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The Second General Table gives the proportion of children taught gratuitously and paying for education; and this table is extracted from the details contained in the Digests of the different counties-the former table being deduced from the different tables. The grand total for England, in this Second table, is as follows.

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* On the National, and British and Foreign Plan.

We have been favoured with the following statement of the totals for Scotland.

Endowed schools, including parochial schools
Where there are taught

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1,144 65,533

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-or about 4th less thanth of the whole population of Scotland. But the returns for Edinburgh and the Islands are extremely defective, so that the average is certainly rather above

th, as is stated by Mr Brougham. Of the endowed schools above given, 267 are not parochial; of the unendowed, 202 are society schools, and 205 dame schools. The Sunday schools amount to 687, and are attended by 49,285. *

It is upon the mass of information contained in this Digest, and in these Tables, that the Plan for National Education, which we are now to consider, has been constructed; and as, in the course of the argument respecting its merits, we shall be constantly obliged to appeal to this work, it was necessary to begin by explaining its nature and arrangement.

Among the topics which we think may now safely be passed over in entering upon this discussion, the benefits of Education must be reckoned as one. Happily the season seems gone by

* A most absurd statement has lately appeared in the newspapers, purporting to be a return up to May last of the schools in England and Wales. No such return has been, or could have been made to Parliament; and this statement seems, from internal evidence, to be a concealed advertisement of a Book, which it mentions as used in 3682 schools. By this statement it is pretended that there are above 37,000 schools, taught by above 56,000 teachers, and attended by above a million and a half of children-consequently, that every human being in the kingdom above sixteen years old can read, at the least; nay, that there are 7520 schools where French is taught, and 3327 where Greek and Latin are taught; or, in other words, the English are so accomplished, that every third person speaks French, and so learned that every sixth person reads the classics. This fabrication, we must in justice add, cannot for a moment be supposed to have been made for the purpose of helping the arguments urged against the New Plan; for it represents the Church Catechism as used in 22,583 schools; or, in other words, that nine millions and a half, that is, nearly the whole population, belong to the Church. So much for this statement; which, whatever be its origin, is sufficiently discreditable to its authors.

for ever, when men could be found capable of denying, in a civilized nation, the policy of diffusing knowledge among the people. It is not indeed above twelve or thirteen years since some eminent persons thus lingered behind the times in which they lived; and, though gifted with genius to go before their age, preferred the doubtful fame of displaying ingenuity in support of an absurd paradox,-lavishing their eloquence in extolling the usefulness and safety of darkness in the most enlightened period of history, as their predecessors among the luxurious Romans, but, in the decline of Latin taste, had employed their Rhetorick in making the panegyrick of rudeness and barbarity. But the case is now wholly changed; no persons, or next to none, have openly denied the policy, and even the duty, of Educating the people. If any still doubt it in their hearts, they are now fain to conceal their scruples, and, we suspect, will rather be found to oppose the measures in contemplation, by objecting to their details, than by attacking their principle. This great and salutary change deserves to be marked in passing; and relieves us from all necessity of adding any thing to the observations which we have formerly made upon the more general views of the question.

Another remark of a preliminary nature must be added. Some worthy persons, how deeply scever they may be impressed with the importance of universal Education, are disposed to question the expediency of Government interfering with the Instruction of the people, and that on two grounds:-They are suspicious of Government, and afraid of entrusting it with so powerful an engine of authority and influence; and they rely upon the general maxim of modern policy, which prescribes the rule of leaving the concerns of the people as much as possible to their own care. Now, we conceive that both these objections to a system of National Instruction countenanced and supported by the State, are founded upon most fallacious grounds -and we shall take them in their order.

1. Admitting that a superintendence of the education of youth were likely to give the Government some increase of influence, it would by no means follow that this price was not a cheap one for the benefit purchased, unless it were shown that any other means existed of securing the same benefit; and this consideration belongs to the other head of the argument. An established religion and endowed church certainly arms the civil magistrate with no small power-a power wholly foreign to the purposes of supporting a hierarchy, and only arising incidentally out of the means necessary for accomplishing those purposes. The expediency of such an establishment has accord

ingly been denied by many, who had never witnessed, or not duly reflected upon the numberless evils of unlimited fanaticism, and the great risks of the people receiving no religious instruction, or at least such instruction as could hardly lead to any religious improvement, were they left entirely to the tuition of their own stipendiaries, at all seasons of private and of publick fortune. But no man has ever denied the advantages, nay the necessity of providing for the administration of justice; and yet it may safely be affirmed, that the Judicial establishment of a State, in the present liberal-minded age, furnishes as much of what Mr Bentham terms the Malter of Influence' to its government, as the hierarchy itself: For we believe that Lawyers have, in most enlightened countries, succeeded to no little portion of the sway once enjoyed by their predecessors, the Priests. But there is another and a most important circumstance to be taken into consideration. Not only may checks be devised which shall control the interference of the Government, and confine its operation within certain limits; but the principal portion of the influence thus acquired is over the minds of children, whose ripened understandings will easily shake it off, if indeed time does not silently efface its impression: and above all it is never to be forgotten, that the natural effect of the system is to increase, beyond all calculation, the power and energy of the people generally, and especially to furnish, in each individual instance, the very antidote most adapted to counteract any tendency which the mode of tuition might have, unfriendly to perfect independence. All considerations of patronage being put out of view for the present, because means may be devised of removing any such dangers, it seems obvious, on the one hand, that no very great harm can result from the Government, or the establishments connected with it, generally superintending the manner in which the first rudiments of learning shall be conveyed to children; and, on the other, that the progress of popular improvement will, by the great and certain supply of instruction thus obtained, be so accelerated as indirectly to counteract a far greater weight than can ever be gained by Government through the direct operation of such a cause. Let the people but read and write and cipher, and they must think for themselves: and it would, in our humble opinion, be quite as unreasonable to complain of the power which the superintendence of their education may give to their rulers, as to be alarmed at the chance of their knowledge leading them into habits of insubordination. Such fears on the part of the Governors have now happily been removed. It will argue very little for the good sense of the governed, if any considerable portion of them fall a victim to the

opposite alarm, and still less for their candour, if they make an outcry of this description without really feeling the alarm.

2. The other objection to Government interfering, rests upon a plain misconception or perversion of the principle which it professes to proceed from. Nor are similar errors at all uncommon among shallow and half-read economists, in dealing with that principle. It is indeed one of the evils which have flowed from its great simplicity and easy application. Before the time when the science of political economy was purified and simplified by the labours of the French theorists and of our countrymen Hume and Smith, a considerable stock of learning, and a great familiarity with details, was required to set up as a political speculator. When the change took place, which was found mainly to consist in rejecting the officious interference of the Government with men's private concerns as useless, or repudiating it as pernicious, every sciolist who had turned over a few pages of the great works where this principle is unfolded with infinite practical knowledge and much nice limitation and qualification, thought he was at once master of the whole science, and could settle all questions belonging to it, by merely saying, if a Frenchman, Laisser-faire-and if an Englishman, ' Leave things to themselves.' How many persons have we heard thus disposing of all nice matters of national polity by crying out, • Adam Smith,'-and adding, things will find ther level'-persons who had no knowledge of things, and hardly knew what level meant !

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But the same error has pervaded men considerably above this description of shallow talkers. The first province and proper office of the doctrine in question has not been sufficiently regarded; still less has it been observed with what material guards and modifications its original patrons always promulgated it. This principle originally was never meant to extend further than to the laws by which capital is distributed and accumulated. Its import was, that every man being the best judge of his own interest, and that interest being necessarily the same with the interest of the community, as far as the augmentation of national wealth is concerned, the State ought to leave the employment of his industry, skill, and capital, as much as possible to himself, both because he has a right to chuse for himself in this respect, and because he will in general make a far better choice for himself, that is, also for the state, than the state can make for him. But neither Adam Smith, nor any one else whose authority is worth mentioning, ever dreamt of prescribing the same neutrality and abstinence to the Government upon all matters of publick concernment. On the contrary, they all admitted very ample heads of exception, even to the application

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