestant church as of the Catholic. The General Episcopal convention has not convened of late years without canvassing the question of marriage and divorce. In l886 a most stringent Canon upon this relation was proposed and although it failed of adoption, a similar effort was made at the recent triennial convention in New York the fall of l889.

            The Rev. George Z. Gray, dean of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Mass., is author of a book in which he asserts, referring to scripture as authority, that marriage is not a contract between equals, but an appropriation of the woman by the man, the wife becoming merged in him and owing him obedience, the right of divorce lying alone with the husband, the wife not an independent being possessing independent rights, but a veritable slave of the husband. Not alone the Episcopalians, but Congregationalists, Presbyterians and other sects oppose marriage as a civil contract declaring it a rite to be solemnized by the church alone, and using influence changes in the celebration of this rite, requesting the publication of banns, etc., and a bill to this effect passed both houses but fortunately met with a veto from the governor.

            The clergy of Derby, England, have recently decided not to accept a marriage fee, in the hope of thus securing control of marriage by the church, and expect their example to be followed by their brethren throughout England. These are dangerous signs of the times as to the effort of the church to obtain increased power over the laity. It is also an attack of the church upon the state. The courts of this country have decided that marriage is a civil contract. As such a clergyman is no more fitted to take part in it than he would be to take acknowledgement of a deed, or part in the legalization of any other contract. In fact a marriage performed by a clergyman of any denomination should be regarded as invalid in the light of civil law.

            It is an infringement of individual rights, that either state or church should possess absolute control over this important relation, --one that enters the inmost life of the individual persons contracting it. The parties themselves as chiefly interested, should hold power over its forms. When consummated it might be placed upon record for their own safety as is done in case of other contracts.

            The Grand Jury of the General Sessions, New York City, l887, in addition to its presentment in regard to court accommodations also advanced opinions that marriage should be taken from magistrates and the laws so amended as to require all marriages to be performed by a "duly authenticated and licensed minister," mayor or Judge of court record.

            While still recognizing the right of the higher state officials to perform marriages, the dangerous suggestion of the Grand Jury calls to memory a canon of the Baltimore council which directed Catholics to use constant influence upon legislation in line with church plans. The other important subject against which the powers of the Catholic church has ever been arrayed, and whose touch we are beginning to feel in this country, is that of secular schools. As an ecclesiastical body the church is opposed to general education and to systems of public instruction in any part of the world. In Belgium, in l879, when the state established communal schools under its own control the opposition of the clerical party was strenuous and bitter. The sacrament was refused to those whose children or grandchildren attended public schools; masters of state schools were excommunicated and communion refused to the children in attendance. The sacrament of extreme unction was also refused to parents whose children were in the state communal schools.

            A curious division of penalty upon parents whose children were in these schools is notable as showing the opinion of the church as to where her chief power in ignorance lies--with women. The parents of girls attending state schools were excommunicated, but not those of boys.

            The stronghold of the church has ever been the ignorance and degradation of women. Its control over woman in the two questions of marriage and education have given it keys of power more potent than those of Peter. With her uneducated, without civil or political rights, the church is sure of its authority; but once arouse woman to a disbelief in church teachings regarding her having brought sin into the world; once open to her all avenues of education, so that her teaching of the young in her charge will be a broader, more scientific character than in the past and the doom of the church is sealed.

            Persecution of like character as that of Belgium has taken place in Prussia and other countries where state schools exist. Even here within the past twenty-four hours of the threat of excommunication by a Catholic bishop, against the parents of children not attending parochial schools, has appeared in your city papers. Instances of like character have come under my own observation in the city of Syracuse.

            In order to maintain its authority over mankind it is necessary that the church should control human thought; freedom of the will has ever been its most dangerous foe. The theory of the superiority of the church over the state, the doctrine that teaching is a function of the church and not of the state presents itself in many forms, and during the present session of congress, has been the ground of the bitter opposition to efforts for the establishment of a common school system for the education of all Indian children. It was the church that in the interests of Catholicism by the priesthood opposed the confirmation by congress of General Morgan and Dr. Dorchester. But let it not be thought that the Protestant clergy are less desirous of priestly control over education. While their efforts have not been as apparent to the general public, they no less exist, both in this country and abroad. Frances Lord, an English literary woman and reformer, at one time member of the London School Board, says of England: "The Church still clings tenaciously to its authority over the teachers of the youth of both sexes. The head masters of our great public schools, like Eton and Rugby, for instance, must be clergymen of the Church of England. Unless a candidate for such a post has taken orders, he has no chance of being accepted. No woman will be made head mistress of a girl's High School, if she be not a trinitarian."

            She declares those great universities controlled by the church stand as bulwarks against the advance of new ideas, even though they are deeply tinctured with infidelity.

            The school established by Harriet Martineau at Cheddar, among an ignorant, vicious, neglected population was ultimately broken up by the priesthood, although it was accomplishing an inconceivable amount of good. The Catholic clergy of France in similar way destroyed the schools of Madam Pepe-Cappentier, who was in reality the originator of the kindergarden system. When the statute providing for the admission of women to Oxford was passed in England a few years since, the Dean of Norwich characterized it as "an attempt to defeat Divine Providence and the Holy Scriptures," It is no less the Protestant than the Catholic clergy that show themselves opposed to woman's education, the church, whether Catholic or Protestant, possessing the same contemptuous opinion of woman, the same fear of the results to follow her education, the same teaching that through her, sin and death were brought into the world.

            In our own country most of the colleges and universities are presided over by clergymen; Harvard, Yale, Princeton, all closing their doors against the admission of girls. Even Vassar, a university for women alone has a clergyman at its head.

            Dr. M'Glynn asserts that the Roman church threatens the republic, especially referring to the efforts of its clergy against the common school system "things happening which but a generation ago would have stirred the country to a white heat of anger." But the efforts of the Protestant clergy are no less dangerous. It is the Protestant priesthood now inciting the bills before Congress to make religious teaching obligatory in common schools. Cardinal Gibbons thinks religious and secular education should not be divorced, but no less does Protestant Rev. Dr. Hill, in the Forum, also warmly vindicate the right of the state to compel religious teaching in the public schools. Dr. Hodge, of Princeton, a short time before his death published an article to which the press referred at time of its publication as very similar to those presented by the Roman Catholic clergy. Dr. Hodge declared Catholics had maintained a sounder and more consistent position as to education than Protestants who had the courage to assume. Bishop Litttlejohn characterized Dr. Hodge's paper as an expression of the views entertained by many thoughtful men--"a deep and serious dissatisfaction with the drift of the public schools." Prof. Seeley, a foremost representative of New England Congregationalism, has expressed like opinions, while other Protestant bodies are showing increasing opposition to a form of purely secular education. And yet the history of the world shows that wherever ecclesiastical schools have been tried, -wherever the church has secured influence above that of the state, the standard of education has been universally lowered.

            Governor Thomas, of Utah, only last fall speaking of the public schools of that territory under control of the Mormon Church, says they in no respect compare with the schools of Washington, Montana or the Dakotas but are practically worthless. The experience of centuries past and present prove the danger of allowing a church of any name, the control of secular education. This not alone because of the lowered grade of instruction but also because of the greatly increased power of the church over human thought and human will gained by this means. In the light of past experience all bills, legislative or congressional, looking towards compulsory religious education of whatsoever character, should be most persistently and energetically opposed.

            In November last a Catholic Congress in honor of the hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy in this country assembled in Baltimore. Priests of every degree, cardinal, monsiegneurs, arch-bishops, bishops, with hundreds of the laity took part. The whole tenor of this congress was an affirmation of the superiority of the church over the state. Among the notable points of its platform was one declaring that as the state made no provision for teaching religion, Catholics must continue to support their own schools, colleges, universities already established and multiply and perfect others so that a Catholic education might be brought within the reach of every Catholic child in the United States. That resolution points to the first danger,--that the state must teach religion.

            The second notable point was shown in the tendency towards a prohibition of free thought and free action on questions of labor, and what is known in Russia as "The will of the People." It condemned nihilism, the one bright ray in that land of torture, Russia. Macaulay said of the French toilers what may be said of those of many another country, be that country Russia, England or the United States: "In their wretchedness and despair there they sat waiting any leader that might bid them follow." "How far from that condition now are myriads of our working men to-day, aye, and working women, too? queries that old anti-slavery apostle, Parker Pillsbury.

            The most brilliant leaders of the commune were women; and was it not just, --woman, the part of humanity most debased by church and by state--woman, upon whom the heaviest weight of oppression falls?

            "We hear," remarks the Rev. Dr. Channing, "of the horrors of the Revolution; but in this, as in other things, we recollect the effect, without thinking of the guiltier cause. The Revolution was, indeed, a scene of horror; but when I look back on the reigns which preceded it, and which made Paris almost one great play and gambling house, and when I see altar and throne desecrated by a licentiousness unsurpassed in any former age, I look on scenes as shocking to the calm and searching eye of reason and virtue as the l0th of August and the massacre of September. Bloodshed is indeed a terrible spectacle, but there are other things almost as fearful as blood.

            "There are crimes which do not make us shout and turn pale like the guillotine, but deadlier in their workings. God forbid that I should say a word to weaken the thrill of horror with which we contemplate the outrages of the French Revolution! But when I hear that Revolution quoted to frighten us from Reform, to show us the danger of lifting up the depressed and ignorant mass, I must ask whence it came? and the answer is, from the want of culture among the mass of the people, and from a corruption of the great, too deep to be purged away except by destruction. Even the Atheism and Infidelity of France were due chiefly to a licentious priesthood and a licentious court. It was Religion, so called, that dug her own grave."

("Works," vol. vi., 175,176.)

            Speech of Matilda Joslyn Gage at the Woman's National Liberal Convention, "Dangers of the Hour", February 24th, l890.