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

14 Catechism. And this my lords believe to be the true legal interpretation of those terms. Hence the Dissenters in a one-school place, though that one school be supported by public money, may be unable to make use of it for his children.'

'This the commissioners pronounce, and it has been admitted on your behalf, to be an injustice.'

'You propose to meet it in future, as you say it is met at present, by an unqualified discretion to the clergyman.'

'This will not do. In the first place, Sir John Coleridge's limitation of that discretion makes it nearly worthless, quite so for legal purposes. In the next place, no "injustice," if such there be, should be left to individual discretion for redress.'

'We submit the following clause to your committee for consideration, since you have not devised one yourselves.'

'Henceforward my lords propose to make this clause part of every trust deed &hellip; where there is room for no second school. Your schools are the only ones of Protestant character in which something of the kind is not already part of the trust.'

'My lords would learn with much pleasure that your committee was disposed to consider the means of adapting its terms of union to such a measure.'

Then follows the famous clause, "being founded on Act "23 Vict., cap. 11" (the Endowed Schools Act):—

"The (persons authorised to manage the school) shall be bound to make such orders as shall provide for admitting to the benefits of the school the children of parents not in communion with the (Church or denomination with which the school is connected); but such orders shall be confined to the exemption of such children, if their parents desire it, from attendance at the public worship, and from instruction in the doctrine or formularies of the said (Church or denomination), and shall not otherwise interfere with the religious teaching of the