said that in view of the satisfactory statement made by the First Lord of the Treasury on the previous night that any school for which rent was charged would ipso facto become a provided school, and that he would introduce words to make that perfectly clear, he was willing to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment; but before doing so he wished to ask whether on consideration the First Lord had not come to the conclusion that the insertion of the words he had proposed was not the most suitable way of carrying out the undertaking.

said these words could not possibly be inserted, because their insertion here would throw doubt on the construction of the expression "provided" as applied to schools without any qualification in a previous Clause. The twenty-third section of the Act of 1870 made provision for the transfer of schools to a School Board either absolutely or for payment of rent. Where rent was paid it was clear from that section that to the extent to which the use of the school was required by the local authority it was intended to be a school "provided" by the Education Department. That Act was now to be read in conjunction with the Bill under consideration. If the rent charged was a bonâ fide rent, it was beyond all controversy that the school would be in every sense of the term a school provided. There might, however, be cases where a merely nominal rent might be charged by some one practically providing the school. It deserved to be considered whether a definition was not required to determine whether a school provided on these terms was to be deemed a school provided by the local authority. He hoped the hon. Gentleman would be satisfied with the statement he had made.

said it was difficult for a non-legal mind to follow the whole of what had been said, but so far as he could gather, the statement of the Attorney-General was not altogether in accordance with the First Lord of the Treasury's statement on the previous evening, which clearly was that the charging of the rent would ipso facto make a school a "provided" school. The question of a nominal rent had now been introduced; but who was to decide what amount of rent was nominal? Suppose a rent of £40 was charged on a building which cost £2,000. That was not a commercial rent, but yet it was substantial, and he held that the owners of the school should not be allowed to retain all the privileges of private managers. He did not think any solution of the difficulty could be more satisfactory than the one they understood the First Lord to agree to on the previous night, and before withdrawing his Amendment he would like to hear other opinions.

thought the Amendment in admissible, because it would practically prohibit the managers of a day school from letting to the local education authority for evening classes. He could not believe that that was the intention of hon. Members opposite.

said it had been stated over and over again that the majority of the school managers and the appointment of teachers could not be given in the case of schools not provided by denominations but only rented to the public. The First Lord of the Treasury had made a clear and definite statement that a school for which rent was paid was ipso facto a provided school, and he thought they were justified in keeping the right hon. Gentleman to that statement.

said that although the matter was complicated there was no real difficulty in it, and there should be no obscurity about this. Hon. Gentlemen appeared to think that the observations of the Attorney-General wore intended to limit his statement. But that was not the case: they rather extended it. If a school was transferred to the local authority under the Act of 1870, then the Bill would not interfere at all. With regard to cases not under the Act of 1870, suppose a schoolhouse were practically let to the local authority for a business rent, evidently that became a provided school. But his hon. and learned friend suggested whether, if only a nominal rent were charged, the question might not be raised whether the school should be deemed to be "provided" or not. They thought it ought to be. If an owner chose to let it to the local authority, in so far as it was let it was subject to all the provisions of this Bill, which transferred educational powers to the local authority. If the school was completely transferred for a peppercorn rent during the whole of the twenty-four hours, that school would be subject to, provided by, and financed by the local authority, and the Cowper-Temple Clause would operate through the whole period. Whether the rent be large or small, excessive or nominal, so long as the local authority paid that rent the school would be provided by the local authority and subject to the incidents of that position.

said an out-and-out transfer was perfectly clear, but take the case of denominational managers who, without any formal arrangement, lease, or document, put down in their accounts £30 as rent. Was that a school provided by the local authority? As an illustration he might mention the case of Preston, where there was a denominational building out of which it was suggested the managers made a profit.

I do not think that such a statement should be made on hearsay. Is the hon. Member going to bring forward evidence in support of it? I deny that it is the case.

said there would be no difficulty about proving it in the course of the debate, as one of his hon. friends had got all the facts. There was in Preston a denomination controlling a school for which they got £300 or £400 from the Treasury. They had practically no voluntary subscription, and they charged a certain amount for rent for the use of the building during the time occupied with secular instruction, other portions of the week being used for other purposes. Would that be a school provided by the local authority? Supposing they were dealing with a denomination or church, would the right hon. Gentleman allow an arrangement between the denomination and managers whereby rent was paid? The managers were not identical with the denomination; they were two separate bodies in law. Would the denomination be allowed to charge any amount for rent in their accounts without the school becoming "provided" by the local authority?

would like to put the question in a different form. Trustees gathered funds from the congregation of a chapel and built a school and let the building to members of the congregation, who became managers; and it was the practice of the managers of the school to pay to these trustees a sum for rent. At the present time this sum was paid either out of voluntary contributions or out of Government grants received by the managers. The question arose for the future, if that rent continued, would the school become "provided by the local authority"? Again, there might be a public company who, having erected a school, played the part of the trustees in the other case and received a rent from the managers. What would be the position there? Yet another case was that of a private individual who built a school hired by managers at a nominal rent, and sometimes rent was received for half of the building. All these points went to show that the subject required careful consideration. He thought the suggestion of the Attorney General that the matter should be postponed was a very wise one.

said these points, whatever their importance, did not arise on the Amendment, in which the point was whether rent paid by a local authority made a school a school provided by the local authority. This was important, because provided schools were under different rules to those for voluntary schools. The question raised by his hon. friend had nothing to do with rent paid by a local authority.

In future rent now paid from contributions will be paid from the rates.

said if the payment came from the local authority the general rule would apply. There might be, and he was afraid there were, hard cases, but he did not know how they could deal with those. He thought the Committee would get into hopeless trouble if they tried to make an arrangement by which the local authority would pay rent and yet the schools remain voluntary; he did not see how it could be done.

said this question of rent was one of extreme importance. He could not quite follow the right hon. Gentleman. On the 2nd of May last, when he asked if it was competent for the managers of a public elementary school not provided by the local authority to make a charge for school buildings, he was answered in the negative. He was, in fact, told it would be impossible for managers to make any charge for a public elementary school. Now he gathered that they might make a charge subject to the consequences that might follow if the Bill contained a definition in a certain way. It was notorious that large sums had been taken from School Boards by all denominations for rent. No doubt it had often been paid back in the form of the voluntary contribution, but what he wished to call attention to was that every time there had been an addition to public aid, there had been an increase in the rent charged for schools, and this had been mentioned in the Report of the Education Department after the passing of the Voluntary Schools Act. The report ran—

"My Lords have regretted to find that in certain cases, happily not very numerous, a new rent, or an increased rent, has been charged since the passing of the Voluntary Schools Act."

The Parliamentary Return showed that a number of schools, many of them without voluntary contributions at all, made enormous demands on the Education Department for rent. All denominations were offenders in this respect, and especially so the Wesleyans. When the First Lord made the statement that there was to be no charge for rent, the Wesleyans, who were building a school at Leigh in Lancashire, dropped their operations at once and abandoned the scheme. The managers of some of these Schools charged £200, £300, £400 and even £600 a year for the rent of these buildings; and that was true of all parts of the country. And whenever there had been an addition to the Government grants there had been an addition to the rents.

said he quite recognised the interest and importance of the point which the hon. Gentleman was discussing, but was it really relevant to the Amendment before the Committee? The Amendment dealt, and dealt only, with the rent paid by the local education authority for the school, small or big as the case might be; but it did not seem to him to have anything whatever to do with the point now being debated by the hon. Member for North Camberwell.

But the local education authority will be compelled to pay these rents.

Then in that case the schools would become provided schools.

said he would sit down at once if he thought that he had departed from the precise point before the Committee. The local education authority would be compelled to pay these rents; and the point he wanted to get clear was would the Government say that the Bill did provide, at some stage, that where the local education authority was charged any rent for the use of the school buildings, that school would be treated as a provided school, and be under the entire control of the local education authority, and would be undenominational in its religious instruction. That was the real issue. He would quote from a Parliamentary Return, giving an illustration of each case. The Talbot Roman Catholic School, Preston, charged a rent of £653 2s., and the voluntary subscriptions amounted to £496 11s., though he must say that the money paid as rent went to improve the school. Then, in regard to the British Schools, there was the case of Grimshaw Street School, Preston, in which the rental charge was £70 and the voluntary contributions £3 3s.

said that that was not a denominational school.

No; but it was a denominational school. Then there was St. Paul's Square Presbyterian School, Preston, which took £48 in rent and there were no voluntary contributions at all. He did not think he need pursue this subject any further, but would refer hon. Members to the report of Mr. Holman, His Majesty's Inspector of Schools, published in the Blue Books a year or two ago. In that report it, was stated that the finances of the Preston schools were absolutely unsound, and ought to be audited by the Public Auditor.

said he hoped his hon. friend the Member for Preston would resist the challenge which had been thrown out to him, and not delay the procedure with the Bill by discussing this extraneous question which had been imported into the debate. Everyone was aware that in some cases, and at some places, those concerned with voluntary schools had represented an imaginary rent as the amount of their subscription to the school. But that was a matter between them and the Board of Education. It had been suggested that the statement in the item of rent did not show justly the amount which was contributed to the schools. but that was a hundred miles away from the question which the Committee was now discussing. The question was, what would happen if the local education authority took over the use and control of a school, either for the whole time or a portion of the time during the week? If the local education authority took over the use and control of the school, with or without the rent—the rent was not the important question—to the extent that they acquired the use and control of the school, the Government intended that it should be a provided school. It was so now under the provisions of Section 23 of the Act of 1870; and if, by any arrangement outside that section, the use and control of the school should pass to the local education authority, he suggested to the Committee that the proper way to deal with this point was by definition, when they came to the proper part of the Bill.

Will you do that?

said that his right hon. friend had already stated that he thought some definition would probably be necessary upon this point; but I the terms of that definition required very careful consideration. He suggested that the matter should stand over to the proper time.

said that not being a lawyer he had not been able to follow the course of the Attorney General's argument; but he understood from the statement of the First Lord of the Treasury, that where money was provided by the local authority, either out of the rates or through them from the Education Department, that was taken for the purpose of the rent of buildings during the day school hours, that that was to be considered a provided school. If that were made perfectly clear, he should not think of pressing the particular words he had suggested to a division. But he should like to ask, in view of what the right hon. Gentleman had told the Committee, whether he would put down words on the paper before the adjournment for this part of the Session.

Certainly before the adjournment.

said that in that case he asked leave to withdraw his Amendment.

said that the statement made by the First Lord of the Treasury was very satisfactory. The right hon. Gentleman had said that his Amendment applied to the provided schools, and to the aided schools as well. But the statement of the Attorney General limited the application to the provided schools. He ventured to say that the Attorney General did not seem to grasp the point. The right hon. and learned Gentleman's statement had reference to the schools, which, being now denominational, were taken over by the local authority, either wholly or partly, during the week, and in that case the right hon. and learned Gentleman said that these schools would be regarded us provided schools, and that any rent charged would cause them to be regarded as provided schools. The question was as to aided schools. The school budget being provided for, partly by the State and partly by the local authority, if any item of economic rent appeared in that Budget, from that moment would the school cease to be a denominational school and become a provided school?

said he thought it would be impossible for the local authority to give any aid of the kind referred to, which was not to be a school provided by themselves; but if they paid a rent for it, then it should become, as he understood it, a provided school, for the hours during which the local education authority had control.

proposed an Amendment, under which any school not provided by the local education authority, and—

"Which is the only public elementary school within a radius of three miles,"

would be treated as a provided school. It had nothing to do with the Amendment of his hon. friend, which dealt with areas. Where there was only one school within a radius of three miles, the parent had no option as to which school he should send his child to. In a town where there were denominational and undenominational schools, it might be reasonable, although he did not agree with it, that the denominational schools should be maintained out of public funds; but where the parent had no option, it appeared to him that the only school available should not be a school of a particular denomination, having the atmosphere of that denomination, and yet paid for wholly out of public funds. It was said yesterday by the First Lord of the Treasury that the local education authority had full control of secular education in these denominational schools. That was, if he might say so, with great respect to the First Lord of the Treasury, a fundamental mistake. It was quite true that the local education authority would have full control in outlining the education to be given; but it was the schoolmaster who would have control over the children; and he was to be appointed, not by the local education authority, but by the school managers. The Bill would give the local education authority the dry bones, keeping the juicy meat for the managers. He submitted that, where there was only one school, and the parents had no option, it was not reasonable that the children should be sent to that school to be taught a denominational creed, or oven if they absented themselves during the period of religious teaching, to be taught in a denominational atmosphere at the public expense. They were entitled to ask for some concession on the point. What were they giving up? He was quite prepared to accept the figures of hon. Gentlemen opposite. They were told that the value of the present voluntary school buildings was £22,000,000 sterling. That, at 2½ per cent., worked out at £450,000 a year rent; and, taking the repairs at 33⅓ per cent, of the rent, it meant that the total gift of the voluntary subscribers to the nation amounted to £600,000 a year.

I do not see what this has to do with the three mile limit.

said he was showing that what was to be given in exchange for a great public expenditure was so small that some concession should be made in eases where the parents had no option. He intended to show what the public expenditure and the voluntary expenditure would really be.

That is the general question which was argued last night. The hon. Member must show some special reason why a school, which was the only school within a radius of three miles, should have exceptional treatment.

said he was about to say that where the taxpayer paid £10, the voluntary subscriber paid only £1, and the taxpayer did not get what he wanted—and had no chance of getting what he wanted—but he would not pursue that point. Then, again, children would be excluded from becoming pupil teachers unless they belonged to a particular denomination.

said that that was a question which would come up later, and he hoped the hon. Gentleman would not raise it now.

said he was merely outlying the hardships which would occur when there was only one school. Unless a child, in such a case, belonged to the denomination to which the school belonged, he would be excluded from becoming a pupil teacher. That was a real hardship, and he asked the First Lord of the Treasury to allow parents in such cases full control as to what the denominational training should be. Why should a denominational school belonging to a minority have the patronage of the teaching profession to the exclusion of the children of the majority; and why should a child be taught in a religious atmosphere, to which the parent objected, without giving the parent any control or any option to send the child elsewhere?

said that no one, he thought, would deny—he would not deny—that the particular case the hon. Gentleman had in view, namely that of a denominational school being the only school within reach of the children in a considerable area, did present a hardship. That was one of the difficulties of the existing system, and would be one of the difficulties even of the system which would be brought into being under the Bill. Everyone who had studied the question knew that that was one of the grievances of Nonconformists; but there was a correlative grievance on the part of members of other denominations, where there was only one board school, in which case, parents could not get the religious teaching they wanted at any cost. That was one of the unfortunate results of their religious divisions. But he would point out that the Bill as drawn would diminish the grievance; because it would permit what was not permitted under the existing law, other schools to be provided of a denominational character by the local authority, or by other religious bodies than the denomination which possessed the only school in the district. Therefore, the Bill would do something, and something very material, to mitigate the evil to which the hon. Gentleman referred; but as long as the Cowper-Temple Clause was insisted on, and as long as denominational schools were maintained, so long would the grievance exist in some form or another on both sides. All that could be done was to diminish it as much as possible; and the Bill did that. He would not refer to the point about pupil teachers, because that was a question which would come up later for discussion. Speaking broadly, the Committee would readily understand that it was impossible for the Government to accept the Amendment which would result in denominationalising a very large number of denominational schools.

said he was very glad his hon. friend had raised the question, which was one of the greatest hardships under which Nonconformists suffered. There were 8,000 parishes which would be affected by the Amendment. They contained 9,000 denominational schools, and no other schools; and Nonconformists would be bound to send their children to those schools where the only religious education they could get would be contrary to the doctrines of their own Church.

said that even Christians were not always talking about their differences.

said that that did not come well from the Leader of the Party that insisted on differences between Christians. Their contention was always that Christiana ought to agree on the teaching to be given in the schools; and they had given pledges of their willingness in that direction. It was because the Party of which the right hon. Gentleman was each a distinguished Leader, had refused to come to an agreement with their fellow Christians and fellow Protestants, that all these differences had arisen. The grievance could be removed without destroying the principle of the Bill. In 8,000 parishes in the country, one of the most honourable branches of the Civil Service was shut against Nonconformist children. There were between 40,000 and 50,000 teacherships in those parishes; and every penny of the salaries attaching to them was paid by the State. Every Nonconformist child was precluded by the deed of trust from entering the teaching profession. It was true, with the consent of the trustees, certain children were allowed to come in, but a thing of this kind ought not to be left to the magnanimity of one sect. In the diocese of Bangor there were 9,500 children in the voluntary schools, of whom 75 per cent, were Nonconformists. What happened in the district? This Bill, instead of relieving, aggravated the grievance. Under the old system one-sixth of the cost of maintenance of these schools fell upon the denominationalists, and if they reckoned in the fabrics as well only one-third. Under this Bill henceforth the denominationalists would only pay one-tenth. The right hon. Gentleman could not make any concession to the Nonconformists in this matter so long as the denominationalists controlled the schools and selected the teachers. The 25 per cent. of church children got a preference to which, by no principle of equity with which he was conversant, were they entitled. In one parish of Bangor there were 110 children, and only one school —a church school—which these children were compelled by law to attend. Eighty of those children were Nonconformists, thirty were Church children. For the last thirty years they had not had a Nonconformist teacher there. He did not suggest they did not take a Nonconformist child and train him up as a teacher, but they did so only on condition that he would become a Church member. Some of the best ministers in Wales at the present time had been bought into the Church in that way. In that parish there was one Church. The Nonconformists had to maintain five chapels. The maintenance of the Church came out of rich tithes, so that the Nonconformists had to maintain it; they were compelled by law to contribute. Therefore in that parish practically the whole burden of maintaining this institution fell upon the Nonconformists and the whole of the management was given to another sect. The right hon. Gentleman said that that was part of the penalty which had to be paid for religious division. Would the right hon. Gentleman point to one civilised country where these divisions exist where the control of the Church schools was given to the minority.

There is Ireland.

In Ireland in the Catholic districts the priest managed the schools; in the Protestants districts the Protestants managed them. Could the noble Lord point out in Ireland a single Protestant parish where the Catholics were in a minority, and where the schools were controlled by the Catholics, or could he point to the converse case?

The hon. Member seems to suggest that I approve of this state of things. I have always acknowledged the grievance.

said there was a great chasm between acknowledging a grievance and remedying it. It was in the power of the noble Lord, and he knew it, to bring pressure on the Government to redress this grievance. If the extreme section of the Church party were willing to assist in redressing this grievance, he did not believe the First Lord of the Treasury was the man to stand in the way. Was the noble Lord, since he had acknowledged the grievance, prepared to get up in the course of the debate and say he would assist in redressing it? What would he do? They were entitled to know. Take the case of countries where there was denominational education—where the settlement was on the denominational basis, but where the children were divided in the parish — Holland, Manitoba, Ontario, Victoria, Switzerland, some parishes in Germany. Would he settle this grievance on the basis of any of those alternatives? Or take Quebec, where they had the most effectual denominational education in the Empire, but where, at the same time, there was a perfect system of control. Could the noble Lord point to a single case in the world where this question was settled on the basis on which it was in this country — a basis which did wrong and injustice to perfectly law-abiding citizens? Seventy-five per cent, of the children were ruled out ! And the children felt it. The moment they crossed the threshold of the school they felt their position to be one of subordination and inferiority, and a school was the last place in which such a thing as that should be tolerated.

said he could not support the Amendment, because the effect of it would be to introduce the Cowper-Temple Clause, which he regarded as the concentrated essence of all evil, into the rural schools, thus preventing Episcopalians from obtaining that religious teaching which they desired for their children. It was upon that ground that he objected to the Amendment, but he did not care to allow this, the first time that this particular matter had been discussed, to pass without making an urgent appeal to the noble Lord and the right hon. Gentleman to devise some scheme for remedying the grievance which it was admitted the Nonconformists had. If a plan could be devised by which this grievance might be redressed without inflicting a grievance upon other people, it would undoubtedly smooth the passage of the Bill and would have some effect in alleviating the bitterness of this discussion. So far as the Irish Catholic Members were concerned, they were prepared to support any plan which remedied that grievance without inflicting any hardship upon others.

said the hon. Gentleman had travelled from China to Peru to discover different methods of settling this question, and had asked him to select one which he thought would be satisfactory. The proper course for the hon. Member, however, was to put down on paper in succession these particular proposals, and then they could judge of the merits in each case. The particular proposal now before the Committee had the disadvantage of not remedying the grievance of which he thought the hon. Member very reasonably complained. The grievance was that there was only one school, and that that school gave a form of religious education which was distasteful to a large part of the population; but under the Amendment that grievance would still exist as long as they had only one school in a district. Supposing the management altered the religious character of the school, then the grievance would be merely transferred to another set of people, and would be just as great.

No, it would be a grievance of the minority, instead of a grievance of the majority.

said the hon. Member did not mind the grievance of the minority.

No, I did not say that.

The hon. Member had never been prepared to admit that the grievance of Churchmen in resenting a particular form of religious teaching was the same as that of Nonconformists. The true remedy was partly applied in the Bill, which provided for the erection of new schools where there was a religious grievance. The further remedy would be to allow different religious teachers to enter the schools and teach their different beliefs. But the hon. Member never would accept that.

Yes, I would support it.

That Amendment will come on in due course, and I hope then the hon. Member will go into the Lobby to support it.

Yes, if it is done all round.

said he looked with terror on the vista opened up, if his noble friend and the hon. Gentleman—those two redoubtable champions—dragged the Committee into a discussion of the broadest aspects of the measure. Before they knew where they were they would be involved in a Second Reading debate. He earnestly trusted the Committee would refrain from that rather trying pleasure. They should as far as possible restrict themselves to the important point now raised, and come to a decision upon it.

said he believed the intentions of the Government to deal with this grievance were good, but they were far too elaborate, and that the Amendment of his hon. friend the Member for North Monmouth touched the heart of the grievance better than the more elaborate Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman, with all its ingenuity. It had been said that the proposal of his hon. friend was unworkable, but his hon. friend was not so wedded to his Amendment but that he was quite prepared, if it was carried, to put down other Amendments in order to carry out his proposal. There would naturally have to be some kind of educational census in the country, and certain scheduled districts. The proposal would not result in the complete remedy of the existing grievance, perhaps, but in a considerable diminution of it. It would place within the reach of the Nonconformists and the Evangelical Protestants such a school as they desired to have. He did not believe in the existence of the Church of England parents about whose grievances they had heard so much. These grievances were but the views of a very narrow section of the clergymen of the Church of England, who were strong and were growing stronger every day in the localities to which the Amendment of his hon. friend applied. Where there was a village with only one school, there the religious difficulty arose, and education suffered in consequence. He believed that if British schools or County Council schools were opened in these villages, the extra cost would be well repaid in its good results.

said he thought the question had been happily raised. It was a question upon which a reasonable compromise might be arrived at if the First Lord of the Treasury and the noble Lord the Member for Greenwich would give it their consideration. The First Lord of the Treasury had indicated that his own solution at the present moment would be to allow the local authority to provide small extra schools, the "thirty pupil" schools—Little Bethel schools—to meet the necessities of a certain section of the population. He could not go farther into that question at present than to say that, in the interests of education, he protested against the duplication of schools in the most emphatic way. Most people knew that in the rural districts at the present time, schools were often far too small to be efficient, and where there were now two schools there really ought only to be one. Why could not they treat the single Church School in the rural parish on a somewhat different basis, both from the schools provided by the authority and from the denominational schools, as regarded management? Why could they not interpose a distinct typo of school and make special arrangements for these intermediate schools between the two types? It was absurd to argue from the Catholic schools, which were rarely the single school and stood on a wholly different footing. The Church of England was a national institution, and stood upon a totally different basis, both morally and religiously. So long as the Church remained established all had a claim to share in the schools. His suggestion was that the Government should find a middle ground between the regulations in the provided schools and the powers given to the denominational schools. He thought it would be reasonable to have the same system as had been introduced in Lincolnshire, where they had special Church teaching on special days, and on other days simple Bible teaching, without any distinctive formularies or doctrines which might alienate the sympathies and be offensive to Nonconformists. This system worked admirably, and produced religious peace and good-fellowship in many of the parishes in Lincolnshire. Another method was to give religious teaching during special hours. The suggestion to duplicate the schools and support these reactionary and ill-equipped little schools as a solution of this difficulty was a suicidal policy, educationally and religiously. He appealed to the First Lord of the Treasury to try to find some modus vivendi for these rural parishes, where an enormous amount of ill-feeling had been caused in the past; and he asked the right hon. Gentleman whether they could not find a solution of this difficulty by placing these schools in some intermediate position between the provided schools and the denominational schools.

asked if the Prime Minister was prepared to say that, in a largely predominant Church village with a High Church parson and a Low Church majority of inhabitants, it would be possible for those Low Churchmen to have a school of their own. In his opinion, that would be absolutely impossible. An inquiry must be held by the Board of Education, which was a State Department, which recognised a State Church; and therefore any inquiry held by the Board of Education would raise the whole question of Ritualism, and the Board of Education would be called upon to decide between one branch of the Anglican Church and the other. It would be impossible for the Board of Education to hold any such inquiry. He thought it was most advisable that Clauses 9 and 10 should be amended in the direction he had indicated, and he should cordially support the Amendment.

said he wished to appeal to hon. Members who belonged to the Evangelical Church party, and who held strong views, judging from their public utterances, to support this Amendment. Judging from their speeches, their views were just as strong upon this question as those who sat on the opposite side. At a meeting held in connection with the Church Association at Exeter Hall the chairman (Mr. James Inskip) said—

"The work of the Association was never more needed than today. They were engaged in a great battle against sacerdotalism and sacramentarianism. The Education Bill was introduced to satisfy the High Church party, and was calculated to work great mischief. They were not met to revile their neighbours, but to set up their own banner. They were angry, but they did well to be angry with a righteous anger."

At the same meeting the following resolution was carried, with one dissentient—

"That the prevalence of Romish heresy among a large section of the clergy of the Established Church makes them unfit and untrustworthy guardians of religious education in the schools of the nation, and that no scheme of religious education which leaves to the clergy the determination of what shall be taught in public schools can be satisfactory or deserving of support at the present juncture. The combination of the priests of the Roman and Anglican Churches to monopolise the education of the young, and to capture the board schools, is a danger to the purity of the faith and to the freedom of the English people, and ought to be resisted in the interests of both civil and religious liberty."

In moving this resolution, the Rev. W. R. Mowll said—

"The clergy had, as a body, shown themselves lacking in backbone, knowledge of the times, and power to act. If only the Evangelical party would stand film and shoulder to shoulder, the whole question would soon be dealt with. It was their bounden duty to resist the Bill, and offer it the most strenuous opposition. They should say to the Government, If you intend this Bill to pass, let the Bible, pure and simple, be taught without creed or catechism."

He appealed to members of the Evangelical party opposite to get a little backbone into themselves and vote for an Amendment which was on all fours with what they desired equally with the supporters of this Amendment. This proposal seemed to him to be a most reasonable settlement. He should certainly look to the division list with considerable interest upon this Amendment, and he looked to some of the members of the Evangelical party with confidence for support. If they would only vote as a body along with the Liberal Unionist Nonconformists in support of this Amendment, it would have as great an effect as winning the Leeds election next week.

thought this Amendment was a sort of compromise by which the Government could do something to mitigate the opposition which their proposals had caused. The unfairness in the case of a single school belonging to a denomination where there was no alternative school, was the worst of the evils which this controversy raised. This point was emphasised in a speech delivered by the Colonial Secretary some years ago, in which he pointed out this evil in the voluntary system. There was a village in Cambridgeshire called Toft which had only one denominational school, which was managed by a denominational committee. Half the people in that village were Nonconformists. Two years ago a new clergyman came to that village, and he found in the school a woman teacher who had been there for fifteen years. He quarrelled with her — it was not quite clear on what particular point, but it was supposed to be over a new catechism. The matter was brought before the managers, and they dismissed the teacher. She had given thorough satisfaction to the greater part of the village, and so much were the people pleased with her teaching that they asked her to remain and carry on another school. She consented to do so, although they could not provide a salary for her. There were now two schools running in that village. The point which he wanted to insist upon was that if the managing body had been representative of the whole village, even if they had dismissed that teacher, the people would have said, "Well, after all, it is our representatives who have done it," and there would never have been that split in the village which was now spoiling the friendly feeling between the two sections there. That was the consequence of leaving the management of what ought to be a matter of universal interest in the hands of one section. From another point of view, it was most important that at any rate some of the schools should be managed by the representatives of the people. They were setting up the County Council as the controlling authority, and they were hoping to get an interest in education through the County Council. The only way in which they would excite in the people a permanent interest in education was by giving them the feeling that they could control the schools intimately themselves. That alone would give them an understanding of those higher ideas of policy which were required on the County Council. He, therefore, sincerely hoped that where a compromise could be made by the Government they would attempt to do it in this particular respect.

said this was not a matter on which Irishmen could be expected to give a silent vote. He remembered that in his boyhood in Ireland there was nothing that so much excited animosity, and the feeling of subordination and inferiority of which the hon. Member for the Carnarvon Burghs spoke, as the fact that there was a large number of schools in Ireland, richly endowed and greatly patronised by the authorities, the purpose of which was to proselytise the children of Catholic parents, and entice them away into the religion of Englishmen and Protestants. When hon. Members brought before the Committee cases in which was the suspicion, and in some cases, he was afraid, the well-grounded suspicion, that the resources of the State were being given to a particular sect or school for the purpose of seducing children into the religion of that school, the sympathies of every Irishman must naturally be evoked on behalf of the Nonconformists. The hon. Member for the Carnarvon Boroughs had made a statement founded on his own experience. Was there any hon. Gentleman opposite who would regard it as a just and tolerable state of things that there should be eighty children of Nonconformist parents out of 110 in a school, and that the entire management of the school should be in the hands of the sect which was in a minority? That was a state of things which no Irishman could be expected to support. From the moment the Bill was brought in, the Irish Members gave fair warning to the Government that they would support the Nonconformists in the endeavour to get this grievance remedied, so far as principle would admit. The grievance was admitted by hon. Gentlemen opposite. It was admitted by the noble Lord the Member for Greenwich, whom he took as representing the high-water mark of Church feeling on the subject. The noble Lord's answer was that they had no remedy for it. That was a position of impotence which no Government ought to take up when dealing with so supreme and vital a question as national education. He put it to hon. Gentlemen opposite whether, when they were beginning a new chapter in education, and in the Christianity of the country, they could have a worse thing than the fierce religious warfare illustrated by the case to which the hon. Member for the Ellon Division referred. It was not for him to say whether the threats of violent action which some of the friends and supporters of the Nonconformists in the country had uttered would be realised, but what was evident to every man in this House was that, unless some compromise was made on this question, there would be a great deal of religious feeling and animosity aroused, and he would have no respect for the Nonconformists if they did not revolt against the oppression which was proposed. This question affected 8,000 parishes. The Prime Minister had said that the effect of the Amendment would be to undenominationalise all the Church schools in these parishes. His own interpretation of the Amendment was that the effect of it would practically be to exclude from all those denominational schools denominational teaching, and to substitute there for what was roughly called the compromise under the Cowper-Temple Clause. That was anathema, maranatha to the Catholic Church. The Bishop of Raphoe was a tolerant and high-minded ecclesiastic of the Catholic Church, who would be as much inclined to sympathise with Nonconformists as any of them, but he had heard him say that he would sooner have an extreme form of Protestantism taught in a school than the form of religion which came under the Cowper-Temple Clause. It was unfair to ask hon. Gentlemen opposite to accept the Amendment. It was for the State physician to prescribe what should be done, and not a simple member of the Opposition; but this he did say—that the Nonconformists of this country were entitled to demand that a clear and broad distinction should be made, between localities where the parents had a choice of schools, and localities where they had no choice. That was a proposition which would get the universal assent of the House. A parent who had only one school to which he could send his child was in an entirely different position from the parent who had a choice of schools. He would not deal with the objection which might be urged that a certain number of Nonconformist parents had the right to call for and get the establishment of a school representing their views. The multiplication of small schools would, he thought, be a great disadvantage. He had put before the Committee the general principle. It was not for him to suggest to those in charge of the Bill in what particular way that principle could be carried out. He was clear in his own mind that the Nonconformists had a legitimate grievance, that that grievance had met with an impotent answer, and that that grievance reached its maximum when the Nonconformist parents had nothing but a Church of England school to send their children to.

said that, although the construction of the Amendment, if it stood alone, might be perfectly right, its purpose was to distinguish between schools where the parents had no option and other aided schools.

said that the meaning of the Amendment was that a difference should be made between those schools to which all children—Anglicans, Roman Catholics, and Nonconformists—must go, and other schools. He ventured to appeal to the Government, as one who had done all he could to arrive at something like a reasonable compromise on this most difficult question, to try and find some means by which those schools should be differentiated from other schools. It was not necessary that the managers of those schools should be preponderatingly chosen by the local authority, or that denominational teaching should be excluded from the curriculum. It was becoming increasingly apparent that the attempt to deal with public schools and denominational schools was not sufficient, for there was the case of the Roman Catholic schools, which, he agreed with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Aberdeen, should be treated on a different basis. Very often the majority of the children in the single schools were Nonconformists, and if in all the denominational schools a majority of the managers was to be of the opposite denomination from that of the children, the passing of this Bill would only be the beginning of very serious trouble. He agreed on the whole with the hon. Member for Camber-well, not only that this Bill was not meant as a clerical control Bill, but that it would not so work out. The days of one-man management had passed away, or were drawing to an end; and, at any rate, the power of the ratepayers would increase, and the power of the denominational managers would decrease. Seeing that many of the local authorities sympathised with the Opposition and not with the Government, he asked whether there was not a serious danger of reprisals being made. These authorities would have the control of all secular education. They would have the power of building new schools, which he hoped they would not have to do; but with these powers in their hands, he was certain that reprisals would be possible, and it was because he did not wish to see this war carried on under the Bill that he earnestly asked the Government to consider the grievance.

said he wanted to ask, if the management of these 8,000 schools was placed in the hands of denominational managers, by what means did the right hon. Gentleman propose to compel those managers to upset, tolerate, and employ Nonconformist teachers and Nonconformist masters and mistresses? If once complete denominational management and control was established, by what means could this very real grievance be removed? Two or three months ago a person writing a reply to a letter in regard to this question, in behalf of the school management, frankly said: "I am sorry to say that my managers regret being unable to appoint you, because of your being a Nonconformist." Now, this teacher was admitted to possess the highest qualifications for the teaching profession. There were thousands of parish schools where, if denominational management was once established, as it would by the first part of Clause 7, the same thing would happen. There was one other grievance he wished to refer to, although he would not have done so but for the words used by the Prime Minister when he administered a severe rebuke to Members on this side of the House for introducing religious differences. He charged hon. Members with un-Christian feeling by those constant references to religious differences.

When did I do that?

In an interruption to the hon. Member for Carnarvon.

No.

said the words which the right hon. Gentleman used were that Christians do not attack each other, or words to that effect. The case he wished to refer to was that of a parish school with no alternative Nonconformist school within ten miles. In that parish school the person charged with the delivery of a Bible lesson, and imparting religious instruction to the scholars, ordered the children of Nonconformist families to stand on one side, and the reason given was that these children were the children of the devil, as they belonged to Nonconformist families. [Cries of "Oh, oh!"] Those words were used.

Where?

They would not have been used to the children had it not been known that the parents of those children were dependent for employment on persons who were strongly and wholly of the Church persuasion. It was nonsense to say that a man could maintain an independent position when he had eight or nine little children to provide for.

Where were those words used?

said that if the right hon. Gentleman would give him his word of honour that he received the information in confidence, there would be no difficulty in saying where and when. If inquiry were to be made it would give away the whole case. [Laughter from the Ministerial Benches.] He did not see where the laughter came in. If hon. Members opposite were earning only 16s. a week, with eight children to provide for, they would not laugh at the chance not only of losing their employment, but in all probability of being driven forth out of the parish without a cottage to cover their head. The right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Council knew of these cases as well as he did. They were not isolated cases, and such things would not be practised with parents who were independent. In nearly all cases the offences were committed against poor labouring people who had not the means of protecting themselves against these insults. And that was why the Nonconformists objected to the control of these schools by the Church party. The Nonconformists had no objection to Church doctrines being taught in the schools. If they shared in the control of the management, they would not object to Church doctrines being taught. He supported the Amendment and he hoped it would be accepted.

said he would not have troubled the Committee but for the challenge thrown out to any evangelical churchman to get up and speak in favour of this Amendment. The debate had only confirmed the opinion he had long held, that Nonconformists had a most distinct grievance in this matter. That grievance had been admitted on all sides and if he, or any of them, could do anything to allay religious grievances, to soften religious asperities, and to knit together in peace and amity the members of the different Christian Churches, surely it was their duty to do so. He spoke as an evangelical churchman, who had had the privilege for many long years to work in harmony with members of other branches of Christ's Chinch militant here on earth. He saw a most bitter feeling coming up, and he was thoroughly afraid that one of the results of this Bill, if it passed in its present state, would be to accentuate their differences, and, to a considerable extent, to spoil that harmony which he had hoped was increasing. He made a most earnest appeal to the First Lord of the Treasury, to see if he could not do something to meet this acknowledged grievance. If he did not give them some compromise it would do a great deal to quicken and make more easy the passage of the Bill through the House. It would do no harm, he believed, to the Church; it would do a great deal of good to the cause of true religion. He felt so strongly that, if the First Lord did not see his way to hold out a hope of doing something to lessen this serious grievance, he should have to do what he had not yet done on this Bill—vote against the Government.

desired to acknowledge the broad-minded spirit of the speech of the hon. Member opposite, and to second the appeal he had made to the First Lord of the Treasury to see if the right hon. Gentleman could not, either now or at some later period, produce some scheme or make some proposal which would eliminate the bitterness of a grievance admitted on both sides of the House. Unless something was done, in this new departure upon education, to do away with this friction, the national system of education would not be improved but quite the contrary. It was quite obvious after what had been said on all sides of the House that there was an admitted grievance, and if the present Government refused to deal with it, it would be the duty of those who succeeded them to do so.

said it was, he felt, impossible for him to add to the force of the speech of the hon. Member for the Scotland Division, but he desired to identify himself in the fullest possible way with the spirit of that speech, and he trusted the Prime Minister would not turn a deaf ear to the appeal made to him from all parts of the House. Speaking for the Irish Party, who in the main had supported the Government in this Bill, he did think their views ought to have some influence with the right hon. Gentleman. They felt most strongly that here was a serious grievance which had not been denied from any part of the House, and for his part it seemed to him that it would be perfectly easy for the right hon. Gentleman, without in the smallest degree imperilling those interests which he had at heart, to propose some compromise which would go a long way towards mitigating a legitimate grievance of a large portion of the people of this country. He earnestly appealed to the right hon. Gentleman to set his mind to the task of devising a compromise which would do something towards remedying this grievance.

rose with some diffidence to make a suggestion with reference to the Amendment now before the Committee, because he approached this subject from a different point of view to that of many Members on both sides of the House. He was one of those who had long been convinced that the only, not only logical but sound and satisfactory, way of dealing with their difficulties was to separate secular education entirely from religious education—that the public ought to pay for and control the secular education only, and that the religious education should be paid for and controlled by private sources. In the interest of the schools and also of religion, he would make the school the teacher of tolerance of all kinds of faith and not a source of bitterness and strife. He was told that the view which he was urging was not practicable. The Prime Minister, on Saturday, said the country would not stand it. He accepted the situation, and he accepted it all the more willingly on account of the favour with which he observed the Cowper-Temple Clause was received on both sides of the House. He believed the Cowper-Temple Clause had been called an illogical compromise. He ventured to think it had only been as successful as it had been, because it had also been as illogically carried out. Though he was convinced that every bit of knowledge well and truly taught went to form character, yet he recognised that at the present time the best way of effectively and speedily forming character was to make use of religion, and by religion He meant something based on a definite belief. Unless both secular and religious teaching were made use of, public education would always be halting. The Prime Minister had said that the country would not stand such a system of education as he was in favour of. Well, the suggestion he had now to make to him was this—was he willing to make an experiment by which in the small areas under discussion, which could not be dealt with in other ways, there should be introduced schools which should be controlled by the people, but in which schools, in the absence of any other suitable school, each denomination might give the teaching of its own?

said he agreed with the principle laid down by the hon. Member who had just sat down. He had always thought that Nonconformists made a great mistake when they abandoned the system of secular instruction only. He did not believe the day school was the proper place to teach religion, or the master of that school the proper person to teach it. He hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would agree to accept this Amendment, or make some substantial concession in this direction. If all churchmen spoke as the hon. Member for Norwood spoke, and approached the question in that way, he did not believe that there would be any difficulty in the management of their public elementary schools in any part of the country. Unless something were done to meet the Nonconformists in a fair and reasonable spirit, he believed they would have a controversy such as had not been experienced for a long time past. He pointed out that this Amendment dealt with rural districts, and that it was there that the grievance was a real and a serious one. Previous to the passing of the Act of 1870 these schools were built by the joint effort of Churchmen and Nonconformists. These schools had in some surreptitious manner got into the hands of one religious body, who taught doctrines in the schools which Nonconformists believed to be theologically wrong and politically unsound, and it was proposed by this Bill to perpetuate these grievances. The cleverest of the Nonconformist boys and girls were shut out altogther from the teaching profession unless they became members of the Church. They had either to abandon their profession or sacrifice their religious principles. That was a real and crying grievance which he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would endeavour to remove.

hoped it was not imagined that his hon. friend was not prepared to accept changes in the Amendment which would carry out the object which he really desired. Whatever his private opinion of the Cowper-Temple Clause might be, he would not be a party to doing anything indirectly which the House would not wish to do directly. They were not seeking to turn all these schools under the Cowper-Temple Clause. He had great sympathy with the views expressed by the hon. Member for London University, whose view he took to be to have united secular education and separate religious instruction. Their grievance was that there was only one school in a district in which doctrines were taught, to which evangelical Churchmen objected as strongly as Nonconformists.

said he thought the Government had no right to complain of the style and tenor of the speeches, but they did complain of the substance of the criticisms of some of the details put forward in the Bill. He admitted that there was a grievance. He had never denied it since he first spoke on education in that House, which was now many years ago, more years than he cared to remember. He admitted that with regard to schools in some districts, there was reason to fear that there was a real grievance to the Nonconformists. They were told by the hon. Member for the Scotland Division of Liverpool, that the Government, having admitted the grievance and not remedied it, it was a scandalous admission of legislative impotence. Well, they all knew that there were many ills which should be remedied.

"How small, of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure."

The charge that the Government had shown want of goodwill in this matter was, he thought, unreasonable. There were other grievances which he did not rind hon. Gentlemen on the other side so very anxious to remedy, and in regard to which, no reproach was brought against the occupants of the Treasury Bench. As he understood the matter, the particular weight of the charge was that there was only denominational teaching provided in a great many schools where a large number of children in attendance did not belong to the particular denomination. What remedy was proposed by the Amendment before the Committee? That Amendment apparently met the favour of his hon. friend behind him. He had heard his speech with sympathy, but his conclusion with astonishment. What his hon. friend was going to vote for was an Amendment which absolutely destroyed the denominational character of 8,000 denominational schools. The Amendment, though hardly anybody would have guessed it from the speeches which had been delivered, was that the management of these schools should be precisely the same as the management in schools provided by the education authority. What was that system? The management was one which had no denominational character at all.

said the system of appointing managers would become the same, but there was nothing in the Amendment which would apply the Cowper-Temple Clause to these schools.

thought the hon. Member was correct in saying the Amendment did not carry with it the Cowper-Temple Clause, but it would carry with it, the absolute undenominationalisation of the whole school management. It would absolutely exclude managers who would have the power of managing under the trust, and substitute persons appointed by the County Council. To adopt that as a remedy for this grievance which the Committee had had unfolded to them seemed to him the most extraordinary and extravagant course which the Committee could adopt. Gentlemen who did not like the Amendment were, it was said, going to vote for it as a protest. He hoped that would not be the case. The result would be, if they had their way, that an Amendment which they did not approve would be introduced into the Bill, and the Bill would be absolutely destroyed. He was one of those who had always thought that this difficulty might be met by permitting outside denominational teaching of all kinds in the school, if a sufficient number of parents desired it. That was the principle of the Clause which the Government introduced into the Act of 1897, for which they were soundly rated by the Nonconformists, and against which there was a Nonconformist agitation. He had seen some of the pamphlets against that Clause. If anything in any degree on those lines would settle this question, or go any important way towards settling it, well and good. He did not see why there should be any difference between the two sides of the House on that subject. ["With public control or without?"] But that interruption showed that it was not the teaching which was wanted, but an alteration of the management of the schools. The hon. Gentleman who had just spoken would be content with the solution which he offered; but the hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment was not content that the children of Nonconformist parents should have teaching in accordance with the religious opinions of those parents. If that would satisfy him, he thought he could promise him satisfaction. He hoped his hon. friend behind him noticed from the ominous silence which now reigned on the Benches opposite that that was not the solution which they desired, or with which they would be content. It did not satisfy them that when there were a sufficient number of children, those children should be taught the religion which their parents desired them to be taught. What they wanted was to get hold of the schools which now belonged to the denomination, and hand them over to managers who were quite fitted and ought to deal with schools provided by the local authority, but who surely ought not to be given the absolute control, so far as managers had control, of schools provided by special denominations. The issue before the Committee was—would they, or would they not, undenominationalise these schools? It was not, as his hon. friend appeared to think. Would they, or would they not, force down the throats of reluctant children, or the children of reluctant parents, denominational teaching of which they disapproved? That was covered by the conscience Clause. Nor was it a question whether they would provide those children with the teaching of which their parents approved, because that could be managed. He thought the Committee would be most ill-advised if, under the cover of this Amendment, brought forward nominally in the interests of religous toleration, they were to deal with these 8,000 schools in a manner which he was sure was not in conformity with the general wishes of the community.

said the speech of the right hon. Gentleman would have been more satisfactory if it had been less vague, and it would have been less satisfactory if it had not been so sympathetic, and he did not know which of these views to take. The right hon. Gentleman had spoken of promising satisfaction to the desire that the children of Nonconformists should not be taught doctrines with which their parents did not agree and should receive the religious education of which their parents would approve. But why had he not given that satisfaction? The whole of the question depended upon the provisions by which that point would be met. The silence on which the right hon. Gentleman commented was due to the fact that hon. Members on that side had never heard of any such intention on the part of the Government, and were at a loss to know what the right hon. Gentleman was going to do. They were anxious to know exactly what would be put before them before expressing their approval. The right hon. Gentleman did not observe that the claim made went beyond the question of religious teaching, and did not, on the other hand, go quite so far as he had tried to frighten the Committee into believing. The claim was not that these schools should be placed wholly under public control; it was that the public voice should be heard in the control of these schools. There was no claim that the schools should be absolutely denominationalised; the claim was that the management should be denominationalised, should be made less of a monopoly of one sect, and that public interest in the locality should be fully represented in the management. He thought his hon. friend the Member for North Monmouth was much to be congratulated on having pointed to this particular case and having shown the way in which it could be dealt with. The right hon. Gentleman had recognised the grievance, but said that it could not be cured by human laws. The grievance had, however, been created by human laws, and he was afraid it could only be remedied by further laws. He trusted, however, that what they had gained from the right hon. Gentleman might not be little. He had stated that He understood the grievance, and had publicly expressed his desire to remove the cause of the grievance. He had promised satisfaction in regard to that part of the question which affected religious teaching. Let him go a little further. Let him recognise that to leave these schools—the only schools to which these children could go—under the hard and fast system of the Bill, would be a gross injustice, and that some way ought to be discovered of meeting a grievance, the existence of which He had candidly and spontaneously acknowledged.

said that while the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, in. so far as it was sympathetic, was very satisfactory, it was not really comforting to know that the grievance had been recognised for so long without any practical effort having been made to remove it. The right hon. Gentleman has admitted that the Amendment would not inflict the Cowper-Temple Clause upon denominational schools, and suggested that the Opposition should he satisfied with tin; opportunity for all denominations to teach the children of their members their particular doctrines. But the First Lord thought the arrangement should there come to an end, and described the suggestion that he should go one stop further and accept the principle of public management as absurd and extravagant. That view could not be accepted. What did the right hon. Gentleman mean when he spoke of "undenominationalising" these schools? The only object of securing denominational management in these schools was to secure exclusively denominational teaching, but if the right hon. Gentleman once agreed to abolish that exclusively denominational teaching, on what ground could he seek to have exclusive control or management? Public control could do no harm to the rights of the denominational system in the schools. The right hon. Gentleman had taunted them with being silent in regard to this matter. One of the most important grievances was that in the schools which these children were compelled to attend, the doors were practically closed to them with regard to the teaching profession. What they sought to introduce into this Clause was that the management should be public and that the door should no longer be closed to those children. That was why the control should be public. The management should be public so that they might have for all children and teachers an equal chance for all denominations. He did not see why the right hon. Gentleman should taunt them with silence in this matter, when they were insisting upon public control and equal opportunities for all.

thought it would be a great pity if this House and the country was left in ignorance of what the views of the Government were upon the matter to which the right hon. Gentleman had alluded. The hon. Member who had just spoken had dealt with denominational teaching and management, but he thought those questions might be dealt with separately. The right hon. Gentleman was of opinion that there was another method of dealing with the grievance in regard to denominational teachers, and he said that he saw his way to give them satisfaction upon that point. But why should they not now know what the views of the Government were upon that question? He thought it would be a great pity if this afternoon they did not have some definite idea of what the right hon. Gentleman meant when he said that He recognised the grievance in a country village that children could only receive one form of denominational teaching, and that they could not receive that form of religious teaching which the parents—who might form a majority of the parish—might desire. That was the feeling which was very extensive throughout the country, and it was one of the great sources of bitterness in this controversy. He was aware that they would have frequent opportunities of dealing with this question of denominational management, but, in his opinion, it would be an immense advantage in dealing with this measure if they knew what the right hon. Gentleman had in his mind as the solution, which he regarded as satisfactory, in reference to denominational teaching, and which might meet the views of hon. Members who were not members of the Church of England. It had been rightly pointed out that this was a grievance which was felt, not merely by Nonconformists but also by members of the Evangelical Church. It was a grievance of a very real character, and it was the source of all the friction in this matter. If the right hon. Gentleman had in his mind some method of removing that grievance, it would be a very great relief to people, not only in this House but also in the country, if the Government would state their views upon it. They might, at any rate, partially redress the injustice if they wore not prepared to remove the whole of it. He felt sure that the First Lord of the Treasury would not be unwilling to listen to the appeal that he should let the Committee know how far he would go in this direction. Having admitted the existence of this grievance in frank and sympathetic tones, and having told the Committee that, as regarded a portion of that grievance he was prepared to deal with it, the right hon. Gentleman should now go further, and at this very critical period of the Bill at which much might; be determined as to the spirit in which it would be dealt with, tell the Committee at least how far this portion of the grievance could he redressed, and what was really in his mind. By doing this the right hon. Gentleman might, at all events, throw oil upon the troubled waters which might perhaps have some effect in allaying the storm, and if it did not remedy the whole grievance it might remove a portion of it,

said he supposed he must answer the appeal of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouthshire, although he confessed that his previous replies had not tended to shorten the debates. This debate had already gone very wide upon a comparatively narrow point. Now what was the grievance which he had admitted? It was that there was no teaching available in those single school districts of a kind that the majority of the parents of the children, attending the school in those districts desired. That was the grievance. That grievance could be met by permitting such teaching in the schools, whether they be voluntary schools or Board schools. What was sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander, and the principle applicable to the one was also applicable to the other. If they permitted denominational teaching under these circumstances to be given in a solitary Board school, in precisely the same way they could provide for undenominational or Cowper-Temple teaching in those single school districts where those schools belonged to a particular denomination. Those were the general lines upon which a remedy of this grievance should proceed. If that was the grievance which the Committee generally felt, he could not doubt that they would be able to find some general solution. He begged the House now to come to a decision.

said he considered himself something of an authority with regard to the question now before the Committee. He said this because he did not think any other hon. Member had taken the pains he had done to ascertain the feelings of hon. Members on both sides of the House with regard to this difficulty. He invited the First Lord of the Treasury to think as kindly as he could of them, because the more considerate he was in regard to the grievances of Nonconformists the more assuredly would he satisfy his own followers, for he knew that hon. Gentlemen opposite were almost one and all desirous of satisfying the feelings of those who sat on the Opposition side of the House. This proposal entirely failed to meet the grievance which was keenly felt. Something had been said about the pupil teachers, but that was not enough to meet the case, and it was not sufficient to say that Nonconformists would be able to become teachers in those schools. Granted that religious teaching in accordance with the wishes of the parents was given, they did not think it was right that the one denomination should be able to appoint all the teachers, and by their votes exclude other denominations. If this matter were left to the free vote of the parishes in the country, he did not believe any set of people would decide to exclude the teachers of various denominations. Wherever the experiment was tried, kindly feeling and consideration were assured, and wherever there was freedom in this matter there was peace. Therefore he asked for freedom for the people in each locality to choose the teachers, and not leave it to one religious sect. He was satisfied that the right hon. Gentleman's followers wished to meet them, and he asked that hon. Members should be left free to vote as they liked.

said he approached this question with a sincere desire to secure the best possible results. Their object on both sides was to develop good citizens, and it was generally held that moral principles must be inculcated in order that this should be successfully done. Therefore, he had great sympathy with; Gentlemen who supported the denominational system. In a village with which he was acquainted there was only one school, and it was connected with the Church of England. The Rector, desiring to meet the wishes of his Nonconformist parishioners, undertook to provide non-sectarian education in the elementary school. However, under the pressure of public opinion among Churchmen in the neighbourhood, he had to recede from that position. Eventually, the school committee decided that religion of an unsectarian character should be given during the first half hour on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and that on, Friday, after the school had been formally dismissed, those children whose parents desired it should remain for the teaching of the Church Catechism.

That has nothing to do with the present Amendment.

said he would try to keep to the point before the Committee. But he argued that there should be provided in school districts such management as would be secured by the Amendment. He would read as briefly as possible the resolutions passed by the Methodist Conference, which was a non-political church, to which he invited their attention. One of the resolutions expressed deep regret that steps had not been taken by past Governments to carry out their policy declared some years ago in regard to education (there was no allusion to the present Bill in that resolution), namely, that its primary object was the establishment of School Boards everywhere.

I must invite the hon. Member to be more relevant to the Amendment.

said he would endeavour to obey the ruling. The resolution concluded with the words —

"And the placing of a Christian unsectarian school within reasonable distance of every family."

This was of special importance in rural districts, where Nonconformists had no alternative to the compulsory attendance of their children at Anglican schools. He therefore asked the Committee to consider the expressed views of so large a church, which were shared by all the other Nonconformist churches, and which together formed a majority of the people of this country. Further, he urged that, as the Government proposed to re-open the compact of 1870—by which it was agreed that all rate-aided schools should be, unsectarian — consideration should be given to their views in the new settlement, so he hoped the First Lord of the Treasury would consider the appeal which had been made to him by the hon. Member for Norwood, and that he would find out some practical way of meeting the views of Nonconformists in regard to the provision of unsectarian teaching.

said that he was deeply disappointed by the attitude taken up by the First Lord of the Treasury on, this question. It was a question on which he thought the right hon. Gentleman would at least be willing to make an effort to meet the admitted grievance of the Nonconformists. He saw no promise of any proposal to meet that grievance in a generous spirit.

I said I would meet it.

said he listened sympathetically to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, and he did not think it contained any promise that an endeavour would be made to meet the grievance. That, at least, was the interpretation He placed on the speech. Unless this grievance were met, the cause of denominational education in this country would be put in the most serious jeopardy. A reaction would set in with such force that the denominational schools would be in danger of being swept away altogether. The denominationalists were parting with more of their power over the schools generally than they realised; and if the measure did not pass as a concordat in a spirit of conciliation and peace, if this grievance wore left unredressed, it would mean the opening of a new war, in which the Nonconformists would have advantages they had not hitherto possessed. In these circumstance it was only natural that the Irish Catholics, who formed a small minority, should be afraid that between the unreasoning policy of the Church of England party on the Ministerial side, and the consequent instigation of Nonconformist animosity, their own schools might be wiped out of existence in the ensuing struggle. The Irish Party could not support the Amendment, for reasons which had been given; but they would not support the Government in resisting the demand for some redress. Did anyone in this House say that in the 8,000 parishes where there was only one school to which the Nonconformists could resort, that these schools were not used as instruments to proselytise the Nonconformist children, and place them in a position of inferiority? It would be impossible for the Irish Catholics to support such a system, and all they could do under these circumstances, in view of the speech of the First Lord of the Treasury, was to withdraw from the House altogether.

Hear, hear !

said he wanted to refer to what had happened when his friend the hon. Member for Leicester was quoting a case of hardship. The hon. Member was met with derisive cries of "Where," the implication being, as had often occurred before, that unless the circumstance, time, and place, were all given, there was no truth in the story. Now the grievance they were discussing was admitted, but no adequate remedy had been proposed by the First Lord. He would point out that, in his opinion, hon. Members opposite did not hear of those grievances in the way hon. Members on this side of the House did. There was a vast number more of them than hon. Gentlemen opposite had any idea of, but they could not be brought forward because the grievances would be only thereby accentuated, and the Nonconformist parents and children would be victimised by the teachers and managers. He would give a case with the names. A gentleman named Mr. Benjamin Elsmere, a missionary of the Society of Friends, living at No. 11, Brooklands Terrace, Swansea, some time ago went to reside in a small country village. In that village there was only one school, a Church school, and he sent his children to it. His little boy was questioned on the principles and doctrines of the Church of England, and one of the questions was something about who was his godmother. The child, knowing nothing about it, said he had only one mother, and for this, that child was laid across the desk and caned severely. [Loud cries of "Oh, oh !"]

Will the hon. Gentleman give the name of that school?

said he had not the name of the school at that moment, but he had given the name of the man. He had a letter in his possession with name of place and all particulars, although not in his pocket, and would give it to the right hon. Gentleman, or to any Member of the House. There was no secrecy about this case. In consequence of what had occurred, Mr. Elsmere withdrew his children, this boy and two girls, from religious instruction, under the Conscience Clause, and for that they were subjected to the most offensive treatment. They were told to stand aside because their father did not believe the Bible. He knew the right hon. Gentleman would repudiate and condemn such treatment as that. The law was not made for people who knew how to behave themselves, but for the protection of citizens from the lawless. There was one other thing he wanted to say. He was glad to hear the hon. Member for London University speak as he had done. He was glad that the hon. Member had been supported by a Welsh member and a Scotch member. He desired, as an English member, to associate himself with those hon. Members who said that the only logical solution of the question was united secular and separate religious instruction.

said he hoped that the Statement made by the hon. Member for Holmfirth would be probed to the bottom; but, until he heard the case proved, he should refuse to believe it. He was very much obliged to the First Lord of the Treasury for the way he had treated this question. There was a remedy in the Bill, but he believed it was entirely unworkable, and, even if it were workable, it would be disastrous, and educationally grotesque. As a practical man he wished to point out to the First Lord that they were dealing with Clause 27 of the Bill of 1896. That clause provided that in all denominational schools the local education authority, in town or country, should be granted the right to bring in outside denominational teachers and give the children specific denominational teaching in accordance with the faith of their fathers. And from the cheers with which that plan was received he thought that was a line which might be acceptable to many members of the Committee. He should be profoundly disappointed if it was. It must be remembered that in many parish schools there is only one room, and how could they get eight or nine Wesleyan children in one corner, and the same number of Anglicans in another corner, and impart to them in that fashion serious religious instruction? He did not see the necessity of breaking up the children into these pens. He believed in common vital religious teaching. He had a great respect for the clergy of all denominations, but sometimes they failed to convince him as an adult. What He maintained was that the clergy were not trained to deliver themselves in that simple way which would commend itself to the children. He had another serious question—

said the hon. Member was now not even discussing the Bill, and he would invite him to give his attention to the clause before the Committee.

said certainly he ought to have dealt entirely with the alternative.

said he had sketched out an alternative, but he thought that example ought not to be abused.

said he was not inclined to abuse anything or anybody. He saw the difficulty, and was as anxious as the right hon. Gentleman to find a solution. But the solution in the clause would be an impracticable one, and it would take out of the hands of the teachers their most important function, viz., that of religious instruction. He had been a teacher himself, and he would have strongly objected if any one had taken away from him the right to give religious instruction. He did not want to see volunteer teachers of all denominations upsetting the harmony and discipline of the schools.