§ MR. RAIKESasked the Vice President of the Council for Education, Whether he has any objection to lay upon the Table of the House any Memorials or Communications addressed to him by which he has been induced to refuse Building Grants to Church of England Schools in Wales during the last six months; and whether, in the event of there being an objection to producing such Communications in extenso, he will 569 state to the House generally the reasons urged therein for the refusal of such grants?
§ MR. W. E. FORSTER, in reply, said, he really could not lay on the Table the various memorials, communications, and addresses on the subject of those building grants. He had received a great many, both in favour of those grants and against them. The hon. Member was mistaken if he supposed that it was in consequence of these memorials the grants were refused. Every memorial or communication received by the Department he endeavoured fully to consider; but the grants were given upon established principles. No grant for a new school was given to applicants on behalf of any religious denomination unless the Department was satisfied that the majority of the parents of the children likely to attend that school belonged to that denomination. That was the principle which he found in action when he came into the Department, and which he had carried out very carefully and especially in Wales, on account of the denominational feeling which he was sorry to say prevailed there so much on both sides.