I E. RARY OF THL UN IVLRSITY or ILLl NOIS CRIME AND EDUCATION THE DUTY THE STATE THEREIN. REV. WILLIAM J. E. BENNETT, M.A. LATE STUDENT OP CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD, AND PERPETUAL CURATE OF ST. PAUL'S, KNI6HTSBRIDGE. LONDON : W. J. CLEAVER, BAKER-STREET, PORTMAN-SQU A RE . MDCCCXLVT. LONDON : RICHARDS, PRINTER, 100, ST. MARTI NS LANK. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. OUR PRESENT DANGER. PACK Increasing Wealth with increasing Pauperism tends to Revolution . 1 Instances ...... 3 Ignorance of the Rich of the state of the Poor . 7 Testimony thereupon 8 Junction of Crime with Ignorance 9 Testimonies thereupon . . . 10 Proportion of Criminals Uneducated to Educated 14 Reports from the Gaols 15 Reports from the Inspectors of Prisons • 19 Reports from the Inspectors of Mines 21 Reports from the Inspectors of Schools 25 CHAPTER II. ESTIMATES. State of the Population . . . . . .28 What proportion needs Education . 31 The Monitorial System . 32 Testimonies concerning . 33 Number of Masters required . 36 . 37 . 38 of Normal Colleges Expenses of Building . 38 ^■P IVTrt n + i-\if»n* d<-k1 ii-ni i-ko . 39 . 39 General Summary . 40 . 41 How shall these Expenses be met 42 Expenses of Crime and Poverty— Poor Laws . Justice Polieo Parkhurst Prison The Income Tax PAGE . 43 . 44 . 45 . 46 . 47 CHAPTER III. EDUCATION AS CONNECTED WITH RELIGION. Difficulties .... Political Ideas of Education Education without Religion — The Intellectual System University College, Gower-street The Compromising System Kildare-street Society The Disjunctive System Irish Board of Education Archbishop of Armagh and the Irish Church . Testimonies from the Continent Opinions of English Writers thereupon Dr. Hook's Plan .... Opinions of Dissenters The Disjunctive System vicious and impracticable In regard to Masters Scholars Religious Teachers ■■ The Church . Severance of the Church from the State 50 52 56 58 60 60 65 66 67 69 70 74 76 80 82 83 85 86 92 CHAPTER IV. EDUCATION AS CONNECTED WITH THE CHURCH AND THE STATE. Four classes of Schools . . . . . .94 Committee of Privy Council, History of . . . .96 Opinions as to its Principles . . . . .97 Its Dangerous Tendency in 1839 . . . . .98 Its Concessions to the Church . . . . .101 Its possible Constitution as a Government Instrument for Education . 104 The State must Educate by means of the Church . . .112 Compulsory Education not possible . . . . .114 Plan for encouraging it among the Poor . . . .115 Whence will the opposition arise . . . . .116 ^ uiuc : CHAPTER I. OUR PRESENT DANGER. " When the Kings of Israel, some few excepted, to better their worldly estates (as they thought), left their own and their people's ghostly condition uncared for, by woful experience they both did learn that to forsake the true God of Heaven, is to fall into all such evils upon the face of the earth, as men either destitute of Divine grace may commit, or unprotected from above may endure." — Hooker, Eccles. Pol v. i. 4. An increasing aristocracy of wealth, coupled, as it necessarily- must be, with an increasing pauperism of the lower orders, is the sure forerunner of Revolution. Not because it is against the will of God that there should be rich and poor, — on the con- trary, He Himself has said that " the poor shall never cease out of the land," — but because wealth, if permitted to accumulate without limit, has an invariable tendency to create luxurious and selfish habits ; and luxurious and selfish habits harden the heart, and blind the understanding. A double process goes forward. On the one hand, with increasing riches there is an increase of luxurious living, selfishness, exclusiveness, oppression. On the other hand, with increasing poverty there is an increase of de- graded habits, — vice, recklessness of life, ignorance. And, while both advance in a progressive ratio, according to the increase of population (the labour of the poor, who are multiplied year by year, increasing the wealth of the capitalist, who extends his accumulations year by year in parallel advance), so it comes to pass that the line of distinction between the two extremes be- comes broader and broader ; the wealthy shopkeeper, merchant, and manufacturer, passing into the lordly and selfish aristocrat, and the poor labourer receding more and more into unpitied misery, and unheeded ignorance. But it may be said that religion is the cure of this evil. Cer- tainly. Religion is meant by Almighty God to be the corrective of man's sins, and the adjustment of man's inequalities, — to teach the rich love, and the poor contentment : but, when the division of the rich and poor has advanced to such an extreme as that which now exists among us, religion can do but little, because her operations are unfelt, as her principles are lost. The probability is, as we are taught in the parable of Dives and Lazarus, that the human vision is blinded by excessive wealth. The feelings 2 OUR PRESENT DANGER. of the rich are hardened, so that they lose sight of God : the capacity of the poor is withdrawn, so that they descend into the condition of the irrational brnte. In the rich, love is lost in a refined sensuality : in the poor, contentment vanishes in a dogged indifterence. Religion, therefore, stands aloof. She is powerless ; and, while she is full of vigour and blessing to those who partake of " neither riches nor poverti/,'''' and has therein some little spot to set her foot on, she struggles with the two diverging extremes in vain. She becomes more and more a stranger to them both ; and the people, as tending in the mass towards one or other of them, year by year lose sight of her. Add, moreover, this peculiarity, that the population of the poor increases, as is evident from the ratio of numbers, in a much more rapid degree than that of the rich ; so that year by year the proportion between the rich and poor extends, not only in disparity of sentiment, but simultaneously in extent of numbers ; not only, on the part of the poor, in the ignorance and misery which beset them, and the sense of injustice under which they labour, and the hatred which they cherish towards those who, in their opinion, are their oppressors ; but also in the area over which such ignorance, and sense of injustice, and hatred, is ex- panded. And w^iat must be the issue? Like the spark long smouldering in hea])s of rubbish, which some accidental gust of wind blows into a flame, — so this deep feeling of wrong gaining power, and the poor by bodily necessities becoming reckless of consequences, having no check in obedience to the laws, God being not recognized, religion untaught, and obedience to man depending only on brute force, — immediately that such brute force is on their own side, and they become sensible of it, they burst forth, and are beyond control. Hence a revolution ; that is to say, according to the meaning of the word, an upsetting of the existing system of things — laws subverted, order destroyed, pro- perty passing from hand to hand, as mere power masters it, human life sacrificed in the struggles of the ambitious to gain the highest places of such power ; and the land, reeking with blood and slaughter, calling for the vengeance of God upon the sins of man. Such, indeed, seems the law of Nature, when unrestrained of God ; and when, in the avarice and cupidity of the few, the wants of the many are unheeded. It is Nature's law, and one from which she never deviates without a miracle, that men shall not grow rich beyond a certain limit without danger, first to the community, and secondly to themselves; and that a nation shall not be degraded in the transition of its poor into a barbarian ignorance and abandonment of religion, without a reflux tide, which, sooner or later, shall carry all obstacles before it, and OUR PRESENT DANGER. 3 abolish the unjust distinction which prevails. Moreover, it is not only the law of nature that these very broad distinctions shall destroy themselves ; but it is also the law of God, as coun- teracting nature by grace, that nations which pretend to civili- zation should anticipate the force of nature, and so rectify and govern themselves, as to prevent, under His Providence, the miseries which, if left to herself, she would create. The only nation over which Almighty God extended His own per- sonal government was the Jewish. Over these He was King and Ruler, as well as God ; and in these, though we see from time to time various revolutions, changes of dynasty, and civil commotions, yet we always see that such revolutions arose from their neglect of His personal ruling. For His personal ruling was this : Riches were never to accumulate in the hands of a few ; poverty was never to overwhelm the many ; usury was forbidden ; and the great and distinguishing law of His govern- ment, to secure this principle, was the law of Jubilee. By this, at the conclusion of every fifty years, all accumulated property was to be restored. Houses, lands, and servants, were all marked at their proper price of redemption ; and so the sale and pur- chase of all property was regulated in its value by the anticipa- tion of the year of Jubilee, or restoration. No man, therefore, could be very rich ; no man could be "cery poor : while, at the same time, usury ^ by which, either in fact or in principle, all com- mercial wealth is acquired in the present day, was forbidden, as the curse of the people of God. See Leviticus xxv. When, however, the Jewish law passed away as the principle of legislation among men, and God's will of comparative equali- zation was forgotten, in its place succeeded an equalization in another way — ^equalization by bloodshed, anarchy, and rebellion. " It is my will,'' said God, " that nations shall not display for any great length of time the cupidity of the wealthy, or the tyranny of the powerful, without suffering by violence great organic changes. If they will not have the spirit of my law, by which I signify that too great discrepancy in their political and domestic state must be met by legislative provision, they must learn it to their cost by wars and revolutions. If they will not search for it in gentleness, they must be content to suffer it in violence." This truth may be traced in all the revolutions which have deluged the earth with blood, from the creation until now. It may be traced very positively in the history of the greatest people on the face of the earth, next to the Jews, — that of the Romans. In the constant struggles we there behold between the j^atricians and plebeians ; in the institution of the agrarian law ; in the revolution of the Gracchi ; in the social war, which had its fulfilment in the destruction of the republic ; b2 4 OUR PRESENT DANGER. and finally continued in the horrible scenes of oppression and mis- rule with which the lives of the emperors are, with hardly one exception, marked in the pages of that wonderful history. It may be seen a iug property supposed to be stolen, &c j Total 1000 1055 445 Who can read such a statement as this without horror. In two years and a half, two thousand five hundred boys com- mitted to one metropolitan prison, and some below the tender age of ten years ! Surely this is no other than a grievous national sin. Of what value our profession of religion, when we leave our children in such a state as this ? And now, behold the education which such children have re- ceived, and the comments of the chaplain : Degrees of Instruction, Neither read nor write Read only ..... Read and write .... Read and write well Total . The chaplain considers that the criminality of three-fourths of the juvenile prisoners committed to this prison is the result of parental neglect — an opinion which we consider as of general application. We subjoin some extracts from his journal, in reference to this subject : — " 19th January, 1844. — Saw a little girl in private, aged 1 1 years. Had no place to go to when she left prison. " 25th February, 1844. — One poor boy cried very much, because he was to be discharged to-morrow^ and had no place to go to this cold weather. c 1843. 1844. 1845. Hf. Year. 387 432 208 271 168 62 339 454 175 3 I ... 1000 1055 445 18 OUR PRESENT DANGER. " 28th February, 1845.— Spoke to a youth named William C— , and gave him advice. He said he had been apprenticed to tlie boot- closing business, but was obliged to leave it off from an affection of the head. He often applied afterwards for relief, but could only get some on condition of breaking stones, which he was not able to do. He had been 15 days without lodging, and two days without food when he committed the crime. He had astonishing talents for learning. He committed to memory the 119th Psalm in two weeks, in the little leisure he had in the prison school." There is one more prison which it might be well to cite, as bearing, in the same way, more particularly on juvenile offenders. It is that of Parkhurst, in the Isle of Wight. In this prison, boys under a certain age are confined, with a view to instruction and religious education previous to their transportation. They come from all the other prisons of England and Wales, after conviction ; and so may form a very fair criterion of the extent of education, in comparison with crime, affecting the young. In the Report of this prison, we find the following : " The number of prisoners admitted, 1110: out of this number, 53 could read well; 202 not at all: 12 could write well; 398 not at all : 61 had considerable knowledge of Scripture ; 668 scarcely any, or none : and 17 could not repeat the Lord's Prayer." And now it is scarcely necessary to add more. The reports of prisons in the other districts of England and Wales, those of the north, and of Scotland, are found to bear a very similar propor- tion to those which have now been cited. The glance which is here given on this all-fearful subject, is but slight. But, slight as it is, it may be taken as a sample of the rest. The invariable proportion which the utterly ignorant bear to the utterly vicious is absolutely astounding. If I were to extract the various opinions and comments, and the remarkable instances of depra- vity, detailed by the various governors and chaplains of gaols, there would be no space to speak on any further subject. I shall content myself with making one or two extracts on this head, which, as coming from practical men, dealing with crime in their daily duties, its causes and its results, must, of course, carry great weight. Mr. Redgrave, (from whose tables containing the general ab- stracts from which I quoted at p. 13) taking a review of the whole question, speaks thus : " It remains to advert to the state of crime in the metropolis, to which a peculiar interest attaches. Here those great vicissitudes which affect the dense population of the manufacturing districts are comparatively but little felt, and a numerous and well-trained police, armed with extensive powers, has been long in operation, whose chief object is professedly the prevention of crime. Yet crime OUR PRESENT DANGER. 19 is not only unchecked^ hut has continued steadily to increase ; and in Middlesex 13*6 per cent has been added to the commitments, on a comparison of the two last periods of five years, although on the last year there was a decrease of 5*4 per cent. Admitting that a fair trial has been made of an efficient police, the fact that the com- mitments have increased in a ratio nearly double that of the popu- lation, leaves much room to fear that an increase of vigilance and skill to prevent and detect, has been met by greater cunning to de- vise and to elude ; that crime cannot be checked, much less repressed, by such an agency alone ; and that, to attain this desirable end, other means are required, which, reaching the sources of demorali- zation, may be brought into operation before the action of a police can commence, and arrest the propensity to crime ; not merely, when crime is developed, prevent its commission.^' The inspectors of prisons for the Home District, Messrs. Crawford and Whitworth Russell, speak thus : " It is well known that the principal causes which lead to the offences of criminal youth, may be traced to the absence of parental care and control, their destitution, and from the want of early and proper training, arising from the extreme poverty, ignorance, and depravity of their parents and natural guardians. The pressure of indigence under which vast numbers of the poorer classes live — the necessity of their toiling hard, early and late, for their daily sub- sistence — their unavoidable absence from home, and their consequent inability to prevent their children from having intercourse with bad associates — frequently preclude even the most honest and in- dustrious from bestowing on their families that attention which is indispensable to preserve them from criminal practices. But among the offspring of persons in the yet lower ranks of poverty, the temptations to crime are still more powerful. The many thousands who, when they rise in the morning, know not where to find a meal for the day, and who are therefore absorbed in the means of obtain- ing a subsistence, can bestow no moral care whatever on their children, who necessarily become an early prey to their vicious propensities ; while, it is needless to add, of adult criminal offenders, that their children are from infancy systematically initiated into crime, and become trained to the practice of nearly every species of iniquity. From the two last classes emanate a large body of deserted or orphan children, who may be daily seen begging in the streets, or wandering about with no other object than that of plunder. They are frequently committed to an ordinary prison, where they are generally rendered worse by their confinement. On their liberation, being friendless, they resume their predatory habits, cor- rupting or being still further contaminated by those with whom they associate, until, after frequent imprisonments, their career is arrested by transportation." But perhaps a still stronger passage occurs in the Report of the Chaplain of the Pentonville prison. This prison is one of a c2 20 OUR presp:nt danger. peculiar character. It receives convicts between the ages of 18 and 35 under probationary discipline, previous to their departure for the j)enal settlements. The total darkness of the human mind in sin, — the profound depth of recklessness of tlie prisoners at their first admission, — the gradual awakening of their minds as instruction advances, — then their total change of character, so as to take delight in the things which before they hated, and to hate the things which before they loved, is very beautifully seen by those who have visited this prison. The chaplain thus speaks : *' No one who has not personally inquired into the subject can form any just idea of the profound ignorance, which envelopes at first the understanding of certainly two-thirds of those who come under instruction in this place ; not excepting those who have been taught to read and write tolerably in indifferent schools ; but their ignorance of Christianity, in particular, is still more deplorable, so that terms used in ordinary pulpit discourses convey no distinct idea to their minds, and the peculiar doctrines of the gospel are altogether unknown, or as confused in their minds as if they had heard of them only through some distant and obscure tradition. I often ask men how they came to be so ignorant in religion, when, as farm-labourers or domestic servants, they had gone pretty regu- larly to church. The answer uniformly is, ' I did not understand the minister.' " How far this state of things amongst criminals may be con- sidered indicative of the condition of the classes from which they are drawn is not for me to determine, or in these pages to discuss ; certain it is, however, that where such ignorance exists, the labours of the schoolmaster who instructs people in the meaning of the language in which Christianity is communicated to them, and helps to raise the mind to its proper position, is only second to that of the painstaking pastor, who condescends to men of low estate, and adopts a style of teaching in which the mass of the people may take an interest, because they can understand it. " To correct this gross ignorance, to create habits of attention, and to gain a hearing for religion, we have found nothing of so much use, as the consecutive finniliar exposition of the New Testa- ment Scriptures, and such chapters of the Old as bear directly on Christianity. The Gospels, above all, are acceptable, and the common people hear gladly now, as they did eighteen hundred years ago, the instruction which fell from the Saviour's lips. The graciousness of His words, the simplicity and beauty of His parables, the spotless holiness and unbounded benevolence of His whole cha- racter and teaching, attract the attention of all who are not com- pletely lost to every sense of virtuous admiration, and procure, even from the worst, a silent and involuntary homage." OUR PRESENT DANGER. 2l So much then for the connexion between ignorance and crime, — that is to say, — as connected with prisons, convicted crime. But in its aspect in connexion with depravity not convicted, — with sedition, — rebellion against masters, — outrage, — ^violators of moral obligation between husband and wife, parent and child, master and servant, — points which do not come under the law, but nevertheless degrade and vitiate a people, — in this respect we shall have to turn to other sources of information ; and we have them readily. The reports of the inspectors of mines will readily furnish the proofs of what we might expect. Such passages as the following will shew how the labouring population in the mines and factories have become, in consequence of a want of common education, the prey of the turbulent and the seditious ; how they are induced to destroy their own comfort, or to retard their own interests, as well as the interests of their employers ; wasting what God has sent for their advantage, just by reason of their utter incapacity to understand the commonest principles of the business of life. Speaking of the state of the collieries in the North, and alluding to the combinations or " strikes " of the workmen, which have at various times prevailed, Mr. Tremenheere reports as follows ; "It has been shewn that there was no cause, in' any grievances of which the colliers had to complain, for a movement so injurious to others as well as themselves. The immediate and effective cause can only be found in the excitability of their peculiar tone and temper of mind, and in their liability to be led astray through their best feelings, in consequence of their present very limited state of intelligence. " It may be asked after the warnings given by the more recent strikes of 1826, 1831, and 1832, was nothing clone by the coal- owners and others to dispel ignorance, to produce more sober and temperate habits of thought, and to place in their way opportunities of sound secular and religious instruction ? " Several efforts in that direction were made between 1831, and the spring of 1844, but still far below the need. " Some schools were established under competent masters ; but it would appear that these are little frequented by the colliers' children. In one, I found, on the master's enumeration, that there were only tivelve out of sixty : in another six out of fifty ; and in others the proportions were about the same. " It appears to have been necessary that experience should shew its results in the case of those subjected to the experiment among the lower classes ; and that it should be proved that where little is taught at school, there will be little to remember, for direction and guidance in after-life ; little to fortify the mind against attempts at misdirection, or to soften and humanise, instruct and elevate it. 22 OUR PRESENT DANGER. The consequences to this collier community are, that they are open to any impression that agitators of their own class, appealing to their supposed interests, and taking advantage of their generous feelings, may seek to convey. They are easily led into error, and persevere in it with the greater obstinacy, because they want the knowledge to enable them to see where they are wrongT And It appears that these delusions arose very mainly from the fanatic teaching of low Methodist preachers, who are in the habit of working upon the ignorance of the colliers. The Inspector goes on to state — ' " The testimony to the fact was universal, that the lower and less educated classes of local preachers, belonging chiefly to the sect of * Primitive Methodists,' frequently had recourse to appeals to the rehgous feehngs of their hearers, to keep up the excitement in favour of the strike. The following is an example ; it is the state- ment of a highly respectable person, made in the presence of another capable of judging of its correctness : " During the strike they had regularly once a- week prayer meet- ings at the chapels in the colliery villages, to pray to God to give them success. The men said they went to ' get their faith strength- ened.' I attended one of these meetings. There w^ere about sixty members present. Prayer was oiFered up for God's blessing and support during the strike, and that He would give them the victory. Everything that could be collected in the Bible about slavery and tyranny, such as Pharaoh ordering bricks to be made without straw, was urged upon them." And what was the state of these men ? What minds had they to think or reason, on the state of things before them ? In the Earl of Durham's collieries, the population being 3,716 above five years of age, only 1,461 could, hy their own statement^ read and write ; but, in all probability, two-thirds, at least, had received no elements of instruction whatsoever. In 1841, Henry Morton, Esq., the manager of the Earl of Durham's estates and collieries, stated (Evidence, No. 386, April 6th, Keport of Children's Employment Commissioners) that: *' He did not think the means of education open to the boys (of those collieries) at all sufficient — quite insufficient. Parents are anxious to send their children to school, but they have no good schools. * * * They (the pitmen) consider themselves vastly superior, in the scale of society, to agricultural labourers. Drunkenness is a prevalent vice, and dog-fighting is a favourite amusement. There is much swearing down the pits. It is much to their credit that, during the great strikes, when imder the most violent excitement, and ui-ged by their leaders to annoy their employers in every way, scarcely a solitary instance of the destruc- OUR PRESENT DANGER. 23 tion of colliery machinery occurred. In these strikes there is a class of self-sufficient leaders, who are generally local preachers, and who are most decidedly the most difficult to control, and who urge on the others to acts of very great insubordination. " There is a great want of veracity among the boys, and all their statements must be received with the greatest caution : they are exceeding prone to mischief of all kinds, and to acts of insubor- dination." Drunkenness, insubordination, reckless and prodigal sensuality seem to devour the whole population. Reporting upon South Wales the Inspector says : — " It is desirable to direct especial attention to the fact of the great and general increase of intemperance since the return of high wages and prosperity, in the autumn of 1844. The fact is notorious throughout the entire district, comprising a population of at least 1 40,000 souls. At all the works it was stated to me that, although the wages of colliers now ranged from 1/. Is. to 25s. per week, and the earnings of the men employed about the furnaces and rolling- mills from 21. to 4/. per week, with a corresponding high rate in every other species of employment, the great majority of the work- people, men, women, and boys, spent the whole of their earnings within the week, principally in eating and drinking, and were often in debt besides. On Sunday nights, as at other convenient times, the public-houses are generally full. Among the statements made to me on this subject were the following : — The iCev. T. Davies, incumbent of Pontypool, informed me that he estimated that on Sunday evenings there were now from 1200 to 1500 people in the public houses and beer shops of his parish, containing a population of 7000. As beer houses, &c. abound among all the adjoining mass of population, it would appear that not far short of the entire adult working population frequent those places on Sunday evenings. A highly respectable dissenting minister in another part of the district thus expressed himself to me on this subject: — 'The people began to drink away all their earnings as soon as the good times returned. I have laboured among them many years, and I am sorry to say that I see no improvement in their habits in this respect, and but little, if any, in their general morals. Teetotalism has declined ; for every twenty whom I induced to join it a few years ago, I have not now five who have remained. My chapel is attended by at least 400 people every Sunday evening, and it is shocking to think, after so many years of my ministry, that imme- diately after the service is over, they all flock to the beer shops and public houses.' The general state of things seems to be summed up in the expression frequently used in answer to my inquiries on this point, ' the more wages they get the more they spend in drink ;' and, unhappily, it is also added, * the less they spend on the educa- tion of their children ;' for, notwithstsnding their own ample earn- ings, the moment there is the least demand for their childrens' 24 OUR PRESENT DANGER. labour, they take them from the school at the earliest age at which they can earn anything ; whereas when employment is slack they are content that they should be left at school, provided it costs them little. Females in many cases frequent the public houses and beer shops with the men ; or, if they remain at home, they often send their daughters for spirits. With the participation of the females of the population in these demoralizing habits the prospect of amendment in tills particular seems remote ; and from this we see not only the demoralization of the people, and the danger in their rebellious dis- position, but also, even taking lower grounds, the actual loss that the proprietors of the mines are continually suffering. The want of education is not only a moral degradation, but it is a loss of profit, and if religion will not speak, surely self-interest might dictate a better state of things." Samuel Homfray, Esq., a magistrate and resident director of the works of the Tredegar Iron and Coal Company, thus de- scribes the state of his workmen, and its effects : — " Our men had full three years of low wages. Since wages rose again, about twelve months ago, their habits of drunkenness have become as great as ever, and they have commenced again working irregularly, particularly in the first and second weeks of the month. Our make of iron is one-third less during that part of the month than towards the end, solely for want of coal. At the end of the month they work very hard, and our horses are obliged to do extra work. Tliere are now three assault cases for one that there was when wages were lower, and when they could not indulge their habits of intemperance." W. Williams, Esq., of Snatchwood, the Resident Director of the Works of the Pertwyn and Golyros Company, stated — " The loss of iron, if left a few minutes too long in the furnace, is very considerable. This frequently happens from the inattention of the men when half stupified with drink, and scarcely knowing what they are about. The iron, when left too long, melts away and runs to cinder. The drunken habits of the men oblige us also to keep an additional number of labourers, and also of horses, to do the extra work towards the end of the month. There is then a great wear and tear of horses and gear, the work continuing fifteen and sixteen hours a day ; whereas, at the beginning of the month, they are often not working two hours." The foregoing contain the substance of the universal com- plaints of the managers of the works throughout the district, and show satisfactorily that the drunken habits of the men occa- sion a tax upon the employer's capital to no small amount ; pro- bably far beyond what it would cost to maintain the machinery of such secular and religious instruction and superintendence, as would afford tlic best chance of reaching those evils at their source. OUR PRESENT DANGER. 25 But passing away from the mining districts, we shall find the case no better either In the factories or in the agricultural popu- lation. The low state of the schools, the inefficiency of the masters, the apathy of all concerned, is the constant burden of the School Inspectors' reports. In the report of Mr. Horner (1839), we find that in one of the factories, the master who was set over the boys to teach, could not even write his own name. Behold the following picture of a school : — " In the last quarter I had a school voucher presented to me with a ^mark,' and when I called on the schoolmaster to read it before me, he could not. It had been written out by the clerk of the factory, and the schoolmaster had been called to put his mark to it. I have had to reject the school voucher of the fireman, the children having been schooled in the coal hole ! (in one case I actually found them there), and having been made to say a lesson, from books nearly as black as the fuel, in the intervals between his feeding and stirring the fire of the engine-boiler." Mr. Moseley, School-Inspector reports — " I could scarcely have believed, on any other experience than my own, that some hundreds of children taken from the highest classes of our national schools, should be incapable of telling me the name of the country in which they live, or indeed of attaching any definite idea to that question. I have examined many who are ignorant who governs this country ; and when told it was the Queen, and requested to mention the name of her Majesty, unable to do so. They have told me that the Queen of England was also Queen of France ; that England was in Africa ; that to reach Scotland it was necessary to travel southward and cross the sea. In short there is no limit to the absurdities, which in their gross ignorance these children may be made to utter." In regard to the deficiency of schools, and their incapacity of doing what they are meant to do, Mr. Allen speaks : — "In the county of Bedford there are fifty-seven parishes in which there are no schools. In the county of Huntingdon, forty- nine. In eighteen parishes in which the population reached 500, there was not a single properly trained teacher at work." In regard to the inefficiency of the masters and mistresses, and consequently the ignorance of the children who came to be taught, Mr. Watkins writes thus: — " At one school in Yorkshire I found that arithmetic was not taught. I a,sked the reason. Because I know nothing about it, was the honest reply. At another, in Lancashire, where the children were very ignorant and crowded together in classes made like sheep pens, I begged the master to put some questions to them as I could get no answer. He took a book out of a corner cupboard, where it had not seen the light for many a day, and began, ' Who wrote the 26 OUR PRESENT DANGER. Bible ?' and then qualified this strange question, * that is the greatest part of it ?' 'Moses,' was the answer given and allowed. * Who collected the Scriptures into books ? Answer, 'Gomorrah.' In three schools there were notorious drunkards. In one was a wretched profligate passed middle age, as shameless as he was un- principled. I found three Dissenters teaching in our Church schools. At one school, in the West Riding, the mistress assured me with a burst of tears, that she and her husband with five or six children had ' at times been sorely pinched for food.' " In regard to the political character of the districts remarkable for the neglect of education, Mr. Moseley reports thus: — " That is an instructive comparison which places the records of popular commotion side by side with the statistics of education. From the returns made to the Chester Diocesan Board of Education, it appears that in the Deanery of Manchester, containing a popula- tion of more than half a million, one individual only out of fifty- four is under daily instruction ; in the Deanery of Wigan, one in thirty-four ; in Blackburn, one in thirty-eight ; in Chorley, one in thirty-two ; in Macclesfield, one in forty ; in Bolton, one in fifty- five. The names of these places will be familiar to those persons who bear in their recollection the popular outbreaks of the year 1841. In the Potteries we learn, ' that the elementary instruction offered to the people is probably worse than in any other district, and the statistics of education lower ; and it is a district not less remarkable for the wild forms of religious belief, than for the infi- deUty prevalent in it, and the madness of its political combinations." In the summary of the state of education which Mr. Moseley gives, he makes this astounding remark, that — " On a probable conclusion, out of every 100 children who leave these schools annually (schools of the midland districts) seventy-five are unable to read the Word of God with ease and correctness, and twenty-four of them know only the letters of the alphabet and mono- syllables ; that fifty of them have received no instruction whatever in penmanship, and eighty have not advanced in arithmetic as far as the compound rules. In the town of Burslem, out of a population of 9,672 souls, excluding all under six years of age, and in some cases under seven, one-third was found totally unable either to read or write, namely 3240." But here we needs must stop ; whichever way we turn we are met with overwhelming evidence of the hideous nature of our position. Either in the statistics of the population as com- pared with schools, or with crime, or with political agita- tion, either going into our agricultural villages, our factories, our mines, or our prisons ; visiting our police courts and assizes, and hearing the oi)Inions of our judges and grand juries ; — in all we arc met with one inevitable question which OUR PRESENT DANGER. 27 presses on the mind of every thoughtful man — what will, in the next generation, if not in the present, be the result of population thus growing up before our faces in such blank and brutal ignorance? Are we not, as it were, walking upon a charged mine, which is ready to burst beneath our feet ? Is not a chasm, as it were, ready to gape open and swallow us up ? Is it possible to think that if it should please God to send upon this country some more immediate trial of patience, some greater emergency in which ordinary legislation fails — for instance, difficulty or dearth of food, some turbulent demagogue and agitator, winning the affections of the labouring population, and seizing upon opportunities in politics which such men know so well how to use— is it possible to think that our present organi- zation of government could survive ? Where is its point of safety ? Where the counterbalancing power to resist the im- pulse of ignorant and maddened multitudes ? Will the lord of 200,000^. per annum be permitted to sleep in undisturbed enjoy- ment of his lands and goods : when the starving mechanic, or the emaciated factory slave, or the savage collier living like the brute beneath the earth, once perceives the power of numbers com- bined for the work of destruction : — Will the Church be safe ? will the Throne ? will the Altar ? Is it not evident that as each in its place has violated the great duty with which God has entrusted them for the salvation of souls, so God will suffer the outpouring of His vengeance to descend in retribution, and all will be swept away. This is not a theory — it is a matter of mathematical calculation. It is as certain as the shining of the sun at noon-day, that from a people selfishly luxurious in its upper classes as ours is, and rudely pressed with many griev- ances in its lower classes as ours is — with rationalizing know- ledge, and empty speculation at one end, without faith — and barbarian ignorance without God at the other — unless by Divine grace we apply the remedy which He wills in time, a revolution must issue. Neither God nor man will tolerate the hypocrisy of a land which denies every attribute of the faith which it professes. If the cross be not taken up to do its work of mercy, the sword will find its way to do its work of 28 CHAPTER II ESTIMATES. " The expense of the institutions for education and religious instruction, is no doubt beneficial to the whole society, and may, therefore, without injustice, be defrayed by the general contribution of the whole society." — Adam Smith, b. v. c. 1. The necessity, then, of providing for the labouring population of this country a more efficient education than that which they at present enjoy, is clear, and beyond dispute; such necessity arising from two considerations : first, the remedy of the gross state of crime and depravity in which the great mass of the lower orders are at present living; and therein involved, se- condly, the ultimate safety of the whole community. I now proceed to consider what the actual state of things is in regard to the population, as compared with the means of edu- cation already existing, and the requirements which the country has a right to make, either of parliament or the Church, for its supply. It appears from a general survey of the different population returns since 1801, that the average number of children between the ages of two and fourteen, is in a ratio of one-fourth to the whole. In an estimate presented to the public by autliority, and set forth in a pamphlet, in the year 1839, entitled ^' liecent Measures for the Promotion of Education,''^ we find that, in the towns of Manchester, Salford, Liverpool, Bury, York, and Bir- mingham, and also in the city of Westminster, where, in three divisions, registers had been kept, "the number of healthy children from two to fourteen years of age, — which the modern prevalence of dame and infant schools in our manufacturing dis- tricts marks as the limit of the school-age, — is nearly one-foarth of the population.''^ In my present estimate, I compute from tliese two ages, because, on the one hand, I find from experience that parents are glad to get their children into infant schools quite as early as tw^o years of age, if not earlier ; and on the other hand, though certainly it must be confessed that fourteen is beyond the age at which we generally find the children of our poor to remain at school, still, in making an estimate of real national education, we must make it with reference to that which it ought to be, rather than that which it is. ESTIMATES. 29 In most of the continental nations, education, even among the poorest, is not considered complete until the age of fifteen. In Switzerland, some of the children enter the mills at eleven years of age, if they obtain a certificate of being able to read and write ; but they are obliged to continue periodical lessons until fourteen or fifteen. In the cantons of Berne, Vaud, Argovie, and Zurich, the children are at school between seven and fifteen. In Thurgovie, all parents are obliged by law to send their children to school from the age of seven to fifteen ; but are per- mitted to work at thirteen, on condition of attending evening classes all the year, or attending periodically daily schools, till fifteen. In Prussia, since the time of Frederic the Great, the education of the poor is compulsory ; and all parents are re- quired to give their children a proper education, from the seventh to the fourteenth year : and, after this, the law demands that the child, after having left school, and having been con- firmed and admitted to the communion, shall attend for one year the catechism class in the church on Sundays. In the govern- ments of Wirtemberg, Hesse, Bavaria, &c., children are by the law^ compelled to be at school from six to fourteen. In Austria, the age at which children are obliged to be at school is, from five to thirteen ; and, in Denmark, from seven to fourteen. How different the case is in our own country, any one who watches our parochial schools may observe. Boys * of fourteen years of age are seldom to be seen. They are gone, — lost in little places of service, errand-bo3^s, pages, working in the fields ; they are lost to religion, lost to all instruction, and forget the little they ever knew. Mr. Cooke, one of the inspectors of schools under the privy-council, gives the following account of the ages at which boys leave school in the metropolis : " There is a considerable difference between the schools in the east and west of London. In the schools at the west end we usu- ally find that of 200 boys, two or three are above 13 years old, and about twelve above 12 years old ; that the average age at which boys who have proceeded regularly through the school, leave it finally, is somewhat under 1 1 J years, and that the average time of their stay in school is under one and a-half years, but varying from five years to six months. In the east of London, and in the densely popu- lated quarters, the average is generally lower. The first class ave- rages under lOJ years of age, and the time in school under 12 months. There is little difference, taking all the town schools, between the age of the boys and girls, although a few girls between ■ 12 and 16, are occasionally to be found in schools of high character." Every one will agree that this is a great evil. We must not accommodate ourselves to this evil, and make our estimate of provision according to it ; and because children do not in point 30 ESTIMATES. of fact remain at school longer than 12, make our calculation so that they should not ; on tlie contrary, means must be taken to carry them on, to induce longer attendance; at any rate, we are justified in calculating by the higher age rather than the lower in any great scheme of real national education. Exceptions may be made, or plans of combining a certain degree of labour with a certain continuance at school, as in Switzerland, and as at present is the case in our factory schools ; or evening schools may be more largely adopted in conjunction with day-schools ; or the catechising of the clergy may be insisted on in the public service, as by the canons of the church is directed, and a con- tinuance at such catechising in regard to the members of the church until the time of confirmation. Some one, or all of these plans, may be adopted so as to carry on the age of education, the status pupillaris, to 14, 15, or even 16. But however this be, most assuredly one great feature in any attempt to improve the education of the poor, must be to insist upon the age of 14 as the very lowest age at which it can be considered as in any degree satisfactory. But to return to our calculations. We may safely assume that about one-fourth of the population is between the ages of 2 and 14. But the population of England and Wales, accord- ing to the last census, that of 1841, was at that time 15,906,829, with an increase between the years 1831 and 1841 of 2,009,642. We therefore assume that there is an annual increase of popula- tion in England and Wales of 200,964 ; but for the sake of easier calculation, and that we may be sure to be below the mark, rather than above it in the results to which we shall be led, let us say the annual increase is 200,000,* and that the population at the year 1847, cannot possibly be less than 17,000,000. Now taking the children at one-fourth, the number will be 4,250,000. But again, upon the best calculations that can be made, one-half of such children may be considered as capable of providing their own education, the children of the rich and middle classes, which will reduce the number again, and there will remain 2,125,000 poor children to be publicly provided * We are speaking of the increase of population in England and Wales, not of the whole kingdom. Dr. Hook falls into the error of computing the average increase of the population by the latter, instead of the former ; which, unfortunately, laid him open to the attack of Mr, Baines, in letters published by him in the Leeds Mer- cury. Mr. Baines clearly shews how much beyond the mark l)r. Hook's calcula- tions were. Dr. Hook says : "If 625 schools may be annually built, with the aid of this grant of £75,000, accommodating 93,750 scholars, these numbers^ represent only one-fourth part of the annual permanent increase of the population, which proceeds at the rate of nearly 365;000 in the year." But the grant and the scholars refer to England and AVales only ; while the numbers 365,000, as the increase of population, refers to Great Britain and Ireland, which will be seen by reference to the census. ESTIMATES. 31 for. In the pamphlet before quoted, it is said that '' the number of the children of the working classes from 3 to 13 years of age for whom daily instruction should be provided is two-thirds of the whole ; one-third being deducted for those privately edu- cated, or employed, or sick, or prevented by casualties from attending school, and also deducting the number attending supe- rior private schools." Now if the number of children between 2 and 14 is one-fourth, and two-thirds of that one-fourth be the number between 3 and 13 requiring a gratuitous education, the calculation here made that one-half only would require such education, between 2 and 14, cannot be very far wrong; we shall perhaps be short of the real truth. But it is not to be assumed that the poor are at present entirely neglected. Much is already done for them ; for on the one hand there is the great Church Society, called the " Na- tional Society,'* and on the other there is a Dissenting Society, called the " British and Foreign School Society," both of which, by means of voluntary contributions, and by aids of money from time to time from the Government, furnish a considerable body of education for the poorer classes. Many are also educated in the Workhouses and Unions, in which latter case, in very many instances, a far better education is provided than in any national school throughout the country — as for instance in the workhouse school in the parish of St. Marylebone, London. We find by the National Society's Report, that the number of children educated by the Church is 911,834, and the number educated by Dissenters may be computed at 100,000 ; while again the number of those in Workhouses and Unions, including in this latter class those who are physically incapable of receiv- ing education, such as idiots, and the like, would amount to about 75,000. Deducting these three amounts from the 2,125,000 before mentioned, we shall have, in round numbers, 1,038,000 children at this present moment to be provided for. But at the same time, population still increasing at the rate of 200,000 every year, we shall have to add the same proportion, that is, one-eighth of 200,000 every year. The whole will stand as follows: — (A.) Present number of children requiring, but not provided with education 1,038,000 Annual increase of such children - - - - 25,000 Having thus ascertained the number of children, we shall next inquire what should be the number of masters, mistresses, and assistants, in proportion. Every one knows, that Dr. Bell's system of teaching by monitors has been of late years totally 32 ESTIMATES* inadequate to the object in view. It is not possible that boys of 11 or 12 years of age, or even 14, should in any real effi- ciency impart knowledge to, and govern the minds of children who are only one or two years younger than themselves. The practice has had its day, but the testimony of all who have watched the system is against its continuance. Mr. Allen, School Inspector under the Privy Council, says — " Under this conviction, I have been long desirous to get rid of the use of monitors, except for such parts of school discipline as approach to what is purely mechanical, and to see only small school- rooms erected ; for example, such as would accommodate 100 or (in the case of infant schools) 140 children. The advocates of the monitorial system of instruction remind us that it is not their plan that one ignorant child should teach another, but that the school- master should diligently prepare his monitors ; and that these when instructed by him should become so many channels through which the teaching derived from him as the source should be carried over the whole school. But if it be granted that in ordinary cases the master has energy enough to do intellectually for his monitors what is needed, the most important question still remains, as to the power of moral training which such instructors are likely to exercise over their pupils." Mr. Cook says — " We cannot reflect upon the age or acquirements of monitors without being struck with the absurdity of expecting any good results from the use of such materials. Taking the average of monitors, they may be described as boys about eleven and half years old, reading with ease, but not much intelligence ; writing from dictation, so as to give the sense of a passage, but without any regard to punctuation, or any practical knowledge of grammar ; with more or less facility in working the ordinary rules of arith- metic to proportion or practice, but with little or no insight into its principles. The knowledge of geography, history, or general infor- mation, which the more intelligent of these youths may possess, is not called for in their employment as teachers of the lower classes ; and it is hardly needful here to reiterate the severe but just obser- vations which all writers upon our National Schools have made upon the tone and character of the religious instruction under moni- tors. It is equally prejudicial to the children, who are taught to confound the holiest things with the least important, and to them- selves, since they are thus acquiring or confirming habits either of apathy or irreverence in dealing with those subjects which pertain to man's salvation." Mr. Moseley says — " The system of Dr. Bell does not, indeed, contemplate, as ori- ginally propounded by him, and as practically applied in many of our large schools, the intervention of a well-instructed master at ESTIMATES. 33 all, — otherwise than vicariously, and through his monitors. During school hours, it provides for him, in his capacity of an educated man and an enlightened instructor, no place in the school, but only with reference to his skill as a disciplinarian, and a man of order and authority. It intends no contact of his mind with the minds of the children of his school ; it gives him no opportunity to study their individual characters ; and, not being the immediate agent in their instruction, of course none to adapt the means and the subjects of instruction, in any degree, to the exigencies of each— to develop that of which the growth has been kept back, to strengthen that which is weak, and supply that which is deficient." A member of the National Society, in a letter to the Arch- bishop of Canterbury, writes as follows : — " Of all follies, the idea of a Royal road to learning being disco- vered in the 19th century, was the greatest, and yet it flattered our self-love. The Reform Bill itself was not lauded as a greater panacea for every social grievance than the march of intellect ; and whatever good may have been done by the promulgation of the Bell and Lancasterian systems of mutual instruction, they have been attended with one great crying evil — the production of a belief that Bell's texts learned by rote, with a little reading and writing, and spelling for the million, when afforded at the cheapest possible rate, and diffused among the largest possible number of children by the aid of monitors under twelve years of age, in the shortest possible space of time, will produce a sufficient measure of Christian edu- cation." "Each boy can spell 100 words in a morning. If 100 scholars do this 200 mornings yearly, the following will be the total of their efforts towards improvement : — 100 words 200 mornin^ijs 20,000 words each boy per annum 100 boys 2,000,000 Total words spelt by 100 boys per annum. Joseph Lancaster. {Quoted by Quarterly Review, Oct. 1811.)" Such testimony as this, coming simultaneously from the public inspectors of schools in different portions of the kingdom, sealed by the observations of a distinguished member of the National Society, cannot be resisted. The monitorial system and the J 00 boys spelling 100 words must be given up. We require real masters, and minds, not automata, to produce real education. No doubt the failure of the National Society's system in grasp- ing the minds of the poor, and training them to sound and evan- gelical religion, is mainly attributable to these dry skeleton like monitorial classes. The teaching is hollow, formal, and mecha- 34 ESTIMATES. nical ; there is no flesh and life within it, no power or vigour ; no holding of the affections as the seat of the moral improvement of the human mind ; no sympathy between the teachers and the taught ; and therefore the consequence is, that after so many years, we still find the poor, as a class, in great commercial and manufacturing towns, as well as in the metropolis, still alienated from the Church. I have observed very carefully, for it has been my duty so to do, the general conduct of boys at ordinary national schools, and I have searched among the poor for their opinions upon the subject, and without fear of contradiction, I assert that the system, as a system, is a failure in the great work of the education of the mind, and of the religious affections. Reverence for holy places, reverence for holy things, deference to superiors, good manners, purity of langunge, orderly conduct, solid yet humble faith in the doctrines of the Church, habitual attendance at public worship, and above all, the reception of the Holy Communion as the seal of their lives and of their faith, is not the product among the poor of the National Society's system of education. For instance, it is no part of the society's system to ascertain the Baptism of the children. It is no part (at least as it is practised in most national schools) to insist on the Confirma- tion of their children. It is no part to lead their minds by spi- ritual exhortations to contemplate the Holy Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, as one of the sacraments generally necessary to salvation, although in the Catechism they say the words by rote. Many of the children never have had any godfather or god- mother, having been baptized by Dissenters, and yet they are suf- fered to repeat the words of the Catechism, in which they assert the contrary. Many children are systematically suffered to attend * In the Report of the Mining population for 1846, there is the following extraordi- nary announcement, speaking- of schools in Glamorganshire: "All the schools are under the superintendance of the Clergyman ; but unfortunately, from his advanced age, he is not able to take a very active part. They are all Church Schools, As a large proportion of the work-people belong to different Dissenting Congrega- tions, and as many of their children may not have been baptized, the part of the Catechism relating to Baptism is 7iot taught these children. The rule is to teach the Catechism to all those children whose parents do not object. This arrangement meets with no objection, and we have no difficulty about it." And again, speaking of the schools of the Llynvi company, and also of the Msesteg company, the report states : " The same practice in regard to teaching the catechism will be adopted as at the Llynvi schools. In this, Mr. Hughes Jones states that he meets with no difficulties or objections on the part of Dissenting parents ; and that, in omitting the portion of the catechism relating to baptism, in the case of children who have not been baptized according to the forms of the Established Church, he receives the sanction of the bishop of the diocese. The rule will be, to teach the catechism to all the children whose parents do not object." Mr. Hughes Jones is a priest of the Church of England lately appointed curate of that part of the parish. How it has come to pass that either he, as a priest, or his diocesan, as a bishop, has ventured, in a Church school, to forego a por- tion of the Church catechism, it is impossible to conceive. I cannot, at present, ascertain whether these schools are in union with the National Societ}' ; but in all ESTIMATES. 35 places of dissent for public worship, at the same time that schism is known to be a sin. These are the anomalies which destroy the spirit and tone of the religious mind, and make the men and women of the poorer orders hostile to the Church, im- mediately that they see the want of reality with which they have been treated at school. Maps, plans, slates, and registers abound, but the spiritual mind I fearlessly assert to be wanting (speaking generally) in the national schools of this country. Moreover, the people themselves are sensible of the inefficiency of the monitorial system, and avoid it. They refrain from our schools in consequence, and many schools may be named where the benches are completely empty, just in consequence of the imperfect and spiritless education which is imparted. To verify this we have only to look to the reports of the different inspec- tors." Mr. Moseley informs us that — " Ninety -four schools, in which he found 6,351 children present, were erected to contain 11,147 children, and to benefit an aggregate population of 247,199. It thus appears that the school-rooms are but little more than one-half, or, accurately, four-sevenths, full, and that of the population, for whose advantage they were erected, one in thirty-nine only is under instruction in them." * * * ********* " I have everywhere found," he continues, " the indifference of parents alleged as the great obstacle to the success of schools, and I confess that, in too many instances, that indifference has appeared to me to be in some degree justified by the character of the instruc- tion offered to their children. ****** I cannot but think that in the sympathies of the poor themselves, the hopes of the friends of education may rest with more confidence than they have hitherto done ; and that if the existing system has failed of its results, it is among other reasons, that the opinions and the prejudices of those whom it is intended to benefit have been so little consulted in it. Until an opinion of the labouring poor shall be thus formed, favourable to the education offered to their children, although school-houses be built at the public expense and masters maintained, neither will any adequate proportion of the population be brought, I fear, under the means of instruction, nor will the great objects, which, under the blessing of God, it is calculated to produce, be effected in respect to those who are." He then instances three schools in which a new master being probability they are. In this respect, I would refer the reader to the observations of Dr. Hook, in his pamphlet on Education, p. 42, and the following; and particu- larly p. 55 ; in all of which I heartily concur, and do most sincerely deprecate the hollowness of a theory which would embrace, for the sake of a little ephemeral success in numbers. Dissenters in the same arms as Churchmen ; and, for the sake of an apparent liberality, would forego, in the teaching of our poor, some of the fundamental principles of our Catholic Church. d2 36 ESTIMATES. appointed, higher instruction introduced, and a better system established, the numbers had doubled and trebled in six months. — See Beport. The object of these remarks is to shew that the education of our schools must be elevated. The whole tone of it must be more capable of satisfying the mental wants of the poor. Our schools must cease to be machines. As one of the inspectors justly observes, we must have educated men to teach the uneducated, \i the country desires to expend money on the education of the poor, let it see that the money is turned to the best advantage. It is better to spend, and cheaper to spend double the amount, and obtain fruit, than be sparing and parsimonious with half, and receive no fruits at all. This is said, in order that we may be prepared for a large outlay in masters, mistresses, and assist- ants. Get rid of monitors, who are of no use, in proportion as they cost nothing, and then you must substitute grown-up teachers, who will be of use in proportion to their cost. But first for the number. All persons seem to be agreed that there ought to be no less than one master or mistress to every hundred children, and we should also add to every master and mistress there should be an assistant or subsidiary teacher. Supposing, then, as we fairly may, that the average number of children in each school-room shall be 100, we shall find by referring to A., that the number of masters or mistresses will be 10,380, while, of course, the assistants will be the same. But as we estimated the whole number of children from two to fourteen, one portion of these will be infants, over whom a mistress will be required, and ano- ther portion girls over whom again a mistress, and only the third portion boys, over whom a master will be required ; so it will follow that the number of masters will only be one third of the whole number, 10,380. But again, on the other hand, as it will be desirable to abolish monitors, and to introduce assistant masters and mistresses in their place, so we may reckon in pro- portion the same number of assistants as of masters and mis- tresses ; and of these in the same way, two-thirds for female assistants, and one-third for males. The whole calculation may rest as follows: — (B. ) Number of masters at present required Ditto of mistresses Number of male assistants at present required Ditto of female Number of masters required, annually increasing for a future supply . Ditto of mistresses Ditto of male assistants Ditto of female assistants 3460 6920 3460 6920 83 167 83 167 ESTIMATES. 37 The next point which will come before us is the number of school -houses to be provided. In every populous place, manufac- turing towns and the like, it is possible that school-houses may- be built for a somewhat larger number, though certainly, as far as real improvement is involved, no school-room ought to contain more than 200 children. Upon an average, however, we may safely estimate that school-houses should be built, containing lodgings for masters, mistresses, and assistants, and also three school-rooms. One for 100 boys ; the second for 100 girls, and the third for 100 infants. Any excess in one place, would be made up by deficiency in another. A. being then 1,038,000, our estimate would be as follows : — (C. ) Number of school-houses required at present . 3460 Number of scliool-houses required per annum, for increase of population . . .83 But now another consideration presses upon us. Whence are we to be supplied with the great number of masters, mis- tresses, and assistants which this system will involve ? how are we to teach the teachers ? Let us not despair : it is one of the most wonderful things in the providence of God, to behold how the supply of all things is ready for the demand as it grows up. We might wonder, looking through the streets of London, and calculating the enormous increase of dwellings on all sides, every year producing thousands of new houses, in hundreds of new streets ; we might wonder, w^hence should spring up the brick- layers, and the masons, and the carpenters, to supply this great demand. But the fact is before us. The simple recollection then, that the very increase of the population of which we speak, will furnish the enlarged area from which the instructors of youth are to be selected, will satisfy us that neither men nor women will be wanting to do the work for which God shall call them. The office of schoolmaster for the poor will become an office of the highest and most honourable character, as most assuredly, in the eyes of all, it is known to be one of the most laborious and irksome. But as his office will, in the improved state of education which we contemplate, become more honourable, so it will require some system of special training and discipline to fit and prepare him for his labours. Too often it has been the custom for any cast-off servant, or bankrupt tradesman, to turn schoolmaster ; as in the sacred office of the Priesthood, we have too often seen the half-pay lieutenant, or the idle lawyer, thrust himself into holy orders. It is owing to the intrusion of inefficient persons, both into the office of schoolmaster and of priest, the want of training of the mind, the wrong tone and 38 ESTIMATES. setting of the character, that we find, both in moral and religious education, such gross anomalies. But, as it may be needed to have stricter supervision over the teachers of youth, we may hope to reap richer fruits in the manhood of the taught, and the schoolmaster must from henceforth stand out from among his fellows, in a higher sphere, and take a better place. Normal schools or colleges for training, must therefore be immediately prepared. Heferring to B, and seeing the number of teachers which every year will demand, there will be need of at least twenty such colleges. The College of St. Mark in Stanley Grove, for masters, and the institution at Whitelands for mistresses, must be multiplied throughout the land. There should not be more than two hun- dred students in each, with a principal and chaplain, and other officers and appendages, suitable to a Collegiate education. It will stand in our estimate, at the very lowest, in addition to those already existing, as follows: — (D. ) Normal school houses or colleges for the training of masters . . . . .20 Having thus ascertained the establishment which would be required for anything like a sufficient supply for the education of the poor, let us next turn our attention to the expenditure which such an establishment would involve ; and first in order, the building of school houses. We cannot estimate the building of a school house, with lodgings for master, mistress, infant mistress, and assistants, at less than o£*1000. They would vary of course, according to the place, facility of procuring materials, and price of labour ; also according to the number of scholars to be provided : but, as in all the other items of calculation, the average must be taken to represent the whole. Referring then to C., we shall find the following expenditure : ( E. ) Expense of 3460 sclioolhouses for present £ need ..... 3,460,000 Expense for 83 school houses to be pro- vided per annum . . . 83,000 We next come to the expenditure which will be needed for the salaries of masters. We have before spoken of the elevation of rank which it will behove us to impart to the office of a schoolmaster of the poor ; that he ought not to remain, as now too frequently he is, no better in knowledge or in estimation than the af^fricultural labourers around him : he ought to be in ESTIMATES. 39 character, as in literary attainments, a man to whom, next to the clergy, all might look in confidence and respect ; and this being brought about, as no doubt it will, by the Normal colleges, which we suppose to be instituted under the improved system, it will follow that the means of maintenance should be supplied to them in a liberal and generous spirit. Superior masters, with large schools in the metropolis, or in commercial or manufactur- ing towns, might receive a salary of <^ 100, school mistresses, ^80, and from this there might be a descending scale, as low as £50 for the one and <£*30 for the other ; the lower sum of £30 to embrace the infant-school mistresses. An average might be taken for masters at £75 per annum, for mistresses at £40 per annum. The assistants also might be supplied at an average for the males of £20 per annum, and for the females at .^15 per annum, rising from year to year from rifi'IO to ^£^30. From the foregoing we shall find, by comparing it with B., that the following will be the result : (F. ) £ Salaries of masters at present required . 259,500 „ mistresses . . . 276,800 „ male assistants . . . 69,200 „ female assistants . . . 103,800 Total at present required . . 7©9,300 Salaries of masters for increasing population . 6,225 „ mistresses . . . . , 6,680 „ male assistants . 1,660 „ female assistants . 2,505 17,070 Then again, we have to find the amount of outlay necessary to supply the Normal schools or Colleges. We estimated their number to be twenty, and we cannot but consider that each of them would cost <£^ 15,000. For the Normal schools would not be, as the primary schools, required merely to supply accommo- dation for children in daily attendance, but they would as well require practising schools for children, as also more particularly rooms for boarding and lodging the pupils, just upon the same system as the colleges in our universities. Dining hall, lecture rooms, college chapel, and the like, with requisite furniture and appendages, would all be required: d^ 15 000 would there- fore be a moderate estimate, and the whole sum on this head would be : ( G. ) £ Building and preparing the Normal Colleges . 300,000 40 ESTIMATES. But still we have more to add, for our whole school establish- ment being now supposed to be in existence, how is its existence to be continued, how is it to be maintained ? The annual repairs for wear and tear, supi)ly of books and school materials, — and particularly in the Normal Colleges, the sum which would be re- quired annually for the principal or head of the college, the various teachers, and the servants, and other such expenses, — we could not estimate this head under £4^0 a year for the ])rimary school, and £3000 a year for the Normal colleges ; and it would stand thus. See C. ( II. ) Present yearly maintenance of the primary £ schools ..... 138,400 Ditto of the Normal schools . . . 60,000 Total . . . . . 198,400 Future supply for primary schools to meet in- crease of population . . . 3,320 We have also to add one further expense, that of inspection. Without a full and methodical insi)ection of the schools, both nor- mal and primary, by competent persons, appointed either by the Church or Government, or both in unison, no great or permanent improvement will ever be achieved. The value and importance of inspection will at once be seen, by the most cursory examina- tions of the reports now made to the Privy Council, and from which, in the last chapter, I have made so many extracts. In fact, its absolute necessity is so universally recognized that there is no need to speak further on the subject. Mr. Allen says : (Report, dated February 24, 1846): " If my salary be taken into the account, and the number of schools be taken at 340, the whole cost of inspection would be for the last year at the rate of somewhat less than £2. 6s. 4d. for each school.'^ (He had already estimated the travelling expenses at 12s. 9d. for each visit.) We have to find then the number of schools, and for the sake of round numbers, to estimate the cost of inspection at £2 105. per annum for each school, in order to allow for contingencies, and we shall then be enabled to make a fair esti- mate of the probable cost of inspection. Referring to calculations at p. 31, we find the population need- ing instruction to be 2,125,000, and reckoning 300 children at an average to form each set of schools, namely, boys, girls, and infant schools, we shall find the sets of schools to be 7,083. But, in all probability, there would be some difference in the aggregate number of individual or single schools as compared with sets of schools, by which is meant the junction of two or more under one roof, or in one parish ; so that we may say 8000 ESTIMATES. 41 sets of schools would require visitation, and the increase per annum would be (see C.) about 80. The expenses of inspection might therefore stand as follows : ( I. ) £ For the present number of schools . . 20,000 For the annual increase . . . 200 Let us now make a general summary of the preceding items ; they will divide themselves into three heads. 1. Our present needs in building and outfit of schools for the population already existing. 2. Our present needs for the same in masters and maintenance. 8. Our future needs for the same to meet increasing population : 1. Our present needs for building £ £ and outfit will be seen in . E. 3,460,000 G. 300,000 ■3,760,000 927,700 F. 709,300 H. 198,400 I. 20,000 E. 83,000 F. 17,070 H. 3,320 I. 200 Our present needs for annual maintenance will be seen in Our future needs for annual increase of population will be seen in 103,590 For the first of these, the expenditure will not again be demanded : the schools being once built, the work of education will proceed, subject only to the occasional demands of repair, which are estimated under the second head. But the second head, namely, the annual maintenance, may be diminished to a considerable extent, by remembering that there are small v/eekly payments to be received from the children themselves. It is a prevailing rule in most of our parochial schools, and might very easily be extended to all, that the children who receive educa- tion should pay a weekly sum of one penny, and in some cases, twopence. If therefore we assume the payment to be one penny, and refer to the number of children who will make the payment, namely 1,038,000, the amount received in pence, (allowing two weeks vacant as holidays,) would be ^^2 16,250. But let us take it at £200,000. We may safely deduct this sum from the amount of No. 2, which will then be reduced to 6^727,700 ; as also in a similar ratio we may deduct the sum of c^5,200 from No. 3, which would then remain £983,90, and the whole balance 42 ESTIMATES. which wc slioukl ask the Parliament to supply for the purposes of education, would stand as follows:* 1847. 1. Outlay for building, &c., E. and G. . 3,760,000 2. Maintenance, F. H. and I., to be annually repeated . . . 727,700 Total for the year 1847 . . £4,487,700 1848. 2. Maintenance as before repeated, F., IL, and I., . . . . 727,700 3. Additional, for the increase of popu- lation E., F., H. and I. . . 98,390 Total for the year 1848 . . £826,090 And so each year would continue adding its increasing de- mand according to the population. When we should arrive at the census of 1851, it would be necessary to recast the estimate, for by that time the population will be annually increasing in a much greater ratio than it does at present, and perhaps in ten years or so, it will be necessary to increase the number of the normal schools ; but of this it would be premature to speak at present. Sufficient for our present day is to prepare for the needs thereof; sufficient to consider, that we require without a moment's further delay (to speak in round numbers), a grant of four millions and a half for the year 1847, and an annual provi- sion of between eight and nine hundred thousand pounds, as an average grant for the next five years. And how shall these needs be met ? Do we hang back in reluctance when we arrive at the conclusion, to which indeed we are forced by the nature of the thing, that the nation must supply, for a question of its own positive safety, four millions and a half of money ? We have only to consider what is done in things of a cognate character, in order to be sure that there * The reader will, of course, bear in mind that it is presumed all alone^ that the present charitable contributions of the National Society, and also of the British and Foreign School Society, should still continue. All the calculation turns upon the 1,038,000 children, exclusive of those educated already. (See p. 31.) The alms of the benevolent, as alms, must continue. AVe are only estimating what is still deficient. It is reckoned that each child's education costs, in our general schools, lis. 2d. per annum. Therefore, as above (see p. 31): Scholars. The National Society educates 911,834 The Dissenting Society educates 100,000 In Workhouses (probably) there are educated . 75,000 Total .... 606,815 of which we may say that about £555,000 is the produce of voluntary gifts, and about £50,000 is the produce of rates and grants of Parliament. But the gi-ants are confined to the building of school houses, and are not allowed to be used in the maintenance of schools. £. at 509,107 at 55,833 at 41,875 ESTIMATES. 43 can be no difficulty in providing this, or even a much larger sum than this : we have only to take a review of the balance sheet of the income and expenditure of the country for the last three years, and see what we have done and what we are now doing, in order to receive an undoubting assurance that the people have merely to express their desire that the money should be granted, and granted it will be. But it is not a question of possibility — it is a question of economy and political wisdom — it is a question of Christianity. There are three great corroding and devouring evils, which meet us at every turning in this country — poor laws, police, and prisons. If it can be shewn that a just expenditure in education would relieve us of the overwhelming burden under which we now labour in these three evils — then, even without regard to any moral responsibility, or any regard to the salvation of souls, but even on the ground of political economy, it will follow that we should do well to substitute the one for the other. £ In the year 1840 the amount levied for the Poor Law was 6,014,605 1841 6,351,828 1842 6,552,190 1843 7,915,595 1844 6,847,205 Now, although poverty Is God's will, and that some should live scantily, fare hardly, and labour with the sweat of their brow, with nothing more to solace them in this world, as the wages of their labour, than daily bread — we perfectly understand. Of this poverty we speak not, nor do the Poor Laws touch it; but it is of pauperism we speak ; and by pauperism, if we may so distinguish it from poverty, we mean the utter inability, by labour, or by any means whatsoever, to maintain life. But poverty de- generates, in nine instances out of ten, into pauperism, by rea- son of want of education. Poverty gives us a respectable, a faithful, and it might be, an educated peasantry ; but pauperism shews us a demoralized, an idle, a wasteful, and an improvident class of the dregs of the community. Poverty, with education, would maintain itself, and relieve the country. Poverty, neg- lected by being left untaught, costs the country seven millions of money per annum. I should fearlessly maintain as a prin- ciple, that pauperism is the fruit either of ignorance or crime, or both conjointly — that the poor of the country, the labourer, the artisan, the mechanic, and the servant, end their days in pau- perism, because they have not been taught in youth the way to avoid it. Waste, improvidence, prejudice, inability to foresee consequences, recklessness of the consequences when they are foreseen, hardness of feeling and grossness of mind — these are the ways of the great bulk of the poor. Teach them better, and 44 ESTIMATES. they will become better. Let them know what is right, and they have some chance of doing what is right. Elevate their minds ; give them a higher tone of feeling, and pauperism will be felt as a disgrace, and avoided. But as it is now, the whole land is suffering one mighty drain of its life-blood, in seven millions of money, si)ent in pauperizing the lower orders, whereas a seventh portion annually spent in education would redeem at least five- sevenths, and leave the remaining seventh for the absolute ne- cessities of the time. But look again. There is another great crying evil — The Police. Whether we walk the streets of London, or wander in some lonely village lane, what meets us but that universal signal of crime — a police constable. Regiments of men are dressed, equipped, and set forth, as though they w^ere anxious for no- toriety as the detectors of crime; men whose very step along the pavement seems to speak as though there were a thief in every street — and these men cost the country, in the metropolis alone, for the year 1845, d£'296,636 ! Let any one read the balance sheet of the accounts of the metropolitan police, and then observe the pains we take, and the expense w^e suffer in London only (the same expenditure is carried on in the rural police, and has its own expenses) to detect crime. The commissioners cost £2>SS1 . The pay, clothing, and equipment of the police force costs ^^271,380. Medical expenses cost c£^l 97 9. Allowances for re- tired officers cost £3,508, and in addition, the magistrates cost, with their ushers, gaolers and messengers, ^83,961. Now what reasonable person can read such an account without this imme- diate reflection : — Did we but pay some of this money which now is given to commissioners, magistrates, constables and gaolers — to Schoolmasters, we might save them the trouble and our- selves the disgrace of witnessing day by day outrages against the law, and crimes against God and man, which are undermining the foundations of our whole community. But I pass on to the prisons. In the balance sheet of the country's income and expenditure for the year 1845, under the title Justice, there stand the following great heads of expen- diture : — JUSTICE : £ Courts of Justice . . . 562,678 Police and Criminal Prosecutions . 581,365 Correction . . . .413,713 .£ Total Justice 1,557,756 Leaving the question of the sums paid to the judges and the like higher officers of the law, let us consider the second and third of these heads, involving merely the punishment and cor- rection of crime in England and Wales- ESTIMATES. 45 England : Police and Criminal Prosecutions : Police Offices 58,817 Metropolitan Police 78,377 Mint Prosecutions . 7,500 Law Charges 18,000 Sheriffs' Convictions, &c . . 19,195 181,889 England : Correction : Convicts at Home and Abroad . 52,612 Bills drawn from New South Wales 185,983 Penitentiary House . 31,891 Criminal Lunatics . . 3,849 , Prison, Isle of Wight, providing for 23,522 Model Prison . ditto 15,364 313,221 Total 495,110 Nor is this all — for we must also add in this place, the re- membrance that the county prisons and gaols are not here con- sidered. The expenses of these fall upon the separate parishes under the county rate. The expenses of all when put together I am not able to ascertain, but of course it must be mry consi- derable ; so that the aggregate amount paid by the country for justice, as it is called, is frightful to think of. It coines in every quarter — it meets us at every turn. Crime and its correction ; prisoners and their trials ; prosecutions and defences ; counsel, judges, magistrates, gaolers, courts, assizes and sessions, with all their forms, their terrors, and their punishments, make one great leading feature in the idea which we form of our country, and millions and millions are spent, to punish crime with the greatest possible celebrity, distinction, and grandeur. But I must advert to one particular prison as bearing more closely on the question at issue — the education of the young. There is one particular prison, not I believe generally known to those whose attention is not drawn to such matters, but in which we may see one perhaps of the strangest anomalies that can exist on the face of the earth. I allude to the Parkhurst prison in the Isle of Wight. In regard to the expense of this prison, we find, in addition to the previous sum of 23,522^., the following items 1844. Prison, Isle of Wight, works at ,, Prison, Isle of Wight, completion of 1846. Prison, Isle of Wight, completion of 3,654 9,261 1,039 Total - - £13,954 Now Parkhurst prison has this single end in view — the edu- 46 ESTIMATES. cation and discipline of juvenile offenders. The boys there in custody are in preparation for their departure to the colonies as convicts. I have visited this prison, and have been astonished, as well as delighted, at the singular and minute care, the bene- volent and truly Christian spirit with which these boys are treated. They are wxll clothed, well fed, and well disciplined. They learn trades, they are trained by various masters in the knowledge of human things ; and moreover, are blessed with a chaplain (a priest of the Church of England), whose sole busi- ness it is to preside over them in their moral and religious edu- cation, and this extending to the minutest detail of each indi- vidual boy. I have seen the boys, happy, intelligent, rapidly emancipating themselves from the ignorance through which they fell into crime, and their minds opening under their penitential education into a bright prospect of future happiness . . . And then I have turned away to behold the child of a poor cottager, or labouring mechanic, untaught, unclothed, uncared for, either by layman or by priest, sent forth into the hard world to toil from morning to night, himself in mind but little above the clods of the earth which he cultivates — without reli- gion, without a governor, without a God ; and all this difference between the two, simply owing to the accidental misfortune of not having committed a felony. Why this is a most strange conclusion to which in common reason we are driven, that those who violate the laws of God and man are fortunate, — that a blessing attaches to them, not a punishment. Can this be a wholesome state of things ? Can a country guilty of so signal an anomaly long retain the blessing of God ? Can a Grovernment wdiich is studious about the welfare of convicted felons, nursing and tending them as exotic plants, ministering to all their wants both in body and mind ; at the same time leave millions of youth, not convicted of crime, to rot in this world in reckless pauperism, and to die for the next world without either love or knowledge of God. Can a Government do this, and presume to the justice or the charity of Christian men ? What then should be done ? Is it meant that Parkluirst prison, Pentonville prison, Millbank prison, and others of like character, should be abolished ? No ; far very far from it. All is good, admirable, and well worthy the care of a Christian legislator. But why not give the same advantages to all; why not build hundreds of Parkhurst prisons, under the name of Schools? why not appoint hundreds of chaplains, under the name of parish priests, hundreds of governors under the name of schoolmasters, who should train and teach the po- pulation who have not yet violated the laws, and give them equal blessings with those who have ? Why not begin this exuberant ESTIMATES. 47 care for the young hefore they are guilty of sin, instead of after ? give them teachers and discipline, and rules to live by, and know- ledge of things, and the hope of a future world, without saddling upon them the condition of being convicted felons ? Well then, common sense, political economy, and Christ- ianity do (as indeed they always must), coincide in demanding of the rulers of this country an immediate application of the money needed, and a better adjustment of the resources of the people, in providing education for the poor. The question Jioto to 'provide the vfioney^ cannot surely be a question of any difficulty to solve. If the people will that their children shall be educated, they of all nations on the face of the earth have the means to put their will into execution. Wealth exists in abundance, facility of taxation exists in the forms of our Go- vernment. Legislative discussion, in which the voice of the people is sure to be heard, and executive machinery, by which the desired supply shall be immediately collected. Let the people express their will, either in the present Parliament by petition, or return their members to serve in the ensuing Parliament upon condition of this question proving the immediate subject of their deliberation, and the thing is done. If it may be allowed us to indulge in some slight speculations as to the way in which it might be done, — We ^ might ask : would it be desirable that a vote of money should be given from the general resources of the country, or would it be rather de- sirable to mark a specific source from which it might be derived. The former of these would not appear desirable, nor perhaps would it be just ; for in such a case, it would appear to the lower orders as though they were receiving additional burdens from the state, and therefore the boon of education would be accom- panied with murmuring and discontent. The lower classes, and those who are but a few degrees above them, are not as yet sufficiently long-sighted to perceive the real economy, or we may say, the saving which would ultimately accrue to them by a tax levied for the purpose of education. They would only dwell upon the cost of their provisions, their dwellings, or their clothing, and not upon the value of the moral and intellectual progress made by their children ; for it requires education to acknowledge the value of education. It would be wiser then on this ground, if not for others, that recourse should be had to a direct or spe- cific tax. Sir Robert Peel, when prime minister, has shewn us the way to such a direct and specific tax. The income tax first levied by him to defray the deficiency of the exchequer for a time, might with great ease be continued by the present Govern- ment in perpetuity, not indeed at its present amount, but such a portion of it as might be thought necessary for the purposes 48 ESTIMATES. required. Two great advantages would arise from this plan. First, it is a tax which affects only the higher or middle classes, and affects them in proportion to the amount of wealth which each individual enjoys, leaving the poorer classes untouched : but principally, since the great difficulty of supporting the expense of education arises from the increase of population re- quiring year by year an increasing sum for its support, this method would exactly meet such difficulty, for population affect- ing the higher orders as well as the poorer, there would be a larger amount of income and property year by year from whence the supply would be made, so that once having determined that such or such a portion of an income tax should be set apart for this purpose, there never need be again any recurrence to its consideration. The rich, as in justice and wisdom ever should be the case, would supply the poor for ever. But to come to actual numbers. For the immediate outlay of the four millions and-a-half alluded to at p. 42, for the building of schools, and supply of masters and mistresses up to the present time, we should of course require a special exertion. But such a special exertion was made not long since to nearly five times the amount for the emancipation of slaves in the West Indies. In that great and Christian work the people did not grudge, nor the House of Commons refuse to grant a vote of 20 millions. There surely then would be no question in the case of a similar exertion to one-fourth of the amount for the emancipa- tion of the children of our own poor. The former exertion was for the redemption of the bodies of men from bondage, — this would be demanded for the redemption of human souls from the bondage of ignorance and crime. If the Christian feeling of the people of England determined them without doubt in the one case, how much more would it determine them in the other. But this first outlay being assumed as granted by the Parlia- ment, we should also have to look to the annual supply of about one million for future years. The income tax in 1844 produced 5,387,455^.; in 1845, 5,329,601/.; in 1846, 5,182,649/.; so that calculating these amounts at the rate of IcL in the pound, and requiring as we should one-fifth, or thereabouts, for education, we might safely say, that a little more than 1 d. in the pound would give us the desired sum. Now can it be supposed that the people of England having incomes above 150/. per annum, would, for an instant, hesitate to make the sacrifice of Id. in the pound for this great purpose. If the present amount of income tax is imperatively demanded for other state purposes, let the Chancellor of the Exchequer add \d. to the Id. now demanded; or should it be determined to lower this tax, the Exchequer no longer requiring it, then let the 1 d. bo retained as marking spe- ESTIMATES. 49 cifically the gift of the rich for the blessing of the poor, and in them so blessed, the blessing of all. In either case, or in any case, the assessment of a tax on property and income for the sake of education, would seem both the wisest and the justest way in which the needs of the people could be met. It would essentially be the wisest in regard to the happiness and pros- perity of the country, the avoidance of Revolution, and for the salvation of millions of souls for whom our Rulers are, before a higher throne than any on earth, responsible. With all these purposes in view, shamed also by the conduct of all other countries around us, who have so long preceded us in this Christian duty, there could be no manner of doubt, but that such a means of raising the supply would meet with a cheerful and ready acquiescence. 50 CHAPTER III. EDUCATION AS CONNECTED WITH RELIGION. "'On fiev ovv ti^ vofxoOsTy jttdXicrra TrpaynaTtvTsov tteqI ti)v toju v'hov irai^iiav ovSeiQ av aii(pia[3i}Ti](rfuv' koi yap tv toiq iroXecnv ou yiy vofisvov tovto ^XaTrni Tag TToXiTiiaQ .... [/cat] .... on i'oixojGerijrsov Trefji Traideiag kcu rauTtjv KoivTjv 'KOU]Ttuv ^uvspov' TiQ d' {(TTiV t) TTaidka Kal TTtJjg xp>} irailtvidOai Cti firj Xa^'Bdvuv." — Aristotle, Politics, b. viii. 1, 2. The endeavour in the preceding chapters has simply been to show — first, the need of a public system of education; secondly, the facility which exists in the pecuniary resources of the coun try to supply it. But now we approach the great question of all, — that at which all who have hitherto written on the subject have either stumbled or fallen, — that which all political parties have been hitherto unable to surmount ; and while all have seen and acknowledged the immense importance of its attainment, none have as yet overcome the prejudices or disarmed the jea- lousies with which different classes of religion have invested it. It does not become an humble individual to imagine that he can succeed in doing that which the wisest and most able men in the country have failed to do. It would be the height of pre- sumption and of folly so to think ; but every one may help a little towards this great national object. The difficulties may be set forth in some new light, so that plans for their surmount- ing may be put in better train, and the expression of feeling arising in different quarters, as no doubt it will arise, may do good in forwarding the discussion to which we shall again be driven, and be taken as a manifestation of the desire which we all have of doing something for the blessing of the poor. " The fact of the want of means of instruction for the people was admitted," says the writer of " Recent Measures," speaking with authority of the debates in parliament in 1839 : — *' But little or nothing transpired indicating that the extent of the void was known. Had the fearful breadth of this chasm in our national institutions been perceived, we cannot believe that so much time would have been expended in exaggerating every difficulty, obstructing the extension of education to the entire people, whether those difficulties be referable to the religious divisions which unhappily separate the middle classes into hostile camps, or whether EDUCATION AS CONNECTED WITH RELIGION. 51 they originated in the opposition of any of the existing voluntary associations for primary education." Such were the difficulties known and felt then (in 1839) — such are the difficulties known and felt not one whit the less now. Nothing has occurred to lessen them ; on the contrary, much to increase them. Sects and sectarians are not the less hostile to the Church, nor has the Church less distrust towards the sectarians. Romanists are making just as great endeavours to undermine the Church of England, and the Church of England is even more divided within herself, so that it is quite useless, as surely it would be impolitic, to conceal the fact of difficulty, and that difficulty of the very highest degree. The government must be honestly told, that in approaching this question, they approach the touchstone of their duration as a government; they are either preparing the foundation of their strength as the governing body of the people for many years, or they are sowing the seeds of their speedy disruption. Contending parties and adverse interests will rise before them at every turning ; and bitterness of spirit, which is never so great as when it springs from partizanship in religion, will beset them for many a hostile debate in the houses of parliament. Nevertheless, approach it they must, 13ut wherein is this difficulty ? It is not the raising of the supply, — we have seen how very simple the means are for so doing; but it is the distribution of the supply when raised. Having obtained the money required, from the just taxation of the people, to whom shall it be given, and upon what conditions ? v/hat shall be the channel of its conveyance ? Let it be granted that the people must be instructed, the question is, who shall be the instructor 1 On this arises the question of the principle of education, ichat it ought to he, and this principle immediately involves religion, ichat that ought to he ; and as we know unhap- pily how religion has divided us, so it follows that the struggle will turn upon these divisions ; for let us observe carefully that we are now speaking of education to be supplied by the State as distinct and separate from that of the Church. If the State and the Church were one in reality, as they are in theory, then no difficulty whatsoever would arise, in the distribution of the money, for the Church would, as a matter of course, be the teacher, and no sooner had the temporal power collected it, than the spiritual power would use it. But the State is now not the Church. There is neither one religion, nor one faith, nor one baptism, in the State : it is an heterogeneous mixed body, quite external to the Church. It is not even necessary that it should be Christian ; therefore we are constrained to speak of the State now, just as Christians might be supposed to speak of it in the first three centuries, before its incorporation with the State, by E 2 52 EDUCATION AS CONNECTED Constantino. Wc speak of it as a body, with which, in si)iritual communion, wc have nothing necessarily to do ; wc speak of it as an instrument of temporal legislation in the hands of God, — a power for which we must pray, as Christians did in the first centuries, and then turn and use its gifts under His grace as best we may. Now, even in Heathen states, there was consider- able difficulty about education. That the people ought to be educated was an abstract principle acknowledged as a part of wisdom even by Aristotle, and the only difficulty turned upon the manner in which it was to be carried into operation : — " That the education of youth ought to form a principal object of the legislator's attention, cannot be a matter of doubt, for when this is not done in states, it is a cause of damage to the polity. Preparation and exercise are necessary for the acquisition of every art, and not the least, for the great art of political life. In this important object, fellow-citizens are all equally and all deeply con- cerned, and as they are all united in one common work, for one common purpose, this education ought to be uniform and public, and regulated by general consent, not abandoned, as at present, to the blind decision of chance, or the idle caprice of parents. For the children of citizens belong to the commonwealth of which they are destined to be members, and like every member or part, must be formed and fashioned in subserviency to the good of that whole, or system, to which they collectively appertain That the state then should legislate on education, and make it common, [/coij'T/] is manifest, but what education is, and how education should he conducted, is a question upon which discussion will arise."* But at that time Aristotle spoke of a State or Polity as in conjunction with the form of religion professed by the people. The State was Heathen, the religion was Heathen : the State therefore, had the power to enforce education without trenching (as it would with us) upon the great doctrine of religious liberty. That a man should profess what creed he pleased, was a doc- trine unheard of in Aristotle's time ; and so little was it heard of for centuries after, that when some of the Greek and Roman philosophers professed the faith of Christ, they were offisred the ehoice of sacrificing to the idols of the State religion, or the combat of the wild beasts. But it is not so with us, as all men know. Universal toleration of religious opinion is the doctrine of England, and the State itself existing on this doctrine, and containing within itself the exemplification of this doctrine, cannot, with any consistency, even had it the power or the will, Aribtotk', rolitics, b. viiL WITH RELIGION. 53 (but it has neither), propagate education of any one sort to the exclusion of another. The State finds itself bound round and hampered by contending interests. If it pleases one it displeases another; and being of a democratic tendency, and owing its very existence to a democratic principle, its form of legislation must more or less tend to the satisfying of the people's pleasure, not the ruling of the people's will. In taxing the people, as a people, for the benefit of all, and gathering from the people the supply of means for education, that supply must in equity be distri- buted among all, and consequently every man, of every creed whatsoever, has his equal right to a share in the distribution. Immediately then that the State begins her distribution, the Church steps forward. The Church being recognized by the State as one portion of the people, must have her share. On another side starts forth the Romanist. This creed is now openly tolerated, and not, as fifty years ago, persecuted with pains and penalties ; nay, it is very nearly, in the State's estimation, on a parallel with the Church, for it now receives endow^nents from the State, as in Maynooth, which the Church does not. The Romanists are a very conspicuous body : it is doubtful whether they may not be the prevailing body before another century has passed ; but whether so or not, they are sufficiently conspicuous and pow^erful even now to demand their share of the people's money. Well, no sooner has their claim been satisfied, than the great body of Protestants arise in various denominations, such as the Presbyterians, the Wesleyans, the Anabaptists, the Independents, the Quakers, the Plymouth Brethren, and the like : no one entirely agreeing with another, save in dissent from the Catholic church, therefore no one able to join another in the education of their children ; each then must have their share. Then, leaving Christianity and those who profess faith in the Son of God as God, we come to the Socinians and the Jews. They, too, cannot conscientiously suffer their children to be taught in a faith differing from their own : and yet they, with the rest, contribute to the taxation, and so doing, in equity must have a corresponding share. Admit then on one side, as must be admitted, that the people are to be educated, and admit on the other side, that all who pay would have a right to receive — then it follows, that the State, as the instrument or power used for the distribution of the money received, must consider all claims equally, and not only all claims that may exist now, but all possible future claims ; and, be it remembered, the state will have no power to judge between one and another— to say one is right, and another wrong — ^that power is forgone by its disjunction from the Church, and its own construction, and the claim of private judgment, which Protestants as such, maintain. 54 EDUCATION AS CONNECTED Now, could it be for a moment entertained that the State or Parliament of England, with a Queen, on whose coinage of the current money of the realm, as well as in all deeds and instru- ments of her royal prerogative, rests this title, " Defender of the Faith" — with Christianity interwoven in all our institutions, with the Cross, the banner of our faith, with the Gospel of the Son of God read, as our great boast is, in every village, and as our great desire is, in every cottage, — that the State or Parlia- ment of England should systematically propagate the faith of Judaism, should institute schools for the hindrance of the faith in Christ, and for the teaching of a system of religion which denied the holy and ever blessed Trinity ? No ! It is evident that this could not for one instant be entertuined : it is a differ- ent thing, let it be remembered, to tolerate the teaching of an error on the score of religious liberty, and to propagate it by a system of professed authority. But this the State must do if it be just, but at the same time, this the people of England will not permit, if it be Christian. Well then, if the State would not be permitted to do it in the case of a Jewish or a Socinian school, could it do so with equity in the case of an Anabaptist or Wesleyan school ? On what ground could there be a State school for the teaching of Wesleyanism, which would not affect the claim for the teaching of Judaism ? Both are opinions, and it is conceded that all have a right to their opinions. Both would pay taxes to the State for education, and both would have a right to secure their proportion back for education. But it might be said, a distinction may be drawn upon the basis of Christianity, and as the majority of the people profess the Christian faith, Judaism might justly be excluded, and all other differences of creed might share in the distribution. Let it be so : on this ground the Church of I^ome would step in. Could abstract justice say that a considerable and eminent por- tion of the Christian body, some of the very highest nobility in this country, holding places in the very Government, Peers in Parliament, and members of the House of Commons, a body decidedly eminent for piety and Christian devotion, that such a body as this should be excluded from its share of the education grant? But would the feelings of the Protestants, the great bulk of the people, hostile as they are to the very name of Rome, tolerate such an endowment ? Let us only remember what the feelings of Protestantism in this country have only very lately displayed, when, against the very Church of England, the oppo- nent of Bome in her, as we call them, erroneous practices, the Protestants have in many places risen, and with violent abuse, have thwarted the clergy, and have taxed them with Romanizing tendencies, because they were striving to obey the Church's WITH RELIGION. 55 laws : only let us remember the names with which such persons delight to cover all who even speak charitably of Rome, — Papists, Puseyites, Jesuits ; and Rome herself, " the Mother of Harlots," " the Scarlet Whore," " the Antichrist." Even a holy vestment, or a cross, the bowing at the holy name, or the practice of con- fession, are looked upon by the great bulk of the English people as so intolerable and so odious, that even in the Church of England they will hardly abide them : how much more then should we find them up in arms, against a systematic State school for the propagation of Romanism, instructed by State schoolmasters, and fed by State money, derived from the pockets of the people ! Where would Exeter Hall be, and the Protestant Association ? where Freemasons'* Tavern and the Evangelical Alliance? The floor of the House of Commons, much more its table, would be covered with petitions from every congregational meeting, from every sect and shade of creed, throughout the country, and the days of Guy Faux and Gunpowder Treason would be revived with redoubled energy in every town and village of England. No : practically, and in its working, such an idea could not be entertained, whatever abstract justice might say; and if not, what claim could Wes- leyans, or Independents, or Plymouth Brethren, or any other sect maintain? Neither could such, nor even the Church herself, claim in equity one farthing of the public -money, if it were refused to the followers of Rome. If religious sectarian- ism would exclude the one, equity would exclude the other; but if religious toleration would admit the one, equity would admit the other. The conclusion then evidently is, that the State could not move ; having received the money from all, it could not distribute to any. Such are the religious feelings of the people, that the State could not be a mere reservoir or fountain, out of which should be poured, in little diverging rills, a supply for all the claims that could be made upon it. It would be physically impossible, as well as morally so. What- ever the idea might be in theory, it is utterly absurd in practice, and would be utterly subversive of the little charity and good- will which yet remains among us, — drawing men away in more exclusive and separate communities than even now they are found to be, and sealing with a seal of authority, the issues of that many-headed monster. Schism, which even as it is, has filled the land with discord and with misery. Having disposed then of this method of instituting a state education, let us consider whether there be any others which might meet with better success. There are three other methods which have been spoken of in various quarters, and which have met with various advocates of great name and reputation in the 56 EDUCATION AS CONNECTED world. Let us carefully examine into these methods, and work out as best we can the consequences to which in all probability they would lead. The first method we may describe as the Intellectual method, that is, the collecting children together as mere creatures of reason, waving all matters of religion, and not considering in any way that the business of education has more to do than to cultivate the mental or intellectual faculties. The second method we may describe as the Compromising method, that is, the collection together of children of all churches, creeds and shades of faith into one school, and out of all their various articles of faith deducing a portion which is common to all, merging all tliat is distinctive in each in oblivion and silence. The third method we may describe as the Disjunctive method, that is, the collecting together children of all churches, creeds, and shades of faith, and teaching them all as one school in matters of literary knowledge and science ; but separating them into different schools or classes for instruction in religion. The first, namely the intellectual method, has had its advocate in the powerful and energetic mind of Lord Brougham, and its practice in the University College and school established in Gower-street, London. The idea in this system is, that man is to be considered for the purposes of education as a mere rational being, superior to the rest of the animal creation in having a onind, but not regarding that power or virtue which exists within him called the soul. Education is therefore looked upon as a mere question of reason^ and all is done to bring out that reason, fertilize the mind, stir it up with metaphysical argument, and enlarge it with practical exemplification of all that science can do for man. The pupil in this school is taught that he is to take his place in the world, attain its highest places, and prepare himself to be a skilful, a clever, and a scientific citizen therein ; but he is not taught that there is any thing beyond it, or any need of learning aught that is not to be exercised within it. His end is to be in the world ; his hopes, his joys, his fears, his duties, his ambition, his struggles, all are to centre here : at least, if aught is breathed of any thing hereafter, he is to learn it as he can, and gather it for himself, as best he may. But is this the education of a Christian man ? The answer to this question involves the definiiion of education. What is education? Turning to the Penny Cyclopaedia^ a publication issuing from the same class of persons as instituted the University Col- lege, we find it defined tlms — " The art of iweparing youth for the business of after life' ; and in the discussion which ensues hereupon, the whole aspect of the argument looks to the pre- paration of the human being to become a good " citizen.''^ Now, WITH RELIGION. 57 if under the word citizen, as rightly and in its full meaning would be the case, were embraced, a man's duties as such in a moral capacity as well as every other ; and if under the idea of his moral capacity as a Christian, were embraced, as rightly and in its full meaning would be the case, his religious, duties as a servant of God ; and, if under the idea of his religious duties, were embraced, as rightly and in its full meaning would be the case, the idea of a man's life proceeding in its course from the fountain and only source of religious duty as a Christian — his faith — then we could agree in this definition as a perfect one, and say that the education which tended to produce it would be a right education. But the evident tenor of the discussion to which we refer is to shew that a " citizen", as there used, means a citizen of this world, and nothing more. To be a good trades- man, shoemaker, tailor, carpenter, sculptor, lawyer, physician ; this it is which the definition means to signify as " learning the business of after life", and the after life in which the citizen is to labour is this life. So that the consideration of any part of citizenship consisting in being a good brother or sister, husband or wife, father or son, magistrate or subject, is not for a moment entertained ; for of course these duties could not possibly be mentioned without moral teaching. The argument is this — moral teaching in a Christian country must involve Christian- ity ; but Christianity involves in England differences of opinion, therefore must be eschewed. But is it really meant that it can be conducive to the welfare of a state, that eminence or success in arts, trades, or professions should be attained, while the excellence which is deducible from the moral relationships of life is to be passed over in oblivion. Are men to be set forth to the youth of this age as gregarious animals, not social? Even Aristotle, as before quoted, and Cicero, and Seneca, Plato, and all the philosophers of the ancient world, universally agreed in setting forth the ex- cellence of man as referring to his social capacity. A " ci- tizen" was considered in the light of a friend, a brother, a husband, a father, and the like, not merely in reference to the facility or skllfulness with which he should practise a profession. It may Indeed be freely granted on the one hand, that any edu- cation which failed in imparting to the people the knowledge of their business in after life, would be so far an imperfect educa- tion, and it must also be confessed that at present the prevailing system adopted by private associations is so far Imperfect ; but nevertheless it by no means follows that we should better it by adopting the ideas of Gower-street. That which makes a man expert In the business of after life, is a portion of his educa- tion, and a necessary portion ; but it is no more education for a 58 EDUCATION AS CONNECTED Christian man, than going to sea upon a single plank would be the same thing as going to sea in a ship. The plank must be fastened on to other planks, knit together by joints and staples, bands and bolts, furnished with masts and sails, ropes and rudder, and be guided by a spirit within presiding over the great mass of mechanism floating on the waters. " Educare'^* is to feed, sustain, nourish. Sustain what? the w^^/^c? certainly ; but along with it, the soul, as the greater part — the essence of the man — the man himself. It is to sustain, nourish, and cause to grow to perfection the moral affections, not the intellectual only ; but the moral aftections as being the source of a man's life ^— to correct their natural evils, to check their tendencies as far as they are merely animal, and to shape, mould, and guide their bias towards the benefit first of ourselves, and secondly of those in the intercourse with whom as social beings we are called upon by Providence to live. It is the part of education to develope and bring out to its perfection both the mind and the affections ; not the affections for the sake of the mind, but the mind for the sake of the affections ; so that, both cultivated together, may engender the highest state of moral excel- lence : for the mind, however highly cultivated, without moral excellence, will fail to produce happiness ; whereas moral excel- lence, dul}^- cultivated, may produce happiness without any very great cultivation of the mind. Of this we have practical in- stances in every family we meet, and since it is an axiom in Government, that that form of polity is the best which produces the greatest aggregate of human happiness, so it follows that the education adopted by any government for its people must be that which makes the cultivation of the intellect a secondary consideration, moral virtue the first. Thus then we may argue a priori, that an intellectual system of schools — schools in which every thing should be excluded as of public teaching, save that which regarded the reason, would not be wise ; and if we apply to evidence for its proof, we have it readily in the history of the Gower-street college. That college was commenced in the year 1825. Its professed principle was the intellectual. It was to teach the sciences. It was to teach law and physic, the languages, mathematics, &c., but it forbad religion altogether to lift up her voice, and thus it was defended — " That the omission of religious instruction was not owing to indifference, appeared from the fact, that an earnest but not very judicious attempt to reconcile the introduction of instruction in theology with the principles of the institution — the admission of all ♦ •' Educit obstetrix, educat nutrix, instituit psedagogus, docet magister." — Varr. WITH RELIGION. 59 classes without distinction of creed — was the subject of anxious deli- beration, and a proposal was at one time entertained, and nearly- adopted, to give theological instruction in those classes, viz., The- ology, by a member of the Church of England ; Ecclesiastical His- tory, by a member of the Church of Scotland ; and Biblical Cri- ticism, by a member of one of the Dissenting Congregations. But the impracticability of such an arrangement was foreseen, and it was wisely abandoned."* And thus it was left. The consequence is that we do not hear (and thankful ought we to be that it is so) of any of that school coming forth into the world of great note in the higher points of education. It is understood that the system is altogether a failure ; that funds are deficient ; that even the building itself remains incomplete, though now twenty years have passed over its head ; and there it remains, a warning to all to keep clear of an attempt to educate the intellect, while the things of Revelation and of God are put aside. Even then on Heathen grounds ; even if we could imagine ourselves eighteen hundred years younger in the world's history than we are ; we should shrink from calling together the children of our poor, and dealing with them as beings merely of this world: but the men who constitute the Government under which we live, have higher responsibilities than those of Heathen wisdom. Since they have been baptized in the faith of Christ, the respon- sibilities of the faith of Christ they cannot shake off, nor if they could, or would, are the people of England likely to tolerate a system which would for them deny it. However great and nu- merous the religious differences which prevail among us ; and however opposed the dogmata of our creeds may be ; still there are certain fundamental points of union upon which the faith of the cross would take its stand, and the doctrine of eternal life is one of these points. The necessity of educating man for a citizenship in Heaven, as the essential source of his attaining a good citizenship on earth, would not be foregone, except, perhaps, by some few of the extravagant in political theories, or some few of the debauched and reckless outcasts of all that is respectable in life. In this you would light upon a touchstone of unity, unknown at present, among sects of every denomination. Were you to force upon them as a nation an intellectual without a moral course of teaching, and were you for an instant to attempt the displacing of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, as the foundation of that moral teaching, you would find the sects and the Church, Anglican and Romanist, all equally hand in hand, displaying a phalanx of resistance against which the strongest of * Penny Cydopmdia^ Article — University College, London. 60 EDUCATION AS CONNECTED governments would quail and totter. ]Moral teaching must form a i)art of the state education of the people, and since Clu-isti- anity gives us the highest code of moral teaching, and since the country is Clu'istian and the Government is Christian, so Christian morals must form the basis of that teaching. Any system which should fall short of this ; any system which shuts out from the poor man's children, tlie Holy Scriptures and the Gospel of Christ, w^ould end in failure. To force the poor to re- ceive it, no Government would dare; to persuade them to receive it no Government would have the power; as long at least as the preachers of the Gospel remained in their places, either in Church or meeting-house, and taught the people that in the world to come there is such a thing as eternal life. The second system to wh.ich we referred was, the Comfro- muing ; and this also has had its votaries in theory, and its trial in practice. Now this system differs from the preceding, in that it is as wide-embracing in the name of religion, as the former was reluctant to hear even of its existence ; and also that under this name it has been cherished even by a portion of the Church, and in its day has received the actual support and encouragement of the State. This system w^ould set to work in the following manner : It would teach its literary knowledge to its schools, without dispute or difficulty ; but, when it came to religion, it would gatl^er round it all the different creeds of which the earth is full, and deal with them thus : — To the Catholic Church of England, it would say, What creed do you profess, and what Scriptures do you read? To the Romish communion, the same. To the Dissenters, of all denominations, the same ; and then, having heard the reply of each, it would carefully gather, out of all their peculiar creeds and systems, something that was common to all, and, having collected together the residuum, would say thus : " We have found out all that you differ upon ; and we have left you all that you agree upon. There is no chance of your quarrel- ling now. You may teach your children what we have selected. You need not be afraid of the masters of your schools making proselytes. He will not have the power to do so ; for he will only teach you that which you all are agreed upon." And thus it would shape its religious teaching upon the idea of offending none. Now, the practical demonstration of the working of such a system, will be seen in the history of the last thirty years in Ireland. In the year 1814, all former systems of teaching the poor being found useless, a society first took its rise in the city of Dublin, called the Kildare-strect Society. It was under the direction of a committee of members of the Church of Ireland, of Koman Catholics, and of Protestants of all denominations, WITH RELIGION. 61 without regard to distinction of faith. The Bible, without com- ment, was used in the schools ; but no catechism was allowed, nor any attempt at dogmatic teaching. It was also ruled, as the basis of the union of those who disagreed, that nothing of conversion from one creed to another should be permitted. But, in the year 1824, that is, when the system had received a good trial of ten years, it was found by the commissioners that, of 56,000 children who had passed through these schools, 30,000 had been Koman Catholics, and the rest children of parents who had either been Dissenters, or members of the Church. So far, then, there was an appearance of equality in the children at school; but, upon referring to the population, and comparing the number of children at the Kildare-street schools with the number of children educated at other schools throughout the country, there were found 300,000 Roman Catholics in other schools, and only 80,000 children of other creeds, taken all together. This fact, in itself, proved that there was some dis- affection on the part of the Roman Catholics towards the Kil- dare-street Society; and so, upon examination, it turned out. They had become afraid that the society would make proselytes of their children. The Romish clergy had set their faces against it ; and, notwithstanding all the care that had been displayed that no disagreement should take place, there was nothinoc but disagreement ; so that, m the year 1828, resolutions were passed for the formation of another society, on a different principle, and a select committee of the House of Commons advised a total alteration of the system. Accordingly, in 1831, new Commis- sioners of Education were appointed for Ireland; and, in 1839, all grants of public money were withdrawn from the Kildare- street Society. From this short statement, then, we find that ten years' trial was fairly given, and failure the result ; we find the compromising system established, aided by the government, fostered by both Roman Catholics and Protestants ; growing up, — then cut down and destroyed ; we find the two great classes of the people, headed by their clergy, attempting to waive all distinctions of creed ; doing their best, in a desire for unity of religious teaching, to cancel dogmatic differences ; setting aside, as far as they could, prejudices and fears ; paring away, on this side, something that offended the other, and keeping in abeyance something cherished here, in order that no breach of union might arise there, — but all in vain. The Romish Church could not abide it. They withdrew, and the plan was at an end. Now, if this system failed in Ireland, where it had principally to deal with only two varieties of creed, how would it be pos- sible that it should succeed in England, where it would not only have to meet with the same two varieties, but also with many G2 EDUCATION AS CONNECTED numerous and powerful sects infinitely diverging, in addition. Let us begin, in imagination, the opening of a scliool on the compt'omisinp system. First appear memljers of the Catholic Church on one side, and Romanists on tlie other ; tlie two whose creeds more nearly approach than any other of our unhappy divisions. They meet in one school-room, built and endowed by the State, with a master sent by the State, under a promise to hold an equal balance, and not to proselytize. What are we to do wuth religious teaching? Some religious teaching they must have ; that is agreed upon by both parties, — but v^hat ? We begin, upon our system, to pare away the differences, in order that something shall be taught offending neither. Well : we take the Apostles^ Creed. So far we agree — but then the CatecJiistn : we agree even with these pretty well, until we come to the doctrine of Sacraments. Here the Catholic Church asserts " only two as generally necessary to salvation^"* ; but the Romanist interferes. "We hold seven." Then let it all go : say nothing about the Sacraments. It follows that all discussions about Sacraments, w^hich as a principle both hold as " necesmry to sal- vatioUf'^ must be withdrawn. Here then in the first commencement of our compromise, we undermine all real and sound moral teaching, — for on both sides we give up something of what we hold to be a truth. On both sides we agree tacitly to hold in abeyance, and suffer no teaching upon a subject " necessary to salvaMon''\ lest we should offend each other. If it were a point which affected no essential article of faith, it would be charity so to do ; but if it be a point, as the Sacraments are, containing a sphere of teaching which each Church holds to be vital to the salvation of the human soul, then should the State interfere and prohibit tlie subject ; it would be undermining in both the true character of the Christian faith, and far more danger would ensue to the moral tone of the people at large, than advantage could be gained by the fictitious unity of the school-house of a day. Suppose, however, the case should be, that both parties ima- gining the present advantages of a literary education to be very great, are willing to hold in abeyance tliis point of differ- ence, and keep only to the points of agreement. Let it be so. They proceed in their school. The English Catholic and the Romanist sit down together. But the next day there enters into their councils a Wesleyan or an Independent, claiming the privileges of the national education which the state prepares. We must set about then to accommodate ourselves to tlie new comer. How shall we do it ? We might all agree together as to the Holy Scriptures being the Word of God ; and as to the incarnation and atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ; and we WITH RELIGION. 63 might concur in the teaching of the Apostles' Creed to a consi- derable extent : but when we came to the article, "/ believe in the Holy Catholic Church,'' we should, I fear, be stopped. The Independent would allow no such authority as the Catholic Church. He would deny himself to be a Catholic, and he would repudiate the idea of any Church beyond his own immediate congregation. What now is to be done ? This great truth, which is essential to the Catholic, both the English and the Roman, must be set aside ; for the compromising system says, — you must take away all the points of diiference, and find only the points of agreement. It must, therefore, form no article of your religious teaching henceforward. Here then the second gxQ^i compromise, and the English Catho- lic, the Roman Catholic, the Wesleyan, and the Independent, all sit down in peace together. We begin our school again, and we begin it on a much broader basis of faith, and with less points of difference, but still not broad enough ; for behold an Anabaptist enters, and as he understands that this is a state school, and is maintained by the people's money, he has a natural desire that his child shall reap its advantages. But he inquires, first, what the religious teaching is which the school provides. He is answered, "The holy Scriptures are read, and the Apostles' Creed, short of one or two articles, is taught." How does it begin ? " What is your name ? N. or M." " Who gave you this naftie ?" " My godfathers and godmothers in my baptism, wherein I was made" — but here he interrupts us. "I acknowledge no such thing as godfathers and godmothers, and I cannot suffer my child to answer a deliberate falsehood such as this, for he has never been baptized at all,* nor do I ever intend that he shall, until grown up to years of discretion, when he can judge for himself. In fact, 1 abhor and reject the doctrine of infant baptism." What must be the reply ? Very good. Of course you have a right both to your opinions and to the state education. In order then that you may have the benefit of both, we must shape our school to fit you. We must expunge all the teaching about baptism, and henceforth be it expunged. The school shall hear nothing farther on the subject. So now let us go on with our arithmetic and our geography ; our writing and our reading. Let baptism be set aside. Hence the third compromise. Still, however, there is not yet enough to embrace all. Many sects remain, to whom a school with its religious teaching, silent upon the Sacraments, silent * Refer to p. 34, where is found a strange instance of the compromising system within church -schools, in the omission of those parts of the catechism which refer to sponsors in baptism. 64 EDUCATION AS CONNECTED upon the holy Catholic Church, and silent upon baptism, and its privileges and its duties, would even so present its objections; for it might happen on some admission day that a Socinian might bring his child. He or his friends paying taxes for the national education, would have a perfect riglit so to do ; and he would begin at once by saying, "I object to your teaching in the Apos- tles' Creed the doctrine of the divinity of Christ. You teach the children to believe in Jesus Christ, the Lord God their Lord ; and you teach moreover the Trinity of the Godhead, which doc- trine I utterly deny. I demand, therefore, according to your rules, that such teaching should not be imparted." At such a S2:)eech the State commissioners for educating the people would perhaps, being Christians of some denomination, be somewhat abashed and astounded ; but what was just in the case of the Romanist, or the Wesleyan, or the Independent, or the Anabap- tist, must be also just in the case of the Socinian, and consequent- ly, willingly or unwillingly, the disputed point must be banished. It must go like the rest, for in our school our order is that nothing which creates a difference of religion, is to be made material of instruction. Such is the fourth compromise. And when a few days after, the child of a Jewish parent claims also his share in the national edu- cation, — when he, as paying taxes in his rich patron, would have his proportion back in the education of his child, — then would come the climax — for then, lest the prejudices of the Israelitench legislature and government have, in the opinion of tl e clergy, abandoned religion altogether ; and the idea of endea- vouring to infuse a Christian spirit into them through the Church, was one which they could not be induced to consider as at all practi- cable ; indeed the clergy, as far as we have seen, and the Catholic laity also, seem, if we may so express it, to have abandoned the State as reprobate, and given it up as incurable. The argument which they generally employ, and which our friend the Benedictine used on the present occasion, is, that the experiment has been already tried without success in one of the most vital questions, that of Xational Education; that the Chart of 1830 promised liberty of instruction to the clergy, as well as to all other classes of the community : that since 1830, that is for a period of fourteen years, the bishops of the * Hooker, book viii. 1. WITH THE CHURCH AND THE STATE. Ill Church had been petitioning and expostulating with the govern- ment, in the hope of obtaining by gentle measures the exercise of a right which belonged to them by Divine as well as human law ; but that all their endeavours have been fruitless, and that the state to which they are reduced is this — that the bishops have no con- trol over the national education as administered in any schools of their own dioceses (except the clerical seminaries) ; that they have no power of inspecting these schools ; that the appointment of schoolmaster is entirely a secular one, without any license or approval from the bishop ; that the curate cannot open a school for the poor in his own parish, and cannot instruct a class of more than three children together in his own house ; that what is true of the education of the poor, is equally applicable to that of the children of the middle classes and of the rich ; that the license to open a boarding school can only be derived from the secular power ; that even the chaplains of these schools are appointed by the state ; that the inspection is administered by the university, which is entirely under the control of the ministers of Public Instruction, and which is so deeply tainted by the spirit of scepticism and infidelity, that it is better that the ecclesiastical students of the seminaries should be altogether excluded from university honours and degrees than be submitted to an examination before an academic tribunal . . . . . Thus, the Church of France strengthens itself against the State by identifying itself with the Papacy ; it also taunts the State with the separation which has taken place between it and itself. You — it says to the State — have been the cause of the severance, and you must take its consequences. You have broken the treaty of alliance, and yet you claim to exercise control over me still, but I protest against such tyrannical usurpation. As long as you were Christian and Catholic, it was reasonable enough for me to allow you to mix yourself up with my affairs ; but now that you have hecome. Jeiv and Jansenist in your codes, and Deist and Pan- theist in your colleges, I renounce all your jurisdiction What pretence have you to meddle with my affairs. Res tibi tuas habe. Take care of your own concerns and let me manage mine. I interdict you from all commerce with me. I denounce your touch as profane. What ! shall an heretical government take cognizance of the affairs of a Christian Church ? Shall Catholic bishops give account of their proceedings, not to the successor of St. Peter, but to a multifidean Privy Council ? .... Whatever may be the consequences to you and to myself, I repudiate your claim to exer- cise any jurisdiction whatever in ecclesiastical matters. I affirm that I have reason and religion on my side We have a great and a growing power on our side ; therefore, we bid you beware, and to give to us that which we now ask as suppliants, but for which we shall soon contend as combatants — that for which we will sacrifice our lives, and which we are resolved to win at any cost — liberty complete, inalienable Liberty."* ♦ Wordsworth, Diary in France, p. 191-2. 112 EUL'CATION AS CONNECTED It is quite certain that the State, pursuing in identity with the Church the interests of the people, must teach, in identity with the Churcli the same doctrines as in her opinion are likely to maintain and promote those interests. The State must either regard the Church, and in the Church, itself, as possessing the truth, or not possessing the truth : — if not possessing the truth ; then it behoves the State to remodel its position, and maintain for the people whom it governs that which is the truth. But if it does possess the truth, then, as Dr. VVhewell says, in his Treatise on the Elements of Morality and Polity : — " the State, regarding the Church as the Teacher of Truth, will naturally hy 7neans of the Church encourage and facilitate the passage of men from error to truth." .... Nay, he goes still further than this : — " Every community of Christians has, by its Christian principles, a missionary character: it must endeavour to extend true religion to those whom it can reach. And the State, if it fully adopts and establishes the Church, must also partake in this missionary character, and must look upon the Teachers of the Church not only as the religious ministers for those who do belong to it, but as Home Mission- aries to those who do not."* Hence then again it follows, that it is no violation of religious freedom, when the State finds a number of children of its poor population overwhelmed in ignorance, and daily falling into deeper degrees of sin : that it should teach such children those truths w^iich it thinks likely to redeem them, and not only that, but should teach them by those means which are within her, and part of her, namely, the Church. It is no violation of the conscience, as in grown up persons, because the conscience of children^ as to religion, does not exist. There is just as much a violation of conscience and private judgment in a parent teaching his child religion, as there is in a Government: if a parent has the power and the means to teach his child, he may do so ; the toleration of the State allows him : but if he be without means, and without power, the State then has a right to step in for the sake of the Commonwealth, and say, "I will educate him for you." But the State cannot adopt any other means of educating him than her own means — that is the Church. Crime and Ignorance must not be permitted to disturb the peace of the Commonwealth, because of the private opinions of a few. Now our whole Constitution, not only in theory but in prac- tice, sets forth the State as working in all things religious hy the Church, If the State needs in common assemblies where all creeds meet, some minister of religion, such minister of ♦ Vol. ii. p. 335, § 1098. WITH THE CHURCH AND THE STATE. 113 religion is of the Church. In the House of Commons, the Chaplain, ministering before God in the company of every creed, is of the Church. In Unions and Prisons, where all creeds are met together, the ministers of Religion are of the Church. In the Corporations, and all other civic relations of cities, the ministers of religion are of the Church ; even although it should happen that the heads of that Corporation be themselves, on the principle of toleration. Dissenters. In these practical points, then, we see the State recognizing, by its authority, the Church as the only means by which it can publicly profess religion. It is quite impossible to conceive that Dissenters could object to this. Object to a state religion they might ; but when there is a State religion, to object to the working of that State religion, in con- sistency, they cannot. Just as the same writer expresses it, in much better language than I can use : — " To compel Dissenters to have their children taught by the teaching of the Established Church, would be a violation of toleration ; and to accept the teaching of Dissenters as answering the purpose of the State, equally with the teaching of the Church, is to repudiate the view of the Church which its establishment implies. To give the Church the means of educating all, and to leave those who reject its education to their own teachers, appears to be the nearest approximation to a Universal Education of the People which can be made under the Polity of an Established Church."* Assuming then this principle, as conceded in charity by all rational Dissenters, the Board of Education — in the event of the two societies not preferring any claim, would in the natural order go forth, and seek out for itself the destitute places, and while it freely afforded sustenance to the schools already esta- blished, on their own principles, still wheresoever it founded new schools on ground hitherto unoccupied, it would found them on the principles of the Church. The Parish Priest would be the person naturally called in to assist, nay, even to take the lead in the organisation of the new school. Secular education being carried on according to the universal plan, which it would be the business of the Board to devise ; religious teaching would be left to the Parish Priest, such doctrines being enforced, and such formularies being used, as the Church has thought fit to appoint for her people. And now there remains but one more difficulty — one, how- ever, which is by no means the least among the many which surround this question. Having obtained our governing power and our controlling checks ; having built our schools and ap- Whewell, Elements of Morality and Polity, vol. ii. § 1094. I 114 EDUCATION AS CONNECTED pointed our school-masters ; having avoided the possibility of collision, in maintaining the rightful claims of the Church, with- out violating the conscience of Dissenters ; still how are we to secure the end of it all, and without which all else will be vain — the attendance of the children ? Compulsory education is an impossible thing to attempt in such a country as England. However successful it may be in foreign countries, where there is less freedom of the subject, — among ourselves it would be absurd even to think of it. When, indeed, the lower classes, or any class, forfeits its freedom in cases of crime, which results in the discipline of a prison ; or when from poverty they throw themselves willingly for support on the laws of the land ; then the State may, as it does, justly interfere and insist upon their due moral and religious culture. Providing itself the means, it is justified in saying : If you accept the provision which we make for your bodily necessities, you must take with it the sus- tenance which your country and Church provide for your intel- lectual and religious improvement. But this does not affect the great mass of the people ; and anything like a constraint placed upon even the very poorest and lowest, would excite in all pro- bability a serious disaffection ; for it is melancholy to think of the great intellectual debasement and reckless abandonment of the poor in many places, particularly in the metropolis and large manufacturing towns. Without knowledge themselves, they desire no knowledge for others. Seeing only from the pressure of animal wants, that which is immediately before them, perhaps looking no further than the meal of the day, they would turn the bodily powers of the veriest infants into a provision for that meal. And the occupation of factories, and mines, by large masses of such poor on one side, and the fields of half-educated farmers filled with a clownish peasantry on the other side, pre- sent to us many a picture of depravity, coupled with poverty, at which the stoutest heart would shrink. You cannot speak to these men about education. They would reply by a laugh of contempt. You can neither argue with them, for they have no reasoning power ; nor alarm them, for they have no foresight. You can neither persuade them, for they have no moral feelings ; nor command them, for they have no rule of law, save that only rule which bids them to seek food and shelter for the day — the law of nature. This is no exaggeration. Tale after tale could be given of the grossness of life in which the poor live. Those only whose duty it is to visit them know it. They who sit in ceiled houses, and ride in painted carriages, of course cannot know it. When will they learn to trust those who tell them of it ? It is evident that such cannot in any sense be forced. The only weapon which remains to us is a sort of indirect induce- WITH THE CHURCH AND THE STATE. 115 ment which will aiFect their temporal condition. The induce- ment of prizes and rewards, and an elevation in the scale of life palpably placed before them as the result of education. And this might be done in some such manner as the following : — An Act of Parliament might be passed, rendering it illegal for any person to receive as an apprentice, or servant, or in any way hire for employment, children below the age of fourteen years, with- out a certificate of education. The certificate of education must be made, as it were, a token by which the employer, or proposed employer, of such children should have their attention drawn to the point, and by which the parents might be induced, as well as the children encouraged to exertion. It is not necessary here to enter into the details of such a plan. Variations in the ages, or variations in the certificates might be entertained, or certain local exemptions allowed, or the education might be permitted to be carried on simultaneously with the apprenticeship, as it is in the factory system, by giving half the day to the school, and half the day to labour ; or it might still further be accommodated to local necessities, by allowing one day for the school, and the alternate day for labour ; and this to be continued until the certificate is gained. In order to carry this into effect it would be necessary to enforce a penalty, encreasing with the repetition of the offence, on all such as should be found violating this law. The certificate might be signed by the master or by the inspector', and counter- signed in case of Church schools, by the parish priest, and in case of Dissenters by their religious teacher. The operation of this law would, of course, be gradual, but the effect would be, after a time, that the employment of very young children would cease. The attention of parents and employers would be drawn to its value, as beholding a better race of appi^entices, servants, and labourers, both in the towns and in the agricultural villages. A superiority of attainments, an elevated demeanour and habits, a greater value set upon their services, and the greater respecta- bility of their employments ; all these things would soon begin to tell upon the general community, and distinguish the educated child from the uneducated. The parents themselves, seeing the value set upon the certificate, would thereby be convinced of the immediate fruits of education, for it is the immediate fruits by which alone the poor ever judge, and so they would begin to rouse themselves, in its pursuit ; and not least of all, the chil- dren themselves, as they grew on from year to year, would soon feel it a sort of disgrace, not to bear about them the certificate of education current amongst them. A stigma would attach to those who could not in after life produce it. This notion pene- trating, from the better sorts of the poor, down to the lowest. 116 EDUCATION AS CONNECTED would leaven the whole mass, and the next generation would behold a more intelligent as well as a more godly race. And now what hindrance will there be to this plan, or some such plan? and from what source will the hindrance spring ? Will it be in any impossibility involved in the finance ? or will it be the voice of the Dissenter ; or will it be, as most it is to be feared, from the voice of the State ? Will the State persist in the ideas promulgated in the year 1839, and run the risk of a renewed collision with the Church? The State should remember, for the sounds of it have not yet died away, the battle which the Church then fought, united as we seldom see her ; and if this battle was so fought seven years ago, and ended in the confessed defeat of the State, how much more resolutely will it be fought now, when the spirit of the ancient Church Catholic of Christ is reviving daily ? It may be possible that some few, as in fact we have seen, may find reason to be of a difl:erent opinion in this change of years ; but should even the prelates of the Church think fit now to stand passively by, as then they did not ; or should some of those strange oblivions of the past come over their spirit, which ever and anon we see in the very best of men, still it may confidently be foretold that of the Priesthood there will be a faithful and resolute band, whether with the National Society or without it, who will stand devotedly to their work, and w^hatsoever the State shall do, will not flinch from the uncompromising advocacy of those truths which the Lord Jesus Christ has committed to their hands. But, suppose that the hindrance of our plan arise from the voice of the Church. Will the Chttrchy the State gracefully yielding those few points which before it assumed as necessary for co- operation, will the Church be the cause of hindrance ? If that is conceded to her now, which then she asked but did not gain, namely, the sole superintendence of her religion, and the right to ask that Sectarianism should not be propagated by the State — if these points be conceded, as in the plan here suggested they are — then what can the Church oppose ? She will not surely prefer the plan of Dr. Hook, throwing all into the hands of the secular schoolmaster, and the intriguing sectarian ; casting out the conscientious Parish Priest from the control which God has given him over his own Parish? She would not surely take the higher ground on an opposite side, and saj^ that she alone was the teacher of the people, and that even the toleration of a Dissenter was sinful. This she might have said three hundred years ago. But now, when she beholds millions of souls lost to her in this kingdom (let us confess it with humiliation), by her owm negligence, she cannot any longer say it. Three hundred WITH THE CHURCH AND THE STATE. 117 years ago the Church was one body in this country ; but in the paralysis of her powers which since that era she has suffered, in the loss of sanctity in her people, in the carnal lives of her clergy, in the low Erastianism of her prelates, in the robbery of her fair lands and endowments to feed the eager cupidity of her aristocracy — in all these points, known to all who have read her history in the lapse of those three hundred years — she has no longer, alas, the right in equity, as certainly she has no longer the ability in power, to say that no one shall teach the people but herself. The great bulk of Dissent in this country is Wesleyanisin — not so much opposed to the Church in doctrine, but rather in discipline. It is known that this great body sprung out of the Church's side, and cut herself off from her, led by one of her own Priests, in consequence of the miserable state of sin and ungodly lives of the laity, and the low, debased, worldly views of the Clergy. And all men ought to know, that it is owing to this sect principally, in conjunction with others, that Christian education holds the place which it now does among our people. The Dissenters led the way in Education^ not the Church. Let us confess this truth with shame, by being merely recalled to the dates at which the several societies of education took their rise : they are as follow : — I. The first Society was that called the ) Composed of Dis- Sunday School Society, established in Lon- > senters and ChurcJunen don 1785. j indiscriminately. II. The second Society was that called 1 Composed of Dis- the Sunday School Union, established in > senters and Churchmen 1803. 3 indiscriminately. III. The third Society was that called ") Entirely Dissenters. the British and Foreign School Society, > Liberty of Conscience, no established 1808. ) Creed, no CatecMsyn. IV. The fourth Society was that called 1 the National School Society, established)- Exclusively the Church. 1811. 3 So that the Church was, as a body, twenty-six years after the first society which drew attention to the subject of education, and three years behind her acknowledged great rival among the Dissenters. The Church then, has forfeited the claim of being the sole teacher of the people. It is as unjust that she should make it, as it is impossible that she should maintain it. Let us con- template the great body of religious persons professing the faith of Christ crucified, in this country, not in communion with the Church, for they are religious persons ; mistaken they may be, 118 EDUCATION AS CONNECTED WITH THE CHURCH, ETC. in grievous schism they may be, but looking upon their exist- ence as a fact, what are we to say and do? We need not join with them, when the Apostle says, " Avoid them." We need not consort with them, or say, " we voluntarily hand over to you a portion of our flocks " ; but we may, and ought in all equity, considering how much their present position is the fruit of our own negligence, to tolerate in them the edu- cation of their own people. We cannot say with the Committee of Privy Council, or with the late Lord President, that we should hand over an equal division of the revenue of the State, but we must say, for charity's sake and justice : " Take that proportion which your members need." The anomalies under which we live are great — the anomalies of the Church even within herself are great, and much greater are they when she is contemplated as at present in union with the State ; but how much greater still would they be, were we to be found publicly and openly divided against each other, the State against the Church, and the Church against the State, acknow- ledging each that the Gospel should be preached to the poor, but differing in the very presence of the people whom we come to teach, as to what that Gospel is. The only safe method is, as now most humbly has been sug- gested, and with a faint hope that something yet may save us from the cloud that is ready to burst : the only safe method is, that the State may set herself forth in this controversy, with a faithful spirit, and a mind trusting in the Lord God to do her duty, and that she may see that duty to consist shortly in this principle ; — The toleration of Dissent in a reluctant charity : the propagation of the Church loith an obedient faithfulness. Then our hope will be that as years flow on, and the poorer classes open out by the voice of instruction, becoming wiser and more intel- ligent beings ; and at the same time the Church opens out as to her clergy in more sanctified and self-sacrificing lives, in a more consistent and harmonious practice of her liturgy, in a more vital and edifying preaching of the Word, and, above all, in a more constant and public catechizing of the young in her Churches (for this indeed is the great weapon of the Church in the teaching of the poor) ; that then even those of Dissent being led to think, may return to the fold which in ignorance they have abandoned, and that once more God may look upon this realm of England, and behold, among a people enlightened by Wisdom — a Church united in Love. THE END. LONUOJf: RICHARDS, 100, SF MARTIN's I.ANE. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. THE EUCHARIST. (Second Edition.) 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