The Sun.
London, England, 1862-05-06 00:00:00

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THE SUN.

LONDON, 'TUESDAY, MAY 6, 1862.

So for the year the education battle—we ought
to call it the managers' money battle—is over.
In the most condescending language, General
WALPOLE accepted the terms of capitulation of-
fered by General LoWE. The Government marches
out with the honours of war, the Tories carry off
the best part of its spoils. The country has to
thank an unscrupulous Opposition for depriving
it of one of the most honest amendments ever
offered to it in any department of Administration.
Were the same principle to be applied to the
Admiralty and its Dockyards, the saving would
be one of millions to the country, combined with
increased security. We need hardly say that the
one thing in which Mr. WALPOLE has thwarted the
design of the Government is—the principle of
paying for results. ?hat was tie cardinal point
of the Government proposals. Payment, whether
the work were done or not—payment, whether
the children could read, write, and cypher or not
.—payment, come what will, so that all teachers,
managers, and pupil teachers, as they grew up,
should vote for the Tories—this was the single-
minded object of the Opposition.
They have been but too successful. We do
not deny that some good will result from the
diluted alterations. The decentralisation of the
payments is itself an advantage, and a consider-
able one. The payment of part of the grant or
examination is also some advantage, but it is so
much neutralised by giving up the classification by
age, that it will be of nest to no service this years
and but of little use for many years to come. The
least we can say is that there is the germ of a
better system introduced, and that if it be cherished
and cultivated, it may bring forth fruit in fifteen
years. Meanwhile, should the Tories by the help
of Roman Catholic ingratitude, get into office, we
know that they will rather repress than cherish
the good still left in the new Code, while as long as
its authors keep their seats, they must be more
patriotic than most Governments to stir up again
a nest of hornets. We are probably surrendered,
therefore, for a series of years to a large annual
waste of money under the guise of encouraging
education. The fact being that money is to be paid
rather for getting the children to the school than
for teaching them when there.
The worst part of the whole business, however,
is that the greater part of the schools in the coun-
try, including decidedly those which most need
assistance, get none whatever. Nothing can exceed
in capriciousness the bestowment of the grants !
rather by the wealth than by
It is regulated, indeed,
the poverty of the district. While 10,000 schools
are assisted, 15,000—most of them needing assist-
ance much more—get nothing whatever. The
sensible resolution prc;posed by Mr. WALTER did
go a considerable way towards meeting this greatest
blot on the Privy Council system. It eroposed to
create a kind of free trade in the grant. Those who
could produce the result requited, pretlnce it how
they would, wire to rceeive the cap? 'ion grant.
Certificated teacbeis and pupil teachers ~-zere not to
be an indispensatde Condition. If the children
could do the three thiugs required, pay was to be
awarded to them. We are Lorry to record that,
for what appears to us to be very insufficient reason,
the House rejected, by a small majority, this I
'very reasonable resolution. The protective system
is retained intact.

It strikes us that Mr. WALTER has yet scope for
carrying out the spirit of his resolution in a way
which might do the country every-way !much ser-
e. As he stated, a great part of these 15,000

anbeneficed schools need help more than those which
get it. What will he and Mr. LOWE say to pro-

posing that they all should be offered the ter,t s of the
original Revised Code of the Government, we mean of
the single condition of payment for all pupils that
will bear the examination proposed, when classified
according to age. Throw overboard, in the case of
the 15,000, all limitations, restrictions, and inter-
meddling—offer them the pay for the required
results, get them how they may. If they got but
a few pounds a year, to many of them this little aid
would be of the greatest value. The public would,
so far, gain a real education of the most needy.
And, what would be as desirable as anything, the
beneficed schools would be stimulated by the com-
petition of those they are now so ready to despise.
The trial would solve many of the problems over
which there is now so much dispute ; the Great
Certificated could not complain that there
was any poaching on their manor, for the system
would only be applied to schools, at which their
more dignified services would never be required ;
while the Government would have again some
trial, though not of the most advantageous one, for
the scheme which interest and faction have contrived
too successfully to defeat.

It is insinuated, we observe, that the mere fact
of barely one quarter of the Lambeth constituency
having been polled on Saturday, indicates the in-
eradicable apathy of the great mass of the registered
electors in availing themselves of the privilege ac-
cruing to each by right of his £lO tenancy. Rather
we should venture,however, not so much to insinuate'
as roundly to assert that the circumstance of no
more than six thousand out of the twenty-four thou-
sand registered electors of Lambeth having voted
for all three of the candidates put together. betrays
their indifferenee, not to the possession and
exercise of the elective franchise, but to the very
feeble choice that was in any way discoverable
among those same three candidates ! For, in homely
phrase, those three candidates were really and truly,
and quite undeniably, much of a muchness. Their
political principles were, in point of fact, all but
identical. They were all three of them Liberals.
They were all three of them Reformers. They were
all three—as indeed but well becomes anyone who
aspired to succeed to the representation of that
particular metropolitan borough—so strongly in
favour of economy, and as soon as might be in any
way rendered practicable, after a conscientious at-
tention to the exigencies of the country, for a gradual
but comprehensive, and in the end very consider-
able reduction, in the aggregate amount of our an-
nual expenditure.
Eaeh of the three candidates, by the way, it ought
at the same tints to be borne particularly in
remembrance had a distinctive claim of his own,
of one kind or another—such as it was—upon the
consideration of the Lambeth constituency. Taking
their names in the order in which from first to last
they stood upon the polling-books—there was, to
begin with, the triumphantly successful candidate
(triumphantly we mean, so far as concerns the
ignominious defeat of his two antagonists), there
was Mr. DOULTON. Now Mr. DOULTON, besides
being a shrewd, hard-headed man of business, had
the very obvious advantage of being thoroughly
well known in the borough; with the local interests
of which his own individual interests are largely
and intimately connected. Like many another trader
now enrolled among the members of the British
House of Commons—such as Mr. BASS, whose very
name has a positive relish for us all in the mere
utterance of it, as associated with the brewing
interests, as identified indeed with what Mr. GLAD.
STONE gratefully calls that "incomparable beve-
rage" pale or bitter ale—Mr. DOULTON stands be-
fore the world as head of a firm high among the
ranks of our merchant princes, and conspicuously
placed among our leading manufacturers. Mr.
DOULTON, briefly be it said, besides being a
thorough-going Liberal, Reformer and Economist,
was perfectly well known to the Lambeth consti-
tuency, was a large employer there in the
borough, was one amongst its wealthiest
traders, and therefore—having besides that a
wholly undamaged and untarnished reputation—
was the very candidate, in most respects, in whom a
Lambeth constituency might confide. And how
they have confided in him—those, at least, who
voted at all for anyone on Saturday—we all now
know perfectly. Mr. DOULTON having polled (so
far as the returns have yet been corrected) 5,124
votes. Whereas his two opponents together
could muster but very little over the first
thousand ! Abd yet each of those rival candidates,
as we have already vaguely intimated, had in
turn his peculiar claims upon the attention of the
Lambeth constituency. There was the forensic gen-
tleman, who stood next upon the list on Saturday,
though a very long way down indeed below Mr.
DOULTON, so far as numbers serve to indicate a
candidates' position upon the polling-book. Whereas
Mr. DOULTON, as we have seen, numbers up at the
close of the day's polling, as many as 5,124 votes in
all—this second candidate, a very long way down
we premise again apologetically, could count up in
his favour no more than 754 supporters altogether !
And yet the aspirant for the suffrages of the Lam-
beth constituency who was thus cavalierly treated
by the great mass of the 24,000 registered electors,
was no other than the well-known Old Bailey Barris-
ter, Mr. W. CAMPBELL SLEIGH, a practitioner, who
has during the last few years been rising into so very
large a practice of a particular kind; one who has
in a remarkablo degree what Jack calls "the gift
of the gab"—and who although still robed merely
in his stuff gown, as a counsel called to the bar and
not within it, is fast acquiring for himself among
the several constituencies that have already rejected
him (the Lambeth constituency being the last to
have that honour), a sort of ex officio right to the I
title of—Somerro-a-n
~.ENERAL

Now, of course, neither Mr. DOULTON, the
successful candidate on Saturday, nor yet
again that other candidate not already men-
tioned here by name neither Mr. DOULTON
nor yet Mr. WILKINSON could venture in
any way to compete with Mr. W. C. SLEIGH as a
platform orator—Mr. SLEIGH being admirably well
prepared by his forensic practice for any amount of
rhetorical display that he may ever have the oppor-
tunity for—first of all upon the hustings, and as he
yet hopes, no doubt, eventually within the walls
of Parliament. Yet, in spite of Mr. SLEIGH'S Won-
derful witcheries of speech, Mr. DOULTON, silenced
additionally though he was with an inopportune
cold towards the close of last week, distanced his
formidablecompet itor, the practisedlegal practitioner
and already we should presume also the practised
canvasser of parochial and metropolitan constituen-
cies—and distanced him, too, not by a few odd hun-
dreds, but by a g lod swinging net majority of 4,370
ovtes.! A ludicrons non sequitur enough, remember-
ing tnat upon the nomination dey Mr. SLEIGH had
obtained the show of bands—coming off with flying
colours, at that preliminarystageof the prcceedings,
as the favourite of the Lambeth non-electors!

Finally, there was the last candidate of the three,
the one who tailed off on Saturday with no more
than just 347 Totes when the poll closed at four
o'clock in the afternoon! Yet Mr. WILKINSON,
who thus came unmistakably hindmost in the race,
kills supporters being more than doubled by those