Wales threatened to revolt. Political institutions are stable in England, and anything in the nature of violent upheaval and rapid change is abhorrent to the English mind. Gradual evolution She tolerates; revolution of any kind repels her. She is " a land of evolution rather than revolution." Facts like these explain the slowness of reform in England. It takes a long time for the radical views of the minority to leaven the views of the conservative majority. Yet reforms do take place. England never sits on the safety valve; in every crisis her sound, practical common sense saves the situation.

For good or evil John Stuart Mill is the spiritual father of English politics. English statesmen, for the most part, have absorbed his views on individual liberty and made them their own. It is no accident that in Oxford and Cambridge Universities, where the majority of political leaders are educated, Mill's work On Liberty ranks almost as a sacred text. His definition of the principle of individual and social liberty has become, as it were, the common heritage of the people, governing their actions in a thousand and one unknown and obscure ways. Liberty he defines in the following passage:

"The object of this essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means need be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him, must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."

Contrast these views with the Treitschkean or German conception of the relation of the state to the individual: "The state is power." "The essence of the state consists in this, that it can suffer no higher power above itself." "The state has no higher Mill, On Liberty, pp. 20-21.

judge above it, and will therefore conclude all its treaties with that silent reservation." "We cannot distinguish between public and private morality." "Silent obedience to superiors, and at the same time strict discipline with inferiors, demand an independence of character which is very highly to be appraised." 1 Here we find the state elevated into a sort of superman or god, which must be implicitly obeyed, nay, almost worshipped by the individuals composing it. The state can do no wrong; the code of ethics for the individual does not apply to the state. In return for implicit obedience to its authority the state not only protects the individual against alien aggression, but also ensures him a livelihood by giving him a sound training in commerce and industry, houses him in model dwellings in sanitary cities, and pensions him during disability and old age. Life runs so smoothly for him that the critical sense is dulled. The state thinks for him, relieves him from the responsibility of making decisions upon questions which vex and rend mankind elsewhere, and guides him firmly into those paths which the state deems good. England allows each of her citizens to choose whether, and in what way, he shall serve his country. Germany places her citizens in the position which suits her purpose best. Efficiency of a kind certainly results from the German practice, but the cost-that of individual initiative-is much too great. Such subservience to the state would not, in normal times, be tolerated for a moment in England, much less in the United States. In both these countries the salvation of the state must be worked out through the individual. Individual enterprise and initiative are therefore encouraged, and although the method is costly and apparently inefficient, it undoubtedly pays in the long run.

No educational system can afford to neglect or run contrary to the dominant racial characteristics of the people. Especially true is this in England, where ethnological traits are so deeply rooted. The Englishman is aggressive, fond of competition, and, at heart, a rover. None but the aggressive rover could conquer and settle in England, and the present British Empire and the United States are standing proofs that these traits still persist. This inveterate instinct for competition is concealed from the scrutiny of the casual observer by a thick layer of mental laziness. The Englishman hates theories and theorising; he loves to come to grips with the practical problems of life and solve them as he goes along. He is a constitutional pragmatist. Consequently he 1 Treitschke, Lectures on Politics.

appears stolid and lacking in imagination. It is difficult to arouse him. Like anthracite, he catches fire slowly, but once alight he burns to the last ash. Professor John Dewey once said to the writer that the Englishman had tremendous reserves of strength stored away under an indifferent exterior, reserves which were only drawn upon for the greatest emergencies. This view is apparently a true one. The Englishman is tenacious; he never admits that a task is too big for him. If this never-admit-you-arebeaten attitude were once destroyed the whole fabric of English national life would crumble to dust. But above all, the Englishman loves individual liberty. For more than a millennium he has fought for it; Magna Carta and Habeas Corpus mean more to him than he cares to acknowledge.

The Englishman is lazy intellectually and has a deep-seated love of liberty. These traits have caused the adoption of a laissezfaire policy, not only in politics, but also in education. There has been exhibited a timidity, even a positive shrinking from the exercise of coercion in any shape or form. The English educational system, like the English Constitution, can hardly be ascribed to conscious human design or volition. Nothing in it bears the imprint of the manufactured article. The people feared the domination of the state. Consequently a national system of education developed later in England than elsewhere. Educational salvation was to be secured through individual effort and experimentation. To this day private voluntary schools flourish by the thousand, while educational efforts and experiments of the most diverse forms are to be found in every part of the country. In spite of the growing power of the Board of Education, local control is still a more potent factor in shaping the educational destinies of the nation than is the centralised administration.

This instinctive desire for liberty, this latitude, this freedom of initiative are exhibited in many ways. Educational legislation is almost invariably permissive in its opening phases. As soon as the people at large have experienced the benefits of it, and have overcome their conservative antipathy to something which is new-fangled and therefore suspect, compulsory legislation is introduced. Individual liberty gives way to the good of society as a whole. Thus compulsory attendance has followed voluntary attendance at school, compulsory medical inspection has followed voluntary medical inspection of both schools and scholars, and compulsory training has followed voluntary training of teachers. Examples such as these might be multiplied a hundred times.

There is shown also a profound respect for the individual liberty of each school and teacher. The reason why private schools are tolerated, many of them patently inefficient, is that some of them give expression to varieties of thought and principles that a state system finds it difficult or impossible to recognise. Gradually, however, many of the voluntary schools are submitting themselves to state examination and control, and in so doing are finding the condition compatible with a continued exhibition of marked individuality. The gradual disappearance of the fear of the Board of Education is shown by some of the large "public schools " inviting the Board's inspectors to report on their educational efficiency. The inspection of Harrow and Eton by the Board are cases in point. These schools will probably remain private schools forever, yet the governors of each institution were anxious to know what the central authority for education thought of their equipment and methods of teaching.

The teacher in English schools, and especially the headteacher, has far greater freedom than in any other country. The headmaster is invariably "captain on his own deck." In secondary schools the appointment and dismissal of teachers is largely in his hands; in both elementary and secondary schools, with the assistance of his staff, he frames his own curriculum and makes his own time-table. The Board of Education offers suggestions of various sorts, but if a teacher can produce a better scheme than the Board it is accepted without demur. Even experimentation in new methods of teaching and in the organisation of new departments within schools receive the official and financial encouragement of the Board. England seems to fear one thing, namely, that the teaching shall present a deadly uniformity throughout the country and be unrelieved by the faintest spark of originality.

These expressions of freedom bring some evil in their train. It is not every teacher who is fit to be trusted so completely. And control is difficult, chiefly because it is difficult to test the results of such forms of education. Efficiency of the obvious German type is impossible of attainment in the English schools. That is not the desired end. Yet efficiency of a very real, though somewhat subtle, type is undoubtedly present. It would almost seem that obvious efficiency is distrusted, even despised, by the average Englishman, and that is one reason why England has been so persistently misjudged by people of other nationalities.

Another marked feature of English educational administration is its inherent conservatism. Things are seldom done in a hurry. America would try a dozen methods of teaching or new forms of administration and probably discard them all while England was debating one of them. She is afraid of "throwing away the baby with the water from the bath." This conservatism, which tries to preserve the best of the old, has its good points, but it drives the radically-minded to distraction. It is excellently shown in the various Education Acts which Parliament passes. There is never a clean sweep; each act is invariably a compromise. English education would undoubtedly benefit by a consolidation of her Education Acts, for at present few people have a complete or even a working knowledge of them.

Yet a change is coming over England. Since 1900 the conservatism has been less in evidence than aforetime. In fact the recent changes have been many and marked. As yet few realise their profound significance. The majority simply know that something is happening in the educational world, that things are changing rapidly. They feel vaguely perturbed, but are, as yet, inarticulate. Beneath the surface, however, the conflict between the reformer and the conservative is constant, if silent. A knowledge of the forces at work is necessary for the proper appreciation of England's educational system.

II. CENTRAL CONTROL OF EDUCATION

The consolidation of all forms of English education under one central authority is not yet complete. In the first place, a very large, though unknown, number of private schools exist outside the jurisdiction of the Board of Education. Reformatory and industrial schools, together with the children who are employed in mills and factories, are still controlled by the Home Secretary. The Local Government Board inspects the premises and general arrangements of poor law schools, although the Board of Education supervises the educational work of these institutions. The Board of Agriculture has placed upon it the responsibility for the organisation of farm institutes and the agricultural work of universities and colleges, but it works in very close co-operation with the Board of Education in directing the agricultural education of the country. Army schools for soldiers and their children fall within the jurisdiction of the War Office. The Admiralty is the central authority for a complex system of navy schools