Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/200

 The political soundness of Birmingham Mr. Dale traces back to the old Dr. Priestley leaven, which is still at work in the community. The good which that great man did has not been interred with his bones. The Tor}' mob of his day stoned him; but the present generation has built him a worthy sepulchre. The solidarity of the Birmingham Liberal vote is less easy to account for. Mr. Dale thinks the large number of small employers of labor, who are only a few degrees removed from the condition of their employés, has much to do with it; and he is probably right. There is more of what the French call égalité in Birmingham than in any other town in England. No doubt there are snobs there as elsewhere; but I have not had the misfortune to meet them. Rich men like Mr. Chamberlain are devoted to Radical principles, and that sets the fashion. Given, moreover, culture and religion on the same side, and the worst Conservative foe that remains to be overcome is ignorance.

This last-named obstacle to the triumph of Radicalism Mr. Dale has set himself vigorously to combat. He was one of the most strenuous champions of the famous National Education League, which had for its object the complete separation of religious from secular instruction in board schools. To seek to disestablish religion in the church, and to hasten to establish it in the school, did not seem to some Nonconformists too glaring an inconsistency. The minister of Carr's Lane thought otherwise, and was returned at the first school-board election in the purely "secular" interest, along with Chamberlain, Dawson, Wright, Dixon, and Vince. They were in a minority on account of the inexperience of the party managers in working the cumulative vote.