the office of inspector; that without their concurrence no inspector should be appointed or retained in office; that the instructions to the inspectors with regard to religious teaching should be framed by the Archbishops; and that copies of the reports on Church schools should be sent to the Archbishop of the province and the Bishop of the diocese.

'This concordat contained all the securities that the Church could desire with reference to inspection; and accordingly at a meeting of the Committee of the National Society, held on the 15th of August, 1840, the above Order in Council having been read by the Archbishop, the following resolution was unanimously agreed upon :-" That the best thanks of the committee be conveyed to his Grace the President, for the trouble he has taken in conducting the negotiations with the Committee of Council, and for concluding an arrangement by which the National Society is enabled to resume its recommendation of cases for aid out of the sums voted by Parliament for education." * The concordat of 1840 has now been in operation above twenty years; it has given universal satisfaction; no voice has ever been raised against it; upon the faith of it millions have been expended on national education; and yet the Royal Commissioners do not hesitate to make the above-quoted gratuitous expression of opinion,-"The majority of us think that the inquiries of the inspector should be confined in all cases to the secular instruction."-(Discouragements to Religious Teaching, &c., p. 1.)

The Committee of Council does not go so far as the majority of the Commissioners, but the new regulations will undoubtedly tend in the same direction, both by drawing the line of distinction, which may be readily hereafter widened, and by fixing the attention of the master (and that from the most influential of all reasons) on other subjects, to the exclusion of religious knowledge. It is thought by some that religious knowledge will take care of itself; but this has been for ever disproved, even as concerns the middle classes, by the experiment of the Oxford Middle Class Examinations. And how much less will it be the case amongst the poor; and yet, with them, school is the only place where they can be imbued with a religious spirit, or acquire religious knowledge! Others think that the managers, being mainly clergy, would take care that the religious part of the children's education was not neglected; but this implies a constant clerical supervi

* Had Dr. Vaughan been aware of these facts, he could not have written the last few pages of his temperate but somewhat superficial pamphlet. It is assumed by him, and still more by others, that the clamour which greeted the introduction of our existing system' has been proved by events to have been wholly senseless. A perusal of Sir James K. Shuttleworth's evidence before the Royal Commissioners will show that the clamour' in question had the effect of changing the whole character of the Government educational scheme, and of converting it from a comprehensive and non-religious to a denominational and religious system.

6

sion, to be exercised not in co-operation with, but in antagonism to, the master, and the working of the system will necessarily militate against any such interference. For the manager will be dependent on the success of the examination for reimbursement of the considerable sums which he has prepaid to the pupil-teachers, and for a great portion of the funds with which the school is supported. If, then, the master represents to him that time spent upon Scripture, Catechism, and Liturgy will tend to the loss of the capitation grant, it is more than probable that Scripture, Catechism, and Liturgy will be shelved for the mechanical drill of reading, writing, and arithmetic. We are happy to hear from Mr. Cory and from Mr. Lowe, that religious examination by the inspector is still to continue; but how will this be practicable? There is nothing in the Code to require it; and after having not only examined, but reported, the special merits or defects of each one of perhaps two hundred children in reading, writing, and ciphering, is it likely that public officers would be able to go through this additional and gratuitous labour?

If we pass from the machinery by which a school is to be tested to the machinery by which it is to be taught, we find that, for reasons which we cannot here state at length, the result of the Revised Code will be the abolition of pupil-teachers in all schools where the average attendance for the year is less than eighty a day, that is, in all but large town schools. The monitorial system would therefore to a very great extent once more supersede the system of pupil-teachers. Before committing ourselves to so great an extent to this change, it may be well, again, to call to mind what was formerly the state of teaching and discipline in schools conducted by monitors, and how great an amount of evidence there is to the superiority of pupil-teachers over them. Again, the cutting off of the pupil-teachers would cut off the supply of suitable students for training colleges: there would be a corresponding diminution of trained and certificated masters; and thus a stop would be put to the flow of the fountains, which by the quiet working of natural laws are now gradually and yet quickly supplying the needs of our poorer parishes, and making them recipients of the public bounty. The Commissioners emphatically declared that they did not recommend any reduction of aid at present given to the colleges in various forms' (Rep. i. p. 143). The Revised Code curtails their funds; cuts off their teachers; cuts off their scholars; and takes away from the students all motive for remaining beyond one year under training, thereby still further diminishing their income. If it be said that the certificated masters have been overtaught during their residence in the training institutions, the plea may be partially allowed, without

without these consequences being therefore admitted to be needful. It is using the knife for a disease which would readily yield to mild treatment. The subjects taught in training schools may be lowered with advantage, and we hope that a set will be made against the pernicious habit of cramming wherever it exists; but the masters and mistresses must be themselves educated; and it may be doubted whether that high moral character which it is so supremely necessary that they should have could be stamped upon them, considering their origin and previous opportunities, in less than two years.

If it is urged that the real argument for the Code is the financial argument, we must say that the framers of it do not bring it forward on economical grounds. They profess to give by it the same amount of assistance that was given before, although, it is true, they made their calculation so badly that they would, in fact, have cut off at a blow one-third or two-fifths of the aid now given. If economy of the grant is aimed at, let it be openly declared, and effected in the best way that can be devised, not by a side-wind. Sir James K. Shuttleworth points out how the abruptness of the present blow, instead of developing local resources to take the place of the public grant, would paralyse the efforts of managers of schools in poor districts. At the same time he indicates a plan by which a gradual withdrawal of the State aid would elicit local means, and reduce the grant from its future maximum of 1,200,000l. to a sum not greater than that which was voted last year.

If we wish to know the animus with which the change has been made, we must turn to the only official commentary upon it-Mr. Lowe's speech in moving the estimates on education. The tone of what he then said is in many respects most satisfactory. He quietly puts aside the main proposals of the Commissioners. He lays down some principles of which we heartily approve. So long as certain indispensable conditions are complied with,' he says, 'you ought to minimize your interference with the management of schools.' (P. 30.) That we think a sound principle; and we are glad to read the following:'The schools will continue to be denominational, and religious teaching must be the foundation of all. The inspectors will still conduct a religious examination, where they conduct one now; in short, there is no proposal to make any change in the religious character of the schools.' We are glad to learn on such good authority that no change of this nature was intended, though such would have been the effect. So far we say Mr. Lowe's speech is most satisfactory; but there are two points to which we feel bound to call attention, as they underlie the Code, out of sight,

but

but nearer to the surface than is usually supposed, and awaiting the proper time at which to emerge. One of them is a matter which Mr. Lowe has more than once brought forward in Parliament, and on which he has expressed strong personal opinions. In speaking of an increase in the number of inspectors which will be necessary to carry out the system instituted by the new Minute, he says,

'But let me say that if the number of inspectors should become too large, the Government and the House have the remedy in their own hands. The number of inspectors is far larger than it need be at this moment, because each denomination has its own inspectors, and it often happens that three or four gentlemen are sent to the same town to inspect the schools in it. That, of course, involves an enormous waste of time and money; and some good might be effected by making the same gentleman inspect all classes of schools, with the exception perhaps of those belonging to the Roman Catholics.'-(p. 32.)

Mr. Lowe was, of course, not aware that he was mistaken when he made this statement, but he might have been aware of it had he consulted the evidence given to the Commissioners, or applied his own mind closely to the subject. Mr. Cook points out (Evidence, 1022) that the denominational character of the inspectors cannot possibly make the least difference in the number of inspectors that are employed. Each inspector by his instructions necessarily visits five (or, if they are small, seven) schools a-week; and he would not visit more, whatever denominations they might belong to, or however near they might be to each other. Mr. Cook thinks, indeed, that there might possibly be a saving of one inspector in the case of the Roman Catholics; but with these Mr. Lowe is too liberal to desire to interfere. It is true that there is a slight increase in the expenses of travelling. It is difficult to learn the exact amount, but we may calculate it approximately in the following manner :There are seven or eight British and Foreign School-inspectors, and their travelling expenses are, we believe, from 107. to 157. higher than those of the Church of England School-inspectors. The cost of the denominational inspection system we may consider to be the sum of the difference between the expenses of these two classes of inspectors: therefore, by doing away with this system, according to Mr. Lowe's suggestion, there would not be saved to the country a single inspector or any public time, and not more than about 1007.* This is a small

This sum would be more than saved by Mr. Senior's common-sense suggestion of subdividing the several districts now assigned to an inspector and an assistant-inspector, abolishing the specific office of assistant-inspector, and confining

each

small sum to set against the advantages on the other side. By these advantages we do not merely mean the confidence that is thereby given to the Church, and to the different religious bodies, that the State is not attempting to undermine their specific religious character, nor to that general good-will of the religious bodies towards their inspector which is hereby secured; but we wish to point out two results which would follow from a change of the system; and we call the attention of the Archbishops of the two provinces to this point, as by the Order in Council of 1840 their concurrence is made necessary before any such change can be effected. Should the British and Dissenting schools be placed under the supervision of the inspector of the neighbouring Church of England schools, a cry would at once arise, that these inspectors must be laymen, because clergymen would not be admitted into Dissenting schools. If the inspectors are laymen, examination in religion must be given up; for, as Dr. Morell remarks, in a sympathising reply to Mr. Miall, ‘the religious element' and 'clerical inspectors' imply each the other (ib., 1469); and no doubt the practical abolition of the religious examination by the new Code tends towards the abolition of clerical inspectors. When we had got so far, another step would soon follow. At present Dissenters elect to be examined by laymen belonging to the Church of England, because Wesleyans would not have confidence in Independent inspectors, nor Independents in Wesleyan inspectors. But should there be one staff of inspectors for all the public day-schools in England, the Dissenters, as such, would naturally enough insist on having a certain proportion of Dissenting inspectors upon it, who would nevertheless be almost entirely occupied in the inspection of Church of England schools. We are constrained to add, that if the Bishop of St. David's Letter contains a just representation of the occurrences to which it relates, some shyness may well be felt with respect to lay-inspectors, although professedly belonging to the Established Church.

The other point in Mr. Lowe's speech to which we have to call attention is his advocacy of a Conscience Clause. We give credit to Mr. Lowe for choosing his positions of attack well.

each of the gentlemen now ranging indifferently over three or four counties to half or one-third of his present circuit. Can anything be more uneconomical, or more incomprehensible, than that Somersetshire, Dorsetshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall, while finding employment for three Church of England inspectors, should yet belong to one district; so that an inspector living at Bath visits, perhaps, the schools in the Scilly Isles (charging his travelling-expenses to Government), and an inspector living at Penzance visits the schools in the close neighbourhood of Bath (also charging his travelling-expenses to Government)? and this when, as Mr. Senior says, they belong to the same rank of life, they have received the same education, and they perform the same duties.' (Suggestions, p. 349.)

The