tions of submission and peace to the Council Board. They have not forfeited consistency. But if Dissenters accept the pay of government, if they do not firmly and inflexibly abjure it in all shapes and pretexts, their prevarication will cover them with infamy. All will be remembered against them which they have said and which they have done. They will be set for public scorn. They cannot touch stipend or gift, and their hands be clean. The moment they take it, the most important grounds of private judgment and uprightness are abandoned. The whole question on which they have stood for the higher spirituality of the church is trodden under foot. Their boast of freedom is shamed. Their character of sincerity is confounded. They will deserve to be reviled for hypocrisy,-the mummers of principle, the swashers of conscience! They will be indeed abased. They will have yielded to a bribe, while their fathers shrunk not from the death. The mark of servitude will be burnt deep into their brow. They will have stooped their neck to the yoke. They will have passed beneath the Caudine Forks.

It is surely a little strange that this elementary principle and necessary conclusion of Protestant Nonconformity, should have been, not without some pains at wit, though with a sparing abstinence of argument, described as altogether new. There is always suspicion attached to the untried opinion. Its supposed singularity brings it into contempt. This can be only the conduct of prejudice. The question, whether it be one

U

of antiquity or of the instant, may be alike worthy of consideration. How can, then, the objection to the extension of the national revenue for religious purposes be accounted novel? The two thousand ejected ministers who threw themselves upon the Dissenters of this country for fellowship and support, may not have abandoned the Established Church because they thought that, a priori, the establishment of any church was wrong. But they were not the founders of Nonconformity: they fled only to its sanctuary. Its records are of a higher epoch. Its fathers denounced every civil incorporation of Christianity. If the contrary doctrine has been ever breathed by those who claim to be their descendants, theirs is the embarrassment of the experimental, the problematic, the abrupt, the inventive. They are the Discoverers. Why should the sneer of a new and sudden illumination be indulged? The support of religion by the State is the objection of the Dissenter. Without recanting that objection, how could he accept aid in support of religious education? It does not render his consistency with this rudiment the less close and imperative, because he has not attentively meditated upon every application of it until now. When had he the opportunity? When was he called to refuse? He always knew and held the principle: the offer of patronage and assistance has not been his frequent temptation to forget it. You may try to involve him in sudden deviation from his course. What is the pretext for this charge? He has been associated

with the British System, whose normal schools public grants have sustained. But that is not a Dissenting Institute. He has enrolled himself in it as a patriot and a Christian. He owned a heart larger than his denomination. It may be that he has regretted such grant, employed his influence to dissuade its acceptance, and generously contributed in order to do away with the ground of necessity on which it was pleaded. It was not for him to control the convictions of others, the friends of liberty, the best men of the land.—It has been said that Dissenters already received Parliamentary endowment. This refers to the Regium Donum, a sum of less than £2000., voted annually for the relief of poor Dissenting Ministers. But a large majority desire that this may cease. Nor is the charge founded on a just analogy. When the princes of the Hanoverian dynasty acceded to the throne of these realms, they felt themselves so greatly indebted to the influence of the Protestant Nonconformists, that they determined to mark their sense of it by a royal bounty. The donative was bestowed from their own privy purse. The Civil List was an exchange and satisfaction for sacrifices which this Royal Line was prepared to make of certain fiefs and revenues. Specific payments were transferred from the Royal Family to the State. Gifts and dotations, aforetime free and personal, were now undertaken by the legislature. This donative was one among the rest. The Monarch no more gives it but the Parliament. But he is supposed to have vested in

its Houses a full equivalent, and to have assigned for this purpose an adequate provision. It is still described as his bounty. The acceptance of it as his bounty could be no compromise of the strictest Dissent. He has paid over this bounty in perpetuity. It is a rentcharge. It is the burden on a particular estate. The Dissenter might well wish to be rid of it. Nevertheless, it is only righteous to say, that it stands on specific grounds. It cannot in fairness be confounded with any subsequent or future grant. It cannot contradict or perplex the consistency of any who repudiate all State aid for the administration of religion. Nonconformists, in this repudiation, follow no new light. The error has been to quote as their prototypes Howe, Baxter, and Owen, rather than Robinson and Ainsworth, Thacker and Penry, Barrowe and Greenwood, Rough and Simpson, those earlier confessors, exiles, and martyrs, those original standard-bearers against any concession to this principle. The antiquity of their opinion proves nothing for it: but it purges them of any innovation!

It may be observed, that the strictest Nonconformist need not object to Regium Donum. If "kings bring presents," it is only a discharge of their personal duty. Some might fear a possible evil influence, but this would be only the abuse of what, in itself, was right. Potentates need not expect any power in return. It is to Parliamentary subsidies that the obligation refers.

That is wrested from public property contri

buted for no such ends. There is an unevenness and an injustice in the appropriation. The two questions ought to be kept quite distinct. Kings have a perfect right to give of their own,-their peculium,--senates have no right to distribute, with an obvious partiality, that which alike belongs to all, which is raised from all, which is intended for all!

Convinced of the exaggerations which have gone forth, concerning the condition of education in this country, and especially in the manufacturing districts, -persuaded that when the matter shall be more investigated, much of the present alarm will pass away,assured, that when new schools are erected, and larger schemes of instruction are applied, the principal difficulty will be to obtain pupils, we are equally impressed with the necessity of informing and exciting the public mind upon the duty of seeing to the edution of the people.

Agricola, when the Governor of this Island, commenced the attempt to educate the natives in liberal learning. He first essayed his experiment on the children of the chiefs. The "ingenia" of the Britons were found to excel those of the Gauls. The Latin language was cultivated; and the Roman civilization assumed. That was in 80th year of the Christian æra. We are now in the nineteenth century. Had that experiment proceeded until now! Had education been still the ambition of our people!

With all that interval of time,

with every subsequent means of light and improve