will still be unable to
distribute the money at their discretion. Whatever they may do for any
schoolmaster must be done in concert with those persons who, in the
district where the schoolmaster lives, take an interest in education,
and contribute out of their private means to the expense of education.
When the honourable gentleman is afraid that we shall corrupt
the schoolmasters, he forgets, first, that we do not appoint the
schoolmasters; secondly, that we cannot dismiss the schoolmasters;
thirdly, that managers who are altogether independent of us can, without
our consent, dismiss the schoolmasters; and, fourthly, that without
the recommendation of those managers we can give nothing to the
schoolmasters. Observe, too, that such a recommendation will not be one
of those recommendations which goodnatured easy people are too apt
to give to everybody who asks; nor will it at all resemble those
recommendations which the Secretary of the Treasury is in the habit of
receiving. For every pound which we pay on the recommendation of the
managers, the managers themselves must pay two pounds. They must also
provide the schoolmaster with a house out of their own funds before they
can obtain for him a grant from the public funds. What chance of jobbing
is there here? It is common enough, no doubt, for a Member of Parliament
who votes with Government to ask that one of those who zealously
supported him at the last election may have a place in the Excise or
the Customs. But such a member would soon cease to solicit if the answer
were, "Your friend shall have a place of fifty pounds a year, if you
will give him a house and settle on him an income of a hundred a year."
What chance then, I again ask, is there of jobbing? What, say some of
the dissenters of Leeds, is to prevent a Tory Government, a High
Church Government, from using this parliamentary grant to corrupt
the schoolmasters of our borough, and to induce them to use all their
influence in favour of a Tory and High Church candidate? Why, Sir, the
dissenters of Leeds themselves have the power to prevent it. Let them
subscribe to the schools: let them take a share in the management of the
schools: let them refuse to recommend to the committee of Council any
schoolmaster whom they suspect of having voted at any election from
corrupt motives: and the thing is done. Our plan, in truth, is made
up of checks. My only doubt is whether the checks may not be found too
numerous and too s