Gladstonian Ghosts

by Cecil Chesterton

I suppose I ought in passing to refer to the contention that the administrative machinery of the Acts is undemocratic because the Councils are to govern through Committees. The absurdity of such a view will be obvious to anyone acquainted with the machinery of local government. All local bodies act through committees in educational and other matters. The Committee is a purely executive body, absolutely subject to the authority which creates it; and in this respect there is no essential difference between the Education Committee and that which controls the trams, the parks or the music halls.

To return to the other provisions of the Acts of 1902-3. The second effect which they have is to give to the local authority complete control over the “Voluntary” Schools—now called Non-Provided Schools—in all matters relating to secular education. This, I know well, will sound an audacious statement in the ears of those who have taken their views from the declarations of the Liberal press. I can only recommend such people to buy a copy of the Act and read it for themselves. They will find that the managers of the non-provided schools are expressly compelled to carry out any instructions of the local education authority in regard to secular education, that in the event of failure to do so they can by a single stroke be deprived of all the benefits of the Act, and that the authority has two nominated representatives on the board of managers who are responsible to the public alone and can at once appeal to the public authority should their denominational colleagues show symptoms of recalcitrance.

Lastly all the cost of maintaining these schools (except for the upkeep of the buildings) is to come from public funds, the balance once borne by private subscriptions now coming out of the rates (bear in mind that already two thirds of their income was derived from taxes) so that a great nation is no longer placed in the humiliating position of having to rely on private charity in order to meet its educational needs, while denominational schools will no longer be able to plead beggary as an excuse for inefficiency.

That in plain English is what the Education Act of 1902 and the London Education Act of 1903 have effected. I defy any Liberal or Nonconformist opponent of the measure to show that I have misrepresented their purport in any particular.

But no sooner was the first draft of the Bill before the country than the campaign of unscrupulous mis-statement began. The loudest and most popular cry was that the Bill “imposed” a religious test on teachers. I remember once at a public debate asking a gentleman who urged this with great rhetorical effect to point out to me the Clause of the Bill which imposed such a test. There upon I experienced the keen pleasure of watching my antagonists struggle through a copy of the Bill in the hopeless endeavour to find such a clause. Of course he did not find it for the same reason which prevented Tilburina from seeing the Spanish Fleet. There is no religious test imposed by the Act. Its sole effect in this respect is firstly to introduce an elective and nonsectarian element into the body which appoints the teacher and secondly to allow that body to over-ride any religious test imposed upon assistant teachers by the Trust-deeds of the school.

Then came the cry that the “People’s Schools” were being “handed over to the Priest.” What this meant I cannot conceive. The reference could hardly be to the denominational schools which before the passing of the Act were absolutely under the control of the “Priest” while under the Act his control is to say the least of a very shadowy and much mitigated character. I am therefore forced to the conclusion that those who used the phrase really supposed—or at any rate wished others to suppose—that the Board Schools were handed over to the Church, which is of course so monstrously untrue, so devoid of even the faintest shadow of foundation in fact, that it is difficult to put it on paper without laughing.

There is, so far as I can see, no escape from one of these conclusions. Either the Nonconformists who made use of these catch-words and of many others like them had never read the Education Acts, or they were incapable of understanding the plainest English, or, having read the Acts and knowing their purport they deliberately misrepresented them. Take which ever explanation you choose:—are they men whom we can safely trust with political power?

Later the agitation passed through another phase. After flagrant misrepresentation came nauseous cant and fantastic casuistry. I believe that the English Nonconformists profess a great horror of Jesuits. But nothing attributed to the latter in the fiercest of Pascal’s satires can equal the extraordinary casuistical tour de force whereby the former tried to find a distinction between the payment of rates and the payment of taxes. With one voice the Nonconformists declared that it would sear their consciences as with a hot iron if they had to pay a penny towards the support of schools where “Romanising” teaching was given. Whereto sensible men replied by pointing out that for years the Nonconformists had been paying for the cost of such schools out of the taxes. Then it was that the new ethical principle was discovered. It appears to be as follows:—It is not wrong to pay money to a national body to meet the cost of supporting Denominational Schools but it is wrong to pay money to a local body for the same purpose. I will not attempt to follow the various lines of argument by which this remarkable conclusion is reached. I merely set down the conclusion itself for the amusement of my readers.

It should be remembered moreover that all the time that they were ranting about “Rome on the Rates” and the wickedness of compelling Dissenters to pay for teaching in which they did not believe the Nonconformists were themselves forcing on the provided schools and endeavouring to force on all schools a form of religious instruction notoriously abhorrent to Anglicans (at any rate of the Catholic type), Romanists, Agnostics and Jews. Could sanctified hypocrisy go further?

Yes, it could and did! No sooner was the Education Bill law than the leaders of Nonconformity with Dr. Clifford at their head entered upon the Opera Bouffe rebellion (mischievous enough despite its silliness) known as “Passive Resistance.” That is to say that, fortified by the magnificent ethical principle italicised above, they considered themselves justified in repudiating their plain duties as citizens in the hope that by so doing they might injure the educational machinery of the country. The form which their very prudent insurrection took was that of refusing to pay their rates and compelling the community to distrain on their goods.