n other words, they exist in places
where there is no natural chief to give expression to the feelings
of the parish.

Agriculturists of all shades of political opinions are usually
averse to a School Board. An ill-defined feeling is very often the
strongest rule of conduct. Now there is an ill-defined but very
strong feeling that the introduction of a School Board means the
placing of the parish more or less under imperial rule, and
curtailing the freedom that has hitherto existed. This has been much
strengthened by the experience gained during the last few years of
the actual working of the Bill with respect to schools which are not
Board Schools, but which come under the Government inspection. Every
step of the proceedings shows only too plainly the utter unfitness
of the clauses of the Bill to rural conditions. One of the most
important clauses is that which insists upon a given amount of cubic
space for each individual child. This has often entailed the
greatest inconveniences, and very unnecessary expense. It was most
certainly desirable that overcrowding and the consequent evolution
of foul gases should be guarded against; and in great cities, where
the air is always more or less impure, and contaminated with the
effluvia from factories as well as from human breath, a large amount
of cubic feet of space might properly be insisted upon; but in
villages where the air is pure and free from the slightest
contamination, villages situated often on breezy hills, or at worst
in the midst of sweet meadow land, the hard-and-fast rule of so many
cubic feet is an intolerable burden upon the supporters of the
school. Still, that would not be so objectionable were it confined
to the actual number of attendants at the school; but it would
appear that the Government grant is not applicable to schools,
unless they are large enough to allow to all children in the parish
a certain given cubic space.

Now, as a matter of fact, nothing like all the children of the
parish attend the school. In rural districts, especially, where the
distance of cottages from the school is often very great, there will
always be a heavy percentage of absentees. There will also be a
percentage who attend schools in connection with a Dissenting
establishment, and even a certain number who attend private schools,
to say nothing of the numbers who never attend at all. It is, then,
extremely hard that the subscribers to a school should be compelled
to ere