THE DEFEAT OF THE CITY MEMBERS.
THE debate of Tuesday night was a very curious political phenomenon. We have had no debate for years which illustrates so curiously the disturbing and even distorting effect exerted on the mind of respectable Liberals by traditional privi- leges. Mr. Crawford and Sir James Lawrence, and those of their colleagues among the Metropolitan Members who sup- ported the opposition to the new scheme for Emanuel Hospital, had less than no case. There was something pitiful in the efforts they made to give a show of logical argument to what they themselves must have felt a strong suspicion was the mere offspring of a very different kind of bias. The proof of this is that even among the ordinary members of the Liberal Cave, among those who always delight much more in the exercise of an impartial conscientiousness if it happens to enforce upon them a combination against the Government than if it enjoins support, there were hardly any who ventured to help the enthusiasts for the rights of the Common Council of London. Mr. Akroyd, indeed, who probably hardly claims any longer to rank amongst the Liberal party, voted with the devotees of the City Corporation. But even Mr. Bouverie and Mr. Horsman both found themselves unable on this occasion to vote against the Government, and so hopeless was the case as regards logic, that Mr. Walpole, the most upright of Conservatives, felt compelled to speak, and speak very strongly, in favour of the Government, though voting against it on a principle which no doubt he had made quite clear to his own conscience, though it seems to savour of the strangest feats of casuistry to ordinary men. The truth is that the debate was intellectually at an end after the Prime Minister's most exhaustive reply, we will not say to the arguments of Mr. Crawford and Mr. Beresford Hope,—for they brought forward no arguments,—but to those apologies for the lack of arguments, and those attempts to emulate the policy of the cuttle-fish and blind their enemies by the emission of a dark fluid, which Mr. Crawford and Mr. Beresford Hope were obliged to substitute for any more substantial help to their supporters in the shape of reason or fact. Mr. Gladstone never spoke better. He pointed out that Mr. Crawford had not really ventured to attack the scheme of the Commissioners on any point whatever except the reconstitution of the Governing Body,—and that on that point, so far was the scheme from transcending the moderation of precedent, that the Corporation of London is left to nominate a majority of the new governing body,—a course far more respectful to the existing Governors than that taken in relation to the reform of our most important educational institutions, the Universities, for example, and the great public schools. The argument that because the reappointment of the Endowed Schools' Commission in its present form is now upon
its trial, therefore a scheme admitted even by its oppo- nents to be singularly good should not be accepted by
the House, was really monstrous, considering that, as Mr. Gladstone showed, 120 schemes prepared by it had already been accepted, and are therefore law, and amongst them plenty of schemes affecting similar interests, and dealing with them after the same fashion as the present scheme, the sole difference being that this scheme touches the privileges of the Corporation of London, which is a much more powerful body than any hitherto reformed. If the Endowed Schools' Commission be in any way reformed, it will be reformed not because it has been a dangerous and in- novating body, for its reforms have all been tacitly sanc- tioned by both Houses of Parliament, or else they could not now have any authority; but rather on the ground that it gets through its work too slowly, and is too likely to spread over a long series of years changes which it is very desirable to con- centrate within a much shorter time. There is something simply ludicrous in objecting to a scheme otherwise approved even by its enemies, that it emanates from a body whose reform is under consideration only on the ground that its work has been slow and its procedure cumbrous. If the scheme was bad in itself, the House would be quite right in rejecting it• ; but if good, then how can sane men ask us to postpone it on the strength of pending constitutional changes in the body which drew it up You might almost as well refuse to drink confessedly good milk, on the ground that the cow which gave it was going to be removed to new pastures, where somebody surmised that its milk might even improve.
The only thing in the nature of argument against the scheme itself, was addressed to the House by Alderman Sir James Lawrence, who maintained that under the scheme the property not of the rich, but of the poor, was to be confiscated, that the Endowed Schools Commissioners' scheme took away revenues meant for the very poor and applied them to the benefit of those not so poor. But, in the first place, it did not seem from the speech of Mr. Craw- fornhat the City authorities themselves regard the gmanuel Hospital as intended for the poorest class, but rather for the impoverished class, the class which has been well-to-do and is, through misfortune, fallen in the scale of prosperity. In the next place, it is pretty clear that the Commissioners' scheme does much more even for this class—as our account of it last week will show—than the City proposes to do ; and in the third place, it is ridiculous to assert that when primary schools are now everywhere established for the benefit of the very poor, the funds of a charity of this kind should be limited to the supply of wants already supplied under the new Education Act. As far as we understand Sir James Lawrence's reasoning, he would maintain that if a charity were founded to supply the poorest class with flannel underclothing, and that then a peculiarly charitable Govern- ment chose to supply them with such underclothing out of its own resources, it would be incumbent on the trustees of that charity to go on supplying duplicate flannel waistcoats and petticoats to children who necessarily had them already, and that it would be an outrage on "the Christian sentiment" of the country to propose to substitute for the decent under- clothing which they had, decent over-clothing which they had not. Under the Education Act, the poorest class is supplied with good primary schools by the law, and of course the proper course is to direct such charities as Lady Dacre's into the channel of secondary education. That is what the Emanuel Hospital scheme of the Endowed Schools' Commission has done, and then the able and worthy Alderman who represents Lambeth arises, and cries aloud that this is an outrage upon the Christian sentiment of the country. It seems to us that though he says he is shocked at the confiscation of the property of the poor and humble for the sake of the well- to-do, what he is really shocked at it is the invasion of the privileges of a body not remarkable either for poverty or humility,—the Corporation of London. It is not the poor widow in defence of whom his generous zeal rises into wrath, but the rich company of City Aldermen, whose influence in relation to education has been by no means of the most enlightened
or the most disinterested kind. It is satisfactory to see that the City, even with the help of the Tories, cannot defeat the Government, but has been defeated by a majority of forty-eight. But it is a little lamentable to find so many as two hundred and thirty-six votes in such a Parliament as ours for a resolution whose only merit it was that it defended the imperilled monopoly of an opulent and powerful body, which had not used its power remarkably well, and that it afforded another chance of defeating a Government which, on the whole, has used its power remarkably well.
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