We are glad to see that the Board of Governors
of St. Paul's School, and its very able high master, Mr. Walker, are firm in their resistance to the policy of the Charity Com- missioners in impounding so much of Dean Colet's trust- fund for the benefit of a class for which it was not intended, and for which the State now provides generously, and with the hearty assent of all classes of the community. The Com- missioners' scheme has already been usefully modified, and 29,000 a year substituted for the 28,000, to which St. Paul's School was at first to have been limited ; but though that does not leave the school paralysed as the scheme originally did, it leaves the barest possible margin, which any time of general depression might reduce to a deficit. And we do think that Dean Colet's fund should not be impounded for the bene- fit of children educated at elementary schools, until the purposes of Dean Colet's Trust have been amply provided for. Our own idea of secondary education is that the middle and higher classes have no need to lean on the State at all. They possess quite enough to educate the young people of their own class, and we view with some alarm the increasing tendency of the well-to-do to come to the State for help in educating their children. But then at least the trust-funds which have been originally and expressly provided for their benefit should be reserved for their benefit, and not distributed to the class who already receive millions annually out of the revenues of the State. Democracy ought not to mean the policy of despoiling the class that is almost independent of the State for the benefit of the class that gets so much of its educa- tional revenue from that source.
Previous page
