26 NOVEMBER 1870, Page 2

Mr. Forster, the Vice-President of the Council of Education, distributed

the prizes to the students of the Birkbeck Literary Institute on Wednesday, and made a striking speech, in. which he said that 26 towns, with a collective population of 2,750,000, had already applied for power to elect School Boards under the new Education Act, and that Bristol is at present the only very large town that has not so applied. Including London, six millions of people will at once be placed under the new Act. In Liverpool and Bradford the ratepayers had decided on their School Board already without a contest, the different parties of the Boroughs have agreed to the fifteen names chosen ; and in both cases this was due to the fact that the first men in the town had come forward to act on the School Board.