fects, but to bring into active employment the superabundant but dormant material; and, generally speaking, not to set up an entire new system, but first to avail itself of everything which is available, and to introduce nothing new, beyond what is absolutely necessary, to supply deficiencies. Such, in truth, is the spirit of these instructions throughout. Thus, for instance, they find a number of school-rooms never used except on Sundays. These they propose not to wrest out of the hands of their managers, but to put it in the power of their managers, if they please, to fill them with daily scholars to be educated on their own system. They find a number of different systems of education carried on in different schools. They do not propose to interfere with these, but to introduce a new system only in those places where, there being no school in existence, a new one has to be built. They find the Committee of Council, with a large amount of machinery, inspectors, &c., already in active and useful operation. They adopt it all. They find voluntary subscriptions, charitable societies, and a Parliamentary grant-all contributing a good deal, though very far from sufficient, to the work of education. They do not, like the National Public School Association, propose to supersede all these sources of income by a local rate, sufficient for everything, and therefore leaving nothing for any other sort of income to do. Neither have they, with Mr. Denison, such a horror of a local rate as rather to leave a great deal undone than resort to such an expedient. But they are ready to open a willing hand for the receipt of all that either Parliament, societies, or individuals, are disposed to give; and to levy a local rate for the supply of the remainder. These, when the details are examined, will be found to be the principles on which these instructions are based.

For the "Plan" which these instructions set forth is in detail as follows. Each of the two boroughs of Manchester and Salford is to be constituted a school district; and in each of them the municipal council is to elect annually a school committee, with a paid secretary and other necessary officers. On the recommendation of these committees the municipal councils are to lay a school rate, never to exceed in any one year sixpence in the pound, and to be collected and received in the same manner as the borough rate; and the portion contributed by any particular ratepayer to be applied if he requires it and that class of schools indicated needs it, to the support of any particular class of schools in union; so that scruples of conscience may be as far as possible respected,

and no one be obliged to pay for a description of teaching which he does not approve. The inspection of all the schools received into union is to be placed entirely in the hands of the Committee of Council on Education. "No school-(it is expressly provided by sec. vi. 3)—is contrary to the wish of the proprietors or managers to be admitted into union." On the other hand, it will be "lawful for the proprietors or managers of all schools open to the inspection of her Majesty's inspectors, or to inspectors to be appointed under this Act, and employing teachers who have obtained certificates of merit, or teachers whose competency to conduct the schools is certified by the inspectors thereof, to place such schools in union with the district committee " (vi. i).

And again, section viii.:-"When school-rooms, unoccupied as day-schools, are found within the district and required for educational purposes, the district committee may assist the managers or trustees thereof to open such as day-schools upon the same conditions as are applied to other schools in union." The being brought into union will be accompanied, on the one hand, by the receipt of certain benefits; and, on the other, by the fulfilment of certain conditions. The benefits to be derived are (ix. 2), the receipt out of the rate of fivepence per week for every boy, and four-pence per week for every girl or infant under seven years of age, registered as attending the school, and in cases of special need (ix. 1), assistance in the matter of repairs. The conditions, on which alone schools can be admitted into union, must be quoted at length and verbatim from the instructions, and are as follow:

"SECTION VII-1. All schools admitted, as aforesaid, into union to be free schools. 2. In all schools which at the time of the passing of this Act are permitted or permissible, by some minute of the Committee of Council on Education, to participate in the benefits of the Parliamentary grant for educational purposes, the following conditions of union to be imperative, in addition to the conditions prescribed by any now existing minute of such Committee of Council, so far as applicable to any such schools or classes of schools. First, to keep a register of attendance, absence and conduct of the scholars, and periodically to furnish a copy thereof to the district committee. Secondly, to admit the secretary or other officer of the district committee to compare the attendance of the children with the register. Thirdly, not to compel children attending such schools either to learn any creed or formulary, or to attend any Sunday-school or place of religious worship, to which their parents, or persons having the care and maintenance of them, shall in writing object. Fourthly, all schools, not being infant schools, to produce annually to the district committee, in

form hereunto schedule A annexed, a certificate from the teacher of the school, countersigned by the inspector thereof, that the general instruction of the children includes reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar, English history, and the elements of geography; and, in the case of girls' schools, plain needle-work also. 3. In all other schools it shall be required as a condition of union, in addition to the four conditions aforesaid, that the reading of the holy Scriptures in the authorised version shall be a part of the daily instruction of the scholars. 4. The district committee not to acquire by such union any right to interfere with the internal management, discipline, or instruction in such school, except in relation to the conditions of union before stated."

Such is the mode proposed for bringing within the scope of the intended Act all existing school buildings. But, in case a want of accessible schools is proved to the satisfaction of the municipal council to exist in any district, a report of the same is to be advertised in the local newspapers. And (xi. 4):-"If within sixty days after the advertisement of such report no notice in form hereunto annexed, in schedule C, shall have been given to the municipal council of any intention to erect within six months such school by voluntary effort, the district committee to issue notice by advertisement in the local newspapers of their intention to erect or provide, in pursuance of the powers contained in this Act, the necessary school accommodation." This is not to be done, however (5), "without the sanction of the Committee of Council," with whom likewise the arrangements (8) "for the inspection of the school are to rest. The whole management (9) of the school, including the appointment and removal of the teacher, is to be vested in a committee of management, fifteen in number, to be elected by the municipal council;" and (11), "Instruction in the daily reading of the holy Scriptures is always to be provided for; but no distinctive religious creed or formulary to be taught." To this it is added (xv. 3), that "nothing contained in this Act is to prevent, in respect to the boroughs of Manchester and Salford, the application of any minute of the Committee of Council on Education for regulating the distribution of the grant made by Parliament for educational purposes, and for encouraging voluntary liberality in the erection and opening of new schools." Such are the main features of the "Instructions for the Draft of a Bill to Promote Education in the Municipal Boroughs of Manchester and Salford."

Now, we do not undertake to answer the objections of those, who, like Archdeacon Denison, in no measured language denounce this whole scheme, simply because the clergy are not

all in all-the beginning, the middle, and the end of the whole affair; or because the benefits to be derived from it are offered to Dissenters as well as to Churchmen. This ultra-exclusiveness, like the jealousy of the Jews towards the Gentiles in the time of our Lord and his apostles, will soon find, if it has not already found, its own level; and those who advocate it will learn, it is to be hoped not too late to be of service, that the true meaning of the Church being the appointed teacher of the people is not that she has a right to force her doctrines upon all by keeping all in ignorance who will not receive them, but rather that it is her duty to promote the education of all, in order that all may be able to see that her teaching is founded in truth, and, therefore, dispose all heartily to acquiesce in it. There are, however, some objections which have occurred to men of more reasonable minds and moderate views, and who are really anxious for some scheme of national education such as shall neither compromise principle nor violate conscience; and these we will now proceed to consider. The first of these lies against an educational rate under any circumstances. It is argued that an educational rate once established there is at once an end of that voluntary munificence in the matter of education which has already produced such great results, and, if allowed free course, will in the end achieve all which is required. We are the last to undervalue the large amount of good which has been achieved for the cause of education both by voluntary societies and individual munificence. But still, as we observed at the outset, we cannot conceal from ourselves that, large as has been the stream which has flowed from these sources, it has been by experience shown to be quite unequal to the emergencyquite inadequate for the efficient support even of existing daily schools, without any reference whatever to the efficient support of at least twice as many which ought without delay to be called into existence. A large amount of school-room almost everywhere, as in Manchester, not used except on Sunday--an insufficient supply of teachers both in number and qualification and an indifferent quality of education in a great number of such daily schools as are in existence-the difficulty of maintaining these schools even in their present state of inefficiency-the miserable expedients, the abject mendicancy, to which the managers of such schools have to resort for this purpose-all these things we confess, as far as our own opinion is concerned, prove to demonstration that, however great have been the results of associated and individual efforts in the matter of education, they never have been,

never can be, and, under present circumstances, are still less likely than ever to be, adequate for the supply of our great and daily increasing wants. Were the question of an educational rate or the continuance of the present state of financial embarrassment, notwithstanding a perpetual begging from door to door, to be put to the vote amongst school managers, the parochial clergy, for instance, and dissenting ministers, to whose lot in the matter of education, as in almost everything else, it for the most part falls to act the unpleasant part, and not unfrequently to meet with a reception far less agreeable than that of mendicant friars, there cannot be the least shadow of a doubt on which side the majority would be. Such persons are in a position to prove by the painful experience of many years-by facts against which no theory however beautiful can possibly stand-that if the bill, the instructions for the draft of which we have been considering, should ever, as we heartily hope, during the coming session of Parliament it may, pass into a law, and afterwards be extended in its sphere of operation, and the maintenance of daily schools be thenceforth wholly provided for by rate, there will still, in the erection of additional school-rooms and teachers' houses, in the support of Sunday-schools, in the establishment and conduct of efficient training-shools for masters and mistresses, in raising a fund (a most desirable method this of assisting in the good cause) for enabling deserving young persons amongst the poor to avail themselves of these training schools, remain even in the matter of education alone, not to mention churchbuilding, the founding of reading-rooms and libraries for the labouring classes, and a thousand other useful avenues for expenditure, which might easily be mentioned, open for the efforts both of charitable societies and individual munificence, a far wider field than both together are ever likely to occupy; and that, while from the moment an educational rate is established daily schools will be maintained in a state of efficiency which can alone render them really useful, and on the only terms which are likely to make them generally accessible to the poor, the flow of private munificence will not be in any degree checked; and at the same time the managers of schools will have leisure to occupy their proper position and attend to their proper duties, instead of spending all their time in going about with a begging-box in their hands, knocking at every door and being rudely repulsed from not a few. While, therefore, we should deprecate the whole burden of the erection and maintenance of schools being thrown on a Parliamentary grant, which would have the effect of centralizing the whole