If the Bishop of Manchester could but multiply himself by
twenty, the National Church would be in no sort of danger. He is always Liberal, always manly, and always sensible. In de- livering on Saturday the prizes in connection with the school of the Liverpool Council of Education, he said he had long arrived at the conclusion that without a uniform, equitable, but at the same time effective, system of compulsion, the education of the country would neveribe what we have a right to expect. " Rather than maintain a Church of England school as denominational in a state of languor and inefficiency, he, as a clergyman bothered out of his life to get up subscriptions and to have school sermons, —begging and begging for the upholding of the school,— would ask the School Board to take it for secular purposts. The Act allowed him his own terms, and he would certainly preserve his school as a place of religious education." No doubt ; and Dr. Fraser, moreover, would manage this without the unfair- ness which has characterised this operation in the hands of some astute Church managers, who have given their religious lessons in such close proximity to the School Board's secular teaching, as
to give rise to the impression among the parents that the School Board is responsible for it, and that it is a part of the regular school course. But Dr. Fraser looks at School Boards as if they were friends, not enemies. If the clergy would but follow his example, the famous " religious difficulty " would soon disappear.
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