asked the Secretary to the Treasury, Whether it is true that negotiations are on foot between the Commissioners of Woods and the Provost and Magistrates of Stirling for the sale of the King's Park of Stirling by the former to the latter; and, whether the Treasury has sanctioned or is likely to sanction the alienation of that ancient possession of the Crown?

in reply, said, the Office of Woods had been in negotiation with the provost and magistrates of Stirling for the transfer of the Crown property under the control of the Woods to the authorities of the burgh, subject, however, to the continued exercise by the public of all the rights of way and of recreation over the land which now existed. In deference, however, to the representations which had been made to the Treasury upon the subject, that negotiation had been abandoned and the property would remain in the possession of the Crown.

I wish, before the third reading of this Bill is put from the Chair, to record my last protest against it, and to declare my conviction that it is the worst Bill, the most unjust, the most reactionary, the most tyrannical in spirit, that has been brought before Parliament since Lord Bolingbroke proposed his Schism Bill in the reign of Queen Anne. The object of that measure was the same as this—to put the education of the people of this country in the hands of the Church of England by discouraging and suppressing all other kinds of education. That failed utterly and ignominiously, as it deserved to fail, and as I hope this also will fail. I believe the Party opposite have taken an unwise as well as an unfair advantage of their position as being temporarily in possession of a great majority. They seem to me to have tried to do every thing that was most obnoxious and offensive to this side of the House. They know that a large number of hon. Gentlemen who sit here, as well as a powerful party out-of-doors, attach the greatest importance and value to school boards, because they call in the people themselves to take part in the work of educating their own children. But the Party opposite have been aiming at the very existence of school boards. If all the Amendments they put on the Paper had been carried, it would have brought that existence into imminent jeopardy—and I must say that the noble Lord (Viscount Sandon) himself has done not a little by his speeches to throw discredit on those bodies. Then with regard to denominational schools, there are many of us here, and tens of thousands out-of-doors, who maintain that the attempt to make national education sectarian is an absurdity and a contradiction in terms, and that it is impossible to have a denominational system imposed upon the people with adequate securities for the rights of conscience. And yet, in the face of this, you are, by this Bill, strengthening, and extending, and intensifying the denominational system. Then comes the 25th clause, which, as it existed even under the Act of 1870, was utterly repugnant to large bodies of persons in the country, because it involved the principle of concurrent endowment, making everybody to pay for teaching everybody else's religion, and because it is practically an acknowledgment on the part of the Government of utter indifference as respects religion, since by paying all sects alike it proclaims aloud its belief that all religions are equally true, or equally false, or equally worthless. But by this Bill you make that clause harder than ever by making it compulsory instead of optional. And all this is done on the plea of zeal for religious education. Now, I do not wish to call in question the perfect sincerity of the loud professions which hon. Gentlemen opposite have made of their own religiousness. But I do not think the best way of showing our regard for religion is to put it into an Act of Parliament, and to force it upon others. I must say that when I listened to the vociferous cheers with which hon. Gentlemen opposite have greeted any allusion to the Bible, or the Church, or religious education, I could not help being reminded of Tom Hood's lines—

"A man may cry Church! Church! at every word,

With no more piety than other people:

The daw's not reckoned a religious bird

Because he keeps caw, cawing from the steeple."

It is curious to observe the effect which the word "secular" produces upon hon. Gentlemen opposite. It seems to have the same effect upon them as it is said a red rag has upon a bull, rousing them into fury. Even my hon. Friend the Member for Louth (Mr. Sullivan), whose sound judgment and generous feelings always keep him, in spite of his fervid Celtic temperament, within the bounds of good taste, indulged yesterday in declamations on this subject which filled me with astonishment and some pain, as coming from him. He told the House that secular education would produce only skilful or clever infidels. But do hon. Gentlemen who say such things really mean gravely to aver that all knowledge that is not directly religious or theological is profane and unholy, and has a tendency to produce infidelity? Does my hon. Friend maintain that to teach a child writing, and arithmetic, and grammar, and geography, and geology, and botany, and other natural sciences, will make him an infidel? Now, I venture to say this—that any Church which fears knowledge, though it be but natural knowledge, which wishes to exclude light unless it passes through an ecclesiastical spectrum, through its own

"Storied windows, richly dight,

Shedding a dim religious light"

—often a very dim religious light—stands self-condemned, because it fears the truth. Now, if all secular knowledge and all secular pursuits are perilous to the welfare of the soul, what a plight we must be in who sit in this House, for we are generally dealing here with purely secular matters; and I cordially wish we never dealt with any other than secular matters, for I believe that our discussions of religious questions do very Little to promote the interests or to foster the spirit of religion. I wish to explain once more to hon. Gentlemen opposite what our views are on this subject. No one wishes the children of our people to be left without religious instruction. I protest against the persistent misrepresentations made on this point. There are many hon. Gentlemen who sit on these Benches who are as deeply and earnestly anxious that the children should be brought up under religious influence as any hon. Gentleman opposite. But what we contend for is, that in a country like ours, where there is so great a diversity of religious opinion, you cannot, in rate-supported or State-supported schools, give religious instruction without trenching on the rights of conscience; that, therefore, the religious instruction must be given at other times and by other persons—in a word, that there must be united secular and separate religious instruction. Hon. Gentlemen opposite who declaim against this principle do not seem to be aware that it was first introduced into the educational system of this country by two great Conservative statesmen, Sir Robert Peel and the late Lord Derby. In 1845 Sir Robert Peel brought forward his scheme for establishing the Queen's Colleges in Ireland. Sir James Graham, in introducing the measure in this House, stated very explicitly that if the projected institutions were to be, as they were intended to be, for the use of men of all creeds in Ireland, it would be impossible to give any theological or religious instruction whatever. Then Sir Robert Harry Inglis—a most admirable man in many respects, though somewhat narrow ecclesiastically—immediately followed Sir James Graham, and inquired whether he was to understand that there was to be no religious instruction given in the Colleges? Sir James Graham assented, and forthwith Sir Robert Inglis denounced the scheme as "a gigantic system of Godless education."And yet that was the system introduced by the Conservative Government of that day, and supported, I believe, by the whole strength of the Conservative Party. Then, in 1832, the late Lord Derby, then Lord Stanley, and Chief Secretary for Ireland under Lord Grey's administration, introduced the Irish system of national education. That was originally intended to be founded on precisely the same principle as that adopted by the Birmingham League, and practised by the Birmingham School Board, of united secular and separate religious instruction. There can be no doubt on this point, because the original draft of Lord Stanley's letter to the Duke of Leinster, in which he expounded his scheme, is still extant. The Royal Commissioners on Irish Education, who reported in 1870, say—

"In that draft the plan projected by the Government was described as one of combined literary and separate religious instruction, each department altogether to exclude the other."

And Mr. Carlyle, the resident Commissioner of the Irish system of Education, in whose hands really the whole administration of it rested, said in a letter to The Times in 1854—

"The system proposed in Lord Stanley's letter was certainly a system of united secular and separate religious instruction."

But there is another incidental evidence of a curious character to confirm this. Some hon. Gentlemen here may be aware that before the system of national education was introduced in Ireland, the Government used to help education in that country by giving grants to a society known as the Kildare Street Society, something like the British and Foreign School Society. Now all the religious instruction given in the Kildare Street Society's schools, consisted of reading a portion of Scripture at the opening of the school, either from the received version, or the Douay version. And yet Lord Stanley, in his speech in this House, declared that even this minimum of religious instruction was too much for Ireland, because the Roman Catholics objected to the reading of the Scriptures without note or comment. Furthermore, the resident Commissioner, Mr. Carlyle, gave evidence, in 1837, before a Committee of this House, that—

"It was strictly correct to say that if the term 'school hours'is understood to apply to those hours for which the board supplies tuition, and not merely permits it, the Scriptures cannot be read during school hours in the schools of the board."

He said further, it was considered—

"That the board does not take cognizance of the religious instruction at all, but that they allow every denomination to take care of itself, through the clergyman." That—"with the separate religious instruction the Commissioners have nothing to do; they have no power of enforcing separate religious instruction at all. If it be not given, the fault is not with the system, but with those who neglect their duty." The Commissioners "employ no one to give the separate instruction beyond the school-house, neither school books, nor other means."

And, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain) said yesterday, in 1866 there was a very remarkable declaration made in favour of this system, signed by 2,754 members of the United Churches of England and Ireland. The signatures comprised the Lord Primate of all Ireland; the Lord Justice of Appeal; Noblemen, 45; Bishops, 5; deputy-lieutenants, 146; justices of the peace (not deputy-lieutenants), 146; clergymen, 733; professional men, country gentlemen, and merchants, 800; miscellaneous signatures, about 387; total, 2,754. The declaration says—

"We, the undersigned members of the United Church of England and Ireland, desire to express our earnest hope that the principle of united secular education, as opposed to the denominational system, may be maintained in Ireland."

And thus hon. Gentlemen will see that the scheme they have been denouncing as some terrible innovation introduced by the Birmingham League, or started by Dissenters to sub serve some sinister sectarian purpose, owes its birth. to Conservative statesmanship, and has Primates and Bishops for its sponsors. But I can call in a more recent witness, whose testimony will, I am sure, be received with respect by hon. Gentlemen opposite—no other than the hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Beresford Hope). In the discussions that took place on the Bill of 1870, the hon. Gentleman suggested a plan identical with that of the Birmingham League. These are his words—

"A solution of the religious difficulty might, perhaps, be found in encouraging the different denominations to send voluntary—and, it might be, unpaid—teachers into the rate-created schools to teach religion, these teachers being either laymen or ministers. They would give instruction according to their own formularies to those only who pleased to attend. There is sufficient religious zeal amongst the various denominations to incite them to provide voluntary teachers for day-schools as they now did for Sunday schools."—[3 Hansard, ccii. 552.]

Now that is absolutely the plan now in operation in the Birmingham School Board schools, and I really must suggest to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham whether he ought not to propose the hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Cambridge as honorary Vice President of the Birmingham League. Now, in regard to this Bill, I find it hard to believe that the people of this country will long submit to have the education of their children placed in priestly hands—especially at a time when priestly pretensions are becoming every day more exorbitant and audacious. That this is so I can prove by the authority of a very distinguished Member of this House. The speech from which I am about to quote was delivered at a Church Congress held at Wolverhampton in 1867. The speaker is referring to the hindrance to Church extension, and says—

"One great hindrance to Church extension is the impression that widely prevails, and I think not without cause, that not only among the High Church clergy, but also among the clergy generally, there is a strong growth of what I may broadly call a priestly feeling….During the last few years every one must have observed more and more, even among clergymen of the Evangelical and moderate party, a steady, quiet, stealthy growth—though without the least guile or sinister intention—of the feeling that the clergy are a priestly order….We believe that that feeling is the parent of great and serious evils….We believe it leads to inordinate multiplication and the bur- den some infliction of rites and ceremonies. We believe that when the temporal power will assist, it leads to the extermination of all who differ from the priestly body. We believe that the priestly idea leads to the establishment of another master in every household, by every hearth, in the place of the husband and the father. We believe, and history shows us, in all creeds, in all times, and in all countries, the same thing—that this priestly feeling ends in raising up and establishing a human, artificial barrier between man and his God."

Then comes a remark in which I very cordially concur—

"Let me remind you that ever since the art of printing resulted in the distribution of books throughout the country—ever since knowledge ceased to be the exclusive possession of the clergy, there has been no faltering in the determination of the people not to have a priestly rule in England."

Now at the head of that speech I find the name of the noble Lord opposite (Viscount Sandon). And I confess I find it hard to understand how the noble Lord, who, with so much apparent sincerity, deplores the growth of the priestly feeling among all classes of the clergy of the Church of England, and has described in such graphic language the terrible fruits of that feeling, can have allowed himself to be made the instrument of pressing through this House a Bill the tendency and object of which is to consign the education of the people of this country, to a large extent, at least, into the hands of those very clergy. Now, Sir, in conclusion, I wish distinctly to give notice that I, for one, do not accept this Bill as a settlement of the education question. I hope we may consider, after the Motion proposed by the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Hartington) on the Report, that that is the conclusion of the whole Liberal Party—that we feel ourselves at liberty, whenever we have the opportunity, to reverse the unjust and tyrannical policy embodied in this Bill.

said, he regretted that he could not vote for the third reading of the Bill. He was not one of those who voted against the second reading, because he thought that it was a distinct educational advance, and because he relied upon the statement of the noble Lord that it was no way intended to reverse the principles of the Act of 1870, or to aggravate the religious difficulty; but, unfortunately, the noble Lord at a later period gave way to the reactionary views of some who sat behind him, and introduced clauses utterly subversive of the Act of 1870, which would greatly aggravate the religious difficulty. In his opinion, therefore, faith had not been kept with the House of Commons. He was convinced that if the Bill had been introduced in its present shape it never would have passed the House of Commons. He entered his protest, therefore, not only against the action of the Government, but also against the spirit of aggressive sectarianism which had been introduced into the Bill, and which, he believed, would give rise to great agitation, and would ultimately end in the destruction of the denominational system.

said, that he very much agreed with what the hon. Member for Merthyr (Mr. Richard) had said with regard to priestly influence. While he (Mr. Birley) would be the last person to abolish that influence entirely, it should be kept under proper control; and if this was not the case it was the fault of the laity of the country. They had an ample opportunity of taking their proper share in the management even of denominational schools, for their co-operation was generally invited and welcomed by the clergy. Indeed, the fact was, the Department required that there should be more than one manager, so that a layman must in almost every case be associated with a clergyman. It was a curious fact that the allegations made about violations of the rights of conscience were always confined to the case of Church and Roman Catholic schools, and never were applied to the various Nonconformist schools. There was no such feeling in the localities themselves, for children freely attended the day schools of the Church of England where there were no others, and yet went to the Nonconformist Sunday schools. He distinctly challenged the assertion that faith had not been kept with the House. All the clauses which were objected to had been carried by the whole body of the Ministerial side of the House, and had been accepted by many hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite. He hoped that when the Bill became law the acrimonious views which now prevailed would disappear, and as in his own neighbourhood the principles of this Bill were already acted upon with very great success he did not see why the same results should not be achieved elsewhere.

said, that so many speeches had been delivered on this Bill in that House during the last two months that it was all but impossible for any one now to give utterance to a new idea respecting it, or detect a new point in it. He, however, thought strongly and felt keenly on the subject, and before the Bill passed its final stage he wished to record his opinion on the measure. He might ask permission to do that more confidently, as he had not opposed the Bill in any of its stages by unnecessary talking, or by promoting uncalled-for divisions. He knew the views he held were unpopular in that Assembly, but he held them sincerely, had striven over many years to promote them, and, although only entertained by a small minority there, they had the adherence of an intelligent body amongst their countrymen outside. The noble Lord (Viscount Sandon) had on more than one occasion accused hon. Members who sat in that part of the House of inconsistency in their opposition to his measure. One section of them, he said, objected to it because it was feeble and incomplete; another censured it because it was too stringent and severe. The difference in these two charges was more apparent than real. As an educational project the Bill was weak, but as a piece of legislative mechanism for strengthening denominational schools, increasing the influence and adding to the authority of the clergy of the Church of England, it was in no sense deficient in power. The Government admitted that it was impossible to secure universality of primary instruction except by compulsion. This, coming as it did from the other side of the House, was a distinct gain. A few years ago, hon. Gentlemen opposite would not have made such a confession. But instead of putting that principle in force by the easiest, simplest, and fairest process—namely, direct compulsion, by the instrumentality of boards specially appointed for the purpose, they had devised an indirect system at once cumbersome, complicated, and complex. He certainly did not share the sentiments of hon. Gentlemen opposite as to school boards, but he was bound to say that he was not altogether surprised at their hostility to these boards. School boards had really been established in a most unhappy manner. They had been, by the action of the late Government, forced upon the country as a species of punishment. The framers of the Act of 1870 said, in effect, this—"We have no objection to sectarian schools; on the contrary we approve of them, and if the supporters of these establishments will cover the country with them, we will aid them in their work by substantial subsidies from the national Exchequer; but if the supporters of denominational schools will not do this, then we will compel them to form school boards." It was to be regretted that such opposition had been shown to these institutions, but called into existence in this way, and as a threat and a punishment, he repeated he was not astonished at the hostility they had engendered, and at hon. Gentlemen opposite attempting, now they had the power, to get quit of them. Yet he thought if their opponents would quietly and calmly review the origin and the history of school boards, they would see grounds to modify their dislike to them. These bodies came into being at a period of some political excitement, when sectarian passions were aroused and Party feeling ran high. The mode of electing their members was the worst—perhaps the very worst—that could have been devised. He did not know the motive for fixing on such a mode for electing members of school boards, but he was quite certain that the effect had been to emasculate these institutions. Through its instrumentality persons hostile to the boards had in hundreds of instances been elected members, and they had ostentatiously proclaimed it to be their intention to make the work of education by their means a failure. They had striven—sometimes, he feared, with success—to weaken the influence of the boards, and to curtail their power. They had, too, persistently exaggerated their cost, and thus attempted to rouse popular prejudice against them. The working of these boards had also been judged most unfairly. Everyone knew that no school could fairly get into good working order till it had been in existence six or seven years. It required that time to get its educational machinery adjusted. School boards had scarcely been formed six years, and few school-board schools had been fully at work three. Yet they had had repeated comparisons in that House, of the work of newly-formed board schools, with the work of sectarian schools which had been labouring from 10 to 12 or 20 years. That was scarcely just. But, notwithstanding these drawbacks, in spite of their unfortunate origin, their more unfortunate mode of election, and the steady hostility and injustice that had been shown to them, school boards, wherever they had had a moderately fair trial, had produced the most gratifying results. In some places they had increased the school attendance by 60, in some by 80, and in others by 100 per cent. This, however, was not all. School boards had given in many places a new and healthy impulse to the cause of education. The formation of school boards had stimulated the managers of other schools to greater exertion; and the result had been that in some districts the whole scope of the educational machinery had been broadened and bettered. This indirect influence for good had scarcely been second to the direct benefit that the institutions had conferred. He was best acquainted with the North of England, and he believed he could say of that part of the country school boards had almost universally been attended with the most encouraging results. Wherever they had been honestly tried, they had succeeded. He, too, was willing to bear his testimony to the fact that in the locality to which he had referred, much of the hostility felt by many members to school boards had disappeared when they had got rightly into action. When the strongest opponents met round the board table to discuss the practical details of the work of education, they gradually rubbed down the corners of each other's prejudices; and in the process of contact they all became fairer and more tolerant. He regretted deeply that the Government had consented to allow any of these useful and much-maligned institutions, even under such stringent conditions as had been agreed to, to be superseded. He was even more sorry to hear the tone and spirit in which the noble Lord and other hon. Gentlemen near him had spoken of them. Such speeches could not fail to generate and sustain a spirit of distrust towards institutions which were calculated to work a great social betterance, and which, if fostered and encouraged, would in time elevate and re-cast the whole character of English national life. Instead of forming school boards, the Government were going to use Councils in boroughs for applying compulsion. He could not say that he had any strong objection to that proposal. Town Councils were elected by, and responsible to, the ratepayers. They were popularly elected institutions. His only objection to throwing upon them educational duties was that they already had as much work to do as they could do well. They had already committed to them great sanitary and municipal responsibilities; and to impose upon them other labours would, he thought, be unwise. But if any other body except such as was specially elected for the purpose had to control our educational agencies, he would prefer Town Councils to any existing organizations. As the borough councils had to apply compulsion, he was sorry the Government had not gone further, and committed to them all the powers of school boards. If, as well as making compulsory bye-laws, the councils could also have had authority to build schools where and when required, and to superintend the work of education in their boroughs, his (Mr. Cowen's) objection to the Bill would have been considerably modified. But while he had no objection to municipal corporation undertaking the supervision of schools in their respective boroughs, he had the strongest objection to Boards of Guardians doing the same work. Poor Law Guardians stood on a different footing from members of Town Councils. Apart from the fact that the votes of popularly elected Guardians were often neutralized by the number of elective, or ex-officio Guardians, the application of Sturges Bourne's Act to the Poor Law systems gave large owners of property a preponderating influence in their deliberations. To state the question roughly, he might say that the Guardians in too many instances represented property and not the people. Indeed, this was what was intended by the Poor Law Amendment Act. It was openly contended at the time that measure became law that the relief of the poor was only an organized and legalized system of charity—the contribution of the rich to the support of the needy and destitute; it was only fair that the men who contributed the largest portion of this charity ought to have the greatest amount of control over its distribution; and he (Mr. Cowen) did not very well see what answer could be made to that contention. But while the system of electing Guardians might be equitable enough when the administration of the Poor Law was only to be considered, it failed entirely to meet national requirements when popular education was to be considered. Dispensing parochial relief was one thing, and regulating the education of a district was another and very different thing. The qualifications for the offices differed, and men fitted for one task might be, and often would be, altogether unfitted for the other. He was opposed on other grounds to the working people being brought too closely in contact with the administration of the Poor Law. It had a tendency to familiarize them with proceedings and practices which could not fail to depreciate their spirit of independence, and, possibly, in the end, degrade them. The less contact the mass of the people had with pauperizing agencies the better. Hon. Gentlemen on the other side spoke on this question as though the whole of England consisted of Lancashire and the agricultural districts. Indeed, nothing surprised him more in the discussions on this Bill than the ignorance which hon. Gentlemen from one part of the country had displayed concerning the habits and thoughts of the people in other parts. He could assure his hon. Friends opposite that there were other districts in Britain than those to which they were so strongly connected by material and public ties. There were "hills beyond Pent land and lands beyond Forth;" and he could say for the North-east part of England that the mass of the independent and intelligent working people there shrank from all possible contact with workhouses. Labouring men would suffer the cravings of hunger, amounting almost to starvation, rather than they would subject themselves to the humiliation, and what they not unnaturally thought the disgrace, of being compelled to seek subsistence from a parish dole. He felt that that spirit of independence ought to be sustained, and not weakened; it might seem a hard thing to say, but it was not at all clear to him that the plan followed in France of the people supporting them selve entirely and having no Poor Law to fall back upon, would not, if tried, have a tendency to increase the sense of manhood in the British agricultural labourer. Nothing to him appeared more indicative of a low state of intelligence and independence than the unblushing manner in which labourers in the agricultural districts of the Midland and Western counties would, for months together, throw themselves upon the support of the poor rate. He could assure hon. Gentlemen that such was not the practice of workmen in the part of the country from which he came; and he could not but regret that the tendency of the Bill would be to diminish that spirit of self-help. As indicating the correctness of what he said, he referred to the fact that although in the North of England they had had a prolonged period of commercial depression, the number of persons supported by the poor rate, and the amount paid for parochial relief, did not increase. If the educational machinery of the country, however, was mixed up with pauperism, the sentiment of dislike that now attached to all contact with the business of Guardians would be weakened and possibly destroyed. A further objection he had to the Guardians taking these educational duties was that the main point they considered was rates. How to keep the rates down was the "be all and end all" of the official labours of a large proportion of the members of rural Boards. This might be all well enough if viewed from a parochial or pauper point of view, but from an educational standpoint such a narrow estimate of public duties was to be deprecated. It might be quite necessary to be stringently economical in the administration of the Poor Law; but the work of national education, if it was to be pursued with advantage, ought to be administered in a spirit of generous and wise liberality such as he feared the Guardians, both by their training, and instincts, and experience, were scarcely qualified to perform. As another illustration of the curious way in which Guardians sometimes measured the duties and responsibilities of their officials, he would refer to a statement recently made at an agricultural meeting in one of the Midland counties. It would appear that several members of a Board in that district had, not in their capacity as Guardians, but as ratepayers, to appoint a schoolmaster. The man they selected for the office was postmaster, farmer, butcher, assistant-overseer, road surveyor, and organist. The object in appointing the man to all these offices was simply to save the rates by giving him many duties to perform, and thereby getting him at a lower salary. The efficiency of the teacher was not taken into account. The smallness of the salary was the only point that weighed with the Guardians in question. To show the different way in which in a large town such matters were managed, he might state that recently in Newcastle they had erected a large unsectarian school; that they had in it 1,200 scholars; and although it was simply an elementary school, they gave the head teacher £400 a-year, and paid the assistant-masters in proportion. This school, even with that liberal remuneration, was made to sustain itself without other support than was afforded by the children's pence and Government grants. Another objection he had to the Guardians was that, as a rule, the farmers and the country gentleman generally were not very warm supporters of education. He did not wish to do any class of his fellow-countrymen an injustice; but he had a strong impression that the section of the community to which he referred were in no sense enthusiastic admirers of the educational policy that was now generally approved. He could recollect the time when it was openly stated at agricultural meetings that the best workmen were the least educated. Again and again, they had heard landlords and farmers declare that when the men got too well-informed, they became dissatisfied and discontented. They sought to better their condition by either asking for additional wages, migrating to the large towns, or emigrating to America or the colonies. Though these anti-educational principles, it was true, were not openly advocated now, they had still a lingering attraction for many. They had bubbled up in all directions from hon. Gentlemen on the opposite side during these debates. Again and again, they had had undisguised expressions of disapproval at the unnecessary time that was spent on educational matters. The direct advocacy of ignorance was not now popular. It was fashionable to support education; and in this country when anything became fashionable it always became despotic and Imperial. Persons, however, who did not openly object to education, did not hesitate to say that the smallest amount of elementary instruction was sufficient for the working man. He had been astonished, and pained to hear some Gentlemen on that side of the House uphold that doctrine. He entirely and emphatically repudiated it. If there was one body of men in the country more than another that required a good education it was the working man. A rich man could afford to be both ignorant and stupid. He could pay an educated man to manage his affairs and conduct his correspondence; but a poor man had no other capital save his intelligence. His stock-in-trade was his knowledge; and instead of attempting to reduce the standard of education, he (Mr. Cowen) thought it was their duty and interest to largely raise it. It was a disgrace to the country, educationally considered, that the standard was so much below what it was in Saxony, Switzerland, America, and in other nations. For the grounds that he had stated, he was opposed, then, to the committing of any educational duties to the members of Poor Law Unions—first, because these gentlemen, as he had said, represented property and not the people; second, the main consideration with them was the "rates," and not efficiency; and third, that, as a body, the section of the community to which he referred was not distinguished for their attachment to, or admiration for, popular instruction. He admitted, however, that in many places the education would practically be handed over, through the instrumentality of school committees and their influences, to the hands of the parish parson, the squire, and a few of their immediate friends. But even that change would scarcely be beneficial. The clergy and the squirearchy had little, if any, more Liberal views on educational matters than the farmers. As a specimen of the sort of teaching given in sectarian schools, he would quote some remarks made at a meeting of Church of England educationists recently, at Cheetwood, near Manchester. On the occasion referred to, Mr. Leresche, the school treasurer, made this significant remark, which he (Mr. Cowen) commended to the consideration of the noble Lord the Vice President of the Council. In the course of his speech Mr. Leresche said it was their intention to get from the Committee of Council on Education as much as they could, and afterwards carry out their own way as far as possible. But it was to the singular speech of another, and more influential man, that he wished to draw the attention of the House. The gentleman in question was a man of ability, energy, and high personal character—he was a near relative of the late Speaker of the House of Commons, and Vicar of East Brent. His remarks at the meeting alluded to were thus reported—

"Archdeacon Denison, in proposing cheers for the Chairman, referred to the school question, and said when the School Inspectors were inspecting the schools in Somerset some years ago, and had done all their other parishes, they said—'Now, let's toss up who goes to East Brent.' [Laughter.] They knew it was not a safe business. [Renewed laughter.] When the Inspector whose lot it was to go to East Brent arrived, he waited upon him(the Archdeacon) and told him his business. He (Archdeacon Denison) said to him—'Well, you are a big man, and not very easy to manage; but I'll tell you fairly that if you come here again, I shall lock the school door, and tell the boys to put you into the pond.' [Great laughter.] He went away and never came again. [Laughter.] Eleven years after that another Inspector went to him, and said—'Perhaps you will allow me to inspect your school.' He (Archdeacon Denison) replied that he did not like Inspectors, that he hated them—he did not wish to hate anybody, and he loved them as Christians and as men, but he hated and detested them as officials, but he told the man that he could go and inspect the school if he liked. The Inspector said he would go, and after he had been there, he (Archdeacon Denison) said to his wife—'Let's go and see what that man's doing. He's been there two hours now, and has had time to spoil the whole of the children in the school.' [Laughter.] They got into the school just as he was finishing, and were informed by the Inspector that he had nearly done, to which he (Archdeacon Denison) replied that he was glad to hear it. [Laughter.] 'Did the children ever sing?' the Inspector asked. 'Oh, yes,' Archdeacon Denison replied, and turning to his wife asked her to start them. His wife had been teaching the children to sing 'Goosey, Goosey Gander,' and after getting their voices into tune, the children struck up—

'Goosey, Goosey Gander,

Whither do you wander,

Upstairs and downstairs,

And in the ladies' chamber.

'Old Father Longlegs

Didn't say his prayers,

So they took him by the left leg

And threw him down the stairs.'

[Laughter.] When the Inspector heard about 'Daddy Longlegs' not saying his prayers, it had such an effect upon him that he thought it was a personal reflection on himself, and went away; and he (the Archdeacon) had never seen an Inspector, either diocesan, or any other, since, and he hoped he never would. [Great laughter."]

This was the sort of education given, and the manner in which, he feared, children of the Church schools too often spent their time. They long complained of the low standard of education amongst large sections of the people; but he did not see how they could expect any higher scale of instruction, if the children's time were spent in singing such silly doggerel as this typical Church clergyman boasted he taught to the scholars in his schools. He had heard it affirmed repeatedly in that House during the last few weeks that Churchof England clergymen were the most disinterested and energetic supporters of education in the country. They had been commended and complimented for their activity in this work without stint. He, however, could not assent to the unqualified praise that had been bestowed upon the parsons. He had had no in considerable experience in the work of popular education. Some of the pleasantest, and certainly, in a public sense, the most useful days of his life had been spent in promoting educational projects. He had been treasurer, teacher, secretary, and president of more than one Mechanics' Institution for the last 20 years, and for nearly the whole of that period he had been secretary of the Northern Union of Mechanics' Institutes; and all he could say from that rather extended experience was, that he had never found the Church of England clergy at all enthusiastic in the support of such societies, or in such education as they conferred. He had oftener found them opponents than friends, and rather antagonists than helpers. It was quite true that the Church of England clergy supported Church schools, but no other kind of schools. In the general work of education, apart from the Church, they took little interest, and in not a few instances the clergy were opposed to it. They were concerned upon no educational matter unless they were the directors, and it was under the guidance and influence of the Establishment. They used these schools too frequently, he feared, as proselytizing arenas for the Church. Of course there were exceptions, but that was his general experience. He was opposed entirely to the idea that the education of the masses was a clerical question. On the other hand, it was, or ought to be, a national work, and one in which the people themselves, and not the parsons, should have the main direction. They were told that it was absolutely essential to give religious along with secular instruction, but he maintained that they could not teach religion in schools. They might teach dogmatic theology. Nay, they could not even teach that. Teaching pre-supposed that the person who learned understood what he was taught; and it was ridiculous to suppose that children could understand their abstruse creeds, collects, and catechisms. All they could do was to compel the scholars to get these formularies off by rote, but that was not teaching. He asked hon. Gentlemen if they seriously thought it was possible to drive religion into a child of from 10 to 12 years of age by three feet of cane, a birch-rod, or a strap of leather? Religion was not a system of manners, or a mere form of praise, or prayer, which evaporated with the repetition of a number of unfelt words. Religion was heart-worship, and its abiding principles gentleness and love; and he was satisfied that the harsh treatment and noisy surroundings of many of our schools were not calculated to encourage the growth of these kindly and generous sympathies. In our system of education, he thought many hon. Gentlemen were pursuing an entirely wrong course. Instead of teaching children what to think, they should teach them how to think: they should try to improve their minds, so that they could think for themselves, rather than load their memories with the thoughts and ideas of other men. They were told that the Conscience Clause was a protection to children of Nonconformists. It might be meant to be such by the Legislature, but he was perfectly satisfied that in practice it was not so in hundreds, or rather thousands, of instances. Dissenting children were made to feel a sense of social disgrace and deprivation in consequence of refusing to receive the instruction that the Church parson vouchsafed for them. To realize the force of this position, he would ask hon. Members who were such ardent believers in the efficacy of the Conscience Clause how they would like to be compelled to send their children to Unitarian schools under the protection of a Time Table Conscience Clause? If they would not be prepared to send their children to schools where Unitarian doctrines were taught and Unitarian hymns were sung, how could they, with consistency or fairness, compel Unitarians to send their children where the doctrines and formularies of the Church of England were so persistently and offensively proclaimed? He believed in time that this handing over of the education of the people to clerical control, and mixing it up with theological instruction, would be abandoned, and that the work of education would be taken in hand by the people themselves. He would have been glad if the measure under consideration had contributed more towards that end. But while he dissented so strongly from some parts of the measure of the noble Lord, he was willing to admit that some portions of it would be of service; and he trusted that, in practice, the fears he entertained of other parts would not be realized. He could not conclude without expressing his sense of respectful admiration for the noble Lord for the ability with which he had piloted the signally difficult Bill through the House, and for the good temper and spirit that he had preserved under much discussion that could not fail to be both exciting and irritating.

said, he believed he was in a more miserable minority than the hon. Member who had last spoken (Mr. Cowen), representing, as he did, what had been called "the residuum of the stupid Party"—namely, the tenant-farmers. Like the hon. Member for Merthyr (Mr. Richard), he had one or two slight protests to make against the Bill. He contended not that it did not go far enough, but that in one or two instances it went too far. He considered that it imposed serious restrictions on the employment of juvenile labour—greater restrictions than the educational requirements of the Bill demanded. And when hon. Members went down to their districts in the autumn and began to talk of the good which had been accomplished, some farmers would very probably ask—"What about educating our boys up to 14?"By keeping the age of 14 in the Bill, he feared a feeling of hostility would be created against it in the rural districts which it would be difficult to allay. He deeply regretted, therefore, that the Government had not accepted the Amend- ment of his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mr. Rodwell). The noble Lord the Vice President of the Council was compelled to go for a precedent to the Factory Act of 1874. But the subject under consideration was not a Factory Act, but the question of education. To carry out indirect compulsion, it was necessary that every inducement should be held out to secure the proper number of attendances; but the Bill would not have that effect. The noble Lord had intimated that several relaxations in favour of agriculture had been placed in the Bill at his (Mr. Read's) suggestion. But all that he (Mr. Read) had done was to strike out one of the most objectionable clauses and provide that the relaxation should come from some local authority, and not depend on the caprice of individual farmers. He had always endeavoured in the district with which he was connected to secure for the children a sound and thoroughly religious education. As a manager of voluntary schools, as a member of a Board of Guardians, and as a ratepayer he was satisfied with the Bill and grateful for it; and as a lover of justice, was glad that it secured religious freedom for the children of the poor.

also wished to say a few words by way of protest before the final passing of the Bill. He regretted that so much had been said in favour of giving education to the working man to make him a mere valuable money-making machine, rather than as a means of developing what was best and noblest in his nature and character, and promoting his intellectual and moral advancement. He also regretted that a considerable amount of excitement and bitterness had been imported into the discussions upon the measure, but thought that, with the exception of one or two unfortunate slips, the noble Lord opposite (Viscount Sandon) had conducted the Bill not only with great ability, but with great good temper, good sense, and good feeling. There were certain provisions of the Bill of which he most entirely approved. The provision with regard to the age at which children should be allowed to commence work was a most valuable one, as it would allow an opportunity for the foundation of a strong physical constitution for the children to be established. There might be differences of opinion as to the suitable age at which children should be employed, but after that age had been attained it was very undesirable to prevent them from being employed in a useful way, as want of employment would probably add to their ignorance the greater evils of idleness and improvidence. There was a danger to be guarded against, as had been pointed out by the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Read). He could not agree with the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. Cowen) that even town councils were suitable bodies for educational administration. Compulsion in itself was necessarily distasteful and unpopular; but if it had to be applied, it should be applied in the least objectionable way, in a direct manner, and by those in whom the people most concerned had the greatest possible confidence. He objected to the Boards of Guardians, because they were the most unpopular Bodies in this country among the classes who would be most affected by this Bill, and were regarded as the Guardians not of the Poor, but of the ratepayers; and besides, he thought it most undesirable to connect education with the administration of the Poor Law. The feeling of independence was very strong among the working classes in the North of England, and they desired most strongly to avoid coming into contact with the Boards of Guardians. Although for two years past there had been great depression in the trade of the North of England, it was a remarkable fact that there had been no appreciable increase, either in pauperism, or in the poor rates. That showed that many of the calumnies levelled against the working classes were entirely untrue, and that they were desirous of maintaining their independence. He thought that independent feeling should be encouraged and strengthened by the House, but this Bill would, he feared, have one of two effects, both of which were greatly to be deprecated—either it would weaken that feeling and familiarize the working classes with the machinery of pauperism, or it would put a stigma and a degradation upon education itself, which would make it distasteful. In reference to the alliance between the Roman Catholic Members and the Conservative Party in endeavouring to secure denominational education, he would point out to the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Sullivan), that if a similar Bill for Ire- land were introduced and supported by the Conservative Party, they would then prove their consistency. It had been said that the working classes desired religious education. He had attended many meetings on this subject, and they had always declared in favour of a national system of education, founded upon a compulsory, free, and unsectarian, or in other words, secular basis. The direct representatives of the working classes on the school boards in every case with which he was acquainted were instructed to support only secular or unsectarian education; and he ventured to say that if we were to have a thoroughly national system of education it would have to be based upon the principle of being free, compulsory, and entirely unsectarian.

asserted that the fundamental principle of the Bill was indirect compulsion. He thought the restrictions placed upon the employment of children were a mistake which would have to be remedied at some future time. The Bill would interfere very greatly, especially in agricultural districts, with free labour, and also with the most important portion of education—namely, the habit which ought at the earliest period to be inculcated on children of making themselves useful. He deprecated the raising of the Standard of education for the poorer classes as tending to render them too proud to work. Every one had felt the results of the spread of education in the difficulty of procuring domestic servants; and a friend of his who wanted to engage a housemaid, was told by one of the applicants that she could not think of taking an engagement where she could not have a room for her piano, as she must keep up her music. An hon. Member had said that in the schools religion should be taught without dogma. How was it possible, he asked, that there could be religion without dogma? No science could exist without it. Mathematics was a series of dogmas, and he pointed out that the first sentence in the "Book of Genesis" and the first sentence in the "Lord's Prayer" were both dogmas. They could not move a step in religion without dogma, and if they did away with dogma they would deprive religion of all its efficacy and all its force. There was dogma in Atheism and dogma in Deism. He contended that the most valuable part of the Bill was that which encouraged the teaching of religion. Viscount SANDON: There seems to be a general desire that the House should now come to a decision upon this question, which has occupied their attention for a considerable time. I wish to express generally my appreciation of the spirit in which the House has received the Bill during its long and protracted discussions. It would be a foolish affectation on my part not to acknowledge that from some quarters there has been a keen opposition to the measure, more than I had hoped from a recollection of the conduct which hon. Gentlemen showed on this side during the progress of the Bill of 1870; but still this is perhaps after all only what is to be expected with regard to a Bill which touches on a variety of difficult and disputed points in connection with this all-important subject, which affects almost every interest and feeling of every class and community in the land. I have always, however, tried to remember, and have often said that, as a matter of course, hon. Members in Opposition have as good a right to their opinions as the Government and its Supporters have to theirs; and, in a great representative popular Assembly like this, it would be absurd and ridiculous to expect that large measures affecting, as this one does, such a vast number of people, opinions, and interests, could go through without considerable friction and occasional, though, happily, not very frequent, outbursts of animosity on both sides. But even allowing all this, and even after all that has passed, I still adhere to what I have said on several occasions—namely, that there is, and has been throughout, a strong and growing under-current of satisfaction and approval of the Government measure widely spread on both sides of the House. I cannot think I am wrong in this opinion, and I have a full hope, and I might almost say confidence, that this will increase into a stronger feeling, both in Parliament and in the country, when the Bill as a whole becomes more understood, and the misapprehensions and exaggerations of the hour have passed away. I cannot forget the many nights we have discussed the Bill in Committee, and the valuable suggestions received from hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House; but, at the same time, I do not pretend to shut my eyes to the keen opposition in some quarters, ever watching and endeavouring to defeat the measure by attack, or alteration, or delay, at the beginning, and going on to the end of the affair; nor can I forget the persevering and cordial support both in Parliament and throughout the country, which has enabled us, even when time began to fail, to carry the Bill through to what, I believe will be, a happy and successful conclusion. This is all past now, however, and has dropped into the historical records of Hansard. I will now rapidly run over the points raised in the speeches which have been made to-day, some of which have been, I venture to say, the most remarkable and interesting of the whole of these long debates. First amongst them, it is impossible not to notice the very interesting speech delivered by the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. Cowen). Looking at the opinions which we know the hon. Gentleman holds in the matter—and most properly and justly holds, just as much as we on this side are free to hold ours—it is a matter of great satisfaction to the Government to acknowledge—and the Committee will endorse what I say—that he has behaved most handsomely throughout the progress of this Bill. It is, of course, known that he is in favour of purely secular education in State-aided schools—a perfect tenable position—though one which the Government, and I believe the country, entirely disapprove of; but when once the hon. Member saw that the House and the country were clearly not with him in his views, but were generallyin favour of the Government's proposals, he has never, by unduly using his influence, or by trying, as was done in some other quarters avowedly, to create delay and obstruction, to stop the progress of the Bill. But the hon. Member has to-day contributed a very interesting speech to the consideration of the whole of the subject—in fact, whenever we listen to his speeches we must feel they are worthy of all attention, as they show much real individual thought. There are two or three points in the hon. Gentleman's speech to-day which I ought to allude to. He raised the question of the cumulative vote, and said it was one of the obstacles to the success of education at the present moment; but I would remind the hon. Gentleman that the cumulative vote was added to the Bill of 1870 by a Liberal Member who now sits on the front Opposition Bench (Lord Frederick Cavendish), and was accepted by the Liberal Government of Mr. Gladstone, when the right hon. Members for Bradford and Birmingham were Members of the Cabinet; and I must add that I never heard that the Liberal Party as a body was against it, and from what passed in 1870 it appeared that many hon. Gentlemen now on the Opposition side of the House thought the introduction of that system of voting very valuable. The hon. Member has referred to the Boards of Guardians, and had raised, not unnaturally, some opposition to their being made the authority in the Bill for seeing that the children in rural districts were instructed, but he has overlooked the fact that the duties of the Boards of Guardians are very different now from what they were formerly. The Boards of Guardians are becoming very much, as I have said before, the rural municipality, and the duty of looking after pauperism is now only one part of their duty. They have become the great sanitary authority, and have jurisdiction perhaps, as a matter of fact, as far as sanitary questions are concerned, rather more over the rich, being landowners, and therefore owning many houses, than over the poor. If, at the present moment, a rich man neglects the sanitary condition of his property, he is prosecuted by the Guardians, just as is the poor man who owns and lives in a filthy hovel, and allows it to get into a state dangerous to health. I would also remind the hon. Member that this Bill largely alters the position of the Boards of Guardians, who, be it remembered, will not act directly as to these education matters from their Body, but by means of a special school attendance committee, which—just like the assessment committees chosen by the Guardians in the same way—would thus be quite separated both in name and in fact from the Poor Law administration, and would be responsible directly to the Education Department; in fact, one of the great changes introduced by Government has been to prosecute in the first instance the employer who tempts the child from his education, instead of the parent who yields to the temptation of getting the child's wages: so that, as I have said, under this Bill the position of the Guardians is again much altered, as the first duty put upon their school attendance committee under this measure is that of prosecuting the employer who breaks the law. They have therefore primarily to deal with what must be called the rich and not the poor man. They will also, of course, have to look after the negligent parent; but it can no longer be held to be a slur upon the poor parent to be thus touched by the school attendance committee of the Boards of Guardians, inasmuch as this same committee has vested in them the duty of prosecuting the rich employer if he is in fault. The hon. Gentleman says he is averse to putting education in the hands of the Boards of Guardians; and most rightly is he averse to such a scheme: but I must just ask him to recall to his recollection that this is exactly what the Government has persistently refused to do during the debates, and that we have over and over again ourselves refused to make the Guardians an educational authority like the school boards, having control over schools, and being able to build or maintain them. We showed our fixed determination specially by absolutely refusing to accept the Amendment of the right hon. Member for Birmingham (Mr. Bright), who proposed to give Town Councils and Boards of Guardians all the powers of school boards, when we insisted—and were well supported by the Committee—upon keeping the Guardians to what might be called, for convenience sake, their educational police duties. I am therefore pleased to think that the Government and the hon. Member for Newcastle are really very much at one on this question of the Boards of Guardians. Then the hon. Member has thrown out some doubts as to the clergy, or the country gentlemen, or the wealthy classes of the country being, as a body, really favourable to the education of the labouring classes. If that was the case, how is it that before 1870, when it first became a legal obligation upon every locality throughout the land, under the Education Act, to build schools for the whole of its population, if voluntary effort had not already supplied them, that I find that £8,000,000 had been spent for this purpose? Who, I want to know, spent this enormous sum? Did the labouring class? Certainly not. Enquire in every place, and you will find that the clergy gave and procured a large proportion. If the clergy and the wealthy classes had been averse to education they would surely not have dipped their hands so largely into their pockets when there was no necessity for them to do so, and when there was no fear of a school board being placed over them if they did not. The hon. Gentleman says he wants to see a high standard of education in the country. I hail him gladly as a fellow-worker in the cause—as by general consent we are known to have been working zealously since we have been in office in that direction—and I remember that the hon. Member gave his cordial adhesion to what have been acknowledged to be the very large and comprehensive changes Her Majesty's Government made in the Education Code last year—changes the whole aim and effect of which was to put within the reach of the poorer classes not merely a mechanical knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic, but, while it took greater security for the conduct, training, and morals of the children, and for the needlework and domestic knowledge of the girls, put within reach of all a higher education in subjects, such as history, geography, physical geography, botany, and mechanics, to suit the wants of different parts of our population, if they choose to require such instruction, and laid down special rules by which all the teaching was particularly to be directed to developing the intelligence of the children. I think I have shown that we have already actually done a great deal in the direction to which the hon. Member pointed, and therefore, on this matter too, it appears that he and the Government are to a large extent agreed. The hon. Member raises certain questions as to the supposed religious difficulty, and refers to Archdeacon Denison, who is an admirable man, but is generally acknowleged to have peculiar and extreme views, and would never be considered to represent the clergy generally: and he told an amusing anecdote to show the little respect the clergy had for the Inspectors of schools. I cannot say whether the story is correct or not, but it is rather hard to quote one special case against the whole of the clergy, who have always been anxious, independently of trying to get any special advantage to their own creeds, to open widely the Book of Knowledge to the people of the country. If the clergy generally were to treat the Inspectors of schools as Archdeacon Denison was reported to have done—and he did not at present admit that the story was correct—the Education Department would certainly have to take care and see that these gentlemen were properly respected when they went into the schools. I certainly should regret if foolish songs were taught in the schools, but we must not forget that children from 5 to 10 years of age may prefer nursery ballads to sonnets of Moore or Byron. The hon. Member spoke strongly as to the impossibility of teaching religious doctrines in the schools, and I quite agree, as I have often said, that it is not at all likely that by your religious teaching to children of the ages of 5 to 12, you will attach them to this Church or that; but a much more important object is gained: I believe, from all I know and hear, that the simple Christian teaching common to almost all Churches, as happily now given in the great mass of schools, has had a great effect on the minds and morals and future lives of the children. There was a meeting of the best teachers in the country held not long ago in London, representing various Churches, and they had prayed the Government, whatever they did, not to abolish that great instrument of religious teaching in the schools, because if that was done, they said, they would not be able to do the necessary work in the schools, and did not know how they could carry them on. I cannot leave this all-important part of the education subject without saying how much I rejoice to think, and I am sure the country and hon. Members generally will join in my feeling, that the effect of this Bill will not, in all probability, simply be to secure a sound elementary secular education for all the children of England, but that, as most of our schools are now conducted, it will secure for them the advantage of an elevating moral training, and the inestimable boon of early acquaintance with the Bible, and early Christian teaching, for those whose parents desire it. Many other interesting and valuable speeches have been made by the hon. Member for Manchester (Mr. Birley), the hon. Baronet opposite (Sir George Bowyer), and others, and I appreciate very much the support which the Bill has received from such Gentlemen of experience. My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Read) has said one or two things against the Bill which I could, perhaps, have wished unsaid; but I think that, on further consideration, my hon. Friend will feel somewhat doubtful as to whether he has been correct in his views of the Bill. My hon. Friend seems to suppose that under the Bill a child might reach10 years of age without having had any instruction, saying that it was hard under such circumstances that a parent should not have the advantage of its labour. But the Bill provides that the local authorities, which will now exist everywhere for these purposes, should be bound to see that no parent habitually neglects his child. This is really one of the charters of the measure. My hon. Friend said he was afraid that no magistrates would convict. I would, however, remind my hon. Friend of the tremendous powers which, under a certain clause of this Bill, are provided to the Education Department in Whitehall. I think I can assure him that, whatever Government is in office, if the Department finds that the school attendance committees show any disposition, not to enforce the law, steps will be taken very soon by the Education Department to send down their own officers to see that it is strictly carried out. [Mr. Clare Read: They are not to supersede the magistrates.] Of course, they are not to supersede the magistrates; but I do not think if a Government officer brought these cases before the magistrates, that the magistrates would be so rash as to neglect a real bonâ fide complaint. And before leaving this point I would just beg my hon. Friend to remember that as our Inspectors constantly visit every part of the country, we shall soon know in Whitehall if the school attendance committees do their duty, and I have no doubt that managers of schools, who are largely interested in the attendance of the children, will also quickly let us know of any cases of neglect. I know, of course, and regret, that the Government and my hon. Friend are at issue in regard to 14 years being fixed as the first age of employment in extreme cases, and as the age up to which a child is liable to be seized and sent to school if an habitual idler—that is to say, "if wandering, &c," to use the language of the Bill—being neither at work nor under instruction—even when it does possess a labour pass; but I would remind my hon. Friend that certain conditions have been attached to the age clause, at his own suggestion, respecting harvest and the necessary operations of husbandry, which are more favourable than those which previously existed. I consider it, however, of the greatest importance, as enabling the Bill to deal with the wastrel class, and as putting a greater pressure on the parents to send their children of their own accord early and regularly to school, and to give them other suitable instruction, to retain the age of 14 years. I acknowledge, however, with the greatest satisfaction the general approval which my hon. Friend gave to the Bill, and which far outweighed his not unnatural criticisms on one or two points. No hon. Member has a more thorough acquaintance with the rural districts and the feelings of the people, and the Government accepts gladly, and as high testimony, his assurance that it will be a thoroughly workable measure, a result to which he has been no slight contributor. The House has also had a very interesting speech from the hon. Member for Morpeth (Mr. Burt). It is impossible not to feel that the speeches made by the hon. Member on these questions are a great addition to the discussions in the House. They have, if he will allow me to say so, an unusual freshness about them, a thorough knowledge of the subject,. and they are delivered in a tone and temper which always renders them acceptable to the House. Of course, I need not say the Government does not agree with the hon. Member on many important points. There is no question about that; but we do cordially appreciate and concur in his feeling as to the desirability of securing for the working classes not only the means of rising in life, but of elevating them in the scale of mankind, so that they may be enabled to take a higher position in the general intelligence of the country, and have the advantage and pleasure of having more intellectual resources. The hon. Member spoke of the desirability of considering intellectual pursuits as a good thing in themselves, and of valuing them for their own sakes, and not looking at them merely from their money point of view, as tending to raise one's worldly position: this is, indeed, a noble sentiment, such as we should expect from the hon. Member, and one with which I cordially agree, and I hail it as representing what I hope may be a growing feeling amongst the working classes, with whom the hon. Member is specially associated. Sound sense characterizes generally the speeches of the hon. Member, and in many of the sentiments uttered by him the Government fully agree. The hon. Member is afraid that the contact in which the Bill placed a portion of the people with the Boards of Guardians might tend to diminish the independence and self-reliance of the English people. Such a result we should particularly regret, and to avoid such loss of reliance we have refused, amongst other reasons, to propose universal direct compulsion. I am confident, however, that when once the law becomes known that children are to be educated, and that they cannot go to work under a certain age if they are not educated, the great mass of the people, both in the towns and in the country, will not need any futher interference in the matter. It is not, then, as a rule, the ordinary respectable artizan, mechanic, or farm labourer who will be brought in contact with the school attendance committees of Town Councils or Boards of Guardians. Important deputations, representing large organizations of working men in town and country, have assured me that these men are full of anxiety for the instruction of their children. With the employers, firstly, these committees will have to do, and then with the negligent, the improvident, and the vicious parent. I should have been prepared to concur with the views of the hon. Member if I had entertained the slightest fear that the independence of the people, one of the most precious possessions of a nation, was likely to be affected by the measure; but I am thoroughly convinced that the Bill will only affect that class, except in special cases of vice or neglect or gross ignorance, which is now touched by the Poor Law. The hon. Member wishes that the constituencies of Town Councils and Board of Guardians should be altered, so as to admit working men on their school attendance committees; but, however desirable this may be in itself, I must, of course, pronounce no opinion upon it. I would remind him that it would have been a serious, and I may say unwarrantable, addition to the Government Bill, had they proposed also to re-model these municipal bodies. I can only say that if working men became members of the school attendance committees, I am sure they will be welcomed there by all men of sense, as they have been in the Great Council of the Nation. I have now alluded, I think, to the most important of the speeches which have been made. I do not think it would be wise nor is it necessary to enter upon the topic of religious differences which has been opened up by the speech of the hon. Member for Merthyr (Mr. Richard). I regret the tone which has been adopted by the hon. Member; but it is a matter for congratulation that Government are not alone in having bitter attacks made upon them by the hon. Gentleman. If the hon. Member has said hard things of the present Government, he said still harder things in the Education Debates in 1870, as they would see on reference to Hansard. He then stated, I quote his words, that the Bill of 1870—of the right hon. Member for Bradford—was a measure for making the education of the people universally and for ever denominational: and he also described it as founded on the principle of concurrent endowment. As to our Bill now, he lays great stress upon the Amendments proposed to it, which he says, if all had been accepted, would have made the Bill horrible; but I must really beg him to remember that we accepted principally Amendments, and important ones too, from his own side, and refused whole sheets of Amendments from hon. Members sitting near us. As to his saying that the present Bill was the worst and most tyrannical measure since the reign of Queen Anne, I will leave the justice of that statement to the sense of Parliament and the community outside. I have had communication with many leading members of the Nonconformist Churches, and am assured by many of them that that is not at all the way in which they look upon the measure. As to the expressions of the hon. Member for Reading (Mr. Shaw Lefevre), that the Government has broken faith in this. matter, by accepting Amendments which reversed the policy of the Act of 1870. I confess I am astonished at such a statement, but it appears to be merely an assertion, and based upon no facts, so I confidently leave it to the judgment of Parliament. I must, however, recall to the hon. Member's recollection—though, perhaps, as till the struggles of the last few days he took little apparent interest in our discussions, he may therefore be unaware of what passed—that in introducing the measure I particularly invited suggestions from both sides of the House, which I intimated we should gladly accept if we considered them improvements, and not inconsistent with the principle of the Bill; and when, on going into Committee, I mentioned some leading changes in the early clauses, resulting from the previous discussions, I closed my remarks by stating in so many words that I must not thereby be held to be precluded from proposing or from accepting from any quarter any other Amendments, and this reservation was specially cheered, in token of assent as I understood, by hon. Gentlemen opposite, and the Paper was at that time crowded by Amendments. As a matter of fact, we have only accepted two Amendments at all affecting the Bill of 1870, and surely after six years' experience we may well be allowed to remedy proved defects—the first, to allow localities to get rid of unnecessary school boards, now that another existing authority is entrstued with full powers to do their work; and the second, to do for England what the Scotch Education Bill of 1872, which was passed by the last Liberal Government, did for Scotland—namely, to confide the payment of fees for poor children to the Poor Law authorities instead of to the school board. I do not allude to the repeal of the famous 25th clause, as that repeal we accepted from the Liberal Party, on the Motion of the right hon. Member for Bradford. The whole school-board system is, in fact, kept intact, and the country has the free choice of which it prefers, unless it neglects to supply schools, when it must have school boards. It is really a perfectly untenable position to call these changes a reversal of the Act of 1870. So much, then, for the speeches which have been delivered to-day. The real opposition to the Bill has been based, the Com- mittee will see, on considerations upon leading points which were fully discussed in 1870, and which were pressed by the extreme section of the Liberal Party upon their Government—namely, universal school boards, universal compulsion, and the extinction of voluntary schools. General free education was also discussed in 1870, and pressed from the same quarter; but all these schemes were steadily opposed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford, and the Prime Minister (Mr. Gladstone), and by the bulk of the Liberal Party, and were rejected by the decisive feeling of the House, even when the Conservatives were only a small minority, so that to press these matters now, which are the special points of the Birmingham Education League, after the country, both at the General Election and at the mass of school-board elections, has decided against that League, had been surely a waste of time. The truth is that hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway opposite are always forgetting that by the announcements of the right hon. Member Bradford, and of the then Prime Minister (Mr. Gladstone), the Education Bill of 1870 was intended to fill up gaps in the voluntary education system of the country, and to do the best to keep those schools alive. They, it is true, seemed to hope that, by what they called a process of painless extinction, the great body of voluntary schools would be destroyed; but this, they must remember, was always denied by the Liberal Government, the authors of the Bill. Upon these assurances of theirs the Bill was accepted by the country and assisted by the Conservative Party in Parliament. I cannot allow them to forget, if they have any further doubts as to my being right, what in one of the leading debates was said by the then Prime Minister (Mr. Gladstone), when he proposed to substitute an increased Government grant for the local aid from rates to the voluntary schools, that that increased grant would, he believed, enable the voluntary schools to stand in competition with the schools for which rates were to be levied by the new school boards under the Bill. This is the very provision which we say, owing to the increased cost of schools under the Act, has not been carried out, and which we seek to set right by our increased Government grant, which has also many other educational advantages. Surely this speech of the late Prime Minister's, and the Amendment which he then introduced, confirms decisively what I have said, and puts beyond the reach of dispute that the Liberal Government, representing an overwhelming Liberal majority, intended and assured the country by word and act in 1870 to maintain the voluntary schools. After the endless discussions in Committee, it is, perhaps, difficult to recollect how the Bill now stands. I will, therefore, so to speak, take stock of what has passed, and will give a rapid sketch of the measure as it leaves this House. The Bill was introduced by the Government on the assumption, which the debates have completely confirmed, that the country wished that there should be universal education for the people. We have, therefore, headed the Bill by a declaration that it should be considered henceforward the legal duty of the parent to provide elementary instruction for his child. We have not, however, adopted the scheme of universal direct compulsion, with its array of rules, attendance officers, and expenditure; but we have gone upon the supposition that, with respect to the great majority of parents, if you remove the great temptation of his child's earnings by punishing the employer who employs the child under the legal age, and without the certificate of sufficient schooling, they will, both from the usual wish to comply with a law when it is once passed, and from real regard for the child's welfare, get their children properly instructed. We consider it a matter of the highest importance for the people, as affecting the national character, its independence, its self-reliance, and the sacred principles of freedom, that the people should not be told by the State that so many hours a day, for so many weeks in the year, they should send their children to school. The case is of course quite different when a locality by popular vote, and under the guidance of a school board of its own electing, chooses to have the rules, &c, of direct compulsion. This, under this Bill, they can do just as before. But now comes the second stage of the measure, if the parents do not, in their own interests and those of their children, send the latter to school, or get them properly instructed, the Government has held that these parents come into a different category: they have shown themselves unfit for the precious charge of their child; so then, in the interests of the child's future life, and in the interests of the country of which he must become a citizen, we say that the State has a full right to intervene, and we then have no hesitation to apply direct compulsion, and we charge the local authority to lay down compulsory rules for the child's education, which the parent has shown himself unfit to manage. I have thus given in short the principle upon which we have built up our measure. I do not expect to see any sudden educational revolution created within the next 12 months by this measure, and should feel some alarm if such was the result. We are dealing, by the hypothesis, with a class of people who are unwilling to send their children to school, and if a sudden revolution in their family habits were brought about amongst this class, it would set them against the Bill, and do more to set them against education than any legislation could do in the other direction. I think, therefore, a very important provision of the Bill is that by which it only comes into operation very gradually by a sliding scale of five years. This will greatly relieve the strain of the new law upon the parents, the children, and the employers of labour. The Bill, then, after the declaration of the parent's duty, goes on to say that no children should be employed under 10 years of age, and by so doing we put on an equality all trades and occupations throughout the country, and I am confident that this will be a great gain to the parents and the employers. The next step is to fine employers who break the law; and then we provide that at 10 years of age a child to be employed shall have a certificate, either that he has passed a certain Standard of knowledge, or that he has completed five years' previous attendance at an efficient school, or, which is the "honour certificate," that he has passed a higher Standard than the necessary one, having also regularly attended an efficient school. Those certificates are thus of three kinds, and form a most important part of the Bill. You have the dunce's pass, the ordinary pass and the honour pass, and the last-named will, I hope and believe, give a keen stimulus to the work of education in many dis- tricts. This is, I know, a new plan, but it is surely worth a trial. It is like a prize in the school for the children most remarkable for attainments and character—however poor they may be—and is, in fact, an exhibition founded by the State; but the trifling money advantage is its least important part. So far our legislation by compulsion, &c, has been all confined to driving the children to school: on this, in my opinion, we ought not in fairness only to base our legislation. I have a good confidence that the honour certificate will not only do much more to secure regular attendance at school, but that it will do a still more valuable work—it will awaken a keen sense of honour and ambition, and the invigorating feeling of distinction, in many an out-of-the-way place in the country, as well as in many a back court in our towns, and will lay the foundation for the honourable success of many a child in after life. The next point is that which has reference to children between the ages of 10 and 14. The Bill here deals with "wandering" children, and provides that where a child is habitually not at work and is found wandering, even if he has got a labour pass, he is bound to be sent to school by the local authority, unless there is a reasonable excuse. This is a most important principle in the Bill—that a child up to 14 years of age shall not be idle even after he has got the "labour pass." All wastrel children, so to speak, will be looked after by this Bill. Then the important clause having reference to day industrial schools comes in as a supplement to the action of the Government respecting wastrel children in our towns. This provision is now surely shorn of all possible danger of abuse, and I entreat the House to give their cordial support to that which is after all avowedly only an experiment. It is forced upon us by the existence of an enormous evil never yet dealt with—that is to say, the particular class of children who haunt our big towns: the wretched children who throng the worst parts of our cities. These are the children who, if they are girls, grow up to be the miserable women whom we pass with loathing in our back streets, and who are the depair of our workhouses, and, if boys, they became that peculiar, stunted, degraded class which prowls about our worst alleys, which emerge into light only at moments of popular disturbance, and which make a constant home of our gaols. These poor children become the disgrace of our Christianity and civilization, and grow up to prey upon society. Ask the school boards in the big cities: they will tell you they elude their grasp, and, unfortunately, the ragged schools, which alone effectively dealt with them, have been much diminished, unintentionally, by the Act of 1870, and thus these are the very children for whose education the intervention of law is most needed. I earnestly hope, therefore, that Parliament will help the Government in the attempt—I confess it a difficult one—to cope with one of the most terrible evils of our civilization. The Bill then proceeds to provide for the payment of school fees by Boards of Guardians, when necessary in cases of great poverty, as in Scotland under the Act of 1872; and then it removes that great bone of contention, the 25th clause of the Act of 1870. The removal of this clause was not owing to one side of the House, nor to either political Party, but was owing to the spirit of conciliation which happily influenced many hon. Members on both sides of Parliament, who felt primarily and very strongly for the cause of education. The measure provides that existing local authorities everywhere in boroughs and towns in the country shall appoint school attendance committees; at the beginning of next year, therefore, they will have, in every part of the country, a new authority to look after the education of all the children. The erection of the existing local authorities into school education authorities, as far as seeing that all children get due instruction is concerned, is a most important point, it not only will effect a great saving of expense and prevent the Party bitterness which must follow from frequent elections, in opposition to the scheme of creating new boards everywhere for this purpose, but it has the immense advantage, as all must feel who look at it broadly, and not from a Party platform, in a political point of view, as it tends to concentrate duties in the hands of the existing local authorities, to increase its dignity and weight, and by giving it fresh duties of interest to attract the best people to enter its ranks. Beyond this, these school attendance committees may appoint little local committees out- side their own bodies, in every village, to aid them in their work. As there has been some misapprehension as to school boards, I must add that school boards will be appointed as heretofore by the Department where a place does not make a sufficient supply of schools, and it is also left optional to every part of the country to have school boards if they desire them; further, where there is a school board, but no school, if two-thirds of the people desire to get rid of it, and the board is not required in the opinion of the Education Department for the purpose of education, a majority of the ratepayers can do so. I should be truly sorry to have it thought, for one moment, that by having accepted this provision, that the Government meant to weaken the authority of the school boards. On the contrary, as long as the present Lord President and myself are at the office, I can assure the Committee they will have the firm support of the Department—as they have had hitherto—as long as they do their duty. This very Bill itself ought to show the country that the Government wishes rather to increase the efficiency of school boards in their difficult education labours. These changes have been little noticed on this head, but look at its provisions; independently of the great assistance given to school boards as to school attendance by the new general indirect compulsion of the Bill, there are many other special provisions for their benefit. All the heavy expense and inconvenience of bye-elections is done away with—a great boon to large towns—and they are enabled to fill up, as in Scotland, their own bye-vacancies. Then, it is now provided that they can build offices for themselves: a matter the large places were very anxious for on the ground of expense and convenience. Further, they are to be allowed to raise money by loan for this purpose and for building industrial schools; and last, though not least, we have removed from them that great source of bitterness, the 25th section of the Act of 1870. All this surely shows a desire to facilitate the work of school boards. I hope from this survey of the Bill, the House will feel with me that a great advance has been made—a great advance, I mean, towards securing the sound education of the whole of our people; but when I use the word advance I must guard myself against being supposed, in accordance with expressions I have heard used, to mean that it would be an advance in our course to adopt general direct compulsion. If we are driven to this at last, it would be an acknowledgment of national weakness, by the failure of this or other schemes, which I, for one, do not at all expect. I should hold that to be obliged to confess that parents were not able to do their duty to their children without the daily intervention of the State, and that to be driven thus to direct compulsion would be anything but an advance: and I trust, and cannot but believe, that hon. Members on both sides will agree with me that if they can do without direct compulsion it will be a subject for rejoicing. I claim then for the Government and for myself that we have kept steadily in view in this matter the real advantage of the children. We have throughout taken this as our guiding star. This being once secured, we have endeavoured to interfere as little as possible with the industry of the country, and to avoid the fatal mistake of throwing discredit upon the labour of the hand or of discouraging the habits of work, and we have also kept constantly in mind that it was all-important in the interests of education itself and of the national character to interfere as little as possible with the personal freedom of the people, to incur as little unnecessary expense as possible in carrying out the operations of the law, and to utilize every existing institution. So far as I am concerned, now that the Bill is about to pass through this House to "another place, "I can only say that I shall endeavour to forget all the opposition the measure has received, and I shall try only to bear in mind the unexpected support which it has received from all quarters of the House. I desire now to express my warm acknowledgments of that support, most kind and cordial, which I have received in my difficult task. The recollection of the attacks made upon us will soon pass away, but not so the remembrance of the kind and valuable assistance we have obtained. In conclusion, then, I will venture to express the honest hope and expectation, in which I believe most hon. Members will join me, that, whatever have been their opinions in the past, whatever may be their political or ecclesiastical opinions, they will do their best, each, in his own district, to make the measure work as efficiently as possible, so as to give effect to the earnest desire of the Government, of Parliament, and of the nation, so as to place our social system on broad and deep foundations, by securing the general sound instruction of the whole of our people, and thereby fitting them to be worthy subjects and useful citizens of the great State of England.

said, that when the Speaker put the Question from the Chair, and proposed that the Bill should be read a third time, and challenged hon. Members to a division, a great many of them would have to consider what course they would have to take under the circumstances. Hon. Members would agree that it was a grave question for many of them to say whether, after these protracted debates, they found themselves in a position to vote for the third reading of this Bill, or whether they would be compelled to vote against it. The noble Lord opposite (Viscount Sandon) had placed before them the condition in which the Bill would leave the House if it were passed. In two sentences he (Mr. Goschen) would state two of the results which would occur to many Members on that (the Opposition) side of the House. School boards had suffered in reputation and power. The 25th clause of the Act of 1870 had been repealed, but a worse clause had been substituted. School boards had suffered in consequence of the position which the noble Lord and the Party opposite had taken up. The authority of the boards would be weakened in the country, and the legislation of 1870 had been represented in a different light from that in which it was conceived and executed. They would further find themselves in this position—that while the noble Lord said the 25th clause was a bone of contention and had been removed, an arrangement had been substituted in its place which would cause as much contention and as much heart-burning, and would be universal, extending over a wider area than the clause of which it took the place. Under these circumstances, what course ought those of them who felt strongly on this point to pursue? He would only speak for himself, but he believed he should be speaking the sentiments of a great many on that side of the House when he said that throughout the whole of the discussions on the Bill their opinions, and their political consciences, he might almost say, had been stretched to the utmost. Many of them felt that the 25th clause had left a grievance in the minds of a large portion of the community. Many thought that any Bill that did not, to a certain extent, remedy the grievance under which the Dissenters thought they were labouring would not be a satisfactory measure. But so anxious were they to support the Government, in the interests of the people, that through many stages of the Bill they did not oppose it, but voted in favour of it. On the second reading, and in Committee, even at last, when the hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr. Pell) had proposed his clause, which was received with so much dissatisfaction on that side of the House, they supported the Government. On the Report they only made a protest, and throughout they had shown an interest in the educational part of the measure, and were most reluctant to take any step hostile to the Bill. But, subsequent to that protest, and notwithstanding the proof of conciliation on the part of the Leader of the Opposition, on the Report a blow was struck at the Nonconformists, strengthening denominational schools, and against, he would not say the prejudices of some hon. Gentlemen, or their wishes, but their just claims. He asked, whether it was a fair mode of dealing with the House that on the Report, at the end of the Session, when it was impossible to communicate with all classes of the country and give the country an opportunity of pronouncing on such a thing as this, that a radical change should be made in the character of the Bill? The noble Lord minimized the effect of the Bill, but hon. Members knew it would have a great effect. With regard to the repeal of the 25th clause, the Government were putting an end to the dispute by the force of its large majority. It could not be said that it was a removal of the bone of contention. If it was removed from the area of the school board, it was not removed from the area of the ratepayers or the public or those interested in education. That being their position, what was it their duty to do in the present crisis? He saw no other course open to them than this—that if there should be a division, they should record their votes against the third reading. He knew that that vote would be misinterpreted, but he thought he might appeal to the action of the Party, and to what the noble Lord opposite himself had said—namely, that they had been most anxious to promote the cause of education, to show that, unless under great provocation, they would not have opposed the measure. He did not want to vote against the Bill as a matter of form, but he thought that it would be better in the interests of education that the Bill should not pass at all than that it should become law containing those provisions which had been recently introduced into it. Moreover, if the result should be to throw out this Bill, another might be introduced next Session, and then the question of the denominational system could be more fully canvassed. The noble Lord had said that the Bill should not aggravate the religious difficulty, but that pledge had been broken, because the measure aggravated the difficulty in a manner that would set a large portion of the people of the country against the scheme. He thought it a misfortune that the question should have produced so much acrimony, and he did not think the cause of education would lose if the Bill was not read a third time. No hon. Member had ventured to answer the question which was put to the Government the other day—namely, if they had Unitarian schools, with a Conscience Clause, would they compel children of the Church of England to go into them? That was a challenge which had never been taken up. He believed that in the long run popular feeling would declare itself against the compulsory attendance of children at denominational schools, and the support of such schools by public money. Personally, if a division were challenged, he had no option but to vote against the Bill.

said, that as he differed somewhat from his right hon. Friend who had just sat down (Mr. Goschen), and as probably there would be a division, he thought it absolutely necessary that he should explain what course he intended to take. It would be very kind of the House to listen to him, as he was now speaking his own personal views in the matter, and giving what was almost approaching a personal explanation. Now, he naturally looked very much to educational results; but he did not agree with some hon. Gentlemen that if the opponents of the measure had succeeded in preventing its passing that it would be absolutely necessary to re-introduce it next year. Indeed, he thought it would have been possible for the Government to have gone on for some time without any fresh measure. He agreed with the noble Lord opposite (Viscount Sandon) in much that he had said as to the educational results of the Bill. Those results were to him of the greatest importance. First of all, they had got this result, that work was stopped under 10 years of age. That was a very great result. Then they had the principle established that after 10 and up to the age of 14 the children must attain a certain Standard, or work and school went on together. He considered that another great result. [An hon. Member: Not in agricultural districts.] He thought his hon. Friend was mistaken there. By the Amendment of his noble Friend the Member for the West Riding (Lord Frederick Cavendish), on the second reading, the principle was established that no child could work fulltime after 10, and before the age of 14, unless it had attained a certain Standard of efficiency, or had made a certain number of attendances, failing which it would be put upon half time, or work and school together. His hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Clare Read) thought they had gone too far in enlarging the half-time age from 13 to 14. He, however, regarded that as a great advantage; and there was another—an advantage the effects of which it was not very easy to overlook—that workshops had been placed under the same educational provisions as factories. But these were not the only good educational results obtained by the Bill. These results referred to indirect compulsion; but the Bill had been so improved that it was now, in his opinion, a measure of direct compulsion. Upon this point he thought there had been some misconception. The noble Lord opposite (Viscount Sandon) had always interpreted direct compulsion in a way that he (Mr. Forster) did not. He seemed to think that in order to establish direct compulsion, it should be ordered that every parent should be made to send his child to school for certain hours every day. That was not, as he understood it, what they were aiming at. What they were aiming at was, that by the law of the land a parent should be bound to provide for the education of his child, and that if he neglected to do so, some authority should cause it to be done for him, and the parent should be subjected to a penalty. That was what he considered to be direct universal compulsion, and that was what was enacted by this Bill. Parliament was bound, first of all, to declare by Act of Parliament what was the duty of a parent, and accordingly it said, by the 4th clause, that it was the legal duty of a parent to see that his child was taught, as well as fed and clothed; and in the 8th clause—originally the 7th, as now amended—it told the local authorities throughout the country that if any parent habitually neglected to perform his duty in regard to the education of his child he was to be made to do it. To his mind the educational results of these provisions were very important, and he should be sorry to learn that the country disapproved of them. The hon. Member for Sheffield (Mr. Mundella) was really to be congratulated, for almost every one of the recommendations which he urged in his Motion upon the second reading had been adopted, or rather complied with, inasmuch as the Bill had been made to accord almost entirely with the suggestions of the Factory Commission. Leaving the educational results for a moment, he came to the other features of the Bill. His right hon. Friend (Mr. Goschen) considered himself compelled by the alteration which had been made in respect to the 25th clause to vote against the third reading. It was, however, possible to overrate the change which had been made. Still, he exceedingly regretted that the Government had allowed the subject to be mooted, and he entirely agreed with his right hon. Friend as to the mode in which the change had been made—a change which had been brought forward with so little Notice, and to which the Government themselves had become reconciled in so brief a time. But that was merely the way in. which the result had been arrived at. And what was the result? Those who were opposed to the change evidently thought that in the transfer of duties the Boards of Guardians would inherit the whole of the difficulties of the school boards, and would be put in a new position. That would not be the case; for at the present moment the Boards of Guardians experienced and were meeting those difficulties, and they heard nothing about any particular inconvenience arising. At that moment every Board of Guardians throughout the country was required by the Act of 1873 to perform the same duty as the parochial boards of Scotland—that was, to pay the school fees of out-door paupers, under regulations similar to those of the 25th clause. The enormous majority of the children who were neglected and for whom payments would have to be made were the children of the out-door paupers; and what was proposed now was merely that the children of the comparatively few parents who were too poor to pay fees, but who were not paupers, and with regard to whom the school boards had at present the option of paying or not paying the fees, should be put, as in Scotland, under the same superintendence as those who were paupers. They were, in his opinion, doing a great thing in relieving the school boards of this difficulty. The school boards themselves, in his opinion, would think it no slur that it had been taken away from them. The London School Board, he was informed a little while ago, had petitioned the Department to get rid of it. He was sure of this—that under the change there would be an immense diminution in the amount of school fees that would be paid; for this reason—the Boards of Guardians had both more knowledge of the inability of payment on the part of the parents and more will to take care of the rates than a school board—they were more economical, and better knew who were too poor to pay, and who were not. He did not know whether Boards of Guardians were denominational or not; but he did know that a large number of school boards were not secular. He was perfectly sure that in those places in which the school boards had made the most payments under the 25th clause—in Manchester, Salford, and Liverpool—the practical effect would be that the denominational schools would receive far less help out of the rates than they hitherto had received. He could not, therefore, make this change a ground for voting against the third reading of the Bill, much as he regretted the mode by which this result had been arrived at. Having always held that the parent had a right to choose the school to which, he would send his children, the change did not, of course, weigh much with him. He was perfectly well aware that he might be charged now, as indeed he had been charged before, with inconsistency to this extent—that in places where there was only one school the parents would have no option. In such a case, he would have to choose between the child and the parent, and it being so necessary that the child should be educated, he should decide that the child should be sent to the school that did exist. It had been asked of the supporters of the Bill how they would like to be compelled to send their children to school if only Unitarian schools existed. Well, there were many situations in which inconveniences and difficulties arose, but they might depend upon it the establishment of mere unsectarian or secular schools would not get rid of this particular difficulty. For instance, they would have to deal with the Roman Catholic parents, and with other parents of strong religious views, who certainly would not like to have their children compelled to attend secular schools. They might say that was a most unreasonable prejudice; but they would nevertheless find that the same difficulties and inconveniences would arise much as at present. Considering, therefore, the educational results of the Bill, especially as amended in Committee, he could not, on account of the change with regard to the 25th clause, vote against it. But he had now to consider the two clauses which had been introduced into the Bill, and to which, as the House was aware, he was strongly opposed. He had very little doubt that the clause for the dissolution of school boards would not have much practical effect. Never was the House of Commons occupied so long a time upon so small a matter. ["Hear, hear!" from the Ministerial Benches.] Hon. Members on the other side cheered that statement; but if they felt the reason of it they should not have pressed so small a matter so strongly. Some of them on that side of the House did their best to minimize the effects of the clause, and they did so fritter it down that it came now to very little. It was wonder- ful how quickly the animus that cropped up in the heat of debate passed away, and was forgotten; and coming to the third reading, it was not sufficient for them to say that they disliked the hard speeches made and the animus displayed; but they must consider the actual measure itself. The other clause was a very important one, and one which obliged him not to record his vote at all—he referred to the relaxation of the restrictions with regard to the Parliamentary grants. He could not put himself in the position of being supposed, by voting for the third reading of the Bill, to assent to this alteration. He regarded it as a most important change of principle, and although its immediate effects might be slight its ultimate effects would be great. He believed further that those ultimate effects would be exactly opposite to those intended by the promoters; for denominational schools, supported without subscriptions, if they did not become State schools, would become much subjected to State control. Now, as to the effect which this Bill might be supposed to have upon the condition of things as they were left by the Act of 1870, he thought the Government had acted most unwisely in disturbing the settlement of 1870, and he must be allowed to say that, in consequence of these changes, the alteration in the Parliamentary grant, and the dissolution of school boards, he did not consider himself any longer bound by any engagement he might have been supposed to enter into at the passing of the Act of 1870. He hoped, however, that his Friends on this side of the House would not misunderstand him. In regard to the Act of 1870 he had been in this pleasant position—that he had never felt himself compelled by expediency or for the purpose of getting the Bill passed to do anything that he did not consider fair and just, and in the true interests of education. What, therefore, he wished to state was simply this—that he should now consider himself perfectly free to adopt in this important matter of education, under any changed circumstances of the country, whatever course he thought most conducive to the interests of the children and of the country generally, though he must be allowed to say that he was still of opinion that the Act of 1870 had been framed upon fair and just principles.

rose to call attention to Mr. Cave's Mission to Egypt, and to move,

"That it is inexpedient that the British Government should take any part to facilitate loan transactions to the Khedive of Egypt."

He said that the Motion was now somewhat out of date, because the evils which it was intended to guard against had not come off in a direct form. He had kept the Motion on the Paper to bring it forward that day, rather with the view of giving the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shoreham an opportunity of giving some information to the House on his important Mission, than with any other object. The Session bade fair to end as it began, with discussions regarding the Suez Canal and the affairs of Egypt. He would not refer to the Suez Canal, except to say it was evident that the great and glorious results which the Press and the public seemed to anticipate from that purchase had not been realized. He was bound to say also that the evils, the risk of which had been incurred had not so far developed themselves, but that, as often happened in such cases, neither the good nor the evil was so great as had been anticipated. He would confine his observations to the Mission of the right hon. Gentleman and the state of Egyptian finances, of which his Report was the subject. At one time there was very great reason to fear that Her Majesty's Government might meddle with the finances of Egypt, and he, for one, thought it undesirable and inexpedient to do so; but he was very glad to find that the intention of Her Majesty's Government to appoint a Commission to deal with the Egyptian Debt had not been carried out. The general feeling of the country, if he (Sir George Campbell) apprehended it rightly, was that too large a political character had been given to the right hon. Gentleman's Mission, and that too large a staff accompanied him to do what might very well have been done by a clever and experienced financial clerk. He went to ascertain the exact state of the finances of Egypt, and not to produce any great political or financial effect upon that country. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would take the opportunity of giving the House some information with regard to the Report which had been presented to Parliament, and especially in regard to the sources of the information contained in the Report, and to the state of the Egyptian Revenue, especially the effect of the imposition of the Moukabala and the probable effect of the cessation of the Moukabala. He should be glad to hear the right hon. Gentleman justify his sanguine view of Egyptian finances, and to know that the reports of these finances were founded on clear and undoubted evidence. Until he (Sir George Campbell) heard full explanations on those points he must continue to regard the right hon. Gentleman's Report as too sanguine. If it should prove that the right hon. Gentleman had been too sanguine, that would be, he apprehended, a great evil, because the result had been to bolster up unduly the credit of Egypt—a result which the Khedive, a shrewd and sagacious man, no doubt desired. At first the Khedive did not like the Mission, but finding it was inevitable, he determined to utilize it to the utmost for the benefit of Egyptian credit, to supply it with facts of a sanguine and roseate hue, and thus to favour a financial scheme, which, if it had succeeded, would have induced the people of these countries to lend their moneys. He (Sir George Campbell) was glad that scheme for the conversion of the Egyptian Debt had not succeeded; for he was very apprehensive that if it had succeeded, all the people who lent their money would have said, and said with some justice, that they were induced to do so by the Report of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shoreham. He had expressed in the Resolution on the Paper, that it was better they should not interfere to try and patch, up Egyptian finance, for he did not believe in patching up the finances of foreign countries for the benefit of the widow, and the orphan, and the poor clergyman, and the half-pay officer. He was aware that it was argued that for the benefit of the poor people who held these old Egyptian loans, these foreign loans should be patched up. He pitied those poor people very much; but if we were to adopt this mode of assisting them, a great many other people might similarly get into difficulties. He believed the first loss was the best, and that it was not wise to prop up the credit of any foreign State that might be in a rotten or tottering condition. He thought, too, that the very sanguine reports of the Revenues of Egypt would lead to great harm; and it might lead the Khedive to think it necessary to justify the estimate by screwing more money out of those under his control. He found that the land revenue of Egypt was already ten times the highest revenue which we obtained from the people of India. It was above the average rent per acre of the land of England, and, if additional taxation was imposed upon the down-trodden cultivators of Egypt, the result would be one we should not be justified in aiding and abetting. He found from the figures that the land revenue of Egypt was £4,300,000, and that on account of the operation of what was called the Moukabala that revenue had been reduced by about £1,600,000. He also found that about £1,500,000 of the Moukabala had been treated as an asset, whereas it was in reality only a capitalization of the Revenue. There would be, according to his figures, a loss of £3,200,000 of the revenue on account of the cessation of the Moukabala. He wanted to know where these figures came from, and on what it was that the right hon. Gentleman based his sanguine estimate of the finances of Egypt on the cessation of the Moukabala payments? If a new land tax was, as he gathered, to be imposed in substitution for the Moukabala, great injustice was likely to be done. He would be glad if the right hon. Member for Shoreham removed that impression. There were other items of revenue of which he should like explanations. In other parts of Europe an octroi was supposed to be a local tax which could not legitimately be taken as a source of general revenue, and if the estimate of the net profit of the Egyptian railways was correct, they must be the most profitable railways in the world. He had the greatest doubts of the possibility of, and therefore of the expediency of attempting to, veneer these old Oriental Governments with the gloss of modern civilization. They had a strength and vigour of their own; but his experience was that the result of any attempt to civilize and modernize them was to destroy their old vitality without imparting a new one. This was more specially the case when you put them into the hands of City financiers and tried to vitalize them with money from the City; there could not be a more speedy, more effectual road to ruin for these States than their putting themselves into the hands of persons in the City. Whereas the Predecessors of the Khedive had executed considerable works of public importance, and yet had incurred only a small Debt, the impression derived from the Papers was that the Khedive had incurred large debts and done little work with the money. We had not only aided him in great financial schemes and industrial enterprizes, but our money had also aided and abetted him in great political projects. He was an exceedingly ambitious man, and he had conceived the project of establishing a great Empire in Africa, which he thought would be better in the hands of still more civilized Powers. As the result of the loan from this country, he had established a large Army, which had not only been employed for great conquest or attempted conquest in Abyssinia, but 15,000 or 20,000 black troops in Egypt had been sent to assist in crushing the Christians of Turkey, a course of proceeding which to him (Sir George Campbell) seemed to be a serious thing to be done with the money of this country. Further, a Mahomedan Power must be a very great difficulty in the way of our efforts to put down the Slave Trade, and the evidence was strong that in the Red Sea, under the Turkish and Egyptian flags, a very large slave trade was carried on. Considering the doubtful character of the enterprizes which the Ruler of Egypt undertook, at all events, there was every reason why at present the Rulers of this country should not bolster up the credit of the Potentate of Egypt; that he should settle as best he could with the financiers with whom he might deal, without being patted on the back in official Reports to our own Government, or having his credit bolstered up by any other indirect means. Having made these observations, perhaps he would best consult the opinion of the House by not moving his Resolution, and by simply calling his attention to the subject, in the hope that he would elicit some statement from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shoreham.

who was received with cheers, said: I rise in accordance with the hon. Member's invitation, and because I imagine the House will expect me to say a few words before the Session closes; otherwise I should much prefer remaining silent. I agree with him that his Motion is now somewhat out of date. I feel that the interest which formerly attached to my Mission has well nigh died away, and that the affairs of Egypt have naturally been thrown into the shade by more urgent and important events in the East. I should not, therefore, be justified in repeating what is said in my Report, or detaining the House over the varying fortunes of the Egyptian Mission. My Report has long been before the country. All that we said and did in Egypt, and a good deal more, has been duly chronicled and commented upon. Still less is it my business to defend the policy of sending the Mission to Cairo. That will be done by others. But whatever differences of opinion there may have been in England on that point, I believe there was little doubt in other countries. I believe, moreover, that without it—without the exposure of the perilous state of the finances of Egypt which resulted from our inquiries—her Ruler would, like so many others in similar difficulties, have gone on shutting his eyes to the danger of the course he was pursuing, and the end would have been more hopelessly disastrous than the present crisis. The hon. Member charges me with unduly bolstering up the credit of Egypt. That may be his opinion, but that was not the opinion of the Khedive. He complained that the Mission, far from assisting him to borrow, closed the Money Market against him; and, if that were so, it may turn out that this was the best thing that could have happened, though his difficulties may have been aggravated at the time. No doubt, such a Mission to an independent Power was perhaps unprecedented, and it was a very delicate and difficult duty to carry out our instructions so as to avoid giving offence on the one hand and to attain our object of obtaining accurate information on the other. I hope we have performed that duty with tolerable success. I am sure the Khedive will admit that we were not wanting in the respect due to his high position; and I must say that His Highness treated us with every consideration, and seemed most desirous of giving us all the information we could desire. Whether this information would have been so readily afforded to the "clever clerk" whom the hon. Member would have substituted for my Mission may be doubted. It has been suggested by the hon. Member that all our information was merely second-hand, and that we were obliged to take what was set before us without asking any questions. That, of course, is in the main true, though not entirely so. We did test what we had opportunities of testing; but, of course, we could hardly be expected in two months to unravel the intricacies and audit the accounts—kept in Arabic—of the Finance Minister. We might have been deceived, no doubt. Still, we had this to rely upon, that though we might easily have been deceived, yet that a person who wished to deceive us would hardly have asked for an experienced English financier to remain in his employment for five or ten years, to whom all the accounts of the Government were to be submitted, and by whom the statement furnished to us would, of course, be examined. The result, however, has exceeded my expectations. I fully expected that many errors would be detected and exposed, and was prepared to be satisfied if the truth at length came out amid the conflict of statements. But what has happened? The Report has been before the public for four months. It has been translated into every civilized language, and as far as I know, beyond some very minor details chiefly arising from accidental errors of transcription—the detection of which shows the care with which the Report has been scrutinized—it has been accepted as accurate, and has formed the basis of every negotiation which has up to this time been carried on. The dif- ference between the French computation and the figures in my Report, I have already explained, in answer to a Question in the House, to be due to circumstances which have taken place since my Report was written. I at one time hoped that the plan indicated in that Report—not of assisting the Khedive to borrow, as the hon. Member for the Kirkcaldy Boroughs (Sir George Campbell) imagines, but of preventing his borrowing more—would have been carried into effect by capitalists in this country. We had good reason for expecting this; but unfortunately our expectations were not realized, and the matter was afterwards complicated by the extreme pretensions of the French holders of Treasury Bonds, to whom the necessities of the Khedive, driven as it were into a corner, obliged him to yield. For this I am in no way responsible. Indeed, I told the Khedive plainly, and placed it on record, that the acceptance of any plan which did not provide for the full payment of his creditors was really an act of bankruptcy, and was incompatible with the expenditure which he was still carrying on. I believed that his liabilities might have been met then. I believe they may be met even now, though of course it is much more difficult. The total indebtedness is far larger than when my Report was written, and the Khedive is most unfortunately again involved, this time probably against his will, and in consequence of the obligations he is under to the Porte, in the waste of war. I am naturally sorry that my own labours did not bear fruit more speedily and more conspicuously, but I hope that they may yet be carried to a successful issue by more fortunate and abler hands. This one merit I may, without presumption, claim for my scheme—namely, that it kept steadily in view the equitable demands of creditors on the one hand, and on the other the relief of the taxpayer—for whom the hon. Member expresses very natural sympathy—from burdens too heavy for him to bear. It was in order to further both these objects that I laid much stress upon a complete control over both the collection and the appropriation of the revenue, to be vested in the Control Department presided over by the financial agent whom the Khedive was anxious to obtain from this country. This is the key of the whole position. Whatever ar- rangements may be made in future, I am convinced that such a control must form part of them; and one of the worst features in the Decrees which have been issued in favour of the French scheme is the absence of any security for the independence and permanence of the Control Department. I think I am bound to say a few words, and they shall be very few, on the character of the Khedive, who has sometimes been spoken of in very hard, and in some instances, I think, very unjustifiable terms by a portion of the public Press. The Khedive has been even compared to the late Sultan, but no two characters could be more unlike. The Sultan's fall was preceded by his abdication of the functions and duties of a Sovereign. His vast expenditure was mainly upon unworthy favourites, upon luxury, and debauchery. The Khedive, on the contrary, is the most intelligent and laborious man in his dominions. In his Cabinet early and late, there is hardly any public business with which he is not familiar. He allows himself scarcely any rest or relaxation. His Highness told me once that nothing was so delightful to him as a few weeks' repose at Minieh amid his private estates, but that he had not been able to go there for three years. Profuse in hospitality, proud of entertaining the princely visitors now not unfrequent in Egypt in a princely way, he is frugal and simple in his personal habits. He is, however, obliged to work with the instruments which custom and tradition have handed down to him, to employ officials whom he cannot trust, and whose object is to enrich themselves as rapidly as possible, and to insure against their uncertain tenure of office by plundering the Exchequer. Consequently he endeavours, as many others have done, to manage everything himself, which Rulers of far greater bodily activity would entirely fail to do; and though his knowledge of detail is extraordinary, it is difficult for him to see what it is everybody's interest to conceal. I was once told in Egypt by an eminent official, that the difficulty of educating Arab children lay in the fact that they had no conscience, their only motives being fear and the hope of gain. Probably in consequence of being aware of something of the same kind in others than children, His Highness is too prone to throw him- self into the arms of hardly more disinterested foreign advisers who press upon him schemes of various kinds, some good, some crude and ill-considered, but mostly involving heavy expenditure, an undue proportion of which goes into the pockets of these advisers, who are often identical with or closely allied to the contractors who carry out the works, and the financiers who find the means. Loans at ruinous rates, bonds renewed on terms still more ruinous, supplementary contracts in which, for obvious reasons, the Khedive is as much at the mercy of the contractor as the English Post Office used to be in respect of the great steamship companies when contracts were to be renewed. All these have eaten out the resources of the country. The Khedive is of a sanguine disposition, easily impressed with new ideas, which uncontrolled power and impatience of restraint lead him to realize without proper deliberation. Those around him are afraid to tell him the truth. It is most rare for him to find his ideas combated or corrected. The answer of his highest Ministers is usually, "Arda"—"As you please." The customs of the country, polygamy, the system of adoption, the palaces and great establishments considered necessary for the various branches of the ruling family, the practice, as old as ancient Egypt, of never repairing or finishing the work of another, all contribute to the ruinous expenditure. Even Nature appears to encourage this kind of extravagance. The slowness of the growth of trees in the North seems to attach people to one locality. There is no chance of making more than one place in a lifetime. In Egypt, not only is the growth of trees extraordinarily rapid, but the acacia and sycamore can be transplanted at almost full size. The avenue to the Gezeerah Palace, which was not in existence a few years ago, looks as if it had been planted 50 years. It is only fair, however, to mention that the Khedive is the first of his race who has shown an appreciation of the antiquities of his country. In Mohamed Ali's time, the priceless monuments of the past were used as quarries for his bridges and factories. His Highness has collected these objects in a most valuable museum, freely open to the inspection of travellers. The hon. Member talks of the Khedive having done very little. In reply to this, I need only allude to the Bahr Ibrahim, a navigable irrigation canal 160 miles long, fertilizing vast tracts of land. He speaks also of the Khedive originating sugar cultivation, which, he says, is only successful on virgin soil. But I may remind him that Mohamed Ali originated this cultivation, and that the place where sugar pays perhaps best, is the colony of which we have heard so much lately, the island of Barbadoes, where the soil is almost as artificial as in Malta. Still, I agree that the cost of these enterprizes has been enormous; sugar factories unfinished, with expensive machinery lying about; irrigation works, with recent inventions, never completed; experiments half tried—these represent a waste of capital never to be restored. The great body of Europeans resident in the country think only of getting as much as possible out of the general plunder, and of exempting themselves from the taxation to which they ought to contribute. A curious specimen of their character and ideas might be seen in a complaint from Alexandria, in The Times of Wednesday last, that high rates of interest could no longer be obtained; that a contract for a thousand quarters of wheat, which used to change hands 30 times, paying 30 brokerages and employing the staffs of 30 merchants, was now made direct by the Government with one exporter, who paid one brokerage, and then sent it out of the country. This was regarded as a sign of degenerate times. The great want, and one we have endeavoured to impress upon the Khedive and to some extent to supply, is that of an official body of high-class Europeans, such, for instance, as our public servants in India—a class which the hon. Member who has just spoken knows well—men accustomed to deal with Native races in outlying Provinces, and to conduct affairs in which tact, integrity, and decision are required. Under such men the railways and Customs duties would produce far more than at present. I have alluded to the uncertain tenure of office. There seems, moreover, to be no system of appointment. We do not expect a complicated system of Civil Service Examinations like our own; but we might suppose that when a man was found fit for his post, he would retain it. Far from it: Ali Pacha, when at the head of the railway department, proved himself to possess the rare qualities requisite for such a post; but he was suddenly made Governor of Alexandria, and then Master of the Ceremonies at Cairo, where I left him. His successor, Zecchi Pacha, after being several months in office, did not, as we were informed, know whether the French mails went by railway from Cairo to Suez or not. Such men as those I have indicated would also protect the Fellaheen, for whom the hon. Member expresses natural sympathy, from irregular collection of land tax, from corvées, and from the many forms of oppression and extortion which cripple their energy, and make them reluctant to apply money to the land, inducing them rather to conceal it and deny the possession of it. The state of the peasantry is highly unsatisfactory, though I doubt their being as wretched as many writers imagine, simply because it is their habit, after the manner of the Jews of the Middle Ages, to make themselves look as poor as possible. But this alone, it must be admitted, implies a great deal. Those, however, among us who have studied the Reports of the various Commissions on the state of women and children employed in mines, factories, and agricultural labour in this country, will acknowledge that we are not justified in being too severe upon a nation only just emerging from barbarism. The hon. Member has asked about the Moukabala. I will not go into figures, for which I refer him to my Report. But, shortly, the Moukabala is the redemption of land tax. I have shown in my Report that it has proved very unfavourable to the Revenue. The Khedive has discovered this, and wishes to put an end to it, which he cannot do without paying the sums advanced by the proprietors. He also inquired about the octroi. In Europe, no doubt, the octroi is received and expended by municipalities; but in Egypt, where everything is done by the central Government, these imposts are paid into the Exchequer, and form part of the general revenue. I feel I have detained the House too long. I could say much more about Egypt and her Ruler—subjects in which I naturally take deep interest. I am bound, however, before sitting down, to direct attention to one or two points: First, to my remarks on the Moukabala in the covering despatch of my Report. This paragraph was published by an accident, for which I alone am responsible; but I promised to explain that the Khedive states that I misunderstood him, that he did not say that he had only recently discovered the error in the calculations of the land tax, but that he thought it had escaped our notice. Secondly, it was alleged in one of the papers that I had submitted my Report to the Khedive in the first instance, and at his request made it more favourable. It is hardly necessary to say that there is not a word of truth in this. The Report was written on my way home and after my return, and was seen by no one outside the Mission, before it was delivered to the Government. I have only one other point upon which I feel bound to touch, and I do so with great pleasure. I feel bound to acknowledge the obligations under which I personally am, and the country in general, in my opinion, is to my colleague, Colonel Stokes, not only for his labours in regard to the Suez Canal arrangement, but for the tact, the intelligence, and the industry he brought to bear upon the work of the Mission, and the valuable assistance he rendered in our interviews with the Khedive and in the preparation of the Report. I am sure no better man could have been chosen to represent British interests on the Suez Canal direction, and I am glad to bear this testimony to one who cannot make his voice heard in this House. Sir, there is still corn in Egypt, and there are not wanting those who are ready to reap where they have not sown; but I trust that they may fail in their machinations, and that better days, and a more lasting, because a more securely founded, prosperity may yet be in store for that interesting and hospitable country, and for its amiable, peaceful, and industrious inhabitants—a country in which there is the greatest security for life and property and the most entire freedom of religious worship, a country in which European ladies, unattended except by Natives, may and do travel in perfect safety from Alexandria to the Second Cataract,—and of how many Christian lands can this be said?—a country in which every Englishman must take especial interest, as the gate of our mighty Empire in India.

said, he had listened with great interest to the statement of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Cave). The remarks he (Mr. Dodson) had to make would have reference to the policy of the Mission itself, which appeared to have been attended with a fatality of cross purposes amongst those who initiated and conducted it, and the last thing he intended would be to convey the slightest reflection on the right hon. Gentleman, who had been placed in a most difficult position. In October, the Khedive had requested the English Government to send out two gentlemen intimately acquainted with the English system of accounts, to act under the superintendence of his own Chancellor of the Exchequer; but the Government, instead of sending two officers to give him the assistance required to investigate the condition of his finance, had sent out one of their own Colleagues. It did not appear to have been known whether the information obtained was to be regarded as confidential or not. At first, it appeared to have been presumed that it was, and a telegraphic inquiry brought the answer from the Khedive that it was intended solely for the information of our Government. Then, on its being intimated that it was intended to lay the Report before Parliament, publication was objected to by the Khedive pending a certain negotiation, but the Prime Minister described this objection as a general one in the then condition of the Khedive's finances. Next, Lord Derby telegraphed that refusal to consent to publication was injurious; and the Khedive replied that he never refused, but asked only for temporary postponement. The declaration, however, made by the Prime Minister was so prejudicial to the Khedive that he telegraphed requesting immediate and unreserved publication. The Khedive was placed in this dilemma—that whereas immediate publication was injurious to him, such a situation was created for him that non-publication was worse. At least four different versions of the confidential nature of the Report were given; but after all that had been said, and after all the withholding of information on the part of the Government, there was the despatch of the Khedive showing that he wished the Report only withheld for a short time pending the appointment of a Com- missioner. In fact, the Khedive had shown that he only wished for a momentary delay in the publication of the Papers. There was one other point to which he wished to call attention, and that was, that there had been a very narrow escape of this country being to some extent involved in the responsibilities of Egyptian finance. Lord Derby telegraphed to the Khedive at a most critical moment in the condition of his affairs, to await the arrival of Mr. Rivers Wilson, and to abstain from hasty action because proposals were under the consideration of English financiers, but those proposals came to nothing, and it was then necessary for Lord Derby to telegraph that the Government had no proposal before them, and could not originate any, so that we raised false hopes and expectations. Lord Derby, in his last despatch, declared the Mission had been of undoubted benefit to the Khedive, but it was difficult to see how this could be when his bonds had since fallen in value from between 50 and 60 to 40; and, indeed, the Khedive himself was reported to have said of the English Government—Ils ont creusé ma fosse. The Khedive was willing to abide by the plan sketched in Mr. Cave's Report, but the voluntary conversion of a debt of £75,000,000 required the assistance of bankers and capitalists, and, as they did not come forward, the plan could not be carried out. The only chance for the right hon. Gentleman's scheme was the assistance of great capitalists. How otherwise could the Khedive be expected to carry it into effect, as Lord Derby told him he might, unless compulsorily. According to the Correspondence, Her Majesty's Government were asked to appoint a Commissioner as one of the International Commission to carry out the plan recommended by Mr. Cave. On the 21st of April, Lord Derby telegraphed to inform the Khedive that he had heard with satisfaction that he proposed to adopt the plan proposed in Mr. Cave's Report, and told His Highness that the Government would have much pleasure in suggesting or recommending a Commissioner. Now, the plan recommended in what was known as Mr. Cave's Report, involved the appointment of a Commission which was to receive a certain part of the Revenue, which was to be handed over to them, and by them applied to the payment of Debt, and it further involved that His Highness was not to interfere with the Committee of Control, nor to raise any fresh loans without the consent of the Committee of Control. But the defect of that scheme was that either the Commission would have no powers to carry out this proposal, or the Khedive would be deprived of his Sovereign rights. The Government, however, had gone very far in coquetting with the appointment of some Commissioner. After the Khedive had agreed to the French scheme, Lord Derby declined to recommend a Commissioner to form one of the International Commission. He (Mr. Dodson) did not mean to say that the refusal to recommend a Commissioner was not valid and good; but he regretted that the Government had committed themselves so far, that Lord Derby should have found it necessary to explain himself out of the recommendation. The scheme of Mr. Cave was a voluntary scheme, but the scheme adopted by the Khedive was a compulsory one. Lord Derby, however, was too far committed to be able to get off on that ground, and therefore he said he would not recommend a Commissioner, because the amount of Debt was larger than was stated in Mr. Cave's Report; that the charge would be £1,000,000 more, and so on. All those things, which might be traced through the Correspondence, showed that Her Majesty's Government went rashly into the business, and that they had been at cross purposes with the Egyptian Government all through. If he were called upon to sum up the result of this Mission, which was described by Lord Derby as having been such an undoubted benefit to the Khedive, he should say, shortly that the Mission was a fiasco, the Report was waste paper, that we had done no good to the Khedive, no credit to ourselves, and certainly had not improved our relations with the Government of Egypt.

:said, the last words of the right hon. Gentleman rather reminded him of an expression in Shakespeare, "I knew I should have your good word." Indeed, the Government had never expected anything else when the subject came to be discussed, than that the right hon. Gentleman would not spare them any comments which he thought would be disagreeable. But when the right hon. Gentleman described the Mission of his (the Chancellor of the Exchequer's) right hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham as a total fiasco, and the Report as being so much waste paper, it was to be regretted that his Colleague the right hon. Member for the City (Mr. Goschen) was not sitting beside him, because he (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) would have liked to have asked that right hon. Gentleman whether he considered the Mission such an entire fiasco as the right hon. Member for Chester would have them believe, or the Report to be simply waste paper as he gave them to understand? Whatever else might be said with respect to the Mission, he was inclined to think that the Report which his right hon. Friend had laid before the country and the world, and which had been subjected to such severe and minute criticism by, it might be, interested persons, and persons who had all kinds of information, had stood a very severe test, and one point was clear—which was that his right hon. Friend had obtained a large amount of valuable information, and had put it together in a form which rendered it a valuable authority, and in all the schemes which were afloat it had been taken as the basis of information on which great reliance might be placed. He really felt that it was necessary to make these observations in answer to the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman; but, of course, the criticisms which he had made were perfectly legitimate criticisms, and the questions were questions which it was fair that they should be called upon to answer. He was afraid that it would be inconvenient at that time, when it was to a certain extent after the interest in the matter had subsided, and that it also would be unfair of him to detain the House by going at very great length into the minute particulars which he might enter into, and he would therefore endeavour in what he had to say to confine his observations to following as far as he could the line which had been taken up by the right hon. Gentleman, and explain the points which he had thought it necessary to call the attention of the House to. The right hon. Gentleman said that that business had been marked by a series of blunders, and that they had on many points been at cross purposes with the Government of the Khedive. Now, in the first place, with re- gard to the origin of the Mission, the right hon. Gentleman said that the origin of the Mission was, that the Khedive had applied to them for a gentleman or gentlemen, possibly to assist in the management of his finances, and that what he required was one or two clerks of business-like habits and experience in business matters; and that instead of that, they sent him a Gentleman of high rank, one of their own Colleagues, with instructions that he was to assist the Khedive in various ways, which, after all, he never did assist him in. But let them bear in mind the history of that Mission. It was perfectly true that the application was made by the Khedive in the first instance for two gentlemen who were to go out and assist him in his financial department. But when the application came the course taken was this—the Foreign Office receiving it communicated with the Treasury, and the Treasury took time to consider the matter, for they felt some little hesitation and some difficulty as to the class of persons to be sent, as to the precise amount of responsibility the Government would assume in recommending one person more than another; and they also felt there might be some difficulty as to the instructions and stipulations which they might have to give to those persons when they were to enter the service of the Khedive. The Government were considering those points when an interlude occurred which very much altered the position and increased the importance of what they were about to do. That interlude was the purchase of the Suez Canal shares. The Mission of his right hon. Friend was in many respects distinct from the question of the purchase of the Suez Canal shares, and the right hon. Gentleman had treated it apart from that question. He would try to follow the right hon. Gentleman's example as much as possible, but he was not able entirely to separate the two matters, because they were in their origin closely connected, and, in point of fact, the reasons which led the Government to take the one step had considerable relations to the reasons which induced them to take the other. It was said by some that in the purchase of those shares Her Majesty's Government intended to make a great commercial speculation, by others that they aimed at great political objects, by others that they were coming forward to assist the Khedive, and various other explanations had been given as to the grounds of the purchase which had been made. But the action taken by the Government was not upon any of those grounds. Of course, in taking a step of that sort many considerations entered into the mind of the Government, and into some of those considerations it was not necessary that he should then enter. But this was one very leading consideration. The Suez Canal was important to us, and not to us only, but to Europe at large, especially as the highway to the East. It was also valuable property, capable of being converted into money in the hands of the Khedive, and Her Majesty's Government were aware that the Khedive was in a position in which it was necessary for him to raise money. Her Majesty's Government, therefore, were anxious lest he should make use of the valuable property which he held in the Canal in order to get money in some way that might be prejudicial to the interests of this country. They felt that it would be of great importance to this country and to European interests that by one and the same action a considerable command of the Canal should be obtained by England, so that there might be no fear of its falling into the hands of others who might make use of it inconveniently to England, and to Europe generally, and by the same transaction they would improve the position of the Khedive, and enable him to meet pressing difficulties, by advancing money on those shares. Well, upon these considerations the Canal shares were purchased, and then they had again to take up the question which was still before them as to what they were going to do with respect to giving the Khedive assistance in the way of officers to advise him in the financial question. That was not originated by the Canal shares, but had assumed a greater importance in consequence of that transaction; and various considerations necessarily imported themselves into the question. They had to consider what was likely to be the effect of that purchase, and what use the Khedive would make of the £4,000,000. One of their objects in giving the money was to get him out of his financial difficulties; therefore, they were anxious that he should be well advised as to the mode in which he should apply that money, so that it might not be thrown into the sea or spent in useless works. They were anxious again to ascertain for themselves whether there were any reasons why they should take further securities than they had done with regard to their position in connection with the Suez Canal—what would be the measures most desirable to be taken—whether it was desirable to have separate arrangements as to the constitution of the Company, which to a certain extent was under the Khedive's patronage. On these grounds they thought the best course would be to send out a Gentleman of such position, experience, and weight, that he would be able both to give advice to His Highness and obtain for them valuable and useful information. They thought that by associating Mr. Cave and Colonel Stokes they should best obtain the ends they had in view. They believed they were thus doing a good service to Egypt and likely to put matters on a proper footing between Egypt and themselves. But they did not lose sight of the original ground on which they were proceeding. The original ground was the request of the Khedive that they should send out a gentleman or gentlemen who might assist him in his financial department. [Mr. Lowe: Might assist his Ministers.] That was a very refined distinction, he thought; but, at all events, they were asked, as, he had said, to send out a gentleman or gentlemen to assist—he would not say whom—but in the financial administration of Egypt. They bore in mind that the Mission of Mr. Cave had for its preliminary object, as regarded the relations between England and the Khedive, to ascertain what sort of person should be sent, what position he would occupy; and the result was that Mr. Cave did give them such information that they selected Mr. Rivers Wilson to go, as the gentleman the Khedive had asked for. He, therefore, said there was no cross purpose in the matter; the gentleman sent did fulfil the Mission the Khedive had requested them to undertake—to send out a gentleman competent to render him the assistance required. He might appeal to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of London (Mr. Lowe) himself whether in making that selection they had not made a good one, or whether they could have made a better? But, said the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Chester, while all this was going on, Mr. Cave was preparing his Report. He sent it home, and a question then arose whether that Report was to be published, or whether it should be considered confidential? He gave that as an instance of cross purposes on the part of the Government. Well, he (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) was not at the moment prepared to go through every one of the Questions put in the House—every one of the communications made at one or another time on that subject, but he would wish to point out to the House that when they were continually being asked a Question here and a Question there, and when they were expected to give an answer at the moment, it was very difficult not to give an answer which might seem in a certain way contradictory or inconsistent with another answer given at another time, because the circumstances of the case might vary from time to time, and they could not be fully aware how much of the information at the time was subsequent to the Report. He certainly was not aware, at first, how far it might be fit to publish the Report, for it was not even written in February when he gave the first reply to a Question on thesubject—at all events, it was not communicated to the Government, although he was privately made aware of what its general character would be, yet he was unaware how far it would have to be considered confidential. When it was sent to them they were aware that the information was obtained from the Khedive, but not under the seal of confidence, and the question was, whether they could publish it without his permission. At the same time, they considered, as the information was not of a character that could be considered confidential, the Khedive should have no objection to its being printed. They communicated with him on the subject, Mr. Cave having authorized them to say that nothing in the Report had been communicated to him under the seal of confidence. Then came the question whether they should publish it or not. At that moment the position of Egyptian finance was somewhat critical. There were hopes that an arrangement would be made which might be deranged by the publication of his right hon. Friend's Report, unless, indeed, they were prepared to come forward and assist the Khedive. Therefore, it was said there was inconsistency again between what his right hon. Friend at the head of the Government had said as to the unsettled state of Egyptian finance being the reason for not publishing the Report, and the explanation which the Khedive himself afterwards gave. But the Khedive was naturally anxious to get assistance from Her Majesty's Government of a practical kind—he was anxious for a Commissioner, who might carry with him authority, to be nominated by the British Government. He might not have rightly understood the difficulties, but he believed that by urging upon them the nomination of a Commissioner, and by objecting to the publication of the Report, he might put a pressure upon them to induce them to comply with his wishes. They were not able to comply, and the result was that the Report had to be withheld, simply because the Khedive objected. They were obliged to tell the truth. They withheld it not from any feeling of their own, but because the Khedive objected to its publication. If there was any confusion occasioned by the short answer his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was obliged to give, it was, to a great extent, due to the unfortunate position in which he was placed on the occasion of being obliged to give an answer which might be abrupt and could not enter into the full circumstances of the case. He (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) explained the matter immediately afterwards—the next day he thought—and he pointed out that his right hon. Friend, in his reply, had no intention of bringing discredit upon Egyptian finance, or of implying that there was anything in the Report damaging to Egyptian credit. It was simply to the effect that arrangements were in progress; and in that sense, it was perfectly correct to speak of those arrangements as being in an unsettled state. Not being settled, they were rightly described as being in an unsettled state. There was another point which the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Dodson) touched. He took notice of an expression which occurred in a telegram from Lord Derby to Egypt. The expression used was this—

"Government have reason to know that proposals are under the consideration of certain English financiers, which may lead to a satisfactory settlement of the Khedive's affairs. You should urge His Highness to abstain from any hasty action, and at least to await the arrival in Egypt of Mr. Rivers Wilson."

The right hon. Gentleman commented on some expressions of the Khedive, and threw on the Government the responsibility of the position. The circumstances were these—The net result of his right hon. Friend's Mission to Egypt—its primary purpose was the selection of Mr. Rivers Wilson, according to the request of the Khedive. They communicated this while his right hon. Friend was still in Egypt. The Khedive expressed satisfaction with the selection of that gentleman, and requested that Mr. Rivers Wilson might be sent out quickly; at the same time, he expected that there would no longer be any occasion for Mr. Cave to remain in Egypt—he hoped Mr. Rivers Wilson would be sent out and that Mr. Cave would return. His right hon. Friend accordingly proceeded to leave Egypt and come home; but Mr. Rivers Wilson, who was preparing to go out to Egypt, naturally put himself into communication with the Khedive's representatives here, and with Egypt by telegraph, and he was instructed by the Khedive to endeavour, before he left England, at all events before he left Europe, to make some arrangement for giving effect to what might be agreed upon as desirable. The Government, having once nominated Mr. Rivers Wilson, and being informed that the Khedive was pleased with the selection, considered themselves entirely released—dissociated from any further proceeding which Mr. Wilson might take as the Khedive's servant. That gentleman was in Paris making arrangements in the service of the Khedive. Of what those arrangements consisted the Government were not cognizant, although they had reason to believe that Mr. Wilson had hopes that they would end in a successful result. All of a sudden the Khedive thought it desirable to send to the French Government to ask for a gentleman to be sent to him for financial advice. The Government were surprised at this information, which came upon them suddenly, and they thought it possible that the Khedive might not be aware of what was going on, and might think that Mr. Wilson was not coming, and they thought it well to let him know that Mr. Wilson was on his way. Mr. Wilson had, in fact, left Paris, and was somewhere upon his journey, and they requested the Khedive not to take any steps until he saw Mr. Wilson. Having sent his right hon. Friend on a Mission to Egypt, and he having proposed a scheme, and having selected a gentleman fully competent to carry out financial arrangements, they did feel it unfortunate to hear that the Khedive had applied to France for assistance, and they feared that it was owing to some misapprehension. They, as Her Majesty's Government, had no communication with capitalists, and nothing to propose. They only wanted to know what the Khedive had to propose. That was the explanation of that point. Then the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Chester commented upon some expression used by Lord Derby in which the noble Lord spoke of the undoubted benefit which had resulted to His Highness and to Egyptian finance, and further remarked that the Egyptian Funds had fallen, and that the Khedive was reported to have said we had dug his grave. Of course, he (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) could not say what expression His Highness might have used on this or that occasion. It was not unnatural that as the Khedive was pressing them to appoint a Commissioner to assist him in a scheme for the consolidation and reduction of his Debt, he should use every kind of argument to show that the position was due to them, and they should assist him out of it. Every sort of argument was natural, and for his purpose legitimate to use. As to the Egyptian Funds falling, was it an advantage to keep them up? They fell because of the light which was let in upon matters, and discovering what was not before known. What was the process going on in Egypt before the Mission of his right hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham? Egypt was subject to a large fixed Debt—a considerable Debt—not a Debt which was crushing to the resources of the country, but still a considerable Debt, and in addition Egypt was burdened with the weight of floating debt, with obligations which would shortly have to be met. It was a necessity that the Khedive should meet his obligations, and the consequence was that money had to be raised at sacrifices ruinous for the future, and a house of cards was built up in the form of a floating debt. And the state of things must have got worse; the time must have come when the floating debt must be paid, and then Egypt would be brought to a state of bankruptcy. "What was the benefit?" asked the right hon. Gentleman. Did he not think there was a benefit when the Khedive was involving himself in loans at 20, 30, and 40 per cent? Was it not desirable to bring such a state of things to a conclusion? Was it not, he (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) would ask, a benefit to Egypt to stop such a state things? He would ask the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of London whether there would be any advantage in going on with a fool's paradise, supposing all things pleasant, till the crash came—all the heavier for being thus deferred? It was, he thought, the truest friendship and the wisest policy to bring the light to bear upon the course being pursued, and, as far as possible, to mark the path of safety. Egypt, he further thought, had claims upon them. They had instructed her in that pleasant vice of borrowing. Western Europe had done a great deal to encourage that which had undoubtedly been to Egypt the source of considerable confusion. Was it not their duty to take steps to point out to those going a pleasant, though dangerous, road where that danger was? What was the benefit to the Khedive? Why, was it not a benefit to put a stop to a system of so much danger—a danger which would lead, perhaps, to foreign intervention or Heaven knows what, if the evil were not stopped? The right hon. Gentleman had questioned whether the scheme propounded in the Report was workable or not. Well, although capitalists were not at once found to take up the proposal, it was one, at all events, which was not manifestly unworkable, and it did not require the raising of a large loan of £70,000,000 or £75,000,000. The scheme had many advantages, and might have been adopted had the Khedive issued a decree such as he had since had recourse to. But upon that point he did not think it necessary to enter. The scheme had been presented to the world, and it was one on which the Khedive was able to form his own judgment. The right hon. Gentleman had also spoken of a narrow escape from serious responsibilities. He (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) could not help thinking a great deal too much was made of that. The Government had agreed to nominate a gentleman as Commissioner for certain purposes, and what, after all, were the purposes the Khedive had in view? Not only did his right hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham obtain a large amount of information, but he pointed out the way in which it was desirable to administer the finances. And what were the responsibilities? If a gentleman was required to receive the revenues on one hand, and apply them to the relief of the Debt on the other hand, they would have been exempt from all responsibility. The gentleman would be in the service of the Khedive, and their responsibility would only go so far as they recommended him as a capable and honest man, and that responsibility, he thought, it was not worth while to discuss. It was not the first time that gentlemen had been requested from this country for matters of the kind. There was, for instance, the case of Tunis. Well, he did not know that that was a case in point, but such cases had occurred, and there was nothing in the nature of the thing unreasonable or compromising to this country. Having given that brief outline of the history of his right hon. Friend's Mission, and having, he thought, touched upon those points the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Chester referred to, he felt it would at that time be unreasonable to trespass further upon the House, and should any further questions arise in regard to the subject, he should have an opportunity of meeting them in Committee.

Sir, we have commenced the Session with discussions on this subject, and it seems that we are about to end it with them. I hope, therefore, I may be excused if I take a leaf out of the book of successful dramatists, and, as I think not inaptly, term the drama which the right hon. Gentleman has gone over "the decline and fall of Egyptian credit," and I should be inclined to divide its parts into four acts, or tableaux. The first of those acts may, I think, be named "intrusion;" the second, "inquisition;" the third, "suppression;" and the fourth and last, "repudiation;" and though I cannot expect the right hon. Gentleman opposite to see at once the force of that nomenclature, I hope it will be made apparent in the course of my remarks. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer has just told us that the Khedive applied for a person or persons—he did not seem to know which—to assist him in the re-organization of his finances. Now, a great deal depends on what the Khedive really did apply for, and we find from the Papers that Nubar Pasha, addressing General Stanton, asked for two persons who might be placed in the Finance Department of Egypt, under the orders of the Minister of Finance, in the two divisions of that Department, one of which has the direction of the receipts and the other the direction of expenditure. It is as plain as words can make it that what the Khedive asked for was not anybody to advise or anybody to re-organize his finances. He did not ask for anybody of high trust or confidence, but simply for two persons, one of whom, as he says with some simplicity, should know something of political economy, to work under the Finance Minister, and they were to be persons who had a good financial education in England. That was the whole demand out of which these transactions have sprung, and nothing is more remarkable than the way in which this has all arisen through a small and insignificant request for two skilful clerks. The Chancellor of the Exchequer says—"We could not tell at all how to deal with such a question. It puzzled the whole wisdom of the Treasury. What sort of clerks did they want? What were the duties they were to perform? What would have been their status under the Khedive? All these things were so difficult that we could not undertake to deal with them." The consequence was, that the request has never been complied with to this day, and the two clerks asked for have never been sent; but the Treasury and Foreign Secretary laid down this extraordinary doctrine—that in order to find out what sort of men these two clerks were to be, and what were to be their salaries and their position with the Khedive, it was necessary to send out an envoy, as they call him, to make inquiries into the subject, so that when he had thoroughly ransacked the finances of Egypt from one end to the other he might come home and report to the Government exactly what sort of clerks should be sent out. An envoy was ac- cordingly sent out in the person of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shoreham, and no doubt a better person could not have been selected for the job if we only knew what the job was. He was provided with every possible adjunct to swell his natural dignity to the proper proportions in the eyes of the Khedive. All this I do not deny, but what I say is that this thing was done without its ever being asked for by the Khedive, and without his ever expressing the slightest wish that anything of the sort should be done. It was the misfortune of the Khedive to ask for these two poor clerks, and upon that we forced upon him this envoy without his having an opportunity of saying whether he would like to see the envoy or not. This forms the first act of the drama, which I venture to call by the name of "intrusion." There is not the least ground for saying that the Khedive asked for such a thing at all, or that he wished to have an envoy in the land of Egypt to take stock of his affairs. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, feeling that that part of the case is rather weak, went into a digression, into which I do not mean to follow him, in regard to what happened in the purchase of the Suez Canal shares; and what he seemed to say—though I doubt whether he will admit my construction of his words—is that we bought these shares for £4,000,000, on the personal security of the Khedive, to pay a certain amount of interest, and having entered upon the transaction and thus bound ourselves we thought it was right to send out some one to see what was our chance of being paid. The Chancellor of the Exchequer seems to see no other reason for the Mission except that we had spent a very large sum of money on which we got a very doubtful security indeed, and when we found ourselves bound we thought it necessary to send out to see whether we should ever get our money back again. I believe, with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that the purchase of these Suez Canal shares had a great deal to do with the sending out of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shoreham, but in a different way. Unfortunately, as I think, for the Khedive, these affairs happened to come at a peculiar moment. The letters dealing with this subject are dated the 26th November last, and on the 27th November the world was delighted and electrified by the information of the splendid property we had acquired in these canal shares. All right-minded people were in raptures at the prospect before them. It was believed that we were about to take possession of Egypt. Everybody was enchanted with the whole thing, and the Prime Minister and everybody else were in the height of human glory. It is not the time now to inquire whether that position has been maintained, but every pretext, and no pretext at all, was greedily laid hold of to increase the belief of the public that we had at last got a high-minded policy in connection with affairs in the East, and that we were going to take a more prominent part than we had done for years in the affairs of Europe. I trace much more to that feeling, than to any desire to find out how much salary two clerks were to have, the fact that this splendid Mission was sent out. This concludes the first tableaux of "intrusion." The next is "inquisition." The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shoreham was sent out to inquire, without leave asked or given, into the Khedive's finances, and he did his duty, as he would be sure to do it, most fairly, assiduously, and honourably. He has collected together a great mass of information; but it appears to me to be one of the most remarkable things in this history that such a Mission for such a purpose should have been forced and foisted upon an independent country that never asked for it, and that it should have been maintained at the Khedive's expense, and at a very large expense indeed. I cannot help thinking that it would have been more proper, and more worthy of this country, if the Mission had not been maintained at the Khedive's expense, and I should like to hear something more upon this subject. It was bad enough to go without leave to examine into the state of Egyptian finances and to publish them to the whole world, without quartering ourselves on the Khedive; but, of course, all this rests upon the assumption that we did send out the right hon. Gentleman and his suite to be supported by the Khedive, and not at the expense of the British Government. Information was collected, and this forms my second tableaux of "inquisition." We sent out persons with no right whatever to inquire, but the Khedive being in difficulties and almost at his wit's end, he was glad no doubt to do almost anything in the hope of getting some assistance of some kind or another. The House will observe that the words used in sending out the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shoreham on his Mission was that he was to inquire what assistance we were to give the Khedive, though the words are somewhat ambiguous. The two clerks grew somehow or other till they seemed to involve the question—at least in the minds of the people of England, though I do not know how far they involved it in the minds of the Government—whether we were not to give some very great pecuniary assistance of some kind beyond the £4,000,000 which we were to pay for the Canal Shares. That was the question which had to be solved by the inquisition. I now close the second tableaux—that of the "inquisition"—and come to the third, which I venture to call "suppression." The Report was finished, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shoreham returned to England. Then the Prime Minister was asked whether he would produce the right hon. Gentleman's Report, and he said in substance, though I cannot give his exact words, that the Khedive was unwilling that it should be published, and therefore he could not allow it. When we look into the Papers we find that that, of course unintentionally, is not a fair representation of the views of the Khedive. The day before he made that statement he received a telegram stating that His Highness strongly objected to the publication of the Report at present, and information which had been given to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shoreham was confidential, and intended solely for the information of Her Majesty's Government, and the Khedive went on to say in that telegram that, if the publication was not preceded by an arrangement with English financiers or by the nomination of an English Commissioner, any discussion of Egyptian finance must be prejudicial to his interests, and would prevent a solution of his difficulties; but he added that he would not object to the publication of the Report at the conclusion of such an arrangement as he had mentioned or after the nomination of a Commissioner. He trusted, finally, that Her Majesty's Government would not place him in the false position which would ensue from the premature publication of the right hon. Gentleman's Report. The fact was, that the Khedive objected to the publication of the Report till he knew the mind of Her Majesty's Government with regard to Egypt and what they were prepared to do for him. It was most unfortunate that the Prime Minister in making his statement should have told us in substance that the Khedive objected to the publication of the Report—

In the unsatisfactory state of affairs I read the telegram to the House, and it was in the language of the Khedive himself.

I think not. I have read the telegram of the Khedive, and I will read the words of the right hon. Gentleman.

The right hon. Gentleman is correct.

The right hon. Gentleman said in substance that the Khedive objected to the publication, and the effect had been that the finances of Egypt from that moment had never recovered the blow. It gave a mortal wound, from which they have never rallied since. I do not make any charge against the right hon. Gentleman in the matter, except that he only confined himself to the Khedive's refusal to allow the publication, without stating the concomitant part of the subject, which showed that the Khedive considered that Her Majesty's Government were about to give him some assistance in some shape or other. I make no charge against anybody, but the effect of the unfortunate suppression of those words has been absolutely destructive to the finances of Egypt, which never rallied from the blow from that time to this. This concludes the third act of the drama, and then there is a little interlude, which I should like to mention. It has been said that the Khedive asked for Mr. Rivers Wilson or some one else to be sent out, but I cannot find anything in the Papers to show that he made any request of the kind. I remember that the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer told us in this House that the Government had declined to send out Mr. Rivers Wilson to advise the Khedive, or something of that kind; but I never heard a word, and I see nothing in the Papers to show, that the Khedive had ever asked for Mr. Wilson to be sent out. As to supposing for a moment that any person in the position of Mr. Wilson, and going out in the manner in which he was sent, would be sent out to fulfil the wish of the Khedive for two clerks to assist in the Finance Department, that is simply ridiculous. It is not likely that a gentleman holding the office he held would be sent out to act in a small Department under the Egyptian Minister. That also, as I understood it, is another intrusion on the part of the Government, but not equally blameable, because they did not send out Mr. Wilson as an inquisitor to get information, which might be used greatly to the injury of the Government of Egypt, but, as I understand the matter, it was a very considerable liberty to send him out, unless they had made up their minds to some definite policy. What was the result? Mr. Wilson was sent out, and a little while afterwards telegrams were sent to him telling him in the most peremptory manner to return, as he would be doing nothing but mischief by staying longer, and that therefore the best thing he could do was to come back as soon as possible, and that he did. That is the history of the transactions with Egypt, but then comes the tragical part of the drama. Lord Derby, in a very remarkable passage, finds himself under the necessity of disentangling himself and the Government from all these complicated transactions which have been attended by so small a result; and he declares in one of his despatches that at this juncture the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shoreham arrived at Cairo, and that the information given to him by the Government of Egypt led him to believe that, great as they were, the difficulties in the case were not insurmountable, and that the Khedive would be able to maintain his Government, and to discharge his obligations within a reasonable time and on reasonable terms, without the imposition of fresh burdens upon his subjects. That opinion, coming from the right hon. Gentleman, was entitled to every respect, but I may mark two things. There was some error in the way in which the revenue was estimated on account of the Moukabala diminishing rather faster than he thought it did, and also there will be a considerable difference in the expenditure for which he is not responsible, because he could only act upon the information which was given to him; and though I do not doubt that he took every trouble to get the matter correctly, still his information must partake of the weakness of the source from which he got it. The result of the matter was that whereas he estimated the debt of the Khedive at £77,500,000, the amount is brought out to £91,000,000. Then Lord Derby goes on to say that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shoreham accordingly prepared a scheme which was so framed as to satisfy these important conditions without interfering with the independent action of the Khedive within his own dominions, and that though no doubt it involved to a certain extent an arrangement with creditors, such as England would always be an unwilling party to, it did provide ultimately for the payment of the Debt, and thus the Mission of the right hon. Member for Shoreham had been an undoubted benefit to His Highness. The House will observe that Lord Derby says the Mission had been of undoubted benefit, not to Egypt, but to the Khedive. Now, this arrangement had one misfortune—it would not work. We remember Moore's imaginary criticism of a friend's novel—

"Clever work, Sir!—would got up exceedingly well—

The only fault is—that it never would sell!

And though statesmen may glory in being unbought,

In an author, we think, Sir, that's rather a fault."

This admirable scheme would not work for good and sufficient reasons. It was a scheme by which a large quantity of stocks were to be made into a single consolidated stock, and that could well be done in one of two ways, either by the consent of every single bondholder, or by purchasing the interest of those who would not agree. Both these courses were, however, impossible, and the scheme accordingly failed. Lord Derby gives us as reason why the Mission has been of great benefit to the Khedive, that the right hon. Gentleman devised a scheme which would not work. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke differently of it. He did not look at it in the same light as Lord Derby. He did not see how a scheme which, however innocent and well meant, turned out to be utterly abortive, could be of great benefit to the Khedive. "In the first place," he says, "we did not send out the right hon. Gentleman to benefit Egypt, but at the request of the Khedive, to assist him with his finances." That is the way in which he puts it, and that is the only way of course to justify it. If it had not been done for that reason it would have been a simple outrage. But he said it would benefit Egypt. Well, how did it benefit Egypt? Why, the Mission and the answer of the Prime Minister together produced such a state of Egyptian finance that the Khedive found himself perfectly unable to get on with the system of financing which he had adopted; and I dare say it is a good thing when people become insolvent that their affairs should be brought to an end. Therefore, it may have been a benefit to Egypt just as it may have been a benefit to England for a man to go through the Bankruptcy Court when he cannot pay any longer. What I say is that the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer has substituted the word "Egypt" for "His Highness," which is the phrase in the despatch; secondly, I say that it was not for this that the right hon. Gentleman was sent out; and, thirdly, I say that in no one way has it benefited Egypt except in this, that it has forced upon the Khedive a declaration of insolvency and repudiation, and enforced suspension of payments, and all those plans for reduction of interest and unification of stock. These are not transactions such as take place between individuals; they are all high-handed acts of power by a debtor who cannot pay, and who chooses to select the terms as to what he will pay, whom he will pay, and how he will pay; not because such a course is right or proper, but because his creditors have no remedy against him. If the right hon. Gentleman will take the credit of this, I should be very sorry that the country should share it with him; for, though it may be the best thing for the Khedive of Egypt, I quite agree with Lord Derby that England does not look with much favour on these enforced settlements, and therefore I call this the closing act of the tragedy "repudiation;" first of all, because Lord Derby repudiates any intention to help the Khedive after all the hopes held out to him by the manner in which the Mission was announced to this House; and, secondly, because the result of the Report of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shoreham was to hasten the repudiation which has taken place in Egypt. That is the whole nature of this transaction. First, you take the most marvellous pretext in the world, and avail yourselves of it, to force on a friendly nation an inquisition which nobody called for and did not desire; secondly, you held that inquisition; thirdly, you continue to persistently withhold the Report of that inquisition, and then to publish it, first casting a slur upon it by not giving reasons for not publishing it; and, fourthly, by this course you strike a fatal blow at the finances of Egypt, which ends in an act of repudiation on the part of the Government, and then you take credit to yourselves for producing that result. That is a plain statement of the case, and I commend it to the consideration of the right hon. Gentleman and the House.

said, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Chester (Mr. Dodson) had described the Mission of his right hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham (Mr. Cave) as being a fiasco, but he (Sir H. Drummond Wolff) considered the present debate the most complete fiasco of the Session. The right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down (Mr. Lowe) had endeavoured to treat the subject with dramatic propriety, and had divided it into four acts—intrusion, inquisition, suppression, and repudiation. As connected with the first of those acts, as regarded the appointment of the two clerks, the Khedive had asked for them on October 24, when there was no idea of the purchase of the shares in the Suez Canal. He considered that act as most important in. the interest of Egypt and of England. It was a great political act, and was especially important as ensuring the way to our Indian possessions. The right hon. Gentleman said that the British Government had intruded Mr. Cave upon the Khedive; but the fact was that on November 29, two days after the purchase of the shares, Lord Derby telegraphed to General Stanton that the Government proposed that Mr. Cave should go on a special Mission to Egypt, to advise on financial matters. General Stanton telegraphed back to say that he had given the information to the Khedive, and that His Highness appeared grati- fied and thankful at the announcement. Was that intrusion? Then as to inquisition, His Highness the Viceroy had undertaken to give every information to his right hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham. The object was to obtain such information as might be important both to Egypt and to England. It was not likely that two clerks would be entrusted with such a Mission, but these gentlemen went as subaltern officers. It was true that these shares were bought in a hurry, but the boldness of the act was justified considering the state of Turkey, and it was our duty to seek to prevent Egyptian finance from falling into the state of decay in which finance at Constantinople was involved. As to the charge of suppression, what was the fatal blow to the finance of Egypt of which they had been told? The Report was supposed to contain the truth with reference to Egypt, and because it was not satisfactory, Egyptian finance had not recovered its depression. He believed it had done a great deal of good. It had reduced the finances of that country to its proper level, and investors ought not to be blamed for acts which every honest man should defend. Whatever harm was done by the telegram of the Government which spoke of financial proposals, was undone by subsequent explanations when Mr. Wilson and the French Commissioners were at Cairo. The Mission of Mr. Cave had been of great advantage to the Khedive, because it had, as he said, reduced Egyptian finance to its proper level, and had shown the people of France to whom they could lend and to what extent, and when the Report was published it produced that effect. The right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Lowe) had sought to make a distinction between the Khedive and Egypt, but if the Mission had been beneficial to Egypt it must have been so also to the Khedive. What did the right hon. Gentleman mean by saying that this measure had forced on bankruptcy? How could bankruptcy have been prevented if it was so likely to take place? His right hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham (Mr. Cave) was not going to take out money. Bankruptcy arose from the absence of assets and resources, and on its being found that the assets would not meet the liabilities, and if his right hon. Friend had not gone out the state of things would have been much worse. With respect to Mr. Wilson's recall, the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Lowe) said it was peremptory, but it was not so, for it was entirely at Mr. Wilson's own suggestion. He telegraphed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say that he could not approve the scheme in consequence of the heavy burden upon the taxpayers; and after that it was, of course, impossible that he could be allowed to remain to carry on negotiations in a policy which he did not approve. He (Sir H. Drummond Wolff) conceived that the Government had done its duty. They had shown that England was determined to maintain her position in the Mediterranean, to keep open the thoroughfare to India, and that she was desirous to enable the Khedive to administer the affairs of a country in which he held so great an interest. With regard to another matter referred to by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of London, it was a condition made by the Viceroy that Mr. Cave should be entertained by him, for it was at that moment more than ever necessary that he should not depart from those rules of Eastern hospitality which had always been observed by the Rulers of Egypt.

said, that he very seldom trespassed upon the time of the House; and he would not have done so on that occasion if he had not taken such an active part in the subject under discussion. He had had a long acquaintance with Egyptian matters, and had resided in the country for some time; and he therefore thought that he could speak with some authority on the matter. In listening to the debate he could endorse what had been said by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the purchase of the Suez Canal shares was a most proper measure as regarded the interests of this country, and that it had, in a manner, led up to the appointment of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shoreham (Mr. Cave) to go on the Mission which he had so ably conducted. Previously there had been an inquiry for some clerical assistance; but when the larger business of the Canal shares had been completed, and the interests of England became more identified with Egypt, there was a greater necessity shown for the inquiry which followed. He could speak of his own knowledge that it was not the desire or at all the feeling of the Khedive to have mere clerks sent to him to look into his accounts. His Highness believed that Mr. Cave would report upon the affairs of Egypt, and the Khedive believed that the finances were sound and good at that time. The Khedive was not aware of the defective administration of his affairs, and His Highness had expressed to him (Sir George Elliot) over and over again his willingness to accord to any well-organized system for the administration of the affairs of Egypt his most cordial co-operation. With the permission of the House he would read a note which he himself had addressed to the Khedive. It was as follows:—

"Two years ago His Excellency the Minister of Finance submitted to me, through Mr. Laing, then of the Imperial Ottoman Bank, a general statement of the Egyptian finance, and asked my opinion as to the best course to be taken for getting rid of the high interest then paid upon temporary loans, and the further accumulation of Debt. Since that time the subject has occupied much of my attention. On my arrival in Egypt in December last a suggestion was made to me by His Excellency the Minister of Finance as to the procuring of a loan of £2,000,000 on the security of the harbour revenues. I presumed on that occasion to express my conviction that any partial and temporary mode of dealing with the financial difficulties of the Government would be only to prolong a system which had already involved the country in general pecuniary embarrassments, and that some more comprehensive and effectual means should be adopted for re-adjusting the finances and restoring the credit of the Government."

He might say that the Report which he had published on Egyptian finance was prepared long before any Report was made by Mr. Cave; in fact, it was more than two years since he was invited by His Highness to look carefully into the financial condition of Egypt, and that occupied a considerable time. During his recent visit there he had his official accountants, Deloitte, Dever, Griffiths, and Co., and Ali Hassan, who was educated at King's College 25 years ago, and a most efficient and competent person, to assist in understanding the books and accounts;and after fully going into those matters it was remarkable that, although his inquiry had been commenced more than two years previously and was carried on entirely by independent means—not at the expense of either the English Government or of the Egyptian Government, but at his own cost—the statement of the general Debt of Egypt so nearly agreed with that of the right hon. Member for Shoreham. Indeed, there was not more than £1,000,000 difference between the two estimates. He thought that answered in a great measure the question that had been put—"What was the foundation of the correctness of the statements contained in Mr. Cave's Report?" For himself, he believed they were practically correct, and his opinion was that it would be well if such a change could be made as to the revenues that the Khedive should have his subsidy or civil list. As to the question whether the Mission of Mr. Cave had been of use or not, he believed that although attended with temporary inconvenience and hardship, because it had in a degree as it were precipitated the result, yet it had done good inasmuch as it had revealed plainly and clearly the condition of the finances of Egypt. It had, perhaps, as he said, brought about a crisis earlier than it would have come; but the disaster resulting from it must be proportionately diminished because of the system of raising money to provide for the floating debt, which was constantly becoming due—almost every week, being raised at 20 and 25 per cent—was continued. It was not necessary to point out what must have been the inevitable consequence of such a process. The inquiry had revealed the actual state of Egypt, which was not a forlorn one. It was sound so far as the income was calculated to deal with a fair payment of the Debts which were due from it. What he meant by that was giving fair and proper security, but with a reduced rate of interest, such as he proposed in his own scheme. By following out the scheme which he proposed to the Khedive, he had no doubt whatever that Egypt was equal to discharge all the interest for the sinking fund, which would relieve the Debt in 65 years, and there would be a margin sufficient for all the necessary requirements of the proper administration of the country. Having said so much, he returned to the most important part of the subject, which was this—That, in his opinion, it would be for the interest of Egypt, of the bondholders, and of England also, if the Government would give their moral countenance to Egypt. With an abundance of means, or, at any rate, with sufficient means, to do all that he had said, it would not avail unless there was proper administration; that was to say, due economy in the discharge of the several duties of the State, proper functionaries appointed, and a responsibility attached to the discharge of such duties, that the persons acting in such a position might feel assured that, if they did their duty, they would not undergo any kind of menace or chance of being discharged from their employment. He had a thorough conviction that Egypt was sound in itself. Egypt had ample resources, which had increased and developed in the most extraordinary way, and had every appearance of doing so in future. He believed that before that day twelvemonth the facts which had been stated would be more thoroughly verified, and the country would be in a much better condition, both commercially and in every other respect in higher repute than it was at the present moment.

begged to offer an apology to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shoreham (Mr. Stephen Cave) for having called his Report waste paper. When he said that the Report which had been made was only waste paper he referred to its scheme, which had proved unworkable.

said, he had no doubt the right hon. Gentleman used the words only in that sense, and was satisfied that nothing offensive to himself was meant.