346 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



managers for such admission. Admitted schools were to be inspected. 

 Expenditure under the act was to be met out of the borough fund to 

 the extent of sixpence on the pound. The bill was coldly received and 

 withdrawn. About the same time were introduced education bills 

 emanating from Manchester school societies. One advocated free 

 secular rate-paid education; the other the assistance out of the rates 

 of denominational schools. These two bills were referred to a select 

 committee of the House of Commons on February 17, 1853. The 

 bills were eventually dropped. In 1855 the denominational bill with 

 a provision for the foundation of new schools was re-introduced by Sir 

 John Pakington. In the same session Lord John Russell introduced 

 another borough bill, with a full conscience clause; while the free 

 schools bill again represented the views of the Manchester secular 

 party. The three bills were all abandoned. Bills were once more, with- 

 out effect, introduced by Lord John Russell in 1856 and Sir John 

 Pakington in 1857. These were followed by the comparative unsuccess 

 of Mr. Robert Lowe's revised code. In 1867 came the beginning of 

 the end, or rather of the beginning. What was practically the Man- 

 chester denominational schools bill was introduced by Mr. Bruce, 

 Mr. W. E. Forster and Mr. Algernon Egerton. It was a carefully 

 prepared scheme, but unfortunately it was not compulsory in form. 

 Each locality could adopt or refuse it.^ In the then state of education 

 the worst districts would have refused to adopt the act. The bill was 

 withdrawn, and in 1868 the Duke of Marlborough introduced into the 

 House of Lords a bill that purported to solve the problem without the 

 aid of rates. The bill merely proposed to put a modification of Mr. 

 Lowe's administrative code into an act of Parliament. Such a bill 

 could but fail. In the same year the bill of 1867 was again introduced, 

 and on this occasion it offered the compulsory system. The feeling that 

 this bill would involve compulsory rate-aid for denominational schools 

 under private management, and the fact that it gave the proposed 

 board of education power to enforce the act in any district exhibiting 

 educational destitution, contrary to the will of the district, weighed 

 against the bill and it was withdrawn on June 24, 1868. The final 

 step came when the bill of 1870 was introduced on February 17. It 

 received the Royal consent on August 9, 1870. 



The education act of 1870 divided England into school districts 

 for the purposes of elementary education, and enacted that in 

 every district a sufficient amount of accommodation must be pro- 

 vided in public elementary schools for all children resident in the 

 district, for whose elementary education sufficient and suitable 

 provision was not otherwise made. The meaning of 'elementary 

 education' was not defined by the act, but in the famous Cockerton 

 case, decided in 1901, it was settled that the phrase was an elastic 

 term 'which may shift with the growth of general instruction and 



