Independently, however, of any fiscal considerations, it seems to us that there are weighty arguments against the proposal of a gratuitous education.
It may be observed, and we think it an important observation, that the proposal of free education is in the teeth of all our recent policy; and some pressing reasons ought to be given for a complete and sudden reversal of all that we have hitherto been doing. There are many free schools in the country, endowed by 'pious founders,' and established for the special purpose of giving free education to the children of particular parishes. Some of these schools have had to pass through the hands of the School Commissioners and to receive new schemes. It has been, we believe, the invariable practice to insert into these new schemes the condition of school-pence; the portion of the endowment so saved has been applied to the foundation of exhibitions and other methods of assisting deserving children. The inhabitants of the parishes in which this innovation has been introduced have grumbled and submitted; it has in some cases been a bitter pill, but the law-abiding character of the Englishman has caused it to be swallowed without noisy remonstrance. We cannot, without raising a suspicion of having practised educational quackery, retreat from the position which we have thus taken up.
What is the argument for the position? It is sometimes stated thus, that people value a thing more when it costs them something to get it. The argument is not to be despised; but we think that it yields in importance to the consideration, that the payment of the school fees is almost the only indication left of the great truth, that the parent is responsible for his children's education. We have sometimes trembled when we have seen in Board Schools directions concerning the doings of the children, which would seem to have had a right to come from parents, but which do in fact come 'by order of the Board.' We have almost feared lest in the Fifth Commandment our boys and girls of the rising generation should be tempted to substitute 'Board' for 'father and mother.' Certainly there is great danger in virtue of modern social arrangements lest parents should forget their highest duties to their children, and children cease to honour their parents in the good old-fashioned way. We confess, therefore, that we are jealous of the proposal to take away from the father the proud privilege of paying for his children's schooling, even though it may sometimes cost him an effort to do so.
It may be said, of course, that every man does pay indirectly, because he pays according to his means to the taxes of the country, and that therefore the proposal only gives him of his own. The argument is defective, because it ignores the fact that whatever a man may pay indirectly in taxes, there is a conscious effort in finding the pence for the children's schooling, which morally is of great importance. But the argument fails also on other grounds: it assumes that all men have children equally; it asserts that the married man with his five children has no more responsibility than the elderly spinster who lives next door; it supposes that the parents have not a special interest in their children, distinct from that which can be felt by any other person whatever. It may be further urged, that if a man pays for his children while they are in process of education, the pressure comes upon him when he is in full vigour, and most able to bear it; whereas if the payment of pence be commuted for a perpetual tax, the pressure becomes one of a lifelong character, and is not relieved when the powers of earning begin to diminish.
We do not deny that painful cases have occurred, and are likely to still occur, in which parents are summoned before the magistrates for the non-attendance of children at school. But free education will not get rid of these painful cases. Already arrangements are made by law for the payment of fees for very poor parents who make the proper application; and if there be any obstacle in the way of the smooth working of the law, the matter should be looked into and the law amended; but the great difficulty in the way of good attendance on the part of very poor children lies, as we apprehend, not more with school-pence, than with school-clothes, and school-dinners. Attendance cannot be enforced completely all round, unless free education comprise in its idea free food and clothing, as well as free books and lessons.
We cannot but fear also lest the remission of school-pence should be another step towards the destruction of Voluntary Schools. It is evident that the proposal is so regarded; and though it may not be difficult to find arguments to show, that if the loss from school-pence be made up from the Exchequer, the compensation will work equally and fairly with respect to all schools, whether Voluntary or Board, still there can be little doubt that the additional grant will give a handle for proposing to introduce some more direct interference with the management of Voluntary Schools than has existed hitherto: and it is probably a true instinct which leads many friends of Voluntary Schools to look upon the free system with sincere apprehension. Certainly the indirect abolition of Voluntary Schools would be a great calamity; and if the views already expressed be correct, the abolition would leave a legacy of weakness, and a permanent injury to the Board Schools, when they found themselves 'monarchs of all they survey,' and without the wholesome rivalry of Voluntary Schools.
There was no such objection to the free education offered to his poor brethren by the hero of this article, the sainted De la Salle. He made himself poor and bound all his disciples to a life of poverty, in order that they might have fullest sympathy with the poor, and might teach their children for no other payment or purpose but the love of God. The atmosphere of a school conducted upon such principles would be so saturated with the spirit of holiness and godly love, that there would be no danger of duty to parents, or indeed of any duty either to God or man, being left out of sight. It would never be forgotten in such schools that the formation of character is the chief aim of education: manners makyth man—as William of Wickham, our great English father of liberal education, has taught us: and manners, taken in the broadest and best sense, even more than the three Rs and all the extra subjects of all the standards, is what we want in our elementary schools, and what we shall never get, except upon the condition of a religious tone and a pure atmosphere, and teachers whose hearts are animated by the love of little children and by the love of God.
We gladly turn once more, before laying down our pen, to the volume which we have already introduced to the reader, and out of which we have told the tale of De la Salle, and the Christian Brothers. We do so for the purpose of showing what kind of men these good Brothers are, when put to the test in a severe and unexampled manner.
'After the disasters of the Prussian invasion in 1871,' says our author, 'the City of Boston, in America, placed at the disposal of the French Academy a special prize of two thousand francs to be given to whoever should be judged most worthy of the honour, on account of services rendered during the siege and in presence of the enemy. The Academy could find no more fitting recipient of this distinction than the Community, which during the whole time of the war had sent five hundred infirmarians into the battlefields, one of whom had fallen under the fire of the Prussians, among the wounded at Bourget. Public opinion fully endorsed the decision, when the first literary body in the world adjudged this reward to the humble and despised corps of the Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes. At the same time the National Defence Government insisted on decorating their venerable Superior with a cross of honour. He would have refused it, as he and his predecessors had already done many times, and he only yielded when he was told that there was nothing personal in the honour; that it belonged to his Institute; and that it was only as the representative of the Society that he was asked to wear it. The eminent Dr. Ricord, who had been an eyewitness of the devotion of the Brothers, was charged with the office of fastening the cross on the cassock of Frère Philippe, in the great hall of the mother-house. This was the most embarrassing moment in the life of that man of God. He could not bear to wear the cross of honour, and in fact he never did wear it. When he returned after conducting the Doctor to the door at the end of the ceremony, he somehow managed that no one should perceive his decoration. The cross was not to be seen; and it has remained ever since as a kind of myth, or mysterious souvenir; it was never found.'
Thus in France Ministers of Public Instruction and Superiors of the Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes agree in removing the cross from elementary schools: but how marvellous the distance between the religious principles which lead to the two kinds of removal!