Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/68

 60] ENGLISH HISTORY. [mabch

and that you are more likely to increase the disease than to stop it." Having expressed his agreement with the general opinion that the return relating to confessional boxes ought to be granted, Lord Salisbury ended with the declaration : "It is for them [i.e., the clergy] to teach their flocks — and they cannot do it too earnestly or too often — the evils which may attend habitual and systematic secret confession. But let us be careful lest we hinder their work and prevent them from doing that which it is their proper charge to carry out, by bringing in the arm of the flesh, which never yet beat down a religious error, and has often made the evil worse than before."

Shortly before the close of the preceding session, the Duke of Devonshire, as Lord President of the Privy Council, had brought in two bills, which expressed generally the views of the Government with reference to the reform of secondary education. It was intended that public opinion should express itself with regard to the views of the Government on the education question. He therefore proposed (March 14) to begin by intro- ducing a bill which would provide for the establishment of a Board of Education for England and Wales. Its object, he explained, was to constitute a board of the same character as the Board of Trade or the Board of Agriculture. Like the Board of Trade, and unlike the Board of Agriculture, the new department would have a parliamentary secretary as well as a president, but the office of vice-president would cease to exist, although the present vice-president would continue to be a member of the Tboard. The bill would give more elastic powers for the transfer of the educational functions of the Charity Commissioners to the new department. At first there would only be such an inspection and examination of local schools as .would bring the endowed, municipal, private and proprietary schools within their areas to some common local scheme. It was intended that the inspection should be optional, except in the case of schools which were being conducted under schemes framed by the Endowed Schools Commissioners. In the first instance, no attempt would be made to impose upon the schools anything like uniformity in their course of instruction, but the inspection would be made in accordance with the advice given by the consultative committee. Although the Government were unable to ask Parliament to vote funds for the inspection of schools which were mainly for the benefit of the upper or middle classes, they recognised that in the case of the poorer schools the cost of inspection might properly form a charge on the funds placed at the disposal of the counties for educational purposes. It was considered that the registers of teachers, both in elementary and secondary schools, might be most properly kept by the department itself, but it was provided that the regulations relating to the registers should be framed in accord- ance with the advice given by the consultative committee. The composition of that committee would not be stereotyped by the