HC Deb 05 May 1874 vol 218 cc1707-39
MR. KAY-SHUTTLEWORTH

rose to call the attention of the House to the Minute of the Committee of Council on Education, substituting the Third Standard of the Education Code for the Fifth Standard as the standard to be reached by the children of out-door paupers, and to move— That, in the opinion of this House, it is undesirable that the Guardians of the Poor should be relieved from the duty of providing for the education of the children of parents in the receipt of out-door relief under section 3 of 'The Elementary Education Act Amendment Act (1873)' as soon as those children reach so low a standard as the Third Standard of the Education Code. The hon. Member said, he was sorry that the first action he had to take in the new Parliament should be apparently to offer any opposition to his noble Friend (Viscount Sandon), who so worthily represented the Education Department in that House. The appointment of his noble Friend when the present Government came into office was hailed with the greatest satisfaction on both sides of the House, for most of them remembered the part his noble Friend took at the London School Board and in the education debates in the last Parliament; therefore he regretted that his (Mr. Kay-Shuttleworth's) Motion should in any way be hostile to him. So long ago as the 18th and 19th year of Her Majesty's reign, an Act was passed by Mr. Denison to provide for the education of the children of persons in receipt of out-door relief. That was a measure of a hopeful character and a good deal was expected from it, and probably the reason why it, had had so little effect was because it was permissive, leaving guardians to take advantage of it or not just as they pleased. Last Session, however, his right hon. Friend the Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) brought in a Bill which repealed that Act, and provided by its 3rd section that when out-door relief was given by the guardians to the parents of any child between five and 13 years of age, or to any such child, it should be a condition for the continuance of such relief that the child should receive elementary education in reading, writing, and arithmetic. But there were certain exemptions from the liability of the guardians, the principal exemption being that when a child had reached such a standard of education as might from time to time be fixed for the purpose of this Act, by the bye-laws of school boards, or where there were no such bye-laws by Minute of the Education Department, the guardians should be exempt from the duty of sending the child to school any more. His right hon. Friend and his Colleagues issued a Minute on the subject in December last, which fixed the point of exemption at the Fifth Standard of the Education Code, and that Standard required certain proficiency in reading, writing, and arithmetic—namely, reading a short ordinary newspaper paragraph, writing the same or ten fines of verse slowly dictated, and being able to do sums in simple and compound rules and in practice, and to make out bills of parcels. When the new Ministry came into office they issued a new Minute, which repealed the Minute of his right hon. Friend and substituted the Third Standard for the Fifth, thereby most seriously lowering the scale of proficiency in reading, writing, and arithmetic, to be required before releasing children under 13 from attendance at school. Now, practically, it was found that children passed from one Standard to another in the course of one year, so that the effect of lowering the standard from the Fifth to the Third was to reduce the child's education by two years. Another Act was passed last year—the Agricultural Children Act—under which an imperfect half-time system of work and education was provided for children in the rural districts. That Act—imperfect, timid, a compromise as it was—laid down the Fourth Standard as the one that should be reached by children in the agricultural districts. They were cither to be 12 years of age or to reach the Fourth Standard before they could be employed full time. He did not know whether his noble Friend had had his attention called to one of the cones- quences of the Minute he had issued as affected by the Agricultural Children Act. The Board of Guardians would be obliged by this Act to send a child under 12 who was employed in agricultural work to school until he could pass the Fourth Standard; but, under the Minute of his noble Friend, it was absolutely impossible for the guardians to provide means to enable the child to go to school after he had passed the Third Standard. The consequence was, there was nobody whatever to pay for the education of this child after it had passed the Third Standard and until it had reached the Fourth. He was very anxious to hear how his noble Friend was going to get over that difficulty. When this Minute was issued, the Agricultural Children Act was entirely forgotten, though it was the very last thing that should be forgotten by hon. Gentlemen opposite, seeing that one of their own Colleagues (Mr. Clare Read) took such an honourable and prominent part in passing the Act. He was one of those who contended that all our standards were too low, and that we must not be content to rest where we were. He did not expect we should advance very rapidly; but he did look for constant, if slow progress. He had been much impressed by what had been told the House by the hon. Member for Sheffield (Mr. Mundella) and others, of the standards which other countries had been able to attain, and thought we should imitate them. He doubted very much whether this Third Standard represented half education. He thought it represented something lower. His noble Friend and his Colleagues ought to have looked for guidance in this matter to the school boards in the Provinces. They acted with local experience; they had practical knowledge of all the difficulties. What standard had they laid down under the power given them by the Education Act for framing bye-laws compelling school attendance? One of these bye-laws usually provided that at a certain standard children should be exempted from attendance at school. He had examined the bye-laws of a number of school boards, and the result was this. He had taken at hazard 29 school boards who had adopted compulsory bye-laws, and he found that of these only one laid down the Third Standard as the limit at which a child might be exempted from further attendance at school, and that was the board of an agricultural village in Norfolk. Five had fixed the Fourth Standard, and no fewer than 19 the Fifth. In 11 out of the 19 there was a provision that the children, after attaining the Fourth Standard, might attend school only half-time; but two, one of which was Bradford and the other Bodmin, to their great honour, had fixed the Sixth Standard. Bodmin provided that after reaching the Fifth Standard, the children should have to attend school only two days in the week, and Bradford that they should attend half-time. In two cases there was no exemption at any Standard. In short, the predominant opinion of the school boards seemed to be that children should attend school until they had reached the age of 13—some boards fixed 12—or had passed the Fifth Standard; and he hoped the time was not distant when no school board would be content with less than the Sixth Standard. He was rather curious to hear what vindication could be offered by his noble Friend for this hasty alteration of a Minute issued so recently as December, 1873, by his right hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, and for a course which instead of encouraging school boards to oblige children to attend school until they reached the age of 13, or had really had a fair education, would set an evil example to school boards of releasing children from school before they were half educated. He trusted his noble Friend would not at the outset of his official career identify himself with a retrograde and deplorable movement, but that before the end of the debate he would make such a statement as would save the House from the trouble of going to a Division. If his noble Friend should not give a satisfactory explanation of his policy, he would take the sense of the House on the Resolution which he now begged to move.

MR. CARTWRIGHT

, in seconding the Resolution, said, that no question more important in the interests of education could be submitted to the House. The Resolution so ably moved by his hon. Friend dealt with a Minute which he ventured to designate as most untoward, and which, if it had any meaning at all, was intended to paralyze that movement in the direction of improved education which it had been the strenuous effort of his right hon. Friend the Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) to create. The Minute of the noble Lord opposite (Viscount Sandon) contravened, he maintained not only the words, but the spirit of the Act of 1872, and of the supplementary Act of last Session. It was distinctly stated in the 3rd clause of that Act that Standard IV. was the lowest up to which children of parents in agricultural districts were to be educated. That clause was approved of by an hon. Member who was not an enthusiastic educationist, but a practical man, who knew well the real wants of children in those districts, and there was a distinct reference to them in the Act. By a most disingenuous construction, however, these words had been made to mean the very opposite of what was intended, and the standard had been lowered when the intention of the Legislature was to raise it. Apart from the legal aspect of the question there was the moral side of it, and he would ask upon what grounds the reduction of the Standard from V. to III. could possibly be justified? They must know perfectly well that Standard III. was an illusory standard, especially in the case of children in agricultural districts. It was an education which could never penetrate their hearts or exercise any influence upon their lives; it would be a mere bit of veneering or coat of varnish. They had not the grounds before them on which his noble Friend the Vice President had based assent to this Minute; and he therefore could not help anxiously asking the question whether they were to take it as the foreshadowing of a retrograde policy on the part of the new Government? He told his noble Friend that it would be presumptuous in him to tamper with the policy laid down by his predecessor in office, and yet they found the Minute was dated the 17th of March, a very few days after he took office. The subject appeared to him to be a grave and serious one, affecting as it did at least 200,000 children belonging to the poorest classes in the agricultural districts, and he trusted they would hear a satisfactory explanation from the Government. He should cordially support the Motion of his hon. Friend.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That, in the opinion of this House, it is undesirable that the Guardians of the Poor should be relieved from the duty of providing for the education of the children of parents in the receipt of out-door relief, under section 3 of 'The Elementary Education Act Amendmemt Act, 1873,' as soon as those children reach so low a standard as the Third Standard of the Education Code"—(Mr. Kay-Shuttleworth.)

MR. SCLATER-BOOTH

said, his noble Friend (Viscount Sandon) would explain presently the reasons which had induced him to issue this Minute. He thought his noble Friend, considering the exertions which he had made in the cause of education, might have obtained credit from the last two speakers for a desire to stand by the principles which he had always maintained, and for having no wish to break down the principles on which the national system of education was based. He (Mr. Sclater-Booth) wished to point out that the obligation of providing education for the children of parents in the receipt of out-door relief fell, not upon school boards, but upon the guardians of the poor. He might add that the substitution of the Third for the Fifth Standard had been very much pressed on his noble Friend by himself. Boards of Guardians in different parts of the country had represented that they had experienced the greatest difficulty in bringing the children in question under the operation of the system. They found, on the one hand, that parents were discharging themselves from relief in order that they might still enjoy the earnings of their children [Opposition cheers]; but, on the other hand, they complained of the great expense that would be cast upon the ratepayers if parents were to be deprived of the earnings of their children. It was thought, therefore, important that the Act should be put into operation in the most tentative manner. Hon. Gentlemen opposite cheered when he said that parents discharged themselves from relief rather than submit to the alteration in the law; but the fact told in favour of his argument, because the children of parents receiving out-door relief ought to be in the workhouse schools, which were highly efficient and maintained at great cost to the ratepayers. All parents of children receiving out-door relief were not paupers in the strict meaning of the word. He had lately had an ap- plication to know whether a man earning full wages was to he considered as coming within the operation of the Act because on account of one of his six children who was blind or an idiot he was in receipt of some relief. They decided that it must be so. Yet that was clearly a perversion of the intention of the Legislature. Surely the man ought to have paid for the education of his children. It did not follow that as soon as a child reached the Third Standard he would be in a position inconsistent with his hon. Friend's (Mr. Read's) Act; because if he sought employment as an agricultural labourer he would be prevented from obtaining it, and would then finish his education at the workhouse school, or pressure would be put upon the parents to finish his education for him. It was desirable that the education provided under the Act of last year should not be of the highest standard. Besides, this was only a temporary alteration of the Minutes of Council. It was certainly the intention of his noble Friend, and it was his intention in urging his noble Friend to make the alteration, that it should not be harsh in its operation either as regarded the parents or guardians. A Circular had been issued to the guardians on the subject by the Local Government Board, the effect of which he would leave his noble Friend to describe. He repeated, he thought it highly expedient that the education to be provided in this abnormal way for the children of parents receiving out-door relief should not be of the same standard as that provided by the school boards. Having advised his noble Friend to make the alteration in question, he was anxious thus early to bear his share of the responsibility.

MR. LYON PLAYFAIR

said—I believe that the mistake which the President and Vice President of the Council have committed is largely due to the disjointed manner in which the education of this country is carried on. Here we have the case of two distinct Departments dealing with the education of pauper children—the Committee of Council and the Local Government Board. The latter, having had long experience of the education of paupers, could have given abundant testimony as to the effects of low and high education in the training of paupers; but, until the President of the Local Government Board spoke, I believed that he had not been consulted by the Committee of Council when they prepared their Minute of March. If he were, then his recommendation to fix a low standard of education for paupers is against all the published Reports and experiences for the last 20 years. Under the old parochial system, when education was limited to a low standard, very much resembling that of Standard III., scarcely more than a third of pauper children could be traced to places of productive employment. Pauperism and mendicancy passed from generation to generation, and one of the most effective means to break up this vicious succession was to educate children to a much higher standard than had been previously attempted. Accordingly, the union schools were altered in character. The children were no longer treated as educational paupers, but were taught history, geography, grammar, and other subjects of a higher kind. Under the old system of low education, 50 to 60 per cent of the children of the workhouse schools were returned on the hands of the guardians as unprofitable servants. Under the new and higher education of the best union schools not more than 3 or 4 per cent were so returned. Allow me to make a single quotation from the evidence of Mr. Tufnel, the Inspector of Union Schools, He says— Many persons object, as to the book knowledge communicated in the schools, that we are over-educating the children: but my reply has always been that I never wished them to receive more education than is necessary to ensure that they shall never become paupers again. If we educate them so that they fall below this mark, we probably entail upon the parish the expense of £200 or £300 in each ease when a failure lakes place. Now, as the difference of the cost between a good and bad education is not more than about 30s. a-year for each child, I maintain that it is excessively uneconomical, putting aside higher motives of Christianity or morality, to under-educate the child for the sake of this miserable saving. This, then, is the argument of the Inspector who has the most extended and varied experience of our pauper schools—that a high education is economical and productive to industry, and a low education wasteful and productive only of a new generation of paupers. I confess my surprise that this truth has to be repeated at the present time, for the evidence in support of it is so overwhelming that I am embarrassed in dealing with it. I content myself with referring to a single instance, which is described in the evidence given before the Agricultural Employment Commission. Those Members in this House who have passed middle age will have a lively remembrance of the wretched condition of the Scilly Islands some 30 or 40 years ago. The inhabitants were always on the verge of starvation, and were kept alive in winter by constant contributions from the mainland. For generation after generation these wretched islanders had been paupers. Why is it that no cry of destitution reaches us from these islands now? Because Mr. A. Smith, once a Member of this House, in addition to agricultural improvements, introduced a high system of education among the inhabitants on a compulsory system introduced and upheld by himself. In the schools of these islands education did not end with Standard III., but included history, geography, the elements of mathematics and navigation. The children educated at these schools were uplifted from the slough of pauperism, and became eagerly sought for by the employers of productive labour, and by ships which stopped at the Seilly Islands for the purpose of obtaining such well-educated boys. Pauperism wholly disappeared from the islands, and when the Agricultural Commission made its Report it was stated that it was difficult to find persons poor enough to accept the offerings made at the Communion Service. With such evidence before us as to the effect of low education in continuing generations of paupers, and of higher education in uplifting them from their degraded condition, this late action of the Committee of Council is incomprehensible. It is altogether inconsistent with the position which the State has taken up in regard to national education. Formerly, when the State contributed small sums to schools throughout the country, it doled out money to education as it doled out charity to paupers, and it was not surprising if education was stinted in its character. But when Parliament determined that education should become a national concern and a national duty, the relations of the State to education became altogether different. Then the purpose of the State was to obtain well-educated citizens, capable of adding to the production powers of the nation. When compulsion was added to the educational system, it became a logical necessity that the education of our schools should be raised. To compel a child to remain at school to 13 merely to learn a standard which ought to be reached at nine years of age, would be an unmitigated tyranny. Schools under a compulsory law must offer education adequate at least to the extent of the age at which compulsion ceases. As this improved condition of education which follows as a corollary the enactment of compulsion does not yet exist in our primary schools, Parliament has been pleased, as in the present case, to relieve children from compulsion when they have attained a certain standard. That standard was fixed by my right hon. Friend the late Vice President of the Council (Mr. W. E. Forster) at Standard V. which requires a child to read a short paragraph from a newspaper, to write a sentence on dictation, and to do sums in practice. Can any boy be fairly launched into the world in a less unprepared state with hopes for the future, especially when he has been taken out of the ranks of pauperism, with all its depressing influences? The noble Lord the new Vice President of the Council (Viscount Sandon) apparently thinks he can, for my noble Friend is satisfied with two standards lower. But if the Reports of his own Inspectors, again and again repeated in their annual Reports, are to be believed, such a low standard of education is rubbed off in three years' wear and tear of life, and the cost of giving it is wholly wasted to the nation. It has been contended that the 73rd section of the Scotch Education Act is much the same as the Minute of March. It is no such thing. That clause enables one of Her Majesty's Inspectors to liberate a child upon a certificate from him that it can read, write, and do elementary arithmetic. But there is no Inspector in this Kingdom, certainly not in Scotland, that would give a certificate to this effect for a child that could only pass Standard III. The Act of last year, which we fondly hoped might secure education to out-door pauper children, will merely result in unproductive extravagance, if this low standard of education be held out as sufficient for pauper children. Besides this evil, which is large enough, there is another of far greater magnitude involved in the recent Minute of the Committee of Council. By the Act of last Session the State put itself and the local government of the country in loco parentis to pauper children, and became responsible for their education. Surely it is a most serious and responsible act for the State to tell the whole parents of the nation that they may be satisfied if their children attain Standard III., and that they may be justified in removing them from school; but that is actually what the Committee of Council do by their Minute. They announce that they, acting in loco parentis, are satisfied with Standard III., and the parents throughout the Kingdom will not be slow in imitating this example. Now, if this be the result, as it is probable it will be, of the action taken by the Education Department, then it is useless for us to vote from year to year upwards of £2,000,000 for primary education in the country, for it is beyond the region of doubt that children who leave schools with no other attainment than the lower standards can make no use of them in future life, and will grow up ignorant men and women. Last year we were induced to make a great effort to mitigate the pauperism of the country by means of education. The pauperism of this country, and the misery which hangs upon its outskirts, is a terrible evil, and one which cannot be mitigated without much effort. The age of miracles is past, and we cannot remove mountains by a large faith in our little doings. The burden of pauperism is heavy upon England, and requires every force which we can apply to remove it. Last year we gave to the Committee of Council powers to apply their hand to the removal of this burden; but when we find the new Committee shutting their hands and applying a little finger to the task, educationalists may well despair. The House has now the opportunity of deciding whether it is wise to relax our efforts in a manner opposed to all past educational experience.

MR. PEASE

was of opinion that the introduction of this Minute was due to the exigencies of a Department of the State, as shown by the speech of his right hon. Friend (Mr. Sclater-Booth), rather than to the dictates of the judgment of the Vice President of the Council, whose contributions to national education had always shown that the noble Lord had at heart the best interests of the persons immediately affected by that Minute. He (Mr. Pease) agreed with the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Lyon Playfair) that there could be no doubt that the low standards of education and the great want of education throughout the country had produced our pauperism, and that if they were continued we should still increase our paupers instead of bringing them up useful, honest, and intelligent citizens; it was particularly upon that ground that he opposed the standard now proposed to be adopted. In carrying out Denison's Act, when it was permissive, the Boards of Guardians had no restrictions placed upon them, and when the limit of even the Fifth Standard was placed on them it was a limit, and by this Minute a still further limit was placed on the Boards; consequently, in many unions the pauper child would be deprived of advantages that it had enjoyed. In many instances the Board of Guardians had done more good among the pauper children than the standard of the Council of Education would do for them. They were told that this was a paupers' question; but he contended that it was a great national question, involving the future rather than the present. No doubt the requirements of the law were complied with by this Minute; but it was in the letter and not in the spirit of the Act which made Denison's Act compulsory.

MR. J. G. TALBOT

said, he could not help thinking that some of the remakes used in this debate were sensational rather than distinguished by practical utility. The Act of last Session made that compulsory, which was before optional under Denison's Act, and provided that a certain amount of education should be given. He would remind the House that this question did not relate to children in work-house schools, but to an entirely different class—namely, the children of out-door paupers. To children brought up in workhouse schools the State might be said to stand in loco parentis; but he denied that it stood in that relation to the children of out-door paupers. The section provided that— It should be a condition of the continuance of relief that elementary education in reading, writing, and arithmetic should he provided for each child. Were not these requirements amply provided for by the Minute of his noble Friend? ["No!"] What was elementary education but reading, writing, and arithmetic—and was it not amply provided for by the simpler standard of the Code? If such sums in "Practice" as were given in many of these schools were part of "elementary education," all he could say was that his education had been grievously neglected. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Edinburgh (Mr. Lyon Playfair) said that if these children were only educated under this standard they would become unproductive members of society and lose all the education they had got; but he could not help remarking that that observation did not come very well from the front Opposition Bench, the occupants of which had done so much to discourage night schools, which were intended to supplement the education provided in the elementary schools. Some very startling disclosures had been made on this subject, for it appeared that night schools which were very flourishing a few years ago had I been so much discouraged by the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. E. Forster) that they now received only half the amount of the grant formerly made to them. It might be said that most of the parents receiving out-door relief, whose children were now in question, ought never to be paupers at all; and in this opinion he was disposed, speaking broadly, to concur; but he challenged any hon. Gentleman to bring forward a practical system for doing away altogether with out-door relief. One section of persons receiving this relief were those who had been reduced by accident or illness to destitution, and the first duty of their children as they grew up was to contribute to the necessities of their parents. Practical persons—not mere theoretical philanthropists—would consider whether on reaching the Third Standard, these children might not help to provide for their parents' necessities, especially if they were the children of widows struggling for a livelihood, instead of advancing to a standard which would not, after all, give them intellectual proficiency. He was sure the House would approve the Minute, as combining a moderate amount of elementary education with the primary duty of maintenance of parents, though, as time went on, a higher standard might be hoped for.

MR. S. B. BRISTOWE

said, he was anxious to recognize the services of the Vice President of the Council in the cause of education and the great interest he took in the question, and it was on this very ground that he was wholly unable to comprehend the aim and object of the Minute of 18th March in this year. He thought the House and the country were entitled to have solid and substantial reasons given for so summarily repealing the Minute of December last, which decided that Standard V. should be the limit of exemption under the Elementary Education Act Amendment Act, 1873, and deciding that Standard III. should be sufficient. It was important to consider what the undoubted effect of this new Minute would be. In his opinion, it must tend to lower the standard of education throughout the country, because it would be alleged and believed that, in the opinion of the Government and of those having the direction of educational matters, the Third Standard was a sufficient qualification for all children. It had occurred to him that the general opinion of the country upon this point might be tested in some degree by looking through the bye-laws of school boards sanctioned by the Committee; of Council since the passing of the Elementary Education Act, and with that view he had carefully gone through the appendices to the Reports of the Committee of Council for Education for the years 1872 and 1873, and he found that out of 194 school boards whose bye-laws had been allowed, 125 had adopted Standard V. as the limit of compulsory attendance, 11 had adopted Standard VI., 47 had adopted Standard IV., and only four had adopted Standard III. Now, what did these figures show?—clearly, that public opinion in these districts where school boards had adopted bye-laws with compulsory powers, was practically unanimous in adopting a higher standard than the Third, and that being so, the great inconvenience would follow that we should have school boards where the standard of exemption was the Fourth, Fifth, or Sixth, whilst the Third was the normal Standard for the rest of the unions in which the school board district was situated. It was quite impossible to suppose that this state of things could go on; and as, in his opinion, Standard V. was already low enough, he considered the new Minute to be of a retrograde character, and damaging to the progress of education.

VISCOUNT SANDON

thanked hon. Members opposite for the friendly way in which they had alluded to his appointment. He had not expected that the debate on this subject would have taken so wide and important a scope; and he hoped the House would forgive him if he attempted to bring them down for a moment from the high flights of philanthropic aspiration in which some hon. Members had indulged, to the lower regions which, being in office, he had to deal with on the present occasion. The question was simply, in the first place, what was the character of the population that were affected by the subject, and, in the second place, how much of the population would the Minute embrace? Of the 22,000,000 which composed that population nearly 10,000,000 were already under the action of bye-laws, and therefore more or less under the influence of compulsion, and were not touched by the Minute. The population affected by by the Minute amounted to between 12,000,000 and 13,000,000. The last Returns brought the number of the children of out-door paupers up to about 140,000, so that they might suppose roughly that the Minute affected a population of between 70,000 and 80,000 children. They were orphans, children of old or permanently disabled parents, unmarried women, of prisoners, soldiers, and sailors, and persons out of work or suffering from long illness, a large proportion of them being the children of wives deserted by their husbands, or of widows. Returns showed that though of very tender age they were to a very large extent in service or work of some kind, earning from 2s. 6d. to 3s., 4s., and 4s. 6d. a week, and that was an important matter which should not be lost sight of when they were considering the question of taking these children, with their earnings, from their parents for a certain number of years. His right hon. Friend's proposal last December was to prevent their leaving school until they had passed the Fifth Standard of the Revised Code, which consisted in reading a short ordinary newspaper paragraph, writing from dictation a short newspaper paragraph or ten lines of verse, and doing sums in practice and bills of parcels. He had looked particularly to see what were the numbers of children who had passed this Fifth Standard, and he found that out of the 1,190,000 in attendance, only 40,500 had been offered for examination, and only 22,000 had passed. Then he went back to Standard IV., under which a few lines of poetry selected by the Inspector were to be read, a sentence slowly dictated once, by a few words at a time, from a reading book to be written, and compound rules in arithmetic; and he asked how did all the children in all the schools, including the best in the country, before the pauper children were brought upon them, pass this Standard? Why, out of the 1,190,000 in attendance, 74,800 were offered for examination, and only 42,000 passed. Under these circumstances, he asked was it wise or sensible to direct that when the best educated children in the country had so much difficulty in passing this Standard, we should compel the children of the out-door paupers either to pass it or to remain at school until they were 13 years of age? That meant to compel them to sacrifice all their earnings and to bring such inconvenience to the poorest and most degraded homes as would raise in the hearts of the parents the bitterest feeling with regard to the new educational scheme. He much doubted whether that would be a wise course to pursue. Then he passed to Standard III., to adopt which was supposed to put you in the black books of the friends of education. That Standard required a child to read a short paragraph from a more advanced reading book, to write a sentence slowly dictated once by a few words at a time from the same book, and to do sums in long division and compound money rules. How did the children in the country generally pass that Standard? Out of the 1,190,000 in attendance 620,000 were offered for examination and only 372,000 passed. Surely, when the children of the more highly educated classes found such difficulty in passing that Standard, it was not a fatal re-action to limit the requirements to be exacted from the out-door paupers to that Standard? What had been done in this matter? The Local Government Board, after full consideration of the subjects, issued a Circular on the 30th of March. 1874, forwarding the Minute of the 18th of March, in which they stated that the latter— fixes the third Standard for the years 1874 and 1875 only. The Board learns from the Educational Department that they will fix a higher standard of education for the subsequent years, and, in order to enable the Department to determine what standard shall be so fixed they have requested this Board to furnish them at the end of the current year with information as to the number of children who may he exempted from attendance at school as having reached the third Standard. The Board, therefore, must leanest the Guardians to keep such a record of these eases as will enable them hereafter to supply the information required. The Lord President of the Council and himself had thought, therefore, that the best course was to require those children of out-door paupers to pass this Third Standard, as they found that so few of the higher educated children in the country could pass it. At the end of the year the Local Government Board, with whom they had acted in complete accordance, would inform them as to the number of out-door pauper children who had passed this Third Standard, and if necessary, in 18 months that standard would be raised. He admitted that that was not an heroic treatment of the question from the educational point of view; but when the very lowest class of people were being dealt with, it was necessary to proceed with the greatest possible caution. Although there had been a great deal of talk about compulsion, it must be remembered that every school board in the Kingdom was at its wits' end how to deal with this class of children. They let these children off on every possible excuse, and even if they sent their school teachers after them, they were not to be caught. These children were living from hand to mouth, and to keep them in school would be to starve them, unless they were supplied with food as well as with education. Therefore, he felt that in exercising caution in this matter they would be assisting rather than pushing back the great cause of education. But what were the objections to adopting the Third Standard for this class of children? It was said that the school boards would at once lower their Standards if such a course were adopted. He did not think that they would do anything so foolish. The standard, the school boards would know very well from his Minute embodied in the Circular to the Boards of Guardians only lowered to Standard III. for 18 months, and the greater portion of the children with whom the school boards had to deal were of a higher class than out-door pauper children. It was further objected that if the course proposed were adopted, the standard must be lowered for agricultural children under the Act of 1873, and that all agricultural children would have to be exempted after they had passed Standard IV. Agricultural children, however, were of a far higher class in the social scale than were outdoor pauper children, who were among the most unfortunate and ignorant of the population. It was further suggested that the Government had the power of making what conditions they pleased, seeing that they provided a portion of the funds which supported the schools; but what was their contribution compared with the earnings? Then it was suggested that the half-time system should be adopted; but the House would see that it would be a difficult matter to apply the system at once, and without much greater preparation, to out-door pauper children. As for the broad question of all, he could not express too strongly the importance which he attached to carrying the whole feeling of the population with them on this great question of education. Hon. Members on both sides of the House must be aware that the enthusiasm in favour of education was not so great at present as it was some time ago—that the interference by school boards with parents and children was creating a re-action which they would have to lament. [Dissent.] He could only express his own opinion on the subject. He wished to prevent that reaction going further, and therefore he thought that they were bound to do all they could by tact and management to prevent that feeling among the labouring classes from endangering the ultimate success of their educational schemes. As far as the Government were concerned, they thought it was their duty at the initiation of a new system of compulsion and interference with the labour of class unused to such treatment, to make the matter as simple as possible for these people for the next 18 months. He wished to remind hon. Members opposite that when the Act of 1870 was before the House he was the only person who brought forward an Amendment to make Denison's Act compulsory—the very Act which the Govern- ment three years after were obliged to make compulsory, and that he had been obliged by the attitude of the then Government to withdraw his proposal. He did not recollect that the hon. Members for Durham (Mr. Pease), Hastings (Mr. Kay-Shuttleworth), and Newark (Mr. Bristowe), gave him any encouragement on that occasion; and his right hon. Friend who was then Vice President of the Council (Mr. W. E. Forster), assured him that it was entirely a Poor Law affair. Children who could not pass the Third Standard must even now remain at school to the age of 13, and comparatively few, he was assured by the best authorities in the Education Department, were likely to pass even that Standard within the next 18 months. Great suffering, he thought, would be caused even by that regulation as to age, but that matter must be risked. He was not prepared to go beyond the decision which the Education Department had adopted until information was obtained next year as to the results of that decision. He was sorry to differ from so high an authority as his right hon. Friend opposite; but he felt confident that he (Mr. W. E. Forster) would give him the credit of having done what he thought was best under the circumstances, and would not think that he had been actuated by any of those dark ideas of re-action and pushing back the tide of education which some of his hon. Friends opposite had rashly and most unjustly attributed to him.

MR. W. E. FORSTER

said, it was with regret that he had found himself in opposition to his successor in the Education Department. Considering the difficulty of the work which his noble Friend had to do, he thought his noble Friend deserved special sympathy. He fully believed that both the President and the Vice President of the Council were anxious to carry into effect the Education Act. If his noble Friend had had three or four months' experience of the work he had to do, he did not believe that this Minute would have been passed. He was bound to state to the House the ground on which he thought it right, on behalf of the Education Department, to issue the Minute which his noble Friend had deemed it his duty to cancel. His noble Friend the late President of the Council (Lord Aberdare) was not in London at the time that he (Mr. W. E. Forster) thought it necessary to issue the Minute; but he afterwards agreed to the step he took. Last year the House passed unanimously an Act providing for the education of the children of out-door paupers. He was rather alarmed to hear the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Poor Law Board (Mr. Sclater-Booth) and the Vice President of the Council speak of those children as if less education was required for them than for other children. [Viscount SANDON dissented.] His noble Friend shook his head, but that appeared to him to be the purport of his remarks. In his (Mr. W. E. Forster's) opinion, there was no class of children for whom it was more necessary to provide education than for the children of parents who were unable to provide it for them; because such children, if uneducated, would be a source of trouble and expense and a nuisance to the rest of the community. In considering what should be the standard of education for such children, he did not for a moment forget those considerations which the right hon. Gentleman and the noble Lord had stated. But he knew that the House passed the Act with a knowledge of the inconveniences which had been referred to, and with a determination that the necessity of the parents should be relieved by an additional charge upon the rates, and that upon the whole it was better that a real education should be provided for these children than that it should not. He had also to bear in mind that as to the vast majority of these children, it was exceedingly unlikely that they would obtain any kind of knowledge except what they got at school, and therefore that such a standard should be adopted with regard to them as would require them to attend school sufficiently long to enable them, at least to read well. He maintained that the Standard which he fixed for them was the lowest standard that could be adopted to insure that the education given to those children who, when they left school, returned to the homes of uneducated parents, should be efficient. These children must be regarded as the children of parents who were unable to pay for their education, and the effect of the Act would be this—that it would not be in the power of guardians to pay for the education of these children after they had reached the standard defined by the Education Department. What he (Mr. Forster) said was, that he should take care that the money of the ratepayers was not wasted; that the Act should not become a delusion; and that the children should at least be able to read. His noble Friend had thought it right to cancel that Minute, and replace it by the Third Standard. Now, he had no hesitation in saying that every one of the Inspectors would confirm him in this—that under the Third Standard children returning to an uneducated home would soon lose the ability to read. He was well aware that one argument might be used against the Fifth Standard, and that was that the children might be at work. But that was an argument against the Act altogether. It was surely intended that a real education, and not a sham one, should be given to these children; and if the noble Lord had consulted the Secretary to the Poor Law Board, who brought in the Agricultural Children Act last year, he hardly thought he would have been advised to adopt the course he had taken. What was the position in which it placed the children under the operation of the Agricultural Children Act? The Agricultural Children Act of last year declared that after the 1st January next, no child under 10 years of age should be employed who had not attended school 250 times in the past year; and no child between 10 and 12 should be employed who had not attended 150 times—unless the child had passed the Fourth Standard. Well, what was the consequence? Any Inspector would go to a school in an agricultural district, and find that several children of out-door paupers attending it could pass the Third Standard. He would thereupon inform the Guardians of the fact, and they would then have no power to pay for the further education of these children. It must be assumed that the parents had no power to pay, and when January next year came, these children would not only not get their schooling, but they would also not get work, as the farmers would not be allowed to employ them. Surely this ought not to be. The noble Lord was, he feared, tinder a misapprehension when he spoke of the Act as applying only to places where there were no school boards, by which he, no doubt, meant boards with compulsory bye-laws. If he took the advice of the Law Officers of the Crown, he would probably not read it in that way. It said that the standard fixed by the Education Department was to apply to all places where there was not a bye-law passed for the purposes of this Act. Now there had been no bye-law passed anywhere for the purposes of this Act; and therefore the real effect seemed to be, that in Manchester, Bradford, Liverpool, and London, for example, the Guardians would not be able, unless fresh laws were enacted, to pay for the education of the children of out-door paupers after they had reached the Third Standard. Probably, on considering the matter, the noble Lord would see that he had in this way brought about a collision, which, no doubt, he would regret, between the action of the school boards and the action of the Department. It was but fair to acknowledge the difficulty with which the Education Department and the Poor Law Board had to contend. The object of the House had certainly been to secure a real education—that of reading, writing, and ciphering; they meant to do what was done by the Scotch Act—namely, that the children should not be released from compulsion until they were able to read and write, and had some elementary knowledge of arithmetic. No doubt there might be a hardship in taking the children away from work. To some extent there must be a hardship, and an additional burden cast upon the rates; but if the children received a proper training, the rates would eventually be relieved. The noble Lord might have met the difficulty without degrading the standard of education. He might have said that up to the ago of 10 the children must simply be taught, no regard being paid to standards, and that after that ago he would be satisfied with that number of attendances, which was made, by the Code he had laid upon the Table, the condition of the annual grant. It might have been laid down that the children must either reach the Fifth Standard or go regularly to school; or that they must produce a certificate from the school board or school managers that they had attended school 150 times in the course of the year. This last condition would have enabled work and schooling to go on together, which was the object desired by most hon. Members, and this would have been far better than degrading the standard, and sanctioning the principle of a low education. Even now it might not be too late to reconsider the question, and he hoped there would be some assurance given that this would be done. He was aware of the power of the Government; but if no disposition was shown to meet the objections that had been raised, he thought it would be the duty of hon. Members to protest, by their votes, against the course proposed to be taken. This course would really amount to a nullification of the Act passed last year, because the standard which children were now to reach was not education at all—it was not the power so to read that the acquirement would be kept in after life. He was sorry that his noble Friend, perhaps in the heat of discussion, had seemed to sanction the notion that we ought to be content with this miserable Third Standard. He stated how many had passed that Standard, and how many had been unable to pass it; but he forgot that a very great proportion of those who succeeded tried in the following year to pass in a higher Standard. The Third Standard had been framed in the hope that children under the age of 10 would reach it. The noble Lord seemed to think that the amount of education which it represented was sufficient for children up to 13. Perhaps the greatest evil which the Education Department had experienced was the fact that so many of the children stopped at the Third Standard, and there was reason for deep regret if anything was said or done which was calculated to make the school boards set value on the amount of education so obtained.

MR. CLARE READ

understood the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Forster) to say that pauper children should be better educated than other children—["No!"]—but he said they must take things as they found them. Owing to the way in which the Poor Law had been administered in this country, the children of out-door paupers were, as a rule, worse educated than any other children. That was due, in the first place, to the rough-and-ready way in which Denison's Act had been put in force in the rural districts. Guardians had asked whether a child was at school or at work, and on finding that a child was at work they did not insist on his-going to school. The ratepayers employed pauper children to ease the rates, and kindhearted people found them work in order to minister to the necessities of the parents. That was the case as they found it, and not as they hoped it would be hereafter. Why did not the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. E. Forster) try to make the two Acts uniform? Why did he put the Fifth Standard in his own Act when the Fourth had been inserted in "another place" in the Agricultural Children's Act? If there had been uniformity, in all probability the present difficulty would not have arisen. He (Mr. Read) wished to reduce out-door relief; but he did not wish to do it in this cruel and one-sided way. The Act fell like a bombshell upon Guardians on the 1st of January last. He was present at the Board of Guardians presided over by the Earl of Kimberley, who sharply criticized the Act. Every child in receipt, of out-door relief had to leave his service and go to school until he was 13. The consequence was, that children were taken from work and sent to school, and in one instance a boy who was employed at 6s. per week was sent to school and given 1s. 6d. and half a stone of flour per week—a poor consolation for his widowed mother. The right hon. Gentleman said it would have been sufficient if certain attendances had been insisted upon. Why did he not do something in that way? [Mr. W. E. FORSTER: I said the noble Lord might have met the difficulty he felt in that way.] The right hon. Gentleman was six months in office after the Act passed, and had done nothing to make this Act work smoothly. If he had been at the Local Government Board, he would have been astonished at the opposition it encountered among the guardians. He would have heard that complaints were lord and general. He could point to places in which there was no school to receive children at less than 6d. a week. That fee had previously been paid by the guardians; but now they could pay only 2½d., and the result was there was "a reasonable excuse" for not sending the children to school at all. Another excuse was furnished by the fact that schools were presided over by uncertificated teachers, and another by the expulsion of rough boys from schools conducted by mistresses, in which they created disturbances, and went as far as to kick the legs of the governess. It had been said that the Fifth Standard was the one which the children of out door paupers might he expected to pass. He should not like to be examined in that Standard himself, and he believed there were other Members also in that House who would not like to have to pass it. He was in an average school in the country the other day, which was conducted by a certificated mistress, and out of 54 pupils only one could pass the Fifth Standard. ["Oh!"] It was to be hoped that condition of things would improve; but the way to improve was to begin moderately and to take public opinion and the poor with us. He did not think hon. Members were aware of the extreme accuracy with which in these days the Inspectors insisted upon arithmetic, and examined in practice and bills of parcels. Village schoolmistresses, although good in teaching reading and writing, were generally deficient in the power of imparting arithmetic, and therefore he thought the Fifth Standard was one which very few children in the country could pass, or would pass, for some years to come. The right hon. Member for the University of Edinburgh (Mr. Lyon Playfair) had spoken of giving a child that education which would never again admit of its becoming a pauper, and he (Mr. Read) should like to know what sort of education that was. We had in our workhouse schools the best system of book-learning we could have, and there were more educated paupers from these schools than any other. It was found in the City of London that, although the children got such an excellent education in these schools, yet in consequence of their proximity to the workhouses, and constantly mixing with paupers, the degrading badge of pauperism stuck to them, and, notwithstanding their education, they continued paupers to the end. The first duty of a pauper child was to learn how to earn a living. The great object should be to correct that indifference and inertness which constantly clung to paupers, and impart to them habits of industry and independence, so as to raise them from the scale of pauperism. He should be glad to give pauper children the best education the State could afford them; but he he thought that when they considered the case of the pauper child as he was, the Third Standard would be amply sufficient for the next 18 months.

MR. LOWE

I will not stop to argue with the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, for though I do not doubt he is a very good friend to education, I am perfectly unable to conceive how, upon the grounds which he has placed before us, he ever was able to reconcile his mind to giving the poor any education at all. I will pass to the noble Lord (Viscount Sandon) who has, I think, fallen into a fault that is very unusual. The noble Lord is new in his office, and it is the tendency of most of us when we first get into an office of importance and responsibility, to over-estimate its value and importance. What I complain of the noble Lord is, that he has under-estimated the duties of his office, and that which he is called upon to do. I do not confine myself to assertion; I say what I do in no spirit of disrespect to the noble Lord. I apprehend there are two duties cast upon the noble Lord in the most important office which he fills. The one is that, as this system of education is partly carried on by Acts of Parliament, and partly by Minutes of Council, the noble Lord ought so to frame the Minutes of Council as to carry out the spirit of the Acts of Parliament. The second duty incumbent on the noble Lord is that, as through his hands passes an enormous sum of public money, which is given by Parliament with the view of promoting the real and thorough education of the people, it is his duty by every means in his power to seek to uphold the standard of that education, and to make the money that he disburses the means, not only of still maintaining, but of elevating the standard of education all over the country. I am sorry to say that I do not think, judging by his speech to-night, that he is sufficiently aware of the magnitude of those duties, nor do I think that in this matter he has adequately discharged them. The question is, what did Parliament mean when it made, so far as it has made, education compulsory? Did it mean that that was to be a colourable proceeding—that the formula was to be gone through under the pretence of doing something, and then we were to stop? Was not Parliament aware, when it passed the Elementary Education Act, of all that has been urged to-night about the hardship of taking children away from their parents when they were earning money, and compelling them to learn? Parliament looked at the thing in the face, and did it knowing that; and I am sure Parliament was too wise and the feelings of Parliament too liberal. The House was too liberal then to have incurred the admitted evil of taking children from work for any purpose otherwise than that they should receive a real and thorough education; it would have been cruel to have deprived the parents of what the children would have earned without the latter receiving some real and thorough benefit. Does the Minute of the noble Lord give that real and solid benefit? I say it does not. Twelve years ago I prevailed upon Parliament to lay down these standards, of which I was the inventor, when people were not supposed to be very much alive to the question of education. We treated children up to six years of age as infants, and we then endeavoured to form a scheme by which they might attain additional learning year after year between the ages of six and 12, so that, as a matter of fact, what you are asking the House to do, is to say that the children of the poor shall be sufficiently educated to be sent out into the world with an education suitable for a child of nine years of age. I say, too, that if we want a child to read and write well, we ought to teach it more, rather than less, than the Fifth Standard. It was never intended that we should stop here, and I say that if you do, you are dealing a deadly blow at education. It is for the Education Department, for the noble Lord, or for the Government—Liberal or illiberal—to define what the standard of education is to be, and I say you are doing a serious injury to the cause of education if you adopt the Third Standard, because you will be doing your best to make the school boards of the country follow your example. If the Education Department lowers the standard of education, I say that is running directly contrary to the purposes for which it was formed, and instead of elevating the education of the people, we may as well have no education at all. I feel strongly on this point, and it is most painful to me to see this done, especially, too, as it has been done so precipitately; only three weeks, indeed, after the present Government had taken office.

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

said, he had hardly expected, after the speech of his noble Friend (Viscount Sandon), that the hon. Member for Hastings (Mr. Kay-Shuttleworth) would really go to a division; but if he did, he wished to point out that the speech of the right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down tended to confuse the issue before the House, and, indeed, to reverse that issue. If there was any question between what was real and what was colourable in the case, it was hon. Gentlemen opposite who were in danger of making those proceedings colourable; because they pretended they were giving an education which they did not give and could not give, whereas the Government said they would only give one which they really could give. Parliament, judging à priori, had thought it desirable to provide that children of the class confessedly the most backward and neglected should be educated to the Fifth Standard. He would not go into the difference between the Fifth and the Third Standards, because that was not the point. ["Oh!"] Well, it was only the difference between reading and writing more perfectly or less perfectly. The question was whether the Fifth Standard was one which children of that class could reasonably be expected to attain? The Government believed that if they really wished to promote education and gain the confidence of the people in carrying out the principle of compulsion, they must convince them that what they were doing was possible and practicable. In calling on that miserable class of children to pass a standard which experience had shown that but a very small proportion, even of the best children they had to deal with, were able to pass, they were manifestly asking that which it was unreasonable to ask. It must take some time to bring them up to the standard at first, although by-and-by, when the work had been going on for some years, the task might be found easier. The question really seemed to resolve itself into the difference between the view as taken by the right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down, who looked at this matter from an official point of view, and the noble Lord, who looked at it not so much from an official as from a practical point of view. It was all very well and very proper to frame schemes of education in Downing Street; but when they were for the first time compulsorily taking children of that class away from their parents and from their work, they must be careful not to insist on what was plainly impossible, otherwise they would set the people against them and run the risk of breaking down their whole system. He maintained, therefore, that the course adopted by his noble Friend was a wise and prudent one. His course was not to reverse the policy of the last Government—["Oh!"]—and not to lower the Fifth Standard. Hon. Gentlemen opposite might cry "Oh, oh!" but upon this point he accepted the statement of his noble Friend, who had issued a Minute to all the Boards of Guardians stating that this was only a temporary measure to last 12 or 18 months, and they were at the end of that period to report upon the result. If they were told that in doing this they were doing something reactionary, he confessed he did not know how to expect policy to be fairly judged. The Government were endeavouring to carry out this policy in the most practical way. It was not a question between two different methods. The object they sought to attain was the same in both cases, and the question really was whether they should proceed as fast as they could, or attempt to go on at a rate which was absolutely impossible.

MR. KAY-SHUTTLEWORTH

, in reply, said, that as it was the wish of the House to proceed to a division, he would not stand in the way for more than a few moments. He would merely remind them that the Fifth Standard had been fixed by the Education Department, that it had been adopted by most of the school boards in the country, including that of London, of which the noble Lord (Viscount Sandon) had been an active member, and that even in the Agricultural Children Act the Fourth Standard was the minimum required. It had boon reserved for the present Government to disregard all these precedents, and to say that children must not be sent to school after passing the Third Standard. It remained to be seen whether that course would be approved by Parliament.

Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes 202; Noes 265; Majority 63.

AYES.
Adam, rt. hon. W. P. Forster, Sir C.
Allen, W. S. Forster, rt. hon. W. E.
Amory, Sir J. H. Fothergill, R.
Anderson, G. French, hon. C.
Anstruther, Sir R. Goldsmid, Sir F.
Backhouse, E. Goschen, rt. hon. G. J.
Balfour, Sir G. Gourley, K. T.
Barclay, A. C. Gower, hon. E. F. L.
Barclay, J. W. Gray, Sir J.
Bass, A. Grey, Earl de
Bassett, F. Grieve, J. J.
Baxter, rt hon. W. E. Hankey, T.
Beaumont, Major F. Harcourt, Sir W. V.
Bell, I. L. Harrison, C.
Biddulph, M. Harrison, J. F.
Biggar, J. G. Hartington, Marq. of
Blennerhassett, R. P. Havelock, Sir H.
Brassey, H. A. Hayter, A. D.
Brassey, T. Henry, M.
Briggs, W. E. Hodgson, K. D.
Bristowe, S. B. Hopwood, C. H.
Brocklehurst, W. C. Ingram, W. J.
Brogden, A. Jackson, H. M.
Brooks, rt. hon. M. James, W. H.
Brown, A. H. James, Sir H.
Bruce, rt. hn. Lord E. Jenkins, D. J.
Bryan, G. L. Jenkins, E.
Burt, T. Johnstone, Sir H.
Cameron, C. Kensington, Lord
Campbell-Bannerman, H. Kingscote, Colonel
Kinnaird, hon. A. F.
Carington, hn. Col. W. Kirk, G. H.
Carter, R. M. Knatchbull-Hugessen, rt. hon. E.
Cave, T.
Cavendish, Lord F. C. Laverton, A.
Cavendish, Lord G. Lawson, Sir W.
Chadwick, D. Leatham, E. A.
Childers, rt. hon. H. Lefevre, G. J. S.
Cholmeley, Sir H. Leith, J. F.
Clarke, J. C. Lloyd, M.
Clifford, C. C. Locke, J.
Cogan, rt. hn. W. H. F. Lowe, rt. hon. R.
Cole, H. T. Lubbock, Sir. J.
Collins, E. Macduff, Viscount
Colman, J. J. Macgregor, D.
Convngham, Lord F. M'Arthur, A.
Cotes, C. C. M'Arthur, W.
Cowan, J. M'Carthy, J. G.
Cowper, hon. H. F. M'Kenna, Sir J. N.
Crawford, J. S. M'Lagan, P.
Cross, J. K. M'Laren, D.
Dalway, M. R. Maitland, J.
Davies, R. Martin, P. W.
Dickson, T. A. Martin, P.
Dillwyn, L. L. Massey, rt. hon. W. N.
Dixon, G. Meldon, C. H.
Dodds, J. Molly, G.
Dodson, rt. hon. J. G. Milbank, F. A.
Downing, M'C. Mitchell, T. A.
Dunbar, J. Monk, C. J.
Dundas, J. C. Moore, A.
Edwards, H. Morgan, G. O.
Egerton, Adm. hon. F. Morley, S.
Evans, T. W. Mundella, A. J.
Fawcett, H. Mure, Colonel
Fay, C. J. Murphy, N. D.
Ferguson, R. Nevill, C. W.
Fitzmaurice, Lord E. Noel, E.
Fitzwilliam, hon. C. W. W. Nolan, Captain
Norwood, C. M.
Fordyce, W. D. O'Brien, Sir P.
O'Byrne, W. R. Shaw, W.
O'Callaghan, hon. W. Sheil, E.
O'clery, K. Sherriff, A. C.
O'Conor, D. M. Simon, Mr. Serjeant
O'Conor Don, The Sinclair, Sir J. G. T.
O'Gorman, P. Smith, E.
O'Keeffe, J. Smyth, R.
O'Loghlen, rt. hon. Sir C. M. Stafford, Marquis of
Stansfeld, rt. hon. J.
O'Reilly, M. Stevenson, J. C.
O'Shaughnessy, R. Sullivan, A. M.
O'Sullivan, W. H. Swanston, A.
Palmer, C. M. Taylor, D.
Parry, T. Temple, rt. hon. W. Cowper-
Pease, J. W.
Peel, A. W. Thompson, T. C.
Pennington, F. Tracy, hon. C. R. D. Hanbury-
Perkins, Sir F.
Playfair, rt. hn. Dr. L. Trevelyan, G. O.
Portman, hn. W. H. B. Vivian, A. P.
Potter, T. B. Vivian, H. H.
Power, R. Waddy, S. D.
Price, W. E. Watkin, Sir E. W.
Ramsay, J. Whitbread, S.
Rathbone, W. White, hon. Col. C.
Redmond, W. A. Whitwell, J.
Reid, R. Whitworth, W.
Richard, H. Williams, W.
Robertson, H. Wilson, C.
Roebuck, J. A. Wilson, Sir M.
Ronayne, J. P. Young, A. W.
Rothschild, N. M. de
Russell, Lord A. TELLERS.
Samuda, J. D'A. Cartwright, W.
Samuelson, B. Kay-Shuttleworth, U. J.
Seely, C.
NOES.
Adderley, rt. hn. Sir C. Bulwer, J. R.
Agnew, R. V. Burrell, Sir P.
Alexander, Colonel Buxton, Sir R. J.
Archdale, W. H. Callender, W. R.
Arkwright, A. P. Cameron, D.
Arkwright, R. Campbell, C.
Ashbury, J. L. Cartwright, F.
Assheton, R. Cawley, C. E.
Baggallay, Sir R. Cecil, Lord E. H. B. G.
Bailey, Sir J. R. Chaplin, Colonel E.
Balfour, A. J. Chapman, J.
Ball, rt hon. J. T. Christie, W. L.
Baring, T. C. Churchill, Lord R.
Barrington, Viscount Clifton, T. H.
Barttelot, Colonel Close, M. C.
Bates, E. Clowes, S. W.
Bateson, Sir T. Cobbett, J. M.
Bathurst, A. A. Cobbold, J. P.
Beach, rt. hn. Sir M. H. Cole, hon. Col. H. A.
Beach, W. W. B. Conolly, T.
Bentinck, G. C. Coope, O. E.
Beresford, Lord C. Cordes, T.
Beresford, Colonel M. Corry, hon. H. W. L.
Birley, H. Corry, J. P.
Boord, T. W. Crichton, Viscount
Bourke, hon. R. Cross, rt. hon. R. A.
Bourne, Colonel Cubitt, G.
Bousfield, Major Cuninghame, Sir W.
Bright, R. Cust, H. C.
Brise, Colonel R. Dalkeith, Earl of
Broadley, W. H. H. Dalrymple, C.
Brooks, W. C. Davenport, W. B.
Bruce, hon. T. Denison, W. E.
Bruen, H. Dick, F.
Dickson, Major A. G. Johnstone, J. J. Hope-
Disraeli, rt. hon. B. Johnstone, Sir F.
Douglas, Sir G. Jolliffe, hon. Captain
Dowdeswell, W. E. Jones, J.
Dyott, Colonel R. Kavanagh, A. Mac M.
Eaton, H. W. Kennard, Colonel
Edmonstone, Adm. Sir W. Kennaway, Sir J. H.
Knowles, T.
Egerton, hon. A. F. Laird, J.
Egerton, hon. W. Learmonth, A.
Elliot, Admiral Lee, Major V.
Elliot, G. Legard, Sir C.
Elphinstone, Sir J. D. H. Lennox, Lord H. G.
Eslington, Lord Leslie, J.
Estcourt, G. B. Lewis, C. E.
Fellowes, E. Lloyd, S.
Finch, G. H. Lloyd, T. E.
FitzGerald, rt. hn. Sir S. Lopes, H. C.
Floyer, J. Lopes, Sir M.
Folkestone, Viscount Lorne, Marquis of
Forester, rt. hon. Gen. Lowther, hon. W
Forsyth, W. Lowther, J.
Gallway, Sir W. P. Macartney, J. W. E.
Galway, Viscount Mackintosh, C. F.
Gardner, J. T. Agg- Mahon, Viscount
Gardner, R. Richardson Majendie, L. A.
Makins, Colonel
Garnier, J. C. Manners, rt. hn. Lord J.
Goddard, A. L. March, Earl of
Goldney, G. Marten, A. G.
Gordon, rt. hon. E. S. Mellor, T. W.
Gordon, W. Milles, hon. G. W.
Gore, J. R. O. Mills, Sir C. H.
Gore, W. R. O. Montgomerie, R.
Grantham, W. Montgomery, Sir G. G.
Greenall, G. Morgan, hon. F.
Greene, E. Mowbray, rt. hn. J. R.
Gregory, G. B. Mulholland, J.
Guinness, Sir A. Muncaster, Lord
Gurney, rt. hon. R. Naghten, A. R.
Hall, A. W. Neville-Grenville, R.
Halsey, T. F. Newdegate, C. N.
Hamilton, Lord C. J. Newport, Viscount
Hamilton, I. T. North, Colonel
Hamilton, Lord G. Northcote, rt. hon. Sir S. H.
Hamilton, Marquis of
Hamilton, hon. R. B. O'Neill, hon. E.
Hamond, C. F. Onslow, D.
Hanbury, R. W. Paget, R. H.
Hardcastle, E. Palk, Sir L.
Hardy, rt. hon. G. Parker, Lt. Col. W.
Hardy, J. S. Pateshall, E.
Hay, rt. hn. Sir J. C. D. Pell, A.
Heath, R. Pemberton, E. L.
Henley, rt. hon. J. W. Peploe, Major
Hermon, E. Perceval, C. G.
Hervey, Lord A. H. Phipps, P.
Hervey, Lord F. Plunket, hon. D. R.
Hick, J. Plunkett, hon. R.
Hill, A. S. Polhill-Turner, Capt.
Hogg, J. M. Powell, W.
Holford, J. P. G. Pracd, H. B.
Holker, J. Price, Captain
Holmesdale, Viscount Puleston, J. H.
Holt, J. M. Raikes, H. C.
Home, Captain Read, C. S.
Hood, Captain hon. A. W. A. N. Rendlesham, Lord
Repton, G. W.
Huddleston, J. W. Ridley, M. W.
Hunt, rt. hon. G. W. Ritchie, C. T.
Isaac, S. Round, J.
Johnson, J. G. Sackville, S. G. S.
Johnston, W. Sandon, Viscount
Sclater-Booht, rt, hn. G. Torr, J.
Scott, Lord H. Tremayne, J.
Scott, M. D. Trevor, Lord A. E. Hill-
Scourfield, J. H. Turner, C.
Selwin-Ibbetson, Sir H. J. Turner, E.
Twells, P.
Shirley, S. E. Verner, E. W.
Shute, General Wait, W. K.
Sidebottom, T. H. Wallace, Sir R.
Simonds, W. B. Walpole, hon. F.
Smith, A. Walsh, hon. A.
Smith, F. C. Waterhouse, S.
Smith, S. G. Watney, J.
Smith, W. H. Welby W. E.
Smollett, P. B. Wellesley, Captain
Somerset, Lord H. R. C. Wells, E.
Spinks, Mr. Serjeant Wethered, T. O.
Stanford, V. F. Benett- Whalley, G. H.
Stanhope, hon. E. Wheelhouse, W. S. J.
Stanhope, W. T. W. S. Whitclaw, A.
Stanley, hon. F. Williams, Sir F. M.
Starkey, L. R. Wilmot, Sir H.
Starkie, J. P. C. Wilmot, Sir J. E.
Steere, L. Woodd, B. T.
Stewart, M. J. Wynn, C. W. W.
Storer, G. Yorke, J. R.
Sykes, C.
Talbot, J. G. TELLERS.
Taylor, rt. hon. Col. Dyke, W. H.
Tennant, R. Winn, R.