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, under the title of "The Closure and Common-Sense," we pointed out that no false delicacy need

21

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 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, under the title of "The Closure and Common-Sense," we pointed out that no false delicacy need

VOL. CLXI.-NO. DCCCCLXXVII.

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of

now deter any Government from making use of the instrument which Parliament has placed in their hands. "Old times are changed, old manners gone." An entirely new mode of opposition has superseded the system known to Peel, Russell, and Tiernay. To meet the new method attack we must employ a new method of defence. The tactics of Frederick the Great were found useless against Napoleon. The closure, as we said last year, must now be accepted as one of the regular organs of parliamentary pro cedure. We sympathise with the reluctance of Conservatives to have recourse to a system so little consistent with their own principles and traditions. But they need neither be ashamed nor afraid of exercising a power which has now become absolutely essential to freedom of legislation, and which their opponents are certain to employ without any constitutional scruples if ever their turn comes round again. Mr Balfour has to choose between two alternatives which are both extremes. He may either let legislation take its chance, thinking it enough that the people know the reason why; or he may secure the efficiency of parliamentary government by curtailing some of that liberty which members seem determined to abuse. He may either abdicate his functions, or uphold them by main force. The great party which he leads must decide between these alternatives, and let him know which they prefer, not only for the Education Bill, but for all Bills-not only for this session, but for all sessions. Which will they have? Will they con

sent to be contemptible for fear of being called tyrannical; or will they exert that authority which is vested in all Governments for their own protection, and throw themselves on the support of the public, who desire nothing more than to see an end to vacillation and indecision in the conduct of public affairs, and are ripe for almost any measures which may have the desired effect.

Seasons may arise when the departure from those maxims and principles which guide our conduct on ordinary occasions becomes a sacred duty, in obedience to a higher law. Such a situation creates grave responsibilities, from which, however, no statesman, no honest and courageous citizen, ought to shrink. At the present moment every man is bound to consider by what means the efficiency of the Queen's Government, and the usefulness of the House of Commons, can be most successfully maintained. We must not sacrifice the end to the means. If, owing to such changes as we have just referred to, the action of the party system threatens to impede instead of assisting the progress of legislation, the maxims which held good at a previous period may no longer have any claim upon us. Freedom of debate is a privilege of great price. But it may be necessary to contract its limits in order to preserve its life; and statesmen who recognise this truth, and have the courage to act upon it, are the real friends of parliamentary institutions, and not those who would earn a little cheap popularity by denying or deriding it.

THERE could scarcely be a more curious literary sensation than to open a book by a French romancist, bearing all the appearance of a novel, and find in it, instead of those wearisome intrigues, enlivened more or less by sparks of wit, degraded more or less by noisome details of uncleanness, to which we are accustomed in that kind of production, a Pilgrim's Progress, neither less nor more, -the struggle of a soul, disgusted with vicious life and all its accompaniments, to find an opening into purer air, into faith and hope. That this should come to us under the name of a writer whose command of the varieties of circumstance in vice, and its favourite sentiments and descriptions, the dreadful lore of the so-called Realist, is well known, and certifies its popularity by a stamp

VOL. CLXI.

of seizième édition on its titlepage, makes the wonder still more remarkable. Has France begun to disgust herself with her own special form of literature, and to learn that the obscene and impure are as dull as they are loathsome subjects of study, and that nothing is more monotonous than the record of vice in which she has so long tried to find entertainment? We think there are signs to this effect even in general literature; but so singular a work as the one before us could not be other than individual, and we cannot suppose that it marks any common movement, or is anything but the strange story of a soul satiated, disgusted, sickened by a life which at the same time does not seem to have been any worse than that of the ordinary hero of a French novel. The effect pro

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