Letter to Earl Granville on the proposed Lancashire system for Canadian schools: With an introduction and appendix, containing joint-stock companies' system for British schools

Overview
William Edward Hickson’s 1869 tract addresses Earl Granville, then Colonial Secretary, to challenge proposals to transplant a “Lancashire system” of elementary schooling to Canada. Drawing on English experience in industrial counties, Hickson contends that rate-aided, denominationally managed schooling entrenches sectarian rivalry, fragments administration, and impedes rapid, economical expansion. He couples this critique with a constructive alternative: an outline for chartered, regulated joint-stock companies to supply school accommodation under public standards, a mechanism he believes better suited to both Britain’s factory districts and Canada’s dispersed, fast-growing communities.

Context and purpose
Writing in the first years after Canadian Confederation, Hickson frames education as a nation-making instrument that must not be captured by church or party. The Lancashire arrangements he targets grew out of England’s “voluntary” school tradition, patched with local rates and grants, and administered by committees often organized along sectarian lines. To endorse such a model for Canada, he argues, would be to export the very causes of English controversy at the moment the Dominion needs unity, equal access, and uniform standards.

Critique of the Lancashire model
Hickson depicts Lancashire schooling as a cautionary mosaic: overlapping committees; funding dependent on subscriptions, patronage, and fluctuating rates; and governance prone to doctrinal gatekeeping. He stresses three practical defects. First, inequality: districts with affluent patrons and strong sectarian networks prosper, while others languish. Second, inefficiency: duplicative denominational provision wastes scarce capital and depresses teacher pay and training. Third, instability: reliance on charitable moods and local factions makes planning uncertain, especially in new or transient populations. Beyond administration, he warns that embedding creed within publicly aided instruction creates permanent political fault lines, inviting endless contests over catechism, inspection, and control.

Principles for Canadian schooling
For Canada’s mixed populations and wide geography, Hickson urges a clear separation of creed from the common school curriculum. The state’s duty is to secure literacy, numeracy, and civic knowledge under a uniform code, with religion taught by families and churches outside the publicly aided day. He favors strong inspection, trained teachers, transparent finance, and a funding formula that follows pupils rather than sects. While respecting colonial self-government, he cautions the Colonial Office against conferring imperial prestige on any denominational template, lest it bind new provinces to English disputes.

The joint-stock companies’ system
In the appended scheme for Britain, Hickson proposes a market-assisted but publicly regulated mechanism to accelerate school supply. Chartered joint-stock companies would raise capital to build and maintain schools where need is demonstrated, earning capped dividends from modest fees and state capitation grants tied to attendance and results under rigorous inspection. Governance would be secular, with open admission and a prescribed common curriculum; religious instruction, if any, would be voluntary and separate from the school’s funded core. By mobilizing private capital under public rules, he aims to overcome the slow pace of charitable subscriptions and the distortions of sectarian rivalry, enabling rapid expansion in fast-growing towns and new settlements alike.

Significance and tone
Hickson writes as a practical reformer: empirical in diagnosis, wary of doctrinal capture, and focused on scale, economy, and fairness. His letter urges Granville to treat Canadian education not as a field for ecclesiastical accommodation but as a national infrastructure project requiring neutral governance, stable finance, and enforceable standards. The accompanying joint-stock plan offers a scalable tool to meet those ends, whether in Britain’s industrial counties or across Canada’s emerging communities.