LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
ENTRANCE SCHOLARSHIPS IN ENDOWED SCHOOLS.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.")
can assure your correspondent "Z." that no doubt is possible with regard to the feeling of the working-classes of Bir- mingham on the subject of the freedom of the grammar-school. At a meeting of the Liberal Asssociation (July 29, 1875)—an association thoroughly representative of the great mass of intelli- gent artisans of the town—not even an amendment was moved to a motion authorising a petition to Parliament, "to preserve the principle of free education which has been in operation since the foundation of the school." A resolution to a similar effect was moved in the Town Council, and on a division, carried by 40 to 2, four remaining neutral. I am personally familiar with the state of feeling of the working-men, not as an abstract body, but as organised in our various wards, and have no hesitation in saying that, in the proportion of 99 to 100, they desire the grammar-school to be preserved as a free school.
Until within the last few years, the free scholars were admitted solely by the nomination of the Governors ; that system very naturally caused deep dissatisfaction, since it enabled the friends of the Governors to obtain a free education for their children, while poor men without influence could obtain no nominations. 'The establishment of open competitive examinations has entirely removed this just ground of complaint.
I fail to see in what way (as "Z." appears to believe) a school which opens, say, 600 admissions for general competition, places poor children less on "an equality with their social superiors" than a school which only admits a small per-centage of free scholars. Surely in the former case social distinctions are abolished, while in the latter, they are protected and preserved.
Mr. Haslam's letter goes to the very root of the whole question, and I thoroughly accept the issue he raises. "Surely," writes Mr. Haslam, "it has been shown that good education cannot be kept up without a well-paid staff of educators ; in other words, that the highest of all kinds of skilled labour must be purchased at its price ; you give the poor man the kind of education he can afford to purchase, and the rich man also. Why should this set the poor against the rich, any more than by giving each the kind -of food he can afford to purchase ?"
I hold that the opportunities to be afforded for education ought to be bounded only by the capacities of children to learn, and that the various subjects of a noble education are not to be bought and sold as goods across the counter. The basis of this belief is religious as well as political; religious, because I cannot regard the enjoyment of wealth as a sufficient ground to justify one class of those who possess our common nature, for making scholastic arrangements by which the intellectual acquirements of another class will necessarily be limited ; political, because to bring the highest possible culture within reach of the largest possible number is -the only security not only for the happiness, but for the progress of our race. The abolition of free grammar-schools means (as Mr. Haslam puts it) that the education for which a man cannot afford to pay, he shall not have, and that therefore (as I am compelled to add) the most glorious privileges of our existence are to be made permanently dependent upon the accident of
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