of the Bill that some such compromise as the following should be made.

The county is to remain prima facie the sole authority for education throughout its entire extent. But boroughs of 10,000, and urban districts of 20,000, may, for purposes of elementary education only, cut themselves off from the county, and be independent and autonomous. All boroughs and urban districts are also to retain the power, which they now possess under the Technical Instruction Acts, of levying a rate of a penny in the pound on their districts, and spending the proceeds in advancing technical instruction.

It must be admitted that this compromise is not logically consistent with the principle of the Bill. But it has the merit of being acceptable to both parties to the controversy, town and county alike, and of thus smoothing the passage of the Bill through Parliament. It is a great improvement on the state of things now existing, and it is not likely to cause practical damage to the cause of education. It is quite true that in those boroughs and urban districts which think fit to separate themselves for elementary education purposes from the counties in which they are situated, there will be two education authorities and not one: there will be the same necessity as now for drawing a line between elementary and higher education-a task which the judgment of the Courts in R. v. Cockerton has made more easy: and there will be the same risk on the border line of the schools of one authority rivalling and overlapping those of the other. But consider the number of local authorities and powers which at present intervene in the education of such a town-the Voluntary Associations under the Act of 1897, the School Board, the Town Council under the Technical Instruction Acts, and the County Council with its concurrent

powers under the same Acts. To reduce these to two will be at least a step in the right direction. The power to raise and spend a penny rate in the town on technical instruction is likely to be used to aid and not to thwart the county schemes. Such a power has existed for thirteen years without producing friction between town and county, and it is on the special motion of the County Councils Association that the power has been preserved. No higher school could be maintained by a town without subsidies from the Board of Education, whose sanction is for this reason always obtained before such a school is established. No Board of Education would sanction a school established by an individual town in opposition to the general county scheme. There is no doubt that the powers in relation to education, thus given to towns, can only be serviceable to the interests of the community if exercised in co-operation with the counties, and in accordance with a general county plan. It has been urged that this should be secured by making all the operations of the town subject to the consent of the county. But the counties themselves are of opinion that such a provision would be more likely to hinder than help the joint action which is desired. Towns are jealous of their independence; that independence is on the whole advantageous to the nation; aud it is thought that they are more likely to agree if their independence is respected than if they are placed by legal enactment in a position of subordination.

But of all the controversies stirred up by the Bill the sharpest and bitterest is that raised by the provisions for making the elementary instruction given in Voluntary Schools efficient. This is not a matter which affects in reality the principle of the Bill at all. Municipal authorities might be charged with the duty of providing for national

education without any special mention of Voluntary Schools or special plans for their improvement. But the establishment of an authority having jurisdiction over all schools makes it for the first time possible to take steps for bringing Voluntary Schools into a state of real efficiency; and if an authority were created without power to do this it would be unable to perform the duties in relation to national education for which it had been constituted.

In attempting the solution of this problem, difficult because of the religious passion by which it is surrounded, three great principles have had to be borne in mind.

(1) It is essential to the welfare of the nation that the elementary education given in Voluntary Schools should be made as efficient as possible. It is in them that the majority of the children of the country are receiving their instruction. However excellent some of them may be, it is now evident that the charity of churches and denominations cannot keep up the instruction given in all of them to that level which the interests of the nation require. The mischief is not only the inferiority of some of the schools themselves, but they drag down the level of education all round, and force the acceptance of a minimum for certified efficiency far lower than it should be. There is no chance that these schools will disappear. Some may, as it is said, be kept up to avoid the costly machinery of a School Board. But a great many are the product of strong religious sentiment; the more they feel aggrieved by being denied their just share of public support for the public work they do, the more obstinately will they be clung to by their adherents, Of the Roman Catholic Schools, for example, which are the poorest and most needy, not one has since the Act of 1870 been given up. In them thousands of chil

dren are taught at no cost to the rates, so that the religious convictions of the Roman Catholic Church have been productive of a pecuniary gain to the ratepayers to which they are not justly entitled. It is certain that, even if left to struggle on, the Voluntary schools will not disappear; they will linger for generations, and remain for all that time a source of weakness to a national system of education. Even those who do not believe in religion as an instrument of education would be wise to recognize existing facts. A large proportion of the people of England will persist in maintaining schools in connection with Churches and denominations. It is the interest of the people at large to enter into some arrangement whereby the best possible instruction shall be given in such schools.

(2) It is an essential consideration, in any arrangement with the Voluntary schools, that satisfactory security shall be given that the religious character of such of them as are denominational will be preserved. Without such security the schools will not come in, if a choice is left to them. And if no choice is left to them, it would, unless satisfactory security is given, be an act of public spoliation to take away schools from those to whom they belong, and apply them to purposes other than those for which they were founded. The necessity therefore of giv ing a security of this kind is generally admitted. Two methods have been suggested as to the effectiveness of either of which doubts cannot be excluded. Machinery of this kind has a way of acting in direct opposition to the intentions of its inventors. Both methods rightly fix upon the appointment of the teachers, or at least of the head teacher, as the cardinal point on which the character of the religious teaching depends. It is indeed upon the head that not religious teaching

only, but the whole spirit and nature of a school depend. Managers, after appointing a head, have to leave the discipline, the course of teaching, the influence over the children mainly in his or her hands. The best managers in the world cannot make the school good if the head of it is bad. Nothing that they have to do is more important or more difficult than the selection of the head teacher. People who talk as if it was an easy thing for a body of managers to choose know little of the real difficulties of the case. The best and wisest people may make the most fatal error in their selection.

The first of the two methods proposed for securing the religious character of the school is, that a majority of the managers should be of the religious denomination to which the school belongs, and that the managers should appoint the teacher or teachers. This method has the advantage of being the security which the religious bodies have themselves asked for, and with which they declare themselves to be satisfied. It has the disadvantage of appearing, at first sight, to take the general management of the school, including even secular instruction, out of the hands of the local authority by which the funds for the conduct of the school are provided. shall show presently that this appearance is illusory and that the control of the local authority over the secular instruction is absolute. If this be so, it is neither wrong nor unwise to accept the proposals which the religious bodies themselves have made, and in the efficacy of which they themselves confide. Without any safeguards at all there is no general and immediate danger of the religious character of the Voluntary schools being tampered with. The County and Municipal Councils would in general have no desire to interfere, and religious teaching would go on in the schools

I

Safeguards

very much as heretofore. are required for exceptional cases only. Whether in such cases, where a County Council or a majority of parishioners, or both, are hostile, two-thirds majority is a reliable safeguard is a question for the religious bodies themselves.

The second method proposed is that the religious body in possession of the school should have the sole right of nominating the teacher, but that the majority of managers should be appointed by the public authority. This would maintain the religious character of the school, so far as the selection of the teacher by the religious body could secure it. The most serious objection from the educational point of view seems to be that the presence of independent persons is useful in the selection of a teacher, even when they are a minority, and that the body of which one-third represented the local authority would make a better choice than an ecclesiastical conclave sitting in camera. The chief advantage of the method is that it avoids all appearance of taking the management of secular instruction out of the hands of the local authority. But, unless the religious bodies concerned adopted the proposal as a better security than the one they had asked for, it would be unjust to attempt to force it upon them.

(3) The control of the local authority, which represents the ratepayers who provide the money for the maintenance of the school, must be absolute and complete, SO far as secular instruction is concerned. It is no necessary infringement of this principle that the local authority should be required to act in relation to individual schools through "managers:" that depends on the powers with which these "managers" are endowed. The name "managers" is perhaps not an altogether happy one. It has certainly led to much misapprehension. These

are no longer to be "managers" in the sense in which those now responsible for Voluntary schools are "managers." The "managers" of the Bill are, as has been frequently stated, the "creatures and servants" of the local authority. They have no powers except those specifically given them by statute, or delegated by the authority. The teachers are only to be appointed by them subject to the approval of the authority, which, as it fixes and pays the salaries, will be the real master of the teachers. The hours of opening, the holidays, the time table, the staff, the teaching apparatus, the expenditure of every kind will all be under the control of the authority to whose directions the "managers" will have to conform. It does not follow that the authority may not entrust a great deal of discretion to particular bodies of managers and follow to a great extent their advice. In determining the kind of lessons suitable to the surroundings of the children, for instance, it would be a great misfortune if variety and experiment were not permitted on the initiative of man. agers, advised as they would be by the teacher, and if the local authority so used their power as to impose one uniform and unvarying course of instruction on their whole district. This suppression of managers in individual schools is a fault not unjustly found with some of the large School Boards. But all such discretionary powers would be dependent on the will of the authority, who would have the right to withdraw them at any time from bodies of "managers" with whose com. position or conduct they were dissatisfied.

It appears therefore that the plan of the Bill fulfils all the essential conditions of a wise and just treatment of the Voluntary schools.

(1) It creates a local authority with the power and duty of bringing the

secular instruction given in these schools to a proper level of efficiency. (2) It provides safeguards for the religious character of these schools satisfactory to the religious bodies by which they have been established.

(3) It gives the most absolute control over secular instruction to the local authority.

It has frequently been stated, and with perfect truth, that the religious difficulty, which takes up so large a share of the discussions about national education, is the creation of the public platform and the House of Commons, and is practically unknown in the schools themselves. The reason

of this is not far to seek. The teachers, and the managers by whom they are directed, possess in general common-sense and Christian charity. It is not that the religious teaching is slurred over as a matter of no importance; on the contrary, in most schools and in the hands of most teachers it is the important lesson of the day, in which the influence of the teacher upon the character of the scholars is most powerfully exercised. But the teaching relates for the most part not to abstruse points of theology, which the minds of the children could not comprehend, but to the universally accepted lesson of the life of Christ, and to the truth, courage, obedience, energy, and kindness of which His life is the pattern to humanity. It is a very small part of the teaching that can in any sense be called "sectarian." There is no attempt to proselytize: there is no desire to force on the children teaching which is objected to by the parents, or by the members of the religious body to which the parents belong. There is nothing that would more fatally injure the character of our schools than to take religious teaching out of the hands of the regular staff of the school, and to treat religion as a kind of special ac

complishment to be taught by specialists brought for that purpose only into the school. It is quite true that there are thousands of parishes in which the Church school is the only school available for the children. It is not true that this is in most places distasteful to the people. There are thousands of these parishes, in which no religious difficulty has ever been raised: there are numbers in which Nonconformist schools have been closed, and the Church school improved by the consequent increase of its numbers, because the arrangements for religious instruction were made so satisfactory to the people that no second school was required. There are Church schools with Nonconformists on their committees, with Nonconformists among their teachers, supported by a voluntary rate paid by Churchmen and Nonconformists alike. It is not, for example, uncommon in the South of England to find parishes in which a large proportion, or even a majority, of the people are Baptists, but are quite content to send their children to the Church school. The part of the Church Catechism which relates to Baptism is wholly unsuitable to the children of Baptist parents. It is a general prac'tice in such parishes to give religious instruction to the children in common, except on one day in the week, when the Catechism is taught to the Church children, while the Baptist children have a Bible lesson from another teacher in a class-room.

Cases doubtless occur now and then in which the principles of religious liberty and Christian charity are forgotten. Such cases are certain to obtain the widest publicity. A single one will form the topic of hundreds of platform speeches, while the thousands of parishes in which there has never been a grievance are overlooked. The right, however, of a citizen to the protection of his religious liberty by

He cannot be put

law is undoubted. off by being told to depend on the justice and forbearance of teachers and managers. In secondary schools protection is unnecessary. The parents of the scholars generally have definite views as to the religious instruction they desire their children to receive; and, as the schools are for the most part on the look-out for scholars, they have to conform to the parent's desires. But in elementary schools the mass of parents are unfortunately indifferent as to the instruction, religious or secular, which is to be given to their children. Unless moved thereto by the ministers of their religion, they have no desire to interfere. The efforts of the legislature to protect by statute people who don't want to be protected have not been conspicuous for their success. The Conscience Clause permits the withdrawal of a child from a religious lesson, but not its withdrawal from the school while the lesson is going on. In small schools the child cannot be prevented from listening to the lesson, the more attentively because it is forbidden. Stories are told of children excluded from learning the Catechism, sent in by mistake for examination, and winning the Catechism prize. Village society does not look with favor on people who claim the protection of the clause. It can be used to injure as well as help the conscience of the parent. Fanatical managers have forced children to come into school and do sums, to prevent them receiving, in an adjoining building, the religious instruction to which their parents had assented. The CowperTemple clause, which has been erected by the House of Commons into a sort of fetish, is equally unsatisfactory. It forbids the teaching of any catechism or formulary which is distinctive of a religious denomination. Without infringing its provisions you may teach the most advanced dogma