Chapter IX.

There Record on Education.

The first serious attempt made by the (unreformed) House of Commons' to provide for the education of the people of England was thwarted by the Lords. It was in 1807 that Whitbread introduced and passed through the House of Commons the first Education Bill that ever received the sanction of that assembly. It was a simple but comprehensive measure which enacted that there should be established an elementary school in every parish in the land, supported out of the rates, and controlled by the rate-payers. The Commons passed it, the House of Lords threw it out. And why did the House of Lords throw it out? Not because they hated education, but because they allowed themselves to be dominated by the Arch-bishop of Canterbury, who approached the question not from the point of view of the needs of the people, but from that of the interest of the Established Church. The Primate frankly declared that his objection to the measure rested upon his determination not to allow the control of the school to get out of the hand of the parson. The Bill, he said, "left little or no control to the minister of the parish." He believed that it would go far "to subvert the first principles of education in this country, which had hitherto been, and he trusted would continue to be, under the control and auspices of the Establishment." He felt sure that their Lordships "would feel how dangerous it might be to innovate in such matters."

The Primate was justified in his confidence. Only three Bishops voted for a rate-aided public elementary school in every parish. Fifteen voted against it. The Bill was thrown out by a majority of the Peers. So ended the first attempt to pass an Education Bill providing school accommodation for all the people in the country. Thanks to that veto, it was sixty years before a similar measure was placed on the Statute Book. Two generations of English folk had lived and died without education, because the Church and the Lords preferred they should have no schools rather than provide schools which were placed under the control of those who paid for them.

The Nonconformists in 1808 founded the British and Foreign School Society. The Church, three years later, followed their example. In 1833 the Reformed Parliament voted £20,000 a year in aid of national education. Twenty thousand pounds per annum! At that time the Dukes of Grafton, in recognition of the dishonour of a female ancestor of theirs who had been one of the harem of Charles II., had been drawing £11,946 per annum for 163 years. The sum allowed to the descendant of a single Royal bastard was more than half the education vote which the Reformed Parliament ventured to propose for all the schools of the country. It was fortunate that this was a money vote, otherwise it might have been vetoed page 52 by the Peers. It was not until 1839 that the Lords had an opportunity of having a say in the matter. In that year the grant was raised to £30,000, and its administration was placed in the hands of the Educational Committee of the Privy Council. The Roman Catholics were allowed to share in the grant. That was the beginning of a national system of education.

Lord Ashley was beaten in the House of Commons. In the House of Lords the battle was renewed.

When the division was taken 229 Poors, including 15 Bishops, voted with the Archbishop, and 118, including three Bishops, with the Government.

The Queen replied dryly that the reports of the way in which the money was expended year by year would he laid before Parliament. But peace was eventually made between Lord John and the Bishops by an arrangement by which the reports of inspectors of schools were to be sent to the Bishops as well as to the Committee of the Privy Council.

For the defeat of Sir James Graham's attempt to extend the national system of education in 1843 the Lords were not responsible, neither can they be charged with the responsibility of defeating Lord John Russell's Education Bill of 1856. It was not until 1870, when Mr. Forster introduced the Education Bill which created the School Boards, that the Lords had an opportunity of displaying their hostility to popular education. They confined themselves to two amendments. The first struck out the clause permitting School Boards in certain circumstances to establish free schools. This the Lords struck out apparently under the influence of the two-fold motive to limit the powers of the Boards and to prevent the establishment of free education. Fortunately when the Bill went back to the Commons this Lords' "amendment" was disagreed with and struck out. The Lords fared better with their second amendment. By a unanimous vote they struck out the clause providing that the ballot should be used in School Board elections. The Commons did not insist upon restoring the clause, but secured their object by the Ballot Act. On the whole it is marvellous, in view of their subsequent performances, that the House of Lords allowed Mr. Forster's Bill to pass with so little mutilation.

It is well to be reminded of the fact that the Lords were practically shut out from any effective share in the development of the national education from 1839 to 1859. During that period the Education Grant had risen from £30,000 to £836,000 per annum.

"It is remarkable," says Mr. Spencer Walpole, "that this rapid growth of expenditure was the effect not of legislation but of departmental minutes. Even the introduction of the Capitation Grant in 1853 and its extension in 1856 were effected without legislation." Sir H. Craik says, "The legislature at the most acquiesced in the minutes: it did not deliberately ratify them." But it should be recollected that the expenditure was directly sanctioned by the House of Commons in votes of supply and by both Houses in the Appropriation Act.—("History of Twenty-five Years," vol. ii., p. 505.)

In 1862 Lord Derby claimed and Lord Granville conceded that both Houses should have the right to discuss the new Code, and discussed it was accordingly both by Lords and Commons. But with that exception, the Commons kept the control of national education entirely in their own hands until 1870, when Mr. Forster's Education Bill necessitated an appeal to the House of Lords.

Ten years after Mr. Forster's Act was placed on the Statute Book, the Lords passed a resolution by 98 to 50 striking out from the Code the schedule sanctioning the teaching of elementary science. Four Bishops voted against science and three for it.

Eleven years later the Conservative Government brought in a Bill abolishing the payment of fees in elementary schools. It was passed by the House of Lords. The House always passes the measures of a Conservative Government, excepting when they touch the land.

It was, however, not until 1897, when the Voluntary Schools Bill was under discussion, that Lord Halsbury, who was then Lord Chancellor, laid down the doctrine that as the Bill made a condition to the grant of money it came within the scope of the Protest of 1678, and therefore could page 54 not be amended by the Lords. This ruling was made in order to expedite the passage of a Bill granting £500,000 to the Voluntary schools. The Lord Chancellor said that it would be hardly respectful to the House to discuss matters "and come to a decision to which their lordships could give no practical effect, because if the amendment were passed it would, as a privileged amendment, have to be again struck out from the Bill."

The Earl of Camperdown said that "if the House were precluded from discussing any conditions which appeared in a Bill making a grant of public money out of the Exchequer, then their Lordships would have no power to modify the words of any clause in Committee on such a Bill." Lord Coleridge asked if the second amendment, defining "efficiency," were in order, and the Lord Chancellor at once replied, "It adds a condition to the grant of money, which is within the express language of the protest of the House of Commons." So with an amendment standing in the name of the late Lord Kimberley, "I think," said Lord Halsbury, "it comes within 'management.' The language of the protest includes the management, and I think that this touches the management." The Liberal peers appeared to object to Lord Halsbury's ruling; not so Sir II. H. Fowler, who promptly pointed out (Times, April 6, 1897) that this was an unprecedented and complete acknowledgment of the privileges of the House of Commons.

The Lord Chancellor appeared to be of opinion that because the Bill proposed grants in aid of Voluntary schools it became what is technically called a "Money Bill," and he laid down the doctrine that it was the undoubted and sole right of the House of Commons to attach conditions, limitations, and qualifications to such grants, and "that such conditions, limitations, and qualifications could only be altered in the House of Commons."

It is not for the Liberals to complain of this unqualified recognition of the sole prerogative of the House of Commons with respect to all measures which involve any grant of public money.

It is to be regretted that these admissions of 1897 were forgotten until the close of the debates of 1906.

In 1902, the Unionist party having obtained a majority by appealing to the country in the midst of the South African war, on the pretext that Imperial interests entitled them to appeal to the electors for a renewal of their confidence irrespective of their views on questions of domestic policy, were no sooner firmly reseated in the saddle than they insisted upon reopening the great settlement of 1870. They had no mandate from the country. The subject had never been submitted to the constituencies. If ever there was an occasion on which, if the House of Lords had really been an impartial umpire, charged to see that no legislation was carried upon which the mind of the country had not been clearly made known, that occasion arrived in 1902, when Mr. Balfour's Bill, abolishing School Boards, and putting the denominational schools on the rates, was sent up from the House of Commons. But, true to their invariable rule, whenever a Conservative Government is in office, the House of Lords refused, by page 55 147 to 37 to defer the consideration of the Bill till the country had been consulted.

Of these amendments the Bishop of Manchester's Wear and Tea clause was obviously a breach of privilege. It was a violation of the con stitutional law of the country and a departure from the constitutional practice of the House of Lords, which, as Lord Davey truly said, has no page 56 been to interfere with either the amount, extent, or incidence of the rates which such a Bill enabled a local authority to raise." But the House of Commons under Mr. Balfour was a very indifferent guardian of the rights and privileges which had been won by its predecessors. The opportunity of helping their clerical allies to a further raid upon the rates outweighed all other considerations.

The way in which this was done deserves special mention. As the Bishop of Manchester's amendment was admittedly a breach of privilege, the Duke of Norfolk, with the consent of the Duke of Devonshire, added to the clause after the Bill had been read a third time the following words: "But this obligation on the local educational authority shall throw no additional charge on any public funds."

As the whole object of the clause was to impose upon the local education authority the duty of meeting the cost of wear and tear out of the rates, this addendum was an absurdity. It was equivalent to telling a man ne had to pay a bill and in the same breath saying that that acknowledgment of a debt entailed no obligation to part with any money.

So monstrously ridiculous was the clause as amended that the officials of the House of Lords marked the words in italics as "proposed to be omitted by the House of Commons."

When the amended clause came before the House Sir James Ferguson proposed to omit the italicised words. The motion was carried by 200 to 104. Thus another inroad upon the privileges of the Commons was nade with impunity.

Obsta principiis is a good maxim, but one of which the House of Commons has been unmindful—with the natural and inevitable result. One unresented encroachment paves the way for another, and unless there a prompt awakening the House of Commons will discover that its exclusive right to deal with financial questions has vanished into thin air.

The action of the House of Lords in relation to secondary education as been similar to their dealings with elementary schools. The Endowed schools Commission was appointed in order to secure the utilisation of educational endowments amounting to nearly £600,000 per annum; that a sum equal to 3 per cent. interest on £20,000,000. The Commission as appointed to prepare schemes for the reconstruction of trusts that had en abused, for the restoration of the moneys of the pious founders to [unclear: ucational] purposes in accord with the necessities of the altered times. [unclear: was] a Commission on which no Nonconformist had a seat. Its page 57 inspectors were all Churchmen. But its schemes were mercilessly, maltreated by Lord Salisbury, who had the House of Lords at his back; Some of the best schemes for the reform of our great educational foundations for middle-class educations were rejected by the Lords When the Endowed Schools Bill was introduced in 1873, the Lords [unclear: cut] down its duration from four years to one, and so paved the way for the transfer of its powers in 1874 to the Charity Commission. The governing principle of the Lords in dealing with all these questions is to look after the interests of the Church and let the school look after itself. In 1893 the Bishop of Chester carried an Address to the Queen praying her not to sanction the charter for the University of Wales unless the Anglican Lampeter College was included in the University. In the same year he carried his address to the Crown objecting to the intermediate and technical education schemes drawn up by the Charity Commissioners for Cardiganshire and Merionethshire.

"The effect of this action on his part was," says Mr. Claydon, "to prevent in the counties named the carrying out of a plan for taking scholars from elementary [unclear: o] intermediate schools, for giving bursaries to poor scholars, and for taking successful scholars from intermediate schools to university colleges."—("Bishops as Legislators,' pp. 62-3.)

The extent to which the House of Lords has forgotten the modest [unclear: roll] which it was formerly content to play has been most notably illustrated [unclear: o] late by the manner in which it dealt with the Education Bill of 1906.

Against these provisions of the Act the Nonconformists rose in [unclear: revol] Thousands became passive resisters, refusing to pay the proportion of [unclear: th] rate that was devoted to the teaching of denominational religion. [unclear: Eight] thousand summonses were issued to enforce payment, property was [unclear: seize] and sold by auction, and 318 public-spirited citizens who had no [unclear: visibl] property upon which to levy restraint were sent to prison as [unclear: ordinal.] page 58 criminal convicts. They took joyfully the spoiling of their goods, and the spectacle of their self-sacrifice fired the zeal of their co-religionists to such an extent that a Conservative Nonconformist could hardly bo discovered with a microscope. Among all the causes which contributed to the Liberal victory the Nonconformist revolt stood first, and in natural sequence an Education Bill occupied first place in the programme of the session. At the General Election 360 Liberal members were elected in England and Wales by a plurality of 504,814 votes over 126 Unionists. Every one of these Liberal members was pledged to vote for a Bill amending the Act of 1902 in such a way as (1) to secure public control for all public schools maintained at the public expense, and (2) to abolish tests for teachers. The justice of this latter claim was emphatically recognised by Mr. Chamberlain, who declared that teachers ought to be as free from theological tests as postmen or any other civil servants. The Bill was, as the Premier said, packed full of concessions to the Denominationalists before it was brought into the House of Commons. These concessions were still further increased on its passage through Committee. The House of Commons spent 49 parliamentary days on the Bill, which was read a first time without a division, a second time by 410 votes to 204, and a third time by 369 votes to 177.

The House of Commons sent the Bill back to the House of Lords by a [unclear: njority] of 416 to 107, rejecting all amendments en bloc, while intimating t the same time what further concessions they were willing to make. These concessions satisfied the Irish Catholics^*, they satisfied the Duke page 59 of Devonshire, they appear even to have gone far to satisfy the Archbishop of Canterbury. They did not satisfy Mr. Balfour, who used the Lords as his cat's-paw to wreck the Bill. They horrified the Nonconformists, whose revolt had necessitated the legislation, but there was a general disposition to concede almost everything to avoid the loss of the Bill. But "the material and generous concessions" were made in vain. The Lords adhered to their amendments by a majority of 132 to 52. The Duke of Devonshire carried four Unionist peers with him into the Government lobby, in which was also found one solitary bishop. After this there was nothing to be done but to abandon the Bill, which was done with the usual ceremony.

The children of the poor, it would seem, have scant reason to "thank God for the House of Lords."

It is not surprising that at the National Assembly of the Free Church Council held at Swansea, 1909, it was resolved that: "The Council realises and feels it incumbent on it to declare, that the veto of the House of Lords is the great obstacle in the way of a national system of education, since not only does its exercise cause the rejection of carefully drawn Bills, but its., existence (a) injuriously affects the drafting of educational measures, and (b) leads to their deterioration in Committee. "