Crisis of Popular Education in its Relation to the Government.... Question of Government-Interference.... Question of Necessity... Gratuitous Education.....Compulsory Attendance.....Kind and Form of the Agency to be exercised by the State.... Centralisation ....Question of Religious Instruction.... Secular Schools....The exclusively Voluntary System....The same System with Secular Schools....Government Aid to Voluntary Societies.... Isolation of Voluntary Societies.... Principles of Government Aid to Volun- In our times, the education of the people has been extended in some quarters where, either public convulsions but recently subsided, or an absolute despotism, might have led us to expect but little. The Orleans dynasty has been marked, in its rise, by a keen perception of the importance of a system of public instruction for the juvenile millions of France, the most populous country of Europe. In Russia, too, next in population, the intentions of Catharine in the last century, were extensively carried out by the late Emperor Alexander, in the establishment of public schools for neighbouring lights only make one's own darkness more "visible"-it may be more dangerous. Even the absolutism handed down unchanged from the times of Ivan the Terrible, can no longer safely repose on the ignorance of a brutish serfdom. Czars now speak to the children of the soil as to beings that have minds. Despotism is not one of those things which are most beautiful when "unadorned :" it must at last rest upon a sober and seemly basis : "It is certainly not to the progress of civilization," says the manifesto of Nicholas, dated 1826, "but to vanity, which produces only idleness and vacuity of mind, to the want of real instruction, B that we must attribute the licentiousness of thought, those unbridled passions, that confused and fatal half-knowledge, that tendency to extreme theories and political visions, which begin with demoralising, and end by ruining their victims. Let the fear of God, and solid and patriotic instruction, be the basis of all hope of improvement, the first duty of all classes." 66 It was not far from the date of the above imperial document that Foster, the admired author of the "Essay on Popular Ignorance," in his preface to that work, endorsed the assertion that England was behind all other European nations in the matter of popular education. "Impracticable!" exclaims this reflective thinker and genuine philanthropist, while he describes a state of things even now scarcely obsolete, and does the case come to this; that from the arrogance of the high, and the untowardness of the low, the obstinacy of prejudice, and the rashness of innovation, the dissensions among friends of a beneficent design, and the discountenance of those who are no better than enemies, a mighty state, triumphantly boasting of every other kind of power, absolutely cannot execute a scheme for rescuing its people from being what a great authority on this subject has pronounced the worst educated nation in Europe?' Then let it submit, with all its pomp, pride, and grandeur, to stand in derision and proverb on the face of the earth." That England was absolutely the lowest of all European nations on the scale of popular education, even a quarter of a century ago, is an assertion which may well admit of demur. But, however this may be, there seems now a general agreement that it is a good thing for the childhood and youth of a nation to have intellectual and moral training. If there be still those who would keep the people in ignorance, as perhaps there are, they remain silent. A neglected, ignorant, vicious. population, is not denied to be an enormous evil. France is often pointed to, and justly, as a beacon to all nations in practical demonstration of this truth. All who reflect on her past and woful history seem convinced that a people blessed with the advantage of a wholesome early discipline, in knowledge, morals, and religion, would never have formed elements to produce the dreadful orgies that followed in the train of the revolution of 1789. The most "dangerous classes" in a nation, as they have been expressively termed, have always been found the most uninstructed. This fact is borne out by all Criminal Reports; and we have illustrations of it of no distant date. In the volume for 1839 of the Central Society of Education, we are informed that in the locality where, in the previous year, the poor fanatic who called himself Sir William Courtenay raised a tumult which ended in the loss of his own life, and of the lives of several of his deluded followers, at Herne Hill in Kent; out of one hundred and sixty-two young people above fourteen years of age, only seventeen could read and write. According to Mr. Tremenhere's table, it appears that in the part of Wales in which the Chartist insurrection took place under Frost, in 1840, not one in twenty-six of the population was in any school; a proportion which, even if incorrect, can hardly have been so erroneous as to leave room for any thing like a satisfactory result. On the other hand, we may find mischief at all events greatly restrained, if not wholly prevented, by such counteractive force as may have existed in the form of education. The portentous rising in the north of England consequent on the condition of the working classes, in the autumn of 1842, filled many hearts with alarm: but whatever elements of restraint did appear among the masses, in prevention of violence, were ascribed by well-informed local inhabitants and eyewitnesses, in a considerable degree, to the effect produced on the population by schools. But no lengthened argument is now required to prove that moral means cannot be dispensed with, as a vital part of the remedy for evils incident to the progress of the social fabric. Vast bodies of men are thrown together, and some common source of suffering chafes their minds. Passions unused to discipline, and ignorance of the consequences and relations of things, may induce them, as we have seen in our times, to resort to the breaking of machinery, incendiarism, the maiming of cattle, or some other work of reckless barbarism and vengeance. Knowledge and moral training would have taught them that in thus abandoning themselves to furious impulses, they were often but preparing for themselves worse evils than those from which they desired to escape; and that the only sure way to gain a true redress of any grievances, is to exhibit peaceably and legally the moral power of a vigorous remonstrance, against which not a few social oppressions have given way, and none that are of real magnitude can ultimately stand their ground. Little sagacity is needed to perceive that unless men are to be ruled by some kind of violence, they must be subjected to intellectual and moral discipline. Hence, when the educational clauses of the Factories' Education Bill of 1843 were proposed in Parliament, not a voice was lifted up from first to last against the principle of popular instruction. We were not plied with the once incessant assurance that the poor man, when taught, would fancy himself raised above labour, though he saw all labouring around him, and all as wellinformed as himself;* or that he would be artificially forced into a different position in society from that in which he was born, while his fellows equally shared in whatever position knowledge and good training may be supposed to give. It is the elevation of the national mind and character in general that is to be aimed at; and though there may still be found among us those who would if possible retard this object, it is not easy to see any thing revolutionary in the idea of raising the whole platform of society to a higher level by cultivating men's minds and hearts; though it must be admitted that in a free country, with a soundly instructed people, all sorts of rational reforms may be expected to go on, in process of time, up to the last limit of abuse this, indeed, is one grand advantage which a system of popular education, worked in harmony with freedom, is likely to draw in its train. Certain it is, however, that on the introduction of the above Bill into the House of Commons, all the hackneyed objections were unheard, and no new ones were raised. Lord Ashley's previous and celebrated speech had produced so intense a conviction that something more must be attempted in the way of public instruction, to prevent ignorance and crime, that the contest related solely to the mode in which an object desired by all was to be accomplished. It is true that the full impression which would seem due to speeches in Parliament, and to official documents, has sometimes failed of being realised, from the fact that in some cases only the dark side of the picture has been given, while much of the good that has been done in the way of counteraction has been omitted. On this account much was said in neutralization of Lord Ashley's speech-more perhaps than was just for we should remember that it is one thing for facts to be omitted, and quite another for alleged facts not to be true. Definite independent facts cannot be affected, individually, by the omission of others. Now if half the statements in Lord Ashley's speech were true, unquestionably the mass of juvenile ignorance and evil at work among us was proved to be appalling enough, whatever might be the relative amount of good. These statements, it should be remembered, were * Dr. Johnson's remark is in point-to the effect that "if all men wore laced hats, a man with a laced hat would not be above going to plough." |