It was a fair summary of the opposing interests which clashed during the progress of the Bill through the House. _Punch's_ impatience is shown in the further cartoon "Obstructives." "Those people" are a group of clerics of various Churches blocking the school doorway. A fortnight later _Punch_ was able to announce in his "Essence of Parliament" that the very qualified compulsion proposed by Parliament had been approved by large majorities, and to publish his third cartoon on the solving of the problem. Master Forster (with his slate) is saying to Britannia, the Schoolmistress, "Please, M'm, I've done it, M'm." And when Britannia asks, "And _how_ have you done it, William?" he replies, "Please, M'm, I've reduced all the fractions to the lowest common denomination." To this is added the stage direction "The good Boy enters the Cabinet." The Bill passed through both Houses, and when Parliament rose on August 10 and the Queen's Speech made special reference thereto, _Punch_ comments, "Excuse us, your Majesty, but permit us to say 'Hooray!' and to add a cheer for Mr. Forster." He welcomed a measure which affirmed the principle that the State was bound to provide gratuitous instruction for all the children in the realm, but resented the educational luxuries which leading "Educationalists" were anxious to introduce. So we find a burlesque list of these fancy subjects, including hieroglyphics, croquet, bézique, etiquette, given in the following year with the remark: "There are people old-fashioned enough to think that it might be as well to give our poor neglected children only plain joints at first--the 3 R's--and let the _entrées_ stand over for the present." The introduction of the "Fourth R"--Religion--prompted the "Educational Epigram" a year later:-- Milk is for babes, wrote one that knew. Sectarian Educators, you Who dogmas teach which Doctors question, Are you not giving babes strong meat, So much too tough for them to eat The upshot must be indigestion? [Illustration: THE CONSCIENCE CLAUSE RECTOR'S WIFE: "And what's your father, my boy?" BOY: "My father's a 'Hagitator,' an' he says he won't have me learnt no catechism, 'r else you'll all of yer 'ear of it!"] In the following summer we have a picture by Charles Keene of a beery working man protesting against temperance propagandism at schools, and resolving to withdraw his small son from the reach of these subversive doctrines, while humorous capital is made out of the "Conscience Clause" at the expense of the "agitator." The provision of gratuitous meals to elementary school children was not yet even mooted, but _Punch_ strongly supported the philanthropists who in 1867 gave weekly dinner parties in Marylebone to seven or eight hundred children, following the example set by Victor Hugo during his sojourn in Guernsey.