London elected for the purpose of dealing with education alone. No one who understood and cared anything about it could hesitate to vote against the bill.

ROMAN CATHOLICS AND REPRESENTATION ON THE EDUCATION COMMITTEE.

Mr. T. P. O'CONNOR pointed out that the bill abolished the school board, but at the same time it abolished the cumulative vote, which had been the best protection for a religious minority that had yet been devised. In his observations it should be remembered he represented those who would be compelled by this measure to give up this safeguard for their religious rights. He deplored the fact that the cause of voluntary schools had been brought into collision with the schoolboard system. But for zealots on either side it would have been possible to have made an eirenicon under which school boards could have been maintained and the rights of the minority safeguarded. Those rights were not protected under the act of last year, and there was fear that the last state of Irish Catholic schools might be worse than the first. In many of the northern towns the Catholic populations were without representation on the education committees; and, summing up the facts, he found that in 44 county schemes Catholics had 14 representatives among 2,000 members, and on 56 county borough committees 27 meinbers out of 1,500. In Liverpool they had one member on the education committee, and there was a time when Catholics had seven members on the Liverpool school board. The experience of the act of last year was an experience full of warnings to Catholics as to the danger of any scheme which destroyed the protection of the cumulative vote. What he desired to see was a combination of the system of popular control and rate aid to voluntary schools. Such a system already existed in London in the case of the Jewish community. That showed what could be done by rational agreement. The Jewish school-board schools taught only the Old Testament. Therefore they did not teach any definite Christian doctrine. Jewish teachers were appointed not because they were Jews, but because they knew Yiddish and could teach Yiddish to the Jewish children. By this subtlety the school board, who declared they would never give a penny for the endowment of denominationalism, gave money for the teaching of the Jewish religion by Jewish teachers to Jewish children. He did not blame them. He only contended that if they endowed the maximum of Jewish dogma they had no right to refuse to endow a minimum of Christian doctrine. That would have been the way to deal with the education of Catholics. Catholics invited every form of public control and investigation with regard to public funds, if the public authority were willing to deal only with secular education and leave them to deal with the religious doctrines which they taught their children. He viewed the abolition of the school board and the cumulative vote with alarm and regret. He agreed with that part of the bill which recognized the principle of cooption, because, if the cumulative vote were abolished it was only by cooption that they could provide for the representation of minorities. The feeling of his friends was that the borough councils were not bodies to which their destinies could be very safely intrusted. He would be inclined to support an ad hoc authority; but at all events he hoped the representation of the county council would be increased, and he rather favored Dr. Macnamara's proposal for increasing the membership.

In the annual conference of the national union of elementary teachers (held at Buxton, Easter week) the following resolution was carried with but one dissenting vote:

This conference is of opinion that the London education bill contains proposals fraught with the greatest possible danger to educational progress, will lead to inefficiency and extravagance in administration, is unworkable, and is incapable of being satisfactorily amended. It can not be made effective either by eliminating the borough council representation or by according to the London county council a majority of seats on the committee, since the London county council members could not possibly devote sufficient time to the committee's work, which would fall into the hands of coopted members and officials. Even if those modifications were adopted, therefore, conference would be compelled still to use every legitimate means to secure the withdrawal of the bill. While not opposed to the municipalization of education, where the amount of work to be accomplished makes this possible, conference believes that the magnitude of London's educational operations is such that no scheme of administration can be satisfactory which does not place primary and higher education under the effective control of one authority, directly elected exclusively for that purpose.

The following resolution was adopted at a special meeting of the executives of the three boards of ministers (Presbyterian, Baptist, and Congregational) held in London:

The committee of the general body of Protestant dissenting ministers of the three denominations make their most serious protest against the action of the Government in seizing the opportunity for proposals of a very retrogressive nature. The proposed London education bill is intended and adapted to destroy the present London school board. It removes the education of the people further away from the control of the people, and is conceived in the interest of the Established Church rather than in that of the nation. The bill practically increases the endowment of religion, to which we have always objected, and do still strongly object. We protest against the great complication in the appointment and management as removing responsibility. We object to the method by which the work is to be placed in the charge of persons needed and selected for services of a totally different character and requiring entirely different qualifications. Without judging the motives of its advocates, we assert that the present bill is deficient in sound statesmanship, that it may be worked very detrimentally to the advance of good national education, and that it will greatly increase the bitterness of religious controversy, which we deplore.

MODIFICATIONS OF THE BILL.

To those who were watching the progress of the London bill the greatest surprise was occasioned by the dropping of clause 2. The history of the clause up to that point was epitomized by the Schoolmaster (May 30, 1903) as follows: Clause 1 of the bill sets up the London county council as the education authority for London.

Clause 2, as it originally stood, provided that the authority should act through a committee composed of 36 county councilors, 31 borough councilors, and 30 "outsiders." The second edition of the clause provided for 42 county councillors, 12 borough councilors, and 30 ** outsiders," and the third edition of this clause provided that the county council itself should determine the number of members to constitute the committee, that 12 borough councilors should find seats upon it, that 30 outsiders" should be appointed, and that of the total membership thus involved the county council must have a majority. Last week a great fight raged round the retention of the 12 borough councilors in the third edition of clause 2. On the Wednesday Mr. Balfour insisted that the 12 borough councilors must stay in, and by a majority of 41 he succeeded for the moment in securing their retention.

Much to everybody's astonishment, when the Parliamentary papers were issued last Saturday it was found that Sir William Anson had put down a motion to drop clanse 2 altogether. If the clause was to be dropped, then came the question as to how the education committee for London would be constituted. The answer is that the education committee for London would be constituted in precisely the same way as the education committees in the country have been constitutedthat is to say, under section 17 of the act of last year, by the county council, in accordance with a scheme made by the council and approved by the board of education. To this committee, as already observed, the council may delegate all its powers under the act, excepting that of levying a tax or borrowing money.

The bill having thus been deprived of its most objectionable feature, interest centered upon clause 3, which, it will be seen, originally provided that the borough councils should be constituted as the managers of the board schools; that they should have the right to adopt and modify the curriculum of these schools to the needs of their own localities; the right to appoint and dismiss board teachers, and to determine upon what sites in their own areas any further board schools should be erected. These proposals excited intense opposition in Parliament from those who supported the measure. The public demonstrations against the bill assumed ominous proportions, and finally the government yielded and clause 3 was radically transformed.

The amended bill, as will be seen by comparing the text of its principal clauses with that of the original draft, virtually left the London county council the supreme local authority for the schools of the metropolis.

In the House of Lords the bill received a very few unimportant amendments, and was passed August 5, substantially as it went from the House of Commons.

TEXT OF THE PRINCIPAL CLAUSES OF THE BILL AS AMENDED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

Be it enacted by the King's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:

1. The education act, 1902 (in this act referred to as the principal act), shall, so far as applicable, and subject to the provisions of this act, apply to London.

2. (1) All public elementary provided schools within the area of each metropolitan borough shall have a body or bodies of managers, whose number shall be determined by the council of each borough, subject to the approval of the board of education: Provided, That three-fourths of such body or bodies shall be appointed by the borough council and one-fourth by the local education authority: Provided also, That due regard shall be had to the inclusion of women on the said bodies of managers.

(2) The site of any new public elementary school to be provided by the local education authority shall not be determined upon until after consultation with the council of the metropolitan borough in which the proposed site is situated, and in the case of compulsory purchase, if the council of the metropolitan borough does not concur in the proposed compulsory acquisition, the board of education shall be empowered, as a condition of its approval of the provisional order, to require, if it thinks fit, the substitution in the order of any other site proposed by the council of the metropolitan borough for that inserted by the local education authority.

RETROSPECTIVE TABLES.

STATISTICS OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS OF ENGLAND. a

Table I shows the comparative growth of board and "voluntary" schools, the latter chiefly denominational, as indicated by average attendance for successive years from 1870 to 1902, inclusive. Table II shows the accommodation and enrollment in the different classes of schools for the year 1901 in comparison with the same for 1891.

TABLE I.-Number of children in average attendance in public elementary day schools, board and voluntary, inspected during the year.

a Annual reports of the committee of council on education, 1870 to 1898-99, inclusive; report of the Duke of Newcastle's commission, 1861; report of the royal commission on the elementary education acts, 1888; special reports on educational subjects, education department, 1896-97; reports of the board of education, 1899-1900, 1900-1901, 1901-2. The retrospective tables are derived chiefly from the last-named source and the final report of the committee of council on education (1898-99).

TABLE II.—Accommodation and enrollment in the several classes of elementary schools, 1902 and 1891.

TABLE III.-Expenditure on public elementary education (England and Wales), 1871-1902 (current and capital).

a The law of 1870 authorized school boards to borrow money on the security of local taxes (rates) for the building of schoolhouses. Up to the 1st of April, 1901, the education department had sanctioned loans to the amount of £41,624,464 ($208,122,320). The new accommodation thus furnished is sufficient for 2,788,120 children. The estimated cost per child is thus about £14 18s. 7d. ($73). The department has also sanctioned loans to the amount of £132.998 to 10 school boards for providing accommodation for 729 blind and deaf children, and also £26,818 18s. to 5 school boards for providing accommodation for 390 defective children.

The grant for this year does not include the grant from the science and art department, which is no longer applied to elementary schools. This grant, now limited to so-called higher schools, amounted in 1902-3 to £649,702. The Government grant to training colleges not included in the foregoing totals was £231,989.

TABLE IV.-Expenditure on public elementary education (England and Wales) 1871-1895 (current and capital).

PROPORTION OF TOTAL EXPENDITURE WHICH FELL (a) ON THE CENTRAL FUNDS OF THE STATE, (b) ON OTHER SOURCES OF REVENUE.

TABLE V.—Average expenditure (for maintenance only) per scholar in average attendance.

TABLE VI.-Comparative view of income for maintenance only, day and evening schools, 1894-1900; day schools only, 1902.