TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 191 



taining, then the amounts of Division 1 required for each dockyard, as A, Deptford; 

 B,Sheemess; C, Portsmouth; D,Devonport; E, Pembroke; F, Chatham, and so on : 

 Di^dsion 2, Victualling the Navy ; then follow the amounts for each Victualling- 

 vard : Division 3, Medical ; and so on, till the whole amount of the estimates was 

 incorporated in these and other divisions. The appropriation accounts (series 2) 

 would give the same divisions, and would show the money expended, so called, as 

 distinguished from the money voted, so that the appropriation accounts would be 

 the debtor side to the final expense accounts of — 1, the cost of building, repairing, 

 and maintaining the fleet ; 2, the cost of victualling, and so on, so that all these ac- 

 counts would be parts of one gi'eat whole system. A similar retabulation was ad- 

 vocated for other departments, where practicable, so that we might have one 

 great account. The author also maintained that the nation ought to know the 

 whole value of the Governmental property of every description, land, buildings, 

 machinery, stock of every description, and that the increase or decrease should 

 be shown by each department at the end of the year. The author recognized the 

 labours of Sir John Bowring, Sir H. Parnell, Mr. Childers, and Mr. Stansfeld in 

 improving om- accounts, and urged that it was of national importance that a 

 thoroughly good scheme should be introduced to give the House a greater check 

 on expenditm-e. 



On the Maintenance of ScJiooIs in Rural Districts. 

 By the Rev. Canon GiaDLESTOifE. 

 The writer alluded to a general expectation that next session some measure 

 of direct or indirect compulsion, as regards the education of the children of agri- 

 cultural labourers, would be proposed, and meet with general approval. Out 

 of 14,877 parishes in England and Wales the Committee of Council report that 

 there are only 740G which have aided schools ; that of the remainder 2779 have 

 schools built with State aid, but not fulfilling the conditions of annual State aid, 

 and described, after inspection, as generally more or less ineflicient ; while, with 

 regard to 4G92 parishes, nothing whatever is officially known, though there is 

 reason for supposing that in some of them there are good schools, in many more 

 schools of various degrees of inelficiency, and, in not a few, no schools at all. Canon 

 Girdlestone proceeded to explain the cause of this deficiency of good schools. Most 

 men agreed that the difliculty consists, not in the one great but isolated effort in- 

 volved in the first building of a school, but in the continuous eftbrt involved in the 

 annual maintenance of it. Canon Girdlestone stated that there can never be any 

 guarantee for there being an efficient school within easy access of every labourer 

 until the land is made to do its duty. He recommended that the children should 

 continue to pay a penny a week, as now, thus avoiding the risk and evil of educa- 

 tion becoming a pauperizing dole ; that the State grant should be distributed as 

 now ; that in every parish or district in which there are not at the present time 

 existing school-buildings in all respects satisfying the requirements of the State, 

 such buildings should be immediately erected with money borrowed wholly on 

 the parochial rates, and to be repaid, like loans from Queen Anne's Bounty for 

 parsonages, by equal instalments in thirty years, or partly in this way and partly 

 by a tax on the land. That Denison's Act should be made compulsoiy, and so 

 throw upon occupiers of land the charge of educating in the parochial school the 

 children of all receiving outdoor relief— a process which would at one and the 

 same time bring himdreds of idle children under education and increase the 

 funds of the school. And, lastly, that all that portion of school expenses which 

 is now defrayed by voluntary contributions should be satisfied by a tax or rate 

 upon the land. As regarded Devonshire, Canon Girdlestone said that there are 

 aided schools in little more than one-third of the parishes in that county, and 

 there was much reason to fear that in many of the remaining two-thirds the 

 schools were chiefly inefficient, and that in some there were none at all — a state of 

 things which contrasted unfavorably with the condition of the country at large, 

 bad even as that was. 



On the. Decline of ShiphuilcUng on the Thames. By John Glotee. 



