Sitting of 2 December 1902

Preamble
The House met at Two of the Clock.
UNOPPOSED PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.
  GLOSGOW CORPORATION (WATER AND GENERAL) ORDER CONFIRMATION.
  Bill to confirm a Provisional Order under the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899, relating to Glasgow Corporation (Water and General), ordered to be brought in by the Lord Advocate and Mr. Solicitor General for Scotland.

  GLASGOW CORPORATION (WATER AND GENERAL) ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL.
  "To conform a Provisional Order under the Private Legislation procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899, relating to Glasgow Corporation (Water and General)," presented accordingly, and
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  read the first time; to be read a second time upon Wednesday, 10th December, and to be printed. [Bill 306.]

PETITIONS.
  DETENTION OF POOR PERSONS (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  Petition from Kirkwall, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  EDUCATION (ENGLAND AND WALES) BILL.
  Petition from Glasgow, against; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  CENSUS OF ENGLAND AND WALES, 1901.
  Copies presented, of Census of England and Wales 1901 (Counties of Cumberland, Hertford, and Wilts) [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  DISEASES OF ANIMALS ACTS, 1894 AND 1896.
  Copy presented, of an Order, dated the 28th November, 1902, entitled the Foreign Animals (Amendment) Order of 1902 (No.12) [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  LUNACY (SCOTLAND).
  Copy presented, of Rules approved by the Secretary for Scotland for the reception of Pauper Lunatics into Lunatic Wards of Poorhouses [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  TREATY SERIES (No. 15, 1902).
  Copy presented, of Additional Act modifying the Industrial Property Convention of 20th March, 1883, Signed at Brussels, 14th December, 1900 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
CHINA (No. 3, 1902).
  QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES.

    Irish Education— Equivalent Grants.
    Mr. MACARTNEY (Anterim, S.): To ask the Chief Secratary to the Lord

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    Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will state on what basis the payment to national school teachers known as equivalent for results was made; and whether the Commissioners of National Education applied to the Treasury to allow special consideration in cases where the application of the general principle worked out unfairly to the individual teachers; and, if so, what was the result of such application.
    (Answered by Mr. Wyndham.) The payment of equivalent grants, understanding by equivalent grant the single sum paid to each teacher in 1900-1 in lieu of results fees, and not the portion of consolidated salaries corresponding to results fees, was made, as a rule, on the basis of the average incomes of the years immediately grant. In certain cases where it was shown to the satisfaction of the Commissioners that the grant in lieu of results fees supplementary grants were made. The Commissioners of National Education did not apply to the Treasury to allow special consideration in individual cases.

    O'Keeffe v. Walsh.
    MR. MACARTNEY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will lay upon the Table of the House the summing-up of the Lord Chief Baron in the case of O'Keeffe v. Walsh and others.
    (Answered by Mr. Wyndham.) This was a litigation between private parties. There is no precedent, so far as I am aware, for laying upon the Table of the House the charge of the presiding Judge in such a case.

    Bridgerule National School.
    SIR HENRY FOWLER (): To ask the Secretary to the Board of Education whether his attention has been called to the fact thirty-one children attending the national school at Bridgerule, in the parish of Holsworthy, Devonshire, were withdrawn by their Nonconformist parents from the religious teaching of that school on the 13th October, and that the Vicar compelled all the childern to repeat three times after the schoolmistress the following statement,
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    "Fifty of us want the Bible, and thirty-one do not want the Bible"; and will he say what action he proposes to take in the matter.
    (Answered by Sir William Anson.) My attention has been called to the matter by a minister residing in Holsworthy, on the authority of a local newspaper. The only confirmation of the newspaper statement appears to be a statement made some time afterwards to the minister by the mother of two of the children to the effect that her children had been made to repeat some such words. He did not ask her by whom the requirment was made. The vicar assures me there is "not the least shadow of truth in the charge." His denial will be communicated to the minister.

    British Trawlers under Foreign Flags.
    MR. WEIR (): Toask the Lord Advocate, in view of the fact that a number of British-owned trawlers have recently been transferred to the Norwegian flag and registered at Brevig under the name of Zodiac Steam Fishing Company, so that as foreign trawlers they can fish in the Moray Firth, will the Secretary for Scotland consider the expediency of taking some action such as will put trawlers sailing under a foreign flag on the same footing as trawlers sailing under the British flag; and will he state whether the Norwegian Government have been made award that the Moray Firth has been closed against British trawlers for scientific research.
    (Answered by Mr. A. Graham Murray.) There is no reason to doubt that through their delegated at the Christiania Fishery Conference, and otherwise, the Norwegian Government are fully aware of the closing of the Moray Firth against British trawlers. With regard to all the earlier part of the Question of the hon. Member I can only say that the whole question is surrounded with great difficulty; and while it is, as a matter of course, the subject of consideration, the Secretary for Scotland cannot come under any further obligation in regard to it at present.

    Wireless Telegraphy for Lighthouse Communication.
    MAJOR SEELY (): To ask the President of the Board of Trade

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    whether he can now state what progress has been made in the direction of connecting certain lighthouses and lightships with the shore by means of wireless telegraphy for life-saving purposes.
    (Answered by Mr. Gerald Balfour.) I have been anxious to make some such arrangement as that indicated in my hon. friend's Question, and I entered into negotiations for the purpose. The whole subject is, however, surrounded with difficulties, and it is impossible at the moment to perfact a scheme.

    Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway.
    DR. THOMPSON (): To ask the Secretary to the Board of Trade if he is aware of the condition of the Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway Station in Londonderry; and if he will take such steps as may be necessary to compel the Railway Company to build a new station suitable to the requirements and comfort of the travelling public.
    DR. THOMPSON: To ask the Secretary to the Board of Trade if he is aware of the non-compliance of the Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway Company with the Board of Trade regulations requiring that goods wagons attached to passenger trains shall be under the control of the automatic brake; and will he have an inquiry made into the matter.
    (Answered by Mr. Gerald Balfour.) The Board have no power to compel a Railway Company to carry out improvements at stations already open for traffic. As regards the running of mixed passenger and goods trains, the Board's regulations do not require that the goods wagons should be fitted with continuous brakes; but they require that if not so fitted they should be placed at the rear of the train so as not to interfere with the action of the brakes upon the passenger vehicles. I have, however, calles the Railway Company's attention to the hon. Member's Questions, and have received a communication in reply, of which I shall be happy to send him a copy.

    Foreign Bounties.
    MR. YERBURGH (): To ask the Under Secretary of State for Foriegn Affairs whether he will give a Return showing the foreign countries which pay
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    bounties, other than shipping bounties, directly or indirectly, on the production or export of agricultural and other products, defining the commodities on which such bounties are paid, and the rate of bounty under each heading.
    (Answered by Lord Cranborne.) Returns showing the bounties given by foreign countries were presented to Parliament in 1895 and 1896, Commercial No.7,1895, and No. 2, 1896. I will make every effort to comply with my hon. friend's wish, and bring these Returns up to date, but I shall be unable to give a final answer for a day or two.

    Newfoundland—Supposed Agreement between France and Great Britain.
    MR. YERBURGH: To ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the Newfoundland and other outstanding questions between France and this country have been settled upon the basis of mutual concessions; and, if so, whether he can, conveniently to the public service, state the said concessions.
    (Answered by Lord Cranborne.) There is no truth in the statement which has appeared in the Press, and to which, no doubt, my hon. friend refers.

    Parcels Post to South Africa.
    COLONEL WYNDHAM MURRAY (): To ask the Postmaster General whether, in view of the rates charged by parcels post to South Africa and the consequent expense to the troops still remaining there, he can make any reduction in these charges.
    (Answered by Mr. Austen Chamberlain.) I have within the last fortnight made a proposal to the Colonial Office on this subject for communication to the different Colonial Administrations concerned, which I hope may lead to a reduction in the present rates. Until I am in possession of the reply of the Colonial Governments I can do nothing further.

    Newcastle West Union Labourers' Scheme.
    MR. T. M. HEALY (): To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutentant of Ireland why the Local Government Board have not yet held the local inquiry into the present labourers scheme of the Newcastle West Union;

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    and if will expedite matters so that the labourers may if possible obtain their plots before next spring.
    (Answered by Mr. Wyndham.) The Board has not yet received the scheme referred to. Upon its receipt, and when the other preliminary requirements of the Labourers Acts have been complied with, the Board will lose no time in considering the question of holding a local inquiry.

    Education Bill—Poor Law Children.
    COLONEL WYNDHAM MURRAY: To ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether there is any provision in the Education Bill requiring that a local education authority should receive into the schools under their charge, without payment, children maintained by boards of guardians and either resident in a workhouse, cottage home, or scattered home, or in an linstitution to which they have been sent by the guardians.
    (Answered by Mr. Balfour.) There is nothing in the Education Bill to alter the present law in regard to the matter referred to in the Question.

  (2.15) QUESTIONS IN THE HOUSE.

    South Africa—Repatriation Commissions.
    *MR. ALFRED DAVIES (Carmarthen Boroughs): I beg to ask the Postmaster General, as representing the Secretary of State for the Colonies, if he will state in how many districts of the Transvaal and Orange River Colony commissions have been appointed on which there are representatives of the local inhabitants and under the presidency of a magistrate or other official for the purpose of assisting the restoration of the people to their homes, and supplying those who, owing to war losses, are unable to provide themselves with food, shelter, and the necessary amount of seed, stock, and implements for the resumption of their normal occupations as per Clause 10 of the Articles of Peace; and further, in the event of these commissions not having been appointed, will he say what local authorities are entrusted with these duties and the administration of the free grant of £3,000,000 to the Boers.
    THE POSTMASTER GENERAL (MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN, ():
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    It was intended to appoint such a Commission in each district of the Transvaal and Orange River Colony. This has been done in the latter Colony, and doubtless also in the former, although the Colonial Office has not yet received information as to three of the Transvaal districts.
    *MR. ALFRED DAVIES: May I ask what body is distributing the funds in the Transvaal where Commissions have not been appointed.
    *MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I have said we have not yet received the information.
    *MR. ALFRED DAVIES: But "doubtless" is hardly a good enough answer for the British public. Will the right hon. Gentleman inquire?
    MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I do not think it necessary to make any inquiry. The Colonial Government is quite competent to deal with this matter.
    *MR. ALFRED DAVIES: Well, I give notice that I will call attention to it as soon as possible.

    South African Customs Duties—Draw backs for Soldiers.
    MR. LAMBERT (Devonshire,): I beg to ask the Postmaster General, as representing the Secretary of State for the Colonies, whether, in any of the Colonies in South Africa, Customs duties are charged on imported articles, such as spirits and tobacco, used by the British Army there; if so, can he state what these duties are and since when have they been imposed.
    MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Transvaal Ordinance No. 22 of 1902 provides that, "Articles imported or taken out of bond for the sole exclusive and personal use of any member of His Majesty's Regular Forces serving on full pay duty. The Customs duties of the Caps Colony, Natal, and the Orange River Colony are those prescribed by the South African Customs Union, one of the provisions of which is that wine and spirits and beer for the sole use of commissioned officers of His Majesty's

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    Regular Force shall be exempt from duty. Prior to the war drawbacks were given amounting to 25s. per man per annum in Cape Colony, and 35s. per man per annum in Natal in 1899. Various privileges were given by the Governments of the Cape and Natal to the troops during the war, but these have now been withdrawn, as it has been decided to revert to the system of drawbacks as from 1st October last. His Majesty's Government is in correspondence with the two Colonial Governments with regard to the amount of the drawbacks.
    MR. LAMBERT: Then I understand that the drawback has not been settled?
    MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Not the amount of it.

    Navy—Destruction of Defective Ammunition.
    MR. WEIR (): I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if he will state the names of the officials responsible for the manufacture, examination, testing, and taking into stock £27,000 worth of defective ammunition which had recently to be thrown overboard from His Majesty's ships; and will he state what steps have been taken to prevent ammunition of this character from being again manufactured and passed into stock; and will he say whether the officials who are to blame in this matter are still retained in the service and in the same positions as hitherto.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATES FOR WAR (Mr. BRODRICK,): The pattern of fuze which was found to be defective was adopted into the service in 1885. A new pattern was adopted in 1886. The defects which were considered to render it dangerous only appeared in 1899, and were appartently caused by prolonged rough usage. All stores of this nature are subjected to rough usage trials before they are approved for the service.
    MR. WEIRcomplained that the right hon. Gentleman had not answered a single question as to the officials responsible for the issue of the ammunition.

    Sandhurst Cadets.
    CAPTAIN NORTON (): I beg to ask the Secretary of State for
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    War whether he can explain why, by a recent circular, the parents and guardians of Sandhurst cadets are called upon to advance to the college authorities a sum of 2s. a day is already allowed out of Army funds for messing; and why, seeing that the cadets are about 300 in number, the last-mentioned sum does not suffice for good and complete messing; also, if he can state how this sum compares with the sum paid by cadets in His Majesty's Navy.
    MR. BRODRICK: If the hon. Member will be good enough to look at the circular in question he will see that the advance of 2s. a day is entirely optional, and that the items to be provided out of it cannot be held to be necessary components of good and complete messing. They include such articles as beer, mineral waters, extra jams, and tobacco.
    CAPTAIN NORTON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that although the Government pay a sum of 3s. per diem for the cadets' food thay have nothing between 1 p. m. and 8 p. m. except such as they provide for themselves?
    MR. BRODRICK: Adequate rations are provided for 3s. a day.
    CAPTAIN NORTON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there have been grave complaints as to the insufficiency of food among the cadets?
    MR. BRODRICK: I am not aware of that; it has not been brought to my notice.
    CAPTAIN NORTON: Is the right hon. Gentleman also aware that the guardians and parents of these cadets, taking into account this 2s. extra per diem, pay more than a guinea a day?
    [No answer was returned.]

    Bread Contracts for Irish Barracks.
    MR. TULLY (): I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he is now in na position to state the decision of the authorities as to the subletting of the bread contract for the Victoria Barracks, Belfast, and Hollywood Barracks, County Down.
    MR. BRODRICK: I am not yet in a position to give the hon. Member any information on this subject.

    Pretoria Field Force Canteen.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, if he will state whether contracts for the supply of provisions and beverages to the field force canteen at Pretoria are subject to the same regulations as prevail in the case of War Office contracts in this country; and whether it is the practice in South Africa to give all such contracts to the lowest tender.
    MR. BRODRICK: These contracts are made by the authorities in South Africa, and I have no information concerning the points raised in the Question.

    Brussels Sugar Convention.
    MR. LOUGH (): I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade under what Clause of the Brussels Convention would exporters of confectionery, preserves, and other goods containing sugar derive advantage by reduction in the duties chargeable on the admission of their manufactures by the foreign countries who had signed the Convention; and whether provision has been made for admission of manufactures from this country on the same terms as we admit foreign confectionery and similar goods.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. GERALD BALFOUR,): British exporters of confectionery and similar goods will share in the benefits derived from Article III. of the Brussels Convention, which limits the surtax, and therefore limits the discrimination against the British exporter to the amount of the surtax. There is no provision in the Convention for equality of import duty on these goods throughout the various contracting countries.
    MR. JAMES LOWTHER (): Will there be a larger tax placed upon imports than that levied upon home producers in any of these countries?
    MR. LOUGH: Can the right hon. Gentleman explain how this surtax which only exists in foreign countries can benefit the exporter from this country?
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: I did not say it did.
    MR. GIBSON BOWLES (Lynn Regis): Is there any limit at all to the surtax itself? Does the Convention deal with anything more than the difference between the import and the excise duties?
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: The surtax is the difference.
    MR. GIBSON BOWLES: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether, by Article IV. of the Sugar Convention (Brussels), Great Britain is bound to impose upon sugars or sugared products coming to this country from British self-governing Colonies a countervailing duty equal to any bounties granted by such Colonies on the production or exportation of such sugars or sugared products; if not, will he say by what Article of the Convention the general obligation imposed by Article IV. is removed from Great Britain in respect of her self-governing colonies; and can he say whether the construction placed upon the Convention in this respect by His Majesty's Government is agreed to by the other high contracting parties to the Convention.
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: There is nothing in Article IV. of the Brussels Convention which imposes an obligation on the contracting Powers to penalise sugar imported from their own Colonies. Any possibility of doubt on this point is removed so far as His Majesty's Government are concerned by paragraph A (2) of the Final Protocol, which reserves in principle entire liberty of action as regards the fiscal relations between the United Kingdom and its Colonies and possessions. I am aware that this view is controverted by some of the Powers who signed the Convention, but our own attitude was made perfectly clear to the conference by repeated declarations on the part of our delegates. These are embodied in the proces-verbaux, in which it was stated

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    that this country would not in any case apply a penal Clause to the self-governing Colonies. The Convention was agreed to by the Powers with full knowledge of these declarations.
    MR. GIBSON BOWLES: This is a very important matter. Are the procesverbaux part of the protocol? And is it not the case that the protocol binds Great Britain not to give her self-governing Colonies any preference over other countries, in regard to sugars coming from them?
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: I believe I am correct in saying that, where any doubt exists as to the interpretation of a Clause in the protocol, reference is to be made to the proces-verbal. The protocol does not bind us to countervail any bounty given by the Colonies.
    MR. GIBSON BOWLESasked where the proces varbal could be obtained, as it was not contained in any published Paper.
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: I have no personal knowledge, but I have been informed that the proces-verbal can be seen in the library now.
    MR. LOUGH: Does not the right hon. Gentleman think that the admission free by this country—
    *MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! That is a matter of opinion. The hon. Member cannot argue the question.

    Landless Cottars in the Island of Lewis.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether the Secretary for Scotland is aware that the Crofters Commission in their Report on the social condition of the people of Lewis, state that, in order to provide land for the landless cottars and squatters, the proposal to break down the remaining farms in Lewis, and take certain of the lower lying parts of the deer forests for division into individual holdings, with an assigned area of common pasture for each new township, might with advantage be adopted; and will he consider the expediency of communicating with the proprietor of the island on the
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    subject, with a view to ascertain whether he is prepared to give effect to the recommendations of the Commission.
    *THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR SCOTLAND (Mr. SCOTT DICKSON,, Bridgton): Perhaps I may be allowed to answer in the absence of my right hon. friend. The Report of the Crofters Commission to which the hon. Member refers was prepared on the special request of the Secretary for Scotland. That request was made because the Secretary for Scotland felt that, without a careful review of all the circumstances of the Lewis as they now exits, taken along with accurate knowledge of the history of the island, and how the present circumstances have been brought about, it would not be possible to settle upon a definite policy. While some action in the direction suggested by the hon. Member may not improbably be resorted to, it would not of itself be adequate to provide a remedy for the existing state of matters. It is not, therefore, possible at present to come under any other obligation in regard to this or any other suggestion or proposal contained in the Report than to state that the Secretary for Scotland is considering the whole circumstances as disclosed, and the suggestions offered in the Report, and will announce in due course the conclusions arrived at.

    Illegal Trawling in Board Bay.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether the Secretary for Scotland is aware that, owing to the insufficiency of the number of cruisers placed at the disposal of the Scottish Fishery Board, only one of the four convictions of illegal trawling off Tiumpan Head, Broad Bay, Island of Lewis, since the 1st January last was secured through the action of a Fishery Board cruiser; and will he consider the expediency of applying to the Treasury for additional funds to be placed on the Fishery Board Estimates for the ensuing year with a view to the acquisition of another cruiser for the protection of the interests of the line fishermen from illegal trawlers.
    *MR. SCOTT DICKSON: The Secretary for Scotland does not, under present

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    circumstances, propose to the Treasury for additional funds for this purpose.

    Armagh Telegraph Staff.
    MR. TULLY: I beg to ask the Postmaster General whether he can state why no local Roman Catholic has ever been appointed on the postal telegraph staff in Armagh City, although 50 per cent. of the population are Roman Catholics; and what steps will be taken to remove the dissatisfaction existing in Armagh as to this matter.
    MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I know nothing of the religious belief of the Post Office staff either at Armagh or elsewhere, and I must decline to make any inquiry upon the subject.
    MR. TULLY: I beg to ask the Postmaster General whether he will state why, at recent vacancies for three appointments for females at Armagh Post Office, two were allotted to Protestants, and a local Roman Catholic girl, who on first trial satisfied the requirements of the Civil Service Commissioners, was not accepted.
    MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: In January last, when the three vacancies at Armagh were filled, the senior learner had not qualified for an established appointment, and the vacancies were therefore filled by transfers from other officers. I know nothing of the religious belief of any of the officers concerned.

    Dromod Pier.
    MR. TULLY: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether he will state the amount of the grant made by the Board of Works to the Shannon Development Company for the construction of a pier at Dromod; will he explain why this pier has been allowed to get into dilapidation; and whether inquiry will be made as to who is responsible for this state of matters
    THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. HAYES FISHER,): The pier at Dromod was part of the old Shannon Navigation Works. No grant was made to the Shannon Development Company in respect of it. It is not now used for trading purposes,
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    but is not in a state of dilapidation; and if there should be any indication of a revival of traffic, whatever repairs are necessary can be carried out at small cost.

    Water and Wexford Dispensaries.
    MR. TULLY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can state what steps have been taken to fill up the vacant dispensary appointments in the counties of Waterford and Wexford, for which no medical candidates offered themselves; and whether he can state how long this state of matters has continued and when it will be terminated.
    THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR THE LAND (Mr. WYNDHAM): There are two vacancies; one, in County Waterford, occurred in August. In this case the guardians are considering a proposal to re-arrange the vacant and an adjoining district. The vacancy in County Wexford occurred at the end of June. An election to fill this vacancy is fixed to take place on Saturday next.

    Athy Juror's List
    MR. TULLY: I beg to ask the Cheif Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he has received a complaint from the Secretary of the Irish Poor Law Association as to the manner in which the Jurors' List for Athy, No. 1 District, has been prepared by the officials appointed under the recent change in the law; and whether he can state what action the Local Government Board have taken on this matter; and if he will promote legislation to have this work carried out under the former system.
    MR. WYNDHAM: A complaint of the character mentional was received. The results of inquiries made by the Board go to show that the allegations are greatly exaggerated, and in some cases, unfounded, and that on the whole the work is most carefully and efficiently done by the Secerataty of the County Council. On the general question of the propriety of alterning the existing law, I refer to my former replies.

    Irish Land Bill
    MR. TULLY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can state what steps he has taken to promote a confrence between landlords and tenants in view of the promised Land Purchase Bill; and if he is in a position to give the names of business experts who would be acceptable to both parties.
    MR. WYNDHAM: I can only refer the hon. Member to my public pronouncements on the Land Question. The reply to the second query is in the nagative. It would, I think, be inexpedient and, indeed, officious, on my part to suggest names.

    All British Cable to India
    *SIR CHARLES DILKE (): I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether the attention of the Government has been directed to the recommendation of the Committee on Cable Communications, presided over by Lord Balfour of Burleigh, in favour of a cable connecting the Cocos and Ceylon, or the Cocos and Singapore, and thus giving an alternative and an all-British line to India; and whether any steps are being taken towards the construction of such a cable.
    THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): The matter is engaging the attention of the Govenrment at the present time. We are waiting a reply from the Government of India, with whom we have been in communication.

    Tristan da Cunha Islands.
    *SIR CHARLES DILKE: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether, having regard to the possible value for telegraph purposes of the Tristan da Cunha group of islands, including Gough Island, steps are being taken to retain the ownership claim of the British Government over these islands.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: These islands are under British sovereignty. His Majety's Government have now under consideration the question of granting furhter licences for the removel of guano
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    from some of them. The group is periodically visited by one of His Majesty's vessels.

    FISHERIES (IRELAND)—EXPENSES.
    Committee to consider of authorising the payment, out of money to be provided by Parliament, of the Expenses of any application under Section 33 of the Fisheries (Ireland) Act, 1842, and all proceedings thereunder consequent thereon, which may become payable under any Act of the present session to amend the Fisheries (Ireland) Acts, 1842 to 1901, (King's Recommendation signified), To-morrow.—(Mr. Wyndham.)

    THIRD READING—FIRST DAY'S DEBATE.
    Order for Third Reading read.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the third time."
    (2.35.) MR. JAMES LOWTHER (): In moving the recommittal of this Bill in respect of its financial Clauses I do not think I need offer any apology to the House for intervening in this dabate. The financial policy of this Bill has never been adequately discussed. I need only point out that the amount of money already levied on various forms in the United Kingdom for the purpose of upholding our present system of education is simply colossal, and yet this Bill will considerably increase demands made upon the various contributors to the national funds, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer is to be bound to provide money for the education authority. The expenditure under the various headings of the Bill is of necessity automatic and progressive in its character, and it is not merely the present Chancellor of the Exchequer but his successors who will have to obey the behests of a third party. Though the expenditure on the Army and the Navy is rigidly scrutinised by the Treasury it is remarkable that there has been practically no discussion whatever with regard to the huge sum allocated for education. I venture to say, without going into the merits or demerits of our education policy, that grave doubts

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    are widely entertained as to whether a great deal of this money is to be wisely and prudently expended. There are those who agree with me in thinking that with reference to the position of life and the future prospects of scholars the subjects which are selected are ill-assorted and are calculated to discourage them in after-life, instead of redounding to their personal or pecuniary advantage. I have often been asked "How can you expect these youths and girls to perform the ordinary calls of honest toil if they are to be allowed to think that they are above their position through receiving education in a half-smattering manner on subjects they will never have an opportunity of following to their logical conclusion?" I am one of those who think that the definitions applied the other day by the Prime Minister to the objects which should be included in primary education is the utmost limit to which Parliament has any right to proceed. That, of course, is a moot point. I do not wish to be dogmatic, or to raise a question which is outside the immediate scope of my Amendment. But I must remind the House that in this policy it is forestalling future Budgets and committing the country to a great increase in its expenditure, the utility of which many persons venture gravely to doubt.
    What is the amount of money which the taxpayers alone, apart from the ratepayers, are now called upon to provide? I find that in the three kingdoms the amount provided in the current year for education is upwards of twelve and a half millions, and in many cases it is handed over to the tender mercies of enthusiasts who spend it right, left, and centre, without any regard to the interests of the taxpayers or the children. But that is not all. There is the Local Taxation (Customs and Excess) contribution, miscalled the "whisky money," half of which was specifically allocated by Parliament to the relief of the rates, but the whole of it is now left at the disposal of the County Councils. This sum amounts nearly to a million, bringing the total expenditure for which the Treasury is responsible to more than thirteen and a half millions. In addition, £1,400,000 is being provided by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to arrest the outcry of the ratepayers under this Bill. That surely is a huge addition to our national obligations which deserves consideration. That brings up the total
    928
    to £15,000,000 sterling. But even that is not all. The burden on the ratepayers is extremely heavy at present, and I venture to think it will become still more so in the near future. It has been admitted that there is a further sum of £5,500,000 expended in the shape of rates at the present time and that brings the total expenditure to more than £20,000,000. I maintain that Parliament has failed to discharge its prime obligation of scrutinising and controlling such a huge item of national expenditure. I have heard paltry suggestions from time to time for dismissing a few hundreds or thousands of His Majesty's troops, and I have heard cheeseparing and somewhat mean, if not contemptible, proposals for disposing of the naval stores and cutting down the naval resources of the country, but I have not heard a word of protest against the acceptance of this huge national burden which Parliament is precluding itself by this bill from in any way effectually controlling. It is almost unheard of that a great public expenditure like this should be treated in the haphazard way in which Parliament of late years has treated educational finance. The right hon. Gentleman the Mamber for West Monmouth is a staunch economist, and although he is prepared to spend national funds when occasion demands it, he neverthelese closely scrutinses all items of expenditure submitted to the House of Commons. But even he has not raised his powerful voice against this educational expenditure uncontrolled by Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman actually made a suggestion that if there were a few children in a remote part of the country special arrangements should be made to bring the mountain to Mahomet. I hope that those who have championed the cause of economy, not always too wisely, will have a few words to say on this absolutely uncontrolled expenditure which is being riveted on the neck of the nation for all time. I do not hesitate to say that a vast part of this money has been very unwisely expended. Nothing is more fatal to economy than to give one set of persons other persons' money to spend. I have always protested that, and many years ago I raised my voice here against the doctrine of subventions, which meant giving the taxpayers' money to the

    929
    representatives of the ratepayers, who are tempted to say: "It is not our money, so we had better spend as much as we can locally." That has been the argument of many county financiers. The only true solution for these educational difficulties is that, inasmuch as the money is found from the pockets of the taxpayers, the representatives of the taxpayers ought to supersede the local authorities in the expenditure of the money. I recognise that this would involve the recasting of the whole Bill, which I would not venture to propose at this late stage. But the House has still in its hands the control of the financiers, which is its special prerogative, and one which we have no right to abrogate at the dictation of Ministers, however powerful, or public opinion so-called, however highly wrought or ill-informed. I hope we shall have from some authoritative exponent of the Government a statement clear and precise as to the estimated cost to the national taxpayer and the ratepayer of the educational system. I think we have a right to ask that, and I hold that it will not be to our credit if we do not address ourselves in earnest to the great and legitimate duty of the House of Commons, viz., the control of the national finance.
    MR. GIBSON BOWLES (Lynn Regis): I beg to second the Amendment.
    Amendment proposed—
    " To leave out all the words after the word 'be,' and add the words ' re-committed in respect of Clauses 19 and 20 (Expenses and Borrowing).' "—(Mr. James Lowther.)
    Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
    THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): My right hon. friend in his speech tried to induce the House to accept two propositions, which I am perfectly convinced will find favour neither on that side nor upon this. The first of these was that out of public funds no education should be supported which went beyond the three R's, and the second was that, inasmuch
    930
    as the contribution from the Imperial Exchequer to education was so large, the control of that expenditure should rest entirely with the central authority, and that the local authority, neiither in the shape of City or County Councils, nor in the shape of School Boards, should have anything to say in the matter.
    MR. JAMES LOWTHER: Of course the local authority would spend its own rates. I was dealing with the money provided from Imperial funds.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I will come to that in a moment. As regards the first point, I am not concerned to deny, nor is any serious advocate of education concerned to deny, that there may be, and there have been, cases in which people are, what is called, over-educated—that is to say, they have not received the kind of education which is of any use to them either in their private or public capacity, either as individuals or citizens. I would even go further, and say that I could conceive of a system of education so ill-managed that the multiplication of classes incapable of earning their living in what is called the learned occupations, and unfitted to earn their living in the unlearned occupations, might be a serious public inconvenience. That is perfectly true, and it is mere pedantry to deny it; but I do not believe that will be the result of this Bill, or that any such state of things is likely to follow from any educational efforts this House is likely to indulge in, and is far less likely to happen under a sound system of educational evolution, such as the Bill proposes, than under any centralised system. My hope and belief is that education will be managed on commonsense principles by the great local authorities, and by commonsense principles, I mean principles suited to the real genuine needs of their locality. What are my right hon. friend's financial proposals? He admits that education ought to be largely supported by the State; but what is the only possible conclusion from his arguments? Either that the State should contribute nothing or manage everything. Both dilemmas are equally impracticable and impossible. It would be quite impossible to ask the localities to bear the whole

    931
    cost of education, primary, secondary, and technical; and I am sure it would be disastrous to take the other alternative and say that the State, inasmuch as it contributes so much, must manage everything. There is a third possibility—namely, that the State should manage the expenditure of all the money it contributes, and the locality all the money it contributes. That would be even more impossible than either of the other two, because it would mean that you are to have two sets of schools, one entirely managed by the State and the other by the locality. If my right hon. friend will consider all the possible alternatives, he will see that the alternative proposed in this Bill is the only one which will find general and practical acceptance. I would remind my right hon. friend that the expenditure by the Chancellor of the Exchequer is not the limitless sum which he seems to suppose. It does not rest with the local authority to determine how much is to be spent by the State. That is laid down with precision by the Bill. It is capable, no doubt, of automatic increase as the number of children increase, but no mere reckless expenditure on the part of the local authority will extract another shilling from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. No doubt his successors may be called upon to pay an increased grant, but that will depend solely on the number of children. I hope I have adequately answered the arguments of my right hon. friend, and that he will not think it necessary to press his Motion, but allow us at one to pass to the discussion of the more general issues raised by the Motion for the Third Reading of the Bill.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT (): My right hon. friend reproached me for certain proposals I made in reference to this Bill, and as to that I shall be perfectly prepared to justify my action at the proper time. Acting on the suggestion of the Leader of the House I will attempt to confine my remarks now to the question of the cost thrown upon this country by its educational policy. But I think this House has not done its duty in examining as it ought to be examined the expenditure involved in this
    932
    Bill. We are the tribunal, and I venture to say the only tribunal, which has a right to interfere with the expenditure under the Bill; and, therefore, it was our duty to have informed Parliament in both its branches as to what was our view as to the extent of the expenditure involved. That we have not done. The Closure has prevented that examination which ought to have been given as to the effect of this Bill on expenditure, whether Imperial or local. We have got this complicated arrangement in respect to Imperial taxation, which, I confess, I am totally unable to understand myself.
    *MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! I would point out to the right hon. Gentleman that the debate at present is confined to Sections 19 and 20, which raise the question not of the amount of expenditure but of its apportionment and the method of raising it by loan or otherwise. The observations of the right hon. Gentleman would of course be quite in order on the main Question, but are not in order on the Question before the House.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid he would not discuss the matter further; but would suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that before the Bill left the House or immediately afterwards information should be given by the Government as to what was likely to be the amount of expenditure under it, both Imperial and local.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: How can we tell the amount of the local expenditure?
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: There ought to be some material for obtaining information on the subject. For instance, it would be perfectly possible to give the amount of money received from endowments and fees; but as you, Mr. Speaker, have laid down that that is a question rather in connection with the general aspect of the Bill, I will reserve it.
    MR. HENRY HOBHOUSE (Somersetshire, E.)said that there was a question with reference to the apportionment of expenditure which it would be for the enlightenment of the House and the country if the President of the Board

    933
    of Trade explained. In Clause 19 there were certain provisions for the treatment of School Board areas and non-School Board areas. These provisions had not been fully discussed, but it seemed to him that, taking the School Board districts generally, the rates would probably be reduced; whereas they would certainly be raised in the voluntary school district. A certain proportion, varying from a quarter to one half, would be spread over the county at large; but he should like to ask the Government how they justified that arrangement. If a parish found its own buildings, it would be unfair to charge it for the buildings in another parish. There was another question on which he did not appear clear, and that was with regard to current liabilities. He believed that there was something in the long and complicated schedules of the Bill which made the question clear to the initiated; but he thought it would be to the advantage of the uninitiated if the President of the Local Government Board could give an assurance that where a School Board had incurred liabilities other than in respect of buildings, such liabilities should be charged on the former School Board area, and not spread over the county at large. He hoped his right hon. friend would be able to give that assurance, and thereby allay the rather natural apprehension felt in some of the voluntary school districts. He would also wish to know whether, in future, the county authorities would get the amount payable under the Agricultural Rating Act to the School Boards in respect of School Board districts which in future would be under the county authority.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. WALTER LONG,)said his right hon. friend had correctly anticipated the effect of the Bill on the rates, as between board school and voluntary school districts. But he had overlooked the fact that the special relief which was given to the poor School Board districts at the time the grant-in-aid was voted for the voluntary schools would end under the Bill, because these poorer School Board districts would no longer be separately rated areas for the purposes
    934
    of education. It was felt by the Government that something should be done to meet the case of these poorer districts in the future, and with that object in view they inserted the provision in the Bill that one-fourth of the local indebtendness of these poorer districts should be taken over by the local education authority and placed upon the county at large. The grants under the Agricultural Rating Act would in future be paid to the local education authority and not to the particular School Board districts, but those districts would benefit by the distribution of the whole cost of education over the county at large.
    MR. HENRY HOBHOUSEasked what about the current liabilities.
    MR. WALTER LONGsaid he did not quite understand what his right hon. friend meant.
    MR. HENRY HOBHOUSEsaid he referred to the debts other than capital charges.
    MR. WALTER LONGsaid he had not received notice of the question, and, therefore, he could only reply in a guarded form. All the capital expenditure would be pooled, and all other expenditure, for which the local education authority would be responsible, would fall on the general rate, and not on the local rate.
    MR. JAMES LOWTHERsaid that as the question he desired to raise could be discussed on the Third Reading, he wished to withdraw his Amendment
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    question again proposed, "That the Bill be now read the third time."
    (3.10.) SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNER-MAN (Stirling Burghs): The House will recognise, with a considerable feeling of relief, that the long-protracted examination and discussion of this most important, and—as I am sure it will be regarded in the future—this most memorable measure is approaching the end, The general subject is, as we all know, of the most intense interest to the country. And well it might be, because upon the trained

    935
    intelligence and equipment of our people the national future depends. It must be admitted that the subject in its details, the system in its machinery, are of the most complicated and technical character, and I think I shall find myself in the same lobby, mentally, with almost every Member of the House when I say that the discussion of those details was necessarily monotonous, dull, and uninspiring. What conclusion do I draw from this? It is that we should pay all honour to those among us who have devoted so much time and labour to the study and examination of this Bill, whether it be in defence of its provisions or in frustrating, exposing, and correcting its faults; and I am sure I speak for the House when I say that, while we have a sense of relief in anticipation of the end of these discussions, we are grateful to those of our colleagues who have devoted themselves in so earnest and systematic and praiseworthy a way to the examination and improvement of the Bill, and we are grateful to them for the spirit they have shown in devoting themselves to this work. No one, I think, can say that more time has been given to this measure than it required or deserved. As I have said, it is exceedingly complex and technical, and it had to pass through the ordeal of examination by men—and they abound among us—who are intimately acquainted with the details of the machinery of education, either from their own personal share in its administration or from their study of or the interest they have taken in the subject. But, besides that, this subject is intimately concerned with the daily domestic life of the people, and appeals in the strongest possible way to every father and mother who care for the welfare and the careers of their children. Again, every provision in a measure such as this is minutely examined, because it touches sincere and strong religious feelings and susceptibilities on either side of the House. I have observed with some astonishment that some hon. Members, mostly outside the walls of this House, have spoken lightly of these susceptibilities, and, if I may say so, prejudices, pronouncing them unreal and almost squalid, and thanking Heaven, apparently, that they themselves have no share in them. I cannot
    936
    rise to that superior point of view, because, in my opinion, there are few aspects of the question which more thoroughly deserve the most careful treatment by Parliament. But for myself I would say frankly that from the first I have entertained strong objections to the whole scheme of the Bill; and I would say for myself, and those who think with me, that, while we have been honestly trying to amend the Bill, we have naturally and of course tried to amend it in the direction of our particular views.
    Will the House allow me to state broadly the reasons of my objections to the Bill? My first broad ground of objection is this—that the Bill appears to endeavour to reconcile two things which are in compatible with each other, namely the national system of education and the denominational system. The one is the antithesis of the other. The only permanent system must be the national system. Of course denominational schools may be and would, almost under any system, continue to be recognised under certain conditions, and within certain limits. But as you develop your system the national must increase and the denominational decrease. Education is the affair of the State and not of the Church; the affair of laymen and not of the clergy. I know there are some of my friends who hold this view who say, "What does it matter, seeing that it is inevitable that you must glide sooner or later into a more purely national system—why raise such a particular dust about a particular form of control under this Bill? Make your schools efficient and you will call off the clerical element. "I prefer to adopt a national system as the ideal, instead of ineffectually struggling against it, as you are doing in this Bill. My second ground of objection is based on this, that where there is public duty to be performed, and public money to be spent, the more direct and complete your public control the better. Now, I have found some words here—I am not quoting them as a tu quoque, but they are so characteristic and so true that I think it is worth while to quote them. They are the words of the present Duke of Devonshire spoken in the House of

    937
    Commons, probably from the place in which I now stand, in 1876—
    "There are many of us," he says, "and I do not scruple to say I am one of them, who believe that the principle of the School Boards is the right and true principle in this matter."
    We believe that that, being the true and right principle, it will in the end prevail. We believe that when once the time has arrived, when Parliament has declared that education is the business of the State itself, it becomes inevitable that sooner or later State education must be in the hands not of individuals but of representatives of the people. That appears to me to be a very fair statement of the view I take.
    What do we find under this Bill? That such public control as there is, is partial, remote, indirect, anddiluted. The County Council, itself a body elected for quite other purposes and upon other issues, is to appoint the local committee. That, local committee need have no elected member upon it. If that is the solution, you have at once a divorce between your controlling body and the public interest. But if there are County Councillors on this local committee, they ae accompanied by members nominated by outside private and sectarian bodies. To a large extent, therefore, the responsibility to the public, originally weak, has already become diluted. Then the local committee appoints a sub-committee, and I would remind the House that this provision for the appointment of the sub-committee was passed sub silentio on one of those fatal nights when the closure fell upon the Schedules. How are these sub-committees to be constituted? They are to consist either all or partly of members of the committee. Here again outsiders are introduced on to the sub-committees, and that which has been already diluted is diluted again. But let us look at it a little more closely. Popular control was much insisted upon by the right hon. Gentleman when he introduced the Bill. He said there would be complete popular control over the whole educational system. When a statement like that is made, what does the plain man understand by it? He thinks the work of School Boards is only to be transferred to some other more convenient body; that is practically what it comes to. Again, it has been urged by
    938
    many persons—I think the Colonial Secretary made a point of it during that celebrated colloquy at Birmingham—that there would be publicity. The right hon. Gentleman congratulated them the publicity the new system would introduce into the management of Church schools. The local authority might be in a minortiy in the management, but they would be able to make themselves heard. Publicity, undoubtedly, is an all-important element of popular government; but where is the publicty in the Bill? Does the education committee, which is merely a critical body, make for publicity? The probability is that it will not. This is the body most corresponding to the school Board, and what small part of its proceedings will ever come before or be debated by the County Council, which is the only popular body to which the public can elect? How then will the minority on the committee of managers in denominational schools make themselves heard? When the point of contact is reached between the controlling authority and the school, how much of the representative element remains? Instead of ad hoc election we have ad hoc nomination and selection. What would a School Board be if it were without the knowledge that suspension of its functions would follow neglect of duty? These considerations constitute the second reason why I object to this scheme in toto.
    My next objection has rather to do with education itself. It seems to me that this system fails to produce and supply the very thing that is wanted. The thing that is wanted is the ladder of learning for the boy of average brains and energy. The right hon. Gentleman, replying with some sympathy to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Thanet just now, admitted that there were many cases in which the boy, or young man, or young woman, might be over-educated, and might be unfitted to take part in any of the learned professions, and yet be too learned for any other occupation. I believe that to be a great fallacy. If the training in our schools is of the right kind, the more learning a man has, whether he sweeps a crossing or controls a diocese, the better he will do his work. It is not only the most backward

    939
    and retrograde, but also the most mischievous and dangerous doctrine, which says that learning in itself does any harm to the man who possesses it. "A little learning is a dangerous thing." But that is when a little learning is mistaken for a great deal of learning; and the man who possesses it does not know his position. I could speak of a country—
    MR. A J. BALFOUR: You are not arguing against me, I hope?
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I am arguing at large. It seems to fit what the right hon. Gentleman said, if it does not express his real view. Of course, it is a view commonly and widely held on certain questions, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Thanet will not deny that there is a country where you may see the shepherds and under-game-keepers walking about with a Horace in thier pocket. I myself have known a railway porter in that country who was the most accomplished astronomer in that part of the world, but who nevertheless was one of the best of railway porters. A ladder ought to be provided for every boy who is able to take advantage of it to enable him to reach the step he is capable of reaching. It seems to me that in this Bill you have been so much occupied with your schools and thier fees and their funds, and your appointed trust managers of them and your nominated committee men, and with keeping a check on popular interference, that you have forgotten, to some extent unconsciously forgotten, education—the very thing for which the Bill exists. What was without doubt the best, the most efficient, the most successful part of the previously existing educational machinery? The continuation schools and the higher grade schools, and the higher schools conducted by the great School Boards. They were far more efficient than your Universities, which, with all their enormous funds and traditional advantages, educate only a fraction of the community, or than your public schools, of which we are so proud, where also learning is the last thing that is considered to be of much importance. It was these humble but earnest men in the board schools who were doing the very best work for you, and it is because they did it that you have destroyed them. You
    940
    make it your excuse that you are overlapping, which you have been trained by your inspirers to thihk of as something terrible. Is our educational covering so full and ample that we can be so fastidious as to whether it is overlapping or not? What a crime for a public education authority to commit! Trop de zele. It is actually destroyed because it has done too much. It was against the law, so we are told. Then the law ought to have been amended. That was the easy and plain way of getting over the difficulty.
    Then, there is in this Bill and in the whole theory of your scheme a line drawn between primary and secondary education, and that is called unification and co-ordination. I think I have listened to a homily from the last Vice President of the Council in which he has declaimed against the vice of drawing a hard and fast line; and here is a fixed line. You have different authorities and different rating. You have the town schools and the village schools. Which are, with their Church atmosphere, to be confined religiously and solemnly to primary education. Consider the result of that arrangement. A boy arrives at the critical period of his early life. He has finished his primary education. He has got all the advantage he can get out of your teaching in elementary subjects. What are we to do with such a boy? We ought to induce him, to tempt him, to use the opportunity of prosecuting the march up the ladder, and to do it in the most convenient and effectual way. Why should he not do it? What should prevent him doing it in the same school? At this critical age—critical because he has the opening of possible careers before him, or because his parents may see their way to his earning a little money for their assistance—you stop him and say, "Now you must go no longer to this school, but to a secondary school at the other end of the town, or to a secondary school five or ten miles away, in the county town." The boy therefore has to make a fresh start, to begin a new life, with fresh associates, away from all the old influences. In how many cases will he not subside into a contented ignorance from which it is our highest duty to save him? He is not to be allowed any longer to go to the

    941
    primary school; what is then to take its place? He is to go to a secondary school. What are the circumstances of these schools? They are to be supported by limited funds—strictly limited funds—and those funds are to have permissive operation. Then your limited funds are to be largely mortgaged by the necessity of undertaking this very intermediate duty between primary and secondary education which the School Boards have so well discharged hitherto. Of the rate, of which we hear so much, how much will be absorbed by the various duties to be transferred? What was demanded, and rightly demanded, by the country, was a good continuous system of intermediate and higher education founded on a vigorous and complete primary system. What you have here is a permissive, limited, undefined secondary provison. You may spend twopence, if you can get it with the goodwill of your ratepayers. This is the outcome of fifty years of agitation for secondary education.
    And in the primary schools, this Bill at least gives no guarantee whatever of efficiency. The primary schools—what are we to say of them? One thing is certain of them—they are to remain primary. No tentacles are to be put forward towards the higher learning. There is no educational fulcrum for the levelling up of education. Direct election, with its influence of enlightened public opinion, is gone. The power of declaring a School Board in default gives place to a mandamus. What is a mandamus? It is a terrible word. I am not lawyer enough to know what it precisely means, but I have no doubt it means that somebody is to be called upon to do something, and the result is that if he does not do what the Court calls upon him to do he goes to prison like other wicked people. Fancy a chairman of a County Council—there are two or three of them opposite—marched off to prison because some sub-committee has not done its duty! I suppose that is the meaning of this proceeding by mandamus.
    Above all, and this is a most important point, the pressure of the rates will probably be such as may suggest to the new authority the most obviously economical expedient of levelling down the provided schools to the admittedly low level of the Church schools. ("Oh, oh!") I did not say that evey Church
    942
    school was bad, but it is notorious—that was the reason of the Bill—that they could not keep up to the mark, they could not keep pace with the board schools in the encouragement of education. If they are improved, that is what I call "levelling up," but a much more likely result will be levelling down. The threepenny rate will be dangled before the ratepayers' eyes. Lord Salisbury's suggestion of 1895 will probably be adopted. and "threepence" will be written in letters two feet long over every school. That is the greatest and the tremendous dead weight in this Bill against progress and efficiency in primary education, and, if anything was wanted to make its influence more complete, you have it in the actual instruction to committees to have regard to the economy of the rates—as if they were not likely to do that without being specially instructed.
    Now, when the right hon. Gentleman introduced the Bill he made many representations and promises, the most prominent of which was the creation of one uniform authority. Especially there was much shaking of the head over the two rating authorities in the same area. I have taken the trouble to analyse geographically the different counties of England and Wales, and I come to a somewhat strange conclusion—that this ideal of the right hon. Gentleman is very limited in its operation. If I were to give a new title to the Bill and describe in one sentence the only effect of it which will be absolutely certain, I would call it a Bill for creating one education authority in the counties of Rutland and Huntingdon and in the Scilly Isles. There may be the same result attained in some of the smaller counties in Wales, but the result as far as England is concerned is literally what I have said. The population of England Wales is 321/2millions. Deducting London's 41/2 millions you have 28 millions. Of these, 9 millions are in the county boroughs, 6 millions in the municipal boroughs and urban districts over the limit prescribed in the Bill, 71/2 millions in the rural districts, and 51/2 millions in the smaller boroughs and smaller rural districts, making in the country parts 13 millions. Now let us consider the effect on these successively. First of all, county boroughs. There is one authority in the county boroughs, and one rating power

    943
    is established. Therefore the county boroughs are the most happy from the Government point of view; but their happiness is qualified by the fact that there is no duty put upon them to supply higher education; they are only permitted to do so. There are two rates instead of one after all, the one for elementary and the other for secondary education. And then they are hampered, as I think, by what is called the Cockerton law. Then when we come to the smaller boroughs—six millions—the education is under two authorities; the primary is under the municipality, which has rating power, the secondary is under the County Council, which has rating power, and the urban authority may raise indipendently a penny rate for secondary education. So you have three systems and two rates. Therefore here the pretext for the abolition of the School Boards fails. Here you have multiplied control and possible overlapping, and no consecutive ladder such as we all profess to desire is provided, because the lower steps are under the control of one authority and the higher steps are controlled by another authority. Then you have the rural districts, the residue of the counties, the patchwork areas after others have been taken out, 13,000,000. Why, I believe that in the West Riding the time to go over these disconnected areas by inspectors will be measured by years. Nominally there is one supreme authority, but without the means for competent higher authority, for, as I have said the rate will be mopped up by the transfer of duties from the School Boards and the training colleges—which is a new burden to be put upon them. This sum of two pence may enable the authority to make grants in aid of existing schools, but who in the world believes it sufficient for equipping new schools? Again, there is no duty imposed to do anything at all.
    Here then is your one authority! It consists of (1), the Board of Education; (2) the various Councils, with thier differemt powers; (3) the committee or committees of these Councils, including outsiders—whom I almost ought to include in a separate category; (4) the sub-Committee with thier outsiders; (5) the provided schools managers; and (6) the denominational schools managers, some of whom are to superintend, more or less, religious instruction—although as
    944
    to that we are left in great doubt—and some of whom are to be appointed members.
    But we have not yet explored exhaustively this starry firmament. We discover by its disturbing influence rather than by actual vision, another mighty element. So did the acute, learned, and watchful astronomer recognise the existence of the planet Neptune by its influence on other heavenly bodies before it came within range of his telescope; he calculated its size, although he had never seen it, and the only thing he did not discover, to the surprise of the American humorist, was the name of the planet; that followed the actual vision. We, however, know our planet, his size, his name, and everything about him; he is the Bishop. I should be disposed, if I might without disrespect, and I believe I should express the sentiment of many others in doing so, to meet the discovery with the expression, Que diable allait-il fair dans cette galere?" He is established under the mantle of the hon. and gallant Member for the Newport Division of Shropshire; he shoves his nominees on the committees and sub-committees, he directs and guides the teaching in denominational schools, he keeps up the calorifere, he pumps in the proper atmosphere, he sees that the inner door has its hinges well oiled. An ingenious friend of mine has furnished me with a little diagram showing the effect of all these different authorities. It looks like a family tree, or perhaps it more resembles in some respects those wax models of the human frame, with the skin removed, the veins shown in one colour, the arteries in another, the nerves in a third, and so on. Here are the ecclesiastical ramifications coloured red, and the civil control in black, and they run through each other from the beginning to the end of the whole business; and this ecclesiastical tree sends out its branches into the entire system.
    Here is your unification and co-ordination; here is your public control and all the other advantages you have promised; here is your provision for infusing fresh vitality into this old nation to enable it to set up successful rivalry with its competitors. Why, Sir, I

    945
    could go on at length pointing out in consistencies and injustices, but I have said enough for my purpose. The crowning defect of this Bill is that is fails to create—nay, it does its best to smother and alienate—that popular interest in education, that appreciation of it, and that desire for it, without which the best system the ingenuity of man could devise would fail. On that ground, if on no other, I hold it to be unworthy of the support of the House, and therefore beg to move the Amendment standing in my name.
    Amendment proposed,
    "To leave out the word 'now,' and at the end of the Question to add the words 'upon this day three months,'"—(Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman.)
    Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
    MR. WALTER LONG: Anybody who today had strayed into the House for the first time to listen to our debates, would have found it hard to believe that we were commencing the last stage of the discussions on a Bill which we have been assured is one of the worst measures ever brought into the House of Commons, and one which has shaken the heart of the nation to is foundation. The speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition must, I think have forced many of us, on this side at all events, to the conclusion that he had failed to do two things which he should have done before proposing the rejection of the Bill—first, seriously to address himself to the consideration of the practical problem with which the Government were faced and had to deal when they approached this question, and secondly, carefully to study the Bill itself. Throughout the greater part of his speech the right hon. Gentleman failed altogether to realise the practical difficulties with which the Government were confronted when they came to the consideration of the education problem. The right hon. Gentleman said a great deal in criticism of our proposals, but it would be difficult to discover from his criticism what policy he would recommend the country to adopt if he were sitting on this instead of on that side of the House.
    So far as I was able to follow his criticism, his suggestion is that instead of
    946
    the proposals of the Government a universal system of School Boards ought to be established. I do not know whether I am right or wrong. If I am right, I say that the right hon. Gentleman has failed to appreciate one of the elementary facts of this education problem with which every student has been face to face for many years. The right hon. Gentleman talks of the position of the School Boards solely from the point of view of the School Boards in the towns, and he ignores the difficulties in all the rest of the schools of the country. He talks only of the School Boards in the large towns, where, it is true, they have done some excellant work for elementary education, and where they have made excellent efforts in connection with secondary eudcation. When he says that these School Boards have done this good work, and we are displacing them because they have done it, he talks as if School Boards generally had done this and made this provision; but he fails altogether to recognise that outside the large School Board areas it has in the past been impossible to make any efforts at all in the direction of secondary education.
    The right hon. Gentleman found some fault with out Bill for reasons which I will refer to very briefly. His first cirticism was that we were trying to do the impossible, and that we were trying to reconcile a national system with a denominational system. He also said that the denominational system must come to an end and the national system must prevail. In regard to the great Act of 1870 which passed through Parliament, precisely the reverse has followed to that which has been prophesied by the right hon. Gentleman. What is the position of the Voluntary schools today? Have we been driven into a national system by the Act of 1870? The right hon. Gentleman, like other critics of the Government, seems to me to have fallen into the error, both in this House and in the country, of determining to ignore altogether all that has been done by the denominational system, and while he is full of praise for the School Boards, he had not one word to say for the great work of education

    947
    done by the various hurches, a great deal of which was done at a time when no national system of education was provided.
    I will say a word presently about the right hon. Gentleman's comments upon public control. As to his general criticism on the Bill, I maintain that whether his criticism is upon the way in which we deal with School Boards, or upon the attempts at unification, it is a humorous description of the new education authority brought into existence under this Bill, and his criticisms are made because he fails to realise what are the essential difficulties with which we have to deal in this country. The right hon. Gentleman found fault because we have the County Council as the education authority and also the Council of the smaller boroughs. If the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition had been sitting on the Treasury Bench and responsible for the Government, does believe, either in regard to education or any other from of local government, he would be able to propose to this House a measure which ignored the position of the existing boroughs and the larger urban districts in regard to their powers of administration and rating? If he does believe that, then it is not fair to say that we are doing nothing. He says that all we do is to abolish the School Boards; but is that nothing? You must select one authority, and we have gone as far as we can in the direction of unification—as far as it is practical. When the right hon. Gentleman says we have abolished School Boards, no doubt he is right, but does he propose to transfer the powers of the Municipal Councils to the School Boards, or leave the two bodies to work in the same area?
    We must come, after all these vague criticisms, to the consideration of the practical question. Have we approached this problem with a due regard to the practical difficulties which exist, or have we done—as I submit we have—the best that was possible under the circumstances? I do not deny that the right hon. Gentleman might be able to propose a general remedy if you had no municipal districts and no powers and statutes already in existence, but that is not the case here. This is the main difficulty we have always to contend with when we deal with
    948
    local government. You are compelled to have regard to the existing authorities and their powers, and it is impossible to override their powers wholesale or to ignore the position which these local authorities have occupied. We have done this, and I venture to repeat that the right hon. Gentleman is not justified in criticising us unless he is prepared to tell us that, if he had been in our place, he would have been more courageous.
    What, after all, are the main criticisms? The right hon. Gentleman has repeated them. I do not wonder that he has not repeated all the criticisms that have been made, because of the length of time and the number of speeches which they have occupied. The length to which many of these speeches ran naturally led to this result, that there is very little left to be said on either side in regard to this question; and the right hon. Gentleman has practically repeated criticisms which we have already met many times, and they come to this: That the proposal of the Government is unjust, because it does too much for the denominational system, because it is a departure from the recognised principles of local government, and that it is so unjust and so bad that it will not be workable, and the local authorities will decline to carry it out. Is there any foundation for these very serious charges? The right hon. Gentleman, as I have already said, does not seem to me to have attempted to grapple with the real difficulties of this question. He says we were forced to deal with it because of the Cockerton judgment. I submit that that is only a very partial statement of the case.
    The right hon. Gentleman himself, in the speeches he made in the country at the time of the General Election, declared that education and the completion of the education system was one of the first questions to which any Government ought to address itself. In all parts of the country speeches were made declaring that national education should be dealt with by the Government, and therefore to suggest that we dealt with it in order to get rid of the School Boards is to make a statement which cannot possibly be maintained. We were face to face with the educational difficulty as it existed. You had a large number

    949
    of local authorities. You had 2,500 School Boards with 5,800 board schools under their control, and 14,000 voluntary schools which gave you over 15,000 independent education authorities with no co-ordination and no connection whatever between them, and no means whatever by which the Country Council, charged as it is with secondary education, could connect secondary education with elementary education. There was no inducement given to the minor local authorities to unite their system with the system of the superior authority.
    That was the practical problem which we had to face. We faced it, as the House knows, by, so far as we could, limiting the number of authorities responsible for education. We have given the County Council wide powers. We have given the boroughs with a population of 10,000, and urban districts with 20,000 inhabitants, control over their own elementary education. In place of these 15,000 local authorities charged with the duties of education and with the task of providing funds for education, this Bill will provide a very greatly reduced number of athorities, and will enable the main local authority to control the education of the country in a way that was impossible before.
    The right hon. Gentleman says that we have done all this to preserve the denominational system. Whether you have regard to the historical aspect of the question or the work that this denominational system has done, or from the practical point of view of pounds, shillings, and pence, no other course was possible than the one the Government has adopted. I will not take up the time of the House by going into the historical question. Everybody knows what has been done to provide educational facilities. Let the House look at the question from a pounds, shillings, and pence point of view. The House is familiar with the various estimates which have been made, but a very moderate estimate puts the providing of additional school places, if all the voluntary schools were got rid of at twenty-five millions sterling. [OPPOSITION cries of "Oh, oh!" and an HON. MEMBER: "About £15,000,000!"] In order to save time, I will take it at
    950
    £15,000,000 for the purposes of argument. That is a very serious sum. We are told that we ought to have bought out all have these voluntary schools. If it had been just and right to do this in the interests of education, would it have been a sensible policy to suggest? These schools are already in existence, and many of them, I say, are very excellent schools, not withstanding what the right hon. Gentleman has said for the work done in them. The right hon. Gentleman, I think, unfairly and unduly stated the case against the voluntary schools when he appeared to imply that a very large number of them are unsuitable for educational purposes. It is quite true that here and there there are voluntary schools of an unsatisfactory kind—[An HON. MEMBER: "There are also bad board schools!"]—but there are a great many very excellent voluntary schools.
    DR. MACNAMARA (): Hear, hear!
    MR. WALTER LONG: The right hon. Gentleman says the origin of this Bill was the cry of the supporters of voluntary schools that they could not provide for their schools, but that was not their cry. What was said, and said with great truth and force, was that it was not just that they should have to provide for voluntary schools on the one hand, and on the other hand, and on the other hand be rated for the maintenance of board schools. They also said that the competition between the schools provided out of the rates by an elceted body who thought of nothing but what they had to do as the education authority, and a school which had no rates to fall back upon, was very severe and unfair. But nevertheless they struggled on with great self-denial and difficulty, and found large sums of money in order to maintain and improve these voluntary schools. It would have been a gross injustice to them to have ignored all the work they had done, and from a business point of view it would have been an act of folly to have turned over these 15,000 schools from those who now owned them to new body; and for what reason? For no reason on earth except that hon. Gentlemen opposite believe and try to prove that the control over these schools is not sufficient. The control which the local

    951
    authority will have is full and complete, and I can show to the House that these educational proposals of the Government follow strictly and completely all precedents in regard to the past history of local government. What has been the form which local government has taken in regard to the poor law and in regard to highways? They were maintained by the parishes and by highway districts, and Parliament made what had been a charge upon a district a charge upon the whole parish or county. The same cry was raised then as now. It is obvious that whatever portion of this expenditure is to be borne out of the local rates, if you are going to transfer the burden and spread it over a wider area or over the county, there must be an imposition of a fresh burden upon some of the ratepayers, although there is a real relief given to the other ratepayers. The system may not be the best that could be adopted, but the Prime Minister in the Bill which he has now very nearly carried through this House has followed strictly and accurately the precedents in regard to local government.
    I maintain that there is only one other course if the House rejects these proposals, and that is to adopt what apparently finds favour with the right hon. Gentleman opposite, namely, what is known as the ad hoc system. Does anybody seriously suppose now, in 1902, that in any proposals for education or any similar purpose we are to revert again to an ad hoc election of a separate body for this particular work? [An HON. MEMBER: Yes.] Then all I can say is that Gentlemen who make that proposal fly absolutely in the face of the experience of the last twenty years with respect to local government. If there is one truth that is more persistently borne in upon anybody who has studied local government than another, it has been that by the multiplication of local authorities, the multiplication of elections, and the confusion of responsibilities and duties, you have sickened the people regarding these popular and local bodies, and if you are going to revive interest, if you are going to whip the people up to take an interest in elections, and if you are going to bring in the right sort of people to serve on local bodies, it will only be by reducing th number of local elected bodies, and by concentrationg the work in the hands of one or more of them, and so
    952
    far as possible, making it perfectly clear that the local authority for a particular area, and not a local authority for this, that, or the other, is the local authority responsible to that locality for all that most affects the comfort, the happiness, and the whole well-being of the people. Therefore to suggest that our system is wrong because we have not adopted the ad hoc system in out proposals, is to fly in the very teeth of the experience of anybody who has taken the trouble to study the question.
    What is the nature of the charge that is made against the local authority? It is—and the right hon. Gentleman repeated this—that the control of the local authority is not a real one. We are asked to believe that the local authority has no control. The right hon. Gentleman told us that the control of the local authority is remote and indirect, and he had a great deal to say about committees and sub-committees. I have made it my business to examine and to put down very briefly here what is exactly the position of the local authority, which the right hon. Gentleman said is so remote and indirect that its authority is practically nil. In the first place, the local authority publicly elected is responsible for and has full control over all secular education in its area. In the second place, it appoints one-third of the managers in the non-provided schools. It has the right to inspect all the schools within its area. In the next place, the managers are compelled under this Bill when it becomes law to carry out all the instructions with regard to secular education which the local authority sees fit to give them. They also exercise powers as to the qualifications of the teachers employed in the schools. The managers have the power of dismissal of teachers on educational grounds. The consent of the local authority is required to the appointment and dismissal of teachers upon educational grounds, the managers are compelled to provide the schools and maintain them; and the local authority has power to provide a new school with the consent of the Education Department. I submit that that is a list of powers—powers given for the first time—to these popularly elected education authorities, which if it is accurate, and I maintain it is accurate, entirely disposes of

    953
    the argument on which the right hon. Gentleman based his contention that the position of the local authority is a sham, and that it has no reality. Their control is full and complete.
    The local authority, the right hon. Gentleman tells us, acts through committees, and its powers is therefore diluted. To listen to these attacks upon the Bill one would think that the Gentlemen who make them had never studied or taken any interest in the local government of our country. What after all is our system of local government? It is a system of local government where the local authority is supreme, but where the whole work is done through committees of various kinds. We have been told all through these debates that is no precedent for the devolution of work from the County Councils to the committees. Has the right hon. Gentleman never heard of the Standing Joint Committee? Does he pretend that that is an unpopular body, or that it does its work badly, or that it has not been loyally accepted by the people of our various counties? There are several other committees of the local authorities which stand in the same position. But the local education committee is not independent of the County Council. It is not in the position of the Standing Joint Committee. It has not got the right to issue its precept for expenditure; it has to come back to the County Council for every penny that it spends, and it has to receive the assent and the approval of the County Council for the expenditure. It has no right to expend money without the knowledge and approval of the County Council. If that be the case, and it is the case, how can it be maintained that the position of the local authority with regard to education is a sham, and that it has not got full and complete control? The right hon. Gentleman tells us that the County Councils that are suddenly to be made the education authorities are not elected for this purpose at all. I have listened to that statement, made repeatedly in the course of these debates, and for the life of me I cannot see what force it has. If there is anything in it at all it would follow that you are never to pass measures through the House conferring fresh powers on the local authorities of the country until you have first consulted them as to what view they would take of the proposal.
    954
    What is the history of local Government? Is it not the case that local authorities have been created and their duties have been added to from time to time, and is there any reason why we should not entrust them with this educational work? The right hon. Gentleman said that they had not had educational work to perform hitherto. A great many of them have done excellent work with funds provided, not out of the rates, but in connection with what was called the "whisky money," which was given for that purpose. I maintain that there is no justification whatever for the argument of the Leader of the Opposition and his friends that the County Councils are not bodies created for this purpose, and that therefore they ought not to be entrusted with the work which they will have to do. I submit that I have shown that this Bill follows, and follows closely, the precedents to be found in previous history in regard to local govenment, and that the control of the local authority is full and complete in every way.
    We have heard something said, not by the right hon. Gentleman, but by other crities, many on our own side of the House, in regard to the question of finance. My right hon. friend the Member for Thanet spoke strongly upon that in the earlier part of our proceedings this afternoon. I have already said that the new local authority has full control with regard to expenditure. They alone can authorise expenditure, they alone can levy the rates necessary. But my right hon. friend asked that the Government should state more clearly what was their estimate of the expenditure which will be incurred under this Bill. It is quite impossible for anybody to say what will be the amount of that portion of the expenditure which is dependent upon the decision of the local authorities, and which they will provide for themselves. The local authority is given a very wide discretion. It is given the power to decided what shall be the standard, and what shall be done with regard to education in its own area. It is impossible for us to lay down what will be the view taken by each local authority of the work necessary in its own area. We know what are the grants in aid that are being made under these new proposals, and I venture to say, with great respect to hon. Members on both

    955
    sides of the House, that the contribution made out of the Exchequer is more liberal than, as a rule, has been made in Bills of this kind. What is it, after all, that the Government provide? The new grant under the Bill is estimated to run to £2,100,000. The grants as they stand now are £625,000 for voluntary schools, £217,000 for School Boards, a total of £842,000. Deducting that from the £2,100,000, we have an additional grant fo £1,257,500. The present voluntary subscriptions in 1901 amounted to £834,000. It is said that these will disappear, but I hope not. But assuming that the sum remains, and is passed over to repairs, there still remains £466,000 additional grant in aid of rates. I should be the last person in the world to suggest that this should be regarded as a final settlement, but I do say that at this stage it is as much as could be asked from the Government. The whole question of taxation, the distribution of the burden between the Imperial and the local exchequers, is one which must be approached by Parliament, and I hope satisfactorily settled, before long. But I submit that in connection with this expenditure on education it would be unreasonable to ask that more should be done at the present moment.
    I want to deal with one question which must remain for the present a matter of opinion. We have been told repeatedly during these debates that the County Councils and others are not going to give effect to this Bill if it passes. I may be more sanguine than hon. Gentlemen opposite, but I confess that I do not share that opinion. Hon. Gentlemen opposite may criticise this Bill adversely, but I do not think any of them will deny that there is in it a great deal that must be useful, that there is an abundant opportunity for good educational work for a steady advance of education, if it is taken full advantage of. The Leader of the Opposition, if there was to be a change of Government, would, no doubt, speak with greater authority from this side of the House than from that, but we have not heard one word from him which would justify us in believing that some more generous or satisfactory proposal would come from them. What is it that these local authorities will have to face? First, that this Bill undoubtedly gives them opportunities which will enable them to
    956
    do great good in educational work; that the present education system is incomplete; that there are gaps to be filled up, and a great deal of work to be done. Are they going to decline to complete this chain so far as this Bill will enable them to do it? Are they going to say, "No, we admit there is work to be done, but we will not do it because this Bill does not meet our wishes?" The main criticism of the Bill is not that it falls short of what it should be in its practical proposals. It is that it does too much for denominational schools. The children of the country are asking for bread in the form of education; are you going to give them, in answer, the stone of religious controversy? Are you going to say to them, "We admit that there is good in this Bill, that it gives us great opportunities for educational reform and advancement, but because we say that we object to your system that of maintaining existence the denominational schools, therefore for that reason alone we will turn our backs on all the opportunities with which you have presented us, and we will do nothing for the people of our district, whatever they may be doing in others?" I do not believe that to be a true forecast of what the local authorities will do. I believe that they will realise their responsibility, and appreciate their opportunities. I believe they will do under this Bill what they have done under previous Acts of Parliament—they will realise what is possible, they will approach their work with a single-minded desire to do their best for those among whom they live. I believe they will find in this Bill the machinery necessary for the purpose, and I believe that they will give effect to it, and thereby do great and lasting good to the nation.
    *(4.30.) SIR CHARLES DILKE (): The greater portion of the religious controversy on which we have been engaged in considering this Bill has proceeded not from this side but from the other side of the House; and, while we on this side have said singularly little on any form of religious controversy, we have been auditors of very long debates on religious subjects, which have proceeded from the other side. The right hon. Gentleman said that my right hon. friend the Leader of the Opposition

    957
    failed to realise the difficulties of the Government, and that that was why my right hon. friend was unable to properly criticise the scheme of the Bill. It is our view that these difficulties are mainly of their own creation, and that it is the plan on which they have chosen to deal with the subject that is responsible for the difficulties in which they find themselves, and the difficulties into which they have plunged the country. The right hon. Gentleman said that in abolishing the School Boards of the country it was impossible for the Government to ignore the Town Councils; but he spoke of them as though they were hostile representatives of local feeling to the School Boards.
    MR. WALTER LONGdissented.
    *SIR CHARLES DILKE: The right hon. Gentleman said that the Government could not ignore the Town Councils.
    MR. WALTER LONG: But I did not say that they were hostile representatives of local feeling.
    *SIR CHARLES DILKE: The right hon. Gentleman said that in abolishing the School Boards they could not ignore the Town Councils, and that seemed to the right hon. Gentleman to be a ground for handing over these duties to the Councils, very largely against their own wishes. The right hon. Gentleman ignored the fact that there are hon. Members present who represent constituencies in which the Town Councils and the School Boards take precisely the same view of this Bill, and where the School Board, which it is proposed to abolish, and the Town Council, to whom it is proposed to hand over these duties, equally condemn the Bill. Indeed, in many cases, the Bill is more strongly condemned by the Town Council than by the School Board. The right hon. Gentleman made his main appeal to the House by saying that no other course was possible. No other course possible than one which two years ago no one in the country foresaw, than one which three years ago the Government themselves did not foresee, than one which the Archbishop until Convocation passed Resolutions in favour
    958
    of it! The right hon. Gentleman told the House that the control to be given by the Bill to a popularly elective authority would be full and complete in every way; and as an example of the extreme popularity of these elective bodies to whom the work was to be given, he instanced the Standing Joint Committee of the rural County Councils. A body less popular, less really representative of the ratepayers is hardly known; and the right hon. Gentleman must have a curious notion of what is a popularly elective body for functions of this kind if he thinks—
    MR. WALTER LONG: The right hon. Gentleman has misunderstood me. I did not say it was a popularly elective body.
    *SIR CHARLES DILKE: The word popular occurred just before and just after the right hon. Gentleman's reference; but, at all events, he compared the Standing Committee with popularly elected School Boards in direct touch with the ratepayers. Now I take issue with the whole principle of the right hon. Gentleman's speech. In the division on leave to bring in the Bill only about twenty-five of us voted No! Most of those who have lately taken the strongest course against the Bill were opposed to our action at the time. We divided because we thought the Bill hopelessly bad. They did not, but have now for the most part come over to our view. The one Liberal Member representing a Scottish constituency not directly affected, who still holds out, and two or three advanced men outside the House, for whose opinions also those who care for education have a high respect, have continued to be favourable to the Bill because they think it creates in each district a single educational authority. We need not inquire if that is so. It is enough that, as regards the rural counties, the single authority is a bad one, because the area is far too large. In the rural areas themselves this opinion is generally entertained. Tories and Liberal Unionists hold it as strongly as we do; and on this main point all reasonable people are agreed. The opposition is reinforced in the rural areas of the West of England by the strong feeling which exists among Churchmen as to the jobbery by which the

    959
    public money, specially granted a few years ago to voluntary schools, has been wasted by Diocesan Boards. The special representation of the Diocesan Boards on the County Education Committee is a portion of the Government plan.
    *MR. TALBOT (): Does the right hon. Gentleman refer to Diocesan Boards? What does he mean by jobbery? It is not a word that should be lightly used.
    *SIR CHARLES DILKE: I do not mean that the members of those Boards stole the money; but I mean that money has been given to the schools which had the strongest representation on the Boards, and was not given to the poor schools for which the House intended it.
    *MR. TALBOT: I think that is a statement which should be substantiated by facts.
    *SIR CHARLES DILKE: It is substantiated by many votes at elections in the West of England. The facts as regards Gloucestershire have been published; and the authorities of Church schools have themselves published the definite figures for the West of England in the local press. Those of us who opposed the Bill of 1870 as unduly favourable to voluntary schools,—my right hon. friend the Member for Monmouth shire, my noble friend the Member for Wiltshire, with myself—had come to hope that a School Board system based on popular election in convenient areas, would, in the long run, give us a national system. School Boards were not originally in the Bill of 1870. They were put in by the House, unanimously as regards London, although the London School Board is now also to be destroyed in 1903. As regards the rest of the country, my suggestion of 1870, to have School Boards elected by the ratepayers, carried half the House of Commons against the Government of the day, with the effect that the Government yielded to our view. We believed that the School Boards would gradually supersede the temporary system, as we thought it, of State-aided voluntary schools. It was not so. Still we have accepted, in practice, the compromise of 1870, as modified by subsequent legislation. It was, on the whole, working well. It
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    was working in the rural counties far better than this Bill will work for elementary education. The large School Board districts are excellent; educationally much better than will be the rural county. In the rest of the rural districts the system is not bad for its cost, although it is run very cheaply in many cases. This Bill destroys School Boards, which are doing the best work, and, outside the School Board areas, offers no certainty of improvement, but only an assured additional charge. In the towns it will uproot what exists, substitute chaos for a time, and, in the long run, a system no better than the present, which is good.
    The right hon. Gentleman claimed credit for the higher education portion of the Bill, and referred to the necessity of dealing with the difficulties which had arisen. But these difficulties were brought on the Government by the Cocker ton judgment, the result of which they controlled. We have never opposed the part of the Bill dealing with higher education, and our Amendments were not wrecking Amendments, but were designed to strengthen the Bill. As regards higher education, the School Boards had, rightly we think, done much, and might have done more had they not been interfered with. But we have offered no opposition to the proposals for higher education. We admit that the country was ready for a measure of higher education which might have been carried easily, and might have been a stronger and better measure than the higher education portion of this Bill. The School Board system has been abolished by the House of Commons against, I am convinced, the opinion of the majority of the people, in the districts in which and for which School Boards exist. We regret the destruction of a directly-elective education system, the loss from the School Boards of the workmen, and of others who as representatives of the localities really within the knowledge of the electorate, have learned the work and done the work admirably in the past. If there were to be a new departure, if the risk of creating an entirely new authority was to be run, then, surely, it should have been in connection with the creation of a really national system,

    961
    by the purchase or renting of the voluntary schools and their government by the people in districts of moderate size, not in unmanageable areas such as Lancashire or the West Riding. Even in counties of middling size, the county town is often difficult of access.
    As regards the details of the Government plan, they have been carried by the Closure without adequate discussion. The financial proposals which were discussed were so new at the moment of the debate that it was impossible to bring home to the House the injustice which is done by the extraordinary variation of the rate between parish and parish in one county, under one authority—variation of the rate, without any variation of what is obtained in exchange for it. The strongest case of all is perhaps that of areas which formed a group of united parishes in a School Board district. Some of them not benefited in any way, must find three quarters, or less, probably a half, of the capital expenditure, including that on the school master's house, in a distant parish, and get no consideration for it from the county, while a voluntary school obtains a rent from the county in such cases. Yet the property in the case of the dissolved School Board district is at the absolute command of the County Council, though the district pays and receives nothing. In the other case, where the County Council pays a rent, the schoolmaster's house is not at the command of the county except during elementary school secular hours. As regards the financial considerations, a curious matter arises, that will have to be considered when the time comes, but it is the fact that there are two Amendments which are required to make the Government scheme complete. Those Amendments have not been carried, and if the Government scheme is to work, it was the duty of the Government to have re-committed this Bill today in order to incorporate those Amendments. The Closure which brought about this result has caused very considerable ambiguity in other matters besides the financial propositions of the Bill. It will be responsible for complexities in its provisions which will make it very difficult indeed for willing authorities to carry out the Bill.
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    Owing to the mode in which we have been forced to legislate, the obscurity of the Bill is not confined to the Kenyon-Slaney incomprehensible Amendment, which ought to be made a 40th Article of the Church of England, for it has a similar Parliamentary sanction. Among the new principles rammed in on Thursday night by Closure, without the opportunity of discussion, is an episcopal veto on orders as to the management of voluntary schools, in the form of an opportunity of dissent on the part of either House of Parliament.
    But it is with principle that on this occastion we can best deal. It is our view that to throw the so-called voluntary schools almost entirely on to rates and taxes cuts us off from the movement of the world in education, and constitutes the first thoroughly reactionary piece of legislation in English-speaking countries in our time. The result of what has been done must be that those who desired to keep rural local government away from Party, and to elect to the County Councils all those who, while out of political sympathy with the districts which they represent, are gratefully admired for the work which, in the past, they have well done, will have to join in fighting all the County Council seats upon this Bill. The schemes are to be passed by the existing County Councils, elected without the slightest suspicion that they would have to deal with primary education. The spirit in which the existing authorities are likely to treat the question may be seen from the action which many of them have already taken. Some indeed, however, have declared against the Bill; Wiltshire, for example, by two to one, although there is a Unionist majority upon the Council. A dozen Unionists walked out of the room in order not to have to vote, and others of them voted against the Bill. In Gloucester the same thing happened; and a minority of only eight, deserted by their Unionist friends who walked out, ventured to pronounce themselves favourable to the Bill. In some areas the Councils have not been allowed to express a free opinion In Gloucestershire the right hon. Baronet the Chairman of the County Council treated his Council as the Archbishop of York is said to have treated the House

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    of Laymen. The Member for the Tewkesbury Division ruled a Motion out of order on the ground that it was not the custom of the Council to discuss Bills before Parliament. When it was shown that there was a precedent of his own making, he held that the gentleman who wished to move a resolution against the Bill could only read his notice and ask the Council to place it on the agenda for next Christmas. This notice the Chairman at once called on the Council to reject without debate, saying that the Council could not allow discussion in advance. Before the train containing the representatives of the western portion of the county reached the county capital he threw out the motion by a majority.
    After the old County Councils have prepared the scheme for the constitution of the Committee and the working of the Bill, behind the back of their electors, the new County Councils, to be elected in the spring of 1904, will be elected on this question and will have to reverse the scheme, or even block the scheme until they get their way — the way of the majority. The electors have been challenged by the statement that the County Council is a democratically - elected authority, and we must accept the challenge. It is the only way of making the new system national, but it means carrying the struggle in which we have been here engaged into every parish in the country. We shall do so under some disadvantage. We have allowed the rural magnates to be elected without opposition. Moreover, the franchise and the distribution of seats are far from democratic. The electoral districts are not based on population, but on rateable value, area, and population; and area means the exact opposite of population. To the Gloucestershire County Council nearly 12,000 people in an urban district return one Member, an opponent of this Bill: and three Conservative seats, held by supporters of the Bill, have between 2,000 and 3,000 electors each, or. all three together, far fewer than are represented by one opponent and the same number as are represented by another opponent of the Bill. The existence of county aldermen still further removes the majority from the democratic control of the electorate. That electorate itself is far from being
    964
    popular or democratic, for, while in hardly any case are two miners or two labourers to be found on the county register for a single house, I have named a case where eight supporters of the Bill, six brothers and two sisters, have recently been placed upon the county register in respect of a single country house. The First Lord spoke on Friday of the School Board system as "the only popular system which at present exists." He preaches excellent funeral sermons. But he was the murderer. There is no resurgam on the School Board tombstone; but we shall fight to make the county a great School Board, animated by our spirit and converted to our views. It is not on Nonconformist but on national lines that we shall fight, aided no doubt by that warfare between two clerical factions whose internecine hatreds are far stronger than is the hostility of Protestant dissenters to the Church.
    Some have advised the refusal of the rate. There are those whose conscience is so touched that they will refuse to pay and will endure whatever consequences are imposed. If the policy should be recommended to others whose consciences are not affected, it becomes an alternative policy: an alternative to the necessary policy of fighting every County Council seat. None of us would attempt to argue with those to whom it is a case of conscience. Most of us here feel that it is as objectionable to have to pay taxes permanently towards a non-national system as to pay rates. When it comes to advising those whose consciences are not touched, I do not think we can advise them to refuse the rate. We shall advise them to fight every County Council seat, and then, after the unnecessary conflict forced upon us is conlcuded, we may hope that the rural county will become one great, though cumbersome, School Board, capable of discharging, less well, the function which School Boards for districts of moderate size performed so admirably under the system which you have destroyed. There is no third policy. Some call on us to declare that we shall repeal the act when we come into power. It will never be repealed, though it must be amended. Humpty-Dumpty cannot be set up again. The School Boards once destroyed are destroyed for ever. But the rural county can be cut up into

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    districts under the Bill and each of these made into a great popular School Board.
    There are some of us who deeply regret that the time of the Prime Minister in his first session as Prime Minister should have been spent upon this unhappy Bill. His high and deserved personal reputation has gained by his tactical conduct of the Bill. But some of us had hoped to be able to work with him, though from opposite sides of the House, towards national ends. Now he has turned every parish into a cockpit. It is with sorrow that we find ourselves called upon to consume for a year and a quarter all our energies in a fight of half the nation against the other half;but in that struggle we do not expect to prove inferior to our traditions.
    (5.6) MR. CRIPPS (): I should not have taken part in this debate at its present stage but for an expression used by the right hon. Baronet opposite, which I think ought to be challenged at the earliest possible moment. The right hon. Baronet brought a charge of jobbery against the Diocesan Boards. I challenge him, either inside or outside the House, now or hereafter, to bring forward a single fact which can really justify such an allegation.
    *SIR CHARLES DILKE: I will supply the hon. and learned Member with the facts as soon as I can get them;they were published about a year and a half ago.
    MR. CRIPPS: I have seen the accounts, but the fact that accounts are published is no justification of a charge of this kind. It is natural enough that where you have limited funds at your disposal, the people who do not get so large a portion of those funds as they had hoped for should be discontented. We all admit that, but I say that this charge against the Diocesan Boards of what is really wholesale jobbery in connection with public funds committed to their care, is a monstrous allegation, which should be followed up by specific data. It is not a charge to be lightly made, and I hope the right hon. Baronet will either follow up his allegation with specific
    966
    instances, or withdraw a charge which ought never to have been made, particularly in this House, against a body of men who have fulfilled a great public duty, merely on published accounts—
    *SIR CHARLES DILKE: The hon. and learned Member says, "particulary in this House." If the implication is that the charge has not been made in the locality, I may say that I made it in the locality a year and a half ago.
    MR. CRIPPS: If the right hon. Baronet did so make it, he ought to be the more prepared with specific data. The right hon. Baronet not only charged the Diocesan Boards with jobbery, but he charged corruption of the worst kind, in my opinion, against the Government. He stated that the Government had controlled the decision in the Cockerton case;in other words, that the Government had intervened, as a Government, and interfered with the decision of the Court.
    *SIR CHARLES DILKE: I did not use that phrase, and if the hon. and learned Member is about to found an argument upon it, he had better take the phrase I did use. What I said was that the result of that judgment was under their control.
    MR. CRIPPS: I took down the words of the right hon. Baronet. If he withdraws them, well and good, but they were that the Government "controlled" the Cockerton judgment.
    *SIR CHARLES DILKE: I said that the result of that judgment was under their control.
    MR. CRIPPS: If the right hon. Baronet says that that is what he meant I need not go further into the matter. But I do not wish to bandy words on a point of this kind. I took down that the judgment—that is, the opinion of the Court—had been influenced or controlled by the Executive Government.
    *SIR CHARLES DILKE: Oh no.
    MR. CRIPPS: Then what does the right hon. Baronet mean when he talks

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    about the control of the Cockerton judgment by the Government? What is done after a judgment of that kind is a matter of policy, and men may agree or disagree with it. If that is what the right hon. Baronet means, I have no fault to find with what he said, but his words conveyed not only to me, but to others, an entirely different meaning. If that is withdrawn—
    *SIR CHARLES DILKE: I do not withdraw anything. I adhere to what I said, but I certainly did not mean that, and I am under a strong impression that I did not say it.
    MR. CRIPPS: Any way, I took down the words at the time. Then there was a statement with regard to the teachers house which I did not follow. Does the right hon. Baronet imply that those houses, or any of them, have been constructed as charge on the rates, or that since 1870 they have been constructed out of any charge on or loan from the National Exchequer?
    *SIR CHARLES DILKE: I referred to an extinguished School Board district, into which parishes had been brought to make a sufficiently large area for rating purposes. Some of those parishes have never derived any benefit from the school, the school being in a distant parish, but they will have to bear a liability for building the house.
    MR. CRIPPS: I will deal with that, but it is an entirely different point. That is a question which may be argued as to the adjustment of rating liability between different parishes or districts. But I understood the right hon. Baronet to say that the exception of teachers' houses was peculiarly inadvisable, because, in many cases, those houses had been built out of a charge upon the rates.
    *SIR CHARLES DILKE: The case I was putting was of exactly the nature I have just described, viz., a couple of rural parishes in a School Board;they have to bear a liability, from which they have never derived any benefit, and they will have to pay not only for the building but also for the school-house. I said that the hardness of the case was there
    968
    shown by the fact that although they gave the buildings to the country they got no rent for them, whereas the voluntary school managers would get a rent for the schoolmasters' houses.
    MR. CRIPPS: Then I quite misunderstood the right hon. Baronet's statement and argument. As regards the distribution between the county area and the minor area, that, of course, is a matter upon which we may have differences of opinion. But that is quite a different question from the allegation which has been more than once made in this House, viz., that these teacher's houses for which a rent will in future have to be paid, if they belong to denominational bodies, have been constructed out of a charge on the ratepayers. I absolutely deny that that is a fact. Since 1870 there has not been a farthing of charge on the taxpayers in connection with teachers' houses.
    Now, Sir, I will say a word or two in reference to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition. The right hon. Gentleman, in his amiable way, summed up the views of the Opposition against the proposals of the Government. His first allegation was that there was a necessary antithesis between what he called a national and a denominational system. Apart from the play upon words, I might appeal on this point to what has been said several times from the Benches opposite. There is no antithesis. Here, however, we come to the question we have discussed, viz., whether the particular proposal of the Government for the incorporation of the denominational into the national system is in itself a wise and good measure, but that is an entirely different matter. It is a misapprehension, at the very outset, to treat these two points as necessarily inconsistent. They were made consistent in 1870 by the Liberal Government of the day, they have been carried on as consistent ever since, and I thought it was more or less common ground that any national system must comprehend the denominational system, having regard to the history of education in this country.
    The next statement of the right hon. Gentleman was, I thought, rather one of prejudice, viz., that questions had

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    arisen as to the respective parts laymen and clerics should play in national education, and that he was wholly for the laymen. That was a very bold way of describing what the point of discussion has been. I think that almost every one who has followed the arguments has come to the conclusion that you must have both the lay and the clerical element in education, and that the question is simply as to the relative share that each should take. I have always been opposed to "one-man management," and I welcome this Bill because it introduces into what are really private schools a local representative element. It has been supposed that some Members on this side want to destroy or diminish the element of lay management. That is not the case except within the region of doctrine, which has been especially preserved to one class under the trust deeds. I do not believe there is a single Member who desires to turn the lay element out of the managing body as regards public elementary education. They simply desire that questions of doctrine should not be at the will of—not a representative body in the true sense of the term, but of a body of casually appointed laymen.
    The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition then referred to what is sometimes called the constitutional question—that where you have public expenditure you ought to have public control. There, again, I do not believe a single Member on this side of the House disagrees with that general proposition. The question is whether the Bill gives a fair measure of public control as regards public expenditure. On that point there has been a great deal of misapprehension, and I should like to say a few words on what I consider to be the true basis and theory by which to test whether or not you have a proper control in relation to the public expenditure. To begin with, it seems to be forgotten that, whatever the proportions may be, you get your funds partly from the National Exchequer and partly from rates. The funds which come from the National Exchequer are safeguarded from this House through the Education Department, who, through their inspectors, see that the requirements of the Code, for which this House is responsible, are carried out. It
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    is just the same as regards every grant made by this House for the purposes of local expenditure. Our one and only security is the control we have over the spending Department, whether it is the Board of Education, the Home Office, or any other, who act through their various inspectors. The portion of the expenditure which in future will be provided for the denominational schools, in reference to which the question of public control arises, is therefore that which comes from the rates. What are the conditions as regards the rates? I admit that it is impossible to make a very accurate estimate as regards the future, but the best estimate of the charge upon the rates is that it will not exceed one-sixth or one-seventh of the whole expenditure on voluntary schools under the Bill. In respect of that expenditure, you not only get the entire local control, as regards secular education, but even as regards education which is not secular—that is, in the general management —you get one-third representation. The challenge I make is this. It is no good talking about the control of the representation. If I am right in my contention that only one-sixth or one-third of the expenditure of denominational schools be thrown upon the rates, and if in respect of that you give the ratepayers one-third of the management as regards religious education. I want to know have I established my proposition that under this Bill you give a complete and a more than complete element of public control as regards any question of expenditure? [OPPOSITION laughter.] It is all very well for hon. Members opposite to laugh, but I challenge them as regards the argument. I challenge them to say what principle they suggest to give a larger element of public control as regards expenditure. I know that hon. Members opposite would like to do away with denominational bodies altogether. I will not go back upon this argument, for it has been argued again and again, and if those in favour of denominational education have not made their position absolutely certain up to this point, it is no good arguing the matter any further. Assuming that you maintain denominational education, and assuming that the question is whether you give a sufficient measure of representative control to the

    971
    ratepayers, there is no answer to what I say—that you give a far larger measure of representation than ought to be given as regards any possible expenditure that will occur under this Bill.
    There is one other matter with which the right hon. Gentleman dealt, and upon which I should like to say one or two words before I sit down. Apart from this control of expenditure. I want to deal with what has been said as regards public control from the point of view of public representation on the management only. I must say that I think the right hon. Gentleman cannot have appreciated in what he said how matters of local government are managed, not only in our counties but in county boroughs. I will not go into what was said by the right hon. Gentleman who represents the Local Government Board. It is notorious that the whole tendency of local self-government in this country has been towards concentration and uniformity, whether you take the parish constable or the parish road or the poor law. In every direction you have had this same system of concentration upon particular bodies, and therefore these bodies must act through committees. What does the right hon. Gentleman mean as regards the absence of representative control because you act through committees or sub-committees?
    SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: But they are not committees of elected members.
    MR. CRIPPS: Let me deal with the right hon. Gentleman's two points. As regards their not being a committee of elected members, that is nothing more than a question of administration. As a matter of fact, under this Bill as it stands every single member of the local education authority might be a member of the representative body. I do not know how far this tendency will be carried out, but we have the analogy of the committees under the Technical Instruction Acts. This only means that you reinforce your representative element by an expert element;and what has been found as a matter of practical administration is that you get better results if you have an elected element and an expert element as well. I go further, and say that if you are to take most of the views expressed by progressive Members on the other side of the House as regards municipal
    972
    government, they all agree upon this, because they have expressed the opinion more than once that the best way of ensuring efficient municipal representative government is not merely by trusting to the representative element alone, but also by including the expert or special representative. In this particular case you may introduce it or not, and I should have thought that the right hon. Gentleman opposite might have trusted local representative bodies on this point to carry out their duties in the best possible administrative manner. I am one of those who always very much regretted that the general principle of uniformity has been impaired by the special treatment of urban and borough councils, for I have always looked upon that as a limitation which interferes to that extent with the main principle of the Bill. I regret it enormously, but what I want to put is that there is still an enormous advance under this Bill upon the conditions which exist at the present moment. What can be better than to take the parish as the basis of the area for educational purposes, and although under this Bill a borough of a particular size and an urban district of a particular size have been maintained, there is an enormous advance in spreading the local interests as regards education over a far wider area than before. Although I will not use the word "contempt" I do say that I think the right hon. Gentleman used somewhat contemptuous language in regard to this principle in the Bill.
    I speak from the experience I have had upon this educational question, and from the knowledge I have of the propularity of this Bill in the great industrial centres of the North. [OPPOSITION laughter]. There is no county in which this Bill is so popular as in the great manufacturing county of Lancashire. There is no county and no County Council which has received this Bill in the same spirit as Lancashire, although the County Council in Lancashire is under the leadership of a gentleman who does not agree with the Government in political matters, but who at the same time is one of the greatest educational experts—I allude to Sir John Hibbert. This Bill has been received in this way in Lancashire because it has co-ordinated education, and it is an extraordinary argument to put forward at this stage of the Bill, as has been put forward by the right hon. Gentleman opposite, that this measure

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    in any way interferes with what everyone who is in favour of this Bill had looked upon as the element which they cared most about, namely, that it will enable the poor child to start at the bottom of the education ladder, and, if his abilities justify it, he will be provided with secondary edcuation right up to the univerisity. Upon this point I do repudiate most strongly the suggestions made from the opposite side that there is something of the obscurantist element in this Bill. If I thought it was not for the advantage of education—and the main point is after all whether it is a good educational meausre or not—If I did not believe that from an edcuational point of view this is a great and a most beneficial edcuational reform, I should not have supported it so cordially as I admit I have always done both in this House and outside.
    It is on that ground that our great industrial centres of the North are in favour of this Bill, and it is on that ground that the isolated country districts are in favour of it. [OPPOSITION cries of "Leeds."] I am talking about the great industrial centres of Lancashire. [OPPOSITION cries of "Bury."] I will give hon. Gentlemen opposite what they can make out of matters of that kind. I understand their opposition to be not on the main lines of the Bill, but on incidental matters which are not educational matters, which have been introduced into the discussion of a great educational question. In undertaking any great and statesmanlike reform in matters upon which the people feel deeply, I willingly admit that a Government must risk popularity. I honour the Government because they have done this. Apart from matters of improtant details, upon which I have expressed my difference of opinion with the Government. I have cordially supported this meausre. But although I feel strongly upon some of these incidental matters, which are of great importance, yet I do feel much more strongly that in its main lines this is a great edcuational reform which will carry out the purpose for which it has been introduced, and from that point of view this Bill will certainly have my most hearty support on the Third Reading.
    *(5.35.)MR. HERBERT SAMUEL (): I must beg the forgiveness of the House if I rise so early to ask its attention. I know that it is
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    somewhat unusual for a Member so newborn as myself to utter anything more articulate than a cheer;but I have been sent to this House with a message on the Education Bill, so special and direct—from a great industrial centre—that I should not be doing my duty if I did not voice in this House the opposition to this measure which my constituents feel so strongly, and which they have expressed so decisively. The objections which we entertain to this Bill are not, as the hon. Member for Stretford appears to think, merely on incidental matters, but they are objections which go to the very root and centre of the matter. We object to this Bill because it destroys the direct popular control of the people over the people's schools. We object to the Bill because it throws the entire cost of education in the voluntary schools of the country on to public funds while it establishes no complete system of popular control. The hon. Member opposite threw down a challenge to the Opposition. He said that it is clear that the control over these schools is ample in proportion to the payment made from the public funds, but when the teachers are paid entirely out of the rates and taxes how can it be said that the public control is ample when the appointment of those teachers in over 12,000 schools is left to a committee of which two-thirds is in no way representative of the people. You cannot allocate one particular branch of revenues to the teachers, and in future the whole income of the schools, apart from the maintenance of the buildings, will come from public funds, and consequently the teachers will be paid entirely out of public funds in a way in which they have never been paid before. Under these circumstances it is not complete public control to leave the appointment of the teachers in the hands of committees which, by a majority of two-thirds, are wholly unrepresentative.
    We object to this Bill because it does not remedy the grievances of Nonconformists in single school areas, and because it imposes sectarian tests upon teachers in 12,000 schools in this country, in which practically no Nonconformist will ever be able to obtain a post as a schoolmaster or schoolmistress. What is the defence offered for these restrictions?

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    It is that the voluntaryists provide the school buildings, and in cases where there are no fees, no endowments, and no teachers' houses, they will also have to pay the cost of repairs. Let me put an illustration. Suppose, for the sake of argument that the Roman Catholic community in this country was a very wealthy community, and suppose they had offered to build national schools for elementary education throughout the country, but on the condition that all the teachers should be Roman Catholics, and that no religious instruction should be given in these schools except Roman Catholic instruction. Would hon. Members opposite have been prepared to accept such an offer as that? I think they would realise at once that the terms were preposterous;and yet when they propose precisely the same terms themselves, in regard to 12,000 schools, for the Nonconformists of England, they are surprised and astonished that the Nonconformists rise in revolt against such terms.
    Would it have been impossible, after all, to have arrived at some new and larger compromise on this question which would have ended once and for all this long wrangle, this lamentable quarrel, which for sixty years has kept the Churches apart, and has so often prevented this House from doing its full duty to the children of the nation? What is it that hon. Members opposite specially desire? It is that the children should have the right to be instructed in the religious doctrines of their parents. Would it have been impossible for us to have conceded that claim? What do we desire on our side? That there should be a national system of education under complete popular control, that there should be equal rights for all sects and no religious tests for the teachers. Would it have been impossible for hon. Members opposite in return to have conceded this to us? Why would it have been so difficult to have introduced a measure transferring, on equitable terms, these voluntary schools to popular control and placing them on the footing of provided schools;giving in them the fullest possible liberty for religious instruction;allowing the teachers themselves to impart non-sectarian religious teaching; allowing ministers of religion, or others nominated
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    by them, to enter the schools and give at the cost of the denominations the definite religious instruction the parents of the children specially desire, and at the same time allowing those parents who did not wish to have any religious instruction given to their children the opportunity of withdrawing them under the Conscience Clause. It would not pass the wit of man, or that highest form of the wit of man, the ingenuity of Cabinet Ministers, to elaborate a scheme of this character. It is no new scheme. It has been said that the system of education in our colonies is entirely secular and undenominational. I find, however, that not only are ordinary Scripture lessons given, but facilities are afforded for special religious teachers to enter the schools to give such denominational instruction as the partents desire their children to receive. In New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania, Manitoba, Ontario, and New Brunswick, the State gives undenominational religious instruction while allowing these facilities to each denomination;in Queensland and New Zealand the State limits itself to secular teaching, but allows the same facilities. There is a similar system in some of the German States, in Hungary, and in Ireland.
    It is said that the cost of purchasing the voluntary schools would make the scheme impossible, but that cost at the outside would not entail a loan that would bring an interest charge of more than half a million a year. It has been urged from this side of the House that it would be impossible to secure teachers to come in from the outside to give adequate religious instruction, but this proposal would supply an automatic test as to how far definite dogmatic instruction was really desired. If the denominations were not willing to pay capable teachers to come in and give the instruction, it would prove that that instruction was not desired. It has been urged, also, with great force, that the children would be divided into various denominational camps, and penned up in various theological folds. But is it seriously imagined that every Nonconformist child, who goes to a Nonconformist Sunday school, is not aware that he is a Nonconformist? Every Roman Catholic child knows from its earliest years that it belongs to the Catholic body and not to the Protestant

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    body, and similarly with other denominations. My right hon. friend the Member for South Aberdeen urged that, after all, this dogmatic teaching was unnecessary, and that the virtues could be inculcated without specific denominational instruction. That is also my own view, but I do not think the State is entitled to say that. The State has no right to declare how much or how little dogmatic teaching is necessary for the formation of character. This House is not a synod, and those who hold Disestablishment views should be the first to proclaim that Parliament is incompetent to say exactly what particular religious principles persons should hold and should be taught. As a Liberal, I wish to see the greatest possible liberty given for all sorts of religious beliefs to be taught, even in the schools paid for by the State. I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Berwick, and the hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon have declared themselves in favour of this, and even the General Committee of the Free Church Council has declared that it would be willing to accept this scheme as a compromise.
    I am profoundly convinced that it is only upon those lines that a settlement of this question will ultimately come. You cannot abolish tests for teachers; you cannot abolish sectarian management; you cannot abolish the denominational system of training colleges, unless you undenominationalise the voluntary schools, and I believe that in practice it will be found impossible to throw the voluntary schools into the general national system unless you at the same time give the right of entry to other religious bodies. But this is not the scheme of this Bill. This is a Bill saturated through and through, from beginning to end, with the very essence of the spirit of sectarianism. And it is a Bill which has been introduced in response to no public demand. I know that some discredit has been cast on the doctrine of the mandate. It is indeed impossible to say that a Government shall never introduce a measure which has not been formally before the country at a General Election; but, on the other hand, a Government has no right to introduce a measure which deeply divides the nation after a General Election
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    which had been specifically limited to another issue. If a Liberal Government had been elected on some question of foreign policy and had used its power to force through a measure, let us say, for the disestablishment of the Church, would not hon. Members on the other side have been the first to cry out and to say that it was a gross abuse of Constitutional usage? The speeches of the Colonial Secretary have been quoted to prove how closely the issue of the last general election was limited to the question of the South African War. But, after all, his speeches can always be quoted on either said in any controversy. The same has been said of Holy Scripture. There, however, the resemblance ends. I go to the speeches of the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury himself. Again and again he told the country that on the South African War alone was the judgment of the nation to be given. In his election address he declared—
    "Every citizen is bound to dismiss all smaller issues."
    In one of his first speeches in Manchester he said—
    "He was anxious that on his first appearance before his constituents not a word should escape him on any collateral subject which should suggest the possibility that there was any other and smaller issue before them than the great question on which the country was required to express its verdict."
    Again he said in Manchester—
    "This is the solitary issue of importance before the constituencies."
    And in his last speech he declared—
    "The poll to-morrow did not turn on any of the old questions which had previously divided the electors. It was a new issue, to be governed by new considerations."
    I have read through with some industry all his speeches during the general election as reported in The Times, but I cannot find one single speech, nor one paragraph in his election address, in which the smallest reference is made to the giving of rate aid, or to giving aid of any sort, to the voluntary schools of this country.
    The hon. Member for the Stretford Division, who spoke last, said that this Bill is very popular in the great centres of industry, although, almost in the same breath, he declared that the Government had risked their popularity in introducing it. There is only one way in

    979
    which the popularity or unpopularity of a measure can be shown, and that is by the votes of the people themselves. There have been since this Bill was introduced six elections in various parts of the country, from the extreme south up to those islands in the north where sea-sick candidates wander disconsolately from rock to rock. [An HON. MEMBER: Devonport.] I am including Devonport, where the circumstances, however, were exceptional and peculiar, and where questions of Imperial politics are sometimes subordinated to somewhat sordid interests. In those six constituencies the Conservative poll has been decreased by 10 per cent., and the Liberal poll, on the other hand, has been increased by 40 per cent. The total Conservative poll was reduced from 31,400 to 27,800, while the total Liberal poll was increased from 22,800 to 31,500. If that shows that this Bill has been popular in the country I am at a loss to know how unpopularity can be shown.
    This is a Bill, also, which has been forced through this House by the exceptional use of the Closure. I have been carefully through the Bill, and I find that it contains, to be precise, just 637 lines, of which no fewer than 184, or not far short of a third, have been passed through the House without a single minute's debate, without the slightest opportunity for discussion or for one solitary Amendment to be moved. Not only that, but the nine pages of Schedules, which contain a large number of improtant provisions which have attracted a great deal of attention throughout the country, have been passed also without being at all before the attention of this House. If it is said that the debates have been protracted, let it be remembered that, though in form one Bill, it is not in reality one Bill at all. It is three Bills merged and amalgamated into one. It is a Bill to revolutionise the system of primary education and to abolish the School Boards; it is a Bill to establish a system of secondary education, or rather to allow others to establish a system of secondary education; and, in the third place, it is a Bill to give rate aid on certain terms to the voluntary schools. All these proposals are more or less distinct from one another, and each needed, and should have had, considerable debate.
    This measure is introduced in response to no public demand; it is resisted with
    980
    great intensity by a large section of the nation; and it has been forced through this House by the use of the Closure. It presents as clear a case as could be presented for action by the Second Chamber. If ever there was a case in which the Second Chamber was justified in rejecting a Bill passed through this House I venture to say this is the occasion. But when Conservatives are in office we have no Second Chamber. For all practical purposes the House of Lords disappears; the Constitution is a single-chamber Constitution; the House of Lords hibernates, and though it may growl in its sleep when stirred by the bishops, it does not awake to resume its destructive activities until a Liberal Ministry is once more in power. This Bill, of course, will pass through the other House with practically no difficulty. The provisions it contains for secondary education will stand. But I am profoundly convinced that the time is not distant when the work with regard to voluntary schools will have to be undone, and that a new settlement on other lines will have to be undertaken. Hon. Members opposite as well as ourselves, I feel sure, must deplore the fact that after these prolonged debates this question of denominational edcuation still remains as one of the unsolved questions before the country. All who realise—as I, for one, fully realise—how much vice, how much crime, how much immorality there are in this country of ours, how potent and how active are the forces that make for evil, who also realise the need for genuine unity and harmony among the various Churches of the country in combating those evils, must all the more deplore that this Bill does nothing to remove, but rather accentuates, the antagonism on this question that has so long existed between the Churches. There can be no cordial harmony, no true unity between the Churches, so long as one is given privileges at the expense of the rest, and so long as education, which should be a national concern, is left to be a battlefield between contending sects.
    (5.58.) MR. WANKLYN (): May I be permitted to offer my congratulations to the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, on the ability he has shown in his speech? I can say for myself that I have derived great pleasure

    981
    from the perusal of his book on "Liberalism." I have never found my own grievance in regard to the existing order of things better put than in the book of which the hon. Gentleman is the author. He says—
    "In two-thirds of the country Board schools and voluntary schools exist side by side, and those who wish their children to be given denominational teaching have not only to pay the School Board rates, but to subscribe to the schools of their own sect as well. Their position is much the same as that of the Dissenters in the days of Church rates, whom conscience compelled to give to the chapel, and law compelled also to give to the Church."
    I read the book with much interest when it was published, and also the preface written by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Fife. I am glad to be able to state that I find myself in agreement with much that the hon. Member has said in his speech, but on the particular question of rate aid I join absolute issue with him.
    The main prejudice has arisen against this Bill, I think, in connection with authorship. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Forest of Dean, in opening his speech, ascribed the authorship of the Bill to Convocation, and generally the authorship has been ascribed to the bishops. The Prime Minister has said more than once that there is no bargain between him and the bishops. Canon MacColl, a life-long friend of Mr. Gladstone, has informed us in a pamphlet he has just published that Convocation was not the author of the Bill. The hon. Member for the Carnarvon Boroughs has done me the honour to suggest that I am the author of the Bill. I may ballowed on the Third Reading to congratulate the hon. Member for Carnarvon on the manner in which he has led the opposition to the Bill, but I cannot claim to be myself the author of it But while I cannot claim the authorship of it, I can let in a little light on that subject. I was asked by one of the authors of the Bill last year—"What would Bradford think, and what woluld Bradford like?" And my answer was that Bradford would like a Bill based on the Memorandum of Mr. Forster to the Cabinet, dated 21st October, 1869. That Memorandum opened with the statement—
    "We must supplement and not supplant,"
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    and went on—
    "Our object, then, is to supplement the present voluntary system—that is, to fill up its gaps at least cost of public money, with least loss of voluntary co-operation. I, therefore, now look with most hope. to compulsory school provision, if and where necessary, but not otherwise;. but it seems to me impossible. unless we divide the country into districts."
    In his speech in the following year in this House, Mr. Forster said—
    "Well, the electoral body we have chosen for the towns is the Town Council. In the Country we have taken the best body we could find—the vestry."
    At that time, of course, of course, the County Councils were not in existence. The Vice President of the Council has told us that he feared the idea of putting the supreme control of secondary education into the hands of the County Councils was not an original idea of any member of the Government, but it was based on Mr. Forster's proposal, which I have just read to the House. The Bill supplements and does not supplant. Next, it places the supreme control of sceular education in the hands of the City Councils and the County Councils, and it follows Mr. Forster's views in another step. Mr. Forster had absolute confidence in the City Councils, and he said he would leave the nomination of the sub-committee to them, with full power of cooptation. "You cannot," said Mr. Forster, "if you put power into the hands of these local bodies, trust them too much." Now I come to the crucial point of rates, and when I am taunted with being singular, it is singular to me how few Members on either side of the House recollect that Mr. Forster always advocated rate-aid to volumtary schools. I am sure that will not be questioned by the Member for North Camberwell, because he knows the education question so thoroughly, and he will recollect, probably, that Mr. Forster, in 1868, introduced himself, with Mr. Bruce, a Bill into this House giving full rate-aid to voluntary schools. Mr. Forster's argument was given in these words—
    "It is not unfair to levy a rate on a Roman Catholic for the secular education of a Methodist. But if the ratepayers give aid to schools they should do so impartially—it to any, then to all efficient schools, whether denominational or secular."

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    And in a letter to Mr. John Bright of October, 1871, he wrote as follows—
    "The power to assist the voluntary schools out of the rates, greatly objected to by the Nonconformists, was omitted."
    But Mr. Forster himself, I have reason to think, never saw onjections to rate-aid to voluntary schools. His original proposal was set out in the words I have read to the House, but it was watered down subsequently. Finally, Mr. Gladstone dealt with the difficulty by giving an extra grant from the Exchequer in lieu of rate-aid, but that grant from the Exchequer, of course, in a very short time became of no more value than the threepenny rate of Mr. Forster. With the growth of demands in the increasing standard in which we all rejoice, that grant in aid became of no more value than the threepenny rate, and so we had the measure of 1897 giving the voluntary schools more assistance. And now what has the Government done? Ministers have reverted to this Memorandum of Mr. Forster of October, 1869, and they have boldly put all schools, as he suggested, on the rates also with regard to secular education. It has always seemed to me unfair to penalise the majority for the prejudices of the minority. If we tax and rate a Jew for the teaching of the New Testament, are we to deprive the Jews of the right to teach the tenets of their own faith? If we tax and rate a Roman Catholic for what most of them regard as a moral monster, undenominational teaching, are we to deprive the Roman Catholic of his right to teach his faith in schools? I made a speech in this House in 1897, in which I said, and I was only echoing the words of Mr. Forster, that every school must comply with the requirements of the Education Department, and, subject to the Conscience Clause, had the right of demanding full aid from the taxes, the rates, or the public. This measure is Mr. Forster's Memorandum brought up to date, with the grievances of Gentlemen opposite removed to the best of our ability. We must all agree that one-man control has gone for ever, and I for one am not sorry.
    There is a curious historical parallel, which I might touch upon before I sit down, between this Bill and the Bill of
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    1870. The same arguments, the same literature, the same meetings, the same banners, the same leagues, and the same men, have opposed this measure, as opposed Mr. Forster's Bill. In my own constituency Mr. Alfred Illingworth was one of the first men in Bradford who opposed the Bill of Mr. Forster. Mr. Alfred Illingworth has been the chief opponent of this Bill today. Mr. Alfred Illingworth founded in 1896 the Northern Counties Education League, which has taken the place of the well known Birmingham League of 1870, and he invited Mr. Hirst Hollowell to take the place of Mr. Miall. When the Bill of 1870 was made and Act, Mr. Forster was treated by his constituents to a vote of censure, and he told them they would live to thank him for his Act. North Leeds has passed a vote of censure on the Government, and on that analogy North Leeds will live to thank the Government. If that is considered doubtful in my own constituency—I do not speak for Bradford as a whole—in the recent municipal elections three seats out of four were won by supporters of this measure. One seat was lost by a reduced majority. The next seat was fought by a Wesleyan supporter of the Bill. That was won against a loss last year. We won another seat lost last year, and we won a third which we had not won before in my time. Mr. Forster, in his wisdom and in his courage, brought into existence the Bill of 1870. In their courage and wisdom, the Prime Minister and the Duke of Devonshire have brought in this Bill, and we thank them for it. Mr. Forster went through a fire of affiction which shortened his days. He was subjected to a most relentless opposition amounting to persecution. The Prime Minister and the Duke of Devonshire knew what they have to face, and I say they deliberately faced that opposition which they knew would arise in connection with these proposals. They were wise and courageous, and we thank them for carrying Mr. Forster's system into a great scheme of national education. One section of Gentlemen opposite advocate a purely secular system of education, another section advocate an undenominational form in national schools, and all sections are agreed that they would do their best to repeal this Bill. We on the Government side claim that we have been

    985
    the pioneers in the cause of education, and we have always been in the past. Will hon. Gentlemen opposite question the fact that the Church of England rejected anything that might be called a national system, or deny that the great Liberal Unionist, Mr. Forster, took the great step, or that we on the Government side have been pioneers in the cause of education? We believe with the late Dr. Dale that undenominational teaching is positively dangerous. We believe that education, unless based on definite religions teaching, to use Dr. Dale's words, is dangerous and mischievous. We hold that belief, and no these issues we are prepared to join and to fight to the last.
    (6.15.) SIR THOMAS ESMONDE (): I am asked by some of my old constituents to vote for this Bill, and therefore I may perhaps be excused if I say a few words upon it. I approach this matter from a different standpoint from those who have addressed themselves to the debate, in so far that I approach it from the point of view of the way in which it concerns the Roman Catholics of this country. I do not pretend to be an authority upon English educational matters, but it does seem to me that this Bill does not confer upon the Roman Catholic schools of this country benefits which it might confer without in any way trenching on the principle of the Bill or interfering with the advantages which the Opposition have galned in the course of these debates. Having said so much, the House, I am sure, will allow me to deal with one or two points that occur to me in connection with this Bill, in so far as it relates to the Roman Catholic schools in this country. Under the Bill as it now stands I take objection to the circumstance that the power of appeal by the managers of Roman Catholic schools from the decisions of the local authority to the Board of Education is very seriously diminished, if not taken away altogether. That may or may not be an important matter, but it is conceivable that it may be a very important matter, and injustice may be done to these schools. I hope, therefore, in another place to which this Bill will shortly go, it may be possible to widen the operation of the power of the managers of those Roman Catholic Schools. I think it is
    986
    Clause 5 which provides for the management of the schools. Under that Clause Roman Catholic schools may be compelled to use text books opposed, or at least, hostile to their religion, and in view of that the House will realise that there is something in my contention that Roman Catholic managers should have some wider power with regard to the books to be used in the schools. I do not ask that they should be allowed in any way to use inferior books, or that a lower grade of education should be admitted in those schools than is permitted in others, but I ask that they should not be compelled to use text books to which they conscientiously object. In this matter of the selection of text books the Roman Catholic managers ought to have an appeal to the Board of Education. At all events I, think the Government should not allow the existing text books to be taken away unless some very serious reason in shown for it.
    I think also that under this Bill the financial position of the Roman Catholic schools generally is not so good as it might have been made. This Bill imposes upon the Roman Catholic managing body the whole cost of school repairs. In former years the Roman Catholic bodies were enabled to charge the cost to the school account, and to make a charge for rent in respect of their schools, and they were reimbursed that expense out of the grant by the Government. Under this Bill as it now stands these schools are no longer in a position to do this, and I hope the Government will reconsider their financial position. The Roman Catholics represent the poorest part of the community, and the voluntary tax upon them for the support of their schools has been far more heavy upon them than upon any other section, and in view of the fact that they are a poor and small section of the community, I hope the House will deal with this question in a large-minded and generous manner, and show more consideration than has been accorded to them. They have, I think, a good claim, because they have made enormous sacrifices to teach their religion in their own way. With regard to Section 3 of Clause 7, I think that may prove extremely dangerous, so far as

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    Roman Catholics are concerned, as it might be used to make the position of these schools intolerable by the placing of a Protestant pupil teacher in a Roman Catholic school. In such schools there would be strong objection to the appointment of a pupil teacher who was not a member of the Roman Catholic religion: and, in my opinion, this Section might lead to considerable inconvenience, which I should be desirous myself to obviate.
    Sub-Section 4 — the Kenyon-Slaney Clause—which raised so much discussion, requires a certain amount of explanation, and we Roman Catholics can only appreciate what it means when we see that we shall managers in our schools who do not belong to the Roman Catholic community. We should much object to anything of that kind, and protest in the strongest possible manner; and, inasmuch as the managers would control religious education in the schools, it would be a most extraordinary position to have a Protestant manager in a Roman Catholic school. I do not know whether this can be remedied, but it is a very serious matter. I do not think you would ever get Roman Catholics to agree to a thing of this kind. What I would suggest to the Government is that another Section should be added to this Clause, to the effect that Sections 3 and 4, Clause 7, should not apply to the Roman Catholic rellgion. That would be the best way out of the difficulty, so far as the Roman Catholic schools are concerned. I press this upon the Government because of the extremely important matters which these Sections raise. There are other matters in this Bill which are not satisfactory, which will no doubt be opposed by the Roman Catholics of Great Britain, but I hope these points to which I have called attention, when they do come before the Government in another place, will receive favourable consideration. The two points I have raised seem to me to be points of very great importance, and I venture to press them on the Government. In conclusion, I can only say I was asked to support this Bill, and I do so, because it was conceived to be to the benefit of the Roman Catholics in this country.
    SIR JOHN KENNAWAY (Devonshire,): I do not know what to
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    admire most—the courage of the Government in admitting their misfortune in having to deal with it, or the way in which they have dealt with this question of education, which has absorbed so much of their time. It is a question which arouses such very strong feeling and contains so much contentious matter that I should not have been surprised if the Government had left it alone. I remember the contest waged in 1870, and the way in which Mr. Forster promoted the interests of the children and secured for them the benefits of education. I remember also the Bill of 1896, and the number of Amendments which were put down at the time the Government decided to withdraw it. I remember the vehement opposition offered in 1897 to the attempt to do some justice to the voluntary schools, to enable them to hold their own against the fierce competition which they had to face. And remembering all these things, I doubted whether the Government would have undertaken this Bill. I felt it needed a Forster's courage to face the question, but I confess I did not know the Prime Minister then as I Know him now. By his grasp and knowledge of the question, and his readiness to consider all points urged upon him, from whatever side they came, and his determination also to carry the measure upon the lines upon which he first introduced it, the Prime Minister has merited the thanks of all.
    The right hon. Gentleman has kept to the front three points which were the main features of the Bill when it went into Committee, and which are its main features now—namely, the harmonising and improving of education by bringing schools hitherto deficient up to the requisite standard of efficiency; the placing of secular education throughout the country under popular control; and the preservation of the denominational character of schools hitherto called voluntary. As to the first two points I need not say much; they have been urged with great ability on either side, but I think the combining of the spending authority with the rating authority and centralising in that body all the best functions of muncipal life is an ideal worthy of being aimed at, and one that will not prove itself impossible of accomplishment, especially when there is to be

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    called to the aid of these educational committees experts from outside, who will add great strength to these counties. Dignity and independence ought to be added to municipal life by the new duties cast upon the municipal bodies. No doubt the question of whether the areas are too large will have to be considered, and there are many things that remain doubtful; but the scheme of the Bill is an ideal worthy of begin aimed at. As to the question of putting the schools largely under popular control, there has been expressed tonight the greatest difference of opinion as to the efficacy of that. It is admitted that in regard to the teachers the educational authority can veto an unsatisfactory appointment, secure the dismissal of a teacher who is not up to the mark in educational matters, and have the power of the purse to withhold all grants of money, and the power to compel by mandamus, and by appointing two of their own body on the management, to see that their orders are effectually carried out.
    It is upon the third point, the reserving of the denominational character of the schools, that the chief controversy has centred. Other points of difference might have been agreed upon, but the differences here appear to me to be irreconcilable. The Prime Minister in introducing the Bill was not prepared, as some on the other side of the House would have liked to see him, to confiscate the schools or to buy them—in fact they have never been for sale. The right hon. Gentleman recognised that in any scheme these schools must be placed in a position worthily to play a necessary and inevitable part in the scheme of national education. This came as a most bitter surprise to hon. Gentlemen opposite, who had begun to hope for the extinction of the voluntary schools. Immense surprise has been felt at the way in which those schools have multiplied since the board schools were established. Some paralled in the matter is to be found in what happended in Egypt a few years ago. Egypt had been in a state of anarchy and bankruptcy, and no one would put it to rights jointly with England. England, therefore, had to step in and do the thing herself. No sooner was England securely established there, than the greatest jealousy was excited; those who had refused to under-
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    take the responsibility now wanted to share it with England, and asked to be admitted to partnership, and it seemed for a time that we should be obliged to give way in that direction. This appears to be very analogous to what happened when the Church stepped in and created the voluntary schools, doing what no one else would do—with the exception of the British schools and a few Roman Catholic schools. The Church stepped in; practically covering the land with voluntary schools, and thereby brought upon herself a reward of honour which had and always would inure to her. Those who might have done the same have been ever since anxious to get rid of or to supplant the denominational system by schools provided out of the rates. But we hope that by this Bill the position which the voluntary schools rightly hold will be maintained.
    The tremendous opposition against the Bill has, I am afraid, been stimulated by statements of the wildest character, and some of absolute inaccuracy. The fears of Nonconformists have been appealed to. A letter in The Times newspaper to-day quotes from the quarterly paper of the Primitive Methodists, in which their people are advised "to do your best to kill the Bill, for the Bill is meant to kill us." To think that anyone would be insane enough to introduce a Bill intended to kill Nonconformity! Nonconformity has stood for a great many years, and I hope it will continue to stand and bring out its sturdy Protestant qualities for a great many years more. But for governing bodies to appeal in this way to the fears of their people seems unworthy of the great traditions of Nonconformity. Appeals have also been made to cupidity. The most barefaced statements have been made that the Bill is to endow the Church and put large sums of money into her pocket. I believe the Church will have a very hard bargain, and that nothing but the greatest sacrifice on the part of her supporters and adherents will suffice to enable the voluntary schools to be carried on in view of the demands likely to be made upon them by the local authority. Then appeals have been made to Protestantism. In the same manifesto to which I have already alluded, the Bill is spoken of as "a determined attempt to capture the children for the priests." The hon. Member

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    for the South Division of Lincolnshire has put his name to a letter, in which, after quoting manuals which are practically Romish and go against the sentiments of every true Member of the Church of England, he says that—
    "At least three-fourths of the clergy profess the doctrines and practise the ritual enjoined in these repulsive priestly manuals."
    On behalf of the Church of England, I heartily contradict any such statement. There are a few, I am sorry to say, who so disgrace their cloth; but to say that three-fourths of the clergy profess these doctrines and practise this ritual is a gross exaggeration.
    Again, it was said, even by the hon. Member for the Launceston Division, that the children of Nonconformists were being handed over to new ecclesiastical rulers It seems to me that the man who made such a statement must have been in a balloon. The children have been under these rulers and under one-man management for a great many years, and yet how very few instances of hardship and objectionable practices have been brought to light! There have been one or two cases, and they have been made to do duty again and again, but under these new local managers such cases will be impossible in the future. It has been a bitter experience to me to find myself, on this occasion, opposed to men with whom on so many points I am in full sympathy. We have many evils outside to fight, and great enemies to resist; in this battle I should like to join my hon. friends opposite, and it is therefore most painful to find myself now in direct conflict with them. But when we are asked to come to terms, as we were by the hon. Member for the Cleveland Division, it seems to me that we are invited to give up everything for which we have hitherto contended. We are to be allowed to retain our schools on condition that they become undenominational, and we are asked to assent to a national undenominational system. An undenominational system in which all Christians agree is in theory most delightful, and in practice it might be often excellent. It may be said that stubborn vitality of the Church of England schools has had great effect on the advance and maintenance of a high standard of religious teaching in Board Schools; why can we not accept this undenominational teaching? Secular teaching has been carried
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    on in Board Schools, and we have had to pay for it. But when it was a question of the Church of England teaching her form of religion, it has been forbidden. The reason we cannot accept undenominational teaching is that there is about it an uncertainty and a tendency towards indifferentism. We did accept it when introduced as a supplement to another system, but when it is to be made universal and imposed without limitation, carrying with it the prohibition of distinctive teaching, we say once and for all that we cannot for a moment accept an undenominational system. Its teaching is positive; it says things are to be omitted; creeds, sacraments, and catechisms are to be of no account. We beleve that undenominational teaching means purely secular teaching, and, therefore, we must resist it. We sometimes hear views of undenominational teaching which sound as though we might almost accept it, but we are indebted to the Leader of the Opposistion for a description which shows the real attitude of hon. Gentlemen opposite, and which I will venture to read. Speaking at the Alexandra Palace recently, the right hon. Gentleman said:—
    "We would confine ourselves, as nine-tenths of the Liberals would confine themselves, to secular education. plus such moral teaching as would be common to all, and not obnoxious to people who do not come within the rauge of Christianity."
    That is to say, teaching that might be taught to Brahmans, Mohammedans, and I suppose, even in the Gordon College at Khartoum. That is what we say undenominational teaching is bound to come to, and that is why we resist it. We believe that secular teaching to which undenominational teaching would come would be a disaster to this country more serious than a defeat of our fleets and armies, and would degrade this country from its high position as a Christian State. Therefore we stand to our guns and support this Bill, because it gives denominational teaching a place in the national system which we hope it will long retain.
    This Bill has received practically the unanimous support of the Teachers' Convention at Bristol, and therefore it cannot be so absolutely unworkable as has been made out in certain quarters. This Bill offers to the working classes advantages under the co-ordinated

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    system which they have never enjoyed before, and it gives the greatest liberty to Municipal and County Councils to spend what they like on either elementary education, evening classes, or technical education. Therefore this Act constitutes a boon to the working classes which they have never yet had the chance of before, and that, when they realise and appreciate, they will cease to be opponents of this Bill. If the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition secures the rejection of this Bill, what does he offer us in its place? Suppose this Bill is thrown out, will you get an Education Bill with like advantages introduced within the next twenty years? We have no guidance whatever as to the character that such a Bill would assume, and therefore it is either this Bill or nothing. There is no alternative to this Bill offered by the Opposition, and I trust that now that we are bringing these discussions to a close we shall forget the hard words said about it, and do our best to make it a boon and a blessing to the country.
    *(6.50.) MR. EMMOTT (): We have come almost to the end of a long and memorable Parliamentary struggle, and before proceeding to speak of the reasons which induce me to support the Amendment so ably moved by my right hon. friend, perhaps I may be allowed to say one or two words, which shall not be words of provocation, on the prolonged debates of which the Committee stage of this Bill has been the scene. In the first place I should like to be allowed as a political opponent to congratulate the Prime Minister on the extraordinary patience which marked his conduct of the earlier stages of the Bill, and the skill, ability, and resource which has marked his share all through the discussions in Committee. Without him this Bill would have had no chance. The Bill itself added to his difficulties enormously. The Bill was a bad Bill, as a Bill. apart from the intrinsic merits, or demerits, of its main provisions. It did not enact what the Government though it enacted; it was not clear in its provisions. Some of its financial and other provisions were so unfair that the Government altered them as soon as they were pointed out. To complain of waste of time. or, of what
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    The Times, with its usual good taste to wards political opponents, calls anarchical chatter, and to speak of the time occupied as showing a break-down of the Parliamentary system is mere nonsense.
    The Bill was said to be drawn by experts. Where are the experts now? If I were asked for a single proof of Parliamentary efficency, I should find it in the fact that a few Government supporters, some thirty or forty Liberal Members, were sufficient to absolutely transform and remodel all the most important Clauses, except Closure ones, and finally make a possible final Bill out of an utterly impossible orginal. The right hon. Gentleman has failed to meet our main objections, and therefore we must oppose the Bill in the final stage; but in regard to those alterations of the machinery of this originally imperfect and defective Bill, he has shown a quickness of perception and a comprehensive grasp of detail which has distinctly raised even the high opinion which Members on both sides already held of his great Parliamentary abilities.
    I wish the patience had held out to the end. I wish we could have exhaustively discussed the later as we discussed the earlier Clauses of this Bill. It would have been better for the Bill. And that brings me to my second point, and it is this. This Bill has aroused strong antagonism here. If the Opposition had wanted to make sure of the failure of this Bill, they would have confined themselves to wrecking Amendments. They have done nothing of the kind. Where they could not get concessions on the points to which they most object, they have devoted themselves with perfect bound fides, and in an eminently businesslike spirit to improving the machinery of the Bill, to many of whose provisions they are strongly opposed. So eager have they been in this unwelcome task, that I have sometimes wondered whether such hon friends of mine as the Members for Carnarvon Boroughs and MidGlamorganshire have not begun to develop a sneaking and surreptitious regard for a bantling which was none of thier producing. yet which they have borne a conspicuous part in knocking into shape. At any rate, no personal ill-feeling

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    has been produced in this House. I would even go further, and venture to express a hope that some of the threats of permanent ill-feeling and of reprisals in the country made by strong partisans on both sides may be exaggerated. Churchmen objecting to the Kenyon-Slaney sub-Section have threatened to give up their schools. It must be obvious they only play the game of their opponents if they do such a thing. On the other hand, Nonconformists may refuse to payrates. I desire to compel the individual conscience of no man. But as a matter of tactics, surely if this great Parliamentary struggle means anything, it means that the Liberal Party will amend this Bill when they get a chance. What possible good can it do them if those most in favour of its amendment have sacrificed their rights of citizenship in the meantime by refusing to pay rates?
    Now let me turn to the Bill. I am going to say all I can in favour of the Bill because I am not one of those who believe the Bill was "conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity." I am quite willing to believe, and have always believed, it was an honest attempt, so far as the Government was concerned, to make a national system of education. I think it fails; but of that more anon. I am only dealing with the intention. This Bill does at a bound what ought to be done by degrees. It destroys excellent and successful institutions with thirty years experience and thirty years record of useful work, and it puts in their place new and comparatively untried bodies. It is a revolution without any excuse for revolution, and it is an example rather of irresponsible Radicalism than of Conservative statesmanship. But when all that is said, if you grant we must have one authority for education (I do not grant it as a present necessity), but probably a majority do, I prefer the municipal authority. So, on the main principle of municipalisation, I am not opposed to the Bill. I admit to the full the necessity of dealing woth secondary education. I am not opposed to the plan of the Bill. It is true the plan has been improved. The meagre skelton of that part of the Bill dealing with secondary education has been clothed with flesh and blood, and galvanished into life. It is still inadequate. But I have no quarrel with the principle of dealing with secondary education in the Bill; here it is constructive, and I should be
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    very soory if any delay occurred in setting up a local authority to deal with it Finnaly, I must admit that the Bill has been enormously improved in Committee. I do not forget certain new alterations put in, after Clousre by compartments, was carried, which are a very sad example of the narrow and huckerstering spirit which certain so-called friends of the church bring into their considerations of questions of national education. I wonder who these faithful but mistaken friends are? Whoever they are, they are the sorriest friends the Church has had for many a long day. But this is by way of parenthesis. My main point is that in spite of these Clauses, clandestinely smuggled into the Bill at the end, the Bill has been greatly improved in Committee. And so we have the Bill enormously altered, and on the whole altered for the better.
    I may be asked, why do we now oppose the Bill. My answer, shortly, is this . I would vote for the Third Reading if School Boards were retained in large towns, if the provisions as regards management were fair to the public, if Nonconformists were fairly treated as regards teachers, and the Bill were made workable. The Bill destroys what is good, viz., School Boards in large towns. It is needlessly destructive, for they might have been preserved; but they could not have been usefully maintained under the ridiculous Option Clause of the orginal Bill. That Clause, the offspring of some tortuous mind, made it possible to maintain School Boards, but enacated that if they were maintained no aid from the rates could be given to voluntary schools. I voted against, and would again vote against, so cruel an option as that. But the Government could, if it had desired, have retained the School Boards. This Bill puts on the new local authority the duty of at once taking over the control of both elementary and secondary educaion. Now, it is our secondary and higher technical education in which we compare so unfavourably with other countries. Our elementary education could have waited. You have gone far to prevent due attention being paid to the more important secondary education by coupling with it elementary education in our larger counties and boroughs. And all this is being handed over to new and comparatively untried bodies. We are told

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    that the Technical Instruction Committees have done good work. I gladly acknowledge it; but do let us be frank. It is the fashion to say that these Committees have done everything well. They have had little to do and no enemies, for the whisky money they spent came from the taxes. They now will have to deal with secondary education in a comprehensive spirit and at the same time perform the multifarious duties of School Boards and control the secular education of voluntary schools.
    I know the official excuse, You must have one authority in order to have co-ordination and correlation. The Cockerton judgment made it necessary. To that I reply that the Cockerton judgment drew a line between elementary and secondary education for the first time and in itself made separate working possible. Further, the cry of "one authority" is a new cry. You did not bring in such a Bill last year, and we never heard a word of "one authority" at the General Election. True statesmanship would have gone slowly—step by step—making sure of the ground—as you proposed last year. I cannot believe that this revolutionary educational leap in the dark is a safe solution of this question.
    I shall not discuss at length with, though I must mention, the chief reasons of our opposing the absolute unfairness of the proportion of management given to denominational schools and the consequent unfairness of the position in which Nonconformists who wish to become teachers are placed. The Church gets three-quarters or four-fifths of the head-teachers. It is apologised for in this way. It is said to be the only plan to keep denominational teaching. Well, I dispute that. There are other ways. I content myself by remarking that as one purpose of denominational religious teaching as of undenominational religious teaching, is to inculcate principles of justice and rignt and fair-play, it is a wrong thing, and an unwise thing, to attempt to preserve denominational teaching by methods which are obviously and admittedly unfair to half the people of England.
    One thing these debates have done. They have helped us to clarify our minds, and they have knocked some
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    venerable fictions on the head. The whole claim for denominational education rested in the past on the in-alienable right of the parent. Who hears of the inalienable right of the parent now? We implored you to give the parent a deciding voice in the choice of managers. You refused, so that venerable fiction is at last exploded. What then is this inalienable right now? It turns out to be the inalienable right of the Church to educate in denominational doctrine on week days, and at the public expense, the children of parents too lazy to teach religion themselves, or too indifferent to send them to church and Sunday school. In order to do this effectually it is to provide one-twelfth or less of money and to have two-thirds of management. I am willing to leave the fairness of that arrangement to the decision of the English people. They respect the parent, and they respect the Church when she confines herself to her proper sphere; but when they find the claim of the Church extending, as it does in single-school districts, to the inalienable right to teach Nonconformist and Roman Catholics Church doctrine at the public expense, and the inalienable right to have denominational headteachers in two-thirds of the schools of the country, they cannot fail to see that the position is fundamentally unfair, and what is fundamentally unfair cannot last in this country.
    I come now to the last objection I wish to offer. Granted that the Government are right and that we are wrong in regard to this question of denominational schools, will the Bill which we have elaborated so carefully in the Committee stage probably work smoothly, as the Government say, or will it break down in working, as many of us on this side believe? I heard the Parliamentary Secretary the other day use phrase with regard to the new provisions in relation to these schools. He spoke of "dual ownership." Well, that is to me an ominous phrase. I cannot remember any dual ownership that has been successful. It has been tried with regard to land in Ireland, and both landlords and tenants are heartily sick of the plan. Remember the Bill starts badly. Many Councils have declared their intention of refusing to carry out the Bill. I

    999
    hope they will not do anything of the kind. Other Councils have objected to a majority of the voluntary school managers being of a denominational character. Some Nonconformists have threatended not to pay their rates. Remember that these local authorities you are appointing are, as County Councils and Town Councils, accustomed to have absolute control of those matters of local Government placed under their charge. They have not been accustomed to be tied by red tape—well, I will not use that phrase which may be regarded as objectionable—but they have not been accustomed to the Education Department in connection with the matters with which they have to deal, nor have they been like Guardians of the Poor, subject to the superintedence of the Local Government Board. They have hitherto been accustomed, in dealing with thier own affairs, to absolute control, but they will now find themselves in a new posistion, with any number of possible causes of friction arising between them and the managers of voluantary schools. I will only enumerate some of these cases. In regard to economy, the local authority in counties will have one representative on boards of management in favour of economy, against five whose interest it will be to get all they can. In most schools no trouble will arise with respect to teachers, but it will be inevitable in some. There are questions of alterations and improvements; damage to furniture out of school hours; the share of fees and endowments; the different views on new schools, and the delimitation of religious and secular education. In all these matters there will be appeals to the Board of Education, and consequent delay, irritation, and ill-feeling. In the end, I believe the meantime you run risk of denominational teaching perishing altogether in the conflicts that must arise. Time only can show, and at any rate we are free from responsibility.
    The noble Lord the Member for Greenwhich, in his speech on the Second Reading of the Bill, made a powerful and elequenttions, whether Churchmen, Roman Catholics, or Nonconformists, to unite
    1000
    in one supreme effort to stem the tide of materialism which was sweeping over the land. I cannot but sympathise with that appeal. I feel as strongly as the noble Lord does that there are many tendencies of the present age which are not only mundane and secular, but entirely forgetful of the higher and nobler ideals of existence. One sees it in the race for wealth, in the pursuit of pleasure as the main end of life, and in the recklessness and frivolity of some classes of society. Whence come these tendencies? Do they come from a proletariat fed on Cowper-Temple teaching, and would they have been restrained by denominational Christianity? No. They come from the higher classes, and they are only gradually permeating the lower. They arise from the fact that money today, mere money, can buy place and power and title, the favour of the great and the friendship of the powerful, to an extent that it never could before. They arise from the false conception that happiness in this world can only be obtained by an endless round of gaiety and excitement. This is a movement which, beginning in the higher classes, is permeating the middle classes, and going down to the lower classes. One conspicious fruit is seen in the secularisation of the Sabbath, and in the fact not that our poor children do not repeat the Creed on week days, but that the upper classes have almost ceased on even one day out of seven to turn their thoughts to higher and holier things. When I am asked to believe that this tendency, which I deplore and for which the upper classes of society are responsible, is going to be stopped by teaching the children of the lower classes creeds and catechisms instead of the simpler hymns and prayers and Bible teaching of the Cowper-Temple Clause, I must veil the rudeness of my reply by cloaking it in an ancient language, and answer,Credat Judceus Apella. That is my frank opinion on the deeper aspects of this question. But though I prefer good. Cowper-Temple teaching myself , I desire to preserve denominational teaching myself, I desire to preserve denominational teaching on lines which are fair to all. This Bill, while it mitigates one-man rule in our public elementary schools retains denominational management and favours denominational teachers by methods

    1001
    which are unfair and therefore cannot and must not last. I do not say there is no good in this Bill. On the contrary there is much that is useful. But I do say that in these vital matters on which I have touched it violtaes the eternal principles of justice, and therefore, I for one must vote aganist the Third Reading.
    (7.20) MR. ABEL SMITH (): I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman opposite cannot see his way to support the Bill. The hon. Member said that he and other members of the Opposition did not wish to wreck the Bill or to make the working of it impossible. With respect to those who have expressed other views, I am sure we all hope that when the Bill comes into operation good counsels will prevail throughout the country. As one who has not always found himself able to agree with the Government as to some of the details of the Bill, I cordially support the Third Reading, because I am throughly in favour of the principle of the Bill. The Bill proposes to place the educational system in each district under the control of one authority. The county and borough councils which will in future have charge of our education are popularly elected bodies, and therefore the control of the people or the therefore the control of the people or the ratepayers over education will be theoretically complete. But it may be said that these bodies have not been elected for the particilar purpose of education. Are we, I should like to ask, to have a seperate local authority for every public function? It appears to me to be contrary to all our ideas or representative Governement. It is not necessary to have one House of Commons for the consideration of financial questions, another for the consideration of Imperial questions, and another for the consideration of our home or social questions, but we have one body of Members sent here by the constituencies throughout the country to deal with all those questions, and in the same way our local authoroties have many important functions to perform. I do not see on what may be called constitutional grounds why the question of educationa should not be entrusted to them. I think that in entrusting education to the local authorities there is one great advantage. The members of the new bodies will
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    know the educational needs of the different districts. They will know what the local industries are and what the requirements of the children are in each separate locality. That is the main principle of the Bill on account of which I feel that I can give it my cordial support.
    If I may say so, I think my right hon. friend the President of the Local Government Board dealt in a peculiarly happy way with the speech made this afternoon by the Leader of the Opposition. In dealing with this question the Prime Minister had to deal with the existing circumstances which he finds with regard to education. A large majority of the children throughout the country are being educated at the present moment in voluntary schools belonging to trustees, on behalf of some religious denomination or other, or else in schools which are the private property of landowners, or, in some cases. large employers of labour. The Act of 1870 allowed those voluntary schools to remain, and I venture to say that the Government have adopted a wise policy in allowing them to remain under this Bill. There is only one alternative, and I listened with great attention to the speech made by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposistion to hear what alternative policy he was going to put before the country. I noticed that his expressions with regard to this matter were of extremely mild and moderate terms. He spoke in a comprative sense. He said more popular control ought to be given over the voluntary schools, and that this Bill did not give sufficient control. Either you must adopt some such scheme as that contained in this Bill, or sweep away all the voluntary schools belonging to the different denominations throughout the country. There is no middle course to pursue, and I am anxious to hear whether the Leader of the Opposition and his friends in this House are prepared to adopt that policy. I should have vey little anxiety or doubt as to what the answer of the electors throughout the country would br if these two alternatives were placed clearly before them. Under this Bill the control of the local authority over secular education will be absolute. The managers are to carry out the instructions of the local authority and they will, as regards secular education, be their agents, and therefore, in my opinion, there is no possible objection to the aid to be given from the rates for

    1003
    the voluntary schools. I must say for myself that, as a Churchman, I should not have been afraid to give greater public representation on the boards of managers, and especially to give representation to the parents, but I do recognise that if the denominational character of the school is to be maintained it may be necessary that the number of foundation managers should be as proposed. I would point out that it will be open to the trustees to elect a representative of the parents to be a foundation trustee if they think fit. I regret, I need hardly say, that greater burdens are to be put upon the shoulders of the ratepayers, but I would remind those who are specially careful about the intrests of the ratepayers that the Government have given a very generous grant for their relief. I hope the time is not far distant when education will be regarded still more as a national service paid for out of national funds. Of course, it was utterly impossible for the Government to deal with all those great and important questions at the same time, but I hope the time is not far distant when they will see their way to deal with the whole question of local taxation of which this will be an important part.
    It being half-past Seven of the Clock, the Debate stood adjourned until this evening.

  EDUCATION (ENGLAND AND WALES) BILL.
  Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Amendment [2nd December] to Question, "That the Bill be now read the third time."
  Which Amendment was—
  "To leave out the word 'now,' and at the end of the Question to add the words 'upon this day three months.'"—(Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman.)
  Question again proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  (9.0) MR. ABEL SMITH: When, Sir, you left the Chair, I was referring—I confess with some trepidation—to what is known as the religious question in connection with this Bill. I think we have heard too much of this religious question, and
  1004
  I can only say, for myself, that if I thought the Nonconformists of this country had any real substantial grievances in this respect, I should be the first to be anxious to redress them. But, having given great consideration to their position, and knowing many of them, especially in my own constituency, I have come to the conclusion that these grievances are to a great extent theoretical, and I believe that it is only in very exceptional cases that they have any reason to complain of the religious instruction which has been given in the Church schools throughout the country. Under the provisions of this Bill what is known as the "one-man management" will be abolished, and where there is any considerable number of Nonconformists in a school district they will be in a position to elect a manager through the minor local authority, and will thus secure a share in the management of the elementary schools. I have the honour to represent in this House a country Division, partly urban and partly rural, in which there are many Nonconformists, and it is a rather remarkable fact that in the Division there are only two School Boards, which are in small rural parishes, while the other parishes, many of which have large and increasing populations, are served by voluntary schools. Although I have been connected with the Division all my life, I have never heard of any religious difficulty—I have never heard of any child being withdrawn from religious instruction in the Church schools, and therefore I think I am justified in saying that, at any rate as regards my own county, this religious difficulty is to a very great extent theoretical. We have heard a great many strong expressions of opinion on this subject; we have heard talk of "handing over the schools to the priests"; we have heard the Bill described as "a measure of relief to the clerical party"—
  whatever that may be; and we have also heard that it is designed for the destruction of Nonconformity. These expressions can only be described as gross exaggerations; they cannot be accepted as fair criticism, and I wish to join with my right hon. friend the Member for the Honiton Division of Devonshire in deprecating the use of such language. I hope the hon. Member for North Louth, who is, I believe, to speak presently, will either withdraw of justify—if he can—these expressions.

  1005
  One cannot deal with this so-called religious question without referring to the sub-Clause which has made the name of my hon. and gallant friend the Member for the Newport Division of Shropshire famous for all time. I was a keen supporter of that Clause, because I regarded it as giving to the laity a fair share of the management of religious instruction in the schools. It has been very sharply criticised by members of the Established Church, and has been said to be inconsistent, but it has been upheld by men eminent in the Church. Canon Henson and Prebendary Smith are good enough Churchmen for me, and I believe, with them, that the Clause will do much to restrain the extravagant and fantastic teaching which has prevailed in a few exceptional cases. Under this Bill, Nonconformists will have more voice in the management of the schools than they ever had before, especially in rural districts, where in many cases the only school belongs to the Established Church. I believe that the extravagant fears indulged in cannot be justified, and I do appeal most earnestly to the leaders of Nonconformity to abandon their opposition to the Bill, and to work for the advancement of education under its provisions. Our system of national education needs reform and reconstruction in many respects, and I believe that this Bill would give that much-needed reform. If we all work together I feel confident that the measure will prove of great lasting benefit to the people of England and Wales.
  MR. PERKS (): I am quite sure that the hon. Member who last spoke must have little knowledge of the history of Nonconformity of this country, and still less of the views of the governing bodies of the great Nonconformist Churches. It is inconceivable that the clergy and laity, who are responsible for the control of these vast organisations, can have been labouring under the hallucinations that the hon. Member imagines that they have been labouring under. My right hon. friend the Member for the Honiton Division of Devonshire, tool me to task for some observations which I made in a little leaflet which I wrote some ago, and which has attained some little circulation. He complained because I said that the Church of England was honeycombed by a certain class of
  1006
  Romanizing literature. I was then dealing with the allegation made by the Ritualistic section of the Anglican Church in their journalistic organs, and also by their allies among the Roman Catholic clergy, that it was essential that the whole atmosphere of the schools should be Anglican and sacredotal. These manuals of instruction catechisms, but they were manuals which had attained circulations of from 20,000 to 40,000 copies, and it is perfectly clear that his literature must have a great effect on the clergy, and, through them, on the schools for which they are responsible. I said that at least three-fourth soft the clergy—those most active and most favoured by the Government, professed the doctrines and practised the ritual described in these manuals; and I should be only too glad to think that the section of the Anglican Church to which my right hon. friend belongs represents even one-fourth of the great religious community. But I am convinced that the most vigorous, the most energetic, and the most popular are these very clergy who are making such large use of these manuals. My right hon. friend, I thought, went a little bit astray when he cited his Egyptian analogy, for it he knew much about the condition of the great dependency of this country at the present moment he would be aware that one of the most serious dangers is the question of financial control which he thinks so attractive when applied to education. I do not know whether Mr. Forster ever imagined that his mantle would fall upon such an advocate of this system as the present Member for Central Bradford, but there is certainly a circumstance in connection with Mr. Forster's educational history which to some extent is repeating itself at the present moment. It Mr. Forster's "Life" there is a very singular letter which he wrote to Lord Ripon, who was bitterly taking Mr. Forster to task for his conduct on the Education Bill of 1870. Mr. Forster defended himself by saying that if they could not get the Bill through with the assent and support of the Nonconformists of the country, then the Leader of the Liberal Party was determined that it should go through with the assent of the clerical section of the House of Commons. It is singular that the very men who were fighting

  1007
  tooth and nail against the Education Bill of 1870, having imposed on the Nonconformists of the country by collusion between a section of the Liberal Party and a Church of England section of the House of Commons, are the very men who at the present time arte enabling the Government to carry this Bill through, in defiance of the protests of the Nonconformists from one end of the country to the other. I have never used the phrase that his Bill will kill Nonconformity. I do not believe that is the intention of the Government, in bringing forward this Bill, to kill Nonconformity, but I do believe it is the hope of a very important section of the Church of England that the measure will have the effect of materially increasing the number of the supporters of the Church throughout the country by getting hold of these little Dissenting children in the elementary schools. Indeed this has been avowed by Canon Pendleton, a well-known in spector of schools in Lancashire, who declared that the syllabus was always so arranged as to give distinctive denominational instruction to the children of Nonconformists. But to talk about killing Nonconformity is, I quite admit, to use a phrase which is absurd. It is manifestly impossible to kill Nonconformity. But I would remaind the House of two very important declarations which have been made by two accomplished leaders of Nonconformity in this country. My right hon. friend the Member for East Wolverhampton, directly this Bill was propounded, pronounced it in this House to be a declaration of was against Nonconformity. The right hon. Gentleman is not a fanatical Dissenter, and I think that in using that phrase he accurately described the Bill it its relation to Nonconformity. But Cardinal Vaughan used a far more ominous phrase. He spoke of the Bill as a triumph of the Government over the Nonconformist opposition.
  MR. TULLY (): Has the hon. gentleman read the Cardinals letter disclaiming that interpretation?
  MR. PERKS: I am using the Cardinal's own words.
  MR. TULLY: It would only be fair to read the Cardinal's second letter.
  MR. PERKS: I have not got it here. I merely quoted the statement in order to support my argument that this Bill is regarded by two very prominent men as a direct attack upon Nonconformity. But, in addition, the Church of England authorities evidently regard the Bill as a measure which is of the very greatest importance to their own Church. The Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking early last year, said there were signs that the Government would listen to anything that was said because in a very great degree their own political position depended on it, and it would be rather awkward for them to face the Church if only its members were united on the subject of education. My right hon. friend the Member for Oxford University has appealed to Churchmen not to throw away the opportunity, which might never recur, of allowing the Church of England to continue to be, wherever her strength was equal to it, the religious instructor of the people. Surely these quotations justify in saying that this Bill is regarded as being directed by the King's Government against Nonconformists, and as a direct attack upon the religious tenets and the ecclesiastical position of English Nonconformists. We are told that it contains within it numerous concessions made to the Nonconformists. But why were not those who are responsible for the educational organisation of the Nonconformist Churches consulted with reference to the Bill before it was introduced? Why were not the Free Church leaders and the Wesleyans consulted? There were indications that the Roman Catholics were consulted, but then the children attending Roman Catholic schools formed but a very small proportion of the community. But there is a vast number of Nonconformist children in the Anglican schools, and inasmuch as the Nonconformist leaders were not consulted, it is rather extraordinary to expect us to accept with gratitude the scheme of the Government when not the slightest attempt has been made to bring them into line. My own conviction is that an attempt of that sort in the early stages of the squestion would possibly have succeeded. I think that the abolition of the Cowper-Temple Clause in all the schools would probably have been accepted by the Nonconformist Churches.

  1009
  if it had been accompanied by a scheme for placing the whole of the elementary schools under real effective popular control. But the Nonconformist leaders were not consulted, and none of their organisations were taken into counsel for a moment. The Free Churches of this country — I am not speaking of the Roman Catholic Church, but the Wesleyan Church, the Congregationalists, the Baptists, and an organisation which for the last few years has exercised very great influence throughout the country (I mean the Federation of Free Churches) have laid down schemes of elementary education which distinctly define our position. We claim no authority; we ask for popular control. We claim that there should be no tests; and lastly, we ask for Christian Bible teaching to be given under the protection of the Conscience Clause by the teachers in the elementary schools.
  The Prime Minister, speaking in Manchester, used language which was certainly very strong, and was not justified, with reference to the critics of the Bill. The Prime Minister said, "The voice of the calumniator has been too long uncontradicted," and the right hon. Gentleman proceeded to refer to two grave misrepresentations concerning the Bill. The first was the statement that Schools Board schools would be abolished; and the second was that "in the rate supported schools of the future, denominational teaching would be required by law." I venture to think that that is exactly what is going to happen; and that denominational teaching will be required by law. It is true that there will be the Conscience Clause, and that children can be withdrawn from the schools; but to tell us that it is a travesty of the Bill, that it is gross misrepresentation, and that it is falsehood of the blackest character to say that denominational teaching will be required by law under this Bill, is an assertion which cannot for a moment be justified. Because, what is that extraordinary Clause to which reference has been made by preceding speakers, and on which the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Newport Division of Shropshire is going to rest. It is a direct instruction to managers that they are to give religious instruction in the schools in
  1010
  accordance with the tenour of the trust deeds. Surely, that is exactly what we have been declaring; and that is one of the grievances to which we justly take exception.
  There are four grievances of which Nonconformists have to complain, and these, instead of being removed by this Bill, are exaggerated and enforced by it. In the first place, there is to be no application of the Conscience Clause to the training colleges. We endeavoured to secure for the pupil teachers to who went up from the provinces to these great colleges, supported almost entirely out of public funds, the protection of the Conscience Clause, but we failed. The second grievance we have to complain of—I am not going to elaborate it, it is perfectly manifest to anyone who knows anything about the Bill—is that in 12,000 public schools in this country, supported almost entirely out of public funds. Nonconfirmists are excluded from the positions of headmaster and headmistress. A concession has been made in the case of pupil teachers; and permission which will never, or hardly ever, be exercised, has been given in the case of assistant teachers; but it is a serious blow to educational efficiency in this country to exclude from 12,000 schools Nonconformist teachers. The Prime Minister, a few weeks ago, rather plumed himself on the concession he had made to Nonconformists in connection with pupil teachers. It is just like teaching a boy how to eat his dinner, and then to bring him in and show him his dinner, and say, "Oh no, you are not to partake of it." You train these children for the teraching profession, and then you deliberately say to them, "In half the elementary schools of this country you shall not take first place, because of your religious opinions." That is a provision which, I think, will not hold good for many years. It is opposed to the whole tendency of public opinion, and even of legislation, during the past half centuary; and I wonder how long the Government really imagine such a condition of affairs is going to last. That is the second grievance which has been exaggerated, instead of being ameliorazted, under the Bill. The third grievance we have is that the bishops and clergy of the Anglican Church will have to settle what is to be

  1011
  the religious teaching of 700,000 Nonconformist children in Anglican elementary schools. In Lincolnshire—I refer to it because I know it better than any other county—in many cases 70 per cent.,in some cases 80 per cent., and generally 50 per cent., of the children attending the public elementary schools belong to the Methodist or some other section of Nonconformity. It seems to us a great injustice that the parents of these children should have absolutely nothing to do with their religious education; and that, in the event of any question arising as to religious instruction, the bishop of the diocese and the local clergy should be the people to deal with it. I am not able to say, I do not think the Government themselves can say, what is their interpretation of the Kenyon-Slaney Clause. I should like to know what would happen in this case, which occurred at Plymouth or Portsmouth, and was brought before the House a few weeks ago. A sailor, on coming home from sea, found that his little girl had been caned several times in an elementary schools because she would not how down to some image in the church she was taken to.
  *THE SECRETARY OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (Sir WILLIAM ANSON,): I do not know whether the hon. Member is alluding to this story as a matter of fact, but it has been absolutely denied. The father has withdrawn his statement, and legal proceedings have been taken in the matter.
  MR. PERKS: I have here a copy of the affidavit.
  *SIR WILLIAM ANSON: Which the father now acknowledges to be untrue.
  MR. PERKS: I am glad to hear that. I pass from that to a case which occurred at Dorchester. There the clergyman has given some explanation. He says the children were ordered, not to bow to the alter, but towards the alter. Crucufixes were put up, the children were compelled to bow to them, and they were only removed on the protest of the local Nonconformists. What I wish to know from the Secretary to the Board of Education is, who will be responsible in such cases? Will it be the managers? The clergyman may say,
  1012
  "I will have a crucifix put up in this elementary schools," and the managers might reply that they would not have it. Who would then decide? Take another case. Children in many parts of the country in elementary schools are taught a little series of phrases called "Hail! Mary," which is used in the Roman Catholic Church, and very largely also in the Anglican Church. Who will say whether that little prayer or invocation is to be used or not? Will it be the managers or the clergyman of the paris? What is the interpretation of the Kenyon-Slaney Clause? Is it solely limited to an appeal to the Bishop as the religious instruction which may be given, or to the text books to be used; or does it extend to things put up in the schools, such as crucifixes or to little invocations such as I have mentioned. For example, in many parts of the country children have been marched to Mass on Saints' Days. For instance, on St. Matthew's Day the Children in a particular school were marshalled up on the highway and taken to Mass. Who would be responsible in such a matter? Would it be the managers or the clergyman? I hope, and indeed I believe, that the construction which will be put on the Kenyon-Slaney Clause by the Courts of Law when it gets there—which I have no doubt will be very soon, if it passes in its present shape, as already there is conflict between the Church papers and the Government, and the Bishop of London disagrees entirely with the interpretation given by the Attorney General—I hope, and indeed believe, that the interpretation which will be put on the Clause will be that the local managers will have absolute control as to the use of manuals of devotion, the putting up of little ecclesiastical symbols in the schools, and the arrangements for marching the children to church on the various festivals connected with the Church.
  There is one other grievance which Nonconformists seriously complain about, and that is that the Bill prepetuates, to some extent, one of the grievances and inequalities of the Act of 1870—namely, facilities for the erection of new sectarian schools and the enlargement of sectarian schools; which are denied to the local public education authority, because a number of conditions are imposed which

  1013
  the Education Department in London will take into consideration on the appeal of ten agreed parishioners. The extra cost involved will be a grievous injustice to all who wish to see the extension of schools under public control, not the extension of sectarian schools, whether Wesleyan, Roman Catholic, or Anglican. I wish just to refer to a misconception which is very current, and which has frequently been referred to in this House. The Nonconformists have been charged with wishing to teach what is called "Nonconformist religion," and School Board schools certainly, and some of our Nonconformist schools, have been called Godless schools. The Colonial Secreatry, speaking at Birmingham, said that Wesleyans in then schools taught "Wesleyanism," whatever that may be. There is no such thing as the teaching of Wesleyanism in Wesleyan schools. I know nothing in the doctrins of the Wesleyan Church which differs from the doctrins of the Evangelical section of the Anglican Church, except the application of the cardinal principles of Christian faith. I observe that Cardinal Vaughan the other day said—
  "Do not suppose that Christianity is a science that needs to training to teach in aht, but that any infidel, or any fool, it he likes, can teach the Christian religion to children."
  I quite understand the Catholic principle, as now asserted, that the clergy have the prespective right alone to teach religion; but that is a doctrine which Nonconformists absolutely repudiate. The prescriptive right of experts alone to criticise and teach is now going beyond the province of religion and is invading even the province of literature. But the Methodist Church, which ranks in number next to the Church of England. and in the United States stands first as regards number, depends for its doctrinal teraching on lay teaching, on lay interpretation of the Scriptuers, and lay deduction of the principles of Christian faith from the Scriptures. Next Sunday, 25,000 sermons will be preached in Methodist churches, mission halls, and class rooms, throughout the country, and, of these, 20,000 will be preached by laymen of all ranks of society. We entirely repudiate the notion that you can only have a clerical expert to expound the Scriptures, and enforce their
  1014
  teaching on children in elementary schools. Our object is not secularism. We are as much opposed to secularism as hon. Members below the Gangway can be. In fact, we hold in common with them certain principles of Christian faith; it is only when we come to their practical application that we differ from them; but we are opposed to secularism just as much as we are opposed to clericalism in the elementary schools. The Wesleyan authorities have represented again and again that what they wished for was Bible instruction given by a teacher in whom they had absolute confidence, as regards his intelligence and fairness towards sections of the children.
  I wish to say a few words about the attitude of the Nonconformist Churches towards the Roman Catholic Church in this country. We voted on the side of Catholic emanicipation at a time when the Anglican Church in this country opposed it. We are willing that Roman Catholics should have absolute equality in every possible detail, but we are willing to concede to them nothing more whatever. The Nonconformist Churches in this country will, in my judgement, never agree to any special privilages of concessions being given to the Roman Catholic Church. We want to have absolute equality. We are willing to concede that to the Roman Catholics, and will fight along with them to get it; but we cannot give them any special privilages or rights which we are unwilling to give to other religious communities. We have been asked by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Forest of Dean and by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Oldham to work this measure, and discourage, in every possible way, the contention put forward that it is the duty of Nonconformists to resist the payment of the rate. The question whether a Nonconformist will be justified or not in resisting the rate is a matter for each individual conscience, and, having settled that problem for himself, he will not be likely to be influenced in the slightest degree by the fact that he may lose his right as a citizen. I would remind the House that if the great Nonconformist communities take this serious step, they will, to some extent, be following the

  1015
  advice given by the Colonial Secretary in Brimingham in 1872, when he said—
  "It had been said that he encouraged resistance to a law—at all events he did not encourage active resistance to the law. They were not going to fight the bailiffs, they were going to submit in their way; but an alter native was provided for them—an alternative which landed them in great sacritices, but still permitted them to make a protest. Whatever might have been the opposition brought against the old Church rate, let the majority not doubt for a moment that there would be just as stout an opposition against the new; and the result which followed the opposition of the opponents of the former, would in good time follow the oppoisition of the opponents of the latter."
  There is no doubt that the decision to which Nonconformists will have to come will be very grave one; but I do not see any conflict between the advice that has been given by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Forest of Dean, and the advice that will have to be given by the leaders of Nonconformity. It will be quite possible in the constitution of the County Councils and of the local bodies of management to use every exertion in public elections, in the Press, and on the platform, to secure an adequate representation, and possibly in many parts of the country an effective control, over these educational agencies; and if this Bill is likely to have, as I fear it will, a paralysing effect on education through placing the children of the country largely under electrical control, I think it will be the paramount duty of all these organised institutions of Nonconformity to put forth their utmost efforts to secure, in a way they have never yet done in the present generation, a control of or adequate representation on these educational bodies. But I ought to say that that is quite a distinct and separate question from the other, which is still more grave, namely: whether it will be the duty of the Nonconformist churches to recommend their followers to organise a resistance, passive or active, against the payment of the rate which may be charged for the maintenance of these local sectarian schools. Already, there are manifest indications that the country is dividing itself into two great hostile camps. On the one side we have the Anglican Church working on the lines of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and the Roman Catholic clergy and laity. On the other side we have the representatives of labour. It is indeed a
  1016
  noteable fact that not one single labour organisation, no trades union, has pronounced in favsour of the Bill. Everyone of them has reprobated it; and, surely, it cannot be said that those who ought to know the true interests of the children are the clergy, the upper classes and the privileged sections of Society, and that they alone have a prescriptive and paramount right to tell the working classes how their children ought to be taught.
  Have the working classes no knowledge in this matter? On the other side, therefore, we have the labour organisations of the country, we have the whole of the Protestant community, and we have the Nonconformists solid. We may find here and there a Nonconformist who is put up on a public platform by a bishop of the Anglican Church as a sort of exhibit of Nonconformist opinion. I remember a friend of mine who took a great interest in foreign missions but had never seen a convert. One day he went down to the docks and got a little black boy from the captain of one of the steamers, put him on a platform and exhibited him as a triumph of missionary enterprise. The other day an Anglican Bishop put one of our Methodist Tory baronets on the platform of the Albert Hall as a specimen. The thing as ludicrous, because the overwhelming majority of the Tory section of the Methodist Church, the Wesleyan Church, had pronounced against the Bill. At last we have a united Party against the Bill. There is no schism; we have not had to form any league; there is absolute unity in our Party. I do not believe that we can be charged with being guilty of travesty and misrepresentation when we talk of the clercial control and clerical infulence which will be exercised under the Bill. We believe it to be a serious danger. John Bright speaking in this House on the education question said: "Nothing tends more to impede the progress of liberty, nothing is more to impede the progress of liberty, nothing is more fatal to independence of spirit in the public, than to add to the powers of the priesthood in the matter of education." It is because we are anxious to defend liberty of thought, which, in our judgment, is at the root commerical and political progress, that we are opposed to a measure which has the stamp of ecclesiasticism over almost every section of it.
  SIR JOHN ROLLESTON (): Concurrently with a general support of this Bill, the only criticism I wish to offer is that provision for the teacher of voluntary schools has not been made as it has been made for the teacherss of board schools. A great number of these teachers will now be transferred to the local authorities, and I can only say that, if their office is abolished or altered in any way, or if their pay is lessened, or if they suffer any loss, proper and reasonable compensation ought to be provided for them in this Bill; and those teachers who have experienced the difficulties existing under the voluntary system should not now be subjected to any measure of injustice. I hope there may yet be time to make some provision for them in this respect. Apart from that, I have nothing but praise for the Bill, and I most heartily support its third reading. Judging from the resolutions and petitions from my own constituency in favour of this measure, I must say that I feel that I have a mandate to give this Bill my hearty support, and I should be false to those who entrusted me with their confidence if I did not support this Bill. My own view is that this Bill is a democratic measure, designed in the best interests of the children of this country, and I believe that it is another great measure of constructive reform for which right hon. Gentlemen sitting on the Treasury Bench are so justly famed. This Bill will offer great advantages to the present generation, and will also have a great influence on the future prosperity and progress of this country.
  (10.5.) MR. BRYCE (): The hon. Member who has just sat down can scarcely expect me to imitate the general terms of praise which he has bestowed upon this Bill. This measure is now passing from us. It is past our mending, and it is going to a place where is is not likely to be amended. Looking at the fact that in all its provisions this Bill is closely connected with the granting of money, I can hardly hope that in another place it will be compatible with constitutional usage to alter this Bill at all. This Bill, Sir, has been passed under unprecedented circumstances. Although it is not a Bill of an urgent character, although there is no obstruction, although all the discussion upon it has been honest and practical, directed to an
  1018
  examination of its provisions and to a fair and reasonable criticism of them, many of its most important Clauses have been passed without any debate whatever. The proof of the value of the debates we have had on the Bill is to be found in the fact that whenever a Clause was properly debated it immediately grew in dimensions. If hon. Members will refer to Clause 7, which was originally Clause 8, and compare it with Clause 8 as it stood originally, they will find that this Clause has more than doubled in size, and I think not more than one-fourth of the original Clause remains. That was because we were allowed to debate that Clause pretty thoroughly. Similarly, Clause 12 has been very largely changed and greatly improved, and if more time had been allowed no doubt we should have been able to effect similar improvements in other parts of this Bill. The schedules were never discussed at all either in the Committee stage or upon report, and yet they contained a great many important provisions, some of them introduced in fulfilment of undertakings made on other Clauses of the Bill.
  The Bill itself has been very nearly doubled in size. It began as a measure of fourteen pages, including the schedules, and it is now a Bill of twenty-four pages. A great deal of time, no doubt, has been spent upon it, but the fact that so much time was spent upon it was due to the condition in which it came before the House. It was in some respects the worst drafted Bill that we have had for many years past in this House, not that I mean to reflect upon the drafting of the Parliamentary draughts men, who have done their work thoroughly, but I refer more particularly to the part of the drafting which belongs to the instructions given to the draughts men as to the nature of the problems which they were to introduce into the Bill. Anyone who read the Bill could perceive from the first that in many points it was vague and obscure, and sometimes I think it was intentionally obscure, for many material matters were omitted, sometimes from mere negligence, and occasionally omitted because it was desired to evade the difficult questions which would have been raised. It was necessary that the discussion should be very thorough, and as everyone knows who has

  1019
  followed these debates, we are able to discover in almost every Clause a great number of points which it became necessary to alter by Amendments.
  Even now we have left many points doubtful. Take the last subject which employed us—I mean the case of the Amendment made at the instance of the hon. and gallant Member for the Newport Division of Shropshire. When we discussed that Amendment a few days ago, two diametrically opposite views of its effect were put forward, one by the Attorney General and the other by some other lawyers of eminence in this House. It is now left for the courts of Law to determine which of these views is correct. Of course we know that it sometimes happens, owing to the haste with which our work is done, or owing to the fact that we do not perceive all that may arise, we do make work for the courts of law, but is it creditable to us or is it creditable to any assembly of our status and experience that we should deliberately leave questions which will be immediately litigated upon, and which will send the unhappy parties to the courts in order to determine what we ought to have determined here? I must say that in reviewing this Bill, which has cost us so much time and labour, we are now almost too exhausted to be able to discuss it properly, and I notice that to-day an atmosphere of exhaustion, limpness, and lassitude has pervaded the House.
  Reviewing these debates, although some of the most salient faults have been removed, and the Bill is rather more workable than it was at first, I must say that, so far as the objections taken on this side of the House are concerned, they have not been to any appreciable extent removed. In my view, and if I may venture to express what I think is the general view of this side of the House, the Bill is no better, and in some respects it is distinctly worse, than when it was brought into the House. Therefore, we have nothing to thank the Government for, and do not let it be regarded that any concessions which have been made are considered to be of the slightest value. [MINISTERIAL laughter.] I am sorry to say that if we look at these questions of principle, upon which our objections were directed, I do not think this Bill goes any way to remove them. In one point in Particular I regret very much that the option was not given to
  1020
  the great boroughs of retaining their School Boards if they thought fit, a point upon which so much stress was laid by the two hon. Members for Newcastle. I regret exceedingly that that provision has been struck out, because it would have facilitated the transition from the old to the new system, and would have given these great bodies the opportunity of obtaining the service which we know they value very highly.
  Let us ask for the sake of comparison what we have done now by this Bill, and what was intended at first. Let us ask what it was that this Bill promised to do and what has it in fact performed. We were told when the Bill was introduced that it was to secure the denominational schools, that it was to co-ordinate all forms of education, that it was to unify and simplify the authorities, that it was to promote secondary education, that it was to establish a harmonious and uniform national system, and, finally, that it was to put an end to religious controversy and to effect a final settlement. All these objects, except the first, on which there is a vital difference of opinion between the two sides of the House, are laudable and excellent, and if the Bill had been really designed to attain these objects it would have had nothing but support from this side of the House. Let us see how far they have been attained. The Bill has placed the voluntary schools on the rates, but it has departed from the understanding which was announced when it was brought in. We were then told that the maintenance of these schools was to be put on the rates, upon the condition that the managers were to undertake the cost of the repairs. That condition has been entirely departed from in three material points, not one of which was in the Bill, and every one of which was introduced late in the Committee stage since we met in October. What has the result of these three changes been? There is the rent of the school houses, and the rent of the houses of the teachers has been estimated at £50,000 a year. a sum which will go to the voluntaey schools in the future. That is, at any rate, the best estimate I have been able to find. The sum which will be obtained by the voluntary school managers from endowments under the Clause which gave them a share of the edowments has been estimated at

  1021
  £75,000 a year, and the sum which they may receive form fees has been estimated at £90,000 a year, making up altogether a sum of £215,000 a year as the estimated amount which will come to voluntary schools under this Bill.
  Now let us see what is the amount of the repairs, or rather the probable total cost of repairs which are to be undertaken by the managers of voluntary schools. The Bishop of London, I am informed, estimates the probable total cost of the repairs for the Church of England schools at £150,000 a year. If we take three-fourths of the £215,000 as the share of the Church of England schools, we arrive at the sum of £162,000 a year, so that in return for a charge of £150,000 for repairs, the Church of England voluntary school managers stand to receive £160.000 a year out of the subventions given to them by the Bill. That is to say they make a clear protit out of the transation. I shall be told that this will not happen in every area. I have no doubt that is so, but what is intended is to have an arrange what is intended is to have an arrangement by which all that is received over the areas is to be "pooled," and then an area which has not got these sources of income of their own is to be helped out of the general fund. What will the result of that be? The liability which, we were originally told, was to be undertaken by the managers of Church of England schools will disappear altogether. They will have a sum of money which will probably be large enough for distribution over the areas to relieve them from the necessity of obtaining any subscriptions at all in order to pay for the repair of these schools. I think we may fairly say that whether there is that bargain or not, there has been a complete departure from the understanding originally arrived at, and from the terms upon which this Bill was originally presented to the House.
  What does this amount to? Some hon. Members earlier in the debate said that this amounted to a re-endowment of the Church of England. At anyrate I think it is a re-endowment for the puroposes of education in the Church of England. It amounts to giving funds to the Church of England which, without this Bill she would not have had, and which nobody expected her to have,
  1022
  And in a certain sense it may almost be said that the Bill goes to establish the Church of England in a further sense than that in which it was established before, because we have under its provisions made one curious change. If the Attorney General is right in his interpretation of the so-called Kenyon-Slaney Amendment, it has the effect of making the bishop the arbiter to determine what is to be the religious instruction to be given in State schools. For these schools are no longer voluntary schools. They are now to be entirely supported by the State, and the giving of such a right to the bishop was never contemplated when we began this Bill, and it is a provision which not only surprises us, but seems rather more appropriate to the sixteenth than to the twentieth century. What else does the Bill do? It destroys the bodies which have done most for education—the School Boards in the great towns. It confirms the exclusion of half the nation from headmasterships and head teacherships of schools, and it gives them a doubtful right of entry into other teaching. It heaps on Borough and County Councils a vast mass of new work, for which they have no previous experience whatever. This work is admitted to be so heavy that we are invited to devolve some of it upon another authority. The committee has no power of deciding any question; they are not answerable to the people, and, therefore, responsibility is lost because it is divided between two authorities, and because the electors have no opportunity of reviewing the conduct of those who have been chosen. It will not be in the power of the Council, with all their public spirit and zeal, to change the line of administration and to lay down a policy.
  In the same way, it will be impossible for the electors to have an opportunity of determining the lines of policy, because those in whose hands the conduct of the business lies never come before them at an election, and because when the county and borough councillors do come before them there will be such a diversity of questions to be determined that it will be impossible to concentrate attention on educational questions alone This, to my mind, is one of the grave objections to the whole scheme, and it

  1023
  is one upon which sufficient stress has not been laid. But if the Government desire to have an educational policy which shall be the mirror of the mind of the nation, in the same sense that Parliament ought to be the mirror of the opinion of the nation, they cannot get it by such a system as they have established in the Bill. In each parish they are going to perpetuate two different kinds of schools under different kinds of managers—schools which can not be worked together as being parts of one system. I regret to see that the President of the Local Government Board and the hon. and learned Member for Stretford are not in their places. I have noticed that there is a tendency, after delivering Third Reading speeches, for hon. Gentlemen to disappear. They remind me of the Sultan in Omar Khayyam, "who bides his destined hour and goes away." The President of the Local Government Board argued that the system would be uniform because all the schools would be under the control of the local authority. Within a limited area it is capable of being served by different schools. One set may be under managers entirely at the disposal of the local authority; the other set will not be. In one set the committee will have power over the buildings at all times; in the other set they will only have power during the day, and during the evening they will have to make arrangements with the managers while they are only entitled to the use of the buildings three nights a week. In one set of schools they will appoint and dismiss the teachers; in the other set they will not have the power. In one set of schools they will be able to unite, divide enlarge or reduce schools; they will be able to group different schools under the same set of managers; but in the other set they can do none of these things. [An HON. MEMBER: They can group them.] But they cannot group them with schools which are provided schools.
  The Government have put obstacles and difficulties at every step in the way of harmonious and efficient administration. Entrenched under this Bill and behind these trust deeds the non-provided schools will be able to defy the local authority in what may be proved to be the most
  1024
  necessary and urgent reform. They can require it to keep up three small weak schools in an area where one strong school would be infinitely better to serve the needs of the people. Confusion and waste will continue under this system, and small schools may be multiplied. Economy will be sacrificed, because the voluntary managers have no motive for economy. Efficiency will be sacrificed as well, because the local authority will be distant and will not have an intimate and direct knowledge of the schools neccssary to give it a proper and effective control. For secondary education the Bill seems to him to do practically nothing. It does provide some money, but not the whole of the money for this purpose under the Act of 1890. It imposes no obligation; it does not require a local authority to do any more for secondary education than it pleases. It gives them no directions what to do. When we were discussing Clauses 2, 3 and 4 it was pointed out that there were many matters on which it was urgently neccessary that some directions should be given, and many of the matters connected with secondary education were left entirely untouched by the Bill. Excellent proposals were put down by my right hon. friend the Member for East Somerset, who placed on the Papers a number of Clauses containing very useful practical provisions, some of them drawn from his own knowledge and some of them from representations made by the Royal Commission, expressing the wishes of County Councils and technical committees, which would have turned this Bill into a very fair measure for secondary education. The new Clauses which have been submitted have been closured, but the Government had an opportunity on the Report stage to adopt them and to incorporate them in the Bill. That they have not done so affords conclusive proof of the indifference which they have shown to the educational side of the measure. It the admirable suggestions made by the right hon. Member for East Somerset had been taken up by the Government it would have caused them no trouble, and they would have greatly added to the value and utility of the Bill. The rural problem, one of the most pressing in connection with the whole question of education, is left untouched. We had an opportunity of dealing with it on the Clause relating to endowments.

  1025
  We were dealing with a sum of between £100,000 and £200,000 a year, which would have been of the utmost value in edeavouring to give to poor children in neglected rural districts an opportunity of getting something better than the mere elementary education which the small board schools have hitherto been able to give. You cannot have secondary schools in all these districts, but you might have here and there a secondary class at the top of the school, as they have in Scotland, or you might establish scholarship or exhibitions of small amount to carry promising and industrious scholars to the nearest secondary school. These endowment funds would have been of the utmost value for such purposes, but the money has been practically thrown away, and given in part to the managers and part to the rates. Even the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Somerset, to enable the local authority to apply for schemes for the utilisation of these endowments, was not taken up and carried through by the Government.
  For the unification of authorities, which has been represented as one of the main objects of the Bill, hardly anything has been done. Something is given with one hand, but nearly as much is withdrawn with the other. It is perfectly true, as the President of the Local Government Board said, that the Government would have encountered some resistance in carrying their proposal; but unless they did intend carrying it they had no right to represent this scheme as unifying the authorities. Instead of doing that, the scheme passes by the most vital part of what real unification ought to effect. All boroughs and urban districts have received an independent rating power for secondary education, so that you have reintroduced overlapping on the largest scale, and lost the opportunity of consolidating funds for the purposes of secondary education. What becomes of "one authority" and "co-ordination" under such a scheme as that?
  The Bill, except as regards the voluntary schools, fulfils no one of the promises with which it was introduced. It fails as regards secondary education; it fails as regards unity and co-ordination. In spite of the specious phrases scattered here and there throughout the Bill, it fails to prevent overlapping, and it fails to secure economy or efficiency. The
  1026
  Prime Minister has said that in these debates there has been much talk about religion and some about local government, but very little about education. That is true. But why has there been very little about education? Because there is very little about education in the Bill. The Bill is almost entirely concerned either with questions which arouse religious passion, or with questions of local government.
  We have been taunted with having no alternative scheme. I may tell the right hon. Gentleman that twice I desired to bring forward such a scheme, and twice the Closure on Clauses prevented me doing so. I will not attempt to develop that scheme now, but one part of it would have been to increase local areas of education—I do not think the county is the proper area for elementary education; it is far too large; but we could have found an area larger than the parish, which would have been a very effective educational area. The Bill has displeased many of the local authorities. Some of the County Councils resent it becasuse it introduces an element of strife and controversy from which they have been hitherto free, and impose upon them duties which they have not the time or experience properly to discharge. Others have even gone so far as to declare their intention to refuse to work the Bill. The County Councils, as a whole, I believe, through their Association, have expressed their strong disapproval of many of the provisions of the Bill which restrict their powers, and subject them to the Board of Education.
  These objections taken by the county authorities, do not promise well for the working of the Bill. The irritation amongst the local authorities is the least part of the harm which has been done. The Bill has created intense exasperation among large and active sections of the community. This has been manifested not only among Nonconformists, but also the working classes. One hon. Member has said that the Bill confers benefits on the working classes. If so, the latter do not know their friends, because the working classes, including the trades unionists and co-operators, have without exception condemned the Bill, believing

  1027
  that it sacrifices their interests to the demands of a section of the clergy. How can a Bill opposed by such large and important sections of the people, be repersented as being a message of peace or calculated to remove con roversy from the field of education and effect a final settlement? It does the exact opposite. The fire that was burning low has leapt up with tongues of flame, and, I fear, will continue to burn. The Bill will introduce theological and political elements into elections hitherto free from them.
  And for what gain has all this opposition been incurred? We are told that it was necessary to safeguard the denominational schools. That necessity has been enforced upon two grounds. The first the bricks-and-mortar ground, is the most unreal pretext ever brought forward to obscure the true issues of a measure. Everybody knows that if it were a question of taking these schools at a fair and moderate rent the country would be willing to undertake the expense. So far from acquiescing in that extravagant doctrine with regard to the interference with trusts. I would remind the Secretary to the Board of Education that trusts have often been broken by legislation when Parliment thought it necessary to do so. The real, the substantial, reason in the minds of many, those whom I most respect, is the desire to preserve, in what they conceive to be the only way, the religious education of the people of this country. But what grounds have they for believing that this is the only way in which to safeguard the religious and moral character of the future generations of this country? It I could believe that only in this way that object was to be attained I might feel that there was a substantial compensation for the mischief to be expected from other parts of the Bill. What evidence is there that Church of England parents desire sectarian instruction for their children? No such evidence has been produced. The testimony is all the other way. English parents, we were told by the Secretary to the Board of Education, are not theologically minded.
  *SIR WILLIAM ANSON: I was speaking of the managers, not of the parents.
  MR. BRYCE: I presume managers may be parents; at least I hope so.
  *SIR WILLIAM ANSON: It is quite possible for a manager not to desire to interfere with the theological treatment of subjects by the clergyman, and yet for the same man, as a parent to be extremely anxious for his children to learn their catechism.
  MR. BRYCE: But the hon. Gentleman was contrasting the interest of Scottish parents in theological matters with the total lack of such interest in English parents. The best proof that they are not anxious for this teaching is to be found in the fact that parents of the Church of England send their children to board schools just as freely as to denominational schools, even when denominational schools are equally within their reach. Nor is there any evidence that the children of the denominational schools are better citizens or better Christians than the children of board schools. If you can show that the voluntary schools turn out better members of the community, or more religious children. we should admit that you have made out your case. But no such evidence has been adduced, and we say that no such evidence can be found. Can any one say that during the thirty years in which the board schools and the voluntary schools have existed side by side there has been the slightest difference in the minds, the habits, or the character of the children they have turned out? Lastly, what evidence is there that children of twelve or thirteen can or do understand the distinctive teaching it is desired to give? How can they appreciate the dogmatic difference which are said to be so vital to their future life? Who of us at the age of twelve or thirteen appreciated these difference, and who would have retained them three years after leaving school? Is it true that in countries where the priesthood have the greatest influence on education the people have the greatest attachment to religion or most retain the habit of attending the public worship of God? Let us compare Protestant Germany on the one hand with Protestant America and the Protestant British Colonies on the other. In Germany the schools are

  1029
  largely denominational; in America and the British Colonies the schools are undenominational; and yet everybody knows that in Germany the number of churchgoers are only a small percentage of the number of churchgoers in America and the British Colonies. Denominational teaching has nothing to do with disposing the children to attend church during their subsequent years. I agree as to the moral atmosphere which may be created in a school by a teacher inbued with the principles of Christian morality and able to enforce them by his teaching. But that atmosphere depends on the teaching, not on the formularies. According to all the evidence, the moral atmosphere is just as strong and just as wholesome in its effects in the board schools as in the voluntary schools. Indeed, many dignitaries of the Church of England have given the most candid and frank testimony of the value of the undenominational religious teaching given in the board schools. I believe that the advocates of the Bill who think it will secure religious education, and through that the future welfare of the children of this country, are pursuing a mere phantom; they are sacrificing for a shadow the substance of a united. harmonious, undenominational system of education which would keep the children together and give them a common Christian teaching during their early years.
  The House is losing by this Bill the greatest opportunity it has had for thirty years of conferring a benefit upon the education of the country. We are losing the opportunity of creating an efficient system of secondary education, which might have been created without any controversy had a Bill for that purpose and that purpose only been introduced. We have lost the opportunity of securing unity of management and the harmonious working of elementary schools in suitable areas, and of associating the people of each locality with the work of education. The hon. and learned Member for the Stretford Division spoke about the control of the local authority, forgetting that the kind of popular control that we want is popular control on the spot. The vital thing is to interest the people on the spot in their schools, but by this Bill local interest is actually diminished, because School Boards are abolished.
  1030
  Next to, or perhaps even greater than, the harm done to education by the introduction of religious controversy has been the harm done by the want of popular interest in it. It is the want of a real living interest in the people of this country in education that is its great drawback. That want of interest is not confined to the humbler classes, and it is largely owing to the fact that we have never had a genuinely popular system. Surely we ought, above all things, to endeavour to make our system popular. That is the secret of the success of the American, Swiss, Scottish, and Colonial systems; it is because the people in the different localities in those countries are the managers of their own schools that they will make sacrifices for education. You want to give the parent a voice in the management of the school in which his own children will be taught, so that he will do, as a ratepayer and elector, that which will be for the benefit of his child as a pupil. A system which is popular is more effective in a country like England than a system on which more money is spent but which is not popular, and managed from a centre.
  These are critical years for England. We can not afford to stand still while the rest of the world is moving. We are now losing an opportunity, and it may be many years before we can retrieve it. Certainly the plan the Government have proposed cannot be regarded as a final plan. It is an ill-compacted scheme, and a cumbrous compromise between opposite methods. It is founded on no principle that endures: it is based on the sands, and it must crumble and fall. The passing of this Bill is not the end, but the beginning, of the struggle. You have made the old controversy more acute than it was before; you have emphasised the latent opposition between the claims of the clergy and the feelings of the laity in the Church of England, as well as the differences between the two leading schools of opinion in the Church—a difference which goes deeper than that between the Evangelical school and Non-conformists—and you have brought into the foreground the question of a State Church itself. You have made people ask whether the extraordinary demands which have been put forward, I will not say by, but for and on behalf of, the

  1031
  Church of England, do not spring from the fact that one Church is blessed in this country with privileges and a status which are entirely unsuited to our time and popular Constitution, and which are incompatible with the principles of religious freedom and equal citizenship. It is not the Opposition who have raised this controversy. It has been forced upon us, and we are obliged to accept the challenge. We deny the moral authority of a Bill which has taken the country by surprise, which was framed without any attempt to meet and respect the conscientious feelings of large sections of the people, and which has been carried by violent methods, under which parts have never been discussed at all. What will happen in the next few years I will not venture to say, but when we look at other democratic communities and see how the problem of education has been solved in Switzerland, in Holland, in the United States, and in the Colonies, we cannot doubt as to the ultimate issue. Those who think not of this or next year only, but who look beyond England, will indeed regret the loss of precious time, but at the same time they will not despair, because they will see beyond the clouds of confusion and bitterness, in whose shadow the struggle which is now beginning will have to be conducted, a clearer and a calmer sky, under which there will arise a system of education fitly organised, worthy of England, and commensurate with the needs of her people.
  *(11.0.) SIR WILLIAM ANSON: The criticisms of the hon. Member for Oldham are more satisfactory to my mind than those of the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down. The hon. Member for Oldham might have voted for the Bill if its provisions for elementary and for secondary education had been different—if, in fact, it had been almost a different Bill. But from the point of view of the right hon. Gentleman this Bill has been bad in its conception, bad in its drafting, and bad in its conduct, and its provisions with regard to religion, to education, and local government are all bad. The right hon. Gentleman went on to say that the debates in this House have made the Bill worse than it was before.
  MR. BRYCE: That is not what I said. I thought I conveyed quite distinctly that the changes that have been made had made the Bill a more workable Measure. What I stated was that the Government had not removed the objection we maintain to the principle.
  *SIR WILLIAM ANSON: Finally, the right hon. Gentleman said that arising from the Bill a fire was lit up in the constituencies, which I must confess, however, has found very inadequate representation in this House. Other hon. Members have complained that this Bill has undergone considerable change in the course of its progress through the House. But let us consider the magnitude of the subject undertaken. We have had really to recast the educational system of the country, both elementary and secondary. And it is not as if we had had a clean slate to write upon; we had to work through a mass of previous legislation and of existing custom in order to establish what we conceive to be a system resting on proper lines. The right hon. Gentleman talked of; the present system as united, harmonious, and efficient.
  MR. BRYCE: I said nothing of the kind. We have always admitted that it requires to be amended.
  *SIR WILLIAM ANSON: I have quoted the right hon. Gentleman's words.
  MR. BRYCE: I did not apply them to the existing system.
  *SIR WILLIAM ANSON: I will consider the present system without reference to what I believe were the words of the right hon. Gentleman. Under the present system, there is, first, as regards secondary education, the power given to local authorities to deal with technical instruction under the Technical Instruction Acts, and the use of the whisky money; then there is the Science and Art Department at South Kensington, assisting scientific teaching of a different character; establishing secondary schools of science, making grants to other schools, as formerly to the School Boards. The

  1033
  School Boards in the large towns made gallant efforts to fill the gap in our educational system, and to push their way from the elementary education, which is their proper task, into the region of secondary education, until they were checked by the Cockerton judgment. We are told that the Cockerton judgment shows how much simpler and better it would have been to deal with secondary education apart from elementary education. No doubt the Cockerton judgment by, to some extent, defining secondary, as distinct from elementary education, did make it easier to bring in a secondary education Bill, but, at the same time, it is quite plain, from the mode in which, under the efforts of the School Boards, elementary education has passed by insensible stages into secondary education, how important it is to have one authority to deal with the two. We have these various bodies, the technical instruction committees of the municipal bodies, the School Boards, the science and art grants to the different societies which enjoy them, and then behind them, in the region of elementary education, we have the small School Boards, with their insufficient areas, and the voluntary schools struggling against competition with rate-aided schools and with the requirements of the Board of Education. Besides which we have private enterprise and the old foundations in the region of the smaller secondary education schools, and the training of teachers wholly left to the enterprise of denominations assisted by Government grants, and not assisted by local effort at all. Out of this chaos this Bill endeavours to establish something like order, and surely, starting with this jumble of material on which to work, some changes in the course of the progress of the Bill through the House, as well as some drafting errors and omissions, might very well have been regarded as practically inevitable in the progress of the Bill.
  Now as to the order which we are trying to establish. First, as regards the authority. What we have laid down with regard to the authority is first, that the county or the county borough in each case is the one authority for all the education within the range of the County Council or County Borough Council. Then the boroughs and urban
  1034
  districts of 10,000 and 20,000 respectively are the authorities over elementary education within their area, and every borough and every urban district is an authority for secondary education to the extent of a penny rate. The comment of the Leader of the Opposition is that we have a great variety of authorities, and having dealt with the local authorities and their education committees, and of the managers of elementary schools, he spoke of the voluntary schools as having in the background the revolving bishop, whose orbit distracted the movement of these lesser luminaries, the managers of the voluntary schools. The different authorities, however, work into one another in very reasonable and logical order, so that we obtain a combination of local autonomy and educational uniformity. The County Council has the power of raising money to the extent of a 2d. rate, and the boroughs can levy their rate. Surely these boroughs, being authorities for elementary education not only relieve the local authority of the great burden of superintending all the elementary schools, but having their own elementary schools under their own eyes can see whether the need is for the higher elementary or the lower secondary education, and they can come forward and invite the County Council with its larger resources to help them, and thus you get a combination of local autonomy and uniformity of government in respect of that higher elementary and lower secondary education which is the most important branch of our educational system.
  As regards education itself, we want good elementary schools so far as they go—good intermediate and technical schools, and good secondary schools—we do not want schools always attempting to do something different to what they are intended to do. Evening schools, except in a limited number of cases, and schools deriving grants from South Kensington, will be outside the range of elementary education, elementary schools being defined as schools for boys and girls up to the end of the year in which they reach the age of fifteen. Objection to this was raised by the Leader of the Opposition, who said it was an unfortunate thing that a boy who reached the top of the elementary school, and was capable of receiving further education, and had time for it, should not be enabled to continue his education at

  1035
  the same school, but should have to remove to another school, possibly at some distance off. I cannot understand how a system, which has been adopted and followed with the best results by one class of the community, should be regarded as foolish when it is proposed to apply it to another class of the community. Would it be thought desirable by any hon. Member that his boy should continue at a private school after reaching the top of that school? Would it not be desirable that he should continue his education at a public school, passing from his classical extracts and smaller mathematical studies to the more difficult classics and the higher branches of mathematics, and that at the end of his school time he should again move, this time to the University? Surely there is an additional stimulus in a boy finding himself amid other youths doing different work from that he has been hitherto engaged in. Surely it gives him a fresh impulse in education if only from the change in his surroundings.
  The local authorities will have to deal with some other schools of a special character. Some discussion has been raised upon evening schools, and the difficulties that will be felt in some classes of the community if these schools, giving education of a rudimentary character, are done away with. Boys and girls who should have learned the rudiments may have been sent to work at an early age, and may wish to recover the lost arts of reading and writing: they will be able to do so under the provisions of the Bill, but we do not want evening schools to move up from elementary and to deal with secondary education. Of course, it is well understood that it may constantly happen that in working for higher subjects old ground of a rudimentary character may be covered, but that is different from the sort of elementary education we wish to see confined to these evening schools. What the Government hope is that the elementary schools under the new system will be more efficacious, that children will not leave them in such a condition that they readily forget their school teaching, and that, consequently, the evening schools which are really of an elementary character will rapidly disappear.
  It has been objected that there is no provision for the creation of secondary
  1036
  schools in rural districts for children who, after the age of fifteen, are able to stay at school, are capable of acquiring more information, and are worthy of a longer course of education. The Bill makes provision for that. If there is no available higher education in the neighbourhood of a rural school the local authority may provide higher education out of the money which is appropriated to elementary education, and the children, therefore, may stay on after the age of fifteen, and may be given education other than elementary—if there is no other available school—in the same school.
  Power, too, is given to pay for and provide for the conveyance of teachers and of pupils from one school to another, and so we may say that we have brought a good and suitable education within the reach of all.
  There is one other point. The local authority, before the provisions of this Bill, had no power to do anything for the training of teachers. We shall have that power in the future. In the case of all schools, colleges, or hostels provided by the education authority, the Cowper-Temple Clause will prevail. One of the great difficulties under which Nonconformists have laboured has been their exclusion from the training colleges. Of course the training colleges have been, with a few exceptions, of a denominational character; and for this reason Nonconformists have not merely been excluded from the higher teaching posts in the Church schools, where the trust deeds prevent the headmaster or headmistress from being anything but a member of the Church of England, but they have been excluded from the great board schools, because, owing to their inefficient training, they have not been able to aspire to these higher posts. Now, not only can the local authority provide undenominational training colleges, but if their resources are unequal to the provision of training colleges they can provide undenominational, hostels attached to denominational training colleges, where people can get training without incurring denominational liability.
  The application of the Cowper-Temple Clause to the schools and colleges provided by the local education authority, has been the subject of some complaint.

  1037
  I regard the Cowper-Temple Clause as a great safeguard to the local authorities. I feel that local authorities would spend much of their time in discussion as to whether they should or should not provide a school of a particular denomination, whereas where there exists the safeguard of the Cowper-Temple Clause that difficulty will not arise. I feel that the Cowper-Temple Clause, which is at best a very illogical and unsatisfactory safeguard for those who do not desire denominational teaching, has, at any rate, the merit that it protects local authorities from internal dissensions in regard to the establishment of schools.
  Before I pass from the subject of secondary education there is one thing I should like to say as to the attitude of the Board of Education to these local authorities. Much has been said as to the probability that the Board of Education will take a line with regard to the local authorities which may be offensive to them, which may put pressure upon them to do what they were not otherwise disposed to do, and which might make them feel that they were not as independent as I think the House generally desires they should be. There are many ways in which the local authority are brought into contact with the Board of Education. There is, in the first place, the consultation with the Board of Education which is required of the local authority as to the educational needs of the area under Clause 2 of the Bill. There is the constitution of the education committee. One object of the Education Board will be to see that all the interests in an area that ought to be represented are represented. Another object which the Board will have in view is to take care that the education committees are not so broken up as to prevent co ordination—to see that the education committees are not so constituted as to leave one wholly for secondary education and the other wholly for elementary education. Then there are the appeals which must come in the course of events from the managers to the Board of Education from the decisions of the local education authorities. Now, I may say for my noble friend the President of the Board of Education, as for myself, that it is our desire to co-operate as cordially as possible with the local authorities. Each will be able to
  1038
  contribute something. The one will bring their local knowledge and experience to bear on the subjects which they will have to consider in common. The Board of Education have a wider experience of education, and I have no doubt the Board of Education and the local authorities will work heartily together for the common end which they both have in view—the benefit of the young people in each area, to secure for them opportunity of success in life, and make their lives more full and interesting. In this way the two bodies will act together to promote the well-being of the whole community.
  This is all I have to say on the secondary education part of the Bill, and I turn to elementary education and the constitution of the body which has charge of it. The hon. Member for Lincolnshire speaks of this part of the Bill as an attack on Nonconformity. I entirely repudiate that. I regard the Bill as an Education Bill, not as a measure designed either for the relief of the Church of England, or as an attack on Nonconformity, and I repudiate any such idea. The School Boards have passed away, and the local education authorities will take possession. Each local authority will find its area studded with schools of two sorts; the buildings of the one sort provided out of the rates, the buildings of the other sort provided out of private funds. They will incur responsibilities with regard to these two classes of schools. Their control over secular education will in all cases be complete and absolute, but in the case of the non-provided schools it will be limited in certain directions as regards religious instruction, and the managers will have an initiative in the appointment and dismissal of teachers. I am not going to argue or touch on the controversy which has raged so long in the House as to the composition of the board of management of the latter class of schools. We have already had fully explained the arrangements as to the buildings, the foundation managers, the right of appointing and dismissing teachers, and the maintenance of the fabric. The fabric will be maintained out of private contributions, out of endowments, out of fees, where fees are charged, and out of the rent of the teacher's house. I see no reason why these latter revenues, which are part of the revenues of the

  1039
  school as a building kept up by the denomination should be given up. These are matters which have been commented upon with great indignation. Sometimes they have been treated as petty, and one hon. Member described them as a huckstering demand on the part of the managers. [An HON. MEMBER: "Hear, hear!") I see the hon. Member still adheres to that description. The revenues are part of the revenues of the schools as built and kept up by the denomination. They are part of the property, and, for my own part, I see no reason why they should be given up. In the matter of fees the local authority can stop charging them. As regards the other matters the local authorities will benefit by the existence of teachers' houses and endowments wherever the endowments are appropriated to its own purposes.
  Now, I should like, in passing, to say a word about the Kenyon-Slaney Claue. I shall not discuss the legal aspects, but some other aspects more particularly connected with it. It has been said that the Kenyon-Slaney Clause has been a great blow, a great injury, to the clergy. More than once in the course of the debate I have been told that I cannot really grasp the problems of education because I am representative of a university, and am consequently said to be a representative and mouthpiece of the clergy. To my mind the representation of a university means something wider than the representation of the clergy. There are interests not exclusively clerical which every university, and necessarily the representative of a university, must consider as his peculiar charge, but in so far as I do represent the clergy, I am proud to represent a body of men who in the past have done, and now in the present are doing, so much for the religious education of the country. In the past they were our teachers all
  1040
  down the line of education, and they have now, I believe, abandoned the higher walks of education to laymen, largely because they have thrown themselves with greater force and enthusiasm into other departments of clerical life. Therefore the last thing I should desire to do would be to wound the feelings of the clergy in this particular department of clerical work. But, on the other hand demands have been put forward on behalf of the clergy which, I think, could hardly be the demands of the entire clerical world. It was stated by the noble Lord the Member for Greenwich, the other day, that the ordained ministry of the Church were the only persons entitled to teach its doctrines, and this with reference to the religious teaching in the public elementary schools. If that is true of a public elementary school, surely it carries us a little further. If no one but the clergyman may teach the doctrines of the Church, that is to say, if no one but the clergyman may attend to the teaching of the Catechism and the Prayer Book in a public elementary school, surely the same rule would apply to the home. If the lay manager and the lay teacher may not the one superintend and the other instruct in the Prayer Book and the Catechism, surely the same thing applies to the father and mother in the household. This, I think, is almost the reductio ad absurdum of that statement of the clerical case. But I do not think that is the view of the case taken by the bulk of the clergymen. What they feel is that hitherto they have had the sole superintendence, and like most men who have exercised power and feel that they have used it worthily, they do not wish to give it up. I do not think it is too much to ask the

  1041
  clergy, in the present conditions of elementary education, to exchange the sole superitendence which they now exercise for a joint superintendence with five other managers, three of whom are to be specially chosen from their own denomination, and specially constituted to protect the denominational teaching of which the clergyman has been in charge. My belief is that this Clause will in its working strengthen the position of the clergyman, and that, when the first irritation of this withdrawal of the sole superintendence from the clergy has passed by, we shall find that the boards of management of voluntary schools will work well, alike with the local authority which superintends the secular instsruction and with the clerical member who is mainly interested in the religious instruction, although he is no longer the sole superintendent of it. That is all I have to say about a Clause which will, no doubt, confer upon its author a fame similar to that of the author of the celebrated Cowper-Temple Clause. The same element of legend will grow up around him as grew up around Cowper-Temple. I may mention that I have been more than once asked who were Cowper and Temple, what were their respective views, and how they were compromised. The author of the Kenyon-Slaney Clause will perhaps be regarded as two persons—one of them holding extreme Ritualistic views and the other extreme Nonconformist views, who eventually struck out a compromise which was accepted by the House.
  The hon. Member for Cleveland, in a very interesting speech, made an allusion to these debates as prolonged. "Prolonged" is, to my mind, hardly an adequate expression. In fact, my vocabulary scarcely supplies me with any word which would convey an accurate description of my feelings with regard to the
  1042
  length of our debates. But, as has also been mentioned more than once tonight, these debates have been conducted in a friendly spirit, and the controversy, although prolonged and at times acute, has left no trace of bitterness behind it. Let me speak for my single self. In the middle of this Parliamentary battle I was brought into the fighting line, new to office and comparatively new to the life of the House of Commons, and I have experienced from both sides a consideration and an indulgence for which I should like to express my gratitude in the heartiest terms I can command.
  In regard to the religious difficulty, my own belief is that under the great difficulties of the existence of the voluntary schools in these large numbers, and the real desire which, in spite of all that has been said, I believe to exist, that there should be definite denominational teaching—a desire the best proof of which is the continued existence, during all these thirty years of struggle and conflict, of these thousands of voluntary schools—my own belief is that in the curcumstances the solution provided by the Government is the best and fairest that could be found. The hon. Member for Oldham has said that if the upper classes would take a more serious view of life there would be less need for denominational teaching in the elementary schools. I cannot accept that solution, nor am I prepared to say that we have found the ultimate solution of our difficulty. I accept this solution as the best which the present circumstances will allow; but I look for another solution at a future time. Some day we shall realise that religion is and always must be an integral part of education, and at the same time that our religious differences will always exist in a nation

  1043
  which is a really serious nation and which takes its religious differences seriously. We shall also realise that these differences ought to be accepted and must be understood. For this reason I do not regret what has been regretted in some of the criticisms made on this Bill, that we shall bring the different denominations together in the Education Committee. The more they jostle one another in the common interests of education the more rapidly will they learn to understand one another, to appreciate one another, and to see the common good which underlies all their differences. The differences will not disappear, but they will lose their bitterness because they will be understood. That, I hope, will be the end and the solution of this great educational and religious problem. It will not come this year or next year, but I for one will never despair that it will come, and then the religious question will not be the great educational difficulty. Rather, we shall see religion set to education "like perfect music unto noble words," and at last in the fulness of time there will descend upon our schools the blessing of peace.
  (11.40.) DR. MACNAMARA: I desire to express my sincere admiration of the manner in which the First Lord of the Treasury has acted during the proceedings on this Bill. His exquisite courtesy and unfailing good temper will always remain a pleasant memory, although they must be associated with a matter on which we sincerely differ. I am glad that his patience has lasted so long, but I could have wished that it had sasted to the end of Clause 20, so that we might have had an opportunity of going into those repealing Clauses which
  1044
  touch matters of great importance, and not consequential upon anything that has transpired during the Committee or other stage of this Bill. But the First Lord told us that there was nothing for it but to apply the Closure by compartments. I think we might have made a better Bill if we had had a little longer time for discussion. Whatever might be said of the merits of the Bill, I would like to say that it has worked something in the nature of a modern miracle during the eight months it has been before the House and the country. I say modern miracle advisedly. It has created on the part of the English people something in the nature of an interest in the education question. The English people up to the present time have had little or no belief in intellectualism as a factor of national defence. They have won their way to superiority by physical superiority almost entirely in the past, but they will not do it in the future. However superior physically they may be, other forces are at work. I think that John Bull does not connote the enormous changes that are going on all around. This Bill, with all its defects on its head, and there are many, has awakened him to the importance of national education, and the gravity of it from the point of view of national defence, and to that extent it is really a blessing in disguise. That is my deliberate judgment upon it. But when it goes into the localities I am bound to confess that I see it must be associated with very much irritation, because it cuts across so many of the traditions of our educational system. That irritation will not subside for some time. All that is good. So long as we can keep John Bull awake we have a priceless stimulus. I believe the result of keeping him awake on this subject will

  1045
  be that he will make enormous changes in this Bill. I think a decade will not pass over our heads until that will happen. I am perfectly grateful for the Bill from the fact that it has aroused the interest of the people of this country. I cannot come up in the train without hearing people discussing the Education Bill. I cannot help wondering what the good people of Sevenoaks thought things were coming to that they should have an election fought entirely on the education question. I believe that if we can keep that interest alive all the bad things in the Bill will be driven out under the irresistible force of public opinion.
  I should like to turn to two or three of the main principles of the Bill, and to say a word or two on each. First of all in regard to the new machinery for local education in this country. The Government has determined to go to the municipal councils for their local authorities for education in the future. I said on the First Reading that there was nothing anti-democratic in that. I understand that it was the original form of the Bill which Mr. Gladstone placed before the Cabinet in 1869, and which Mr. Forster introduced in 1870. The proposal was not to creat an ad hoc body, but to make the municipal councils the local authority for elementary education. The ad hoc authority was the result of an Amendment proposed by the hon. Member for the Forest of Dean, and supported by the hon. Member for Oxford University. Why does the Government go to the municipal council for the local authority for education? From the point of view of a good many of us on this side of the House, we cannot help feeling that, however we cannot help feeling that, however desirable it may be to bring the control of education into the general field of municipal activity, we think it should
  1046
  be accorded a separate election and a separate franchise. There is at the back of many of us this sort of feeling, that when education is handed over to the municipal council, which has a thousand and one other things to attend to, it is likely to be slowed down and overlooked, and not so likely to be prosecuted with that enthusiasm and vigour with which it would be prosecuted if left to the control of a body exclusively elected for education, and nothing else. There is a feeling among the Progressives that that is the reason why the Government have gone to the Municipal Council for the local council for education. If that is the view of the Government I believe it is doomed to complete disappointment.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Hear, hear!
  DR. MACNAMARA: I do not think for a moment that the Municipal Councils, with their local patriotism and their desire to promote education in their own centres, will try to slow down education. Remember we can only judge of those points by what they have done in the past. I do not think we can pay the present Ministry the credit of being enthusiastic on the subject of elementary education in this country. The last of the Vice-Presidents of the Council will tell you frankly that the members of the Government are composed of an aristocratic class who do not believe in higher education for the children of the people, being perfectly convinced that there are certain functions in civilised life which are best performed by ignorant people. I believe that in the administration of the counties for some time there will be a disposition to slow things down, but I do not think for a moment that the

  1047
  great municipalities of the north of England—Leeds, Bradford, Manchester, and Liverpool—are likely to be less progressive in the work of education than would be a School Board elected for the same area. Would Ministers tell us if this is the reason? One reason they suggest is that they want to get rid of a number of elections. We have heard tonight that there are too many elections, and that people are sick and tired of them. We are prepard to meet the Government on that issue. You could have elected an ad hoc body for education on the same day and on the same franchise as you elect your Municipal Council.
  The First Lord says that one of the desires of the Government in giving the work to the Municipal Councils, and this of course is quite a sincere desire, is that it would be possible to bring all grades of education under one authority in the same area. That is an admirable reason, and I with it entirely. If you are to have an educational ladder in use you can only have it by co-ordinating the different grades of education, and so long as there are separate authorities you cannot have complete co-ordination. It is desirable and expedient that you should have all grades of schools under one authority in the same area. I agree entirely as to the essentiality of that. But when I remember how very little we hear of the blessed word co-ordination now-a-days I cannot help recalling to mind the highly-coloured play bills that depict the Surrey side drama. I would say to the Government, "Live up to the poster." In the First Lord's First Reading speech he spoke of co-ordination, but I confess I do not hear much about it now. I can put the First Lord's position in a sentence more
  1048
  succinctly than by quoting from any speech. It is a statement contained in a letter written to the hon. Member for North West Ham. In that letter the right hon. Gentleman said—
  "The Government quite recognise that until both primary and secondary education in each district are confided to a single education authority, we cannot regard our educational system as properly organised."
  That is the whole position taken up by the Government—a position in which I most entirely and thoroughly agree. What has been done to live up to that poster? It is true that this Bill provides us with an authority for all grades of education in counties and boroughs. You have got under Clause 1 of the Bill 129 authorities which live up to this ideal of co-ordination. But you have got a great deal more than that which do not live up to the poster by any means. You have the proviso of Clause 1 of which I moved the rejection in Committee and of which I stand a pronounced opponent. I am sorry for the difficulty in which the First Lord finds himself, and I should have been glad if he had shown more courage and had lived up to his own testimony for one authority for all grades of education.
  It being Midnight, the Debate stood adjourned.
  Debate to be resumed Tomorrow.
  Mr. SPEAKER, in pursuance of the Order of the House of the 16th October last, adjourned the House without Question put.
  Adjourned at two minutes after Twelve o'clock.

RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.

  CHINA (No. 3) (1902).
  Correspondence respecting the evacuation of Shanghae.
  TREATY SERIES (No. 15) (1902).
  Additional Act modifying the Industrial Property Convention of 20th March, 1883; signed at Brussels, 14th December, 1900. Presented [by Command], and ordered to lie on the Table.

  DISEASES OF ANIMALS ACTS, 1894 AND 1896.
  Order, dated the 28th November,1902, entitled the Foreign Animals (Amendment) Order of 1902 (No. 2). Laid before the House (Pursuant to Act), and ordered to lie on the Table.
  House adjourned at Four o'clock, till To-morrow, Eleven o'clock p. m.