20th October.
By accepting a single but all-important amendment, Mr. Balfour has virtually abandoned the Education Bill, and the principle of direct public control of public money has been again substantially vindicated, The wonder is that at this late duy any Government should have been sufficiently hardy to challenge it. That the Education Bill was a tactical blunder, the recent bye-elections have proved beyond question. Now that the sting has been taken out of the measure, it is not easy to see what of value at all there is left in it. Framed in the first instance not so much in the interests of secular education as to bolster u; the voluntary schools, it laid itself open to all the criticisms of a wenk, half-hearted measure. Its one notable feature was the proposal, to shift the control of the schools, board and voluntary alike, from the present authorities to committees of management nominated by County or Municipal Councils, who would themselves retain, nominally at least, the power of the purse. Apart from the fact that this delegation of the work of education, a3 incidental occupation, to bodies elected for quite different purposes, was a rebuff to education, the conclusion was inevit~ able that in practice the non-elective, nominated committees would control the schools. In other words, the present boards of management of voluntary schools would be confirmed in their positions and entitled to all the privileges of rate-supported schools, while teaching doctrines repugnant to half the ratepayers who would be forced to support them, Nonconformist feeling has _been roused to a pitsh of extraordinary excitement, and Dr. Parker and others have declared that they would rather go to gaol than pay the new rate, which has been compared to the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.