THE QUESTION OF THE HOUR.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR...1 SIR,—May I express a hope, in which I feel sure I shall have many sympathisers, that you will reconsider the resolution, announced in your last issue, to "close the in- teresting correspondence" on the education question ? It is surely just now emphatically the very question of the hour. The stalking-horses of the late Election contest—Protection, e.g., and Home-rule—must perforce rest in their respective stables for a while. Even the triumphant Liberals dare not as yet trot out Home-rule; and the discomfited Conservatives cannot hope to work Protection to any practical purpose in the new Parliament. Meanwhile, a question which in the eyes of very many of us looms as large as either—the question whether religious education shall survive in England or be virtually destroyed—confronts us at once, and is threatened with a prompt, and in that case, it is to be feared, an ill- considered and disastrous, decision. That the Spectator should in such a crisis close its columns to the discussion seems nothing less than a disaster. For further discussion, I venture to say, is absolutely needed for the attainment of anything approaching to a fair or just result. To this, as to every question, there are two sides, and as yet but one has been seriously considered by the country. A furious fanaticism has succeeded in gaining a hearing for its demands on the one side, even above the din and conflicting cries of the General
Election; but the case for the Church has certainly not as yet been effectively laid before the English people, whether through a simple confidence in its justice, or through a lamb- like spirit of non-resistance, or from a "spirit of slumber" which, with some noble exceptions, seems to have narcotised her natural defenders, it would be vain to inquire. It has, however, I think, already been apparent that the discussion, so far as it has gone, was beginning to open the eyes of the public to aspects of the case not before commonly realised; and as the larger part of our people would not willingly be unjust, much more, I venture to think, might be hoped from a further and fuller discussion in your ever hospitable and
widely circulated columns.—I am, Sir, See., H. E. T.
[We closed the discussion because it had gone on for some five weeks, and we were anxious not to weary our readers. If, however, there is a general desire to proceed with it, we shall be glad to print letters as before on the problem of how to avoid the secularisation of the schools by the adoption of a system of instruction in the fundamentals of Christianity. —En. Spectator.]
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