CATHOLICS AND E D U C A T I O N OUR SUNDAY VISITOR LIBRARY HUNTINGTON, INDIANA L O N D O N C A T H O L I C T R U T H S O C I E T Y 6 9 S O U T H W A R K B R I D G E R O A D , S . E . - C O N T E N T S - T H E E D U C A T I O N A C T OF 1 9 0 2 : T H E D I F F I C U L T Y A N D ITS S O L U - ~V ~-TION. ; By the Archbishop of Westminster. T H E - C A T H O L I C A T T I T U D E ON T H E E D U C A T I O N QUESTION^ B y the same. T H E M A I N T E N A N C E OF RELIGION IN T H E SCHOOL. B y t h e s a m e . C A T H O L I C EDUCATION AND T H E D U T I E S OF P A R E N T S . B y t h e " I5jshop of Clifton. THE EDUCATION BILL.; By the Very Rev. Canon Glancey. T H E C A T H O L I C A S P E C T OF T H E E D U C A T I O N Q U E S T I O N . , B y Bertram C. A. Windle, M.D., F . R . S . | T H E R I G H T S OF M I N O R I T I E S . B y t h e R e v . J o s e p h R i c k a b y , S . J . ..RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION" IN SCHOOLS. B y R o b e r t J . S m y t h e . E D U C A T I O N , T R U E AND F A L S E . B y W i l l i a m S a m u e l L i l l y . N O T E THÈ following pamphlets on THE attitude of Catholics- towards Education in general, and especially in relation., to threatened legislation, past and future, h a v e ' b e e n published by the Catholic Truth Society, and are now brought together for the convenience of those who may like to possess them in a collected form. Tanuary, 1908 T H E E D U C A T I O N A C T OF 1902 T H E D I F F I C U L T Y A N D I T S S O L U T I O N " ' B Y HIS G R A C E T H È A R C H B I S H O P O F W E S T M I N S T E R Y o u must be almost weary by this time of hearing of - the Education Question. For years w e have been calling out for a resetting of the position of our schools. For years, too, "we have been watching, and criticizing, and striving to amend the efforts of the Legislature to effect that readjustment. F o r many months our attention has been fixed on the results of those efforts, and no one can yet say what phase the question will next assume. W h e t h e r w e be weary or not of the whole subject, w e can never forget it. It forces itself continually upon our notice. Qur interests as Catholics in the matter of education are so great that until some satisfactory solution is found—if that day will ever c o m e — w e must be alive to every change, actual or imminent, and w e must not allow ourselves to be distracted from the subject by any weariness or any disappointment. Y o u will " Inaugural Address at the Catholic Conference s held at Birmingham, September 26-28, 190 .̂ § The E d u c a t i o i t Act of 1962 pardon me, therefore, if I take for the subject of m y address to you to-night the results of the Education Act of 1902. I. T H E G O O D O F T H E A C T . I think that w e may say boldly that this A c t is great step in advance in the general educational pro- spects of the country. A spirit of method and of co-Ordination is brought into the national education which must certainly have the most far-réaching results. T h e complicated control of the Education Department and of t h e Science and Art Department, and óf the Charity Commission, and of the School Boards has been unified and simplified, and for the first time primary and secondary and technical educatibn with all their subdivisions have been brought under one authority, w h o s e duty it'will be to see that t h e y stand in proper relation to one another. Again, the training of teachers is. ait last receiving the attention w h i c h it deserves, and new avenues of usefulness are being opened up to those w h o desife to enter on the profession of teaching, while adequate remuneration is provided to stimulate their energy; Moreover opportunities are being afforded, and they will every day.'increase, w h e r e b y those w h o h a v a talent but small means will nevertheless be able by means of scholarships to avail themselves of every educational advantage, that the country has . at its disposal. But jnore important than all these reforms is the The Good of the Act 3 spirit w h i c h is animating them, a spirit very diffe- rent from that w h i c h w e w e r e once accustomed to associate with the Department. A glance at the " Introduction " prefixed to the Education C o d e for J904, or at the Regulations for Secondary Schools, will be sufficient indication of what I mean. It is now clearly recognized that the main object of education is not to give instruction in certain subjects and to enable children to pass muster at examination, but to train the character; and develop the intelli- g e n c e of the children and to fit them for the w o r k of life. T e a c h e r s are reminded how it is theif duty to implant in the children habits of industry, self- control, and courageous perseverance in-the face of difficulties. T h e y are to teach them to reverence what is noble, to be r e a d y for self-sacrifice, and to strive their utmost; after purity and truth. Again, due recognition is given to the fact that great freedom must be allowed to secondary schools, to w o r k upon the lines either bequeathed b y tradition or suggested by local circumstances, and that hard and fast rules would impede and not advance the educational progress of the country. On all these grounds I think that w e have reason to be grateful to the promoters of the legislation of 1902, and to the framers of the various A c t s and regulations w h i c h p r e c e d e d or have followed that much-debated enactment. T h e y have §hown them- selves keenly alive to the educational necessities of the country, and they have proved themselves to be men w h o know what real education is. i T h e nation cannot but be the better for the important changes :which have taken place. § The E d u c a t i o i t Act of 1962 II. T H E INJUSTICE O F T H E A C T O F 1 8 7 0 . Having said this much, and having recognized most fully, as I consider w e a i e bound to do, all that is good and useful in the recent legislation, w e are none the-less obliged t o confess that the A c t of 1902 has not solved the great. educational problem w h i c h has confronted and tormented the country for so many years. In order to show this, I will endeavour t o ' e s t a b l i s h three points : (1) T h é - E d u c a t i o n A c t of 1870 w a s in certain respects an unjust law ; (2) T h e Éducation A c t of 1902 has removed some of the inequalities created by the A c t of 1870 ; but, (3) It has left the fundamental injustice of that A c t untouched. 1., Until 1870 the education of the country was not adequately provided for. Thousands of children w e r e without education, and a remedy w a s urgently necessary. Voluntary effort had done much,- and could do no more. T h e direct intervention of the State' w a s required in order ; to make good the . deficiencies which w e r e recognized b y all. B u t in carrying out this \ urgently needed reform a very great injustice was committed, and a privileged posi- tion was conferred upon those w h o had done little or nothing in the cause of education, w h i l e those w h o had made ' sacrifices of every kind w e r e placed in a position of undeserved inferiority. In December, 1882, my great predecessor, Cardinal Manning, wrote The Injustice of the Act of i 870 5 an article for the Nineteenth Centwy, entitled, " is the- Education A c t of 1870 a Just L a w ? " T o m;.,ke my meaning clear I will 'quote largely from that article, which sets forth in terms plainer than any one else could have chosen the fatal flaw of the system introduced b y that A c t : — T h e principles embodied in the A c t of 1.870 may be stated as follows : — 1. T h a t education, whether b y voluntary schools or by rate schools, shall be universal, and co-extensive w i t h the needs of the w h o l e population. 2. T h a t an education rate shall be levied in all places w h e r e the existing schools are not1 sufficient for the population in number or in efficiencyi and that such rate shall be adminis- tered b y a board elected by the ratepayers. 3. T h a t the standard of education shall be raised to meet the needs and gradations of the people. 4. T h a t all schools receiving aid, whether b y Government grant o r by rate, shall be brought under the provisions of the statute law. 5. T h a t all such schools shall be under inspec- tion of Government, and bound by all minutes and codes of the Committee of Privy Council as sanctioned by Parliament. 6. Lastly, it has been since that date enacteH ~ that education, Under certain conditions and f o r Certain classes, be compulsory. N o w , these principles have been so" long admitted, and have worked themselves so deeply § The E d u c a t i o i t Act of 1962 into public opinion and daily practice, that no scheme or proposition at variance with them would b e listened to. T h e condition thus made for us being irrever- sible, our duty is to work upon it and to work onward from it for the future. Assuming then that the principles of the A c t of 1870 are good, and their results beneficial, the promoters of that A c t cannot but desire that it should be carried out to its fullest extent. . . . Putting a w a y all ecclesiastical questions, it cannot be denied that the State is justified in providing for the education of its people. It has a right to protect itself from the dangers arising from ignorance and vice, w h i c h breed crime and turbulence. It has a duty also to protect children from the neglect and sin of parents, and to guard their rights to r e c e i v e ' an education w h i c h shall fit them for human society a,nd for civil life. If the civil p o w e r has these rights and duties towards the people, it has the corresponding rights and powers to levy upon the people such taxes or rates as are necessary for the due and full discharge of such duties. But correlative to these rights of the civil p o w e r are also the rights of the people. If the'. Government may tax the w h o l e people for education, the w h o l e people have a right to share in the beneficial use, of such taxation. An education rate raised front the w h o l e people ought to be returned to the w h o l e people in a . The Injustice of the Act of i 870 7 form or in forms of education of w h i c h all may partake. If any one form of education can .be found, in w h i c h all the people are content to share, let it be adopted ; if no one such form be possible, let there b e as many varieties of form as can with reason be admitted. N o one f o r m of religious education w o u l d satisfy Catholics, Anglicans, Nonconformists, and un- believers. N o form whatsoever of merely secular instruction will satisfy the great majority, w h o believe that education without religion is impossible. T h e r e f o r e , if no one i o r m can be found t o satisfy all, many and various forms of education bught to be equally admitted, and equally allowed to stand on the same ground before the' law. 1 T h i s does not mean that every individual or every caprice may claim a share in the education rate ; but that every association or b o d y of men having p u b l i c and distinct existence, already recognized by law, should be recognized also as a unit for the purposes of education, and, being so. recognized, t h e r e f o r e admitted to a participation in t h e education rate ; reserving always'./to the Government its full inspection, and to the ratepayers their due control and audit of accounts. . . . W e may now go on t o see in w h a t the present w a y of carrying out the Act is open to the Censure of inequality and injustice. • x. First of all, the exclusive enjoyment and control of the education rate is given to one only class of schools, w h i c h represent one and § The Educatioit Act of 1962 only one form of opinion, and that form w h i c h is repugnant to the majority of the people of the United Kingdom, namely, that such schools should be only secular, to the exclusion of religion. T h e exclusion of religion excludes the vast majority of the people from those schools ; and such schools, being exclusive, are truly and emphatically sectarian. A n d here, lest I should seem not to know, or knowing, i o omit to say, that the Bible is read now in the majority of board schools, I cite the fact to' prove that religion is not taught in them. All doctrinal formularies and catechisms are ex- pressly excluded b y the A c t of 1870. But religion without doctrine is like mathematics without axioms, or triangles without base or. sides. I heartily rejoice that the life and words, and works, and death of the Divine Saviour of the world should be read by children. But that is not the teaching of religion, unless the true meaning and the due intrinsic worth of all these things be taught. But this would perforce be doctrinal Christianity, prohibited by law. T h e r e can be no mathematics without precise intellectual conceptions and adequate verbal ~ expression. . . . T h e Cardinal finally declares : " It would be difficult to find in all our recent history a more unequal and unjust condition." T h e s e w o r d s are true to-day as they w e r e twenty-two years ago. I am willing to admit, if you like, that the old board schools gave more than secular instruction, and that The Injustice of the Act of i 870 9 they endeavoured to impart a moral and religious basis of conduct. B e it so f then the inequality created b y the Act of 1870 is all the greater, for it gives a privileged position to one form of religious teaching, w h i c h is repugnant to vast numbers of the people. H e r e , in a country w h i c h prides itself7 on its Christian character, the teaching of definite Christianity w a s refused the same recognition as that a c c o r d e d to indefinite and indeterminate doctrines, and those w h o clung to it for the most conscientious motives were made to suffer for their convictions. Unwillingly, unwittingly very likely^ the framers. of .the Act of 1870 introduced a system of unfair treatment of definite religious belief, against w h i c h w e have protested for more than thirty years. 2. W e readily admit that the A c t of 1902 has removed some of the inequalities created by the A c t of 1870. W e shall no longer be called upon to content ourselves with insufficient apparatus a.nd furniture. Our teachers will be adequately re- munerated, and will not now have 1 to make t h e Sacrifices so generously and so nobly accepted in the- past. W e are given a more definitely recognized place in the educational system of the coun.try. W e , have no longer to appeal to the charity of our people for the "daily w o r k i n g of our schools. In other words, the inequality existing b e t w e e n the provided and non-provided schools of to-day is not so-great as that w h i c h existed between the board schools and the voluntary schools w h i c h they have supplanted. B u t though less in degree, the inequality is the same ir\ character, and it calls loudly for redress. § The E d u c a t i o i t Act of 1962 O N L Y AN I N S T A L M E N T O F J U S T I C E . 3. Some time ago, w h e n the A c t of 1902 was. under consideration, I ventured t o ' say that it was only an instalment of justice. I repeat that state- ment to-day, and I say that that A c t leaves untouched the ^fundamental injustice wrought by the Act of 1870. W h a t is the actual position ? T h e people of E n g l a n d are d i v i d e d into t w o camps: T h o s e w h o prefer that their children shall' receive at school only secular training or some colourless moral instruction are placed in a position of privilege. Sites are pro- cured, and schools a r e built for them, without regard to expense ; and all this is done at the public cost. T h o s e , however, w h o regard definite religious teach- ing as an all-important and fundamental part of education, are called upon to provide at their own expense sites and. buildings in order' that their children may receive the education which, as a matter of conscience, they require for them. In other words, while both classes alike are composed of those w h o pay the same rates and taxes, and have • the s^me rights as citizens, of t h e ,one same country, the upholders of definite religious teaching aré placed under a disability, and are, in fact, penalized on account of their conscientious belief. W e , have heard a great deal of t h e Nonconformist conscience, and of the injury done fo Nonconformist children because they are obliged to frequent Anglican or'other schools. I would gladly do a w a y with every such grievance, w h e r e it exists, but I confess that I am astonished to find so little appreciation on the part of our Nonconformist friends of the fact that other The I n j u s t i c e of the Act of i 870 11 people have consciences too, and that many of them,, owing to the A c t s of 1870 and 1902, have suffered, and are suffering still, a far greater injustice than any of w h i c h Nonconformists have to complain. Until the privileged position a c c o r d e d to secularists and Nonconformists by the educational legislation begun in 1870 is swept away, there Can be no per- manent settlement of the Education Question, and the primary education of the country, will continue to suffer to the great detriment of the nation. T h e voluntary schools : struggled on for years with an insufficient staff of under-paid teachers, only too often in badly built and ill-equipped schools, and, notwithstanding, they attained results b e y o n d all expectation. But they could not compete with their rivals backed by the public purse, and able to indulge in costly improvements at their whim. T h e non- provided schools, of to-day will do their best with such buildings as their friends can provide, but they cannot compete on equal terms with those w h o will find schools provided at public cost w h e n e v e r and wherever they need them. I do not complain of the vast sums e x p e n d e d on school sites and buildings by the public authorities of the land. Education is so important that I welcome everything that will make it more efficient, more attractive, and more accessible. But all these advantages should be the heritage of all alike, and it is unjust that any one should be debarred from them on account of his conscientious beliefs. All should have the; same rights in this respect, be they Catholic, Anglican, or Nonconformist. § The E d u c a t i o i t Act of 1962 III. T H E S O L U T I O N : R E C O G N I Z E A N D M E E T T H E R E L I G I O U S D I F F I C U L T Y . W h e r e , then, ladies and gentlemen, is the solution of the education difficulty to be found ? Some will tell you that w e are tending t o the complete seculari- zation of all public elementary schools. I trust that this is not the case, for such a policy would not only be a calamity to the nation as a w h o l e , but it would most certainly not be a solution of the difficulty w h i c h confronts us. Rather it would intensify still more the crying injustice of w h i c h w e have already so much reason to complain. T h e lesson of passive resistance has been taught very prominently of late. B u t what, I ask you, would its most acute recent -developments be in comparison with the resistance, both active and passive, w h i c h — i f the Christianity of England is worth anything at a l l — w o u l d at once be aroused, if Christian parents w e r e to be forced to send their children to schools w h i c h their conscience abhorred ? Compulsory education in secularized schools w o u l d most certainly not end the difficulty. T o find a solution I g o back to the words of Cardinal Manning, written in 1882 : — . . . If the Government may tax the whole people for education, the whole people have a right to share in the beneficial use of such taxation. An j education rate raised from the w h o l e people Ought to be returned to the whole people, in a form or in forms of education of which all may partake. If any one form of education can be found, in which The Solution T t I J all the people are content to share, let it be adopted ; if no one such form be possible, let there be as many varieties of form as can with reason b e admitted. N o one form of religious education would satisfy Catholics, Anglicans, Non- conformists, and unbelievers. N o form whatsoever of merely secular instruction will satisfy the great majority, w h o believe that education without religion is impossible. T h e r e f o r e , if no one form can be found to satisfy all, many and various forms of education ought to be equally admitted, and equally allowed to stand on the same ground'before the law. In other words, an equitable solution is to be found not in ignoring, but in recognizing to the full, the religious differences of the country. On this matter w e Catholics can speak quite frankly. W e are in no .way responsible for the religious divisions which unfortunately exist among our fellow-country- men. None deplore those divisions more than w e do. W e would heal them if w e could, but w e recognize them as stubborn facts' w h i c h must be taken into account in every department of our national adminis- tration. W i t h regard to the provision of elementary schools, let all Englishmen alike stand on an equal footing before the law, and let all alike have, under reasonable conditions, schools properly built and fully equipped at the public c o s t — t o w h i c h all alike contribute—but of a character to w h i c h they Can send their children without any injury being done to their conscientious religious convictions. I say undet reasonable conditions, because w h e r e v e r y f e w chil- dren of one religious belief are to be found, it would. § The E d u c a t i o i t Act of 1962 be obviously impossible to provide an efficient school for thehi, and it would b e necessary that their o w n pastor, priest, or clergyman, should see that adequate provision is made for the religious instruction of the very small minority. But in all large centres w h e r e a number of children too great for individual religious care out of school is to be found, I maintain that for such children schools should be provided and maintained at thè public cost, wherein they shall receive an education in accordance with the religious convictions of their parents, at the hands of teachers w h o are recognized as fit and capable for their task by the religious b o d y to w h i c h they belong. Many, no doubt, will say that such a scheme is chimerical and Utopian. H o w e v e r this may be, I am convinced that in nò other w a y can the educational difficulty be ended, and that until such a solution is devised, with all its necessary details, the education of the peoples of England will be retarded, and the injustice done to conscientious religious belief b y the Acts of 1870 a.nd 1902 will remain unredressed. And I hope that a day may come w h e n those w h o understand the full importance of harmonious action, w h e r è education is concerned ; and those w h o are interested in assuring to E n g l a n d that foremost place in education upon which her future prosperity depends ; and those who, like ourselves, desire to enter most fully into the educatiónal life of the Country, provided that conscience does not hold us • back, will at length realize that the only w a y to educational peace and concord i s * b y recognizing in the> fullest w a y the religious and conscientious convictions which underlie every aspect of the question. The Attitude of Catholics 15 I V , T H E A T T I T U D E O F C A T H O L I C S . W h a t is to be our attitude at the présent moment ? ' . W e are in presence of a new crisis, as w e were • in 1870, W e must face it with the same earnestness 1 , and determination as our fathers a generation ago . met the position that confronted them. First, w e see already that in many places w e shall have to improve or replace our school buildings. E l s e w h e r e new sites must be acquired and n e w schools erected upon them. E v e r y effort must be made to meet these requirements, crushing though • they will undoubtedly be in a large number of localities. In the large towns it is simply impossible to vie with the public purse in the acquisition of rschool sites, and w e must be content, as in the past, with taking the position that is within our means. At the same time, bearing ever in mind the unjust burden placed upon us because of our religious con- victions, w e have every right to expect and demand considerate treatment at the hands of all the public authorities. T h e y must be content with what w e can achieve, and not regard it as a sign of half- hearted interest on our part, if w e are able to do far less well than w e desire. But a prolonged and very strenuous effort is needed to cope with immediate needs, and to ensure our maintenance of the position \Vhich w e have gained by the struggles of so many years. Secondly, w e must be ever on the watch. T h e Board of Education and the local authorities will § The E d u c a t i o i t Act of 1 9 6 2 • admit, I believe, that the Catholic body has en- deavoured to co-operate with them loyally, and to abstain from raising difficulties, in the very complex | and difficult work of reorganizing the education of " the country. T h e y will-not take it amiss/therefore, I trust, if, as w e are bound to do, w e urge most strongly upon their notice any deviation from the understanding arrived a t in 1902, or any matter in w h i c h educational requirements are enforced to the detriment of our schools. T h e Education A c t ' •of 1902 has lessened the injustice to w h i c h all voluntary schools, w e r e subjected ; there must be no increase of that injustice in any shape'or form. Lastly, while w e toil and strain every nerve to make the best use of the existing-situation, while w e do all in our p o w e r to promote in every w a y the education of our children and of the nation to which they belong, w e must never forget that the E d u - cation Question has not received its final solution. W h i l e the Acts of 1870 and of 1902 have done much ' to ensure the due - instruction of the people, they have done so b y leaving an unfair burden on religious conviction. Until that burden is removed, until all English children are able to receive on equal terms an education irt conformity with the conscientious requirements of their parents, the , problem remains unsolved. Against the fundamental injustice initiated by the A c t of 1870, and continued, though in a mitigated form, by the A c t of 1902; w e p r o t e s t . a s loudly as w e can, and our protect must be renewed and repeated until that injustice is finally swept away. PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY THE CATIJOtJQ ;TRjj™ SOCJETY, | . " THE CATHOLIC ATTITUDE ON THE EDUCATION QUESTION BY THE A R C H B I S H O P O F W E S T M I N S T E R 1 FOR thirty-five years the education of our poorer children has been the absorbing preoccupation of the Catholics of this country, and there seems no prospect of arriving, within a measurable space of time, at & solution w h i c h will put an end to all controversy and allay all anxiety. T h e r e are, in- deed, many subjects w h i c h are intimately connected with the progress of the Catholic Church in E n g l a n d w h i c h might well b e treated on the occasion of a great gathering like this, in a large centre of a very important d i o c e s e . But, w e i g h i n g their gravity against that of this question of education, I f e e l that, without -excuse or any seeking for justification, I may again ask the members of the Catholic Truth Society, and the friends w h o have w e l c o m e d them to this town, to give all their attention for a f e w 1 Address delivered at Blackburn, Sept. 25, 1905, at the opening of the Catholic Conference. 2 The ' C a t h o l i c Attitude moments to the aspects of the question -which now confront us. A s far as legislation goes, w e are as w e w e r e just a year ago. A clearer interpretation of t h e Acts of 1902 and 1903 has been given on some disputed points. Increased p o w e r s have been granted to the Board of Education to facilitate the w o r k i n g of those Acts. T h e opposition to them is less noisy aiid less virulent, and this in many cases because personal contact and more intimate k n o w l e d g e have brought a truer and fairer conception of t h e w o r k carried on in the non-provided schools. Accurate informa- tion shows that in v e r y many parts of the country our schools are w o r k i n g under decidedly improved conditions, and that a g o o d understanding prevails between the foundation managers and the local authorities. In some f e w areas there is bitter and a v o w e d hostility to our schools, s h o w i n g itself in acts of grave injustice, and, it would appear, of positive illegality. N o distinct provision seems to have been made in the Acts to prevent an unjust differentiation b e t w e e n the salaries of t e a c h e r s ; probably because it never entered t h e mind of any honourable man to suppose that such an attempt would be ever made. T h e majority of t h e L o n d o n County Council, w i t h the support of those w h o in all other matters make themselves the champions of fair wages, have decreed that our Catholic teachers are to b e underpaid, and can assign for their decision only t h e shallowest and most flimsy of reasons. on the Education Question - 3 Our A t t i t u d e in the F u t u r e . W h a t of the f u t u r e ? W e are t o l d r e p e a t e d l y that t h e present G o v e r n m e n t is d o o m e d ; that b e f o r e a y e a r is p a s s e d a g r e a t L i b e r a l m a j o r i t y w i l l b e t h e p a r l i a m e n t a r y masters of t h e c o u n t r y ; that their first c o n c e r n w i l l b e to a m e n d , or repeal,-or manipulate t h e E d u c a t i o n A c t s , in s u c h a w a y as to d e s t r o y t h e C a t h o l i c c h a r a c t e r of our schools, In o t h e r w o r d s , w e are assured that in a f e w m o n t h s ' t i m e w e shall b e in p r e s e n c e of a crisis f a r m o r e serious than a n y w h i c h w e h a v e y e t h a d t o f a c e . T h e s e t h i n g s m a y b e true, t h e y m a y b e f a l s e ; p r o b a b l y t h e y c o n t a i n s o m e e x a g g e r a t i o n . B u t , if it b e a f a c t — a n d t h e r e c e n t f o r c e d retirement of a g r e a t soldier, a d i s t i n g u i s h e d Irishman, a n d a n e x c e l l e n t -Catholic, Sir W i l l i a m B u t l e r , f r o m t h e field of political c a n d i d a t u r e is a most ominous sign — i f it b e a f a c t that t h e g r e a t political p a r t y n o w in opposition h a s definitely c o m m i t t e d itself to a p o l i c y w h i c h m e a n s t h e destruction of w h a t w e r e g a r d as essential t o t h e C a t h o l i c c h a r a c t e r of our schools, w h a t , then, is t o b e our attitude ? O u r attitude in t h e f u t u r e must b e true to our attitude in t h e past. In that phrase, w e m a y fairly sum u p t h e w h o l e . s i t u a t i o n . It is not in our p o w e r to initiate p o l i c y ; it w o u l d i n d e e d b e a g r e a t error on our p a r t to m a k e t h e necessarily fruitless a t t e m p t t o d o so. W e h a v e neither t h e n u m b e r s nor t h e political strength to w a r r a n t any s u c h attempt. Wfc h a v e rather t o scrutinize v e r y closely t h e proposals 4 The ' C a t h o l i c Attitude of those w h o s w a y t h e political destinies of t h e c o u n t r y , to w h a t e v e r p a r t y t h e y m a y b e l o n g , a n d to e n d e a v o u r t o d i s c e r n t h e a i m a n d o b j e c t t o w a r d s w h i c h t h e y are ultimately t e n d i n g . If t h e s e pro- posals are in a c c b r d a n c e w i t h t h e p r i n c i p l e s f o r w h i c h w e h a v e c o n t e n d e d so long, t h e n t h e y d e s e r v e all our support. I f , h o w e v e r , t h e y are in contradic- tion to those principles, n o e f f o r t must b e omitted to b r i n g t h e m t o n o u g h t . W e c a n n o t - s a y w i t h absolute a c c u r a c y w h a t t h e f u t u r e p o l i c y of political parties is t o b e . B u t w e d o k n o w , a n d w e o u g h t t o b e absolutely clear in h o l d i n g a n d in enunciating, t h e principles w h i c h h a v e a l w a y s a n i m a t e d us in t h e struggles of t h e past. S t a n d i n g , t h e r e f o r e , m i d w a y b e t w e e n t h e anxieties w h i c h p r e c e d e d t h e last efforts of t h e Legislature, a n d t h e fierce b a t t l e w h i c h v e r y p r o b a b l y soon a w a i t s us ; o n this, t h e last o c c a s i o n on w h i c h it may b e possible to a d d r e s s a C o n f e r e n c e of t h e C a t h o l i c Tputh S o c i e t y b e f o r e t h e c o n f l i c t is actually j o i n e d , I desire t o r e c a l l t o y o u s o m e of t h e d e c l a r a t i o n s of t h e last thirty-five years, a n d t o p l a c e b e f o r e y o u in w h a t m a y b e a useful outline, t h e g r e a t p r i n c i p l e s w h i c h h a v e b e e n our mainstay in t h e past, and w h i c h must, u n d e r all c i r c u m s t a n c e s , b e t h e f o u n d a t i o n of our p o l i c y in t h e f u t u r e . T h e Declaration of 1870. T h e first d e c l a r a t i o n t o w h i c h I call y o u r attention is v e r y interesting, as it w a s p r e p a r e d in 1870, w h e n t h e B i s h o p s w e r e absent in R o m e , w i t h a v i e w of on the Education Question - 5 conveying to Catholic Members of Parliament the views and wishes of the Catholic laity in reference to Mr. Forster's Bill w h i c h had just been introduced. Its main statements are as follows : — T h a t no moral training can be efficient unless built on the truths of religion, and therefore the Church is essentially concerned in t h e most important part of true education, since accord- ing to our faith Christ has appointed the C h u r c h and its ministers to be t h e teachers of moral and religious t r u t h . — T h a t b y the natural and divine law it is the duty and right of parents to educate their children, and all Christian fathers and mothers are bound to see that their children receive a Christian e d u c a t i o n . — T h a t it is the duty of the State or civil authority to provide for the g o o d order and well-being of the com- munity and, as these depend principally on the proper education of the individual members of the community, it is t h e duty of the State and its truest policy to assist parents in the discharge of t h e aforesaid duty, or to compel them to fulfil it if they neglect t o do s o . — T h a t the manifold differences in religious convictions w h i c h exist" in this country render such action on the part of the State a matter of grave practical difficulty, because w h i l e on the one hand the general enforcement upon all of any: particular system of sectarian teaching would involve most serious violations of the rights of conscience, the establishment on the other of 6 The ' C a t h o l i c Attitude a system of secular education f r o m w h i c h religious t e a c h i n g should be excluded 'would b e equally opposed to the conscientious convictions of the majority of. the people of this country, w h i c h are deeply impressed with the importance of the sacred truths of. C h r i s t i a n i t y . — T h a t con- sequently a system of popular education f o u n d e d on the secular system, instead of b e i n g unsec- tarian, w o u l d b e sectarian in the most obnoxious sehse to the community generally, and it would be especially unjust to Roman Catholics, w h o under such a system w o u l d b e compelled to support schools contrary to the plain dictates of their consciences and to send their children to them, or burthen themselves additionally with the entire cost of maintaining other schools of w h i c h their consciences would a p p r o v e . — T h a t whilst, therefore, t h e R o m a n Catholics of Great Britain declare cheerfully their readiness to co-operate in establishing any just system of national education w h i c h is necessary to extend to ail the benefits of education, they h a v e a right to ask that it may be based on principles w h i c h will not do violence to their con- sciences-, and be protected b y provisions w h i c h will enable them to avail themselves of its benefits, without sacrificing rights and interests t h e most sacred to themselves and their | children. I need not allude to the a r t i c l e ' w h i c h Cardinal Manning wrote in The Nineteenth Century of on the Education Question - 7 D e c e m b e r , 1882, for I q u o t e d f r o m it at l e n g t h last year, a n d it is n o d o u b t present t o y o u r m e m o r y . 1 T h e B i s h o p s in 1884 and 1885. T h e n e x t p r o n o u n c e m e n t of i m p o r t a n c e is con- t a i n e d in t h e resolutions of t h e B i s h o p s in L o w W e e k , 1 8 8 4 : — | T h e B i s h o p s a r e of o p i n i o n t h a t t h e time is c o m e w h e n C a t h o l i c s s h o u l d m a k e a g r e a t a n d united e f f o r t t o secure t h e just r i g h t s of C a t h o l i c schools, b y u s i n g e v e r y means t o set b e f o r e t h e | p u b l i c t h e m a n y g r i e v a n c e s inflicted on t h e m b y t h e educational l a w , a n d b y l a b o u r i n g in ¿ v e r y w a y f o r t h e r e m o v a l of these g r i e v a n c e s . A l l w h o p a y rates a n d t a x e s h a v e a n e q u a l r i g h t to r e c e i v e e d u c a t i o n a l assistance in p r o p o r t i o n t o their n e e d , their numbers, a n d t h e v a l u e of their services. In 1885 w e find t h e f o l l o w i n g most i m p o r t a n t declaration : — T h e s a c r e d r i g h t s a n d liberties of p a r e n t s and c h i l d r e n a r e i n v a d e d and d e s t r o y e d b y a n y kind of c o m p u l s o r y State e d u c a t i o n w h i c h separates - religion f r o m -education, or w h i c h d i c t a t e s w h a t shall b e t h e a m o u n t a n d k i n d of religious in- . struction w h i c h c h i l d r e n shall r e c e i v e d u r i n g t h e p e r i o d - o f their e d u c a t i o n . W e r e n e w t h e r e p e a t e d - c o n d e m n a t i o n p r o n o u n c e d b y ourselves 1 See The Education Act of 1902 ; the Difficulty and its Solu- tion. Price-id. Catholic Truth Society. 32 The ' C a t h o l i c Attitude and b y the Church on all systems o£ mixed education ; and w e declare that t h é temporal and eternal interests of Christian youth demand above all things that the mind, heart, and character shall b e trained and educated in Christian truths and principles. W h i l e w e heartily unite in t h e universal desire that all children shall be suitably educated, w e maintain that the State cannot, without violation of the natural and divine law, compel parents to educate their children in a system w h i c h is opposed to their conscience and religion ; and w e declare that the Catholics of this country' cannot accept for themselves any system of education w h i c h is divorced f r o m their religion. Inasmuch as in the year 1869 a scheme of education, " universal, secular, compulsory, and f r e e , " in t h e hands of the State, w a s announced and r e c o m m e n d e d b y parties and b y persons of political notoriety, w e feel bound in duty to declare that w e cannot consent to a c c e p t such a scheme, or in any w a y to aid in substituting a system w h i c h is foreign and fatal to Christianity, and to the traditional Christian education of the people of England. W e have abstained from entering into many details, but there is one so glaring in its inequality and injustice that w e cannot refrain from entering our protest against it, namely, the use of t w o measures in apprais- ing the value of w o r k done and of instruction given. . . . on the Education Question - 9 Cardinal M a n n i n g ' s È R e a s o n s . " R e a d e r s of t h e Life of Cardinal Manning w i l l r e c o l l e c t t h e impression m a d e on t h i n k i n g m e n by his p u b l i c a t i o n in 1888 of " F i f t y R e a s o n s w h y t h e V o l u n t a r y S c h o o l s of E n g l a n d o u g h t to share t h e S c h o o l R a t e s . " I w i l l g i v e y o u s o m e of t h e most striking of those reasons : 1. B e c a u s e all w h o p a y R a t e s o u g h t t o share in t h e benefit of t h e Rates. 2. B e c a u s e to c o m p e l p a y m e n t and to e x c l u d e f r o m p a r t i c i p a t i o n is political injustice. 3. B e c a u s e to offer participation u p o n con- ditions k n o w n b e f o r e h a n d t o b e of impossible a c c e p t a n c e is w i l f u l a n d d e l i b e r a t e exclusion. 4. B e c a u s e t o o f f e r e d u c a t i o n either w i t h o u t Christianity or w i t h indefinite Christianity to t h e p e o p l e of E n g l a n d — o f w h o m t h e g r e a t m a j o r i t y are definitely and c o n s c i e n t i o u s l y C h r i s t i a n — i s a c o n d i t i o n k n o w n b e f o r e h a n d to b e of im- possible a c c e p t a n c e . S u c h o f f e r is t h e r e f o r e politically and m o r a l l y unjust. 1 1 . B e c a u s e t h e y (the voluntary schools) a r e t h e only s a f e g u a r d of t h e r i g h t s a n d c o n s c i e n c e b o t h of p a r e n t s and c h i l d r e n . 12. B e c a u s e t h e y e m b o d y t h e f r e e d o m of t h e p e o p l e t o e d u c a t e t h e m s e l v e s in o p p o s i t i o n to t h e p a g a n and revolutionary c l a i m that t h e e d u c a t i o n of the p e o p l e is t h e State. 1 3 . B e c a u s e the C h r i s t i a n ' p e o p l e of E n g l a n d never h a v e g i v e n up, never can g i v e up, this 34 The ' C a t h o l i c Attitude natural and Christian liberty of conscience. T h e A c t of 1870 did not spring from their will, nor does it represent their mirid. 14. Because, until Christianity, full and defi- nite, made E n g l a n d to be one and Christian, there was no E n g l a n d . T h e only E n g l a n d known to history and to the w o r l d is Christian E n g l a n d , w h i c h has been perpetuated b y the Christian conscience of the people until the schools of 1870 d e p a r t e d from the education of their forefathers. 41. Because neither will the denominational system ever w i n back the w h o l e population; of E n g l a n d and W a l e s , nor will the board school system ever extinguish the Christian schools of this country ; but a higher, larger, and equal law, g i v i n g place and liberty of action to both the voluntary and board school systems, will reconcile their variances and peacefully mature and complete a National system of education w o r t h y of the name. 45. Because local administration is surest, and develops local responsibility and e n e r g y : w h i c h are suspended and destroyed b y cen- tralisation. 46. Because a large decentralisation of the functions of the Education Department is cer- tain, inevitable, and more expedient. 47. Because what touches so closely the conscience and homes of the people ought to be within their k n o w l e d g e and reach. on the Education Question - 11 48. B e c a u s e t h e e d u c a t i o n o f - t h e c h i l d r e n is a local duty, and c o n f e r s a - l o c a l benefit. It ought, t h e r e f o r e , t o b e c a r e d for, a n d in part p a i d f o r b y e a c h locality. • F u r t h e r D e c l a r a t i o n s b y the B i s h o p s . In 1 8 9 1 t h e B i s h o p s r e s o l v e d t h a t — It w a s p r e f e r a b l e that t h e c o n t r o l of elemen- tary e d u c a t i o n should b e t r a n s f e r r e d to t h e c o u n t y councils, a n d that s c h o o l b o a r d s s h o u l d b e a b o l i s h e d . L a t e r in t h e s a m e y e a r t h e y d e c l a r e d t h a t — It is i m p o r t a n t b o t h f o r t h e present w e l f a r e and f o r t h e future s a f e t y of our schools, that t h e com- mittees of m a n a g e m e n t b e m a d e efficient, a n d that t w o persons e l e c t e d b y t h e p a r e n t s of t h e c h i l d r e n b e a d d e d , to t h e t h r e e ex officio e x i s t i n g m a n a g e r s , a n d that, as t h e v o l u n t a r y s y s t e m is essentially t h e e d u c a t i o n of c h i l d r e n under t h e responsibility of their parents, e v e r y p o s s i b l e effort o u g h t to b e m a d e in all t h e d i o c e s e s and parishes to a w a k e n p a r e n t s t o a c o n s c i o u s n e s s of their duties a n d rights ; and that t h e manage- ment of t h e schools, a c c o r d i n g t o t h e require- ments of t h e l a w as it n o w exists, s h o u l d b e v i g o r o u s l y and efficiently c a r r i e d out, In 1893 t h e B i s h o p s p r o n o u n c e d as f o l l o w s : — 1. T h a t in a c c o r d a n c e w i t h natural l a w , t h e m a n a g e m e n t of public e l e m e n t a r y schools o u g h t to b e in t h e h a n d s of persons h a v i n g the 12 The ' C a t h o l i c Attitude c o n f i d e n c e of t h e p a r e n t s of t h e c h i l d r e n fre- q u e n t i n g such schools. 2. T h a t c o n s e q u e n t l y t h e denominational s y s t e m of e d u c a t i o n must b e maintained and s t r e n g t h e n e d b y all m e a n s in our p o w e r . 3. T h a t , t o w a r d s p r o v i d i n g t h e c o s t of im- p r o v e d secular instruction, C a t h o l i c p u b l i c ele- m e n t a r y s c h o o l s h a v e a r i g h t t o a fair share 9 ! t h e r a t e s ; a n d that t h e r a t e p a y e r s h a v e a c o r r e s p o n d i n g r i g h t to s u c h i n s p e c t i o n a n d o v e r s i g h t as shall ensure a p r o p e r e x p e n d i t u r e of their contribution t o w a r d s t h e cost of- public education. T h e Declaration of 1894. In 1894 t h e B i s h o p s again discussed t h e matter at l e n g t h , and their resolutions w e r e a s f o l l o w s : — 1 . T h a t it is a r i g h t a n d a d u t y , g i v e n t o parents b y their Creator, w h e r e v e r s u c h natural r i g h t h a s not b e e n f o r f e i t e d , to secure a n d w a t c h o v e r , t h e education of their c h i l d r e n in that w h i c h t h e y b e l i e v e t o b e t h e true religion. 2. T h a t no p l e a on behalf of educational uniformity, a n d n o decision b y a n y m a j o r i t y of votes, c a n alter or a b r o g a t e this f u n d a m e n t a l natural l a w , w h i c h t h e L e g i s l a t u r e a n d t h e p e o p l e of this c o u n t r y a r e equally b o u n d to r e s p e c t a n d o b s e r v e . 3. T h a t , in t h e nature of things, it can n e v e r t e n d to t h e happiness, t h e w e l f a r e , or t h e per- manent a d v a n t a g e of a State, t o disregard, and on the Education Question - 13 in practice to outrage, a law of nature, such as the right of parents over the education of their children, b e the injury brought about directly, or indirectly, b y a process of law, o r ' b y a process of privation and exhaustion. 4. T h a t , while political p o w e r and the respon- sibilities of self-government are more and more devolving upon the masses of the people, and while obvious dangers menace the future of Society, it is to the country's highest advantage that religious principles of life and conduct should b e deepened and strengthened in thé" souls of all during the period of. elementary education ; and that these advantages can be adequately secured, so far as the education of Catholics is concerned, only b y Catholic public elementary schools, conducted under Catholic management. 5. T h a t Catholic parents cannot in conscience accept or approve for their children a system of education in w h i c h secular instruction is w h o l l y divorced from education in their religion. 6. T h a t Catholic parents cannot in conscience a c c e p t or a p p r o v e for their children a system of religious education based upon private inter- pretations of the B i b l e given b y school teachers, whether trained in religious k n o w l e d g e or untrained. 7. T h a t the only system of religious education w h i c h Catholic parents can accept for their children- is that given under the authority and The Cat ho He Attitude direction of the Catholic Church, w h i c h they believe that Christ Himself has appointed to teach all those things w h i c h H e has revealed. 8. T h a t to take the management of schools intended for Catholic children out of the hands of those w h o represent the religious convictions of their parents, and to p l a c e it in the hands of public ratepayers w h o cannot represent those convictions, is a violation of parental rights, to b e resisted as an unwarrantable attack upon religious liberty and upon a fundamental law of nature. 9. T h a t Catholic public elementary schools, satisfying the demands of the Education Depart- ment, have a right to as full a share of public money, w h e t h e r from the rates or f r o m the taxes, as any other public elementary schools in the country ; and that it is unjust to deprive them of it because of the religious instruction -required b y the parents, w h i c h is given to the children attending such schools. 1 1 . T h a t compulsory State education is an intolerable tyranny, unless due regard be paid b y the State to t h e education of the children in their o w n religion ; that happily, in the case of pauper and semi-criminal children, such regard is part of the English L a w , w h i c h makes provision for the education of such children in their o w n faith ; and that, therefore, consistency and justice require that the children of the honest working classes, w h o are compelled on the Education Question - 15 under penalties to a t t e n d school, should not b e less a d v a n t a g e o u s l y p r o v i d e d f o r in r e s p e c t t o e d u c a t i o n in their o w n religion. 12. T h a t t h e doctrinaire assumption, p r e s e n t e d t o t h e p e o p l e as axiomatic, viz., that a contribu- tion f r o m t h e rates t o a s c h o o l invests t h e rate- p a y e r s w i t h a right, n e v e r c l a i m e d o n behalf of t a x p a y e r s , t o s u p e r s e d e t h e natural responsibility of c o n t r o l i n v e s t e d in t h e parents, is prepos- terous, unjust, and c o n t r a r y t o f a c t . D e m a n d for E q u a l T r e a t m e n t , 1895. In 1895, w e find t h e f o l l o w i n g : — T h e j u s t i c e of t h e claim p u t f o r w a r d in t h e D r a f t Bill, a d o p t e d unanimously b y t h e C a t h o l i c A r c h b i s h o p and B i s h o p s in January last, ought to b e m o r e a n d more urgently- pressed h o m e u p o n t h e minds of t h e e l e c t o r a t e of t h e c o u n t r y , , a n d u p o n statesmen and politicians. N o effort should b e s p a r e d to c o n v i n c e t h e E n g l i s h p e o p l e that t h e -public e l e m e n t a r y schools, u s e d b y p a r e n t s d e t e r m i n e d that t h e secular e d u c a t i o n should b e associated w i t h definite religious training, c a n n o t b e t h r o w n u p o n private c h a r i t y ' (and thus b e p l a c e d at a fatal d i s a d v a n t a g e w i t h b o a r d schools) w i t h o u t a flagrant injustice, and w i t h o u t national r e p r o a c h and d i s h o n o u r in a Christian c o u n t r y like' E n g l a n d . T h e e l e c t o r a t e must b e p e r s u a d e d a n d c o n v i n c e d — t h a t all denominational schools, f a i t h f u l l y c o m p l y i n g 16 The 'Catholic Attitude w i t h t h e r e q u i r e m e n t s of t h e E d u c a t i o n D e p a r t - ment h a v e a r i g h t to r e c e i v e an e q u a l p r o p o r - tionate share w i t h b o a r d schools of all p u b l i c moneys, w h e t h e r p a i d f r o m t h e rates or t h e taxes, f o r e d u c a t i o n a l p u r p o s e s ; a n d that l i b e r t y s h o u l d b e g r a n t e d t o o p e n n e w denominational s c h o o l s w h e r e v e r r e q u i r e d b y a sufficient n u m b e r ; of- p a r e n t s and children. Declaration in v i e w of the B i l l of 1902. In N o v e m b e r , 1901, in v i e w of a p p r o a c h i n g legis r lation, t h e B i s h o p s issued a statement of t h e C a t h o l i c claim, f r o m w h i c h w e e x t r a c t t h e f o l l o w i n g sen- t e n c e s : — I. T h e y take it f o r g r a n t e d that t h e p a y m e n t of p u b l i c m o n e y s , w h e t h e r d e r i v e d f r o m t h e rates or t h e taxes, w i l l b e m a d e e q u i t a b l y to the- m a i n t e n a n c e of all s c h o o l s fufilling the educa- tional conditions, i r r e s p e c t i v e of c r e e d . I I . T h e y consider it essential that t h e r e should b e p l a c e d on t h e E d u c a t i o n C o m m i t t e e of t h e C o u n t y C o u n c i l representatives of t h e g r e a t e d u c a t i o n a l interests that h a v e g r o w n u p w i t h ; t h e E d u c a t i o n D e p a r t m e n t . It must b e b o r n e in mind that t h e E d u c a t i o n C o m m i t t e e of t h e C o u n t y C o u n c i l w i l l b e t h e educational c i t a d e l of e a c h c o u n t y . If that c i t a d e l d o not contain c h o s e n r e p r e s e n t a t i v e s of t h e g r e a t Christian educational bodies, these b o d i e s w i l l b e constrained f r o m the first to take on the Education Question - 17 up an attitude of well-founded fear and suspicion. T h e y will perceive that the lead of t h e Govern- ment, ignoring their claim even t o a minimum of official representation on the E d u c a t i o n Committees, may easily b e improved upon to their serious and permanent disadvantage. T h e y will understand how, in the absence of official representation, public opinion may b y degrees he f o r m e d and strengthened in the county councils against the interests of definite Christian education. T h u s the refusal to admit any official representation of the religious or voluntary schools upon the education committees will inevitably lead to the introduction into the county council elections of politico-religious animosities and contests, w h i c h will b e f o l l o w e d b y their natural consequences. W h e r e a s , if the constitutional precedent b e f o l l o w e d , w h i c h recognizes the claim of religion to b e represented in the Imperial Legislature, evidence will be given of a sincere desire to maintain that equilibrium of forces w h i c h is essential to the peaceful and progressive development of a national system of education. I I I . T h e Bishops censider it essential to the natural g r o w t h of Christian schools throughout t h e country, that t h e c l a u s e . in t h e S c o t c h Education A c t of 1872, Section 67, w h i c h recognizes the increase of such schools, regard being h a d to the religious belief of the parents, should b e introduced into the English Bill. 18 The ' C a t h o l i c Attitude I V . T h e y h o l d that it is an essential c o n d i t i o n t o t h e e x i s t e n c e of their schools t h a t . t h e m a n à g e r s should retain in their h a n d s t h e r i g h t of a p p o i n t m e n t a n d dismissal of t e a c h e r s ; w h i l e at t h e s a m e time p u b l i c b o d i e s r e s p o n s i b l e f o r p u b l i c m o n e y m a y naturally claim a r e p r e - sentation on t h e s c h o o l m a n a g e m e n t f o r sanitary, financial, and scholastic purposes, in a p r o p o r t i o n not e x c e e d i n g o n e in three. . I n e e d not m a k e a n y r e f e r e n c e t o t h e mor.e r e c e n t declarations, f o r t h e y a r e in all l i k e l i h o o d v e r y w e l l k n o w n t o y o u . F r o m t h e s e various declarations t h r e e p r i n c i p l e s stand clearly f o r t h . _ Parental R i g h t and D u t y . i . It is a duty o f - C h r i s t i a n p a r e n t s t o b r i n g u p their c h i l d r e n in t h e Christian faith ; in o t h e r w o r d s , w h i l e p r e p a r i n g t h e m t o talke t h e i r ' p l a c e in life, t o fit t h e m at t h e s a m e t i m e f o r t h e k i n g d o m of their F a t h e r w h o is in h e a v e n . T h e y are b o u n d to see that t h e y are e d u c a t e d and trained in t h e p r a c t i c e of̂ religion. If t h e y attend t o all else and n e g l e c t this, then d o t h e y f a i l in t h e most important p a r t ef their parental d u t y . Circumstanc&s are- such at t h e présent d a y that m a n y p a r e n t s are unable f r o m w a n t of time or l a c k of c a p a c i t y , a n d t o o o f t e n f r o m n e g l e c t a n d i n d i f f e r e n c e , to p r o v i d e a d e q u a t e l y f o r t h e e d u c a t i o n of their children. A n d , as t h e con- s e q u e n c e s of this inability or n e g l e c t w o u l d b e t h e on the Education Question - 19 most serious to the common weal, the State rightly intervenes, and makes every effort to assist and g u i d e parents in t h e discharge of these primary duties, and to supply for all those things iji w h i c h they are in default. T o effect this, the State is entitled to resort to compulsion, and to levy rates and taxes, thus obliging the w h o l e community without exception to bear the burden w h i c h belongs to the individuals that compose it. But the State does not thereby supersede the parent, or destroy the rights and duties w h i c h b e l o n g to parents, but assuming the responsibility w h i c h those rights and duties carry with them, is bound to discharge that responsibility without infringing the rights and duties w h i c h are its very source. In'arranging any system of national and compulsory education the conscientious con- victions of parents must never be overlooked, and any System w h i c h violates them is fundamentally unjust. T h e application of this principle is without doubt surrounded b y many difficulties in a country like England, and Catholics have never shown themselves unwilling to consider and accept any fair, solution. B u t w e can never insist too strongly on the f a c t that t h e policy followed for the last thirty-five years of giving an exceptionally favoured and privileged position to those w h o attach no importance to definite religious teaching in ele- mentary schools, is essentially unfair, and has retarded most seriously the educational progress of the country. It is, moreover, a violation of the rights of many parents and a w r o n g f u l use of money 20 The ' C a t h o l i c Attitude contributed b y t h e r a t e p a y e r s i n d e p e n d e n t l y of their r e l i g i o u s c r e e d . T h e R i g h t of A l l to A c c e p t a b l e E d u c a t i o n . 2. O u r first c o n c e r n is f o r our o w n C a t h o l i c children. T h e i r parents a n d their pastors must e v e r g i v e t h e m t h e first p l a c e in their t h o u g h t s , and b e p r e p a r e d t o m a k e e v e r y sacrifice and e v e r y e x e r t i o n to secure f o r t h e m a Christian education. B u t w e should b e false to t h e principles w h i c h our l e a d e r s h a v e e n u n c i a t e d so o f t e n in t h e past, untrue t o our n a m e of Christians and Catholics, w e r e w e in t h e c o n c e r n about our o w n , t o f o r g e t a l t o g e t h e r and d i s r e g a r d t h e thousands of" p a r e n t s w h o , a l t h o u g h t h e y h a v e not " t h e C a t h o l i c faith, are k e e n l y and earnestly solicitous that their c h i l d r e n should b e b r o u g h t up at s c h o o l in t h e k n o w l e d g e a n d f e a r of G o d , and r e c e i v e therein a definite religious training. I t matters not b y w h a t name t h e y a r e c a l l e d — b e t h e y A n g l i c a n s , or W e s l e y a n s , or b e l o n g - i n g t o a n y o t h e r d e n o m i n a t i o n — w e c a n n o t b e in- d i f f e r e n t to t h e z e a l a n d earnestness and self-sacrifice w h i c h so m a n y of t h e m h a v e s h o w n in their endeavours t o secure a n d maintain a r e l i g i o u s training f o r their c h i l d r e n . It has s o m e t i m e s b e e n said, g e n e r a l l y b y t h o s e w h o a r e o p p o s e d t o us, t h a t t h e r e h a s b e e n a n alliance o n this question b e t w e e n C a t h o l i c s a n d t h e m e m b e r s of t h e E s t a b l i s h e d C h u r c h , a n d that our cause h a s b e e n i n j u r e d t h e r e b y . I b e l i e v e this statement to b e w i t h o u t foundation. I k n o w of on the Education Question - 21 no understanding either in the past or in the present w h i c h , with a n y propriety of language, could b e designated an alliance. B u t it is un- doubtedly true that many w h o are Anglicans, and many w h o are not, are led b y the same principle of parental right w h i c h has guided us, and are striving after the same end, namely, the maintenance of definite religion in public elementary schools, and I trust that w e shall never look with indifference, still less w i t h coldness, on the efforts w h i c h they are making. W o r k i n g as they are on lines, parallel to those w h i c h w e have laid d o w n for ourselves, they deserve our sympathy and encouragement, W e k n o w the admiration w i t h w h i c h many of them in their turn r e g a r d t h e hard struggle w h i c h w e have had to make for our schools against odds far greater than those with w h i c h they themselves h a v e usually had -to contend. Lamenting as w e do the divisions into w h i c h the Christianity of E n g l a n d has been torn- s|nce it Was severed f r o m the centre of unity, the Apostolic See, w e can never, without failing in the duty of honour and of conscience w h i c h , precisely as Catholics, w e o w e to the nation as a whole, be indifferent to the. efforts of those w h o are convinced of t h e vital importance of maintaining definite religious influences in the minds and hearts of all the children of E n g l a n d , even though w e see that those influences are only partial arid inadequate for their task. W h a t w e ask f o r ourselves w e ask for all those w h o claim i t on the same grounds. Our demand is that all Christian parents should have ft 22 The ' C a t h o l i c Attitude in their p o w e r to find in t h e elementary s c h o o l s of t h e c o u n t r y an education in c o n f o r m i t y w i t h their conscientious convictions, w i t h o u t let or h i n d r a n c e or disability of a n y k i n d ; a n d that t h e p r i v i l e g e s n o w c o n f e r r e d on those w h o attach no i m p o r t a n c e to definite religious t e a c h i n g should . b e finally a b o l i s h e d . F i d e l i t y to Principles. 3. E v e n if all others a b a n d o n - t h e principles f o r w h i c h w e stand, w e can n e v e r relinquish t h e m . I trust that t h e d a y w i l l n e v e r c o m e w h e n those t o w h o m I h a v e just alluded w i l l d e c l a r e t h e m s e l v e s i n d i f f e r e n t to t h e m a i n t e n a n c e of their schools, or w i l l content t h e m s e l v e s w i t h s o m e v a g u e and s h a d o w y " r i g h t of e n t r y . " I d o not think that such a d a y is near, but should it ever c o m e , and s h o u l d all o t h e r s fall a w a y f r o m t h e principles w h i c h h a v e a n i m a t e d •us so long, w e must stand firm, even t h o u g h w e stand alone. T h e n , and not till then, m a y w e fairly clairp s e p a r a t e treatment, f o r others w i l l h a v e definitely s e p a r a t e d t h e m s e l v e s f r o m us. U n t i l t h e n , s u c h an i d e a is a m e r e w i l l - o ' - t h e - w i s p , alluring us f r o m t h e real and present w o r k w h i c h d e m a n d s all our attention. W e ask f o r no privilege, a n d at t h e present time separate treatment w o u l d be a privilege, arousing ultimately against us all t h e animosity w h i c h p r i v i l e g e s e n g e n d e r . In t h e c o n t i n g e n c y — f a r off, I h o p e — w h i c h I h a v e f o r e s h a d o w e d , separate treat- ment w o u l d b e no p r i v i l e g e at all, but the only possible r e c o g n i t i o n of the rights w h i c h w e h a v e on the Education Question - 23 u n c e a s i n g l y ancl u n f l i n c h i n g l y claimed. T i l l that m o m e n t comes, I trust that w e shall not hear a n y t h i n g of such a solution of our difficulties. C o n c l u s i o n . L o o k i n g b a c k , as I h a v e l a t e l y b e e n o b l i g e d to do, pver t h e w h o l e e d u c a t i o n a l p e r i o d since 1870, I find m u c h to e n c o u r a g e and t o s t r e n g t h e n us. T h e r e h a v e b e e n v e r y dark m o m e n t s , but t h e y h a v e p a s s e d and g i v e n p l a c e to c o m p a r a t i v e p e a c e . T h e n t h e struggle h a s b e e n r e n e w e d , and n e w f e a r s h a v e b e e n a w a k e n e d a n d f r e s h e f f o r t s h a v e b e e n n e e d e d . A n d m e a n w h i l e t h e w o r k of t h e C h u r c h has a d v a n c e d , a n d our b i s h o p s a n d c l e r g y a n d f a i t h f u l h a v e b e e n g e n e r o u s and united in t h e p r e s e n c e of e a c h f r e s h difficulty. O n e conclusion f o r c e s itself u p o n m y mind, that w e are m a k i n g a g r e a t mistake in attri- buting t o t h e A c t s of 1902 and 1903 t h e s p e c i a l diffi- culties w h i c h s o m e of us f e e l so v e r y k e e n l y at t h e present m o m e n t . T h e causes are m u c h f u r t h e r b a c k , a n d those A c t s are t h e inevitable result? of causes a l r e a d y f o r a l o n g t i m e at w o r k , causes w h i c h w e cannot control, but t h e e f f e c t s of w h i c h w e shall f e e l m o r e and m o r e as time g o e s on, a n d w h i c h b r i n g w i t h t h e m difficulties of a n e w o r d e r w h i c h w e must f a c e w i t h c o u r a g e and strive to o v e r c o m e . T h e w h o l e e d u c a t i o n of t h e c o u n t r y is u n d e r g o i n g c h a n g e . It has e n t a i l e d f r e s h outlay, more c o - o r d i n a t i o n , increased local control. T h e s e things h a d to c o m e , and in t h e r e s e t t i n g it w a s inevitable, as it w a s in 1870, that w e should pass t h r o u g h a time of stress 24 The Education Question and toil. T h a t time is not over, but with the experi- ence of the past and our k n o w l e d g e of the strength of our cause, and a b o v e all w i t h the assistance of G o d , w e may surely hope that w e shall c o m e forth with our position strengthened and consolidated. Unity of action is of extreme importance. It is not wise to put forth unauthorized programmes of un- attainable perfection. It is neither wise, nor is it just, to impute to those w h o look with scant interest on such efforts, pusillanimity or a dangerous tendency to compromise, because they are obliged to look facts in the face, and are, perhaps, in closer touch with the men with w h o m decisions must ultimately rest. Our only hope, apart f r o m supernatural aid, lies in quietly and courteously and firmly making known our convictions to our fellow-countrymen, and gradually bringing them to see in what light these matters appear t6 us. H e a t e d language, violent discussion, polemical bitterness have not served us in the p a s t ; they are not serving us in t h e adminis- tration of the recent A c t s ; they will certainly not help us in the future. B u t w e have our principles to sustain us, and the history of the past to encourage us ; and w e are determined to continue the struggle, w h i c h was begun long before most of us could h a v e any share in it, and w h i c h will probably be still w a g i n g in one form or another long after the things of this world have ceased to be of any concern to us. PRINTED AND PUBLISHED B Y THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, LONDON. THE MAINTENANCE OF RELIGION IN THE SCHOOL1 BY THE A R C H B I S H O P O F W E S T M I N S T E R H E L I G I O N is a vital element in every civilized country, an •essential factor in constituting a nation in that ordered well- being which every people desires to attain. And this is true even when men are not in agreement as to the precise forms which are to express their dependence upon their Maker, and when they view their relation to Him not all in the same way. Weaken the power of religion, and you rrelax the bonds which knit a civilized people together. Destroy and uproot religion, and you will have to en- •counter the wildest forces of human passion, and you will be beaten in the encounter. And the result will be the same whether you deliberately aim at the destruction -of religion, or allow it, without your knowledge or intention, t o grow languid and eventually to die away. In this country we pride ourselves, unduly in the estimate of our neighbours, upon our religious and God- fearing spirit. We point to the respect in which the Word • The Inaugural Address delivered at the Catholic Conference .At Preston, September 9, 1907. 2 Thé Maintenance of-. of God has been held; we are loudly conscious of t h e purity of our home life and of the right observance of t h e Lord's day; and, in a spirit of which the Gospel has spoker» in terms which are not those of commendation, we thank God that we are not as other nations, breakers of the Sabbath and heedless of family ties. T o o close inquiry into the grounds upon which our self-complacency rests might lead to a very painful realization of the gulf which may easily yawn between pleasing theories and actual? practice. There is for my present purpose no object ir> undertaking such an investigation. We will take the average Englishman at his own estimate, and give credit to our country for all the virtues and super-excellent quali- ties that he claims for it. T h e more precious its gifts t h e greater is the danger which threatens the national life from the forces which are attacking religion at its foundation irk the very heart of the people. T H E U L T I M A T E I S S U E . It is time, I think, to leave for a moment the engrossing, but still comparatively petty, details which are absorbing our thoughts in the great struggle for educational freedom in England. These details compel our attention, but if they are dwelt upon exclusively they obscure the ultimate issue, and may lead us to forget that in fighting for t h e existence of our Catholic schools we are also and neces- sarily withstanding those agencies which, unconsciously o r wilfully, are working for the destruction of all religion in t h e country. For if the taskmasters that govern our present Parliamentary rulers have their way, the religion of the nation will receive a blow from which it can, humanly speaking, never recover. There are two main ideals ifor the religious life of. a Religion in the School 3 country. There is the old notion, consecrated by the practice and experience of so many centuries, that, as there can be but one Christian faith, delivered to us •wholly and fully by Christ Himself, so there should be but one worship and one religion, the natural out- come of that faith. It is that notion, familiar to us all, which explains the action of the Catholic Church in every age, namely, that there is but one Lord, one Faith, and one Baptism. And so when the authority of the Church was universally recognized, every child born into a Christian nation received as an inheritance transmitted by his parents a knowledge of the way in which God would be worshipped and his own salvation could be attained. T h e religious difficulty in the school had, and could have, no existence. Parents might indeed neglect their duty, and children might be allowed to grow up in ignorance of God's teaching, but all were agreed as to the form of that teaching and the place where it was to be found. There was one faith, one religion, and one school to teach them both. Regretfully we acknowledge that that ideal has passed away. Its destruction has not been the work of the Catholic Church, which has never ceased to uphold it, and which lives with the prayerful hope that it may one day be realized again. In place of this single teaching we now find a denial of any absolute certainty in matters of religious belief, and men band themselves together, with or without the over- sight and control of the civil Government, to worship God according to the views which they have conceived con- cerning their relations to their Maker. There is no longer one faith; religion has put on many varied forms; there can be no longer only one school, seeing that the teaching of these things no longer possesses the unity of days gone by. And men have come to understand that, just as of old 4 Thé Maintenance of-. there could be but one teaching of fundamental truths, because no one could dream of any other doctrine; so in the present divergence of opinions, schools of various types have to be admitted to allow parents to bring up their children in the doctrines which, in the exercise of their individual responsibility, they have adopted for themselves. T h e new ideal, then, has been that, as men were no longer agreed about the forms of religion, latitude must be given to teach children these different forms, lest all religion perish from their hearts. T H E E S T A B L I S H M E N T OF U N D E N O M I N A T I O N A L I S M . But we have now to face a very different system, and one which, in its own nature, is singularly arrogant, aggressive, and unjust. It professes to be much con- cerned about the religion of the country, and most apprehensive lest a day should come when all religious teaching shall be banished from the elementary schools of the land. While proclaiming its hatred of all dog- matizing, it arrogates to itself the right of declaring that there is a form of teaching, so vague, so colourless, so simple, that it may be taught in every school without wounding the conscience of any learner; and that, in spite of its indefiniteness and nebulosity, such teaching •will be enough to maintain the religious character of the nation: for the upholders of the system of which I speak are perfectly aware that for vast numbers of the children there can be no religious teaching of any kind except that -which they receive while they are at the school desk. A n d so enamoured are they of their own invention that they propose to arm it with all the power of the public purse, and to deny this tremendous assistance to any teaching but that of which they themselves approve. Truly never has Religion in the School 5 there been injustice more shameless and more arrogant than this. I know full well that among those who are forcing this so-called undenominational teaching upon the elementary schools of the country there are many men of high prin- ciple, of deep religious feeling, and of undoubted kindliness of heart, and that they would be deeply concerned were they to see that, in reality, they are striking a deadly blow at the religious life of the country. It is to them that I would appeal, and I beg them to reflect very carefully and impartially whether they may not be making a very grave miscalculation, while imagining that they have found the solution of a very serious difficulty. I make no plea now for our Catholic schools in particular, although they do possess special rights to kindly consideration; but I plead for just consideration of various forms of religious teaching in our schools, lest the religious influences in the nation, already so much weakened, prove powerless to stem the torrents of evil which assail us. Pleasure, self-interest, self-advancement are breaking down the moral law to an extent which must appal all those cvho are in a position to mark their ravages. T h e civil law can do but little to withstand them, and not infrequently throws down itself some of the barriers which the religion and conscience of other ages had erected. After hundreds of years of Christianity we find ourselves obliged, year after year, to pass many statutes to regulate matters which the Christian conscience no longer suffices to control. This certainly is no moment to weaken still more those restraints •which rest for their foundation upon religion, and such weakening is the evident result of that Nonconformist solution of the Education question which his Majesty's Government would fain force upon us. They manifest 6 Thé Maintenance of-. horror at the idea of a godless school, of a school where the name of God may not be mentioned. Will, I make bold to ask, the ideal public elementary school conceived in the Act of 1870, and fostered by every Government since then—and now, by the starvation of other schools, to be made paramount and supreme—prove of much greater efficiency as a teacher of moral integrity than the " Ecole sans Dieu," at which the phariseeism of England stands aghast? ' I T S I N S U F F I C I E N C Y , In answering this question I can speak with certainty only in so far as our own people are concerned. With regard to others I speak under the correction of those who have more knowledge. But my own conviction is that in every case the undenominational school will have little more efficacy in inculcating moral rectitude than a school whence religious teaching has been excluded, though the absence of real religion may therein be concealed under the outward appearance of the few moments devoted to indefinite religious exercises. Children need very simple teaching, it is true; but they need, still more, teaching which is clear and definite and based on facts. T h e instruction which a Christian child receives in a good Christian home is simplicity itself, but it is so distinct and definite that it remains clearly imprinted upon his memory, and is quickly present in his mind to guide his will and to direct his conduct. Simplicity and indefinite- riess are not correlative terms, and I have no belief in the moral efficacy of indefinite teaching, which hesitates to speak in plain terms of God and our relation to Him, of the Fall and of the Redemption, of heaven and of hell, of the means of avoiding sin and of living in God's friend- Religion in the School 7 ship, and of all the other fundamental truths which have been made known to us. That this simple teaching is inadequate, as I assert it to be, is shown by the admission •of every earnest Nonconformist that the Sunday school is •absolutely necessary in order to complete the religious teaching imparted in the elementary school. But how many children are there to be found on the registers of Sunday schools, how few comparatively are in actual attendance, and how vast already is the number of those whose only contact with religion is the indefinite lesson allowed by the Cowper-Temple Clause. If our opponents have their way in starving the Non-provided Schools to •extinction, this army of little children, whose souls mutely cry out to know the God who made them, will b e immeasurably recruited. T H E L I M I T A T I O N S OF U N D E N O M I N A T I O N A L T E A C H E R S . Moreover, the teacher in the Provided School, well trained a n d able though he may be, cannot claim absolute con- fidence either as an imparter of religious knowledge or as t h e moulder of character on religious lines. It is no answer -whatever to this criticism to point to the good results said t o have been attained in the past in the Board Schools, f o r until recently, as Nonconformists bitterly complain, the majority of teachers had been trained in colleges under very •definite religious teaching, as hardly any one seems to have thought it necessary to be at the .expense of establishing a really undenominational training college. Some two years a g o a dignitary of the Established Church, speaking of the .London area, stated that he and many others would be •quite content with a settlement of the Education question o n the lines of " a right of entry " to all Provided Schools, because in every one of them could be found Anglican 8 Thé Maintenance of-. teachers, trained under Anglican auspices, willing a n d competent to impart the definite teaching of their Church. But, in future, indefinite teaching is to b e imparted by those who have not necessarily had any- definite teaching themselves; whose belief or unbelief can never be called in question; and who, notwith- standing this, will have and must have that potent influence over the character o f the children committed to their care which rightly belongs to every one who holds- the sacred office of a teacher, standing for the time being: in the place of the parents themselves. For elementary teachers are henceforth to be assimilated to civil servants,, as though there were any logical parity between the two- careers beyond the fact that they are both paid for from the same purse. A civil servant has a most honourable position in which he is called upon to discharge certain duties to the State, and in fulfilling them he must b e upright, conscientious, and honest. But he has nothing whatever to do with the formation of the character o f children. No one, save those of his own family, will look to him for guidance in moral conduct, or seek the inspira- tion of his life at his lips. Whereas in the case of t h e teacher, thousands of little children will be largely de- pendent upon his character, upon his ideals, upon t h e beliefs and unbeliefs and misbeliefs which unconsciously or consciously give colour and meaning to his actions, f o r the directing of their own lives and the mapping out o f their future ethical careers. Never was analogy more absolutely false than that which is so glibly drawn between the position of an elementary teacher and that, of the civil servant. And it is surely a mockery to exalt, as it is but just to do, the dignity, the responsibility, and the far-reaching influence of the schoolmaster, and then t o Religion in the School o 9 déclare that he may in conscience regard himself merely as a civil servant with no further responsibilities, and that all will in future regard him as such, for the sole reason that he is paid from the public purse. Moral teaching a t such hands will in the end mean the death of vital religion in the hearts of all those little children who receive no- other training save that of the elementary school, and they may easily come to constitute the majority of the c h i l d population of the nation. It is an outlook that no earnest: man can contemplate without terrible forebodings. Vague- moral training will be powerless against the tremendous- forces of human interests and the lust of human passions. Mere intellectual training without reference to the Christian, code of conduct will help a man to deceive and outwit his- fellows with greater probabilities of success : it will n o t check the various forms of dishonesty and over-reaching; of which all men know, but which the law is almost- powerless to control. T H E P O S I T I O N AS REGARDS C A T H O L I C S . In the case of our own Catholic children we have e x - perience of the sad results which attend their inability to- find definite Catholic teaching. Catholics they may cease to be, Protestants they will never become, and they drift away to swell the ranks of those who are entirely indifferent to all religious teaching. T h e position as regards ourselves- may be broadly stated as follows : First, where a Catholic child has a good Catholic hom& with parents of sufficient knowledge and leisure to watch, closely over his religious education, guiding him by both precept and example, he may spend the hours of the school day in a school where no religion is taught, and he will suffer little or no harm, for his home is of such a character 58 Thé Maintenance of-. to be able to do the essential work of a Christian family Such a child may lack the detailed knowledge of his Faith which a good Catholic school would impart, but he will 3iave the necessary knowledge. In the present rush and stress and material absorption of life, there are few homes •that can thus accomplish their whole duty; and it is, therefore, only in exceptional cases that a Catholic child may with- any safety lose the advantage of the training ^iven m a Catholic school. T h e State, moreover, has led parents to expect the school to supply the place of home in -almost every detail of education. Next, those children whose parents are lacking either in t h e knowledge, or in the leisure, or in the will, to superin- tend their education in religious matters, stand in manifest sieed of a school which is Catholic in the full sense of the -word, if they are to grow up faithful to the guidance and ¡practice of religion. Without such a school vast numbers will inevitably fall away from the faith of their parents • they will become irreligious and a menace to the society in which they live, for the only control which they can reasonably recognize, outside the menace of the law will Slave been fatally obliterated from their consciences.' We 3iave the experience of a generation of lay teaching in France, and we know the terrible results of robbing a •Christian people of its hereditary faith. T h e work of •destruction is rudely and easily done ; the ruins remain to «how what once existed; the long-promised new edifice of -civic moral teaching is not yet in sight; and meanwhile t h e youth of both sexes are astounding the onlookers by the logical cynicism of their crimes and by their immorality and unbelief. T h e religious devastation of Italy is not yet so complete as that of its northern neighbour, but the evidence there is clearly to the same effect. Root the Religion in the School 11 Catholic faith out of the heart of those to whom it has c o m e as the inheritance of many ages, and they will cease ¡to believe in God or master. Socialism, anarchy, and political murders are the natural retribution of those who •deny religious teaching to the little child. T H E R E S U L T OF T H E W I T H D R A W A L OF S T A T E A I D . Lastly, in the present condition of the Catholic Church i n this country, public elementary schools for Catholic -children cannot exist without the financial assistance of matter i s even more serious. E v e r y person interested in education k n o w s that the ques- tion of the training of teachers lies at the very bottom of the w h o l e educational problem. W i t h respect t o the training of pupil teachers, w h i c h is the first r u n g in the ladder, w e might have taken up .one of t w o attitudes. - W e might have decided to send our children to a common centre, with the right of entry -for religious teaching, and have, in addition, provided hostels w h e r e t h e y could live and be brought u p under Catholic supervision, "or w e might h a v e adopted the plan of providing separate f centres for the education of our o w n teachers. 6 The Catholic Aspect F r o m the number of our schools, f r o m the number of teachers w h o m w e require, and from our position as ratepayers, w e w e r e , and are, perfectly entitled to demand either of these measures. W e have chosen the latter, and I am not g o i n g to take up time b y g i v i n g the arguments in favour of that line of action. N o w Pupil T e a c h e r Centres can also obtain grants from local and national sources. W e h a v e every right to assistance from local sources. W e are providing teachers for local schools in w h i c h local children will b e educated, and w h e r e , , very much against our o w n wishes, w e are obliged to receive the children of parents professing any or.no religion, as w e l l as our o w n children for w h o m t h e schools w e r e intended and provided. Y e t . i n at least a large number of cases all assistance from the rates has been refused to our Pupil T e a c h e r Centres. B u t more than this, in some places at l e a s t , ' t h e local authority, though it w a s not a s k e d to allot a single copper to t h e support of the centre, has refused to. permit such a centre to exist, in so far as it can refuse, b y declining to recognize it, and thus doing its best to cut it off f r o m national as w e l l as local , resources. W e have y e t to learn h o w far this p o l i c y may b e tolerated b y the B o a r d of Education. It is generally supposed that all kinds of k n o w l e d g e are valuable and w o r t h possessing, but one could h a v e dispensed w i t h the k n o w l e d g e that there w e r e m e n and w o m e n in this country capable of perpetrating such an outrage in the name of religious equality. M y h o p e is that these things have only been d o n e — and 1 recognize that it is only in certain ill-favoured localities that they have taken p l a c e — i n the first of the Education Question î t flush of responsibility, and that w h e n the real needs of the education of-the children of this country come more home to the minds of the too-often ignorant persons to w h o s e tender mercies s u c h needs are entrusted, saner counsels may prevail, and more thought be taken of the future inhabitants of this land, and less of the temporary success of some local religious struggle. O U R E L E M E N T A R Y S C H O O L S . T u r n i n g now to the question o f - t h e elementary schools, I am confronted with the fact that there,are some persons w h o seem to think that, on the w h o l e , w e have done well in this direction. I find—to my surprise and d e l i g h t — t h a t the land of Leicester is one flowing with milk and honey. It is not the place w h e r e I myself should have looked for an abundance of kine and bees for Catholic use ; but one never knows, and I can only congratulate those w h o live in that favoured spot. I turn to the con- dition of- the rest of South' Britain, and" here again I exclude ' W a l e s — a locality f r o m w h i c h one does not e x p e c t much. N o w here, in this country, the A c t has been in some cases fairly carried out, and i n others unfairly. T h e A c t , as must necessarily be the case w i t h any measure conferring large p o w e r s upon popularly elected bodies, afforded innumerable loopholes for harassing and annoying t h e voluntary schools. It w a s one w h i c h could be w o r k e d with great unfairness, and possibly the A c t could not otherwise have been framed if it w e r e to carry out the statesmanlike objects w h i c h its originators had 8 The Catholic Aspect in mind. L e t us be thankful that i n — I think I am right in s a y i n g — t h e large majority of places the A c t has been not unfairly administered, and that, at least in most cases, our teachers, w h o have up to this borne so large a portion of the intolerable strain, are n o w properly remunerated. W e have not fully r e a c h e d this last ideal here in Birmingham, but, on the w h o l e , I recognize w i t h gratitude that our schools have received fair, if not exactly cordial, treatment. H o w TH-EY M A Y B E T R E A T E D U N D E R T H E A C T . B u t if any person desires, to learn h o w the volun- tary schools may be treated within the four corners of the A c t b y persons devoid of deeent feeling and desirous of harassing, as far as possible, those whov are opposed to them, let him read the articles w h i c h have recently appeared in the Times on t h e methods pi t h e W e l s h education authorities towards the hap-, less schools w h i c h now lie at.their mercy.; It is of little profit, however, to pursue this inquiry, for I suppose no person is so sanguine as to imagine that the present Act, as it stands, will exist for ever, or perhaps even for any great length of time. E v e n if a Government of the complexion of the present does not find it necessary to do something in the w a y of m o d i f y i n g the law, some day or another the " popular vote will give us a Liberal administration p l e d g e d to alter the E d u c a t i o n Act. It will be an interesting spectacle, or would b e if it w e r e not one of such vital importance, to see such an administration, perhaps under t h e sway of Mr. L l o y d G e o r g e , attempting to tinker w i t h this measure. One feels a g l o w of thank- of the Education Question î t fulneás w h e n one reflects that the task will not be one of any great ease, and that there will be more than one interest w h i c h will have to be fully satisfied- before any alteration can find its w a y on to the statute book. But let that pass. W H A T A R E W E T O DO ? In the face of present political affairs it is at least of great importance that w e should make up our mind as to w h a t w e want and w h a t w e will accept, and to make it abundantly clear, to all w h o m it may concern,, that with anything less than our rights w e will not be satisfied. Moreover, w e " should let it be clearly k n o w « that w e are not p r e p a r e d to be treated w i t h injustice, and that w e will resist by every means m our p o w e r — a n d I think w e might, if w e choose, make ourselves quité as unpleasant as the Passive R e s i s t e r s — a n y arbitrary interference with, our rights to g i v e our children the kind of religious t e a c h i n g w h i c h is-desired for them b y their parents. W e d o not desire to give it-to the.children of others. If w e could reserve our o w n schools for our own children I believe w e should all be grateful for the privilege, but our o w n children w e , must have, and that w e must make p e r f e c t l y clear; W e are n o w b e i n g asked to lay down- a policy w h i c h w e should be prepared to accept. In reply to this request I w o u l d say, In vain is thé net spread in the sight of any bird. D o y o u make a proposition to us, w h e n y o u are in a position to attempt to carry it into law, and w e will then tell you w h e t h e r w e will a c c e p t i t or not." A n d this brings me to . the question of the so-\ to The Catholic Aspect called " s p e c i a l treatment." Hitherto w e have made common cause with the Anglicans and the W e s - - leyans, but in v i e w of recent developments it . seems to be doubtful w h e t h e r this p o l i c y will be open to us for any v e r y great length of time. A s far as the W e s l e y a n s are concerned, it would appear that a large number at least of that b o d y are prepared to g i v e up the policy of separate schools, so that, if this ijhould turn out to b e the case w e can no longer count upon their support or assistance. T H E A N G L I C A N P O S I T I O N . T h e n w e come to the Anglican position. It has always seemed to me that our relations with them, whilst no d o u b t o f advantage to the cause.of religious education at large, have had at least t h i s one dis- a d v a n t a g e — t h a t they have led persons to imagine that our positions w e r e identical, i T h i s is very far from b e i n g the Case. In the eyes of the o v e r w h e l m - ing majority of the inhabitants of this country the C h u r c h of E n g l a n d i s . o n e of several, I might say- many, Protestant bodies in this land, and to the careless observer it is not very easy to s e e w h y all such bodies cannot combine on some common m o d i c u m ' o f religious instruction. W e can see that such a plan w o u l d not be a c c e p t a b l e to some Angli- c a n s — t o others it w o u l d be welcome-—-and can understand their motives. B u t w h a t w e w a n t made clear to Gallio in the street is that w h e t h e r this is a possible p o l i c y for Anglicans or not, it is not possible for us. W e cannot take any part or lot in a common system of religious education, and w e are not g o i n g of the Education Question î t to agree to any scheme w h i c h tends to make us do so., I repeat that it is important that our distinct position should be made clear on this head. T h e n , again, it is extremely difficult to k n o w w h a t the C h u r c h of E n g l a n d does want, if, indeed, it has any clear idea itself. R e c e n t l y I have seen a letter in the Times from the Anglican D e a n "of Bathurst, N e w South W a l e s , extolling the I right of entry " method w h i c h prevails in that Colony. T h i s was f o l l o w e d , a day or t w o later, b y another f r o m the A r c h d e a c o n of Monmouth, in this island, complaining that such a p o l i c y is not possible in this country on account of t h e refusal of the non-religious party to a c c e p t it, and stating that, " it would, I venture to say, meet the v i e w s of the majority of C h u r c h m e n if a compromise could be brought about on this basis." T h e D e a n of Bathurst ends his letter w i t h the remark : s It is only fair to say that the C h u r c h of R o m e does not look with favour on this provision, though it gives satis- faction to the rest of the population, secures equal rights to all, and is not a Godless system." F o r the last fact w e may at least express our thankfulness, but the Catholic inhabitants of this country will no more " l o o k w i t h f a v o u r " upon this proposition than their brethren in t h e Antipodes ; indeed, they will g o further and refuse peacefully to a c c e p t any measure w h i c h ties them d o w n to this limit. N o w , "on the other hand, I can very weH see certain advantages w h i c h the »Anglican C h u r c h might gain from such a compromise. It is not f o r me to argue this aspect of the question, and I am not g o i n g to do so, because it is not my place to express an opinion as to w h a t is the proper The Catholic Aspect . policy on the part of the Establishment. W h a t I do want to bring out is that w e are coming .to a point at w h i c h it may be possible f o r the Anglicans to a c c e p t a measure which w e could not,.and that in that case w e should have to depart from our " policy of the past, and-demand different measures for our children from those w i t h w h i c h Anglicans might content themselves. One cannot also conceal from oneself that far too l a r g e r proportion of the Angli- can laity has ho strong convictions on the subject of religious education. I g i v e all honour to those c l e r g y and laity w h o ' h a v e done w h a t they h a v e done in the past, and w h o are now carrying, on their schools with a definite religious teaching-which, though it is not ours, is at least far better than the stuff w h i c h i s ' described as undenominational Christianity. But one is f o r c e d r e g r e t f u l l y ' to admit that there is not the same f o r c e of lay opinion behind the Anglican d e m a n d - t h a t there is behind ours, in proportion to the numbers of the t w o bodies. Poll the C a t h o l i c b o d y throughout the land, and you will find it abso- lutely determined that its children shall be taught the Catholic religion in Catholic schools, and prepared, too, if necessary, t o take any needful measures to ensure that this shall b e the case. If there were, t h e same unanimity óf opinion amongst A n g l i c a n s — "which is, perhaps, too much to e x p e c t — t h e position of religious education in this country w o u l d be much stronger than it isf L e t me repeat that w e have a somewhat different platform from that of the Anglicans, and that w e have a laity w h i c h , t h o u g h " numerically much smaller, is much more united ánd in earnest as to its educational programme. of the Education Question î t R A T E - A I D A N D S T A T E - A I D . , T h e s e are matters of prime importance in the. present controversy. It has been suggested by some that the A c t should be so modified as to permit any school to opt itself out f r o m under the local authority; ,to cease to receive any rate-aid and to obtain in lieu thereof an extra capitation grant f r o m the T r e a s u r y . F r o m one point of v i e w this would, in my opinion, b e an excellent thing, I have never ceased to believe that the p a y i n g for any kind of education out of local sources is a gross absurdity. John Bull and Patsy M u r p h y are not b e i n g e d u c a t e d jjj in Birmingham for Birmingham, but for t h e g o o d of the nation at large, at least so it is h o p e d and believed. In so far, therefore, such a scheme w o u l d h a v e my support.. A n d it w o u l d have it in its entirety, if it w e r e the only w a y b y w h i c h w e could retain the only kind of school w h i c h w e are prepared to a c c e p t or submit to. B u t I should d e e p l y regret to see such a measure carried," for it w o u l d at once take from out of the" scheme of national education not only our o w n but presumably a n u m b e r of other schools. W e have at this moment a great scheme of national e d u c a t i o n — o n e w h i c h , if fairly w o r k e d and administered without religious or irreligious prejudice, might and could accomplish great things, and it would be a thousand pities to see it torn t o pieces. But torn to pieces it must be if in no other w a y w e can obtain fair treatment. It is not our place, however, I submit, to discuss the question, at least in public, of h o w our d e m a n d ' is to be met. Suffice it t h a t w e lay d o w n precisely 14 The Catholic Aspect what is the minimum w h i c h w e are prepared to accept, and then leave it to those w h o are c o n c e r n e d with the d r a w i n g up of an amending Bill'(I think it may be some time before w e see an amending 'Act) to make such provisions as they see fit. W h e n w e see them w e shall be able to say w h e t h e r w e can acc6pt them or not. B u t there is one thing for w h i c h the time is more than ripe, and that is the putting of our present schools into proper order and the provision of such new schools, particularly of the secondary group, as w e may require. T h i s is a point upon w h i c h various writers in The Tablet, and particularly my friend A b b o t F o r d , have most properly insisted. I wish the bulk of our laity could be got to understand h o w pressing and h o w great a task this is. It is pressing because at this moment -there is a number of our schools w h i c h a hostile authority, prepared for any kind of depreda- tions upon the public purse, could practically close, unless large sums of money were forthcoming. H o w long it may be b e f o r e some such attempt is made no one can say ; not long, it would appear, in the W e s t Riding, at any r?ite. - T H E N E E D O F M O N E Y . A n d it is great because it entails the raising of a great sum of money. I believe that the estimate of ^1,000,000 w h i c h has appeared in our papers is not an e x a g g e r a t e d one, and I believe that if w e are to save bur schools a determined attempt must be made to raise this sum by contributions, large and small. May I add another suggestion, without a n y intention of the Education Question î t of giving offence ? It is prompted solely b y the very keen interest w h i c h I take in this matter of education. I think w e should enforce a " self- , d e n y i n g ordinance " and a d d nothing to our churches, J save w h a t is absolutely necessary, until our educa- tional necessities have been relieved. N e w c h u r c h e s w e must have, a n d repairs and alterations unfor- tunately cannot be postponed, but I w o u l d make a plea that b e y o n d . this w e should not go, until w e have put our educational organization on a proper and sound footing. I must c o n f e s s — I h o p e I shall not b e thought to be temerarious in saying i t — t h a t I never read of an erection of a new high altar, or the putting-up of a new stained-glass w i n d o w with- out a p a n g of regret for the needs of the heavily m o r t g a g e d or ill-repaired schools w h i c h are our first line of defence. Better to kneel on the bare earth, as many of our forefathers have done in Ireland, and have only painted deal for our. altars, than abandon the schools in w h i c h the little ones of Christ are brought up in the truths of religion. T h e r e cafl be no matter more pressing and serious than this, and I am certain that it requires no urging upon those w h o are responsible for our educational policy. But this is a layman's and a laywoman's question, and I wish I could make my w o r d s heard b y all of them, ¿mcl cause them to feel h o w great is the necessity for us to be up and doing. I am quite prepared to be described as one of the pessimists w h o are a l w a y s w i t h us. W e l l , I h o p e I may be too pessimistic. * W i t h such k n o w l e d g e as I possess of the educational field I cannot but feel anxious. Anxious, not hope- less, for I f e e l certain that if w e have a definite r 6 The Education Question p o l i c y and an absolute determination at all hazards and at any cost of strife, to. have that policy carried out w e shall be successful. But let us see to it that w e h a v e the policy, the determination, and the sinews of w a r . PRINTED AND P U B L I S H E D B Y T H E CATHOLIC T R U T H SOCIETY, LONDON. T H E RIGHTS OF M I N O R I T I E S 1 B y THE R e v . J O S E P H R I G K A B Y , S.J. R h e t o r i c a n d S c i e n c e A GREAT master in science has likewise written a book on rhetoric. He lays it down that a scientific argument is drawn from the nature of the facts under considera- tion, but a rhetorical argument from the nature of the audience to be persuaded, a very different standard to go by. T o persuade an audience, you may have to descend to ground which you yourself regard as scientifi- cally untenable, or, at any rate, not tenable without further defences, which you may securely neglect, thanks to the incapacity of the men you have ,to deal with. That : " t h e audience are a poor lot," av\oi ol atcpoarai, is an axiom, according to Aristotle, of the first importance for the orator to remember. H e must not- waste rigid demonstrations upon them, but ply them 1 A paper read at the Catholic Conference, Blackburn, Septem- ber 27, 1905. The Rights of Minorities -If with catchwords that, will " g o d o w n " and suit their stomachs. T h e practice of the great Roman orator, Cicero, well illustrates this Aristotelian precept. T h e Cicero of the Speeches, addressing senate or jury, is a very different man from the Cicero of the Letters, uttering his real mind to his friends, I say this not with any reference to the intelligent audience now before me, but with regard to a wider audience, the British public. In their judgement upon questions where religion coiries in, the British public, I fear, are on the whole " a poor lot,"steeped in ignorance, prejudice, heresy and indifferentism, dreading and dis- liking whatever savours of Rome. A t such disadvantage, before such a tribunal, do we plead Roman Catholic claims in the matter of education. What shall we, a poor minority, say to the mighty mass of our country- men ? Shall we tell them that the Catholic Church is thé Kingdom of the Word Incarnate ? that she bears His royal commission • to teach all nation?, but most especially those who are of the household of the faith? that dire woe is pronounced from heaven upon all who set stumbling-blocks in the way of little ones who believe in Christ—aye, upon the nation, hciwever great •and powerful, that so legislates as to render the bringing up of Catholic children in the Catholic faith a working impossibility? These things are true; these are the facts which the scientific eye of the Catholic believer regards, and upon which his educational policy is based. The Rights of Minorities -If But the unbelieving and, consequently, in the things of God, unscientific eye of millions of our countrymen is blind to this really decisive aspect of (he education question. We are left in the position of a son who holds a document which he well knows to represent the last will of his father, but which from some technical defect of signature cannot be pleaded in court. We cannot plead before the British public that the Catholic Church is the one true Church of Christ, and that Christ is God, and that God is Lord of all, of States no less than of individuals. We are obliged to descend to lower and less scientific ground. We have to acquiesce, for argument's sake, in the supposition that one religion is as good as another, so that it be not inimical to the interests of the State. We have to argue upon the axiom, generally admitted, that consciences are not be interfered with, except when by some abnormal perversion they come to stand in the way of the decency and order and proper requirements of civil society. And we add that the Catholic con- science, surely as reputable, an organ as the Noncon- formist conscience, cannot endure to see Catholic children driven into schools where everything that a Catholic values as distinctively Catholic is ignored, tacitly set aside,'nay, lies open to downright mockery and formal repudiation. T h e Nonconformists filled all England with their outcries at the iniquity of having to send their children to Church of England schools in t M 4 The Rights of Minorities -If places where they had failed to build schools of their own. K they had built schools of their own, and a majority of voters, being strong Church of England men, had refused all aid to these Nonconformist schools unless, they came under Church of England manage- ment and were taught by Church of England teachers, one may imagine how the new temple of Nonconformity that is being erected on the site of the old Westminster Aquarium would have rung with indignant complaint, and how " passive resisters " would have multiplied ih the land. Yet that is the exact counterpart of the situation thát . our Nonconformist brethren are endeavouring to create for us. We are threatened with an endowment of Non- conformity, " the Nonconformist on the rates," and nót a mere endowment but a . monopoly. T h è schools which we Catholics have erected out of Catholic money, saving cost to the ratepayers, in the hopes of the con- tinuance of that well-earned subvention from public funds which alone renders the maintenance of such schools possible, will have -to be closed for defect of such . maintenance unless we are prepared to surrender them 'to a purpose the very opposite of that for which they were built. And the justification pleaded for this arbitrary proceeding is the will of the majority. We Catholics are a minority, and we are poor, and therefore we must submit to be hustled and flouted in our dearest interests' by the mass of our countrymen as were the The Rights of Minorities -If Jews in Egypt by the mass of the Egyptians till Moses led them forth. We are not going to secede, but we may well try to persuade our country to treat us better. E n d s o f E d u c a t i o n T o bring two parties to an agreement or compromise it is useful to specify what ends they severally wish to gain, and upon such specification to consider whether those several ends are incompatible one with another. T h e end and aim of the Catholic body in all its conten- tion about education is simply this, that the children of Catholic parents may be brought up Catholics. There are those in this land and in every land, France for example, who regard the Catholic faith as a detestable superstition, as the Roman Emperors Decius and Diocletian regarded Christianity. They call for its extirpation at any price. They find the axe, the rack, the wild beasts of the arena unnecessary instruments for their purpose, and gone somewhat out of fashion. They will «do to Catholicism what the Church has sometimes done to a religious community that it wished to suppress, forbidding it to receive novices j they will weight educa- tion with public money, and lay the balance so cunningly that Catholic schools shall heel over and founder, and the Catholic child,"the novice, I • may, call him, of the Catholic Church, in the poorer classes at any rate, shall gradually become an impossibility. With men who con- 6 The Rights of Minorities -If sciously labour to this end, it is useless to argue; we can only expose their purpose and put them to shame. They are endeavouring to subvert that principle of freedom of conscience in religious beliefs, upon which the British Empire has been governed for a century. They are making the State what the State never can be; judge of religion. T h e State can only be judge of public order and tranquillity. Happily, these our heartiest, our thorough-going opponents, are themselves a minority in the land. We are, I dare say, quite as numerous as they. It remains to inquire what the mass of English folk hope to get as the reward of the money that they are spending and prepared to spend on education, as the product of imperial and municipal care and control of schools. I have thought of four ends contemplated and desired in this light. I state them, not in any order of desire or desirability, but as they have occurred to my ' mind. T h e first end then is Empire, the second is trade, the third is public health, the fourth is social virtue. If we can convince our countrymen that What we demand on behalf of Catholic schools^ does not militate against any of these ends, which the State has in view in its care for education; if we show readiness heartily to concur in the prosecution of these four ends ; if we insist that we Catholics have in our mind's eye a perfectly compatible fifth end, namely, the theoretical and practical training of our own children in the faith of The Rights of Minorities -If their parents, then the refusal of our demands may be seen to be unreasonable, and therefore—in a govern- ment set up for the good, the ease, the content of all its' subjects—a refusal tyrannical and unjust. I will not weary your patience with arguing that the preservation of Catholic schools is no danger to the British Empire, that we are not disloyal: that we shall place no hindrance to that education of our working classes which is deemed necessary for the products of British manufacture to hold their own in the market against the competition of educated nations on the Continent, say Germany ; that we Catholics have no affection for sewer-gas, and are not, as a body/ opposed to vaccination; that we are lovers of washing, fresh-air and exercise, and are eager to exterminate the deadly microbe according as science shows us the game ; lastly, that we have a modest confidence in our ability to teach social virtue, or, in other words, such honesty, self- restraint and good manners,.as are necessary to prevent the world being turned into a bear-garden. By all means let us promise, while inculcating that higher virtue which fits men for another world, not to be negli- gent of the virtue the absence of which unfits them for this. Possibly, looking at drunkenness and other evils within our fold, we may confess in all humility some failure of educational success on some of these points. If so, we must amend that deficiency. T h e sobriety, industry, public spirit, and sound frames of the children 8 The Rights of Minorities -If who come forth from our Catholic schools, will go further than anything else to convince our countrymen that Catholic education should be respected and deserves to live. T h e L e s s o n of P a s s i v e R e s i s t a n c e It is difficult to argue the justice of Catholic claims in education without setting forth in particular what Catholics do claim in our present educational crisis. On the other hand, to formulate these claims is beyond the function, not to say beyond the capacity, of the present writer.' I must be allowed to do what I cannot help doing, to speak somewhat vaguely and deficiently and inadequately. T h e statement of our claims in all their amplitude I leave to others: I will state some part of our just claim. And in stating it I will be mindful of -the Aristotelian distinction between science and rhetoric.— between claims sound in themselves and claims that you can press with effect before a popular j u r y ; in other words, between what we simply ought to have, and what we at once ought to have and are not unlikely to get. In considering these " rhetorically valid " claims, as I may call them, I am apt to think that our friends the "passive resisters" have taught us a useful lesson' and created a valuable precedent in our favour. I am not at all in favour of the policy of refusing to pay our education rates, however much we may dislike and detest the The Rights of Minorities -If purpose to which we know ihey will be applied. By all means let us pay our rates, and give an example of Catholic obedience in contrast with Nonconformist disobedience to law. It is the principle, not the practice of the Nonconformists that is valuable to us. T h e principle is this,, that it is undesirable for ratepayers to have to pay for schools that they do not want and object to use. Now we Catholics do not want secularist schools, and object to our children going there. Further, what the Nonconformists generally have not done, we have provided schools at our own heavy cost. One claim, then, that we might make, though it does not belong to me to make it, a claim which no passive resister ought to dispute, is to be exempted from paying rates to secularist, or what are called " provided" schools, on this condition^that whatever education rate be levied in the.locality where we live we pay that same rate, thus bearing our fair share of public burdens; and that our contribution be " earmarked " and assigned to the support of Catholic schools. A Catholic school may be defined, so far as elementary schools go, as " a school taught by Catholic teachers." If this claim were allowed, we should at least save our education rates for our own purposes, and not pay education rates for an education which is to us polluted water, which our lips refuse to touch. Whether our own education rates would suffice to keep our schools,. that is another question not belonging to my subject. The answer The Rights of Minorities -If would be various in various localities according to the various number of Catholics in each. Some equality would be found by pooling over large areas. But let that question pass. -We should have to settle it amongst ourselves. Can we urge any further claim upon the justice of our countrymen ? I think we can.- But before proceeding to do so, I should like to fix a mark in advance, a sort of statute of limitations, beyond which our claims need not be pressed. It is well to reassure our judges beforehand upon the modesty of our pretensions. Supposing, then, it were laid down that Catholics had no right to expect the burden of public taxation to be increased for the easing of their consciences. That principle, rigidly carried out, would bear heavily upon our body, and would deprive us of many privileges that we now enjoy. J u s t i c e o r G e n e r o s i t y Economists might point out that one chaplain ought to suffice for the needs of so many huhdred soldiers, or so many score of workhouse inmates, prisoners, or patients. They might prescribe the appointment of one Anglican clergyman accordingly, regardless of the fact that one-third of the said soldiers, or patients, were Catholics, to whom the reverend gentleman's services would be entirely nugatory, and who, consequently, in The Rights of Minorities -If practice would have no chaplain at all. We are better treated than t h a t ; and for such better treatment we have to thank a good quality in our fellow-countrymen, concerning which I am here wholly indifferent whether it should be called "generosity" or "justice." We should be amply satisfied if we could secure similar justice, or generosity, in the matter of elementary education, f o r consider. T h e State has taken- upon itself to see that all its people shall be educated. T h e rich it leaves to their parents, presuming that no well-to- do father or mother will allow a child of theirs to grow up wholly illiterate and boorish. T h e poor, too often, are unable or unwilling to pay for the education of their children. Thereupon the State, or rather, under the State, the municipality or commune, builds schools, staffs and furnishes them at public expense, and by authority sweeps all otherwise unprovided children into those schools. Considering our whole number, the per- centage of Catholic poor is extraordinarily large. Taken together, we are a flock of poor people. And we have precisely the same rights as other citizens. What Government does for others, it ought to do for us. We are neither proscribed nor pariahs in the land. Suppose not a penny had been raised for Catholic elementary education, and no Catholic elementary school existed anywhere in England, all our pporer Catholic children would be thrown on the public funds. I have no statistics of the number by me, but it is a large number, The Rights of Minorities -If and their schooling would cost the country a consider- able sum. I presume I may further hope and suppose that of our existing Catholic schools the legal titles of ownership are so secure in private hands that not one of them could be claimed by public authority, as its property. We could, if we chose, sell all those premises for music-halls, or art galleries, or even public-houses : and none of the money so realized would belong to county council or other State educational authority. Thereupon we might demand of the Secularist party a raising of rates all round for the Secularist education of Catholic children. That would be, in some towns especially, a pretty bill to pay. No doubt, part of it is already paid in the shape of grants to Catholic schools, and salaries to Catholic teachers. But such payment is only, partial. There remains a large unpaid amount. That sum represents the gain hitherto made by the public purse from the educational charity of Catholics, from the charity of the poorest class in the community. One would like to know, in this matter of elementary schooling, how much the public purse is indebted to the voluntary contributions of the prosperous Nonconformist tradesman, the Wesleyan and Jewish communities always excepted. When then it is urged that Catholic claims for elementary education involve expenditure of public money upon Catholic schools, we may reply that surely public money ought to be expended upon Catholic children, as much as upon any other children, The Rights of Minorities -If and, if anything, more, seeing that Catholic children are poorer and needier than other children : further, that this expenditure should in reason take such a form as may be acceptable to Catholic parents, and not present to them for bread 'what to their stomachs is a stone : lastly, that the money which Catholic children would cost, were their entire education thrown upon rates and taxes, as in all justice it might be—that this' sum, I say, would amply suffice to cover the entire expenditure which Catholics are now demanding of public authority for the support of an education distinctively Catholic. Thus for education we are keeping within the maxim, otherwise, as I have said, a rigid and stern maxim, and one already set aside in our favour in other departments, that the safeguarding of the Catholic conscience ought not to increase the financial burdens of the State. It is not within my province, nor within my purpose either, to deal with the rule continually quoted against us, that public money involves public control. Public money, as our opponents are always telling us, is given for secular education. We too undertake to provide secular education; and for all the details of that secular education, for which alone public money is given, we challenge the most unlimited public control. We do not take away from education, but we add. We add one whole subject, religious Catholic education; and that subject we claim to have taught in our own way, not in other men's way who do not understand it.. Our educa- The Rights of Minorities -If tion is secular, but not secularist: that is to say, it is not exclusive of those three articles of the Christian creed, God, Jesus Christ, and the life of the world to come. We contend that our children will not grow up less worthy and less efficient citizens of this world for being trained over and above that in the duties of a citizenship that is in heaven. > I am aware that M. Combes and" the Grand Orient Lodge think otherwise. But are they really Liberal ? Are they a model for English politicians ? A G e n e r a l P r i n c i p l e T h e general question of the rights of minorities in a democratic State makes a nice point of political science. It seems clear that in foreign relations the State must behave as one person: a minority cannot be permitted to levy war on a foreign Power with whom the State as a whole is at peace, nor to remain at peace and refuse to serve against a Power, with whom the State is at war. Nor must a minority create such disturbance as to render the will of the majority nugatory j n what concerns the said majority. Thus if the will of the majority is to hav,e "provided schools," in which no dogmatic religion shall be taught, Catholics are in no position to interfere with the erection of such schools. Let the schools be '' provided " at the public expense, and let the children of the parents who approve of them go there. Catholics The Rights of Minorities -If ask for nothing that could in any way do injury to such schools. Any lover of free trade and fair play, any man who grievously suspects protectionism, monopolies and syndicates, ought, one would think, in this question of education, to feel some sympathy for Catholics. On the general question I have written elsewhere in a Dissertation stamped with an approval that I highly value : "Besides the proper and essential functions of civil au- thority, functions necessary to the conservation of any maturely organized political society, there are other func- tions postulated by public convenience, which government, imperial or local, may take up, if the people by general consent will have it so. This may be called the Principle of Voluntary Public Control. It goes towards clearing up the difficulty which we all feel in fixing the exact bounds of civil authority, what the State may do and what it may not do in the way of abridging the liberty of the individual. State interference can have no legal limits, inasmuch as the State makes the law : only physical and moral limits. It is more important to assert the existence of such limits than to trace them as though one were a member of a boundary commission. The principle of voluntary public control has. this advantage, that it is not too rigid for facts and futurities. According to this principle, there is an inferior and a superior limit to civil authority; I mean, there is a minimum of civil authority which the maturely developed State can never forego, and there is a maximum which the same State The Rights of Minorities -If can never exceed, it being the utmost fulness of power which any State can ever carry. Between these two limits civil authority is just what the people as a whole wills that it shall be. The State thus becomes the organ of public opinion. There is' a clear trend of public opinion to widen further and further still the region of control." T o which text the following note is appended : " B u t in spontaneous admissions of State interference, e.g., in the matter of education, special regard should be had for the rights of minorities, where there is a strong minority against interference and tenacious of their l i b e r t y " (Political and Moral Essays, pp. 69-71, Dissertation on the Origin and Extent of Civil Authority. Benziger, 1902). Whenever there is opportunity of exercising their civil rights, the Catholic minority should show itself "strong"• and "tenacious" on this point of education. It should know its own mind and voice the same loudly, and enforce it in political and municipal action. A minority that does not cry aloud almost to shrieking pitch, will not be heard for the roar of greater numbers. Above all, the Catholic minority must be united on this one issue. A disunited minority is a nonentity : it has neither cohesion nor force .nor available rights. PRINTED AND PUBLISHED B Y T H E CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, LONDON. RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOLS BY R O B E R T J. S M Y T H E THE present trend of educational politics removes the occasion for »prefatory apology in any attempt to simplify the problem of securing religious instruction to the children. In a very literal sense " the old order c h a n g e t h , " and even the most sanguine look uneasily to the development. Amid hopes and fears one thing seems certain : the bulk of the religious instruction and the responsibility for it cannot be p l a c e d as heretofore with the teachers. T h e i r earnest- ness and g o o d w i l l may remain, but they will be of little avail w h e n effort and desire are restricted and f e n c e d in b y the regulations of a rigid governing authority. A gradual w e a k e n i n g of the Catholic position in the matter of religious training b e c a m e inevitable b y the A c t of 1902. In a letter addressed to the clergy and laity the late Cardinal V a u g h a n thus wrote : " A s a result of that A c t competition b e t w e e n the w o r l d and the Church to control the formation of the y o u n g has b e c o m e visibly and sensibly accentuated in all direc- tions," A n d to counterbalance " t h e increasing control Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 of the w o r l d in the sphere of education to the ultimate destruction of r e v e a l e d religion as a vital factor in public and private life," he advocated e v e r y w h e r e an intro- duction or extension of Confraternities of Christian Doctrine, w h o s e special function is to co-operate w i t h the clergy in the religious instruction of t h e young.' Infinitely more hostile to Catholic interests is the prospective A c t than the A c t of 1902, and, w h i l e in many districts it may b e sufficient to strengthen and supplement existing means of instruction, in some districts at least the w h o l e w o r k of religious instruction may need to be organized and carried on apart f r o m the ordinary routine of the day-school. In considering any scheme of voluntary effort for teaching purposes, a grave difficulty confronts us at the outset. N o subject lends itself more readily than education to discussions of a general c h a r a c t e r : f e w subjects are less fruitful and more distressing to the tyro than teaching. T h e reason of this is plain. T e a c h i n g is an a r t — i t is practical. It conforms in its operations to general principles, as do all arts ; yet good teaching is no more inevitably the outcome of an acquaintance with the broad features of educational science, than is the ability to write g o o d poetry a necessary outcome of a k n o w l e d g e of the principles of versification. G o o d teaching implies learning, love of k n o w l e d g e , patience, z e a l : the converse of the proposition is of limited application only. A widespread appreciation of this fact is no doubt an explanation of the general practice of leaving religious instruction equally w i t h secular instruction, almost w h o l l y in the hands of Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 professional educators. B u t w h i l e it is true that a w i d e range of g o o d gifts directed b y use are involved in the work of teaching, and that the p e r f e c t craftsman is as rarely met with in the school as in the atelier, it is equally true that fair proficiency in the art is within reach of all. In this paper it is proposed, first, to consider certain aspects of the course of religious instruction usually f o l l o w e d , with a view to a possible simplification ; and, secondly, to set d o w n briefly some of the more obvious conditions of successful oral t e a c h i n g for t h e considera- tion of those w h o are without actual experience of the work, but w h o may be disposed if need be to do their best in it for the children's sake. I. T h e range of matter for lessons is so extensive and the time at disposal so short, that the loss is serious w h e r e the academic is preferred to the practical, the formal to the real. A n d it is obvious that in a p p l y i n g the terms just used, a constant adjustment must take place. Selection of matter will d e p e n d on (i.) the importance of the information in itself, (ii.) its suitability to the age, capacity, and circumstances of the children. A careful overhauling of values will s h o w h o w effort may be economized. As an e x a m p l e : One of the diocesan syllabuses used to prescribe as part of the memory- Work for individual repetition the H y m n s to the H o l y Ghost, the H y m n of St< Bernard, the Litany of our L a d y , the Miserere Psalm, and the Te Deum! T h e Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 exercise w a s unnecessary ; it took up much valuable time ; it w a s irksome ; y e t — s o easily do w e adapt ourselves to w h a t is-—several geherations of school- children w e r e made to pass through the ordeal ere a reasonable c h a n g e w a s e f f e c t e d . In framing s c h e m e s and in selecting material for lessons the keynote is simplicity. In case of doubt it is w e l l to err on the side of defect, for an o v e r c h a r g e d syllabus induces cram and lessens the disposition to take up the instruction for its o w n sake as a labour of love. T h e amount of religious k n o w l e d g e absolutely necessary f o r children is s m a l l : it will, if the treatment he good, produce in later life c h o i c e fruit in faith and character. But the issue is obscured and development is arrested w h e n the essential is overlaid with w h a t is at the best of but secondary importance. In the forefront of most Schemes of religious instruc- tion stands the Catechism, and the position has been held so long that there is a tendency to admit a prescriptive right to it. T h e r e are s o m e to w h o m Catechism, learning, and religious instruction are synonymous t e r m s . T o these any suggestion of a modified use of the Catechism may c o m e as a painful surprise. T h e y will recall their y o u n g days spent in Catechism lessons and point to a manhood of lusty Catholicity, and into a time sequence read cause and effect. Or they may maintain not less bravely that, since the Catechism is an excellent epitome of religious k n o w l e d g e , therefore the t e a c h i n g of the Catechism must be an excellent "means of c o n v e y i n g religious k n o w l e d g e . In days g o n e b y there w a s little need to traverse Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 these or other arguments, on w h i c h w a s f o u n d e d a conviction of the supreme need of mastering as early as possible the w h o l e text of the Catechism, for a w i d e margin of time w a s still available for more intimate instruction. B u t those w h o are acquainted with the actual conditions of w o r k inside the schools see clearly in the near f u t u r e — w h a t e v e r the letter of the law may b e — a considerable curtailment of the study and observance of religion. L e t us look into the question more closely. T h e qualities w h i c h give value to the Catechism as a c o m p e n d i u m of Christian D o c t r i n e — t h e completeness of its survey, the precision of its definitions, the logical arrangement of its p a r t s — r e c o m m e n d it but slightly as a text-book for the young. Fulness of matter is without advantage w h e r e only a small portion of the w h o l e can be studied ; definition, h o w e v e r exact, is usually of . less value to children than simple d e s c r i p t i o n ; | and the p s y c h o l o g y of the child disposes us to regard as futile the attempt to build up for h i m ' an elaborate system on a strictly logical basis. T h e Catechism is ungraded in respect either of im- portance of contents pr of difficulty of matter. Much of the earlier sections is p y r e theology, of little practical use to the child. T h e t w o chapters w h i c h are most easily intelligible—those dealing with the Christian's Rule of L i f e and the Christian's Daily E x e r c i s e — c o m e last, a n d are reached, if at all, at the close of a child's school career. It would be amusing, w e r e the question of religious instruction of less moment, to contemplate the position of 'the seven-year-old child on his trans- f e r e n c e from the infant department to the senior school. 6 Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 H e is able, with assistance, to read w o r d s of one syllable and to understand their meaning vaguely -r he can just catch a glimpse of number in the concrete ; he writes a little, and he may be able to take an interest in a simple tale, provided it be within his sphere of thought and w e l l told. W i t h such preliminary training he is set upon the Catechism, and in a ' s h o r t time can repeat glibly enough that " Faith is a supernatural g i f t of G o d w h i c h enables us to believe without doubting w h a t e v e r G o d has r e v e a l e d " ; t h a t " W e must believe w h a t e v e r G o d has revealed, because G o d is the very T r u t h w h o can neither d e c e i v e nor be d e c e i v e d " ; that, " G o d is the Supreme Spirit w h o alone exists of Himself and is infinite in all perfections " ; and that " A mystery is a truth w h i c h is above reason but revealed by G o d . " In days g o n e b y catechism-learning w a s much in vogue. T h e r e w e r e catechisms of history, of common k n o w l e d g e , of natural science, of philosophy, and specimens may still be found in the lumber-rooms of old houses, or on the shelves of amateurs in literary curiosities. But all these manuals have vanished from the schools. It is generally held to b e unnecessary and undesirable to reduce our information on a subject to a congeries of definitions. A n d to a p p r o a c h a study by means of definitions is to run counter to all the prin- ciples of scientific method. W h a t then must be said of the teaching of such, definitions as those instanced to children of tender years ? T h e teacher is yet unborn w h o could g i v e t h e m life and meaning. W e may manufacture, so to speak, infant grarfiophones w h i c h on the application of due stimulus will tickle our ears Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 with a record intelligible to ourselves ; but the instru- ments will remain dull, cold, and unchanged., T h e question may be v i e w e d from another standpoint, and the acquisition of Catechism answers in childhood considered as capital for latex years. T h i s is ordinarily the v i e w of those w h o by the condition of their life and occupation need frequently to refresh their k n o w l e d g e of the Catechism. B u t w e have to consider the case of the every-day child w h o satisfies the demands of the Diocesan Inspector, and passes from, the schoolroom to the shop, the factory, or the fields. W h a t is the influ- e n c e of the imperfectly c o m p r e h e n d e d exercises of childhood during the perilous years of adolescence ? A n d how much of the original does the memory retain at a period w h e n w i d e r experience and maturer judge- ment w o u l d render it of value ? F o r an answer to the last question the reader may make a direct examination in typical cases. Or, without leaving his arm-chair, let him endeavour to write out the paradigms of some language learnt at school and since neglected. T h e n , having, made a deduction in his o w n case for the influence of favour- able circumstances and a cultured mind, he may look upon the residue as a fair standard of comparison. In spite V)f the d r a w b a c k s and limitations inseparable f r o m this form of study, there is so much convenience to the teacher in having to hand a precis of Christian Doctrine, and so much advantage in the general adoption of an authorized expression of religious know- ledge and belief, that there is little likelihood of the Catechism ceasing to occupy a central position in the scheme of religious instruction. But it is of the first importance to ascertain how its study may be made less Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 routinary and its influence more real. H e r e suggestions arise. Selected portions of the Catechism of practical utility and allowing of explanation to y o u n g -children might be studied first, and the more abstract portions left over. Or a shorter and simpler Catechism might be p r e p a r e d for the elementary school, and the manual at present in use be*reserved for more advanced pupils. T h e r e is little need, h o w e v e r , to discuss details n o w : they will assume a practical form should a modification of the present course be seen to be desirable. Mean- while, w e may bear in mind that our aim is to teach the most and the best and that w e are not teaching in Utopia. L e t us turn f r o m this branch-of religious instruction in schools and ask if values are sufficiently w e i g h e d in the department of Scripture History. Here the arrange- ment of matter is usually chronological. T h e seven- year-old child begins with the Creation, and within a period of, perhaps, t w e l v e months he reaches, say, the T o w e r of B a b e l ; within another period he may come to the Captivity i n , E g y p t ; and, again," he w a n d e r s through the Desert to the Promised Land. B y dint of custom this p r o c e d u r e is f o l l o w e d without a suspicion < of incongruity, and children will learn to reel off the order of Creation, the names of the sons of Jacob and the plagues of E g y p t without hesitation or danger of transposition. W e do not set about the t e a c h i n g of English history in this crude way. First are taught simple stories of bravery, of duty, of unselfishness, of obedience, w h i c h make a direct appeal to the c h i l d — s t o r i e s of the Lion- Heart, of Nelson, of the burghers of Calais, of the B l a c k Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 Prince ; then come salient features of history traced simply through cause and effect ; these again are ex- panded and w o r k e d out in d e t a i l ; and, lastly, if oppor- tunity offer, there is specialization of a given period. W e do not trouble y o u n g minds with the complexities of the Saxon H e p t a r c h y , w i t h the T r e a t y of Dover, or the Constitutions of Clarendon. Might not the same y o u n g minds be as considerately dealt w i t h in the teach- ing of H o l y W r i t ? Instruction in the N e w T e s t a m e n t - l e a v e s little room for comment. T h e parts usually taught in school are within the capacity of children, and of direct value. But there is a tendency even here to subordinate spirit to letter—*to reduce, for instance, the teaching of parables to rote, and their lessons to bald statements. A pertinent consideration c o m e s in here. In every branch of secular instruction there have been made during recent years strenuous efforts not only to popularize the study b y a d e a r and convincing pre- sentation of its^ main features, but there have been equally strenuous attempts to elaborate special methods of teaching the various subjects. F o r although c o m m o n principles of method can be seen to underlie all g o o d teaching, the application of these principles is infinitely varied, and distinctive methods are evolved in harmony with the subject-matter and w i t h the special purposes w h i c h a subject is meant to serve. A n d much good, direct and incidental, has resulted to various branches of school-work f r o m this elaboration of method. In religious instruction, h o w e v e r , little seems to have been done ; w e are w h e r e w e w e r e years ago, and the special didactics of the subject have hardly been begun. Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 Some of the d e f e c t s in the religious instruction of the schools are traceable to the system of inspection w h i c h has been commonly adopted. T h e courses of study prescribed have been extensive, t h è tests have been stringent, and schools have been classified a c c o r d i n g to their examination results. Under such conditions there is small r o o m for surprise if, too often, the teacher has lost perspective and devoted his attention to the w o r d rather than the thing. F o r some unaccountable reason the inspections have been originally modelled on the lines of the inspectors of the E d u c a t i o n Department during the period w h e n school-payments w e r e made a c c o r d i n g to " result." B u t w h e r e a s in secular subjects a constant endeavour has been made to get a w a y f r o m the ill-effects w h i c h that form of inspection produced, many of its evil features are still recognizable in the Department of Religious Instruction. I II. It has been said that an initial difficulty of all organi- zations of voluntary effort for purposes of instruction lies in the naturè of the w o r k . F o r though good-will and zeal, joined with adequate k n o w l e d g e of the subject-matter, will g o far, they cannot of themselves' suffice in an undertaking w h i c h demands a measure bf technical ability. A f e w simple observations on some of the more obvious principles and conditions c o m m o n to all successful teaching are here submitted. T h e y may, perhaps, tend to direct effort along lines w h i c h might otherwise be overlooked-or ignored, and thus be of service to those w h o are taking up the task of teaching for the first time. Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 L E C T U R I N G A N D T E A C H I N G . T h e beginner is more apt to lecture than to teach. T h e t w o exercises are not w h o l l y dissimilar, inasmuch as each makes a demand' upon clear statement and vivid narration. In other respects they are at opposite poles. W i t h the lecturer the question is, " H o w much matter can be p r e s e n t e d ? " with the teacher, " H o w much may be taught ? " T h e lecturer obtrudes information ; the teacher seeks to create a demand for it. T h e lecturer is c o n c e r n e d w i t h his o w n point of v i e w ; the teacher with the point of v i e w of his pupils. T h e lecturer assumes intelligence, desire, concentration, r e c e p t i v i t y : the teacher has to ascertain if these qualities exist, and to w h a t degree, and no small part of his effort lies in inducing, stimulating, and developing these primary conditions of learning. L e c t u r i n g is not altogether o u t , o f place in school. W i t h older children and in subjects w h i c h kre w e l l within their range of thought, it may be advantageously used. W i t h y o u n g children it is of small value,, for the well-ordered information of the adult finds little re- sponse among the fragmentary shreds of k n o w l e d g e possessed b y the child. It is just h e r e that t h e . t e a c h e r comes in. H e brings his mind to meet the mind of his pupils. T h e r e is fusion of idea, feeling, sentiment. A n d not for a moment does he lose sight of the f a c t that if the information he means to supply is to be more than empty words, it must in some w a y or other be brought into connection with k n o w l e d g e w h i c h already exists, so that the child may recognize in the new matter an expansion or development of his previous Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 store. T h i s seems to be the, true meaning of the much- quoted and ill-used aphorism of method, " P r o c e e d f r o m the known to the u n k n o w n . " Q U E S T I O N I N G . In order to ascertain the content of the pupil's mind the teacher resorts to q u e s t i o n s — o f t e n with but slight success. F o r o w i n g to difference in concept and in sentiment b e t w e e n the. child and the adult a question and its interpretation may be in spheres of thought w h i c h are mutually exclusive. A sympathetic teacher w h o k n o w s h o w to k e e p himself in thé b a c k g r o u n d i s usually not long in finding somè idea in common, and then he has only to f o l l o w the lead of his "pupils to maintain touch w i t h them. Of special value to him are the questions w h i c h children under genial treatment are w o n t to ask, and the explanations and narrations w h i c h they delight to make. T h e alertness and industry of the pupils s h o w clearly w h e n they are interested in the lesson, and the interest will continue so l o n g as the instruction is within the range of their thought, and their activity is stimulated b y constant addition of new matter intimately allied w i t h w h a t has been already assimilated. T h e r e is no need here to treat of the questions e m p l o y e d to test the r e m e m b r a n c e of facts, for such questioning lies outside the lesson proper. N o r need w e d w e l l on that most difficult form of questioning to w h i c h the name Socratic is often given, in w h i c h , b y skilfully applied questions, the pupil is made to shift voluntarily from position to position, until at last he himself rises to the formulation of the truth w h i c h is Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 under discussion. Such questioning is obviously of usé to the teacher of ability ' only, and is a very p e r f e c t example of progression f r o m t h e k n o w n to the unknown. B u t reference may be made to a common practice of interlarding a narrative w i t h p o i n t s , of interrogation w h i c h lead n o w h e r e and elucidate nothing, and serve no other purpose save to disguise thinly a lecture under the trappings of a lesson. A I M A N D M E T H O D . H o w often does the schoolboy marvel at what seems to him the special facility of the teacher in disguising his m e a n i n g ! E a c h lead has a blind issue, and the_ w e b b e c o m e s more tangled as the lesson advances. In such lessons the facts are usually correct, but they are used, so far as the class is concerned, in the w r o n g place. Such misplacement, with its attendant confusion of thought, would be avoided w e r e the teacher to- fix in advance his aim and k e e p it in mind throughout the lesson. C h a n g e s need to b e made in his p r e c o n c e i v e d procedure to suit the circumstances w h i c h arise during t h e instruction; and indeed the soul of g o o d teach- ing is' spontaneity. But e v e r y c h a n g e of procedure must serve to bring out more clearly the dominant • idea. T h i s conscious adaptation of means to end is the basis of method, without w h i c h teaching is i m w o r t h y of the name. A n d it should seem that method may be im- paired b y either o f , t w o opposite faults. - T h e teacher may keep c h a n g i n g front, in w h i c h case the pupils are unable to fix, out of many possible, the goal at w h i c h they should aim. Or, he may persevere in his course" Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 without taking c a f e that his pupils are given sufficient g u i d a n c e to enable them to bear him company. I N T E R E S T . L e a r n i n g proceeds through interest. W h e n the pupils become genuinely interested in the instruction a teacher's difficulties are almost at an end. H e need no longer struggle against the resistance of the child-mind to his ministrations. On the contrary, a demand for informa- tion comes f r o m the pupils, and this information they endeavour of themselves to systematize. And as- the mental effort is at such times highly concentrated, the facts of the lesson b e c o m e fixed in memory more effectively than they w o u l d be b y any mere verbal repetition. A l l children are not, of course, equally interested in the same things, and some allowance must be made f o r individual tastes, preferences, and capabilities. T h e differences in individuals are repeated in a milder f o r m in classes. Instruction w h i c h is suitable to the children of a t o w n school may not appeal to children in a remote village. T h e bases of interest in .girls are not identical w i t h those in boys. Nevertheless, in all. cases the sum. of agreements in essentials outweighs the differences^-; w e r e it not so, collective t e a c h i n g w o u l d b e impossible. W h a t e v e r the conditions and circumstances of the children may be, there is in every lesson a spirit of interest if the t e a c h e r will but distil it out. T h a t he fails to do so lies most commonly in "his disinclination or inability to c o m e d o w n f r o m his rostrum, to lay aside the cloak of manhood and to be once more a child. T h e acquisitions of a d v a n c i n g years are n o t all Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 clear profit. W e accumulate fact, p e r f e c t inference, and build up system, but in doing so are apt to lose fancy, imagination, and impulse. T h i s loss a teacher must endeavour to repair, f o r success depends not upon his w e a l t h of fact, the closeness of his reasoning, the completeness of his k n o w l e d g e , but upon his p o w e r of thinking and feeling as children think and feel. It is not a question of w h i t t l i n g d o w n information, as some do, but of selecting elements w h i c h are within the capacity of the child, and presenting them in such a w a y as to be both intelligible and stimulating. It is because the child lives in a world of f a n c y w h e r e the facts of life have an aspect and meaning peculiar to the stage of his d e v e l o p m e n t that fables and allegories are of such service' to the teacher in dealing- with junior Classes, and it is because of their revolt against the prosaic that children of all ages a c c e p t lessons f o r their daily conduct in the f o r m of stories. Suitable stories may be met witli on e v e r y side, and, above all, in the p a g e s of Sacred Scripture the teacher has material for c o n c r e t e illustration of every phase of childhood. B u t the stories should convey their o w n lesson if they are to p r o d u c e the full c h a r m and effect. An objection m a y b e raised that it is possible to make learning too pleasant, that rigidity in school is a g o o d preparation for the routine of life, and that children should be accustomed to look on their tasks less as a pleasure than as an unavoidable duty. S u c h objection can only arise f r o m those w h o regard character as f o r m e d b y accretions from without rather than b y development f r o m within. T h e r e is practical unan- Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 imity a m o n g educators that even in the t e a c h i n g of secular subjects it matters less w h a t w e teach than h o w w e teach. T h e facts taught in school can-form only a tiny portion of the sum of k n o w l e d g e in any direction, and such facts may be forgotten or uncalled for. B u t in the act of their sympathetic and intelligent study qualities of mind and heart are e n g e n d e r e d w h i c h persist to thè end. T h e objection is, h o w e v e r , w i t h o u t f o r c e f o r another reason. T h e r e is nó royal road to learning. W i t h e v e r y effort of the teacher obstacles remain. B u t obstacles are surmounted more easily b y those w h o s e interest has been secured and w h o s e intelli- g e n c e has been evoked. A n d memorizing is no longer drudgery w h e n motived not only by cheerfully a c c e p t e d duty but also by the k n o w l e d g e that it is a means to a desirable end. C O N T R O L . T h e golden rule for maintaining order in class is to k e e p the pupils occupied. B u t this rule is of application only w h e r e a measure of disciplinary p o w e r already exists. A n d attention of a mechanical kind w h i c h e m b r a c e s silence and a respectful attitude must b e established as a necessary preliminary to the stage of intellectual attention. T h e non-professional teacher endeavours frequently to obtain a leverage b y intro- d u c i n g a story or some other detail calculated to arrest the attention o f - h i s class. T h e principle is excellent, but it does not a l w a y s w o r k well in p r a c t i c e ; for, unless the instruction is d e v e l o p e d easily and intimately, the end of the introductory matter is marked b y i n d i f f e r e n c e and reaction. Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 It is really not difficult to secure initial attention if the teacher assumes in a simple, unpretentious manner his o w n position and the co-operation of his class. H e will do w e l l to avoid a concessive attitude either at the reli- gious lesson or at any other time. E x e r c i s e of p o w e r is an instinct in children, and under a w e a k g o v e r n m e n t they tend to b e c o m e lawless.1 On the other hand, they are not given to question captiously authority, and their admiration for the strong and masterful makes them willing subjects of,"an unobtrusive y e t determined ruler. A capable teacher bears this in mind in t h e discipline of his class. H e uses f e w words, he imposes f e w rules, he neither promises nor threatens, he is firm y e t kind. H e does not e x p e c t too much f r o m his pupils, but he insists on a minimum : he allows f o r t h e weak- nesses of> child-nature, w h i l e taking advantage of its virtues. | T h e f o r e g o i n g observations may p e r h a p s serve as a slight introduction to the meaning of method in teaching. Incidentally .they may show that teaching is no mere routinary avocation but one in w h i c h e x c e p t i o n a l demands are made upon the intelligence, the devotion, the k n o w l e d g e , and the resource of those e n g a g e d in it. T h e progress w h i c h has b e e n made in secular studies during recent years is largely the result of improved methods of teaching, and there seems to b e no reason to doubt that progress in religious k n o w l e d g e must be similarly conditioned. H e r e w e put in a plea for a more general reading of 1 There seems to be here an explanation of the fate of many a boys' club, guild, and confraternity. Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 educational science. An inquiry into its principles and their application will be found to open out a n é w and fertile field of thought. N o r will the study b e devoid of immediate utility. A t every turn the tax-payer is confronted with the ideals of correlation, unification, nationalization of e d u c a t i o n — b r a v e w o r d s w h i c h may mean s o m e t h i n g or may be but " v a c a n t chaff well- meant for grain." A study of principles will help to s h o w w h a t he is p a y i n g for and w h e r e t o he is tending. Parents will be especially benefited b y siich reading, for in it is much that will help them in the management, the training, and the destination of their children. T h e introduction of a short course of theoretical and practical teaching may be found practicable eventually in all ecclesiastical seminaries. Such a course would be highly stimulating and of no small service to y o u n g priests in taking up w o r k on the mission. T h i s brings us back to our starting-point. T h e whole work of religious instruction may > in the near future need to be organized outside the school, and it is w e l l to look at the special difficulties of the impending task and to be prepared to c o p e with them. . Inducements to join in the g o o d work are many and profound, and all w h o enter upon it in the right w a y may rest assured their labour will not be in vain. In striving to enlighten others, their o w n vision will be made more clear. T h e i r nature will be d e e p l y moved, and the best that is in them will c o m e forth in com- munion with the unspoiled souls of children. In w a t c h i n g the g r o w t h of the g e r m s of faith and piety w h i c h they are privileged to tend, they will find an absorbing interest, and in the affection of their pupils Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 abiding solace. T h e i r reward even here is great, and a greater is promised hereafter. I I I . In times of impending stress there is ever a tendency to mistake the import of innovation, and it is thus some- w h a t unfortunate that the outline of a possible modifi- cation of the scope and method of religious instruction of the y o u n g should need to come under discussion at a moment w h e n our school system itself is seen to b e upon a precarious footing. Y e t , inasmuch as the trend of events in the elementary school is unmistakable, and by means d i f e c t or indirect, motived or unmotived, the portion of the school programme effectively devoted to religion will b e c o m e inevitably smaller, a discussion is more easily focussed on the necessarily-practical as against the possibly-desirable-but-unobtainable. A first question arises as to the amount and kind of religious instruction w h i c h at present obtains in thè schools.. T o this question no definite answer can be given. T h e w o r k of a school in this subject d e p e n d s largely upon the syllabus of the diocese in w h i c h the school is situated. A perusal of a number of these syllabuses shows in every case a provision for the learn- ing by heart of prayers, hyijins, and catechism, for an explanation of doctrine, and for a k n o w l e d g e of the Scriptures. B u t w h e n w e c o m e t o look at the matter w h i c h is detailed, w e find—except in the case of the Catechism, w h i c h is e v e r y w h e r e prescribed in its entirety — v e r y varied estimates of w h a t is considered desirable for children to k n o w and possible for them to learn. In one place the commonest prayers only are asked Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 for, in another are a d d e d forms, w h i c h f r o m their difficulty, or from the fact that they are meant only for occasional use, might w e l l be sought for, w h e n needed, in a manual of devotion. T h e requirements in B i b l e history vary greatly. T o take the Old T e s t a m e n t , f o r e x a m p l e : in one case the instruction is to cover the period from the Creation to Josue, in another case it is to be continued to Solomon, and in a third a k n o w l e d g e of the w h o l e book is required. In the matter of doctrine the variation is not less marked, ranging as it does f r o m simple courses embracing merely the common truths of faith and the ordinary practices of piety to elaborate schemes w h i c h might almost stand as synopses of a c o m p l e t e course in dogma. It is admittedly a difficult matter to find the normal child f o r w h o m these programmes of instruction are framed, and local circumstances, such as irregularity of attendance, half-time, and a g e of leaving school, have no doubt complicated the search ; but it is not easy to trace the connection b e t w e e n these circumstances and the courses as they exist. And, it should seem, an intimate inquiry- into w h a t an a v e r a g e c h i l d under ordinary conditions' can be reasonably e x p e c t e d to acquire, would be of service in laying out the courses of the different classes. T h e influence on school w o r k , of ah elaborated syllabus is usually of doubtful value. T h e gain w h i c h results f r o m the orderly plotting out of the field of study, finds a counterpoise in the routine character of a teaching effort w h i c h is felt to be in part vicarious. A n d w h e n a syllabus presupposes a capacity which pupils do not possess, or sets forth more to be learned Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 than time permits; and w h e n , in addition, progress is tested b y a rigid examination, little of g o o d can result. F o r under such circumstances the natural order of learning, w h i c h lies in a separating (from the manifold) of elements w h i c h are seen to be allied to and an extension of already-existing k n o w l e d g e , gives w a y to a haphazard piling up of facts w h i c h may not in any - w a y correspond to the pupil's experience. A n d leisure, too, is lacking for the exercise of the selective faculty, w o r k i n g in sub-consciousness, w h e n c e springs our idea of congruousness and our first appreciation of inherent value. N o small portion of the confusion of w o r d and t h i n g , of means and end, of process and result, so apparent in the ordinary w o r k of the schools, and the consequent uselessrness of school education for after-life has had its rise in the demands of syllabuses and inspectors. A n d in the department of religious instruction the remark applies with not less force. Here, moreover, the wide- spread practice of labelling schools as " e x c e l l e n t , " " very g o o d , " " g o o d , " " fair," " moderate," and the need of obtaining a high percentage o r - c o r r e c t indi- vidual answers as a condition .of satisfactory classifi- cation have accentuated the evil. A n unhealthy rivalry has been set up a m o n g schools and departments of schools, a species of charlatanry has b e e n fostered, and the happiness of pupils has been lessened. T h e insist- ence, in particular, on an individual and \yord-perfect repetition of a long list of prayexs, and of the three or four score p a g e s of a technically-written Catechism, has impaired the teaching, and has been also the fruitful source of mental and p h y s i c a l suffering to those from Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 w h o m Nature has w i t h h e l d the g i f t of a v quick and retentive memory. In taking up the t e a c h i n g of any subject of the school, curriculum it is w e l l to realize in advance not only the special value in itself of the information w e may convey, but also its probable effect upon the children. A n d this e f f e c t will largely d e p e n d upon the w a y in w h i c h the instruction is given. T h e careful teacher chooses such matter as may be intelligible to his pupils and in harmony with their feelings and interests. H e prepares their minds to receive the lesson profitably by evoking the k n o w l e d g e cognate to it w h i c h they already possess, so that his facts may not stand loosely out of context, but be recognized by the pupils as a development and amplification of w h a t they already know. A n d in the act of presenting the subject-matter of his lesson h e aims at the vividness and earnestness w h i c h secure attention and stimulate the children to make for them- selves a further advance in k n o w l e d g e . It is to be feared that the caref-ul p e d a g o g i c treatment a c c o r d e d to secular subjects, w h i c h accounts for the progress made in certain directions during recent years, has been for the most part overlooked in the teaching of religion. Y e t , surely, it is just here that w e have most carefully to w e i g h w h a t w e teach, and w i t h much greater solicitude than in the case of seciilar instruction must w e look to the e f f e c t to be produced in the process of teaching : for it is h e r e not merely a question of an advance in intellectual fitness but, of nourishing a living faith, of inducing a true piety, and of strengthening the moral fibre. T h e religious instruction of the schools is usually ill- Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 calculated'to the attainment of these high ends. It is given indeed with vigour and devotedness, but the exercise of these qualities apart from a true perspective may p r o d u c e little that is of benefit. A n d it must be said that the energy of the teacher is largely and inevit- a b l y — a t times without a consciousness of perversion on his p a r t — d e v o t e d , to the production of a merely verbal accuracy. T h u s religious instruction tends to fall into place as one of a score of subjects of the school curriculum with little to differentiate it f r o m the others save its monotony and its difficulty. • T h e disadvantage to the child of learning his p r a y e r s under these conditions is patent to all. We turn to the Catechism. A n d here w e enter upon debatable ground. F o r while some urge that the completeness and precision of the Catechism entitle it to a centralposition in'any scheme of religious instruction, others w h o have carefully observed the effect of the every-day Catechism teaching of schools are dubious of its utility. T o hold the latter v i e w is of course in no w a y incon- sistent with the keenest appreciation of the Catechism as an epitome of Christian Doctrine, for the little book w a s not written from the standpoint w h i c h t h e teacher of y o u n g children is bound to adopt if he means to bring his mind really into-touch with the minds of his pupils. A n analogy may make the matter clearer. T h o s e readers w h o are so unfortunate as to have already reached middle life will remember their schoolboy attempts to extract a meaning f r o m a certain confusing and indeterminate writer named Euclid. B u t they will admit to-day,that these a d j e c t i v e s — o r their school- b o y e q u i v a l e n t s — w e r e undeserved, and that E u c l i d is Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 both clear and precise from the standpoint of the adult f r o m w h i c h he" wrote." A n d a new generation of teachers is taking this difference into account, and is endeavour- ing to frame a simpler and more concrete method of teaching the principles w h i c h he taught. W i t h care and patience it may be found possible to devise a p r o c e d u r e w h e r e b y the learning of the truths of religion may be in a c c o r d a n c e with the child's capacity and development, and fruitful to him. Such a procedure does not lie in the Catechism as it is usually taught. L e a v i n g out of count the hardship involved in the memorizing of it, the . t i m e — a t least one half of the amount available for religious instruction—spent in the process and the lack of p e r m a n e n c e of the matter learnt, t w o objections at least remain. One of these is the extreme difficulty of making actual to y o u n g minds any p i e c e of k n o w l e d g e by beginning with the definition — w h i c h is in the nature of a finished product of thought — a n d explaining the phraseology of its p a r t s . . T h e other lies in the f a c t that while the Catechism is un- graded in regard to difficulty of contents it is used as a school-book b y all children alike f r o m seven- years of age to fourteen. T o the reader unused to actual teaching, this matter of gradation may not immediately appeal. A somewhat grotesque illustration will serve to bring home the point. L e t him imagine the state of a school w h e r e the series of reading-books, w h i c h begin with the infant primer and advance almost impercept- ibly in difficulty through the succeeding years of the school course, are all laid aside and extracts from standard authors used in all classes, w h e r e simple addition, the rule of three, and square-root are taught to Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 all pupils promiscuously, and w h e r e children, without preparation, are immersed in technicalities of botany and physics ! A careful grading of the material of k n o w l e d g e , so as to adapt it to the stage of advancement of the children is a main concern of the teacher. A n d if w e Start w i t h an understanding that development is mainly from within w e Shall at once lay hold on an important truth pi method, viz., the inadvisability of (i.) presenting information to a child f o r w h i c h he is not prepared, o i of (ii.) stating in the rigid terms suitable to a cultured mind that w h i c h is understood best by the child from his o w n standpoint. W e do, as a matter of fact, make a concession not only to vocabulary, but also to concept, in our common dealings with the little ones. F o r instance, w e allow the policeman to stand merely a.s the friend of the good and the f o e of the w i c k e d : w e do not seek to present him either as, a humble necessary instrument in a c o m p l e x system j of government, or as an embodiment of our innate striving for that w h i c h in the social order is best. W e do not interfere with the literature of the nursery, for w e r e c o g n i z e that the stories of giants and fairies and dragons are real to the child and s h o w forth truths w h i c h it w e r e labour lost to. define for him. Indeed, the child allows to pass u n c h a l l e n g e d fictions, obvious to him as such, f o r he is able intuitively to p l a c e t h e m in a perspective in w h i c h an underlying truth s h o w s most clearly to the immature mfnd. T h e wolf speaks to R e d Riding H o o d , and the frogs to the boys w h o throw stones into the pond, for in the one case the dominating idea is the danger of consorting with evil Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 company, and in the other t h e inevitable protest of the w e a k against the tyranny of the strong. T h e s u b j e c t is interesting : it has a. counterpart in one direction in the myths of primitive peoples, and in another direction in the peculiarly metaphorical treatment of physical f a c t w h i c h w e are f o r c e d to jj employ w h e n e v e r w e attempt to give an account of physical process. B u t w e must not digress. T h e principle to be grasped is that true instruction is according to t h e stage of development at w h i c h the pupil has arrived, and that in e v e r y stage the effective organization of his k n o w l e d g e must-be in terms of his o w n understanding. In other words, the dominant note of our teaching must be reality—reality as felt b y the child. N o w , there are some w h o have c o m e to feel, in a w a y , a need f o r reality, but, f r o m the fact that they have not g a i n e d the children's standpoint, construe the term as meaning no more than scientific exactitude. " W h y ? " for example, ask those of this school, " w h y do w e allow a perpetua- tion of the fiction of a n g e l s ' w i n g s ? " W h y not ? It is true the a p p e n d a g e s do not bear a close inspection f r o m the adult, scientific point of view. B u t it has already been shown that the child often gains his truest concept under conditions w h i c h have but little to do with fact, and it should seem that to substitute in this case a technical definition of angel in place .of the commonly a c c e p t e d fiction " w o u l d be to walk back- w a r d s from reality, and in our regress to unclasp the hand w h i c h has guided childhood through all the ages. It f o l l o w s as a corollary to reality that the t e a c h i n g should usually be positive. A teacher has asked the Catechism question, " W h a t is G o d ? " T h e children Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 h a v e r e p l i e d , G o d is t h e s u p r e m e . S p i r i t w h o a l o n e exists of H i m s e l f and, is infinite in all p e r f e c t i o n s , " and their r e p l y is, p e r h a p s , t r e a t e d in s o m e s u c h w a y as t h e f o l l o w i n g A spirit is a l i v i n g b e i n g . It c a n think a n d k n o w , a n d it h a s f r e e - w i l l . B u t it h a s no b o d y ; it c a n n o t b e seen b y us, or f e l t ; it n e e d s n e i t h e r f o o d nor d r i n k nor h o u s e to live in as \ve do. T h e a n g e l s are spirits. G o d is t h e s u p r e m e S p i r i t — S u p r e m e Spirit, that is t h e h i g h e s t or g r e a t e s t of all t h e spirits. N o o n e is so h i g h , so great,' as G o d — a l o n e exists of Himself, lives, c o n t i n u e s t o b e , w i t h o u t h e l p f r o m a n y one. W e n e e d h e l p in o r d e r to live, h e l p f r o m our p a r e n t s w h o p r o v i d e us w i t h h o m e and f o o d and c l o t h i n g , a n d h e l p - e s p e c i a l l y f r o m G o d , b y w h o m all t h e s e g o o d t h i n g s are in the first p l a c e g i v e n . B u t G o d n e e d s no h e l p f r o m any one. A n d t h e r e is no o t h e r b u t G o d w h o , c a n t h u s exist of h i m s e l f — i n f i n i t e , w i t h o u t e n d or l i m i t — infinite in all •perfections, t h e r e is no e n d or limit t o t h e g o o d qualities, or attributes, of G o d — t o H i s w i s d o m , H i s g o o d n e s s , H i s p o w e r . " T h i s e x p l a n a t i o n , w h i c h is n o t u n r e p r e - sentative of its class, can h a r d l y b e l o o k e d u p o n as s a t i s f a c t o r y : it is m a d e u p l a r g e l y of negations, and t h e c e n t r a l i d e a is o b s c u r e d b y t h e p r o m i n e n c e g i v e n to its parts. B u t e v e n s h o u l d t h e instructor m a n a g e to steer clear of t h e b a r e r o c k of n e g a t i o n , y e t is t h e r e — s o l o n g as h e limits his e f f o r t to t h e e x p l i c a t i o n of C a t e c h i s m terms—-imminent d a n g e r of b e i n g c a u g h t in t h e v o r t e x of v e r b a l i s m . H e is d e a l i n g w i t h , f o r instance, the last clause of t h e definition just q u o t e d . H e s h o w s first a s c h o o l - b o o k w h i c h h a s seen s o m e w e a r : p a g e s are m i s s i n g — i t is n o t perfect; t h e n a p e n k n i f e , of w h i c h a Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 blade is broken : it, too, is imperfect ; next, he draws freehand, on the blackboard, a; simple geometrical figure ; he trims it with care, and eventually, b y use of ruler and compasses, he evolves the square or circle. H e r e , indeed, in a sense, is perfection realized and made visible. Ai)d y e t the explanation has done little or nothing to supply the child w i t h an answer to the question, " W h a t is G o d ? " ' T h e lesson may h a v e been excellent as a lesson in E n g l i s h or geometry, but such instruction is not religious instruction. H o w far removed is all this from the kind of teaching made use of b y our L o r d , w h o in parable, in miracle, in illustration . f r o m nature and every-day occurrence, makes the truth patent, concrete, and real, even to the simplest of His hearers. In place of definition, H e gives us description : G ó d is a F a t h e r w h o s e care extends even to the meanest of " His creatures ; and H e is our Father. H e is a K i n g besides ; His k i n g d o m is Heaven, w h e r e the blessed do His will, as w e , too, must do if w e w o u l d enter into the kingdom. A l l w e can h a v e is from G o d , and w e are to ask H i m for all that w e n e e d — f o r our daily bread, forgiveness of our sins, deliverance from the wiles of the w i c k e d one, and from every evil. It seems clear that under existing conditions the ordinary every-day teaching of Catechism in the schools tends not a little to obscure the true purport of religious instruction. S o m e r e m e d y may be found practicable in the substitution of a simplified «form more adapted to the capacity of children, and by the omissión of the more, difficult sections from the courses of the y o u n g e r pupils. A n d still more if instructors Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 can be made to feel the n e e d in their lessons of w o r k - ing up to the definitions, and of having them then memorized as a formulation of w h a t has b e e n taught. For, indeed, to begin w i t h the ready-made definition and to comment loosely on its grammatical parts, is a slipshod method only too readily a d o p t e d b y those w h o are inclined to make use of the labour of others in order to save themselves the trouble of thinking out suitable lessons. T h e question of Catechism teaching merits the careful and first-hand study of all e n g a g e d in the religious training of the young. A n d it is, without doubt, a question of h o w the Catechism may be used w i t h the greatest advantage, and not of its employment as against other possible f o r m s of instruction. For at any moment the teacher may need an exact statement of the truth w h i c h he is attempting to explain, and he must have to hand also a concise and authoritative exposition of the w h o l e field of Christian Doctrine. A n d this means of guidance will b e c o m e even more necessary if the efforts made in certain directions to restrict the w o r k of the day-school staff to the teaching of s e c u l a r ' s u b j e c t s should meet w i t h any measure of success, for in that case the religious instruction will have to be given largely by imperfectly trained volun- teers. N o t less necessary is it, too, that the child should have his information fixed and made precise and should have stored up in his memory a f o r m of w o r d s b y w h i c h he can upon occasion express un- mistakably that w h i c h he feels and knows. T o summarize. Present circumstances call for Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 special e f f o r t in safeguarding and improving the religious instruction of the schools. In v i e w of a reduction of the time available for direct religious training it may be w e l l to m o d i f y existing schemes, so as to' limit the field of instruction and to concentrate effort on w h a t is of most importance. Success in teaching depends on the kind of pro- cedure e m p l o y e d . T h e methods of imparting secular k n o w l e d g e have improved greatly, but not much has been done to improve the procedure of religious instruction, and it is for the most part routinary and antiquated. An exercise of skill in the teaching will mean simplicity and interest in the process and reality and permanence in the result. All this, however, goes a part of the w a y only. In dealing with the ordinary subjects of the school curri- culum it is no small part of the teacher's aim to prepare the pupil to display his k n o w l e d g e for the credit of the school and as a means of a d v a n c e m e n t in after-life. In the religious instruction, on the other hand, these considerations can have but an obscure place. T h e attitude of the teacher should make manifest the difference, and should bring- before the child the sacredness and dignity of the subject. A n d the w h o l e trend of the t e a c h i n g should be towards a n ! apprecia- tion of religious truth and the formation of a lasting habit of virtue. A s conducing to these ends it is w e l l to connect closely the daily religious instruction with the spiritual life of the children. T o take a rough illustration : the fixing in memory of the common prayers will b e sought in the devotional every-day repetition of them as a Religious Instruction in Schools , 15 religious exercise* rather than in a formal drill w h e r e rigidity of expression takes the first place. Other forms of prayer will be best learned at times w h e n their use is seen to be necessary or fitting. If, for instance, the Litany of our L a d y is publicly recited on her feast- days, and as occasion arises, the De profundis for the souls of departed relatives and friends of the children, the amount of learning-by-rote will be lessened and a truer meaning of the prayers will b e c o m e apparent. And the " drill " w h i c h may be necessary as a supple- ment will then be looked on b y the child not as a mere task, but as a m e a n s to enable him at fitting times to do that w h i c h he sees to be desirable. T h e application of this principle is even mtire striking in the treatment of hymns, and, indeed, there is hardly a phase in the religious instruction of schools into w h i c h it may not effectively enter. P R I N T E D AND P U B L I S H E D B Y T H E CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, LONDON. EDUCATION, TRUE AND F A L S E ' BY W I L L I A M S A M U E L L I L L Y , H O N O R A R Y F E L L O W OF PETERHOUSE, CAMBRIDGE. I SUPPOSE no one will deny that liberty, popular govern- ment, and the power of public opinion, if they are to prove a blessing and not a curse to any country, require the elevation of the people generally in ethical qualities and tone of mind. " We must educate our masters," said Lord Sherbrooke. The familiar dictum seems like the very voice of the Zeitgeist. Indeed, there is nothing upon which this age of ours prides itself more than its educational activity. The schoolmaster is abroad, and has been for a great many years past. The expenditure upon popular Education is a heavy item in the budget of every civilized country and is daily becoming heavier. " Educate, educate, educate," is everywhere the cry | I only educate enough and we shall in time get a blessed new world and bring in the golden age." No shibboleth of the day is more frequently repeated, or more highly honoured than this of Education. Nor can there be a doubt that the zeal for it is excellent and worthy of all commendation. But I may be permitted to doubt whether it is always, one might, perhaps, say often, a zeal according to knowledge : whether 1 By the kind permission of Messrs. Chapman and Hall, these pages are reprinted, with a few alterations and omissions, from the Author's work On Shibboleths. io Education, True and False it is not frequently expended upon what is not Education at all, but a mere counterfeit thereof. T h e point is worth discussing. What then is, as a rule, meant when Education is spoken o f ? What but the instruction, in greater or less degree, of the intellect ? Every one is now taught some things, be it only the three Rs, although, in most countries, the primary schools have got far beyond that. In schools of a higher grade the number of things which a scholar may learn, and is encouraged to learn, is very great, the usual result being his acquisition of a large amount of small information at the cost of much cerebral fatigue. In the Universities, Professors lecture on all things human and divine, and the whole field of human knowledge is open to the student. It is an age of universal instruction, and it is an age of universal examination. T h e examiner extracts what the schoolmaster has put in, and satisfies us that we have the worth of our money. Now I am far from denying that from the humblest schools, as from the highest colleges, many youths are sent into the world who are educated in what I must account the only proper sense of the word: a sense which I shall presently indicate. But I do say that a student may answer with absolute correctness the questions set to test his proficiency in the subjects wherein he has been instructed, that, in Lord Tennyson's phrase, he may be "gorged with knowledge," and yet be quite uneducated. Mere instruction is not sufficient even to form the intellect. Still less sufficient is it to form the character. But the formation of the character is the true end of Education. I lay no claim to originality in putting forward this view. I find it expressed, clearly enough, in a verse of the Book of Proverbs, as rendered by King James's translators: " Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." A youth that is so trained is educated. H e is fitted for the work appointed him in this world, whatever it may be, which, indeed, is a matter of comparatively little importance. io Education, True and False " Honour and shame from no condition rise; Act well your part: therein all honour lies." And so the majestic words of Milton : " I call, therefore, a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both public and private, of peace and war." T h e true ideal of Education is the right development of all the human powers and faculties, its function being, as Herbert Spencer well says, " t o prepare us for complete living." This development must be simultaneous and harmonious, for the undue predominance of one power or faculty is necessarily attended by the degeneration or atrophy of others. Hence Plato, Aristotle, and the philosophers of the Porch were led to place virtue—man's distinctive ex- cellence and perfection—in a mean, that is, in a proper balance or accord of all his endowments. " All that makes a man " should be recognized in manly Education. " Mens sana in corpore sano "—a sound mind in a sound b o d y — was the aspiration of the Roman poet; and it was not unwise. Physical culture is important as the instrument of that corporal soundness which enters into the virile ideal. " T o remove the original dimness of the mind's e y e ; to strengthen and perfect its vision; to enable it to look out into the world, right forward, steadily and truly; to give the mind clearness, accuracy, precision; to enable it to use words aright; to understand what it s a y s ; to conceive justly what it t h i n k s ; " 1 is, according to Cardinal Newman, the object of intellectual Education : an object which every teacher, from the village schoolmaster to the University Professor, should keep in view. But much more than this enters into the conception of the sound mind. Man is not merely an intellectual but also a moral being. That is his distinctive prerogative separating him, far more decisively than physical or mental differences, from the lower animals, and crowning him with glory and worship. Of all the ideals that man can set before him, the moral idea comes first, because all other ideals, the ideal of knowledge among ' The Idea of a University, p. 322 (Third Ed.). io Education, True and False the rest, hold of it. In every circumstance, action, or emotion of life, there is an ethical issue : Am I right in being here ? in doing this? in thinking that? There is no situation that has not its duty. T h e moral ideal embraces our entire being: all other ideals but segments thereof. It is at the very centre of consciousness, for, only as an ethical being is man a person. And the supreme end of educating a child is to educe his personality, " t o make a man of him," as we are wont to say. That only satisfies the philosophical conception of E d u c a t i o n — " Where all, as in a work of art, Is toil, co-operant to an end." Let us pursue the matter a little further. What is the first lesson that should be taught a child ? Yes : and the last too? We may call it the Alpha and Omega of Education. Surely it is reverence. Reverence for what is highest above him. Reverence for what is highest in him. And it is a lesson which the child is naturally disposed to learn. It corresponds to a primary instinct of human nature. A n opinion has largely prevailed— attributable, I suppose, to the Calvinistic doctrine of our total depravity—that man is born entirely under the dominion of egoism, of self-seeking, of covetousness, and that Education consists in revolutionizing his innate character. But this view is the outcome of false dogma and superficial observation. It is as erroneous as the Rousseauan view that man is by nature altogether good H e is neither altogether good nor altogether bad. H e is imperfect: able to discern and to admire the things that are more excellent: unable, through defect of will and nature, adequately to follow after them. Consider a child, as everyday experience reveals him—nay, much as children differ, through the influence of heredity, I would almost say any child—and what is its strongest motive ? Surely the desire for esteem. And that desire may well be considered the original spring of right action. It first displays itself in the wish to be thought well of by those who naturally command the child's reverence. T h e approbation of his parents, and io Education, True and False in particular—which is noteworthy—of the less tender of the two, the father, is necessary to his peace of mind. It represents to him, Hegel well says, his own better will, and therefore it has a rightful claim upon his obedience. Their judgement mirrors him to himself. It reflects his own worthiness or unworthiness. A s years go on, the judge- ments of others, of his tutors and governors, his companions and friends, come also to weigh with him. T h e note of virile maturity is that the rule and measure of self-respect is transferred from without to within. H e finds his standard, not in the praise of men, but in the idea of the Right, the Just, the True : in the testimony of his conscience, in his thoughts accusing or else excusing one another, as he falls short of, or corresponds with, that idea. Hence culture of the will is a far more important part of Education than culture of the intellect, for will is of the essence of person- ality, in virtue of which man is man. Duty is, as Kant excellently teaches, the obligation to act from pure reverence of the moral law. And a good will is a will self-determined by that law. " Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control— These three alone lead life to sovereign power." T h e truly educated man, be he peasant or prince, is he who has learned to know his duty, and whose whole powers have been disciplined and developed to the utmost for its accomplishment. That is the ideal of virile maturity. Doubtless, it is never entirely attained. T h e very nature of the ideal forbids that complete objective reality can ever be given to it by man. We must account of it as the type to which we can but approximate, more or less nearly. And just in proportion as any one does approximate to this idea of virile maturity is he " man, and master of his fate.' Just in that proportion is he educated. But in the popular conception of Education this moral element, this discipline of the will has no place. I have described that conception as being " the instruction of the intellect, in greater or less d e g r e e " ; an instruction, in io Education, True and False many cases, wholly or chiefly directed to the attainment of what Lord Goschen has called "saleable knowledge." And, what is most singular, from such instruction ethical results are confidently expected. Ignorance is held to be the root of all evil. Knowledge—literary, scientific, aesthetic—is exhibited as an universal remedy or panacea, as a quickening, regenerating, organizing power, able to transform individual and national character. All which appears to me gross and irrational superstition. It passes my wit to understand how moral improvement is to be the outcome of merely intellectual culture; of knowledge, how- ever wide and exact, of arts or literature or physics. How can such knowledge affect character ? It cannot minister to a mind diseased. It cannot convert the will from bad to good. T h e utmost it can do is to minister to an en- lightened selfishness. It leaves you ethically where it found you, unless, indeed, its effect has been to illustrate the Apostolic dictum, g Knowledge puffeth up." That such is the usual effect of instruction divorced from reverence cannot, indeed, be doubted. I remember John Ruskin once saying to me that, in his judgement, what is commonly called Education is little better than a training in impudence. It ministers to the excessive individualism of an age when the man in the streets supposes himself qualified, by his modicum of elementary instruction, to give sentence on all things in heaven and earth, and resents it, as flat blasphemy, if the sufficiency of the purblind private prejudice which he calls his judgement is so much as questioned. More than fifty years ago, Flaubert, in one of his letters to George Sand, prophesied, " F r e e and compulsory instruction will merely increase the number of fools." T h e event, in France, has proved the correctness of his prediction. This by the way. My present point is, that instruction of the intellect has, in itself, no moralizing tendency. It may turn crime into different channels, and render it less easy to detect, it may make a man more decent, but it does not change his natural propensities or his proneness to gratify them at the expense of others. Physical science, literature, art, may refine the judgement and elevate the taste. * But io Education, True and False here their power ends. The utmost they can do is to minister to an enlightened selfishness. Knowledge of them is, in fact, power, and nothing else. Its practicar effect is to make the good man more powerful for good, the bad man more powerful for evil. And that is all it does or can do. If ever there was a safe truth, it is this. And I know of few things more curious than the blindness to it exhibited by many who are accounted, and in other respects justly, among our wisest. I remember, upon one occasion, hear- ing a very learned judge pass sentence upon two criminals, one a country doctor, the other an agricultural labourer, who had been equally concerned in an offence the monstrous turpitude of which must be patent even to the simplest. In sentencing the doctor the judge said, " You are an educated man, and ought to have known better: I shall therefore award to you a longer term of penal servitude than to your fellow-prisoner." As though the possessor of medical and surgical knowledge might equitably be punished for not attaining to a higher ethical standard than the pea- sant. It was a striking instance of the belief that moralizing effects may reasonably be expected from intellectual instruc- tion : a belief which, as Herbert Spencer well points out in his Study of Sociology, while "absurd a priori," is " flatly contradicted by facts." Criminal statistics exhibit more crime among skilled than among unskilled labourers. The less instructed peasants in the fields are, it would seem, better morally than the more instructed artizans in the streets. The schoolmaster, abroad for so many years, has not proved the moral regenerator that he was expected to be. Let us see how the expectation arose. It appears to me to have directly arisen from the Utilitarian philosophy, which resolves .morality into self- interest. " Honesty," the teachers of this school insist, " is the best policy; and a thing is honest because it is supremely politic." The practical conclusion is that, virtue being enlightened selfishness, men will be virtuous out of regard for their own interests, if the eyes of their under- standing are only sufficiently opened to discern what.their io Education, True and False true interests are. And so John Stuart Mill apparently regarded the end of Education as being, " t o diffuse good sense among the people, with such knowledge as would qualify them to judge of the tendencies of their actions."1 The conception of Education held by Utilitarians is essen- tially mechanical. How should it embrace the culture of the will if, as they one and all teach, from Bentham down to Herbert Spencer, the freedom of the will is an objective and subjective delusion ? It looks without, to mechanism, for what can be effected only by dealing with the springs of action within. T h e Utilitarian philosophy de-ethicises Education, as it de-ethicises everything else, by banishing the moral idea. For Utilitarian morality, in all its shapes and forms, is not moral at all. From agreeable feeling, the laws of comfort, needs personal or racial, the interests, whether of the individual or of the community, it is im- possible to extract an atom of morality.2 Right differs from expediency in its very essence. S I ought," never does and never can mean " i t is pleasantest for thee, or for me, or for all of us." T h e only morality derivable from pleasure is the morality of money, for which pleasures of all kinds, intellectual and physical, may be purchased. The moral law is dethroned by Utilitarianism. T h e Almighty Dollar is exalted in its place, in the schoolroom as in the market-place. Mammon is the present deity: and " P u t money in thy purse," is his gospel generally received and believed by this generation. " T h e idols of the Gentiles are silver and gold, the works of the hands of men. Let them that make them become like unto them, and all such as trust in them." In such an age, I hold it of the utmost importance to insist upon the true conception of Education. T o Education, that is really such—a stern, high, ethical dis- cipline—must we look for the cleansing of the land from 1 Principles of Political Economy, Book II. c. xiii. § 3. 3 I have pursued this subject, at some length, in chap. ii. of my work On Right and Wrong, and in chap. iv. of my work The Great Enigma. io Education, True and False that debasing Mammon-worship which strikes at the root of the qualities specially needed by a democracy. " T o make the people fittest to choose, and the chosen fittest to govern, will be to mend our corrupt and faulty education, to teach the people faith, not without virtue, temperance, modesty, sobriety, parsimony, justice."1 These golden words of Milton should be inscribed on every schoolhouse in the kingdom. Universal Education is the natural consequence of popular government. It is only just to the leaders of the great Revolution which ushered in the present era, to say that they discerned this truth. The National Assembly declared teaching a sacred function and the schoolmaster the equal of the priest. It affirmed that the first charge upon the public revenues should be public instruction ; and the Convention voted fifty-four millions of francs for this purpose. It is true that the vote was mere waste paper, for the' money was not forthcoming. But the intention of the Revolutionary legislators was thereby put on record: and who can deny its reasonableness ? All men, in virtue of their fundamental equality, should start, as far as may be, equal in the race of life, each with his fair chance to make the best of himself: to secure the benefit of that most righteous principle, " a career for talents." A man is not really free in the present state of society to develop his faculties to the greatest advantage of himself and of the community, without teaching of a much higher kind than would have sufficed for him in a simpler age. Nor, again, is he qualified for the exercise of that political power which modern democracy puts into his hands, save by Education in the complete sense for which I have been contending. Mere intellectual instruction is not sufficient. Herbert Spencer justly notes, in his volume from which I have already quoted, " the ample disproof, if there needed any, of the notion that men are fitter for the right exercise of power by teaching." Power is a trust, for the due fulfil- ment of which it is not enough that a man know rightly. He must also will rightly: that is, his volition must be 1 The Ready Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth. io Education, True and False determined by the moral law. Ethical culture, the very keystone of Education, is, from the political point of view, absolutely necessary. And this brings us face to face with one of the most momentous practical questions of the day. How is it possible to ensure for a country that moral and intellectual discipline which shall " make the people fittest to choose and the chosen fittest to govern " ? That this is a matter of vital interest to the social organism, and that therefore it ought to be cared for by the State, is certain. " Do you imagine," said Plato, " that politi'es grow on a tree, or on a rock, and not out of the moral dispositions of the men who compose them ? " " The first element of good government," echoes a philosopher of our own day, " being the virtue and intelligence of the human beings comprising the community, the most important form of excellence which any form of government can possess is to promote the virtue and intelli- gence of the people themselves."1 Certain it is that the nation, as an organic whole, is most deeply interested in the Education of its children. That to undertake it is not, primarily, the proper function of the State, is no less certain. It is the duty and prerogative of parents, and especially of the father, as the head and personification of the family, to ensure for a child that degree of moral and intellectual culture which shall enable him to quit him like a man in the business of life. T h e doctrine of the patriapotestas is no figment of superannuated superstition. However rude and stern the forms which it assumed in antique civilizations, it is rooted and grounded in the nature of things. The father is, by divine right, the Priest, Judge, and King in his own family. Of all jurisdiction exercised in this world, his is the mbst sacred, for he is the direct and indefeasible repre- sentative of Him " o f whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named." Tyrannously as his authority may have been exercised in the archaic family, it is now the bulwark of liberty. True is the instinct which leads our Courts of * Mill, On Representative Government, p. 31. io Education, True and False Law so jealously to guard it, that by no agreement, however solemn, can he divest himself of it. For it exists not only for his own sake, not only for the sake of his children, bit for the sake of the community as well. T h e whole of social life is based upon the family. Nor in this age of dissolvent individualism can we insist too strongly upon the sacredness and inviolability of those paternal rights which form its foundation. But sacred and indefeasible as are, in theory, a father's rights and prerogatives in respect of his children's Education, what if he neglect the duties involved in those rights and make no account of those prerogatives ? That this fre- quently happens is matter of the commonest experience. Nor can it be otherwise, by reason of the abject poverty and deep degradation in which so many families exist. I need not enlarge upon what is, unhappily, too familiar. Certain it is, that if the Education of children were left entirely to their fathers, who are primarily and directly responsible for it, a vast number would remain wholly uneducated, and so unfitted for their life-work in general, and, in particular, for the discharge of their political duties in a democratic polity. Equally certain it is, that this is opposed to the best interests of the social organism; that it is a mischief which the nation, in its corporate capacity, should strenuously combat. T h e State is bound to undertake the Education of children who, without its intervention, would receive no Education. But how can the State teach "virtue, temperance, modesty, sobriety, parsimony, j u s t i c e " ? How can it supply that moral element which is the most vital part of Education ? Is there, as a matter of fact, any other instru- ment of ethical culture possible for the mass of mankind, but religion? I admit, or rather I strenuously maintain, that the fundamental doctrines of morality are independent of all religious systems. They are the necessary and eternal truths of reason. But so viewed they are merely intellectual? They are diagrams. In order to vivify them, there needs emotion ; there needs enthusiasm ; there needs celestial fire. I am not here considering Education as it affects man's prospects and destinies beyond the io Education, True and False grave. I am viewing it from the standpoint of this life only. And so viewed, I say that religion is a sort of centre of gravity of human knowledge. It is the greatest source of moral authority in this world, because it is, according to Kant's admirable definition, " t h e repre- sentation to ourselves of the moral law as the will of God." Can morality work upon the world at large without such representation ? Can we banish the vision of the Creator, Witness and Judge of men, from our schoolrooms and not enfeeble, yes, emasculate, the whole of the teaching given there? M. Renan, an unsuspected witness, thinks not. " T h e peasant without religion," he declares, " i s the ugliest of brutes, no longer possessing the distinctive token of human nature."1 And this confronts us with a grave practical difficulty in an age of religious disunity. In the present day a common creed and a common cult no longer supply the bond of states and the rule of legislation. Religion is no' longer the great objective fact, dominating all relations of life. "Religions," said Turgot, " a r e opinions, and there- fore there ought not to be a dominant religion. Right and justice for all alone should dominate." This declaration, regarded when it was made, in the eighteenth century, as a perilous paradox, is now accepted as the tritest of truisms. And the State has everywhere been secularized in accord- ance with it. Religion is regarded as a private thing for every man's conscience. H e may have any variety of it which he prefers, and as much or as little of it as he pleases. But the State, qua State, has no religion, although maintaining the free exercise of all religions. It professes itself (in the French phrase) incompetent in the matter of cults, and displays, or affects to display, benevolent neutrality towards them all. I, for my part, do not pretend to admire this condition of things, so loudly eulogized by many as the ripe fruit of liberty, a high stage of progress, a magnificent conquest of the modern mind. VAvmir de la Religion, p. 487. io Education, True and False It appears to me, as a student of history, that a national religion is a great national safeguard, and, as a student of philosophy, that it is necessary to the perfection of the social organism. And 1 believe that, as time goes on, the want of it will be increasingly felt in every country. But whether I am right or wrong in so thinking, certain it is that one great problem lying before modern society is to reconcile the authority of religious convictions with the Agnosticism of governments. And how, to speak merely of our present subject, is it possible for the State to obtain the aid of religion as an instrument of ethical culture, while maintaining its attitude of religious neutrality ? It has been observed, not without truth, that if you wish to recommend any course of action to Englishmen generally, there is no better device than to commend it as a middle course. T h e solution adopted by us of the religious difficulty in Education given by the State possesses this recommendation. T o banish religion altogether from the " provided" Schools was repugnant to the in- stincts of piety, happily so strong in the English people. On the other hand, to teach there any existing variety of Christianity was clearly impossible. And so a new variety which, it was supposed, would not hurt the most sensitive Nonconformist conscience, was invented. It permits the Bible to be taught, but excludes-fell formularies. It is, in truth, Theism plus a certain amount of Christian sentiment. And its special recommendation is held to be that it is undogmatic. A s a matter of fact, it is not so. T h e total banishment of dogmas would mean infinite conjecture. T h e existence of God, or the authority, in however attenuated a form, of the Bible, is as much a dogma as Transubstantiation or Justification by Faith alone. But the dogmas of this new religion are few, and they are not obtruded. I suppose its practical effect is to instil into the minds of children that sense of Divine Providence, that habit of endeavouring to trace it in all events, which are distinctive of the Hebrew Scriptures, and to familiarize them with the sacred scenes and pregnant precepts of the Evangelical history. I by no means incline to undervalue io Education, True and False such Biblical training. It seems to me that, as a matter of fact, it brings home, more or less effectively, to many who receive it the highest and most operative ideals. Those august lessons from beyond the grave, uttered, as it were, from the realms of eternity, can hardly fail to introduce an element of poetry and morality into many lives. I am, of course, very far from allowing that such religion is a satis- factory substitute for the definite instruction in faith and practice which every Christian community more or less fully and precisely gives. But I do assert that, as compared with no religious teaching at all, it is something considerable: and that it is more than a State, which has ceased to be dis- tinctively Christian, if acting within its logic, could fairly be expected to give to the children whose Education, through their parents' default, it is itself obliged to under- take. Assuredly, however, the State has no right, directly or (which is much more likely) indirectly, to impose this religion upon any children whose parents prefer more definite teaching. It is for the parents, not for the State, to choose what religion their children shall be taught. T h e Denominational system (as it is called) is the only system possible in this country which is consistent with the father's rights, which respects his religious liberty, i But those rights and that liberty are not absolute. They are con- ditioned by the rights and needs of the social organism. T h e same principles which warrant the State in under- taking the Education of children who, otherwise, would not be educated at all, also warrant it in requiring that the intellectual instruction of the nation shall come up to a certain standard. " A government," to quote John Stuart Mill, " is justified in requiring from all the people that they shall possess instruction in certain things, but not in pre- scribing to them how, or from whom, they shall obtain it." 1 Does it, however, follow that Education thus enforced by the State should be paid for by the State? By no means. T h e function of the State is to define the public 1 Principles of Political Economy, Book V . chap. xi. § 9. io Education, True and False duties of the subject. Upon the subject lies the obligation of performing those duties, at his own proper cost and charges. But unquestionably the principle of social soli- darity requires that those who, while doing their best for the Education of their children, are unable to comply with the legitimate requirements of the State should be assisted from the public funds in the fulfilment of that duty. T h e cry raised against the aid thus given to Denominational schools as an indirect endowment of religion is absurd. —With religion, as a Divine revelation, the unreligious State is not concerned. With religions as teachers of morality, it is deeply concerned, and such teaching it may justly subsidize. T h e great practical difficulty arises in the endeavour to discriminate between those who cannot and those who will not help themselves in the Education of their children. T h e true justification of " F r e e Educa- tion " is that it is the best possible solution of that and other difficulties, and a boon which, in virtue of social solidarity, may very properly be conferred upon the poorer classes, at the expense of the community at large. Again, the right of the State to satisfy itself as to the quality of the Education given in elementary schools does not primarily arise from its pecuniary grants in aid of them. T h e true reason for the public control of Education is not that public funds are used for it, but that it is a thing of vital im- portance to public interests. Nor, in my opinion, can such control be properly entrusted to Local Boards. T h e matter is of imperial concern, and should be as directly ordered by the State as are the Army and Navy, or the various departments of the Civil Service. So much may suffice to indicate what appears to me the true principle which should regulate this matter of such vast importance to the public weal. But I would not pass away from the subject without noting how necessary it is, in the highest interests of the body politic, that the func- tions of Government in respect of Education should be jealously restricted within the limits which I have, as I trust clearly, however roughly, traced. T h e replacement of the io Education, True and False Denominational system by what is called " a national system," sometimes advocated in the name of liberty, would really be a deadly blow to liberty. It would bring about a liberty which is not liberal : a liberty à la Fran- çaise. There are certain weighty words of John Stuart Mill so well worthy at being pondered in this connection, that I cannot end better than by citing them : " That the whole or any large part of the education of the people should be in State hands, I go as far as any one in deprecating. All that has been said, of the importance of individuality of character, and— diversity of -opinions and modes of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable importance, diversity of education. A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another : and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the Government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation, in proportion as it is èfficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body. An education established and controlled by the State should only exist, if it exist at all, as one among many competing experiments, carried on for the purpose of example and stimulus, to keep the others up to a certain standard of excellence. Unless, indeed, when society in general is in so backward a state that it could not or would not provide for itself any proper institutions of education, unless the Government undertook the task—then, indeed, the Government may, as the less of two great evils, take upon itself the business of schools and universities, as it may that of joint-stock companies, when private enterprise, in a shape fitted for undertaking great works of industry, does not exist in the country. But in general, if the country contains a sufficient number of persons qualified to provide education under Government auspices, the same persons would be able and willing to give an equally good education on the voluntary principle, under the assurance of remuneration afforded by law rendering education com- pulsory, combined with State aid to those unable to defray the . expense. " T h e instrument for enforcing the law could be no other than public examinations, extending to all children, and beginning at an early age. . . . Under this system the rising generation . . . would be brought up either Churchmen or Dissenters as they now are, the Statç merely taking care that they should be instructed Churchmen, or instructed Dissenters." 1 1 On Liberty, chap. v. There is a striking passage to the same effect in Mill's Principles of Political Economy, Book V. chap. xi. § 8 PRINTED AND PUBLISHED B Y T H E CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, LONDON