Intelligence. THE BIRMINGHAM CONFERENCE.-This is an attempt to discuss at one meeting all kinds of social evils and their remedies, coram Lord Brougham. We have heard it much cried down; but are disposed to think it may do much good. It will not effect specific reforms, but it may induce discussion hereafter fruitful of them. It is the creation of ideas by attrition; and we always find that many sparks are struck, and some light shed, by the mere meeting of minds. Lord Brougham is the President; the Bishop of London, Lord John Russell, Lord Stanley, and Sir John Pakington* inaugurate the Sections. The Mayor and Recorder of Birmingham will take their proper post in the vanguard. The composition of the Committees of each Section is far less happily made. It omits many who ought to have been on them, and places some there who have no title to figure in any of the Sections. We hope that the arrangements will be carefully made, and ten minute speeches insisted on. Here is the programme : MONDAY, October 12th.-Opening Meeting in the Town Hall, at Halfpast Seven in the Evening. Lord Brougham will deliver an Inaugaural Address. TUESDAY, October 13th.-The several Departments will meet in the Queen's College, at Eleven o'clock A.M., for Papers and Discussions. In the Evening a Conversational Meeting (dress) at the Town Hall, under the Presidency of the Mayor of Birmingham. THURSDAY, October 15th.-Departments at Queen's College, at Eleven In the Evening a Public Meeting in support of the Reformatory and Industrial Schools Movement, at the Town Hall. A.M. FRIDAY, October 16th.-Concluding Meeting to receive a Report from the General Committee, at Twelve. A Reception Room will be open during the days of the meeting, where letters may be addressed, tickets purchased, lists of lodgings obtained, and every information given. Tickets to admit to all the Meetings, Ten Shillings each. Members of the Association (Subscription One Guinea Annually) admitted free. All Papers to be read at the Meeting must be sent to the General Secretary (3, Waterloo Place, Pall Mall, London, S. W.), at least one Week before the 12th of October. By the permission of the Hon. and Rev. Grantham Yorke, a Special Service for the occasion will take place at St. Philip's Church, on the Afternoon of Monday the 12th of October. *Lord Lyttelton, we much regret to say, will not be there. JURISPRUDENCE AND AMENDMENDMENT First Department. OF THE LAW.-.-. President: The Right Hon. Lord John Russell, M.P. Secretaries: J. Stuart Glennie, Esq. J. Napier Higgins, Esq., Arthur Ryland, Esq. Topics: Its bearing on the social condition of the people; the advantages derivable from a wide diffusion of its principles; the practical defects in our laws; the evils arising from such defects; and the fitting remedies. Second Department.---EDUCATION.---President: The Right Hon. Sir John S. Pakington, Bart., M.P. Secretaries: James Chance, Esq., Rev. Nash Stephenson. This department will deal with the various questions relating to education, both industrial and intellectual, whether of the upper, middle, or lower classes of society; the foundation schools of the country; the connexion of art and literature with national education, &c. Third Department.---PUNISHMENT AND REFORMATION. ---President: Bishop of London. Secretaries: Rev. J. T. Birt, Alfred Hill, Esq., Martin Ware, Esq., Jun. Questions relating to the prevention and repression of crime; the reformation of the criminal; the best mode of secondary punishment; prison discipline; the management of reformatory schools and institutions; &c. Fourth Department.---PUBLIC HEALTH.---President: Lord Stanley, M.P. Secretaries: Dr. Headlam Greenhow, William P. Marshall, Esq. H. W. Rumsey, Esq., F.R.C.S. Questions relating to the public health and the prevention of disease; it will collect statistical evidence of the relative healthiness of different localities, of different industrial occupations, and generally of the influence of exterior circumstances in the production of health or disease: it will discuss improvements in house-construction (more especially as to the dwellings of the labouring classes), in drainage, warming, ventilation; public baths and wash-houses; adulteration of food and its effects; the functions of government in relation to public health, the legislative and administrative machinery expedient for its preservation; sanitary police, quarantine, &c.; poverty in relation to disease and the effect of unhealthiness in the prosperity of places and nations. Fifth Department. --- SOCIAL ECONOMY. --- President: Lord Lyttelton. Secretary: J. D. Goodman, Esq. Social economics: the conditions of industrial success, whether of nations or individuals; savings banks and insurance; the relation between employers and employed; strikes and combinations; legislative interference with the hours and wages of labour; legislative regulation of professions, trades, and employment generally, and of price and means of supply: emigration, its effect, and true conditions; exercise of public and private charity; relief of the poor; industrial employment of women; industrial and economical instruction of the labouring classes; social economics in relation to education; &c. UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.-At a recent meeting of the Council of this College, Earl Fortescue, Vice-president, as chairman of the committee of subscribers to the Hume Memorial Fund, presented a letter from Mr. W. Owen, the secretary, informing the council that, on the recommendation of the committee, the subscribers had resolved that "the fund collected for the purpose of commemorating the public services and virtues of the late Joseph Hume should be placed in the hands of the council of University College for the establishment of a scholarship to advance the sciences of jurisprudence and political economy, such scholarship to bear the name of the Joseph Hume Scholarship." Lord Fortescue, the Right. Hon. the Master of the Rolls, the Right. Hon. Sir Edward Ryan, Mr. Booth, Mr. Goldsmid, and Mr. Hutton were appointed a committee to consider the best mode of carrying into effect the object of the founders of the scholarship. The fund, amounting to 1,330%., has been transferred to the college by the trustees, Lord Robert Grosvenor, M.P., Sir James Duke, M.P., Mr. J. A. Nicholay, Col. Sykes, M.P., and Mr. W. Williams, M.P., and has been invested in the purchase of £1,471 128. 11d. Consols. The council, on the recommendation of their committee have instituted two "Joseph Hume Scholarships," one for jurisprudence and one for political economy-each of £20 a year, tenable for three years, and to be awarded every third year, the first for jurisprudence in December 1858; the first for political economy in December 1859. At the same time, the council determined to devote the greater part of the dividends of a fund belonging to the college, called the Ricardo Fund, to the foundation of a second scholarship in political economy, "The Ricardo Scholarship, "£20 a year, tenable for three years, to be first awarded in 1860, and afterwards every third year. Candidates for either of these scholarships must have been in the academical year immediately preceeding its award matriculated students of the college, and have attended the course of lectures on the subject of the scholarship. For the Andrew's Scholarship in Classics, and Mathematics, and Natural Philosophy (£100 and £60), to be awarded in October next, the examiners will be Professors De Morgan, Newman, Malden, and Potter, Joseph Gouch Greenwood, B.A., Fellow of University College, Professor of Classics, and Principal of Owen's College, Manchester; and Wm. Bower Todhunter, A.M., Fellow of University College, Professor of Mathematics in Lady Huntingdon's College, Cheshunt. As trustee of the fund of the Working Men's Memorial of Gratitude to the late Sir Robert Peel, the council have just sent collections of books, each collection costing £15., to the following institutions, viz., the Mechanic's Institute, Hull; the Working Men's Library and Reading Room, Merthyr Tydvil; the Free Library, Dowlais; and the Institute of Popular Science and Literature, York. Books of equal value have been presented to every one of the 16 institutions specially named in the deed declaring the trusts of the fund. In the future distribution to "any public library, mechanics' institution, reading room, or literary or scientific association in the United Kingdom maintained by workingmen, or to which working-men and youths have access gratis, or at a small charge," the council are bound to take into consideration the amount of subscriptions derived by the fund from each place from which an application may be received. The annnal income of the Peel Fund is £52. SIR, CORRESPONDENCE. TO THE EDITOR OF THE ENGLISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATION. If any of your Mathematical Correspondents will solve the two following questions, I should feel much obliged. Question 1.-Three circles touching each other, and the sides of the triangle, are inscribed in a triangle, whose sides are 3, 4, and 5 respectively. Required the diameters of the circles? Question 2.-What distance does a man walk in unwinding a string from a pin one foot in diameter fixed in the ground, supposing the string to be wound six times round the pin, and that the string is always kept stretched. B. DALE. "X. Y. Z." would feel extremely obliged if the Editor of the English Journal of Education would inform him in the next part, how and where he can obtain the Blue Book or minutes of the Committee of Privy Council on Education and if any charge is made for it. [By application to the Secretary: no chargeis made if the applicant be deemed entitled to a copy. It may also be purchased at the office for the sale of Parliamentary Papers. Ed. J. E.] SIR, FOLDING BLACK BOARD. TO THE EDITOR OF THE ENGLISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATION. I saw in a London Newspaper a notice of a substitute for the "Black Board" in schools. It has been adopted by Professor Faraday in his Lecture Room, and is well spoken of -patented, if I remember rightly, by a Mr. Stevens,-but the address was not given. The material was, I believe, the same as that of Japan. An "inquirer" would feel obliged for any information respecting it which would enable him to form an opinion of its merits, and to procure it of the patentee. [We believe that our correspondent means the frame filled with a sort of fine tarpauling sold by Messrs. Groombridge aud Sons. It answers well for chalk marks, and is easily unshipped and rolled up, and therefore very portable. Ed. J. E.] CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. BY HORACE MANN, ESQ. HE subject which I have undertaken to introduce to the Conference is briefly this:-"Competition for certain appointments in the Civil Service, considered as a means of promoting popular education." As it is, perhaps, known to some now present that I have the honour of holding an appointment under the Civil Service Commissioners, it may be advisable, in order to obviate all possible misapprehension, to state that the following remarks and suggestions have been written entirely on my own responsibility as a private individual, and that I have had no communication on the subject with the Commissioners, except so far as to ascertain that they recognize the privilege which has been so beneficially employed by Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools and others, and which is now generally conceded to public officers, of expressing in an unofficial manner, their individual opinions upon questions of public interest. The general question of competitions for the Civil Service has probably been rendered familiar to nearly all present by the Report of Sir Charles Trevelyan and Sir S. Northcote. I am not now about to say any thing new upon the subject; and what I shall say that is old has been better said by the reporters and by the commentators on the Report; but it seems to me extremely desirable, that attention should be directed to the scheme. there recommended, with special reference to its applicability to that particular portion of the service which draws its recruits from the popular day schools of the country. I allude to what may be called the inferior portion of the service, including the Excisemen in the Inland Revenue, the Letter Carriers and Sorters in the Post Office, the Tidewaiters and Weighers in the Customs, and the whole force of messengers and similar officials wherever they may be found. The plan of Sir C. Trevelyan, it is well known, embraces the entire Civil Service; his recommendation being, that all vacancies in junior situations, whether clerkships or more subordinate positions, should be filled up by the successful competitors in the examinations adapted to the respective offices. The argument of the Report, however, is evidently applied more particularly to competitions for clerkships, and to the best means of attracting to the public service the more highly educated portion of the youth of this country--those in fact who obtain their instruction in the public endowed schools, and other efficient schools for the middle classes. If, however, I rightly understand the object of this conference, it is to discover the best means of making really effective the education given in what may be called our popular day schools, such as those connected with the National and British and Foreign Societies, and with various religious bodies. It has, therefore, seemed desirable to limit VOL. XI. NO. 131, N.s. 3 с the scope of this paper to the inferior situations already mentioned; and I propose to ask with respect to these situations, whether the plan of filling them up by competition would not be attended by very considerable benefit, in the first place to the Civil Service itself, and, in the second place, to the cause of popular education and advancement. I put the Civil Service first, and education second in this inquiry, because, while yielding to no one in a desire for the promotion of the latter, I certainly concur most strongly with the opinion, that whatever alterations may be made in the Civil Service should be made with a primary reference to the interests of the Civil Service itself, and that no change, however fertile in other social advantages, can be justified, unless it be advantageous, or at least not detrimental, to the service which is made the subject of it. It will, consequently, I fear, be necessary to trouble the meeting with a few remarks upon this point; but I hope to be able to show that a system of competitions for the posts referred to, while giving a great impulse to education, would, so far from being hurtful or even merely innocuous to the Civil Service, tend greatly to promote its efficiency. But first, let us try and gain a clear idea of the number, nature, and value of the situations proposed for competition. From the estimates for the financial year 1856-7, we collect the following numbers, or approximations, referring to the whole of the United Kingdom : Excise Officers Sorters, Letter Carriers, and Mail Guards, exclusive of Rural Tidewaiters and Weighers Packers, &c. Messengers, Porters, Watchmen, Gatekeepers, Stampers, 3,310 5,079 2,952 1,277 making a total of 12,618. From the same source we may ascertain pretty nearly what are the emoluments derivable from these situations. The amounts vary according to circumstances and localities, being, as respects the Customs and Post Office, higher in London than elsewhere, and in the large towns than in the rural districts, The salaries of Excise Officers, however, are the same all over the country. Taking the London scale as to the others, the average emoluments of the various classes may, perhaps, be fairly stated as follows: For country appointments, a deduction of, perhaps, ten per cent. should be made with respect to all but Excise Officers, who enter at about £80 a year, rising to £85 or £90 in about two years, and to £100 in two years more. The annual number of vacancies occurring in the ranks of these officers may probably be stated at about 700 or 800, that being the number of certificates granted in a year by the Civil Service Commissioners. There is, indeed, a considerable number of less valuable appointments, for which, probably, some sort of competition might be beneficially established; but I propose to confine attention to those enumerated, as the necessity for some examination of the persons nominated to them is admitted by the fact that they are already subject to a test examination, conducted by the Civil Service Commissioners. |