Mr. Balfour, who followed Mr. McKenna, took up, we regret
to say, a very hostile attitude from the first. He had nothing good to say for the Bill, for he had never seen an educational measure which was less likely to bring religious peace. The Nonconformists had, he admitted, a grievance in single-school areas, but this grievance the President of the Board of Education now proposed to multiply indefinitely. He was about to commit the grossest injustice on those who had built and maintained the schools in country districts, for he contemplated taking those schools and diverting them wholly from the purpose for which they had been erected. That there is a good deal to be said for Mr. Balfour's criticisms of the single-school parish clauses ot the Bill we admit, but we hold it a matter of very great regret that he merely denounced these clauses instead of suggesting ways by which they could be amended and made in some measure acceptable. The fierceness of his attack may have been good party tactics, but it was not, we are sure, wise policy, regarded either from the point of view of the truer and wider interests of religious education or from that of the Established Church.
