| THE STORY OF ENGLISH EDUCATION. II. |
By J. E. G. DE MONTMORENCY, B.A., LL.B. (Cantab.),
BARRISTER-AT-LAW.
IT is not possible in the space allotted to such an article as this to deal in any detail with the mass of facts that fill the seventy years that have passed since this first government grant in aid of education. It is possible, however, to indicate the course of events. Previous to 1870, apart from unsatisfactory and more or less ineffective factory acts, and apart from revenue statutes providing yearly grants, there was no legislation. Educational work was undertaken for the most part by the education committee of the Privy Council, formed in 1839, and the great school societies. From 1833 to 1839 the annual grant of £30,000 was administered by the treasury through these societies. In 1839 Queen Victoria, on the occasion of the creation of the committee of council on education, expressed through Lord John Russell the wish 'that the youth of this kingdom should be religiously brought up, and that the rights of conscience should be respected.' Some statistics of a comparative character may here be noted with advantage. The population of England and Wales in 1833 was almost 14,000,000, and the number of day scholars of all classes nearly 1,300,000, a number that was about nine per cent, of the population. If one in every eleven of the population was at school, it did not prove that the working classes were in so favorable a case. In fact we may take it that under one million scholars belonged to the working class; in other words that not one in fourteen of the laboring population was at school, when in fact, one in six ought to have been at school. Thus a great many more than half of the children had no education at all. By the year 1851 matters had somewhat improved. The population was then about 18,000,000, and of this population some 1,600,000 of the children of the laboring poor were at school. In other words, about one in ten instead of one in six of the poorer part of the population were at school in 1851. At this date almost exactly half the children had no education at all. By the year 1870 the population had reached 22,000,000, of whom 19,000,000 constituted the manual-work class. About 1,700,000 children belonging to this class were at school, or say, one in eleven of the population. This looks like a decline on the position in 1851. This is, however, extremely improbable, and it is more likely that the available figures for 1851 are in error. The improvement between 1851 and 1870 was most marked in the methods of education employed and in the books used. The school-teaching was practically valueless in 1833, it was not of great value in 1851, and
