[To THE EDITOR ON THE " SPECTATOR."]
Sra,—As a former member of a School Board, and a present manager of voluntary schools, I wish to see a fair adjustment of the difficulties that arise from their unequal rivalry. The out-and-out supporters of the Board-school system have two main objections to increased support being given by the Government to voluntary schools. They affirm that such support is tantamount to an endowment of denominationalism, and they say that it would remedy the alleged grievances of the Church party, while it would leave untouched the greater grievances of Nonconformists. The first objection has been forcibly answered by the Duke of Argyll, and the second by Cardinal Vaughan, but if any further reply were necessary, I believe that all Nonconformists and their sympathisers who possess both candour and discrimination, will be con- vinced that their terror of the undue influence of the Anglican clergy is an exaggerated one, when they consider how largely the number of existing Dissenters has been recruited by the intolerance of some of the clergy, and how unlikely it is that adult Englishmen in the end of the nineteenth century will be drawn to the Church by unfair versions of history. I am convinced that nothing is so likely to grow a crop of militant Dissenters as " sowing the dragon's teeth " of a Gace's catechism.—I am, Sir, &c., J. VINCENT BELL. Star Hill, Rochester, December 10th.
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