but little in repute; and but few persons have, hitherto, been accustomed to seek it, except such as, for the want of sufficient ability, or energy, or industry, have been unsuccessful in other callings, or who labor under infirm health or bodily deformities. These were considered indeed good enough for the purpose; until that inveterate prejudice was got rid of, that education is a privilege of men's social condition, and to be graduated according to it. It is a legitimate deduction from this principle, that a teacher of the lowest standard in attainments and skill is competent to the instruction of children of the lowest class. The converse proposition is to rule the future of education. The education of those children who are the most degraded, intellectually and morally, being the most difficult task,—is to have the highest qualities of the teacher brought to bear upon it. The three or four thousand pupil teachers, having been selected as the most promising children in the schools in which they have been brought up, and having been apprenticed to the work of the school for five years, and educated under the careful superintendence of the clergy and the inspectors of schools, will when they have completed their apprenticeship, present themselves for admission to the training schools. So selected and so trained from an early age, they cannot fail, after two or three years' residence in them, to form a body of teachers such as have never before entered the field of elementary education in England. The worst training of the normal schools cannot mar this result; and we have reason to hope for the best. This, then, is the bright future of education. If the apprenticeship of new pupil teachers is continued at the same rate as heretofore, from 1000 to 1500 will annually complete their apprenticeship; and nearly as many will complete annually their training in the normal schools; so that nearly that number of teachers will every year be prepared to enter on the charge of elementary schools. The following are the conditions annexed to grants: 1. In respect to grants for the building of schools, it is stipulated that the site shall be legally conveyed to trustees, to be used for ever for the purposes of a school. 2. That the buildings should be substantial and well adapted to the uses of a school. 3. That the State, by its inspector, shall have access to the school, to examine and report whether the instruction of the children is duly cared for. 4. To these conditions there have been added, since the year 1848, certain others, well known as the Management Clauses;' having for their object to secure to the laity, in all practicable cases, what appears to be a due share in the managment of the schools. 5. To grants for the augmentation of teachers' salaries, and for the stipends of pupil teachers, it is made a condition that certain examinations shall be passed, the subjects of examination being specified beforehand. These subjects include, with secular instruction, a detailed course of elementary religious instruction, to be conducted in Church schools in strict accordance with the formularies of the Church of England. 6. To grants for apparatus and books, no other conditions are annexed than that the Committee of Council shall be certified on the report of one of its inspectors, that the assistance is needed; that the books and apparatus sought are proper to the use of the school; and that the teachers are competent to make the proper use of them. These measures of the Committee of Council appear excellently calculated to promote the interests of education. But the best measures depend for their success upon their execution; and these have been so administered as to secure the cordial acceptance of the various parues locally interested in schools. These measures were not adopted without encountering the most violent and determined opposition. Even the appointment of the Committee of Council, was denounced in the House of Lords by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who carried an address to the crown, praying for its revocation by a majority of 111 votes; and in the House of Commons, Lord Stanley, the author of the system of national education in Ireland, missed carrying a similar motion in the first instance by five, and on a second occasion by only two votes. Even the continuance in office of Lord Melbourne's administration was periled by his declaration in favor of these measures. By degrees the jealousies and opposition of the different religious communions has been conciliated, and a system of elementary education, under the local direction and support of religious bodies, and the general supervision and pecuniary aid (mainly in the qualification and encouragement of teachers,) of the Committee of Council, has grown up to the proportions represented in the following table: The following are the educational statistics of England and Wales, Attending at the schools on the 31st March, 1851,...... Proportion of scholars on the books to the (1 scholar in 8 11.76 per cent. per cent. Number of scholars in attendance to school on books, 83 The progress of elementary education is exhibited in the following table: Increase of population from 1818 to 1851, 57 per cent. In view of these facts Lord John Russell, and Sir James Kay Shuttleworth, the former in a speech in the House of Commons, and the latter in a volume just published, (1853,) advocate an extension of the measures now in operation, in preference to a system of National Education, based on municipal management and taxation. Sir James thus speaks of the policy of parental contribution in connection with public grants and private subscription. A weekly payment from the parents of scholars is that form of taxation, the justice of which is most apparent, to the humbler classes. Every one who has even an elementary knowledge of finance is aware, that no tax can be largely productive from which the great mass of the people are exempt. The moral advantage of a tax on the poor in the form of school pence is, that it appeals to the sense of paternal duty. It enforces a lesson of domestic piety. It establishes the parental authority, and vindicates personal freedom. The child is neither wholly educated by religious charity, nor by the State. He owes to his parents that honor and obedience, which are the sources of domestic tranquillity, and to which the promise of long life is attached. Let no one rudely interfere with the bonds of filial reverence and affection. Especially is it the interest of the State to make these the primal elements of social order. Nor can the paternal charities of a wise commonwealth be substituted for the personal ties of parental love and esteem, without undermining society at its base. The parent should not be led to regard the school as the privilege of the citizen, so much as another scene of household duty. Those communities are neither most prosperous, nor most happy, in which the political or social relations of the family are more prominent than the domestic. That which happily distinguishes the Saxon and Teutonic races is, the prevalence of the idea of "home." To make the households of the poor, scenes of Christian peace, is the first object of the school. Why then should we substitute its external relations for its internal-the idea of the citizen, for that of the parent-the sense of political or social rights, for those of domestic duties-the claim of public privilege, for the personal law of conscience? Parliament has not been entirely neglectful of the education, as well as the health of children employed in factories. The first act in their behalf was passed in 1802. This proving insufficient, other provisions were adopted from time to time, after very minute inquiries into the condition of this class of children, and protracted contests in parliament, until by the law as it now stands, every child (between the ages of 8 and 13 years) employed in a factory, must attend school three hours every day, between the hours of eight o'clock in the morning, and six o'clock in the afternoon. The person, whether parent or employer, who receives any direct benefit from the wages of a child, must take care that the child attend; and to show that this attendance is regular, the employer must obtain from the schoolmaster, on Monday of every week, a certificate in a form prescribed by the statute, showing the number of hours the child was at school on each day of the week previous. This certificate must be preserved for six months, and produced to an inspector on demand. The law imposes a fine for every case of neglect on the part of the employer. Inspectors are appointed by the Home Office, to visit factories and schools, with full powers to examine any person upon oath on the premises, employ surgeons to examine into the condition and arrangements for health, to cause defective machinery to be repaired, to set up a school for factory children, where none exist, and to report annually, and when required to the Home office. Among the resplendent names of modern English literature, Thomas Babbington Macauley and Thomas Carlyle stand preeminent, and in their writings, both Mr. Macauley and Mr. Carlyle appear the earnest advocates of popular education. In his place in the House of Commons, in 1847, Mr. Macauley came forward to defend the minutes of the Committee of Council on Education, to which, as Member of the Privy Council, he had given his assent. I hold that it is the right and duty of the State to provide for the education of the common people. I conceive the arguments by which this position may be proved are perfectly simple, perfectly obvious, and the most cogent possible. All are agreed that it is the sacred duty of every government to take effectual measures for securing the persons and property of the community; and that the government which neglects that duty is unfit for its situation. This being once admitted, I ask, can it be denied that the education of the common people is the most effectual means of protecting persons and property? On that subject I can not refer to higher authority, or use more strong terms, than have been employed by Adam Smith; and I take his authority the more readily, because he is not very friendly to State interference; and almost on the same page as that I refer to, he declares that the State ought not to meddle with the education of the higher orders; but he distinctly says that there is a difference, particularly in a highly civilized and commercial community, between the education of the higher classes and the education of the poor. The education of the poor he pronounces to be a matter in which government is most deeply concerned; and he compares ignorance, spread through the lower classes, neglected by the State, to a leprosy, or some other fearful disease, and says that where this duty is neglected, the State is in danger of falling into the terrible disorder. He had scarcely written this than the axiom was fearfully illustrated in the riots of 1780. I do not know if from all history I could select a stronger instance of my position, when I say that ignorance makes the persons and property of the community unsafe, and that the government is bound to take measures to prevent that ignorance. On that occasion, what was the state of things? Without any shadow of a grievance, at the sum mons of a madman, 100,000 men rising in insurrection—a week of anarchyParliament beseiged-your predecessor, sir, trembling in the Chair-the Lords pulled out of their coaches-the Bishops flying over the tiles-not a sight, I trust, that would be pleasurable even to those who are now so unfavorable to the church of England-thirty-six fires blazing at once in London-the house of the Chief Justice sacked-the children of the Prime Minister taken out of their beds in their night clothes, and laid on the table of the horse guards—and all this the effect of nothing but the gross, brutish ignorance of the population, who had been left brutes in the midst of Christianity, savages in the midst of civilization. Nor is this the only occasion when similar results have followed from the same cause. To this cause are attributable all the outrages of the Bristol and Nottingham riots, and all the misdeeds of General Rock and Captain Swing; incendiary fires in some district, and in others riots against machinery, tending more than anything else to degrade men to the level of the inferior animals. Could it have been supposed that all this could have taken place in a community were even the common laborer to have his mind opened by education, and be taught to find his pleasure in the exercise of his intellect, taught to revere his Maker, taught to regard his fellow-creatures with kindness, and taught likewise to feel respect for legitimate authority, taught how to pursue redress of real wrongs by constitutional methods? Take away education, and what are your means? Military force, prisons, solitary cells, penal colonies, gibbets—all the other apparatus of penal laws. If, then, there be an end to which government is bound to attain-if there are two ways only of attaining it-if one of those ways is by elevating the moral and intellectual character of the people, and if the other way is by inflicting pain, who can doubt which way every government ought to take? It seems to me that no proposition can be more strange than this-that the State ought to have power to punish and is bound to punish its subjects for not knowing their duty, but at the same time is to take no step to let them know what their duty is. I say, therefore, that the education of the people ought to be the first concern of a State, not only because it is an efficient means of promoting and obtaining that which all allow to be the main end of government, but because it is the most efficient, the most humane, the most civilized, and in all respects the best means of attaining that end. This is my deliberate conviction; and in this opinion I am fortified by thinking that it is also the opinion of all the great legislators, of all the great statesmen, of all the great political philosophers of all ages and of all nations, even including those whose general opinion is, and has ever been, to restrict the functions of government. Sir, it is the opinion of all the greatest champions of civil and religious liberty in the old world and in the new; and of none--I hesitate not to say it-more emphatically than of those whose names are held in the highest estimation by the Protestant Nonconformists of England. Assuredly if there be any class of men whom the Protestant Nonconformists of England respect more highly than another-if any whose memory they hold in deeper veneration-it is that class of men, of high spirit and unconquerable principles, who in the days of Archbishop Laud preferred leaving their native country, and living in the savage solitudes of a wilderness, rather than to live in a land of prosperity and plenty, where they could not enjoy the privilege of worshipping their Maker freely according to the dictates of their conscience. Those men, illustrious for ever in history, were the founders of the commonwealth of Massachusetts; but though their love of freedom of conscience was illimitable and indestructible, they could see nothing servile or degrading in the principle that the State should take upon itself the charge of the education of the people. In the year 1642 they passed their first legislative enactment on this subject, in the preamble of which they distinetly pledged themselves to this principle, that education was a matter of the deepest possible importance and the greatest possible interest to all nations and to all communities, and that as such it was, in an eminent degree, deserving of the peculiar attention of the State. I have peculiar satisfaction in referring to the case of America, because those who are the most enthusiastic advocates of the voluntary principle in matters of religion, turn fondly to that land as affording the best illustration that can be any where found of the successful operation of that principle. And yet what do we find to be the principle of America and of all the greatest men that she has produced upon the question? "Educate the people," was the first admonition addressed by Penn to the commonwealth he founded-"educate the people" was the last legacy of Washington to the republic of the United States educate the people" was the unceasing exhortation of Jefferson. Yes, of Jefferson himself; and I quote his authority with peculiar favor; for of all the eminent public men that the world ever saw, he was the one whose greatest delight it was to pare down the functions of governments to the lowest possible point, and to leave the freest possible scope for the exercise of individual exertion. Such was the disposition-such, indeed, might be said to be the mission of Jefferson; and yet the latter portion of his life was devoted with ceaseless energy to the effort to procure the blessing of a State education for Virginia. And against the concurrent testimony of all these great authorities, what have you, who take the opposite side, to show? Institutions for the education of the people are on every ground the very description of institutions which the government, as the guardians of the people's bests interests, are bound to interfere with. This point has been powerfully put by Mr. David Hume. After laying down very emphatically the general principle of non-interference and free competition, Mr. Hume goes on to make the admission that there undoubtedly may be and are some very useful and necessary matters which do not give that degree of advantage to any man that they can be safely left to individuals. Such matters, he says, must be effected by money, or by distinctions, or by both. Now, sir, if there ever was a case to which that description faithfully and accurately applies, I maintain that it is to the calling of the schoolmaster in England. That his calling is a necessary and an useful one, is clear; and yet it is equally clear that he does not obtain, and can not obtain, adequate remuneration without an. interference on the part of government. Here, then, we have the precise case, if we are to adopt the illustration of Hume, in which the government ought to interfere. Reasoning à priori, the principle of free competition is not sufficient of itself, and can not supply a good education. Let us look at the facts. What is the existing state in England? There has, for years, been nothing except the * |