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the Established Church of the country; that which the State and Parliament declare to be the true religion, which possesses the churches of the land, and whose clergy are invested with public endowments and other recognised and valuable privileges. These are but indifferent reasons for according less favour to its distinctive teaching in its own schools than to all other forms of belief. Yet it is precisely this religion, sir, that my Lords of the Privy Council cannot away with. They can tolerate the Roman Catholic system and the Nonconformist system in their integrity, but when we come to the Church system, my Lords discover that there can be no necessity for teaching little children theological mysteries and propositions of Church government. Why do they not say that to the Roman Catholic school managers, and the managers of British and Foreign schools? Because neither would listen to them for a moment; neither would surrender one tittle of their religious teaching to purchase the grants of the State. And shall the Church of England be the only body to commit this treason against her principles?
Whether or not it be necessary to teach little children articles of belief which want the imprimatur of Downing Street, I shall not stop to argue; but this I say, sir, that the Church of England requires all godfathers and godmothers to see that the Catechism, to which the objection chiefly applies, be taught to every baptized child in its opening years, and that her clergy are bound to teach this same Catechism to every person, before he be presented to the Bishop for Confirmation, and admitted to the full privilege of communion. To aid the clergy in this work among the children of the poor is the main object of a National school; and to hinder them by giving security to dissent is the main and sole object of the Conscience Clause. My Lords are not satisfied with the largest concessions a clergyman can make, consistently with his views of religious duty; they want to tie up his hands, and the hands of his successors to the end of time, by a clause in the trust deed, which shall render him liable, as Lord Granville is careful to explain, to a suit in chancery, if he venture to say to all the children in his school what he is bound and sworn to say to all the men, women, and children in his church. Sir, that is the Conscience Clause. It
