Page:The Conscience Clause in 1866.djvu/37

33 creates a title to a merely secular education, in the teeth of the repeated and unequivocal declarations of Parliament that national aid should be extended only to such education as comprehends instruction in religion. That much ambiguity however still remains is shown by the extraordinary scene lately witnessed in the House of Lords. Certainly that question cannot be clear either to Parliament or the country, upon which the Archbishop of Canterbury, after interrogating the Lords President of the Council, expressed a modified approval which further correspondence and explanations induced his Grace publicly to retract.

The difficulty we have to contend with is this—that when we object to the wording of the Clause, we are told the words are not imperative, and if we will only accept the principle the terms may be settled to our satisfaction afterwards. But when we ask what the principle is, we are assured that it is the same which the bulk of the clergy (including myself) have already adopted in admitting the children of Dissenters to our schools without a Conscience Clause. How is it then that we who arc favourable to such admissions are found cordially agreed with my friend Archdeacon Denison, who objects to them, in resisting this Conscience Clause? Either we do not know what our principles are, or this clause is an insidious attempt to entrap us into something very different from our principles.

Mr. Lingen tells us that the Clause is intended in the first place "to guard the religious instruction of Church of England schools in its entirety from all interference." Very kind of Mr. Lingen certainly! And the Church ought to be very much obliged to him for his protection; the more so because the Church neither solicited, nor believes in his competency to bestow it. The Church had already provided for her religious instruction in the terms of union with the National Society, and the Crown had afforded her the protection she desired in the Charter granted to that Society. But it is exactly these terms and this Charter which Mr. Lingen seeks to abrogate in order to make way for his Conscience Clause. Is it not manifest that this clause is at all events a very suspicious boon to the Church? Secondly; Mr. Lingen explains that his clause is intended to "provide for the instruction of the children of Dissenting parents" in the schools of the Church. Here we have