Commons Sitting of 5 May 1863

MINUTES.
NEW MEMBER SWORN—Richard Green Price, esquire, for New Radnor.
PUBLIC BILLS—Resolution in Committee—Judgments Law Amendment (Ireland) [Stamp Duty] (May 4) reported.
First Reading—Act of Uniformity Amendment [Bill 104]; Pier and Harbour Orders Confirmation [Bill 109]; Harwich Harbour [Bill 110]; Drainage and Improvement of Land (Ireland) [Bill 106]; Sale of Mill Sites, &c. (Ireland) [Bill 105]; Sheriff Courts (Scotland) [Bill 107]; Volunteers Acts Amendment [Bill 108].
Committee—Jurors' Remuneration [Bill 101] (on Re-Committal).
Report—Jurors' Remuneration [Bill 101].
Considered as amended—Customs and Inland Revenue [Bill 91]; Savings Banks Monies [Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer] [Bill 79].
Withdrawn—Writs Prohibition (No. 2) [Bill 62].

THE ATTACK ON SHON-HING.

  QUESTION.
  COLONEL SYKESsaid, he wished to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty, If any and what measures are to be adopted consequent upon Captain R. Dew, of Her Majesty's ship Encounter, employing part of the Naval force under his command in an unsuccessful attack upon the

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  city of Shon-hing, in which Lieutenant Tinling, of the.Encounter, was killed, Shon-hing being many miles beyond the thirty mile radius from a Treaty Port?
  LORD CLARENCE PAGETsaid, that Her Majesty's Government had received no official intelligence of the unfortunate event to which his hon. and gallant Friend had called his attention; but he might say that that was probably owing to Admiral Kuper being on his way to Japan; but the Admiralty had sent out orders that none of our ships were to be employed in the protection of the Treaty Ports beyond the thirty mile radius.

GREENWICH HOSPITAL.

  QUESTION.
  MR. CONINGHAMsaid, he rose to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty, Whether it is the intention of the Government to take immediate steps to remedy the abuses alleged to exist in the administration of the funds of Greenwich Hospital, and at once give practical effect to the Registered Seamen's Act, which gives the seamen's sixpences monthly to the Hospital, and also declares that the widows and orphans of seamen slain, killed, or drowned in the sea service, and not of ability to maintain or provide comfortably for themselves, shall be received into the said Hospital, or in some reasonable manner be provided for and educated?
  LORD CLARENCE PAGETsaid, in reply, that as an hon. Gentleman had given notice of his intention on Friday to bring before that House the subject of the management of Greenwich Hospital, he should wish to defer till then giving any answer respecting the alleged grievances.

POOR LAW (SCOTLAND).

  QUESTION.
  MR. DALGLISHsaid, he wished to ask the Lord Advocate, Whether he intends to bring in any Bill to explain the existing Poor Law of Scotland in regard to the occasional relief of able-bodied poor?
  THE LORD ADVOCATE, in reply, said, he had reason to know that in Scotland some doubt had been thrown upon the meaning of parts of the existing Poor Law Act, and he thought it might be desirable to introduce a short Act to make that clear. He had been in communication with certain gentlemen on the sub-
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  ject, and he thought it probable that he would be able to answer the Question in a few days.

THE DRAWBACK ON EXPORTED REFINED SUGAR.—QUESTION.
MR. MOFFATTsaid, he would beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether the International Inquiry as to the Drawback on exportation of Refined Sugar is completed, and when it is probable that the Report will be laid upon the table?
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, he could assure his hon. Friend that the Government would lose no time, as far as it depended upon them, in making the House partakers in any information which might be received as to the drawback on the exportation of refined sugar. As to the International Inquiry, he understood the Report was virtually completed. It had not yet been placed in his hands, but he believed it would reach him in the course of a few days.

THE CASE OF CAPTAIN MELVILLE WHITE.—QUESTION.
COLONEL DUNNEsaid, he rose to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, What steps have been taken to obtain redress for the cruelties inflicted by the Peruvian Government on Captain Melville White, a British Subject?
MR. LAYARDsaid, in reply, that the case of Captain Melville White was one of the worst he had ever heard of. That gentleman was arrested on a frivolous and, as it proved afterwards, unfounded charge; he was thrown into prison and treated with the greatest brutality, and the course adopted towards him by the Peruvian Courts of Justice was disgraceful to those Courts. After an imprisonment of some time, he was released upon the earnest remonstrances of the British Government; but he had been banished from the country, and no reason had as yet been assigned for his imprisonment. The British Government referred to the Law Officers of the Crown the statement made by Captain Melville White, and the circumstances under which he had been so maltreated, and requested them to suggest an amount which should be claimed from the Peruvian Government as an adequate compensation for the ill-treatment he had received. The Law Officers recommended a sum of £4,500, to be demanded of the Peruvian Government as a payment to be

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made by way of reparation. It appeared, however, that Captain Melville White was not satisfied with that sum, and had sent in a claim for £292,174. That sum was made up of various items, among which were "four heavy blows from butt ends of muskets, £3,200; a knockdown blow from a soldier, £1,000; several bayonet prods, £4,000; kicks in his aching side, £2,000; five days' alleged bad diet in prison, £5,000; and loss of health, £20,000." The Government had not thought it right to make that demand upon the Peruvian Government, but were willing to leave the question to arbitration; and as the Peruvian Government were willing to do the same, he hoped that some decision would be come to that would meet the justice of the case, and be satisfactory to the friends of Captain Melville White.

UNITED STATES—MAIL-BAGS ON BOARD THE "PETERHOFF."—QUESTION.
LORD ROBERT CECILsaid, he wished to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs a Question, which he imagined he would have no difficulty in answering. A few days since the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Layard) stated that a letter had been received from Mr. Seward, promising that the mails on board the Peterhoff should be forwarded unopened to their destinations. From a report which had appeared in the newspapers of the previous day, it seemed that the captors, by whom he understood to be meant Admiral Wilkes, had declined to permit that course to be taken. He (Lord Robert Cecil) therefore desired to ask the hon. Gentleman, Whether the Foreign Office has received any information to that effect from Lord Lyons, and whether he has been ordered to take any course on the subject?
MR. LAYARD: In answer, Sir, to the Question of the noble Lord, I beg to state that what I told the House is strictly in accordance with the information received by Her Majesty's Government. There appeared to have been some difficulty in determining in the prize courts what should be done with the mail-bags. The matter was referred to Mr. Seward, and Mr. Seward informed Lord Lyons that he had sent orders to New York that the mail-bags should be forwarded to their destination without being opened. At the same time, as had been stated by Earl Russell, Mr. Seward informed Lord Lyons that a gem Ionian would be sent to England to
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settle the principle upon which mail-bags, such as those of the Peterhoff, should in future be treated—the question being new and now raised for the first time. No information had been received since that time by Her Majesty's Government.

EDUCATION.—RESOLUTION.
MR. WALTER: Sir, I rise to move the Resolution which stands in my name upon the paper, for the purpose of inviting the attention of the House to a subject which, after the very narrow division of last Session, requires, I think, no excuse from me for again bringing it under the consideration of the House. It is a question which, although it involves no difficult problem of finance such as engaged our attention last evening, and is hardly capable of being illustrated by the same skilful arguments, or adorned by the same splendid eloquence which charmed the House on that occasion, yet, nevertheless, is a question of very considerable interest, and second, perhaps, in importance to none of those domestic questions upon which so many hon. Members are qualified to express opinions. I trust, therefore, in bringing this question before the House I shall meet with that indulgence which was once sarcastically said by an old writer to be always granted to those who go about seeking to persuade the multitude that they are not so well governed as they should be; for although such indulgence maybe considered by some cold-blooded politicians rather as a weakness than as a virtue, and that it is easier to find fault with existing arrangements than to supply remedies for them, yet I think I shall be able to show that the grievance which I have to lay before the House is one of such substantial as well as arbitrary and unhandsome character that it is well worthy of their most earnest consideration and of any remedy which the wisdom of Parliament may think fit to apply. Of this, at least, I feel confident, that whatever may be the issue of this debate, I shall not be accused of bringing forward this question hastily and inconsiderately, or without respectable authorities to support me. After the long discussion which took place last year upon this subject, and the somewhat hasty compromise which was drawn up and accepted, it could hardly be supposed that the Revised Code, or rather that portion of it known by the name of the Capitation Grant, to which my remarks will be confined, would be con-

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sidered as a final settlement of the question. I think there can scarcely have been any one in the Department of Education, and very few out of it, who could possibly conceive that the question would rest where it was, or that that multitude of country parishes which had been carrying on the work of education before the Privy Council was heard of could endure to see the large sum of money voted by this House expended upon objects from which they are of necessity absolutely debarred. In the speech of my right hon. Friend the Vice President of the Education Department I find this admission. Speaking of the existing arrangement—namely, the Code of 1860—he says—
"The first fault I find in the system—one which the Commissioners have also reported upon—is what I shall call its partiality. That may not be a fault in a tentative system; but when we come to deal with what we hope to consider a national system, it is a great defect if it does not pervade and permeate the whole of the country." [3 Hansard, clxv. 198.]
A few sentences further on my right hon. Friend proceeds to say—
"It would be a discredit to that system which we wish to render permanent in this country if we could not meet this great and pressing want."
That is, the great want of the means of applying the Government grant to education in the rural districts—
"These districts contribute to the revenue equally with others, and it is exceedingly desirable, both on the ground of justice and of policy, that they should receive back some share of the money." [3 Hansard, clxv. 199.]
And the Commissioners in their Report, after stating that their object was to preserve the quality of education by encouraging schools to employ superior teachers, to simplify the business of the office in its correspondence, and to diminish the rigour and apparent injustice of some of its rules, went on to sav—
"These alterations…would be an improvement of the system on its present basis; but they would not, in our opinion, supply the requisite means by which the basis itself would be widened; in other words, by which the public aid would be extended to a large body of the poorer schools, both in town and country, which do not seem likely within any assignable period to be in a position to meet the requirements of the Council."
In another passage they sum up their statements by saying—
"Until the system can be extended to the whole country, the case of the excluded parishes will be doubly hard, since they contribute as taxpayers to a fund in which they do not share."
Now, perhaps the House will bear with me for a moment while I recall its attention to
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the circumstances out of which the Revised Code has grown into its present shape. The House is well aware, that when the Government undertook to meddle with the system of education in this country, it found the ground already occupied by voluntary societies. These voluntary societies, the chief of which were the National and the British and Foreign School Societies, had been in operation for a period of nearly thirty years before the Government undertook to meddle with the question. I believe I may say that the egg out of which the present Privy Council was hatched was laid by one or other of those societies. We recollect, that when the Privy Council Department first tried its wing in what may be called its unfledged state, it made very feeble efforts to soar into the regions of expenditure; it contented itself with Votes of £20,000 or £30,000 a year, chiefly for building purposes; and this money was appropriated, no doubt, fairly enough. But after a short period, towards the year 1839, it determined to extend its operations much further—
"Trunca pedum primo, mox et stridentia pennis Miscentur, tenuemque magis, magis aera carpunt."
It spread its wings for a flight, and after soaring pretty nearly over the whole Continent of Europe—especially France, Belgium, and Germany—it brought home the materials which it had collected to build its nest, and established the system of training colleges and the pupil teacher system. The establishment of that system is in reality the mainspring of the Code which now is the law of the land. I will state, if the House will allow me, what is the present amount of the grant which the Privy Council Office administers. In the Estimates of the present year I find that the grant is put down in round numbers at £800,000. The number of children who are directly or indirectly benefited by the grant amount to about 1,000,000—that is to say, the State contributes 16 s. a head towards the education of every child who is directly interested in the grant. That I think an enormous and preposterous sum. It ought to be made certainly to go much further. The total number of certificated teachers by the last Return was about 9,000. The total number of pupil teachers is, in round numbers, 16,000. The total number of students in training colleges is about 3,000, and the total number of elementary day schools visited by Her Majesty's Inspectors during 1862 was 7,569. Now, I want the House to bear in mind that the total num-

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ber of children of the class intended by the Commissioners to be benefited by the State grant is upwards of 2,000,000—that is to say, after deducting the number who are already indirectly benefited by the grant, there remain upwards of 1,000,000 children who are neither directly nor indirectly in any way the better for this enormous public contribution. These children may be divided into two classes—those who attend public unassisted schools, and those who attend private schools; and in the Resolutions which I have placed on the table the plan of assistance which I propose to recommend is limited—for reasons which I will by-and-by mention—to the children who attend the unassisted public schools. Now, let me state what the opinion of the Commissioners was as to the duty of doing something towards assisting these schools. The Commissioners say in their Report—
"We have found that the principal obstacle which has prevented the Committee of Council from assisting schools in places which primâ facie would appear most to stand in need of aid, arises from the fact that any extension of assistance to meet exceptional cases is sure to pass rapidly into a universal rule, involving much waste of public money. This difficulty we believe to be one from which a central office, called upon to meet local and distant, demands, can never escape. We have therefore been led to look for some principle on which assistance can be offered to poorer schools, whether in town or country, without violating the rule which has hitherto directed all Government grants to education, that no public assistance shall be given to schools except in proportion to their own exertions to meet it. With this view we propose to offer a premium upon every scholar, upon proof given of a definite amount of knowledge, no condition being required from the school except its being clean and healthy. Such a plan would, we believe, act directly upon most of the smaller schools in the country, not only by encouraging them to improve their teaching, but by giving them that pecuniary locus standi which is what they may justly require as the means for raising themselves to the higher level of the Government grant. Thus a school of fifty boys, which should obtain £8 or £10 from this examination, would receive both an aid and a stimulus which would induce it to make greater exertions. No other mode of assistance appears to us appropriate."
Therefore, the Commissioners do not propose to leave these schools altogether in the lurch, but they suggest a curious mode of supplying the fund by which these schools should be relieved. While they limit the State grant to schools which possess certificated teachers, and which comply with all the other terms of the Privy Council Department, they propose to tax the counties by levying a county rate for the benefit of the unas-
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sisted schools; no other condition being attached, except that they shall be open to inspection, and shall be clean and healthy. Now, I do not know upon what principle the Commissioners consider that the money voted by this House is too good for these unassisted schools, but that the money levied by the county rates is not too good for them. I do not understand upon what principle that distinction was drawn. It appears to me that this grant itself may be regarded as in lieu of a national rate. The House entertains, very naturally and very justly, a great objection to a national rate for the purpose of education, and I trust it will always entertain this objection. But the money which this House votes for the purpose of education is as much paid out of the pockets of the ratepayers, and out of the general funds of the country, as if the rate were levied in a more direct form upon the ratepayers themselves. However, my right hon. Friend the Vice President of the Education Department did not think it right to adopt this view of the Commissioners, and he accordingly, without making the slightest effort to meet the want of these poor rural schools, left them totally in the lurch, consigning them to hopeless perdition, and providing an utterly inadequate machinery as the indispensable condition of their obtaining any share in this capitation grant.
The House will allow me to state, for the information of hon. Members who may not be able to keep all these facts in their minds, that under the Revised Code, which comes into operation this year, the capitation grant—which is the only part of the subject with which I am concerned—is regulated as follows:—It is divided into two parts. There is a grant for attendance and a grant for examination. The grant for attendance is 4s. per head for all children who attend the school two hundred times—that is, who attend it one hundred days, two attendances being the requirement for each of those hundred days. Besides this, there is a grant for examination of 8s. per head, subject to certain deductions in the event of the failure of the child to pass in three heads—writing, reading, and arithmetic—and subject to certain other modifications. I will at once say, though it may spoil sport for my right hon. Friend, what my proposal comes to. I know a case will be set up for the private pupil teachers—that interesting class of which we have heard so much, and for

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whom we have been obliged to sacrifice so much. I myself am one of those who do not attach much importance to certificates; but I am willing, for the sake of peace, to make a concession to those gentlemen. Therefore, I do not propose to meddle with the minor grant of 4s. which is paid for the attendance of the children at those schools. What I propose to do—what I insist on, is that the grant of 8s. shall be open to all children who shall pass an examination to the satisfaction of the inspector. I wish the whole of the capitation grant was dispensed in that form; but I believe that 8s. is an ample grant; and therefore I think I shall not be sacrificing the interests of my clients if I can get this for them—if I can wring it from the Education Office; and I do not see what objections can be urged against such a proposal. But to return once more to the progress which has brought us to the present state of things. When the Government are determined to make any change in a system they get up a "Report," and we know that the Government can get up Reports to prove anything. They got up a Report which proved to their own satisfaction that the whole system of education was wrong, that the teachers were bad, and that the children were not taught, and they resolved to set up a normal school. Sir James Kay Shuttleworth was the great agent in this work. He had ransacked Europe and was particularly struck with what he had seen in Switzerland. He set up a model school in Battersea and proceeded to train high-class masters, who ultimately were to be scattered throughout the country. Following the system which he had seen adopted in Switzerland, and which seems to have been severe and almost monastic in its character, he accustomed them, of course, to labour, but also to short slumber and other practices of denial, by which it was intended that they should acquire habits of self-control and discipline. This system did not find many proselytes. He did not get many young men to come into it. After a time the system was given up. It had been found that those young men who were in training, not being, like the inmates of a monastic institution, restrained by vows of celibacy and devotion to the work in which they were engaged, had pretty well the same motives to advance themselves in life as are found to actuate other persons. It was found that a young schoolmaster, if he had a presentable exterior, was sure to try and
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make the acquaintance of a rich farmer's daughter, and follow his profession like any other gentleman. This system having broken down, training colleges were founded by other persons. These institutions were more rational and fitting, and I wish to speak with the greatest respect of those who were engaged in their management. I believe those gentlemen have done great good, and that they would have done more if they had not carried their syllabus of education far too high for students intended to teach the class of children over whom they were to be placed. Notwithstanding, I am satisfied that the training schools have done good, and I would not wish to be understood for a moment as speaking a word against them; but I will say this—that the managers of those institutions should not go partners with the Education Office for the purpose of enforcing their rules on others who can get on very well without them. It was between 1839 and 1846 that the system grew up of giving augmentation grants and grants for pupil teachers, in order to provide a vast machinery for educating the poor of the country; but, after a trial of this system for some time, the Department began to have misgivings that even it was not perfect. They then issued another Commission, and this Commission reported, that though nothing could be better than those training colleges, and though the pupil teachers were very good, yet the system did not do what it was intended to accomplish—namely, teach the labouring classes to read, write, and cipher moderately well. That Report was printed, and the old Revised Code is based on it. The Commissioners stated that only one-fourth of the children educated under that system wrote, read, and could cipher moderately well; and therefore my right hon. Friend discovered that providing that great machinery was not one of the most successful ways of securing the education of the country. Something more was required, and, in accordance with the recommendation of the Commissioners, he hit on the system of paying for results; and while paying a certain deference to what they considered the vested interest of certificated masters, which they thought was accomplished to some extent by the amount expressed in the 4s. capitation grant to which I have referred, the House adopted the plan that the principal portion of the capitation grant should, however, be paid for results. I should have thought—and that was one reason I had for assisting to

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the best of my ability my right hon. Friend—that this system would have been one of the means of bringing the assistance of the State to the poor schools of the country which are most in need of Government aid, I took the liberty of asking my right hon. Friend to carry out his system, and make results the sole condition of the payment of capitation grants to those schools; but my right hon. Friend made an objection to that proposal, which objection occurs in part of his speech. He admits that managers should be allowed to select any machinery they might think fit, provided that the child passed such an examination as would satisfy the inspector; but he qualifies that admission in these terms—
"That remark does not in my view extend to certificated teachers, because we have the same right to require that there should be a certificated teacher and to limit our patronage to him as the public has to require that a man shall be regularly educated before he is allowed to practise as a lawyer or a physician."
That raises the whole question, and I should be perfectly prepared to join issue with my right hon. Friend on that alone. I wish to call the attention of the House to this matter, because it is right the public should know what movement is going on in the Education Department, and what we shall be in for if we give way to this principle. I, for one, think that the educational hobby is very hardly ridden at present. Mechanics' institutions labour us to death. One half of them are bankrupt, and we have to make speeches and deliver lectures for them. I, for one, am heartily sick of them. Then we have got Societies of Arts all over the country. I received a circular the other day from a society of gentlemen who would not employ any one who did not get a certificate from them. I am not sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Stamford had not something to do with that. Education—education is all a man hears of. I have received a circular from the College of Preceptors, which states—
"The Council of the College of Preceptors desires to invite your attention to a recently originated movement, the success of which depends entirely on the co-operation of the general body of teachers. The Report of the Royal Commission on Education shows that an urgent necessity exists for legislative interference, in order to place the scholastic profession in its proper position; and the suggestion made in their Report, 'that no person shall be appointed to the mastership of an endowed school who shall not have either taken an academical degree or obtained a certifi-
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cate of competency from some authorized body,' is founded on the very minute and careful investigations which the Commissioners have made. But it may naturally be asked, why, if the principle involved in this proposal is sound, should it not be applied to every member of the profession? The present time, when educational questions are actively discussed, seems to be a suitable opportunity for directing public attention to the best means of improving the status of our profession by legislative action. It is the opinion of many persons who have devoted attention to the subject that a Scholastic Registration Act, analogous in its provisions to the Medical Registration Act, would be productive of great advantages to the profession; and there appears to be a reasonable probability that such a measure might be so framed as to secure the general concurrence and support of teachers, and the assent of the Government and of the Legislature."
These gentlemen, after sounding the opinions of the profession, propose that a measure should be introduced into the Legislature, the leading provisions of which should be these—
"All teachers now engaged in the profession, of whatever class, would be entitled to be registered; but after some future date, to be specified, only persons holding degrees, recognised diplomas, or Government certificates, would he registered, without which no person would be in a position to prosecute any claim for scholastic instruction in the courts of law. Thus all interference with 'vested interests' would be carefully avoided; while year by year those who are unfit to hold the office of educators would gradually be eliminated from the profession. A Scholastic Council, formed on a plan analogous to the constitution of the General Medical Council, would represent the interests of education and of educators, without favour or partiality towards any particular college, society, or system of education; while teachers would be as free and independent in the management of their schools and in their methods of teaching as at present. Qualified educators would be registered irrespectively of their religious opinions or denominations, the only conditions being competency to instruct, and good moral character."
These gentlemen wish to place themselves on the same footing as the lawyers, doctors, and other learned bodies. One great objection to this ought to strike every one—that it is not at all necessary to increase the self-importance of the scholastic profession. We all recollect the story of Dr. Busby, who, when he took Charles H. over Westminster School, strutted before him with his cap on, and after showing him every part of the school apologized to His Majesty for that piece of rudeness, saying, "If I were once to allow my boys to think there was anybody greater than I in this kingdom I should lose all my authority over them." That is pretty much the state of feeling among the scholastic profession

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They want to have a legislative sanction given to that authority which, I think, is at present amply sufficient for them. This country has the reputation of being a lawyer-ridden country; some countries have the reputation of being priest-ridden. Spain was, I believe, in Dr. Sangrado's time, and, if all accounts are true, North Italy now is, a priest-ridden country; but of all the humiliations and indignities which can befall a country it is to be a schoolmaster-ridden country. I therefore would join issue with my right hon. Friend on this point alone, and would ask the House not to give its sanction to the principle that no man who has not received a certificate is to be considered fit to teach little children—not grown up people, mind—not to train mechanics, not to teach the higher branches of arithmetic, but merely the first rudiments of education—reading, writing, and ciphering, and how to behave themselves; for that is really all this vast complicated machinery has been set up to do. And it is certainly most extraordinary to read the syllabuses of some of these training schools. The House will find this point referred to in the important evidence of Mr. Skeats, a gentleman who has had great experience both in England and America. It is in volume 5 of the evidence. Mr. Skeats goes much further than I do, for he objects altogether to Government interference. He gives a list of the subjects taught at St. Mark's College:—Religious knowledge—liturgy, Church history, evidences of Christianity; English grammar and composition; Mathematics—algebra, Euclid, industrial mechanics; higher mathematics, physical science, English literature, higher mathematics pure, applied book-work; experimental science; organic and inorganic chemistry, natural philosophy; History—"Hallam," Henry VII., James I.; Latin—prose, poetry, translation; and after all, a few accomplishments by way of dessert to all this solid food—vocal music, Welsh, reading, spelling, penmanship. [Mr. F. S. POWELL: What is the date of that?] That is 1859. The House will bear in mind that all this preparation is to teach little children from six to twelve years old—the greater number being under twelve—to read, write, cipher, and how to behave themselves. We are told that this cannot be done properly without masters who have gone through these colleges, and who have passed an examination; and that the inspectors, highly-educated men, clergymen generally, cannot possibly tell when
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they go into a school whether the children have been taught these things properly. This system is one of the main features in the effects of the capitation grant to which I object; but there is also another system which is very objectionable, and that is the pupil teacher system. There are a great many opinions as to the pupil teachers; and although my statement may be called into question, and may be overborne by the amount of testimony which my right hon. Friend may bring against it, yet he cannot deny that there is the highest authority of experienced schoolmasters, clergymen, and others, against the whole system of pupil teachers. Before I begin to show this, I will mention, that in addition to those conditions of the capitation grant which I have quoted, a further condition is annexed—that for every forty children above the first fifty in a school which applies for a grant there must be a pupil teacher, and for every eighty there must be another sort of assistant pupil teacher. I think that is a hard condition to impose on any schoolmaster and on any manager. I know schoolmasters of great ability who would give up their situations rather than take a pupil teacher on any terms.
If the House will allow me, I will just state a case which is within my own knowledge. When I had finished that correspondence with Mr. Norris which my right hon. Friend has published, and which I have taken the liberty of laying before the House in the shape of a small pamphlet, I asked him to recommend me a schoolmaster for a vacancy which was shortly about to occur in a school in my neighbourhood. Mr. Norris was good enough to recommend to me a young man who, I have no doubt, would have fully justified the description which he gave of him. The young man wrote to me describing his qualifications, and asking me whether it was worth his while to come down to see me. I said to him, "I must tell you, first of all, that I want a married man; there is a house attached to the school—it is a mixed school—and I must have a married man, or, at least, some one with a female relative who will look after the girls." He said that he was not married, and that he had no female relative who could come with him to look after the girls. I wanted a certified married teacher, and the consequence was that our negotiations soon came to an end. Shortly after that a schoolmaster was recommended

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to me with a first-class certificate—a man of great ability, far too good, I am afraid, for what I had for him to do. He gave up a much better school of 200 children, where he was receiving nearly £120 a year, and he has come to me for a much smaller salary, simply in order to get rid of the nuisance of having to look after pupil teachers. He tells me they are a greater plague than all the rest of the school put together. I am not in the least surprised at that, because there is abundant evidence—it would be wearying the House to read it all—to show that pupil teachers are not so desirable a class as they are commonly represented to be. Mr. Skeats says—
"The pupil teacher system, the most expensive branch of the operations of the Privy Council Committee, was originated, it seems to me, in a mistaken estimate of the kind of instruction needed by the poorer classes, and in a very fallacious calculation as to the number of teachers that are likely to be required in public schools. The result of the former mistake has been to perpetuate a system of over-education; of the latter, to increase the supply of teachers far beyond the natural demand for their services. As a further consequence, therefore, large numbers of these teachers who have become Queen's scholars, and who have been specially educated at the public expense for this profession, cannot obtain immediate employment, and are obliged to resort to other occupations."
And then he makes what I think is a very sensible recommendation—
"By the aid of a small number of paid assistant teachers and of unpaid monitors, all the good which the pupil teachers do might be done without them, and the public revenue saved an annual demand amounting now to nearly a quarter of a million sterling. The opinion, I think, has now become general that the system has been overdone."
And some gentlemen, speaking of their experience of certificated masters, say the qualifications are so high as to disqualify them us teachers of public schools. I have the opinion of another gentleman as to the character of pupil teachers—a gentleman whose opinions are to be tumid at greater length in the blue book. The Rev. Mr. Procter, who is referred to by the Commissioners, says—
"Except when the principal teacher is a very judicious, right-minded person, or the clergy or the other school managers exercise a constant watchfulness over these young people, and are at the pains of training them individually in morals and religion, many of them only become eye-servants, inflated with self-importance, overbearing towards the younger children, contemptuous towards their social equals, high-minded towards their parents, brothers, and sisters, and other relatives; very dressy out of school, and forward
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and deficient in outward tokens of respect towards their betters."
I have no objection to those who like pupil teachers using them; but what I do complain of is that the Government should insist on forcing these raw lads on the managers, when the managers are quite as competent to form an opinion upon the subject as the British House of Commons. The Government, in its benevolence, has done more than that, and has devised a special machinery for the benefit of the unassisted schools. As a mode of making schoolmasters cheap, and certificates easy, it is provided that all acting teachers shall be competent to go up and be examined for a certificate. The examination is professed to be as easy as possible, in order to bring all the schoolmasters, in some shape or other, under the control of the Government. I have the syllabus of the examination which the acting schoolmasters are to pass, and it is apparently a very simple and easy affair. [Mr. LOWE: "Hear, hear!"] The right hon. Gentleman cannot make it too simple for my argument, but he can make it too simple for the argument of Mr. Norris. Mr. Norris's argument is that the system of certificates is a great system of moral regeneration. I will read what he says about it—
"A thorough-going examination occupying a whole week of the Christmas holidays, in subjects which they had been advised to prepare twelve months before, stamping once for all those who succeeded in passing it, was just what all the worthy teachers approved. In my district, all the best of the old-fashioned teachers, though they had never been to a training school, sooner or later obtained their certificates. Thus we succeeded in our direct object, in discriminating teachers of sound from those of unsound attainment. But, indirectly, another object was gained, and a still more important one. In a few years the teachers of doubtful character, such as I have alluded to above, disappeared from our annual grant schools. No mere adventurer would face that certificate examination, occupying a whole week, and requiring a twelvemonth's preparation. A man must be in earnest to do that,"
He says again—
"The attainment of a certificate is to a very considerable extent a guarantee of moral worth, implying a course of self-denying study, the production of very complete testimonials, the strictest integrity during a six days' examination, and (now) two years' probation of character between the date of the examination and the issue of the parchment."
Mr. Norris merely represents the Privy Council Department, and, by way of showing what this certificate is worth, my right

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hon. Friend proposes to give it to all schoolmasters who have passed the easiest examination in the A B C of knowledge. What becomes of the moral test? My right hon. Friend cannot have it both ways. Either the certificate is, as Mr. Norris contends, a prize granted after a severe and searching examination, following a course of study and preparation, and testing the sincerity and self-denial of the candidate, or it is given upon the smallest possible pretext, and is therefore worth nothing. I defy my right hon. Friend to make out that the certificate such as he proposes is worth a farthing or is any guarantee of worth. But I go further, and I contend that the department has no right to impose the requirement of a certificate in the teeth of the wishes of the schoolmasters, and in the teeth of the intelligible objection that those who have been engaged all their lives in teaching ought not to go up for examination. I will read to the House what one of these first rate schoolmasters, Mr. Moses Angel, says about it—
But, as has been before stated, there were two classes of teachers, of which the one, certainly a minority, possessed, long before Lords' Committees existed, high qualifications for the posts they held. These men, good and true, had in some cases conducted large establishments for many years; in all cases had secured the well-doing of their pupils, the approbation of their employers, and the satisfaction of their own consciences—the mens conscia recti. These saw the degradation implied by the want of examination; they felt that to stoop to learn what they had successfully taught for so many years was to confess their lives a falsehood, their career a fraud; they felt that to submit to an investigation into attainments and capabilities which had been continually undergoing the severest of all tests, the daily wear and tear of intellectual questioning encouraged among their pupils, was to give no higher proof of superiority over the common herd than they had already afforded; they felt that to subject the firm and less pliant mind of mature age to the discipline and drill adapted to students fresh from the ranks and still barely beyond the years of boyhood, was to insult their self-esteem, to wound their reputation, to destroy their prestige."
Here is an exception to Mr. Norris's statement that all the best of the teachers hail with satisfaction this examination test. The second remedy which my right hon. Friend proposes is to manufacture a class of schoolmasters who shall he cheap, abundant, and suitable to the wants of all rural schools. Let us see who are these schoolmasters. They are ex pupil teachers—young men of from eighteen to twenty-five, who are to undertake the office of village schoolmasters upon pay equal to the pay of common labourers, at 12 s. a week, or £25 or £30
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a year; and Mr. Melville, my correspondent, says that plenty of them have gone out already. What I maintain is that those young men are unfit to be sent out, and that no manager of common sense, who knows anything about bringing up young people, would have one of them. I will give the evidence of a lady upon the subject who was examined by the Commissioners, and whose evidence appears in the blue-book. Mrs. Partridge, a lady in Herefordshire, says—
"I highly disapprove of mixed schools under a master. I have observed the bad effect upon the conduct of the girls educated at them; and well-thinking parents always object to it. Giving trained masters, generally, credit for strict morality, still girls should have female influence and female advice, and be kindly warned and cautioned by one of their own sex."
Let us see what the Commissioners themselves say with regard to female pupil teachers and how carefully they look after them. They provide that the pupil teachers shall be of the same sex as the principal teachers of the schools in which they are employed, and that in mixed schools female pupil teachers may receive instruction from the master, upon condition that the mistress is invariably present during the whole time of the lessons, and that the master and the pupil teacher are not both young and unmarried. My right hon. Friend very properly will not bring female pupil teachers under the instruction of young unmarried men; but is it right to send young unmarried men into all the mixed rural schools of the country, where the girls, who generally stay the longest, are often fourteen years of age? But perhaps the right hon. Gentleman may say, "We will supply you with mistresses." There is an objection to that also. One part of the system, and the most beneficial part of the system, is that of evening schools. Now, I put it to the House whether they think that a young mistress is a fit person to conduct an evening school in a village where the attendants are generally grownup lads and young men. Another objection is this:—What a manager most requires when he engages a master is that the man shall remain with him for a considerable period. Nothing is more inconvenient or subversive of the discipline of a school than constant changes of masters. If he employ a young man and a young woman, they are always looking out to better themselves. The young woman is looking out for a husband; and being a

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person of superior education, probably has less difficulty in meeting with a husband. The young man is always seeking a better situation, and the school is exposed to the injury of frequent changes. I cannot conceive a more certain way to ruin village schools than to supply them with young masters and mistresses. Allow me to call attention to another feature, which involves great hardship and is the real foundation for the proposals which I am about to make. On whom does the burden fall of supporting these village schools? The Commissioners tell us that the clergy are the persons who make up deficiencies—
"The heaviness of the burden borne by the clergy is imperfectly indicated even by such figures as these. It frequently happens that the clergyman considers himself responsible for whatever is necessary to make the accounts of the school balance, and thus he places himself towards the school in the position of a banker who allows a customer habitually to overdraw his account. He is the man who most feels the mischief arising from want of education. Between him and the ignorant part of his adult parishioners there is a chasm. They will not come near him, and do not understand him if he forces himself upon them. He feels that the only means of improvement is the education of the young, and he knows that only a small part of the necessary expense can be extracted from the parents. He begs from his neighbours, he begs from the landowners; if he fails to persuade them to take their fair share of the burden, he begs from his friends, and even from strangers; and at last submits most meritoriously and most generously to bear not only his own proportion of the expense, but also that which ought to be borne by others."
That evidence is borne out in every page of the book, and if the House will allow me, I will read one or two letters which show the manner in which this burden is borne by the clergy. Here is a letter from a gentleman who is the rector of a country parish, and who takes a great interest in the subject. He writes to me as follows:—
"I will give you my own case as an example of cases all round me. Fifteen years since I secured the services of a man who was not a certificated schoolmaster, but who still had great qualifications for his office. On the whole, I determined to retain him, supplementing his and his wife's teaching by my own and my wife's. The result was most satisfactory, and the school turned out well."
Another gentleman writes to me to this effect—
"If Government grants are made only to such schools as have certificated masters or pupil teachers, it is obvious that a number of parishes too poor or too small to maintain such teachers will suffer grievous wrong in many instances."
He then goes on to refer to the case of in-
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cumbents who, out of an income of £200 a year, are often obliged to pay £30 for the cost of their schools. Now, I beg the House to consider what it is to deduct £30 a year for the support of a school from an income of £200 or £300 a year, those schools all the time producing all the results which are sought for, the only ground for the refusal of Government aid in their case being that they cannot afford to employ masters who, if they did employ them, would require salaries far beyond the amount which they could afford to give. The whole of this book is, I may add, made up of accounts very much to the same effect. There are innumerable instances cited in which the burden of those schools does practically fall on the country clergy. Now, I think, that considering the interest which they have in the subject, and the respectability of their position, they ought to be credited with such an amount of common sense and with so large a share of the feeling of propriety as to be able to choose their own masters without such tests as my right hon. Friend suggests. He has his own means of testing those schools. He has his Inspectors, and that which I call upon him to do is to make those Inspectors do their duty. I venture to say, that if I were to tell any one Inspector that he could not say whether any three or four of those schools were properly conducted or not, he would think I was offering him an insult. Nay, more, I contend that any Member of this House would, after six months' practice, be able to form an opinion as to whether they did or did not come up to the Government test. For my own part, I should suppose that any one who has the least experience of children would have no difficulty in ascertaining the extent of a child's knowledge by the test of individual examination relied on by the Privy Council. The Government has therefore no pretence for saying that it wants additional tests beyond the examination of the Inspectors. I do not believe that my right hon. Friend will seriously contend that what he wants is to get a hold of some sort over every schoolmaster in the country where the schools share the grant. At all events, that is precisely what I refuse to give him.
I shall now, with the permission of the House, proceed to give my right hon. Friend the opinions of some of those Inspectors with respect to the value of the certificate system. I have been obliged to

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refer to the evidence laid before the Commission, because, I am sorry to say, I can no longer place that confidence in the reports of the Inspectors which I desire to do. My right hon. Friend admitted the other night, in answer to the right hon. Member for Droitwitch (Sir John Pakington), the difficulty of exercising an official censorship over those reports, and that it was not desirable to give us their free and full opinion, for fear they might clash with the Privy Council system. Happily, I have the reports of Inspectors which are not garbled, and from these I will quote. Here, for instance, is the report of Mr. Fraser. He says—
"The ties that often bind the managers of a school to the existing teacher—ties sometimes of a weak and mistaken charity, but more frequently of genuine and deserved respect and appreciation—are to be reckoned among the most influential causes that still keep many schools aloof from the system of Government aid. 'We are quite sensible of the advantages' I have heard managers say again and again; 'we wish we were in a position to accept them, but our present teacher is too old, or too timid, to be examined for a certificate, and we value him too highly to part with him, or to press him to take a step from which he himself shrinks.' And when I have seen schools conducted so admirably, and in all respects so efficient, as, e. g. Mr. Ricardo's boy's school at Berrow, or Mr. Baker's school at Monkland, under uncertificated, and in the latter case under an untrained teacher, I have fully admitted the force of the argument; and highly as I value the aid offered by the Committee of Council, which I regard as almost indispensable for the thorough efficiency of elementary schools, I should have shared the reluctance of these managers to change a system which was working so well, even were the schools my own."
That is the opinion of Mr. Fraser. I will now read to the House that of Mr. Winder, another Inspector, who says—
"The case of the existing schools not at present qualified for the grant is somewhat different. I saw several, both inspected and uninspected, sufficiently efficient to deserve the grant, if efficiency were the only test. Most of the latter would very gladly submit to inspection for the single purpose of getting the capitation money so long as they were certified to deserve it. It certainly does seem hard that these schools, which, as far as the country at large is concerned, are as meritorious as any other, should have all public aid denied, except on the condition of dismissing their tried and competent masters. That a master has not or cannot come up to a certain literary standard may be an excellent reason why he should not have the advanced education of pupil teachers in his hands, but it does not seem a very strong one for refusing to give him the means of teaching better the scholars whom he has proved that he can teach well."
Mr. Headley, in his report, says—
"Schools which are under Government inspec-
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tion and receive Government aid are, generally speaking, the best. They are usually found in the larger villages or towns. If in towns, they have the great advantage of more constant attendance. They are better supplied with funds, and have the services of a trained master or mistress. They are also generally taught with the aid of pupil teachers. But with all these advantages I do not think that reading and writing are better taught in these than in many others. The difference appears rather in the wider range of subjects introduced, e. g. geography, history, drawing, music, and also in the better order, discipline, and system."
Again, he says—
"I have not heard any complaints that certificated teachers devote too much time to the instruction of pupil teachers. But the impression which I have received from my visits to schools under certificated masters is that the elementary branches of education are not sufficiently attended to, the mechanical part of the work is not well done, the writing of the children can seldom be called good, the reading still more seldom.……In schools which are qualified for Government grants the teachers are persons of intelligence and information, the apparatus and organization are excellent, but I do not see the corresponding superiority in the art of teaching that might have been expected. When we come to the schools which do not reach the standard in funds or in numbers, which qualifies for a claim to Government grants, the teachers are either persons who have been trained for the employment, but have not obtained a certificate, or they are persons who have had no special training. Among the latter class are many who, though deficient in education, yet possess qualities of good sense, industry, and high character, which enable them to fill their position with success. Managers of schools who have such a master would seldom be willing to supersede him by a trained and certificated master. Masters of this class, if supported and aided by an active clergyman, are, I think, fully adequate to the wants of a country district."
That is the opinion of one of Her Majesty's Inspectors. Here is the opinion of Dr. Hodgson, another inspector—
"I have heard it objected, and I agree with the objection, that it is unwise (admitting the wisdom of the grant itself, of which I give no opinion) to exclude from the grant unregistered or uncertificated teachers, if their schools be found fairly efficient….To examine the master instead of his school is to prefer the worse to the better mode of ascertaining his efficiency, and is at variance with the rule of judging of the tree by its fruit."
Mr. Jenkins, another Inspector, says—
"The observations I have made in the course of this inquiry lead me to the conclusion that an extension of the capitation grant so as to include all schools in part or wholly supported by subscription, on the condition of submitting to inspection, would tend to the promotion of education, and to the improvement of its quality in rural districts where the population is too poor to provide the salary necessary to secure the services of a certificated or registered teacher."

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This is the opinion of Mr. Wollaston, Diocesan Inspector of Sussex—
"I never recommend a highly-trained master or mistress to the school of a purely agricultural parish. I have almost invariably found that the masters and mistresses sent out from our training institutions do not attend to the lower classes in a school. They have a few show boys or girls in the first class. I find, on looking at the list of schools in my district (classed privately in order of merit), that neither the first, second, nor third are under a master or mistress trained at our college. I am not at all prejudiced against the system of training—quite the reverse; I merely state a fact, so far as it has come under my own observation. It becomes a question whether we are not training and teaching the masters and mistresses too high for the country village schools."
Now, let me read one or two passages from letters which I received from country clergymen who are managers of schools, and who have had the best possible opportunities of judging of the merits of the system. The rector of Offwell, in Devonshire, says—
"Mr. Norris dwells upon the necessity of a certificate as a test of the master's moral character. Like the clergyman you allude to in your letters to him, I can assure him that I have failed in two instances in certificated masters. And now, having had instead, for some years, a self-trained one, who gives great satisfaction, and whose scholars have had more prizes at an annual examination of the district candidates, from town and country schools around, than those of any other master but one (that one also uncertificated), I am shut out from all Government help. It is rarely the case that a certificated master stays long in a little country village such as this, where it is difficult to muster above thirty children at the most, and generally not twenty-five."
Then I have a remarkable letter, which I particularly wish the House to do me the favour to listen to, because the writer, who does not give his name, has devoted a great deal of time to an investigation of the whole subject of education. He says—
"Some years ago, when certificates were certainly less abundant than in the present day—but the principle upon which they were given was the same—I obtained a list of a number of the best masters at different classes of schools both in town and agricultural districts, and for a long time travelled about in various parts of the country to learn the different modes of education, to examine the working of the systems, and to ascertain the actual practical results. I was acting purely as an amateur; and, having plenty of time on my hands, I never allowed in my mind an opinion of a school till I had personally remained in it, generally at intervals, during at least one day's routine. I afterwards, with the consent of the master, examined the classes; but my special attention was directed to the boys separately, and very frequently at their own homes; my only object was to find out by what system the greatest amount of real, practical, useful knowledge was
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conveyed. The resulting impression on my own mind was not at all favourable to the certificated masters. About that time the mastership fell vacant in a school, with tolerably good payment, and of which I had been placed on the committee, though only residing as a visitor in the neighbourhood. A number of candidates applied, and several with high certificates. I strongly advocated one whose qualifications appeared to me very superior, but who had never been in a training school, and was at the time employed in a printer's office: he was elected. Not very long after the second mastership in a Government establishment became vacant; the pay and allowances were very superior, and the candidates were in proportion. The number was first reduced to some thirty, then to six or seven; these were strictly tested in the school by special commissioners, and the man of whom I have just spoken was appointed to the office: he had no certificate, but was tested by his work. In the course of my school visiting I went to one at a most flourishing town, where the salary was good and all the educational appliances of the highest order. There the master had the strongest certificate; for a long time I frequently attended the school, and found that nine-tenths of the children were very deficient, in comparison with very inferior schools, as to the most common and essential points of education. Having, of course, seen a great deal of the master, and knowing that he was really most zealous in his duties, I ventured to tell him my opinion both on the state of the boys and even the discipline and condition of the school; of course, he did not agree, till I suggested the means of fairly judging for himself."
Now, just listen to this—
"He then fully confessed his surprise—immediately sent seventeen boys to be punished. I most strongly demurred to this, and saved all but two; but it showed convincingly he could not manage—did not even know the real state of his school. He was a most gentlemanly, agreeable, well-informed man—one whom I should have been willing to esteem and admire as a friend; but with all his acquirements he had not the ability to teach, or rather to teach the only subjects for which, in his position, acquirements were of any value. He had a special class of some twenty or thirty boys, and, as to them, I have no doubt they would have passed a good examination in that acme of absurdity, published 'for the use of pupil teachers and the upper classes' of schools—the Atlas of Isothermal Lines; but the 150 other boys would have been better taught at a good dame's school (using the term dame's school for the system of education, not as under a female teacher). But when the country pays for education it is not the forced plants—the pines and peaches—that it wants to cultivate, but the solid food for the people. In this latter case, the master was appointed by his certificate, but it was no voucher for his ability to teach; he was rewarded, like a college fellowship, for labour be had done; but we want men able and willing for work that is to be done."
I think that a very important and a very good letter; at all events, it affords proofs that in the opinion of a gentleman so truly and conscientiously interested in the sub-

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ject, and so well able to judge as the writer of this letter evidently is, a certificate is no guarantee whatever of the excellence of a master. Let me now give the House a letter from a gentleman, whose name I will not mention, but whose signature will he seen in the front rank of literary men, and who himself occupies one of the highest educational posts in the country—
"I have received your circular as to your Resolutions in the House of Commons for the 20th. I fully agree with them. I have had enough experience of certificated masters to know that in most cases, if they are good enough for their work, they are above their work. They are ambitious—generally to become parsons. Thinking teaching a bore, and having no family or other ties to the parish, they long to be away from it. Moreover, they generally think that they know better than the parson. I will have none of them."
That is the opinion of a gentleman who, as I have said, holds one of the highest positions in this country in connection with education. I will now give the declaration of another friend, whose name likewise I refain from quoting, regarding the uses to which certificated teachers may be applied, and the abuses of the system which my right hon. Friend administers. The author of the letter writes with the most perfect simplicity and with entire Unconsciousness as to what its effect wilt be; therefore I do not mention his name. He says—
"I wish to write a line in reply to your circular. I do not think your Resolution would affect my parochial school so long as. I am vicar,"—and why?—"as I shall probably, continue to use a certificated master, having occasion to employ him with my own pupils."
My correspondent is an old friend, who has private pupils, and finds it very convenient to keep a certificated master, paid out of the pockets of, the Treasury, to assist in teaching those private, pupils; so that here is the case of a clergyman—acting as many other clergymen are doing—employing one of these highly-qualified and no doubt competent teachers in the work of educating the sons of gentlemen. Having obtained his services for a distinct purpose, he is deriving a personal benefit from the labours which are paid for by the State. I have other letters from gentlemen complaining, that having to get rid of bad certificated masters, and to employ good uncertificated masters, the grant to them had been stopped in consequence. It is objected by some persons, and I have no doubt, will be thrown in my teeth this evening, that if my Resolution were carried,
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it would operate seriously to the detriment of training colleges. I think I can bring evidence to bear on that subject also. Here is the opinion of a gentleman who was for five years principal of the Chichester Training College—
"Having been the principal of the Chichester Diocesan Training College from 1842 to 1847, I may have, perchance, a practical as well as a theoretical knowledge of public education. My opinion is, that your proposed Resolutions for Friday the 20th instant will be of great service to village and other schools, where there is, of necessity, little local support, but that they will be taken advantage of by many schools now under the rules of the Revised Code; and, if so, will they not lessen the already insufficient demand for certificated masters, and afford further ready justification to certificated masters, lodged, boarded, and taught almost entirely at the public expense for a special service, for leaving that service? But this leads to some points which, when the Code was being revised last year, ought to have been, and which now ought to be, brought to the consideration of the House of Commons. Having a list of men trained at a training college during five years, more than one third of whom, to my knowledge, are no longer schoolmasters, I speak advisedly when I say:—1. There are too many training colleges; they are too expensive, more so than many good boarding-schools; they supply much learning; little practice in the real work of teaching. 2. These training colleges send forth and add every year too many certificated masters to an already superabundant supply. 3. There are far too many pupil teachers—an ever-increasing army, not possible, according to the death-rate of existing schoolmasters, to find employment in schools by vacancies. 4. The consequence is that certificated masters and pupil teachers readily feel themselves justified in leaving their peculiar calling for other employments less onerous or more agreeable or remunerative; and thus a large sum of the taxes is lost to the public intention, though not to individual gain. 5. The question, therefore, arises, should Government continue to expend so much money upon certain individuals—more than many a respectable parent is able to spare for his own child—under the idea of fitting them for a calling which many of these individuals know they do not mean to follow, and which others cannot follow; but the training for which, they all know, is most useful for private ends—for 'knowledge is power'? 6. The simple remedy or requirement seems to be to put the training colleges on their original footing—i. e. on their own resources."
That is the opinion of the principal of a training college as to the excessive supply of teachers under the existing system. I will not weary the House by reading more extracts with reference to this part of the subject; but I must say a word or two upon a point to which I have not yet adverted—I mean the extravagance of giving money where it is not required. One of the first letters in this blue-book of mine, at page 49, relates to a school at Fairford, in Dorsetshire—

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"The school there is endowed with £150 per annum. They can therefore command a certificated master. The parishioners have never been called upon to subscribe to the school, nor, I believe, has the clergyman, simply because the endowment, with the payments from the children, are ample for all their needs. The trustees of the school, however, desired Government inspection. Mr. Bellairs was accordingly instructed to proceed to Fairford. He said, however, that he could not continue to inspect the school unless they had an annual grant. As the master was certificated, there was no difficulty; and as the school was large, so was the grant. Will you believe it, that a grant of £130 per annum was thrust upon a school not needing or desiring it, because they could not get inspection without; while the adjacent little village schools, struggling unbefriended to keep their heads above water, can get nothing, on account of some grossly absurd rule about certificates, though the results produced in these same village schools may be all that are desired?"
The writer of that letter referred me for its confirmation to the vicar of the parish, the Rev. Mr. Rice, who happens to be a personal friend of mine, and who wrote to me on the subject. From his letter it appears that the endowment is not £150, but £120; and he adds that the grant was not thrust upon them, because they were very glad to get it. I have no doubt that few clergymen would be unwilling to receive a grant, no matter what might be the endowments of their schools, but it does seem to me to be a reductio ad absurdum of the whole system to grant the public money voted by this House to schools of this class—endowed schools, already in possession of £120 a year. If any charity whatever would fitly come under the lash of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, it would be such a school receiving £120 a year by endowment and an equal sum from the Privy Council Office. There is only one other letter to which I will refer, and that only in consequence of the respect which is due to the writer. I have been favoured with a letter from the author of The Christian Year, the Rev. Mr. Keble, in which he expresses his cordial concurrence—and he is no mean authority—with the view which I take of this subject.
I will not trouble the House with any more remarks upon the second Resolution, which is the more important of the two, but I should like to make a few observations with regard to the first, which defines the class of schools to which I think the second Resolution is properly applicable—namely, schools not being private schools—that is, not being kept by private persons for profit. The Commissioners, I am
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aware, did not draw that distinction. They thought that all schools, whether kept by private persons for their own profit or not, should receive money levied from the public in the shape of county rates; but I must say that after giving the subject the best consideration in my power I am not able to come to that conclusion. I think that the subsidizing of such private schools would introduce an altogether new and dangerous principle, and therefore I do not propose to include them in the terms of my Resolution. There are also other reasons against doing so; one is the character of most of these schools. They are generally of a very inferior description. The testimony of almost all persons who have examined them agrees upon that point. Mr. Hare says—
"In general little satisfaction is found in visiting private schools of an elementary description, after witnessing the procedure of a well-regulated public school. With extremely rare exceptions, everything—place and furniture, books and apparatus, master and scholars—everything is painfully inferior."
There is another difficulty with which we should be met if we were to assist these private schools—and that is that there is a large class of private schools of a superior description intended for the middle classes, which at present suffer considerably, not only from the operation of the Government grant, but from the competition of schools supported by voluntary subscriptions—I mean the inferior grammar schools in country towns, which are very seriously injured, even under the existing system, by the competition of publicly-assisted and publicly-supported schools. I have received a letter from the master of a small village school in Oxfordshire, complaining that his school is being seriously injured by the number of children of a higher class who attend the national school of the place. This is a difficulty which I have often felt, which I suppose is a recognised difficulty, and one which we can hardly meet. Whenever a good village school is established, it is sure to be attended by children of a higher class than those for whom it was intended. I might mention a school in my own village. The children of farmers attend, paying only the usual 2d. a week, and I find it difficult to refuse them. There is no other equally good school in the neighbourhood, and it is difficult to raise the fee without sanctioning the principle of having two different classes of children in the school, which,

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I think, is rather a dangerous principle to introduce. It is therefore generally found best to admit children of that description, although it may to a certain extent be considered an abuse of private charity, and, still more, an abuse of public grants, whenever the children of the middle classes attend schools which are intended only for the children of the lower classes. That difficulty would certainly be increased if private schools likewise were supported by Government grants. I have therefore thought it right to exclude them from any share of the grant; the more especially as I believe that in time these private schools will become extinguished, as they cannot sustain the competition to which they are exposed by a system of public schools.
There is, however, another description of schools which I think ought to participate in the grant—namely, the ragged schools. I know that there is in the minds of some persons a prejudice against ragged schools, because it is supposed that they offer a premium to dissolute and negligent parents. It has been attempted to be shown that the ragged schools are used by children of the same class as attend the ordinary national schools, but that the parents of the one class are respectable and those of the other are not; and therefore it has been contended by some persons that ragged schools ought not to be encouraged. I do not think that that argument can be fairly maintained. There are other considerations to be attended to than are included within its scope. After all, we must remember that there are such persons as parents, who, being needy themselves, know how to give good gifts to their children. It may so happen that a drunken and dissolute parent may have enough decency and morality left in him to wish that his child should be better than himself. The children of such persons go to the ragged schools, and I do not think that such schools ought to be excluded from a fair share of the Government grant, if they comply with that which I conceive to be the only just test which can be applied to any school. I have trespassed too long, I fear, on the attention of the House. I only hope that if hon. Members have done me the favour to attend to my arguments, and if they have been in any measure convinced by them, they will put a stop to this illiberal and pedantic monopoly; and that they will do one of two things, and either compel the Educational Department to contribute some portion—for I
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make no exhorbitant or immoderate demand—of those funds which are liberally placed at its disposal, to those excellent, praiseworthy, and self-denying gentlemen, who constitute the management of most of the rural schools of this country, on their fulfilling and coming up to the test which the inspectors may require; or else that they will relieve these managers and the country at large from contributing any longer to a grant which becomes odious as soon as it is proved to be unjust. The hon. Member concluded by moving the Resolution.
MR. BUXTONsaid, he rose to second the Motion. He hoped the House would observe that there was nothing in the Motion of his hon. Friend which indicated that the system of giving certificates to teachers upon examination was to be done away, or even weakened in the least degree. Neither he nor his hon. Friend sought to place the schools under non-certified teachers upon the same level as those of which the teachers had obtained certificates. Such a radical change would be rash. All that they wanted was, that under certain conditions, all schools for the working class should he open to inspection, and that for each child who was actually found proficient in reading, writing, and arithmetic, the managers should receive that portion of the grant which was to be based on such proficiency; but that the attendance grant should still be confined to schools under certificated teachers. When the subject was brought forward last year, he was one of those who, after hearing the debate, in the hope of being led by it to a fair conclusion, felt that the matter was one in which it was not possible to decide without a great deal of inquiry and thought, and therefore abstained from voting. Since that time he had carefully gone into the question, and it was perfectly clear that, with the modification he had now spoken of, the proposed change would do almost unmixed good.
The doubts which he, in common with others, had felt upon the subject were three-fold. In the first place, there was the question whether the alteration would not involve a breach of faith with vested interests. Then, there was the question whether it would not be at variance with the general policy of the country, both with respect to expense and also with respect to the maintenance of that great educational organization which had been set up. Lastly, there was the question whether the change would injure or

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whether it would advance the education of the poor.
The first question was, whether the alteration would not be unfair towards the certificated masters and the training schools. If the grant for attendance were only given to those schools the masters of which were certificated, that alone would be a sufficiently powerful inducement to every manager to get certificated teachers if he could possibly do so. More than that, if it really were the case that the certificated masters were better teachers than the uncertificated—and that, of course, was the essence of the argument of those who pleaded for them—it must then follow that the certificated teachers would be most likely to secure to the school a larger proportion of the proficiency grant. The managers would therefore have strong pecuniary motives for getting a certificated teacher—first, with the view of securing the attendance grant; and secondly, with the view of obtaining the proficiency grant, through the children being better up in their reading, writing, and arithmetic. But even if those pecuniary motives were less powerful, who could doubt that managers would be eager to get the boat masters they could? Certificated teachers would therefore still be able to Bell their services at full value, and there would he the strongest motives to young men entering on that profession to obtain certificates, and therefore to go to the training colleges. The alteration, then, would cause no wrong to any vested interest. On the other side, justice demanded the change. The managers of schools were taxed for the educational grant; and if their children were well taught, it was unfair to debar them from sharing in it by an arbitrary restriction. It was also unjust to the masters of such schools.
Then came the question whether they would not be ruining that mighty educational organization which had been erected with so much labour and outlay during the last thirty years. By degrees that system had been developed with its certificated masters, its pupil teachers, and so forth. Last year they had made an important reform in the mode of administering it; would it not be rash again to set their hands to it, and perhaps tumble it down altogether? Now, he allowed that nothing could be worse in the administration of affairs than to be setting up one day and pulling down another, and in a love of tinkering to forget the inestimable value of stability. And
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certainly, had they sought to sweep away the certificate system, they would be dealing a very deadly blow to the educational organization; but what they actually sought would leave it untouched. If the proposed modification were adopted, there would still be certificated masters. To them, and to them alone, would pupil teachers be apprenticed. The training schools would still find it worth while to educate young men with a view to obtaining these certificates. That pupil teacher system, to which so many were warmly attached, and which he believed to have been invaluable, would not be one jot or one tittle the worse. He was unable, therefore, to discover that their educational system would receive the smallest injury.
He would now pass on to the question of expense. They must all, he thought, have felt some anxiety of late years in looking at the rapid increase of outlay under the head of Education, and he hoped they would all shrink from making any lavish increase in that direction. But the proposed alteration would, at the outside, cause an increase of £200,000 per annum. It was shown last year that, in all probability, the amount that under the Revised Code would be given under the head of the proficiency grant to the schools now under inspection, would amount to a little less than £300,000 a year. These schools contained 1,000,000 children. That left a balance of 600,000 children in the other working-class schools. They might fairly suppose that only half a million of those children, at the very outside, would obtain the grant. In that case—and that was a most liberal computation—the increased outlay in the shape of the proficiency grant would only reach £150,000 per annum; but he would give a margin of £50,000 for the increase of staff expenses, salaries of inspectors, and so forth. He had no doubt himself that in making that allowance he was going a great deal further than the case really demanded. It must be remembered that under the Revised Code it was reckoned that a saving of more than £100,000 a year would be made; consequently, half the proposed increase would be, so to speak, provided for by that saving. He owned, however, that even that increase was serious. At the same time, he utterly denied that the argument from expense was a legitimate one to use in order to prevent schools that now lay beyond the action of the national system from being connected with it. The country

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had deliberately accepted the principle that stimulus and superintendence should be given by the Government to the education of the working class. That conclusion had been come to, and had been acted upon for many years, with the goodwill of the whole people; and it was an anomaly, not to say an absurdity, deliberately to adopt such a policy, and in accordance with it to give lavish aid to a certain portion of the schools, but, after all, to shut out one-third of them upon the ground of expense. It clearly would be right rather to give small aid to all, so as to cover the whole area, than to give abundant help to a few and none to others. It was a breach of principle, nay it was a breach of common sense, to let their frugality lead to such an arbitrary distinction. These, however, were comparatively secondary considerations.
The real, the essential question was, would the change be likely to make or to mar the work the State had undertaken, of raising the character of the working class? That was the end they all had in view. What they wanted was, that in days to come the working class should be raised to the highest practicable point of intelligence and morality. It was with that view that they had established an immense educational machine. Would their machine be more or would it be less potent if they made the change? Now, on the one hand, the only way in which the alteration would damage education would be if it caused non-certificated teachers to be substituted for certificated. But he had already given reasons for believing that that would very rarely, if ever, be the case. Let them, however, assume, that in some considerable number of schools such a result would follow. His hon. Friend the Member for Berkshire, in a speech last year, and in some of his letters, had given solid grounds for doubting whether the certificated teachers were so very much better than the non-certificated. He (Mr. Buxton), however, was ready to take for granted that the difference in value was very great indeed, and that it would be a serious loss in those cases to lose the certificated and substitute a non-certificated master or mistress. But it might be observed in passing that the managers would be likely soon to find out their mistake if they were in reality getting an inferior teacher. However, let them grant the outside of damage that would be done to education in that way. But then they must weigh, on the other side, the immense increase of value that would be given to
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the education of the children in those schools which, unless the rule be modified, would be excluded from connection with the Committee of Council. They must bear in mind the striking fact, that although the so-called National System had been at work for a great number of years, schools containing 600,000 children of the working class were debarred from connection with it. Some of them, no doubt, from various motives influencing their managers, or from other circumstances, would not in any case be brought under the Committee of Council. But they might fairly believe that the managers of five-sixths of those schools would be very glad indeed to connect themselves with the Board, to receive inspection, and to obtain grants, were it not that, from various causes, their teachers had not obtained certificates. And let them not give way to the delusion that the reason why so vast a number of masters and mistresses had not obtained certificates was, that they were too ignorant, or too immoral, to be able to obtain them. In a small number of cases that was true. But in by far the greater number the reason simply was that the school was a small one in some outlying district. It would not be possible for the managers to obtain as a teacher of such schools the services of a person "who was able [he was quoting Mr. Norris] to give a year's hard study to the subjects on which he or she would be examined," and, further, to give a whole week to the examination, involving the expense of the journey and of board during that time, and to pass successfully an examination which, unless it was to be degraded into a useless absurdity, must really show that a man or woman had a highly-cultivated mind. It would not be either practicable or desirable for petty schools in agricultural districts to be superintended by teachers with such high qualifications, pecuniary and mental, as those which the certificate must imply. It was the vainest thing in the world—it was utterly against common sense to hope, or even to wish, that the mass of small schools, for the poorest class, could have teachers of so high an order. The instrument would be too valuable for the work to be done. Such schools were not unworthy of aid; they might be very efficient for the purpose for which they were intended. But, though they could not hope ever to obtain certificated teachers for those schools, it would be of the highest value to them to be examined by inspectors sent down from the Government. Nothing could give a

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stimulus so potent as that, and he lamented extremely that the existing restriction should deprive half a million children of such a vast advantage. But, besides the advantage of inspection, the Government grant would enable the managers to adopt a better apparatus, and in every way to improve the education they were bestowing; and it seemed to him as clear as daylight that the good they would be doing to the education of the working classes, by giving these benefits to those outlying schools would a thousand times outweigh the possible contingent evil that might arise, here and there, from non-certificated teachers being substituted for those with certificates. These, be it remembered, were the very schools that wanted aid. The schools for the upper part of the working class in the wealthiest districts were, almost without exception, under the Government Board. But that portion of the working class which most wanted training, and from whose want of training the country suffered most severely, was found in schools of the lowest class, by far the greater number of which were at present debarred from those benefits of which he had spoken. If it be the fact that Government superintendence and aid really made the training in the schools better, it would be wiser to throw the whole of its force upon the lowest class of schools, rather than, as now, to exclude that class from all aid, and concentrate all endeavours upon the schools of a higher rank. But more than that, he had no doubt that the effect would be very good upon the schools that were already under the aid of the Council. At present they had not that stimulus which they ought to have from competition. They received the whole aid, while many other schools near them were deprived of it. Now, if those additional schools were in that respect placed on the same level with them, the effect of that touch of free trade would be to make them exert themselves more vigorously. Upon the whole, it seemed to him that the proposed change would not ruin, or in any way endanger their educational organization. It would not involve the country in extravagant expense. It would not be a breach of justice, but would, in fact, do justice to those who were at present wronged. In the long run it would spread the blessings of a sound education over a far wider space, and would give an additional stimulus to that good education which already existed.
Motion made, and question proposed,
"That it is the opinion of this House, That the sums annually voted by Parliament for Educational purposes ought to be made applicable to all the poorer schools throughout the Country (not being private schools, or carried on for profit), in which the attendance and examination of the children exhibit the results required, under the Revised Code, by Her Majesty's Inspectors of schools."
MR. LOWE: Before I offer any remarks, I wish to ask my hon. Friend the Member for Berkshire whether it is his intention to persevere with his second Resolution. [Mr. WALTER: Certainly. That is the Resolution to which I attach the most importance.] Then I think my hon. Friend and his seconder scarcely appreciate the gravity of the step they have resolved to take. They have placed on the papers of this House Resolutions embodying directions which I, in the management of the Department which I have a share of governing, am to obey. I have endeavoured, as well as I could, to make myself master of these Resolutions, and have come down prepared to give my reasons why I cannot agree to them. But what have my hon. Friends done? They have moved and seconded the first Resolution in speeches which are entirely contradictory to its spirit; and not only that, but they do not offer the least explanation of parts of the Resolution which to me are utterly incomprehensible. Suppose they carry that Resolution—a Resolution contradicted by their own speeches, a Resolution which contains very important matter to which they have not made the slightest allusion—what course am I to take? I object exceedingly to the proceedings of the hon. Gentleman. It is not fair to a person in my situation, whose words are weighed and scanned with more minuteness perhaps than those of any other public functionary, because upon what I may say depend the pecuniary interests of many classes who receive grants of the public money—it is not fair to give notice of one proposition, and then change it without giving any intimation or warning of the change. Sir, I am bound to great care and circumspection in every word I utter, and therefore I have a right to expect that hon. Gentlemen who make a Motion after months of notice and preparation will condescend to make one which conforms to their speeches, or that they will make speeches which conform to their Motion. The House has heard the speeches of the Mover and

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Seconder, and hon. Members will gather from those speeches that it is to be optional with the managers of all schools whether they will employ a certificated teacher or not; but in case they do not employ a certificated teacher, they are not to receive the grant for attendance. Very well, Sir, that is the speech; now hearken to the Motion—
"That it is the opinion of this House that the sums annually voted by Parliament for educational purposes ought to be made applicable to all the poorer schools."
The Motion, then, was applicable to all the poorer schools; and yet the hon. Gentleman expressly made certain exceptions. The Resolution went on to say—
"All the poorer schools throughout the country (not being private schools or carried on for profit), in which the attendance and examination of the children exhibit the results required, under the Revised Code, by Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools."
Now, I ask whether it is fair to the public or to me to come down and make a Motion, and then strike out of it a certain part? I mention this because I am not going to shirk the question. If I could get over my duty by reading extracts of letters from clergymen and others, as the hon. Gentleman did, I should consider it a very easy task; but it is not so. I am bound to be most careful not to commit the Department I represent; and I certainly feel that I have been rather taken advantage of by the manner in which this Motion has been brought forward. But this is not all. Not only does the Motion contradict the speeches of the two hon. Gentlemen, but it contains a proposition which I cannot think was intended, it is so monstrous and unreasonable; but not one word was said with regard it. The construction of the Resolution would be this—that in any one of the "poorer schools," whatever that means, for no definition is given, where on examination pupils are found exhibiting the results required under the Revised Code, although there might be not only no certificated teacher—although the school might be a sty as regards cleanliness, and a bedlam as regards order—although it should not be divided into classes, and should exhibit a total disregard of sanitary arrangements—although the master might have the worst character—although the whole thing were done in the very worst way—as this Motion is worded, I should be bound to give to that school, if any children passed the examination, and the proper attendance could be shown, as
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ample a grant as to the best-regulated school. That is the proposition, and I really feel at a loss how to deal with it. I am quite sure, if you debated it for hours, it would be impossible the House could pass such a proposition. But my hon. Friend now says he intends to move his second Resolution. I can make nothing of it. It involves a proposition manifestly absurd. It would be offering a large premium on schools that should not be clean, decent, or well managed. It would be as if saying to schools—If you have certificated teachers, you shall have every rule sternly enforced against you; but if you break through the wishes of the Privy Council—if you have not certificated teachers—then you shall be exempt from those rules and receive the very same grant. I should then be throwing the whole weight of my Department against decency, order, and good management.
My hon. Friend, whose abilities I do not wish, in the least, to disparage, should have taken the trouble to acquire that information which could alone enable him to deal with this subject. He has assumed that I shall object to his Resolutions on the ground of the vested interests of the teachers. It is not my intention to raise any such objection, and the concession he offers I am not disposed to take, being quite satisfied, that if this concession were made—if we were to say that a manager employing an uncertificated teacher should obtain the grant on examination of the pupils, just as if the teacher had been certificated, there would be but one result—that is, there would be an agitation commenced founded on exactly the same arguments, that the only thing to be looked to was results, and that if these were obtained, no matter for the rubbishing certificate of the teacher. We should then have given up that high principle on which we can stand—that we are bound to test those to whom we intrust the education of the young at an expenditure of so much public money; we should be obliged to give up certificated teachers altogether. That would be ridiculous. Examination is easily borne down by pressure. It requires all the support we can give it. It requires a good inspection and good teachers up to the mark. We must maintain the standard. The thing must stand on those three feet; take away one and it topples over. I should utterly despair of maintaining the standard if the certificate were broken down. The standard of the teacher would speedily degenerate, and the

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whole matter would become a mere scramble for the public money. The expenditure would increase, and there would be no security whatever for efficiency. I cannot assent to such a proposition.
The objection I have is, that the Government should make grants to any school where they have not tested the teacher. Passing over other matters, I will address myself to what I always understood was the real question, as to whether we ought or ought not to maintain in our schools certificated teachers. My hon. Friend has thrown it out somewhat in his speech, and more largely in the letters he read, that it was not the practice of the Privy Council to attend to the quality of the teachers, and that this was left to the managers. It is impossible to give a more inaccurate account of the matter. When the Privy Council first meddled in the question, it was under the guidance of Earl Russell and the late Marquess of Lansdowne—two of the most experienced statesmen in the country. Their first effort, made in 1839, was to improve the teachers in the schools. They attempted to form a training college, in order to raise the character of the teaching in the country. They were defeated by the Episcopal bench; and being unable to do so, they desisted altogether from making grants towards the sustentation of schools, and contented themselves for seven years with making grants for buildings. In 1846 they renewed their efforts to found a training college in order to raise the character of the teachers, and granted payments to teachers and pupil teachers which almost absorbed the first grants for education. So anxious were those members of the Committee of Council, who are now accused of being indifferent to the quality of the teaching, that the qualification of masters should be thoroughly tested, that it was the practice of the inspector not only to examine the children, but the master himself. That practice continued until 1853, when the present system was introduced, that no master should be permitted to receive aid from the Government without a certificate of qualification, that certificate being only given after examination. That system has lasted to the present time; and I think we have had no reason to regret the part we took in that matter. People may differ in opinion upon some points of the system, but there can be no doubt as to the benefit conferred upon schools by giving them really efficient teachers, in raising the standard
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both of managers, schools, and teachers, and maintaining it firmly as it has been for now these ten years. If the Privy Council have done any good by their labours in this department, it has been in this respect. And it has not been done without cost. Of the £6,700,000 which has been spent on the education of the people by the Privy Council I compute not far from £5,000,000 has been expended on this very object of raising the character of the teachers.
My hon. Friend says he is going to move his second Resolution, that the teachers shall no longer be required to hold certificates; in other words, he says you are still at liberty to spend £100,000 per annum in training and testing your teachers; but when you have so tested and trained them, you shall not be at liberty to give the public the advantage of the knowledge so obtained. You must show no distinction: certificate or no certificate, you shall intrust the care of the young indifferently to the master who has and to the master who has not a certificate. You must avoid a monopoly, although that monopoly be based in knowledge and experience. The hon. Gentleman has so framed his Resolution as to turn prohibition into protection. He says you may dispense with a certificated teacher; we impose a penalty, but it will not be enforced. His argument goes to that extent. Now, have we been wrong in what we have done? We have 9,115 certificated teachers, and I will venture to say that there is not a single one of all the schools in which they are employed where cleanliness, decency, neatness, order, and discipline are not enforced—not a single one of all these masters or mistresses, varying in many respects as to their qualifications, that is not perfectly able to give the instruction that is required. There may be exceptions, but, as a whole, they are highly respectable, useful and laborious. It is easy to pick out a few instances to the contrary and make the most of them. I am not prepared to say that there is not matter for regret in the conduct of any of the teachers. The training college system was originally pitched far too high. My hon. Friend read many extracts from the evidence taken before the Commission condemning many things that were wrong, but he has never given himself the trouble to inquire what alterations have been made in the system. He read a long and ridiculous catalogue of the high qualifications required, while the whole of them have been swept away from

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the syllabus under our direction. The only one that is retained is Latin. Of course, I do not mean to say that young persons were not conceited and guilty of many follies—indeed, I have been obliged myself to point them out, but just consider what was their position. The public money was poured out all at once so lavishly that the schoolmaster became the most difficult animal in the world to train. Young men and Women of twenty or twenty-one who had just left school, and who ought to have been placed for eight or ten years under a good master to learn their business, all at once found themselves at the head of large establishments with hundreds of pupils, with pupil teachers, with large salaries and high position. No wonder these things made them mad with vanity. The House would have a faint idea if they suppose the case of a sizar or Bible clerk, having just taken a degree, and perhaps not a very good one, who finds himself, by some incomprehensible stroke of fortune, suddenly placed at the head of Eton or Harrow. One cannot be surprised that these young people's heads were turned. They have not always been placed in judicious hands. I have heard of their being told continually, that great as may be the dignity of the Commander-in-Chief, or the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Prime Minister, the glory of those offices was nothing as compared with the glory and usefulness of those who imparted instruction to children. They were taught to consider that their social position was not appreciated; that the times were not enlightened enough to permit of their value being fully understood, and other such nonsense. It is ridiculous to use arguments founded upon that highly exceptional state of things, which has now passed away.
I will just mention another thing. There used to be three classes of certificates, as though they were degrees, and, indeed, those certificates were not only degrees, but fellowships, because by them young men immediately received extra payments, according to the classes of certificates which they held. That tended to puff them up, and to set them over people who were quite as useful, although they had not passed so good an examination. We have now altered that, and in future no master will be placed in any but the fourth class; and if he rises higher, it must be by a certificate of good conduct, and not of examination. It would have been better if all these things had been stated to be of five or six years' standing, and not be raked
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up now against me. We have been labouring incessantly for the last three years to abate these evils; there is not one for which we have not proposed a remedy, and yet they are put forward now as if they still existed—take the case of the Revised Code. But my hon. Friend has produced not only a speech, but a blue-book. He has sent round for information, and the questions to which he sought replies have led to the production of the most extraordinary blue-book I ever saw. Here is a circular addressed to a certain number of clergymen, for I perceive the printed letter begins "Reverend Sir," and therefore excludes all laymen—and it appears from the replies that the letter was sent exclusively to clergymen in charge of small parishes. What did my hon. Friend want? Did he want information as to the public interest in the matter, or who was right or wrong upon this question? Why did he confine his inquires to one single class of clergymen in remote parishes? Why did he thus seek for information upon a great question of public policy if he wanted the truth? But if he wanted clamour and support from interested persons, who thought such a Motion would relieve them, he did take the right course. It has been an appeal to a class of persons, almost all of whom are prejudiced upon pecuniary grounds. The hon. Gentleman asked them, in fact, whether they thought that doing what they now do, and with out making any further effort, they ought to get as much as if they had made further efforts, and they all say, "We should like it." If my hon. Friend had gone further, and asked them whether they thought it might not be as well to intrust them with the examination of their own schools, and that the Government would be content to make grants upon their own reports of the progress of the children in them, does he think he would have met with any strenuous opposition from Gentlemen who all begin their answers to his questions by saying, "My school is a heavy expense to me. The squires will not do anything, and the farmers will do nothing." [Laughter.] It may be a very good joke, but I do not think it is, for I commiserate the gentlemen who have been thus brought before the public. But to seek to invest them with a position which these gentlemen, in their letters, do not pretend to fill, and to think to influence the House by such evidence, so taken from one class, does appear to me a mixture of astuteness

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and credulity of which I did not think the hon. Member would have been capable. These gentlemen say, "Certainly, we did not like the Revised Code; but now that it has passed, let us carry it out logically. The logical consequence of the Revised Code is clearly that there should be no more certificated masters, and yet we are to receive no grant of money unless we employ them." These gentlemen profess a great fondness for logic just now; but it is essential, or it used to be, when I had the honour to study the science, that we should have premisses to argue from, and that is just where these gentleman are weak. They are like my hon. Friend—not one of them, to support his conclusions, has taken the trouble to make himself, in the slightest degree, master of the details of the subject. They all say that is the logical inference from the Revised Code, and that is the sheet anchor of my hon. Friend.
I beg the attention of the House when I tell them what the Revised Code really is, and what is its logical inference. When I came into office, I found the quality of teaching, as far as I was able to judge, most excellent; that the £5,000,000, or thereabouts, of public money that had been spent upon it, had borne fruit, and that the standard of teaching had been raised to a very respectable height. But the Report of the Royal Commissioners came—and they, while agreeing as to the general excellence of the teaching, pointed out, that good as was the quality, there was a deficiency in quantity—that not so many children were taught, thoroughly taught, as should be. We set ourselves to remedy that evil, and the attempt to remedy the evil produced the Revised Code. We now know that we have a continued excellence of quality, and that no master is admitted to teach a school without having been thoroughly tested, and proved himself capable of teaching. But we found that masters were paid by Government a portion of their salaries, and that they were sure of those payments whether they worked hard or not; in fact, that unless they were guilty of some misconduct so gross as to justify the inspectors in taking away the grants altogether, they were sure of the payments. A schoolmaster, therefore, had no pecuniary inducement to work his best. We endeavoured to offer some stimulus to exertion, and for that purpose we thought it necessary to abolish the augmentation grant.
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It is no longer appropriated to the schoolmaster; we left him a certificate to insure quality, and we determined to give the grant for quantity of teaching; that is, according to the number of children who passed. That is the history of the Revised Code. My hon. Friend charges us with relying upon nothing but results, but we retained all the machinery of the Minute of 1846—teachers, pupil teachers, inspectors, religious teaching—everything except that clause which appropriated the augmentation to teachers, and we made the augmentation dependent upon the examination and attendance of the children. It is obvious what was our policy. We let go no security for the quality of the teaching, and we took greater securities for the quantity. Is it a logical inference to draw, that we abandoned all care of the quality of teaching, all rules that had hitherto prevailed, and therefore were bound in consistency to sweep everything away? That is the logic of my hon. Friend and his correspondents. But I maintain the logic is the other way. When a Department undertakes the distribution of public money to private, varying, and irresponsible individuals, it is bound to take every security possible; and if we could obtain ten times the number of securities, there would not be one too many. Therefore, it is quite clear that it does not at all follow, logically or otherwise, from the Revised Code that we are bound to let go the least security because we have added another security.
I may as well mention what I think my hon. Friend had not given much consideration to, until I drew his attention, in a marked manner, by laying papers on the table. He read an extract from my speech, in which I pointed out that the system had not penetrated as far as I could wish in the country districts. That was so; but in meeting the objections, we felt bound to take the best measures to make our education efficient. We have established three classes of teachers. The first are intrusted with the charge of pupil teachers. They must have taken, at least, a certificate in the upper part of the fourth class, and must, therefore, have passed a fairly hard examination. We do not agree with my hon. Friend that it is nothing for these teachers to be able to teach children up to twelve years. But these teachers are also intrusted with pupil teachers. They form a sort of normal college; and this shows the danger of dogmatizing on these

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subjects without looking into the minutiae. It is not wonderful that my hon. Friend should have overlooked this; yet it makes all the difference. Well, that is the first class. The next consists of persons who have not been in training colleges; and with express reference to the wants spoken of by my hon. Friend's correspondents, the country clergymen, we made this rule—that if any one wanted his master to be certified, he had only to invite the attendance of the inspector, who would twice inspect the school; and if he were satisfied with its condition, the master would be told to appear in December following the second inspection; and then, if be passed what would be considered as a very easy examination, he would receive a certificate. That certificate would not entitle him to have the care of pupil teachers, but it would entitle the school which he served to the full amount of the capitation grants upon examination and attendance, just the same as if he had been passed in the higher branches. Not content with this, we furnish a provisional certificate; that is, the pupil teacher who passes with credit is allowed, upon the recommendation of the inspector, to take a rural school with a certain moderate number of children, up to the age of twenty-five years, on the understanding that at that time he must take a regular certificate. My hon. Friend disapproves of that arrangement. But it is optional, and it may be dispensed with; because as long as acting teachers may be certified, we get over all the difficulties which my hon. Friend and his correspondents raise. Yet there is not a letter written by those gentlemen which does not show that the writer believed, first, that no school could receive grants except it was under the care of a certificated teacher; and secondly, that no teacher could procure a certificate unless he served in a training college. I cannot perceive a trace of their being aware that it was open to them to have their teacher examined, and that then, if he passed, their school would be eligible for the Government grant.
And what does this magnificent grievance amount to? The examination which these acting teachers in the country districts have to pass consists of reading, writing, ciphering, arithmetic, not including the rule of three, a very slight knowledge of history, a very slight knowledge of the geography of the world, a very little more extensive knowledge of the geogra-
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phy of the British islands, and, if a member of the Church of England, a knowledge of the liturgy, the catechism, and the Bible. That is all; and the grievance is, that we will not give grants to schools taught by teachers who will not submit themselves to that examination—who are either too ignorant, or too wilful, or too wayward, or too conceited, or too timid to submit to it. That is the whole amount of the grievance which my hon. Friend brings forward. It is either that or nothing. Of course, he speaks of the examination of the training colleges, and it would be a good argument if we asked the country teachers to go to those colleges and pass an examination similar to that passed by students there. But we ask nothing of the kind. The whole matter is, that we refuse to trust the education of children in this country to the hands of persons of whom we know nothing except that they are unwilling for some reason, best known to themselves, to pass an elementary examination in reading, writing, arithmetic, the elements of geography, history, and Church catechism. Will any man assert that persons who do not possess this knowledge ought to be in charge of any school, or that persons who do possess this knowledge, and do not choose to submit to the test which we impose, should—I do not say remain in charge of the school, but receive one penny of public money?
It is quite true that this public examination will not make teachers better than they were before; all it does is to make us know what the man is. It is the difference between knowledge and ignorance on our part. People talk of certificated and un-certificated teachers as if they were two distinct classes of animals; but the only difference is, that the one class has been tested, while the other is untested. It is possible that the man who remains untested is better than the one who has submitted to the test; but that is a point beyond our knowledge. A bottle of wine untasted may be better than one which we have drunk. All that can be said in such a case is, "I know the quality of the one, and I know nothing about the other." What can justify the expenditure of £800,000 of public money in the support of schools whose masters shrink from this test, who wilfully shroud themselves in darkness, and do not allow us to know what their capacity is? Only look at the coolness of these gentlemen. The correspondents of my hon. Friend, as well as I can

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gather, are 600 in number, and each may possibly represent schools with fifty children in them. That would mate 30,000 children, and for the sake of those 30,000 children, who they think ought to receive assistance for their education—assistance which I should be very glad to give—they call upon us to bring down the system which is acquiesced in, approved, liked, and practised in the education of more than a million children. They ask us, in point of fact, to vitiate the education of the larger part for the advantage of the smaller part—to destroy our whole system of teaching in order to admit these schools. I think I have now said enough as to the arguments adduced in these letters. I meant to have read some of them, but my hon. Friend has read so many, that though there are some on the other side, and very excellent ones, I cannot ask the House to hear any more of them.
And now I come to the points that are urged against me. In the first place, my hon. Friend calls the existing system a monopoly. He says that to examine teachers, and refuse Government assistance where the teacher has not been examined, is to establish an "odious monopoly." Well, it is a very curious thing, that as free trade has been developed, these "odious monopolies" have increased in number and intensity. A little while ago there was no such thing as the examination of the master of a ship. Now, we trust no man with the command of a ship who has not undergone an examination testing his fitness for the post. A little while ago there was no examination for an attorney. Now, no man is allowed to deal with the property of his fellow-creatures in this way unless he has passed through the same ordeal. Formerly medical men were unexamined. Now, at least, no man can recover the money of his fellow-creatures for what he may do to their persons without undergoing examination. Does anybody conceive that these are violations of the principle of free trade? The principle of free trade is surely to promote efficiency and to secure the best article. My hon. Friend says, "Trust to the interests of the managers themselves for employing the best men; and let Government take it for granted that this will be done." But this is not so clear. I know instances where men have been made masters of schools in order that they may not become the inmates of workhouses; and I can well conceive that it may be cheaper for school managers to employ bad teachers than to
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employ good ones, and then try to get a share of the grant. The mere pecuniary interest of the managers, I say, is by no means clear. But is this interest a safe guide? Look at the instances I have given. One would think that no man would trust himself at sea with an incompetent captain, and so run the risk of being drowned; but does the Legislature consider that a sufficient protection? One would think that a man's desire to win his lawsuit would lead him to choose a competent attorney, and that in the wish to avoid being murdered in a legal way by a doctor he would choose a competent medical practitioner. But the Legislature has not thought that a reason why the attorney and the doctor should not pursue a certain course of study and pass a certain examination to entitle them to practise. Now, if that is the ease with regard to private business, how much more should it be the case in public matters? If the Legislature will not allow me to trust my money or my person to an unskilled hand, but will insist on taking care that I employ skilled hands, what shall I say in dealing with public money—money which is not mine, with which I am intrusted by the State, and for the proper expenditure of which I am answerable? Of course, the argument is ten times stronger. It would be inexcusable for me to intrust my interests in the cases I have supposed to incompetent persons; but it would be doubly inexcusable for me to do so when I have to deal with public money. Therefore, I think the argument which is drawn from interest falls wholly to the ground.
The next point urged is as to the number of schools to which this rule is said to apply. It has been said, on the authority of the Commissioners, that there are more than 15,000 schools which are excluded from the grant by the condition of certificated teachers. Now, I will undertake to say, reserving demonstration to another time, that the figures on which that statement is based are utterly unreliable. The way they are arrived at is this:—The religious societies report to the Commissioners that there were 22,849 schools in connection with them, assisted and unassisted. The Committee of Council returned that there were 6,897 assisted schools. The Commissioners subtracted the one from the other, and said that 15,952 is the number of unassisted schools. Placing that side by side with the 6,897, it appears that the number of unassisted are to the num-

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ber of assisted schools two to one, and that is made a great argument. But it happened to me to receive from a most excellent inspector of schools, Mr. Norris, an account of the schools in connection with the Church of England in Staffordshire. He returned the number as 420; I compared with that the number given in the Commissioners' Report, where it was given as 622. On looking further into the matter, I find that these 622 schools include 19 grammar schools, which, of course, have nothing to do with the question; 88 dame schools, which have still less to do with it, 20 schools held in churches, 43 where more departments were enumerated than ought to have been, and one workhouse school. That is a specimen of the sort of way in which the total number was made up. I asked how these 19,000 odd schools were made up. The National Society gave me the desired information very readily, and stated that in 1847 they made an investigation of the number of schools, and they found it to amount to 17,015, and that between that period and 1858, there had been added 2,534 more, making 19,549. In that 19,000 were included 3,222 dame schools; and the fallacy of the argument founded on those figures was quite manifest. We have not been informed how many of these old women have died; it is perfectly well known that every new school we set up destroys two or three of those other schools. The conclusion at which I arrive may be stated in two ways:—First, that if those figures of the National Society can be relied on at all, so far from the relative numbers being something like "assisted" schools, 7; "unassisted," 15, the numbers should be something like "assisted" 2, "unassisted," 1. But it would he paying too great a compliment to those figures to base any conclusion on them. The only conclusion we can come to on the subject is, that the whole basis of the calculation has failed, and that it affords us no data as to the number of unassisted schools.
I think the effect of such a plan as that proposed by my hon. Friend must be to prevent young men from entering those training colleges. Unless a certificated is to have a preference over an uncertificated teacher, is it at all likely that a young man would enter a training college? Is it likely that a young man would go through two years of training, when he was to be treated after that time as if he had gone through no training at all? Again,
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how is it at all likely that persons should be found willing to carry on those establishments when the Government was doing everything to discourage young teachers from adhering to their profession, and when, as a consequence, it had become a matter of doubt whether they would adhere to it or not. Then, as to the share the Government should take in giving effect to such a plan—how could any man, holding the position which I have the honour to fill, have the impudence—for I can call it nothing else—to come down to the House and ask year after year for £100,000 for training masters, at a time when with the same breath he would have to tell you that the Government would not give trained masters the slightest advantage, but would place them on a level with persons whose character, antecedents, and qualifications we could know nothing about?
I beg to point out another objection to the proposal. This system of the Revised Code is untried. I have the greatest confidence of its success; but not only is it untried, but, in deference to the feelings and wishes of the House, the plan has been deprived of much of its original vigour and efficiency. We had to give up the grouping by age, which was one of the most important of its provisions. Will the House, after obliging me to weaken the examination; to make the test less stringent—will the House, after having compelled me to do that, ask me now to stake on an examination more than I ventured to stake on it when the Code was in its vigour? When we had grouping by age, I never dreamt that the examination in those schools could be taken as a test independently of the fact whether or not there was a certificated master. Now that we are deprived of that system of grouping, would it not be monstrous to make an untried system depend even more on examination than was originally intended?
There is this point also which I think the attention of my hon. Friend has not been called to:—Very heavy duties are thrown on the schoolmaster by the Revised Code. He has to keep a log-book of the school; he has to keep a register on the contents of which the money is granted—a register of the qualified children. He has in his hands the arrangement of the children for examination; and he may pack them by putting them in the wrong classes, and so deceive the inspector and injure the system. Is it too much to expect that the person in whom

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we place so much confidence should be not only a man of acquirement, but also, as far as we can judge, a man of honour and integrity? We have, in the certificate, not only a guarantee for the man's efficiency, but a document on which is endorsed the history of his life—where he has been, what he has done, whether there is anything that affects his professional character. We have now something like a hold over the master to whom we intrust the public money; but to rob me of that! I confess I can imagine nothing more scandalous than that we should be paying money on the faith of one of whose private history we know nothing, and respecting whom we have not troubled ourselves to make any inquiry. According to the proposed plan, any school which has a candidate to examine has nothing to do but call upon the Education Department to send down an inspector. If the parties connected with the school get nothing else, they will have the pleasure of a conversation with an educated gentleman, How many of those inspectors does my hon. Friend think I should keep, like post horses, ready to start? How many inspectors should I keep to supply any one who took it into his head that he should like to have the pleasure of an examination? We might send down a man whose expenses would be £10, while the school would not get 5s. after the examination. On the other hand, by this preliminary test of a certificated master, we have at all events the security that there is in the school a person capable of teaching the children. Are we to be at every one's beck and call, sending on fool's errands over the country to schools where they have not this chance of good teaching, because they have not employed men fit to teach.
I will state my decided opinion that the Privy Council ought to adhere most firmly to the rule, that no school should receive a grant unless it had a certificated teacher. That rule is most valuable for the poorest of country schools. We have a graduated system in reference to those teachers, for there are two classes—the superior and the inferior. I hold that we are bound to adhere to the system we have adopted. We had the experience of three centuries previously to 1846, and we saw what teaching under uncertificated teachers had accomplished for our people. There is no one connected with the Department of Education with whom I have had the
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pleasure of consulting, and who has had any practical knowledge of the subject, who is not of opinion that this is the very corner-stone on which our system rests. I hold it to be a duty we owe to the managers that we should test the efficiency of the master for them; I think this is the greatest service we perform for them; far greater than the payment of money, I hold it to be a duty, when a man has made a good character in his profession, that the public department which presides over that profession should keep a registry of the fact, and give the person every advantage that he ought reasonably to derive from his meritorious exertions. I hold that it would be disgraceful if, when we are in possession of the fact that there are 9,115 competent teachers in the country we should wilfully shut our eyes to that knowledge, instead of applying it to the benefit of the public schools in which the children of our people are to be educated. I hold that it is equally our duty to the parents of those children, who are often poor, uneducated, and ignorant persons, that we should judge of the qualifications of those masters. I can imagine no duty more imperative on the State than to see that they intrust that priceless treasure, their children, to no unworthy hands. In 1856 Earl Russell Stated that the object of the system was to create models of education. Nothing could be more melancholy, nothing could lead to more distrust in the advance of human progress and enlightenment, than, after the signal success of the effort made of late years to improve the quality of education, to fling all this aside as of no values I hold it also to be our duty to the pupil teachers, as long as we retain them, to adhere to this test. Of course, my hon. Friend wishes to do away with the pupil teachers. I do not argue that point with him. If the goodly ship is to be scuttled, I do not care to ask what is to be done with the pinnace. But we cannot leave the instruction of the pupil teachers to persons of whose fitness for the task we have no guarantee, except that they have been engaged by managers, who may not always be proper judges in such a matter. It is our duty to provide that they shall have efficient teachers, and not to tempt them into a position where they will not have the means of obtaining the knowledge they require, or have the prospect before them to which they may fairly look.
Another reason is, that a really well-

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educated or well-trained teacher is of enormous assistance to the clergy of a district, and an immense addition to its civilizing influences. As is well established by Mr. Lewis Campbell in these letters, the children after they leave school are not likely again to be brought into contact with a being so intelligent and cultivated as such a master. Are we then to destroy this influence, merely, as it seems to me, to give a premium to ignorance, which may justify the squandering of the public resources? We find no security for the fitness of the teacher in his selection by the managers, because managers have often a pecuniary interest in preferring a cheap and inefficient master to a dearer and more efficient one. Neither can we find it in inspection, because there are numberless things which the most experienced inspector—and I need only refer to Mr. Norris's testimony on this point—cannot discover. We cannot trust to simple examination, because that only shows that a certain number of children have gained a certain amount of proficiency. How many things are there in the conduct of a school, none of which either the inspector or the manager may see, and which may yet, perhaps, be the most essential of all? Consider what a schoolmaster is. He is the very life and soul of the school. His mind, his moral qualities, his peculiarities, are all stamped with the greatest facility, but with the most indelible accuracy, on the young and plastic natures committed to his charge. The school is the express reflex of his own intellect and character; and we cannot be too jealous or too careful in ascertaining that the man to whom we intrust so enormous a power for good or evil over so many of our fellow-creatures comes up, as far as our means of investigation will enable us to test it, to the standard of qualification which his task demands. I know that all we can do to insure this falls far short of what is to be desired. Examinations will not enable us to judge of a man's morals, but our knowledge of his previous history and of his associates, together with the examination, all give us at any rate a much better knowledge of him than we can have of a person of whom we know nothing except that he has not undergone any such test.
I have said that there are many things in the conduct of a school which neither inspection, nor examination, nor managers can discover; and these things we must take on trust. Well, but in whom shall
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we trust? Shall it be in the person of whom we know nothing? That is the whole question. I say we are bound to take every precaution in our power; and when we have done that, we have done little enough. You would not let a man cut a diamond for you without some assurance that he had proper skill; but we are asked to instruct the youth of the country to teachers of whose competence we have no assurance; and yet the youth of the country is worth many diamonds. As the teacher is, so is the school. But would it not be a monstrous absurdity for the Privy Council to be so strict and minute in requiring that the sanatary arrangements of the school, the ventilation, the make of the desks, and the shape of the forms should be of a particular kind, and yet that it should be perfectly careless and indifferent about the one thing on which everything else depends—namely, the character and the attainments of the teacher?
But there is one more consideration which I would urge on this subject, and that is that we owe it to the public, not only to do our best for them in the ways I have named, but to influence them as far as we can in the right direction by precept and example. A Pagan satirist has said—
"Nil dictu fœdum visuque hæc limina tangat,
Intra quæ puer est.…
Maxima debetur puero reverentia. Si quid
Turpe paras, nec tu pueri contempseris annos."
And if we were to show negligence and carelessness in these things—if, while we looked with prying eyes to so many matters of minute detail, we used no vigilance in regard to that which is greatest of all, and on which the temporal and eternal welfare of the children so much depends—I hold that there could no greater abnegation of duty on the part of a public department. These are the grounds upon which I confidently entreat the House not to ask us to give up the requisition that a certificated teacher should be indispensable in every school, and also not to ask us to fritter this security away by countenancing the employment of uncertificated—that is, unknown teachers, in a certain class of schools. If the principle of the certificate is right, let it be enforced universally; if wrong, let it be swept away altogether. But do not ask me, believing as I do that there is a serious obligation resting on the Government to maintain this security, to barter it away for the small advantages held out to us from waiving it. The matter cannot be compounded in that way.

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The employment of these teachers is either a great principle or it is nothing.
There is only one other thing which I wish to say, and I say it with great reluctance. But I must make a humble appeal to the House on behalf of my noble Friend (Earl Granville) and myself. We undertook this business of the Revised Code with the experience of three campaigns before us, and with a knowledge of the obloquy it would provoke. We have carried it through, I believe, on the whole, with considerable success. We ask, in all fairness, to be allowed to carry out the experiment for which we are so deeply responsible, I under the safeguards and conditions upon which the House last year assented to it. We do not ask to be relieved of any part of our responsibility heavy as it is. But, on the other hand, we supplicate the House to abstain from destroying the one thing which we believe to be essential to its success—namely, the standard of qualification in the teachers. On the whole, the Department is not, I think, in such a state as to render it necessary for the House to interfere in order to set it right. When we came into office, the aspect of things was really formidable. The average excess of the estimates for education over those of the preceding years was no less than £130,000; and they were steadily increasing at the rate of £130,000 a year. In January 1860, Sir J. Kay Shuttleworth, when examined before the Commissioners, gave it as his opinion that this expenditure might be expected to go on increasing from its then amount—namely, £836,000, at the rate of £100,000 a year for a period of five years. That was the opinion of that experienced man on the prospects of the department. Well, since 1859 we find 203,000 more children in the schools inspected, and we have provided accommodation for 267,000 more than in 1859. Now, the expenditure of the Department in 1859 was £723,000; and although there has since then been the addition I have mentioned to the number of children, the expenditure last year was only £774,000, or an increase of only £51,000 over that of 1859. The estimate for this year is only £804,000. Contrasting this with Sir J. Kay Shuttleworth's anticipations, according to which the estimate ought to have been £1,200,000, my hon. Friend, I think, dues not do rightly in accusing us of extravagance. We have, as far as we could, stood in the breach, and stemmed the tide of this vast expenditure. We have,
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we believe, now settled every question that was open when we came into office, and we implore the House to give us some peace and rest after the crisis we have gone through, and to leave things to work so that we may gather experience from what is doing. We implore the House not to unsettle men's minds more than is necessary, and to wait a year or two to see what is the effect of the changes so lately introduced. I think that is not an unreasonable request. I am most sanguine as to the result. I cannot find that the frightful consequences which many predicted from the Revised Code have really occurred, nor that that unpopularity has attached to the Department which some apprehended. We are gradually covering the face of the country with good teachers and good schools—well-taught, orderly, well-disciplined, and each forming a nucleus of civilization in its own sphere. As long as we continue to do this, I am sure the House will not grudge a further expenditure if necessary. But if you break down your system for the very purpose of increasing your expenditure, you will only open a floodgate which will not be easily closed. Let nobody imagine, that if you break down the regulation as to certicafied teachers, you can stop there. One barrier after another will give way, and each successful attack will only make resistance more difficult. If the House will kindly abstain from pressing upon the Department, if it will not break us down by such Motions as the present, if it will leave us to manage our business upon the principles which on so many occasions we have propounded to it at large, I think it has a reasonable prospect, in return for a very slightly increased expenditure, of getting enormously increased advantages. The Commissioners themselves say that the number of children whom they expect to see in the schools for many years to come will not be more than 1,500,000. Already we have school accommodation for 1,378,000; in other words, our accommodation is only about 120,000 short of the quantity which the Commissioners think will be required for a considerable time. Let the House remember, in conclusion, that this Department differs in one important respect from the Department of War, or of the Navy, or any of the great Departments of Government. There you may reasonably hope that by an increased expenditure you will obtain greater efficiency. The more money you spend, the more men, the more artillery, or the more ships you

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will get. It is not so with this Department, which depends upon its efficiency as a check to expenditure. If you break down that efficiency, you will increase expenditure; but exactly in proportion as you increase expenditure do you diminish the utility of the Department, do you frustrate the purpose it was intended to answer, and do you involve the country in endless expense, every additional thousand pounds of which only leads to less substantial results.
MR. DUTTONsaid, he thought that everybody connected with schools in the rural districts must be greatly obliged to the hon. Member for Berkshire not only for bringing this question forward, but for the very comprehensive speech which he had made. All connected with rural schools must know that the great difficulty was, not in getting schools: built, but in maintaining them, after they were built; and he had often thought that it was a great blot on their educational system that the State did not come forward to aid private persons in their efforts to keep up these rural schools. It was true that a grant might be obtained if the master and mistress were certificated, but in many instances these certificated teachers were not wanted in the rural districts, where children were rarely kept at school beyond twelve years of age. He quite agreed with the hon. Member for Berkshire in what he had said with regard to the effects of over-education. One of the most painful signs of the times was the number of young men turned loose on the world who had nothing to do with their knowledge. Being in a position to, give Employment to well-educated young men, he found that he was, not able to supply one in twenty of those who applied to him, At the present time be had applications from two schoolmasters who were unable to get schools and were obliged to turn to other pursuits. A child educated beyond his station was in a worse position than one who had to get his living with his own hands. If the hon. Gentleman should divide the House on the question of giving grants to schools which had not certificated masters, he should certainly go into the lobby with him.
MR. F. S. POWELLsaid, he begged leave to tender his thanks to the right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Board of Education for the very able speech he had just addressed to the House. He wished that the same spirit of justice and conciliation towards all the persons engaged in the educational system of the country had ac-
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tuated him in the discussions of last year. Many of the difficulties which he had then to encounter would have been greatly diminished, and the solution arrived at would have been much more satisfactory. He differed entirely from the hon. Member for Berkshire as to the over-education of the people. He did not believe that mechanics' institutes, the Society of Arts, or the educational institutions called into existence by the Privy Council, had led to any over-education. Neither did he agree with what had been said by the hon. Gentleman as to the College of Preceptors. Part of its machinery might be rude and defective, and some of its pamphlets might not have exhibited that deference to public opinion which ought to be shown by an experiment; but their efforts were all in a right direction, and a great want in the education of the middle classes would be supplied by them. The hon. Member for Berkshire had kept his eye almost exclusively on the rural schools, and had not sufficiently regarded the schools in towns. Any one who compared masters as they used to be in the olden times with masters as they were then, would see that an immense improvement had taken place in the social, moral, and intellectual condition of the class. Some time ago he had had occasion to visit a school on the moors in the West Riding of Yorkshire, which he found presided over by an old man, whose account of his appointment was that he had been brought up in a neighbouring workhouse; that when he was a young man he had the misfortune to lose the use of his left leg and his right arm; and being utterly incapable of getting his living in any other way, and having two cousins on the foundation, they got him made master of the school. He might contrast anew school maintained in a high state of efficiency by a master of the modern style, which had been highly spoken of by Mr. Watkins, the gentleman whose report had been most unjustly and unrighteously suppressed by the Vice President. This master, however, was afflicted by a plague—he was under the impression that his calling in life was to be a dealer in artificial manure. Next he took it into his head that he ought to go into the stained glass business. In that state of uncertainty he left the school, but there was no difficulty in procuring an excellent master to succeed him; while the old incapable at the other school still continued to be an incubus on the education of the district. Something had been said about

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the unwillingness of masters to take pupil teachers, but he trusted the time would never come when that would be the case. He was aware that in some departments of instructed labour—among the masons and the carpenters, for instance—there was a great aversion to teaching others, but he hoped nothing would ever be said which would, in any degree, indispose masters to take pupil teachers. Without discourtesy, he ventured to ask the hon. Member for Berkshire what was the period at which the requisitions of the training college were such as he quoted. Year by year those requisitions had been lowered as the friends of education found that the sanguine hopes which they had entertained some years since in reference to the education of the labouring classes could not be realized; but while they were trying to adapt the system to the real wants of the people, it was neither fair, generous, nor politic to set before the House as a warning that which every year was becoming less a part of the system which they wished to maintain. He did not think that they ought altogether to throw overboard the Report of the Commissioners of Education some years ago. The Report of Mr. Arnold as to some departments of education abroad was most instructive; and although he could not cite the precise words, Mr. Arnold stated in effect that it was no part of the liberalism of France to intrust the education of the people to men unknown to the State, and probably incompetent to instruct the children of the State. Mr. Arnold, in the same Report, stated that in France the masters of the schools were overwhelmed with the multitude of their scholars. He had visited some of the schools in France, and he found two systems in operation—one, of the master teaching the whole school; and the other, of the master being aided by monitors. He believed that they could never induce the intelligent artisans of this country, who were paying 3d. or 4d. a week to have their children educated, to submit to continue those payments, if they were told that their children would not be instructed, but would have, without pay, to instruct their juniors. As to testing a system by results, the amount of knowledge in reading, writing, and arithmetic was no adequate or sufficient test. The true test was the future career of the children, or, in other words, the increased power to raise themselves in the social, scale, represented by a higher morality, a more elevated religious tone, and a
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more complete performance of the duties of citizens among the members of the rising generation. It was to realize those hopes that the friends of education had toiled, and he trusted that up to the present hour their labours had been consistently and perseveringly directed to the attainment of those great objects.
MR. SALTsaid, the proposition of the hon. Member for Berkshire was extremely plausible and extremely tempting. The hon. Member complained, with a great deal of apparent reason, that while the country was spending something like three quarters of a million a year in public education, there were a great number of schools extremely poor and needing assistance to which the public money did not come. That was a very strong position, and it was very difficult to give to that statement a definite answer. But when they left the abstract proposition, and came to the Resolutions of the hon. Member, considerable difficulties arose. In the first place, the Resolutions were founded upon the assumption—which they were hardly in a position to make—that the system of the new Code, with regard to examination, would be successful. The new system about to be adopted was one of strict individual examination of schools; and until it was ascertained how far it would work, it was quite impossible to say that they could carry out the Resolutions of the hon. Member. Again, with regard to the new Code itself, it was not adopted last year without great opposition and after considerable Amendments. It was a measure of great importance, peculiarly affecting the whole population, and he thought it very undesirable, even although a clear and definite advantage could be proved, to make any change in a system which had so recently been adopted by the House. As manager of a school, and he believed in the name of the managers of schools generally, he was prepared to say that their object was simply to do the best they could for the cause of education, and that whatever was the system which Government and Parliament had carefully and deliberately adopted, they considered it their duty to carry it out as fully and as well as they possibly could. Therefore, without going into the merits of the propositions of the hon. Member, he thought the time peculiarly inopportune to propose such Resolutions as those before the House. If they were carried, they must necessarily hamper the operations of the House with regard to education either in this or in some

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future years. The whole system upon which they were going was experimental, and every one who had the cause of education at heart must concur in wishing to be let alone for a year or two to see how the system worked. With regard to certificates, any one who took the trouble to read the Parliamentary papers, and especially two letters of a most excellent school inspector, Mr. Norris—a man who was known to be a gentleman of great ability, of great experience, and of the greatest sincerity—would find that the evidence in their favour was very strong indeed. Another reason for saying the moment was inopportune was that they did not know what expense would be entailed by the additional labours of the inspectors which the Resolution would involve, or how many additional inspectors would have to be appointed, or how much time the inspection of so many more schools would require, or whether they could be inspected at all under the new Code. Under these circumstances, and with a strong feeling that it was most desirable that when a great measure had once been passed, with whatever feelings it was regarded, it ought to be fully and carefully put to the proof before it was meddled with by legislation, he should not vote with the hon. Member for Berkshire.
MR. ADDERLEYsaid, that before the debate closed he was anxious to call the attention of the House to the Amendment to the first Resolution, which he proposed to move. The proposal of the hon. Member for Berkshire went as far as to create a new distinction in regard to poorer schools, and to abolish the use of certificates to teachers. He owned that the hon. Member for Berkshire ought to have full credit for the indefatigable industry with which he had mastered the subject, and for the perfect fairness and obviously high intentions with which he had brought forward his Resolutions. He could not agree with the Seconder, the hon. Member for Maidstone, that the effect of the Resolutions, if carried out, would be anything short of the destruction of a principal feature of the present system. He was rather surprised to find that a gentleman who had given such substantial proofs of his interest in national education should be ready in so summary a way to endanger, if not absolutely to demolish, the chief element of the system which they had occupied thirty years in setting up, and on which they had spent millions both of
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public and private money. The majority of the House was, he believed, agreed as to the principle that grants of public money should be given only in aid of voluntary undertakings for the education of the poor—the main intention of such aid being to improve that which had previously existed. It must also be admitted that no system of public grants could be safely administered without rigid rules and checks. Whatever difference of opinion there might be as to the Revised Code, it had at least this good point about it, that it threw back on the voluntary managers the charge of the schools for the poor, and restricted the grants from the Treasury to the aid of such undertakings. It sought for guarantees of the work of education being really carried out by those whom the Treasury aided. The tests established by the Code were three in number:—First, that the scholars individually should furnish some proof that they had received elementary instruction; secondly, that the inspection of the school should show satisfactory results as to attendance and the general condition of the establishment; and thirdly, that the school should employ a certificated teacher. It was very reasonably stipulated that no school should be entitled to public money which did not fulfil these three conditions; that is, if not even elementary instruction were given, if the scholars did not attend, and the master could not pass an examination for certificate. The hon. Member for Berkshire, however, coolly proposed, that within twelve months of the adoption of that system, two out of the three checks should be abolished, and that the Treasury should be open to all schools which could show scholars at the lowest standard of elementary instruction. Since the hon. Gentleman first gave notice of his Motion he had somewhat modified it, and now asked only part of the grant for schools which only complied with the first test. That, however, did not in the least affect the principle of his Resolutions, which was the same whether it was applied to a part or the whole of the grant. The hon. Gentleman had thrown his proposition into a terse, well-rounded, plausible syllogism. The public money, he said, was promised by the Revised Code on certain results being shown; these results could be secured, not only by the specified means, but in a thousand other ways, and therefore the public money was due to those results, however obtained. The fallacy of the syllogism lay in its first premiss, in which

1213
the hon. Gentleman designated as total results those proofs of merely elementary instruction which formed one of the three prescribed tests. That test was of the most meagre kind, and even the opponents of the Code had attempted to get it improved. It did not cover even the field of elementary instruction, for it omitted a most material part of it—religious teaching. [Mr. WALTER: No, no; that is a result required by Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools.] The hon. Member, he believed, was mistaken on that point, and therefore his proposal was defective in not providing for religious instruction. Moreover, the syllogism ignored the two other tests enforced by the Code—the tests of Government inspection and certificated masters. The intention of the hon. Member's Resolutions was obvious, and on the first blush was a good one. It was to bring the "poorer schools" of the country within the scope of the Government grants. Now, he was satisfied that there was nothing more mischievous in a system of public grants than to permit an exception from the general rule. [Mr. HENLEY: Hear, hear!] The right hon. Gentleman confirmed that opinion, and could not therefore support the Resolutions, which in express terms required special indulgence to poorer schools. The fact was, that the exceptions were sure to become rules. That could be aptly illustrated in the very Department under consideration. The old capitation grants were originated for the assistance of poor schools, and an attempt was made in the Minute to define what were poor schools. The definition, of course, broke down entirely, and the exceptional assistance to poor schools became a regular largess to rich schools. If it were thought that the present system were forced beyond its original intention, and had so deserted the poorer classes for whom it was primarily intended, there was still no necessity for disturbing the machinery by which it was worked. The proper course, on the contrary, to take would be to bring the whole system down to its intended level. While, however, he should urge the restriction of public grants to schools for the poor, the House ought to distinguish that from giving public grants to poor schools. The business of Parliament was not to favour schools of an inferior kind, but to give a lift to the schools of the inferior classes. The great object of the hon. Member for Berkshire was to get poor schools within the reach of the
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grant, and for that purpose he proposed that the test should be restricted to mere attendance, and that certificated masters should no longer be indispensable, in fact, that the lowest hedge school, if it could reach the art of spelling and the first rules of arithmetic, should pass muster for Treasury payment. But he would ask the House what grounds the hon. Gentleman had given to lead to the belief that any decent schools of the country districts were excluded from the receipt of the grant. He had looked through the blue-book of correspondence of the hon. Gentleman, but he had failed to find any such conclusion established. There was not a case of a single schoolmaster of any schools worthy of receiving a farthing from the public Treasury who might not obtain a certificate if he chose. He therefore entirely denied the proposition that the schools of the poor could not come within the reach of the grant, the fact being that they would not in every case in which they did not.
The real obstacle was not the stipulation for a certificated master, but rather a certain timidity, or perhaps pride, on behalf of the old teachers which prevented them from submitting themselves to examination. Another obstacle was the narrow-mindedness of some of the managers of the distant rural schools—small farmers and tradesmen—who objected to exposing themselves to Government inspection. He could mention several instances in his own neighbourhood in which contributions towards the establishment or improvement of a school had upon those grounds been refused, because the donors had stipulated for having Government inspection. A third and a fourth obstacle were to be found in the objection sometimes raised by the clergy to associating small adjoining parishes together for the purpose of forming a school; and in the occasional illiberality of gentlemen in the rural districts, who refused to put their hands in their pockets, hoping that the Government would support a school for them, and not much caring whether it did or not. Such were the obstacles which kept some rural schools from the grant, and it was not his intention to upset the existing system, which worked well when not so impeded, simply in order to get rid of such impediments. The hon. Gentleman's correspondents who disagreed with him had truly said that a certificate was not only a scholastic guarantee but an economy to a school. Were they

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to yield to the prejudices of those who could not see that fact, clearly as it might be substantiated if there were only a will with the way to that conclusion. The hon. Gentleman asked what was the use of the certificate. From what the hon. Member had said it appeared that he thought those certificates should be done away with altogether. In effect, the hon. Gentleman asked why should we go on expending all that money in the maintenance of a system when they could find masters better or as good in the open market. At all events, let them consider, on the other hand, the consequences of abolishing the requirement of certificates. It was completely involved in the hon. Gentleman's proposition, on his own showing, that if the preference given to the certificated master were done away with, the training colleges would be destroyed. Neither would young men then go to these colleges, nor would managers of schools seek for masters there, if they were to be more cheaply obtained in the open market; and thus a system by which a better class of masters were obtained at public expense would be put, an end to. The Royal Commissioners, in their original Report, stated that the most useful application of any sums voted by Parliament would consist in the establishment of normal schools. From the earliest proceedings of the Committee of Council on Education, that had been the primary and chief object and the most successful part of the system; and the Commissioners asserted that it was proved beyond all doubt that the trained teacher was greatly superior to the untrained, and that lowering the standard by diminishing the importance of the trained teacher would be a fatal measure. There was not a single country, he might say, in which a system of national education had been attempted, where the establishment of training colleges would not be found to be a principal part of that system, though a most difficult part to rear and maintain. In America, where the whole system of national education was carried out in the most popular manner by rates—even there training colleges existed. They were not supported by rates; for it would be very difficult to get people from year to year to vote large sums of money for institutions the benefit of which was deferred. Still, these institutions existed in every State, and were placed upon endowments in lands and fixed property. If, by passing a Resolution like that before them, the House struck
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a paralysing blow at the training colleges in this country, they would never revive. Many persons had spent their £100 and.£1,000 in establishing and maintaining training colleges; and if those institutions were allowed to die, no one would be foolhardy enough to make advances from his own private resources again for the purpose of re-establishing them. It was quite clear, that if they went into the market for masters, instead of applying to the training colleges, the cheapest article would be taken that was capable of obtaining a grant from the Treasury; and if the hon. Member's Resolution should be carried, the national system would go down to the level of teaching the mere elementary matters referred to in the Motion, and would sink down to the point from which it sprang. If the views of the hon. Member for Berkshire were participated in by many Members of that House, they had better not pass those Resolutions, but make up their minds to trust to the voluntary system exclusively, and no longer to waste the public money in attempting to uphold one the principal feature of which the House was prepared to dispense with. The right hon. Gentleman concluded by moving his Amendment.
Amendment proposed,
To leave out from the word "applicable" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words, "to Schools only of the working classes, but to all of them alike, in the way of proportionate aid to voluntary support; subject to the favourable report of the Inspector, and to tests of at least elementary instruction being given in them by teachers in all respects qualified,"
—instead thereof.
Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
MR. HENLEYsaid, he felt some difficulty in offering to the House the few observations he had to make, on account of the very curious way in which the Motion of his hon. Friend had been met. Speeches had been made, distinguished by very great ability, as was especially so the speech of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Lowe); but every word of that speech, fine as it was, would have been just as applicable to the state of things three years ago as fit present. They had been asked, by his right hon. Friend near him (Mr. Adderley), to wait and see how the changes made operated; but the right hon. Gentleman opposite had stated that the number of the unassisted schools had been

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greatly exaggerated. Now, he did not know whether they amounted to 15,000, 12,000, or 10,000; but at all events it was admitted that from 500,000 to 600,000 children were not receiving education in the assisted schools and private schools. Now, these children wore scattered over the face of the country, many of them living one, two, or perhaps three miles from the national school. The people, however, where they lived were taxed at the rate of 1d. in the pound on the income tax for the maintenance of the present system—for that was what the Education Grant came to—and so far from their being able to get any benefit from that grant, their children were actually shut out by the conditions of those schools from obtaining any share of the public grant, which the right him. Gentleman opposite said ought to be administered with the greatest care. The right hon. Gentleman who last spoke maintained that they were not shut out, but said that some masters were timid, and that the narrow-mindedness of the small farmers and tradesmen managing the schools was the cause of the schools losing a share of the public grant. Now, he should like his right hon. Friend to produce evidence, from which any general conclusion could be drawn, showing how many schools were managed by small farmers and tradesmen. So far as the Reports of the Commissioners and Inspectors were to be depended on—though he certainly was not one who placed implicit reliance on those reports—it appeared that that class of persons would not touch the schools at all. They held off altogether, and it was difficult to get them to do anything. They really seemed to think that they wanted some assistance themselves, without giving assistance to others. What lie wanted to know was, whether they were going to meet the difficulty in respect to the 500,000 or 600,000children he had referred to by lowering the certificate; and if they did so, how long would they be able to keep up the higher certificate? He believed that the people would all come down to the lower certificate. Besides that, there was another difficulty to be encountered. It was not to be supposed that they could go on laying a tax upon the whole community at the rate of 1d. in the pound on the income tax for a system so contrived that it only reached two-thirds of the persons that were wanted to be reached. At the same time, he would admit that the question how they were to
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bring that class of children within the range of State assistance was a most difficult question to solve. For fifteen or sixteen years the country had been waiting to ascertain the results of the system, and at the end of that time they were told by the Queen's Commissioners that the scheme set up bad entirely failed and broken down. A great deal had been said about the high quality of the teaching power. It was true, as far as the masters were concerned, that the teaching power was very great, but unfortunately it lacked one element—it could not be brought to bear successfully upon the scholars. The Privy Council Office had so beautifully moulded the formula intended for the information of the House and of the country, that persons, when they heard that good teaching power existed in such and such a school, in their ignorance believed that the pupils were taught there. When the Queen's Commissioners went round, however, they showed that to be an utter mistake; and, on the contrary, that the pupils were not taught at all. Then the right hon. Gentleman, being acquainted with the mysteries of the Privy Council Office, explained that the phrases used only meant that the masters had the power to teach, but did not do so. The right hon. Gentleman shook his head; could he deny that this was an accurate description of what had happened? [Mr. LOWE: It is quite accurate.] Persons who had been assured for sixteen years that this was the best possible system of popular instruction, and that nothing, in fact, could be done without it, went on paying their money contentedly, in the absence of results, believing that by so doing they were conferring enormous benefits on their countrymen. But when the Queen's Commissioners reported that the system was a total mistake, people began to say, "We ought not to be taxed any longer, or, at least, we ought to get a share of the money for ourselves." "No," said the right hon. Gentleman, "you shall not have a clean face if you will not shave with my razor, which I candidly tell you, at the same time, will not cut at all." The right hon. Gentleman had given a description so beautiful that he would not venture to realize it till be saw it in print, of the condition of these pupil teachers at the time when, by the blessing of the Almighty, be came to manage them—of the system as it was established by those great men Earl Russell and Lord Lansdowne, beyond all comparison the best judges of matters of this kind; but he added that

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they had since been obliged to cut it down to something approaching an every-day level. Now they had got that amended article, the country was recommended to go on again with perfect contentment, paying its penny in the pound for ever so many years more—to open its mouth, in fact, and see what God would send. That was exactly what they were asked to do; and to determine, under the circumstances, what course should be adopted was to solve a most difficult problem. The right hon. Gentleman objected to the phrase "poorer schools," and that was not an accurate definition. There were many localities in England with small populations, the number of children ranging from twenty-five to forty, where the difficulty was to get a school at any cost. The right hon. Gentleman said, "Why not unite these?" and, applying some term to the clergy which was not complimentary, he urged that they stood in the way of union. He by no means believed that the clergy were the only persons opposed to union; but it must be remembered that the villages where these people lived were scattered often at distances of one or two miles from each other. If little children, eight, nine, or ten years of age had to travel a couple of miles to sellout every day, trapesing and dragging there under all weathers, in this uncertain climate, and, it might be, sitting in their wet clothes during school-hours without the possibility of going home and being fed in the middle of the day, the result would be that children would not go to school at all. That would be the A B C of it. Everybody knew, that when children lived one or two miles away from school, the attendance was most irregular; villages hung together in the same way as counties or countries, and try as they might they could not break up that feeling. The clergy of the country felt very properly that it was part of their duty to look after the education of children; and if the children of three or four parishes were brought into a common school, through providence or improvidence it might happen that there would be four clergymen of extremely different views. In that case he should like to know how the combination proposed by the right hon. Gentleman would be brought about. He believed it would be an absolute impossibility. The effort had been made in many places; but it had never worked successfully. The Motion of his hon. Friend the Member for Berkshire proposed to bring home to parts of the
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country some plight benefit from the contributions which they had been making for the last sixteen or seventeen years without any result. He did not say that he agreed absolutely with the proportion for which his hon. Friend had asked; that was an entirely different matter. But he would ask the right hon. Gentleman opposite whether in lowering the standard of certificates a greater risk was not incurred of lowering the quality of the education imparted to over a million of children, than there could be in allowing small schools, with a limited number of children, and under conditions properly laid down, to participate in the grant without possessing such a certificate. That was a question very difficult of solution. Last year he had supported the Motion of the hon. Member for Berkshire, and he would support it again, in case he went to a division, on the grounds he had already stated. He did not believe the conditions laid down by the right hon. Gentleman would produce all the good effects that were anticipated. It would be attended, in his view, with mischievous consequences to place a village school, containing thirty or thirty-five children under the exclusive control of a female pupil teacher, between the age of twenty and twenty-five, without a mother or any one else to look after her. Not to speak of the scandals which would arise, practically speaking the children would be exposed to temptation, and the pupil teacher herself would be placed in a position of difficulty. He believed that the effect of lowering the certificate would be most effectually to pull down the general quality of the schools. Both his right hon. Friend below him and the right hon. Gentleman opposite appeared to be in favour of pulling them down. Another very important question which was raised by the Resolutions was, were hon. Members content to make every schoolmaster and schoolmistress the paid servants of the right hon. Gentleman opposite? The right hon. Gentleman said that he would have them. He would have a nice army. He wished any one, who had to look after them ten or fifteen years hence, joy of his office. The right hon. Gentleman was going to increase their numbers and lower their quality. He did not think that that was good policy. He believed that schools in which there were any considerable number of children would, for their own sakes, always have these trained masters; but a lowering of the scale of the

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certificate would reduce all to the same low level. He did not say that the proposal of his hon. Friend the hon. Member for Berkshire was a perfect remedy, but it was, at all events, a step in the right direction. It would, to a certain extent, compel the trained masters to show, not only that they had the power to teach, but that they did teach. They would, through the inspectors, come into competition with men trained in a different way, and the results would be beneficial to both.
His right hon. Friend below him said that the proposal would wholly exclude the consideration of the religious teaching given in the schools. He did not understand it in that sense, and the hon. Member who proposed the Resolutions had repudiated that construction, and placed upon the words the larger interpretation which they certainly would bear. The inspectors were to look into the whole condition of the schools proposed to be admitted under these Resolutions, in the same way as they did with regard to those which already received the grant. He considered that the words of the Resolution were large enough. If he did not, I he certainly should not support them, because the two points to which he had always attached the greatest importance were, that education should be based upon religion, and that the Privy Council system should be made more elastic, so that it should not shut out the large number of children who were now excluded from its benefits. With reference to ragged schools, he must say that the children who attended them, those outsiders of society whom the Privy Council would not admit into their schools, were just those who were the most destitute and most neglected, and who required the most looking after; and any system which did not take hold of them failed in a most important particular. They were the most destitute of God's creatures. It was perhaps their misfortune that they had careless parents. It might be their great misfortune that they had wicked parents; but they were cast loose to go to what mischief they might, and for some reason or other the Privy Council would not attempt to recall them. What had been said that night upon the subject deserved great weight. He had, over and over again, urged those who had the management of the Educational Department to endeavour to recall what, were called the "Arabs" of this and other great cities,
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and not leave them to go wholesale to a place which must not be named, without a helping hand being held out to save them. He believed that the Motion of his hon. Friend would have a tendency to make the Privy Council system more elastic, and to enable it to reach those whom it did not reach. If they adhered strictly to the system as it was now established, they would go on for fourteen or fifteen years more having large classes shut out; the consequence of that would be that they would become impatient of paying, and then those who were now sacking the orange to their hearts' content would not find it yield quite so much juice as it had hitherto done.
MR. PULLERsaid, he would suggest to the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Adderley) that it would be better to meet the Motion of the hon. Member for Berks with a direct negative than by the Amendment which he had proposed. That Amendment would, as it stood, exclude from the grant schools for the teaching science and art, which were not confined to the working classes, and would, in fixing the amount of aid, leave out of consideration fees and endowments, neither of which results could be desired by the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley) took a view of the matter different from that entertained by the hon. Member for Berks. The latter hon. Gentleman in his second Resolution complained of the injustice done to managers; but the whole burden of the right hon. Gentleman's complaint was the injustice, not to the managers of schools, but to the payers of taxes. The first Resolution spoke of the poorer schools. There was a cognate expression which was often used—that of "poor parishes." The poverty was often fictitious and imaginary rather than real, and arose, as the Commissioners themselves stated, not from any want, of property in the parishes, but from the indifference of non-resident proprietors and their unwillingness to pay for the support of that education to which they ought to contribute. Only last year the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxfordshire stated that there were in that county sixty assisted schools. The population of the whole county was 170,000, mid that of the places where the assisted schools were situate 70,000, or about 40 per cent; while, according to the Income Tax Returns, those places represented about 30 per cent of the

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property of the county. Therefore, comparing property with population, the part of the country which was assisted had a smaller proportion of property and a larger proportion of population; while that which was not assisted had a smaller proportion of population, and a larger proportion of property. It was said that the population was scattered over a large area divided into small parishes; but did the proposition of the hon. Member for Berkshire meet the cases of small parishes where there was no liberal esquire or energetic parson? Not at all. He proposed to meet the case of those who, being able and willing to pay for a good teacher, and so to produce certain results, were now excluded from the grant because their teacher had not got a certificate; but the difficulty of the small parishes was to take the first step, that of securing a good teacher; and if the hon. Member wished to meet the wants of really destitute parishes in the manner suggested, he must go on and guarantee the salary of the teacher, without waiting for any results. If that were done, the House would never have any rest until it consented to take into its own hands the entire control of the education of the country. That would be the fatal result of departing from the system of wholesome supervision which the House had hitherto exercised. He should give a decided negative to the Resolutions.
SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTEsaid, the House had heard a great deal about logic, but he must protest against some of the logic he had heard. The case put by the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Adderley) was, that there were three conditions under the Revised Code necessary for the receipt of a grant—instruction, the approval of the inspector, and the presence of a certificated teacher—and that the Resolution of the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Walter) did away with two of these conditions and retained only the test of instruction. So far, however, from that being the case, it was the reverse of the case; and what the hon. Member for Hertfordshire (Mr. Puller) had said was an illustration of the mistakes into which hon. Gentlemen had fallen. What the hon. Member for Berkshire, however, did, was to put before the House the case of a large number of schools the managers of which could not afford to pay certificated teachers. These uncertificated masters had been spoken of as cheap and bad. Now, the Vice President of the Education Committee was not asked to
1224
lower his certificates until they became of no value, so that bad and cheap masters could obtain them. What was asked was that the managers of schools should produce certain results of instruction, and that they should have the advantage of the stimulus of a Government inspector, who should make the schools as good as circumstances permitted. Disguise it as they might, a large number of schools were unable at present to take advantage of the Government grants. These schools were mainly of two classes—small country schools not supported in their localities, and ragged schools in towns. As long as their educational system excluded these two classes of schools, it rested on an unsound and illogical foundation. Depend upon it, such a system, however they might patch it up, could not be maintained. In some way or other the difficulty must be met. The Vice President of the Education Committee was aware of the defect, and how did he intend to meet it? In the most objectionable way possible—namely, by lower classes of certificates. He said, "I will still keep up this system of certificates, still maintain a class that shall have a monopoly; and, in order to reach the classes in question, I will endeavour to make my certificates really worth nothing by lowering them." The right hon. Gentleman was not asked to do that. Those who wished for some alteration in the present system felt the advantage of the trained masters, the certificated teachers, and the pupil teachers. The latter were an important class, and it was desirable that the duty of instructing them should be intrusted to men of high certificates. The right hon. Gentleman was only asked to make some provision for those children who were excluded from any participation in the Education Grant. The hon. Gentleman (Mr. Walter) had moved two Resolutions—the first was of a very positive character, and might be embarrassing to the Government. He was certain the hon. Member did not wish to embarrass the Government, but to carry the principle of his second Resolution, which should have his hearty support. He trusted that the hon. Member would consent to withdraw his first Resolution, so that the issue might be taken on his second Resolution, which was a protest against the necessity of employing a certificated teacher. If that were the issue, he should heartily vote with the hon. Gentleman the Member for Berkshire.
SIR MINTO FARQUHARsaid, that lie had taken considerable interest in the subject, and having last year joined in the opposition to the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Lowe) he felt that they had now reason to be thankful to the hon. Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Walpole) for the course be then took, which obliged the Government to re-revise the Revised Code, and to make it more acceptable to the country. On this occasion he felt bound to take a different course, because the right hon. Gentleman, in an excellent, clever, able speech, had shown that he had lost much of the feeling which he displayed last year. He then made most unfair attacks upon the schoolmasters, but on re-consideration, he now candidly admitted their usefulness in the work of education. The right hon. Gentleman had shown that the Resolution proposed by the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Walter) would entirely interfere with the system proposed by the Privy Council. That system had effected a great improvement in the education of the country, and he should be sorry to see it interfered with. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Henley) had said that the children at present were in some cases not taught at all. That was going, he thought, much too far. The Commissioners of Education had acknowledged the great advantages derived from the present system of education. He felt satisfied, that if the Resolution of the hon. Member for Berkshire were carried, it would very materially interfere with the education carried on by the Committee of Privy Council. If, as had been stated, the test was so simple, he could not understand why the masters should not submit to it, seeing that such submission would not only give them a status, but would entitle their schools to an assistance they did not receive. He hoped his right hon. Friend (Mr. Adderley) would accede to the suggestion of the hon. Member for Hertfordshire, and withdraw his Amendment, so that the House might be able to come to a decision on the Motion of the hon. Member for Berkshire.
MR. WALTER: After the indulgence which the House accorded me in the early part of the evening I shall make but a very few remarks in reply. I heartily agree in the proposal of the hon. Member for Hertfordshire (Mr. Puller), that it would be far better to come to a vote, "Aye" or "No," upon one or other of these Resolutions than upon the Amendment which the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Adderley) has
1226
submitted to the House. But I must first offer a few remarks upon the verbal criticism which my right hon. Friend (Mr. Lowe) made in the course of his speech upon the first Resolution. I do not know whether he imputed what he found objectionable in that Resolution more to stupidity on my part or to malice prepense. Now, it is not easy to frame a Resolution which shall be entirely unexceptionable, but I agree with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley) in thinking that the terms of the Resolution were simple enough. The first Resolution was intended to define the sort of schools to which the second Resolution was to apply, and when I spoke of "the poorer schools" I wished to include such schools as the ragged schools, and to exclude private schools or schools carried on for profit. As regards the word "attendance" it would have been better to have omitted it, but it certainly never occurred to me for one moment to exclude from the results to be required by the inspectors, and of which they were to have the means of judging, the religious instruction, cleanliness, and, in general, the proper condition of the school. That, of course, I took for granted—it was taken for granted in the Revised Code—and I never intended to include those hedge schools which would not satisfy the ordinary requirements of decency, order, and discipline. But as the first Resolution is of no material consequence, I should wish it away altogether, and that the Vote should be taken upon the second, which is entirely on the question of certificates. When my right hon. Friend uttered his glowing eulogium upon the schoolmasters, and described the great achievements which they would perform, it occurred to me that that was not quite to the purpose, because we have not to deal with children of high-skilled mechanics who are to be made Stephensons or Brunels, but with the children of labourers and poor men, for whom all this sublime, marvellous, and exceedingly expensive machinery is not required. We are spending at present £800,000 in educating a million of children. I say that is monstrous. Give me £80,000 and I will educate 250,000 children in the best possible way. The sum which I think at the outside my Resolution, if carried, would cost the State would be £100,000. It would be long before 250,000 children would come within the scope of this Resolution. But, taking 5,000 schools of fifty children each, and allowing £15 for every

1227
school, that would give £75,000 for 250,000 children. Add to that sum the expense of an extra clerk and fifty assistant inspectors, which might be set down at £25,000, and the entire cost would be £100,000. That is cheap in comparison with the system which the Government is at present carrying out. But I think my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley) hit the right nail on the head when he said that my Resolution would not interfere with the training colleges so much as the Government themselves have done. There is much more consistency in trying to abolish the training colleges altogether, which I do not propose to do, than in introducing an utterly sham certificate in order to meet the case of those hedge schools. We are told that the certificate is to prove the moral character of the teacher; but if you give a certificate on two totally different principles, there is an end of its utility. What I ask is, that those trees of knowledge which the rural managers—the country clergymen chiefly—are planting in all the rural schools of the kingdom, and planting at their own expense, should be judged by their fruits, without the Government inquiring whether certificated teachers have been employed or not. That is the sum and substance of my Resolution, and I trust that it will meet with the support of the House.
MR. LOWEsaid, he rose merely to add one piece of statistical information which he had omitted in his former address to the House, and which would have some hearing on what had fallen from the right hon. Member for Oxfordshire. In the Report of the Royal Commission, page 318, it was stated that in the year 1858 there was in the parishes of under 600 inhabitants in the county of Somersetshire only one school which was aided by Government. There were now twenty-seven. In Devonshire there were only two such schools in the year 1858, there were now twenty-three; in Dorsetshire there were in the year 1858 only ten such schools, there were now twenty-eight; and in Cornwall there was then only one, whereas now there were ten.
Amendment and Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
Motion made, and Question put,
"That to require the employment of certificated teachers, or of pupil teachers by school managers, as an indispensable condition of their participation in the Capitation Grant, is inexpedient, and unjust to the managers of such schools.
The House divided:—Ayes 117; Noes 152: Majority 35.

UNIFORMITY ACT AMENDMENT BILL.

  LEAVE. FIRST READING.
  MR. E. P. BOUVERIEsaid, he rose to move that the House go into Committee for the purpose of enabling him to introduce a Bill to make an Amendment in what was commonly known as the Act of Uniformity. He did not propose to deal generally with the question, which, as they all knew, had recently excited considerable attention and discussion in the country, so far as it related to the condition of the clergy of the Church of England and the subscription to the liturgy. That was a far wider question than the one he proposed now to deal with. The hon. Member for Maidstone had given notice of a Motion touching that question, and he did not intend to trench upon his province. His object was to amend a portion of the Act of Uniformity which was comparatively unnoticed and obscure. The eighth section of the Act required a great number of persons, deans and canons, and prebendaries, professors, masters of colleges, and all fellows of colleges, to make a declaration of conformity to the Liturgy of the Church of England before they took possession of their fellowships or incumbencies. In accordance with that requisition, no person could become a fellow of a college at Oxford or Cambridge until he had declared before the Vice Chancellor of the University that he would conform to the Liturgy of the Church of England. Now, up to the year 1854 at Oxford, and the year 1856 as regarded Cambridge, that clause of the Act of Uniformity might be said to have had no operation, because until then nobody could take a degree without declaring in one way or another that he was a member of the Church of England. At Oxford he had to sign the Thirty-nine Articles when he was matriculated or became an undergraduate, and again when he took his degree; and at Cambridge, when a person took his degree, he had to declare that he was a bonâ fide member of the Church of England. The Oxford Act of 1854 and the Cambridge Act of 1856 did away with that requisition, and these two Acts provided, the one with reference to Oxford that nobody should be required to take any declaration or make any oath on taking his bachelor's degree; and the Cambridge Act declared that for any degree except divinity no oath or declaration should be taken. Now, a Fellow, as they all knew, to obtain a fellowship must have

  1229
  a degree; and as that declaration in connection with the Church of England was required at the time of taking a degree, no person could possibly by university law become a Fellow who was not a member of the Church of England. But, in addition to that, he would have also to make a declaration under the Act of Uniformity, that he would conform to the Liturgy of the Church of England. What he proposed to the House to do was simply to repeal this requisition. It was not merely as a theoretic question of liberty of opinion that he proposed it, for on that ground he never would have invited the House to make a change; but it was at the request of an influential portion of the resident Fellows of the University of Cambridge. In the past year he bad presented a Petition signed by no less than seventy-four of the resident Fellows, comprising many of the most eminent names of men connected for a long time with the educational system of that great university, and stating that that requirement of the Act of Uniformity was in their opinion injurious to the interests of the university, and praying the House to repeal that clause. When be mentioned that amongst the names attached to the Petition were those of Professor Sedgwick, Mr. Clarke, Mr. Phear, Mr. Todhunter, and others well known in association with the educational system at Cambridge, anybody who had any knowledge of that subject would admit that great weight was due to the authority of that Petition. The ground upon which the opinion of those Petitioners was formed he ought to state to the House. One great change effected in the universities by the Acts to which he bad referred was to render Dissenters admissible to degrees. Up to the Act of 1854 no Dissenter could even have matriculated at Oxford, but at Cambridge they were more liberal; they allowed a man to reside, and till he took his degree no declaration was required of him. Up to that time no Dissenter or Nonconformist could take a degree; but by those two Acts Dissenters and Nonconformists of every kind were admissible to a degree, and admissible at Cambridge to all the scholarships and exhibitions without any declaration or oath required of them by an express clause in the Cambridge Act. What had been the consequence? A certain number of gentlemen had come to reside in different colleges of the University of Cambridge who were not members of the Church of England, and some of
  1230
  them had turned out the most distinguished of the undergraduates. The gentleman who was Senior Wrangler in the year 1860—a Scotchman—was a member of the free Church of Scotland. He took his degree as Senior Wrangler, and he (Mr. Bouverie) was informed that it was perhaps the most brilliant degree taken for the last half century. He was a mathematician of the first order, and would have adorned the annals of Cambridge. He was a scholar of Trinity College, and had he been able to make the required declaration of conformity he would have been elected a Fellow. the college, as be was informed, was desirous or electing him a Fellow, as it had happened that for some years no member of it had taken a distinguished degree in mathematics, and there had not been a Trinity Senior Wrangler for sixteen years. The college was therefore desirous of strengthening its mathematical teaching power; but this particular gentleman was stopped by the declaration, although be had attended the services in the chapel, and he believed had taken the sacraments, and thus the college lost the services of Mr. Stirling. The same thing happened in the case of another Nonconformist, also a Senior Wrangler. These examples happening so shortly after the admission of Nonconformists to degrees showed what good grounds those gentlemen, who were most competent to form an opinion, had for thinking that such exclusion was injurious to the university and to the cause of education. Great educational establishments like Trinity College, with Fellowships open to all classes, offered great prizes for intellectual ability. By excluding Nonconformists from competition they were deprived of incentives for going to the university, and for exertion if they did go there. The colleges which desired the services of such men were not only robbed of them, but the field of choice for Fellows, who ought to be distinguished for intellectual capacity, was limited. He did not wish to put forward the case of injustice to Nonconformists, but where there were no clerical privileges, nor theological questions affected, he thought the exclusion was an injustice. Take the case of his constituents in the north. Why were all Scotchmen to be excluded from all opportunity of obtaining those prizes? It was a curious fact that this particular clause in the Act of Uniformity did not appear to have been originally part of the Bill, but was introduced by the Commons as an

  1231
  Amendment to an Amendment of the Lords. The object of the Amendment seemed from contemporary history to have been that a monopoly of the training of the nobility and gentry of the country should be confided to members of the Church of England, and the provision extended to every schoolmaster and even to a tutor in a private family. It was stated that so many of the gentry and nobility had adhered to the Long Parliament that it was determined, now the Church had regained uncontrolled power, that steps should be taken to insure it a monopoly of education. But was the House prepared now to maintain that restriction? He did not ask for more than that the colleges should be left to themselves, to do what they might think best for their own interests. At Cambridge there were four colleges, which, in their statutes, made no condition about religion for fellowship. In one of them, so far from its being devoted to teaching in theology and clerical education, there was a condition that no clergyman should be a Fellow, and the consequence was that the Fellows were all lawyers. Was it at all desirable that a man who gained a fellowship of £150 a year for a few years, to enable him to start in life in an open profession, should be obliged to declare that he conformed to the Liturgy of the Church of England? As to two other colleges, of which Trinity was one, the requirement on their statutes was, that Fellows should declare that they belonged to the true religion of Christ. That was hardly a test which a Nonconformist or a Presbyterian could refuse to take. The remaining college required a declaration from its members that they were bonâ fide members of the Church of England. He repeated that all he asked was that colleges should be left to themselves. At Cambridge and Oxford they had power to modify their statutes, and all he asked was to allow those colleges which thought it advisable to remove the restrictions, to apply for the consent of Her Majesty in Council to the alteration. He asked for that freedom, believing that those bodies were the best judges of their own interests and of the interests of education, and that the welfare of religion or of the Church of England was not promoted by such restrictions. In conclusion, he would quote an authority greater than any words of his could convey. Bishop Thirlwall, the Bishop of St. David's, said—
  "I can see clearly that the question is one in
  1232
  which science and literature may hereafter be interested, but in which religion has no concern. If that part of our endowments which are enjoyed by laymen were to be thrown open to Dissenters, I can see no other effect that would be produced than an increased activity of competition for them. Or, to put the same case in another shape, if one half of our junior Fellows who are now preparing themselves for the Bar, or practising at it, were Dissenters, instead of members of the Church of England, however this might be matter of regret as tar as the individuals themselves are concerned, it does not appear how either religion or the Church would suffer by the change."
  With that expression of so eminent an authority, than whom, for his ability, sagacity, and experience of the university, no one was better able to form an opinion on the subject, he should rest content, and he trusted the House would be willing to go into Committee.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House will immediately resolve itself into a Committee upon certain portions of the Act of Uniformity."
  MR. WALPOLE: Sir, my right hon. Friend said he did not intend to go into the general question of the Acts of Uniformity, but to confine himself to this particular clause relating to fellowships; and as we shall have an opportunity on another occasion of discussing the general question which is to be raised by an hon. Gentleman opposite, I too shall now confine my remarks to the particular section which my right hon. Friend has brought under our notice with such good temper and moderation. My right hon. Friend goes on to say that the declaration in the Act of Uniformity which he wants to do away with is a declaration taken by certain deans and other dignitaries of the Church, and also by the heads and fellows of colleges. Now, let me see whether the measure of the right hon. Gentleman is one the principle of which we ought to agree to; and let me further examine, if it were acceded to, what the practice would be in consequence of our acceding to such a Motion. My right hon. Friend says that this particular clause in the Act of Uniformity had virtually no binding application till 1854 and 1856, when the University Acts were passed, because, he says, and truly, that down to 1854 no person could even be a student at Oxford without making what was tantamount to a declaration that he was a member of the Church of England; and down to 1856, though Cambridge does and always did admit students who were not members of the Church of England, yet, on taking their

  1233
  degree, students at Cambridge made what was equivalent to a declaration that they were members of the Church of England. I entreat hon. Members to see what was the view taken by the House when those two statutes were passed. In 1854 two propositions were made by Mr. Heywood, who is no longer a Member of this House. The first was, that no declaration should be required on matriculating or taking the degree of Bachelor of Arts; and the second that no declaration should be made on taking the degree of Master of Arts. He carried the first of these propositions by a large majority after considerable discussion. The Government were in a minority on the first question; and when the second proposition was submitted to the House, I took the liberty of urging on the Government, who, having been beaten on the first proposition, seemed disposed to yield on the second, that they ought to reconsider their determination, because the second proposition contained a principle distinct from that contained in the first. This House assented to that view, and rejected the second proposition. Now, then, what are the principles involved? The principle of the first Resolution was, that the Universities of the land should be open to all the subjects of the Queen for the purposes of education; but the principle involved in the second proposition, and involved, as I shall presently show, in the proposition of my right hon. Friend, is that the government of the university, and consequently the endowments of the university and the colleges, might be held by those who were not members of the Church of England. The House adopted that distinction, and decided that while for the purposes of education the university should be open to all, the government and endowments should be confined to those who professed the established religion, in relation to which those colleges and those universities had been founded by benefactors in times long past. In 1856, when the Cambridge Bill was before the House, similar propositions were submitted, and with precisely similar results. My right hon. Friend has pointed out, that in consequence of the existence of the declaration which he seeks to remove, a gentleman of high ability who attained the distinguished position of Senior Wrangler in the university had not become a Fellow of his college. My right hon. Friend is not quite, accurate in the cause to which he attributes the fact of this gentleman not having be-
  1234
  come a Fellow; because it appears from my right hon. Friend's own statement that during the whole of his undergraduate career he did conform to the Liturgy of the Church of England; and the only declaration required by the Act is one that the person will conform to that Liturgy. My right hon. Friend shakes his head; but I may tell him that the cause generally assigned for the gentleman in question not having taken the declaration was, that the Nonconformists had persuaded him not to stand for the fellowship.
  Now, as to the necessity for the measure proposed by the right hon. Gentleman, it is true that Petitions have been signed by some of the most eminent men of Cambridge University, praying that this alteration may be made. But has a single college petitioned for it? They are the bodies corporate, to whom we must look in order to find whether such a measure is necessary or desirable. There are Petitions from members of the colleges, but not from any college in its corporate capacity. It must be remembered that the statutes of these colleges were settled recently, not only with reference to education, but also with reference to the design of the benefactors; and I believe there is hardly a case in which the design of the benefactor was not to keep the college in connection with the Established Church of England. Let me now inquire what the effect of altering the declaration would be? We will suppose the case of an undergraduate of a college at Cambridge who is not a member of the Church of England, or of any Christian Church, but a member of the Jewish persuasion. Would you alter the declaration for him? [Mr. WHITE: Hear, hear!] The hon. Member for Brighton said "Hear!" Would he take away every declaration with reference to the religion to be taught in those colleges? If so, bow is discipline to be maintained in them? If you do away with the declaration, one of two consequences must follow—either you must say that every one is entitled to have in those colleges the religion which he chooses, or you must say that there need be no religion there at all. You cannot avoid one of these alternatives. When the University of London was founded, Dr. Arnold was very anxious that the Christian religion should be professed; that lectures should be given, but all shades of difference avoided. The matter was discussed. Those who took a great interest in the

  1235
  university—and Earl Russell was one of them—in drawing up the statutes, found it so utterly impossible to frame a statute applicable to a general lecture on the Christian religion, that they were, in the end, obliged to say, "We will confine the objects of the university to science and literature." [Mr. WHITE: Hear, hear!] I am glad to notice the cheer of the hon. Member for Brighton. He means that these great educational establishments, which, like your State, are founded upon religion, and are in connection with the established religion, ought no longer to be founded upon that principle, or to be connected with that establishment. If the House is prepared to adopt the conclusion which is the legitimate consequence of my right hon. Friend's Motion, it will assent to the Motion; but inasmuch as I hope the House will not adopt it, I think it fairer to my right hon. Friend at once to say, that in my opinion, we had better not go into Committee on the Act, because it would be only encouraging the hope and expectation that we were prepared to assent to such a proposition. I, for one, am not prepared to assent to it, and therefore I shall move a negative to the Motion that you. Sir, do now leave the chair.
  MR. POLLARD-URQUHARTsaid, he had heard with much regret the opposition of the right hon. Gentleman to what he thought was the very candid, just, and beneficial proposal of his right hon. Friend. It could not be said that the universities were practically open as places of education to the Dissenters of the United Kingdom, when Dissenters were deprived of the rewards which were given to other students. How could the universities hope in these days to maintain their position as champions of the faith, and defenders of that revelation in the truth of which they believed, if they shackled the spirit of religious inquiry? How could men be trained up to defend the revelation with ability and with reason if an attempt were made to stifle free thought and limit free inquiry to what the universities regarded as true? He denied that the Church of England would be injured if the proposal of his right hon. Friend were acceded to, and did not think so meanly of the doctrines of the Church as to suppose that they could only be maintained by a system of rewards and punishments at the universities.
  LORD STANLEY: Sir, I should be glad if I could give a silent vote on this
  1236
  question, but having been a member of the University Commission that was formed under the Act of 1856 for Cambridge, and having been a good deal in communication with members of the university upon this subject, I feel bound to offer to the House one single remark upon a question of fact. My right hon. Friend (Mr. Walpole) says this is the question as to the admission of Nonconformists to fellowships which was considered in 1856, which was then very fully discussed, and was rejected by this House. Now, unless my memory fails me, I think there is some misapprehension on the part of my right hon. Friend. The proposition of 1856 was totally different from that now submitted to the House of Commons. In 1856 it was proposed that all tests of religious opinion for admission to fellowships should be done away with, and therefore that all colleges, whether they desired it or not, and without any reference to their wishes in the matter, should be compelled, they being to a great extent ecclesiastical bodies, to admit Nonconformists to their fellowships, all rules of theirs to the contrary notwithstanding. That was the proposal of 1856, and looking to the circumstances of the case, looking to the ecclesiastical character and traditions of these bodies, I do not hesitate to say that in my belief the House exercised a wise discretion in rejecting that proposal. But the proposal now made is one of a totally different character. Its effect is not to take away from the colleges any rights which they possess. It recognises that which the proposal of 1856 did not recognise—the right of self-government; nay, it even extends the right in removing them from the external control to which they have been subjected. The state of the case, I take it, is this:—The colleges—I am speaking of Cambridge—vary a good deal one from the other as to character and constitution. Some are decidedly more ecclesiastical than others in their character. The governing body is not in all constituted in precisely the same manner; but, generally speaking, there is a preponderance of power in the senior Fellows, a large proportion of whom are clergymen of the Church of England. Among those Fellows there is a comparatively small minority of laymen; but there is not a single person among them who is not a member of the Church of England; and there is no body of men—as I can testify from a four years' experience while acting upon

  1237
  the Commission—who are more intensely I imbued with academical and ecclesiastical feelings and traditions. You may, therefore, take it as a thing absolutely certain that under no circumstances will they be likely to use the privilege which it is proposed to confer upon them, unless the admission of some fresh blood is likely to prove a very manifest benefit to their colleges. I confess that I have some doubt whether, under the circumstances, this privilege is likely to be taken advantage of to any great extent. If I were asked what would be the effect of adopting the proposal now made. I should say that the larger colleges are not likely for a considerable time to make any change in their regulations. But cases may occur from time to time in which men of great ability and great eminence are virtually about to be sent away from Cambridge, and are unable to pursue a scholastic life in consequence of the opinions they entertain; and the smaller colleges, which are not always very well supplied with men of this class, will be anxious to secure them, so that first one and then another will relax their rules. The small colleges will be opened in the first instance, and it may be—though this is a distant future to look forward to—that at some more remote period the movement will extend to the larger colleges. In no case, however, under the provisions of this Bill, can any Nonconformist be admitted as a Fellow of any college except upon the free choice of the majority of the governing body, that governing body being composed exclusively of Churchmen, and in most instances of clergymen of the Church of England. That gives, I think, a sufficient security for existing rights and privileges. I know that the heads of colleges, and the senior Fellows, will be generally opposed to this concession; but I know also that among the younger members of the governing bodies there is a growing opinion that some such change as this is reasonable, and they will at no distant period be a majority of the whole. In the interest of the colleges themselves, I shall give my vote for it. But the point to which I rose to call the attention of the House was this—that the proposition before us to-night differs totally from that which was considered and rejected several years ago, because the one took away the powers of these collegiate bodies, whereas this proposition leaves them not only with the powers they have, but actually increases and extends them.
  SIR WILLIAM HEATHCOTEsaid, he thought his noble Friend had somewhat forgotten what really took place some years ago on this matter. There were two clauses in the Cambridge University Act, the enactments of which would be found, if examined, to bear a rather different construction from that which the noble Lord had put upon them. He believed it had been the deliberate opinion of Parliament that while every facility should be given to Dissenters wishing to receive the advantages of the education at the universities, yet that the bent of those institutions should be kept unswervingly in the direction of the Church of England by retaining the fellowship and the whole government of the universities in the hands of members of that Church. As to the alleged hardship of Dissenters who were not rich not being allowed to obtain the means of supporting themselves while at the university, there was a clause in the Act which met that case by throwing open to such persons all scholarships and undergraduate emoluments. In another clause, where it was conceded that all degrees might be taken without the takers being members of the Church of England, there was a special proviso, that unless they belonged to that Church, they should not be Members of the Senate, or of any governing body. Moreover, in both the Acts degrees were not to qualify Dissenters taking them for any office previously held by members of the Established Church. He considered, therefore, that the question before the House had been really raised on the previous occasion, and he wished to warn the House that it was a far graver question than the noble Lord or the right hon. Gentleman opposite supposed. The question was whether they should entirely overturn the position of the Church of England in the universities; and though the present step was but a small one, it had a very distinct and definite direction.
  MR. GRANT DUFFsaid: Sir, at this very late hour I will not attempt to detain the House by a speech—although, if I had risen earlier, I should have wished to express the very strong views of the younger M.A.'s of Oxford upon this subject. As it is, I will merely put two questions to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Cambridge, than whom no fairer disputant sits in this House. He has told us, that if a member of the Jewish persuasion is allowed to become a Fellow without making the declaration

  1239
  to which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Kilmarnock objects, there will be an end to the discipline of the University. Now, I want to know how they manage at those foreign universities where, happily, honours are bestowed without any reference to the religious opinions of the candidates. Take, for instance, the great University of Leyden. At Leyden there are many Jews, who are admitted to the same privileges as other students. Nay, one of the most distinguished professors of that University is a Jew. Does that impair the discipline of Leyden? And further, is it not a fact at this moment, in spite of the dangerous presence of this Jew in the governing body, the Christian Divinity School of Leyden is as much superior to the Christian Divinity School of Cambridge, as one thing can be to another?
  LORD ROBERT CECILsaid, he was happy to receive the avowal of the hon. Gentleman that the measure was one to assimilate the universities and theology of England to those of Germany and Holland. He could assure the hon. Member that he regarded it with the same certainty as he did the probability that the adoption of this measure would reduce or elevate our discipline and our theology very much to the level on which both stood in the German universities; and if that admission was any satisfaction to the hon. Gentleman, he had the greatest possible pleasure in making it. The whole of the question seemed to have been argued on a false issue. They were told that these were prizes for which Dissenters had as much right to contend as churchmen; but if fellowships were nothing but prizes, they would not need to fight that battle long. Fellowships really gave those who held them the power of regulating the studies of the universities, and therefore the measure was practically a measure for transferring the control over the studies and religious education of the universities from members of the Church of England to Nonconformists. The noble Lord the Member for King's Lynn (Lord Stanley) said the measure was one for giving independence to the colleges. If the colleges were isolated bodies, having no connection with the university, that argument might hold. But on the constitution of the colleges the teaching power of the university depended. The noble Lord had in his mind the idea of a small college of Unitarians or Jews existing in the middle of a Church of England Uni-
  1240
  versity. ["No!"] He contemplated all the Nonconformist element gravitating to a small college. Well, the small colleges, at Oxford at least, had the power not only of furnishing proctors, who appointed the examiners, but they also elected a head who in due time became Vice Chancellor of the university. Now, he would not put the matter upon high religious grounds, but would ask whether that would pay? Imagine the University of Cambridge or Oxford with a Unitarian Vice-Chancellor. He knew that the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. E. P. Bouverie), and the noble Lord the Member for King's Lynn were men of enlightened mind, and that they would send those over whom they had power to a place of education presided over by Unitarians or Jews, with perfect confidence that it was all the same thing. But the difficulty was that, unfortunately, the people of England were not as enlightened ns the noble Lord and the right hon. Gentleman. What he was afraid of was, that if there was a Unitarian or a Jew Vice-Chancellor, or if there was any distinguished teacher in the university who occupied the position of the celebrated professor at Leyden, the fathers of families throughout the United Kingdom would as soon cut off their right hands as send their children to the universities. If it was intended to pass a measure which would prevent the universities from being, what they had heretofore been, the favourite resorts of the middle and upper classes of England, justice required that they should hear the universities themselves. They were now asked to do that which would not only change the character of the universities as religious seminaries, but destroy their influence and position altogether. The subject, however, deserved a more lengthened discussion than it could receive at that late hour, and therefore he begged to move the adjournment of the debate.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned."
  VISCOUNT PALMERSTON: My right hon. Friend who proposed this Motion gave a notice so vague in its wording that it conveyed no notion whatever of the particular proposition which he intended to found upon it. His Motion, no doubt, is one of considerable importance, and I think it would have been fairer to the House, and would have enabled them more easily to come to a decision, if my right hon. Friend had specified distinctly what was the par-

  1241
  ticular object which he had in view. But the present stage, I take it, is equivalent to moving for leave to bring in a Bill. It might be said that this measure is rather one of principle than of detail, and consequently that the House should be as competent at the first blush to form an opinion upon it as if they had the advantage of seeing its clauses. On the other hand, it relates to a matter upon which parties out of the House are fairly entitled to have full time for consideration, and for that reason I should not be indisposed to vote for going into Committee, which simply means that my right hon. Friend should have leave to bring in his Bill. I confess, however, that I think the subject itself is one which will require very grave consideration. The distinction taken by the right hon. Member for Cambridge University seems to be a sound one—namely, the distinction between admitting persons of all religious opinions to every advantage in point of education which our universities can confer, and admitting them to be part of the governing bodies. It also appears to me that the point adverted to by the noble Lord who spoke last is not unworthy of notice, for one can conceive that there might be peculiar circumstances connected with the religious opinions of the governing body of a college which might have a very material influence in preventing parents from sending their sons to such college. I shall not be more particular, but I am sure everybody will understand the bearing of that remark. On the whole, I should say that it would be consistent with the usual practice of the House to allow my right hon. Friend to bring his Bill in, but, in voting with him, I must hold myself perfectly free to deal with the measure afterwards in such manner as upon further consideration may appear to be expedient. It would be fair to the universities to give them an opportunity of considering the Bill, and making their wishes and feelings upon it known to the House. Therefore, as far as I am concerned, I have no objection to vote for the introduction of the Bill, but my right hon. Friend must not understand that I express any opinion favourable to the measure itself.
  MR. E. P. BOUVERIEsaid, he wished to correct an error into which the right hon. Member for Cambridge University had unintentionally fallen. The Bill which, he proposed to introduce was limited to fellowships, and did not touch the headship of colleges.
  MR. LYGONsaid, that if the House should be allowed to go into Committee, he hoped it would be only on the understanding that the Chairman should immediately report progress, and that the question of leave to bring in the Bill should stand over until after the universities and the Church of England had had an ample opportunity of considering the matter. If the House went into Committee, he should avail himself of its forms to prevent a division being taken on the Main Question.
  LORD ROBERT CECILsaid, that as it seemed to be the wish of the House and the Prime Minister to divide upon the Main Question, he had no objection to withdraw his Motion for the adjournment of the debate.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
  Original Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 157; Noes 135: Majority 22.
  Act of Uniformity considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  LORD ROBERT CECILsaid, he hoped that as the Bill affected the material interests of persons at a distance from the House, the right hon. Gentleman would give them what was always accorded to criminals, "a long day," in order that they might have an opportunity of considering the proposals of the Bill which was to be introduced.
  MR. E. P. BOUVERIEsaid, that if hon. Gentlemen would allow the Bill to be brought in that evening, he would undertake to fix the second reading at a sufficiently remote date to give every opportunity for considering its provisions.
  MR. WALPOLEsaid, he accepted the division as an intimation that the House desired to see the provisions of the Bill, and he hoped that before the House went out of Committee the right hon. Gentleman would fix the day for the second reading.
  MR. E. P. BOUVERIEsaid, he would fix the second reading for Wednesday, the 3rd of June.
  MR. HUNT: That's Ascot week.
  MR. LYGONsaid, he wished to point out that the Public-houses Bill, which was sure to create much debate, was fixed for that day.
  MR. E. P. BOUVERIEsaid, he would look through the Order Book, and fix a day for the second reading on the following day.
  Resolved,
  That the Chairman be directed to move the House, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to repeal so much of the Act of Uniformity as relates to Fellows and Tutors in any College, Hall, or House of Learning.
  Resolution reported.
  Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. EDWARD PLEYDELL BOUVERIE and Mr. POLLARD-URQUHART.
  Bill to amend the Act of Uniformity, as regards Fellows of Colleges, presented, and read 1°. [Bill 104.]

HOLYHEAD HARBOUR.

  SELECT COMMITTEE MOVED FOR.
  COLONEL DUNNEsaid, he rose to move for a Select Committee to inquire into the state of Holyhead Harbour, with a view to ascertain the best method to afford safe and efficient accommodation for the Vessels engaged in the Irish Mail Service, and for the Passengers conveyed by them. When the wind blew from particular quarters, there was considerable danger, and vessels were not safe alongside the pier. It was said that there should be a protecting wall, but the only protection was by piles, and it was totally insufficient. The Government had promised to strengthen the pier on more than one occasion, and had failed to perform those promises. The vessels were often delayed twenty or thirty minutes in getting alongside the pier, and the passengers had to scramble over wet planks on a dark night. He hoped the Committee would be granted, as it was the only hope which passengers to and from Ireland had of any attention being paid to their just complaints.
  MR. LEFROYseconded the Motion. The noble Lord the Secretary for the Admiralty had himself on more than one occasion expressed his concurrence in the importance of these improvements. He might say that long and unavoidable delays in landing the mails were often occasioned by the state of the accommodation.
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the state of Holyhead Harbour, with a view to ascertain the best method of affording safe and efficient accommodation for the Vessels engaged in the Irish Mail Service, and for the Passengers conveyed by them."
  MR. MILNER GIBSONsaid, the House was hardly in a position to accede to the Motion of the hon. and gallant Gentleman. The correspondence on the subject was on the point of being circulated among Mem-
  1244
  bers, and ought to be perused before the subject was discussed. As far as he knew, there was no disposition on the part of the Government to deny that they were bound to make arrangements for the safe landing of the mails and the accommodation of passengers. The packet company had not complied with the requirements of the contract in regard to speed, but there was no connection between that and the state of the pier. The Government were prepared to carry out the plans certified as sufficient for the accommodation of the steamboats, and the captains of the vessels had admitted that those plans were satisfactory. The works were in progress, and the jetty was about to be filled in so as entirely to exclude the sea. The covered building suggested had not been erected because it was believed to be too heavy for the jetty; but a substitute would be provided. He hoped that under the circumstances the hon. and gallant Member would not press his Motion.
  MR. HERBERTsaid, he regretted that the answer of the right hon. Gentleman was not more satisfactory. There had been a distinct breach of contract by the Government. For eight years the steamboat company had put themselves in a position to keep their part of the contract, but the Government had not performed their part.
  LORD NAASsaid, he thought there ought never to have been any correspondence at all. The House had a right to insist upon the Government keeping its part of the contract. The Government had, eight years ago, promised to build a pier for the passengers, and they had not done it. The steamboat company, on the contrary, had done all in their power. The Government had much better make up their minds to build a new pier than to try to patch up the old one. He hoped the appointment of the Committee would be agreed to.
  MR. WHALLEYsaid, that the Holy-head route was not the best way of communication with Ireland, and contended that to lay out any more money on it in addition to the £1,000,000 which had already been expended was a course which ought not to be adopted without due consideration.
  LORD CLAUD HAMILTONtrusted the Government would not throw away any more public money in an endeavour to make the present pier-head the place for landing.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, he should move the adjournment of the debate. He did not see that the case was one for investigation by a Committee; and even if it were, the House ought not to proceed further in the matter until the correspondence mentioned by his right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade, which was now in the press, was in the hands of Members.
  MR. MILNER GIBSONsaid, that he thought the question of the appointment of a Committee was not proper then; but if, after the perusal of the correspondence, the House should think otherwise, it might be proper to re-consider the point.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate he now adjourned."
  The House divided:—Ayes 40; Noes 35: Majority 5.
  Debate adjourned till Tuesday next.

DARTMOOR PRISON.

  PAPERS MOVED FOR.
  MR. NEWDEGATEsaid, he wished to move for an Address for a copy of, or extracts from, the correspondence between the Home Office, the prison authorities, and the visiting Roman Catholic priest recently dismissed from attendance at, the Dartmoor Prison. It was important that the correspondence should be produced before the House was called on to pass a judgment on the Prison Ministers Bill.
  Moved,
  "That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that She will be graciously pleased to give directions that there be laid before this House, Copy of or Extracts from the Correspondence between the Home Office, the Prison Authorities, and the Visiting Roman Catholic Priest, recently dismissed from attendance at the Dartmoor Prison."
  SIR GEORGE GREYsaid, he had no objection to produce the letter in which he had intimated his opinion as to the conduct of the Roman Catholic priest dismissed from attendance. He considered, that owing to deficiency of temper and discretion, his continuance in the office was inconsistent with the good order and discipline of the prison; but he thought it was undesirable in such a case that all the correspondence should be laid before the House.
  MR. KINNAIRDsaid, he regretted that any desire should be evinced to conceal the facts of the case. In his opinion,
  1246
  the whole correspondence ought to be produced, as it bore upon the Prison Ministers Bill, which the right hon. Gentleman had introduced.
  MR. WHALLEYsaid, that similar correspondence, in another case, had been given to him, and he thought it was most reasonable the House should require the correspondence in the present instance.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 21; Noes 35: Majority 14.

WRITS PROHIBITION (No. 2.) BILL.

  BILL WITHDRAWN.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  MR. E. P. BOUVERIE, finding the opposition with which it was threatened of too serious a character, begged to move that the Order be discharged.
  Order discharged:—Bill withdrawn.

  PIER AND HARBOUR ORDERS CONFIRMATION BILL.
  Pier and Harbour Orders Confirmation—considered in Committee:—
  (In the Committee.)
  Resolved, That the Chairman be directed to move the House, That leave be given to bring in a Bill for confirming certain Provisional Orders made by the Board of Trade under the General Pier and Harbour Act, 1861, relating to Blackpool, Deal and Walmer, Exmouth, Llandudno, Rhyl, Rosehearty, Ilfracombe, Instow, Bangor, Chatham, Bray, Dartmouth, and Nairn.
  Resolution reported.
  Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. MILNER GIBSON and Mr. HUTT.
  Bill presented, and read 1°. [Bill 109.]

  HARWICH HARBOUR BILL.
  Harwich Harbour—considered Committee:—
  (In the Committee.)
  Resolved, That the Chairman be directed to move the House, That leave be given to bring in a Bill for the Preservation and Improvement of Harwich Harbour under the General Pier and Harbour Act, 1861.
  Resolution reported.
  Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. MILNER GIBSON and Mr. HUTT.
  Bill presented, and read 1°. [Bill 110.]

  DRAINAGE AND IMPROVEMENT OF LAND (IRELAND) BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. PEEL, Bill to enable Landed Proprietors to construct works for the Drainage and Improvement of Land in Ireland, ordered to be brought in by Mr. PEEL, and Mr. CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER.
  Bill presented, and read 1°. [Bill 106.]

  SALE OF MILL SITES, ETC. (IRELAND) BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. PEEL, Bill to amend the Act of the twentieth and twenty-first years of Victoria, authorizing the Sale of Mill Sites and Water Powers by the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland, ordered to be brought in by Mr. PEEL and Mr. CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER.
  Bill presented, and read 1°. [Bill 105.]

  SHERIFF COURTS (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. CAIRD, Bill to enlarge the Sheriff Small Debt Jurisdiction in Scotland, ordered to be brought in by Mr. CAIRD, Mr. DALGLISH, and Mr. MACKIE.
  Bill presented, and read 1°. [Bill 107.]

  VOLUNTEERS ACTS AMENDMENT BILL.
  On Motion of The Marquess of HARTINGTON, Bill to consolidate and amend the Acts relating to the Volunteer Force in Great Britain, ordered to be brought in by the Marquess of HARTINGTON and the JUDGE ADVOCATE GENERAL.
  Bill presented, and read 1°. [Bill 108.]
  House adjourned at Two o'clock.