in November, and after the general election Sir Robert Peel became Premier. Early in 1835 Lord John Russell brought forward a motion in regard to the Irish Church, in which he declared that the Anglican Establishment in Ireland was excessive, and that its surplus revenues should be applied to education. (1) Sir Robert Peel would make no compromise, and the Government was defeated by a majority of twenty-seven, and resigned. In a few days Lord Melbourne's second Administration came in. This year Lord Brougham, whose short term of office had expired, never to be renewed, submitted a series of resolutions to the House of Lords, affirming the insufficiency of the means for national education, and the necessity of supplementing them; of establishing training schools for teachers, and of appointing a permanent Board of Commissioners for guarding and applying funds left for educational purposes. In a subsequent session he brought in another bill having the same object. No progress was made with it, and he complained that his bill was unfortunate at all times, since when their Lordships had nothing to do they could not proceed with it. A practical suggestion he afterwards made found acceptance. This was the appointment of a Department of Public Instruction-the idea of which he derived from France. (2) About the same time the Bishop of London attacked the Central Society of Education, which was doing the work of propagandism in the country. He said that he viewed with great alarm the attempt to establish a compulsory system of education, secular in character; and he cautioned the Christian public against it.

The grant of £20,000 yearly was continued after 1834, but its division was already causing great dissatisfaction. The first grant had been equally divided between the National, and the British and Foreign School Societies.

1 Life of Melbourne, 2, 101. 2 Hansard, T. S., 38, 1618.

The principle of the Government was to make grants where one half of the sum required was raised by local efforts. The British and Foreign School Society had exhausted their local funds in the first year, and were unable to make a proportionate advance. The result was that gradually two-thirds, three-fifths, or three-fourths of the grant went to the National Society, which had superior local resources. (1) It also became evident that the system was defective in a most essential feature, as no provision was made in poor localities where it was most required, and where education was at the lowest ebb. These defects and inequalities were gradually turning the public mind to a rate supported system, which, however, was yet far in the distance.

The sessions of 1837 and 1838 passed without further substantial progress. Mr. Slaney moved for a Select Committee, but Lord John Russell deprecated haste for fear of exciting resentment and opposition on account of religious differences (2) which continued to be the great stumbling block. Mr. Wyse followed up the attack in 1838, by asking for the appointment of a Commission to provide for the efficient application of the grant, and for the establishment of schools. (3) The Government opposed the motion; Lord John Russell, who was the Liberal leader in the Lower House, saying that he "was not prepared to state any manner in which Parliament could aid the work beyond what it had done.” He expressed his own preference for the British and Foreign Society's System, but adhered to the principle of distribution adopted by the Treasury, that the largest share of the grant should be given to those who subscribed most towards it. The motion was defeated by seventy-four votes to seventy. The lessons of this division were not lost upon the 1 Hansard, T. S., 37, 448. 2 Ibid, 39, 388. 3 Ibid, T. S., 43, 710.

Ministry. They began to see that public opinion would support them in more decisive action, and therefore prepared for an important step in the next session.

CHAPTER III.

PERIOD.-FROM THE APPOINTMENT OF THE COMMITTEE OF COUNCIL IN 1839 TO THE MINUTES OF 1847.

THE direct intervention of the Government for the promotion and regulation of elementary education dates from 1839. In the assistance which the State had given previously to that period, it had merely stood in the position of a subscriber to the two great voluntary societies which occupied the ground; having no connection with schools or their teachers, and exercising no authority over their regulations or management. The important changes which now took place, and the subsequent history of the question will be better understood, after a brief review of the condition of education and the relations of parties at this time.

The new science of statistics has played an important part in the education controversy. From 1818, up to the present time, many sets of educational statistics have been published. They have been derived from all sources, and sent forth under all manner of auspices-from the Government, from rival education societies, from the purely statistical societies, and from individuals for whom the peculiar investigation has had an attraction. They have been useful at times in fixing attention upon the subject, while on other occasions, they have tended to confuse the issue. For the ordinary reader, at any rate, they have not raised the question out of the depths of dulness to which it has often been condemned. They have been employed for all purposes-to prove the value of instruction and the reverse, the want of education and its abundance, the necessity on the one hand for legislative

action, and on the other the sufficiency of voluntary effort. The same tables have been quoted to support precisely opposite views. In the early discussions of the question they were sometimes used to make education responsible for crime. Blackwood wrote, "It is now established by decisive evidence that public instruction has not only no effect whatever in diminishing the tendency to crime, but that it greatly increases it." (1) No useful purpose can now be served in disinterring from the reports and pamphlets in which they are buried, the voluminous figures which have been published on the question. The accuracy of the most authentic of them has been impeached, and even where this has been vindicated, they have been subject to deductions and qualifications which cannot be represented by figures. Until recent times there has never been a standard by which educational statistics could be tried, for the reason that there was no agreement as to what education meant. They failed to convey an adequate idea, alike of the depths and intensity of the exertions which have been made for the sake of education, and of the mass of ignorance which was left untouched

The several Government enquiries into the state of education have produced four sets of statistics, to which occasional reference may be necessary for the purposes of comparison. The first were those of 1818-the result of Brougham's Select Committee. The next are known as Lord Kerry's returns, and refer to 1833. An exhaustive enquiry in 1851 produced the elaborate figures contained in the census returns of the Registrar-General. A few years later the Duke of Newcastle's Commission of 1858, became responsible for the tables contained in their report. Since the formation of the Committee of Council the reports of the Government Inspectors have been illustrated by valuable and reliable statistics; and the various statistical societies of London, 1 Blackwood, 38, 393.