LORD BROUGHAM* I rise, according to the notice I gave on Friday, to bring under the notice of the House the Petitions which I presented on that day, 120 in number, from twenty-four counties, and signed by upwards of 15,700 persons of various ranks and all classes, excepting the humblest. And I must begin by stating, that my noble and learned Friend 350 (Lord Lyndhurst) is not the only person who has been charged with being aged. I, too, have been a sufferer from the like imputation.
§ LORD LYNDHURSTI do not admit that I am a sufferer.
LORD BROUGHAMI am glad to find my noble Friend is not a sufferer. No more am I. But it has certainly been said, not "elsewhere," but by an able and eminent person, promoted to a high office, of which, I doubt not, he performs the duties much to the public advantage, that I have grown grey in talking of education; and disrespectful words were added, because I happened to differ with this worthy individual in some of his opinions upon the subject. To the charge of age I plead guilty, with my noble and learned Friend; that I have only talked upon education, if such was the sense of the accusation, I take leave to deny; but I shall pursue the same course, which for so many long years I have held, both in and out of Parliament, strenuously devoting myself to the education of the people in all its forms and all its branches. Since I gave my notice of bringing this great subject before your Lordships, a debate has taken place "elsewhere," which your Lordships have most probably read the account of, and I shall thus be spared the trouble of bringing many details before you. A very able and useful statement was made by my right hon. Friend, the Vice President of the Council (Mr. Lowe), who, however, is represented to have fallen into some errors by inattention to dates; and the other side of the question was taken, with equal talent, by my Friend the Member for Leeds (Mr. E. Baines). It would be difficult to find two persons more fitted, by their abilities and their enlightened principles, to handle this question, — propounding the views in which they differed with exemplary fairness towards each other, and perfect good-will to the cause. Their statements were incorrect as to the origin of the system now established, and of which I am enabled to speak with perfect certainty. In 1816, 1817, and 1818, I had the honour of presiding over the Education Committee in the House of Commons, and I am only discharging a strict duty to the memory of that celebrated body, if I state, after all the violence by which it was assailed has subsided, and men are fully aware of its services, that their Report in 1818 recommended that very measure afterwards adopted; of vesting annually a 351 sum in responsible hands, to be applied in planting schools, but so as not to check, and rather to stimulate private exertions. The plan proposed was to give a sum for outfit, so as to provide the building, or other first expenses, to such bodies or individuals as would furnish a due proportion of these, and would undertake the charge of continuing the school. We advised, as a general rule, the applying the grant through the instrumentality of the two great Societies, the British and Foreign and the National, but without confining it to these. Furthermore, with the concurrence of the Committee, indeed by their instruction, I prepared a Parish School Bill which I brought in, and it had made some progress, when that and all other business was suspended, except the necessary work of the Session, by the well-known proceedings before this House, in which my noble and learned Friend and myself bore a part (Queen's Case), and which for many months occupied Parliament and the country with an absorbing interest. When the heats and distraction of that time had passed away, it was found that another obstacle arose to the Education Bill; not from any opposition of political parties, or of the Government, I am bound to say, or of the Church, but unhappily of the sects, who were jealous of the provisions made for clerical superintendence, but under the strictest regulations to prevent all exclusion of Dissenters, and all observances that might lead to such exclusion. Finding these worthy persons immovable in their objections, as I well knew how zealously they had worked for education so many years, as my fellow-labourers, it became my duty to submit. I yielded to circumstances—to scruples which I could not remove; but I submitted unconvinced, and as little convinced were some of their own most distinguished leaders. I well remember, with one of their most venerable presbyters, the late Dr. Lindsay, leaving a meeting where we had stood nearly alone, and in reference to their vehement objections against the least interference of the Church in the economy of schools, he said:—
I am, as you know, a strict Presbyterian, adverse to the Church of England and the regimen of prelates; and I am as irreconcilable an enemy to the Church of Rome; but rather than the people should not be taught at all, I would have them taught by the Pope of Rome himself.Such was not the sentiment of the dissenting people at large, and the Bill was abandoned.352 But although the action of Parliament was thus prevented, the unaided efforts of private zeal and private munificence continued to further the great and good work. Much had been thus effected before the appointment of the Education Committee; and in the earliest days of its labours, in 1818, the number of day-schools in England and Wales was 19,000, attended by 674,000 scholars; and 7,400 Sunday-schools, with 425,000 scholars. In the next fifteen years there was a great increase, which we of the Committee flattered ourselves we had some share in causing. The day-school returns were now 39,000, with 1,127,600 pupils; the Sunday-schools 16,800, and 1,548,000 pupils; so that the amount of schooling had doubled in the interval, and still without one farthing of the public money being applied. In 1833 when my noble Friend at the table (the Marquess of Lansdowne) and I were Ministers of the Crown, as soon as the agitation occasioned by the Reform Bill had subsided, I deemed it my duty to call the attention of my colleagues to the Report of the Education Committee to which I have referred. I obtained the concurrence of the Treasury, then under my dear and lamented friends Lord Grey and Lord Al-thorp; and the sum, the moderate sum of only £20,000, as a beginning of the new work which it was resolved should be tried, was vested in that department, to be applied annually to execute the plan recommended in 1818, but which during the interval we had possessed no power effectually to pursue. The success was such, that the grants have gone on constantly increasing; and this year, instead of £20,000, they amounttobetween£700,000 and £800,000. The number of day-schools during the next 18 years, under the system of grants, has increased to 46,000, with 2,144,000 pupils; Sunday-schools 23,500, and 2,401,000 pupils. But a great change and improvement has taken place, beyond the increase of numbers. There has been an important change in the quality as well as the quantity of instruction afforded, and this is wholly owing to the improved administration of the funds. In the Bills which I have repeatedly presented to your Lordships, I proposed establishing a Board, with two irremovable members and one responsible minister. I have abstained, of late years, from pressing this plan upon Parliament, because since the administrating of the funds has been vested in the Committee of Council, great success has at- 353 tended their labours; in referring to which it is impossible to speak in terms too laudatory of Sir J. K. Shuttleworth and Mr. Lingen, the able and indefatigable secretaries. I own I could wish that there were established some more close connection between the Committee and the Treasury, in order to promote a more close inquiry, I had almost said inquisition, into the circumstances, the detailed particulars, of all applications for aid, with a view to the most rigorous economy and the prevention of abuse.
But the great service rendered by the Committee of Council has been their invaluable measures of Training Schools for the education of teachers—of inspection, extending over all schools receiving aid; and of pupil teachers, substituted for the old monitorial plan of what was called mutual instruction—against which, my friend, Mr. Cousin, has written a book, and which in consequence of the substitute provided by the Committee—far better than any argument either they or he could use—has really ceased to exist. I have stated the claims to gratitude of the Education Committee of 1818; but I am bound to admit that this forms no part of their recommendation, at least, such is my recollection of their Reports.
But another plan I have often proposed to your Lordships, and it was the subject of a Bill presented you. I refer to it, because it bears upon the only real objection made to the prayer of these petitions for the extension of certificates and inspection to middle-class schools. I was anxious to confer upon all corporate towns, all towns having a Council, the power of levying a school rate by the authority and under the control of the Committee of Council, in order to prevent abuse, and to guard against interference with private and voluntary exertions. This would alone give a vast number of schools where education is most wanted, schools under the management of parties living on the spot. For it is lamentable to find, that the deficiency of education is much greater where it is most wanted. In great towns, having 50,000 inhabitants and upwards, it is as thirteen to eleven in comparison of the rest of the country—and, unhappily, in London greatest of all; so that there are in the capital, as compared with the rest of the country, only half as many day-schools and scholars, and one-third as many Sunday-schools and scholars. It would have been an easy, and I should say, a safe measure, to give that 354 power of rating to all those corporate towns, taking care to make one indispensable condition of all aids to be granted, that no exclusion of any sect should be permitted by the rules established or the observances appointed, though requiring that parents, on refusing to let their children attend the parish church and learn the Catechism, should give a security that they are taught the religion and attend the church of their families. I know that many hold it better to separate entirely secular from religious instruction, and I was formerly much inclined to this view. But I consider the opinion of the country to have been fully pronounced in favour of religious education; and I see no difficulty of combining this with due equality to the Dissenters and Churchmen. The difficulty, no doubt, is great, to get an exact equality. You cannot place the Dissenter on the same footing in all respects with the Churchman, because, to have at a school ministers of the faith of each family having children there is impossible, the Church being one and the sects thirty-five. But you can prevent all exclusion; you can secure that the doors shall be open to Jew and Gentile, Turk and Christian, Churchman and Dissenter. Each cannot be taught or catechised by a minister of his own faith; but, that the children of Dissenters may be taught in the same school, and by the same masters with the children of Churchmen, is proved by numerous examples— such as the excellent school on King Edward's foundation at Birmingham, where many Dissenting children, above one-third of the whole, receive secular education without any objection by their parents, while receiving religious instruction from their own pastors, and attending the worship of those pastors. I know, too, in Scotland the same object has been fully and satisfactorily attained; and there, although the main causes of dissent are rather in discipline than in doctrine, yet there are also sects of entire diversity in belief, as Roman Catholics, Baptists, Unitarians. Now, the difficulty has been entirely overcome in the school established by two friends of the noble Marquess (Lansdowne) and myself—Lord Dunfermline, and also he of whom we have so lately had the altogether irreparable loss, Lord Murray. In that school, all sects are taught together in the same room, and their religious instruction takes place at different hours of the day, without any difficulty whatever.
Now, all these exertions have been made, 355 and all this money has been expended, for the education of the poorer classes—the working classes. The number of schools planted—the providing teachers qualified for their important duties by training schools—the inspectors appointed and salaried to secure the performance of those duties—the qualifying pupil teachers, and defraying the expense of employing them; invaluable as the system has proved, and daily increasing in its extent, and adding to the benefits it bestows on the community, yet its operation is confined to the humbler classes of the people, and the petitioners complain that the inestimable benefits of the system are not extended to the middle classes, who pay a vast proportion of the charge. Of the four millions which have been subscribed for this good work, it is calculated that above three are contributed by them. They have not grudged this or complained of it as a burthen, and they are fully sensible of the benefits it has secured, and grateful for the improvement of their poorer brethren. But they feel that the schools at which their children are taught by no means stand in the same position as those of either the classes above them or below them, and to the great defects of their schools it is, that the many thousands whose petitions I have presented and entreat your attention to, are addressed. These petitions, from all parts of the country, have been transmitted to the "Society for Promoting National Education," whose exertions are above all praise, under their manager, Mr. Joseph Bentley, of whom I will only say, that his purse as well his labour has been devoted, without stint, in the most disinterested manner, and from the purest motives, to this good work. The petitioners complain, that no care is taken to prevent improper persons from exercising the office of teachers in these schools. While tests are required of qualification from those who exercise other professions, as the medical in all its branches; no pains are taken to qualify those where incompetence as teachers may produce the most serious evils, or to prevent, or even to discourage, those whose character and conduct wholly unfits them, or whose employment as schoolmasters for gain, being uninstructed and ill conducted, is calculated to inflict the greatest evils on the community. The petitioners have no intention of recommending any compulsion; but they claim the benefits of the system of inspection for all schools which voluntarily place themselves 356 under the supervision of the council—all schools which either the patrons or the teachers choose to place in connection with that council. If arrangements were made for inviting or permitting all who enter into the profession to be trained, and for granting certificates to those who excel, which might have the effect of a diploma or degree, the petitioners are confident that the effect would be to raise the character of the teachers, both for moral and professional fitness, and give the same improvement to the schools of the middle classes, which the great seminaries of the higher orders have long possessed, and which the administration of the funds granted by Parliament have, of late years, secured to the schools of the humbler classes. This subject is of greater interest than can well he described. The petitioners justly observe, on the care taken to protect the health of the people from the risks occasioned by unqualified practitioners; they ask if the morals of the community are of less importance than their health, and bid you to look to the misery, and suffering, and crimes, resulting from ill-conducted or incompetent teachers in schools. We prevent unqualified practitioners of medicine in all its branches by law. The petitioners only ask for due encouragement to schoolmasters, qualified by their conduct and capacity, and they rely on the effect of this encouragement, sooner or later, to place all schools under fit masters. And here let me for a moment step aside and advert to a kindred subject, which has been most strikingly brought to my attention as connected with the improvement of the middle classes, and more especially in the Congress of Social Science, at Birmingham, in 1857, and at Liverpool last year. I here allude to the training of female teachers, and the necessity of requiring a capacity to instruct, and a willingness to instruct, in other than the ordinary accomplishments of music and French, or the necessary learning to read, write, and cypher. But household duties require the learning of other things, as needlework and cooking, and it is of the utmost importance that those who are to be the wives of working men and the mothers of their children, should be qualified to save their money and make their homes comfortable, which far too many wives are not. The consequence is that the husband, unless he has acquired a taste for reading, passes his evenings at the alehouse. We had at Liverpool and Birmingham, the strongest 357 representations made of the difficulty in procuring female servants, from the love of distinction in higher accomplishments making girls despise the more ordinary and useful ones I have referred to. It is lamentable to add, that their morals in too many cases suffer, and render them unacceptable as domestics. One manufacturer, though not in either of the great towns I have mentioned, declared that of the numerous hands in his employ, no fewer than eighty unmarried girls were mothers. Why do I mention this painful subject in connection with the improvement of the middle, rather than of the working classes? It is because by an uniform law of our social condition all improvement proceeds from the higher to the lower order of society, and therefore the improvement of the middle classes is sure to be followed by that of those below them.
I have been drawn aside from my statement of the numbers of these classes, and the proportion which they bear to the rest of the community. According to the calculation of Major Graham, the Registrar-General, the working classes form four-fifths of the people. Though I placed great reliance on my hon. Friend's estimate, I had recourse to the evidence before Mr. Hume's Income-Tax Committee, in 1853, particularly that of Mr. Farr, for the purpose of checking the calculation, and I found that, taking those under the income of £75, as the working people, the result agrees to a mere fraction of difference with the proportion of four-fifths. Then, of our nineteen millions, this would give fifteen and a half for the working classes, and three and a half for all the others. In order to find what proportion of this three and a half are of the middle class, I take all incomes frum £150 to £1,000, and I find these are possessed by about 107,000 persons; or allowing five to a family, somewhat under 550,000 of the people. Then-children of a school-going age would be 120,000, and require about 1,200 schools, a large number, with reference to the importance of the class being well educated, but an inconsiderable number with regard to the additional duty, which extending the Privy Council inspection would impose upon that department.
These petitioners are anxious to declare their desire that no restrictions may be imposed upon Education, whether of the upper, the lower, or the middle classes—restrictions which are in the least degree connected 358 with religious belief, or inconsistent with, the most perfect toleration. That I heartily agree with them, I need not add. All withholding of rights or privileges, all exclusion from colleges or schools; in a word, every arrangement, he it by law or by practice, under a law, or by a mode of administering it; nay, be it by any feeling or prejudice operating practically in society to exclude persons for their religious faith from advantages enjoyed by others, the bulk of the community,—are to be either reprobated or deplored—reprobated if wilful, deplored if unintentional—as not only oppressive to the excluded, but hurtful to religion; inconsistent with its genuine spirit, adverse to its best interests, obstructing the progress of truth, and only encouraging error. How often have I in this place, and with the concurrence of my noble and learned Friend (Lord Lyndhurst), declared my hostility to all attempts at supporting religion by exclusive or disqualifying laws. Vain, indeed, must such attempts ever prove; impotent to promote truth, but not powerless to propagate error. For persecuted truth I have no anxiety or alarm,—it grows under attacks, and rears its head the higher. Of persecuted error I have a great dread; for persecution confirms and spreads it, and makes it at length usurp the place of truth.
THE BISHOP OF LINCOLN*expressed his thanks to the noble and learned Lord for calling the attention of their Lordships to the very important question of the nature of the education now provided for the middle classes. In speaking of the middle classes he was disposed, however, to draw the line somewhat below that fixed by the noble and learned Lord, and include all whose incomes ranged between £75 and £500 a year. Those above the latter sum generally send their children to a higher class of schools than those whose defects had been alluded to. Of late years some amount of jealousy had been expressed among the middle classes, on the ground that the education given, partly at the expense of the tax-payers generally, in our primary schools, was superior to that they could obtain in schools of considerably higher pretensions, and which cost much greater expenditure. He believed there was some truth at the bottom of that feeling as to the deficiency in the quality of the education given in the middle-class schools. He believed that instruction in the primary schools to those 359 children who were permitted to remain long enough in them to profit by going through the complete system of instruction, was very much Letter; and in saying that, he was but giving utterance to complaints he had frequently heard from those whose means and whose social position and habits obliged them to send their children to the more pretentious and higher-priced schools. Take the case of farmers, for instance, who were not willing to send their children to the National school in the village, and who placed them in middle-class schools at a distance, and at a considerable cost. Many of them had said to him, "We cannot judge of professions, but we can of results; we pay high for the education of our children, but we do not get value for our money." He thought these schools should be subjected to periodical inspection, in the same way as the National schools, under the authority of the Committee of Education. He knew that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would not consider the present moment a very favourable one for making an addition to the educational votes for the inspection of these middle-class schools, but he could not help thinking that a very small amount would suffice for the immediate purposes in view. Of course, compulsory inspection was quite out of the question, the inspection could only be applicable to those schools where the masters desired it, and applied for the inspectors. But he had no doubt that, in cases where the proprietor of these schools believed the system of education pursued in their establishments would bear the test of inspection, that the prospect of receiving the certificate as to the superiority and efficiency of the training and instruction imparted, would induce them to come forward voluntarily and request it. In the course of time the success which they would achieve, in consequence of the greater influx of pupils, would incite the proprietors of other establishments to introduce improvements, and to qualify their schools for inspection also; and thus eventually, and at a comparatively small cost, the whole tone and efficiency of these schools might be greatly raised and improved. What he had said respecting the inferiority of middle schools generally had special reference to female education in that class of schools. The education given was very pretentious, but it was very imperfect; and he would only conclude by saying that, if it were possible, no greater boon could 360 be bestowed upon the middle classes than to appoint inspectors, or to give those now existing power to visit and report upon these schools.
EARL GRANVILLE*remarked that the noble and learned Lord, who had presented petitions from a large number of persons on the subject of education, had addressed himself to two questions—one the subject of the education of the labouring classes, and the other the education of the middle classes, which was more immediately the subject of the petitions. Lord Granville was not surprised that the noble and learned Lord had, in dealing with the first point, referred with some pride to the labours of the Committees winch were formed in 1817, and over which he had presided. Lord Granville was too young at the time to know anything of those Committees; but he has often been struck, in reading Lord Brougham's speeches in 1819, with the comprehensive manner in which all the principal improvements in national education, since carried out, were therein inculcated. The noble and learned Lord had read to the House some statistics with respect to the number of schools and scholars between the time of the sitting of those Committees and the first grants of public money. But any such statistics are fallacious, unless the quality of the education given is taken into account. The large proportion of schools were held formerly in buildings ill-adapted for their purpose, the system of education was bad, and the schoolmasters entirely incompetent. Under the minutes of 1833, and subsequent years, excellent schools buildings have been scattered over the land, a good system of teaching adopted, and, by the introduction of pupil teachers into schools, an invaluable body of men have been raised for the object of national education. Large sums are now being expended for this purpose, and have not unnaturally excited the attention of the other House of Parliament; and it becomes more incumbent than ever upon the department of the Privy Council, which has the superintendence of these grants, to endeavour to make those grants produce still more effect, by great vigilance as to the conditions accompanying them, or possibly by some change in those conditions. In this object, Lord Granville hoped that assistance would be given by the Commission, presided over by the Duke of Newcastle, who had been able to take a more general view of the work of national edu- 361 cation than it was possible for an office to do. Lord Granville regretted that, as regards what it was right that the Government should do for the improvement of the education of the middle classes, he could not go as far as the noble and learned Lord, and the right reverend Prelate, who had followed him. Great political economists, such as Mr. Adam Smith and Mr. John Mill; great statesmen, including the noble and learned Lord himself, had laid down the principle, that it was the right and duty of the State to give to the working classes that education which, while it was a means of preserving order, was not within the reach of such persons, even if they appreciated its importance. No one had hitherto maintained the same principle applied to those who were rich enough to provide education for their children. The smaller farmers and shopkeepers could now obtain, at a very small rate, an excellent education for their children at the National schools, and their larger means gave them the advantage of keeping their children at those schools much longer than it was possible for the poorer parents to do. It is true that a feeling of social pride often prevented their availing themselves of these advantages. In Lord Granville's own parish, many children who could receive an excellent education close to their own doors, are sent to receive, at a considerable distance and at larger cost, very inferior instruction. Lord Granville did not quarrel with any feeling of this sort, but it is clear, that if it is indulged, it must be paid for by those who entertain it. There are, however, now facilities, which did not formerly exist, for ascertaining the merits of schools, by the best of all practical tests —their success. The competitive examinations carried on for admission to the different branches of the public service—the examinations conducted by the Society of Arts—the middle-class degree given by two of the Universities—all contribute to point out the excellence of certain middle-class schools, in their results as well as in the attainments of their masters; though Lord Granville freely admitted no means existed for training and granting certificates to middle-class teachers. As long, however, as the whole superintendence of National education was thrown upon a central office in London, the work was so great that it was only got through by the great ability and incessant labour of the permanent civil servants in the Council-office; and Lord Granville would not will- 362 ingly assent to throw a new department of business upon them. Lord Granville could not, therefore, give an assent to the prayer of the petitioners; but after the strong opinions given by the noble and learned Lord and the right rev. Prelate, the matter was one which should receive the consideration of the Government.
§ After a few words from Lord BROUGHAM, denying that there was any intention to make the inspection compulsory, the subject dropped.
§ House adjourned at Half-past Six o'clock, till To-morrow, Half-past Ten o'clock.