Page:The conscience clause (Bickersteth, 1867).djvu/13

 and they require every child, without exception, to attend the Sunday School. If my own practice differs from this, it is not because I do not highly appreciate and respect the motives of those who adopt the stricter rule. I can quite imagine the case of parishes in which such a course may be pursued with advantage; and though, as a general rule, I might question the expediency of inserting strict conditions like these into the Trust Deed of a School, I conceive that they would be in perfect consistency with the Charter of the National Society. And in parishes sufficient in population and in wealth to support a Dissenting School as well as a Church of England School, I do not see how any well founded complaint of injustice could be made.

The real and practical difficulty arises in those parishes which are unable to support two Schools, but which contain a certain proportion of Dissenters, whose children have no alternative but the Church School. In parishes such as I describe, wherever the Clergyman exercises a liberal discretion, and receives into his School the children of Dissenters for such portions of the teaching as the parents do not object to, (and in the vast majority of cases they object to none of it,) the difficulty does not arise. But suppose the Clergyman of such a Parish to adopt the stricter rule, a grievance at once exists, for which we ought, if possible, to find a remedy. Admit that it is