PREFACE.

THIS volume is intended to exemplify the mode in which the School, transferred by the Reformation from the Priesthood to the Congregation, can continue under religious government, consistently with the privileges of the laity, the rights of conscience, and the duty of the Civil Power to fit its subjects for the discharge of their functions as citizens.

A scheme of purely secular education is truly separated from one of religious character by a gulf; but how deep soever that chasm may be, it will be crossed by one stride, if the principle of religious government be abandoned.

Parliament has repealed religious tests, and repudiated the idea on which they depend, that the law has any authority over conscience. The legislature can, therefore, only support the religious character of the

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School by confiding its management to the Religious Communions; for to enforce religious doctrine by law, would be to interfere with conscience.

The traditional claims for the maintenance of the re

ligious government of Schools are mingled with others of recent origin, which it is one of my chief objects to set forth.

Such Schools as now exist have been established by the Religious Communions, aided, of late years, by the State.

The character and number of elementary Schools, if abandoned to voluntary support, may be inferred from the condition of public education in 1833, and its subsequent progress and improvement, especially since 1846.

To define the province of voluntary agency, in the creation and maintenance of a system of National Education, is, therefore, one main part of my design. I neither join those who would repudiate such aid, nor those who would reject that of the State; but I would earnestly co-operate with all who desire to rescue from neglect or abuse the endowments founded by the piety of our ancestors.

Worn with work, scathed by former controversies, and slowly restored to life after four years of suffering,