§ Bill considered in Committee.
§ (In the Committee.)
§ Clause 20 (Powers of Special Commissioners).
§ MR. NEWDEGATEobserved that it was contrary to practice to repeal Acts of Parliament without specifying them, and he therefore proposed the following Amendment to be inserted after the word "Commissioners":—
But no statute or scheme proposing the repeal of any Act of Parliament, or the alteration of the provisions or application thereof, shall have effect until the same has been submitted to Parliament in a Bill, to be introduced by Her Majesty's Ministers within two months after the commencement of the then next Session of Parliament, and such Bill shall have been enacted.The clause as it stood was a departure from the practice of the Universities and the Common Law of the State. There were two principal Acts of Parliament under which the property of these schools 813 was appropriated, and his object in moving this Amendment was to prevent any existing Act relating to the public schools of this country being varied or repealed by Order in Council.
§ MR. WALPOLEobserved that the clause as drawn was almost entirely analogous to the Oxford and Cambridge Act. He did not think the hon. Gentleman was aware of what would be the legal effect of his Amendment. He (Mr. Walpole) thought the introduction of those words would cause great confusion, and instead of enabling the Commissioners or the Governing Body to settle what are to be the future arrangements, they would have to come back to Parliament, re-opening the whole of the questions now discussed.
§ MR. NEWDEGATEsaid, his object was to take care that a set of Commissioners or the new Governing Body should not have power to vary Acts of Parliament.
§ SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTEsaid, he could not admit that the clause would give any power to repeal Acts of Parliament. This Amendment would render it necessary to bring every scheme before Parliament to be discussed, and that would be obviously most inconvenient.
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, he thought the Amendment proposed would do away with all the advantage of passing the Bill. Where would be the benefit of the measure unless the new Governing Body had power to reform or make better regulations for the conduct of the schools?
§ MR. NEWDEGATEsaid, that his object was that the property in question should be dealt with by Act of Parliament.
§ MR. GOLDNEYsupported the clause as it stood.
MR. HENLEYsaid, that the object of his hon. Friend (Mr. Newdegate) was to prevent a course being followed which was unprecedented; and his hon. Friend contended that these schools should be enabled to come to Parliament in the same way as the schemes of the Charity Commissioners were submitted to Parliament.
§ MR. NEATEsaid, there was a precedent, and in proof of it he would refer to the Acts relating to Oxford University.
§ MR. NEWDEGATEdenied that there was any precedent, and in the case referred to by the hon. and learned Member (Mr. Neate) the Act of Parliament was never mentioned.
COLONEL SYKESsaid, the Commissioners would be enabled to deal with the rights of property in utter ignorance by this House.
§ MR. DARBY GRIFFITHsaid, he could not understand the tendency to hand despotic powers to Commissioners.
§ Amendment negatived.
§ Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.
§ Clause 21 (Clause A. Scheme for Appropriation of Estate to Westminster School).
§ MR. WYNN moved in page 11, line 10, to leave out "exceeding," and insert "less than." He stated that the expenses of Westminster School had increased from £2,176 in 1861 to £2,681 in 1867; and that the Commissioners had stated in their Report that £3,300 would be barely sufficient to meet the expenditure of the future. He therefore proposed to alter the clause, so that the sum set apart for the Westminster School shall not be less than £3,500.
§ SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTEsaid, if this were agreed to, he should move the insertion of other words preventing the Ecclesiastical Commissioners from appropriating more than £4,000 to Westminster School.
§ Amendment agreed to.
§ MR. AYRTONsaid, he hoped it would not be lost sight of by the friends of the Church and the supporters of religion that property originally set apart for the religious culture of the poorest was being appropriated for the education of the wealthiest. ["No, no!"] That he maintained was the fact. Reverting to the clause under consideration he advised the granting of an annuity to the School, rather than giving it property which could be much more cheaply managed by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. He moved the insertion, of the words "or for granting an annuity of the like amount."
§ MR. MOWBRAYsaid, he hoped the Committee would not agree to the Motion, on the ground that it would maintain the connection between the Chapter, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and the School, whereas the object of the Bill was to sever the connection, and place the School upon, an entirely independent footing.
§ MR. BENTINCKsaid, he could not allow the statement of the hon. and learned Member for the Tower Hamlets to go un- 815 contradicted. The boys at Westminster School formerly were by no means exclusively the sons of the wealthy; they included a great many sons of struggling professional men, whose difficulties were greater very often than those of persons nominally in a poorer grade. The hon. and learned Member appeared to think that no boys whatever ought to be on the foundation but those whom one sees running about the streets in leather breeches and a little muffin cap.
§ MR. NEATEsaid, he had certainly understood from many "Old Westminsters" that the School used to be specially the resort of the British aristocracy.
MR. W. LOWTHERsaid, the aristocracy used to be strongly represented at Westminster, but they did not, as alleged, devour the endowments, which were freely enjoyed by sons of the poorer clergy and struggling professional men. The endowments of Westminster were not being created now for the first time, and in any fresh distribution of the funds he thought the School had a right to claim its fair proportion.
§ MR. AYRTONsaid, the Government might very fairly have supported the recommendation of the Committee; but they had shown a ready lavishness to spoliate the people by adding a further sum of £500 a year to the endowment. His hon. Friends who had been educated at Westminster School seemed to believe that they had been there in company with all the poverty of the town; but that was not the impression of anybody else. What he complained of was, that those who had the charge of this Bill had refused to introduce a clause which would limit the application of these public funds to people who shall give evidence that they were required for the purposes of their education. He had a right to say therefore that this was a Bill for the benefit of a class who could afford to pay for their education. Supposing that Westminster School was used by those who could not pay for their own education, he would ask whether the same thing could be said of Eton, Harrow, and Rugby? Were those schools carried on upon the principle of being most adapted to the people who could not afford to pay for their education? On the contrary, their only peculiarity was that they were most expensive in point of charge, and least effective in point of education. ["No, no !"] It was notorious that the education of the majority of the scholars was neg- 816 lected for the purpose of occasionally producing what were called "show boys."
§ MR. WALPOLEsaid, the hon. and learned Gentleman, who was so severe upon the Government, had not been very careful as to the accuracy of his own stetement. So far from the Government seeking to spoliate the funds belonging to the Church, the proposal in Committee to fill up the blank with the sum of £3,500 was carried by a majority of 14 or 15 votes, the only dissentient being the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the Tower Hamlets. The Committee had determined that a sum should be paid to the School out of the property of the Dean and Chapter, amounting to nearly £3,593, and all that was now asked to be done, in addition, was, that the Commissioners should be left a discretion to increase that amount to a sum not exceeding £4,000. The Government, in sanctioning that proposal, were simply acting on the equitable construction to be put on the statutes, which laid it down that portions of the funds in question fairly belonged to Westminster School.
§ Amendment negatived.
§
MR. MARSH moved the insertion, page 11, line 12,after the word "them," of the words—
The playground in Vincent Square with the buildings thereon; the dormitory with its appurtenances; the school and class-rooms; the houses and premises of the Head master and Under master; the three boarding-houses; the gymnasium excepting the crypts; and subject to existing interests the house in Great Dean's Yard, now occupied by the Rector Canon of Saint John the Evangelist, Westminster; the house abutting on the school premises, and now occupied by Mr. Turle; the house now occupied by the Sub-Dean and the house situate at the south-western corner of Great Dean's Yard, now numbered, and in the occupation of Mrs. Gullan and.
The space occupied by Westminster School, he said, was only 5,000 square feet, whereas King's College and the City of London School occcupied a space of 12,000 feet. He trusted the number of boys at Westminster School would largely increase, and if that were so they would stand in need of the additional accommodation which he proposed to provide.
MR. W. LOWTHERexpressed a hope that the Committee would accede to the very reasonable suggestion which had just been made. The requirements of the present day necessitated that additional accommodation should be provided for the School.
§ Amendment agreed to.
817§ MR. POWELL moved to omit the words, "and such other portions of the said Chapter estates as are essential to the well-being of the School."
§ Amendment agreed to.
§ MR. MARSHsaid, that, according to the proviso at the end of the clause, in the event of Westminster School being removed beyond the City of Westminster, all its property and income derived from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, or from the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, or their estates, would revert to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. He thought that Westminster School should be treated on the same principle as the Charterhouse School; and therefore, by way of Amendment, he moved in line 28, after "governing body," leave out to the end of the clause.
§ SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTEsaid, he was of opinion that there was force in the argument that Westminster School, not being an entirely independent school, but being connected with Westminster Abbey, should not be allowed to take the funds which arose from the revenues of Westminster Abbey and spend them in some place in the country. He therefore deemed it desirable that the decision of the Select Committee, which was in favour of the proviso, should be adhered to, though the matter was of no great practical importance, as it was not probable that Westminster School would be removed into the country.
§ MR. BERESFORD HOPEsaid, he thought that the buildings round Dean's Yard ought to be reserved, and ought to lapse to the Abbey, if the School should be removed.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
§ Clause agreed to.
§ Clauses 22 to 26 agreed to.
§ Clause 27 postponed.
§ Remaining Clauses agreed to.
§ MR. LOWE, in proposing a new clause, providing for an annual examination by Inspectors, said, that the proposal was not altogether a new one, because when the Public Schools Commission were inquiring into the matter they invited the public schools to submit to an examination of the kind he proposed; but for various reasons, all equally cogent, these schools declined the honour that was offered them. He made this proposal in no spirit of hostility 818 to the public schools, but in friendship for the youth of this country. A very good case for the clause was, he thought, to be found in the Report of the Commissioners. A gentleman of great judgment and experience, for instance, stated that a few years ago the University of Oxford had to make its course commence with the mere rudiments of education, and on page 26 of their Report the Commissioners arrived at the conclusion, among others, that the classical knowledge possessed by young men leaving school was very low, but that the knowledge of arithmetic, mathematics, and general information was lower still. Now the deficiencies thus pointed out in no unfriendly spirit were such that he felt sure the Committee must deplore their existence. At Winchester, in his time, neither writing nor reading was taught, and a similar state of things prevailed, he believed, at most of our public schools. The question then arose how so great a want was to be supplied? His idea was that the sources of improvement were not to be sought in the endowments of a school, but in the parents of the children by whom it was attended. The object which the Committee should endeavour to secure was to bring the opinion of the parents to bear on the system of instruction which their children received; because our public schools being in the main adventure schools necessarily depended very much on those who were their customers. It was desirable, therefore, that the fathers and mothers of England should be made acquainted with the deficiencies in the education given, and the way to that was to submit the schools to examination and to make known the result. If the views of the Commissioners should then be found to be correct, a service would be done by having public attention called to the fact, while, if not, an erroneous notion would have been dispelled, and the schools would be the gainers. In either event such examinations as he proposed could not fail to be attended with advantage, and he could not see how, on the ground of expediency, there could be any objection to the clause. But then, perhaps, it might be opposed on the ground of right. It might be contended that Government Inspectors could not properly be empowered to enter the schools for the purpose of instituting an examination of the pupils. These schools, however, he would remind the Committee were really founded on endowments, and the Commissioners on Middle-class Education 819 reported in favour of having every endowed school examined under Government inspection. He was therefore only asking the Committee to anticipate the recommendations of those Commissioners; and, indeed, it would, he thought, have been better if endowed schools had been dealt with as a whole, and the invidious distinction between public and private schools obviated. If the subjects to which his clause related were taught in our public schools, he could not understand why they should shrink from the proposed examination; if not, he could not gee why the House of Commons should shrink from making the fact known to the world. The right hon. Gentleman concluded by moving the following clause:—
That all boys educated at the seven Schools mentioned in this Act shall be examined once a year, by one of the Inspectors of the Committee of Council on Education, in reading, writing from dictation, arithmetic, including vulgar fractions, practice, and the rule of three, geography, English grammar and history, and the results of such examination and the Report of the examining Inspectors shall be laid before Parliament.—(Mr. Lowe).
§ MR. DARBY GRIFFITHcontended that the effect of the adoption of the clause would be to degrade the great public schools of England down to the level of village schools. The right hon. Gentleman had in another place ascribed his success in life to his command of his mother tongue; but he would venture to say that there was no Member of that House who owed more to other sources. Had he trusted to his mother tongue alone, independently of the classical reputation which he had acquired, he would scarcely have reached so high a position as he had achieved. The right hon. Gentleman scorned to wish to interfere with private right, and the function of the Head master of the school. There was no such thing as mens sana in corpore sano, as when the mind was cultivated the body suffered, and when the body was highly cultivated the mind suffered. The richness of our language arose from the Anglo-Saxon foundation, enriched by copious gatherings from Greek and Latin. It was to these agglomerated sources that the English language owed its richness. The object of Eton and Westminster was to raise the minds of the pupils; but all those in the public schools would feel that examination in the branches mentioned in the Resolution would be a degradation.
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, he would be obliged to vote against the clause, be- 820 cause he did not think the Inspectors of the Committee in Council would be the proper examiners, nor did he think an examination should be limited to reading, writing, and arithmetic, or be confined to the schools affected by the Bill. He thought all endowed schools should be subjected to examination. Nothing seemed more clearly proved than this in the evidence before the Committee. If his right hon. Friend would frame a clause that would submit all these schools to an extensive examination, he (Mr. Forster) would vote for it; but he was afraid many of the schools would think this clause an insult.
§ MR. LABOUCHEREsaid, he hoped the clause would be pressed to a division, because it was evident that most pupils at public schools did not know as much as an intelligent charity boy. Complaint had been made that the whole time of public school boys was taken up by the study of Latin and Greek; but, as a matter of fact, they learnt very little of these languages. An ordinarily educated German could converse with a foreigner in Latin if the two had no other language in common; but how many Englishmen carried from a public school sufficient Latin to do this? He confessed that, although he might be able to translate some half dozen words of Latin, he was wholly unable to translate a sentence from the Greek, although he had studied those languages for ten years at a public school. He complained that it was the fault of the system and his misfortune that this was so. The fact was, public schools had become mere hotbeds of social exclusiveness and aristocratic prejudice, where people sent their sons to pick up what they called gentlemanly connections. He hoped that a division would be resorted to, in which case the right hon. Gentleman would find more Members voting for him than he expected.
§ MR. WALPOLEagreed that it was desirable to remedy as far as possible the deficiency of their public schools with regard to the lower branches of education; but he did not think that the remedy which the right hon, Gentleman proposed to apply would at all hit the source of the disease. The sources of the deficiency were chiefly two—one was connected with the boys, as the hon. Member for Middlesex (Mr. Labouchere) had virtually admitted was his own case, the other was traceable to the parents. The real fault lay with the parents themselves, who left the responsi- 821 bility altogether upon the school and the masters, and did not pay sufficient attention themselves to the progress which their boys made. But how was that difficulty to be got over? He believed the Bill would meet this evil much better than the appointment of Inspectors, and that it would be the primary duty of the newly-constituted governing bodies to make regulations for accomplishing the very purposes to which it was proposed that the Inspectors should apply themselves. It would be a great mistake, and that not merely in educational matters, to encourage the belief that everything which was complained of could be got rid of by a system of Government inspection. Evils like these were properly to be encountered and surmounted by the exertions of the people themselves. Even if Government Inspectors were appointed, in time the duties would be very imperfectly discharged, and the system would end very much in matters of form. Seeing, therefore, that the object which his right hon. Friend had chiefly in view could be accomplished by trusting and strengthening the new governing bodies, he hoped the Motion would not be pressed to a division.
§ MR. PERCY WYNDHAMsaid, there was no doubt the fault lay to some extent with the parents; but a parent who paid £200 a year for the education of his boy had, at the same time, a right to expect that he would be taught the elementary branches of learning. For his own part, he hoped the Motion would be pressed to a division. The Government had done a great deal during the last twenty years for the education of the poorer classes, and it was time now that something should be done for the children of the upper and middle classes. Government inspection, he believed, would do a great deal towards renewing public confidence in the education given in the public schools.
MR. HENLEYsaid, of all the curious propositions put forward during the present discussion, this was the most remarkable. For the last couple of years the Legislature had occupied itself in constituting anew the Governing Bodies of the great schools; it had not hesitated to deal freely with founders' wills, with Acts of Parliament, or, as some put it, had not scrupled to "rob the poor." But hardly was all this done, the work even was not yet completed, when the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Lowe) came forward and said—
These very authorities whom you have just 822 established with so strong a hand are not fit for anything—not fit even to judge whether the schools are teaching anything or nothing.Surely, if you have swept away much of what exists and set up something in its stead that you declare not to be competent to decide whether children can read or write, you must have done a great deal of wrong, and the better course would be to proceed no further with the Bill. What confidence could the Committee put in the machinery which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Calne (Mr. Lowe) now proposed? Why, he was the very man who was forced to come down to the House some years ago and state that all the beautiful system of inspection which had gone on for many years under the Privy Council was an utter failure, that the children could neither read nor write, and that an Act of Parliament was necessary to set right the very matters which, according to the Inspectors' Reports, varied only in their degrees of excellence. He honestly avowed that he had no faith in the proposed system of inspection. It was a serious charge, and behind it was the whole question of visitation. Were the Committee going to strike down the system of visitation, and to create in its stead a system of inspection? The hon. Member for Middlesex (Mr. Labouchere) told the House that there were a great many boys in these schools who learnt nothing. Some of these were not wanting in ability, but they set that ability to work to defy the masters, putting up with any little inconveniences for the sake of carrying their object. If the Committee chose to enact that the children in the different public schools should learn reading, writing, or arithmetic, that proposition in itself might be deserving of consideration. But a system of Government inspection, he believed, would be a failure, and, furthermore, would militate against the system of visitation.
§ MR. ACLANDsaid, the great evil of the public schools was the tacit recognition of idleness. One of the Assistant masters at Eton brought before him very plainly the difficulty of grappling with this evil, when he repeated a saying of the parent of one of these boys—"I don't care whether my boy learns anything as long as he makes a good connection." The gentleman who made this remark was a man likely to rise into a very high position in society, but he was nevertheless somewhat of an upstart. The ceremony of examination under the operation of the clause would 823 in his opinion, be a great farce. Who were to be the examiners? Inspectors appointed by the Privy Council, who, he must say, with all respect for some of them, were not men in the slightest degree fitted to discharge the duty. Indeed, it would be nothing less than an insult to any respectable middle-class school, be thought, to send such persons to examine the scholars. Why were decimal fractions omitted from the list of subjects in which the examination was to take place? He hoped the Committee would not consent by a sidewind to erect the President of the Council into a Minister of Public Instruction. If the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Calne was so anxious for improvement in the direction to which his clause pointed, why did he not propose, he should like to know, that all boys should be examined before they were admitted to our great public schools? He himself was the advocate of enforcing elementary education in the schools of England from top to bottom; but the subject was one of great importance, requiring serious consideration, and ought not to be dealt with in a chance clause, such as that under discussion. The clause should run, not "all boys educated at the seven schools;" but all boys "admitted" to the seven schools.
COLONEL SYKESmaintained that the principle advocated by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Calne was a sound one. The object of the clause was to see that the endowed schools did their duty in elementary knowledge. The fault was not in the pupils or the parents, but in the system. According to the rules at Harrow a pupil might go out with honours in Greek and Latin without knowing the multiplication table.
§ MR. J. STUART MILLsaid, the remedy which was now proposed was that the scholars should be examined, not in what the schools professed to teach, but in what every boy should know before he went. To examine them in what any boy should know at a National School might be an extremely good joke against the schools; but he hoped no one would vote for it seriously. The examination should be in those subjects the cultivation of which was the purpose of the schools. But he quite agreed that the examination provided by the clause might be applied as an entrance examination.
MR. HEYGATEthought the objections which had been urged against the teaching 824 at Eton applied more to a past state of things than to the present.
§ MR. NEATE, having a great respect for endowments, protested against the way in which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Calne (Mr. Lowe) proposed to treat them, and expressed himself as not well satisfied with the feeble defence of them which had been made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Walpole).
§ MR. LOWE, in reply to the hon. Member for Westminster (Mr. Stuart Mill), who argued that the Motion might be good as far as it went, but that it should go further, observed that it could go no further, as there was no machinery by which the boys could be examined to better effect than according to the plan he proposed. With regard to the Universities, there were enormous endowments held out to those who learnt there; but with regard to elementary studies nothing was to be got in the way of endowments, and no endowments were held out as rewards for good teaching. Therefore, it was important to bring before the public the amount of deficiency in teaching which might exist in any institution. The hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. D. Griffith) said that his (Mr. Lowe's) tongue was not enough. Now he (Mr. Lowe) quite agreed with him—mother wit was wanted as well as mother tongue. As to the statement that there was no such thing as mens sana in corpore sano, probably on that point the hon. Member spoke from his own experience. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Walpole) attributed the evil to the wrong cause, and suggested the wrong remedy. He said that the evil was the fault of the parents. How was it their fault if they paid sufficiently for the education of their children? In that case was it not the fault of those who undertook to give the education and did not give it? Then, again, the right hon. Gentleman said that the remedy was to be sought in the governing bodies. Was that according to the analogy of human affairs? The evil of these endowments was that the persons enjoying them had a duty to perform but no interest in performing it, and it was desirable to create that interest in the Head masters by making known to the parents what was and was not taught. Then the right hon. Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley) said that it was monstrous that these great changes should have been made, and that governing bodies who were not 825 competent to see the desired things done should have been created. Did the right hon. Gentleman suppose that the governing bodies of schools could be inspectors in that sense, and that they should look after the Head masters and stimulate them to teach what ought to be taught? Where were to be found the governing bodies who had ever exercised this great supervision? The right hon. Member for Oxfordshire expressed surprise that he (Mr. Lowe) should have made the present proposal, because he had pointed out that the inspection of schools was nugatory, and yet he now advised, it was said, the introduction of inspection. What he now proposed was not inspection, but examination; and when inspection was found deficient was not the evil remedied by examination? The statements which were made with regard to the defective results of inspection were at the time boldly denied, and by no one more strongly than by the right hon. Gentleman, and yet when they came to be investigated every word of them was verified. It stood pro confesso that the things mentioned in his clause were not taught at these schools; but he would not expose the remedy proposed in the clause to the disadvantage of a division in the existing temper of the House.
§ Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
§
MR. AYRTON moved clauses, to be inserted in all statutes under this Act, providing for the admission of day scholars into every school to which the Bill applied. In a vague way the Bill recognized the admission of such scholars; but the provision did not go far enough, it being merely permissive, whereas the object of his clause was to make the admission of day scholars compulsory. The demands of the masters of these schools were enormous—£150 or £200 a year; but there were a great many people in this country who, from their position, might fairly desire to have their sons educated in those schools who could not afford to pay such a sum. There were, for instance, officers in the army and navy, members of the professions, many country gentlemen and clergymen, whose income would not enable them to pay such large demands. Then, there were a great many widows, whose husbands had occupied considerable positions, and who generally resorted to the places were those schools were situated, in order to obtain education for their sons at the low rate of charge. It was incum-
826
bent on the Committee to secure that the classes he had described should have the benefit of education for their sons on paying the actual sum required for instruction. The only objection to this was that the richer classes sent their sons there for social considerations, which they regarded as superior to educational considerations. Now, that was a feeling to which they ought not completely to succumb. The spirit of exclusiveness was cultivated by these schools, and the more the false pride and pretension of money was checked the better, by the association of the children, of the wealthy with those who, though not so rich, were probably their superiors in mental accomplishments and moral elevation of character. He proposed to limit the application of the clause to children residing with persons who stood to them in the fourth degree of relationship. He trusted that the right hon. Gentleman would consent to the clause being inserted in the Bill.
Clause (In the statutes to be made under this Act, for every school to which this Act applies, provision shall be made for the education of any boy, as a day scholar, who may be residing within three miles of the school with a parent or relative within the fourth degree of relationship, consanguinity, or affinity, or with his guardian, and who may be proved by a preliminary examination to be in other respects fit to be educated at such school: Provided, That every such boy may be required to pay a reasonable sum for his education not exceeding that paid by borders,)—(Mr. Ayrton,)—brought up, and read the first time.
§ MR. P. WYKEHAM-MARTIN, in supporting the clause, observed that when he was at Eton there were there a certain number of day scholars, the sons of tradesmen, who were received upon an equality with the rest of the scholars.
§ MR. BARNETTalso supported the clause and remarked that he recollected when the head boy of Eton was the son of an Eton tradesman.
§ MR. LABOUCHEREsaid, that the boys were all treated alike at the public schools.
§ MR. WALPOLEobjected to the clause, on the ground that it would interfere with the management of the school by permitting the influx of a number of boys far larger than the teaching power of the school was calculated to educate in a proper manner. He added that under a clause of the Bill the object of the hon. and learned Gentleman might be accomplished.
§ MR. NEATEurged the necessity for some such provision, as the interest of the 827 school would rather be in the direction of boarders, who would be more profitable, than of day scholars.
§ MR. AYRTONurged that there was no ground for the objection made by the right hon. Gentleman to the clause. He was willing to consent to the introduction of words to guard against any undue increase in the number of the scholars.
§ SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTEremarked that in the 12th clause power was given to the Governing Bodies to afford facilities for boys other than boarders to attend the schools.
§ MR. AYRTONsaid that power was not given to the Commissioners to do what he required, and therefore the clause was necessary.
§ MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, he thought his hon. and learned Friend would do well to leave the education of the day boys to the Commission.
§ Motion made, and Question put, "That the Clause be read a second time."
§ The Committee divided:—Ayes 40; Noes 96: Majority 56.
§ House resumed.
§ Bill reported; as amended, to be considered upon Thursday.