XV THE SCHOOL BOARDS 381 



I confess I should have tliought it my duty to 

 reject any such suggestion, as dishonouring to 

 a number of worthy persons, if it had not been for 

 a leading article and some correspondence which 

 appeared in the Oiiardian of November 9th, 

 1870. 



The Guardian is, as everybody knows, one of 

 the best of the " religious " newspapers; and, 

 personally, I have every reason to speak highly of 

 the fairness, and indeed kindness, with which the 

 editor is good enough to deal with a writer who 

 must, in many ways, be so objectionable to him as 

 myself. I quote the following passages from a 

 leading article on a letter of mine, therefore, with 

 all respect, and with a genuine conviction that the 

 course of conduct advocated by the writer must 

 ap])car to him in a very different light from that 

 under which I see it: — 



" The first of these points is the interpretation -which 

 Professor Huxley puts on the * Cowper-Temple clause.' It 

 is, in fact, that which we foretold some time ago as likely 

 to be forced upon it by those who think with him. The 

 clause itself was one of those compromises which it is very 

 difficult to define or to maintain logically. On the one side 

 was the simple freedom to School Boards to establish what 

 schools they pleased, which ]\[r. Forster originally gave, but 

 against which the Nonconformists^ lifted up their voices, 

 because they conceived it likely to give too much power to 

 the Church. On the other side there was the proposition to 

 make the schools secular — intelligible enough, but in the 

 consideration of public opinion simply impossible — and 

 there was the vague impracticable idea, which Mr. Glad- 



