1 FEBRUARY 1890, Page 3

The Archbishop of Canterbury attended a meeting of the Canterbury

Diocesan Educational Society at Tunbridge Wells on Tuesday, and said that if all political parties were virtually agreed that the school-pence,—the parents' fees,—ought to be remitted in elementary schools, the Church ought not to stand out against such a measure. He asserted that the higher and middle classes had owed a great deal to free education, and he thought that it would look like "the height of ingrati- tude" that free education should not go to classes lower than their own. It might, perhaps, be replied with some truth that, however much the middle and higher classes have gained by free education, they have never been relieved from all burdens for the education of their children so completely as the parents of children at the elementary schools would he relieved, if the weekly twopence is to be paid for them out of taxes ; but as a matter of policy, we agree with the Archbishop that it will be both impolitic and impossible for the Church to fight for an inconvenient and rather unpopular contribution, which both political parties in the State have consented to remit. After all, it is not a sin for the richer taxpayers who pay for their own children's education, to help the poorer taxpayers in educating theirs,