Mr. Gladstone has written a letter to a correspondent on
the London School Board controversy, which has thrown, some of his former supporters into what the Yankees call "sky-blue fits " of dismay. This letter, though it indicates it preference for a very opposite solution from Lord Salisbury's,. will yet, we think, oddly enough go into the same scale. He leans towards confining all State education to purely secular studies, and leaving religious education to the various denominations ; indeed, he treats the individual conscience and the special Church to which it pays its allegiance, as the only authorities which have any warrant to interfere in so sacred a matter as the religious education of children. It is clear that if Mr. GIadstone's opinion can command much influence on a question of this kind, it will go in favour of secularising entirely the Board-schools, and so throwing a good deal of additional influence into the hands of the- managers of voluntary schools. But as that is precisely what the Secularists on the London School Board least desire,. his advice will, we suspect, be very unwelcome to them, even though it might seem to point to the particular vote in relation to the recent religious circular for which they most wish. In point of fact, those who share Mr. Gladstone's. preference for unmuzzled theological teaching are more likely to support the circular than to condemn it, in the absence of any immediate chance of completely secularising the schools.
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