public and private life. But this is patronage; and patronage, it is said, is an evil, and must be abolished. Now, what is patronage; or rather, what ought it to be? For, like every other responsibility, it is liable to abuse, and has been abused; and the abuse of it, nowhere more conspicuous than in the arena of politics, has brought a violent recoil to the opposite extreme. The duties of patronage vary, in some degree, according to the circumstances under which it is to be exercised. It may be sufficient for a patron to appoint a thoroughly fit person-it may be incumbent on him to search out the very fittest. We dismiss so large a subject, with the attendant motives, nobler and baser, and confine our selves to the case of Trustees of a Charity. These may be as honest and scrupulous in assessing claims of poverty as examiners in assessing marks in competitive examinations. We grant the difficulty, but believe that it will disappear before a genuine endeavour to overcome it. We should be glad to see a portion of the Commissioners' energy devoted to the task of framing a scheme for the future regulation of patronage, one provision of which ought certainly to be that it is not to be exercised by individual members of a trust in rotation, but that each case should be considered on its merits by the body collectively. The Enquiry Commissioners (Report, i. 605) furnish also the proviso that governors of eleemosynary foundations "ought to be responsible to public control, and required to furnish to a central authority (not for publication) the names and claims of all candidates for admission, and their reason for preferring those whom they preferred." By all means let there be an end of indiscriminate gratuitous education, but let the system which is to replace it provide for a discriminating applica

tion of the portion of the destitute and friendless on their behalf. The governing bodies of many of the endowed schools have from various causes, sometimes from their composition, sometimes from excessive limitation of residence, sometimes from too great dispersion; failed to satisfy the purposes for which they were created. Even where this has not been the case, the Commissioners seem disposed to make considerable changes. "The governing bodies," they say, “at all events of the larger foundations, should be composed of various elements, combining as far as possible local knowledge and interests with freedom from local prejudices and influences, and stability, experience, and permanence with freshness of ideas, and sympathy with the feelings of the community among whom the foundation works." Hence the Commissioners wish, "wherever it can be done, to introduce and combine in one body official, representative, and co-optative members." We have here a model trust indeed; and it is with regret that we scent the Utopian aroma, and must own to a suspicion, that where the governor's function has hitherto been judiciously exercised, little or nothing is to be gained by the change. Practically, if insensibly, governing bodies for the most part move under the guidance of one or two of their most able and energetic members.

On looking back some forty or fifty years, to the time when exhibitions and scholarships, especially at Oxford, were to a great extent close or went by favour, it seems impossible to overrate our obligations to that fair and open competition which now prevails at the universities. And not only have those prizes, which enable men in their passage through life to win others of greater permanency, but

many of these latter themselves been thrown open gradually by the State to public competition. On the expiration of the East India Company's charter, the Government afforded to all natural-born subjects of her Majesty, within certain limits of age, the opportunity of competing for appointments in the Indian Civil Service. Each year since 1858 an examination has been held for this purpose; and by degrees a similar course has been pursued in bestowing many posts in the Home Civil Service, until at length it has come to be applied to offices of a higher and higher grade. This is certainly a very great indirect encouragement to education. The regulations for the Indian Civil Service Examinations are adopted also in those for the higher class of appointments in the Home Service.

It does not fall within our scope to discuss these at large, but it may just be remarked that the method pursued for discouraging superficial knowledge, though upheld by so high an authority as Dr Temple, is not quite fairto subjects which carry, in comparison with others, only a low maximum of marks; no limit being imposed on the number of the prescribed subjects which a candidate might take up. It was found that under the original regulations for the examination, which continued in force for some time, an accumulation of smatterings conferred success, to the discomfiture of more solid information in fewer subjects. Some remedial measure was called for. The one adopted was to deduct from the score of every candidate in every subject (except mathematics) not a percentage of the maximum marks, which would have been fair to all alike, but a given number. It is evident that we have no inclination to show favour to modern languages at the expense of the ancient classics; but we must

VOL. CX.-NO. DCLXIX,

say that in this arrangement the modern languages have met with scant justice, defended by very superficial argument. After a few years' experience, representations began to reach home from India that the open competitive system was introducing into the Civil Service there too large a sprinkling of men not very well fitted for it. The habits, feelings, and exterior of a gentleman on the one hand, and bodily vigour and energetic temperament on the other, were too often missed. The latter failing has lately been attributed we cannot say with what truth, but the feeling is certainly very prevalent to the severe strain of successive competitive examinations. The question raised is one of very great importance, and calls for an impartial inquiry.

Here then is the weak point of the competitive examination, as applied, pure and simple, to select for such appointments. It will naturally be asked, But is not this far superior to the old patronage? To a great extent, no doubt it is; but

we

are fully persuaded that the more prizes are awarded to competition, the more necessary will it be found to introduce into the award other elements besides answering questions out of subjects of instruc tion. The difficulty of effecting this, it must be confessed, is very great, but the necessity will at length make itself so keenly felt, that means will be devised for testing the moral and practical worth of the competitors. In order to regulate promotion by selection in the army, Mr Cardwell has lately announced (Pary. Report, 5th June) that the reports of the inspecting officers are to be so given and tabulated in the office of the Military Secretary, that the Commander-inChief may be acquainted with the professional character of every officer.

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Selection for the Civil Service may perhaps have to resort to a similar instrumentality, in a well-organised system of registry by certified schoolmasters; to which may be added some adequate opportunities for careful personal observation of the candidates by a board of inspectors specially appointed for that purpose.

But if there is ground to suspect that a career of competitive examination at a later period of life is not unfrequently followed by enfeebled bodily health and impaired energy of mind, how much more reason is there to fear this for the very young; not only too because they are young at the commencement of such a career, but because that career will probably be continued during a longer series of years. The Enquiry Commissioners propose and the proposal is excellent so far as the endowments can, consistently with founders' intentions, be claimed to further it that merit should have opportunity of gaining gratuitous education at a tender age, and should, by means of exhibitions, go on to win its way from grade to grade. Each step is through competitive examination. For boys under 13, we are glad to see that the Commissioners (Report, i. 594) express apprehension that "this might prove too severe a strain." "Whenever," they add, "it is advisable to give gratuitous schooling to children so young as this, it would seem best to select them from particular schools after a careful observation of their industry and progress for a year preceding." To bring boys so young into the arena of competition is like running two-year-olds. If it be objected that, in a well- conducted school, competition is going on every day and all day in every class, the answer is that this emulation-for so it might be more correctly called -operates very differently from the

process which we have been considering, and is not of the same exhausting character. It is not to be compared, in respect of its wear and tear upon the subjects of it, even with the periodical examinations for ordinary prizes and places within the school, still less with the competitive struggles between school and school open to all comers. The plunge which has been made into competitive examination, and the depth to which it is now proposed to carry it by bringing very young boys under its exciting and absorbing influences, is a subject deserving further inquiry and a patient watching of results.

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Perhaps no more admirable report has ever been laid before Parliament than that of the Schools Enquiry Commission, to which the Executive Commissioners are referred by the Endowed Schools Act as expressing the objects to be aimed at by themselves in matters on which the Act itself does not speak. The masterly precision with which the immense mass of evidence has been digested, concentrated, and applied to every topic of interest or difficulty, is not to be surpassed. It would have been both an easier and pleasanter task to dwell upon the many convictions which share with the Enquiry Commissioners, and on the conclusions to which we follow them; but the disposition shown by the Executive Commission to push to the very utmost, and beyond it, the few in which we cannot altogether agree, has imposed upon us the necessity of dwelling rather upon these. There is hardly any extreme measure for benefiting the education of the middle classes generally, at the expense of existing interests, which such a passage as the following might not be adduced to defend (Report, i. 578): "We are of opinion that to give the privileges of founda

tions by open competition, so far from thwarting the desire of the founders to benefit the poor, is now the only method of really fulfilling that desire. But no one can possibly doubt that it is the only method of furthering their other and more important purpose, the promotion of education." Notwithstanding this positive utterance by so high authority, we find it still very possible to doubt. After a careful consideration of all the arguments adduced in its support, we are inclined to think that education will gain more under a mixed system, which assigns part of the endowments for open competition, reserving part for the help of those who most need it, than by surrendering the whole to absolute competition. But be this as it may, better far to gain much while observing justice, than, ignoring it, to gain more. And simple folk will not be convinced that the only way of fulfilling the desire of founders to benefit the poor is to take what would otherwise go to help a poor boy, and make it over in all cases to a clever boy, who may or may not be poor. Beyond a doubt the plan of the Commissioners possesses in a high degree the advantages of simplicity, completeness, and more facile administration, and these seem to have proved an irresistible attraction. There is also, it must be admitted, a certain sense in which education would be more promoted by it than by any other. Its advocates may certainly point to a somewhat higher total of proficiency in the recipents of the founder's bounty at the close of the school career; but we doubt if the same amount of public benefit would be the result.

"Ridiculum acri fortius ac melius plerumque secat res ;" and the question, asked with a touch of sarcasm"What is to become of the fools?"

has its serious side. Those who bestow well-merited praise on the schoolmaster who attends the more sedulously to his dull boys, may well leave for those who are neither fortune's favourites, nor foremost in the intellectual race, some crumbs of the inheritance bequeathed to them by the tender-hearted and compassionate. Steadiness and industry in adversity ought not to be utterly cast out, though the wit may be small, or slow in developing.

It must also be remembered that the appropriation of large portions of the endowments to prizes will considerably add to the cost of education in endowed schools, and will, if the Commissioners' maxim be acted upon, of itself exclude some of the former clients of the founder, who will be unable to meet the increased charges. That the assistance for which we plead is by no means superfluous, but is one of the wants of the age, is shown in the recent establishment of schools like the Medical Benevolent College at Epsom, and the Clergy Orphan School near London. Should Parliament give its unqualified adhesion. to the recent proceedings of the Commissioners, there is too much reason to fear that the springs of bounty will be dried up. It has been said, indeed, that this tendency is already showing itself, and that Christ's Hospital, which receives every year £7000 from donations of new governors, has received this year only £1000. This merciless crusade against the helpless and friendless is no pleasant feature of our time. Let it, at least, be understood, that if there is to be an universal prevalence of the maxim that "there should be no gratuitous education except as the reward of merit," a first element in this merit shall henceforth be deserving need.

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IF we had not strong faith in Parliamentary Government, however misused from time to time, and constantly liable to abuse, we should be forced to conclude that in this country, at least, we had pretty nearly seen the last of it. Never in the memory of living man has there been such a session as that of which we are approaching the end. are we, in the month of July, within a few weeks of the time when Parliament is usually prorogued, and of the ordinary, and therefore urgent, business of the country scarcely any portion is.complete. As to the special bills introduced at the beginning by the Government, and laid upon the table of the House of Commons with great flourish of trumpets, positively not one has become law. There seems, indeed, at last, to be some prospect that two out of the whole lot may pass; but one of these has been mutilated in order to give a chance of its acceptance, and the other is a measure of which only a small section of the extreme Liberal supporters of the Government cordially approves. And yet the Minister who thus signally fails in legislating for the country, continues to command, whenever a question of confidence arises, an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons. How is all this to be accounted for, and where will it land us?

There are several obvious and cogent reasons to be assigned for the sort of dead-lock into which the business of the country has fallen. One of these is, that the House of Commons is by no means in accord, on questions of general policy, with the country; another, that the House, with all its apparent sub

serviency, distrusts the Minister whom it nevertheless retains in office; a third, that the Cabinet is, as will sooner or later be made manifest to all the world, at sixes and sevens with itself; a fourth, that Mr Gladstone has no faculty whatever for ruling men. Any one of these would, as it seems to us, account in a great degree for much of what offends our sense of right. The whole, in combination, must produce anarchy, and we have got it.

"The House of Commons," said the highest authority only the other day, and he spoke like a man oppressed with the weight of his own anticipations, "is quite demoralised. All respect for order, all deference to constitutional usage and authority, seems to have died out among its members. I never saw such a mob as the body which is supposed to represent the people of England has become. I despair of seeing any change in it for the better."

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There needs very little abstract reasoning to prove that the results which we are at this moment contemplating, were, so far as the present antagonism between the country and the House of Commons is concerned, exactly such as might have been anticipated from the beginning. Whenever, in a free State, the people are appealed to through their sions, it invariably follows that they answer the appeal in a state of frenzy. Bring prominently before them some great wrong, real or imaginary, done to themselves or others,speak to them about it in the language of enthusiasm, the wilder the better, and if there be the faintest shade of plausibility in your argument, you will carry them with you for the moment, as surely as the mag