Mr. Fawcett made an excellent speech on Education on Monday
in taking the chair at the opening of the new Board Schools in Turin Street, Bethnal Green. He pointed out the wrong inflicted on the towns by leaving the rural districts without any compulsory education. In these times, labour is attracted towards the towns, and so it happens that the young men and women whom, as children the country has neglected, bring their ignorance and all its consequences into the towns, and the towns suffer for the neglect of the country. If education is necessary to a factory-boy up to the age of fourteen, it is even more necessary
to a country boy, who is, nevertheless, dismissed to work in the fields at the age of eleven, no matter whether he knows anything or not. Mr. Fawcett remarked, too, very justly that the clergy, in making the policy they do of a resistance to School Boards, even in places where good School Boards would be elected and would be very useful, are strengthening the outworks of their opponents. Of course, it is said that the Church wishes more for influence than for education, and of course the result of that belief will be to promote Disestablishment. Mr. Fawcett is quite right. But the Clergy will never take warning. Their passion for the Church Catechism is like the passion of the Arab for his desert or the Swiss for his glaciers. Yet very little real religious influence is wielded through the Church Catechism.
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