principle of payment by results; but the fact was that the practice which they had adopted might more correctly be described as that of non-payment for non-results. The object of the existing system was to take care that the money given by the State should be expended for the purpose of securing the greatest possible efficiency. If the necessity for a certificate were dispensed with, a man without any character at all might start a school; and if he were only able to produce children who could read, write, and count, he would get the public grant. Another point of importance had reference to the appointment of a Minister of Education, and the desirability of such an appointment had been very much urged by some of those who took an interest in the cause of education. He, however, had great doubts as to the expediency of an appointment of that kind. He was aware it was said that no one knew who were the Lords of Council, or what was the amount of their responsibility; but he had not the slightest doubt whatever that if any great maladministration were at present to be detected in the Education Committee of the Privy Council, the person who would be subject to the severest Parliamentary censure on that account would be no other than the noble Duke the President of the Council. Technically and practicaily, the President was responsible for anything that went wrong; and the admirable civil servants belonging to the Department, so long as they acted under their political chief, had absolutely no responsibility whatever. He might be asked how it was-if he entertained that opinion-that Mr. Lowe had resigned while he had retained his office when a Parliamentary censure was passed upon the conduct of the Council? But he believed he could offer a satisfactory explanation upon that point. He tendered his resigna. tion upon that occasion, as Mr. Lowe did, to Lord Palmerston, who requested him to withdraw it. He (Earl Granville) stated that he could not do so unless Lord Palmerston could induce the House of Commons to withdraw the stigma they had attached to the Council. Lord Palmerston effected that object, and he (Earl Granville) accordingly withdrew his resignation; whilst Mr. Lowe, who thought that he had been the subject of a personal censure, refused to adopt the same course. He was conscious that during his tenure of office he had been guilty of many sins both of commission and omission, but on the most careful reflection he did not believe that he should have avoided any one of them if he had been a Secretary of State instead of President of the Council. In reference to the appointment of a Minister of Education, he might further state that he thought it objectionable to multiply offices giving seats in the Cabinet, which he was disposed to think was already too large; and it was also not without objection to increase the number of the Secretaries of State. That question had some bearing on a point to which two noble Lords had already referred-namely, with respect to stereotyping in an Act of Parliament the largest portion of the Revised Code. The Council were obliged to add supplementary rules after the Revised Code had been issued, and he defied any person who held the office of President of the Committee of the Council, who had a real view to the public interest, not to find himself constantly engaged in making slight improvements and filling up small gaps in the system to prevent it from falling into confusion. He was, on the other hand, aware that the noble Duke at the head of the Department might have felt that the concessions which he was asked to make would lead to concessions much more serious of public money, as well as to a diminution of the check upon public expenditure, and that he might have deemed it advisable to embody the whole of these matters in an Act of Parliament, because such a step might have the double effect of preventing the whole system from going backwards, and at the same time of preventing encroachment. But, be that as it might, he now came to the most important part of the Bill-the Conscience Clause. So important was it, that the considerations connected with it were of themselves sufficient to prevent him from voting against the second reading of the measure. His noble Friend who moved its rejection (the Earl of Airlie) had, indeed, shown that the Conscience Clause, as at present framed, was entirely unsatisfactory, and for his own part he (Earl Granville) thought that the wording of it must be amended, and that its scope must be extended. The whole of the Members sitting on the Liberal side in the House of Commons were, he believed, in favour of a Conscience Clause, and the most eminent Members of the Government had at different times signified their adhesion to that view. The best arguments advanced in favour of such a clause had, he might add, emanated from the pens of clergy- the proposition to create a Minister of men; while the Commission to which he Education. It seemed to be assumed that had already referred had strongly recom- the proposal had reference simply to those mended its adoption in the case of endowed duties which were now connected with schools. But it was of still greater im Parliamentary Grants and with the admiportance that, a Conscience Clause having nistration of education as it was now conbeen proposed by the Government as a ducted by the Committee of Council. He Government, the second reading of the (the Duke of Marlborough) must confess Bill in which it was embodied should be that he should not deem it expedient to carried; for the passing of such a measure, appoint such an official if his functions even in its present imperfect shape, would, were to be confined simply to the performhe felt, stop for ever that non possumus ance of those duties. But their Lordships argument which was advanced to show could scarcely fail to perceive that there that it was impossible the clergy could was beyond the performance of those duties conscientiously accept such a clause. Of a very wide and important field to be one thing he felt perfectly sure, and that taken into account. He need hardly rewas, that nothing was of greater import- mind the House of the various Commisance for the Church of England, and sions that had been appointed to inquire nothing more certain to arrest the secular- into the state of education throughout the ization of the children of this country, country, and that within the scope of their than the sanction by Parliament of a inquiries came the primary schools, the clause which largely satisfied the con- Irish endowed schools, the middle class scientious scruples and objections of the schools, the public schools, and the large Nonconformist portion of the population. grants in connection with them which it He was also desirous of voting for the was the duty of the Privy Council to adsecond reading of the Bill because it was, minister, and which now amounted to he thought, impossible not to perceive more than £900,000 a year. When they the truth of the observation of the noble considered how various and important all Earl on the cross Benches (the Earl of these subjects were, he thought that ParKimberley) that it was only a portion of liament could hardly deal with them exa scheme-in fact, the tragedy of Hamlet cept through the agency of some responwith the part of Hamlet left out; and if sible Minister; and he thought the apit were sent down to the other House pointment of a responsible Minister of modified and improved in a great many Education, capable of dealing with the particulars, an excellent measure might be subject in a comprehensive spirit, and of produced, quite consistent with its pro- framing measures with the view of consovisions; or, what was still better, the Bill lidating and uniting the different branches might be brought back to their Lordships' of primary and secondary education into House with the part of Hamlet re-inserted, one great whole, would be likely to be and that with the sanction of the Govern- productive of the greatest possible advanment. His noble Friend (Earl Russell) con- tage. The noble Earl who had just spoken curred, he believed, in the view which he had asked him, whether he was of opinion had expressed; and he ventured to appeal that the duties of the Committee of Counto his noble Friend behind not to press, cil on Education could be better adminisunder the circumstances, his Motion for tered by a Secretary of State than, as was the rejection of the Bill to a division. at present the case, by a President, assisted by a Vice President, and he (the Duke of Marlborough) must say he concurred with the noble Earl in thinking that they would not be so far as those duties went. then, there were beyond those the important functions to which he had adverted, to which it was impossible for the President and Vice President of the Committee of Council, with the work which they had already on hand, adequately to devote their attention. A notion seemed to prevail that the President of the Council had little or nothing to do but to administer the Educational Grant and to preside over THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH said, the noble Earl who had moved the Amendment (the Earl of Airlie) had adopted the somewhat unusual course of comparing the provisions of the measure under discussion with those of another which had not yet been brought under their Lordships' notice, but was in the other House of Parliament. He should not, however, follow the noble Earl into that comparison, but should confine his remarks to the other points more immediately bearing upon the Bill before the House. The first point to which he would advert was the objection taken to But the Committee of Council on Education. But that was not so. Some time ago he prepared a Minute of what were the duties of the President of the Council which would show their Lordships what were the duties of that Department. Besides the Education Grants, the President of the Council had to attend to the subject of quarantine, the affairs of the Channel Islands, municipal charters and charters to companies and corporations, questions relating to diseases of cattle, University statutes, public health, the Diseases Prevention and Nuisances Removal Acts, the Medical Act of 1858, ecclesiastical schemes and representations, and a great variety of other matters. It might be safely said that if the Department of the Privy Council now intrusted with the administration of public health were enlarged, as it might be, by a consolidation of the statutes relating to that branch of business, an ample amount of occupation would be provided for the President of the Council, irrespective of those great subjects of education to which he had alluded. The next objection to which he would refer was that taken to the embodiment of the provisions of the Revised Code in an Act of Parliament; but their Lordships must understand that that part of the Bill was a necessary consequence of there being a Minister of Education. The Minister of Education took the place of the Committee of Council, and therefore the latter was no longer a body existing for the purpose of making Minutes. Those Minutes, therefore, must be reduced to Regulations and Orders of the Secretary of State; but what was to become of the Minutes which already existed? If the subject of education was henceforth to be committed to a Secretary of State, what legislative sanction could be given to the Revised Code, if it was to continue in force, unless it was included in an Act of Parliament ?-for it now had no operation except as being a Minute of the Committee of Council. But it was said the Revised Code, by being placed in an Act of Parliament, would be thrown into the form of a hard and fast measure, incapable of improvement, and not as intelligible as it had hitherto been. Now, he thought their Lordships would admit that if ever there was a concatenation of regulations of an abstruse and complicated character it was the Revised Code in its present shape. It was, he might say without exaggeration, a mass of the greatest confusion, and any person reading it for the first time would find extreme difficulty in making head or tail of it. What the Government, however, proposed was to bring those parts of the Revised Code which had been proved by the test of experience to be those principles on which Parliament might safely act in the distribution of the Parliamentary Grant into a statute, but at the same time to give as much latitude and power of expansion as might be necessary to the Minister who presided over the Department. The portions of the Revised Code which it was thought could be comprised in the Bill were, first, the conditions on which building grants were made; and it was very requisite that they should be placed in an Act of Parliament. The next portion of the Revised Code to be inserted in the Bill referred to the teachers and the conditions of the Grant to non-certificated teachers. He entirely agreed with the noble Earl opposite (Earl Granville) as to the immense importance of maintaining certificated teachers, and he trusted that nothing would ever obtain the sanction of Parliament which would at all imperil the present regulations on that point, to which he attached the very greatest weight. Still, he felt quite sure, that if they pertinaciously adhered to an obstructive principle, and refused to make any concession in regard to the employment of non-certificated teachers, they would run an infinitely greater risk of having the whole of that system swept away, than if they allowed concessions to be made in the moderate and guarded manner proposed by that Bill. The rule requiring a certificated teacher to be employed in all cases where the maximum grant was given was a sufficient security against the loss of the principle of having certificated teachers. The next branch of the Revised Code included in the Bill related to the annual grants. Exception had been taken in the course of the discussion to those provisions of the measure, on the ground of the uncertainty they would produce. Now, he believed they would have the very opposite effect, and that, instead of leading to increased expenditure, extravagance and uncertainty, they would lay down definitely, by an Act of Parliament the conditions on which Parliament, was willing to vote money, and also the actual sums which it was willing to vote. It should be remembered that the Vote for Education had attained as large an amount as £900,000, and that in a ratio that was increasing from year to year; and moreover that that increase had been produced by changes made in the Office to a great extent, and made, he ventured to say, almost without the authority of Parliament; because they had it on the testimony of Mr. Lowe that the Revised Code, though laid from time to time before Parliament, was rarely considered by any one. Those changes were made by a kind of spurious mode of legislation which he thought was extremely objectionable. When, therefore, that was converted into a system based on the authority of an Act of Parliament, they would thereby offer the public the best guarantee that the expenditure for elementary education would not be excessive, and that if it increased at all, it was only through the ordinary and natural increase of the schools applying for assistance, and not through various alterations, made by the whim or caprice of a Minister of the Crown. The next part of the Revised Code was the conditions under which pupil-teachers were employed. Nothing could be more important than the employment of pupil-teachers, and the conditions relating to that subject ought not to be changed, but were worthy of being made a permanent portion of our national system. Again, the conditions on which grants were made to normal schools were sufficiently known and settled to obviate any inconvenience in their being incorporated, as they ought to be, in an Act of Parliament, along with the other great sections of the Revised Code. He was almost unwilling to trouble their Lordships at that late hour by any reference to the subject of rating; but he would remind their Lordships that in introducing the Bill he had distinctly stated that the Government did not regard it as a complete measure. The question of rating was one that had excited a vast amount of controversy in the country; and although several of their Lordships had that night expressed strong opinions in favour of that principle, he was by no means satisfied that the proposals for rating had obtained general concurrence from the public. He believed that a very large section of the community was opposed to rating for education, upon conscientious grounds as well as upon fiscal grounds. It was impossible to see the burdens that were gradually increasing in the large towns and other districts without perceiving that it was very dangerous, without grave consideration, and without being perfectly certain that municipal bodies themselves were willing to undertake them, to impose additional burdens upon them. When it was urged, as it had been by a noble Duke (the Duke of Argyll) that a power might be given to municipal bodies to rate themselves, he might remind their Lordships, by way of illustration, that a few years ago an Act, called the Free Libraries Act, was passed, by which municipal corporations were empowered to rate themselves for scientific and literary purposes; but that power had hitherto proved almost entirely nugatory, the Act having been put in operation to a very small extent indeed, if at all. If rating powers were given to municipal bodies, they would in all probability remain a dead letter, and he did not believe a rating system would successfully provide for elementary education unless the Minister of Education had the power of compulsion. As to the Conscience Clause he was glad to learn that the course pursued by the Government was so strongly approved by the noble Earl opposite (Earl Granville), who thought it of such merit as to justify the second reading of the Bill, notwithstanding his objections to other portions of it. For his own part he thought the principle of a Conscience Clause was a sound one to this extentthat where a child could not obtain secular instruction, except in a school where the religious teaching would do violence to its conscience, or to the consciences of the parents, parental authority ought to be recognized, and there ought to be relief from the disabilities which would otherwise be incurred. The Government had, however, endeavoured to meet the objections of many persons to such a clause by providing that it should be applied only in cases where but one school existed. To apply it to the annual grants would be unwise and impolitic, since large numbers of schools had been built on the faith of a Conscience Clause not being required, and were, in fact, purely denominational schools. Ex post facto legislation of that kind would be very unfair. With regard to an educational Census, the object was to obtain accurate information, and, whether Parliament hereafter agreed to a rating system or continued to rely on voluntary effort, such information would be of the utmost importance. He thought it probable, indeed, that the taking of such a census in any district, and the apprehension that, failing all other means, Parliament would feel itself justified in enforcing a system of rating, would induce a great amount of educational activity, and would test to the utmost the capacity of the voluntary system. The Government did not pretend that this was a complete measure; but they believed that by the embodiment of the Revised Code in the Act, by the appointment of a Minister of Education, and by the concession with regard to secular and evening schools the utmost expansion would be given to that voluntary action which had already produced such great results. He hoped to see the Bill passed into law during the present Session, and then, when the wants of the country become known, and the results of the various Commissions were reduced into the shape of Acts of Parlia ment, this might prove one of a series of measures which might hereafter be effective in bringing about such a combination as might result in a great system of national education. THE EARL OF AIRLIE, in withdrawing the Amendment, vindicated his right of comparing the Bill with the measure discussed at the recent Manchester Congress, and expressed a hope that time would be given before the Bill went into Committee to frame Amendments. Amendment (by Leave of the House) withdrawn. HOUSE OF COMMONS, MINUTES.-SELECT COMMITTEE-On Standing PUBLIC BILLS-Resolutions in Committee-Established Church (Ireland)-R.P. Ordered-Military at Elections (Ireland); Cotton Statistics; Documentary Evidence.* First Reading-Military at Elections (Ireland) [95]; Cotton Statistics [96]; Documentary Evidence* [97]. Second Reading-Petroleum Act Amendment* [93]. Committee Broughty Ferry Provisional Order Confirmation [90]. PIERS.-QUESTION. MR. WATKIN said, in the absence of his hon. Friend (Mr. H. Lewis), he would beg to ask the hon. Member for Bath, Whether the Metropolitan Board of Works intend to give any compensation to those persons who have, with the consent of the Thames Conservancy, erected and maintained piers for the accommodation of steamboat passengers, but which piers will be removed on the completion of the Embankment ? MR. TITE said, in reply, that there could be no doubt that when the Metropolitan Board of Works took away or ob structed the enjoyment of any existing stairs, pier, or landing-place, they were bound to take care that some other pier or landing-place should be erected and provided for the public. This had been done, or was doing, at very great expense. and he believed with very great advantage to the public. They were advised that, that being done under the clause of the Act of Parliament under which these works were constructed, they were not liable to any personal compensation in respect to any rights referred to by the hon. Member. The Act the Board were carrying out was an Act brought in and passed by Her Majesty's Government, and handed over to the Metropolitan Board to carry into effect, who were bound by it, and not at liberty to go beyond it. If anyone thought himself wronged by their proceedings, under the 21st section of the Act, application might be made to the Court of Queen's Bench, when the rights of parties would, of course, be respected and attended to. CONSECRATION AND ORDINATION FEES. QUESTION. MR. MONK said, he wished to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, Whether any steps have been taken to settle a Table of Fees on Consecrations and Ordinations, with the consent of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, under the provisions of the Act of last Session? MR. SCLATER BOOTH, in reply, said, the consent of the Treasury had not |