under the direction of the Lord President; and that the several schools be, from time to time, inspected by Her Majesty's Inspectors, and a Report thereon submitted to the Committee of Council, and transmitted by their Lordships to the Secretary of State for the Home Department. MINUTE on the ADMINISTRATION of the GRANTS for the SALARIES of MASTERS and MISTRESSES of SCHOOLS for PAUPER CHILDREN. THE Lord President brought under the consideration of their Lordships a letter received from the Secretary of State for the Home Department, dated 18th November, 1846, calling their attention to the fact that 15,000l. was granted in the late Session of Parliament towards defraying the expense of salaries of masters and mistresses of pauper schools, and to the importance of rendering grants for this purpose in future years, conducive to the increased efficiency of such schools. The Lord President also communicated to their Lordships a paper, prepared at the request of Sir George Grey, on the administration of these grants. From these documents it appeared that there were upwards of 700 workhouse schools, and that little progress had hitherto been made in the establishment of schools of industry for districts of Unions, owing to the limitation of the radius of such districts in the Act of Parliament authorizing their creation, and also to the limitation of the expense for which the rate-payers under this Act might be rated towards the erection of the requisite buildings. Their Lordships were of opinion that it was expedient to employ Inspectors for the examination of workhouse schools, in order that by their suggestions to the guardians, and upon their reports, measures might be adopted in the administration of these grants to procure the improvement of these schools. Resolved, That it is desirable to train the pauper children now in workhouses in habits of industry. That with this view, and for the purpose of improving workhouse schools, four Inspectors be appointed, with authority to examine the condition of schools for the education of pauper children, and to ascertain the character and qualifications of the persons employed as schoolmasters and mistresses, in order that unfit and incompetent persons may no longer be employed in that capacity, and that measures may be taken for awarding salaries according to the qualifications of the masters or mistresses, and the extent of the duties they have to perform. That instructions be prepared for the guidance of such Inspectors. SIR, SUPPLEMENTARY OFFICIAL LETTERS. Committee of Council on Education, Privy Council Office, Downing-street, I HAD yesterday to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 8th instant, in which you inquired whether masters of elementary schools, who have not been trained in a normal school under the inspection of the Committee of Council, “are admissible to the advantages offered by their Lordships' Minutes of August and December last, provided that, upon the report of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, my Lords find such masters to be efficient and deserving." It was very satisfactory to me to have been then enabled to state, that all such masters may enjoy the gratuities offered in their Lordships' Minutes for the training of pupil teachers and stipendiary monitors apprenticed under the regulations of their Lordships, as well as the gratuities offered for the successful management of schools of industry, and for general merit. I informed you also that my Lords, being desirous to offer the strongest inducements to schoolmasters and schoolmistresses to render long and efficient services to the public, had opened the prospect of a retiring pension to this class of teachers, and that the sole point of distinction which, in their Lordships' recent Minutes, had been left between this class of teachers and those who may obtain certificates of merit by a course of training in a Normal school under their Lordships' inspection, was the augmentation of salary to which the latter class will become entitled when provided with a house rent free, and with a salary equal to twice the amount of the stipend granted from the Parliamentary Fund. I was able at once to assure you that my Lords did not intend that any injustice should be done to teachers whose merits and attainments equal those of masters and mistresses regularly trained in a normal school under inspection, and provided with the required certificates of merit; as well as to intimate that their Lordships had under their consideration the important question whether teachers who had not obtained such certificates at the close of a course of training in a normal school under inspection, should be admitted to an examination for certificates of merit. The attention of their Lordships had been directed to this subject by numerous letters received from the trustees and managers, and from the masters of schools. My Lords had also before them the resolution of a meeting in Leeds, of the friends of the measure recently adopted by Government for the promotion of public education. That resolution declares, "That, as the benefits of Government aid are proposed to be confined to those masters and mistresses who have been trained in normal schools already under inspection, this meeting would beg leave respectfully to suggest that these benefits might, for the present, be extended to teachers who have not had that advantage, and who shall be reported to be duly qualified by competent examination." These communications have been carefully considered. I have now the satisfaction to say, that I am authorized to inform you that the Committee of Council on Education will cause regulations to be framed, for the purpose of defining the conditions upon which masters or mistresses of schools under their Lordships' inspection, who have not passed through a course of training in a Normal school, may be admitted to an examination for three classes of certificates, to correspond with those which are to be granted in Normal schools. Masters and mistresses who have not obtained such training, but who may, upon this examination, obtain certificates, will thus enjoy the augmentation of salary proposed to be granted, according to their Lordships' Minutes of August and December last, to teachers who shall have procured certificates of merit. I am, &c., (Signed) J. P. KAY SHUTTLEWORTH. Mr. E. Salter, 68, Park-street, Hulme, Manchester, REVEREND SIR, 38, Gloucester-square, Hyde-park, March 12, 1847. I READ in the "Patriot" newspaper this evening a letter to which your name is attached, addressed on behalf of the Committee of Privileges to ministers of the Wesleyan Association, requesting them "to use their best efforts to get a petition from every congregation in their circuits," in order to induce "the House of Commons not to vote any further sum of money to be placed at the disposal of the Committee of Council on Education, and to entreat the House to petition the Queen to dissolve the Committee by whom this pernicious scheme" (the Minutes for August and December, 1846) "has been recommended, and to declare that the interests of the nation will be best promoted by the non-interference of Government as to the education of the people." A form of petition is appended to this letter, and intended to be sent to every congregation connected with your Association. For this purpose the letter commences with the following representation: Her Majesty's Ministers having recently brought before Parliament certain Minutes of the Committee of Privy Council on Education, proposing that provision should be made by Government for training, supporting, and pensioning schoolcreating and supporting a widely masters and mistresse extended system instructors of ma y which it is intended that the reneration should become Go vernment stipendiaries and expectants of Government pensions, to obtain which purposes they will have to secure the approbation of an inspector appointed by Government, but who must also be sanctioned by one of the archbishops, and who is to remain in office only so long as such sanction is continued." If such were your interpretation of the intentions of the Government, I cannot wonder that you should have used your utmost efforts, in conjunction with the Committee of Privileges, to arouse the congregations of the Wesleyan Association to defeat so gross an injustice. But if you have misunderstood, and unintentionally very gravely misrepresented the plan developed in the recent Minutes of the Committee of Council, observe the consequences. Every superintendent minister, placing confidence in your Committee of Privileges-every local preacher acting in obedience to the suggestions of the superintendent-and every congregation which may rely on the representations of its minister, will receive from your letter the impression that no school connected with the Wesleyan Association can partake of the grants offered by the Committee of Council in their recent Minutes, unless this school be subject to the visits of an inspector, appointed with the concurrence of one of the archbishops, and liable to be dismissed by the withdrawal of the archiepiscopal sanction. They will believe that no Wesleyan pupil teacher can be appointed-no master can receive a gratuity-no teacher can be pensioned-no apprentice can be elected to a Queen's scholarship and no candidate in a Normal school connected with the Wesleyan Association can obtain a certificate, and the consequent augmentation of salary, unless he be examined by an inspector appointed with the concurrence of an archbishop, and for whose continuance in office his grace's sanction is requisite. Such a conception of the intentions of the Committee of Council would justify the appeal of the Committee of Privileges to the congregations of the Wesleyan Association, and such a representation is likely to rouse the superintendent ministers, the local preachers, and their congregations, to the utmost activity, to petition the House of Commons to withhold the Parliamentary grant for the promotion of so" pernicious a scheme." Accordingly, as your letter suggests, that "it is important that the petitions should be numerously signed," it is probable that on the ensuing Sunday (March 14th), as your letter is dated March 4th, the form of petition appended to your letter will be signed by great numbers of persons belonging to the congregations and Sunday schools of the Wesleyan Association. All will feel that a plan of education which thus imposes the interference of an ecclesiastical authority as a condition of grants from the Committee of Council to Dissenting schools, is an intolerable injustice. You will rejoice to learn that the danger which you apprehended to be impending over the schools connected with the congregations of the Wesleyan Association is a delusion. The Committee of Council never made any grant to a Dissenting school on such a condition as you have supposed. They have never acquired, either as a consequence of their grants, or otherwise, power to authorize any inspector, appointed with the concur rence of an archbishop, to enter any British or Dissenting school. The Order in Council of the 10th of August, 1840, makes the approval of an archbishop an incident in the appointment of inspectors of Church of England schools alone. Six other inspectors have been appointed, in whose nomination the archbishop has in no respect intervened, and three more of this class are about to be appointed. Their Lordships have agreed (vide Minutes 1842-3, p. 537) that they will not proceed to recommend any candidate to Her Majesty as an inspector of schools connected with the British and Foreign School Society, until they have consulted the Committee of that Society, and found that the candidate has their approval. In like manner their Lordships have agreed to consult the Education Committee of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland as to the appointment of any inspectors of schools, which are by law, or by their constitution, connected with that Church (vide Minutes 1839-40, pp. 19 and 20). The Committee of Council have been of opinion that, unless each inspector possessed the confidence of the religious communion with which the schools visited by him were connected, he could not usefully co-operate with the school managers. Their Lordships have, therefore, in proceeding to nominate inspectors, been ready to consult the Central Board, watching over the interests of any distinct class of schools, in order to avoid the appointment of any persons who, especially on religious grounds, did not enjoy their confidence. No inspector is employed in the visitation of other schools than those for the examination of which he is appointed, except on the direct and formal invitation of their managers, which rarely occurs. Schools connected with the Wesleyan Association would not, therefore, ever be entered by a Church of England inspector, or by any inspector who did not enjoy the confidence of the Committee of Privileges. If the managers of such schools desired the aid of Government to enable them to apprentice pupil teachers to procure for these assistants exhibitions to Normal schools at the close of their apprenticeship, or an augmentation of the salaries of their masters-the principle on which inspectors of schools are appointed would oppose no obstacle to their application for such aid, for no person would be so employed who did not enjoy the confidence of the Committee of Privileges. The opposite conception is a delusion, which the proceedings of the Committee of Council, as recorded in their Minutes, from the year 1839 to this date disprove. Those Minutes contain abundant proof that the Committee of Council have, with unwavering impar |