Page:The Conscience Clause (Oakley, 1866).djvu/18

6 implied in Term of Union 2; but of that I must speak presently. My present point is that, historically, in relation to the Church, the dispute lies entirely between the Committee of Council and the National Society -, and as the dispute has arisen in respect of schools in union, or to be In union, with that body, so the controversy about them has taken the form of correspondence between the secretaries of the Committee of Council and of the National Society.

The first serious outbreak of dissatisfaction occurred in connection with what are known as the management clauses of the trust deed. The correspondence lasted from 1848 to 1850, having begun in the time of Sir J. Kay Shuttleworth, and concluded in that of Mr. Lingen. It has no material bearing on the subject of the Conscience Clause beyond bearing witness to the fact that what is known as the religious difficulty—be it with reference to management, or be it with reference to teaching—must have been and was a constant quantity in the calculations of the Committee of Council with reference to the establishment of new parochial Church of England schools; and that in the case of the management clauses a settlement was at length effected, not indeed to the entire satisfaction of the Society, and of course not without some reluctant concessions on the other side also, yet with such practical success that it is now appealed to, though resisted and rejected at the time, and by those who resisted and rejected it, as a sacred compact which must never be modified more! In this first instance the dispute turned on the qualifications and on the method of election of persons to serve on the committee of local managers. Soon, however, the long-foreseen difficulty was to crop up in the more formidable shape of a question how far the existence of Nonconformity in a parish only large enough to admit of one school should be allowed and required to affect the religious teaching given in such single school, being a Church of England school,