164 REPORT—1868. 
impossible to summarize it. But the total number of boys professing to belong 
to these 820 schools is 9279 warders and 27,595 day scholars, a number wholly 
inadequate when the capacity of the school-rooms and the resources of the trustees 
are considered; and of this number very few are receiving the classical education 
contemplated by the founders, while the general instruction in other subjects is, 
as a rule, of very inferior quality. Indeed the very existence of the statutes pre- 
scribing the ancient learning often serves as an excuse for withholding any modern 
‘addition to it. It had been his own duty as Assistant Commissioner to visit 
about 120 schools, and to report thereon to the Commission. Of these there were 
perhaps twenty which deserved the name of good schools, including five or six 
which stood in the foremost rank for efficiency ; but of the rest scarcely any would 
pass muster as respectable National Schools, while the large majority were, in 
material equipment, in method, in the quality of the instruction, and in the 
brightness and mental activity of the scholars, very much below even that hum- 
ble standard. Similar evidence abounded in the reports of the Assistant Commis- 
sioners, particularly in those of Mr. Fearon and of Mr. Bryce. The paper proceeded 
to discuss the constitution of bodies of trustees, the freehold tenure-of the master- 
ships, and other hindrances to the proper development of the schools, At present 
three authorities exist for rectifying abuses and creating new schemes—Parliament, 
the Court of Chancery, and the Charity Commission ; but no one of them ever 
initiates proceedings, or deals with a school or group of schools on any general 
plan. They provide no security for the continued efficiency of the schools, or for 
their development according to the future needs of the people. Above all, Par- 
liamentary and Chancery schemes for single institutions are all alike hampered by an 
attempt to keep as close as possible to the intentions of the founders—an attempt 
which often perpetuates capricious and mischievous regulations, and puts a bar to 
future improvement. The statesmanship of the future would probably reverse the 
whole law of inheritance, and ask boldly by what right the pious founders of these 
institutions were to go on for generations legislating on a sued on which private, 
irresponsible, and local regulations were likely to be especially mischievous, and 
on which the supreme intelligence of the nation, as represented in Parliamert, 
ought first to be heard. By the law of France, no man is permitted to bequeath 
money for any public purpose to a private corparation of trustees nominated by 
himself; every such bequest, if made at all, must be confided to the administra- 
tion of a personne civile, or some Corporation, municipal or otherwise, known to 
the law, and responsible to the civil authority. Instances were given showing the 
need of some energetic restraint in this country on the power a testator now pos- 
sesses of enacting laws with a view rather to gratify his own vanity or selfishness, 
or to promote some false theory of education, than to promote the public interest. 
Meanwhile the Royal Commissioners had not recommended any change in the 
law of inheritance ; but they had put forth a plan for organizing and utilizing the 
existing endowment, which deserved the earnest attention of the public. They 
proposed to establish in each of the eight divisions of the Registrar-General a 
local Board of Commissioners, with power to fix the grade of each endowed 
school, to convert useless or effete endowments into exhibitions, to rearrange, 
where necessary, the local distribution of the schools, to institute periodical in- 
spection, and to report publicly on each of them. These local Boards are to work 
in harmony with a central authority, to be formed by enlarging and strengthening 
the present Charity Commission, and by giving to it a more distinctly educational 
character. Another of the Commissioners’ recommendations was, that there 
should be a Council composed of representatives of the Universities, which should 
be empowered to examine and to certify teachers of all grades, and to give unity 
and system to other general examinations, whether obligatory on the endowed 
schools, or voluntary in relation to private schools. By this and other means, which ~ 
were described in detail, it would be possible to introduce order and organization into 
the chaos of our secondary instruction, and possibly at some future time to absorb the 
present machinery of the Privy Council Office, and thus to give unity to the educa- 
tion of the whole country. Measures like this would, when the time came for dis- 
cussing them in Parliament, encounter much opposition, partly from self-interest, and 
partly from a traditional tenderness towards the wishes of testators, which had — 
