330 History of the Radical Party in Parliament. [1841- which it was hoped would satisfy the Nonconformists, and the bill was recommitted. The alterations were inefficient, and on the 1 8th of May Roebuck raised the main issue clearly by moving a resolution against the inculcation of any religious opinions in State education. This was lost by a majority of ninety-six, sixty Radicals voting for it, and Russell and other Whigs against. It was found impossible to resist the popular feeling, and the education clauses of the bill were withdrawn. It violated the principle of religious equality, without being an efficient scheme of education. As Cobden said, it was ridiculous as a national scheme, because it would provide only for 60,000 children altogether. Another attempt was made to vindicate the same principle of religious freedom in education by Mr. W. D. Christie, who, on the 25th of May, moved for leave to bring in "a bill to abolish certain oaths and sub- scriptions in the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and to provide for the extension of education in those Universities to persons who are not members of the Church of England." In the division, when Mr. Milner Gibson was teller with Christie, the numbers were for the motion, 105 ; against it, 175. Parliament was prorogued on the 24th of August, the Queen's speech declaring her Majesty's firm determination to maintain inviolate the legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland. This was the reply of Government to the violent repeal agitation which O'Connell had been con- ducting during the year by means of monster meetings and anti-rent manifestos, in which one of the " three F's," fixity of tenure, was promised as a result of repeal.* On the I4th of October the great agitator and nine other repealers were arrested on charges of conspiracy, sedition, and unlawful assemblage, but the trial did not take place until the following year. Parliament met on the 1st of February, 1844, in more prosperous times than had been known for some years past, and with the financial troubles overcome. The Queen in her
- Martineau's " History of the Thirty years' Peace," vol. ii. page 567.
