theological opinions or to pay for them, for my theological platform is different from theirs. This scheme, as it appears to me, proposes that the children of Mr. Vince's denomination should be taught, and that the State should provide the means—I suppose by rate for their being taught, that Christian baptism is a delusion; and that the children of the school of Mr. Dawson should be taught that the Christian priesthood is a sham; yes, and that the children in Jewish schools should be taught, at the expense of the State, that the author of Christianity himself is an impostor. I believe that the proposal of the League, which, at what-ever risk, I am prepared to endorse, shows me to be a much more sound and conscientious Churchman than he is who professes the other scheme, which, in my belief, could only tend to perpetuate and to intensify those divisions among Christians which are, and which have been so long, the bane and the scandal of Christendom. There are other speakers of far more note and of far more weight than myself who are to address this meeting, and therefore I will not trouble you with any further observations of my own. I am to be followed by one that cometh out of Samaria, which has supplied redoubtable champions in former times; and I am proud and happy to be associated with Mr. Dawson in this work of education. It is, of course, a most unnatural and a most monstrous conjunction, and one which twenty years ago, perhaps ten years ago, would have been quite impossible; when I, perhaps, considered Mr. Dawson somewhat of a firebrand, and he used to remark on me as an ornamental, but not very useful, appendage to the Church. Ah! but, God be praised! things move rapidly in the present day to that consummation which as citizens and as Christians we all ought to desire, when good men of all parties -and of all religious creeds can unite together in the cause of a common country and a common humanity. I have had brought strongly before me the teachings and example of one who, though himself born and bred a Jew, though he maintained that salvation was of the Jews, though he protested against every conceivable form of error, and at last died a martyr to the truth, yet was on friendly terms with Samaritans, and has set forth in the Book of Books a Smaritan as the grand type of practical benevolence for the imita

tion and admiration of the Church and the world throughout all time. Before that sublime and magnificent example I bow in loving adoration. I wish to be imbued with that spirit. I wish to tread in those footprints, and therefore I rejoice to-day to come forward to co-operate with my Nonconformist brethren in an endeavour to redeem and to raise the outcasts of society who are left at this moment lying in wretchedness and in the dark, and who, but for this intervention, I believe in God, would be left to perish without instruction, without moral instincts, without any moral or religious knowledge at all.

Mr. GEORGE DAWSON: It is not for me to enter into the reasons why I have been asked to second this resolution, though I guess it is because on this question there is no man that holds more extreme views than I do. It is certain that if I state my views, I shall state all yours, and, with regard to many of you, a great deal more besides. Courtesy demands that I should reciprocate the kindness of the Archdeacon. He has told you he has ceased to regard me as a firebrand. Well, I have long since ceased to regard him as a fogey. We have made mutual concessions; and it gives me, as I am sure it gives you, pleasure to see a man so eminent in the Church discharge the duty of a true leader of the people, opening his eyes widely and clearly to know the signs of the times; for his Master and mine pronounced a severe condemnation upon those leaders of the people who are unable to know the signs of the times. One word of congratulation, and that is that we have advanced. We have not to argue that the poor have a right to be educated, or ought to be educated. That is gone by. So far, we have got through the meeting without any gentleman telling us the difference between instruction and education. That used to be a stumbling block. We have got to this proposition—that every child in this nation ought to be taught. We hold the doctrine of the family life of the nation. I believe the majority of you do feel as I do, that every ragged, filthy, untaught, cursing, blaspheming child should be looked upon as a child of our household, and should bring shame and disgrace upon us. I would that at heart you and I could say with him of old, "Mine eyes run down with tears for the iniquities of my people." But at all events we have come to see

that there is no human remedy but education, and that education is always good, be it little or much. We dismiss Mr. Alexander Pope's couplet about drinking deep or not touching at all as a piece of antiquated nonsense. We bow, with great respect, those clergy out of our road, represented by one in this town, who once said that unless he could have religious education he would shut up the schoolhouse, put the key in his pocket, and walk away. We have most of us got rid of that foolish distinction between sacred and secular. We believe all knowledge to be of God, and therefore towards good. I believe that he who teaches two letters of the alphabet to a child who yesterday knew but one, has furthered that child's chances of future instruction, and of all well-being. These things we have not to discuss. A word of warning I shall go further than you will follow; but, in a discussion like this, ill-temper would be out of place; and large allowance for individualism is what we require. We all mean the same thing, only we travel different paces. We all wish to lay the foundation of a national educational system. It must be laid with lucid simplicity and with great breadth, to bear the strain of the future. We are not here to patch existing systems-to patch the garment of semi-charity and semi-ecclesiasticism, which forms a large part of the present education, but to lay a broad system, by declaring at once that the world-by which I mean all people that do not call themselves the Church-has its rights, and that the world is not to be governed by the good people in anythng which belongs entirely to the world. All men whose opinion is of value have come to know that what for present purposes we call secular education is an affair of the world—an affair of the nation-acting through its Government. We have got rid of some bugbears-we are no longer afraid of the Government. This used to be, perhaps, a necessity; but it is a disgrace if it remains so now. What is the Government of this country? It is the nation itself. antagonism between the people and the Government now. We are not here to bury the voluntary principle-its great supporters buried it long ago. We have lived to hear the recantations of a Miall and a Baines to hear them declare that their mistakes about voluntaryism were what we all knew them to be-well

There is no

intentioned; and that voluntaryism is quite an inadequate basis for a national system. A national system must be laid in simplicity, and it must be paid for by rates. I am a lover of rates myself. I was never guilty of that "ignorant impatience" of taxation which a great statesman once spoke of. I like to see the tax-gatherer come, provided the ends to which the taxes are devoted are holy and noble, and it will be one of the pleasantest sights when the tax-gatherer comes to lay upon me the noble hand of national compulsion, to pay a rate in order that every child in the nation shall be educated. But, remember, rates mean compulsion. I hope most of you have done with compulsion as a bugbear. All life is compulsion. Society is based upon compulsion. What is government but law made compulsory? Happy the man who by-and-by shall escape from the necessities of compulsion, and do that from the law of liberty which at first he must be made to do with reluctance. I like rates because they touch everybody, because I get hold of the fat and selfish manufacturer and touch him up, because I lay hold of the man that visits no church and visits no chapel, and make him pay; and I advocate not only local rates but national taxation for educational purposes. It is time that a good deal of work that the religious bodies have burdened themselves with should be given over to the world. Let society do its own business. What is going on just now is an operation like what goes on when sheep get mixed. There is a meeting of shepherds to look over the flocks, and each selects his own sheep. We have just restored to the Church a sheep that had got into the State fold. We have handed to the voluntary principle-to the good people-the Irish Church. Marked with the sign of a cross, that sheep belonged to the Church, and it has been restored. Now our turn comes-I mean the world; for I never profess anything more than that. Looking over the Church flock we find a sheep there that belongs to us, and that is education-the primary education of the nation. It does not belong to the Church in any sense-it belongs to the whole nation. It belongs to the Government, and ought to be done by the Government. I have no more notion of sectarian education, or denominational education, in the sense of mere

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primary instruction, than I have of a denominational water cart or a sectarian vaccinator. What has our history been for years but the putting of sheep into the right fold? I am old enough to remember when nobody could be married except they went to Church. I sat once at supper with a High Churchman who asked me whether I was married or not? I said I was. "Who married you?" I named the person. "A priest in the true succession?" "Oh dear, no." Said he, "You are not married at all." I said, "What am I?" "You are only joined together." "Well," I said, as a practical man, for me that will do." By degrees society found out that marriage did not belong to priests, and we established civil marriage. For those who wish to be married in Church, liberty; for those who do not, liberty also. Why must a man be married in the name of a God he does not believe in? Why should a Jew be compelled to invoke a Trinity he despises. and abhors? As to compulsory matters, there is the vaccination question. Is education, in the sense in which we use the word-the education about which we are all agreed, the education that relates to this life—is that a matter that the State should now kindly take out of the Church's hand, and do for itself? I say it is. And with that education the clergy have no more to do as a matter of right than the parish doctor or the parish lawyer. I for one am profoundly thankful to clergy of all sorts for what they have done. If the squirearchy and the nobility and gentry of England had done their duty half as well as the clergy, old England would be further advanced than to be only now laying the foundation stone of a national system of education. The poor Dissenting minister hasdone his duty. He has not had the chances of the Church, but it was often the poor Nonconformist man who held up the flag of true liberty, and maintained the fundamental principle of all just politics-"Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you." Now, however, it is time that the matter should be taken out of the hands of clergy and ministers. Why should the Church educate the world in matters about which the world is entirely capable of looking after itself? Religious people have quite enough to do without this. What an advantage it will be to you Churchmen, if we take all this business, and leave your purse