Page:The Conscience Clause in 1866.djvu/7



numerous meeting was held in the Chapter-House of York Minster on Friday the 18th of October, 18GG. The spacious hall was filled to overflowing, and large numbers were unable to find seats.

The Hon. and Very Rev. the Dean of York presided, and having congratulated the meeting on the large and influential assemblage gathered to consider so important a subject as the progress of popular elementary education, he called on Mr. Hubbard, Member of Parliament for Buckingham, to move a resolution.

said: Mr. Dean, No subject has been considered at this congress, fraught with more important consequences than that to which you have now invited the attention of this crowded audience. The following is the motion which I shall venture to submit to them:—

"That a deputation be appointed to wait on the Prime Minister and represent to him the serious injury to popular education which had resulted from the practice of the Education Department of the Privy Council in making the Conscience Clause a condition of Building Grants."

I can assure this meeting that my opinion expressed in this resolution has not been hastily formed, but is the result of long and careful study of all available evidence, and especially of the Reports of the Select Committee on Education, the last of which has been recently printed, and I purpose to present to their notice such portions of that evidence impartially collected as may justify their affirming the resolution which I propose,