Mr. Rodwell, Q,.C., M.P. for Cambridgeshire, and in a very
special sense the representative of the tenant-farmers of that county, has been making a somewhat embarrassed endeav- your to reconcile himself and his constituents to the Education law, in spite of the frankly-expressed dislike .of it which he and they evidently feel. In a speech at Lxworth on Wednesday, he remarked that the hopes of those who had been sanguine enough to expect a great diminution of crime from the spread of education had not been verified by the results, for—so he stated—in the manufacturing districts where the Education Act had been carried out most completely, the magis- trates were constantly lamenting the extent of crime. A lawyer should know better than to give such silly evidence as that. Mr. Rodwell might just as well remark that in towns people are -always lamenting the badness and deficiency of the gas-light, and -argue thereon that the progress of science has not had the effect that might have been expected in extending the arrangements for lighting our towns. Besides, the Education Act has been in force for exactly three years, and does Mr. Rodwell suppose that those -who were children three years ago would in any case have already furnished a very large force of recruits to the ranks of convicted criminals? However, the tenant-farmers hate the Education Act and the Agricultural Children's Act, and approve the Government -for lowering the standard in the workhouses, so Mr. Rodwell is obliged to talk a little nonsense ; and, as he goes on to recom- mend giving the Act fair-play, and to point out that educated children will earn enough when. they are older to make up for the earnings which they lose by attending school, we suppose he may be forgiven for his little effort to cast suspicion on the Education policy.
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