for the heart or conscience, but for the decision of the cool judgment of mature years; that at that period when the whole Christian world deem it most desirable to instil the chastening influences of Christianity into the tender and comparatively pure mind and heart of the child, ere the cares and corruptions of the world have reached and seared it,—­at that period the child in this college is to be carefully excluded therefrom, and to be told that its influence is pernicious and dangerous in the extreme.  Why, the whole system is a constant preaching against Christianity and against religion, and I insist that there is no charity, and can be no charity, in that system of instruction from which Christianity is excluded.  I perfectly agree with what my learned friend says in regard to the monasteries of the Old World, as seats of learning to which we are all indebted at the present day.  Much of our learning, almost all of our early histories, and a vast amount of literary treasure, were preserved therein and emanated therefrom.  But we all know, that although these were emphatically receptacles for literature of the highest order, yet they were always connected with Christianity, and were always regarded and conducted as religious establishments.

Going back as far as the statutes of Henry the Fourth, as early as 1402,[3] in the act respecting charities, we find that one hundred years before the Reformation, in Catholic times, in the establishment of every charitable institution, there was to be proper provision for religious instruction.  Again, after the time of the Reformation, when those monastic institutions were abolished, in the 1st Edw.  VI. ch. 14, we find certain chantries abolished, and their funds appropriated to the instruction of youth in the grammar schools founded in that reign, which Lord Eldon says extended all over the kingdom.  In all these we find provision for religious instruction, the dispensation of the same being by a teacher or preacher.  In 2 Swanston, p. 529, the case of the Bedford Charity, Lord Eldon gives a long opinion, in the course of which he says, that in these schools care is taken to educate youth in the Christian religion, and in all of them the New Testament is taught, both in Latin and Greek.  Here, then, we find that the great and leading provision, both before and after the Reformation, was to connect the knowledge of Christianity with human letters.  And it will be always found that a school for instruction of youth, to possess the privileges of a charity, must be provided with religious instruction.

For the decision, that the essentials of Christianity are part of the common law of the land, I refer your honors to 1 Vernon, p. 293, where Lord Hale, who cannot be suspected of any bigotry on this subject, says, that to decry religion, and call it a cheat, tends to destroy all religion; and he also declares Christianity to be part of the common law of the land.  Mr. N. Dane, in his Abridgment, ch. 219, recognizes the