NEWS OF THE WEEK.
MR. GOSCHEN'S Budget caused a great surprise to most of his hearers by its announcement that the Government intend to reserve the whole of the surplus for the complete remis- sion of parents' fees in the elementary schools,—a policy which, as it was thought, had been abandoned in consequence of the delay in the discussion of the Irish Land-purchase Bill, and the backwardness of Supply. Children's school-pence are to cease from August 31st next, if the Government carry their plans, and this moans that one million of the surplus of nearly two millions will be devoted even in the current financial year to Free Education. The remainder will be all wanted next year, and probably something more than the remainder; and therefore Mr. Grosehen proposes to leavo the whole surplus upon which he counts at the disposal of any Government which may be in office next April. The announcement was a great blow to some forty el. forty-five faithful Conservatives, who cannot be persuaded that school-fees can be remitted without destroying the denominational schools altogether ; but that is just the very point on which we totally disagree with them. Doubtless the concession of any local representation of the ratepayers on the governing bodies of the denominational schools as an equivalent for the extended Government grant, would destroy them. But this must be steadily resisted, as we have elsewhere argued ; nor do we see that there is the ghost of an excuse for such a concession. It looks very much as if a dissolution in the autumn were coming, and that the Government expect the householders, in the first sense of relief from a considerable burden, to vote for the Adminis- tration which gave that relief. Nor do we think that the expectation would be disappointed.
