On Thursday, the debate ranged chiefly round a proposal of
Mr. Summers to omit the sub-section of Section 3 empower- ing the Education Department to convert a free school into a fee-paying school, in case a school of a superior sort were specially needed in the district. Mr. Summers's amendment was negatived without a division, it being generally admitted that the working classes often prefer for their children a school of a more select kind than it is possible to attain under the conditions of a free school; and that where it is so, the working classes are as much entitled to have what they want, as the middle classes are to select a dear school for their children when they think it better suited to their children's needs. There is as much and as legitimate room for allowing the principle of intellectual or moral caste amongst the working classes as there is in relation to any other class, and no Govern. ment would be popular in England which tried to reduce the educational system to a single dead-level.
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