Page:The Conscience Clause (Oakley, 1866).djvu/28

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society?" He repeats the clause, and again mentions the Act of Parliament on which it is based.

Mr. Lonsdale repeats that the clause is held to be inconsistent with the charter and the terms of union, and adds that the National Society was expressly exempted from the operations of the Act which Mr. Lingen has quoted.

"Of course it was," Mr. Lingen retorts; "if it were otherwise this correspondence would be unnecessary."^[2]

His reply amounts to this:—We are endeavouring to induce you, in the face of facts and a changed set of circumstances, and a strong drift of public opinion, to accept voluntarily a principle which has been admitted to be just in all other cases, and to some extent in your own and by yourselves. If we could make you adopt it, by force of Act 23 Vic, cap. II, or otherwise, be assured we should. "We are quite aware of your exemption from the operation of that Act, as well as of our own long forbearance to press you on the point, but we are convinced that that forbearance can no longer justly be continued.

↑ J. G. Hubbard, Esq, M.P. The Conscience Clause of the Education Department, p. 33. (Masters.)
↑ This rejoinder has been denounced as a piece of "discreditable trickery." I cannot conceive how the accusation can seem to any one to lie, Mr. Lingen informs the society that the clause is based on the principle of a certain Act of Parliament (which no one denies that it is) for the obvious purpose of suggesting to the Society that the principle of what he was proposing had been necessarily and notoriously discussed and voted for by Bishops in the House of Lords, on the occasion of passing the Endowed Schools Bill, although National Schools were at the time exempted from its operation. The Society—again ready to impute finality to any enactment in its own favour, be it Trust Deed or Act of Parliament—triumphantly records this exception, as if the Committee of Council had presumed upon their ignorance of it, and their champion^[1]" does not hesitate to impute "discreditable trickery" to the correspondence carried on in the name of the Committee of Council" for mentioning a plain and simple matter of fact!

[1] J. G. Hubbard, Esq, M.P. The Conscience Clause of the Education Department, p. 33. (Masters.)

[2] This rejoinder has been denounced as a piece of "discreditable trickery." I cannot conceive how the accusation can seem to any one to lie, Mr. Lingen informs the society that the clause is based on the principle of a certain Act of Parliament (which no one denies that it is) for the obvious purpose of suggesting to the Society that the principle of what he was proposing had been necessarily and notoriously discussed and voted for by Bishops in the House of Lords, on the occasion of passing the Endowed Schools Bill, although National Schools were at the time exempted from its operation. The Society—again ready to impute finality to any enactment in its own favour, be it Trust Deed or Act of Parliament—triumphantly records this exception, as if the Committee of Council had presumed upon their ignorance of it, and their champion^[1]" does not hesitate to impute "discreditable trickery" to the correspondence carried on in the name of the Committee of Council" for mentioning a plain and simple matter of fact!

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