continued in existence for another forty years, in nominal charge of the Education Department, but by the new Act the Committee received in 1856 a Vice-President who was henceforth definitely responsible in the House of Commons for the work of the Department.

It was not until 1899 that an Act was passed substituting for the Committee of Council a Board of Education consisting of a President of its own, the Lord President of Council, the Principal Secretaries of State, the First Lord of the Treasury, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. There is also a Parliamentary Secretary. Exactly what benefit was secured by substituting a Board for a Committee, I have never—as the Irish preacher said-'been able to understand or even to explain', since both bodies were mere parliamentary figments and had no living existence.

It is not known whether this Board of Education has ever met, but it is on record that its predecessor, the Committee of Council, did hold at least one meeting in circumstances described by Lord George Hamilton, who was at the time its Vice-President. In 1879 Sir Stafford Northcote, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, induced the Duke of Richmond, then President of the Council, to agree to cutting down the Vice-President's Education Estimates without consulting either the VicePresident or Sir Francis Sandford, the Permanent Secretary of the Board. Lord George went to the Prime Minister, Lord Beaconsfield, and made his protest. He listened intently, and after a minute's reflection said, "Is there not a thing that you call the Committee of Council upon Education ?" "Yes," I said, "there is." "Am I on it?" "Yes." "Very well then, tell the Lord President I wish it to be summoned at once." It was summoned, and I should think for the first and

last time in its existence all the official members of this heterogeneous body met. We sat in a semicircle, Lord Beaconsfield in the centre and I at the extreme outside. "I understand", said Lord Beaconsfield, "that the VicePresident has a statement to make to us." I then proceeded to state my case as best I could, letting down the Lord President and the Chancellor of the Exchequer as much as possible. When I had finished there was a dead silence, whereupon Lord Beaconsfield remarked, "I move that the Committee of Council upon Education do agree with the Vice-President". There was not a word of opposition to this motion, both the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Lord President looking rather foolish.' Such was the only recorded meeting of the body which for sixty years nominally directed English national education.

The most recent precedent, or at any rate the closest analogy for the establishment of a Board was in the case of Agriculture in 1889, a Board which has since acquired the up-to-date title of Ministry: it remains to be seen whether the same honour will be bestowed on education and what difference, if any, it will produce. At any rate, whatever other effects may have been produced by the Board of Education Act in 1899, it rendered possible the policy which has been followed ever since 1905 of having the chief official representative of national education in the House of Commons. At first this change seemed only to have substituted for a mere figurehead some active politician with less interest in education than in his own promotion to some more popular office, but in 1917 the opportunity of education came at last, and the nation secured an able and enlightened expert who turned out to be a born parliamentarian. Some of us who have claimed that

a really good university career fits a man for any known post have been somewhat dismayed to see the application of this theory by the Cabinet in the ubiquitous employment of Mr. Fisher, and questioned within ourselves whether the heaven-sent Minister of Education, who is set to understudy half the Cabinet, is being utilized to the best advantage of the nation.

To sum up this remarkable history.

Less than forty years before the decade which saw the institution of a universal compulsory system of education throughout the country, the system of State aid was smuggled in by a money grant, and it was left to the Treasury to let out the public business to two voluntary societies. Even then, after six years of useful work, the House of Commons as nearly as possible dropped the new-born department, while the Lords tried to kill it. It was only the firmness and courage of the Ministry which secured its continuance and its elevation into a State Department by a method which appears. altogether unconstitutional. The most surprising thing is that the earliest opposition came not in the years of reaction after the French Revolution, but partly from advanced thinkers and in the first flush of the advance of the Reform Bill.

Till 1856 there was nominally no Education Department, and after that until the end of the century the sleeping Committee of Council remained, and was even then only replaced by the equally inactive Board of Education.

With Parliament rests the credit of having passed the various Education Statutes of the second half of the century as they were needed, but the actual progress was made by the steady administration of the officials to which we must in due course turn our attention.

LOCAL AUTHORITIES-THEIR

HISTORY

But first we must consider the original local authorities in education. Local administrators of education, other than trustees, a hundred years ago there were none. Indeed, it is very curious how imperceptibly that important figure of the latter half of the nineteenth century, the School Manager, steals into existence. In such extracts from the minutes of the Committee of Council as I have been able to consult, I find no reference to him before the end of 1843, while four years later the management clauses' of the Committee were the chief battleground between the central authority and those who had local control of the schools as well as, in most cases, the privilege of paying for them. In the forties it is interesting to notice that all grants to teachers were made by Post Office orders, payable personally to them, and it was not until the Revised Code of 1861 that payments in respect of teachers were made directly to the Managers. Thus the teachers, who had been on the verge of being civil servants so far as central payments were concerned, were then placed definitely under the local employer who appointed them.

School Boards were introduced by the Education Act of 1870. They were the first elected public local education authorities: on them fell the duty of making good the enormous deficiencies in the cities and towns left by the voluntary system. Both Voluntary Managers and School Boards bore the burden and heat of the day. To them is due the credit for much of our present

English education, and to them we who are administering it can never be sufficiently grateful. The School Boards were the first bodies on whom was placed the legal obligation of providing and maintaining elementary school accommodation for the needs of whole districts and of obtaining the necessary amount from the rates. Here the chief points to notice about them are that their adoption was voluntary, that their members were elected ad hoc for the purpose of managing their elementary schools and for nothing else, and that the election was by cumulative vote.

The Local Government Act, 1888, possessed an importance for English education foreseen by few, in providing the machinery for its future administration by the creation of County and County Borough Councils; but already in the following year the next step was taken by the Technical Instruction Act, 1889, entrusting to the new or newly-named authorities what proved powers for higher education; and yet again, a year later the Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act, 1890, furnished these authorities with an unexpected income. In this way the new local authorities began to administer higher education on a small scale, and were not at once overwhelmed by the large mass of elementary education, which was withheld from their charge until 1902. In 1902 came the Education Act, the greatness of which may best be judged by the fact that it made the Act of 1918 possible: two measures of which probably no one living can hope to see the final result. It linked up the whole system of public education with the general democratic system of local government, and in spite of other objections, it has taken deep root in the principles of government upon which it is based. It is perhaps worth noticing that it was eighty years from the very