LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
A VESTRY SCENE.
!TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.") Polvellan, Looe, Cornwall, September 24. Srn,—My weekly Spectator has become so gloomy of late that it quite depresses me ; indeed, had it not been for the " English- woman in Difficulties" I could hardly have borne the sight of the familiar paper. As I have nowhere seen it stated how the new Educational Act has been received in remote parts of England, and as my experience may amuse your readers, and as it seems to point out rather a curious fact, I beg to lay before you the follow- ing scene at our vestry when the chairman announced the Education question to be the next subject for discussion. There advances a very little man with a very long face, our overseer ; with a solemn air he holds up certain papers and says, " Gen'lemen [N.B., we are very particular about being called gentlemen, Radical as we profess to be], gen'lemen, I dunno what these papers mean ; you'd best mind what you're adoing when you fills 'em up ; mark my words [here the papers are flung upon the table with a tragic air, such as an M.P. might envy], afore long you'll have to eddicate other people's children as well as your own, and [looking hard at me] there '11 be another rate." Up starts then a speaker such as Dickens delighted to describe ; he enchains the vestry. " I tell yer what, I'm not adoing to to be led by the nose [movement, as the French would say]. I'm a Dissenter. Ali! and I'm a brother in Christ ! Would I go for to lay a burden on a poor man's back (sensation) ; 'tis a hard matter to get bread ; let them as is rich pay for the eddication of the poor (thunders of applause). Gentlemen, gentlemen [emphasize strongly the gen "] indeed ! they call theirselves to go for to say there shall be a rate," &c., &c. Then another, " I should like to tell people who don't know Looe (the sarcastic reference is made plain by a ferocious stare at me) that there are a few John Bull's in this place,---a rate, indeed !" I won't waste your valuable space with any more ; but I cannot help thinking that the above account bears out my wife's prophecy (I trust Mr. Mill will observe how I have not appropriated to myself the clever remark of a woman), that as sure as the Education Bill passed with a clause compelling a rate for educational purposes, the people would all say, " The parsons are at the bottom of it," so that we have the amusing spectacle of the greatest opponents of Mr. Forster's Bill getting all the credit of being its chief promoters. This must be gall and wormwood to those who look upon this Bill as Earl Shaftesbury looks upon " Ecce Homo," as a thing vomited from the jaws of hell. I expect where Dissent is strong my experience will prove to be the experience of other parsons, and the general idea will be, as expressed in some newspaper which our overseer pro- duced, that the parsons are the cause of this new impost, —the
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