Mr Colquhoun adds,
"That you may perceive more clearly, and observe that they mean the same thing all the world over, I will mention to you what was discovered at Manchester. There is a large Roman Catholic school in Manchester, out of which hundreds of children are paraded every Easter, to show how the Romish Church cares for her children. It was discovered, however, by the chaplain in the jail that these children, so educated, were scarce ever able to read, and were brutally ignorant. How did this happen? From a very simple cause. It turned out that the Popish system of instruction in the heart of Manchester, was the same as in the heart of Rome. The children were drilled in catechism and dogmas, and made to bow and cringe and crawl before the priest and this was all the education they received. The little reading they got was so imperfect, that in a year or two it fled from their minds, &c. The first object of the priests in every country in which they have power, is to establish schools under their influence; and the reason why they establish schools at all, is a very sound one. If they left the children without some semblance, of education, the people would originate schools for themselves, and they might thus acquire instruction. By taking the schools into their own hands, the priesthood secure that no knowledge shall reach the people. Accordingly, in all Roman Catholic countries—in Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Italy—you find the country covered with schools, and schools in the hands of the priests. And, so long as the state remains under the influence of the Roman Catholic Church the schools are such as I have described,—bigoted, formal, superstitious haunts; places in which this minds of the children are hammered as on a forge into a hardened bigotry."
"If driven to the necessity of teaching something in their schools, the priests make a show of giving education by teaching arithmetic, with as little of reading as possible. A people quick in calculation may remain superstitious; but a people reading, thinking, questioning, would throw off the yoke of bigotry." Above all, the free perusal of the sacred Scriptures, in a correct translation, is carefully prevented, and even denounced as a grievous crime; for this obvious reason, that the perusal of the New Testament would "lay the axe to the root of the tree," by showing that the pretext that the Popish association are teachers of the religion of Jesus Christ, is palpably untrue; and that the idolatry which they sanction, is utterly offensive to the divinity they pretend to worship.
By the arts now described, the associated priesthood of Rome have been able in a great degree, and in many countries, to resist the effect of the invention of the art of printing. The danger from that invention was great and imminent; and it has cost them much toil and vigilance to defeat the effect of it. They have treated it as a most diabolical invention, and, in their malignity, they have represented John Faust, or Faustus, an early artist, if not the inventor of the art, as an associate of Satan; and have pretended to the vulgar of Germany and other countries, that he was finally carried off by the arch enemy of man.
