[21] "When Lancaster had his famous interview with King George III, that monarch was impressed, as he naturally might be, by the statement that one master 'could teach five hundred children at the same time.' 'Good,' said the King; 'Good,' echoed a number of wealthy subscribers to Lancaster's projects." (Binns, H. B., A Century of Education, p. 299.)
[22] In 1807 Mr. Whitbread, an ardent supporter of schools, said, in an address before the House of Commons: "I cannot help noticing that this is a period particularly favorable for the institution of a national system of education, because within a few years there has been discovered a plan for the instruction of youth which is now brought to a state of great perfection, happily combining rules by which the object of learning must be infallibly attained with expedition and cheapness, and holding out the fairest prospect of utility to mankind."
[23] When Lancaster first hired the large hall in Borough Road which later became an important training-college, and opened it as a mutual- instruction school, he announced: "All that will may send their children, and have them educated freely, and those who do not wish to have education for nothing, may pay for it if they please."
[24] In 1820, Brougham, in introducing his "Bill for the Better Education of the Poor in England and Wales," gave statistics as to the progress of education at that time in England. His estimate as to the numbers being educated were:
430,000 in endowed and privately managed schools;
220,000 in monitorial schools;
50,000 being educated at home;
100,000 educated only in Sunday Schools;
53,000 being educated in dame schools.
From these figures he argued that one in fifteen of the population of England and one in twenty in Wales were attending some form of school, but with only one in twenty-four in London. The usual period of school attendance for the poorer classes was only one and a half to two years.
[25] Known as the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act. It limited the working hours of apprentices to twelve; forbade night work; required day instruction to be provided in reading, writing, and arithmetic; required church attendance once a month; and provided for the registration and inspection of factories. The Act was very laxly enforced, and its chief value lay in the precedent of state interference which it established.
[26] Whitbread proposed a national system of rate-aided schools to provide all children in England with two years of free schooling, between the ages of seven and fourteen.
[27] See J. E. G. de Montmorency's State Intervention in English Education, pp. 248-85, for Brougham's address to the Commons in 1820 on "The Education of the Poor"; and pp. 285-324 for his address before the House of Lords in 1835, on "The Education of the People." Both addresses contain an abundance of data as to existing conditions and needs.
[28] So called because the House of Lords rejected the first two passed by the Commons, and finally accepted the third only because the King had agreed to create enough new Lords to pass the bill unless it was enacted by the upper House.