te a payment of two millions by the Exchequer
for the two millions paid in driblets by the persons most interested,
for the most part gladly and with special provisions for preventing the
payment pressing hardly upon the exceptionally poor, it may well be that
many sensible persons will ask the question, _Cui bono_?

Independently, however, of any fiscal considerations, it seems to us
that there are weighty arguments against the proposal of a gratuitous
education.

It may be observed, and we think it an important observation, that the
proposal of free education is in the teeth of all our recent policy; and
some pressing reasons ought to be given for a complete and sudden
reversal of all that we have hitherto been doing. There are many free
schools in the country, endowed by 'pious founders,' and established for
the special purpose of giving free education to the children of
particular parishes. Some of these schools have had to pass through the
hands of the School Commissioners and to receive new schemes. It has
been, we believe, the invariable practice to insert into these new
schemes the condition of school-pence; the portion of the endowment so
saved has been applied to the foundation of exhibitions and other
methods of assisting deserving children. The inhabitants of the parishes
in which this innovation has been introduced have grumbled and
submitted; it has in some cases been a bitter pill, but the law-abiding
character of the Englishman has caused it to be swallowed without noisy
remonstrance. We cannot, without raising a suspicion of having practised
educational quackery, retreat from the position which we have thus taken
up.

What is the argument for the position? It is sometimes stated thus, that
people value a thing more when it costs them something to get it. The
argument is not to be despised; but we think that it yields in
importance to the consideration, that the payment of the school fees is
almost the only indication left of the great truth, that the parent is
responsible for his children's education. We have sometimes trembled
when we have seen in Board Schools directions concerning the doings of
the children, which would seem to have had a right to come from parents,
but which do in fact come 'by order of the Board.' We have almost feared
lest in the Fifth Commandment our boys and girls of the rising
generation should be tempted to substitute 'Board' for 'father and
mother.' Certainly there is grea