TOPICS OF l'H] DAY.
MR. GOSCHEN'S BUDGET.
MR. GOSCHEN'S Budget has the great merit of ex- treme simplicity and great caution. His surplus is not large, but it is adequate for the purpose to which he proposes to devote it,—that of setting free the elemen- tary education of the country from the burden of the school-fees,—a purpose announced in the Queen's Speech, and which the surplus will enable the Government to carry out in its entirety even when it comes into full operation next year. In the present year it will operate, if the House of Commons accepts it, for only seven months,— namely, from September 1st to the end of the financial year,—and hence Mr. Goschen will have enough to pay half-a-million for the rebuilding of the barracks out of revenue, instead of borrowing, as he would otherwise have had to do, for that purpose, and enough also to devote £400,000 to the calling in of light gold. and restoring the gold coinage to its standard weight. Mr. Goschen has been not only a fortunate but a most provident Chancellor of the Exchequer. Within four years his surpluses have reduced the National Debt by nearly £31,000,000, and his estimates of revenue have proved neither artificially low nor too sanguine. On the whole, nothing could be more careful nor more nearly verified than his anticipations of revenue. And while he has shown himself ready for a great effort in the enlargement and reconstruction of our naval and military defences, and has heartily seconded the country in its cry for good material rather than cheap material, and good work rather than cheap work, he has yet resisted sturdily the encroachments of unscrupulous popular demands on the national purse, and kept the standard of public economy and thrift as high as any of his predecessors. He has thought it right, indeed, to spend more on the defences of the country than they have done, but that has been in the pursuit of a deliberate policy, and a policy of which he and his colleagues are not ashamed, seeing that they regard it as the best and surest kind of guarantee for peace.
It is obvious enough that the chief question raised by the Budget will be the question of the Voluntary schools. A great effort will be made by the Opposition to insist that an infusion of representative local control shall be conceded to all the Voluntary schools as a set-off against the payment by the taxpayers of the school-fees,—in other words, that locally elected members shall be introduced into the management of all denominational schools which are relieved from the payment of school-pence. We heartily trust that the Government will oppose itself firmly to any such demand. It will mean virtually the intro- duction of theological squabbles into all denominational Boards of Governors, and the destruction of all unity of design and firmness of administration on these Boards. Nor is there really any sort of excuse for such a change. The grant is made by the central authority, and does not fall upon the ratepayers. The richest parts of England will pay a great deal more than the poorest parts towards the remission of the parents' fees. If there is a claim for extra control at all, it is a claim for extra control on behalf of the central Government, which represents the nation at large, not a claim for extra control on behalf of the local district in which the parents' fees are remitted. One great argument which diminishes our own hearty dis- like to the removal of personal responsibility for their children's education from the shoulders of the parents, is that the surrender of the parents' fees will make the machinery of education far more simple and efficient, and enable the schoolmasters and schoolmistresses to give up their time far more effectually than before to their proper work of education. But this great advantage would be vastly reduced, would be perhaps wholly lost, if, by way of equivalent for the remission of fees, the governing bodies of all Voluntary schools were embarrassed by the introduction of elective opposition members, who would generally conceive it to be their duty to em- barrass the management, and interfere adversely in its plans. A schoolmaster or schoolmistress would rather have to screw the school-pence out of poverty-stricken parents, than to please two conflicting parties on the Board. of Management. The Government do not mean to injure the denominational seheele, They assure us, and we fully accept their assurance, that they intend the remission of fees to benefit all schools alike, the denomina- tional and National schools no less than the School Board schools ; and if this is to be the case, there must be no- attempt to introduce an opposition into the Boards of Management of the former class of schools. That the Council of Education should direct their inspectors to insist, gradually but firmly, on a higher standard of general efficiency after the school-fees have been remitted, we. should think very reasonable. As the central Government are to give a great increase of aid, the central Government may fairly exact a general increase of educational force. But instead of ensuring this result, the very opposite result would be all but ensured, by introducing the elective prin- ciple into denominational schools. The conscience clause, and the due enforcement of the conscience clause, is the only possible security against anything like denominational propagandism. That, of course, must be carefully pro- vided against. But to introduce an elective element into the Boards of Management of denominational schools would really mean, not the exclusion of propagandism, but the inclusion of conflicting propagandist forces, and therefore not only the intensification of any spirit of propagandism which may already exist, but the. introduction of a rival propagandism of equal bitter- ness. As it is, the religious body which manages the Voluntary school should be left to determine quite freely what the religious teaching should be. Only the children of parents who do not accept that religious teaching should be carefully secured, as they are now secured, against any illegitimate attempt to draw their children into the classes held for that kind of lesson. We trust the Government will stand perfectly firm on this question. We are, indeed, quite convinced that they will. If they do not, the Free Education Bill will be wrecked by their own followers, and they would have no right to complain that it had been so wrecked. Nor, in our belief, would the attempt to introduce religious squabbling into the govern- ment of denominational schools be at all really popular. A few angry fanatics and a few political mischief-makers would approve it, but the great majority of the people of this country do not wish to see the religious teachers whom they most trust, embarrassed by angry controversies as to. the religious methods which those teachers adopt. They are quite content if their own children are secured from religious meddling, and for the rest prefer a good, school that is established for a specifically religious end to be made honestly subservient to that religious end,—so long as no children are submitted to the religious teaching whose parents do not approve it, and so long as these children suffer no disadvantages as regards their instruc- tion in secular subjects by being exempted. from the religious classes. If the Government leave no room for doubt that they really intend all classes of schools to. benefit equally by the remission of the school-fees, they- will, we believe, pass this measure triumphantly, and gain by it the gratitude of the people. One great merit of Mr. Goschen's Budgets is, that they have uniformly been Budgets aiming at nothing less than the glorification of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. When Mr. Goschen held that the local taxation had a claim on him, he spoiled the effect of his Budget to give for local taxation what he regarded as due to it. When he was convinced that the Army and Navy needed a systematic effort to strengthen them, he spoiled the effect of his Budget to give sufficient help to the Army and. Navy. And now that he regards the promise of Free Education as a pledge that ought to be redeemed, he has spoiled the effect of his Budget to redeem that promise. This is, indeed, the duty of a true Finance Minister. His object should be not the remission of taxation unless the remission of taxation happens to be the chief need of the nation, but the employment of the great re- sources of the country in the mode best adapted to the country's duties and. wants. That has been Mr. Goschen's leading idea throughout his administration of the Exchequer, and therefore his career at the Exchequer will compare favourably with that of many Chancellors of the Exchequer who have starved the great services of the country in order to swell the amounts by which they have been able to reduce the so-called burdens on the people. But when the burden taken from the back is hung upon the feet, and the people find that, though they have less to pay, they have less power to per-. form the active duties of a great nation, they are not grateful for a physical bc on wIlich lowers them in their own eyes.
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