College and pursued his education by working at the British Museum. He
matriculated at London University (1859), and took its B.A. degree
(1861), B.Sc. (1862), M.A. (1864), and LL.B. (1866), and in 1883 he was
given the honorary degree of D.D. by Bates College, U.S.A., being known
therefrom as Dr Clifford. This degree, from an American college of minor
academic status, afterwards led to sarcastic allusions, but Dr Clifford
had not courted it, and his London University achievements were evidence
enough of his intellectual equipment. At Praed Street chapel he
gradually obtained a large following, and in 1877 Westbourne Park
chapel was opened for him. As a preacher, writer, propagandist and
ardent Liberal politician, he became a power in the Nonconformist body.
He was president of the London Baptist Association in 1879, of the
Baptist Union in 1888 and 1899, and of the National Council of
Evangelical Churches in 1898. His chief prominence in politics, however,
dates from 1903 onwards in consequence of his advocacy of "passive
resistance" to the Education Act of 1902. Into this movement he threw
himself with militant ardour, his own goods being distrained upon, with
those of numerous other Nonconformists, rather than that any
contribution should be made by them in taxation for the purpose of an
Education Act which in their opinion was calculated to support
denominational religious teaching in the schools. The "passive
resistance" movement, with Dr Clifford as its chief leader, had a large
share in the defeat of the Unionist government in January 1906, and his
efforts were then directed to getting a new act passed which should be
undenominational in character. The rejection of Mr Birrell's bill in
1906 by the House of Lords was accordingly accompanied by denunciations
of that body from Dr Clifford and his followers; but as year by year
went by, up to 1909, with nothing but failure on the part of the Liberal
ministry to arrive at any solution of the education problem,--failure
due now not to the House of Lords but to the inherent difficulties of
the subject (see EDUCATION),--it became increasingly clear to the public
generally that the easy denunciations of the act of 1902, which had
played so large a part in the elections of 1906, were not so simple to
carry into practice, and that a compromise in which the
denominationalists would have their say would have to be the result.
Meanwhile "passive resistance" lost its interest, th
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