education commission as to the constitution of these bodies. These suggestions relate to the question of the presence of women on these committees, to the question of the election of experts and of teachers' representatives, etc. The only restriction that will be placed on the composition of a committee is that a majority of its members must be members of the county council. Power is given to counties to combine for the purposes of the bill. In counties where the circumstances are special, as in the county of London, the county council may itself propose a scheme for the special constitution of a committee which, when approved by the education department, will become the committee for the county; and in the case of Wales the governing bodies under the Welsh intermediate-education act will become the committees. It is proposed to decentralize entirely the administration of school grants by the education department and to throw upon these bodies the duties of administering the parliamentary grant. The general inspection of schools will, of course, be undertaken also by the county authority, and the committee of council, the central government, will only have inspectors who will visit the schools from time to time to see that the county education authority is properly fulfilling its duties and that the education is up to the proper standard. It is hoped that this arrangement will lead to a decentralization of the Code, and that instead of our attempting to impose one rigid system of education from the Land's End to Berwick-upon-Tweed, each county and county borough shall be able to make such modifications in the Code as may be suitable to its particular local circumstances. Then it is proposed to hand over to this committee the powers of the county council under the technical-instruction act, 1889. The money received under the local-taxation act, 1890, will be specially applicable to secondary education and will be administered by the education authority and may be accumulated. This authority will also be the school-attendance committee in all places which have not a school board. Lastly, this authority will constitute a body to which may be intrusted hereafter those unhappy children of the State who are to be found in industrial and poor-law schools, and this body may deliver them from the prison taint on the one hand and the workhouse taint on the other. This authority will exercise all the powers given to the county council with regard to industrial and reformatory schools, and may make contracts with boards of guardians to take charge of poor-law children, so that they may be brought up in a humane fashion and may have a chance of becoming honest, self-supporting men.

THE NEW "SPECIAL-AID GRANT," "TO BE APPROPRIATED, IN THE FIRST PLACE, TO THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE TEACHING STAFF."

Then this authority is to distribute a special-aid grant to necessitous schools. The committee will receive from the exchequer a sum of 4s. for every child in voluntary schools or in the schools of those school boards which come under section 97 of the act of 1870. This special-aid grant will be divided among the voluntary schools, with a deduction for any endowments which they may possess, and, as regards the board schools, it will, in the first place, be used for making good any grants which they are entitled to, and the residue will be used for the general assistance of board schools which stand in need of further help from public sources. But in both cases the amounts received are appropriated, in the first place, to the improvement of the teaching staff, and it is only in cases where the teaching staff does not require improving that the sums may be applied to other definite purposes which are specified in the bill. There is a power given to schools to federate themselves either by districts or denominations, and in case a federation of schools is formed the education authority of the county may pay over the whole grant to which the group of schools is entitled in a lump sum, leaving it to be distributed according to a scheme to be approved by the education department. Any surplus left in their hands will be applied to local purposes of elementary education as the education department may sanction.

PUBLIC AUDIT OF ACCOUNTS.

There are also provisions for examination and inspection, and for the auditing of accounts by district auditors in order to insure that the money is applied to the purposes for which it is given. In case the voluntary schools in any district which has not at present a school board break down and other provision for education becomes necessary, in a county borough the education authority becomes the school board. In any other district, parish, urban district, or noncounty borough the district is to have the option of having a school board as at present. There is no compulsion, with the exception that if it is a borough the school board is not to be an elected school board; but there is to be a committee of the municipal council formed on the analogy of the education department. If the district does not choose to have a school board, then the educational authority of the county becomes the school board for the parish, district, or borough, and after an opportunity has been given for establishing a school board they may take over the elementary schools of any district and become in that way virtually the school board for the district. Then in the case of a defaulting school board, if a school board becomes a defaulter, the education authority becomes the school board for the district; but in performing their duties as a school board in reference to the control and management of schools they must delegate their authority to manage to local managers. They are not directly to manage schools themselves. In the case of county boroughs the local managers are to be appointed by the education authority themselves, and in the case of other boroughs by the municipal council; and in the case of parishes, half by the parish and half by the education authority. Then these schools are to be paid for either by a rate upon the district or by a county rate charged on all those districts for which the education authority acts as a school board. This will tend to-and I hope it will grow into a system under which all those parts of the county in which there are public schools will all be connected with and under the authority of the county education authority, and will be maintained out of the general county rate. As regards secondary education, the new authority will be able to aid schools out of the money at their disposal, to aid schools for secondary education, and to establish them; and with the consent of the education department they may take a transfer from the school boards of their higher grade schools and so become managers of higher grade schools. Then they may apply their money to scholarships and the supply of teachers. They may inquire into the sanitary condition of all schools, and they may also inquire into the education given in all schools except those which are decided to be nonlocal. In the case of local schools they may publish any information they may think proper as to the efficiency of those schools.

THE "SEVENTEEN AND SIXPENNY LIMIT."

EXEMPTION FROM RATING-TWELVE YEARS OF AGE FOR JUVENILE LABOR-VETOING SCHOOL BOARD EXPENDITURES.

Besides all this, the bill contains also a number of miscellaneous amendments of the education acts, which I will very shortly enumerate. There is the abolition of the 17s. 6d. limit. There is a clause exempting elementary schools from all rates. Then I am happy to say that the age of school attendance is raised to 12 years. There is no attempt to deal with the question of half time, and the clause is one similar to that passed by the right honorable gentleman, the late vice-president of the council, two years ago, except that the age of 11 is turned into 12. Then powers are given to the county authorities to lend money to the managers of voluntary schools on the security of the school buildings; and there are limits put to the school-board rate, requiring any increase in the rate in consequence of the maintenance of children to be sanctioned by the public authority before it is levied.

Mr. ACLAND. What is the authority?

Sir J. GORST. If the district is a borough, it must be the council of the borough; if it is an urban district, it must be the district council, and in any other case the county council of the county in which the district is situated. Finally, the Government have put a clause in the bill in the hope of laying the very last objection which could be made to elementary education on religious grounds.

THE EXTENSION OF THE COWPER-TEMPLE CLAUSE.

I did not enumerate the religious difficulty as one of the difficulties which had to be surmounted by Parliament, because the religious difficulty is no difficulty at all in the schools. It is never heard of there. It is a difficulty which flourishes in Parliament and on the platform. Since I have held the office I now have the honor to hold I have asked in many schools whether there was any religious difficulty, and I have never yet found that there was any. I have never found a school-teacher to tell me at first hand that they have ever had any difficulty with the parents, children, or anyone else on the teaching of religion to the children. This clause is a kind of supplement to the conscience clause. It not only enables a parent to withdraw his child from religious instruction of which he does not approve, but it also helps him to secure that religious instruction which he requires. The provision is that in every elementary school one of the conditions of receiving a Government grant is that if a reasonable number of parents of children require to have separate religious instruction given to them, then it is the duty of the managers of the school to permit of reasonable arrangements being made for allowing that religious instruction to be given. It is hoped that in that way if there are any parents who conscientiously desire that their children should be instructed separately from the other children in the schools it is the duty of the managers of the schools to give every possible facility for the teaching of that form of religion which they require. I do hope that this may be accepted by the House of Commons as a sincere attempt on the part of the Government to introduce a system of perfect religious toleration. I am very much obliged to the House for allowing me to make this very long statement, and I hope the bill will be approached by the House of Commons in a really businesslike spirit. I can not, of course, expect that every clause will be generally accepted on both sides of the House, but I hope that the principle of the bill will be, and that we shall all cooperate together to make this a real step in advance in the education of the country. (Schoolmaster, April 4, 1896, pages 617-619.)

The keenest analysis of the bill made in the House on the side of the opposition was by Mr. Asquith' in his speech on the resolution for the second reading. At the outset he noted the provisions which, even from his standpoint, were recognized as valuable and beneficent. These were, first, the proposition to raise the age for compulsory attendance from 11 to 12, and, second, the proposals as to secondary education. He then proceeded with the objectionable features, considering chiefly the question of local authority. Under this head Mr. Asquith said:

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Now, I will ask the House to come to close quarters with the actual provisions of the measure. As the right honorable gentleman has told us, the pivot upon which the whole of this scheme hinges and turns is the creation in every county and in every county borough in England and Wales of a new education authority which is at once to discharge some, and which in the course of time is intended to perform all, the functions as to inspection, as to examination, as to control, and as to payment which are at present vested in the education department. The decentralization of the control of education was represented by the right honorable gentleman, and

home department in Mr. Gladstone's fourth ministry.

I think properly represented, as being the very foundation and the mainspring of the scheme. When the bill comes into full operation-although I understand from the speech which we have just heard in its initial stages its provisions are to be tempered by a very invidious process of selection-you will have in England and Wales no less than 126 education departments. This is the number of the counties and of the county boroughs. In the county of Lancaster alone you will have no less than 15 education departments.

I am quite aware that there are provisions in the bill which enable these authorities by agreement to combine with one another. But I do not think that anyone who is acquainted with the facts of our local life and adequately appreciates the tenacity and exclusiveness of what I may call our municipal patriotism, its rivalries and jealousics, which are often founded, I agree, upon real diversities of local sentiment and of local interest-I do not believe that anybody who is acquainted with the facts will believe that that power is likely to be very frequently resorted to. Many of these new departments-I will not say all of them--will have or may have educational codes of their own. The right honorable gentleman has told us that the education department will scrutinize with jealousy any proposals of the kind that may be made, but, as I shall point out presently, the education department, when you have regard to the terms and spirit of the bill, will do so with maimed powers and with fettered hands. It is true that the education department in name and in theory remains, but it remains in the background, a spectral and disembodied authority—an authority of which you might say with truth that it reigns, but it can not govern; for the very essence of your scheme is, in the future, as regards the discharge of these very functions which now for more than a generation have been exercised by the education department upon uniform principles over the country as a whole, to make local opinion and local feeling predominant and supreme.

This ingenious plan for the production of what I can not help thinking will be an educational patchwork and an administrative chaos is presented to us under the specious name of decentralization. Those of us, of whom I certainly am one, who are strongly in favor of the principle of devolution, who wish to see transferred to local bodies a very large number of the powers and prerogatives which are at present exercised both at Westminster and at Whitehall, are challenged to reconcile our faith in that principle with our opposition to this measure. I never had a challenge which I could contemplate with more equanimity or take up with greater confidence. What is the essence of devolution in any intelligible and rational sense of the term? Devolution means the taking away from the central authority of powers which experience has shown that that authority exercises ignorantly or inefficiently, and it means the granting to local authorities, competent by their composition to discharge the task, and with time and energy to spare for it, of powers which can be more fitly and more properly exercised by them. I do not stand here this evening in any sense as an uncompromising or uncritical advocate of the education department. I have no doubt, as the right honorable gentleman told us when he introduced this bill, there is, under the existing system, an excess of routine, and even of red tape, a multiplication of gratuitous forms, an accumulation of unnecessary details. I will go further, and I agree that in our large urban communities— in places like London itself; like Birmingham, like Leeds, and like many other towns-there is in existence what I may call an indigenous enthusiasm for education so keen and so well organized that it stands in very little need of extraneous supervision and control, and that it might very well be trusted with a wider latitude of action and a larger freedom of making experiments.

But the House can not fall into a greater or more fatal delusion than to measure the educational climate of the country as a whole by the temperature of these great towns. I certainly am not exaggerating-and I should have thought I was here upon what the right honorable gentleman calls common ground-when I say that over large parts of England at any rate there is not-we may regret it, we may acquiesce in it, but we are bound to admit it-there is not that local interest in

educational progress which, if matters of this kind are to be left entirely to local initiative, is the only security for the maintenance of a high standard of education. I do not think the right honorable gentleman himself, with his knowledge of the work of his department, will question the truth of that statement. I do not hesitate to say that if throughout the length and breadth of England and Wales during the last thirty years we have succeeded in constantly raising what I may call the minimum standard of educational efficiency, the main credit for the accomplishment of that most beneficent work is to be put down to the impartial, unsleeping, and the ubiquitous activity of the education department.

You are proposing by this bill to transfer the work of examination and of inspection from that department, in the first instance, at any rate, to the local authorities. Now, may I give the House an illustration drawn from another branch of administration with which I happened myself to be personally familiar-I mean the factory department of the home office? That is a highly centralized system of administration, and there are many people who think-I confess I myself used to think— that it might very well, in some of its parts, at any rate, be delegated to local authorities. In the year 1891 Parliament did transfer the inspection of workshops, so far as their sanitation was concerned, from the home office to the local authorities. When I went to the home office and during the time I was there, I found that that part of their duties-though of course there were exceptions again in the case of large towns-was being systematically neglected over all parts of the country. I do not hesitate to say-and I speak from a certain amount of practical acquaintance with the matter-that if you were to do with reference to factory inspection that which it is proposed by this bill to do in reference to school inspection, there are many parts of England in which, after the expiration of five years, these laws which were passed for the protection of the lives and limbs of our working population would be a dead letter. If that is the case in relation to such a matter as factories, it is still more likely to be the case in relation to schools; for remember that, as regards schools, the work of inspection does not merely mean that you are to see that the law is being complied with, but upon that work depends the grant and the receipt of large sums of public money which are not locally raised but voted by Parliament. I am satisfied-and I speak in no partisan spirit, but merely in the interests of good administration, so far as this subject is concerned-that it is the presence, or at any rate the liability of the presence, of an inspector who is totally detached from local prepossessions and local influences, who speaks with the authority of a great department and even of Parliament itself, who is not subject to appointment or dismissal, to raise of salary or promotion in rank according as he makes himself agreeable or disagreeable to the locality concerned-it is the presence of a body of impartial, detached, dispassionate officials of that kind which, both as regards the inspection of schools and of factories, is the most effective security for the uniform observance of the law,

I say I speak in this matter as a strong disciple and advocate of the principle of devolution. Localize management as much as you like. I will go with the right honorable gentleman any length in that direction. If he were doing what from his speech we should have inferred he was going to do-to give the management of schools, the appointment and dismissal of the teachers, the everyday control of the education of the place to a representative popular authority-we should be with him to a man. But that is just what he is not going to do. As regards these allimportant questions, the great bulk of the schools, nearly 15,000 out of the 20,000, are to remain as they are at present, in irresponsible hands. The thing which you are going to devolve upon the local authority is the very thing which local authorities, so far as our administrative experience in the past goes, are least fitted to perform. Who are these local authorities? They are committees nominated by the county councils and by the town councils of the county boroughs. Do these authorities wish for the task which you are going to intrust to them? Have any of them asked for it? I know some that have not, and not only not asked for it, but have already