Leading Articles on Various Subjects — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Leading Articles on Various Subjects
John Stuart Mill · en
expected for either, where is there the man, Voluntary or Free Church,
that would deem it worth the money? The story of the footman, who,
upon being told, on entering on his new place, that he would have to
attend family prayers, expressed a hope that the duty would be
considered in his wages, has become one of the standard jokes of our
jest-books. We would, however, place the religious teaching of the
school on an entirely different footing from its religious services.
We would assign to _it_ its separate class and its separate time, just
as we would assign a separate class and time to the teaching of
English grammar, or history, or the dead languages. And whether the
remuneration was specified or merely understood, we would deem it but
reasonable that this branch of teaching, like all the other branches
which occupied the time and tasked the exertions of the teacher,
should be remunerated by a fee: in this department of tuition, as in
the others, we would deem the labourer worthy of his hire. We need
scarce add, however, that we would recognise no power in the majority
of any locality, or in the schoolmaster whom they had chosen, to
render attendance at even the devotional services of the seminary
compulsory on the children of parents who, on religious or other
grounds, willed that they should not join in the general worship. And,
of course, attendance on the religion-teaching class would be
altogether as much a matter of arrangement between the parent and the
schoolmaster, as attendance on the Latin or English classes, or on
arithmetic, algebra, or the mathematics.