EDUCATION.—RESOLUTION. (Hansard, 8 March 1864)

HC Deb 08 March 1864 vol 173 cc1659-98 1659

§ MR. ADDERLEY
, who had given notice of his intention to move— That grants made from the Treasury to Schools for the working classes, should not, in every case, be reduced by the whole amount of all endowments, and— That, before laying new Minutes of Council on Education upon the table, the Vice President should explain to the House, after due notice, their purpose,"— said, he had given notice of two Resolutions, but he was informed by the highest authority that the second of those Resolutions was not proper in form; he should therefore confine his Motion, on the present occasion, to the first Resolution. He did not expect that any extended debate on Education would arise, because the issue he sought to raise was of very narrow dimensions. He wished by the Resolution he now submitted, to prevent coming into operation in June the Minute of Council on Education dated in last May, the effect of which would be to transfer all the endowments of schools referred to in the Minute from the school account to the credit of the Treasury. He would remind the House of the history of that Minute. It might appear that in so doing he would weaken his own case, because he must admit that the principle of excluding endowments from calculations of school incomes in some cases to meet grants dated from the origin of education grants. In the Minute of 1846 it was laid down that when the funds of a school were wholly or partially derived from endowments, such local or general permanent endowments should not be taken into account for an augmentation of the master's salary. In the consolidated Minute of 1858 the same principle was laid down, with a limitation to after the lifetime of the donor. In the Revised Code of 1862 the nature of annual grants was altogether changed, and they became capitation grants, and it was laid down that such grants were not, in the aggregate, to exceed the school pence and subscriptions. Then came the Minute of 1863, which was in principle wholly unprecedented, and an extraordinary stride in advance of the former position. By that Minute not only were grants to be reduced by the excess over the school pence and voluntary subscriptions, but the endowments were to be taken and appropriated in assistance of 1660 the grants and treated as part of the grants themselves. He protested against such a step receiving the sanction of the House. Small endowments, such as he was now speaking of, had always been regarded as local contributions, and it never was supposed until the Minute of the Council that they would be taken in relief of the public grants. In the first place, he would draw attention to the reasons assigned on the part of the Treasury on behalf of the principle of excluding or appropriating endowments, and show how the theory of the Treasury broke down in practice, and would then show what the general results and consequences of the principle, if practically enforced, must be. Lastly, he would suggest the right course which he thought should be pursued under the circumstances. With respect to the reasons alleged by the Treasury for excluding from calculation of income, or appropriating the endowments, they were ably laid down by Mr. Lingen soon after the Minute of 1846. Mr. Lingen stated that the Education Grant was intended to cover that portion of the field of public instruction for the labouring classes which was unoccupied by existing provisions. He denied that such was the principle of the education grant. As he understood it, the principle was that voluntary enterprize which had done so much already for popular education should not be overtasked, but should be supplemented by grants of public money. That was the principle which had hitherto been pursued, and it was rational, safe, and constitutional. The Council view of the subject appeared to him to be not only inaccurate but dangerous. It was based on two arguments, the first of which was unsound and the other untrue. The inaccurate argument was this. The Council declared that the Treasury grants to schools were intended only to stimulate and draw out private support, and that when private support had been so secured the grants might be withdrawn. His construction of Mr. Lingen's argument was this, that they had a great public object before them, and it was important that it should be supported as much as possible by private beneficence; they, therefore, laid down rules intended to draw private contributions, but when they had got them they were to withdraw these grants. In other words they angled for private benefactors with these grants, and as soon as they caught one they took the bait out of 1661 his mouth and reserved it to attractanother. That was a most short-sighted policy, and would in the end defeat itself; for he did not think that they would catch many fish with this bait, after one or two had been made to disgorge it, especially if they did not conceal the hook. It might, perhaps, be said that much success was not contemplated, and there was reason to suspect that at the bottom of the principle enunciated, was the feeling that endowments ought to be discouraged. It might be the opinion of those in office that endowments of all kinds were liable to abuse and ought to be checked; but then, the issue ought to be openly and distinctly raised. The Council ought not to follow the policy attributed to one of the Universities, of trying to starve an obnoxious professor whom they were unable to dismiss. In the present instance, if they could not absolutely prohibit endowments, they ought not to discourage them by a process of injustice. The question was, on which side of the contract between private individuals and the State, for maintenance of labourers' schools, were private endowments, and he (Mr. Adderley) maintained that private endowments were on the same side of the account as private contributions, and ought to be treated as such, and not as public property. Taking the question in the light of parallel cases, he might remind them that the late Lord Plymouth left a considerable sum of money to a favourite Yeomanry corps, of which he had been colonel; but the Government did not thereupon stop a corresponding amount from the pay of the men. Then, again, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners who aided private benefactions out of public funds at their disposal, did not, as soon as a contribution had been secured in the form of an endowment, by their own stipulation turn round and deduct it from the grant they undertook to give. As a matter of common justice, educational endowments ought to be dealt with on the same principle as other contributions which were supplemented by the State. There was a further error in the view of the Council. They said that when a school got an endowment it did not stand in the same need of the grant. That position he could not accept. He would put the case of two parishes of exactly the same amount of wealth and population. In one, an owner set apart so much of his property as an endowment for the school; and, in the other, the owners set 1662 apart exactly the same amount in annual contributions. The only difference between the position of the two parishes was in the character of the givers, and the permanence of the gifts, but in local effort and sacrifice of their resources they were precisely in the same circumstances, and they had equal claims for a subsidizing grant. He did not endorse some of the petitions he had presented, which expressed merely a general cry for money, and did not enter into the question of right. The simple issue was, in a contract to supply the income of schools between private and public resources, what the parish, on the one hand, was entitled to take to its credit, and the Treasury, on the other, was bound to give, and he (Mr. Adderley) said that the Treasury was not to help itself out of the pockets of private trustees. He would now show how the principle, set up on the part of the Treasury, broke down in practice. First, in the whole of the kingdom of Scotland the principle had utterly broken down; and, considering that that was half the area of the grant, it was a considerable break down for its supposed principle. To the honour of Scotland, ever since the Reformation, there had been a rentcharge or endowment in every parish in the country for the maintenance of schools. According to the principle laid down by the Government, the Council would say to the Scottish parishes, "All this heritor's tax must be excluded from your calculations of income to meet a grant." According to the Minute of May, they must go further, and say, "This rentcharge is secured for the public purpose of education, and we must regard it therefore as public money, and we shall relieve the Treasury from charge to that extent. In fact, the substance of the Treasury doctrine to all Scotland would be, "We have nothing for you — you have no claim upon us." The grant would become a minus quantity in every rural parish in Scotland. The Scotch, however, had been too well educated ever since the Reformation to take such arguments for logic. And, accordingly, they had not only been relieved from the operation of the minute, but this heritor's tax, instead of being appropriated in reduction of the grant, was treated as a voluntary contribution to which the Government were willing to make equal grants in every parish in Scotland. "What would England now say to the justice of such a distinction drawn between endow- 1663 ments on opposite sides of the Tweed? Beon's Charity and Dick's Bequest furnished other instances of the impracticability of the view of the Council. Those were private bequests, leaving large funds for the benefit of schools and schoolmasters, the application of which in detail was optional in the trustees. Here was a puzzle for the Council. The trustees represented the permanent interest, and the receivers the precarious interest. It was clear that the Council had to deal with the latter; but they saw at once it would not suit their view to deal with them, and they said to the trustees, "You have a large endowment; we cannot think of employing public means to supplement your subscriptions to schools, and we must, therefore, relieve the public taxation for those objects out of the means at your disposal." But there was a proviso in both wills that the trustees should so apply the funds as never to interfere with the obligations of any contributors to those schools. The Privy Council had therefore so managed it as to do exactly that which the testators wished to prevent, and had relieved the public chest of all obligations by means of private bequests to those schools. There was also numerous cases of endowments for the payment of weekly pence for the education of poor children, in which the principle dealt with the endowments twice over. Then there were instances, where, with the consent of the Charity Commissioners, small sums allotted for bread, or clothing, or other doles, had been converted into aids for schools. In such cases it might almost be said that the claimants for such doles were still living contributors to the schools to which their doles were transferred, from year to year relinquishing their own rights as a contribution to the schools; yet by the mere fact of the doles having been twisted into the form of school endowments, these practically living contributors were taxed to the Treasury for the relief of public obligations to the poor. Endowments of schools by allotments of common land came under the same category. Because the allottees were practically life contributors, yet the school lost the benefit of the grant to the extent of their contribution. In the case of a great number of endowments created indiscriminately for "clothing and educating" certain children, he felt curious to know how the Treasury could draw a distinction. Why should it not take all to its own credit; 1664 or, if not, on what point rests its option? There was a case at Hayes, in Kent, where, in 1861, the parishioners in vestry consented to give two-thirds of a charity which had been expended in bread to the school. Now that this sum was proposed to be taken in reduction of the Treasury grant, the rector who had originated the movement was accused in the parish of fraud. At Harlton, in Cambridge, in 1848, a landed proprietor left £90, to which several voluntary contributions were added by other landowners, who preferred paying down a sum of money at once to making annual payments. The whole was invested in consols, and by that process, under the Minute of May, was practically handed over to the Treasury. At "White-parish, Salisbury, the Council made it a condition of their first grant that the old master and mistress should be pensioned; but this inexorable principle would not even allow for those pensions, but deducted the whole endowment from their annual aid. Mr. Baldwin wrote that there were two schools in his neighbourhood which each had £1,000 left to them. One invested the legacy to use the interest for current expenses; the other built a master's and mistress's house. The first consequently lost all benefit of its legacy which the other saved. Barrow, near Loughborough, had an endowed school for all sorts of learning; as this did not meet the wants of the working classes, the Charity Commissioners enabled them to establish a lower school with part of their endowment. The trustees handed over one - third of their funds for the purpose, and now found that they had simply relieved the Treasury to that extent at a useless cost to their upper school. He would now show what would be the result if the principle asserted were practically carried out. It appeared by the Privy Council Returns that the Church elementary school endowments amounted to £34,782 a year, and the elementary school endowments of other religious denominations to £3,328. By the National Society's Returns he found that the number of Church elementary schools endowed with small sums of from £5 to £50 was 4,678. Prom those two statements it was clear that the majority of the schools affected by the Minute were Church schools in poor rural districts. In this manner the Minute certainly contravened the express intention, of the grant. He never stood up for the plea of poverty in the rural 1665 districts, where there was always property enough to take its share in the work, if there were no poverty of spirit in the owners. What he contended for was, the spirit of this Minute was in direct contravention of the declared intention of the original grant — namely, that the poor were its primary object; and all construction should be in their favour. The Minute of June, 1839, said that "the rule for aiding in proportion to subscriptions should not be invariably adhered to in cases of very poor and populous districts."

§ MR. LOWE
That relates to building grants.

§ MR. ADDERLEY
said, that the principle was the same whatever the application, and therefore his argument was not affected. It was certainly a contravention of the original principle to pass a Minute by which all classes of schools in the country, especially those in the rural districts, should be most deprived of the Privy Council grant; and it was quite as mischievous, if not more so, that they which needed inspection most should be deprived of the examination and inspection, and of the stimulus which was given by the Privy Council to all the schools which came under the supervision of its officers. But the schools which would suffer under this Minute were not only the schools in poor rural districts—they were nearly all Church schools. He did not desire that a Parliament grant drawn from the general taxation of the country should be administered for the benefit of any one class; but, for the same reason, it should not be spent to the special injury of any class, and least of all of the Established Church of the nation. As an evidence of what would be the operation of this Minute, it was stated that in the diocese of Carlisle, the aggregate grants under the Revised Code to eighteen schools, taken as samples, having endowments of about £30 a year each, would have been £322 a year, but by the Minute of May last they would be reduced to £87. It was also stated that nearly one-half of these schools would lose all grants, and that endowers of them to the amount of £1,830 a year were still alive. He fully admitted that there was great difficulty in drawing a Minute on this subject so as to avoid too wealthy claimants obtaining undue advantage. There must, in the first place, be a limit beyond which endowed schools should have no claim upon the public grant which was specially meant for 1666 the labouring classes, and ought not to be spent on classes which could afford to pay for their own education. That limit should be so fixed as to characterize the endowment as belonging to the working classes. Secondly, there ought to be another limit fixing the extent to which those who are within the first limit might claim the grant; because, although certain endowed schools might be allowed to participate in the Parliamentary grant, they ought not all to receive as large a subsidy as schools which were supported solely by voluntary contributions. But, in all cases, endowments were of the nature of private benevolence, and ought not to be taken by the Treasury as a means for reducing their own contributions. Several suggestions had been made to him as to how the difficulty might be met. Some persons thought that endowments might at a certain rate be taken for the education of a certain number of children, and that the rest of the school might be treated as a school un-endowed. That seemed to him to be a complicated mode of dealing with the question. Others proposed that the aggregate income of the schools, including school-pence, grant, and endowment, should be limited to a certain amount. There were various ways of meeting the difficulty, but he thought that the double limit which he had mentioned, which was the principle of the Revised Code, was the true principle, and that the principle which sought to appropriate private endowments in relief of the public treasury, which was the principle of the Minute of May, was a wrong principle, and ought to be abandoned. As his second Resolution was informally drawn, he would postpone it, and he would merely say a word on the principle involved in it. He thought that it would be very useful if the House could have its attention drawn to the introduction of new Minutes, and if some check could be put upon too incessant changes. They must expect changes from a very clever Minister, who had talents equal to a place in the Cabinet, and who had to let off the steam of superfluous energy which was pent up in a too narrow office. But if the attention of Parliament were called to every new Minute that was laid upon the table, it would probably prevent such numerous changes being made. Generally speaking, this system of bye-legislation in Executive offices, which seemed to be increasing, was dangerous. Still, from his own experience, he confessed 1667 that if every change that it was necessary to make in the administration of the Education Grant were to be brought to a Vote in that House, administration of the grant would be impossible. There was, however, a medium somewhere between this and the present mode of slipping changes on the table, without any one knowing anything of them, and often at the close of the Session. Not only did new Minutes steal upon them thus from time to time, but there were besides circulars issued in explanation of these Minutes, which very often in their importance themselves amounted to new Minutes. Something in the way of announcement of, and calling attention to, changes might, he thought, be adopted. However, as his second Resolution was so worded that it could not be put, he would defer to some future opportunity, taking the sense of the House upon the proposition which it involved, and at present would only move — "That Grants made from the Treasury to Schools for the working classes should not in every case be reduced by the whole amount of all endowments."

§ MR. F. S. POWELL (Cambridge)
seconded the Motion. He entirely agreed with the right hon. Gentleman in his statement as to the effect of the system in the poorer districts, and in his assertion, that the Education Grant was intended for the benefit of the working classes. It was not impossible that the House might have from the Treasury bench some loud declamation against endowed schools. He conceded every argument which could be based upon strong accusations and harsh expressions. On looking over the Report of the Education Commissioners he observed that endowed schools were abused by witness after witness. The Bishop of Carlisle said there was a danger lest the security of endowments should damp the zeal of the masters; but he added that such superintendence as was implied in Government inspection might neutralize the tendency, and he declared his opinion that small endowments should be treated as annual subscriptions in the matter of augmentation of stipends. But, in the midst of the evidence against endowed schools, there appeared some gleams of light and some symptoms of hope; and, upon the whole, no candid inquirer could say that there was anything in the Report of the Commissioners adverse to the proposition of the right hon. Member for Staffordshire. 1668 The Commissioners themselves said that if endowed schools were to remain useful, or to be prevented from becoming noxious, they should be made the subject of cautious and discriminating reforms. Most assuredly, however, they proposed no sweeping measures, and yet their recommendations, if faithfully carried out, could not fail to be successful. They suggested, for example, that the master of an endowed school should hold a certificate either from the Privy Council, or from the Universities, or from some other public body; that there should be a change in the manner in which some masters of endowed schools were appointed; that there should be a power to remove masters; and that there should be a periodical inspection by officers of the Privy Council. The direct tendency of the new Minute would be to remove endowed schools from Government inspection, and in that respect, therefore, as well as in others, it was in opposition to the recommendations of the Commissioners. Among the many evils connected with the charities of the country, not the least arose from the doles of bread periodically given. Such doles were mischievous and dangerous; in many cases they induced persons to attend the services of religion for no other purpose than to receive the dole, and so tended to produce among the people feelings of irreverence and profanity. He should like to see them devoted to one or all of three purposes—the providing of hospital and infirmary accommodation, the promotion of education, and the relief of the aged poor. In many parts of the country attempts were now being made to apply doles to education; but, judging from letters ho had received from clerical and other friends, he was afraid that if the new Minute was not repealed those efforts would cease, and the doles would remain a source of demoralization among the people. These endowed schools were distributed over every part of the country, and admitting that many of them were in a languishing state, the question was whether, by stimulating the action of local interests, we could improve their condition. He had no doubt that such would be the effect of the Resolution of his right hon. Friend the Member for North Staffordshire, and, in point of fact, something had already been done for endowed schools. Those schools required such assistance as the Privy Council could give; but now it was actually proposed to leave them to 1669 themselves, permitting them to become an obstruction to education, a resistance to progress, and a harm to the people. Many endowments had been created within the last few years, and in applying their Minute to them the Privy Council were acting not only in violation of justice and policy, but likewise in opposition to the recommendation of the Education Commissioners. There was also another point to which the right hon. Gentleman had alluded, and to which he wished briefly to advert. We had in existence throughout the country several free schools which possessed endowments, and which were obliged by their foundation to educate certain scholars without remuneration. Now, how did the Government propose to act towards such schools? Why, it said, "You shall still continue to educate those scholars free, but you shall not continue to receive the money by which the expenses of that education are to be defrayed." By no principle of reason or justice could such a mode of proceeding as that, he contended, be justified. But on the face of the Report itself was to be found the most powerful condemnation of the Minute, inasmuch as the proposition was there clearly set forth, that because endowed schools often obtained grants without needing them, therefore it had been decided to consider such endowments in relief of grants. But surely it was not because endowed schools often did not need grants that the grants were to be taken not from those particular schools, but from all endowed schools? The Minute, and also the Revised Code, were in his opinion bad; but there was an old proverb, that bad laws were not so mischievous as uncertain laws; and now an element of uncertainty was about to be introduced. There was a time when there was a pleasure in having communications with the friends of education in this country; but that time no longer existed. From communications which he had had with those who were engaged in educating the classes for whom this course of education was specially intended, he found that the difficulties with which they had to contend were greatly increased by the conduct of the Government, and there was everywhere a feeling of doubt, uncertainty, and suspense, and an anticipation of some impending blow. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Adderley) had alluded to the changes which had taken place in the Code; but the mischief was that those 1670 changes never ceased. It was much to be regretted that the Government had not paid more careful attention to the Minute, and the various other documents which had been issued from the Education Office, because the want of care produced this consequence, that there were in some of the documents clauses which were in direct contradiction to the Revised Code. The Code said that trust deeds which settled the legal ownership of the premises, and provided for the inspection and management of the schools, should be prepared in accordance with one or other of the precedents which had been settled. But in January last an attempt was made to force upon the National Society in every case where there were only 150 children in the school, a "conscience clause," though it appeared that that conscience clause was not contained in any one of the precedents according to which the grants were to be made to the National Society. He contended that this was in contravention of the arrangement between the House and the Government, and that such an alteration ought only to be made by a Minute, which should be laid upon the table, and should be approved or rescinded by the House. There were many other points in which, according to his judgment, the action of the Government was most disastrous to the schools. He believed that it would be wisdom and policy in an administration which desired to promote the interests of the people to meet as far as they could every desire of those who promoted education, and he most deeply regretted that a different policy had been adopted by Her Majesty's present advisers. He saw this policy in the Minute of which he complained, in the correspondence with managers of schools, and in the general outline of the action of the Government in this matter; but he trusted that a change would come over them, and that the country might not find from the Department of Education obstruction instead of advancement; and that it would hereafter be able to repose a confidence which it did not at present entertain in an important department of the administration.

§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That Grants made from the Treasury to Schools for the working classes, should not, in every case, be reduced by the whole amount of all endowments.—(Mr. Adderley.)

LORD HENLEY
said, that in no part of his speech had the right hon. Gentleman 1671 opposite (Mr. Adderley) spoken with more truth than when he stated that it was the Schools in the rural districts which the alterations made by the Committee of Council would principally affect, and that these schools were chiefly Church of England schools. Now, if the proposition had been to vote a fresh grant for education, there might have been more doubt as to the regulations proposed; but, in fact, it was only proposed to administer a grant that already existed; and seeing that the Church of England monopolized almost entirely the education of those districts, he was disposed to look with great regret on any proposition which tended to diminish its power of extending its operations. He agreed that one of the principal grounds of complaint, on the part of the managers of schools, was the sudden changes to which they were exposed. It was, for instance, only about two years ago that the managers of schools in the rural districts were taking into consideration a Minute, under the operation of which they were to receive certain additions to the sums paid for those schools, in the belief that the increase was to be placed on a fixed basis, and was to continue for a great many years. All their calculations in the matter were, however, rudely upset by the Minute under discussion. He would call attention to the way in which its operation would interfere with the interests of the three classes of persons chiefly interested—the managers of the schools, those who taught in them, and the pupils. Now, first as to the managers. They thought that under the Minute of two years ago they were to receive a certain sum as the price of certain results to be found upon examination; but the managers of schools with endowments found, in many cases, that they were to lose the whole amount of the sums which had been promised them; and that, consequently, they must reduce their establishments. This reduction would be necessary, because in many of the rural districts it would be found impossible to raise additional subscriptions sufficient to compensate for the loss of the grant. He thought that this was a position which it was hard to put the managers in. The Minute operated, in his opinion, equally injuriously in the case of the schoolmasters, who had gone to great expense, and undergone laborious preparation, with the view of obtaining the certificate, and whom the managers would now find it impossible to 1672 employ at the rate of wages which they had been led to anticipate. The consequence would be, that a great number of those teachers would be thrown entirely out of employment, and be unable to find a market for their labour. Then, as regarded the scholars, the effect of the Minute would be to deprive them in a great many instances of all the advantages of Government supervision, because the stimulus which made the teachers and managers endeavour to earn as much as they could by getting their pupils to appear to the best advantage at the Inspector's examination, would no longer operate. Indeed, where the amount of the endowment and the amount of the augmentation grant were nearly the same, the managers, as they would have little or nothing to receive, might be induced to withdraw their schools entirely from Government control, whereby the efficiency of the teaching might be seriously impaired. If it were proposed to make this reduction in the grants on the score of economy, it should be deemed necessary to economize in regard to the Educational Vote, and more especially in this particular form. He thought it would be very bad economy to take away the grant on account of the existence of an endowment, because the natural result of it would be that in future no person would be found to endow a school at all from his private resources. The Report mentioned the case of a clergyman at Coventry who had set apart the sum of £28 annually for the purposes of education in his own parish, and who said that if, at the time he did so, he had known of this Minute, he never would have made such a disposition of his money. He desired, therefore, to impress on the right hon. Gentleman the very great injury which his proposed Minute would do to the cause of education generally, and more particularly in the rural districts, in connection with the Church of England schools. It would exercise a very deteriorating influence upon the character of the instruction given; and on all these grounds he trusted that some modification would be made in its terms.

§ MR. MITFORD
said, that in supporting the Resolution of his right hon. Friend, he begged to express the pleasure with which he had heard those manly words fall from the noble Lord opposite, who consistently supported Her Majesty's Government, but whose practical knowledge compelled him on this occasion to vote 1673 against his friends. As the manager of a small endowed school, and representing a district which contained a large number of such schools, he must enter his humble protest against the proposal of the Government. He protested against it, in the first place, as tending to alter and unsettle the arrangements—these arrangements being the result of a compromise—which were come to under the Revised Code of 1862. Under those regulations he, in common with all other managers, entered into pecuniary arrangements with teachers, and incurred other responsibilities which, if the Minute of the right hon. Gentleman were to be carried out, would be entirely destroyed. He protested, in the second place, against the proposal of the Government as tending to discourage many rural schools, which alone would be affected. Rural schools, by comparison with urban schools, suffered in the competition for capitation grants, and it was impolitic to weight them still more heavily. Few, save those who lived in rural districts, appreciated the immense disadvantages under which such schools laboured, from the difficulty of bringing children together, from their living at some distance from the schoolhouse, from insufficiency of clothing, from bad weather, and from the unwillingness of their parents to send them to school. And it must not be forgotten that it was almost impossible to give to children in country villages the same sharpness and readiness displayed by children in towns. The consequence was, that when the Inspector paid his visit they made a worse show, and suffered proportionately in the capitation grant. He protested against the proposal of the Government, in the third place, as tending to discourage future endowments and those who might be inclined to make them by confiscating to the revenue of the State the endowments already made. Perhaps he might be allowed to state the case of the parish in which he lived, and of the schools of which he was the manager. A few years ago the schools were built by relatives of his, and were afterwards endowed with a sum of £500. The trust deed showed the purpose for which the endowment was given—that the money was given as a subscription of so much a year during the life of the donor, and to save himself and others in the parish after their death, by as much as the interest of the gross sum, from paying to the support of these schools. With what justice, then, 1674 he asked, could the Government take away the endowment from the parish as they were about to do? If the principle were adopted it would discourage many liberal men from doing liberal deeds, and would prevent future ages from enjoying the benefits of their liberality. The right hon. Gentleman would by-and-by make a speech to which they would listen with great pleasure, and his words might be summed up in this one argument—that it was unfair to give to endowed schools in the same proportion as they gave to unendowed schools. But he (Mr. Mitford) would say in answer, that the ingenuity of the right hon. Gentleman could not devise means by which all schools in all the parishes throughout the kingdom could be placed on the same footing with regard to competition for the Parliamentary grant. He had already referred to the great disadvantages under which rural schools laboured in comparison with urban schools, and he could mention twenty other cases in which the same injustice would he done as in that which he had named. The right hon. Gentleman could not get real justice by his present proposition—he could only get apparent justice; and was it then worth while, he asked, under those circumstances, to meddle with such sacred things as endowments and bequests? He supported the Resolution of his right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire. He only regretted it was not stronger. Instead of merely saying that the grants to endowed schools should not in all cases be reduced by the amount of all the endowments, he thought it would have been better if the words of the Resolution had been "that grants made from the Treasury to schools for the working classes should not be reduced, except in cases provided for by the Revised Code of 1862." It was better, in his opinion, to take their stand on that broad ground, and he should be glad if his right hon. Friend would allow the substitution of those words for his own. He trusted that the right hon. Gentleman who had charge of the Educational Department would see that the feeling of all Members on the Opposition and of many Members on his own side of the House was against his proposal, and would be satisfied with what he had at present done. The House and the country had allowed him to do a great deal, and he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would take a hint from the well known saying of the great oracle of his party—"rest" 1675 on the merits of what he had done, "and be thankful."

§ MR. BAINES
said, the object sought to be obtained by the Government proposal was to prevent a great and palpable waste of public money, and to bring back these grants to schools to the distinct principle upon which they were founded. Nothing was better known than that the principle of the system founded in 1846 was to find means, not to supersede, but to stimulate voluntary contributions. It needed no quotation from Hansard to prove this. Nothing was better known than the fact. Every grant was to be met by a voluntary subscription. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Lowe) was just going back to the principle which existed at the outset. It had been for a time most unjustly and improperly departed from. The right hon. Gentleman the Mover of this Resolution had found it necessary to depart from the extended terms he originally employed, and to adopt a more contracted form. His original Motion was to prevent the Government from deducting the endowment from the grant in any case; but he now said merely that it should not be imperative to deduct the whole endowment from the amount of the public grant in every case. He was astonished that the right hon. Gentleman, with the zeal he had always avowed for voluntary exertions, should have made such a Motion. Not only was it utterly unfair to give the same amount of public money to a parish having an endowment as to those which had none, but such a system tended positively to repress, discourage, and prevent the development of the voluntary principle. He should prove that, not by argument, but by facts, from documents which had been laid on the table of the House. In the parish of Clewer, Berks, National School the endowment was £61 per annum, the subscriptions nil, and the Government grant £45. In Old Windsor National School the endowment was £110, the subscription £30, and the Government grant £60. In March, Cambridge, National School the endowment was £56, the subscription nil, and the Government grant £61. In Sandbach, Cheshire, National School the endowment was £105, the subscription nil, and the Government grant £263. In "Wyburnbury (Delve's Charity) National School the endowment was £110, the subscription nil, and the Government grant £20. In Crosthwaite, Cumberland, Free Grammar School the amount was 1676 £124, the subscription £37, and the Government grant £82. In Glossop (Duke of Norfolk's School), Derbyshire, the endowment was £120, the subscription nil, and the Government grant £298 10s. In Barnstaple, Devon, National School the endowment was £100, the subscription £35, and the Government grant £54. In Bishop Auckland, Durham (Bishop Bar-rington's) Church School the endowment was £187, the subscription nil, and the Government grant £85. In Cirencester Church School the endowment was £638, the subscription nil, and the Government grant £108.

§ MR. MITFORD
inquired what year the hon. Gentleman referred to?

§ MR. BAINES
said, he was referring to papers which were moved for last year; one of them by the hon. Member for Oxfordshire, and the other by the hon. Member for Bolton, He was not sure whether one was the year before last.

§ MR. MITFORD
That was before the Revised Code.

§ MR. BAINES
It was in Fairford National School the endowment was £131, the subscription £18, and the Government grant £141. In Hanham Wesley an School the endowment was £129, the subscription £58, and the Government grant £101. In Moreton-in-the-Marsh Church School the endowment was £145, the subscription £40, and the Government grant £101. In Hereford (Scudamore's Charity) National School the endowment was £168, the subscription nil, and the Government grant £132. In Faversham District, Kent, National School the endowment was £596, the subscription £44, and the Government grant £391. In Greenwich, West Brand, Roan's Grey Coat Wesleyan School the endowment was £751, the subscription nil, and the Government grant £70. In Whitstable and Seasalter (Charity), Kent, National School the endowment was £140, the subscription £28, and the Government grant £173. In Liverpool St. Bartholomew's, Naylor Street School the endowment was £170, the subscription nil, and the Government grant £164. In Lough-borough, Leicestershire, School the endowment was £200, the subscription nil, and the Government grant £214. In Lambeth, Archbishop Tenison's School (National) the endowment was £335, the subscription nil, and the Government grant £97. Looking to these facts, he maintained that the effect of the old system was to repress voluntary action. It was a great benefit 1677 to the people to compel them to be active in the great, cause of education; and they would be active under the influence of motives of religion, humanity, and regard to the public peace. He thought the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Lowe) would have been censurable in the highest degree if he had not put an end to such a system as he had described. When that system was put an end to, the means would develop themselves for supplying the want. First of all they would have subscriptions and collections in churches and other places of worship. Then they would have a higher scale of payment on the part of children. He believed it was a most fatal policy to keep them down to the miserable penny per week. A higher payment would be positively beneficial to parents. It tended to increase their interest in the education of their children. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Lowe), he repeated, had taken the fair, just, and common-sense course in putting an end to the monstrous system of paying no regard whatever to private endowments in his administration of the public funds. He most heartily agreed with the principles laid down by the Privy Council, and should, therefore, oppose the Motion of the right hon. Gentleman opposite.

§ LORD ROBERT CECIL
said, it was always an unpleasant thing to witness the waste of labour well intended, and all the time the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Baines) was detailing figures which he had evidently collected with much care and cost of personal labour, he felt a pang that all those figures should be thrown away. The hon. Gentleman had been slaying the slain; he had been killing a system which was dead, and delivering an argument, not in favour of the Minute before the House, but in favour of the Revised Code, which had been disposed of two years ago. The enormous disproportions of which the hon. Gentleman had spoken might be disposed of summarily for the moment by the observation that they referred to a system which had gone by. He quite agreed with the hon. Gentleman, that what they had to look to was not any special case, but the general principle on which these grants were originally made by Parliament. The general objects which Parliament had in view were two. In the first instance, Parliament desired to assist education in those districts where population was comparatively poor, and therefore might be presumed to be unable 1678 to assist themselves. Besides that, Parliament desired to draw out the voluntary subscriptions of the people, and in respect to both of those objects, this Minute sinned against the primary objects of the Parliamentary grant. With respect to the poverty of the districts aided, everybody knew that in towns education could pretty well take care of itself. [Mr. HADFIELD: Hear, hear!] In the towns with which the hon. Member for Sheffield (Mr. Hadfield) was acquainted, large sums, no doubt, could be collected for education without any assistance from Government. The really sore point was reached on getting into the more sparsely populated districts, where the same amount of wealth could not be found. He agreed with the right hon. Member for North Staffordshire that those districts could not be called too poor to support the education which they desired to promote; but they certainly were very much poorer than the districts with which they were brought into comparison. The support of education was always a matter of difficulty there, because, in rural districts, the schools depended mainly on the landed proprietors. They were, generally speaking, the chief persons possessed of wealth, they were liable to the vicissitudes of character to which human beings were exposed, and it never could be relied on that in any particular district, at any particular time, there would be found landowners who would be disposed to support education. In dealing with towns, we might rely on averages. There might be a certain number of persons indisposed to education, but there would always also be a certain number who would be zealous in the cause. But where property was comparatively concentrated, the point was to obtain a permanent support for education. Voluntary subscriptions might safely be depended on for education as long as there was a sufficient number of persons of wealth to enable us to be certain that there would be among them some zealous promoters of education; but they were no longer a safe dependence where the numbers were few. In rural districts, when a man zealous for education came into his property, he said to himself, "These schools depend mainly upon me; it is possible that my son, or some future descendant, or some person into whose hands my property may pass, may be less zealous in the cause; I will, therefore, stereotype my good dispositions by making an en- 1679 dowment for the school. I will secure it from all danger which may arise from a change in the character of any future tenants of my property, and I will take care that it shall he as secure in its support as those schools which are supported by the denser populations of towns." Was it not desirable to encourage people to do that? Was not that a mode of voluntary support quite as worthy of the countenance of the House of Commons as the contribution of those subscriptions the amount of which varied from year to year? It was on that ground that he thought the right hon. Gentleman opposite was levelling a heavy blow at the education of the poorer districts, when, by this Minute, he said he would discourage all permanent sources of support. Here he must remind the right hon. Gentleman of one thing of which the arguers of his case had lost sight of. The hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Baines) had mentioned cases in which there were large endowments and small subscriptions. The rationale of that was this:—When a man inherited landed property he might probably find that his ancestors had alienated a large amount for the support of a school. He knew that the school was supported by revenues which but for that alienation would be his, and he said, not unnaturally, "My ancestor has taken care of my subscription, my duty is discharged, and I will subscribe no more." There was no harm in that, the school flourished just as well—it was merely a different mode of taking the amount, and that explains why parish endowments may be very large, and voluntary subscriptions nothing at all. Then there came the other object of the Privy Council—the encouragement of the voluntary subscriptions of the people. In this country the system and principle of endowments had become so much a part and parcel of our institutions, it had entered so thoroughly into our social life, we relied on it for the supply of so many wants, that at this time of day it was hardly open to us to start the question, whether endowments were good or bad. But if it were desirable to raise that question, it ought to be done in a direct manner. He maintained that the voluntary contributions of the people, in the shape of permanent endowments, were just as worthy of encouragement, just as great an object of self-devotion, showed just as great zeal in the cause of education, and were just as powerful an aid to the pro- 1680 motion of that cause as if they were temporary and evanescent. Therefore, the objects contemplated in the original scheme of education appeared to be not only equally but better attained by the encouragement of endowments than by the encouragement of temporary subscriptions. It was on these two general principles that he opposed the Minute of the right hon. Gentleman. But he had special grounds also, which were intimated in the Motion appended to the Resolution' of his right hon. "Friend (Mr. Adderley), which he had not been able to put. There were peculiar features connected with this Minute which the House of Commons was called on to take notice of. Two years ago they had a battle on the Revised Code, which ended, as all political battles in this country must do, in a compromise. Each side yielded a great deal to obtain what was generally believed to be a permanent settlement. It was accepted, to a great extent, by the managers of schools. They, bowing to the will of Parliament, set themselves to the task of undertaking new liabilities, bearing new burdens, and discharging new duties, on the faith of that settlement, which they believed to be permanent, and to the maintenance of which they thought the authority of Parliament was pledged. But the object of the right hon. Gentleman, since he had been in the Education Office, seemed to be to keep it in a perpetual state of revolution. No man who had to deal with him knew what the next year might bring forth, what new principles would be started, and what new conditions would be thrust upon him for his acceptance of the grant. The right hon. Gentleman must see himself that nothing could be more fatal to the progress of education, or more weakening to the confidence which managers had in Parliament, than these perpetual alterations of principles. But it was not merely that of which the House of Commons had a right to complain. It is that from the very beginning of his tenure of office to the present time, the right hon. Gentleman seemed to have thought that his mission was insidiously and clandestinely to thrust into the management of the affairs committed to his charge principles which he did not venture to avow when he stood on the floor of the House of Commons. The hon. Member for Leeds (Mr. Baines) was a bold and outspoken voluntary. The hon. Member for Sheffield (Mr. Hadfield) was something more 1681 than an outspoken voluntary; but though the right hon. Gentleman differed in language from his supporters, did he differ in conduct? The right hon. Gentleman lost no opportunity of striking at the basis of the system which he had been placed in his present office to administer. What the House had reason to complain of was, that the right hon. Gentleman did not come forward, when he moved the Estimates, and acquaint the House with the changes, and tell them the effect of his proposals. Instead of doing so, he wrapped his schemes up in those hieroglyphics which the permanent Secretary of the Treasury knew so well; and in these they remained till some hierophant of the Education Office unravelled them. Then the House found it was not some alteration in detail they had passed, but that some principle which they had cherished, and which was at the foundation of the whole system, had been secretly sapped and undermined. He thought such proceedings very objectionable on the part of a Minister in the House of Commons, but they seemed especially objectionable in the Education Department. There was no Department to which the House of Commons committed trusts so unlimited. Parliament committed to the right hon. Gentleman a fund of which it touched scarcely a single item; it handed over to him enormous sums—reaching nearly a million sterling—and left it almost entirely to the discretion of his office to dispense them. He thought that so much confidence deserved some confidence in return. What he was now about to refer to was not a subject before the House, but it bore on that subject. They had had many complaints from religious societies of the way in which the right hon. Gentleman was dealing with the religious aspect of the question. There was the case of what was generally known as "the conscience clause." This clause was not before them, and he did not mean to discuss it; but what he wished to bring before the House was this, that if those changes were made at all, they ought to be made openly, avowedly, and deliberately. [Mr. LOWE: Hear!] They ought not to be made by the Minister in the secresy of his office; they ought to be made avowedly in the face of the House of Commons. It was not fair that the right hon. Gentleman should go so far as to banish dogmatic teaching from the Church of England schools, without giving the body who fur- 1682 nishes the money an opportunity of passing judgment on such a proceeding. It appeared to him that the proposition which, they were discussing that night was only a part of the same system. No intimation had been given by the right hon. Gentleman of the bearing of that plan. The first intimation they had received of it was the complaint of those who felt that it was an injury, and apprehended the damage which it was likely to entail. Even if the House did not now differ from the right hon. Gentleman on the general principle on which the contributions to the rural schools are to be based, if they did not fear the utter ruin of the rural schools, and the entire extinction of the contributions on which for the future they ought to rely—even if there were not those objections to the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman—they ought to reject it, because it had been introduced with a secresy and a silence which the House of Commons was bound not to tolerate.

§ COLONEL SYKES
said, as representative of the city of Aberdeen he was an official trustee of the Milne Bequest to schools in Aberdeenshire, and in the name of the schooolmasters of that shire he protested against the scheme of his right hon. Friend as mischievous and impolitic. There were two bequests of an important character to schools in the North of Scotland, the Milne and Dick's Bequests. Taking the case of one of these bequests by way of example, he wished to observe, that it was not an endowment in the usual sense of a compulsory annual fixed allowance to particular schoolmasters, but an allowance at the discretion of the trustees to such schoolmasters as satisfied the requirements laid down by the trustees; and the trustees, acting on their powers, applied it for the purpose of securing schoolmasters of superior attainments. Accordingly, there were in some of the parochial schools in the North of Scotland schoolmasters who could teach Greek and Latin, and Mathematics; and many men whose names were an honour to their country, and who were enrolled upon its annals, had received their early education in those schools. Dr. Milne, in his deed, says— So small is the pittance of salary which is in general bestowed upon the parish schoolmasters in Scotland, that little inducement exists for men of any talent or acquirements to engage in such an office; the sources of instruction are consequently proportionably defective, and the youth whose minds ought to he formed, find but a poor and ill adapted model for improvement. It is therefore 1683 highly important that the situations of the parish sohoolmasters should be improved, because it will induce men of abilities and of education to engage in such a task. And he expressly enjoins that his bequest shall not be applied in such a manner As in any way to relieve the heritors or other persons from their legal obligations to support parochial schoolmasters, or to diminish the extent of such support. The bequest fund only permits of £20 being given annually to 70 out of 114 parochial schools in Aberdeenshire; the trustees therefore have an ample margin for new selections, whenever the grantees failed in their duties: in fact, those endowments were in the nature of voluntary grants in the first instance; and they ought not to come under the rule which his right hon. Friend sought to have adopted. The scheme of the right hon. Gentleman would unquestionably deter all benevolent persons from assisting, by bequests, in promoting the education of the people, and he, therefore, should give it all the opposition in his power.

§ MAJOR CUMMING BRUCE
said, he quite agreed with those who believed that the effect of this measure would be to discourage endowments for the future, and it might almost be concluded that this was the object which his right hon. Friend had in view. He knew his right hon. Friend too well, however, to suppose that that was his object. No doubt the proposition had been made from the fear that the Educational Grant was attaining such formidable dimensions that Parliament would be deterred from continuing it. But ho thought the right hon. Gentleman had entirely overshot the mark, and that the effect of his proposition would be to prevent the bequests which would otherwise be made for educational purposes. He was sure it would have that effect in Scotland. With regard to the Dick Bequest, which was a fund left for the purpose of improving the position and raising the qualifications of the parochial schoolmasters in the three northern counties, his right hon. Friend came under the description of the persons alluded to in the terms of the bequest, which said that the fund was not to be applied in such manner as to relieve the elders or other persons from their obligation, to support the parochial schoolmasters. Practically, his right hon. Friend proposed to confiscate for the use of the Treasury a bequest which was given for a different purpose— 1684 namely, to raise the standard of qualifications and the remuneration of the parochial schoolmasters. He also believed that the right hon. Gentleman would entirely fail in saving the public money. In the county of Banff there was a school with 272 scholars, and the grant to which they would be entitled would amount to £90, while at present the utmost extent of the grant given by the trustees in aid of any parochial schoolmaster was £40. The Minute had been received in Scotland with the greatest possible disapprobation; it would interfere materially with the efficiency of the schools there; and the people were therefore unanimous in thinking that every possible opposition ought to be given to it.

§ MR. HADFIELD
said, the proposition before the House was how to educate the people of England. A grave question connected with it was now moving the world, the question of endowments and the voluntary principle—a living sentiment and the exercise of mental effort on the one side, and a dead lock, a body without a soul, on the other. It was a subject which interested all civilized society; the old and obsolete principle of endowments and establishments was dying away, and those highest in Christian principle and example would carry the day. It was the pivot on which humanity, on which the whole human race would turn. How had the competition between voluntaryism and endowments been carried on during late years? For years it had been the principle of the Nonconformists to abandon endowments and rely entirely upon voluntary effort and intellectual effort. And what had been the consequence? Had the Church competed with them in the moral and intellectual instruction of the people for the last fifty years? Certainly not. The Church had between 15,000 and 16,000 institutions in the country; the Nonconformists had 25,000, and yet did not seek a single shilling from the State. The only denomination of Protestant Nonconformists in the United Kingdom who asked for a single shilling of public money were the Presbyterians of Ireland, who pestered the Lord Lieutenant and hunted up the Prime Minister to secure and to increase their endowments, and the result had been the decrease of their body. The Voluntaries in this part of Britain—he meant England and Wales—had 3,000,000 children under the tuition of 350,000 voluntary and unpaid teachers. What was 1685 moving the Church of England at the present moment? Dissatisfaction with the subscription to the Doctrines and Articles. For two hundred years the Nonconformists had borne the persecution and obloquy of the hierarchy. And what said the Head of the Church now? Her Majesty, the Head on earth of the Church of England, had issued a Royal Commission to inquire whether this subscription, so long sought to be exacted from the Nonconformists, but never got from them, could not be changed. In other words, suggesting that the Nonconformists, who had protested against the subscription, were right, and the Church wrong; that those who for 300 years had borne a testimony against this subscription were right, and those who insisted upon the subscription—and insisted on it, too, on the principle that they were the predominant party—not the Christian party, but the dominant party— were wrong.

§ MR. LOWE
Sir, before I address the House upon the subject immediately before it, perhaps I may be allowed to say a few words in reply to the observations of the noble Lord the Member for Stamford (Lord Robert Cecil). The noble Lord did me too much honour in attributing to me the undivided management and responsibility of what he calls the educational revolution which has taken place during the last three years. I am but the humble instrument of much higher authorities, and the whole of these changes have been submitted to the Educational Committee composed of the highest officers of the State, under whose directions I have to act. I should be tempted to take to myself—if I were worthy of it—all the responsibility and the blame for what has been done. The noble Lord, in the light and sportive manner in which he is in the habit of enlivening our debates, has said that I entertain insidiously and clandestinely certain sentiments which I dared not avow —one of those sentiments arising from the fact that I am a concealed follower of the hon. Member who has last addressed us. It matters very little to the House what my opinions upon this subject may be, but I can assure it that in what I have had to do with regard to education, I have looked upon it as a matter of business in a department which I have had to administer under principals. All my efforts have been directed to carrying out the directions I have received from my official superiors in the manner best 1686 calculated to attain the end they had in view. I have had no concealed opinions —no views kept back—no secret colloquies with the hon. Member for Sheffield (Mr. Hadfield). If I had been an advocate of the voluntary principle I could have done no better than to have done nothing and to have left matters alone. By doing away with some of the charges to which allusion has been made, and by bringing the whole subject to the test of examination, the Privy Council system has secured a new lease. When I found the Vote increasing at the rate of £100,000 a year, if I had left that state of things to continue for five years I should now have to submit an estimate of £1,200,000, and I think then I should have pretty well played the game of the supporters of the voluntary principle. The thing would have become so inflated —so intolerable—that the country would have risen and the whole system would have been swept away.
Coming now, Sir, to the immediate subject of discussion, I am accused of having acted stealthily, furtively, and secretly with regard to this Minute. Let the House look at the facts. The Minute was laid on the table on the 19th of May, last year. The noble Lord says the Minute is couched in such intolerable jargon that a hierophant is necessary to explain it. The Minute is, "Annual grants to endowed schools are reduced by the amounts of their income from endowment;" that is the whole of it. I am not acquainted with any hierophants, but I am sure he must be a clever expositor who can put that into plainer English. It was laid upon the table on the 19th of May. After that I was duly questioned by the right hon. Baronet the Member for Droitwich (Sir John Pakington) and others, and then came the Education Estimates, when the amplest opportunity for discussing the subject was afforded. The Minute was proposed to come into operation on the 30th of June of this year, thus giving fourteen months for consideration and discussion. There may be many faults about it, but it is impossible to take a course more calculated to insure publicity. Let hon. Gentlemen remember that it is not my fault if the Department must act by Minutes. It is the system we found in existence, and it is not possible, for a Department acting by Minutes to have that publicity and concert with the House of Commons which accompany the intro- 1687 duction of a Bill. There is one consolation which ought to redeem us from obloquy, and that is, that if we had been compelled to alter the old system by a Bill I could never have carried it through this House, and I should now be about at this moment to move for a Vote of £1,200,000. So, with all its faults, the present system has at least one advantage. With respect to this Minute, it obliges me to go to the fundamental principle of the grants of the Privy Council. In 1860 we reduced these Minutes to a Code, which, in 1861, we revised. In our Codes, we defined the means by which the Department acted, which were the aiding of voluntary local exertion for the maintenance of schools. Then comes the question which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Staffordshire (Mr. Adderley) raises —Do these endowments come under that head? That is what it really comes to. This new arrangement of the Department was not adopted without great consideration and good reason. We were about to trust to local bodies, of whom we knew little, a certain amount of public money to expend, and it was right that we should take all the guarantees in our power. These guarantees were of two kinds. The first was that these bodies should be expending their own money at the same time; and the second was that they should be resident on the spot, and have a personal interest in the expenditure being properly administered. It was for these reasons that the Department aided voluntary local expenditure. Before the Revised Code was adopted all the grants were appropriated, and it was quite clear that endowments were not considered to come under the head of voluntary contributions and local expenditure. That is quite clear from two Minutes—the one relative to the building of schools is Article 26 of the Revised Code of 1860, which declares that where the balance is not covered by the local contributions it may be made up from any other sources, such as the proceeds of endowments. So that these are spoken of as proceeds from other sources than voluntary local contributions. Secondly, in Article 62 of the old Code of 1860 it was said, that the minimum salary of the teacher must be wholly derived either from voluntary contributions or from them and the school fees. That showed that no funds derived from endowment would be considered as voluntary contributions, except during the 1688 life of the donor. That was the state in which we found the question. I will now proceed to tell the House the grounds on which we made this Minute. When the appropriated grants were done away we had to reconsider the whole question. The first point that naturally suggested itself after the Revised Code passed was, under what class we should rank endowments. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Adderley) said again and again that we ought to have ranked them under the head of local contributions. I have shown from previous Minutes that the authority of the office was opposed to this view, and it would have been an absolute bull to have done otherwise. An endowment is not in the least degree local in its nature. I may bestow a house in New South Wales on my right hon. Friend's school in Staffordshire, and that would be in every sense a good endowment, but not a local one. An endowment may be in Bank Stock or money in the funds. It is something bringing in income which the managers know they have to deal with. Then, again, in what sense can an endowment be called a subscription? The noble Lord the Member for Stamford said it made not the least difference whether a gentleman at his death or during his life settled a sum on a school, or whether that sum was contributed by his son. The same point has been put more forcibly by a periodical which is opposed to our policy on this question, and which asked, "What is the difference between a dead squire and a living squire?" We have high authority for saying that a living dog is better than a dead lion, and I should say the difference is as great between the living and a dead squire. The dead squire may leave his money to the school, but he cannot bequeath his active superintendence, his direction and authority — all which accompany the gift of the living squire. Such a bequest cannot be called a contribution; it cannot be called a subscription. It is the property of the school —that which it possesses—and it carries with it all the incidents of property. One of the incidents and luxuries of property is that a man may be thoroughly idle and yet not get into trouble by it. That is also the case with a school. A school enjoys the property, whether it is managed well or ill. But it does not follow necessarily that it should receive Government assistance. For the purposes of our grant, we had to determine whether we should 1689 base it on the principle of life superintendence and energy in the management of the school, or on that of taking money from a dead hand which gives us no guarantee for any effective superintendence. I think there is no doubt we must consider those endowments as not being local contributions. But then we have to consider not what they are not, but what they are. They are property in possession of the school. They have it independently of the Government or of any voluntary contributions. Well, then, we come to consider our new relations to schools. We have to pay money, not strictly appropriated as heretofore, but to the managers for the general purposes of the schools. We have to consider what every discerning person ought to consider in the distribution of charitable and eleemosynary funds—the means of the recipient. We have to examine whether we are giving to a rich or a poor school, to a school relying on the voluntary exertions of those living around it, or having property of its own. We have to do what every relieving officer does. If he has two applicants, and if one has 2s. a week from a friendly society or other source, and the other has none, he does not treat the two alike. He does not give the same allowance to both, but he deducts the 2s. from the first. That is just what the Government has done. Again, in the case of a debt, if a creditor receives a part of it from any other source the man who owes it does not pay it over again, but pays the difference, and allowance is made for that part which has been discharged. That is the simple, plain principle on which the deduction of the endowment is based. A great deal has been said this evening about the interests of schools; but we have to consider another interest besides that of the managers. The money that the Privy Council has to administer does not drop from the clouds, like the gold of Jupiter into Danae's lap. It is taken from the toil and sweat of the labouring millions of this country, and the Government owe a debt of justice to them, as well as to the managers of schools. Hon. Gentlemen talk as if I only took a pleasure in vexing or annoying people. But they who give must take, and when, we take from the working men we take from those who can worse afford to give than the managers can afford to do without it. We are a public department standing between the people and the administration of their funds. It has been predicted to-night that in dealing with this 1690 question I shall use violent and strong language. I feel no desire to take up that challenge; but I think it is melancholy to hear hon. Gentlemen contending that, merely because we, under the direction and control of Parliament and exercising the undoubted right of this House, dispense the taxes of the country in such a manner as we think proper—that, if we make deductions from these grants, we are to be told that we confiscate these endowments. What right had the persons who made these endowments to suppose that Parliament would frame its future policy according to their wish? Are we to allow the folly of one age to legislate for the wisdom of all succeeding ages? We tie up for limited periods the estates of our great families, in whom we all feel pride and interest. We allow the claim of these endowments to an eternity of existence and immunity of management. Is not that enough, but that in addition we are not to be allowed to regulate our grants in such a way as to give the Government any advantage from these endowments? Are we bound to ignore their existence? Are we to be compelled to pay to these institutions public money wrung from the people as if these schools possessed no funds at all? I have been asked a question to which I am not bound officially to give an answer, and indeed officially I have no answer to give. I am asked how I can answer to myself for being the means of discouraging the creation of charities for schools for the working classes? There was a time when it was a noble thing to found a school for the working classes. That was a time when the State left those matters to private benevolence entirely, and I think at that time there was no nobler or better occupation than to found a school for the education of the people. But as soon as Government undertook that duty, I cannot conceal from myself that it was better for a school that it should have no endowment at all. It has been insisted over and over again by hon. Gentlemen, that it is impossible to obtain voluntary subscriptions for a school with an endowment, whether large or small. How can we explain that? In this way — that the opinion of people, founded upon long and uniform experience, is that those endowments are ill administered, and that in proportion as their wealth is great their management is bad. Therefore it is—much as we are abused, greatly as our conduct has shaken the con- 1691 fidence of managers, as we are told—people are always ready to come forward and subscribe liberally to schools which receive the assistance of the Privy Council when a shilling cannot be had for schools which are endowed. Knowing, then, the great advantage that these grants should not go to the schools as an absolute certainty— the immense advantage of there being a power of withholding them—I must say, speaking boldly my own individual opinion, that I do not at all desire to see money, as long as things remain in their present state, devoted by will or by deed to the foundation of schools for the children of the working poor. I think the thing could be better done by the Government. I would put another point. Supposing those schools were supported by rates, and that every union was rated to maintain them, is there a union in the world that would act upon the policy which you urge upon the Government? Would it say, "Here are two schools, the one with an endowment of £50 a year, the other with none; let us treat them exactly in the same way?" Is such a thing conceivable? "Well, then, is it because we live in London, and deal with larger sums, that we are to be more prodigal? I admit that my right hon. Friend the Member for North Staffordshire (Mr. Adderley) has touched upon some of our principal difficulties. The principle of this Minute is that you ought not to do again that which has been sufficiently done already, nor pay a sum which has been already sufficiently paid. I have heard no one contend that if the school is fully supported by endowments, it should also receive the grant of the Government. But if that be so, with what cogency can it be contended that it would be a proper object of relief when partially endowed, just as much as a school which had no endowment at all? Is not the right principle that, if the school is wholly supported, we should deduct the whole amount of the endowment from the grant; if only partially, that we should deduct the part? If it is urged that this will be hard upon schools with small endowments, the answer is, that if the endowment is small the deduction of the grant is also small; but if the deduction is large, then the endowment is also large, and I maintain that the endowment must go to the relief of the grant. There are three sources from which these schools are ordinarily maintained—first, by the school pence; second- 1692 ly, by voluntary contributions; and thirdly, by contributions from the Privy Council. If these endowments are not to be considered in the nature of grants already paid to the schools, they must be taken, on the other side, in ease of the contributors. Does anybody think that those who founded these schools meant that the money with which they were endowed should go to the ease of the gentlemen and ladies who charitably contribute to the schools, or to the relief of the general taxpayers of the country? No, they meant it for the benefit of the poor. The question is, who is to be relieved? Is it the body that represents the general taxpayers, or is it the local contributors? Surely the Education Department, which represents the general taxpayers, has as good a right to the easement as the local contributor. Take the case of a school which has no endowment. We are bound, for the purposes of this argument, to believe that what we give to our schools is sufficient. It has been considered sufficient, for it has received the sanction of this House. But if it be sufficient for a school which has not got an endowment, of course it is more sufficient for one that has. The sum given in aid to endowed schools must either displace voluntary contributions, instead of aiding them; or, if it does not, it must give the school a larger income than it ought to have, and encourage extravagance; and the amount of the endowment is the exact measure of the waste. Then there is the case of Scotland, which my right hon. Friend seemed to think showed conclusively that we were wrong, because this Minute does not reaily apply to Scotland; and, if true to our own principles, we must range the rates paid by the heritors in aid of the endowment. Well, Scotland receives about one-tenth of the educational grant, England about nine-tenths. Of course, therefore, our Minutes are originally framed with reference to the larger country and the larger expenditure, and then we endeavour, as well as we can, to adapt them to the state of society in Scotland. Therefore, if pressed by the argument of my right hon. Friend on this point, I should not feel very much distressed on that account. Scotland contributes to the grant as well as England, and has been always celebrated for her liberality in the cause of education, and, therefore, even if the cases were similar, we need not be ashamed of the way we act towards her. 1693 But the cases are not the same. The real meaning of the tax in. Scotland is that public opinion entirely sanctions the principle of the support of schools by the land of each parish, and the real effect of the rate is rather an apportionment than a compulsion; it is more to arrange the contribution to be made by the proprietors of a parish than by way of compulsory payment. It seems, therefore, to be much more analogous to a voluntary rate than to an endowment. But if it be not we cannot help it. We are obliged to have two institutions for the two countries, but we endeavour to make each answer the best we can. We may not be entirely logical, but we act, to the best of our judgment, as the circumstances require. Besides, the Scotch system differs from ordinary endowment in a very important particular; in Scotland there is no founder of parochial schools, except the public. There is a charity which has been referred to, and which seems a very excellent one, in which the founder left a sum of money to be distributed among the schoolmasters of two or three counties, trustees having the power of recalling the grant if they think proper. It is contended that that is not an endowment; but it has every feature of an endowment. There are the trustees and the property to pay the money. It is true the money may be recalled, but that does not alter the nature of the endowment. It is said it is a grant to the schoolmasters, and not to the school. But I cannot understand that distinction, because the grant must be either to carry out the intention of the Privy Council or not. If this grant be for the purpose, not of educating the poor, but of setting the schoolmasters to educate Indian generals or statesmen, that is not a grant in accordance with the views of the Privy Council. But if it be a grant to the school for the purpose of educating the poor, it is really doing the work which we have to do, and to pay the money over again would be to do that which has been donealready. These are the observations which I wish to address to the House in vindication of the course which we have taken. It is a matter of no importance to the working of the Education Minutes; but the course has been taken merely from a sense of justice to the taxpayer, that we might not undergo the reproach of paying over again a sum of money which has been already paid. The sum at issue amounts to about £30,000, and it is in the hands of the 1694 House to do what it will. It is an item hardly worth notice in our very large expenditure; but I think that hon. Gentlemen who press for a reduction of taxation should look to such matters as this. It is not by objecting to taxes, but by economizing the expenditure that relief may be obtained. The attempts to economize which have been intrusted to the care of the House, and of which the House has had instances to-night in the extracts quoted by the hon. Member for Leeds (Mr. Baines) do not hold out any great expectations of accomplishing our wishes to diminish the burdens of the country.
I come now to the Motion of my right hon. Friend the Member for Forth Staffordshire (Mr. Adderley). His first Motion (for my right hon. Friend has proposed two), I took up with a great wish, if possible, to agree with it, because if my right hon. Friend in his speech of to-night appears entirely to have forgotten the Revised Code and all about it, I have not forgotten the able, candid, and generous support which he gave me when that support was so much needed. Therefore, had it been in my power to accede to his first proposition, to the effect that no reduction should be made in grants to schools on account of endowments, I would have done so with the greatest satisfaction. That would have prevented the slightest change in this matter of endowments—a matter which no one has defended quite to the full extent; because if the managers of schools had a vested right to have the Minutes of Council continued exactly as they were, in order to have the enjoyment of the endowments assigned them by the founders, no doubt that argument would extend to the hundreds of wealthy schools we have heard of to-night. It therefore seemed to me that that argument proved too much, and it would be quite impossible for me to agree to such a Resolution. No doubt it would have been very agreeable for me to have done so, for I have been so fortunate hitherto as to carry these great changes through the House without a single division of any kind—a fact which, I think, gives them double value, as the expression not of my own opinion, but of the deliberate opinion of the House, formed after hearing argument and debate on the subject. This circumstance is, I think, considering the pressure exerted on all sides with respect to the Revised Code, highly creditable to the House. Therefore, I should have been very unwilling at the 1695 end of my task to be obliged to encounter a hostile division, but so long as the Motion remained in its original shape I could not help doing so. But my right hon. Friend has, since his Motion was originally framed, altered the words of the Motion, and it now stands "That grants made from the Treasury to schools for the working classes should not, in every case, be reduced by the whole amount of all endowments." Now, when I look at the terms of the Motion, I must confess, that though the penalty be that of being devoured by the Sphinx that has put the riddle to us, I must answer, Davus sum, non Œdipus. As far as I can make out the meaning it appears to me that my right hon. Friend has gone from one extreme to the other; for instead of a Resolution preventing the deduction of any endowment from the grant, he has now laid before the House another Resolution, the terms of which would be satisfied if I deducted all but a single shilling of the endowment. This seems like a Resolution framed in respect to financial matters for the purpose of including all possible things, and I confess I did hope that my right hon. Friend would in his speech have given some guidance as to the meaning of this most remarkable Motion. It seems to me much the same as if a man said to a little boy, "Here is some money for you; go and spend it, not every day nor in all pastry-cooks' shops," and I do not know what the little boy would think he was to do. I looked to the right hon. Gentleman's speech for an intimation of the interpretation he himself put upon his Resolution. No doubt the right hon. Gentleman was not sparing in his language—he said, for instance, that the Minute was "a robbery;" but that was, of course, a conventional manner of speaking. I do not complain of it, except in so far as it affords me no information as to the meaning of the Resolution. Then the right hon. Gentleman said that he wishes the grants to be confined to the working classes. Well, I entirely agree with him; but I believe that the Department has already done everything that human ingenuity could suggest for the purpose of confining their grants to the children of the working classes. The right hon. Gentleman then proceeded to admit, that he did not consider that people claiming under an endowment stand in exactly the same position as those who claim on account of voluntary contributions. It is true that 1696 in the greater part of his speech my right hon. Friend seemed to hold that they did; but towards the end of his observations he somewhat relaxed the severity of his argument. That is all the light which the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman have thrown upon his Motion. At the same time, I think I have gathered from the course of the debate to-night, that there is a strong feeling in the House that something ought to be done for the poorer classes of schools. In the way we have conducted this matter throughout we have been obliged to concoct our propositions in secret, as the noble Lord said, and then lay them before the House. We are quite aware of the disadvantage of this course of proceeding; but it is our duty not to dictate to the House, but to lay such propositions as we consider best before it, with the view of eliciting public discussion; and by that discussion we have endeavoured to guide ourselves. I have, therefore, no hesitation in saying, that if my right hon. Friend presses it I am willing to accept the Resolution which the right hon. Gentleman has put on the paper. I cannot pretend to say that in accepting it I make any great sacrifice, so far as the words of the Motion are concerned, for I do not exactly know their point; but, at the same time, I do not mean to accept it in any illusory manner. I will endeavour to lay before the Committee of Council on Education some view which may be adopted without abandoning the essential principles of the Minute. I have not gathered from the debate that I am desired to treat these endowments exactly as local contributions. The chief complaint seemed to be that the Committee were dealing with endowments too exclusively as such, without taking collateral circumstances sufficiently into consideration. What it strikes me they should do is this:—I think they might add together the endowment and the grant, and apply to the sum the principle of a maximum. I think that is the principle which they may embody in the Minute, and although it may not satisfy all, it will prove the desire of the Government to meet all reasonable objections. There will be no delay on the subject, for in the course of next week I will lay the altered Minute on the table of the House, and then there will be an opportunity of discussing it, and of ascertaining whether it satisfies the expectations of the House.

§ MR. GATHORNE HARDY
said, he felt the most sincere pity for the two hon. 1697 Members for Leeds and Sheffield (Mr. Baines and Mr. Hadfield), who had addressed on the present occasion such strong language in denunciation of the principle of endowments. It now appeared that though the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Lowe) was not a convert with respect to old endowments, he was a convert with respect to new ones; and the two hon. Members must have been much surprised at the facility with which the right hon. Gentleman had at last accepted the Resolution of the right hon. Member for North Staffordshire, having at first professed to find it so extremely unintelligible. It really was, however, so explicit, that it traversed in every form the Minute of Council. One thing was clear, that the right hon. Gentleman, in altering the Minute, must bring the change before the House in some shape in which it can be discussed, and that was one object which the right hon. Member for North Staffordshire had in view. The Revised Code was fixed on the principle of results, and yet the right hon. Gentleman had determined to reduce the grants to schools, the efficiency of which was improved by means of the grants added to small endowments, and thus to render them inefficient. The right hon. Gentleman, so far from being in the position of a relieving officer, as he called himself, dealing with destitution, had to deal with schools in which an expensive system had been introduced in compliance with the requirements of the Council. Not destitution, but expenditure was the ground of claim on the Committee of Council. He agreed with the Vice President that it was necessary to do justice to the taxpayers; but it should be remembered that the great body of the taxpayers, if not those who paid the largest amount of taxes, were directly interested in the education system on behalf of their children. The object of the interference of the State was not to assist schools generally, but efficient schools, and the organized inspection of schools was the root of the whole scheme of Government assistance. Without that supervision there would be waste and inefficiency. But by diminishing the grant to these schools by the amount of their endowments, the Vice President would reduce them to the level of the schools not under inspection. It seemed to be supposed by some Members that endowments were counted in the first instance as part of the subscriptions to the schools; but that was not the case. In 1698 illustration of the injustice of the deductions directed by the Council he put the case of two schools, one of which received a building grant from Government, say of £1,000, which was tantamount to an endowment of £50 a year, but on account of which no deduction was made; and the other received an endowment of £10 for the schoolmaster, on account of which the grant was diminished. When the House passed the Revised Code, it was on the principle that the grant was to be equalized to the school pence and subscriptions, and the question of endowments never entered the mind of hon. Members. As the right hon. Gentleman had withdrawn the Minute, he would say no more then on that part of the subject. In regard to Minutes generally, however, he wished to point out that rules were issued by the Committee of Council which never came before the House at all, but which seemed to him materially to alter the effect of the regular Minutes. There were supplementary rules, for example, binding schools to comply with a particular standard of education, and thus imposing a condition not laid down in the Minute. Moreover, an explanatory circular had been published in reference to training colleges, which announced, in violation of the arrangement of last year, that no certificated teacher should earn a grant for his college unless he had passed a certain examination before his entrance, which the right hon. Gentleman called a matriculation examination. In that case, results were counted for nothing, and though the training college gave the education which fitted the person trained for his certificate, it received no reward for that expenditure of labour and money. The right hon. Gentleman had promised to lay his new Minute on the table in the course of this week. He (Mr. Gathorne Hardy) hoped the right hon. Gentleman would be very careful in preparing that Minute. He did not know whether the right hon. Gentleman had the authority of his superior officers. He trusted that he would frame that Minute with the full assent and approbation of his superior officers, and that when it was laid on the table of the House it would be the result of their deliberate judgment.

§ Motion agreed to.

§ Resolved, That Grants made from the Treasury to Schools for the working classes should not, in every case, be reduced by the whole amount of all endowments.