Mr. Mundella, in a speech at Sheffield on Wednesday, after
showing that during the five years of his administration the average attendance of children had increased by 700,000, while the number of children passing in the upper standards had more than doubled in the same five years, indicated his opinion in relation to the Free-school controversy. That opinion seemed to be favourable to Free schools, on condition that there should be no disturbance of the settlement arrived at in 1870 as to the Voluntary schools. He appeared to think that the large con- tribution now given by the parents could best be replaced out of the Consolidated Fund, or, at all events, out of Imperial taxa- tion; and he denied that the exemption from school-fees would pauperise the parents. The parents of boys who got free education at the higher schools in the country did not, said Mr. Mundella, appear to be pauperised. There we are inclined to differ with him. There are plenty of instances at least in which the parents of such boys, if they have not been pauperised by their escape from parental obligations, have at least been unjustly exempted from the disgrace to which other parents in the same class have been exposed,—parents who suffer the shame and the remorse of seeing their children growing up ignorant as a con- seqnence of their own thriftlessness and idleness, and who are nevertheless, not more culpable than the parents of boys receiving a charitable education at the Blue Coat School or elsewhere.
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