It is not very easy to say what the drift
of the discussion on free dinners at Thursday's meeting of the London School Board, really was. Some of those who supported the resolution, —especially Mrs. Besant, who herself seconded it,—openly pro- fessed that they wished not merely to give every facility to the voluntary bodies which provide free dinners for the children, but to gain for the Board new powers to give such dinners themselves. Mr. Conybeare, however, who moved the resolution, entirely disclaimed this intention, and declared that he did not mean it to introduce what is called the " thin end of the wedge," as a preliminary to obtaining for the Board the power to give free meals. Hence, though the resolution was carried by 33 to 13, to inquire into the best means of facilitating the efforts of the voluntary bodies which provide free meals for the children, it was carried, we presume, in the sense of the mover, and not in the sense of the seconder. We could have wished that Miss Davenport Hill's amendment to refer the whole question to a committee had been carried rather than Mr. Conybeare's resolution. The really hard- working philanthropists are, we believe, more and more deeply convinced every day of the mischief of those charitable doles to parents which diminish their sense of responsibility for the proper feeding of their own children ; but the socialistic tendencies of the day are against them, and we shall have to suffer from a good many mischievously benevolent enter- prises, before we recover the true mean between the political economy of fifty years ago and the socialistic enthusiasms of to-day.
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