, and the
parent _fees_--we assert further, that should the Government give its
salary 'exclusively as the expression of its value for a good
_secular_ education,' _he_ may, notwithstanding, demand that his fees
should be received as the representative of _his_ value for a good
_religious_ education. Whether his principles be those of the
Voluntary or of the Establishment-man, the same schoolmaster who is a
secular teacher in relation to the Government, may be a religious
teacher in relation to him. For unless the State positively _forbid_
its schoolmaster to communicate religious instruction, he exists to
the parent, in virtue of the fees given and received, in exactly the
circumstances of the teacher of any adventure school.

Let us further remark, that the rights of the parent in the matter of
education are not _ecclesiastical_, but _natural_ rights. The writer
of this article is one of the parents of Scotland; and, simply as
such, he claims for himself the right of choosing his children's
teacher on his own responsibility, and of determining what his
children are to be taught. The Rev. Dr. Thomas Guthrie is his
minister; and _he_ also is one of the parents of Scotland, and enjoys,
as such, a right identical in all respects with that of his
parishioner and hearer. But it is only an identical and co-equal
right. Should the writer send his boy to a Socialist or Popish school,
to be taught either gross superstition or gross infidelity, the
minister would have a right to interfere, and, if entreaty and
remonstrance failed, to bring him to discipline for so palpable a
breach of his baptismal engagement. If, on the other hand, it was the
minister who had sent his boy to the Socialist or Popish school, the
parishioner would have a right to interfere, and, were entreaty and
remonstrance disregarded, to bring _him_ to discipline. Minister and
parishioner stand, we repeat, in this matter, on exactly the same
level. Nor have ten, twenty, a hundred, a thousand, twenty thousand,
or a hundred thousand lay parents, or yet ten, twenty, a hundred, or
a thousand clerical parents, whether existing as a congregation or
hundreds of congregations on the one hand, or as a Presbytery, Synod,
or General Assembly on the other, rights in this matter that in the
least differ in their nature from the rights possessed by the single
clergyman, Dr. Guthrie, or by the single layman, the Editor of the
_Witness_. The sole right which exists in the ca