managers for such admission. Admitted schools were to be inspected. Expenditure under the act was to be met out of the borough fund to the extent of sixpence on the pound. The bill was coldly received and withdrawn. About the same time were introduced education bills emanating from Manchester school societies. One advocated free secular rate-paid education; the other the assistance out of the rates of denominational schools. These two bills were referred to a select committee of the House of Commons on February 17, 1853. The bills were eventually dropped. In 1855 the denominational bill with a provision for the foundation of new schools was re-introduced by Sir John Pakington. In the same session Lord John Russell introduced another borough bill, with a full conscience clause; while the free schools bill again represented the views of the Manchester secular party. The three bills were all abandoned. Bills were once more, without effect, introduced by Lord John Russell in 1856 and Sir John Pakington in 1857. These were followed by the comparative unsuccess of Mr. Robert Lowe's revised code. In 1867 came the beginning of the end, or rather of the beginning. What was practically the Manchester denominational schools bill was introduced by Mr. Bruce, Mr. W. E. Forster and Mr. Algernon Egerton. It was a carefully prepared scheme, but unfortunately it was not compulsory in form. Each locality could adopt or refuse it. In the then state of education the worst districts would have refused to adopt the act. The bill was withdrawn, and in 1868 the Duke of Marlborough introduced into the House of Lords a bill that purported to solve the problem without the aid of rates. The bill merely proposed to put a modification of Mr. Lowe's administrative code into an act of Parliament. Such a bill could but fail. In the same year the bill of 1867 was again introduced, and on this occasion it offered the compulsory system. The feeling that this bill would involve compulsory rate-aid for denominational schools under private management, and the fact that it gave the proposed board of education power to enforce the act in any district exhibiting educational destitution, contrary to the will of the district, weighed against the bill and it was withdrawn on June 24, 1868. The final step came when the bill of 1870 was introduced on February 17. It received the Royal consent on August 9, 1870.
The education act of 1870 divided England into school districts for the purposes of elementary education, and enacted that in every district a sufficient amount of accommodation must be provided in public elementary schools for all children resident in the district, for whose elementary education sufficient and suitable provision was not otherwise made. The meaning of 'elementary education' was not defined by the act, but in the famous Cockerton case, decided in 1901, it was settled that the phrase was an elastic term 'which may shift with the growth of general instruction and
