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(2.) 1870 to 1902.

On February 17, 1870, Mr. Forster introduced his great Bill. By the passing of this Bill the Parliament, for the first time in its history, displayed a genuine interest in the question of education. By this date the National Society had expended over six and a quarter millions of pounds in building schools, and had raised eight and a half millions of pounds for their maintenance. It had gone on its national work and had raised this enormous sum of money in the face of absolute indifference on the part of the great bulk of the people.

Mr. Forster's Bill was vehemently opposed by a large number of Nonconformists and a certain section of Churchmen; but the House was, at last, in earnest and determined. Mr, Henry Bichard introduced an amendment in favour of refusing any more assistance to National Schools, and proposing that religion should be taught by voluntary effort. The House rejected it by 421 to 60. Mr. Forster's words are worth quoting:—"In proportion as the Voluntary Schools were made useful, the rates would be saved," and "if the voluntary subscriptions disappeared, the constituencies would have to pay for them either as taxpayers or ratepayers." In his speech introducing the Bill Mr. Forster said:—"No one could occupy mv office without being fully aware of what the country owes to the managers of the schools (i.e, Voluntary Schools of all sorts). ... "I have had 'many opportunities of seeing those gentlemen at work, particularly ministers of religion of all denominations, though perhaps it has been my lot to see more of the clergy of the Church of England than of others. I have seen them at their work, and tried to help them occasionally, I know the sacrifices they have made, and not for a moment do I believe it possible that anyone who considers this question will disregard what they have done or will wish to do without their aid in the future," . . . Again, "We must take care not to destroy in building up—not to destroy the existing system in introducing a new one. . . . There must be . . . the utmost endeavour not to injure existing and efficient schools. ". . . Our object is to complete the Voluntary system."

Further, "If by passing this measure we destroy the present 'educational agencies, it would be long before we could do as much good as we should have done harm, and therefore as a friend of education, and of education only, I was anxious that we should help every person, whether he belonged to the Church of England or not, who was willing to spend either his time or his money in promoting education among his poorer neigh- page 12 bours. . . . With regard to the country parishes, if we were to drive all the clergy from the educational camp, I for one do not know how we should be able to replace them."

Mr, Gladstone was equally clear:—" . . . we adopted this principle also as a fundamental principle of this Bill, that we would frankly and without jealousy endeavour to employ the machinery of Voluntary Schools as far as it was avaliable in aid of our object." And again:—"We have found in approaching this question a vast machinery in action; and it is in our opinion almost required by justice and by the implted pledges of the State, which have been conveyed in every form both of declaration and practice, and absolutely required by the dictates of common sense, that we should make use of this machinery. . . . If we treat those Voluntary Schools as institutions either to be proscribed, or at the best only to be tolerated, limited, hemmed in, permitted to exist merely because they do exist, as things which it is not worth our while to recognise, or honour, or encourage, on what principle can we justify such a policy? On none, that I know of,"

On the third reading Mr. Gladstone summed up the position in these words: "It was with us an absolute necessity—a necessity of honour and a necessity of policy—to respect and to favour the educational establishments and machinery we found existing in the country. It was impossible for us to join in the language or to adopt the tone which was conscientiously and consistently taken by some members of the House, who look upon these Voluntary Schools, having generally a denominational character, as admirable passing expedients, fit, indeed, to be tolerated for a time, deserving all credit on account of the motives which led to their foundation, but wholly unsatisfacton- as to their main purpose, and therefore to be supplanted by something they think better. . . . That has never been the theory of the Government. . . . When we are approaching this great work, which we desire to make complete, we ought to have a sentiment of thankfulness that so much has been done for us."

Mr. Mundella, afterwards himself Education Minister, said:—"We had not a training college or a normal school which the exisiting Societies had not given us."

Mr. S. Morley, a Nonconformist, alluded to "the undoubted right which the Church had to be considered, as having done so large a work in the great undertaking of education." Mr. E. Miall, another leading Nonconformist M.P., was as clear on page 13 the facts to be considered. There was, however, some considerable amount of opposition to the Bill notwithstanding. The Nonconformists, as a whole, were not satisfied at the perpetuation of the dual system of education. In the House of Lords the Bishops gave the Bill very general support, and it was, practically, unaltered by the Lords.

I have made these quotations mainly to show you upon what assurances the supporters of Voluntary Schools, Anglican, Roman, or Wesley an, have been working since 1870. Until the Bill of 1906 was introduced, members of the Church of England, and of the Church of Borne, believed that a statement by a responsible Minister of the Crown in one Administration would not be wholly repudiated by another Minister in another Administration, Foolishly, perhaps, they believed in the traditions of honour of the English House of Commons. The matter really concerns only the Anglican and Koman people to any considerable extent. The British School system has not grown as has the work of the Church of England, and the Church of Rome, for education. The religious instruction allowed under the Act of 1870 met the requirements, in the main, of the British School system, i.e., of the non-episcopal bodies.

The Act of 1870 was quite clearly intended to provide a svstem of education supplementary to the national system. The Government made this quite clear. I think this is a fair statement of what happened in 1870, and during the next thirty-two yearsr:—The Government said, here is our duty: every child in this country ought to have the opportunity of education; here are certain Voluntary Schools doing a big national work; they cannot do it all; we must do our part; it would be immoral to ignore them; all elementary schools must be under Government supervision, inspection, and regulations; religion is a matter of conscience, and so we must give perfect religious liberty, alike to Anglicans, Romans, nonconformists, and Jews; local government is a principle of English life, and so we must get local bodies to work in education.

The theory is sound, and the practice, had it been left alone and had no other factors come into play, would have been found permanently workable. I can best illustrate the practice by a concrete example: My own parish in London; but, please bear in mind that I quote it because I know most about it; it is typical of the whole situation all over England of every sort and kind of Voluntary School.

When I was appointed Vicar of the parish I found a small, inconvenient, dirty National School there. Within a very few page 14 months of my institution, H.M. Inspector condemned the school. He was quite right; had he not done so, I should have done the same sort of thing in another way as Vicar. The London School Board had scheduled a site for a big school, roughly speaking, to accommodate 1000 children. Such a school was demanded within the area in which my old parish lay. The Education Minister told me, quite fairly and honestly, this sort of thing: if your people build the school according to our requirements, we sha'n't let the Board go further, and we will give you a reasonable period of time. (This was from Mr Acland, one of our best Ministers of Education, a Radical.) Well, the London School Board meant to spend some £24,000 of the rate-payers' money in building a new school. My old parish bought land adjoining their old school, pulled down the old school, and built a new school, as required by Government, for £11,000. They paid that sum of money down in hard cash; the ratepayers were saved more than double that amount. Sir John Gorst, the Minister for Education at the date came and spoke at the opening of the schools. The National Society gave a small grant towards the building, and so it was a national School. Now, mark carefully, two things:—(a.) So far as the State was concerned, that school was a direct gift to the State for State purposes. Every teacher, male or female, in that school had to come up to State requirements of educational fitness, H.M. Inspector walked into that school with as entire authority as he or she walked into any Board school throughout England. The manager of that school wore dependent on H.M. Inspectors' Reports, for State aid, exactly as was every Board school in England. No Religious Instruction could be given by any soul within that school after 9.45 a.m. every day. Thus the State demanded quite fairly and rightly. Thus my old parish responded. (b.) Why did we spend this large capital sum? Why, within six years, have the people connected with that parish spent £14,000 on their schools? Simply to obtain two things:—(1) The right of giving Religious Instruction, subject to a perfectly clear conscience clause, from 9 a.m. to 9.45 a.m. daily. (2) The right of appointing teachers as head masters or mistresses who would conscientiously teach religion according to the doctrines and discipline of the Church of England; and who were people of whom we had surety that a lesson in arithmetic or geography was an act capable of being sanctified by the faith of the teacher. Those were the only reasons, No others exist. If I had gone into my old parish schools after 9.45 a.m. and proceeded to teach religion and the Government, Inspector page 15 had come in (in recent years he always came unexpectedly) he would, to a certainty, have fined us through our grant—and quite rightly, Now, as to the finance of such a school. You will understand it better if I put it this way: there were, as we have seen, two sorts of schools, Voluntary and Board, both equally and completely under the same Government conditions as to inspection, grants, and so forth. A Board School was financed thus:—Government grants from the Imperial Exchequer of various sorts, e.g., annual grant on average attendance, grant in aid, and the like; the difference between the amount of these grants and the annual expenditure was provided by the School Bosrd Bate. A Voluntary School had exactly the same treatment from the Government; but had to supply its deficiency between income and expenditure from the pockets of the members of the religious body to whom the school belonged. Thus the State said to religious bodies:—So far as yon do the work of the State you are to be treated by the State in exactly the same way as the State treats anyone else; but, if you believe in your own particular religious method, you must pay for your belief, the State cannot. Personally, I believe that this was morally the only right position for the State to adopt; but on this point more later. You will observe that the sources of supply for the annual deficiency between income from the State and expenditure on behalf of the State varied in the two systems thus:—the Board schools provided the deficiency, under law, out of the inexhaustible pocket of the ratepayer; the Voluntary School provided its deficiency out of the exhaustible pocket of the members of the religions body to whom the school belonged. For instance, I see from the Report of my old parish that something like £400 was paid in subscriptions and school pence (the form of the wage-earner's contribution) towards the deficiency between grants and expenditure during the year 1901-2, a year selected at random.

As time went on, the rightful demands of teachers for better pay had to be met. School Boards could, as you see, easily meet such demands, and could also improve both buildings and apparatus to an unlimited extent. The School Board rate rose from Mr, Forster's estimated maximum of 3d. in £ to some shillings in £—so far as I recollect, our London School Board rate when I left was 1/3½ in f. Everyone, Anglican, Roman, Nonconformist, Jew, had to pay it; but the man who supported a Voluntary School had, in addition to his rate, to pay his subscription to his Voluntary School. Personally, I think quite rightly. Gradually, two things happened:—(a.) What Mr. Bal- page 16 four called "the intolerable strain" on Voluntary Schools, became a matter of grave concern both to the managers of such schools and to the Education Department. (b.) Teachers in Voluntary Schools had to possess the same teaching qualifications as teachers in Board Schools, but could never hope to receive the same financial emoluments. Such teachers were, from one point of view, being fined for their faith by the State, though doing the State's work. Many of them made the sacrifice willingly, I knew teachers personally who had more than once refused higher stipends under the Board in order to serve their country and their faith by teaching in a Voluntary School. The thing the Act of 1902 did was to remove this inequality, as we shall see presently. A word now on the religious instruction given in the Board Schools. I know most about it as given under the London Board, and I have more than once spoken of it in my charges to the Diocesan Synod. I dealt particularly with the matter in 1904, and so I need not repeat the facts now. Suffice it to say that, as religious instruction—I do not say education—it was thoroughly good, and I never heard of any teacher being otherwise than glad at the privilege being given for imparting religious instruction, But, whether such instruction were given or not, depended on the local School Board. The majority of Boards, I think, caused it to be given. Some, chiefly in Wales, forbade it. Under the Board, no distinctive formulary or catechism could be taught, and, of course, under both Board and Voluntary systems the conscience clause was real and operative.

Compulsory and free education became law through the operations of the Act of 1870; but free education did not become law for some twenty vears.

Certain prophets gloomily, or cheerfully, according to their politics or their religion, foretold the extinction of Voluntary Schools by the Act of 1870. The Education Department Report for 1896 gave statistics proving the contrary. The department published these facts:—During the twenty-five years that had elapsed since 1870, the number of Voluntary Schools or Departments had grown from 12,061 to 20,553; the school places from 1,878,000 to 3,638,000; the average attendance from 1,152,000 to 2,465,000, of which number no less than 1,873,000 were attending Church of England schools; over 18 millions of pounds had been raised for Voluntary Schools, of which over 14 millions had been for Church of England schools; the yearly subscriptions had doubled in amount and stood at over £800,000; while page 17 the Church training-colleges were training two-thirds of the students under training.

This remarkable increase is quite natural: Religion had at last a partner in her national work of education. The Church was spurred to fresh efforts by the activity of her partner now at long last awake. Neither the Church of England nor the Church of Rome could be content with Religions Instruction only; they wanted Religious Education. The State (as I think, rightly) said: pay for it and you shall have every religious liberty.

One of the arguments against the Voluntary Schools used to be (and perhaps still is) that they were less efficient than the Board Schools. There, doubtless, were eases where such a statement was true; but life has to be estimated on averages, not on particular instances, and so the facts from the Educational Blue Book for 1901 may be quoted:—It showed that the average grant to Board Schools throughout the country (taking the town and rural districts together) that year was £1 1s. 8¼d., while that to Denominational Schools was £1 1s. 2¾d., only 5/12d. per head less. As this grant is determined by the sole consideration of efficiency, the superiority of Board Schools is slight indeed, and becomes insignificant when it is remembered that each Board School child costs the public funds 13s. 6d. per annum more than the denominational scholar.

The Minister of Education (Sir John Gorst) was quite clear on this point, for, speaking in the House of Commons, on March 31st, 1896, he said that the Board Schools in the rural districts had proved themselves totally inefficient, and if the Voluntary Schools in those districts were replaced by Board Schools it would degrade National Education. In the October issue of the Nineteenth Century, 1902, speaking with all the weight of his official experience, he continued his previous statement with the remark that "the worst Elementary Schools in the country are to be found, not among Voluntary Schools, but among Rural Board Schools,"

As a matter of fact, thirty years after the Act of 1870, there were three million children in the Voluntary Schools, i.e., a majority of the children in England and Wales.

One of the grievances that used to be alleged was: there are some 5600 "single school" areas, i.e., places in which the National School was the only one open to children of all denominations. Here, it was said, is a real religious inequality. The answer to such a charge is difficult, because it is based on the assumption that the clergyman of that parish cares more page 18 for proselytizing than he does for education; in other words, that he is a very dishonourable person. I daresay that you could find such a man among the thousands of clergy of the Church of England, or among the clergy of the Church of Rome, or the Methodists, Congregationalists Baptists, or other Religious Bodies. But I do know as a fact that where such a man was found among the clergy of the Church of England, he found encouragement neither from State nor Church. I cannot claim for us clergy an entire absence of asinine qualities; but I can say that the history, both past and present, of education in England proves that our number of selfish apses is more remarkable for its singularity than for any other feature. I can honestly say that, during my experience in English parishes, I never personally came across an instance of violation of the conscience clause, either in the letter or the spirit. Moreover, I never heard of "the religious difficulty" outside newspapers or political speeches. In my old parish 20 per cent of the scholars were children of Nonconformist parents (in October, 1902); there had been no withdrawal from Religious Instruction for over six years; on admission of a child the parent was asked: "Do you wish your child to receive Religious Instruction as taught here?" When I left London one Jewish boy and three Jewish girls attended O.T. Lessons only. Dr. Clifford, whose educational practice is far better than his educational creed, was a parishioner, and—I think I may say—a friend of mine, and, when we were re-building our schools, he most generously offered to accommodate our Boys' Department in his chapel buildings if H.M. Inspector would permit it. The Inspector could not sanction it, for sanitary reasons; but the fact remains: no religious difficulty. The "costers" on the Portobello Road had collecting boxes for our building on their barrows, and the working men, almost without exception, throughout the parish, helped with their money also. Probably, 20 per cent., if not more, of the Boys and Girls came from the Harrow Road and North Paddington, and passed, in some cases, four Board Schools to come to a Church School, which encouraged the poor to help themselves by contributing School Pence as a voluntary offering. For nine years, the Religious Lesson was given by me every day at 9 a.m., in the Church, to certain Standards, whilst the teachers taught the other Standards in the Schools.. The parents were thankful, the children were happy, I am thankful to say that some of the clergy, whose churches are close to the State Schools in this Diocese—notably the Archdeacon of Auckland—have adopted this practice in New Zealand, and that page 19 the teachers and children, in a real sense, are glad of it. My successor continued the custom until the last Minister of Education (Sir W. Anson) issued his ignoble Circular No. 512, and thereby stopped a custom in that school, and similar customs in other schools, which were of benefit to the children, As usual, the chief people concerned, the children, were not considered in an Education Question! There may have been parishes where the conscience clause was observed in the letter, but not in spirit; but I knew of none personally. I did know of certain carefully "manufactured" breaches of the conscience clause, which were trotted about throughout the country on every political anti-Church platform. I am also quite certain that the clergy are not infallible; but that they are human beings, very much like other human beings, and so there may have been, as I said before, cases of hardship; but I am absolutely certain they were very rare.

Let me sum up so far as we have got:—

The Act of 1870 was really the only big and serious effort that Parliament had ever made to grapple with a matter of the utmost national importance: Education.

The purpose of that Act was, definitely, not to supplant Voluntary Schools, but to supplement them. Voluntary Schools could not cover the ground. The State had to come in and help. The Act aimed at conserving a dual system of Education: Board Schools and Voluntary Schools.

All Schools were subject to the same Government inspection, and had to comply with the same Government demands, and received the same sort of Government grants.

All Schools were under the same conscience clause.

In Voluntary Schools distinctive formularies and catechisms could be taught; in Board Schools they were forbidden by the Cowper-Temple clause; but in most Board Schools Religious Instruction was given; in not a few, I believe, the teaching included the Lord's Prayer and Ten Commandments.

There were more children in Voluntary Schools than there were in Board Schools thirty-two years after the Act was passed.

The expenses of all schools increased. The Boards met them by increasing the rates; the managers of Voluntary Schools either could not pay their teachers the standard price or got increased voluntary contributions.

The whole subject had grown irregularly (as most things constitutional in the Empire do), and by 1902 there were no less than ten Cabinet Ministers officially in charge of various educational institutions in the United Kingdom; while rates, page 20 taxes, and endowments brought the educational expenditure up to about £20,000,000 per annum.

Between the years 1870 and 1902 the Church of England spent voluntarily on building and maintenance for elementary education nearly £30,000,000. Since the establishment of the national Society, in 1811—up to 1902—the Church of England (apart from the Chureh of Rome and the British Schools) had expended over £45,000,000 on her schools.

The Church of Rome had expended some £5,000,000 on her Voluntary Schools. The Nonconformist returns for the same period, unfortunately, I cannot ascertain now. The Nonconformist Schools were chiefly Wesleyan. The number of children, according to the latest returns, in Roman Schools, were 337,868; in Nonconformist Schools 354,461. It is quite natural that the number in Nonconformist Schools should not show a very large increase: the Board School system of Religious Instruction met their requirements. They are citizens and are entitled to every privilege of citizenship. Neither the Anglican nor the Roman has any right to object herein. All that the Anglican or the Roman had a right to claim was: give me the same liberty that I am willing to give you in matters of Religion.

For over eighty years the National Society had raised and expended on Church Schools nearly £10,000 per week. The amount, when I was in London, had been for some years nearly £20,000 a week, or nearly £3000 a day I think this amount is not far short of £1,000,000 per annum.

It was estimated that the capital value to the State of all the Voluntary Schools was over £40,000,000, and that they represented, if wiped out, an annual burden on the rates of £6,000,000 per annum. This enormous outlay was undertaken by supporters of Voluntary Schools on the distinct understanding as to what the religious teaching in thcose schools should be; an undestanding definitely given by responsible Ministers, over and over again, in the English House of Commons.

Finally, both Nonconformists and members of the Church of Rome had suffered certain disabilities in England for a considerable number of years. Legal disabilities—thank God!—no longer exist for Nonconformists in England; it is detestable to think that they ever existed. But the removal of a legal grievance does not kill the tradition of a conscientious or religious grievance; the tradition goes on "unto the third and fourth "generation." Hostility to Voluntary Schools, on the part of Nonconformists, is the fruit of a tree rooted in the past of English history; the planting of that tree is, to some extent, page 21 a story of which Nonconformity has reason to be proud. Planting and fruit, however, are not the same thing.