the Tariff Reformer, in his parochial infatuation, would strike a blow and so bring the whole structure to the ground. He met the argument that Free Trade was discredited, because it was an antiquated doctrine, by retorting that the Union between England and Ireland was double the age of Free Trade. Was he on that account to become a Home Ruler? At a meeting of the Notts Liberal Unionist Association, held on January 7, there was adopted, by a very large majority, a resolution in favour of alliance with the new Liberal Unionist Council, which had strongly committed itself (ANNUAL REGISTER for 1904, p. 165) to the cause of fiscal reform. Thereupon Lord Belper resigned the post of president and Sir Charles Seely that of vice-president of the association, and Mr. C. H. Seely, Member of Parliament for Lincoln, intimated that he should sever his connection with it.

And, while the dividing force of the great issue brought forward by Mr. Chamberlain in 1903 thus continued to be manifested among the Ministerialists, special interests were evidently undergoing at least partial disappointment and possible alienation, through the inevitable failure of the Government to meet their wishes at the expense of the Treasury. A Departmental Committee, presided over by Sir Edward Bradford, had recommended a considerable increase in the scale of wages paid. to various classes of Post-Office employés, and on January 12 a deputation from several associations of those employés waited on the Postmaster-General, Lord Stanley, to urge that the hopes thus raised should be realised. He felt obliged to decline to be guided by the report, the Bradford committee having failed to institute the comparison which they had been instructed to institute between wages in the Post Office and in other more or less similar occupations. At the same time he intimated that on a careful consideration of the evidence on which the committee based their report the Government had seen their way to some substantial augmentations of pay. Thus in the largest provincial towns there would be an increase in the minimum wage, affecting some 6,000 men; there would be a further increase when a man reached the marriageable age (twentyfive), affecting 8,700 men in London and 12,500 in the provinces; and over 3,700 women clerks would receive an augmented wage. These concessions were on the face of them appreciable, but the spokesman of the deputation, who thanked the PostmasterGeneral for receiving them, stated that he did not pretend that they were satisfied and that they would be heard of again.

Another dissatisfied interest was that of the sugar-using trades, such as confectioners and mineral water manufacturers, who approached the Chancellor of the Exchequer through a deputation, on January 13, to urge the remission of the sugar duty as being a very injurious tax on the raw material of their trades, and to complain also of the effects of the Brussels Sugar Convention in raising the price of sugar. Mr. Austen Chamber

lain, in reply, expressed a certain amount of sympathy with the trades represented before him in the difficulties of which they complained, and pointed out that the Government had announced their intention of making a change in fiscal policy an issue at the next general election, but were pledged not to anticipate the country's decision by introducing any fundamental changes during the present Parliament. The abnormal rise in price of sugar from which they at present suffered was not, in his opinion, caused by the tax, but by the great shortage during the past year in the supply of European beet sugar. The exceptional cheapness of sugar which had been enjoyed under the bounty system was artificial, and the sugar-using trades would not be in a sound condition if they depended for their prosperity on obtaining sugar, as they had done in certain recent periods, actually below cost price. After citing facts and figures to show that the present condition of those trades could hardly be as gloomy as had been represented, Mr. A. Chamberlain pointed out that time must be given for the abolition of bounties to achieve its full effect in stimulating the production of cane sugar. In conclusion, he made it perfectly clear that "in the present circumstances, and with the resources at present open to the Exchequer for revenue purposes," no prospect existed of the sacrifice of the sugar duty, which brought in some 6,000,0001. a year to the Exchequer.

An interest which, if there were anything in the allegations of Opposition speakers at elections, ought to be regarded as having been attached to the Government at the expense of justice to local minorities in many parts of the country, was that of the Church educationists. Yet in the early weeks and months of 1905 a section of them were, as they had been during the previous autumn, loud in the expression of their dissatisfaction with the manner in which the Act of 1902 was being worked by the Board of Education. Their complaints had special reference to the policy of the Board as declared in what became known as Circular 512, issued in July, 1904, in respect of the attendance at church on Saints' Days of the scholars at Church schools. This practice had widely prevailed under the Act of 1870, and school time-tables had frequently been approved by the Board of Education making provision for taking children to church during school hours for religious observances or instruction. In Circular 512, however, the Board held that timetables making such provision could only receive their approval if they had the sanction of the local educational authority which, under the Act of 1902, had become responsible for the maintenance and efficiency of the school as a place of secular instruction; and the Board instructed His Majesty's Inspectors to govern their action accordingly. In taking this line the Board held that they were making no new departure, inasmuch as under the Act of 1870 the school attendance authority had the power, though it might rarely, if ever, have exercised it, to object to provisions

for children's attendance at church within school hours; and the local educational authorities had succeeded to the powers of the old school attendance authorities, besides being endowed with other large powers and responsibilities. In several places, however, the action of the Board in thus placing the practice of Church schools, in relation to days appointed by the Church to be observed, at the mercy of the local education authority, which was not always sympathetic, was regarded as an unwarrantable and gratuitous innovation. The matter had, of course, been brought under the notice of the National Society (the chief central organisation for the maintenance of Church schools), and the Standing Committee of that body, at a special meeting over which the Archbishop of Canterbury presided, in November, 1904, had unanimously passed a resolution urging that Church school managers, while retaining, as far as possible, any existing opportunities in the matter of the attendance of children at church should make every effort" so to arrange such attendance "as not to clash with the bye-laws of the local education authorities."

66

In giving this advice the Standing Committee of the National Society, as they made plain in an accompanying memorandum, had been actuated both by a belief that the action of the Board of Education could not be successfully resisted on legal grounds, or with any large amount of public sympathy, and by a desire to promote the smooth working of the Education Act. In that connection they were also influenced by the hope that, if friction were avoided, there might be a general adoption by local education authorities of a model bye-law issued by the Board of Education in 1904, which provided that in the case of children withdrawn by their parents from the religious instruction in a school the obligation to attend school should be restricted to the time during which the school was open for secular instruction. Wherever any such bye-law was in force, they pointed out, it would be "possible not only to arrange for the children attending Church schools to be present at services in church if their parents are willing for them to attend, but also to organise definite religious instruction for the very large numbers of Church children attending Council schools."

The policy here indicated on the part of many of the most influential leaders of Church opinion was not wanting in width of view. But to the minds of not a few of those who in various parts of the country were engaged in the work of religious education, the National Society's recommendations savoured of surrender. In the autumn of 1904 these eager spirits had formed a "Church Schools Emergency League," for the purpose of fighting the question, and securing if possible the withdrawal of Circular 512. Originating in Lancashire and Yorkshire, this body, on January 16, held a conference at Cambridge, which was attended by several academic dignitaries, and considered a resolution, on the motion of Sir J. Gorst, declaring it to

be "inexpedient for the Board of Education to interfere with the independence hitherto allowed to managers in Voluntary schools with regard to the conduct and control of religious instruction." Sir R. Jebb, who had been asked to second this resolution, explained why he felt unable to do so in a speech in which he strenuously urged the importance in the interests of religious education of seeking to maintain, as far as possible, "a spirit of goodwill and cordial co-operation for the public good" between the managers of Church schools and the local education authorities. Canon Cleworth, however, the secretary of the Emergency League, who was described as its life and soul, stigmatised the policy of Sir R. Jebb and the National Society as "weak and abject," and the meeting took his view and adopted Sir J. Gorst's resolution.

In Wales, meanwhile, the administration of the Act was being blocked in the case of the Voluntary Schools by the Radical and Nonconformist majority on County Councils, so far as could be done without forcing the Board of Education to put the Defaulting Authorities Act of 1904 into operation. There were not wanting weighty voices of protest on the Liberal side against this policy, but there seemed little, if any, prospect even of any modus vivendi being arrived at, such as had been discussed, pending the issue of the next general election. Yet in not a few parts of England the Act was working in the main smoothly and efficiently. It was doing so, notably, in Kent, where the Primate at Sevenoaks (Jan. 16) moved a resolution at a meeting of the Canterbury Diocesan Education Society, expressing satisfaction at the manner in which the educational authorities of the county had applied themselves to their difficult work, and urging Churchmen to contribute liberally for the purpose of meeting the "inevitable requirements" of the authorities in regard to the improvement of Church school buildings. Churchmen, the Archbishop said, would have to show their interest in education by continuing to contribute really substantially towards making their school buildings fit in every respect. Looking back upon the passing of the Education Act, now that they were able to regard it more calmly, he would say that neither of the two parties to the controversy had obtained all that they desired. But both parties, in Kent at all events, had found that the thing worked perfectly well.

Nor was there any reason to suppose that in this respect Kent stood alone. On the contrary, it could not be doubted that in many, if not in most, counties the benefits of the Act in its simplifying and unifying of educational administration, and in the facilities it afforded to local authorities to deal with such problems as the provision of an "educational ladder" for promising scholars and of better and more liberal training for teachers, greatly outweighed any disadvantages caused by any temporary and sporadic exacerbation of the religious difficulty. Yet it was true that there was such exacerbation in various

places. Sir Edward Grey, addressing a meeting of the St. Andrew's University Liberal Association (Jan. 16), spoke of the Education Act as having produced "a rankling sense of injustice," and as requiring therefore to be amended; and at a conference of Free Churchmen held in London somewhat later (Feb. 2) speakers from various parts of the country alleged cases of clerical intolerance and of the unfair administration of the Act of 1902 in the interest of sectarian schools. At this conference a letter was read from Dr. Fairbairn, Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford, stating that with great regret, but without hesitation, he should advocate the complete exclusion of sacred teaching from the schools if the only alternative were the continued domination of the clergy.

In the speech just mentioned, Sir E. Grey indicated with a considerable approach to accuracy the relations of the Government and their supporters on the fiscal question. They were, he said, upon that question like men in a fog. They could hear them calling to each other and asking the way, and the commonest question that came from the fog in which they were wandering was, "Where is Mr. Balfour?" Every now and then two Conservatives groping in search of the right direction ran into each other when going opposite ways, and each of them told the other that he was following Mr. Balfour.

The justice of this estimate of the situation was illustrated by the appearance on consecutive days (Jan. 19 and 20) of a speech in which the Postmaster-General, Lord Stanley, declared himself a Free Trader, "not even a tariff reformer," although a supporter of Mr. Balfour's "policy of retaliation," and a letter from Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Deeley, a possible tariff reform candidate for the Ealing Division, in which the writer declared that he did not recognise "any difference of principle" between Mr. Balfour and himself, that if they differed at all it was "only on a question of method and tactics," and that Mr. Balfour had "advocated the great objects" which he (Mr. Chamberlain) had in view" as strongly as any tariff reformer could desire." The confusion thus exemplified was in some places already becoming acute dissension. At Durham, as Mr. Arthur Elliot set forth in a letter to the Times (Jan. 25), he had spoken on one day at a meeting with an entirely Unionist platform, which carried resolutions condemning the Tariff Reform League policy and approving of his (Mr. Elliot's) continued representation of the city, and on the following day a meeting of tariff reformers had passed a resolution urging that he should be turned out because of his disagreement with Mr. Chamberlain's policy, a supporter of which was shortly after started as a candidate against him by a number of Tariff Reform Conservatives. Similarly, Mr. Hatch, the Unionist Member for the Gorton Division of Lancashire, complained in a speech at Manchester (Jan. 25) that having been elected as a Unionist when Free Trade was the policy of the Unionist party he now found himself accused of