THE EDUCATION BILL.
LTO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:1
Sre,,—Grant to an old man who has tried to keep himself at school some seventy years, and who has been a school manager for nearly fifty years, a place—if you will, the lowest place—in your columns for a few words on the education question.
First, I note a call has gone forth for "mass meetings." I have not the faith of some in mass meetings on such questions as this. Anyway, they should not come first. I most respectfully suggest that the first step should be for the Archbishops to summon all the Bishops of their Provinces, the Houses of Con- vocation, the Houses of Laymen, Rural Deans, school managers, to go up to the great Cathedral in the heart of our Empire, and there plead, in the Church's great Service of Intercession, the cause of the children, and of the parents who desire that their children should be brought up in "the Faith once for all delivered to the Saints." There need be no sermon. I would not subject even our Archbishop to the danger of popularie aura, or "the chiel taking notes." Let the one thought in our hearts and the one word on our lips on such a day be "our Help is in the Name of the Lord."
Turning to the Bill itself, the first thought that strikes me is this : What a great opportunity God has put into our hands for proving to the people of England that Churchmen are going to battle, not out of love of pre-eminence, not for the money value of their school fabrics, not for any compensation for the sacrifices they or their fathers have made, but for conscience and con- viction's sake, and that the education of our children may be established on principles of truth and justice and toleration and freedom for all alike, and for all times to be.
Further, I hope that we shall be all of one heart and mind in rejecting Mr. Birrell's offer of the maintenance of our fabrics. Its acceptance would put into the hands of our opponents a weapon which they would be quick to use. They would say : "You have secured another dole out of the public, purse " ; and not many years would pass before they would be saying "Why. we have paid for your fabrics over and over again by the money we have spent on their upkeep and repairs." And then, this offer —the one concession made to Churchmen in the Bill—these thirty pieces of silver tossed to us up and down through the land, look so like the offer of a bribe to betray the innocents and to be false to the charge laid upon us by our Master to feed His lambs. We shall be false to higher things than trust-deeds, and shall bitterly repent it hereafter, when "this tyranny be overpast,'' if we come to any terms (except under direct compulsion) for the transfer of our schools, unless there be secured to all schools alike, provided and non-provided, (1) the right of all parents to have their children taught their own faith; (2) the right of all parents to withdraw their children from all religions teaching of which they disapprove ; and (3) freedom to all teachers, if they be so minded, and with the parents' consent, to teach the faith which they themselves believe. A Bill which safeguarded these great principles of justice and liberty and toleration would bring peace, and satisfy the great mass of thinking and God-fearing Englishmen. But this Bill to which Mr. Birrell has unfortu- nately put his name can only multiply strife and bitterness, and can never be a permanent settlement of the question. What has come over Mr. Birrell ? Why has he a heart that is touched as he thinks of the sacrifices Roman Catholics have made for their schools, and only a nether millstone in him as he thinks of the millions that Churchmen have spent in the same cause ? He told the House how some of the Voluntary schools were "bad, and some very bad," and so earned his "loud cheers"; but he left unsaid what some of his predecessors in his high office had said,—
that the "worst schools" were some of the small Board-schools, which, mutat° nomine, is true of that class of schools to-day. I would ask, further, why the provided schools are the special property of the Nonconformists only, and why Churchmen have no right in them at all. Have not Churchmen, besides building and keeping up their own schools, contributed at least equally to the building and upkeep of the provided schools ? Out of injustice and intolerance and tyranny no peace can ever come. The animus and purpose of the Bill is one throughout,— to ignore the work and destroy the influence of the one religious body which perhaps has done and sacrificed more than all the other religious bodies put together for the education of the English people. In common with thousands to whom he has afforded so much pleasure, I am sorry for Mr. Birrell and this lapse from his true and better self, and I am sure all Church- men are ready even now to meet him fairly and make every concession compatible with justice, freedom, and toleration to enable him to pass a satisfactory Bill, and to save him from the fate which now seems threatening him, of being, like Actaeon, torn to pieces by his own dogs.
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