It is perfectly clear that the chief opponents of the
Government Bill are very much at sea as to their own aim. Here, for instance, is a circular on the subject from the " Central Nonconformist Committee - Rooms " at Birmingham, signed by two distinguished Dissenting ministers, Mr. Dale and Mr. Crosskey, which says, " The sacredness of individual conscience is violated when the members of a majority endeavour to force a minority to pay for the teaching of their doctrines." Well, that is absolutely fatal to anything but strictly secular education, and not only, of course, to the present Parliamentary grant for denominational schools, but quite as much so to either grants-in- aid or rates for so-called undenominational schools. However undenominational the teaching in such schools is, we suppose it can hardly help being Protestant, Christian, and Theistic, —in which case the "sacredness of individual conscience" is violated, for the Roman Catholic, the Deist, and the Atheist. If the gentle- men who sign this circular mean what they say, they want a complete revolution in the present system, and not merely a modi- fication of the proposed Bill. Nothing is gained by using these high-flown abstract phrases, when the very persons who use them have acquiesced for years, and probably intend to acquiesce for the space of their natural lives, in a system wholly at variance with their drift.
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