bus teaching as the local educational authority adopts subject to the conscience clause, I come now to consider the question of the necessary supply of school places. One-half of the children of the country are now in nonprovided schools—some very good, some not so good, some bad, and some very bad. Now, what is required? The use of the schoolhouse for five days a week, from nine o'clock in the morning till four in the afternoon. And for what purpose is it required? To carry on State-aided, rate-maintained, Government-inspected public elementary schools—a public institution of the very first class of material importance.a

That Mr. Birrell had rightly gaged the temper of the people in their desire for religious instruction in the schools appears from the fate of two amendments offered to Clause 1. : The proposition to secularize the schools and thus avoid all further controversy over this question was lost by the enormous majority of 414 votes, swelled by accessions from every party in the House. On the other hand, Mr. Chamberlain's plan of "inside facilities" for all denominations was rejected by a purely official majority of 187.

THE TRANSFER OF VOLUNTARY SCHOOLS.

The status of "provided schools" having been settled by the vote upon the first clause of the bill, all interest centered in the conditions affecting the transfer of voluntary schools to the local authorities, first, as regards their property interests; secondly, as regards the continuance of their sectarian teaching by special favor.

Clause 2 provides that the terms on which the local authorities may have possession of the school buildings of transferred schools shall be settled by agreement between them and the trustees, with the approval of the board of education and subject to specified conditions. These conditions bring the charge "of maintaining the entire fabric of the school buildings" (estimated at £250,000 a year) upon the local authorities in return for their unrestricted use during the regular school hours. The owners of the buildings, as Mr. Birrell explained, will have "sole exclusive possession of them during the whole of Saturday and Sunday, and also have the use of them in the evenings of the week days,” hence, he adds, "the cost of their permanent upkeep is a very considerable gift to the owners of the schools for the expenses which otherwise they have to bear."

To meet the increased expenses incurred by the transfer, the bill provides for an additional annual grant of £1,000,000 (Clause 12 in the original bill; 13 in the bill as adopted). During the debate on clause 2 it was repeatedly pointed out that no compulsion rested upon a local authority to take over any school. The sincerity of the government in this respect was tested by an amendment to the clause which carried what Mr. Birrell aptly termed "bilateral compulsion."

The amendment provided for appeal to the board of education in case either the local authority or the trustees should fail to carry out the provisions of the law in good faith. It was defeated by a vote of 327 to 78, "the government whips telling against it." This was the first of several votes by which the House of Commons evinced its determination not to encroach upon the province of the local authorities.

To understand the spirit in which the debate over the bill was continued, especially the clauses relating to denominational schools, it is desirable to have clearly in mind the attitude of the Conservative party, and also the disabilities against which Nonconformists have protested under the existing conditions.

A CONSERVATIVE VIEW-SPEECH OF MR. WYNDHAM.

The Conservative position in respect to four points emphasized by different members during the debate, namely, religious equality, the rights of parents, the rights of teachers, and property rights, is indicated by the following citations from the speech of Mr. Wyndham, who, on the second reading, moved the rejection of the bill. After a brief enumeration of the main provisions of the bill, he said:

In Part I of the bill there is a violation of the principle of religious equality. That in itself is unjust; that in itself calls for our strenuous and uncompromising opposition, unless

a Parliamentary Debates, 4th series, vol. 155, p. 1019.

and until you so amend the bill as to make it consistent with the principle of religious equality, and it bears other evils in its train. We hold that the two things for which we care depend upon the preservation of the principle of religious equality. We may be right or wrong, but in the integrity of our hearts we believe that the continuous maintenance of any form of religious instruction in our schools depends largely upon the preservation of the principle of religious equality. We believe, in the second place, that the degree-I shall develop this later-to which it is possible to uphold and give effect to the right of the parents depends largely upon preserving the principle of religious equality. You concede that right in theory in certain clauses in this bill. We claim that the right of the parent is to have his child brought up in the religion which the parent prefers, and to have his child taught by those who believe in the religious instruction. You concede that in theory. * * * Well, that is denied. I should have thought that it was conceded by clauses 3 and 4. Otherwise, why were these clauses introduced into the bill at all? But I admit that the concession is of very little value, because when dealing with this right of the parent you limit the operation to nonprovided schools. Why? The parent has the right; it exists independent of the accident which has given this or that character to the school, but you fetter the exercise of this right, you imperil its continuance, and you make no reasonable provision for the future.

*

* *

The whole of this is illogical. That is not a very grave charge to bring against a bill if it departs from logic in order to meet the exigencies of the people for whom it is brought in. If it does not; if that bill goes out in this or that direction apparently only to inflict injury upon some classes of the population, then, I think, the charge that it is illogical and irrational is one which will have to be met. We hold that so far as the State is concerned it ought to be neutral.a * * *

Until the minister of education brought in this bill, for which he is responsible, the State, in my judgment, had preserved a neutral attitude toward those who, on the one hand, prefer, and we think they have a right to prefer, that religious instruction should be of a definite character and that it should be given by competent persons in school hours, and, on the other hand, those of our fellow-citizens who prefer, as they have a perfect right to do, that religious instruction should be of an undenominational character; that if they are satisfied with the bill denominational instruction should be given only by the good nature of anyone who cares to give it, and that it should be given out of school hours. I hold that the State should hold the balance equally between these two great sections. But taking the facts as they are, the schools in this country in which religious education of the first kind is given number something over 14,200. They are two-thirds of the schools of this country, and more than half the children of the country are being educated in them. Under clause 1 of the bill, with an exception which I promise to deal with as fairly as I can, the rule is that all those schools are to be transferred or converted from the kind of school which many prefer into the kind of school which others prefer. The rule is, with certain exceptions, that from all these schools the religious teaching to which millions of our countrymen attach immense importance is to be abandoned; that the teachers belonging to the various denominations who have perhaps joined the teaching profession because they cared more about these matters than about the mere curriculum of secular education are silenced. They are not to be allowed to teach. That is a great interference with the liberty of the subject, and it is resented by a great body of the teachers. Moreover, owing to the operation of the third part of the bill, some of these teachers may find that their occupation is gone.b * * *

We did not attack the undenominational schools; but we did believe, and we do believe, that the existence side by side with undenominational religious instruction of definite religious instruction was a stimulus which kept up the standard of religious instruction in board schools, which are now the provided schools. We believe that if you crush out definite religious instruction you imperil the maintenance of any form of religious instruction as part and parcel of the education of the English child.c * * *

Let me now turn to the method of transfer. By clause 2 the transfer is to be carried out by arrangement (which is a new word in legislation) between the owners or trustees of the schools and the local bodies in cases where the local body desires to do so, and in cases where it does not desire to do so these schools may cease to be public elementary schools, and the local body may rate all those who have subscribed these large sums of money in order to build two or three schools to compete with the original schools, withdrawing from them all rate aid and aid from the exchequer. That is a monstrous proposition. You invite two persons to make a bargain, and you give to one of the parties to the arrangement the power of ruining the other unless he accepts the terms. The local authority says to the trustees of the unprovided schools, "If you do not accept my terms I shall withdraw all public aid from your schools and build two others and rate you for them. Now, what will you take?" But if even with this wonderful lever which the Government has placed in the hands of the local authority they do not succeed in making

a Parliamentary Debates, 4th series, vol. 156, pp. 1015 1016, 1017. b Ibid., pp. 1017-1018. c Ibid. pp. 1020-1021,

an arrangement, then this anonymous, this novel body, is brought into being; this commission of three, with powers utterly unknown, is placed above all law. And what a long time the Government is going to give owners and trustees to make this arrangement. a *** There are 14,200 voluntary schools, nearly all of them under trusts. Do you suppose, in default of arrangement before January 1st, 1907, that in twenty or thirty years your commission, unless you give them all the powers of Oliver Cromwell's military generals, will be able to extract that property from people whom you compel to defend it?

I come to the first exemption from the iron rule-clause 3, the ordinary facilities. If the local authority allows it, if the commission awards it, only in the nonprovided schools religious instruction may be given upon two mornings in the week. The teachers are prohibited by the State from giving it, and the pupils are told by statute that they need not attend. Why, it is a mockery. I will not waste time upon that. Coming to clause 4, the extraordinary facilities, which are confined to urban districts and to boroughs, there, if the local authority allows it and the inquiry demonstrates that four-fifths of the parents wish it, the school is to remain more or less a denominational school. I say there is no liberty in any of these exemptions. *

* *

You are forcing the country into a period of religious war, and we think that no solution can be arrived at which does not recognize the right of the parent to choose the religious education which is to be given to the child. If you do not do that you at once set up an unfair distinction between the opportunities of the rich and the opportunities of the poor in this country. The rich man sends his son to Eton, and his child hears the services of the Church of England, to which he may be attached by many associations every day of his life. Why, if a poor man wishes that, is he not to have it? c * * *

We may have to endure the persecution of this bill, but we will battle against it at every stage, and if the bill is passed, then throughout this Parliament and in every succeeding Parliament, until some recognition is given of "the natural and inalienable right' of every parent to see that his child receives from the State the religious teaching which his parents claim for it.d * * *

DOCTOR MACNAMARA IN REPLY TO MR. WYNDHAM.

Doctor Macnamara, replying to Mr. Wyndham, declared that the State departed from its policy of neutrality in educational matters in 1902.

I venture [he said] to give three small points in proof of my contention, and in justification of my interruption. The first of these points is that the act of 1902-the act of the leader of the opposition-put the denominational schools upon the rates of the locality, of which I do not complain, and which I think was a right thing to do, and which I think was a great reform; but it avoided the direct consequence of popular control, which is that the moment you place public education on public funds you must follow that up by giving full public control. * * * It gave a nonprovided school six managers, of whom the public had two and the trustees four. e * * *

Again, at the present moment there are over 30,000 head teacherships in this country which are salaried out of public funds. As to 18,000 of those head teacherships, no nonconformist can, under any circumstances, apply for the post of head teacher, and in 16,220 nobody can get the position who is not a member of the Church of England. That, again, I think, is a fantastic notion of neutrality. In the third place, to go no further, although I could multiply these illustrations, there are 7,987 places open to King's scholars in the residential training colleges; but in 4,309 of those places, no matter how successful the King's scholar had been, he would not be admitted unless he changed his religion and became a member of the Church of England.ƒ * * *

The right hon. gentleman, the member for Dover, has said that the denominational buildings, which it is alleged are to be confiscated under the bill, are worth £32,000,000, and that the money has been subscribed because of religious zeal.

* * *

It is of course notorious that much of this money has been contributed for other reasons— to keep out the higher charge of a school board.9 * * *

Let me, with great respect, offer a word of warning to the extreme denominationalists who talk about confiscation. I would recommend them to agree with their adversary quickly, while he is in the way with them. I certainly think the local authority, if there is much haggling, will say: "Go away. We decline to treat with you. We will build our own schools. We will spread the cost over sixty years. The financial burden will be immediately less, and in the long run we will have a building of our own, and all the time we shall have complete control of it."

The other main attack on the bill rages around the eternal religious question. It seems to me there are three courses open to the Government in dealing with this question. They

a Parliamentary Debates, 4th series, vol. 156, pp. 1021-1022. b Ibid., pp. 1022-1023. c1bid., p. 1025.

might have said they would dispense denominational teaching all round as part of a State system. I think that is hopelessly impracticable. * * *

The second proposal is that * * * "we will confine the instruction to purely secular teaching." I admit that that is absolutely logical and fair to the body at large, but it is hopelessly out of touch with the national sentiment. * * * It will commit tens of thousands of the children of our cities to a youth untouched by Christian truths. The secular party may emerge well from this controversy, because it is already a powerful party, and very likely will be reinforced by the man in the street who, sick and tired of theological bickering, will adopt it as a policy of despair. * **Personally, however, I should oppose that proposal. Then, having dismissed denominationalism as impracticable, having dismissed a system of secular schools as being out of touch with national sentiment, there remains only the system of the State's giving simple Biblical teaching, leaving to outside teachers the task of adding a denominational superstructure. That is the scheme of this bill. Religious teaching need not be given unless the local authority desire it. It is not a very new feature, for it is the fundamental provision of the Cowper-Temple system as laid down in 1870. Then there is a clause under which no child need attend religious instruction unless its parents desire. That is the by-law of the late Government issued through the board of education. * * *

For the first time in the history of this country, under this bill no teacher will be compelled to give religious instruction unless he likes, and that will take away many of those unfortunate aspects of the religious controversy which have been referred to. Clause 7 [in the bill as adopted clause 8], subsection 2, is a real charter of liberty to the teacher. a

MR. BALFOUR ON THE BILL.

In his speech already cited (p. 15) Mr. Birrell referred to the bill of 1902 as the immediate cause of the measure offered by himself. The relation between the two was emphasized also again and again by Mr. Balfour, whose perfect appreciation of the conditions to be met gave special point to his running commentary on the successive clauses of the bill as viewed from the opposition standpoint.

The following extracts from a speech by Mr. Balfour on the second reading of the bill show his position with respect to its treatment of the religious difficulties. Replying to an "attack" upon the act of 1902 by the president of the board of trade (Mr. Lloyd-George), Mr. Balfour said:

*

I do not quarrel with his dealing with the act of 1902, because I believe this question can only be understood if it is dealt with historically. I do not agree with his criticism, as I shall show in a moment, but I think he was justified in dealing with that act. * * I have said you ought to approach this question historically, and so you ought. The member for the Louth division of Lincolnshire, if he will forgive me for saying it, had the amazing courage to describe the bill now before us as a moderate and reasonable measure, very unlike the bill of 1902. Well, sir, let hon. gentlemen reflect upon the position we were in in 1902. In 1902 the education system of this country was a by-word to every educationally advanced nation of the world. * * * There is such a thing as secular education, and our system of secular education was a by-word amongst every advanced country in the world. It had to be dealt with in a broad and comprehensive spirit. Secular education was dealt with in a broad and comprehensive spirit, and on the foundation then laid you, the majority, are going to build up anything you can do, if you can do anything, to improve the existing educational system of the country. You have not attempted, you do not mean to attempt, to alter it; you are wise not to attempt to alter it. It remains the broad basis upon which secular education for our children and, I believe, for our grandchildren is going to be framed. Now, sir, we could not deal with the great secular needs of this country without touching the question of the voluntary schools, which educated more than half the children of this country, and we could not touch the question of the voluntary schools without touching the question of religion. * * *

*

*

We found an act in operation dealing with the voluntary schools and the board schools, an act passed by a great Liberal administration. * Both the Cowper-Temple clause and the voluntary schools had to be left. To abolish the voluntary schools and leave the Cowper-Temple clause would have been the grossest injustice to one great body of opinion in the state; to abolish the Cowper-Temple clause and leave the voluntary schools would have been an outrage on another great body of opinion in the state. Illogical though they are admitted to be, both had to be left. That being the case, could we have dealt with the question better than we did? * * * Under Mr. Gladstone's act we found innumerable cases in which schools were under the control of one clerical manager; we cured that.

a Parliamentary Debates, 4th series, vol. 156, pp. 1090, 1091, 1092.

** *We found that, so far as local control was concerned, there was no representative element in the voluntary schools as regards secular education; we made the control of secular education complete from top to bottom in every school throughout the country. We found there was no machinery in existence for adequately training for the teaching profession men who did not belong to the Church of England; we provided machinery by which this teaching for men not belonging to the Church of England could be provided. We found a large number of parishes in which it might seem to the local authority that the education ought not to be left to the voluntary schools; we gave them power under certain, not harsh or stringent, limitations to build another school side by side. In every one of these great particulars-not details, but vital elements of our education system-we found a method established by a Liberal Government and we corrected it. * * *

Now, that is the system, with its admitted imperfections, of the Cowper-Temple clause on the one side and the single-school area on the other, with which you have got to deal. How have you set about it? I understand from the chancellor of the exchequer and other speakers that you have been driven to put before us this strange legislative effort by what you call "the mandate of the general election." * * *

What are these two mandates? They are that you are to establish popular control and to abolish tests for teachers. Is either of these understood in the same sense, or in any sense, by the authority? Take popular control. There is popular control now, under the act of 1902, so far as secular education is concerned. Therefore the mandate must have referred only to religious education. Does this bill establish complete popular control as regards religious education? The education minister has told us that, in his opinion, it is an obligation a moral though not a statutory obligation upon the local authority to select for particular schools teachers of a particular creed. Does that mean there is complete local control over these schools in religious matters? I should have thought when you were giving mandatory instructions to the local authority that it was to select teachers of a particu lar religious complexion you must abandon the claim that you have established complete popular control in religious matters, and if you have ever received the mandate you claim to have received you stand convicted of disobeying it at this moment. * * *

Will anybody pretend that after this bill is passed there will be either in the provided schools or in the denominational schools under clause 3, or the specially privileged schools under clause 4, either better education, a better system of religious education, or the prospect of a better system of religious education? * * * It is going, for example, to take religion out of the compulsory school hours. Would you encourage arithmetic by taking it out of compulsory school hours? Or geography? Or any subject of secular learning? Do you think you are going to aid religious teaching * * * by taking it out of the compulsory hours? * * * Do you think you are going to improve it by preventing the experienced teachers in voluntary schools, anxious and ready to take their place on the two days a week you are going to allow in voluntary schools, to teach the form of religion for which subscribers gave their money? Do you think you improve the teaching of religion by saying to teachers not willing to give it~ * * * you shall give it?

* * *

I assume, as surely I am justified in assuming, that for your million of money you are not going to get better religious teaching. There is only one thing you could get, and that is religious peace. Are you going to buy religious peace with this million of money? * * * There are gentlemen who seem to think that while the Jews have a case against school board teaching, while Roman Catholics have a case against it, the Church of England are to allow the Cowper-Temple clause to remain untouched in their schools and to see with equanimity this diversion of the funds which they have given to the cause of religious as well as of secular education. * * * I doubt whether it is worth while for the Government to go into committee with the view of modifying their bill to an extent which alone would make possible a satisfactory solution of this question. It would be a happier and wiser course if they were to withdraw it altogether and recast it, to adopt new principles. If they think that inconsistent either with sound policy or with their dignity, I can only say that, either in this House or in the country, they are predestined to find arrayed against them forces, both within their own ranks and outside their own ranks, which will compel them to make this measure dealing with religious education something distantly approaching an impartial settlement of the question.a

The position thus assumed by Mr. Balfour in the early days of the discussion of this measure was maintained by him to the end.

FACILITIES FOR DENOMINATIONAL INSTRUCTION IN TRANSFERRED SCHOOLS.

In his speech submitting the bill, Mr. Birrell dwelt upon the fact that it afforded facilities for special denominational teaching in any of the hitherto “nonprovided" schools that may choose to come to terms with the local educational authority.