Sitting of 11 May 1896

EAST INDIA (INDIA OFFICE, RETIREMENT AT 65).
Return [presented 7th May] to be printed.—[No. 171.]

PUBLIC OFFICES (SITE) BILL.
Reported from the Select Committee, with Minutes of Evidence.
Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.—[No. 172.]
Bill, as amended, re-committed to a Committee of the whole House for Wednesday, and to be printed.—[Bill 225.]

QUESTIONS.

  PORT TALBOT POST OFFICE.
  MR. BRYNMOR JONES: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether at the Port Talbot Post Office female clerks are required for one week in every three to commence work at 5.30 a.m.; whether this requirement is of recent introduction, and whether he is aware that it imposes a severe physical strain upon the female clerks concerned, and that one of them
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  became seriously ill; and whether he will consider whether a better arrangement of the hours of work of female clerks could be made without prejudice to the public service?
  THE SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. R. W. HANBURY,): It is the case that the women clerks at Port Talbot are required to commence work every third week at 5.30 a.m. This early attendance has been imposed upon the women since last July, in order to partially relieve the postmaster and a man clerk who were being overworked. Though the attendance described would scarcely impose an undue strain upon any one in ordinary health, it appears that the clerk referred to has not enjoyed good health for some years, her absences on sick leave prior to July last having been very numerous. It is feared that it will not be practicable to relieve the women clerks of the early morning attendance altogether; but the Department is considering the duties at Port Talbot.

  INCORPORATED LAW SOCIETY.
  SIR HENRY FOWLER: I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he has arrived at a decision as to the application of the Council of the Incorporated Law Society in respect of the increase of duties which has been imposed on them by recent legislation?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Sir MICHAEL HICKS BEACH,): The application referred to is one for the grant to the Incorporated Law Society of a small portion of the revenue derived from the Solicitor's duty in order to defray the increasing cost of the statutory duties imposed on the society in cases of misconduct by members of the profession. There are some difficulties connected with the matter, but I think the request is reasonable, and I hope to have a clause in Committee on the Finance Bill in order to deal with it. ["Hear, hear!"]

  CANADIAN FAST STEAMSHIP SERVICE
  SIR JOHN LENG: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether, in the arrangement for the new

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  Transatlantic Mail Service between the United Kingdom and Canada, consideration will be given to the expediency of the steamers calling at a port in the north of Ireland to embark and disembark mails?
  MR. HANBURY: As stated in reply to a Question on Thursday last, the conditions of tender for the proposed new mail service between this country and Canada provide that the mail steamers shall call at an Irish port, if required to do so. ["Hear, hear!"]

  WRIGHTINGTON PARISH COUNCIL ELECTION.
  LORD BALCARRES: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board, whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that the Register of Voters used at the Wrightington Parish Council Election, 1896, was incomplete; whether he can state the number of Voters disfranchised in consequence and their proportion to the total number of voters who polled, and who was responsible for the non-supply of the proper register; and, whether it is customary for petitioners who are successful to pay for the Inquiry held by a County Council into the conduct of any election, or whether the latter can order an Inquiry on their own account, paying the expenses thereof, if there is reason to doubt the validity of such election?
  THE SECRETARY TO THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. T. W. RUSSELL,): I am informed in reply to the inquiries which have been made that the Register of Voters at the election in question was incomplete; that the number of persons who applied to vote and whose names were not on the Register was about 15; that the total number of the electors who recorded their votes was 146; and that the list of parochial electors for the township are included in the lists for two polling districts, and one list only was furnished by the Clerk of the County Council and the omission of the second list was not detected. I presume that the question of the cost of the Inquiry referred to applies to an Inquiry for the purpose of the Local Government (Elections) Act of the present Session. The Local Government Board has no
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  authority to determine questions of this character, but I am advised that that Act does not authorise petitioners being required to pay the costs.

  TRIPPLETT CHARITY (WOODHORN).
  MR. CHARLES FENWICK: I beg to ask the hon. Member for Thirsk, as representing the Charity Commissioners, whether the parish of Horton is entitled to a proportion of the Tripplett Charity in the parish of Woodhorn, seeing that Horton was a chapelry of Woodhorn at the time of the foundation of the Charity by Dr. Tripplett?
  MR. GRANT LAWSON: The Commissioners have no evidence before them to show the parish of Horton was ever included in the ancient parish of Woodhorn; but they will be ready to consider any evidence to that effect which may be laid before them; and its bearing upon the application of the benefits of the Charity in question.

  SEIZURE UNDER VACCINATION ACTS.
  MR. F. A. CHANNING: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether he will inquire into the case of T. G. Reed, of 14, Maxwell Road, Fulham, whose goods are alleged to have been seized on Tuesday 14th April, to defray a fine and costs under the Vaccination Acts, and sold on the evening of the same day; and, whether, such a sale is a sale by public auction under the provisions of the Act?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Sir MATTHEW WHITE RIDLEY,): I have made inquiry into this case and am unable to find that there was any irregularity in the proceedings.

  CLAIM FOR MALICIOUS INJURY (COUNTY CORK).
  CAPTAIN DONELAN: I beg to ask Mr. Attorney General for Ireland, whether his attention has been called to a claim made by Denis Doolan, of Walshtownbeg, Templenacarriga, county Cork, at the recent Ballymore

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  Presentment Sessions, for malicious injury to a cow; whether he is aware that the magistrates and cesspayers almost unanimously rejected the claim, in consequence of the medical evidence having plainly proved that the wounds were inflicted upon the cow after she had died a natural death; and, whether, in view of the frequent frauds perpetrated upon Irish ratepayers by the presentation of similar fictitious claims, the Crown will institute proceedings against the claimant in this case?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. J. ATKINSON,): My attention has been called to the claim referred to and to the rejection of it by the Presentment Sessions. It is still competent for the claimant to prefer his claim before the Grand Jury, and until the time for doing so has passed, or the claim, if made, has been adjudicated upon, I think it is premature to state the intention of the Crown with regard to the prosecution of the claimant.

  CRUELTY TO HORSES (LONDON).
  MR. FELL PEASE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether any of the Metropolitan Police are specially detailed to prevent cruelty to animals; and, if so, whether they have power to prevent owners of omnibuses and other public or private conveyances from using horses unfit from size and strength to draw heavy vehicles?
  SIR MATTHEW WHITE RIDLEY: No constables are specially detailed for this purpose; it is a part of the regular duty of the police to take action in any case of cruelty that comes under their notice. As I have stated before, the police have no powers, in regard to animals generally, other than those conferred by the Cruelty to Animals Act, 1849. In the case, however, of horses employed in public vehicles, they can act also under the Stage and Hackney Carriage Acts, and special instructions are given to the whole of the police, and in particular to the inspectors of public carriages, to observe the horses used in omnibuses and tramcars, and to report all cases in which the horse appears too small or too thin for the purpose.

  EDUCATION (BOZEAT SCHOOL BOARD).
  MR. CHANNING: I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education, whether he is aware that the school rate of Bozeat, Northamptonshire, is 1s. 10d. in the pound, the ratable value of the parish is £3,096, the produce of a 3d. rate is only £38 16s., the number of children in average attendance is 259, and the amount of 7s. 6d. per child is about £97; and that the School Board of Bozeat has been entitled to, but has not hitherto claimed, the supplementary grant, under Section 97 of the Elementary Education Act, 1870, for many years past; whether the Bozeat School Board will now be placed on the list of School Boards entitled to this supplementary grant; and, whether the Education Department can make any allowance to the Board in respect of the unclaimed arrears?
  THE VICE PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (Sir JOHN GORST,): The latest returns in possession of the Committee of Council give the rate raised as 1s. 8d. in the pound, the ratable value as £3,301, and the average attendance as 250. The gross produce of a 3d. rate would be £38 14s. The Board have not hitherto claimed a grant under Section 97, and no grant can now be paid for any year earlier than the year ended 29th September, 1895.
  MR. CHANNINGasked whether the answer was to be understood as implying that the Bozeat School Board had established its right to the supplementary grant under Clause 97; whether the right hon. Gentleman had taken the opinion of any of the Law Officers upon the interpretation of Clause 97 as to the inclusion or exclusion of arrears; and, whether the Bozeat School Board was one of those included in the 426 Boards which would be entitled to the Special Aid grant?
  SIR J. GORST: I cannot answer the latter Question without notice. The Committee of Council have no funds out of which to pay arrears.
  MR. CHANNINGgave notice that he would call attention to the matter on the Education Vote.

  EDUCATION BILL (SPECIAL AID GRANTS).
  MR. A. H. ACLAND: I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education, whether, under Clause 4 of the Education Bill, in order to establish a claim to the special aid grant for Voluntary Schools, or any part thereof, a Voluntary School is compelled to become a member of an association; and, whether, if any such school should leave an association, it would forfeit its claim to assistance from the special aid grant?
  SIR J. GORST: The answer to these questions is, in the opinion of the Committee of Council, in the negative.

  INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS ACT.
  MR. LEWIS FRY: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board, what provision is made for children remanded by justices to allow of an industrial school being found for them under Section 19 of the Industrial Schools Act, 1866; whether he can state what number of such children come annually into workhouses in the Metropolis under this section; and, whether it is the intention of the Local Government Board to provide a central home for such children, as recommended by the Report of the Poor Law Schools Committee?
  MR. T. W. RUSSELL: The provision made for children remanded by justices prior to their being sent to an industrial school varies in different workhouses. I am unable to state what is the number of children of this class that come annually into the workhouses of the Metropolis. As regards the concluding question, the Local Government Board in November last communicated with the Home Secretary, stating that the arrangements as regards children of the class referred to are, in many of the metropolitan workhouses, far from satisfactory. The children are, in fact, prisoners, and there is considerable difficulty in making in each workhouse such separate provision for these children as is desirable. The Board added that they believed that, of the children who are detained in the metropolitan workhouses under remand orders, the great majority
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  are remanded in connection with applications made on behalf of the London School Board for the sending of the children to industrial schools, and that this being the case, it appeared to the Board that it was a question for consideration whether it was not desirable that the law should be amended so as to admit of these children being sent to the truant schools provided by the London School Board as an alternative to the the workhouse. The Board suggested for the consideration of the Secretary of State, that the Committee who were sitting with reference to reformatory and industrial schools might be asked to consider whether the course suggested by the Board might not with advantage be adopted in the case of London. The matter has been referred to that Committee, and is under their consideration.

  EDUCATION (BLIND AND DEAF CHILDREN).
  SIR FRANCIS POWELL: I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education whether any rules have been made under Section 8 of the Elementary Education (Blind and Deaf Children) Act, 1893, relating to the religious instruction and observances of the children; and, whether he is prepared to cause the same, with the date thereof, to be printed and circulated as a Parliamentary Paper?
  SIR J. GORST: A form was printed and issued by the Committee of Council in 1894, in which the rules under the Industrial Schools Act were shown to apply to the schools for the blind and deaf.

  VACCINATION (ROYAL COMMISSION).
  MR. C. J. MONK: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, whether any Supplementary Vote will be required for the expenses of the Vaccination Commission, as it is not included in the Estimates of the year ending 31st March 1897; and, if he will state what the total cost of the Commission has been?
  MR. HANBURY: It is not anticipated that a Supplementary Estimate will be required for this Commission in 1896–97. The expenditure due to the prolongation of the Commission's labours

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  will be met out of sub-head M, "Commissions not specifically provided for." The total cost to March 31 last was £16,792. ["Hear, hear!"]

  EDUCATION BILL (HALF-TIME SCHOLARS).
  SIR UGHTRED KAY-SHUTTLE-WORTH: I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education, whether Clause 21 of the Education Bill is intended to apply to the case of children employed in labour, whose education is regulated by the Factory and Workshop Acts, etc.; and, whether it is intended by the Bill to prohibit half-time labour for such children under the age of 12 on and after 1st January, 1898?
  SIR J. GORST: The answer to these Questions is in the affirmative.

  ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY.
  MR. JAMES DALY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, (1) whether he will inquire from the police at Carrick-macross if District Inspector Bain, when stationed there, examined the police out of his own books; and, (2) whether he will take steps to prevent District Inspector Bain from selling his books to the police under his charge in future?
  MR. T. H. COCHRANEasked whether Inspector Bain mentioned in the Question was specially sent to South Monaghan to suppress boycotting and intimidation; whether, in the course of this duty, he obtained a conviction against a man of the name of Daly, who was sentenced at Londonderry Assizes, in 1890, to six months' imprisonment with hard labour; whether the hon. Member, who had repeatedly asked questions reflecting on Inspector Bain, was the same gentleman as the Mr. Daly who was prosecuted by Mr. Bain?
  MR. DALY: Yes, Sir, I am the individual who was sentenced by the right hon. Gentleman's brother to six months' imprisonment, and I am very proud of it. [Nationalist cheers.]
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. GERALD BALFOUR,): So recently as Tuesday last I informed the hon. Member that Mr. Bain had assured me that he never at
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  any time required the men under his command to answer questions from any particular books or publications. I see no reasons for doubting the truth of this very categorical statement, nor any necessity for instituting the inquiries suggested in the first paragraph. In reply to the second part of the question, I am informed by Mr. Bain that his books have been sold in the ordinary way through the medium of the bookseller, and that he never sold his manuals to the men under his command except on one or two occasions when a member of the force spontaneously applied to him for a copy. ["Hear, hear!"]
  MR. J. P. FARRELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, can he state what percentage of the total force of the Royal Irish Constabulary is at present on pension; is it proposed to reduce the force by stopping recruiting; and can any scheme be devised to relieve taxation by a commutation of pensions.
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: The percentage of members of the force on pension is about 33. The Executive Government are perfectly alive to the importance of keeping down the strength of the force consistently with a due regard to public interests. Compared with the 1st January, 1895, the existing Establishment shows a reduction of 162 men, and since January, 1883, there has been a reduction of 2,440 men in the authorised strength. The Constabulary Acts of Parliament under which Pensions are granted do not provide any system of commutation of these allowances. Undoubtedly the amount of the non-effective charge is a grave matter and is deserving of the most serious consideration.

  TROOPS IN IRELAND.
  MR. J. P. FARRELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, with regard to the fact that the British troops at present quartered in Ireland number 37,000 men, at the cost of £3,500,000 annually, or 16s. per head of the population, will he grant a Return showing how much of this sum is actually spent in Ireland, and the different centres at which it is disbursed; and, whether it is proposed to add to or diminish this force.
  THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE WAR OFFICE (Mr. J. POWELL-WILLIAMS,)The return at page 480 of the Minutes of Evidence taken before the Royal Commission on the Financial Relations between Great Britain and Ireland shows the numbers of the Regular forces in Ireland as 27,642. Of the cost of this force, together with that of the Militia, the sum of £2,128,000 is expended in Ireland. It is impossible to further locate this expenditure; but generally, it may be assumed that the portion representing pay is disbursed at the places where troops are stationed and that contractors are paid at their places of business. No change in the force is contemplated at present.

  ASSISTANT CUSTOMS OFFICERS' EXAMINATION.
  MR. HARRY SAMUEL: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, why the result of the examination of assistant Customs officers, which took place on the 28th and 29th February last, has not yet been made known?
  MR. HANBURY: Six hundred and seventeen officers presented themselves at the examination for appointments to the rank of assistants of Customs, held on the 28th and 29th February last. The examination of the papers of such a large number of candidates necessarily occupied a considerable amount of time. The results of the examination are now being tabulated in order of seniority of the successful candidates and will be announced as soon as the list is completed.

  EDUCATION BILL (SCHOOL BOARDS).
  MR. ALFRED HUTTON: I beg to ask the Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education whether, under the provisions of the Education Bill, the Education Department will be deprived of their present power to order the formation of a School Board on the closing of a public elementary school; and whether it is intended by Clause 9 of the Education Bill to empower the Education Department to supersede a School Board in any case in which the Board is not in
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  default within the meaning of the Act of 1870; if so, in what cases?
  SIR J. GORST: The answer to both questions is in the negative.

  CIVIL SERVICE (ABSTRACTORS).
  MR. COURTENAY WARNER: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether he recently recommended a clerk on the permanent establishment of the Colonial Office for promotion, but that the conditions attached to the consent of the Lords of the Treasury were such that their acceptance would have entailed a pecuniary loss on the promoted clerk which it would take him upwards of 25 years to recoup; and whether he proposes to take any steps to remedy this state of things?
  MR. HANBURY: No, Sir; it is not for me to recommend clerks in another office for promotion. But I presume that the hon. Member intends to refer to the case of an abstractor whom the Colonial Office recently recommended for appointment to the Second Division. His present salary is £150 a year, but the Order in Council of the 21st March 1890, fixes the initial salary of the second division clerks at £70 rising by £5 a year to £100, and then by £7 10s. to £190. He would, therefore, have to start at £70 a year and would attain his present salary in 13 years, not 25. The Treasury has no power to disregard the Order in Council. In reply to a similar question my predecessor said in this House a year ago:—
  "I am not prepared to recommend an alteration of the Order in Council at present, but whenever the time for generally reviewing its provisions arrives, that now in question will be considered with the rest."
  As I recently pointed out, any alteration on the lines suggested by the hon. Member would lead to greater stringency in the promotion of abstractors, and it, therefore, by no means follows that the alteration would be in the interests either of the hon. Member's special client or of the abstractor class taken as a whole.
  MR. J. P. FARRELL: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether six clerks of the abstractor class of the Civil Service, serving in Dublin offices,

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  have been promoted for signal service to the Second Division; whether he is aware that, although the Treasury Minute of 1st May 1890 lays down as a general rule, without exception of the Civil Service, that clerks on promotion from one permanent class to another shall not suffer loss of pay thereby, these six clerks have each suffered an immediate loss of pay to the extent of about £30 per annum, and that it will require a further service of about 15 years before these clerks recoup themselves from such loss; and, whether he will inform the House when a supplementary Order in Council may be expected to remedy this state of affairs?
  MR. HANBURY: I am aware of five abstractors in Dublin offices who have been appointed to Second Division clerkships. In each case, the clerk so appointed understood that under the Order in Council of 21st March 1890, his initial salary would be £70 a year, and his appointment was only authorised on that understanding. The hon. Member will have gathered from my reply to the Question put by the hon. Member for the Lichfield Division to-day that, if the conditions of the promotion had been altered as he suggests, it by no means follows that these clerks would have been appointed to the Second Division at all. The minute quoted by the hon. Member cannot of course override the distinct provisions of an Order in Council. I am not yet able to state what change, if any, will be made in any future Order in Council on this subject; but in any case I do not suppose that its effect could be retrospective.

  ARMY CLOTHING.
  MR. WARNER: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War if, considering that soldiers of the Regular Army are supposed to be clothed by Government, the War Office authorities will reconsider the regulation that a men enlisting for seven years is provided with two shirts, and is never given any more, but compelled to purchase new when wanted himself?
  MR. POWELL-WILLIAMS: Shirts are not classed as uniform. A free issue of them is made to a recruit, but the maintenance rests with the soldier.

  AGRICULTURAL LAND RATING BILL.
  SIR CHARLES DILKE: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as regards the effect of the Agricultural Land Rating Bill on the Royal Forest of Dean and the New Forest, whether it is the intention of the Crown to continue, after the passing of the Act, to contribute towards the local rates in respect of the enclosed woodlands on the now existing basis?
  MR. HANBURY: My right hon. Friend will have understood, from my answer to a Question put by him on April 28, that the amount of the Treasury contributions in lieu of rates for Crown woodlands will depend on whether these woodlands are or are not included in the Returns under the Agricultural Land Rating Bill. The Treasury is consulting the Local Government Board as to whether they will be so included. If they are not included, the contributions will remain unaltered; but, if they are included, the contributions will be on the amount at which they would be assessed if they were private woodlands. The benefit which the Crown lands would in that case receive from Imperial taxation would be a question between the Crown and the general taxpayer, and would not really affect the local rates. If my right hon. Friend has any suggestion to make on the subject it shall receive my best attention. ["Hear, hear!"]
  SIR CHARLES DILKE: It would affect the local rates in the long run where they were rapidly increasing.
  MR. HANBURY: Yes; that is so in that case.

  BEER DUTY (FARMERS).
  MR. JAMES ROUND: I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer—(1) whether a farmer who brews only for himself and his labourers, and occupies a house exceeding £10 annual value, has not only to take out a licence, but also to pay Beer Duty at the same rate as if he were a brewer for sale; and (2) whether he can see his way to exempt from payment of duty all farmers who brew only for themselves and their labourers?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: The answer to the first paragraph of the Question is in the affirmative; but the licence taken out by the farmer is only 4s., as compared with £1 paid by the brewer for sale. In answer to the second paragraph, the great difficulty with regard to all exemptions is to insure that relief is not given to persons who are not really entitled to it. At present I do not see my way to grant the exemption, but I will look into the matter. ["Hear, hear!"]

  NATIONAL GALLERY (SUNDAY OPENING).
  DR. FARQUHARSON: I beg to ask the First Commissioner of Works, whether he will authorise an addition to the staff of the National Gallery, so that the attendants shall not be obliged to work seven days a week, in consequence of the opening of the National Collection of Pictures on Sunday?
  MR. HANBURY: The Trustees of the National Gallery, with the approval of the Treasury, have made temporary arrangements for utilising the present staff of attendants on Sundays during the present season, ending by the middle of next September, and it is for them to settle whether the men who attend on Sundays can be allowed any compensating holiday during the week. The Sunday opening of the Gallery is in a tentative stage at present, but the experience of the next few months is expected to provide sufficient data for making permanent arrangements for the future.
  DR. FARQUHARSONasked whether it was not a fact that these men were practically obliged to work seven days a week, and whether it was not a condition of the Resolution passed by this House that the attendants should not be required to work more than six days a week?
  MR. HANBURY: I do not understand that they are required; I think they do it of their own free will. The terms of the Resolution were that they were not to be required to do it, but I am not quite sure on that point.

  ROYAL VISIT TO SOUTH WALES.
  MR. J. M. MACLEAN: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty, whether, having regard to the great maritime importance of the seaports in the Bristol Channel, both in regard to the training of Sailors and the supply of coal for the British Navy, he will allow some of Her Majesty's ships to go to Cardiff on the occasion of the approaching visit of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales to that town?
  MAJOR WYNDHAM-QUIN: I beg to ask whether, in the event of any of Her Majesty's ships being sent to the Bristol Channel on the occasion of the visit of the Prince of Wales to Cardiff, the right hon. gentleman will arrange that they visit the ports of Barry and Penarth?
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (Mr. G. J. GOSCHEN, St. George's,): Arrangements will be made, circumstances admitting, for a visit by one or more of Her Majesty's ships to the Bristol Channel during the visit of his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales to Cardiff. The vessels will necessarily anchor in Penarth Roads, whence either Cardiff or Barry are equally accessible.

  CASTLECOMER COAL FIELDS.
  MR. PATRICK McDERMOTT: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether he has received representations from the ratepayers of Castle-comer district, including clergymen, landlords, farmers, coalowners and colliers, asking for State aid towards the construction of a railway through the coalfields; whether he is aware the miners are on half time, as over 12,000 tons of coal are on the banks at the pit's mouth at present, which cannot be moved owing to the want of railway facilities; whether he has caused inquiry to be made into these facts; and, whether the Government have considered the claims of this district, and how far they are prepared to go in aid of local effort?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: Representations to the effect stated have been received, and the proposal will be considered in connection with other similar proposals.

  QUEEN'S INDIAN CADETSHIPS.
  SIR WILLIAM WEDDERBURN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India, whether Colonels of the Indian Army drawing Colonels' allowances of £1,140 per annum, and more, pay £60 per annum for sons at Sandhurst and at Woolwich, while the sons of retired officers of Her Majesty's Indian Civil Service are charged £150 per annum; and, if so, if Her Majesty's Government will remedy this inequality by classing members of the Indian Civil Service with Military Officers according to relative rank, as they are already classed in regard to eligibility for Queen's Indian Cadetships for their sons?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Lord GEORGE HAMILTON,): The facts are as stated in the Question. Special terms are granted to the sons of Military Officers, not with reference to their means, but because their military services are held to entitle them to special facilities for sending their sons to the two military colleges. I do not think that Her Majesty's Government could be expected to extend this privilege to civilians.

  CORNAIG HARBOUR (COLL ISLAND).
  MR. D. N. NICOL: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate, whether there is any chance of a buoy being placed outside the harbour of Cornaig, in the Island of Coll?
  THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. A. GRAHAM MURRAY,): I have to inform my hon. Friend that the Secretary for Scotland is inclined to consider very favourably the execution of this work, and will be glad to confer with him in regard to it.

  STIPENDIARY MAGISTRATES (IRELAND) BILL.
  MR. JASPER TULLY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether he is prepared to accept the proposed Amendment to the Stipendiaries Magistrates (Ireland) Bill providing that in charges against publicans for breaches of the Licensing Acts the court of summary jurisdiction shall, as at present, consist of two or more justices, and not of a stipendiary magistrate sitting alone.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND: Under the 51st Section of the Licensing Act 1872, a stipendiary magistrate was given jurisdiction to decide these cases when sitting alone. There can be little doubt that it was the intention of the Legislature to confer this jurisdiction on resident magistrates under the designation of stipendiary magistrates. The Bill which has been introduced has been framed to carry out that intention, and it is rendered necessary by the decision of the Queen's Bench Division that resident magistrates are not stipendiaries within the meaning of the section. The answer to the Question must therefore be in the negative.

  FIRST OFFENDERS.
  MR. L. P. HAYDEN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether he will take steps to have the new Rule recently put in force by the Home Secretary in England and Wales regarding first offenders extended to Ireland?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: I should be glad if the hon. Member would be good enough to refer me to the date of the Rule in question.

  BENGAL LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
  SIR WILLIAM WEDDERBURN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India, whether it is the case that, up to the present time, the Members of the Bengal Legislative Council have, under No. 7 of the Rules sanctioned by the Governor General in Council, enjoyed the right of asking questions regarding the Provincial Budget; whether, on the 4th of April last, the Lieutenant Governor expressed an intention of taking away this right; whether the Secretary of State will state upon what grounds it is proposed to take away this right, and whether it can be taken away without an alteration of the Rules sanctioned by the Governor General in Council; whether he is aware that in 1894 18 questions were asked regarding the Provincial Budget, in 1895 16 questions, and in 1896 10 questions; and whether it is alleged that this right of interpellation has been in any way

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  abused; and, whether the Secretary of State will make inquiry, and direct that this much valued right, enjoyed under Section 2 of the Indian Councils Act, 1892, shall be continued?
  LORD GEORGE HAMILTON: It is true that in the last three years a number of questions relating to the Budget have been asked, before the discussion of the Budget, in the Bengal Legislative Council. As to the action of the Lieutenant Governor, I know nothing officially; but from a newspaper report I gather that in his opinion the practice is irregular and inconvenient, and tends to waste time, and that what he proposes is to assimilate in this respect the practice of his Council to that of the Supreme Council. I see no reason for any special inquiry.

  CHITRAL.
  SIR WILLIAM WEDDERBURN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India, whether, in view of the fact that in the Proclamation issued by Lord Elgin before the Chitral Expedition the Government of India pledged itself not to occupy permanently any territory of the Swat tribes, he will state if the strong post recently built in the Malakand Pass is situated within that territory; and, whether he will state for what period it is proposed to occupy that post?
  LORD GEORGE HAMILTON: The proclamation to which the hon. Baronet refers was issued at the outbreak of hostilities, and states that the Government of India have no intention of permanently occupying any territory through which their force may pass. The proclamation has been adhered to. Negotiations for the maintenance and protection of a road to Chitral had been carried on for some time with the tribes before the outbreak of hostilities, and the Chitral Expedition afforded a favourable opportunity for completing them. With the assent and approval of the tribes, arrangements were made for protecting the road, which included, among other things, the stationing of a force at the Malakand Pass. It will be maintained there so long as it is necessary for the purpose for which it was established.

  PREACHING AND PLAY-ACTING IN HYDE PARK.
  MR. E. BOULNOIS: I beg to ask the First Commissioner of Works whether his attention has been drawn to the preaching and play-acting which now takes place every Sunday in Hyde Park; and whether he will take steps to place some check on such proceedings?
  MR. W. JOHNSTON: May I ask whether the right hon. Gentleman will make a distinction in his arrangements between preaching and play-acting? ["Hear, hear!"]
  MR. AKERS-DOUGLAS: My attention has been drawn to the performances for money alluded to in my hon. Friend's Question. I am considering, with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, whether a new rule can be framed under which the proceedings complained of can be checked.

  JUVENILE OFFENDERS.
  MR. E. H. PICKERSGILL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the number of the prisons in which accommodation has been provided for juvenile offenders sentenced to one month and upwards, with a view to the administration of the rule which he has just issued; whether those prisons will be reserved for this class of offenders exclusively; and whether he will be good enough either to state the names of the prisons or to indicate the area of the districts to each of which one of these prisons is assigned.
  SIR MATTHEW WHITE RIDLEY: A scheme for giving effect to the Rule is at present under consideration. When the Rule is in force, as it will not be until it has lain for 40 days on the Tables of both Houses of Parliament, I shall be prepared to give the hon. Member the information he asks for.

  EDUCATION (EQUIVALENT GRANTS).
  MR. JAMES BRYCEI beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he can state on what plan there will be allotted to Scotland a grant from the Exchequer proportionately equivalent to the new grant proposed to be made to England for educational purposes, under the Education Bill brought in by Her Majesty's Government; and

  1013
  in what form it is intended to bring before the House such equivalent grant?
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,):I am afraid I cannot give any adequate answer to the right hon. Gentleman at the present time. I ought, perhaps, to say at once that the Government are not of opinion that the principle of equivalent grants is applicable to the case of education, and whatever is done for Scotland must be done on a principle different from that which he appears to contemplate.
  MR. BRYCE: May I ask whether, in one form or another, there will be given to Scotland something to compensate the Scotch taxpayers for what they will pay in respect of the English Education Bill not applying to Scotland?
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY: That involves the discussion of the fundamental principle on which this should be done. The right hon. Gentleman is doubtless aware that Scotland has been given more than English taxpayers in respect of education for many years past.
  MR. T. R. BUCHANAN: The Chancellor of the Exchequer promised us an equivalent grant in his Budget speech?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: I never said a word on the subject. [Laughter.]
  MR. BRYCE: When will the First Lord of the Treasury be prepared to make a statement on the subject?
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY: I have no doubt I shall be able to make a statement on the Question before Whitsuntide.

  COAL MINES BILL.
  MR. JOHN ELLIS: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether, having regard to the lamentable colliery explosions which occur from time to time, and to the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the connection of coal dust with these explosions, he will give such facilities to that portion of the Coal Mines Bill which deals with the saving of human life as will insure its passing into law, leaving, if needful, the more contentious proposals to be dealt with hereafter?
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY: I have consulted with my right
  1014
  hon. Friend in charge of the Bill, and he informs me that he thinks the course suggested by the hon. Gentleman will be one well worthy of the attention of the House. If the parts of the Bill dealing with colliery explosions be treated as a non-controversial Measure, he will be prepared to drop for the present Session other clauses which, however important, must necessarily give rise to Debate.

  INDIAN TROOPS FOR SUAKIN.
  MR. JOHN MORLEY: I desire to ask the Secretary of State for India a Question of which I have given him private notice—namely, whether there is any truth in the rumour, now furnished in some detail in some of the prints of to-day, of the dispatch of Indian troops to Suakin; further, if the rumour be true, whether a Motion will be submitted to this House in connection with the subject; and, further, by whom the expense will be borne. ["Hear, hear!"]
  LORD GEORGE HAMILTON: Her Majesty's Government have decided to dispatch certain Indian troops to replace the Egyptian garrison at Suakin, which, with the exception of one battalion of infantry, will be moved across to the Valley of the Nile. As regards the apportionment of expense between the two Governments it is still under consideration, and I cannot at present say whether it will be necessary or not to lay a Resolution on the Table of the House.
  MR. J. MORLEY: Which two Governments?
  LORD GEORGE HAMILTON: The Government of India and Her Majesty's Government, and, of course, until that matter is decided I cannot give a definite answer as to whether it will be necessary for me to move a Resolution and place it on the Table of the House.
  MR. HENRY LABOUCHERE: Are we to understand that the expense of these troops is not to be borne by the Egyptian Government?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: No, Sir, not at all [Laughter.]
  MR. J. MORLEY: It means, then, that in regard to the expenditure, the two Governments concerned are Her Majesty's Government and the Indian Government?
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I should like to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, before any further progress is made with the Finance Bill, we shall have a statement from him as to whether or not any or what part of the charge for these troops that are to be brought to Suakin will be placed on the English Exchequer?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: I do not absolutely see the necessity for such a statement, but I will consider the matter. The present position is this—that if it is decided, as I assume, having regard to previous precedents, it will be, that the ordinary expenditure of these troops shall be charged upon the Indian Government—[cries of "Oh!"]—a Resolution would, in accordance with the Act of Parliament, be brought forward on the subject. The question whether the further expense connected with the matter will be defrayed by the Egyptian Government or by a Vote of this House will be a matter for consideration.

  SENTENCE OF DEATH (CUBA).
  MR. JAMES O'KELLYasked a Question as to the sentence of death passed upon an Englishman by the Cuban authorities, and whether representations would be made to the Spanish Government?
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. GEORGE CURZON,)asked for further notice of the Question, and said he hoped to be prepared to answer it to-morrow.

  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
  SIR ALBERT ROLLITasked what business would be taken after the close of the Education Bill Debate?
  MR. CHANNINGasked whether, having regard to the fact that 67 speakers took part in the Debate on the Bill of 1870, and that only 28 Members had spoken on this Bill, which was a more controversial Measure, he would arrange to defer the Division until Thursday?
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY: As soon as the Second Reading of the Education Bill is concluded we propose to take the Committee stage of
  1016
  the Rating Bill. Friday, as usual, will be devoted to Supply, and we shall take the Navy Estimates. As to the Question of the hon. Member opposite, my study of the Debate on the Bill of 1870 has led me to a different conclusion. I make it that on the Second Reading of that Bill three days or only two and a half were occupied by Debate, and that 25 Members spoke in it. The Bill was recommitted, and there was no doubt a Debate lasting for five days more—["Hear, hear!"]—upon the recommitted Bill; but then that was stated by the present Leader of the Opposition to be an entirely new Measure. I do not therefore think that is a precedent for continuing the present Debate for more than four or five nights. [Cheers.] I may remind the hon. Member that the Welsh Disestablishment Bill took only five nights, that the Finance Bill of the right hon. Gentleman opposite took only three nights, and if the Debate closes to-morrow, as I hope it will—[cheers]— the discussion will have lasted five nights. Even at the rate of speaking which has prevailed—[a laugh]—I find that, as a matter of speculation, some 50 speakers will probably have the advantage of addressing the House, and the House will have had the advantage of hearing them, before the Debate closes. I earnestly hope, therefore, that the House will feel that five nights are adequate for even a Bill of this importance, and that they will allow us to take the Second Reading to-morrow. In order to facilitate that I beg to give notice that I shall to-morrow—["Oh!"]—move the suspension of the 12 o'clock Rule. As I am on my legs, the House will permit me to give public notice that henceforth public business will commence at a quarter-past 3 instead of half-past, if the state of private business admits without inconvenience.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: As to the notice just given as to the 12 o'clock Rule, I beg to give notice that I shall oppose it. I have always been desirous on all occasions of making arrangements for the convenience of both sides of the House. As I have received representations on this occasion of the desire of so many hon. Members on this side of the House to speak in the Debate, and as I understand many Gentlemen opposite also desire to discuss the Bill, I cannot

  1017
  give any consent whatever to the attempt to closure this Debate to-morrow night. I think that would not be a legitimate proceeding, and, so far as I am concerned, I shall offer all the opposition in my power to such an illegitimate—
  MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! The right hon. Gentleman is not in order in criticising beforehand a possible application of the closure.
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY: I do not wish to enter into any controversial matter, and I should like to make arrangements suitable to all parties; but may I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that all, or nearly all, the Gentlemen who desire to speak can do so if only they will curtail somewhat their speeches? [Laughter and cheers.]
  MR. GEORGE LAMBERT: Can the right hon. Gentleman make any communication to the House as to the Whitsuntide holidays?
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY: It is an unfortunate moment to ask me that question. I am in great fear that it may be a question whether we shall have any holidays at all.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  EDUCATION BILL.
  Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Amendment proposed to Question (5th May), "That the Bill be now read a Second time":—
  And which Amendment was, to leave out the word "now," and, at the end of the Question, to add the words "upon this day six months."—(Mr. Asquith.)
  Question again proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question." Debate resumed—
  MR. JOHN ELLISsaid, he would not now pursue the comments on the financial clauses of the Bill in which he was engaged on the interruption of business at midnight on Thursday. He wished now to turn to what was called the religious difficulty. The Vice President had given away his case in this matter, for he said in so many words that the difficulty did not arise in the schools, it flourished on the platforms. Why should they have such a
  1018
  clause as 27 imported into the Bill if the difficulty did not arise in the schools, with the teachers, or with the parents? Nothing could be more emphatic than the repudiation of the need and reason for the clause on the part of the teachers. The clause was an invitation to the elements which had produced such turmoil and confusion in these matters, and to the agency of which we owed largely the fact that we were so lamentably long in obtaining a really national system of education. The noble Lord the Secretary of State for India, on Wednesday, admitted the case he was now putting, for he said:—
  "He did not deny for a minute that there might he clergymen of the Church of England who went too far in trying to push the particular views they held, but they were few and far between."
  They were not quite so few and far between as the noble Lord seemed to think, and it was to the clergy who desired to push their peculiar views beyond what the common sense and judgment of the people at large wished, that he was satisfied they owed the introduction of this most pernicious clause. What would be the working of it? In not a few districts a number of persons, whose conscientious convictions were not denied, would be found going round and asking the people to sign the request necessary under the clause. He did not wish to be misunderstood. He held that our standard of right and wrong was and must be based upon religion; he believed with Mr. Gladstone that religion was the true, indeed, the only treasure of mankind; but had the House studied the most interesting returns obtained by the House of Lords from the School Boards with respect to religious education? Inquiries were addressed to 2,392 School Boards, and from all of them replies were received. It was found that 2,335 made provision for religious instruction, and that only 57 made no specific provision, and they included a large number of small districts with unpronounceable names in Wales, where, as they all knew, religious feeling was as strong as it was in any part of the Kingdom. Why could not the Government let well alone? School Boards supported what he believed to be the opinion of the people at large; they did not wish for denominational religion, but they desired

  1019
  that the spirit of religion should prevail in the schools, and he was satisfied from experience that if this subject were only approached with the spirit of our common Christianity underlying their proceedings, and the matter were left to the good sense of the teachers, the religious difficulty would not and need not exist. But in any case, the last assembly in the world to discuss questions of religion was the House of Commons, composed as it was of Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Nonconformists, Agnostics and others. He now turned to that word "decentralisation" which seemed to play the part in relation to the Bill that the blessed word "Mesopotamia" played with a certain old woman of whom they had often heard. The Vice President of the Committee of Council gave them a most vivid picture of the Education Department. He told them it had its habitation in five separate and inconvenient places; that in certain schedules 32 million blanks had to be filled up in 54 stages; that in fact it was breaking down under the weight of details. He was not concerned to deny that for a moment. He did not put the Education Department as an educational influence quite so high as the late Home Secretary did. Judging from an experience of 25 years, during which he had been a member and chairman of School Boards, and as the manager of a school, the Education Department had meddled far too much, and had made irritating and needless regulations and restrictions. The country was deeply indebted to the late Home Secretary for the vigour and vitality he infused into some of the dry bones of our factory system, but the right hon. Gentleman should bear in mind how entirely different were the qualities which came into play in dealing with sanitation and public health and adult people employed in factories, and those which came entered into the treatment of little children in schools. They all knew what inspection was. There was hardly a word which caused so much alarm to managers of schools, and above all to teachers. They found some men dealt with children as children should be dealt with, but they found others of the high-and-dry order who hardly knew what children were. If he found in the Bill any real
  1020
  decentralisation in respect to inspection he should find it very difficult to resist it; but this was not the case. And as to the Code, anyone who had bad to make himself familiar with its chapters, its articles, its sections and its schedules, would agree with him, it was far too intricate and detailed. He was all for variety. He was for much less inspection, and above all for a great simplification of the Code in many respects. He was all for decentralisation in these matters, even if it involved some weakening of the central department. But he did not find it in the Bill. There was no real decentralisation either as affected the Education Department or the Code. If the right hon. Gentleman had said "I have more than 700 men under my superintendence, they cost £275,000 or £300,000 a year: I find a great deal of their work can be done better locally: I will lessen their number, decrease the estimate, and I am willing in some way to supply local authorities with funds to carry out these duties," he could have understood it. But the right hon. Gentleman simply duplicated the inspection. Still less was there decentralisation in the Bill as affecting local authorities. It was a fair time for considering the constitution of our local educational authority. In his opinion, School Boards had been deteriorated by the system of electing them. Nothing had been more productive of wire-pulling than the cumulative vote. This had been the general experience. On the first Birmingham School Board election there was a denominational majority contrary to the opinions of the electors, because of the miscalculation of the effect of the cumulative vote. But at the next election great care was taken to arrange the machinery so as to neutralise the system. Much arithmetical calculation was required to forecast the results under this system of voting. Often it happened that there was a majority of one on a School Board election, and it became apparent that none of the majority were free to take an open, fair and candid view of a subject, but were always appealed to to vote en bloc on party grounds. He need not elaborate the argument, for there was in the Library a Blue-book which was the result of the labours of a Committee that sat in 1885, and that

  1021
  book contained evidence establishing the fact that while theorists were on the one side, practical men were on the other and against the cumulative vote.
  SIR JOHN LUBBOCKremarked that every Vice President of the Council and all the heads of the Education Department were in favour of the cumulative vote.
  MR. JOHN ELLISsaid he was speaking from the point of view of local authority. The evidence of members of School Boards having the duty of the local administration of the Education Acts was in all cases against the cumulative vote. He agreed entirely with the view that had been expressed by Mr. Bright that the cumulative vote had thrown into School Boards an element unfavourable to the honest and successful working of educational Measures. But for this evil there was no remedy whatever in the Bill. He deplored the effect the Bill would have on the School Boards. There were clauses in it which undoubtedly contained in them the virus of a deadly, creeping paralysis as regards School Board work. The Bill clothed an old authority—the Town Council—with new educational powers, and in such a way that it would be powerless for good and largely operative for evil. He had carefully gone through the clauses relating to the action of County Councils and their duties in relation to education, and could not see how anyone could pretend that those provisions could produce anything but confusion and chaos—not real decentralisation. If the Bill had put forward a clearly-defined scheme founded on principle, something might have been said for it. He was strongly in favour of lessening the number of elections for local authorities. There were at the present time very ominous signs in the steadily-decreasing number of electors taking part in those contests, clearly indicating that elections were too frequent and too complicated. ["Hear, hear!"] He was all for simplification, lessening of elections, and concentration of voting functions. He would have the School Administration and the Poor Law Administration entrusted to one body, enlarged and simplified in its elections. If that were not done we should shortly find ourselves with a number of bodies
  1022
  greatly wanting, as was the case with the School Boards now, in representative authority. ["Hear, hear!"] He desired to say a word with regard to the Charity Commission as affected by this Bill. There was an object-lesson in the House on Thursday night. What happened? One of those schemes, which this body had framed without knowledge of local requirements, was rejected by the House, Ministers supporting and opposing it. The Charity Commission as it existed were a body wholly wanting in authority and power, and, to quote an expression used on Friday last by the Secretary for the Colonies, although not, perhaps, well advanced as the Commission was in years, it might, he thought, well be superannuated with great advantage to the public. He stood by the recommendation in this matter made by the Committee that sat in 1894, of which he was chairman. His charges and allegations against the Bill fell mainly under three heads. In the first place, the financial provisions were insufficient, inefficient, and would be injurious. As they stood they would not do what the promoters desired, but would certainly lead to ridiculous anomalies and gross injustice in the treatment of different localities. In the second place, the promise of decentralisation was a mere "sham, a delusion, and a snare" as regarded the admittedly overburdened Central Department, and especially in relation to the local authority. The clauses in the Bill would only be productive of confusion and chaos, and would have a paralysing effect on all educational effort. Thirdly, and above all, so far as it might have any effect at all, Clause 27 invoked a spirit which all real educational reformers desired to see at rest. The right hon. Member for Bodmin had said that the Bill was extremely complicated; that it contained much that was worth saving and much that ought to be rejected. He would agree with the right hon. Gentleman if he would delete the first "much" and substitute for it the word "little," for there was little worth saving in the Bill in his opinion, and very much that ought to be rejected. In the situation in which the House was placed, hon. Members had a right to ask the Government to give

  1023
  ample time for the consideration of what all admitted to be a most complicated and controversial Measure. The Leader of the House read that afternoon at the Table certain figures, and he interposed a remark which he now repeated. It was to the effect that no comparison could be made between the present Debate and the Debates on the Bill of 1870, and for good reasons. At that time there was no Twelve o'clock Rule, which had effected a vital change in the procedure of the House. With no particular limit of time a clause could be completed before the Committee rose—
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURYsaid, that without regard to the Twelve o'clock Rule there were only 25 speakers on the Education Bill of 1870.
  MR. JOHN ELLISsaid he would only add, in relation to this point, that the number of speakers must be relative to the number of Members taking part in the business of the House, and the Division List showed that the attendance during the Debates in 1870, was far below the attendance of Members in these days. He, however, deeply lamented the position in which they found themselves with a Bill of this kind before them. It had been said that it was the business of an Opposition to oppose. He did not accept this as a definition of his duty as a Member of the Opposition. He came up in February prepared to deal with the Measures of the Government on their merits, and to deal with the matter of education, as too sacred to be drawn into the vortex of Party recrimination and political strife. He thought they should have a little more consideration for the interests of those who had known nothing of religious, or political or Party strife. He had, to the best of his judgment, formed his own opinion of the Bill, and from an examination of the provisions, and the Measure being what it was, he should, with great regret, but with no hesitation, go into the Lobby against the Second Reading.
  SIR EDWARD CLARKEwho was received with Ministerial cheers, said the speech to which the House had just listened had deepened the surprise he had felt, following the course of the Debate, that the Opposition should have committed themselves to a Motion distinctly hostile
  1024
  to the Second Reading, because of the two main principles contained in the Bill the hon. Gentleman had declared himself in favour of one, that of decentralisation; while as to the other principle, that of further assistance to the necessitous Voluntary Schools of the country, he had said nothing.
  MR. JOHN ELLIS: I spoke of that the other night.
  SIR E. CLARKEsaid he heard the hon. Member the other night, and he did not remember that he made any complaint, at all events, of further help being given to the Voluntary Schools of this country. ["Hear, hear!"] The hon. Member did not controvert his suggestion, and therefore the two main principles of the Bill did not meet with opposition from him. On those two principles, he ventured to say, there had been a chorus of support from hon. Gentlemen opposite. The right hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment complained of his right hon. Friend in charge of the Bill for having said that there was much common ground upon which both sides of the House could meet. Every speech that had been made from the Front Benches opposite had shown how large was the area of that common ground. [Cheers.] Looking at the Bill purely from the educational point of view, no one had denied that the Voluntary Schools ought to receive some measure, at all events, of increased support—["hear, hear!"]—not because they were Voluntary Schools as contradistinguished from Board Schools, but because they were schools which, gauged and tested by the best inspection which could be given to them, were doing good educational work for the people of this country, and were doing that work under conditions which now crippled and limited their efficiency, and put them in an unfair condition of inferiority to other schools. [Cheers.] He was amazed to see people outside talking about this being a Bill to degrade education. ["Hear, hear!"] What was the fact? Something under 2,000,000 scholars were educated in the Board Schools of this country, and 2,500,000 scholars were educated in the Voluntary Schools. ["Hear, hear!"] Those Voluntary Schools, it was said—and for the moment he did not challenge it, because it was most important for the support of this

  1025
  Bill—were unable to give so thorough an education to the children as they ought to have. It was said, and he was sorry to say truly said, that their teachers were underpaid, and the burden of expense pressed so heavily upon their managers that many things that would improve the condition and efficiency of the schools must be left undone; that they were not able, having no large funds to which they could go, to provide that equipment for the technical and manual instruction which could be given in many Board Schools. That was perfectly true, but what was the consequence which pressed itself not upon Members of that side alone, but, by confession, upon those who were upon the Front Benches opposite? namely, that the proper thing was to bring up the educational standard of those schools—[cheers.]—and to say that in bringing up the educational standard of the schools which educated four-sevenths of the children they were depressing the educational level of the others was to make a suggestion which had not the smallest foundation. [Cheers.] It was a rhetorical figure of speech for attack upon the Government outside the House. [Opposition cries of "No!" and Ministerial cheers.] He did not think any one would get up in his place and venture to say so there. ["Hear, hear!"] The right hon. Gentleman, in moving his Amendment, said he was prepared to give a full and large measure of relief to Voluntary Schools. In the course of his speech the right hon. Gentleman went farther than, he thought, some of his colleagues would be likely to follow him. He said that if Voluntary Schools were brought under public control he would be prepared to give them aid from the rates without the Cowper-Temple clause. He did not think all his colleagues would follow him to that extent, but he undoubtedly did say that he would be prepared to give a large and generous increase of public support to Voluntary Schools.
  MR. A. J. MUNDELLA: He said with the Scotch system of universal School Boards.
  SIR E. CLARKEsaid, that the right hon. Gentleman the late Home Secretary was asked by the Secretary for the Colonies "without the Cowper-Temple Clause?" and he replied "Yes."
  1026
  The declaration of support of Voluntary Schools, and of willingness to give them large local assistance was made, not only by the late Home Secretary, but by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aberdeen, by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Bridgeton Division, and also by the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean, so that upon the first proposition of the Bill they were all at one. He agreed they were not all at one on quite the same grounds. The right hon. Gentleman who stated the case for the Bill, he thought, put the claim on a somewhat lower ground than many of them would be disposed to put it. His right hon. Friend put it on two grounds—first, that the presence of the Voluntary Schools gave a variety and competition to their system; and, secondly, that the extinction of the Voluntary School system would mean an expenditure of £25,000,000 at once by the country, and an annual expenditure of perhaps £3,000,000 a year. He confessed that he did not think those two grounds fully represented what the feeling on that side of the House upon the matter of Voluntary Schools was. ["Hear, hear!"] He hoped Members opposite were sincere in their declarations of willingness to assist Voluntary Schools. He was quite sure they were prudent. [Cheers.] No one could possibly have watched the expression of public opinion in the election of Members of Parliament during the last few years without seeing that the people as a body were determined not to suffer the extinction of the Voluntary School system. [Cheer.] They did not want to defend it only because it gave variety to education, nor did they desire to defend it only because its extinction would bring a large burden upon them. He believed it was of value to the country—[cheers]—and he thought the great majority of the people believed, as he did, that the education which it was worth while for the country to get, and for which it was worth while the country to pay, was not merely the education that resulted in a certain proportion of the children being able to go out of school at 12 years of age with a capacity of doing vulgar fractions and with some knowledge of the islands of the Southern seas, but was the education in that larger sense which included the moral and

  1027
  religious training of the children as well as their instruction in secular subjects. ["Hear, hear!"] He thought hon. Gentlemen on both sides should be aware of the strong feeling there was on this matter throughout the country. The hon. Gentleman who spoke last expressed, on Thursday, some surprise, and, he thought, some disappointment that, after 25 years' working of the Education Act of 1870, they should find four-sevenths of their children, in Voluntary Schools. It was somewhat surprising when they knew the legitimate use that had been made of the provisions of the Education Act. [Cheers.] When that Act was before the House, the Leaders of the Party who proposed it were as loud as the Leaders of the Party now were in their declarations that they did not desire to attack the Voluntary School system; but in many places, certainly in London, the School Board which was instituted was most wrongfully and unrighteously worked with a, desire to attack and to extinguish the schools of the Church in London. [Opposition cries of "No!" and Ministerial cheers.] He knew well enough of what he was speaking, because he had been associated with questions of this kind for many years. During the whole of the 25 years there had been a competition between the Board Schools, with far more highly-taught children, far better-equipped schools, and large public funds at their hands, and those Voluntary Schools which the people desired to have. The fact that after 25 years of that unfair competition they still found 2,500,000 childen in the Voluntary Schools, and 2,000,000 in the Board Schools was the best possible proof, he thought, of the judgment the people formed with regard to the two systems of education. [Cheers.] It was said for the other side that the School Board system was the best part of the education of this country. He did not believe it, and he he did not think the majority of the people believed it, and the School Board system could not exist if they had not in this country large numbers of Voluntary Schools where Christian parents could send their children. [Cheers.] During the Debates of 1870 the mischief that was coming was pointed out, and Mr. Gladstone since 1870 had expressed his belief that what was done in that
  1028
  year was not absolutely right, and that the system introduced for Scotland two years afterwards was much better. He was not surprised that the people of this country did not like Board Schools, because the system of education provided therein was repugnant to the feelings of a very large number of parents. [Opposition cries of "No!"] The religion taught was a spurious religion—[Opposisition cries of "No!"]—which did not exist outside the school walls, and consisted of what was called moral teaching illustrated by passages read from the Scriptures, passages which might be explained by teachers who did not believe the narrative of what was being read, and looked upon the doctrines derived from that narrative by Christendom with indifference or contemptuous unbelief. It was not wonderful, therefore, that the people of this country had stood by their Voluntary Schools, and had shown at the General Election last year that they were determined that these schools should be protected. The financial provision made in the Bill for Voluntary Schools he did not regard as altogether satisfactory. The assistance proposed to be given was not sufficient to meet the present difficulties experienced by the schools, and he failed to find in the Measure anything to protect them against the unfair competition to which he had referred. The educational efficiency of the Voluntary Schools was, no doubt, to some extent lower than that of the Board Schools, but it was wonderful that it was not very much lower, considering that the average expenditure per child in a Board School was 10s. higher than in a Voluntary School. In London there was nearly £1 more per head spent on teachers in the Board Schools than was spent in the Voluntary Schools, The proposed 4s. grant, therefore, would not be adequate assistance even in the present state of things; but they must remember that alterations had been made in the Code, by which from the 1st of next August an increased teaching staff would be required in Voluntary Schools—a staff increased by 16 per cent. That change would absorb practically the whole of the assistance given by the 4s. grant. Then, under the Bill School Boards were to have power to give £1 per head for maintenance, and

  1029
  as against that figure 4s. was all that was given to Voluntary Schools. That was not establishing equality; it was not putting the Voluntary Schools in a position to meet the educational demands that were made upon them. But even if the sums granted to Voluntary Schools were such as to do away with the present inequality between them and the Board Schools, that inequality could be set up again unless some limit were put to the sum that the School Boards could raise, or some other precaution taken. He should not like himself to limit the rate, although he recognised that in many parts of the country the money raised by rates had been most extravagantly and wastefully spent. He thought that a plan might be devised under which, when a certain limit of rating had been reached and there still remained educational needs to be provided for, an extra grant would be given and distributed equally among the Voluntary and Board Schools of a district. A plan of that kind would relieve the necessities of the Voluntary Schools, and would provide against the competition of School Boards with its resulting wasteful expenditure. It was possible that the figures produced by certain right hon. Gentlemen opposite, to show that the proposals of the Government would involve an inequality of treatment between schools, proved their case, although he did not think they did; but he felt sure that if it was shown in Committee that capricious inequalities would be caused, the Vice President of the Council would be quite ready to consider the representations made to him. The way in which the Bill was being denounced outside that House was too bad. Even when an election was pending in Wiltshire the late Home Secretary ought to have refrained from telling the people there that the Government were proposing to give ten times as much to the Voluntary Schools as to the Board Schools. ["Hear, hear!"] If a man were to offer to give an equal grant to 100 poor persons—90 men and ten women—he supposed the ex-Home Secretary would denounce the donor as hard-hearted, on the ground that he gave nine times as much to the men as to the women. He thought it right to protest warmly against misrepresentations of this kind, and they were not
  1030
  consistent with the declarations made in that House by right hon. Gentlemen opposite as to their willingness to assist the Voluntary Schools. ["Hear, hear!"] On the question of decentralisation, he agreed with the Government that there ought to be some devolution of power from the overgrown and overworked Education Department. In many cases there had been much to complain of under the present system, and numberless questions now came before the central authority which any sensible man would at once say ought to be settled by the local authorities on the spot. ["Hear, hear!"] He did not believe that under the scheme of the Government there would be any duplication of inspection, as some hon. Members feared. Devolution was also desirable, because it was not only in connection with elementary education that they were confronted with a problem requiring immediate attention. The School Boards of this country, with the same lax regard which they had shown for the limitations by statute of their duties with respect to money, had been extending their prerogatives into the domain of secondary education—[Opposition cries of "Oh!"]—and they were proud of it. In Sheffield, for example, a great building had been erected at a cost of £30,000 for the purposes of secondary education. The funds to pay for the teaching in that place when built would no doubt be drawn from certain Parliamentary sources which would properly be used for secondary education; but the £30,000 which went to pay for the building came from funds supposed to be allotted to the teaching of young children in elementary schools. It had been said that if Parliament would only leave secondary education alone for ten years, the elementary teachers and School Boards would have got the whole system into their hands. He did not think that the control of secondary education ought to be allowed to drift into the hands of bodies established for another purpose, and which were to some extent transgressing and exceeding their powers in the work they were doing in this respect There was at this time a fund of £2,400,000 a year for the purposes of technical and secondary education. That was administered by six local and

  1031
  four central bodies. Thus it came under the control of ten different administrative bodies. Surely it was time to simplify these arrangements, and to provide that that money should not be spent by different bodies with overlapping powers and competing ambitions, but should be in the hands of one responsible and authoritative body. ["Hear, hear!"] The case for decentralisation was complete. The Education Department, overburdened as it was, ought to have relief. There ought to be taken from it and given to some proper body a power of dealing with local needs. The simplification of this curious system was surely an imperative matter of social reform. ["Hear, hear!"] If decentralisation was to take place, was there any real difference of opinion as to the body to which local authority ought to be committed? He should have thought not, for the proposal of the Government substantially harmonised with the very words of the Report of the Secondary Education Commission, which was drawn up by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aberdeen. He did not profess to attach much respect to that Report, because he thought the terms of the reference to the Committee were badly drawn and the Commission most imperfectly constituted; but there were two passages in that Report which might have been drawn from the speech of the Vice President of the Council. Both the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aberdeen and the Member for Nottingham signed that Report. They had to consider the authority to which the future direction of secondary education was to be committed, and whether it should be elected directly or indirectly. They came to the conclusion that indirect election would be the best. One of the worst and weakest of popular delusions was that an administrative body could be best gathered together by direct election. ["Hear, hear!"] If the Cabinet were elected by the people we should have a very different one—[Opposition cheers and laughter]—and we should have a very much worse one. [Cheers.] If the Cabinet were elected by the constituencies of this country, he doubted whether our Imperial existence would be prolonged beyond a generation. ["Hear, hear!"] He would read the words of the right
  1032
  hon. Gentleman the Member for Aberdeen:—
  "We have no alternative save to confine ourselves to the question whether the local authority for secondary education ought to be constituted by direct election. However abstractedly desirable direct election may be, the practical objections to it are inevitable. The electorate is already overburdened with elections and is growing restive under their combined annoyance and expense." [Cheers.] "In rural areas parish, district, and County Councils, Members of Parliament, and occasionally School Boards, in urban areas, vestries, boards of guardians, councillors, School Boards, and Members of Parliament make up, especially when taken along with their different electoral areas and modes of election, a rather anxious burden for both electors and candidates. And it becomes us to consider well before adding another item to his over-full programme. This is the more necessary, as it is certain that the increase in the number of elections tends to beget carelessness in the electors, who begin to feel that what comes so often requires little thought when it does come. Then the law of parsimony, the need for doing with the least expenditure of energy and resource what has to be done so often, tends to throw all these varied elections into the hands of single organisations, which are inevitably the organisations of the great political Parties, and so it directly results in turning a question which ought to be in its essence non-political into a distinctly political question."
  ["Hear, hear!"] Admirable philosophy on the part of the right hon. Gentleman! [Cheers.] An admirable declaration of opinion from which, at present, he had heard no dissentient voice from the Bench on which the right hon. Gentleman usually sat. [Cheers.] If it was decided to constitute a body by indirect election, what should that body be? With regard to this matter, the Commission advised that the control should be given to a committee appointed by the County Council from its own members, with or without an addition from outside—the very body suggested in the Bill. [Cheers.] In the only other passage he would quote they went on to show how valuable this body would be. They said:—
  "It is perhaps unnecessary to say in conclusion that an authority constituted mainly, or even solely, by indirect election, is yet an independent authority. It would not in this case be a mere creature of the principal electing body, whether council or School Board, but would have an existence and executive powers of its own, with its province, powers, and functions defined and secured by statute. The power to elect would not involve the right to control the policy, or to throw out the Measures of the

  1033
  educational authority. It would be a body elected for a specific purpose, able to accomplish its purpose, but steadied throughout by the sense of its responsibility to the ultimate source of its being. The ratepayers would have control over it through the council or Board they returned; the council or Board would have control over it through the persons they elected; and thus the ancient relation between representation and rating would be maintained. … A body so constituted would seem to have the promise of fitness for the work to lie laid upon it."
  He thought the House could now understand the absence of objection to decentralisation. [Cheers.] The opponents of the Bill were reduced to saying that this body, which the Secondary Education Commission declared would be capable of administering this large fund and of directing the future of secondary education, would not be capable of acting as the local inspecting authority over the Voluntary and Board Schools. That only needed to be stated to be answered. [Cheers.] If a committee appointed by the County Council was able to undertake the responsible duties of managing the new system of secondary education, a fortiori it would be able to discharge the duty allotted to it under this Bill. ["Hear, hear!"] For these reasons it amazed him that a directly hostile attack should be made on the Bill. Up to the present the work of promoting education had not been the property of either one of the two great parties. Prior to 1870, mainly by the devotion of Churchmen and the clergy, there had been built up a great system of education, under which 1½ million children were educated. The Bill of 1870 was not a Party triumph. No doubt the extraordinary Cowper-Temple Clause, the meaning of which no one had ever been able to understand—[Cheers and Opposition laughter]—was forced on the Conservative Party in spite of the protest made then by Mr. Disraeli; but at the close of the discussion on that Bill the Minister in charge of it gratefully recognised the services of the Tory Party. [Cheers.] The next step in education came from the Tory Party in 1876, when they extended the principle of compulsion to the districts outside the areas of School Boards. The next contribution came from the other side of the House. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sheffield was, he believed, the author of the Bill
  1034
  of 1882, which rendered education compulsory. Then, again, the next great step was taken from the present Government side of the House, and in 1891 it was a Tory Minister who, without being actuated by any party motive, gave that free education which was the natural complement of, and which might most properly have preceded, compulsion, as it had done in some other countries. Then, he asked, why should the two sides of the House now part company in regard to this Bill? ["Hear, hear!"] Why should hon. Members opposite oppose this Bill with the main objects and principles of which the Leaders of the Opposition said they sympathised, and had no quarrel? ["Hear, hear!"] Of course, they were entitled to find fault with the details of the Measure, which they would have every opportunity of discussing in Committee. He could wish that it was not yet too late for them to reconsider their position, to desist from their opposition to the Bill, and to allow the Measure to go forward as other educational Measures had done, as the work of both sides of the House, and with regard to which each party could share the responsibility. ["Hear, hear!"] But, if the militant attitude and the high and heroic sentiments of the right hon. Gentleman the late Home Secretary were to be taken as representing the views of the official Opposition, those who supported Her Majesty's Government would, at all events, have nothing as a party to regret, because they would have the great satisfaction of knowing that the Ministers whom they trusted would, with the most hearty support of the great body whom they led, place upon the Statute-book an Act which would redress the injustice of the past, not by injuring, but by improving education—["Hear, hear!" and cries of "Oh!"]—by raising the level of the education given in Voluntary Schools to that which had been attained in Board Schools by means of public money. ["Hear, hear!"] The Bill would, he believed, tend to do away with the religious differences and difficulties which had divided parties in this country by putting an end to unjust competition, which in the past had produced extravagance on the one side and on the other an abiding sense of injustice. [Cheers.]
  MR. MUNDELLAsaid, that it was with great pleasure that he had listened to the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman who had just sat down, because it was impossible to do otherwise in view of the hon. and learned Gentleman's great forensic power and eloquence. ["Hear, hear!"] Whether hon. Members agreed or not with the hon. and learned Gentleman, it always delighted them to hear him speak on any subject. ["Hear, hear!"] The hon. and learned Gentleman had asked those who sat on the Opposition side of the House why, having worked together so long in the cause of education, they now sought to part company with those who sat on the Government Benches in relation to this Bill? He should like to ask the House to consider the nature of this Measure. The hon. and learned Gentleman had said that it was only natural that, after the result of the late General Election, the Government should have introduced some such Bill as this, dealing with education. But was there at the time of the General Election any question raised of introducing a Measure which would have the effect of degrading the School Board system, and of placing limits on grants for educational purposes? ["Hear, hear!"] He had been glad to hear the hon. and learned Gentleman state that he objected to limits being placed by statute upon grants for education, and in that remark, he entirely concurred. ["Hear, hear!"]. For the last 25 years, the system of education which now existed had been loyally carried out by both parties, and the right hon. Gentleman the Vice-President of the Council in Lord Salisbury's last Government used to assure the House that the last thing in the mind of the then Government was to disturb the settlement that had been arrived at in 1870. It was because this revolutionary, reactionary, and insidious Measure had been introduced by the Government, that those who sat upon the Opposition side of the House had parted company with them. ["Hear, hear!"] He had accepted the Voluntary Schools as part of the educational system of the country, but he thought that this insidious attack upon the Board Schools was most unjust. He denied that there was any foundation for the statement that the School Boards had endeavoured to injure the Church Schools. It had
  1036
  been stated that the London School Board had built Board Schools side by side with Church Schools, but he might remind those who took that view, that no new Board School could be built without the sanction of the Education Department having been first obtained. He could assure the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for the Colonies that he was mistaken when he said that the Nonconformist organisations had condemned this Bill before it was born, and that as soon as it saw the light it was doomed to death by a purely partisan opposition. These organisations were not called into existence to oppose the Bill, but the demands made by deputation after deputation on the Government, and to be watchful and ready. One was called an Emergency Committee, and the other was a revival of the old Birmingham League. The head and front of both organisations was the hon. Member for Edgbaston, than whom there was no more honest friend of education in the House. Often, when Chairman of the Birmingham School Board, had he put his hand deep into his own pocket to keep Voluntary Schools alive when their subscribers had neglected them. Condemning the Bill beforehand was the last thing anyone dreamed of. But no one anticipated a Bill like this. The Chancellor of the Exchequer went to his constituents and said, in effect:—
  "Don't you believe what you hear about our intentions against board Schools. Wait till you see the Government Bill, and you will find that what we want to do is to take care of the Voluntary Schools and preserve them from extinction."
  But the grant of 4s. per head would not preserve them from extinction. It was pouring water into a sieve to give 4s. a head if they did not at the same time insist, as the Archbishop of Canterbury suggested, on a certain limit of subscriptions in every case. Let there be no statutory inequality between Voluntary Schools and Board Schools. Let both be treated alike, and let them take care that what was poured into the lap of the Board Schools was not lost by a deficiency of subscriptions towards Voluntary Schools. It was grievous that they should be discussing a Measure dealing with secondary education which was so

  1037
  complicated and embarrassed by provisions which provoked bitter controversy. Nothing was more needed in this country than the organisation of secondary education. It was the teaching of Matthew Arnold's life. Mr. Forster attempted it in 1869, but had to abandon it, and it was now high time it was done. But was the way to get it done to mix it up with so much bitterness and contention, the natural result of a Bill like this? Even now, at the eleventh hour, a good secondary education Measure might be passed this Session. The clauses relating to secondary education might be detached from the rest of the Bill, amended, and passed with very brief discussion. Then, in the smallest number of clauses necessary they could deal with the question of saving the Voluntary Schools from extinction. Such a Measure would be more likely to commend itself to the House and the country than the action already taken. They saw before them a prospect which he hoped they would never see again—of the revival of the old controversy about the religious difficulty; and controversies they believed were dead and buried, all to be fought over again with the greatest disadvantage to education. He hoped the Vice President of the Council would adhere to 12 years as the age of compulsory attendance at school. We should never have an educated peasant or artisan class in this country when children left school as soon as they had reached the 4th standard and in a few years forgot the little they had learnt. He had not the advantage last week of hearing the speech of the noble Lord the Secretary for India, but he had read it with care. The noble Lord indulged in bitter attacks on the School Board system. He insisted that there should be additional control over the expenditure of School Boards, and adduced statements to show how extravagant it was. He said (to quote The Times report):—
  "Had hon. Members opposite the slightest conception of the cost of our system of primary education? It was by far the most expensive system in the world. At the present moment the Board Schools, according to the last Return of the late Government, were spending £9,000,000, and if they added the cost of maintenance alone of Voluntary Schools there was an expenditure during the year to which the Report related of £14,000,000."
  1038
  This was absolutely incorrect. According to the Report of the Education Department for 1895, giving the aggregate expenditure of all School Boards in England and Wales for the 12 months ending September 29, 1894, there was spent on capital account, land, and buildings, £1,885,702 17s. 9d.; furnishing, £57,844 0s. 2d.; repayment of principal of loans, £547,252 6s. 3d.; interest on loans, £758,652 1s. 10d. The money borrowed and spent on capital account was accounted for by the last two items. So the noble Lord had counted the sum twice over. The real annual expenditure was not £9,000,000, but exactly £6,766,000, and the average cost of maintenance per child in average attendance (including London) £2 8s. 9¾d. This was what the noble Lord called the most extravagant system in the world. On what authority did he make that statement? To begin with, all the schools of all the English-speaking people in the world were more expensive than our own. He found, for instance, that in the United States the total expenditure for common schools—elementary and higher elementary schools—for 1892–3 was over £32,600, whilst last year it was £34,000. The cost per pupil in the elementary schools in the United States was £31 3s. 9d., as against £2 1s. in England. ["Hear, hear!"] He could not understand the noble Lord's statement, nor from whence he got it. In the same speech the noble Lord said that our system relatively was the most expensive of any in Europe, and that on primary and secondary education combined we spent more per head than any other country. They had, he told them, a limit of 49s. under the Bill, experience having shown them that some check was absolutely necessary,
  "because, as far as he knew, the highest expenditure in Europe upon secondary and primary education was only 38s. per child in average attendance."
  He should like to call the attention of the House to a little report issued by the Foreign Office on Saturday, on "the various institutions and agricultural development of Switzerland" prepared by Her Majesty's representative there, Mr. St. John. In his report, which should be read by everyone who cared

  1039
  about education, or who was engaged in agriculture or industry, Mr. St. John said:—
  "In 1893 there were 8,390 primary schools in Switzerland, with 469,800 children and an average of 50 pupils per teacher, of whom there were 6,290 masters and 3,180 mistresses. The expenses of the cantons were, on an average, 50f. (£2) per pupil, or 6s. 8d. per inhabitant."
  Whilst in this country we spoke of average attendance, in Switzerland and other countries they always spoke of every pupil in the school, which would raise the £2 per pupil to 48s. or 49s. ["Hear, hear!"] In the same report Mr. St. John said there were
  "485 secondary schools with 31,800 pupils; an average of 22 pupils per teacher, costing the canton an average of £6 6s. per pupil."
  He went on to say that there were commercial schools in six cantons which cost £18 10s. per head; and he added in a subsequent page: "There are 16 agricultural schools, with 400 students at, £16 a year each. Last year the expenditure averaged £46 for each student, the difference being made up by the cantonal and Federal subventions, amounting to £8,750 and £4,300 respectively." He should like to ask where the noble Lord got his 38s. from. ["Hear, hear!"] He had shown, in one of the countries which was naturally the poorest in Europe, which had no resources in coal or iron, but which had obtained marvellous industrial achievements, which had exported more manufactures per head than England herself—sending to this country very nearly £750,000 worth of condensed milk last year—they could afford to pay all this for education, whilst England, which spent so much less, was reproached for her gross extravagance. ["Hear, hear!"] The two reports from which he had quoted, relating to the United States and Switzerland, could be perused by hon. Members desirous of seeing them, and who would be able to judge for themselves—first, whether, as the noble Lord said, we were the most extravagant people in the world in education; and secondly, whether in Europe only 38s. per head was spent upon both secondary and elementary education. The right hon. Member for Dartford, speaking the other night, said that School Boards having the rates behind them had overstepped the limits
  1040
  of elementary education and trespassed upon the field of secondary education. That was a statement that had been, constantly made, and the hon. and learned Gentleman who had last spoken had dealt with the Central School at Sheffield. He should like to deal with that question. When Sheffield got into good working order they found they had at the Board schools a few boys of bright parts who could get through their standards very easily, but who were kept back and hindered because they had to wait for other boys. It was found more economical to combine these brilliant boys into a higher-grade elementary school and give them a somewhat better teaching. A scheme to this effect was submitted to Lord Sandown, who heartily approved of it. The noble Lord, the Secretary for India succeeded Lord Sandown as Vice President, and when he (Mr. Mundella) entered into that office in 1880 the first matter that came under his notice was the fact that the noble Lord before he left office had sanctioned the scheme of instruction for this Central School. He spoke to the noble Lord on the subject, who told him he was glad to approve of it as a good scheme, and one that was likely to tend to economy. That school had been going on with marvellous success from that time to this. It taught something more than the three R's, imparting instruction in science, in drawing, commercial subjects, bookkeeping, and higher arithmetic, qualifying students for counting-houses, warehouses, and mills in the town The scholars included many poor boys. There was, for example, the son of a widow who got her living by turning a mangle. Some were enabled by an allowance of 2s. a week to remain at school till they were 14 or 15. They were making themselves more useful to themselves and their families than they would have been if they had gone to the grammar school till they were 17 or 18. The right hon. Member for Dartford (Sir W. Hart Dyke) visited that school, and afterwards, addressing a great public meeting, he stated the numbers of students earning science and art grants and other grants, and the number of Queen's scholars, and he added,
  "These figures are all-important; I have read them not only to encourage you, but with another special object; I should like to say to

  1041
  many other large communities, Go you and do likewise and support central schools of this kind. I do trust that before long the excellent example you are setting will be followed by other towns and will bring prosperity to other trading and industrial communities."
  [Cheers.] Several inspectors had casually referred to these central schools and had urged that similar schools should be set up in other districts on the ground that they were economical when tested by results, and particularly by the stimulus they gave to all elementary schools in the town, both Board and Voluntary. The schools were not confined to Board School children; Voluntary Schools sent to them their best scholars; and it was pleasant to see bright lads, the sons of the poorest workmen, receiving an education which they were qualified to turn to good account. ["Hear, hear!"] The only thoroughgoing support of the Bill had come from the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India (Lord George Hamilton). The hon. member for West Ham (Mr. Gray) was going to vote for the Second Reading of the Bill, which he reduced to a mere skeleton and framework, while the hon. member for Nottingham (Mr. Yoxall) tore the Bill to shreds. The noble Lord said the Cowper-Temple Clause could never have worked except with the common consent of every member of a Board; but the House contained many members of School Boards who knew they had never experienced the slightest difficulty in working it. As to the Jews being "bought off with a syllabus," two-thirds or three-fourths of the teachers in the great Jews' Free School were Christians, Churchmen trained in Church of England training colleges. [Cheers.] The scholars, children of the poorest Jews in the East-end, many of them refugees from persecution—the poor children, 90 per cent. foreign-born, and knowing little or no English, made 95 per cent, of possible attendances, and in two or three years they made remarkable progress. Surely the London School Board did not commit a great sin in appointing a few Jewish masters for these children. [Ministerial cheers.] As to the syllabus, immediately it was discovered it was contrary to the rules of the London School Board it was withdrawn. He was astonished at the noble Lord asserting that a Unitarian teacher gave religious
  1042
  teaching which was repugnant to a clergyman who heard it. The supposed teaching was allowing a child to say that Joseph was the father of Jesus. The clergyman at once published the statement that the doctrine of the Incarnation was being improperly taught. It turned out that the schoolmistress was a Wesleyan from the Wesleyan. Training College in Westminster, yet the incident had led to two years' wrangling in the London School Board, and now the noble Lord appealed to it as showing the difficulty of working the Cowper-Temple Clause. When the children were in the schools all the difficulties disappeared. He spoke with a good deal of experience of the School Board Schools. Anyone who visited these schools at morning service would find the children reverently taught the Scriptures, and joining reverently and orderly in the prayers. Why, then, did they propose this 27th Clause? The effect of that clause would be to take religious teaching out of the hands of the teachers, thus depriving them of great influence with the children in teaching morality and higher things; and then they would sort the children into this class or that class in order that they might learn a little Wesleyan, or Baptist, or Church doctrine. He trusted they would hear no more of this—[cheers and cries of "Oh!"]—on the Second Reading of the Bill. Most of them had received a circular signed by Cardinal Vaughan, but all he had to say was that Roman Catholics were treated with greater consideration than they were in any Catholic country in Europe. They were the only country which gave large grants to Voluntary Schools, whether Catholic or Protestant, which were under private management. There were no such grants given in France, not a farthing in Italy, and the same was the case, he believed, in Bavaria and Prussia. He always recognised that they never could enforce compulsion in this country without allowing the Catholics to teach their own faith in their own schools. He did not believe that they, as Protestants, ought to make the difficulty that they did make about children assembling together reverently to be taught the Holy Scriptures without any particular doctrine. On the other hand, he thought they should all be

  1043
  thankful that so much had been done, and he was at a loss to understand how any clergyman of the Church of England could do other than rejoice at what was done in this direction in the Board Schools. Why, 25 years ago more than half the population was outside the schools—in the streets and gutters, most of them; and as to the religious teaching, it was a farce. ["Hear, hear!"] Let them examine the reports, and they would find that it was a farce. ["Hear, hear!"] There was very little religion indeed. What was it to-day? Everybody knew what it was. He had received, as, no doubt, other hon. Members had received, a circular signed by Cardinal Vaughan, who said that they—the supporters of the present system—
  "Hoped that a system of undenominational instruction given in the Board Schools by teachers whose religious belief might not be inquired into and ascertained, will lead by degrees to the dissolution and final disappearance of Christianity as a definite system of faith and conduct from amongst the masses of the English people. … Another quarter of a century will well nigh complete the de-Christianising of the great majority of Englishmen. Under cover of the School Board method, considerable progress has been made already in this direction."
  This circular contained language as to Bible teaching which he should not use in reference to any Catholic publication that he ever saw. He asked leave to read an eloquent passage from one of the greatest Cardinals the Roman Church had had in modern times—Cardinal Newman, who said:
  "'Bible Religion' is both the recognised title and the best description of English religion. It consists, not in rites or creeds, but mainly in having the Bible read in Church, in the family, and in private. Now I am far indeed from underrating that mere knowledge of Scripture which is imparted to the population thus promiscuously. At least in England it has to a certain point made up for great and grievous losses in its Christianity. The reiteration again and again in fixed course in the public service of the words of the inspired teachers under both covenants, and that in grave majestic English, has in matter of fact been to our people a vast benefit. It has attuned their minds to religions thoughts, it has given them a high moral standard, it has served them in associating religion with compositions which, even humanly considered, are among the most sublime and beautiful ever written; especially it has impressed upon them the series of Divine Providences in behalf of man from his creation to his end, and, above all, the words, deeds and sacred sufferings of Him in
  1044
  whom all the Providences of God centre. What Scripture especially illustrates from its first page to its last is God's Providence; and that is nearly the only doctrine held with a real assent by the mass of religious Englishmen. Hence the Bible is so great a solace and refuge to them in trouble. I repeat, I am not speaking of particular schools and parties in England, whether of the High Church or the Low, but of the mass of piously-minded and well-living people in all ranks of the community."
  It was not often they discussed the religious question, and therefore he desired to add that only on Saturday last he received a message containing a resolution passed by the Sunday School Union, which represented 200,000 children and 2,000 teachers, in favour of the maintenance of the Cowper-Temple Clause, and expressing the unbounded blessing that the teaching in the Board Schools had been to the Sunday Schools of the country. A few months ago he made inquiries following up some he made when he was Vice President of the Committee of the Council, and also President of the Sunday School Union, as to the progress of religious teaching in the Sunday Schools of England, and the statistics he collected were obtained from all denominations. When Mr. Edward Baines was a Member of the House he ascertained—it was about 1860—that there were two million children attending Sunday Schools. The return for 1892–3 showed that there were 37,201 Sunday Schools in England and Wales, 585,457 teachers, and 5,976,000 children on the rolls. There were really several thousands more attending Sunday Schools than Day Schools. Respecting the special-aid grant, he thought it ought to be administered by managers who owed some responsibility to the public. It was time we had a better insight into the working of the Voluntary Schools than we had at present. Finally, he asked the House whether this was not a time when we ought to be building up both our primary and secondary education, so as to equip our people for the battle of life. He agreed entirely with the Bishop of Durham that the object of education was not merely to make men bread-winners, but to make noble men and women; but still, they must not lose sight of the fact that, if we made noble men and women, it was also to the utmost degree desirable to enable them to meet all the opposition opposed to them with

  1045
  all the ability and equipment they could be given. It was necessary, surely, in these times, having regard to the competition in our industries, that our people should be abreast in the matter of education of any people in the world. We did not limit our expenditure by statute in respect to any other branch of the public service; why limit it in the case of education? He appealed to the House so to deal with the Bill that all the mischief it contained should be eliminated; to try not only to maintain the position we now held, but to attain a higher and better position, so that it could not be said that the English people were amongst the worst educated people in Europe. [Cheers.]
  MR. JEBBasked the indulgence of the House while he dealt with the principles rather than with the details involved in the Bill. The first principle was, of course, devolution. For that there were two reasons. First, that the Education Department was now overburdened with detail; secondly, and this was the greater reason of the two, that, within such measure of uniformity as elementary education demanded, there was still room for a better adaptation to the varying needs of the different districts. The other night his hon. Friend the Member for East Somerset pointed out, not only that County Councils were perfectly fitted to deal with the question of elementary education, seeing that they were already dealing successfully with the far more difficult problem of secondary education; but that some such devolution as was proposed was absolutely necessary if education was to be carried on successfully in many counties, because only a local authority could properly organise that grouping of country schools which was so requisite for peripatetic teaching as well as for other purposes. Now, the result of this measure of devolution would be, in his opinion, not to weaken the central control of the Education Department, but to strengthen it. The hon. Member for North West Ham had said that, judging from his long experience, a large devolution of the powers and functions of the Education Department had become a matter of absolute necessity. But they had been told that this new plan would bring sectarian strife into the election of municipal
  1046
  bodies. It ought to be noted that in constituting the new local authorities it would be absolutely necessary to place on them persons not members of the municipal bodies, who had a competent knowledge and experience of education. ["Hear, hear!"] Amongst those persons should be representatives of the teachers, including women; and he, personally, would not object to have upon the new authorities some direct representatives of School Boards. The Vice-President indicated how these objects might be secured—viz., by the County Council submitting to the Education Department a scheme for the constitution of its education committee, subject to modification by the Department itself. It was said there would be danger of sectarian strife in the election of these new educational authorities. But surely that danger would be modified by the presence on those bodies of persons, conversant with education, who did not belong to the County Councils. And might it not be said also that the election of School Boards had not always been ideally tranquil? He might quote a few words on this subject of a distinguished Anglican clergyman who was unfavourable, on the whole, to the Bill, but who was speaking of the proposed local authority as it would be with the modifications just suggested.
  "It would consist," he said, "of representative men, elected, not as our School Board is elected—in a torrent of misrepresentations and on purely sectarian grounds—but with a view to general public interests, and enlightened and moderated by the presence at their board of men who may be presumed to be above the influence of Party."
  They had just heard from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Sheffield a renewal of the charge that the Bill was hostile to the School Boards. It was admitted by every one that there was no direct attack upon the School Boards. ["No, no!"] Well, it was generally admitted; but it was held that the School Boards were indirectly threatened. How were they threatened? In three ways, it was said. In the first place, because the formation of new School Boards would be discouraged. But Clause 6 merely gave an option. If the district to which the Education Department had given notice under Clause 6 did not apply for

  1047
  a School Board, the presumption was that the conditions in that district were such as would render the School Board, if formed, weak and inefficient. Such conditions had surrounded many rural School Boards, as was generally admitted. The Report of the Education Department for last year stated that the climax of inefficiency was sometimes found in the country Board School. The greater School Boards in the large towns had done admirable work—["hear, hear!"]—but it was clear that the smaller School Boards in rural districts had not, as a rule, been successful. In the next place, it was said that Clause 8 would lead to the dissolution of many School Boards. Very probably; but the question was whether the School Boards likely to be dissolved were such as the more enlightened friends of the Board School system would wish to continue. They would be some of the Boards in districts with small populations. According to the Report of the Education Department for 1893–4, page 33, there were then 142 School Boards with less than 250 population, 387 with between 250 and 500, 312 with between 500 and 750, and 184 with between 750 and 1,000. Those who spoke of the School system as if it were equally applicable everywhere, forgot that its successes had been won with the large populations; its failures had been with the small populations. The districts in which School Boards would be dissolved under Clause 8 would be of the same kind as those which, under the option given by Clause 6, would not choose to have School Boards at all. But the strongest objection was taken to Clause 26, under which the School Board rate could not be raised above 20s., or the amount of the rate for the year ending 1896, whichever was the higher, without consent of the local authority. The real question here was whether, after 25 years' experience, the ratepayers had not some right to be consulted before the expenditure was allowed to overstep a limit representing the maximum hitherto found requisite. If the ratepayers, speaking by the new education authority, decided that the rate ought to be so raised, then it would be raised notwithstanding the limit, for the new authority had the power to go beyond the limit. They had been told by a former chairman of a great School
  1048
  Board (the Secretary for India) that the control exercised by the finance committees of the School Boards sometimes left much to be desired. He wished it to be distinctly understood that he was not accusing the School Boards of extravagance. He was prepared to assume that they had generally, if not always, got their money's worth from them. ["Hear, hear!"] What he did protest against against was this—assuming that the veto in Clause 26 was vested in a body which would have no interest in the welfare and progress of education. That seemed to him to be an altogether unwarranted assumption. On the contrary, if the local authority should be constituted as he hoped it would be before the Bill passed out of Committee, and provision made for an adequate representation upon it of persons with knowledge and experience of education, then there would be ample security that if a really good case existed for passing beyond the limit set by Clause 26, an increase to the rate would be granted. There would be on the local authority persons competent and desirous to urge any considerations which the School Board might have to urge in favour of such a course; and, further, the body as a whole would be one disposed to give all due weight to any real and strong reasons that could be urged in favour of such a course. He could not, therefore, see how the Bill would even indirectly injure the operation of the School Board system in any place where that system was now really valuable, or in any place where it had a fair prospect of becoming so. If he thought that the School Board system would be injured, he should consider that a most serious defect in the Bill, he might say almost a fatal defect. (Opposition, cheers.) He was prepared to stand by those words because, though he thought Voluntary Schools were indispensable, every one knew that Board Schools were also indispensable. ["Hear, hear!"] As to the aid to Voluntary Schools, they were pretty well agreed that the 4s. grant would be a valuable boon to some of the Voluntary Schools, but he thought there was also a general agreement that to many or most of those schools the grant would be totally inadequate. [Cheers.] The deduction of the whole endowment would at once cancel even this small help in

  1049
  many cases where it was most needed. ["Hear, hear!"] He thought, therefore, that the provision as to endowments would have to be reconsidered in Committee. It seemed to him that the root of the whole matter as to Voluntary Schools was to bear in mind the broad distinction between Voluntary Schools in non-School Board areas and those in areas with School Boards. Where there was no School Board there was no education rate, and therefore there was a stronger ground for keeping up the subscriptions. But in School Board districts, where the same people to a great extent paid both the rate and subscription, he thought it was impossible for Voluntary Schools to compete with Board Schools. The strain was greatest in the poor districts of large towns, especially in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Voluntary Schools in Manchester had to compete with Board Schools receiving £300 to £900 of public money; or, in London, £1,000 to £2,000. Suppose a subscription of 5s. per child to be required. A Voluntary School of 100, where there was no School Board rate, might raise the £25. But a Voluntary School of 500, in a poor urban district with a heavy rate, could not raise the £125, and would be extinguished. ["Hear, hear!"] The Free Education Act of 1891 was a gain to some Voluntary Schools in non-School Board areas, because the 10s. fee grant brought in more than they had been taking in fees. But in the urban districts of the north the Act of 1891 had been most disastrous to Voluntary Schools, to which fees had been a large source of income. There was no help in the provision that they might charge the difference over the 10s. as a fee. For the parent was entitled to free education somewhere, either in the Voluntary School or the Board School. A fee-charging Voluntary School had no chance against a free Board School. So far as concerned Voluntary Schools in poor urban districts, it seemed impossible that they should compete with Board Schools by means of State grants plus subscriptions. He agreed with those who thought that the final settlement must be found in rate aid coupled with local control. [Opposition cheers.] State aid in grants carried with it central control. This central control was already secured. There was the
  1050
  supervision of secular instruction by the Department, and there was the audit of accounts. To this, Voluntary and Board Schools were alike subject. But aid from the rates would involve further some control by the locality in which the rates were raised—as Board Schools were controlled by the School Boards. If Voluntary Schools received rate aid, what should the local control be? He should say, give the local authority representation on the managing body of every Voluntary School that received rate aid. This would be analogous to the representation clause in the Technical Instruction Act of 1889. Let the secular instruction be controlled by the whole managing body. Let the religious instruction be controlled by that element in the management which represented the denomination to which the school belonged. The essential condition was that the denominational character of the school, which was its very reason for existing, should be preserved, and that there should be no alienation of trusts. With reference to the teachers, it was evident that in a Voluntary School some at least of the teachers, always including the head teacher, must belong to the denomination. But it was undesirable that Nonconformists should be excluded from all share in the teaching of Voluntary Schools. ["Hear, hear!"] In small Voluntary Schools that might be hardly avoidable; but in large Voluntary Schools it might be arranged that some places among the pupil-teachers and assistant teachers should be open to Nonconformists. The opinions of Anglicans were very much divided on this matter of rate-aid with local control. Some weighty men were for it; many were against it. The local control they feared, might end by subverting the I distinctive basis of the schools. He did not think so In the first place the preservation, of that basis would be made a first condition; secondly, public opinion would act as a strong restraining force, both generally, and especially within the Nonconformist bodies. An aggressive policy would be liable to reprisals, and would discredit the body which adopted it. The ratepayer, it might be added, would have a compensation in the great impulse which this system would give to the building of denominational schools at private cost.

  1051
  In his judgment a defect in the Bill was that the Education Department could forbid the establishment of a new Voluntary School, if they thought it unnecessary. Now, the judgment as to the necessity should be left to the denomination concerned. What was wanted was a clause like Section 67 of the Education (Scotland) Act, of 1872. No school was to be deemed "unnecessary" which supplied education, otherwise not available, in accordance with the religious belief of parents. As to Clause 27, he agreed with those who thought that it would require, if it became law, care and self-control. The late Home Secretary quoted some words spoken on this subject by the Bishop of Durham, to the effect that the clause would be seldom exercised. But the Bishop added some words which were not quoted by the late Home Secretary last week. The Bishopsaid:—
  "There are some exceptional cases on both sides, and here the Bill brings a necessary relief."
  The right hon. Gentleman gave the extract correctly as to its purport, and as far as it went, but the words he had now added involved an important condition, because in some cases this relief would be necessary. [''Hear, hear!"] As to Clause 27, he thought it was right in principle. The terrible pictures which had been drawn of its effects by some hon. Members presupposed two things—that it would be largely and constantly pressed into use, and that the persons who worked it would be destitute of common sense and good feeling. ["Hear, hear!"] If the principle of rate aid for Voluntary Schools were adopted as he had indicated, the need for such a clause would rapidly tend to disappear. [Hear, hear!"] With regard to the so-called settlement of 1870, he had not heard any statement on the point which represented the facts as they appeared to himself. One great merit claimed for the settlement was that undenominational religion was taught under it upon ground common to all Christians. He would admit that the religious teaching in many Board Schools had been excellent, and that it had received the approval of several Bishops of the Anglican Church. Large numbers of Church people were content
  1052
  with it. The hon. Member for Flintshire had said that it satisfied all Protestant Nonconformists. The Cowper-Temple Clause had worked smoothly, on the whole, for 25 years. At the same time, a vast number of people could not accept the religious teaching of the Board Schools. If there were no such objection, four-sevenths of the children would not be in Voluntary Schools. ["Hear, hear!"] There were many persons who thought that religious teaching divested of doctrine was not religion in the full sense of the word. All Roman Catholics, and a large number of Anglicans, held that view. The right hon. Member for South Aberdeen had asked what distinctively denominational doctrine could be profitably taught to a child. The answer was manifest. It was true that particular doctrinal subtleties could not be understood by children. But it was equally true that the teaching of every doctrinal system of belief exercised a certain moral influence inseparable from its collective body of doctrine. ["Hear, hear!"] The right hon. Gentleman himself expressed this fact when he admitted that Roman Catholics might justly be dissatisfied with the measure of religion taught in the Board Schools, because, said the right hon. Gentleman, their faith surrounded them with a certain atmosphere. Well, the Church of England had its atmosphere too—[cheers]—and though the child might be unable to analyse the constituents of the spiritual air which he breathed, he felt its influence none the less. [''Hear, hear!"] But the Cowper-Temple Clause was not absolutely efficacious, even for its own purpose. It forbade distinctive catechisms and formularies. It did not forbid distinctive doctrine. When Mr. Forster's Bill was being discussed in 1870, it was proposed to insert the word "doctrine," but it was rejected, because it would pass the wit of man to define it. [Laughter.] This inevitable laxity of the clause was one reason why it had worked so smoothly. But there was another and a greater reason—he was surprised that it had been ignored—and that reason was the existence of the Voluntary Schools. [''Hear, hear!'] People who did not like the Cowper-Temple Clause had an alternative. If no such alternative had been open to them, did anyone imagine

  1053
  that the clause would have worked so smoothly? The compromise of 1870 was confessedly illogical. But that was nothing against it. In this country we were not governed by logic. The real blot on it was twofold. First, it gave no security for any religious teaching at all, while it left any religion taught to be regulated by the municipal standard. Secondly, a fallacy underlay it, namely, that if you substract from religious teaching every tenet distinctive of each particular denomination, the residuum was a religious basis acceptable to all. That was not the case. And the practical outcome of this fallacy was that multitudes of people who paid the education rate were confronted with a dilemma—either they must surrender their liberty of conscience, or they must lose all share in the benefit of the rate which they paid. That was a violation of justice. There were some who objected to public aid for Voluntary Schools not merely because certain conditions are not attached to it, but mainly on the ground that no public aid should be given to any denominational teaching. But it had already been pointed out that in Industrial Schools, Reformatory Schools, Poor Law Schools—all rate supported—the right to distinctive teaching was recognised. [Cheers.] And the Blind and Deaf Children Act, passed by the late Government in 1893 contained these words:—
  "A child shall, so far as practicable, have facilities for receiving religious instruction and attending religious services conducted in accordance with the parents' persuasion."
  But he could give another and perhaps more striking instance. Did hon. Gentlemen opposite remember that the Act of 1870, in its original form, recognised the same principle? Under the original Clause 25 of that Act very poor parents could apply to the School Board to pay the fees for their children in Voluntary Schools. That clause was repealed in 1876, but the five years of its existence remained on record to show that the framers of the Act of 1870 held no such dogma as had since been formulated in the interests of a particular view. [''Hear, hear!"] Indeed, they might be content to found themselves on a definition of religious equality given by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of
  1054
  the Opposition in the Debate on the Second Reading of Mr. Forster's Bill in 1870. He said:—
  "As regards any funds raised either directly by the State, or indirectly under its authority, one form of religious opinion has as full a right to share in the appropriation of such funds as another."
  That statement, then, included rates as well as grants. Not long ago—on November 9, 1894—in a letter to a leading journal, Mr. Gladstone said:—
  "I will not undertake to say what precise system as to religious instruction was in the contemplation of the Act of 1870. I have always thought, however, that the Act for Scotland, which soon followed, was more wisely framed."
  The Scotch Education Act of 1872, it would be remembered, left School Boards entirely free as to religious teaching. The Bill gave to the new local authorities large powers in respect to secondary education. They could inspect such schools (other than the non-local schools), they could help such schools, they could set up new secondary schools. The whole of the beer money was most wisely appropriated by the Bill to secondary (including technical) education. But there was here a great defect in the Bill, which would have to be remedied, if they were to make any real progress in organising secondary education. There was no provision for a central authority to supervise it. The control of secondary education was left by the Bill, as it was now, divided among several independent agencies. The Charity Commission could deal with only certain endowed schools. The Science and Art Department had cognisance only of certain subjects. The Education Department was confined, in respect of secondary education, to those of its own schools in which some higher work was done, and to certain relations with the University colleges and the day training colleges. The late Commission recommended a single central authority which should survey that field as a whole. [''Hear, hear!"] Its business was to strictly limited—not interfering with a free and spontaneous variety—only seeking to bring about harmony and co-operation among the local agencies. This central authority was to consist of

  1055
  two elements—an administrative department and an independent professional body. The administrative department was to be a distinct branch of the Education Office. The professional body was to be an educational council of not more than 12—one-third to be appointed by the Crown, one-third by the Universities, and one-third to be co-opted, or, when a register of teachers should have been formed, to be nominated by the registered teachers. This council should be available to advise the Minister of Education on certain judicial questions, such as appeals, and on certain professional questions, such as regulations for examinations. Acting alone, the council should form and keep a register of teachers, and decide what schools were non-local. Now, the need for such a central authority was all the greater since, under the plan of this Bill for the local authorities, there was less security than there would have been under the plan of the Commission for the presence on local bodies of persons specially conversant with secondary education. With the present Bill before the House, then, what could be done? The Committee of the Privy Council could, of course, establish in the Education Department a branch specially devoted to secondary education. They could also transfer to that Department the educational functions of the Department for Science and Art. Those were purely administrative matters. But an Act of Parliament was required to transfer to the Education Department those powers of the Charity Commission which concerned educational endowments. The Vice President told them that in a Bill so complicated as this he rather shrank from taking up that matter. One could easily understand that; still, it seemed worthy of further consideration. If it could be done by a new or amended clause in the Bill, it would mark a long step forward in delivering secondary education from that conflict of controlling agencies under which it now labours. ["Hear, hear!"] Then, in order to complete the central authority for secondary education, nothing would be lacking but the educational council, and to create such a council by a clause in this Bill would be all the easier, since, in another Bill before the House—the Teachers' Registration Bill—it is already
  1056
  proposed to constitute a council, very much on the Commissioners' lines, though larger, to form and keep the register. If this Bill gave to such a council the function of advising the Minister and of deciding what schools were non-local, those two functions could be discharged by the same body which was to form and keep the register. He ventured to press this matter of the central authority on the attention of the Government, for he could assure them it was one on which there was practical unanimity among people interested in secondary education. [Cheers.] The other day they had a conference at Cambridge on secondary education, attended by some 200 delegates from bodies of all kinds directly or indirectly connected with education, and a resolution in favour of such central authority, such as he had sketched, was carried without one dissentient voice. If this matter was neglected it would be a grave omission; if it was looked to, it would enormously increase the effective value of the Bill. ["Hear, hear!"] He would sum up in the fewest words the merits which, from his point of view, the Bill possessed. It applied the principle of devolution in a sound way, without weakening the central control. It did not tend, directly or otherwise, to injure the School Boards where they possessed, or could expect, a true vitality. ["Hear, hear!"] It affirmed the principle—recognised in the Act of 1870 as originally passed, and also by subsequent legislation—that parents had an indefeasible natural right to have their children taught that definite form of faith which they approve. [Cheers.] It gave a small measure of sorely-needed aid to that class of elementary schools, provided largely at private cost, which educated four-sevenths of the children of this country. In doing this it did not more, but far less, than might justly be claimed by ratepayers who subscribed to those schools, for such ratepayers were paying a Board School rate from which they could not conscientiously derive benefit. ["Hear, hear!"] The Bill tended so far to avert the extinction of the Voluntary Schools—an event which would throw upon the ratepayers a fresh capital expenditure of at least £28,000,000, and a fresh annual expenditure which could not be put at less than £1,500,000 to £2,000,000.

  1057
  The Bill was also fraught with good to secondary education; it promised to improve the organisation; to complete the supply where it was defective; to keep schools of different types within their proper spheres; and to delimit the province of secondary education from that of primary. Incidentally, the Bill did these among other things—it raised the school age from 11 to 12, and it removed from destitute children the stigma of the workhouse and the prison, placing these children of the State under the care of an educational authority. [Cheers.] Those were some of the merits of the Bill. The Bill had also some defects, which he hoped would be amended in Committee. But the merits enormously outweighed the defects. ["Hear, hear!"] He could assure the House that he looked at the Bill not as an advocate for Voluntary Schools, but as a man interested in education. [Cheers.] If he thought that the Bill was going to help the Voluntary Schools at the cost of injury to the education of the country he should not have a moment's hesitation in going into the Lobby against it. It was because he believed that the Bill was really beneficial and progressive that he should vote for the Second Reading. [Cheers.] There were many hon. Gentlemen opposite, he was sure, who had a sincere desire to consider this Measure on grounds raised above those of Party or sect—an obligation which was imperatively laid on all of them. He earnestly appealed to them to hold the balance with an even hand. He appealed to them, seriously and confidently, to ask themselves whether it could be denied that, when this Bill was so weighed, its faults were far lighter in the scale, and far more accidental in their nature, than those substantial, permanent, and far-reaching advantages which the Bill undoubtedly secured. [Cheers.]
  MR. R. B. HALDANEsaid, the House had listened that afternoon to two speeches from the Benches behind the Government. Both of them were made by remarkable men; both of them were characterised by unusual felicity of diction and both were in defence of the Bill, though in somewhat different ways. The speech to which they had just listened was that of an hon. Member who represented a
  1058
  University constituency—the very hotbed of the old Toryism—but the speech was one which might, in the language of the hon. and learned Member for Warwick, have been the speech of an old Liberal. It was a speech in defence of the Bill, but of a most Liberal kind. It abounded in criticism. It contained things which were astonishing to listen to as coming from a supporter of the Measure. First of all the hon. Member put in a plea for School Boards; then he proposed to introduce into the governing bodies of the Voluntary Schools a representative, though not a directly representative element, and he wound up his speech by a scathing criticism of the secondary education provisions of the Bill by reason of the absence of a central and controlling authority. The other speech, with which he would contrast that just delivered, was that of the hon. and learned Member for Plymouth. The hon. and learned Member represented a more Democratic constituency, but what was his line of defence? He said that he objected to the School Board system in toto, because in that system there were facilities for what he called spurious religious teaching, teaching by men who might be unbelieving teachers. One asked what the hon. and learned Member meant? Was that kind of high Toryism to be preached at this time of day? One would like to know how far the hon. Member would follow up his doctrine. Were they to go to a system of tests for School Board teaching; were they to be chosen for their religious qualifications in the first place and in the second place because of their learning and ability? And was the principle to which he referred to be applied to Universities, because contamination might come in there just as much as it might in the schools. One wondered whether the hon. and learned Member talked language of that kind at the late election in Plymouth. His majority was not a very large one, and he ventured to think that if that sort of language had been talked more at the late election, if they had known that they were the real issues involved in this Bill, the attitude of the House towards it would have been somewhat different. The Debate had now run into its fourth day, and they were in a

  1059
  position to assume pretty well the currents and tendencies of opinion which were to determine the fate of the Bill. It seemed to him there were three attitudes, and three attitudes of a very remarkable kind. First of all, there was the attitude of the Party on that side of the House. The Radical Party found itself in the position of defending existing institutions against revolutionary attack for the first time, so far as he was aware, in its life. It was endeavouring to retard an attack made, not from outside, but from within the fortress. The defenders of the garrison were admitted by the constituencies in the belief that they were to keep things as they were and to go on in the way of reasonable and moderate reform. The first thing they did, being admitted into the institution which, perhaps, the country valued more than any other—the religious settlement which was made in 1870, the whole system of education which was reared upon that basis—was to propose, not merely to disturb that settlement in one or two particulars, but to undo it down to its foundation; to repeal the controlling authority; to delegate the local control, not to the people in the parish who were directly affected, but to an outside, independent body; and to alter the whole basis of the compromise which was come to for the purpose of averting the keenness of the religious controversy of 1870. They on that side of the House were in an attitude of resistance. On the other side of the House there were two distinct currents of opinion. There was for instance, the noble Lord the Member for Chichester, the hon. and learned Member for Plymouth, and the noble Lord the Member for Rochester. They defended the Bill upon grounds which went far beyond anything in the Bill, and at the same time took occasion to pronounce the Bill wholly unsatisfactory from their point of view. Then there was the attitude of the Government as repeated by the Vice President of the Council, who had defended the Bill simply on the ground of expediency, and put forward its provisions or what he was pleased to call a remedy for an existing condition of things which required amendment. How were they to balance their minds in considering these attitudes? He would at once respond
  1060
  to the appeal of the hon. Member who had just spoken. He would admit that there were good things, very excellent things, in the Bill. There was the control of the Poor Law and Industrial Schools, though one would have been glad if in that control, in the case of girls who attended those schools, they could have had a body on which there could have been representation for women; the provisions for higher education, bad as they might be in the absence of a central authority, and the raising of the age. All these were things which were good in their kind, but one had to weigh the good against the evil. What was the evil which they had to consider? The treatment of the Education Department under the Bill was very remarkable. If he were asked the true meaning of it, he should call it the "De-Aclandising" of the Department. It was an attempt to make impossible that vigorous and spirited policy which had been infused into the department under the late Government. Of course such a policy could not be pursued without friction; but there was the testimony of the Archbishop's Committee that the requirements of the Department had been reasonable, and such as the Schools ought to conform to. At the present time the Education Department was in a position to command the best talent of the country. It had an enormous sphere of influence; and its machinery for the spread of secondary and technical education was moving rapidly. But with an Education Department shorn of three-fourths of the people who were on its staff, and with a sphere so greatly limited, it would not attract men of the same eminence. Men like the late Matthew Arnold would not consent to be inspectors of schools to a County Council. Not only was the efficiency of the Department being crippled, but large sums of public money, at present administered by a Department of the State, presided over by a Minister of the Crown, were to be handed over to bodies not directly responsible to Parliament. In future Parliament would have no direct control over Education, and those grievances involving questions of principle, which arose from time to time, would no longer be discussed by Parliament. Then as to the School Boards. He agreed with what the hon. Member for West Ham had said, that

  1061
  in future no self-respecting man would remain on the School Board. The policy of the Bill was to make the School Board a less important body, and to alter its whole relation to the ratepayers. The reason no doubt was that, in the minds of the real promoters of the Bill—the clergy of the Church of England—the School Board meant Nonconformity. Delegation was a good thing in the right place; but there was bad delegation; and why should the County Councils have been chosen as the bodies to which the elementary education of the county was to be delegated? Why not the Parish Councils, which were directly elected by the localities? In Scotland there was a universal system of School Boards, which gave more and more satisfaction every year. And why? Because power and responsibility had been placed on the same shoulders. Did hon. Gentlemen opposite, who undoubtedly represented a large majority of the electors, really think that the country gave them a mandate for this Bill at the General Election? The principles of the Home Rule Bill were before the country for six years, and yet hon. Members opposite complained that the details within those principles had not been sufficiently brought forward. If hon. Members made that objection in respect of the Home Rule Bill, why was it not good in respect of this Education Bill? Was it not unjust to spring upon the country a Bill which went far beyond what was discussed on any platform last July? At that time every speech of the Duke of Devonshire asserted the principle of the maintenance of School Boards. He said that under no circumstance would he be a party to the destruction of the School Board system, and that any alteration must be on the basis of preserving the general principle of the Act of 1870. Instead of accompanying the additional support to the Voluntary Schools by the infusion of a popular element into the management, the proposals of the Government reopened old differences, and let loose a flood of controversy and bitterness. In a recent speech at Bristol the First Lord of the Treasury had referred to Scotland as affording an example of the way in which the religious difficulty might be treated. But Clause 27 had no analogue In the Scotch Act of 1872. That Act
  1062
  left to the School Boards complete control of the religious teaching. The present Bill proposed to override the School Boards by enabling a minority of the parents to compel the Boards to give religious teaching whether they liked it or not. In Scotland there were no creed controversies between the three Presbyterian Churches. Their differences were about Church government, and it was possible to give religious instruction in the schools without offence to the consciences of the parents. But there were cases of hardship in Scotland in respect to the Roman Catholic children. He had seen a number of them sitting apart from the rest during the Scripture lesson; and the manager told him that, though by law they were compelled to separate the Roman Catholic children, they kept them in the same room in the hope that some ray of truth might reach their souls. So that the Scotch system was by no means perfect. The First Lord of the Treasury was a distinguished Scotchman, but he brought to the consideration of Scotch matters less of the enthusiasm with which he informed his mind on other subjects. The right hon. Gentleman was not keen in his support of the spirit of Scotch institutions. The right hon. Gentleman as a distinguished Scotchman was imbued more with the spirit of David Hume than with the spirit of John Knox. [Laughter.] But he could not help thinking that, in connection with this Bill, the arguments derived from the Scotch educational system were misleading. He believed that if the Government proposed, so far as Scotland was concerned, to go back on the system of 1870, and introduced instead the system of this Bill, they would be met by a storm of popular indignation which would make it impossible for them to proceed. They proposed different treatment for different kinds of schools in the interest of a particular religious denomination. It was quite true that to-day religious controversy was not so strenuous as it once was, say in the days of Knox. But there was evidence, at any rate, that religious storms were not altogether passed; signs, indeed, that the torrent of religious passion, which made life so intolerable in the old days, might be brought back again. There was the case of Canada. In Manitoba there had been

  1063
  established a system under which there was no support given from the rates for denominational schools. There was free education, but, so far as the schools were concerned, there were no contributions by the State to any form of religious teaching. But there was a clause in the British North America Act which gave to Roman Catholics the right of appeal against the provision of any Act which disturbed any older system. There had been an older Act by which rates had been applied to assist denominational teaching, and the Roman Catholics successfully appealed against the more recent Act, which, as they said, deprived them of this ancient privilege. The Government of Canada felt themselves bound to act on the decision of the Privy Council, which confirmed the right claimed by the Roman Catholics; and they endeavoured to bring matters back to the old condition of things, by which taxes were to be used in a modified form for the use of secular schools. Canada was, in consequence, convulsed by a tumult such as it had not known for years. The same thing might occur here, and would occur here, if the Government persisted in this Bill. He would like to know how far the Conservative Party supported the sentiments of the hon. Member for Plymouth, who had spoken that evening. He would like to know whether the First Lord of the Treasury took the view that the religious teaching in the Board Schools was ''a spurious religious teaching," and whether the right hon. Gentleman was in favour of tests for teachers in those schools. He would like to know how far the general body of the Conservative Party held those doctrines, because, if they were well brought out before the country at the time of a General Election, they would arouse—no matter what other issues there might be—the keenest and strongest feelings, which would show that the vast majority of the people adhered, at least in those matters, to the older principles of the Liberal flag. The Government had got a large majority. But why had they got it? Because the country had pronounced against the late Government, and in favour of a change to another political Party. It was intended that the new Government should make a steady progress with social reforms which all
  1064
  Parties agreed should be carried to some extent further. But the Government was not returned because the country wished them to undo all things which had already been ccomplished. Yet, to undo, in the interest of sections, was the principle of all the legislation introduced by the Government since the opening of the Session. That principle pervaded the London Water Bill, the Cattle Bill, and the Agricultural Rating Bill. It was legislation, not in the interests of the great mass of the people, but legislation primarily inspired by the demands made upon them by sections. He knew that there were many high-minded men in the Conservative Party who believed that the question of religious teaching in schools outweighed everything else in the political horizon. But, on the other hand, they should not allow the intensity of their convictions to mislead them as to the wishes of their constituencies; and he was convinced that the mandate which returned the Conservative Party to power with a majority of 150, was a mandate that did not permit them to give, as he feared they would, their assent to the Second reading of this Bill.
  On the return of Mr. SPEAKER, after the usual interval,
  MR. A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENsaid, that what had struck him most in the Debate had been the extraordinary character of the opposition. Each speaker who had risen on the other side of the House seemed to try to discard something which he had always understood to be a principle of the Liberal Party. The late Home Secretary tried at great length to show what a bad thing decentralisation was, and he had to invent a new definition of decentralisation to make it applicable to the present Bill. If there was one thing to which decentralisation was eminently applicable it was education. He could imagine nothing worse than trying to apply some sort of education by an absolutely rigid procrustean rule to all parts of the country. The last speaker had absolutely contradicted the whole spirit of the speech of the late Home Secretary, because, so far from objecting to decentralisation, he proposed that instead of the County Council they should

  1065
  take, for this purpose, the Parish Council. He confessed he never heard a more ridiculous suggestion. The right hon. Gentleman who introduced the Bill spoke of the Committees of the County Council as the paramount education authority in the county, and it was objected to that by the late Home Secretary, that he would be setting up something like 160 paramount education authorities in the country. But what would be the result if they substituted the Parish Council? They would be setting up something like 12,000 paramount educational committees. The proposal seemed to him as extravagant as anything he had ever heard. The right hon. Member for Sheffield had indicated his fear that the School Boards would be utterly destroyed by the provisions of this Measure. For his part, he saw nothing in the Bill to destroy School Boards. It was true a limit was placed upon their rating power. He asked why not? Why should the Birmingham Town Council not be allowed to say whether in their opinion the School Board was or was not spending too much money? Why was there this extraordinary fear of the Town and County Councils on the part of hon. Members opposite? They were popular bodies elected by the people, and it was perfectly reasonable they should have the power of saying when a School Board was spending too much. When the right hon. Member for Sheffield spoke of the School Boards and Board Schools, and his fear of their extermination, he would ask had hon. Members on the Government side no right to have fears for the Voluntary Schools? He admitted the excellence of many of the Board Schools, but he must point out that the Voluntary Schools had been in existence for years before the School Board system was started, and whereas he saw nothing in the Bill to destroy the Board Schools, he said that unless this Bill or something like it was passed, and passed quickly, the Voluntary Schools would be destroyed. They were now being destroyed by the unequal competition to which they were subjected, and when the right hon. Gentleman asked what was the necessity for the Bill, he had to reply that something must be done if Voluntary Schools were to be preserved, to get rid of that absolutely
  1066
  ruinous competition. It was said that the Bill gave a grant to Voluntary Schools, while it gave no grant—or a very small grant—to Board Schools, and that this was not only unfair but unequal treatment. He said that, so far from its being unequal treatment, it was an attempt at equality. The proper way to regard this was not as a grant to Voluntary Schools, but as a payment to them for the immense amount of additional expense to which they had been put by the ever-increasing demands of the Education Department. It now cost the Voluntary Schools £1 per head to educate children more than it did in 1870, and the additional grant was only 4s. That was a very small pittance, and much less than the Voluntary Schools were entitled to for the work they were undertaking at the bidding of the State. Hon. Members opposite were constantly arguing the question as if they thought that Members on the Government side of the House were the enemies of secular education. He ventured to say nothing more untrue could be uttered. He recognised as fully as anyone the paramount importance of providing efficient education for all children if they were to compete with foreign nations. The difference between them and hon. Members opposite was not so much that they on the Government side denied the importance of secular education, but that hon. Members opposite denied the importance of religious education. ["No, no!"] He could only refer those who cried "no, no!" to a body which, he supposed, was more or less in line with the opinions of the Party opposite—namely, the London Liberal and Radical Union, which, in 1891 made it part of their programme in the School Board elections that there should be no religious teaching in the schools at all. His own opinion was that, important as secular education was, the most important part of education was religious education. He could conceive nothing more terrible to contemplate than that the children of this country should grow up and be educated without a knowledge of those great truths of religion and morality contained in the Bible, inculcated by definite religious teaching. He had seen the results of purely secular education in other countries. In

  1067
  America they had got what was, perhaps the finest system of secular education in the world, but it was generally an education where religion was neglected altogether. And what was the result? He spoke with hesitation because he did not wish to say a word against the country and against the people, amongst whom he had many friends; but the result was, as every educated and enlightened American would admit, a lower standard of politics and of commercial morality than existed, he thought, in almost every other civilised country. He was recently travelling in America, where he had a conversation with a most enlightened and educated American. They were discussing the wholesale system of corruption which prevailed upon a certain trunk railway, from the President down to the meanest official, and this American used some words which, to his mind, were so important that he wrote them down. He said:—
  "All this sort of thing is the result of our system of education. There is no school-attendance difficulty over here. Every parent is anxious to send his children to school, and the children are anxious to go, knowing that they cannot get on in the world without education. Each one, in fact, wishes to become a little bit cuter than his neighbour. The result is, we are bringing up the sharpest people on earth, and each one learns to play for himself, and himself alone. As to religion or morality, or the good of the people as a whole, they are never taught anything of that kind in the schools, and they know absolutely nothing about it."
  And he concluded:—
  "I think the end will be we shall come to a bad smash commercially and politically."
  These were the opinions of an educated American on their system of education. They had in America, he repeated, probably the best system of secular education known in any part of the world; but one which absolutely neglected those religious and moral characteristics, with the result he had indicated, and disastrous consequences would ensue here if they were to adopt any similar system of education. The question he desired to ask was—Were they not in this country travelling to some extent along the same road which was being travelled in America and other countries, in the direction of making their education purely secular? Under the present system it was left to a chance majority of the
  1068
  School Board to decide whether there should be religious teaching or not, and if they decided in the affirmative it was left to the discretion of the teacher to teach what sort of religion he liked. Could that be considered a satisfactory system? It imposed no test upon the teacher for the purpose of finding out whether he was competent to teach the Christian religion. [Mr. DAVITT: "What Christian religion?''] That was, no doubt, a very difficult question, and it was the question which the teacher ought to be asked. Could a system be satisfactory under which no inquiry was made as to the religious belief of a teacher? At present a teacher might be a Jew, Turk, or heretic, and yet children were, forsooth, to be taught Christianity from him. [Several HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] What safeguard was there? [An HON. MEMBER: "There is the certificate of character."] At any rate it was left to the School Boards to say whether any religious teaching should be given in their schools, and the result was often that no such teaching was given. In Wales there were 347 School Board districts. Of these 21 had no schools. Of the remaining 326, 34 had an efficient syllabus of Bible instruction; 62 sanctioned the reading of the Bible and some instruction thereon; 113 sanctioned the reading of the Bible, but had no instruction thereon; 62 did not even sanction the reading of the Bible, and 50 had no religious observance of any kind. Hon. Members opposite said that they did not wish to drive the Bible out of our schools. He asked how there could be a guarantee under the present system that the Bible would not be driven out of our schools? He supported the 27th Clause of the Bill, believing it to be the best in the Measure. It would be an efficient guarantee that in every school the religion which the parents approved would be taught. It was a natural sequence to the Conscience Clause, but it was a splendid advance upon that clause. The Conscience Clause said that no child should be taught religion if the parents did not wish it; the 27th Clause secured that every child should be taught religion if the parent desired it. The parent and child had as much right to protection against a School Board, which might be a godless body, as they had

  1069
  against a Church of England clergyman, who might be over-zealous in his teaching. It would be an advantage to Nonconformists in a district where there was only a Church School, to be empowered to demand that their children, instead of having no religious instruction or Church instruction, should have that form of instruction which they, the parents, approved. The working classes specially ought to approve this clause. The rich man could send his child to a Church of England School, a Wesleyan School, a Congregationalist School, or to any school which he chose to select, but a poor man was compelled to send his child to the nearest village school, which might be a Church of England School, a Roman Catholic School, a Wesleyan School, or a Board School where no religion whatever was taught. But this clause would place the poor man in this matter on precisely the same footing as the rich man. He supported the Bill not only on account of the 27th Clause, but on account of the general support which it gave to Voluntary Schools. These schools had afforded hitherto the only effective guarantee for religious instruction in this country, and they had been subjected to ruinous competition, and unless something was done to assist them they must disappear, and a universal system of Board Schools must take their place. The 4s. grant was not as large a grant as he would like to see provided, and he should not think that it would protect the Voluntary Schools from the ''intolerable strain" imposed by the competition of the Board Schools. He suggested that the present standard of efficiency in all schools should be stereotyped, except where the State was willing to pay extra for any additional demands that were made by the authorities. When further efficiency was demanded by the Education Department, as was constantly the case now, the Department should supply the funds necessary to defray the cost. Voluntary Schools were to be allowed to federate, and he was of opinion that either the 4s. grant should not be paid unless schools federated, or that there should be a larger grant for schools that did federate. In that way they would compel federation, and thus make the richer schools contribute to the expenditure of the poorer. The result would be
  1070
  that the 4s. grant would go further. The new limit which it was proposed to introduce, and which had been described as imposing a degradation on School Boards, was to his mind not nearly rigid enough. It would, he believed, be frequently overstepped by permission of the Town Council. If the School Board for Birmingham, for example, were to ask to be allowed to exceed, the Town Council would probably say: "We suppose it is necessary." and grant the request. The Bill was, in principle, a thoroughly good Bill. He approved without reservation the proposals for decentralisation, for the orgnanisation of secondary education, for the extension of age from 11 to 12, for the abolition of the 17s. 6d. limit, and for relieving Voluntary Schools from the liability to contribute to the rates. There was only one thing in the Bill to which he took objection, and that was the proposal for deducting from the special grant the amount of any endowments that a school might have. He could not understand why such a proposal as that was made. If a man subscribed £20 a year to a school, or capitalised the money and gave £500 at once, it was equally a gift. It seemed to him that there was no more reason for deducting the proceeds of endowments than there was for deducting voluntary subscriptions made every year. Generally speaking, he believed the Bill was a good one, and had been, brought in, firstly, to improve the educational system, and, secondly, to do justice to Voluntary Schools. Because he looked upon it as a Bill that would mark a great step forward and would be for the benefit of all classes in the country, while reserving his right to criticise some of its details in Committee, he should give it his most strenuous support and should hope soon to see it carried into law.
  MR. J. J. CLANCYdesired, as an Irish Catholic, to state the course his Party intended to take with regard to the Bill. So far as he could recollect, he had never before taken part in the discussion of an English Measure, and he regretted the necessity for doing so on this occasion, but there was a special reason for it. The policy of Parliament had driven from Ireland into England a large Irish Catholic population, and that population was to a large extent a poor one, and practically unrepresented in

  1071
  the House. He ventured, therefore, as an Irish Catholic, to say that his Party most cordially supported the Second Reading of the Bill, for the reason that, to some extent, it would remove the gross inequalities between Voluntary and Board Schools. He was astonished at the arguments by which the demands for further assistance for Voluntary Schools were met by the advocates of the secular system. Could anybody deny the right of the Christian parent to have his child educated in the definite truth of the Christian faith? It was no use to admit that right in the abstract without giving the means of enjoying it. The fact was that every Catholic looked upon the unsectarian system as a Godless system. That caused them to regard it with distrust, a distrust which had been only too well founded by the experience of Godless education in other countries. The advocates of the un-sectarian system objected to the teaching of definite Christian truths in the public schools; but that system was itself a religion. It taught the religion of in-differentism. ["No, no!"] He might be wrong, but that was the view of the Catholics. He would like to say a word on the principal defect in the Bill as he regarded it. He referred to the fact that unequal treatment was meted out, even by this Bill, to the Voluntary Schools. Board Schools had sites provided for them at the public expense, but no sites were provided for the Voluntary Schools. Buildings were provided for the advocates of the secular system, but no buildings were provided for those who favoured denominational education. Administration in Board Schools was provided for at an excessive public cost; but there was nothing of the kind in the case of Voluntary Schools; and when they came to the only matter in connection with which public money was allowed to be given, namely maintenance, even when the 4s. grant was given to the Voluntary Schools in addition to what they were getting, there would still be a difference between Voluntary and Board Schools to the advantage of the latter of 9s. a child. That was to his mind a gross inequality, and it was all the worse because of the fact that, as he judged the matter, the majority of the people of this country used the Voluntary Schools. Certainly, all the Irish Catholics in the
  1072
  country had declared themselves infavour of the Voluntary system. Notwithstanding the advantages the Board Schools had had during the 25 years of their existence, there were 700,000 more children being educated in Voluntary Schools than in the richly endowed Board Schools of England. That seemed to him a conclusive proof that the majority of the people of England detested the Board School system and used the Voluntary Schools and the definite religious teaching to be found in them. It was notorious that the Irish Catholic Schools were the poorest in the whole country. Unfortunately, the Irish who came into this country were mostly very poor. They came to earn their bread, and often even to earn the rents of their relatives in Ireland, and it was an astonishing thing that these people should, nevertheless, not only not be put on an equality with other people, but should be compelled to pay towards the maintenance of schools to which they could not send their children. He thought that was a circumstance that ought to appeal to the Liberal Party. Knowing as he did the feelings of Irish Roman Catholics in England on the subject of education, he felt bound to vote for the Second Reading of this Bill, because it would largely assist the Irish Roman Catholic Schools which were so very poor. It had been contended on the Opposition side of the House that there ought not to be an equality between the Board Schools and the Voluntary Schools, but in his opinion there ought to be absolute equality between them. ["Hear, hear!"] That House had passed a law making it compulsory upon every child to attend school, and it would be most unjust to force them to attend schools which their parents objected to. In these circumstances he thought it right that Voluntary Schools should receive State aid, and therefore he and the Party with which he was connected intended to give their hearty support to the Second Reading of the Bill, in the hope that they would be able to amend it in Committee in the direction which he had indicated.
  SIR G. OSBORNE MORGANsaid, that an hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Griffith-Boscawen) had brought the charge against the Board Schools in Wales that the Bible

  1073
  was not taught in some of them. That charge was perfectly true, but the reason that the Bible was not taught in those schools was because it was thoroughly taught in their admirable Sunday Schools—because it entered into the daily life of the Welsh people and coloured their language and literature to an extent that the people of England could scarcely believe. Welsh children of 14 or 15 years of age possessed an amount of scriptural knowledge that nine out of every ten men who had passed the theological schools at Oxford did not possess, and it was a singular fact that at a recent examination seven out of eight children who had gained prizes in Wales for scriptural knowledge had been educated in what were called Godless schools. He should like to ask hon. Members opposite whether there was any part of England in which crime was so rare as it was in Wales? The hon. and learned Member for Plymouth had said that 1870 was the high water mark of Radicalism, and that then the School Boards had been forced upon the Church party.
  SIR E. CLARKE: What I said was that the Cowper-Temple Clause had been forced upon the Church Party by a Radical majority.
  SIR G. OSBORNE MORGANsaid he accepted the hon. and learned Gentleman's correction of his statement. He himself ought to know something about what happened in 1870, because he was one of the few hon. Gentlemen now in the House who had taken an active part in passing that Bill. There was in 1870 a large Party in the House, and a still larger Party in the country, who thought that the grant to denominational schools given by an Act was too great a concession to the Church Party and to Voluntary Schools. At the head of that Party in those days was the right hon. Gentleman the Colonial Secretary, and it might be interesting to some Members of the House to know that the foundations of the brilliant oratorical and Parliamentary reputation of the right hon. Gentleman were laid in those days. Speaking on the 23rd January 1872, about a year after the Act of 1870 was passed, the right hon. Gentleman said:—
  "For years we Nonconformists have served the Liberal Party; we have been hewers of wood
  1074
  and drawers of water; we have been patient under somewhat contemptuous toleration very difficult to bear; we have accepted, meanwhile, every act of justice as a favour, and every instalment of rights as a singular and almost unmerited grace. … I suppose, Sir, that it is not consistent with the pacific habits of Nonconformists to make a demonstration upon Mr. Forster's windows, or to pull down any park railings, although we have been told that both these exhibitions have been very marvellous stimulants to modern statesmanship. But we are met here to advocate no intemperance of word or action. …. The so-called National Church is fast becoming one vast political organisation for maintaining the supremacy of a sect. The so-called national schools, built in part with our money, mainly supported with the funds derived from the national purse, are everywhere centres for the support of a power which has hitherto been prominent in its resistance to popular reform. We cannot win by these means, nor with such allies, but we may sink our individual differences, we may unite as one man to remove the last vestige of ecclesiastical supremacy."
  And now the right hon. Gentleman told one of his constituents that he had just discovered that, primâ facie, there was a great deal to be said in favour of placing Board and Voluntary Schools upon the same footing! The Act of 1870 established two principles. In the first place, it gave power to the parishioners to establish an educational system of their own—that was, it gave us education of the people by the people; and secondly, by the Cowper Temple Clause, it guarded the system when established from any distinctive theological teaching. If this Bill were passed both of those principles would be doomed. It was for this reason that he was bound to part company with the hon. and learned Member for Plymouth. Wales was a land of Board Schools, they existed in that country in a larger proportion than elsewhere. The Welsh were proud of those schools, which they believed had done an immense amount of good to the people. He would refer to the opinion of a most able and experienced gentleman, Mr. Williams, the Inspector of Wales and Monmouthshire, who said:—
  "Nearly all the towns and populous places are under School Boards, and the schools under the larger Boards, and some of the Voluntary Schools, are well staffed, and well equipped with apparatus, and in these a high level is generally attained; and in many comparatively small schools—mostly under School Boards, which are fairly staffed—highly satisfactory results are obtained. But in a considerable number of

  1075
  schools—mostly Voluntary—in which the staff is weak, the results are often poor or indifferent."
  As to religious instruction, he should have thought the religious instruction given in the Board Schools was exactly suited to the ages and capacities of scholars attending elementary schools. It was simple, direct, and intelligible. It had been specially approved on the ground that it was intelligible by many men of light and learning in the Church, such as the Bishop of Durham and Archdeacon Sinclair. Did we really want to puzzle the minds of children of tender ages with the mysteries of the Athanasian Creed? A great deal of what was called religious instruction was nothing more than unintelligible jargon; and in proof of this he repeated an answer that had been given at an examination in reply to the question, "What is meant by a sacrament?'' He asked what was the use to children of instruction of this sort? Judged by a test of this kind, and it was very generally applicable, denominational religion, which was so strictly contended for on the other side, was the parrot like repetition of phrases which conveyed no intelligible idea comprehensible by the scholar who repeated them. Speaking from personal knowledge, he could affirm that the system of religious instruction pursued in Board Schools was answering admirably. As to Board Schools being ''godless schools," if a tree was known by its fruit, the results in Wales were satisfactory, when it took three counties to produce a lad prisoner at the Assizes. Why should the House tamper with a system which had done more for education than than all other Acts of Parliament put together? It was said the Bill did not directly assail the Board School system; but you could assail a system by undermining it, and this Bill would sap the foundation of School Boards, it would cut their very roots. There would be great difficulty in the way of forming new School Boards, and existing School Boards might be dissolved by a bare majority, a packed majority. Scattered up and down the Bill there were various provisions inimical to School Boards, such as the limitation of the rate, and exclusion from the special aid grant. Was Clause 4 fair as between the two classes of schools? From the 4s. grant
  1076
  they were told that £489,000 would go to Voluntary Schools, and only about £73,000 to Board Schools. How would this affect Board Schools in Wales, where, on the whole, the Bill was more favourable to Board Schools than it was in England, because a larger proportion of the schools in Wales came under the 97th Clause of the Act of 1870? In Denbighshire there were 73 Church Schools, educating 8,676 scholars, and 42 Board Schools, educating 7,133 scholars. The Church Schools would get £1,737, or 4s. per child, and the Board Schools would get £155, or about 1¾d. per child. In Carmarthenshire, there were 72 Church Schools, educating about 7,000 scholars, and 91 Board Schools, educating about 12,000 scholars. The Church Schools would get £1,400, or 4s. per child; the Board Shools would get £10 odd, or less than a farthing a child. Yet hon. Gentlemen opposite were not satisfied. Like Oliver Twist, they asked for "more." [Ministerial cheers.] Probably they would get more, for the Government owed a heavy debt to the Church party for services rendered at the last Election. He did not object to them paying their debt, but he did object to them paying it out of other people's pockets. He ventured to say that the result of that Bill would be to ring the knell of Board Schools. Long before that Bill was produced he had always said that the very worst body they could in trust education to were the County Councils. (1) They were elected for entirely different purposes. (2) They had neither time or machinery for the purpose. (3) They were not conversant with the locality; and he might instance his own constituency, which was 50 miles long, and of which one half was Welsh and the other half English. What could a man elected from one end know of the want of a school at the other end. (4) They were not responsible to the ratepayers. (5) They were not even a popularly elected body. (6) As the Northampton County Council pointed out, the Bill would introduce into the election of County Councillors an element of sectarian bitterness hitherto unknown. Talk of "Political Nonconformists!" Why during the last Election the whole of North Wales was seething with poli

  1077
  tical churchmanship. ["Hear, hear!"] This new Conscience Clause was about the worst coin ever passed across the Parliamentary counter to the Liberal Party, and it was adding insult to injury to call the 27th Clause a protection for Nonconformists. There was not a single Nonconformist who had ever asked for it; it was a clause for the benefit of the Church of England entirely. Were they to suppose that in a small village hamlet in Berkshire or Hampshire it would be found possible for a few labourers at 10s. a week, or a few struggling tradesmen to demand the right to have their children taught as they wished? He was sure the right hon. Gentleman fresh from the classic groves of Academies had no idea of the storm that this Bill would create in the country. [A laugh.] As far as we could gather, the people were never so unanimous or so enthusiastic as in their repudiation of this Bill. ["Oh!"] They might say on the other side, that they were masters of the situation, that they could pass anything they liked, and closure anything they liked. If they asked for a 10s. grant instead of 4s. they would be able to pass it. They had let slip the dogs of war, and it would be more than they could to muzzle them. Did they really believe that when the day of reaction came, as come it would, that the Nonconformists would sit down patiently under this Bill? If they did they were greatly mistaken. The Bill went too far. It was both reactionary and revolutionary. It would create chaos and confusion in their educational system, and dislocate their educational machinery, but, worst of all, it would stir up the slumbering embers of religious strife in every rural parish. They should therefore resist the Bill at every stage.
  MR. EDWARD HULSEsaid, he had no hesitation in offering the Bill on the whole his unqualified support. There were no doubt certain details which he hoped the Government would be prepared to alter, and certain amendments which, if accepted, would make the Bill work more smoothly in the country.
  1078
  They must all welcome the fact that local needs and aspirations would be duly considered, and that the form of education most suitable to the locality would in future be applied. He represented a city which had a School Board but no Board Schools, and he could not but approve the decentralisation proposed in that Measure. In the case of Salisbury he hoped the Educational Committee would be elected by the Town Council. There were two safeguards that were necessary—(1) the Education Department should have power of control, and there should be an appeal from the Voluntary and Board Schools against any seeming injustice on the part of the local educational authorities; and (2) that every such local educational authority should include a certain number, at least one half, of nominated members who were experts in education, and in order to secure the rights of the minority he would like to see introduced some system of proportional representation. In his opinion it was absolutely necessary that the Education Department should draw up special rules applicable to the non-elective or selective members of the educational authority. In the case of Salisbury School Board one member only attended the meeting of the Board once, and another member did not attend at all, and yet these two gentlemen went to the Wiltshire County Council and objected to a grant being given to a school built by the Bishop of Salisbury on the ground that the establishment was of a sectarian character. On the representation of the two gentlemen the Technical Education Committee of the Council refused to give a grant; and it was only after a close division in the County Council that justice to the promoters of an excellent educational institution was secured. He felt that in many counties, notably in Wales, the educational authority would be found inimical to Voluntary Schools, and that unless the grants-in-aid were specifically ear-marked, and there was some system of appeal to the Education Department,

  1079
  grants-in-aid would be used by hostile County Councils as a sort of financial thumb-screw against those who had hitherto educated the greater part of the children in rural districts. He thoroughly agreed with the proposal to give greater assistance to the poorer Board Schools under Section 97 of the Act of 1870, and he could not but think that where the 4s. was insufficient to get Voluntary Schools out of their difficulties there should be a special aid grant exceeding that sum based on the system suggested in the Education Act. He looked forward to the time when the Chancellor of the Exchequer would be in a position to provide, say, another £600,000 for educational purposes, and that then possibly the Vice President would be able to complete his educational scheme. Whatever hon. Members opposite might say, he was quite certain the Government had the country with them in regard to the possible limitation of School Board expenditure. The heavy expenditure in which many country districts were involved by having School Boards thrust upon them, was directly alien to the true interest of education. He thought it was necessary there should be a clearer definition of elementary education than any Act of Parliament now gives us, because some School Boards were usurping rights with regard to secondary education which had not been assigned to them by the State. He was glad, therefore, we now had a prospect of creating an authority on secondary education, and it would be a good thing, too, if a clause were inserted in the Bill preventing children being kept at elementary schools after 14, because the authorities of secondary education could, and would, provide the necessary means, by scholarships or exhibitions, by which children who had arrived at the age of 14, and had passed the sixth and seventh standards, could be drafted into higher-grade schools. He would like to say one word as to the provision by
  1080
  which the educational authority might make grants to training colleges. It had been said that the main object of the Bill was not to supplant but to supplement existing efficient educational organisations, and he would like to see it made quite clear that the training colleges would be protected from any interference from the educational authority, and also that the grant to those institutions should be an Imperial or a Departmental one, subject, of course, to the Department being satisfied as to the educational facilities afforded. He regarded the Bill as an honest and statesmanlike attempt to advance the cause of education, and he was of opinion that Clause 27, which had met with so much hostile criticism in many parts of the country, and from leading Nonconformists in London, was based upon the real principles of religious liberty and freedom of conscience. He recognised to the full the right of parents to control the education of their children, and felt that that right was properly safeguarded by the Measure. In Salisbury, as well as other towns, where there were no Board Schools, it gave the right to Nonconformist ministers to go to the schools and give religious education to the children of such parents who are members of their body. He was sure that members of the Church of England and Roman Catholics were quite ready and willing to concede that right to the parents of other religious bodies which they claimed for their own Faith and Church. He hoped that on this point the Government would not give way owing to the action of some of the clergy who objected with mistaken zeal to the appearance of Nonconformist teachers in their country schools. The Bill was one which the true friends of education should support, and he hoped that every supporter of the Government who, like himself, was returned pledged to uphold the voluntary system and to secure justice to their schools, would use their utmost endeavours, even to the extent of suspending

  1081
  the 12 o'clock Rule and taking morning sittings, to secure the passage of this Measure into law before the close of the Session.
  SIR JAMES WOODHOUSEsaid, that in venturing to address the House on this Bill, he was sure he should not ask in vain for that indulgence which the House invariably extended to those who addressed it for the first time. But the fact that he had for many years taken a deep and active, and as Chairman of a Governing Body of a large public school as well as a member of other educational institutions, a practical interest both in primary and secondary education, was his excuse, if any excuse were needed, for interposing in this Debate. He cordially appreciated the desire of the right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Council that they should examine this Bill in a calm and philosophic spirit, for he recognised that of all the subjects which were debated in this House there was none more important in its object, none more far-reaching in its results, and none which was more clearly their obvious duty to weigh in all its aspects free from the infusion of religious animosities or partisan prejudices, than that of the primary education of the children of the toiling masses of the nation. It was in this spirit he had approached the consideration of this Bill. He looked at it, not as a Churchman but as an educationist, and he asked himself, "Will this Bill promote or retard national education?'' He submitted that was the test, and the sole test, by which hon. Members ought to determine their approval or disapproval of this Measure. What was the object of this Bill? As announced in the Queen's Speech, it was to be a Measure for the relief of Voluntary Schools. Had that been its only object a very simple Measure would have sufficed, and recognising, as he did, the important work done in the aggregate by Voluntary Schools, subject to provision for representative control and
  1082
  for that statutory equality of treatment foreshadowed by the Duke of Devonshire, he should have been prepared to give it support. Such a Bill, whilst giving relief where relief was most needed, in the better remuneration of Voluntary teachers and in the improvement of the quality of the tuition, would have been of advantage to education, would have left undisturbed our existing system, and would at least have been innocuous in its results. But this Bill had been described as a "revolutionary Bill." Those were not his words; they were the words of one of the most ardent Anglican supporters of the Government, whose name was not unfamiliar in connection with this subject. He meant Mr. Athelstan Riley. Addressing the House of Laymen of the Province of Canterbury, he said:—
  "This was a revolutionary Bill. It took their system of national education, and practically switched the whole system on to a different line."
  He could not use words which more aptly or tersely described the effect of this Bill; and it was because it would have this effect that he felt bound to oppose it. It would be switched on to a line which had been inefficiently engineered and badly constructed, and on which it would come into collision with numerous obstacles to progress, and he feared the result of the impact would be disaster if not ruin to the cause of education. The danger signals had been exhibited from both sides of the House, and he should greatly regret if the Government persisted in ignoring them. They had 25 years' experience of the existing system. It had, on the whole, worked well. At all events the onus was on those who sought to disturb it to establish its failure. As was shown in the very able speech of the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean, it was not an ideal system. It was not a logical system. It was neither national nor denominational. The Act of 1870 was a compromise, but it was a

  1083
  clumsy and unsatisfactory compromise. Parliament, however, had not clear ground to start upon. It was hampered by existing institutions and interests. The result was that it had produced a system which was semi-national and semi-denominational. It was now proposed, in effect, to render denominational what was national, and to maintain what was denominational out of public funds without public control. The facilities and inducements offered by this Bill for the extension of School Boards were subversive of the best interests of education. No one could deny that School Boards, though they had been much maligned, had been useful institutions. Notwithstanding the unfortunate mode of election, notwithstanding all the hostility and prejudice and injustice manifested towards them, they had done a noble work, and had produced most gratifying results. They had given an enlarged and healthy impetus to education. They had stimulated the managers of other schools to greater exertions, and as a result the whole scope of our educational machinery had been broadened and bettered. At whose instance was this upheaval of our system of elementary education to be accomplished? Had it been suggested by any Commission? Was it demanded by any authorities whose chief aim and object were the elevation of elementary education to its loftiest standard? No; it found its parentage in the clamorous petitions of a section—though an influential section—of the clerical party. If he wanted authority for that statement he should find it in the address of the Archbishop of York to the Northern House of Convocation, who said:—
  "The Education Bill was in a very large degree the result of the pressure brought to bear upon the Government from the side of the Church."
  ["Hear, hear!"] Why had the Church made this demand and applied this pressure? Was it from an avowed desire to promote education? Not a bit of it. The demand had been inspired, and the
  1084
  pressure had been applied because of the jealousy and dislike, if not hatred, of the School Boards, and the wish to "capture" them, and because the clerical party desired to obtain the appointment and control of the teachers. The demand had been made, and pressure applied too, because of the incitement and exhortation made to that party by the Prime Minister himself when he told them to make that raid upon the Board Schools a few months ago. That raid upon the Board Schools was very much like the raid made in another part of the world, and both had been actuated by the same motive—the motive of self-interest. [Cheers, and cries of "No!"] The reason that this raid was now made by the Church party through the Government was to serve their Church as a Church. As to the clerical party pressing the Bill forward with a view to obtain the appointment and control of the teachers, he did not evolve these statements out of his own imagination, but he made them on the authority of the prelates of the Church. The Bishop of Salisbury, addressing his brethren, said:—
  "The balance of influence on the side of the Department is intended in future to be rather against the School Board policy than in favour of it."
  And later on, speaking of the Bill, he said:—
  "On the whole, we shall be wise to accept it, because many Voluntary Schools will be relieved by it, and Board Schools and quasi Board Schools will, under it, be less injurious to our interests."
  The Bishop of London said:—
  "What we who have been working on the side of the Church have been perpetually pushing to the forefront is, we must have the appointment of the teachers."
  He maintained, therefore, that the action of the clerical party was prompted on the one hand by dislike of the School Boards, and on the other by the desire to obtain the appointment and control of the teachers. [Cheers.] He believed, on the other hand, that the best educa

  1085
  tional policy lay in a greater development rather than in the curtailment of our School Board system. The right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Council said:—
  "Universal School Boards in our country districts would lead to National degradation."
  He admitted that in rural districts there was ample scope for improvement, but in many of them the education had been cheapened and starved down to the level of the denominational schools. The remedy lay in revising and enlarging the area of election. Let County Councils have powers to prescribe larger and more convenient areas. But that a School Board system, so far from degrading national education, would be the right and true principle on which to extend and develop it, was not a new doctrine, it was the doctrine that was once advocated by Members of Her Majesty's Government. So high and respected an authority as the Duke of Devonshire said in 1876:—
  "There are many of us, and I do not scruple to say, I am one of them, who believe that the principle of School Boards is the true principle in this matter. We believe that being the right and true principle, it will in the end prevail. We believe that when once the time has arrived that Parliament has declared that the education of the country is the business, not, as formerly, of individuals, but of the State itself, sooner or later State education must be in the hands, not of individuals, but the representatives of the people."
  It was said as a reason in favour of this Bill that the School Boards unduly competed with the so-called Voluntary Schools, and that such competition was never contemplated by the Act of 1870. But surely that was a misconception. The Act of 1870 not only contemplated such competition, but distinctly provided for it. So far from not being contemplated, it was provided by the 23rd Section of the Act of 1870 that Voluntary Schools—schools held in trust for education—might be transferred to School Boards, and, under the provisions of the section, no less than 1,297 schools—including 919 Church Schools, 21
  1086
  Wesleyan, and 256 British Schools—were so transferred up to the end of 1894. The main principle of this Bill, they were told, was decentralisation, and they had been challenged with being apostates to a cardinal article of Radical faith, because they opposed what were called the decentralising powers of this Bill. That argument, was, however, founded on a misconception. Decentralisation was not a fetish with the Liberal Party; it was a question of the object in view, and of the duties which had to be performed; and if they found that the object in view would be better attained by maintaining the administration in the hands of the central authority, then the Liberal Party maintained that it was better to keep it so. Education being a national object, it was to the advantage of education to keep it in the hands of the Education Department. That this was to manifest distrust of popularly-elected bodies he denied. He said that the Government themselves and the supporters of the Bill manifested distrust of the very body they proposed to set up. If not, why did they limit the expenditure which that body was to have under its control? He objected to a Committee of Town and County Councils, because at present they, and especially the large borough town councils, had as many duties to perform as they were able to efficiently discharge. The work of School Boards was so exacting in its details, it engrossed so much time, that it was impossible for a man at once to be a diligent town councillor and also to discharge his duties as a member of the Education Committee. The result would be that the work would be done, not by the chosen of the electorate, but by the co-opted members; and the danger of this was that the work would almost inevitably fall into the hands of officials. The proposal would also entail great friction. The authority would have to scrutinise and control the School Board—that was to say, a non-educational body would have to

  1087
  control an educational authority. If members of a Town Council had an improvement scheme in hand which would entail considerable expenditure, their prejudice would naturally be in favour of that which was under their immediate control and which they were anxious personally to put through, and they would not be very likely to view with favour the demands of another body whose expenditure they had power to control. Even now, when they had not this power, friction sometimes arose. In many instances precepts had been objected to and referred back, and would not have been paid had it not been for threat of mandamus. If that were so when the enthusiasm for education was at fever height, how much more would it be the case under the new system. One of the strongest arguments in favour of the Bill used on the other side of the House was that this devolution would lessen the duties of the central department. He ventured to submit that they would be greatly increased, as a result of the friction which would inevitably arise between School Boards and Town Councils, and the appeals that would be necessary from the local authority to the central authority. Then it was degrading to a School Board and to the position of members of a School Board to have one elected authority placed over another co-ordinate elected authority. As the hon. Member for West Ham had said, no man with any self-respect would consent to act on a School Board and to be placed in such a position as he would be placed by this Bill. It would introduce confusion and religious animosity into their municipal elections, and it would be a great disturber of municipal peace. He did not think the right hon. Gentleman had quite appreciated the difference which his proposal raised between County Borough Councils and County Councils. The right hon. Gentleman, in reply to a question, had stated that under the Bill the minutes and proceed
  1088
  ings of County Councils would be subject to confirmation or revision by the Council itself. The right hon. Gentleman, perhaps, might have forgotten that that only applied to County Councils with an administrative area created by the Local Government Act, 1888. It did not apply to County Borough Councils, which were governed by the Municipal Corporations Act; and while in the one case it was permissive, in the other case it was obligatory, that the proceedings should be brought before the whole Council. The result would be that in the case of County Borough Councils the whole of the proceedings of the educational authorities would be subject to revision and confirmation by the full Council. The work might have been altogether done by the co-opted members, and they would not be present in the Council when their work came under consideration, and would have no voice in determining or explaining what had been done. In County Councils proper the proceedings might be reviewed; it was not obligatory. This difference might not be intended by the Bill, but he was quite certain that was the real effect of its provisions. The hon. Member for South Islington had stated, in answering an argument of the late Home Secretary, that the Municipal Corporations Association had passed a resolution in favour of the constitution of an authority like this; but he would point out that not a single Council had had this Bill under consideration at that time, and that not a single Council authorised any such resolution to be passed. The Northampton Council, and, he was informed, the Cheshire Council, after full consideration of the Bill, had come to the conclusion that they ought not to have these functions thrust upon them; and the Committee of the West Riding of Yorkshire Council which had had this matter under consideration, had arrived at the same resolution. These

  1089
  were bodies to whose opinions the right hon. Gentleman ought to give the greatest weight to. He could not conceive how this proposed authority in large rural districts could do the work. He was satisfied that it would be an absolute impossibility for any representative of the wage-earning classes to be on the Committee because they could not possibly travel the great distances and be subjected to the great expense which this would entail. Then, where the educational authority in a county was the School Board for some parts of a district and not for the other portions and was yet responsible for the financial administration of the whole, great practical difficulties would arise, and the more he examined those difficulties the more he was satisfied they had not been fully realised by the authors of the Bill. Clause 27, he was satisfied, opened the door to the most bitter religious and sectarian strife. The Vice President said it was introduced to meet and to settle the religious difficulty which he said was only heard of on the platform and in Parliament, and not in the schools. He ventured to say that the right hon. Gentleman was going to be responsible for introducing it into the schools. This clause was unnecessary, impracticable and unworkable; it would produce conflict and chaos, discord and want of harmony into their system of education. It was said parents had a right to send their children to denomitional schools. In towns it was not needed because they had there denominational schools to which parents could send their children, and in the country most of the schools were denominational. In 99 out of every 100 Board Schools there was good religious teaching, and in this connection he was surprised to hear the hon. and learned Member for Plymouth make the statement he did, viz., that the religious teaching in Board Schools was repugnant to the majority of the nation. The Times on this question would not be deemed a prejudiced authority in favour of the Opposition case. But in reference to the returns furnished to the House of Lords in 1894, The Times wrote:—
  "These returns show not only the possibility but the actuality of much excellent religion instruction in the Board Schools, with the
  1090
  evident desire on the part of those who manage them that the religious teaching should be a reality."
  Further it wrote:—
  "It is clearer that the larger Board Schools especially are by no means indifferent to religious teaching. They confine themselves, of course, to the limits prescribed by the Education Act of 1870, but that within those limits much sound religious teaching can be and is given, is abundantly clear from these returns."
  That the clause would be unworkable, there was the authority of the hon. Member for West Ham for believing, and was there any other hon. Member on the Government side of the House who had the same practical experience of the question? Archdeacon Haigh speaking at a conference the other day, said:—
  "He objected to the whole clause. He thought it was beautiful in theory, but that the working of it would be absolutely impracticable, and would produce a condition of utter and hopeless chaos. …. With the most excellent intentions of producing an element of peace, he felt sure that this clause would be productive of religious discord and grievous harm."
  At the same conference, Canon Frere said that he had been 50 years in a country parish, and agreed with every word that Archdeacon Haigh had spoken. The Bishop of Hereford said:—
  "It is a fundamental mistake to foster in young children the sectarian spirit by splitting them up for the religious instruction of their common school into rival sections instead of teaching them the truths of the Bible all together."
  The fact was, it was not religion the supporters of the Bill wanted to teach in these schools. It was dogmatic theology. Not 10 per cent. of the children remained at school up to 14 years of age. Teaching presupposed that the person who learnt understood what he was taught, and it was ridiculous to suppose that children could understand abstruse collects, creeds, and catechisms; they might learn formularies by rote, but that was not teaching. Religion was not a system of manners, or a mere form of praise or prayer, which evaporated with the repetition of a number of unfelt words. It was heart worship, and its abiding principles were gentleness and love. That could only be instilled at home and not at school, and therefore he

  1091
  objected to this noxious clause. He would not dwell on the clause limiting the expenditure of money, further than to say that it was a very serious thing for the poor man. He hoped the country would not return to the illiberal maxim that because a man was poor he must have a poor education. As knowledge was power and wealth it followed that the poorer a man was the better should be the education he could procure. He believed the Bill to be bad in principle, that it would be pernicious in practice and disastrous in its consequence. In resisting these persistent attempts to prefer the interests of a class to the interests of a nation, their efforts within the walls of that House might be feeble, and their results might be futile, but he was satisfied they would find a responsive echo in the hearts and minds of the great majority of their fellow countrymen.
  MR. ROBERT PURVISsaid, the Bill had been described by hon. Gentlemen opposite as a Church Defence Measure. He contested that description. He represented a constituency which was to a great extent composed of Dissenters, and yet he felt himself justified in supporting the Bill. It had also been condemned as a Measure of decentralisation, there being no local interest in education. But centralisation, in his opinion, tended to starve local interest by leaving it nothing on which to thrive. The pride of doing well in their own districts would evoke in the local committees a keen interest in the advancement of education. The Town Council of the borough which he represented had passed a Resolution declaring that they desired to be raised as a non-county borough to the level of a county borough, so that they might be invested with the educational authority proposed by the Bill. That might be right or wrong, but at any rate there was already an intense interest in educational matters on the part of local authorities. The Bill would also raise the standard of education by improving the teaching staffs in Voluntary Schools. The Board Schools had been able hitherto by the aid of the rates to secure the services of the best teachers. But the Voluntary Schools, penalised as they had been for teaching a form of religion, had no such unlimited aid to fall back upon, and
  1092
  therefore had to content themselves with teachers of perhaps less ability. He hoped that one effect of the Bill would be to place both classes of schools on a more equal footing in regard to teachers. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Fife had said that the Bill would inflame religious controversy by driving the children into separate theological pens. In Peterborough, which contained every variety of Nonconformists, Roman Catholics, and Church people, they had done without Board Schools, and they had not been troubled with inflamed religious controversies. The object of the Bill was levelling up inferior schools whether they were Voluntary or Board Schools, and the principle of the Bill was decentralisation. A centralised authority, in his opinion, might instruct but could not educate. It was not a central office in Whitehall that could disseminate education. Just as the three "R's" were the foundation of all instruction, so religious reverence was the foundation of all education.
  SIR JOHN BAKERsaid, he had had the honour of presiding for 21 years over one of the largest School Boards in Portsmouth, and he had listened to the two speeches made by the Vice President of the Council in regard to this Bill with consternation. The right hon. Gentleman said that he approached the question with philosophical calmness, but it reminded him of the calmness of a surgeon who was about to operate upon a subject. It was apparent that his intention was to disestablish the Education Department, and to disestablish the School Boards. School Boards had never been in competition with the Voluntary Schools, nor were they designed to compete with them. They were provided by the State to supply a deep-seated want, and no stronger illustration of that could be found than that presented by Portsmouth. When the Act of 1870 was established, there were in Portsmouth 4,000 children in the Voluntary Schools. That showed that the School Boards supplied a great demand. Moreover, these School Boards had called into existence a separate and distinct body of men all over the country who had been educated into the position of administrators of our public schools, and their success had given such satisfaction to every class of the community as

  1093
  no other system of public education had afforded. By this Bill the dethronement of the authority of the Education Department was contemplated. He would say with every respect that they had looked to the Vice President of the Council as to a High Priest of education, but he seemed rather to be an executioner. He would show how, in the very Department over which the right hon. Gentleman presided, they had found one of the strongest supports of the various efforts made in regard to the increase and adaptability of the Act to the wants of the community, and they had always found the locality had been a drain rather than a help in order to promote the efficient educational experience and authority which the Department could afford, and if they destroyed that central authority—which was the focus of experience and intelligence in educational matters, and which had the responsibility of coming to a final decision upon questions submitted to it—and preferred to it an inferior authority, they would do the greatest possible harm to the system of national education under the School Boards of this country. Therein was the danger. If they allowed a municipal authority, after 25 years of training by a school authority, to intervene, and control and subject the school authority to its rulings and decisions, they would thereby not only deprive them of what was their due—the opportunity of acting on their experience—but they would deprive such Boards of men who would not fill such a subordinate position. What would they do besides? Hon. Members knew that, unfortunately, in increasing numbers, municipal authorities were elected on political lines. Were these the lines on which an educational authority should be framed, first through a municipal committee, and then through the co-optative members? No; it would deprive them of that independence and indigenous enthusiasm which might be found in every community for educational purposes; it would deprive them of the resources now afforded them. With regard to limiting expenditure which was to be afforded from Imperial sources to Voluntary Schools, he denied that there had ever been the slightest opposition with regard to Voluntary Schools. They had been afforded every
  1094
  assistance by the various School Boards, and there had been no complaint whatever. As to any increased grant—4s. or any amount they pleased—if the grant were accompanied by that control and supervision which the Board Schools received, there would be no possible objection to it. But it was clear that the intention was first to deprive the School Board authority, through its representatives of the position which they at present held, and advance the authority and position of Voluntary Schools. To that, those who called themselves educationalists demurred. They submitted that the system which had been adopted was one that could be adopted to its fullest extent and become national. Therefore, there was no possible justification or mandate from the constituencies, not the slightest hint of any such Bill as this. If there had been there would have been a remonstrance, and the result of the last General Election would have been different. The teachers, both in Voluntary and Board Schools, were interested in this Bill. Hon. Members complained of waste and extravagance by Board Schools in the payment of teachers. Was that not a proof that through the instrumentality of the local authority and the Town and County Councils, the position and emoluments of teachers would be at stake. There was not the slightest doubt that the inclination was to reduce the salaries of the teachers. A more suicidal policy could hardly be adopted. Teachers were not paid extravagant salaries, when head teachers received the salaries of butlers, and head mistresses the salaries of footmen; they had only sufficient to live and make small provision for the contingencies of life. Was there any branch of the State in which expenditure was limited by Statute. He believed this limit was proposed because it was desired to kill the Board Schools, and its effect would be to impede the progress of education. With regard to the 27th Clause, relating to religious teaching, he observed that the present system had worked with admirable results, and, so far as his experience went, there had been no desire for a change on the part of those most interested, and no agitation whatever had arisen on the question until the subject had been stirred by the clerical agents, to whom reference had

  1095
  been made in the course of this Debate. Were they to be led to this transformation and revolution of their system of education because certain men of theological tendencies required that dogmatic teaching should be introduced into their schools? He thought if they consented to such a thing they would make one of the gravest possible mistakes, and he was confident those who advocated the change little dreamt of the difficulties and troubles that would follow from any change in the present system which gave ample satisfaction to teachers, parents, and scholars. If the system were changed, it would place teachers in such a false position that it would render their work almost unbearable. How was it possible for such a bombshell to be thrown into the educational arena without producing discord and confusion for many years to come, and how could they expect teachers to rest under such stigmas as they had heard to-night as to spurious religious teaching? No difficulties existed now, and no such charges as those which had been made by some hon. Members in this Debate, could with truth or justice be urged against the administration of the School Boards, or by the central authority over which the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir J. Gorst) so eminently presided. If there was any truth in the charges of lavish and wicked expenditure by the School Boards, he would point out that it was not so much upon the Boards themselves that such charges could be maintained, as against the head of the Department which had imposed their orders upon the Boards, and had always been responsible for all the expenditure which had been incurred. He could confidently say, not only with regard to the Board about which he knew most, but of many other country School Boards, that it had only been at the constant urging of the Minister of Education to fulfil the requirements and conditions of the Act of 1870, that expenses had been incurred by such Boards, and that such expenses had been justifiable and necessary was shown by the fact that there were no schools that were not required or which were not filled. Why should the present arrangements, which were entirely satisfactory, be disturbed for the purpose of introducing dogmatic religious teaching into their national schools? They would not get
  1096
  uniform religious teaching, but they would get discord and confusion, not only in the Voluntary Schools, but, as a matter of course, to an even larger extent in the Board Schools, which were more numerous. He should gladly support those portions of the Bill which would promote the interests of education. The assistance to Voluntary Schools, the raising of the age of scholars from 11 to 12, the boarding out of children under the Poor Law, were all proposals which would command the support of the bulk of the people who were interested in the subject of elementary education; but the attempt of the Government to introduce a system of dogmatic education in Board Schools would meet with determined opposition from the working and middle classes.
  COLONEL MELLORsaid, that he had had much experience of elementary school work. For 40 years he had been the corresponding manager of a public elementary school which his firm had maintained at their own cost. He mentioned this to show that he was familiar with the subject. The objections raised against this Bill were to him incomprehensible, for he could not believe that the Measure would create any difficulties which were likely to impair the efficiency of education in the future. The whole question was one of pounds, shillings and pence. The electors had decided at the last General Election that the Voluntary Schools of this country should be maintained. All that was required for that purpose was increased financial assistance. The Measure was as comprehensive and liberal as any measure could be, and its features were such that it seemed to him to be a Bill which might well have been brought forward by right hon. Gentlemen sitting opposite. The difficulty which the managers of Voluntary Schools had had to face was the following: How to compete successfully with the Board Schools when these received £2 10s. per scholar as against the £2 received by Voluntary Schools. In the course of time the Voluntary Schools would, no doubt, be submerged in the competition with Board Schools if an increased grant were not given. If only the Voluntary Schools had received up to the present time the same financial assistance that Board Schools had enjoyed, the latter, he

  1097
  thought, would almost have disappeared by this time. At any rate, the state of things would have been very different from what it was now. The Voluntary Schools had suffered under an "intolerable strain," and the persons who had felt that strain most were the teachers who had not been paid the salaries to which their merits entitled them. He would give the concrete case of Bolton in Lancashire. In the Voluntary Schools there are 8,854 scholars in attendance, and in the Board Schools 8,152. The Voluntary School teachers' salaries amounted to £12,517 per annum, while the Board School teachers received £14,872. Thus, the Voluntary School teachers for teaching 700 more children received £2,355 less per annum. Was it surprising, therefore, that there should be a feeling of dissatisfaction among the Voluntary School teachers? The same thing applied to the whole country round. In his own schools the salaries had increased 50 per cent. during the last ten years. He had paid those salaries for 40 years out of his own pocket, and he thought it was now time that someone else should put his hand in his pocket. The 4s. grant proposed to be given in aid of Voluntary Schools was altogether insufficient, and he hoped the Bill would contain some provision for increasing it. It would, for instance, give £1,771 additional to the Voluntary Schools of Bolton, but the amount they required to bring their teachers' salaries up to the level of Board School teachers was £3,635; and if the new code was carried into effect there would be 14 per cent. additional expense laid on these schools, and that would amount to £1,752, leaving £19 to meet the amount required to increase the salaries of the teachers. As to the question of public control, Voluntary Schools had always been subject to public control. They had always been subject to the control of Her Majesty's Inspectors, who were under the control of the Education Department. The Education Department was in turn under the control of the Minister for Education, who was under the control of the House of Commons. But under the new Bill there would be local control of a still more drastic character. In addition to that there would be local auditors. To concede
  1098
  the conditions demanded by hon. Members opposite would be fatal to Voluntary Schools. Nothing surprised him more than to hear the hon. Member for Nottingham defend the 17s. 6d. limit. Only a fortnight ago he received a deputation of Voluntary School teachers representing a large association extending over the whole of his constituency, and they all of them, without exception, denounced the 17s. 6d. limit; and the other day he received a letter from the Rev. Henry James, a Congregational minister in one of the towns in his constituency, in which he said:—
  "For many years our schools have suffered from the operation of the 17s. 6d. limit, some years to the extent of £50. This year the Department have deducted £35, and I should rejoice to see a clause which so penalises poverty abolished."
  Most people would agree that it was impossible for the managers of the Voluntary Schools to carry them on successfully in poor districts under the 17s. 6d. limit, a limit which was both oppressive and unjust. They had heard a good deal about the County Councils and as to their competency to undertake the new duties that were to be imposed upon them by this Bill. They had been told by the hon. Gentleman who spoke last but one that certain County Councils had protested against having these duties imposed upon them and that no County Council had expressed themselves as being willing to undertake those duties. The hon. Gentleman, however, had not been fully informed on the subject, because the County Council of Lancashire, which was not an unimportant county, had appointed a committee to consider this Bill, who had reported last Thursday in favour of the Measure. The Chairman of the Committee was Mr. Snape, who in the last Parliament had sat for the Heywood Division of Lancashire, and he said:—
  "The Bill proposed that the County Councils should be the local educational authority, and he thought that the Lancashire County Council was well qualified to take up the subject. It was said that it would introduce sectarian differences into the County Councils. School Boards were subject to these considerations, and he did not see how a change of the authority would aggravate them. They would not change that aspect of the circumstances unless, as he hoped, they did so for the better."

  1099
  Again, Sir John Hibbert, the Chairman of the Lancashire County Council, had said:—
  "He was in favour of the principal proposal of the Bill, because it set up local educational authorities and led to decentralisation. He had seen so many drawbacks connected with the system of control that he hailed with delight any proposal for giving back to the authorities the power of dealing with their own affairs. He looked at the Measure as a democratic one, especially coming, as it did, from a Conservative Government."
  Sir J. Hibbert further said that he objected to the proposal to limit the amount to be spent on education. In his opinion we ought to be more economical as far as elementary education in Board Schools was concerned, but we could not spend too much upon secondary education.
  And, it being Midnight, the Debate stood adjourned.
  Debate to be resumed To-morrow.

  FINANCE BILL (BUDGET RESOLUTIONS).
  Considered in Committee.
  [Mr. GRANT LAWSON in the Chair.]
  Clause 1,—

  CUSTOMS. [DUTY ON TEA.]
  "The duty of Customs now payable on tea shall continue to be charged, levied, and paid, on and after the first day of August one thousand eight hundred and ninety-six until the first day of August one thousand eight hundred and ninety-seven on the importation thereof into Great Britain or Ireland (that is to say):—Tea, the pound, fourpence.
  MR. D. LLOYD-GEORGE MR. D. LLOYD-GEORGE (Carnarvon Boroughs) moved to insert after the word "continue," the words "except in respect of tea grown in any part of Her Majesty's Dominions." The practical effect, he said, would be to except from taxation the tea of India and Ceylon and tea grown in any of our colonies. We ought, he said, to encourage industries in those parts of the Empire that were not self-governing. Those that were self-governing had taken advantage of that fact to impose duties upon goods sent from this country. India and Ceylon had no power to do so; they could impose no duties upon imports from this
  1100
  country without the consent of this country; and that was a ground for exempting their produce in this country from taxation. A good deal was said about a British Zollverein to encourage British trade in all parts of the world. Here was an opportunity of making a practical start. It was easy to make speeches upon questions of this character; but what was the good of doing so, now that they had the opportunity to carry out a policy of that kind? They had a great surplus, and they had the opportunity of making a fair start with a Zollverein. Let them begin by taking the duty off tea. Another reason for helping India was that taxes there were exceedingly heavy and the neglect of irrigation works might bring a large section of the people to the verge of famine. It was of the greatest importance that Indian industries, and especially an industry of this character, should be encouraged. To impose heavy duties on tea was to discourage the tea industry, to arrest its growth, and thus to deprive the people of India of profitable employment. He pointed out that the case for India was strengthened by the fact that they had heard even to-day that exceptional expenses were to be thrown on India to provide troops for Egypt—a matter which was none of theirs at all. If they were going to put exceptional expenses on the natives of India for the purpose of an expedition in which they were not concerned, surely that was an argument for doing away with a tax on their industry. He found that the existing tax was the highest tax on any commodity in the whole of the Queen's dominions. He objected to it also on the ground that it was a tax on a popular beverage. It was practically a tax upon the poor. In his Budget speech the Chancellor of the Exchequer told them that most of their tea was grown in India and Ceylon, so that if they took away that tax on Indian tea they would cheapen and encourage a popular beverage. If they took away this tax they would benefit the working classes. He begged to move his Amendment.
  MR. HERBERT ROBERTSseconded the Amendment and thought that the tax ought not to be suffered to remain. Not only in the interests of the poorer consuming classes, but of an industry in

  1101
  the island of Ceylon which deserved encouragement, they asked the House to take the duty off Ceylon tea. The present condition of India, too, did not justify the House in retaining any duty which might be prejudicial to our Indian Empire.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Sir MICHAEL HICKS BEACH,)said, the adoption of the Amendment would destroy the duty on tea in a year when we could not afford so large a loss to the revenue, and it would put an end to the payment of any Imperial taxation by a very large number of the population. Thirdly, this proposal was remarkable as coming from the other side of the House, because it indicated the adoption by hon. Gentlemen opposite of what they had hitherto denounced as a policy of protection, or, at any rate, of a reactionary character. ["Hear, hear!"] He did not know whether this subject had been seriously raised, but if he had known that it would be raised at all, he would have postponed the clause and asked the Committee to consider the succeeding clauses which were of a purely non-contentious character. But as the subject has been raised he would not ask the Committee to proceed with the discussion to-night, but would move to report Progress.
  Committee report Progress; to sit again To-morrow.

  TEACHERS' REGISTRATION BILL.
  Second Reading deferred till Tomorrow.
  MILITARY MANŒUVRES BILL.
  Committee deferred till To-morrow.
  MILITARY LANDS ACT (1892) AMENDMENT BILL.
  Second Reading deferred till Tomorrow.
  LAND TAX COMMISSIONERS' NAMES BILL.
  Committee deferred till Thursday.
  EVIDENCE IN CRIMINAL CASES BILL. [H.L.]
  Second Reading deferred till Thursday.
  NAVAL RESERVE BILL.
  Committee deferred till Monday next.
  BERRIEW SCHOOL BILL.
  Second Reading deferred till Thursday.
  TELEGRAPH MONEY BILL.
  Second Reading deferred till Thursday.
  SUPPLY.
  Committee deferred till Wednesday.
  WAYS AND MEANS.
  Committee deferred till Wednesday.

  CABS (LONDON) BILL.
  On the Order to go into Committee on this Bill.
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. JESSE COLLINGS,)said that with reference to Clause 2 of the Bill, which gave power to the driver to require the hirer to produce the fare, he had been in communication with the London cabmen, and the chairman of the Society, representing 7,000 men, said they would rather lose this clause than drop the Bill. It was thought that the cabmen were protected enough from fraud by the first clause.
  Bill considered in Committee.
  Clause 3,—
  Section 18 of the London Hackney Carriage Act, 1853, is hereby repealed from "and in case of any dispute" to the end of the section.
  MR. D. CRILLYsaid that, as the law now stood, in the event of a dispute a cabman had to drive his fare to the nearest police station. This doubtless placed some hardship on the cabman, but in return for abandoning this right, those who employed the cab should be given some protection under the proposed Bill. Section 18 of the London Hackney Carriage Act, 1853, should not be repealed altogether, but he suggested that in case of dispute the cabman should take his fare to the nearest policeman, who should be enabled to settle the dispute.
  MR. JESSE COLLINGSsaid it was proposed that there was remedy enough by taking the cabman's number, subsequent proceedings being taken in the police court. A policeman could settle nothing in connection with the dispute.
  Mr. CRILLYsaid that, although the right hon. Gentleman had admitted that the fare should have some protection, he had not even suggested what form that protection should take. In order to give him an opportunity of finding a way out of the difficulty he moved to report progress.
  Committee report progress; to sit again To-morrow.

  LAND LAW (IRELAND) BILL.
  Second Reading deferred till Monday next.
  AGRICULTURAL LAND RATING BILL.
  Committee deferred till To-morrow.
  MERCHANT SHIPPING ACTS AMENDMENT BILL.
  Second Reading deferred till Thursday.
  MILITIA BILL.
  Second Reading deferred till Friday 5th June.
  FRESHWATER FISHERIES BILL.
  Second Reading deferred till Monday 8th June.
  MINES (STANNARY COURT) (ARBITRATION) BILL.
  Second Reading deferred till Thursday 4th June.
  BALLOT ACT (1872) AMENDMENT BILL.
  Second Reading deferred till Tuesday 9th June.
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (SCOTLAND) (PUBLIC HEALTH RATING) (No. 2) BILL.
  Second Reading deferred till Thursday 4th June.
  CRIMINAL LAW AND PROCEDURE (IRELAND) ACT (1887) REPEAL BILL.
  Second Reading deferred till Thursday.
  PLACES OF WORSHIP (LEASEHOLD ENFRANCHISEMENT) BILL.
  Second Reading deferred till Monday next.
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACT (1894) AMENDMENT BILL.
  Second Reading deferred till Wednesday.
  ESTATES TAIL ABOLITION BILL.
  Second Reading deferred till Tomorrow.
  CORONERS (IRELAND) BILL.
  Committee deferred till Monday next.
  CRIMINAL LAW AMENDMENT BILL.
  Second Reading deferred till Wednesday.
  CRIMINAL LAW PROCEDURE BILL.
  Committee deferred till To-morrow.
  REGISTRATION OF VOTERS (IRELAND) BILL.
  Second Reading deferred till Tomorrow.
  INCUMBENTS OF BENEFICES LOANS EXTENSION BILL [H.L.]
  Committee deferred till To-morrow.
  FISHERIES ACTS (NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK) AMENDMENT BILL.
  Mr. Penrose FitzGerald, Mr. Francis Stevenson, and Mr. Taylor nominated Members of the Select Committee on the Fisheries Acts (Norfolk and Suffolk) Amendment Bill, with two Members to be added by the Committee of Selection.—(Captain Pretyman.)

  BOYNE NAVIGATION TRANSFER BILL.
  Mr. Hanbury, Mr. McGhee, and Colonel Waring nominated Members of the Select Committee on the Boyne Navigation Transfer Bill, with two Members to be added by the Committee of Selection.—(Sir William Walrond.)
  Adjourned to Twenty-five minutes after Twelve o'clock.

HUNGARIAN KINGDOM (MILLENNIUM).
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord HALSBURY)acquainted the House that he had received, through the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, a copy of a letter addressed to him by the Austrian Ambassador, expressing the special gratification it would give to the Hungarian Government if Members of this House would take the opportunity of visiting Buda Pesth in the course of this and the following month, during the festivities in celebration of the Millennium of the Hungarian Kingdom.
PRIVATE BUSINESS.
  WATERFORD INFIRMARY BILL.
  Read 3a, and passed.
  RESERVE FORCES BILL [H.L.]
  Second Reading (which stands appointed for Friday next) put off to Tuesday the 19th instant.
  FLOODS PREVENTION BILL [H.L.]
  A Bill to give further powers to County Councils with a view to the Prevention of Floods and other damage arising from Rivers and Watercourses.—Was presented by the Lord Thring; read la; and to be printed.—[No. 88.]

  TRAMWAY BILLS.
  LORD TWEEDMOUTH LORD TWEEDMOUTH moved:—
  "That Standing Order 133A relating to Tramway Bills be suspended for the remainder of the Session."
  His Lordship explained that the Standing Order was one which prohibited or impeded the consideration of clauses in
  978
  that House empowering Corporations to work their own tramways. A corresponding Standing Order in the other House was suspended a week ago on the Motion of the Chairman of Committees, Mr. Lowther. The reasons for the suspension of the Standing Order were briefly these. In spite of the Standing Order, various Corporations already had the power to work their tramways, and the experience of those Corporations being not unfavourable to the extension of such powers, there were now before Parliament various Bills asking such powers by various Corporations. These clauses would have to be struck out if the Standing Order were not suspended. But there was a further reason, which was, that by the Light Railways Bill promoted by the Government, not only was power given to Corporations to work tramways, but also to County Councils and District Councils. It would be difficult to define the line exactly which divides light railways from tramways, and therefore it was desirable that the Committees of the House should be enabled to deal with the clauses of each Bill on its merits.
  THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (The Earl of MORLEY)did not offer any opposition to the Motion, although he thought the suspension of the Standing Order must lead to its repeal altogether eventually. As his noble Friend had said, there were several Bills asking for powers to work tramways, powers wider than were given by the Standing Order, one of those Bills being an important one of the London County Council, which was passed by the House of Commons last Session. As Chairman of Committees he had told the promoters that, until the Standing Orders in this House were modified, it would be impossible for any Committee to consider the clauses for working tramways. The policy of Parliament up to the present time had been that local authorities, as having charge of the repair and maintenance of roads, were a proper authority to which to entrust the construction of tramways; but, except under very special circumstances, Parliament had declined to give powers to work tramways, and therefore their lines had always been leased to companies. However, as had been stated, the House of Commons had

  979
  adopted a Motion similar to the present, and in addition to that, the policy laid down in the Light Railways Bill so clearly pointed to facilities being given to local authorities for working as well as constructing tramways, that he felt he should not be justified in offering any opposition to the Motion. At the same time he thought Parliament should be a little careful in extending very largely the commercial activities of Corporations. It seemed to him that the control of the ratepayers was not a control on which they could depend very much. [The PRIME MINISTER: "Hear, hear!"] In addition to that, members of Corporations and of local authorities were not elected for the purpose of carrying out undertakings such as tramways, and were not subject to the same checks and motives as private companies were. He was afraid, moreover, that, if these enterprises were encouraged, though they might have successes, as they had had successes, they might also have failures, and a failure of a public undertaking in the hands of a Corporation was a very different thing from the failure of a company. In the case of failure by a local authority or Corporation, the injury inflicted was one that was inflicted upon the whole of the ratepayers in the community, and was nothing short of a public misfortune. Gas and water undertakings were on a different footing, as they involved the supply of necessaries of life. The experiences of Corporations undertaking dock enterprises, as at Manchester and Preston, was not encouraging. Now they were about to give unlimited powers of working tramways. Where were they going to put a limit? Were they going to allow Corporations to work omnibuses or auto-cars and cabs?—for he really did not see, if they were given this absolute power to work tramways, why they should not have a monopoly of locomotion altogether. It was also worthy of consideration whether there was not some political danger in encouraging Corporations to undertake enterprises which would involve so large a number of the voters in those municipalities being directly employed by the Corporations. That was a question that might give rise to anxiety in the future. In the meantime, as a practical point, he wished to point out that many of those tramways led
  980
  out of large towns into country districts. Who was to work the ends of the tramways that extended from the large municipalities? Were they going to give municipalities power to work tramways outside their own districts? It had been done, he knew, in the case of Glasgow for a small distance between Glasgow and Govan, but if this power were to be generally conceded it would be necessary to put some limitation upon it. At any rate, he would suggest that local authorities should come under the same provisions as they did with regard to gas and water supply, that they should be obliged to sell to the neighbouring local authorities at arbitration price any plant placed within the district of those authorities.
  THE SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF TRADE (The Earl of DUDLEY)said, that, after what the noble Lord had said, there remained little for him to add, and he simply rose to say that he did not propose to offer any opposition to the Motion. In the circumstances which had been placed before their Lordships, it was difficult for this House any longer to resist the demand, which was undoubtedly increasing on the part of municipal authorities, to work their own tramways. He did not think Parliament had always taken up a consistent attitude in regard to the question. Other Corporations had, by special Acts of Parliament, been granted power to work their tramways, and he believed, in the majority of cases, these powers had not led to any evil results.
  Motion agreed to, and ordered accordingly.

  DIVORCE AMENDMENT BILL [H.L.]
  VISCOUNT HALIFAX VISCOUNT HALIFAX rose to move the Second Reading of the Divorce Amendment Bill. The Bill, he said, was to all intents and purposes the same Bill as that which their Lordships read a Second time last year. The only difference was that, in accordance with what he understood at the time to be a suggestion of Lord Grimthorpe, it made definitely illegal what before had been left dependent on the law of the Church. This, however, was not a material part of the Bill, and might, if necessary, be altered in Committee. Their Lordships

  981
  were aware that up to 1857, when the Divorce Act was passed, it was impossible to obtain the dissolution of a validly contracted marriage, with power to marry again, by any ordinary legal process. The only way such a marriage could be dissolved, so long as the Ecclesiastical Courts had cognisance of matrimonial causes, was by a special Act of Parliament, which set aside, in that particular instance, the general law. It was the same state of things as now prevailed in Ireland. In his opinion the Divorce Act had been an unmitigated misfortune to the country, but that was not the question he was asking their Lordships to consider. What he wanted to point out—and it was all that was required for the purposes of the Bill—was the special grievance that was occasioned to the clergy and laity of the Church of England, the injury that was done to the Church as a whole, and the continually recurring cause of offence that was given to the religious and moral sense of the community at large by Clause 58 of the Divorce Act, which was the one clause of that Act he was now asking their Lordships to have repealed. By that clause any stray clergyman who could be picked up by persons who had been divorced for a breach of the seventh commandment, was entitled to force himself upon the incumbent of the parish, and, against the will of the incumbent, and against the will of the parishioners, to claim the Church for the performance of a marriage which certainly can claim no sanction from the Church of England, which outrages the religious convictions of a vast number of persons, and which, under the circumstances in which it is necessarily celebrated, turns the words of the marriage ceremony into a religious mockery. First as to the incumbent. In no other case can any other clergyman force his way into a Church to perform any service of the Church against the will of the incumbent. It is only in the case, and for the benefit of persons divorced for adultery that such an unenviable right has been conferred by law. Could anyone really maintain that such an exception, and for the sake of such persons should be provided by the law? He submitted, with some confidence that they could not. Next, in regard to the parishioners.
  982
  He assumed that the parishioners are interested in the religion and morality of the parish. If they are not they ought to be. Some grievous scandal occurs, not a case where evil done has been repented of, for in such a case no one would be likely to insist on such a legal right as that conferred by Clause 58, but a case in which the evil done is being deliberately ignored and condoned. Nevertheless the parishioners are compelled to see the persons guilty of the evil, and responsible for the scandal, in defiance of what they believe to be the law of the Church, treated in precisely the same way as the innocent and virtuous, and married with words and blessings none can think applicable to their case, and with nothing to show that the Church disapproves of their conduct, or thinks them guilty of any breach of morality. In the third place, he asked the House to consider the direct effect of such a state of the law in regard to the Church herself, and in reference to the respect due to the sanctities of religion and morality. Would their Lordships recall for a moment the words of the marriage service prescribed by the Church of England. The solemn vow—
  "To forsake all others so long as ye both shall live."—"For better, for worse, till death do us part." And—"That it should never be lawful to put asunder those whom Thou by matrimony hadst made one,"
  and then say whether it is tolerable, in the interests of religion, truth, and morality, he would go further, whether it is consistent with the honour due to God's holy name, who is invoked as a witness to the vows given and received, that those who have set at nought such solemn obligations should be enabled and encouraged by the law as contained in this 58th Clause of the Divorce Act, to call God again to witness similar vows made to another, the original husband or wife being still alive, with the probability—for such cases are not uncommon—of such vows being again broken and trampled under foot. Such a state of things was not tolerable, and it was because he felt sure that everyone who had the interests of religion and morality at heart must say the same thing, that he asked them to give this Bill a Second Reading. As he had already said, the

  983
  Bill in no way affects the legal facilities for divorce which at present exist. Those facilities, so far as this Bill is concerned, remain precisely where they are. The persons whom it affects can, if they wish to contract a legal union, always have recourse to the Registrar's office. The Bill merely deprives them of the legal power which they now possess of forcing themselves and some intruding clergyman, into a Church against the will of the incumbent, for the performance of a marriage which is in flagrant contradiction to the whole tenour of the marriage service. With this object, it merely repeals Clause 58 of the Divorce Act, and makes such other provisions as are necessary to make that repeal effectual. He would add, in conclusion, that the Bill had obtained very large and wide support outside this House. It was understood that the members of the Episcopate and the Convocations of Canterbury and York were in favour of it. It had, he thought, been discussed and accepted by every Diocesan Conference throughout the country. It had the approval of the lay house of the province of Canterbury; a very large number of petitions had been presented to this House in favour of it last year. He had been asked to-day to present a very large petition signed by 31,367 members of the Church of England, which went a great deal further than the present Measure; and it had also obtained considerable support from persons outside the Church of England—among others, Mr. Price Hughes, whose name might be familiar to their Lordships as one of the most leading representatives of the Wesleyan body, who had written to him expressing his strong desire that this Bill should become law. He asked their Lordships, therefore, to read the Bill a Second time.
  THE PRIME MINISTER (The Marquess of SALISBURY): If my memory serves me right, either last year or the year before we had a Bill very similar to this in its provisions and there was a general agreement on both sides of the House that, whatever the present form of the remedy to be adopted, there was an evil to which a remedy ought to be applied, and that, therefore, it was expedient to read the Bill a Second time. The evil, of course, is the offence which
  984
  is given to a very large number of persons on the grounds of religion and morality by the right possessed by guilty persons, after their divorce, to require the use of the Church for the purpose of remarriage according to the service of the Church of England. I do not think it is the least necessary, in dealing with this question, to go into any abstract principles. We have merely to recognise that the feeling of scandal does exist; that it is created by persons who have no particular right to our sympathy; and if a remedy can be found to which no reasonable objection can be offered, Parliament will have taken a step which will be decidedly conducive to the interests of morality. The difficulty which I should find in this Bill, if we are to come to details, is the very drastic provision that these marriages shall be void. I do not say that out of any consideration for the person; but you must remember that, if you make marriages void, you hazard the creation of a condition which must be a hardship, and which may be a great injustice, for the issue of such marriages. I should, therefore, prefer any other way of deterring guilty persons from the use of the Church than that of making marriages void, whereby the principal burden falls upon the unhappy children. But as far as the Second Reading of the Bill goes, I have no reason to alter the opinion which I expressed last year, that it would be wise to read the Bill a Second time.
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY: I am not going to oppose the Bill, but some of the expressions used by the noble Viscount were worthy of notice. He says that these marriages are contrary to religion and morality; and that is as much as to say that marriages legalised by Parliament have been contrary to religion and morality. That is a very dangerous doctrine. The whole question of divorces is a very delicate one; and I do not wish to raise it now; but there is some objection to the Bill in principle, because, in a way, it penalises a certain class of persons who, as the noble Viscount says, have broken the seventh commandment; and it has not hitherto been the principle of the law of the land to inflict a penalty for breaches of that commandment. I protest against language which will go much further than

  985
  this Bill warrants. It is a Bill to relieve certain persons from what they consider to be a hardship, though I do not think it is a great one. The noble Marquess has referred to another objection—that of making the marriages void—but I shall not oppose the Bill, and only make these observations that it may not be supposed I agree in the language of the noble Viscount.
  LORD GRIMTHORPEsaid, that his objection to the Bill last year was that it should be introduced in consequence of a disturbance deliberately created in a church by the curate of another church and by a certain number of persons who had organised a conspiracy to prevent the law from being acted upon and a certain marriage from being solemnised. But he thought the main object of the Bill was quite right—namely, to avoid that which a great many people felt to be a scandal. He strongly objected last year to its being left to the discretion of clergymen to say whether certain people should be married in church or not, but that provision had gone. At present his criticism was rather to the defect that the Bill was a long way short of what the promoters said they wanted to achieve. It was said by one of the Prelates who spoke last year that it was desirable to prevent the scandal of persons coming redhot from the divorce court to be married again in church, and he agreed with that. But there were a number of equally guilty persons who would be able to do that after this Bill had become law. Assuming the spouse to die very soon after the legal proceedings, there was nothing in the Bill to prevent a bigamist from getting married again in church. Last year he suggested something like a time of repentance, but he was told by the Archbishop and the Bishop of London that the persons aimed at did not deserve such indulgence. He was rather inclined to think that one of the rev. Prelates had now somewhat changed his mind. At any rate, the bigamist may still get married, if he did not also get divorced; and bigamists were very seldom divorced. Again, people who committed rape or unnatural crimes did not get divorced, but all these offences were properly included in the Divorce Act of 1857, with which the noble Viscount was so
  986
  dissatisfied. Then, petitioners for divorce who failed to obtain it on account of their own adultery would be able to get married in church in spite of the Bill, supposing their wives to die. Persons who were convicted of adultery, but against whom divorce proceedings failed by reason of collusion, and, more than all, guilty co-respondents, might all be married in church and immediately. The Bill only dealt with people whose marriages had been actually dissolved on certain grounds, and he had pointed out a number of guilty people whose marriages were practically never dissolved. There was another point which was certain to arise. The right rev. Prelate was suspicious of anything which might lead to lawsuits, and so was he. But nothing was more likely to do so than to use the words ''marriage dissolved'' without any qualification as to when and how. Two cases had recently come under his notice showing the importance of this point. The first was the case of a dissolution of marriage in a colony. He was shown the decree, and was asked whether the parties could get married again. The question was whether there had been collusion; and his inquiries convinced him that there had been collusion, such as would be fatal to the recognition of the divorce here; and in many countries divorces are granted which are not recognised here. Therefore it was necessary to specify by what Court the dissolution had been effected, and the only safe line to draw seemed to be at some superior Court of this kingdom. The second case was now pending. The defendant in it had actually been declaring at one time that he had a good divorce, and at another time that he had a bad divorce, and personally he should not like to say which statement was likely to prove true. The noble Marquess had pointed out another fault in the Bill as to the voidance of the marriages under certain circumstances. A provision of this kind would be a capital sporting-ground for any fresh claimant or blackmailer to ruin another family after any length of time. A person had only to swear that a party to the marriage had admitted that he or she knew this provision in the Bill was being transgressed, and how was such a statement to be disproved? Whoever drew this Bill miscarried altogether in his

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  notions of analogy. He had evidently thought of the Prohibited Degrees Act, which rightly made marriages void; but that was by reason of "a previous incapacity,'' which did not exist in the cases contemplated by the Bill. The object was to prevent scandal; but if the scandalous conditions were not known till after the marriage had taken place there could be no scandal, and there was no reason why the marriage should be upset merely for being celebrated in a wrong place, which does nobody any harm. Then the Bill repealed sections 57 and 58 of "The Matrimonial Causes Act 1857," and that was totally unnecessary, because the Bill would be a contradiction of that Act. These defects showed that the Bill had been imperfectly drawn, and, indeed, it would require remodeling altogether. Last year when the Bill was before the House he gave notice of an Amendment substantially to the following effect:—
  "No marriage of a person found guilty in a superior Court of the United Kingdom of divorce or of any crime for which a marriage may be dissolved shall be solemnised in any church or chapel of the United Kingdom."
  That did a great deal more than the Bill, and would avoid its numerous defects. But the progress of that Bill was stopped by a greater event.
  THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURYhoped that the House, following up its decision of last year, would give the Bill a Second Reading. The operation of the present law was felt by the clergy to be a tyranny, as it took away from them on one particular point the discretion which they were obliged to exercise on many similar points. It was also a great scandal to the best people in the congregation—those people who valued most the privilege they possessed in their Church, and to whom the Church was the scene of the most sacred incidents in their lives. It was extremely painful to those people in their resort to this sacred place, the day before, perhaps, it was subjected to what was, in their opinion, a great desecration. He did not think it was quite fair to describe the Bill as a penalising Bill for a particular act. If the people it affected desired to be married again, a legal way was open to them which could not be called penal. It was no
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  objection to the Bill to say that it arose out of the conduct of a curate. The conduct of a curate might be heroic—he did not say it was; but he would point out to those who minimised it that great changes often arose out of small occasions. The causes were always great, the questions were always great, though the spark that finally kindled the conflagration was a small one. As to the suggestion that there should be a limitation of time—that, for example, a man who had been divorced might wait for five years and then be married again—there could be no rational limit irrespective of other considerations. He thought there was no use in Parliament making an enactment of this kind if it were to be passed without a penalty. The noble and learned Lord (Lord Grimthorpe) had proposed to place under the same penalty certain crimes for which divorce might be granted, whether there had been a previous marriage and divorce or not. But they were not dealing with crimes at large. They were dealing with a particular action which reversed the applicability of the marriage service. They desired that a clergyman should not be asked, nor churches used, to perform an important and solemn religious ceremony over again for persons who had offended against its obligations; and he thought that the Bill should be limited to that.
  LORD GRIMTHORPE: My proposal does not deal with any crimes but those for which divorce is granted.
  THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURYsaid, it was also urged as an objection against the Bill that it was hard that a marriage should be invalidated if it were performed in the wrong place. But under the existing law, if a marriage was not performed in a church or in a licensed place, it was invalid; and all the Bill did was to provide that the church was, for the marriage of certain persons, the wrong place. He thought there was nothing unreasonable in that. In regard to the Amendment which the noble and learned Lord suggested, there was a most serious difficulty. According to it the marriage must have been dissolved in a Court of the United Kingdom. But divorces in many foreign courts were recognised here; and it would not be reasonable to say that while a man who had his

  989
  marriage dissolved in England might not be married again in a church, a man who had been divorced in a foreign court, or in the colonies or in America might go triumphantly into church and have the religious ceremony again performed. He was aware that the Bill, as introduced, needed Amendment; but he did not think the Amendment suggested by the noble and learned Lord met the case.
  Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Tuesday the 19th instant.

  HOUSING OF THE WORKING CLASSES BILL [H.L.]
  THE SECRETARY FOR SCOTLAND (Lord BALFOUR), in moving the Second Reading of the above Bill, explained that it had been prepared to remedy a defect which was occasioned by an Act passed in 1892, amending the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1890, so far as the latter Measure related to Scotland. The Act of 1892 consisted only of two clauses, one of which was quite correct, but the other repealed the whole, instead of only a part (as was intended), of a section of the Act of 1890, with the result that urban authorities could not borrow money for the erection of dwellings for the working classes. The Bill proposed to repeal the defective Act of 1892, and then re-enact it without the defect.
  Read 2a (according to Order), and committed to a Committee of the Whole House To-morrow.

  LAND CHARGES BILL [H.L.]
  On the Motion for the Second Reading of this Bill,
  THE LORD CHANCELLORexplained that the object of this Bill was to simplify the mode of enforcing judgments against land, and to give fuller effect to the policy embodied in the Land Charges Registration and Searches Act, 1888. It was the opinion of many
  990
  eminent conveyancers that the proceedings under an elegit were cumbersome and ought to be abolished, and that a simpler form of execution against land might be adopted and made applicable whether the debtor's interest was legal or equitable. The object of the first part of the Bill was to give effect to the suggestions which had been made for this purpose, and to entitle the judgment creditor to a charging order giving him the same powers as if he were a mortgagee under a mortgage deed to which the provisions of Section 19 of the Conveyancing and Law of Property Act, 1881, applied. Words were inserted for the purpose of making it clear that the charging order extended to all interests of the debtor, and not merely to those to which a writ of elegit was at present confined. The second part of the Bill was more simple. The Land Charges Registration and Searches Act, 1888, established at the office of Land Registry a register of writs and orders affecting land. The intention was that this register should supersede the register of judgments kept at the central office of the Supreme Court. But the latter register was still kept up and searches were regularly made in it on behalf and at the expense of purchasers of land, though it was doubtful what effect the registration of a judgment had and whether the search was of any value. It was proposed by the Bill to transfer to the office of Land Registry the business now conducted in the Judgments Department of the Central Office, and after a due interval, to repeal the enactments under which registered judgments might possibly operate as charges on land, and close the register of judgments.
  Read 2a (according to Order), and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Friday next.

  STANNARIES BILL [H.L.]
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR, in moving the Second Reading of this Bill, said, it proposed to abolish the Court of the Vice Wardens of the Stannaries in Cornwall, and transfer its jurisdiction to the County Court, with the assent of everybody concerned.
  LORD HERSCHELLsaid, he supported the Second Reading of the Bill. He was glad to find in it a clause which he knew had been much urged by people interested in the mining industry of Cornwall. Certain differences between them were to be referred to the judge having this Stannaries Courts authority, and he believed the Bill would be the cause of very great satisfaction in Cornwall.
  Read 2a (according to Order), and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Friday next.

  ARCHDEACONRY OF CORNWALL BILL [H.L.]
  On the Motion of the EARL of MOUNT-EDGCUMBE, this Bill was Read 3a (according to Order), and passed and sent to the Commons.
  SHORT TITLES BILL [H.L.]
  Amendments reported (according to Order), and Bill to be read 3a on Friday next.

  JUVENILE OFFENDERS (WHIPPING) BILL [H.L.]
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved, "That this Bill be now read a Third time."
  Clause 1,—

  WHIPPING OF JUVENILE OFFENDERS.
  Where a young person convicted before a court of quarter sessions or by a court of summary jurisdiction is a male, and in the opinion of the court under the age of fourteen years, the court, if they think it expedient so to do, may, in substitution for any other punishment, adjudge such young person to be privately whipped, and thereupon such young person shall be whipped with such number of strokes of a birch rod, not being more than twelve, as shall be adjudged, such whipping to be inflicted by a constable in the presence of an inspector or other officer of police of higher rank than a constable, and also in the presence, if he desires to be present, of the parent or guardian of such young person.
  LORD NORTON LORD NORTON moved to omit "fourteen years," and to insert instead thereof in each place the words "sixteen years." His Lordship said that his object was to make the law consistent
  992
  on this subject, and in the Criminal Consolidation Act of 1861, 16 was the age up to which boys might be corporally punished. He was quite sure that it would be a great advantage to keep boys up to the age of 16 who were guilty of such offences as larceny, malicious injury, and a great number of other offences specified in the Criminal Consolidation Act, out of prison, and to give them a punishment which would be short, sharp, and efficient. Imprisonment had been proved to be a very inefficient punishment for a certain class of offenders, and there was not a prison in which many of the prisoners had not been re-committed several times. In the case of boys, especially those not committed of grave offences, it was most important to give them summary punishments which would, if possible, prevent the commencement of a criminal life, and keep them from the corrupting influences of a common prison.
  THE LORD CHANCELLORsaid, he was not able to accept the Amendment of the noble Lord. If the question were simply one of general application to the criminal law, there might be a good deal to say in regard to the matter. The Bill, however, had certain distinct provisions which were applicable only to very young persons, to question which would be very inappropriate.
  Amendment negatived; Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.

  COMPANIES BILL [H.L.]
  Select Committee on: The Lords following were named of the Committee:—

  L. Chancellor.

  E. Leven and Melville.

  E. Dudley.

  E. Kimberley.

  L. Belper.

  L. Hillingdon.

  L. Macnaghten.

  L. Monckton (V. Galway.)

  L. Farrer.

  L. Davey.

  L. James of Hereford.

  L. Aldenham.

  The Committee to appoint their own Chairman.

  PILOTAGE PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL.
  (Pursuant to the Resolutions of the 4th day of July last, as extended by the Order of the 19th day of August last respecting Private and Provisional Order Confirmation Bills) read 1a; to be printed; and referred to the Examiners.—[No. 89.]
  House adjourned at Twenty minutes before
  Six o'clock, till To-morrow, a quarter past Ten o'clock.