Those who are now barring your road to school are not the Churches, but those who insist that no Church at all shall have a hand in your teaching when you have got there. I have been accustomed to think that it was the Established Church's jealousy of the Dissenters that kept you ignorant, now it looks as if you were to be kept in the dark by the Dissenters' jealousy of the Established Church, working with those who distrust and dislike equally Church and Dissent, and all forms of religious Creed.
"OBSTRUCTIVES"
Mr. Punch (to Bull A.1): "Yes, it's all very well to say 'Go to school!' How are they to go to school with those people quarrelling in the doorway? Why don't you make 'em 'move on'?"
It was a fair summary of the opposing interests which clashed during the progress of the Bill through the House. Punch's impatience is shown in the further cartoon "Obstructives." "Those people" are a group of clerics of various Churches blocking the school doorway. A fortnight later Punch was able to announce in his "Essence of Parliament" that the very qualified compulsion proposed by Parliament had been approved by large majorities, and to publish his third cartoon on the solving of the problem. Master Forster (with his slate) is saying to Britannia, the Schoolmistress, "Please, M'm, I've done it, M'm." And when Britannia asks, "And how have you done it, William?" he replies, "Please, M'm, I've reduced all the fractions to the lowest common denomination." To this is added the stage direction "The good Boy enters the Cabinet." The Bill passed through both Houses, and when Parliament rose on August 10 and the Queen's Speech made special reference thereto, Punch comments, "Excuse us, your Majesty, but permit us to say 'Hooray!' and to add a cheer for Mr. Forster." He welcomed a measure which affirmed the principle that the State was bound to provide gratuitous instruction for all the children in the realm, but resented the educational luxuries which leading "Educationalists" were anxious to introduce. So we find a burlesque list of these fancy subjects, including hieroglyphics, croquet, bézique, etiquette, given in the following year with the remark: "There are people old-fashioned enough to think that it might be as well to give our poor neglected children only plain joints at first—the 3 R's—and let the entrées stand over for the present." The introduction of the "Fourth R"—Religion—prompted the "Educational Epigram" a year later:—
Milk is for babes, wrote one that knew.
Sectarian Educators, you
Who dogmas teach which Doctors question,