sity degree in arts, science, or literature (to include the new degrees of the University of London). There seems no reason for instituting a separate system of certificates by the Universities or by the Government, unless, through the establishment of a central training and model school, opportunities were given of testing and attesting the qualities of the teacher in the direct exercise of his profession. If such a school could be constituted, and, becoming the receptacle of every improvement, be kept near to an ideal standard, scarcely any cost would be excessive that might be required for its maintenance. But whether, even if realized for a time, it could be secured against that decay into decorous routine which befalls almost every favoured institution, may be reasonably doubted.

The Right Hon. Lord Taunton.

I have, &c.

JAMES MARTINEAU.

REV. F. D. MAURICE, M.A., Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Cambridge.

MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN,

London, June 1, 1866. I PRESUME that Her Majesty's Commissioners wish me to consider the questions on which they have done me the honour to ask my opinion, specially in reference to the circumstances of our middle class education.

1. The temptation to say that all endowments are bad which secure gratuitous education to boys or a fixed income to masters is particularly strong when those endowments are intended for the benefit of this class. They contradict all the notions and habits which prevail in it, all those with which it has leavened and is leavening the rest of English society. That nothing can be so efficient as a competition for prizes in securing the industry of scholars, that nothing can be so efficient as the fear of losing customers in securing the fidelity of masters, is that tenet of our time which the middle class holds with the most fervent faith and inculcates with the greatest vehemence. Some members of the academical class, many professional men, numbers of working men may dissent from it; but by the body of those who send their children to commercial schools it is adopted as an axiom which it is mere folly to dispute. When endowments are found in schools supported mainly by those who are imbued with this feeling, it is scarcely possible that they should not have a tendency to become fictitious and useless. The masters will almost claim a natural right to be indolent; if there are boys whose parents pay for them they will be almost certain to despise those who do not pay. Under such circumstances there is great plausibility in the proposition that the endowments should be turned from their original purpose and should be used to strengthen the competitive principle which is opposed to them.

But I cannot think that this plausible opinion is a true one. I cannot find that the experience of those commercial schools in which the competition among boys and the dependence of the

master upon the parents are most complete, offers the least ground for supposing that a wholesome and manly education will be obtained by the methods which they follow. And it must be remembered that these methods by their very nature prohibit any change in the teaching except that which the opinion of the neighbourhood authorizes and requires. I imagine that the notorious failure of these schools was a main reason for instituting the inquiries of the Royal Commissioners which are likely to be so beneficial. If these inquiries have led to the discovery that there are endowed schools which are doing even less than the unendowed, which are manifestly turning their revenues to no account or to a bad account, such a result appears, for the reason I have given already, a very natural one. No other could be looked for. Yet it may be an argument for retaining and strengthening the old application of the endowments rather than for accommodating them to the maxims of the class which they ought to elevate. Endowments suggest the thought that education has some relation to the past and the future; the tendency of the middle class is to confine it altogether by the judgments and demands of the present time. Endowments proclaim that money may be made subservient to the promotion of ends which are above itself; the tendency of the middle class is to make it the main motive and reward of education and of every other work in which human beings are engaged.

Whilst there is a feeling of contempt for "charity" boys in those whose parents pay, it may be a serious question whether the latter class should not be excluded from the endowed schools (of course I speak only of those with which the Royal Commissioners are now occupied); whether the master shall ever be tempted to weigh the claims of one against those of the other. This change would, it seems to me, be a far more beneficial one than that which has been suggested of turning funds which were meant to provide for the education of a number of boys into prizes for stimulating the ambition of a few. If that course is adopted I should fear that the endowed schools would become feeble imitations of the ordinary commercial schools, cultivating all the habits which they cultivate, reducing education to their standard. If the other course is chosen the endowed schools might become models after which the unendowed would be gradually reformed. For then it would be possible to bring them under the kind of control and superintendence which is hinted at in the second question.

2. The importance of the suggestion respecting the grouping of the schools as well as of that respecting their government can scarcely, it seems to me, be overrated. I do not know what local or sectarian difficulties might interfere with the process of grouping; but if it could be accomplished, the advantage of communication between the masters respecting their different experiences and methods, and of their encouragements and warning which one might give to another would surely be very great.

I do not quite perceive what local bodies could be trusted with the direction of the schools. If such could be constituted it would still be desirable, I think, that an ultimate Court of Appeal should be found somewhere. It has occurred to me that the schools might be placed in connexion with the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge, or London; each group, if not each school, being allowed to exercise its discretion to which of the three it should be affiliated; and that these Universities should periodically send visitors to whom powers of inspection and rectification, ample but carefully defined, should be committed. Such visitors would, it strikes me, inspire more confidence and awaken less suspicion of jobbing than any local board could. The plan might require much modification; in the case of nonconformist or Roman Catholic schools it might be necessary to provide some persons besides those appointed by the University for the examination and direction of certain parts of the teaching. But some organization of this kind would tend to invigorate the schools, to keep them in mind of the objects for which they exist, to suggest practical improvements, and restrain the appetite for wilful novelties.

3. On the third point I have no remarks to make. I know of special abuses only by second-hand reports. Her Majesty's Commissioners must know of a hundred on good authority for every one that I could mention upon indifferent authority. The legal remedies for them could only be recommended with any effect by lawyers.

4. I do not imagine that there are any training schools now in existence which would be adequate for the purpose of providing a supply of competent masters for middle schools. The formation of training colleges, expressly for this purpose, would be a slow and expensive process which might not bring a compensating reward. Yet mere University certificates could scarcely call into existence a race of men qualified for this peculiar and difficult task. I hope that the experiments for University extension and reform, which are now occupying the thoughts of so many earnest and able men, may help to solve the problem. These experiments may themselves be made more complete and less professional, if it is felt that one great object of a cheap college or University education would be to furnish masters for middle schools. There might be a special as well as a general training with a view to this object. And in that case it would, I conceive, be most desirable that clerical incomes should not be eked out by the addition of school work to parochial work, now often combined to the injury of both. A clergyman in the old sense of an educated or learned man could preside over the school, but there would be no necessity of his being ordained to some specially clerical function.

I believe I have now replied, as well as I am able, to the four questions in the paper which has been sent me. The hints I have offered may be very crude, but possibly they will mix with others of a different or opposite kind, which come from various

quarters, and may assist Her Majesty's Commissioners in arriving at some satisfactory result.

MY LORD,

I have, &c.

F. D. MAURICE,

Incumbent of St. Peter's, Vere Street.

EDWARD MIALL, ESQ.

INCESSANT Occupations which would not admit of postponement have prevented me hitherto from replying to the circular of inquiries which your lordship has done me the honour to address to me. In now complying with your request I wish it to be understood that the statement of opinions which follows pledges nobody but myself. Perhaps, however, I may be allowed to say that, while I alone am responsible for anything I have ventured to suggest in regard to practical details, I believe the general principles I have deemed it necessary to enunciate would be sanctioned by the concurrence of a very large proportion of the Nonconformist body.

I am not quite clear whether your circular was meant to elicit opinions on the subject of middle-class education generally, and of the measures that seem likely to improve it, or whether it was intended that replies should be confined to the questions of endowed schools and their management. The explanation given of the fourth topic of the inquiry suggested leads me to infer that the wider range is not to be excluded from observation. I will, therefore, if you please, deal with that in the first instance and separately, that being the order which strikes me as most conducive to clearness of statement.

The education of the young whose parents are above a condition of indigence appears to me to be a matter which scarcely falls within the legitimate province of civil government. I put the question upon this abstract ground, not for the purpose of discussing it, but merely to indicate that the conclusions at which I have arrived ultimately rest upon this foundation. Apart, however, from abstract fitness, the circumstances and habits of the British people are such as to make it unlikely in the last degree that Government can interpose its authority in the matter without raising many more and much greater difficulties than any which its action would be designed to meet. The liberty of the subject, as generally understood by Englishmen, and diversities of religious faith, will be sure to start objections to the mildest and most tentative forms in which the assistance of the State can be tendered. No doubt middle-class schools, in a large majority of instances, it may be, give to the children who attend them scholastic instruction of a very inferior type; but, in the main, the supply is equal to the demand. Upon the character and force of that demand it is safe to rely. People will become educated in proportion as education becomes indispensable to their progress in life and to their social position, and it is open

to question how far artificial stimulants, applied at least on a national scale, would prove of permanent advantage to the country, even if they should succeed in improving the quality of education. In the present day especially such stimulants are less necessary than ever. Everything about us-our marvelously increased and widened commercial intercourse, the new forms in which, and conditions under which, much of our business is transacted, our scientific industry, the large intermixture of foreigners with our population, excessive competition, cheap literature, and so on-calls, and calls loudly, for a higher style of scholastic training among the middle classes. Everything is testing and revealing the inefficiency of that which is usually given them, of which fact the appointment of the Royal Commission may be taken as conclusive evidence; and, I may add, the tendency of thought and feeling on the part of the most highly cultivated section of society favours the suggestion and adoption of arrangements calculated to improve existing educational appliances. These spontaneous and natural agencies are slowly, it is true, but certainly, securing the desired results more efficiently and with far less disturbance of popular prejudices than any action of the Legislature or the Government could effect, and to these the work had better be left. There is only one way in which I can conceive the possibility of permanently useful intervention by the State. To some central body organised in connexion with the Universities, English and Scotch, it might grant authority to give some form of public attestation to the professed acquirements of teachers, and to the efficiency of schools, after due examination,-such examination to be optional, of course, and the expense of it to be defrayed in part by those who apply for it, and in part from a fund to be derived from the educational endowments of the country.

Passing on to the subject of endowed schools, other considerations come in to modify those expressed above. As general trustee of endowments, educational or other, Government is bound to see to their fitting application. If it could absorb them all, that, probably, would be the best use that could be made of them, so far at least as the progress of education is concerned. They operate very much in the same way as dram-drinking. Occasionally, and in instances of great feebleness, they may give a salutary impulse to the system; habitually resorted to, their tendency is to weaken and paralyze. Whether it be possible by any mode of administration to obviate their pernicious effects it would perhaps be presumption in me to speak with confidence. My opinion rests upon the pretty uniform experience furnished by the past; my expectations result from the projection of that experience into the future. Public opinion, however, is not ripe for the extinction, nor, to any considerable extent, for the reappropriation of existing endowments, to whatever uses they may be applied, and until public opinion on the subject shall become enlightened and energetic vested interests are too many,