Page:The Conscience Clause (Oakley, 1866).djvu/46

34 large portion of it being actually collected upon cards by the local Dissenting Ministers themselves! Nor has their interest ceased with the first opening of the schools. £100 was raised for the expenses of maintenance of the first year from a population such as in other parts of London we should think unable to produce £10, and, I am told, without any difficulty whatever. In a word, the support of the most impracticable type of population has been thoroughly enlisted on behalf of these schools.

Nor is the smooth working of the schools confined to the pecuniary aspect or it, The Conscience Clause has wrought no such confusion as has been anticipated from it. The curate who has charge of the school retains the conduct and control of the religious lessons. And prizes for the knowledge of the Catechism are given in each standard at the year's end. The method of giving effect to the clause appears to be that the exempted children are set to write out some exercise of a religious character upon their slates while the Catechism class goes on. The parents of eight boys and four girls, or four per cent, of the total number of scholars (300), have claimed the exemption which the clause allows—that is to say, they have said, on bringing the children, or have told the children to say, that they wished them not to learn the Catechism, and even this stipulation was not elicited in the case of all of them till the clergyman, feeling bound to act up to his own promises, instituted an inquiry throughout the school. The demand was scarcely in any case wholly spontaneous. To the objection to this, that if it be so little used it is hardly worth while to make the concession, the reply is that which I have given—see the confidence and harmony which it conciliates! And on the part of the Church authorities, I may add that the gain to them is thus described by Mr. Fowle, who has had experience of a mixed country-town parish with schools on the old footing:—The clergyman is