Sir John Pakington opened the Social Science Congress at Leeds
on Wednesday with an address on the condition of the working-classes, which seems to have leaned very decidedly 'towards the extreme into which are now not unlikely to drift, of hoping too much from legislation and trusting too little to volun- tary exertion. lie reiterated his demand for a Minister of Educa- tion, declaring that had Mr. Forster last Session been Minister of Education, he would never have allowed himself to be diverted to the irrelevant work of pushing a Ballot Bill through Parliament ; he would instead have taken up the abandoned part of his Endowed Scheibe' Bill,--the proposed Council of Education which was to test the working not only of the public schools, but of all such of the secondary and voluntary schools of the country as might be desirous of obtaining a certificate of efficiency. Sir John supported strongly the policy of the Education Department in giving destitute parents their choice of any qualified school to which they might wish to send their children, and resisted as bigotry the outcry of the Nonconformists. He held that Govern- ment ought to do much more than they do to secure to the work- ing-classes decent houses and wholesome food at a fair price, and, in short, delivered an address inclining almost too strongly to that beneficent view of Government which but a few years ago political economy was never weary of decrying.
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