Cardinal Vaughan made an important speech on education last Tuesday
at the Birmingham Town Hall. He said he thought that it would be quite fair if School Boards, whenever they supplemented grants in aid by a precept for a school- rate, should be required to give the same sum per child to the voluntary schools within the same district as the Board-schools ; but he ,would in such a case empower the ratepayers to place on the Board of management of each voluntary school a representative whose duty it should be to ear-mark the addition so made to the ex- penditure of the school,—the half-crown per child, or five shillings per child, as the case might be,—and see that it was devoted strictly to the improvement of the secular education of the Children. Also, he did not object to the parents of the children attending Catholic schools,—and therefore presumably Catholics,—electing a certain proportion of the managers. This speech shows that the Catholics are not at all bigoted against popular management, though they do not wish for a kind of popular management which would set the Board of Managers by the ears.
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