Page:The probable course of legislation on popular education, and the position of the church in regard to it.djvu/14

 main defect of the Bill of last Session, introduced by the Right Hon. H. A. Bruce. Where must is required, may does but invite opposition. Permissive legislation is but the expression of an infirm purpose.

Still this last offer of the sibyl will, in its main features, be the alternative to accept. This Bill recognized a rate locally administered as the source of supply. Perhaps that Bill, being only permissive, might be described merely as Voluntaryism, plus a particular machinery; which machinery, if it worked, would be found probably to carry more consequence than its inventors intended or hoped. I doubt whether any company could carry on both a voluntary and a rate-supported system, as co-elements of the same concern. Voluntaryism is for the maintenance of distinctive religious teaching—with a rate, this is scarcely possible. The rate-raised school might also be found incompatible with optional attendance and the children's weekly payments. The attendance might, that is, have to be compulsory and the teaching gratuitous. Still the idea involves the only possible solution of the difficulty. Where a school ought to be, yet is not now; there, failing any immediate erection of a school under existing regulations, the district should be required to raise a school by rate. It were almost easy now to spot the dark places on the map. Our army of inspectors, each in his locality, could supply much information on this head; and what was needed besides could readily be obtained. The whole process would, of course, apply with the greatest facility to towns. The country districts offer more difficulty through their scattered population, and the want of intelligence and earnestness which might characterize the local administration. The first point is a matter of strictly local detail; but to the difficulty a thin and scattered rural population may seem to offer to district schools, the old solution, solvitur ambulando, applies with a very literal force. Four miles is not an unknown distance for children to walk to school, though of course most undesirable; whilst it is certainly true, that children will attend often more punctually and regularly from some distance than if living close by. I have proved it by the same family under the different conditions. The latter point would have to be very strictly watched, and can, possibly, be only securely dealt with by the closest central supervision, under most stringent central conditions. This is supposing such districts had to be brought under rate-raised schools; but almost all such districts belong to some prevailing influence in property and opinion. As things now are, such might, if it liked, establish schools, and claim for them State aid on certain conditions. With the addition of one more condition, imperative and absolute whilst simple and considerate, these influences might still be recognized. That condition is a Conscience Clause. Under these conditions the Act should give opportunity for the ground to be occupied by the existing system, if it chooses to occupy it, within a certain prescribed time; if not, then a Board must be originated to raise by rate the required school under specified conditions. This