ABSTRACT
WHEN Matthew Arnold first commanded the State to organize its secondary education, the endowed grammar schools, in company with the private schools, were still providing the only form of secondary education available to the middle or working classes. They had been rescued from the state of financial insecurity and educational inefficiency in which the Schools Inquiry Commission had found them in 1867, by the efforts of the Endowed Schools Commission. This body, claims Lowndes, 'displayed such energy in its handling of moribund or misapplied endowments that it had become unpopular with a section of the Tories. These, on Disraeli's accession to power in 1874, secured the dismissal of Lord Lyttelton and Mr. Roby, two of the paid commissioners, and the submergence of the functions of the Commission in those of the Charity Commission, a Government Department which could be trusted to repress its enthusiasm.' 1
