and have given away the guarantees of an efficient and economical education. In England the blunder was committed. The Churches of England and Rome, the aristocratic and landed interests, proved too strong for those who were in favour of religious equality. Denominational schools, belonging chiefly to those two bodies, were perpetuated under a state system. Six months was given, with the bribe of additional aid from the state, to increase the number of denominational schools in the parishes, until the accommodation should be sufficient for all the children in the parish, and thus secure exclusive ascendancy to one sect. School boards elected by ratepayers, and empowered to levy local rates for education, were only to be formed where there were not enough denominational schools to accommodate all the children. The denominational schools were to receive for the children they taught a certain grant from the imperial government; and school boards, where there were any, were empowered to pay, at denominational schools which the parents might designate, the fees of the children of paupers who had religious prejudices-that is to say, I may be forced to pay a rate which goes to support a school in which are taught doctrines I abhor. In consequence of these wicked and pernicious blunders, while hundreds of thousands of children are waiting to be educated, England is a battle-field of religious bigotry. In elections for school boards, the question is not how many men of experience in educational matters shall be elected, but how many representatives of each sort shall upon the board and give it a secular or a denominational leaning. sit Those natural allies of Liberalism, the Nonconformists, seeing in this policy an unfair advantage conferred on the Establishment and on Romanism, are either hostile or cold to a government which has been false to its principles. In that old country, with its overpowering State Church, compromises, which here are possible, are impracticable; the power of the uncompromising is great indeed; religious bigotry, exasperated by ever-obtrusive social and political inequalities, will neither be generous nor tolerant, and the only smooth platform of state action is absolute equality. XV. A THIRD INSTANCE: TRADES-UNION LEGIS- stance: Union the Crimi Amend ment Act. Let me cite a third instance. These con- A third increte exhibits of the truth I am stating are Tradesfar more instructive than any arguments. legislation; Some time ago the trades-unions applied nal Law to Parliament for relief from the abominable laws which rendered their associations illegal, and which deprived them of any remedy in a court of law for the defalcations of their officers. Parliament passed a milk-and-water permissive measure, because just then the working-men were important to the Liberal party: but at the same time privilege stepped in and demanded its securities. The Act was supplemented by an Act called the 'Criminal Law Amendment Act,' and which defined special misdemeanours supposed to be peculiar to trades-unionists, with special penalties for the commission of them. This was a case of class-legislation. The ordinary criminal law, which protects all the rest of the community, so far as it is possible to protect it, from infringements of personal liberty of thought or action, but which cannot possibly protect every individual from the thousand moral influences which his fellows may bring to bear on him, provides penalties for threatening or molesting people; and, moreover, it is as unfair as it is impolitic to define crimes as class crimes and to punish them as class offences. True, the Criminal Law Amendment Act was separated from the Trades-Union Act, and thus in name appears as a simple amendment of the general criminal law, but both its origin and its terms stand forth to brand it as a gross instance of special legislation, aimed at and affecting in almost all its particulars only one portion of the community. Ever since that time the Act has been working with increasing hardships. It is purposely indefi nite-no one can tell whether some word or act may not bring him within the clutches of some prejudiced Tory magistrate or judge. You will remember that two clerical justices in Oxfordshire sent nineteen women to prison under this Act, some of them with infants at their breasts, for frightening a couple of men. instance: ing men Once more: since the Reform Act, the A fourth working-men have been attempting to secure the workfor themselves that influence in legislation, and Parand that opportunity of expressing their Represenopinions in Parliament, which the measure was designed to afford them. The principle of class representation is not a sound one-it is obviously prone to exaggerate class-prejudices and to create representatives less useful to the community than diligent in promoting class interests at D liamentary tation. |