'1. I should not require a certificate of satisfaction with the religious progress of the scholars from the managers of the schools, in order to their receiving the Government aid. Such a certificate from Unitarians or Catholics implies the direct sanction or countenance by Government to their respective creeds, and the responsibility, not of _allowing_, but, more than this, of _requiring_, that these shall be taught to the children who attend. A bare allowance is but a general toleration; but a requirement involves in it all the mischief, and, I would add, the guilt, of an indiscriminate endowment for truth and error. '2. I would suffer parents or natural guardians to select what parts of the education they wanted for their children. I would not force arithmetic upon them, if all they wanted was reading and writing; and as little would I force the Catechism, or any part of the religious instruction that was given in the school, if all they wanted was a secular education. That the managers of the Church of England schools shall have the power to impose their own Catechism upon the children of Dissenters, and, still more, to compel their attendance on church, I regard as among the worst parts of the scheme. 'The above observations, it will be seen, meet any questions which might be put in regard to the applicability of the scheme to Scotland, or in regard to the use of the Douay version in Roman Catholic schools. 'I cannot conclude without expressing my despair of any great or general good being effected in the way of Christianizing our population, but through the medium of a Government themselves Christian, and endowing the true religion, which I hold to be their imperative duty, not because it is the religion of the many, but because it is true. 'The scheme on which I have now ventured to offer these few observations I should like to be adopted, not because it is absolutely the best, but only the best in existing circumstances. 'The endowment of the Catholic religion by the State I should deprecate, as being ruinous to the country in all its interests. Still I do not look for the general Christianity of the people, but through the medium of the Christianity of their rulers. This is a lesson taught _historically_ in Scripture, by what we read there of the influence which the personal character of the Jewish monarchs had on the moral and religious state of their subjects; it is taught _experimentally_, by the impotence, now fully established, of the Voluntary principle; and last, and most decisive of all, it is taught _prophetically_ in the book of Revelation, when told that then will the kingdoms of the earth (_Basileiai_, or governing powers) become the kingdoms of our Lord Jesus Christ, or the Governments of the earth become Christian Governments. (Signed) 'THOMAS CHALMERS.' -----