Page:The Conscience Clause in 1866.djvu/8

4 In proposing the Educational Grants for 1866 in the House of Commons, the Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education remarked that the sum of £18,880, then proposed for Building Grants was £9,400 less than the grant for 1865.

The retrospect may be profitably carried further. The Building Grants for Elementary and Normal Schools, actually paid by the Education Department for the last seven years have been as follows:—

Why (is the instinctive inquiry) Why this rapid and progressive decrease? Is it that the country is thoroughly supplied with schools, or that the country has become indifferent to the spread of education and that school promoters have ceased their efforts?

The Reports of the National Society for the Education of the Poor, may answer this inquiry, and show that, while the Church Educational organ increased the number of its grants 25 per cent., and the amount of its grants 100 per cent., the State Education Department decreased its grants 90 per cent.

The number and amount of school grants made by the National Society in the last seven years have been as follows:—

From a comparison of these tables, it is obvious that the decrease in the Building Grants of the Education Department is due, not to any relaxation in the voluntary efforts of school pro-