sidered as redeemed from the charge of being altogether revolutionary or chimerical, by the following remark of the Registrar-General, in his Report of 1846-" the insufficiency of the national education is the more to be regretted, as the means of education exist, and the funds left for educational purposes, if properly applied, in the charities and public institutions, would with some assistance from Parliament, supply the children of the poor with the sound knowledge which the scanty earnings of the parents do not enable them to purchase.” But there are difficulties in the way of applying these funds to the maintenance of primary elementary schools. Much reform has already been introduced in regard to the Grammar Schools, by the Court of Chancery. It is contended, too, that if the endowed schools were merged in the elementary school system, the ancient means by which individuals of the lower and middle class of society have often climbed to honour, wealth, and station, would be wanting. Again, as these endowments have been mostly identified with the established religion of the country, it could hardly be expected that, in the present state of national opinion as to the relations of civil and ecclesiastical affairs, these funds, even if applied to the purposes of education more extensively, would be applied on the principle of religious equality. Considering, therefore, the obstacles which appear to lie in the way of a general system of popular instruction, either on the voluntary principle, or on that of a new and more liberal appropriation of existing endowments, it would seem that the only path remaining to an early and efficient remedy of the great and crying evil of a still extensively prevailing and neglected popular ignorance, would be that of aid from the government, on terms not fettered by ancient usages and prescriptions, but equal towards all. 186 CHAPTER VIII. CRISIS OF POPULAR EDUCATION, IN ITS RELATION TO THE GOVERNMENT. THE education of the people is now entering on a crisis, which may go far towards shaping the relations which it is to sustain towards the government in future time. This fact is not only important in its bearings on the immediate object-the efficient instruction of the young: it will draw in its train other momentous consequences. The character of the influence which government is henceforth to exert over educational societies and over the masses of the people, the course which freedom is destined to take, the future relations of religion to the state, may all be involved in the final issue of the eventful educational crisis which is now coming on. The more decided prospective movement of government in the matter of popular education, naturally leads to some retrospect of principles: and here we find the source of those diversities of opinion which have, hitherto, constituted the great obstacle to united action, both on the part of society with the government, and of various classes of the community among themselves. It is of little importance to inquire how much there is of romance, or that is apocryphal, in the story of Minos of Crete, or Lycurgus of Sparta, or in the picture which Xenophon has delineated of the ancient Persians, before we affirm that there has been a prevailing-nay, up to a late period, an almost universal understanding among men, that THE STATE MAY DO SOMETHING TO PROMOTE THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. The general ideas and practices of mankind in former ages may be gathered, in respect to some points, with tolerable certainty, without the previous necessity of defining the limits between what is true and what is legendary in that which comes down to us in the shape of history. Even the myth and the romance will reflect from their surface an image of predominant ideas. But if we turn to those states which have grown up under the influence of modern civilisation, on which Christianity has so conspicuously marked its traces, almost everywhere do we find more or less of government-agency employed in the education of the people, modified as that agency may be by the degree of freedom which has prevailed: hence, according to circumstances, direct taxation, compulsory regulations, a uniform organisation, aid from the exchequer to voluntary efforts, or any other sign of the idea that the state may be an agent, one agent at least, in the work of popular education. In almost all the Protestant, and in many Catholic parts of the Continent, we see a regular governmentsystem; as in France, or Prussia*-no precedent, it will be said, for England and Englishmen. But, with the United States of America, our sympathies are naturally strong and many. Here, again, the local governments are found aiding the same work in the form of public grants and taxation—a principle which has been handed down from the practice of the "pilgrim-fathers," who suffered voluntary exile for the sake of nonconformity; the modern adherents of which, in England, under the influence of the difficulties with which the subject has been beset in this country, have been almost alone in extensively adopting the theory that government has no mission, and can have none, on any sound principle, to aid in the attempt to rescue the people from ignorance. The very fact that those who now assume this theory, in the abstract, have only done so of late years, strongly marks that they have been driven to it by the reaction occasioned by repeated disappointment of the hope, long entertained, that the British government would carry some measure which should neither favour nor compromise any party, but should prove just and equal towards all. Whatever practical difficulties, however, may accidentally lie in the way of such a consummation, it is obvious that the soundness of the general principle itself does not depend on the accidents which may in some instances obstruct its operation. If there are cases in which it cannot work, there are others in which it has survived great political changes. It is deserving of note that at the time of the American revolution, when the minds and deliberations of the most enlightened men on the * Since some of the above pages were printed, the King of Prussia has granted the long-promised constitution to his subjects. How far it will work out greater freedom, seems doubted by many: but, at all events, it is a concession; and it may have been a necessary consequent on the universal education of the Prussian people, despotic as their educational system is very commonly thought to be. other side of the Atlantic, revolting from arbitrary power, were directed towards the theory and form of government, generally, and when the United States were established on their present basis, the principle that education was a concern not beyond the province of government, so far from being repudiated, was affirmed by Washington himself, and by several successive Presidents,* and has been acted on ever since; and this in a country in which the government is democratic, and religion is more free than it has ever been in England, at any period of our history. Again; were the voice of authority, from Aristotle, the great practical thinker of antiquity, downwards to our own day, to decide the question whether education can be an affair for government to deal with, there could be no doubt on which side the suffrages would be found preponderating: "That the legislator should especially occupy himself with the education of youth," says Aristotle, "no one can dispute. In the matter of education, as well as in other matters, the Lacedæmonians deserve praise; for they take the greatest pains about the education of their children, and that, too, as a public concern. That a state ought to legislate on education, and make it a public concern is clear: but what education is, and how education must be conducted, is a subject for consideration." It is very true that Aristotle's doctrine of public education, however it might suit a free Greek state, necessarily omits one element of the greatest consideration in Christian countries. The poetical mythology of Greece appealed to feeling, not to faith. Here, conscience no doubt had its sphere in the law written on the heart; but there was no testimony extant, like the documents of Christianity, claiming to be authoritative, on the interpretation of which men might, on conscientious grounds, hold different opinions. Besides which, there was among the Hellenic race the common bond of unity in religion, such as it was; though the independent states were various in the form of the republic. Liberty of conscience, therefore, as there was little or no scope for it, in the modern sense, was not ostensibly included among Aristotle's ideas of the mode in which popular education was to be the concern of government; and he contented himself with laying down the general principle that the end of education, in every state, was the preservation of the polity. This is no doubt one mode of expressing the proper end and concern with which government, as such, has to do, amidst all the improve * See page 31. + Politics Book VIII. ch. I. ments which the polity may undergo; and that a polity may be endangered by the consequences which ignorance, and its usual concomitant, the absence of moral restraints, draw in their train, is obvious. In countries where diversity of religious opinion is a prominent feature, it is evident that a proper adjustment of the claims of conscience must tend to the unity and strength of the polity, and consequently to its preservation. Such adjustment, therefore, ought to be a foremost ingredient in any relations which education may sustain towards the government. If we ask for authorities which may be considered as more practical, being nearer to the present time, we find that a very considerable uniformity of opinion has prevailed among the most thoughtful men respecting the general principle of the moral lawfulness, not to say the possible necessity, of making the education of the people a concern of government. To omit all living names, we may adduce that of Adam Smith, the father of political economy, who, notwithstanding his tendency to carry, throughout, the theory of equality between demand and supply, remarks that "there are cases in which some attention of the government is necessary, to prevent the almost entire corruption and degeneracy of the great body of the people."* He even goes so far as to speak of "imposing the necessity of acquiring the most essential parts of education:" so also the late Mr. Foster, though a great champion for rational freedom and popular institutions. It is, however, only in reference to the principle of governmental concern with education, that we adduce these witnesses, not to the coercive mode of securing attendance at school, which is now generally exploded, and which it is certainly desirable to avoid by the use of all possible other means. Mr. Foster thus strongly writes on the subject: "If the condition and fate of children shall mainly be left at the discretion of ignorant and often worthless parents; if there be no considerable positive exaction of local provision for the institution, or of attendance of those who should be benefitted by it; if, in short, there shall not be a comprehensive application of the national power, through its organ the government, by authoritative, and, we must say, in some degree coercive measures, to abate as speedily as possible the national nuisance and calamity of such a state of the juvenile faculties and habits as we see glaring around us,† we may well ask whether those factitious pre * Wealth of Nations, Book V. ch. I. † It must be admitted that, if the estimates of the present state of education, numerically at least, in the above pages, have any foundation, the state of things |