The Bishop of Manchester has taken his usual manly and
fear- less course in telling his clergy and people that inefficient schools on the denominational principleare not half as useful to the people as efficient schools under School Boards, and has encouraged his clergy to make over to the School Boards, on the best terms they can, denominational schools which at present they can only just keep up to a point much below the highest possible efficiency, by that constant soliciting of help which amounts to systematic mendicancy. At the annual meeting of the Diocesan Board on Thursday week, Dr. Fraser's plain and manly language on this head brought down upon him mach plaintive clerical and quasi- -clerical protest, which, however, did not in any degree shake him from his position that a well-managed school, with less elaborate religious appliances, is better than a school always in difficulties, but abounding in theological lessons. After all, the irritability caused by chronic poverty is probably more fatal to true religious influences than any deficiency in catechetical refinements could be. Teachers perpetually conscious that they are not doing their best by their pupils, will generally be too apt to mingle a self-distrustful pretentiousness with their redundant religion.
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