majority on the committees of management, and maintenance out of the rates, and we are content." They have got both. But the fact that the clause which has aroused so much opposition among the clergy was in the bill all along, though it clears the Government of blame, does not make it, and ought not to make it, less of a shock to the clergy. What the bill does is to laicize the church schools. The opposition wanted to do more than this. Their contention was that church schools ought to be secularized. This demand the Government have consistently resisted. The church schools were to remain church schools in name. They were to retain their denominational character so far as this is compatible with the rejection of a foundation principle of the denomination to which they are supposed to belong. A church school under the Kenyon-Slaney clause is like a Baptist school from which all mention of adult baptism is excluded, or a Wesleyan school which knows nothing of the conference. So long as the education act of 1902 remains in force, so much of a clergyman's pastoral work as has been done in the school will be done in subjection to the laity. The right to pronounce whether a particular doctrine is the doctrine of the Church of England will, it is true, belong to the bishops, but to the laity will belong the more practically · important function of deciding whether the doctrine in question shall be taught in a Church of England school. * * * The speeches of the lord chancellor in the House of Lords and of the prime minister in the House of Commons show that the powers now for the first time intrusted to the laity are intended for use, not for show. The lay managers are meant to serve a purpose. The Government are evidently alarmed at the threatened revival of the agitation of 1898. If they look at the matter from the strictly ministerial point of view they may possibly be right. An antiritualist movement of any magnitude in the country generally seems to me a most unlikely event. I could almost say that I wish it were more likely than it is; for an anti-ritualist movement, where it is genuine and not a mere political dodge, is, at least, evidence that those who take part in it care something about religion. It is better that a man should wish to suppress confession because he thinks that it puts the priest in the place of God than that he should extend to it a contemptuous tolerance because he does not really believe that there is such a thing as sin. The reason why we are secure against an anti-ritualist agitation on a large scale is that a large proportion of the electorate has ceased to take any interest in religion. The vision of a future life, the thought of their own position in regard to that future life, no longer excites either hope or fear. But a prime minister has to take into account the state of opinion in his party as well as in the country, and I can easily believe that Mr. Balfour finds this part of the prospect less satisfactory. The squire is seldom a sacerdotalist, and the squire is still a power in the Unionist ranks. On the 17th of last month Mr. Balfour said plainly that if the management clause of the act had not been understood to exclude clerical management the house would not have looked at it. "I had difficulty enough," he went on, "in passing it as it was difficulty among those who are my most constant and loyal friends on this side of the house." These words reveal a state of feeling in the Unionist party of which few of the clergy had any suspicion. More than any other party at this moment it is an anticlerical party. It may seem absurd to say this just when the whole Nonconformist body are in arms against the alleged greed and arrogance of the Anglican clergy. But there is a very real difference between the two tempers. The Nonconformists dislike the clergy because they are established. If the Church of England were a voluntary body they would no more concern themselves with her clergy than they do with the Roman Catholic clergy. The Unionists whom Mr. Balfour had in his mind do not, indeed, dislike the clergy, but they like them-as some people like cats-in their place, and that place a strictly subordinate one. The Kenyon-Slaney clause exactly meets this feeling. It does not forbid the managers of a church school to leave the clergyman in undisturbed possession of the position he has hitherto held. Provided that he behaves himself nicely, he will be allowed and even pressed to remain. It is only when his preaching or ritual happens to offend them that they will make use of their new powers. In their eyes the clergyman is a useful agent, but a bad principal, and an agent they mean him to remain. So long as the clergy were content to accept the status thus assigned to them there was no need to register it in an act of Parliament. Now that so many of them take a different view of their duties and responsibilities they need to be restrained by legislation. But, as Mr. Balfour explained when the KenyonSlaney amendment was first submitted to the House of Commons, the passing of a clergy discipline bill would be a long, troublesome, and doubtful business. The advantage of the education act as completed by this clause is that it does half the work of a clergy discipline act without cither trouble or uncertainty. It gives the school managers the power of hitting the clergy in what, for various reasons, is a very tender place. The managers, as the Lord Chancellor has pointed out, will be able to hold it in terrorem over them, and, now that attention has been drawn to their powers, there is good reason to believe that they will be used. In This, then, is the unappetizing mess of pottage for which the clergy have sold their birthright. They have, it is true, been unconscious Esaus, but, all the same, they have played Esau's part. They have been so absorbed in considering how to keep their schools alive that they have not stopped to ask themselves of what use they will be to then under the new management. It will not be long, however, before they will have evidence on this head. Wherever a clergyman is not popular with his parishioners they will now have the means of making him feel their displeasure. The managers of the church school will have only to express their regret that, by lighting candles in the daytime, or wearing "Mass vestments," or preaching the Real Presence in the pulpit, or sitting in the church to hear confessions, he has forfeited their confidence and driven them to refuse him admission to the church school. Thus the act makes a change of vital importance in the position of every parish priest. Hitherto he has had nobody over him except the bishop and the law courts. future he will be subject as regards a large part of his work to a lay tribunal of first instance, with nothing to guide its members except their own fancies. No doubt it is a part of his work which in many cases he has left to be done by others. Mr. Balfour had facts on his side when, in replying to Lord Hugh Cecil, he charged the clergy with systematically making over to the elementary schoolmaster their function in the church school. Possibly this is one explanation of the strange fact that the church is often weakest in the districts where single schools are most frequent. She has had the education of the children in her own hands, but she has allowed religious instruction to rank among the incidents of school life which find their natural end when the school age is passed. But though Mr. Balfour's charge is a true one as regards many of the clergy, it does not bear out the conclusion he sought to draw from it. There is a world of difference in principle between a system which makes the parish schoolmaster the delegate of the vicar of the parish and a system which makes him the delegate of the school managers. In the former case the authority remains with the vicar. He can at any moment resume the function he has laid aside, and he can exercise an effectual supervision over the deputy to whom he has for the time intrusted it. In the latter case the vicar is in the school only on sufferance; the control of the religious instruction is out of his hands. It is inconceivable that the clergy should long accept such a state of things as this. Parliament can not relieve them of a duty intrusted to them at their ordination, or bid them trouble themselves no further about a responsibility which has passed into the keeping of a lay committee. If a clergyman is shut out of his school, it will at once become his business to make other provision for the religious instruction of the children whom he can no longer reach in the school building or during school hours. How far such an arrangement will conduce to the religious peace of a parish I leave to the imaginations of the authors of the Kenyon-Slaney clause. There is no need to inquire, with Mr. Balfour, whether the Church of England regards teaching as the inalienable right of the clergy, or, with Sir William Harcourt, whether at the Reformation she did not, by express ordinance, make over that right to the laity. Both speculations belong to a class on which the time of politicians is very idly spent. For them the only question worth considering is not: "Are such and such bodies of men right in thinking this or that?" but: "Is it true that they think it?" There was a great deal of very useless discussion last spring as to the supposed want of logic in Nonconformists when they objected to support voluntary schools out of the rates, after supporting them without protest out of the taxes. Probably many politicians wish now, and many more will wish at the next general election, that they had been at equal pains to ascertain whether Nonconformists really did feel this objection. In the same way the smooth working of the education act will depend much less on the reasonableness than on the strength of the hostility it has evoked in the clergy. They are indeed a body of men as to whose action it is specially unsafe to hazard a positive prediction. They are isolated; they are divided; they have no recognized leaders. But to be turned out of the schools they have till now held to be their own, or to be let remain in them only so long as the managers think that they can be of use to the regular schoolmaster, is a greater slight than has yet been offered them. And it is one which, as I sincerely hope, they will not take patiently. But what are they to do? It is not often that a question of this moment admits of so plain and straightforward an answer. Let them in the first place bethink them of the large and increasing number of the children nominally under their charge whom they have allowed to slip out of knowledge. What has until now been their defense when they have been accused of neglecting church children in board schools? That entry into these schools could only be had by giving up their own schools, and that to do this would be to sacrifice all the advantages which children enjoy who are brought up in a thoroughly church atmosphere. We shall not hear much of this argument under the new act. Whatever other merits a school in which the parish priest has of right no place may chance to possess, it will certainly not have a church atmosphere. The parish priest who tries to give it one will soon discover that in order to succeed he must secure the support of a majority of his colleagues on the management, two of whom need not, and probably will not, be churchmen. When the clergy come to realize that for this they have raised controversial passion to an almost unprecedented height, undone all the advances previously made toward a better understanding with Nonconformists, and permitted themselves to be presented to one-half of their countrymen as setting rate aid above every other consideration, they will surely see that it is better to have a secure position in every public elementary school than a position from which they may at any moment be dislodged in a particular variety of elementary schools. At all events, this conviction is every day becoming more general. A year ago the churchmen who entertained it could almost be counted on the ten fingers. Now those who hold this to be the only ultimate solution of the religious difficulty in education are to be found at every corner. The only point on which there is any real difference of opinion is the length of time it will take to bring it about. There are three systems, any one of which might conceivably be substituted for that set up by the new act-the Scottish system, the German system, and the system which provides religious instruction in all public elementary schools, but provides it at the cost and by the agents of the denominations. The Scottish system leaves the local authority free to teach what religion it likes in its own schools, while permitting local minorities to build schools for themselves and to draw their share of the government grant. The German system takes care that, in every school where the children are of more than one religion, each creed shall furnish a corresponding proportion of the teachers. Either of these plans is defensible in principle, but it is more than doubtful whether either of them would work well in England. The German system involves concurrent endowment, and so has no chance of being accepted by Nonconformists. The Scottish suits a country where the immense majority of the people are of one religion, and that a religion the members of which are not divided among themselves on any important matters of doctrine. This is not a description which can be applied to the Church of England. Among us the local authorities would constantly be asked to decide, not merely whether the religion taught in their schools should be that of the Church of England, but whether it should be that of the High Church or the Low Church section of the Church of England. In this way the question for the clergy is narrowed to the simple issue: "Shall we, in the matter of religious teaching, rest content with the education act of 1902, or do our utmost to get universal State schools with denominational religious instruction set up in place of it?" I can not believe that the clergy as a body will be long in making up their minds what their answer shall be. They will prefer State schools into which they can enter as of right, to church schools in which they will at best be tolerated visitors. They may, however, hesitate to declare themselves active supporters of the change because of the difficulties which are assumed to lie in the way. Some of these difficulties are purely mechanical, and may be got over by a little common sense. Others relate to the supposed injury done to the children by the discovery that mankind is not of one mind upon the subject of religion-a fact which we may safely assume them to have learned when first they saw some of their companions going to church and some to chapel. Others again rest on the alleged unwillingness and incompetence of the clergy to give the religious lesson. That some of the clergy will dislike going into the State schools, just as they have disliked going into their own schools, is certain. But to say this is only to say that every profession is irksome to some of its members. Probably there are clergymen who do not welcome the return of Sunday, and are happier outside their churches than inside them, but we do not for that reason abolish public worship. We are content to hope that a more careful use of patronage and a sounder public opinion will gradually mend matters. That there are some of the clergy who can neither give a lesson properly nor keep a class in decent order is likely enough, but if every bishop would make six months at a training college part of the necessary preparation for taking orders, this difficulty would soon disappear. It can not be impossible for a curate, with time and proper preparation, to rise to the level of a certificated teacher. Nor will the work be wholly done by the clergy. The need of providing religious instruction in State schools will create a class of laymen who will offer themselves for this duty, just as they do now for that of a lay reader. The office of religious instructor in State schools will supply a new and useful outlet for that lay energy which, as we are so often told, is now allowed to run to waste. а Details like these, however, belong to the future. The business of the present is to give expression and organization to the growing determination of the clergy that, so far as its arrangements for teaching religion are concerned, the education act of 1902 shall have but a short time to live. THE NEW EDUCATION ACT AT WORK. By T. J. MACNAMARA, [From the Fortnightly Review, January, 1903.] In at least one important respect the new education act has proved, and will prove, a blessing in disguise. During the eight months it has been before Parliament and the country it has aroused the English people to something approaching a sense of interest in the question of national education. Such an achievement is by way of being a modern miracle, for the English people, up to the present, have had little or no belief in intellectualism as a factor in national defense. They have in the past won their way to supremacy by physical superiority. And, broadly speaking, it is John Bull's belief that since muscle has been the ruling force of yesterday so it will be the governing power of to-morrow. John is too conservative to connote the changes going on around him. He does not yet see that mere physical superiority can avail nothing against the magic forces that can be called up by the electrician, the chemist, and the scientist generally. The new education act, by awakening ja him a concern for the education problem-even though that concern be either purely political or purely sectarian-has helped very materially to move him with the times. And when the act actually gets into operation the newly found interest to which I refer is scarcely likely, for some time at any rate, to subside. The act-inasmuch as it wipes out the school boards, and, for the first time in the history of this country, not only universalizes the local rate for education but boldly puts the denominational schools upon the-e rates-will arouse many irritations and cut clean across many traditions. In so doing it will stimulate local interest. For the next ten years this act will keep the education question acutely before the country, and at the end of that time some of its leading features will be the subject of drastic Parliamentary modification. Well, this is all to the good. Rather a thousand times a faction-creating education act and strenuous agitations for its repeal, than a humdrum act and national education hopelessly eddying to and fro in the placid backwash of public apathy. John Bull has got to be kept awake on the education question for the next decade; and, thank Heaven, this act will perform the operation. THE ACT, THE MUNICIPAL COUNCILS, AND THE LOCAL CONTROL OF EDUCATION. After so much by way of general reflection I come to the act itself. Its first operation is to destroy all the school boards. Thus, 2,544 public authorities which have been engaged upon elementary education for thirty years are wiped out of existence. Probably nobody will shed many tears over the disappearance of the small village school boards; but it is an educational leap in the dark thus to destroy the great urban school boards which have done so much to raise the level of public elementary education in this country. In lieu of the ad hoc local education authority the Government makes every county and every county borough council the authority for the education in its area. Thus, at one stroke, not only do the school boards disappear; not only is the local control of education “municipalized;" not only, for the first time, will every area in the country possess a public authority charged with the administration of education, but also-and again for the first time-it is made possible to bring all grades of education, elementary, technical, and secondary, under one and the same local authority in each district. Thus, in the first place, the act creates 67 county borough education authorities and 62 administrative county education authorities. Each of these authorities, acting through an "educational committee," will be charged with the control of all the public education within its area. No sooner, however, is the policy of "one paramount authority in each area vindicated than the act is made by way of proviso and exception to run ignominiously away from the principle. In the counties every municipal borough of over 10,000 people, and every urban district of over 20,000 is to be autonomous, both as to administration and rating charges for elementary education. Thus, throughout the 62 counties there will be 140 municipal boroughs and 61 urban districts, which, though the higher education will be administered from the county center in each case, will set up for themselves education committees for elementary education. This is not quite the scheme of educational coordination to introduce which we understood in the earlier days of the education debates was the Government's fondest aim. But this is not all. Having given way to the local patriotism of the middle-sized urban areas and promised them education committees of their own for elementary education, the Government found itself confronted with the smaller urban areas. "If you give an educationally misplaced measure of autonomy to 10,001, what do you propose to do for 9,999?" Thus the inevitable political pressure. "Very good,” said the Government, amiably forgetting all its old zeal for coordination, avoidance of overlapping, prevention of the duplication of administrative machinery, and so on and so on, “we will allow every municipal borough with under 10,000 people and every urban district with under 20,000 to levy over its own area an extra penny (over and above the 2 pence the county will levy) for higher education. If it cares to-do this it may have autonomy, financial and administrative, for purposes of higher education so far as the penny will carry it; at the same time it will be governed by the county in respect of its elementary education." This charmingly characteristic little bit of complaisance on Mr. Balfour's part confronts us with the possible calling into being of 108 further education committees for municipal boroughs of under 10,000 people, and of 745 more for urban districts of under 20,000 people. Thus, in the "one-authority" act, we get the following: LOCAL EDUCATION AUTHORITIES WHICH MUST BE CREATED. Autonomous for elementary education and autonomous for higher education 67 Autonomous for elementary education and autonomous for higher education 62 Autonomous for elementary education and autonomous for higher education Urban districts with population of over 20,000 . . . . 140 61 LOCAL AUTHORITIES WHICH MAY BE CREATED. Non-autonomous for elementary education, but autonomous for higher educa- 108 Non-autonomous for elementary education, but autonomous for higher education up to 1 pence in the pound. (Ratable also up to 2 pence more, without autonomy, by the county council): Urban districts up to a 20,000 population..... 745 For myself I hope the latter 853 will all resolve to throw in their lots with the county for higher education. It is little they can do with their penny rates, and it would be the maxium of stupidity thus to cut holes in the general scheme of higher education for any county. THE EDUCATION COMMITTEES. Having resolved to destroy the ad hoc local education authorities, and to go to the municipal councils for its new education authorities, the Government at once found itself faced with the fact that already the municipal councils have enough to do. So, though nominally they are to be the "authority" in each case, directly the new responsibility is conferred upon them they must delegate it to another body-the "education committee." The function of the municipa! council is confined to "the power of raising a rate or borrowing money." Educational administration is delegated in each case to the "education committee." In every urban district, of whatever size, this "education committee" must consist, as to a majority of its members, of members of the municipal council. In the administrative counties it may so consist. But even here the county council must nominate a majority of the persons to serve |