THE PUBLIC ESTATE.

As a set-off against its collective debt, Bristol enjoys not only the possession of its docks, schools, public offices, markets, and the result of its sanitary and other improvements, but also a share of the rental. The complete Schedule of the Property of the Corporation, issued in September, 1888, shows that their property in the city yields ground rents, £324, the terms or tenancies mostly dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; rents of premises let on leases for lives, £220; annual rents of premises let on leases for 40 years, renewable at the expiration of the first 14 years, £330, the total amount of the fines (one year's rack-rent) paid at the last renewals being £8,808; annual rents of premises let for terms of years not renewable, the terms being almost always 75 years, £6,245; annual rents of premises let on yearly tenancies, £10,540. Besides this, the Exchange and St. Nicholas markets (rents of stalls and standings) produce £2,700; the Corn Market (rent of stands) £490; St. James' Market (tolls and rents), £400. The Corporation also owns Durdham Down, comprising about 212 acres, the greater part of which lies just outside the municipal boundary, in addition to certain country property in the adjoining counties of Gloucester and Somerset. The Down yields no revenue, but is a most valuable open space, the Corporation being required by the Clifton and Durdham Downs (Bristol) Act, 1861, to keep it open and unenclosed as a place of public resort and recreation. Most of the Corporation property is let at very low ground rents, much below the present ground value. Care should be taken that the full economic rent is exacted in each case of new letting, whatever the form of lease may be.

Besides the receipts from Corporation property (gross receipts for 1889-90, £26,500; net receipts, £21,000), the property of the Sanitary authority yielded £1,852, that of the Municipal Charities £7,500 (about) for the same year. To this extent therefore, the land is already "municipalised," and its rental duly applied for the benefit of the community, instead of to the gratuitous maintenance of individual landlords.

BRISTOL'S PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

About two-thirds of Bristol's children attend schools over which the citizens have no control: out of 73 elementary schools, only 19 are administered by the Bristol School Board, 54 being under the management of various religious bodies. The statistics are as follows (the figures are partly found in the Parliamentary Blue Book, C. 6079, the rest having been supplied by the Bristol School Board):

The School Board is not specially efficient, and unfortunately cannot extend either its energy or its advantages to three-fourths of the schools in which the next generation of Bristolians are being educated. Fourteen schools have been built by the Board since its formation up to October 1890, at a total cost of £116,000 (cost of land, £26,000; cost of building, etc., £90,000), of which £113,528 was raised by loan. The debt of the Board at the end of September 1890 was £102,577 (loans from Public Works Loan Commissioners outstanding, £49,722; other loans outstanding, £52,855). Bristol stands well, so far as its School Board is concerned, with respect to its Day Industrial Feeding School (established by the late Mary Carpenter), which feeds and educates 210 poor children; its two Swimming Baths for Board School children, with swimming instructors; its pianos in the larger schools; and its provision of special instructors for pupil-teachers, as well as of classes for deaf and dumb and blind children. The denominational schools, which charge a higher fee, have fewer advantages, and yet receive in school-pence twice the amount which the School Board receives per scholar.

On the other hand, Bristol compares badly with other cities with respect to the number of children at school. The numbers on the register and the average attendance remain almost stationary, and the proportion which the latter figure bears to the total population (12.2 per cent.) is much below the corresponding figures for Bromsgrove (17.1), Frome (14.5), Keynsham (15.0).-(C. 6079, I., p. 279.) The Education Department Report says (C. 6079, p. 8) that school seats should be provided for one-sixth of the population, and that these seats ought to be daily occupied.

The statistics of Evening Schools shew the need for compulsory Continuation Classes. About 4,500 children leave school in Bristol every year, and nearly all of these ought to attend continuation classes for at least two years. Yet, during the whole year 1888-9, only 1424 children entered the evening classes, the average attendance being only 706. The total cost of the classes was £730, and the grant earned £288.* These classes are said to be well advertised, and frequent concerts, lectures and games are arranged, as well as summer evening classes; but there is a want of persistent attendance, largely due to long hours of work, for which the Board can make little remedy until it has compulsory powers. But as it is, there should be a greater variety of subjects, and more prizes should be offered. Every facility is offered by the Board for the distribution of free breakfasts.

Bristol shares, of course, with other places, the need for (a) the Abolition of School Fees, (b) the Extension of the School Age, with Abolition of the Half-time System. The standard of exemption has recently been raised to the VI. Standard.

BRISTOL'S EDUCATIONAL ENDOWMENTS AND CHARITIES.

A summary of the accounts of the Endowed Charities of Bristol in 1873,† gave the total gross income at £48,356, of which nearly

*Figures obtained from Bristol School Board.

Digest in Vol. xiii. of Accounts and Papers on Endowed Charities, 1873, quoted at p. 175 of Report of Bristol Committee on the Poor.

£20,000 was for educational purposes, £12,000 was for alms houses, £8,000 for distribution and general uses of the poor, and about £5,000 for church purposes.

Speaking generally, the large eleemosynary charities of Bristol are a source of pauperism, and in great measure will continue to be unwisely and wastefully employed until collectively administered. Recent changes have diverted a much larger proportion to educational purposes, and at this moment £11,000, or more than half the income administered by the trustees of the Bristol Municipal Charities, goes to support three schools, £9,000 being devoted to other purposes.

These three schools are the Bristol Grammar School (a first grade school, 300 boys, fee £9s to £13 11s. 6d.), the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (160 Free Scholarships, which entitle to residence, food, clothing and education, free of cost), and the Redmaids' School (80 girls).

Other charitable endowments go to support Colston's Boarding School, Stapleton, 100 foundationers entering before ten years of age, and leaving at 15 or 16, £5 per annum being charged for clothing, £2,500 of endowment being required for the School. The Merchant Venturers' Society administer this educational trust, and have established two schools of their own, aided by their corporate funds, which must be very large, although they maintain reserve with regard to their exact extent. They are (1) the Merchant Venturers' School-400 boys, fee £5 a year; (2) the Colston Girls' Day School, 300 girls, fee £4 per annum, opened in January, 1891, to provide education up to 17 years of age; to this school any surplus from the Colston Hospital Trust is diverted.

Clifton College (started by a limited liability company with £10,000 capital, and opened 1862; incorporated by Royal Charter, 1877), the best known educational institution in Bristol, cannot be counted among the endowed schools, and the majority of the boys it educates come from outside. Two High Schools for girls (Clifton and Redland) educate over 400 girls, and the Cathedral School (boys) about 150.

The educational ladder is perhaps less incomplete in Bristol than in other parts of England. There are charities for retaining Boys and Girls in the higher standards of Elementary Schools; and for the second step up the ladder, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital provides 100 places to be competed for among children from the Elementary Schools; Colston Boarding School provides 80 more; the Redmaids' School provides 30 for girls, and the Colston Girls' Day School will provide about 30 more. There are also nine Peloquin Scholarships tenable at the Grammar School for boys from elementary schools, and six more for boys under 16, for which Queen Elizabeth's Hospital Boys have the preference; these scholarships consist of a remission of all fees, and an annual payment of £5 in cash. There are 12 exhibitions of £6 tenable at the Merchant Venturers' School for elementary school boys from SS. Philip and Jacob Without, or St. George. But when all is said and done, these various agencies, each with its own expensive financial staff, provide without the least attempt at a common organisation some sort of secondary education

for less than 1 per cent. of the population, which is immensely below the cheap and efficient provision of a really scientific education in such towns as Stuttgart and Zurich.

The modern demand for technical education has been partially met by the expansion of the old Trade and Mining School into the well-equipped Merchant Venturers' School, and by. the provision made by Bristol University College (opened October, 1876, about 500 students, exclusive of medical students), on its scientific and engineering side.

But there is no comparison between Zurich with its renowned Polytechnic costing £20,000 a year* and Bristol University College without endowment other than the sum of £1,200 a year from the Treasury, granted only since 1889, eking out a precarious existence with gifts from Balliol and New Colleges, Oxford, and with small classes of evening students.

A representative Bristol Educational Council has existed since 1888, and is doing what it can to influence public opinion; but it is a purely voluntary agency, and has no authority. Secondary education, if it is to be efficiently organized and co-ordinated, must be placed in the hands of a representative public body, which would be forced to consider the question of some systematic provision of technical education, and the application of the grant now made from Imperial taxation for that purpose, which for Bristol will amount to about £5,000.† It is high time that secondary education should be organized by local authorities, in the interests of those taught, and also in the interests of the general body of teachers, whose training, prospects, and dependent position sadly need improvement. If this were done, the University College would assume its natural place at the apex of a properly constituted system, and one of its functions would be to act as a public training college, free from test, alike for elementary and secondary teachers.

BRISTOL'S PUBLIC LIBRARIES.

Bristol's fifty thousand families have the use of one central and five branch public libraries, maintained at an annual expense of about £4,000, defrayed from the Libraries Rate at one penny. The St. Philip's branch, which is in the poorest district, has the largest number of readers on the premises, and the Redland branch, in the well-to-do district, the largest number of borrowers for home reading, mostly women and girls. The chief reforms needed in the administration of these public libraries appear to be the following:

(1) Opening of the reading rooms on Sundays; (2) Provision of additional branches in the growing new districts; (3) Delivery of free popular lectures on "What to read," and other literary subjects; (4) Besides legislation to enable the penny rate to be raised,

*

Report of Royal Commission on Technical Instruction, vol. i., p. 191.

† An excellent provisional scheme for spending this sum has been submitted by the Bristol Educational Council to the Technical Instruction Committee of the Town Council. (See p. 108 of Second Series of Reports on Utilisation of New Fund under Local Taxation Act, 1890, by National Association for Promotion of Technical and Secondary Education, 14 Dean's Yard, Westminster. One shilling; April, 1891.)

means should be adopted for preventing any savings being swamped at the end of the year in the Borough Fund, as happened lately to £2,000 or £3,000 with which it was intended to open a new library.

BRISTOL'S WATER TRIBUTE.

Bristol depends for the supply of the first necessity of urban life upon the Bristol Waterworks Company, which has a capital of £1,200,000. On the ordinary stock (£444,000), in 1885 and several previous years, 10 per cent. was paid, for 1886, 9 per cent., for 1887, 9 per cent., for 1888 and 1889, 81 per cent. The amount raised by water rates in 1889 was £85,435.

If the water works had been constructed by the Town Council, the annual interest payable upon their cost would have been, at 3 per cent. only two thirds of the amount annually received by the shareholders.

The supply is partly direct from springs at Barrow Gurney (five miles) and from Sherborne: the water from the springs at Watery Combe and at Chewton Mendip, 16 miles from Bristol, is intercepted by the storage reservoirs at Barrow Gurney (holding 350 million gallons) and thence brought into the city. The water is supplied at constant service, and the supply per head is calculated at about 24 gallons a day, but the Company has power to make an annual charge for each closet flushed, in addition to the charges for other domestic purposes: hence tho majority of outdoor closets throughout the city are dependent upon hand-flushing. There is little doubt that the condition of a very large number of closets would be materially improved, if the charge were omitted on houses of the artizan class." (Report of Medical Officer of Health for 1889, p. 20.)

Such are the results, financial and sanitary, of making the supply of water a source of private profit. Bristol is the only provincial municipality having more than 150,000 population which commits this error. Liverpool and Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds, with hundreds of other local authorities, agree in the enormous public benefit of the "municipalization" of the water supply. The Sheffield Town Council bought up its waterworks in 1887, at a cost of over £7 per inhabitant. The market value of the Bristol waterworks stock and shares probably does not exceed £1,800,000, and even at this price the Town Council could make an annual profit on the purchase, besides securing important sanitary advantages, and fair treatment to all those employed in the water service.

BRISTOL'S ANNUAL GAS BILL.

Bristol gives a virtual monopoly in the supply of its main source of artificial light to the Bristol United Gas Light Company, the statistics of which are as follows:

paid up Share Capital 444,250

10 per cent. paid as dividend