The dislike of the House to wander out of the
path it had fixed for itself has been shown in every debate in Committee. On Monday, for example, Mr. Dixon made an adroit attempt to weight religious instruction, by proposing that any children who dissented from the religious teaching should be withdrawn from the school while it was going on. Their time of attendance, in fact, would be shortened, and their play-time lengthened. The effect of this would have been that the children of irreligious parents, who most need moral training, would have persuaded their fathers to withdraw them ; while the children of the respectable, who least want it, would have been forced to go through it as a task made bitter by the sight of " irreligious " play outside. The House, however, detected the object, and the amendment was negatived by 379 to 35,—a crushing majority. Mr. Walter's atterqpt to compel the formation of School Boards everywhere, so as everywhere to subject denominationalism to a formidable rivalry, was defeated by 303 to 112; while a motion by Dr. Brewer to make the conscience-clause worthless, by requiring every child to receive religious instruction unless his father forbade it in writing, was negatived without a division. On Tuesday a curiously insidious motion by Mr. Harcourt, to let the parents be represented in the management of the denominational schools, that is, in fact, to let them prohibit the special teaching such schools are founded to give, was defeated by 329 to 81. And finally, on Thursday, the fairness of the Government towards all parties was conclusively proved by the rejection, by 250 to 81, of Sir J. Pakington's pro- posal to make the daily reading of Scripture compulsory. That, as Mr. Forster showed, would have made the establishment of secular schools impossible, and have been a breach of faith towards the party which has endeavoured to make them universal.
