The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1849-06-12 00:00:00

NATIONAL SOCIETY'S GENERAL MEETING.

(From the Church and State Gazette.)
The Annual General Meeting of this Society has passed
off with a narrow escape only from its being committed
to the fatal position which we described a fortnight ago
as imminent, and which must have ended in the disrup-
tion of the society, the abandonment of its endowed funds
to a Tractarian clique, and a prodigious accession to the
power of the State over the Church, as regards the edu-
cation of the people.
From the commencement of the proceedings it was
evident, from the tone of the mover and seconder of the
resolution of which notice had been given, that the Trac-
tarian party had mustered their entire force, and that the
battle of principles was transferred to the arena of the
National Society. Of not less than seven hundred sub-
scribers, we should think that on a moderate computation
five hundred were of the class we refer to ; and it required
all the practical tact of that excellent and sound Church-
man, the Earl of Harrowby, supported by Sir Thomas
Acland, and other lay members of the society, to render
the more reasonable section of the party sensible to the
abyss before them, and into which the society would be
plunged by an adoption of Mr. Denison's resolution. The
noble Earl, in a speech eminently distinguished for saga-
city and penetration, unveiled the design of the Romani-
zers at the bottom of the movement to coerce the arch-
bishops and bishops, and to pass a censure on the com-
mittee of the society, as well as practically to exclude the
laity from a share in the managements of Church schools ;
and he also indicated the impossibility of the society
going before Parliament with the slightest chance of find-
ing sympathy and support, if committed to such a flag-
rant rejection of State co-operation as was conveyed in
the terms of the resolution.

An amendment was moved by Archdeacon Manning,
embodying a declaration that, in the opinion of the meet-
ing, the committee had not obtained from the government
adequate conocssions, and that no arrangement would be
satisfactory which did not recognise those forms of trust
deeds which gave the entire management of church schools,
aided by state funds, to the clergyman and bishop of the
diocese, to the exclusion of the laity.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, in putting the amend-
ment, concurred in the protest of the Bishop of Oxford
against Mr. Denison's construction of the amendment,
and declined to be bound by it if voted in that sense.
The meeting, however, which had evidently been packed.
was in no humour to defer to the episcopal authority so
loudly vaunted when exercised in a tractarian direction,
and the amendment was carried amidst much uproar—the
tractarian majority voting it in their sense.
The Rev. Sir George Prevost, a Tractarian, proposed
that the meeting, instead of dissolving, should adjourn,
with a view, as explained by Mr. Denison, of holding in
check the committee, who would otherwise be irresponsi-
ble to the members for another twelvemonth ! The arch-
bishop, however, declinel to entertain this new insult to
the committee, on the ground of its being contrary to the
society's charter, and declared the meeting dissolved.
Thanks having been voted to his grace, the proceedings
terminated with prayer, interrupted by a person in the
garb of a Roman Catholic priest proposing a vote of
thanks to the demagogue of the day—Mr. Denison !