ABSTRACT
Before Gladstone introduced his famous Bill for Irish Church Disestablishment on March 1, 1869, some of the lines on which his Government proposed to work were already clear. Forster had brought in a measure which set up Endowed Schools Commissioners competent to turn to better use the three thousand and more school endowments over fifty years old and not dealt with under another scheme for modernising the teaching and organisation of the great “Public Schools.” George Odger’s campaign for Southwark created a very considerable stir in politics between October 1869 and February 1870. Both the “Land Question” and that of “Labour Representation” were far outdistanced in immediate political importance by the “Education Question” as propounded by a Radical Education League. A great advance in the public provision of elementary education was recognised as inevitable, and the Education League pressed that the opportunity should be taken to provide “unsectarian” education free in the public elementary schools.
