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small parishes and another for big parishes? Small parishes used to be considered rather nice things than otherwise, but if their Parish Schools are to be, as a rule, secularized by the "Conscience Clause" they will hardly retain their nice character. Then again, there is something which touches big parishes. The big parishes, which got their Trust Deeds and their grant for buildings long ago, are not so safe as perhaps some of them think. The Lord President of the Council in his evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons last year said, that in his judgment no settlement of the "Conscience Clause" would be satisfactory which did not extend to the annual grants also. Big parishes, which betray little parishes, will find themselves, in turn, betrayed. Churchmen then cannot say they are not forewarned; I wish I could add forearmed, but unhappily the two words do not always go together. Supposing, however, that at present, it is rare and exceptional, that does not make it one jot less vicious in principle; and what we have to deal with is principles and not expedients. Or is it so impossible to open the eyes of Church people that they remain blind to the steady progress that the "Secular System" has made in twenty-five years in the hands of the Committee of Council. Is it for nothing that a correspondence with the Council Office has been published within these last few months, shewing that in a school accepting a "Conscience Clause" the Parish Priest is debarred from teaching the Apostles' Creed to children who have a right to what the Council Office call "all the benefits of the school"?[1]
I proceed to prove the position laid down in the resolution—
- ↑ See Correspondence between the Rev. W. B. Caparn and the Secretary of the Committee of Council. Wells, T. Green; Oxford and London, J. H. and J. Parker. 1805. Price One Halfpenny. 3s. 6d. per 100.
has more authority on his side in the earliest records of the Council Office itself than he is perhaps aware of.
