Miss Helen Taylor (Mr. J. S. Mill's step-daughter), if she
was not endangering her election by her violent speech at the Bridge-House Hotel, London Bridge, on Monday, against the Church party on the School Board, certainly was preparing need- less controversial elements for the School Board, if she should prove to have been elected,—which seems probable enough. She declared the contest to be one of School Boards against clerical despotism. The clergymen were merely anxious to get the schoolmaster to do the clergyman's work, but in that case they should give up, she said, clergyman's pay. That the London Clergy have made a mistake in their vehement advocacy of denominational schools, we are quite sure, but it is a mistake which Miss Helen Taylor imitates when she takes up her parable against clerical despotism. The true attitude towards these cleri- cal advocates of denominational schools is to make them show the general efficiency of their schools, to deal generously and cor- dially with those which are really efficient, but to insist steadily on those which are not efficient being either excluded from help, or handed over to the School Board to be made efficient. The anti- theological animus in the matter is even more unfortunate on the ' part of the friends of School-Board schools than is the theological animus on the part of the clergy themselves,—for it is less ex- cusable. Fanaticism is a sin appropriate to a religious teacher, but not to the advocate of secular learning.
Previous page
