The Sun.
London, England, 1860-11-08 00:00:00

cational purposes. It is unanswerably urged
that money contributed by all ought to be
so used as that all may receive the benefit of it.
The Roman Catholic is not spared by the tax-
gatherer, why should the poor child of his poor co-
religionist be excluded from the instruction for
which Roman Catholics have helped to pay. The
reply, that Roman Catholic schools are also aided,
does not meet the difficulty, since Catholics are
not everywhere located in sufficient numbers to
establish a school of their own. And in England
especially, so scattered are the adherents of diffe-
rent creeds that in hundreds, perhaps thousands
of places,lhe alternative for a poor parent is,
education for his child where his religious views,
which to him are a sacred inheritance, will be
contravened, or no education at all.
The DUKE strongly advises all the sects
to adopt the rule which has been successfully acted
on in many places, of " affording secular education
to every child whose parents object to their pecu-
liar religious teaching, without forcing the child
to go through their religious education." The ob-
servation was received with cheers by the intelli-
gent assembly at Manchester, and we think it
would be so received by almost every intelligent
assembly of laymen throughout the country. The
difficulty is to get over the clergymen. They live
in such a peculiar atmosphere, and are so accustomed
to lecturing us all on the subject of religion, that
they often acquire, insensibly perhaps, a kind of
Popish infallibility on religious subjects; prac-
tising unconsciously what they indignantly refuse
to his Holiness at Rome. Be the cause what it may,
the obstacle to thorough liberality such, as
the DUKE pleads for in our State-aided
schools, is commonly the clergyman, and
we must only hope that the pleadings of
the DUKE will go further with them than those
of us—the unt;Ced herd.
We have no doubt, as the DUKE observes, that libe-
rality would be good poliey—good sectarian policy we
mean; these are just the days inlwhich, if ever, con-
ciliation will go further than coercion, and libe-
rality than infliction of social penalties. We think
it most likely, as the DUKE says, that in schools
where the parents were freely allowed to decline
the religious teaching, ninety-nine out of a hundred
would not do it. It is the compulsion which creates
the resistance and the sense of hardship. A sturdily
sectarian, or even infidel parent, would generally
prefer that his child should get the full benefit of
the common religious principles and duties which
all sects teach, and would rely on his home
instruction to counteract what he did
not
_like. But, better even than that,
the effect of religious liberality would
he most happy on the mind both of parent and
child. It would teach the former that his theolo-
gical antagonists are not the ungenerous bigots
which the opposite course would lead him to suppose,
and would conciliate his goodwill through his
parental affections ; while the child would grow up
to regard his schoolmates with as genial senti-
ments as if their fathers had all held the same creed

as his own.
As there is little likelihood that the grant in aid
of the system will be ever abolished, as the object is
to make it work smoothly, and as the services of
the different religious sects in education cannot
easily now be dispensed with, we think the
DUKE has done very wisely in inviting the attention
of all sects to the duty and advantage of liberality.
That the course he recommends is the most Chris-
tian one we are quite egrtain. Whatever some
clergymen may think, it is certain that the minister
who is willing to give freely useful instruetion to all
is thereby fulfilling the first Christian duty—that
of Charity,