to defy the Ministry of Sir Robert Peel. The petitions against Sir James Graham's bill had contained millions of signatures. Against the Minutes of 1847, there were 4,203 petitions presented, having only 559,977 signatures. Notwithstanding this indication of division and defection, the Voluntaryists were as good as their word in the threatened opposition to Ministers. At the general election, which took place in the summer of 1847, they opposed many Liberals who had voted for the Government Minutes. Mr. Hawes lost his seat for Lambeth on this account. At Leeds, the head quarters of the movement, Mr. Joseph Sturge, of Birmingham, stood as the representative of the Dissenters on this special ground. He was, however, badly beaten. They were reconciled, however, by the defeat of Mr. Macaulay at Edinburgh, for which they took credit. (1) There were, however, many contributing causes to his defeat. The drinkers of cheap whiskey, and the opponents of the Maynooth grant, which he had supported, were offended with him. With these, and others, the Dissenters allied themselves, to humiliate a man whose whole life was a plea for enlightenment and freedom, and a protest against ignorance and its attendant superstition and

narrowness.

The opposition of the Voluntaryists continued for several years, and for some time they continued to increase, and were conspicuous for their energy and earnestness. But within ten years the movement had spent itself. Some of the most eminent members of the Congregational and Baptist communions, including Dr Vaughan and the Rev. Thomas Binney, while opposing the ecclesiastical tendency of the Government minutes, and the partiality shown to the Church, had refused to subscribe to the political doctrine that the State is not entitled to interfere for the education of the people. Such an abstract doctrine of the province of Government was never 1 Life of Baines, 336.

accepted by the wisest and strongest heads of the dissenting bodies. Their objections were limited to the State becoming a teacher of religion by means of the apparatus of the religious sects. (1) As new phases of the question were developed, there were many desertions from the voluntary ranks. Many Congregationalists were members of the National Public School Association, and others supported the Manchester and Salford Bill. The Newcastle Commission, of 1858, on which the voluntary party was represented, was able to report that the number of persons having conscientious objections to the acceptance of State aid was greatly diminished, and that all denominations were then in receipt of grants.

Some modifications of the minutes were introduced relieving schools from reporting on religious instruction, and this paved the way for a reconciliation. But the failure of the voluntary movement was owing to the conviction, that the ignorance of the country could never be overtaken without assistance from the State. Lord John Russell quoted from Dr. Vaughan's articles in the British Quarterly Review, to prove that in every ten years a million and a quarter of children were thrown on society without any education. Mr. Dunn, the Secretary of the British and Foreign School Society, confessed that an examination of British schools demonstrated the utter inadequacy of voluntary means to educate the country. Sir James Kay Shuttleworth estimated in 1855 that nearly £3,000,000 was required for building schools. "There are no facts to support the hope, that unless the amount of aid from the public resources was greatly increased, and distributed upon principles applying the greatest stimulus to voluntary efforts, the existing agencies could provide for the education of the poorer classes." (2) In 1850 the Archbishop of Canterbury said the Church could never from its own funds provide accommodation for the increasing numbers of children. 1 British Quarterly Review, 1847, 504. 2 Public Education, 260.

to defy the Ministry of Sir Robert Peel. The petitions against Sir James Graham's bill had contained millions of signatures. Against the Minutes of 1847, there were 4,203 petitions presented, having only 559,977 signatures. Notwithstanding this indication of division and defection, the Voluntaryists were as good as their word in the threatened opposition to Ministers. At the general election, which took place in the summer of 1847, they opposed many Liberals who had voted for the Government Minutes. Mr. Hawes lost his seat for Lambeth on this account. At Leeds, the head quarters of the movement, Mr. Joseph Sturge, of Birmingham, stood as the representative of the Dissenters on this special ground. He was, however, badly beaten. They were reconciled, however, by the defeat of Mr. Macaulay at Edinburgh, for which they took credit. (1) There were, however, many contributing causes to his defeat. The drinkers of cheap whiskey, and the opponents of the Maynooth grant, which he had supported, were offended with him. With these, and others, the Dissenters allied themselves, to humiliate a man whose whole life was a plea for enlightenment and freedom, and a protest against ignorance and its attendant superstition and

narrowness.

The opposition of the Voluntaryists continued for several years, and for some time they continued to increase, and were conspicuous for their energy and earnestness. But within ten years the movement had spent itself. Some of the most eminent members of the Congregational and Baptist communions, including Dr Vaughan and the Rev. Thomas Binney, while opposing the ecclesiastical tendency of the Government minutes, and the partiality shown to the Church, had refused to subscribe to the political doctrine that the State is not entitled to interfere for the education of the people. Such an abstract doctrine of the province of Government was never 1 Life of Baines, 336.

parties in the country and Parliament. These differences are chiefly now interesting because of the extraordinary pretensions put forward on behalf of the Church, and because many of the men engaged in them have been conspicuous and familiar forms in the public life of the time. The first reasons for the complete severance of Mr. Gladstone from the Conservative party probably arose out of this dispute, since the opposition to him at Oxford, in 1852, was the direct consequence of the discussions. The story of this controversy has been told by Archdeacon Denison from the Church point of view in his "Notes of my Life," in a manner which must win for him respect and regard, even by those who are irreconcilably hostile to the principles he contended for. The view which was taken at the Education Department has been described by Sir James Kay Shuttleworth in "Public Education." The briefest sketch of the movement and its consequences will suffice for the purpose of this history.

The dispute ostensibly began over the management clauses, which were submitted to Church schools for insertion in their trust deeds by the Committee of Council, in cases where grants were made for erection out of the public funds. This was merely the formal laying of a venue where the dispute could be tried. The real issue involved the rights of the State and the Church respectively to the control of public education, and the object on the part of the Church was to check the growing power and influence of the State Department at Whitehall—or, as Archdeacon Denison would put it, to defeat the Whig plot for crushing Church schools.

The management clauses were not however the creation of a Whig Government. The correspondence respecting them began in 1845, when Sir Robert Peel was in power, and they were submitted to the National Society during his administration. Their object was to secure the preservation of

schools for the purposes for which they were erected, and to define the authority by which they should be governed. There had been much looseness in regard to the trust deeds. Many school deeds were not enrolled in Chancery, and were found to be invalid. In others, conveyances were made to individual trustees, which involved great trouble and expense. In some deeds there were no management clauses-while in others the provisions for management comprised every form. of negligent or discordant arrangement. "Often there was no management clause; in which case the government of the school devolved on the individual trustees and their heirs, who might be non-resident, minors, lunatics, or otherwise incapable." (1) The Committee of Council therefore resolved to make the adoption of the management clauses a condition precedent to the receipt of aid from the grant. There were several clauses adapted to the circumstances of towns and parishes. In substance, they placed the control of the school premises, and the superintendence of the moral and religious instruction, exclusively in the hands of the clergy. government of the school, and the appointment and dismissal of teachers, were vested in a committee, consisting of the officiating minister and his curates, and a certain number of persons who were residents or contributors to the school. The latter were to be elected by subscribers, having votes in proportion to their contributions, and being members of the Church of England. The schoolmaster was to be, by the terms of the trust, a member of the Established Church, and the minister was ex-officio chairman of the committee. The Committee of Council also consented that a rigorous test of church membership should be imposed on the lay members of the committee, who were required to sign a declaration that they were members and communicants of the Church. A further demand made by the National Society for an appeal 1 Newcastle Commission Report, 57.

The