If we may judge by a letter of Mr. H.
J. Roby's to Saturday's Times, the Government, though it withdrew the objectionable clauses of the Endowed Schools Bill of last Session, has not given the enlarged Charity Commission now entrusted with the recon- stitution of the new Trusts any hint to act in the liberal spirit evid- ently desired by the House of Commons. Mr. Roby shows, at least if he has made no error in his examination of the new scheme for Crewkerne School, that that scheme is more conservative on some points than even the withdrawn clauses of last year's Bill would have required. Those clauses would have allowed, for instance, instruction in the Scriptures for all scholars, in such a school as Crewkerne, and Church teaching for Church scholars only, but the Charity Commissioners' new scheme appears to require that all the religious teaching given in the school shall be " in accordance with the doctrines of the Church of England." It will be a very serious thing if the clauses of last year's Bill which the House of Commons defeated are to be practically adopted as the rules of the new Commission, and their most objectionable principles in some cases are even to be exaggerated. In that event, we suspect that the reaction against the Conservative re- action will begin very soon, and that the renewed flow of the tide will soon acquire even greater vigour than the recent ebb of Liberal feeling itself ;—and that has been quite strong enough.
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