THE LIBERALISM OF THE CHURCH, 1816. 225 nected with education." The condition of education in country districts was, however, very bad. There were few who could help the ignorant, and "the efforts of individuals combined in societies are almost wholly confined to populous places." The Committee pointed out the difficulties that occurred where the only school in the country district was governed by regulations that excluded the Dissenters, but added that "in many schools where the national system is adopted, an increasing degree of liberality prevails, and that the church catechism is only taught, and attendance at the established place of public worship only required, of those whose parents belong to the establishment; due assurance being obtained that the children of sectaries shall learn the principles and attend the ordinances of religion, according to the doctrines and forms to which their families are attached." This "liberality" must be noticed. The Church had awakened from its eighteenth-century sleep; it had realised once again the great part that it had to play in national education, and it had recognised that if the common faith was once more to mould the education of the children of the country the conscientious scruples of Dissenters must be respected. In that fact lies the genesis of the conscience clause of later years. The principle of the clause was indeed suggested by the Select Committee. The Committee advised on the whole educational position that two different plans were desirable, severally adapted to the opposite circumstances of the town and country districts. Wherever the efforts of individuals can support the requisite number of schools, it would be unnecessary and injurious," said the Committee presided over by Mr Brougham, "to interpose any parliamentary assistance. But Your Committee have clearly ascertained, that in many places private subscriptions could be raised to meet the yearly expenses of a School, while the original cost of the undertaking, occasioned chiefly by the erection and purchase of the schoolhouse, prevents it from being attempted." The Committee 226 THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION, 1816. recommended that money might well be employed in this way, but that it must be left to the wisdom of Parliament to decide whether such public funds should be vested in Commissioners em Recommendations of the Select Committee. powered to make proper terms with the private parties desirous of establishing schools, or whether the money should be entrusted for distribution to great institutions in London for promoting education. On the other hand, in districts where no aid from private exertions could be expected and the poor "are manifestly without adequate means of instruction, your Committee are persuaded, that nothing can supply the deficiency but the adoption, under certain material modifications, of the Parish School system, so usefully established in the Northern part of the Island, ever since the latter part of the seventeenth century." We must note that the Committee, in hesitating to decide whether funds for building should be given to Commissioners or to the great school societies for distribution, had before them the example of Ireland, where Parliamentary funds were distributed by the Kildare Street Society amid considerable dissatisfaction. It is curious that the English Parliament should have adopted in 1833 the method of distribution by school societies at the very date when that method was emphatically abandoned as unsatisfactory in Ireland. The Select Committee thought that where it was necessary to give schoolhouses to a district there should be thrown on the inhabitants of the district the burden of paying the schoolmaster's salary, "which ought certainly not to exceed twentyfour pounds a year. It appears to Your Committee that a sufficient supply of schoolmasters may be procured for this sum, allowing them the benefits of taking scholars, who can afford to pay, and permitting them of course to occupy their leisure in other pursuits." With respect to the religious question, the Committee thought that there ought to be a connexion between the proposed educational system and the PROPOSALS OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE, 1816. 227 Establishment, as in Scotland; but they felt the difficulty that whereas in Scotland the Dissenters differed from the Established Church on matters political and not on matters of faith, in England the difference was not so much in politics as in faith. The solution of the difficulty offered by the Select Committee was ingenious and interesting. "To place the choice of the schoolmaster in the parish vestry, subject to the approbation of the parson, and the visitation of the diocesan; but to provide that the children of sectarians shall not be compelled to learn any catechism or attend any Church, other than those of their parents, seems to Your Committee the safest path by which the Legislature can hope to obtain the desirable objects of security to the Establishment on the one hand, and justice to the Dissenters on the other'." It will be noticed that this Select Committee had at once realised the nature of the problems that were destined to occupy the attention of Parliament for the greater part of the nineteenth century. It moreover offered the solutions that were eventually accepted by the country. It recommended a conscience clause; it recommended, for a certain class of districts, schools that were practically rate-supported free parochial schools-the principle which was carried out by legislation beginning in 1870-and, for other and less helpless districts, grants for building schools-the principle carried out by the grants that Parliament began to make in 1833. The system of control over the rates was to be parochial; the system of inspection was to be diocesan, but full regard was to be paid to the claims of conscience and to the right of Dissenters to retain their children in dissent. The scheme was sound, able, and well thought out, and we must regret that Parliament was unable to adopt such suggestions?. 54. The mass of information collected by the Select 1 Third Report of Select Committee on Education of Lower Orders, pp. 5, 6. 2 The Committee succeeded in passing an Act in 1818 appointing Commissioners to enquire into educational charities (58 Geo. III. c. 91). 228 The Education Bill of 1820. MR BROUGHAM'S SPEECH OF 1820. Committee of 1816 enabled Mr Brougham to bring forward his Education Bill with wide knowledge of the educational problem that awaited solution. The high tribute that he paid to "the whole of the clergy of the established church was a well-deserved tribute to the unceasing labours through many centuries of that Church on behalf of education, and it is important as showing how inseparable was the connexion between the Church and education, and how thoroughly the Clergy had awakened to their immense responsibilities. Tribute to the clergy by Mr Brougham. Circulars asking for information of an elaborate character were issued to 11,400 clergymen of parishes, and full answers were received from 11,200, though no statutory duty to furnish the information lay upon these persons. "It was, however," said Mr Brougham, "quite impossible that any words of his could do justice to the zeal, the honesty and the ability with which they had lent their assistance towards the attainment of the great object which had been proposed as the result of the inquiries." The speech as reported in Hansard is extremely valuable and interesting. Mr Brougham pointed out that the assertions of Dr Patrick Colquhoun in 1806-that there were 2,000,000 children in England and Wales, including 50,000 in London, in want of education, and that 1,750,000 persons grew up without any education-were untrue and inconsistent with the facts known as to population. Dr Colquhoun's further suggestion that the problem could only be met by building in each parish a school capable of holding 800 children was, Mr Brougham showed, absurd, as the average 1 Appendix II. p. 249, infra. As to the self-sacrifice of the Established Clergy in the cause of education see the evidence of the Bishop of London before the Select Committee of 1834 (Parliamentary Paper, No. 572, p. 194, Q. 2492-4). 2 (1745-1820) Metropolitan Police Magistrate. Author of A New and Appropriate System of Education for the Labouring People (1806); see Dictionary of National Biography. THE STATE OF EDUCATION IN 1820. 229 Brougham's conclusions number of children in each parish was 85, and there were in all only 50 parishes that contained 800 children and 700 parishes that contained 400 children. Mr Brougham proceeded to show from the statistics collected by the Committee that in 1820 there were 500,000 children receiving education in unendowed schools, of whom about 53,000 "were educated, or rather not educated," at dame schools, while 165,432 received education at endowed schools. He then argued that rather more than one-tenth of the whole mass of the population were children requiring education, and that as a matter of fact (regarding the children in dame schools as not receiving education) one-sixteenth of the whole population were children actually receiving education. The following passage from Hansard shows the educational position with regard to numbers as conceived by Mr Brougham: "The average means of mere education, therefore, was only in fact one-sixteenth in England; yet even this scanty means had only existed since the year 1803, when what were called the new schools, or those upon the systems of Dr Bell, from his and Mr Lancaster, were established. Those schools were in number 1,520, and they received about 200,000 children. Before 1803, then, only the twentyfirst part of the population was placed in the way of education, and at that date England might be justly looked on as the worst-educated country of Europe. What a different picture was afforded by Scotland! The education there was in the proportion of 1-9th or between 1-9th and 1-10th. Wales was even in a worse state than England: at the present day the proportion was 1-20th, and before 1803, it was 1-26th." Mr Brougham arrived at the general conclusion that every fifth person was without the means of education. He then entered into an interesting survey of the position by counties. Middlesex, "the great metropolitan county of England, was, beyond all dispute, the worst-educated part of Christendom." In that county (excluding dame schools) only one forty-sixth Committee's statistics. |