Sir John Gorst, who made his annual statement on the
Education Vote in Committee of Supply yesterday week, attributed the increase of the amount of the Vote,'" which is £8,753,986, or 2188,240 over last year's estimate, to purely automatic causes. In the ensuing debate Mr. Herbert Lewis moved to reduce the salary of the Vice-President as a protest against the support given by the Education Department to the clerical managers, and the anomalousness of Sir John Gorst's position was denounced, amongst others, by Mr. Birrell and Mr. Bryce, who described him as "not a skipper ; not even a pilot ; but merely a boatswain who repeated orders which somebody else gave him"; while Mr. Middlemore, in a maiden speech, delivered a weighty appeal to the Government on behalf of the half-timers. Sir John Gorst in his reply iisposed effectually of the charges brought against the Department, and was followed by Sir Henry Campbell- Bannerman, who declared that the Vice-President showed a strange lack of regard for his own personal dignity by con- tinuing to retain a position in which he was unable to give effect to his avowed views on education, and by showing ill- disguised contempt alike for his office, his Department, and his chief. The vote for reduction was lost by 155 to 71, or a majority of 84.
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