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may be said to be in the years preceding the formation of the National Society. It was then an undertaking of a voluntary sort, independent of the Legislature, or of Government; maintained, as it had been instituted, by private persons, and by societies. The necessity of providing education for the people was thereby recognized and recorded, though not by the State as such. Attempts were subsequently made to obtain acts of the Legislature for National Education; but, for various reasons, they failed of success. Government contented itself with making grants from the Treasury in aid of individual exertion, on application of the two education societies. So the case stood until the year 1839, when an attempt, fresh in the memory of us all, was made to introduce a system of education which should comprehend the children of parents differing in religious belief. This attempt likewise failed, chiefly because it went to separate the higher and lower elements of education, and to provide a mutilated system, in which religious truth was compromised or excluded. There is no one who does not familiarly know the course and result of the eventful contest between the Church and the then Government. It was successfully maintained that no education for the people could be accepted which should be wanting in its religious character, or withdrawn from the oversight of the English clergy. While this controversy was going on, the Church organized
