Sir William Harcourt has made another attack on the Bishop
of London in a second letter to the Rev. John Haslam, the Honorary Secretary to the Pudsey Division Liberal Association, published in Thursday's Times. The Bishop has said that he thought the salaries paid by many of the rich School Boards to their teachers are too high, and that many of the School Boards are wasteful in the use of their resources generally,—which we believe to be often true. On the other hand, we so far agree with Sir William Harcourt that we think the proposal to get the precept for a school-rate revised by such a body as a Municipal Council, or even a County Connell, a very imprudent one, for in many respects the School Board is much better fitted to judge what is a needful expenditure on school expenses and management, than any Municipal or County Council. If only the Education Depart- ment had time and staff enough to revise decisions of this kind, we should heartily support the proposal to give them a revising power, though we fear they have not. But Sir William Harcourt's notion that there is practically no waste, and no- extravagance in the administration of School Boards, is, we are sure, one that her Majesty's inspectors would never think of endorsing. But it suits Sir William Harcourt's policy of agitation to treat the voluntaryist educationists as desirous of starving education everywhere, in order that the better schools may be reduced to the level of the inferior schools, and so he thunders away against the Bishop of London, who is a far older and far truer friend of education than himself.
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