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clause. There is an active and intelligent party, who will watch for such difficulties, eagerly endeavouring to exaggerate them where they exist, to create them where they do not. At present, the majority of the Boards, and of the school-managers whom they appoint, will be honestly anxious to work the system efficiently, and may expect to find many difficulties vanish as they grapple with them. If the old schools shall exist, preserving a religious tone, and offering an easy refuge from actual or virtual secularism, then, we believe, their attempt will succeed. Even for the sake of self-preservation, to say nothing of the contagion of a noble example, the new schools will preserve, under all difficulties, a subtsantially religious character. Let the voluntary schools decay and vanish, and we do not feel so sure of this result. The example of the United States is not encouraging. It is generally known that the common schools have there become virtually secular; in ordinary cases, nothing is left, except the reading of a passage of Scripture, and the use of some very general prayer at the opening of the School. But it is not so well known, that originally the system was intended to 'provide religious instruction for all children,' and that it has gradually faded into what it is, because it is provided that this religious instruction shall not 'favour the tenets of any particular sect of Christians.'" (This is ominously like the language to which we have been lately accustomed.) "We trust that such might not be the case in England, if the new schools were left in undisputed possession of the field; but we cannot feel sure that the same causes will not operate to produce the same results. Doubly, then, we believe, that the old schools are of paramount value here. They can work most effectually for religious instruction themselves. Most of them are connected with the Church, and all the prestige and influence of
