r'^"^<---rr^;*'%^ 
 
 
 W 
 
 
 ;:^^ 
 
 sS^'^ 
 
 
 
 w^ 
 
 
 
 /:.L S * ... .'« 
 
 
 
 
 
 '>i^i-
 
 
 ON 
 
 ^>/^. 
 
 SCHOOL EATES 
 
 IN 
 
 ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 
 
 BY THE VENERABLE 
 
 JOHN SINCLAIR, M.A., 
 
 ARCHDEACON OF MIDDLESEX, VICAR OF KENSINGTON, TREASURER OF THE 
 NATIONAL SOCIETV, ETC. * 
 
 " To establish a School Rate is a very serious measure ; for if the rate becomes unpopular, w hat 
 are you to do ? Voluntary subscriptions will iu the mean time have died out, and tlius you may 
 be stranded altogether." 
 
 Henry late Marquis qf Lansdoume, TA)rd President, d-c. 
 
 FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 LONDON: 
 THE NATIONAL SOCIETY'S DEPOSITORY, 
 
 SANCTUARY, WESTMINSTKR. 
 18G7. 
 
 Price Fomypnce.
 
 LONDON : PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREST, 
 AND CHARING CROSS.
 
 PREFACE, 
 
 The following Kemarks were originally printed as a Letter to 
 Earl Granville, then President of the Committee of Council on 
 Education. The author, having afterwards corrected and en- 
 larged them, published two editions in the form of a Charge to 
 the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of Middlesex. If is hoped that 
 a fourth edition, not addressed exclusively to the Clergy, may 
 be useful in the approaching crisis of National Education. 
 
 Vicarage, Kensington, 
 
 15th February, 1807.
 
 uiuc r ^ 
 
 ^■'crvfi 
 
 J-
 
 REMARKS ON SCHOOL RATES. 
 
 While the Committee of Council are urgently enforcing, and 
 the promoters of Church education throughout the country are 
 strenuously resisting, the insertion of Conscience Clauses in the 
 trust deeds of Church schools, a movement is in progress, which, 
 if successful, would ultimately remove this ground of quarrel 
 altogether, by superseding the present system of elementary 
 education. I refer to the movement in favour of school rates. 
 
 A school rate, although dangerous in any form, is not always 
 equally alarming to the ratepayers. Its promoters, therefore, 
 will propose it under the modifications best adapted to con- 
 ciliate favour and to disarm opposition. Those among them 
 who are at all inspired with the wisdom of this world will say to 
 cue another, " We must not attempt at once to abolish school 
 fees and voluntary contributions, and to impose the whole burden 
 of educating nearly two millions of children upon the rateable pro- 
 perty of the country. Such a scheme would have no prospect of 
 success. It would be immediately set aside. We must proceed 
 more plausibly and warily. Our bill must be permissive only; 
 it must sanction the imposition of a rate only in parishes or 
 districts where the majority of the ratepayers are in favour of 
 the measure ; for many will not perceive that a merely permis- 
 sive bill will not eifect the object in view, and that to make 
 education universal, compulsory legislation is indispensable. 
 Again, we must confine our proposal to a siihsidiary rate in aid 
 of voluntary contributions ; for not a few will fail to discover, 
 before it is too late, that if once a school rate is established, 
 voluntary efforts will decline ; and the rate required wiU not
 
 6 ON SCHOOL RATES 
 
 amount to thousands merely, but to millions. And further, we 
 must propose that, in order to* secure religious teaching, the 
 ratepayers shall be excluded from the management of tlie 
 schools assisted. For the religious world, not being remarkable 
 for sagacity, will not at once discover that such a scheme is 
 nothing more than a " devout imagination," and that those who 
 pay for the support of schools cannot be prevented from con- 
 trolling the expenditure^of their own money. 
 
 Such is the kind of rating bill which the wisdom of this 
 world would naturally suggest. For my own part, I entirely 
 concur in the opinion ably stated by the late Vice-President, 
 that to demand money from the ratepayers, and, at the same 
 time, to witlihold from them all control over the outlay, is un- 
 reasonable and impracticable. The result is obvious. Since 
 the ratepayers hold contradictory religious opinions, dissensions 
 on this new ground of quarrel must arise in nearly all the 
 parishes of the kingdom — dissensions far more intolerable than 
 those produced by Church rates — dissensions only to be appeased 
 by the entire withdrawal of religion from the curriculum of 
 elementary schools in England, as is the case in America. 
 tSolitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant* 
 
 I am well aware that the idea of any Government proposing, 
 or of any Parliament acceding to a school rate in any form, is 
 looked upon by many as a mere phantasy. The religious 
 bodies, it is alleged, would unite in opposing it as dangerous to 
 religion. The rate-payers, we are assured, would resist it as 
 nothing less than an enormous confiscation of rateable property. 
 
 * When I wiis in the United States, I visited a school in which all the 
 apparatns was of the most costly description, and the proficiency of the children, 
 in all tlie ordinary branches of secular knowledge, was unexceptionable. Having 
 complimented the master on his success, I inquired what course he took with 
 refi'rence to religion. His answer was to this eftect : *' On my appointment to the 
 school, I resolved to give religious knowledge along with secular teaching ; but I 
 found it would not do. I got snubbed for my pains. Our managers belong to 
 various denominations. One took me to tttsk, and then another, until at last I 
 gave in." " Do you then," I asked, " give no religious instruction at all ? " He 
 replied : "What I do is this : wlien any boy is guilty of a fault, I give him a good 
 jobation ; I can do that w ith perfect safely."
 
 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 7 
 
 I suspect, liowever, that the danger is more serious than the 
 supporters of the present system generally imagine. Indeed? 
 their false security is in itself a source of peril. It leads them, 
 not only to do nothing themselves, but to discourage others 
 from doing anything to avert the threatened mischief. 
 
 The first attempt to introduce a rating system in this country 
 was made by Sir James Graham in the Factories Kegulation 
 Bill of 1842. Since that time no fewer than five measures of 
 the same kind liave been proposed — viz., the Manchester Bill, 
 the Borough Bill of 1852, and the three bills of Lord John 
 Kussell, Sir John Pakington, and Mr. Cobden in 1855. Eecently 
 preparation has been made for the introduction of a seventh 
 school-rate bill in the next session of Parliament. The meeting 
 for that purpose was held at Manchester on the 10th of Decem- 
 ber, 18G6, under the presidency of the Mayor, when the following 
 resolution was carried by a large majority : — " That in the 
 opinion of this meeting it is desirable to make complete pro- 
 vision for the primary instruction of the children^of the poorer 
 classes, by means of local rates, under local administration, with 
 legal power, in cases of neglect, to enforce attendance at school." 
 On this occasion there were present representatives of both the 
 educational parties known, respectively, in Manchester for many 
 years past as the supporters of the merely secular plan, and as 
 promoters of the Manchester and Salford scheme for uniting 
 secular teaching with religious education ; both parties now 
 assenting to the agency of local rates. 
 
 To these advocates of a rating system must be added the 
 Royal Commissioners, appointed to inquire into the state of 
 popular education, who in their Report presented to her ]\lajesty 
 in 1861, recommend the establishment of a school rate. They 
 advise, however, that it should not be levied on parishes, but 
 form part of the county rate, in the fond hope of thus preventing 
 the interference of the ratepayers with the expenditure of their 
 own money. 
 
 I have next to mention the great body of Radical Reformers 
 who openly declare, that among the chief benefits to be derived
 
 8 ON SCHOOL RATES 
 
 by the working classes from their admission, in preponderating 
 numbers, to the franchise, is the substitution of a "just, sound^ 
 and truly national system of education" for the "miserable 
 compromise," the "tentative," "provisional," and "preliminary" 
 arrangements, the " pretence," the " sham," the " makeshift," 
 now palmed upon the country by the Committee of Council and 
 the religious bodies. These views, promulgated by Mr. Bright, 
 Mr. Stuart Mill, Mr. Milner Gibson, Professor Fawcett, Mr. 
 Ernest Jones, and many others, deserve more consideration 
 from Conservative statesmen and legislators than they have 
 hitherto received.* 
 
 It is a startling fact, which we learn from the evidence given 
 before the Koyal Commissioners and Sir John Pakington's 
 Committee, that many of the authorities at the Privy Council 
 Office, both past and present, including even their able Secretary 
 himself, have acknowledged their aversion to the system which 
 they are appointed to administer, and their readiness to super- 
 sede it by school rates. 
 
 I must not overlook a very numerous body who advocate 
 school rates as the only remedy for the evils caused by Trades 
 Unions. They dwell on the impracticability of the rules wliich 
 Trades Unions are endeavouring to establish, on the ignorance 
 which those rules betray of the very alphabet of political 
 economy, and on the prevalence of wanton and ruinous strikes : 
 and they contend that it is only by a better system of national 
 education that the ruin of trade in this country can be arrested. 
 In vain do we remind these hasty reasoners that in Scotland 
 strikes are more frequent and more obstinate than in England 
 and Wales, although Scotland has for centuries enjoyed a 
 system of education which used to be held up as an example to 
 
 * Mr. Gibson, addressing his constituents at Asliton-undor-Lyne, on the 29th of 
 Jitnuary, 18G7, said, " If he were asked what were the advantages to be gained by 
 Reform, he should answer tliat there were many important questions that could be 
 better dealt with by a reformed Parliament than by the present House of 
 Commons — amongst others, the question of national education. If we had a 
 system of national education supported by all, it should be one from which all 
 could derive advantage, and therefore it shoidd be devised by a Parliament in 
 which all were fairly represented.'"
 
 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 9 
 
 this country. In vain do we remind them, that Trades Unions 
 are thoroughly organised in the United States of America, in 
 spite of the highly-lauded common-school system, and that 
 according to recent advices, "there has been a perfect mania 
 at New York and Brooklyn on the subject of strikes. The 
 painters, the harness-makers, musicians, lightermen, longshore- 
 men, carpenters, masons, plasterers, plumbers, all sorts and con- 
 ditions of men, followed the example of the car-drivers, and 
 generally attained the same measure of ill luck for themselves 
 and their wives and children. The community would be 
 startled," says the * New York Times,* " if they knew the vast 
 numbers of unemployed men, the sick-hearted women, the hungry, 
 shivering children that are at this time in the City of New 
 York." But the strongest evidence of blindness in the parties 
 I refer to, is that we in vain appeal to the experience of 
 England itself, to demonstrate the inefficiency of intellectual 
 culture as a preventive of strikes. The Amalgamated Engineers 
 are intellectually as well instructed as the working classes are 
 likely to become under any educational system ; and yet by 
 their turbulence, their impracticability, and their repeated 
 strikes, they have succeeded in depriving themselves of the 
 monopoly which they recently enjoyed of their own branch of 
 industry — a monopoly never to be re-established ; they are 
 rapidly transferring their trade to foreign lands, and yet so in- 
 corrigible is their infatuation, so completely are they enslaved 
 by demagogues and agitators, that even now, at the eleventh hour, 
 they are as turbulent and unruly as ever. It is to no purpose 
 that we adduce this accumulated evidence. There are persons 
 so completely demonstration proof as to insist, notwithstanding, 
 that the only remedy for the suicidal policy of our working 
 classes is to sweep away our existing educational arrange- 
 ments, and to indoctrinate our artizans in early life, under a 
 rating system, with the principles of Quesnel and Adam Smith. 
 I have only now to add that many persons are disposed to 
 look upon a school rate with favour, in consequence of having 
 been led to believe that the number of parishes in which there
 
 10 ON SCHOOL RATES 
 
 is no school receiving a Government grant, amounts to 11,024. 
 The basis of this startling statement is the Report of the 
 Committee of Council for 1863-4. And it is a statement held 
 up to us as of unquestionable authority. It has formed the 
 groundwork, as regards statistics, of Mr. Walter's motion on 
 education, of numerous speeches by members of both Houses of 
 Parliament, of leading articles in leading newspapers, of printed 
 letters without end, of reference by the House of Commons on 
 the appointment of Sir John Pakington's Committee, as well as 
 of a draft report by the Chairman himself. But tlie statement 
 is founded on a gross mistake committed at the Council Office. 
 By *' Parishes " we should naturally understand parishes or 
 ecclesiastical districts which might be expected to have separate 
 schools. But, strange to say, the word " Parish " in the lieport 
 means a Poor-law division or township, of which there are 
 14,877, that is, 1114 more than the whole number of parishes 
 and ecclesiastical districts. To this fundamental error must be 
 added otlier mistakes which I have no room fully to expose.* 
 When, however, it is stated that there are 11,024 parishes 
 which are not, but ought to be, assisted by Government, we 
 have to deduct 405 parishes, consisting of five houses or even 
 fewer ; also parishes in which the school is endowed ; parishes 
 in which a wealtliy proprietor is jealous of State interference ; 
 parishes in which a competent master carries on an adventure 
 school ; and parishes so near each other that one school supplies 
 the wants of two or three. Happily the erroneous statistics of 
 the Council Office will be corrected by the decennial enquiry 
 which will be completed this year by the National Society. 
 As this enquiry is conducted by secretaries of great ability and 
 experience in statistics, its results will be deserving of entire 
 confidence. I rejoice to state that the returns already obtained 
 
 * There are, for instance, no fewer than 4347 out of the whole niimbt-r of town- 
 ship parishes, which do not coincide in respect of area or population with the 
 ecclesiastical parishes, and on account of which, therefore, a large deduction must 
 be made. See two very able letters published in the * Standard ' newspajier of 
 December 25, 186G, and January 7, 18G7, by the Kev. C. A. Stevens, incumbent of 
 All Saints', Blackheath, and lately Secretary of the United Education Committee.
 
 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 11 
 
 are Higlily satisfactory; and since a case of supposed neglect on 
 the part of the landowners and Clergy of the County of Berks 
 has recently called forth a burst of indignation from a prominent 
 Reformer, I hope it will restore his mental equilibrium to be 
 informed that, according to the returns just obtained, the whole 
 Diocese of Oxford, including not only Berkshire, but Oxfordshire 
 and Buckinghamshire, contains only 54 parishes unprovided with 
 Church schools, and of these only 13 are in Berkshire.* 
 
 The readiness with which many persons allow themselves to 
 be prejudiced against the present educational system is the 
 more surprising when we consider how the system originated, 
 and how^ many conflicting recommendations it most happily 
 combines. It was not devised in its present form by any party 
 in the State or in the Church. It has been gradually deve- 
 loped ; it is the result of much discussion, controversy, and 
 negotiation ; the rival interests of Churchmen and Dissenters, 
 of Protestants and Romanists, were to be reconciled; intel- 
 lectual was to be combined with spiritual progress ;• secular with 
 religious instruction. The system thus gradually elicited, al- 
 though, no doubt, susceptible of improvement, combines the most 
 important requisites by which a national system could be recom- 
 mended. It makes a very moderate demand on the national 
 resources ; it acts fairly towards all Christian communions, 
 helping all in proportion as they are willing to help themselves ; 
 it is conducted by the very persons, wdiether Churchmen or 
 Dissenters, who take the greatest share of interest in the intel- 
 lectual and spiritual advancement of the people ; it is making 
 rapid progress in the extent and efficiency of its operations ; 
 and, if liberally and judiciously encouraged by the State, 
 would gradually supply the wants of our whole population. 
 
 The total number of children in England and Wales, between 
 three and fifteen years of age, was in 1851, 4,908,696, and may 
 be assumed, on the authority of the Registrar-General, to have 
 
 * Of the 54 parishes, 9 are returned as being united with others for school pur- 
 poses; and in many of the remaining parishes the population is too small to 
 require schools or any beyond private adventure " dames' schools.*'
 
 12 ON SCHOOL RATES 
 
 in;Teased since the census of that year to 5,350,000. Making 
 all necessary dediictioua, we may estimate the whole number 
 who ought to be in attendance at National and other elemen- 
 tary schools at 1,800,000. According to the returns made to 
 the National Society in 1856-7, the number of week-day scholars 
 in Church schools alone was 1,187,086. And it appeared that 
 the increase, during the ten preceding years, was 955,865, or 
 at the rate of 19 J per cent.* 
 
 Under these circumstances, it might have been hoped that 
 statesmen and legislators, and still more that clergymen, would 
 be entirely satisfied. It might have been hoped that, to the 
 best of their judgment and ability, they would endeavour to 
 uphold and advance these auspicious arrangements, and be pre- 
 pared to put aside at once, as mischievous and delusive, any 
 proposed measure calculated to supersede them. But unhappily 
 this is not the case. Our present system, as we have seen, has 
 many powerful assailants. The proportions, certainly, of the 
 edifice are not critically symmetrical. Being the result of 
 compromise and concession among the several builders, it 
 presents, of necessity, great anomalies. Being not compulsory, 
 but allowing free scope to all parties, it falls short of theoretical 
 perfection. Enthusiasts, therefore, and severe disciplinarians, 
 disparage and despise itj They look down upon it as a homely, 
 
 * The progress of education in this country has been most rapid. In 1803 the 
 proportion of scholars to the total population was 1 to 17J ; in 1818 it was 1 to 
 17J; in 1833 it was 1 to llj; in 1851, at the time of the census, it was 1 
 to 8*36 ; and tlic recent Statistical Inquiry of the Education Commission proves 
 that in 1858 the proportion had become 1 to 7*7. 
 
 Compared with the educational statistics of Prussia, Holland, and France, those of 
 our own country cannot be pronounced unsatisfactory. In England the proportion 
 of scholars to the population is, as stated above, 1 to 7*7 ; in Holland it is 1 to 
 8*11 ; in France it is 1 to 9; in Prussia it is rather higher than in England, 
 namely, 1 to 6"27 ; but m Prussia education is compulsory. The progress of 
 Churcli education in particular has been romarlcably rapid. During the period 
 between 1837 and 1857, the number of scholars in Church "Week-day Schools had 
 risen from 558,180 to 1,187,086. The greatest number of children likely to attend 
 National Schools and other elementary schools of a similar class is 1,800,000. 
 
 t Mr. Bright, addressing his follow townsmen at Rochtlale, on the 30th of 
 January, 1867, said, "Take the education question. You will hardly talk to 
 a man in the House of Commons who will not tell you that education is a great
 
 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. !.'> 
 
 native production, twisted into conformity with our national 
 character and social peculiarities ; and would give the preference 
 to some magnificent exotic, transplanted full-grown fi'om the 
 neighbouring continent or from America. 
 
 Among the chief arguments in favour of school rates is the 
 often-repeated assertion that the wisdom of our brethren on the 
 other side of the Atlantic has solved the great problem which 
 hitherto has baffled us on this side ; — that schools for the use of 
 all, or " common schools," should be placed under local manage- 
 ment and supported by local rates ; that since the ratepayers are 
 of different religious persuasions, the instruction of the children 
 should be restricted to secular matters ; and that religious 
 education, if given at all, should be given at extra hours, or 
 on Sundays, or by the parents at home. 
 
 As the common schools of the United States are seldom men- 
 tioned or alluded to in England, except by persons who hold 
 them up as models for our imitation, a notion widely prevails 
 that the system is almost universally approved of in America ; 
 that not a single voice worth attending to is raised against 
 it ; that the secular instruction is admirable ; and that the want 
 of religious teaching on week days is abundantly supplied on 
 Sundays or at home. 
 
 1. My first remark, therefore, on the American common 
 schools is, that the secular instruction they afford deserves to 
 a great extent the commendation it receives. I admire the 
 liberality with which school-rooms, class-rooms, salaries, books, 
 and school apparatus of all kinds are supplied. It forms a 
 noble contrast to the miserable parsimony which too frequently 
 betrays itself in the provisions we, of this country, are content 
 to make for the education of the poor. The legislatures of 
 many States, especially in New England, seem determined 
 that no child shall grow up without opportunity to acquire the 
 
 question, and admit that very little has been done, and that what has been done 
 has been done awkwardly and expensively, and that something more is required. 
 But I do not believe that it is in the power of any Government to pass any decent 
 or satisfactory measure through that House."
 
 14 ON SCHOOL HATES 
 
 key of kii(3wledge. I do not affirm that all children, even in 
 New England, do actually acquire it ; but only that to a large 
 extent they have the opportunity. For it would be a grievous 
 error to suppose that there are not in America, as in England 
 and Wales, many parents, especially immigrants from Europe, 
 who from indifference, from cupidity, or from indigence, cannot 
 be prevailed upon to send their children regularly to school. 
 There are also many, who, as I shall presently have occasion to 
 show, would not expose their children to the contaminating 
 influence of schools from ^vhich religion is excluded. 
 
 2. Another admission which I feel compelled to make, is the 
 necessity of the common-school system in the country of its 
 birth. Under the peculiar circumstances of the United States, 
 I do not see how the system could be dispensed with. The 
 attempt to establish denominational schools throughout the 
 length and breadth of a vast territory, where there is no ecclesi- 
 astical establishment, and where the population is divided into 
 an endless multiplicity of sects, the chief of which are almost 
 equally balanced in numbers and influence, would be obviously 
 impracticable. But the people must be educated. Universal 
 suffrage renders universal education imperative. Every in- 
 dividual voter must be able to read and write, and must possess 
 sufficient intelligence to be entrusted with the elective franchise. 
 It is also to be seriously considered, that not only English, but 
 Irish and German, not to mention Scandinavian immigrants, ai-e 
 known to settle in large numbers on the American continent. 
 Now these different nations must be fused together into one 
 homogeneous people ; and the great medium for such fusion is 
 the common school, in which children of various tongues and 
 races may be educated together. 
 
 A nation dwelling in the midst of another nation, with which 
 it has no social sympathies, but is utterly alien in habits, 
 language, and religion, presents one of the most intolerable evils 
 with which a country can be afflicted. We have a lamentable 
 example of this evil at no great distance from us. If the 
 common schools had done nothing more than lessen the in-
 
 IN ENGLAND AND AMEiaCA. 15 
 
 fluence of the Romish priesthood over the Irish immigrants, 
 and prepared the cliildren of Ireland to become American 
 citizens, they would have conferred a priceless benefit on 
 America. Among the evils with which that great republic has 
 to contend, there is none that more seriously imperils all its 
 best institutions than the turbulence, the corruption, and the 
 spirit of lawless combination, characteristic of the Irish Romanists 
 in the more populous cities of the American Union. It is gene- 
 rally admitted that but for the common schools that dangerous 
 class would have been more numerous and formidable than it is 
 by many hundred thousands, whose combined strength would 
 have been well nigh overwhelming.* 
 
 3. My next remark is, that our American brethren did not 
 spontaneously and all at once adopt the common-school system 
 in its present non-religious form. It was forced upon them. 
 They tried at first to reconcile a school rate with religious 
 education. And if it had been possible they would have 
 succeeded ; for they are a wise and understanding j^eople.^ But 
 when rates were established, the ratepayers of course insisted on 
 a share of the disposal of their own money, and in the manage- 
 ment of schools supported at their expense. A question arose 
 as to the religious teaching to be given ; then followed endless 
 jealousies and dissensions : various schemes of compromise were 
 tried. These invariably failed. The only method of restoring 
 peace was to remove entirely the source of quarrel, and to exile 
 religion altogether from the common school. I have myself 
 
 * The above remarks may be illustrated by the following apostrophe to Boman 
 Catholics in the Anniversary Address appended to the 29th Eeport of the 
 American Sunday School Union (p. 82), " You know, and we know, that what 
 you dread is not so much the Bible in the school, or the godlessness of the 
 common school, as its pure American spirit. Confess, Gentlemen, confess, that 
 the shoe pinches just there. But I insist that the children of your flocks shall 
 attend as American children. I know no Irishman ; I know no German ; I know 
 nothing here but American. Let the children of your enslaved and prejudiced 
 people mingle with those of freemen, study with them, read history with them, 
 catch their tone of manliness and thcii' sense of personal existence, personal 
 rights, and personal rcsiwnsibility ; and you may shut up yoiu* confessionals, and 
 extinguish your wax tapers around your altars, for soon there will be no one to 
 want them to see the sunlight with. t Deut. iv. 6.
 
 in ON SCHOOL RATES 
 
 received from an emiueiit ecclesiastic of Connecticut, in a letter 
 dated the 2nd of January, 1855, the following account of this 
 lamentable falling off: "In this State," he says, "it was once 
 the custom to teach in the ordinary sciiools the Westminster 
 Confession to the children of Congrogationalists, and the Church 
 Catechism to those of Churchmen. The divisions of the Con- 
 gregationalists, however, and the fact that many of them became 
 Methodists and Baptists, and sectaries of other names, resulted 
 in so wide-spread an indifference to matters of religion as to put 
 an end to this. So that now the only relic of this * thing of 
 old ' is the reading of the Bible, as an exercise in reading out 
 merely in the schools." 
 
 In the * Church Journal ' of New York, a paper conducted by 
 clerical editors of the highest respectability and intelligence, the 
 impossibility of teaching religion in schools supported by rates 
 is very forcibly illustrated. " We now further state," says 
 the Journal, "that this neglect of moral and religious in- 
 struction is a necessary consequence of a system where there 
 are so many persuasions participating in the instruction, all of 
 whose varying opinions must be respected. Each party is taxed 
 for the support of the system ; and each, however small, pro- 
 vided it be at all in earnest, pleads by the sacred rights of 
 conscience, for liberty of opinion, for protection from religious 
 bias : and thus every positive element of Christianity must be 
 sedulously excluded from common-school instruction. Is it not 
 so ? Consider for one moment. How is it possible to avoid the 
 questions of adult or infant baptism, predestination, grace and 
 good works, the corporeal or spiritual resurrection of the dead, 
 the sacraments, free-will, and necessity ? And yet these, and 
 perhaps more important points, must be avoided. To teach 
 that Jesus Christ was a mere Man, would not be endured by the 
 Presbyterians, Baptists, &c. ; and to instruct tlie school that 
 he was God-Man, and that he made atonement for sin on 
 the cross would not be endured by Unitarians ; for they not 
 only pay their taxes, but they live under institutions which 
 sacredly guard tlieir freedom of opinion. To teach that there
 
 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 17 
 
 is no judgment beyond the grave, no rigid retributive justice 
 in eternity for crime on earth, will not be tolerated by 
 the orthodox ; and that there will be such a retribution, 
 that the oath in courts of justice is supported by awful sanctions 
 derived from the future world, will not be brooked by Uni- 
 versalists ; for they live under a constitution which guarantees 
 freedom of religious opinion ; and besides, they plead by all the 
 sacredness of conscience against being compelled to pay for 
 a system which seeks to enforce upon their children what they 
 deem falsehood. 
 
 " The inculcation of the first day of the week as holy, is 
 resisted by Sabbatarians and Jews ; and to teach the seventh as 
 the one sacred day will no more be tolerated by others whose 
 rights of conscience are to be as sacredly respected. 
 
 " That the New Testament itself is true, must not be incul- 
 cated upon the Jewish children in our schools, and that the Old 
 Testament is to be credited, must not be impressed upon the 
 youth of the Free Thinkers, who are a no very small number in 
 these days. 
 
 " Now if a judgment and future retribution are to be ignored ; 
 if the resurrection of the body, and human responsibility, and 
 the sacredness of a judicial oath, and the observation of a day of 
 holy rest are to be unrecognised ; if the truth of the very 
 Scriptures is not to be affirmed ; how much of Christianity, 
 worthy of the name, remains wliich can be taught in our schools ? 
 Nay, God himself is as unknown, in the majority of them, as He 
 was in Athens when Paul visited Mars Hill. It is said, that 
 moral precepts can be inculcated in our schools. But what 
 are precepts without the sanctions of religion ? What are mere 
 prudential rules before the gusts of passion, or when assailed by 
 strong temptation ? What is chaff before a tempest ? 
 
 " This divorcement of religion from education was unknown 
 to our fathers. Washington's dying injunction was, * Never 
 allow education to be divorced from religion.' " 
 
 Thus far the New York Journal. Are we then to expect our 
 own statesmen to be more successful than those of all the 
 
 c
 
 18 . ON SCHOOL KATES 
 
 numerous States of North America in devising a scheme by 
 wliich school rates may be reconciled with religious education ? 
 I think lie will be a bold politician wlio pretends to accomplish 
 this, and they will be simple-minded auditors who should put 
 their trust in his pretensions. 
 
 It appears to me that Mr. James Simpson, an enthusiast for 
 exclusively secular instruction, evinced a praiseworthy con- 
 sistency in his evidence some years ago before a Committee of 
 the House of Commons, when he gravely stated that to him it 
 was a matter of indifference to what religious persuasion the 
 teachers of elementary schools belonged ; they might be 
 Christians or infidels, Jews or Mahommedans; for he would 
 establish a rule that any teacher who should so far forget his 
 duty as to utter a single word either for or against religion, 
 should be liable to immediate dismissal. 
 
 4. This leads me to my next remark, namely, the difficulty 
 of obtaining evidence against the common-school system of 
 the United States. Many Americans, who acknowledge its 
 deficiencies and dangers, insist notwithstanding on its neces- 
 sity. " We cannot," say they, " supersede it if we would, and 
 we should hesitate if we could. Serious as the evil is, the evils 
 resulting from its removal would be more serious still." A 
 northern Bishop, to whom I had applied for information, writes 
 to me : " I have liad to ivork rather than to write against this 
 state of things. Hence there is less to be, found in the way of 
 pamphlets and essays than might be imagined." A similar 
 remark was made to me by a Bishop whom I visited in one of 
 the Border States. At a meeting of the Diocesan Convention 
 of New Jersey, in 1858, the late able and energetic Bishop of 
 that diocese. Dr. Doane, gave this warning to his clergy: 
 " There are serious objections against taking the ground of 
 hostility to the common-school system. We cannot upset it.'' 
 Such is the opinion expressed by an authority, who would be 
 the very last to recommend without necessity a neutral attitude 
 in religion. Why should any American citizen, lay or clerical, 
 decry an institution which he neither can nor would iipset ? If
 
 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. • ID 
 
 I were myself an American I should probably be altogether 
 silent on the subject. I may add that, as a British subject, I 
 should at this moment be silent, if I did not know that silence 
 would be dangerous, and that our statesmen, under most erro- 
 neous impressions, may be led unadvisedly to introduce this 
 transatlantic institution into England and Wales, thereby 
 upsetting and destroying the admirable system which now 
 prevails. 
 
 If any countryman of mine took up a prejudice against some 
 British institution, — the Poor Law, for example, — and began to 
 tell me that it is a great social evil, that it destroys all habits 
 of forethought and frugality among the working classes, and 
 that it would be a better course to abolish the whole system, 
 and relieve the poor by parliamentary grants in aid of voluntary 
 contribution, I should remind this theoretical objector, that the 
 Poor Law is an established institution of the laud ; that he 
 cannot upset it ; and that his only course is to make the best of 
 it. I should tell him, that if a question were to ^rise as to the 
 expediency of introducing for the first time a poor law into 
 France, Germany, or America, his general objections to the 
 principle of the measure might possibly command respect, but 
 that in England they come too late, and are altogether out of 
 place. 
 
 5. The next point I would suggest for consideration is, that 
 the want of religious teaching in the common schools of America 
 on week days is not compensated by religious teaching upon 
 Sundays. On this point I may quote a very able work on the 
 United States, published in 1852, in London, by Hugh Seymour 
 Tremenheere, Esq., Her Majesty's Inspector of Mines. The 
 prepossessions of this intelligent observer were all in favour of 
 the common-school system; but the following propositions are 
 the result of much observation and inquiry. One proposition 
 is, that ten, twenty, thirty, forty, and in some places even fifty 
 per cent, of the children who attend the common schools on 
 week days, do not attend a Sunday school, and consequently do 
 not receive religious instruction in school at all. His other 
 
 c 2
 
 20 ON SCHOOL RATES 
 
 proposition is that "religions instrnction given in Snnday 
 schools by persons unaccustomed to teach, and usually not 
 trained to deal with the subject in the manner most capable of 
 presenting it in all its parts to the minds of children," is often 
 utterly ineffective. 
 
 Among the chief agencies in the United States for supplying 
 the deficiencies of the common-school system is the American 
 Sunday School Union, which labours with much energy and 
 ability in the cause. But the Keports of this Society contain 
 the bitterest lamentations over the increasing vice and irreligion 
 which it is in vain endeavouring to combat. In the 29th 
 Keport I find the following appeal: — "There must be more 
 money, thoughts, pains, and prayers bestowed upon the children, 
 or we shall find ignorance and irreligion will have the upper 
 hand."* And again, "It is one of the unsolved, perhaps 
 unsolvable problems of our time, that there should be such a 
 general conviction of the importance of the early training of 
 children, and, co-existent with it, such a general indifference at 
 least to one of the most effective means of accomplishing it." t 
 
 6. I pass on to remark next on the pernicious influence 
 which the professed neutrality of the common -school system 
 must exert upon the minds of children. On this subject I 
 may quote a valuable article in the ' Mercersburg Quarterly 
 Keview ' for January, 1853. The article forms the substance 
 of a sermon at the meeting of the Synod of the German 
 Keformed Church in October, 1852, at Baltimore, published 
 at the request of that body. It is therefore of high authority, 
 and represents the opinions, not merely of an individual, but 
 of a respectable conclave of divines, — German divines, and 
 therefore among the very last from whom the strong senti- 
 ments I am about to quote would be expected. "It is the 
 seemingly distant and careless attitude in which the common- 
 school system stands to the Church in the education of children, 
 which is so powerful in weaning their hearts from her. It is 
 
 * Page 30. t Page 35.
 
 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 21 
 
 not positive opposition, but negative indifference, which is the 
 root of the evil. It is in this, as in other cases, distance, coldness, 
 and carelessness, more than all else, that alienates the heart 
 from what it ought to love, and would love but for that. A 
 child weaned in early infancy, removed from its mother, 
 brought up among strangers, not permitted to hear her name 
 pronounced, except with the uplifted finger of caution, and 
 hearing that it is almost a crime to praise her virtues, — such a 
 child can never afterwards have all, if any, of the feelings which 
 belong to the relation of a child to its mother. It is just so 
 when we permit our children to be trained out of the Church, 
 where her name is not heard except in a way which implies 
 that she needs to be watched, and that her influence is espe- 
 cially to be deprecated in the nurture of man's intellectual 
 nature. Thus the Church is, in fact, a man of hideous face, 
 looking out upon children from the dark, filling their young 
 spirits with secret dread, and causing them to go as far as 
 possible the other way, for fear of hidden evil^ and just as 
 those superstitious fears which are awakened in the confiding 
 heart of childhood by thoughtless parents or injudicious nm-ses, 
 can be removed by neither reason nor philosophy, — so the 
 feeling of fear and jealousy toward religion which this false 
 system of education inspires, will present its repulsive images 
 before the spirit, in spite of its better judgment, to the latest 
 hour of life ! He that — or any system that — instils in the heart 
 of a child any fear but the fear of God, or raises any doubt or 
 dread but for that which is evil, has made wrong what he can 
 never make right. . . ." 
 
 It might well be expected that the practical result of thus 
 estranging children from religion would be disastrous. Ac- 
 cordingly, the German Preacher thus proceeds : — " Already 
 there are many parents who decline sending their children to 
 the common schools on account of the profanity, vulgarity, and 
 rudeness which are found to reign there." And again : " Chil- 
 dren learn from example before they can understand the 
 grounds and reasons of moral obligation : hence the injury they
 
 22 ON SCHOOL EATES 
 
 receive from the bad examples which are constantly before 
 them in common schools." Tlie Preacher afterwards informs 
 us that in 181 G a Committee ^vas appointed in Philadelphia to 
 inquire into the weak points of the system. '* They report," he 
 says, " that many children do not attend at all during the year, 
 though 22,000 dollars were spent to educate them. But this 
 is not the worst ; so bad was the character of these schools that, 
 *8ucli as were absent suffered less by their inattention than 
 many of those whose morals have been thus undesignedly 
 injured at the county expense.' But worse yet remains. * For,' 
 proceeds the Report, *in every view of the existing plan of 
 public education, witli which your Committee are furnished, 
 they are reluctantly and sorrowfully compelled to declare, that 
 from its first establishment to the present time, it has, in their 
 opinion, been not only injurious to the character of the rising 
 generation, but a benevolent fraud upon the public bounty.'" 
 " The patrons of this system," observes the German Preacher, 
 " forgot that educated mind without religion is educated vice ; 
 and that mind can only be stimulated to seek its improvement 
 by something higher, deeper, and more earnest than itself. Of 
 this truth they are reminded by the failure of the experiment." 
 Let us contrast with this lamentable picture the noble descrip- 
 tion given in the same sermon of the kind of school education 
 which both himself and the Synod he was addressing desired to 
 see established. "Hear then the conclusion of the whole 
 matter, and the sum of what we need and ask. Give us 
 Christian schools, schools which have a God, a Saviour, a 
 Holy Spirit, a Bible, a hymn-book, a catechism and prayer, 
 a pastor and pious school-teacher — a school between the family 
 and the Church, — a school which will carry forward the educa- 
 tion of cliildren in the same spirit in which it was commenced 
 by pious parents — a school that will be a nursery to the Church 
 — a school so entirely under the control of the Church, that it 
 may carry out the spirit of its great commission in reference to 
 its own childi-en, * Feed my lambs' " 
 
 I trust that in these words the great body of the clergy will
 
 IN ENGLAND AND AMEllICA. 23 
 
 recognize a description of their ^wn schools ; and that there is 
 no sacrifice which they will not be prepared to make, of time, 
 of labour, or of expense, rather than permit them to degenerate 
 into seminaries of mere worldly knowledge. 
 
 But it must not be imagined that the German Lutheran 
 Synod of Baltimore is my sole authority. I proceed to members 
 of our own communion ; and I begin with an extract from a 
 speech delivered before our University of Oxford, in 1852, by 
 the Eight Kev. S. A. M'Coskry, D.D., Bishop of Michigan. 
 "In behalf, then, of the American Church, I heartily thank 
 you for your kind expression of esteem ; and permit me to say, 
 that one of the greatest comforts for the present and the future, 
 with regard to yourselves, is the connection which I see every- 
 where in England between religion and education. It is this 
 which is the security, and will be the security of your land. 
 Dissever them, — I believe it was the remark of an eminent 
 individual in your land, whose name is always remembered with 
 gratitude, the Duke of Wellington. I believe it. was he who 
 said, ' Dissever religion and education, and you only make men 
 clever devils ! ' It has always been so, and if there be any one 
 thing in our land which we deeply deplore, and with respect to 
 which we look to the future with forebodings of disaster, it is 
 that severance." 
 
 A New England Clergyman writes to me as follows : — " An 
 instance or two will illustrate more strikingly the condition to 
 which our Congregationalists have come, than pages of ordinary 
 statement. In one of our towns, a missionary who had gone 
 thither to establish the Church, was made one of a committee to 
 visit the schools. In only one district of all did he find ani/ 
 children who knew the Ten Commandments ; and that district 
 was the one in which his field of labour lay ; while the children 
 were those that attended his own Sunday school. In another 
 case, a clergyman in a school in which there were no Church 
 children, could not find one who knew the Lord's Prayer. And 
 still again, in the case of a very intelligent person, who came to
 
 24 ON SCHOOL RATES 
 
 be examined for a teachership,- it was found tliat although well 
 instructed in other matters, he could not even tell the names of 
 the first books in the Old Testament." 
 
 Equally painful statements will be found in the Eepoi-ts of 
 the American Sunday School Union. Thus, with respect to 
 Western Ohio, a Home Missionary writes as follows : — " A dark 
 cloud of ignorance rests on this whole region, the like of which 
 I did not expect to find in any part of our land." * Another 
 missionary makes the following pious ejaculation with respect 
 to his field of labour : " Would that I had the power to portray 
 to the minds of our fellow citizens in the East in all its living 
 reality the bright intelligent faces of the thousands of the dear 
 children in Northern Illinois ! And then if I could draw aside 
 the veil that covers their mind from human view, and show the 
 deep moral darkness that broods over them, and on which not 
 a single ray of light from the blessed Bible has ever shone ! 
 In one daily school that I visited, of twenty or twenty-five 
 children I found only one that could tell what Jesus Christ 
 came into the world for. And tliis is only a specimen of 
 thousands that are growing up to manhood in this great valley. 
 What are dollars and cents when compared with the value of 
 these precious souls? But how can they be saved without 
 instruction ? " t I shall only add a passage in the Eeport of the 
 Society with reference to two considerable towns in the State of 
 Maine. " No religious organisation ; no sabbaths ; no preaching. 
 In these two towns there are about one thousand children 
 growing up under such influences as will draw them to intem- 
 perate habits as soon as they are old enough to lift a glass to 
 their lips ; and they are entirely without any religious instruc- 
 tion or restraint. * I have seen,' says a colporteur, * children 
 not over ten years old lying beastly drunk.' " 
 
 7. My next subject of remark is the inefficacy of the common- 
 school system in repressing crime. It might be expected that 
 
 * Page 31. t Page 32.
 
 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 25 
 
 in our old and densely-peopled land, presenting great contrasts 
 of wealth and indigence, crime would be frequent : whereas we 
 should not anticipate the same result in a new country, bound- 
 less in extent, and affording full employment, with cheap food 
 and high wages, to the whole body of the people. But I find 
 numerous and bitter complaints that, owing to the want of 
 religious education, crime is rapidly on the increase, and that 
 the common schools, if they do not engender depravity, cer- 
 tainly do not prevent it. 
 
 The New York Church Journal of December 4, 1856, quotes 
 the following remarkable statement made by Ex-Governor 
 Clifford of Massachusetts : — " I have a general impression, de- 
 rived from a long familiarity with the prosecution of crime, 
 both as District Attorney and Attorney-General, that the merely 
 intellectual education of our schools, in the absence of that 
 moral culture and discipline which in my judgment ought to be 
 an essential part of every system of school education, furnishes 
 but a feeble barrier to the assaults of temptatiorw and the pre- 
 valence of crime ; indeed without this sanctifying element, I 
 am by no means certain that the mere cultivation of intellect 
 does not increase the exposure to crime by enlarging the sphere 
 of man's capacity to minister through its agency to his sensual 
 and corrupt desires. I can safely say, as a general inference 
 drawn from my own somewhat extensive observation of crime 
 and criminals, that as flagi-ant cases and as depraved characters 
 have been exhibited among a class of persons who have enjoyed 
 the ordinary elementary instruction of our New England schools, 
 and in some instances of the higher institutions of learning, as 
 could be found by the most diligent investigation among the 
 convicts of Norfolk Island or of Botany Bay." 
 
 A recent Report of the Inspectors of Prisons in the State of 
 New York, gives the following statement : — " Of the convicts 
 in the Auburn Prison, 468 had received no religious or moral 
 instruction, and 512 had never read the Bible or attended 
 Divine Service."
 
 2fi ON SCHOOL RATES 
 
 The Chaplain of another prison makes in his lleport the 
 following startling announcement : — " Of 631 prisoners, 2 only 
 were familiar with the Scriptures, and had been well instructed 
 in Christian doctrine. 204 of them were ignorant of the 
 Saviour's name, and could not repeat the Lord's Prayer." 
 
 Another Chai)lain states that — " Of 3000 prisoners, he found 
 1583 so destitute of religious instruction, that to speak to them 
 of virtue, vice, iniquity or holiness, was to speak to them in an 
 unknown tongue." * 
 
 The Ex-Mayor of Boston, Mr. Bigelow, publicly made the 
 following statement : — " At the rate with which violence and 
 crime have recently increased, our jails, like our almshouses, 
 will scarcely be adequate to the imperious requirements of 
 society." 
 
 The Inspectors of Prisons in New Jersey made the following 
 report to the Legislature of that State in 1856 : — " We regret 
 to have to say, that in our opinion the violation of law by the 
 commission of crime is largely on the increase in our State, 
 and, as a necessary consequence, our prisons are full to over- 
 flowing." 
 
 The Eev. Dr. Townley, of Toronto, quotes the following 
 statement from a journalist in the United States, addicted to 
 liberal opinions : — " Everybody knows that the most depraved 
 beings in our country are among those upon whom most is 
 expended for their education; also that thieves, midnight 
 assassins, and incendiaries have come from our schools by 
 hundreds and thousands." t 
 
 In the autumn of 1855 a remarkable meeting was held at 
 New York, including "Presidents and Professors of Colleges, 
 and Directors of County and City High Schools from different 
 parts of the Union, to consider of the best measures for the 
 improvement of education." The following is from the printed 
 
 * Crime increasing, &c. Clmrcli Journal, p. 230. Aug. 12, 1857. 
 t Seven Letters, by the Rev. Adam Townley, D.D., on the Non-religious 
 Common-School System of Canada and the United States. Letter VI. p. 42.
 
 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 27 
 
 account of the speeches on that occasion : — " The venerable 
 editor for several years of tlie Massachusetts Journal of Educa- 
 tion, with great fervour, insisted that * a great change must be 
 adopted in our educational system, for, from the midst of our 
 schools depravity is growing up ; and from them the Schuylers 
 and Tuckermans have their origin.' * He had been,' he said, 
 * in an official capacity, brought in contact with five or six 
 thousand of the teachers of New England, many of whom were 
 morally unfit for their work, and he was persuaded that the 
 State must be shaken to ruins under the present training of 
 American youths.' Before he left the hall he said that there 
 was not one in ten of the teachers of New England to whom he 
 would entrust the moral training of his child. 
 
 " Another speaker. Professor Greenleaf, called for a different, 
 training of the young. He said he knew of thirteen young 
 men, who came from one school, and every one of them had 
 rushed headlong into destruction. The same speaker said, 
 that one of our teachers had made to liim the foJlowing de- 
 claration: — *I think I must somewhat change my system of 
 teaching ; I think I ought to give a little more moral instruc- 
 tion, for already two of my scholars have been hung for 
 murder.' 
 
 " Professor Pierce, of Harvard College, said, * We must have 
 daily religious culture in our schools ; separating religion from 
 the daily work of a child, and confining it to the Church, is like 
 taking all the salt that should be mingled with our daily food, 
 and eating it alone before breakfast. If religion could not be 
 taught in schools without sectarianism, then let sectarianism be 
 taught. As for myself, I would much prefer my children to be 
 instructed in sectarianism, than be sent to schools where there 
 is an indifference to religion.' 
 
 " Alexander Bache, the retiring president of the association, 
 concluded his address upon the improvements our system needs, 
 with these significant words : — ' I have reserved the most im- 
 portant thing for the last, that which must be at the bottom 
 of our whole system, religious education. The religious man
 
 28 ON SCHOOL RATES 
 
 is everything; the intellectual man without religion is 
 nothing.' " * 
 
 8. The next point for consideration is, that our brethren in 
 America show their disapproval of the common-school system, 
 by endeavouring at a great expense to establish parochial schools, 
 or, as we might call them, national schools, in order to give the 
 children a religious education. On this point I had an interest- 
 ing conversation with one of the most learned Bishoj^s in 
 America. He was denouncing the common-school system in 
 strong terms. I inquired whether he had ever delivered a 
 Charge or published a Pamphlet on the subject. " No," he 
 said, " I must not let it be possible to represent me as an 
 enemy to the enlightenment of the people. What I do is to 
 encourage to the utmost of my power the establishment of 
 parochial schools in all parts of my diocese." In reply I 
 ventured this remonstrance : " How can you expect your clergy 
 to undertake the task of building and maintaining schools, — not 
 where there are no other means of education, — but in opposition 
 to common schools supported by contributions from the public 
 treasury at the rate of 21. a year for each scholar ? " The 
 Bishop answered : " The extreme urgency of the case compels 
 me ; and I may add, that I receive great encouragement, not 
 only from my clergy, but from the laity. They see the magni- 
 tude of the evil impending over us." 
 
 The Diocesan Synod of New Jersey, at a meeting held in 
 1858, took into consideration the Report of a Committee on 
 Church schools and the common-school system. The Com- 
 mittee recommended that the Church should " give every aid 
 and encouragement in its power to the establishment of schools, 
 afibrding not only intellectual culture, but also such special 
 instruction in religion as accords with the sober and Scriptural 
 discipline of the Church." .The Committee at the same time 
 could not avoid expressing serious apprehensions on the subject 
 of pecuniary support, because the members of the Church were 
 
 New York Church Jomnal, Dec. 11, 1856.
 
 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 29 
 
 already taxed, and some of them to the utmost of their ability, 
 for the educational expenses of the common schools. Notwith- 
 standing this difficulty, resolutions were actually adopted in 
 favour of parochial schools as tending " to check the rapid 
 increase of juvenile immorality, to raise up a generation of good 
 citizens and good Christians, and supply a serious and con- 
 stantly increasing demand for well-trained teachers of the young, 
 as well as able ministers of the Gospel." 
 
 The desire to establish parochial schools is not confined to the 
 members of our sister Church in America. It is strongly felt, 
 as I have already shown, by the German Lutheran Synod ; and 
 from a statement published by the General Assembly in 1849, 
 it appears that the Presbyterians had succeeded in establishing 
 no less than eighty-two schools of tliis description. 
 
 When I first printed my Remarks on the common-school 
 system some years ago, I sent a copy to my celebrated parish- 
 ioner, the late Lord Macaulay. In acknowledging the pamphlet, 
 his Lordship said, that he had read it with deep inl^rest ; that 
 it had made a great impression upon his mind ; but that the 
 impression would have been greater, if he had not perceived all 
 my authorities to be ecclesiastics. My answer to this objection is, 
 that ecclesiastics are not bad authorities on a question of fact, 
 with which they are especially conversant ; that my authorities 
 are not all ecclesiastics ; that some of them belong to the 
 American laity ; and that the laity must sympathise entirely 
 with the clergy on this point, otherwise, after having paid a 
 heavy rate to support their common schools, they would not 
 come forward with voluntary subscriptions for parochial schools. 
 
 9. The next particular to which I wish to draw attention is, 
 the great importance attached by intelligent educationists in 
 America to the religious element, as the only means of perma- 
 nently infusing life and energy into a school, and of prevailing 
 upon all parties, whether managers, parents, teachers, or scholars, 
 perseveringly to do their duty. We all know, from painful 
 experience, that in this country the chief obstacle to the educa- 
 tion of the poor, is the early age at which children are withdrawn
 
 30 ON BCnOOT. HATES 
 
 from school, notwithstanding tho wholesome rivalry of different 
 religious bodies, each desirous to educate tho rising generation 
 in its own religious principles, namely, those which it considers 
 best adapted both for time and for eternity. 
 
 In 1857 some of the leading promoters of education in this 
 country resolved to hold a Conference on this subject. The 
 Prince Consort was Chairman, the Rev. Canon Moseley was 
 Secretary, and I acted as Treasurer. The result of long- 
 continued deliberations, not only among the members of the 
 conference collectively, but by separate sections, to each of 
 whom a separate branch of the subject had been assigned, was 
 far from satisfactory. After several days' discussion, it appeared 
 that no effective mode could be devised of retaining children in 
 our elementary schools for the poor. The melancholy reflection 
 immediately suggested itself — to what hopeless inefficiency 
 would not our schools be reduced if the stimulus of religion, 
 to which they owe their whole vitality, were utterly removed, 
 or even seriously diminished.* 
 
 But there is no such religious stimulus to animate the common 
 school in America, and the want of it is keenly felt. In the 
 already-quoted sermon printed at Baltimore, by request of the 
 German Lutheran Synod, I find some most interesting observa- 
 tions on this subject. " We hear without end," says the preacher, 
 "of the sluggishness of directors and parents, and of the care- 
 lessness and unfitness of teachers." He then complains that 
 
 * The Prince Consort in his inaugural address gave the following summary of 
 the argument against any compulsory measure to secure the attendance of children 
 at elementary schools: — "Wliat measures can be brought to bear upon the other 
 root of the evil is a more delicate question, and will require the nicest care in 
 handling, for then you cut into the very quick of the working man's condition. 
 His children are not only his offspring, to be reared for a future independent 
 position, but they constitute part of his productive powers, and work with him for 
 the staff of life. The daughters especially are the handmaids of the house, the 
 assistants of the mother, the nurses of the younger children, the aged, and the 
 sick. To deprive the labouring family of their help would be almost to paralyse 
 its domestic existence." For further remarks on the subject of the compulsory 
 attendance of children, see Appendix B.
 
 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 31 
 
 the advocates of the common-school system most unfairly attri- 
 buted these evils to the apathy of the ministers of religion. 
 " They allege," he says, " that the ministers of the Gospel could 
 exert an influence which might reach every fireside, opening 
 the eyes of the blind and unstopping the ears of the deaf, on 
 the subject of rational and moral education." To this charge 
 he indignantly replies : " So they might, and so they would, 
 were not they, in their capacity of ministers, virtually shut out 
 from the schools. If parents are sluggish in sending their 
 children, how can they be moved to duty except by the higher 
 * drivi7ig poivei' ' of religion ? But this is contraband in the 
 system. Shall ministers be expected to manifest zeal for the edu- 
 cation of immortal beings for this world merely ? The common- 
 school system can never, in its present form, gain the confidence 
 of the Church and ministry ; even if the system did not itself 
 virtually exclude their influence, the false principles which it 
 involves are too radical, and in their practical workings too 
 disastrous, to receive either favour or toleration.'^ .In another 
 place he continues : " The reports complain abundantly that 
 many parents do not send their children. This will ever be so ; 
 it rests upon the deep principle, that religion alone can foster 
 the education of mind, and that educational interests are only 
 sustained where religion underlies them. Where this is not 
 the case, the * driving potver ' is wanting ; and any educational 
 system that has not religion for its soul, cannot enlist sufficient 
 interest in itself to sustain itself in existence." 
 
 These just and noble sentiments are the deliberate opinions 
 of a German Preacher, and a German Synod. If therefore any 
 politician or theoretical educationist should venture to disparage 
 them, as the extravagances of some arrogant Clmrch of England 
 ecclesiastic, let us remind him that the words I have quoted are 
 not the words of Englishmen — not the language of Episco- 
 palians, but of German immigrants to America, whose fother- 
 land was the birthplace of rationalism, and is now the strong- 
 hold of infidelity. 
 
 10. I now proceed to my last remark upon the common-
 
 32 ON SCHOOL RATES. 
 
 school system. I refer to its expemiveness. On this point 1 
 may again advert to the vahiable work of Mr. Tremenheere. 
 He gives a table, showing tliat the cost of maintaining schools 
 in the United States is at the rate of about 2L a year for each 
 cliild. 
 
 Cost of Education per Child in the Piiblic Schools of — 
 
 Dols. Cents. 
 
 St. Louis 9 50 
 
 New York 10 62 
 
 Boston 15 42 
 
 Dola. Cents. 
 
 Philadelphia 7 33 
 
 Baltimore 10 54 
 
 Cincinnati 6 37 
 
 In England and Wales the number of children for wliom 
 provision ought to be made in elementary schools is, as I have 
 already stated, about 1,800,000, and the annual cost, at the 
 above rate of 21. a scholar, would be about 3,600,000?. ; in which 
 estimate I do not include the building of school-rooms, nor 
 the maintenance of training institutions. At three per cent. 
 3,600,000/. a year would represent a capital of about 120,000,000/. 
 Are the owners, let me ask, of rateable property prepared for 
 so enormous a confiscation ? The parliamentary grant of 
 780,000/. a year for education was cut down under the Revised 
 Code as too formidable an item in the miscellaneous estimates 
 — although it was voted from the Consolidated Fund, a fund 
 levied on 550,000,000/. of property ; how severe then would be 
 the pressure of 3,600,000/. a year upon rateable property, which 
 amounts to only 86,000,000/., and the owners of which are no 
 more bound than any other class of proprietors to educate the 
 people ! 
 
 No doubt the promoters of school rates will produce a lower 
 estimate than that which I have given. But I do not think it 
 likely that they will be able to do the work more cheaply than 
 their American fellow-laboiu*ers.* 
 
 The Chancellor of the Exchequer, it may be said, will be 
 relieved from a heavy burden. But who cares to relieve him ? 
 
 * The estimate of the Royal Commissioners, as well as of the Committee of 
 Council, is 308. a scholar ; but they forgot that to support a system by rates is far 
 more expensive than by voluntary contributions.
 
 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 38 
 
 If I am compelled to pay a certain contribution, what is the 
 difference to me wliether I pay it in the shape of a tax or of 
 a rate ? I consider the rate-ccfl lector quite as formidable a 
 personage as the tax-gatherer, and in one respect more for- 
 midable. For taxes are in general voted from year to year, 
 but a school rate once voted by Parliament is imposed for 
 ever. 
 
 The evidence I have now adduced at considerable length 
 against the common-school system of the United States is 
 entirely that of Americans themselves. I have advanced 
 nothing as the result of my own personal experiences. I have 
 entered on the subject with reluctance, and only from the motive 
 , of preventing our possible adoption of school rates in this country 
 under a false impression that they have succeeded in America. 
 I heartily wish they had succeeded there, or could be made to 
 succeed. No man on this side of the Atlantic desires more 
 earnestly than I do the welfare of the United States. No man 
 takes a deeper interest in the magnificent experiment they 
 are attempting for the first time in all history of federal 
 institutions on a great scale. No man admires more than 
 I admire their unsparing liberality, not only in the cause 
 of education, but of Home and Foreign Missions. 1 regard 
 their common-school system as having been, in their circum- 
 stances, an unavoidable expedient, but at the same time as 
 among the most alarming sources of social danger to which 
 they are exposed. 
 
 The remarks I have offered on the common-school system 
 of the United States have now extended to a considerable 
 length. I must, however, observe that the advocates of school 
 rates, on being driven from the great American republic, are 
 apt to cross the St. Lawrence, and take refuge in our own 
 provinces. They insist that if the Americans have failed 
 in uniting school rates with religious teaching, tlie Cana- 
 dians have succeeded, and that we ought to profit by Cana- 
 dian wisdom. But these are not the views entertained by 
 
 D
 
 34 ON SCHOOL HATES. 
 
 tlie members of om* Church in the North American pro- 
 vinces. On the contrary, in 1851, at a conference of the 
 Bishops of Quebec, Torotito, Newfoundland, Fredericton, and 
 Montreal, held at Quebec, a general declaration was unani- 
 mously agreed to, strongly condemning the entire exclusion 
 of religious instruction from the common schools as " a manifest 
 depravation " of the religious principles of the scholars and " a 
 crying injustice to the Church of England." The assembled 
 Bishops further resolved, "That all lawful and honourable 
 methods should be adopted to move the colonial legislatures to 
 make grants to the Church of England as well as to the lloman 
 Catholics and other religious bodies, as they require it, and 
 according to their numbers respectively, for the education of 
 the members of their own communion." The clergy and laity 
 of Toronto in the same year, at a semi-synodical meeting, voted 
 resolutions and petitions to the same effect ; and on the 18th of 
 June, 1857, at a regular sy nodical meeting, they held a remarkable 
 discussion, to which I would especially request attention. In 
 the report of that discussion I find it stated that " great masses " 
 of the Canadian population were "brought up in total igno- 
 rance of Christianity ;" that the common schools were filling all 
 Canada with a " moral pestilence ; " that the lecture-rooms of 
 the Canadian schools and colleges were crowded with " unruly 
 youths, and the streets defiled with their profane language;" 
 that "children born in sin are sent to schools in which the 
 education they receive only fits them for carrying out more 
 thoroughly the works of depravity ; " that the common-school 
 system in Canada is "an utter failure ;" that its utter failure is 
 " triumphantly proved by the Annual Eeports of the General 
 Superintendent of Education himself;" that "from the first 
 establishment of the system there had been continual complaints 
 from the local superintendents of inefficiency in the teachers 
 and irregularity in attendance of children ;" that in proportion 
 as the schools deteriorated, " the expense was more enormously 
 increased;" that "in Upper Canada alone there were 3235
 
 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 35 
 
 schools, of which only 374 had regularly trained teachers ;" 
 that out of 1318 students admitted into the Normal school, 800 
 or 900 had received certificates, of which number no less than 
 500 had deserted their vocation ; that in the city of Toronto, 
 out of 8884 children who ought to be in the common schools, 
 only 1570 were actually in attendance ; that " totally illiterate 
 young men and women were received into the Normal school, 
 and in ten months turned out again, with first-class certificates, 
 as competent to teach anything" — the whole curriculum of 
 knowledge ; and that each of these so-called teachers draws not 
 less than 121, from the provincial treasury for this defective 
 ed^ucation. 
 
 A number of Clergymen then stated in succession, that they 
 had " weighed the school system of the country throughout its 
 practical bearings and found it miserably wanting." 
 
 A local superintendent declared at the same meeting that 
 "in one school within his district there are not ten children, 
 beyond those of the Church of England, who can»8ay the Ten 
 Commandments ;" that in another school, the teacher was a 
 Unitarian, and spent his time on Sundays in preaching in 
 accordance with his views to the children under his care ; 
 that in a third school " only one child knew the Command- 
 ments ;" that on a certain occasion when he, the local super- 
 intendent, discovering that " not one out of one hundred 
 children had ever heard of the Ten Commandments," en- 
 deavoured to impress on parents the importance of the 
 Decalogue, he was indignantly denounced as " a Puseyite and 
 a Romanist ! " 
 
 Another intelligent local superintendent, who, according to his 
 own statement, had approached the Canadian school system with 
 " very favourable impressions," confessed that in doing so he had 
 betrayed " extreme and gross ignorance" of the subject ; he 
 appealed to all practical men whether it would be possible for a 
 minister to obtain permission from the trustees of a school to 
 misapply in "mere Christian teaching" any portion of that pre- 
 
 D 2
 
 3(3 UN SCHOOL KATES. 
 
 cioiis time wliich ought to be employed in " the noble work of 
 sharpening the intellect " ? 
 
 Another local su2)erintendent of great experience stated, that 
 although prayers are directed to be said in the common schools, 
 they are not required ; the consequence of which neglect is that 
 this injunction is constantly evaded ; so much so, that " out of 
 fifteen schools in his jurisdiction prayer is never heard in ten of 
 them ;" that '* in the schools throughout his jurisdiction the 
 Bible is unknown ;" that when in his visits he has tried to teach 
 from it, he has been " prevented by Papists and Dissenters ;" 
 that so far from pi-ayers being heard in the schools, " he dare 
 not ask the teachei'S to read them, for they are too ungodly, 
 too intemperate, too wicked." He bitterly complained that the 
 trustees are " reckless in choosing persons to act as teachers — 
 granting certificates to most shameless vagabonds." 
 
 A parochial Clergyman on the same occasion alleged that the 
 present school system gave to Romanists a privilege which was 
 denied to Protestauts. In his own district one of the common 
 schools was held in a Roman Catholic College, and was used as 
 " a primary department of that institution." 
 
 I conclude wdtli the evidence of ]\lr. Justice Hagarty, who said 
 that during his short experience of one year and a half in the 
 administration of justice, *' the most humiliating, sorrowful, and 
 heartrending spectacle he had met with had been to see child 
 after child brought up for felony. Can nothing," he asked, " be 
 done to prevent such melancholy exhibitions ? Can neither the 
 State nor the Church make provision for them, and for the hun- 
 dreds whose training may lead to similar results?" 
 
 The learned judge affirmed that while these were the results of 
 the common-school system in Canada, the annual cost of main- 
 taining that system in Toronto was an intolerable burden.* 
 
 * Those who woukl hokl out the Common Scliool systeiu of Canada as an 
 example to England, or ^Yho cm[)irically imagine it an easy task to devise a sound 
 system of national education, would do well to consider carefully the following
 
 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 37 
 
 Here the question arises, What is to be done ? What prac- 
 tical suggestions arise to us from the train of thought which I 
 have been suggesting ? The obvious answer is, we must resist 
 to the utmost the imposition of a school rate ; we must resist 
 also any such diminution of the parliamentary grant for educa- 
 tion as would require a school rate to supply the void. And if 
 we show to religious men the unavoidable mischiefs of such an 
 impost to the cause of religion, and exhibit at the same time to 
 ratepayers its unfair and intolerable pressure on their property, 
 I confidently think that our resistance will be effectuah I do 
 not see how any Government, however bold, could venture to 
 propose a measure so certain to be generally and strenuously 
 opposed. 
 
 I have already remarked, that the rules for distribution of the 
 annual parliamentary grant adopted by the Committee of Privy 
 Council on Education might be improved. This is not the 
 place, however, for explaining the measures which appear to 
 me desirable for that purpose. • 
 
 weighty words of that tmmently wise and good man, Chief Justice Eobinson, of 
 Upi)er Canada : — 
 
 " There is, we all know, a difficulty which has met at the threshold those who 
 have been influential in establishing systems of national education ; I mean that 
 which arises from the number of religious sects into which the population is 
 divided. This is not the occabion for entering mto any discussion upon that 
 painfully interesting question. Whatever difficulty it has occasioned in England 
 or Ireland must be expected to be found here, applying with at least equal, if not 
 more than equal force. I should be unwilling to suppose that any doubt could 
 exist as to my own opinion on this question ; and scarcely less unwilling to be 
 thought so unjust and uncandid as not to acknowledge and make allowance for 
 the difficulties which surround it. They are such, I believe, as no person can 
 fully estimate, until he has been called upon to deal with them, under the resiwn- 
 bibility which the duties of government impose. In the mean time, resting 
 assm-ed as we may, that no general system of instruction can be permanently 
 successful which has not the confidence and cordial approval of the sincerely 
 religious portions of the community — that portion, I mean, who will think it worse 
 than folly to aim at being wise above that which is written — we must wait with 
 hope and patience for the solution which this ditliculty, to which I alhide, may 
 receive in other countries more ct)mpetent to gra])i)le witli it — trusting that what 
 may ultimately be found to be the safe and satisfactory course may, by the wisdom 
 and good feeling of the majority, be adopted among ourselves." — Speech of Chief 
 Justice liobinsun, al Ihe opeuiiuj of the I'rovincial Normal ISchvol, Nov. 2-kth, 1852.
 
 38 ON SCHOOL KATES 
 
 As regards the members of the Church, whether Clergy or 
 Laity, no effort must be wanting on our part to make the present 
 system a success and not a failure. We must not, by negligence 
 or inactivity, allow the advocates of school rates, and of an 
 American or Prussian discipline, to get the better of us. We 
 must not give them occasion for alleging, that voluntary efforts, 
 aided by a moderate parliamentary grant, are incapable of edu- 
 cating the people. It is a weighty responsibility that is imposed 
 upon us ; all our other efforts will be vain if we fail in this — all 
 our plans of church-building — all our home and foreign missions 
 — all our multifarious schemes for averting social evil, ajid for 
 doing social good, will be hopelessly inefiScient, if we do not 
 succeed in implanting religious principle in the minds and hearts 
 of our population. 
 
 And while we are zealous, let us also be conciliatory. Let us 
 be united. So far from discouraging the co-operation of the lay 
 brethren, let the Clergy do all they can to call it forth, and to 
 enlist their sympathies in the cause. Let us avoid all need- 
 less offence to Non-conformists. Need I remark, that a single 
 act of indiscretion with reference to the management of an 
 endowed school, has in a recent instance been very nearly fatal 
 to the cause of Church education among the middle classes; 
 and has rendered concessions necessary, which may prove em- 
 barrassing, and which would not otherwise have been demanded ? 
 
 I shall only add, that our best security for the maintenance of 
 our existing educational system is to make the most of scanty 
 opportunities. In spite of all the "driving power" we can 
 exert, the period during which we shall be able to retain under 
 our tuition the children of the poor will, no doubt, as hereto- 
 fore, continue limited to a few uncertain years. Those years 
 are precious. They are all in all to an immortal being. We 
 must make the most of them. We must apply the whole of 
 them to the essentials of education. Above all things a good 
 foundation is indispensable. We must teach our young charge 
 nut only to read, but to understand ; not only to hear, but, as
 
 IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 39 
 
 far as is possible, "to learn and inwardly digest." Their own 
 language is the key of knowledge. With this key they will be 
 competent more or less to unlock for themselves not only the 
 treasures of the Bible and tlie Liturgy, but the stores of English 
 literature and science. Without this key they can do nothing. 
 Without acquaintance with their own language, all the miscel- 
 laneous particulars we may laboriously accumulate in their 
 memories, under the abused name of useful information, will be 
 only so much pedantic lumber utterly unavailing for any prac- 
 ticable purpose.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 NOTE A. 
 
 The first occasion on which Conscience Clauses and the compulsory 
 attendance of children at elementary schools were brought under the 
 consideration of the Committee of the National Society, was in 1840. 
 The Act 3 & 4 William IV., c. 103, provided that " children should 
 not be allowed to laboui* in mills or factories unless a voucher were 
 produced by them on every Monday morning, to certify that two hours 
 in each working day in the preceding week had been devoted to the 
 purposes of education." A proposal was made, that in the special 
 case of children attending school under the provisions of an Act of 
 Parliament the Society should relax its rule requiring them to learn 
 the Church Catechism. It was strongly urged that by refusing this 
 concession the Society would forego the opportunity of giving instruc- 
 tion in Church principles to many thousand children, whose parents 
 and guardians were anxious they should receive it. In the first in- 
 stance a resolution favourable to the concession was adopted. At a 
 subsequent meeting it was agreed to obtain further information. A 
 fortnight afterwards a final meeting, the Archbishop of Canterbury in 
 the chair, was held. The following members of the Board were pre- 
 sent : — His Grace the Lord Archbishoj) of Canterbury ; the Lord 
 Bishops of London, Durham, Winchester, Bangor, Chester, Chichester, 
 Ely, Hereford, Lichfield, Lincoln, Norwich, Ripon, Rochester, 
 Salisbury ; the Right Hon. the Lord Kenyon ; the Right Hon. the 
 Lord Ashley, M.P. ; the Lord Sandon, M.P. ; T. D. Acland, Esq., 
 IVLP. ; Rev. H. H. Norris ; Rev. H. H. Milman ; Rev. John Jennings ; 
 William Davis, Esq. ; G. F. Mathison, Esq. ; Richard Twining, Esq. ; 
 Joshua Watson, Esq. ; Samuel F. Wood, Esq. 
 
 Letter after letter was read from clergymen of all parties in the 
 Church, and throughout all the manufacturing districts, m'gently 
 remonstrating against the proposed concession. Among them were 
 the Rev. Dr. Hook, Vicar of Leeds, now Dean of Chichester; the 
 Rev. C. Musgrave, Vicar of Halifax, now Archdeacon of Craven ; the
 
 APPENDIX. 41 
 
 Rev. John Bull, Incumbent of St. Thomas, Birmingham ; the Rev. J. 
 Slade, Vicar of Bolton ; the Rev. G. Hornby, Rector of Bury, Lan- 
 cashire ; the Rev. J. S. Master, Rector of Chorley ; the Rev. Cecil 
 Wray, of Liverpool ; the Rev. Dr. Scoresby, Vicar of Bradford ; the 
 Rev. John Rushton, now Vicar of Blackburn ; and many others. The 
 school fees of the factory children would in many poor districts have 
 been a valuable assistance to the clergy in meeting the expenses of 
 their schools. But they repudiated all such considerations, and urged 
 the Society at all hazards to maintain inviolate the religious character 
 of National Schools. The result was that the proposal to relax the 
 terms of union was rejected by a large majority. 
 
 NOTE B. 
 
 The following passage occurs in the Report of the Royal Conomis- 
 sioners, pp. 197-201 : — 
 
 " Among the persons to whom we addressed our circulap of questions, 
 and whom we selected as fair exponents of general opinion, the great 
 majority of those who have touched upon this point declare themselves 
 against a general system of compulsory education. We may refer to 
 the evidence, among others, of Mr. Blakesley, the Rev. R. Brown, Miss 
 Carpenter, the Rev. T. W. Davids, the Rev. S. Earnshaw, the Rev. 
 Canon Guthrie, Miss Hope, the Rev. C. E. R. Keene, the Bishop of 
 St. David's, the Hon. and Rev. W. H. Scott, Mr. H. S. Skcats, and 
 Mr. John Snell ; the evidence of Mr. Ackroyd, the Hon. and Rev. 
 Samuel Best, and the Dean of Carlisle tends in the other direction. 
 The evidence contains indications that the current of opinion is setting 
 away from general compulsory measures. Lord Lyttelton advocated 
 direct compulsory education in his ' Thoughts on National Educa- 
 tion,' proposing that 'it should be made a jmnishable offence for any 
 parent or guardian not to send to school, and keep there, any child of 
 a given age ; that they should be required to pay a certain sum for 
 the schooling of such children, and that they should be allowed to 
 choose freely what school it should be.' He now says : ' I am still 
 of opinion that what I have there proposed is practicable, would involve 
 fewer difficulties than most other plans, and would be to a great extent 
 effectual. But I must admit that since its publication, not only have 
 I seen no considerable signs of adhesion to that particular plan, but 
 the course of public opinion has seemed to tend away from tlie prin- 
 
 E
 
 42 APPENDIX. 
 
 ciplo of compulsion rather than towards it.' The Hon. and Rev. 
 W. H. Scott says : ' I long thought that nothing short of compulsory 
 attendance, and imposing a penalty on employers hiring children 
 under a certain age, would make it possible to educate the children of 
 the labouring classes ; but on mature consideration, I am satisfied that 
 the difficulties attending such a law would be insurmountable, and 
 that before we could impose compulsory attendance on rate-paid 
 schools, we must, in each ratepaying district, have as many schools as 
 there were differences of religious belief among the inhabitants. In 
 short, the disadvantages arising from an educational rate, or from 
 compulsory attendance in rural districts, would far outweigh any 
 benefits.' Mr. John Snell also says : ' I was long of opinion that 
 nothing short of compulsory education would answer. I am not now 
 of that opinion. The educational movement is already progressing, 
 and will hardly require so violent a measure. English sentiment is 
 unmistakeably opposed to compulsion ; and the means of evasion are 
 so numerous that a law to this effect would probably fail from un- 
 suitableness and want of popular sympathy. Still, a species of indirect 
 or negative compulsion, requiring school attendance as a condition 
 secm-ing privileges, situations, &c., such as suggested in preceding 
 answer, might be resorted to. The education of certain classes might 
 also be compulsory, as of paupers in workhouses, criminals in gaols ; 
 but in the latter case it should be confined to moral, religious, and 
 industrial, as anything tending to sharpen their wits would probably 
 be productive of greater mischief than ignorance itself.' 
 
 " It does not appear, therefore, that the Government would be 
 seconded by public opinion in instituting and maintaining the minute 
 system of supervision, registration, detection of defaulters, and enforce- 
 ment of penalties, which would be requisite in order to carry into effect 
 a general system of compulsory education. The administrators would 
 be brought into collision with the constitution of English society and 
 the habits and feelings of the people. There is a material difterence, 
 in reference to such questions, between the political and social cir- 
 cumstances of our own country and those of countries where the central 
 administration wields great power over a people but recently emanci- 
 pated, habituated to the control of a searching police, and subjected to 
 the direct action of the Government without the interposition of a 
 numerous landed gentry and a multitude of great employers of labour ; 
 or where social equality renders possible and democratic opinion 
 enforces a general resort to common schools, the heritage of an ancient 
 Puritan community or the pride of a modern republic. 
 
 " The conviction entertained by many persons, and embodied in the
 
 APPENDIX. 43 
 
 protests to which we have referred, that Government compulsion is 
 wrong not only in policy but in principle, whether well founded in 
 itseK or not, would compel the Legislature to place the compulsory 
 system on a clear moral basis by making it bear equally on all classes, 
 which it would probably be very difficult to do. 
 
 " Even as regards the operation of the Factory Acts, Mr. Winder 
 says :* ' I satisfied myself by repeated questions to individual children, 
 and by an inspection of school registers, both at Rochdale and Brad- 
 ford, that on the average half-time children at the commencement of 
 their work have been a shorter time previously at school than day- 
 scholars of the same age.' ' I am afraid,' he adds, ' that it is the 
 prospect of compulsory education which is at the bottom of this ex- 
 ceptional neglect, and this I found to be the opinion of those best 
 qualified to judge. The knowledge that a child must go to school at 
 a later period of life makes its parents more careless during its earlier 
 years.' Canon Girdlestone, also speaking from an experience of twenty- 
 five years in Lancashire, states that great numbers of children do not 
 attend school till the age arrives at which they are compelled by the 
 Factory Act to do so.j" 
 
 " The existing schools belong to private managers. But the Govern- 
 ment, in adopting a general measure of compulsory education, could 
 scarcely refrain from undertaking to some extent, the management of 
 the schools. If it compels parents to send their children to school, it 
 is bound to see that there is a school to which they can conveniently, 
 profitably, and conscientiously resort. Difficulties might then arise 
 between the Government and the managers with regard, amongst other 
 things, to the religious instruction, especially in country parishes, 
 where there is generally but one school ; and scruples which ordinarily 
 lie dormant, or yield to more important considerations, are apt, when 
 the State becomes a party, to be insisted on as a matter of right. 
 
 " A system of education tests, in the shape of examinations or certifi- 
 cates of school attendance, has been proposed as a simpler and more 
 practicable plan than a system of compulsory school attendance 
 actually overlooked and enforced by the State. The verification of 
 the certificates would probably be little less difficult, and liable to 
 fraudulent evasion, than the supervision of school attendance, espe- 
 cially in the case of the more migratory portions of the population, 
 whose children are frequently removed from school to school. Both 
 tests would alike require some supplementary provision for the case of 
 
 Report, p. 229. f Appendix to Mr. Cumin's Report, p. 159.
 
 44 AITENDIX. 
 
 children who, through the fault of their parents, or their own stupidity 
 or truancy, failed to satisfy the test, and who would thus, on arriving 
 at the age of labour, bo excluded from all honest callings. 
 
 " The State could not compel the parents by law to do more than 
 their moral duty in each case requires. The moral duty of labourers, 
 mechanics, and small tradesmen, as to the amount of education to bo 
 given to their children varies greatly according to the nature of their 
 employment and the amount of their wages. Either a variable scale 
 of the greatest complexity must be constructed to meet these diiferences 
 of obligation, or the minimum must be accepted as the standard, in 
 which case little would be gained. 
 
 " That which the State compels it must also enable men to do. 
 It must therefore take on itself in the last resort the obligation of 
 assisting those who are too poor to pay the whole sum for the educa- 
 tion of their children ; an obligation now acknowledged and discharged 
 by social duty, but which, when it legally rests upon the State, social 
 duty will perhaps cease to acknowledge and discharge. 
 
 " The state and prospects of education in this country, as displayed 
 by oui* evidence and returns, do not seem to us to waiTant the recom- 
 mendation of a measure which would entail so much difficulty and 
 danger, and give so great a shock to our educational and social 
 system. 
 
 " The same social organisation which repels State compulsion also to 
 a great extent renders it needless. Active and rightminded employers, 
 landowners, clergymen, and .other persons of local influence, may and 
 frequently do exercise a inoral pressure on their poorer neighbours in 
 the matter of education, the practical force of which is probably at 
 least as great as that of State comjDulsion in the countries where it 
 prevails, and which, combined as it is with charitable assistance, must 
 be far superior in its influence on the relations between classes and on 
 the character of the people." 
 
 LONlK>N: rUIMTED 3T W. CT.OWE8 AND SONS, STAMFORD OTREKT, 
 AND CHAKINQ CKOSS.
 
 V 
 
 
 
 "-m 
 
 ^.i'-^^ 
 
 ^^^^^ 
 
 ll-. s^ ♦ 
 
 fi:6^»^^ 
 
 V^^^ 
 
 ^':^-vj 
 
 .^ , ' ^- 
 
 
 tf 
 
 m 
 
 
 / 
 
 'M 
 
 % 4. 
 
 -A . ' . V\ 
 
 ^' :M'\ 
 
 
 X 
 
 y;j^-rz^^:-