are inheriting the fate that befell poor scholars in and after the sixteenth century in England. The great public schools are becoming the exclusive training grounds of a class enriched by the war. They are being isolated-a fact which has alarmed the Headmasters' Conference, the parliament of public school masters, which recently set up a committee to examine these newer tendencies. What position, then, ought the public schools to occupy in a new and more equalitarian age? One may offer six suggestions:— (1) The restoration of the original local connection of these historic public schools. (2) Centralised control by the Board of Education of their endowments and administration, conjointly with local representation on the governing bodies of public schools. This would get rid of their dangerous isolation and establish a much-needed local contact, by no means given under the present system. The Public Schools Acts of 1868 may be amended so that the Board of Education may have power to make new and equalitarian schemes for the eight greater and the lesser public and grammar schools. (3) Reform or, even better, an intellectual revolution of the public school system of education which will tend to the betterment of the community through the avenue of a free and liberal education and culture unimpeded by reactionary, or theological bodies and individuals. (4) Creation of more scholarships pending the longoverdue establishment of free, secondary education in England; and its correlative-the setting up of a poverty test whereby candidates must prove that financial aid is a necessity for their education. (5) The realisation of a system roughly corresponding to the American whereby the son of a duke or a dustman shall be educated side by side in the public schools. (6) Something, also, will have to be done to reform and level up the curriculum of the local grammar and secondary schools throughout the country, so that the expensive preparatory school education which, to-day, bars the public schools against poor students will be rendered unnecessary. Moreover, the curriculum of these and the whole of the English secondary schools needs to be recast so that no boy or girl may as now leave them without some acquaintance with modern thought in the realm of sociology, history, biology and science itself. Better text-books are needed, and above all a truly liberal education which will release and educate the power of thought, and not utterly stifle it. A people which has no vision and no thought shall perish as surely as the civilisation and culture of old Rome and Byzantium ! The legal position of the public schools is a singular one for thought, to quote Lord Halsbury's Laws of England (1910), "a public school is nowhere defined in law," yet from the sixteenth century onwards, these schools have always been subject to special statutory treatment. With the exception of Eton and Winchester, they can deal with their land only under the control of the Board of Education, who are the successors of the defunct endowed schools branch of the Charity Commission. However, if these schools so desire, they may voluntarily for any particular purpose come under the provisions of the Charitable Trusts Act, 1855 (18 and 19 Vict. c. 124); that is to say, may apply to have extended to them a certain modified jurisdiction of the Charity Commissioners. Nevertheless, those schools to which the Public Schools Acts of 1868 apply are wholly exempt from the Endowed Schools Acts (1869 to 1889), which means that the Board of Education has no power to deal with the endowments, or to make new schemes in respect of the existing trusts of Eton, Winchester, Westminster, Charter-house, Harrow, Rugby and Shrewsbury Schools. APPENDIX CHARITY SCANDALS IN ENGLAND. It is probable that no country in the world has witnessed such maladministration and malversation of charitable trusts as England. The terrible records on this head contained in the many volumes of Brougham's Charity Commission Reports (1815-1839) preserved in the British Museum more than sustain this indictment. I may cite a report which appeared in the Daily News (London), on April 24th, 1913, recording the by no means unique experience of the rector of Esher (Surrey) Parish Church. "A LOST SCHOOL "The Mystery of an Endowment by Sir (?) Francis Drake.* "The mystery of a lost school, endowed in 1631 by Sir Francis Drake, is being investigated by the Rev. J. K. Floyer, rector of Esher (Surrey) Parish Church. 'There is a document referring to the fact that 'Francis Drake (son of Richard Drake, of Esher Place, Surbiton) in his will dated 1633-4,' left £10 a year to teach 18 poor 'schollers' of Walton and Esher. "The school was actually constituted, but what has become of it is a mystery. The vicar, the Charity Commissioners, and the Board of Education are alike ignorant of its fate. "The following is an extract from the Bishop's Register: 30 Dec., 1631.-Whereas I have at my own charge erected a new school house from the ground, and added 5 acres of land unto it within the parish of Walton-on-Thames, in the county of Surrey, and endowed it with x (10 pounds) per annum. All which is for the teaching and the instructing of twelve poor children until they shall be fit to be bound out apprentices. Know, all the world by these presents, that the same shall be converted to no other use, by the help of God, than is above said. In witness whereof I have set my hand. "'FRANCIS DRAKE.' "There is also a Bishop's licence to a schoolmaster, one *This is not, of course, the Elizabethan buccaneer. John Gaukroger, dated Jan. 9, 1631-2. The vicar will be glad of information." " The writer of this book has personal knowledge of a very recent, but subtler, and partial diversion of an old charitable educational trust in a West of England city, where a benevolent knight and Turkey merchant, Sir Thomas Rich, bequeathed to a municipality of Restoration times the very large sum, in that day, of £6,000. The trust was instituted for much the same purpose as that of Drake's (of Esher) referred to above, viz., a Hospital (his own residence formerly), for ever for the entertaining and harbouring of 20 poor boys and their maintenance with diet, lodging, washing, clothing, and other necessaries in blue coats and caps according to the laudable usage of Christ's Hospital in London." An" honest and able schoolmaster was to live in the house, 'to teach the said poor boys to write and read,' who were not to be under 10 years of age, nor to continue in the Hospital beyond 16, when 3 or 4 out of the 6 boys to be annually apprenticed were, by his desire to be bound to some honest handicraft-trades in London, and with honest masters not adhering in their opinions to the novelties of the times.' There were other provisions for freemen, and the deserving poor of the city, such as doles of money, dowries to young maidservants, a bequest for a dinner for the corporation, loans for impecunious young tradesmen, and the like. He directed that the money was to be invested in land so as to produce an income of £300 (probably at a modern computation equal to some £1,800), of which £270 yearly was to go for the Blue-coat School. Until 1905, or near that year, the governing body annually awarded a number of scholarships, under the foundation of Sir Thomas Rich, carrying education freed from payment of tutorial fees, but not books, and, when the beneficiary came of age a sum of £30, with accumulated interest, was presented to him. This latter, which may be regarded, in some sort, as a deferred maintenance grant has, since 1905, and under the ægis of the local municipal authority and the Board of Education, disappeared into the limbo of things forgotten. The local municipal corporation began a movement which in 1902 resulted in a new scheme under the Charitable Trusts Act (1853-1854), sealed by the Board of Education, on February 13th, 1906. By the terms of this scheme, the governing body may, if it thinks fit, award a yearly sum of not less than £5, nor more than £10 (in addition to gratuitous education, books, and optional allowance for travelling expenses), on the result of a competitive examination, to boys who are bona fide residents, or sons of freemen. After diligent enquiry, however, I cannot find that this permissive bursary allowance is, or since 1905, has ever been awarded either to the sons of bona fide local residents, i.e., boys from the elementary schools of the neighbourhood, or to the sons of freemen. And yet the need to-day is greater than before the war. More, out of a gross yearly income of £2,767 before the war, only ten scholarships at this particular school were annually awarded, whereas in the years 1882-1900 there were thirty. And when, in consequence of 103 boys and eighty-three girls (from the elementary school) competing for nineteen and sixteen free places respectively-evidence of the real local demand for secondary education-a councillor, himself one of the governing body, asked if a sub-committee could go into the matter of this paucity of scholarships, the Chairman said "he saw no reason for such a course of action," and there the matter remains. Strange as it may appear when we consider that we maintain an expensive permanent commission with very numerous provincial branches and legal advisers to look after such things, there are to-day, in England, many charities, educational and other, either misapplied or altogether unapplied to any purpose. I quote this time from The Times Parliamentary Report, dated September 10th, 1914 Charities Emergency Bill.-Mr. Herbert Samuel, in asking leave to introduce the Charities Emergency Bill, said that it was based on the recommendations of the Charity Commissioners with a view to dealing with certain charities at the present moment unapplied, or which, in the opinion of Commissioners could not be applied to the specific purposes. It was suggested that the Commissioners, with the consent of the trustees, should have power to devote the income of these charities temporarily to the Prince of Wales' fund. The Act would only apply for the period of the war. The Bill was introduced and read for the third time.” PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE WHITE FRIARS PRESS, LTD., |