resident owners of land subscribe £2 to the school, and four ⚫ non-residents £11 5s., whilst the clergyman gave £23 in one year. In this parish the rateable value of the land was £3,500.

It would be unjust to ignore this generosity, and the service which it has rendered to the country. To destroy the schools of the clergy, by suddenly withdrawing from them the State grants which alone makes it possible to keep them in existence, would be to inflict cruel pain and disappointment on those who have deserved well of the State.

But the present system ought not to remain just as it is.

(1). The eighth clause of the Revised Code should be altogether cancelled. We very much doubt whether the cancelling of this clause would lead to the establishment by voluntary contributions of a dozen schools throughout the country, whose managers would object to the reading of the Scriptures; but the change would remove the scruples of those who will not receive Government assistance while the reading of the Bible remains obligatory; and it is only just to offer the grant to those persons, however few they may be, who are willing to assist in the secular instruction of the poor, but conscientiously object to give any religious teaching.

(2.) School inspectors should examine only in secular subjects, and the grants should not be dependent upon the religious knowledge of the scholars. Why should national servants, paid out of the national taxes, spend an hour and a half or two hours of their working-time every day in seeing that certain formularies of the English Church have been well taught, and that the clergyman's instructions have been remembered? Why should the State stimulate religious zeal by diminishing its grants to schools if the religious instruction has not been satisfactory? Let these matters be left to the conscience and zeal of the school managers.

(3.) No school should henceforth receive any assistance from public money except on condition of accepting an efficient 'conscience clause. The form of the present clause for Church of England schools is said to be objectionable to many of the clergy who honestly desire to carry out its spirit; if so, it ought to be amended. We are inclined, however, to think that the most effective regulation would be one requiring that, in assisted schools, of whatever denomination, all religious instruction should be Every school aided from the grant must be either

(a.) A school in connection with some recognised religious denomina'tion; or,

(b.) A school in which, besides secular instruction, the Scriptures are 'read daily from the authorised version.'

Changes necessary in the Minutes.'

425

given during the first half-hour after the opening of the school, either morning or afternoon, or during the half-hour immediately before closing;* and that no children should be compelled to be present whose parents objected. Of course, a proselytising schoolmaster or clergyman would be able to exert a powerful influence over the minds of the children at other times. This is one of the obvious inconveniencies of the denominational system; if it were found to be intolerable, some remedy would have to be devised.†

(4.) The clauses should be cancelled under which the grant is withheld altogether, if the principal teacher be not duly certificated,' and by which it is reduced, unless there be either one pupil teacher for every forty scholars after the first fifty of the average number in attendance, or one certificated or assistant teacher for every eighty scholars after the first fifty. The regulation requiring the school building to be healthy, properly lighted, drained, and ventilated, supplied with offices, and to have eighty cubical feet of internal space for every child in average attendance, is reasonable; but the success of a teacher is a better guarantee of his efficiency than his possession of the highest possible certificate. There is reason, too, to apprehend, that if there is any considerable increase in the number of schools during the next ten years, there will not be a sufficient number of certificated masters to supply them.

But apart from the religious injustice which it is almost certain to inflict in rural districts, the great weakness of the present system is, that the aid of the State is least effective where the most aid is required. The grant for building a new school is never to exceed the total amount ' voluntarily contributed by proprietors, residents, or employers ' of labour in the parish where the school is situated, or within a 'radius of four miles from the school.' The clergyman or dissenting minister-and under the present Minutes, the responsibility almost always falls practically upon one or the otherwho wants to open a school, has first to arrange for the site, plans, estimates, specifications, title and trust-deeds, and to make them all perfectly satisfactory to the Committee of Council. He has then to beg money for the cost of the building within the limits defined by the clause we have just quoted. The district may be miserably poor; the people who have

* It is an obvious objection to this suggestion that it might be difficult for a clergyman to arrange to be at the school every day at the particular time required by the 'conscience clause' in this form; but in this matter there is only a choice of evils, and we must take the least. The suggestion is most honestly made in the interest of the clergy themselves.

† See p. 427.

NO. XCIV.

FF

money may be wretchedly stingy; but he cannot get from the Committee of Council a single shilling beyond what he has collected within the prescribed boundaries. When the school is opened, his chances of obtaining annual grants diminish in the precise proportion that his need of them increases. We believe that the principle of the Revised Code, which pays according to results, is the only safe principle on which aid can be granted from the national exchequer; but obviously, where the children are poorest they will, as a rule, be most likely to fail at the annual examination; the children of the most prosperous working people will be best looked after at home, will be most regular at school, will work when they are there most intelligently and successfully, and will be most certain to satisfy the inspector. Our present system seems to us to present a rather unnecessary illustration of a principle which is already sufficiently vindicated, 'To him that hath shall 'be given.'

The only remedy for these serious evils is to provide for the establishment and maintenance of schools out of local rates; and should a general measure for rendering school attendance compulsory ever be carried, it is obvious that it will become impossible to leave the founding of new schools solely to voluntary benevolence.

The principles on which we believe that a Local Rating Act should be constructed may be stated very briefly.

1. Municipalities, parishes, or unions of parishes for school purposes, should receive power to levy a school-rate, and should be required to establish and provide for the maintenance of elementary schools in destitute districts.

2. The Committee of Privy Council should appoint educational surveyors,' to report from time to time on the provision existing for popular education in every part of the country; and the Committee should be enabled to compel local authorities, when negligent, to use their rating powers.

3. The proceeds of the school-rate should be supplemented by grants from the Privy Council, and the grants should amount to at least double the proceeds of the rate.

4. The schools sustained by the rate should be under the management of school committees appointed directly, or in cities and boroughs indirectly, by the ratepayers.

5. Every school committee should determine whether the Bible should be read in the schools under its government;

* It is rumoured that the present Government intend to retreat from this principle; any proposals in that direction must be most carefully watched.

but all denominational catechisms and formularies should be excluded.

6. School committees should be empowered to take charge of existing schools, when the present managers are willing to surrender them; and in this case, the surrendered schools must cease to be denominational, and must come wholly under the management of the school committees.*

The objections to the rating system are obvious. Rates press most unequally on the ratepayers. A merchant or broker with an income of £5,000 a year may occupy a small office in Manchester or Liverpool, and be rated at £50 or £60; a tradesman who is thankful to clear £1,500 a year is rated at £300 or £400. Another difficulty may be anticipated; one section of the 'liberal' party-the section which consists of the apostles or evangelists of culture'-will perhaps protest against placing elementary schools under local management. It has become a habit to sneer at town councils, at boards of guardians, and at parochial vestries.

În reply to the second difficulty, we can only say, that if the ratepayers have not sufficient public spirit and administrative power to be safely entrusted with the management of their local affairs, the glory of the empire will very soon be extinguished. The necessity of having inspectors appointed by a central board no one disputes; local school committees themselves will be eager to have the efficiency of their schools tested by independent examiners. But in choosing school sites, erecting buildings, appointing masters and mistresses, fixing the salaries of teachers and the fees of scholars,† determining the hours during which the school shall be open, arranging what special subjects shall be taught in addition to those which must be universally required, we believe that the knowledge of local circumstances which would be possessed by local committees would be of the highest value. It is generally understood that Mr. Lingen's office is already almost overwhelmed by the

To remedy the evil referred to on page 425, it might be provided that on the representation of any number of the inhabitants of a parish that the introduction of special religious tenets in the hours appropriated to secular instruction rendered the school objectionable, the secretary of the Committee of Privy Council should give notice to the school managers of the dissatisfaction; and that on a second complaint the Committee of Privy Council, or any other board that may be hereafter entrusted with the superintendence of the parliamentary grants, shall have power, after inquiry, to withdraw aid from the school, and to require the parish to rate itself for educational purposes, or to become part of a school district, and establish a school under local management.

† It might be expedient and necessary that the central board should fix the minimum of salary and the maximum of the fees.

innumerable questions of detail which it is now required to decide. We would diminish rather than increase the work of the central board. French centralization is not to our taste. It is not only a great political evil; it impairs the efficiency of the French educational system, as every one is aware who has any acquaintance with its practical working. 'I 'know,' said M. Duruy, looking at his watch, 'exactly what is 'being done at this moment in every College and Lycée in 'France.' 'Not a pane of glass,' said a French professor, in the epigrammatic style of his race, can be mended in any 'village school in the country, without the official permission of 'the Minister of Public Instruction.' This is not the kind of thing we desire to see in England.

The anticipated inefficiency of school committees may be altogether obviated, if the gentlemen' who have left local affairs in the hands of small publicans will only do their duty. We believe that in those boroughs which have suffered from the gross neglect of public affairs on the part of the wealthier and more educated classes of the burgesses, the additional importance with which the proposed measures would invest the local authorities would have a most beneficial result; it would recall the deserters to their duty.

The objection arising from the unequal pressure of the rate may be alleviated by providing that the national grant shall be always twice or thrice the amount provided by local taxation.*

On the question whether all elementary schools should be free, there is considerable difference of opinion among educational reformers. For ourselves, we have a very definite and firm conviction, that those who are contending for the immediate and universal abolition of school fees are making a most mischievous mistake.

Their proposal is unjust; a working-man with five-and-thirty shillings a week is better able to pay threepence or fourpence a week for his child's education, than a professional man, with £600 or £700 a year, to pay £20 a quarter for his girl at boarding-school. Why should the professional man have to pay his school bills first, and then have to pay rates to give a free education to the children of other people who could pay school fees for themselves without any trouble? If it be said that there must be free schools for the middle classes, supported by public money, it may be replied, that when the necessity for establishing these schools is clearly demonstrated, and a measure proposed which would not be more injurious than beneficial to the cause of education, it will be quite time enough

Mr. Goschen's recent speech on the reform of the whole system of local taxation deserves the most serious consideration of the country.