Page:The "Conscience Clause" (Denison, 1866).djvu/15

11 a "Conscience Clause" at that time would have been fatal to the Management Clauses, as, no doubt, it would. Wherefore those who pull the strings of Committee of Council bided their time and waited till they saw their way. And now that the idea so long cherished has not only been hinted at, but has been enforced in the first instance upon poor little schools, which may be thought an easier prey, as a condition of a building grant, that is, forced upon the Church of England under a penalty—now that founders and promoters of parish schools are told by Committee of Council "It is quite true that what we propose now is contrary to all the recorded principles of a great national compact: it is again quite true that Churchmen pay by far the larger proportion of the taxes out of which the education grant is made, but we cannot stop to consider these things. What we have to say to you is: if you like to take the new terms which we impose upon our own authority, you can have a grant; but if your conscience won't let you take them, then you must go without a grant,"—such founders and promoters, having it in charge from the Church to maintain above all things the religious teachings of their schools, have no choice but to obey their conscience rather than the Committee of Council, and to reject a "Conscience Clause," which is no "Conscience Clause," but an "Anti-Conscience Clause," for them, and to suffer the penalty of having a conscience. For their business, because their duty, is not to make their schools "comprehensive" in the sense of the Committee of Council, but to bring up children in the principles of the Church, to do their duty in that station of life to which it has pleased God to call them. Now a "Conscience Clause" prevents this in every case for few or more, as the case may be, of the children coming to the school. It intrudes into the parish school children who are there neither to be taught, nor to be prepared to be taught, the Faith of the Church. It violates the denominational principle in its tenderest and most vital point. It converts Church schools into State schools. It degrades the Parish School into a secular academy.