The Bishop of Hereford (Dr. Percival) sent a long letter
on the Education Bill to Thursday's Daily Chronicle. He calls it "a crude and heterogeneous" Bill. He complains of the constitution of the new Education Authority as originating in a Council elected for the purpose of making roads and drain- ing houses, and declares that if a majority of the County 'Council for the time being is Radical or Tory, or Anglican or Nonconformist, the whole educational bias of the county will partake of the same character. He might just as well say that every school in London that was under the School Board would be necessarily of the same type as the majority of the London School Board, which is certainly not the case. The nominated minority of the Educational Authority was intended to procure the assistance of educational experts who would greatly improve the character of the county education, and we have no doubt that they will have that effect. No County Council would dare to nominate men of no repute as educationalists to assist the elective members. The Bishop is not so one- sided as Mr. Adam), and is disposed to give a sufficient number of the parents the right to ask for special religious education where any district has only one kind of school, either an elected School Board, or a voluntary school ; but he forgets that Roman Catholics will not be content with an Anglican voluntary school, nor Anglicans with a Roman Catholic voluntary school ; and he proposes to make no pro- vision at all for the existence of a variety of faiths in the same district. His letter seems to us very onesided though not vehemently partisan.
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