HC Deb 08 May 1902 vol 107 cc1170-220

[SECOND READING.]

Adjourned debate on Amendment to Second Reading [5th day] continued.

(9.0.) MR. YOXALL (resuming)

It is possible to have too much of the permissive element, even in a Bill of this sort. I am for freedom and for variety in legislation, but not for licence. I am in favour neither of giving too much freedom in what is a national duty, nor stretching elasticity to the point of recoil. I am willing to confess that, from the point of view of the statesman and the politician, perhaps it might be the wiser course to leave this Bill to the option of the local authorities, under it, to take upon themselves—or not to take upon themselves—the duty of supervising, controlling, and financing the elementary schools within its area. There is much to be said for gradual growth and development, locality by locality, so long as the development takes place with justice to schools newly brought in, and with no injustice to those already there. There is some danger, if this option were removed, and compulsion placed instead, that localities might be unwilling to rate themselves for elementary education, might avoid it as far as possible, and might be even carried to the extent of diminishing the grants to the board schools now in existence. From the statesmanlike and political point of view, there is much to be said for this option clause, but from the educational point of view, there is little indeed to be said for it. I am afraid that, unless it is made compulsory upon local authorities, we shall have for many years to come in county areas and some borough areas, such as Preston, Bury, and Stockport, which have hitherto shirked the duty of providing by a board school rate for board school education, a standing still in regard to elementary education. I would urge upon the Government that option with regard to the taking over by local authorities of the powers and duties with respect to elementary education should be removed from the Bill, and a general system of compulsion adopted. I am aware that from another point of view there is something to be said for leaving option in the Bill. I have looked at it from the side of the local authority. But there is no option left for the managers of voluntary schools to refuse to come under the local authority, and the terms and conditions upon which local authorities take over the financial management and direction of the voluntary schools are consequently very wide, very vague, and very unsatisfactory. If the option had been mutual, the local authority and the managers of the voluntary schools might have come to terms, an arrangement might well have been arrived at. But when you compel the schools in the area to come under the control of the local authority, then you must lay down general terms, which in this case are too tender, towards what are supposed to be the interests and rights of voluntary school managers, but far less just to the interests and rights of the representatives. If this compulsion took place, I feel it should be accompanied by another condition, which in my opinion is vital to the success of the Bill.

There are three conditions with respect to this Bill with regard to which I may say that unless an assurance can be given by the First Lord of the Treasury that they will be granted, the Bill ought not to be permitted to pass. The first condition is the removal of option with regard to primary education. The second is its concomitant, and is that there should be given to the local authorities for the purposes of easing the new expenditure which they will have to incur some considerable Exchequer grant in relief of local taxation. I am not in favour, generally speaking, of grant in aid of local taxation, but I do submit that on the present occasion there is a better case to be made out for a grant in aid than there has been in some other cases where it has been granted by this House and by this present Government. If the local authority takes over the duty of financing and maintaining the denominational schools within its area, it can only do so at considerable cost. Take the case of a county borough in which there are as many voluntary school places occupied as there are School Board places. At present it costs an 8d. rate to maintain the board school places, and if you knock off 3d. in the £ to represent the annual sinking fund, payment for loans obtained for building purposes, you leave the maintenance cost at a rate of 5d. If there are as many voluntary school places to be taken over as there are board school places maintained, another rate of 5d. in the £ will be required, supposing you are to bring the voluntary schools up to the same level as the board schools. That will make the rate 13d. in the £, and it is not credible, in my opinion, that in a borough which already pays an education rate of 8d. a further rate of 5d. will be struck solely for the benefit of the voluntary schools. There is nothing in the Bill to compel a local authority to rate itself for educational purposes up to a certain amount. Very probably the local authorities will not rate themselves above 2d. or 3d. in the £, and that 2d. or 3d. will not be sufficient to bring the voluntary schools up to the former School Board level. I may liken the voluntary schools to a gap, and the board schools to a hillock. What is more simple and obvious than to pare off the top of the hillock in order to fill up the gap? The voluntary schools are the gap, and the board schools the hillock, and the temptation, to which the local authorities will yield, will be to pare the board school hillock in order to fill up the voluntary school gap. The result will be that the board schools will be levelled down, unless an additional Exchequer grant is promised by the First Lord of the Treasury to ease the large amount of taxation which will be necessary under the Bill.

All who wish well for education, whether in board or denominational schools, will see clearly the danger of a diminution of the expenditure upon board schools, and the lowering of the level of the board schools education, and they will feel that this is not a Bill that they can support. It is most important and most essential to improve the condition of the voluntary schools, but unless the option clause is removed, and the Exchequer grant given, I do not believe the condition of these schools will be improved. Not only will you fail to mend them, but you will damage, diminish, and disimprove the existing board schools, if that is true in the boroughs which I have taken as an example, where voluntary and board schools have in the past boon almost equal, so far as the number of schools is concerned, how much more true must it be in those boroughs where they have rated themselves for board school purposes hardly at all, and still how much more true in those large county areas, like Dorset, Hants, and the like, where practically none but voluntary schools are in existence? This is a vital question in the Bill. One wants to improve and assist the condition of the denominational schools, but that must not be done at the expense of the board schools. It has been the improvement of the board schools during the past thirty years which has set the pace and lifted the standard of elementary education. It has been by the best schools in a given locality that the inspector sent by the Board of Education has tested all the schools, and if anything is done in the Bill before the House which will lower that standard, education as a whole will be damaged. You will have a lower standard in the best schools, and you will lower the efficiency of the board schools. To my mind, it should be compulsory to take over the elementary schools in an area, and there should be an Exchequer grant for the purpose of meeting the additional expense of administering the area. This Exchequer grant is an essential feature of any proper scheme of educational reform. I regard it as so essential that without a promise of it I maintain that this Bill ought not to receive a Second Reading.

But I go further. My third condition is that when the Bill gets into Committee, the House should have a free hand to deal with it. It would be to the interest of the Government to give the House and the Committee a free hand, and to my mind the House never appears to greater advantage than when in Committee on an important Bill, when suggestions are made from all quarters as to the way out of a difficulty, which, after consideration and communications, may be adopted by the Minister in charge. That is what I wish to see in the Committee stage of this Bill. Having regard to the length of the debates on the Bill of 1896, and that after eleven days debate the Bill hardly advanced a word, perhaps the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury will conclude that the most tactful way will be for him to announce tonight that when the Bill goes into Committee Members of the House, in view of their desire to make the best of the Bill, will have a free hand to deal with it in a businesslike way. In the past there have been Bills in regard to which the doctrine of verbal inspiration has been insisted on by the Front Bench, and Bills which have been forced through without alteration so as to avoid the Committee stage. I venture to predict that unless this Bill goes into Committee on the understanding that it is to be altered according to the wish of the House, it will not pass at all. Time is against it. It has been said in the course of the debate that speeches have been made which are not, properly speaking, Second Beading speeches, but which ought to have been delivered at the Committee stage. It is not so much a question of what this Bill is to do, as how it is going to do it. I think that practically everybody is agreed that an educational reform Bill is requisite, and that that Bill must depend upon the central principle of one and the same local authority for education. You cannot enact the principle of one and the same authority without also enacting that all schools in the locality, board and voluntary, high and elementary schools, shall be brought under the control and administration of the local authority. But there are several other points to consider. There is the question of the constitution of the local authority. That is vital. It is not vital to education in the future whether the local authority is the School Board or the County Council, but the thing that is vital about the local authority is that it shall be a local authority directly responsible to the people. The majority on it must consist of elected persons who derive their inspiration from the ratepayers and who owe an account of their stewardship to the ratepayers. It must be secured that the majority of the Members of the Education Committee shall be persons who are members of the local authority under the Bill. That is a most essential point that will have to be dealt with in Committee, and on it we ought to have a free hand. There is also the question of proportion on the Management Committees of voluntary schools. I have heard with satisfaction more than one speaker say that the proposal to give the rate paying interest only one third of the representation on the Voluntary Schools Committee is not sufficient: some suggest that the proportion should be as seven to one, but no one would be so unwise and unpractical as to insist on that. Suggestions have come from the other side that the representation should be equally divided; while, further, it has been urged that the elected representatives should form two thirds of the Committee. All this goes to show the desirability of giving the Committee a free hand in this matter if the Bill, when passed, is to work smoothly.

With regard to the secondary schools under the Bill, the safeguards set up under the Technical Instruction Acts are left out. A much wider latitude is given to the local authorities. Under the Bill there is no conscience clause to be applied in these schools, If such a clause were an essential part of the compromise of 1870, then I think it is important that similar protection should be extended to those who attend these schools. There are still further points to be dealt with, like the treatment of teachers by the Committees of the schools and by the local authority. These and other things must be dealt with in Committee. Nobody wishes more than I do that this measure should succeed, and that we should establish a unified and effectual system of public education. I do not wish to exasperate theological opinion on the other side or to minimise such opinion as has been expressed on this side as well as outside the House, but there is a strong feeling outside that the Bill is going to be most unjust to all but the Members of the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church; that it is to be a bad, unjust, tyrannical, and bigoted Bill. I hope on that point we shall receive some assurance that in the Committee stage the Government will make their real meaning clear. I do not believe that they are actuated by bigoted motives in bringing in this Bill, and there ore I hope that by their action in Committee they will mitigate this feeling. A question has been raised in the course of the debate with regard to the training colleges, the, great majority of which belong to the Church of England. It was asked why the Nonconformists do not establish more such colleges of their own. I will give the House the reason. These training colleges are few, but by their trust deeds, in purpose and in essence, they are undenominational. There is at Isleworth an undenominational training college for men. One-third of the students there are members of the Church of England. In no Church of England training college will there be found one-third, or even one-hundredth, of the students other than members of the Church of England. There is an undenominational training college for ladies at Stockwell, and at least one-fourth of the students are member's of the Church of England That is the principle of all these training colleges: no theological test is imposed. They stand high among the crack training colleges, and the best students among; the Queen's scholars seek to enter them. To multiply undenominational training colleges would not be to multiply places for Nonconformist students, therefore. This debate has occupied four days of Parliamentary time, and I will not longer, detain the House. I will simply express the hope that the three conditions I have laid down may be accepted. If they are, I believe the Bill will emerge a measure worthy to be adopted by the country, and efficacious for its purpose.

(9.33.) MR. WARR (Liverpool, East Toxteth)

The hon. Member opposite has told us there is a danger, if this Bill is adopted, of the high level of education, which we all acknowledge is due largely to the efforts of the School Boards, being materially reduced in order to accommodate education to the standard which would then be necessitated by the great rise in the rates. I cannot express an opinion in regard to the rural districts, but in regard, at all events, to one of the large county boroughs, I can assure him that his fears are entirely without foundation. Liverpool—I believe in common with all the other great cities of the kingdom—is thoroughly aroused in this opinion, and is quite determined that there should be no lack of financial support to any really great educational measure such as this. If proof were wanted of this, I should rely on one circumstance, which I think the House will agree is sufficiently remarkable. Liverpool is now asking for a university of its own. The Corporation are promoting a Bill one of the objects of which is to enable them to support that university out of the rates. On three separate occasions that principle has been affirmed by a unanimous vote of the City Council. Does the hon. Member think that that spirit will lead to the starvation by the local educational authority of the secondary and elementary schools in the city?

We are told that any benefit that might arise from a single authority will be more than outweighed by the disadvantages of the scheme. It is said we shall lose the benefits of the School Boards, and that the work will be entrusted to an already over-loaded authority. I think that under this Bill we shall have an authority which has all the advantages of the School Board and none of its disadvantages. I have never allowed myself to underrate the value of School Boards or the debt which we owe to them. I can hardly conceive what the state of things would have been in the great towns had we not had the School Boards. Nobody can doubt that the level of elementary education would have been much lower than it is today. I greatly appreciate, too, the services rendered on such School Boards by women, and I earnestly hope that under this Bill those benefits will be continued to the local educational authority. But we shall have none of the disadvantages attaching to School Boards. We shall no longer see such things as School Board elections in which claims are put forward on the part of candidates without any justification on the ground of educational qualifications whatever. We shall have a complete abolition of the system of a precept address to the City Council. I have been much alarmed as to the effect of the precept if it were longer continued. It has become so distasteful to the ratepayers that the next thing would be a recoil against the rate altogether, and, in consequence, a tendency to lower the standard of education. That is what I fear would happen if the School Board were continued without alteration.

It is suggested that the City Council is not capable of undertaking this work of elementary education. By what they have done for secondary and technical education they have shown that they are thoroughly capable of undertaking it. I entertain no manner of doubt that if this Bill be passed, the standard of the City Council will be improved and heightened. If this great duty with regard to elementary education is entrusted to the City Councils, there will be attracted to those bodies men who hitherto have held aloof, because they were not prepared to stand the racket of a popular election. I hope we shall see the day when City Councils will think they are doing right in relieving some men from the necessity of going through such an election by choosing them straight off as aldermen, adding them to the Council on the understanding that they are representatives of education, that that is the work assigned to them, and that they are reasonably relieved from the duty of watching sanitary and other matters which come before the Council. Then it is said that the control will be inefficient. If so the Bill must be strengthened, and there must be more control. Personally, however, I fail to see that it is insufficient. The Bill gives the local authority absolute power to direct the secular instruction; it gives the fullest power of inspection; it requires the consent to the appointment of teachers; and it involves the nomination of one-third of the managers. I should be glad to see the teachers distinctly recognised as servants of the local authority, both appointed and dismissed by them. I should like to see the added members of the Committee under an obligation to report annually to the education authority. The voluntary schools have nothing to lose by control. They have nothing to fear from inspection unless their work is bad. The denominational character of the schools is settled by the trust deed. I remember very well that when the grant was first given to university colleges, the Chancellor of the Exchequer very properly required as a condition of the grant that there should be inspection by Government Inspectors. I know that at all events, in one University College there was a feeling that they were being treated as elementary schools, and it was somewhat resented. Nevertheless, the inspection went on; the work was found to be extremely good, and the inspection has ever since been welcomed. Inspection of good work will always be welcome. I notice there is an assumption on the part of critics of the principle of nominated members that these nominated members will be more or less the enemies of the rest of the managers. There is no reason whatever for managers fearing in the least that they will be associated with enemies who are appointed to watch over them.

I assume that the optional character of the Bill will be altered. If the measure is to be worth anything in regard to secondary education the duty must be imposed upon an authority to make adequate provision for secondary education, and it would be a primary part of their duty in that respect to make provision for the training of teachers. I do not doubt that under the Bill the rates will go up. I regard that, not with disapproval, but with entire approval. I do not believe there will be any outcry against the rates if as a result of this Bill there is established a co-ordinated system which will put an end to all that now hinders education, and make it possible for everyone, however poor, to advance, step by step, to the university. If that is the result, as I believe it will be, of this Bill, it will prove to be a great and worthy measure, and one which may be heartily supported by everyone who truly values education.

(9.48.) MR. CHARLES MORLEY (Brecknockshire)

Our difficulty on this side of the House is that we have so many objections to the Bill that in stating our case we hardly know where to begin, and, having begun, we hardly know where to leave off. I want, however, to make one point clear—that we approach the consideration of this question not as members of an Opposition, pledged to oppose, not as members of this or that section of a political party, not even as Churchmen or Nonconformists, but as educationists and citizens who are profoundly impressed with the fact that our commercial supremacy, the material prosperity of the country, and, what is more important, the moral well-being of the people, are at stake, My main objection to the Bill is that while it professes to make provision for the education of the people, as a matter of fact it does nothing of the kind. Instead of promoting education, it will hinder and delay that efficiency which is so essential to our well-being as a nation.

I have no desire to occupy the time of the House, and therefore will confine my remarks to one point. I object to the Bill because it is a direct and absolute negation of the principle of popular control by which I mean local representative control. The Bill proposes to destroy School Boards. I need say nothing as to the admirable work done by those bodies during the last thirty years; the House knows it well. In the picturesque language of my friend Mr. Birrell, the Bill places a knife in the hands of the Councils and invites them, by a bare majority of votes, to draw that knife across the throats of the School Boards, and, while doing that, practically leaves the managers of voluntary schools as they are. I know this is not the view held by the Colonial Secretary. In the letter in The Times on April 24th, the right hon. Gentleman claimed that this Bill gave complete control over the secular education in these schools to the local educational authority acting through an Education Committee, and he instanced several powers which the local educational authority could exert in regard to the voluntary schools Amongst those powers he mentioned the dismissal of teachers. This point has already been made, and it has not been contradicted; we therefore wish the country to understand that to say that this Bill gives the local educational authority power to secure the dismissal of teachers is not a true statement of the case.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

It is.

MR. CHARLES MORLEY

It is not in the Bill. There is a clause dealing with the appointment of teachers, by which the local authority has a very limited right of veto. Their consent is not to be withheld except on educational grounds. But there is nothing in the Bill which reserves to them the power to dismiss a teacher. The Colonial Secretary does not stop there; he goes much farther. He states with regard to the managers of the voluntary schools that the local educational authority will secure on these Boards of Managers representatives of the ratepayers and of the parents of the children. I am anxious to avoid anything like misrepresentation, so I will read the words. The right hon. Gentleman is referring to a meeting of his constituents which he addressed in 1891; he is dealing with the question of the managers of voluntary schools, and in his letter he says that at the meeting I referred to he suggested that— The utmost you could do now was to ask that they should be content to receive on their Committees of management some representatives of the ratepayers and the parents of the children. That object has been secured in the Bill. I suggest that that is neither the intention nor the desire of the Government. If it is I hope they will say so, because it is not contained in the Bill. There is not a single word compelling the local educational authority to place on the Committee of management of voluntary schools any representative of either the ratepayers or the parents of the children. So far as I remember, the parents of the children do not come into the Bill at all. As to the ratepayers, all that is reserved for them is the privilege of paying a heavy additional educational rate. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Aberdeen referred to a Royal Commission upon this subject which was appointed more than thirty years ago, and he reminded the House that that Commission declared that our only hope lay in the co-operation of the people. What has happened in our experience during the last thirty years has confirmed us in that belief. Hon. Members are aware that the voluntary school system was established about the year 1810, and that for sixty years it received a fair trial and proved to be a failure. There is no doubt about the fact that from 1810 to 1870 the control of education was almost entirely in the hands of the clergy. Since 1870 the control of education has been largely in the hands of the people, and it is within the recollection of the House that since the control of education was taken out of the hands of the clergy, and was taken by the people into their own hands, only since then has education made anything like satisfactory progress in this country. As to the origin of this Bill, no one has ventured to accuse the Government of being wild enthusiasts upon the subject of education. We have heard from the First Lord of the Treasury, and the Vice-President of the Council, a good deal about the co-ordination of education, that in this country we have no national system of education worthy of the name; that our system, as far as we have one, is chaos, and that it is our duty to reduce chaos to order. Recently pressure has been brought to bear upon the Government by their clerical supporters who control and mould their educational policy, and I believe that the whole aim of the educational policy of the Government for the last seven years has been to bolster up a deeming system, and to destroy the great principle of public control.

What is the great need of the present day? I think it is agreed on all sides that the great need is a good and thorough system of secondary education. But this Bill docs nothing, or next to nothing, for secondary education. It is practically an elementary educational Bill, and though secondary education is the most pressing need, I assert that elementary education is the most important branch of the subject. In this country the whole question of elementary education has long ago resolved itself into a conflict of systems. For more than thirty years we have had a dual system of education, and what have we found it to be? We have found it to be both costly and inefficient, and the fact is that the Government recognise that this dual system cannot continue. I am not surprised that the Government desire to settle this question rather than to leave the settlement to those who will succeed them in office. This Bill is a determined effort to perpetuate the schools which are privately managed by killing the great principle of public control. I have no doubt that this Bill will pass the Second Reading, but I venture to remind hon. Members opposite that sometimes victory proves more costly than defeat, and believe the country will not be slow to condemn a Government which has betrayed the educational interests of the nation.

(10.0.) MR. BOND

I should like to re-echo the wish which has been expressed that a more certain provision should be made in this Bill for securing the presence of a greater number of women on the Education Committees. No one who has served on a School Board and who has seen the excellent educational work which women have done can have any other feeling than that it is highly desirable that a certain number of women should form part of the body which will have to look after the interests of the girls and young women in our schools, for the new authority will have to employ female as well as male teachers. Having said that, I should like to say that I am one of those who agree to a great extent with the opinion which has fallen from some hon. Members on the other side of the House as well as upon this side, that the chief matter which requires our attention at the moment is the condition of our secondary schools, and I for one should have been very well content if the Government Bill had dealt with this subject only, had it not been for two considerations. Those two considerations seem to me to make it imperative that the Government should introduce some such Bill as that which we are now considering. The first of these considerations is that the Cockerton decision introduced a great deal of difficulty into the working of our School Board system, concurrently with the working of Technical Education and Technical Instruction Committees of the Borough Councils. I will not trouble the House with the history of this matter, but the practical effect was that a considerable and important part, at all events, of the instruction which was being given by the School Boards was pronounced to be illegal, and it became almost essential that it should be discontinued. And yet that illegal part of the work was recognised as being so important that there was a great reluctance to abandon it altogether because it would have caused a great deal of economic waste. Under these circumstances, seeing that there were two bodies, both of them drawing upon the rates and one of them empowered, though not in quite so adequate a fashion as under this Bill, to deal with secondary education, it seemed obvious that the only remedy was to place both the elementary and secondary education of the boroughs under the same authority.

But there was another reason which, made it imperative to deal with the matter, and that was the poverty of the denominational schools throughout the country. A good deal has been said in this debate about the compromise arrived at when the Act of 1870 was passed. I think hon. Members have a little neglected to state the real condition of things which existed at the time that contract was entered into. Hon. Members do not seem to have laid sufficient stress upon the fact that the amount of money required at that time for the children in the elementary schools was very much less than that which is now required. The late Mr. Forster estimated that the School Board rate would be about 3d. in the pound. We know now how that limit has been exceeded, and this has been caused owing to the pressure of the Education Department and the growing desire on the part of the population as a whole for a more extended system of education and for greater efficiency in teachers. The cost of elementary education has gone up so much that the conditions of 1870 can hardly be regarded as binding in the year 1902. The plain reason for this is that the sacrifice which those who supported voluntary schools were then required to make are very much greater now, and they are far greater than it was ever anticipated they would be.

The consequence is that the time has arrived when those who are paying School Board rates as well as finding money for the voluntary school can very well say that they cannot bear those burdens any longer, and I think we are entitled to demand that a larger share of the expense of schools which are necessary and desirable in the interests of the education of the country should be borne by those who have hitherto escaped any responsibility in the matter. That is the reason why we are asking that the rates should be called in aid of the revenue of voluntary schools, and the fact that that necessity exists, and that the voluntary schools throughout the country are clearly in a parlous condition is the reason why it is considered necessary, in any educational reform Bill, for the Government to do something in regard to elementary education as well as in regard to secondary education. I was glad to recognise in that powerful and lucid speech which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Fife favoured us with, that with his usual good sense and capacity for hitting the right nail on the; head, he recognised fully that elementary schools must be kept up and supported, and the only way in which they can be supported is by going upon the rates. But with the greater part of the right hon. Gentleman's criticism I find myself unable to agree. He suggested that this scheme would have the effect of inducing subscribers to voluntary schools to discontinue their subscriptions and to leave the support of those schools entirely to the rates. I have no doubt, that some such result as that will follow, but it docs not at all follow that the motive which has induced people to make this demand is an unworthy desire to escape from the subscriptions which they are now paying. Who are these people? In the rural districts these people who subscribe to voluntary schools are the large ratepayers of the district, and consequently what they save by discontinuing there subscriptions, they will lose in increased rates. I do not suppose that there is a single squire or parson or any large farmer who at present subscribes to voluntary schools who will not have to pay considerably more under the scheme before the House.

With regard to the secondary education part of this scheme, for my part, I wish it contained more of the element of compulsion. I wish that in this Bill what is popularly known as the whiskey money had been definitely and permanently allocated to educational work instead of it being left to the discretion of the local authority to apply it cither to education or to the relief of the rates as it thought fit. It seems to me that a good many of the County Councils may be a little alarmed at the extra burden, in the shape of raising rates, which this Bill will undoubtedly throw upon them. The County Councils finding themselves compelled to raise money for elementary educational purposes, to an extent which would increase the county rate might be tempted to infringe a little upon the whiskey money, and apply it to the reduction of their rates, instead of keeping it for educational purposes. That temptation will certainly prevail in the case of those comparatively few public bodies which have not hitherto devoted any large part of the whiskey money to educational purposes. The London County Council in the first two years of the allocation of this money did not apply it to educational purposes, because they were then making inquiries and maturing schemes as to how the money would be best employed. They do not oven now spend the whole of that money for educational purposes. I have had figures placed before me this morning which show that if the London County Council had been compelled to set aside all the money they derived from this local taxation grant for educational purposes, and had not spent this money in the ten years that have elapsed since the money became available, they would have had in their hands at the present time no less a sum than, £1,100,000. The sum which they have actually spent out of the local taxation grant is therefore less by £1,100,000 than the sum they have received on account of the whisky money. What a tremendous advantage it would have been if in the present condition of education a sum of that kind had been available for educational purposes in London. What has happened in London has happened in other places, and in my judgment it is highly desirable that the Government should see their way to lay down, at all events, that the money derived from the source I have mentioned should be permanently allocated to educational purposes, leaving no discretion at all to apply it to the relief of the rates.

I would go a step farther. There has always been a risk of a certain amount of friction between Technical Instruction Committees, which are composed of a large number of co-opted Members, and the Committee of the County Councils, and this has had a bad effect upon the progress of secondary education. The words "Technical Instruction" are calculated to mislead a great many people, and although by this time the definition of technical instruction has been so extended that the money can be spent upon almost any kind of education, that was not supposed to be the intention when the money was first granted; it was supposed to be the intention of Parliament that it should be devoted to improving the skill of the people in handicrafts. Under that system in many villages they found people going about endeavouring to find an audience for a lecturer. The efforts which have been made by many hon. Members on this side of the House have now brought about a much more satisfactory state of things, and I believe the money which is now at the disposal of the various counties for this purpose has been wisely spent upon improving education, and I should like to see this money placed at the disposal of the Education Committees straight away, instead of being placed in the first instance at the disposal of the Borough or County Councils. In my opinion this Bill does not directly do a very great deal towards altering the existing state of things. It is, however, a Bill which is full of promise, and contains the seeds of great things. If the feeling which I think now' prevails in this country with regard to the necessity of taking up secondary education in a serious spirit should grow and increase, and if the new Education Committees rise further and further to a higher sense of their great responsibilities, then I say that we have in this Bill the potentiality of an improvement in the educational system of this country far beyond the dreams of the most sanguine educational reformers.

(10.20.) MR. OSMOND WILLIAMS (Merionethshire)

I cannot quite make I out what are the provisions of this Bill with regard to Wales. Apparently Wales has the option of retaining the present system of secondary education, but it does not appear in the Bill what is to become of the Welsh Central Board, or the local governing bodies. I do not think our county governing bodies, however good they have been in the past, would be able to carry out the extra work they would have to do under the new system of local government. I have no doubt we shall have an opportunity of discussing this matter more effectively in Committee, and I will not take up the time of the House now in dealing with them, but I am desirous of accentuating, if I may use the term, what fell from my hon. friend the Member for Oldham with regard to secondary education. I think the provisions with regard to secondary education are, without doubt, the weakest part of the Bill. The local Committees and the educational authority may do this, that or the other, or again they may do just nothing at all. I was very much impressed with, the words of a Churchman, who said, some years ago in Wales— He wondered how it was yon English did not envy the stream of higher educational influence flowing like running brooks by every cottage and farm through all the hills and valleys of Scotland and Wales, and try and emulate it. On the contrary, you do not appear to think at all of secondary education as a living influence and a power which ought to form a beneficent part of the actual life of the people. Your great English universities have been, and still are, to a large extent, the privilege of the upper and the professional classes. They are little known and hardly thought of in the homes of the people. Oxford and Cambridge are to the mass of country folks names without a shadow of influence on their social and domestic life. I cannot understand why it is that you do not embody in this Bill a good strong scheme of secondary education for the people. If you consider what I wonderful benefits the people of Scotland have derived, and are deriving, from the influences of higher education you cannot help feeling how much your ordinary English life is impoverished by the lack of those influences. It would be a very great advantage to the poorer classes of England if they could have the advantage of a good system of secondary education.

(10.24.) MR. PURVIS (Peterborough)

There has been a general desire on the other side of the House today to praise the School Board system, and I think I cannot do better than recall to the recollection of the House the fact that while School Boards are to be abolished by the Bill the board schools are not to be abolished. I say that the voluntary schools will still be at a disadvantage as compared with the board schools. It is true that so far as concerns secular education all are to be on a level, but as regards religious instruction undenominalism is still to be more favoured by the State, and denominalism is still to pay its footing or be left out in the cold. Hon. Gentlemen laugh at the use of the word "denominalism," but I think it a better word than "denominationalism" which I should class with what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Fife described as "barbarous jargon," when referring to the words ad hoc. The board schools have now the rates and the taxes (in the shape of grants in aid) to meet all the expenses of religious as well as secular education from start to finish, while the voluntary schools have only grants in aid to help them in that behalf. The mainspring of the opposition to the Bill is not regard for national education. It came out strongly this afternoon that it was owing to ill-will towards the clergy. I am sorry to remind them of it, but it is impossible to understand the opposidtion unless you take this motive into consideration. By this Bill the voluntary schools are no longer to be penalised by being refused part of their expenditure for secular education as an atonement for the teaching of a religious creed. It is proposed that as regards both denominational and undenominational schools the cost of secular instruction is to be paid for out of the rates and taxes, and thus so far as that kind of instruction is concerned the balance between them is to be redressed and they are to be placed on equal terms. But when you come to the question of religious instruction a like equality is not to rule, and the balance will still incline in favour of the undenominational school. Religion without any form of creed is still to be paid for out of the rates, while religion with creed is still to be ransomed as before and paid for by those who wish it taught. How so? The buildings of two generations and the future expense of maintaining them are to be the price of manumission. Moreover, where a new school is required, and if a creed is to be taught the expenses must be paid for by those who wish the creed taught, for they must provide the new buildings and maintain them. On the other hand if undenominationalism is to hold sway in a new school the rates and taxes will have to bear the whole expenses of religious as well as secular education. How then comes all the stir as if some conspiracy were being hatched by the Bill, in favour of creed. The attitude of the opponents of the Bill reminds me of the story which is told of Sydney Smith. When Moore was having his portrait painted by Newton, the wit remarked to the artist— Could you contrive to throw into the face a somewhat stronger expression of hostility to church establishment? This Bill seems to have done what the painter might not do. It has brought into strong relief the unreasonable and preposterous nature of the agitation about religions difficulties which do not really exist. It is a fictitious agitation got up by disappointed politicians in search of a cry, and the truth when revealed by experience under the working of the Bill will be rightly appreciated by the country. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Aberdeen said the only bodies who have blessed the Bill are the ecclesiastical organisations. I have in my pocket a letter from the Borough Council of my constituency which blesses the Bill save its adoptive clauses. The truth is just the converse of what the right hon. Gentleman says. The only bodies which have banned the Bill are the professional ecclesiastical organisations of the Nonconformists. It calls to mind what one reads of the Great Civil War :— When pulpit, drum ecclesiastic Was beat with list, instead of stick. But that the people do not sympathise with this professional stirring-up of the mud of fanaticism may be judged of out of the mouth of the right hon. Gentleman himself. "I agree," he says, "with what was said the other day by the President of the National Union of Elementary Teachers when he said that he did not believe that English parents cared one atom about dogma." That is just it. Had he said they disliked dogma, it would be different. English parents do not make a song about it like the right hon. Gentleman and the platform agitators, for, as we say, this is a hocus pocus agitation against the Bill.

Then it is said that the local Education Committee will be an anomaly as infringing the rule that representation should go hand in hand with taxation, and that Education ought to be committed to a body elected ad hoc, to use the current jargon. But the great spending spending departments of State are not elected by the people, but are amenable to Parliament, which is elected by the people. And vet Parliament is not elected ad hoc. The public departments have not a Parliament apiece to keep them to their duty. Nor is this all. If the children's good is to be considered the Committee will need to be selected with calmness and deliberation; but calmness and deliberation are not characteristics of a popular election. And as to an election ad hoc, the truth is that an assembly elected for a special purpose is apt to degenerate into a body of fanatics. Let the House consider how wearisome and unpractical is the grammarian, the phrenologist, the political or religious enthusiast, or indeed any possessed mortal, whose balance is lost by the exaggeration of a single topic. And it an ad hoc elected assembly are not all sufferers from this disease, many of them are also slaves to their constituents.

A few months ago the London School Board gravely considered a proposal to teach the ancient Irish language at the public expense because a hundred Irishmen at Greenwich had asked for this. I suppose that even hon. Members from Ireland will at least admit that ancient Irish has no greater claims than Greek and Latin, or French and German, which are certainly not elementary education. And yet this monstrous proposal was rejected by only a majority of four. This showed that some of them were either harebrained enthusiasts or were frightened out of their senses by the thought of a section of their constituents, and as Parliament is not an assembly with one idea, so the County Council will not be an assembly dominated in that way. I am indebted to the House for allowing me to explain these two points in favour of this Bill, first that it is no conspiracy against undenominational religion, and secondly that it is not a violation of the principle that representation goes with taxation. I only add that I regret the optional part of the Bill, for I believe that it will not effectively help Elementary Education unless Part III. be made compulsory. I shall, however, vote for the Second Reading.

(10.40.) SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN (Stirling Burghs)

I congratulate the Government on having at least one thorough-going and unswerving admirer-, and I have no doubt, when we come to the Committee stage, that the hon. Gentleman will give every clause of the Bill what I suppose he will call more than a "denominal" support. At this period of the debate it is unnecessary to expatiate on what we are all agreed upon—the grave necessity that exists in this country for a review and reform of our system of education, in order that we may be sure that our countrymen of the future will be equipped fully to play that part we should wish them to play, not only in advancing the material prosperity of the nation, but in tie greater and nobler work of the moral and intellectual development of mankind. For my part, so strongly am I in favour of a great extension and improvement of education that I would say of the three most urgent public questions in this country this question of education is the paramount and most urgent of all. In this Bill we have the result of the deliberations of His Majesty's Government during many years. They have made several efforts before and tried several experiments—some of them not very successful, and in other cases they have passed measures covering a small part of the work—but now here is their final and complete conception of the wants of the country. But we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the Bill is something more. It is not only the Bill of the Government. It has another character, which gives its provisions a distinct tinge and flavour. It is a Bill which commends itself to and proceeds upon the lines indicated as essential and desirable by the Convocation of the Church of England. It is the Hill of the Church party and openly defended by them as such.

The first outstanding feature of the case, on the surface of the matter, is this, that the proposals of the Bill are an abandonment of the compromise of 1870. That com promise has been since that time the foundation of the system of education in this country, It was a compromise to which the Churches themselves were parties. Let the House consider the gradual growth of the claims that have been put forward perhaps by the extreme clerical and ecclesiastical interest, but certainly by the ecclesiastical interest in this matter. It is they who have departed from the arrangement of 1870. It is they who have never loyally accented the arrangement of 1870, and who have always done their best to prevent its being successful. On that ground we are invited to throw it over and to submit to their pretensions. I do not think that in that I am at all overstating the case we have before us. Will the House allow me to go back for a few moments to 1870 and consider what were the circumstances of that time? The State, in this country, had lamentably failed in its duty with regard to education. It had failed to interest the people in education: it had failed to bring the children into the schools. When he introduced the Education Act of 1870, Mr. Forster said— Only two-fifths of the children of the working classes between the ages of six and ten yens are on the register of the Government schools, and only one-third of those between the ages of ten and twelve. And, in consequence of this, between six and ten we have helped about 700,000, more or less, but we have left unhelped 1,000,000, while of those between ten and twelve we have helped 2,10,000, and we have left unhelped at least 500,000.' That was the condition of things at that time. Now, up to that moment it was the Churches and not the State that had done the duty in regard to education, and to her everlasting honour be it said, the Church of England especially had devoted the best energies of her sons and a largo part of her resources to this cause. When there was none to help, the Churches stepped in to fill the void. When the state of things described by Mr. Forster became apparent, and men's minds and consciences awoke to the lamentable condition of affairs, the necessity became evident that schools had to be provided, and the first steps were taken towards compelling the attendance of children at these schools. In fact a national system was demanded; and I venture to say, as was said then, that no system can be truly national which does not rest upon the interest, the co-operation, and the control of the people themselves. But then these independent Church schools were in existence and could not be ignored. Therefore it was agreed that so long as the voluntary schools were maintained in a state of efficiency by the contributions of their subscribers the State should assist them, and they should be allowed to continue alongside the new national, rate-supported schools. The friends of the voluntary schools accepted this arrangement. But what was the proposition at that time of the different sources of the revenue of these schools? The sources of revenue of those schools at that time were the fees, the Government grants, and the subscriptions of the supporters of the schools. Each of these supplied about one-third, roughly speaking. But what is the state of things now? Great changes have been introduced. There have been large building grants. When free education was established, compensation was given for the loss of the school pence to a far greater extent than the loss itself. Again, there was the aid grant to the I voluntary schools of 5s., and now from these and other causes the state of things is this, according to the most recent Returns that I have been able to find access to, the Government grants which then were one-third are now 77 per cent. in round figures; the subscriptions are 14 per cent., and other sources of revenue are 9 per cent. In that state of things we are still told that those schools are starved for funds, and that the teachers are underpaid; and there are loud complaints of the intorable strain upon the supporters of the schools. By this Bill the whole of the charge is taken over by the public. Therefore I say the bargain is over. The obligation that we were under to these schools has ceased. We become free to do as we like; and what are we to do? I say we should proceed to build upon the only basis upon which a truly national system can stand—namely, the basis of popular control

The right hon. Gentleman has put before us who take a strong view of this subject a dilemma which he seems to think unavoidable—that either the denominational schools must eat up the School Board or the School Board must eat up the denominational schools. I do not admit his dilemma, because something far short of the full-grown School Board organisation might be adequate for the purpose of public control in the denominational schools. I must go further. It is not a mere question of voluntary schools. Those schools are not only voluntary schools, but they are sectarian schools. They are intended to be ancillary to the Church. The noble Lord the Member for Greenwich, in a speech which not only was elevated in tone but elevating in tone, and to whose excellence I bear a willing, because an admiring testimony, avowed that the schools were meant to be ancillary to the Church. The noble Lord dealt with the question of conscience, including the attitude of Nonconformists, in a manner which must have attracted the sympathy and respect of all who heard him. He dealt with the question of the scruples of conscience and the attitude of Nonconformists in a sympathetic manner. For, after all, do not let us fall into the error that our people are to be divided between Churchmen and Nonconformists. There are many people who are neither the one nor the other. The noble Lord dealt with that question in a reverent manner; and I could not but contrast the spirit shown by him with the spirit in which the Vice-President of the Council dealt with the same difficulty. The Vice-President of the Council considers conscience to be nothing but a nuisance.

SIR JOHN GORST

No.

SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN

Some one has said that vulgarity means the manners of other people. According to the Vice-President the conscientious scruples of other people mean religious animosity.

SIR JOHN GORST

I never said anything of the sort.

SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN

The right hon. Gentleman thought that he had disposed of this question of the religious conscientious scruples of many of his fellow-countrymen by saying that religious animosity cannot be disposed of by legislation. He reads conscience as meaning religious animosity.

SIR JOHN GORST

I never said anything of the sort.

SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN

Whatever may have been the right hon. Gentleman's meaning, that was what his words conveyed.

SIR JOHN GORST

Quote my words.

SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN

The words to which I refer are those in which the right hon. Gentleman said that religious animosity cannot be removed by legislation. That was the way in which he disposed of the whole of this religious difficulty.

SIR JOHN GORST

I said nothing of the sort. It is a gross misrepresentation.

SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN

Did the right hon. Gentleman not use the words that I have quoted, that religious animosity cannot be disposed of——

SIR JOHN GORST

That was not all that I said.

SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN

I did not say that it was all that the right hon. Gentleman said. That was the right hon. Gentleman's way of dealing with the matter.

SIR JOHN GORST

No, it was not.

SIR H. CAMPBELL BANNERMAN

It was part of his way of dealing with it. It was a large part of the right hon. Gentleman's way of dealing with it. This is too serious a matter to be dealt with by a gibe or a sneer. The religious difficulty is not to be put away in that manner. There is, in the first place, the great question—which has been admitted as a grievance by several hon. Members on the other side of the House—of shutting from the whole career of teaching a large part of those who are eligible and anxious to take part in it. There is no provision in this Bill that I have discovered to mitigate in any way that state of things. Let us look the matter in the face. There can be no doubt that, on the part of a large portion of the people of this country there is a fear of these schools being used, not consciously, for proselytising purposes. I do not know what other interpretation we can put, although he does not realise it, upon the words used by the noble Lord when he spoke of the two doors. The noble Lord said that there ought to be one door for the admission of the child and another door leading into the Church. [An Hon. MEMBER—"Or chapel."] Oh yes, I am quite willing to add that. I do not know that there is much distinction between the two. What is to be condemned in the proceedings with regard to one is equally to be condemned with regard to the other. But what we say is that if a child goes into a school he should go in through the open door, and he should come out into the open street and then enter any church that his conscience or his inclination or his conviction may lead him to go in. He ought not to be beguiled, induced, or coaxed to enter another, even if it can be shown that no unfair thing is done to any child in these schools. Yet it is quite enough to condemn the system if there is a danger of its being done.

LORD HUGH CECIL (Greenwich)

What is the danger?

SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN

The danger is of proselytising, against the beliefs of the parents.

LORD HUGH CECIL

Will the right hon. Gentleman excuse me? I think it a great scandal that in any school supported by public money anyone should be proselytised against the belief of their parents; but I think it is of the highest possible importance that everyone should be made to believe as far as possible the belief of their parents.

SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN

That would not be proselytising. My hon. friend the Member for East Mayo suggested that there should be a kind of concordat of the Protestant Churches. He did not see why the different Protestant denominations should not combine to erect some sort of a standard of instruction which would be approved by all. I rather agree with my hon. friend, although I do not think that such a solution would be entirely satisfactory. I would be prepared to take a stronger line myself, but let me quote a few words which show, I think, better than anything I could say what might be the ideal, because they explain what is the ideal in certain classes of schools. The words are these : Above all things education ought not to be made subservient to the propagation of the peculiar tenets of any sect beyond its own number. It then becomes undue influence, like the strong attacking the weak. And yet reverence for the sacred name of God, detestation of vice and love of veracity, due attention to the duties towards parents and the relations of society, carefulness to avoid bad company, civility without flattery, and a peaceable demeanour may be calculated in any seminary for youth without violating the sanctuary of private religious opinion in any mind. That is the general principle which I think ought to be applied to a national system of education, and I entirely differ therefore from the views expressed by the noble lord, though I fully appreciate the generous and considerate tone which he adopted. Well, Sir, these schools are to be riveted on our system, and side by side with them are the board schools, growing, ambitious, and successful. And why are they successful? Because the breath of popular feeling is playing upon them. And if you wish to make your denominational schools equally successful the way to do that is to introduce the same breath of popular feeling. But these may be destroyed under the Bill, because they are too successful. The Vice-President—I am afraid to quote him, because he is so very evasive and illusive; he is so difficult to catch, I mean—the Vice-President gave one or two reasons why School Boards might with advantage be put an end to. One was that their schools sometimes are too large. If that is the case, where has the right hon. Gentleman been? For the last seven or eight years he has been a fixture in the Board of Education, with the assistance during all that time of his noble friend, whom he finds such a convenient dux exmachina, whenever he has an unpopular proposal to make. Why have they not stopped the Schools Boards from forming too large schools? But then, again, they have been overlapping. Overlapping is a very bad thing, no doubt, and it may load to some administrative confusion, but I confess I would rather have overlapping than shortcoming. I would rather have excrescences than gaps in the educational system. But the Vice-President has himself been one of the most prominent encouragers of the School Boards in this very process of overlapping. I have a perfect sheaf of quotations that I could give from the right hon. Gentleman and his noble friend, in laudation of School Boards for this very action of theirs. I have only brought one or two. This is not the Vice-President of the Council—it is Sir George Kekewich, who is the alter ego and bosom friend of the Vice-President. Sir George Kekewich, in opening a new higher grade school, erected by the School Board of Bolton in 1897, congratulated the School Board, and said— That these advanced schools had now become not a mere luxury, but an absolute necessity. On another occasion, at Sheffield, after the inevitable reference to the ladder of education, he said— It was wonderful how Sheffield and other Boards threw themselves into the breach, and established schools of that character. That action had been of incalculable benefit to the people of the country, and be did not know that a single soul was a penny the worse. In his opinion, it was an excellent action. But here is the right hon. Gentleman himself, who, in the Queen's Hall, remarked that— The School Boards of England had sixty science schools, besides eighty science classes, and it would be madness to destroy or damage, them, or to take them out of the handset those who established them. The right hon. Gentleman has been going about the country laying foundation stones, and binding laurels about the brows of Chairmen of School Boards.

SIR JOHN GORST

I did not lay the stones. Sir George Kekewich does that.

SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN

And now he turns upon them, and says they have been guilty of the grievous offence of overlapping. I wish now to ask the right hon. Gentleman a very-plain question, to relieve my mind, because I should be slow to believe that the information I have received is quite correct. I am told that when the original objection was taken before the auditor in April, 1899, the terrible Mr. Cockerton said that he had proceeded upon a statement of Sir John Gorst's that these things were illegal. This cannot be true.

SIR JOHN GORST

I never made the statement.

SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN

I understand, then, that it is not true that Mr. Cockerton acted in the way that he did upon either the suggestion or the opinion of the Vice-President. I am very glad to hear it, it was so entirely inconsistent with the rest of his conduct. Well, this is to be the fate of the School Boards, which, by the confession of every one, have been doing such admirable work—they are to be left at the mercy and to die at the will of the County Councils and the Borough Councils. What is to be the fate of the voluntary schools? They are to be maintained by the ratepayers, who will take the place of the subscribers. I do not know what answer there can be to the argument of my right hon. friend the Member for West Monmouth, and if the expenses of the parish schools are to be defrayed out of the county rates what reason is there why any one should subscribe. Even if the matter were kept separate, parish by parish, there might be an inducement to subscribe in order to keep down the rates, but if it is a county matter, what inducement is there. Therefore, the result will be that the new rate will be charged on the small farmer and the village shopkeeper, who will regard it—and they will not be very far wrong—in the light of a payment which they are to make in relief of their wealthier neighbours who hitherto have subscribed to these voluntary schools. I do not know what answer there is to that argument. And then, not more than one-third is to be added to the acting board of management as representing the general interest. And by whom are they to be added? By the local authority appointed by the County Council of which they will not necessarily be members. The noble Lord the Member for Greenwich—he will forgive me for referring so much to him, but being unable to be present during a great part of the debate from causes which are obvious to the House, I had the advantage of hearing his speech, and, therefore, it has dwelt in my mind—regards this as true democracy. Direct election, he holds, is retrograde and reactionary. He prefers secondary election to primary. He would fall into a perfect rapture, I suppose, if he could discover a mode of tertiary representation. Now that I think of it, this is tertiary election, because the first is the county vote of the members of the County Council. Then the members of the County Council elect or appoint, not one of their colleagues, but somebody else, to the Education Committee; and then that Education Committee, in the third place, elect or appoint somebody who is to serve on the management. So that we get into the third degree removed from the ratepayers. I do not know whether the noble Lord would prefer a fifth or a sixth degree, but we get a long way from the ballot box when we arrive at this exclusion of the ratepayer from all proper voice in the management of the money to which he contributes. The thing is condemned by the mere statement of it.

But there is a further point to which I would venture to call the attention of the House, if I am not trespassing too long on its time. It has been referred to by my hon. friend the Member for Berwick, and I think it is deserving of attention. It is this. Besides this question of financial control our object is to interest the ratepayers and the inhabitants, to give them some say in some of our popular institutions, and what popular institution is more likely for the purpose than the School Boards? The Church is an exclusive affair managed over their heads. The school hitherto has been the same. Let the villager have some say, all the more as he is the parent perhaps of children—give him something to interest him beyond the dull daily round of his monotonous life. Unless you popularise education—that is what I wish to impress on the House—and interest the people in it, the best of schemes and the best of machinery will fail. I am tempted here to quote a little incident which happened about thirty years ago, and is recorded in a Blue-book relating to education. At that time there was a great inquiry into education in England, and commissioners and sub-commissoners were sent down to Scotland to inquire into the state of things there. There is a popular belief, I think even in this country that my countrymen in Scotland, the ordinary peasantry, have a more highly - instructed and developed intelligence than most of the inhabitants of England. Being a modest Scotchman, I will not say so on my own account, but I believe it is the general opinion, and if it be so, I could give many good reasons which conduce to it, one being this very question of education. This is the incident I wish to relate to the House. One of the sub-commissioners who went down to Scotland recounts in the most pleasant way a conversation he had with a woman in a mining village, the wife of a working man. He asked her about her life, her family, and the wages of her husband, and he said. "Is it not very dull here?"—"Oh, rather dull." "What do you do in the long winter evenings?"—"Oh, indeed, Sir "—I will not quote the Doric lest it should not he apprehended of all—"we have no time to ourselves, because when our work is done we listen to the children's lessons." There was a case of a hard-working man and woman who actually were in the habit of devoting the little leisure they had at the end of the evening to preparing the children for school next day. It is your business to induce your peasants to take that view of education and the battle is won. I refrain from entering upon the administrative machinery of this Bill, for that has been dissected and examined and exposed by my right hon. friend who moved the Amendment and by others. It seems to us, at any rate, to give neither unity, nor co-ordination, nor decentralisation, although these are the very objects it professes to attain. I have dwelt rather on the technical aspects of the question and I have stated objections to the proposals in this Bill, which are strong enough to make me vote heartily for its rejection.

(11.25.) MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The right hon. Gentleman began his speech by informing us that of the three most pressing questions which call for legislative effort on the part of this House, the question of education was the most pressing. I confess I never should have guessed it from the speech of the right hon. Gentleman. I listened to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman with the utmost attention, and I have not at this moment the smallest conception of the direction in which he looks for the solution of this the most pressing of all questions, upon which this House should be called to legislate. I understand he objects to voluntary schools and I understand that he has a great desire for the preservation of School Boards. Well, Sir, there may be objections to voluntary schools and there may be merits in School Boards, but does any human being suppose that by a criticism of that kind you are going to found constructive legislation, or that anything is to be gained in the discussion of a great measure—it may be a good or a bad measure, but, at all events, it is a great measure—by anecdotes of our Scottish peasantry, and, if I may use the word without offence, by commonplaces about the popular interest in education, from which no man in this House differs and from which no man in this House can be expected to derive the smallest enlightenment? The exigencies of time will oblige me—and I dare say the House will receive the announcement with relief—to compress such observations as I have to make into a period a good deal less than half as long as the longer speeches that have been delivered in the course of this debate; and though it is formally and technically my duty to survey and summarise the four days' debate, everybody will admit that in thirty-five minutes that task is not to be accomplished, even by a speaker who is most anxious to compress his remarks. If therefore I hurry quickly over such points as I deal with, the House will understand that it is not out of want of respect for them.

Before I come to the strictly educational portion of my remarks, let me say something about the topic dealt with by my hon. and gallant friend the Member for the Chelmsford Division two nights ago—the question of rates. My hon. and gallant friend objects to this Bill because, he says, it will increase the rates; and he finds-allies apparently in the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouth, who devoted a large part of his speech to that topic, and in other Gentlemen on that side, of the House, who have endeavoured to discredit the Bill by explaining that whatever other effect it may produce an increase in the burdens of the local ratepayers. I would warn my hon. and gallant friend not to put too much trust in the allies who have come on this occasion to his assistance; because, if I may divide the criticism of those allies into two halves, I would say that the first half consists in saying that the Bill by its limitations embarrasses the County Councils in dealing with secondary education, and in the second place they express, I do not think explicitly, but quite unmistakably, their desire to see the extinction of voluntary schools. These are two great themes on which hon. Gentlemen opposite are as much agreed as they may be expected to be upon anything, and I would point out that my hon. and gallant friend has little to hope for from allies who think that we have greatly underrated the cost of secondary education, and that we ought to have put unlimited resources into the hands of the secondary education authority, and that we ought to have made the duty of providing that education in unstinted measure a statutory obligation. And if my hon. and gallant friend has not much to hope for from those allies on that ground, still less has he to hope from them when we remember that their policy is to destroy voluntary schools, which, whatever else may be said about them, will, at all events, have this certain and indubitable result, that it must end in a greatly increased charge to the local ratepayers. I would point out to my hon. and gallant friend that whatever he may think of the Government in this respect, they are, at all events, much better than the Opposition.

I have only one further remark to make on the subject of local taxation. I will not say a demand, but a suggestion has been made from many quarters that if there be a new charge thrown on the rates—if education is to cost more under this Bill—an additional charge should be thrown on the Exchequer. Our view is that the local charge for education should be a municipal charge. We also think that municipal charges—the burden of local taxation—urgently require revision. In that revision, of course, the charge for education will be included. But we see no justification for separating it from the other charges; and while the ratepayers will benefit from any reform in the rating laws in respect to the rate for education we see no ground for making that benefit touch the cost of education rather than any of the other great charges we throw upon our county and borough municipalities.

I leave the question of rating, and I will briefly touch on the more strictly educational aspect of the scheme. I think it will be admitted that any suggestions which have been made of a constructive character on the other side of the House have been of a most crude and imperfect description. One school of thought on the other side says that we ought to have an ad hoc authority, a special education authority dealing with the whole area of education from top to bottom, including technical education secondary schools, primary schools, and the borderland between primary and secondary education. The hon. Gentleman the Member for North Camberwell opposite and my hon. friend the Member for Newcastle on this side—who has not had the opportunity of speaking in this debate—hold that view. I do not know that any other Members have advocated it. Hut it really is an impracticable suggestion.

DR. MACNAMARA (Camberwell, N.)

I said that the School Board was the proper authority for elementary education, and the County Council and the School Board should form a joint committee for higher education. It was the Vice-President of the Council that I quoted as having said at Bradford that the School Board should be made the one authority for all education.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I thought the hon. Gentleman was a single authority on it, but by his own account he wants a triple authority.

DR. MACNAMARA

A Joint Committee.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

School Boards dealing with elementary education, and a joint committee dealing with secondary education.

DR. MACNAMARA

In county boroughs.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

It is too late now to develop the argument, but the whole scheme is wholly impracticable. I believe that if we were to introduce it we should be laughed out of Court on the First Reading. It is one of those plans which is thought good enough to be thrown at a Government which has a scheme, but which no responsible Government would think of introducing themselves. Even those on the other side—if there be such—who after reflection consider that this particular framework of education is applicable to big towns, do not admit that it is applicable to small boroughs; and not one of them will admit that it is applicable to the counties. As to the county problem, I have not heard one adumbration of a practical scheme for setting it thrown out by hon. Gentlemen opposite. They have abused the voluntary schools. They have abused the County School Boards. They have abused the particular plan of the Government for putting the voluntary schools and the School Board districts under the County Council. But as for a plan of their own they have not ventured to give us a sketch of one; and, if the county problem is the most difficult and the most pressing for a solution, I should have thought there would be some genius on the other side to formulate some alternative plan for the Government which would have some semblance at least of practicability and plausibility. I believe no such scheme is possible unless yon mean to abolish the voluntary schools and to make School Boards universal in the county districts, which nobody desires, which nobody has the courage to say he desires; and I am utterly at a Joss to understand what is the alternative plan which hon. Gentlemen opposite would propose were they in a position of having to suggest constructive legislation on this subject. On the question of primary education two or three questions have been asked. We have been told that there is no popular control of these schools. At all events let it be distinctly understood that there is absolute control by the County Council. If you choose to say there is no popular control I will not quarrel about words. In my opinion it is popular control At all events, it does not lie in the mouths of hon. Members opposite to say it is an improper kind of control, for it is the exact form of control for secondary education suggested by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Aberdeen and the Commission over which he presided.

MR. BRYCE (Aberdeen, S.)

That Commission dealt with secondary education only.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Yes, secondary education. Is secondary education to be under aristocratic control and primary education under democratic control? Is that the theory?

MR. BRYCE

No; but the problems are entirely different.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

I do not in the least deny that the problems are different; but I think they are closely and intimately connected and cannot be divorced without infinite loss both to primary and secondary education. But are we to understand that the people are to be divorced from the management of both primary and secondary education? [Mr. BRYCE: No.] Then the people are not divorced from secondary education under the plan of the right hon. Gentleman, and the kind of control we are devising for elementary schools, therefore, is popular control

MR. BRYCE

The scheme of the Bill is different.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The scheme of the Bill may be different. The difference I principally remember is that the County Council in the right hon. Gentleman's scheme were only allowed to appoint one-third.

MR. BRYCE

That is not so.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

In what I say I am correct.

MR. BRYCE

I do not wish to take up the time which the right hon. Gentleman has for addressing the House. There are only twenty minutes left; but I wish to assure the right hon. Gentleman that he has not stated the recommendation correctly.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Will you tell me what it is?

MR. BRYCE

It would take a long time to state it fully; but the right hon. Gentleman is confounding the proposals which the Commission made for secondary education in boroughs with what they made for the secondary authorities in counties.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Well, I will not quarrel with the right hon. Gentleman, for it is wholly immaterial to my argument. He admits that in boroughs I am not inaccurately representing him.

MR. BRYCE

No, I do not admit that. The right hon. Gentleman obliges me to say what was the plan of the Commission in boroughs. In boroughs two-thirds were to consist of, or be appointed by, bodies directly elected by the people—viz., the School Board and the Borough Council. The School Board was to nominate one-third and the Borough Council another third of the local Secondary Education Authority.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

That makes four-thirds altogether. From my point of view it is a matter of detail. The right hon. Gentleman, in his most contradictious humour, will not deny that secondary education on his plan was to be managed by a Committee?

MR. BRYCE

Certainly.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

And he says that that is consistent with popular control. That is all I ask. So long as it is admitted that management by a Committee is popular control, then I say that the primary schools of the whole country under our Bill are put under popular control, and that by the admission of the right hon. Gentleman opposite. Secular education is to be settled by them, and the appointment of the teacher is to have their approval, and let me say the teacher can be dismissed by them if he fails in carrying out his secular work. A great deal has been said on that subject, and it has been denied that the Bill will have that effect. [An HON. MEMBER: It is not in the Bill.] We think it is in the Bill. But if it is not in the Bill, it can easily be put in the Bill. It is the publicly avowed policy of the Government, and any dispute about it is not a dispute about the Second Reading. It is dispute about drafting. The only remark I shall make upon the constitution of the Committee concerns the great deal that has been said as to there being no provision making the Committee contain a majority of Councillors. In my opinion, there is a great deal to be said for that plan. Let nobody suppose that is an essential part of the scheme. It was not part of the scheme that we brought forward last year on secondary education. The thing is arguable, and, while I am inclined to think the plan in the Bill is the most convenient from an educational point of view, it is a matter which the House will decide. It is not in any sense a fundamental part of our scheme, and if the general view be that the interests of the local authority and of education would be better served by having the majority of the Committee formed out of the Council, the Government will not oppose that view with any obstinate resistance if it be clearly shown to be the view of the House.

On secondary education I have only two things to say. We have been accused with having brought forward a Bill which throws no duty on the local authority, and which does not ensure any great scheme of secondary education being carried out. It is true that we have been most careful not to bind this authority instantly to produce a great scheme of secondary education for their area, which they are not yet in a position to do with benefit either to the ratepayer or to those who are to enjoy the education. We feel that we may trust confidently to the public spirit of those bodies to whom we have given ample powers. We see what they have done under the Technical Instruction Act. We know that the spirit which has animated them since 1889 animates them still, and we agree with the very wise words introduced by the right hon. Gentleman in his report on secondary education, in which he said that a great deal more was to be got out of our great local authorities by leading them instead of by driving them. That sentiment the right hon. Gentleman still adheres to, and it has animated us in framing the Bill, and I am convinced in so framing it we have been following a wise and statesmanlike policy. Now, I would ask anyone who has listened to this debate whether, if the educational objections to this Bill had been the only objections present, there would have been a division on the Second Reading? I am perfectly certain that there would not. I have admired the ingenuity of those on the other side who claim with justice to be interested in education in finding reasons for voting against the Second Reading. These reasons have been ingenious, but they have not been very powerful; and I am pretty certain that if educational interests alone were at stake, it would not be opposed in the Second Reading. Why is it opposed? The Bill is opposed principally on account of the religious difficulty. It is a political force wielded by Nonconformist bodies who are opposed to the Bill, who are driving hon. Members into the lobby against it, not their convictions as to its inefficacy as an educational measure.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT (Monmouthshire, W.)

That is not a proper thing to say.

Mr. A. J. BALFOUR

It is a perfectly proper thing to say. I think the House will do me the justice to acknowledge that I am the last man to make light of anything which is regarded as in conscience objectionable by any human being, but, after all, in the name of conscience very many unwise things have been done in the course of human history; and when I am told by correspondence which has reached me in large proportions within the past few days that this Bill is an insult to Nonconformists, that it is cruel to them, that it interferes with religious liberty, I really wonder whether my correspondents or I have lost all sense of the use and proportion of language. In what way can it interfere with conscience? I am told it is because rates are applied to denominational education. Everyone knows that taxes are so applied. Rates are so applied North of the Tweed, and I can hardly believe that a Presbyterian from Scotland feels no twinges of conscience in applying his rates to education in his own country, and suddenly has prickings of conscience when he crosses into Northumberland. Every one knows that rates are applied to denominational industrial schools. School Boards themselves apply them in the case of Jews to denominational purposes, and everyone knows that under the Technical Instruction Act denominational schools have been assisted out of the rates. It really is impossible to say that a system of that kind, which has been acquiesced in by Nonconformists, can be a matter of conscience when it is extended, especially when we remember that under this Bill every grievance under which Nonconformists suffer will be largely diminished. Complaint was made of the grievance as to the employment of teachers, but I would remind the House that under this Bill it will be in the power of every County Council to provide educational machinery for the teachers, irrespective of the will or wishes of the managers of the voluntary schools.

Again, we are told—I think this is one of the pet phrases of the hon. Member for the Carnarvon Burghs—that this rivets the clerical chain round the necks of the people I am the last man to deny that in the Church of England, as in the Church of Rome and every other denominational body, there may be, and probably will be, found men of narrow and bigoted views who do little honour to the cause in which they are engaged. It is possible that there are schools in this country, under the management of the clergyman of the parish, in which things have gone on which would be as repulsive, I venture to say, to Members on this side of the House as to Members on the other. I have tried to run some of those stories to ground, but I confess I have failed. I am not, however, concerned to deny that such cases may exist, although I have not come across them. But so far as the evil exists, it is one which must be immensely mitigated by this Bill. What you profess to be afraid of is clerical tyranny. Let me point out that the age of one-man management comes to an end when this Bill is passed. There must always be other members associated with the clergyman. In many cases, I am told, the other two members of the Managing Committee, besides the clergyman and the nominated member, will often be non-attendant. But if they take no part in affairs, evidently the management of the school will be equally divided between the clergyman and the nominated member. But if, on the other hand, these otiose managers do take part in the affairs of the school, is it not evident that this strictly clerical influence will be only one quarter, at the most, of the whole management of the school? This has been made a clerical question. The attack is on the clergy. If the laity are in a majority, I do not believe that any of those errors which have been feared will be committed. If you have this large lay element, and all the publicity which is ensured by the system we propose, I am perfectly certain that all fear may be removed; and if that is not enough, remember what a weapon this power of building a new school puts into your hands. Under the Bill, for the first time, if any managers of a voluntary school so abuse their power as to make themselves intolerable to the parish in which there is only a solitary school, it is possible, nay, easy, for another school to be built in which their control shall be nonexistent. What do the Nonconformists

want? What they want, though they do not say so, is slowly to starve the voluntary schools. That does not, and cannot, conduce either to Christian charity or to the education of the children. We take a different view. We build upon the foundations to be found, knowing that they are the only foundations available. The voluntary schools are here, and they must remain. The Cowper-Temple clause—for which I have no especial admiration—is also intended to remain in our system. The common sense of our people, on these two disparate and illogical buttresses, will found a system of religious and secular education, acceptable to the mass of the people. The difficulties from which we suffer are difficulties in this House; there will be no difficulty in the parishes or in the schools. They are not difficulties in the parish or the school; and if only the professional politician will allow these things to rest, I am perfectly confident that, not merely as regards secondary education, but also as to primary education, this Bill will work for peace, sound education, and religious, harmony.

(11.57.) Question put.

The House divided :—Ayes, 402; Noes, 165. (Division List No. 166.)

AYES.
Abraham, William (Cork. N. E.) Anson, Sir William Reynell Bailey, James (Walworth)
Acland-Hood, Capt. Sir Alex. F. Archdale, Edward Mervyn Bain, Colonel James Robert
Agg-Gardner, James Tynte Arkwright, John Stanhope Baird, John George Alexander
Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel Arnold-Forster, Hugh O. Balcarres, Lord
Aird, Sir John Arrol, Sir William Baldwin, Alfred
Allhusen, Augustus H'nry Eden Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John Balfour, Rt. Hn. A. J. (Maneh'r
Ambrose, Robert Bagot, Capt. Josceline FitzRoy Balfour, Capt. C. B. (Hornsey)
Balfour, Rt Hn Gerald W. (Leeds ; Dewar, T. R (T'r H'mlets, S. Geo. Harris, Frederick Leverton
Balfour, Kenneth K. (Christen.) Dickinson, Robert Edmond Haslam, Sir Alfred S.
Banbury, Frederick George Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P. Hatch, Earnest Frederick Geo.
Barry, E. (Cork, S.) Digby, John K. D. Wingfield- Hay, Hon. Claude George
Barry, Sir Francis T. (Windsor) Dillon, John Hayden, John Patrick
Bartley, George C. T. Disraeli, Coningsby Ralph Heath, Arthur Howard (Hanley
Beach, Rt. Hn. Sir Michael Hicks Dixon-Hartland, Sir Fred Dixon Heath, James (Staffords, N. W.
Beckett, Ernest William Doogan, P. C. Heaton, John Henniker
Bentinck, Lord Henry C. Dorington, Sir John Edward Holder, Augustus
Beresford, Lord Chas. William Doughty, George Henderson, Alexander
Bhownaggree, Sir M. M. Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers- Hermon-Hodge, Robert Trotter
Bignold, Arthur Doxford, Sir William Theodore Hickman, Sir Alfred
Bigwood, James Duke, Henry Edward Higginbottom, S. W.
Bill, Charles Durning-Lawrence, Sir Edwin Hill, Arthur
Blundell, Colonel Henry Dyke, Rt. Hn. Sir William Hart Hoare, Sir Samuel
Boland, John Egerton, Hon. A. de Tatton Hobhouse, Henry (Somerset, E.
Bond, Edward Elliot, Hon. A. Ralph Douglas Hogg, Lindsay
Boscawen, Arthur Griffith- Esmonde, Sir Thomas Hope, J. F. (Sheffield, Brightside
Boulnois, Edmund Faber, Edmund B. (Hants., W.) Houldsworth, Sir Wm. Henry
Bowles, Capt. H. F.(Middlesex) Faber, George Denison (York) Hoult, Joseph
Brassey, Albert Fardell, Sir T. George Houston, Robert Paterson
Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John Fellowes, Hon. Ailwyn Edward Howard, Jno.(Kent, Faversham
Brookfield, Colonel Montagu Fergusson, Rt. Hn. Sir J (Manc'r Howard, J. (Midd., Tottenham)
Brotherton, Edward Allen Ffrench, Peter Hozier, Hon. James Henry Cecil
Brown, Alexander H. (Shropsh.) Field, William Hudson, George Bickersteth
Brymer, William Ernest Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst Hutton, John (Yorks. N. R.)
Bull, William James Finch, George H. Jackson, Rt. Hon. Wm. Lawies
Bullard, Sir Harry Finlay, Sir Robert Bannatyne Jeffreys, Arthur Frederick
Burdett-Coutts, W. Firbank, Joseph Thomas Jessel, Captain Herbert Merton
Burke, E. Haviland- Fisher, William Hayes Johnston, William (Belfast)
Butcher, John George Fison, Frederick William Johnstone, Hey wood (Sussex)
Campbell, John (Armagh, S.) Fitz Gerald, Sir Robert Penrose- Joyce, Michael
Carew, James Laurence Fitzroy, Hon. Ed ward Algernon Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir John H.
Carlile, William Walter Flavin, Michael Joseph Kenyon, Hon. Geo. T. (Denbigh)
Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H. Fletcher, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry Kenyon-Slaney, Col. W. (Salop.
Cautley, Henry Strother Flower, Ernest Keswick, William
Cavendish, R. F. (N. Lanes.) Flynn, James Christopher Kimber, Henry
Cavendish, V. C. W (Derbyshire Forster, Henry William Knowles, Lees
Cayzer, Sir Charles William Foster, Philip S (Warwick, S. W. Lambton, Hn. Frederick Wm.
Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor) Galloway, William Johnson Laurie, Lieut.-General
Cecil, Lord Hugh (Greenwich) Gardner, Ernest Law, Andrew Bonar (Glasgow)
Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. J. (Birm.) Garlit, William Law, Hugh Alex. (Donegal, W.)
Chamberlain, J. Austen (Worc'r Gibbs, Hn A. G. H.(City of Lond. Lawrence, Joseph (Monmouth)
Chamberlayne, T. (S'thampton Gibbs, Hon. Vicary (St. Albans) Lawrence, Wm. F. (Liverpool)
Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry Gilhooly, James Lawson, John Grant
Chapman, Edward Godson, Sir Augustus Frederick Leamy, Edmund
Charrington, Spencer Gordon, Hn. J. E.(Elgin S Nairn Lee, Arthur H (Hants., Fareham
Churchill, Winston Spencer Gordon, Maj Evans-(T'r H'ml'ts Lees, Sir Elliott (Birkenhead)
Clancy, John Joseph Gore, Hn G. R. C. Ormsby-(Salop Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage
Clare, Octavius Leigh Gore, Hon. S. F. Ormsby-(Linc.) Leigh-Bennett, Henry Currie
Clive, Captain Percy A. Gorst, Rt. Hon. Sir John Eldon Leveson-Gower, Frederick N. S.
Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E. Goschen, Hon. George Joachim Llewellyn, Evan Henry
Coddington, Sir William Goulding, Edward Alfred Lockwood, Lt.-Col. A. R.
Cogan, Denis J. Graham, Henry Robert Loder, Gerald Walter Erskine
Coghill, Douglas Harry Gray, Ernest (West Ham) Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham
Cohen, Benjamin Louis Green, Walford D (Wednesbury Long, Rt. Hn. Walter (Bristol S.
Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse Greene, Sir EW (B'ry S Edm'nds Lonsdale, John Brownlee
Colomb, Sir John Charles Ready Greene, Henry D. (Shrewsbury) Lowe, Francis William
Colston, Chas. Edw. H. Athole Greene, W. Raymond-(Cambs.) Lowther, Rt. Hon. James (Kent)
Compton, Lord Alwyne Grenfell, William Henry Loyd, Archie Kirkman
Condon, Thomas Joseph Gretton, John Lucas, Col. Francis (Lowestoft)
Cook, Sir Frederick Lucas Greville, Hon. Ronald Lucas, Reginald J.(Portsmouth
Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow) Groves, James Grimble Lundon, W.
Cox, Irwin Edward Bainbridge Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill Lyttelton, Hon. Alfred
Cranborne, Viscount Gunter, Sir Robert Macartney, Rt Hn W. G. Ellison
Crean, Eugene Guthrie, Walter Murray Macdona, John Cumming
Cripps, Charles Alfred Halsey, Rt. Hon. Thomas F. MacDonnell, Dr. Mark A.
Cubitt, Hon. Henry Hambro, Charles Eric MacIver, David (Liverpool)
Cust, Henry John C. Hamilton, Rt Hn L'rd G (Midd' x Mac Neill, John Gordon Swift
Dairymple, Sir Charles Hamilton, Marq. of (L'nd'nd'rry Maconochie, A. W.
Davenport, William Bromley- Hanbury, Rt. Hon. Robert Win. MacVeagh, Jeremiah
Delany, William Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashf'rd M'Arthur, Charles (Liverpool)
Denny, Colonel M'Calmont, Col. H. L. B (Cambs.
M'Fadden, Edward O'Shaughnessy, P. J. Smith, Hon. W. F. D. (Strand)
M'Govern, T. Spear, John Ward
M'Hugh, Patrick A. Stanley, Hn. Arthur Ormskirk)
M'Iver, Sir Lewis (Edinburgh W Palmer, Walter (Salisbury) Stanley, Ed ward Jas. (Somerset
M'Kean, John Parker, Gilbert Stanley, Lord (Lanes.)
M'Killop, James (Stirlingshire Parkes, Ebenezer Ste wart, Sir Mark J. M'Taggart
M'Killop, W. (Sligo, North) Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlingt'n Stirling-Maxwell, Sir John M.
Majendie, James A. H. Pemberton, John S. G. Stock, James Henry
Malcolm, Ian Penn, John Stone, Sir Benjamin
Manners, Lord Cecil Percy, Earl Stroyan, John
Maple, Sir John Blundell Pierpoint, Robert Strutt, Hon. Charles Hedley
Martin, Richard Biddulph Pilkington, Lieut.-Col. Richard Sturt, Hon. Humphry Napier
Massey-Mainwaring, Hn. W. F. Platt-Higgins, Frederick Sullivan, Donal
Maxwell, Rt Hn Sir H. E (Wigt'n Plummer, Walter R.
Maxwell, W. J. H.(Dunrfriessh. Powell, Sir Francis Sharp
Melville, Beresford Valentine Power, Patrick Joseph Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)
Meysey-Thompson, Sir H. M. Pretyman, Ernest George Talbot, Rt. Hn J. G (Oxf'd Univ.
Middlemore, Jno. Throgmorton Purvis, Robert Thornton, Percy M.
Mildmay, Francis Bingham Pym, C. Guy Tollemache, Henry James
Milner, Rt. Hn. Sir Frederick G. Tomlinson, Wm. Edw. Murray
Milvain, Thomas Tritton, Charles Ernest
Mitchell, William Quilter, Sir Cuthbert Tufnell, Lieut.-Col. Edward
Molesworth, Sir Lewis Tuke, Sir John Batty
Montagu, G. (Huntingdon)
Montagu, Hon. J. Scott (Hants.) Randles, John S.
Moon, Edward Robert Pacy Rankin, Sir James
Mooney, John J. Ratcliff, R. F. Valentia, Viscount
Moore, William (Antrim, N.) Reddy, M. Vincent, Cl. Sir C. E. H (Sheffield
More, Robt. Jasper (Shropshire) Redmond, John E. (Waterford) Vincent, Sir Edgar (Exeter)
Morgan, David J (Walth'mstow Reid, James (Greenock)
Morrell, George Herbert Renshaw, Charles Bine
Morrison, James Archibald Renwick, George Walker, Col. William Hall
Morton, Arthur H. A (Deptford) Richards, Henry Charles Wanklyn, James Leslie
Mount, William Arthur Ridley, Hn. M. W. (Stalybridge) Warde, Colonel C. E.
Mowbray, Sir Robert Gray C. Ridley, S. Forde (Bethnal Green) Warr, Augustus Frederick
Murphy, John Ritchie, Rt. Hn. Chas. Thomson Webb, Colonel William George
Murray, Rt Hn A. Graham (Bute Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield) Welby, Lt.-Col. A. C. E (Taunton
Murray, Charles J. (Coventry) Robertson, Herbert (Hackney) Welby, Sir Charles G. E.(Notts.)
Murray, Col. Wyndham (Bath) Robinson, Brooke Wentworth, Bruce C. Vernon-
Myers, William Henry Roche, John Whiteley, H (Ashton-und-Lyne
Rolleston, Sir John F L. Whitmor, Charles Algernon
Rollit, Sir Albert Kaye Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset)
Nannetti, Joseph P. Ropner, Colonel Robert Williams, Rt Hn J Pow ll-(Birm.
Newdigate, Francis Alexander Round, James Willoughby de Eresby, Lord
Nicholson, William Graham Royds, Clement Molyneux Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E. R.
Nicol, Donald Ninian Rutherford, John Wilson, John (Glasgow)
Nolan, Col. John P. (Galway, N. Wilson-Todd, Wm. H. (Yorks.)
Nolan, Joseph (Louth, South)
Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford- Wodehouse, Rt. Hn. E. R. (Bath)
Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm
O'Brien, James F. X. (Cork) Samuel, Harry S. (Limehouse) Worsley-Taylor, Henry Wilson
O'Brien, Kend'l (Tipperary, Mid Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-
O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny) Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W. Wrightson, Sir Thomas
O'Brien, P. J. (Tipperary, N.) Seely, Charles Hilton (Lincoln) Wylie, Alexander
O'Donnell, T. (Kerry, W.) Sharpe, William Edward T.
O'Dowd, John Sheehan, Daniel Daniel Young, Samuel
O'Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.) Simeon, Sir Barrington
O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N. Sinclair, Louis (Romford)
O'Malley, William Skewes-Cox, Thomas
O'Mara, James Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East) TELLERS FOR THE AYES—
O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens Smith, H C (North'mb, Tyneside Sir William Walrond and Mr. Anstruther.
Orr-Ewing, Charles Lindsay Smith, James Parker (Lanarks.)
NOES.
Abraham, William (Rhondda) Allen, Charles P.(Glouc., Stroud Ashton, Thomas Gair
Allan, William (Gateshead) Asher, Alexander Asquith, Rt. Hn. Herbert Henry
Atherley-Jones, L. Hain, Edward Philipps, John Wynford
Harcourt, Rt. Hn. Sir William Pirie, Duncan V.
Hardie, J Keir (Merthyr Tydvil) Price, Robert John
Banes, Major George Edward Harmsworth, R. Leicester Priestley, Arthur
Barlow, John Emmott Harwood, George
Bayley, Thomas (Derbyshire) Hayne, Rt. Hon. Charles Seale-
Beaumont, Wentworth C. B. Hayter, Rt. Hon. Sir Arthur D. Rasch, Major Frederic Carne
Bell, Richard Helme, Norval Watson Rea, Russell
Black, Alexander William Hobhouse, C. E. H. (Bristol, E.) Reckitt, Harold James
Bolton, Thomas Dolling Holland, William Henry Reed, Sir Edw. James (Cardiff)
Brand, Hon. Arthur G. Hope, John Deans (Fife, West) Reid, Sir R. Threshie (Dumfries)
Brigg, John Horniman, Frederick John Rickett, J. Compton
Broadhurst, Henry Humphreys-Owen, Arthur C. Rigg, Richard
Brown, George M. (Edinburgh) Hutton, Alfred E. (Morley) Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.)
Brunner, Sir John Tomlinson Robertson, Edmund (Dundee)
Bryce, Rt. Hon. James Robson, William Snowdon
Burns, John Jacoby, James Alfred Roe, Sir Thomas
Buxton, Sydney Charles Joicey, Sir James Runciman, Walter
Jones, David Brynm'r (Swansea Russell, T. W.
Caine, William Sproston
Caldwell, James Kearley, Hudson E. Schwann, Charles E.
Cameron, Robert Kinloch, Sir Jno. George Smyth Scott, Chas. Prestwich (Leigh)
Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H. Kitson, Sir James Shaw, Chas. Edw. (Stafford)
Causton, Richard Knight Shipman, Dr. John G.
Cawley, Frederick Sinclair, John (Forfarshire)
Channing, Francis Allston Labouchere, Henry Soames, Arthur Wellesley
Craig, Robert Hunter Lambert, George Soares, Ernest J.
Cremer, William Randal Langley, Batty Spencer, Rt. Hn. C. R (Northants
Crombie, John William Layland-Barratt, Francis Stevenson, Francis S.
Leese, Sir Joseph F.(Accrington Strachey, Sir Edward
Leigh, Sir Joseph
Dalziel, James Henry Leng, Sir John
Davies, Alfred (Carmarthen) Levy, Maurice Tennant, Harold John
Davies, M. Vaughan-(Cardigan Lewis, John Herbert Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)
Dewar, John A. (Inverness-sh.) Lloyd-George, David Thomas, David Alfred) Merthyr
Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles Logan, John William Thomas, F. Freeman-(Hastings
Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark) Lough, Thomas Thomas, J A (Glamorgan, Gower
Duncan, J. Hastings Thomson, F. W. (York, W. R.)
Dunn, Sir William Tomkinson, James
Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J. Trevelyan, Charles Philips
M'Crae, George
Edwards, Frank M'Kenna, Reginald
Elibank, Master of M'Laren, Charles Benjamin Wallace, Robert
Ellis, John Edward Mansfield, Horace Rendall Walton, John Lawson (Leeds, S.
Emmott, Alfred Markham, Arthur Basil Walton, Joseph (Barnsley)
Evans, Sir Francis H (Maidstone Mather, William Warner, Thomas Conrtenay T.
Evans, Samuel T. (Glamorgan) Mellor, lit. Hon. John William Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan)
Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen) Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Morley, Charles (Breconshire) Weir, James Galloway
Farquharson, Dr. Robert Morley, Rt. Hn. Jno. (Montrose) White, George (Norfolk)
Fenwick, Charles Morton, Edw. J. C.(Devonport) White, Luke (York, E. R.)
Ferguson, R. C. Munro (Leith) Moulton, John Fletcher Whitley, J. H. (Halifax)
Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond Whittaker, Thomas Palmer
Foster, Sir Walter (Derby Co.) Williams, Osmond (Merioneth)
Fowler, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry Newnes, Sir George Wilson, Fred. W. (Norfolk, Mid.
Fuller, J. M. F. Norman, Henry Wilson, Henry J. (York, W. R.)
Furness, Sir Christopher Norton, Captain Cecil William Woodhouse, Sir J. T (Huddersfd
Nussey, Thomas Willans
Palmer, George Wm. (Reading)
Goddard, Daniel Ford Partington, Oswald Yoxall, James Henry
Grant, Corrie Paulton, James Mellor
Grey, Sir Edward (Berwick) Pearson, Sir Weetman D. TELLERS FOR THE NOES—
Griffith, Ellis J. Pease, Alfred E. (Cleveland) Mr. Herbert Gladstone and Mr. M' Arthur.
Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton Perks, Robert William

Bill read a second time, and committed for Monday next.

House Adjourned at twenty minutes after Twelve o'clock.