on Education was appointed, but bowed to the will of the Archbishops,
setting forth the decree of "their lord-ships" that "the first purpose
of all instruction must be the regulation of the thoughts and habits
of the children by the doctrine and precepts of revealed religion." In
1850 a bill for secular education was denounced as presenting to the
country "a choice between Heaven or Hell, God or the Devil." In 1870,
Forster, author of the still unpassed bill, wrote that while the
parsons were disputing, the children of the poor were "growing into
savages."

As with Education, so with Social Reform. During the struggle to
abolish slavery in the British colonies, some enthusiasts endeavored
to establish the doctrine that Christian baptism conferred
emancipation upon negroes who accepted it; whereupon the Bishop of
London laid down the formula of exploitation: "Christianity and the
embracing of the gospel do not make the least alteration of civil
property."

Gladstone, who was a democrat when he was not religious, spoke of the
cultured classes of England:

In almost every one, if not every one, of the greatest
political controversies of the last fifty years, whether
they affected the franchise, whether they affected commerce,
whether they affected religion, whether they affected the
bad and abominable institution of slavery, or what subject
they touched, these leisured classes, these educated
classes, these titled classes have been in the wrong.

The "Great Commoner" did not add "these religious classes ", for he