House of Commons, and between three and four hundred ministers of religion, have already joined the League, by formally assenting to its principles; and this number is daily increasing.

It is now proposed to complete the working organization of the League by electing a Council and an Executive Committee, charged with the transaction of general business, the appointment of officers, and the formation of branch committees. The last-mentioned work has already been commenced. It was intended that it should have been deferred until after this meeting; but the response to the invitation of the Provisional Committee was so great that it was found necessary to form branch committees without delay, and branches have accordingly been constituted in London, Manchester, Bradford, Bristol, Leicester, Sheffield, Liverpool, Leeds, Huddersfield, Exeter, Bath, Warrington, Devonport, Carlisle, Merthyr Tydvil, Wednesbury, South Hants, and the Isle of Wight.

With reference to the funds necessary for carrying on the operations of the League, it was thought desirable to abstain from issuing an appeal until after the general meeting of members; but a number of gentlemen, having the work strongly at heart, have offered the sums undermentioned, payable by annual instalments extending over ten years :

As regards the general meeting of members, it is thought desirable that it shall be held annually in different parts of the kingdom. It is proposed that the Council, to be chosen at each annual meeting, shall be a consultative body, assembling at such intervals and in such places as may be required, and shall include all Members of Parliament who may join the League, large donors to the funds of the association, and at least one representative of each branch committee. A body so numerous, and consisting of persons so widely scattered, being obviously too large for the transaction of current business, it is proposed to appoint an Executive Committee, to whom, subject to resolutions of the annual meeting, and the general revision of the Council, shall be entrusted the conduct of the business of the League. This Committee will meet at the central offices of the League in Birmingham.

The work of the League will be to collect and disseminate through its various branches, by means of meetings, publications, lectures, and otherwise, all available information on the subject of education; to stimulate discussion upon educational reforms; to create and guide public opinion; tó influence Members of Parliament through their constituents; to hasten and strengthen the action of Government; and to promote the adoption by the Legislature of measures which shall ensure the education of every child in the country, and which shall provide instruction so accessible and so graduated that the child of the poorest artisan shall have it within his power to fit himself for any position capable of being attained by a citizen of the United Kingdom. To this work the members of the League have set themselves with a serious conviction of its vital importance, and under a sense of personal responsibility and public duty; and to this work they intend to remain constant until it is accomplished, and the reproach and curse of ignorance is wiped away from the land.

TREASURER'S REPORT.

BIRMINGHAM, October 8th, 1869.

I have to report that the donations and subscriptions already received amount to £1,212 10s. 6d. The orders made upon me for payment are £418 19s., leaving a balance in hand of £793 11s. 6d. There are liabilities incurred amounting to nearly £600, including the expenses incidental to the general meeting, and the publication of the report of its proceedings.

JOHN JAFFRAY, TREASURER.

The Venerable Archdeacon SANDFORD said: Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I have been requested to move the adoption of the concise and lucid and complete report which has just been read to you; and when I tell you that I am labouring under a serious attack of indisposition, I am sure you will feel that my presence on this platform to-day is a proof of my deep and continued interest in the all-important question which we are met to discuss. I deeply feel the honour which on this occasion is conferred on me, and the responsibility which I incur in coming forward to move the adoption of the report, and I wish to keep distinctly before my own mind and before yours the object proposed by this Education League, which justifies, I believe, the course that you and I are about to adopt. It is to provide the means of education for every child in England and Wales-that is, to supply education, the best gift that can be bestowed on any human being, to the multitudes of the children of our native land who are at this moment ignorant of those essential truths which are to qualify them for the duties of this life and for the hopes of a better. I remember hearing it observed by the late Lord Brougham, some years ago, in the House of Lords, that he had never met a Frenchman of any condition or occupation whatever, who did not consider that, after the Emperor, he was himself the fittest and the sole man to solve the constitutional difficulties, and to work out the political destiny of his country. Now, I am not so aspiring or so self-reliant, but you can understand that no man can have been connected as a pastor of the people, as I have been, for more than thirty years, with the education of the

children of the poor, without having my own views upon this all-momentous subject, and even believing that I could suggest to you a scheme preferable to that which has been elaborated by my friend Mr. Dixon and his provisional committee. But in our excellent chairman we have a commander-in-chief who is not only sagacious and vigilant, but whom I have found to be inexorable, and whatever discussions have taken place in the Council, he will allow no divergence of opinion whatever on the eve of battle and in the face of the foe. To this very judicious decision I most meekly submit. My consolation is the belief that in the discussions which will ensue, there will be found gentlemen less compliant, who will be sure to bring forward and to press those very objections and those very preferences which have occurred to myself. Gentlemen, we stand in the presence of an overwhelming necessity, and of a great national danger, and that necessity and that danger are involved in the fact, as you have heard in this luminous report, that there are thousands and tens of thousands of the children of our people, for whom we are responsible in the sight of God and man, who are the outcasts, the pariahs of society, who are growing up without any moral influences whatever being brought to bear on them, and who in the course of a few years must constitute a very large and important portion of the community, invested with legal rights, which they may use for the injury of themselves and the destruction of society. Now, that is my reason for keeping back any preferences and objects of my own, and coming forward, as I believe I ought to do on this occasion, to endorse the report which has been read to you. What we want to do is to give the means of education to all those wretched children; and it is quite clear from what has been uttered here, and what has appeared in many and voluminous publications, that the voluntary system, however admirable it may be, has utterly failed in providing what is required; yes, and the character of the education imparted is very deficient indeed. Well, now, to secure universal education for our people, I have long believed that we must have compulsory education. And this is no new light that has broken upon me since this Education League was proposed, because I advocated compulsory education months ago, at Man

chester. Well, then, to have compulsory education you must have a rate, and to have a rate you must have-I will not call it secular education, for I abhor the term, and I do not like the phrase adopted in this report, "unsectarian education;" I very much prefer the term "undenominational education." It is quite clear that in a country like ours, with our various denominational churches, and with our many differences in point of religion, it will be quite impossible to have an education supported by rate unless you have the teaching undenominational. Now, with regard to the rate itself, I believe-and I know that it is the conviction of many of the inspectors of schools in the country- that it is required to compel employers, and to compel parents who do not discharge their duties in this respect, to bear their portion of the burden. I am quite satisfied that very many severe things will be said of your platform. We shall be told, no doubt, that it is a godless scheme; that it is a revolutionary scheme; that it is a scheme utterly unsuited to the taste and the feeling of the British people; that it cannot succeed; that if it is carried out it will flood the land with a number of atheists and infidels, who will be the curse of society; that we are departing from the course of duty; yes, and that we deserve very severe vituperation ourselves because we have the effrontery to propose this scheme to the public. All I can say is this, that after a man at my time of life has been pronounced sacrilegious and an atheist because he has presumed to utter an opinion not upon a religious but upon a political question, he becomes rather callous, and is prepared to do his duty, and, if needs must be, to stand alone, whatever may be said of him by ignorant and interested parties. I am now about to allude, not to what is propounded in this place, and of which for the first time I received a statement to-day, but to another scheme, which was brought forward a little time ago with a great flourish of trumpets; and that is, that all religious sections of the kingdom should be paid to bring up the children of their denominations in the strictest tenets of their own faith. Now I confess that I utterly object to that proposition. I have a very great and affectionate respect for my friend Mr. Vince; I have an equally great and affectionate respect for my friend Mr. George Dawson; but I am not prepared to endorse their

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