FREE SCHOOLS.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR "] have only to-day seen the letter in your columns from Mr. Lee-Warner, of Townt GonviNe,-Dorsetshire, in which he writes :- "Si,—Here, in Doraetshire, a labourer receives lls. a week wages, and pays twopence a week, ungrudgingly, for the education of the eldest child, and a penny for each of the others in his family. Consequently, he pays for the education of each child, upon an average, about the hundredth part of his income. The clergyman hard by is fortunate if he can get his son educated for the tenth part of his. Dr. Rigg has shown conclusively that in America free educa- tion fails in securing the regular attendance of the children. To be logical, therefore, the advocates of free education here must go back a step farther, and present, at the expense of the rates, a pair of boots to every Briton who pleads difficulties of locomotion in excuse for the
non-attendance of his child at school." •
I should be glad if you will allow me to confirm what Mr. Lee-Warner states.
In this parish, and, I believe, in all this part of the country, the wages are 16e. a week. Only a very few years ago, perhapi within the last three or four, or half-a-dozen at the most, they were 18s. a week ; and are at the same rate still, for an odd day or two, or so. I charge in our school twopence each for the first two children, and nothing at all for any number above that. Is
it not time for us to have heard the last of the cant about free
Nunburnholme Rectory, Hayton, York, August 25th.
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