(6.) The parent shall be considered as employer of labour if there be no other.

(7.) The Act to be construed as a part of the Elementary Education Act of 1870.

Now as soon as such an Act as this is added to the Education Act, it is obvious that a further marshalling of the schools will be required. It will involve no little strain upon the schools to supply the requisite half-time classes, even in parishes so small that separate schools may not be required. And any one who takes the pains to read the passages in Mr. Stewart's "General Report" for 1870,* which describe the confusion to whole-time schools involved in the introduction into them of half-time scholars, will, I think, come to the conclusion that, as a general rule, separate provision will have to be made for them. This, I think, will be the case, whether the plan adopted be that of half-time schooling each day, or of alternate days, or longer periods, of schooling and work, or whether a choice be offered of all or any of these plans.

The fact that the passing of a half-time schooling Act may involve an important re-arrangement of the school system of a district, is an urgent reason why it should be promptly enacted, lest much of the work of arrangement should have to be done over again. The necessary provision of half-time classes or schools in almost every parish would, I think, be one of those matters which would strongly suggest the importance of combination and division of labour between the several schools rather than the existing rivalship. The impossibility in most places of maintaining separate sets of junior, middle, senior, and half-time schools, both for boys and girls, will be one of the things which may tend to draw what are now conflicting agencies into harmonious action; which may tend, in other words, towards the realisation of a system of common schools.

Now in support of the two practical suggestions just made, I have this further important reason to urge, viz., that I believe, when taken together, they would place in the hands of School Boards the key to the success of compulsion.

Mr. Forster urged, on the introduction of his Bill, that it introduced the principle of compulsion. Whatever further legislation is needful to make compulsion general, instead of optional, as now, or to make the national system bear the strain of compulsion, is simply carrying out his principle into practice.

When the Education Act was passing the House, I ventured, in an article in the Fortnightly Review, to answer the question, "Can compulsory education be made to work in England?" in the affirmEducation Report, 1870-1, p. 213. X

VOL. XIX.

ative. I there pointed out that children may be divided into two classes, (1) those who are too young to work and earn wages, and (2) those who are already at work.

With regard to the first class, to send them to an infant school at a penny per week is the cheapest thing that the poorest parent can do. It is a boon, and not a loss to parents to have their children a few hours a day under proper care while they work themselves. Were the marshalling of the schools before suggested in the matter of school fees carried out, and the educational ladder so brought down within their reach, the difficulties, as regards the application of compulsion to this class of children, would, I think, be reduced to a minimum.

With regard to the children who are earning wages, their case would be fairly met by such an elastic system of half-time schooling as I have also suggested. So soon as the duty of setting them free for schooling is made to fall on the employer of labour, as well as on the parent, the hardship of sending them to school would be reduced to a minimum. For the hardship now is that parents cannot make terms with employers. The choice practically is between full days' work and no employment. If the terms were arranged for them under a half-time schooling Act the hardship would almost vanish.

I will not here enter into further details. I will merely repeat the conviction that, were the needs of the two great classes of children met in such a way as proposed, it might be reasonably urged that, so far as the difficulties in the way of compulsory education, which arise from the poverty and outward circumstances of parents, and questions of labour, are concerned, daylight might be seen through them, and that in other respects also making the system in the best sense national, would make it bear the strain of the application of compulsion.

This brings me to the last point, and not the least, which I have ventured to write this article to suggest.

It is this-By whom is the marshalling of the schools, which I have advocated so strongly, to be effected and carried out, and by whom is compulsion to be applied?

No doubt it must needs be done under central control by some local authority. Mr. Forster has more than once appealed to the instincts of his Radical friends in favour of local self-government. The only true answer to the question is surely, therefore, "by a School Board in every district." School Boards are just now unpopular, because they seem to have spent so much of the first year of their service in denominational squabbles. But all this must sooner or later have an end. The sectarian topics will some day

have worn themselves threadbare, and public indignation will probably set in against sectarian squabbling, because it interferes with practical work. The causes which occasion religious squabbles will one by one be removed; and, as they get to practical work, School Boards will more and more be composed of practical men. Give them this work of marshalling to do, let them have to work out such a system of school-fees as I have hinted at, let them have to adjust the claims of labour and schooling, let them have to arrange a system of halftime schools, and denominational questions will be more likely to subside into their proper places, to make room for practical matters, the solution of which will require practical men. Especially will this be likely to be the case in rural districts, where the religious difficulty is theoretically the greatest. The parents and the employers of labour would become more and more interested in the work of the Board, as labour questions and the working of compulsion became mixed up with it, and they would be sure in the long run to elect their own men upon the Boards as well as the clergyman. The so much feared "Jupiter of the village Olympus" would soon be found to be one only in the council of the gods. The national conviction in favour of local self-government would be respected, and in every parish there would be a standing reminder that the English educational system was meant to be national as well as compulsory.

I have before pointed out that in order to carry out the half-time principle to all kinds of labour, a local authority will have to be provided. If School Boards be the proper local authority, why should not the opportunity be taken in the "half-time schooling Act" to provide for the election of School Boards everywhere?

To sum up the suggestions I have made. I advocate the honest attempt to remove religious difficulties (even including those which may be but crotchets) out of the way of the practical working of the Education Act; not by the repeal of any of its main provisions, but by whatever further legislation is necessary to carry out its principles to their legitimate results, under circumstances as they may arise.

But still more earnestly I advocate immediate legislation which shall at once convince the masses of the people that for the sake of their children the system is really going to be made national in the sense of being made to meet the practical every-day needs of the people.

The interests of the masses of the people and their children seem to me to require such immediate legislation as shall secure

(1.) Such a marshalling of the schools and arrangement of schoolfees as shall place the bottom rounds of the educational ladder fairly within their reach.

(2.) Such an elastic half-time system of schooling as shall fairly adjust the claims of labour and education, and enlist, employers of labour, as well as parents, in the working of education.

(3.) The election of School Boards in every parish, entrusted with the work of carrying out the foregoing arrangements, and securing the attendance of the children who are now growing up untaught.

I believe that the earnest attention of Parliament to these points would do more to raise in the minds of the masses of the people faith in the realisation of a truly national system, and in the blessings it ought to confer, than any amount of legislation against religious difficulties which affect the consciences of those above them rather than their own. Let us remember that it is after all for the masses of the people that the long-delayed boon of national compulsory education is asked, and that the question between Church and Dissent is, after all, only a side issue, to be fairly and justly met to the best of our ability, but not to be magnified by either party into a matter of such immense importance, as that for it another generation of children are to be allowed to grow up into manhood, unfitted to discharge its duties. Let it be remembered that hundreds of thousands of children are every year going out into the streets instead of the schools, to receive another kind of education from that which it is the intention of the nation to secure-an education which no future efforts will be able to undo; an education which will foster poverty and crime, and result too often in inflamed passions, lawless selfishness, and precocious cleverness in sin; an education which will be deplored too late, when so many of our future citizens have suffered irretrievable wrong, when what we call "the dangerous classes" have been reinforced by a fresh infusion of lawless blood; when the foundations of the Churches have been a little more undermined, and the hold of Christianity itself on the nation loosened. It will be a hard blow upon religion in the eyes of the masses of the people if good men, carried away by sectarian zeal, whether churchmen or dissenters, push their rivalries (which, after all, are rivalries between Christian and Christian) so far as to incur responsibilities so terrible, by deliberately choosing again to intrude ecclesiastical difficulties between the children of the people and their acknowledged rights.

F. SEEBOHM.

THE

HE Irish are an intensely religious race, but even in their religion they are inclined to be "Nationalists," and among some of them at least the Hebrew prophets are not held in higher esteem than St. Patrick, St. Columbkille, and others of minor note, to whom was deigned the gift of prophecy for the comfort of the faithful and the confusion of the stiff-necked Pagans among whom they lived. The utterances attributed to these worthies have been preserved by the Irish-speaking peasantry down to the present hour, and by the labours of antiquaries they have been transcribed and published. A volume of this kind lies open before the writer; and among the many predictions of evil to the Saxon which abound in its pages, there is one which fixes 1867 as "the year in which the English race was to be finally expelled from Ireland." By a singular coincidence, it came about that, in the chapter of accidents, that very year witnessed the attempt at an insurrection, commonly known as the "Fenian Rising." The outbreak of five years ago is fresh in the recollection of all; and yet, so rapidly do events crowd upon one another in these days, that it seems already to have glided into the region of history. Fenianism no longer affords material for panic