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20 which provides for it. Mr. Hubbard in his recent pamphlet, beating to arms against the clause, endorses the opinion which was universal among the committee and the witnesses in the late Parliamentary inquiry, that it is "an undeniable proposition, that a parent ought to have a supreme authority over the teaching of his children." It need not, indeed, be defended until some show of reason on the other side is made. And it is not too much to say that a view which negatively makes to any extent against such parental authority may be carried positively to the length of justifying the Mortara case and forcible baptism.

The point is that the National Society will not, as it did in the case of the Management Clauses, negotiate, and originate, and finally secure with more or less completeness an alternative more acceptable to itself. It prefers to occupy the odd position of declining to do what itself approves, for no better reason that appears than because the State asks it to promise to do so. The consequences professed to be foreseen from this promise I will presently, if time be permitted to me, show to be exaggerated where they are not wholly visionary. As for the pretended argument that what is just as a concession, may become wicked, and is certainly superfluous, as a law—if, that is, the paternal charity of the priest be exchanged for the express stipulation of the Privy Council—it is just the old argument between rulers and people of which political history is so full. It calls up the familiar vision of hollow promises and confidence betrayed, to meet which Constitutions, Concordats, and Conscience Clauses have been devised. Nor can the society now consistently venture to use it in terms, for in a memorandum although on another subject) presented to the Lord President on April 11th, 1848, they speak of "the largest amount of liberty compatible with the safeguard rendered necessary by the application of public money." And again, "they fully agree in the principle that while the "State is giving assistance, it has a