remunerated by a fee: in this department of tuition, as in
the others, we would deem the labourer worthy of his hire. We need
scarce add, however, that we would recognise no power in the majority
of any locality, or in the schoolmaster whom they had chosen, to
render attendance at even the devotional services of the seminary
compulsory on the children of parents who, on religious or other
grounds, willed that they should not join in the general worship. And,
of course, attendance on the religion-teaching class would be
altogether as much a matter of arrangement between the parent and the
schoolmaster, as attendance on the Latin or English classes, or on
arithmetic, algebra, or the mathematics.

While, however, we can see no proper grounds for difference between
Voluntaries and Free Churchmen, on even these details of school
management, and see, further, that they never differ regarding the way
in which the adventure schools of the country are conducted, we
must remind the reader that all on which they have really to agree
on this question, as Scotchmen and franchise-holders, is simply
whether their country ought not, in the first place, to possess an
efficient system of national schools, open to all the Christian
denominations; whether, in the second, the parents ought not to be
permitted to exercise, on their own responsibility, the natural right
of determining what their children should be taught; and whether, in
the third, the householders of a district ought not to be vested in
the power, now possessed by the heritors and parish minister, of
choosing the teacher. Agreement on these heads is really all that is
necessary towards either the preliminary agitation of the question,
or in order to secure its ultimate success. The minor points would
all come to be settled, not on the legislative platform, but in the
parishes, by the householders. Voluntaryism, wise and foolish, does
not reckon up more than a third of the population of Scotland; and
foolish, _i.e._ extreme Voluntaries--for the sensible ones would be
all with us--would find themselves, when they came to record their
votes, a very small minority indeed. And so, though their extreme
views may now be represented as lions in the path, it would be found
ultimately that, like the lions which affrighted Pilgrim in the
avenue, and made the poor man run back, they are lions well chained
up--_lions_, in short, in a _minority_, like the agricultural lion in
_Punch_. L