ECONOMY AND JTJSTICE IN REGARD TO VOLUNTARY SCHOOLS.
WHETHER the Chancellor of the Exchequer likes or dislikes the prospect, we do not know ; but whatever his feelings may be, it is clear that voluntary schools are preparing to make an attack in force on the national purse. A great authority has declared that there is something to be said on both sides of every question but one,—the exception being the advantages of public thrift. With this, as a general principle, we have no wish to quarrel. On the contrary, we greatly regret the dis- position so often seen to vote money for all kinds of objects, national and local, without the least consideration of those from whose pockets it must ultimately come. Public expenditure is only private expenditure under another name. The State has no funds except what it takes from the purses of its citizens ; consequently, it behoves it to act with the caution proper to those who know that they are being liberal with other people's money.
There are two reasons, however, for spending money about which the most penurious State need feel no hesita- tion. They are economy and justice,—the fact that the State will, in the long-run, save more than what it spends, and the fact that unless this expenditure is incurred, some public right will be infringed. On both of these grounds, the demand that is being set up on behalf of voluntary schools has a solid justification. The Westminster Gazette complains that for each child in a voluntary school, the State already pays 28s., and the supporters of a school only 6s. 6d. This, as we shall see directly, is a most inadequate and misleading way of stating the figures, but, apart from this, we say that even this 6s. 6d. leaves a margin within which the State may wisely add to its present subsidies to voluntary schools, and yet be richer rather than poorer. Suppose that the supporters of voluntary schools were driven to the conclusion that it is impossible for them to contend any longer against the competition of Board-schools, and that they must devise other means of giving religious instruction to the children who now attend them. This would mean that the schooling of some millions of children would at once be thrown on the State, and that for each one of these children 6s. 6d. annually would have to be paid, which is now paid by volun- tary contributions. It is true 6s. 6d. is not a sum to cry over, but when 6s. 6d. comes to be multiplied by three million it runs up to something appreciable. And if the voluntary schools were closed the State would have to find more than 6s. 6d. per child. Whether it be that the education given in a Board-school is better, or that the consciousness of having the rates at their back makes School Boards careless in the matter of cheeseparings, we need not inquire. All that concerns us is the fact that for one reason or another the cost per head in Board- schools is greater than it is in voluntary schools. When the 6s. 6d. per child had been made good there would still be a balance, and that a balance constantly tending to grow larger on the wrong side. Over and above all this comes the question of buildings. In spite of Childrens' Dinners Associations, it is still possible to teach children without feeding them ; but it is not possible in this climate to teach children without housing them. Of this truth the ratepayers are likely to have fuller knowledge every year. Loans are easily contracted, but when the interest and a portion of the principal has to be found year after year in addition to all the current expenses of the school, they are apt to become burdensome. How many fresh loans would have to be raised if all the children now attending voluntary schools had to be taken into Board-schools ? That is a question which would be found somewhat urgent if, as a result of the State's refusal to give them any further help, voluntary schools had to be closed. Any calculation of the relative contributions of the State and of individuals towards the cost of voluntary schools which leaves the buildings out of the account, is essentially misleading. The other day Churchmen contributed half a million of money, which would otherwise have had to bepaid by the State, in.order to meet Mr. Acland's requirements. But what is this, in comparison with the original value of the buildings that it cost this merely to improve and put in order? Liberals who take the line of the Westminster Gazette have not, so far as we have observed, ever looked this fact in the face. The school buildings that are found in almost every parish, and in the great majority of rural parishes, are the only ones available for elementary education, and are not the property of the State. They are usually the property of trustees, and in almost every instance they were built expressly for the education of children in the doctrines of the Church of England. Besides this they serve what in the view of those who built them was the secondary purpose of giving the children who attended them secular instruction. Consequently, every child who is taught in a voluntary school, is taught in a school lent to the State, instead of in one provided by it. The conten- tion of those who are asking for further help is that with- out such help these schools cannot live. When their doors are closed, and the children who used to occupy them have to be taught in brand-new buildings, put up by the newly appointed architects of the newly elected School Boards, the State will have cause to regret the ill-judged economy which forbade it to keep the voluntary schools on their legs. This is the argument from economy. Taking capital and income together, the question is simply,—Is it best for the State to increase its contribution to volun- tary schools, or to leave them to become extinct with the prospect of having to undertake the entire education of all the children now attending them ?
The argument from justice is still stronger. The State now interferes with the religious liberty of its subjects in two ways. First, it compels them to send their children to school whether they approve or disapprove of the education they will get there. It does, it is true, give them the protection of a conscience clause. The children need not attend the religious lesson if their parents object. But the unconscious influence of the school is subject to no conscience clause, and cannot be made subject to one. Wherever there is but one school, what- ever character the unconscious influence of that school may wear, will be the one which the children will tend, in a greater or less degree, to carry away with them. This is a difficulty which, in a vast number of cases, there is no getting over. The State cannot undertake to teach every child in the Kingdom the religion professed by its parents. But inasmuch as it compels the children to attend school, it is bound to mitigate the hardship by every means in its power, and one of these means is the multiplication of voluntary schools in which secular education is coupled with a specific religious education. But the State does more than compel children to attend school. It sets up all over the country schools in which a particular religion is taught at the public expense. That religion may be described as the religion of Nonconformists and lukewarm Churchmen. It is, that is to say, a religion which perfectly contents them ; while it is wholly dis- tasteful, if not actually abhorrent, to convinced Church- men, to Roman Catholics, and to Jews. In almost every large town members of these three religions are rated for the teaching of a religious hybrid, which may be good or bad, but which is not theirs, and not one which they would like their children to learn. In 1870, this was thought to be the best way of getting over the religious difficulty. The immense multiplication of Board-schools was not then foreseen, nor was it realised that they would by degrees develop a new and distinctive type of religious instruction. Now that both these things have come to pass, we are confronted by the startling fact that one main result of the Act has been to endow a new form of State religion engendered in Board-schools. We do not say that this can now be helped. The religion taught in these schools is one which is liked by a large part of the popula- tion; and they would naturally be loath to forego the advantage of having it taught at the expense of the rate- payers instead of at their own expense. But the only way in which this unjust anomaly can be made tolerable is by giving every facility to the members of other religions to found and maintain schools in which the religions they believe can be taught to their own children. It will always be a hardship to be forced to pay for a religion which they think hopelessly inadequate, if not absolutely wrong; but as yet, at all events, they are willing not to raise this question provided that their own schools can get the State help they need in the matter of secular education. If the clients of the Westminster Gazette are wise, they will leave the fact that in elementary schools one religion, and one only, is endowed out of the rates, in the convenient obscurity in which it has till lately remained.
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