e subsequent grants of the years 1837 and 1838 yet
unappropriated, any grant that may be voted in the present year,
be chiefly applied in aid of subscriptions for buildings; and, in
particular cases, for the support of schools connected with these
societies. The report further stated, that the committee did not feel
themselves precluded from making grants in particular cases which
shall appear to them to call for the aid of government, although the
application may not come from either of the two mentioned societies.
The opinion of the committee, it was stated, was that the most useful
applications of any sums voted by parliament, would consist in the
employment of those moneys in the establishment of a normal school,
under the direction of the state, and not placed under the management of
a voluntary society. Finally, the committee recommended that no further
grant be made now or hereafter for the establishment or support of
normal schools, or of any other schools, unless the right of inspection
be retained, in order to secure a conformity to the regulations and
discipline established in the several schools, with such improvements as
may from time to time be suggested by the committee. The report added,
that a part of any grant voted in the present year might be usefully
applied to the purposes of inspection, and to the means of acquiring
a complete knowledge of the present state of education in England and
Wales. The day after these resolutions appeared, Lord Ashley moved a
call of the house for the 14th of June. This motion was seconded by
Lord John Russell, who embraced the opportunity of warning the members
against the petitions which had been presented against the ministerial
scheme. Great error and misrepresentation, his lordship said, prevailed
on this subject throughout the country. At the same time he stated that
government would not persist in their proposal to found a normal school.
His lordship concluded by some remarks on the merits of the National
and British and Foreign School Society; and by stating that he should be
ready to go into the report of the committee of the privy-council, and
should also propose that the vote of L30,000, of which he had given
notice, should be divided as it hitherto had been, between the two
societies. Lord Stanley objected to the proposition for giving a direct
control over the moral and the religious education of the people to a
board or committee exclusively political in its