THE NEW CHURCH-RATE CRY.
TWO very different opinions are suggested in our correspond- ence to-day as to the probable working of the Education Bill if it should pass into law. The Rev. Llewellyn Davies, who at least accurately understands the practical arrangements likely to result in London under this Bill, thinks that the power of the proposed School Boards to found new schools,— or what, we suppose, comes to much the same thing, to take over a school already established on a voluntary basis, and appoint its managers for the future,—may hardly be used at all,—that the machinery of the Bill will work almost entirely through the assisting clauses. Our Liverpool correspondent of this week evidently thinks very differently, but one of his reasons is, we think, founded in misconception. He thinks the economical argument in favour of a policy of assistance rather than a policy of construction, will be worthless, because the Education Board has promised to supplement the rate wherever the rate exceeds threepence in the pound. He for- gets, however, the very important restriction upon that assist- ance. If he looks at Clause 83 of the Bill, he will see that it is only to be given where a threepenny rate fails to raise a sum equal to ten shillings a head for each child who ought to be provided for in the school district, and is onk to be given so far as may be needful to bring it up to that point. Now, 10s. a head per child,—very little more than the 2d. a week which each child pays,—is by no means an unreasonable limit to fix, and is evidently suggested on the idea that the rate ought to produce at most one-third of the total expense of education, the second third being contributed by the Parliamentary grant, and the last third by the parents' school pence. If that limit is reached, and still the organization of education in the dis- trict be inefficient, the central department will have the duty of superseding the School Board in order to make the educa- tional provision really efficient ; and of course it would effect this in the manner which seemed the most economical, and best for the interest at once of the children and the rate- payers. If any School Board, under the pressure of vehement sectarian jealousies, had initiated the spendthrift policy of building instead of assisting adjacent schools already built, the Education Department would compel a return to the more thrifty policy. In fact, the power reserved to the Educa- tion Department to intervene over the heads of any ineffi- cient School Board, coupled with the limit imposed on the sum to be raised, must act as a most efficient check upon a spendthrift policy, and as a virtual compulsion to adopt in any such district the policy of assisting existing schools wherever that is possible, instead of needlessly establishing new ones. Our Liverpool correspondent's complaint that this policy of assisting existing schools out of the rates will cancel the motive for voluntary energy, applies in far greater degree to the plan of the League, or indeed every other plan for national education yet suggested, than it does to the Govern- ment Bill. You cannot propose to cure the deficiencies of our existing educational system wherever they may exist without giving indolent people an excuse for saying, As the State will supply my deficiencies, I may be idle.' We are offered an alternative between one of two evils,—either to let a great number of children grow up ignorant for the want of adequate voluntary effort,—or to provide a substitute for voluntary effort where it is inadequate. You cannot possibly have both advantages at once. If you prefer to keep an urgent motive to stir up voluntary effort,—you must keep the ignorance and the misery caused by neglect. If you pro- pose to remove the bad consequences of neglect, no matter in what fashion it is proposed to be done, you will (and must) remove with it one of the most urgent of the motives which press upon the indolent and the parsimonious, and induce them to exert themselves. Mr. Forster's Bill, in leaving the most ample Towers to the managers of religious schools to teach religion to all whose parents wish them to be taught it (though to none others), leaves one very strong inducement to voluntary effort, still untouched. The plan of the League, by underselling these schools and establishing a ruinous com- petition between public and private resources, would remove it.
But though we see that there will remain under Mr. Forster's Bill very many and most important inducements to the policy of extending even-handed assistance to all qualified public elementary schools,—whether denominational or not,—we cannot but fear that what seem to us prepossessions inherited from a very inappropriate class of traditions,—the traditional battles between Dissenters and Churchmen about the Church- rate,—will interfere, first to impede the progress of the Bill, and next to hamper its natural operation when it has passed into an Act. We observe' that a Conference of Dissenting ministers and others has been held, to condemn what is called this attempt to revive the Church-rate controversy, and that a certain section of the public seem in a mood to take what is certainly not a dispassionate and, as it seems to us, not a rational view of the matter. The grievance of the Dissenters, as we understand it, is this :—The School Board, whether elected by the vestry (as in the country, and usually in London), or by the Municipal Council (in boroughs), has the power to decide whether it will establish and manage new schools, or take over and manage existing schools, or assist exist- ing schools out of the rate, or expend its funds partly on schools which it manages and partly in assisting other qualified Schools which it does not manage. Now in all Schools which it manages, it may teach religion, if it pleases, on condition that no child is offered any external induce- ment to attend upon that religious teaching except its parents' wish, and that no parent is subjected to any disadvantage for keeping his children away from it. Hence in a district where the Church ratepayers have a decided majority, even though the Dissentera keep up at present a good and efficient school there, the School Board might decide to take over and manage the Church School o* Church principles, and decline to assist any other,—might, indeed, prefer to build a new school in another part of the borough or parish for those children who cannot be accommodated in the existing Church School, and manage it also on Church principles, to giving a penny of the rate to the existing Dissenters' school. Thus if the Church party had a majority, the Dissenters might be excluded from all satisfactory appearance of share in the advantage of the rates they pay,— receiving in return only the right to send their children to a good school, with full protection indeed, against any prosely- tism—but still, a good School under the Church flag,—whereas, what they would desire would be to send them to what they think an equally good or better school under a Dissenting flag, and know none the less that the rates they pay contribute to keep such school in working order :—in one word, in such a case as we have supposed, they would pay what went to enhance the glory of the Church, instead of the glory of Dis- sent. And if we reply that precisely the same might happen to Churchmen where Dissenters are in the majority, the answer is, 'No ; for Dissenters would hardly unite except in favour of Secular Schools ; the Baptist, the Calvinist, and the Wesleyan differ too widely from the Unitarian to be willing to combine with him for a policy of extending aid to all good denominational schools alike ; they would agree with him only to decide on a policy of Secular teaching. Thus it would happen that while in the districts where the Church had a majority, the Schools might be Church schools, and would redound to the glory of the Church,—in the districts where the Church was in a minority, the Schools would be secular schools, and would not redound to the glory of Dissent. Hence, the election of the School Board would involve a con- test very much like the old Church-rate contests, in which, if the Church should win, the Church would carry off all the effect of victory,—while, if the Dissenters won, it would be a mere barren victory, which would only mean that they had foiled the Church, but not that they had gained anything for themselves.' Such is, we think, a fair view of the Dissenters' case, as they will be inclined to put it in the coming agitation.
Now, the first remark that everyone must make on this statement is that it is wholly grounded on a jealous sectarian view apart from the interests of the chil- dren, that it is a question of flags, and not a question of conscience. No one can say that a ratepayer pays for the teaching of a religion he does not believe to be true. He pays for secular teaching, and surely ought not to grudge that to the children of those whose parents wish it, and to no others, a special religious teaching is given in addition under the same roof under which those children whose parents do not wish it receive only an efficient secular education. As we should entirely fail to sympathize with the Churchman who complained that though his child got a capital education in a public elemen- tary school managed by Dissenters, in return for his rate, it did not procure him any teaching in his own special form of faith, so we cannot at all sympathize with the corresponding wail from the Dissenters. In a country where religion is so utterly disorganized as ours, we must provide for religious education as best we can. But there is no reason, merely because the arrangements cannot be wholly satisfactory, why we should throw up the attempt in despair, and decide on excluding the most civilizing of all human influences from the very schools established to civilize the most uncivilized members of our community.
The second remark we make, is that even as a question of flags and sectarian jealousies the difficulty is grossly exagge- rated. There is now, we must recollect, absolutely no resist- ance in Parliament to the principle of a Parliamentary grant to all denominations, nor has there been for a long series of years. Yet the silly cry raised against this Bill, that it is a new form of "concurrent endowment," would imply that the Par- liamentary grant to denominational schools has all along been objected to on that ground,—whereas no voice has been raised against it for years back on such a ground. No member is urged by his constituents to protest against 'the sin ' of giving aid even to Roman Catholic schools, much less to any Protestant schools, from the Unitarians to the extreme end of the orthodox scale. Well, we admit that , the municipalities and the rural parishes would be far narrower and more bigoted, were they to vote on this question alone, and to realize that their nominees are to have the im- mediate responsibility of assisting what they call 'true' or 'false ' religions, than they are when electing a member of Parliament, and instructing him on a host of subjects amongst which this matter is subordinate. But still it is a monstrous and libellous exaggeration of that bigotry and narrowness, to suppose that in almost every parish there will not be plenty' of Church ratepayers who will from the first so far combine• with the Dissenter as to demand a policy of 'religious equality from the Town Councillors or Vestrymen they elect ; and we• believe that there will also be plenty of Dissenting ratepayers. who will insist on no more than religious equality, and_ will be quite content with the policy of assisting equally all' classes of schools, and providing that in the School Board's. own schools the question of the religion to be taught should be decided, say, by the religion of the majority of the parents. For our parts, we heartily believe that so far from becoming a mere renewal of the old Church-rate contests, the contest under the proposed Bill would be between the party of 'religious equa- lity ' and the party of bigotry, and that in nine cases out of- ten, the candidates for Vestry or Council who declared them- selves for a policy of strict religious equality in the matter of education would win, and win easily, over those who took a. narrower and less popular line. Instead of renewing the old Church-rate contests, we believe the School-Board contests. would be so utterly different both in tone and issue, that they' would bury the old Church-rate contests deeper in oblivion than they have ever yet had a chance of being buried. The opposite fear is the fear of sectarian minds which have utterly failed to read aright the signs of the times.
Previous page
