c members from opposition by a private
understanding that, although by the minutes of the educational committee
of the privy council then under consideration, they were debarred from
any grant, separate minutes would afterwards be introduced in their
especial behalf. There was also an understanding with the Wesleyan
Methodists on the principle of the grants to their schools, the
inspection to be exercised, and the selection of pupil teachers,
which disarmed the opposition of that numerous and energetic body. The
Unitarians were also conciliated by the explanations which were offered
to them, and that body was so extremely anxious for the spread
of education, that they were ready to accept a position of great
denominational disadvantage, in order to see the extension of some
plan that would conduce to the mitigation of popular ignorance. The
Congregationalists and Baptists, Presbyterians and Friends, and various
other bodies of Methodists who adopted the voluntary principle, were
beyond conciliation. They boldly demanded equal rights for all, and
perfect freedom of education. This large class of persons were much
maligned by the Earl of Surrey, when he consented to have Boman
Catholics excluded from the minutes, because, in his opinion, if they
were placed within the circle of advantage which the government was
willing to accord, all the dissenting sects would assail them with
an increased and perhaps successful opposition. The objections of the
"voluntary dissenters," and more liberal sections of churchmen, were
unaffected by theological considerations; they desired that their
schools should be protected from government interference, and
remain uncorrupted by government patronage, and they objected to the
unconstitutional authority, as they deemed it, exercised by the
privy council. No public man out of their own party ever had so much
intercourse with those classes as Lord Brougham, who, at the same time,
understood them so little. His lordship affected to "live and move and
have his being" in an atmosphere of liberality and enlightenment too
high for the earnestly religious men of the country to attain. From
this elevation he looked down upon their conflicts with an affected
compassion, which if meant to cover his disdain was very unsuccessful,
and it brought out more prominently his lordship's thorough ignorance of
the tone and principles of these classes, many of whom had studied the
merits of the whole question with