Page:The "Conscience Clause" (Denison, 1866).djvu/38

34 The imposition then of the "Conscience Clause" is unjust in itself, and was considered to be unjust by the Committee of Council itself up to 1856. It is also inequitable relatively to the case of other Churches. Mr. Lingen writes to me and says that all other Protestant bodies in this kingdom have got a "Conscience Clause." Possibly he does not consider the Church in Scotland a Protestant body. However, it has no "Conscience Clause," and it is, with the Church of Rome, the only analogous case to the Church of England. Mr. Lingen does not appear to know the difference between a Church and a sect.

Next, I have to show that for founders of a Parish School to accept a "Conscience Clause" is not just as respects future managers of the school.

Now a man may be able to see his way for himself to applying a "Conscience Clause" to a Parish School, and for his own incumbency—though I confess I don't understand the eyesight that sees the way, being the eyesight of a priest of the Church of England—but by what right such a man is to take upon himself to see for all that long succession of priests who are to come after him in the parish, and to leave to them, as his bequest, a Parish School upon the "secular principle," stereotyped as such for ever by a Trust Deed, it is plainly impossible to understand upon any principle known to the Church Catholic. I suppose it is among the principles (so called) of "the Broad Church," the excess of "liberality," meeting and answering to the excess of individual despotism. Now a man's individual action and influence on a parish may be got rid of as a fact, and even as an example and precedent, after a time. But how are you to get rid of a Trust Deed? A successor comes, abhorring, because the Church abhors, the very idea of "secular education," and he finds the Parish School committed to it for ever. I say it is not just. I say more. I say such conduct, setting up a man's private judgment against the judgment of the Church of which he is a priest, is a sin against the Church at large, against the