In his evening speech at Oldham Mr. Gladstone declared for
an education measure more or less founded on Mr. Austin Bruce's Bill of last session, with necessary extensions and enlargements. He was entirely in favour of retaining all the denominational schools, with a universal conscience clause, to enable the children of parents of other denominations to receive their secular educa- tion there if they so choose. He argued, however, earnestly for aid to purely secular schools also, wherever they may need it. On compulsion he did not declare himself. He was exceedingly frank in condemning the restrictive policy of trades' unions, spoke of machinery as the power which would supersede the slave power, and one day do all the brute work of civilized communities, and expressed his amusement at the fears expressed, when capital goes abroad, that England is going to be beaten in the competi- tion. On the contrary, Mr. Gladstone held that this is just the stimulus England needs to make her put out her strength. " The Englishman is like a horse out of which you cannot get his best pace without a little flogging," and foreign competition is really the beneficent whip which administers that flogging.
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