to be imposed on Dissenters who
wish their children to have religious teaching. I am quite against
this moderate form, which consists in making a Baptist child own
that he is to believe what his godfathers and godmothers promised
for him--he having neither godfathers nor godmothers. Every form of
persecution is in my eyes detestable, so that I shall have to fight
a new fight for freedom of education.

_Lord Russell to Lady Minto_

CANNES, _January_ 6, 1872

MY DEAREST NINA,--Your New Year's Day letter shows that you write
as well as a volunteer as on compulsion.... I am sorry to have
annoyed Maggie by my allusion to the Hertfordshire incumbent. Here
is my case. Sixty-three years ago my father, with others founded a
Society to teach the Bible to young boys and girls, which they
called "Schools for all." One should have thought there was no harm
in the project, and that they might have been left alone. Not so.
The clergy were furious. Sixty years ago they founded the National
Society, and ever since they have libelled our schools.... Last
year or the year before the H.I. [Hertfordshire Incumbent] attacked
my proposals. I left him alone, but I carried the day, and excluded
formularies from schools provided by rates. Still the bishops and
clergy fulminate against us, shut out Baptists from the schools
where they have influence, and declaim against us. Now I happen to
have a great respect for the Bible, and while I have life will not
cease to defend our Bible schools. You will say, if I do not, that
in time the world will come round to Christianity, which is at a
low ebb at present. Men will understand at last that they ought to
love God and to love their neighbour as themselves, not to steal,
or commit murder, or cheat their neighbours. The Athanasian Creed
is making a pretty hubbub. It was invented as a substitute for
Christianity, and taken from Aristotle....

Ever yours affectionately,

RUSSELL

_Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline_

CANNES, _November_ 29, 1871

What is to be the result of the Republican ferment in our country?
It may not be widespread, and it certainly hardly exists above the
working classes, yet I feel that the germ is there--and who can say
how far it is doomed to flourish, or whether it will die away....
Ours has been so free and indep