The state of elementary education in England in the middle of the Nineteenth Century was a matter of considerable public concern. In 1858, the Newcastle Commission was appointed both to report on existing arrangements and to suggest measures likely to extend ‘sound and cheap elementary instruction to all classes of people.’
One of the associated problems was how to reconcile the freedom of denominational schools with public control over the subsidies which they then received.
In the January and February issues of the Catholic periodical, ‘The Rambler’, Nasmyth Scott Stokes, a recent convert to Catholicism, addressed the question of how the Catholic Church should cooperate with the Newcastle Commission. Stokes was in favour of open and positive cooperation with the Commission. Not only would such a policy dispel bigotry, but it would reassure the Commission that the public subsidies which the Church received had been spent on school buildings and teachers’ houses and not on churches and presbyteries. He further suggested that the Catholic authorities should welcome the Commissioners’ representatives into their schools so that they might witness personally to the effectiveness of Catholic religious instruction and assure the Commissioners that Catholic education was calculated to train useful citizens and sound Christians.
‘The Rambler’ had already come under suspicion from the Catholic bishops, mainly because some of its distinguished lay contributors had shown the temerity to indulge in historical and theological criticism, suggesting, for instance, that St Augustine was a proto-Jansenist. Nor did it help that many of these contributors were not only laymen but also converts. The editor, Richard Simpson, another convert, was induced to resign, and, to the initial relief of the bishops, John Henry Newman was persuaded to succeed him as editor.
In the first number of ‘The Rambler’ which he edited in May 1859, Newman studiously endeavoured to avoid controversy. The theological and historical articles were anodyne in intent and execution, and the pastoral visitations of Cardinal Wiseman to various centres came in for special commendation. But a comment by Newman buried in a notice on ‘Contemporary Events’ did not escape the scrutiny of prejudiced and critical readers. Apropos of the Newcastle Commission and in an oblique reference to Stokes’ articles in the earlier numbers, Newman submitted that:
We do unfeignedly believe… that their Lordships really desire to know the opinion of the laity on subjects in which the laity are especially concerned. If even in the preparation of a