Canon Clayton shows, in a letter addressed to Monday's Times,
what Mr. J. S. Brownrigg, the secretary to the National Society, shows still more conclusively, in a letter to the Times of last Wednesday, that nothing can be further from the mark than to speak of the voluntary subscriptions to the National schools as a diminishing quantity. Canon Clayton shows that the voluntary subscriptions, which in 1870 amounted to only £428,419, amounted last year to £808,553, or very nearly double. Nor did this include the whole sum raised. What the Duke of Devonshire probably meant by saying the other day that the volun- tary subscriptions amounted to "a diminishing sum," was that the sum per scholar had diminished, which is true, not because less had been subscribed,—much more had been sub- scribed,—but because the number of children attending these schools had so vastly increased. In 1870, the average attendance at these schools was 1,152,389, while in 1894 it was 2,448,037. Thus, while the voluntary subscription had not quite doubled, the average attendance had a good deal more than doubled. The Secretary to the National Society shows in his Wednesday's letter that the total sum spent out of private pockets in maintaining the schools was in 1894 very little short of a million of money, if not fully that amount. We cannot think that, without reference to the great wet, of the buildings and plant, this is an
annual sum which the people of this Kingdom either would or could afford to dispense with and to replace, quite unneces- sarily, by an increase in the rates.
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