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17. It is proved, by the recorded and printed Minutes of the Committee of Council, to have been brought forward at the sole instance of clerical and other bodies connected with the Established Church.

18. The Inspectors, most of whom are Clergymen, are not appointed without the concurrence of the Archbishops, which can be withdrawn at pleasure, when the appointment ceases; and they receive their instructions "with regard to religious teaching" from the most reverend Prelates.

19. The parochial Clergy have an authority co-ordinate with that of the Inspectors, the yearly certificates of the one class being as necessary as the favourable reports of the other, to Pupil Teachers, Stipendiary Monitors, &c., &c. No favour whatever can descend but through the intervention of the Clergy.

20. In the Church of England schools, which are under the authority of the parochial Clergyman, the religious teaching is to be at once definite and compulsory; and, since no scholar can become a Pupil Teacher or a Stipendiary Monitor without being, in the first place, well versed in the Church Catechism, nor remain one unless the Clergyman distinctly certify that he "has been attentive to his religious duties,”— it follows, independently of the existing practice in such schools, that the Church Catechism and attendance at Church and at the Church Sunday school, will be compulsory on those who wish to reap the proposed benefits.

21. When we consider the character of the proposed religious teaching, the order of persons appointed as Inspectors, their extensive powers, and their complete subjection to the Heads of the Church; the high authority conferred upon the parochial Clergy, the immense amount of money and influence placed at their disposal, with a power at almost any moment to diminish or withdraw their patronage, (for the Clergyman may at any time withhold his testimonial, and thereby blast the fortunes of a youth for ever, without any one having the power to ask him for a reason,) and add to all this, that the Church is permitted in every material point to prescribe her own terms,-the measure cannot be viewed in any other light than as a Subsidiary Church Establishment. To these considerations might be added many more; such as,(1.) The scheme has been justly characterised as "a system of spiritual despotism, unclogged by a single condition in favour of religious freedom, and totally exempt from legal responsibility." (2.) It absurdly proposes to give Government clerkships and gaugerships for the learning of the Liturgy and the Church Catechism.

(3.) It may be reasonably expected, that, beginning with insisting upon annual certificates that Apprentices and Monitors

are drilled in the Catechism and the Liturgy, it will ultimately require, according to the practice of the Normal College at Stanley-grove, that the Thirtynine Articles shall also be learned by heart.

(4.) The scheme will gradually give the
Clergy a new and vast power, not only
over Dissenters, but over the laity of the
Church of England.

(5.) It will produce a perpetual succes-
sion of theologically bred Schoolmasters,
large numbers of whom, it is probable,
will obtain holy orders; thus unnaturally
increasing a State-paid Clergy, already a
grievous incumbrance on the nation.
(6.) Beneath a thin, though an elaborate
veil, it more than half reveals a skilfully
devised machinery for the recovery of
Church power over the popular mind.

THE MEASURE AS IT AFFECTS DISSENTERS.

22. It aggravates the public burdens of Dissenters, imposes on them new disabilities, places them under inequitable disadvantages, and aims insidiously at the destruction of their educational institutions by increasing, at their expense, the attractiveness of Church of England schools, and by rendering attendance on their own Sunday-schools an act which, in many instances, will entail practically penal consequences.

23. They will have to pay a new tax, (as it will virtually be,) in addition to tithes, church-rates, Easter-offerings, and other ecclesiastical imposts, in support of a system of religious teaching at variance with their own convictions, and under the exclusive direction and control of the Established Church.

24. By offering numerous advantages on the sole condition of constant conformity to the doctrinal symbols and the rites of the Established Church, it creates new disabilities more grievous in their pressure and more extensive in their application than those removed by the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts.

25. It tends to the disadvantage of all Dissenting schools, and all scholars, schoolmasters, committees, and subscribers connected with them, by compelling Dissenters, as tax-payers, to pay towards the support of Church of England schools without receiving an equivalent for their own; by conferring on the pupils and masters of Church of England schools advantages denied to the pupils and masters of Dissenting schools; and by constraining the committees and subscribers of Dissenting schools either to make inordinate efforts otherwise uncalled for, or to compete with rival schools under grievous disadvantages.

26. It offers so many inducements to the poor to send their children to schools under Church-and-State patronage, that, in many

parts of the country, the Sunday-schools, and even the congregations of Dissenters, will, in process of time, almost inevitably be dissolved and disappear.

THE MEASURE HOSTILE TO CIVIL FREEDOM.

27. It is hostile to civil freedom in various

ways:

(1.) In committing the education of the people to teachers dependent in a great measure upon the Established Clergy and the Executive.

(2.) In placing schools, as well as Schoolmasters, Pupil Teachers, and Stipendiary Monitors, under the virtual control of the Established Clergy and of Inspectors nominated by the Executive and approved by the Heads of the Established Church, and no way responsible to Parliament.

(3.) In thus spreading over the face of the country a large army of Governmental and Ecclesiastical functionaries ready to do the bidding of those on whom they are dependent, and in encouraging to a wide extent a disposition among the people to expect sustenance from the State.

(4.) In extending the duties of the
Inspectors, heretofore confined to places,
over the conduct of persons, hundreds
of thousands of whom will, more or less
completely, be at their mercy as to their
prospects in life.

(5.) In destroying the freedom of Educa-
tion, which is the firmest basis and
surest safeguard of civil freedom.
(6.) In adopting a plan of procedure
which, on the Continent, has been found
one of the most efficient instruments of
tyranny and despotism.
(7.) Finally, in appropriating taxes paid
by all classes of the people, without
distinction of creed or worship, to the
maintenance of schools and schoolmasters
of one particular creed and worship.

GENERAL OBJECTIONS TO THE MEASURE.

28. From this plan, devised by a "Liberal" Government, we may learn the folly of looking to the State for any Educational plan which does not violate the most cherished convictions of Dissenters and of the friends of liberty.

29. Although introduced as "no plan," it is clearly "u scheme fully arranged," a tentative device, which is to determine how much the public mind will bear.

30. It is proposed only as an instalment, not from any doubt or hesitancy of the Government, but simply because the public mind is known to be hostile to any more perfected scheme.

31. In the meantime, under the guise of apparent concession, a most important point is gained the principle of Government

interference is assumed, the public mind is accustomed to Governmental control of Education, educational stipendiaries are created without number, and a machinery is put in action capable of indefinite expansion.

32. It assumes that the Education of the people is the office of the State, a proposition which cannot be admitted; and that the State is best able to perform that office, a proposition which experience disproves.

33. The plan is liable to this further objection, that it may be varied or extended at any time without the useful notoriety of parliamentary discussion; a state of things which is highly unconstitutional.

34. It will extend immensely the administrative power of the Government, without adequate publicity and parliamentary check.

35. Not merely the committees of schools, and subscribers to the funds, but also the parties who have materials to supply, apprentices to obtain, or even land to lease or cultivate in connection with Government schools, will deem subserviency to the reviewing official properly and profitably rendered.

36. The proposed retiring pensions involve the futile principle of pensioning every class of men whose voluntary occupation, though not prospectively lucrative to themselves, happens to be beneficial to others.

37. It increases the wealth and influence of the Established Church, already too great; and entrusts the Education of the young to the Established Clergy, who have in all times been the most negligent and inefficient in instructing either the young or the old.

38. In respect to religious instruction, whether in Church of England or other schools, it clearly proposes to pay for all kinds of such instruction without discriminating between the good and the bad, the false and the true, a principle of action based upon the pernicious doctrine that any one religion is as good as any other.

39. It thus exhibits the Government directly, and the Established Clergy indirectly, as engaged in the authoritative maintenance of all existing religious systems, as if to them all were equally true, equally false, or equally indifferent.

40. The whole corps of Inspectors are animated by one spirit, and are adherents of the principle of national endowment.

41. The proportion to be observed between voluntary contributions and the aid of the State, so far from stimulating private benevolence, will first discourage, and afterwards extinguish it; while, to the Established Clergy, it suggests the wisdom of sacrificing, in the form of voluntary contributions for school purposes, a small portion of their present revenues, in order to entitle themselves to receive an additional income from the State of perhaps fourfold amount.

42. It compromises the interests of private | themselves condemned in the Universities of schoolmasters, threatening as it does to Oxford and Cambridge. swamp them by the creation of a vast number of State stipendiaries, with various enticing advantages.

43. The extreme youth of the new race of schoolmasters constitutes an obvious objection.

44. Every teacher who will not accept the largesses of the State, will be driven into unfair, hostile, and obnoxious competition with antagonists who derive their resources from impositions and exactions practised on himself with all the penalty and obloquy a Government can inflict.

45. The proposed scheme will tend greatly to paralyse the efforts of private individuals and communities who cannot conscientiously accept of Government aid, and especially will render it increasingly difficult for them to obtain masters for their schools.

46. These Minutes of Council are not founded on those principles of local assessment, suffrage, control, and action, which were in some degree recognised and embodied even in the measure of 1843.

47. They do not so much as provide, that in a parish having but one school supported by Government Grants and the prospect of Government appointments, every child in that parish sball have A RIGHT to all the advantages of that school, without going through religious exercises, or submitting to religious authority, to which its parents may object.

48. It deserves consideration, whether the novel mode proposed of giving boys instruction in various trades and handicrafts, be not in inconvenient opposition to the rules and usages which, whether right or wrong, have hitherto regulated their exercise.

49. The measure violates in a twofold manner a settled economical principle. It proposes to create a supply independently of a corresponding demand: for,

(1.) It will vastly increase the number of schools and schoolmasters, whereas the poverty of the people prevents them from availing themselves of education for their children to the full extent of the means already provided by voluntary and independent exertions.

(2.) It will, through the operation of the Industrial Schools, greatly augment the amount of skilled labour at a time when the labour market is in every department distressingly overstocked.

50. The statistics of crime prove, on the whole, that poverty is the parent of more offences against the law than ignorance, while it is also the grand impediment to the extension of education.

51. As brought forward by the present Government, the measure is liable to the forcible objection of being based upon that very principle of exclusion which they have

52. It proceeds from the same deliberately formed purpose which has determined upon the endowment of Popery, and which has already endowed Popery, in the education of the young.

III. MEANS OF OPPOSING THE MEASURE.

1. The uncandid and evasive answer of Lord John Russell, in reply to Mr. Hindley, affords no reason for relaxation in opposing the measure, but the contrary.

2. Whether the Government take a grant for £100,000, or any larger sum, they can in either case begin to put their plan in operation.

3. So long as the Minutes of Council remain on the tables of Parliament unquestioned, the Committee of Council are warran ted in taking it for granted that the authority they claim is conceded, and in making still further advances in its exercise.

4. It is therefore strongly advised, that steps be taken immediately to oppose the measure by Public Meetings, Memorials to Her Majesty's Ministers, and Petitions to Parliament (a form is subjoined).

5. Public meetings should be called, if possible, in every town, parish, village, and hamlet; and the resolutions adopted, either embodied in the form of memorials to Her Majesty's Ministers, or simply authenticated by the signature of the Chairman, should be transmitted without delay to Lord John Russell.

6. All memorials and petitions should, it is submitted, contain a decided protest against any Government interference with the education of the people, and should conclude with a prayer that the proposed measure be withdrawn, and the powers given to the Committee of Council in 1839 be revoked.

7. Above all, individual electors should correspond by name and address with their Representatives in Parliament, and intimate distinctly the view which they shall be disposed to take of their conduct, if they are not prepared, not merely to oppose and resist the present unconstitutional and obnoxious measure, but also to withhold their support from any future measure, the effect of which may be to increase the number of Dissenters' grievances and augment the power and wealth of the Established Church.

8. Petitions may be forwarded for presentation to the Representatives of the petitioners, or (if sent free of postage or other charge) to the Central Committee, who will place them in the hands of Members opposed to the measure.

9. Every mode and form of constitutional and effective opposition should be set in motion; e. g.:

(1.) Towns and parishes may forcibly object to the centralizing character of the

measure, and the menaced addition to
the public burdens in the shape
(virtually) of a new and heavy ecclesias-
tical impost.

(2.) Congregations may protest against it
as calculated, among other evils, to
undermine their congregational institu-
tions, by enticing away the working
classes and their children through the
lure of superior worldly advantages.
(3.) Sunday-school teachers may justly
complain that it is directly adapted to
counteract and neutralise their voluntary,
self-denying, and useful efforts, by
absorbing the children of the poor into
the so-called National Schools, in which,
no doubt, attendance at the Church
Sunday-school and at church will be
more than ever insisted upon.
(4.) The Committees and supporters of
British and other voluntary day-schools
may urge, that they will be unjustly
compelled, through the taxes, to contri-
bute to the support of exclusive Church
of England schools, without being able,
from insuperable objections, to accept
any such support for their own schools.
(5.) Protestant Dissenters will have a just
right to complain that a new and oppres-
sive ecclesiastical impost, with unprece-
dented disabilities, is about to be imposed
upon them,

10. Men who care little about Dissenters or their principles, may yet hesitate, in the immediate prospect of an Election, to sanction the wrong with which Dissenters are threatened.

11. Happily, honourable Members are not yet committed. In the case of the Maynooth Grant, it was otherwise. Many of them had spoken or voted before the communications of their constituents were received, and a General Election-no trifling consideration in such matters was not then near. On this occasion, they are unpledged ; and consistency does not require them to proceed.

12. But no time must be lost. The emissaries of Government are abroad; and, when they see the gathering storm of opposition, their policy will be to hasten the accomplishment of their measure before the full power of that storm is felt.

FORM OF PETITION.

To the Honourable the Commons of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and

Ireland in Parliament assembled.
Petition of the undersigned, &c.

Sheweth,

The

That your Petitioners have at all times, in England, been anxious to promote the common with the Protestant Dissenters of extension and improvement of Education among all classes of the people.

That they have for many years sustained schools for the poorer classes. (or assisted in sustaining) at their own cost,

scheme of State patronage and inspectorship That they view with serious alarm the developed in the Minutes of Council communicated to Parliament by Her Majesty's Ministers, from the belief that its practical effect would be inevitably to diminish, and ultimately to extinguish, all those voluntary tion, whether in Infant and Day-schools, or efforts for the promotion of popular Educain Sunday-schools, which are not connected with the Church of England.

against the measure as unconstitutional in That they feel constrained to protest the manner of its introduction and in the principle which it appears to involve,—as Church at the expense of all other religious partial in the favour shown to the Established denominations, as tyrannical in the double inspection to which it would subject all the teachers who should find themselves induced provisions, -as corrupting the public mind or compelled to avail themselves of its by an extensive system of bribery in the shape of pensions, places, and other rewards, -and as an unjustifiable increase of the public burdens.

House to withhold its consent from any
They therefore pray your Honourable
further grants of public money for Educa-
tional purposes, and to address the Crown to
revoke the unconstitutional powers vested in
the Committee of Council on Education.
And your petitioners, &c.

postage charges) to observe the following
N. B. It is necessary (in order to avoid
directions in transmitting Petitions to Members
for presentation:-

sheet, must bear some signatures upon the 1. Petitions consisting of more than one first sheet.

2. If sent through the post, they must be left open at each end, and be addressed direct to the Member for whom they are intended, at the House of Commons."

66

should be written on the outside.

3. The words "Petition to Parliament "

A vigorous effort is being made, encouraged by the Committee, to raise a self-supporting church in the important town of Romford, Essex. A good place of worship is indispensable; and the few friends in Romford, encouraged by the generous assistance, personal and pecuniary, of G. Gould, Esq. of Loughton, have determined to have one. Mr. Gould has contributed £100; Mr. Marlborough, Brixton, £50; Mr. Skerritt, Loughton, £10; and several other friends at Loughton and Romford, £5 each. The following circular has been issued from Romford. The Committee most cordially recommend the case to the attention of their friends.

ROMFORD contains a population of about five thousand, and is very inadequately supplied with the means of grace. Desirous that the word of life should be more extensively proclaimed to these multitudes, some friends, a few years back, purchased and put in trust a piece of freehold ground, and erected a commodious vestry, in which public worship has been hitherto conducted. The Lord has graciously smiled on the work of his servants, and circumstances seem to indicate that the time is now come for the erection of a larger place of worship. The church, finding the labours of the Rev. E. Davis very acceptable and useful amongst them, have given him a unanimous invitation to become their pastor, which it is hoped he will accept. After mature deliberation the friends have determined to erect a chapel 52 feet by 37 feet, which, according to an estimate they have received, will cost about £ The church and congregation have raised £ and believing that the work in which they are engaged is in accordance with the will of their Lord, and that a promising field of usefulness is opened to them, they affectionately and earnestly appeal to their fellow Christians for help. Donations will be thankfully received by G. Gould, Esq. treasurer, Loughton; and by J. S. Davis, Secretary to the Baptist Home Missionary Society, 33, Moorgate Street.

The Committee would also earnestly

fully explain the nature of its embarrassment:

THE Baptist Chapel, Bideford, Devonshire, has reached an affecting crisis. The question is now asked, What is to be done? Must all the efforts hitherto put forth, be lost; and we, as a denomination, recede, to our great and lasting dishonour? The money received on loan, is demanded;-legal proceedings are threatened; and if there be not prompt payment, the church must be thrown into the greatest dismay and perplexity.

Those united together in Christian fellowship, although few and poor, are prepared to make considerable sacrifices in helping to re move the debt; but as the sum owing is £545, they cannot, without the liberal help of others, meet the demand. Their urgent cry is, for IMMEDIATE assistance. They desire to speak to the holy, sacred sympathies and principles of every lover of Zion, and pray for their cheerful aid. May the commiserating grace of Jesus excite every heart, and lead to a noble generosity, equal to the extremity of the case!

Three members of sister churches, deeply concerned for the spiritual interests of this sea-port town, and anxious for the well-being of the Baptist denomination in the North of Devon, have promised £125; another gentleman, £50-yea, more, the Rev. Thomas Pulsford, the Evangelist, intimately acquainted with the importance and necessities of the case, has kindly offered to collect £100:thus £275 is guaranteed, SUBJECT, however, to this condition, THAT THE DEBT BE ENTIRELY REMOVED WITHIN THE PRESENT YEAR. This fact must be distinctly understood; ONLY CONDITIONAL must be remembered by those Christian friends receiving this appeal.

-

It may be necessary to state, that the Chapel is neat and commodious;-that it will seat about seven hundred: and if this burden is removed, we anticipate, under the Divine blessing, much spiritual good. There is a wide field of usefulness, and a spirit of hearing in the town.

We hope that Christians will kindly and prayerfully consider this plea, and appear for us in this time of darkness and distress-re

membering that "it is more blessed to give

than to receive."

direct the attention of their friends to the critical circumstances of the church Donations received by Mr. Robert Dyer, in Bideford, Devon. The following Accountant, Bideford; Charles Vesey, Esq. circular which it has just issued will or Rev. David Thompson, Great Torrington. Contributions received since last Register will be acknowledged in the forthcoming Annual Report. £5 from E-, is acknowledged now because no receipt could be forwarded to the

donor.

Donations and Subscriptions will be gratefully received on behalf of the Society, by the Treasurer, J. R. BOUSFIELD, Esq., 126, Hounsditch; or by the Secretary, THE REV. STEPHEN JOSHUA DAVIS, 33, MOORGATE STREET, LONDON. Post Office orders should give the name in full.

Collector for London: MR. W. PARNELL, 6, Benyon Cottages, De Beauvoir Sq., Kingsland.

J. HADDON, PRINTER, CASTLE STREET, FINSBURY.

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