Mr. Forster received a deputation from the Town Council of
Rochdale on Tuesday, which came to request that the Local School Boards should have the right to send their own Local Inspectors to any denominational school at which they were bound to pay poor children's fees. Mr. Forster expressed his regret that there should have been ill-feeling between the Town Council and the School Board for so small a matter as £10, to which the poor children's denominational school fees had amounted, and remarked that it would be impossible to insist on the denominational schools admitting inspectors, not of the Central Govern- ment,—that they must do,—but of the Local School Boards, unless we are prepared for a blank refusal, and for throwing on the rates the whole expense of providing new schools in the place of the schools thus driven into rebellion. That would involve the interruption for many years of the work of popular education. The deputation had also intimated that many of the denominational schools gave directly religious instruction in other hours than those provided by law and allowed in the time-table Conscience Clause, but Mr. Forster threw doubt on the fact, saying that if it were so the grant would be withdrawn, and that he should have had complaints long ago made to that effect, as people are constantly on the look-out to catch the Denominational Schools tripping. Mr. Forster is at present in disgrace with the Secularists and the Dissenters, but he continues to hold the balance as even as if, like Justice, he were blind,—which to attacks upon himself he certainly is.
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