MR. BALFOUR AND THE EDUCATION BILL.
MR. BALFOUR, could hardly have said anything more significant than when he reminded the members of the Unionist party last Monday that it is now a vastly more difficult thing to pass a change in the Education measure than it was twenty-six years ago to pass the first measure which introduced a great national provision on the subject to the House of Commons of that day, although the novel principle of compulsory edu- cation was then for the first time proposed. If the same number of days would now suffice to pass a change in the al-aca,tion lhw which then sufficed to overrule all the objections which a new and very important revolution in the whole structure of our social life excited amongst us, we should have found it easy to pass the Education measure before Parliament separates in August. The very great and most beneficial change in the process of voting Supply which Mr. Balfour's new Rules have pro- duced,—and for which, by the way, he has not had one quarter of the credit he deserves,—has had the most satisfactory result, and had not the enormous multiplication and microscopic examination of every conceivable detail of the legislative process far out- stripped the capacity of the House of Commons for dealing with these criticisms, we should now find the work of the Session in a much more satisfactory state than it was twenty-six years ago, when Mr. Gladstone had not only a great educational revolution on his hands, but also a difficult Irish Land Bill, which consumed a very large portion of the time of the Session of 1870. But the truth is that what has been called, and in some sense is, the great improvement in the capacity of in- dividual Members of Parliament for considering and judging legislative changes, has proved an enormous change for the worse in the capacity of the House of Commons as a whole for getting through the business of legislation. If you double or treble the critical subtlety of each legislator, you double or treble at the very least the number of minutes and hours which the deliberation on any particular measure will cover; and if at the same time you increase vastly the reluctance of the House to go through the exhaustion of long hours and late sittings, you really render it impossible to do in anything even approaching to the same time the work which was accomplished by the House a generation ago in any one Session. Mr. Balfour, in spite of his very great success in improving the system of Supply, has now got before him a problem of infinitely greater diffi- culty in relation to education than Mr. Forster had in attacking for the first time that very thorny question. Every night, as we see, both the verbal and substantial criticisms on the Education Bill multiply like the multi- plication of clouds of locusts in the East, and for every controversy that is settled, two or three new ones are generated. The educational jealousies of a vast number of popular bodies are stimulated to the utmost. Old Conservative Members like Major Banes are roused into rebellion against their own party leaders, without apparently the least glimmering of insight into the manifold advantages of unifying the authority under which local expenditure on the various local improve- ments in our social life is voted, and it becomes a far more herculean task to carry through a genuine reform of such a structure as our Education system, than it was originally to build it up. The talk about " the decline of Mr. Balfour" and other such cries that have been raised are the wildest nonsense.
Mr. Balfour has done more for the House of Commons this year in regenerating the system of Supply, than he could possibly lose by attempting too much in relation to the Education Bill. But the truth is that he has brought out into a glaring light the vastly increased power of the House of Commons for criticising and entangling a great legislative enterprise, and we believe that he has not even now fully discounted the magnitude of the task before him. With a vast number of jealous School Boards all on the qui wive, and a vast number of able men of business to express these jealousies in a swarm of elaborate amendments, it will take more than six weeks of next year to complete what will be left unfinished of the Education Bill when Parliament adjourns, and we feel sure that Mr. Balfour is not allowing margin enough, in summoning Parliament together early in January, to complete the frightfully onerous task which will await him, if he gives the House of Commons the full autumn recess. Six or seven weeks in the new year ought to be enough, and more than enough, but we feel sure that what ought to suffice will not suffice. Never has there been a task of greater complexity set before the House of Commons than this Education Bill. It is a matter on which almost every Member in the House has a good deal of detailed knowledge, without having the power to take a large and clear view of the measure as a whole. And then the fact that the questions involved cannot be properly called party questions, renders the difficulty far greater instead of less. No Unionist feels that he is deserting his Unionist principles in becoming h "candid friend,"—in other words the most dangerous of foes,— to the Government, and a very considerable number of Unionists find themselves with a crowd of discontented constituents behind them urging them to deliver their souls in petty criticisms. Mr. Balfour, keen as he is to discern the signs of the times, has hardly allowed enough for the difficulties in his way when he proposes to over- come them in five or six weeks of next year. And though a failure to complete the gigantic task will not, of course, involve a " collapse of the Government," as the angry Opposition papers shriek, yet it would undoubtedly very much diminish the prestige of the Government, and eclipse, even if it did not obliterate, the credit which it has won by the forward state of Supply which Mr. Balfour's new Rules have brought about. Looking not only to the temper which the House of Commons displays on the Education Bill, but to the experience of the few nights of this week in the more than Egyptian plague of lice in the form of amendments to all the clauses and almost all the words of the Bill, we are constrained to think that either an autumn Session should be summoned to prove beyond doubt the determination of the Government to carry the measure before the prorogation, or else that a considerable portion of the measure should be left to a future Session, and that the Bill should be practically limited to the two general principles of giving aid to the voluntary schools, and passing the religious clause. Before the end of next week Mr. Balfour and Sir John Gorst will know a good deal more than they know now of the captiousness of the House of Commons on this great and difficult measure. And they will have ample justification for reconsidering the decision of the Government on the question of adjourn- ment, or else on the question of the scope of the Bill. It will be to Mr. Balfour's credit if, on the evidence that he then has before him, he alters the decision he came to on Monday last, when he hoped, and hoped not unnaturally, that his wish to save the House any excessive sacrifice would so mollify the temper of Parlia- ment that matters would run more smoothly than the experience of the week appears to render probable. The truth is that Mr. Balfour's urbanity and gentle- ness in dealing with opponents renders him a little too much of an optimist. He is quite aware that he himself would never think of acting as almost all his opponents and a good few of his nominal supporters are now acting. And he cannot, therefore, persuade himself that they really intend to be as unreasonable as we feel sure that they do intend to be. But in a few days more he will have more data to go upon, and then we hope that he will not hesitate to reconsider a judgment formed before he had tested the suavity of his opponents' and his supporters' reasonableness, and found both wanting. Sir William Harcourt, with his long second reading speeches delivered in Committee, is doing all he can to convince the Government that he intends to leave no stone unturned to wreck the measure to which so many of his followers have conceived a fanatical and almost furious hatred. It will not do to minimise the serious- ness of the danger. If a humiliation can be inflicted on the Government, there is little doubt that it will be inflicted. For that the Cabinet must be prepared.
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