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It is obvious that the same political necessity which opened the legislature to persons not in communion with the Church, has imposed its control upon the course of legislation, and on the action of the executive government, which must always largely sympathize with the composition of the legislature. For this reason we shall be wise if we give over looking to the civil power for measures conceived in the spirit, and carried out with the freedom, of the times, before those changes came upon us. I do not say whether such measures are to be desired or no; whether the cessation of them is to be regretted or no; but I simply point to the fact, that whether desired or regretted they seem no longer possible. We must prepare ourselves for a new complexion in the measures which affect the moral and religious state of the country. This, at least, we may both ask and expect, first, that all measures drawn for the Church shall be framed upon her own principles, and administered according to the genius of her system; and, next, that in all other measures affecting the religious and moral state of the people, as little departure as possible from her principles, or rather as close an approximation as possible to them, shall be made.
To come to particulars, I would first refer to the clauses relating to education in the Factory Bill.
It may be said with truth that the subject of National Education has been under discussion these thirty or forty years. The opening of the subject
