Page:The Conscience Clause (Oakley, 1866).djvu/75

63 but even of elementary education, exclusively on the basis of our own doctrinal formularies? At all events, can we wonder that the State, or at least a large section of the country, and an important school in Parliament, begin to grudge us, in the face of this unyielding exclusiveness, in spite of the existing state of things, some of that consideration and pre-eminence which we have so long enjoyed, and which I hope and believe that our Church will always retain? In the matter of education, at least, it is small wonder that we find the National Church severely criticised for her claims to receive State aid in the work of education, and yet to be allowed to ignore the Nonconformist element in the population, the existence of which is at least in part attributable to her own fault, and to be exempted from that condition to which other denominations submit, for the purpose of economising the public grant, and securing protection to conscientious differences of opinion, which she ought to be the first to respect and guard.

I share to the full the dislike of Nonconformist aggressiveness which is so frequently encountered. I cordially endorse Burke's famous dictum that "Dissent, not satisfied with toleration, is actuated, not by conscience, but by ambition." But I ask, does it lie in our mouths to make this reproach too freely at the present day? Have we done, are we doing, nothing to justify and even stimulate that ambition—to give ground for it to wonder whether it might not one day come to tolerate us? I submit that there is much to make us pause and reflect in the fact of two-thirds of the community (especially if that be only a polite hypothesis for a much smaller fraction) assuming to tolerate the other third as loftily as we are wont to do. At least, I cannot see that it gives us any valid right to say that, so far as we are concerned, the heads of families belonging to that third shall not control the religious education of their own children; and that we can find no better mode of dealing with it than by