HL Deb 18 April 1864 vol 174 cc1182-93
EARL GRANVILLE

My Lords, I wish to call your Lordships' attention to a matter of considerable importance to myself, and in order to put myself in order I will finish by a formal Motion for the adjournment of the House. The Votes of the other House of Parliament are communicated to this House, and I will therefore read the Resolution to which that House came last week on the subject of the Reports of the Inspectors of Schools— That in the opinion of this House the mutilation of the Reports of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, and the exclusion from them of statements and opinions adverse to the educational views entertained by the Committee of Council, while matter favourable to them is admitted, are violations of the understanding under which the appointment of the Inspectors was originally sanctioned by Parliament, and tend entirely to destroy the value of their Reports. This Resolution appears somewhat unusual, and to be couched more in the sensational style than in the ordinary grave and guarded phraseology adopted in Parliamentary proceedings. With that, however, we have nothing to do; but what I do feel most strongly and deeply is the censure which has been cast upon the Department with which I am. connected. It is a rule that no allusion shall be made to debates in the other House of Parliament. That is a good and a salutary rule, and one which it is most desirable should be observed. At the same time, it is so necessary to state that which I am about to say, that I will suppose that some similar Motion has been proposed in a distant country enjoying representative institutions, and that a debate took place on a Resolution of this character. I will do this as shortly as possible, and not with the view of answering the Motion, but for the purpose of explaining the position in which I stand in the matter. The Mover of the Resolution appears to have grounded it on certain alleged facts. He stated that the representative of the Education Department claims the right to expunge from the Inspectors Reports all opinions differing from his own, and at the same time to retain all opinions agreeing with his own. He asked the House to believe him without proof, though proof he said he had, if challenged. He mentioned that certain passages were expunged from the Inspectors' Reports, and that if he had access to the Reports he could make out a much stronger case. The pith of the answer made by the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education was, that the alleged facts were not true. In fact, he gave the most complete denial that it was possible to give. But, notwithstanding, the House divided; and by a majority of eight passed the Resolution which I have read. I have been informed—although I do not know it of my own knowledge—that while the Vice President was denying the allegations against him, proofs—not tendered to him for explanation, contradiction, or retractation, were, in the shape of either the original Reports or copies of Inspectors' Reports, privately handed round to Members of the House of Commons, with marks appended to certain paragraphs. That must have been done with the view of influencing their votes on the Resolution, when the question was really one of veracity on one side or the other. In a large office, with much routine business, the head of the office is officially responsible for everything, and that official responsibility ought not to be lessened in the slightest degree. But with regard to the particular matter which gave rise to this vote, I am not only officially but also morally and practically responsible for the proceedings which have taken place. And I will say further, that if I had been in the Vice President's place in the House of Commons on Tuesday last, and if the same accusation had been made against me, I should have made exactly the same statement. Your Lordships may well suppose that as soon as I heard of the circulation of this report, I called upon Mr. Lingen, the Secretary of the Committee of Education, to give some explanation of what had taken place, and to state whether it was possible that such a report should be in existence. It is one of the peculiarities of the Resolution of the other House that it complains of a breach of faith towards Parliament, and with regard to this Minute, on which action has taken place, I will venture to read it to the House. It is as follows:— Their Lordships having considered the instructions issued from time to time to Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools for the preparation of their annual Reports, find the sum of those instructions to be that the Inspectors must confine themselves to the state of the schools under their inspection, and to practical suggestions for their improvement. If any Report in the judgment of their Lordships does not conform to this standard, it is to be returned to the Inspector for revision; and if, on its being again received from him, it appears to be open to the same objection, it is to be put aside as a document not proper to be printed at the public expense. I will now read the explanation given by Mr. Lingen— Education Department, Council Office, Downing Street, London, April 18. My Lord—In answer to your Lordship's inquiries with regard to the alleged mutilation of the Reports of the Inspectors, I beg leave to submit the following statement:—From the earliest time of my connection with the Office it has always been the duty of some one officer to carry the Inspectors' Reports through the press, and the Secretary has discharged, permissively, a sort of editor's duty. Previously to 1858 this came to very little. A private note, or a personal communication, might pass, most frequently with a view to condensation. About that time, however, the increasing size of our volumes, and the wide range taken by some of our Reports, had become frequent matter of complaint at the Treasury, and had been noticed in Parliament. Fresh instructions were, therefore, issued in 1868 to reduce the length and confine the subject-matter of the Reports, and in 1859 the Vice President used to read the Reports himself in manuscript, and strike out from them, before they went to press, those passages which he regarded as not conformable to the instructions. I may say here that I think such a course to be a perfectly right one. If properly done, it could not be open to a charge of mutilating. I should rather be inclined to look upon it as a pruning of extraneous and irrelevant matter. The Inspector, when he had his manuscript back with his proof, had an opportunity of seeing what had been struck out. The debates which occurred in Parliament about this time, appeared to me to leave the Committee of Council, at least in some degree, responsible for the exclusion of irrelevant matter from the Inspectors' Reports, and I, therefore, directed the officer who read them for the press to examine them with increased care. The mode in which he was to call my attention to anything requiring it was not fixed to any particular routine; he was at liberty either to speak to me with the Report, or to mark it at his discretion. The Report, at this stage of its progress to press, was treated like any other official paper. Such was the state of method throughout 1859, and I do not remember any particular change taking place in 1860, but one of the Reports printed in that year was objected to in Parliament as irrelevant, because it entered into a comparison of Protestant and Roman Cotholic countries in respect of chastity. This led to the Minute of the 31st of January, 1861 (the one now in force), being passed. For some time after this Minute the practice was to mark, or note, any passages in the Inspector's Reports which appeared to be irrelevant, or otherwise at variance with the Minute, and to return them so marked or noted to the Inspector for re-consideration, and this practice did not consider to be inconsistent with the Minute; but as soon as it was brought prominently to Mr. Lowe's notice (which it was in consequence of certain of the Inspectors attempting to raise discussion on the marked or noted passages) Mr. Lowe ordered it to be discontinued, and directed that the Reports should for the future be returned to the Inspectors, when it was necessary to return them, without being marked at all. The date of this order was the 14th of February, 1862. Since that time the practice of marking or noting the Reports has, of course, been discontinued, and, if any later case has occurred, it must have arisen either from inadvertence, or for some special reason, which, if the marked or noted passage were shown to me, I have no doubt I should be able to explain. I conclude that it is some act or acts done in conformity with the practice above explained which is pointed to in the late Resolution of the House of Commons. I think your Lordships will feel that Mr. Lowe was perfectly justified in the statements which he made in the House of Commons, and had I been so attacked my answer would have been conveyed in precisely similar terms. I may be allowed to say one word with regard to the policy of the Minute. I think it will be the general opinion that it is necessary for the central office to exercise some such check over the Reports which it receives from so large a body of Inspectors. The noble Marquess who preceded me in my office (the Marquess of Salisbury) and Mr. Adderley, the Vice President of the Committee of Council, exercised such a supervision; Sir George Grey exercises such a supervision over the Home Office Inspectors; and my noble Friend Earl de Grey will answer for himself and his predecessor, that such is the practice of the War Office; and I think that my noble Friend the First Lord of the Admiralty (the Duke of Somerset) will bear me out in saying that the same supervision is exercised in the Admiralty. I very much doubt if there is any Department of Government where this principle has not only not been found advisable, bat absolutely necessary. This being a well-understood principle, another question arises as to the correctness of the statement conveyed in the Resolution, that the practice of the Committee of Council is to expunge those passages which are unfavourable to its policy, while it retains those which express accordance with its arrangements. That statement I entirely deny. The marks upon the Reports sent back to the Inspectors were not the marks of the chief of the Office, but they were made by a clerk in attendance upon the Secretary, simply for the purpose of calling his attention to the passages so noted. I regret deeply the oversight by which. The marks were allowed to remain on the Reports sent to the Inspectors, but I deny that they were sent back to them so marked because those passages were adverse to the policy of the Department. On the other hand it has been alleged that passages have been retained because they were considered favourable to that policy. Now I cannot help thinking that, considering the animus with which the attack was made, all the Reports which have appeared before Parliament must have been carefully sifted; and yet only one such case has been cited, and that is a passage giving the opinion of one of the Inspectors upon the system of certificated masters for the schools. As a proof that we are not influenced by the motives attributed to us, I may say that I remember four separate cases in which a request was made that opinions favourable to the policy of the Government should be omitted. Those opinions, as coming from some of the ablest of our Inspectors, would have carried great weight with them, and still could hardly have been considered as irrelevant under the Minute, but, as speaking so highly in favour of our policy, we thought it best to adopt the course I have mentioned. I think the statement I have now made will clearly and fairly dispose of the charge that we have garbled the Reports for our own purposes. I do not know whether your Lordships are aware of the number of Inspectors of schools. There are sixty in all, of whom twenty-two are laymen and thirty-eight clergymen. I believe that there is not in the service of Her Majesty, a body of men of greater ability and higher character. The offices are extremely sought after, and are filled by men of great ability. I have myself appointed twenty-eight, and in saying this I do not claim for myself the slightest credit for the manner in which I have exercised the power of making these appointments; I have merely endeavoured to follow the example set me by Lord Lansdowne and my predecessors. With the exception of one clergyman, whose treatment of educational subjects I had had an opportunity of observing, I do not think that I knew one of the persons I appointed, even by sight, at the time of their receiving their appointments from me. Even now I have no idea what the political opinions of those gentlemen may be. It has been said that if I had selected men bound to me by personal or political ties, they would have identified themselves more thoroughly with the working of the Office. This I utterly deny. I believe that the Inspectors are actuated, as a body, by a strong desire to discharge their duty, and the sincere wish to co-operate most cordially with the office to which they belong. It is true that during the very warm discussion which took place, not only in Parliament but also throughout the country, with reference to the Revised Code, there appeared some articles in the Reviews, showing certainly such an amount of knowledge regarding the details of the office as tended to imply that the information, was obtained from some of the officials themselves. Not being thin-skinned I did not complain of this at the time, nor do I complain of it now; but I think I have a right to complain if any Inspector belonging to Her Majesty's service, and under the superintendence of the Committee of Council of Education, not only afforded elaborate information to Members of Parliament for the purpose of attacking the Department, but also actually furnished them with copies of papers belonging to the Council Office. I do think that I have a right to complain of that as a departure from that honourable discretion which I believe to be the characteristic of the civil service of this country. Not only do I complain of this conduct, but I believe it to be viewed with indignation by the whole of the other Inspectors. My Lords, I have endeavoured to show that this Minute is right in principle, and in harmony with the practice of other Government offices under different Administrations, and that our mode of carrying it out has been perfectly fair and honest. The condemnation of the Office, however, remains. The censure is one the import of which it is impossible for your Lordships not to see. Her Majesty's Government have considered the subject. They have thought that it is quite impossible that the House of Commons, having come to such a Resolution as this, hastily and upon imperfect knowledge, should refuse to inquire into the facts supposed to exist, and upon which the Resolution was founded. It appears to me that this is a just, right, and necessary course of Her Majesty's Government to take. I have not the slightest doubt, from the usual fairness of the House of Commons in matters of this sort, that the Committee will be granted without any difficulty and without any hesitation, and I am not afraid of the result of such an inquiry. Mr. Lowe has taken another course—he has resigned his office. He has resigned it on the ground that he could not sustain such a deliberate Vote of the House of Commons founded on what must have been a disbelief in his personal veracity, and that he could not remain under the weight of such a blow even until matters were more fully cleared up. My Lords, as a personal friend of Mr. Lowe, I may state that I have now been in political relationship with him for five years. I have remarked —what are generally acknowledged—his commanding intellect and his vast acquirements; and I may add that I have never been associated with any one who appeared to me to be more single-mindedly zealous for the advantage of the public service. As a private friend of Mr. Lowe, I cannot help appreciating the sensitive delicacy with which he has resented that which he considers an attack upon his personal honour; but I may be allowed to say further, that I regret the determination he has come to. I think it is a blow to the Government. I think it is a blow to the Department to which he belonged. The state of that Department as compared with what it was five years ago when Mr. Lowe entered into office is most satisfactory. The number of children in our schools has increased certainly by one-quarter, the schools have increased by between one-third and a quarter; I think that the number of certificated masters has been doubled, the number of Inspectors has necessarily been augmented; but notwithstanding the tendency of the Estimates to increase year by year they were last year brought down below the point at which they stood when he came into office, and that notwithstanding so much had been done for the improvement of the schools. I cannot help referring to the Revised Code. Whether that is a good or a bad measure is of course a matter of opinion. In my judgment it is an excellent one. I believe it has greatly increased the efficiency of the grants given by Parliament, and has established an economy which will do much to encourage Parliament to continue its grants for the promotion of the education of the lower classes of this country. By that Code we have reduced the expenditure and have entirely set free all vested interests. If any improvements are needed, Parliament will be at perfect liberty to adopt them. The merit of the elaboration of that Code must be ascribed to the Secretary of the Committee of Council, Mr. Lingen. I believe that there are very few persons with ability, industry, and courage enough to grapple with what was a most difficult work. I believe that none could have attempted it but one who had had that daily experience of the administration of these Parliamentary grants which Mr. Lingen had had for several years. But the passing of the Code through the House of Commons —naturally representing as it did the considerable panic which existed, naturally reflecting the feelings of many intelligent and excellent persons who did not see the advantage which would be gained in the aggregate, but only the pressure and inconvenience which it inflicted in different directions—the passing of that work through the House of Commons was entirely owing to the patience and perseverance, to the singularly clear statements, and the great argumentative powers of Mr. Lowe. For these reasons, I deeply regret the course which he has taken in at once resigning. I have not the least doubt that the Committee will be granted by the House of Commons, and that the result of its inquiries will be favourable. I believe that it will be favourable to the principle which we have endeavoured to establish; but with reference to the personal character and personal veracity of Mr. Lowe I have not the slightest doubt in the world that the verdict of that Committee must be in his favour. I beg to apologize to the House for having trespassed on their attention for be long upon a personal and somewhat egotistical matter; but I felt it necessary to make this explanation not only as a Member of the Government and of your Lordships' House, but because I have for some years been allowed to hold, however unworthily, a very prominent position in this House. I could not have held it, I could not continue to hold it, without the great support which I have received from my friends, and I must be allowed to say the considerable forbearance which I have met with from noble Lords on the, opposite side of the House.

THE EARL OF DERBY

My Lords, no one can be surprised that under the circumstances the noble Earl should have taken the opportunity of making the statement which he has just concluded, and of entering into the details upon which he has given us. If I had had any idea that the noble Earl was about to enter upon the discussion of the debate which took place in the other House of Parliament, I would have endeavoured to make myself better acquainted than I am with the nature of that debate, of the allegations which were made against the Vice President of the Council, and of the answer which he gave to these allegations. With a great deal of what the noble Earl has said I entirely concur. It is in every Department absolutely necessary that a certain discretion should be left to its heads to strike out from the Reports made to them anything which appears to be irrelevant to the subject and which may lead to long disquisitions, and if not checked to the practice of each individual who makes a Report to the Government writing a pamphlet in support of his particular views. Therefore, my Lords, so far as any alteration or omission that may have been made in their Reports by the various Inspectors, I do not think that the Government is open to any censure if they insisted upon the Inspectors restricting their Reports to that which really bears upon the state of education and the condition of the schools, and refraining from matters of opinion. The charge, however, I understand to have been this—I hope the noble Earl will understand that I am not saying or suggesting that it was substantiated. I do not know upon what evidence or opinion it rests—the charge, as I understand, was that in a matter which has been made the subject of a great deal of controversy, and which appears to bear directly upon the efficiency of the system—I mean the question as to the comparative merits of certificated and uncertificated masters —expressions of opinion have been allowed to remain in these Reports strongly favourable to the superior claims of certificated masters; while, on the other hand, statements of an opposite character, statements tending to show that uncertificated masters were in many respects equal to certificated ones have been struck out. That I understand to have been the character of the charge made. Whether it is capable of being substantiated or not I do not know. Of this I am quite certain, that the noble Earl opposite— and I am sure that there is not one of your Lordships who will not concur in that description—I am certain that the noble Earl opposite would not, in anything which came under his personal superintendence, allow a Report to be placed either before the House of Commons or your Lordships, altered in such a manner as to convey a different impression from that which, the reporter intended to convey, or to give undue bias or favour to the particular view which might be entertained by the Government on any subject. I have not the slightest means of knowing how these Reports have been dealt with, how the information was obtained, from whom the information came, or what, in point of fact, was the information upon which that Motion was made in the House of Commons, and carried by a small majority. It is not, it is true, very regular to refer to what takes place in the House of Commons; but, under the circumstances of the case, I am sure that the noble Earl's slight irregularity may be fairly justified and excused; and perhaps the noble Earl having originated the irregularity, I may be allowed to be guilty of an equal irregularity by stating what I am told has taken place this afternoon, and which may considerably modify the view that may be taken of the circumstances of the case. I am told that this evening the Vice President of the Council, having thought it necessary, in vindication of his own position, to resign the office which he held, has, after taking that step, made a very elaborate vindication of the course which he pursued and defence of his own conduct in office; and I am given to understand, that after hearing that explanation, the noble Lord who brought forward the charge (Lord Robert Cecil), and upon whose Motion the division took place, stated publicly that if what the right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Committee on Education had said to-night had been said in answer to the charge on a former occasion, he should have felt it his duty at once to abandon any attempt to press his Motion on the House. I understand that that has taken place to-night. I believe, also, that a Committee of the House of Commons is likely to be appointed for the purpose of investigating the facts of the case, and I think that is a very proper course to be pursued. I understand that although that proposition was made to Mr. Lowe it was one to which he did not think fit to accede, and insisted, perhaps from an over-scrupulous sense of duty, on resigning his office. I do not know that I can say anything further upon this subject, because I was not prepared, nor am I disposed, to enter into the merits of the Revised Code, or to renew discussions which occupied a good deal of our time on former occasions. I sincerely trust—and, from what the noble Earl says, I am inclined to hope and believe—that if an investigation is made into the circumstances it will prove that there has been no substantial mutilation of the Reports, and that the passages have been omitted, not out of favour or prejudice to one side or the other, but simply from a desire to bring these Reports within fair and reasonable limits, and to exclude from them everything which is not strictly within the limits of the duty of the Inspectors. What has been done I cannot pretend to say; but for the sake of the public service and of public men of all parties and all political views, I earnestly hope that the result of the inquiries of the Committee will be to clear the Council Office from any imputation of having improperly departed from their duty, or having tampered with these Reports.

EARL GREY

said, there was one point in the statement of the noble Earl the President of the Council to which he wished briefly to refer. If he correctly understood his noble Friend, he said that there was reason to believe that the Motion which had been submitted to the House of Commons on the subject under discussion had been suggested or prompted by some person or persons in the employment of the Government. Now, that was a matter which, in his opinion, required carefully to be investigated by the Committee which it was proposed should be appointed; because he could conceive no more fatal blow to the interests of this country than that there should be any interference with that honourable understanding which, on the one hand, went the extent of implying that the Government should not use the power which it legally possessed of removing any public servant at the mere pleasure of the Crown, and without assigning any reason for so doing; and, on the other hand, that the civil servants were bound by the strictest principles of honour not to be guilty of the offence of entering upon anything like a secret or passive opposition to the course which the Government might deem it expedient to pursue. The Government of the country would not work a day if the political servants of the Crown did not receive the faithful and honourable support of those who acted under them, and we might eventually be reduced to that unfortunate state of things which existed in America, where when a change of Administration took place, all the civil servants were dismissed from the highest to the lowest. This was an unbounded source of corruption fatal to proper government. So far as our experience hitherto went, we had the advantage of maintaining a body of public servants who had been remarkable for their general order, knowledge, and zeal; and he, for one, felt surprised that any one in the service of the Crown could so far have forgotten his duty as to give any underhand support to the opponents of the Ministry of the day. He trusted that the investigation before the Committee would prove that no offence of that kind had been committed, and that, if it had, the guilty party might be at once removed from his situation.

House adjourned at a quarter past Six o'clock, till to-morrow, half-past Ten o'clock.