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fairly assisted by the Government Grants, has made such rapid and satisfactory progress. The attempts to force a secular education upon the people of this country have hitherto failed, and the mixed system even in Ireland is gradually but surely ending in a denominational system. It is difficult to understand the inveterate hostility which the Education Department has displayed against the teaching of the Church, and indeed against all dogmatic teaching. If the Catechism, instead of enforcing God's Commandments, and explaining Christ's Sacraments, had inculcated the most immoral and antisocial principles, it could not have been more resolutely branded as unsuitable to a school of English children. To the Welsh people the Catechism is declared to be especially obnoxious, (not by themselves indeed, but) by sectarian leaders and by My Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council on Education: and yet I should have thought that even in Wales it could not injure the rising generation that they should learn in the words of the Catechism to keep their hands from picking and stealing, their tongues from evil speaking, and their bodies in temperance, soberness, and chastity. The aggression which we are now considering is but one of many directed against the religious liberties of the country, and in repelling the attack at this one point we are fighting the battle not alone of Churchmen but of Roman Catholics, of Wesleyans, of all, whatever their denomination, who hold a faith and who possess in their religious system the life which faith alone can give. The positions menaced may appear unimportant, but we must be watchful and defend every outwork. For I will not conceal it from you, as I do not conceal it from myself, that a government which should propound a scheme of secular national instruction would meet with a very hearty support from a small but active party which has recently exhibited several notable champions of its principles, and would rejoice to extirpate religious teaching from all the educational institutions of the land. The especial object of their animadversion is dogmatic teaching, or in other words is Faith. But I have sufficient confidence in the religious sentiment of the people of this country, and in the fidelity of its enlightened and loyal clergy, to look without a shade of apprehension on the struggle that might occur.
