§ LORD WHARNCLIFFE presented a petition from the parish schoolmasters of Scotland, and put a question as to the grants by the Committee of Privy Council for Education under the Minutes of Council of 1846 to parish schoolmasters in Scotland. The noble Lord was wholly inaudible.
§ The MARQUESS of LANSDOWNE found, on inquiry, that several applications had been made both for advances to schools and to schoolmasters in Scotland to the Committee; and twenty-eight of those applications were at present under consideration. With regard to the examination proposed to be instituted into the qualifications of schoolmasters, preparations were making for the appointment of proper persons to conduct such examinations in various parts of Scotland. Persons had been already appointed for that purpose in Glasgow, and were at the present moment engaged in conducting the examinations.
§ The MARQUESS of BREADALBANE complained that the members of the Free Church had been charged with withdrawing their support from the parochial schoolmasters. He did not believe the charge. So alive were the people of Scotland to the importance of securing a good education, that the members of the Free Church would send their children to those schools in which they could secure for them the best education. With respect to the question of an augmentation in the salaries of the parochial schoolmasters of Scotland, he should certainly object to it, unless the office of parochial schoolmaster were thrown open to members of the Free Church, who constituted the great majority of the people. At the present moment no one was eligible to the office of parochial schoolmaster in Scotland who was not a member of the Established Church. There was one method he thought by which all branches of Presbyterians in Scotland might be united, and that was by adopting as the test the Shorter Catechism.
§ House adjourned.