MR. FORSTER'S DEFENCE.
A B. FORSTER has at least one great quality for the very 111 difficult position he holds,—that he seems incapable of either irritation or unfairness against opponents who are not very scrupulous in attacking him. His speech at Liverpool on Tuesday contained not a word of reproach, and we imagine not a word which even his most inveterate opponents would call one of misrepresentation. Of course it did not state his antag- onists' case as they would have stated it, but it did not put one of their arguments or objections in a false or exaggerated light. And though we sincerely and deeply regret that Mr. Forster cannot see his way to some concession which would have conciliated some, at least, of his opponents, in re- lation to the Twenty-fifth Clause, we cannot doubt that his speech will produce a very powerful effect on the minds of all impartial politicians. No review of the con- ditions and difficulties of the case so exhaustive and lucid has ever yet been laid before the English people. And though it is certainly likely that the League will rekindle strife, if it should discover that Mr. Forster's speech anticipates the action of the Government more truly than Mr. Bright's, and that the result at the polls may be very unfortunate for the Liberal party, we are quite sure of one thing, that on the lines of this speech the education policy of the next few years must be guided, and this not because it represents the view of any party, but because it points out so clearly the objective conditions of the case from the force lof which no Minister who has to deal with these matters can by any possibility set himself free.
In the first place, it was a very remarkable point to show that those who cry out, with the League and Mr. Bright, that Education should have waited till the country had got a clearer understanding of the principles on which it desires to base its education policy, are really crying out for the very delay which would have most profited the Denominationalists. As Mr. Forster reminds us, before 1870 it was the denomina- tionalists,—the Manchester Union,—who cried out Wait ;' while the Unsectarians, who did not desire to see the denominational schools gain any further ground, declared for immediate action. Now, since immediate action has not benefited the Secularist party as much as they hoped, they reproach the Government with taking premature action, though their adversaries then deprecated such action, and they them- selves urged it. And as Mr. Forster remarks, had there been a delay of a year or two, the Voluntary managers would have pushed on their preparations far beyond what they were able to effect in the four months' grace that was actually given them. The number of denominational schools entitled to building grants and to yearly grants in 1871 or 1872 would have been far greater than the number so entitled in 1870. So much for the reproaches against the Govern- ment for their undue haste to legislate in the interests of the Church. Had legislation been delayed even till the present
year or to the next Parliament, does the League for a moment hope that it could have secured a measure drawn on its own principles ? Let the School-Board elections and the insulated borough and county elections show. For every Leaguer elected to Parliament, there would have been two Liberals displaced by Conservatives, and what kind of a Bill are we to suppose that such a Parliament would have passed ? If nothing else will soften the wrath of the League, is it nothing to consider that, even if Mr.
Forster and Mr. Gladstone had agreed with them, it would have been simply impossible to carry their Bill through the present House,—for the Roman Catholic Liberals would have deserted in a body, and a great many moderate Liberals would have gone with them,—while delay for two or three years would simply have increased largely the sectarian agencies at work in the country, and the Conservative agencies at work in politics ?
Again, if it be admitted that it was wise to begin early, unless the national system were to be more and more built on denominational foundations, Mr. Forster goes on to ask whether it would have been possible to give the Voluntary managers, whose help was invited, notice that the object of the Government was to persuade them to abolish
themselves in the speediest manner possible. Could you ask the earnest aid of men who are fairly told that whether they do well or ill, whether they satisfy the inspectors or fail to satisfy them, the first wish of the Government is to get rid of them as soon as they can ? We have argued elsewhere, in reviewing Mr. John Morley, what we profoundly believe, that in the rural districts this would be a very mistaken policy. But even if it were as wise, as it would be, no doubt, to wish the Board Schools to absorb the Voluntary-manage- ment schools in the great towns, would it be practicable to ask bodies of managers all over the country for their help now, and their pledge to commit on themselves the happy despatch ' as soon as may be ? It is not a matter for argument, but a matter of plain common - sense, that if the Denominationalist managers were to be asked for their aid at all, they must clearly be given motive for exertion in the shape of opportunities for achieving a lasting work.
The only point on which we differ from Mr. Forster is the possibility of modifying the 25th Clause,—which, as he says, was quite " innocently " carried in a House that made no kind of objection to its principle,—so as to meet the scruples it has stirred up. Mr. Forster admits that the Act of last Session has taken out of the operation of this clause, and handed over to the guardians of the poor, the great majority of cases which would have come under it,—those of children whose parents are receiving out-door relief. For the few remaining cases there can really be no reason for not in- sisting that, in consideration of the large annual grant, Volun- tary schools shall be required to remit the children's fees, no less than School-Board schools. Of course it is true that School-Board schools remit them at the expense of the rates, while Voluntary schools will remit at the expense of their private funds, and will therefore be so far at a disadvantage. Still, no one denies that the annual grant is handsome, and that these schools may fairly be asked to do more than they now do to earn it, nor that this particular concession will heal a great many heart-burnings. The most formidable diffi- culty is that which of course the Conservatives would at once raise. They would say, What do Dissenters gain by this ? You could not enforce it but for the large annual grant, and the annual grant is, therefore, the considera- tion for this concession ? But where is the difference between a consideration paid out of the central taxes, and a considera- tion paid out of the local rates ? You are asking us to legis- late an anomaly in order to gratify the superstition which attaches more importance to the local rate than to the Imperial tax.' And this would be quite true. But is it the first time that Parliament has consented to do an illogical thing for the sake of a compromise, for the sake of making a great institutionwork more smoothly? What was the concession made to the Irish landowners in the Irish Church Bill, but one of this kind The wiser and more prudent Conserva- tives would themselves admit that anything, not in itself unjust, which makes the Twenty-fifth Clause operate less grievously and diminishes the limits of strife at the School Boards, would be a Conservative measure. We would earnestly entreat Mr. Forster to reconsider his view on this subject, and attempt something to which the Liberal party, with the exception perhaps of the Roman Catholics, would assent eagerly, and to which, as we believe, a great many Conservatives would give in a prudent adhesion. It is not that we care in the least about a great defeat at the polls on this question, in case the Dissenting agitation goes on. That might turn out a blessing in disguise, if the Tories were only to set up a strong Government and show their true policy when they had once got a working majority at their back. It is that it gives us sincere pain to see so many good and wise men among the Dissenters smarting under a sense of grievance and injury which, little as we understand it, is very real, and un- fortunately very fatal to the hearty unanimity on subjects affecting education that we still hope to see. On one great subject we are very glad to see Mr. Forster standing firm, and that is the refusal to draw any arbitrary line of separation between religious and secular education in this sense—that those who conduct the latter, and are certainly the natural persons to conduct the former also, shall be under any artificial prohibition to do so. As the. Vice-President of the Council truly says, if such a prohibition means anything, it means that masters and mistresses shall not even refer to the religious sanction in punishing or reproving moral offences, and a more veritable piece of moral slavery was surely never contemplated in the interests of a so-called Liberal party. The Daily News, whose elaborate comment on this part of Mr. Forster's speech would have been fairer, if it had published that portion of his speech in full,—as far as we have observed, it is the only paper whose report of his appeal to the principles of the old Quakers is seriously curtailed,—taunts Mr. Forster with having de- viated from the old Quaker principle that the secular Govern- ment shall not touch the question of religion. But what Mr. Forster appealed to the Quaker fathers about was not what the Daily News represents him as having appealed to them about. " I hold to the principles of my old Quaker fathers," he said, " and I am not one of those who are prepared to draw this line between religion and other subjects, that secular subjects should be taught by lay schoolmasters, but religion handed over to the clergyman, the priests, and the ministers of all denominations." The words in italics, which the Daily News omitted in its report and did not supply in its strictures, really contain the true Liberal ground of objection to this newfangled League policy, and when the Daily News quotes Barclay to show that the old Quaker fathers would not have approved of the teaching of religion by the State schoolmaster, it only misre- presents Mr. Forster still more. What Barclay disapproved of was conceding power to the civil magistrate in matters purely religious. Does Mr. Forster wish to give the civil magistrate any power at all to compel religious teaching? Would Barclay have disapproved of a freely elected School Board, or a Voluntary denominational school, giving children the option of attending religious teaching at the discretion of their parents It is simply absurd to say so. And it only shows how hard-pressed the ultra-secularists are for arguments, when they go out of their way to quote Barclay's disapproba- tion of the usurpation of religious power by the State, as evidence that he would have disapproved of permitting a lay- man chosen by a School Committee or a School Board to give religious lessons to those children whose parents wish them to attend. Does the Daily News really think that the,Quakers would have sanctioned a veto on any schoolmaster's right to give religious teaching, so long as he gave it with the parents' full consent ?
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