from the cold. 'Last night,' said the mother

of a little boy seven years of age, 'when my Henry came home he lay up quite stiff and cold; he is often very tired, and will fall down and drop asleep with the food in his mouth.' In some parts of the fen districts the children are compelled to jump the dykes, an exertion causing frequent accidents, and one poor girl died from the effects of an effort beyond her strength."

"It is a common practice for the gang-master to carry a stick or a whip, but rather, it is said, to frighten the children with than for use; but the treatment depends entirely upon his disposition. There is no control or possibility of control, for the children know that remonstrance would be immediately followed by expulsion from the gang, and the parents, having a pecuniary interest in their labour, would but too certainly shut their ears to any complaints. Instances are not uncommon of severe and lasting injuries having been inflicted by brutal gang-masters, and gross outrages, such as kicking, knocking down, beating with hoes, spuds, or a leather strap, 'dyking,'| or pushing into the water, and 'gibbeting,' i.e. lifting a child off the ground and holding it there by the chin and the back of the neck, are said to be frequent."

The labour in the wet fields was dreadful, the worst being stone picking, at which exhausting toil children worked eight or nine hours a day; but turnip pulling was nearly as bad, and, indeed, the manner in which the work was often urged on by a brutal taskmaster had effects, which need not be repeated here, but were quite as serious as many of those recorded in the worst accounts of West India slavery.

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and shamelessness; and that the obscenity of their conversation and of their songs was such as needed to be heard to be believed. And this was little more than seventeen years ago.

It was not till July, 1867, that a bill, brought in by the Earl of Shaftesbury, forbade the employment of girls of less than 13 years old in agricultural labour for hire, or the employment of women under 18 in public gangs. Yet there existed schools supported by voluntary subscriptions, and having no connection with the government, and schools aided by the state and under the control of the committee of the privy-council of education. There were Dissenting schools, Church schools, national schools, infant schools; there was an education department, administering a sum of money annually granted by parliament "to promote the education of children belonging to the classes who support themselves by manual labour." The means employed were to aid voluntary local exertion, to establish or maintain schools for the elementary instruction of children, or for training teachers in normal schools. The schools were to be in connection with some recognized religious denomination, or to include besides secular instruction the daily reading of the Scriptures from the Authorized Version. Aid was given to establish schools, and to support such as were open to inspection by appointed inspectors, upon whose reports the grants were made. There were thus building grants and annual grants.

Whatever may have been the endeavour to make these provisions into a system of national education, it had signally failed, or rather it had never approached success. On all hands it was felt that a wide and inclusive measure must be brought in, and the act introduced by Mr. Forster was received with serious interest. It was, he explained, intended to secure by enactment efficient school provision in every district in England where it was wanted. The districts were to be the civil parishes. Any district supplying a sufficient amount of primary secular instruction would be let alone so long as it continued to do so. Schools entitled to government aid were to be efficient according to a fixed standard, and compulsory

18s. 1d., and Leeds and Sheffield both £1, 178. 5d.

At the same time it was averred by those who were likely to be well informed that the system of estimating the true value of the teaching did not in all instances work satisfactorily. The National Union of Elementary Teachers was protesting against the overpressure on scholars and teachers under the education code. It was stated that inspectors, school managers, and school-boards attached so much importance to the mere percentage of passes in the annual examinations, and made so little of the higher results of moral and intellectual training, or the quality of the passes, that teachers were compelled against their wish to adopt a cramming system, and to bring undue pressure upon dull and weak children in order to keep up the reputation of the schools and to maintain their professional position. The teachers implied that practically the code was based on the principle that all children can progress at the same rate, and that its provisions endangered the so-called "results" if such children were educated naturally. Special difficulties existed in girls' and infants' schools, where an inordinate amount of needlework was demanded from children of tender years in addition to the ordinary subjects of instruction. It was stated that the extra worry and labour caused by regulations in the code, might be greatly reduced by allowing the managers to withhold from examination, or to present again in the same standard, children not able by reason of dulness or bad attendance to advance at the average rate, such power not to extend beyond 10 per cent of those on the books for the last 22 weeks of the school year.

The final passing of the education bill concluded the session of 1870 so far as important ineasures were concerned. It may also be noted that an order in council directed that from the 31st of August appointments to the civil service of the state would be by competitive examination. The announcement of the intended release of the Fenian prisoners undergoing sentences for treason or treason-felony, on condition that they should not remain in

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or return to the United Kingdom, was also an event which was regarded with considerable interest.

The Franco-German war- that terrible conflict which made Napoleon III. a prisoner and an exile, and gave occasion for the King of Prussia to accomplish North German unity under his own empire-has its own history. It need bear no prominent part here, for it has little directly to do with the social and political progress of England, except, indeed, that our having remained strictly neutral was some evidence of our advance in wisdom and in judgment. The greatest anxiety of the government was for Belgium, and it was much increased, while public suspicion was. excited, by the publication in the Times of an alleged draft treaty between Count Bismarck and M. Benedetti, when the latter was French minister at Berlin. This treaty was obviously intended to secure Belgium to France. The matter was serious, but Mr. Gladstone preserved a calm and moderate attitude, while waiting for explanations from the French and Prussian governments. Count Bismarck, it appeared, had published the document to show what kind of proposal had been made, and by that means to secure the alliance of England and Belgium. All that Mr. Gladstone did when France first denied and then admitted that the document was authentic, was to ask for two millions of money and an increase in the army by 20,000 men. His desire was to remain on friendly terms with the antagonists, that England might take the earliest occasion (should it arise), either alone or with others, to bear a message of peace. This was in accordance with the general feeling of the country, and a new treaty was signed between Russia, France, and England, engaging to maintain the independence of Belgium as provided in the treaty of 1839.

As the war between France and Prussia went on there appeared to be a peculiar change in public feeling here, and though after the siege of Paris, where the inhabitants had suffered dreadful privations, we were prompt in sending relief to the famished

people, something like adulation was heard in reference to German prowess. For a time German tactics, German promptitude, German organization were the foremost topics of conversation, and perhaps deservedly so, and then in relation to our own board-school teaching, the German method of education was everywhere lauded as something very near perfection, only a few people venturing to doubt whether it was as effectual as its admirers represented it to be.

The position of affairs in Europe, and some movement in public opinion on the subject of a comparison between England and other nations in the matter of military government, made the time seem favourable for bringing forward the proposed system of army reform, which had been prepared by Mr. Cardwell, the minister of war. To purchase a commission, and to follow that up by purchasing successive steps in the service, had been the rule, so that a commission represented actual property, just as a horse, a house, or the good-will of a business might. It was, in fact, a matter of bargain and sale, and the regulation price of a commission at the Horse Guards was often far exceeded by its actual selling value. It is scarcely surprising, therefore, that whenever abolition of purchase had been proposed, as it had been by Sir de Lacy Evans, and more recently by Mr. Trevelyan, a whole contingent of officers frantically declared that the service was going to the bad; and another contingent, believing purchasing a commission was the only way to keep the commodity in the hands best fitted to adorn it, determined to fight the bill to the last. It soon became evident that they were strong enough, aided by the opposition, to arrest the progress of the bill so that it might go over the session, and therefore the part of it relating to reorganization of the army was abandoned, and only the abolition of purchase clauses retained; with a strong hint to the clamorous opponents that as all premiums on the original price of commissions were illegal, the law might be put in force. The bill passed the Commons, but in the House of Lords a clever expedient was tried for the purpose of delaying and then shelving the whole matter. The Duke of Richmond moved an amendment

to the effect that the Lords could not consider the proposal till a more comprehensive scheme was brought before them. This plan of burking the bill was ingenious, but the intention was obvious, and Mr. Gladstone frustrated it by a plan which aroused much remonstrance among some of his own supporters, including Mr. Fawcett, a very thorough Liberal of the school of Mill, who was returned for Brighton in 1865, and was a noted man in the house, not only because of his great ability, but because several years previously an accident had deprived him of his sight, a calamity which made little difference in his pursuits, in his intellectual achievements, or even in his robust recreations. Mr. Gladstone checkmated the Lords by an expedient which, for a moment, at all events, looked unconstitutional, and for which nobody seemed able to find a precedent. The purchase system was originated by a royal warrant, making it a privilege, and therefore he had advised the queen to aid the reformation of the army by cancelling the warrant. Perhaps her majesty may not have been unwilling to do so, when she remembered some opinions of the Prince Consort on the subject. At all events it was done, and purchase was made illegal. The only effect of the Lords rejecting the bill now would be that they would vote against compensation to the holders of purchased commissions, for that was all of the bill that was left. They therefore passed a vote of censure on the ministry by a majority of eighty, and then passed the measure without more delay.

The University Tests Bill was also carried without any serious alteration, and the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill put an end to another intolerant demand which had remained ever since the "papal aggression." The Trades Union Act, while forbidding the violence exercised by workmen in the case of strikes, yet defined what was and what was not illegal interference, and did something to bring about a better understanding between employers and their "hands." The Local Government Acts extended to small towns and villages the advantages of managing their corporate business, which had previously been confined to cities