"WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS," Etc.

That not particularly learned body which rejoices in the name of the Commissioners of Sewers of the City of London, held a Special Meeting at the Guildhall last week, to discuss the terribly extravagant conduct of the London School Board in adding one penny in the pound to the amount of the rate to be levied in the wealthy City of London for the ensuing year. Much burning eloquence, of the peculiar City type, was used on the occasion, and a statement by one highly excited member that there were no fewer than 313 Board Schools in the Metropolis in which the great work of education was being successfully carried on, and that the cry was still for more, was received with as terrible a groan of horror as if it had been announced, on authority, that there were to be no more "Cakes and Ale" for the Sewage Commissioners.

In vain was it stated by those who, apparently, love light rather than darkness, that whereas the population of London some ten or twenty years ago was one of the most ignorant of any capital of Europe, it was now, thanks to the School Board, assuming its proper place in this respect, by giving all its children a good education. They were met by a shout of derision from an angry Commissioner, who demanded to know "why they didn't try to teach a cow to win the Derby," which brilliant interrogation elicited great applause.

In vain was it suggested that this sudden affectation of sympathy with the poor Ratepayer for having to pay this additional penny for education, was but a blind to screen their own increased rate of double the amount, for a purpose of not one-tenth the importance. The Sewage Commissioners listened with impatience, reserving their enthusiastic approbation for the very demonstrative gentleman who addressed them after their own heart; and in language that all could understand and thoroughly sympathise with. He was quite willing, generous soul, that the poor children should have bread, but what he objected to was rumpsteaks! and he concluded his brilliant oration with the following magnificent peroration:—"Everybody should have his meal, but he must have a stomach of the highest class before they could give him turtle soup and port wine!"

Who but a member of the City Corporation could have contrived, when discussing the question of the education of the Poor, to have brought in those two gods of his idolatry, turtle soup and port wine? And in combination too!

Under-feeding and Under-housing

PROGRESS

Young Rustic: "Gran'fa'r, who was Shylock?"

Senior (after a pause): "Lauk a' mussy, boy, yeou goo to Sunday Skewl, and don't know that!"

This well-merited castigation preceded the protests of the "Indignant Ratepayers" by a couple of years, but it is more truly representative of Punch's convictions on the main question. We had to educate our masters, and we must not squeal over the bill—provided the education was sound. On that point Punch was by no means satisfied, and in 1887 he invokes the testimony of the British workmen, who is made to protest against the unpractical nature of modern education, and the undue prominence assigned to the 'ologies and 'ometries. A cartoon in 1888 represents Education betrayed by its "friends"—pedantry and jobbery. Over-pressure was aggravated by under-feeding and under-housing. As for the former, Punch prints an East End remonstrance against the penny rate: "When we wants daily bread it ain't any good saying you only wants 'that there penny.'" But the steady growth of State expenditure on education is resented on the ground that it was devoted to inappropriate or unnecessary objects. In 1891 Punch publishes a forecast of the Exasperated Public protesting against the ever-increasing extravagance of the London School Board, who have taken to building observatories and raised the salaries of elementary teachers to £2,500 a year.

This is burlesque, but there is criticism and dissatisfaction at the back of it. So when the Bill providing for "assisted" (i.e. Free) Education, for which the Budget surplus of £2,000,000 was to be devoted, was introduced in the same year, Punch represented the cross-currents of the Unionist Party in his cartoon. Mother Goschen, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is seen introducing her adopted child (Free Education), whom she had found in Birmingham, to the Old Tory Party (Mrs. Gamp), who doesn't like the looks of him at all. But Goschen carried his point—that the Government were pledged to alleviate the burden which compulsory education had, in recent years, imposed upon the poorer portion of the people; and by September 1 the free education proposals of the Government were generally adopted throughout the country by both Board and Voluntary Schools.

The old question of corporal punishment comes up in 1880 and 1881, but in a new light. There was "one law for the rich and another for the poor," but here, at any rate, it could not be maintained that the poor were oppressed. Already flogging was only commonly resorted to in the schools for the upper classes, and Punch emphasizes the contrast in his dialogue between the Peer and the Peasant. The Peasant observes that when he is tapped over the head with a cane, his mother goes and bashes the teacher over the head with the poker and gets him fired for assaulting her son. The Peer, on the other hand, owns to having been "swished" four times in a fortnight without attempting reprisals. Whereupon the Peasant suggests that he should have sent his mother to go and bang his old master. If Punch is to be believed, conflicts between teachers and parents were pretty frequent at this time. They are not unknown even to-day; but parents are less inclined to take the law into their own hands.