L.—EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE 225 
I go that way no more, for now galvanised netting is high on either hand 
for a mile or so, and one arrives at the end in a state of exasperated longing 
for a pair of wire cutters. Some of you may know that walk and the 
educational institution which at vast expense has put such a slight on our 
common ability to behave ourselves. 
There are still stretches of the old statutory fencing in the Education 
Act, although nominally it was all taken down in 1918. ‘The Code of 
Regulations, however, is far less detailed than it used to be. The 130 
articles with sub-sections have shrunk to a reasonable 27. For this 
comparative freedom local authorities have to thank another predecessor 
of mine in this Chair, Lord Eustace Percy. Lord Eustace claimed that 
the Code, as revised in his time at the Board, gives the authorities a wider 
field for the exercise of their discretion, and the claim can be freely allowed. 
‘ The limit of useful State control is to be found at the point where it 
ceases to be an expanding and stimulating force and tends to fetter or 
sterilise.’ Those words are quoted from Sir Robert Morant, the archi- 
tect—if any one man can be so styled—of our present educational system. 
For fifty years from the time of Robert Lowe’s Code of 1862, elementary 
education moved in fetters, and the marks of that servitude are still upon 
it; only gradually is it recovering the vigour, the elasticity, and variety of 
which a too restrictive control deprived it. 
On the other hand, the local authority was given full power from the 
beginning to supply or aid the supply of higher education as it thought fit 
after considering the needs of its area and consulting the Board of Educa- 
tion. In theory, the central authority is here a friendly adviser, and can 
exercise no control so long as the local authority is prepared to finance its 
own schemes entirely. ‘The friendly adviser, however, in this case is 
usually ready to back the advice with offers of financial assistance, and 
although at first in a number of instances authorities were willing to pay 
_ the piper for a tune they preferred, there are not many higher institutions 
left—I do not myself know of any—under local authorities, which the Board 
does not aid. At the same time, this power the local authorities have of 
resuming their independence is very real and colours all their relations 
with the Board. I wish to avoid all suggestion of a reluctance on the part 
of the Board to give the local authorities their due, or of serious differences 
of opinion between them, for in fact consultation between the Board and 
the authorities is frequent and close, and the differences which do occur 
are in matters of detail rather than of principle. But the position is that 
of two parties in a negotiation which either of them can break off, one 
perhaps more easily than the other, and for which each of them desires a 
successful conclusion. 
The administration of the Exchequer grants under regulations framed 
by the Board is the greatest factor in the relations of the central with the 
local authorities. By most people these grants are regarded merely as 
subventions in aid of local expenditure. They are that, but they are also 
a powerful instrument for the furtherance of national policies and a precise 
technique has been worked out for so using them. ‘There is not time to 
develop this point, but an example will illustrate my meaning. I select 
one which at the present time is agitating the county authorities—an 
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