§ First of all there is the child, for whom heredity and parental care have perhaps done nothing or worse than nothing. And yet it is the raw material, upon the fashioning of which depends whether it shall add to the common stock of wealth 1190 and intelligence and goodness, or whether it shall be cast aside as a waste product in the social rubbish heap. The State has long recognised that it cannot pass by that appeal with folded arms. It has put the child to school, it keeps the child at school, and (much as it shocks some excellent people) after the legislation of last year, if the poor body of the child is benumbed with cold or pinched with hunger so that it can got no benefit from its lessons, it will even go so far as to help to provide it with bread Does the House realise what the recognition of that means on the part of the State, what every one of us now agrees is a duty, though it was neglected and passed by generation after generation by humane and far-sighted statesmen? Does anyone realise what the performance of that duty has cost this community? Let me give two or three figures which I think very striking. In the year 1869–70, the last year of what I may call the old system, the total cost of education to the public in the form of Parliamentary grants—for of course there was no rate-aid at that time—was £721,000. What was it in the year 1906–7? Your Parliamentary grants, if you add the Exchequer contributions, as you ought to, were £13,359,000; sums raised by local rates were £11,785,000; a total of £25,144,000. That is what it has cost the State to recognise its duty to the children of the community. I do not say that every penny or every pound of that money is well or wisely spent. I rejoice to think that we have at the head of the Board of Education my right hon. friend the President, a severe economist, who subjects the whole of this expenditure to a most searching review. But this I do say, that there is not a man who sits on either side of the House who is prepared substantially to recede from the performance of this enormous duty. Well, that is one thing.