Page:The Conscience Clause in 1866.djvu/13

9 the smaller school. Where the Church population is too scanty to support a school he would have but one school (2608, 2623) upon liberal, that is, upon comprehensive principles, or in other words, upon the principles of the British and Foreign School Society, which makes them thoroughly and truly National. The school should be managed by a committee elected by the subscribers. The parish clergyman might be a subscriber, and might be elected as one of the committee of management; but in no other light would he be recognised.

Mr. Phillips repudiates in decided language (2655, 6, 7) the proposition to establish a National school with a Conscience Clause as a substitute for a British school, because although children of Dissenters are exempt from learning them, the Creed and the formularies are taught, and the whole management is in the hands of the Church.

The Rev., Baptist minister, and agent for the British and Foreign School Society in South Wales since 1855 (4400—4402) "considers that where three-fourths or four-fifths of the population are Dissenters they are unfairly dealt with unless they are allowed to participate in the management of the schools."

Mr., a publisher at Denbigh, and a Calvinistic Methodist, is deeply interested in the question of education, and has for some years given great attention to the establishment of schools in North Wales. His evidence is given with a tone of confidence and of conscious authority. Mr. Gee seems to have been the prompter of the body of Dissenters who in the parish of Dyserth conferred with the incumbent, Mr. Watts, upon the provisions of a school to be satisfactory both to Churchmen and Dissenters, each party having previously applied for grants for a Church and British school respectively. The promoters of the British school proposed a scheme unacceptable to Mr. Watts, who offered terms comprehending a Conscience Clause, but (subject to that Conscience Clause) vesting the control of the religious instruction in the incumbent, who was to be ex officio chairman of the committee of management, itself elected annually by subscribers of five shillings and upwards. The proposition of Mr. Watts was rejected by the Nonconformists, who, however, built no school, "for they had no funds." (4674.)