DR. FARQUHARSON (Aberdeen shire, W.)said, the House had become somewhat out of training for late hours, and he felt that some apology was due from him for introducing that subject; but he hoped the discussion might not occupy much time. Scotch Members, at any rate, would feel that though the question in itself might be a small one, it was part of a question that was exciting much public attention—the action of the Commissioners in interfering with existing arrangements which had been found to work extremely well. There was no need for him to say much upon the general principle of the Act of 1882; that point had been well urged by the hon. Member for Roxburgh (Mr. A. R. D. Elliot) in relation to a kindred subject on the previous night. He had nothing to say against the Commissioners; they were able and patriotic men who did a great deal of hard and laborious work without fee or reward. The right hon. and learned Lord Advocate, however, seemed to think that because the Commission was appointed by Act of Parliament, they occupied a sort of angelic position, and it was not in the power of the House to alter or question their actions. That was not 160 the general view in the country, nor could he (Dr. Farquharson) accept the judgment of the Commissioners as in fallible, and the very fact that the procedure under the Act required that their proposals should lie before the House for consideration justified him in challenging the scheme. Avoiding any great detail, it was sufficient to say that the present scheme had relation to a part of the country in the constituency he had the honour to represent, and it had to do with an old trust left by Lord Cullen two centuries ago, for the benefit of the education of the poor in the parish of Monymusk, and the money was applied in virtue of a scheme framed in 1825 by the Court of Session, so that there was nothing antique or archaic in the way the trust was applied in carrying out the idea of the founder. A school was carried on on the North side of the Don, and a certain number of poor children received education, the fees being paid out of the trust. There was nothing in the way of doles in this case, nothing spent for maintenance or clothing; it was absolutely an educational endowment. The new scheme of the Commissioners was, that of the £90 a-year, the income of the trust, £25 only should be devoted to paying for elementary education, that £20 should go to the establishment of four bursaries, and the remainder to the general purposes of the school. What the people wanted was that instead of four bursaries there should be two, and that showed practically that the people of the parish, as might be expected of Scotchmen, and especially Aberdonians, men quite alive to the importance of higher education and the value of means by which the young could go from school to the University, but they thought that four bursaries was too large a proportion from this small endowment. They wished to have two bursaries, and further they desired to have it distinctly laid down that the bursaries should apply only to the parish, for they feared that the educational advantages might be secured by persons outside the parish. To secure the advantage of higher education upon a good groundwork of primary education, they wanted a sum devoted to the payment of pupil teachers, so that the head master might be set free for the higher education he would like to carry on, and they also wanted to erect a new school in a different part of 161 the parish, where the population had increased in consequence of certain quarry works being carried on. Of course, it would be said that that would have the effect of saving the rates; but he was bound to say he did not see why the rates should not be saved. He thought the arrangement the school board wished and the people wanted, which carried out the wish of the pious Founder, and, at the same time, duly recognized the importance of having higher education and bursaries, to enable boys to climb from school to the University, might well be granted. A letter from Mr. Grant, an excellent constituent of his, put the case clearly. He said the inhabitants of the parish were mostly labourers and crofters; there were very few large farmers, and the trust had been a great been to them, as at present administered, enabling them to get through the trying times for agriculture; but the new scheme would be an additional burden laid on the rates which an agricultural district was not able to bear. Anyone who knew the condition of the agricultural districts in the North would admit the force of this. Further, his correspondent went on to express the opinion that the diversion of a large portion of the fund to the purposes of higher education was not in accordance with the wishes of the testator, who intended to confine the application of the fund to the parish poor. Without trepassing further on the time of the House, he thought he had shown grounds for modifying, if not altogether rejecting, the scheme of the Commissioners.
§
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying Her Majesty to withhold Her consent from the scheme for the Management of the Endowments in the Parish of Monymusk, in the County of Aberdeen, known as the Cullen Trust, approved by the Scottish Education Department, now lying upon the Table of the House."—(Dr. Farquharson.)
§ THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. H. A. MACDONALD) (Edinburgh and St. Andrew's Universities)said, this was another of those schemes similar in some respects to that which had occupied the attention of the House last night, and it occurred to him, as he was sure it would to other Members of the House who considered the matter dispassionately, that it was not in the least surprising that in this, and in a large number of 162 similar cases of small trusts, when the Commissioners came to revise the application of the funds, whatever they did must, to a certain extent, be unpleasant to some people in the parish where the endowment was situated, and must, to a certain extent, tread on the toes of people a little sensitive on the subject. This was inevitable, and it was therefore not unreasonable, from their point of view, that these people should find means to get their objections expressed in that House, and should endeavour to get the scheme altered to meet their views. But if that course were generally followed, it would probably result in two Bodies coming to the House for judgment—the Commissioners appointed under Act of Parliament, and the self-established Commissioners of the locality. Now, he asked hon. Members to consider whether it was possible for the House to go into the details to enable it to come to a sound decision between these two parties? The Commissioners were in an independent position for making full inquiry, for hearing all sides of the question, and deciding as they thought best, and certainly without any bias whatever in favour of one view, or necessarily antagonistic to the views of others. In the present instance, the amount of the income of the trust was £94 a-year, and the endowment was about 200 years old. As the hon. Member (Dr. Farquharson) said, there was a re-arrangement, in 1825, by the Court of Session; but the whole educational arrangements for primary education in Scotland had completely changed since the scheme was arranged in 1825. It was now established, as part of the duty of the ratepayers all over the country, to provide education for the community, on the footing that expenses not met by the payment of fees should fall upon the rates. Hitherto, a considerable part of the expenditure for education in this parish had been paid out of the trust, and it had not been thought desirable to continue that state of things. He thought he was right in saying that there was a little want of logic in stating that because hitherto a district had been exempt from the burden it should continue to be exempt from a burden that had been shared by all their neighbours ever since the passing of the Education Act. Sir William Grant, in reference to the scheme, said his tenants would 163 have to pay a charge from which his ancestor expressly desired to free them. But he (Mr. J. H. A. Macdonald) had a higher opinion of the intention of his (Sir William Grant's) ancestor than that. The intention was to provide for the education of poor children by the payment of fees under a state of things totally different to that of the present day, which required an entirely different treatment. The Commissioners proposed to devote £25 to the payment of the fees for poor children; and as the population was not large, this was in proportion a considerable sum, and to that extent there was necessarily a saving of the rates. [Dr. FARQUHARSON: Only after competition.] He was not speaking of details, but referring to the allocation of money saving the rates. Then £20 were given for small bursaries for poor childen, one higher bursary was established, and the rest was given to the school board to help the general work of school improvement. All these things would benefit the community. It was all very well to say only a certain portion of the population would get the benefit of the bursaries; but surely the benefit of all classes should be considered. The hon. Member had himself shown that it was not at all to the general scope of the scheme that objection was taken, but rather to the number of bursaries. But was that a matter for the House to dispose of when it had no opportunity of inquiring into details? If that was a matter that could not be entrusted to the Commissioners, then the Act of 1882 could not be administered at all. After consideration of all details and objections that could be urged, the Commissioners had, upon their responsibility, arrived at a decision which the House should not, in a more or less haphazard fashion, override. Only one other point required attention, and that was the claim that a portion of the fund should be applied to the establishment of a school at a place at a considerable distance from that the testator desired to benefit. It was not a residential part, but quarries were being worked, a valuable industry was being vigorously and successfully carried on, and many hands were employed. But if this venture was producing successful results in dividends to shareholders, and work to the labouring population, he did not see why the 164 endowment should be drawn upon to secure educational advantages which the district might well provide for itself. But he thought the House would not be disposed to enter upon the details in reference to the scheme, but would trust the decision of the Commissioners, seeing that nothing had been shown to justify an alteration of that decision.
§ MR. ESSLEMONT (Aberdeen, E.)said, it was certainly a new experience to find himself in opposition to his hon. Colleague. It would not be denied that he had some claim to express an opinion, as he had given to the subject of these bequests considerable attention during the last 20 years, and he took the opportunity of entering his protest against the sentiment expressed on those Benches last night, that those who favoured the schemes of the Endowment Commissioners were endeavouring to deprive the poor of their patrimony. That accusation could not fairly be levelled against him. He contended, when he was accused of taking the fund from the poor, when the fund was diverted from elementary education, or eleemosynary purposes, that the object was in quite the opposite direction. What he desired in regard to these bequests was to apply them to the benefit of the poor in circumstances when no other fund came to their aid. Provision had been made by the Poor Law for the maintenance of the poor, and by the Education Act for elementary education; but there was no provision for the poor in respect to secondary or higher education, and the object of the Endowment Commissioners had been throughout Scotland to give poor children the opportunity of securing, by their own efforts, a higher education. He had no objection to any amount of restriction, and he understood such restrictions were embodied in the present scheme—to the effect that this secondary education should only be given to the poor who had no means but by these bequests of receiving that higher education. He thought there was a disposition on both sides, because the Charity Commissioners in England had not, in the opinion of many, used the funds under their control as they ought to have used them, to visit the sins of this Commission upon the Endowment Commissioners of Scotland. He had little in common with the Nobleman who was Chairman of 165 this Commission; he was an opponent in politics, and generally they found themselves of different opinions. But, although that was the case, he was bound to say that Lord Balfour, and the other Commissioners, had entered upon their work in the most liberal spirit, and had certainly, so far as he was able to judge, given earnest attention to the various endowments with which they had dealt in a fair-minded manner, without regard to Party, and certainly in harmony with modern ideas. His hon. Friend had referred to what happened in 1825; but his hon. Friend would not contend that the circumstances of even such an intelligent county as Aberdeen had not greatly changed since then. He would appeal to his hon. Friend not to press this matter to a Division. He would understand that the House had no power to alter the scheme, only the power to reject it by means of an Address. At present, there was a constitution whereby the fund was administered by the heritors and two parish ministers; and surely his hon. Friend did not object to the addition of two members of the school board popularly elected? At present, the school was conducted on the footing of no Government grant; but if the scheme was carried out, a sum would be raised for the parish equal to two-thirds of the Endowment by Government grant, and the school would be managed equally in the interest of the poor, with the advantage of Government inspection and grant. Under the circumstances, his hon. Friend would do well not to press the Motion. It would be quite impossible, as the right hon. and learned Lord Advocate said, to frame a scheme that would be in harmony with the views of the whole of the community; but he would remind the House, that the trustees of this endowment had the opportunity of proposing a scheme themselves, and it was quite within their power to urge their objections to the scheme of the Commissioners upon the Education Department. They had that opportunity, and failed to appear before the Education Department with a better scheme, and it was unfortunate that they should only now offer opposition. He submitted that it would be better if this scheme did not work out so well as was desired, to take the opportunity of getting it amended; but 166 meantime he could see no grounds for rejecting the proposed scheme.
§ MR. A. R. D. ELLIOT (Roxburgh)said, he hoped his hon. Friend (Dr. Farquharson) would press his Motion to a Division. Nothing said by the hon. Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Esslemont) induced him to alter his opinion that the poor, who were the beneficiaries of the trust, would suffer by the proposed change. The hon. Member said it was not in the power of the House to modify the scheme, but only to reject it; but this was not correct, because, under the Act, it was competent for the House to address the Crown in favour of consent being with-held to any part of a scheme, and so the House had a power to modify any such proposal. He also protested most strongly against the argument of the right hon. and learned Lord Advocate, that it was not in the power of the House to thoroughly investigate these schemes. If that were so, what was the object of the scheme being laid before the House? It was the duty of the House to go into these schemes, and he regretted that there was no better method than by raising a discussion at a late hour. It had been said by the right hon. and learned Lord Advocate, and by the hon. Member for East Aberdeen, that the whole circumstances were changed, and that the poor were provided with educational and other advantages from the rates; and, therefore, the poor were no longer entitled to the fund left for their support. That was a faulty argument. Because persons without means altogether had a right to support from the rates did not give any moral title to those who wished to take away property left in trust for a certain purpose, purely on the ground that if it was so taken away for some other good object the beneficiaries would not be left destitute, seeing that they could get support from the rates. Men liked to be provided for from their own means, and it was unfair and unjust to take away those means, on the ground that the law had made provision for them from the pockets of others. He hoped his hon. Friend would go to a Division, and receive the support of a large number of Members.
§ MR. J. A. CAMPBELL (Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities)said, he 167 wished to state exactly what the condition of things at present was, and what it would be under the new scheme. The greater part, almost the whole, of this endowment had been applied to the maintenance of a small school in Monymusk, attended by about 50 children. The school had never been under Government inspection, and had, therefore, never enjoyed the benefit of the Government grant; the endowment had simply been relieving the rates to the extent of educating some 50 children. What was proposed was that the school should be handed over to the school board of Monymusk, provided the board undertook to carry it on, making arrangements, if necessary, with the board of an adjoining parish a portion of which was served by the school. Part of the fund was to be applied to free scholarships—that was to say, the payment of school fees; small bursaries, three in number, and one higher bursary were to be established; and the balance was to be handed over to the school board of Monymusk for the improvement of the school, but so as not to interfere with the obligations of the board under the Education Act. The assistance that would be given would not be for such expenditure as under the Act the school board would reasonably be required to incur—the endowment would not be applied in such a way as to serve in lieu of the ordinary school rate—so that the poor would have the full benefit of it, as something in addition to what was provided by law. With regard to the free scholarships and the bursaries, they were all confined to children whose parents or guardians were in such circumstances as to require assistance for the education of the children under their charge. None others would receive that assistance. That being so, he hoped the House would see that it was not a scheme really open to such charges as had been brought against it by the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire. In fact, the chief point of difference between the hon. Member and the Commissioners seemed to be that while he thought two bursaries would be enough they thought there should be four.
§ Question put.
§ The House divided:—Ayes 54; Noes 96: Majority 42.—(Div. List, No. 233.)