ART. V.-Nonconformists and National Education.

A HUNDRED years hence, in the pages of some cynical historian of our own times, our descendants may, perhaps, find some such paragraph as this :—

'At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a few enthusiastic and courageous philanthropists began to call the attention of the educated portion of the English people to the deplorable and disgraceful ignorance of the great masses of their countrymen. Their enterprise severely tested the depth of their enthusiasm and the fibre of their courage. For many years the indifference and the prejudices of the most powerful classes in the State offered a successful resistance to their statistics, their arguments, and their eloquence. When at last the clergy, the country gentlemen, and the mercantile aristocracy, were convinced that the institutions of the country and the authority of religion would not be altogether ruined, even if agricultural labourers, domestic servants, and factory hands, were taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, the obstacles to the establishment of an effective national system of education appeared for a long time insuperable. Efforts for the reform of the tariff, and for securing or resisting the extension of the franchise, commanded a strenuous support, and determined the fate of Governments; but neither of the great parties in the State had the resolution which was necessary to meet and subdue the religious jealousies and the hostility to innovation which stood in the way of the education of the people. The common sympathies of the human heart might have constrained a nation that boasted of its justice and philanthropy, to secure the right of its own children to receive at least rudimentary instruction; and Christian preachers who maintained that the most wretched outcast was made in the image of God, and was capable of immortal glory, might have been expected to subordinate the special interests of their sects to the imperative claims of innumerable souls; but vested interests, sectarian zeal, and the blind attachment of the Philistines to English traditions, were too strong for both pity and faith. When the third quarter of the century had almost run out, and the great question still remained unsolved, there came a vast though peaceful political revolution; and then the whole country rose and demanded that the "new masters" of the State should be taught to read and write. The rights of one generation after another of neglected children had asked in vain for protection; a generous enthusiasm for intellectual culture had been powerless; the dignity with which the Christian revelation invests the humblest and meanest of the human race had commanded no reverence; but when the security of property and of political institutions was supposed to be threatened by the ignorance of the new electors, ignorance became an intolerable

evil, and all the difficulties of removing it suddenly vanished. Then at last the nation demanded that, if necessary, martial law should be proclaimed against the public enemy, and all precedents and all interests" disregarded, which stood in the way of securing the safety of the State.'

Such a view as this of the recent zeal for the extension of popular education would have more truth in it than we care to acknowledge; but it would not be altogether accurate. It is not an ignoble political panic which has originated and sustained the efforts of the true leaders of the present educational movement. But the lowering of the franchise has given them new power; it has brought into the constituencies a vast number of electors who have the keenest personal interest in the multiplication of good schools, and who have no sympathy with either the principles or the prejudices which have hitherto thwarted the efforts of those who have agitated for the extension and reform of our educational system. It has also excited the fears and almost paralyzed the energies of those who, on whatever grounds, have resisted more generous and more equitable educational measures.

The time has, therefore, come for Nonconformists to consider their position in relation to this great question, and carefully to review the controversies by which for nearly a generation they have been agitated and divided.

There is a very general impression for which we have ourselves to thank, that in consenting to consider how the State may render most effective aid to the education of the poor, Nonconformists are abandoning all their traditions, and consciously surrendering their principles under the pressure of irresistible necessity. We have heard and read with astonishment and pain very much that has been said during the last few months by some of the former advocates of pure voluntaryism, who have recently declared themselves in favour of accepting Government aid. They do not mean what they appear to say, but their language has been sometimes singularly unfortunate.

It has been urged, for instance, again and again, as a reason why we should agitate for a national system, that if we retain the position which the majority of Congregational Dissenters have conscientiously held during the last twenty years, the clergy of the English Church will soon have the whole education of the poor of the country in their own hands. No doubt that is a very serious consideration. But if there be anything in our Nonconformity which is inconsistent with our receiving or

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sanctioning any assistance rendered by the State to education, we must stand by our Nonconformity and accept the consequences. We have no choice. It can never be right, it can never be expedient under any circumstances, to violate our principles. Whatever apparent advantages Nonconformists might gain from sanctioning a popular movement at the cost of their convictions would be only apparent; whatever benefits such an act of infidelity might enable us to confer upon the nation, we have no right to confer them. If the alternative were submitted to us of surrendering our Nonconformist principles, or of permitting all the children in the country to be driven into day-schools where they would be taught a faith hostile to the essential principles of Protestantism and Evangelical Christianity, we could not hesitate for a moment as to which alternative to choose. Whatever comes of it, we must be true to our own consciences. We must walk in the light which God has given us.

Equally objectionable is the plea that the voluntaries have been overborne by the pressure of public opinion, that it is useless to fight a battle which can end only in disastrous defeat, that 'the 'inexorable logic of facts' compels us to abandon the true faith. We have only to say in reply to all this, that if we have a clear and definite principle to stand by, it matters nothing to us though the whole nation is against us. We must refuse to 'go 'with the multitude to do evil.' As to fighting a losing battle, we ought to have learned from the sufferings and heroism and victories of our fathers, that whatever the odds may be on the other side, those who struggle for the right are sure to win at last; and if it is certain that we ourselves must die before the victory is won, we ought to have learnt how to die with courage undaunted, faith uncrushed, and with our face to the foe. What is meant by 'the inexorable logic of facts' in this connection, we cannot quite understand. Whatever logic there may be in the temporary triumph of evil, seemed to be terribly against the martyrs under the Diocletian persecution, but they stood firm spite of the facts; it pressed hard upon Ridley and Latimer, and all the confessors of the Reformation; it was terribly severe against our own ancestors who suffered imprisonment, exile, and death, rather than be false to their ecclesiastical convictions; it was unanswerable, in its own order, against the decision of the illustrious Two Thousand of 1662, who were driven not only from their pleasant parsonages, but from their pulpits, because they refused to profess a consent to documents from which their heart and judgment revolted. But we honour all these men for refusing to listen to

inexorable logic' of this kind, and for their resolute contempt of all the penalties which they incurred by their fidelity.

It is quite true that voluntary schools have been almost everywhere crushed by their rivals; that the cost of their maintenance has often been an almost intolerable pressure on the resources of our churches; that, as a rule, they have been less efficient than the schools which have been stimulated and developed by the grants and the inspection of the Committee of Privy Council; but, what then? If we cannot receive the grants and submit to the inspection without violating our principles-and this is what was urged in 1846 and 1847 by many of the leaders of the voluntaries-if it is only at the cost of abandoning the grounds on which we rest our protest against the subjugation of the Church of Christ to political governments, that we can permit the appropriation of public funds to the support of popular schools-and this has been reiterated with all the energy of profound conviction during the last twenty years-the inexorable' fact that our schools are being extinguished, and that public opinion is against us, affords us no relief; we are bound, inexorably' bound, to refuse to swerve a hair's breadth from the line of action which Conscience has determined.

No doubt the practical aspects of the question have been greatly changed during the last quarter of a century, and many arguments and fears that appeared reasonable in 1846 have been shown by experience to have been futile. Those who still believe that, on the whole, it would be most expedient to trust the education of the people to voluntary zeal, may reasonably and honourably acknowledge that, since the country has definitely decided against them, it has become their duty to accept the decision and make the best of it. Those who thought that voluntary schools were likely to be more effective than schools connected with a government department, may confess that facts have compelled them to change their opinion. Those who feared that inspectors would interfere with the religious freedom of the churches whose schools received assistance, may concede that the experience of twenty years has shown that their apprehensions were unnecessary. Those who recognised, in the proposals of the Government to supplement voluntary benevolence by national grants, the essential spirit of Communism, and the germ of a thousand social delusions, may admit that the characteristic Individualism of the English race has proved too strong to be at all affected by the pernicious principle which excited their alarms, and that perhaps our social condition is likely to suffer greater injury from the actual ignorance of vast

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masses of the people, than from any slight infringement of what they feel to be the noblest theory of the functions of Government. Those who believed, twenty years ago, that voluntaryism would soon cover the country with efficient schools, and that public money was not necessary, may now maintain that voluntaryism has not a fair chance side by side with a Government scheme, and that, therefore, voluntaryism must be abandoned. But if the abstract principle which constituted the strength and inspired the enthusiasm of the voluntary agitation was sound, the principle that the State cannot, from the nature of the case, touch the secular education of the people without touching their religious faith, and that the same reasons which oblige us to exclude State-aid and State-inspection from the Church, oblige us to exclude both from the school, that principle is as sound to-day as it ever was. No force of adverse public opinion can refute it. It is invulnerable to the logic of 'facts.'

We earnestly trust that, in the discussions which are likely to last for at least two or three years to come, care will be taken to avoid the impression which we fear has been produced by the speeches of some recent converts from voluntaryism. Let the line be clearly and sharply drawn between arguments against State interference, which may be legitimately surrendered in the presence of altered circumstances, and principles the authority of which no change of circumstances can affect. The only plea on which a Nonconformist, who occupied an extreme position in 1846, can justify his acceptance of the present Minutes, however modified, or indeed of any scheme of Government education, is plainly this: that the principle of Nonconformity has no real application to the question whether or no Government should aid popular schools. If this is not made perfectly plain, the retreat from the false policy of 1846 may be more ruinous to Nonconformity than the policy itself. It was bad enough to identify in the public mind the theory that the State has no right to touch the Church, with the theory that the State has no right to assist the School; it will be still more mischievous if Nonconformists abandon their protest against State education, without making it distinctly understood that they now perceive that there is no necessary connection between voluntaryism in education and voluntaryism in religion.

We do not intend to maintain that the able and excellent men who led the opposition to the Minutes of Council in 1846 and 1847 had no reason for regarding the action of the Government with distrust; but we believe that the identification of our protest against Church Establishments with the theory that the