MIDDLE-CLASS EDUCATION 311 



only continue to be enjoyed by the locality which the founder 

 intended to benefit, but might be greater than that at present 

 realised. 



" The whole might be confided to the joint management of 

 representatives of the subscribers and of the trustees of endow- 

 ments, and some ultimate control might form one of the many 

 useful functions to be conferred upon a county board in the 

 direction suggested in the report of the Schools Inquiry Com- 

 mission. 



" The regulation of examinations might properly be provided 

 by the Universities and certificated masters might be obtained 

 from the same source. 



" Your Committee, without expressing any final opinion upon 

 the suggestions or attempting at present to deal with points of 

 detail, would recommend them to the careful consideration of 

 the Council, and submit the desirability of circulating this pre- 

 liminary report through the Associated Chambers, with a view 

 of eliciting their opinions on the main principles contained in it." 



This was presented to the Council with the motion : 

 ' ; That the report be received and circulated," but no further 

 reference to it can be found in the records of the Council or 

 in the Minute Books of the Committee. 



In 1876 the Council unanimously resolved at its April 

 meeting that the Elementary Education Acts, 1870 and 1873, 

 ought to be so amended that the powers of School Boards 

 to enforce attendance of children at school and to pay the 

 fees in cases of poverty should be conferred on every sanitary 

 authority not in a School Board district. At the May meeting 

 the Council urged that where School Boards existed and any 

 part of their expenses weie defrayed out of rates, such rates 

 should be levied on the basis of special sanitary rates, and 

 should be equally divided between landlord and tenant. 

 They further thought it desirable that the inhabitants of 

 any parish in which a School Board did not exist should be 

 empowered in vestry assembled to levy a rate on the basis 

 of a special sanitary rate for the support of a public elementary 

 school for such parish. 



The Government's Elementary Education Bill, 1876, was 

 considered by the Council in June. The main principles of this 

 Bill were unanimously approved on two grounds, first, because 

 the making of education a condition of employment in the 

 case of young children is a sound and efficacious mode of 



