the Irish National School system 300,000 children are educated for 285,3731., at an average of 19s. per scholar; in England the cost of popular education in registered schools averages 30s. per scholar. It is in the nature of high departments of State, administered by great political officers, and dealing with millions of money, to do things in a very different manner from a local education Board. Official agency always tends in this country to encourage that propensity to extravagance which is one of our most grievous national failings. In another part of his Report Mr. Arnold computes the rate of expenditure on the French schools and school administration at one-fourth of ours.

'These schools,' he adds, 'would look humble enough beside an Elizabethan Normal College in England, or the elaborate Gothic edifice with which the liberality of the Committee of Council enables an English rector to adorn his village. English certificated schoolmasters would reject with disdain the salaries of their teachers. English normal college students, accustomed each to his separate room, would look with contempt on the vast dormitories, rigidly plain though scrupulously neat, in which French students sleep by companies, under the charge of an overlooker, like the inmates of a hospital or a barrack. The English Privy Council Office would regard with contempt a certificate examination which occupies but a few hours, and which leaves conic sections unexplored. English inspectors would never quit their fellowships for posts the occupant of which has the salary of an exciseman. Vice-president or viceminister there is none; indeed, the French officials thought the post of this functionary, when I explained it to them, a very curious invention. "Your vice-presidency," they said, "must generally have for its occupant one who would not have been designated chief minister of public instruction: yet it is he who, under the shadow of a nominal chief's authority, will inevitably transact nine-tenths of your educational business and give the guidance to your system." The habits of our country are hardly compatible with official salaries so low as those of France, and to have our schoolmasters' means reduced to the French standard would be a serious misfortune. But there can be no doubt that a certain plainness and cheapness is an indispensable element of a plan of education which is to be widely extended: that a national system is at this price.' (Arnold's Report, p. 92.)

To this observation we have a brief answer to make, though we fear it will not be to the taste of Mr. Arnold. It is because you have converted the machinery for public education into State machinery, the agents employed in it into high official persons, and even the teachers in primary schools into government functionaries, looking to the State for patronage and pay, that you have encumbered it with financial burdens utterly in

compatible with the real object you profess to have in view, namely, the instruction of those poor and humble classes which can obtain instruction by, no other means. Here, again, that object is defeated by the grandeur, ostentation, and importance of the means adopted. Those means should be regulated not by the notions of Ministers of State, or Prize-men from Oxford and Cambridge, but by the lowly condition and limited wants of the children-young, ignorant, indigent children-whom we wish to qualify for the state of life in which God has placed them. It is a great misfortune that the management of schools should be so entirely taken out of the hands of the class for which they are really intended, and made an affair of patronage. There is a strong and growing conviction among the people of the value of education and of the duty of educating the young. That is one of the most satisfactory points established by this Report. But there are great complaints of apathy in the managers of schools-evidently because the managers belong entirely to a class who have no direct interest in the matter.

Two modes of expenditure yet remain to be noticed, more important from the principle they involve than for their present amount. The one is the capitation grant; the other the grant for books, &c. In 1853 a scheme was proposed to divide the population of the country into two classes, one consisting of large towns, the other of rural districts. The education of the former was to be provided for by local rates assessed and distributed by the towns themselves; the rural districts were to be provided for by grants of public money, administered by the Committee of Council, and regulated by the number of children in actual attendance for 176 days in the year, at the rate of 6s. per child. The Bill to establish the system of local rates in towns was thrown out: but the Education Committee proceeded to execute their part of the plan, and as in subsequent years no good reason subsisted for the distinction which had been drawn between town and country, these capitation grants were extended to all schools under certificated and registered teachers, which fulfil certain other conditions. Since its establishment this grant has grown with great rapidity. It was 5,9571. in 1854; 20,0797. in 1856; 61,1837. in 1859: and on the supposition that two millions of children enter schools connected with the Privy Council, the Commissioners inform us that the capitation grant might grow to 300,000l.

The Commissioners appear to be of opinion that the capitation grant is one of the forms of relief to schools least open to objection, for in their final recommendations they propose that all assistance given to the annual maintenance of schools shall

be simplified and reduced to grants of two kinds- that is, by a direct payment of money out of the Parliamentary votes to schools conducted on certain conditions and inspected by Government, and also by a payment of money out of the county rates in consideration of the attainment of a certain 'degree of knowledge by the children in the school during the 'year preceding the payment.' The machinery for the first of these payments already exists in the Education department of the Privy Council. County and Borough Boards of Education are to be created for the second.

But if this course were adopted, it must obviously be on a much simpler plan, and on one less open to the same class of objections we have already noticed. Here again we find the action of the Government and its financial resources employed to the direct advantage, of a certain category of protected schools. The Commissioners expressly report that this grant is now received 'by many schools which do not want it.' On the other hand, the districts and schools which want it most cannot obtain it, because they are too poor to meet the demands of the Council Office, and to maintain one of that highly favoured class, 'a 'certificated and registered teacher.' The present system therefore operates unfairly and even absurdly; but if the conditions were relaxed, the demand would become universal and entail a further expense of several hundred thousands a-year on the Consolidated Fund.

The existence of schools aided by these capitation grants and by other means, is, of course, opposed to the principle of free competition, which in all other walks of life is, in this country, the best check on abuses, and the most active encouragement to progress. Nor are such grants entirely free from a still more serious objection; they tend, as far as they go, to pauperise education, and that to large classes of persons who could afford to pay their school-pence. To the Ragged Schools, which partake as much of charity as of tuition, no assistance is given unless they are industrial-only 3 receive it out of 192. Evening schools and evening classes are in the highest

Lord Shaftesbury has complained, with somewhat too much warmth, that justice has not been done by the Commission to the promoters of Ragged Schools. These schools unquestionably prove what may be done in this country by voluntary exertions, even under the least favourable circumstances. No less than 300,000 children of the lowest class have received education in these schools. In London alone, 25,000 children attend them. In the last two years 250,000l. has been subscribed for their support; and the return of juvenile delinquents convicted in the metropolitan district has

degree useful, because they are frequented by an older class of pupils, coming of their own accord, and valuing what they learn ; but the assistance of the Government is not extended to them unless they are connected with day schools, and there is great difficulty in obtaining competent masters, a suitable locality, and teaching apparatus. Much may undoubtedly be said in favour of the intervention of the State in promoting the education of the people, but such intervention is necessarily partial ; and it would seem that there is just as much reason, or perhaps more, for making all these institutions the objects of State patronage, as there is for employing the grants of Parliament in the way they have lately been employed. Why or where are you to stop? But as there must be a stop somewhere, a code of artificial rules and distinctions has been established by the dispensers of the grants, which of course operates with harshness on a multitude of persons excluded from the benefit of them.

One other point deserves a passing remark, because it exemplifies in the most forcible manner the inconvenience of State interference with the laws of demand and supply through the ordinary channels of trade. The Committee of Council were desirous of supplying schools with good educational books at low prices. For this purpose they devoted a sum of nearly 6000l. a year to carrying on a book trade below the market price, and therefore, at a loss, represented by that amount. Nothing could be more injurious to the production of good school books; for the list of works circulated by Government had of course the command of the market, and so far prevented improvement; the actual price of school books was no longer determined by open competition; publishers being compelled to allow a discount of about 40 per cent. to the Government, were compelled to put a higher price on their books than they would otherwise have done, and consequently the public at large paid more, in order that the protected schools might have books for less than they cost. The administration of this puerile scheme has been enormously troublesome and expensive, and it has now been abandoned; but nearly 40,000. have been spent by the Government in providing for the loss upon the amount of books and apparatus thus purchased and resold to school managers below their value.

diminished from 10,194 in 1856 to 7850 in 1860. To those who contend that the work of public education in England cannot be carried on without large Government grants and official management, these facts afford some answer. The Ragged Schools have neither.

It is impossible to read these Reports without arriving at the conviction that our method of conducting the work of popular education is pre-eminently wasteful. This investigation into our large expenditure of time, labour, and money, followed by comparatively small results, has, however, led to the discovery of two or three principles of the greatest importance to the whole question. The Commissioners, in their Report, have not given to these principles the prominence which they appear to us to deserve, but Mr. Senior has supplied this deficiency in the seventh chapter of his book, to which we must refer for a digest of the evidence supporting them. The evidence was collected by Mr. Chadwick, in a subsidiary inquiry undertaken by him for that purpose. These principles are as follows:

1. That children learn as much and as well when the schoolhours are restricted to four or even three hours a-day, as when they are extended (as they now commonly are) to six or seven hours. The limits of the attention and mental power of children are soon reached—nothing but harm is done by an attempt to go beyond them.

2. That instruction can be conveyed with far greater facility and success in a well-organised large school than in a small one.

3. That the introduction of a certain amount of drill exercise has a most beneficial effect upon the moral and mental condition of the children, as well as on their discipline, and physical health and bearing. Nothing tends so effectually as precise regulated exercises to shake off that slovenliness, heaviness, and inattention which are the bane of practical education.

The results of these three propositions, if they are correct, will be obvious. A vast economy would ensue from reducing the school-hours to what is called half-time;' the teachers would be able to devote a portion of their labour to evening schools for adults; the school-rooms might be used at different times of the day or evening for different educational purposes and the school attendance of children might be prolonged to a later age, because it would no longer be incompatible with a certain amount of productive labour, as is already done under the Factory Act. Wherever the area of schools can be enlarged, as is generally the case in populous towns, a further economy of labour and expense may be effected, and with a marked improvement in the educational results.