Page:The Conscience Clause in 1866.djvu/22

18 require the exclusion from the school of unbaptized children. (5462, 5408.)

Sir Thomas Phillips cited on these points from the letter of the Secretary of the National Society addressed to the Colchester School Committee, in December, 1860, the following words:—"In the opinion of the Committee, the terms of union which relate to the religious instruction in schools are so framed as to allow the clergyman a fair liberty in the application of them to the several children, and also to enable the same clergyman, or successive clergymen of the same parish, to make alterations in the practice of the same school, so as best to adapt it to the varying wants or circumstances of the place, due regard being always had to an honest conformity with the purposes for which the society was incorporated."

Sir Thomas Phillips, in a school which he had himself founded in Wales twenty years ago, framed rules which were to secure a religious education for all the children (5538) "by giving the master a discretion with regard to his teaching, the Catechism is either entirely taught or taught in parts," (5488;) but Sir Thomas Phillips well explains the broad distinction between a system which, to ensure a religious education, vests a discretionary power in the master, and a system which, through the Conscience Clause, excludes religious education by vesting the discretionary power in the parent. He is asked, (5494,) Why "should the objection be greater if a Conscience Clause were in the deed, than if it were not in the deed, the liberal practice prevailing?—In the one case (and whether it is right or wrong I am not now saying, but that I apprehend is one of the strong objections felt to the Conscience Clause by the clergy at all events,) the discretion is with the clergy; they are to judge of the fitness of excusing a particular child from the teaching; they have to take all the surrounding circumstances into consideration, and they come to the conclusion that it is not expedient to force, as it were, the teaching upon that child. On the other hand, the choice is entirely with the parents, and the clergyman is required to abstain from teaching, whatever may be his own sense of duty on the subject."

The following question (5495) I would gladly omit, conveying as it does, an unmerited and ungenerous insult to the clergy, but for the excellent reply.