LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE NONCONFORMISTS AND ENDOWED SCHOOLS.. sro THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,-Iu the midst of the more exciting topics raised in the Rev. J- Jenkyn Brown's letters, and in the discussions of the Birmingham, League, there is one statement, which at present has received little attention, and which yet ought not to pass sub silentio. In his first letter Mr. Brown denounces the Endowed Schools' Commission, because in their schemes " the representative principle in the governing body is ignored, made indirect, or reduced to a minimum, the co-optative or self-elective element is made large ; and ilk almost every scheme, the incumbent of the parish is made ex-officio a member of the Board of Trustees," This arrangement he des- cribes as a " now insult and a new wrong" to the long-suffering Nonconformist ; and in his second letter of October 28th he waxes bolder, and declares that the "Endowed Schools' Commissioners have so far forgotten the commonest principles of justice as to make• their office the means of Torifying and Churchifying the entire middle-class education of the kingdom." Mr. Dale makes a similar complaint in a letter in the Daily News, and brings forward, as a crucial instance of unfairness, a scheme for a school in Bridgewater which became law last session, and which places four clergymen ex-officio on the governing body.
On these statements, I ask your leave to make two or three• simple comments :- 1. Strong partizans of the Church of England are in many places complaining bitterly that the schemes of the Commission are unfairly favourable to the Dissenters. Au elaborate complaint has been published by the Bath and Wells Diocesan Board of Education on this ground, enforced by special reference to the very same case of the Bridgewater School, which is by the instrument of its foundation essentially denominational, and has always been administered by Churchmen exclusively. The Act expressly re- spects the denominational character of such institutions, and omits in. their case the usual provision that religious belief shall not be. November 11, 1871.1 ---- .either a qualification or a hindrance in the case of a member of the governing body. Yet in the Bridgewater scheme the Commis- sioners introduced for the first time the principle of popular repre- sentation, giving to the Corporation and to the School Board the nomination of two members each, besides placing the Mayor and the chairman of that Board on the new Trust es-officio. Thus it has happened that no less than six Nonconformists have obtained seats on a Board of fifteen members in the case of a dis- tinctively Church-of-England school, whose denominational charac- ter was intended to be carefully preserved by the Act. The first resolution passed by the new governing body of this school was published in the local papers as follows :—.44 That the Endowed Schools' Act is a violation of the principles of civil and religious liberty, inasmuch as it prevents members of the Church of England from retaining, under their own control, schools founded for the pur- pose of educating their children in the doctrines of the Church of England, and compels them to accept the interference of Dis- senters in the management thereof :"—An angry and inaccurate expression of opinion, no doubt, but one which illustrates in a striking manner the worth of Mr. Dale's assertion that the scheme is unjust to the Dissenters.
2. Hitherto nearly all the Grammar-School Trusts have been filled up from time to time on one principle exclusively—that of co-optation. It should be remembered that this method is not without its advantages. It gives permanence to the traditions and management of a public institution, guards against abrupt changes, and utilizes valuable experience. And the men who are earnestly interested in the management of a local trust are often the best judges of the kind of help they want, and of the sort of man among their neighbours and friends who is most likely to give it. On the other hand, it is a legitimate objection to this method that 'it is apt to make the governing body narrow and cliquish, and to perpetuate whatever of party or religious exclusiveness it may acci- dentally possess. It appears that the Endowed Schools' Commis- sioners, though not expressly required by the terms of the Act to do so, have so far followed the recommendations of the Schools Inquiry Commission, as to introduce two new elements—the official and the representative—into all the reorganized bodies of trustees. A portion of the board, generally less than one-half, is left subject to the old rule of co-optation, the practice being, as far as I can judge from a perusal of these schemes, to mention nominatim, those persons of all parties who, after local in. .quiry, appear to be best fitted for the office ; and to provide that vacancies in this limited number shall be filled up by the votes of the remaining governors, the representative and official members being of course among the electors. Au attempt is thus made to combine in the trusts two kinds of ingredient,—the permanence, local knowledge, independence, and continuity of tradition represented by the co-optative method, and the freshness and sense of public responsibility secured by the representation of a town council, a vestry, a school board, or a meeting of parents. Mr. Brown describes this policy as "ignoring, making indirect, or reducing to a minimum the representative element." It is, in fact, creating it, and introducing it for the first time as a substantial force in the government of the local trusts. The Commissioners appear to be only following the clear guidance of the Report, which is cited in the preamble of their Act, when they seek in this way for that combination of variety and steadiness, local knowledge and freedom from local prejudice, general intelligence and special experience, which is so important in the composition of an educational governing body.
3. Mr. Brown talks of the " deliberate purpose of the Commis- sioners to Torify and Churchify the entire middle-class education of the country." This must be a rhetorical flight. For it cannot be that in itself the principle of co-optation, thus regulated, is more favourable to one class of persons or opinions than another. And Mr. Brown ought to be challenged, in the interests of the public, to name a single instance in which the Commissioners, in selecting the first governors to be named in the schemes, have evinced party preferences of any kind, or have recognized any other claim than educational fitness. One such fact would be of more value than a broad general invective against the whole policy of a body of public officers who have a very difficult and delicate task to perform, and whose efforts to popularize and reform the governing bodies of the schools have hitherto met with special opposition from Churchmen and Tories all over England. Unquestionably it has happened in many instances, though not in all, that the clergyman of the parish has been placed either officially or by name on the governing body even of a non-denominational trust. For the district in which the school is to work is often co-extensive with the parish ; and the parson, apart from all sectarian eon- siderations, is undoubtedly the most important parochial officer. He is nearly always chairman of the vestry, he is the custodian, either sole or jointly with others, of the parish documents, of the church and its appurtenances, he performs certain offices of a solemn kind for all the parishioners who require them. Moreover, he is the possessor of property in the parish, in which he is bound to be permanently resident. Anybody more definitely pointed out by circumstances to be one of the administrators of affairs con- cerning the pariah, it is impossible to conceive. If Dissenters had any representative occupying a like position, it is probable that his services would be thankfully accepted as a governor. But Mr. Brown would be the first to admit that Nonconformity as such has no organization, and that the Baptist or Congregational minister in a rural parish or country town could make no claim which could not with equal propriety be urged by the Roman Catholic priest or which, even if admitted, would not be very hard to define. The most influential form of Dissent in many rural districts is Methodism. Yet there is no resident Wesleyan minister whose status is definable in a legal document. The chapel is supplied in rotation by the ministers or local preachers of a circuit, whose head-quarters are in a neighbouring town, and the ministers are themselves removed by the Conference every three years. Moreover, they stand in no assignable relation to the whole community for whom the school is provided, but are solely concerned with the interests of the Wesleyan congregation, And I believe it is for such reasons that the Court of Chancery and the Charity Commission have been in the habit for many years of making the parochial clergyman an official member of charitable corporations or trusteeships. When we descend from the heights of speculative philanthropy, and are confronted with the actual problems of administration, we cannot afford to over- look the plain facts of our social life. One of these is that an honest attempt to find a local body suited by education to be the best governors of an upper school, will not always result in the selection of a majority of Dissenters. Another is, that so long as an Established Church exists in England, there is pro- vided in every parish a resident freeholder, who is often a scholar and generally a gentleman, whose own training, history, and per- sonal experience especially fit him to understand the subject of secondary education, who is brought into legal and social relations with all the inhabitants of the place, and who is, as a rule, in- capable of a job. And it is difficult to see how the presence of one such person on a board of twelve or fifteen members, all the rest of whom are the direct product, in some way, of local repre- sentation, can be otherwise than a great educational gain.
What is to be said of the temper of mind which discovers in such an arrangement a " new insult and a new wrong " to the Dissenters ? No one who looks carefully at the schemes of the Commissioners can doubt that by the operation of the Act all trusts are thrown open ; that whore intelligent Nonconformists have the confidence of their neighbours they will be placed in large numbers on the new governing bodies ; that every substantial grievance of which as a class they had to complain is abundantly redressed, and that Dissent has now for the first time a full and equitable share of influence over the secondary education of the country. But to me there is something unspeakably petty and un- statesman-like in an attempt to measure all such questions by con- siderations of mere sectarian loss and gain. I for one hope that the Endowed Schools' Commissioners will rise to a higher and broader conception of their duty than this. If they do so, they will address, themselves in each case as it arises to the single question, " How is the best, the fairest, and the most intelligent governing body for the Endowed school to be composed ? " And in replying to this question, they will first seek to break down all the unjust restrictions which custom or antique legal decisions have imposed upon the schools, and will make access to the trusts easy for pro- perly qualified men and women of all religious and political parties. But at the same time they will certainly not be bound to assume that a man holding a legal and social position eminently qualifying him in the majority of cases to serve with advantage on such a trust, should be set aside, because he is also committed to certain theological views which are unacceptable to Dissenters. To do this would be to establish in a new form the very dis- qualification which the Act is intended to remove.--I am, Sir, Sm.,
ALPHA.
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