nd then,
after being carefully sifted by the Sheriffs or their Substitutes,
forwarded in a documentary form to Edinburgh. It would scarce be wise
to attempt extemporizing an official code in a newspaper article;
but the laws of such a code might, we think, be ranged under three
heads,--immorality, incompetency, and breach of trust to the parents.
We would urge the dismissal, as wholly unqualified to stand in the
relation of teacher to the youthhead, of the tippling, licentious, or
dishonest schoolmaster; further, we would urge the dismissal (and in
cases of this kind the corroborative evidence of the Government
inspector might be regarded as indispensable) of an incompetent
teacher who did not serve the purpose of his appointment; and, in the
third and last place, we would urge that a teacher who made an
improper use of his professional influence over his pupils, and of the
opportunities necessarily afforded him, and who taught them to entertain
beliefs, ecclesiastical or semi-ecclesiastical, which their parents
regarded as erroneous, should be severely reprimanded for such an
offence in the first instance, and dismissed if he persevered in it.
We would confer upon the board, in cases of this last kind, no power of
deciding regarding the absolute right or wrong of the dogmas taught.
The teacher might be a zealous Voluntary, who assured the children of
men such as the writer of these articles that their fathers, in
asserting the Establishment principle, approved themselves limbs of that
mystic Babylon which was first founded by Constantine; or he might be a
conscientious Establishment-man, who dutifully pressed upon the
Voluntary pupils under his care, that their parents, though they
perhaps did not know it, were atheistical in their views. And we would
permit no board to determine in such cases, whether Voluntaryism was in
any respect or degree tantamount to atheism, or the Establishment
principle to Popery. But we would ask them to declare, as wise and
honest men, that no schoolmaster, under the pretext of a zeal for
truth, should with impunity break faith with the parents of his pupils,
or prejudice the unformed and ductile minds entrusted to his care
against their hereditary beliefs. Should we, however, do no violence
by such a provision, we have heard it asked, to the conscientious
convictions of the schoolmaster? No, not in the least. If he was in
reality the conscientious man that he professed to be, he would quit