To the main features of Mr. Forster's great speech at
Liverpool on Tuesday, on the education policy of the last three years, we have referred at some length elsewhere. It is worth adding, how- ever, something of his personal vindication of himself. Mr. Forster declared that he had been charged on the one side with propping up the Church of England, and on the other with striking it a heavy blow by this Education Act. Neither purpose, he said, had he ever entertained for a moment. His sole object had been to get the children to school. He had not aimed at helping the Church,—he did not see that if his direct wish had been to destroy it, the Act would necessarily have been changed. It was probably the first Act ever passed with regard to education in which the State Church is not even mentioned, in which it is utterly ignored. There had, undoubtedly, been plenty of " controversial religious conversation," but nothing of the discord there would have been had there been any attempt to forte the secular system
on the country. He ended a lucid, temperate, frank, very dignified speech, with the manly avowal that " if ever the time should come when fathers and mothers wish that State education should be conducted on purely secular principles, they must find some other individual than myself to do their bidding." And if ever that time does come, we should expect from a secularist Minister far less impartiality towards all religions than has dis- tinguished Mr. Forster.
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