Page:The "Conscience Clause" (Denison, 1866).djvu/26

22 Now, it may seem strange that I should include a Management Clause among things just to require, when I spent some five years in struggling against the Management Clauses. But it is easily explained. I struggled then because I saw that the Management Clauses proposed to restrict, in one important particular, the liberty recognised as properly belonging to founders of Church schools in 1839-40. I felt that this was a step in the wrong direction, and, as such, it strengthened the apprehension I had entertained from the first of the ultimate issue of the administration of the Committee of Council. I struggled and I was beat. I got something, but I did not get what I most cared for. Being beat, mainly by the help of my friends, I gave up the struggle, because there was no religious principle violated by the Management Clauses. It was a question of the best method of managing a Parish School. I had a very clear opinion, as I have now, of what is the best method; but others thought differently, and the question was definitely settled in 1852, by mutual agreement, and no one wants to re-open it. This is why I include Management Clauses among things just to require. They violate no religious principle, and they are a settled thing. "Conscience Clause" does violate a religious principle, and is not by any means a settled thing; and if it was, the Church cannot take it as it takes the Management Clauses, for this single reason, which cannot be got over, that it does violate a religious principle, and does not respect churchmen's conscience, which is, I suppose, the reason why it is called "Conscience Clause."

The above three things then fill up the measure of what it is just for the civi lpower [sic] to require. On the other hand the Church has an indefeasable right, so long as there is an "Education Grant," to have her schools assisted upon compliance with these conditions. If in any parish she has not children enough of her own to build a school for, such as the Civil Power may reasonably ask to be provided for by money which comes in part from the public purse, she must wait till she has. But is there any even