Lord Salisbury defeated the scheme of the Endowed Schools' Commissioners
for the reorganisation of King Edward's School, Birmingham, on Monday, by getting an address voted to the Crown asking Her Majesty to withhold her consent from it. his arguments were twofold. King Edward's School should have been exempted altogether from reform, because it was well managed already, and Mr. Forster had assured the country that the Endowed Schools' Act was not for well-managed trusts, but only for ill-managed trusts: and further, it should have been specially exempted from reform directed against too exclusive a Church management, because in the Charter it had been pro- vided that " the Governors, with the advice of the Bishop of the diocese for the time being, may make, and have power to make, fit and wholesome statutes and ordinances, concerning the order, government, and direction of the School." Lord Salisbury was easily answered. The Marquis of Ripon showed that in the Committee on the Endowed Schools' Bill he had himself asserted in the House of Lords that this very school, mentioning it by name, with certain other schools, would be reformed by the Com- mission, if it did not within a year suggest a satisfactory scheme of reform for itself. As for the notion that the reference to the Bishop in the Charter made it a denominational Church school, it was not only not the legal view of the matter, but not a view taken by some of the warmest Churchmen amongst the friends of the School. Lord Salisbury was answered, but not beaten. He had the brute force of a majority at his back, and carried the Address to the Crown by a majority of 46 (106-60). There are hardly any Tory votes in Birmingham to lose, but the Marquis has, we hope, strengthened the Government there, by thus testing its firmness and denouncing its moderation.
