The Express.
London, England, 1866-08-15 00:00:00

THE CONSCIENCE CLAUSE.

The correspondence between the Archbishop of
Canterbury and Earl Granville on the subject of the
Conscience Clause was published this morning. Earl
Granville, writing under date :30th of June, 1866, refers
to a speech delivered by the Archbishop at the annual
meeting of the National Society, in which his grace had
stated that a reply of the noble earl's to a
question put to him in the House of Lords
was as far as it went satisfactory, and if ratified

by parliament more would not be required, but teat the
interpretation put by the noble earl upon the Conscience
Clause was at variance with that which bad been put upon
it by the Committee of Council. Earl Granville, that all
doubt might be removed before his successor entered upon
his official duties, asks where any interpretation by the
Committee of Council differing from his is to be found.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, in reply, points to the
language of Mr. Lingen, the secretary of the Committee
of Council, in his correspondence with the Rev. Mr. Scott,
quoting from a letter dated March, 1866, the words—
"No child ought to be compelled to receive religious in-
struction contrary to the professed and declared wish of its
parent. It is hardly neoessary to add that such
compulsion might be applied without the direct
use of sped& formularies, inasmuch as all that
is contained in them might be taught in other words."

This passage his grace understands to imply a prohibition
to any clergyman or schoolmaster to explain say part of
the Scriptures, in conformity with the doctrine of the es-
tablished church, or to touch upon any Christian doc-
trine incidentally in any other lesson, if any parent chose
to require that his child should never be exposed to such
instruction. This being the case, either a bondage was
imposed upon a clergyman to which no one would volun-
tarily submit, or the child must be deprived of the instruc-
tion which it was the object of the Committee of Council
to secure to him. " Your lordship," his grace continues,
. .

seems to proceed upon tho assumption that religious in-
struction will shelve be confined to the teaching of the
formularies ; whereas we think that inasmuch as Christian
doctrine is the mainspring sad motive of Christian action,
a careful and conscientious pastor or master might find oc-
casion at any moment of school hours to inculcate Christian
conduct from Christian principles. If he be debarred from
that opportunity whenever it may arise, then follows that
interference with religious teaching which your lordship de-
clares not to exist in connexion with the Conscience Clause.
Heartily should I rejoice if Mr. Lingen's statement, as
above quoted, could be brought into harmony with your
lordship's assurance that the Conscience Clause did not in
the least interfere with the religious instruction in our
church schools; but under my present impression it seems
to me to deal a serious blow to the cause of Christian
education in the schools connected with the Church of
England."
Earl Granville writes on the 12th of July that he canna
perceive the contradiction referred to, and that the pas-
sage quoted from Mr. Lingen was the substance of his
answer in the House of Lords to the first part of his
grace's inquiry. Mr. Scott's proposal had been to omit the
word " doctrine " from the clause, and the letter of the
Secretary of the Committee of Council purported to show
why that word ought to be retained. The noble earl
points out that he had endeavoured to enforce the same
argument by reading an extract from the (Jhureh
and State Reber, which went to prove that
the word " formularies " without the word " doc-
trine," or some equivalent expression, did not
secure the object for which it was worth while to
discuss the clause at all. The Conscience Clause assumed
it to be possible in a strictly denominational school to
give the fullest religious instruction to the children of
parents who belonged to the denomination of the school,
and at the same time to admit into the school the children
of parents who did not belong to that denomination, and
instruct them along with the other children in all those
particulars which did not cause say religious differ-
ence. To show that this is possible, the noble
earl refers to the feet that a large if not the
larger portion of the managers of national wheels were
already doing all that was sought to be imposed upon them
by the Conscience Clause ; that the Endowed Schools Act
of 1860 embodies almost the same words as the Conscience
Clause, and that in the scheme for the government of
schools, sanctioned almost daily by the Court of Chancery,
the conscience clauses are inserted almost as part of a com-
mon form. If the trivial and vexatious objections were
practised which his grace imagined dissenting parents
might make under the datum, each objections would
simply recoil upon their authors. If their remonstrances
were unattended to they must go to a legal tribunal for
redress, and those who went into court without a plain and
substantial grievance were not likely to take much by
their suit." The letter concludes :—" The object of the
department responsible to parliament for the distribution
of public money for the purposes of education has been,
not to alter the character of the schools of the established
church, but to enable the government to extend their
benefits to the whole community of districts in which no
second school can be maintained."
The archbishop writes again on the 20th of July, refer-
ring to the concluding words of Earl Gnuerille's reply in
the House of Lords, in which his grace says the noble earl
distinctly stated that not only did the Conscience Clause
not interfere with the religious instruction of the schools
but that it required that no interference should take plays;
with inch instruction. "It certainly," he says, " never
occurred to ese that the principle of the Conscience Clause,
thus broadly laid down, could be compatible with the
power of interference on the part of any parent with the
exposition of Holy Scripture in the Bible class.
It is now, however, evident that such is the case, and that
I attached a meaning to your words which they were nos
intended to convey. It appears that a clergyman, by ac-
cepting this Conscience Clause, will be bound to abstain
from explainiag Holy Scripture according to the tenets of
the Church of&gland, or indeed in any way that shall
offend the religious views of any dissenting or unbelleviag
permit if required so to do. Under these circumstances I
21
ml/self compelled to retract those expressions of see
on with year lordship's swine to which I gave ut-
terance in the House of Lords."
Bari Granville esatinnes the correspondence for the pur-
pose of correcting a misapprehension which seems to exist