the agitation of the general question, furnished, on the contrary, the best possible of all arguments _for_ its agitation; and to show further, that the policy which brought a denominational scheme, that did not look beyond ourselves, into a great national engagement, in the character of a privateer virtually on the side of the enemy, was a most perilous policy, that exposed it to damaging broadsides, and telling shot right between wind and water. Let us now pass on to the consideration of a matter on which we but touched before,--the perfect compatibility of a consistent Voluntaryism with religious teaching in a school endowed by the State, on the principle of Dr. Chalmers. The _Witness_ is as little Voluntary now as it ever was. It seems but fair, however, that a principle should be saddled with only the consequences that legitimately arise from it; and that Voluntaryism should not be exposed, in this contest, to a species of witchcraft, that first caricatures it in an ill-modelled image, and then sticks the ugly thing over with pins. The revenues of the State-endowed schools of this country--and, we suppose, of every other--are derived from two distinct sources: from Government, who furnishes the schoolmaster's salary, and erects the building in which he teaches; and from the parents or guardians, who remunerate him according to certain graduated rates for the kind of instruction which he communicates to their children or wards. And the _rationale_ of this State assistance seems very obvious. It is of importance to the State, both on economic and judicial grounds, that all its people should be taught; but, on the adventure-school principle, it is impossible that they should all be taught, seeing that adventure schools can thrive in only densely peopled localities, or where supported by wealthy families, that pay largely for their children's education. And so, in order that education may be brought down to the humblest of the people, the State supplements, in its own and its people's behalf, the schoolmaster's income, and builds him a school. Such seems to be the principle of educational endowments. Now, if the State, in endowing national schoolmasters, were to signify that it endowed them in order that, among other things, they should _teach religion_, we can well see how a Voluntary who conscientiously holds, as such, that religion ought not to be State-endowed, might be unable to avail himself, on his children's behalf, of the State-enjoined religious teaching of any such functionaries; just as we can also see, that if the State _forbade_ its schoolmasters on any account to teach religion, a conscientious holder of the Establishment principle might be perhaps equally unable to avail himself of services so restricted. We can at least see how each, in turn, might lodge an alternate protest,--the one against the positive exclusion of religion by the State, the other against its positive introduction. But if, according