PUCK, April 22nd, 1885. The so-called “Freedom of Worship Bill Controversy” has been carried on so many years, through so many varying phases and under such exceptional and peculiar conditions, that it has become most difficult of description and characterization. Its exciting cause is a bill introduced into the New York legislature ostensibly in the interests of what might be called sectarian fair play. On the face of it, it aims to secure to the Catholic, confined by sickness or for other reasons in a public institution, the right to enjoy the ministrations of his religion at the hands of a priest of the Roman Church. Its opponents have alleged that it is calculated to go much farther than this in practical effect, and to afford a foothold for the regular and official installment of Roman Catholic Priests in the public institutions of the state. The bill has appeared and reappeared for many years. It has assumed many forms, has provoked a vast amount of discussion, and has engaged the interest of a very large, and in some respects a very peculiar, collection of friends and enemies. Its good faith has always been questioned, and we do not think it is expressing an ex parte opinion to say that it has always been open to question—in view of the breadth and comprehensiveness of our American common law as applied to the civil rights of the citizen and the equal status of all religious organizations in the commonwealth. At the time (April 22, 1885,) when this cartoon was printed, the bill had appeared in a form which gave good reason for the belief, in which the whole press of New York shared, that it was a covert attack upon non-sectarian institutions.

It is to be hoped that this cause of so much contention will some day be forgotten in the natural growth of a spirit of religious tolerance.