manner of teaching when suggested. For many years they had to struggle on in the face of opposition; a portion of the upper classes denying that their poorer neighbours would be benefited by education, whilst the great majority of the poorer classes were apathetic and indifferent, and could only be persuaded to send their children to school by the advantage of the clothing offered them, by having nothing to pay, and by clergy and others interested in their welfare urging them to do so.

During this period there were no Government grants, no popular favour, no political advantage to be gained by furthering elementary schools. Church people expended some millions of money on what they regarded as a religious and philanthropic object. The growth of manufacturing industries, the great increase of wealth, the frequent acquisition of riches by men of the labouring classes tended to remove prejudices against popular education that had previously existed; so that when the first Reform Bill was passed there was a rapidly-growing feeling that something ought to be done to secure education for the great mass of the nation.

This feeling was greatly deepened and called into active and sympathetic action by the discovery that a considerable portion of the people in the manufacturing districts were growing up in absolute ignorance of all religion. Population had greatly increased; not so the number of churches and clergymen. Until 1819 no church could be built without an Act of Parliament authorising it, consequently very little church building went forward. Towards the close of the fourth decade of this century there were serious riots in many of the manufacturing districts, and it was found that the prisoners who were concerned in them had for the most part received no religious instruction. Many of them had never been taught that there was a God; still fewer had learned to believe in the Saviour of the world, or in the account they would one day have to give for the deeds done in the body, and the consequent blessing or woe that would ensue. When this was brought to light at the trial of the prisoners, it stirred the religious conscience of the nation. Churchmen became more anxious than ever to provide schools in which the children might be taught the truths of Christianity as well as secular learning. Immense sums were subscribed for the

purpose, and national schools sprang up in most parishes in the country.

When so much was being done by private religious effort it cannot be a matter for surprise that the Government of the country became anxious to take part in what promised to be popular. At first it made small grants towards building schoolrooms, entrusting to the National Society and to the British and Foreign School Society the task of distributing the money voted, according to prescribed conditions, amongst the Church and Nonconformist schools which they represented. Then followed the formation of the Education Department, which did much to further the progress of elementary education and to improve its quality. With tolerably equal hand it dealt out the benefits which it conferred, and until 1870 it recognised that religion ought to form the basis of any system of popular education, and so required that the schools which it assisted should be in connection with some religious body.

By the Education Act of 1870 the State for the first time professed to disclaim all connection between the education it assisted and religion. The millions that the Church and other religious communities had expended in erecting and supporting schools, and colleges for the training of teachers; the covenants into which the Education Department had practically entered with the various religious bodies by assenting to their trust deeds and voting grants to enable those deeds to be fulfilled, made it impossible, without the grossest breach of public faith and inflicting a serious blow on the rights and inviolability of property, to interfere with the status of existing schools and educational corporations. Parliament was content, therefore, to impose certain restrictive conditions on the religious teaching given in denominational schools, and to withdraw the oversight of such teaching from its inspectors: this whilst continuing its assistance towards the maintenance of the schools. At the same time it withdrew, after an interval of grace extending. over a few months, the help it had previously afforded towards the increase of such schools. Moreover, those who were responsible for the Act were profuse in their assurances that they regarded the existing schools as the basis of the elementary educational system of the country, and that the schools they proposed

to supply in a different fashion were only to make good deficiencies: they were to supplement, not to supplant, the schools and the educational system that were then in possession of the field.

It was thus that the Board school system sprang into existence; but the Act which created it reversed the principle of equity between the various religious bodies on which the State had hitherto acted, and whilst professing to dissociate the help it gave to schools from all connection with religion, it did so in a manner hostile to one of the existing systems, whilst practically adopting and establishing the other as a national educational religion. In reality it endowed with the educational rates of the country the Nonconformists, with whom the Liberal party, which was then in power, was allied, and so made it impossible for Churchmen and some other religious bodies to acquiesce in the system then inaugurated as the national one. I have already pointed out the difference between the character of the religious teaching which Church people and Nonconformists thought essential for the moral and religious education of the children for whom they are responsible. The Act of 1870 accepted the Nonconformist system, with this only difference, that the schools might be taught on the principles of the pure Secularists if the people so desired; but such teaching as Church people insisted upon as absolutely necessary they did their best to make impossible. Practically, therefore, there were thus made two established religions in the country: the one apparently designed for adults, or at all events for those capable of being instructed from the pulpit, and endowed by tithes given in past ages by individuals; the other designed for the children of the labouring people, and endowed with the school rates of the country, levied compulsorily under the authority of an Act of Parliament. It is only twenty years since this last endowment was given, and its amount increases annually. Already it greatly exceeds what all the parochial clergy receive from tithes ; the commuted annual value of these is £2,412,103, which by the system of averages is worth only £1,883,500 this year; whilst the education rate last year amounted to £2,718,891. There is also this further difference between the two endowments, that from the tithes has to be deducted the cost

of collection, whilst the education rate represents the net amount paid into the exchequer of the School Boards.

The Education Act called into existence a number of eager supporters of elementary education who had been indifferent to the question so long as it largely depended upon the liberality of its supporters, but who became enthusiastic when the funds had to be furnished by the ratepayers, and there was some local distinction to be gained by the administration of them; and when, moreover, the new system could be used as a weapon of offence against the Established Church.

It is only when these facts are taken into consideration that the true character of such sentences as the following, which recently appeared in this REVIEW, can be estimated at their proper value, and their liberality and generosity to opponents duly appreciated.

"Among the many abuses which follow from delegating to irresponsible and private managers the authority over most of our public school system is the vague and arbitrary power of taxation enjoyed by them through the school fee " (p. 239).

"The truth is that no reform in the management of the voluntary schools is worth looking at which does not secure the transfer of the appointment of the teacher from private and denominational patronage to the elected representatives of the locality" (p. 243).

“But before we can be considerate of minorities we claim for the majorities, that is, the community as a whole, the absolute right of managing and directing the schools to which the children are bound to go. If the local community as a whole is Anglican the elected School Board will reflect the views of the community. If, as in Wales, the community is not as a rule Anglican, it is a clear hardship that the State should perpetuate by its grants a system of school government which subjects the school to influences adverse to the general sentiment of the community" (p. 244).

To speak of the State delegating the management of Church schools to the existing managers is ludicrous. The Church has spent over £30,000,000 on the elementary education of the country, and the State has not seen fit to confiscate schools that owe their existence to private liberality, or to rob their managers of the right to control them. This control is the security that the instruction

given in them will not be entrusted to persons of any religion or none, and that the religious purpose which their founders had in view will not be lost sight of. Is it necessary to say that religion can only be taught effectually by those who believe what they teach ? What would be the effect of a Roman Catholic or a Secularist teaching religion in a Church school? What is the effect of Atheists teaching in the elementary schools of France?

But the third of the paragraphs is the most disingenuous. “The local community," however Anglican, Roman, or Jewish it may be, could only teach religion on lines of which it disapproves if the whole education of the country was committed to School Boards fettered by the existing law relative to the teaching of religion. The State has tied the hands of the managers, so that if every man, woman, and child in the district of a School Board desired and petitioned that the Church, or any other religious Catechism, should be taught in its schools, it could not grant their request. These schools have been made Nonconformist or Secularist by Act of Parliament, and if those who advocate so strongly the right of representatives, popularly elected, to decide how the schools. of the locality should be carried on really believe what they advocate, let them prove the sincerity of their convictions by procuring the repeal of the Cowper-Temple Clause, and so leaving the most important subject to be dealt with at the discretion of elected representatives. The real difficulty of the question is a religious one, and so long as the State regulation endows Nonconformity or Secularism with the education rates of the country, those who desire a different system of religious instruction cannot be satisfied.

I have not cared to deal with statements that seem to lower the fight over the education question to a mere party or political contest, such, e.g., as a regard for "a good teacher who is not subservient to the clerical needs being liable to be dismissed"; or "a fear that the village schoolmaster may be forced to be a political partisan," because "the mass of the Established clergy belong to the Conservative party"; or "to many clergymen the Church school means an organist and Sunday-school teacher for nothing "; or "the schoolmaster is in many ways made the assistant of the clergyman. Sometimes he is required to be a lay preacher," and so on. Those