HL Deb 04 May 1874 vol 218 cc1570-7

THE BISHOP OF BATH AND WELLS moved an Address, praying Her Majesty to refuse Her assent to the scheme of the Endowed Schools Commissioners for the management of the charity established under the will of Richard Ellsworth, for the benefit of the parishes of Timberscombe and Cutcombe and adjacent parishes in the comity of Somerset. The Founder, Richard Ellsworth, lived in the reign of Queen Anne; and by his will, which was made in 1714, left a number of small legacies for educational purposes in the parishes named. The Founder was evidently a man of great piety, and it would be evident from a perusal of his will that it evidenced two leading motives—one the strong love of the testator for Timberscombe, and the other his great love for the Church of England. The trustees were to be the incumbents; directions were contained in the will for the use of catechisms in the schools, and the educational books, for which he left bequests, were to be chosen by the Bishop. the, seemed to be the design of the Endowed School Commissioners to take away every sixpence from the parish of Timberscombe and its adjoining villages. The bequest of £50 a-year, was to be taken away. They would; then possess board schools, supported by rates; but there could be no religious education—as the testator plainly desired—in these schools. The charity had been unfortunate. It had in the course of time met with two calamities from defaulting trustees and the Court of Chancery, where it once remained for a period of 25 years. During those years the funds increased to the amount of £7,626. Now came this scheme dealing with those funds and the charity, and if it should be carried out very great injury would, as he conceived, be done to those parishes. The trustees had appealed against the scheme, but they had been unsuccessful. The facts were these:—There were eleven trustees, and six were actually against the scheme; but at a meeting which took place only nine attended, and of these, four were for the scheme, two against it, and three did not vote: consequently, it appeared on the appeal that there was a majority for the scheme. He was not actuated by any narrow or illiberal motive whatever, nor did he oppose the scheme out of any dislike to the Commissioners, for he thought that many of their schemes were excellent. He wished for more of these funds to be given to the two parishes mentioned, in the great hope that education would be stimulated, and the benefits arising therefrom would be diffused amongst all the people of the parishes.

Moved that an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying Her Majesty to refuse her assent to the scheme of the Endowed Schools Commissioners for the management of the charity established under the Will of Richard Ellsworth for the benefit of the parishes of Timberscombe and Cutcombe and adjacent parishes in the county of Somerset.—(The Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells.)

LORD LYTTELTON

said, that as he understood, the noble Duke the Lord President of the Council was disposed to allow the objection against this scheme, and therefore he had not much encouragement to uphold it. Moreover, as the working of the Commission might be considered as, at present, in a transitional state, it was, perhaps, natural that this scheme should stand over. He was bound to acknowledge the consideration the noble Duke and Lord Sandon had given to such of the Commissioners' schemes as had been brought before them. Since their accession to office, he doubted whether, if the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Salisbury) had been placed at the head of the Department, one out of twenty of those schemes would have been allowed to pass. In reference to a remark of the right rev. Prelate, he must say that if the Endowed Schools Commissioners were to be bound to adhere to the exact purposes of the founders, except in the extreme cases of the destruction of whole villages, or the desertion of the villagers to nonconformity, there would be little occasion for the services of the Commissioners—there would be no need to go beyond the old system of the Court of Chancery. In this case the Commissioners had endeavoured to extend the area of the endowment, and to make it applicable to a great many contiguous parishes. The charity had been of no benefit whatsoever for the purposes of education except to Timberscombe and Cutcombe and one or two other small places; and as regarded Timberscombe and Cutcombe, the schools were the worst in the county, and the school buildings had fallen into a state of dilapidation and ruin. Bishop Chapman, who was at present one of the official trustees, had written a letter stating that it was most lamentable to see how this endowment had been wasted. The right rev. Prelate had stated that there would not be left to Timberscombe one farthing of annual endowment, and that the trustees had appealed. Now, he (Lord Lyttelton) was not aware that the trustees had appealed; but he knew that there had been two distinct Votes of the trustees in favour of the scheme. The Commissioners proposed to allow sufficient sums of money for putting the school buildings into good condition; they had left £10 a-year for the poor of Timberscombe, and given that parish a preferential right to exhibitions; and they assigned funds for the encouragement of education in several places in the locality. In addition to that, they had allotted a sum for a higher class school to be erected at Minehead. The elementary schools would come under proper inspection, and would obtain the Government grants. The Commissioners had acted strictly according to the Preamble of the statute, which directed them to promote education amongst all classes in the localities in question by means of endowments. It would be a question for the Government to discuss, when they came to consider the prolongation of the Commission, whether they should ask Parliament to grant greater powers to the Commissioners than they at present possessed, or whether they should give a greater power 10 the Education Department to amend what the Commissioners should recommend. In conclusion, he would submit that the present scheme deserved their Lordships' approval.

THE BISHOP OF BATH AND WELLS

explained that there was an appeal to the Privy Council, that four of the trustees signed the appeal, and that two others gave their assent to it—making six out of the 11 trustees.

THE DUKE OF RICHMOND

said, he did not object to the general outline of this scheme; but he thought that, as a scheme, it ought not to be agreed to, because the Commissioners had not carried out the details in a proper manner. He thanked the noble Baron (Lord Lyttelton) for the manner in which he bad been pleased to express himself in regard to other schemes which had come under his notice; but after the reference made to himself and the noble Marquess rear him (the Marquess of Salisbury), he would go through those schemes again with more care, because he might have erred in the views which he had formed of them. It appeared to him that their Lordships should put themselves in the position of the testator, and ask what he would have done if he had been alive at the present moment—looking at this surplus charity, had the Commissioners dealt with it in the way in which the testator would have disposed of it? The testator's main object evidently was to benefit Timberscombe and Cutcombe, and to give to the children of those parishes the advantages of a religious education, He (the Duke of Richmond) was not one of those who thought that free education was always of benefit to the locality that was entitled to it; for his experience was that the poorer classes did not value much that for which they paid nothing; and therefore he should be sorry to sanction a scheme which would give to Timberscombe and Cutcombe an entirely free education. The noble Baron (Lord Lyttelton) said there had been no objection to the scheme. Well, Minehead would not object, for the Commissioners proposed to allot £1,500 to that place for the erection of suitable buildings for a higher class school; and, in addition to that, £100 a-year for the maintenance of the school. But with so large a sum of money to dispose of. He did not see why more should not be done for Timberscombe—the place that Mr. Ellsworth chiefly desired to benefit. He did not see why both Timberscombe and Cutcombe should not receive larger benefits than were proposed by this scheme. The former was to get a sum of money down, for the purpose of carrying out repairs of the schoolhouse; but there was no sum set apart for the regular maintenance of the school. It might very well happen that after the building had been put into a proper condition, there would not be sufficient money found in the parish to carry on the schools in accordance with the rules laid down by the Education Department; and it might, in consequence, become necessary to establish school boards in the parish. The result of this state of things would be that the parish would not enjoy that religious education which it had been the chief object of Mr. Ellsworth to impart. He did not object to the scheme as a whole, but was of opinion that too little was given under it to Timberscombe and Cutcombe. In this respect it did not seem to him to carry out the views of the testator. That was why he objected to this scheme. Parliament could not amend it, and therefore he was obliged to support its rejection.

THE EARL OF DEVON

said, he quite agreed that they ought to consider what the testator would have done if he had now been alive, and he thought that he would have agreed to the scheme which the Endowed Schools Commissioners had framed. Both Timberscombe and Cutcombe would be materially benefited by it. They would both receive grants—the former £150, the latter £400—towards erecting their new schools. Moreover, there would be a considerable number of exhibitions founded, open to the competition of the children of several parishes. There being in the district a large number of small parishes, remote from large towns, it was much to be desired that the competition should not be restricted with in narrow limits. Any child belonging to those parishes would be able to gain an exhibition, and would thus be able to push himself forward in the world. These exhibitions would tend to remedy what was an admitted defect in our elementary education, by preserving an intimate connection between schools of different grades. He did not agree with the view taken by the right rev. Prelate, that this scheme was an unjust one: on the contrary, looking at the great increase in the funds, he considered that it was a wise application of the doctrine of ey près, as the Commissioners had made the funds available for educational purposes over a considerably wider area, and he, moreover, thought that the right rev. Prelate, in objecting to the scheme that it was unjust to the Church of England, had overlooked the composition of the proposed Governing Body. He had given his best attention to the scheme, and he felt he could come to no other conclusion than that it ought to be supported.

LORD REDESDALE

considered that the parishes referred to ought to have the full benefit of the charity—at least, to the extent required to exempt them from rating for primary education. Parliament had determined that schools of a higher class should not be aided by public rating, but to whatever extent a parish became liable to be rated for primary education by being deprived of an income properly belonging to it applicable to that purpose, it was practically rated for the school of a higher class, to the support of which the income of which it had been robbed was devoted.

EARL FORTESCUE

considered that the question was one of great importance, because of the principle involved, and its bearing upon the educational endowments of the country generally, so far as the working of the Commission was concerned. He thought the late Government had made a great mistake in acting upon a part only of the wise recommendations of the Schools Inquiry Commissioners—namely, that for the appointment of the Endowed Schools Coin-mission. Those last Commissioners—not all of them judiciously selected—had begun with much too sweeping and rash proposals; and after being most properly defeated upon some of them in that House, had now gone into the opposite extreme, and had been of late adopting, under the pressure of local trustees, schemes incompatible with a sound and comprehensive policy. Neither Government nor Parliament was a desirable tribunal to decide questions of this kind. What was desirable was the establishment, in accordance with the wise Report of Lord Taunton's Commission, of provincial or county boards for considering, each in its own locality, the best application of the educational endowments there. Such bodies would, he contended, not only be able to prepare schemes with advantage for the sanction of the central authority, but also to reconcile the districts which would be affected by it to any of its provisions which might seem to be in conflict with their petty local interests.

THE MARQUESS OF RIPON

pointed out that the scheme of the Commissioners would not take away all the endowments from the parishes in question, and that they furnished the means of obtaining exhibitions, to which he attached great importance. The effect, he maintained, of throwing out the scheme would be to continue for another year the exceedingly unsatisfactory state of things which now existed. It was not necessary to reject that scheme and delay the whole matter indefinitely merely for the purpose of effecting objects which might be attained through the action of the Charity Commissioners. With regard to the effect of the scheme on the interests of the Church of England, the education to be given under the scheme was distinctly to be in accordance with that Church, and the provisions as to the appointment of Governors were such as would maintain the Church character of the endowment.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

said., the principle on which the Government desired to look at the scheme was, in the first place, in the interest of Timberscombe, which it was the object of the founder to regard. By the scheme, Timberscombe was not to have what it had hitherto enjoyed—an annual revenue for the support of its school. The consequence might be that it would be driven to have a school board, and then it would no longer have education in the principles of the Church of England. Therefore, it appeared to him that the intentions of the Founder were disregarded, the interests of the ratepayers of Timberscombe unduly pressed upon, and the interests of the Church of England, as far as Timberscombe was concerned, entirely set aside. The effect of rejecting that scheme need not be to delay the matter for a whole year. A new scheme could be framed; and if there were no opposition, it would not require to be laid before Parliament, but might come into operation in about five months at the outside. Of course, if there was opposition to the amended scheme, it must be presumed there was some ground for that opposition until the contrary was declared. With regard to the suggestion that the scheme might be amended by the Charity Commissioners, there was something anomalous and unsatisfactory in the idea that the moment a scheme became law another authority was to be called into action to alter its provisions.

Motion agreed, to.