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Dissenters in a place, by all means let them have a school too with Government help, if they too can show a sufficient number of children in esse in the judgment of the department of Government charged with the administration of the Grant. But what have they to do with the Church School unless they are willing that their children shall there be taught, or prepared to be taught, the Faith of the Church. Here it is that comes in the real grievance. This is the turning point of the whole controversy about the "Conscience Clause." Here begins interference on the part of the State with the religious teaching of the schools of the Church.
I will read the "Conscience Clause" to the House.
"The (persons authorised to manage the school) shall be bound to make such orders as shall provide for admitting to the benefits of the school the children of parents not in communion with the (Church or denomination with which the school is connected;) but such orders shall be confined to the exemption of such children, if their parents desire it, from attendance at the public worship, and from instruction in the doctrines or formularies of the said (Church or denomination) and shall not otherwise interfere with the religious teaching of the scholars as fixed by (these presents, or as the case may be,) and shall not authorise any other religious instruction to be given in the school."
"And shall not otherwise interfere."
It does interfere then in some wise. Now it is this interference—interference too under a penalty, that no grievance may be left which is not inflicted by means of the "Conscience Clause,"—which is a thing wholly new in the history of the question' violating all preceding principles of administration, unjust absolutely, as respects the Church, unjust relatively, as respects other branches of the Church Catholic, and very dangerous. There is no symptom of it from 1839 to 1847, nor again from 1847 to 1852, nor again from 1852 to 1856.
The first case of "Conscience Clause," and therein of new forms of Management Clause, imposed by sole authority of the
