The Educational compromise, which last week we did not under-
stand, proved on full reports to be fair enough. Lord Robert Montagu desired that when School Boards declined to pay the fees of poor children, the Boards of Guardians should pay them, an obvious snub to the School Boards which Mr. Forster resented. Lord Sandon therefore proposed that Boards of Guardians should always pay everywhere the school-fees of children whose parents were too poor to pay them, thus sweeping away the celebrated Twenty-fifth Clause in favour of a general provision quite in conformity with existing laws. This proposal of course excited extreme wrath among Nonconformists and Secularists, but Mr. Forster, with his usual courage, separated himself from many friends, and declared it only just that the parent, if compelled to send his children to school, should have a right to select its religious or irreligious character. Compulsion being made universal, the Twenty-fifth Clause is made universal too,—that is the whole of the matter. The change is perfectly fair, but whether the Government is wise in reawakening a controversy which had begun to die away is a very different matter, discussed in another place.
Previous page
