II. The Working of the Education Act of 1870 Unequal: therefore Unjust

The grave and courteous answer of Mr. Dale in the Nineteenth Century for January, to what I had written on the Education Act of 1870 in December last, lays upon me the duty of making a reply. In doing so, I hope that nothing will escape from me at variance with his good example.

My object is not contention but agreement: I de sire to invite all who value Christianity and education in England to stand firmly together in defence of Christian education, and to press onward steadily for its extension throughout English homes. I rejoice, therefore, to note many points of agreement in Mr. Dale's reply to my argument.

1. We are fully agreed in the desire that the whole population of the country should be duly educated.

2. And that those who are unable, by reason of poverty, to provide education for their children, should be aided by the help of the public revenues.

3. Further, and most emphatically, I agree with him, that to compel Nonconformists of any kind to go to an Anglican school, or to any school where their conscience can be tampered with, is a flagrant injustice.

4. Once more, that education is to be valued and promoted for its own sake, and not, as Mr. Dale puts it, for the sake of " Churches." Though Catholics desire all men to come to the knowledge of the truth, their work of education has their own flocks and their own children so emphatically in view that the presence of non-Catholic children in their schools is wholly unsought, and, if their number be great, it is a cause of difficulty to them.

5. Further, I am rejoiced to perceive in the cautious reserve of Mr. Dale, that he distinguishes between the reading of the Bible and doctrinal Christianity. He denies that they are equivalent in phrase or in fact. This I read with great satisfaction. I would that it were more widely recognised.

6. Lastly, I agree with Mr. Dale in all he says as to the care that is due to the Nonconformists scattered throughout the villages and small towns of the country. I would support with all my heart his pleading for them before any Royal Commission. He takes as an example the parish of Blackford, with a thousand people, of which he claims half as Nonconformists. By his theory in page 62 he would have one only school for the sake of efficiency. I would have two, for the sake both of conscience and of Christianity. To impose one only Anglican school on the five hundred Nonconformists would be unjust. To impose a Board School on the five hundred Anglicans would be equally unjust. I would oppose both schemes as tyrannous; and I would contend for the Christian liberty and Christian conscience of both Nonconformists and

Anglicans. Thoroughly as I value the efficiency of schools, I value the liberty and conscience of Christian men far more. The Nonconformists of Blackford, being five hundred, could have their united school, and in five hundred there would be at least one hundred children: and a school of a hundred children, with proper care, may be made completely efficient. There are cases more difficult than that of Blackford. As you diminish the population, so you increase the difficulty. But it is a still greater difficulty, not where there are-thousands or hundreds, but where there are onl;y tens. Such difficulties must always exist. Nobody knows them better than we. There are Catholics scattered in villages and in small towns by tens and by fives, or by single families here and there. We have too much common sense to demand of the majorities, be they Anglicans or Nonconformists, the breaking up not only of their schools, but the sacrifice of their religious conscience, and the change of the legal status of their education to meet our objections. It would be like blowing up a town to clear the rooms cf mosquitoes. There must always be residual difficulties which cannot be met by legislation. They must be treated by common sense, justice, and equity. The nearest approach to such a treatment would be what I have laid down: namely, a universal education rate, with proportionate participation, and separate schools for all who are willing to form them under the conditions of the statute: or, again, common schools on like terms for those who prefer them: or, finally, for all those who cannot form or maintain schools of their own,.

the amplest conscience clause, vigilantly guarded, and promptly vindicated.

But here begin our disagreements:

1. I cannot think that the million of schoolless children in 1870 represented only poverty in their parents. First, because others equally poor had already founded and maintained their schools — witness the Wesleyans and the Catholics. These children were schoolless because, as I must believe, their parents looked on the education of the people as a matter belonging to the State, or at least not belonging to private persons, either as Christians or as members of the commonwealth. Religion they held to be one thing and education another. They built their chapel and paid their minister, as Mr. Dale says. Having done this, they were content. This I believe to be the chief cause why, outside of the voluntary schools, there was no education in the country. Other causes, indeed, there were, such as vice, neglect, intemperance — all these contributed to the general desolation; but the main cause, I must believe, was apathy, an absence of zeal for education, and of a sense of responsibility to found or to build schools for themselves and for others. This belief is still further confirmed by the fact that the Nonconformists of this country, always excepting the Wesleyans, are to be found chiefly among the middle and lower middle class. But the middle class are above poverty. The population of England and Wales in 1870 was about 22,000,000. The Established Church had provided school room for 1,765,944: that is, taking a sixth for the children who ought to be at school, for about 10,000,000 people. The Nonconformists had at that time school room for 411,948: that is, by the same calculation, they had provided for about 2,500,000 people. It is clear, then, either that the Nonconformist population was greatly less than that of the Established Church, or that the Nonconformists were behindhand in the work of providing schools for their children. And this may be gathered from Mr. Dale's plea of poverty. They could not provide schools, he says. Therefore it is not unreasonable to believe that they did not; and from this it follows that they who were chiefly responsible-for the destitution complained of have now received the chief benefit and control of the Act of 1870 and of the education rates.

2. I must also disagree in Mr. Dale's statement that the Board Schools represent the kind of religious teaching desired by the people of this country.

First, because the people of this country as yet know little of what the religious teaching of the Board Schools may be. " They are attached to the Board Schools," as Mr. Dale says, " because they are larger, handsomer, better lighted, better warmed, more attractive than their own schools." There is nothing of religion in all this. The people may be indifferent, or careless, or thoughtless about the religious teaching. But that is a long way from approving positively or knowingly of the religion taught in the Board Schools.

Further, if the people of this country had any zeal for the Act of 1870, or any care to promote its operation, they would go to the poll at the triennial elections. But the fact now comes out, that of the electors a very large proportion never vote at all. In the metropolitan district, for instance, at the last election not one in four had zeal or care enough in the matter to go to the poll. There were weeks of placard ing and addressing and canvassing in public meetings, and by private agents, but not one in four voted. In each of the metropolitan boroughs about three-fourths, or even more, did not take the trouble to vote at all. This is a new revelation. Hitherto it has been thought and, because much vaunted, believed that the Act of 1870 was an Act demanded by the popular voice, and that it represents the popular mind. I agree with Mr. Dale in thinking that it was an Act carried by a Liberation Parliament, which began with the schools on its way to the Established Church.

It was so far a political measure. It disendowed religion in the schools as an approach to disendow religion in the Established Chuch. But, as I have said, the disendowment of religion is the endowment of secularism.

8. Here, again, is another point of disagreement. Mr. Dale thinks that I contradict myself because I have said that the Board Schools are secular schools, and also that the reading of the Bible in them has giyen them a religious character. These two things are perfectly consistent. There is no contradiction. At the outset the Bible was not read in them. The schools then were essentially secular. The desire of the people has forced the reading of the Bible into them, and now they have a religious semblance. This fact proves that whereas the schools are essentially secular, the people have made them so far religious. I quoted this fact, not to commend the Board Schools, but to prove that the desire of the people of this country is decisively in favour of religious education.

9. Once more, I fear, I must disagree where I most wish to agree with Mr. Dale. He affirms broadly that doctrinal Christianity may be taught, and is taught, in the Board Schools: and that not in contravention of the Act of 1870, but in conformity with it. He points out that the clause of the Act excludes only " formularies and catechisms distinctive of any denomination." If I rightly understand him, he says that this does not exclude the matter of such formularies, but only the formularies themselves. He says, indeed, that Christian doctrines may be taught, and are taught, by Nonconformists without creeds or formularies. If I had so interpreted the Act of 1870, 1 am afraid — " pace Sancti Ignatii " — that I should have been called a Jesuit. But if the Act of 1870 permits Nonconformist schoolmasters to teach in Board Schools the doctrines which Nonconformist ministers, without creeds or formularies, teach in chapels, what becomes of Clause 14? Are not these doctrines distinctive of any denominations? But they are taught without creeds or formularies. Yes, but doctrines are the mental con ceptions of which creeds are only the verbal expression. Creeds are only the diagrams of the triangles, as I said. But Mr. Dale tells us that Nonconformists do not use creeds or formularies. Then Board Schools are after all Nonconformist and denominational. They are the endowment of the Nonconformist religion. I am not arguing to exclude the Nonconformist religion or Christianity, so far as it is true, from the Board Schools. I thank God that so much of Christianity yet remains in the schools of the Act of 1870, and that the will of the people is forcing the Christianity of England, whatsoever it be, into the Board Schools and through the clauses of the Act of 1870. This is to me clear gain, but it enormously strengthens my argument as to the inequality and injustice of the Act in its present application. For it results in this. The Anglican, the Catholic, and the Wesleyan schools are aided by the Privy Council grants only, and that for maintenance alone, and not for the multiplication, of schools. The Nonconformist doctrines are aided by Privy Council grants, and are exclusively endowed with the whole education rate, both for maintenance and for indefinite multiplication of Board Schools. Indeed, Mr. Dale says that the friends of the Act of 1870 foresaw and desired that Board Schools should " displace " all others. This is the issue at stake: honestly avowed.

And here I must call attention to the 'incongruities of this Biblical instruction. Th6 Bible may be read and explained, and explained doctrinally, but only in such words as the schoolmaster may select. The weighed and exact words of formularies and cate chisms, which the highest and best minds have for ages pondered and fixed as the most adequate and exact expression of truth, are not statutable, but the extemporaneous or haphazard words of the schoolmaster are sanctioned by the Act of 1870. Surely this is a surpassing perversity. Let us go a step further: the schoolmaster may explain the Bible in the sense of doctrinal Christianity. But does the schoolmaster belong to no denomination? And does he so know the peculiarities of all denominations that he can teach a doctrinal Christianity which shall not coincide with any one of them? This unsectarian doctrinal Christianity should at once be stereotyped for the use of Board Schools. It is an achievement, or even a miracle, of Biblical exegesis. But if, to exclude errors, variations, and contradictions, it were stereotyped and imposed on all Board Schools, it would straightway become formulary. Mr. Dale says that the doctrines of our Lord's divinity, His atonement for the sins of man, the future judgment, may be taught without formularies in Board Schools. Are not these distinctive? But this is not all. If the people of England could be assured of the Biblical teaching of the school masters in 1883, this would be no security for 1884. The schoolmasters, like other men, may change their minds. Lady Hewley's Charity is warning enough. The law has been changed to meet the lapse of endow ments from Orthodoxy to Heterodoxy, from Trinitarianism to Unitarianism. A prescription of twenty years is enough, I believe, for any error in possession. Schoolmasters may begin to the satisfaction of Mr. Dale, but may end to the satisfaction of the Agnostics. Not only may schoolmasters change their minds, but schoolmasters may be changed themselves. They are here to-day and there to-morrow. And will the in coming doctrine agree with the outgoing? And the poor children of Christian parents, and the poor VOL. in. d parents of Christian children, are to be tossed to and fro and carried ahout with every wind of doctrine as schoolmasters and School Boards please. I do not know the English people if they will not one day rise up in anger against this trifling with all that is most precious to the poor, to their children, and to their conscience. Nine Conscience Clauses will not be enough to protect them from this creedless Christianity. The next work for the Liberation Society ought to be to disestablish and disendow the Board Schools.

There is, however, a still more preposterous result. With all their imperfections, the ministers of religion are supposed to be qualified to teach by study, training, experience; and they teach with a sense of responsibility. They have been as much set apart to teach religion as schoolmasters are set apart to teach secular knowledge. But no minister is admitted to teach in a Board School. Of whatsoever colour he be, a minister is distinctive of a denomination. The schoolmaster is without colour or creed. No denomination owns him, nor he any. He is by the statute an unsectarian unattached. All trained ministers are excluded— only untrained schoolmasters may teach doctrinal Christianity by law. This exclusion of " the fittest," and the survival of the less fit, throws the religious teaching of our rising youths into the hands of the unfit. Could unreason more visibly betray itself? And can any considerate man wonder that all who hold dear as life the faith once delivered to the Saints in all its integrity and in all its precision conscientiously refuse to send their children to Board Schools? And these schools are one day to "isolate" and to "displace" the Voluntary and Christian schools of England. If Mr. Dale's account be accurate, the net result of all this would be that the Board School system has been turned into the endowment of a new religion. It is a Pan-Nonconformist Church concurrently endowed side by side with the Established Church.

I must also take leave to call this new form of Christianity emphatically sectarian; and the system itself, a new sect of which schoolmasters are the pontiffs. It is also a propaganda of Christianity without a creed. And the first effect of it will be to break down in the minds of the English people the surviving belief that Christianity is a fixed and definite truth. As yet, I do not believe that it represents the religion with which the people are content, but in ten years more I can well believe that they will not only be content with the dispensation of schoolmasters, but with less. The managers of the 302 Church schools and the 176 Non conformist schools already surrendered to the School Boards are content, it seems, with the shadow of their Christian inheritance.

5. Once more I must disagree in the statement that the Act of 1870 has done great things for the Voluntary schools. Mr. Dale says that by its commit tees, &c., it has enabled them " to increase the number of their schools, and the number of children in average attendance; that the grant earned has been greatly increased, and the number of the children nearly doubled." All this he sets down to the Act of 1870. I set down none of it. All might and ought to have

3G THE WORKING OF THE EDUCATION ACT been clone without it. If he had set it down to the movement that produced the Act itself, I should agree with him. The facts are these. The destitute condition of so large a numher of children, the inadequacy of the efforts, great as they had been, of the founders of Voluntary schools, the niggardly parsimony of the annual vote for education of 600,OOOZ. a year, with an irresistible impulse and a growing conviction through out the country that we were behindhand in education — these and other like causes produced the Act of 1870. As soon as it became law the Committee of Privy Council gave notice that after two years all grants in aid of building new schools would cease. This was, in fact, a declaration against the multiplication of Voluntary schools. And this at once roused the friends of religious education to a great effort. In the ten years from 1*70 to 1880 the increase of schools and scholars was as follows:

In 1869-70 there was school room for 1,765,944. In 1879-80, for 3,158,119; increase, 1,392,175. Average attendance in 1869-70, 1,062,999; in 1879-80, 1,981,684; increase, 918,685. Even Catholics out of their poverty raised a " Crisis Fund" — so called because of the perils of the Act of 1870 — with this result: they raised 31K),00(M., and provided school room for 71,518 additional children. There is no communion in Eng land poorer than the Catholic Church. A few old and wealthy families there are, with a handful of the middle class and a million of labouring poor. What the Catholics and Wesleyans did, the Nonconformists might ha?e done, and more abundantly.

Not a particle of this vast increase came directly from the Act of 1870. It did, indeed, give a menace and an alarm, followed by the refusal of building grants. All the machinery of committees and bye-laws, and boy-beadles and school "visitors," might have been created without the Act of 1870 or the Board School system. Machinery is an accident which might have been created without the Act as it stands. All the 1,570,OOOZ. which Mr. Dale says the Voluntary schools have earned has been earned since 1870, as before it, not by the Act or because of the Act, but under the minutes and inspection of the Committee of Privy Council. I must deny altogether that we owe to the Act of 1870 as such anything but alarm, and the energy which alarm excites. For this I thank it; but for nothing more. We owe to it much privation, the loss of the building grants, the legal secularisation of our schools, and the exclusion of Christianity from our school hours and from our school books. To the Nonconformist schools and to those who had not denied themselves to provide schools, the Act was, indeed, a profuse and an exclusive boon. To those who had laboured and toiled, spending and being spent for the education of England, it was, as one of its chief promoters wras compelled to confess in Parliament, great discouragement to Voluntary schools.

6. Again, I fear, I must accept Mr. Dale's disagreement by affirming once more that the statute of 1870 has reduced our schools to the condition of secular schools. During the four hours of the school day only secular matter can be taught. What is taught

:!S THE WORKING OF THE EDUCATION ACT out of those hours is beyond the law, and, morally, as much out of the school as if it were taught under another roof. And as I said, it is taught freely: that is, so far as the Government is concerned, which pays nothing for it, and takes no cognisance of it — not freely, indeed, for the managers who hear the burden in the maintenance of the school, and in the teachers' stipend. Mr. Dale's comment, that if our schools are only secular, Government may dispense with them, is hardly well weighed. Government is bound by every bond of equity and justice to recognise freedom of conscience; and if the Voluntary schools of England were " displaced," such a violation of conscience would be perpetrated as would convict all the agents, aiders, abettors, and comforters of such a policy of tyranny and simulation: of tyranny, in violating conscience; of simulation, in prating about religious liberty. Here is the inevitable alternative: the Legislature must either recognise liberty of conscience, and the schools freely founded on liberty of conscience; or, with the profession of civil and religious liberty in its mouth, it must force secular education upon a Christian people. Free denominational schools are the safeguards and depositories, the outworks and bulwarks, of liberty of conscience. The world has gone right round the compass. If the Free Churches of England should in the nineteenth century make reprisals on the Court of High Commission and the Star Chamber in the seventeenth century, they would take away the liberty of conscience for which their fathers suffered all pain and loss, and make their name a perpetual reproach. The

Voluntary or Christian schools give to the Government at an inadequate price a full secular teaching. This is all it requires and all it recognises. To the Christian teaching of the school the Government contributes nothing, and has no pretext or plea to interfere. Nay, more, it cannot interfere without a violation of the liberty of Englishman to believe and to educate their children as their conscience dictates.

7. Again, I am unable to agree with Mr. Dale that in a population of 1500, howsoever divided in religion, there ought to be only one school, because small schools of sixty or seventy children are not efficient. Here we reach the truth. It is secular efficiency against religion and conscience. I would maintain that, whether the population be 15,000 or 1500, Anglicans, Catholics, and Nonconformists ought to be free to found their own schools, and ought to be aided by the public revenues to do so. If in such a population any desire and are willing to deny themselves to found a secular school, I would at once say that in our mixed state they ought to be helped by public aid to do so. As to efficiency, the Government by its inspectors will take care. In three places Mr. Dale says that Non conformists are " unable," " are too poor, "and "cannot'' found schools for themselves. To this I answer again, the Wesleyans and Catholics of England out of their greater poverty have done so, and for the religious care of their children hold themselves bound to do so. Let others do the same. I cannot, therefore, accept the plea of inability, except in cases where the numbers are few and scattered. And these cases may be treated exceptionally. The rule is founded on a great law of equnl justice, and it ought not to be abandoned because of a few residual difficulties.

8. I am sorry to add to the list of disagreements, but two remain which I cannot pass over. Mr. Dale asks, What will become of the " moral power of the Voluntary system which no public money can create,'* " theunbought energy," "the free gift, "if the Voluntary schools receive a snare in the school rates? Voluntaryism would then cease to be. Not so fast; I will tell him. I would give to the Board Schools a share in the school rate in proportion to the voluntary contributions of those who desire to found such schools. This would at once spread the wholesome principle of voluntaryism all over the laud. I would have no educational pauperism; and I would give to the Voluntary schools, in like manner, though not, perhaps, in like proportion, a share in the education rate. The effect of this measure would be universal equality, and therefore universal justice. The schools of the whole country would depend on four kinds of support: the Consolidated Fund, the school rate, the contributions of founders and managers, the school-pence paid by the parents. I have said that the proportion might vary. For denominational schools it may be equitable to require that the contributions should be larger, and the school rate less, than in the Board Schools. Mr. Dale says that most people would prefer schools managed by boards. Let them have them. But more, I believe, would prefer their own management and their own schools. All who pay ought to share; no school ought to exist without voluntary contributions as well as State aid. Under the old Poor Law the people were pauperised, and the rates were intolerable because all was done by the rate, and little was required of the receiver. The amendment of the Poor Law revived profitable labour, and restricted relief to helpless poverty. This combination of popular energy with public aid runs through all the healthiest and most vigorous activities of our commonwealth. It is being destroyed by the working of the Act of 1870. Mr. Dale desires the displacement of "Voluntary schools by Board Schools." He says: " the Board School system is certain to supersede the schools of the denominationalists " (p. 70). Here again we agree. He thinks it will be for good. I believe it will be a fatal and final evil. Time was when some would have agreed with me. " Our object," said Mr. Forster in 1870, "is to complete the present Voluntary system, to fill up gaps, sparing the public money where it can be done without, procuring as much as we can the assistance of the parents, and welcoming as much as we rightly can the co-operation and aid of those benevolent men who desire to assist their neigh bours." l Mr. Dale's system of universal Board Schools would abolish all Voluntary schools, and convert all voluntary contributions into school rates. Where would Voluntaryism be then? Education would be endowed as by tithes and Church rates, levied on the willing and unwilling alike. My desire would be to lighten the rates as much as possible, and to develop as much

1 Hansard, vol. cxcix. p. 443.

as possible the energy, generosity, zeal, self-respect, self-help of the people of England. Rate schools will kill all these highest qualities of a free people, and burden us with a mechanical, automatons, educational bureaucracy worked from a centre with clouds of paid officials. Germany and France are examples which no Christian Englishman — I will say which no free Englishman — will desire to follow. There is only one adequate check to this tendency, and that is that conscience shall be free, and that the choice of education shall be free throughout the whole people. Mr. Dale thinks that he has a larger faith in English Christianity than I have. I doubt it: as I will show before I have done. But I think I have a larger faith in free and voluntary education than he has. Before 1870, with the annual pittance of GOO,OOOZ. a year, the people of England were hardly encouraged to spontaneous effort, and yet they founded schools for nearly two million of children. Show them now that to honest effort on their part help sufficient for their need is offered, and the hands that hang down will be lifted to resolute work. But this will never be so long as the Act of 1870 is-unequally and unjustly worked for the exclusive creation of schools for which no voluntary effort is demanded.

9. I will close this array of disagreements by one more, which is, I fear, very deep. Mr. Dale says: " I have a larger faith than the Cardinal in the prospects of English Christianity. It is not dependent upon the success of his Eminence in getting a million a year from the rates for the support of denominational schools. Let the secular education of the people be provided by secular authorities, and let the Churches, by whatever arrangements seem expedient to them, provide for religious education at their own cost, and out of school hours " (p. 75). I have already shown that we do provide religious instruction outside of the four school hours and without the State or public revenues, partly by the stipends paid to our teachers, and by the free personal work of our clergy. Therefore, in what I add I have this always before me.

It is now fifty years since I began to work among the poor; and I think I know their state. The home ought to be the best school, but it is not so. A Christian people can only be perpetuated by Christian education; but Christian education is not to be given in the unaided homes of England — no, not even of the rich, or of the middle class, or of the poor. Where one home is full of Christian truth, a thousand are unable, by reason of toil or incapacity, to teach the children of the house. Christian education is to be perpetuated in England by Christian schools. It was. Christian schools that made England; and it will be in the schools, Christian or deprived of Christianity, as it may be, that the future of England will be decided. Schools without Christianity will rear a people without Christianity. It is true that neither a million, nor a myriad of millions of money, will perpetuate Christianity. It will be sustained, as it was first diffused, by teaching, and by teaching all that the Divine Author of Christianity commanded us to believe and to do. Direct and certain evidence convinces me that the last ten years of the Act of 1870 have already done much to-weaken the power of Christianity over the schools of this country. How can it be otherwise? Before 1870 the whole school day was pervaded hy Christian faith. Every book presupposed its truth; in many it was explicitly recognised. It is not so now. I am aware that five hours a week of religious teaching, if well used, may do much, and if zealously employed may do enough at least for individuals. But who that knows the irregularity of attendance, the want of punctuality in the morning, the weariness and the wandering of children in the afternoon, can fail to see that Christianity is put to every disadvantage, and embarrassed by every discouraging circumstance? Who that knows the unequal, imperfect, and perfunctory working of any extensive system depending upon human agency can fail to know how, with all effort to tend upward, we are continually tending downward? I am a firm and fearless believer in the future of Christianity in Eng land. Nothing but extermination of Christians and Christian teachers can extinguish it. But I have little confidence in doctrinal Christianity without creeds. The history of latitudinarianism since 1088, of freethinking since 1700, and of rationalism since 1840, is before us. The history of Presbyterianism, as in Lady Hewley's Charity, and of other forms of religious thought, is also known. If the religious teaching of the Board Schools be all that the people of England desire, as Mr. Dale says, then I need not add more proof that Christianity is already far in its decline. I am not insensible of the widespread and wonderful reviving of religion in individuals: but what is the state of the masses of the people? Thirty years of work and observation in London have taught me things that Mr. Dale cannot efface from my reason. The late Hugh James Eose, whose name is venerated in Cam bridge and by many still surviving, if it be unknown to the younger men of this day, drew out with his wide knowledge of German literature the decline of Christianity in Germany. He traced its three periods — the first of rigorous dogma, from which men recoiled into a second stage of devout, indefinite pietism; which again issued in a third, the rationalistic rejection both of dogma and of pietism, and the reign of unbelief. I hope I may be deceived, but I believe that England passed from its dogmatic religion in the last century into its pietism in the time of Wesley, and that it is passing into its final period of rationalism and positivism in the educated, and of naturalism and materialism in the uneducated, classes. This downward tide no Board School education and no creedless Christianity can arrest. It is because I have a large faith in Christianity that I have no faith in education which deviates from the inheritance of Christian England. The schools of England were pervaded with Christianity down to the year 1870; their action may have been feeble upon the masses, and must have been feeble if the religion taught by schoolmasters in Board Schools is all that they desire. 1 do not believe it; I have better hopes, and a large confidence, and I do not speak without experience. The clergy and people of the Anglican Church will judge between me and Mr. Dale. Nay, many among the Nonconformists with whom I have

4G THE WORKING OF THE EDUCATION ACT UNEQUAL.

bad correspondence will also be able tt> decide between us. A million of money will not toucb the beart of the English people. I need no one to tell me that; and the pbrase bas a bollow sound. But the multiplication of Cbristian scbools will toucb and train both beart and will to the trutb and life of our Divine Master. Tbis is now at stake, and I impeacb the unequal and unjust application or misapplication of the Act of 1$70 as the peril wbicb is impending over Christian England. Some men tbink that wbat was long ago bas never been, and wbat is now far off will never come. But in my belief it is not more certain that two converging lines will intersect, though it be beyond the horizon, than that the steady elimination of Christianity from the schools of the people will rob England in the future of its Christian inheritance.

Though I would say much more, I must make an end. And my last word shall be the satisfaction with which I find that, in the midst of so many and irreconcilable disagreements, Mr. Dale agrees fully with me in the main point of my contention. I affirmed that the Board Schools would in the end crush or starve the Voluntary schools. Mr. Dale says: "I think the [School Board] system is certain to supersede the schools of the Denominatioualists " (p. 70). My contention, therefore, is not only admitted but supported by the whole weight of Mr. Dale's reasons as well as by my own.

Wbat will be the result of this upon the Cbristian education, the national character, and the Christianity of England, I leave for the present to the conscience and to the common sense of Englishmen.