The Sun.
London, England, 1859-07-07 00:00:00

THE WEATHER.-SUN OFFICM, JULY 7.

THER3 03fETE1L, IN THE SHADE.
81—highest since noon yesterday.
66—lowest this morning and during the night.
77—this day at noon.
BanomETBR-30.26.
WIND, South Westerly ; light, with fine weather.

If any educational proposal could demand the
unhesitating assent of this country, and in the
middle of this century, Mr. DILLWYN'S Bill has a
right to it. The facts lie in the briefest compass.
There are about 3,000 endowed schools in the
kingdom, with an income of £1,500,000 per annum.
The founders of a large proportion of these schools
restricted them to no creed or sect, but many of
them mentioned religion in general terms, in
reference either to the instruction or the character
of the teachers or trustees. Till lately it was the
reasonable practice in such cases, not only to open
the instruction freely to the children from all sects,
but also to place some Noncomformists amongst
the teachers, when there were such persons of
suitable position in the neighbourhood, as a kind
of guarantee that the catholicity of the school
should be honourably maintained.
This natural and desirable state of things has
been put an end to by the bigotry, we are
sorry to say it, of certain Churchmen, and
-the unaccountable perversity of law. There is a
grammar school at Ilminster founded by two
worthy persons in the reign of EDWARD VI., the
deeds of which provide that the trust shall be ad-
ministered by " GoD-fearing persons." For the last
150 years it has been supposed that Dissenters
might be such persons, and the trustees have con-
sisted of Churchmen and Dissenters. The trust
came before Sir John ROMILLY, who arranged that
there should be twelve Churchmen andthree Dissen-
ters in the trust. An appeal was made against this
arrangement, and it was set aside ; the Dis-
senters were removed as not being persons whom the
law could acknowledge to be " GOD-fearing men !"
However ludicrous this may appear, we are bound
to suppose it to be good law ; most certainly the
Judge's decision has made it the actual law of the
land, and unless this new construction of the law be
changed by statute, there will be a general ousting
of all respectable Nonconformist trustees, and as a
consequence, no doubt, the schools will be rendered,
itt a too sectarian sense, Church schools, for the
children of Dissenters to frequent them. Mr. DILL-
WYN's Bill, therefore, merely provides that where
the founders of thesehool have inserted no sectarian
limitations in their deeds, and where they have
simply used such words as
religion, religious, or
Godly, the trusts and schools shall be subject to no
sectarian restrictions. That such words, indeed, shall
be interpreted in law, as they are
by every Eng-
lishman who is not a bigot of the narrowest mind..
Indeed, who amongst us knows the man who would
maintain that the expression " religious" or " God-
fearing person," could re limited to professors of
any one of the creeds which acknowledge a God
at all.

As we have observed, it is not for us to criticise a
final legal judgment ; it may be true that the law
recognises no religion but that which it endows,
and which is garnished with Church-rates and
other honours ; that it knows of )ao " fear of GoD,"
but that which is expressed in the terms of the
Common Prayer-book. It seems to us, however, in-
consistent in that case, to compel, a nd under penalties
too, all kinds of Dissenters, even Jews, to appeal to
GOD in courts of law—to appeal to a GOD whom
the law says the man who takes the oath
does not fear! Somewhat inconsistent too
to have Acts of Parliament explicitly for
the purpose of protecting these outsiders in a wor-
ship of their God which is unknown to law. The
inconsistency of the law hoc vever -with itself is
nothing to its inconsistency with the com-
mon-sense and Christian, charity of the country,
and this inconsistency imperatively requires the
enactment of a Bill such as is proposed by Mr.
DILLWYN. Those who oppose him will do well to
remember that some of the best friends of educa-
tion have proposed to take possession of a Large
portion of tal ese endowments, which are now Madly

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THE SUN.
THURSDAY, JULY 7, 1859.