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speaking of the women employed in the iron-works and collieries throughout South Wales, he says "their ignorance is absolutely awful; yet the returns show in them a singular immunity from crime." - Morning Chronicle, March 21, 1850.

If these testimonies are thought insufficient, they may be enforced by that of Mr. Fletcher, who has entered more elaborately into this question than perhaps any other writer of the day. Summing up the results of his investigations, he says:

"1. In comparing the gross commitments for criminal offences with the proportion of instruction in each district, there is found to be a small balance in favour of the most instructed districts in the years of most industrial depression (1842-'3-'4), but a greater one against them in the years of less industrial depression (1845-'6-'7); while in comparing the more with the less instructed portions of each district, the final result is against the former at both periods, though fourfold at the latter what it is at the former.

"2. No correction for the ages of the population in different districts, to meet the excess of criminals at certain younger periods of life, will change the character of this superficial evidence against instruction; every legitimate allowance of the kind having already been made in arriving at these results.

"3. Down to this period, therefore, the comparison of the criminal and educational returns of this, any more than of any other country of Europe, has afforded no sound statistical evidence in favour, and as little against, the moral effects associated with instruction, as actually disseminated among the people." *

* Summary of the Moral Statistics of England and Wales. By Joseph Fletcher, Esq., Barrister-at-Law, one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools.

To all which evidence may be added that of Messrs. Gurrea and Dupin, who have shown that the most highly-educated districts in France are the most criminal districts.

The fact is, that scarcely any connection exists between morality and the discipline of ordinary teaching. Mere culture of the intellect (and education as usually conducted amounts to little more) is hardly at all operative upon conduct. Creeds pasted upon the memory, good principles learnt by rote, lessons in right and wrong, will not eradicate vicious propensities, though people, in spite of their experience as parents, and as citizens, persist in hoping they will. All history, both of the race and of individuals, goes to prove that in the majority of cases precepts do not act at all. And where they seem to act, it is not by them, but by preëxisting feelings which respond to them, that the effects are really produced. Intellect is not a power, but an instrument-not a thing which itself moves and works, but a thing which is moved and worked by forces behind it. To say that men are ruled by reason, is as irrational as to say that men are ruled by their eyes. Reason is an eye-the eye through which the desires see their way to gratification. And educating it only makes it a better eye-gives it a vision more accurate and more comprehensive-does not at all alter the desires subserved by it. However far seeing you make it, the passions will still determine the directions in which it shall be turned-the objects on which it shall dwell. Just those ends which the instincts or sentiments propose will the intellect be employed to accomplish: culture of it having done nothing but increase the ability to accomplish them. Probably some will urge that enlightening men enables them to discern the penalties which naturally attach to wrong-doing; and in a certain sense this is true. But it is only superficially true. Though they may learn

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that the grosser crimes commonly bring retribution in one shape or other, they will not learn that the subtler ones do. Their sins will merely be made more Machiavellian. If, as Coleridge says, "a knave is a fool with a circumbendibus," then by instructing the knave you do but make the circumbendibus a wider one. Did much knowledge and piercing intelligence suffice to make men good, then Bacon should have been honest, and Napoleon should have been just. Where the character is defective, intellect, no matter how high, fails to regulate rightly, because predominant desires falsify its estimates. Nay, even a distinct foresight of evil consequences will not restrain when strong passions are at work. How else does it happen that men will get drunk, though they know drunkenness will entail on them suffering, and disgrace, and (as with the poor) even starvation? How else is it that medical students, who know the diseases brought on by dissolute living better than other young men, are just as reckless, and even mere reckless? How else is it that the London thief, who has been at the treadmill a dozen times, will steal again as soon as he is at liberty? How else is it that people, who have all their lives long been taught Christianity, will not behave as Christians, though they believe that dire penalties are entailed by behaving otherwise?

It is, indeed strange that with the facts of daily life before them in the street, in the counting-house, and in the family, thinking men should still expect education to cure crime. If armies of teachers, regarded with a certain superstitious reverence, have been unable to purify society in all these eighteen centuries, it is hardly likely that other armies of teachers, not so regarded, will be able to do it. If natural persuasion, backed by supernatural authority, will not induce men to do as they would be done by, it is hardly likely that natural persuasion alone

will induce them. If hopes of eternal happiness and terrors of eternal damnation fail to make human beings virtuous, it is hardly likely that the commendations and reproofs of the schoolmaster will succeed.

There is, in fact, a quite sufficient reason for failureno less a reason than the impossibility of the task. The expectation that crime may presently be cured, whether by state-education, or the silent system, or the separate system, or any other system, is one of those Utopianisms fallen into by people who pride themselves on being practical. Crime is incurable, save by that gradual process of adaptation to the social state which humanity is undergoing. Crime is the continual breaking out of the old unadapted nature-the index of a character unfitted to its conditions-and only as fast as the unfitness diminishes can crime diminish. To hope for some prompt method of putting down crime, is in reality to hope for some prompt method of putting down all evils-laws, governments, taxation, poverty, caste, and the rest; for they and crime have the some root. Reforming men's conduct without reforming their natures is impossible; and to expect that their natures may be reformed, otherwise than by the forces which are slowly civilizing us, is visionary. Schemes of discipline or culture are of use only in proportion as they organically alter the national character, and the extent to which they do this is by no means great. It is not by humanly-devised agencies, good as these may be in their way, but it is by the never-ceasing action of circumstances upon men-by the constant pressure of their new conditions upon them-that the required change is mainly effected.

Meanwhile it may be remarked, that whatever moral benefit can be effected by education, must be effected by an education which is emotional rather than perceptive. If, in place of making a child understand that

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this thing is right and the other wrong, you make it feel that they are so if you make virtue loved and vice loathed-if you arouse a noble desire, and make torpid an inferior one if you bring into life a previously dormant sentiment if you cause a sympathetic impulse to get the better of one that is selfish-if, in short, you produce a state of mind to which proper behaviour is natural, spontaneous, instinctive, you do some good. But no drilling in catechisms, no teaching of moral codes, can effect this. Only by repeatedly awakening the appropriate emotions can character be changed. Mere ideas received by the intellect, meeting no response from within-having no roots there are quite inoperative upon conduct, and are quickly forgotten upon entering into life.

Perhaps it will be said that a discipline like this now described as the only efficient one, might be undertaken by the state. No doubt it might. But from all legislative attempts at emotional education may Heaven defend us!

§ 10. Yet another objection remains. Just as we found, on close examination, by poor-laws a government cannot really cure distress, but can only shift it from one section of the community to another (p. 359), so, astounding as the assertion looks, we shall find that a government cannot in fact educate at all, but can only educate some by uneducating others. If, before agitating the matter, men had taken the precaution to define education, they would probably have seen that the state can afford no true help in the matter. But having unfortunately neglected to do this, they have confined their attention solely to the education given at school, and have forgotten to inquire how their plans bear upon the education which commences when school-days end. It is not