Lord Hugh Cecil's speech, which followed that of Sir Edward
Grey, not only rose to a very high pitch of eloquence in the peroration, but was throughout marked by a persuasive power which was most striking. Whether one agrees or not with his views, it is impossible to doubt his sincerity or his desire to promote that type of education which he believes makes for the production of the good citizen. In a passage full of earnestness he declared that the Church and Noncon- formity were natural allies, and he was not at all consoled for the opposition of men like Dr. Clifford and Mr. Hugh Price Hughes by the support of politicians like Mr. Haldane. In the controversies of the future the Nonconformists would come to see that there was a great contest ahead, and that they and the Church would have to fight shoulder to shoulder. The basis on which the education controversy ought to be settled was that every child should be brought up in the belief of its parents. That was both a matter of right and of political expediency. Lord Hugh Cecil closed his speech with a pero- ration with which we have dealt at length elsewhere. Though he may sometimes show an unjustifiable fanaticism, as we hold he did on the question of the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, Lord Hugh Cecil's political action is controlled by no mean or selfish motive.
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