support religious instruction, and that, therefore, no state aid should be given to schools of any religious denomination; that the rates contributed by Roman Catholics, Protestants of all denominations, Jews, and persons of no religious persuasion whatever, should not be devoted in any degree to the teaching of tenets to which the contributors were opposed; and that those schools alone should receive grants for their support, in which the teaching was strictly secular. Many speakers represented that the larger part of the state-aided schools had for years been under the influence, or wholly under the control of the clergy of the Established Church, and that numbers of persons who had conscientious objections to sending their children to be taught doctrines from which they themselves differed, were compelled to avail themselves of schools supported by voluntary contributions, or of private schools of an inferior class where the teaching was inadequate. These "genuine non-cons," as they were sometimes called by their admirers, did not, of course, object to the teaching of religion; but they opposed its introduction into any national system of education in elementary schools, contending that it was the duty of the schoolmaster or schoolmistress in such institutions to impart only secular instruction; religious teaching being left to the ministers of religion, the parents, or the conductors of Sunday-schools. It is no part of our present purpose to discuss the question how far it is possible to give lessons in history, or to carry on the education of children at all, without some kinds of appeal, in which an extreme analysis might discover religious doctrine; but it may be mentioned at once that a very large number of those who strongly objected to the introduction of what may be called dogmatic or denominational teaching did not insist on the entire exclusion of Scripture reading, nor oppose references by the teacher to those sanctions which are acknowledged by most religious sects. The necessity was, they thought, to secure the schools against any ordination of denominational teaching, or even religious teaching, as a part of the regular instruc tion for which aid was given by rates or government grants, and to provide "a conscience clause," by which parents might obtain for their children the full benefit of the secular instruction without being compelled to keep them at school during the reading of Scripture or any other observance which could be reasonably regarded as religious teaching. Again, however, there were large numbers of persons belonging to various religious bodies, who were unable to believe that there could be any true or effectual teaching at all which did not include, and even depend upon, that religious influence which, they contended, could alone make it of real worth. These were the conditions under which the "Elementary Education Act" was brought forward, and the chief difficulty against which it had to contend was the resistance of those uncompromising Nonconformists, of whom Mr. Richard (representing the Welsh dissenters), Mr. Miall, and Mr. Dixon were regarded as the champions. The difficulty was increased by the fact that these gentlemen had been firm supporters of Liberal measures. Nearly everybody agreed that something should be done. In agricultural districts the church schools had held some sort of authority, but the actual amount of secular teaching was often so meagre that the children were committed to an unintelligible routine which left them ignorant even of the elements of education. In the large towns, such as Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, and Liverpool, to say nothing of London, there were hosts of children between the ages of three and thirteen who received scarcely any primary instruction at all. In Leeds only 19,000 out of 58,000 were at school, in Manchester 25,000 out of 60,000, in Liverpool 30,000 out of 90,000, in Birmingham 26,000 out of 83,000. In London it was not easy to estimate the amount of ignorance, for though free schools, parochial schools, and so called national schools provided a very defective and inadequate elementary education for a large number, there was a vast horde of neglected and destitute children who roamed the streets and appeared to be without parental care or responsible guardianship; while a still larger number were either kept in NEGLECTED AND DESTITUTE CHILDREN. ignorance because they were able even in infancy to contribute to the family support, or only occasionally attended the "ragged" or evening schools provided by the voluntary efforts of benevolent subscribers and unpaid teachers. No system was in existence possessing the controlling power or the settled resources which alone could ensure even the primary instruction of the poorer class of children. Nearly every church and chapel seemed to make an effort to provide day-schools or infant schools, many of which languished for want of funds and employed inefficient teachers, who frequently had to perform their duties in buildings not only inadequate but dangerously unhealthy. In many schools which claimed and received grants of money the conditions were so hopelessly unsatisfactory that various expedients had to be adopted to secure the attendance of a sufficient number of children to obtain external support; while in some cases endowments were misapplied, and funds originally intended for the maintenance of an efficient foundation had been diverted, either because there were few poor inhabitants remaining in the district, or because there was no authority which could compel the parents to avail themselves of the teaching provided for their children, even if it had been in accordance with modern requirements. The provision of the means of education was not the chief difficulty. The problem was how to overcome the indifference of parents, and to compel them to take advantage of such a provision. How could the vast number of boys and girls, amounting to two-thirds of the juvenile population, be brought under instruction? In large towns, and especially in London, destitute, neglected, and apparently friendless children formed a phalanx which appalled benevolence, and dismayed the administrators of justice. Boys and girls, untaught and uncared for, were to be seen in the large thoroughfares as well as in by-ways and slums, some of them making pretences of selling matches or sweeping crossings, others begging or haunting the doors of eating-houses and taverns, many of them hanging about the markets to seize upon the refuse, or to pilfer from the stalls. What were 281 known as "the dark arches of the Adelphi," that series of arches which ran along the river bank at the upper part of the Strand, and spanned the steep lanes and alleys leading to remote and mostly solitary wharves—were the resort of a horde of wretched children who slept there at night, and by day sallied forth starving, wretched, and with the scared cunning look of hunted creatures. The number of neglected children in London had been more than a disgrace and a reproach; it had become a terror and a danger for the future. Magistrates, because of the want of any regular provision, were unable to deal with prisoners whose heads (to use the phrase of police-court reporters) "scarcely reached above the level of the dock." To send them to prison was to brand them with the criminal mark, to promote their graduation in dishonesty and vice. Nor were the industrial schools, the schools providing for a comparatively small number of children convicted of offences against the law, much better than the prisons. The evil was, that no provision had been made for friendless, houseless boys or girls, except they had made themselves of some importance to the state by committing crime. The urchin who lacked food and shelter, but who had too much virtue or too little courage to pilfer from a shop-door, or from the back of a market cart, was an unconsidered fraction in the national estimate. Only by committing an offence against the law did he or she become an integer of some social importance of sufficient importance to be arrested, charged at a police court, and sent somewhere to be fed and warmed and clothed, and taught,—what?— perhaps to become an habitual criminal by the artful communications of fellow-convicts, or by the difficulty of obliterating the prison taint. The Elementary Education Act aimed at remedying this condition of things, and to a certain extent it diminished the number of "gutter children," by directing its officers to seek out the parents and bring them under the compulsory clauses which demanded that the children should be sent to school; but as a matter of fact, the schools which came to be established did not for a long time lay hold of this class. The actually homeless and destitute children they could not bring under instruction, for the provision of food and clothes came first, and there were no elementary breakfast and dinner tables. To voluntary efforts, which had chiefly grown out of the ragged-school movement, the most necessitous of the children of the large towns were left, and are left still. Industrial schools, however, now include refuges as well as reformatories. Crime is still regarded as a primary claim to participation in the advantages of schools where the reformatory system is adopted, and such schools are entirely apart from the provisions of the Elementary Education Act, but the schoolboards, through their officers, make use of industrial schools for the purpose of rescuing children who are so friendless that they are not eligible for the board-schools. Like many of the institutions of this country, the two systems have come to work affinitively, though they differ so greatly that at first they appeared to be opposed in principle. The authorities of the board-schools, supported partly by rates, partly by government grants, and partly by fees paid by parents, soon discovered the value of schools originally founded by benevolent contributions, as refuges for the reception of the homeless and the destitute, and many of these institutions were made certificated industrial schools, supported partly by benevolent support, partly by the government grant-which is now in some instances their chief dependence. While philanthropists were almost disheartened by the aspect of large towns, and especially of the metropolis, with regard to the condition of destitute children, there were agricultural districts in which no less stringent measures were needed to protect children employed in farm or field labour. A commission of inquiry into the employments of women and children in 1865-66 had disclosed a large amount of suffering among a million and a half of young persons and children, occupied in various manufactures and employments not coming under the regulations of the Factories Act. The details of the evidence elicited on the subject were so painful that bills were brought in to place all manufactures previously carried on without government inspection under regulations analogous to those under those acts. The sixth and final report of the commission, however, related to women, children, and young persons engaged in agriculture, and its revelations respecting the system of employing agricultural gangs, or companies of young persons and children of both sexes, in Lincolnshire, Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Nottinghamshire, and to some extent in Bedford, Rutland, and Northampton, were appalling. Gang - masters, and mostly depraved drunken ruffians, were employed to provide field labour, and they did so by collecting from the surrounding villages, companies of boys, girls, and women-some of the children being mere infants, whom the parents, miserably poor, sent out with the rest for the sake of the few pence they could earn. The gangmasters had almost entire control of the children, for they alone could find them regular employment, and that employment could scarcely have found a parallel in negro slavery, for the gangs were driven to labour under conditions in some respects worse than those to which slaves on plantations were subject. Of children of eight years old, or even younger, and lads and girls of 14 or 15, or older, these gangs were composed, and the report on the evidence says— "When the gangs are working at a considerable distance from home the children leave as early as five in the morning and do not return before eight at night, and the few who attend the Sunday-schools after the labours of the week are described as in a state of exhaustion which it is distressing to witness. A little boy only six years of age is stated to have regularly walked more than six miles out to work, and often to come home so tired that he could scarcely stand. Walking, the gangmasters themselves admit, is more trying to the children than working. When the gang has a long distance to go the children become so exhausted, that the elder ones are seen dragging the younger ones home, sometimes carrying them on their backs. In winter the children often return from the fields crying from the cold. AGRICULTURAL GANGS-" BOARD-SCHOOLS." Last night,' said the mother of a little boy seven years of age, 'when my Henry came home he lay up quite stiff and cold; he is often very tired, and will fall down and drop asleep with the food in his mouth.' In some parts of the fen districts the children are compelled to jump the dykes, an exertion causing frequent accidents, and one poor girl died from the effects of an effort beyond her strength." "It is a common practice for the gang-master to carry a stick or a whip, but rather, it is said, to frighten the children with than for use; but the treatment depends entirely upon his disposition. There is no control or possibility of control, for the children know that remonstrance would be immediately followed by expulsion from the gang, and the parents, having a pecuniary interest in their labour, would but too certainly shut their ears to any complaints. Instances are not uncommon of severe and lasting injuries having been inflicted by brutal gang-masters, and gross outrages, such as kicking, knocking down, beating with hoes, spuds, or a leather strap, 'dyking,'| or pushing into the water, and 'gibbeting,' i.e. lifting a child off the ground and holding it there by the chin and the back of the neck, are said to be frequent." The labour in the wet fields was dreadful, the worst being stone picking, at which exhausting toil children worked eight or nine hours a day; but turnip pulling was nearly as bad, and, indeed, the manner in which the work was often urged on by a brutal taskmaster had effects, which need not be repeated here, but were quite as serious as many of those recorded in the worst accounts of West India slavery. The physical consequences were horrible enough, the moral consequences worse. In those mixed gangs of women, boys, and girls the depravity was beyond description. All purity, even the semblance of it, often disappeared. A policeman, speaking of the gangs in his district, and especially of the gross immorality of the girls at an early age, said that although he had been employed for many years in detective duty in some of the worst parts of London, he never witnessed equal boldness 283 and shamelessness; and that the obscenity of their conversation and of their songs was such as needed to be heard to be believed. And this was little more than seventeen years ago. It was not till July, 1867, that a bill, brought in by the Earl of Shaftesbury, forbade the employment of girls of less than 13 years old in agricultural labour for hire, or the employment of women under 18 in public gangs. Yet there existed schools supported by voluntary subscriptions, and having no connection with the government, and schools aided by the state and under the control of the committee of the privy-council of education. There were Dissenting schools, Church schools, national schools, infant schools; there was an education department, administering a sum of money annually granted by parliament "to promote the education of children belonging to the classes who support themselves by manual labour." The means employed were to aid voluntary local exertion, to establish or maintain schools for the elementary instruction of children, or for training teachers in normal schools. The schools were to be in connection with some recognized religious denomination, or to include besides secular instruction the daily reading of the Scriptures from the Authorized Version. Aid was given to establish schools, and to support such as were open to inspection by appointed inspectors, upon whose reports the grants were made. There were thus building grants and annual grants. Whatever may have been the endeavour to make these provisions into a system of national education, it had signally failed, or rather it had never approached success. On all hands it was felt that a wide and inclusive measure must be brought in, and the act introduced by Mr. Forster was received with serious interest. It was, he explained, intended to secure by enactment efficient school provision in every district in England where it was wanted. The districts were to be the civil parishes. Any district supplying a sufficient amount of primary secular instruction would be let alone so long as it continued to do so. Schools entitled to government aid were to be efficient according to a fixed standard, and compulsory demanded exclusively secular education. inspection would be applied to every school | gated the wrath of those Nonconformists who without any denominational conditions, while the adoption of a conscience clause would be the condition of any grant, whether for building or any other purpose. The bill was calculated to establish a system of schools under the direction of school-boards throughout England and Wales, each board to have powers to frame bye-laws, and to compel the attendance of children in the district who were between five and twelve years of age. The reference of the compulsory clause to the boards offended the extreme sticklers for absolute compulsion; the compromise of a conscience clause for some time alienated hard-and-fast advocates of secular education only; while a third party objected to the provision of funds by the mixed method of school fees, rates, and government grants for efficiency. Though free schools were to be provided in districts where the poverty of the inhabitants made gratuitous instruction necessary, there were some who advocated the provision of free education all round. We need not further discuss the questions which arose, many of which continued for some time after the vigorous exertions of the boards had multiplied schools with amazing rapidity. The first chairman of the London School Board was Lord Lawrence, whose powers of organization were well applied to this important work, and he was ably assisted by Sir Charles Reed, who, after the death of the famous Indian administrator, became chairman, and carried on the work with a vigour against which there were some remonstrances, though the answer was to be found in the statistics, published by the board, of the number of children still waiting to be received. The government could not satisfy all the objections that were urged against the bill, and the Nonconformists afterwards showed their disaffection in a manner which contributed to the defeat of the government. Mr. Bright was absent from the house, suffering from a severe illness which for a time made it doubtful whether he would ever again be able to resume either ministerial or parliamentary duties, or he might have miti Some particulars of the work which had been accomplished when the Elementary Education Act had been for ten years in operation, may do more to illustrate the working of the scheme than any general remarks upon the predictions which attended its introduction. We find by statistical returns in the report of the committee of council on education for 1881 that in the year ended August 31, 1881, the inspectors visited 18,062 dayschools in England and Wales, to which annual grants were made, these furnishing accommodation for 4,389,633 scholars, or rather more than one-sixth of the population. There were on the registers the names of 4,045,362 children, of whom 1,268,250 were under seven years of age, 2,573,081 between seven and thirteen, 157,584 between thirteen and fourteen, and 45,727 above fourteen. These figures show some improvement upon the returns quoted in the previous report, the accommodation having increased by 148,880 school places (or 3.51 per cent), and the scholars on the registers by 149,538 (3.84 per cent). The average attendance also had increased by 112,619 (409 per cent), and the number of children individually examined by 91,465 (4.8 per cent). The annual government grant to elementary dayschools rose in the year from £2,130,009 to £2,247,507, or from 15s. 5d. to 15s. 84d. per scholar in average attendance; while the grant for the current financial year was estimated at 16s. per head. The number of voluntary schools was 14,370, with accommodation for 3,195,365, and an average attendance of 2,007,184; while the number of board-schools was 3692, with accommodation for 1,194,268, and an average attendance of 856,351. The expenditure per scholar in average attendance was for the whole of England and Wales £1,14s. 11 d. in voluntary, and £2, 1s. 6d. in board schools. Of the latter the highest was London (£2, 158. 10d.), and the lowest Hull (£1, 98. 11d.-18. 9}d. lower than the Roman Catholic, which are the lowest of the voluntary schools); whilst Bradford was £2, 6s. 6d., Liverpool £2, 3s. 3}d., Manchester £1, 19s. 04d., Birmingham £1, |