THE DEBATE ON LORD SANDON'S BILL.
THURSDAY night's debate shows what might fairly have been anticipated,—that the feeling in the House of Com- mons towards Lord Sandon's Bill is a lukewarm feeling. The
popular men, like Mr. Mundella, think it a milk-and-water affair, intended to stay the appetite for a more adequate measure, rather than to do what a more adequate measure would attempt.
The Moderates of the front Opposition bench are very much of the same mind, but they are heartily grateful to Lord Sandon for not yielding to the cry of the Denominationalists, on the one hand, and for giving a new pledge that the policy of compulsion is—one day, at least—to be completed, on the other hand. The Conservatives, again, are not, and cannot be expected to be, enthusiastic. The Conservatives of the great cities, like Mr. Hugh Birley, are very ready to admit that more might have been done, even in the way of compulsion, and hint the feebleness of the new remedies suggested in polite but perfectly plain terms. On the other hand, the Tories, who wanted all sorts of new stringency in relation to the pro- visions for religious teaching, are openly dissatisfied because the Government is so thoroughly Laodicean in its Con- servatism. And on the whole, the gratitude of the Con- servative benches is for the weakness of the Bill in what it does propose, while their regrets are for the strong pro- visions which the Government have carefully omitted. Thus we have a universally lukewarm House, the Liberals recog- nising the moderation of the Government in refusing to satisfy any one of the more characteristic Tory aspirations, and the Tories recognising the moderation of the Government in refusing to satisfy any one of the more characteristic Liberal aspirations. Each party perceives a certain amiable weakness in the Bill, but is too grateful for the weakness to alienate the amiability. Thus the Bill seems to be an excellent imitation of the Agricultural Holdings Act, in the region of Education. An educational district may contract itself into the Bill, if it pleases, as Sir Wilfrid Lawson proposes that a parish may contract itself into his Permissive Bill if it pleases; and per- mission to do that is, perhaps, better than permission to con- tract oneself out of an Act of Parliament, because once inside this measure at least, there seems to be no open-sesame for getting out again. But with that distinction in favour of this Bill, a better pendant for the Agricultural Holdings Act could not have been conceived. Amiable, complicated, and weak,—such are the adjectives which appear to describe the opinion of the House on both sides in relation to Lord Sandon's measure.
The one good point of the Bill, which may, and perhaps will, save it from destruction, is the power it gives to a borough Council and the ratepayers of a rural parish to adopt bye-laws compelling the attendance of children at school.
There can be no doubt that this, the sixth clause of the Bill, is really good. It will enable a great many new districts to adopt the compulsory principle without troubling themselves with the elec- tion of a School Board, and however reluctant Boards of Guar- dians may be to enforce education, they will have no choice under such a provision as this, except to appoint a truant-officer, whose duty it will be to look after the truant children, and get them to school. This is the one saving element of the Bill, and if adopted, will no doubt extend compulsion to a considerable and a fresh section of the people of England. Possibly a quarter of that part of the population who, as yet, are not under educational compulsion, will be brought under it ..;# this provision, for there are a great many districts quite ripe for voluntary subjection to the educational yoke. Still, even when this provision has worked as far as it will work, there will in all probability be some three-eighths of the population of England and Wales outside the reach of compulsion; and so far as we see, there is no provision left in the Bill which is in any way well adapted to sweep them in. All the clauses in which provision is made for enforcing education in districts which are not willing to enforce it
on themselves are, by Lord Sandon's deliberate design of course, half-hearted provisions. He admitted that he did not want to employ compulsion in any locality where the people are not disposed for compulsion, and as a natural con- sequence, everything which savours of direct compulsion is hesitating, inefficient, and ambiguous. His indirect compulsion is a bad expedient, which has failed already in the Act which this Bill proposes to repeal. The power given in the ultimate resort to the Guardians of the poor to send troublesome truants to industrial schools, is not only obviously meant to be con- fined to troublesome truants, who will chiefly be boys, and not very young boys, but is in itself a very objectionable kind of power, which will probably hurt the Industrial Schools a great deal more than it will benefit the neglected children sent there. To introduce a floating element into these schools will, say all the managers with one voice, ruin the discipline of these schools. Yet to keep these neglected children for any time in Industrial Schools at a cost of five shillings a week a head is obviously impossible, even if Boards of Guardians were the persons to incur such an expense. But if the ultimate direct compulsion is of an impracticable and visionary kind,.the immediate indirect compulsion will be even more mischievous. It mulcts the parents' no doubt, by depriving them of their child's earnings, for the fault of the parents, and so far is more just. But unfortunately, it not only mulcts the parents for their own fault, but gravely injures the child too. To prohibit boys between ten and fourteen from going to work,—and of course, they won't go to work, if they are to earn nothing by it,—till they can produce the requisite educational certificate, is to put them back in life altogether, to prevent their serving an apprenticeship to labour at the right age, and in all cases where school does not and cannot take up the whole of the boys' available time, to inflict on them a very serious injury for the sins of their parents. Another fault in this indirect-compulsion system is the small number of attendances which the new Code proposes to count as the full complement of a year. Two hundred and fifty are a half-year's complement rather than a year's, and though five full years' attendance at school between five and ten years of age might suffice to impart a minimum of education to the children of the labourer, five years of half-time attendances will certainly not be adequate for the same purpose. If the attendance is to be of the half-time kind, some of it should run on into the years beyond ten years of age, and not stop so early.
There is another great blot on the Bill, to which Mr. Forster drew attention on the night of Lord Sandon's first statement,—the proposal to create " poor " districts in which the schools shall receive as a Parliamentary grant double the amount of what is derived from voluntary con- tributions, instead of only an equal amount. This, or some- thing like it in principle, has been proposed again and again, and rejected, because the Department saw clearly what it would lead to,—a constant assault on any limit drawn, a constant effort in the districts nearest in poverty to the dividing- line, to bring themselves within the limits of the more lavish grant. The opposition to this section of the Bill on Thursday night was very emphatic, and we can hardly think that unless it is absolutely needful to soothe the disappointed feelings of expectant Conservatives, Lord Sandon will be at all sorry to yield to the pressure which the Liberals will certainly put upon him to abandon this part of his measure. On the whole, we should like the measure better, and think it more useful, if it were all but limited to the Sixth Clause, which gives power to a Borough Council or to the rate- payers of a parish to require the adoption of compulsory bye-laws without electing a School Board. That, at all events, so far as it goes, would be a definite and tangible gain. It would probably bring some 300,000 fresh children under the influence of compulsory bye-laws in a year or two, and there would be no set-off of loss against that gain. If this were the whole Bill, the whole Bill would be a step in advance. But what is meant to lead up to and sup- plement this provision, in Lord Sandon's very well-intentioned measure, seems to us to be mostly of an exceedingly doubtful, and some of it of a dangerous kind. And it is quite clear that a simple extension of the compulsory principle, within a given time, to the whole country, such as Mr. Forster proposes, would be vastly preferable to Lord Sandon's string of weak, com- plicated, and by no means exclusively beneficial, indirect guarantees.
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