HC Deb 18 February 1857 vol 144 cc776-802
SIR JOHN PAKINGTON

said, I rise once more to request the permission of the House to introduce a Bill having for its object to give increased facilities for the extension of Education. In making this Motion it is not my intention to trespass upon the House at any considerable length. I am the less disposed to do so, because I am sorry to observe that, in consequence of the somewhat unexpected termination of the Bill which has occupied the attention of the House this morning, a good many of those Gentlemen who are anxious to take part in the discussion, or at all events who take a great interest in the question, have left the House; but, Sir, I do not think it would be respectful to the House if I were to move a Bill of this description without offering some explanation of the principles upon which the Bill is founded, and of the circumstances under which I am induced to bring it forward. The first explanation which I wish to offer to the House is, that this Bill has been so drawn as not to contravene or reverse the decision to which the House arrived last year upon the Resolutions moved by the noble Lord the Member for the City of London. I will not now advert at length—I have done so on previous occasions—to the somewhat peculiar circumstances under which the division on the Resolutions of the noble Lord was taken. All that I now wish to say on that subject is, that putting a parliamentary construction upon the negativing the Resolutions of the noble Lord by the large majority who then voted against him, I understand the decision of last year to have practically amounted to this—that it was an expression of disapprobation on the plan of the noble Lord considered as a whole. Looking at it in this light, I feel that the two most important Resolutions of the noble Lord were these, that by the plan which the noble Lord proposed education should be compulsory, and that it should be general. Under these circumstances, I have thought it would be respectful to the House to draw this Bill in a manner that it should not appear to be treating with disregard the determination to which the House then arrived. The Bill, therefore, in these two important respects, is directly the reverse of the plan of the noble Lord. I desire now to propose a Bill which shall be permissive instead of being compulsory, and shall be local only instead of being general. In the speech which the noble Lord then made, he alluded to a Bill which I introduced two years ago, and to a Bill that he introduced at the same period, and he mentioned that both those Bills having been permissive that was an objection. In a measure of this great importance I beg to say that I entirely agree with the noble Lord that a compulsory and general system of education would be far more satisfactory, and far more beneficial than a mere permissive Act; but on the other hand, I find that great doubts are entertained by many parties in the country, entitled to great respect, as to the success of a compulsory system; and when I find that the sense of the House has been so distinctly expressed against compulsory education, I think I have taken a more cautious part, and to the House a more respectful part, when I say I think it would be better that this attempt should be to carry a Bill for permissive rather than compulsory education. It will then leave it optional to the locality to adopt the Bill or not. Having arrived at this decision, I naturally inquired what are the precedents before us with regard to permissive legislation, and whether those experiments are encouraging or otherwise. There are two very recent precedents of permissive legislation; the first is the Act passed by the hon. Member for Dumfries (Mr. W. Ewart), permitting corporate towns to raise rates to establish a library. I find by a paper recently laid on the table that that Act has been taken advantage of, not in many instances I admit, but in five or six remarkable cases. I think the House will feel that the appeal to a town to establish a library is not an object to be compared to an appeal to the sense of duty in the ratepayers to provide the means of education. And yet we find that that Bill has been taken advantage of in several cases. I should be well satisfied to find that the Bill I am seeking to bring in was carried into effect even in as many places as have adopted the Library Act. But there is another instance of permissive legislation more germane to the present subject,—I mean the Act passed some fifteen or sixteen years ago, to enable counties, if they chose, to adopt an improved system of police. That was a direct appeal to the people whether they would consent to tax themselves for an object of great public importance and interest. That Act is made compulsory now, but while it was permissive half the counties in England adopted it; and I must say that both the instances to which I have referred are encouraging with regard to permissive legislation. In the second place, I am disposed to propose that the Bill should be local, and not general, and I intend to propose that it should be applied only to cities and corporate towns. I have selected these for the reason that the boundaries of those jurisdictions are defined, and there is, therefore, no necessity to call into action any fresh machinery for the purpose of defining the limits of the operation of the Act. There are many persons—I have myself commu- nicated with many—who entertain sincere apprehensions of the plan of the noble Lord, and of the plan that I myself introduced two years ago, but who, nevertheless, are very desirous, feeling the importance of this subject, that the experiment should be tried, and, who think that it would be most fitly and beneficially tried in large corporate towns. I will not say, and I do not think, that the want of this measure is greater in towns than in rural districts. I believe that the deficiency in the means of education is as great or greater in the rural districts; but, on the other hand, we must recollect that it is in towns that great numbers of persons are collected together, and it is in towns that we should be able to accomplish the greatest amount of good by the immediate introduction of a system of general education. It is not my intention, as I said before, to detain the House with any of those statements as to the necessity of education, which I have before made here and elsewhere. I am the less disposed to do this, because I hope I may say, without disrespect, that those statements, although they have in some cases been contravened, and in some cases contradicted, have not been disproved. I will say, they cannot be disproved, because they rest on the foundation of truth and incontestable facts. I therefore will not detain the House by referring to them; but in adverting to the importance of introducing some such Bill I may refer to two facts proving the necessity of some measure of this kind in certainly one of the most important cities in the Empire—I allude to the great town of Manchester. I am glad to see my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester (Mr. Milner Gibson) in his place. I am sure he will not dispute the accuracy of my statement. Dr. M'Kerrow, who was examined before the Committee upon the Manchester and Salford Education Bill, stated, from his local knowledge of Manchester, that there were 32,100 children in that city who were neither at school nor at work. I had the opportunity, a week or ten days ago, of conversing with Dr. M'Kerrow on this subject, and he says this state of things has become rather worse since he gave that evidence. And I have before me a memorandum of a report given to me a few days ago by a clergyman who has ensured in that great town of Manchester the general respect of all classes—Mr. Canon Rickson. He has the charge of a poor parish, called St. Andrew's, in which, with an area of ninety-seven acres, there is a population of 13,000 souls. He reports that of the children of that population between three and sixteen, 43½ per cent go to Sunday schools, twenty-five per cent are at work, twenty-nine per cent are at day schools, and forty-six per cent are neither at school nor at work. The result being, as he assures me, that not less than 1,200 children in this single parish attend no school whatever. I will trouble the House with no futher statistics on the subject. I thought it right to state thus much, because I am introducing a Bill for cities and towns; and I would appeal in the most temperate manner to any gentleman, be he who he may, even to my greatest opponent on this subject, whether there is in the present system as it stands—and I do not undervalue it, I acknowledge all that it has done—but is there anything in that system, as it stands, which its warmest advocates can say is competent to cope with the state of things I have represented? Sir, I wish to deal with the House with the most perfect frankness, and therefore desire to say, whether this Bill be extensive in its operation or limited, it involves principles which I consider to be of primary importance in connection with this subject, and I hold that the establishment of those principles upon the Statute-book is of infinitely more importance than the question whether this Bill is permissive or compulsory. The principles which I desire to establish by this Bill are three. The first, religious freedom and toleration; the second, that there should be local contribution to the support of an object which is interesting to every home in England; and the third is, that following out the principle of all our most important institutions, there should be local management and control of the funds so raised for the local school. To the assertion of those principles I attach the greatest possible importance. I will now briefly advert to the religious part of this question. If I remember aright my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester (Mr. Milner Gibson) in addressing the House upon the Bill which I introduced two years ago, said he thought the division of the British public into three great parties on this question, and their mutual antagonism, was fatal to legislation. The three great parties to which my right hon. Friend adverted were—first, the advocate of religious teaching being combined with general instruction; second, those who are called the voluntary party; and third, those that are called the secular party. My right hon. Friend stated his belief, further, that no general measure on this subject would ever be passed till some two of those parties could be brought to act together, and he stated that the two who were most likely to combine were the party in favour of religious teaching and that which had been called the secular party. I may state, that so far as the great locality of Manchester is concerned, this combination of the religious and the secular party is effected, and this Bill that I seek to introduce I have prepared with the co-operation of a large committee consisting of a very able body of men, and comprising an equal number of those two parties, who, I am thankful to say, are now cordially acting together on this subject. The bases of the agreement—if I may so call it—upon which these two parties have consented to act together are briefly and simply these:—On the one hand, the party who are favourable to religious teaching have consented that, so far as they are concerned, the rate should be extended for the benefit of secular schools; and on the other hand, the secular party have withdrawn the language which my right hon. Friend broadly held two years ago—that no national system could ever be adopted until it was arranged that every school in the country should be a secular school. The secular party are willing that the rate should be extended to all schools where religion is taught—in fact, to all schools coming up to a given standard—on one condition only, that the money contributed by the ratepayers should not be directly applied to doctrinal religious teaching. I cannot pass from this subject without for a moment touching on a matter which was discussed a good deal when this subject was brought before Parliament two years ago—I mean what is the secular party and what are the real objects of that party? In my humble judgment that party, whatever they have done in other respects, have made one very serious mistake, and that is in the name which they have selected. I think they have greatly injured themselves by taking that name, that they have misled the country, and that if they had called themselves the separate party they would have done themselves more justice. It is not the object or intention of the secular party to deprive the children of England of religious education. I believe their object is quite the reverse. I believe that, so far from that being the case, the gentlemen who are most prominent as the leaders of the secular party are as sincere and zealous and as deeply impressed with the necessity of religious instruction as those who profess to belong to the religious party. I believe that the difference between the religious and the secular party is not so much a difference of principle as it is a difference of time and place. The most eminent members of the secular party, looking at the sacred nature of religious instruction, think that school is not the best place for imparting it, and that, above all, schoolmasters, speaking broadly, and looking at the character of schoolmasters generally, are not the men to whom they could safely intrust religious instruction. I do not deny that there is force in this view, though I must confess that my own opinions are on the other side. I am disposed to think that you might obtain a safer system of instruction from other quarters, but I think that religion ought to be mixed up with the whole system of training from infancy, and that it can never be with safety entirely put aside. On the other hand, I cannot deny the force of this view of the secular party, and before Gentlemen make up their minds to condemn the so-called secular system as irreligious, I beg to call their attention to the Report of the Rev. Mr. Brookfield, a clergyman of the Church of England and one of Her Majesty's inspectors of schools, given in the Minutes of Council for 1855, which were placed in our hands in the course of the last spring. Those who consult that Report will find a very striking statement of the effect of the system of religious teaching by schoolmasters. He states that those formularies which we hold in the highest estimation are taught to the children by rote, without impressing on their minds any idea connected with them. The Report gives the answers of the children to the written questions with respect to their duty towards God, and their duty towards their neighbours; and if the subject were not a grave one, those answers would only supply food for merriment. Mr. Brookfield, himself a clergyman, dwells with great force on this mode of teaching. He says:— It grieves me, who am not prone to use such words,—it grieves me to think how this daily half-hour, which is usually spent in learning the Catechism by rote, and with such poor success, might have been spent in learning small portions, such as the Lord's Prayer, the Commandments, and the duties towards God and our neighbour, thoroughly and well and with intelligence, and how in the course of those years which result in such grotesque results as I have recited almost every recorded word of the Redeemer might have been stored in the memory, never to be forgotten. That I think ought to show us that we ought not too hastily to condemn the view of those who think that the schoolmaster is not a fit person to impart a religious instruction to his scholars. However, that which I have stated is the arrangement that has been made; and the mode in which it is proposed to carry it out is this—that the rate shall be granted to all schools that may come up to a given standard, and that the religious teaching in those schools shall be left on precisely the footing where it now rests, but every school, whether belonging to the Church of England, or whether it be denominational, shall be at liberty to teach their children religion, reserving only the condition that there shall be no violation of conscience, that there shall be no compelling children to learn creeds or catechisms to which the parents of the children object. In my opinion, as I stated in a speech which I recently delivered elsewhere, in the present state of this great question it is most desirable to recognise all that has been done, and that any legislation should be rather in the direction of a supplement to the existing state of affairs, than a substitution of another system which is wholly new. I have endeavoured to have this Bill drawn in accordance with that feeling. The Bill proposes that the rate to be levied shall be a rate in aid of the existing system; that the pence now drawn from the children's pockets shall be continued to be drawn; that the system of grants from the Privy Council shall not be interfered with; but that the difficulty of giving certainty and permanence to the schools, which now exists, shall be removed by means of a rate in aid, to be levied according to regulations laid down in the Bill. At one time I thought of introducing a system with regard to free schools. I should myself prefer a free system to be adopted throughout the whole country, but at present, at all events, the country is not prepared for that; and I think that unless a general free system could be adopted, it is better not to adopt it in part. Upon this subject, therefore, the only extent to which there is any proposal in the Bill for the establishment of free schools is that there should be power on the part of the local committees which the Bill seeks to establish in particular localities, or clear proof of poverty being given, either to establish free schools or to admit a given portion of free scholars into the existing schools. I am not sure that there is any other principle of the Bill to which it is necessary for me to advert, with this important exception, that the framers of the Bill are most anxious that it should be made perfectly clear that there is no interference intended with the management of any existing schools beyond the point to which interference may be necessary and inevitable to insure compliance with those conditions without the compliance with which the objects of the Bill cannot be carried out, but that the principle of the Bill with regard to religious teaching shall be perfect freedom, and that with regard to the general management and conduct of the schools, there shall be no unnecessary or avoidable interference. I have now stated to the House as concisely as I could the leading provisions of the Bill which I desire to introduce. I am quite aware that I run the risk of being assailed with those imputations which I have met with before. I may be told that I am seeking to introduce an irreligious system—that I am endeavouring to destroy an existing system which works well. I may be further told that I am introducing a system which, if successful, will put an end to the voluntary exertions that are now made. I can only say, being of course aware that I am open to these charges, that so far as my imperfect and humble judgment goes, I have deeply and anxiously considered this question. I feel profound respect for the zeal and good feelings of those who urge these objections, but while I feel respect for the objectors, I feel bound to disregard the objections themselves. I will not consent to be diverted from the line of my duty by objections which I conscientiously believe to be erroneous and unfounded. All that I venture to implore of the House is this—that they will consider the case which I may say without exaggeration is proved, without reference to party, or to existing views—I will not call them prejudices, and will approach the consideration of this subject in the most calm and dispassionate spirit. I believe it is only in this way that this subject, which has been so long before Parliament, can be made a subject of legislation. If this Bill should be more fortunate than its predecessors—if Parliament would adopt the principle which I am about to propose, as a Christian, as a churchman, as an English politician—I declare my firm belief that we shall not only promote the intellectual development of the people, but shall do more than we can accomplish in any other way to promote sound religion. On the other hand, it is my belief that the discussion of such a measure can only do good. I offer this Bill to the House as a contribution. I believe that the more we analyse and discuss the subject the more we shall remove the erroneous impressions that prevail, the more we shall elicit the truth, and thus we may hope ere long to arrive at a practical solution of this great and important question. The right hon. Baronet then moved for leave to bring in a Bill to promote Education in Corporate Cities and Boroughs in England and Wales."

MR. COBDEN

seconded the Motion.

Motion made and Question proposed.

MR. W. COWPER

said, that he did not think that any one would oppose the introduction of the measure which the right hon. Baronet had with so much perseverance, and from so high a sense of public duty, proposed for the consideration of the House. The right hon. Baronet should be met in the same conciliatory spirit which he had shown in not reproducing his measure of a former year, but turning his attention to meeting the objections of some of his opponents, and introducing a Bill which might receive the support, not only of those whose views he represented, but also of others of different sentiments. This Bill was entitled to full consideration as being the result of a compromise between two parties who had hitherto been in direct and long-continued opposition to each other. He (Mr. Cowper) did not at present feel competent to judge of the character or nature of that compromise; but when the Bill was before it the House would ascertain what was the force of the concessions which had been made on each side. With regard to religious instruction the turning point would be whether, according to the terms of this compromise, the master of a denominational school was to be prohibited from giving doctrinal instruction to those pupils who were of the same denomination as himself. The right hon. Baronet had not clearly explained that point, which seemed to him (Mr. Cowper) to be the most important one; for if all that was asked by the secular party was that no distinctive religious formulary should be taught to the children of those parents who objected to it, that was no more than was constantly done in national and Wesleyan schools, the directors of many of which allowed children, whose parents objected to their being present, to absent themselves during the time set apart for the teaching of the Catechism. The principle which was contained in the Bill introduced by the right hon. Member for Manchester (Mr. M. Gibson), and which was advocated by the secular party, was, that no distinctive doctrinal religion should be taught to the children by the schoolmaster. That was a principle to which the denominational party in this country was not prepared to accede, and therefore if it formed part of this compromise the right hon. Baronet would meet with a very formidable opposition from that party. To deprive the schoolmaster of the right of giving any doctrinal instruction was to restrict him to the conveyance of information, the exercise of memory, and the development of the mental faculties of his pupils, and to deprive him of his best instrument in their moral and spiritual training, to silence him in respect to their higher and inner faculties, to limit his appeals to conscience, and to prevent him from pointing to the grand sanctions of moral obligations. In the Bill to which he had referred, it was declared that, although the schoolmaster was not to teach doctrinal religion, he was to inculcate truthfulness, temperance, justice, and the other virtues. It was assumed by those who prepared that Bill that all the cardinal virtues could be effectively inculcated without any allusion to doctrinal religion. From that position he (Mr. Cowper) entirely dissented. Take, for instance, the first thing that should be taught to a child—his duty. How could the master teach a child his duty to himself without a reference to the self-denying principles and examples of Christianity; his duty to his neighbour, without teaching him something of Christian love; or his duty to the Almighty, without speaking to him of the covenant under which he is placed, and his relationship as the child of a heavenly Father? To say that the schoolmaster should teach virtue without doctrinal religion, and inculcate duty without distinctive Christianity was to impose upon him a difficult or hopeless task. But on the other hand, to enact that a master should not teach a particular formulary; or that it should be taught at particular times and under certain conditions, was a much less objectionable arrangement. The right hon. Baronet had referred to the faulty manner in which the Catechism had been taught in certain schools inspected by the rev. Mr. Brookfield; but it seemed to him (Mr. Cowper) that this did not go so much against the teaching of the Catechism altogether as against the mode in which it was taught; and he was afraid that the teaching of it only at a particular hour, instead of allowing it to form part of the ordinary teaching of the schoolmaster, would have a direct tendency to encourage its being taught in a perfunctory and ill-arranged manner—being learned by rote, and not being understood. Upon this point, however, and upon others connected with the arrangement mentioned by the right hon. Baronet, he would not now pronounce an opinion, because the House was not sufficiently informed upon the subject. To the principles stated by the right hon. Baronet he thought that no reasonable objection could be taken. Whatever might be the objections to proceeding by a voluntary and local adoption, yet at present this was the only way in which any progress could be expected. It was pretty clear that no system of national education to be supported by rate could be adopted so as to be compulsory upon the whole country, but it was quite possible that certain parts of the country—such, for instance, as the city of Manchester, which seemed anxious to be allowed to rate itself for the purposes of education—might adopt some such system as that now proposed. There was also advantage in dealing separately with towns and rural districts, since the difference in the circumstances of those two classes of places rendered necessary some distinctions made in the mode in which they were dealt with. Indeed, much embarrassment was daily experienced in legislation by having to devise one measure which should apply alike to towns and country. The right hon. Baronet had quoted as precedents two cases of successful permissive legislation. Perhaps he (Mr. Cowper) might be allowed to add to these the Public Health Act, which had now been adopted very extensively throughout the country, and under which more than two hundred towns had obtained advantages which they would have rejected and repudiated had it been sought to force the measure upon the whole country at first. He was glad that the school committee to be elected by the ratepayers was to have no power to interfere with the management of existing schools, because such a provision would preserve the advantages of the present system, the voluntary management of schools with aid from the general funds, and with such further assistance as could be given by a local central authority. The help to be given to schools, from local rates, would ease the burden often borne with great difficulty by the friends of education in raising the funds necessary for the support of schools, and such assistance would be a great benefit to them, especially to the clergymen who were now constantly obliged to provide from their poor pittances funds for the support of schools which they did not like to see neglected. If the arrangements proposed by the right hon. Baronet for establishing a system of local permissive rating were agreed to, many benevolent persons who were now absorbed in the task of supporting primary schools would be relieved from the necessity of attending to the wants of children under eleven or twelve years of age, and would be able to devote their attention to those young men and women who, having left the primary schools, needed help to enable them to pursue their studies in the evening, and we should then make some real advance in the education of the people. He could not at present, knowing very little of the details of the measure, commit the Government to the adoption of any particular course in regard to this measure; but he should offer no opposition to its introduction.

MR. E. BALL

said, that he felt quite sure that no Member of the House was inclined to assail the motives of the right hon. Baronet in introducing the Bill, or withhold his tribute of admiration for the industry and perseverance with which he endeavoured to attain his object. At the same time he felt bound to declare that any system of national education, which did not embody religious teaching, would not only not be supported by the great body of the religions denominations throughout the country, but it would have to encounter their direct and positive opposition. He had been heard to declare on a former occasion that education, unaccompanied with religious teaching, was rather hurtful than beneficial to the community at large; and the reports made to them as to the increase of crime throughout the country inclined him the more to that opinion. He was, therefore, extremely sorry to find the right hon. Baronet introducing an educational measure which in a great degree excluded the religious teaching, which he himself had on former occasions so strongly advocated. The measure being only permissive might not be as obnoxious as former measures, still it would create a great evil if it was intended that the Word of God was not to be explained in the schools of this country.

LORD R. CECIL

said, that he did not think that the House had any reason to complain of want of candour on the part of his right hon. Friend, for he had admitted that this was an attempt to introduce the thin end of the wedge, which was sought to be introduced by the Resolutions of the noble Lord the Member for the City of London (Lord J. Russell), which were so signally defeated. The instancing of the police Bill, which had just been changed from a permissive to a compulsory measure, was a clear intimation of what was the ultimate intention of the right hon. Baronet, and showed that the only advantage over the rural districts which he designed for the towns was that of being eaten first. Having caught the towns, he fully intended to catch the rural districts, which he said required such a measure still more. In his representation of the several parties into which the friends of education were divided, the right hon. Baronet had entirely forgotten the adherents to the Privy Council system. His (Lord R. Cecil's) objection to this measure was, that its supporters were too hasty, that they were in too great a hurry, and would not allow the existing system to be sufficiently tried. That system had been in existence only ten years; we had had no Census for six years, and we had therefore actual information as to the result of only four years of its operation. It was hasty and unjust to condemn a system on such slender evidence as this. The right hon. Gentleman had, it seemed, for the first time discovered that the secularists were not anxious to prevent children receiving religions instruction in the course of their education. If he ever entertained the belief that the supporters of the secular scheme had such anxiety, he alone in that House must have entertained it, for no one else could ever believe that persons of sense—persons knowing the feelings of the people of this country—would seek to exclude religion from education. He had found that they sought merely to exclude religion from the domain of the schoolmaster, because he taught it inefficiently, and he cited the Report of the Rev. Mr. Brookfield, who said that we ought to provide more efficient instruments for teach- ing religion; but did this Bill provide them? The right hon. Baronet had regaled the House with figures showing the frightful ignorance and destitution in which the juvenile population of our large towns were plunged; but would he tell them that the homes of these children would furnish them with more efficient religious teaching than that now given by the schoolmaster, and to which he sought to put an end? He had said that the money of the ratepayers was not to be applied to the support of doctrinal teaching, but he had at the same time said that it was to be applied in aid of existing schools. Would he tell the House how many schools there were in the country in which doctrinal religion was not taught? It was of no use urging other objections, because the right hon. Baronet had given notice that he did not intend to be convinced; and he (Lord R. Cecil) would therefore confine himself to the expression of his opinion that in exact proportion as you raised money by a rate in that exact proportion would subscriptions fall off. In support of this position, he appealed to the experience of any hon. Members who had during the last few years been engaged in promoting the establishment of reformatories. He had heard of cases—and he had no doubt there were numbers of instances—in which persons had promised to subscribe to the erection of reformatories by means of private funds, but withdrew their subscriptions as soon as they heard that the Government was going to contribute. It had been tried in a hundred cases, and had always failed. You never would get both voluntary subscriptions and Government aid for the same object, and within the same limits. He (Lord R. Cecil) would not oppose the introduction of the measure of the right hon. Baronet, but he hoped that it would not meet with the ultimate sanction of the Legislature.

MR. COBDEN

—Sir, the objection urged by the noble Lord who has just spoken has rather surprised me. He accused the right hon. Baronet (Sir J. Pakington) of haste. Now, I think it is more than twenty years since this question of education was launched in this House. I have witnessed the discussion of many knotty subjects in this country, and have been a party to some, and have always been accustomed to consider that seven years is about the natural duration of any agitation or any great movement before it effected an important political change. This measure of education has to my knowledge had three seven years of discussion in this House, and therefore I think that, whatever other fault may be laid to the charge of the right hon. Baronet opposite, he ought not to be accused of haste or precipitancy. I do not now intend to go into the details of a Bill which is not before us, but I am always prepared for the difficulty which has already been thrown in our way—the question of religious teaching. The noble Lord who has just spoken asked whether it was intended that the rate should be applied to pay for doctrinal teaching? I answer, "No; that is not contemplated." The essential difference between this Bill and others which have been brought into this House is, that while it leaves denominations to teach religion in their own schools it does not propose to raise a rate to pay for that teaching; and it, at the same time, stipulates that parties having schools in connection with churches or chapels shall set apart a particular time when their own doctrinal religious instruction shall be given, and during that time they shall not be subject to the visits of Government inspectors, nor shall children who are not of the religious denomination to which the school belongs be required to attend. Well, surely there is nothing so difficult about this that it cannot be accomplished, if we are in earnest and wish to accomplish it. It is not a question of principle, but merely a question between nine o'clock in the morning and some other hour. If I am to be told that it is not possible to set apart a particular portion of the day when the Catechism can be taught, it must be equally impossible to set apart a particular hour for the teaching of geography, arithmetic, history, or any other subject; yet it is essential to the well-ordering of a school that you should have a time for each subject, that the times should be defined by the master, and that one study should not run into another. Surely, if doctrinal religious teaching be of that importance which those who object to the right hon. Baronet's Bill attach to it, you yourselves will say that it is of so much moment that a time should be named when such instruction should be given. It is done already. When this subject comes to be fully discussed it will be found that your national schools have already adopted this plan; that many national schools are now receiving children of all denominations, with the understanding that they are not to be taught the Catechism. And how are you to carry out that in good faith, unless you have a particular time when the Catechism is taught? Then see how the middle classes overcome the difficulty. There are many schools in the county of Middlesex and in the city of London which act upon the plan. In the city of London you will find a school kept by that excellent man Dr. Mortimer, who will tell you that he has Jews, Roman Catholics, and every denomination of children. If you ask him how he gets over this difficulty, he will tell you what every man who is worthy to be at the head of a school will tell you, that he has forms of prayer—which he will show you—which are read to the children; and that when this is over he directs their attention to French, to German, to mathematics, or to classics, but that he does not, nor would any other man of sense, run one study into another and blend in the minds of his pupils things which are entirely unconnected with each other. There is really no difficulty, and the reason why I am satisfied that the right hon. Baronet has brought in a permissive Bill is this, that when the matter comes to be put to a practical test, when you have one municipality which does itself the honour to lay a rate in the cause of education, you will find that all this religious difficulty will vanish, and that we have been amusing, or rather terrifying ourselves for twenty years with a mere chimera. There is no practical difficulty in the matter. In the Blue-coat School you have from 700 to 800 boys, but you have no difficulty about this religious question. There are also in different parts of the country many proprietary schools. There is the celebrated school at Birmingham, of which the present Bishop of Manchester was head master, and it is his boast that no one was ever excluded on account of his religious opinions. The Bishop of Manchester gives his sanction and approval to this measure. He was head master of this Birmingham school, in which there are 1,200 or 1,300 boys. He had children of all denominations, but he did not attempt to proselytise them and turn them from the faith to which they belonged to his own. There is really no difficulty about this question if we set honestly to work; and I do sincerely hope that at this day, in the year 1857, we shall not lay ourselves open to the reproach which was made by Sir Samuel Romilly in his diary some forty years ago. When speaking of the discussions concerning education in this House, he wrote,—"I am afraid that people are not in earnest about education; that they are opposed to the tax that would be imposed upon them to educate the people." We have come to a time when we are all in earnest, all wishing for a better system. If so, I do not think we shall have any difficulty in carrying out some plan, and I do not think there has been any scheme submitted to the House more likely to meet with general acquiescence than that which the right hon. Baronet has proposed. I do not intend now to go into details, but I thought it necessary to allude to the religious difficulty, which has been thrown in our faces so long that it is high time that we should in some locality put to the test this great difficulty, which I apprehend will instantly vanish, and we shall then find that we have been alarming ourselves with a shadow.

MR. HENLEY

—Sir, I am quite ready to concede at the outset that the discussion of questions of this kind does good, and leads eventually to the discovery of the truth; but I disagree with my right hon. Friend as to the effect of the decision which the House came to on the scheme of last year. It is taking a very narrow view of that decision to say that it was based on the simple fact that the measure was intended to be general and compulsory in its operation. The Bill of my right hon. Friend the year preceding and the scheme of last year were both objectionable, because they would have completely sapped, and ultimately done away with, the existing system of education; and that was the ground on which the House rejected them. The hon. Gentleman who spoke last told us that the religious difficulty is a bugbear, and that no man of common sense would have any trouble in overcoming it. Every man has a perfect right to hold his own opinions, but the assumption of the hon. Member unquestionably implies that some three-fourths of the people of this country are destitute of common sense. A great many persons, quite as earnest in the cause of education as the hon. Gentleman, have applied their minds for many years to this subject, and they never thought of calling the religious difficulty of education a bugbear.

MR. COBDEN

The right hon. Gentleman must excuse me. I attach as much importance to religious education as he does. I say the bugbear is—not religious instruction, but—the difficulty of separating doctrinal from secular instruction.

MR. HENLEY

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his correction, because I am the last person who would fix upon another man the result of my own misapprehension; but he must allow me to say that the religious teaching which is confined to half an hour or an hour per day, and is imparted simply as you would teach French, German, and mathematics, or as you would give any other lesson, is not a teaching likely to reach the hearts of children, but will prove wholly barren and inoperative. Religion must be diffused over the whole surface of their training, or it can never be useful in regulating their conduct. Hence arises the difficulty when the matter comes to be fairly worked out. This point was well touched upon by the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Cowper), who said that if this important branch of instruction could be limited to half an hour each day it might be easily dealt with, but that when you come to teach the child his rule of life, doctrinal religion meets you at every turn and constitutes your real difficulty. As far as I gathered from my right hon. Friend's statement, he makes no provision whatever for new schools. How, then, is the deficiency to be supplied? All that his scheme does is this,—there being a certain number of schools now in existence, the greater proportion of which are attached to some religious denomination or another, it is proposed that you should aid the funds of these schools by a rate. This is what my right hon. Friend in very gentle language calls a local contribution. Why, we have local contributions now, only they happen to be voluntary, and are not exacted by the tax collector. My right hon. Friend, putting his case with great skill, said, "I am for local contributions and local management." Well, so am I for local contributions and local management; he says also he is for religious freedom; but I am also for religious freedom. How does my right hon. Friend deal with that point? There are numerous schools in the country, each affiliated to some religious community, at whose cost, either entirely or in the main, they have been built and supported; and what has been the great incentive to the public to devote its money and, what is a thousand times more valuable, its time, for the organisation of the vast machinery now at work? Undoubtedly, the mainspring of it all has been the desire to give a religious education to the children of their neighbours. In this state of things my right hon. Friend interposes. "True," he says, "you have got your schools and your schoolmasters; true, you are making no complaints; but I think you have not enough money. I must levy a rate and pay you a certain sum from it for every child that conies under your training." The schools, however, having been established on the express condition that the scholars are to have religious instruction, my right hon. Friend says, "I will give you money to take a number of children who shall receive no religious instruction at all." That is the principle of his scheme. Let us see how it would work. Suppose a Presbyterian school to be set up in a locality where many Roman Catholic children reside. The Presbyterian schoolmaster is to be compelled—on the principle of religious freedom, forsooth!—to admit any number of these Roman Catholic children for whom there is room in his school, and to teach them everything else, but not a word of religion. What is that but ignoring religion altogether, under the specious guise of religious freedom, and doing palpable violence to the consciences of the men who, in order to give religious instruction, set on foot your present machinery, and who are nevertheless to have pupils thrust upon them (in place of those whom they now teach) of whose education religion is to form no part? True, my right hon. Friend says he is for religious instruction, but the supporters of the secular system hold that the school is not the place for teaching religion. [Sir JOHN PAKINGTON: I do not say so.] I am aware that my right hon. Friend does not say this, but his new allies do. He differs in opinion from them, but then he proposes a scheme that will do exactly what they wish—not what he wishes. The House must not be led away by the notion that this Bill is only permissive. Permissive for what?—that is the question. Is it under the vote of a narrow majority, obtained in a canvass you do not know how, to permit a system to be set up for giving any instruction, except religious? If so, where there are 100 people in a place, and fifty-one of them are favourable to such a proposal, the remaining forty-nine being strongly opposed to it, this large minority will be taxed, against their consciences, to teach anything in the world except our duty to God and man. I cannot believe that the people of this country will ever be content with such a state of things; and in so grave a matter I, for one, doubt whether they ought to be allowed to establish it. I know it is said that unless persons possess a great deal of secular knowledge your labour in attempting to give them religious instruction is thrown away. ["Hear!"] My right hon. Friend cheers that statement. I am sorry to hear him cheer it. All I can say is, that I differ from that opinion as much as light differs from darkness. I do not believe that the most ignorant man who ever drew the breath of heaven was not amenable to the truths of Christianity. Those who have had the most extensive experience on this point will tell you that the best examples of a truly Christian spirit are often furnished by the most illiterate of our fellow creatures. The Divine message of mercy to man is so wonderfully adapted to the wants of man, that while the humblest peasant can understand and receive its gracious accents, the highly intellectual and most cultivated of our race will esteem it their greatest privilege to submit themselves to its lessons of humility. If you assert that our duty to God and man is to be sought only through the intellect, you have only arrived, as the result of seven years of discussion, at what you might easily have seen from the beginning was the radical difference between us. I say that you must invert the process. You must first teach our duty to God and man, and as a consequence of that teaching induce people to cultivate their intellects according as their means and opportunities enable them. I hold, then, that you never will teach the young their duty to God or man if you attempt to do it through the intellect. Such an attempt strikes at the root of the whole religious teaching of this country; and I trust, that when my right hon. Friend's Bill is before us it will not he found to be based on so pernicious a principle. If, however, it is otherwise, I can only promise to give him my warmest opposition. There is an essential difference of opinion on this subject between two parties in this House; but I am not sorry that this discussion has been raised, because I believe it will elucidate the truth.

LORD JOHN RUSSELL

—I am glad. Sir, that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Droitwich Sir John Pakington has again brought the question of national education before the attention of this House, I cannot but admit—although I do so reluctantly—that the best, or at least the most prudent course is to make the Bill merely permissive and local. At the same time, I have no wish now, any more than on any former occasion, to conceal my individual opinion that it is the duty of this country to render national education general and compulsory. Yet I am quite aware that that is not the view taken by this House, and that such differences of opinion prevail in the House and in the country that it would be utterly impossible at present to obtain the assent of Parliament to any measure founded on such a principle. I think, however, that the right hon. Gentleman does well in endeavouring to take a step in advance with the view of giving an impetus to this great question. I am afraid, indeed, that the prospect before us, partially opened though it is, is not quite so encouraging as the right hon. Gentleman seems to imagine, and that local and permissive as this measure is, and confined to promoting the success of the existing schools though it appears to be, still it is liable to misconceptions and misrepresentations, producing unfavourable opinions, which always impede the progress of a measure of this kind. The right hon. Gentleman, in some degree representing as he does the sentiments of others, seems to me rather to place a bar in the way of his own Bill when he says that the rates are not to go towards religious instruction. What is Intended, as I understand, is that they shall be applied in aid of schools belonging to different religious denominations, in which, under the present system, doctrinal instruction is given. [Sir JOHN PAKINGTON: My expression was, "not directly applied."] I do not quite see the value of that distinction. The rate will go in aid of a national school—say, in Birmingham or elsewhere, and that school will continue to give doctrinal instruction in precisely the same manner as it has hitherto done—that is to say, the Bible will be read, the Catechism taught, and the great truths of Christianity impressed on the pupils exactly as is the case now. Therefore there is no room whatever for the question just raised by the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Henley)—namely, whether religion should be taught by the intellect, or whether the heart ought rather to be appealed to; because that religious instruction is still to be continued with which that right hon. Gentleman himself and also the noble Lord (Lord R. Cecil) are perfectly satisfied. The only question regarding the application of the rate is that the money will not be directly and professedly given for the purposes of that doctrinal instruction; that that instruction will be imparted at certain fixed hours, which will be duly notified; and that children may be admitted who do not accept it, and who will be absent during the time that it is given. But, then, it is not a correct description of the scheme to say that the rates will not go in aid of doctrinal teaching. They will support the school; and the school will still remain a national or a denominational school, as the case may be, in which religious instruction will be given exactly as heretofore. I have heard of a proposition, emanating, I believe, from a section of the voluntary party in Scotland, to the effect that, while consenting to give religions instruction in the public schools, there should be a separate payment for that instruction. This appears to me a very objectional proposal, but I do not understand it to form any part of the right hon. Gentleman's scheme. Therefore, notwithstanding all the objections urged to his plan, the right hon. Gentleman does propose that this rate should form an additional fund for schools in which religious instruction is given, and given, too, not according to a mode of which some hon. Members disapprove, although I do not—namely, by the teaching of the Bible only, but according to the form now adopted in the national and many other schools. This being so, it does not appear to me that the right hon. Gentleman has made any such dangerous concession to the secular party as the right hon. Gentleman opposite seems to suppose. On the contrary, that has itself made an important concession—namely, that the religious teaching of the schools shall be supported from the rates, provided only that religious liberty is not infringed by compelling those of the pupils to attend such instruction whose parents dissent from it, and that it is given at certain fixed hours, to be duly notified. The right hon. Gentleman elsewhere stated fairly the opinion of the secular party when he said that they hold that the children ought to be religiously brought up, but that the schoolmaster is not the person nor the school the place for doing so. My view, agreeing with that of the right hon. Gentleman, is, on the other hand, that the school is the place and the schoolmaster the person. At the same time, if you support a school by rates—if you require that people not of one, but of many different denominations, be they Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, or Jews, shall contribute towards the maintenance of that school—you cannot after that well insist that only a particular kind of doctrinal instruction shall be given, or that the children of those who do not receive that instruction shall be excluded from the school. Thus far I think the Bill of the right hon. Gentleman accords with the principle of religious liberty. I do not quite understand whether or not he proposes to assist by a rate a school in which the secular principle is followed, and no religious instruction given. Such a provision, if it formed any part of the measure, might create considerable difficulty. It has had no place in any scheme which either the right hon. Gentleman or I have ventured to propose to the House. We shall, however, be better able to judge of this Bill when we have had an opportunity of carefully examining its various clauses; and I can only trust that until that time no hon. Gentleman will raise a prejudice against a scheme intended by its author as a concession to objections which he does not himself feel, but by conciliating which he hopes to be able to take a step towards the attainment of a proper system of national education. For my own part, I heartily wish the right hon. Gentleman every success, and sincerely trust he may be able to obviate the objections to which his scheme is liable.

MR. HADFIELD

said, he regretted that the right hon. Gentleman (Sir J. Pakington), in his review of the educational condition of this country, bad omitted to notice the 2,500,000 children now regularly receiving instruction, under upwards of 300,000 teachers, in the Sunday schools of this country, nor had he made the least allusion to the enormously increasing literature of the day. The right hon. Gentleman had hitherto identified his advocacy of education with a section of the clergy of the established Church, but he now suddenly turned round and threw himself into the arms of the secular party, whose views he sought to embody in his scheme. He lately went down to Manchester to hold a conference with the leaders of that party, and in a two hours' interview with them he professed to have settled this great question off hand for the whole world. How powerful must the spell of the right hon. Gentleman's genius be when with a single wave of his wand he could set at rest the vexed ques- tion that had so long agitated the country! [Sir John PAKINGTON: I never said that]. He had not heard the statement himself; his only authority for it was the newspaper reports. This Bill would stir up and perpetuate a greater amount of sectarian bitterness from one end of the country to the other than had ever been produced by the agitation about church rates or Maynooth. The Roman Catholics would not send their children to the Protestant schools, and the consequence would be that the Roman Catholic schools would also have to be supported from the proposed rates. The hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. Spooner) vehemently condemned the vote of £6,000 a year from the public funds for the College of Maynooth; but what would he say to a measure like this, which would probably saddle the people with taxation to the extent of several hundreds of thousands per annum for the support of a religion often described by the hon. Gentleman in terms which he (Mr. Hadfield) would not venture to repeat? The sacred principles of religion were made the football of parties in that House who ought to set the people an example of respect for them. He was confident that this Bill would be unpopular with the country, and would share, as it deserved to do, the fate of its unlucky predecessors.

MR.W. EWART

said, that the state of education in the country, and especially in the rural districts was positively disgraceful, and that until the education of the female population in the humblest ranks of life was better attended to, instead of being, as at present, grossly neglected, it was vain to expect the home training of the young to be what it ought to be. The true system of national education was the voluntary system, but that would be best conducted by means of a rate. If a rate could only be imposed, as in the case of the Libraries Act, by the declared will of the majority, was not that essentially a voluntary species of taxation? Religious training was, no doubt, the highest object of all education, but then religious instruction was perfectly compatible with religious freedom. This Bill sanctioned doctrinal teaching where it now prevailed, and did not impose the secular system where it did not exist. If the right hon. Gentleman would introduce a clause providing that, while the religious teaching should be free, the conductors of a school should nevertheless be bound to see that no child was left without religious instruction of one kind or another, religious freedom would thereby be maintained inviolate, and religious instruction at the same time extended. This was the plan adopted in the Liverpool Corporation schools; there religion was free, but it was necessary that every pupil should have some religious instruction. It was quite right to make this a permissive Bill only, and it was to be hoped that when the good effect of the system had been shown in one or two instances it would be adopted generally throughout the country. Under the Factory Act a certificate of attendance at school must be produced before any child could be employed, and he was in favour of extending this principle to agricultural labour as well. A crisis had now arrived in the educational question, and it behoved all parties to unite to solve it in a conciliatory spirit, for unless some system of national education were adopted there was but little hope of preserving our prosperity or of bettering the condition of the people.

SIR JOHN PAKINGTON

, in reply, said: Sir, I only wish to request the hon. Member for Stamford (Lord R. Cecil) when he thinks proper on any future occasion to allude to me in debate, that he will make a memorandum of what 1 have said, because he has so altered every portion of the speech to which he has referred that I by no means am willing to accept the opinions which are imputed to me. Referring now to the hon. Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley), I admit that the Bill I propose to introduce contains no provision for the establishment of new schools; but my right hon. Friend is not correct in the conclusions he has drawn from that circumstance. It is a fact known to all who have studied this question that the greatest difficulty is not that of establishing schools, but the real difficulty to be surmounted is the maintenance of those schools when they are established. In proof of which I am acquainted with a rural district in Shropshire, in which a good schoolhouse had been built and aided by a grant of several thousands of pounds, Nevertheless, up to a recent period, that; school, though built about eighteen months, has never yet been opened for want of funds to carry it on. My right hon. Friend alluded to the case of the Presbyterians, who would be compelled under this Bill to give up their principles. Well, my answer to that objection is this—that in the event of this Bill passing, whether they be Presbyterian or Church schools, the parties will have to decide for themselves whether they stand in need of the aid which this Bill holds out. If they feel they do stand in need of this Bill, they must accept it with their eyes open, subject to all the conditions which it imposes. In the concluding part of my right hon. Friend's speech he used most impressive language in expressing his belief that the humblest amongst us was fully accessible to the Divine truths of Christianity. No one can be more sensible of that fact than I am myself. God forbid that I should ever say or think that the humblest man was not accessible to the Divine truths of Christianity. But, on the other hand, as I have said—and I refer to clergymen and ministers of religion who exercise their duties in crowded districts to bear me out in the opinion—that the intellectual ignorance and moral debasement of a portion of our population are found to be the great barriers to the teaching of religion in such classes. I have now, Sir, but to express my sense of the general kindness and forbearance of the House towards me.

Leave given.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Sir JOHN PAKINGTON, Mr. COBDEN, LORD STANLEY, and Mr. HEADLAM.