considerations to oppose the policy of the Birmingham League at
the present moment. We regret profoundly, with Mr. Fawcett, that Mr. Forster has been over-ruled by his colleagues in relation to the extension of compulsion. We regret, not equally, but heartily, that he had not the courage to adopt the logical policy of regarding help afforded by the Poor Law Guardians towards the education of children, as a kind of poor-relief, and therefore to exclude from the Bill the very illogical proposal to grant poor-relief to people who are not to be considered paupers. We regret that he did not stand by his Bill even as crippled by that proposal, after so good an authority as Mr. Bright had declared, what it needed indeed no conjuror to see, that the Poor Law Guardians were far more competent than School Board members to keep down the unnecessary payment of rates for school fees, and that the change would quite have done away with the imputation of any theological arrire pewee in the authorities who paid those fees. The only thing on which we can congra- tulate Mr. Forster is, having adhered to the proposal to compel the education of children whose parents already receive poor-law relief as a condition of that relief,—a small enough extension of compulsion, but one so obviously easy and so imperatively required, after the formal admission by the State that to give their children some education is one of the fundamental duties of all parents, and therefore, of course, of all guardians who accept the other fundamental duties of parents towards the children of paupers, that it is hard to understand how a single member of the House of Commons could be found to vote against it, least of all members who, like Mr. Dixon, had urged this very course long before the Education Act was thought of. Mr. Forster must, we fear, have felt more reason for mortification than for satisfaction in the debate of Thursday ; but it is something, and not a trifle, to apply educational compulsion to all pauper children ; for we heartily believe that apart from the far greater benefits of new self-respect and new resources conferred by education on the children themselves, the result must be to diminish, instead of, as Mr. MUullagh Torrens paradoxically contended, to increase, the burden on the Poor-rates ;—for surely it is evident that educated pauper children are far less likely to fall back into pauperism as men and women, than pauper children who have been fed and clothed, but not educated. Mr. Forster cannot feel very triumphant, after the many hopes he has had to abandon ; but he may at least comfort himself with the thought that as a member of a Government which has had to evacuate so many more of its leading positions this year than it has been able to hold, he has at least not come off the worst. He will, in all probability, advance educational compulsion a stage, and that in the class where it it most needed. He hoped to do much more : with a little more tenacity, we believe he might have done something more ; but at worst, he will advance his great cause an appreciable and even a substantial stage.
It is, however, exceedingly unfortunate for Mr. Forster that the indifference or timidity of his colleagues has compelled him to throw over the proposal of which he held out such emphatic hopes last year, to carry educational compulsion into the rural districts. We are quite aware that without changes which would be both financially impossible and morally unjust, the extension of compulsion, instead of conciliating the irre- concilable Nonconformists, would have made them much more angry than they are. Compulsion, without an immense exten- sion of School-Board Schools, that is, without an immense addition to the rates in districts where the rates are most un- popular, would have meant, we suppose, an immense addition to the scholars of the Church schools,—and we regret that it would be so simply because this would raise a great prejudice against a result which on the highest grounds is so infinitely de- sirable. We are well aware, therefore, that had Mr. Forster been able to stick to compulsion, he would have had no chance at all of carrying his Amendment Bill. The Tories would have opposed it almost unanimously, and the League party would have joined the Tories, unless the Government had conceded condi- tions involving the virtual waste of the existing Voluntary schools, which would have been simply impracticable. Still, what a cause would not that have been to go to the country upon! A Ministry defeated in an honest attempt to further the cause of Educa- tion at the least possible cost to the ratepayers, by a coalition of Secularists and Tories, would indeed have had a dignified ground of appeal to the constituencies. We do not say that it would have secured them a great majority like that of 1868, but even if it had brought virtual defeat,—which we shall have now without a good cause,—it would have left the Government in the position of leaders with a great, and clear, and thoroughly Liberal policy, certain of a host of fresh converts With every year of continued discussion. Mr. Fawcett took the tone of a true statesman, when he said that the question is not whether secular education be in the abstract the best, but how best to advance education without any discreditable waste of the great existing resources supplied to us in good elemen- tary schools established from religious motives. Obviously, these resources must be utilised. Obviously, they cannot be utilised without including these schools, when well conducted, amongst those which children may be compelled to attend. And obviously, this involves,—we think, unfortunately, but inevitably,—some advantage to that religious profession which has the largest number of such Schools, namely, the Established Church. That is to be regretted, though we do not regret, but sincerely rejoice, that religious teaching cannot in this way be divorced from secular teaching, as the Birmingham League would divorce it ; but though it is to be regretted, and though the danger it involves is to be guarded against by a very strict application of the Conscience Clause, it is not to be regretted nearly so much as the extension of compulsory education is to be desired. A Ministry which had been defeated on such a proposal, and had gone to the country on a policy at once earnest and economical, though it might doubtless have met great opposition, both from the niggards who cannot bear increased taxation, and the sectarians who cannot endure the prospect of a waning influence, would have been, to use Carlyle's phrase, "horsed upon an idea,"—would not have been, as they are now very likely to be, given up to the melan- choly necessity of raking up old achievements, and trying to fan the dying embers of a gratitude virtually burnt out. We cannot say how profoundly we regret that this opportunity has been lost by the half-heartedness of the Government. The Administration are now charged,—and though the charge is false, it is plausible, — with caring com- paratively little for Education in itself, and very much for the stimulus to denominational religious teaching of which the Education Act has been made the instrument. The best proof that this was a libel would have been to persevere steadily in extending the area of compulsion, against the wish of the great majority of the Conservative party, and of course, therefore, of the Church party, also. No matter that the Churchmen would then have had allies in the Nonconformists. So much the clearer would it have been that the policy was neither a Church policy, nor a Dissenting policy, but simply a national policy. To our minds, a greater opportunity was never lost,—an opportunity of a policy which would at once have confuted the assertion that an entente cordiale exists between the Government and the Tories. on this question, as well as one which would have appealed to the highest aspirations of our working-classes. As matters stand, however, we must be content to support Mr. Foreter's very humble measure, and to hope that the Liberals may learn in adversity not to throw away again so great a chance of basing their home policy on a broad moral principle and a great national interest.
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