THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



tion in the workhouse which he (Mr. Trethewy) com- 

 plained of, as the fact that the children were kept so long 

 at school without receiving some useful training, 



Mr. Tatam said that by education he meant useful 

 training. 



Mr. Skelton (Sutton Bridge, Wisbech), said that, 

 belonging as he did to the same district as Mr. 

 Tatam— the Lincolnshire district — he could not help 

 saying that he thought at least nine-tenths of the 

 clergy there were not amenable to the charge of offering 

 obstructions to the education of the children of the 

 labourer. (Hear, hear). For the most part, if not 

 universally, no religious difficulties were raised ; and in 

 his neighbourhood the difficulty was not to find schools, 

 but to get children to attend tliem — a difficulty which 

 must always exist where farmers could not withstand 

 the temptation to employ children early. (Hear, hear). 

 It was natural for parents to wish their children to be 

 earning something, but it became employers to endea- 

 vour to persuade those with whom they had influence to 

 keep tlieir children at school. He should not have risen 

 if he had not thought that Mr. Tatam had censured the 

 clergy too strongly in reference to the parochial school 

 system — a system, for the general management of which 

 the Government inspectors had reported in their favour. 

 (Hear, hear). 



Mr. Tatam said, Mr. Skelton having thought proper 

 to contradict him, he felt bound to mention a fact in 

 support of what he had said. In his own village there 

 had been, from the time of Charles I., an endowed 

 school with an income of ^"500 a-year ; and until two 

 years ago, when the Charity Commissioners interfered, 

 no child whose parents would not let it conform to the 

 religious views of the clergy of the Church of England 

 was allowed to receive education in it. In the adjoining 

 village, moreover, the school was entirely under the 

 control of a clergyman who took extreme views on 

 religious matters ; in fact, he was a rank Puseyite (cries 

 of " Order"), and no child could be educated without 

 conformity to the highest church principles. 



Mr. Cressixgham (of Carshalton) observed that in 

 the case of endowed schools, it was frequently one of 

 the conditions of the endowment that no child should be 

 eligible to the benefits of the school unless he were a 

 member of the Church of England (Hear, hear). 



Mr. B. Browne felt bound to observe, in support of 

 what had fallen from Mr. Tatam, that a similar state of 

 things to that which he bad described was to be found in 

 many parts of Gloucestershire. 



Mr. S. Sidney (of Peckham) could not concur in 

 Mr. Tatam's general censure of the clergy. On the 

 contrary, he thought that no man could have paid the 

 least attention to the history of rural education during 

 the last five-and-twenty years, without being convinced 

 that but for the exertions of the clergy there would have 

 been hardly any rural education at all (Hear, hear). 

 The truth was, that until recently farmers, as a body, 

 were opposed to education. Their views had since 

 changed, and he rejoiced that such was the case. La- 

 ,bour was for a long time a drug ; and as long as that was 

 the case, farmers felt scarcely any more interest in the 



condition of their labourers than in that of their four- 

 footed animals. It was hardly to be expected that they 

 should ; their concern for the welfare of those whom 

 they employed, like that of manufacturers, depended 

 in a great degree on their own interest. Emigration and 

 other causes had diminished the supply of labour ; and 

 at the same time there arose among agriculturists a de- 

 mand for skilled labour, in consequence of the introduc- 

 tion of machinery of various kinds on farms ; concur- 

 rently with this farmers became convinced of the ne- 

 cessity of improving the education and enlightening 

 the minds of agricultural labourers. In considering 

 this question he could not help recalling the fact that 

 there had been an hereditary difference between the 

 farmers and the clergy. Farmers were perhaps, the 

 most conservative body in this country ; but he could 

 recollect a period when they were living on the worst 

 possible terms with the clergy. Tithes had since 

 been commuted, but farmers had not yet outgrown 

 their former prejudices against the clergy. For a long 

 period there was a pecuniary war between them : the 

 remembrance of that was now happily dying away ; it 

 was in the highest degree desirable that they should en- 

 deavour to agree and act together cordially in the mat- 

 ter of education. How was this object to be secured ? 

 There could be no doubt that farmers knew better how 

 labourers' children should be educated than the clergy 

 (Hear, hear). From this observation he, of course, 

 excepted Mr. James, who was not less practically ac- 

 quainted with the habits and requirements of the labour- 

 ing population than the farmers themselves (cheers). 

 It was very desirable that a good understanding should 

 be established between the two, in order that the right 

 kind of education might be afi'orded. He could not forget 

 the advantage that the country had derived from having 

 at least one educated man in a parish — he meant the 

 clergyman — where, perhaps, nearly all the other inhabit- 

 ants were uneducated. He thought that the clergy 

 had, as a body, devoted more time and money to the 

 promotion of education than any other class of society. 

 The Chairman said he was sure that, after the very 

 able remarks from Mr. James, and the discussion which 

 had followed, they would expect very little from him. 

 He must beg to observe, however, that although educa- 

 tion was not making all the progress they could wish, it 

 did not follow that it was making no progress at all 

 (Hear, hear). In reading a very able speech delivered 

 by Lord Stanley the other day, at Sheffield, he found 

 the following allusion to some remarks of Prince Albert 

 at the Conference, with regard to the increased number 

 of schools. " Prince Albert stated, in bis speech, at the 

 London conference, that while in half a century popula- 

 tion has only doubled itself within these islands, the 

 number of schools has increased as 14 to 1 ; that in 

 1801 the number of schools in England and Wales was 

 between 3,000 and 4,000, while in 1851 it had risen to 

 46 000 ■ and that while the proportion of day scholars 

 to the entire population was in 1818 1 to 17, it was in 

 1833 1 to 11, and in 1851 1 to 8." This is certainly a 

 very rapid increase. He quite concurred in the observa- 

 tions which had been made with regard to the difficulty 



