Page:The probable course of legislation on popular education, and the position of the church in regard to it.djvu/11

 like beavers build their houses, piece-meal as the wind blows; yet the pattern of the construction is pretty surely indicated as it advances. First we close with Crime and Vagrancy before Ignorance, taking that first which presses us most sorely; but having, after some fashion and to some extent, grappled with these through Reformatories and Industrial Schools, legislation has already passed into the region of popular Education, and closing therein, too, first with a scandal, has shaped probably a wider measure by its modes of treatment.

The Hours of Labour Regulation, or Workshops' Act, which came into operation on the 1st of January, 1868, contains provisions which, however defective as yet, are sure to be very influential. It applies to all employments which can be called handicraft, whether in the open air or under cover, whether under masters or parents. Its Educational provisions are as follows:—

Whilst no child is to be employed under eight years of age, every child employed between eight and thirteen, is to attend school for at least ten hours in every week during the whole of which he is employed. Such child is not to attend school for more than three hours at one time, or five hours in one day, Sunday-school attendance not to be counted. This rule is not to be enforced during ordinary school holidays, nor if there is no school within a mile of the workshop or residence of the child. Certificates of school attendance to be obtained from the teacher by the employer, under a penalty not exceeding 3l..; and the parent of any child so employed to see that the necessary school attendance is fulfilled, under a penalty not exceeding 1l. On the application of the^school teacher, the employer is bound to pay any agreed sum, not exceeding 2c?. weekly, provided such sum is not more than one-twelfth the child's wage.

If Inspectors of factories find teachers either immoral, incompetent, or irregular in carrying out these provisions, such teachers are to be disqualified from granting certificates. However crude these provisions may be, and they are palpably so on some points—the particulars are very important, and are sure to characterize any more comprehensive measure.

If a hint of Household Suffrage, almost casually dropped by the Attorney-General in 1866, became the index of the franchise in 1867, much more will these educational conditions thus, however hastily, legislatively enforced, be found in kind in any larger measure. In fact, they only require to be extended to all children of the community, employed or unemployed, with such adaptations as those differing conditions of life would involve, and the thing is done. Without looking for extreme logical precision, or the adoption of any course, simply because it would seem a reasonable consequence from what had preceded, it is hard to conceive that restriction can thus be put upon labour, without compulsion being put upon neglect or indifference. Indeed, to force industry to be educated, whilst idleness might continue in ignorance, were too palpably absurd even