Page:The Conscience Clause (Oakley, 1866).djvu/29

17 Meantime you have not answered my question: "Be kind enough to say distinctly whether or not your committee means to refuse aid to any school that has adopted this clause?"

Whereupon the secretary to the society merely regrets that my lords should not have comprehended that incompatibility with the society's charter and terms is ipso facto a disqualification for aid. He closes the correspondence by again referring to the exemption of the society from the operations of the Act (Vic. 23, cap. II), and repeats the request that the society may be let alone, and the former practice of the Committee of Council maintained.

The Secretary of the Council adds his last words with great force on May 7, 1864. Indeed, letter No. lo of this correspondence puts the gist of the case, so far as regards the right of enforcing on the part of the State, and the duty of accepting on the part of the Church, some such stipulation so distinctly, that I must be excused for quoting the whole of it:—

"No. 10.

,

I am directed by my Lords of the Committee of Council on Education to request you to inform the Committee of the National Society that their Lordships cannot allow this correspondence to be closed without adding such observations upon the last paragraph in your letter of the 21st ultimo as may prevent it from being misunderstood by those who have not followed the whole of the discussion.

In that paragraph you express the hope entertained by the Committee of the National Society that the Committee of Council will cease to press the Conscience Clause, suggested in their Lordships' letter of the 27th November last, on Church Schools desirous of being placed in union with the Society.

My Lords have never pressed such a clause generally on