England’s Education Act a Failure
AUTHORITATIVE voices are heard in England, declaring that the famous education act, which at its passage in 1902 precipitated such a struggle between the established church and the non-conformists, is a pronounced failure, and must soon be repealed. It is declared by its enemies, and admitted by some of its friends, that the system has proved “unworkable.” The people are tired of the disturbance it has created all over the country. According to the Saturday Review, the merits of the controversy will be overlooked in the general desire to put an end to the “pandemonium” created by the act. The ordinary citizen, it says, may for the sake of quiet “at any time throw his weight in favor of wholly secular education. . . . He will take no trouble to ascertain nicely the rights and wrongs of a dispute he abhors. His main object is to stop the noise of the disputants.” Persecution does not succeed well where its victims constitute so large a proportion of the population as do the non-conformists in England. It is where a vast majority imposes its religious dogmas by law upon a small minority that persecution does its deadliest work, and makes the darkest stain on the pages of human history.