institutions of varying degrees of merit. And this in a country whose American offspring had instituted a sound system of general education since the time of Cromwell, and whose Scotch neighbours had organised the same since the days of William III.!
But if the elementary system was bad, the secondary system was really pathetic in its decrepitude; and the ponderous tomes of the Commission which inquired into the state of our grammar schools and other institutions of secondary teaching, constitute one of the most melancholy chapters in the history of the English mind. The body of Commissioners was moved to propound the thesis that girls should have full participation in any such system as could be set on foot.
It had therefore become evident that the State must henceforth abandon its immemorial policy of abstaining almost totally from interference with education. It had relied on the family, and the family had failed it. Parents had not seen fit to insist on the education of their children, so the State must reluctantly adopt the imperative mood, effecting forcible entry into the family precincts and possessing itself of the child. In the words of the minister who introduced the Education Act of 1870, "England must now make up for the smallness of her numbers by increasing the intellectual force of the individual."
During the period of nearly half a century since that time the efforts of statesmen have been
