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without neutralising the effect of the religious training which it is his desire to bestow.
It is much to be regretted that in this argument for the Conscience Clause, shallow as it is, the Education Department should find allies among the clergy themselves. Some of the clergy may have assented to the Conscience Clause without seeing its true meaning and results, and they deserve our pity; others may have thought it right to give a secular education to Dissenters' children who might otherwise obtain none; and even those who differ from their judgment, may appreciate their motives; but when clergy of the Church of England recommend a compulsory imposition of the Conscience Clause, and ascribe the resistance of their brethren in the ministry to ignorance of the subject, to prejudice, or to a struggle for clerical supremacy, I can but regret their own presumption and lack of charity. We are told that if the State builds or liberally contributes to build our schools, the State has a right to make conditions. Now the Privy Council Grants do not exceed one-fifth of the cost of construction, and this fifth is not a gift of the Privy Council, which has nothing to give; it is a portion of the national taxation voted for the promotion of education through an equitable redistribution; and if those Educational Grants are offered on terms inimical to the conscience and religious liberty of applicants they are maladministered.
Far better would it be to abolish the Building Grants, or even the entire administration of the Education Department, than be subject to this injustice. Churchmen would pay less in taxes, and could apply their money to the work of education without passing it through the hands of the tax-gatherer.
We are told by the officials of the Education Department that the Annual Grants should be administered on the same principles as the Building Grants, and that to both the Conscience Clause will be hereafter invariably attached by authority of Parliament if we do not come to terms. In the first proposition I concur, Building Grants and Annual Grants should be made on the same principle—to the second I reply that it is an empty threat; no government and no parliament would desire to paralyze the educational movement which, initiated by the National Society and by the British and Foreign School Society, and until 1860
