To whom did the property from which the schools were kept in efficiency, and their masters furnished with a maintenance--sometimes with much more than a mere maintenance--to whom did this property belong? I can find but one answer. It was the property of the nation; a reserve fund which the nation had permitted certain individuals to set apart from time to time for the furtherance of the education of the people, the object aimed at being considered so excellent that the conditions imposed upon posterity by the founders were allowed to remain in force, these founders being supposed to have entered into a contract with the nation that, in consideration of the value of the surrender made, the reserve of property should be sanctioned, and the conditions imposed be held to be binding upon posterity. The land or the rent-charges which yesterday were private possessions ceased to be so to-day: they _were_ private property, they became public property, and constituted the Educational Reserve. I can no longer resist the conviction that, as in the one case so in the other, the nation may reconsider its treaty with School or Church; may determine that the reserve hitherto set apart for the education of a class, or a district, or the founder’s kin, should no longer be applied according to the compact sanctioned in previous ages, and may in the same way reconsider its compact with the alienation of property now known as Church property, and deal with that far larger reserve hitherto applied for the promotion of the moral and spiritual welfare of the people. The nation has the right to do this, as it undoubtedly has the power. Whether in this case _summum jus_ would not be found to be _summa injuria_ is quite another question. But it is one thing to say this large reserve shall be administered otherwise than it is, and quite another thing to say that it shall cease to exist as a reserve at all. It is one thing to deal with our ecclesiastical endowments on the lines that school endowments have been dealt with, and quite another to deal with them as Henry the Eighth dealt with the property of the religious houses. To adopt the one course would be readjustment, to adopt the other would be confiscation. Nevertheless, if the majority of the new electorate should decidedly and unequivocally pronounce that such is its pleasure, assuredly the property now held in reserve in the shape of religious endowments will be confiscated. Religion will be the luxury of the rich and well-to-do; the proletariate and the agricultural labourer will have to supply themselves with an inferior article, or to do without it altogether.