A great strife has been raging all the week round
the Education Bill, Lord Sandon having eagerly assented last week to an amendment of Mr. Pell's (the Member for South Leicestershire) enabling the body which creates a School Board to dissolve it, or at least apply for its dissolution, when it has no schools of its own to conduct. And he not only con- ceded this to Mr. Pell, but he used language threatening to School Boards in general, on Monday, when he said, in answer to the argument that the feeling of the country was favourable to School Boards,—" If that argument is repeated, I shall be compelled to take a course different to that which I have hitherto adopted in the debate. I have cautiously avoided introducing what! know to be the feeling of the country with regard to School Boards, but if it be insisted that there is no question as to their popularity, I shall be obliged to go more into the matter. As far as my official knowledge goes,—and I have had communications from all parts of the country on the subject,—the largo School Boards are much appreciated, but I cannot conceal from the Committee that the feeling of the country as to School Boards generally, is just now in a very critical position, and that not only as to the small, but as to the large ones." Of course this sounded like a menace, and a menace not merely directed against the School-Board system, but directed against it in the interest of the private, denominational, and voluntary schools, which this Bill so much favours. Naturally the Liberal opposition became heated and tenacious.
