within each, a multitude of smaller distinctions so as to adapt the teaching given to the varied demands of life and the varied abilities of the scholars; and it is because the artificial distinction into elementary and secondary hampers so greatly the adjustments of these smaller distinctions that it acts so injuriously.

How much we lose, and how greatly the progress of education is hindered by this present distinction, will perhaps be clearly seen if we allow ourselves to imagine what could be done if the distinction were done away with, and all public schools, all schools governed by the State, were administered under the same system. It would then be possible for a local authority, according to the demands and the opportunities of the area under its command, to establish schools of a greater or less number of different grades. In an area in which the demands and opportunities were great there might be several grades, distinguished from each other by the progressively advanced character of the teaching. In the lowest grade the teaching would be simple and elementary in the true sense of the term; in succeeding grades the teaching would become more varied and more advanced; and in the highest grade-in the case of some areas at least, if not in all-the teaching would be of such a kind that the scholar might pass from it to a university, the teaching in which was adequately catholic, and included so-called technical as well as humanistic and culture studies. All the grades being under one administration, many of the present difficulties attendant on the transference of a scholar from one grade to another would disappear; the main condition of transference would be, not so much the mere age, as the progress, ability, and promise of the scholar. The schools of all grades would be of a general character; but in some areas it might be found of advantage to make in this or that grade this or that kind of teaching more or less dominant; and again in some areas schools of a distinctly special character might be established. Indeed, not the least merit of such a system would be that it permitted, what is so difficult under the present arrangement, as much elasticity and variety of teaching in each area as the circumstances of the area demanded and allowed.

Such a system would bring us far nearer than can ever be possible under present arrangements to that ideal condition of things in which each scholar would be put within reach of the particular kind and amount of teaching suited to develop most fully his or her latent abilities. But the benefits to the teacher would be at least no less than those to the scholar. No one who ponders over the present condition of education can look without misgivings and forebodings on the position and prospects of what are now known as elementary teachers. The result of our educational legislation has been to create, under this term, a special caste of teachers, sharply isolated from all other teachers. Important as from every point of view their duties are, these have a very limited range and are so uniform in all

the schools, and so simple as to encourage, and indeed to render up to a certain extent successful, a rigid mechanical handling of them on the part both of the authorities and of the teachers themselves. Deeply as the individual teacher may feel the great responsibilities put upon him (and 'him' must be understood here to include her ') in laying the foundations of knowledge, ability, and character in the small section of the great industrial class entrusted to his care, and great as may be his aspirations to contribute to the nation's welfare by yearly leading a group of children on the way to become intelligent, alert, and wholesome citizens, he is conscious that he cannot always do what he thinks best, but must work within the narrow limits of the rules prescribed for him; and should he unhappily have no such feelings or aspirations, his teaching becomes of the worst mechanical kind; the weight of routine and monotonous uniformity presses heavily on every elementary teacher, good or bad. And the training which he has had to qualify him for the post is a training by itself, a training carried out in most cases apart from other teachers, a training narrowly directed to fit him for his particular duties only, and, like those duties, stamped with the stamp of mechanical uniformity. Both the duties and the training tend to make him a something different from all others engaged in the great work of teaching and to write on his forehead the signs of a special caste.

Moreover, the body which he has joined, the system of which he has become a part, is a closed system, within which there is little to excite his ambition; the most he can look for being a larger and a better school. Monotony and uniformity darken his whole career, as they do his training and his duties. The system itself leads to nowhere; the teacher's chief hope to better himself lies in leaving it.

All this is bad, bad in many ways. It tends to make the teacher of the industrial young a stereotyped mechanical mediocrity; whereas it may with great force be urged that he perhaps even more than other teachers ought to be elastic and versatile, since laying rightly the foundations of knowledge and character is a harder task, and especially a task demanding greater variety of aptitude and greater power than that of merely carrying onward a little farther those who have already advanced some distance on the way. It further has an injurious effect in preventing the education of the industrial young from keeping in touch with other education and in hindering the flow of salutary influences backward, from the higher to the lower kinds of teaching.

Were the present artificial distinction done away with, were all the State-aided schools recognised as forming one system within which were many different grades and kinds of teaching, most of these evils would disappear. The bright young teacher beginning his career in the humblest of primary schools would be spurred by the hope of reaching in his maturer years a post of no small importance and emolument; and even if he were led to remain to the end in the more

lowly post he would be sustained by the feeling that he was a fellow member of the same body as some of the most prominent schoolmasters of the day. In a system based on the transference of scholars, according to their fitness, from a lower to a higher school, all grades would influence each other; the higher grade would be led to take care that its teaching was such as to be of the most profit to the scholars coming to it from the lower grade, and the lower grade would be stimulated to make its teaching such that its scholars would be ready to benefit by the teaching supplied by the higher grade. And possibly, from time to time, an authority impressed with the importance of laying a sound foundation might take such steps as would secure for the post of master in a primary school a teacher whose experience in the higher schools had taught him what such a founda. tion ought to be.

Is it not possible to bring about some of the changes dwelt upon above?

The organisation of all public schools, that is to say of all schools supported by the State, into a homogeneous system of graded schools would of course involve taking steps to arrange the relations of such schools and of all belonging to them to schools not so supported by the State. Such steps would entail many and great difficulties, bringing in considerations different from any of the foregoing, but difficulties which do not seem unsurmountable.

January 27th, 1907,

M. FOSTER,

THE IRISH POLICY OF THE GOVERNMENT

AFTER an interval of thirteen years the Liberal party is about to enter upon its third campaign in the cause of self-government for Ireland.

Liberals, who for a period of twenty-one years-broken by a brief and stormy interval-were excluded from power as the penalty of their Home Rule Policy, contemplate with profound anxiety the doubtful issues of the conflict that confronts them. In 1885 the Liberal party obtained a majority which, though numerically less than that of 1906, yet in devotion to a great leader, in enthusiasm for those projects of social reform in the pursuit of which it had secured the confidence of the electorate, and in unity of purpose and action, was unsurpassed in the history of political parties. But its swift downfall was as complete as its victory. From that downfall slowly and laboriously it has carried out the work of reparation; the confidence of the electorate has been regained, social forces almost wholly estranged have been in part conciliated, and a policy of domestic reform larger and more generous than that of 1885 has, with the general assent of the party, been enunciated and partially realised.

And now the forces that triumphed in 1886 are again arrayed against it; the once familiar catchwords of the Unionist party are again heard, and the House of Lords is pointed to as the inexorable arbiter which will condemn its policy and compel this great Liberal party prematurely to dissolve and commit its fortunes to the doubtful judgment of a fickle electorate.

And yet, despite these sinister forebodings on the part of those who compare the superficial resemblance of the present situation with that of 1886, there are some not insignificant reasons for thinking that it may well be within the power of Parliament to improve the conditions of Irish government without violating the strictest canons of Unionism, and yet afford to the Irish people effective redress of some very real grievances, which redress, though it will not stay the demand for Home Rule, may tend to lessen its exigency, or, at any rate, will not grant to it additional force or facility.

The economic and social condition of Ireland is now infinitely more favourable to the concession of powers of self-government than it was in 1886 or 1893. 'Ireland,' to quote a recent speech of

Mr. Redmond in the House of Commons, is peaceful; there is no political disorder or crime of any sort in the country.' The legislation of the past few years has wrought a wondrous change; the Land Act of 1903 and other remedial legislation have removed discontent, at least so far as it was associated with the relations of landlord and tenant; in 1881-82, 21,000 families were evicted, now evictions are practically obsolete--in a word, so far as legislation is concerned, save for the nonapplication of the principle of compulsion, all that legislation can effect for vesting on the most liberal conditions the land in the hands of the peasantry, and for their protection from exaction and oppression on the part of landlords, has been effected.

The significant fact must not, however, be overlooked that this economic pacification of Ireland has deprived the Home Rule move. ment of its most potent ally-i.e. agrarian discontent. It is not to be suggested that the desire of the Irish people for self-government is abated; through the many centuries of British rule the Irish people have never wavered in their devotion to the principle of ' Ireland for the Irish.' Yet never was the Nationalist movement so vigorous and so dangerous to the supremacy of Great Britain as it was from the formation of the Land League in 1869, until the remedial legislation of the past few years began to bear fruit. When the Land League was at the zenith of its power, the government of Ireland had passed from the hands of the Queen's Ministers into those of the Nationalist leaders; in 1886, as was stated on high authority, throughout the greater portion of the island the Queen's writ did not run.'

It has become almost an accepted axiom in English politics that violence, or the fear of violence, is the most effective instrument for securing to the aggrieved legislative redress, and there are numerous instances to support the truth of this deplorable proposition. Certainly, Mr. Gladstone's heroic legislation of 1886 was largely inspired by the conviction that only thereby could be effected a reconciliation between the people and the law'; and abundant evidence could be adduced to demonstrate that of those who supported Home Rule in 1886 no small proportion were influenced more by impatience with the incapacity of Castle Rule' to maintain law and order than by a generous desire to satisfy the just requirements of the Irish people.

No longer under such conditions, but under those, as above described by Mr. Redmond, of perfect peace and security, is the claim for selfgovernment now again advanced. England remained unmoved and unsympathetic when in 1886 Ireland was on the verge of revolution, when the forces of law and order were in abeyance, and when she won as an advocate to plead her cause the greatest statesman of the age.

It cannot be doubted that the Irish leaders are fully sensible that amid the imperative claims of domestic legislation the English electorate is not likely to welcome the recrudescence of the Home Rule controversy. Their attitude towards Home Rule is well reflected