With no less emphasis President Garfield put himself on record in the following words:
"The divorce between church and state ought to be absolute. It ought to be so absolute that no church property anywhere, in any state, or in the nation, should be exempt from equal taxation; for if you exempt the property of any church organization, to that extent you impose a tax upon the whole community."
The New York _Evening Post_ in its greatest days, when edited by William Cullen Bryant, spoke boldly on the subject of church exemption. Hear it:
"The _Evening Post_ has long been of the opinion that the American theory of a self-supporting church ought to be carried out to its full and legitimate conclusion, and that the separation of church and state ought to be complete. It should include the total discontinuance of contributions of public money, direct or indirect, to the support of any religious establishment. We have never been able to see the slightest difference in principle between the appropriation of a certain sum of money raised by tax to a particular church, and a release of that church from a tax on its property to the same amount. The cost of the act in either case falls upon the taxpayers generally."
An admirable summary of the vital principles involved is contained in the following editorial from the San Antonio _Express_:
"The _Express_ is not antagonistic to the churches. It believes that many of them are doing a great and noble work; but it does not believe in exempting sectarian property from taxation in a land of alleged religious liberty at the expense of men who regard the church as a brake on the wheels of progress, an incubus on civilization, the preservator of antique ignorance, the storehouse of foolish superstition. It does not approve of the church posing as an almoner while the thin purse of labor is annually mulct to make it a present of several millions. Let it be just before it attempts to be generous. Let it assume its due proportion of the public burdens, and perchance there will not be so much need of its dole. The church should not profit at the expense of the poor; it certainly should not fatten at the cost of those who despise it."
Even the New York _Independent_, when it was a distinctly clerical magazine, allowed the following clear statement of principle to appear: