thing that the word "necessitous refers to every kind of expenditure which is forced upon voluntary schools by the authorities in Whitehall. If the word is restricted exclusively to the cost of teaching, and managers are forbidden to use any part of the money in aid of other compulsory expenses, it is feared in many quarters that the relief so afforded will be illusory.

It will be observed that, in spite of all the Government assurances -in spite of what they know to be the truth-the whole Radical party both in and out of Parliament have persisted in representing the new Education Bill as a final measure. What a shame not to relieve necessitous board schools, while the working man is taxed for the relief of voluntary schools! What a shame to leave out Scotland! And more to the same effect. Statements of this kind are simple, wilful, and unqualified falsehoods. The working man will not be taxed for the benefit of the voluntary schools. Scarce a halfpenny of the additional grant will come out of his pocket, and nobody reminds him of what a very much heavier school - rate he would have to pay if voluntary schools were allowed to perish. Necessitous board schools are not left out. Scotland is not left out. The Government have a large scheme in hand which includes both. Last year they tried to do everything at once, and the Opposition prevented them. This year they are doing one thing at a time, and the same Opposition are equally obstructive. We do implore the working men of Scotland and England not to be led astray by such gross untruths as were palmed off on the electors of Walthamstow, and to some extent on the electors of Bridgeton. Necessitous board schools, and

Scotch schools as well, will both be attended to in their turn. Their claims are recognised, and are likely to be much more speedily satisfied if taken one by one than if all thrown together into a single bill, as we may learn from the history of last session. It would be no real kindness to either to hurry legislation on the subject. Such an attempt could only defeat itself. If two men ride on a horse, one must ride behind; and if there are three, only one can be in front.

People write and talk as if, after the present session, parliamentary government were coming to an

end.

But let them consider what would have been the position of necessitous board schools now if a limited measure like the present one had been carried last year. Their turn would have arrived, and they would be now about to receive that equitable consideration to which no doubt they are entitled. Then let them look to this time next year, or perhaps to an earlier date, and ask themselves what their position will be then, if the present bill is not passed. It is a very disheartening, not to say sickening task, to be constantly engaged in exposing such impudent falsehoods as are dangled before the eyes of the working classes. It is impossible to demolish them as fast as the fabricator can spin them.

“Destroy his fib or sophistry! in vain : The creature's at his dirty work again."

The creature is a rapid workman. But unless Conservatives and Unionists will stoop to the labour of sweeping away his flimsy fictions, unless they will dog his tracks, and follow him from street to street and from house to house, with written exposures of his calumnies, such as every man can

understand, he will continue to do irreparable mischief.

We observe, however, that on the first night of the debate the Opposition felt itself compelled to abandon this particular attack in favour of another in which Mr Morley took the lead. They now say that the Government never intended at first to do anything for the necessitous board schools, but have been driven to promise it by the action of their opponents. Why, on the very first night when the subject was introduced -i.e., February 1—Mr Balfour, in moving the financial resolution, stated that the relief of necessitous board schools was an object to be dealt with at an early date, and that if the Opposition allowed the present bill to pass without any unreasonable delay there would be no difficulty in introducing a further measure this session. If such a measure is not introduced, it will be the fault of the Opposition and not of the Government. They may make it impossible, and then taunt the Government with the consequences. That would be quite of a piece with their usual methods. But it is almost incredible that such tactics should impose on the public after the experience of last session.

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There is also another kind of misrepresentation to which the secularists are equally addicted. There is a very small minority of board schools which are necessitous, and a very small minority of voluntary schools which not. These two minorities are studiously selected for contrast, the great majority on either side being kept carefully in the background. Then it is said, How infamous to relieve the one and neglect the other! This ingenuous artifice has been highly successful, and Sir William Harcourt made great play with it last session.

It naturally reappeared on the second reading of this year's bill, and was virtually embodied in Mr M'Kenna's amendment, on which the main battle was fought. This was defeated after three nights' debate by a majority of 205, when the bill was read a second time without a division. But the Opposition were clearly reserving their strength for Committee, and when Mr Balfour rose to wind up the debate he found that he had very little to reply to. As we have had occasion to point out before, the sessional debates are now so largely anticipated by the platform oratory of the autumn that it was hardly possible for any one speaking on the principle of the bill to say anything which has not been said already in October, November, or December.

What lies at the bottom of the Opposition argument, stripped of all circumlocution, seems to be the assumption that what the rates are to the board schools the denominational purse ought to be to the voluntary schools. Even supposing that it ought, the fact remains that they are not equally bottomless. Private subscriptions can never be an equivalent for the rate to which there is practically no limit; nor can any possible amount of private liberality ever make them so in the vast majority of rural districts, if indeed in any. The argument, therefore, involves the further assumption that voluntary schools are to remain permanently inferior to board schools. But such was certainly not the intention of the Act of 1870; nor is it in accordance with the public opinion of the present day. It is believed by the majority of the British nation to be a matter of public concern that schools in which real religious teaching is given should be maintained at such a level of efficiency as to prevent

them from being supplanted by others in which it is not given. If this standard cannot be sustained without a further State grant, over and above that which is assigned to the board schools, such grant must be allotted, and if the present grant now proposed is not enough, it must be increased. This is what the country says. This is the voice of that religious sentiment which has been so generally evoked throughout the kingdom by the education controversy, and it is one of which the Government should rather do everything to stimulate the growth than in any way dishearten or repulse. They have now the opportunity. Let them only place themselves at the head of the religious movement, and they will never have reason to repent it.

The board schools have nothing whatever to complain of in the Government proposals. They have got all they want. They have an unlimited fund to draw upon without troubling the Exchequer; and they have no earthly right to interpose between the Government and the voluntary schools and declare that the latter, which are in urgent need of pecuniary assistance, shall receive none unless others which are in no want of it receive it also. Yet this is what is called equality. If of two given individuals one possesses £5 and the other £6, we do not make their riches equal by giving each of them £1 more. It would obviously be no advantage to the voluntary schools to be treated in an analogous fashion. Their absolute strength might be increased, but their relative weakness would remain. Both board schools and voluntary schools might be raised to a higher level, but the distance between them would be just the same.

The survival of the voluntary schools depends on their ability to cope with a competition conducted on unfair conditions, and directed to an ulterior object wholly alien from the original purpose of the Legislature. It is from this attempt, in which lies the root of the so-called disturbance of the settlement of 1870, but which is in reality a return to it, that the voluntary schools desire to be relieved, and the board school Radicals refuse to relieve them. It matters comparatively little what are the respective incomes of the rival schools. What does matter is, that both should be equally adequate to the demands made upon them. It is less the augmentation of their own resources which is essential to the security of the voluntary schools than the diminution of the pressure put upon them by the board schools and the ever-increasing requisitions of the Education Department. The other side are doing everything in their power to conceal the real issue from the public by scattering broadcast those well worn commonplaces which have done good service in their day, but are now only empty anachronisms. They, however, are the true offenders against these time-honoured watchwords, who are using false weights, and under cover of resisting the form of inequality are seeking to perpetuate the substance.

The ultimate goal at which they aim is, however, only too plain. If they can prevent the voluntary schools from being placed on a more efficient footing, they hope to drive them back upon rate aid and popular control, from which it will be an easy step to convert them into board schools. Their success, however, would only be a Pyrrhic victory, and that for two reasons. In the first place, it is calculated

that to substitute board schools for voluntary schools would cost the public nearly five millions, instead of two and a half, annually. In the second place, universal board schools would mean the negation of religious teaching as understood by the people at large. And such a system the people of this country would never consent to support. With the disappearance of the voluntary schools would commence the agitation against board schools, which in a very short time would follow their victims to the grave. What would come after it is impossible to say. The country, as Mr Balfour said, might possibly tolerate, though he did not think it would, either the Scotch or the Irish system; but in default of these there was no other plan possible than to keep up voluntary schools and board schools together, and no other way of doing it than the one laid down in the bill.

The friends of voluntary schools who are in favour of rate aid seem never to have considered how it is to be levied. It must be given by some local body-either the school board, as originally proposed in Mr Forster's bill, or by the town or parish council, or by some kindred authority. Is the local body to be compelled to give this aid, or is it to be at its own discretion? If the former, that would be taxation without representation; if the latter, then the rate might be granted at one time and refused at another. It must be either compulsory or capricious,-the one leading directly to popular control, the other placing the schools in a position in which they would never know their own incomes from year to year, and after incurring liabilities in reliance on the rate, might suddenly find themselves deprived

of it. It would be in vain for them then to try to regain subscribers who had naturally retired when rate aid was adopted.

There is yet another point to be considered ere we can admit that any parallel at all exists between voluntary schools and board schools, whether necessitous or not. When it was supposed twenty-seven years ago that voluntary schools would be able to hold their own, primary education was something very different from what it has become since. What the voluntary schools undertook to do was to give elementary education as it was then understood, without any further State aid. As this elementary education has gradually expanded, the board schools have met the growing cost by an increasing rate. The one has risen in proportion to the other. They have been authorised to pay their additional expenses out of public money. Thus if they were now to receive an additional grant because one was given to the voluntary schools, they would be paid twice over for the same thing, a result which seems likewise to have escaped the notice of a good many writers on education.

Now that the bill is in Committee, no time must be lost. Mr Balfour cannot be too strongly urged to use all the means at his disposal for ensuring its being placed on the Statute-book by the date originally suggested. We hope that it is not yet too late to fulfil those expectations for which the Government themselves are responsible. In an article published in Maga' last July,

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them from being supplanted by others in which it is not given. If this standard cannot be sustained without a further State grant, over and above that which is assigned to the board schools, such grant must be allotted, and if the present grant now proposed is not enough, it must be increased. This is what the country says. This is the voice of that religious sentiment which has been so generally evoked throughout the kingdom by the education controversy, and it is one of which the Government should rather do everything to stimulate the growth than in any way dishearten or repulse. They have now the opportunity. Let them only place themselves at the head of the religious movement, and they will never have reason to repent it.

The board schools have nothing whatever to complain of in the Government proposals. They have got all they want. They have an unlimited fund to draw upon without troubling the Exchequer; and they have no earthly right to interpose between the Government and the voluntary schools and declare that the latter, which are in urgent need of pecuniary assistance, shall receive none unless others which are in no want of it receive it also. Yet this is what is called equality. If of two given individuals one possesses £5 and the other £6, we do not make their riches equal by giving each of them £1 more. It would obviously be no advantage to the voluntary schools to be treated in an analogous fashion. Their absolute strength might be increased, but their relative weakness would remain. Both board schools and voluntary schools might be raised to a higher level, but the distance between them would be just the

same.

The survival of the voluntary schools depends on their ability to cope with a competition conducted on unfair conditions, and directed to an ulterior object wholly alien from the original purpose of the Legislature. It is from this attempt, in which lies the root of the so-called disturbance of the settlement of 1870, but which is in reality a return to it, that the voluntary schools desire to be relieved, and the board school Radicals refuse to relieve them. It matters comparatively little what are the respective incomes of the rival schools. What does matter is, that both should be equally adequate to the demands made upon them. It is less the augmentation of their own resources which is essential to the security of the voluntary schools than the diminution of the pressure put upon them by the board schools and the ever-increasing requisitions of the Education Department. The other side are doing everything in their power to conceal the real issue from the public by scattering broadcast those well worn commonplaces which have done good service in their day, but are now only empty anachronisms. They, however, are the true offenders against these time-honoured watchwords, who are using false weights, and under cover of resisting the form of inequality are seeking to perpetuate the substance.

The ultimate goal at which they aim is, however, only too plain. If they can prevent the voluntary schools from being placed on a more efficient footing, they hope to drive them back upon rate aid and popular control, from which it will be an easy step to convert them into board schools. Their success, however, would only be a Pyrrhic victory, and that for two reasons. In the first place, it is calculated