From John Bright, M.P.

Thinks it is impossible to do anything at the present time. Church and Dissent are in favour of specific religious teaching; many Dissenters are against national education; the working classes 'have never recovered their blunders and disappointment in connection with Chartism and apparently have lost their political aspirations'; 'the war swallows up all .... and doubtless the more the nation is engaged in breaking the Ten Commandments and showing their contempt for the Sermon on the Mount, the more doggedly will they insist upon a scriptural education for the young.