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THE GOVERNMENT AND EDUCATION…

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THE GOVERNMENT AND EDUCATION IN WALES. Most genial, and even enthusiastic, was the gathering at Captain Verney's beautiful residence -Rhianva-on Tuesday week. The gallant gentleman and Mrs. Verney had very kindly invited the "Liberal Hundred" of Anglesey to dine with them on that day, and to meet the Right Honourable A. J. Mundella, vice-president of the Committee of Council on Education, and other distinguished guests. Not the least happy part of the arrangement was the visit of the vice- president of the Committee of Council on Education at a time when higher education is the one paramount theme in Wales, and the right honourable gentleman's remarks are calculated to strengthen the hope of the Welsh people that this great requirement of theirs is being seriously and earnestly taken up by the Government. Indeed, Mr. Mundella observed to his audience that he could not tell them how deep an interest the Prime Minister took in all questions affecting Wales, or how warm a place the Principality bad in the heart of Mr. Gladstone." He also added that Mr. Gladstone, like other members of the Government^ was most anxious that the question of intermediate education for Wales should receive early attention at the hands of Parliament. These sentiments were cheered to the echo, as well they might be. Of course, the right hon. gentleman had to remind us that the great hindrance in the way of dealing with the question at once was the more urgent question affecting Ireland. Let this be once got out of the way, and there is no doubt, from what Mr. Mundella has told us, that the great need of Wales will have the very earliest possible attention from the present Government. Inde- pendently of the greatness of the boon to the Principality, when it shall come, the very thought, as the principal of Bangor College remarked, that Wales at the present time is taken notice of, as it should be, and not as existing in a small corner as a part and parcel of the United Kingdom, but as having a separate political existence of its own, and as having requirements distinctively different from those of other parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland, sent a thrill of joy through the hearts of the inhabitants of the Principality. As an instance of this, Mr. Mundella, later on in the proceedings, announced, to the satisfaction of every one present, that Mr. Wm. W illiams, (of Swansea College, we presume), whom the right hon. gentleman characterised as a learned and erudite Welshman, had been appointed Educational Inspector for the whole of Wales. Previous Governments never entertained a thought of Wales, and the prominent attention given to it must be a source at once of pride and satisfaction to every Welshman who has the true progress of his country at heart. It is true, as Mr. Mundella observed, that we have now the advantage of the Elementary Education Act of 18/0 in nearly every parish in Wales, but equally true it is that there is "a great blank between elementary and intermediate education, there being only about one in every thousand of the population attending grammar or advanced schools." "The reason for this," added Mr. Mundella, "was because there was very few endowments." Many of the Grammar Schools are ill adapted or badly situated, and the governing bodies, according to Welsh ideas, were 'close. Meanwhile it is a matter of joy to all Wales that the vice-president should have been able to assure his audience that he himself was surprised to find that the Welsh children bad taken a higher per- centage of passes than those in England, and that the grant for Wales was the heavier of the two countries. And be it remembered that this excellence was attained under great disadvantages. "I know," said Mr. Mundella, that the Welsh children laboured under the disadvantages and difficulty of learning in what is to them a foreign tongue, and yet after all they took a higher standard than the average made by English boys and girls." Had the vice-president been a Welshman, he might have been suspected of putting rather more colour than was necessary on this pleasant picture; but Mr. Mundella is not a Welshman, as our readers are aware, and his testimony, being thoroughly impartial, is on that account all the more satisfactory and pleasant.

Y SASSIWN.

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