NATIONAL EDUCATION.
Since the year 1833 parliament had granted annually the sum of £20,000 for the purposes of education. This money had been equally divided between the National Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society. Government, however, were not satisfied with merely asking an increase; they required liberty to change entirely the mode of its distribution. Their views on this subject were first made known to the house on the 12th of February, when Lord John Russell, in presenting certain papers connected with education, gave an outline of his views upon it, and stated the determination of himself and colleagues respecting it. His lordship proposed that the president of the council, and other privy-councillors, not exceeding five, should form a board for the consideration of the manner in which the grants made by parliament should be distributed. He further stated that the first object of such a board should be the establishment of a good normal school; and, in order to make that as perfect as possible, attention should be mainly directed to four objects—religious instruction; general education; moral training; and habits of industry, applied in learning some trade or profession. This brief outline was regarded with various feelings by the house and the public. Sir Robert Inglis confessed the noble lord had proposed to do less evil than he expected; while Mr. Wyse complained that he proposed much less good than was hoped for. The manner in which this step was followed up by the government subsequently was unfolded in a minute of the privy-council. This minute recommended that the sum of £10,000 granted by parliament in 1835 towards the erection of normal or model schools, should be given in equal proportions to the National Society and the British and Foreign School Society; and that the remainder of the subsequent grants of the years 1837 and 1838 yet unappropriated, any grant that may be voted in the present year, be chiefly applied in aid of subscriptions for buildings; and, in particular cases, for the support of schools connected with these societies. The report further stated, that the committee did not feel themselves precluded from making grants in particular cases which shall appear to them to call for the aid of government, although the application may not come from either of the two mentioned societies. The opinion of the committee, it was stated, was that the most useful applications of any sums voted by parliament, would consist in the employment of those moneys in the establishment of a normal school, under the direction of the state, and not placed under the management of a voluntary society. Finally, the committee recommended that no further grant be made now or hereafter for the establishment or support of normal schools, or of any other schools, unless the right of inspection be retained, in order to secure a conformity to the regulations and discipline established in the several schools, with such improvements as may from time to time be suggested by the committee. The report added, that a part of any grant voted in the present year might be usefully applied to the purposes of inspection, and to the means of acquiring a complete knowledge of the present state of education in England and Wales. The day after these resolutions appeared, Lord Ashley moved a call of the house for the 14th of June. This motion was seconded by Lord John Russell, who embraced the opportunity of warning the members against the petitions which had been presented against the ministerial scheme. Great error and misrepresentation, his lordship said, prevailed on this subject throughout the country. At the same time he stated that government would not persist in their proposal to found a normal school. His lordship concluded by some remarks on the merits of the National and British and Foreign School Society; and by stating that he should be ready to go into the report of the committee of the privy-council, and should also propose that the vote of £30,000, of which he had given notice, should be divided as it hitherto had been, between the two societies. Lord Stanley objected to the proposition for giving a direct control over the moral and the religious education of the people to a board or committee exclusively political in its character, and having no fixed principle of action. His lordship also objected to the plan for giving a secular rather than a religious education; contending that schoolmasters entrusted with the instruction of youth should be of sound doctrine. He concluded by moving an amendment to this effect, “That an address be presented to her majesty to rescind the order in council for constituting the proposed board of privy-council.” Lord Morpeth said that he conceived that the speech of Lord Stanley went to this extent—to separate by a specific vote of the house the executive government of the country from all superintendence and control over the general education of the people. He combated this notion at considerable length; arguing that so long as the state thought proper to employ Roman Catholic sinews, and to finger Unitarian gold, it could not refuse to extend to those by whom it so profited the blessings of education. Lord Ashley said that he considered the scheme propounded to the house to be hostile to the constitution, to the church, and to revealed religion itself, although he did not mean to assert it was unconstitutional. The remainder of the debate was conducted by Mr. Wyse, Mr. D’Israeli, Sir Robert Inglis, Mr. O’Connell, Mr. Gladstone, and Sir Robert Peel. The house divided on the original question, that the order of the day for a committee of supply be read, which was carried by a majority of two hundred and eighty against two hundred and seventy-five. In accordance with this vote Lord John Russell, on the 24th of June, moved that the house should resolve itself into a committee of supply, in which committee, after recapitulating many of the arguments previously urged by himself and other members, he proposed that £30,000 be granted by her majesty for public education in Great Britain for the year 1839. Lord Mahon said, he felt it his duty to meet the motion with a direct negative. The debate which followed was chiefly remarkable for an eloquent speech delivered by Mr. Shiel in support of the motion. After a few words from Mr. Goulburn in opposition to the grant, the committee divided, and Lord John Russell’s proposition was carried by a majority of two only, the numbers being, for the grant, two hundred and seventy-five; against it, two hundred and seventy-three.
The subject of national education was introduced in the lords on the 5th of July, by the Archbishop of Canterbury; who, after defending the clergy from the attacks made on them by certain parties in regard to this government scheme, and entering into some details of the progress of education in this country, moved a series of resolutions condemnatory of the proposed system of education; and the resolutions were carried by a majority of two hundred and twenty-nine against one hundred and eighteen.
In consequence of this majority the lords went in a body to her majesty to offer their remonstrance against the proposed alteration in the manner of distributing the educational grant.
At a later period of the session Lord Brougham brought forward his plan for educating the people; but its merits were not canvassed by the house, and the consideration of it was adjourned till next session.