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 ^L I B RA RY 
 
 OF THE 
 U N I VLRSITY 
 Of ILLI NOIS

 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFERENCE : 
 
 A LETTER 
 
 TO THE EIGHT EEV. 
 
 THE LORD BISHOP OF ST. DAVID'S, 
 
 ON 
 
 v^ 
 
 PASSAGES IN HIS RECENT CHARGE. 
 
 BY TUE 
 
 REV. C. A. STEVENS, 
 
 INCUMBENT OF ALL SAINTS, BLACKHEATH. 
 
 KIVmaTONS, WATERLOO PLACE ; 
 
 HiaH STREET, 
 
 TEIFITT STREET, 
 
 (JTamtritrgp. 
 
 1867.
 
 LETTER, 
 
 d'C. 
 
 My Lord Bishop, 
 
 1 am fully sensible of the charge of presumption which 
 awaits me in venturing to offer any remarks at variance with your 
 Lordship's judgment upon a subject on which you have pronounced 
 an eoe cathedra opinion. It does require, as you truly say, a 
 "certain" — rather I should say a very large — " amount of moral 
 courage in a clergyman to take a course which he has been told 
 by persons whom he highly respects is inconsistent with his duty 
 to the Church." Still more, to defend that course against the 
 declared convictions of one so dignified both personally and offi- 
 cially, in the estimation of all, as is your Lordship. 
 
 Such an amount of moral courage, however, a sufficient occasion 
 may evoke. The mode of treatment of the Conscience Clause 
 question in your Lordship's recent Charge, ought not to pass 
 without respectful, but very earnest, protest. 
 
 Tour Lordship, in entering upon the subject of the imposition 
 of the Conscience Clause, bespeaks for it a "calm and fair hear- 
 ing." The hearers and readers of your Charge could hardly be 
 prepared by this for the strong language in the next paragraph, in 
 which your Lordship declares your " deep conviction that never 
 has the truth on any subject been more obscured by passionate 
 declamation, sophistical reasoning, high sounding but utterly 
 hollow phrases, and by violent distortion of notorious facts, than 
 on this." 
 
 A 2
 
 4 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEKFERENCE. 
 
 These, my Lord, are, to say the least, very vigorous expressions. 
 Whether they are likely to conduce much to calmness and fair- 
 ness of discussion, or to guide the independent inquirer to a know- 
 ledge of the real merits of the case, your Lordship ought to be the 
 best judge. Those at whom they are aimed will, no doubt, be 
 able to justify themselves. But not being myself concerned in 
 them, I rejoice to be at liberty to pass them by without further 
 remark. 
 
 Tour Lordship compliments the great body of the Clergy by 
 saying, " I have too much confidence in their moderation and prac- 
 tical good sense, to believe that they will be long misled by any , 
 authority which will not bear the test of sober judgment, and I 
 am sure thev will sooner or later be found on the side of truth and 
 
 justice." 
 
 May I, my Lord, venture to suggest whether that same practical 
 good sense may not have operated a little " sooner" than your 
 Lordship has given it credit for. In fact, long ere this. The 
 "calm and fair hearing" has been long accorded. And the 
 result has been, that it has led them to a conclusion diametrically 
 opposite to your Lordship's. 
 
 Tour Lordship asserts that the Clause does not " interfere with 
 the Religious instruction of Church Schools, except in the sense 
 of preventing that teaching from being forced on children whose 
 parents wish that they should not receive it. " It is not denied," 
 your Lordship writes, " that a Clergyman ^ who has accepted the 
 Clause not only remains at perfect liberty, but is as much as ever 
 required to instruct all the children of his own communion in all 
 the doctrines of the Church." 
 
 That it has been the anxious eifort of the advocates of the Clause, 
 and of Mr. Lingen more especially, to make this appear, we all 
 know. But it is indeed surprising to find, at this stage of the 
 discussion, after all that has passed in and out of Parliament, 
 that the objectiou of practical men should be so little appreciated 
 as your Lordship's statement shows that it is. I should have 
 thought that every one, in the most moderate degree "up" in the 
 controversy, must have been aware that the assertion is totally 
 denied : by one at least whose opinion can hardly have escaped 
 your Lordship's notice, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Nor in- 
 deed is it easy to understand your intention in making it, when, 
 
 1 Your Lordship speaks of Clergymen only : but I take it for granted that 
 you mean to include the Teachers as well; for I cannot suppose that your 
 Lordship would assert that it is exclusively a Clergyman's question. It is a 
 Teacher's, and a Churchman's also. 
 
 UIUC^
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFERENCE. 5 
 
 shortly after it, there follow several pages of your Charge devoted 
 to meet the objections of those who do deny that this liberty of 
 Religious Education is practically maintained by the Clause. 
 
 " I do not myself think," your Lordship writes, " that the lan- 
 guage of the Clause can be fairly taxed with ambiguity." Nor, my 
 Lord, do T. It is perfectly clear to me. It is perfectly clear 
 to your Lordship. To you it appears that it does not interfere 
 with the liberty of religious instruction. To me, as a merely 
 practical man, and to many others, both of the working Clergy 
 and Lay managers, it appears that it does. Is then, or is not, the 
 language of the Clause ambiguous ? And who is right ? Tour 
 Lordship has shown why you do not think it so. Will you per- 
 mit me in what follows to show why I do not think it so ? 
 
 Tour Lordship challenges an issue on the point. For you say, 
 " This is an allegation which we can immediately compare with 
 the Clause itself, so as to ascertain in what sense it is to be under- 
 stood, and how far it is to be warranted by the meaning of the 
 Clause." I, for my part, see no reason to shrink from the com- 
 parison : premising only (what indeed is obvious) that this issue — 
 the practical interference with the liberty of general religious 
 teaching within the School — covers only one branch of the whole 
 question. Others have dealt with other points. I will, with your 
 Lordship's permission, address myself to this. * 
 
 It is an issue of the highest importance, and, one would think, 
 of the simplest character. And yet while all are agreed as to its 
 importance, there is the widest difference of opinion as to the effect 
 of the Clause upon it. Mr. Lingen has asserted the liberty in 
 the strongest manner, but even his own statements are not always 
 consistent ; while those of Earl Granville, Mr. Bruce, Sir John 
 Pakington, and Mr. Chester, and others, are at variance with 
 those of Mr. Lingen and of each other. 
 
 Mr. Bruce claims that the Office must be supposed to know 
 best what the effect of the Clause is. If he had said that " My 
 Lords" must know best what efiect they intended, it would have 
 been more easily agreed to. 
 
 Mr. Lingen tells us (Qq. 3598, 3600 ^) that the objecting Clergy 
 do not understand the matter at all. I must really be bold, and, 
 though one of the body myself, venture to say that I think it is 
 just possible they may have an intelligent opinion of their own, 
 and even that they may be right and Mr. Lingen wrong after all. 
 I am sure that the Kight Hon. Chairman of the Education Com- 
 
 2 Evidence, Sir John Pakington's Committee, Session 1866.
 
 6 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFERENCE. 
 
 raittee of 1865-6 would cheerfully acknowledge that it was not 
 always that Examining Members got the best of the contest when 
 it became a cross-examination. If witty lay witnesses some- 
 times turned the tables, so also practical clerical witnesses were 
 not always at once turned over like turtles on their backs, but 
 successfully maintained their position and their temper. 
 
 It is, I say, possible that they may be right after all. 
 
 For, what is the Conscience Clause ? It is a Clause to be in- 
 serted as of legal binding operative force in the Deed of Convey- 
 ance of the School Site to Trustees. It therefore involves two 
 elements, legal and practical : the legal effect, and the practical 
 consequences of that legal effect. 
 
 The primary question then is, what interpretation would the 
 Court of Chancery put upon it ? There have been several inter- 
 pretations by " My Lords." But, with all due respect, an inter- 
 pretation by the Committee of Council (not being the Judicial 
 Committee) is just no more than the opinion of a legislative body, 
 or of their Secretary ; or at best, of their legal adviser. And we 
 all know what an " opinion" is worth ; and experience has proved 
 in notable instances that that of the legal adviser of a Public Office 
 is not worth more than any other. It is in evidence, too, that 
 the opinion of the Law Officers of the Crown has not been taken. 
 " Legislators make the laws, but the Judge makes the Law," — is 
 a very old saying ; the true questions, therefore, are, not what the 
 legislators' — still less the draughtsman's — interpretation might be, 
 but, what interpretation would the Court of Chancery put upon 
 the Clause ? and what would be the legal effect of such interpre- 
 tation ? And, then, what would be the practical consequences 
 which would flow therefrom ? As Lord Cranborne put it to a 
 witness " It is not what this man or that man might think is the 
 spirit of the Conscience Clause ; a Clergyman would have to follow 
 what a Judge upon the judgment-seat would think was the legal 
 meaning of the Clause." 
 
 Interpretation, then, by Mr. Lingen, or by the Vice-President, 
 or by the Lord President, whether on individual authority, or 
 under the semblance of " My Lords," must be, for the ultimate 
 settlement of the question, just valueless. Their representations 
 are useful for polemical purposes, but for no more. They are 
 utterly inconclusive as to the legal effect, and therefore a fortiori 
 as to the practical consequences. 
 
 When the Archbishop of Canterbury gave notice of his inten- 
 tion to put certain questions to the Lord President in the House 
 of Lords on the matter, a qualm of apprehension passed over some
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFERENCB. 7 
 
 minds. Not because there were not good and sufficient reasons 
 for his doing so, but because it was easy to foresee that the 
 answer elicited might be so managed as to produce for a time a 
 very undesirable effect. It was clear, indeed, that no answer 
 which his Lordship was likely to give could be very satisfactory, 
 for the reason just adverted to. Then, again, the courteous affa- 
 bility of Earl Grranville is universally known and appreciated. 
 And it was pretty certain that he could if he would, and would if 
 he could, manage to couch his reply in such a form of words as, 
 by some general statement of favour to the Church, would carry 
 every body with him, while he should say as little as possible on the 
 real point at issue. And so, exactly, it proved. For when the Lord 
 President in his place said that the Clause did not interfere with 
 the religious teaching of the Church of England in her Schools, 
 what could be more satisfactory to their Lordships ? What could 
 his Grace in common civility say, but that he was very glad to 
 hear it ? Having appealed to Earl Grranville as interpreter, he 
 could do no otherwise, in lordly courtesy, than accept his inter- 
 pretation. But then, clearly, his Grace's approval was, from the 
 very nature of the case, conditional on the statement of the Lord 
 President being strictly accurate and complete. This, however, 
 the advocates of the Clause chose to ignore ; and so tried, most 
 unfairly, to make the country resound with the "Archbishop's 
 supposed unqualified approval of the Clause. At the National 
 Society's Annual Meeting, however, his Grace took occasion to 
 point out the discrepancy between the Lord President's speech 
 and statements of Mr. Lingen, and also the dilemma in which 
 his Lordship was placed ; showing afterwards, in correspondence 
 with Earl Granville, that the Clause would interfere with the reli- 
 gious teaching in Church of England Schools, and that his con- 
 ditional approval could not be made absolute. 
 
 I will now proceed to show that, even taking Earl Granville's 
 own statement alone, and comparing its propositions one with 
 another, the same will necessarily be the case. But the ground 
 must be a little cleared first. 
 
 The Committee of Council, by some or other of their representa- 
 tives, have admitted the interpretation which they put upon the 
 Clause, and the objects which they desire to secure, to be, to give 
 a parent the power of withdrawing his child from attendance at 
 the Sunday School and at Church ; from attending the Catechism 
 lesson, or learning any formulary, the Apostles' Creed included ; 
 from attending the Bible lesson, or hearing any exposition of
 
 8 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFERENCE. 
 
 the Bible ; from reading the Bible, or hearing it read ; from learn- 
 ing, or hearing, any religious doctrine ; from receiving any reli- 
 gious teaching, directly or indirectly. 
 
 Now, precise as this list is, does it exhaust all the effects of the 
 Clause ? It has been the interest of the Committee of Council 
 throughout to exhibit this negative phase of it (though the details 
 of this even have only been extracted piecemeal) and so to lead 
 away the objectors to deal with it only. It is one side, and a very 
 important one. But is there no other ? Is exemption the sole 
 effect ? Can exemption be claimed as of legal right without 
 entailing consequences upon other children and on the whole 
 school ? Is it, as Mr. Lingen says, negative only, with no cor- 
 relative positive action ? 
 
 And here let me guard one point. In what follows I shall have 
 frequently to couple together in one phrase the Dissenter and the 
 Infidel. I am sorry for it. But it is not my fault, it is that of the 
 Clause. The question of legal right of exemption is one of principle, 
 as well as of practice, and therefore all who claim exemption must 
 for the occasion be grouped together. The exemption claimed may 
 be from little, or much, or all, but it is a mere question of 
 degree between the Hebron, St. Cleer's, Independents, or the 
 Swansea Baptists, who only object to the children being taught 
 the first three questions of the Catechism, and the Baptists of 
 Tnysfach Ystrad, who " desire that the young, tender, and un- 
 biassed minds of their children should not be corrupted by any one, 
 or any Creed; let the Bible," they say, — " the religion of Chris- 
 tians — be read by them, and taught them without being mixed 
 with man's opinions, creeds, and catechisms ; let them draw their 
 own conclusions, and choose their own religion from the Book of 
 God *:" and the Dissenters of another place who "will not have 
 any prescribed system, nor any sort of a ready-made religion*;" 
 and the Secularist, Eationalist, or Infidel who would withdraw 
 from all religious instruction whatsoever. 
 
 3 This is in keeping with the Conscience Clause proposed in 1865 to the 
 Wey bridge Schools by the Charity Commissioners. " Provided that no Scholar 
 shall be required to receive Religious Instruction according to the doctrines of 
 the Established Church, or to attend School on Sundays, who shall object upon 
 conscientious grounds to such instruction or attendance." What next ? — If 
 space permitted, a good deal might be said about the proceedings of the Charity 
 Commissioners. 
 
 4 Letter of Mr. Bowstead to the Bishop of St. David's, App. Nos. QQ. 67. 75. 
 — Are the children of these Dissenters taken to Chapel ? Does the preacher 
 deliver his own opinions, and are the minds of the children corrupted thereby ? 
 Does he enter his pulpit with no ready-made religion in his heart, in his mind, 
 on his lips ? or is it a mere chance what doctrine he shall deliver on any given 
 Sunday ?
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEBFEEENCE. 9 
 
 For it must not be forgotten, in dealing with this matter, that 
 the main distinctive differences between the doctrine of most 
 dissidents and that of the Church, are differences of defect as 
 regards the former. Consequently, whenever, in order to keep 
 faith with children withdrawn from doctrine, or from formulary 
 representing doctrine, or for any other reason, we avoid speaking 
 in the general school-work of the particular doctrines concerned, 
 we are, by the very fact, in so far not only not teaching Church 
 Doctrine to the exempted children, negatively, but we are also 
 teaching our own children Dissidents' Doctrine positively. From 
 the so-called "orthodox" Dissenter, who differs on questions 
 chiefly, or ostensibly, of Church government (which however in- 
 clude other doctrines — as Confirmation— connected therewith), 
 down to the sheer Atheist, the position of the Dissident is one of 
 more or less extensive negation. When therefore you come to 
 teach, and teach on from an age of infancy to one of " years of 
 discretion," in preparation for Confirmation, that which seems 
 negative has also its positive aspect, and effect. Exclusio unius, 
 expressio alterius. Church Doctrine minus some doctrine, is sub- 
 stantially some Dissident's Doctrine. Therefore the positive teach- 
 ing of Church Doctrine minus some doctrine, is the positive teach- 
 ing of the Dissident's Doctrine. 
 
 For example — taking the more salient points of difference, and 
 stating the cases very roughly — ostensibly. 
 
 To teach Church Doctrine, ignoring Confirmation and Episcopacy, 
 is substantially to teach children to be Presbyterians. 
 
 To teach Church Doctrine, ignoring also the aggregation of 
 visible local churches into a Diocesan, Provincial, or National 
 Church, and an ordained Ministry, and a 'deposit' of doctrine, 
 is to teach them to be Congregational Independents. 
 
 Or, ignoring also the propriety of Infant Baptism, is to teach them 
 to be Antipaedo-Baptists. 
 
 To teach Church Doctrine, ignoring also the Divinity of the 
 Saviour, the Atonement generally, and the personality of the 
 Holy Spirit, is to teach them to be Unitarians, or Socinians. 
 
 To teach Church Doctrine, ignoring the inspiration of the Scrip- 
 tures — if that be possible — is to teach them to be Eationalists ; 
 ignoring the Providence of God, moral, physical, or retributive, 
 to be Deists ; ignoring the existence of a Personal Deity, to be 
 Atheists. 
 
 The principle, therefore, quoad the Conscience Clause exemption, 
 is the same for the Secularist as for the ordinary Dissenter, 
 and its application varies only in degree. Of course, we all
 
 10 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEEFERENCE. 
 
 know, the young children must be fed with milk. But it is im- 
 possible to say that when a child has arrived at twelve or 
 thirteen, it is to have no strong meat. Besides, it is not only a 
 question whether it is to have milk or meat, but whether the 
 milk is to be evacuated of its nourishing elements. It is the 
 religious tone which pervades the whole teaching — not the Cate- 
 chism or Bible Class only — which is different in the Church School 
 exercising its full liberty in teaching Church Doctrine, from that 
 which can exist in a school in which the Conscience Clause, acted 
 out, is in operation ^. 
 
 To proceed — 
 
 In 1863 the Committee of Council, by Mr. Lingen, wrote thus 
 to the Promoters of the Llanwrin School : " The only school to 
 the building of which their Lordships could dispose of any portion 
 of tl^^ Public Fund at their disposal," must be " one where 
 Dissenters would have as much legal right as members of the 
 Church of England. My Lords cannot allow the assent of the 
 population to the establishment of a National School to be a 
 ground for deviating from this rule." 
 
 It will be, I believe, rather a new idea to many promoters and 
 managers of schools, that, under the Management Clauses gene- 
 rally, all children (for in British schools — for instance — it cannot 
 be merely parishioners) have a legal right of entry. It may or 
 may not be very likely to occur, but it is clear that if this be 
 correct, managers may any day be called upon to show cause why 
 they object to receive any child, not on religious grounds only, 
 but on any account, or why they have suspended or expelled any. 
 The possibility of a Chancery bill of costs will not very much 
 encourage lay managers to incur the already sufficient pecuniary 
 responsibilities of the office. If Mr. Lingen' s statement be cor- 
 rect, this is an interference not generally understood. 
 
 However this be, and it need not be further discussed now, there 
 is no question that Mr. Lingen claims for the Conscience Clause, 
 that it confers upon all Dissident parents (whether dissenting 
 Christian, or Infidel) the legal right of entry for their children, as 
 against the Trustees and Managers of the School. 
 
 And not of course a legal right of entry alone; but also of 
 " admittance to the benefits of the School." I will not go aside to 
 consider how far these benefits might involve other matters besides 
 instruction. The particular "benefit" in question is that of 
 being taught all the secular instruction of the School. 
 
 Take now with this the objects admitted by the Committee of 
 
 5 See the Rev. W. J. Kennedy's Statement, p. 40.
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFEEENCE. 11 
 
 Council : and it will follow that the principle of the Conscience 
 Clause is, the conferring on a parent of a legal right of entry for 
 his child for all secular instruction, coupled with the right of with- 
 drawing the child from any or all of the religious instruction. 
 
 Now see one legal effect of this. It establishes at once a per- 
 manent charge upon the Annual Contributions of future sub- 
 scribers, for all time, for the doing of that — viz. giving an ex- 
 clusively secular teaching to some, few or many, children — to 
 doing which those subscribers may conscientiously object. It 
 thus distinctly curtails the liberty of Parishioners, virtually insist- 
 ing that they shall not subscribe to provide for the religious Edu- 
 cation of some, without also paying for the exclusively secular 
 teaching of others. 
 
 The process of the argument addressed to such subscribers is 
 this : — 
 
 All children who desire shall come into the school, of legal 
 
 right : 
 You shall give them all, all secular instruction : 
 You shall, if they require it, give them secular teaching only, 
 
 or modified religious teaching only : 
 Your money shall pay for it. 
 
 Or else, withdraw your subscriptions, and so, pro tanto, cease 
 to educate. • 
 
 I would submit that this is a condition ultra vires, a charge 
 which neither the State, nor any other contributor to the Building 
 cost, has a right, economically or morally speaking, to impose by 
 virtue, or in consideration, of such contribution. And therefore 
 one to which the Promoters, standing at that stage in the position 
 of Trustees for the future of School and Parish, and for the liberty 
 of future Churchmen Parishioners, being Annual Subscribers, 
 ought not to be expected to assent. 
 
 It is a priori, (I do not admit it a posteriori, for I object to it 
 as impolitic and mischievous ; still it is, a priori^ a legitimate 
 stipulation to make in respect of an Annual Contribution ; ir the 
 amount of such contribution be sufficient to meet the particular 
 expense proposed — to pay, that is, besides the State third, the 
 Subscription third as well — for the teaching of all such children. 
 But to establish such a charge, for the special secular instruction 
 of any children who choose to come in, in perpetuam upon the 
 future Subscribers, without such guaranteed payment, and even 
 ivhen the State may not he an Annual Subscriber itself at all, is as 
 unreasonable as unfair. In this respect (as in others), the so- 
 called Conscience Clause is rather of the nature of an Anti-Con-
 
 12 C01!fSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEEFEEENCE. 
 
 science Clause, and unduly restrictive of that liberty to which 
 Churchmen educators for the time being in a Parish are entitled. 
 And, my Lord, considering that the Subscribers thus conscien- 
 tiously objecting to give secular teaching without also giving 
 E-eligious Education, may, after the infliction of the Clause, include 
 a majority, or even all, of the contributing Parishioners, it is 
 within the range of possibility that they might feel it their duty, 
 not only to withdraw their contributions from such Schools, but 
 even to establish antagonistic schools on a strictly religious 
 basis. I say that this is a consideration to be faced, when you 
 are legislating for the- future. And with examples in Scotland to 
 warn us, we should think twice before incurring, for what is now 
 confessedly an imaginary grievance, a mischief so ruinous. 
 
 I will now come to the main question of interference. And I 
 venture to say that the Conscience Clause is in practice incom- 
 patible with, and therefore would be abolitory of, the pervasive 
 E-eligious Education of the School : — as distinguished from the 
 mere half-hour's or hour's Bible or Catechism lesson. 
 
 The highest authority we can have, is that of the Lord Presi- 
 dent. His Lordship laid down, in answer to the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, in the House of Lords, these three propositions : — 
 
 1. " The Conscience Clause not only does not interfere with 
 the religious instruction in Schools, but absolutely requires that 
 no interference shall take place in that instruction. It does not 
 in the slightest degree touch the religious teaching of the Church 
 of England in her schools. 
 
 2. " The only thing it enforces is, that a child shall not attend 
 that portion of the religious instruction to which its parents 
 object. 
 
 3. "It would not be acting justly to the Dissenters, if the 
 Managers of Church of England Schools were to allow the children 
 of Dissenters to withdraw while the formularies of the Church 
 were being read, and to be brought in again to hear the doctrines 
 of the Church taught." 
 
 Earl Grranville's 3rd proposition is, under the legal operation of 
 a Conscience Clause, incontrovertible. 
 
 Under voluntary "tolerant treatment," parents may request 
 exemption from having the first three questions of the Catechism 
 put, without verbal modification, to their unbaptized or un-
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEEFEEENCE. 13 
 
 sponsored diildren. The concession of this, is what every man- 
 ager or teacher who thinks the School an instrument for bringing 
 children to learn, value, and seek the ordinances of the Gospel 
 would not only be willing, but even desirous of making. He 
 would suit the form of words to the exigencies of the case ; with 
 as much necessity and as much readiness as the minister says 
 * he ' or ' she,' ' brother ' or ' sister,' according to the circumstances, 
 in the Baptismal or Burial Services. It involves no question of 
 doctrine, but simply of fact. 
 
 When, under the same, parents request more extensive exemp- 
 tion, the case becomes much more grave. If they ask exemption 
 from formulary, or any portion of a formulary, must there not 
 (supposing the teacher may feel justified in conceding it on other 
 accounts) be a very distinct explanation and warning, to the full 
 and intelligent comprehension of the parent, as to the fact that 
 the child will nevertheless be taught, or run the risk of hearing 
 and learning, the doctrine corresponding to the formulary, and as 
 to the inconsistency of his position under such circumstances r 
 Such an understanding is possible, when a child is received, as a 
 matter of consideration, voluntarily into a Church School. If a 
 Dissenter, or an Infidel, sends his child into such a School, know- 
 ing that he is received there on such an understanding, there is 
 at any rate no room for deception or dishonesty as between man 
 and man. 
 
 But when we come to a legal right of entry, with a legal claim 
 to be exempted from formulary, the case becomes totally different. 
 It is no longer a matter of agreement, or a common understand- 
 ing. A Conscience Clause which should exempt from formulary 
 and not from doctrine (which yet is what the Wesleyan Con- 
 science Clause does) is, I must think, inconsistent with fair play 
 between teacher and parent. Formulary is but doctrine expressed 
 in a definite and permanent form ; concentrated and crystallized. 
 In common honesty I must, even when a dissident exerts his right 
 of objecting to formulary only, go a- head of his ignorance or 
 power of expressing himself, and understand his objection to be 
 substantially an objection to the doctrine formularized. Other- 
 wise his objection would be simply nonsense. 
 
 Mr. Bruce asked (1860^) "Is not the Catechism objected to 
 because it contains doctrines ? (1861j Yet, whenever the objec- 
 tion has been made, it must have been, not to the formularies in 
 the abstract, but to the formularies as containing certain distinc- 
 tive doctrines, to which the parents of the children objected ? 
 
 " Session 1866.
 
 14 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEEFERENCE. 
 
 (1862) Then you would still retain to the Church the right of 
 teaching these doctrines, although not of teaching the formularies 
 which contained them ? (1863) But would not that be alto- 
 gether an illusory arrangement ? " Only one answer surely can 
 be given to these questions. The dissident parent thinks he 
 has, as Mr. Bruce elsewhere says, a legal security against what 
 he considers false doctrine. And so, unless the Clause is to be a 
 mockery, delusion, and snare to him, and a continual strain upon 
 the conscience and sense of honour of the Teacher — ever perceiv- 
 ing divided duty — his legal protection the parent must have. 
 
 I know there are some who say, " It is no business of mine what 
 the parent means and thinks. If he is satisfied with the formulary 
 exemption, that is his business. I am bound to teach him truly 
 and fully. And I do so. I can teach him any thing without his 
 * learning the Catechism.' There is not a single doctrine of 
 Christianity which does not grow from, or is not virtually implied 
 in, the Creed. Or, I can do even without that. The truth of 
 Christianity is as one whole chain. Give me a single link, and all 
 the rest must follow on." Well; this is undoubtedly the case. 
 Exempt from formulary, and Catechism, and Creed, as you will, 
 doctrine can yet be taught. But I do urge that those who pre- 
 tend " liberally " to concede the legal right of exemption under a 
 formulary Clause, and yet teach doctrine to the claimants of the 
 exemption, are doing that which they have no moral right to do. 
 They have no right to take the dissident parent's child on one 
 legal understanding, and treat him practically on another. Nay, 
 more, they have no right to take advantage of his ignorance, 
 knowing as he may think himself, in objecting only to formulary, 
 and teach him the substance of it. I am aware it will be said 
 that the Wesleyans do it. Mr. Melville actually refers to their 
 case as an argument to determine ours, quoting the statement of 
 the Principal of their Training College to him, — " We have 
 acted upon our Conscience Clause [formulary only] from the first, 
 and I believe I may say in truth, it has given us no trouhle." Mr. 
 Eowle, in the irrepressible Hoxton Schools, does the same, and 
 finds "no trouble." 
 
 But would not Mr. Bruce condemn this treatment as "illusory," 
 and Earl Granville as " unjust ?" And would not most Churchmen 
 endorse their epithets? If the dissident has a legal right to ex- 
 emption from formulary, he must in reason and honour have also 
 the correlative moral right implied as regards doctrine ; or, while 
 keeping the promise to the ear, we are breaking it to the hope. 
 This does not arise in the case of voluntary tolerant treatment.
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFERENCE. 15" 
 
 and it does arise in the case of a legal right to exemption. W^%, 
 we shall see more distinctly presently. 
 
 I submit, therefore, that Earl Granville's position is incontro- 
 vertible, that children withdrawn under the rights of the Con- 
 science Clause from formulary, cannot justly be brought in again 
 to hear the doctrines of the Church taught. A fortiori^ when 
 exemption from all religious teaching is claimed. 
 
 Earl Granville, again, declares, or implies, in the first two pro- 
 positions, that the justifiableness of the Conscience Clause, and 
 the reasonableness of expecting it to be accepted by Churchmen, 
 turn upon the fact of its interference, or non-interference, with 
 "the religious teaching of the Church in her Schools." Tour 
 Lordship also takes issue on the fact. 
 
 What, therefore, is the fact ? 
 
 What is " that portion of religious instruction " from which a 
 parent may withdraw his child ? All, without doubt, to which he 
 objects. 
 
 I will not hamper the question by the consideration of the 
 practical difficulties which might arise from different parents 
 objecting to different portions '. Eor in such a matter, involving 
 legal obligations and privileges, we must, notwithstanding Mr. 
 Lingen's deprecatory objections to the process, in common sense 
 try the merits by the extreme case. First, because it will, as the 
 simplest, most easily exhibit the practical tendency of the Clause. 
 Next, because from its manner of use at present we cannot 
 infer by what class of dissidents it may not, when a brief period 
 of incubatory quiet has passed, be most extensively and injuriously 
 worked. Experience only can show whether in individual parishes 
 the demands of Secularists may not be much more numerous than 
 those of Dissenters. Exemption from the Apostles' Creed has 
 already been claimed. Next, because, as there is no difference in 
 principle but only in degrees, it is clear that the exercise of the 
 legal right by a number of Dissenters, if legally and honourably 
 carried out, would necessitate the same result in restricting the 
 religious teaching, as if by a number of Secularists : — for the only 
 real protection for either against objectionable doctrine, is, as we 
 shall see, by the removal of all religious instruction. And 
 lastly, because, if the opponents of the Clause appeal to the test, 
 it is unreasonable that its advocates should shrink from it : — for 
 whatever grievance a simple Nonconformist may be supposed to 
 
 7 The religious teaching, as regards the Dissenting Scholars, "would be 
 entirely in the hands of the Clergyman, so long as he and the parents of those 
 children agreed upon the matter; it might vary conceivably in every indi- 
 vidual case." Mr. Lingen, Answer to Q. 3443 (1866). ,
 
 16 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFERENCE. 
 
 have, it is plain that the grievance of the Secularist in having his 
 unsophisticated mind offended by hearing any thing so noxious as 
 the assertion of a Deity, and a Providence, and a Ketribution, and a 
 E/cdemption, must be incalculably more distressing. It is, there- 
 fore, the most cruel case to stand upon. The grievance is at its 
 greatest. The remedial Conscience Clause is at its utmost glory. 
 
 If, then, the Parent claim to withdraw his child from all reli- 
 gious teaching, that exemption must be conceded. 
 
 But what then happens ? 
 
 Earl Granville, Mr. Lingen, Mr. Bruce even, appear to have 
 invariably assumed that the whole of the Eeligious teaching is 
 confined within the limits of the special Bible or Catechism 
 Lesson ; an assumption very convenient, for it begs the whole 
 question. 
 
 But is this the case ? 
 
 I venture to say that in Denominational Schools — (the Arch- 
 bishop has affirmed it as regards Church Schools ; the Wesleyau 
 Committee of Education have asserted it as regards the Schools of 
 that body ; the majority of Independents hold the same : I appeal 
 also to the general statement of the E-oyal Commissioners, and 
 to the formally expressed opinion of Mr. Henley, of the first Vice- 
 President, and of others which I will presently give) — in all 
 Schools really carried out in a religious spirit, the teaching of 
 religion, and hy necessary implication, of- religious doctrine, is not 
 confined to the half-hour or hour of direct instruction, but is made 
 pervasive through the whole work of the day — 
 
 I am summarily stopped by your Lordship — 
 
 " No ! not in the Eule of Three ! " 
 
 But do not let me misrepresent your Lordship. The words of 
 
 your Charge are — 
 
 " It is argued that there ought to be no such thing as purely secular instruc- 
 tion in a Church School ; that all manner of knowledge should be ' interpene- 
 trated with a definite objective and dogmatic faith ;' and that ' the thread of 
 religion should run through the whole, from one end to the other.' It may 
 appear, at first sight, as if these phrases were utterly unmeaning, and could 
 only have been used by persons who had never reflected whether they are 
 capable of any application to the real work of a School. How, it may be asked, 
 is a sum of the Rule of Three to be ' interpenetrated with a definite, objective, 
 and dogmatic faith ? ' That may seem hard ; but I am afraid that it has been 
 thought possible, and that excellent persons have believed they had accomplished 
 it, by selecting examples of the rules of arithmetic out of Scripture. I leave it 
 to others to judge how far this is likely to cherish reverence for Holy Scripture, 
 or to imbue young minds with dogmatic faith. I only say this is the nearest 
 approach I have yet heard of towards reducing the maxim to practice." 
 
 Can your Lordship really intend that this answer ought to 
 conclude the question, or can be expected to conclude the ques- 
 tion? Does your Lordship really mean that the intelligent
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEUFEEENCE. 17 
 
 Clergy and Laity of your Lordship's Diocese, or those to wliom 
 by its wider publication your Charge shall come, are to be in- 
 structed hereby, on the authority of your Lordship, that all other 
 secular subjects, such as general E-eading, History, Biography, are 
 equally with the "Eule of Three" excluded by their nature from 
 combination with suggestions of religious motives and Christian 
 doctrines? Whi/, my Lord, take that one subject. Arithmetic, 
 which does admit, and which almost alone does admit, of an ad 
 ahsurdum application ? and why take that particular rule which 
 sounds the most absurd, and pin attention to that, as the fair 
 average specimen and true illustration ? 
 
 Tour Lordship speaks with wholesome decisiveness against 
 " the practice of improving, as it is called, all subjects of study 
 by the importation of religious, particularly dogmatic, reflections, 
 apparently quite irrelevant to their nature." Who, my Lord, 
 concerned in the present discussion, would assert a different view 
 from your Lordship's, thus stated ? But why beg the whole 
 question, by assuming the abuse, instead of the good use, of the 
 practice ? Ilust all religious reflections be " quite irrelevant to 
 the nature of all subjects of study ?" If they are, of course then 
 there is no common ground for us to stand upon. Tour Lordship 
 cannot, 1 am sure, go so far as that. But if not, what is the 
 argument good for ? , 
 
 " I am not aware," your Lordship continues, " whether there are 
 yet Church schools where all the copies in tlie writing-books are 
 enunciations of dogma, and all the reading lessons extracted from 
 treatises on dogmatic theology. Hut this appears to be absolutely 
 necessary for the completeness of the system, as the completeness 
 of the system is essential to the force of the argument." Surely, my 
 Lord, this is a perversion of the question. It is not, whether " all 
 the reading lessons shall be extracted from treatises on doguiatic 
 theology." It is, whether, as they are for the whole class, dis- 
 sidents included, any of them may allude to religious matters. It 
 is, whether the liberty is to be retained to the Clergyman or 
 Teacher to " extend " orally and pervasively "any religious instruc- 
 tion to the children" of a class generally, with reference to the 
 reading lesson, — or whether, since secular childre may not read 
 doctrine or hear doctrine at all, and dissenting children may not 
 read or hear doctrine to which their parents object, then as the 
 necessary and only practical alternative, the whole of the religious 
 teaching is to be corapulsorily driven up into the Bible and 
 Catechism lesson, from which the dissidents may be exempted. 
 
 It is commonly recognized, that if opponents expect to come to 
 
 B
 
 X8 OONSCIENOE CLAUSE INTERFERENCE. 
 
 an understanding with, or to persuade each other, they must deal 
 fairly with each other's statements, and attribute to them a 
 reasonable sense. Thus the rule of exceptis excipiendis is one 
 which, by common consent of controversialists, must be applied to 
 all general statements. But when your Lordship dealt with the 
 general statement in question, it must have been as perfectly plain 
 that the Eule of Three was not intended to be included, as that the 
 darning and stitching of the Girls' school was not. Your Lordship 
 was quite sure that the selection of examples of arithmetic out of 
 Scripture was not intended. Tour Lordship did not expect that 
 the setting of dogmatical enunciations in copy-books was intended. 
 Tour Lordship did not believe that those whom you were answer- 
 ing meant any such thing as that " all the reading lessons should 
 be extracted from a treatise on dogmatic theology." 
 
 What then becomes of your Lordship's conclusion? The 
 "argument" (proposition) is what? That doctrinal teachiug 
 should pervade all (all, exceptis ecccipiendis) secular teaching. 
 Tou say the "completeness of the system" (i. e. by the inclusion 
 of the excipiendd) is " essential to the force of the argument." 
 That is, your Lordship virtually asserts, ' you cannot make 
 religious allusions, or exemplify religious doctrines, in reading 
 E-oman History of the time of Augustus and Tiberius, or English 
 History of the 16th or 17th century, without doing the same in 
 teaching the Eule of Three ! ' When the real question is thus 
 ascertained, it must be clear that your Lordship's epigrammatic 
 conclusion is nothing at all to the purpose. 
 
 I refrain, my Lord, from any remark upon this, further than to 
 submit it very earnestly to your Lordship's consideration, whether 
 such arguments, and such a treatment of so grave a matter, are 
 likely to win conviction from the " moderation and practical good 
 sense of the^great body of the Clergy," or still more, of the intel- 
 ligent and clear-headed business men of the Laity. 
 
 Not only is pervasive religious teaching the rule in Church ^ 
 
 8 In undenominational schools, it is of course an unknown thing. Indeed 
 what religious teaching at all can be given in some schools, it is hard to con- 
 ceive. One of the Welsh ministers describes his school, quoted in Mr. Bow- 
 stead's letter to the Bishop of St. David's, " In our school one of the pupil 
 teachers is a Churchman, another a Baptist, and the third an Independent, 
 while the Master is a staunch Calvinistic Methodist. The children are divided 
 the same ; but in school they are not known by these appellations." (No. 82.) 
 
 The Committee of the Tynemouth Royal Jubilee School say truly that '' the 
 unsectarian manner in which the school is conducted cannot be better illus- 
 trated than by stating that there are seventy-seven of the boys whose parents 
 attend the Established Church, forty-seven the Wesleyan Chapel, twenty-one
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFERENCE. 19 
 
 schools, but it is so notably in those smaller schools which are to 
 be the primary subjects of the Conscience Clause. It is one 
 special advantage which these smaller schools have over the great 
 instruction-mills. I appeal at once unhesitatingly to the In- 
 spectors, H. M. or Diocesan, whether it is not so. There is 
 the opportunity, in the hands of good teachers, for the exercise of 
 a far greater amount of personal religious influence by the teacher, 
 through pervasive teachiog, in the smaller than in the larger 
 schools. And I believe it is more persistent in the heart and 
 habits of after life of the scholars of such. Large schools, 
 organized with a staif of pupil-teachers, have no doubt great 
 mechanical advantages. But however valuable these young 
 teachers are in getting the merely intellectual work done, however 
 indispensable it is to preserve the class for the supply of future 
 Teachers, however deplorable the effects of the Revised Code on 
 the supply, still I think my assertion will not be disputed, that 
 the moral and religious teaching in the smaller schools is, as a 
 rule, superior to that of the larger : and that this arises from the 
 cause to which I have attributed it ®. 
 
 the Primitive Methodist Chapel, sixteen the Methodist Free Church, thirteen 
 the Scotch Church, eleven the Baptist Chapel, ten the Presbyterian Chapel, 
 eight Salem Chapel, eight the Independent Chapel, three the Jewish Synagogue, 
 and one the Roman Catholic Chapel." 
 
 9 Since writing the above, the Report for 1862 of the Rev. D. J. Stewart, 
 H. M, Inspector, has been pointed out to me. He says : — 
 
 " The best Schools are generally those in which the average attendance varies 
 from 50 to 80, and where the Teachers are a Master or Mistress, with one or 
 two apprentices and as many paid monitors, who are taught with the appren- 
 tices, and are being trained to succeed them. 
 
 " In such examples as these it is possible for the Teacher to gain an individual 
 knowledge of each child under her care, which adds very much to the peculiar 
 power of her position. 
 
 " Her lessons are given with reference to the individual peculiarities of each 
 one of her pupils, and are accepted as the encouragement or reproof of an 
 earnest friend. 
 
 " On the other hand, the schools in large towns and densely-populated neigh- 
 bourhoods seem to me the least satisfactory institutions to which your Lord- 
 ships' assistance is extended. Their inferiority arises mainly from their size. 
 .... Wherever the number of classes in a room is increased beyond a certain 
 point, the functions of the Master or Mistress degenerate into what is called 
 general superintendence, and the main labour of teaching, as far as it goes, is 
 thrown on to the apprentices, who are, at the best, only beginners preparing 
 for training schools. 
 
 " Purely mechanical routine is often very well carried out in these overgrown 
 institutions. There is smartness in the performance of drill, obedience to 
 general signals, and a certain familiarity with all those branches of elementary 
 knowledge which depend more on manual cleverness than on mental effort. All 
 this may be naturally looked for, because every one knows that the children 
 who pass their lives in busy towns are more shrewd oliservers and apter scholars 
 than the slow, plodding boys and girls that wander along green lanes and range 
 over open commons ; but the results obtained, even under the most favourable 
 conditions, are never so finished as those produced in smaller institutions. It is 
 
 B 2
 
 20 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEEFERENCE. 
 
 The very parishes, therefore, in which the work would be best 
 and most eiFectually done, are just those on which the Conscience 
 Clause is to be inflicted. 
 
 To proceed with the general question. 
 
 The legal right established for the child by the Conscience 
 Clause is, that it should, on demand, be admitted to all secular 
 teaching, and equally exempted from all religious teaching. 
 
 What, then, is to be done, when the exempted child comes in, 
 after prayers and the Bible and Catechism lesson, into the ordi- 
 nary class work of the school, when religious doctrinal teaching is 
 made pervasive through and over the secular ? 
 
 1. Either he must, in receiving the secular, take the religious 
 with it. But this would be, to " bring him in to hear doctrines 
 taught," though not absolutely addressed to him. Earl Granville 
 repeats his opinion that this is prohibited by the Clause, when 
 he writes to the Archbishop, " it does prevent the Clergyman from 
 extending religious instruction to the children of those who object." 
 Without doubt, the Court of Chancery would say the same thing. 
 It would say — " The protection to the child must be substantial, 
 operative, and effectual." The orders must be such as to secure 
 this, for this is the essential intention of the Clause. It is the 
 very object for which it exists, and the proviso, that they " shall 
 not otherwise (i. e., Mr. Lingen says, than by exemption) interfere 
 with the religious teaching of the scholars," cannot override it. 
 Just as in the Parochial Assessment Act, wherein a proviso has 
 been held by the Queen's Bench to be inoperative and nugatory, 
 because it must be interpreted in a sense accordant with the 
 section itself, and it admits of none but a contrariant sense. 
 
 But Mr. Lingen repeatedly urges the effectiveness of the pro- 
 viso, as above signified. In doing so, he must necessarily contem- 
 plate one of two things. Either — 1, that the exempted child shall 
 take the pervasive religious teaching and hear doctrine, and so 
 have religious instruction extended to him, contrary to Earl Gran- 
 ville's interpretation, to the legal rights of the child, and to good 
 faith ; or else — 2, he agrees with his Lordship, upon that one sup- 
 
 impossible to extend to the children in a large school that complete and indi- 
 vidual training of which they are so much in need. They lose the most valu- 
 able advantages which a really good school offers ; they lose the direct daily 
 contact with the teacher under whose charge they are supposed to be placed. 
 
 "The admirers of large schools urge that the loss of individual influence and 
 teaching is made up by the sympathy of numbers. But the answer to this is, 
 that what children need most is the sympathy of an earnest, cultivated mind, 
 and that mere numbers can never supplj^ the place of so valuable an agent.^*
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFERENCE. 21 
 
 position upon which alone their two interpretations are reconcil- 
 able, viz., that there is no pervasive religious teaching in the 
 school at all. 
 
 2. Earl Grranville, pressed by the Archbishop in correspondence, 
 gives the following as his final, and it must be supposed only, 
 solution. " The conscientious difficulty of clergymen to which 
 your Grace alludes, would be met by their excluding the children 
 of objecting Dissenterd from the classes in which they intend to 
 give doctrinal instruction." His Lordship forgets that under the 
 Conscience Clause the child cannot legally be shut out from any 
 secular classwork, for it is part of the "benefits" which the law of 
 the Clause allows him, and the Court of Chancery would award. 
 Besides, it is not a question concerning only the clergyman and a 
 special class, but the teacher and the whole school throughout 
 the day. This, therefore, is no solution at all. 
 
 3. Or else, the secularist child must be sent out of class, and 
 "hearing," every time the teacher or clergyman sees an opportu- 
 nity of adverting to Religion ; for instance, whenever he would 
 incidentally allude to religious motives as the true incentive to 
 moral conduct, or indicate the operation of God's providence, pre- 
 servative or retributory, or show the parallelism of sacred and 
 secular history, or the true bearings of scientific discovery upon 
 Scripture records, or the analogies of natural and revealed religion. 
 This, of course, is a practical impossibility and absurdity. 
 
 4. There remains no alternative, but that Education must be 
 cut down to mere instruction. Training to mere teaching : the work 
 of the whole day, quoad religion, to the work of the dry single 
 hour's lesson ; that pervasive teaching which the great majority 
 of practical Churchmen and Denominational Dissenters hold to be 
 indispensable, sacrificed ; to the detriment of the best and highest 
 interests of the whole School, for the sake and " benefit" of the 
 one — or the one dozen if you will — recalcitrant Secularist. And 
 by this " slight concession," as Earl Granville calls it ^ — by this 
 "secondary consideration" by means of which your Lordship 
 would " adjust the work of a Church school to the operation of 
 the Conscience Clause," — resistance to which is so jocose that 
 Mr. Chester cannot "speak of it with gravity," — is the whole 
 matter to be comfortably settled. 
 
 I have said that Earl Granville's, and Mr. Lingen's, inter- 
 pretations are only reconcilable on this supposition. Mr. Chester, 
 with more boldness of statement, proceeds upon the same, when 
 
 ' In his letter to Mr. Hubbard on the Elmswell case.
 
 22 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEEEEEENCE. 
 
 he declares ^ that " to say that if a boy is detected in a lie, or a 
 theft, or an act of selfishness, the Christian education of a school 
 cannot prosper unless the parochial minister is at liberty to begin, 
 then and there, lecturing to all the scholars on some controversial 
 topics, baptismal regeneration, or conversion, for example, seems 
 trifling with grave realities. In the discharge of duties even a 
 Clergyman must submit to convenient restrictions of times and 
 places." If, my Lord, this means any thing practical at all, it 
 must mean that Mr. Chester would not have the Teacher — for 
 I repeat, these are not questions affecting the Clergyman only — 
 at liberty to speak in open school, or class, on controversial 
 topics. But what are controversial topics, and what are not ? 
 Mr. Chester's cases are special, and do not include the much 
 larger range of subjects likely at any moment to suggest in- 
 ferences of a religious character in the course of reading lessons. 
 Of course, taking his particular cases, it would not usually 
 be desirable to address the boy, or the whole class or school, 
 in face of each other. Still, under circumstances, even that 
 might be necessary. Suppose the offender a Church child. 
 Would Mr. Chester lay it down, and would his ruling have your 
 Lordship's approbation, that the Teacher, or the Clergyman, must 
 not say, in the presence of secularist children, or of dissenting 
 children as against whose opinions the doctrines involved would 
 be "peculiar," that he had been guilty of a sin against God, as 
 well as an offence against man ? That he must not say that such 
 offences are inconsistent with his baptismal vows, and his duties 
 and spiritual privileges in covenant with God thereby, and with 
 his preparation of himself for the perfecting of that covenant at 
 Confirmation ? May he say that the child must turn from evil to 
 good ; and to enable him to do so, must pray for God's pardon 
 and grace ; and through Whom ? I cannot bring myself to think 
 that Mr. Chester, as a Churchman, or your Lordship, as a Bishop 
 of the Church, could insist that he must not do so. But what is 
 all this but the practical pervasive teaching of the deepest " con- 
 troversial topics ? " not those alone which Mr. Chester specifies, 
 but also the doctrines of the Holy Trinity, of the agency and in- 
 fluences of the Holy Spirit, of the Incarnation of the Saviour. 
 
 The fact is simply this, that if you once allow the one element 
 of Eight, you are at once let in for the whole. The first link in 
 the chain leads on to its whole length. The simple interrogatives 
 " Why ?" and " How ? " originate by necessary implication every 
 
 2 Letter to Times, Nov. 1, 1866.
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFEBENCE. 23 
 
 item of Faith and Duty. You can only get rid of controversial 
 topics by a blank silence. And when doctrine goes, moral disci- 
 pline goes too. You cannot separate them. Henceforth, you 
 must rule by the rod. 
 
 And then, how about the after life ? And what sort of citizens 
 will the State have purchased by its Building Grrant ? 
 
 All follows on, therefore, in regular course and order. Enforce 
 the Conscience Clause. Exempt compulsorily from formulary 
 and you must, in consistency and good faith, exempt also from 
 doctrine. Exempt from doctrine, and the concurrent legal right 
 to secular teaching leads on, if loyally carried out, by inevitable 
 practical sequence, to destruction of that pervasive religious 
 teaching, that godly training in the things of daily life, which is 
 really Education in its fullest and highest and only proper sense. 
 And thus will the majority be sacrificed to the minority, the 
 School: to the Child. 
 
 It follows, therefore, as it seems to me beyond contradiction, 
 that Earl Granville's second proposition is irreconcilable with his 
 first. The legal right conferred by the Clause, of claiming exemp- 
 tion from any or all religious, concurrently with admittance to all 
 secular, instruction, does necessarily subvert the " religious teach- 
 ing of the Church of England in her schools " in a mo»t important 
 and indispensable particular. 
 
 His Lordship is therefore involved in this alternative. If it 
 does so interfere, then, on his own showing, he would not expect 
 the Church to accept it. If it does not, then, also ou his own 
 showing in his third proposition, the protection it pretends to afibrd 
 to the child is inoperative, nugatory, and deceptive. 
 
 The broad truth is simply this : — that the carrying out of the 
 Conscience Clause in legal strictness and good faith is incom- 
 patible with the liberty of general E-eligious Education in our 
 Schools. Neither the proposed form of Clause, nor any other 
 form of words can reconcile them. You can not do what 
 Mr. Lingen proposes by the Clause, — "relieve," by a legal secu- 
 rity, the dissidents, without " compromising or prejudicing the full 
 religious teaching to which the other children are entitled^." 
 
 It is an insoluble problem — 
 
 Because the intrinsic nature and force of the Clause itself 
 involve it in this dilemma — 
 
 3 Letter to Mr. Craven.
 
 24 CONSCIENCE CLA.FSE INTEEEE HENCE. 
 
 Either, it is a merely fictitious remedy for the grievance, a 
 mockery, delusion, and snare for the dissident parent ; 
 
 Or else, it must work the destruction of the pervasive Beli- 
 gious Education of the School, and drive up the whole, from 
 being pervasive Education, into the mere instructional teach- 
 ing of the hour's specific lesson. 
 
 Your Lordship will, I think, admit that there is not much room 
 here for misapprehension. It is not much open to your Lordship's 
 complaint of "vagueness." There is no want of a "clear and 
 definite issue." The question is, whether in future, by the intro- 
 duction of the Conscience Clause, the religious teaching of the 
 Church of England in her smaller schools shall be legally com- 
 pressible within the corners of the hour's Catechism and Bible 
 lesson. 
 
 Mr. Grathorne Hardy pointed this out plainly enough in 18G2 *. 
 
 " It is as dangerons," he said, " to have our constitution sapped as to'have it 
 attacked openly ; and I am convinced that, if the National Society and other 
 Societies were to yield to the Conscience Clause, they would eventually have to 
 go a great deal further. They would have to adopt a much more open system 
 than the one now proposed by those who put forward those clauses, because it 
 is the beginning of that inevitable progress which exists towards secular edu- 
 cation If you begin to set up a system by which you say no man shall 
 
 have assistance from the State unless he will admit the children of every de- 
 nomination and allow them to withdraw at certain periods, i/ou must go still 
 further. You must come to times and seasons at which religious instruction 
 shall be given. You must taJce it from the ordinary/ lesson. You must commit 
 it to some definite period, and you must have notices set up that children may 
 quit at particular times. It seems to me that when you get to that system, 
 that if you warn children to leave when religious instruction begins, you are 
 taking a step beyond that which the Clergy are authorized to do." 
 
 Mr. Mann recognizes this as the true statement of the case 
 on the side of the " religious party." He b^ays — 
 
 " The permission to a child to retire from school when instruction is to be 
 given in any Catechism would, it is contended, be inoperative, if the Master 
 might at any other time instruct the whole school in the doctrines of the Cate- 
 chism ; and no words can be devised to hinder him from this which would not 
 also prohibit all Religious teaching s." 
 
 Mr. Chester accepts the statement, for he writes — 
 
 "As for the practical difiiculty which was the subject of Lord Granville's 
 late correspondence with the Archbishop of Canterbury, I confess I scarcely 
 know how to speak of it with gravity. It is alleged that if separate times are 
 appointed for the systematic religious instruction of the Church Scholars by the 
 Clergyman [or Teacher], he must be also at liberty to introduce such instruc- 
 tion at other times whenever he thinks it requisite — whenever any little incident 
 
 ^ Speech at Canterbury, November, 1862. 
 
 5 Census Report on Education, 1851, p. Ixxxvii.
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFERENCE. 25 
 
 occurs — in school hours to call for admonition or warning. ... In the discharge 
 of duties even a Clergyman must submit to convenient restrictions of time and 
 place ^." 
 
 If this does not mean that he understands the Clause, when 
 brought into operation for the "protection" of Dissenters, to 
 restrict the religious instruction of Church scholars to the sepa- 
 rate times, and the Clergyman [or Teacher] from being at liberty 
 to introduce religious instruction " at other times in school hours," 
 I do not know any language that would. 
 
 The Eev. J. Oakley goes a step further. Eor, in arguing for the 
 Clause, and in answer to the objection that the Teacher ought 
 not to be placed in the false position of separating between the 
 religious and the secular teaching of the school, — "nevertheless," 
 he writes, " I suppose he does separate them. They are not, cannot 
 he, taught together." — Well, then, if they are already irrecoverably- 
 separated, how is the adoption of the Conscience Clause to save 
 them from separation ? 
 
 " Of course," he continues — 
 
 ** I know their abstract connexion, 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 di*awn in prac- 
 tice, 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 \' " , 
 
 InvidicB causa, Mr. Oakley puts Spelling as your Lordship 
 has put the E-ule of Three. Why not put the lond fide case ? 
 Does it follow, that because the Spelling lesson may cease at 10, 
 and the Catechism lesson begin at the same moment by the time 
 table, when the dissidents are set to slate-work, tlierefore there is 
 and can be no religious instruction at other times and during other 
 lessons ? Does it follow that when the Teacher separates Spelling 
 and Catechism, because from the nature of the case there is an 
 inevitable line to be drawn in practice, tlierefore E-eading of His- 
 tory or Biography and pervasive Keligious instruction " are not, 
 cannot be, taught together," when the dissident reads the history 
 and hears the doctrine? Tour Lordship will consider whether 
 this is the quality of argument which ought to distinguish what 
 he claims to be a "carefully prepared statement" by the Secretary 
 of the London Diocesan Board of Education. 
 
 Having now, my Lord, shown the incompatibility of the Con- 
 science Clause with the maintenance of pervasive Eeligious Edu- 
 cation in our Church schools, and that there is at least " one clear 
 
 6 Letter to the Times, Nov. 1, 1866. 
 '* " The Conscience Clause," p. 43.
 
 26 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFERENCE. 
 
 and definite issue" on which its opponents see no ambiguity in 
 the Clause ; let me proceed to show what there is to meet it on 
 the other side, — how little agreed its various advocates are as to 
 its effects. 
 
 Your Lordship observes no ambiguity in the Clause ; you have 
 no doubt about its effects. Nor, I suppose, has any other of its 
 advocates, any more than its opponents. But let us see what 
 they have said on the subject. 
 
 1. First, as regards the Bible. 
 
 Mr. Lingen to the Eev. W. B. Caparn, May 31, 1865, inter- 
 prets it to — 
 
 " Allow Managers to make tlie daily reading of tlie Bible hy every child that 
 can read an ahsolute rule of tlie School, 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." 
 
 Mr. Liugen to the Eev. C. Craven, Jan. 29, 1866, interprets it 
 
 to say that — 
 
 " Managers must insist upon the reading of the Scriptures as a necessary part 
 of the instruction in the case of all those children whose parents do not object. 
 To those who do object it would be open to say 'Your child need not attend the 
 Bible lesson.^ " 
 
 Mr. Lingen, again, as a witness was asked (Q. 3483 — 1866) — 
 
 " Quest. Have you not a rule [in the Revised Code] that it shall be necessary 
 that the Scripture shall be laid upon all Schools receiving Government aid ? 
 
 " Ans. But not that every child shall necessarily be instructed in it. Every 
 School is to be a religious School, and the Bible is to be read in it, but it is not 
 provided that in all cases every single child shall read it." 
 
 Mr. Lingen again stated (Q. 3459—1866) — 
 
 " The Conscience Clause in the years before 1862 was a Clause which provided 
 for reading the Bible in the Schools, but for exempting the children whose 
 parents desired it, from . . . the teaching of the Catechism. Then it was felt, 
 while the subject was under discussion by the Committee of Council, that the 
 compulsory reading of the Bible was a great stumbling-block to many Clergy- 
 men, because they felt that to be obliged to read the Bible and to be stopped short 
 of the Catechism, was a difficulty, and this [2nd] Clause which was suggested to 
 the National Society . . . was framed in a great measure to meet that diffi- 
 culty, by not obliging the Clergyman to do any thing positive, but merely 
 giving the Dissenter a negative right to get his cliild into the School without 
 having his dissent trodden upon." 
 
 How to reconcile this statement, that under the Clause the 
 " reading the Bible in the Schools " even is not obligatory, with 
 the provision in the Code, and Mr. Lingen' s statements to 
 Mr. Caparn and Mr. Crayen, I do not know. 
 
 Mr. Bruce, in putting a question in Examination, said (Q. 
 
 5079—1866) : 
 
 " As a matter of fact, according to the interpretation which is put upon the 
 Conscience Clause by the Committee of Council in every Church school with a 
 Conscience Clause, the parent has the power of withdrawing his child even from 
 the exposition of the Bible lesson, if he chooses to do so."
 
 CONSCIEIS^CE CLAUSE IT^TEEFEEENCE. 27 
 
 But Sir Jolin Pakiogton, on the other hand, is indignant with 
 a witness for saying so. (Q. 4556 — 1865) : 
 
 *' Are yoTi not aware that the reading of the Holy Scriptures is required ? 
 (4557) Is it not obvious that it is required? (4584) Have you any doubt 
 whatever in your mind, considering the object of the Clause, that the meaning 
 of it is, that the Bible shall be read to all the children, whether they are Dis- 
 senters or not ? (4585) Supposing the substance of the Conscience Clause to 
 be that the Scriptures must be read, and that the exemptions are, as it appears 
 to me they clearly are, limited to the formularies of the Church of England, and 
 attending Divine Service, — would you then say — ? " 
 
 2. Again, — as regards restriction of religious teaching, and its 
 separation from secular — 
 
 Mr. Lingen interprets it to Mr. Craven to require that the 
 Orders made by Managers 
 
 " Must not otherwise (i. e. than by the exemption of the aforesaid children) 
 interfere with the religious teaching of the said scholars/' The Managers must 
 maintain the Church's doctrine, . . . and in relieving those who object to read- 
 ing the Scripture " they must do so upon terms that are confined to relieving 
 them, and do not extend to the compromise or prejudice of that full religious 
 instruction to which the other children are entitled." 
 
 Yet Mr. Lingen plainly contemplates that under the Clause 
 there shall be an entire separation of the secular lessons from the 
 religious instruction. 
 
 " Qu. (3450 — 1866) According to your interpretation of the Clause, the 
 parent would have the right of coming to the Clergyman and^jicking out the 
 particular dcotrine on which he would place his ban ; and that Clergyman would 
 still be forced by the meaning of the language to teach the Christian religion 
 minus that particular docti'ine ? 
 
 " Ans. I should not myself have come to that conclusion. It is impossible 
 to give a perfectly certain interpretation of any clause which has not been the 
 subject of a judicial decision ; but I myself should have felt entire confidence, as 
 a Clergyman, in saying ' Your child may come to the secular lessons at my 
 school, but under the conditions which you impose^ I can have nothing to do 
 with his religious instruction.' " 
 
 Earl Oranville says that it means that the children of protest- 
 ing Dissenters must not, when withdrawn from formularies, be 
 " brought in again to hear the doctrines of the Church taught." 
 
 Mr. Lingen wrote to the Eev. J. Scott, 26 March, 1866— 
 
 "No child ought to be compelled to receive religious instruction contrary to 
 the professed and declared wish of its parents. It is hardly necessary to add 
 that such compulsion might be applied without the direct use of specific formu- 
 laries, inasmuch as aU that is contained in them might be taught in other 
 words." 
 
 Mr. Chester laughs at the allegation that — 
 
 " If separate times were appointed for the systematic religious instruction of 
 the Church Scholars by the Clergyman, he must also be at liberty to introduce 
 such instruction at other times whenever he thinks it necessary." 
 
 Mr. Oakley puts up the proposition of the adoption of the
 
 28 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEEFEEENCE. 
 
 Clause as one alternative to the separation of religious instruc- 
 tion from the general school work : and yet says that even with- 
 out the Clause " religious and secular teaching are not, cannot be 
 taught together." 
 
 3. Again: as regards withdrawal from any^ or all, religious 
 teaching ; — 
 
 Mr. Lingen to Mr. Caparn — 
 
 " 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 communion wherein that Creed is not said.'' 
 
 Sir John .Pakingtou asks of the 'Rev. Gr. H. Fagan — 
 
 " 4548 — 1865. Supposing that you were the religious teacher of a school in 
 which the principle of the Conscience Clause was adopted, and that you had in 
 that school the children of parents who had availed themselves of their rights 
 under that Clause, are you not, as the religious teacher in that school, at liberty 
 to teach that child his duty to God ?" 
 
 " 4549. In what words, or in what way is it barred out ?" 
 
 " 4650. I ask you whether under those words which I have suggested to you, 
 you are not at perfect liberty to teach every thing but the distinctive doctrines 
 and formularies of the Church of England as shown in the Catechism ? " 
 
 "4553. Knowing that by the plain words of this Clause you are at liberty to 
 teach that child religion, what is there to prevent you, a Christian minister, in 
 teaching that child Keligion, from eliminating the contents of that answer in 
 the Catechism of his Duty to GoD, which does not touch the distinctive doctrine 
 of any Church whatever, but which involves plain duties to which every 
 Christian of every form of worship is liable ?" 
 
 " Ans. I am sorry to say that I cannot see that I am at liberty to teach Reli- 
 gion to any child whose parents object to religious teaching." 
 
 " 4554. Then, if that is your impression, is it not obviously, from the •plain 
 English of the Clause, a mistaken impression, when you read the words, that 
 excepting the formularies of a given Church, and excepting worship in a given 
 Church, this Clause shall not otherwise interfere with the religious teaching of 
 the scholars, which means that with these two exceptions you are at liberty to 
 teach the scholars Eeligion ?" 
 
 " 4555. In these cases we cannot enter into doubts and restrictions, but we 
 can only enter into the plain meaning of the English words as they are there." 
 
 " 4558. Do you mean to say that your construction of the Conscience Clause 
 is, that when the parent of a child having a right to do so demands that his 
 child shall be withdrawn from the teaching and formularies of the Church of 
 England and worship in the Parish Church, you, as a religious teacher, are pre- 
 cluded from teaching that child any Religion at all ; is that your construction of 
 the Conscience Clause ?" 
 
 " 4559. Will you point out to me the words under which you could be so 
 restricted ?" 
 
 But Mr. Bruce says — 
 
 "5079 — 1866. As a matter of fact, according to thejnterpretation of the 
 Committee of Council, the parent has the power of withdrawing his child from 
 any portion of the religious teaching." 
 
 " 5088. Does it not appear from the Conscience Clause itself, as interpreted 
 by the Department, who may fairly be supposed to understand it, that you have 
 a power of withdrawing a child from all religious teaching V 
 
 " 5089. I state that they have the power."
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEEFERENCE. 29 
 
 Earl Granville — 
 
 " It does prevent the Clergyman from extending religious instruction to the 
 children of those who object." 
 
 Mr. Lingen urges that "the true defence of the Conscience 
 Clause, I think, is, that it is negative, and to give exemption ; 
 that it does not warrant positive interference." But he admits 
 (3460. 3480. 3541) that it is only his own interpretation. Even 
 on the legal point the Crown law officers have not been consulted. 
 I have already adverted to the not uncommon occurrence, that the 
 intention of a draughtsman, or even of the Legislature, and the 
 effect given by a Judge, prove very different. Mr. Lingen even 
 allows (3450) that it is impossible to " give a perfectly certain 
 interpretation of any Clause which has not been the subject of a 
 judicial decision." And see now what different views and inter- 
 pretations have been enunciated by Earl Grranville, Mr. Bruce, 
 Sir John Pakington, and Mr. Chester. And yet upon this 
 acknowledged legal uncertainty, and upon these diverse opinions 
 about it, we are to encounter unmeasured reprobation, even your 
 Lordship's severe language of rebuke, for being unwilling^ to hazard 
 the future of our Schools and Parishes. 
 
 Mr. Chester, who differs from Mr. Lingen, or is more candid, or 
 
 8 They who are so, are not, as has been most unfairly insinuated, of any one 
 class of theological views. This is equally true of Laity as of Cl?rgy. 
 
 Sir John Coleridge's opinion is well known. 
 
 V. C. Sir W. Page Wood said, at Colchester, in October, 1862,—" There are 
 symptoms of a desire on the part of the Committee of Council to engross far 
 more than a due share of weight and importance in the superintendence of the 
 education of the country. . . . There is great hazard and danger of the education 
 of the country taking a turn which the true friends of the Church would be 
 very unwilling to see it take, and tends far more to secular instruction than it 
 had hitherto taken. ... As to the wisdom of that Clause, he could not understand 
 it, nor could he see how a master worthy of his position could avoid teaching 
 those principles and doctrines he had imbibed. He thought the Conscience 
 Clause a very foolish one." 
 
 Lord Harrowby writes to the Times, Nov. 8, 1866, that although its dangers 
 appear to him only logical and not pi-actical, still he " cannot but regret that 
 the stipulation was ever introduced by the Committee of Council." 
 
 And the Earl of Shaftesbury, at Salisbury, in December, 1865, said, " I hated 
 the Government Grants from the commencement — I protested from the first 
 against your having any thing to do with them. I knew that your independence 
 would be fettered, and I was perfectly sure that they would interfere with your 
 Religious Teaching both directly and indirectly. ... I do not suppose that 
 there is any Gentleman in this Meeting, or any Clergyman of the Diocese, who 
 would wish unnecessarily to have the children of Dissenters in their Schools, 
 and then to force upon them the various dogmas of the Catechism which they 
 cannot receive, and more particularly those parts about Godfathers and God- 
 mothers. But it is a ditferent thing to allow a Clergyman that discretion, and 
 to have it put into a deed — ' I will give you 5*. Qd. upon the condition that you 
 will not say a word about the Apostles' Creed.' I hope the Laity of the Diocese 
 of Salisbury will come forward and rescue the Bishop from so miserable a posi- 
 tion as that."
 
 30 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEEFEEENCE. 
 
 less cautious, admits that the interference will amount to restric- 
 tions on the liberty of religious teaching in the current work of the 
 school ; restrictions which the "Wesleyan body, with a formulary 
 Conscience Clause already, indignantly refuse to submit to, but of 
 which that gentleman thinks that Churchmen ought, knowingly 
 and willingly, to pass the Church under the yoke. 
 
 Earl Grranville even admits the same thing, when, in his answer 
 to the Archbishop, he remarks upon the Resolution of the 
 Wesleyan Committee, " It implies that no useful instruction can 
 be given on secular subjects which is not interspersed by religious 
 teaching of a controversial character." Of course the word 
 * controversial ' is introduced ad invidiam ; but it turna against 
 his Lordship. For what religious teaching is there which is not, 
 in one view, of a controversial character ? Tou cannot put your 
 finger upon a single item which is not under controversy, or has 
 not been within the last twenty years, or will not be within the next. 
 If this fact, of the ever-shifting locus of controversy, involving not 
 merely external and incidental points, but the very foundations 
 of the faith, be not a conclusive argument for holding hard and 
 fast to the free and unrestricted liberty of definite teaching 
 throughout a Church School, I can imagine none that would be. 
 But whatever sense be really signified by the word as used by Earl 
 Granville, this is indisputable, that his Lordship distinctly under- 
 stands the Conscience Clause to produce a state of things in a 
 school, opposed to that contemplated by the Wesleyan E-esolution ; 
 that is to say, he understands a restriction of the religious teach- 
 ing, from pervasive, to the special hour's lesson ; a separation of 
 secular from religious teaching. 
 
 ISTow these diverse representations, on these three essential 
 points, certainly go very far to show that there is a great amount, 
 if not of ambiguity in the language of the Clause, still of difference 
 of opinion among its best advocates and most authoritative inter- 
 preters, as to its legal and practical effect ; and therefore, if its 
 opponents could have any doubt, would very much increasethe 
 hazard of adopting a clause of such very uncertain operation. 
 
 But they have a special force with respect to the result of the 
 inquiry by the House of Commons Committee, in so far as that is 
 exhibited in the Draft Eeport of the E-ight Hon. Chairman. As 
 they show both what is his understanding of the Clause, and also 
 how far removed it is from what any of the representatives of the 
 Committee of Council maintain, we are able to put a value on the 
 propositions of that Draft. Is it any wonder if the Committee
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEUEEEENCE. 31 
 
 were very glad of a sufficient excuse to postpone it ? Could the 
 Vice-President have supported it on Ms grounds ? 
 
 "Was it indeed possible that Sir John Pakington should avoid 
 drifting, the moment he attempted precision of language, into a 
 fallacy ? Determined to put the objecting Churchmen in the 
 wrong, without seeing that in the eyes of Mr. Bruce he must be 
 almost equally wrong with them, he endeavours to turn their own 
 gentleness and forbearance against themselves by the following 
 argument ; which is as nonconsequent in itself as it is fallacious 
 in fact. 
 
 He represents (1) That the majority of the Clergy " act upon 
 the tolerant principle which it is the object of the Clause to pro- 
 mote;" (2) That in doing so, they " acknowledge the justice of 
 the principle ; " (3) That they therefore "cannot be justified in 
 resisting the embodiment of it in a general law." 
 
 Now not only is there, as must be obvious, no consequence 
 between these propositions, but — what is even more important — 
 the whole argument is based upon ?i petitio principW^. 
 
 It assumes that the principle of tolerant treatment is the same 
 tiling with the principle of the Clause. The two things are totally 
 distinct. To no practical man could they occur as identical. 
 
 There is plainly a broad difference in principle between that — 
 such as exemption from learning formulary, or even Bible or 
 doctrine in the Bible and Catechism class, — which mainly affects 
 the exempted child ; and that which, like exemption from doctrine 
 generally, involves in practical necessity the destruction of per- 
 vasive religious education in the school, and thereby affects every 
 other child in it. It is perfectly possible to accede to the former, 
 without being thereby logically or morally bound to embrace the 
 latter. 
 
 The distinction then lies in this : — 
 
 On the one hand, t\ie principle of tolerant treatment implies the 
 treatment of the individual child with forbearance and considera- 
 tion ; with as much forbearance and consideration for its special 
 circumstances, as the nature of the case admits, and as can be 
 shown without producing evil consequences upon the rest of the 
 children. 
 
 On the other hand, the principle of the Conscience Clause is, as 
 I have previously shown, the setting up for the child, of a legal 
 
 9 This ran throughout the whole examination of witnesses. There was cross 
 questioning and crooked answering throughout. 
 
 Three minutes' questioning by an expert on either side would on many occa- 
 sions have completely altered the whole effect of evidence.
 
 32' CONSCTENCE CLAUSE INTERFERENCE. 
 
 right of entry for secular, or reduced religious instruction, which, 
 worked out, involves in its consequences either, if withdrawal from 
 formulary only is claimed and conceded, and the child brought 
 in again to hear Church doctrine, a mere deception of and injus- 
 tice upon the parent ; or else, if exemption from doctrine is claimed 
 and conceded, then the sacrifice of pervasive Keligious teaching 
 throughout the School. 
 
 It is therefore perfectly consistent and justifiable, that, while 
 Churchmen, Laity and Clergy, wish to treat the minority with 
 all tenderness and consideration, they should conscientiously and 
 resolutely refuse to subject the School irretrievably and for ever 
 to a legally enforcible right which, if acted out, would destroy 
 within it that which they hold to be of the very essence of Edu- 
 cation. 
 
 Sir John Pakington appeals to the evidence. To the evidence 
 let us turn. There is, no doubt, plenty of evidence to show that 
 the Church School managers apply " tolerant treatment," and so 
 acknowledge the justice of that principle. But there is not an 
 inch of evidence to show that the principle of the Conscience 
 Clause is in any single instance of a one-school Parish acted upon 
 or acknowledged. There is not an iota of evidence to show that 
 the pervasive religious instruction has ever been sacrificed under 
 the plea of tolerant treatment. On the contrary there is evidence 
 that when Managers were said, in answer to questions which 
 throughout were put in a leading form, to " act upon the principle 
 of the Clause," what was meant was simply and invariably that 
 they conceded exemption from the formulary or Bible Lesson 
 only. 
 
 The statement of the Eev. W. J. Kennedy, H. M. Inspector, 
 is about as general as any ; he was asked — 
 
 " 2551 — 1865. As far as your experience goes, is it your opinion that the Clergy 
 do generally act upon the principle of the Conscience Clause ? — I think that they 
 act upon it almost universally, and the exceptions are so trifling as not to he 
 worth naming. In Lancashire I have found out persons' feelings upon the sub- 
 ject as much as possible, and I only know of one Clergyman who says that he 
 would not act upon it in his school. He is a very excellent man, who maintains, 
 I think, no less than three or four schools, and who is most liberal and kind to 
 his schools ; but he holds these particular views, and he says that he will not 
 admit any child to his school who will not learn the Catechism : but that is a 
 solitary case out of an enormous number." 
 
 " 2558. Are the Committee to understand that in all these cases, which must 
 be numerous, the principle of the Conscience Clause is carried out to this extent ; 
 that the Clergy do not insist upon Dissenters' children learning the Catechism, 
 and that they do not insist upon their going to Church on Sunday ? — They do 
 neither one nor the other in general." 
 
 The Eev. B. F. Smith, Inspector for Canterbury Diocese, was
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFERENCE. 33 
 
 nearly, if not quite, the only witness out of many to whom the fol- 
 lowing two invidious questions were put, who saw their drift, and 
 was prepared with the true answer. Tlie Chairman is the inter- 
 rogator : — 
 
 "959 — 1866. Are you able to state whether the ol)jection on the part of the 
 Clergy is chiefly to the principle of the Conscience Clause, or chiefly to making' 
 that principle compulsory ? — 1 think that it is to the legal footing which is given 
 by it to Dissenters that they would object. 
 
 " 960. Do you tliink that they do not find fault with the principle, but that 
 they do not like to be compelled to adopt a principle even if it is good ? — I do 
 not think they would like to give a legal footing to Dissenters which might bo 
 used injuriously to themselves and their schools." 
 
 It is not, most distinctly, the mere compulsiveness, which con- 
 stitutes the essence of w^hat School Managers object to ; but the 
 consequences, fiscal, moral, and religious, which that legal com- 
 pulsiveness may giv^e rise to and entail on School and Parish. 
 
 *' 962. Is the discretion in their hands largely exercised in your diocese in 
 favour of the Dissenters ? — Almost universally, T think, where they demand it, 
 which is very seldom. The exemption from religious teaching, granted or asked, 
 is never, as far as I know, from the oral religious instruction, which is given to 
 all Scholars alike, but is strictly confined to exemption from Iparning hy heart 
 the Church Catechism, or certain parts of it." 
 
 The Eev. J. Griffith, Sector of Merthyr Tydvil, said (3717-21 
 —1866) — 
 
 " We act tipon the jrrinciple of the Conscience Clause. Th^Catechism is 
 taught in the School to all the children, unless an objection is made. Prac- 
 tically an objection is never made. As a fact, I do not know of one instance 
 that I could specify myself. 3820. The children of Dissenters learn the Cate- 
 chism quite as much as the children of Church people. All the children, in the 
 School learn the Catechism." 
 
 TheEev.E.B.Squire(3S7l— 1866), interrogated by Mr. Bruce— 
 
 " Has any disposition been shown by the parents of children attending that 
 school (with a Conscience Clause) to avail themselves of the power M^iich the 
 law gives them to except their children fr-om learning the formularies of the 
 Church ? — No, in only one case out of 12,402 children. 
 
 " 3872. Then you have not found in practice that the insertion of a Con- 
 science Clause has led to the consequences which have been apprehended, 
 namely, that the legal power of exempting their children, if their parents 
 desired it, will be largely availed of? — As regards the Conscience Clause of this 
 school, I am quite sure that there is not a single parent in the tohole district 
 who Icnoios of the existence of it ; they do not hno^v the meaning of it. 
 
 "3873. {IMr. Bruce) I suppose that that tvould he very much the case toith 
 regard to any Conscience Clause inserted after correspondence toith the Com' 
 mittee of Cotmcil ?" 
 
 That is to say, according to Mr. Bruce, the Committee of 
 Council propose this Clause to relieve a grievance of the Dis- 
 senter, believing that it will not be of the slightest benefit to 
 them, or injury to the Church, because they will never know of 
 the rights and privileges conferred by it, or of its very existence. 
 
 c
 
 34 COT^SCIENCE CLAUSE INTEErEREKCE. 
 
 In thus gilding the pill to the Churchman, Mr, Bruce surely 
 forgot the opinion which both Dissenter and Churchman will 
 form of the hona fides of the Committee of Council, and of the 
 value of the Clause itself. They will both agree that the word 
 " Conscience " had better be left out. 
 
 The Eev. Canon Robinson, late Principal of a Training College, 
 whose evidence on other matters had strongly impressed the 
 Committee, and who had spoken very decidedly in favour of the 
 imposition of the Clause, when asked to give his interpretation of 
 it, said (6034—1865) that— 
 
 "According to my interpretation it would permit the parents of Non- 
 conforming children to withdraw their children ahsolutely from all religious 
 teaching ; but certainly not from moral teaching founded on religion. . . . Moral 
 teaching, founded on the doctrines of religion, cannot be called a doctrine in 
 the sense in which any use can be made of it with reference to the Conscience 
 Clause. ... I think that the language of it could only apply to specific lessons, 
 and that unless those lessons were strictly what are called lessons in doctrinal 
 religion, the Clause could have no application at all to them. If a master, for 
 instance, chose to give a lesson to his scholars on deceit, or falsehood, or dis- 
 honesty, whatever argument he might make use of to support his views, 
 the doctrinal question would not be raised in any such sense as that Clause 
 implies." 
 
 He was asked (Q. 6039) — 
 
 " But any accidental teaching of doctrine in the course of other lessons, you 
 think, would not be forbidden by the Conscience Clause ? Ans. I do not see 
 how it could be forbidden by the Conscience Clause, because the parents can 
 only require that the child shall be withdrawn from some specific lesson, and 
 not from any accidental indirect teaching which it may come across in the 
 course of its school work." 
 
 The Eev. Dr. Miller, at the last National Society's Meeting, in 
 the most unmistakable terms insisted he would never abate one iota 
 of doctrinal teaching throughout his whole School work ; while in 
 the same breath he advocated with equal positiveness the adoption 
 of the Conscience Clause. He should rejoice, he added, to re- 
 ceive *' even " an infidel child into his school. 
 
 It was plain that he misapprehended the whole operation and 
 scope of the Clause. He obviously did not see that if — as Earl 
 Granville justly said — a protesting child must not be withdrawn 
 to avoid hearing formularies and then be brought in again to hear 
 religious doctrine, it would be imperative upon him to prevent all 
 religious teaching from coming to his ears. In fact and practice, 
 to keep faith with the infidel, and obey the law of the Clause, he 
 must surcease from his determination to sanctify secular with reli- " 
 gious teaching throughout the school. The next speaker, accord- 
 ingly, quietly asked him what, when he had got the child into the 
 school, he proposed to do with him, so as to maintain that general 
 teaching of the school and yet prevent the child being contaminated
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFERENCE. 35 
 
 thereby. The order of speaking in public Meeting unfortunately 
 precluded the reply, which otherwise must have been interesting. 
 
 My Lord, there is one more instance to which I ought to refer : 
 that of the much, but most unduly, vaunted Hoxton Schools. 
 
 What are the facts ? Here is a London Parish of 6000 popu- 
 lation. The number of children, therefore, roughly available for 
 school about 800 : 500 are in this school. To what schools 
 their parents prefer to send the rest does not appear ; of course 
 a proportion go to upper, or to private-adventure schools. The 
 dissenting parents of seven out of sixty children object to their 
 learning the Catechism. The Eev. T. W. Fowle says (Q. 1751 
 —1866)— 
 
 ** The Religious teaching, and the teaching altogether, is that of a Church 
 school. The children who object to the Catechism are set, while the Catechism 
 is going on, to write at a bench by themselves. The parents do not object [have 
 they ever been asked?] to their hearing the Catechism taught to the other 
 children while they are writing. They receive religious instruction : the Bible 
 must be read daily, of course. The Bible is expounded to them. The Master 
 is fully aware of the religious objections of the parents of those children. 
 
 " 1763. Have you reason to believe that he avoids introducing any of those 
 peculiar doctrines in his exposition of the Bible to which they object in the 
 formularies of the Church ? — I should think that he does not touch upon 
 them very much; but if they come in his way, I do not suppose that he would 
 avoid them. He has never been asked to do so at all ; he has been asked not to 
 teach the Catechism, that is all. 
 
 " 1765. In all respects, except the Catechism, is the religious teaching of 
 those children just the same as that of the remaining children ? — ^st so." 
 
 Now, what is this case really good for ? It is good to show, 
 what every body now knows, that the grievance is a merely specu- 
 lative one : and how few parents, in the present state of things, 
 desire the legal security of the Conscience Clause, even as a 
 formulary Clause. But it is good for nothing more whatever. 
 
 For what happens ? Mr. Eowle, or his master, takes the seven 
 children, whose parents conscientiously " object on religious 
 grounds " to their learning the formulary ; and teaches them all 
 Church doctrine, even the "peculiar doctrines" if they come in 
 the way \ Of course Mr. Fowle sees nothing objectionable in 
 this, or he would not do it. But Mr. Bruce would call it " alto- 
 gether an illusory arrangement;" and Earl Granville would say 
 it was taking an undue advantage of the parents, one to which 
 a loyal carrying out of the Conscience Clause could not lead. 
 He would say that "it is not acting justly to the Dissenters, for 
 the Managers of Church Schools to allow their children to with- 
 
 ^ This is the way in which Mr. Fowle exhibits the liberality of, as he claims 
 to be (letters to Guardian, 18th Jan. and 9th Feb. 1866), a " liberal " Clergy- 
 man. Mr. Kennedy, in his Manchester paper, makes the same claim ; but he 
 certainly illustrates it very differently. (See p. 40 infra.) 
 
 c 2
 
 36 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFERENCE. 
 
 draw while the formularies of the Church are being read, and to 
 bring them in again to hear the doctrines of the Church taught." 
 
 However that may be, the fact remaios, that Mr. Fowle, in so 
 pertinaciously urging the Conscience Clause, on the credit of the 
 HoKton Schools, has done so under the persuasion that it allows 
 children claiming legal exemption from learning the Catechism, 
 to hear and receive all doctrinal teaching even of " peculiar doc- 
 trines," and to receive all religious teaching of the school, just 
 the same as the Church children. 
 
 Of course, as his Master thus teaches doctrine to these children 
 in the Bible lesson, he has no reason for hesitation or reserve in 
 the ordinary classwork, when occasion calls for it. Therefore in 
 this school, and case, the question of interference with the per- 
 vasive religious education can receive no illustration. Whatever it 
 is, all the children get the same. 
 
 And this is the case, my Lord, — which does not raise any of the 
 questions except the formulary exemption, and that not carried 
 out according to the Lord President's interpretation, in a parish 
 moreover without any of the special features of a single-school 
 parish, closely surrounded by other parishes with Schools, Dissent- 
 ing and Church ; — which is wholly free from any of those means of 
 aggressive and vexatious action which too many Clergymen know 
 to their misfortune can easily be put into operation in small 
 country parishes; but which appears to Mr. Melville a "typical" 
 case, and satisfies your Lordship to adopt it as the "one well 
 authenticated case " which is " decisive " as to the merits of the 
 Conscience Clause! 
 
 We see, then, what is meant by those witnesses who have been 
 induced by leading questions to say that the " principle of the 
 Conscience Clause " is extensively adopted. It is plain that they 
 meant, not the principle of the Clause, but the principle of tolerant 
 treatment. I have shown how different they are. Those again 
 who have advocated the Clause have done so under a persuasion 
 which Earl Granville's statement must have dissipated. And can 
 it be a matter of doubt what course they — may I not venture to 
 think your Lordship also ? — will take, in coming to a more clear 
 understanding of the legal and practical effect of the Clause ? Will 
 they not change their advocacy for a strenuous resistance, when 
 they appreciate the restrictions imposed by it — when they see 
 that it involves so much more than mere withdrawal from " some 
 specific lesson," even the destruction of the pervasive religious 
 teaching of the whole School ? That, they would surely, for no
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEUFERENCE. 37 
 
 favour, nor price, nor grant, forego. They would, uo doubt, 
 administer tolerate treatment. But one must believe they would 
 refuse — that your Lordship would refuse — definitively to be parties 
 to the adoption, in any parish of which they were pastors in the 
 present, or trustees of the future, of the so-called Conscience 
 Clause. Would not even Sir John Pakington, observing on how 
 different an interpretation from that of the members of the Com- 
 mittee of Council, and on what a misunderstanding of the evidence 
 his argument is framed, be disposed to reconsider the propositions 
 of his draft E,eport ? He has himself admitted that " religion 
 ought to be mixed up with the whole system of training from 
 infancy"." Training, not merely instruction. If he would but 
 follow out the meaning of his own words, would he not be led into 
 a very diflferent course ? 
 
 This, my Lord, is, with regard to the statement in your Lord- 
 ship's Charge, that the Conscience Clause would not interfere 
 with the Keligious Teaching within the School, the main issue. 
 Promoters of Education, School Managers, the Clergy, the 
 Teachers, the Lay Visitors, — nay, my Lord — (and let us realize 
 this fact, that a Conscience Clause for one, must inevitably, after 
 what has passed, be a Conscience Clause for all similarly-placed 
 schools) — not Churchmen only are concerned, but members of all 
 denominational bodies who hold definite forms of faith, must dis- 
 tinctly face the question, whether they are content, under the 
 Clause, to give up that which it is, beyond reasonable dispute, 
 the necessary practical consequence of the Conscience Clause, 
 legally and honestly carried out, to destroy, viz. the liberty of 
 speaking w'hat they hold to be litligious Truth in school when- 
 ever occasion, in the course of lessons or conduct, may call for it 
 throughout the day ; or whether they will be content to shut 
 all up into the hour's special lesson. It is an issue not to be 
 met, as by Mr. Chester, by pretending to lose his gravity. 
 Pardon me, my Lord, if I say it is not to be got over by put- 
 ting a self-contained absurdity about the Rule of Three. But 
 it is a very substantial and crucial question, on which, as I 
 believe, no one will choose to advocate the Clause who under- 
 stands its effect, and who values, I do not say mere teaching, or 
 mere instruction, but Eeligious Training and Christian Education. 
 
 I trust your Lordship will not have reason to say that there 
 is any " passionate declamation, sophistical reasoning, high-sound- 
 
 ^ Speech ou motion to bring in Education (Cities and Boroughs) Bill, Ibth 
 Feb., 1857.
 
 38 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEEFEEENCE. 
 
 ing but utterly hollow phrases, violent distortion of facts," in 
 what I have advanced. 
 
 Is it not a very sober, and very real, and very unpleasant, fact ? 
 Have I put the issue far too gravely ; laid too much upon 
 the Clause? 
 Consider then, my Lord, what others, even laymen, think about 
 the importance of the point at issue. 
 
 The Eight Hon. W. F. Cowpee, V.P., in debate on the 
 Manchester Bill, in 1853, said, in answer to Sir John Pakington — 
 
 " In tlie Bill to which he had referred, it was said that although the School- 
 master was not to teach doctrinal Religion, he was to inculcate truthfulness, 
 morality, and the other virtues. It was assumed by those who prepared that 
 Bill, that it was perfectly easy to inculcate all the cardinal virtues, without 
 teaching doctrinal religion. From that position he (Mr. Cowper) entirely dis- 
 sented. How could the master teach a child his duty to himself, without a 
 reference to the self-denying principles and examples of Christianity ; his duty 
 to his neighbour, without teaching him something of Christian love ; or his duty 
 to the Almighty, without speaking to him of the covenant under which he is 
 placed, and his relationship as the child of a Heavenly Father ? To say that the 
 schoolmaster should not teach doctrinal religion might amount to saying that 
 he should teach no morality, and that he should not inculcate the conscientious 
 duty of acting rightly. If, however, it were only intended to prohibit the 
 schoolmaster from teaching certain formularies, then he (Mr. Cowper) had no 
 objection to that arrangement. The Right Hon. Bart, had referred to the 
 faulty manner in which the Catechism had been taught in certain schools ; but 
 it seemed to him that this did not go so much against the teaching of the Cate- 
 chism altogether, as against the mode in which it was taught. And he was 
 afraid that the teaching of it ow/y at a 'particular hour, instead of allowing it 
 to he enclosed and enveloped, as it were, in the ordinary teaching of the school- 
 master, would have a direct tendency to encourage its being taught in a per- 
 functory and ill-arranged manner,— being learned by rote, and not being 
 understood." 
 
 The Eight Hon. J. W. Henley, in reply to Mr. Cobden, in 
 the same debate, said — 
 
 " The Hon. Gentleman must allow me to say that the religious teaching which 
 is confined to half an hour or an hour per day, and is imparted simply as you 
 would teach French, German, and Mathematics, or as you would give any other 
 lesson, is not a teaching likely to reach the hearts of children, but will prove 
 wholly barren and inoperative. Religion must be diffused over the whole sur- 
 face of their training, or it can never be useful in regulating their conduct. 
 Hence arises the diificulty when the matter comes to be fairly worked out. 
 This point was well touched upon by Mr. Cowper, who said that if this important 
 branch of instruction could be limited to half an hour each day it might be easily 
 dealt with, but that, when you come to teach the child his rule of life, doctrinal 
 religion meets you at every turn, and constitutes your real difficulty." 
 
 The EoTAL CoMMissioNEES say (p. 311) — 
 
 " With respect to the plan of restricting the (religious) teaching to points 
 agreed on, we may refer to the history of the British and Foreign School Society, 
 Undenominational teaching was its distinctive principle, but all the Schools, in- 
 cluding British and others M'hich are founded on that principle, contain only 
 about 14*4 per cent, of the Scholars in public Schools, whilst the remaining 85*6 
 per cent, are in denominational Schools. The British Schools are for the most 
 part large Schools in Towns, and are usually established where the various Dig-
 
 CONSClEJfCE CLAUSE INTEKFEliENC'E. 39 
 
 seating bodies, not being numerous enough to establiijb Denominational Schools, 
 prefer a British School to oue counected with the Clmrcb of England. Religious 
 eonununities, when able to do so, always appear to prefer Schools of their own to 
 scbools on the undenominational principle. The British and Foreign School 
 Society is the oldest of all the Societies connected witli Education, and might 
 for a considerable time have been regarded as the representative of all the bodies 
 which were not satisfied with the principles of the National Society ; hut in the 
 course of the last eighteen years the Wesleyans and the Independents have esta- 
 blished Boards of their own. 
 
 " The plan of drawing a line between Religious and Secular instruction, and con- 
 tining the Religious instruction to particular hours, would, we believe, be equally 
 unlikely to succeed. The principal promoters of Education maintain that such 
 a line cannot be drawn, and that every subject which is not merely mechanical, 
 sueh as writing and working sums, but is connected with the feelings and con- 
 duct of mankind, may and ought to be made the occasion of giving Religious in- 
 struction. They maintain that the Religious influence of the School depends no 
 less upon the personal character and example of the Teacher, on the manner in 
 which he administers discipline, upon the various opportunities tvliieh lie takes 
 for enforcing Religious Truth, and on the spirit in which he treats his pupils 
 and teaches them to treat each other, than upon the distinctive Religious 
 Teaching. 
 
 " Upon this subject we would direct attention to the following Resolution of 
 the Wcsleyan Committee on Education in reference to a Bill introduced Ijy Sir 
 John Pakington." 
 
 Before quoting which, let me give so much of the VV^esleyan 
 Trust Deed and Conscience Clause as relates to the points iu 
 view. Min. 1848-9, p. 61. 
 
 " That every such School shall roguhirly be opened and closed with devotional 
 Singing and Prayer, in which the Wcsleyan Methodist Hymn-books shall be 
 used : That the Holy Bible, comprising the Sacred Scriptures o^both the Old 
 and New Testaments, in the authorized version only, shall be read and used in 
 such School, accompanied with instruction therein by the Teachers, or Visitors, 
 or both : I'hat, for the purposes of Catechetical instruction, the Wcsleyan 
 Methodist Catechisms, authorized by the said yearly Conference, shall be used in 
 such School : That Christian Psalmody shall form a part of the daily exercises of 
 the children and young persons in such School. 
 
 " Provided always, and it is hereby declared, that no child shall in any case be 
 required to learn ang Catechism or other Religious Formularg, or to attend any 
 Sunday School or place of worship, to which respectively his parent shall, on 
 religious grounds, object ; but the selection of such Sunday School, or place of 
 worship, shall, in all cases, be left to the free choice of such Parent . . . without 
 the child thereby incurring any loss of the benefits or privileges of any School 
 the trusts whereof are hereby declared." 
 
 The Eesolution of the Wesleyan Committee, quoted by the 
 Koyal Commissioners, declares — 
 
 " That, while it has ever been the fixed rule in Wesleyan Schools during the 
 teaching of the Catechism, to permit the absence of any child whose parents 
 should object to his being taught suchformularg, and to leave all children free 
 to attend on the Sabbath whatever Svmday School and place of worship their 
 parents may prefer, this Committee believes that the Wesleyan Commanity will 
 never consent that the Teaching of Religion itself in their schools shallhe sub- 
 ject to restriction. Their experience show^s, that besides the Scripture lesson 
 with which their Schools daily open, and in which it is sought to make Divine 
 Truth intelligible to all capacities, an able Christian Teacher will find through- 
 out the day, when teaching (Te«)graphy, History, Physical and Moral Science, 
 and the knowledge of comnion things, frequent occasion to illustrate andenfoicc
 
 40 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFERENCE. 
 
 the Truths of Keligion, and that Keligious teaching may be made to impart life 
 and spirit to the whole process of Education." 
 
 The E-oyal Commissioners proceed : — 
 
 " The above reasons, which have been dwelt upon in other parts of our Report, 
 are the principal ones which induce us to believe, while we are prepared to sug- 
 gest means both for its modification and extension, that the leading principles of 
 the present system are sound, that they have shown themselves well adapted to 
 the feelings of the country, and that they ought to he maintained" 
 
 Mr. Mann states of the Independents, that 
 
 " The great majority hold that a separation of the religious from the secular 
 instruction would be highly detrimental to religious education, — that religion 
 must form part, and no subordinate part, of daily training. — Census Rejport on 
 Education, 1851, p. Iviii. 
 
 The Eev. J. P. jS"orris, Canon of Bristol, and formerly H. M. 
 School Inspector, states (1871, 1866) — 
 
 " The same parent who objected to the doctrine conveyed in the Scripture les- 
 son might object to Moraing Prayers, or to grace before meat, or to prayers in 
 the evening, or even to the method of enforcing the discipline of the School. 
 Tlie religious element 'penetrates a school at all points, and you cannot tear it 
 out without lacerating your school altogether ; and the Clergy feel that so 
 strongly, that I am sure they would not consent to the insertion of the word 
 ' doctrine,' which might be discovered in the prayers, which might be discovered 
 in the discipline, which might be discovered by a vexatious parent in a hundred 
 ways besides the special Scripture lesson." 
 
 The statement of " the Churchman's defence of an exclusively 
 denominational system of schools," by H. M. Inspector, the Kev. 
 W. J. Kennedy, I abridge with great unwillingness. Mr. Kennedy, 
 through, as it seems to me, failing to distinguish between the con- 
 sequences of the principles of tolerant treatment, and of a legally 
 compulsive clause, believes in the possibility of a (not approving 
 of the) Conscience Clause. All w^e can say is, as the Earl of 
 Derby said to the November deputation, " I wait to hear it." 
 If Mr. Lingen, the Dean of Ely, and Canon Trevor, fail to con- 
 struct a workable clause, no one — not even the framer of the 
 Management Clauses — will be very likely to succeed : — 
 
 " On this point I wish to dwell for a few minutes, while I attempt to show what 
 those Churchmen mean who desire exclusively denominational schools, and who 
 oppose the Conscience Clause which has been promulgated. I wish to set forth, 
 so far as can be in a brief compass, what the religious principles are which very 
 many Churchmen believe to be at stake. . . . 
 
 " Without, then, giving any opinion whatsoever of my own, I presume that 
 the Anglican Churchman, and I suppose I might say that the Eoman Catholic, 
 would argue as follows : — He would say that he believes in an authoritative teacher, 
 viz, the Church. He believes that this Church, that this teacher, is entrusted with a 
 special ' deposit,' to use St. Paul's expression ; and that this ' deposit" will be kept in 
 its integrity only where there is an Apostolical descent through descendants of the 
 Apostles, called Bishops. It is his conviction, for instance, that if you could 
 remove all Churchmen and all Roman Catholics from England ; if you were to 
 remove this witness, this teacher and his 'deposit' altogether away, that then
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE IN TEEFERENCE. 41 
 
 ere long there would be no definite Christian creed in England ; that Chris- 
 tianity, in short, would soon become on the footing of any other religion, for that 
 it is the presence of the authorized teacher and his ' deposit ' which keeps even 
 those who dissent from wandering altogether away. Some will say this is all 
 error. Be it so. 1 am giving no opinion whatever, one way or other ; I am not 
 raising now in the slightest degree any question of truth or error. I am simply 
 attempting to show the Churchman's point of view, the belief of very learned 
 and pious Churchmen, and so far, I presume, of Roman Catholics also. 
 
 " The question is, will those who pi'ofess ])ar excellence to be tolerant, show 
 themselves intolerant ? Will those wlio, like myself, profess themselves liberals, 
 prove themselves illiberal ? If not — then in admitting that the Churchman is 
 to be tolerated in his belief, they must also be prepared to show their toleration, 
 their liberality towards the legitimate sequences of that belief. But one neces- 
 sary sequence of that belief is, a feehng respecting a child's education very 
 different from that of those who hold no such belief. The Churchman is urgent 
 to be free and unfettered in school, because he believes in a Church ; in the 
 necessity for an authoritative witness and teacher in revealed matters ; in a 
 commission and a ' deposit ; ' all in a sense and degree widely different from 
 what is felt by the protestant Dissenter. To him, therefore, it must seem ver'y 
 far from an inditierent matter whether the clergyman and the schoolmaster, 
 during the short period they can catch their little lambs among the poor, may 
 or may not be at liberty to impart their creed, their ' deposit.' 
 
 "I desire to avoid specific reference to other special doctrines of the Churchman 
 which also cause a wide divergence of view about a child's education. But well- 
 instructed persons will readily call them to mind. For instance, no one can fail 
 to see at once what a difl'erent attitude must be assumed towards children, and 
 what a different treatment of them must logically ensue, in the case of persons 
 so widely differing about Baptism as the Churchman and the Autipaedo- Baptist, 
 and I might add the Unitarian and others. 
 
 " But also on philosophic grounds, apart from purely rehgious grounds, the 
 Churchman does not believe that a child ought to be left to form its own creed 
 of morals and religion. He believes that if truth is not implanted, error will 
 grow up. He believes that childhood is just the very period in which religion 
 is to be taught, and perhaps, humanly speaking, the only period of life when it 
 can be taught (witness our failure among adult heathens), for that the mind 
 then, and then only, is like the ready mortice into which the tenon of truth will 
 duly fit. 
 
 " And if you go on to tell him that religious belief and religious principle may 
 be inculcated at a fixed hour only in these schools, he will object that you are 
 doing a grievous wrong to his scholars by restricting his teaching to set formal 
 lessons. He will tell you that this is to quench all zeal in himself — that very 
 zeal which led Churchmen to found schools at all. He will tell you that this is 
 to convert the schoolmaster from an Educator into a mere instructor — and this, 
 too, in the case of poor children whose only religious education, too often, can be 
 got in their school. He will deny, perhaps, altogether, that religious instruction 
 is a mere morsel, so to speak, of education, which can be separated from the rest 
 without injuring its vitality. He will deny that religion should be only thus 
 administered to children, especially to these poor children, like a medicinal drug. 
 He will assert that they must needs receive it ever, naturally interwoven in, 
 their school life like the air they breathe, if it is to nourish them, if it is to be 
 absorbed into their nature, and form part of their life and being. Of course he 
 will admit that the Church has its truths and mysteries which must be taught 
 at stated times j yet he will assert that even these, or at least many of them, 
 such as those connected with Baptism and grace and the aid of the Holy Spirit, 
 lose life and efficacy, and that the child is robbed of his very birthright, if these 
 doctrines are treated as a mere by -part of education which the child has to learn 
 and then to have done with ; that, in fact, it is during school routine, during 
 life in the school-room and play -ground, that these truths must receive com- 
 ment and enforcement and illustration, if they are to sink in a child's heart and 
 life, and that in the case of the poor it is thus, and thus only, that the work can, 
 humanly speaking, be done.
 
 42 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEEEEBENCE. 
 
 "One word more in the defence of the Churchman's position, and 1 have 
 done with this part. I say, then, that it is an illiberal and untrue view about 
 the feelings of the opponents of the Conscience Clause to say, or think, that 
 they wish to convert the children of Nonconformists by attracting or forcing 
 them to school, and then taking an unfair advantage of them. Let those who, 
 like myself, wish the National Society and the Church of England to adopt 
 some Conscience Clause, learn above all to be just, and to be liberal in the true 
 sense of the word. The Churchman's feelings in this matter have no reference 
 to Dissenters. He is not thinking of them. When he says — ' I wish for a 
 school in which there shall be a Church schoolmaster, and a man earnest in 
 religion, and that he shall be a trainer and educator of children, and not a mere 
 instructor and machine, the Churchman says this for the sake only of the lambs 
 of his own fold. He grudges that their young minds should breathe in school 
 an atmosphere of hesitancy and doubt in matters of religion. He wants faith — 
 a child's faith ; and not to be rearing a brood of little premature polemics or 
 sceptics, such as, he asserts, those children are likely to become who even ini 
 their babyhood, in their very school, have forced on their notice all the differ- 
 ences which exist from the Churchman down to the Jew. In short, he does 
 not seek to convert two or three little Antipsedo-Baptists or Socinian urchins ; 
 but he does desire to teach and exhort and train his own babes, and so, under 
 God, to save their souls alive. 
 
 " Such, though briefly and impex'fectly stated, I believe to be in part the de- 
 fence — the true defence — of the opponents of the Conscience Clause. Let those 
 who, like myself, wish to have a Conscience Clause do them full justice, and not 
 show that toleration itself can become a very intolerant thing." 
 
 The Archbishop oe Canterbury, ia his correspondence with 
 the Lord President, on July 6, 1866, declares that Mr. Liugcn's 
 statement to the E/ev. J. Scott — 
 
 " To my mind amounts to a prohibition to any Clergyman or Schoolmaster to 
 explain any part of Holy Scripture in conformity with the doctrine of our 
 Church, or to touch upon any Christian doctrine, incidentally, in any other 
 lesson, if any parent chooses to require that his child shall never be exposed to 
 such instruction. This being the case, one of two alternatives must be the re- 
 sult—either the Clergyman and Schoolmaster must feel themselves bound by 
 the Conscience Clause to abstain from all allusion to Christian doctrine and 
 Christian practice founded thereupon, in every lesson, except the Catechism 
 lesson, from which the child may absent himself; or, the child must be with- 
 drawn from every other lesson also, for fear of being compelled to listen to 
 Christian teaching. The first rJternative imposes upon the Clergyman a bondage 
 to which I conceive no one would voluntarily submit, and the other deprives the 
 child of such instruction as I believe it to be the object of the Committee of 
 Council on Education to secure to him. 
 
 " The truth is, that the whole question between us turns upon this, — your 
 Lordship seems to proceed upon the assumption that religious instruction will 
 always be confined to the teaching of the formularies ; whereas we think that, 
 inasmuch as Christian doctrine is the mainspring and motive of Christian action, 
 a careful and conscientious pastor or master might find occasion at any moment 
 of school hours to inculcate Christian conduct from Church Principles. If he 
 be debarred from that opportunity, whenever it may arise, then follows that in- 
 terference with religious teaching which your Lordship declares not to exist in 
 connexion with the Conscience Clause." 
 
 How valid, lastly, and important, and cogent upon the con- 
 sciences of teachers and managers of all denominations — for I 
 repeat it is no exclusively Church question — is this consideration 
 of the practical consequences attributable to the Clause, may be 
 inferred from a statement made by Mr. Bruce to Sir John
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFERENCE. 43 
 
 Pakington's Committee. It was not reported, because not ad- 
 dressed to a witness. But I took it down myself at the time, 
 and I am confideat the Eight Hon. Gentleman will not dispute 
 its accuracy. He said — what can only be the case if, not ex- 
 emption of the individual from formulary or Bible lesson alone, 
 but also, the destruction of pervasive Heligious Education through- 
 out the school, is practically involved in the Clause — " There can 
 he no question, that if the Conscience Clause were acted on through- 
 out a School, it would amount to a purely secular system.''^ 
 
 This is the true and precise pendant to the same gentleman's 
 representation, on another occasion, of the Conscience Clause — 
 that it is " a bond to give on demand a Secular Education in a 
 Church School y 
 
 There is one satisfaction about this, that it shows that there 
 is at least one late Vice-President, and we may surely count 
 upon Mr. Cowper as another, who apprehends the gravity of the 
 situation, and the consequences involved if the Clause were fully 
 carried out by, and with respect to, parents availing themselves 
 of their legal rights of exemption. 
 
 So much, my Lord, for the question of interference in Schools. 
 There are many other points respecting the Clause adverted to in 
 your Charge to which I could have wished to reply, for they 
 admit of most conclusive answers. I will only advert to one or 
 two, which have been confidently urged also by other advocates 
 of it. 
 
 Your Lordship declines to admit that what is attempted is a 
 " compulsory imposition" of the Clause, because "that language 
 suggests a degree of violence which has not and could not be 
 used." Tour Lordship cannot suppose that those who adopt 
 such language intend thumbscrews or swordpoints. But if a 
 Clergyman and Parishioners feel themselves morally compelled 
 to endeavour to provide Eeligious Education for their children ; 
 and if the State, professing ordinarily to give aid, without which 
 the School cannot be built, or built effectively, refuse to give it 
 except on condition of the Clause, then it seems to be perfectly 
 and simply true that it does go a long way towards compelling 
 the adoption of it. There is no compulsion, only they must. 
 
 It would be, your Lordship adds, " quite as correct to say that 
 the Clergyman compelled the Committee of Council to withhold 
 the grant, as that, in the opposite event, they compelled him to 
 accept it on their conditions." I have heard a practised account-
 
 44 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE IJSTERFEitENCE. 
 
 ant say, that whenever in complicated accounts lie arrived at once 
 at an exact correspondence, he alvrays suspected, and generally 
 found, that some considerable errors were concealed. It was too 
 good to be true. Nothing can possibly be more neat than the 
 above antithesis ; it is so neat, that one feels sure there must be 
 some important matter stripped oif from one side to bring it 
 into exact fitness and correspondence with the other. A very 
 little consideration shows that it is so; and that what I have just 
 adverted to is what destroys the balance. There is an antece- 
 dent and moral compulsion on the Parishioners, and still more on 
 the Clergyman — in his case one to which, in his Ordination and 
 Institution vows, the State itself is a party — which obliges theui, 
 both to endeavour to provide Eeligious Education, and also not to 
 agree to conditions which shall unduly restrict the liberty and 
 power, present and future, of giving it. But there can evidently 
 be no antecedent compulsion obliging the State to insist that they 
 shall either give secular without religious instruction to some, 
 (the tendency of which is to restrict that liberty and power,) or, 
 shall have no school and give no instruction of any kind to any. 
 It is therefore impossible to regard the representation as any 
 thing else than (what antithetical statements very often are) an 
 elegantly contrived balance of two non-equivalents ; or to con- 
 cede your Lordship's inference therefrom — that when the children 
 of the Parish thus lose the benefit of Education, " it cannot be 
 fairly assumed that the fault lies on one side more than on the 
 other." 
 
 But I must admit your Lordship's conclusion, " which of the 
 two principles is the most just and reasonable, is a question on 
 which every one must be left to form his own opinion." 
 
 On one side, at least, the justice and reasonableness can be 
 brought into view very distinctly, by regarding the effect of 
 making the Clause a condition of aid, not only on (what we have 
 heretofore considered) the majority in the School ; but also upon 
 the majority in the Parish. 
 
 The practice of the Committee of Council is, in the small 
 parishes, to withhold a grant in case one-sixth of the families 
 are " not suitable to the Eeligious Denomination of the School," 
 unless the Clause be adopted. Mr. Bruce made it, he says, a 
 seventh in some cases. This practice might, to-morrow, without 
 notice, be made one-twentieth. There is no protection whatever 
 against that. But, take the one-sixth. 
 
 The argument is, that, without this condition, the owe-sixth 
 have no legal security for a return, in secular instruction, of the
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEUFEBENCE. 45 
 
 taxes which they pay or represent. But it is surely an Irish sort 
 of remedy for this, to refuse a like return to the^i?e-sixths, of the 
 taxes thet/ have paid. By withholding the grant to them, the 
 Committee of Council actually, themselves, extend that grievance, 
 against which they profess to reclaim, to the majority, which 
 grievance, if they gave the grant, would only touch the minority. 
 
 Even more. For in all cases in which, for want of the grant, 
 schools are left unbuilt, the Committee of Council do thus, in 
 fact, — because they cannot legally secure the exclusively secular 
 teaching of the few — perhaps never desired even by them to be 
 such — prevent (for the withholding of the means is substantially 
 prevention) the many from obtaining am/ Education at all. "Tou," 
 they say in effect to Church promoters — " You shall have none of 
 the assistance necessary to you to educate your own children, 
 unless you also undertake to do that of which we know you con- 
 scientiously disapprove, and give, and bind yourselves and your 
 successors for ever to give — mainly at your own cost, 'primarily 
 and annually — exclusively secular instruction to the children of 
 others ; and also, in order to this, sacrifice, as you believe you will 
 thereby, the pervasive religious teaching of your own children." 
 It is better, they signify, that in a parish of 500 all the seventy-two 
 children should go wholly uneducated, than that the twelve should. 
 Though how the twelve should be better off for the non-education 
 of the sixty, " My Lords " have not, I believe, yet offered to show. 
 
 At first the necessity for the Clause was bolstered up by repre- 
 sentations of the extent of the grievance under which dissidents 
 lay. Now, that ground having been completely cut away from 
 under their feet by the evidence — none more conclusive than that 
 elicited from Mr. Lingen himself — the advocates of the Clause have 
 turned round, and instead of magnifying, minimify the grievance. 
 The twelve, they would now say, would never want the exemption. 
 Well, then, how much more unjust and unreasonable does it make 
 the proceeding ! For it is refusing Education to the whole parish, 
 for what is, on their own supposition, all but a mere imagination. 
 
 A better illustration of the Dog and Shadow it would not be 
 easy to meet with. 
 
 The Eltnswell case is one in point. The Eev. W. H. Luke, the 
 incumbent, had been refused a grant because his school would be 
 in union with the National Society. Thrown upon limited re- 
 sources, he built smaller schools, the annual effective maintenance 
 of which was hampered by the refusal of the usual further grant 
 for building the teacher's house. Mr. Hubbard wrote to Earl Gran- 
 ville, urging the unfairness and impolicy of the refusal. His Lord-
 
 46 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFEKENCE. 
 
 ship in his reply said, " There is a perfectly legitimate alternative, 
 viz., that which is adopted by Mr. Luke, who finding himself unable 
 from conscientious motives to acquiesce in the form of Deed 
 which would obviate the difficulties of the Council Office, is esta- 
 blishing a school without State assistance." 
 
 But, Gui hono? Does building the school too small for the 
 population benefit the Dissenters of Elmswell, or provide for their 
 Education ? Suppose they do not want exemption, what gratitude 
 will they owe, or be likely to feel, to their Lordships for such 
 excessive consideration ? What is gained by the refusal of the 
 grant ? And to whom ? Money is saved to the State. But 
 whose money ? Is it not the money of the Churchmen, who are 
 refused aid out of their taxes to educate their children ? Is it not 
 the money of the Dissenters, in so far as it is represented by the 
 children of those who do not desire exemption ? And Earl Grran- 
 ville is satisfied with the result ! 
 
 My Lord, you claim it as one of the principles which lie at the 
 root of the Conscience Clause, that " every child in a parish has 
 an equal right to a share in the benefits of Education for which 
 a provision is made out of public money." You add, that you are 
 " not aware that it has been disputed as a general principle, even 
 by the most thorough -going opponents of the Clause." I can 
 hardly, my Lord, conceive any one maintaining it — least of all 
 your Lordship — when the facts involved are taken into account, 
 and from them a precise meaning is put upon the words of the 
 proposition. 
 
 Eor the basis of the proposition, is the assumed fact, that " pro- 
 vision " is made for Education out of public money. Provision, 
 even "a" provision, cannot mean any contribution whatever, how- 
 ever small, by the State. But it must mean a full provision, free 
 of cost to the voluntary subscribers. This is of the very essence 
 of the proposition, to give even a jprimd facie reasonableness. But 
 what is the fact? Of the Building cost, the State supplies 
 one pound out of about five pounds which the accommodation for 
 each child in a small school costs ; and 05. Id. out of the 18s. lid. 
 which, besides endowments and school-fees, the Annual Educa- 
 tion costs. Eor the remainder, of 4Z. in the Building cost, and 
 9^. 10^. in Annual cost, there is no provision out of public money. 
 In so far, then, the " equal right of every child in a Parish " is an 
 equal right to an imaginary quantity. These remainders, before a 
 child can come into a Church School, must be either actually paid 
 or impliedly guaranteed from Voluntary funds. Subscriptions,
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFERENCE. 47 
 
 Churcli Collections, Grants from Societies, and such other sources, 
 of Churchmen — not to speak of labour and time given by Ma- 
 nagers and Visitors. Upon what plea, then, every Dissenting or 
 Infidel child can be held to have an a priori right, when the 
 school cannot be carried on or even opened till these funds are 
 supplied by the Churchmen, T cannot conceive. Still less is it 
 just or reasonable that they should be held to have an equal claim 
 with those for whom complete provision is made by voluntary 
 funds ; and still less again, that it should be to such a share, ap- 
 propriated in such a manner as shall destroy, or materially damage, 
 the claims of other children, and the main objects for which the 
 Promoters and Subscribers have established, and carry on, the 
 School at all. 
 
 I cannot help thinking, my Lord, that instead of the principle 
 you have suggested lying at the root of the Clause, there is another 
 which does. 
 
 Tour Lordship says that, when Church School Managers claim 
 liberty of teaching Religion in Church Schools, and do not object 
 to the State " making separate provision for the dissident 
 minority," they are very "liberal of the public money, and 
 would not grudge an expense which it is to defray." But if- the 
 argument that the dissident is entitled to a return for his taxes 
 is a good one (I do not assert it), still it must also be ^ood for the 
 Churchmen. Whose money are they thus liberal of ? Church- 
 men pay 87 per cent, of total Annual Subscriptions. They have 
 also paid the same percentage of the total Building Contributions. 
 Does their proportion of the taxation of the country fall very 
 much below this ratio ? If not, are they not proposing to be 
 liberal with their own money— money, that is, the great propor- 
 tion of which came out of their own pockets ? 
 
 Does it not rather, then, look like this, that when the State 
 presses it so very hardly upon Churchmen to commit themselves 
 to permanently undertake the modified-lleligious or Secular teach- 
 ing of the objecting Dissenter or Infidel, at an expense to their 
 own pockets of four parts out of five of the Building cost, and 
 one-half (or, if there be no annual grant, of the whole) Annual 
 cost', it is in fact showing the very same disposition of which your 
 Lordship has accused — unduly I have shown — the opponents of the 
 Clause, of being very liberal of other people's money ? In fact, 
 that the Committee of Council wants to throw the expense of 
 teaching objecting Dissidents compulsorily upon Churchmen ? 
 
 ^ Ultra the School fees, that is.
 
 4i8 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEREERENCE. 
 
 ^ And this has even one phase more. For what would become of 
 dissidents' subscriptions ? Would they be given to the support 
 of the school ? Is it not obvious that, wherever the Clause is 
 worked out, as soon as they have acquired a le^l^ right of entry 
 to all the benefits of the Church School, they would in wisdom 
 use that right, and leave their children to be instructed at the 
 expense of the Churchmen, and apply their 13 per cent., liberated 
 to them by the Conscience Clause, to chapel purposes if 'bond fide 
 Dissenters, and to soraethinjr worse if not ? 
 
 The Eev. J. Eraser, however, substitutes another logical leg for 
 this. "While he contends that "if extensively taken advantage of, 
 particularly (as might sometimes happen) if used by mischief- 
 makers for the purpose of agitation, it might become a source of 
 serious embarrassment*." he tells us also that he "cannot resist 
 the principle of the Clause as a matter of abstract equity and 
 logical consequence, and that it flows out of the principle of 
 religious liberty and the principle of parental control." He 
 might as well have said that it flows out of the Victoria 
 Nyanza. How can the right to a legal right of entry into a 
 school to claim secular, or reduced religious, teaching only, flow 
 out of those principles ? "What abstract equity is there entitling 
 him to have conferred on him a legal right to levy blackmail 
 upon my contribution as a Promoting or Annually-Subscribing 
 Parishioner, for his exclusively secular teaching, to contributing 
 to whicb I may conscientiously object? "What logical conse- 
 quence is there (let me take a merely familiar —too familiar an 
 illustration) — that because a man has a legal right to smoke 
 under ordinary circumstances, he therefore is to have it in all ? Do 
 not the majority remonstrate when he insists on doing so in a 
 railway journey from London to York ? Is it against the princi- 
 ple of liberty and abstract equity, that a miner should be debarred 
 the comfort in a coal-mine ? If this principle leads by a logical 
 necessity to his right to smoke when and wherever he pleases, so 
 long as Jiimself only is concerned, what becomes of the logic when 
 the depraved atmosphere becomes a nauseose nuisance to others ? 
 Or when the spark of fire may involve not only himself, but 
 hundreds of his fellows in a fatal explosion ? Is he to give way to 
 the many, or they to him ? If logic is to be appealed to, we must 
 be sure that all the premisses are taken into account — that the 
 whole case is stated. Or else the process will be apt to land us 
 in very extraordinary and very fa]^e conclusions. 
 
 -* Times, November 8, 1866.
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEEFERENCE. 49" 
 
 The fact is, that there is nothing abstract about it at all. It is 
 simply a question of practical wisdom and justice. 
 
 However, concede the logic and the abstract equity, what then ? 
 Would it be the first time that practical common sense and logic 
 have been at variance ? Surely it is so every day in everyday life. 
 "We are for ever reminded that observation and Understanding 
 must have their effect in deciding our course much more than 
 abstract Eeason. Induction more than Deduction. Practical 
 common sense reminds us that things impossible, and things 
 incommensurable, occur in other matters besides Arithmetic and 
 Algebra ; that nine-tenths of the difficulties of life consist in a 
 choice of evils, and that the wisdom of choosing the least is pro- 
 verbial ; that aspirants after the totus teres, &c., must look out 
 for disappointments ; that absolute justice and equity, in human 
 affairs and amidst conflicting claims and circumstances, are a 
 luxury seldom attained. It suggests that, in the very anxious 
 matter of Education, the wisest plan will be, not, by over manage- 
 ment and meddling without any sufficient occasion, to bring the 
 whole movement into a condition of frozen rigidity, but, in a free 
 and liberal and sympathizing spirit, to revert to the old and still 
 open course of stimulating and assisting the private efforts of 
 those who are doing voluntary work of incalculable value in both 
 person and pocket ; and then trust, that having done the best the 
 circumstance allows, though not the best that logic might indi- 
 cate, or doctrinaires devise, or empirics promise, or angels desire, 
 things wiU yet be made, in good time, to work together for the 
 greatest good to the greatest — possible— number. 
 
 If wbat I have advanced be true, the advocates of the Clause are, 
 like Earl Grranville, fixed in a dilemma. Whatever they say must 
 be wrong. If they say, the Conscience Clause will have a great 
 deal of "good" effect, and give great relief to a great many Dis- 
 senters and Secularists, then, as this can only be at the expense 
 of Religious liberty in Church Schools, they at once establish the 
 case against themselves. If they say, as their present line is to say, 
 that what Churchmen are asked to agree to is so very trifling and 
 unimportant ; is so very little more than they concede already ; 
 it will be quite inoperative, totally unimportant. Well, then, why, 
 in the view of all that is reasonable, not leave well alone ? You 
 find by inquiry that the grievance is infinitesimally small, in fact 
 all but imaginary. The Dissenters refuse to be the objects of 
 your sentimentality. They reject your sop. They repudiate your 
 remedy. The Wesleyans would not accept the doctrinal Clause
 
 50 CONSCIETTCE CLAUSE INTERFETIENCE. 
 
 if the Churchmen did. The Independents would not. The Eo- 
 manists would not. The British would be " insulted " by it. The 
 Welshmen want something very different. To them it is mere 
 *' social degradation" to offer it. You will satisfy nobody; 
 offend every body. And run the chance — as we think incur the 
 certainty — of disorganizing the whole co-operative system of 
 Education, by which so much has been done in a single genera- 
 tion. I say you will satisfy nobody. I am wrong. You will 
 satisfy the political Dissenter and the Secularist. For you will 
 have planted and legalized a germ which they will cultivate at will 
 wherever they will'. When then it is urged, as your Lordship 
 does urge it, that " experience proves the conjecture of evil results 
 to be mistaken ;" no harm has come in the great Hoxton case, why 
 should there in others ? I answer, that no case has been adduced 
 — least of all is it so in that instance — in which the Clause has 
 been worked out to its legitimate conclusions. The time has 
 not come for that yet. It will come — perhaps not for another 
 generation : but whenever it is, it will be too late to revoke. You 
 may reply, the cases will be so very few. I answer. You cannot tell 
 that ; you cannot look far enough forward to judge. One generation 
 is a short time to measure the effect of a deed that is to operate 
 as long as the nation lasts. You cannot guess what will be the state 
 of things in fifty years in any given parish **. But grant it — assume 
 that the cases will be few. Then I say, that if it be inoperative 
 in ninety-nine cases, it may still ruin the hundredth School and 
 Parish. What if it be a small Parish. Small Parishes contain 
 souls. The mere possibility of this would perhaps be conclusive 
 under any circumstances ; but undoubtedly it is so when the prac- 
 tical hardship upon the dissident has been proved to be merely 
 imaginary, the cherishing of it into a grievance merely sentimental, 
 the desire for it by the Eeligious Dissenters below zero, and the 
 possible good infinitesimal. 
 
 5 " The advocates of secular, combined with religious instruction, desired to 
 make the religious instruction so general, as to embrace all those who agreed on 
 the common principle of Christianity, and also to adopt the provision allowing 
 the parents of children to withdraw them from any religious teaching. There 
 you have the germ of secular education." — Sir Oeorge Orey, House of Commons, 
 \lth April, i856. 
 
 •5 The Rev. J. Scott writes to the Committee of Council, March 19, 1866 : — 
 " I have myself known of a clever, but infidel workman, settling down in a 
 village, and making it his business to propagate infidelity ; and I have also 
 known of cases where a society has been formed for this avowed purpose. I could 
 not therefore conscientiously insert a Clause in the trust deed of a school in my 
 parish which might enable such persons as these to interfere with Christian 
 instruction being given to the children." 
 
 Mr. Scott's experience is unhappily far from unique.
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFEKENCE. 51 
 
 What then must it be — not sober and thoughtful Statesman- 
 ship surely — but (unless indeed it be something more evilly stra- 
 tegic) mere meddling fussy unpracticality — too long the bane of 
 the Council Office, which stirs up, and against the opinion of 
 practical men, keeps stirring the question at all. Surely it 
 is the dictate of common sense to cease from pressing that 
 which, whatever you once thought, you now know from the 
 evidence is to gain nothing, which can only retard the progress of 
 the work by destroying the co-operation of the Denominational 
 bodies with the State. Without those bodies you may — possibly 
 — at an enormous expense, undertake the teaching of Eeading, 
 Writing, and Arithmetic. But let Lord Harrowby speak' — 
 "Without the zeal of religious teachers, whether Churchmen or 
 Dissenters, how could you fill your Schools to the extent you do ? 
 If they did not beat up the lanes and alleys for recruits, how many 
 would come of themselves ?" Without them you could not carry 
 even your secular work out. And who of them will work for that? 
 Who will suhscribe to build and maintain your School? Ton 
 may, possibly, at the manifold expense of time and money you 
 otherwise might, give the mere intellectual or mechanical facility. 
 But without their cordial co-operation you can not Educate the 
 people. You will not secure a generation of GoD-fearing and 
 GoD-serving Citizens. And if you cannot get that, * I suppose 
 most thinking men will agree, that the future of the State has not 
 much to hope for from the efforts of the Committee of Council on 
 Education. 
 
 If the State desires to have such citizens, and will contribute 
 fairly to the expense of production, experience proves that we are 
 ready to do our best to supply them. But we are not in the 
 position of beggars. We have no favour to ask, and we ask none. 
 We give full value, and much more besides. But we do object to 
 turn out an inferior article (for which even we are not offered full 
 cost price) if we cannot produce it without injury to our 
 machinery, and deterioration to our better fabrics. And we 
 contend that the State has no right, logical, moral, or economical, 
 in return for its modicum of contribution, to expect us to do so. 
 
 But then, my Lord, we are threatened, over and over again, by 
 gentlemen professing an unusual degree of far-seeing wisdom, 
 that if we do not make this "little concession," and accept the 
 Conscience Clause, worse will befall us. 
 
 Most certainly, I am inclined to underrate neither the existing 
 
 7 Times, Nov. 8, 1866. 
 I) 2
 
 52 COTTSCIEITCE CLyVITSE INTERFERENCE. 
 
 evils, on the one hand, nor, on the other, the power and influence 
 which have been storing up, against the Denominational system, 
 that is to saj, against Eeligious Education. 
 
 Tor that that, my Lord, is the real ultimate object of assault, 
 no one who does not willingly submit himself to be hoodwinked, 
 can, one would think, fail to see. 
 
 But it is not, and it is a great comfort that it is not, possible 
 for us to look far a-head. We must just make sure of our way, 
 step by step, walking warily, but still confidently. In refusing to 
 lay the Conscience Clause upon our Parochial Schools in perpetuity, 
 we are confident we are right in principle. And so we hold our 
 place and path. The result we must leave in higher Hands, quite 
 sure that there is Wisdom there, which can see farther than we 
 can, or our far-seeing opponents either. If to avoid evil, however 
 appalling, we forsake the path we are sure of, we have no right to 
 be much astonished if we incur the very fate we think to avoid, 
 and while we are stepping aside to escape a possible avalanche, 
 walk over the precipice. 
 
 Some, however, are not content with prophetic warnings, but 
 appear to be doing their best to justify their vaticinations by 
 arguing and acting as if intentionally to bring about the cata- 
 strophe. And this, while occupying a position in which such 
 a course would seem to be the very last which might have been 
 expected. 
 
 The Eev. J. Oakley, Secretary to the London Diocesan Board 
 of Education, considers it accordant with his position to declare 
 as follows, in a paper read at the Social Science Congress, at 
 Manchester : — 
 
 " I own that I should prefer this [the Conscience Clause] settlement of the 
 difficulty to that of the absolute exclusion of religious teaching from our 
 national curriculum ; first, because I could not, without some misgiving, witness 
 the absolute and entire divorce of secular learning from religious associations 
 (though, plainly, if religious persons will not be reasonable on the subject, the 
 whole point must be given up). . . . 
 
 "I need hardly confess that I feel my own reasons for the separation of 
 religious teaching from the rest in our schools to be solid, and my reasons for 
 not separating them to be somewhat ideal ; still I repeat, that I would with all 
 deference advise those who wish to improve and extend elementary Education, 
 to confine themselves at present to dealing such a blow at the sectarianism in 
 our schools as is struck by the Conscience Clause. The public mind is not 
 sufficiently informed to take in the arguments for a wider plan ; it is not yet 
 alive enough to the importance of it to learn the meaning of them quickly. It 
 can comprehend the plain plea for toleration and parental authority. The 
 Conscience Clause may be a temporary measure, a provision in the nature of a
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFERENCE. 53 
 
 compromise. Universally enforced and frankly acted on, it would, I believe, give 
 an enormous impulse to our Educational progress, and last us for many a long 
 year, without exposing us to the united outcry of 10,000 clergymen, the fright 
 of the religious public, and the wrath of the religious press, which would greet 
 the proposal of the purely secular system. Let the principle of the Conscience 
 Clause be submitted to Parliament next Session, by some independent member, 
 if the Government decline. There can be no cabinet opposition to it, it is plain, 
 for several of its leading members are committed to its principle. It may 
 possibly serve as the final touchstone to test the harmony of the present House 
 of Commons with the more earnest mood of the nation. 
 
 ** But failing this appeal, or if the Conscience Clause should fail, then I urge, 
 without a moment's hesitation, that the friends of Education thenceforth insist 
 that the State shall drop all recognition of religious teaching in our schools, 
 shall reject all attempts at compromise whatever, shall carry out with a firm hand 
 a compulsive, if need be, to that extent a gratuitous, and a toholly non-religious 
 system of primary instruction, in the schools supported directly or indirectly 
 by the taxation of the people." 
 
 It can be no great wonder if the anxiety of Churchmen is 
 deeply stirred when they perceive into what hands the interests 
 of the Church in the Diocese of London have been consigned. 
 
 Thus disquieted by the words of the Secretary, they naturally 
 appeal for the restoration of their confidence to the acts of the 
 Board and of its Executive Committee. 
 
 But when they look to their formal exponent, the Annual 
 Eeport, they find to their astonishment that the old guaranties, 
 the constitutional Resolutions defining the objects for which the 
 Board was founded by Bishop Blomfield, have been altogether 
 dropped out. Nay more, for they find that in a recital, in the 
 body of the Eeport, of what " the objects were then stated to be," 
 they are in most essential respects misrepresented ^ 
 
 8 The Board was established by Bishop Blomfield on the basis of a plan drawn 
 
 up by him, and settled by Eesolutions of a Meeting. Among the objects specified 
 
 were : — 
 
 " 1. To form a medium of communication and mutual suggestions between 
 
 the Clergy, and other persons of the Diocese interested in the cause of 
 
 lleligious and General Education in accordance with the doctrines and 
 
 discipline of the Church of England. 
 
 " 2. To collect and circulate information as to the state of Education in the 
 
 Diocese, and the obstacles which impede its progress or efficiency. 
 " 3. To take measures for the extension and improvement of Education in 
 
 connexion with the Church of England throughout the Diocese. 
 " 4. To bring into union with itself as many as possible of the Schools 
 
 existing in the Diocese on the terms adopted by the National Society." 
 The plan also declaring that " in furtherance of its designs it is desirable for 
 the Board to enter into union with the National Society." 
 
 These were passed as constitutional Resolutions ; they were annually printed 
 as such in the Reports; and in reference to the fourth were appended the 
 *' Terms upon which the schools will be taken into union with the Board; for
 
 54 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEREEEENCE. 
 
 Guaranties gone, they have nothing left to guide their expecta- 
 tions, their hopes, and fears, but the published or known opinions 
 of the individual members of the Committee: and is there much 
 to afford satisfaction in these ? 
 
 Can they help considering how many of the Committee and 
 Board, especially in its lately reconstituted state®, have been more 
 or less connected with the Council Office, how many pledged to 
 the Conscience Clause, or to the British system, — nay, how many 
 there may be who would go the whole length with the Secretary 
 himself? 
 
 Then they notice that the Committee have laid down a rule 
 that they will require applicants for aid for building schools in all 
 cases to apply in the first instance to the Committee of Council 
 for a grant. 
 
 Then they find endeavours made to prepare and excite the public 
 mind by statistics, estimates, and inferences of the wildest cha- 
 racter (as if it makes the real mischief less to exaggerate it to a 
 caricature) put out as on the authority of the Board ^ 
 
 National, Parochial, and other schools ;" which terms are, in respect of religions 
 instruction, those of the National Society : viz. " 1. The children are to be 
 instructed in the Holy Scriptures, 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 Clergy. 3. The Master and 
 Mistress are to be members of the Church of England." These are the funda- 
 mental rules of the Board, and the security to the Churchmen of the Diocese of 
 its objects and operations. 
 
 The Report of 1865 omits tJie whole oftTiese; and substitutes the following. 
 " The Diocesan Board was first founded on June 27, 1839. Its ohjects were 
 then stated to he : To form a centre of influence and information respecting 
 Education in connexion with the National Church, and to promote Education 
 in general." 
 
 Now the new expression "education in general," as contradistinguished 
 from "education in connexion with the National Church," has no 'parallel 
 in the original expression, " religious and general education in accordance with 
 the doctrines and discipline of the Church of England," or in any other phrase. 
 This is a misrepresentation of fact, and the introduction of a new element. 
 
 Again, the fourth constitutional object and rule, and the terms, are wholly 
 omitted, without even an allusion. This is a misrepresentation by omission, 
 and amounts to a removal out of the way of the only other security as to the 
 objects and operations of the Board. 
 
 9 They observe that the four members most recently appointed are Mr. 
 Goschen, M.P., Mr. Acland, M.P., Mr. Bruce, M.P., and the Rev. Dr. Miller. 
 Mr. Chester, late one of the under-secretaries of the Council Ofl5ce, having for 
 some time been a member. 
 
 ^ The country has been amazed by the statements of the London Diocesan 
 Board, that the number of children in the Diocese who have no means of 
 education is 150,000. A demand being founded on it for 250 new Schools of 
 500 each ; to be supplied by the " Bishop of London's Fund." 
 
 When it is remembered that the Royal Commissioners in 1858 arrived at the 
 conclusion that the total number in England and Wales whose names were not 
 on the books of some school was 120,000, — and that this included children
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEKFEKENCE. 55 
 
 Then again, the circulation (not through the legitimate chan- 
 nel of the Archdeacons and Rural Deans, by which necessary 
 consultative discussion would have ensued, but to the Clergy 
 segregatim, through the private agency of local secretaries, 
 which practically excluded it,) of leading questions suggesting 
 the desirablenes of " some obligatory measures ;" with a view, 
 they must expect, to the answers so elicited being used in a 
 public manner, and, if possible — if after all they admit of 
 such use, and if the Committee interpose no restraint — in 
 furtherance of the views enunciated at Manchester by the 
 Secretary. 
 
 Add to this, that the Board, or Committee, is " a party to the 
 grants for Educational purposes from the Bishop of London's 
 Fund ;" the claims too, on which, for school extension, are, they 
 are told, to be measured by the statistics above described. 
 
 E-egarding the published opinions of newly introduced members, 
 and the declared views of the Secretary, so discordant with the 
 original objects of the Board of which he is the ostensible and 
 acting representative, and so accordant with the alterations, omis- 
 sions, and proceedings above adverted to, they find it impossible 
 to disconnect words from acts ; and cannot but be sensible that 
 the time has come when they must ask for some explanation and 
 assurance which may clear up misapprehension if* any really 
 exists, and restore confidence, thus seriously disturbed. 
 
 At this pitch of uneasiness, my Lord, we had arrived, when, as if 
 to show that our apprehensions — which we had felt almost obliged 
 to apologize for entertaining — were even below the occasion, we 
 are startled by the announcement that, on the 4th of February a 
 Meeting of the Greneral Board was convened, whereat, the Bishop 
 in the Chair, and notice having been given by the E-ev. E. Bur- 
 gess, Eector of Chelsea, of the following resolution : — 
 
 " That in future all grants of money made to schools not already in union 
 with the Board be accompanied with a copy of the terms of union (these terms 
 of union having been originally the same as those of the National Society), and 
 
 educated at home, infirm, and vagrants, — it will be evident that this statement 
 must be taken cum maximo grano salts. 
 
 The Secretary has in fact been invited by the able Statistician of the Royal 
 Commissioners, Mr. Flint, in the columns of the Times, to verify the returns 
 on which the statement is made, both generally and with regard to specific 
 parishes, but it does not appear that he has responded to the call. 
 
 'J'he truth is, it is arithmetically demonstrable that there cannot be one- 
 four ih of the number, and it is probable not a sixth.
 
 56 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEEFEEENCE. 
 
 the form of application for union ; and that the terms of union, together with a 
 list of all schools in union, be henceforth printed, as in former years, as an 
 appendix to the reports of the London Diocesan Board of Education ;" — 
 
 the following amendment was proposed by Mr. H. Chester, 
 seconded by the Eev. Dr. Irons, Vicar of Brompton, and sup- 
 ported by the Eev. Dr. Miller, Vicar of Greenwich : — 
 
 " That the Executive Committee may grant aid towards the promotion of 
 education in the Diocese in any case where the circumstances shall seem to 
 warrant it, provided that the spiritual person who has the cure of souls in the 
 place where the grant is to take effect do concur in the application, or the 
 Bishop do signify his opinion that such concurrence may be dispensed with." 
 
 The amendment was, on a division, carried by 16 to 7. 
 
 Then, as if to give special point to it, the following rider was 
 moved by Mr. H. Chester (again), seconded by the Dean of 
 Westminster, and carried unanimously: — 
 
 *' That in passing the foregoing resolution the Diocesan Board has no desire 
 to depart from its friendly relations with the National Society.'* 
 
 At the same time it was determined that the subject of Com- 
 pulsory Education should be brought on the tapis at the next 
 Meeting of the Board. 
 
 What, then, we had before imagined, is here plainly brought 
 out as substantial fact. Grants may henceforth be given for the 
 "promotion of education" without the smallest security that it 
 shall be Church education, or religious education at all ; except 
 only the protection afforded by the concurrence of the " spiritual 
 person who has the cure of souls ; " and that reserved only if the 
 Bishop shall not signify his " opinion that sucb concurrence e3y 
 be dispensed with." 
 
 That is to say, grants may be given, by a Committee which is 
 already entertaining, and by leading questions suggesting its 
 advocacy of, compulsory education, which inevitably involves 
 secular education ; on the concurrence of one who, under circum- 
 stances, may be a curate put temporarily in charge ; oe, it may be 
 given on the opinion of the Bishop, for the establishment or main- 
 tenance of a school, of any character he may approve, and with any 
 trust deed he may approve — a purely secular school if he think 
 fit — in any parish whatever, without the concurrence and against 
 the will of the Clergyman to whom the cure of souls is entrusted. 
 
 Now this, my Lord, is not only throwing over the whole con- 
 stitutional position of the Board, as originally founded ; it is not 
 only throwing over its union with the National Society, for co- 
 operation with which it was expressly so founded, and in affiliation 
 to which it has for nearly thirty years carried on its work, but
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEEFERENCE. 57 
 
 something more still ; it is, in the face of a resolution affirming 
 the continued use of terms ensuring religious and Church Educa- 
 tion, virtually repudiating the use of any terms and written 
 guaranties whatsoever ; even more yet — it is at once assuming to 
 itself a licence to interfere, in a secular manner if it so will and 
 the Bishop so will, with the education in any parish, subversively, 
 as it may be, of the cure committed to the clergyman. We 
 may henceforth have, for any thing that stands to the contrary, 
 the Diocesan Board's Secular Schools, carried on in antagonism to 
 the Incumbent's Church Schools. 
 
 What is this, my Lord, but a complete houleversement of all 
 ecclesiastical rights and duties ? And, committed to this, how 
 can the Board consistently profess a desire not to depart from 
 " friendly relations " with a Society which continues to adhere to 
 " the doctrines and discipline of the Church of England ?" 
 
 So far as the Board, as at this Meeting constituted and arranged, 
 could effect it, this coup has been struck. But the meeting was 
 composed, it appears, of but twenty-three voting members out of 
 seventy-six who form the complete Board. Sixteen voted for the 
 amendment, seven against it ; so that there are fifty-three who 
 have not expressed their opinion, and sixty who have not declared 
 their assent. Is, then, the question of the constitutional position 
 of the Board to be taken for concluded by the votes' of sixteen 
 out of seventy-six ^ ? 
 
 And then even, it will remain to be seen, whether the Church- 
 men, Laity and Clergy, of the Diocese, are satisfied to see every 
 guaranty on which the Board was instituted, and commended to 
 their confidence, by the sagacious wisdom and sound Churchman- 
 ship of Bishop Blomfield, thus finally swept away ; and, if the 
 
 * At the First Annual Meeting of the Board on July 16, 1840, the Bishop 
 said : " The only question now to be discussed was, how were the people to be 
 taught, and what were they to be taught ? Respecting the last point, there 
 could be no difference of opinion among the present Meeting, who had clearly 
 shown their sentiments by contributing to form the London Diocesan Board of 
 Education, in union and strict conformity with that important Society, which 
 had for a quarter of a century superintended the religious education of the poor 
 in the doctrines of the Church — the National Society." 
 
 The question arises, whether it is competent for the Board to pass, at any 
 other than an Annual Meeting, a valid direction to its Executive Committee 
 contrary to its own constitutional basis. If the Board be a mere voluntary 
 association of private gentlemen, with no assumption of official or public 
 position, then possibly they may do what they like. But if they claim any 
 position as a public body, they must surely be content to submit to the 
 inconvenience of being bound by the fundamental Resolutions which are the 
 very terms of the public and official existence of the Board, and the basis of its 
 recognition, as the representative of the Church, by the Churchmen of the 
 Diocese.
 
 5.8. CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFEHENCE; 
 
 Board do conclusively so decide, whether they will continue to 
 regard it as in any sense representing the Church of England 
 in the Diocese of London. 
 
 On the very same day, the Clergy, I believe throughout the 
 Diocese, received another — upon another — urgent pressure to make 
 collections for the fund called the " Bishop of London's Fund." 
 
 This is the fund from which, in Educational respects, the grants 
 are made by the Diocesan Board — for, beyond a mere trifle, it has 
 no available funds of its own. 
 
 But what can the Committee of the " Bishop of London's 
 Eund " expect will be the response, if this E-esolution stands ? 
 
 What security can there be for the character of the 250 Schools 
 asked for, for the (imaginary) 150,000 ? 
 
 My Lord, I need not apologize for adverting to this subject to 
 your Lordship. Eirst, because the argument is general, though . 
 the illustration is local. And secondly, because it has already 
 ceased to be a merely diocesan question. Eor the call has been 
 even now made ^ in an article apparently " suggested," if not some- 
 thing more, by the revolutionists of the Board, upon all the 
 Dioceses to follow the lead of the sixteen members of the London 
 Board. What will they do ? 
 
 The advice of those who have warned us that the Conscience 
 Clause would save all other mischief is thus already shown to be 
 merely nugatory. That it is a mere stepping-stone, and that no 
 finality or permanence can be attached to it, Mr. Oakley's 
 statement plainly shows. 
 
 He is prepared, with small compunction, to go through 
 it to a system compulsory, in so far gratuitous, and wholly non- 
 religious. Can it be that those of the Clergy, be they few or 
 many, from whom answers in favour of obligatory measures have 
 been elicited are prepared to do the same ? Is it likely that they 
 have even imagined that, in combining these epithets, Mr. Oakley 
 is (for once) strictly logical and practical, and doing that which 
 all authorities are agreed on ? Yet he is. 
 
 Eor obligatory measures, of any general nature, and applicable 
 to all grades, can only compel attendance for secular teach- 
 ing. They therefore necessitate obligatory means of paying 
 for such teaching : that is to say, obligatory school-rates. And 
 
 3 Daily News, February 8. '
 
 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTERFERENCE. 59 
 
 these inevitably imply, either the establishment of professedly 
 secular schools, or else {or, and also) the reduction, by the elimi- 
 nation of pervasive religious teaching, of denominational schools 
 accepting secularist children paid for by rates, from religious to 
 in so far secular schools. 
 
 Nay, even more, for on any general scale they imply the destruc- 
 tion of the Voluntary Denominational E-eligious System, and the 
 substitution of one purely secular. 
 
 " I cannot," said Sir Geoege Geey, in debate, April 11, 1856, " shut my 
 eyes to the fact that the proposition with respect to rating does lead in the 
 direction, at all events, of Secular JEducation." 
 
 The Eev. Canon Melyille, in Evidence, 1866 (App. p. 310). 
 
 " A rate-supported system of Education must in event be secular, compulsory, 
 gratuitous. 
 
 "Secular; because the denominational rests, necessarily, on the voluntary 
 principle, and a rate iind voluntary contributions could never co-exist. The 
 rate would kill the voluntary aid ; and with that the denominational system, 
 i.e. the only recognition of the religious element ^possible in this country, 
 would fall likewise. 
 
 " Compulsory ; because that which is supplied by a rate could never be 
 allowed to be refused or neglected. The mere will or caprice or uidifierence of 
 parents could never be allowed to paralyze that result for which funds were 
 legally and necessarily raised. 
 
 " Gratuitous ; because you could not ask voluntary payment for that which 
 the recipients were forced to take, and might not be willing to take of them- 
 selves. Besides, that for which people have directly to pay on legal enact- 
 ments they will not pay for otherwise." 
 
 Mr. Lowe (673-1865) :— 
 
 ** I think that the local [rate] system would be an undenominational system 
 in the end." 
 
 Lord John Eussell, in debate, April 11, 1856 : — 
 
 ** I confess that, if you impose a rate upon all the inhabitants of a place, 
 I do not see how you can do otherwise than vest in the hands of persons selected 
 by themselves the direction and management of that rate." 
 
 The Eev. Canon Noekis (2061—1866) :— 
 
 " I have no hesitation in saying that I should regard any scheme of rating 
 disastrous. The first reason is, that it would transfer the government of schools 
 'from the most charitable people in each parish, who now have it in their 
 hands, to the rate-payers; and that would be a transfer from an admirable 
 body of governors, to a very objectionable body of governors. The second 
 objection to any scheme of rating is what is called the rchgious difficulty. 
 It would inevitably secularize our schools.'*
 
 60 CONSCIENCE CLAUSE INTEEFERENCE. 
 
 To the same effect is the evidence of the E/ev. J. Phaser 
 (4010—4392, 1866), of the Eev. Canon Eobinson (5783, 5996), 
 and of other witnesses. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone, in the same debate : — 
 
 " It appears to me clear, that the day you sanction compulsory rating for 
 the purpose of JEducation, you sign the death-warrant of voluntary exertions. 
 It is impossible that a voluntary school can compete with a rate-supported 
 school ; for the supporters of the voluntary system are paying the expenses of 
 both schools ; and when the promoters of the voluntary school improve their 
 arrangements, and increase their cost to maintain the competition with the 
 rate-school, the rate-school likewise improves its arrangements at the expense, 
 in a great measure, of the supporters of the voluntary school. We all know 
 what must be the end of a competition like that. If this be the true tendency 
 of the system which my noble friend seeks to introduce, are we prepared to 
 undergo the risk of extinguishing that vast amount of voluntary eflbrt which 
 now exists throughout the country ? 
 
 " We here touch the question of the difference between Education and mere 
 instruction — between that which only touches the understanding of man, and 
 that which acts upon his heart, purifies his sentiments, elevates his thoughts, and 
 raises him to the standard of a Christian life. It is that which we expect from 
 the voluntary system, but its spring is found deep in the human heart, in the 
 heart of Christian philanthropy ; and you cannot supply by any legislation that 
 which comes from a different source. Aid it you may; strengthen, and 
 invigorate, and enlarge it you may ; you have done so to an extraordinary degree j 
 you have every encouragement to persevere in the same course ; but always 
 recollect that you depend upon influences of which you get the benefit, hut 
 which are not at your command — influences tohich you may, perchance, in an 
 unhappy day, extinguish, hut which you can never create." 
 
 Surely, my Lord, there is enough here to make us pause, and 
 think well, before we consent to rush in at the bidding, and with the 
 bold folly, of the empiric, to dispense with the established system, 
 the working machinery, the zealous agents, the liberal offerings, 
 the warm nourishment— even to Life Eternal — of Eeligious 
 Education, in order to try an experiment. 
 
 And therefore, my Lord, whether we are not wise in resolutely 
 setting ourselves to resist all attempts at tampering therewith, 
 from whatever quarter they may come ; either from enemies 
 without, or friends within ; either by insidious destruction of 
 securities for Eeligious Education, or by interference with the 
 liberty of Eeligious Education — I venture to submit to your 
 Lordship's consideration very respectfully, and with the deepest 
 earnestness. 
 
 Churchmen have nothing personal to gain. On the contrary, 
 they incur great expense, of time, labour, money, anxiety. It is
 
 COKSCIETTCE CLA.ITSE IfTTETlPEHET^'CE. 61 
 
 no pleasure to them to be always fighting battles of resistance. 
 Still they acknowledge that it is their duty — to a higher 
 Authority than the State — to give of these talents in order to 
 furnish forth useful citizens for the good of the commonwealth. 
 But this they can do on one basis only, and in one hope only. 
 They must see that it is Education on their own Christian 
 Church principles, and Education for a Society in Heaven as well 
 as a Society on earth. They must see— what the Earl of Shaftes- 
 bury has said in better words than I can frame — 
 
 " I want to see the Church of England stand upon her Eormu- 
 laries, her Articles, and upon her sublime and heartstirring 
 Liturgy. I want her to carry to the mind and hearts of all the 
 people that religion which satisfied Cranmer, Eidley, Latimer, 
 Bishop Andrewes, and Hooper. If she can but diffuse this among 
 her people she will be safe amidst the greatest difiiculties, and 
 after this great conflict now at hand — and God only knows the 
 issue — I trust out of that issue we shall be delivered ; and that 
 the Church of England, having done her duty, by His grace, 
 with an earnest heart, and devout prayer, directing the hearts of 
 her people heavenward, by teaching them to do their duty in that 
 state of life to which it has pleased Gon to call them in this life — 
 I trust that at the close of this dispensation, the Church may still 
 be found erect, in the attitude of prayer and thanksgiving to 
 Almighty God, saying, * Behold, here am I, and the children Thou 
 hast given me.' " 
 
 I have the honour to be, 
 My Lord, 
 Tour Lordship's faithful servant, 
 
 C. A. Stevens, 
 All Saints', Blackheath, 
 
 February 8, 1867. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 GILBEET AND EIVINaXGN, PEINTERS, ST. JOHN'S SQTTAKE, LONDON.
 
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