Page:The conscience clause (Bickersteth, 1867).djvu/15

 then should it meet with such strenuous oppositions? Why, it is said, do you object to have that condition set forth and fixed in your Trust Deeds which is for the most part your own voluntary rule of action?

The objections may not be obvious; but they are abundantly sufficient when fairly stated. There is the widest possible difference between the discretionary power vested in the Clergyman in this matter, and the tyranny to which the rigid rule of the "Conscience Clause," so applied, might subject him. Every one must see the difference between the Clergyman admitting the Dissenter's child into his School on sufferance, and the Dissenter demanding admission for his child as a matter of right. The School would no longer be the Parochial School presided over by the Clergyman. If a Dissenter demands that the whole of the religious teaching be withheld from his child, another may do likewise, and another; and thus, so far as the relaxation reaches, a simply secular education would take the place of the religious. There would, in fact, be nothing to prevent the School losing altogether its religious character, and becoming a mere secular seminary. I know it will be urged that in the great majority of cases the "Conscience Clause" would remain inoperative. But still there it lurks in the Trust Deed, and has only to be brought into action generally, in order