Page:The Conscience Clause in 1866.djvu/15

11 still further, and grants should be given for the establishment of schools in proportion to the number of children which Church and Dissenters may have to educate."

5021. In the case of Llanychan, Mr. Gee considers a Church school with a Conscience Clause, "a constitution which it was insulting to offer, and which it would have been degrading and humiliating in the extreme on the part of Dissenters to accept." And he repeats, (5096,) "In a case like Dyserth, where five-sixths of the population are Dissenters, to offer a Conscience Clause to a district of that kind is really insulting."

5109. "I really do not see why clergymen should not meet on equal terms with Dissenting ministers; we are not inferior to the Church in any sense connected with education, we are superior to them; we do more for the education of the people than the Church do, as may be proved by the statistics which I have laid before you; but to place us in a position of social inferiority, and to degrade us by giving the grant to the Church and putting us under a Conscience Clause, is putting us in a position which we will not and cannot accept." But Mr. Gee, while he asserts the superiority of Nonconformists to Churchmen in Wales alike in numbers, intelligence, and zeal, concurs very heartily in desiring to give fair play to each denomination. He had already suggested, as the only fair solution of the supposed difficulty, that grants should be more liberally assigned both to National and British schools, and he further suggests (5154, 5) that when the denominational minority in any parish is insufficient to support a school, parishes should be grouped. "I would group parishes; I think that is the best system. You would remove from the Church what they consider to be a fair ground of complaint, and you would remove from Dissenters what they consider to be a fair ground of complaint. 1 would allow parishes to be grouped where the number of children were very few, and would let the grants be made in proportion to the number of children to be educated alone; and it should be immaterial to the Committee of Council whether they be Church or Dissenting schools; let the same rule apply to all, then no section can complain."

Nothing can be more fair or reasonable than this suggestion,