ELEMENTARY EDUCATION (ENGLAND AND WALES) (No. 2) BILL.

HC Deb 01 December 1908 vol 197 cc1276-392

Considered in Committee.

(In the Committee.)

[Mr. EMMOTT (Oldham), in the Chair].

Clause 2:

MR. F. E. SMITH (Liverpool, Walton)

said he put down his Amendment to leave out subsection (1) at an early stage because it was clear that the only method which one Had in the short time at the disposal of the Committee for examining into the value of the concession as to the right of entry would be considerably postponed if the opportunity presented by this course was not taken advantage of. He had never belonged to the number of those who denied that, as far as the right of entry was concerned, a very real and substantial concession had been made by Nonconformists to members of the Church of England. It was clear that if the right of entry was secured in such a manner as to be really a right of effective entry into all the provided schools, a very great concession indeed was made to the Church. From what had fallen from the Prime Minister and the Minister for Education there were grounds for assuming that they intended, at least, that this right of entry should be made effective, but it was a little difficult to understand some of the qualifications which had been made upon this point by prominent Nonconformists. Dr. Clifford had said he was able to support it in so far as it was a definite approach to the ideal; the Rev. J. Scott Lidgett said that no loss of principle was involved, so long as no pressure was brought to bear either on the parents or the teachers; and Dr. Horton had said his own difficulty centred in Section 5 of Clause 2, and that everything turned on the regulations which would be made for determining the effect of the demand of the parents for denominational teaching in provided schools. Those statements appeared to suggest that those gentlemen were placing some reliance upon the regulations which were to be drafted to prevent that full and effective operation of the clause which it was the intention of the Government to see. On superficial examination the clause appeared to be drafted in a manner hardly adapted to give the facilities which the Government said they were anxious to give. If one read subsection (1), one would see it was phrased in a very curious way. It said— Where the parent of any child in attendance at a public elementary school provided by the local education authority desires that child to receive religious instruction of a character different from that which it is open to the local education authority to give, in accordance with subsection (2) of Section 14 of the Elementary Education Act, 1870, the authority shall, for the purpose of enabling that child to receive that instruction, on two mornings in the week in which the school meets, make available any accommodation in the schoolhouse which can reasonably be so made available. The extent of the undertaking contained in subsection (1) was merely that whatever accommodation could reasonably be made available in the schoolhouse was to be made available, and he thought that in explicitness the clause left a great deal to be desired; and it contained several serious omissions. The system of right of entry, which was a new one, ought to have been worked out in detail, and he thought some alternative provisions such as he had on the Paper would be better adapted to secure the object of the Government. As an illustration, he would mention that Section 7 of the Act of 1902, which settled the relations of voluntary schools and local education authorities—a very analogous subject to the one at present before the Committee—was a detailed clause of the Bill, and occupied eleven days in discussion. This question of the right of entry, which was an extremely difficult one to determine and to define, contained no detailed provisions at all in the Bill. The regulations were the really important part, and in so far as the desire of the parents was dealt with in the regulations, it was, of course, directly relevant to the provisions of the subsection under discussion. Supplementing the words of the subsection by the regulations, he thought he was right in saying that the desire of the parents for special religious instruction had to be indicated six weeks before the school term began; but to anybody who had any experience of a Lancashire school, such a provision was useless. Taking the working classes in an ordinary town, it was inconceivable that in any large number of cases a written demand for a particular form of instruction should be presented six weeks before the term began; and as showing that it was not a reasonable provision he would contrast with it the regulation of the Board of Education distributing the £100,000 building grant provided under the Appropriation Act, in order that council schools might be built in single school-areas. The original Treasury estimate announced that the grant was intended to be distributed in cases where there was a strong desire of the parents for an undenominational school. One would have expected that that strong desire would have had to be indicated in a manner a little clearer than a mere desire, which was not a strong desire, but the Board's regulations in the case of the building grant only required as evidence of the strong desire a parents' petition, and none of these restrictions as to the date on which the petition must be presented. If they could show a strong desire simply by signing a petition when they were dealing with public money, it must be obvious that when they were dealing with the money of the denominationalists themselves it was a provision singularly ill-calculated to elicit the real desires of the parents to make the requisitions contained in the regulations as exacting as in the present Bill. Without going into any detail at all, he ventured to criticise the manner in which this clause providing for the right of entry was drafted. He suggested to the Government that they had made the limitations the most important part of the clause, and the general declaration the least important, instead of making the general declaration the most important, and the qualification of that principle the subordinate part. He thought it was more particularly desirable that in subsection (1) it should be made clear that the instruction to be given within school hours was part of the regular curriculum and discipline of the school, but it did not appear in the present subsection. He ventured to think also that the method of eliciting the wishes of the parents ought to be identical with the method to be adopted for eliciting the wishes of those parents who wished for Cowper-Temple teaching instead of denominational teaching. It would be the clearest possible indication of good faith on the part of the Government in making the right of entry genuine if they were to provide in the clause that the method of ascertaining the wishes of the parent should be the same whether the parent desired Cowper-Temple or denominational teaching. He ventured to say that if that concession was forthcoming nearly every misunderstanding which existed at present about the right of entry would be cleared away. It would be the best possible evidence which could be given of the sincerity of the desire that denominationalists in council schools should obtain facilities for the teaching of their children. He would not be in order in discussing the terms of the alternative proposals which he had put down lower on the Paper, but he would say that he was not in any way wedded to the language in which they were drafted. If it were really the intention of the Government to make these concessions effective—and he gladly acknowledged that, from their utterances and their later correspondence with the Archbishop, it was to be assumed that they did desire that—they would certainly conciliate a great many people who were, at present, dissatisfied with the reality of the concessions by doing as he suggested.

Amendment proposed— In page 2, line 19, to leave out subsection (1)."—(Mr. F. E. Smith.)

Question proposed, "That the words 'Where the' stand part of the Clause."

MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN (Worcestershire, E.)

said the Prime Minister had throughout recognised the vast importance of this clause to anybody who approached the question of a settlement from the Church of England point of view, and he had repeatedly assured them that, whilst the Government in drafting these proposals intended they should give a real and effective right of entry, at the same time he was prepared to consider with an open mind any criticisms that might be brought to bear upon the clause and to amend the clause if it was necessary to secure the result which was common to the Government and to the Archbishop of Canterbury, if he might take him as representative of the great body of Church opinion. In those circumstances he hoped that in dealing with the Amendment the Government would be ready to take the House into their confidence at once and to give some general indication of the result of the further consideration which they had given to the matter. He thought that would very much facilitate their discussions and tend to preserve the non-party and sympathetic attitude that on the whole had prevailed. It must be borne in mind that there were fears on the part of those who set a real value on the right of entry. He had some knowledge of those fears, because from the first he had regarded this clause as being intended to give a real right of entry, but he had found many of his friends rather difficult to convince upon that point. What was it that they urged? If he approached a controversial subject he hoped the Committee would see that he was not doing it in a controversial manner, and that if he said what was disagreeable to some hon. Gentlemen it was not with the desire to be disagreeable, but because it was really necessary that they should know what fears they had to meet if they were to come to anything like an agreement. He started with the assumption that if the Bill passed with anything like general assent the great bulk of educational authorities throughout the country would accept it and endeavour to work it honestly, with a real desire to make it successful. But there were educational authorities in certain parts of the country who had shown such animus and bias in their treatment of the denominational schools that he found it impossible to convince many of his friends that fair treatment could possibly be expected from them. It might be replied that in that case there was the appeal to the Board of Education, and he for one believed and did not hesitate to state that the President of the Board of Education, whose Bill this was, who had promoted and nursed this attempt at a settlement, would do his best to make the settlement really effective; but many people thought that the Board of Education itself had shown in its administrative and some of its judicial functions so distinct a bias, and had adopted so party an attitude—not under the right hon. Gentleman himself, but under his immediate predecessor—that the confidence which they were prepared to place in it, as shown by the treatment of the 1906 Bill by the House of Lords, they no longer had in 1908. It was a most unfortunate thing, but it was a fact which they must recognise, that the Board of Education in 1908 had not the confidence of the present minority in, the House in the sense in which it had in 1906. They could not get over what had happened in the interval. That being so, the words of the statute became, for the purposes of those who wished to assure their friends that the right of entry was really secured, of enormous importance, and not merely the words of the statute, but the words of the Regulations issued, or projected, by the Board of Education, as being the authority which would have to watch over the execution of the statute. He would like to say three things in regard to the Regulations which had been already sketched by the Board. He thought it was an unfortunate mistake, which he hoped the Government would rectify, to put in the clause to which his hon. and learned friend had already alluded, that the parent should give notice six weeks before the term began. He was sure that that was not in the least necessary for the purposes of school administration, and it was placing an obstacle in the path of the enjoyment of the right of entry which in many cases was likely to be for a time at least insuperable in regard to a great number of children. He was certain it was not necessary. The first boarding school he went to—if he might give a personal experience—consisted of members of the Unitarian body and of the Church of England in almost equal proportions. It was not necessary for their parents to give notice six weeks beforehand of the kind of instruction they desired their boys to have, any more than later, when he went to Rugby, it was necessary to say six weeks beforehand whether he desired to take natural science or German. He was asked on the first day of the term, and he was certain they could do away with this long notice, and that in itself would be a concession that would be much valued by those who really cared about the right of entry. In the second place, why should it be necessary, when a child passed from one department of the school to another, to give a fresh notice? Surely, provided the notice was given for the child when it entered the school or at any given period, that notice ought to stand in the books of the school authority and ought to apply until it was revoked. There was no necessity for troubling the parent to make a fresh declaration. These were two points arising out of the Regulations, and there was a third. He joined with his hon. and learned friend in deprecating the form attached to the instructions in which the parent was to give notice. He invited the House to consider what this form would convey to the ordinary parent. He got a form in which he had to say that he desired his child to receive special religious instruction of a character different from that which it was open to the local education authority to give in accordance with subsection (2) of Section 14 of the Act of 1870. Even they in that House did not carry subsection (2) of Section 14 of a particular Act in their minds, and that was a jargon which was wholly foreign to their public discussions outside the House. It was the language of the House or the language of lawyers, but it was not the language in which they discussed these questions with their constituents. They did not talk of subsection (2) of Section 14 of the Act of 1870. They sometimes called it Cowper-Templeism, which had become a slang phrase, but more often they spoke simply of denominational or undenominational teaching. Why could not they have a form in which the parent should say: "I desire my child to receive undenominational teaching, or the denominational teaching of such and such a Church"? If the Government would meet them on this point, they would sacrifice nothing which was essential to them, and they would give something which was essential to those who, from the undenominational point of view, wished to find a settlement of this question. These three points arose on the Regulations. There were other points which arose out of the wording of the Bill. In the first place, was there any difference intended in the mind of the Government by the difference of the wording in regard to the time when religious teaching was to be given in Clauses 1 and 2. That point was raised by the hon. Member for Oxford University and had not been dealt with. He understood that the Government meant that the denominational teaching should be given within school hours. From his point of view, as one certainly who was trying his best to promote a compromise, It was essential that it should be given in school hours. He understood that that was the intention of the Government, but he wanted to know clearly before they decided to go on with the clause whether that was their intention. He asked the Government to indicate further their intentions in particular with reference to the Amendment standing in the name of his hon. and learned friend the Member for Kingston. Were they prepared to introduce some further words to secure that it should be the duty of the local education authority to provide suitable accommodation so that the authorities should not be at liberty to raise fictitious obstacles on the ground that accommodation was not easily obtainable? He asked further whether the right hon. Gentleman attached any great importance to the limitation of denominational teaching to two days in the week. He did not himself attach very great importance to that from either point of view, because he could conceive that in most denominational schools, outside those where the whole atmosphere was denominational all the day long, and which therefore would be contracted-out under the Bill, that portion of the religious teaching which was not specifically denominational probably now was given on three days out of the five.

MR. YOXALL (Nottingham, W.)

Denominational teaching occupies one morning of the week [Cries of "No, no."]

MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

said his object really was not to invite controversy on that point. He said frankly that he did not attach very much importance to this matter, because in the ordinary denominational school there must be a foundation of simple Bible teaching on which to build the denominational superstructure. That must occupy a large proportion of time. At the same time there were many people interested in this matter who would find it easier to accept the clause if the Government could see their way to give more latitude. From his Nonconformist standpoint he attached no importance to it at all, but it would be no sacrifice to say that where denominational facilities were required they should be given on as many days as the denominational body could arrange for giving it. If the Government would make that concession, it would be valued at any rate by some who set great store on denominational schools and their denominational teaching. His object was to draw the Prime Minister's attention to certain specific points, and he hoped that the Committee might have from him some general statement as the result of the further consideration he had given to the clause.

THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. ASQUITH,) Fifeshire, E.

said he acknowledged that the right hon. Gentleman throughout had discussed the Bill as a sympathetic critic of its provisions. It was the desire of the Government to make good to the full the assurance he had given on the Second Reading of the Bill that the right of entry which he regarded as an integral part of the proposed arrangement, should be an effective and not a nugatory right. He could assure the right hon. Gentleman that he had a perfectly open mind, and if he could show that the language of the clause was inadequate to carry out the real intention of the Government, such criticism would be entitled to receive most respectful consideration. The hon. and learned Gentleman had moved an Amendment for the omission of the subsection, the effect of which, if carried, would be to get rid of the right of entry altogether. That, he took it, was not the intention, but the hon. and learned Gentleman had raised the general question whether or not the Government had in this clause not only given the right of entry, but given it in such a manner that it would be fully enjoyed. He would proceed to deal with the specific criticisms of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, all of which were very relevant. In the first place he did not believe that there was any foundation for the apprehensions that if, and when, this Bill became part of the statute law of the land, local authorities would not endeavour loyally to carry it out. Local authorities were often obliged to enforce laws of which they themselves disapproved, but experience showed that when a local authority was entrusted by the Legislature with a public duty, the members of that authority in practice endeavoured, whatever their private prepossessions or prejudices might be, to obey the law. As the right hon. Gentleman had recognised, the Government had provided the right of appeal to the Board of Education, and he really did not think the Minister for Education, whoever he might be, would be likely in any sense to exercise his power in a partisan spirit.

MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

If the right hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will make a confession which may not be palatable to all my friends. What I want is to give my friends conclusive proof that it cannot be so exercised.

MR. ASQUITH

said that both in regard to the local authority and the Board of Education they were obliged to draw a draft on the future, and the degree of confidence with which that draft was drawn no doubt would vary according to the different quarters of the House in which Members sat. But the real point was this—was this a water-tight clause; in other words did it leave a small margin of discretion or indiscretion, either to the local authority or to the Board of Education, more than the exigencies of drafting would allow? The right hon. Gentleman called attention, first of all, not to the language of the clause itself, but to the language of the draft regulations issued by the Department in order that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen might see clearly the manner in which the clause was to be administered. The right hon. Gentleman took exception to three points. In the first place he referred to the requirements that a parent should made a declaration six weeks in advance. Six weeks was really inserted partly no doubt for reasons of an administrative character, but also largely in the interest of parents themelves. If they waited until the last moment it might be impossible or impracticable for the administrators of the school to make the provisions necessary at the beginning of a school term. He could assure the right hon. Gentleman that the Government attached no significance whatever to six weeks. It might be made three weeks or one week. He did not care what the precise period was, but he thought they ought to expect, as a matter of administrative convenience, some notice to be given in order to safeguard the right of entry. Otherwise if these things were left higgledy piggledy at the last moment, it might happen that the accommodation could not be provided. Let it be clear that there was no magic about six weeks. Whatever period of time might be found upon examination to be the one convenient to the parents on the one hand, and to the local authority on the other, the shorter period could be substituted. The right hon. Gentleman next objected to the necessity for repeating this notice when a child was transferred from one department of a school to another. He confessed that that was a matter which had not occupied his attention. He believed that when a child went from one department to another, it often went into an entirely new building, and the object of inserting this requirement arose out of that fact. Of course the Government did not desire to label a child during the whole of his school career with its little denominational character. This was a most innocent provision, and intended merely from the point of view of administration. Lastly, the right hon. Gentleman referred to the words in the application form in which the parent expressed his desire that his child should— Receive special religious instruction of a character different from that which it is open to the local education authority to give in accordance with subsection (2) of Section 14 of the Elementary Education Act, 1870. The right hon. Gentleman thought that imposed too great a burden, and that the words of the application might be put in a simpler form. His right hon. friend put them in out of his scrupulous desire to conform with the conditions of the law, but he was quite prepared to substitute a phrase by which the parent should desire special religious instruction for his child and should define the special denominational teaching he desired. Nothing could be simpler than that, and no one would say that it was imposing a burden on the parents. So much for the regulations. He now came to the language of the clause itself and the criticisms of the right hon. Gentleman. With regard to the hours, everybody agreed that 9 to 9.45 were the hours In which this kind of instruction was now obtainable and the right hours to set apart for the purpose.

LORD R. CECIL (Marylebone, E.)

May I point out that the language of Clause 1 and Clause 2 with regard to the hours is quite different and very important?

MR. ASQUITH

It is different, I agree, but I do not think it is important. They are the same hours at any rate—9 to 9.45. Everbody agrees on the hours.

LORD R. CECIL

Are they school hours?

MR. ASQUITH

9 a.m. is the hour at which the school assembles, and between 9 and 9.45 religious teaching, whether Cowper-Temple or denominational, is given and intended to be given.

MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

When is the register marked?

MR. ASQUITH

said that the register was not marked till 9.45, but that applied to whatever form of religious teaching the child was receiving. There was no preference given in that respect between the one form and the other. Both stood in precisely the same position.

MR. RADFORD (Islington, E.)

May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether attendance is compulsory at nine o'clock?

MR. ASQUITH

said that if the hon. Gentleman would allow him he would rather go on with his two points in reply to the right hon. Gentleman opposite. The right hon. Gentleman had called attention to an Amendment in the name of the hon. and learned Member for Kingston, and asked whether the Government would make it perfectly clear that the accommodation to be given to the children receiving this special kind of religious instruction should be suitable. They were quite prepared to make line 27 of the clause read: "any suitable accommodation which can reasonably be so made available."

LORD R. CECIL

That makes it worse and worse.

MR. ASQUITH

said that they wanted to make it better, but if the noble Lord thought it made it worse they would not insert it. By subsection 2 there was the express provision that— The part of the school house in which the instruction is given shall be properly lighted, warmed and cleaned at the cost of the authority. These were words which presupposed that the accommodation was suitable for the purpose of instruction to be given. It was intended to provide that the instruction should be given where children could be properly and comfortably taught under the ordinary conditions that prevailed in school life. He did not think that such an extremely suspicious spirit should exist with regard to this matter. He believed these words to be effective, but if better could be suggested let them be suggested. They could not, of course, impose on the local authorities the obligation of putting up a new structure for the purpose of providing for these children, and he did not know that that was what the noble Lord wanted.

LORD R. CECIL

No, no.

MR. ASQUITH

said that their meaning was that the local authorities should do their best with the structural facilities they actually possessed, and if additional words were shown to be necessary they would be inserted.

MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

Will the right hon. Gentleman accept such words as "shall make suitable accommodation unless fresh building would be required for the purpose"? [OPPOSITION cries of "No."] That is the right hon. Gentleman's meaning. Will he consider some words of the kind?

MR. ASQUITH

said that the Government were quite prepared to accept any form of words which could be devised to make it perfectly clear that they were only dealing with existing facilities and were going to make the best use of them for the purpose. Lastly, the right hon. Gentleman referred to the number of mornings on which a child was to receive this instruction. He thought that everybody would agree that with the object of making the right of entry real they had provided that every child, and not the school as a whole, was entitled to two mornings. He did not think that they could possibly have gone further to show the bona fides with which the right of entry was intended than by making that express provision. As the right hon. Gentleman had truly said, after all, the foundation of religious instruction would be in the future, as it had been in the past, the Bible teaching given throughout all the council schools, and as a matter of practice, as the hon. Member for Nottingham had said a few moments ago, rarely, if ever, on more than two mornings, was superadded to the fundamental elementary religious instruction, the special denominational instruction that the parent required. He did not think that anyone had asked or desired that each child should have the opportunity on more than two mornings in the week of receiving instruction in the special tenets of its parents. He thought that he had said enough to show, what nobody would dispute, that it was their intention to make this an effective and available right of entry, and that they were prepared, both with regard to the regulation and the language of the clause itself, to meet such criticism as the right hon. Gentleman had made, and to secure by adequate safeguards that this right—unpalatable as it was to many of their own supporters and of the local authorities—nobody knew that better than he did—should be freely and effectively exercised.

DR. HAZEL (West Bromwich)

said that his hon. and learned friend the Member for the Walton Division, who had moved the omission of this subsection, regarded the right of entry for denominational teachers into council schools as a real and substantial concession, and on this account, no doubt, he offered it no real and substantial opposition. He, himself, wished as one who strongly objected to the concession to offer to it as real and as substantial opposition as his humble powers allowed. The Prime Minister had rightly said that the right of entry was unpalatable to many on that side of the House. So unpalatable was it to him that with the best will in the world he was unable to swallow it, and the speech of the right hon. Gentleman had not helped to wash it down. He objected altogether to the principle of the right of entry and in that he was in a considerable minority on his own side. His position was not a pleasant one. The way of the consistent, like the way of the transgressor, was hard; and last ditches made very uncomfortable quarters. He knew that, because this was the second he had been in during the present session. He had thought that if he ever found himself in the last ditch against the right of entry in council schools, that ditch would be better lined than appeared to be the case that day. He remembered how during the 1906 education debates the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty had thundered alternate scorn and denunciation against this proposal. He wished that they had the hon. Gentleman with them now.

MR. ASQUITH

I have done the same myself.

DR. HAZEL

said that be that as it might, there were some on that side of the House who even at this stage were not prepared by swallowing their principles to break the pledges which they had given to their constituents at the last election. Nobody pretended for a moment that the right of entry was educationally good. It was educationally bad. It would irritate the local authorities and disgust the teachers. They were asked to reverse the policy of the Liberal Party on the ground that this was a part of a compromise. They all admired the tact of the President of the Board of Education. The right hon. Gentleman put this Bill and particularly this proposal before them simply as a piece of political opportunism born of bad logic and good feeling. To cover this pill of right of entry, the right hon. Gentleman supplied them with a certain amount of jam. He wanted to examine the right hon. Gentleman's jam purely in the light of the subsection. The jam was that they on that side of the House had got three principles conceded to them: the public control of rate-aided schools, denominational teaching off the rates, and the teachers relieved from religious tests. He wanted to show that by this subsection of Clause 2 every one of those principles was either actually or potentially 'violated. Take the first one, public control of rate-aided schools. He failed to find in the Bill any provision which enabled the local authority to object to the right of entry, or to the appointment of any particular denominational teacher who might be approved of by the parents. If the denominationalists said that they had the approval of the parents for this particular teacher, whatever objection the local authority might have to him he could snap his fingers at the local authority and walk in on two days of the week, or as it now appeared from the speech of the Prime Minister on five days a week.

THE CHAIRMAN

said that the point the Committee were now discussing was not the clause, but the subsection (1). and the hon. Gentleman was obviously going beyond that in discussing the question of the teacher.

DR. HAZEL

said he was sorry he transgressed, but the next point he raised undoubtedly came under this subsection, and that was the question of whether denominational teaching would be on the rates. The subsection provided that the authority shall— Make available any accommodation in the schoolhouse which can reasonably be so made available. And he put it to the Committee that under those words rates would still be called upon to supply the denominations with room, light, warming and cleaning in the council schools. The teacher, of course, would be paid for by the denomination. But let them see how it worked out. Suppose they had an assistant teacher who volunteered to give this teaching, earning £2 a week for a week of thirty hours. That worked out at 1s. 4d. an hour. Suppose that teacher was called upon to give denominational teaching for three-quarters of an hour for five days a Week, they would get three and three-quarters of an hour at 1s. 4d. an hour or 5s. That would have to be paid by those who demanded the denominational instruction, but there would be provided at these council schools at the expense of the rates, the building and all the paraphernalia connected with it, and he said that if a careful calculation were made it would be found that the cost, beside the teacher, would be as great as, if not greater, than the cost of the actual teaching. Then what became of the relief of the conscience of the passive resister? He was not there to say whether the passive resister was right or wrong; he was only endeavouring to deal with the position as it appeared to him. What the passive resister objected to was rate aid for sectarian teaching; here was a difference of amount, but not of principle, and he said that under this Bill the principle of rate-aid would remain. He was not surprised, therefore, that the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Education, in moving the Second Reading of this Bill, deprecated too much discussion of principle. He came now to the third point. What about the tests for teachers? Clause 1 had already been passed; it read well, and if it stood by itself it would be admirable, but when taken along with this section he said that although the Government abolished tests in name, in fact they kept them, and even added them where they were not before. He was not going to enlarge upon that, but there was from the teachers unanimous condemnation. They said this clause would result in the subtle imposition of tests where no tests existed before. Of course, they would be told that the teacher need never volunteer, but he was reminded of the American who said: "A man here does what he likes, and if he does not do it We make him." A teacher might volunteer if he liked, and if he did not, it was not unlikely that in some way or another it might be made unpleasant for him. Another point which arose was who was to keep order during the presence of the external teacher. Would the curate, or whoever was imported from outside, keep order, or would the temporal power be there. Would the man with a stick be there to assist the ecclesiastic? He should imagine that there would be poor order if he was not. If the man with a stick was there who was to pay him? Was the denomination to pay or the local authority? He said that this right of entry was a clerical and not a parental demand. The subsection said it should be given where the parent of any child desired that child to receive special religious instruction, and certain regulations had been set out with a form which it was proposed that the parent who desired that instruction should sign. Suppose the parent signed that form, and asked for instruction for his child in the doctrines of the Church of England, what sort of instruction would be given? Suppose the council school served an area in which there were three churches whose incumbents and parishoners had different views—a High Church, a Low Church, and a Broad Church? Which form of religious instruction would the child get whose parent demanded Church instruction? He suggested that this was a most important practical point, because of the difference between the High Church clergyman's teaching and that of the Low Church clergyman.

THE CHAIRMAN

said the hon. Member was again straying from the point. This did not arise on subsection (1), but on other parts of the clause. This subsection only outlined that different religious instruction might be given, and provided that accommodation should be found for it.

MR. D. A. THOMAS (Merthyr Tydvil), on the point of order, was understood to ask whether the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire and the Prime Minister had not discussed the whole question of the clause, and whether the Chairman would not apply the same rules of order to other Members of the House that he did to Privy Councillors.

MR. LAURENCE HARDY (Kent, Ashford)

inquired whether it was not possible for them to say anything with regard to the observations of the Prime Minister, both with regard to the regulations and the time and other points which arose under other parts of the section.

THE CHAIRMAN

said he allowed the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Worcester to put certain questions to the Prime Minister, and of course, the Prime Minister to reply to them, because he understood that they had relevancy, and he thought they had relevancy distinctly to this subsection. He had followed the hon. Member very closely, and where he considered his remarks were relevant to the subsection he had not intervened, but this did not appear to him to be relevant.

DR. HAZEL

said, speaking with great respect, he thought he was applying his remarks to line 21, in which it was stated that— Where the parent of any child in attendance at a public elementary school provided by the local education authority desires that child to receive religious instruction of a character different from that which it is open to the local authority to give. He was endeavouring to discuss the probable character of the instruction, but if the Chairman ruled that he was not entitled to do so, of course, he must pass to something else.

THE CHAIRMAN

said that the clause referred to special religious instruction; All that the parent would have to do under this subsection would be to state that he would require some form of special religious instruction, but he did not think that the kind of religious instruction or the character of the teaching arose on line 21.

DR. HAZEL

said he was endeavouring to ascertain what sort of instruction the parent was likely to get if he did ask for it. It appeared that there would be an interesting question as to what was Church of England teaching.

THE CHAIRMAN

said he would reply to the hon. Gentleman in the words of the subsection— Where the parent of any child in attendance at a public elementary school provided by the local education authority desires that child to receive religious instruction of a character different from that which it is open to the local education authority to give in accordance with subsection (2) of Section 14 of the Elementary Education Act, 1870, the authority shall, for the purpose of enabling that child to receive that instruction, make available any accommodation in the schoolhouse which can reasonably be so made available. That did not raise the question of whether it was in the case of an Anglican, a High Church, or Low Church teacher. It only raised the question of accommodation. The other question could be raised on the clause. It was possible it might be raised on subsection (3), but not here.

LORD R. CECIL, on the point of order, and without wishing to contest what the Chairman had laid down for their guidance, suggested that it had been sometimes the custom of Chairmen of Committees in substance to allow a general discussion on the whole clause on a proposal to omit subsection (1) where there was a general consent on the part of the Committee that that should be done.

THE CHAIRMAN

did not think it would be wise or proper on his part to enter into any such arrangement, because he thought it would lead the Committee on future occasions into very great trouble, and it was not wise to make one rule for discussing a clause in one set of circumstances, and another in another set of circumstances. As far as possible, he thought they ought to keep to the same rule.

DR. HAZEL

said he would obey the Chairman's ruling, and with regret he left the extremely interesting question of what really was the doctrine of the Church of England. But he wanted to say a word or two on the desires of the parent, and the way in which those desires might be carried out under the subsection. He trusted that there would be no relaxa- tion of the regulations in such a way as; would enable the bona fide desire of the: parent to be avoided by people who were interested in getting something else, because it was quite possible that unless the regulations were made stringent, and kept stringent, there might be a good deal of misrepresentation, and parents might ask for special religions instruction without really knowing what they were asking for. That kind of thing took place when petitions were being organised against the Bill of 1906, and many a parent signed the petition against the Bill believing that he was signing a petition against a Bill' which would abolish Scripture and religious teaching in the school. He was therefore particularly anxious that the bona fide wishes of the parent should be respected, and that the regulations should be such as would express that desire clearly so that what the parent was said to desire should not turn out to be some clerical selection. He remembered that some months ago the battle-cry of "Right of entry and right of parents" was raised by his hon. and learned friend the Member for Walton, and by the Bishop of Manchester, who appeared at that time to have elected themselves, respectively, as Emperor and Pope of Lancashire It was raised in a manifesto which was issued by them—after the manner of the tailors of Tooley Street—in which they spoke in the name of the parents of Lancashire. The main point of that manifesto was the right of the parent to have his child educated in the denomination that he desired, by teachers of whom he approved. That sounded very well, but he observed that one of the parties to that manifesto, the Bishop of Manchester, this time not in collaboration with his hon. and learned friend, had issued a document, which had been in the hands of most Members of this House, dealing with this Bill. Here he found that one of the right rev. Prelate's objections to this subsection was that the teaching might be given by somebody who was approved by the parent but not approved by the clergyman. The right rev. Prelate pointed out that the denominational instructor must be a person approved by the parent, he might or might not be one of the clergy of the parish. he might be one of the clergy from another parish, and then—awful thought —"he might be some layman antagonistic to the clergyman of the parish."

THE CHAIRMAN

said the hon. Member had again gone beyond his ruling. There was a great difference between this subsection and the clause as a whole.

DR. HAZEL

said he was very sorry so frequently to transgress the ruling of the Chair. This sub-section, which was very wide, included the desire of the parent—

THE CHAIRMAN

said the hon. Member was not talking about the desire of the parent. He was talking about the teacher and teaching, which did not arise.

DR. HAZEL

said he had no desire to argue with the Chair.

MR. LOUGH (Islington, W.), on the point of order, said the matter appeared to be one of the most intense importance, and he would ask with great respect whether the object of the subsection was not to say how the parent might describe the religion he desired, and had not his hon. friend been trying to show the difficulty the parent would have in describing the religion which the subsection allowed to be taught? Was he not in order in so doing?

THE CHAIRMAN

said the hon. Member was dealing with the question of the teacher which he had declared out of order, and now again declared out of order.

DR. HAZEL

apologised, and in justification of his mistake said he wished to say that one of the manifestations of the desire of the parent would be the approval of the teacher, and it was said in the clause he must approve of the teacher, but he passed on. He would say this, however, that the document to which he had alluded, issued by one of the most prominent champions of the parents' rights, showed that the chief consideration was not the right of the parent, but the privilege of the clergy. He said with all earnestness that those who were anxious to restrict, as far as might be, the area of sectarian influence in the educational system of the country, viewed with the greatest alarm, the provisions of this clause. Particularly ominous was the simile used by an eminent divine, who said the clergy were like hounds in the leash waiting to enter the council schools. That being an episcopal simile, he might be allowed to continue it. He preferred to see the clerical pack hunting over their own country, and not in full cry in the council schools. There was much in this Bill that was good, but he would point out that if they had six eggs in an omelet, and one of them was bad, the whole was tainted. He believed this clause tainted the whole Bill. If he were to support it he would be breaking the pledges upon which he had been elected.

LORD R. CECIL

said there was one observation which fell from the Prime Minister with which he was happy to be able to agree. The discussion on this particular Amendment had certain disadvantages, especially when it was desirable to get to the details of the clause which were of infinite importance, and would either make this a real clause or render it absolutely valueless. The right hon. Gentleman had appealed to the Committee not to regard this clause with undue suspicion, but before his official duties had called him away the right hon. Gentleman no doubt heard sufficient of the speech of the hon. Gentleman who followed him to gather the reasons why some regarded this with a suspicious view. Could any occupant of the front bench really suppose that this clause, administered by gentlemen in full agreement with the hon. Member who had just spoken, could possibly be regarded by denominationalists as satisfactory? He himself could not possibly regard any clause as satisfactory unless it was of such a nature that it could not be misused by any authority which did not approve of it. They need not go as far as the speech of the hon. Member to see that, because he had the utterance of a Minister whom he was glad to see in his place. The hon. Member for Richmond recently made a speech in which he dealt with this matter, in which he said— They were asked to give in exchange a very big thing called the right of entry. He did not like it, but let them think this. Was the clergyman a very good teacher; did he really like turning out in the morning, going into the school and teaching, with the eye of the teacher upon him to see whether he was doing it well or badly? No, he thought there would be rather a flourish of ecclesiasticism to begin with. This, he would remind them, was the language of a Minister of the Crown— But after a bit things would settle down, and the churches would use the money they received for the use of their school buildings to improve their Sunday school teaching, and they would probably leave the elementary schools to be managed by the men who ought to have the control—the teachers appointed and paid by the local authority. He did not think, if a Minister of the Crown made that assertion about the concession offered by the Prime Minister, a concession which was intended to be a real concession, the right hon. Gentleman could much complain if the denominationalists regarded it with considerable care and scrutiny. He understood that the teaching under this subsection was to be given on perfectly fair and equal conditions, except where those conditions were varied by the language of the clause itself. There was to be no sub-current of discouragement running through the provisions of this clause, except those provisions which were absolutely essential to secure the object which the Government said they had in view in respect to this matter. Approaching the matter from that point of view, he wished to see if it was of such a nature that those who desired to receive this teaching would get it placed at their disposal, quite fairly and frankly, without any discouragement on the part of the authors or those who would have to administer the Bill. That seemed to be a fair test of this clause. What was the purpose of having these regulations for insuring the control of the parents in this form? Was not the effect of regulations of this character to make it difficult for parents who required special instruction to obtain it? Would it not be more fair to say to the parents of the children who came to the schools: "What do you want—Cowper-Temple teaching or denominational teaching?" and let them answer the question without giving any advantage to one as against another? That was exactly what was done in the day industrial schools, where the arrangement worked perfectly. Unless that was done in the case of these schools, there was no security that the object intended by the Government would be carried out. In many cases the parents were not only busy people, but very ignorant people, and would not have brought to their minds the means of obtaining their desire. The result would be that those interested in this matter would go canvassing about, and they would have that state of things which no one desired. This was the most important part of the clause, and therefore he had been a little elaborate upon it. He wished to know, was this religious teaching to be given during the period of compulsory attendance? That was a matter of vital importance. There were other matters to which, however, he would not refer, such as whether the discipline of the school was to be maintained during this hour, and other matters of that sort. He did not pretend that this concession was satisfactory, or a quid pro quo for what the Church was giving up, but he certainly wished to know whether it was to be a real concession or a mere paper concession which was not worth the paper on which it was written.

MR. PICKERSGILL (Bethnal Green, S.W.)

thought that if hon. Members had suggested three years ago that the Government was going to give a right of entry into the board schools of the country such a suggestion would have been scouted by nearly every supporter of the Government. It was said that the position was now changed, but the mere fact that they were getting something in exchange did not alter the result of what they were giving. The name of Dr. Clifford had been invoked in connection with these proposals. A few weeks ago when these proposals were published in the Westminster Gazette, what did Dr. Clifford say in reference to the right of entry? He said that the right of entry was "unspeakably bad" if it were, like Cowper-Temple teaching, left to the option of the people, but it was much worse when, as in the present case, it was coercive of the education authorities. It was with Dr. Clifford that the negotiations were conducted as the representative of Nonconformity, and it was Dr. Clifford who said that the proposal contained in this subsection was much worse than "unspeakably bad." If language had any meaning, how a proposal to which language of this sort could properly be applied could be accepted for any consideration whatever was really more than he could understand. Then in regard to the right of entry the Committee had the further advantage of knowing how its results appeared to the mind of the Prime Minister. In the course of the debate in 1906, the right hon. Gentleman, speaking about the right of entry, said there were three obvious and insuperable objections to it. The first was that the right of entry was not desired; the second was, and this was important, that it would inevitably land them in administrative chaos; and the third was that it would leave them with no security for the genuine religious teaching of the children. The Minister for Education had claimed the other night that he had the Nonconformists of the country at his back. He did not think the right hon. Gentleman had the Nonconformists of the country at his back. It was true, the whole of these proceedings having been so sudden and unadvised, that it might be the Nonconformists were a little dazed. They were a little puzzled by, he did not call it the discretion of their leaders, but at all events, their leaders' sudden conversion, which remained unexplained. About the time when the Bill, including this subsection, became law, if it ever did become law, he was really afraid that the right hon. Gentleman the Minister for Education might have a somewhat rude awakening. They had heard a good deal about negotiations with what he might call priest and presbyter, in regard to this matter, but particularly in relation to the subject-matter of this subsection. The Government had not taken into their counsels those whom the subject-matter of the subsection most vitally concerned. They had not consulted those upon whom the really hard practical work of the administration of education fell. They had not taken into their counsels the education authorities of the country, or the managers of the schools, or the teachers, or even the parents of the children. No one in authority seemed to have put to himself the question, which was really a little important, namely, whether this proposal would really work. He had some knowledge of schools, being in fact, in close touch with some of them, and he had no hesitation in saying that the effect of this subsection would be absolutely fatal to the discipline and order of the school. Whichever alternative they adopted, whether they brought in a person from outside or some other person to give the instruction, or whether they employed the assistant teacher to give it, in either case the effect would be fatal to the discipline and order of the school. Suppose the first alternative was adopted, and they brought in. a person from outside, an amateur—he would be unable to maintain order. The other day he was conversing with a clergyman, who informed him that good order was maintained in his Sunday school. He was surprised to hear that statement, because he had always understood that good order was not a characteristic of Sunday schools. He asked how such a result had been brought about. The clergyman replied that he had brought in four or five elementary day school teachers to keep order. If they wanted to avoid pandemonium in the school, they must not bring in the amateur, who could not maintain order. It required years of experience to control a class of London children. To avoid pandemonium in the class they would have to bring in the teachers to keep order. On the other hand, suppose the other alternative were adopted, and the assistant teachers were allowed to volunteer. That would be equally fatal to the discipline and order of the school, because the teachers during school hours would be giving instruction for which the head teacher or headmaster was not responsible, and in respect of which he had no authority. That would be really fatal to the good order and discipline of the school. The Government would never even think of introducing this kind of thing into the secondary schools, and he protested against its being introduced into the people's schools, and against those schools being sacrificed by what the Government mistakenly believed to be a political necessity. As a London Member he of course regarded this question with particular interest from the London point of view. In London the effect of this subsection would be particularly unfortunate. In London he found that the accommodation in provided schools was for 595,000, and in voluntary schools for 120,000 children, in round numbers; that was to say, the number of children in council schools as compared with the number in voluntary schools was as about three to one. The proportion in the council schools of London was very much higher than the proportion which obtained in the council schools of any of those parts of the country which at all compared with London. It was obvious, therefore, that in London the area of disturbance which this subsection would produce would be very much greater than in any other part of the country. Why should there be this disturbance? The parents were satisfied with the religious teaching given in the council schools, and the enormous majority of the clergy were satisfied with it, and it really seemed to him that the Government were almost wantonly breaking the peace which had existed for so long. The Bill had been drawn up to effect a settlement, but the provisions contained in this subsection could not possibly be a settlement; indeed, his hon. friend the Member for North-West Norfolk the other night, in a phrase which was right from his point of view, though somewhat maladroit, said that these proposals were emergency proposals. If they were emergency proposals they could not possibly constitute a real settlement. To call that a settlement which was contained in the subsection they were now discussing was really one of the ironies of this matter. Therefore he appealed to the Committee to reject this subsection because it embodied a proposal which would be fatal to the unity of the national schools. For his part he could not see why the Bethnal Green lad should not have the same feeling of loyalty towards his school as the Rugbeian for Rugby, the Harrovian for Harrow, or the Etonian for Eton. He was in the closest touch with the council schools, and he knew the spirit which prevailed in them, and how the common games, the excursions together, and other incidents of school life had produced a growing sense of unity, responsibility, and esprit de corps. He must express the bitter disappointment which he felt that a Liberal Government should try to drive a sword into the very heart of that growing unity by dividing the scholars into groups distinguished by denominational names. For the sake of the children attending the schools he now raised his voice against this subsection, and he proposed to record his vote against it.

SIR FRANCIS POWELL (Wigan)

said he sympathised with the remarks made by his noble friend the Member for Marylebone, and he wished to put a question of a very definite character to the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill. It had reference to the words of the subsection, which were most perplexing to the lay mind. Among others who had been more or less perplexed by its language was the Bishop of London, as appeared by a letter from him to the newspapers a few days ago. What was the real meaning of "two mornings a week?" One theory of the subsection was that the school was to be open for the purpose of this special religious teaching two mornings a week; and the other theory was that the words meant that such arrangements were to be made as to make it certain that a child would have teaching of a special character on two mornings a week. There seemed to be a very great difference between those two conditions, for the reason that it was provided by the subsection that certain conditions were to be satisfied, and if they were not satisfied the special teaching was not to be given. He expressed no opinion whatever on the question, but it was only just to those who felt anxiety upon it that the right hon. Gentleman should give a clear exposition as to the real meaning and intention of those words. There had been a great feeling of disappointment in the minds of Churchmen that there was inequality between the provisions of Clause 1 and Clause 2. Most persons, when reading the two clauses, thought there was entire equality, and that Churchmen, Wesleyans, and Roman Catholics were placed in exactly the same position in the two cases, but it was quite clear from the regulations that, without any application of any kind, a child would receive in a provided school teaching under the Cowper-Temple clause. But, on the other hand, in Clause 2 it was provided that instruction could only be given when application was made. That was not equality between the two. It was certainly a great disappointment to those who were looking for equality of treatment under this clause to find that, in the case of Clause 1 Cowper-Temple teaching was to be given automatically, while if there was to be special instruction there was delay and possibly some perplexity to simple-minded and half-educated peasants. What was the right hon. Gentleman's proposal as to giving legal effect to those regulations? Were they to be issued as an Order from the Department, or were they to be laid on the Table of the House, in order that Members might have an opportunity of discussing them? The regulations themselves appeared to be somewhat severe and ponderous in character, and he did not think those who drew them had had sufficient regard to the properly migratory habits of artisans in our great towns. They all knew how many removals took place in each Parliamentary borough every year. They were part of the life of the best of artisans, owing to changes of occupation, and they would in each case require a new notice when the child was sent to a new school. There were points in the regulations which required the most careful investigation, and there were others which he hoped the Government would see its way to change before the Bill passed.

SIR FRANCIS CHANNING (Northamptonshire, E.)

thought the hon. Baronet was in error in saying there was to be inequality between the two classes of schools. He was sure they must all regard the President of the Board of Education with the utmost admiration for the diligence with which he had tried to solve this question, for the skill, dexterity, courtesy and conciliation with which he had laid his case before the House. He had not a word to say against the desire for peace shown by the Government in attempting to bring this Bill before the House, and his natural impulse as a party man was somewhat quickened to support the Government even in matters which were distasteful to himself, because of the transparent desire, the intention almost of the Leader of the Opposition, as evinced the previous day, to wreck this attempt at obtaining a settlement on conciliatory, kindly and generous lines as between the religious sections of the community. If what he had to say was contrary to the Government proposal as embodied in the subsection, he hoped his right hon. friend would fully appreciate the spirit in which he spoke and the sense of duty and the long consideration of the subject and long association with it for many years past which compelled him to dissent most profoundly from the proposal of this subsection. He had the warmest respect and admiration for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Clifford, and many of those concerned in arriving at the compromise, but he thought these questions were too profound in their bearing on national life to be treated as questions, merely to be settled in the studies or the pulpits of ecclesiastics. He would look to the life of the school, to the life of the children, to the whole meaning and machinery of education, and he would say, if they were to look to these broader issues, the suggestion conveyed in the subsection was one which ought to fill with profound misgiving the minds of many who had worked at the education question all their lives. What was the effect of this clause? They were asked to accept this principle of the right of entry into every school as a means of obtaining religious peace and the removal of all the animosities which had beset the course of education for generations past, and paralysed the moral and intellectual forces of education applied to the child-life of the people, which ought to be set free from this wretched friction of religious animosity and the constant contentions of the sects. If he could believe that this right of entry, and all that went with it, would lead to the removal of the religious difficulty and of the trammels which had paralysed the forces of education in the past, he should say God-speed to the proposal. But every consideration, every fact, every atom of evidence they had had during those years tended in exactly the opposite direction. He remembered no speech on the Education question quite so vividly as the great speech of the Prime Minister in moving the rejection of the leviathan Bill in 1896. On Clause 27 of that Bill he said on this precise proposal, when advanced by the Leader of the Opposition— What evidence is there, I ask, that the parents of the children for whom this religious instruction is provided are dissatisfied? This agitation is a clerical agitation. … I do not believe myself parents would be found to avail themselves of this clause, but I can conceive that, under the stimulus of a more or less fanatical propaganda, it may be possible to get together in some of our towns a sufficient number of parents to make the demand.… If this clause were carried into effect and worked upon a large scale you would have these children in the future herded, if I may use the word, into separate theological pens, branded and labelled with the names of their particular sects and taught under conditions which must compel them, if they had fairly receptive minds, to attach more importance not to the truths which unite, but to the controversies which divide the religious world. There they had words of sound sense, knowledge of human nature and knowledge of the character of this controversial teaching which was to be forced into the peaceful atmosphere which they had preserved uncontaminated and uninterfered with for a generation past in the provided schools. The present Bishop of Manchester, whose career he had followed with very great interest, and whose opinions deserved the very careful consideration of those who were dealing with this issue, was for a long time the distinguished Chairman of the Birmingham School Board, on which he had some practical experience of this system of right of entry. He was also the Vicar of Aston Manor, where the same system was introduced into the schools. In 1905 he made at Manchester a remarkable speech directed to this particular proposal. He was advocating of course, as always full and specific, and exclusive denominational teaching in Church schools. But what was the Bishop's experience of the result of the right of entry? He said that— The right of entry was unworkable and unprofitable and certain to bring the religious question in its acutest form into places which the religious question had never yet entered. The Aston Manor school board used to allow different departments of the same school to be hired by different denominations, and what was the result? More than once, as Vicar, he had had Sunday school teachers coming to him with tears in their eyes, telling him that their 'Tommy,' who really was a Church child, had been captured by the Wesleyans or some other denomination, and he had no doubt the Non-comformist minister had his teachers coming to him with the same tale. It required all the tact and discretion they could use to keep the peace under those conditions. If he were a schoolmaster he would on no terms allow such a right of entry The great thing was to maintain the discipline, tone and spirit which belonged to a school, and that depended largely upon the influence of the head teacher. They had the philosophy of this question in the speech of the Prime Minister in 1896, from which this proposal so widely diverged, and in the speech of the Bishop of Manchester they had practical evidence laid before them by a strong and determined supporter of the Church of England. It. seemed to him that this was a very serious matter. From long experience he felt that the two points of view he had attempted to lay before the Committee had immense force and weight. If instead of bringing peace, the spirit of brotherhood, kindly respect and sympathy into the lives of children of different denominations they were stirring up in their small minds the narrow and contemptible prejudices of bitterness and sectarian animosity, it seemed to him that in pandering to the demand of the ecclesiastics to get at the board schools, on any terms and by any means, they were doing a treacherous act to the child-life of this country, and betraying also the noblest institutions ever evolved by the local government of this country. The late Lord Salisbury, some years, ago in addressing the National Society, advised his friends, to capture the board schools under the existing law, and then capture them under a better law. While the Leader of the Opposition, in his legislation on this subject in 1902, spared the board schools, and left them free from contamination and free from this war of the sects, it had been reserved for the Liberal Government of 1908, returned with a majority unparalleled in history, and pledged to the hilt to maintain the principles of national education, to hand over the keys of the people's schools to the ecclesiastics with apologies, and to trust the future of education to this war of the sects. When he thought of these questions, and of all the Education Bills of which they had seen a gloomy procession passing through this House, when he realised that each of them had failed by the intricacy and illogical contradiction of its provisions, he could not help thinking that behind all these Bills there had perhaps been some evil genius at the Board of Education whose dictation and intrigues had led not only to the abandonment of Liberal ideals but also to the failure of one proposal after another.

SIR PHILIP MAGNUS (London University)

said that after listening to the eloquent speech of the hon. Baronet who had just sat down, he could not understand why he had accused the Leader of the Opposition of a desire to wreck this Bill. If the speech of any one would have the effect of wrecking the Bill, surely it would be that of the hon. Baronet himself. Personally, he had no desire to wreck the Bill, although he must admit this was a measure which did not find much favour in any particular quarter of the House. They understood it was a compromise. He was surprised to hear the hon. Member for Bethnal Green refer to the twelve years peace which they had all been enjoying in educational matters since 1896. He was under the impression that they had been in a state of religious warfare during that time. He had scarcely ever been to a political meeting without hearing of religious strife. They had been discussing the education question for the last three years in the House, and he was surprised to find on the Ministerial side of the House that they were now beginning to speak of the religious peace which had existed since 1896. From his own experience of educational work in different parts of the country there had been, in his opinion, as much real peace since 1902 in all educational matters as had existed at any period since 1870. He had always maintained that if the Act of 1902 had been permitted to continue in operation for some time to come undisturbed, they would have heard very little indeed of these religious differences to which his hon. friend opposite had referred. Personally he was extremely desirous that they should come to close terms with the Amendments on the Paper, and that no more time should be wasted in making speeches of a Second Reading character. For his part, he regarded the concession given in Clause 2 as one of considerable value to all persons who believed in denominational education. At the same time, he did not believe the framers of the Bill had recognised fully the extreme difficulty as regarded administration and management which were involved in making this concession. The concession ought not, to be a matter of indifference to his Roman Catholic friends who had rightly voted for the omission of the contracting-out clause As a matter of fact, there were many council schools in different parts of the country in which there was a large number of Roman Catholic children who would, by means of this concession, be provided with the opportunity of receiving denominational teaching. He hardly needed to say that this was a concession which ought to be valued by the Anglican Church, and equally by the Jewish community. There were council schools containing a large number of Jewish children. He knew of a school containing nearly 1,000 Jewish children, and in that school there was not a single Jewish teacher. He thought some alterations would be necessary in the detailed arrangements made in the clauses of the Bill, and it was for that reason very desirable if this settlement was to be accepted that they should approach those details as quickly as possible in order to see whether the Amendments on the Paper were likely to receive the assent of the Government. Personally, he should have liked to have seen two words omitted from subsection (1), and an Amendment had been put down to that effect. The clause stated that this instruction should be given on two-mornings, but why should it not be given at some other more convenient time? He did not think it was possible to carry out the principle of the right of entry unless more opportunities were afforded for denominational instruction than were suggested by the admission of the denominational teacher on two-mornings per week. The hon. Member for Bethnal Green was quite right in pointing out the difficulties of management and administration which would arise in regard to the right of entry. He trusted that when they came to consider those details the Government would show that they were anxious that the right of entry should be made real and effective. It was very important that they should approach as soon as possible the consideration of the Amendments on the Paper in the limited time which had been placed at their disposal for the discussion of this question, and he would not on that account trouble the Committee any longer.

MR. LLEWELYN WILLIAMS (Carmarthen District)

said he did not wish to give a silent vote on this subsection, because it was a proposal which went to the very root of the Bill. It required a great deal less courage to get up and denounce this compromise than to fight for it, and it would be very easy for him, as it would be for a good many other hon. Members, to take from his pocket old speeches on the right of entry quite as eloquent as the one to which they had just listened from the hon. Baronet the Member for East Northamptonshire. During the last few days he had been reading the debates which took place in the House two and a half years ago in May, 1906, upon the right of entry, in which debates the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham took part. In. replying on that occasion his right hon. friend made a very eloquent and convincing opposition to that proposal and pointed out how it was quite unworkable. He remembered that the Solicitor-General and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board denounced the proposal to give the right of entry to these schools. It was quite easy, therefore, for anyone in the House to taunt hon. Members on that side with inconsistency regarding this matter. It was the cheapest form of controversy. He voted for the Second Reading of this Bill, believing that it embodied the proposals which were essential to a compromise, and the only thing he could say in extenuation of This offence, if it was an offence, was that he had been convinced long ago that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham was right in the proposal he made in 1906. He said so last May when they were discussing the Second Reading of the previous Education Bill. He was sorry that in the subsection under discussion the Government persisted in one illiberal exception to the proposal made by the right hon. Gentleman then. In this Bill Cowper-Temple teaching was treated as denominational instruction; it received preferential treatment, and that was unfair. That was why he and his friends on those benches believed, as Liberals and Nonconformists should believe, that the State not only had nothing to do with religion on Sundays, but had no right to teach any form of religion on week days. That was why they were compelled to say that the right of entry to all the schools should be granted to all denominations. It was not a position which Liberals or Nonconformists cared to occupy. The right of entry was a thing which he did not care for himself, especially within school hours, and if the teachers were to be allowed to volunteer to give denominational instruction. He confessed frankly that it was a thing which he denounced at the last election. To-day he and his friends were compelled in fairness and equity to support the Government in this matter. The first reason was that, as they were told, it was a compromise. It was a compromise which entailed sacrifices on the Church of England; they had to give up every school they possessed in the single-school areas. Some compensation should be given in justice and fairness for that. In the second place, Cowper-Temple teaching, which was not only believed in by a majority of Nonconformists, but which was endowed out of public funds, was continued by the Bill. In the face of these two things it was only just and equitable that real compensation should be given to the Church of England for the sacrifices they made. If the right of entry was to be granted to them, they must see that the facilities were real and not sham. If the words of this clause were not sufficient to carry out the honest intention of the Government to give real facilities, then it was their duty as honourable men to alter the phraseology in such a way as to give effect to their intention. He had read the clause carefully, and he could foresee no difficulty at all. He could not defend the right of entry in the face of his constituents or in his own conscience on principle. He could only defend it as a compromise. It was only a matter of give and take. He asked the Government: What was the nature of the compromise? Was the compromise embodied in the Bill? He voted for the Second Reading, believing that the compromise was embodied in the Bill. Was that so? If they were to be met later on with further concessions, then he said that the whole situation had changed. If the Bill was an honest agreement between the Government on the one side and the Archbishop of Canterbury and other religious leaders on the other, then, although he disagreed with some of the clauses, he would vote for the Third Reading; but if it did not embody the compromise which had been come to, and if there were negotiations going on somewhere behind their backs, negotiations of which they knew nothing and which might mean further concessions, then so far as he was concerned his support of the Bill was gone. He supported the Bill last week as it stood. He did not mean to say that there might not be small adjustments here and there in the first Schedule. He was not going to haggle over a shilling or so when a great national settlement of a question which had been vexing the community for forty years was at hand. If the Bill went through the House substantially as it stood, it would have his support, not because it was an ideal measure, but because he hoped and believed it would put a stop for some years to come, if not for ever, to those factious and intolerable grievances and discussions which in the past had made the educational progress of the country almost impossible.

MR. RAWLINSON (Cambridge University)

said the point they had to consider was whether this subsection made the obligation of the local education authority effective with respect to the right of entry desired by parents whose children were to receive denominational instruction. He regarded this as a business matter of vital importance. The speeches of the hon. Baronet and others were rather out of date. They had passed the Children Bill, which, following the precedent of previous legislation, provided for the system referred to as that of labelling the child as belonging to a particular denomination. The effective right to particular religious instruction was given under the poor law and also under the statutes affecting industrial schools. This was far more than a question of words; it was a question of principle. He hoped the Government would be able to accept the provision in the Industrial Schools Acts. It was very simple, the words being as follows:— The local education authority shall, so far as is practicable, make arrangements that such children shall have facilities for receiving religious instruction in accordance with the parents' desires. That was a duty cast upon the local education authority. This clause imposed no duty on the local authority except that of providing a room where it was practicable to do so between 9 and 9.45 a.m., where denominational religious instruction could be given to the children. Was that intentional or accidental? If it was intentional, it went to the root of the whole matter. Effective right of entry was absolutely impossible unless there was cast upon the local education authority a duty beyond that indicated in the clause. There were two different kinds of local education authority to be dealt with in this matter. A large number of authorities took a strong view as to their duty. Their desire was not to do more than they were absolutely required to do by the words of the Act, and so far as they were concerned it was essential that the duty should be cast upon them by the words of the statute. Otherwise, if they did not do their duty, there was no sort of redress. Lawyers knew that when proceedings were taken against a local education authority it was necessary to show that there had been a breach of statutory obligation. On the other hand there were many local education authorities who wished to do what was right and just as between two contending parties; they wished to do their duty honestly without any bias on one side or the other. He had got the moderate Churchman on the one side and the Nonconformists on the other, and then he had to look, and would look, at the exact words of the Act of Parliament, and say: "We must do this much, and no more, because Parliament has laid down these lines of action." It was very important, if it was intended that any further duty was to be imposed on the local education authority, that it should be imposed on them in unmistakable terms. Here there was no obligation on the local authority that these three-quarters of an hour for denominational teaching should be in school hours at all. What made him think that that was not accidental on the part of the draftsman but intentional, was that different words were used when dealing with undenominational teaching. Unless they cast on the education authority the duty in the way he had indicated there was no sort of obligation on the local education authority that denominational teaching should be given in school hours at all. There was nothing to prevent the local education authority making the school attendance begin at 9.45 a.m.; and if they did that, the religious teaching would be given out of school hours. That would be a right of entry to a school which was not a school. Was that really an effective right of entry? He thought that the Government ought to accept the Amendment in order to make the right of entry effective. He need hardly say that all these points were fully in the minds of the local authorities who were hostile to the voluntary school. But assuming that they got the local education authority to decide that nine o'clock was to be the hour for commencing the teaching of denominational religion, and that was to be continued to 9.45 a. m, on two days a week—

THE CHAIRMAN

The hon. and learned Member is discussing the next subsection.

MR. RAWLINSON

said he would confine himself to this subsection. The only obligation cast on the local education authority was cast by this subsection. He could not discuss under this Amendment why the facilities proposed to be given were unreal, but unless he got a much more definite assurance from the Government on the points raised by himself and other speakers, he maintained that the right of entry was absolutely ineffective. Why he objected to subsection (1) was that it did not cast the duty on the local authority to say that religious instruction was to be given within the council schools. Under the Poor Law Acts and the Industrial School Acts it was provided that where the parent had proved himself unfit to give his child religious instruction, the local authority was forced, at the expense of the State, to say that the child was to receive proper religious instruction according to the denomination to which the parents belonged. But here, in the case of a parent who had proved himself to be a good parent, when he sent his child to a Church school, they proposed to hedge that right round to an extent which, the Committee would agree with him made those facilities ineffective. He prayed the Government to put in this subsection words which would make it the distinctive duty of the local education authority to render the right of entry effective.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

said he wished to make an appeal to the Committee. On the previous day they discussed Clause 1, which embodied what the Church was expected to give up in connection with this Bill. This clause embodied some proposals which were intended to benefit the Church, but in its present shape, he thought it would be admitted, after the speech of his right hon. friend the Member for East Worcestershire, that there were many points which were ambiguous and required alteration and modification. Was it too much to ask that they should have an opportunity of hearing what the Government were prepared to concede in the way of giving greater precision to the clause, so as to allow the Committee to get at the bottom of what their intention really was? The night would be finished otherwise before they got to those details.

MR. ATHERLEY-JONES (Durham, N. W.)

said he was very reluctant to take part in the debate, and he could assure the right hon. Gentleman that he would not stand for more than a minute or two between him and the discussion of those matters which he very properly pointed out were interesting to the party which he represented. He was reluctant to take any part in the debate because he felt that this was a bargain entered into between the Nonconformists on the one hand and the members of the Church of England on the other, and because he associated himself with the views which had been largely expressed on the other side of the House below the gangway. He was in favour of a secular system of education, and therefore he felt he was an outsider in this matter, and that he had no right to intervene. But he could not help recalling the fact that he was the representative of a great Nonconformist constituency in the North of England, and he felt that it was due to his constituents to state briefly his view of this so-called compromise as it was effected by the Bill. As a Churchman he acquiesced in the compromise, qua Churchman. He had followed the debate that afternoon, especially the speeches delivered from the other side of the House, and what had impressed him was the absolute unreality of the criticisms which had been made against this clause; that the whole feeling of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition and those who agreed with him was one of profound dissatisfaction with the entire scope and purport of the Bill. He went further, and said that this Bill was a source of mixed gratification and dislike to the Church of England. He would go still further and say that were he a Nonconformist, which he was not, he should oppose this measure to the utmost of all his powers. He quite appreciated the spirit of his hon. friend who represented a Welsh constituency, because he believed that the Bill from a Church point of view could be and would be made unworkable in Wales. He thought that the local education authorities had under the Bill certain resources which would enable them to defeat what was intended by it. But in England the position was totally different. In England the great bulk of the local authorities who controlled the education of the children would be in sympathy with rather than antagonistic to the Church. The facilities given to the denominations of having access to the schools for denominational instruction to the children would, he believed, be made as facile as possible. This was called a compromise, and he had always been taught that a compromise was necessarily founded on some bilateral arrangement. But he would point out that he was unable to find—and he challenged the Leader of the Opposition to indicate—in what single respect this presumed compromise did not deal entirely in favour of the Church of England and against the Nonconformists. He did not want to indulge in generalities, but he asked what the elements of a compromise were to be? They were going to give up in single-school areas the whole denominational teaching.

MR. J. W. WILSON (Worcestershire N.)

inquired if it was in order for the hon. and learned Gentleman to refer to these matters. They wanted to get on with the rest of the clause.

THE CHAIRMAN

said the hon. and learned Gentleman was certainly allowing himself very great latitude. He was listening to what he said, and so far as he could see he had been on his feet five minutes and he had not really approached the subsection they were discussing.

MR. ATHERLEY-JONES

said he was sorry that was the case. He understood this subsection to involve the questions as to whether or not in the provided schools this instruction was to be given. Of course, he bowed to the Chairman's decision, but he conceived that he was justified in pointing out what he thought to be the radical defect in this measure. He quite appreciated the motives of his hon. friend's intervention, and would not say more than this, that with regard to what he conceived to be the paramount effect of this section it was contended that the Nonconformists gained public control over every school in a single-school area, but that was accompanied by this curious anomaly, that in single-school areas the existing teachers were still to be allowed to teach dogmatic religion.

THE CHAIRMAN

said that did not arise on this subsection. All that this subsection did was to say that in the circumstances described the accommodation should be available. Another subsection dealt with the teacher.

MR. ATHERLEY-JONES

said he thought on this subsection it was competent for him, in accordance with the trend of the debates hitherto, to review the whole purport of the section. Previous speakers had dealt with the whole clause, and not with a single detached department of it. In view of the Chairman's ruling, however, he would bring his observations to a conclusion. Hon. Members on that side of the House must not imagine that he was speaking in any spirit of antagonism to the Government. He was desirous of seeing a modus vivendi, although he was precluded on this part of the discussion from stating his opinions. The allowing of the Church to have the right of access to provided schools was an invasion of that which had lasted for nearly forty years with the greatest advantage to the cause of education, and speaking as a Liberal, and as one who represented a Nonconformist constituency and sympathised with the Nonconformist attitude on this question, he for his part, although he gave the fullest credit to his right hon. friend for his desire to bring this controversy to a peaceful conclusion, could not help expressing his profound regret, which he was sure was echoed not only by Nonconformists, but by all those who loved education, that this solution of the question had been proposed by a Liberal Government.

MR. RUNCIMAN

joined in the appeal of the Leader of the Opposition that the Committee should at once come to a decision on the Amendment. They had had a general debate on the subsection, and sometimes they had wandered over the other subsections in the clause, and it was necessary and desirable to come to a decision. There was no difference of opinion between the two sides on the main object of the Bill. They wanted to provide for a real right of entry, about which there was no doubt or suspicion, and it was only about the details of the Bill that there was any doubt. He hoped the Committee would come to a decision on this subsection, and then they could get on to the other subsections.

MR. SUMMERBELL (Sunderland)

was rather surprised at the appeal by the Leader of the Opposition to bring this discussion to a close, considering that this particular Amendment emanated from his own side of this House. He was not aware that anyone had spoken from those benches as to the right of entry. For the fourth time they were discussing the question of the religious welfare of the workman's child, and he wished to say, as a workman whose children attended a public elementary school and as a Churchman, that he was just as anxious to have this question settled as any hon. Member in the House, but he was not going to assent to its being settled if the settlement proved to be inefficient from an educational standpoint. There were people who said they had discussed the religious well-being of the workman's child too long, and had neglected the other educational interests of the children from a mental and physical point of view, and therefore he believed if they could have a peaceful and honourable settlement of this question, he and his friends would not stand in the way. But he ventured to think they were not going to have a peaceful settlement by this particular Bill. Instead of having peace in the public elementary schools under this Bill, he ventured to assert that they were going to have confusion and discord. As one whose children attended public elementary schools he had never yet heard of religious differences inside those schools, although they certainly had a good deal of talk by eminent clerics whom he respected. But this was a parent's question as well as a cleric's question, and he joined with the hon. Gentleman who said that the two people principally affected had not been consulted, viz., the parents and the teachers. He ventured to think that if they gave a right of entry to all the various denominations to teach their particular creeds they would not bring about that education of the children that they desired to see, and that they would spread the confusion and discord to which he had referred. But if there was going to be a settlement of the question he must admit that they had to give fair play to all the creeds and denominations if they once conceded the right of entry. He appealed to the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill not to relax in any way what he had settled with regard to the demand of the parents to have a religious education for their children. He ventured to say that, if the right hon. Gentleman insisted that the parents must apply for the religious education of their children, in two or three years he would have his eyes opened, and would realise as far as the parents were concerned that they were not so excited or animated with regard to these religious differences as they were led to believe in the House. He hoped, therefore, if they were to have this concession as to the right of entry, that the right hon. Gentleman would adhere to the form that he had set up that the parents must make the necessary application. As to the clergymen, he

knew clergymen of all denominations, and he did not think they were so enthusiastic as to turn out every morning to go down to the schools to give religious education. He ventured to think that their eyes would be opened from that standpoint also, and that the clergymen were not so keen as they were led to believe they would be to give this religious education to the children. In conclusion, for himself, and he thought for his colleagues, he looked with suspicion upon this concession of the right of entry, and he thought that in order to prevent that peace in council schools which now existed being disturbed, he must go into the division lobby and vote against this particular part of the clause.

Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes, 239: Noes, 46. (Division List No. 423.)

AYES.
Acland, Francis Dyke	Castlereagh, Viscount	Gardner, Ernest
Acland-Hood, Rt. Hn Sir Alex. F	Causton, Rt. Hn. Richard Knight	Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West)
Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R.	Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)	Gladstone, Rt. Hn Herbert John
Agnew, George William	Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. J. A. (Worc	Glen-Coats, Sir T.(Renfrew, W.)
Anson, Sir William Reynell	Chance, Frederick William	Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)
Armitage, R.	Cleland, J. W.	Gooch, Henry Cubitt (Peckham)
Ashley, W. W.	Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E.	Grant, Corrie
Asquith, Rt. Hn. Herbert Henry	Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)	Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston)
Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hn. Sir H.	Corbett, C H (Sussex, E. Grinst'd	Gulland, John W.
Baker, Joseph A. (Finsbury, E.)	Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Harcourt, Rt. Hn. L. (Rossendale
Balfour, Rt. Hn. A. J. (City Lond.)	Cotton, Sir H. J. S.	Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)
Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Courthope, G. Loyd	Hardy, George A. (Suffolk)
Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)	Cox, Harold	Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashford
Baring, Capt. Hn. G. (Winchester	Craik, Sir Henry	Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worc'r.)
Barker, Sir John	Crossley, William J.	Harrison-Broadley, H. B.
Barlow, Percy (Bedford)	Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)	Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)
Beach, Hn. Michael Hugh Hicks	Davies, M. Vaughan (Cardigan)	Hay, Hon. Claude George
Beale, W. P.	Davies, Timothy (Fulham)	Helmsley, Viscount
Beckett, Hon. Gervase	Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S)	Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon., S.)
Benn, W. (T'w'r Hamlets, S. Geo)	Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P.	Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)
Bennett, E. N.	Dixon-Hartland, Sir Fred Dixon	Hill, Sir Clement
Berridge, T. H. D.	Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-	Hills, J. W.
Bertram, Julius	Duncan, J. H. (York, Otley)	Hobart, Sir Robert
Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)	Duncan, Robert (Lanark, Govan	Hobhouse, Charles E. H.
Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine	Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall	Holland, Sir William Henry
Bowles, G. Stewart	Edwards, Enoch (Hanley)	Holt, Richard Durning
Bramsdon, T. A.	Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor)	Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)
Branch, James	Ellis, Rt. Hon. John Edward	Hope, W. Bateman (Somerset, N)
Bridgeman, W. Clive	Erskine, David C.	Horniman, Emslie John
Brigg, John	Essex, R. W.	Houston, Robert Paterson
Bright, J. A.	Evans, Sir Samuel T.	Howard, Hon. Geoffrey
Brodie, H. C.	Everett, R. Lacey	Hyde, Clarendon
Brunner, J. F. L. (Lancs., Leigh)	Faber, G. H. (Boston)	Idris, T. H. W.
Brunner, Rt. Hn Sir J. T. (Cheshire	Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.)	Illingworth, Percy H.
Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn	Fardell, Sir T. George	Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)
Bull, Sir William James	Ferens, T. R.	Jones, Leif (Appleby)
Butcher, Samuel Henry	Fiennes, Hon. Eustace	Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)
Byles, William Pollard	Findlay, Alexander	Kearley, Sir Hudson E.
Cameron, Robert	Fletcher, J. S.	Kennaway, Rt. Hn. Sir John H.
Carlile, E. Hildred	Forster, Henry William	Kerry, Earl of
Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Fuller, John Michael F.	King, Sir Henry Seymour (Hull)
Laidlaw, Robert	Pearson, W. H. M. (Suffolk, Eye)	Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)
Lambert, George	Percy, Earl	Tennant, Sir Edward (Salisbury
Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm.	Pollard, Dr.	Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)
Lamont, Norman	Powell, Sir Francis Sharp	Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)
Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich)	Price, C. E. (Edinb'gh, Central)	Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.)
Layland-Barratt, Sir Francis	Price, Sir Robert J.(Norfolk, E.)	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton
Lewis, John Herbert	Priestley, W. E. B. (Bradford, E.)	Toulmin, George
Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David	Pullar, Sir Robert	Trevelyan, Charles Philips
Lockwood, Rt. Hn. Lt.-Col. A. R.	Rees, J. D.	Ure, Alexander
Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred	Rendall, Athelstan	Valentia, Viscount
MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh	Renton, Leslie	Verney, F. W.
Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk B'ghs)	Ridsdale, E. A.	Vivian, Henry
Mackarness, Frederic C.	Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)	Walker, H. De D. (Leicester)
Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.	Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs.)	Walton, Joseph
M'Callum, John M.	Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)	Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid)
M'Crae, Sir George	Robinson, S.	Wardle, George J.
M'Micking, Major G.	Robson, Sir William Snowdon	Waring, Walter
Magnus, Sir Philip	Rogers, F. E. Newman	Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.
Mallet, Charles E.	Ronaldshay, Earl of	Wason, Rt. Hn. E (Clackmannan
Marnham, F. J.	Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry)	Samuel, Rt. Hn. H. L. (Cleveland)	Waterlow, D. S.
Massie, J.	Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde)	Watt, Henry A.
Mildmay, Francis Bingham	Seaverns, J. H.	Wedgwood, Josiah C.
Molteno, Percy Alport	Seely, Colonel	Whitbread, Howard
Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)	Shaw, Sir Charles Edw. (Stafford)	Whitehead, Rowland
Morrell, Philip	Shaw, Rt. Hn. T. (Hawick B.)	Wiles, Thomas
Morse, L. L.	Sheffield, Sir Berkeley George D.	Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarthen
Morton, Alpheus Cleophas	Sinclair, Rt. Hon. John	Williamson, A.
Myer, Horatio	Soares, Ernest J.	Willoughby de Eresby, Lord
Napier, T. B.	Spicer, Sir Albert	Wills, Arthur Walters
Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncastr	Stanier, Beville	Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.)
Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)	Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N.W.)	Wilson, J. H. (Middlesbrough)
Nield, Herbert	Stanley, Hn. A. Lyulph (Chesh.)	Wilson, J. W. (Worcestersh. N.)
Norton, Capt. Cecil William	Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal)	Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.)
Nussey, Thomas Willans	Stone, Sir Benjamin	Wood, T. M'Kinnon
Nuttall, Harry	Strachey, Sir Edward	Wortley, Dt. Hn. C. B. Stuart-
Parkes, Ebenezer	Straus, B. S. (Mile End)
Paul, Herbert	Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr.
Paulton, James Mellor	Stuart, James (Sunderland)	Joseph Pease and Master of
Pearce, William (Limehouse)	Talbot, Rt. Hn. J. G. (Oxf'd Univ.	Elibank.
NOES.
Bowerman, C. W.	Hodge, John	Scott, A. H. (Ashton under Lyne
Channing, Sir Francis Allston	Hudson, Walter	Shackleton, David James
Clough, William	Hutton, Alfred Eddison	Sloan, Thomas Henry
Cobbold, Felix Thornley	Jenkins, J.	Snowden, P.
Cory, Sir Clifford John	Johnson, John (Gateshead)	Steadman, W. C.
Cross, Alexander	Kekewich, Sir George	Stewart, Halley (Greenock)
Curran, Peter Francis	Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Summerbell, T.
Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles	Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)	Taylor, John W. (Durham)
Doughty, Sir George	Macpherson, J. T.	Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr)
Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter	Maddison, Frederick	Thorne, William (West Ham)
Fullerton, Hugh	Middlemore, John Throgmorton	Williams, J. (Glamorgan)
Glendinning, R. G.	Radford, G. H.	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Glover, Thomas	Renwick, George
Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)	Richards, T. F.(Wolverh'mpt'n	TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Mr.
Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil	Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)	Hazel and Mr. Pickersgill.
Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E	Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)
Haslam, James (Derbyshire)	Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)

MR. HUTTON (Yorkshire, W. R., Morley)

said the Amendment he now proposed to move would have the effect of limiting the privilege the Committee had just conceded to the transferred voluntary schools. The right of entry should not be extended to the council schools of the country, those schools which had grown up in the land in which no kind of denominational teaching had ever been given. Hereafter denominational teaching of any kind should be confined to the transferred voluntary schools. He supposed the granting of this right of entry was a part of a larger scheme, that it was part of a bargain and did not stand by itself. He had often heard that in that bargain the Nonconformists had given up something in permitting this right of entry into the council schools; but the Nonconformists had no right to give up anything. It was not in the province of the Nonconformists as such to yield this privilege of right of entry into the elementary schools. They were State schools, the property was State property, the schools were organised and maintained by the State, and it was wrong to say that this concession had been made by the Nonconformists. He had never claimed that the Nonconformists as such had any special rights in the council schools. Cowper-Temple teaching was not Nonconformist. It was inserted in the Act of 1870 in order to please the Conservative party, and he noticed whenever there was any chance of its disappearing the Archbishop of Canterbury came forward and stipulated that it should continue to be given in the schools. Cowper-Temple teaching had not, and never had been, in any sense Nonconformist teaching, and the Nonconformists as such had no right to give this concession. From a letter which appeared in the Manchester Guardian on the previous day it would be seen that the Bishop of St. Asaph did not regard this Bill as sufficient. The Bishop of St. Asaph required more facilities for contracting out, a more extended rent for the schools to be transferred, and other conditions added to it. His own fear was that the Government had conceded this right of entry into the council schools without there being any prospect that this would be an end of the difficulty. Already more was being demanded. The hands of his right hon. friend were tied, but those of the Bishop of St. Asaph and of the Archbishop of Canterbury were not, and already those gentlemen were coming forward and saying they must have more. He thought he had shown that these negotiations had not been altogether wisely carried on by the representatives of the Government. The terms of settlement would never have been assented to by his right hon. friend but for one thing, that they were to have educational peace. Was this kind of right of entry into the council schools of the country to bring educational peace? They were going to destroy the unity of the schools, they were going to destroy simplicity of administration. By Clause 1, not a word of which had been discussed, they had made the teaching of religion absolutely compulsory, and added to that was the right of the parent to require religious instruction for his children. They were to have a division of scholars into the sheep and the goats; but more than that, they would also have trouble outside the schools. They were certain to have canvassing of the parents. Did his right hon. friend look at that prospect with equanimity? There was another right of entry which the parents had gained, and it was in connection with free education. Free education was impossible to a great many parents because the only school in their district charged a fee. There was no alternative school within reach, and the only right was the right to demand a free place for a child. But that very rarely succeeded. He remembered one instance where the fathers wanted free education for their children, and a number of them banded together for the purpose of achieving their object. No sooner had they presented their petition for free education than the curates went to the mothers, who signed another petition to the authorities asking them to refuse the free education asked for by their husbands. Now, they were certain to have this kind of canvassing. They were inviting it. They would certainly have the clerical interest at once set to work to get up a petition by the fathers or mothers, whichever were the more easily persuaded, to demand this right for themselves and their children inside the public elementary schools. Frankly, he thought he would rather have a Church school in the village than have put upon the parents the difficulty of having to refuse the request of the clergy to demand facilities in the schools for religious teaching. Social boycott was absolutely certain to follow refusal. What was to happen in the village where at present there was only a council school? At any rate there was peace there now, but were they going to have it in the future? Wherever they had church schools or council schools they were introducing educational warfare and social warfare as well. He deplored the result of the proposals of his right hon. friend. Who was going to enjoy this right of entry? The parents were going to have the right to demand a special kind of religious instruction. Was it to be limited to the Roman Catholics, and the Church of England, and certain Nonconformists? There was a church called the Labour Church. Had the parents who were members of that the right to demand for their children special religious instruction? The hon. Member for Oxford University was anxious about the way in which the council schools would be used on Sundays. He remembered a little more than a year ago his catechising the First Lord of the Admiralty about the use of council schools on Sundays for the instruction of children in Socialistic doctrines. Take the Labour Church. Were parents who were members of that church to have the right to demand for their children special religious instruction? What kind of religious instruction would it be? Were they opening the door to catechisms of all kinds, political and religious as well? He saw no reason why they were not. He saw no sign in that clause of educational peace. On the contrary, he saw great difficulty, canvassing, and boycotting. Lord Londonderry said this proposal had "neither practicability nor popularity," and when the right hon. Gentleman opposite had charge of the Education Bill of 1902 they all knew what his opinion was. He said it was an idea greatly favoured, but he did not think it was possible to put it into force. He failed to see why one man was allowed to steal the horse while another man was not allowed to look over the hedge. His hon. right friend opposite must marvel now at his own moderation in 1902 in this respect. He thought that the case made on the proposal in 1902 ought not to be given away by the present Government, and he hoped that even yet they would have his right hon. friend announcing, when he came to find himself under the pressure of the Archbishops and the Bishops to give further securities, that he had already gone beyond what he thought were the limits of the case. He forbore quoting his right hon. friends on the Treasury bench. He could quote them all, but he thought it rather a humiliating position when a whole Government could be quoted in a sense contrary to the principles of their Bill, and contrary to one of its main provisions. It was said that the Bill was to bring peace. On the contrary he thought that the Bill would do more harm to education and religion than any other proposal that he had known any Government to make itself responsible for since he had been in the House.

Amendment proposed— In page 2, lines 20 and 21, to leave out the words 'public elementary school provided by the local education authority,' and to insert the words 'transferred voluntary school.'"—(Mr. Hutton.)

Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the clause."

MR. RUNCIMAN

said he made no complaint against his hon. friend for the speech which he had just delivered. It was exactly what one might have expected from him, for he was nothing if he was not consistent, though he was consistent to the point of being impracticable. The hon. Gentleman would rather be consistent than see anything done for the parents who now had to send their children to the village schools. He would rather be consistent than free the teachers who, in those village schools, were subject to religious tests; and there, he must say, he parted company with his hon. friend. He thought the advantage of freeing these village schools and teachers was so great that they were justified now in giving away the power which they possessed of exclusion from all the council schools of the country. His hon. friend said that his hands were already tied, and had practically suggested that the representatives of the English Church had got the better of him in this bargain. As he understood, there were some Members in the House who thought it was he who had got the better of the representatives of the Church in this bargain. He was inclined to think that when both sides complained, the Government could not be very far wrong. He did not object to his hon. friend making references to some of the speeches made by Ministers in the past against the right of entry. But it should be remembered that the right of entry which was then spoken of was a right of entry put forward as a distinct act of agression. They were not offered anything by the other side, and they were not to gain control by the council of a single parish school. But the case was now entirely changed, and they had a distinct and substantial offer made. He was quite sure that hon. Gentlemen opposite would not for one moment say that the offer made by the Church was not a substantial offer. His hon. friend drew a lugubrious picture of the facilities in operation. He said that in most cases there would be canvassing among the parents to send their children to these schools. They must all admit that there had been clergymen in the past, and there might be now, who had abused their position, but this would not enable them to abuse it any more than they had abused it in the past. Did his hon. friend suggest that he could prohibit the vicar of a parish from visiting his parishioners? If the vicar of a parish abused his position, he presumed there were ways of dealing with him. After all, the vicar of a parish had not altogether a very easy task. In many parishes the vicar would find it difficult to carry on Church work if he abused his position. He would gain for himself unpopularity in his own parish, and he might throw up the sponge at once because his work for good there would be absolutely gone. He did not say there might not be cases where pressure was brought to bear

on the parents of children quite unjustifiably. He quite admitted that many parents might submit, but he doubted very much, if this settlement went through, that they would find the system abused. After all, they must remember the altered temper which existed in relation to matters of education. During the whole of this controversy in the past, each side had been in its trenches, and each had fired on the other whenever it got a chance, but neither had ever left its trenches. The local administration of the country had been coloured by the controversy, and, as he had said on previous occasions, coloured to the detriment of education. If this settlement went through, as he hoped it would, it would give satisfaction to the great body of administrators, and to those who sent their children to the schools. They would have in the whole of the constituencies of the country, in the county councils and the borough councils, a feeling of amity which had not been known in educational matters for ten years past; and the only justification he had for asking his hon. friend's support of the right of entry into council schools was that it was a bargain, and they could not expect at this hour the Church to fulfil her part of the bargain if they adopted the advice of his hon. friend and withheld the very thing which she regarded as one of the most treasured items.

Question put.

The Committee divided:—Ayes, 273; Noes, 56. (Division List No. 424.)

AYES.
Acland-Hood, Rt Hn. Sir Alex. F	Beaumont, Hon. Hubert	Byles, William Pollard
Agnew, George William	Beckett, Hon. Gervase	Cameron, Robert
Anson, Sir William Reynell	Benn, W.(T'w'r Hamlets, S. Geo.	Carlile, E. Hildred
Armitage, R.	Berridge, T. H. D.	Carr-Gomm, H. W.
Ashley, W. W.	Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine	Castlereagh, Viscount
Asquith, Rt. Hn. Herbert Henry	Bowles, G. Stewart	Causton, Rt. Hn. Richard Knight
Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hn. Sir H.	Bramsdon, T. A.	Cave, George
Baker, Joseph A. (Finsbury, E.)	Branch, James	Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)
Baldwin, Stanley	Bridgeman, W. Clive	Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)
Balfour, Rt Hn. A. J.(City Lond.)	Brigg, John	Chamberlain, Rt Hn. J. A.(Wore
Balfour, Robert (Lanark)	Bright, J. A.	Chance, Frederick William
Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Brocklehurst, W. B.	Cleland, J. W.
Banner, John S. Harmood	Brodie, H. C.	Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E.
Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)	Brooke, Stopford	Collins, Sir Wm. J.(S. Pancras, W
Baring, Capt. Hn. G (Winchester	Brunner, J. F. L. (Lancs., Leigh)	Corbett, C H(Sussex, E. Grinst'd
Barker, Sir John	Brunner, Rt Hn Sir J. T(Cheshire	Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.
Barlow, Percy (Bedford)	Bryce, J. Annan	Cotton, Sir H. J. S.
Barnard, E. B.	Buckmaster, Stanley O.	Courthope, G. Loyd
Barran, Rowland Hirst	Bull, Sir William James	Cox, Harold
Beach, Hn. Michael Hugh Hicks	Butcher, Samuel Henry	Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)
Beale, W. P.	Buxton, Rt. Hn. Sydney Charles	Craik, Sir Henry
Cross, Alexander	King, Sir Henry Seymour (Hull)	Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter
Crossley, William J.	Laidlaw, Robert	Salter, Arthur Clavell
Dalziel, Sir James Henry	Lambert, George	Samuel, Rt. Hn. H. L. (Cleveland
Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)	Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm	Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde)
Davies, Timothy (Fulham)	Lamont, Norman	Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)
Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.	Lane-Fox, G. R.	Sears, J. E.
Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P.	Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich)	Seaverns, J. H.
Dixon-Hartland, Sir Fred Dixon	Layland-Barratt, Sir Francis	Seely, Colonel
Dobson, Thomas W.	Lehmann, R. C.	Shaw, Sir Charles Edw. (Stafford
Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-	Lewis, John Herbert	Shaw, Rt. Hon. T. (Hawick B.)
Duckworth, Sir James	Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David	Sheffield, Sir Berkeley George D.
Duncan, J. H. (York, Otley)	Lockwood. Rt. Hn. Lt.-Col. A. R.	Sinclair, Rt. Hon. John
Duncan, Robert (Lanark, Govan	Lowe, Sir Francis William	Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie
Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall	Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred	Smith, Hon. W. F. D. (Strand)
Edwards, Enoch (Hanley)	MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh	Soares, Ernest J.
Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor)	Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk B'ghs	Spicer, Sir Albert
Ellis, Rt. Hon. John Edward	Mackarness, Frederic C.	Stanier, Beville
Erskine, David C.	Maclean, Donald	Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N. W.)
Essex, R. W.	Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.	Stanley, Hn. A. Lyulph (Chesh.)
Everett, R. Lacey	M'Arthur, Charles	Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal)
Faber, G. H. (Boston)	M'Callum, John M.	Stone, Sir Benjamin
Fell, Arthur	M'Crae, Sir George	Strachey, Sir Edward
Ferens, T. R.	M'Micking, Major G.	Straus, B. S. (Mile End)
Fiennes, Hon. Eustace	Magnus, Sir Philip	Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)
Findlay, Alexander	Mallet, Charles E.	Stuart, James (Sunderland)
Fletcher, J. S.	Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston)	Sutherland, J. E.
Forster, Henry William	Marks, H. H. (Kent)	Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)
Fuller, John Michael F.	Marnham, F. J.	Talbot, Rt. Hn. J. G. (Oxf'd Univ.
Gardner, Ernest	Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry)	Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)
Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West)	Massie, J.	Tennant, Sir Edward (Salisbury
Gladstone, Rt Hn. Herbert John	Micklem, Nathaniel	Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)
Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford	Mildmay, Francis Bingham	Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)
Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)	Molteno, Percy Alport	Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.)
Gooch, Henry Cubitt (Peckham)	Mond, A.	Thomson, W. Mitchell-(Lanark)
Goulding, Edward Alfred	Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton
Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston)	Morpeth, Viscount	Tomkinson, James
Gulland, John W.	Morrell, Philip	Toulmin, George
Harcourt, Rt. Hn. L. (Rossendale	Morrison-Bell, Captain	Trevelyan, Charles Philips
Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose	Morse, L. L.	Ure, Alexander
Hardy, George A. (Suffolk)	Myer, Horatio	Valentia, Viscount
Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashf'rd	Napier, T. B.	Verney, F. W.
Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worc'r)	Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw)	Vivian, Henry
Harrison-Broadley, H. B.	Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncast'r	Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid)
Hart-Davies, T.	Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)	Wardle, George J.
Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)	Norton, Capt. Cecil William	Waring, Walter
Haslam, James (Derbyshire)	Nussey, Thomas Willans	Warner, Thomas Courtenay T-
Hay, Hon. Claude George	Nuttall, Harry	Wason, Rt. Hn. E (Clackmannan
Helme, Norval Watson	Parkes, Ebenezer	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Helmsley, Viscount	Paul, Herbert	Waterlow, D. S.
Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon., S.)	Pearce, William (Limehouse)	Watt, Henry A.
Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)	Percy, Earl	Wedgwood, Josiah C.
Hill, Sir Clement	Philipps, Col.Ivor (S'thampton)	Whitbread, Howard
Hills, J. W.	Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.	White, J. Dundas (Dumbart'nsh.
Hobart, Sir Robert	Powell, Sir Francis Sharp	Wiles, Thomas
Hobhouse, Charles E. H.	price, C. E. (Edinb'gh, Central)	Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarthen
Holland, Sir William Henry	Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)	Williamson, A.
Holt, Richard Durning	Priestley, W. E. B. (Bradford, E.)	Willoughby de Eresby, Lord
Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)	Rainy, A. Rolland	Wills, Arthur Walters
Hope, W. Bateman (Somerset, N	Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel	Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.)
Horniman, Emslie John	Rea, Russell (Gloucester)	Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)
Houston, Robert Paterson	Rees, J. D.	Wilson, J. H. (Middlesbrough)
Howard, Hon. Geoffrey	Remnant, James Farquharson	Wilson, J. W. (Worcestersh. N.)
Idris, T. H. W.	Rendall, Athelstan	Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.)
Illingworth, Percy H.	Ridsdale, E. A.	Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm
Isaacs, Rufus Daniel	Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)	Wood, T. M'Kinnon
Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)	Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs.)	Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-
Jones, Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea	Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)
Jones, Leif (Appleby)	Robinson, S.	TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr. Joseph Pease and Master of Elibank.
Jones, William (Carnarvonahire	Robson, Sir William Snowdon
Kearley, Sir Hudson E.	Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)
Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir John H.	Rogers, F. E. Newman
Kerry, Earl of	Ronaldshay, Earl of

NOES.
Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R.	Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)	Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)
Bethell, Sir J. H. (Essex, Romf'rd	Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil)	Rowlands, J.
Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)	Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E.	Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)
Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Hazel, Dr. A. E.	Scott, A. H. (Ashton under Lyne
Channing, Sir Francis Allston	Hodge, John	Seddon, J.
Clough, William	Hudson, Walter	Shackleton, David James
Clynes, J. R.	Hunt, Rowland	Sloan, Thomas Henry
Cobbold, Felix Thornley	Jacoby, Sir James Alfred	Snowden, P.
Cory, Sir Clifford John	Jenkins, J.	Steadman, W. C.
Crooks, William	Johnson, John (Gateshead)	Stewart, Halley (Greenock)
Curran, Peter Francis	Jowett, F. W.	Summerbell, T.
Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles	Kekewich, Sir George	Taylor, John W. (Durham)
Doughty, Sir George	Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)	Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr
Edwards, Clement (Denbigh)	Macpherson, J. T.	Thorne, William (West Ham)
Fenwick, Charles	Maddison, Frederick	Walsh, Stephen
Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter	Money, L. G. Chiozza	Williams, J. (Glamorgan)
Fullerton, Hugh	Pickersgill, Edward Hare	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Gill, A. H.	Radford, G. H.
Glendinning, R. G.	Renwick, George	TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Mr.
Glover, Thomas	Richards, T. F. (Wolverh'mpt'n	Hutton and Mr. Yoxall.

MR. WEDGWOOD (Newcastle-under-Lyme)

who had given notice of his intention to move to insert after the word 'authority' the words 'disapproves of, or is dissatisfied with, on conscientious grounds the religious instruction which It is open to the local education authority to give in accordance with subsection 2 of section 14 of The Elementary Education Act, 1870, and in consequence" said: I gather that my Amendment cannot be accepted, and that it would upset the nice equipoise of the Bill. I do not, therefore, move.

SIR FRANCIS POWELL

in moving to leave out the word, 'desires,' and insert the words 'expresses a desire that,' said a parent applying for special instruction or his child was put to considerable trouble, Inconvenience, and delay. He would repeat the question he had put a few moments ago, whether it was intended that these regulations should be issued at once on the authority of the Education Department, or whether they were to be laid on the Table of the House with opportunities for discussing them during a reasonable number of weeks. He hoped the latter course would be adopted, because it would give opportunity for consultation and discussion, and he believed it would facilitate the carrying out of the regulations. Knowing, as he did, something of the habits of the working classes in our manufacturing towns, he thought six weeks would be in many cases extremely inconvenient. The most worthy members of the class moved from one part of the town to another. Opportunities of work in a particular mill or factory varied from time to time and they were obliged to change their residence. He was quite sure they would feel it a very great hardship to be called upon to issue new applications on every occasion. These points were really of very great importance. He wished to remove doubts and to say something which might conduce to such modifications of these regulations as might procure their more effective working.

Amendment proposed— In page 2, line 21, to leave out the word 'desires,' and insert the words' expresses a desire that.'"—(Sir Francis Powell.)

Question proposed, "That the word 'desires' stand part of the clause."

THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (Mr. TEEVELYAN,) Yorkshire, W.R., Elland

said the Government had no objection to accepting this Amendment. It appeared in effect to be a verbal Amendment and expressed perhaps a little more clearly the object they had in view. The Prime Minister had made it perfectly clear that these regulations were only put forward as a draft with a view to seeing what the authorities of the Church thought of them. With regard to the term of six weeks before the commencement of the school, he wished to make it clear what the Minister for Education intended. It was thought that there should be full opportunity for the facilities being started at the beginning of the term. There was a Vacation of four weeks before one of the terms, and the idea was that the parents should express their desire for facilities by giving an announcement of their desire before the last term came to a conclusion. The Government felt it would very likely be preferred that this request should be made a week before the term started, and they simply put forward the period named as their first proposal. If they gathered that it was the opinion of hon. Gentlemen opposite and the authorities in the Church that it would be simpler and more satisfactory to have a shorter period the Government would be ready to accept that general view, and make the regulations in accordance with the general desire of those parents who wished to have the facilities.

MR. LYTTELTON (St. George's, Hanover Square)

said the point which he thought was of great importance was that the desire to be expressed by the parents for Cowper-Temple religion and for special religion should be expressed identically in the same manner. It was most undesirable from his point of view that there should be any difference in the manner of expressing the desire of the parent for Cowper-Temple teaching and for special religious teaching. As the Bill stood at the present moment no method of expressing the desire of the parent was laid down, although it was mandatory upon the authority to set aside for three-quarters of an hour the school for Cowper-Temple teaching for the children whose parents desired that they should receive that instruction. There was no provision at all as to how that desire was to be expressed or ascertained. Did the Government presume that intention, or, if no desire was expressed, would the child be obliged to have secular education? Subsection (b) of Section 1 set aside for three-quarters of an hour the school for Cowper-Temple teaching, but it enacted that that teaching should be given to those parents who desired the children to receive that instruction. No provision was made in the Bill prescribing the mode by which the desire; of the parent was to be expressed or how it was to be ascertained by the local authority. He wished to know specifically if no desire was expressed one way or the other, would Cowper-Temple instruction be given to the child automatically? If that were so, he submitted with great respect that it was not right that, in the absence of any express desire for Cowper-Temple instruction, that instruction should be taught as a matter of form. Obviously what was fair was that the expression of both desires should be in the same form, and should not be influenced in the smallest degree by the procedure of the local education authority. The Prime Minister had expressed his desire to treat both forms of religious teaching with absolute fairness and equality, and it was very important to obtain that result.

MR. RUNCIMAN

did not know whether this point was quite germane to the Amendment, but in answer to the right hon. Gentleman he might say that they proposed, with regard to Cowper-Temple. teaching, to leave it in exactly the same position as it was now. It would be a very serious matter for the Government to disturb an arrangement which had stood good for thirty-eight years and. was well recognised by parents all over the country. They did not propose to make any change as regarded Cowper-Temple teaching.

LORD R. CECIL

said the Government on this point spoke as if this proposal was only to apply to council schools. If the principle of the right hon. Gentleman was to be observed—

THE CHAIRMAN

I allowed this question to be put, although I thought it was very doubtful whether it was in order. What the noble Lord is now doing is arguing upon something we have already disposed of upon Clause 1.

LORD R. CECIL

contended that he was not out of order because he was opposed to the Amendment of the hon. Member for Wigan, which seemed to him to increase the difference between the two-forms of religious instruction which already appeared in the Bill. He thought-he was entitled to reply to the Minister for Education who desired that a distinction should exist, and he had accepted the Amendment on the ground that it emphasised that point. On this Amendment he claimed that he was entitled to show why he did not desire any difference made between Cowper-Temple teaching and religious instruction of a different character. The Board of Education had justified the treatment of Cowper-Temple instruction differently in this respect from denominational religious teaching, because the right hon. Gentleman said that Cowper-Temple instruction had for thirty-eight years been the rule, and parents all over the country knew what their rights were in regard to it. That, however, was the reverse of the fact when they came to deal with transferred voluntary schools. He did not think it was a good argument even with reference to council schools, but it was clearly bad when they dealt with transferred voluntary schools. If the view of the right hon. Gentleman was to be carried out, what they ought to provide was that in every transferred voluntary school the old religious teaching should be given as a matter of course, and it should only be when the parents expressed a desire for Cowper-Templeism that they should get it in those schools. This seemed to him to be a really crucial question, and he thought it was a point on which they were entitled to test the reality of the facilities offered. Unless a real, fair, and unbiassed choice was given it would be, to use the expression of the hon. Member for North-West Ham, playing with loaded dice, and he desired that they should deal fairly and absolutely impartially between the two kinds of religious instruction. Unless that was the intention of the Government these facilities would be exactly as they were described by the hon. Member for Richmond, namely, a mere temporary salving of the consciences of Churchmen, which was intended to pass away, leaving a universal undenominational system of religious instruction throughout the country. The real question was were these facilities to be effective or not? He did not believe that the bishops and archbishops who had gone so lightly into these negotiations intended that Cowper-Temple religion should be given an advantage from the outset. He did not believe that was their intention now. They thought evidently that in these provisions—he did not think they were all familiar with the construction of Acts of Parliament—they had got a real, definite, and effective right of entry. Unless the two forms of religious instruction were treated impartially they had not got an impartial right of entry. He was asking for complete impartiality and not for anything new.

THE CHAIRMAN

I have been looking into the point of order. I do not see how this matter can be raised on this Amendment. I think, however, it can be raised on the Amendment standing in the name of the hon. Member for West St. Pancras.

LORD R. CECIL

said in that case he would not proceed with his remarks and he hoped the hon. Baronet would not press his Amendment.

MR. JAMES HOPE

urged his hon. friend not to press his Amendment.

SIR FRANCIS POWELL

said his desire was to make the provisions as to both teachings identical, but the course of the debate under the restrictions imposed had rendered it impossible to raise that issue, and there fore he would ask leave to withdraw his Amendment because it had already served the purpose he intended.

MR. FORSTER (Kent, Sevenoaks)

said that before leave was given to withdraw the Amendment he wished to invite the President of the Board of Education to give an answer to the point raised by his right hon. friend as to whether the form in which the parents' desire was to be expressed was really the same in regard to Cowper-Temple teaching as it was in regard to special religious teaching in the transferred schools. The right hon. Gentleman did not answer that point, and he hoped he would tell the Committee now whether they were to express their desire in the same form and language.

MR. RUNCIMAN

did not think it was necessary to follow up the point, because the hon. Member knew what happened now in regard to Cowper-Temple teaching. He was equally well aware that in voluntary schools on four days in the week and sometimes on three days in the week there was given what was almost identical with Cowper-Temple teaching in those schools. [Cries of "No."] It was proposed that in the transferred voluntary schools the education should be treated in the same way as before. The system would not he altered.

SIR WILLIAM ANSON Oxford University)

said the right hon. Gentleman had not put the matter in a very satisfactory way. Under the present arrangement as the law stood, the child attending a council school got Cowper-Temple teaching. The child who went to a voluntary school got automatically the religious teaching of the denomination to which the school belonged. It might very well be that ordinarily what might be called Christian teaching in certain Church schools would differ very materially from the teaching given in council schools. As he understood the right hon. Gentleman, it was proposed that Cowper-Temple teaching should be the normal teaching, and that the child should get it automatically whether the parent expressed any desire or not, but that in the case of other teaching there should be an expression of desire on the part of the parent. If the right hon. Gentleman meant that, he wished to call his attention to the fact that the Bill had not said so. The words of the first section did require that the parent should express a desire that his child should receive certain teaching. Hitherto there had been no requirement of any such expression on the part of the parent, and, therefore the first clause as it stood, did not express the intention of the right hon. Gentleman. The clause which they were discussing did not express what he and his friends wished to see expressed, and he would point out that the only way to solve the difficulty was to throw on the local education authority the onus of ascertaining what was the desire of the parent in every case in respect of the religious instruction to be given to his child.

Amendment negatived.

SIR W. J. COLLINS (St. Pancras, W.)

moved an Amendment providing that where the parent of any child in attendance at a public elementary school provided by the local education authority desired that child to receive religious instruction, the authority shall make available any accommodation in the schoolhouse which can reasonably be so made available. He admitted that this Amendment lost some of its point, because, on account of the falling of the guillotine (for which he did not vote) on the previous night, he had not been able to move an Amendment to Paragraph (b) of Clause 1, of which he had given notice, and which, if it had been carried, would have made the proposal symmetrical. His object was to secure perfect equality of treatment in respect of Cowper-Templeism and denominational religion, to draw no distinction as to the use of the school premises between the two. When the Bill of 1906 was before the House he voted for the Amendment proposed by the hon. Member for Burnley, which proposed that any religious instruction given in school premises should be outside the school curriculum, and not at the public expense. He desired to raise that question now, in so far as it could be raised on this Amendment. Those who objected to the right of entry founded their objection mainly on the fact that the religious instruction would be part of the school curriculum. A great deal of that objection would be removed if, while the use of the school premises was allowed for religious teaching, that teaching was apart from and not a part of the school curriculum provided at the public expense. He wished to draw no distinction, so far as the use of the school premises was concerned, between Cowper-Templeism and other religious instruction. That might be regarded as closely similar to what was spoken of as the secular solution, but now that so much deference was being paid to the wishes of the parent, in regard to religion it necessarily followed that the religious instruction ought to be given outside the compulsory curriculum of the school and at the expense of those who wished to have their religion taught. Students of Stuart Mill would remember that the reason he gave to justify the intervention of the State in the matter of education was that the case was not one in which the judgment of the consumer was a sufficient guarantee for the goodness of the commodity. In the particular case of religious instruction the judgment of the parent was now supposed to be a sufficient guarantee for the goodness of the commodity, and on the principle laid down by Mill this ought not therefore be a matter for State intervention, but ought to be dealt with outside the compulsory curriculum of the school. He saw no objection to the proposal that the granting of the use of the school premises should be obligatory on the local education authority, subject to the condition that the accommodation could reasonably be made available. At present school premises were let at almost nominal rentals for a great variety of purposes. In some cases they had been let for Socialist schools on Sunday, and if they were let for that purpose, he could not see why they should not be available outside of school hours for those children whose parents desired that they should receive instruction in accordance with the tenets which they held.

Amendment proposed— In page 2, line 21, to leave out from the word 'instruction,' to the word 'make,' in line 27, and to insert the words 'the authority shall.' "—(Sir W.J. Collins.)

Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out to the word 'that,' in line 22, stand part of the clause."

THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Sir W. ROBSON,) South Shields

said he recognised the importance of the Amendment, especially from the point of view of hon. Members opposite. But the issues were well understood. The question here was whether there should be any form of religious teaching which should operate normally in the schools. But the local authority could not tell to which of the various denominations in its district the parents wished to adhere, and the parent had to make a selection if he wished a special form of religious teaching to be given to his child. Did hon. Members opposite, who were most likely to support this Amendment, wish that a large number of parents who might be indifferent, apathetic, or careless should have no form of religious teaching automatically provided? He supposed that among the adherents of religious teaching there were many persons who would rather see some elementary form of religious instruction automatically provided, even though they might not agree with it or believe that it satisfied their wants. The effect of the Amendment would be to disestablish and disendow religious education in general, only leaving it applicable in cases where the parent was sufficiently in earnest about it to make a specific request. He did not think that this was exactly what hon. Members opposite meant, while on the point raised by the Amendment the Bill did make a distinction between Cowper-Templeism and other forms of religious instruction. His noble friend the Member for East Marylebone desired an explicit answer from the Government on the point. He thought that was reasonably clear on the face of the Bill itself. In Clause 2 power was given to the Board of Education to make regulations as to the manner in which the parent was to communicate with the local education authority. There was no such power in Clause 1. He thought that was a distinction. Did hon. Members really desire that there should be no distinction whatever between the normal religious teaching of the school and the teaching which required to be specified and particularly demanded in writing? It was a very remarkable tribute to the attitude of the community towards the provision in the Act of 1870 with regard to Cowper-Temple teaching. That provision had worked without complaint, without suspicion, without friction, and without difficulty throughout the country. He understood that only thirty local authorities in England and Wales did not adopt that provision. Why, then, should this rule be withdrawn? The Amendment, he thought, would put a novel and unnecessary impediment, though a slight one, to the giving of religious instruction, and he thought that on reflection the hon. Member would not consider that that was desirable. The Bill itself was founded on the assumption that there should be a form of religious teaching.

SIR WILLIAM ANSON

said he thought that it was quite possible to effect what they wanted without creating any invidious distinction between this or that form of religious teaching. He entirely agreed with the Attorney-General that it would be a pity in many parts of our crowded towns where parents were indifferent and there was not that access to various forms of spiritual advice which would bring home to them their responsibility to their children, that the parents should be called upon to give their opinion before the children received any religious instruction at all. Might it not be assumed in every school that the parents desired their children to have some religious instruction? Might they not on that assumption make it the duty of the local education authority to ascertain what form of religious instruction the parent desired? That might be done without imposing any undue burden on the local authority and without making any invidious distinction between one form of religious teaching and another; and would secure that every child would get the religious teaching which the parent desired.

LORD R. CECIL

said he had listened to the Attorney-General's speech with considerable interest. The argument of the hon. and learned Gentleman was that there should be a State form of religion.

SIR W. ROBSON

said he certainly never said anything of the sort; he was the last man in the House to say so.

LORD R. CECIL

said he did not know what on earth the hon. and learned Gentleman meant then in his speech. The hon. and learned Gentleman said that in the case of apathetic parents who would not say whether their children should have any religious teaching at all, the local authorities should see that some form of religious teaching was given. As he understood the argument on the other side, it was that there ought to be established and endowed in every school some form of religious teaching, which might be of a particular character or no particular character, and that that was to be given to all children unless the parents took the trouble to demand under the terms of an Act of Parliament, religious instruction of a different character which they desired. He maintained that that was not just, that that was not making the facilities for giving special religious teaching effective. They were loading the dice. They were saying that one form of religious teaching should be given. They were not dealing on this section with the question whether the religious teaching should be paid for by the parents or whether there should be freedom of religious teaching. What they were arguing now was that the parent should be asked when his child came to school: "What particular form of religious teaching do you want for your child?" That was done in the day industrial schools of the country with perfect satisfaction to all concerned; so that there was nothing novel in what they were asking by this Amendment. They were only asking what was already the law with regard to the industrial schools, and that did not seem to him to be an excessive demand. The hon. Member for Morley said that this provision requiring a petition from the parents would infallibly lead to canvassing by the ecclesiastical individuals whom he called curates, and the hon. Gentleman thought there was a danger in that. He was delighted and refreshed to hear from an hon. Gentleman opposite that the charge was quite unfounded that opportunities were made use of by the clergy of the Church of England to put unfair pressure on the parents of the children in the parish who were not members of their denomination to sign petitions in favour of religious instruction. If such a danger existed, it would absolutely disappear if it was made the duty of the State to say when a child came to school: "What religious teaching do you want? That religious teaching which you want shall be given to you within the limits of practicability." Surely that was simple justice. He could not understand how, when they had the example of the system working well in the day industrial schools, which had produced the most admirable results, and had never divided the esprit de corps of the schools, they should adopt a newfangled system which had nothing to be said for it except that it would put the voluntary schools at a disadvantage.

MR. ADKINS (Lancashire, Middleton)

said he was quite unable to accept the view of the noble Lord as to a special form of religious teaching. Many of those on that side of the House would not support this Bill, or help this suggested compromise, if they thought it was going to upset the practice followed for so many years of Cowper-Temple teaching being the ordinary religious teaching as matter of course in the public elementary schools. There was this difference between that teaching and the special teaching which the noble Lord had so ably and conscientiously put before this House, that the latter was connected with the fortunes and desires of particular religious societies, and if those ideals were carried out by this Amendment they would have every school in the country a place in which rival religious organisations were laying the greatest stress on all sorts of teaching which was in the highest degree controversial, and which was bound to be for the interest of particular religious societies.

LORD R. CECIL

desired to point out that none of these criticisms turned out to be accurate when they dealt with the day industrial schools.

MR. ADKINS

said he was coming to the day industrial schools, which loomed so large in the noble Lord's view. Whatever might be said against Cowper-Temple teaching, it had during the last thirty-five years proved less controversial, and led to less acute differences, than any other more complete forms of religious instruction, and when they had to deal with the undoubted fact that there were many persons who did not look at these things with the theological acumen of the noble Lord there was great ground for having a less controversial form of religious teaching made the ordinary common procedure of the school, except for parents who wished to withdraw their children from it. The noble Lord seemed to build his argument most specially on the day industrial schools, but when they were dealing with them and with reformatories the segregation had taken place before the school was formed.

LORD E. CECIL

No; not in the ordinary day industrial school.

MR. ADKINS

said the ordinary day industrial school had to deal with a particular type of child who was best dealt with there, and was not left free-to go to an ordinary school in the neighbourhood, and, therefore, they were not dealing with the general competition and general access of any child in the neighbourhood, and they were not dealing with the ordinary kind of child. He-did not, in this friendly discussion, wish to use any expression which was too polemical, but he would remark that in the day industrial school and in the reformatory the problem was easier, because Nonconformity provided no appreciate quota to the insubordinate or criminal classes. He did not wish to base his support of the Government on any facts of a kind which might be looked upon in a different way. He wished to base his support of the Government on the general ground that Cowper-Templeism had worked well for thirty-five years, and if this compromise was to go through, the feelings of those who supported board schools and council schools through all this period must be considered, and Cowper-Templeism, if not by its defects, by its. merits, led less to controversy, and was. less connected with the particular interest of religious societies than any other teaching, and, therefore stood on a different footing. There was no reason, therefore, why the general uniform type of Cowper-Temple teaching, which had raised no acute dislike in the schools, should not remain where it was to-day in the ordinary life of the school.

MR. LYTTELTON

said that for his part he could not support this Amendment because, although he quite agreed with the spirit of it, viz., that which, dictated that all forms of religion should be admitted, he certainly could not support that part of it which laid it down that in the absence of an expression of opinion from the parent the child should receive no religious education at all. That, he thought, was absolutely inadmissible, and he was sure if hon. Members would consider for a moment, if they placed any value on religious education at all, they would agree that it would be deplorable that the children of the drunkard and the wastrel, who very often grew up to be excellent citizens, should be deprived of that which they specially stood in need. He only got up to say that in order to make his own position perfectly clear, because, although he ventured to disapprove of that portion of the hon. Member's Amendment, he entirely approved of the principle which would give equality between the religions. As to that, he did not wish to add a single word to what had been said by his noble friend behind him or his hon. friend the Member for the University of Oxford.

MR. VERNEY (Buckinghamshire, N.)

said the cardinal distinction which had now been introduced was that in the case of denominational teaching they could only give one kind, but when they came to what he preferred to call fundamental Christian teaching, but which had most unfortunately been called Cowper-Templeism, they could give that concurrently with denominational teaching. Under the present Bill they would have three days a week for fundamental Christian teaching and two days a week for denominational, in both cases by desire of the parents. They were not going to give the child Wesleyan and Church of England teaching, but they were going to take the fundamental Christian teaching and give that for three days a week, and on the top of that came denominational teaching, with which it in no way conflicted but for which it furnished the very best ground. That was the distinction on which the whole compromise and Bill was based on its religious side, and he thought it a fair one. Its fairness had been proved by upwards of thirty-five years successful teaching in the school board and council schools, and on Sunday they had denominational teaching of the kind given in Sunday schools up and down the country concurrently with fundamental Christian teaching given on week-days. Nobody had ever heard one single word in the undenominational teaching against any form of denominationalism, and because there had been that broad basis of fundamental Christianity therefore there had been the great success to which he had alluded, and which had been testified to by many leading churchmen, archbishops, bishops, and by layman who were loyal churchmen.

MR. FORSTER (Kent, Sevenoaks)

said he certainly desired that every child should receive some form of religious education, but he did not think he could support the Amendment, because it struck out of the Bill the first and, he thought, only effective reference to religious education other than Cowper-Templeism, and if it were accepted they should be left without any reference to special religious instruction in the Bill at all. Under those circumstances his hon. friend would see that it was impossible for them to support the Amendment, and he had only risen to make that quite clear.

MR. NAPIER (Kent, Faversham)

said he rose mainly for the purpose of uttering a few words of protest against the statement of his noble friend the Member for Marylebone that under this Bill it was intended, or it ought to be the case, that there should be complete equality with regard to undenominational and denominational religion. After all, they were discussing not so much what ought to take place in the abstract, but what as a matter of fact was the agreement between the President of the Board of Education and the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was true the details of that agreement might not be settled, but certain things were already settled, as they saw by the correspondence which had already passed. It seemed clear from that that the Archbishop of Canterbury did not intend that denominational teaching should be in anything like the same position as undenominational teaching. The Archbishop had already agreed that they should differ, seeing that Church children were to receive Cowper-Temple instruction on three days in the week and Church teaching on two days. Undoubtedly, therefore, denominational teaching was to be on quite a different footing from undenominational. The Archbishop had also agreed that undenominational teaching should be paid for by the State, while denominational teaching was not to be paid for in that way; also that the head teacher should be allowed to give undenominational teaching, and above all that the Cowper-Templeism should be compulsory upon local authorities. In the face of all that, how was it possible to say that it was intended that denominational teaching should have equal advantages with undenominational? What was intended, and what he believed would be carried out, was a right of entry which would be made an effective one and which could be used by every parent who desired it. He did not think it had even been suggested by anyone until that afternoon that Cowper-Templeism and denominational teaching were on the same footing. If he might make an egotistical remark, he might say that all this trouble would have been avoided if the Government had accepted his Amendment that the word "permits" instead of the word "desires" should be inserted in Clause 1. The hon. Member for Oxford University had put forth a most specious proposition which on its face appeared to be fair all round. The hon. Gentleman had said that he was much inpressed with the argument of the Attorney-General that unless there was some State form of undenominational religion in the schools a large number of the children of this country would go without any religious instruction at all. That was true. There would be an overwhelming number. Not more than one out of ten of the working classes ever attended a place of worship on Sundays, and although he might say he was a member of a particular denomination because his grandmother or mother was a member of it, everybody knew very well that he was not. The hon. Member for Oxford University saw very clearly that it would not do to say there should not be some normal form of religious instruction, and therefore made the specious suggestion that it should be the duty of the local authority to ascertain from the parents of the children who came to the schools what religion they belonged to In his opinion that was a most pernicious thing to do. It would only result in crossexamining people who had no religious convictions whatever. It was absurd for the local authority to go out of its way to try and find out what religion the parents wished their children taught, and unless the parents actually came forward and said they desired their children to be brought up in a particular denomination, in his opinion the local authority should put these children with those whose parents were content that they should be taught those common principles of Christianity which underlay all systems of denominational teaching, and without which no denomination could exist.

MR. LAURENCE HARDY (Kent, Ashford)

thought that it would be better if the Committee could get rid of the Amendment and proceed to something that was more practicable, because he did not see how the Amendment could become part of the Bill. He took exception to the remarks of the hon. Member for Faversham. He had understood that the hon. Member had been very active in attempting to obtain religious education, but the gist of his arguments now was that nine-tenths of the parents of the children of the country did not care whether their children had any religious education or not.

MR. NAPIER

said he did not intend to say that and hoped he did not say so. What he meant was that nine-tenths of the parents had no bias in favour of any particular denomination.

MR. LAURENCE HARDY

said the evidence they had was in an entirely opposite direction, seeing that all the years that these provided schools had been existing there had been a strong bias in favour of the denominational schools which were for some time in a large majority. So far as anybody reading the Bill was concerned, the use of the word "desires" by the parent pointed to equality of treatment, and. except for a very acute lawyer he imagined that that would be the understanding arrived at. He personally was strongly in favour of the provisions of the Bill, especially those with regard to the Tight of entry, but the right of entry, to be made effective, must not suffer from any disadvantageous treatment except the fact that. Cowper-Templeism was to be the established, normal, and endowed religion of the schools, while the other religions were unendowed.

MR. MASSIE (Wiltshire, Cricklade)

said from his point of view it would be far more just to put both Cowper-Templeism and denominationalism out of schoolhours altogether, but as this was a compromise he was going to support it. But he would much regret if one of the results of the compromise were to be to institute a practically compulsory creed register for all the parents in the schools. He would prefer to leave it to the parents to register themselves if they desired.

MR. EVELYN CECIL (Aston Manor)

said he could not understand why hon. Members should not recognise the possibility of equality of treatment between Cowper-Templeism and denominationalism. This equality existed in the day industrial schools, the poor law schools, and the military and naval schools of this country, and in no single instance had it given rise to any friction or any difficulty. He could not help greatly regretting that the Government had not been able to proceed upon these lines. They had the instances of its success before them which he had already mentioned, and they had not to go far abroad to see how the same principle succeeded. They had only to go to Germany to see how well that system worked, especially in Bavaria, and there were many other countries in Europe where such facilities worked as well as they did in the day industrial schools. He hoped that the Government would reconsider the matter and adopt some scheme on the lines he had indicated. He quite failed to see his way to support the Amendment. It only provided that religious instruction should be given to a child if the parent desired and asked for it. What was to happen to the child whose parent did not ask for it? He presumed that if the Amendment passed, the child whose parents had failed to make known their wishes would get no religious instruction at all. If that were the case the Amendment created a purely secular besis, and unless parents were active and cared enough, and were religious enough to ask for religious instruction for their children they would not be able to get even Cowper-Temple teaching under the Amendment. Under these circumstances he could not support the Amendment, and he hoped it would be rejected. He welcomed the spirit of conciliation that was abroad and he was sincerely anxious for a settlement, but he was anxious for a settlement on really fair terms. He fully recognised the advance of Christian brotherhood in bonds of peace. They must realise that there must be variety in Christendom, but not, he hoped, disunion.

MR. LLEWELYN WILLIAMS

said there was a great deal of misconception on both sides of the House as to the object and effect of this Amenmdent. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for St. George's, Hanover Square, seemed to think that if the Amendment were carried the children of drunkards and wastrels would have no religious education, because their parents were not likely to ask that such teaching should be given. But the right hon. Gentleman had apparently forgotten that unless the parent did apply that his child should receive religious instruction he could not get it as the Bill stood. In Clause 1, subsection (b) the parent must ask for religious instruction to be given. In the subsection of Clause 2, also, the parent must ask for religious teaching. So that there was really no point in what the right hon. Gentleman said with regard to the children of wastrels. His hon. friends sitting around him seemed to think that his hon. friend who had moved the Amendment was against Cowper-Temple teaching. For himself, he supported the Amendment, and he had never said a word against Cowper-Temple teaching in his life. Cowper-Temple teaching had done very well during the last thirty-eight years. What he objected to was not the character of the teaching but the fact that it was paid for out of public funds, and the object of the Amendment was to reduce Cowper-Temple teaching to the same position under the Bill as denominational teaching, namely, that it should be given in school hours by the teachers if they liked to volunteer, but that the expense of giving that Cowper-Temple teaching should fall not on the community, many of whom objected to it, or did not believe in it, but on those persons or those religious organisations who did believe in it. He had always been taught that this was the old Nonconformist and Liberal position. It was a position which had never been departed from as far as he knew except at the instance of members of the Church of England, and Nonconformists all over the country had gradually conceded, for the sake of peace, the giving of Cowper-Temple teaching in the schools, not because they wanted it, but because they were afraid, or unwilling, to pay for it out of their own pockets. They wanted to come to some sort of settlement of the religious difficulty in the schools. In Carmarthen under the Act of 1870, every school in the county was a secular school, and no religious teaching of any sort or kind was given in it. Not that religious education was not wanted. There were more scholars to-day in the Sunday schools of Wales than in the day schools, and it was absurd to say, therefore, that they were in favour of secular education because they did not care for religion. They did not have religious teaching in the schools because they did not want to have religion discredited by its being taught by people who did not believe in it. The only way to teach religion was by having it taught by people who believed in it, and who were ready to sacrifice themselves to teach to others the religion which they loved, and not because it was part of their employment, or that it helped to keep discipline in the school, or because it furthered their Worldly aims. He ventured to say that no real religion could be taught by people who were inspired by such motives. It was only by people who felt deeply that which they taught that the true interests of religion and of education could be advanced. Nonconformists, unfortunately for themselves, had been lured step by step from an impregnable position for the sake of peace. He was sorry to say that hon. Gentlemen around him had now come to believe in established and endowed religion. These discussions had raised many paradoxes, and it was especially paradoxical to hear hon. Gentlemen on his side of the House speaking in favour of the establishment and endowment of one form of religion. The objection to Cowper-Temple teaching was not to its character, but to the fact that it Was given in school hours; for his part he abandoned that part of his secular opinion in view of the difficulties which existed, but what he did object to was that it should be paid for out of the rates and public funds.

THE DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

said the question which the hon. Member was discussing did not arise on this Amendment.

MR. LLEWELYN WILLIAMS

said he was obliged to the Deputy-Chairman for letting him deal with it so far, and he would not pursue it further. He hoped that his hon. friend behind him would carry his Amendment to a division and give them this one last chance of entering their protest against the unfairness to those who did not approve of Cowper-Temple teaching, and to those who did not believe in that teaching being paid for out of public funds. He hoped that they would get the support of those who voted for a similar Amendment two years ago, and of his hon. friend the Member for West Bromwich, who was willing to die in the last ditch on the question of the right of entry, which, while other points of the Bill might be matters of expediency, was one of the vital principles. He hoped that when they got into the division lobby his hon. friend behind him would be supported not by sixty-three as the hon. Member was two years ago, but by such a phalanx of Liberals and Nonconformists, together he hoped, with gentlemen on the other side of the House who believed that Cowper-Templeism should be placed on an equality with denominational teaching in the schools, that at last they would have a solid expression of opinion from that House in favour of the only possible solution, in the long run, of this difficulty, namely, the secular solution.

MR. HUDSON (Newcastle-on-Tyne)

said that after what had fallen from the Attorney-General he could not refrain from saying a word or two on this important matter. The hon. and learned Gentleman had said: "Why disturb the harmony which already exists with regard to Cowper-Temple teaching in the provided schools." The fact was that they were disturbing it by this so-called bargain. They were completely upsetting the harmony which existed to-day, and that was their objection. There was only one logical way, and that was to give complete equality all round. He had been among the working classes all his life, and, though in his district they were not irreligious, he said emphatically that if they were left alone not 10 per cent. of them would ask for religious teaching of any kind in primary schools. Yet in his district they would find the Sunday schools crowded with children of the very parents who would not think of asking for religious teaching in the day schools. It was utterly impossible to settle this question by having what was called a State endowed system. It had never been endowed up to now, and why endow it now? There was no single indication that this difficulty would be any nearer settlement when this Bill went through than there had been for many years.

THE DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

Order, order. These observations are too general. They ought to be confined to the Amendment.

MR. HUDSON

said he did not want to run counter to the ruling of the Chair, and he would conclude by saying that when the hon. Member went to a division he should be very pleased to support him.

MR. REES (Montgomery Boroughs)

said the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Carmarthen had appealed to his hon. friend the Member for We Bromwich as a last ditcher, and to do his hon. friend the Member for West Bromwich justice, he was the very man who would die in the last ditch for a cause. But he thought that earlier in the afternoon the hon. Member for Carmarthen was engaged in exhibiting himself rather as a hedger than as a ditcher. Being prepared to defend his own vote on a straight issue he did rather think that the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman just now was somewhat at variance with the hedger speech which he had made earlier in the day. But, in spite of that, there was a great deal of truth in what he said about Wales and education, when he stated that the Welsh might with less harm adopt the secular solution, because their Sunday schools were crowded, while England had not got her Sunday schools developed to the same extent. ["Oh."] He did not wish to appear to be over-proud of Wales, but he did think that the Sunday schools were developed to an extent in Wales that few people were prepared to argue that they were developed in England. However, he did not wish to exalt the Welsh case, which was strong enough to stand on its own merits. An hon. Member had remarked that Cowper-Templeism was a good enough religion for anybody. He understood that fundamental Christianity and Cowper-Templeism were identical; therefore, if fundamental Christianity was good enough for everybody, Cowper-Templeism was good enough for everybody. The religious feelings of other people, however, must be respected. He thought Cowper-Templeism was most admirable training, but he regarded it as general moral training and rot as a religion. Let the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire ask any Roman Catholic, for instance, who held to the traditions of his Church, to the continuous discipline and dogma that had been handed down, generation after generation. Such an one would regard Cowper-Templeism as an undermining of denomination, and not as a denomination of itself. So might any member of the Anglican Church, or any other Church. It was not a position that was arguable. In this religious question they must allow each denomination and even individuals to have their views. They were not Japanese, who could send delegates round the world to decide which was the most suitable religion without any regard to the inherited traditions and feelings of generations. He thought the hon. Member was unduly dogmatic in his pronouncement upon this matter, and though Cowper-Templeism was full of merits, he held it to be a most admirable system rather corresponding with Confucianism in China as a State code of morals—

THE DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

called the hon. Member to order.

MR. REES

said he understood he was not to enter into any general remarks on the nature of Cowper-Templeism in Committee and he would of course abstain. So far as he could understand, to accept the Amendment would be to strike out the provision practically of any other form of religion but Cowper-Templeism, as a matter of course, and in the absence of a special demand by the parent. It would be to make mincemeat of this portion of the Bill, and would be altogether to deprive it of its significance. In spite of the appeal of the hon. Member for Carmarthen, who seemed very positive about it, he hoped the Amendment would have very little support. He had jotted down some notes during the speeches of other hon. Members, which were more discursive than that which he had been fortunate enough to be permitted to make, but it would be more respectful to the Chairman's ruling to make no further observations of a general character.

MR. ASHLEY (Lancashire, Blackpool)

said the most important point which had been discussed on the Amendment was whether Cowper-Templeism was to occupy a favoured position as compared with denominational teaching. He most earnestly protested, on behalf of his constituents, against the assertion that Cowper-Temple or any other teaching should be given preference over other forms of religious instruction. It seemed to him that the only fair-minded way to approach the subject—the way which he should have thought all hon. Members who called themselves Liberals would adopt—would be to say: "If you are going to have religious teaching in the schools, all religious teaching and teachers must be put on the same footing, on a basis of equality," because if they did not do that surely it was impossible to imagine for a moment that this so-called compromise would stand. They had heard from the hon. Members for Bethnal Green and North-West Norfolk that this was only a sort of temporary settlement. They all hoped, even those who disliked the Bill in its present form, that the prophecies of these two hon. Members would not come true, but if Cowper-Temple teaching was to be endowed by the State and made a State religion, and Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism and Wesleyanism were to be made fashionable extras to be paid for by the denominations, it was absolutely impossible that this should be a permanent settlement, or that the great county of Lancashire would submit for a moment to a settlement on those lines. He asked hon. Members to consider the feelings of the managers and trustees of the thousands of voluntary schools in the single-school areas all over the country. Up to now these Church schools had been saturated with an Anglican atmosphere, though perhaps the Catechism and the Apostles Creed had been taught only one day a week, and on the other days of the week the children had been taught to become in their future lives good Church men and women. The whole object of the schools which had been built by these denominations, very often at great privations to themselves, was that their children should become of the same faith as themselves. Under this subsection they were given a right of entry on two days of the week in exchange for the five days they were giving up. These people, who were the majority of the parents, were to enter on two days of the week, and the minority, who had not spent a penny towards building the schools, were to have their own religious persuasion taught five days a week at the expense of the State. It was not fair or just, and it was impossible that a settlement could be built up on those lines. He warned hon. Members, from what he had heard from Lancashire, that if the Bill was passed in this form it would not be a reality, the schools would not be handed over without scenes of disorder, and unless they met the Anglicans and Roman Catholics in a more reasonable spirit this compromise could never stand.

MR. BOWLES (Lambeth, Norwood)

said he only wanted to ask a question arising out of a statement which had startled him in the speech of the hon. Member for Carmarthen. The hon. Member said that under the Bill, in the case of a child whose parent was so apathetic or irreligious as to make no demand for any religious instruction, such a child would get no religious instruction at all. On looking through the Bill that appeared to be so. If it was true, it knocked the bottom out of the argument of the Attorney-General, and it would enlighten great masses of people in the country with regard to the real character of the Bill. Three-quarters of an hour was to be set aside for religious instruction for children whose parents desired that the child should receive that instruction. It appeared to follow that if the parent did not express his desire under those regulations, no religious instruction of any kind, Cowper-Temple or other, could be given. They ought to be informed if that was so, and, if it was not so, why not.

MR. ESSEX (Gloucestershire, Cirencester)

said he was one of those who felt that the spirit permeating this Bill was of profound importance, and would have a great deal of effect in tempering the attitude of the persons who would have to carry it out on the whole question of religion. He was extremely sorry to find moved by his hon. friend an Amendment which seemed to make for the secularism of the school. He would be glad to be corrected if he was mistaken. As he read the Amendment it made out that only in those cases where a child's parents asked for religious teaching it should be the duty of the authority to give it. He felt that owing to the action of the closure they had not an opportunity for discussing the provisions of the clause, and it had now come to this, that if the first clause became operative they would have to apply for any religious teaching, however small its quantity, or they would get none.

SIR W. J. COLLINS

That does not arise in consequence of my Amendment. It may be so in the Bill as it is drafted.

MR. ESSEX

said fearlessly that if it went out to the country that the Bill laid it down as a cardinal principle that only those parents who were industrious enough to ask for some religious instruction would have the satisfaction of knowing that their children had it, the Bill was doomed to failure. Every man amongst them was moved by a desire that his child should be taught in the day schools of the country the underlying principles of morality to which not a man of them did not pay honour. He wanted to break a light lance with the hon. Member for Blackpool. The hon. Member, like a good many more, hurt the feelings of simple-minded Nonconformists like himself when he suggested that this, which they hoped and begged must be the irreducible minimum of teaching in the schools, Cowper-Temple teaching, was the religion of the Nonconformist. Emphatically that was not so. But the hon. Member for Blackpool placed it in direct competition and contrast with Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism, and Wesleyanism. Cowper-Templeism, which they wanted to be the normal irreducible minimum, was what they, as Nonconformists, conceded to their Church friends, hoping they could at least agree upon that, that the children might understand in that and be taught in that all that their intellects at the time of elementary education were capable of assimilating, and that when they began to branch off from that common basis of simple elements into Roman Catholicism or Wesleyanism, into the creed of the Baptist, the Unitarian, and the rest, they had arrived at a time when the children were no longer in the schools. In short, they could understand the common basis, but when the time came for differentiation between the various colours and textures of these more developed creeds based upon that common basis they had left school. If he was right in that, his hon. friends ought to support this Amendment. There were in his own division eighty single-school areas. He believed that the majority of them desired some religious teaching, but many of the parents would hesitate before taking upon themselves the choosing or indicating of the exact formula or syllabus of religious instruction they required for their children. If he had been in the House of Commons six or eight years ago he would have been found supporting the hon. Member for Burnley in his secular solution, but he would not dare to do that to-day with his knowledge of rural divisions. He had had all his own. children educated by Church people, and, Nonconformist as he was, he would sooner have his children educated by Roman Catholics than have them go without any religious education at all, He hoped his Roman Catholic friends would move along those lines.

MR. D. A. THOMAS (Merthyr Tydvil)

pointed out that if this Amendment were carried, it would merely be a repetition of the First Lord's Amendment.

VISCOUNT HELMSLEY (Yorkshire, N.R., Thirsk)

hoped the President of the Board of Education would give them an answer to the questions put to him. It certainly seemed to him that the hon. Member who spoke last had expressed the true view of the Amendment. He would like to know whether it was the fact that no child would receive religious instruction in the school unless the parent expressed a wish that it should receive such instruction. The clause really ought to be amended so as to read in the negative, and the child ought to receive the religious instruction unless the parent expressed a desire in the opposite direction.

MR. RUNCIMAN

said he had already explained that it was the intention of the Government to leave Cowper-Temple teaching in exactly the same position in which it now was. In all the provided schools of the country Cowper-Temple teaching was given to the children in the school with the exception of those whose parents desired that they should be withdrawn. It was the intention of the Government not to alter the provision of religious teaching in so far as that was concerned.

MR. ASHLEY

asked what the position of denominational instruction would be.

MR. RUNCIMAN

said the child would not get specific religious instruction if the parent did not ask for it. The child would get Cowper-Temple teaching unless the parent asked that the child should be withdrawn. That teaching really did not supersede, or run in antagonism to, or in any way prevent, purely denominational instruction. When they talked about Cowper-Temple instruction they ought to remember that in the non-provided schools it was the same kind of religious instruction as that which was given on four days of the week, and it was of such a kind as not to prevent its being made a foundation for a superstructure of purely denominational instruction.

MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

said he only rose to make sure that he understood the position as it had just been declared by the President of the Board of Education. He understood it was the intention of the Government that the normal instruction to every child whose parents expressed no wish one way or the other should be what was called Cowper-Temple teaching, but a parent might express a wish that his child should have no religious teaching at all. He took it if, on looking into Clause 1, the Government found the wording did not carry out that intention, they would themselves put down Amendments on the Report stage making it clear.

MR. RUNCIMAN

Yes, it is our intention to make that quite clear.

MR. P. BARLOW (Bedford)

said his hon. friend had appealed to those who voted against the right of entry to support the Amendment. He could not imagine on what possible grounds that appeal could be made, because it seemed to him that the result of the Amendment would be not to limit the right of entry, but to extend it to five days a week, and also to extend denominational instruction to every child on every one of those five days a week. This was supposed to be an agreed Bill, and the majority of Nonconformists had endeavoured to take a broad and open view of the situation. They had consented to support the compromise because of its being a possible agreement upon a question which had so long disturbed the education of the country. The two days right of entry was one of the points upon which they found it most difficult to support the Bill. He stood in the position of having put this very point before two public meetings in his constituency, and so far from finding any objection either from Nonconformists or Churchmen, he had to say to the Committee that he did not hear at either of those meetings one single word in condemnation of the Bill as a whole. The opinion was that they desired a settlement to be arrived at as soon as possible, and they believed that this measure provided a basis of settlement which would put an end to this disastrous controversy, and they agreed with him in supporting the Government in their effort to bring this compromise to a satisfactory conclusion.

MR. CLEMENT EDWARDS (Denbigh District)

said he was not quite satisfied with the explanation given by the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill in regard to undenominational teaching. Was he right in assuming that the sole difference between undenominational teaching, as given at present in the council schools, and as it would be given under the Bill, was that whereas under the existing state of things a council might in its discretion decline to give any religious instruction at all, under the Bill the council would be deprived of that discretion, and would be compelled to give the religious instruction? That was his first point. His second was in regard to the right of entry. He would like to know whether, if a parent belonging to any denomination whatsoever desired that his child should be given instruction in the tenets of that denomination, facilities must be provided. He was not quite certain whether that was to be an absolute right, or a right qualified by considerations of convenience as determined by the local authority or the religious instruction committee. For in-stance, had a Mahomedan parent the right to demand special instruction for his child in that religion? He was in a great difficulty about this point, because he did not know whether the right was absolute, or whether the council or religious instruction committee had a right to say who should or should not give such instruction. He presumed that a teacher of the Church of England would be perfectly entitled to teach the children of members of the Church of England the doctrines contained in the thirty-nine Articles. He supposed it would be quite in order for such a teacher to teach the doctrine of the thirty-eighth Article. If a teacher of the Church of England could go into a school and teach the particular doctrines of that Church, would it be open to the members of the Socialist group, for example, to claim the right—

THE DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

said the Committee having decided on the Amendment to leave out subsection (1) of this clause that religious instruction was to be given and that facilities were to be provided for such instruction, hon. Members must now confine themselves to the specific Amendment before the Committee.

MR. CLEMENT EDWARDS

said if that was so he must accept the ruling, but it was very important to know exactly what was proposed before one was called upon to vote on this particular provision which involved the right of entry.

THE DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

May I point out that by rejecting the Amendment to leave out subsection (1) the Committee has already decided the principle of the right to receive religious instruction, of a character different from that to be given under Clause 1 (2) (b) and also the duty of the local education authority to provide accommodation for such religious instruction. The Committee is now only dealing with matters of detail to carry out that principle, and cannot go back on the principle which has been determined by that vote.

MR. CLEMENT EDWARDS

said that was precisely what he understood. He thought they had now a right to discuss the details and ascertain from the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill precisely what the proposal involved.

THE DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

These details the hon. Member refers to will fall to be discussed under subsection (6).

MR. CLEMENT EDWARDS

called attention to the words proposed to be left out, and said that they all knew what was the character of the religious instruction to be given under the Education Act of 1870. What he was not sure about was the precise character of the religious instruction which might be given under this Bill.

THE DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

That question arose on the proposal to leave out the subsection.

MR. CLEMENT EDWARDS

said that they only decided the general principle on the question to leave out the subsection. Here they were discussing a very important point of detail. He was anxious that no undue time should be occupied in discussing these matters, but they were really of vital importance. It had been represented to him that day that clergymen of the Church of England, who, having acted illegally, would be prohibited from teaching if the Report of the Ecclesiastical Commission were carried into effect, might be allowed to go and teach in the schools. He wished to know from the right hon. Gentleman whether that was so or not. He had the impression from what the right hon. Gentleman said at a meeting of Nonconformists in the early stages of the negotiations that it was intended strictly to limit the right of entry to denominations to two days a week.

THE DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

That comes under subsection (2).

MR. CLEMENT EDWARDS

said he would not trespass further on that point. He desired to say that local authorities with experience in the administration of education had very considerable objection to the right of entry. He would like to call the attention of the Committee to an important resolution which was passed.

THE DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

Order, order. The duty of the local education authority in this matter is provided for in subsection (6).

MR. CLEMENT EDWARDS

said he would not press his point beyond reading the Resolution. It was passed at Llandrindod Wells some time ago and affected the whole Welsh community.

THE DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

I do not see what that has to do with the present Amendment. I have repeatedly called the hon. Member to order.

MR. MADDISON (Burnley)

said the Amendment raised a clear issue, whether Cowper-Temple teaching and denominational teaching should be put on an equal footing out of school hours. He regretted that the hon. Member for Gloucester should again, after repeated protests and repudiations, speak of his hon. friend the Member for St. Pancras as endeavouring to enforce secularism. This was no effort of organised secularists to keep their activities confined to affairs of this world without recognising a life beyond. It was unfair to those who supported the secular solution of the education question that they should be constantly obliged to make these protests. What they desired by the Amendment was to keep the school period altogether clear from the entanglement, embarrassment, and bickering that followed the giving of religious instruction as part of the curriculum.

THE DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

The Committee has already decided by the vote to leave out subsection (1) that religious instruction is to be given.

MR. MADDISON

said that if this Amendment was in order at all, it was surely competent for him to say that the instruction should be given outside of the school hours altogether.

THE DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

The subsection as amended, if this Amendment were carried, would still provide for religious instruction being given. The Amendment would not have been in order otherwise, because it would have been antagonistic to the decision of the Committee. The time within which such religious instruction might be given would arise later under subsection (2).

MR. MADDISON

said the hon. Member for West St. Pancras would probably consult the convenience of the House by not going to a division on the Amendment.

Amendment negatived.

LORD R. CECIL

moved to amend the clause by omitting the words "it is open to the local education authority to give in accordance with subsection (2) of Section 14 of the Elementary Education Act, 1870," and inserting in their place the words "the local authority gives, or proposes to give in such school." He thought the Amendment was one which the Government might accept. It was really an improvement on the drafting of the Bill, and made quite clear what the subsection actually meant. The clause, as it stood, gave the parent the right to demand special religious instruction pro-vided that he demanded instruction— Of a character different from that which it is open to the local education authority to give, in accordance with subsection (2) of Section 14 of the Elementary Education Act, 1870. That was to say, the parent was to get for his child the religious instruction demanded and which was incapable of being given under the Cowper-Temple clause. He did not think that the Government could mean that. He did not believe it had ever been decided how far they could give denominational instruction under the Cowper-Temple clause. What would happen if the parent was not satisfied with what was known as the London County Council syllabus or with the instruction ordinarily given in the school which his child attended under the Cowper-Temple clause? He ventured to think that some such words as he proposed in his Amendment would be an improvement on the drafting of the Bill; would describe the intention of the Government better than those used in the clause; and would, to some extent, further the execution of the wishes of those parents who genuinely objected to the instruction ordinarily given in the schools. He could not think that the Government would object to the principle of the Amendment, and he hoped that they would so far meet him as to accept it. He begged to move.

Amendment proposed— In page 2, line 22, to leave out from the word 'which' to the second word 'the,' in line 24, and to insert the words 'the local education authority gives or proposes to give in such school. "—(Lord R. Cecil.)

Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part."

SIR W. ROBSON

said that he hoped to convince the noble Lord that the words in the Bill were the best to carry out the purpose intended. This was not merely a question of drafting, but a question of substance. As the Bill stood, a local authority might give Cowper-Temple instruction, or permit the right of entry in order that a particular kind of instruction might be given. It might be that some parents would say that they did not want Anglican instruction, Catholic instruction, or any denominational instruction for their children; that they were quite content with Cowper-Temple instruction, but that they did not want the particular Cowper-Temple instruction which was given in that particular school. The effect of this clause would be to enable the local authorities to decline to meet such a request. A demand for a particular kind of denominational instruction could be made under the Bill; but the measure did not permit, so far as Cowper-Templeism itself was concerned, the parents to analyse and divide it so that they could demand a large number of different kinds of religious instruction being given. There must be a certain degree of generality observed with regard to Cowper-Temple instruction. To have such a variety might lead to so many class-rooms being occupied for different kinds of Cowper-Temple instruction, that the working of the right of entry would be interfered with.

SIR PHILIP MAGNUS

asked whether the Bill contained any definition of Cowper-Templeism.

SIR W. ROBSON

said that the Bill did not assume to define it. The phrase was very well understood; and he did not think it would be very desirable to define it in the Bill.

MR. JAMES HOPE

said he would like to have a clear understanding on this point. Supposing they had a local authority giving Cowper-Temple instruction in the simple form of Bible-reading and that some parents were dissatisfied with it, saying that they wanted the Apostles' Creed, or the Ten Commandments taught; would it or would it not be competent for the parents to go a little further and ask for the teaching of some catechism or some form of religious teaching common to many denominations?

MR. CROOKS (Woolwich)

Will the hon. Member say whether the Ten Commandments are in the Bible or not?

MR. JAMES HOPE

Yes.

MR. CROOKS

One would imagine they were not from what some hon. Members said.

MR. CARLILE (Hertfordshire, St. Albans)

asked the hon. and learned Gentleman to elucidate the conditions under which this clause could be applied where, in a school in a large borough, Cowper-Temple teaching took the form of reading passages of Scripture without note or comment. If a denominational school in that borough were to pass over to the local education authority, would that local education authority be allowed to set up Cowper-Temple teaching according to their own ideas? If so, the result would be that there would be only a reading of passages of Scripture, but no questions would be permitted to be asked by the pupils and no explanation given by the teacher.

THE DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

How does the hon. Member connect that with the Amendment before the Committee?

MR. CARLILE

said that they were surely entitled to ask the hon. and learned Gentleman how this clause in the Bill would be worked. Apparently it would result in Church children getting no religious instruction except in two days in the week.

LORD R. CECIL

said that what the answer of the Attorney-General came to was that all the boasted security, on which certain well-meaning people had built their support of the Bill, that there should be some Bible teaching in the school was absolutely non-existent. [MINISTERIAL cries of "No."] There was nothing to prevent the education authority giving any kind of religious or non-religious instruction, but if some undenominational parents went to the education authority and said: "We do not desire to be put under the sectarian heel of the clergy of any denomination, but we do desire simple Bible teaching, the elements of Christianity," the local education authority would be bound to reply: "We cannot meet your wishes at all. You can, if you say you are Church of England or Roman Catholic, have special religious instruction, but if you merely want the elements of the Christian faith, you cannot have it." He was quite ready to withdraw his Amendment, but he hoped hon. Members who supported the Bill would observe what was the result of this legislation.

MR. CLEMENT EDWARDS

said that this Amendment raised a very important point indeed. In the Preston case it was expressly held that the Athanasian Creed might be lawfully taught under the 1870 Act, and under the Cockerton judgment—

THE DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

The Amendment does not raise that question at all. Is it the pleasure of the Committee that the Amendment be withdrawn?

MR. CLEMENT EDWARDS

thought he would not be out of order if he asked a definite expression of opinion on this point from the Attorney-General.

THE DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

A question cannot be asked relating to a matter outside the scope of the Amendment.

MR. BRIDGEMAN (Shropshire, Oswestry)

said that it was quite a common case that the local authority might decide that Cowper-Temple teaching amounted only to reading the Bible and looking up difficult words in the dictionary. But supposing a considerable number of parents wanted more—

THE DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

That has nothing to do with the Amendment, which simply proposes to leave out certain descriptive or contrasting words in the clause, and substitute other words. As the clause stands it provides for a child receiving religious instruction of a character different from that which "it is open to the local education authority to give in accordance with subsection (2) of Section 14 of the Act, 1870." The Amendment is to leave out the descriptive words and to substitute those words "the local authority gives or proposes to give in such school. The religious instruction to be given by the local authority is already defined under Clause 1 (2) (b) as "(not being in contravention of sub-section (2) of Section 14 of the Act of 1870)," and the merits of that religion are not open to re-discussion.

SIR WILLIAM ANSON

said he thought the Chairman was assuming that Cowper-Temple teaching was necessarily all of one sort. He submitted that so long as catechisms and formularies were not used the teaching given under the Cowper-Temple clause might be entirely denominational. The Amendment pointed out that the parent might object to one sort of Cowper-Temple teaching when he might not object to another. That was a substantial distinction.

THE DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

said that that was so, but such a question would have to be raised under Clause 1. The present Amendment dealt with the substitution of certain words for those in the Bill and the propriety of such substitution.

MR. BRIDGEMAN

said, with respect, that he was not raising a general question, but the special question of the very words of the Amendment. He said that in many schools the local authority gave what would come under the Cowper-Temple clause, but which was merely reading the Bible and picking out the difficult words in the dictionary. That was a totally different thing from what was regarded by hon. Members opposite as simple Bible teaching under the Cowper-Temple clause, and which the Minister for Education said was actually given three days a week already in nearly all the voluntary schools. Supposing a large number of parents said they wanted Cowper-Temple teaching without formulae and without creeds, but that they did not think it was any good merely having the Bible read and not explained at all, they were entirely excluded from any choice for their children unless they accepted teaching which went a great deal further than what they liked. That seemed to him to be a gross injustice.

SIR W. ROBSON

said that undoubtedly the parents who desired Cowper-Temple teaching must take the Cowper-Temple teaching provided by the local authority; if they desired a different kind of Cowper-Temple teaching they must operate through the local authority; they must change the local authority. He was quite sure that hon. Members opposite would not desire that every parent should dictate to the local authority the precise form of Cowper-Temple teaching, or require, if the local authority did not meet his wishes, that he should have special accommodation provided for him as though he represented a different denomination. To give that right to the parents would very seriously hamper the facilities available. He thought the words of the Bill were those which were the best calculated to avoid possible difficulties.

MR. CLEMENT EDWARDS

asked, if the remedy when parents were dissatisfied with the particular form of Cowper-Temple teaching given was to change the local authority, how he proposed it could be done in the case of the non-elective religious instruction committee.

SIR W. ROBSON

said the hon. Member had put the question of electoral contingencies, which was hardly relevant to the point before them.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

MR. D. A. THOMAS (Merthyr Tydvil)

said he regretted he could not put his Amendment on the Paper, owing to the great hurry in which the Bill had been brought forward. The Amendment was very simple in form, if far-reaching in character. It was to leave out the word "shall" and insert the word "may," so as to leave the discretion to the local authority as to whether they should provide accommodation for special religious instruction or not. The Government claimed that they had never deviated from the two fundamental principles upon which their policy was based—the one being popular control in all State-aided schools, and the other no tests for teachers. He maintained that in this clause they had offended grievously against both these principles. As to the first, they had already, in the name of popular control, taken away the discretion of the local authority, which they always hitherto possessed, as to whether they would give Cowper-Temple teaching or not, and now they went a step further and insisted that the local authorities should, whether they liked it or not, give sectarian teaching. At present, in the council schools, in which after all the bulk of the children of this country were educated, there was no teaching of this kind at all; but under the Bill, in the name of popular control, the Government insisted that the local authorities should give it, whether they liked it or not. He hoped that even now the Government might see their way to comply with his proposal, so that their claim that they had never deviated from the principle of popular control should be well founded.

Amendment proposed— In page 2, line 25, to leave out the word 'shall,' and insert the word 'may.' "—(Mr. D. A. Thomas.)

Question proposed, "That the word 'shall' stand part of the clause."

MR. RUNCIMAN

said his hon. friend had contended that the clause provided that the local education authority should give sectarian teaching, but he would like to point out that it provided nothing of the kind. It merely conferred facilities for other people to give such teaching Under certain conditions. That was the very essence of the sub-clause, and of course he could not depart from it, as the hon. Member well knew.

MR. RADFORD (Islington, E.)

said he would like to support the Amendment. He did not vote in favour of the Second Reading, nor did he vote against it. He voted against compulsory undenominational teaching in Clause 1 and against compulsory denominational teaching in Clause 2, and in that way he had done his best to preserve the equipoise arrived at. He knew that the right of entry, as it was called, was a very grave educational evil, and he was one of those who regarded the interests of education as far more important than the religious wranglings which had occupied the House in discussing this and other Bills. Anyone who had had experience of education— and he had served for three years on the Education Committee of the London County Council—not only knew that the right of entry was an intolerable nuisance, but also that the parents cared very little about it. A compromise had been arrived at between what the Leader of the Opposition had described as the high contracting parties; he did not know who they were, but he knew that that was the language appropriate to international law in the case of the sovereigns of independent States, and it seemed to him a description singularly inapplicable to the parties to this so-called compromise. He would rather liken the contending forces to two rival commercial houses who had been endeavouring for many years to supply the entire public demand. Having failed to get that, they had arrived at a compromise, or, as he would rather call it, in trade terms, a combine. Now the essence of the combine was {his, that in order to regulate competition and to reduce working expenses and diminish friction, each firm should have the opportunity of supplying its own brand to certain classes of customers. As happened in most combines, the customer had not been consulted at all. The customer in this case was the parent, and the parent did not care a rap, generally speaking, which of the particular brands was pushed upon him, and he resented unless he was two poor to resent anything, having a particular kind of religion pushed upon him by the solicitations of parsons or other ecclesiastical bagmen. While it was quite possible for a cleric or a busybody among the laymen to stir up the parent in a particular area and induce him to send in such a request as was specified in this clause, it remained the fact, and they all knew it, that the parent did not care a jot about the whole business. They were imposing by this clause on the local authority the obligation to supply any brand of religion which any busybody might induce any parent to demand. He could not describe the proposal as anything less than foolishness. He welcomed this Amendment to restrict the area. If carried, it would leave it open to the local authorities to decide whether they would or would not supply that denominational education which everybody knew was very little required by the parents and the supply of which would disturb and upset the administration of the school. He had pleasure in seconding the Amendment.

MR. CLEMENT EDWARDS, in support of the Amendment, said that the people of Wales believed in the principle of local option, and although they had not succeeded in getting it in another Bill which had passed this House, that was no reason why they should not attempt to obtain it in this Bill. The Church Congress of Wales had taken a definite stand upon this matter. At a conference called to consider what amendments should be made to the Act of 1902, they carried a resolution unanimously to accept no amendment to the Education Act which did not prevent the right of entry for sectarian teaching during school hours. Upon that official and definite declaration of the Church Congress of Wales he took his stand. It represented the real spirit and desire of the Welsh people in a way which had not been presented by the majority of the Welsh Party in this House.

MR. CARLILE

opposed the Amendment. He thought from the speeches

of the three Members who had supported it that it was not the intention of many people that the provisions of this Bill should be made real. If these rules were illusory, and the local authorities were allowed to put all sorts of difficulties in the way of this instruction being given, and no machinery was put into the Bill to prevent them, then the concession was worthless. He regretted that that tone should be taken up by Members opposite, as it was quite inconsistent with what the Prime Minister and other Ministers had said, and confirmed the impression among those with whom he sat that it was not intended that these things should be real, but, on the contrary, that they should be sapped, undermined, and made absolutely worthless.

MR. ADKINS

said that he, for one, intended to be perfectly loyal to the right of entry given in the clause and he protested against the suggestions of the last speaker which were quite unjustified. If the matter were left to local option, it would facilitate the worst kind of controversy in the election of local authorities. Those who had had to do with local work were most anxious that administration should be as free as possible from acute controversial matter. If the right of entry was part of the settlement to be carried out in good faith and feeling, it was surely better that it should be statutory so that people concerned might know their obligations.

Question put.

The Committee divided:—Ayes, 282; Noes, 18. (Division List No. 425.)

AYES.
Acland, Francis Dyke	Armstrong, W. C. Heaton	Barlow, Percy (Bedford)
Acland-Hood, Rt. Hn. Sir Alex. F	Baker, Joseph A. (Finsbury, E.)	Barran, Rowland Hirst
Adkins, W. Ryland D.	Balfour, Robert (Lanark)	Beach, Hn. Michael Hugh Hicks
Agnew, George William	Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Beale, W. P.
Ainsworth, John Stirling	Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)	Beckett, Hon. Gervase
Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch)	Baring, Capt. Hn. G (Winchester)	Bell, Richard
Armitage, R.	Barker, Sir John	Benn, W. (T'w'r Hamlets, S. Geo.
Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine	Greenwood, Hamar (York)	Mallet, Charles E.
Bowles, G. Stewart	Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward	Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston)
Bramsdon, T. A.	Griffith, Ellis J.	Marnham, F. J.
Bridgeman, W. Clive	Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerstow)	Massie, J.
Brigg, John	Gulland, John W.	Menzies, Walter
Bright, J, A.	Haddock, George B.	Micklem, Nathaniel
Brocklehurst, W. B.	Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)	Mildmay, Francis Bingham
Brodie, H. C.	Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil)	Molteno, Percy Alport
Brooke, Stopford	Hardy, George A. (Suffolk)	Mond, A.
Brunner, J. F. L. (Lancs., Leigh)	Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashford	Montgomery, H. G.
Brunner, Rt Hn Sir J. T (Cheshire	Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worc'r)	Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)
Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn	Harrison-Broadley, H. B.	Morpeth, Viscount
Buckmaster, Stanley O.	Hart-Davies, T.	Morrell, Philip
Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Harvey, A. G. G. (Rochdale)	Morse, L. L.
Buxton, Rt. Hn. Sydney Charles	Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E.	Morton, Alpheus Cleophas
Byles, William Pollard	Harwood, George	Murray, Capt. Hn A. C. (Kincard.
Cameron, Robert	Haslam, James (Derbyshire)	Myer, Horatio
Carlile, E. Hildred	Helme, Norval Watson	Napier, T. B.
Castlereagh, Viscount	Helmsley, Viscount	Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw)
Causton, Rt. Hn. Richard Knight	Hemmerde, Edward George	Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncast'r
Cave, George	Henry, Charles S.	Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)
Cawley, Sir Frederick	Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon., S.)	Norman, Sir Henry
Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)	Higham, John Sharp	Norton, Capt. Cecil William
Cecil, Lord John P. Joicey-	Hobart, Sir Robert	Nussey, Thomas Willians
Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)	Hobhouse, Charles E. H.	Nuttall, Harry
Chamberlain, Rt Hn. J. A. (Worc.	Hodge, John	Parkes, Ebenezer
Clynes, J. R.	Holden, E. Hopkinson	Paul, Herbert
Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E.	Holland, Sir William Henry	Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)
Corbett, C H (Sussex, E. Grinst'd	Holt, Richard Durning	Philipps, Col. Ivor (S'thampton)
Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Hooper, A. G.	Pollard, Dr.
Cotton, Sir H. J. S.	Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)	Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.
Courthope, G. Loyd	Hope, W. Bateman (Somerset, N.	Powell, Sir Francis Sharp
Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)	Horniman, Emslie John	Price, C. E. (Edinb'gh, Central
Craik, Sir Henry	Horridge, Thomas Gardner	Priestley, W. E. B. (Bradford, E.)
Crooks, William	Houston, Robert Paterson	Ratcliff, Major R. F.
Cross, Alexander	Idris, T. H. W.	Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel
Crossley, William J.	Illingworth, Percy H.	Rea, Russell (Gloucester)
Curran, Peter Francis	Isaacs, Rufus Daniel	Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro'
Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)	Jenkins, J.	Rees, J. D.
Davies, Timothy (Fulham)	Johnson, John (Gateshead)	Remnant, James Farquharson
Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.	Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)	Rendall, Athelstan
Dobson, Thomas W.	Jones, Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea	Ridsdale, E. A.
Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-	Jones, William (Carnarvonshire	Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)
Duckworth, Sir James	Kearley, Sir Hudson E.	Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs.)
Duncan, J. H. (York, Otley)	Kennaway, Rt. Hn. Sir John H.	Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)
Duncan, Robert (Lanark, Govan	Kincaid-Smith, Captain	Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradf'rd
Edwards, Enoch (Hanley)	King, Alfred John (Knutsford)	Robinson, S.
Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor)	King, Sir Henry Seymour(Hull)	Robson, Sir William Snowdon
Ellis, Rt. Hon. John Edward	Laidlaw, Hobert	Rogers, F. E. Newman
Erskine, David C.	Lambert, George	Ronaldshay, Earl of
Essex, R. W.	Lambton. Hon. Frederick Wm.	Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter
Evans, Sir Samuel T.	Lamont, Norman	Salter, Arthur Clavell
Everett, R. Lacey	Lane-Fox, G. R.	Samuel Rt. Hn. H. L. (Cleveland)
Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.)	Layland-Barratt, Sir Francis	Scott, A. H. (Ashton under Lyne
Fardell, Sir T. George	Lee, Arthur H.(Hants, Fareham	Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)
Fell, Arthur	Levy, Sir Maurice	Seddon, J.
Fenwick, Charles	Lewis, John Herbert	Seely, Colonel
Ferens, T. R.	Lowe, Sir Francis William	Shackleton, David James
Findlay, Alexander	Lyell, Charles Henry	Shaw, Sir Charles Edw. (Stafford
Forster, Henry William	Lynch, H. B.	Shaw, Rt. Hon. T. (Hawick B.)
Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter	Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred	Sheffield, Sir Berkeley George D.
Fuller, John Michael F.	Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)	Shipman, Dr. John G.
Fullerton, Hugh	Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk B'ghs	Silcock, Thomas Ball
Furness, Sir Christopher	Mackarness, Frederic C.	Sinclair, Rt. Hon. John
Gardner, Ernest	Maclean, Donald	Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie
Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West)	Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.	Smith, Hon. W. F. D. (Strand)
Gill, A. H.	M'Arthur, Charles	Soares, Ernest J.
Glendinning, R. G.	M'Callum, John M.	Spicer, Sir Albert
Glover, Thomas	M'Crae, Sir George	Stanier, Beville
Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford	M'Kenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald	Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N.W.)
Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)	M'Laren, Rt Hn. Sir C. B. (Leices.	Stanley, Hn. A. Lyulph (Chesh.)
Gooch, Henry Cubitt (Peckham)	M'Micking, Major G.	Starkey, John R.
Grant, Corrie	Magnus, Sir Philip	Stone, Sir Benjamin

Strachey, Sir Edward	Ure, Alexander	Williams, J. (Glamorgan)
Straus, B. S. (Mile End)	Valentia, Viscount	Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarthen
Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)	Verney, F. W.	Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.)
Stuart, James (Sunderland)	Vivian, Henry	Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)
Summerbell, T.	Walker, H. De R. (Leicester)	Wilson, J. H. (Middlesbrough)
Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)	Walters, John Tudor	Wilson, J. W. (Worcestersh. N.)
Talbot, Rt. Hn. J. G. (Oxf'd Univ.	Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid)	Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.)
Taylor, John W. (Durham)	Waring, Walter	Winterton, Earl
Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)	Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.	Wood, T. M'Kinnon
Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)	Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-
Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.)	Waterlow, D. S.
Thomasson, Franklin	Watt, Henry A.	TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr.Joseph Pease and Master of Elibank.
Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)	Whitbread, Howard
Tomkinson, James	White, Sir George (Norfolk)
Toulmin, George	White, J. Dundas (Dumbart'nsh.
Trevelyan, Charles Philips	Whitehead, Rowland
NOES.
Channing, Sir Francis Allston	Kekewich, Sir George	Stewart, Halley (Greenock)
Clough, William	Lamb, Edmund G. (Leominster	Yoxall, James Henry
Cooper, G. J.	Macpherson, J. T.
Cory, Sir Clifford John	Radford, G. H.	TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Mr.D. A. Thomas and Mr.Clement Edwards.
Doughty, Sir George	Richards, T. F. (Wolverh'mpt'n
Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne)	Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)
Hazel, Dr. A. E.	Snowden, P.
Hutton, Alfred Eddison	Steadman, W. C.

MR. CAVE

said the Amendment he wished to move had to be read in conjunction with a consequential Amendment later on the Paper. The effect of the two together would be that, when a proper demand for special religious instruction was made, the authority would be bound to provide suitable accommodation for the child to receive that instruction on two mornings in the week. He did not speak as a supporter of the Bill. He did not vote for the Second Reading, and he could not possibly vote for the Bill in its present shape; but, in common with other Members, he was watching to see whether the Government carried out their declaration, and made the right of entry a reality. This was one of several Amendments put down on the Paper to enable the Government to carry out that declaration. The Bill at present provided that, when a parent desired that his child should receive special religious instruction, the authority should make available any accommodation in the schoolhouse which could reasonably be made so available. They had, however, to read those words in connection with subsection (6) of this clause. That subsection provided that, in considering whether accommodation was available, the authority should take into account a number of circumstances. There were no less than four different matters which the authority were required to take into account, viz., the number of children or groups of children requiring religious instruction, the proportion of those children in each case to the total number of children in the school, the number of persons available to give that instruction, and the manner in which the classrooms in the schoolhouse could be most conveniently and advantageously used. There were, therefore, under the Bill as it stood any number of objections which might be raised to the demand for special religious instruction. It would be perfectly easy for a reluctant authority, acting no doubt in a bona fide manner, to find within the four corners of the clause many reasons for not providing accommodation for special religious instruction. He wanted to make that impossible. He did not want the giving of special religious instruction to be conditional on a number of matters which the authority might decide one way or the other. He wanted it made imperative upon the authority to provide accommodation. He had put down an Amendment for that purpose so that, when the demand was made in proper form, the authority should be required to provide suitable accommodation for the purpose. He had only heard one objection to this proposal, and that was that the effect of the words might be that the authority might have to build and add to their premises. He did not think that would arise. If there was room in the school for the giving of secular instruction, surely it would be possible by a little goodwill on the part of the authorities to find room for the giving of the different kinds of religious instruction. He would not object to a reasonable minimum to the number of parents requiring special religious instruction so that they should not have a demand for one or two children; but he felt sure that with a little goodwill it would always be possible to find room He moved his Amendment with the genuine intention of having it embodied in the Bill if possible. He thought it pointed out a real danger in the way of the smooth working of the Bill, and he hoped either it or something of equivalent value would be given.

Amendment proposed— In page 2, line 25, after the word 'shall,' to insert the words 'provide suitable accommodation.'"—(Mr. Cave.)

Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

MR. RUNCIMAN

said the hon. and learned Member had pointed out a very serious flaw in his own Amendment. It put on the authority the obligation to erect special premises if it could not provide accommodation in the existing premises for denominational instruction. The same point arose earlier in the afternoon, and in a conversation across the floor of the House, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcester obtained a statement from the Prime Minister to the effect that in so far as any difficulty arose under the subsection they would do their best to remove it. The right hon. Gentleman had provided him with a copy of his suggested Amendment, and he thought it would cover the hon. and learned Member's point, whilst it would not put on the authority the obligation to erect new premises, which, he presumed, the hon. and learned Member would not put forward. The subsection, if the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman were incorporated, would read as follows: "The authority shall, for the purpose of enabling that child to receive that instruction on two mornings in the week, make suitable accommodation in the schoolhouse available, unless they satisfy the Board of Education that that accommodation cannot reasonably be so made available without making structural alerations or additions to the schoolhouse." The Government had considered the Amendment carefully and would be prepared to accept it. It would, he thought, do all the hon. and learned Member desired in the proposal he made.

MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN

said that, as his hon. friend the Member for Marylebone observed at an earlier stage, he could make no claim to speak for anyone but himself. He thought that he was in the same position as most hon. Members in that respect. He was much obliged to the Government for the way in which they had met him. It appeared to him that the clause as it stood put all the onus of proving that accommodation was available on the parent who desired special religious instruction for his child. He wished to transfer the onus of proof on to the authority that there was not such accommodation, and that was what the Amendment which the Government had consented to accept did. That was a substantial concession, for which he was grateful to the Government. They recognised that it was the duty of the local authority to provide this accommodation if it possibly could without having to erect new buildings; and it placed upon them the obligation, if they refused to provide the accommodation, of proving that their refusal arose out of their inability to make suitable accommodation. He wished to make one other observation, and he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would not think him ungenerous after the way in which he had met him. He agreed that this subsection had to be read in connection with subsection (6). He had read subsection (6) very carefully, and it did, he thought, complicate the matter; but he did not agree with his hon. and learned friend that the object of the subsection was to throw obstacles in the way of parents. He took it the intention was rather in the opposite direction, and that it wag meant to give better security against unnecessary obstacles being placed in the way of parents exercising their rights. He hoped they might reach that subsection in time to discuss it, because he thought it was very important they should do so. He believed if they did, they would come to something like a general agreement. In accepting, so far as he was concerned, the concession the Government had made on subsection (1) they ought not to be precluded from raising the same question on subsection (6) when they came to it.

MR. LANE-FOX (Yorkshire, W. R., Barkston Ash)

said that if this alteration was made there ought to be some limitation as to the number of children for whom accommodation was made. The number thirty had been suggested, but most of them thought that was too many. It had been pointed out by a Liberal friend of his that if every parent chose to demand special instruction for his own child, that might be made a means of wrecking the right of entry. It had also been suggested that this might be a possible means for hostile local authorities to wreck the Bill. He did not suggest that such a thing would be done, but in order to remove the possibility of its being attempted, he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would consider the possibility of putting in some such limitation, and thus make it very much easier for them to believe that this was really a genuine concession to those who desired denominational teaching.

MR. LOUGH (Islington, W.)

said if, as he understood, the Government were going to propose alternative words, it was very important that they should have them.

MR. RUNCIMAN

said that when they came to the Amendment which would be proposed by the right hon. Gentleman opposite, they might discuss it. The only purpose he had in reading it was to show that they had in mind the point raised, and that they could not accept the Amendment.

MR. CAVE

asked what would be the effect on subsection (6) if the Amendment was accepted in lieu of this one. If they were taking away the decision on this question from the authority and transferring it to the Board of Education, they did not want the words in subsection (6), line 33, because they simply supplied a guide to local authorities. Would it not be consequential on his right hon. friend's Amendment to leave out the words in subsection (6), to which he took some objection?

MR. RUNCIMAN

said it did not necessarily follow, and he did not think they could discuss subsection (6) on this Amendment. He would rather leave it to a later stage, when he thought he could show the hon. Member that it was in the interest of his friends. It was framed with that intention.

MR. LOUGH

thought it would be more convenient if they could make an observation or two when the words were actually before them, but they had to remember the way the discussion went on, and perhaps they would never be before them. Would the right hon. Gentleman set them the example of making a suggestion as to what he would agree to with regard to this clause, and just say one word about it now? He suggested that while he could not accept these words throwing an absolute obligation on the local authority to make provision, he would go so far as to see that if they did not make accommodation available it should be left to the Board of Education to decide whether the local education authority had come to its conclusion fairly or not. In short, the matter would be left to the Board of Education. The right hon. Gentleman might well consider whether that was not throwing a very invidious duty on the Board of Education. These local authorities had not been treated very well up to the present. No option whatever war, left to them, and as the clause was drawn it read: "They shall if it is reasonably practicable." These words seemed to go quite far enough. But they were going now to subject them to a trial, and if they said it was not reasonably practicable, they were going to haul them up to London before the Board of Education. That was treating these authorities rather hardly. The Committee ought to consider how the Board of Education would be able to decide this question. It would have to send down an inspector at great expense to hear evidence on both sides, and then to perform one of those duties which tempted the Board of Education into political by-paths. One Board would decide one way, and the next another. Their decisions would be very much an open question. He was glad the Amendment was not to be accepted.

MR. CAVE

After what has happened I ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

LORD R. CECIL

said the Amendment which he rose to move was one of considerable importance. Its object was to provide that except where conditions were expressly varied by the Act the conditions, of denominational instruction should be the same as the conditions of undenominational instruction. It was of some importance in the practical working of this matter. For instance, children whose parents desired that they should receive denominational instruction might say: "Oh, no; we are not going in, we are going to play in the playground or the street." There was nothing in the Bill, as it stood, giving the master any disciplinary authority over the scholars in this connection. There was nothing that made the instruction any part of the ordinary curriculum of the school. All the clause said was that the local education authority were bound to provide accommodation. That was the whole obligation, and the only power given to the parents to obtain the instruction. He was not asking anything unreasonable when he asked that all the conditions that applied to the ordinary curriculum of the school, the discipline to be exercised by the master, the furniture of the school—all that kind of question should be the same as if the denominational instruction were undenominational. They were very anxious, where the authorities were hostile, that the matter should not be put on one side as a matter of no importance and an extra which the law compelled them to carry out, and which they might carry out in as perfunctory a way as possible. They were anxious that it should be a real thing, and he understood the Government wished that too. This would be a real advance towards making the right of entry effective.

Amendment proposed— In page 2, line 26, after the word 'instruction,' to insert the words 'upon the same conditions, save as in this Act mentioned, as any other religious instruction given in the school.'" —(Lord R. Cecil.)

Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

SIR W. ROBSON

, who was indistinctly heard, thought the words of the Amendment were a little too general. The noble Lord said the discipline of the school ought to be applied to the children while they were receiving the special religious instruction. Obviously it should, and he thought that was already provided for in the clause. The special religious instruction would undoubtedly be given between the hours to which the bye-laws applied, and even though in extreme cases it was not given between such hours, it would still be part of the instruction of the school. However, it might well be said more expressly that the children should be made subject to the discipline of the school during the special religious instruction. There would be a little danger in going much further. Supposing the whole special religious instruction was placed under the school discipline, it might have the effect of placing the clergyman who gave the religious instruction under the schoolmaster. Whatever provision was made, it must be in a better form of language. If they specified that religious instruction should be on the time-table they met all reasonable requirements.

LORD R. CECIL

considered that the Attorney-General had met his point very fairly, but he asked him not to close his mind to the possibility of adopting such words as he had suggested. The difficulties of drafting, he was aware, had been very extreme, but he hoped the hon. and learned Gentleman would consider the possibility of adopting more general words, because it would be intensely valuable in the case of any difficulty arising to be able to say to any local authority: "You are not treating these children in the same way as other children," and they would be able to say to the local authority that it was not doing its duty.

SIR W. ROBSON

replied that the Government had considered the point and had decided upon a form of words which would shortly appear on the Paper, making the intention clear.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

MR. JAMES HOPE

moved to insert after the word "instruction" the words "in a class of reasonable size." He did not think all the children requiring special instruction should be lumped together and given their instruction in a perfunctory way. He wished to secure that the instruction should be given under the best educational conditions, and among those conditions he thought a reasonably small class was one of the most important.

Amendment proposed— In page 2, line 26, after the word 'instruction,' to insert the words 'in a class of reasonable size.'"—(Mr. James Hope.)

Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

MR. RUNCIMAN

assured the hon. Member that the proposal he had made was fully met in subsection (6) and it was quite unnecessary to insert those words at this point.

LORD R. CECIL

did not quite agree that this point was met in subsection (6) which was rather a different matter. His hon. friend wished to provide that the local education authority should provide accommodation for special instruction "in a class of reasonable size." Subsection (6) provided that they were not to provide any accommodation at all unless certain conditions were fulfilled. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would see his way to meet the point raised by his hon. friend.

MR. JAMES HOPE

could not agree that his point had been met, but he would content himself with having called attention to the matter, which might perhaps be raised later on.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

MR. MILDMAY (Devonshire, Totnes)

moved to omit the words "on two mornings in the week on which the school meets." He understood from what had been said earlier in the debate that the right of entry would not be restricted to two mornings in the week, but that an individual child would not have an opportunity to receive denominational instruction on more than two mornings in the week. That was a very grudging allowance, and once it was conceded that those who attended the school to give denominational teaching could be present in the schools on more than two mornings weekly, what could be said, even from the strictly undenominational point of view, against granting permission to the children to receive, on more than two mornings in the week, that religious instruction which their parents wished them to receive? There was much to be said on behalf of the parents who conscientiously urged that plea. He had never strongly upheld the denominational point of view, and he supported the Second Reading because he desired to see some settlement of their religious difficulties brought about. He voted for the Second Reading because it always seemed to him that the more they discussed these matters the greater chance there would be of understanding each other and appreciating the depth of each others religious convictions. He had an opinion that religious teaching under the Cowper-Temple clause was valuable as far as it went. But as the noble Lord the Member for Marylebone had said upon a former stage of this Bill, no one could call such religious teaching as he had in mind non-doctrinal. Although he was of opinion that religious instruction of value to the children could be imparted and in some schools was imparted under the Cowper-Temple clause, at the same time he did not ignore the fact which they had all to acknowledge and recognise that there a large body of people who took an opposite view, and who believed that such teaching, if not harmful, was absolutely worthless. They had a perfect right to hold that view, and he was certain it was honestly held, and no man had any right to dictate his views to another in this connection. Those were matters between a man and his own conscience, or perhaps he should say between a man and his Maker. When they heard some hon. Members opposite say that the teaching under the Cowper-Temple clause ought to satisfy all Protestants, he had no hesitation in declaring that the House of Commons had no right to dictate what should be the views of any in regard to the religious teaching to be given to their children. If they were to have a lasting settlement they must bear in mind a fact of very great importance in connection with the right of entry. What had Nonconformists complained of with regard to their position under the Bill of 1902? What had impelled them to passive resistance? It was that they had been compelled to pay for a religious education of which they did not approve. How did they propose under this Bill to remedy that state of things? They proposed to do it by shifting this very same grievance, which by their own admission had been intolerable to them in the past, on to the backs of others. They proposed to compel others to pay for a religious education of which those others disapproved. That was a fact which he asked hon. Gentlemen opposite not to forget. When they said this was not a balanced settlement, and that very small surrenders were required from the Church, he asked them to recall the violent terms in which they characterised some time since the bondage which they now, under this Bill, were seeking to impose upon others. [MINISTERIAL cries of "Question."] How could anyone with any sense of justice be prepared to consider the possibility of carrying into law so obviously unjust a provision as this? It was only because they hoped that the quid pro quo, which was the right of entry into all schools, would be no shadowy concession, but would be really valuable and substantial in its nature. Right of entry was of no use to Roman Catholics, and it was no use in the Roman Catholic schools in the single school areas, of which he had an example in his own constituency. The parents of those Roman Catholic schools in single districts would in future be —

And, it being Eleven of the Clock, the CHAIRMAN left the Chair to make his Report to the House.

Committee report Progress; to sit again To-morrow.