25 JUNE 1870, Page 2

The debates of Tuesday and Thursday on the same topic

were not equally important. Mr. Miall was moderate, but said nothing new ; Mr. Vernon Harcourt was flashy, but made no point beyond the by no means terrible threat of raising an annual Education debate on every occasion of voting the Parliamentary grant,—vihich is really not a threat at all, but a valuable idea ; Mr. Dixon was much less hostile than was to be expected from his little speech of last week ; Mr. Bruce, the Home Secretary, made a very careful and elaborate speech, showing that no uniform national system could be adopted without adopting the secular system, which was not what the country wished ; and that the new scheme, so far from giving a great impulse to denominationalism, will, by withdrawing the building grant, be very adverse to the spread of denominationalism, though it may sustain the schools already existing. Mr. Henley lamented the creeds and formulas ; Mr. Reed, Mr. Hibbert, and Mr. Baines all gave the Bill very effective suppcjit ; Lord Sandon congratulated the House on the increasing tendency to agreement, but deprecated the immense power given to the Education Department, which might be quite right under a Forster, but would be fatal under an Ayrton ; Mr. Winterbotham appeared to have the greatest faith in Christianity so long as the State ignored it, but no longer ; while Lord John Manners bewailed the probable influence of the Bill on religious schools. The debate was to terminate last night, but too late for us to record the result. Mr. Richard will hardly have secured a large, though it will probably be an influential, following in his motion for limiting the State teaching to teaching in purely secular subjects.