This change had of course the effect of sweeping away the old system of electing educational authorities _ad hoc_. This seems to have struck many people as a flagrant piece of injustice, an impudent repudiation of democracy, and a shameless invasion of popular rights. It is difficult to understand why. A County or Borough Council is fully as democratic a body as a School Board, if democratic be taken to mean elected by popular suffrages. And if it is seriously contended that a body ought to be specially elected to deal with education alone, because the issues at a general municipal election may be confused, why not carry the principle further and have _ad hoc_ bodies for each branch of local activity? Indeed why should the principle be applied only to local affairs? Why not elect a separate Parliament to deal with foreign affairs, another to deal with Colonial matters, another to deal with social reform and so on? The fact is that the much vaunted _ad hoc_ principle never had any real existence. It is not contained, as Nonconformists and Radicals seem to imagine either in the Bible or in Magna Charta; it is no part of the Natural Rights of Man or the Social Contract or even of the British Constitution. It is nothing but the last relic of a thoroughly discredited system of local government. The framers of the Education Act of 1870 themselves knew of no such principle. They created _ad hoc_ bodies to deal with education, simply because government was then so undeveloped in this country that there was no other body to which it could be entrusted. County Councils did not then exist; the Local Government Act of 1889, which like the Education Act of 1902 we owe to a Tory government, had not yet been passed. Over the greater part of England there was no democratic local government at all. Therefore it was necessary to create a stop-gap authority to deal with education. Similarly there were in the earlier part of the century innumerable other _ad hoc_ bodies, entrusted with the duties of lighting the streets, making public improvements, etc., but they have all been swept away and their powers absorbed by county, borough, town, district or parish council. In course of time it was inevitable that the obsolete School Boards should follow them into the limbo of rejected experiments. It now only remains for Parliament to complete its work by abolishing our hopeless and discredited Boards of Guardians.