The Endowed Schools debate has been raging all the week,
and making the House of Commons as hot morally as physically. We have reviewed the general tenor of the debate elsewhere, but may add here that the ball was opened on Monday by Mr. Fawcett, in a speech of a power unusual, even for him, asking the Conservatives if they were so infatuated as to wish to remind every Nonconformist that, before 1689, his forefathers, even if of the same faith as himself, could not found a school, or to bring home to them that they are even now regarded as in some measure dis- qualified for managing schools given to the nation by their forefathers. He showed how especially badly the clauses limiting the masterships to ordained clergymen will operate now, when at Trinity College, Cambridge, for example, not a single lecturer or tutor is in Orders, though the very pick of the men are chosen for lecturers and tutors ; and he insisted that if passed, the Bill would create a chronic agitation till it was repealed. Lord George Cavendish, in supporting him, urged the Conservatives by all means to go through with the measure, as it would completely resuscitate the Liberal party, and he defended cordially the Endowed Schools Commission, saying of Lord Lyttelton especially, that his " rough- and-ready common-sense " was just the instrument fitted to do away with corruption and robbery in high places. Lord Sandon, describing the amendment he was prepared to agree to, then made clear, what to our minds was never doubtful, that though wish- ing to enable Church Governing Bodies to exclude Dissenters, his Bill had never been intended to make Dissenters absolutely in- eligible, and he accused the Opposition of keeping back last year all their appreciation of the Endowed Schools Commissioners ; while Mr. Forster pointed out that the amendment proposed was no concession at all, and that the only reason he had not defended the Endowed Schools Commissioners last year was that they had
not been attacked. Mr. Mundella described Lord Bandon as "the mildest-mannered man• that ever scuttled ship or cut a throat ;" Mr. Lowe attacked vigorously the plan to transfer the duties of the Endowed Schools Commission to the Charity Com- mission, and predicted that the result would be to destroy the influence and usefulness of the Charity Commission, and make it the most unpopular body in the country.
