Chapter XXXIII: THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued) (1)

The Elementary Education Bill--Mr. Forster--The existing
State of Education--Deficiencies of the System--The Union
and the League--Mr. Forster and the Cabinet--Mr. Forster's
Speech--"Good Schools"--Undenominational Inspection--The
Conscience Clause--Voluntary Schools and Compulsion--The School
Boards--Districts and Fees--Powers of School Boards--The
Religious Difficulty--Attendance--Mr. Forster's Peroration--Mr.
Dixon's Amendment--Mr. Forster's Reply--Mr. Winterbotham's
Speech and the Churchmen--Mr. Dixon's Motion withdrawn--Partial
Concessions--The Cowper-Temple Amendment--Amendment moved by
Mr. Richards--Mr. Forster's admirable Conduct--Changes in the
Bill--It becomes Law--Outrage in Greece--Seizure of Tourists by
Greek Brigands--Negotiations for their Ransom--The Brigands demand
an Amnesty--Intrigues of the Opposition--The Greek Government
determines on a _coup de main_--Mr. Erskine's Negotiations--The
Troops move on Oropus--Murder of the Prisoners--Indignation
in England--Army and Navy Estimates--The Budget--Other
Legislation--Disaster in the Eastern Seas--Obituary of the Year.

Two days after the introduction of the Irish Land Bill, on the 17th of February, Mr. Forster, the Vice-President of the Council, brought in his Elementary Education Bill, a measure which, fair as were its opening prospects, was destined ultimately to become far more of a bone of contention in England than many Irish questions. Mr. Forster had kept his secret admirably. It was, of course, known that Government had pledged themselves to deal with the Education Question during the Session, and that the construction of an Education Bill had been long ago entrusted to Mr. Forster. As the Radical member for Bradford, Mr. Forster had many times proved his Liberal principles, and had already gained the respect and attention of the House before taking office. His vigorous character, his capacity for hard work, and his known ability seemed to point him out as specially fitted to deal with the vexed and intricate problem of National Education. But how was he going to deal with it? What line were Government, as represented by him, about to take up with regard to the great questions of free education, compulsion, and State aid to denominational schools? The London newspapers guessed in vain. No one out of the Cabinet had any idea of the provisions of the Bill before the night of the 17th of February, when Mr. Forster disclosed his scheme to a crowded House. His speech, as a speech, was perhaps a greater success than any he had achieved before. Perfect mastery of his subject gave a freedom and self-possession to his manner in which it had sometimes been wanting, and his whole demeanour was that of a man who had gone to the bottom of a great question, and who felt himself to be the most competent person to lead the opinion of the House and the country to a satisfactory decision with regard to it.

Before describing the means by which Government hoped to effect a radical change in the educational condition of the country, it may be as well to glance over the system of National Education as it existed at the time of Mr. Forster's speech. The whole system of National Education in England before the Act of 1870 was a matter of voluntary effort. In bygone ages, Greek philosophy had held the education of children to be one of the most essential duties of the State as such--a duty which could not be relegated to private hands, and which the State was bound to conduct with reference to the general welfare of the community. In more modern times Prussia had recognised this political view of education, and had made the training of every Prussian child a State matter. In England alone, with her over-fondness for self-government, and her love for the system of local provision for local needs, voluntaryism remained intact; and the education of the poor was left wholly at the discretion and in the hands of their richer and more intelligent neighbours. Voluntary effort must come first; then, indeed, State help would follow in the shape of building grants or annual grants, coupled with the condition of Government inspection; but in all cases the help given by the State had to be called forth by the prior voluntary action of some particular individual or some particular neighbourhood. It had long been felt that the results of this system were most unsatisfactory and inadequate; and as the Reform question advanced, and political enfranchisement had to be yielded step by step to the working classes, the gross and widespread ignorance prevailing among the lower orders began to force itself more and more strongly upon the attention of the country. Mr. Lowe only expressed the general feeling in a bitter and cynical way when, after the passing of the Reform Bill of 1867, he pointed out the power that it had conferred upon the working-man, and uttered the famous phrase, "Let us educate our masters!" The amount of educational destitution existing in England in 1870 may be roughly gathered from the following statistics. From the Census of 1851 it appeared that about one-fourth of the population of England were of an age to go to school--that is to say, from the ages of three to thirteen or four to fourteen. In 1870 the population of England was twenty-one millions, so that about five millions and a half of children would be of what is technically called the school age. Of these, 23 per cent. had to be allowed for as absent from school from allowable causes, such as sickness; half a million were at school for the upper or middle classes; and rather less than two millions and a half of the remaining three and a half millions were actually at school. There remained about one million one hundred thousand children who were not at school at all. Nor did this represent by any means the whole extent of the deficiency. Of the two and a half millions represented as actually at school, only a very small proportion indeed could possibly derive real benefit from the education offered them, because, as was abundantly proved by statistics, far the greater number of children were removed from school before their twelfth year--that is to say, before the age when the average child, much more the child of poor and uneducated parents, becomes capable of anything like lasting and profitable learning. This evil of short-lived and irregular attendance had been increasing during the years preceding 1870 rather than diminishing, and it was admitted on all hands to form one of the most serious elements of the educational difficulty. With regard to local deficiencies, especially to the educational needs of our large towns, let Mr. Forster speak for himself. "It is calculated," he said, "that in Liverpool the number of children between five and thirteen who ought to receive an elementary education is 80,000; but, as far as we can make out, 20,000 of them attend no school whatever, while at least another 20,000 attend schools where they get an education not worth having. In Manchester--that is, in the borough of Manchester, not including Salford--there are about 65,000 children who might be at school; and of this number 16,000 go to no school at all.... As a Yorkshireman I am sorry to say that, from what I hear, Leeds appears to be as bad as Liverpool; and so also, I fear, is Birmingham."

The educational need, then, could scarcely be denied, though extreme Conservatives, like Lord Robert Montagu, might attempt to palliate it. But the question of "how is this need to be supplied?" admitted of very different answers; and opinion was indeed divided into at least two hostile camps with regard to it, represented by the National Education Union and the famous Birmingham League. The avowed object of both was "to bring a good education within the reach of every child in the country." But the Union proposed to accomplish this by means of the existing system, supplemented and reformed; the League, on the contrary, aimed at the destruction of the existing system, and at the gradual erection of something wholly different upon its ruins. The Union desired, above all things, to keep education in England denominational and founded upon religious teaching; while the League asserted strongly that education ought to be wholly undenominational, that State aid should only be given to secular instruction, and that religion should be provided by the voluntary efforts of all religious sects, the Church of England included. The doctrines of the League were supported inside the House of Commons by men like Mr. Mundella, Mr. Dixon, and Mr. Fawcett; and outside it, by the bulk of the Dissenting communities, who saw in the programme of the League a protest against the undisputed supremacy of the Church in education. On the other hand, the sequel showed that the partisans of the more moderate policy advocated by the Union had Mr. Forster himself in the main on their side, a large majority (both Liberals and Conservatives) in the House, and the whole influence and power of the Church of England. The Church talked of her "claims," and pointed triumphantly to the work done by her, and by her alone, in the cause of education; while the Dissenters complained of grievances, accused the clergy of intentional violations of the Conscience Clause then existing, and professed to regard their zeal for education as a mere cloak for widespread projects of priestly aggrandisement. Between these contending factions Mr. Forster had to take his stand, and to frame a Bill which should if possible satisfy both.

Mr. Forster had set about his great undertaking in that spirit of conscientious thoroughness which characterised him through life. From his well-known biography by Sir Wemyss Reid, we gather that so early as the 21st of October, 1869, he had submitted to the Cabinet an exhaustive memorandum, in which the four ideals of the Birmingham League, the National Education Union, Mr. Bruce's Bill of 1868, and Mr. Lowe's plan for supplementing voluntary effort by compulsory rates were submitted to the most searching criticism. He decided that Mr. Lowe's scheme was the best of the four, but suggested that it might be strengthened in various ways, and concluded--"In venturing to submit the above suggestions, I may be allowed to add my conviction that in dealing with this Education Question boldness is the only safe policy; that any measure which does not profess to be complete will be a certain failure; but that we shall have support from all sides if, on the one hand, we acknowledge and make use of present educational efforts, and, on the other hand, admit the duty of the central Government to supplement these efforts by means of local agency." His views found favour with the Ministry, but meanwhile the Birmingham League had begun to stir, and Mr. Forster was much annoyed by rumours that the Cabinet was of divided mind, and that the measure would in consequence be postponed. On the 6th of December we find him writing to Mr. Glyn, the Ministerial Whip, an earnest protest against procrastination. He received a fairly reassuring reply; nevertheless there were dissensions in the Cabinet. Mr. Gladstone was immersed in Irish land tenure, and Lord De Grey, the President of the Council, had to bring considerable pressure to bear so as to prevent the measure from being shelved. In the end Mr. Forster's memorandum was practically adopted, though his proposals for compulsion were made less stringent, and his provision that the aid given to already existing schools should be confined to secular education was, somewhat injudiciously, toned down.

We cannot do better than let Mr. Forster describe his Bill mainly in his own words. The first problem, then, to be solved, said the Vice-President of the Council, was this: "How can we cover the country with good schools?" The answer to this must be influenced by three considerations--considerations of the duties of parents to their children, of the duty of Government to the taxpayer, and of the duty of every educational reformer to those who were already labouring in the cause of education, and to the system which they at great cost had built up and supported. That is to say, "in solving this problem, there must be, consistently with the attainment of our object, the least possible expenditure of public money, the utmost endeavour not to injure existing and efficient schools, and the most careful absence of all encouragement to parents to neglect their children." The principles upon which the present Bill is founded, he continued, "are two in number--legal enactment that there shall be efficient schools everywhere throughout the kingdom; and compulsory provision of such schools, if and where needed, but not unless proved to be needed. So much for the principles of the Bill. Coming now to the actual provisions by which they are to be enforced, it will suggest itself to the minds of all that there must be to begin with a system of organisation throughout the country. We take care that the country shall be properly mapped and divided so that its wants may be duly ascertained. For this we take present known divisions and declare them to be school districts, so that upon the passing of this Bill there will be no portion of England or Wales not included in one school district or another. We have taken the boundaries of boroughs as regards towns, and parishes as regards the country--and when I say parish, I mean the civil parish, and not the ecclesiastical district. With regard to the metropolis, we have come to the conclusion, subject to the counsel and advice of the metropolitan members, that the best districts we can take in the metropolis are, where they exist, the school districts already formed for workhouse schools; and where they do not exist, the boundaries of the vestries. Having thus got our districts, our next duty is to ascertain their educational condition, and for that purpose we take power to collect returns which will show us what in each district is the number of schools, of scholars, and of children requiring education. We also take power to send down inspectors and officers to test the quality of the schools and of the education given in them. Then if in any one of these districts we find the elementary education to be sufficient in quantity, efficient in quality, and suitable in character, that is to say, hampered by no religious or other restriction to which parents can reasonably object, we leave that district alone; and we shall continue to leave it alone so long as it fulfils those conditions. And I may as well state that for the purpose of ascertaining the condition of a district we count all schools that will receive our inspectors, whether private or public, whether aided or unaided by Government, whether secular or denominational."

Here Mr. Forster, before describing the means by which districts insufficiently supplied with schools were to be sufficiently supplied, explained an important change in the character of Government inspection to be introduced. "Hitherto," he said, "the inspection has been denominational; we propose that it shall no longer be so." The reasons for this change were obvious. In the first place, an invidious distinction was kept up between Church inspectors and inspectors of other denominations--the former alone having the right to inquire into the teaching of doctrines in any school. Thus both sides were in many cases aggrieved. Clergymen complained that their school children were subjected to examination in religious doctrine by an inspector whose religious views differed from their own, while a Wesleyan or an Independent school could not be subjected to any such examination at all. On the other hand, the Dissenters were justly irritated by a distinction that seemed to imply that their peculiar tenets were not, and could not be, recognised by the State in the same way as the doctrines of the Church. The denominational character of the inspection also very much complicated the whole system of inspection, introducing many practical difficulties into the division of inspecting-districts, and so on. In consideration of all these objections, and believing that the existing system was favourable neither to religion in general nor to the Church cause in particular, "we propose," said Mr. Forster, "that after a limited period one of the conditions of public elementary schools shall be, that they shall admit any inspector without any denominational provision."

The next provision of the Bill concerned the framing of a stringent conscience clause to be accepted by every elementary denominational school before public money would be granted to it. There had been at one time strong opposition on the part of a fraction of the Church party to any conscience clause whatever. It became evident, however, several months before the introduction of the Education Bill, that public opinion, both lay and clerical, was strengthening in its favour, and the adoption of a conscience clause into the programme of the National Education Union virtually settled the matter. The Conscience Clause in the Bill of 1870 ran as follows:--

"No scholar shall be required, as a condition of being admitted into or of attending or of enjoying all the benefits of the school, to attend or to abstain from attending any Sunday school, or any place of religious worship, or to learn any such catechism or religious formulary, or to be present at any such lesson or instruction or observance as may have been objected to on religious grounds, by the parent of the scholar sending his objection in writing to the managers or principal teacher of the school, or one of them."

By far the most practical objection that had been made to a conscience clause had been that it would be in reality of little or no use in any case where the clergyman or other manager of a school should be bent on setting it aside. "That, however," said Mr. Forster, "is not the view that I have formed from my personal experience. In the first place, I do not know any case in which our present conscience clause has been applied in which it has not been found thoroughly effective; but our new clause will be different in this important respect, that whereas the old clause was applicable only in some cases to building grants, the new one will apply to all grants, and especially to all annual grants. It is perfectly clear in its operation, and I am quite sure that no manager of a school will risk the loss of the annual grant by violating its conditions."

Mr. Forster went on to state that every opportunity would be afforded to the upholders of the voluntary system to do what was necessary for themselves, and thus avoid the interference of Government. "We have said," he continued, "that we must have provision for public elementary schools. The first question then is, by whom is it to be made? Now here for a time we shall test the voluntary zeal of the district. Not only do we not neglect voluntary help, but, on condition of respecting the rights of parents and the rights of conscience, we welcome it. To see, then, whether voluntary help will be forthcoming, we give a year to test the zeal and willingness of any volunteers who may be disposed to help; but we ought not to give longer time, because we cannot afford to wait." If therefore the educational need had not been met in any given district by voluntary effort at the expiration of the year of grace, the State would step in and supply the deficiency. The next point was one of great importance. The Bill admitted the principle of compulsion, so often attacked as un-English; and in certain districts and under certain conditions, elementary education was in future to be enforced. It will be seen that Mr. Forster was afterwards obliged to defend himself from the charge of timidity and half-heartedness in this matter of compulsion. Having gone so far, it was asked, why not go farther; and having once admitted the justice of the principle of compulsion, why not make it the general law of the land, instead of allowing its application to depend upon the caprice of individual school boards who might adopt it here and there? Yet Mr. Forster was not to blame, but the Cabinet, though he loyally held his peace and never let it appear that he was defending a principle to which his private convictions were opposed.

The machinery of school boards--the newest and most prominent feature in the Bill--by means of which education was to be provided by the State where voluntaryism failed, had next to be explained to the House. For Government did not propose to educate the nation by means of an enormous and omnipotent central department. This would indeed have been un-English, for local action and self-government have been throughout English history the mainstays of English life. Local resources were still to supply local wants, but they were to be made to do this in a far more effective, systematic, and public manner than heretofore. "Voluntary local action," said Mr. Forster, "has failed, therefore our hope is to invoke the help of municipal organisation. Where we have proved the educational need, we supply it by local administration--that is, by means of rates, aided by money voted by Parliament, expended under local management, with central inspection and control.... Undoubtedly this proposal will affect a large portion of the kingdom. I believe it will affect almost all the towns and a great part of the country."

With regard to the area of the school districts, Mr. Forster had already indicated the boundaries established by the Bill. In the provinces, the parish was to be looked upon as the unit of area--Government of course reserving to themselves the power of throwing two or more parishes together if necessary--rather than the union, as being smaller, more convenient, and freer from practical difficulties. In London the existing school districts were to be taken, and, where these did not exist, the boundaries of vestries. And in every school district where the voluntary system had proved inadequate to meet the educational demand, a school board was to be elected--that is to say, a body of responsible and official persons, whose business it would be to provide sufficient and suitable education for the whole district over which their power extended. "But the next question that arises is--How are we to elect our school boards in the provinces (London having been already provided with school boards under a previous Bill), and whom are they to elect? Now first who is to elect? Well, the electoral body we have chosen for the towns is the town council. I do not think there can be much dispute upon that point. In the country we have taken the best body we can find--the select vestry where there is one, and a vestry where there is no select vestry. Secondly--Whom are they to elect?" The answer to this was very simple. The electors were to choose whom they thought fit without limitation of choice; but there was to be a limit of numbers. The school board was to consist of never less than three or more than twelve members. Mr. Forster had come to the conclusion that it was not desirable to add _ex officio_ members to the board, thinking very rightly that "the very men fit to be _ex officio_ members would come in with greater influence and almost equal certainty if subjected to popular election." Nor were the boards to be saddled with Government nominees--a proceeding that would make Government responsible for the failures as well as the successes of any given board. Government only reserved to themselves the rights of a final court of appeal in any case where the work of the board was either carelessly done or done in opposition to the spirit of the Act. In any such case Government claimed a right to step in and manage the district for as long as it thought fit.

The important question of school fees, important in one way to the poor parent and in another to the taxpayer, came next to be considered. Government, however, said Mr. Forster, had no intention of making elementary education in England free. In the first place, such a change could only be effected at the cost of a great sacrifice to the country--a sacrifice of some six or seven hundred thousand pounds yearly--an amount that it might fairly be calculated would be reached by the parents' pence under the new scheme. And in the second place, supposing that the country were ready to undertake the sacrifice, the framers of the Bill were, on general principles, wholly averse from it. To relieve the parent of all payment for his children's education would be, said Mr. Forster, to weaken the sense of parental obligations in him, and to pauperise those who had hitherto kept themselves free from the taint of pauperism. Some provision, however, was to be made for extreme poverty, and real inability to pay school fees was in no case to prove a bar to any child's education. "We take two powers," said the speaker, "we give the school board power to establish special free schools under special circumstances, which chiefly apply to large towns, where, from the exceeding poverty of the district, or for other very special reasons, they prove to the satisfaction of the Government that such a school is needed and ought to be established.... We also empower the school board to give free tickets to parents who, they think, cannot really afford to pay for the education of their children; and we take care that those free tickets shall have no stigma of pauperism attached to them. We do not give up the school fees, and, indeed, we keep to the present proportions--namely, of about one-third raised from the parents, one-third out of the public taxes, and one-third out of local funds. Where the local funds are not raised by voluntary subscription, the rates will come into action." A question of rates is always, as Mr. Forster went on to say, treading on delicate ground, but the future education rate need alarm no one. Should it ever exceed threepence in the pound--a most unlikely event--Government would step in with a "very considerable extra grant out of the Parliamentary votes." And the education rate would save the prison rate and the pauper rate, and might thus prove the most hopeful and satisfactory of all economies.

With regard to the other powers to be granted to school boards, they were, first of all, to be allowed the choice of alternative courses--either they might meet the need of a particular district by providing extra schools of their own, or they might supply it by assisting and extending existing schools. But supposing they decided upon the latter alternative, they were to exercise their right in no prejudiced or limited manner. "If they do go on the principle of assisting, they must assist all schools on equal terms. They may not pick out one particular denomination and say, 'We shall assist you, but not the other.'" To this part of the Bill belonged the afterwards famous 25th clause, by which school boards were enabled to pay the fees of indigent children at denominational schools out of the rates--a point that was attacked with equal ardour by the liberal philosophers of the _Fortnightly Review_, the members of the Birmingham League, the Dissenters generally, and all other advocates of secular education, but the supposed iniquity of which was not discovered until after the Bill had passed through committee. For these last Mr. Forster held out no word of hope. Speaking of the restrictions that ought or ought not to be laid upon school managers with regard to religion, he denied the existence of any real religious difficulty at all, the great plea of the secularists. Or rather, he held that there was a theoretical difficulty that might occur to and perplex an honest man in his study, but no practical difficulty that would affect the parents and children considered by the Bill. The Bill decreed that no restriction was to be laid upon school managers with regard to religion. If the neighbourhood that elected them chose, they might leave religious teaching altogether alone, but they certainly should not be forbidden, in any case, to teach or to explain the Bible. "Now just look," said the speaker, "at the age of the children with whom we have to deal. The great majority of them are probably under ten years of age.... We want a good secular teaching for these children, a good Christian training, and good schoolmasters. It may be said that as these children can hardly be supposed to require doctrinal or dogmatic teaching to any great extent, 'Why do you not then prescribe that there should be no doctrinal teaching--why not, in the first place, prescribe that there shall be no religious teaching at all?' Why do we not prescribe that there shall be no religious teaching? Why, if we did so, out of the religious difficulty we should come to an irreligious difficulty.... If we are to prevent religious teaching altogether, we must say that the Bible shall not be used in our schools at all. But would it not be a monstrous thing that the book which, after all, is the foundation of the religion we profess, should be the only book that was not allowed to be used in our schools? It may be said that we ought to have no dogmatic teaching. But how are we to prevent it? Are we to step in and say the Bible may be read, but may not be explained? Are we to pick out Bible lessons with the greatest care, in order that nothing of a doctrinal character may be taught to the children?" A hard and thankless labour indeed, but one which Government would undertake were it convinced that such was the wish of the country. But it was convinced, on the contrary, that the country wished no such thing; and in no case could such a matter be satisfactorily undertaken or discharged by the central Government. In fact, the framers of the Bill felt confident that the religious difficulty would turn out to be one of words and theories only. "Get your school boards together," they said; "give them the practical work to do of providing efficient secular education, and you will see that at the same time they will find ways and means of managing the religious education satisfactorily also. Put the fiercest of controversialists to the practical handling of details, and he will soon find that the imaginary parent possessed by an imaginary hatred of all religion, or a stubborn and exclusive preference for one form of religious teaching rather than another, is almost wholly the creature of his own fancy; and that the so-called religious difficulty is a phantom which vanishes before the open work-a-day atmosphere of facts."

Having now described the school districts, the school boards, and the various minor arrangements connected with them, Mr. Forster came finally to the important question of attendance. In other words, "Having got our schools, how are we to get the children to come to them in anything like sufficient numbers, and with anything like sufficient regularity?" In his answer to this, Mr. Forster enlarged upon the direct compulsion permitted by the Bill. The Short Time Acts, on which so many depended for securing the attendance of children, would no doubt contribute greatly to that object, and they might be so amended as to render them still more effectual. But the difficulty could not be met by their aid alone, and compulsory attendance was therefore to be resorted to, though as we said before, only in a limited and partial degree. "What we do in the Act," said Mr. Forster, "is no more than this. We give power to the school boards to frame by-laws for the compulsory attendance of all children within their district from five to twelve. They must see that no parent is under a penalty--which is restricted to 5s.--for not sending his child to school if he can show reasonable excuse,--reasonable excuse being either education elsewhere, or sickness, or some unavoidable cause, or there not being a public elementary school within a mile. These by-laws are not to come into operation unless they are approved by the Government, and unless they have been laid on the table of this and the other House of Parliament forty days and have not been dissented from."

Having thus described his Bill, with every detail of which he had shown himself perfectly familiar, Mr. Forster concluded in words of genuine and sincere enthusiasm, which could not but awaken the sympathy of all who had listened to him:--

"Upon the speedy provision of elementary education depends our industrial prosperity. It is of no use trying to give technical teaching to our artisans without elementary education. Uneducated labourers--and many of our labourers are utterly uneducated--are, for the most part, unskilled labourers; and if we leave our work-folk any longer unskilled, notwithstanding their strong sinews and determined energy, they will become overmatched in the competition of the world. Upon this speedy provision depends also, I fully believe, the good, the safe working of our constitutional system. To its honour, Parliament has lately decided that England shall in future be governed by popular government. I am one of those who would not wait until the people were educated before I would trust them with political power. If we had thus waited, we might have waited long for education; but now that we have given them political power, we must not wait any longer to give them education. There are questions demanding answers, problems which must be solved, which ignorant constituencies are ill fitted to solve. Upon this speedy provision of education depends also our national power. Civilised communities throughout the world are massing themselves together, each mass being measured by its force; and if we are to hold our position among men of our own race or among the nations of the world we must make up for the smallness of our numbers by increasing the intellectual force of the individual."

The short debate that followed was extremely flattering to Mr. Forster personally. Liberal and Tory complimented the speech and the Bill, regretting only that the framer should occupy what was nominally, at least, a subordinate position in the Ministry, and should speak as the Vice-President of the Council under its President, Lord de Grey, instead of as "the responsible Minister of Public Instruction." Scarcely a murmur of the coming struggle disturbed the amiability of the House, and on the morning of the 18th of February the newspapers were full of Mr. Forster and Mr. Forster's admirable Bill. For a while it seemed as if the concessions of the Bill, and the conciliatory tone of its advocate, had silenced both the League and the Nonconformists, until a series of ominous articles in the _Daily News_ dispelled the illusion, and a cloud of hostile talk and writing began to gather definitely round certain portions of the proposed Act. By the time the second reading arrived, all the world knew that the Government would find the passing of the measure by no means a matter of such plain sailing as had seemed likely at first. And the motion for the second reading was met, in fact, by a motion of Mr. Dixon's (member for Birmingham and founder of the League), to the effect, "That no measure for the elementary education of the people could afford a permanent and satisfactory settlement which left the important question of religious instruction to be determined by the local authorities." Mr. Forster might well point out with some warmth that the success of such an amendment at the present stage of matters could have no other effect than to throw out the Bill and the Government. Such a question, he argued, should be discussed in committee; only when approached in detail could the religious difficulty be either satisfactorily debated or satisfactorily settled. "Unsectarian education"--which, however, throughout he carefully distinguished from secular education--he thought not at all difficult to reach in practice, though extremely hard to define, and personally he strongly supported it. But unsectarian education could never be attained by definite and minute legislation. "Surely," he said, "the time will come when we shall find out how we can agree better on these matters; when men will discover that on the main questions of religion they agree, and that they can teach them in common to their children. Shall we cut off from the future all hope of such an agreement, and say that all those questions which regulate our conduct in life and animate our hopes for the future after death, which form for us the standard of right and wrong--shall we say that all these are to be wholly excluded from our schools?... I confess I have still in my veins the blood of my Puritan forefathers, and I wonder to hear descendants of the Puritans talk of religion as if it were the property of any class or condition of men. The English people cling to the Bible, and no measure would be more unpopular than that which should declare by Act of Parliament that the Bible shall be excluded from the schools!" Cut the knot of the religious difficulty in this way, and a far greater irreligious difficulty would be created. Instead of the few individuals who might, were the Bill passed in its present form, object to paying the school rate, multitudes would be found objecting to an education from which religion was left out. The greater part of Mr. Forster's speech consisted of an appeal on behalf of local government as against central government. What the amendment proposed, he said, was to force the central government to adopt one rigid line of policy, regardless of all the varying circumstances and wishes of the different localities, the result of which could only be to produce endless opposition and heart-burning. Under the Bill the will of the majority in any given neighbourhood would always take effect, whether that will was in favour of secular or religious education. Only let the House set its face against any abstract proposition like the present amendment. In committee would be the place and time to discuss the several points as they arose, fairly and calmly, and to take the sense of the House upon the religious question detail by detail.

The second night of the debate upon the second reading was marked by an effective and brilliant speech, in behalf of secular education, from Mr. Winterbotham, the young Liberal and Nonconformist member for Stroud. All the opinions and prejudices which the great majority of the House had been accustomed to consider as the mere vulgar talk of back-alley Dissent, they were now to hear expressed in logical and forcible English by a man of liberal culture and large experience, who, while freeing himself from what were regarded as the worst and most narrowing influences of the Nonconformist creed, was yet true to all its main articles, and unfeignedly proud of being a Dissenter. The speech represented far better, and more vividly than anything else in the Education debates, the real feeling of the great Nonconformist party. It embodied their whole claim, and stated their whole grievance with singular sharpness and vigour. It went to the root of the question, and the Church party were fairly startled by the depth and bitterness of the feeling disclosed. The cultivated Churchman, or the philosophic essayist, might equally deplore the additional narrowness and heat imported by Mr. Winterbotham into the controversy upon Education, when he represented the question as so largely affected by social differences and social jealousies. But the fact remained, and subsequent history only brought out more clearly the unhappy and lamentable truth, that the difference between Church and Dissent was, at least in many places throughout England, marked by the worst characteristics of a class quarrel. Such a speech as Mr. Winterbotham's could not but rouse the Churchmen of the House. The challenge was taken up in turn by Lord Robert Montagu, Mr. Beresford Hope, who thought it "impossible to conceive a speech worse-timed, or struck in a more unfortunate key," and that Churchman of Churchmen, Sir Roundell Palmer, who rebuked the Dissenters through Mr. Winterbotham, not without some dignity and reason, for "inflaming the religious difficulty." He declared in decisive language, "that the views advocated by the member for Stroud were such as never could be accepted as the basis of a common system of national education by that portion of the people who belonged to the Established Church." He argued from "the broad facts of existing schools" that the mind of the country as a whole was strongly opposed to the principle of secular education, and in favour of that of religious education. On the other hand, Mr. Miall and Mr. Auberon Herbert spoke strongly in favour of the amendment; while Mr. Samuelson, also a member of the League, announced, as did Mr. Mundella on the third night of the debate, that, while approving heartily of the principle of the amendment, he should vote against it, believing that the advocates of unsectarian education should reserve all their strength for the amendment of the Bill in committee, rather than risk, by such a motion as Mr. Dixon's, the indefinite postponement of the whole question. Mr. Lowe had as usual a witty remark to make upon the situation. It reminded him, he said, of a fine herd of cattle in a large meadow, deserting the grass that was abundant all about them, and delighting themselves by fighting over a bed of nettles in the corner of the field--the bed of nettles being of course the religious difficulty. He denied altogether that Government had "nailed their colours to the mast," and were determined to make no concessions. In fact, his cry was the same as Mr. Forster's: "Let us get into committee; then will be the time to make concessions on both sides." The third night of the debate was marked by several fine speeches. First of all came a clever, popular, _ad captandum_ attack upon the Government by Mr. Vernon Harcourt. He returned Mr. Lowe's hard hits with others equally hard, and drew an amusing picture of the municipal elections of the future, when the Bill had introduced into them the fatal element of religious disagreement. Mr. Mundella and Mr. Jacob Bright took up the middle position of voting against the amendment for conscience' sake, the speech of the former being memorable for its moderation and fairness of tone. Conservative speakers like Sir Charles Adderley were, of course, strong in their denunciations of Mr. Dixon's proposal; but though Government were sure of their majority, it was thought politic not to alienate their Radical supporters by allowing the question to proceed to a division. Mr. Gladstone rose to play the part of peacemaker--which, indeed, was his _rôle_ throughout the Education debates--and promised large concessions on the three important points of compulsion, the election of school boards, and the relation of religious to secular teaching. With this promise the recalcitrant Liberals professed to be contented. Mr. Dixon withdrew his amendment, and the Bill was allowed to pass the second reading.

Except for an occasional question and answer as to the meaning of certain portions of the Bill, the subject of Education was not again brought forward in the House till three months had passed away. That time was spent by the Education Office in a careful collection of statistics, in the preparation of reports, and in various other routine business. And by the statesmen in charge of the Bill it was spent to great profit in observing and noting the true direction of public feeling on the matter. The general current of Liberal opinion was indeed unmistakable, and it was felt on all hands that concessions must be made to it in committee. And concessions indeed were made, so far as Mr. Forster considered the essential principles of the Bill allowed. Meanwhile he had to endure much undeserved opprobrium, since the League persisted in treating him as a scapegoat, and affected to exonerate the rest of the Ministry at his expense. There was a moment when Mr. Gladstone was disposed to yield to the clamour, but Mr. Forster, though much dispirited by the attacks of his former friends, particularly in Bradford, was resolute in adhering to the principles of voluntary schools and Bible teaching. Mr. Gladstone opened the debates in committee on the 16th of June by the announcement that the Government, while rejecting a motion of Mr. Vernon Harcourt's for "undenominational education," combined with "unsectarian instruction in the Bible," on the ground that such phrases were vague and unpractical, were prepared to accept Mr. Cowper-Temple's amendment, "to exclude from all rate-built schools every catechism and formulary distinctive of denominational creeds, and to sever altogether the connection between the local school boards and the denominational schools, leaving the latter to look wholly to the central grant for help." This amendment was practically identical with a compromise, which Mr. Forster had himself suggested in a letter to Lord Ripon written on the 18th of May. In consequence of this, the central grant to all schools, rate-built or voluntary, was to be increased from one-third to one-half the total cost. The remaining half was to be rates and school-pence in the case of board schools, and voluntary subscriptions and school-pence in the case of denominational schools. Mr. Disraeli, in reply, had a great deal to say with regard to this proposal, which he described as an "entirely new Bill;" but Government knew very well that at this particular juncture they had little to fear, and everything to hope, from the Conservatives, and the policy of the League was just now far more important to them than any skirmishing of Mr. Disraeli's. An amendment by Mr. Richards, to the effect that "in any national system of elementary education the attendance should be everywhere compulsory, and the religious teaching supplied by voluntary effort, and not out of public funds," provoked another long debate on the "religious difficulty," in which a few irreconcilable Conservatives joined with Mr. Winterbotham and Mr. Vernon Harcourt to harass the Government. Once more did Mr. Forster defend his position, winding up a practical and temperate speech with language unexpectedly determined. The Government, he said, meant to yield no more ground. "We have considered," he said, "the whole of the religious question, and we present the Bill to the House in the form in which we think we must adhere to it." Upon the supporters of the amendment, should it be successful, must "rest the responsibility of defeating the Bill, and preventing the settlement of the Education Question this year." Once more did Mr. Gladstone endeavour to pour oil on the troubled waters, promising that "effectual guarantees should be taken against the violation of conscience in rate-schools through the acts of a narrow or sectarian spirit," and pointing out to the Nonconformists that, in return for the great concession that was being made to them, in excluding all creeds and catechisms from rate-built schools, they owed some counterbalancing forbearance and consideration to the Church party, which felt as strongly as they, and had greater educational services to plead. But come what might, Government would stand by their Bill, and no more would be yielded. Mr. Richards' amendment, however, was thrown out by 421 to 60--figures which might well give Government confidence. Nor were these proportions substantially altered in later divisions. The Bill was carried through triumphantly, in spite of ardent Churchmen like Sir Stafford Northcote, who were strongly opposed to the Government concessions, no less than of Mr. Dixon and Mr. Jacob Bright. In his diary Mr. Forster described the 30th of June as the day on which the Bill passed through its crisis, and shortly afterwards his position was greatly strengthened by promotion to a seat in the Cabinet. Night after night did he sit through the tedious debates, ready to answer every question and parry every attack, evincing throughout such unfailing good humour, combined with such unflinching determination, that the House was at once impressed and conciliated. Strong in the general support of the Conservatives, joined to that of the moderate Liberals, he defended his Bill at every essential point, regardless of the telling and often bitter criticism of the League. Still certain important alterations were made before the Bill became law; chiefly that the school boards were to be re-elected every three years; that the school rate was not to be levied under a distinct name; that the election of school boards should be on the cumulative principle--that is, that where each voter had a number of votes, he might bestow them all on a single candidate if he chose, instead of being compelled to divide them equally. Finally, after a debate of twenty-one days, the Bill passed the third reading without a division, but amid the anathemas of both classes of irreconcilables. While Mr. Dixon pronounced that Government had aroused "the suspicion, distrust, and antagonism of some of their own most earnest supporters," Mr. Gathorne Hardy charged them with "inaugurating a system of hypocrisy, treachery, and baseness." Mr. Forster enjoyed the fate of all neutrals--of being heartily abused by both belligerents.

In the House of Lords the Bill was well treated, the only important amendment being moved and carried by the Duke of Richmond, to the effect that vote by ballot should not extend to other than metropolitan elections. With this alteration the Bill passed through its last stages and became law, and it may be added that, whatever its defects, it marked an epoch in the history of our educational system. The religious difficulty did not disappear with the passing of the Bill, as was natural to a difficulty which after all was primarily not religious but social. The platforms of the League and the Union--of Nonconformity and the Established Church--were the platforms on which the later elections for school boards were generally fought; but the first elections largely showed that the Bill was being loyally accepted by all parties, and Mr. Forster was greatly pleased when Lord Lawrence, ex-Viceroy of India, agreed to become Chairman of the first School Board for London. Certainly the Act brought education within the reach of every English child, and "covered England with good schools;" and the rancour of the League defeated its own ends when Mr. Forster, on addressing his constituents in the autumn, was received with a vote of censure.

All minor legislative undertakings of the year, even the Land Bill and the Education Act themselves, were for the time wholly eclipsed and driven out of public memory by news that arrived in England, by telegraph, on the 22nd of April--news fraught with personal loss and sorrow to many, which roused throughout England generally a storm of grief and indignation. The facts were these: On the morning of the 11th of April, a party of residents and tourists, comprising Lord and Lady Muncaster, Mr. Herbert, Mr. Vyner, Mr. Lloyd, his wife and child, and Count de Boyl, set out from Athens to visit the battle-field of Marathon, that famous crescent-shaped piece of flat sea-shore, where the destinies of Europe were once staked upon a single throw, and the "teeming East" received that decisive check, the importance of which to subsequent European history none can over-estimate. The gentlemen of the party before setting out had made stringent inquiries in Athens respecting the rumoured presence of brigands in the country round Marathon. Mr. Herbert had received official information to the effect that Attica, was safe, and, the Government declared, perfectly free from brigands. Still, to guard against any possible danger, the Government engaged to send with them an escort of four mounted gendarmes, who were to be joined _en route_ by others. Thus provided, they set out, and, after such a day as a party of cultivated people were likely to spend in such a place as Marathon, they were driving back to Athens in the warm spring evening. Only the four gendarmes were in sight of the carriage--two riding in front, and two behind; but the inmates knew that at least six foot-soldiers were a little way behind them, while it was rumoured that a further body of twenty-five soldiers had left Marathon in their wake, ready to render help if necessary.