Excerpt from Church Schools and State Interference: A Letter Addressed, by Permission, to the Right Hon. William Ewart Gladstone, M. P. For the University of Oxford

In the approval expressed by this act Of petition ing Parliament, I was never able to concur. It always seemed to me that it was one thing for Churchmen - admitting, as I do myself, the very great difficulties Of the case - to accept the assist ance Offered by Government as simply their due, and to use it for good, as far as this might be possible without the compromise Of any principle; and quite another thing to express any approval Of a scheme like the Government scheme: for there is SO much to be deplored by all Churchmen in the fact Of a State which possesses, as a primary element Of her constitution, a branch Of the Church Catholic, being led by her religious divisions to grant aid from State funds towards the teaching Of error, that Churchmen are bound, as it seems to me, to confine themselves to a bare assent to a plan Of this character, as being what, in its whole aspect, they cannot approve.

It is unnecessary to revert to the details Of the proceedings in Parliament; there is little in them to which the Church can look back with any satis faction. Suspicions, indeed, that all was not right had begun to creep in long before the vote was passed, arising chiefly from the publication Of the anonymous pamphlet referred to above. Some faint tones Of remonstrance were heard; and many per sons who had petitioned in favour Of the Minutes, began to wish that they had been less precipitate. Some curious instances Of the power Of expansion and development, SO inherent, as it would seem, in Minutes Of Council, and which render them SO dan gerons a substitute for an act Of Parliament, had extorted strong expressions Of distrust and disap proval in high quarters; but, on the whole, the Education scheme may be said to have been still regarded as full Of promise when the Parliament was dissolved.

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