The religious Dissenters are, we are happy to see, plucking
up. courage at last to assert their conscientious conviction that, in the education of neglected children, religion cannot and ought not to be omitted, against the political Dissenters, who have hitherto carried all before them. In a conference of 65 Protestant Dissenting deputies held on Wednesday, at the Cannon-Street Hotel, the- political Dissenters, who demanded the complete exclusion of religion from the State schools, partly on the ground of the extreme sacredness of the Bible and partly on the ground of the unfairness of appropriating the ratepayers' or taxpayers' money to the inculcation of any shade of religious belief, obtained their victory over those who deprecated this exclusion, by a majority of only nine votes. Dr. Glover took up the ground we have always steadily maintained—that to enact compulsory education chiefly for the sake of the children whom their parents more or less neglect, and then to prohibit their teachers from touching on the most important of all subjects in educating them, is intrinsically absurd. It is all very well to say, Leave them to voluntary religious teaching.' But that will practically mean, in nine cases out of ten, Leave them to involun- tary religious neglect.' " The attempt," said Dr. Glover, " to- thrust upon the country a purely secular education was, in his opinion, just another form of sectarianism." And so apparently thought no less than 28 of the 65 deputies, though 37 thought differently. If that division represents anything like the relative strength of the two parties among the Dissenters of the country, we think we maylook forward to the early victory- of rational views. The schoolmasters, above all, should protest against the attempt to reserve to priests and ministers one of the most valuable fields of their own personal influence.
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