y, may become a true educational parliament, as subordinate
in authority to the Minister of Education, theoretically, as the
Legislature is to the Crown, and yet, like the Legislature, possessed
of great practical authority. And I suppose that no Minister
of Education would be other than glad to have the aid of the
deliberations of such a body, or fail to pay careful attention to its
recommendations.

What, then, ought to be the nature and scope of the education which
a School Board should endeavour to give to every child under its
influence, and for which it should try to obtain the aid of the
Parliamentary grants? In my judgment it should include at least the
following kinds of instruction and of discipline:--

1. Physical training and drill, as part of the regular business of the
school.

It is impossible to insist too much on the importance of this part
of education for the children of the poor of great towns. All
the conditions of their lives are unfavourable to their physical
well-being. They are badly lodged, badly housed, badly fed, and live
from one year's end to another in bad air, without chance of a change.
They have no play-grounds; they amuse themselves with marbles and
chuck-farthing, instead of cricket or hare-and-hounds; and if it were
not for the wonderful instinct which leads all poor children of tender
years to run under the feet of cab-horses whenever they can, I know
not how they would learn to use their limbs with agility.

Now there is no real difficulty about teaching drill and the simpler
kinds of gymnastics. It is done admirably well, for example, in the
North Surrey Union schools; and a year or two ago, when I had an
opportunity of inspecting these schools, I was greatly struck with
the effect of such training upon the poor little waifs and strays of
humanity, mostly picked out of the gutter, who are being made into
cleanly, healthy, and useful members of society in that excellent
institution.

Whatever doubts people may entertain about the efficacy of natural
selection, there can be none about artificial selection; and the
breeder who should attempt to make, or keep up, a fine stock of pigs,
or sheep, under the conditions to which the children of the poor
are exposed, would be the laughing-stock even of the bucolic mind.
Parliament has already done something in this direction, by declining
to be an accomplice in the asphyxiation of school children. It refuses
to make any grant to a sc