DISSENTING OPPOSITION TO THE FACTORIES BILL.
TO THE. EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.
Fourth Month. 25, 1843.
RESPECTED FRIEND—•AS a reader of the Spectator, and an admirer of the independence and impartiality by which it is generally characterized, I cannot forbear expressing my regret at the tone of some recent observations on the Dissenters and the Factory Education Bill. It does not follow because the Dissenters have effected comparatively little towards removing the mass of ignorance which pervades the poorer classes of the community, that they could not do more. They may have wasted their resources upon impracticable ob- jects—hare looked abroad rather than at home, and sacrificed too liberally at the shrine of the spurious charity
" Which seeks the Heathen of some far-off clime, But leaves the wretched of its own to die."
But still I think they are not deserving of the sweeping censure implied in a paragraph of last week's Spectator, which reads more like an outburst of irri- tated feeling than the cool deductions of an enlightened judgment. I believe that a conscientious opposition to the education clauses of the Fac- tory Bill may coexist with a perfectly friendly feeling towards the members of the Established Church; and I can fully subscribe to the position of J. Dirmorim, that " if there must be a religious establishment, by all means let it remain in its present hands." But I do not see how a state church can maintain her supremacy and power, amidst the numerous religious professions in this country, without encroaching upon the borders of religious liberty. The Society of Friends have given this bill no factious opposition: they can have no object in obstructing its course but as its provisions militate against their religious principles. They would gladly support an education measure based upon sound principles, and carried out by wise and just enactments : but if the Government bring forward a bill clogged with provisions which no con- scientious Dissenter can support, the onus of its rejection lies with them, not us. I do not look at this measure as one of merely sectarian interest, but as involving principles subversive of the full exercise of religious liberty ; and on this ground I oppose it. The educationary clauses of this bill are both arbi- trary and unjust. In the first place, they compel the parent to send his child to school; and in the next place, they compel Dissenting rate-payers to sup- port schools in which doctrines are taught from which they conscientiously dissent. With such compulsory clauses as these, and others of a like charac- ter, I cannot conceive how any friend of civil and religious liberty could con- sistently support it. Wherein does it differ in principle from a " Sabbath Observance Bill," the folly and inexpediency of which has so often been de- monstrated by the Spectator? Both may be classed under one category—as an unwarrantable interference of the state in matters out of its proper pro- vince, calculated to retard the progress of true religion by presenting it in the repulsive garb of magisterial authority, rather than enforced by the milder claims of moral obligation.
[Our friend misconceives us. To those who urge specific objections we offer no censure : we have suggested specific objections ourselves; and had every objector sought to realize them, without merging all in a blind endeavour to atop the measure entirely, they might have given some practical efftct to their view as to what it ought to be. Our deliberate feeling on the whole matter may be learned in another column : here we will only say, that those who stifle an attempt to break into the mass of ignorance which oppresses the land, cannot evade the enormous fact that it does exist ; and we are free to con- fess, that in our estimation, no present immunity enjoyed by the sovereign people in the shape of " religious liberty," or freedom from doctrinal errors, can counterbalance that vast and overwhelming evil.—En.]
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