Speech at the National Education League meeting at St. James's Hall, London, March 25, 1870

John

speech at the
£,aucation League meeting

SPEECH

BY

JOHN STUART MILL, ESQ.,

AT THE

Rational iEtwcatton

AT ST. JAMES'S HALL, LONDON, MARCH 25, 1870.

THE Resolution which has been moved relates to a defect
which, as the Bill was originally drawn, was its greatest blot : and
even after the great concessions— for they are great concessions—
which we may now consider to have been made by the Govern
ment, enough of evil remains to demand a strong protest.
Though there are many other things in the Bill that we
wish altered, those other defects are chiefly of the nature of
shortcomings : what is done we approve, but fwe wish that it
were done more thoroughly : the difference between what the Bill
gives and what we desire is the difference between good and better,
but in the present case it is the difference between good and bad.
The Bill does pot simply halt and hang back in the path of good,
it does positive evil; it introduces a new religious inequality.
Even the alterations- that are promised leave untouched a great
part of the evil for they leave the whole of its principle. Teachers
are still to be employed and paid by the entire community to teach
the religion of a part. True, this is now to be done out of school
hours, and I would by no means depreciate the value of this con
cession. I. should be glad to forget as soon as possible what the
Bill would have been without it. Though brought in by a Govern
ment which has earned such high distinction as the destroyer
of religious inequality in Ireland, a more effectual plan could
scarcely have been devised by the strongest champion of ecclesi
astical ascendancy for enabling the clergy of the Church of England
to educate the children of the greater part of England and Wales
in their own religion at the expense of the public. Hitherto
instruction has only been given to those who asked for it, but we
are now going (at least we hope so) to teach every child ; and the
Bill gave up to the local bodies, which in the rural districts means
the squire and the parson, all the neglected children— the children
of all who care little about religion, of all who are de
pendent, of all who are under obligations for charitable
offices, of all who are too timid to risk displeasing their
superiors by sending in a solemn refusal in writing to do what
they are wanted to do. And because the Nonconformists would

not stand this they were told (but I must do the Government the
justice to say, not by them) that their motive could not be religious
or political principle, but could only be unworthy sectarian jealousy.
By the promised concessions this blot is in great part — I wish I
could even now say entirely — taken out of the Bill. But the
principle remains of teaching the religion of a part with funds
raised by taxation from the whole ; and a measure infected by
this bad principle cannot be satisfactory to any but persons of the
dominant creed, nor to impartial persons of any creed.

It is true we may be told that the Dissenters can teach their
own doctrines if they please and in the school-buildings too. They
can, if, after deducting the school hours and the extra hours set
apart for Church teaching, sufficient time remains ; but they must
pay the whole expense and their share of the cost of the Church-
teaching besides. We may be told too that in places where the
Dissenters are the strongest it will be they and not the Church that
will be enabled to teach their own doctrines at other peoples' expense.
As if an injustice in one place were cured by an injustice in another.
But this permission to be unjust in their turn, wherever they are
strong enough, the Dissenters are so extremely unreasonable as not
to value. It is well known that they do not desire their distinctive
doctrines to be taught in schools ; and, indeed, there are probably
few places in which any one denomination is sufficiently numerous
to make this easily practicable. The system deliberately chosen by
the Dissenters is that of the British schools, where religious teaching
is limited to reading the Bible without note or comment. Besides,
we know that the practical strength of the Dissenters is in the large
towns, or districts equivalent to towns ; where they happen to be
in a majority anywhere else, we see by the example of Wales how
little it avails them. But in large towns, even where the Dissenters
are the strongest, the Church party is sure to be strong enough to
reduce them to a compromise and make the Boards either subsidize
existing Church schools, or, if they make use of the power the Bill
gives them of founding others, to found a Church school by the side
of every unsectarian one. So that the Church party will probably
in no single instance, be in that position of victims, which it is
supposed ought to be so great a consolation to the Dissenters for
being victims in three-fourths of the Kingdom. Another thing
that is said is that what we complain of as a new grievance exists
already : by the national grants in aid of denominational schools
we are all of us taxed for teaching religions not our own. Well,
perhaps there are some of us who might have a good deal to say
against this too as a permanent institution, and who live in hope
of its ultimate absorption into something which they can more
thoroughly approve. But we are not going now to begin this
system ; it exists. When it was first introduced nothing better

could have been obtained ; and it still does good, though we may
learn — if we do not already know it — from Mr Mundella's speech,
how sadly the result falls short of the claims made for it.

But we do not desire to destroy what we have got until we
have replaced it by something better. The worst feature of the
system, the bigotted refusal of aid to secular schools is to be aban
doned; and the Bill provides that if the Boards, instead of
founding new schools, elect to subsidize the old, they must sub
sidize all denominations impartially, secular schools, I hope,
included. For this the framers of the Bill are entitled to our
cordial thanks. But it is puzzling to find such opposite principles
acted on in different parts of the same Bill, and such different
measure meted out to the old schools and to the new. It looks
like the result of a compromise between two parties in the Govern
ment, on the plan of giving something to each, the sort of thing
in short which makes our legislation the jumble of inconsistencies
that it is.

Some have the face to tell us that the ratepayer after all is not
taxed for the religious instruction, for the rate is so limited by the
Bill that he in reality only pays for the secular teaching. Indeed !
Then who does pay for the religious teaching ? Do the Church
party intend to raise the money by voluntary subscription. The
Times of last Monday throws out a suggestion of the kind : if one
could hope that it would be adopted I should not have another
word to say ; except indeed, that since, after Mr Gladstone's con
cessions the religious is no longer to be mixed up with the secular
teaching, it may as well be given by a different person altogether,
when the impartiality would be complete. But if the expense ia
not paid by subscription it must be paid by the Privy Council,
that is by the taxpayer. And do not Dissenters pay taxes ? Is
there a conscience clause for the tax gatherer ?

One more thing is said which might well amaze any one who is
not past being astonished at any of the tricks that are played with
words. "We are told that in our care for the conscience of the
minority, we violate that of the majority who conscientiously dis
approve of schools in which religion is not taught. Now, if what
their conscience objects to is sending their own children to such
schools, there is no compulsion, they are free to found schools of
their own. It is necessary to say this, for the principal supporters
of the Bill in the House of Commons did not appear to be aware
of it ; they seemed never to have heard of such an idea ; they
charged us with expelling religion from the schools as if there
were no schools to be had but those supported by rates ; as if we
were proposing to prohibit all schools except secular ones, or to
throw some great obstacle in their way ; while all we demand is,
that those who make use of the religious teaching shall pay for it

themselves instead of taxing others to do it. So that the consci
entious scruple which we are accused of violating is a scruple not
against going without the religious instruction but against paying
for it, and their conscience requires them to get it paid for by
other people. Is not this a singular spectacle of the richest and
most powerful part of the nation, who with two thirds of their
expenses sure to be paid by the Privy Council or the School Rate,
cannot bear tp do what the smallest denomination of Dissenters
cheerfully does — pay for their own religious teaching 1 But is
not this precisely because they are the rich and powerful?
The poor and weak never dream of throwing their personal
pecuniary obligations upon the public. It is a privilege only
sought by those who do not need it, but who think they have a
right to it because they have always had the power to exact it.
But it seems some of these people have a conscience so extremely
delicate that it is wounded, not if their own children, but if any
other people's children, attend schools in which religion, is not
taught. The bare existence of a secular school within the country,
at least with aid from the State, is a burden on their consciences,
as the existence of heretics was on the conscience of the Grand
Inquisitor. And we, because we decline to defer to this remark
able conscientious scruple, disregard the rights of conscience !
But the rights of conscience do not extend to imposing our own
conscience as a rule upon somebody else. I daresay we should be
told, if it were anyone's interest to affirm it, that we are no lovers
of liberty because we do not permit kings to take the liberty of
hanging or guillotining people at their pleasure. But the liberty
we stand up for is the equal liberty of all, and not the greatest
possible liberty of one, and slavery of all the rest. There ought
to be room in the world for more than one man's liberty ; and
there ought to be room in the world for more than one conscience.
Let all parties have what religious teaching their conscience
approves and they are willing to pay for. But when a man tells
me his conscience requires that other people shall have religious
teaching whether they like it or not, and shall have it in schools
though they would prefer having it elsewhere, and shall not be
helped like other people with their secular teaching unless they
consent to accept religious teaching along with it, I tell him that
he is not asserting his own freedom of conscience but trampling on
that of other people. If this is a right of conscience it was bigotry
and prejudice to complain of the persecutions of the Vaudois and
of the Protestants, The case is less flagrant but the principle is
the same.

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