For here we must be allowed to remark, in passing, that of all the caviling and vexatious obstructions which the committee of council have had to encounter, the most ungracious and indefensible appear to have been those offered by advocates of unsectarian education less reasonable and considerate than Mr. Fox. We are not going to challenge any particular respect for the feelings of men in office. It is the well-understood fate of those who undertake reforms to be criticised sharply and unreflectingly; such unsparing treatment helps to harden them for the discharge of unpalatable duties; and even the most captious objections may be suggestive of improved arrangements. But making every allowance on this score, it remains incontrovertible that men entertaining sound abstract views respecting unsectarian education, and the importance of intrusting to the local public a large share in the control of educational institutions, like the members of the Lancashire School Association and others, have not only refused to make due allowance for the obstructions opposed to the committee of council on education by the prepossessions of the general public, but, by assuming an attitude of jealous opposition to it, have materially increased the difficulties with which it has had to labor. These gentlemen think no reform worth having unless it accord precisely with their preconceived notions; and are not in the least contented with getting what they wish, unless they can also have it in the exact way they wish it. Other and even more factious malcontents have been found among a class of very worthy but not very wise persons, who, before government took any charge of education, had exerted themselves to establish Sunday and other schools; and have now allowed the paltry jealousy lest under a new and improved system of general education their own local and congregational importance may be diminished, to drive them into a virulent opposition to any scheme of national education under the auspices or by the instrumentality of government. But all this parenthetically. Our immediate object is to comment upon an opposition experienced in carrying out the scheme of operations which the state of public opinion has compelled government to adopt, coming from the very parties who were most instrumental in forcing that scheme upon it.