21
itself to the Committees of the Convocations in July, 1901. Its omission is a grievous wound alike to the logic and to the fairness of the Bill. Its omission has done much to clothe a measure of justice to the Church with the aspect of a measure of injustice to the Dissenters.
The present Bill is of the nature of a national attempt to prevent the abolition of denominational schools. The instinct of at least a large part of the community recognises that so far its object is true and good. But it is, or is very largely supposed to be, an attempt to maintain them upon the old false hypothesis—or at least without any challenge or reversal, and therefore in apparent subordination to the old false hypothesis—that denominational definiteness is only as a sort of private fancy, to be tolerated in certain individual bigots or enthusiasts, but that the whole national policy and the whole public machinery must of course be "undenominational." The new measure is not easily compatible with the old hypothesis. No wonder that upon the old hypothesis it has largely failed to convince; and even given new heart and cohesion to the professional opponents of the government.
The present Bill may conceivably be the best practical way of attempting to do what certainly needs most urgently to be done. But as things stand, it is no wonder if it does not seem a very perfect measure to anyone. And certain it is that it is infinitely perilous. It seems to aim at saving denominational schools from abolition. But a very little alteration, such as those which were proposed on clause 7 in great numbers, would convert it outright into a measure for the ultimate, if not immediate, undenominationalizing of denominational schools, which would be their abolition as denominational. So altered, the Bill would be a measure of deadly hostility to the whole system which it seems to be designed to protect. Yet the alteration seems a plausible one, because the
