6 Sir Robert Peel's Government confirms its Authority.

tration of the Education Department of the Privy Council. This development was probably the more gradual, because that great statesman was unwilling to subject a Government, which had undertaken the responsibility of a vast fiscal reform, to the further risks arising from the controversies which had attended every step towards a system of public education. Every act of the Committee of Council under Sir Robert Peel's Government, was, however, a confirmation of the principles on which the policy of their predecessors had been founded. Every proposal by which that policy would have been endangered (and such proposals were not wanting) was deliberately rejected. The principles on which the department had been originally founded were practically developed, by a process of natural growth. The abandonment of the Education Clauses of the Factories' Regulation Bill, in 1842, marked the deference paid by Sir Robert Peel and Sir James Graham to the repugnance of a large portion of the middle classes, to acknowledge any supremacy in matters of religion. They plainly yielded to the unequivocal rejection of all authority over the conscience, and to the assertion of the right of private judgment in the interpretation of Scripture. Though, therefore, the advance of the Education Department appeared, during Sir Robert Peel's Government, to consist chiefly in the increase of the public grant and of the number of inspectors and normal schools, the principles of a great public policy were in operation, and were silently attracting to themselves, like centres of crystallization, a mass of precedent and authority, which was destined to become irresistible.

The controversies which had occurred in 1839 and 1842 were not however unattended with transient evils. The offspring of such strife are parties, embodying its excesses, which they propagate like diseases rendered hereditary by the errors of our forefathers. Thus,

The Origin of the Voluntary and Medieval Parties. 7

the Dissenters had supported, both by petition and active exertion, the scheme of the Government in 1839, in which the most energetic exercise of the civil power for the education of the people was involved. Nevertheless, alarmed by the plan of 1842, they created, chiefly among the Congregational body, a party representing that the voluntary effects of religious zeal were sufficient for the education of the entire nation deprecating the action of the Government, and even rejecting its aid as an unwarrantable interference with religious liberty, and as dangerous to civil rights.

On the other hand, there had always existed in the Church a party, which now gradually aroused itself to greater activity. It consisted of a certain portion of the clergy and of a much smaller body of laity, who had adopted exalted notions of the authority to teach, derived by an unbroken succession from the Apostles. They represented the interference of the State in public education, as an intrusion into the province of the Church-the attempt to establish co-operation between the civil and spiritual power, as a struggle1 between irreconcilable systems. They required the subordination of the Government to the Church, so that it might help the Church on its own terms.2 They desired to restore to the Church the power which even in civil matters she possessed3, in that mediæval period

1 "It was no question of conflict or difference between individuals or parties; it was a struggle between opposite and irreconcilable systems. These systems sought to occupy the same ground. To divide the ground between them was impossible. The Clergy of the Church did not wish to divide the province of education with the secular power."-Rev. G. A. Denison's Speech at the Annual Meeting of the Bath and Wells Diocesan Societies, held at Wells in 1849, the Bishop in the chair. As reported in the Bath Chronicle.

2 "The case was this a very simple one; so long as the civil power would help the spiritual power to do God's work in the world, on those terms of which alone the spiritual power could be the fitting judge, so long the help would be, as it ought to be, thankfully received."- Rev. G. A. Denison's Speech at the Annual Meeting of the Bath and Wells Diocesan Societies, held at Wells in 1849, the Bishop in the chair. As reported in the Bath Chronicle. 3 "Our Saxon Ethelbert received not Christianity, but the Church; or

8 The Principles and Objects of the Mediaeval Party.

when learning was chiefly confined to clerks. They even denied that the civil power had any duty in public education, or any connexion with it whatever, except that of providing the means and reaping the benefits.1 They asserted the divine2 commission of the Church to teach,

rather he did not receive the Church, but the Church received him into itself."- Archdeacon Manning's Charge, July 1849, p. 40.

"The councils of our Saxon state, in which the Bishop and the Earl, 'the mass Thane and the world Thane,' side by side, gave justice to a peaceful people," &c. &c.-Ibid. p. 41.

"The true and perfect idea of Christendom is the constitution of all social order upon the basis of faith, and within the unity of the Church. This controlling idea once preserved the external unity of independent kingdoms, and the internal unity of States.”—Ibid. p. 42.

"The sacredness of the State, then, was completed by its incorporation with the Church. It was sacred because it was consecrated to God. And through all after ages of concurrent action, the jurisdiction of the State, in matters of religion, was either an endowment conferred upon it by the Church, or the action of the Church itself, through the forms and procedures of the civil order."-Ibid. p. 43.

"Let it be plainly and finally made clear, that the copartnership of the Church and the State, in the work of education, is in the fruits, and not in the direction."-Archdeacon Manning's Charge, July, 1849, p. 54.

“But that gives to the State no claim as joint founder to intervene in the management of schools."-Ibid. p. 54.

"We are not forming State schools, nor mixed schools, but Church schools." — Ibid. p. 60.

2 "They were fighting for great and sacred principles-for the upholding of the office of the ministry in God's church, as charged by God with the responsibility of educating the people."-Rev. G. A. Denison's Speech at the Annual Meeting of Bath and Wells Diocesan Society in 1849; the Bishop in the chair.

"Parochial education was a portion of the parochial charge. It was as much a part of the system of Church government and discipline as parochial worship; and when the State asked the Church to extend the benefits of education, it ought not to impose any condition which, in the slightest degree, could fetter parochial efforts, or mar parochial duties through the length and breadth of the land. (Cheers.)"-Joseph Napier, Esq., M.P., at Church Education Meeting held at Willis's Rooms on February 12. 1850.

"We shall be obliged to go to Government and to Parliament, not to ask for a participation in the grants of money distributed on the present principle, but to tell them, backed by the voice of three-fourths of the empire, of all denominations, that the State shall not, without a creed, and without a sacrament, and without any ministerial authority from God, undertake to educate the people of this country. (Tremendous cheers.)"-Rev. W. Sewell, at the same Meeting.

"The clergy have a divine commission to teach the children."-The Rev. Mr. Barter, the Warden of Winchester College, at the same Meeting.

"We feel it necessary to say that, by the term Education, we mean training

The Principles and Objects of the Medieval Party. 9

and contended that the school was not less her province than the altar or the pulpit; declaring, in the words of Archdeacon Manning, that "the attempt to divide between the religious and secular elements is destructive of the religious character and essential unity of education and of schools." The Master2 was to be the catechist, or, as some would have had it, the deacon of the clergyman, or to be appointed and dismissed by him, and in any case to be licensed by the ordinary. The clergyman ought to have secured to him such authority3 in the school,

for time and eternity, and that, according to our belief, the Church of England is the divinely appointed Teacher of the English nation."-Petition to the Queen, adopted at this Meeting.

"I find that it is proposed to constitute a central school to supply with teachers those schools in which are to be taught the children of the poorthat especial province of Christ's Church."- The Hon. J. C. Talbot, Q.C., at the same Meeting.

1 Charge, July, 1849, p. 22.

2 "The institutions and measures absolutely needed by the Church are, (4.) a public examination with grant of degree and license to the pupils of the training schools and other schoolmasters; (6.) the admission of schoolmasters who have purchased to themselves a good degree into holy orders."— Archdeacon Manning's Charge, July, 1849, p. 75. in a note.

“The schoolmaster was as important to the clergyman as his curate: if he had a master who did not concur in his views, the clergyman would find himself thwarted: he would not be able to teach in the school the right doctrine, if the master taught that which was inconsistent with his doctrine. Thus it is, that the original terms of the Society leave it free to the promoters of schools to make the clergyman the main organ of the schools; to give to him the power of appointing or excluding the masters if he pleased." -Rev. Dr. Wordsworth, Canon of Westminster, at the Meeting of the National Society held June 6. 1849.

"The power of appointment and dismissal of the schoolmaster, schoolmistress, and assistant teachers is still withheld from the clergyman; and so long as this is so, it is surely quite idle to say that the clergyman has 'the moral and religious superintendence of the school', as claimed for him by the National Society, or even of 'the moral and religious instruction of all the scholars attending the school,' as 'conceded' by the Committee of Council. (3.) The appeal to the bishop on all points is still denied."-Church Education, a Pamphlet by Rev. G. A. Denison, 1849, p. 12.

3 "That in the nineteenth century of our redemption, here, in England, a department of the civil power should forget God, and do dishonour to Christ, by proclaiming openly that the ministers of Christ are no longer fit to be trusted, solely and exclusively, with the education of His people; that they must be watched and interfered with, checked and thwarted in the discharge of that duty for which they are solely and exclusively responsible before God and man that it is a mistake to suppose, as has been supposed for

10 The Principles and Objects of the Mediaval Party.

2

as none could dispute, or if debate arose, he should be at liberty to submit the question to his spiritual superior, whose decision should be final. 1 "The parish school of the English parish is the nursery of Catholic truth and Apostolic discipline." "It is a vicious principle that the control and management of a Church school shall be in the hands of a committee, however that committee may be composed, and however their powers may be regulated, instead of in the hands of the parish clergyman."3 Either directly or indirectly the eighteen centuries, that all education is religious.—Rev. G. A. Denison, Church Education Meeting, Feb. 12. 1850.

"I believe that their principle is vicious-the principle of entrusting the effective control of a church school to a committee of management, however such committee may be composed, instead of to the parish clergyman -and that so long as this principle is retained these clauses cannot be made safe by any process."-Church Education Pamphlet, by Rev. G. A. Denison, 1849, p. 13.

i "I believe that that particular form of school which is most commended to one by the constitution, spirit, character, analogy, and practice of the Church is especially selected for exclusion" from the grants of the Committee of Council on Education. "I allude, my Lord Archbishop, pointedly and obviously, to that form of Church schools, which gives an appeal in all matters to the bishop of the diocese."-Archdeacon Manning, at the Annual Meeting of the National Society, June 6. 1849.

"He would add to the end of his resolution the words 'and in particular, when they should desire to put the management of their schools solely in the hands of the clergy and bishop of the diocese."— Archdeacon Manning's amended Resolution, which was adopted at this Meeting.

"A feeling has gone abroad through the country that it is the intention of those gentlemen who are now forcing these discussions upon us, to exclude the laity of the Church (A burst of cheering, met by loud cries of 'No, no,' drowned the remainder of the sentence.)"-Sir John Pakington, at the National Society's Annual Meeting, held June 4. 1851.

"The desire to constitute the bishop as sole judge in appeal rests upon a principle inherent in the Church, and is coeval in practice with its earliest history, &c. &c."—Archdeacon Manning's Charge, July, 1849, p. 20.

"On one side is a class of Church schools-the class which places the control and management of the school in the hands of the clergyman of the parish, with appeal to the bishop-a class of schools, not simply consistent with the order and practice of the Church, but, above any other" " tioned and commended by the order and practice of the Church."—Statement and Appeal submitted respectfully to Members of both Houses of Parliament, June 25. 1849, by the Rev. G. A. Denison.

2 Church Education, by the Rev. G. H. Denison, 1849, p. 35.

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3 Annual Meeting of Bath and Wells Diocesan Societies at Wells, Oct. 30. 1849 the Bishop in the chair. Prebendary Denison's speech, as reported in the "History and Present State of the Education Question, printed for the Metropolitan Church Union in 1850," and also in the Bath Chronicle, 1849.