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319 No party can now afford to forego an opportunity for strengthening itself by electing, or unclear the election of party men, as Managers?; & these again for the same reasons are guided in the selection of Teachers by party Considerations. It is coming to this, that no one who has to do with the management, & whereon in, or teaching of Schools, will be the fittest person for what he has to do, except by accident." This Gentleman had studied the subject of Education as well in England as in his own Country, & he gave one of the for secular Schools wd the opinion he had formed on the religious part of the question, or rather as to how he conceived the proposal affect the established Church, in the following words. "I think," he said, "the Church "will lose nothing by the absence of a Church Character in the Schools. "I never met with a Clergyman in the Old Country, whether " it was an Archbishop, or the Incumbent of a small rural Parish, to "whom I put the question, who felt sure that they Church gained "by the Schools being in the hands of the Clergy. No one will say "that this attaches the children, when they are grown up, to the Church. "For my own part I feel sure that a System which wd rapidly exclude "both all Church, & all Denominational teaching wd be a gain to the "Church. This is necessarily true, if under the present system Church Schools "do less to indoctrinate those brought up in them with Churchism, than "the Denominational Schools do to undoctrinate those brought up in "them with Dissent. My conclusion is, that if I were an English Churchmen "I sd not vote against the plan which wd supplement your existing system "with secular Schools. It wd do you no harm; & wd give you many intelligent members."