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 LI E) RA RY 
 
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 U N IVLRSITY 
 
 or I LLI NOIS
 
 "THE CONSCIENCE CLAUSE." 
 
 ITS HISTORY, TERMS, EFFECT, 
 AND PRINCIPLE. 
 
 A REPLY 
 
 TO 
 
 ARCHDEACON DENISON. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN OAKLEY, M.A. 
 
 " Not clinging to some ancient saw, 
 Not mastered by some modem term, 
 Not slow, nor swift to change, but Arm ; , 
 
 And in its season, bring the law." 
 
 Tennyson'' s ^'■Love Thou Thy Land." 
 
 '• Un grand danger pent menacer la civilisation modeme. Si, en m^me temps que le 
 *' besoin do bien-ctre se generalise dans le peuple, les lumi^res et la morality se repandent 
 " dans toutes les classes, de fa5on a inspirer aux unes la justice et aux autres la patience 
 " qu' exigent les r^formes pacifiques, le progrfes regulier est assure; mais, si Ton maintient 
 " en haut I'instruction, la richesse et Tegoisme, en bas I'ignorance, la misero, et I'envie, il 
 "faut s'attendre a de violens bouleversemens." .... " II y a, je crols, dans le monde, 
 *^ quatre nations qui peuvent dire avec un legitime orgueil que tous leurs citoyens savent 
 " lire : I'Allemagne du Nord, la Norvege, la Suisse, et les fetats Unis ;....'» 
 
 " Rivm des Deux Mondes," 15 November, 1865. 
 
 LONDON: 
 WILLIAM RIDGWAY, 169, PICCADILLY, W. 
 
 1866. 
 
 Price Two Shillings.
 
 (;. NouMAN, rniNTrn, maidkn lane, covent garden.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 This pamphlet arose out of an invitation to defend the 
 Conscience Clause, at a meeting of London clergy and a 
 few laity, against the opposition to be offered to it by 
 Archdeacon Denison in person. I thought it better 
 to meet the Archdeacon with a carefully-prepared state- 
 ment, in order not to be tripped up on some small matter 
 of fact connected with the long-drawn history of the case 
 by one so long familiar with all its details. It will be 
 easily understood how materials for the defence accu- 
 mulated, on a careful study of Blue-books, Minutes 
 of the Committee of Council, Reports, and published 
 correspondences, all of which suggested at every turn 
 points of undoubted importance necessary to a complete 
 statement of the case. The result was that this paper 
 outgrew the purpose for which it was prepared; and 
 when, moreover, only half the expected time was left for 
 its delivery, it had to be curtailed beyond my worst expec- 
 tations, and I could only pick out a fact here and an argu- 
 ment there as seemed most appropriate at the moment. 
 This, though satisfactory enough upon these points, was 
 manifestly unjust to the case as a whole. Some who 
 thus partly heard or have since read it, thought it desirable 
 that so full a statement of the case should be made public. 
 I have thought it worth while to publish it for several 
 reasons; and not less since it appeared that some who
 
 IV PREFACE. 
 
 were present on the occasion referred to went away with 
 the impression that many men are so apt to receive, that 
 because a reply to their opinions was not made, no reply 
 could possibly be made. 
 
 I venture to appeal to the opponents of the clause to 
 give a careful consideration to the facts and arguments 
 of this address ; and to its ardent supporters to be 
 patient of the tone of apology and expostulation into 
 which I have been led. This was unavoidable in a 
 concio ad cleruni^ and if any one is disposed to under- 
 estimate the amount and force of the feeling against it 
 on the part of the Church, I can only point to the recent 
 majority against the clause in the Lower House of Con- 
 vocation, which, whatever its defects or sins, does cer- 
 tainly include many of the best and ablest clergymen in 
 the country. I am well aware that the facts are diffe- 
 rently interpreted by many able and excellent men — 
 that some of my arguments will not only not com- 
 mend the clause to some of its adversaries, but will 
 confirm their suspicions of it. Nevertheless, I trust I 
 have suggested grounds on which all, or nearly all, may 
 consent to adopt some arrangement of the kind pro- 
 posed. And my object has been that alone — to advocate 
 the acceptance, on whatever grounds and in whatever 
 form may finally be agreed upon, of a stipulation which I 
 believe that the State has every right to demand, and the 
 Church every obligation and inducement to give. 
 
 One point I am induced to mention here, not having 
 referred to it in the body of this paper, in the plan of which 
 it did not appear to me to have any part ; and wishing to 
 print my address as nearly as possible in the form in which 

 
 PREFACE. 
 
 it was first prepared. I refer to the fact that the Conscience 
 Clause has not yet been submitted to Parliament in the 
 shape of a Minute — a fact which is made use of to prove 
 the arbitrary action and insidious policy of the Council 
 Office. It is quite sufficient to quote Lord Granville's 
 answer before the recent Committee when the same 
 objection was under notice ; — 
 
 Question 1 93 1, by the Chairman. — " May I take the liberty of 
 " asking why, as the head of the Department, you did not in 
 ** the case of the Conscience Clause, as in the case of other 
 ** important changes in the practice of the office, place the 
 ** question before Parliament ?" — " I do not know whether I am 
 " wrong in what I have done, but I am quite ready to state 
 ** to the Committee my reasons for acting as I have acted. I 
 " think that it is very important indeed, if possible, to arrange 
 ** this Conscience Clause with the concurrence of the Church 
 ** of England. It is very desirable, if possible, that the Privy 
 ** Council, or whatever department has charge of tl;.e education 
 ** of the country, should be on good terms with the Church of 
 " England ; and I hope that an advance has been made with 
 ** the Conscience Clause in the minds of a very large portion, 
 " not only of Church of England men, but of the clergy of the 
 
 ** Church of England But I think that if I were 
 
 ** to propose to lay before the House of Commons a Conscience 
 ** Clause now, exactly in the shape in which it is, with rather 
 ** a difficult and wavering rule as to the number of Dissenters, 
 ** the first question of the House of Commons would be — * Why 
 ** * are any number of Dissenters to be forced either to violate 
 ** * their religious feelings or to be excluded from the benefit of 
 ** * the education which is partly supported by the State?' I 
 ** believe that our Conscience Clause does not go far enough 
 " now to satisfy the House of Commons, and at present I am 
 ** afraid that we should not have concurrence on the part of
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 " the Chuich of England so as to enable us to bring in a 
 " measure which would be perfectly satisfactory with respect 
 " to the Conscience Clause. On this question of religious 
 " differences I think it is absolutely incumbent upon members of 
 " the Government not to bring them needlessly forward so as 
 " to cause irritation, unless they can see their way very clearly to 
 " a settlement of them." 
 
 ip^^. — " May we understand the substance of your Lord- 
 ** ship's answers to be that you have abstained from submitting 
 ** that important question to Parliament, partly from a feeling 
 " of conciliation towards the Church of England, and partly 
 " from the opinion (which is, I think, a sound opinion) that 
 " Parliament might say, * If you adopt this clause you must 
 ** * carry it out to the full extent of the principle which it 
 '* * involves .^"* — " I am not at all satisfied that the present way 
 " of dealing with the Conscience Clause is in such a shape as 
 ** would meet with the concurrence of Parliament -, and with 
 ** regard to introducing that arrangement which I should like to 
 " see introduced, it has not been done, partly out of a feeling of 
 " conciliation to the Church of England, but it is also in a great 
 " hope of being able to conduct some negotiations to a satis- 
 <* factory point that I have delayed asking my colleagues to assent 
 ** to such a measure." 
 
 In face of this I am at a loss to understand how the 
 non-reference of the question to Parliament can be con- 
 sidered a grievance, or how an unfriendly animus against 
 the Church of England or the National Society can be 
 imputed to the Committee of Council on Education. 
 
 I have prefixed two mottoes to my pamphlet, which 
 hit oflF exactly what I wish to be regarded as its two main 
 points. The former of them expresses perfectly that com- 
 bination of cautious but intelligent conservatism with 
 determined, because necessary, progress, which, as I
 
 PREFACE. Vii 
 
 think, has characterised the conduct of the Committee of 
 Council in making the present proposal, and which, as I 
 am convinced, should characterise the conduct of the 
 Church in meeting it. The latt-er gives forcible expres- 
 sion to the thought which is, I own, the background of my 
 own mind upon the subject. If the Conscience Clause were 
 all that its enemies assert it to be, yet I believe it ought 
 to be submitted to by the thoughtful and patriotic, if it 
 tends in any degree, as I believe it does, to avert our 
 share of that ^' great danger" which, as M. de Laveleye 
 truly says, " threatens modern civilisation," and certainly 
 none more than our own ; if it tends, as I believe it does, 
 to break the neck of the " religious difficulty" which ties 
 our hands and clogs our feet in extending elementary 
 education; if it thereby tends, as I believe it does, to 
 break up the great deeps of ignorance and degradation 
 in England. 
 
 Nor can I forbear to add that if the ^clesiastical 
 line of argument against it be really embodied in 
 Archdeacon Denison's seventeen reasons against it, and 
 in his published evidence and letters and speeches in 
 Convocation and elsewhere, then I thank him for his 
 unconscious demonstration of its necessity ; for if his own 
 account of his own policy and practice be a fair expres- 
 sion of the kind of toleration for which Dissenting parents 
 may look from the clergy of the National Church, and 
 of the risks which attend the faith of their children, then 
 on his own showing, and on the strength of that alone, 
 many politicians and many Churchmen will say. Welcome, 
 if need be, a hundred Conscience-Clauses, each of a 
 hundred Conscience-Clause power !
 
 SYLLABUS OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOE. 
 
 INTRODUCTION . 1 
 
 I.— HISTORY OF THE CLAUSE. 
 
 OniGiNAL Conscience Clause 3 
 
 The National Society 6 
 
 The Management Clauses 6 
 
 The Case of Llanelly 8 
 
 courespondence between the national society and the committee 
 
 OF Council 12 
 
 THE CONSCIENCE CLAUSE • . . .14 
 
 Abstract of Correspondence 15 — 23 
 
 Position of the National Society 19 
 
 n.— THE TERMS OF THE CLAUSE. 
 
 The Draycot Correspondence — the Bible and the Apostles' Creed 
 
 25—30 
 
 Sir J. T. Coleridge's Letter 30 
 
 in.— THE EFFECT OF THE CLAUSE. 
 
 The Conscience Clause in Towns, or other large Parishes . . 32 
 Practical Illustration — the Schools of Holy Trinity Parish, 
 
 Hoxton 33 
 
 Archdeacon Denison's Seventeen Reasons why the Church of 
 England may have nothing to do with any manner of Con- 
 science Clause ; with Seventeen Answers thereto . . 36 — 68 
 
 IV.— THE PRINCIPLE OF THE CLAUSE. 
 
 (certain points reserved.) 
 
 Comprehension 59 
 
 The National Church 61 
 
 The Extent of Dissent 62 
 
 The Need of Education 64 
 
 The Drift of Public Opinion 66 
 
 Lord Derby's Speech 67 
 
 Mr. Garfit's Speech 69 
 
 Archdeacon Browne's Charge 71 
 
 The Church and State Gazette 72 
 
 Conclusion 73
 
 THE CONSCIENCE CLAUSE. 
 
 AN ADDRESS. 
 
 It will be quite obvious that this paper must be taken as an Introduction. 
 independent argument, and not looked upon in the light of a 
 debating reply to the speech of Archdeacon Denison, though I 
 hope it will be found to contain answers to his conclusions. I 
 am only anxious, in the first place, to make a remark as to the 
 way of conducting the controversy. Sincere frieiMls of educa- 
 tion do not desire to snatch a logical victory over any individual 
 or any Society, nor, on the other hand, to protect or uphold a 
 department or an official, even if need were, but to conduce to 
 the sound and practical settlement of a grave political question. 
 
 I shall endeavour to recall the discussion to its proper ^nd pj an of tJie 
 practical basis of Principle and Fact. Under the head of the ^ 
 facts of the case I shall include (l) the history, (2) the terms, and 
 (3) the practical effect of the Conscience Clause •, and though 
 much matter of principle must enter into the mere statement of 
 these — indeed, the main principle is made manifest in all of them 
 — I shall endeavour to reserve for separate discussion, under the 
 head of the Principle of the Conscience Clause, several considera- 
 tions involving its relation to the National Church, and its policy 
 as a measure ** necessary for these times.** 
 
 B
 
 I must ask the favour of your patient attention, on the under- 
 standing that I will be as succinct as I can. 
 
 I. And first as to the history of the Conscience Clause. In 
 this, as in every other controversy, the history of the question 
 throws the clearest light upon its principle and intention. Its 
 history is, in fact, its best defence, as it puts it at once upon the 
 hard ground of practical necessity. But for this I should feel 
 that some apology is due to many who, like myself, are ready to 
 iustify the clause upon its own merits, and are likely to be some- 
 what impatient of a tedious explanation of its origin. Besides, 
 however, the general advantage resulting from such an inquiry, 
 it alone can enable me to justify the friendly remonstrance which 
 I believe ought to be made, and which I intend to make, against 
 the attitude taken up by the National Society, acting as it claims 
 to do, by its very name, and as to a great extent it practically 
 does, in the name of the National Church. 
 
 I believe that the following will be found a perfectly accurate 
 sketch of its general outline. The Conscience Clause is really 
 no new thing. It is not an innovation in its essence, though a 
 comparative novelty in its present form. Council Office, National 
 Society, promoters of schools, have been familiar with the 
 difficulty which lies at the root of it from the first. The earliest 
 trust deeds published for the guidance of managers of other than 
 Church of England schools, and even of some of these, contained 
 a rudimentary Conscience Clause — a Conscience Clause in germ. 
 
 Up to the year 1 839, the Parliamentary grant, amounting to 
 some j^3o,ooo per annum, appears to have been equally divided 
 between the two societies which existed to promote education, 
 and which were supposed to cover the whole field between 
 them — the National Society and the British and Foreign School 
 Society. The rather disturbed state of the country at that period 
 caused more attention to be directed to the need of education, 
 and in that year (April lo, 1 839) her Majesty appointed a Com-
 
 3 I 
 
 mittee of the Privy Council to superintend the distribution of the \ 
 
 Parliamentary grant. At once the new committee decided to 
 hand over, not the whole, but a part only, of their funds to the i 
 
 two societies, and to retain the administration of the remainder 
 entirely in their own hands ; in other words, they resolved to 
 investigate and decide for themselves upon the merits of each par- 
 ticular case as it arose. At once that investigation involved the 
 preliminary questions hitherto taken from the societies upon trust : 
 *' Is a school needed at all ?" and " if so, of what kind i^" This ] 
 
 raises instantly considerations of the religion of the neighbouring ; 
 
 population as yet unprovided with means of education, and of the 1 
 
 means to be taken to extend the advantages of it, purchased by | 
 
 public money, to the whole of that population. Consequently, \ 
 
 among other precedents issued in 1839-40,* one for the con- 
 veyance of a site or buildings, even for a Church of England j 
 school when not in union with the National Society, contains the j 
 following clause or provision : — | 
 " And it is hereby further declared that it shall be a funda- Orujinal Con 
 
 science Clauii> 
 
 ** mental regulation and practice of the said school* that the Bible , 
 
 ** be daily read therein by the children, and instruction in the 
 
 *' Church Catechism and in the doctrines and principles of the ; 
 
 *' Church of England shall at suitable times, [so many times] at '. 
 
 ** least in every week, be regularly given to all the children in I 
 
 ** the said school whose parents or guardians shall not on religious ' 
 
 ** grounds object thereto -, such religious instruction to be under 
 
 " the superintendence and direction of the minister for the time '\ 
 
 V being of the parish. Provided always that no child shall be 
 
 ** required to receive or be present at such religious instruction 
 
 " whose parent or guardian shall object thereto on religious ! 
 
 " grounds, and that no child shall in any case be required to \ 
 
 * See volume of Minutes, &c., presented for 1839-40 by the Com- ! 
 
 mitLce of the Privy Council on Education to Parhament, p. 102. 
 
 13 2 ;
 
 " learn any catechism or other religious formulary, or to attend 
 ** any Sunday-school or any place of worship to which respec- 
 " tively his or her parent or guardian shall on religious grounds 
 ** object, but the selection of such Sunday-school and place of 
 *' worship shall in all cases be left to the free choice of such 
 ** parent or guardian, without the child's thereby incurring any 
 "loss of the benefits or privileges of the school the trusts whereof 
 ** are hereby declared." 
 
 The bare existence of these words, in papers issued in 1 840, 
 whether they were largely used or not, is a sufficient refutation of 
 the hardy statement that the Conscience Clause is an abrupt 
 invention of the year i860. But they prove more than this. 
 For this form is stronger than the recently-proposed Conscience 
 Clause, since it provides for the total exemption of certain scholars, 
 in a given case, from any religious instruction whatever, which 
 the clause now under consideration does not do. Such, however, 
 strong as it is, was one of the trusts framed twenty-five years 
 ago for schools of the Church of England not in union with 
 the National Society : not, it is true, much used, for the large 
 majority of Church of England schools have always been, and 
 are still, in union with that society -, hence the urgency of the 
 present dispute. 
 
 And a similar trust was used for all schools not in union with 
 either of the two societies, being varied to meet the cases of 
 different denominations and different schools.* 
 ifhh mul With reference to schools in union with the British and 
 
 rtujn School 
 
 i^'ty. Foreign School Society, which excludes all catechisms and for- 
 
 mularies, and allows no religious instruction except reading and 
 expounding the Bible, '*the principles of the Society," which 
 are expressly referred to in the precedent, are ipso facto equivalent 
 to a Conscience Clause, without setting it out in extenso* 
 
 * See same volume, 1839-4Q.
 
 But in the case of schools in union with the National Society, National \ 
 
 Society. 
 
 the question was always a very little way below the surface, and i 
 
 gradually came clearly into view. The terms of union* with that i 
 
 society, so far as they relate to this point, are as follows . — 
 
 " I. The children are to be instructed in the Holy Scriptures, its terms 0/ 
 
 union. 
 
 ** and in the Liturgy and Catechism of the Established Church. 
 
 " 2. With respect to such instruction, the schools are to be 
 
 " subject to the superintendence of the parochial clergyman. I 
 
 " The children are to be regularly assembled for the purpose 
 
 ** of attending divine service in the parish church or other place : 
 
 " of worship under the Establishment, unless such reason be \ 
 
 ** assigned for their non-attendance as is satisfactory to the managers i 
 
 " of the school." ^ 
 
 The form of trust deed for schools in union with the National Its trust dei 
 
 Society contains the following provision, and no other, upon the | 
 
 subject : — " Such schools shall always be in union with and ; 
 ** conducted according to the principles, and in furtherance of 
 " the ends and designs, of the National Society for promoting 
 
 ** the education of the poor in the principles of the Established j 
 " Church ... in manner following ; that is to say, the 
 
 ** principal officiating minister for the time being of the said ' 
 " parish . . . shall have the superintendence of the re- 
 " ligious and moral instruction of all the scholars attending 
 
 ** such school." i 
 
 It will be seen that these forms make no direct provision for j 
 
 such exemption of the children of Nonconformists from the | 
 
 religious teaching of the Church as is provided for by the trust | 
 
 deed already quoted. But it is contended that such exemption I 
 
 is habitually practised, and is indeed notoriously so, as a matter I 
 
 of discretion ; and a minor ground of the society's rejection of j 
 
 the clause is that it fetters the discretion of the managers, as ^ 
 
 * As regards the charter of the Society, sec/oj/, p. 23, Note.
 
 implied in Term of Union 2 ; but of that I must speak presently. 
 My present point is that, historically, in relation to the Church, 
 the dispute lies entirely between the Committee of Council and 
 the National Society -, and as the dispute has arisen in respect of 
 schools in union, or to be In union, with that body, so the 
 controversy about them has taken the form of correspondence 
 between the secretaries of the Committee of Council and of the 
 National Society. 
 
 The first serious outbreak of dissatisfaction occurred in con- 
 nection with what are known as the management clauses of the 
 trust deed. The correspondence lasted from 1 848 to 1850, 
 having begun in the time of Sir J. Kay Shuttleworth, and con- 
 cluded in that of Mr. Lingen. It has no material bearing on the 
 subject of the Conscience Clause beyond bearing witness to the 
 fact that what is known as the religious difficulty — be it with 
 reference to management, or be it with reference to teaching — 
 must have been and was a constant quantity in the calculations 
 of the Committee of Council with reference to the establishment 
 of new parochial Church of England schools ; and that in the 
 case of the management clauses a settlement was at length 
 effected, not indeed to the entire satisfaction of the Society, 
 and of course not without some reluctant concessions on the 
 other side also, yet with such practical success that it is now 
 appealed to, though resisted and rejected at the time, and by 
 those who resisted and rejected it, as a sacred compact which 
 must never be modified more ! In this first instance the dispute 
 turned on the qualifications and on the method of election of 
 persons to serve on the committee of local managers. Soon, 
 however, the long-foreseen difficulty was to crop up in the more 
 formidable shape of a question how far the existence of Noncon- 
 formity in a parish only large enough to admit of one school 
 should be allowed and required to affect the religious teaching 
 given in such single school, being a Church of England school,
 
 and in union with the National Society, and applying for Govern- 
 ment aid. 
 
 The case as I understand it arose as follows : — The principal Rise of the Cm 
 
 science ClauS{^, 
 
 operations of the Committee of Council had hitherto been in large dij/kulty. 
 towns and populous parishes, where, from the facilities for 
 erecting other denominational schools, the need of such a stipu- 
 lation with regard to Church schools was obviated. Compara- 
 tively speaking, few of the smaller parishes, or one-school 
 cases, had up to this time been helped. They now began, 
 and still continue, to apply constantly. Moreover, Parliament Parliament 
 
 CovijdainJi of 
 
 began to complain of the rapidly-rising Education Estimates. I the (jrowivff 
 
 exj[)e)iditure. 
 
 cannot now discuss the justice of the complaint, but I suppose 
 no one would contend that the vast amount expended had pro- 
 duced the results that might have been expected from it. Any- 
 how, the first item on which the finger of economy was naturally 
 laid was that of building two small schools in a district where, 
 with proper regulations, it was natural to suppose that one larger 
 one would suffice. Meantime the Education Commissioners had Report of the ' 
 
 Education ji 
 
 met, and had reported strongly against the *' manifest injustice" Commission, j 
 to Dissenters " where, in places too small to allow of the establish- 
 " ment of two schools, the only one to which the children of the 
 " poor in those places can resort (although provided in part by 
 " pubHc funds), is placed by the managers under regulations 
 " which render imperative the teaching of the Church Catechism 
 " to all the scholars, and the attendance of all at church." The 
 Committee of Council addressed itself to remedy these defects in 
 the system. The National Society, learning from applicants to 
 themselves for aid that the principle of the early trust deeds to 
 which I have referred was being revived, and that the intro- 
 duction of it was proposed to schools to be in union with their 
 society, determined to resist the proposal on the ground of its 
 incompatibility with their terms of union, and to take their stand 
 on the trust deed accepted by them in 1850. They chose to
 
 8 
 
 regard this trust deed as solemnly guaranteed to them for ever, 
 "without making any allowance for the change of circum- 
 stances, since that precedent was accepted by the Committee 
 of Council as a suitable condition for the receipt of Parliamen- 
 tary aid. 
 
 The most famous and typical case that had arisen was the 
 well-known one of Llanelly, and this brought matters to a point. 
 War was declared in the usual form, and the serious campaign, 
 which has not yet closed, was opened, after much argument 
 and correspondence, and some less important deputations, with 
 an invasion of the Council Office by a very important deputation 
 from the National Society on April 5th, 1862. The cases of 
 grievance which they carried with them to discharge at the Lord 
 President were four English ones, of various degrees of im«=- 
 portance, which I cannot stop to explain. They embodied, 
 however, more or less, the points that had been at issue in 
 the great case at Llanelly. It was, in fact, in great measure 
 out of the peculiar composition of the Welsh parishes that the 
 difficulty arose in its most pressing shape, Protestant Dissenters 
 constituting in many parishes in Wales a large proportion, not 
 seldom an overwhelming majority, of the population. The 
 point had, however (I may mention by the way, and I do not 
 remember to have seen it noticed before), presented itself 
 still earlier in Scotland, when, on occasion of the disruption 
 of the Established Church, the Free Church was at first dis- 
 posed, till held in check by the Committee of Council, to 
 plant a new Free Church school yard-arm to yard-arm with 
 each one belonging to the Established Communion. In the 
 South, however, the matter came to a head in Wales, and the 
 case of Llanelly, in Carmarthenshire, will best, perhaps, represent 
 its difficulties. I take it because in it the case of the Council 
 Office is the most difficult to sustain in the eyes of zealous 
 Church people, and the common sensible acquiescence in the
 
 9 
 
 Conscience Clause which many men accord on the first blush 
 of it is most easily driven into a corner. It was a case of a 
 parish of some 1 0,000, with no day-school regularly attached 
 to the parish church. A private individual had caused a small 
 one to be opened in a dwelling-house, as a nucleus for the 
 intended national school, and that was all. Naturally — who can 
 reproach them ? — the clergy desired to have a Church school 
 of their own, obtained a site, and applied to the Privy Council 
 for aid to build a school to be in union with the National 
 Society. 
 
 The subsequent inquiries disclosed the facts that the parish 
 and neighbourhood was fully supplied nvith school accommodation for 
 its proportion of poor children — some said over-supplied ; that 
 the British and Foreign schools existing in the place were not 
 full, but were largely made use of by the Church of England 
 population — such as it was — who made no complaint of the 
 religious instruction provided, and that the committee of manage- 
 ment of these schools was composed indifferently of Churchmen 
 and Dissenters, the latter, of course, being in the majority ; that 
 somewhere about 1 20 Church children was the maximum that 
 could at present be depended upon for the new Church school, if 
 started, and that these might, as a matter of fact, be accom- 
 modated in the existing schools. Moreover, a national Church 
 school had, in former years, been built with a public grant of 200/., 
 and, after a brief experiment, had failed, the building being closed, 
 and, at the very time of this new application, in ruins. What could 
 the Council Office do ? On the one hand was the praiseworthy 
 zeal of a younger generation of clergy, and the revived interest of 
 some of the younger local laity anxious to complete the organi- 
 sation of their Church ; on the other an Office constituted for the 
 one object of making the means of education, provided from the 
 public funds, available to the utmost possible extent for the 
 benefit of the whole community, and not of one portion of it, and
 
 TO 
 
 bound to administer those funds with that economy which is the 
 first condition of any fair expenditure of the taxes of the people. 
 I do not use the phrase that I am about to use with the least 
 invidious or reproachful intention, but the case was clearly one in 
 the lay official eye of a more or less proselytising character. The 
 Church promoters wished to win back to the care of the Church 
 those children whom long neglect or other causes had alienated 
 from her. Who shall blame them ? The Council Office cer- 
 tainly did not : it treated them very fairly. It might have 
 refused aid outright to build a school that could almost be proved 
 to be unnecessary. In fact, it stretched a point in favour of the 
 Church, and offered them an alternative. It assented to the 
 erection of a school for 200 children in consideration of the 
 increasing population and the consequent increase of Church 
 people naturally to be expected, and other local circumstances ; 
 the school to be in union with the National Society, if the 
 society would admit the following clauses in the trust deed, other- 
 wise not ; in no case without the admission of these stipulations ; — 
 
 1. An equivalent version of the old Conscience Clause 
 (already quoted), to the effect of the exemption of any children 
 whose parents might desire it from Church of England instruction 
 or worship (as such) -, and 
 
 2. That the first committee should consist of Churchmen -, 
 that it should be perpetuated by annual re-election in the usual 
 way — but without any religious qualification or test — by the 
 majority of the subscribers for the time being. 
 
 These two provisions were the necessary method of securing 
 the one object of the Committee of Council, that the school should 
 be adapted to its surrounding population. Unaccountably, as it 
 seems to me (on studying the tone and the turns of the corre- 
 spondence), the promoters declined these terms. Aid was 
 refused, and the parish was thrown back, as I deliberately main- 
 tain, riglitcously and happily, on private enterprise for its
 
 IT 
 
 Church schools. Righteously, for though it was a project 
 naturally commending itself to individual consciences, and having 
 by parity of reasoning a claim on individual pockets, it had no 
 point of contact with the State conscience, still less a claim, 
 
 being what it was, on the State purse. Happily, for it called, i 
 
 as all such cases call, attention to the fact that a National Church, | 
 
 which is practically the Church of the minority, is a National I 
 
 Church only in name. It was very hard, no doubt, for the t': 
 
 active clergyman of Llanelly, but the hardship arose from the ; 
 
 faults of himself, or his predecessor, or the system which he had '\ 
 
 inherited, and not from the fault of the civil power, which could i 
 
 regard nothing but the facts of the case. For, in truth, the battle | 
 
 which the Committee of Council is constituted to conduct is that ^ 
 
 of Education against Ignorance, not that of the Church of !■ 
 
 England against Dissent. The discovery of this distinction t 
 
 should have warned Churchmen at Llanelly, and this whole con- t 
 
 troversy, as I shall assert more fully hereafter, should warn all | 
 
 English Churchmen, to consider their whole position, to take stock, I 
 
 so to speak, of their present materials and their existing machinery, I 
 
 to set their whole house in order ! 1 
 
 i 
 
 Mutatis mutandis — this is the gist of the question raised in ^ 
 
 case after case that has been in dispute between the Council '^^(^.present \ 
 
 ^ crisis. \ 
 
 Office and the National Society any time this half-dozen years, i 
 
 till at last it has reached a crisis. It has become necessary that ■ 
 
 the Government should know — for the Committee of Council on ' 
 
 Education is practically a Committee of the Cabinet — whether \ 
 
 the Church of England intends to accept the policy which the 
 
 experience of twenty-five years has forced upon the Education i 
 
 Department, and of which the experience of every day is demon- • 
 
 strating the necessity, and, I believe, the justice. No one who 
 
 studies the published correspondence which has passed in the j 
 
 more im.portant cases presented to Parliament, no one who reads 
 
 carefully the controversy on the Management Clauses, can fail to I
 
 12 
 
 perceive that the present juncture has been reached by no change 
 of policy, least of all by the arbitrary will or fixed prejudice of 
 any individual or any ministry, but by the accumulating force of 
 circumstances and the inevitable advance of a system along a 
 given line of proceeding. Lords Lansdowne, Salisbury, Granville, 
 or Russell, Mr. Lowe or Mr. Bruce, Sir J. K. Shuttleworth or 
 Mr. Lingen, have been equally, with varying degrees of conscious 
 co-operation, no doubt, almost involuntary agents in the acting 
 out of a principle. In fact, the form of Conscience Clause (for 
 an alternative is still offered) which, in my humble judgment, is 
 most likely to be acceptable to the Church at the present moment, 
 when one is formally adopted for Church schools, is one which 
 shall be almost a reproduction of the original ones framed in 
 1839-40. And adopted I believe that some form of Conscience 
 Clause must be and will be by the National Society, unless its 
 subscribers prefer that all schools intending to be in union with 
 it shall be absolutely disqualified for Government aid. 
 The official But the course of the later stages of the correspondence may 
 
 correnpoiKh nee* 
 
 betircen tli^ he vcry advantageously traced. The deputation of April 9, 1862, 
 Socicti/ and the was foUowed UD bv a letter from Mr. Lonsdale, placing on 
 
 Council Office ^ ^ » r b 
 
 presented to record what appeared to the deputation to have been the result 
 
 Farhament. 
 
 of the interview. 
 
 The Secretary to the Council Office replies confirming the 
 impression which has been received, " that no change has been 
 " made in the rules under which the Committee of Council act 
 " with reference to such cases, but that with a view to economy, 
 " and to prevent a needless multiplication of schools, more 
 " particularly in places of small population, those rules have been 
 " of late years applied with greater stringency than at first." 
 
 He next reminds them of the censure of the Education 
 Commissioners on the cases of "manifest injustice" certain to 
 
 * Published also in the Annual Report of the National Society for 
 1864, pp. 38—43.
 
 13 
 
 arise where a school in union with the National Society is the 
 only school in a population of mixed Churchmen and Dissenters, 
 and adds that nothing in the trust deed of schools in union with 
 them at present exists to forbid regulations productive of this 
 injustice, and that the Committee of Council, having no interest 
 but that of the extension of education, must consider the risk of it. 
 
 He then adds the important fact, that a member of the depu- 
 tation (Mr. Walpole) had made the "judicious suggestion that 
 " some rule should be devised to prevent these cases of injustice." 
 The admission of the injustice, and the prospect of a rule being 
 devised to meet it, appears to have been the chief impressions left 
 by the whole interview on the minds of the Council Office 
 authorities. , 
 
 This letter is written on April 1 6th, 1 862 ; then dead silence SlUvce of the 
 for a year and a-halfl I know nothing of the working of the 
 National Society beyond what I see in print. I only call attention 
 to the fact that after an apparent admission of injustice is made 
 — after an authoritative suggestion of a» remedy is offered on its 
 behalf — the opportunity for initiating and (as was (Jpne in the 
 case of the Management Clauses controversy) assuming the direc- 
 tion of the coming modifications of their rules is thrown away. 
 
 On November 29th, 1863, more than eighteen months after- 
 wards, Mr. Lingen writes in effect as follows : — ' My lords 
 have had repeated occasion to consider the subject of my letter 
 to you of last year. My lords have been hoping to hear of 
 Mr. Walpole's suggestion being acted on. My lords can 
 stand the open sore between us no longer. The difficulties 
 in question are of constant occurrence. My lords sincerely 
 desire to co-operate with the National Society. Sir John 
 Coleridge has officially pronounced that your terms of union 
 preclude a clergyman from ever consenting to exempt any one 
 child at all or at any time, from instruction in any one of the 
 three subjects specified in your terms — Scripture, Liturgy, and
 
 ^4 
 
 Catechism. And this my lords believe to be the true legal 
 interpretation of those terms. Hence the Dissenters in a 
 one-school place, though that one school be supported by public 
 money, may be unable to make use of it for his children.' 
 
 * This the commissioners pronounce, and it has been admitted 
 on your behalf, to be an injustice.' 
 
 * You propose to meet it in future, as you say it is met at 
 present, by an unqualified discretion to the clergyman.' 
 
 * This will not do. In the first place, Sir John Coleridge's 
 limitation of that discretion makes it nearly worthless, quite so 
 for legal purposes. In the next place, no " injustice," if such 
 there be, should be left to individual discretion for redress.' 
 
 * We submit the following clause to your committee for 
 consideration, since you have not devised one yourselves.' 
 
 * Henceforward my lords propose to make this clause part 
 of every trust deed . . . where there is room for no 
 second school. Your schools are the only ones of Protestant 
 character in which something of the kind is not already part of 
 the trust.' 
 
 * My lords would learn with much pleasure that your com- 
 mittee was disposed to consider the means of adapting its terms 
 of union to such a measure.' 
 
 TU Co7isciettce Then follows the famous clause, " being founded on Act 
 
 Clause. 
 
 <* 23 Vict., cap. 11" (the Endowed Schools Act) : — 
 
 ** The (j>ersons authorised to manage the school) shall be bound 
 
 " to make such orders as shall provide for admitting to the 
 
 " benefits of the school the children of parents not in commu- 
 
 " nion with the [Church or denomination with which the school is 
 
 " connected) -, but such orders shall be confined to the exemption 
 
 " of such children, if their parents desire it, from attendance at 
 
 ** the public worship, and from instruction in the doctrine or 
 
 ** formularies of the said (Church or denomination), and shall 
 
 " not otherwise interfere with the religious teaching of the
 
 15 
 
 ** scholars as fixed by {these presents, or as the case may be), and 
 ** shall not authorise any other religious instruction to be given 
 " in the school." 
 
 Here I would leave its history,* but the few remaining letters 
 in the correspondence to which I am referring are interesting, 
 and to notice them here will enable mc to dismiss the National 
 Society henceforward. 
 
 I'he secretary of the society writes on the 1 6th of December, 
 1863, that the society will take the clause into consideration next 
 February, and asks two questions : — 
 
 1. How will it be determined that there is room for one 
 school only ? 
 
 2. Does the clause exempt from all religious instruction ? if 
 not, from how much, and from what? 
 
 The Secretary of the Committee of Council answers thus : — 
 
 1. There is no room for two schools if the number of 
 children is anywhere under 150. 
 
 2 . The clause is not intended to exempt children from any 
 religious instruction that their parents are willing t^ey should 
 receive.f 
 
 On the 5th of February, 1864, the National Society returns Bephi of 
 what is really its final reply, its first and last and only answer 
 and ultimatum — a single shake of the head, and a simple and 
 solemn Non Possumus : — " They are not prepared to alter the terms 
 " of union with the society.'' 
 
 The Secretary to the Committee of Council on Education 
 tries to make them explain themselves. " Do my lords rightly 
 " infer that the addition of the clause to an ordinary trust deed 
 " would forfeit all or any of the benefits of union with your 
 
 * The next eight or nine pages (up to Section II., p. 24) may be 
 omitted by any reader who feels no interest in the details of the con- 
 troversy. 
 
 I See pus ff pp. 24 ;ind 25.
 
 I6 
 
 " society ?" He repeats the clause, and again mentions the Act 
 of Parliament on which it is based. 
 
 Mr. Lx)nsdale repeats that the clause is held to be inconsistent 
 with the charter and the terms of union, and adds that the 
 National Society was expressly exempted from the operations of 
 the Act which Mr. Lingen has quoted. 
 
 " Of course it luas,"^ Mr. Lingen retorts ; " if it were other- 
 " wise this correspondence would be unnecessary." * 
 
 His reply amounts to this : — ^We are endeavouring to induce 
 you, in the face of facts and a changed set of circumstances, 
 and a strong drift of public opinion, to accept voluntarily a 
 principle which has been admitted to be just in all other cases, 
 and to some extent in your own and by yourselves. If we could 
 make you a.do)pi it, by force of Act 23 Vic, cap. II, or otherwise, 
 be assured we should. "We are quite aware of your exemption 
 from the operation of that Act, as well as of our own long for- 
 bearance to press you on the point, but we are convinced that 
 that forbearance can no longer justly be continued. 
 
 * This rejoinder has been denounced as a piece of " discreditable 
 trickery." I cannot conceive how the accusation can seem to any one 
 to lie, Mr. Lingen informs the society that the clause is based on the 
 principle of a certain Act of Parliament (which no one denies that it is) 
 for the obvious purpose of suggesting to the Society that the principle of 
 what he was proposing had been necessarily and notoriously discussed 
 and voted for by Bishops in the House of Lords, on the occasion of 
 passing the Endowed Schools Bill, although National Schools were at 
 the time exempted from its operation. The Society — again ready to 
 impute finality to any enactment in its own favour, be it Trust Deed or 
 Act of Parliament — triumphantly records this exception, as if the Com- 
 mittee of Council had presumed upon their ignorance of it, and their 
 championj" does not hesitate to impute " discreditable trickery'* to the 
 " correspondence carried on in the name of the Committee of Council" 
 for mentioning a plain and simple matter of fact ! 
 
 + J. G. Hubbard, Esq , M.P. The Conscience Clause of the Education Dqyart- 
 inent, p. 33. (Masters.)
 
 T7 
 
 Meantime you have not answered my question : "Be kind 
 •* enough to say distinctly whether or not your committee means 
 ** to refuse aid to any school that has adopted this clause ?" 
 
 Whereupon the secretary to the society merely regrets that 
 my lords should not have comprehended that incompatibility 
 with the society's charter and terms is ipso facto a disqualification 
 for aid. He closes the correspondence by again referring to the 
 exemption of the society from the operations of the Act (Vic. 23, 
 cap. II), and repeats the request that the society may be let alone, 
 and the former practice of the Committee of Council maintained. 
 
 The Secretary of the Council adds his last words with great 
 force on May 7, 1864. Indeed, letter No. lo of this corre- Mval letter o/> 
 
 the Commiltee. 
 
 spondence puts the gist of the case, so far as regards the right o\ of Coumil. ' 
 enforcing on the part of the State, and the duty of accepting on 
 the part of the Church, some such stipulation so distinctly, that I 
 must be excused for quoting the whole of it : — 
 
 ** No. TO. 
 
 " Education Department, Privy Council Office, 
 
 " 7th May, 1864. 
 " Reverend Sir, 
 
 " I am directed by my I.ords of the Committee of 
 
 ** Council on Education to request you to inform the Committee 
 
 ** of the National Society that their I ordships cannot allow this jj 
 
 ** correspondence to be closed without adding such observations ij 
 
 ** upon the last paragraph in your letter of the 2 1st ultimo as •! 
 
 " may prevent it from being misunderstood by those who have ij 
 
 *' not followed the whole of the discussion. ji 
 
 ** In that paragraph you express the hope entertained by the i 
 
 ** Committee of the National Society that the Committee of 'j 
 
 ** Council will cease to press the Conscience Clause, suggested \ 
 
 ** in their Lordships' letter of the 27th November last, on Church \\ 
 
 ** Schools desirous of being placed in union with the Society. ^i 
 
 " My Lords have never pressed such a clause generally on 
 
 1.1 
 c
 
 i8 
 
 " the promoters of Church Schools -, but in those cases where the 
 ** suggestion has been offered, it has been offered with reference 
 ** to local circumstances which rendered a National School, or a 
 ** National School of the size proposed, unsuitable to the religious 
 ** denomination of the families relied upon for supplying scholars. 
 " (Article 22). 
 
 " The question has in each instance been, whether, instead 
 *' of simply refusing the application, my Lords could agree with 
 ** the promoters upon such a modification of it as would enable 
 " the Committee of Council to entertain it. 
 
 " My Lords have already stated that, with the exception of 
 " increased strictness in examining the preliminary statement of 
 " each case, they have not changed the principles upon which 
 " their grants for building schools are administered. They have 
 ** nowhere bound themselves to make grants to build National 
 ** Schools for children whose parents are not members of the 
 ** Established Church, and they must leave the Committee of the 
 *' National Society to consider how the society's present terms of 
 *' union, as elucidated by this correspondence, affect the establish- 
 ** ment of Church Schools in those many parishes where one 
 ** school only can be maintained, and where a part of the 
 ** labouring population consists of Dissenters. To help with 
 *' public money to build a National School large enough for the 
 ** whole population of such a parish leaves the Dissenters ex- 
 *' posed to a violation of their religious rights, and to help to 
 ** build such a school large enough for the Church people only 
 *' of such a parish leaves the Dissenters without education. A 
 *' Church School, with a Conscience Clause, escapes both horns 
 *• of the dilemma, but my Lords regret to learn that it is held to 
 *' be inconsistent with the charter of the National Society and the 
 *• terms of union. 
 
 " I have the honour to be, Sec, 
 
 (Signed) '' R. R. W. Lingen. 
 " The Reverend the Secretary, National School Society."
 
 19 
 
 Such is the present position of the matter. The onus of noio mnfteri 
 
 now stand. 
 
 proving the inadmissibility of the proposed settlement of an i 
 
 admitted difficulty rests upon the National Society. So does the 
 onus of inventing a better method of effecting an indispensable 
 solution. 
 
 A few words more, and they shall be few, on the course 
 pursued by the National Society. 
 
 The society has laid down, on several occasions, principles TiieimMpU 
 
 .... of the Natiot 
 
 which exactly meet the ponit m dispute. Society, 
 
 In the memorandum with reference to the Management ; 
 
 Clauses, presented to the Lord President of the Council in 1848, 1 
 
 occurs the following statement : — " The National Society has 1 
 
 ** always abstained as much as possible from interfering with the The discretioi 
 
 ofmanager$.\ 
 
 *' discretion of the local founders and supporters of schools. Its 
 
 ** terms of union were not intended to require any one specific ', 
 ** constitution or form of management, but were limited to re- 
 *' quiring such provisions as appeared absolutely necessary to 
 
 " give any school a claim to be regarded as a Church of England j 
 
 ** school." ; 
 
 A bond fide Church school ^ then, is their one * object. This \ 
 
 secured, liberty of action is the principle aimed at in the manage- \ 
 
 ment. So far so good. Now this liberty notoriously extends in jSxchmon ] 
 
 practice to the exemption of Dissenters' children from learning incompatible ;I 
 
 , _, , . , . 1 1 XT 1 iM • Kith union. \l 
 
 the Catechism and going to church. Nay, the liberty to practise i 
 
 this exemption is claimed in the strongest terms in another | 
 
 memorandum of the society of July 23, i860. It maintains || 
 
 that to say "that every child shall be taught the Catechism, j 
 
 ** Articles, and Liturgy is also incompatible with union as de- | 
 *' priving the managers of that discretion which the terms of 
 " union permit, and which has been extensively and advan- 
 ** tageously exercised." 
 
 Further, the principle of this exemption has been expressly Mr. iLMard 
 
 r \ \ admits the ! 
 
 admitted even by the most vehement assailants or the q\a\\sq pnndple 
 
 c 2
 
 20 
 
 which provides for it. Mr. Hubbard in his recent pamphlet, 
 
 beating to arms against the clause, endorses the opinion which 
 
 . "was universal among the committee and the witnesses in the late 
 
 f Parliamentary inquiry, that it is ** an undeniable proposition, that 
 
 ** a parent ought to have a supreme authority over the teaching 
 
 *' of his children." It need not, indeed, be defended until some 
 
 show of reason on the other side is made. And it is not too 
 
 much to say that a view which negatively makes to any extent 
 
 against such parental authority may be carried positively to the 
 
 length of justifying the Mortara case and forcible baptism. 
 
 tHfufJeqf the The point is that the National Society will not, as it did in 
 
 ufi(nial 
 
 ^^^^y- the case of the Management Clauses, negotiate, and originate, 
 
 and finally secure with more or less completeness an alternative 
 more acceptable to itself. It prefers to occupy the odd position 
 of declining to do what itself approves, for no better reason that 
 appears than because the State asks it to promise to do so. The 
 consequences professed to be foreseen from this promise I will 
 presently, if time be permitted to me, show to be exaggerated 
 where they are not wholly visionary. As for the pretended 
 argument that what is just as a concession, may become wicked, 
 and is certainly superfluous, as a law — if, that is, the paternal 
 charity of the priest be exchanged for the express stipulation of 
 the Privy Council — it is just the old argument between rulers and 
 people of which political history is so full. It calls up the 
 familiar vision of hollow promises and confidence betrayed, 
 to meet which Constitutions, Concordats, and Conscience 
 Clauses have been devised. Nor can the society now con- 
 
 \e society sistently venture to use it in terms, for in a memorandum 
 
 tcedes the 
 
 zte's right to (although on another subject) presented to the Lord President 
 on April iith, 1 848, they speak of ** the largest amount of 
 liberty compatible ivith the safeguard rendered necessary by the 
 application of public money" And again, " they fully agree in 
 the principle that while the " State is giving assistance, it has a
 
 21 I 
 
 " right to demand ample security.* In truth, a natural right of all 
 the community cannot be made to depend in the case of a large 
 part of the community on the mere will and pleasure of the 
 clergy not of their own, but of another part of the com- 
 munity. 
 
 I am only concerned now to point out that the National Society, 
 under the influence of something like this sentiment, will not 
 formally endorse its own admitted principle nor consent to 
 enforce its own habitual practice, and that, forsooth, from a feeling 
 of^ sheer conservatism and supposed consistency ; and I venture 
 to predict that if the settlement of this question, which must 
 more or less speedily be made, should need in any way to be 
 disturbed in ten or twenty years' time — which I for one do not 
 anticipate, if it be well considered and loyally accepted now — 
 then the Archdeacon Denison of the period will be found asserting jj 
 
 the inviolable character of the sacred compact of 1 865-6. For 
 the fatal doctrine of finality which has wrought so much 
 mischief, and arrested so much necessary progress, in politics and 
 in theology, will always, I suppose, have its adherents. [; 
 
 Yet even here the National Society is open to an answer out of And its right -,:, 
 
 amend its '. 
 
 its own mouth, having said in a letter of the secretary (March 17th, regulations. '■ 
 1849) — "It may reasonably be doubted whether it be expedient J, 
 
 ** to impose upon the founders of schools any system of manage- 
 * * ment which shall not be open to modification by competent authority* 
 ** at some future time'' And I venture, therefore, to assume as 
 certain that by changes in the Committee of the National Society, 
 or otherwise, the policy of passive resistance will be now 
 reversed, that the society will enter frankly into the discussion of 
 
 * The objection that Parliament is the only " competent authority," 
 and that the Conscience Clause has not been submitted to Pailiament, is 
 one that, after Lord Granville's evidence upon the point (see Preface), I 
 need not discuss. Those who desire it may force the question into 
 the House of Commons as soon as they please. 
 
 '■(
 
 22 
 
 the question, and will no longer refuse to sanction formally the 
 principle and the rule which the majority of its own members 
 practise, and which the best of its apologists defend. 
 
 I may as well, perhaps, in this connection call your attention 
 to the fact that an alternative of two Conscience Clauses (see note) 
 is offered to the promoters of Church schools in parishes only fit 
 for one school.* 
 
 The former of the two has been long in use, and is, in fact, 
 coeval with the existence of the Committee of Council, and the 
 
 * Alternative Consciince Clauses. 
 {Old Form.) 
 
 " And it is hereby declared that the instruction at the said school 
 " shall comprise at least the following branches of school learning, 
 " namely, reading, writing, arithmetic, geography. Scripture history, and 
 " (in the ca«e of girls) needlework; and it is hereby further declared 
 " that it shall be a fundamental regulation and practice of the said school 
 ^" that the Bible be daily read therein, and that no child shall be required 
 * to learn any catechism or other religious formulary, or to attend any 
 " Sunday-school or place of worship, to which respectively his or her 
 " parent or other person having the custody of such child shall on 
 " religious grounds object, but the selection of such Sunday-school and 
 " place of worship shall in all cases be left to the free choice of such 
 " parent or person without the child's thereby incurring any loss of the 
 " benefits and privileges of the school the trustees whereof are hereby 
 " declared." 
 
 Or, as proposed in correspondence between the Committee of Council 
 on Education and the National Society : — 
 
 " The said committee shall be bound to make such orders as shall 
 " provide for admitting to the benefits of the school the children of 
 " parents not in communion with thej- Church of England as by law 
 " established : but such orders shall be confined to the exemption of such 
 " children, if their parents desire it, from attendance at the public 
 « worship, and from insti-uction in the doctrine or formularies of the said 
 " Churchjf and shall not otherwise interfere with the religious teaching 
 " of the scholars, as Jixed by these present Sy and shall not authorise any 
 " other religious instruction to be given in the school." 
 
 t Or as tho case may be.
 
 23 
 
 first construction of forms of trust deed. Either clause should 
 be regarded not as something isolated, but as part of a trust deed 
 full of every sort of precaution for securing the Church character 
 of a school. 
 
 The latter of the two is that proposed to the National Society 
 by the Council Office, after eighteen months' expectation of some 
 proposal from the society. 
 
 It is obviously stronger in two respects — one making against 
 (if so it be), and one directly for, the National Society's view of 
 the case. 
 
 1. It provides expressly for the admission of other than 
 Church children, while the old form only does so by impli- 
 cation. 
 
 2. On the other hand, it guards emphatically the integrity of 
 the Church teaching, and allows nothing but exceptional exemp- 
 tion from it. 
 
 j 
 I venture to think that if the society would discuss the Possibility oj, 
 
 coming to an. 
 
 question with the Council Office, the form might be even now urulerstMvdir,^ 
 improved by a combination of the two — at least so far as the • i 
 
 embodiment in the clause of the old enactment that it be " the 
 ** fundamental regulation Tind. practice of the school that the Bible ' 
 
 " shall be daily read and taught therein." With this proviso, I j 
 
 believe that the assent of the National Society and of the Church \ 
 
 ought to be, and will be, readily given to the clause. i 
 
 Here at length I leave the mere history of this vexed question, 
 and its bearings on that association of Churchmen which assumes 
 the direction of Church education. I do so with a most earnest 
 appeal to the committee and the subscribers of the National 
 Society to reconsider their position — to retrace their path of 
 uncompromising opposition — to effect, as they easily may, another 
 concordat with the civil power, in furtherance of the great end 
 of popular and Christian education.* 
 
 * The/»otf<?r of the National Society to take action in the matter
 
 science 
 
 24 
 
 terms 0/ the 11. I would pass at oncc to some of the larger questions of 
 principle which are involved in the application of the clause, but 
 that so much misconception and misrepresentation has taken 
 place with reference to its actual terms and its practical effect, 
 that I think it desirable, if the meeting will allow me, to deal 
 with these in some detail. And it strikes me that the most con- 
 venient and effective method of doing so, in addressing a meeting 
 mainly clerical, will be to meet the issues involved, at the points 
 which have been already publicly raised, in the Church Congress 
 at Norwich. The notable features, as you know, of the dis- 
 cussion there were a speech from Archdeacon Denison, containing 
 seventeen reasons for resisting the clause, and the production of 
 a correspondence between a country clergyman and the Council 
 Office, which had the effect of converting a distinguished advo- 
 cate of the clause into an opponent of it. And between them 
 they raised all or nearly all the issues that can be raised, in so 
 practical and so comprehensive a shape, that I need make no 
 
 appears to turn on the legal construction of their charter of incorporation, 
 which is a point for lawyers, and on which, I believe, good lawyers 
 differ. Their " terms of union" are declared by themselves to be incom- 
 patible with refusing to do what the Conscience Clause requires. It is 
 hard to see, therefore, how they can be incompatible with promising to 
 do it. But if they are they can be altered easily, which the charter 
 cannot. I would remark, however, that the only words in that docu- 
 ment having a prohibitive sound about them — " by educating the childien 
 " of the poor, ivithout any exception, in the doctrine and discipline of the 
 " Church of England" .... ^^ Siccovdvcig to the Liturgy and Catechism 
 " provided for that purpose" — occur not in the body of the charter, but 
 in the preamble, which purports to be a recital of a petition from the 
 Archbishop and Bishops. The King's decree itself merely speaks of 
 the society as formed " for promoting the education of the poor in the 
 " principles of the Established Church throughout England and Wales," 
 without entering into particulars. I do not know if the recitals of a 
 preamble have the force of law, but the whole circumstances suggest the 
 reflection, " Where there's a will there's a way."
 
 25 
 
 apology even to the most unecclesiastical lay hearer (or reader) for 
 
 choosing this plan of argument or pursuing it at length. For it is 
 
 to a great extent a question between clergy and laity [pace Mr. 
 
 Hubbard), and the laity who would master it must follow the 
 
 course of the clerical opposition. The correspondence with Mr. 
 
 Caparn is more or less occupied with the discussion of the terms 
 
 of the clause, and the interpretation of them — the archdeacon's 
 
 argument, speaking as generally, with the supposed effect of 
 
 them. It is not quite easy to separate the two aspects ; but I 
 
 will follow the lead of these disputants. I take the terms first 
 
 for every reason, but especially because they have been so re- , 
 
 markably misrepresented in connection with this correspondence, ^ 
 
 that to do so will best clear the ground for disposing of Arch- | 
 
 deacon Denison's ingenious deductions from the misstated or j 
 
 misunderstood terms. • 
 
 Mr. Caparn, the incumbent of a rural parish, on its being The Bible and ' 
 
 , _, , ^, • 1 '^* Apostles' ' 
 
 suggested to him to mtroduce the Conscience Clause into the Creed. 
 
 trust deed of a school that he wished to build, asked — 
 
 1. Whether, under the Conscience Clause, a parent might 
 object to the teaching of the Apostles' Creed ? And 
 
 2. Whether the daily reading of the Bible could be made a 
 rule of the school for all the scholars ? 
 
 Mr. Lingen replied clearly enough as follows, on the first 
 point : — ** I am directed to state that the Apostles' Creed, being 
 ** a formulary of the Church of England, might be required not 
 '* to be taught to a child by its parents who belonged to a com- 
 *' munion wherein that Creed is not used." On the second : — 
 ** I am directed to state that the clause allows the managers to 
 " do so, as long as the text of the Bible is not employed to 
 " enforce doctrine which [ex hypothesi) is that of the Church of 
 ** England, but is not also that of the parent." 
 
 He prefaces his answers with the remarkable declaration — 
 *' I am directed to state that the object of the Conscience
 
 26 
 
 " Clause proposed to the National Society for consideration is 
 *' twofold. 
 
 "I. To guard the religious instruction of Church of England 
 " scholars in its entirety from all interference. 
 
 "2. To provide for the instruction of the children of 
 " Dissenting parents in such schools, being the only schools 
 *' within reach, consistently with the rights of conscience." 
 
 And he closes his letter with a similar appeal : — ** It must 
 ** always be borne in mind that the Conscience Clause does not 
 " touch the religious instruction ; it concerns only those Dissent- 
 " ing parents who may wish to withdraw their children from 
 " such instruction when it is contrary to their own belief." 
 
 I shall venture to express plainly my firm conviction that 
 Mr. Lingen's letter, far from making the justification of the 
 clause harder, pmts the justice of it in a clearer light than it has 
 ever been placed in before. 
 
 For it brings out the main fact that the practical object and 
 intention of the clause is one, and one only. That single 
 purpose is to authorise the withdrawal from religious instruction 
 in Church of England schools of scholars whose parents are 
 not members of the Church of England. More than this it 
 neither does nor pretends to do by any positive provision. It 
 leaves the religious instruction in Church of England schools, 
 which is otherwise prescribed in the trust deeds framed by the 
 Committee of Council, absolutely and entirely untouched. It is 
 this effect of it which induces Mr. Lingen to say that the first 
 object of the clause is ** to guard the religious instruction of 
 *' Church of England schools in its entirety from all interference." 
 This IS the result of the action of the clause,* and the statement 
 
 * I must confess that Mr. Lingen's description of it as the primary 
 object of the clause is fully borne out by Lord Granville's evidence 
 before the late committee. Nothing is so manifest from that evidence
 
 27 
 
 is apparently made as a deprecatory argument to his correspondent, i 
 
 but it serves to enable him and those who head the controversy 
 
 to accuse Mr. Lingen of throwing dust in their eyes. The clause 
 
 as it stands provides simply and solely, with no arriere pensee, 
 
 with no second intention in view, for the exemption from m- j 
 
 struction in the principles of one creed of those children whose 
 
 parents profess and wish their children to be brought up in , 
 
 another. That the onus prohandi lies on the opponents of the j 
 
 clause, when its principle is reduced to this elementary statement, \ 
 
 I have never heard any reasonable man deny. Whether such j 
 
 children as are provided for by the clause ought to be provided 
 
 for in Church of England schools at all is another question 
 
 altogether. But none who apprehend the office of a National i 
 
 Church will, I think, doubt that all should be included in her 
 
 schools who will come ; and to this end it is necessary, in the i 
 
 present day, that the rights of conscience should be formally i 
 
 recognised and guaranteed. The very outcry, if the duty be i 
 
 admitted, proves the necessity of the stipulation. 
 
 But the unreasonableness of that outcry will appear more '^^r. Capam'a I 
 
 •^ * qiiesiioiis. 
 
 clearly from the specific questions put to Mr. Lingen by Mr. 
 Caparn. To begin with, they are not so much bond fide state- 
 ments of practical difficulties that had actually arisen in a given ! 
 case as ingeniously put dilemmas, so framed, in perfect good 
 faith (I do not hesitate to believe), as to put the clause in the I 
 most invidious light, and to bring the most discredit on its authors 
 and abettors, and partaking so plainly, however unintentionally, of 
 the nature of traps, that I wonder Mr. Lingen ventured so far into 
 them as he did. The two questions and their answers have 
 been so grossly misrepresented that I repeat them. They were 
 these : — " In a school which has inserted the Conscience Clause 
 
 as the desire of the department to conciliate and protect the Church of 
 England.
 
 28 
 
 " in its trust deed*, may the Apostles' Creed be taught to all 
 ** the scholars ? and may it be made a rule that the Bible be read 
 •* by them all ?" 
 
 Now, the clause does not affect the religious teaching, except 
 by exemption from it. But proposed for a lawyer's interpreta- 
 tion, it was impossible to avoid answering the questions so as to 
 incur the accusation of greater laxity than the clause really effects. 
 Had the Apostles' Creed and the Bible been on the same footing 
 in the trust deeds of a school, it would have been fair to reply — 
 ** I cannot really answer you, for the Conscience Clause has 
 ** nothing to do with the details of your religious instruction ; 
 ** teach what your principles require and what your trust deeds 
 ** allow. This clause does not interfere ; it only provides that a 
 " child may be withdrawn from it, if the parents choose, without 
 Mr.Lingen's " thereby becoming liable to be turned out of the school." And 
 
 reply as to the 
 
 Apostles' this is, in effect, Mr. Lingen's answer in the case of the Apostles' 
 
 Creed. 
 
 Creed : — ** I am directed to state that the Apostles' Creed, being 
 " a formulary of the Church of England, might be required not 
 ** to be taught to a child by its parent who belonged to a com- 
 ** munion wherein that Creed was not used." Of course. What 
 else is the Conscience Clause for ? In a word, a most extreme 
 case is put, and the general effect is inferred from that. The 
 formulary, which scarcely an English Dissenter would object to, 
 is selected ad majorem invidiam in order to drive the Secretary of 
 the Committee of Council to say what every one knew before- 
 hand he must say, that qua formulary of the Church of England 
 (which it is not distinctively) y a scholar must be excused from 
 learning it if his parents objected to his doing so. How could 
 Archdeacon Allen be for a moment turned aside from his own 
 previous judgment on the merits by such an inevitable answer to 
 such a manifestly misleading question ? 
 lis reply as to The case of the Bible is different. The invidiousness of the 
 
 he Bible. . . . ./r 
 
 question is more subtle ; the answer was proportionally more difn-
 
 29 
 
 cult to give. The reading of the Bible is provided for, as the basis 
 
 of the religious instruction to be given, in the trust deeds of every 
 
 Church of England school in union with the National Society. 
 
 {Suproy p. 5.) And in the case of Church of England schools 
 
 not so in union, that rule is established by the provision that 
 
 the instruction be under the clergyman's control. Of this 
 
 Mr. Lingen's interrogator must have been perfectly well aware. 
 
 So he frames his question thus : — " Does the clause allow the 
 
 ** promoters of the school to make the daily reading of the Bible 
 
 ** by every child that can read an absolute rule of the school ?" 
 
 Alloiv them ! Why, it supports and strengthens a clause which 
 
 binds them to do so. The reading of the Bible is otherwise 
 
 provided for, and this clause does not touch that provision. It 
 
 can and does only effect one thing — the withdrawal of a child 
 
 from religious instruction of a special kind at the parent's option. 
 
 It does not allow the parent to withdraw his child from the 
 
 reading of the Bible simpliciter, but only, as Mr. Lingen says, 
 
 from the inferential teaching from it of " doctrine which, ex 
 
 " hypothesis is that of the Church of England, but is not also 
 
 " that of the parent." Here, too, the answer is a' matter of 
 
 course, and did not need to be given to any one who can 
 
 read and understand the clause without desiring to find fault 
 
 with it. The practical effect of this provision I will discuss and 
 
 illustrate hereafter. 
 
 I have not, however, stated the whole of the case as between Misrepresenta- 
 tion 0/ these 
 Mr. Lingen and Mr. Caparn ; for it was (as reported in the amioers at 
 
 Norwich. 
 
 papers) made to appear at Norwich that Mr. Lingen had answered 
 both questions in the negative, that he had declared the clause 
 inconsistent with the teaching of the Apostles' Creed in general, 
 and the reading of the Bible in Church of England schools at 
 all. And so Archdeacon Allen understood it, and acted upon 
 that understanding. Whereas I think I have made it clear that 
 the letter of the Secretary to the Committee of Council did
 
 30 
 
 nothing of the sort, but only said that the one might possibly be 
 objected to, and that a particular method of conveying the other 
 might also perhaps be objected to, but only in certain circum- 
 stances, which he and his questioner and everybody else knew 
 perfectly well are almost certain never to arise ; while, on the 
 other hand, the maintenance of this shadowy right, if such it be, 
 in practice conciliates Dissenting parents, by conceding a natural 
 right dear to every parent, especially the religious parent, has 
 procured the erection of many schools which would not other- 
 wise have been erected, and enables the dispensers of the Parlia- 
 mentary grant to feel that they are carrying out the first condition 
 of their trust, namely, making effectual provision for the edu- 
 cation of all classes of the community. 
 
 Such is the literal interpretation of the actual terms of the 
 Conscience Clause. In a word, everything may be taught to a 
 scholar to which its parent does not object. The only limit to 
 the discretion of the clergyman is the discretion of the parent ; 
 and the discretion of the parent is limited to a veto upon dis- 
 tinctively denominational doctrine, and upon that alone. Thus, 
 although a parent might conceivably object to the teaching of the 
 Creed, he could not withdraw his child from the mere reading and 
 exposition of the Scriptures. 
 
 Sir John Cole- I cannot, in an assembly of Churchmen, turn away from this 
 ridge's letter. 
 
 question of the interpretation of the clause without referring to a 
 
 letter on the subject bearing the well-known initials ** J. T. C," 
 
 which made a great impression on me at the time of its appearance 
 
 in the Guardian newspaper, and which has since been published 
 
 in Mr. Hubbard's pamphlet, with the sanction of its honoured 
 
 writer. Sir John T. Coleridge. This letter, I confess, astonishes 
 
 me. ** J. T. C." says, " I am afraid, therefore, that we must 
 
 " take Mr. Lingen as announcing in effect this : that any clergy- 
 
 " man accepting the Conscience Clause is prohibited from teaching 
 
 *' to the children of Dissenters, however numerous they may be
 
 31 
 
 ** in his school, and honvever luilling their parents may be, the 
 " Apostles' Creed, and equally from explaining to them the Holy 
 " Scriptures." " However willing their parents may be !" Why, 
 with parental willingness, he may teach them the Athanasian 
 Creed as well as the Apostles' ! "Prohibited from explaining 
 " the Holy Scriptures !" Why, that " fundamental regulation 
 " and practice" is untouched and unaffected by the Conscience 
 Clause. Indeed, " J. T. C.'s" own candour bears witness against 
 him in the next paragraph . — " Now, Mr. Lingen was asked as 
 ** follows by the Education Commissioners, on the 30th November, 
 ** 1859 (454> 455) • — * "^^^ general offer {i.e., offer of aid) does 
 ** * not apply to secular schools ?' He answered, * No. The Bible 
 ** * must be taught. The school must either belong to one of those 
 " * denominations which the Committee of Council has expressly 
 ** * recognised, or it must put itself under the Minute of the 3rd 
 ** * December, 1839, nvhich provides that religious instruction shall be 
 *' * given out of the Bible. A secular school professing that it did 
 " * not give religious instruction would not be admitted to aid — 
 ** * that point has been ruled several times over.' Again (459) 
 " he adds, * The Order of Council 3rd June, i839,*says in the 
 ** * name of the Committee, " We are desirous of furthering your 
 ** ' Majesty's wish that children should be duly trained in the 
 ** * principles of the Christian religion, while the rights of con- 
 " * science are respected." I think the Committee has always taken 
 ** * these words as the guiding principle of their action.' " And yet 
 in face of this official evidence — in face of the strenuous reclama- 
 tions of the department against the imputation of any change 
 of policy — ** J. T. C." lends the sanction of his name and 
 character to the assertion that the Conscience Clause altogether 
 forbids the teaching of the Creed, and the exposition of Scripture, 
 which it manifestly and avowedly vi terminorutn does not do !* 
 
 * Strangest of all is the circumstance that Sir J. Coleridge, in 
 permitting Mr. Hubbard to print his letter, admits that it was written in
 
 32 
 The effect of the HI. I pass now to a wider consideration of the effect of the 
 
 uavi^e. 
 
 clause, real or supposed ; and I think I can best vindicate this, 
 apart from particular instances, by discussing seriatim the Arch- 
 deacon's seventeen reasons against it, which, if your patience be 
 not exhausted, I still propose to do. 
 
 I am anxious, however, before doing so, to give a single illus- 
 tration of its working that has come within my own knowledge, 
 by the light of which we shall be better able to estimate the 
 worth of the alleged inconveniences or grievances of its opera- 
 tion. The case to which I refer is one of the introduction 
 of the clause into the trust deed of a school in the diocese of 
 London.* 
 TU Cojisdence I am quite aware that the introduction of the clause in this class 
 
 Clause in r i i • 
 
 'oioiis, or other of school is made use of — indeed, this particular instance was made 
 ''Crge parislies. 
 
 use of, if I mistake not, at Norwich — to show that the Council 
 Office is not sincere in saying that the need of it arises in small 
 country parishes. In this case, as a matter of fact, the clause 
 was voluntarily introduced, proposed, and decided upon for 
 reasons which will presently appear, before any communication 
 was made to the Council Office at all. But the objection in other 
 cases may be met in this way. The clause will often be called 
 for now-a-days in large and even in town parishes for this reason. 
 The bulk of the population is already provided with the means 
 of education, but the residue for whose education aid is now 
 asked is of a mixed religious character, presenting all the features 
 of a small country population. It is easy to understand that 
 
 haste and upon imperfect information ; but prefers, though he " might 
 " have modified" it, to allow it to be used for a controversial purpose in 
 its original form. 
 
 ♦ I may remark here that London is the last place in which the 
 clause could ever be enforced, from the abundant opportunities of deno- 
 minational education. I am told that, as a matter of fact, it has never 
 yet been proposed for adoption in a single school in London.
 
 when each denomination is provided with school accommodation i 
 
 for the bulk of its own scholars, the general remnant unprovided 'i 
 
 for will still include some of each. Hence the clause is just as ;' 
 
 applicable to this section of a town population as to the smallest i 
 
 one-school parish in Wales. Moreover, many managers — I ■ 
 
 believe an increasing number both in town and country — will, « 
 
 as time goes on, voluntarily introduce the Conscience Clause, j 
 
 whether pressed upon them by the Council Office or not, as a ■; 
 
 safe bar to future bickering — as a relief from the exercise of a j 
 
 difficult discretion — as a means of conciliating and comprehending ^ 
 
 all the sections of a parish — as a bond of effective combination 1 
 
 in the deeply-needed work of extending elementary education. j 
 
 The grounds on which the clause is asked for do not, therefore, \ 
 
 disprove those on which it was first offered. ! 
 The case, however, to which I refer is that of Trinity Schools of Holy 
 
 Trinity Pariah^' 
 
 Church District, Hoxton, . Hoxton. 
 
 It is the case of a populous district of upper-working-class I 
 artisans and lower-middle-class tradespeople, mainly Dissenters, 
 
 to one of whose denominations the chief local employers of ! 
 
 labour belong. Yet it had remained withotit any day-schools j 
 whatever. A City missionary has the credit of stirring up the 
 inhabitants to a sense of their responsibility. The matter was 
 
 well advanced upon the appointment of the Rev. T. Fowle as \ 
 
 curate in sole charge. The incumbent gave up, with the : 
 sanction of the bishop (to whom the plan had been referred), 
 a portion of the glebe as a site for the intended school. The 
 
 Dissenters' influence and support was conciliated by the proposal ; 
 
 to adopt the Conscience Clause in the trust deed of the school, • 
 
 and not exclude them from all share in managing it. The first j 
 
 committee comprised one-third Dissenters. Yet Dissenters raised \ 
 
 nearly half the funds, ;^5oo being contributed twice over by the - 
 
 same Dissenting firm. And ^"200 was raised for the building ; 
 
 from the small householders of the District, being Dissenters, a j
 
 34 
 
 large portion of it being actually collected upon cards by the local 
 Dissenting Ministers themselves ! Nor has their interest ceased 
 with the first opening of the schools. ;^ioo was raised for the 
 expenses of maintenance of the first year from a population 
 such as in other parts of London we should think unable to 
 produce £lo, and, I am told, without any difficulty what- 
 ever. In a word, the support of the most impracticable type 
 of population has been thoroughly enlisted on behalf of these 
 schools. 
 rractical Nor is the smooth working of the schools confined to the 
 
 v\>rlhuj of the . _ . _, /-I • /-ii 1 
 
 clause. pecuniary aspect or it, 1 he Conscience Clause has wrought no 
 
 such confusion as has been anticipated from it. The curate who 
 has charge of the school retains the conduct and control of the 
 religious lessons. And prizes for the knowledge of the Cate- 
 chism are given in each standard at the year's end. The method 
 of giving effect to the clause appears to be that the exempted 
 children are set to write out some exercise of a religious 
 character upon their slates while the Catechism class goes on. 
 The parents of eight boys and four girls, or four per cent, of 
 the total number of scholars (300), have claimed the exemption 
 which the clause allows — that is to say, they have said, on 
 bringing the children, or have told the children to say, that 
 they wished them not to learn the Catechism, and even this 
 stipulation was not elicited in the case of all of them till the 
 clergyman, feeling bound to act up to his own promises, instituted 
 an inquiry throughout the school. The demand was scarcely 
 in any case wholly spontaneous. To the objection to this, that 
 if it be so little used it is hardly worth while to make the con- 
 cession, the reply is that which I have given — see the confidence 
 and harmony which it conciliates ! And on the part of the Church 
 authorities, I may add that the gain to them is thus described by 
 Mr. Fowle, who has had experience of a mixed country-town 
 parish with schools on the old footing : — The clergyman is
 
 35 
 
 relieved from the exercise of his discretion, which under the 
 old system was constantly demanded of him ; Dissenters are 
 deprived of a ground of complaint which they otherwise fre- 
 quently take up ; the support and confidence of the lower middle 
 class, that most difficult class of the community, appears to be 
 effectually attracted and secured. 
 
 The first annual report, under the signature of the curate in 
 charge, thus speaks of the success of the experiment : — " The 
 " committee think it right to add that they are perfectly satisfied 
 ** with the working of the Conscience Clause in their trust deed, 
 " whereby the advantages of the school are legally secured to the 
 " children of Dissenting parents, and cannot refrain from express- 
 ** ing a hope that other Church of England schools will more 
 ** largely follow their example." And I believe that other genera- 
 tions besides our own may possibly read the inscription upon the 
 walls of those schools as an unconscious monument of a feud 
 that has burnt itself out, and as marking a turning-point in the 
 history of popular education in England. The dignified record 
 of this successful experiment is as follows : — " To the glory of 
 ** God and for the benefit of the children of the poor of all religious 
 *' denominations, these schools, built mainly by the employers of 
 " labour in the neighbourhood, upon ground given by the 
 " incumbent of the parish, were opened by the Bishop of 
 " London on the 25th day of May, 1 864." 
 
 We will now proceed to examine Archdeacon Denison's 
 " seventeen reasons why the Church of England may have 
 " nothing to do with any manner of Conscience Clause."* 
 
 * I feel convinced that it will not be a waste of trouble to refute 
 these allegations one by one. Strange as it may seem to the statesman 
 or the political student, I believe that many of them will be heard of 
 again in Parliament as well as in Convocation. Indeed, I have been 
 assured by a prominent opponent of the clause, both in and out of 
 Parliament, that he thought only one of them unsatisfactory ! 
 
 D 2
 
 3« 
 
 I. " Because the Church — having agreed in 1839-40, and sub- 
 " sequently in 1847-52, to receive from the State grants towards 
 ** building schools upon the definite basis and express under- 
 ** standing that there was to be no interference of any kind on 
 " the part of the State with the course and order -of her teaching 
 *' in such schools — may not now help the State to do wrong in 
 " setting up a claim so to interfere, and in making the recog- 
 " nition of such claim a condition of grants." 
 
 I understand by these dates the periods at which the original 
 draft trust deeds were under discussion and that during which 
 the Management Clauses controversy was running its course. 
 
 I deny both the " understanding^ and the " interference.^' 
 
 1. As to the "understanding" that there was to be no 
 " interference," I find that the following words were put into 
 the mouth of her Majesty by the Government of the day, in the 
 Order of Council appointing the Committee of Council on Edu- 
 cation : — " Her Majesty's wish that the children and teachers 
 " instructed should be duly trained in the principles of the 
 ** Christian religion, while the rights of conscience should he respected^ 
 This point of respecting conscientious differences of opinion has 
 never been withdrawn ; it has always been kept before the 
 eyes of the Church and the National Society in trust deeds and 
 management clauses. Till the constitution of the Committee of 
 Council, the National Society and the British and Foreign School 
 Society had been unreservedly trusted. When a special board of 
 administration was appointed ad hoc, the point was recognised in 
 the terms of their appointment ; they walked straight up to the 
 difficulty ; they laid hold of it ; they never have, and they never 
 will, let it out of their grasp. An " understanding" that the 
 Church was to do as she pleased with the money given by Parlia- 
 ment for education never was, never could have been, never can 
 be, given. 
 
 2. Next as to the ** interference." Interference in the sense
 
 37 
 
 of attempted modification of the Church's teaching has never 
 been, and I believe never will be, attempted — is certainly not 
 claimed by the Conscience Clause. The spiritual responsibility of 
 the Church has been recognised throughout the correspondence 
 of the Committee of Council, and is asserted in Lord Granville's 
 evidence before the recent committee, as unassailable. The pro- 
 posed Conscience Clause guards and guarantees it in express 
 terms. There is no interference with it at all ; but in order to 
 avoid such interference as might arise (say from having to allow 
 an unbaptised or a lay-baptised child to omit such parts of the 
 Catechism or other formularies as would be simply untrue in his 
 particular case, or other discretionary modification at the instance 
 of an individual objector), a simple demand is made for the 
 exemption y in all cases, of such children from such instruction, if 
 their parents desire it ; and that in return for a definite money 
 consideration y inalienably made for the benefit of ally religious 
 differences notwithstanding. 
 
 2. " Because the Church may not help the State to occupy a Reaam^. 
 ** position hitherto never occupied or pretended to be occupied 
 " in England by the civil power, one which belongs of God's 
 " gift and ordinance to the Church, and which does not belong 
 *' to the civil power by any gift or ordinance either of God or 
 ** man. I mean the position of defining and regulating the 
 " matter and the manner of Christian teaching in parish schools 
 ** or in parish churches." 
 
 The State does not in the Conscience Clause ask the Church Atimer. 
 to help it to do anything of the sort. I pass by the statement 
 that " the position of. defining and regulating the matter and 
 " manner of Christian teaching in parish schools and parish 
 *' churches" " belongs of God's gift and ordinance to the 
 " Church." It is of course, in a certain general sense, true. 
 But it is an oddly verbose amplification of the brief Divine 
 precept — the single sentence of Christ's which is held to cover
 
 38 
 
 the work of the parish school — '* Feed my lambs." And it 
 must in no wise be pressed to the point of contravening that other 
 evangelical maxim of education — may I call it the first Con- 
 science Clause ? — ** Suffer the little children to come unto me" — 
 " Kai fiT} Kb)\v€Te avra^ — hinder them not ! 
 
 Let that pass, however. The State has certainly claimed no 
 such authority in the controverted clause. As to the 7natter of 
 Christian teaching in schools, the State has left, leaves, and 
 expressly proposes to leave, it wholly untouched. The State 
 merely claims as regards the manner of it, to define and regulate 
 certain circumstances in which certain parents may claim that a 
 certain form of that teaching which they disbelieve shall not be 
 taught at all to their children. 
 
 One may add, however — since the Archdeacon has suggested 
 the analogy of " parish churches" — that the State of England — 
 by which I understand the totality of the nation, has gone so 
 far as to " define," or at least to legalise a definition of, what the 
 manner of Christian teaching shall be — at all events so far as to 
 ** regulate" the expression of it in outward act and worship, by 
 legalising the Book of Common Prayer, and by enacting that 
 the matter of the minister's teaching shall not contravene or 
 " deprave" those formularies, or the Articles of Faith appended 
 to them and legalised with them. So that the assumption of 
 defining the manner and also the matter of Christian teaching in 
 schools would be no such unheard-of pretension on the part of 
 the State if it were made. As a matter of fact, however, at 
 present it is not, and the Conscience Clause expressly avoids 
 making it. 
 isonsZaml'i. 3. ** Because the Church may not do harm to the souls of the 
 *' children of the Church by putting before them in her daily 
 " practice that the ' privileges' of a school do not necessarily not 
 ** only include, but flow out of and depend upon, the teaching 
 " of religious truth."
 
 39 
 
 4- " Because the Church may not do harm to the souls of 
 " children not of the Church by putting before them in her daily 
 ** practice that reading, writing, and arithmetic are essential parts 
 " of education, but that religious knowledge, with its close 
 ** application to every part of the daily life, is not." 
 
 I take these two arguments as to the effect of the clause Ammr. 
 upon the two classes of children concerned together. 
 
 Archdeacon Denison is playing with the word ^" privilege." 
 The Committee of Council means by " privileges of the school' 
 its educational advantages of learning and mental cultivation. 
 The Archdeacon means by the word those advantages which 
 undoubtedly result from a direct reference of every good gift to 
 God, and from bringing out the truth that our common right to 
 all the cultivation possible for us, and all other effects of edu- 
 cation, arise from our common membership of Christ. But I 
 do not see that he cannot bring the consideration of these 
 privileges to bear without the Church Catechism or the distinctive 
 doctrines of the Church of England. 
 
 And in. the lower sense of the word " privilege," I maintain 
 that if it is of any advantage to assert that Church teaching is a 
 privilege, this rule providing for exceptions makes it easy to treat 
 it in the very way best calculated to bring out its character as a 
 privilege, and with probably the best results. 
 
 On this point I will ask the Archdeacon to listen to 
 Mr. Chester, who, in a letter to the E?iglish Churchman a 
 dozen years ago, which breathes throughout an air of most 
 sincere and earnest orthodoxy, speaks of the alleged danger to 
 the children themselves from that voluntary exemption of children 
 of Nonconformists from learning the Catechism which was then 
 under discussion : — " I have often heard different anticipations of 
 " the evil that must result to the Church from such a course as 
 " that which I suggest ; but while I never heard of a single case 
 " in which such evils had really occurred, I have heard of many
 
 40 
 
 ** in which excellent results have arisen. Not only have converts 
 ** from Dissent been obtained by this means, but the Church prin- 
 *' ciples of the school have been more clearly defined^ brought into 
 ** reliefs and ingrained in the Church children, in consequence of 
 " the difference of treatment between them and the children of 
 ** Dissent." This surely stands to reason. And if any one 
 replies that, after all, not having to learn the Catechism is certain 
 to be more popular, prized as a greater " privilege," than having 
 to learn it, and that there is more chance of the exempted 
 children pitying the catechised than the catechised the exempted, 
 I would ask him, Did he never see or hear of the effect of setting 
 up a special department or a modern section in an old-fashioned 
 public school ? Surely it would be a long time before Non- 
 conformist children had by any means the best of it in a 
 Church of England school. I am aware that the objection 
 raised goes deeper than this, but I seriously answer the Arch- 
 deacon by saying that he is not called upon by the Conscience 
 Clause to deny that the Catechism is a " privilege" and 
 " essential ;" on the contrary, it gives him the opportunity of 
 putting the " essential" nature of the ** privilege" in the clearest 
 light he can possibly contrive. 
 
 5. " Because the Church may not minister to the delusion that 
 " the reading of the Bible is the same thing with teaching and 
 " learning religious truth." 
 
 The Church is not asked to do so. Nor am I aware that 
 the opinion which the Archdeacon describes as a ** delusion" 
 is ever maintained by the advocates of the Conscience Clause, 
 viz., that bare reading of the Bible is equivalent to teach- 
 ing and learning religious truth. I do not suppose, however, 
 that the Archdeacon means to deny that such reading is a very 
 essential element in that teaching and learning. "We need not, 
 however, discuss it. No clause, no rule, no interpretation has 
 ever limited the religious instruction to reading the bare letter of
 
 41 
 
 the Bible. Even in British and Foreign Schools exposition of it 
 by the master is fully recognised. Indeed, any other rule is not 
 so much absurd as impossible. 
 
 The clause remains in the trust deeds of schools in union 
 with the National Society that the moral and religious super- 
 intendence of the school shall be in the hands of the clergyman, 
 the Society's terms of union remain, that the children " are to be 
 " instructed in the Holy Scriptures j" and, as Mr. Lingen tells 
 Mr. Caparn {supra ^ P* 25), it is only proposed to give parents 
 the right of complaint when such reading and exposition is made 
 use of to inculcate " doctrine which ex hypothesi is that of 
 ** the Church of England, but not that of the parent." And in 
 order to sustain such a complaint, and to bring the school under 
 forfeiture of its grant from the Committee of Council, a trouble- 
 some process of proof must be gone through, which is not at 
 all likely to be undertaken by the class of parents concerned, 
 who are for the most part satisfied with the bare concession of 
 their right in question. In other words, I believe that the Con- 
 science Clause would leave the Scripture lesson the unchallenged 
 domain of the clergyman. * 
 
 At the same time, I see, of course, the point of honour that is 
 raised ; and I can understand men who knew that they were 
 going to expound the third chapter of St. John in the sense of 
 baptismal regeneration, feeling it their duty to remove certain 
 Dissenting children, if they knew them, from the class. Many 
 clergymen, in fact, I know would rather exempt Nonconformist 
 children from all religious instruction whatever than exempt 
 them from learning only part of what they hold as truth. I do 
 not agree with them, but I feel the unsatisfactoriness of their 
 whole position, and I maintain that the unsatisfactoriness, what- 
 ever it is, is in ourselves, and not in the clause — in the Church's 
 actual position, and not in the State's requirements — and that it 
 must be remedied by conciliating the Dissenters to the Church
 
 42 
 
 not by quarrelling with the State for pointing out the unsatis- 
 fiictoriness to us, and requesting us to make an attempt at 
 conciliation. 
 
 6. " Because the Church may not minister to the delusion that 
 *' it is lawful to do that in a parish school which it is not lawful 
 " to do in a parish church." 
 
 I confess I am surprised at this so-called reason, which is 
 to be " proof against argument or sophistry." It does not specify 
 luhat it is that the Archdeacon thinks so wrong in either Church 
 or school. Many things are so, no doubt ; but to say, as these 
 words do say, that ?jothifig may be done in a school that may 
 not be done in a Church is nonsense. Why, then, are the 
 two buildings provided ? But to put the most favourable con- 
 struction on his words — viz., that there are no degrees or quali- 
 fications in the teaching of Christian truth — I ask, did he never 
 hear of special services in a church ^ of sermons directed to one 
 particular_^ kind of audience ? of sermons for children, sermons 
 for men, sermons for women ? Did he never, to come nearer 
 the point, hear of " economy" in preaching ?* Did he never hear 
 of the diiFerence between the jideles and the catechumens ? If 
 distinction between children and children in the school is wrong, 
 at least it cannot be so because such a distinction was never 
 heard of or admitted in the Church ! 
 
 7. " Because the Church may not place the parish priest in 
 " the false position of superintending secular education in the 
 " case of any one child in the parish school." 
 
 She does not do it, and she is not asked to do it. She binds 
 him, through the National Society, " to superintend the moral and 
 ** religious instruction of the children." The State binds him to 
 
 * For this argument fully worked out see The Conscienee Clause : Its 
 Meaning, Its Authority, Its Use, by the Rev. D. Melville, Rector of 
 Great Witley (Rivingtons), whom I might have added to my clerical 
 advocates of the clause (v. post, p. 69) had I seen his pamphlet before 
 these pages were penned.
 
 43 
 
 exempt certain children from certain parts of it, never from the 
 whole. I have allowed that I can realise a case in which a clergy- 
 man might prefer to teach a child no religion at all to seeming to 
 exercise any reserve in his teaching. But I own that it seems to 
 me exactly a case for the exercise of that practical philosophy 
 which holds (I mean nothing offensive by the quotation) — 
 
 « That he's a fool 
 Who does not know the half is better than the whole." 
 
 Better, I believe, because the " half" measure of exempting some 
 children from inapplicable or unwelcome teaching is better than 
 the coveted " whole" of teaching all of them doctrine which is 
 untrue to some, or disapproved by the parents of some ; better, 
 because symmetry of system is often a snare, and induces com- 
 placency where none is justifiable, whereas the very occurrence 
 of these rare exceptions, which prove the general rule, will 
 reveal to the Christian minister and set him to grapple with the 
 mischief which produces them, but which he has no right to 
 ignore, nor to coerce to his will. 
 
 8. "Because the Church may not place the parish school- J?eason 8. 
 " master in the false position of separating between the religious 
 " and the secular teaching of the school." 
 
 Nevertheless, I suppose he does separate them. They are Answer. 
 not, cannot be, taught together. Of course I know their 
 abstract connection, but in the practical mechanism of an 
 individual school I suppose there is no help for their taking 
 different positions on the time-table, no means of obviating the 
 necessary orders, *' Close spelling-books : Catechism class, come 
 up !" And with this inevitable line drawn in practice, I am 
 wholly unable to see the deep departure from good principles 
 in the master's adding, "A, B, C, D, take your slates, and 
 " write out a psalm or hymn from memory, while the others 
 " say their lesson." It is notorious that the much-debated Cate- 
 chism is the only one formula likely to be excepted to, and I do
 
 44 
 
 maintain that it is over-sensitiveness, a misplaced sense of honour, 
 which is loath to teach the Bible where it may not teach the 
 Catechism — which will not allow sectarian prejudices to lie at 
 rest when they would — which will not let the schoolmaster, 
 being a Churchman, teach like a Churchman while he may, 
 ignoring, except in certain specified particulars, the differences of 
 religious opinion. It is the very spirit which produces Dissent 
 in the first instance, which will not let it die a natural death 
 when it might do so. No doubt this practice might be incon- 
 venient, no doubt it would bear witness to something wrong 
 somewhere -, but let us fight the mischief, not the evidence of it. 
 
 9. " Because the Church of England may not of her own act 
 ** and deed place herself in a position at which the Church of 
 " Rome can justly point the finger of scorn as untrue and 
 " faithless — in one word, as un-Catholic." 
 
 10. " Because the Church may not seek or hope to win the 
 *' respect and confidence of the Nonconformist by being faithless 
 " to her trust." 
 
 It is not because I am insensible to the importance of 
 standing well in the eyes of any Christians that I own myself 
 impatient of this nervous reference to the criticism of the Church 
 of Rome — i.e., of Roman Catholics in England. I will not say 
 that Rome's finger of scorn would be a tribute to the sound- 
 ness of our position, but I do protest against the notion that the 
 Church of Rome is to be looked to as having the right to acquit 
 or condemn us. Let her see us cease to emulate her own 
 exclusiveness ; let her hear us rebuke her ludicrous inversion of 
 her own noble name of Catholic ; let her learn from our tone 
 and from our policy that it is only Greek for universal. 
 
 However, let the Church of Rome point as many " fingers 
 " of scorn," and call us as ** un-Catholic" as she pleases, she 
 cannot do it with consistency on this point. The distinction 
 between secular and religious instruction is recognised in the 
 fullest terms in the Minute (of Dec. 18, 1847) under which a
 
 45 
 
 Roman Catholic school is admitted to aid. Art. 2, "That 
 ** Roman Catholic schools receiving aid from the Parliamentary 
 ** grant be open to inspection, but that the inspectors report re- 
 ** specting the secular instruction onlyT And this is acted on 
 without difficulty or complaint, and a late Roman Catholic 
 inspector, T. A. Marshall, Esq., describes the working of it in 
 a Report to the Committee of Council (Vol. II., 1848-9-50, 
 p. 520) in terms which not only recognise to the full the main 
 principle of the Conscience Clause (viz., parental responsibility 
 and authority), but indicate a practice which goes far beyond it, 
 and, in fact, corresponds in principle with the American system, 
 which relegates all religious instruction to the Church and the 
 Sunday-school : — 
 
 " The universal rule is (for I have not met with a single 
 ** exception), that in no case do they receive religious instruction 
 ** without the express sanction or request of their parents, and 
 ** that either they are at liberty to absent themselves from the 
 ** school altogether, when it is communicated, or else the Catholic 
 *^ children are ivithdraivn to some convenient place — commonly to 
 ** the church or chapel — in order to be instructed apart." And 
 the same gentleman, in his evidence before the Education 
 Commission,* asserts that discretionary exemption of some 
 children from religious instruction is the rule — a rule which is 
 equally obnoxious to Archdeacon Denison's condemnation with 
 the Conscience Clause itself. For he repudiates, and in his own 
 practice refuses to exercise, not only the form and manner of the 
 concession embodied in the clause, but the thing itself, no matter 
 in what shape. 
 
 Question No. l^S3y h ^^'^' ^' ^- ^^^^' — " Does the Roman 
 ** Catholic Church by its authorities lay down any stringent rule 
 " that it is necessary for children receiving the secular education at 
 *' a Roman Catholic school to receive the religious education also?** 
 
 * Report of Royal Commissioners on Education. Vol. VI., p. 176.
 
 4« 
 
 Answer 1354. — ** No ; it leaves a discretion to the local 
 " managers, who either impose the leligious instruction or not, 
 " as they think fit." 
 
 All this may be very " untrue" and very ** faithless," but as 
 a matter of fact the Roman Catholic body in England does 
 act in this " un-Catholic" way, and inquiries have satisfied me 
 that this exemption is honestly exercised to a large extent. The 
 number of Protestant children in Roman Catholic schools is 
 surprising, and though it would be absurd not to suppose that 
 many converts are thus made, still it is not the uniform result. 
 Pupil-teachers have entered Roman schools as Protestants, and 
 left them as Protestants.* And I heard the other day a good 
 story in illustration of the system. A Roman Catholic clergy- 
 man was going a journey, and the Sister in charge of his school 
 
 said to the children, " Let us all say a prayer for Father 's 
 
 ** safe voyage and return." " That I won't," said one urchin, 
 " for mother told me when I come to pray for nobody but God !" 
 I quote this, not as a proof of the orthodoxy of the domestic 
 theology of all Protestant parents, but in evidence of the kind of 
 freedom which is practised and tolerated in Roman Catholic 
 schools. And I have seen it shrewdly suggested that it might 
 be quite possible to induce the Roman Catholic body to outbid 
 the Church of England as the " denomination" readiest to educate 
 Nonconformist children under cover of a Conscience Clause. It 
 would be odd policy for the Church of England to profess herself 
 less free or less disposed to accept it. Rome is certainly no more 
 prepared to say that she cannot teach spelling and ciphering 
 without teaching the Immaculate Conception than she is to 
 recognise the infallibility of the Archdeacon of Taunton. 
 
 As to Nonconformists, I should be glad that the Church of 
 England should have their respect and confidence, of course -, 
 
 * Ibid, p. 175.
 
 but I do not believe they would give it her, and if they would, 
 I only know ske must not have ity for maintaining that, to be 
 faithful to her trust, she is bound to teach all Christian 
 children doctrines which some Christian parents do not wish 
 them to learn. 
 
 II. "Because the Church may not do anything to compro- Beason 11. 
 ** mise the principle that, without the steady inculcation of dogma, 
 ** school teaching is no blessing to parent or child, but the 
 ** reverse." 
 
 Whether she may do so or not, I am inclined to think that Answer. 
 the Church of England has done, and is doing, a good deal to 
 compromise this principle. And I do not believe she will retrace 
 her steps because Archdeacon Denison says she must. Nor can 
 the National Society, considering her licence — nay, recommenda- 
 tion — to managers to suspend the " steady inculcation of dogma" 
 at their own discretion, escape the terrific imputation ! {Supra, 
 p. 19.) "Steady inculcation of dogma" is not the basis nor 
 the method of education among any Protestant Christians, nor 
 among many Roman Catholic Christians, nor do I think it is 
 likely increasingly to become so among ourselves. Of course, 
 the very words set modern teeth on edge — " steady incul- 
 " cation of dogma." But allowing for the irritating sound of 
 them, and recognising the scintilla of truth which they embody 
 — viz., that you must teach children something — I maintain 
 that reading and explaining the Bible will supply you with 
 all necessary and reasonable opportunities for teaching children 
 Christian truth, and I even venture to think that training 
 children upon such " steady inculcation of dogma" as you can 
 find in the Gospel history, and teaching them such catechisms of 
 Christian doctrine as are to be drawn from the Sermon on the 
 Mount and from the parables and discourses of our Lord, may 
 possibly be productive of as much " blessing," both to parents and 
 children, as even the admirable compilation of Bishop Overall.
 
 48 
 
 12. ** Because the Church knows that there are two things 
 " in the matter which she may and must do. First, bring up her 
 " own children in the one faith, to do their duty in that station 
 ** of life to which God has called them. Second, bring children 
 " who are not yet her own to be of the one faith.** 
 
 13. " Because the Church knows that there is one thing in 
 " the matter which she may not do — i.e., teach any child anything 
 ** apart from or independent of the one faith." 
 
 These two reasons, which I take together, are imposing 
 from the sound of the words, *' the one faith ;*' but they are 
 also imposing in another sense. Granted that the " one thing 
 *.' which the Church may and must do for her own children" is 
 to " bring them up in the one faith, and to do their duty in 
 " that station of life to which God has called them." There is 
 here no question of her duty towards her own children. The 
 Conscience Clause only affects her conduct to those who are not 
 her own. As to them. Archdeacon Denison says, " Second, 
 ** to bring children who are not yet her own to be of the one 
 «* faith." 
 
 It is impossible to discuss now all that may or may not 
 be included under the phrase, " the one faith." It is enough 
 to reply, that to proselytise is not the one thing which the 
 National Church may and must do towards children not yet 
 of her own faith. The Archdeacon may say that he is not 
 talking of the National Church, but of the Catholic Church. He 
 is talking expressly and exclusively of the duty of a National 
 Church ; but never mind that. I deny that it is the duty of any 
 one branch of the Christian Church to proselytise from another. 
 He surely will not say that English Dissenters are in no sense 
 members of the Christian Church ! If they are not, then are 
 Roman Catholics in England in no sense members of it ? Or are 
 Roman Catholics in England better members of the Church than 
 Protestant Dissenters .? or is the Church of England alone the
 
 49 
 
 Catholic Church ? Be this as it may, if proselytism were never 
 so sacred a duty, it would never be right to associate it with 
 education or any other external good. For that reduces it to 
 mere commonplace bribery, which, as such, is repugnant to 
 every upright mind. 
 
 As to the second position, that the Church " may not teach 
 ** any child anything apart from, or independent of, the one 
 " faith," we may at once refuse to be misled by any such high- 
 sounding phrase. She does so already ; she must do so always. 
 Spelling is " apart" from the faith, sewing is wholly " inde- 
 ** pendent" of it. The only question is, how far it is possible 
 and lawful to carry that distinction between sacred and secular 
 learning which every one well knows to exist. The difficulty 
 will not be solved by confounding the two spheres of knowledge 
 together with a view to rhetorical effect. What I wish to im- 
 press upon Archdeacon Denison and his followers is this — that 
 their resolute refusal to recognise any such distinction is likely to 
 drive, has driven, and is driving, many zealous educationists into 
 the support of purely secular education. If the religious difficulty 
 is hindering the work of education, then, they say, away with 
 the religious difficulty ; limit religion to the Church and the 
 Sunday-school, and give an education uninterrupted by sectarian 
 interests. I am far from accepting this solution. I believe the 
 public mind is farther still from adopting it. But I know whose 
 fault it will be if it is adopted. 
 
 14. " Because it is one thing to admit a child of Dissenting Beason 14. 
 ** parents into a Church school according to the discretion of the 
 *' managers for the time being, and then and there to teach it 
 ** the one faith ; and another and an opposite thing to have the 
 " child intruded there, as of right, to be taught no faith at all." 
 
 I have the fear of being accused of *' discreditable " trickery" Aimaer. 
 before my eyes, but I must paraphrase Mr. Lingen's answer, and 
 say, ** Of course it is ; if it were otherwise, this * controversy' 
 
 £
 
 5^ 
 
 ** would be unnecessary." The question Is, why Is ** teaching 
 ** the one faith" compatible with voluntary exemption of Dis- 
 senting children, and incompatible with it when enforced ? 
 Other clergymen who object to the Conscience Clause admit 
 that in the exercise of their discretion they admit Dissenters* 
 children, and exempt them from part of their religious instruc- 
 tion. The National Society has actually said that to bind 
 themselves not to do so is inconsistent with their terms of union, 
 which permit such discretion. (By the way, does Archdeacon 
 Denison keep his school in union .?) These are the proper people 
 to answer the Archdeacon here. "What do they do ? what do they 
 teach ? what do they omit .'' I have told you what those who 
 admit the Conscience Clause do, and I maintain that they are able 
 to teachf and do teach, the one faith of Christ. Equally must 
 those who make this exemption at their own discretion be able 
 to do the same thing. Archdeacon Denison seems to admit as 
 much, but the admission neutralises his objection to the clause, 
 which in that case only enforces what the Archdeacon allows. 
 But, in point of fact, this reason is the most limited and local in 
 Its bearing of them all. Its statement in its integrity really applies 
 only to the parish of East Brent. ** The discretion of managers 
 " for the time being" means there Church-of-England-baptism 
 or exclusion. The Archdeacon will have no child unbaptised, 
 or lay-baptised, in his school.* He can teach no child all or any 
 part of the faith, till he is baptised into the Church of England. 
 But as he is in a minority of one on this point, it may be passed 
 over at present. Archdeacon Denison is so convinced of his 
 right to the attitude of " Athanasius ,'' (or shall I say Cyril ?) 
 *' contra mundum^ — that he is, as he boasts, proof " against 
 ** argument or sophistry," and I dare say also against the familiar 
 satire which this ** reason" so strongly suggests : " Sic volo, sic 
 **jubeo, stet pro ratione voluntas.^' 
 
 * See Report of Select Committee on Education, Q. 3693 — 3708.
 
 51 
 
 One word on the last sentence in the reason. Nothing is 
 said in the clause to bind the clergyman to teach " no faith at 
 ** all." He is only not to teach the child that doctrine to which 
 the parent conscientiously objects. Legally, he is only bound 
 not to teach what can be proved to be distinctive doctrine of the 
 Church of England, as against the particular sect to which the 
 parent of the child belongs. Practically, it comes to an em-^ 
 bargo on certain parts of the Church Catechism. And that a 
 clergyman cannot teach the Christian faith without the Church 
 Catechism I wholly deny. The risk of taking unintentional ad- 
 vantage of the confidence of parents would be met by a general 
 avowal to such parents, ** Your child will be taught with the 
 ** rest in the Bible lesson ; I can make no difference beyond 
 ** what is in the bond — viz., exempting him from learning the 
 ** distinctive formularies, the Catechism and the Articles." In 
 ninety-nine cases out of a hundred no further objection would 
 be made. In nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand — 
 should they arise — the complaint, if made, could never be 
 substantiated. 
 
 15. " Because the Church may not allow the denominational Beasonis. 
 " system, which is the only system upon which it is possible 
 " for her to co-operate with the State in respect of education, 
 " and upon which all the proceedings of the Committee of 
 " Council were based from 1839 to 1858, to be impaired by 
 ** the establishment of a new order of Church schools,* which 
 " shall be neither denominational nor undenominational, but a 
 " confusion of both, and possessing no principle save that of 
 ** secular education.** 
 
 * "When, according to the expressed desire of the present Loid 
 " President of the Council, the " Conscience Clause" shall have been 
 " extended and applied to the annual grants, as well as to the building 
 " grants, it will be a/I the schools of the Church of England connected 
 " with the Committee of Council, and not only some of thauy which shall 
 " have no principle but that of secular education." 
 
 E 2
 
 52 
 
 1 . The Conscience Clause does not impair the denominational 
 system. It does not otherwise than by exemption of individual 
 children interfere with the religious teaching of the schools " as 
 " fixed by these presents." That " these presents" fix it as a 
 Church of England school for ever, no one denies, or can 
 deny. What religious teaching is given is and must be Church 
 of England teaching. 
 
 2. But it does one thing to the denominational system — // 
 touches it at its weak point. All systems have their weak points. 
 I think we have seen to-night several systems that have weak 
 points : the National Church itself — possibly even the National 
 Society. The weak point of the denominational principle is its ten- 
 dency to the unnecessary multiplication of schools. This, and this 
 alone, the Conscience Clause aims to counteract, and counteracts. 
 
 3. I do not say, with Archdeacon Denison, that the denomi- 
 national principle is the only one upun which it is possible for 
 the Church to co-operate with the State in education. I do not 
 say that it is not so. I believe that the denominational principle, 
 modified by the Conscience Clause, will last us a long while. 
 But I do ask, in anticipation of what I shall say in conclusion, 
 is the Church so enamoured of the name of a " denomination* 
 that she cannot bear to have her claim to it ^^ impaired T — that 
 she dreads and resists being proved to be something larger, 
 something higher, something more comprehensive ? 
 
 4. To state that Church schools with a Conscience Clause 
 possess no principle but that of secular education is simply a 
 misstatement. Their religious, if you will their denomina- 
 tional character, remains. They only undertake, for the sake of 
 a great practical advantage to their children and to themselves, 
 to make exceptions in the application of their religious system 
 in favour of those to whom it does not practically apply. 
 
 5. Lord Granville's "expressed wish" that the principle of 
 the Conscience Clause be extended to the annual grants as well 
 as to building grants is just an illustration of the gradual progress
 
 53 
 
 of the principle in question. Of course it must be so extended. 
 There is no reason whatever (none with even a show of reason, 
 except that which would object to it as a piece of retrospective 
 legislation — an objection which is soon disposed of) why the 
 interests and rights of Nonconformists should not be guarded in 
 schools already built as well as in those to be built hereafter. It 
 is this which makes it so desirable that the National Society and 
 the Church's authorities generally should agree with the Com- 
 mittee of Council in a form of stipulation to which our school 
 manageis can assent in a body, or at least in large numbers, and 
 save the agitation of arguing with them and defeating them in 
 detail. None who accept the principle of the clause can fail to 
 wish to see it generally adopted at once,* for it will relieve the 
 Church from the imputation of exclusiveness, or of want of zeal 
 for education. It will remove the actual stimulus which the 
 Church herself now gives to dissent by this grievance. And it 
 will at least make clear for the future what the really distinctive 
 doctrines of the Church of England are — Charity, Common Sense, 
 and Education. 
 
 1 6. " Because to do all or any of these things is not to preserve Beason 16. 
 " and cherish, but to impair, and ultimately to destroy, the true 
 *' relations of Church and State, and therein to mar their power 
 ** and co-operation." 
 
 This is the most serious of all Archdeacon Denison's Armoer, 
 objections, and it is because I regard it as at once the most 
 important and the most mistaken, that I have dealt with it 
 at length elsewhere as well as here. I beg leave to offer 
 the assurance of my sincere respect and gratitude to the 
 venerable Archdeacon for the way in which he has, when others 
 
 * Mr. Melville, already referred to, says, " Because it is right, and 
 " in the interests of the Church herself, I would gladly see it eveiy- 
 
 ** where I regret . . that a Church system with universal 
 
 " Conscience Clauses was not, rather than the Denomination^, the 
 "original system acted upon." (Pp. 15, 16.)
 
 54 
 
 have talked of Erastianism and Free Churches — and some have 
 actually seceded from us on the ground of such objections — 
 held fast with an Englishman's tenacity to the doctrine that a 
 close alliance of the civil and spiritual power is a vast blessing 
 to a Christian country, and, if I understand him rightly, has held 
 — as I certainly hold myself — that in some shape such a relation 
 of some kind is inevitable in a highly-organised and widely- 
 cultivated society. I allow that there is a question what is the 
 best relation of the two powers for ourselves in England at the 
 present day. The question is, perhaps, more likely to come up 
 for discussion than it has been for many years. I quite allow 
 that the present relations of Church and State are not a little 
 endangered by this very controversy. The State means to extend 
 elementary education to all classes of the community. The State 
 has again and again expressed its willingness — nay, its intention 
 — to give this education a religious character. The State still 
 intends this. To effect it, it has hitherto intrusted each religious 
 denomination with the education of its own children. That 
 system now discovers — indeed, has discovered from the first- 
 symptoms of coming to a dead-lock. The Church might have 
 taken the whole system into her own control from the com- 
 mencement had she seen the opportunity, and used it aright. 
 In its perplexity, the State again appeals to the Church in the 
 first instance to solve the difficulty, to undertake the education 
 of those who cannot otherwise be provided for, or who can be 
 far better provided for in this way than in any other. Again, a 
 golden opportunity is placed in the Church's hands to show 
 herself a true nursing-mother to her children. If it is lost, 
 much more if it is thrown away, contemptuously rejected. 
 Parliament will not be diverted from its purpose, and, though 
 on exactly opposite grounds, I agree with the Archdeacon, that 
 the relations of Church and State in England will be seriously 
 '* impaired" — indeed, that the continued establishment of the 
 present Church of England will be very greatly endangered. That
 
 ss 
 
 some religious organisation will never cease to have pre-eminence, 
 and to be in some way associated with the State, in this re- 
 ligiously-disposed and highly-cultivated country, I fully believe. 
 My point is that any change may so easily be a change for the 
 worse. The supremacy of the civil over the ecclesiastical 
 organisation will never be relaxed. It is not relaxed in other 
 countries, though very differently organised, both religiously and 
 politically, from our own. The French Government asserts 
 itself by forbidding the publication of Bishops' pastoral letters. 
 The Italian Government will not nominate Bishops to please the 
 Pope, nor pay the Bishops whom the Pope nominates. The 
 Portuguese and Spanish Governments suppress convents and 
 monasteries by the score, and sequestrate millions of Church 
 property, and the latter Government imprisons a fanatical nun 
 who exerts political influence. Even America talks of the 
 secular arm for the suppression of Mormonite disorder, and will 
 have to employ it. Nor will England, where " Freedom slowly 
 broadens down from precedent to precedent," forget her history, 
 and consent to be baffled by the Church. Ecclesiastical supre- 
 macy is gone for ever. It is a question only of the extent and 
 the mode of adapting Church organisation to this accomplished 
 fact. One detail of this adaptation is under discussion in Eng- 
 land now, in the shape of the Conscience Clause, and I agree 
 with Archdeacon Denison that no small part of our ecclesiastical 
 and religious future depends upon the Church's answer. 
 
 17. " Because the Church may not hope for a blessing upon Reason 17. ; 
 " expedients when brought into the place of principles ; nor may J 
 
 ** allow any amount of real, much less of supposed, difficulties, 
 *' to make her lose faith in her position or compromise her ' 
 
 " trust." ! 
 
 I. Let me take the less important points in this objection Ansmr. 
 first. The ** difficulties" are not " supposed" only, they are 
 real. Correspondence has flowed into the Council Office, 1 
 
 deputations have attended there, to complain of the hardship
 
 56 
 
 arising to Dissenters. In evidence at once of this and of the 
 moderation of the Council Office, and of the characteristic 
 endeavour of English statesmen to stave off the discussion of a 
 troublesome question as long as temporary arrangements would 
 suffice, I will read an extract from the Minute of June 28, 1847, 
 from which it will appear that my lords said, in fact, that they 
 were very sorry for the Dissenters, that they did not want to 
 press the Church, and that they would see what else could be 
 done. Of course nothing but a Conscience Clause could be done. 
 
 But this is the way they tried to deal with it in 1847, in 
 reply to a deputation from the Wesleyan body : — 
 
 " Their lordships greatly regret that the children of Dis- 
 ** senters are not admissible into Church of England schools 
 " without these requirements, and they would rejoice in a change 
 " in the regulations of such schools providing for their ad- 
 " mission. 
 
 " While, on the other hand, my lords regard with respect 
 " and solicitude the scruples which religious parents among the 
 " poor may feel to permit their children to learn the Catechism 
 ** of the Church of England, they have felt themselves precluded 
 ** from insisting upon a condition which might at once exclude 
 ** Church of England schools, or at least the majority of them, 
 ** from the advantages to be derived under the Minutes of 
 ** Council. 
 
 *' Their lordships hope that much may be expected from a 
 ** careful review of the civil and political relations of the school, 
 ** which has not at any previous period been so fully acknow- 
 ** ledged to be a national institution. Regarded in this light, 
 ** their lordships cannot but hope that the clergy and laity of the 
 ** Church of England will admit that the view they take of the 
 ** obligations resting upon them as to the inculcation of religious 
 " truth must be limited by their duty to recognise the state of 
 '* the law as to the toleration of diversities in religious belief.
 
 57 
 
 " and especially in those who, on the basis of the Apostles' 
 ** Creed, approach so nearly as the Wesleyan Communion do, in 
 " doctrine, to the Church of England." * 
 
 2. Next, what is the " position" in which the Church is not 
 to " lose faith ?" What is the " trust" which she is not to 
 ** compromise ?" Archdeacon Denison says it is the " position'' 
 of bringing children not yet of her faith to be of her own faith ; 
 the trust of " steadily inculcating dogma" at whatever cost of 
 division and separation. I venture to maintain, on the other 
 hand, that the only position calculated to inspire unshakeable faith 
 is that which holds that the truth will find its way, whether one 
 Church force it on the children of another Church or not, and 
 all the more if she does not so force it ; and that the most sacred, 
 and, indeed, the paramount trust of the Church, which she may 
 never compromise, is that of so inculcating doctrine that her 
 children may ** hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of 
 " peace, and in righteousness of life." 
 
 3. Religious liberty and its correlative, religious toleration, 
 are not expedients, but principles-]- — principles of the first mag- 
 
 * This extract is actually relied upon by Archdeacon Denison, 
 to prove that in 1847 the Lords of the Council bound themsehes 
 to maintain their present form of relation with the Church of 
 England schools ! Of all documents to which finality was ever 
 imputed, this is surely the one which has least internal evidence 
 of intending it. It breathes throughout a tone of dissatisfaction with 
 the existing system ; and while it avows that hitherto my lords 
 " have felt themselves precluded" from pressing the stipulation on the 
 Church, it expresses " the hope that much may be expected" (in other 
 words, that continued acquiescence in the existing state of things 
 was the last thing thought of), and actually ends with the hint of a 
 compromise for which the Conscience Clause is the shape eventually 
 devised. 
 
 "j" Mr. Lefevre, in the Fortnightly Revleiu (December I, 1865), 
 has remarked justly that few persons are aware of the extent to which 
 the principles of religious equality and toleration are involved in the
 
 58 
 
 nitude, at least as much so as respect for religious truth. It is, 
 therefore a question not of subordinating principles to expe- 
 dients, but of balancing principles ; and that question is as old 
 as the Gospel, as old as the world. Life is one long course of 
 it. To complain of a Government for forcing the task upon us 
 is to complain of the fate which governs human things. The 
 Church has to do to-day what she has often had to do before, 
 and will often have to do again ; what, moreover, she has 
 abundant maxims and precedents to guide her in doing. Were 
 1 it not, as I have already argued, and as I firmly believe it to be, 
 
 ' a case in which the Church is bounds on her own principles and 
 
 . for her own sake, to comply with the State's demand in this 
 
 instance, it would yet come within the scope of those maxims of 
 concession to the " powers that be" of which, and in not less 
 important particulars, St. Paul's epistles are so full ; it would 
 still be open to settlement on the principles of the Divine Arbi- 
 trator who held the balance so evenly between conflicting claims 
 (which these, I repeat, really are not), and who laid down that 
 inexhaustible law of Church and State which, as I shall no 
 doubt be told, can still be quoted on both sides — " Render unto 
 Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that 
 are God's." 
 Certain points IV. I have now Set forth the history of the Conscience 
 
 ':^ principle. 
 
 Clause, and have attempted to deal with the two principal 
 
 assaults upon it, which have been concerned respectively with its 
 
 terms and its effect. In so doing, I have had occasion, as I 
 
 foresaw, to discuss incidentally most of the points of principle 
 
 involved in it. There remain, however, one or two arguments 
 
 arising from a consideration of the office of a National Church, 
 
 clause, or of the severity of the battle which has yet to be fought for 
 them on other fields as well as on this. His brief but pointed article 
 upon the Conscience Clause is an excellent statement of the case from" 
 the Pai liamentary point of view.
 
 59 
 
 and of the present situation of our own Church in relation to 
 the country at large, which I must state as briefly as I can. 
 
 I. The example of the working of the clause which I have C(mi)rehen»ion, i 
 cited of course suggests the point of secondary principle that I 
 am really most anxious to bring out. Such is the kind of effect 
 that in town parishes, as well as in country parishes, I look for 
 from the operation of the clause. It symbolises in a word that 
 historic cry so often raised in the Church of England — hitherto 
 raised to so little purpose — the cry of Comprehension. I have 
 already said how far I am from aspiring after proselytism, how 
 fully I am convinced that it is the last thing to which the Con- 
 science Clause will lend itself. But does it not suggest a policy 
 of superiority to proselytism ? Does it not indicate a Christian 
 basis of education which shall leave the mutual conflicts of the 
 Churches outside of its inclosure, which shall even act as a dis- 
 couragement to those scandalous conflicts themselves ? Is it not 
 possible, it seems to ask, to make an effort to include some of 
 the many Christian children, if not also Christian parents, who 
 are now outside the Established pale ? Is there any reason in 
 the nature of things why the English Church and nation should 
 continue to be what it is — a microcosm of all the religious 
 differences and disorders of Christendom ? The trial of such 
 an experiment as this, the story of such a success as I have just 
 related,* lends some strength to the hopes of those who are ready 
 to declare that, cost what minor concessions it may, the present 
 attitude of strife, and mutual jealousy, the refusal to co-operate 
 for the most obvious common good, may nut and shall not long 
 continue between the various bodies of English Christians. 
 
 Of course we can never look for the total extinction of 
 Dissent. I do not cherish a Utopian dream of unity, or rather 
 of uniformity. But Is It not a Christian object to reduce non- 
 conformity to a minimum ? No doubt, just as in the political 
 
 ♦ F. supray p. 33.
 
 6o 
 
 organisation, the Opposition, criticising, arresting, modifying 
 the course of the dominant party, supplies that force of friction 
 without which movement is impossible, so the attitude of the 
 Nonconformist Churches does supply a stimulus, not wholly 
 devoid of good effect, to the zeal, the learning, and even the 
 spiritual tone of the established religion. But surely the 
 Christian religion supplies something more, something far other 
 than this mere balance of forces, to the life of a Christian 
 country ? Should it not rather supply the solvent of common 
 faith and hope to all the conflicting interests of our common 
 life ? Should it not rather be the meeting-point for all sorts 
 knd conditions of men ? Should not its outward organisation, 
 so far as so spiritual an influence can be organised at all, be such 
 as to secure the greatest amount of the advantages it affords to 
 the greatest number of the community ? And is not education, 
 symbolising as it does, and inducing as it does, that idea of 
 human dignity, that desire for mental and moral cultivation 
 which has its root in the common belief of all Christians, one of 
 those " advantages" which should command the concurrence 
 and secure the co-operation of every good Christian citizen, be 
 his opinions what they may ? Is it not one for the furtherance of 
 which Catholic and Protestant, Churchman and Dissenter, may 
 well endeavour to combine, or the State at least may well 
 endeavour to induce them to do so ? Of course that lofty view 
 of the identity of Church and State in which the two words are 
 regarded only as two names for one and the same body viewed 
 in different relations, which finds such noble expression in 
 Hooker, and which has fascinated so many of oui greatest 
 statesmen and divines, requires many — alas, how many ! — quali- 
 fications to make it even intelligible to the politicians of to-day. 
 Yet surely it represents the true idea of Church and State — the 
 true standard at which we should aim — the true ground-plan 
 of the Christian nation, demanding the utmost expansion of the
 
 6i 
 
 National Church, the corresponding narrowing of sectarian 
 organisation. 
 
 All theological considerations apart, is not a National Church The National 
 
 \ 1 LILT did 
 
 in great measure the national organisation for the purposes of 
 education ? Is she not the trustee of what Coleridge calls the 
 national " reserve fund" for moral and spiritual purposes ? 
 Other duties and relationships, of course, the Church has as 
 one of the subordinate organisations of the Christian body. 
 There is not, nor ever has been, any risk of these being for- 
 gotten or neglected in England ; and this question of the 
 Conscience Clause does not in reality touch any of these 
 spiritual responsibilities of the Church. It is hard, at least, to 
 understand how a Church can maintain that its prerogatives of 
 religious teaching are invaded when the fundamental provision 
 of the trust deed of every one of her schools must be one 
 which, directly or indirectly, lays down that " the Bible must be 
 ** taught," and when she is only asked to exempt, not from the 
 teaching of the Bible, but from the learning of certain of 
 her special formularies, or from the inculcation of tl^^e charac- 
 teristic doctrines of those formularies, the children of Dis- 
 senting parents who express their conscientious desire to have 
 them so far exempted. The request is only made where other 
 provision for their education is impossible or unreasonable ; 
 and it is made of a body specially pledged to make her institu- 
 tions as comprehensive as possible. Is it, I ask, so light a 
 thing, so mean a privilege, to have the position of a national 
 arbitrator, so to speak, in matters of religion -, to be able to 
 offer a meeting-point for the various schools of theology in 
 the country ; to be able to deal a silent but effectual blow at 
 the multiplication of sects, and the spread of schism ; to be 
 the strong right hand of the nation in drawing together the 
 parted strands of our weakened and divided faith, in holding 
 open the wide door of charity to our scattered flocks, whereby
 
 62 
 
 many of her now alienated children may go in and at least 
 find education, that our Church should lightly abandon it, and 
 throw away this happiest opportunity that has of late years 
 been offered to her of exercising her noblest functions wisely 
 and well ? 
 
 2. Secondly, I call attention to the extent and strength of Dis- 
 sent at this moment in England, and suggest the policy of coun- 
 teracting it, not by forcible resistance, but by conciliation, and 
 by disarming it of every reasonable ground of complaint against 
 us. In this point of view the question raised by the Conscience 
 Clause is not, indeed, a question of theological conflict with 
 Dissenters, but it does raise unavoidably the question. Is not 
 non-conformity arrived at proportions among us which place 
 the matter in a very practical light indeed ? I do not, of course, 
 venture to rely on the only statistics that we possess — those of 
 Mr. Mann. But bating considerably from these, putting the 
 maximum of Protestant Dissenters at one-fourth, and assigning 
 one-twelfth of the population to Roman Catholics and Jews — 
 all of these probably most moderate computations — although the 
 total which they reach is that of one-third of the population alien 
 to the National Church (and there is reason to fear that the 
 Nonconformist element is far larger*), I ask, is it a time, is it a 
 situation, to stand out for exclusive recognition, or even eccle- 
 siastical primacy, not only as the appointed way of salvation, 
 
 * The basis of Mr. Mann's Religious Census is the provision of each 
 denomination for religious worship. This, as has been often pointed 
 out, may be easily fallacious as to the actual numbers of the denomination 
 in question, especially in the case of the Established Church, which may 
 fairly be credited (whether to her praise or otherwise I will not say) 
 with all who claim no other spiritual provision. But the fact is signifi- 
 cant that "in the whole of England and Wales, for every lOO sittings 
 "provided by the Church of England, Dissenters furnish 93 !" (Mr. 
 Mann's Report, p. 75.)
 
 <53 
 
 but even of elementary education, exclusively on the basis of our 
 own doctrinal formularies ? At all events, can we wonder that 
 the State, or at least a large section of the country, and an 
 important school in Parliament, begin to grudge us, in the face of 
 this unyielding exclusiveness, in spite of the existing state of 
 things, some of that consideration and pre-eminence which we 
 have so long enjoyed, and which I hope and believe that our 
 Church will always retain ? In the matter of education, at least, 
 it is small wonder that we find the National Church severely 
 criticised for her claims to receive State aid in the work of edu- 
 cation, and yet to be allowed to ignore the Nonconformist element 
 in the population, the existence of which is at least in part attri- 
 butable to her own fault, and to be exempted from that condition 
 to which other denominations submit, for the purpose of econo- 
 mising the pubhc grant, and securing protection to conscientious 
 differences of opinion, which she ought to be the first to respect 
 and guard. 
 
 I share to the full the dislike of Nonconformist aggressiveness 
 which is so frequently encountered. I cordially endorse Burke's 
 famous dictum that " Dissent, not satisfied with toleration, is 
 '* actuated, not by conscience, but by ambition." But I ask, 
 does it lie in our mouths to make this reproach too freely at the 
 present day ? Have we done, are we doing, nothing to justify 
 and even stimulate that ambition — to give ground for it to 
 wonder whether it might not one day come to tolerate us ? I 
 submit that there is much to make us pause and reflect in the 
 fact of two-thirds of the community (especially if that be only 
 a polite hypothesis for a much smaller fraction) assuming to 
 tolerate the other third as loftily as we are wont to do. At 
 least, I cannot see that it gives us any valid right to say that, so 
 far as we are concerned, the heads of families belonging to that 
 third shall not control the religious education of their own children ; 
 and that we can find no better mode of dealing with it than by
 
 64 
 
 teaching our formularies to the next generation, in spite of their 
 parents* opposition ! I would ask if we cannot take advantage 
 of this demand on our elasticity, this shock to our prejudices, if 
 you will, which the Conscience Clause seems to be, to ask 
 ourselves if it be a pre-ordained necessity that these men should 
 always be Dissenters, and if the Church cannot afford, to put it 
 on no higher ground, in her conscious superiority of theory and 
 organisation, to make some concessions to them, at least in this 
 matter of education, in the hope of bringing about a deeper 
 reconciliation ? The State at this moment stands baffled by the 
 multiplicity of sects, to all of whom it is determined to extend 
 the benefits of elementary education, of religious education, if 
 they will let her. And in her perplexity the State applies to one 
 of the existing denominations, to that which seems most able and 
 most bound to do so, to help her meet this difficulty. The 
 denomination so appealed to is, of course, the National Church. 
 Let her beware how she trifles with the invitation ! 
 
 3. I cast a glance in the third place, and it can but be a 
 glance, at the appalling ignorance of the lower orders in our 
 land, as a motive for removing any obstacle that exists to the 
 spread of education, for adopting any measure that tends to 
 promote it. I believe it is indisputable, though it attracts too 
 little of our attention. This is not the place to produce evidence. 
 I can only say that I could almost have matched the stupendous 
 specimens of ignorance among the children of the operatives at 
 Sheffield which were lately disclosed, out of the papers of an 
 examination in religious knowledge held last winter in London, 
 under the auspices of the Metropolitan Association for Pro- 
 moting the Education of Adults, in which I acted as examiner, 
 the candidates being many of them pupils of schools of good 
 status and organisation. And I believe they may often be 
 matched all the country over, even in schools under Government 
 inspection. I must not dwell now on the direct and indirect
 
 ^5 
 
 results of general ignorance among the people, but will only 
 express the conviction that education is the key of nearly all the 
 social questions of our day. Pauperism, for example, is the evil 
 with which we have next to do valiant battle. Pauperism can only 
 be killed by education. Education alone can in the end extin- 
 guish the race of either London casuals or Dorset labourers, for 
 education will lead paupers to paid industry or emigration. 
 Reform, again, is the question of the hour. Educate the work- 
 ing classes, and they will at once command political influence, 
 and the reason for grudging it to them will be removed. But 
 my argument here is this : the ignorance of large portions of the 
 working classes in England (alas ! it is not confined to them) is 
 frightful. The religious difficulty is a bar to the removal of that 
 ignorance ; first, by diverting the minds of teachers from the 
 great object of a school — the teaching of reading, writing, and 
 arithmetic, the indispensable starting-points of all mental cultiva- 
 tion, and occupying the time of teachers and scholars with often 
 worthless so-called religious instruction from teachers incom- 
 petent to give it, which might be far better given by separate 
 teachers at a separate time and place ; second, by preventing the 
 hearty co-operation of all who are interested in this primary need 
 of a neighbourhood or parish, and the concentration of that 
 interest upon a single school, instead of its being broken up and 
 directed upon many isolated sectarian schools. This religious 
 difficulty the Conscience Clause is designed to cope with. I 
 believe it does so satisfactorily. I have proved that it need not 
 interfere with the religious teaching of a single school. That 
 teaching may still be given under it by the same teachers in the 
 same rooms at the same time with other lessons. But I shall not 
 be deterred by the fear of seeming to concede some part of my 
 adversary's ground from advocating it in this place on the ground 
 that it will also admit of a clearer separation between the secular 
 and religious instruction than ib commonly practised in England, 
 
 F
 
 66 
 
 though it can never " otherwi.^x* interfere with the religious instruc- 
 ** tion as fixed by these presents** in every trust deed. There is no 
 time to do more than name, but I must name in this connection an 
 article in the Revue des Deux Momles (November 1 5, 1865), giving 
 an account of the astonishing system of education now at work in 
 America — that system which has produced still more astonishing 
 results, which has carried the great Republic through its tre- 
 mendous struggle by the mere force of the intelligence and the 
 conscience of her whole people, and which leaves the chief 
 apprehension of her statesmen (and a serious apprehension it is) 
 to be the danger arising from the ignorance imported from 
 Europe, and especially from Ireland. I do not, I repeat, advocate 
 that system as a whole. But it is certain that its strength con- 
 sists in the absence of the religious difficulty which besets us — in 
 the absence of any necessity for a Conscience Clause. For I 
 think it is plain that three principles, to neither of which I 
 commit myself, but which I will name {horresco referens)^ do 
 stand very much in the relation of cause to the effect of general 
 enlightenment and moral elevation which we must all admire — 
 namely, that the instruction in American elementary day-schools 
 is " secular f^ compulsory, <{.n& free [gratis). 
 
 If we can produce this eifect by other or by less extreme 
 forms of the same means, well and good ! Some of it I believe 
 we can so produce. But let us at least admit fully our desperate 
 need of that effect, and welcome anything that tends to produce 
 it or remove obstacles to its production. 
 enirrcutof ^, Fourthly, I point to the progress of public opinion, and 
 its unmistakeable tendency in this direction. I do not insist on 
 the undoubted fact that the mind of the House of Commons is 
 such as Lord Granville has said that he believes it to be — such as 
 to make the Committee of Council, out of regard for the Church 
 of England, and a desire to come to terms with her, hesitate to 
 submit the question to the House, and so draw on the rough
 
 67 
 
 and ready settlement it would be sure to receive. I do not 
 dwell upon the kind of criticism that the opposition to the 
 clause has received in the best and most thoughtful, as well 
 as in the most hectoring and intemperate, portion of the press. 
 I only say, depend upon it, the course of modern politics, the 
 drift of liberal legislation, will never be reversed. And I do 
 appeal earnestly to all her intelligent sons to beware how they 
 thwart the growing sense of the Church's obligations to be 
 generous and comprehensive which is manifested by our political 
 leaders of all parties and schools — by the party which is sup- 
 posed to be the patron and conservator of the Church as she 
 is, no less than of that which is accused of surrendering her 
 rights and assailing her faith. I need only mention the well- 
 known advocacy of the clause by a Tory leader like Sir John 
 Pakington, Chairman of the recent Committee of Inquiry into 
 the Working of the Education Department. But I venture to 
 quote a few sentences from the speech of a still weightier 
 politician, from which I rejoice to infer, not only that one of 
 the best judges and highest examples of the value of education, 
 and a gentleman and statesman of the first rank, comprehends 
 the difficulty of extending elementary education to the lower 
 ranks of society, but that by the cordial support of its principle 
 on the part of the Conservative leader, the Conscience Clause 
 has been taken out of the category of Parliamentary party 
 questions. 
 
 The Earl of Derby, in a speech at Liverpool, on the loth Lord Dcriyt 
 
 opiuxon, 
 
 of October, 1863, at a meeting in aid of middle-class education, \ 
 
 said — 
 
 " Before I pass from the observations upon the education given 
 " here, I ought to mention one subject, which is not only of the 
 ** highest but of unparalleled importance — I mean that in all cases 
 ** and in all the schools — the highest, and the lowest, and the 
 ** middle — they make an essential part of the education here given, 
 
 F 2
 
 68 
 
 " a sound religious instruction according to the doctrines and prin- 
 ** ciples of the Church of England." (Applause.) " Whatever else 
 " may be necessary, unnecessary, or superfluous for each of the 
 ** different ranks into which these schools are divided, there is, 
 *' at all events, this one subject, which is of equal importance to 
 " the high, to the middle, and to the low, and which it is the 
 " boast and the honour of this institution to have, from its first 
 " foundation, incorporated with, and made an essential part of, 
 " the instruction to be given to all those who come within 
 ** its walls. From the first foundation of this institution it has 
 ** not only been decided that the education given to all the 
 *' pupils should be of a strictly religious character, but also 
 ** that it should be in close connection with the service, discipline, 
 " and doctrine of the Church of England. How,^then, it may 
 ** be asked, can this system of religious education work for the 
 * ' benefit of the middle classes in general in a community which 
 " comprises among its members a very considerable number of 
 ** Protestant Dissenters ? I think the solution has been found 
 " by acting upon a very simple principle, and demonstrating that, 
 " where this principle is fairly and honourably carried out, there 
 ** is less difficulty — at all events, with regard to the point of 
 '* religious education — with Protestants of different denomi- 
 " nations than is usually supposed to exist. It has been 
 " determined in this college to introduce that which, with 
 " regard to the Government schools, is known as the ' Con- 
 *' * science Clause' — that is, while we require that the services 
 " of the Church of England should be exclusively made use of, 
 ** that every boy should attend those services, that the teaching 
 •* should be in conformity with the doctrines of the Church of 
 '* England, and that the teachers, with the exception of those of 
 ** foreign languages, should be members of the Church of Eng- 
 *' land, it has also been decided, and I think with a judicious 
 *' and wise toleration, that those boys whose parents object to
 
 69 
 
 " their being instructed in the Catechism and formularies of the 
 " Church of England should be exempt from so much of attend- 
 " ance upon and teaching of the services of the Church* And 
 " the best proof that can be given that this is a sound and reason- 
 ** able principle is that a few years ago — and I have no reason to 
 " suppose the proportions are materially changed — the number of 
 " Nonconformists in the higher school amounted to 10 per cent., 
 *' in the middle school to 20 per cent., and in the lower school 
 *' to no less than 30 per cent., of the whole population, thus 
 ** showing that, while we adhere strictly to the doctrine and dis- 
 " cipline of the Church of England, there is no intolerable obstacle 
 ** to our affording with perfect satisfaction to a large body of 
 " Dissenting Protestants a sound religious education." (Cheers.) 
 
 Nor has the defence of the clause been limited to laymen, ■^ix'cch of tu 
 I am tempted to trouble you with a quotation or two from at the Xoncich 
 
 ^ ■' Congress. 
 
 clerical apologists for it, if only to show you — though they are 
 
 worth far more than this — that I am not quite the solitary 
 
 phenomenon that the Archdeacon has tried to make me out. A 
 
 clergyman (the Rev. A. Gariit) who had once ijefore the 
 
 honour which I now have of withstanding him to the face, used, 
 
 at the Church Congress at Norwich, the following clear and 
 
 reasonable language, the practical suggestions in the end of 
 
 which I cannot now discuss, but which are an excellent example 
 
 of the spirit which the National Society and the Church at large 
 
 ought to have brought, and ought now to bring, to the 
 
 consideration of the proposed clause : — 
 
 " Let us look at the proposed clause. Viewing it as states - 
 
 " men, it docs away with an injustice to Dissenters which has 
 
 " been pointed out to us by Churchmen of distinction. It gives 
 
 " a security, by opening the school doors as wide as possible, 
 
 " for the best return to the expenditure of public money. It lays 
 
 ** down an equitable and unvarying rule, and does not leave the 
 
 " practice to the private discretion of an individual clergyman.
 
 70 
 
 But to such a meeting as this I do not rely on arguments that 
 may have weight with statesmen so much as those that address 
 themselves to Churchmen. Where, then, is the principle 
 of this clause ? A recognition of the parental authority. 
 Some speak of the Conscience Clause as if the Church was 
 called on to resign to the State its spiritual rights, as if it was 
 required to shape its religious teaching to suit the Government. 
 But it is not so. It is rather that Church and State alike are 
 called upon to bow before a power that is paramount to both ; 
 to recognise the natural and divine right of those to whom is 
 intrusted the culture and well-being of their offspring, and with 
 whom rests both the responsibility and right of determining 
 what religion the child shall be taught. This is the principle 
 of the Conscience Clause, and this is a principle which I believe 
 the Church may accept without any compromise of her own. 
 And see how the clause is guarded ; it only refers to indivi- 
 duals, not to the school -, and in the individual cases it gives 
 only a negative power, which * shall not otherwise interfere 
 
 * with the religious teaching.' It leaves that religious teaching 
 still entirely in the hands of the clergy, and ' shall not autho- 
 
 * rise any other religious instruction to be given.' Against this 
 clause thus viewed, I think the seventeen reasons alleged by 
 Archdeacon Denison do not apply, Neither is there any 
 breach of faith on the part of the State. It is too much to 
 require that, with progress in everything, there is to be a 
 finality code of education -, and new difficulties will from time 
 to time require new regulations. We ought to look at the 
 difficulty and try to adjust it. The State desires to embody 
 the Conscience Clause in a minute after conference with the 
 Church as to the terms. What should those terms be ? 
 
 (1) That it should not apply to parishes of above a certain 
 population — say where there arc a thousand Church people. 
 
 (2) It should apply to annual grants, and then the managers
 
 71 
 
 '* of any school could get rid of it at any time, as they can now 
 ** of the inspector's visit, by renouncing the grant. (3) In the 
 ** case of building grants, the managers should have the power 
 " of freeing themselves of the clause at any future time, simply 
 ** by returning the money. This would meet the dislike that 
 " most people have of doing anything that will bind their suc- 
 ** cessors for ever, and would allay the fear that exists lest the 
 ** State should gradually enslave the Church. With these limi- 
 ** tations, I believe a liberal and large-hearted Church can accept 
 *' the Conscience Clause without compromise of its principles, 
 ** and with a practical advantage to itself." 
 
 Nor can I content myself with the protection of a single The c'larrje of 
 authority from among the clergy, especially when so broad an Browne. 
 xgis has been extended over me, and one so well adapted to 
 sustain the arrows of Archdeacon Denison, as that under which I 
 am about to shelter myself. Another Archdeacon from the West 
 (Gfot e'lo-i Ka\ rjfiiv) — Archdeacou Denison's equal in academical 
 and ecclesiastical honours, nay, his coadjutor in the same diocese 
 — the Archdeacon of Bath — has charged his clergy,* by one of 
 those happy compensations which the well-balanced structure of 
 our Church so frequently provides, in language the exact contra- 
 dictory of that of his brother of Taunton. Archdeacon Browne 
 says — 
 
 ** The question of the compulsory insertion of a Conscience 
 " Clause into the trust deed of a Church school when aid is 
 ** sought out of the Parliamentary grant for education involves 
 " some difficulty which we must approach in an impartial spirit. 
 " Take the case for which alone the Committee of Privy Council 
 *' wish to provide, and to which their Lordships strictly confine 
 " themselves, viz., when it is proposed to build a Church school 
 ** as the only one available for a population containing Dissenters. 
 " An application is made for assistance to build this school out of 
 " a fund to which the taxation of Nonconformists contributes as
 
 72 
 
 " well as that of the members of the Church of England. Can 
 " the Government justly exclude from such school the children 
 ** of those who have no other opportunity of gaining secular 
 *• instruction, unless on the condition of their learning a religious 
 " formulary and attending a form of public worship to which 
 ** the parents conscientiously object ? And yet this is all that 
 " the so-called Conscience Clause implies. The objection is a 
 " theoretical objection which in practice vanishes entirely. Sup- 
 " pose no such condition were insisted on, what, I ask, would 
 " be the course which we should pursue in case a Dissenter 
 ** brought his child for admission into our schools, making it a 
 " sine qua mn that he should attend Sunday-school and public 
 " worship in his own communion, and should not learn the 
 " Church Catechism ? Should we shut our doors in the face of 
 " this child, and cruelly condemn him to that ignorance which 
 ** would leave him a leady victim of the enemies of his body and 
 *' soul ? Should we dare to give up the religious influence which 
 ** the Bible lesson given by ourselves, the very atmosphere of 
 " our presence, the interest which the children of our schools see 
 " we take in their welfare, is calculated to exercise over them } 
 ** Should we prefer that they should sink into barbarians rather 
 " than continue Dissenters ? And if it be said that the answer 
 *' to these questions by a unanimous negative proves that it is 
 '■' unjust to impose upon clergymen such restrictions, let it be 
 " remembered that it is the duty of the Legislature, in the distri- 
 * ' bution of public money, to trust no one without security being 
 " taken that the trust cannot possibly be abused." 
 Th " r 7/ »,(•/* Nay ! I venture on a crowning audacity. Some of you may 
 (.'tnr.tic" have sometimes seen a newspaper called the Church am State 
 
 UTHiJoyi.sCS fur 
 
 (lie ( 'louse. Gazette. Some of you may have heard with me that it drew at 
 least a part of its inspiration from the recognised fount of 
 Western *orthodoxy. Be this as it may, how shall I express my 
 astonishment on finding in that journal, so lately as November I,
 
 73 
 
 1865, the following mode of dealing with the question of the 
 Conscience Clause : — 
 
 "We cannot help thinking that if Dissenters were aware 
 ** how little effect the mere Catechism has in the creation of 
 " Church people, they would not make such a fuss about a 
 " Conscience Clause ; and we are quite certain that, unless our 
 " dogmatic teaching is to be of a very different kind in future' 
 ** from what it has been heretofore, we may just as well save 
 ** ourselves the trouble and odium of struggling against its impo- 
 ** sition.'' 
 
 Then follows a quarter of a column of particular doctrines 
 which one is astonished to learn go to make up what is meant, 
 and what I suppose Archdeacon Denison means, by the " one 
 ** faith." But the argument is that all these doctrines can be 
 taught, as I cheerfully concede that they can, apart from the 
 Church Catechism, for they certainly could not be derived from 
 it ; and the inference apparently intended is precisely that which 
 it has been the main business of this paper to assert, that the 
 effect of the Conscience Clause in Church of EnglancJ schools is 
 confined to exemption from the Church Catechism (or part of it) 
 and from the other distinctive formularies (so far as they are 
 so), but does not further limit the Scripture lesson as such. After 
 this, who shall say that an agreement between the Government 
 and the Church — even the Church of East Brent — is a hopeless 
 dream ? 
 
 But I have done. I conclude by reiterating the appeal which 
 I have already made — an appeal to which one who has known 
 how to stand aloof from his own party when the welfare of the 
 Church at large seemed to him to be imperilled, ought not to be 
 insensible. Regarding the Conscience Clause as the direct if 
 unconscious summons of the civil power to the Church to 
 bethink her of her true character, and to render her utmost 
 efforts to heal the breaches of long theological conflict, and by
 
 74 
 
 no me<ins to widen them ; believing that if the clergy persist in 
 refusing to recognise the rights of conscience, the denominational 
 principle itself will go to pieces in their hands, and a system of 
 compulsory and undenominational education — which I here 
 neither denounce nor defend — will be forced upon them ; holding 
 that a last opportunity of effecting a national system of religious 
 education is now offered to us by the clause, and that with its 
 rejection not only that opportunity, but that also of realising a 
 truly National Church in modern times, will be lost for ever -, I 
 do implore the clergy and laity of the Church of England to 
 regard this question as one not of a partisan character, but of 
 national importance ; to hesitate and reflect before they force on 
 so dire a revolution as the divorce — even in the matter of 
 education — between the civil and religious power ; or, to speak 
 more accurately, between the State and the present Church of 
 England. 
 
 FINIS.
 
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