by John Gellibrand Hubbard and George Trevor

“ Are you aware that all the doctrines and formularies of the Church of England are equally excluded by the Conscience Clause?"—He replies, "I am aware that they are excluded; but, although they are excluded, so long as the religious teaching is in the hands of a clergyman, and subject to his control, he has the power of introducing doctrines, or of introducing questions which will lead to answers, and those questions may be questions of which Dissenting parents may disapprove." ”

“ There is one form of religion which reads the Holy Scriptures in strict subjection to the teaching of the Church, and recognises no Church but that which owns the supremacy of the See of Rome. The members of this faith believe that no religious instruction can be imparted, and they refuse to attempt any, except in connection with their own doctrine, worship, and sacraments. That is one form of religion in England, and the Committee of Council respect it. They say, "Yours is a religion which we must acknowledge in its integrity, though it is not our own. ”

“ If a vessel is empty you cannot differ as to the colour of its contents. If no religion is taught religious difficulties cannot arise. What is far more to the purpose than these queries with their inevitable context is the abundant testimony, that whether there be a Conscience Clause or not Dissenters, when they have the power, very rarely object to Church teaching, whether through the Catechism or any other medium. "Practically"—says Mr. Griffith, speaking of a Church school in Wales, unconnected with the National Society—"practically an objection (to the Catechism) is never made." ”

“ The fact is, that in Wales we do not speak so much of a Church school or a Dissenting school. When we talk of a British school, we simply talk of a school, we have no religious element at all introduced, further than the reading of the Scriptures, we make no religious matter of it. ”

“ The Conscience Clause, according to Mr. Bruce's own definition, is a bond to give a secular education in a Church school. The school managers to whom it is proposed either scruple to bind themselves wholly to exclude religion from the instruction of certain children or they do not. If they scruple they decline the clause and lose their grant—if they do not scruple, they accept the grant; but then it follows as a matter of certainty that between such school managers and their scholars no practical difficulty can occur. ”

“ In the first proposition I concur, Building Grants and Annual Grants should be made on the same principle—to the second I reply that it is an empty threat; no government and no parliament would desire to paralyze the educational movement which, initiated by the National Society and by the British and Foreign School Society, and until 1860 fairly assisted by the Government Grants, has made such rapid and satisfactory progress. ”

“ The positions menaced may appear unimportant, but we must be watchful and defend every outwork. For I will not conceal it from you, as I do not conceal it from myself, that a government which should propound a scheme of secular national instruction would meet with a very hearty support from a small but active party which has recently exhibited several notable champions of its principles, and would rejoice to extirpate religious teaching from all the educational institutions of the land. ”

“ Union with the National Society is here distinctly recognized as the only barrier to the gradual establishment of a system of education from which every particle of religious instruction might be eliminated ”

“ It is much to be regretted that in this argument for the Conscience Clause, shallow as it is, the Education Department should find allies among the clergy themselves. Some of the clergy may have assented to the Conscience Clause without seeing its true meaning and results, and they deserve our pity; others may have thought it right to give a secular education to Dissenters' children who might otherwise obtain none; and even those who differ from their judgment, may appreciate their motives ”

“ But the education spontaneously given in Church schools to Dissenters, and the education which the Conscience Clause would secure to them, are essentially different. The Conscience Clause could secure to the Dissenter nothing but a purely secular education. The education given to Dissenters in Church schools unfettered by the Conscience Clause is, (judging from the evidence before us,) a religious education peculiar only in this, that the Church Catechism, in some few instances, is dispensed with, but generally is so taught as to adapt it to the capacity and position of the child. ”

“ To aid the clergy in this work among the children of the poor is the main object of a National school; and to hinder them by giving security to dissent is the main and sole object of the Conscience Clause. ”

“ In point of principle such a distinction is not possible, and is not intended, to be maintained; it is only the thin end of the wedge. If the principle be a sound one, it will and ought to prevail in all grants, annual as well as building. This was openly declared by Lord Granville before the Committee of the House of Commons, and I entirely agree with his lordship in that proposition. If the principle be, as I contend, bad and vicious, then it ought not to be suffered in any one school. No Churchman has a right to be indifferent because the evil has not yet reached himself. ”

“ Next comes the third view of religion; a view which insists upon the inspiration and authority of the Holy Scriptures, vindicates the right of private judgment, and maintains the necessity of absolute submission to the teachings of the Holy Ghost; but which at the same time combines with that belief a fixed conviction that God has established in the world a visible Church, that He has provided an Apostolic succession for its direction, and set apart a particular order of men, in whose hands He has placed the ministrations of the Holy Sacraments, and other means of grace. ”

“ The Dissenters do not consider the Conscience Clause enough for Wales; it entirely excludes all Dissenters from being managers of the schools: they are fond of managing their own affairs, and would like to have a voice in the management of the schools. ”

“ Parliament has never sanctioned any other principle in this country than the denominational one for which we contend. The Conscience Clause is an off-shoot of the Comprehensive scheme which was unanimously rejected when proposed by Lord John Russell in 1839. It is an innovation on the system of public education as administered in this country from that time till about six years ago. ”

“ Lingen admits (3446) that a clergyman is, by the Conscience Clause, placed under no obligation to teach a mutilated religion. He affirms (3450) that he would have felt entire confidence if a clergyman in saying to the Dissenting parent, "Your child may come to the secular lessons of my school, but under the conditions which you impose I can have nothing to do with his religious instruction." ”

“ There is a Church school. The Dissenters are wealthy, and have abundant means, if they thought it right or convenient, or if they desired, to provide a British school, but they do not do it, and the children, so far as they obtain education, are educated at those Church schools."
Sir Thomas Phillips, in answer (5497, 8) desires "most strongly to bring before the Committee his belief that no practical grievance is felt by Dissenting parents with the conduct of Church schools. Those who proclaim the grievance say that a Conscience Clause would be no remedy for that grievance. ”

“ Then the general effect is, that where there are a great number of Dissenters, the principle of the Conscience Clause is acted upon by the clergy, but that where they are few and weak, it is not so generally acted upon?—I cannot tell you that it is where they are few and weak that it is not acted upon. ”

“ That a Church school with a Conscience Clause is not adapted to Wales. A large number of the Welsh people would not send their children to such a school, they would rather not send them to school at all. ”

“ If a Church school were offered with a Conscience Clause, a mixed committee of Churchmen and Dissenters, and the clergyman as chairman, the Dissenters, if in a majority, would refuse it. (5748.) "They would feel it to be degrading to themselves to be subject to the Conscience Clause." ”

“ It is proposed that we approach the Prime Minister with a statement of the damage inflicted on popular education by the maladministration of the Building Grants, and with a complaint of the officials of the Education Department, who have pleaded as Advocates in a cause in which they had no clients, and have carried on a vexatious process against religious instruction in the name of plaintiffs who repudiate and disown them. ”

“ 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 contrary to what the Act prescribes, these schools should be open to Dissenters who, without constraint in any religious matter, would be admitted to the benefits of the school. ”

“ W. H. Bellairs, a school inspector, is in favour of the general adoption of a Conscience Clause. (2187.) But what that clause should be, does not appear.
Mr. Lingen (3502) "thinks it would be a great pity to abandon the building grants. He thinks the building grant is exceedingly valuable. (3505.) He looks upon the Conscience Clause chiefly as a means of extending the building grants, (3510,) which are even more important for the purpose of keeping school promoters in the right path in the matter of building than for the aid they render them." ”

“ The same parent who objected to the doctrine conveyed in the Scripture lesson might object to morning prayers, or to grace before meat, or to prayers in the evening, or even to the method of enforcing the discipline of the school. The religious element penetrates a school at all points, and you cannot tear it out without lacerating your school altogether ”

“ The aggression which we are now considering is but one of many directed against the religious liberties of the country, and in repelling the attack at this one point we are fighting the battle not alone of Churchmen but of Roman Catholics, of Wesleyans, of all, whatever their denomination, who hold a faith and who possess in their religious system the life which faith alone can give. ”

“ The character of the religious teaching in the British schools is very defective. The results of the Monmouthshire prize scheme for 1861—5 shows that 40 per cent, of the children in Church schools obtained prizes against 12 per cent, of the children in British schools, and that each prize in a Church school was worth 15 marks, and each prize in a British school 11: the result indicating, as the value of the religious teaching, 100 in Church schools relatively to 22 in British schools. ”

“ I am convinced they are more calculated to kill than to cure; if you want that sort of thing, go where it is practised, but do not be so unreasonable as to expect me to pursue a treatment opposed to all my study and convictions, and which in my view is destructive of the life which I am bound to save. ”

“ Gee, while he asserts the superiority of Nonconformists to Churchmen in Wales alike in numbers, intelligence, and zeal, concurs very heartily in desiring to give fair play to each denomination. He had already suggested, as the only fair solution of the supposed difficulty, that grants should be more liberally assigned both to National and British schools, and he further suggests (5154, 5) that when the denominational minority in any parish is insufficient to support a school, parishes should be grouped. ”

“ The Catechism lesson contains no doctrine that may not be taught through another medium, and the clergyman who surrenders the Catechism at the parents' bidding, either practises a deception on the parent, or surrenders a portion of his own ministerial charge. ”

“ No man can go into these schools and say, "I want the benefit of your teaching for my child, but I do not want him to be taught that, by reading the Holy Scriptures, and by praying to God, without any other help or direction, he can find his way to heaven." ”

“ Lord Derby is the chief of a Conservative Ministry, and in what is a Conservative Government distinguishable from any other unless in this, that it takes care that in the general assertion of religious rights, the rights of Churchmen be not alone ignored. ”

“ Depend upon it, if we yield the Creeds and Formularies of the Church to the plausible theories of a shallow age, though the fabric should seem fair and imposing for awhile, the time will come, and that perhaps very shortly, when the rain shall descend and the floods come, and the winds blow, and beat upon that house, and great will be the fall of it. ”

“ It is the chief impediment to the growth and spread of the system at this hour. The dissenters have no love for it, and the Church can never return to effectual co-operation with the State till it has been swept out of our way for ever. ”

“ In moving this proposition, my honourable friend has treated the question as a statesman and member of Parliament. It will be my business to approach it from the parish clergyman's point of view. I shall throw aside the details of Parliamentary reports and evidence, and endeavour to grapple with the very heart of the evil which alarms us. ”

“ The offending school managers are untouched by a proceeding which can only discourage projected schools, and which to revenge the exclusion of thirty children in four years, has in the four years ending with 1865, decreased its building grants, as compared with 1861, by £270,000, equal to the average contribution of the State to a school provision for more than 200,000 children. ”