“It may be said,” continued Mr. Forster in his Memorandum, “that this plan is unjust inasmuch as it does not give the majority which prefers catechisms the same chance as the majority which does not, and it is insufficient because it still leaves the Boards free to quarrel as to whether they will have the Scriptural teaching or purely secular, or the quasi-secular schools suggested by Richards. To the last objection the sole reply, and to my mind the sufficient reply, is that this plan will be acceptable to a large majority in the House and in the country, because by excluding the Catechism it silences the rallying-cries of controversy and limits the range for dispute; and because it binds, by Act of Parliament, to have none of the theoretical character teaching which would naturally be given by the schoolmaster to young children in a common school, but to which the local bodies wish to be guided by Parliament.
“With regard to the majorities which decidedly prefer catechisms, especially the Catholics, I think we can and should meet their case. I confess I cannot but think this would have been easier to do if we had framed the Bill in accordance with my original Memorandum, and, prescribing Bible lessons as a rule, had then made allowance for exceptional localities, desiring either purely secular or distinctive schools.”
On June 16 the debate on the Bill was at last resumed, and Mr. Gladstone then made a statement which in substance was merely an amplification of Mr. Forster’s suggestion.
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR (1870).
Source.—Morley’s Life of Gladstone, vol. ii., p. 341. (Macmillan and Co., 1903.)
Letter from Mr. Gladstone to John Bright (August 1, 1870).
Although some members of the Cabinet were inclined on the outbreak of this most miserable war to make military preparations, others, Lord Granville and I among them, by no means shared that disposition, nor I think was the feeling of Parliament that way inclined. But the publication of the Treaty has altered all this, and has thrown upon us the necessity either of doing something fresh to secure Belgium, or else of saying that under no circumstances would we take any step to secure her from absorption. This publication [text of a projected agreement between the French and Prussian Governments] has wholly altered the feeling of the House of Commons, and no Government could at this moment venture to give utterance to such an intention about Belgium. But neither do we think it would be right, even if it were safe, to announce that we would in any case stand by with folded arms and see actions done which would amount to a total extinction of public right in Europe.