M1 . . ALLEN TO THE RESCUE!
THE Liberation Society will be jubilant this week. There has for some time back been a languid tone about their little political project. There has been, in the language of the City, very little inquiry for "free Churches," and Disendow- ment schemes have been dull and drooping. But this week they have gained in one sense a great, though in another sense a somewhat insignificant, ally,—the Rev. J. B. Allen, M.A., late of New College, Oxford, and at present Head Master of the Perse Grammar School, Cambridge ; and like the celebrated mouse which gnawed away the meshes of the lion's net, Mr. Allen may prove to have liberated the Liberation Society from that galling mesh of public indifference which has a far more depressing effect on the vitality of a political organisation than any active hostility or scorn. This week, the Liberation Society will probably be tasting that drop of delicious satisfaction which an unexpected boon from fortune, especially when it comes by the unconscious hand of an enemy, always gives. " Every- thing comes to those who know how to wait," Mr. Carvell Williams will be saying to himself, " even the Rev. J. B. Allen, for whom we did not consciously wait, only because we never before heard of his existence ; but he is none the less a benefactor for that. His delightful unconsciousness of the part he is playing, the simplicity with which he betrays the true caste-feeling of clerical scorn for Dissent, the naïveté of his remark that all his colleagues will feel as much relieved as he himself by the extrusion of the foreign Wesleyan ele- ment from the body of teachers, are of more advantage to us than the highest flights of Mr. Bright's eloquence, or the keenest strokes of Mr. John Morley's wit, more even than the hesitating sympathy of such a statesman as Mr. Gladstone. Hundreds of subscribers, thousands of pounds added to our subscription-list, could not have helped us as much as this supercilious disgust for a Dissenter openly evinced by Mr. Allen." Such, we venture to think, if we may be permitted to speculate on the secrets of a Secre- tary's breast, will be the meditations of Mr. Carvell Williams. And we need hardly say that our own, as warm supporters of the Establishment, and yet still warmer
strained—which might embarrass ten generations, and create supporters of social and political equality and justice, have been a body of interests and a wealth of patronage such as it would cast in a very different and almost opposite mood. This, at be difficult for Parliament itself to resist, without an exertion least, is certain, that if there be many such clergymen as Mr. which would strain or cripple the very principle of municipal Allen,—equally supercilious, equally frank, and equally indif- self-government. We very much doubt whether light taxation ferent to the danger of turning a Christian clergy into a social would have half the attractiveness of liberal expenditure. It caste,—no considerations of policy or religion will be able long has not in Birmingham, where the idea that outlay is good to avert the fall of the Establishment.
for trade has undoubtedly facilitated Mr. Chamberlain's Let us briefly state the facts of the case. Mr. Allen is the wise projects, and where expenditure is limited by a system new Head Master—at least,has been head master for two terms, of levying taxes from poor householders as well as rich ones, and no longer—of Perse Grammar School, Cambridge. During which a Council of London would strain every nerve to abolish that time, and for some years previously, Mr Maxwell, a or to modify. This money might be wisely spent, and no Cambridge MA., and a Johnian, but a Wesleyan, had been doubt much of it would be so spent, but it would be head master of the Junior School, and previously to the lavishly spent, and a great deal of it might stick by the way to separation of the schools had been a master in the undi- influential vestrymen's fingers. They behave tolerably well, vided School, discharging his duties to the great satisfaction or even very well, in their parishes—many parishes are admir- of his previous principal, Mr. Heppenstall. Mr. Heppenstall's ably governed—but their temptations would be multiplied testimonial to Mr. Maxwell is as cordial as possible. He was tenfold, both as to the possible gain and the possible immunity. under him for several years, and " during the whole of that If there is one fact impressed on all observant men by the ex- time," says Mr. Heppenstall, " I found him a zealous, con- perience of thirty years, it is that the temptation of English- scientious, pleasant, and effective helper. He declined to make speaking men, when not restrained by a strongly knit and use of the cane, when all the other Masters were allowed to partly aristocratic society, is pecuniary corruption ; and if there use it, and yet he maintained a high standard of discipline, is one doubt fostered in the same persons by the same ex- and taught his boys to work cheerfully and vigorously. He perience, it is whether democracy cares to extirpate or correct was always popular with the boys, and took part in all their that vice. This would be the grand danger of the reformed amusements and games. His methods of teaching were in- Municipality, and before it is incurred statesmen ought to be teresting and intelligent, securing the attention and arousing convinced both that the improvement to be made is great— the activity of his pupils ; nor did he fail, as many masters which we. for our parts, admit—and that the new machine is a do, to overcome the idleness or help the stupidity of the reasonably perfect one, of which, as yet, we see no proof what- weaker boys. On the whole, I have never had a master in ever. Its essence must be a Council, elected by a democracy whom I could place more confidence, or from whose work I for purposes which do not call out democratic virtues, and be- got more assistance." He goes on to relate how, when the fore it is accepted, we want to see clearly something of the school was divided, he at once saw that the proper work checks provided in every other successful constitution. It is for Mr. Maxwell would be to organise the Junior School, and futile to talk of the success of the Councils in the provincial with what ability, in his opinion, Mr. Maxwell discharged his cities, as futile as to quote the Administration of Schwyz as a difficult task. Mr. Heppenstall's testimonial ends with saying, working model for a British Commonwealth. The organisa- " I shall be glad to hear always of Mr. Maxwell's success, as tion of a village may be perfect without its suiting a great I feel sure that it will be deserved, by his unflagging zeal, his State, and there is no town in England where an active self-denial in school, his thorough devotion to a schoolmaster's Councillor cannot see everything with his own eyes in a long work, and his thorough, Christian integrity, exhibited in every day's journeying : while in London, not only would the journey detail of duty." Such was Mr. Heppenstall's view ; and Mr. take weeks, but there is no single man living who would know Allen, who is evidently a candid man, as well as a supercilious
No doubt, there was a deficiency, which was kept in the shade by Mr. Allen, with more consideration for Mr. Max- well's professional prospects than he was at all able to show for his religious disqualifications. Apparently, Mr. Maxwell had not taught English well, or else had not caused it to be well taught. That is the reason assigned by Dr. Bateson why the Governors did not cancel Mr. Allen's letter of dis- missal. Few men educated in the ordinary way to get a University degree at Cambridge or Oxford do learn anything of English, and Mr. Maxwell possibly was not an exception. But it is clear that in spite of his possible or probable defi- ciencies as a teacher of the English language and literature, Mr. Allen would not have dismissed him but for his much more serious deficiencies in religion and social caste,—or may it not have been for his deficiency in that tone of religious thought which counts so much more with many clergymen in the way of social caste than it does in the way of religion? Mr. Allen admits that he has suppressed reasons for dismissing Mr. Maxwell,—and we may now assume them to have been the English-literature defect to which we have just referred. But he avows his most urgent reasons :- " It will be enough to state one or two. In the first
place, you were not of my choosing The fact of your religious creed being different from my own, and from that which I wish to see universal among my Masters, would
have at once decided me to decline your application ; and there are also other reasons which I will not state, unless you particularly desire me to do so. Secondly, them is a certain difference of social position between yourself and the majority of the other members of my staff, which neither you nor they would probably desire to alter, but which is a complete barrier to the unanimity of sentiment and intercourse which I wish to see prevailing among us. I will not dwell upon this point further than to mention that all my more important colleagues share my views as to the inconvenience of working with a fellow-master with whom they do not care to associate gut of school." Whereupon, Mr. Maxwell naturally wrote to 1now why his creed was objectionable, and remarked that, although he himself was a Wesleyan, there were several pupils, sons of Churchmen, boarding in his house. To which the great prop of the Liberation Society replied promptly by a letter, one sentence in which we expect to see Mr. Carvell Williams quoting in every circular of that Society for years to come :—" The number of Churchmen's sons among your boarders is a matter of perfect indifference to me. A Church- man myself, I object to a Nonconformist colleague, and no considerations could affect my views upon the point ;" " How absolute the knave is," says Hamlet, of another grave-digger, a more jocose, but certainly not a more efficient performer than Mr. Allen. Indeed, who could believe in "religious equality," with that saying in his ears f—remembering that this Perse trust is not in any sense a denominational trust, but one administering endowments in which all the nation has an interest. Nor is Mr. Allen content with the mere religious inferiority of Dissent. He harps upon the social inferiority which the religious in- feriority implies. Mr. Maxwell's Wesleyanism disturbs his conscience and spiritual feeling, but it disturbs his social tastes more. Drawing-rooms are not pleasant with Wesleyan M.A.'s in them. Dissent affects clergymen like Mr. Allen as a dropped or superfluous h affects them, and that quite without regard to any question of liability to such blunders. It is a vulgarism, a jar to refined feelings, like soiled linen or coarse speech. Such is the view which Mr. Allen announces of the feelings of a clergyman, when administering the organisation of a public school for the benefit of a nation which consists of all creeds and sects. His line becomes the more remarkable for the very reasons which led the Governing Body not to dispute his decision. He had better reasons, it seems, for what he did, but would not assign them, because these reasons had for him so much the larger importance. His feelings as a schoolmaster were altogether merged in his feelings as a clergyman whom Dissent affected like a bad drain or a grating sound. " Now that the athletic sports are over," commenced this spirited mani- festo of Mr. Allen's which is destined, we fear, for so wide a popularity under the auspices of the Liberation Society, "I have leisure to write to you on a subject which I should have men- tioned earlier in the holidays, had I not been prevented by stress of work." He could not have devised a better supple- ment to the 4 athletic sports.' No man with so good a will to bowl out Dissent, certainly ever contrived more admirably to give it the impulse for which it has been languishing, and which, if often repeated, will be likely enough to secure for its chief enterprise a brilliant success. Sincerely as we believe in the moral, and religious, and political uses of the Establishment, we could not withstand the moral effect of any very large body of evidence proving, as neatly as Mr. Allen has managed to prove, that the Established Church, sometimes at least, fosters the spirit of a narrow and un-Christian caste, behind the veil of a comprehensive theory and a sober and moderate demeanour.
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