THE DISSENTERS AND THE GOVERNMENT.
NO doubt it is new to the Dissenters to feel the flush of dictatorial arrogance. Though they have long been influential, they have hitherto been influential with Liberal Governments rather as humble friends who have earned con- sideration by valuable services at a critical moment are influen- tial ; and in return they have rarely expected more than the redress of one or two flagrant injustices,—the legalization of marriages by their ministers, the abolition of Church-rates, the admission of Dissenters to the Universities, the repeal of the many privileges accorded in the Statute Book to clergymen of the Church of England. If any one or two of these reforms was taken up heartily by the Liberal ministry of the day, the Dissenters have till lately been grateful, and given that ministry its heartiest support at the poll. Now, how- ever, their success has been far greater. They have at last' obtained something very like absolute equality before the law with Churchmen ; the University Tests have been removed ; Dissenters have been admitted to the Cabinet ; the Irish Church has fallen ; the principle of religious equality has been acknowledged in the broadest way, both in legislation and administration. In the Education Act they have been treated as on an equality with the Church. But so far from being satisfied, they have hardly ever yet held language so bitter and menacing towards any Liberal Govern- ment as towards that of the present Administration, whom they openly threaten with public defeat and, so far as they can inflict it, with disgrace. What is the explanation of this I We do not doubt that to some extent the new sense of political power is intoxicating them, and rendering them blind to the existence of any political scruples except their own ; —because they have conquered when their cause was just, they are beginning to think that only those solu- tions of political problems which they propose can have any title to success, that nobody who differs from them can be otherwise than wrong-headed, or wrong-hearted, or both. Their recent victories have been so great and BO rapid that they are beginning to regard the Ministry through which they have gained it as their tool rather than their friend, and to resent as intolerable indifference to their demands what, five years ago, they would have regarded as almost an incredible amount of sympathy with their hopes. The standard by which the Dissenters now judge the Minsistry has been supplied by that Ministry itself ; and they turn its very claim on their respect into a ground of reproach upon its principles. The Government has been more than once threatened, and seriously threatened,by the Dissenters, with a combination
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against it to drive it from office, if it does not accept at once some of their most unreasonable axioms of political morality. Now, if the Dissenters are in earnest, and choose to act as they threaten, we can only hope the Government will simply acquiesce in the natural event, and rather let the Dissenters have their way, and see whether they can manage to obtain anything better to their minds from the Tories, than allow a relatively small, though important and active
section of the Liberals, which happens to hold the balance of parties, to impose on the whole nation an educa- tional policy as uncongenial to its wishes as it is alien to its principles. We are quite willing to admit that the Baptist Union, as repre- sented in an able and eloquent letter from the Rev. John Jenkyn Brown, which we publish elsewhere, is acting consistently with the principles it avowed before the Education Act was passed or even proposed, in advocating purely secular education and deprecating the smallest grant of public money to any school or institution in any way connected with the diffusion of theological opinion. Bat then, in the first place, the Baptist Union is in this respect no representative at all of the whole body of Dissenters, very many of whose denominational schools accepted the Government grants through a long series of years, though their promoters are now guilty of the caprice of rais- ing an objection of principle to the payment of any denomina- tional school-fees out of the rates ; and in the second place, were even the whole body of Dissenters as consistent on this subject as they are otherwise, their attempt to enforce on all the rest of the nation the secular national schools which they themselves prefer, is as unjustifiable a piece of tyranny as it would be for the rest of the nation to insist on compelling the children of Dissenters to get their general education in denominational Dissenting schools. Mr. Jenkyn Brown says that it is because the Dissenters " believe in religion and love it " that they insist on banishing it absolutely from the ordinary schools,—the only schools, remember, to which the children of the dangerous and destitute classes can be com- pelled to go, nay, the only schools to which the majority of all children will be likely to go, if once all the denomina- tional schools should be shut up. Well, that is one way of showing belief and love. We do not doubt it is the
Dissenters' way. But it certainly is a peculiar, not to say an eccentric way, and to force its acceptance on every- body, whether sharing their peculiar views or not, is hardly possible for a Government which claims to represent not a clique, but a nation. Yet this is what the Dissenters demand ;—that national money should be voted for the express purpose not only of subsidizing secular schools, but also of inevitably extinguishing religious schools, however care- fully the scholar may be protected against their propagandism. We must remember that to vote public money to some of many competitive institutions, is not only to give a bounty to those which get it, but practically to extinguish those which do not get it, If the Government give a grant to one of two rival merchants, it helps him to undersell the other, and con- sequently to ruin and beat him out of the market. This is what the policy of the Dissenters actually supports in relation to education. They desire what would in, fact extinguish the religious, in subsidizing the secular, school. And they demand this as a right. They say, Yes, by all means let us compel parents to send their children to school ; but let us leave them no alternative, not even such as they now have, as to what class of schools they should send them to. Let us extinguish all the religious schools, however good their secu- lar teaching, by driving them into a thoroughly impossible competition with subsidized secular schools, and then compel everybody to send their children to the only survivors,—those assisted by the State.' And if you ask them why this won- derful piece of arbitrary dictation,—they reply, Simply to save our conscience, which will not admit of contributing a penny to the furtherance, indirect or otherwise, of religious views with which we do not agree.' Very well, but if that bo so unjust, then gave up once and for all your idea of educa- tional compulsion. Can anything be more monstrous than to compel parents to send their children to schools in the princi- ples of which they do not agree ? Oh,' says one of our cor- respondents, where is the injustice of compelling a child to learn arithmetic without Papal infallibility added, or any other supplementary dogma ?' The question is hardly candid. Is arithmetic all that a child learns at school ? Is not almost every lesson in history liable to be penetrated through and through with special religious faiths ? Nay, is not the general moral atmosphere and influence of a Roman Catholic school totally different from that of a Protestant school, and that of a Protestant school from that of a purely secularist school ? Our correspondent "S. P." knows per- fectly well that parents may and do feel a scruple not less conscientious, and far more intense because brought far more home to their affections, about subjecting a child at a very early age to general influences which he thinks dan- gerous and irreligious, than lie can possibly feel about paying
a few pence which may by possibility ultimately go to aiding the propaganda of a religion he thinks false. Nor is it only to the pauper parents this applies. Once let the denomina- tional schools without the grant have to contend with secular schools with the grant, and the alternative of sending their children to religious schools will be practically taken away from all parents, pauper and otherwise. It is the most wilful blindness which professes to find no conscientious grievance in this, while urging so strenuously the conscientious grievance in- volved in the payment of an infinitesimal part of a rate for the possible support of error. The Dissenters, if they are real politicians, will frankly admit that no conceivable plan of State edu- cation can be even imagined which will not inflict hardships on some of the delicate consciences of modern parties. The Quaker feels a scruple, and a very genuine scruple, about paying taxes for the support of an Army and Navy at all. The Tory, or the embittered Radical, may fairly feel a scruple about paying taxes for the support of an Administration which he thinks so bad as Mr. Gladstone's. The Republican may find his conscience tormenting him for contributing to the strength and splendour of a Crown. The strict economist may find his reins in the night-watches summoning him to reproach himself for his complicity in the Irish Land Act, and the Evangelical for his being privy to so godless an institution as the Judicial Committee which latitudinarianizes the Church. If all these moral scruples are to be dictatorially insisted on, Parliamentary government on all subjects becomes simply impossible. And yet in connection with education such scruples are pushed with an air of moral authority which nobody pretends to attach to their political manipulation on other questions. The Dissenter ought to see that however good his scruple may be as an argument in his own mouth, to those who feel a quite different scruple their own is just as important, and that the matter is far too complex there- fore to be decided out of hand as one of onesided principle, without any reference to the conflicting principles also at stake. The Government must act for the whole, not for the part. Can the Dissenter deny for a moment that the whole community takes a view of the principles at issue considerably different from that of the Dissenters, and by no means likely over to be the same ?
Should therefore the Dissenters attempt, as they seem inclined to do, not to convince the country first, and so carry their way,--but to force the hand of the Government by making it feel the uncertainty of the Dissenting vote on any critical question on which they might be able without dis- credit to vote with Mr. Disraeli and his party, we should strongly counsel the Government not to shrink from a defeat so brought about. Little indeed would the Dissenters gain for their cause by installing the Tories in power ; but they would gain some experience of the folly of their impatient and dictatorial policy. They would find no party willing to enforce on England a secular scheme of education,—in all the School Board elections there were hardly a dozen true secular- ists elected,—they would find no party willing to repay the denominational schools for the educational zeal which not long ago was almost the only educational zeal in England, by a sword-thrust through the heart,—but they would find the difference between a Government which honestly aims at treat- ing all forms of religion as equal, and one which tolerates and patronizes Dissent, while it calls the clergy from all sides to its aid. The Dissenters are new to the political weight of their position, and have grown a little giddy with its unwonted im- portance. They fancy that there is no conscientious Liberal- ism in the nation except theirs, and hence the dictatorial tone of their solemn warnings to the Education Department and to the Prime Minister. It would be of real political use to them to test practically the extent of their power by turning out the Ministry,—which we do not for a moment doubt they can do, if they will, in the course of the next session,—and then mea- suring their gain by the manoeuvre. We suspect that they would soon find that that gain had been, not the gain of a more mal- leable government, or of a more secularist educational system, but of clearer self-knowledge and a better understanding of their relation to the nation at large. A long course of real grievances is sometimes but a bad education for the purposes of that moderation and sobriety of demeanour which become men who have at last gained substantial equality. The fancy remains sick after the real wounds are healed. It takes a certain time to get rid of the political valetudinarianism and hypochondria which often outlive the source of mischief from which they spring.
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