Three Ideals. 85 



and free to exclude from their voluntary society indi- 

 viduals who do not conform to the rules they have 

 freely chosen for their own regulation ; no one citizen 

 having the right to intrude himself upon the society of 

 others who do not approve of him. 



But the new laws, in fact, deny to citizens the right 

 to group and associate themselves in voluntary associa- 

 tions, to select freely from their fellow-citizens those to 

 whom they will confide the education of their children, 

 or to obey the dictates of their conscience by acts which 

 are innocent of encroaching on the similar rights of other 

 citizens. 



To deny the right of an episcopally nominated Roman 

 Catholic priest to officiate in a parish, the Roman 

 Catholic parishioners of which desire him, is to infringe, 

 not so much his rights, as the rights of election of those 

 citizens who by the fact that they call themselves Roman 

 Catholics show that they have delegated that power to 

 their bishop, and that they elect as their minister that 

 citizen who is selected by such bishop. To exile or 

 imprison such Roman Catholic bishop is to outrage the 

 rights of a yet greater number the Roman Catholics 

 of the diocese, who show by their calling themselves 

 Roman Catholics that they, in fact, voluntarily elect as 

 the citizen to whom they will stand in a certain voluntary 

 relation that one who is indicated to them by, and who 

 is in communion with the Roman pontiff. 



