LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
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 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 AND 
 
 THE LIBEKAL PAETY
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
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 THE REFORMATION SETTLEMENT: Examined 
 
 in the Light of History and Law. 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 89 Paternoster Row 
 London, New York, and Bombay.
 
 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 AND 
 
 THE LIBERAL PARTY 
 
 BY THE 
 
 EEV. MALCOLM MAcCOLL, DD., F.E.S.L. 
 
 CANON RESIDENTIARY OF RIPON 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 
 
 1902 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PA OK 
 
 Introductory 1 
 
 Dr. Hook's solution and Mr. Gladstone's approval .... 2 
 
 Government scheme . - . . . . . . . 3 
 
 Act of 1870 received as a choice of evils ...... 3 
 
 Nonconformist hostility to it . 4 
 
 Attitude of Churchmen . 4 
 
 Origin and motive of the Education Bill . . . . 5 
 
 Agitation against the Bill discriminated . . . . . 7 
 
 Churchmen differ about the Bill ....... 8 
 
 Author's attitude towards Nonconformists 10 
 
 True and false proselytism . . 13 
 
 Gospel ideal of Christian unity . -.' : i '. . . . 14 
 
 Newman on proselytism . . ' ro / * ". '-. . . 16 
 
 Proselytism in Church schools rare . . . ; . ; 17 
 
 Nonconformists' claim to a monopoly of grievances examined . 18 
 
 Twofold duty of the State, and Mr. Chamberlain's view . . . 19 
 
 Dr. Clifford's solution and its corollary . . . . 21 
 
 Undenominational education the negation of Christianity, and 
 
 even Theism . .22 
 
 Argument from the Sermon on the Mount . . . . . 22 
 Undenominational religion impossible . . . ' . . .25 
 
 Testimony of experience ......... 25 
 
 Mr. Gace's catechism 26 
 
 Cowper-Temple clause no security against sectarian teaching . . 27 
 
 Religious teaching in Board schools ...... 29 
 
 The clergy and the schools 30
 
 vi THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 \ 
 
 PACK 
 
 Erastian attitude of Nonconformists . ... . . .31 
 
 Mr. Gladstone on Erastianism and Nonconformity . . 31 
 
 Cowper-Temple clause a grievance to Churchmen ... 35 
 
 Grievance of Churchmen admitted by the Opposition . 35 
 
 Increase and composition of Voluntary schools .... 88 
 
 Leading Liberals recommend the substance of the Education 
 
 Bill proleptically 40 
 
 The Local Authority 41 
 
 No taxation without representation 43 
 
 Under the Bill Nonconformists will not pay any part of religious 
 
 teaching in Voluntary schools 44 
 
 Constitutional doctrines have their limitations . . . . 45 
 
 Bill will diminish clerical power ....... 48 
 
 Appointment of teachers in Voluntary schools . . . . 49 
 
 Quid pro quo of the Education Bill 51 
 
 Fallacy of Opposition's reasoning in re appointment of teachers . 55 
 
 ' The best man ' argument . .56 
 
 The ' Atmosphere ' argument 59 
 
 Nonconformists and the Bradlaugh case ..... 64 
 
 Mr. Sidney Webb on the Education Bill 65 
 
 Professor Goldwin Smith on the Education Bill .... 67 
 
 Need of definition in this controversy . . . . 69 
 
 ' False ' versus ' insufficient ' Christianity 70 
 
 What is ' insufficient Christianity '? , . . . 71 
 
 Mr. Birrell's dilemma 72 
 
 Dr. Clifford's definition of secular education implies a religious 
 
 test . . 72 
 
 Opponents of the Bill offer no alternative 74 
 
 Sir Henry Fowler on the Education Bill 74 
 
 Mr. Bright quoted 75 
 
 Present system of education a failure 76 
 
 Sir H. Fowler's inconsistent conditions . . . . 76 
 
 Purchase of school buildings by the State ..... 78 
 
 Denominational buildings not national property . . . . 79 
 Meaning of ' National schools ' . . . . .80
 
 CONTENTS vil 
 
 PAQR 
 
 The real issue 80 
 
 Bearing of Christian education on property and politics . . 82 
 
 Would Christian morality survive the ruin of dogmatic Chris- 
 tianity? 83 
 
 Formal and material heresy compared with formal and material 
 
 Christianity 84 
 
 The conduct of nations, not of individuals, the true test . . . 85 
 
 Education of the intellect alone tends to moral depravity, e.g. 
 
 Greece and Rome . 85 
 
 Christianity alone arrested the ruin 88 
 
 Modern civilisation the creation of Christianity . . . . 89 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer's opinion . . . . . . .89 
 
 Undenominational education no remedy 90 
 
 Unstable attitude of Opposition leaders . . . . .91 
 
 The new Liberalism and the old 93 
 
 Examples ........... 94 
 
 Lord Rosebery's two Edinburgh speeches 95 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's Liverpool speech and Lord Rosebery's conse- 
 quent resignation ......... 97 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's influence on foreign politics .... 101 
 
 Mr. Gladstone and the Corn tax 103 
 
 A great danger of the day 106 
 
 Kruger telegram and Fashoda incident 107 
 
 Difficulty of Gladstonian Liberals . . . . . . 108
 
 THE 
 
 EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 AND THE 
 
 LIBERAL PARTY 
 
 DEAR DR. GUINNESS EOGERS, 
 
 When we met last month at the opening of 
 St. Deiniol's Library at Hawarden you reminded 
 me of a pleasant dinner-party at which we were 
 both guests some years ago, at the house of the 
 late lamented Mr. Clayden. I was the only 
 Churchman present ; the rest were Noncon- 
 formists of note belonging to various denomina- 
 tions. ' Do you remember,' you asked me, ' that 
 the main subject of conversation was the question 
 of elementary education, and that you and I 
 agreed, while the rest differed from us and from 
 each other ? ' I remember it well, although it 
 slipped my memory till you recalled it. It seemed 
 to you then, as it has always done to me, that, 
 in view of our unhappy divisions on matters of 
 religion, the most logical and equitable solution 
 of the question would be the taking over by the 
 
 B
 
 2 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 Government, at a fair price, of all the Voluntary 
 schools for the purpose of secular instruction, 
 leaving to each denomination free access to all 
 State schools for the purpose of teaching, under 
 regulated conditions, their own specific doctrines 
 to their own children. The necessary corollary of 
 this would be the rigorous exclusion of religious 
 instruction from the curriculum of State teaching. 
 In the very able speech which he delivered lately 
 at Birmingham, Mr. Chamberlain declared his own 
 preference for that scheme, and seemed to imply 
 that the Government had no insuperable objection 
 to it, if only the state of public opinion had not 
 precluded its possibility. Public opinion has ad- 
 vanced in this matter since 1870, and I am not at 
 all sure that, if the various alternatives were now 
 fairly and clearly placed before the public, the 
 balance of opinion would not be in favour of 
 restricting the action of the State entirely to 
 secular instruction, leaving the teaching of religion 
 to the accredited representatives of the various 
 Dr. Hook's denominations at fixed hours. The late Dean 
 and Mr. Hook proposed a plan on those lines when he was 
 stone's ap- Vicar of Leeds, and Mr. Gladstone was strongly in 
 provai. favour of it, and much preferred it to the com- 
 promise of 1870. It would obviously be impos- 
 sible for the Government to propose any such 
 scheme now, unless there was seen to be a plain 
 preponderance of public opinion in its favour as 
 an alternative to the Government scheme, which
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 3 
 
 professedly aims at placing for the first time Govern- 
 under the control of the State the entire secular Seme, 
 education given in primary and secondary schools 
 receiving State aid throughout the country, with 
 the exception of London, which is to be dealt 
 with subsequently. The scheme, however, deals 
 separately with the Voluntary schools. While 
 undertaking to place the secular instruction given 
 in those schools under the control of the State,, 
 it also fulfils the provision in the Act of 1870 
 namely, that the religious instruction supplied in. 
 the Voluntary schools should be safeguarded. 
 The Act of 1870, let it be remembered, recognised 
 the Voluntary schools as an integral part of a 
 national system of education, and established 
 Board schools as supplementary auxiliaries, not as 
 hostile rivals, of the Voluntary schools. 
 
 It was a compromise which aroused no enthu- Act of 
 siasm either among Churchmen or Nonconformists. C eive<Tas 
 The former objected to the Cowper-Temple Clause, & ev f s oiceo{ 
 which forbids the use in Board schools of any 
 catechism or formulary distinctive of any religious 
 denomination, but permits the daily reading of 
 the Bible, with or without comment, at the discre- 
 tion of each particular School Board. The latter, 
 in the mass, disliked the settlement of 1870 
 because it gave State sanction and support to 
 religious schools of a denominational character ; 
 but were divided among themselves : the larger 
 part insisting on religious teaching of some sort 
 
 B 2
 
 4 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 which would not be characteristic of any religious 
 denomination, while the smaller and more logical 
 section demanded universal Board schools where 
 secular instruction alone should be given. The 
 Liberationists, who, I suppose, represent the large 
 Noncon- majority of the Nonconformists, resented fiercely 
 hJsTiiity the compromise of 1870. After the Bill had be- 
 come law their leader, the late Mr. Miall, accused 
 the Liberal Government of betraying the Non- 
 conformists. ' Once bitten, twice shy,' he ex- 
 claimed, and sat down with a plain intimation of 
 Nonconformist vengeance. The speech stirred 
 Mr. Gladstone to unwonted wrath. He took up 
 the challenge, and denying indignantly that the 
 Nonconformists had been betrayed at all, he 
 advised Mr. Miall to take himself and his votes 
 across the floor to the opposite benches. But Mr. 
 Miall's was no idle threat : it took deadly effect in 
 the dissolution of 1874, when the Nonconformist 
 mutiny turned a Liberal majority of 110 into a 
 Tory majority of 66. 
 
 The compromise of 1870 was therefore as far 
 as possible from giving general satisfaction at the 
 time. Its most strenuous opponents were Non- 
 Attitude conformists. Churchmen, as a body, acquiesced 
 of church- m ^ with serious misgiving and great reluctance 
 in consequence of Mr. Forster's assurance that 
 Board schools were intended to supplement, not to 
 supplant, denominational schools. 
 
 But what Churchmen feared has come to pass. 

 
 r 
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 5 
 
 The unlimited command of the public purse which 
 School Boards enjoy has enabled them to handi- 
 cap the Voluntary schools so effectually that a 
 thousand of the latter have been starved to death 
 and many more have to carry on a desperate 
 struggle for existence. The wonder is that they 
 have not only survived, but multiplied. In 1870 
 there were 8,281 Voluntary schools, educating 
 about 1,400,000 children. There are now more 
 than 14,000 Voluntary schools, educating some 
 3,000,000 children. They could only have done 
 so by means of large pecuniary sacrifices on the 
 part of the clergy and laity of the Church of 
 England. Increased taxation and decreasing 
 incomes during the last few years have made those 
 sacrifices harder in all cases, and almost impossible 
 in some. And the hardship has been doubled in 
 all areas rated for Board schools, inasmuch as. 
 Churchmen are bound to pay the School Board 
 rate in addition to their support of their own 
 schools. 
 
 The Education Bill is in part the answer of the 
 Government to the cry of distress which has thus 
 reached them from so many quarters. Of the Origin and 
 origin and genesis of that Bill I know nothing, theEdu- 
 but I am able from personal knowledge to con- BUI. 
 tradict one of the stock arguments against it. I 
 will quote it in the words of a gentleman who 
 evidently believed what he wrote over his signature 
 in the ' Spectator.' The real author of the Bill,
 
 6 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 he declared, was Convocation, and he asserted with 
 honest vehemency that * the Methodists and all 
 other denominations of Nonconformity ' ' sincerely 
 believe that the real promoters of the Bill designed 
 it not to improve education, but to destroy 
 Dissent.' 
 
 Now, I can affirm two things quite positively : 
 first, Convocation is not the author of the Bill ; 
 secondly, the destruction of Dissent was a motive 
 which even a perverted ingenuity could not 
 extract from a single speech or sentence uttered 
 in either Convocation in support of the Bill. 
 The debates of both Convocations are in public 
 and are reported in the newspapers. It is true 
 that there were some joint meetings of the two 
 Convocations in London, in which the Education 
 question was debated and from which the public 
 were excluded. I was present as a member of 
 Convocation, and I declare that the effect of the 
 Bill on the fortunes of Dissent never arose at all. 
 The question was not the destruction of Dissent, 
 but the destruction of the Voluntary schools. The 
 burden of all the speeches was that the Voluntary 
 schools were everywhere in danger, and in many 
 places in extremis, owing to the impoverishment of 
 their supporters and the falling off of subscriptions 
 through the competition of the School Boards. 
 Certain resolutions were submitted to Convoca- 
 tion by the Archbishop of Canterbury whether or 
 not with any knowledge of the general lines on
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY I 
 
 which the scheme of the Government was to be 
 drawn I know not. But I do know that the resolu- 
 tions were received with anything but enthusiasm. 
 They gave rise to serious divisions, not only of 
 opinions but of votes. Nobody was ardent in support 
 of them, and they were finally acquiesced in as the 
 least unpalatable choice of evils, while not a few 
 members of Convocation would prefer the ills they 
 knew to those they dreaded under any scheme 
 based on the resolutions of Convocation. I am 
 myself one of those who doubt whether the rulers . 
 of the Church have made a good bargain for the 
 Voluntary schools. I am therefore at a loss to Agitation 
 understand the fierce hostility which the Education JJJ gjj 
 Bill has evoked among the Nonconformists in f^jj" 11 " 
 general. A few among them, I know, do not view 
 it with great disfavour. Others, like yourself, oppose 
 it with reasoned moderation and discrimination. 
 But the mass of its opponents seem to me, 
 if I may take the liberty of saying so, to 
 be carried away by their anger beyond the 
 bounds of fair controversy. We are all too apt to 
 read our own preconceptions and prejudices into 
 what we greatly dislike. Suspecting enmity and 
 guile, we find ample evidence of them at every 
 corner, and the most innocent commonplaces are 
 magnified into deep laid plots. In this way a 
 fugitive remark or casual coincidence becomes a 
 portentous omen, and a Government Bill which 
 stirs in me no fervour either of enmity or welcome,
 
 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 and which, I am sure, is not the product of any 
 malign intention, is denounced by multitudes of 
 Nonconformists as a sort of anarchist outrage on 
 the rights of conscience, on the liberties of the 
 subject, and even on the sacred ark of the British 
 Constitution ; while, on the other hand, the 
 Church- majority of Churchmen accept the Bill in a spirit 
 
 men differ , ., . . . ... 
 
 about the oi nopeiui resignation, and a considerable minority 
 fear it as a fatal gift, charged, like the horse in 
 classic story, with hidden foes. An amusing 
 instance of these contradictory impressions of the 
 Bill presented itself to my mind on my way 
 back from the gathering at Hawarden on Octo- 
 ber 15. I bought a copy of that able and influential 
 paper, the * Manchester Guardian,' which I found 
 boiling and running over with the controversy on 
 the Education Bill. Besides minor luminaries, 
 there was Mr. Balfour at Manchester defending 
 the Bill as a moderate measure calculated to 
 advance the cause of education, and dealing justice 
 all round. There was ' a great demonstration in 
 London/ at which Principal Fairbairn declared, in 
 a white heat of fiery indignation, that the Bill was 
 so iniquitous an affront to Nonconformists and 
 citizens alike that ' he never intended to compro- 
 mise.' On the same ( page I read the following 
 from a parson who is, I believe, a recognised expert 
 on the subject of elementary education :
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 9 
 
 To the Editor of the ' Manchester Guardian.' 
 
 Sir, I venture to send to you a statement of some 
 reasons why Churchmen should hesitate before they agree 
 to support the Government Education Bill. Yours, &c., 
 
 JOSEPH NUNN. 
 
 St. Thomas's, Ardwick, October 13, 1902. 
 
 (Enclosure.) 
 
 1. It subverts all school trust deeds. 2. It deprives 
 many school managers of their position. 3. It destroys, 
 beyond the possibility of recall, the Voluntary school 
 system. 4. It involves a breach of faith with those who 
 built Church schools under that system and who desire to 
 continue under it. 5. It prepares the way for the 
 destruction of the denominational system. 6. It covers 
 the country with School Boards under a new name on the 
 model of the Birmingham League. 7. It creates a new 
 education rate in places which have been free from this 
 rate. 8. It brings in all the extravagance of School 
 Boards. 9. It makes no provision for an equal treatment 
 of Voluntary schools by the new authorities. 10. It 
 demands sums from Church schools for repairs the 
 exaction of which will close many town schools. 11. It 
 puts upon county councils duties which they cannot 
 adequately perform. 12. It involves an enormous in- 
 crease of costly officialism. 13. It makes the election of 
 county councillors an occasion for religious strife. 14. It 
 gives Nonconformists the cry of a ' new Church rate.' 
 15. It arouses the agricultural interest against the Church 
 as imposing such a rate. 16. It is uncalled for, for the 
 needs of the 3,000 small schools could have been provided 
 for by half the Government grant of 900,OOOZ. now pro- 
 posed to be given. The schools in towns could have been 
 provided for and School Board extravagance would have 
 been checked by compelling the Board to pay to Volun- 
 tary schools a contribution representing the excess of
 
 10 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 their expenditure per child over the amount intended to 
 be spent according to the Act of 1870. 
 
 Obviously the Bill cannot be at one and the 
 same time a subtle instrument ' to destroy Dissent ' 
 and aggrandise the Church, and also an engine 
 which will gradually but surely destroy the Church 
 schools and seriously damage the Church. In 
 media tutissimus ibis. Both extremes cannot be 
 right, and I shall probably not be far wrong if 
 I choose the middle path. Being neither an 
 opponent nor an ardent admirer of the Bill, I think 
 Author's I can examine it with an unprejudiced mind. You 
 towards know me well enough to believe that for Noncon- 
 formists, formists I have only feelings of friendship and 
 good-will. When I had charge of a parish they 
 were among my best friends ; ever ready to support 
 me, sometimes against Churchmen, and to give 
 their aid in making the House of God and His 
 worship beautiful and attractive ; ready also to co- 
 operate in the friendliest way in the management 
 of the school. Nor shall I ever forget the warm 
 and zealous help which I have on critical occasions 
 received from Nonconformists all over the king- 
 dom in my poor efforts on behalf of the Christians 
 suffering under the cruel yoke of Turkish misrule. 
 This is not the first, or second, or third time that 
 I have publicly acknowledged their services and 
 avowed my good- will towards them ; in proof of 
 which I will venture to make the following quota-
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 11 
 
 tion from a volume which I published thirteen 
 years ago 1 : 
 
 Let me say at once that I have no sort of sympathy 
 with accusations of ' schism ' and ' hostility to the Church,' 
 made by Churchmen against Nonconformists. To me it 
 seems absurd to charge the sin of schism against English 
 Nonconformists, considering their history in all its bearings. 
 As a Churchman I am grateful to them for having done 
 so much for Christianity during periods of apathy and 
 supineness on the part of the Church of England. And 
 the more of the privileges of the Church of England they 
 are allowed to share, so long as no essential principle is 
 sacrificed on either side, the more do I rejoice. Nor do I 
 feel any resentment against Nonconformist hostility to 
 the Church. The existence of Nonconformity implies, of 
 course, antagonism to the established religion, and Church- 
 men have no right to blame Nonconformists for being 
 consistent and loyal to their own principles. The Christian 
 who does not believe in the superiority of his own com- 
 munion has no excuse for separation. Our Lord's dying 
 prayer was that all Christians might be one, not in heart 
 and spirit merely, but in outward appearance as well. It 
 was for a visible unity He prayed ; a unity which should 
 appeal to the world. ' Neither pray I for these [His 
 own immediate disciples] alone, but for them also 
 which believe on Me through their word, that they all 
 may be one ; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, 
 that they also may be one in Us, that the world may 
 believe that Thou hast sent Me.' It is therefore an 
 imperative Christian duty to allow nothing that is not 
 absolutely essential, nothing that does not belong to the 
 original deposit of Christian truth, or is not a necessary 
 corollary from it, to stand in the way of Christian unity. 
 
 1 Christianity in Relation to Science and Morals. Sixth edition, 
 pp. 280, 283.
 
 12 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 The divisions of Christendom are doubtless the greatest 
 of all hindrances to the spread of Christianity. I am sure 
 that Nonconformists are firmly convinced in their own 
 minds that their separation from the Church is justified 
 by the claims of truth. And so long as they hold that 
 opinion they are bound in honesty to oppose the Church 
 and strive to bring it over to their own way of thinking. 
 
 And again : 
 
 Surely there can be no lack of charity in holding to 
 what one believes to be the truth. But the Churchman 
 who believes that he possesses a larger measure of the truth 
 than those who have separated themselves from what the 
 late Dr. Lightfoot regards as the original constitution of 
 the Church is not entitled on that account to look down 
 upon them or to consider them less near to God than 
 himself. On the contrary, he is bound to believe that a 
 Dissenter who is morally on the same plane as himself is 
 relatively, and in the sight of God, on a higher level, 
 because his privileges are fewer. Our Lord warned the 
 self-righteous Pharisees of His day that many should 
 come from the east and west and sit down with Abraham 
 in the Kingdom of Heaven, while the children of the 
 Kingdom who had neglected or abused their privileges 
 would be cast out. So now the Nonconformist who makes 
 the most of his opportunities and walks according to 
 his lights is a better Christian than the Churchman who 
 scornfully looks down upon him and lives a meaner life. 
 And, after all, we must not forget that every baptised 
 Christian, whether he be a Nonconformist or not, is a 
 member of the Church. The Nonconformists of our day 
 have inherited their position, and it is not ours to sit in 
 judgment upon them. We are bound to adhere to what 
 we believe to be the truth. The rest we must leave to 
 Him who ' judgeth righteously.' Let us remember that
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 13 
 
 some of the greatest prophets who illumined the history 
 of the Jewish Church belonged to the Kingdom of Israel 
 with its schismatical worship and irregular priesthood. 
 That Churchman must .indeed be blind, and worse than 
 blind, who fails to recognise the illustrious services that 
 English Nonconformity and Scotch Presbyterianism have 
 rendered to the cause of Christianity both at home and 
 abroad. It is a duty to acknowledge all this while 
 honestly contending for our own principles. 
 
 I make these quotations to show you that this 
 attitude of mind towards Nonconformists is not 
 on my part a superficial feeling extemporised for 
 the occasion, but a matured conviction enforced by 
 study and experience. And I believe that the 
 great body of the Anglican clergy share my feeling. 
 I can certainly vouch for my own early teachers in 
 theology, who were, for the most part, High Church- 
 men, such as the late Dr. Bright, Regius Professor 
 of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford. Much inter- 
 course with Mr. Gladstone from my youth, through 
 his writings, private correspondence, and conversa- 
 tion, was also a powerful factor in teaching me 
 that it is possible for an English Churchman to be 
 true and loyal to his own convictions and principles 
 and yet recognise the place and service of other 
 members of the Christian family outside his own 
 communion. It is of course the duty of every True and 
 sincere Christian who believes that God wills His seiytism. 
 Church to be one family, not an aggregation of 
 opposing sects, to do his best to bring Noncon- 
 formists, whether Protestants or Catholics, into
 
 14 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 conformity with his own belief if he believes 
 the points of difference to be fundamental, or to 
 conform to theirs if he believes the differences 
 to be non-essential. What our Saviour prayed for 
 was a visible unity among His followers a unity 
 that would appeal to the reason and conscience of 
 mankind as attesting the Divine Mission of the 
 Church's Founder a unity which owned ' one 
 Lord, one Faith, one Baptism,' in a polity so 
 framed and recognised * that there should be no 
 schism in the body.' A division of labour indeed 
 there must and ought to be, as in every healthy 
 organism, but no division of disruptive and 
 mutually hostile forces. 
 
 Gospel This is the Gospel ideal of Christian unity, 
 
 Christian an( l i^ i s ^ ne duty of every loyal follower of Christ 
 to work towards it. But it is impossible to shut 
 one's eyes to the fact that Christendom has been 
 divided, and more or less disorganised, for cen- 
 turies, and that it is impracticable at this time 
 of day to apportion the blame equitably all round. 
 Let us remember the warning to the men of Judah 
 when they would force the Ten Tribes back under 
 the sceptre of the House of David : ' Thus saith 
 the Lord, Ye shall not go up, nor fight against 
 your brethren the children of Israel : return 
 every man to his house ; for this thing is from 
 Me.' Mysterious are the ways of Providence, 
 who sometimes makes the perverseness and the 
 passions of men minister at once to their own
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PAETY 15 
 
 punishment and to His purposes. That the 
 divisions of Christendom are contrary to His will 
 we can have no doubt. That He is using them 
 for His own ends and in His own way is certain. 
 Our part is not to forestall His processes, but to 
 watch and pray, to remove unnecessary barriers, 
 to promote good- will, to ' make the crooked straight 
 and the rough places plain ' to the best of our 
 ability. It would need more than human judgment 
 to distribute the guilt of separation in this country 
 equitably between Church and Dissent. Our busi- 
 ness as Churchmen is to build up our people in the 
 faith, to make the service of the Church attractive, 
 and to illustrate and recommend her doctrines by 
 our practice. This is the most Christian, as it is the 
 most effectual, method of proselytising. I have 
 little faith in controversial proselytism, and still less 
 in using the opportunities which our schools give 
 us to shake the faith of Nonconformist children 
 in the religion of their parents. It is a serious 
 thing to cast doubt on the form of religion 
 which a child has learnt from a mother's lips. To 
 uproot that is often to pluck up the good seed also, 
 and to leave the mind fallow and unfruitful. 
 And, moreover, the staunchest Churchman will 
 admit that the religion of the Nonconformist errs 
 by defect rather than by violation of any Christian 
 doctrine ; that what he affirms is generally right, 
 and needs to be supplemented rather than contra- 
 dicted. To tell the children of Dissenters that
 
 16 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 their parents are in schism, and that schism is a 
 great sin, seems to me monstrous and cruel. 
 Maxima debetur puero reverentia is a maxim which 
 holds good, especially in regard to the religious 
 impressions of childhood. To disturb them is to 
 incur a grave responsibility, for it is not only the 
 religion of the child which is at stake, but its trust 
 in its parents in addition. To unsettle the faith 
 even of an adult Christian is no light thing. It 
 Newman was characteristic of Newman that he never laid 
 iy n tism. se himself out for making converts. I enjoyed the 
 privilege of his friendship for more than twenty 
 years, and, although he was ever ready to answer 
 my questions, and deigned even sometimes to 
 argue with me, he never once by word or letter 
 tried to shake my faith in rny own communion or 
 inveigle me into his. And I know more than one 
 instance of his refusing to receive converts from 
 the English Church after an interview with them. 
 I once took the liberty of asking him the reason. 
 
 It is always perilous [he answered] to upset a man's 
 faith in the religion of his childhood and youth unless 
 you have good ground for believing that you can plant 
 a better securely on its ruins. Persons sometimes seek 
 admission into our Church from a sudden impulse, or 
 from some disappointment, or because of scandals in 
 their own communion, or by reason of some difficulty 
 in matters of faith which they think will be at once re- 
 moved on joining the Catholic Church. They find that 
 the reality does not come up to their ideal, and the dis- 
 covery makes them bad Catholics and worse Christians
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 17 
 
 than they were before ; or they make shipwreck of their 
 faith altogether and pass on to some form of infidelity. 
 In this matter I am at variance with some high ecclesi- 
 astics here and abroad who appear to think that it is as 
 easy to believe as to obey, and thus sometimes turn good 
 Protestants into bad Catholics, or worse. 
 
 But I honestly believe that the cases in which 
 
 tism in 
 
 Voluntary schools have been used as proselytising church 
 agencies have been so rare as to supply no basis rare. 
 for argument. My own belief, indeed, is that the 
 parochial clergy have paid too little heed to the 
 religious instruction in their schools. They have 
 left it for the most part to the schoolmaster, and his 
 temptation till lately has been to slur it over and 
 concentrate his efforts on those subjects which 
 counted in the Government grant. It is not 
 without careful inquiry and some experience that I 
 express my opinion that the religious instruction 
 given generally in our Voluntary schools has been 
 very far from satisfactory as regards distinctive 
 grounding in the rudiments of Church of England 
 doctrine. If our Voluntary schools were such hot- 
 beds of propagandism as they are represented to 
 be in the fevered rhetoric of platform orators and 
 newspaper writers, there ought to be comparatively 
 few Nonconformists left, especially in the rural 
 districts, considering the monopoly which the clergy 
 of the Established Church have so long enjoyed. 
 But the Nonconformists have never been in a 
 more flourishing condition. Their fears would, I 
 
 c
 
 18 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 imagine, be speedily alleviated if they could only test 
 the religious knowledge of the last two generations 
 of men and women who have been brought up in 
 the Voluntary schools. I am afraid that in the 
 minds of most of them catechetical instruction, 
 even aided by ' the religious atmosphere ' of which 
 we hear so much, has left but a hazy and colour- 
 less impression of definite doctrine. 
 
 I have written so far in order to clear the 
 ground, so that you may see that I approach the 
 consideration of this subject free from prejudices, 
 partialities, or any kind of arriere pensee. At this 
 moment I feel quite unable to decide in my own 
 mind whether the Education Bill is more likely 
 to benefit than to injure the Church schools. 
 Churchmen, both lay and clerical, more competent 
 to judge than myself, have arrived at directly 
 opposite conclusions on that point. This proves 
 at least that the denunciation of the Bill as the 
 offspring of a clerical conspiracy ' to destroy 
 Dissent ' in the interest of the Church is a myth 
 which rests on nothing. 
 
 Let me now come to close quarters with the 
 subject. 
 
 Noncon- My first point is the claim which the Non- 
 
 ciaSTto a conformists make to a monopoly of grievances in 
 o7g n rie p v ly this matter. But a little reflection will surely 
 snow that Churchmen have grievances under the 
 present system not less serious than any which
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 19 
 
 Nonconformists are likely to have under the new 
 system : grievances which will only be mitigated, 
 not removed, by the Bill. And let us remember 
 that the test of a grievance is not the opinion of 
 those who do not feel it, but the opinion of those 
 who do. The Cowper-Temple clause, with its 
 corollary of what is erroneously called ' undenomi- 
 national religious education,' is not felt as a 
 grievance by Nonconformists. It has always been 
 felt as a very hard grievance by Churchmen. It is 
 quite as obnoxious to them as the teaching of the 
 Church Catechism is to Nonconformists. Noncon- 
 formists may think this unreasonable. But that is 
 not the question. There are Churchmen who 
 think the Nonconformist objection to the Church 
 Catechism which, after all, hardly differs in 
 essentials from Presbyterian formularies plus the 
 Conscience clause, unreasonable. But Churchmen 
 and Nonconformists are not proper judges of 
 each other's grievances. I am ready to apply my 
 test all round, and to admit Nonconformist griev- 
 ances on the testimony of the Nonconformist 
 conscience even in cases where I may not feel able 
 to sympathise with it. You are a man of broad 
 sympathies and equitable mind, and I confidently 
 claim your assent to these two propositions : first, Twofold 
 that it is the duty of the State to provide for the the state, 
 mass of the population as good a secular education chamber 
 as circumstances will allow ; secondly, that it is view! 
 likewise the duty of the State to provide facilities 
 
 c 2
 
 20 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 for every denomination to teach its own creed to 
 its own children in all State schools. The pro- 
 blem is how to combine these two desiderata. 
 They are not combined under the present system, 
 nor are they combined in the Government scheme. 
 Mr. Chamberlain, in his Birmingham speech, 
 expressed his own preference in the abstract, and 
 by implication that of the Government, for 
 divorcing the question of religion entirely from the 
 purview of the Government. But circumstances, 
 in his opinion, put that solution beyond the range 
 of practical politics, because, in the first place, 
 public opinion insisted on some residuum of reli- 
 gion being taught in all State schools ; and, in the 
 next place, there were the Voluntary schools 
 greatly outnumbering the Board schools which 
 would have to be purchased at- a cost which 
 Mr. Chamberlain thought the public would not 
 sanction. My own belief is that if the Govern- 
 ment had based their Bill on the lines which Mr. 
 Chamberlain thinks impracticable they could have 
 made out such a case as would have gradually and 
 speedily won the support of a large majority of the 
 constituencies. It is the only system which offers 
 a final and an equitable settlement ; l and in view 
 of that fact I believe that the country would not 
 
 1 I came to this conclusion years ago. In a volume which I pub- 
 lished eight years ago (Life Here and Hereafter, second edition, 
 p. 298) I said : ' I see no solution short of a purely secular education 
 in State schools, coupled with facilities for religious teaching, supplied 
 by Church and Nonconformists under equitable conditions.'
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 21 
 
 grudge the cost of purchasing the Voluntary Dr. Clif- 
 ford's 
 schools. The most active and prominent cnam- solution 
 
 pion of the Nonconformists against the Education corollary. 
 Bill is Dr. Clifford, and he did not shrink from 
 facing the cost. I quote the following from one 
 of his vigorous letters to the ' Daily News ' : 
 
 Why not take our courage in both hands as citizens, 
 and fling aside this clerically inspired Bill, eject denomina- 
 tionalism from education altogether, buy the ' voluntary 
 schools ' from their present possessors, if they are willing 
 to part with them, or rent them for so many hours a day 
 for public education, publicly controlled, leaving the 
 Anglican Church to teach, at its own cost, its own dis- 
 tinctive teaching at other times ? You, Sir, told us that 
 our country paid twenty millions to free itself from the 
 slave trade ; it would be a wise investment, if it cost us 
 twice that amount, to pay it in order to emancipate the 
 education of this country from the ' crippling ' influence 
 of sectarianism. We might then expect to come into line 
 with the educational work of our kinsmen of the United 
 States and of our Colonies. The people must claim to 
 control and manage, through their directly chosen repre- 
 sentatives, the whole of that training of the citizens of 
 to-morrow for which they pay ; and then there will be 
 some prospect of attaining the maximum of economy and 
 efficiency and progress in our State education. 
 
 But let it be clearly understood that the fair 
 and logical correlative of this is the entire ex- 
 clusion of religious instruction in any form from 
 the curriculum of subjects supplied or controlled 
 by the State. Bible reading, with or without note 
 or comment, would thus be outside the cognisance
 
 22 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 of the State teacher, and that misleading and 
 meaningless catch-phrase, ' undenominational re- 
 ligious teaching,' would vanish from the field 
 
 Unde- of controversy. Undenominational education is 
 logically and in fact the negation of Christianity, 
 and even of Theism. A Christian education from 
 which creeds and dogmas are expelled is a con- 
 
 tianity, tradiction in terms. Christianity solicits on the 
 
 and even 
 
 of Theism, threshold of religious teaching an answer to the 
 imperious question, ' What think ye of Christ ? 
 Whose son is He ? ' The cavilling Jews gave an 
 answer charged with a dilemma which silenced 
 them out of their own Scriptures. The School 
 Board teacher cannot give an answer which is not 
 predicable of some denomination ; which does not, 
 in other words, violate the Cowper-Temple clause. 
 Forbid the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation, 
 and your religious instruction becomes Unitarian. 
 Forbid the Unitarian creed, and your religious 
 education becomes Agnostic or Atheistic. Belief 
 in God, a Being without beginning or end, is of all 
 dogmas the most tremendous. Natural religion 
 assumes and rests upon it. Yet it lies under the 
 ban of the Cowper-Temple clause in Board schools. 
 An education which is not distinctive of any 
 religion is not a religious education. 
 
 Argument But I may be told that the Sermon on the 
 
 sermon on Mount contains the most elevated morality, and 
 
 may be taught and expounded without the help 
 
 of any creed. Can it ? The mind of youth is
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 23 
 
 inquisitive. It asks questions which cannot be 
 evaded with crooked or make-believe answers 
 without serious injury to the moral character of 
 the questioner. Children are very acute to detect 
 a false note in the religious lesson of their teacher : 
 it jars painfully on their sensitive and ingenuous 
 natures. The Dean of Lincoln gave me a striking 
 and instructive illustration of this fact the other 
 day at Hawarden. A lady of his acquaintance 
 was a mistress in a London Board school, and she 
 chanced one day to hear the headmaster giving 
 the religious lesson to a class of boys. He was 
 explaining the Christian doctrine of miracles with 
 great ability, when one of the boys suddenly asked 
 him, ' Do you believe all that yourself, sir ? ' The 
 master admitted with a laugh that he did not. 
 What w r as the probable effect of that answer- 
 instinctively suspected before on the class ? Could 
 any method be devised more likely to undermine 
 the faith of the children ? The mistress who told 
 the story was so shocked that she resigned and 
 gave up the profession of teaching. Now, suppose 
 a Board child were to ask his teacher, ' Was Jesus 
 who preached the Sermon on the Mount God ? ' 
 If the teacher answer, ' Yes,' his lesson is distinc- 
 tive of Christianity, which is a violation of the 
 Cowper-Temple clause. If he answer, ' No,' he 
 teaches Socinianism, which is equally forbidden by 
 the Cowper-Ternple clause. If he answer, ' I am 
 forbidden to tell you,' he is very likely to destroy
 
 24 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 in the children's minds the authority and moral 
 effect of the Sermon on the Mount. For let us 
 remember that the ethical teaching of the Sermon 
 on the Mount is in substance found in writings 
 outside the pale of Christianity : in Seneca, 
 Epietetus, Marcus Aurelius, Plato, and others. 
 The unique distinction between Christ and other 
 teachers was not so much in the difference of the 
 morality which they taught respectively as in the 
 authority and power of the Teacher. ' He taught 
 as One having authority, and not as the Scribes.' 
 Their assertions and precepts had no sanction 
 behind to enforce them. He taught truths with 
 the authority of One who claimed to be Himself 
 ' the Way, the Truth, and the Life.' Above all, 
 other teachers could only exhort ; they could give 
 no power to enable their disciples to practise the 
 morality which the teachers taught. * His word 
 was with power.' He offered and imparted the 
 strength which enabled His disciples to obey His 
 precepts. Apart from the Incarnation and ' the 
 life and immortality ' which it ' brought to light,' 
 what is there in the Sermon on the Mount that 
 men should obey it ? ' Let us eat and drink, for 
 to-morrow we die ' is the rational precept of Un- 
 denominationalism, which knows nothing of God, 
 of a future life, of retribution dogging the sinner's 
 heels. These doctrines are distinctive of creeds, 
 and a creed denotes a denomination. 
 
 An undenominational religion is therefore in this
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 25 
 
 world impossible, and is consequently an imposture Unde- 
 in addition. It is possible in Heaven, where there tionai* 
 is only one religion and one denomination. But i m p g d n 
 there is no room for it in a world of many sects 8 
 and various creeds, and the attempt to construct 
 such a religion is as irrational as the task of the 
 artist who tried to fashion a statue of ideal beauty 
 by selecting and combining the features and limbs 
 of the most beautiful men he knew, and succeeded 
 in making a monster. There is no substratum of 
 religion common to all denominations, any more 
 than there is a substratum of human beauty 
 common to the race. If logic and common sense 
 are to be our guides, we must relegate Undenomi- 
 nationalism to the realm of Heaven or of Utopia. 
 It does not exist now ; it never has existed, and 
 never can. ' With w r ords we govern men,' says 
 Lord Beaconsfield in one of his novels ; and the 
 idea of a religion which is creedless and amorphous 
 and of universal application is an admirable ex- 
 ample of mere words to govern unreflecting minds 
 with empty phrases. I say that an undenomina- 
 tional system of religious education has never 
 existed outside the four corners of the Education 
 Act of 1870. Under that Act there has been 
 either no religious education at all or various 
 kinds of denominational teaching. Look at the 
 facts. 
 
 The School Board in each district exercises Testimony 
 autocratic powers. I believe the reading of the
 
 26 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 Bible is universal in Board schools. But the 
 Board may either forbid the teachers to make any 
 note or comment or allow them free discretion in 
 the matter. The former method exists in a small 
 minority of Board schools, but the latter is the 
 prevalent practice. It follows that under the 
 School Board system any religion may be taught, 
 or none : the latter where comment on the Bible 
 is forbidden ; the former where it is allowed at 
 the discretion of the teacher. Prohibition of 
 catechisms and formularies is a mischievous 
 farce so long as the teacher is allowed to give 
 Bible lessons with comments. With this latitude 
 he may box the compass of sectarianism from 
 Agnosticism to Ultramontanism, from Esoteric 
 Buddhism to Papal Infallibility. 1 A catechism 
 
 catechism. 
 
 drawn up for his own school by an obscure country 
 clergyman some years ago, and probably not 
 known outside that parish till the Liberation 
 Society got hold of it and distributed it by the 
 thousand, has often been quoted as an example of 
 
 1 In a letter in to-day's Times (October 27) I read : ' Dr. Clifford, 
 in reply to a question, " Could teachers explain the doctrine of the 
 divinity of Christ in a Unitarian sense ? " said, " Provision was made 
 for the individual teacher using the Bible to express his own views." 
 (See the Times of April 28, 1893.)' This is said of the London School 
 Board, and it bears out to the letter my assertion that under the School 
 Board system any religion may be taught, or none. It all depends on 
 the teacher's 'own views.' Hitherto these views have generally 
 symbolised with the Creed of the Church of England. In another 
 generation they may be widely different and multiform. But in all 
 cases they will be denominational the views of the denomination to 
 which the teacher belongs. Undenominational they cannot be.
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 27 
 
 the intolerant teaching given in Church of Eng- 
 land schools. I have never seen the catechism, 
 and it may deserve all the censure and abuse 
 which have been poured upon it. Judging by the 
 extracts which I have seen quoted from it, I am 
 sure it would be a libel on the English clergy to 
 accuse them of sympathising with such teaching. 
 But my point is that if Mr. Gace were a Board- 
 school teacher he could teach, and quite con- 
 scientiously, all that is in his catechism, with the 
 Bible for his only text-book. In matter of fact, 
 the Cowper-Temple clause offers no security what- 
 ever against denominational teaching. To be clause no 
 
 security 
 
 effective there must be a test for teachers, and a against 
 strict scrutiny of their religious opinions and teaching, 
 beliefs. Unsectarian religious teaching without 
 formularies, but with comments in Bible lessons, 
 means the religious opinions of each individual 
 teacher. For, if you lay down for the teacher's 
 guidance the irreducible minimum of what you 
 believe to be common to all denominations, you 
 at once prescribe a formulary ; and that is for- 
 bidden. And in the election of a Board-school 
 teacher there must be no religious test ; the 
 Cowper-Temple clause forbids it. There must be 
 no scrutiny of the religious or irreligious opinions 
 of the teachers ; and therefore it follows that you 
 may have a Koman Catholic teacher in a school 
 where all the pupils are Protestants, or a Pro- 
 testant where a large proportion of the scholars
 
 28 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 are Roman Catholics ; a Unitarian where there is 
 not a single Unitarian scholar ; and an Agnostic 
 to teach Christian children : all expounding the 
 Bible according to their own several beliefs and 
 fancies. Can anything be imagined better calcu- 
 lated to discredit the Bible and undermine the 
 foundation of religion altogether ? A Board- 
 school teacher lately published the following fact. 
 He told the School Board when he was elected 
 that he was an Agnostic, and begged therefore to 
 be excused from giving Bible lessons. But he 
 was not excused. What sort of religion, what 
 respect for religion of any sort, are children likely 
 to learn from a teacher who does not believe in 
 the Bible at all, or in a single article of the creed 
 of Christendom ? And that class of teacher is 
 very much on the increase. 
 
 The teacher's honesty is not in question so 
 long as he explains the Bible according to his 
 convictions. And it is marvellous with what ease 
 some good and earnest men will sometimes find 
 their own opinions plainly taught in the Bible. 
 
 I remember a story of an excellent Scotch 
 Presbyterian minister, who considered Prelacy the 
 great mischief of the day. So he went on week 
 after week and month after month thundering 
 against Episcopacy. His congregation found this 
 rather monotonous, and the Elders at last called 
 on the minister and told him that the congregation 
 were tired of his denunciation of Episcopacy, and
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 29 
 
 would like him to preach on some fresh subject. 
 He answered that he was very sorry, but the fact 
 was that he could not open his Bible anywhere 
 without finding Episcopacy condemned. Th6 Elders 
 offered to find him a text which had no reference 
 to Episcopacy, and gave him the first verse of the 
 Bible. On the following Sunday the good man 
 mounted the pulpit, gave out his text, and looking 
 his congregation earnestly in the face, said, ' " In 
 the beginning God created the heaven and the 
 earth." Certainly, my brethren ; but there is 
 not a word here about His having created 
 bishops.' 
 
 Under the present Board-school system the 
 honest teacher will either teach his own denomina- 
 tional faith out of the Bible or dishonestly dis- 
 semble his convictions and teach what he does not 
 believe, like the Agnostic expounder of miracles 
 already referred to. In either case the effect on 
 teacher and taught alike must be most demoralising. 
 
 But it may be urged that the teaching given in Religious 
 Board schools has been, on the whole, satisfactory, in Board 
 I admit it with thankfulness ; but the admission 
 will not help the Undenominationalists. For the 
 fact is that the teachers in the Board schools 
 hitherto have for the most part been trained in 
 the same institutions as the teachers in the 
 Voluntary schools, and have given much the same 
 instruction, consisting mainly of the rudiments 
 of the Christian religion instruction which Non-
 
 30 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 conformist children might receive, and have in 
 many cases received, without forsaking their own 
 communion. In many instances Nonconformist 
 children who have attended the religious lesson 
 in the Church school on week days attend their 
 own chapel and Sunday school on the Sunday. I 
 am persuaded, after extensive inquiry, that contro- 
 versial religious lessons aimed at Nonconformists 
 are almost unknown in Church schools. An isolated 
 case here and there is an insufficient foundation 
 for a general indictment. The portentous pro- 
 minence given to Mr. Gace's catechism proves 
 that it was a rare exotic in uncongenial soil. The 
 religious instruction in Church schools has been 
 generally given by the schoolmaster who has come 
 out of the training colleges which have supplied 
 The clergy the great majority of Board schools. The clergy 
 schools. o f the Church of England have their faults, for 
 they are human ; and there are doubtless bigots, 
 fools, and tactless men among so many thousands. 
 But I believe that they are as a body men of 
 honour and self-sacrificing lives, who promoted the 
 education of the masses in a tolerant and unsec- 
 tarian spirit when the public conscience was 
 somewhat apathetic and lethargic on the subject. 
 And I am sure that it would be difficult to find a 
 parish priest among them all who would sanction 
 the perversion of a school lesson to the odious 
 purpose of unsettling the religious convictions of 
 Nonconformist children. I believe, my dear friend,
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 31 
 
 that if you had secret telephonic communication 
 with every Church school in England, and were to 
 listen ad libitum to the religious lessons, you would 
 hear extremely little of which you would disap- 
 prove. The religious difficulty exists much more 
 in excited and suspicious imaginations than in the 
 realm of sober and prosaic facts. 
 
 But there is another aspect of this question 
 with respect to which the conduct of the Non- Noncon- 
 conformists has greatly surprised me : I mean the 
 Erastian attitude which they have taken up. A 
 distinguished member of your own communion, 
 Mr. Justice Romer, has protested in the ' Times ' 
 and elsewhere against this departure from the 
 doctrine and traditions of Nonconformity. Surely 
 it destroys the raison d'etre of the Liberation 
 Society, which exists for the purpose of liberating 
 Christianity from the patronage and control of the 
 State. Yet here is the whole Nonconformist body 
 agitating public opinion in support of a State 
 system of religious education. Is not this a great 
 declension ? But I would rather express my 
 opinion in the words of one whose name and 
 memory we both revere. In the year 1894 Mr. 
 Gladstone published an Essay from which I take 
 the following extract : 
 
 Nowhere, so far as my knowledge goes, is this essential Mr - Glad - 
 difference between the temporal and the spiritual kingdom Erastian- 
 laid down with a bolder and firmer hand than in the l! m and 
 
 Noncon- 
 
 confessional documents of the Scottish Presbyterian formity.
 
 52 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 system. It may be due to that Christian courage that 
 Scottish Presbyterianism has been found strong enough 
 to exhibit in this nineteenth century of ours examples of 
 self-sacrifice and faith which have drawn forth tributes of 
 admiration from the Christian world at large. Conversely, 
 of all the counterfeits of religion there is in my view 
 none so base as that which passes current under the name 
 of Erastianism, and of which it has been my privilege to 
 witness, during the course of the present century, the 
 gradual decline and almost extinction, especially among 
 the luminaries of the political world. This is not a 
 question between a clergy and a laity, but between the 
 Church and the world. Divine revelation has a sphere, 
 no less than a savour, of its own. It dwelt of old with 
 the prophets, the priests, and the congregation ; it now 
 dwells with the Christian people, rulers and ruled ; and 
 this strictly in their character as Christian people, as 
 subjects of God the Holy Ghost engaged in the holy 
 warfare, which began with the entrance of sin into the 
 world, and which can never end but with its expulsion. 
 Foul fall the day when the persons of this world shall, on 
 whatever pretext, take into their uncommissioned hands 
 the manipulation of the religion of our Lord and Saviour. 
 The State, labouring in its own domain, is a great, nay, a 
 venerable object ; so is the family. These are the organic 
 units, constitutive of human societies. Let the family 
 transgress and usurp the functions of the State ; its 
 aberrations will be short, find a power it cannot resist will 
 soon reduce its action within proper limits. But the 
 State is, in this world, the master of all coercive means ; 
 and its usurpations, should they occur, cannot be checked 
 by any specific instruments included among standing 
 social provisions. If the State should think proper to 
 frame new creeds by cutting the old ones into pieces and 
 throwing them into the cauldron to be reboiled, we have 
 no remedy except such as may lie among the resources of
 
 AND THE LIBEKAL PARTY 33 
 
 the providence of God. It is fair to add. that the State 
 is in this matter beset by severe temptations ; the vehicle 
 through which those temptations work will probably, in 
 this country at least, be supplied by popular education. 
 
 The Church, disabled and discredited by her divisions, 
 has found it impracticable to assert herself as the universal 
 guide. Among the fragments of the body a certain 
 number have special affinities, and in particular regions 
 or conjunctions of circumstances it would be very easy to 
 frame an undenominational religion much to their liking, 
 divested of many salient points needful in the view of 
 historic Christendom for a complete Christianity. Such a 
 scheme the State might be tempted to authorise by law 
 in public elementary teaching nay, to arm it with ex- 
 clusive and prohibitory powers, as against other and more 
 developed methods which the human conscience, sole 
 legitimate arbiter in these matters, together with the 
 Spirit of God, may have devised for itself in the more or 
 less successful effort to obtain this guidance. It is in 
 this direction that we have recently been moving, and the 
 motion is toward a point where a danger signal is already 
 lifted. Such an undenominational religion as this could 
 have no promise of permanence. None from authority ? 
 for the assumed right to give it is the negation of all 
 authority. None from piety, for it involves at the very 
 outset the surrender of the work of the Divine Kingdom 
 into the hands of the civil ruler. None from policy, 
 because any and every change that may take place in 
 the sense of the constituent bodies, or any among them, 
 will supply for each successive change precisely the same 
 warrant as was the groundwork of the original proceed- 
 ing. Whatever happens, let Christianity keep its own 
 acts to its own agents, and not make them over to hands 
 which would justly be deemed profane and sacrilegious 
 if they came to trespass in the province of the sanctuary. 1 
 
 1 Later Gleanings, p. 302. 
 
 D
 
 34 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 I had many conversations with Mr. Gladstone 
 on this subject both before and after he wrote this 
 essay, and I can bear witness to the serious anxiety 
 with which he regarded the probable recrudescence 
 of a baleful Erastianism, blighting all true religion 
 through the development of a State elementary 
 education on the lines of so-called undenomi- 
 nationalism, which he publicly denounced as * a 
 moral monster.' He always disliked it as at once 
 a sham and a snare, promising what it could not 
 fulfil, and fraudulently obtaining goods on false 
 pretences. He accepted as Premier the Cowper- 
 Temple clause under the stress of one of those 
 Parliamentary exigencies with which the most 
 powerful Ministers are sometimes obliged to reckon. 
 I well remember the scorn with which he once 
 spoke to me about that clause. ' What an absurdity 
 it is,' he said, ' to abolish catechisms and formu- 
 laries in schools and leave Bible lessons ! It is 
 putting a premium on dishonesty in the teachers. 
 I could teach any religion in Christendom out of 
 the Bible if I were so minded : sincerely if I 
 believed it, dishonestly if I did not.' He blamed 
 the Conservative Opposition for their apathy in the 
 matter, which he attributed to the indifference of 
 Mr. Disraeli ; and he added that if Sir Stafford 
 Northcote had come forward in time with his pro- 
 posal on the lines of Dr. Hook's plan it might 
 have been carried in lieu of the Cowper-Ternple 
 clause.
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 35 
 
 For all these reasons, then, the Cowper-Temple Cowper- 
 clause, with its miscalled undenominational teach- clause a 
 ing, is as repugnant to the reason and feelings of toChurch- 
 Churchmen as the religious teaching given in 
 Church of England schools can be to Nonconfor- 
 mists. And I am sure you will admit that a 
 system of which Mr. Gladstone disapproved so 
 intensely and distrusted so profoundly cannot be 
 dismissed as an imaginary grievance. But the real 
 point is that it is felt as a very real grievance by 
 a class of men as numerous as the Nonconformists, 
 and not less earnest and sincere. They are forced 
 to pay towards the maintenance of a nondescript 
 religious education to which they strongly object ; 
 and they pay at the .same time towards the sup- 
 port of schools in which the religious education 
 of which they disapprove can be taught. Is not 
 their case as hard as any that can be made out on 
 behalf of the Nonconformists ? It is no answer to 
 say that the Nonconformists are not satisfied with 
 the religious teaching given in Board schools. 
 They not only acquiesce in it gladly ; they defend 
 
 it strenuously. But I find myself relieved of the Gri evance 
 J J of church- 
 
 necessity of arguing the point, for it is admitted on men ad- 
 mitted by 
 behalf of the Liberal Opposition, including both the the Oppo- 
 
 leaders and their followers. Lying before me as 
 I write is a very able book entitled ' Liberalism : its 
 Principles and Proposals,' brought up to date. It 
 was published this year with a laudatory introduc- 
 tion by the Eight Hon. H. H. Asquith, K.C., M.P., 
 
 D 2
 
 36 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 and the author is now standing as Liberal candi- 
 date for the Cleveland Division of Yorkshire. Mr. 
 Asquith's introduction opens with the following 
 sentence : 
 
 This volume appears to me to supply a much-felt want 
 by presenting, in a form at once comprehensive and com- 
 pact, a restatement of Liberal principles in their applica- 
 tion to the most urgent problems of contemporary politics. 
 
 The book was hailed with acclamation by the 
 leading organs of Liberalism and Nonconformity. 
 Well, I open the book at p. 219, and find that, 
 after stating trenchantly the grievances of Non- 
 conformists, the author very frankly proceeds : 
 
 Nor are thoss the only grievances to which the system 
 gives rise. In two-thirds of the country Board schools 
 and Voluntary schools exist side by side, and those who 
 wish the children to be given denominational teaching 
 have not only to pay the School Board rate, but to sub- 
 scribe to the schools of their sect as well. Their position 
 is much the same as that of the Dissenters in the days of 
 Church rates, whom conscience compelled to give to the 
 chapel and law compelled to give also to the church. 
 
 I have carefully followed the controversy on 
 the Education Bill in Parliament and outside, but 
 I cannot recall a single admission on the part of 
 its opponents that Churchmen have any grievance 
 at all. Yet here it is openly acknowledged in the 
 latest text-book of the Liberal creed, with the 
 imprimatur of one of the ablest and most in- 
 fluential of the Liberal leaders. The grievance
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 37 
 
 has lasted for a generation ; yet I have never heard 
 of a Churchman, still less of a combination of 
 Churchmen in voluntary or official association, 
 proclaiming their intention to refuse to pay rates 
 and defy the law. 
 
 But I have not yet done with the volume which 
 has come out under the auspices of Mr. Asquith. 
 The author, while giving frank expression to his 
 own opinions and preferences, is at the same 
 time capable of appreciating the obstacles which 
 circumstances and considerations of equity place 
 in the way of what seems to him abstractedly 
 the best solution. He sums up the case as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 Three courses are open to a State faced by religious 
 differences among its citizens. It may support no Church ; 
 it may support all Churches ; or it may support one. The 
 English system of primary schools is supposed to combine 
 the first two of these courses. The Board schools belong 
 to no Church ; the religious teaching in them is meant to 
 embody the points to which all sects agree. [An impossi- 
 bility, as I have shown.] The Voluntary schools belong 
 to all Churches ; each teaches the creed of its founders, 
 and all are helped indiscriminately by the State. But 
 the practice has not been made to square with the theory. 
 
 For there are many places where the only 
 available school is a Voluntary Denominational 
 school, and where the doctrine of the denomination 
 is taught, with the protection of the Conscience 
 clause for the children of Nonconformists. The 
 area covered by these denominational schools was
 
 38 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 so large in 1870 that the Education Act of that 
 year could not displace them by Board schools 
 without violent injustice and wanton waste of 
 public money. The State was thus obliged to 
 utilise them, and this it did by payment of a money 
 grant to all Voluntary schools accepting the Con- 
 science clause and certified by the Government 
 inspector to be up to the standard of efficiency in 
 the secular knowledge demanded by the Act of 
 1870. The result was, in Mr. Samuel's words, 
 that ' the right of supplying education to the 
 parishes then unprovided was thrown open to 
 scramble.' In this scramble the Church of Eng- 
 land, the Eoman Catholics, and the Wesleyans 
 were almost the only denominations which took any 
 part. At present the state of the case is as follows, 
 increase In 1870 there were 8,281 Voluntary schools ; there 
 position*^ are now about 14,000. In 1870 these schools were 
 educating 1,693,000 children ; they are now edu- 
 cating 3,000,000 in round numbers. The Volun- 
 tary schools are divided as follows : 
 
 Church of England . . . 11,731 
 
 Koman Catholic . . . 1,053 
 
 Wesleyans .... 458 
 
 British schools and others . 1,052 
 
 All these schools are under the control of 
 managers or committees who appoint and dismiss 
 the teachers, the Government paying a grant on 
 the fulfilment of its conditions, but taking no
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 39 
 
 cognisance of religion further than by insisting on 
 the Conscience clause. 
 
 ' The plan of reform,' Mr. Samuel thinks, ' which 
 would, no doubt, best please the Sectarian party is for the 
 State to undertake the entire cost of the Voluntary schools 
 while leaving to them the entire control. Such a plan 
 could not for a moment be entertained by Liberals,' 
 although ' it would make these schools more efficient for 
 the purposes of education.' 
 
 ' Those who combine a belief in religious equality 
 with an earnest wish for the progress of education 
 would be best pleased with a directly opposite 
 change. They would desire to see School Boards 
 established everywhere, and take under their 
 management all the Voluntary schools,' on which 
 they would enforce the ' undenominational ' system 
 of religious education. It was of this system that 
 Mr. Gladstone, to whom the Liberal party is still 
 wont to appeal as its greatest leader, said : ' Foul 
 fall the day when the persons of this world shall, 
 on whatever pretext, take into their uncom- 
 missioned hands the manipulation of the religion 
 of our Lord and Saviour.' The * undenominational ' 
 system, in fact, excludes ' the religion of our Lord 
 and Saviour ' in favour of an imaginary protoplasm 
 of religion in which all creeds are supposed to 
 merge. 
 
 But Mr. Samuel is too sensible to believe that 
 the supporters of Voluntary schools would submit 
 quietly to the extinction with which the upholders
 
 40 
 
 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 Leading 
 Liberals 
 recom- 
 mended 
 the sub- 
 stance of 
 the Edu- 
 cation Bill 
 proleptic- 
 ally. 
 
 of ' religious equality ' ' would be best pleased,' and 
 too equitable to advocate the suppression of the 
 Voluntary schools by force. ' Such a measure 
 would be violently resisted as a measure of per- 
 secution,' and must, therefore, be dismissed from 
 the sphere of practical politics. ' So long as a 
 large majority of the nation insists on sectarian 
 schools you cannot close them by force.' 
 
 What, then, is to be done ? I give Mr. Samuel's 
 answer : 
 
 It seems probable, therefore, that when a reform is 
 undertaken it will be of some moderate kind. It may, 
 perhaps, place the Voluntary schools under the care of the 
 authorities which will doubtless soon be created to control 
 the system of primary education in each large area. It 
 may still recognise a sectarian committee of managers for 
 each separate school, but add to them representatives of 
 the whole body of ratepayers or parents. It may give 
 them a more generous financial support and insist on a 
 higher standard of efficiency. It may allow the sects 
 which have built the schools, have so long partly main- 
 tained them, and have managed them often with great 
 devotion and at great sacrifice, to continue at their own 
 cost the religious instruction which they prefer ; but it 
 would demand strong proofs that new denominational 
 schools were needed before it would allow them to be 
 built and the proper development of the School Board 
 system to be forestalled. Some grievances, it is true, 
 would still remain. But they would be less numerous 
 and far less acute than the grievances in this connection 
 of which the Nonconformists, the subscribers to the funds 
 of Voluntary schools, and the well-wishers of the children 
 who are taught in them, now have valid reason to com- 
 plain.
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 41 
 
 The words which I have just quoted were pub- 
 lished after the Education Bill had passed its period 
 of gestation in the Ministerial brain, otherwise I 
 should have conjectured that the draughtsman had 
 them before him when he was framing the Bill, so 
 accurately do they forecast that part of it on which 
 the Parliamentary Opposition and the Noncon- 
 formists have concentrated their assault ; and I 
 am not a little surprised that the brilliant and 
 distinguished Liberal leader who has introduced 
 the volume to the public should have joined in this 
 furious attack on an important part of what he 
 commends as ' a restatement of Liberal principles 
 in their application to the most urgent problems of 
 contemporary politics.' The discrepancy between 
 Mr. Asquith's sponsorship of Mr. Samuel's book 
 and his argument against the Bill, especially in his 
 speech in Parliament on October 27, will appear as 
 we examine the Bill, which I now proceed to do. 
 
 The Bill creates a Local Education Authority The Local 
 
 Authority. 
 
 which will control secular education in all ele- 
 mentary schools throughout the country, with the 
 exception of London, w r hich is left for future con- 
 sideration. This local authority will be either 
 the County or Borough Council of each district, 
 as the case may be, with a view to the unification 
 of all education primary, secondary, technical 
 under one authority within the respective areas. 
 This authority necessarily supersedes the existing 
 educational bodies, including School Boards.
 
 42 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 The Local Education Authority is supreme 
 over the entire curriculum of secular education in 
 every elementary school within its area, whether 
 denominational or undenominational. In the case 
 of Voluntary schools it has the right to appoint 
 two-sixths of the managers, the right of inspection, 
 the right to veto the appointment or secure the 
 dismissal of any teacher whom it deems in- 
 competent to conduct the secular education ; but 
 it has no right to object on the ground of religion, 
 provided the teacher is qualified on educational 
 grounds. It holds the power of the purse abso- 
 lutely, for not a farthing of the money contributed 
 by the State, either by rate or grant, can be spent 
 without its approval. Practically, therefore, the 
 managers are absolutely under the control of the 
 Local Education Authority, which is popularly 
 elected. The money of the ratepayers is thus in 
 the safe keeping of their elected representatives, 
 to disburse or withhold according as they are 
 satisfied or dissatisfied with the management of 
 the school in each place. But the County or 
 Borough Council cannot be expected to super- 
 intend personally the Voluntary schools under 
 their jurisdiction in addition to its other duties. 
 To meet this objection a moiety of the managers 
 must be elected by the ratepayers, and these 
 elected managers can effectually put a stop to any 
 delinquency on the part of the majority by report- 
 ing it to the Education Authority, which holds the
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 43 
 
 purse-strings. In this way the ratepayers have 
 practically as complete control over the distribu- 
 tion of their money as if all the managers were 
 elected by them. Indeed, it is probable that the 
 minority, regarding themselves as the custodians 
 in a special sense of the ratepayers' money, will 
 watch over it with a stricter vigilance than would 
 be exercised if all the managers were chosen by 
 the ratepayers. 
 
 But is not the sound constitutional principle of NO taxa- 
 no taxation without representation both belated out^re 
 and inapplicable in this controversy? The op- sentation 
 ponents of the Education Bill have now for many 
 years been paying taxes in support of Voluntary 
 schools without any representation on the board of 
 management. Now they are to have represen- 
 tatives amounting to one-third of the whole, so 
 that the Bill makes their position in this respect 
 better, not worse, than it is at present. 
 
 But there is said to be a vital difference between 
 payment by taxes and payment by rates. I will 
 give it in the words of one of the assailants of the 
 Bill: 
 
 There is a broad distinction between the two methods 
 of payment. We pay taxes in the lump (no particulars 
 being given) without question, because we know that the 
 expenditure is controlled by Parliament. When, how- 
 ever, we are asked by the Local Board to pay rates we 
 find the items fully set out and allocated in the Demand 
 Note, amongst these being ' Education,' and the rate- 
 payers' attention is thus drawn specially to the matter.
 
 44 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 It would require an (Edipus to unravel the 
 sinuosities of this reasoning, or a casuist of rare 
 skill to diagnose the state of conscience which is 
 driven to it. I can recall nothing finer from the 
 examples of Jesuit theology which Pascal has 
 made immortal in the ' Provincial Letters.' Let 
 us examine it. The writer ' pays taxes in the 
 lump [the italics are his] because we know that the 
 expenditure is controlled by Parliament.' But the 
 expenditure is controlled by Parliament just as 
 much in the one case as in the other. The 
 Government, which is the organ of Parliament, 
 distributes from ' the lump ' as much as it thinks 
 right to the various recipients of rate-aid or grants, 
 including the managers of Voluntary schools. 
 The taxpayer knows perfectly that he is contri- 
 buting to a general fund out of which a grant is 
 made towards the support of Voluntary schools, 
 though he cannot trace the particular destination 
 of every coin which comes out of his ow r n pocket. 
 The ratepayer will be in precisely the same pre- 
 dicament under the Education Bill. The Local 
 Board's Demand Note includes ' Education ' 
 Under among a number of other items, and the ratepayer 
 the Bin can no more trace the special allocation of his 
 
 Noncon- 
 
 formists particular cheque than he can the distribution of his 
 
 will not 
 
 pay any income-tax. It may be that not a farthing of the 
 religious money which he has paid in the one case or may 
 
 pay in the other has reached or will reach the 
 schools, managers of any Voluntary school. But if the
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 45 
 
 Nonconformist ratepayers under the Bill could 
 earmark their contributions to the support of the 
 Voluntary schools they would find that it did not 
 remotely approach the contributions of the volun- 
 tary supporters of the schools. The yearly rental 
 of the buildings has been computed at 715,OOOZ. 
 Add to this the rate paid by the Denomination- 
 alists, and subtract the contribution of the Non- 
 conformists from the total. The result will show 
 that not a farthing of the cost of the religious 
 education given in Voluntary schools will come 
 out of the pockets of Nonconformists. This could 
 easily be shown if the education rate exacted from 
 Nonconformists were paid into a separate account 
 and earmarked ' For secular education only.' I do 
 not see why this should not be done for the sake 
 of those whose consciences are pricked only when 
 they know or suspect that their individual contri- 
 butions touch the unclean thing. I do not under- 
 stand such scrupulosity myself. But we little 
 know each other's sorrows. 
 
 So much as to the difference of principle be- 
 tween rates and taxes in the support of Voluntary 
 schools. 
 
 The objection to the Bill on the ground that it 
 violates the constitutional doctrine of no taxation 
 without representation does not seem to me to be , 
 
 Constitu- 
 
 applicable to this case. There is not a doctrine of tionaidoc- 
 
 trmes 
 
 the British Constitution which may not be reduced have their 
 
 limita- 
 
 to absurdity by overstraining it. Every doctrine tions.
 
 46 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 in political science must be taken with its connota- 
 tion and necessary limitations. ' The King can 
 do no wrong ' is an example. It has a true and 
 reasonable meaning, but is susceptible of a 
 meaning which would make nonsense of it. So 
 with the correlation of taxation and represen- 
 tation. Theoretically every subject of the Crown 
 is entitled to a voice in the government of 
 the nation. But as this is impossible in practice 
 the people exercise their right through freely 
 elected representatives. The Colonies have no 
 elected representatives in the Imperial Parliament, 
 and therefore cannot be legally taxed. It was the 
 attempt to violate this unwritten law of the Con- 
 stitution that lost us the American Colonies. 
 Within these limits the doctrine is sound and most 
 precious. Pushed to the dimensions now claimed 
 for it by the opponents of the Education Bill, it 
 becomes a snare and an absurdity. For it means 
 that the chosen representatives of the people in 
 Parliament cannot discharge their duties ; cannot, 
 that is, ordain the executive machinery neces- 
 sary to fulfil the behests of Parliament. The 
 appointment of the judges and their salaries are 
 under the jurisdiction of Parliament ; but not 
 directly. Indirectly the representatives of the 
 people appoint the Prime Minister. The Prime 
 Minister appoints the Judges directly (with the 
 sanction of the Crown), and the Lord Chancellor 
 appoints a number of subordinate judges. The
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 47 
 
 people are taxed for the maintenance of the Judi- 
 cature ; but they have no direct control over it. 
 Parliament does not carry out its own laws. It 
 enacts the end and ordains the means by sub- 
 division of labour. It is competent for it to create 
 a series of legislative and executive bodies, from a 
 County Council to a Parish Council or Parochial 
 Yestry, and to give these bodies the power of 
 raising and apportioning taxes ; and it is perfectly 
 within its rights if it creates mixed legislative or 
 executive bodies, some nominated and some popu- 
 larly elected in whatever proportion the supreme 
 authoritj r thinks fit. In the case before us the 
 Education Authority, which is itself the creature 
 of Parliament, levies the education rate and retains 
 it under its absolute control. The school managers 
 are partly nominated, partly elected. If they were 
 all nominated by the decree of Parliament, what- 
 ever else might be said of such a provision, it 
 would not touch the fringe of the doctrine that 
 there can be no taxation without representation. 
 There is here a double representation : first, the 
 action of Parliament ; next the action of the 
 elected Education Authority which makes the rate. 
 The school managers do not tax at all : they 
 merely spend as much of the rate as the Education 
 Authority may choose to give them. To denounce 
 this, up hill and down dale, as an outrageous 
 violation of the doctrine that taxation implies 
 representation as its correlative, is surely a parody
 
 48 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 on rational controversy. But to raise the tocsin 
 of organised revolt against the law in defence of 
 such paralogism is to court defeat before entering 
 the battle. The argument is plausible until it is 
 analysed, and may have carried away some minds 
 who did not pause to examine it. But it will not 
 survive the search-light of dry reason which will 
 be directed upon it. And the dissolution is not 
 yet. I am persuaded that time is not on the side 
 of those who have resorted to it, and that it will 
 tell against them as the controversy proceeds. 
 With your usual sagacity and masculine good sense 
 you have publicly discountenanced it. There are 
 vestries all over the country possessing the power 
 of rating and controlling expenditure which have 
 less of the representative character than the 
 board of managers to be created by the Education 
 Bill. Few things are more damaging to a good 
 cause than arguments which have been acclaimed 
 as impregnable and found on examination to be 
 light and unsubstantial as gossamer. 
 
 Bill will One of the stock accusations urged vehemently 
 
 clerical against the Bill is that it will greatly increase the 
 
 power. power of the clergy. To my unsophisticated mind 
 
 it will seriously diminish it. At present the 
 
 managers in Voluntary schools, with the clergy as 
 
 a rule at their head, have full control. Under the 
 
 new system the control of the clergy will be 
 
 limited and checked in a variety of ways. The 
 
 Education Authority is over them, and a minority
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 49 
 
 of the managers, elected by the ratepayers without 
 distinction of religion, will in each school be able 
 to exercise much influence directly, and perhaps 
 more indirectly, by reporting to the Education 
 Authority anything that seems to them amiss. 
 
 I have read with perplexity and amazement Appoint- 
 ment of 
 the debate in the House of Commons on Tuesday, teachers 
 
 October 27, on the appointment of teachers in the tary 
 Voluntary schools. It was really a second-reading 
 debate, for it was the principle and core of the Bill, 
 as Mr. Balfour pointed out, that was assailed by 
 the leaders and spokesmen of the Opposition. Let 
 me quote some samples of the arguments used on 
 the part of the Opposition. Mr. Bryce said : 
 
 He believed that the Local Education Authority would 
 think of neither denominational nor undenominational 
 considerations, but would be guided simply and solely by 
 a desire to obtain the men who were best in every sense 
 of the word. The School Boards, in choosing their 
 masters, had had regard to their all-round fitness. . . . 
 But this Bill proposed to perpetuate the subjection of the 
 teachers in Voluntary schools. The Government had not 
 tried to meet the argument in favour of the open market. 
 By enabling the Education Authority to look for the best 
 men in every quarter, free from every denominational 
 restriction or test, they improved the chances of all the 
 schools of drawing the best talent of the country to their 
 service. 
 
 Sir William Harcourt followed on the same 
 lines : 
 
 In the Universities tests had been done away with 
 They had been abolished in denominational establish- 
 
 E
 
 50 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 ments, and the Secretary to the Education Department 
 belonged himself to a denominational institution in which 
 all tests had been abolished. . . . This Bill would establish 
 in elementary education two categories of schools. There 
 would be the schools provided by the Education Authority, 
 and in their case the Education Authority would be able 
 to choose masters from the whole nation, and take the 
 best man for each particular school. But for the schools 
 in the other category the masters could only be taken 
 from a particular section of the nation. . . . The best 
 man could not be chosen, because he was not a Church- 
 man. ... A man would say, 'What is the use of my 
 coming forward, for I know I shall not be taken unless I 
 qualify by becoming a member of the Church of England ? ' 
 . . . An elementary system which was so founded that 
 the best masters could not be chosen would not be a 
 national system. A system under which the Educational 
 Authority could not select as masters the best men to be 
 had was an imposture and a sham. 
 
 I must in passing correct a slip of the tongue 
 or of memory on the part of Sir William Harcourt. 
 It is not the fact that ' all tests have been abolished 
 in the English Universities.' The chairs of 
 Theology and Ecclesiastical History must still be 
 filled by members of the Established Church. 
 
 With regard to the general drift of the argu- 
 ment of Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Bryce, 
 Mr. Balfour was surely justified in inferring that 
 it meant ' to abolish the Denominational schools 
 root and branch, and substitute for them a pure 
 and unadulterated system of Provided schools of 
 the Cowper-Temple class.' To Mr. Balfour's direct 
 and repeated challenge as to whether that was the
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 51 
 
 intention of the leaders of the Opposition no answer 
 was made at the time. Mr. Asquith offered an 
 answer later, which seems to me to evade the real 
 issue. He said : 
 
 The question was not in the least involved in the 
 amendment before the Committee [viz., that the Local 
 Education Authority shall have absolute power to appoint 
 and dismiss all teachers without consultation with the 
 managers of the Voluntary schools]. . . . The fallacy under- 
 lying the argument of the right hon. gentleman [Mr. 
 Balfour] was this that you cannot preserve in its integrity 
 honest denominational teaching in these schools unless 
 you subject all the teachers to be employed in them to a 
 denominational test. He entirely traversed that argument. 
 He did not believe there was the slightest foundation for 
 it. What was the issue raised by the amendment ? It 
 was the issue whether the selection of the teachers who 
 were to be employed in denominational schools should be 
 in the hands of the Local Authority or in those of the 
 managers. 
 
 Now let us look at the facts. In round numbers Quid pro 
 the Church schools alone have on their register of Educa- 
 attendance 3,000,000 children, which exceeds by 
 about 300,000 the registered attendance at Board 
 schools. The cost of this, including the training 
 colleges and incidental expenses, amounts to more 
 than 1,000,000/. annually, all contributed by Church 
 people, in addition to the rate which they are made 
 to pay for the maintenance of Board schools. This 
 yearly sacrifice Church people have been making 
 towards the elementary education of the country 
 in consequence of their desire to build up the 
 
 3
 
 52 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 children of their own communion in the faith of 
 their fathers. It is now proposed to place all the 
 elementary education of the country under one 
 authority, distributed locally under the supreme 
 authority and control of the Central Board of 
 Education in London. To induce the supporters 
 of the Voluntary schools Anglican, Eoman 
 Catholic, Wesleyans, and other denominations to 
 accept this plan the Government offers to defray 
 out of the public purse all the cost of the Voluntary 
 schools except the buildings (with their furniture 
 and insurance), which the Church is to lend rent 
 free and keep in proper working order, besides being 
 responsible for any structural changes and addi- 
 tions which the Education Authority may require. 
 This is not likely to fall below 300,000/. a year, 
 which, added to the rental value of the buildings, 
 amounts to the round sum of 1,000,OOOZ. annually. 
 That is a handsome contribution towards the cost 
 of elementary education, and the Church has so 
 far agreed to it in return for having the entire 
 control of the religious education of her own chil- 
 dren. The Bill concedes the justice of the claim.* 
 Considering that Church people are to be rated, 
 like other citizens, for the support of their own 
 schools, and also for the support of Board schools 
 which exist in the same area, the State seems to 
 me to have got the best of the bargain. To judge 
 by the speeches of the three distinguished leaders 
 
 * This'was written before the Kenyon-Slaney Amendment.
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 53 
 
 whom I have just quoted, the Liberal party re- 
 pudiates the claim altogether. It demands the 
 free use, without any return whatever not even 
 the inexpensive tribute of gratitude of all the de- 
 nominational school-houses, and to be absolved in 
 addition from a farthing of the cost which usually 
 falls on the renter. In plain language, the Liberal 
 Opposition claims the right to confiscate the use 
 during school hours, for six days in the w r eek and 
 three evenings, of all the school-houses belonging 
 to the proprietors of the Voluntary schools. 
 
 Of course this will be denied, and has, in fact, 
 been denied by Mr. Asquith in the extract which 
 I have given from his speech. But reasoners are 
 bound by the logic of their reasoning, and not by 
 their illogical recoil from the conclusion to which 
 their premisses inevitably lead. A disputant can- 
 not take as much of an argument as suits his 
 purpose for the moment ; he must take it with its 
 consequences or leave it alone. 
 
 Now, what is the position taken up by the Fallacy of 
 distinguished Liberal leaders whom I have quoted 
 above ? Sir W. Harcourt tacitly admitted that 
 his purpose was to destroy the denominational 
 schools root and branch. Mr. Bryce did not go teachers - 
 so far ; but his argument leads to that conclusion 
 irresistibly. Mr. Asquith avowed himself a friend 
 of denominational schools, but peremptorily denied, 
 amidst the cheers of his party, that ' the denomi- 
 national character of the schools ' was affected by
 
 64 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 the religious or irreligious opinions of the teachers. 
 And in his speech at Pontypool on October 30 he 
 denounced as ' an iniquitous arrangement ' the 
 provision ' that the teachers must be selected from 
 the religious denomination with which the school 
 is connected.' 
 
 We have it, therefore, on the confession of the 
 spokesmen of the Opposition that they wish the 
 teachers in denominational schools to be appointed 
 irrespective of religious considerations. * The best 
 men ' must be chosen, and their friendliness or 
 hostility towards the religion which they are to 
 teach must not count as part of their qualification ! 
 This applies to all denominational schools, for I 
 refuse to tolerate for a moment the suggestion, 
 made by some of the opponents of the Bill, that 
 an exception may be made in favour of Eoman 
 Catholic schools. I have always favoured a policy 
 of full and generous justice to Roman Catholics. I 
 have incurred some unpopularity for publicly and 
 repeatedly advocating Mr. Balfour's just and wise 
 recommendation of giving the Roman Catholics of 
 Ireland a university of their own. Considering our 
 treatment of them in the past, I think they have 
 a right to claim even more than Mr. Balfour 
 demands for them. I believe, moreover, that the 
 constituencies of Great Britain would ratify the 
 claim. But, while anxious to be just, and even 
 generous, to Roman Catholics where the occasion 
 requires it, I cannot recognise any difference
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 55 
 
 between them and other denominations in this 
 controversy ; and I am very sure the country will 
 not recognise it. 
 
 That being the case, the policy of the Liberal 
 Opposition lands us in this extraordinary predica- 
 ment. No inquiry must be made into the religious 
 qualification of a candidate for the office of teacher 
 in any denominational school. If he is ' the best 
 man ' in other respects he must be chosen in the 
 interest of ' the teaching profession ' and ' the open 
 market.' We may thus have an Orange Pro- 
 testant teaching Papal Infallibility and Transub- 
 stantiation in a Roman Catholic school ; a Papist 
 teaching Methodism in a school patronised by Mr. 
 Price Hughes ; a protege of Dr. Clifford presiding 
 over a school founded by Mr. Athelstan Biley ; a 
 Unitarian teaching Trinitarian doctrine ; a Trini- 
 tarian teaching Socinianism, and an Agnostic the 
 doctrine of the Incarnation. To ' seethe a kid in 
 its mother's milk' was forbidden by the Mosaic 
 Law as an outrage on man's natural feeling of 
 humanity towards the lower animals which he 
 enlists in his service. But that were a light offence 
 compared with the outrage of sending the children 
 of Christians to learn their faith from teachers of 
 heterogeneous creeds or none. Yet the advocates 
 of this strange policy are surprised and indignant 
 when told that they are doing their level best to 
 undermine and overthrow the Voluntary schools 
 altogether. Their good faith is beyond dispute, but
 
 50 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 what shall we say of the logic eminent and able 
 men though they be which has landed them in 
 such a blind alley of inverted reasoning ? 
 
 They may say that the consequences which I 
 have deduced from their premisses would not be 
 likely to follow. But if they follow in a few cases 
 only their argument stands condemned. Indeed, the 
 paucity of cases would add to the grievance since 
 it would be harder to remedy it. But it will be 
 an increasing grievance, for such schools would 
 become the breeders of religious scepticism and 
 indifferentism. A chain of reasoning, like any 
 other chain, is tested by its weakest link, and 
 the argument for undenominational teachers in 
 denominational schools snaps the moment it is 
 tested. 
 
 The best But I must remark in passing on ' the best 
 gu- man ' argument. In choosing teachers for deno- 
 minational schools Mr. Bryce would ' have regard 
 to their all-round fitness,' and Sir William 
 Harcourt and Mr. Asquith insist on having ' the 
 best men.' Agreed; but what constitutes all-round 
 fitness in this case ? And who are the best men ? 
 In any business or office the man best qualified 
 all round is the man best equipped for all the duties 
 belonging to his office. If for one of the essential 
 duties he is not qualified at all, or qualified 
 imperfectly, he is not ' the best man,' not the 
 fittest ' all round,' though he may be facile princeps 
 in all the other duties of his office. A teacher
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 57 
 
 inferior, though competent, in these, and compe- 
 tent also in the duty for which the other is dis- 
 qualified, is certainly the best man all round. In 
 a class where the study of French is a necessary 
 part of the curriculum the man who combines 
 a competent knowledge of the other subjects with 
 a competent knowledge of French is a better 
 teacher than he who excels him in the other sub- 
 jects, but is ignorant of French. 
 
 Now, the raison d'etre of the denominational 
 schools is the security which they are supposed to 
 afford for the grounding of the scholars in the 
 doctrines of the religion professed by the denom- 
 inations to which the schools respectively belong. 
 Without that security what possible inducement 
 can the founders and supporters of those schools 
 have to make the heavy sacrifices on their behalf 
 which the Education Bill imposes upon them ? 
 They w r ouldbe just as well off under the undenom- 
 inational system of Board schools. The existence 
 of the Voluntary schools refutes, in fact, the 
 argument of those who would appoint the teachers 
 without inquiry into their religious qualification. 
 They might as well propose that no inquiry should 
 be made into the master's knowledge of geography 
 or algebra. The cry against religious tests in this 
 matter is a spurious and captious one, however 
 sincere. A man's competency must be tested on any 
 subject which he undertakes to teach. There is 
 no ' open market ' in the choice of schoolmasters in
 
 58 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 any other sense than that of an open field for can- 
 didates. In schools, for example, where the master 
 is required to teach mathematics or the mistress 
 music the market is closed against all candidates 
 who lack these qualifications, however excellent 
 their qualifications may be in other respects. 
 Why is competency to teach the Christian religion 
 to be excluded from the qualification of teachers in 
 schools of which the teaching of the Christian 
 religion is the raison d'etre ? When denuded of 
 the rhetorical drapery in which it has been 
 shrouded, the argument shrivels and crumbles at a 
 finger's touch. 
 
 Some people apparently imagine that the faith 
 of Christendom may be taught to children by any 
 sciolist, or even ignoramus, who has never given a 
 thought to the subject, because he is not expected 
 to teach more than the elements of Christianity. 
 But the very designation of the whole circle of 
 education supplied in primary schools as ' elemen- 
 tary ' implies that the education given in all 
 branches is no more than the elements of each. 
 Does it therefore follow that any sciolist with but 
 a crude, and smattering, and confused knowledge 
 of grammar, or history, or drawing is a competent 
 teacher of these branches of education ? Is it not 
 certain, on the contrary, that the man who has 
 most thoroughly mastered the principles of any art 
 or science is the man most competent to teach its 
 elements ? And is it not equally true that he
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 59 
 
 cannot teach its elements who is ignorant of its 
 principles ? The absurd notion that anybody is 
 competent to teach the elements of Christian 
 doctrine, though he may never himself have been 
 taught, explains the crude and strange ideas on 
 theological subjects which are sometimes heard on 
 the judicial bench, in Parliament, and even from 
 the lips of divines of academic renown. The 
 briefest summary of the elements of the Christian 
 faith is the Apostles' Creed, and it would be in- 
 structive to witness a ten minutes' examination on 
 that creed of some of the distinguished men who 
 tell us so dogmatically that the best man to instruct 
 children in the elements of the Christian faith is a 
 man who need know nothing about it. 
 
 But it is said that a denominational or sectarian The 'At- 
 teacher in a Voluntary school would necessarily 
 diffuse an ecclesiastical atmosphere which would 
 infect the pupils. Principal Fairbairn put that 
 objection forcibly in the St. James's Hall meeting 
 on October 14. I quote his words : 
 
 It had been said, why not compromise ? (Loud cries of 
 ' Never.' ) He never intended to compromise. (Loud ap- 
 plause.) It was said, why not place secular instruction 
 under the popular authority, but leave the denomination 
 to appoint the teacher and manage the religious affairs of 
 the school ? Could they have secular instruction from 
 an ecclesiastical instructor without being ecclesiastically 
 tainted ? 
 
 I must repeat, for the benefit of Principal 
 Fairbairn and those who cheered him, that inexor-
 
 60 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 able rule of logic which forbids a disputant to use 
 as muck of an argument as he pleases. The dis- 
 tinguished Principal (for whom I entertain a 
 sincere respect) was here wielding, in the exuber- 
 ance of his passion, a double-edged weapon, which 
 in its backward swing smote his argument to the 
 core. He will not admit a religious test into the 
 category of qualifications for teachers in Voluntary 
 schools : no inquiry must be made into, no question 
 asked about, their religious opinions. Yery good. 
 But how, then, is Dr. Fairbairn to save the school 
 from ' being ecclesiastically tainted ' ? Ecclesias- 
 tical taints are of various kinds. Some are Popish, 
 some Anglican, some Wesleyan, some Congrega- 
 tionalist, some Baptist, some Unitarian. Without 
 a religious test they may all enter the schools and 
 taint the atmosphere with their respective religious 
 creeds ; while the Agnostic and the Secularist bring 
 up the rear exclaiming, ' A plague on all your nos- 
 trums ! I am opposed to all creeds and Bible 
 lessons.' Or is it only the ' ecclesiastical taint ' of 
 Anglicanism and Papacy that Dr. Fairbairn would 
 ostracise ? Yet even so he must have a religious 
 test. And what shall we say of Dr. Fairbairn's 
 fairness ? His plea is really for a system of secular 
 education all round, and is as fatal to Board schools 
 as to Voluntary schools. Then, in the name of logic 
 and fair play, why does he not have the courage of 
 his convictions and say so ? He will find me on 
 his side, provided all denominations have free
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 61 
 
 access to the schools to teach their respective 
 creeds to the children of their own faith. He 
 pleaded for ' a large and generous system of 
 education.' Very well : let him join Dr. Clifford 
 in the proposal which 1 have already quoted (p. 21), 
 or join yourself in your fair and conciliatory letter 
 in the ' Times,' dated October 22, in which you 
 write : 
 
 But it seems to me that the only alternative would 
 be one which I have advocated already the separation 
 of the secular from the religious teaching, the former to 
 be under the control of the Education Authority, the latter 
 to be controlled by the churches themselves ; the function 
 of the State in this case being restricted to providing 
 place and time in which such instruction should be given. 
 
 Dr. Fairbairn's protest against the ' injustice ' 
 of the Bill, while he shrinks from adopting the 
 only logical and equitable alternative, reminds me 
 of a story told of Dionysius the Cynic. He called 
 one day on Plato, and leaving the trail of his 
 muddy feet on the rich carpet, exclaimed, ' Thus 
 I tread on the ostentation of Plato.' ' With a 
 greater ostentation of your own,' quietly retorted 
 the philosopher. When John Wesley was re- 
 proached for introducing lively music into religious 
 worship he answered that ' he did not see why the 
 devil should have all the good times to himself.' 
 Dr. Fairbairn is an eminent and a good man, but 
 I don't see why he should have all the school 
 atmosphere to himself. Speeches like his in
 
 62 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 St. James's Hall, shouting * No compromise,' and 
 breathing out slaughter and threatenings to all who 
 take a different view, may stir the enthusiasm of 
 those who are already in agreement with them, but 
 they are calculated to alienate sober and reflecting 
 minds. Let us not forget that there is a large body 
 of men, possessing votes, who belong to no religious 
 denomination, but are shrewd and hard-headed, 
 with a keen sense of justice. These resent the 
 bigoted intolerance of the undenominationalists 
 and will make their resentment felt on the day of 
 reckoning. I quote the following from one of their 
 ablest organs, dissociating myself, however, from 
 all discourteous expressions : 
 
 Canon Malcolm MacColl, in a trenchant letter to the 
 ' Westminster Gazette,' points out the weakness of the 
 Nonconformist attitude on the Education question. He 
 particularly shows the absurdity of their talk about 
 Undenominational religious teaching. ' It is quite right,' 
 he says, in their view ' that the religion of the Undenomina- 
 tionalists should be charged on the rates, but quite 
 iniquitous that the religion of the Denominationalists 
 should be similarly favoured.' Here is the whole case in 
 a nutshell. The Nonconformists say it is right to teach 
 just the quantity and quality of religion they approve 
 in public schools, and wrong to teach any other quantity 
 and quality of religion. There never was a more dis- 
 gusting bigotry masquerading as the very ideal of religious 
 freedom. ' Freethinker ' of October 12. 
 
 My suggestion that Dr. Clifford should, with 
 his friends, formulate a scheme on the lines of his
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 63 
 
 proposal in the ' Daily News ' and offer it as an 
 alternative to the Government plan, has been com- 
 mended extensively in the press ; but I content 
 myself with the following editorial comment in an 
 influential English paper, because of the unpre- 
 judiced opinion of a foreigner : 
 
 An American educationalist, who has studied the 
 position in England during the present controversy, and 
 who rather sympathises, if he regards the matter from the 
 religious point of view at all, with the Church party, tells 
 me that the truest and best solution he can see for the 
 present problem is contained in the scheme which Dr. 
 Clifford outlined the other day, and which Canon MacColl 
 draws attention to in the ' Times.' Briefly, it is that the 
 Government shall buy the denominational schools or hire 
 them for so many hours every day, and that the Church, 
 or the denomination, as the case may be, shall provide 
 religious education for its own children at its own cost. 
 
 But neither Dr. Clifford nor any of his friends 
 have made any response to my suggestion. Why, 
 if the proposal was made seriously ? The British 
 public like a fair and square fight. But they do 
 not like a policy of evasion and subterfuge and 
 sterile criticism : a policy of frantic opposition and 
 ' no compromise,' leading nowhere and offering no 
 alternative. It is a policy which will evaporate in 
 barren speeches, like that of ' filling the cup and 
 ploughing the sand.' Not thus did Mr. Gladstone 
 win his victories. He would have appealed to the 
 country when the House of Lords rejected his 
 second Home Kule Bill, but the majority of his
 
 64 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 colleagues preferred the policy of ' filling the cup,' 
 and they did fill it to their own hurt, as he foresaw. 
 I believe that a similar disappointment awaits the 
 party if they pursue their present tactics on the 
 Education question and other subjects. The 
 country will require a clear issue ratified by a 
 unanimous party, and that issue still remains 
 invisible on the horizon. 
 
 Noncon- I may be considered prejudiced as a Church- 
 
 ana the man, though I have given more than one proof of 
 ca r s a e . a * nay Liberalism when not a few Nonconformists 
 not you, I think deserted the great leader of the 
 Liberal party on sectarian grounds : for example, 
 the Bradlaugh case. I defended Mr. Bradlaugh's 
 constitutional right to sit in the House of Commons 
 and was called an Atheist for my pains when 
 Mr. Gladstone's plea for political justice was 
 defeated by a Nonconformist revolt. It was on 
 religious, not less than on constitutional, grounds 
 that Mr. Gladstone defended Mr. Bradlaugh's right 
 to sit in the House of Commons, and the great 
 names of Cardinal Newman, Dean Church, and 
 Dr. Liddon were on his side. But many of those 
 who now denounce the idea of a religious test for 
 teachers of religion in Christian schools then voted 
 successfully in favour of a religious test for 
 members of Parliament. I think I am a more 
 consistent Liberal than they. In any case I have 
 not a few Liberals on my side whose bias, if they 
 have any, is opposed to my ecclesiastical opinions.
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 65 
 
 Two representatives' names out of many will 
 suffice. 
 
 In the ' Daily Mail ' of October 17 there is a Mr. 
 signed article on the Education Bill, ' from an Webb 3 
 Educationist's point of view,' by Mr. Sidney Webb, ca tio n u 
 a member of the London County Council, and an Bl11 * 
 undiluted Kadical, whom not even Dr. Fairbairn 
 would suspect of being * ecclesiastically tainted. ' 
 Let us see, then, what Mr. Sidney Webb has to say : 
 
 It may seem paradoxical, but I cannot help thinking 
 that, after six months' incessant public controversy, the 
 ordinary citizen knows less about the Education Bill than 
 he did when it was introduced. Let me try to set down 
 plainly, exactly, and with all the impartiality I can 
 muster, how the case now stands. 
 
 The Bill proceeds on the principle of putting all 
 education under the Town or County Council ; of providing 
 completely for all schools recognised as public elementary 
 schools ; of giving the new local authority an absolutely 
 free hand to provide as much secondary, technical, and 
 university education as it chooses ; of leaving unchanged 
 the 'undenominational' character of the present ' unde- 
 nominational ' schools, while preserving the particular 
 denominational character of all schools which possess it. 
 
 Now, in my judgment, speaking as one concerned for 
 education, the Bill has three fundamentally good points : 
 
 1. It puts an end to the present dual control, by 
 School Board and Town or County Council, and gives all 
 education in each great town to one spending body, and 
 one only. 
 
 2. It sweeps away a whole crowd of restrictions and 
 limitations and fetters, which now cramp School Board 
 and County Council alike and gave Mr. Cockerton his 
 
 F
 
 66 
 
 opportunity. Henceforth the Town Council of Liverpool 
 or Manchester will be able to spend (above the minimum 
 insisted upon by the Board of Education) just as much 
 money on education as it chooses, upon whatever subject 
 it chooses, for scholars of whatever age it chooses, 
 allocating it to such schools as it chooses, charging such 
 fee or no fee as it chooses, with whatever scholarships 
 it chooses, up to whatever grade it chooses. 
 
 3. For the first time it definitely includes as a public 
 function education as education not primary education 
 only, or technical education only, but anything and every- 
 thing that is education, as an organic unity, from the 
 kindergarten to the university. This renders the Bill 
 of 1902 as epoch-making in the history of English educa- 
 tion as that of 1870, when, after a tremendous struggle, 
 only elementary education was admitted. 
 
 He notes six ' drawbacks ' in the Bill. (1) ' It 
 excludes London from its advantages.' But this 
 must be regarded as temporary. (2) Exclusion of 
 women from any share in the new education 
 scheme. This defect has been remedied. (3) Lack 
 of experience in primary education on the part of 
 the Town Councils. ' But the all-important point 
 of unity of the spending bodies could be gained 
 only by abolishing one or the other.' I must give 
 the rest in Mr. Webb's own words : 
 
 4. It is argued as a drawback that the Town or County 
 Council is required to submit its scheme for the composi- 
 tion of its committee for the approval of the Board of 
 Education. But experience has shown that some town 
 councils would, if left to themselves, put on no women at 
 all, and possibly ignore all educational institutions except 
 their own. On the whole, until we can get women made
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 67 
 
 eligible for election as town councillors, I think it better 
 to secure their presence on the committee in this way 
 than to go without their help altogether. 
 
 5. It is a blot on the simplicity of the Bill that 
 boroughs over 10,000 and urban districts over 20,000 have 
 got permission to take themselves out of the county, as 
 regards elementary education, and govern their own 
 primary schools. This is a concession to local ' home 
 rule ' in the smaller urban centres which I do not think 
 will work out beneficially to themselves. 
 
 6. I have left to the last the drawback which seems, 
 to many people [but not to Mr. Webb], to overwhelm the 
 whole Bill namely, that the denominational schools, in 
 which half our children get their primary education, are to 
 be allowed to retain their special denominational char- 
 acters ; that they are to be brought up to a higher state 
 of efficiency in secular instruction at the public expense, 
 and that they are yet to be under what is called the 
 ' management ' of a majority of denominational trustees. 
 
 Professor Goldwin Smith is even less obnoxious Professor 
 than Mr. Sidney Webb to the accusation of being 
 * ecclesiastically tainted.' He is a life-long Eadical, 
 and is so jealous on behalf of freedom, and so BilL 
 opposed to clerical domination, that he is hostile 
 to Home Eule in Ireland out of fear of the possible 
 influence of the Pope and the priests. In the 
 letter from which I am about to quote he avows 
 his hostility to the Church of England as an estab- 
 lishment and to what he calls ' the sacerdotalism 
 and sacramentalisrn of the Middle Ages.' Yet he 
 has written a letter to the * Manchester Guardian ' 
 of the 15th of last September to expostulate with
 
 68 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 the opponents of the Education Bill for the incon- 
 sistency and unfairness of their conduct. His 
 words are : 
 
 A State Church is kept up for the purpose of forming 
 the religious character of the nation in accordance with 
 its creed. To carry that object into effect is the duty of 
 every clergyman of the Church, and nothing, can be more 
 essential to the performance of that duty than influence 
 over the education of .the young. A clergyman of the 
 Church of England, it seems to me, is simply doing what 
 the nation binds him to do when he strives to keep educa- 
 tion in Church hands. 
 
 And he utters the following significant warn- 
 ing : 
 
 Perhaps when you are no longer under the distorting 
 influence of this struggle with the clergy you may see 
 reason for considering whether the public school system, 
 as it at present prevails in the United States and else- 
 where, is unquestionably the best. My observation, as a 
 dweller on this continent, raises doubts on this subject in 
 my mind. 
 
 I have seen a private explanatory letter from 
 this most brilliant and distingushed writer which 
 paints in gloomy colours the effect that he has 
 observed on national character, ' in the United 
 States and elsewhere ' across the ocean, of divor- 
 cing definite religious instruction from the educa- 
 tion of the young. 
 
 In face of utterances like these from repre- 
 sentative Liberals, who are also experts in educa- 
 tional matters, it is surely somewhat sanguine
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 69 
 
 to assume that the constituencies are so over- 
 whelmingly at the back of the agitation against 
 the Bill as to endorse Lord Rosebery's declaration, 
 that * it is the duty of the Liberal party to resist 
 it to the death.' My letters to the ' Times ' 
 and ' Westminster Gazette ' have brought me a 
 number of communications from Nonconformist 
 laymen. A few only of them favour the Bill ; yet 
 those who favour the Bill and those who dislike it 
 deprecate this campaign of violent and undis- 
 criminating agitation, against it, and are by no 
 means prepared to echo Dr. Fairbairn's cry of 
 ' No compromise ! ' 
 
 On reading Professor Goldwin Smith's letter I Need of 
 
 -i -i f f -VT 5 definition 
 
 was reminded of a passage in one of JN ewman s i n this 
 University Sermons, and of another in a letter 
 from Mr. Birrell in the * Times ' of the 21st of last 
 April. Newman says, with his usual lucid in- 
 cisiveness : 
 
 Half the controversies in the world are verbal ones, 
 and could they be brought to a plain issue they would be 
 brought to a prompt termination. Parties engaged in 
 them would then perceive either that in substance they 
 agreed together, or that their difference was one of first 
 principles. We need not dispute, we need not prove ; we 
 need but to define. When men understand what eatfh 
 other means they see for the most part that controversy is 
 either superfluous or hopeless. 
 
 The controversy on the Education Bill is one 
 long illustration of the need of definition. Take
 
 70 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 the passage from Mr. Birrell to which I have just 
 referred : 
 
 Churchmen do not quarrel with what they call ' Board 
 school Christianity ' because it is false, but because it is 
 insufficient. If they really objected to it it would have to 
 be abandoned. But the objection of Nonconformists to 
 ' Church of Englandism ' is that they believe it to be 
 untrue and dangerous. 
 
 The quarrel therefore will proceed, and for one good 
 and pious Churchman that will be manufactured by the 
 Bill, if it becomes law, there will be a dozen bitter 
 sectarians and as many ' nothingarians.' 
 
 To begin with, what is ' Board school Christi- 
 anity ' ? The views of the masters who are autho- 
 rised to teach it may range along the whole gamut 
 of theological belief or unbelief, from Cardinal 
 Yaughan to the professor of pure materialism. All 
 undertake to teach Christianity of a sort. The 
 question is, What sort ? Till the author of ' Obiter 
 Dicta ' enlighten us on that point it is impossible to 
 discuss the matter with him. Does ' Board school 
 Christianity ' imply a God ? If it does, what kind 
 of God ? The God of the Apostles' Creed, or Mr. 
 Matthew Arnold's ' stream of tendencies ' ? 
 'False' . Nor is Mr. Birrell accurate in saying that 
 sufficient ' Churchmen do not quarrel with what they call 
 anity. Board school Christianity because it is false, but 
 because it is insufficient.' They have no sort of 
 security against its being false as well as in- 
 sufficient. How can they have when the teacher
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PAETY 71 
 
 may not only be an unbeliever in Christianity, but 
 may think it a mischievous superstition in ad- 
 dition? If the religious teaching in Board schools 
 has hitherto been, on the whole, fairly good, it is 
 because the teachers have been Christians trained 
 in Christian institutions. That class of teachers 
 is becoming, and will continue to become, rarer, 
 and a good deal of the Board school Christianity 
 of the future is sure to be false. And as no inquiry 
 must be made into the religious opinions of the 
 teachers, no parent can have any guarantee that 
 his children will not be exposed to the danger of 
 having their faith poisoned at its roots. 
 
 Again, what is meant by an ' insufficient ' Chris- What is 
 tianity ? Insufficiency is of two kinds. A child is ficient 
 an insufficient man; but he is a man in the making 
 he is on the way to manhood. A truncated 
 man, a man bereft of arms, or legs, or eyes, is 
 also an * insufficient ' man ; but he will never 
 become sufficient. He is not on the way to 
 maturity. He is a deformed and defaced creature, 
 and must so remain. A perverted Christianity is 
 not Christianity at all. If, for instance, the child 
 is taught anything conflicting with the words of 
 the creed which his mother taught him namely, 
 that Jesus was * conceived of the Holy Ghost, born 
 of the Virgin Mary,' it is a * false,' not an ' in- 
 sufficient ' Christianity, which he is taught. More- 
 over, half-truths, when propounded as whole truths, 
 become falsehoods. That is commonly the genesis
 
 72 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 of heresies not in theology only, but in politics, 
 medicine, and other sciences. 
 
 M ii' B <r ^ n( ^ k w did it escape the penetration of Mr. 
 
 lemma. Birrell that he was giving his own case away when 
 he proceeded to add : * But the objection of Non- 
 conformists to " Church of Englandism " is that 
 they believe it to be untrue and dangerous ' ? For 
 if ' Church of Englandism ' is believed by the 
 Nonconformists to be ' untrue and dangerous,' it is 
 their sacred duty to guard against the risk of their 
 children being infected by it ; and this they can 
 only do by excluding Anglican teachers from Board 
 schools ; in other words, by imposing tests and 
 securing a Nonconformist ' atmosphere.' Is there 
 no danger here also in ' manufacturing bitter 
 sectarians and as many nothingarians ' ? Mr. 
 Birrell, too, has fallen into the logical vice of taking 
 just as much of an argument as suits his case, 
 forgetting that it can be turned against himself. 
 Dr. ciif- Dr. Clifford, I am sorry to see, has gone back 
 
 nition of f rom the suggestion which he made in the ' Daily 
 education News.' He now explains that in advocating the 
 reifgious* 1 purchase of the Voluntary schools and a universal 
 system of secular education he did not mean 
 ' non credo, non-theological, non-ecclesiastical, but 
 deeply ethical and in the true sense religious.' So 
 we are to have theology back in the schools after 
 all, and the ' ecclesiastically tainted ' atmosphere : 
 only the theology must be of his brand and have the 
 taint of his colour. It must, however, be ' deeply
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 73 
 
 ethical and in the true sense religious.' But who 
 is to decide ? And does not Dr. Clifford's qualifi- 
 cation bring us perilously near the forbidden 
 ground of tests ? Let us illustrate the matter by 
 supposing both Dr. Clifford and Mr. Price Hughes 
 to be School Board teachers giving a religious 
 lesson on the Sermon on the Mount. ' The South 
 African war,' Mr. Price Hughes would say, ' was in- 
 evitable, and is one of the most righteous wars on 
 record. Our hands are clean. The Boers are our 
 " enemies," and they certainly " hate " us ; and to 
 do them "good" in this case is to fight to the 
 finish, burn their farms, and annex their country. 
 All this is quite consistent with the doctrine of the 
 Sermon on the Mount.' Dr. Clifford, on the other 
 hand, would sound another note. ' My dear chil- 
 dren,' he would say, ' this is one of the most 
 wicked and cruel wars in history. It is an unpro- 
 voked war, and it is entirely opposed to the Sermon 
 on the Mount and to the spirit of Christianity.' 
 There seems sore need even here of a test to decide 
 whose ' deeply ethical and in the true sense reli- 
 gious ' teaching is to prevail Mr. Price Hughes's 
 or Dr. Clifford's ; so impossible is it to combine a 
 universal State system of secular and religious 
 education without a religious test for the teachers. 
 I see no logical or fair solution short of the 
 scheme on which you and I agreed some years 
 ago, and which both of us still think the best- 
 namely, a State system of secular education pure
 
 74 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 and simple, leaving the several denominations to 
 teach their doctrines to their own children in all 
 the public schools, under conditions which would 
 Opponents be just all round. The one great flaw in the 
 offer no * reasoning of the opponents of the Bill is that they 
 tive* ff er no tangible alternative. The School Board 
 system is their ideal, and they make no secret of 
 their desire to make it universal. But in this they 
 overlook two important facts. The first is that so 
 large a body of religious opinion is so dissatisfied 
 with the illogical and haphazard provision for 
 religious instruction made under the School Board 
 system, that they will never consent to its universal 
 application. Each School Board, as I have already 
 said, is autocratic within its own area, and may 
 sanction religious instruction under the Cowper- 
 Temple restriction, or forbid religious instruction 
 Sir Henry of any sort. I learn from Sir Henry Fowler's 
 the Edu- speech at Wolverhampton on the 4th of last month 
 Bm n that there are * seven Board schools in England 
 and fifty in Wales which give no religious instruc- 
 tion. Those schools in England,' adds Sir 
 Henry, * are in obscure places, with insignificant 
 populations.' Huddersfield is one of them, and it 
 can hardly be described as an obscure place, or 
 insignificant as to population. But the point is. 
 that School Boards have the power everywhere to 
 forbid religious instruction in their schools. In 
 constructing a national system of education, a wise 
 statesmanship will surely have regard to the future
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 75 
 
 and not merely to the circumstances of the 
 moment, and if it values religion as an element 
 in national character will not commit it for all 
 time coming to the chances and caprices of 
 triennial elections. Instability and change are of 
 the essence of such a system. 
 
 But if the School Boards were bound by law, 
 which they are not, to provide religious instruction, 
 this would do nothing to satisfy the large number 
 of citizens who insist on providing for their 
 children the religious instruction of which they 
 approve in the schools for the support of wilich 
 they are taxed. Yet under the School Board 
 system the faith in which they believe not only 
 need not be taught to their children ; it may be 
 contradicted, defaced, destroyed. That this has 
 not happened so far is due to causes which I have 
 explained, and on which we cannot reckon in the 
 future. Sir Henry Fowler quotes Mr. Bright as 
 saying: 'We want schools in which to bring up Mr. Bright 
 our children in the love of virtue, truth, and of God.' 
 That, however, is a desideratum which the School 
 Boards by no means secure. He who would teach 
 the love of God must believe in God. But that is 
 discarded from the qualifications of a Board school 
 teacher, and it is now sought to discard it from the 
 qualifications of denominational teachers as w T ell. 
 Their virtue and veracity may be tested, but not 
 their belief in the God in whom, according to 
 Mr. Bright, virtue and truth have their origin and
 
 76 
 
 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 Present 
 system of 
 education 
 a failure. 
 
 SirH. 
 Fowler's 
 inconsis- 
 tent condi- 
 tions. 
 
 sanction. But I have laboured the point suffici- 
 ently, and need not dwell on it. 
 
 The present system of education is a failure in 
 spite of the perfervid encomiums which are now 
 being showered on the School Boards ; and the 
 failure is not due simply to the inefficiency of the 
 Voluntary schools. I quote from Sir Henry 
 Fowler, who is a determined opponent of the 
 Government Bill : 
 
 The working of the Act of 1870 has taught us two 
 things the efficiency of the Board schools in the large 
 towns, and the inefficiency of the Board schools in the 
 small rural districts ; and it has taught us the pecuniary 
 difficulties of the denominational schools, causing an 
 inability to fully provide the additional cost of education, 
 and involving an inadequate, underpaid staff, insufficient 
 buildings, and defective apparatus. 
 
 But, unfortunately, Sir Henry Fowler, while 
 thus admitting the deficiencies of the present 
 system, does not propose, even in outline, an 
 alternative to the solution offered by the Govern- 
 ment. He is clear that ' the denominational 
 teaching ' of the Voluntary schools ' ought to be 
 preserved for the children of the denominations 
 by which those schools were founded, subject to 
 two considerations.' But he does not see that one 
 of his ' considerations ' nullifies the concession 
 which he makes in favour of denominational 
 teaching : 
 
 While the denominational teaching [he says] is rigidly 
 safeguarded, opportunities should be offered for the
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 77 
 
 religious education of children whose parents have with- 
 drawn them, under the Conscience clause, from the 
 teaching of the school. The Nonconformists have a 
 right to make that demand, and side by side with that 
 demand the denominational schools have a right to 
 demand that their denominational teaching shall not be 
 interfered with. 
 
 I fully concede the Nonconformist claim, pro- 
 vided Sir Henry makes good his promise that ' the 
 denominational teaching is rigidl} 7 guarded ' in all 
 Voluntary schools alike ; but he annexes a con- 
 dition to his safeguard which makes it absolutely 
 worth nothing. If not only the appointment of 
 the teachers be taken away from each denomina- 
 tion, but no inquiry is to be made as to their 
 religious opinions, how is the denominational 
 teaching to be * rigidly safeguarded ' ? There is 
 no safeguard at all, and the Voluntary schools 
 might as well be placed under the School Boards. 
 It is, to me, a marvel that men so able and honest 
 as the leaders of the Opposition do not see the 
 mutually destructive propositions to which they 
 have all except, perhaps, Sir William Harcourt l 
 committed themselves. Protesting their desire to 
 preserve the Voluntary schools, they insist on a 
 condition which w T ould inevitably ruin them, 
 leaving no reason or motive for their existence. 
 It may be safely predicted that the country will 
 not listen to such a policy once it is made plain to 
 
 1 To whom must now be added Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman and 
 Mr. Asquith.
 
 78 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 it. The more the matter is considered, the more 
 evident it appears that the only alternative to 
 something on the lines of the Bill is secular edu- 
 cation alone provided by the State, leaving to the 
 several denominations the right to teach at their 
 own cost their own doctrines in the State schools. 
 This would, of course, involve the necessity of 
 Purchase purchasing the school buildings of the denomina- 
 tions. Dr. Clifford, Lord Spencer, Lord Eosebery, 
 
 state 6 an d other opponents of the Bill have all admitted 
 this, and are prepared to face the cost. Dr. 
 Clifford thinks the final settlement of the system 
 on these lines would be cheap at 40,000,000/. 
 Lord Eosebery, in his recent speech in Edinburgh, 
 thinks that the sooner the Government ' apply the 
 Lands Clauses Act ' to this vested interest, ' and buy 
 it out, the better for the education of the country.' 
 Lord Spencer, in his temperate speech on Novem- 
 ber 1 in Derby, reminds us that the State has con- 
 tributed a considerable sum which he reckons at 
 'not much less than three and a half millions' and 
 thinks that this should be taken into consideration. 
 In the event of purchase, he suggests that the 
 matter should be referred to impartial arbitration. 
 
 This is quite in keeping with the high-minded 
 fairness and moderation which one naturally asso- 
 ciates with Lord Spencer's name. Now, what 
 is the cost of the Church schools, including 
 training colleges for teachers ? The National 
 Society states, professedly on the evidence of
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 79 
 
 statistics, that the amount of money thus * spent 
 by Churchmen on their schools since the National 
 Society was founded ' is ' more than 43,000,000/.' 
 Whether the State contributions are included in 
 this I do not know, but that is a detail which 
 can easily be ascertained. If Lord Spencer's ' less 
 than three and a half millions ' are included this 
 would leave 40,000,000^. to the credit of the 
 Church. In any case I submit that an institution 
 which has contributed this large sum towards the 
 elementary education of the nation from the year 
 1811, and contributed much of it while the rest of 
 the country was sunk in apathy on the subject, is 
 entitled to more courteous treatment than the 
 Church has received at the hands of the opponents 
 of the Bill. And let it be remembered that in the 
 early days of the National Society the clergy had 
 to face much obloquy and unpopularity from many 
 of the wealthy and powerful in their efforts to 
 educate the masses. Popular education was con- 
 sidered a dangerous thing. 
 
 It has been contended lately on platforms and 
 in the press that the Church schools are the 
 property of the nation by reason of the contribu- national 
 tions of the State towards their construction. It P r P ert y 
 might be answered that the three millions odd 
 given by the State was a very moderate reward for 
 the secular education supplied by the Church. 
 But, not to insist on that point, the State contri- 
 bution might be repaid, and yet leave a large
 
 80 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 surplus to the credit of the Church. I prefer, how- 
 ever, to give the answer in the words of Mr. Samuel 
 in the volume for whose orthodox Liberalism Mr. 
 Asquith stands sponsor : 
 
 Meaning Confusion sometimes arises from the fact that many 
 
 National ^ these [Church] schools are called National schools, 
 schools.' They have this name, of course, because they have been 
 founded by ' The Incorporated National Society for Pro- 
 moting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the 
 Established Church.' They are not national in the sense 
 of belonging to the nation. 1 
 
 I ask your pardon for inflicting so long a letter 
 upon you without asking your permission before- 
 hand. I have done so because you have shown on 
 this, as on other occasions, that you can elevate 
 your vision above the tumult of the field of contro- 
 versy and contemplate issues and tendencies which 
 are lost sight of in the dust and din of battle. 
 The real The real issue underlying this controversy, however 
 obscured it may be in the turmoil of the strife, is 
 whether the children of the masses are to be 
 brought up as Christians or not. Commit them for 
 their religious education to the charge of teachers 
 who may believe anything or nothing, and you lay 
 the axe at the root of religious education altogether. 
 We have had no experience in this country of 
 what education without Christianity means. We 
 had a glimpse of it in France when the masses, 
 
 1 Liberalism : its Principles and Proposals, p. 218. 
 
 issue.
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 81 
 
 identifying wrongly the God of Christendom with 
 the misconduct of their rulers, oppressors, and 
 religious teachers, dethroned Him and placed 
 the ' Goddess of reason ' on the vacant throne. 
 There are ominous symptoms of the same popular 
 feeling in Germany in Protestant Germany in 
 particular, which has in large degree discarded 
 Christianity, and is honeycombed with Socialistic 
 ideas of a revolutionary character, boding ill for 
 the future. Let me give an example. The German 
 proletariat is far better educated than ours in 
 everything but Christianity ; but whither does this 
 undenominational education lead it ? Let me give 
 an example from one of its most influential organs, 
 formerly published in Berlin, and published in 
 Switzerland since Bismarck suppressed it in Ger- 
 many. Here is a specimen of its teaching : 
 
 They who take heaven from the multitude must give 
 them the earth. When the priesthood bowed the neck 
 of mankind, it gave to the suffering son of man the 
 kindly hope of another and a better world. In all the 
 misfortunes of life, in sorrow, need, and sickness, a 
 sweet hope was still left to a believing mind. But what 
 is now the case ? There are still poverty and privation, 
 sorrow, need, and sickness. These are artificially en- 
 hanced and heaped up upon one class, while the pleasures 
 and good things of the world combine to enrich the other. 
 What, then, have the favoured of human society to offer 
 to those millions through whose sickness, increased by 
 poverty and care, they enjoy the pleasures of earth ? 
 We tolerate no halfness and no expedients ; we desire the 
 full results the whole truth. Ye wretched Pharisees of 
 
 G
 
 82 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 Free Churches, of Liberal citizenship, who have deprived 
 the people of the consolations of faith, and yet will not 
 remove from them the iron yoke of your iron machines, 
 where, then, is your logic? The logic of history is 
 sterner than yours. The people have done with heaven, 
 and now they claim the earth. 
 
 Bearing of That is an argument not easily answered by 
 education those who desire to expel all definite Christianity 
 pertyand from the schools. I say ' definite Christianity ' 
 ICS> because a Christianity which is not definite 
 is a delusion. Christian morality divorced from 
 Christian belief is as impossible as fruit from a 
 tree which has been severed from its roots. And 
 what inducement have the working classes of this 
 country, apart from Christian motives and ideals, 
 to respect the political and social arrangements of 
 society ? They are the majority and command 
 the Legislature. And let it be considered that 
 Great Britain has made an experiment which is 
 unique in the history of civilised mankind. In 
 the ancient world the industrial classes were slaves 
 without political rights. In the modern world 
 outside Great Britain they are freemen having, in 
 the mass, an interest in the land they till and in 
 the laws which they pass and uphold. In Great 
 Britain alone the majority of those who make the 
 laws have no interest in the soil. Our working 
 classes are still Christian in the main, and have 
 never, to their great honour, used their overwhelm- 
 ing power to dispossess other classes of their legi-
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 83 
 
 timate rights. But let a generation arise unin- 
 fluenced by the restraining and consoling power of 
 Christianity, and why should they respect the 
 present order of things ? Communism would not 
 answer in the long run, and the last state would 
 be worse than the first. Good ; but when have 
 empty stomachs and covetous minds ever paid 
 heed to the demonstrations of political economy ? 
 
 It may be said, however, and has been said, Would 
 
 f*V\ * 4-* 
 
 that Christian morality would survive the ruin of morality 
 
 its dogmatic sanctions, since we see in our midst 
 examples not a few of men of exemplary lives 
 adorning the Christian virtues without owning lty? 
 allegiance to the Christian or any other creed. 
 Yes, but the answer is that men born and bred 
 and living in a Christian land are Christians in a 
 sense in spite of themselves, no matter what their 
 intellectual attitude towards Christianity may be. 
 They imbibed Christianity with their mother's 
 milk. They assimilated it into their character as 
 they grew to manhood. The laws which they 
 obey are Christian laws. The customs which they 
 follow are Christian customs. The language 
 which they speak is saturated with Christian 
 ideas and flavoured with Christian sentiment. 
 Their total environment is Christian, and they 
 inhale Christianity through all the pores of their 
 moral nature. I know nothing about Mr. John 
 Morley's religious opinions, but he is commonly 
 classed among Agnostics. Yet I know none of 
 
 G 2
 
 84 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 \ 
 
 our living politicians in whose speeches and 
 writings the spirit of Christianity burns with a 
 brighter glow than in the speeches and writings of 
 Mr. John Morley. Let those differ who will, for 
 example, from the political aspect of his speeches 
 on Ireland and South Africa ; let them condemn 
 his views if they like ; yet they will find themselves 
 attracted by the Christian ardour, the lofty ideality, 
 the fine self-abnegation which would go to the 
 stake for a cause, even a lost cause, in which he 
 believed. Do you remember a certain afternoon 
 some years ago when you and I met, by invitation 
 of Dr. Parker, at the City Temple to discuss in a 
 friendly conference of representative men the 
 question of Disestablishment ? One of your argu- 
 ments for Disestablishment was the probability, as 
 you thought, of Mr. John Morley becoming Prime 
 Minister of this country. ' How will Churchmen 
 like,' you asked, * the idea of an Agnostic appointing 
 their bishops ? ' I answered that the prospect did 
 not alarm me, since I felt sure that Mr. Morley 
 would strive more earnestly than many Churchmen 
 to nominate the best man for the post. Theologians 
 draw a distinction between a formal heretic and a 
 Formal material heretic. The former is one who chooses 
 material heresy deliberately, and is without excuse ; the 
 compared latter is one who is a heretic from no fault of his 
 formal own, who errs through ' invincible ignorance,' 
 material because circumstances over which he had no 
 Christian- con trol closed his mind to the truth. He is 
 
 ity.
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 85 
 
 blameless. It is the old Aristotelian distinction 
 between ' sinning through ignorance ' (which 
 involves no responsibility) and sinning ' ignor- 
 antly ' (wilich entails guilt). I should call Agnos- 
 tics in a Christian land, who live upright and 
 virtuous lives, and often put Christians to shame 
 by their nobler conduct, material Christians, and 
 more acceptable to God than the formal Christians 
 who, like the formalists of old, call the Master 
 Whom they worship, ' Lord, Lord,' but do not the 
 things which He commands. 
 
 But the true test is not the conduct and The con- 
 character of individuals here and there, but the nations, 
 conduct and character of men living a common dividuais> 
 political or national life. Tried by that ordeal, it [ es e t. tn 
 is no exaggeration to say that the nations of 
 Christendom, with all the sins and crimes which 
 may be justly laid to their charge, are divided by a 
 chasm which can neither be passed nor bridged 
 from non-Christian nations. In all that pertains 
 to the development of the imagination and the 
 intellect mankind has made no advance upon the 
 golden age of Greece. The men of ancient Attica 
 are still our masters in the realm of art, and our 
 models in literature, in poetry, in philosophy. 
 What period of human history can match the age Education 
 of Pericles in splendour of mere intellectual efflo- intellect 
 rescence ? Yet that wonderful exhibition of all that tends to 
 man can do by cultivation of his natural faculties 
 synchronised with an unspeakable depth of moral
 
 86 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 degradation. Even then the superb patriotism 
 and valour which laid the hordes of Asia low at 
 Marathon and Salamis, and saved Europe for 
 Christianity and civilisation, were moribund; and 
 the great orator of Athens appealed in vain to the 
 memory of ' the dead at Marathon.' 
 
 And as in Greece, so in Kome. The awful 
 scene of depravity from which the Apostle lifts a 
 corner of the curtain in the first chapter of his 
 Epistle to the Eomans, and which Juvenal depicts 
 in such lurid colours, coincided with a high degree 
 of intellectual development. He who would realise 
 the abyss of moral ruin into which cultivated high- 
 born men and women had sunk when * S} r rian 
 Orontes flowed into the Tiber,' in the classic days 
 of Rome, should peep into that chamber of horrors 
 in the Naples Museum in which are stored the 
 ojetti osceni, in sculpture and painting, which 
 decorated the halls and chambers of the houses 
 of the ' upper classes ' in Herculaneum and 
 Pompeii. No wonder the fires of heaven de- 
 stroyed that Sodom and Gomorrah. Well might 
 St. Paul say that the educated society of his day 
 in classic Greece and Rome ' gloried in their 
 shame.' 
 
 ' Perceiv'st thou not the change of day ? 
 
 Ah ! Carry back thy ken, 
 What, some two thousand years ! Survey 
 The world as it was then ! 
 
 ' Like ours it look'd in outward air. 
 
 Its head was clear and true, 
 Sumptuous its clothing, rich its fare, 
 No pause its action knew ;
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 87 
 
 ' Stout was its arm, each thew and bone 
 
 Seem'd puissant and alive 
 But, ah ! its heart, its heart was stone, 
 And so it could not thrive ! 
 
 ' On that hard Pagan world disgust 
 
 And secret loathing fell, 
 Deep weariness and sated lust 
 Made human life a hell. 
 
 ' In his cool hall, with haggard eyes, 
 
 The Roman noble lay ; 
 He drove abroad in furious guise, 
 Along the Appian Way. 
 
 ' He made a feast, drank fierce and fast, 
 
 And crown'd his hair with flowers : 
 No easier nor no quicker pass'd 
 The impracticable hours.' 
 
 It is difficult to realise across a space of two 
 thousand years the degradation into which the 
 ancient world had sunk at the advent of Christi- 
 anity. Human life counted for nothing in a 
 society in which twenty thousand slaves could be 
 butchered in a summer's afternoon ' to make a 
 Eoman holiday.' Slavery prevailed everywhere. 
 The slaves formed about one-half of the population 
 of the Eoman Empire, and were in the proportion 
 of three to one in the city of Rome. And the 
 slave was treated worse than the brute, with far 
 more cruelty, and with indignities of which brutes 
 are not susceptible. Christianity, without making 
 war on slavery directly, planted in the heart of 
 humanity principles which have been fatal to 
 slavery wherever they have had fair play. Natural 
 affection, too, had in large measure been quenched.
 
 88 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 According to Roman law a father might put to 
 
 death even an adult child without assigning a 
 
 reason. Infanticide was allowed by law in Greece 
 
 and Rome, and even so enlightened a philosopher 
 
 as Plato recommended, in his ideal Republic, that 
 
 weakly and misshapen children should be put to 
 
 death by exposure to cold or the fangs of wild 
 
 beasts. A hospital for incurables would then have 
 
 been regarded as a premonitory symptom of 
 
 insanity. Woman, too, was but the slave of 
 
 man's passions or the toy of his caprice. 
 
 Christian- Christianity changed all that. The vision of the 
 
 lasted 8 Virgin's Child in His manger crib made infanticide 
 
 the rum. & cr j me by ^ ne j aw O f Christendom. And when 
 
 Jesus laid His own pure nature against the polluted 
 humanity which He assumed in its essential inte- 
 grity into union with His Divine Person, that He 
 might staunch its wounds and reconstruct it as the 
 Second Adam ; when He took up squalid children in 
 His arms and blessed them ; when He touched the 
 leper, and cured the paralytic, and raised the dead, 
 and restored the deformed, and committed the 
 ulcerous beggar at the rich man's gate to the 
 guardianship of angels, and dismissed the harlot 
 and adulterer in hope, bidding them ' sin no more ' : 
 He taught us to recognise and reverence the Divine 
 image in the most repulsive forms, and even to love 
 it all the more on that account. And He set .the 
 example by choosing for Himself the life of ' a man 
 of sorrows and acquainted with grief.'
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 89 
 
 ' The best of men 
 
 That e'er wore earth about Him was a sufferer, 
 A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit ; 
 The first true gentleman that ever breathed.' 
 
 In brief, modern civilisation is the creation of Modern 
 Christianity ; not of a creedless, an undogmatic, a tion the 
 
 hazy indefinite Christianity, but of a Christianity 
 rooted in the Incarnation and in the triumph a 
 over death of the Eternal Son of God. Could 
 mere enlightenment of the intellect achieve such 
 a result or deserve the name of Christianity at all ? 
 The whole of heathendom in its myriad voices 
 answers. No. To enlighten the intellect without 
 purifying the heart and subduing the passions will 
 not make human beings better : it is more likely to 
 make them worse. In ratification of this assertion 
 I appeal to a witness who will not be suspected of 
 ' priestcraft ' or any other * ecclesiastical taint ' : 
 
 Intellect is not a power, but an instrument ; not a Mr. Her- 
 thing which itself moves, but a thing which is moved and c ^ s per 
 worked by forces from behind it. To say that men are opinion. 
 ruled by reason is as irrational as to say that they are 
 ruled by their eyes. Reason is an eye the eye through 
 which the desires see their way to gratification. And 
 educating it only makes it a better eye ; gives it a vision 
 more accurate and more comprehensive ; does not at all 
 alter the desires subserved by it. However far-seeing you 
 make it, the passions will still determine the directions in 
 which it shall be turned, the objects on which it shall 
 dwell. Just those ends which the instincts or sentiments 
 propose will the intellect be employed to accomplish : 
 culture of it having done nothing but increase the ability 
 to accomplish them. 1 
 
 1 Herbert Spencer's Social Statics, p. 382.
 
 90 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer proceeds to prove his case 
 by the evidence of statistics showing the undue 
 proportion of educated persons among criminals. 
 
 So much, then, as to the results of educating 
 the intellect alone and leaving the emotions and 
 passions unregulated. It has been tried and found 
 wanting after an experience of some thousand 
 years extending over the whole of the Pagan world. 
 Unde- Has it been a great success even under the unde- 
 tionaiedu- nominational system of the last thirty years ? Has 
 remedy 00 national character improved? Are tradesmen 
 more honest ? Is work less scamped ? Are busi- 
 ness affairs better managed ? Has gambling de- 
 creased ? Does it not, on the contrary, pervade 
 all classes and almost all ages, from men and 
 women tottering on the brink of the grave to the 
 children even of the poor hardly yet in their teens ? 
 Have constituencies become less corrupt ? Has 
 net the tone of Parliament become deteriorated ? 
 Have not the Hooligans of our streets passed 
 through the mill of the Board schools ? A full 
 generation is a tolerably fair ordeal of an educa- 
 tional system. Can the result be considered satis- 
 factory after ample justice has been done to the 
 undenominational system ? Will those who are 
 satisfied with it venture to say that it is so mani- 
 festly satisfactory that it ought to be extended at 
 once over the whole of England and all the denomi- 
 national schools swept ruthlessly away ? 
 
 That is now the policy of the Opposition. Cer-
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY -91 
 
 tainly their policy is undergoing an uncommonly unstable 
 rapid development. On the evening of October 27 
 
 Sir William Harcourt tacitly allowed that he 
 desired the destruction of the Voluntary schools. 
 His colleagues did not commit themselves, and 
 one of the most distinguished and influential of 
 them declared himself a friend of denominational 
 schools, and accused Mr. Balfour of resorting to 
 ' an oratorical artifice ' in challenging the leaders 
 of the Opposition to say whether they were for 
 or against the retention of the Voluntary schools. 
 i The right honourable gentleman,' said Mr. 
 Asquith, ' might have quoted me among those who 
 wish to retain the denominational character of the 
 Voluntary schools.' And in the next sentence he 
 pronounced in favour of preserving ' in its integrity 
 honest denominational teaching in those schools.' 
 On All Saints' day only four days later a very dif- 
 ferent tale is unfolded. At the meeting in the Alex- 
 andra Park Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman said : 
 
 Let me at once lay down this as my opinion, that it 
 is sheer nonsense to talk of a denominational system. 
 We must have a national system. Denominationalism 
 can never be national. The two terms are contradictory. 
 A denominational system can never be made national with 
 all the restrictions and disguises which can be put into it 
 by Act of Parliament. This is the cause of all the difficulty 
 just now, and of all the discussion which has taken place 
 in the House of Commons. 
 
 Mr. Asquith has proved on more than one 
 occasion that he does not shrink from opposing his
 
 92 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 leader, and I should have thought that on this 
 occasion he would have felt constrained to declare 
 that he could not recede from the position on 
 which he had taken his stand only four days 
 before. But Mr. Asquith took a different view of 
 his duty. He said : 
 
 It would, in my opinion, do no harm to the children of 
 England, and it would wound the consciences of a very 
 insignificant number of parents, if we confined the 
 religious teaching in our public elementary schools to 
 those simple acts and truths which are the common 
 heritage of Christianity. 
 
 The Opposition here propose full-fledged the 
 evil which Mr. Gladstone foresaw, and against 
 which he warned us eight years ago. He can 
 hardly have anticipated, how r ever, that it would be 
 his own erewhile colleagues who would succumb 
 to the ' temptation ' that extorted the denuncia- 
 tion, which I must quote again : 
 
 Foul fall the day when the persons of this world shall, 
 on whatever pretext, take into their uncommissioned hands 
 the manipulation of the religion of our Lord and Saviour. 
 
 Here we have at last one article of the new 
 creed of Liberalism written on the ' clean slate ' ; 
 and as it has received the benison of the leader of 
 the Opposition and of one of the chief leaders of 
 the ' Liberal League,' we may presume that it will 
 occupy a front place in the first King's Speech 
 of the next Liberal Government. 
 
 Is not this break-neck rate of progress in the
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 93 
 
 evolution of Liberalism a little too rapid ? It was 
 only last January that Mr. Asquith recommended 
 to the public ' a restatement of Liberal principles 
 in their application to the most urgent problems of 
 contemporary politics.' The volume thus heralded 
 sketched an education scheme which preserved the 
 denominational schools in much the same way as 
 the Government Bill. We have had several fresh 
 ' restatements of Liberal principles ' meanwhile, 
 and the last restatement has, like Aaron's serpent, 
 swallowed up the rest. 
 
 Now, I have fought not a few battles for the 
 Liberal party, but I am out of breath with their 
 rate of motion, and must, I fear, drop out of the 
 race. Nor is it the pace only that is trying. Still 
 more trying is my uncertainty as to the goal. For 
 the motion is backward as well as forward. Mr. 
 Gladstone's Liberalism is good enough for me. 
 But w r here is it ? On the Education question it is The new 
 better represented on the Ministerial than on the and the 
 Opposition side of the House. On the Irish ques- 
 tion the leaders of the Opposition in the Lords and 
 Commons are still loyal to Mr. Gladstone's policy, 
 and so are Mr. Morley, Mr. Bryce, Mr. Herbert 
 Gladstone, and others, while some prominent 
 Liberals have not committed themselves. But 
 the Liberal Leaguers have betaken themselves 
 to another tabernacle, and, having started an 
 organisation of their own, they are busy beating 
 up recruits. The president of the Liberal League,
 
 94 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 assisted by his distinguished staff, has wiped Home 
 Rule clean off his slate and relegated it to the 
 lumber room to which the debris of the Newcastle 
 Programme has been consigned. 
 
 Examples. Then there is the Eastern question, in which 
 you and I have taken so keen an interest. What 
 is the record on that question of the Liberal party 
 since Mr. Gladstone ceased to be its leader ? Can 
 anything be more deplorable than its conduct of 
 the Armenian question ? The Liberal Government 
 received repeated warnings from its own Consuls 
 that a massacre was imminent, but it did nothing 
 beyond making ' representations ' to the Sultan, 
 which might just as well have been addressed to 
 the unhearing winds. And when the first massacres 
 took place the British Consuls sent full reports of 
 them to the Government, but the Government left 
 the British public in ignorance of them. When, 
 through the enterprise of the ' Times ' and other 
 newspapers, the horrible truth began to be known, 
 the Government turned a deaf ear to all the solici- 
 tations and remonstrances of some of its own 
 supporters, and obstinately refused to publish the 
 Consular reports from Armenia, and we had to 
 await the advent to office of Lord Salisbury's 
 Government for their publication. 
 
 The story is too painful to pursue in detail. 
 But I feel constrained to notice the explanation 
 which Lord Eosebery gave of his resignation in his 
 Edinburgh speech last Monday (November 3).
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 95 
 
 Well, it is worth while recalling in a sentence how Lord 
 that came about. There were many Liberals at that ^ os 
 
 two 
 
 time loud in their demands for a war to be undertaken burgh 
 against the Sultan, and against, probably, some of the spee 
 other Great Powers, on behalf of Armenia. I resisted that 
 movement, believed that the first outbreak of war would 
 lead to the extinction of the population that you wished 
 to protect, and, in the second place, I did not think that 
 we were justified in entering upon so stupendous an oper- 
 ation under the circumstances in which we were. . . . My 
 head was demanded as an expiation my political head. 
 It was given to them ; they were welcome to it. 
 
 Now, what are the facts ? Lord Rosebery's 
 Cabinet, in concert with the French Ambassador in 
 Constantinople, drew up a scheme of reforms for 
 Armenia which provided, inter alia, that in every 
 district where the Christian population was in a 
 majority a Christian official should be appointed 
 to assist the Turkish governor. The Sultan took 
 good care that there should be no excuse for de- 
 manding the appointment of a Christian sub- 
 governor anywhere. When the Ambassadors pre- 
 sented their precious scheme the Sultan treated it 
 with silent contempt for some weeks and refused 
 to take the slightest notice of it. Prince Lobanoff, 
 on behalf of Russia, warned the British Goverment 
 that its reforms would remain barren unless it was 
 prepared to enforce them. How was it going to 
 enforce them ? The question was not answered. 
 But meanwhile the Sultan went quietly to work to 
 frustrate the reforms in his own effective way.
 
 96 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 He ordered a renewal of the massacres till there 
 was no Christian majority left anywhere. And 
 when he received a despatch from the Governor 
 of Armenia to say that his Majesty might now 
 safely send his answer to the Ambassadors, ' since 
 the Musulman element was everywhere in the 
 majority,' 1 the Sultan blandly told the Ambassadors 
 that their statistics were inaccurate, for the Arme- 
 nians were nowhere in the majority. And what 
 shall we say of the purely Turkish Commission 
 which the Sultan sent, on the advice of the 
 British Government, to inquire into the massacres ? 
 Of course the Commission reported that the 
 massacres were committed by 'Armenian brigands.' 
 And he proceeded to promote and decorate the real 
 leaders of the massacres, whose condign punish- 
 ment Lord Rosebery's Cabinet had demanded. To 
 this slap in the face the British Government turned 
 the other cheek. Meanwhile Lord Salisbury's 
 Government succeeded Lord Kosebery's, and the 
 Sultan, encouraged by impunity, made a final 
 experiment on the patience of Christendom. He 
 started a carnival of massacres under the very eyes 
 of the European Ambassadors, and made the streets 
 of Constantinople red with Christian blood. Public 
 feeling in Great Britain and Ireland was roused to 
 frenzy, and Mr. Gladstone, who had retired from 
 
 x The Italian Ambassador at the Porte sent a copy of that despatch 
 to his Government, and Baron Blanc, the Italian Minister for Foreign 
 Affairs, showed it to me, together with other important documents 
 on this question, when I was in Borne in the winter of 1895.
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PAKTY 97 
 
 public life, declined, in answer to numerous ap- 
 peals, to break the silence which he had imposed 
 upon himself. He yielded at last to an appeal 
 from the mayor of his native town, Lord Derby, 
 on behalf of the citizens of Liverpool, without dis- 
 tinction of party. In a powerful and exhaustive 
 speech Mr, Gladstone sketched a policy which, Mr. 
 without the smallest risk of war with the Sultan Liverpool 
 or any other Power, would have secured justice to 
 the Armenians. Sir A. Forwood, who had opposed 
 the invitation to Mr. Gladstone, was so delighted 
 with his speech that he asked and obtained leave 
 to second the resolution which Mr. Gladstone 
 moved. 
 
 Conservatives and Liberals thus joined hands 
 in assuring Lord Salisbury's Government of the 
 support of a united nation in ' whatever ' step it 
 took to force the Sultan to fulfil his treaty obli- 
 gations to the Powers, and to Britain in a double 
 sense. About the same time Lord Hugh Cecil 
 wrote from under his father's roof a letter of 
 sympathy with the agitation against the massacres, 
 which made a great sensation. There was panic 
 at Yildiz Kiosk, for not a single Power would have 
 disputed the pacific, but effectual, method which 
 Mr. Gladstone adopted at Dulcigno to bring the 
 Sultan to reason ; which Lord Salisbury adopted 
 to prevent the Sultan from occupying Eastern 
 Eoumelia and the Shipka Pass, under the sanction 
 of the Treaty of Berlin, when sundered Bulgaria 
 
 H
 
 98 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 united itself ; which France lately adopted at 
 Mitylene ; and which the present Government 
 appears to have just adopted with success at 
 Aden. The Sultan is bound by the religious law, 
 which he cannot violate without apostasy involving 
 deposition. That law commands him to resist any 
 pressure short of force from an infidel Power ; but 
 to yield without fighting in presence of a force 
 which he has no reasonable hope of resisting ; 
 which means at present any Power possessing a 
 navy. Let this once be realised, and the Sultan 
 is, of all living sovereigns, the easiest to manage. 
 The Sultan was obliged to obtain the sanction of 
 the Sheikh-ul-Islam before he could .accept 
 Russia's declaration of war in 1877 ; and when 
 his empire lay prostrate under the heel of the 
 Tsar, the Grand Vizir (Midhat Pasha) and 
 Foreign Minister (Server Pasha) declared through 
 the English press that the Sheikh-ul-Islam would 
 not have given his sanction unless the Porte had 
 been assured of England's co-operation. 
 
 But when the Sultan was preparing to yield, in 
 awe of the united front of the British nation, a bolt 
 descended from the blue which neutralised the 
 effect of the Liverpool meeting, and gave the Sultan 
 a free hand. The Liberal leader wrote to the 
 Liberal Whip a letter of resignation, and the reason 
 which he gave was that whenever Mr. Gladstone 
 chose to resume the leadership of the party there 
 was no possible rival. Nothing was further from
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 99 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's intention than the resumption of 
 the Liberal leadership. He believed and he had 
 good reason to believe that Lord Rosebery was 
 in full sympathy with him when he accepted Lord 
 Derby's invitation to speak at Liverpool. This I 
 know, for I was on a visit to Hawarden at the 
 time, and I remember that one of Mr. Gladstone's 
 inducements to speak was a letter from Lord Rose- 
 bery to yourself on the Armenian massacres. In 
 that letter, which was published in large type in 
 the ' Westminster Gazette,' the Liberal leader 
 reproached the Government of Lord Salisbury for 
 its lack of ' tact and spirit ' in dealing with the 
 Armenian question, and seemed to contemplate 
 action at least as drastic as any which Mr. Glad- 
 stone recommended at Liverpool. 
 
 A few days after his letter of resignation Lord 
 Rosebery made a long and eloquent speech in 
 Edinburgh, which was from beginning to end a 
 destructive criticism of Mr. Gladstone's Liverpool 
 speech. The policy of that speech, said Lord 
 Rosebery, would cause a concert of the Powers, 
 not for us, but against us, and the inevitable result 
 would be a great war. He seemed to contemplate 
 even a victorious invasion of Scotland, which would 
 be ' more disastrous than twenty Floddens.' 
 
 Lord Rosebery's resignation and explanatory 
 speech have been an enigma to me ever since. 
 That he shared the horror and indignation of us 
 all against the author of the Armenian massacres 
 
 H 2
 
 100 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 I am sure. That he believed that Mr. Gladstone's 
 very mild policy would cause a great war is certain, 
 for he said so. But his memory has undoubtedly 
 misled him when he says that ' there were many 
 Liberals at that time loud in their demands for 
 war,' and for his own 'political head.' I took an 
 active part in the matter, and I cannot recall the 
 case of any Liberal of note or influence who de- 
 manded war, or believed that war was necessary. 
 I don't know whence Lord Eosebery derived his 
 information ; but I do know that Lord Salisbury, 
 who was then eighteen months in office, as Prime 
 Minister and Foreign Secretary, knew nothing to 
 justify Lord Kosebery's panic. 
 
 Lord Eosebery 's resignation and apologia rent 
 the Liberal party in twain ; but it must be added, 
 in justice to him, that he only disclosed a cleavage 
 which already existed, and not on the Eastern 
 Question alone a cleavage for which Lord Eose- 
 bery must not be held responsible. I know that 
 his whole soul was stirred by the massacres in 
 Armenia, and my belief is that if he had a free 
 hand he would have brought the Sultan to his 
 senses while he was at the head of affairs. I 
 remember a speech of his in the House of Lords, 
 and another at the Eighty Club, which plainly 
 point in the direction of the policy recommended 
 in Mr. Gladstone's Liverpool speech. Lord Eose- 
 bery had a true affection for Mr. Gladstone and 
 a fine appreciation of his character, as his charm-
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 101 
 
 ing speech lately in Glasgow proves ; and I can 
 readily believe that the powerful speech in which 
 he arraigned Mr. Gladstone's policy in Edinburgh 
 six years ago must have been one of the most 
 painful incidents in his life. He obeyed what was 
 to him the voice of duty, as I am endeavouring in 
 my humble w 7 ay to do now. Undoubtedly there is Mr. Giad- 
 aii influential section of the Liberal party which fluence on 
 never had any real sympathy with Mr. Gladstone's 
 splendid efforts to make the influence of Great 
 Britain potent throughout the world on behalf of 
 freedom and just government potent by appealing 
 to what is noblest and most chivalrous in human 
 nature, not to what is most selfish and debasing. 
 He opened that campaign against injustice and 
 oppression, which only ended at his death, with his 
 letters to Lord Aberdeen on the misgovernment 
 of the Two Sicilies a pamphlet which contri- 
 buted even more than Cavour's statesmanship to 
 the freedom and unity of Italy, as a Koman 
 Cardinal once assured me at breakfast one morn- 
 ing, and an Italian statesman at dinner the same 
 evening. Those w r ho think that Mr. Gladstone 
 took no interest in foreign politics have never 
 read his great speech in the Don Pacifico debate, 
 in w r hich he lays down a comprehensive policy 
 worthy of the statesmanship, as of the eloquence, 
 of Burke and Canning. What statesman of our 
 time exercised so widespread and beneficent an 
 influence on foreign politics an influence little
 
 102 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 suspected till the universal mourning for his death 
 revealed it ? The Tsar of Russia did but voice 
 the universal sentiment of civilised mankind when 
 he said in his long telegram to Mrs. Gladstone 
 that not she only and her family, but all man- 
 kind, suffered a loss in Mr. Gladstone's death. 
 The fact of such a universal impression is no light 
 asset in the influence and moral wealth of a 
 nation. 
 
 But there are Liberals who do not understand, 
 because they have no sympathy with, that side of 
 Mr. Gladstone's character. They do not under- 
 stand it even as a potent element in party politics, 
 though proofs are numerous and patent that to it 
 Mr. Gladstone owed no small share of his influence 
 over the masses. These Liberals strongly disap- 
 proved of Mr. Gladstone's Midlothian campaign till 
 the event proved the hollowness of their fears 
 which I heard some of them express that Mr. 
 Gladstone's Midlothian speeches had ruined the 
 Liberal party for at least twenty years. 
 
 Men of this class believe that the British 
 masses will only respond to appeals to their 
 material interests, and very likely thought a 
 general election fought on the Death Duties 
 and Local Veto promised a better chance of suc- 
 cess than an appeal on behalf of an oppressed 
 and outraged people. This may explain Lord 
 Rosebery's feeble and vacillating policy on 
 the Armenian question. Never was there a
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 103 
 
 greater mistake. My position as Honorary 
 Secretary of the Grosvenor House Committee 
 placed me in touch with masses of voters who are 
 outside the range of political wire-pullers, and I 
 feel confident that if Lord Eosebery had published 
 the Consular despatches describing the Armenian 
 massacres, and taken prompt action to stop them, 
 instead of sanctioning a burlesque Commission, 
 composed exclusively of creatures of the Sultan 
 who organised the massacres, he would have 
 carried the country with him. By letting the 
 opportunity pass, and ' resisting,' as he admitted 
 in Edinburgh, ' the movement ' which united 
 Liberals and Tories under the presidency of Lord 
 Derby at Liverpool, Lord Eosebery deprived the 
 Liberal party of one of the most potent of political 
 forces. In the General Election of 1895 crowds 
 of Liberals, to my knowledge, either abstained from 
 voting or voted for the Conservatives entirely on 
 the Armenian question. 
 
 The Corn tax, too, would, I believe, have Mr. Mr. 
 Gladstone's support if he were still among us. the com 
 I remember a speech of his in 1875 in the House 
 of Commons, in which he opposed in vigorous 
 language the policy of Lord Beaconsfield's Govern- 
 ment which raised the income tax to a figure that 
 did not touch the working classes and the lowest 
 stratum of the middle classes. He denounced it as 
 revolutionary and dangerous, partly on the ground 
 of justice, but mainly because it removed a most
 
 104 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 valuable check on rash and improvident wars. 
 Liberal as he was to the core, he saw the tempta- 
 tions and dangers to which democracies are exposed, 
 and one of the chief of them is, in his opinion, the 
 military spirit and love of fighting which charac- 
 terise a martial nation. He saw with regret and 
 alarm an increasing tendency to go to war in haste 
 and repent at leisure. Kegarding the income tax 
 as especially a war tax, he wished to make the 
 working classes feel it, in just proportion, as a 
 stimulant to reflection in the possible excitement of 
 a war fever. The Corn tax, we are told, is hard 
 upon the working classes. That, I believe, would 
 have been its chief merit in Mr. Gladstone's eyes. 
 He would have said, ' War is always prejudicial 
 to the working classes in the long run. But its 
 consequences are not felt at once ; and when they 
 are felt the mass of men do not connect them with 
 their cause. It is, therefore, in the interest of the 
 working classes themselves that in a war of which 
 they approve, perhaps desire, they should feel with 
 the least possible delay that they must pay their 
 fair share of the cost.' 
 
 Now, the working classes by a large majority 
 approved of the war in South Africa, and not only 
 approved, but shouted for it, and were ready to 
 break the heads of all who disapproved of it. It 
 would be an evil day for the Empire if any Govern- 
 ment should adopt the craven and perilous policy 
 of allowing one class of the community, and that
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 105 
 
 the most numerous, to call for war and leave the 
 minority to pay for it. And I am sure that our 
 working men, who are at bottom reasonable and 
 just, will not resent the doctrine which I advocate, 
 and which was certainly the doctrine of Mr. 
 Gladstone, as a reference to his speech in 1875 
 will show. Mr. John Morley lost not a shred of 
 his popularity among the working classes for his 
 speech and vote in favour of the sugar duty last 
 year, although he deserted his leader and his party 
 in obedience to his convictions. The British 
 workman admires courage, though it be exhibited 
 against himself, when he sees that it is the offspring 
 of principle and honest conviction. One of the 
 ugly symptoms visible here and' there in the new 
 Liberalism is lack of moral courage, a disposition 
 to find out what the masses desire and then advo- 
 cate it. How can the working classes have con- 
 fidence in leaders who condemned the war in South 
 Africa and then condoned it ; condemned the policy 
 of farm-burning and then accepted it ; condemned 
 the policy of Proclamations and then defended it ; 
 condemned the annexation of the Boer Eepublics 
 and then commended it ? Not so did Mr. Bright 
 win his great mastery over the working classes. 
 To him the Crimean war was a moral question, 
 and recognising that morality does not depend 
 on the shifting opinions of the multitude, he acted 
 on his convictions, though his conduct might 
 drive him out of public life, as it did for a season ;
 
 106 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 but only to invest him by-and-by with a greater 
 power than he had ever wielded before. 
 
 You will be glad to learn that I am drawing to 
 a close. But there is one more point on which I 
 must remark before I release you if, indeed, you 
 have had patience to follow me so far. 
 A great One of the gravest dangers of the day, I think, 
 
 the day? is the spirit of militarism which threatens to drive 
 the nations of Christendom either to bankruptcy 
 or to a gigantic war. And there are ominous signs 
 that this nation is being gradually drawn nearer 
 the maelstrom which is swallowing up the man- 
 hood, the treasure, the industries of the nations of 
 the Continent. ' Imperialism ' is a high-sounding 
 word, but it has a military origin and has not con- 
 duced to the prosperity and happiness of States. 
 The Conservatives have shown wisdom in avoiding 
 it as a distinctive label. Is it likely to favour the 
 fortunes of Liberals ? I doubt it. I may be told 
 that it is only ' sane Imperialism ' that is needed. 
 But who is to judge of its sanity ? Lord Kosebery, 
 for example, divided the House of Lords against 
 Lord Salisbury in favour of Conscription. Is Con- 
 scription written in invisible ink on the ' clean 
 slate ' of the Liberal League ? Can this Imperial- 
 ism be entirely acquitted of an adventurous policy 
 sometimes in foreign affairs ? When the Fashoda 
 incident was in its acutest stage did not Liberal 
 journals and speakers adopt a tone well calculated, 
 however little intended, to precipitate France and
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 107 
 
 England into the horrors of war ? Did not a dis- 
 tinguished Liberal leader make a speech which 
 made the blood of both nations speed angrily 
 through their veins ? If ever there was an occasion 
 when coolness, circumspection, reserve, should 
 have been shown, it was then. Little did the Kruger 
 orators and writers know how near war we were a nd 8 FaTh- 
 then. ' I think,' said Lord Eosebery in Edinburgh 
 last week, ' that none of those who have perused 
 attentively the history of our late war against a 
 comparatively small nation will think without 
 satisfaction that we were not driven into that war,' 
 i.e. on behalf of Armenia. There is really not a 
 grain of accessible evidence to show that there was 
 then any danger of war. But there was a real 
 danger of a very formidable war in the Fashoda 
 business. France was sore and angry with us, 
 partly on account of the violence of our press in the 
 Dreyfus controversy, and partly over our relations 
 with her in West Africa. We know now on the 
 authority of the German Chancellor, Count von 
 Bulow, that the Emperor's telegram to Kruger was 
 an experiment to test the possibility of drawing 
 Eussia and France into an alliance with Germany 
 to strike a mortal blow at England. The experiment 
 failed, but the policy was by no means abandoned, 
 and Fashoda seemed to offer another and a more 
 promising chance. The German Government then 
 urged France not to give way, and offered her 
 armed alliance against us. Delcasse had a most
 
 108 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 difficult card to play, and he played it with skill. 
 He consulted Eussia, but the Tsar, true to his 
 own noble character snd to his love of peace, 
 counselled prudence. This gave Delcasse a moral 
 force to withstand rash impulses, and peace was 
 assured ; Lord Salisbury's efforts being effectually 
 helped, as Lord Salisbury himself avowed, by the 
 skilful tact of Lord Kitchener. 1 
 Difficulty I think I have shown that Liberals of the 
 
 of Glad- 
 
 stonian Gladstone era are in a difficulty, created by the 
 
 Liberals. 
 
 developments in the Liberal creed since his de- 
 parture : developments not merely in the adapta- 
 tion of old principles to new needs, but in the 
 supersession of old principles by new and untried 
 ones. Lord Rosebery is undoubtedly right in 
 deprecating premature and top-heavy programmes. 
 But we may forecast the action of a political party 
 on cardinal questions by observing its general 
 attitude ; and the general attitude of the Liberal 
 party leaves me in the dark as to the programme 
 which it would write on the ' clean slate ' in the 
 event of its return to power. In fact, has it a 
 general attitude on leading questions of policy ? 
 Do not the existence and the propagandism of the 
 Liberal League prove the contrary ? In this view 
 
 1 I have related in a pamphlet the secret history of the Kruger 
 telegram and Fashoda imbroglio on the authority of a French states- 
 man of rank in Paris, who was in a position to know. My information 
 has lately been confirmed by the memoirs of the late President of the 
 Republic. See Russia, England, and Germany, published by 
 Chapman & Hall.
 
 AND THE LIBERAL PARTY 109 
 
 by-elections are fallacious tests. The General 
 Election will not be soon, and when it comes, at 
 least the outlines of the Liberal programme must 
 be written on the 'clean slate.' The Ministerial 
 party will have a homogeneous programme. Will 
 the Liberal party ? Will Lord Kosebery walk 
 into Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's tabernacle ? 
 or will Sir Henry walk into the tabernacle of 
 the Liberal League ? or will both parties go into 
 battle with two separate arks of the Covenant, 
 each with its own political decalogue ? 
 
 The ' Westminster Gazette ' has with consum- 
 mate ability, unfailing tact, admirable temper and 
 patience, and judicial fairness, striven for years to 
 smooth angles, diminish antagonisms, and accen- 
 tuate any symptoms of agreement. But I fear 
 that the differences between the official Opposition 
 and the Liberal Leaguers are organic, not super- 
 ficial and ephemeral ; in which case office would 
 either result in a demoralising compromise of 
 principles or in a deeper disruption than now exists. 
 Many a man will die for a principle : no one will 
 become a martyr to a conclusion. Even during 
 the short sojourn of the Education Bill in the 
 House of Commons the policy of the Liberal party 
 seems to me to be in a state of unstable equili- 
 brium. 
 
 I am afraid I shall greatly offend valued friends 
 by the frankness on which I have ventured in this 
 Letter. I am sorry. At least I have no axe to grind,
 
 110 THE EDUCATION QUESTION 
 
 no interest to serve but that which I believe to be 
 the truth. It is my misfortune on this Educa- 
 tion controversy, as it has been on some other 
 questions, to find myself out of complete harmony 
 with either political party, and I must bear with 
 such equanimity as I possess the lot of those who 
 refuse to be partisans. I have striven to be fair 
 and courteous all round and I trust that I have 
 not altogether failed. 
 
 Apologising for this unconscionable infliction, 
 written currents calamo, I remain, dear Dr. Guin- 
 ness Rogers, with much respect, 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 MALCOLM MACCOLL. 
 
 November 6, 1902. 
 
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