THE CATHOLIC BISHOPS OF ENGLAND AND THE EDUCATION QUESTION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIV, Issue 38, 15 January 1897, Page 18

THE CATHOLIC BISHOPS OF ENGLAND AND THE EDUCATION QUESTION.

IMPORTANT APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE.

I. — PRINCIPLES GENERALLY ACCEPTED IN ENGLAND. Once more we plead before our fellow-countrymen for the establishment of a just National system of popular education. We desire by all means in our power to promote the welfare and prosperity of the nation. We recognise the importance of establishing a National system of education that shall meet the wants and wishes of the people, and shall be proportionate to the requirements of the day in which we live. We declare to make Catholic children patriotic and good citizenssomething more than secular instruction is needed. They must betrained and educated in the religious principles which command their entire assent and reverence as motives of life and conduct. Teach them to serve God according their conscience and they will become law-abiding and industrious citizens. The sense of the English people has accepted the general principles that underlie these statements. The country has made education universal and compulsory, and! has given to every working man a personal and legal right to secure for his child a sound education without charge. It desires to lift up the lowest stratum of the population by means of a system of good popular schools. It seeks to promote National prosperity by improving and elevating the lives that might otherwise lapse into the ranks of crime or become a menace to civil order. It also professes to respect the conscientious and religious convictions of parents and children, and to impose no law upon any class that would violate those convictions. These are great fundamental principles that guarantee popular education and religious liberty, and are worthy of an enlightened people. The question is : Are they in practice to be carried out honestly and fairly all round ? To this question there ought to be but one answer. H. — EQUAL TREATMENT FOR MAINTENANCE. Since the Board school system satisfies a largo group of the population, Catholics are willing to contribute to the rates for itsmaintenance and improvement, provided their own schools be not thereby impoverished and ruined. They are willing to lighten the public burdens still further, by defraying from their private resources the cost of the buildings and administration of their own public elementary schools. But these onerous charges can be borne on one condition only, viz. : That the fair market price for " maintenance " be paid from the public pur.se in Catholic public elementary schools as in Board schools. It i.s unjust to stint and starve the teachers and equipment and to pauperise one set of State schools, while the public money is poured out lavishly into Board schools.

It ought not to be necessary to point out that honesty forbids the adoption of two scales of payment for one and the same article, or that, to take advantage of a man's religious convictions, in order to make him pay for the education which he has a moral and legal right to have without cost, is an unjust violation of the principles of civil equality and of religious liberty which the nation professes to hold. It is the barest justice to demand that the entire cost of "maintenance" in voluntary schools be met by public money, wherever the national education therein given is equal to that supplied in Board schools. No national system of elementary education can flourish which is based on financial inequalities, or on penalties exacted and paid for conscience sake. We appeal, then, to those who have received their satisfaction in the establishment of Board schools not to fasten upon Catholic public elementary schools a burden of private contributions, when any attempt to fasten a similar burden upon the friends of Board schools would be indignantly rejected. III.— ELEEMOSYNARY MAINTENANCE IMPOSSIBLE. To the injustice of exacting private alma to pay for public education we must add the sheer impossibility of raising the necessary amount of eleemosynary contributions for maintenance in the majority of Catholic schools. The great mass of the Catholics of this country are poor and live in poor localities. All their available private resources are bespoken and exhausted by the cost of school buildings and the payment of interest on capital charges. We have before us a return of tili Catholic schools, from all parts of England, averaging 800 children in each school. The managers show that they cannot count with certainty upon more than an average of Is. per head from voluntary subscriptions applicable to maintenance, after other charges upon the school accounts have been met. Nor can we think it wise to establish a national system, wherein a large proportion of the self-respecting population is either to be made dependent upon alms for good schools or to be put off with an inferior education. The national results certain to follow the pauperising of education in voluntary schools are :—l,: — 1, The condemnation of the poor to an inferior education that will tell fatally in the future upon the common weal. 2. The condemnation of teachers to pecuniary hardships and embarrassment by obliging them to work for salaries below the market rate established by the School Board. 3. The creation of a widespread sense of cruel injustice, which cannot fail to produce chronic discontent. 4. Finally the decay of the denominational schools will eventually throw upon the nation an enormous and crushing expenditure. According to Sir John Gorst, the closing of the voluntary schools would cost the country £2.">,0<)0,000 to provide new schools, and an additional sum of over £2,280,000 per annum for their necessary maintenance, without any allowance for repairs and improvements. Iv . — DOES RATE-AID CARRY RATEPAYERS' MANAGEMENT ? It has been assumed as an axiom that rate-aid for '• maintenance " implies ratepayers' management ; and a hope has been expressed that private subscriptions equal to the rate-aid may buy off their interference. But is not this one of those maxims that pass current, like base coin, only until shown to be spurious / In respect to Board schools, the ratepayers are like the responsible partners in a factory. They erect the buildings and the plant, and advance all the money required tor carrying on the business of education in the hope that at the end of the year they may earn the highest Government }>rant. All losses arising from administration, from failure at Government examination, and other causes, fall upon the ratepayers, who, as the responsible partners, liable for all losses, have a right to the exclusive management of their school. In the case of voluntary schools the owners, or managers, are the responsible partners. They pay from their private resources for the buildings and plant, advance the money necessary for '• maintenance." taking upon themselves all risks and losses. If the Government examination at the end of the year be satisfactory, the Government pays, in course of time, the amount earned, and the managers are recouped to that extent for their expenditure on '• maintenance." If the examination turn out a failure, the loss falls, not upon the Government, but upon the managers as the responsible partners. Those who are liable tor all the losses, have a just claim to the management of the school. Were rate-aid to be added to the Government grant in payment for the education given, the ratepayers would rank with the Government as joint purchasers of the education provided. Unless they became responsible partners, liable for the buildings and plant, and for all losses and failure, they could not justly claim, any more than the Government claim to be the managers. But the ratepayers have a responsibility that involves expenditure and needs economy : the responsibility of providing efficient education has been laid by the State upon the ratepayers of each locality, in which there is a deficiency. Common sense at once points out that it is far more economical for such ratepayers to become purchasers of education at a small sum from voluntary schools, where such schools already exist, than to build new schools of their own, and to carry them on at a huge cost for administration in addition to their cost for " maintenance." And this common sense view of the case has long since prevailed in practice. As a matter of fact and of law, rates have been regularly paid to industrial, reformatory, and poor law denominational schools for 30 years and more, without the ratepayers demanding to undertake the office and risk of managers. And under the more recent " Technical Instruction Act," county councils and other local authorities regularly contribute ratepayers' money to schools and institutions on the following sufficient condition, laid down in the Act itself, viz : — 5. " Where the managers of a school or institution receive aid from the local authority in pursuance of this Act, they shall render to the local authority such accounts relating to the application of the money granted in aid, and those accounts shall be verified and audited in such manner as the local authority may

require, and the managers shall be personally liable to refund to the local authority any money granted under this Act and not shown to be properly applied for the purpose for which it waa granted." Why not allow these local authorities to spend a small rate, under the same conditions, in public elementary schools requiring assistance 1 We believe that the ratepayers are perfectly satisfied with the precautions taken, and have no desire to increase the rates by becoming the managers of the schools to which they may contribute grants in aid. Last year their administration, as managers of about 5000 Board schools, cost the country £430,000 ; it would, therefore, be the height of extravagance to hand over to management so expensive 14,000 voluntary schools which are now managed without any cost to the country. But though rate-aid does not carry ratepayers' management, we are ready to admit their representatives on a council of control, to which the school managers will be accountable. V. — THE PRACTICAL CONCLUSION. Whether the money for " maintenance " is to come from the Treasury or the rates, or from a combination of both, is a secondary question compared to the primary one of placing all public elementary schools upon a permanent basis of equality as to " maintenance." It is not for us to dictate the details of a measure which concerns many besides Catholics, and must necessarily be the result of a Cabinet agreement. But we may say, in general terms, that we approve the proposals to increase the grant, to limit rate-aid to School Board areas, to federate schools under councils of general control representing the managers and the County Council or other rating or educational authority, to leave the appointment of teachers to the school managers, to submit all accounts to public audit, to exempt school and premises from rating, to repeal the 17s 6d limit, and to grant the same power to open new voluntary schools with School Board areas as are enjoyed without those areas. The Catholics of England will be prepared to give the whole weight of their support and influence to such measures as shall, in our opinion, secure financial equality in " maintenance," and the right of parents to educate their children in their own religion, without on that account being penalised and pauperised in the matter of secular instruction, f Herbert Cardinal Vaughan, Archbishop of Westminster, j- William, Bishop of Plymouth. f John Cuthbert, Bishop of Newport, f Edward, Bishop of Nottingham, f Edward, Bishop of Birmingham, f Richard, Bishop of Middlesborough. f Arthur, Bishop of Northampton. t John, Bishop of Portsmouth, f John, Bishop of Southwark. f Thomas, Bishop of Hexam and Newcastle, f William, Bishop of Leeds, f John, Bishop of Salford. f John, Bishop of Shrewsbury, f William, Bishop of Clifton, f Thomas, Bishop of Liverpool, f Francis, Bishop of Ascalon, V.A. of Wales. November 10th, 18%. Archbishop's House. Westminster.