Page:The Conscience Clause in 1866.djvu/31

27 The portion of the Minute of 24th September to which Mr. Lingen refers (3470) runs thus:—

"In every application for aid to the erection of a schoolhouse in England and Wales, it must be stated whether the school is in connection with the National Society or with the British and Foreign School Society; and if this said school be not in connection with either of those societies^ the Committee will not entertain the case unless some special circumstance be exhibited to induce their Lordships to treat the case as special." There the Minute of 24th September ends.

In their resolutions of 3rd December, their Lordships intimate that they will give a preference to those exceptional schools "which do not enforce any rule by which the children will be compelled to learn a Catechism or attend a place of divine worship to which their parents on religious grounds object."

Now the obvious meaning of these Minutes is, that schools applying for grants were required to be in union with the National or British and Foreign School Society, as a guarantee for their religious character. That if not so in union, they were to satisfy their Lordships as to the reason why, and receive a grant if at all accompanied with a Conscience Clause. But what has been the recent action of the Education Department? To Roman Catholic and Wesleyan schools, in union with neither society, they have made free grants; and to Church schools in union with the National Society (as required by the Minute referred to) they offer, not a grant, but a Conscience Clause.

Again, an indirect Parliamentary sanction is challenged in the Endowed Schools Act of 1860, which contains almost literally the Conscience Clause now in debate. (3581.) But what were the circumstances under which that Act was passed? It was alleged that some of the endowed schools were constituted in terms which expressed the founder^s intentions to benefit their countrymen at large, and did not specifically declare that they were to be schools for teaching the doctrines of the Church of England. Practically the date of endowments reaching back to a period when but one religion was recognised in England, ought to have settled the proposed change in the negative, but the legislature decided that in the absence of express directions