THE CRY OF THE DISSENTERS.
1VIR. WINTERBOTHAM'S harsh but remarkably able speech on Tuesday night,—which, by the way, is extremely ill reported, neither the Standard, which now often beats the Times, nor the Times itself doing it anything like justice,—on the social grievances of the Dissenters, was some- what severely criticized in the debate which followed. But we cannot pretend to regret that—even, it may be, at the cost, of some little dignity to the body for which he spoke—he roundly blurted forth the true state of the case as to the feeling of the Dissenters towards the Government Education Bill. Nothing could be more instructive to the country than Mr. Winterbotham's speech ; and nothing can be more justly retributive on our Church for its former, and by no means effectually repented and discontinued, sins of presumption and superciliousness towards Dissent, than the state of feeling now revealed, which appears likely to interfere so seriously with the success and operation of one of the greatest measures of modern times. At the same time, we can hardly believe that the speech will do harm by irritating further the social soreness it expressed. We anticipate that the open avowal of this legitimate social jealousy will do more to allay than to exas- perate it. For, only consider the practical outcome of Mr.
Winterbotham's candid and masterly speech on the Dissenters' grievance. He began by admitting that he had desired delay in the education of the people rather than immediate legis- lation, because he thought after a year or more agitation, the country would have been ripe for secular education. He then went on to admit that a Conscience-clause may easily be .constructed, so as to be a safe and absolute shield against pro- selytism. It was not proselytism in reality that the Dissenters feared. It was any accession to the social importance or prestige of the Church.—nay, not even that, for we did not understand Mr. Winterbotham at all as asserting that the Government measure would really make the state of things worse than it now is for Dissenters, and relatively raise the power of the Church, but only that it would not diminish the social power of the Church, and relatively increase that of the Dissenters, which Mr. Winterbotham evidently believes that a general secular school system would do. His view appeared to be that Bishops would never again dare to be guilty of social impertinences to Dissent,—such as he declared, we suspect somewhat inaccurately in the letter, if not in the spirit, the present Bishop of Winchester (Dr. Wilberforce) to have been guilty of,—if once Secular Schools had become general, and the National Church reduced to a mere religious denomination, on an equality with all other religious denomi- nations, outside the school-room. Once give the various reli- gious bodies a chance to contend for the appointment of the general master, and the Church will continue to assert its existing social ascendancy. Deny that right, and even if it is in fact exerted, there will be no ostensible sign of it. The religious creed of the teacher chosen will no longer be in evidence ; if he happens to be a Churchman, as he will, perhaps, most often be, it will be no triumph to the Church, the Dissenter will no longer feel that he has been beaten ; there will be no room for struggle ostensibly founded on religious distinctions in which he could be engaged. The conscience-clause might provide against proselytism ; but this alone will reduce Church opinions to their right level of political insignificance, and banish them, as it were, to private life. Mr. Winterbotham did not say, but we think his speech more or less implied, that it is the very localism of the expected struggles as to School Boards which renders the thought of such struggles bitter to Dissenters. They do not so much mind being in a minority in Parliament, for the mere fact that Parliament gives a certain amount of distinc- tion and a very real equality to all its members, reconciles Dissenting Members of Parliament to their position. But in the various rural or municipal localities, the social position of a Dissenter is one of uncompensated disadvantage, and local Dissenters, therefore, resent being called on to ticket themselves as Dissenters for any public purpose, though Parliamentary Dissenters feel that they gain a certain amount of specific function and importance by their avowed Nonconformity. Mr. Winterbotham's Dissenting candour did not stop here. He avowed what we are com- pelled to call the flagrant bigotry of which unfortunately Evangelical Churchmen no less than Evangelical Dissenters are alike self-condemned, in relation to the right of the Irish people to choose the kind of education which they most desire and appreciate. We can hardly recall any poli- tical bigotry and inconsistency more unblushing,—we might almost say more barefaced,—than this of crying out for a form of education founded on "the active and intelli- gent co-operation of the people," as Mr. Winterbotham says, in England, and flatly refusing the same to Ireland at all cost. Nay, it is worse than this. Mr.* Winterbotham positively appeals to the English people to give their "active and intelligent co-operation" to a particular system, assigning as one important reason why they should do so, that it will furnish them with a plausible excuse for foisting the very same system on the Irish people in spite of its most active opposition and animosity. No doubt Mr. Winterbotham would call it unintelligent animosity, but that would be a party- epithet applied to the religion of Roman Catholics, and cer- tainly not to the natural understandings of Irishmen, who are, say, fifty per cent. more intelligent than Englishmen of the same amount of culture. How is it possible Ireland can be content with English rule, when we have one of the greatest of English parties not ashamed to point it out as a terrible danger in adopting a particular system of education in Pro- testant England, that if we do adopt it, it will logically lead to granting to Ireland what the Irish people profess warmly to desire,—a Roman Catholic system of education of the same type? And this from one of the eminent men of the party who disestablished the Irish Church on the ground of justice to Ireland! Truly, political liberalisms and religious bigotries are fearfully and wonderfully intermixed in those great reli- gious communities of which Mr. Winterbotham has made himself the distinguished spokesman!
But this last bit of religions candour of Mr. Winterbotham's has led us from our real subject. We are heartily satisfied with the general result of his speech. It was only right and just that the social arrogance and exclusiveness with which our national Church and its members have been so frequently chargeable, should now recoil upon us, and make the satis- factory settlement of one of the greatest questions of the day difficult to the point of extreme hazard. For the Church it is impossible to say anything, except that it has been guilty of the social exclusiveness which is now causing so much soreness of feeling, although day by day that absurd caste feeling is dying away, and may, before very long, as we may well hope, be altogether extinct. But as to the political question itself, we may surely turn Mr. Winterbotham's frank confessions to good purpose. Are the Dissenters really capable of so little magnanimity as to take their stand on this con- fessed feeling of social jealousy, and admit that, though nothing else stands in the way of a satisfactory settlement, they will not even make an effort to overcome it ? If they are, we greatly mistake their real dignity and self-respect, and their real value for the education they are endangering. No doubt they say and think, "we would endanger no good education bill ; we ask for practically secular education in all rate-paid schools ; or if you give power to read the Bible at all, give it under conditions which shall make the use of it hardly a religious lesson, and we will support you heartily." No doubt they will. But what is that but asserting, as Sir Roundell Palmer put it, that if they have it all their own way,—if no scruples are respected except their own,—then they will take credit for magnanimity and educational zeal ? Are they going to have no respect at all for such scruples as ours, for instance ? We write not in the least as sectarian Churchmen.
We should be heartily glad if all catechisms and formulas of faith were entirelyexcluded from the ordinary religious teaching of all rate-paid schools, and the hours of such teaching were compul- sorily published in all denominational schools acting under a conscience-clause. We do not believe that such a concession as this would be in the least objected to by the Government.
But we confess to objecting very strongly,—very conscien- tiously,—on grounds as strictly grounds of conscience as any Dissenter can allege,—to refusing the master of any school full liberty to speak freely of his own religious convictions as the ground of his moral teaching. Why do we object to this so strongly ? Why,—Mr. Winterbotham may ask,—can we not be content to let such instruction be given out of the ordinary school hours, or even in the Sunday-school t For the simplest of all reasons,—that the children who stand in the most need of the full moral influence of a religious mind are children who will never in all probability attend either the Sunday-school or the extraneous religious teaching given out of school hours, and who will receive it either in the ordinary course of the school teaching or not at all. For the children with good and careful parents it would be a matter of comparatively small moment whether the school teaching were secular only, or also religious,—for their home teaching would supplement the secular teaching of the school. This is the reason why in the case of the ordinary middle-class day schools we feel comparatively so much more indifferent to the specific religious instruction of the schools,--though even in their case we (Co not bra moment doubt that any master worth having would be worth twice as much with his deepest self quite untrammelled, than when strictly confined by order to purely secu- lar subjects. But for the children of the dangerous classes,—for the children of the aimless, and hopeless, and creedless classes, who are allowed to "scramble up" as they can except for their regular school training, the moral right of the master to be absolutely himself in his school seems to us, we confess, a matter of first-rate moment,—and we do say that it will be a matter of honest scruple to hundreds of thousands of ratepayers to be compelled by Act of Parliament to exclude from the ordinary teaching of ordinary rate-paid schools the sort of lesson best calculated to save the numberless children to whom we have referred from the moral misery and ruin other- wise threatening them. Now, we do most earnestly and most confidently appeal to the magnanimity of the Nonconformists not to let these, no doubt, just,—but still hardly dignified and hardly magnanimous,—social fears, jealousies, and resentments which Mr. Winterbotham has so powerfully delineated, blind them to the honest and profound moral scruples of hundreds of thousands of ratepayers on the point we have just explained. If we understand aright Mr. Miall's hints in the House, and the principles laid down by Mr. R. W. Dale in his able speech at Birmingham, the Nonconformists are prepared to respect these scruples,—nay, we think we may say,—even share them. They are not going to drive their jealousy of Church ascendancy to the point of inter- dicting genuine and free religious teaching from the natural teachers of the children, the lay masters. Let them in- sist on a time-table, let them veto formal catechisms and formularies within ordinary school hours, if they please. We doubt if one of the hearty supporters of Mr. Forster's Bill will raise his voice against such concessions. But let us not forget the end of all education, in our social jealousies. If we do not, we think we can safely prophesy that instead seeing the bitter old Church-rate animosities renewed, we shall see more and more of the love of true religious equality spreading all over the land, and Churchmen and Dissenters fighting together in almost every town and every rural parish of the kingdom in favour of a generous and just comprehen- siveness in the distribution of the educational rates, and against the attempt to secure a monopoly of religious influence for any church or sect whatever, from Roman Catholics on the one side, to Secularists on the other.
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