e
suppose, of every other--are derived from two distinct sources: from
Government, who furnishes the schoolmaster's salary, and erects the
building in which he teaches; and from the parents or guardians, who
remunerate him according to certain graduated rates for the kind of
instruction which he communicates to their children or wards. And the
_rationale_ of this State assistance seems very obvious. It is of
importance to the State, both on economic and judicial grounds, that
all its people should be taught; but, on the adventure-school
principle, it is impossible that they should all be taught, seeing
that adventure schools can thrive in only densely peopled localities,
or where supported by wealthy families, that pay largely for their
children's education. And so, in order that education may be brought
down to the humblest of the people, the State supplements, in its own
and its people's behalf, the schoolmaster's income, and builds him a
school. Such seems to be the principle of educational endowments. Now,
if the State, in endowing national schoolmasters, were to signify that
it endowed them in order that, among other things, they should _teach
religion_, we can well see how a Voluntary who conscientiously holds,
as such, that religion ought not to be State-endowed, might be unable
to avail himself, on his children's behalf, of the State-enjoined
religious teaching of any such functionaries; just as we can also see,
that if the State _forbade_ its schoolmasters on any account to teach
religion, a conscientious holder of the Establishment principle might
be perhaps equally unable to avail himself of services so restricted.
We can at least see how each, in turn, might lodge an alternate
protest,--the one against the positive exclusion of religion by the
State, the other against its positive introduction. But if, according
to Chalmers, the State, aware of the difficulty, tenders its endowment
and builds its schools 'simply as an expression of its value for a
good secular education,' and avowedly leaves the religious part of the
school training to be determined by the parties who furnish that
moiety of the schoolmaster's support derived from fees--_i.e._ the
parents or guardians--we find in the arrangement ground on which the
Voluntary and the Establishment man can meet and agree. For the State
virtually wills by such a settlement--and both by what it demands, and
by what it does _not_ demand, but _permits_--that its sal