resembling moral discipline or the formation of character,–that the teachers, inexperienced, transitory, snatched up for the occasion, are paid by salaries which hardly exceed the wages of the menial servant or the common labourer,–and that, as a necessary consequence, ignorant and disqualified, they are perhaps even overpaid by the pittance which they receive.
Yet it is in such schools and by such in structures that thirty-eight out of forty of the children of the nation are, as we phrase it, educated. We have lived in a pleasing delusion; but it is time we should awake.
I do not hesitate to avow the belief, that without regulations far more extensive than have yet been introduced,–a control far more enlightened and constant than has yet been exercised,–and fiscal aid far more ample than has yet been afforded, it is vain to expect that the character of our common schools can be truly and permanently improved. It is conceded by all that nothing can be done without competent teachers, and such teachers, in the number and of the qualifications required, we can never have, unless they are properly trained, and properly examined, and watched, and controlled, and, above all, properly rewarded.
The dissemination of this book, and of the truths which it contains, will tend thus to prepare the public mind, to produce the right slate of feeling and of thought; for assuredly it will not be read in vain by parents who are such in heart and in conscience, not in name merely.
There are some truths which it may be painful to confess, yet are most necessary to be known. To the reflecting and the candid it will not seem extravagant to say that the chief source of the evils, the disorders, the crimes which afflict society, is to be found in the heartless indifference of the higher classes, the rich, the educated, the refined, towards the comfort and well-being of those they term or deem their inferiors, and their consequent neglect of tho intellectual and moral improvement of those who always have been, and would seem by the order of Providence, always must be, the most numerous class–those who depend on their daily labour for their daily support.
It is this neglect, the alienation it produces, the ignorance it perpetuates, the vices it fosters, which leave marked the broad line of separation, on the one side of which are the few, indolent, disdainful, proud, on the other the many, restless, envious, discontented. It is this which keeps the minds of a multitude in a constant state of irritation, and which, when the base demagogue seeks to array the poor against the rich, collects the crowd of his willing auditors, and arms him with his dreaded power.
It is this which caused the atrocities of the French Revolution, and which deepens and darkens the cloud that now hangs over England.[1] It is this neglect–the grand crime of civilized and Christian society, which, in every country, sooner or later, and in none more certainly than in our own, if continued, is destined to meet a fearful retribution. Here most emphatically is it true, that the people must be raised to the level of their rights and duties, must be made the safe depositaries of the power which they possess, or in the history of other republics we may read our own fate;–first, lawless anarchy–next, the calm which fear and the bayonet produce–the calm of military despotism.
How then are these evils to be prevented?–this fate to be averted? I answer, all that is odious, all that is dangerous in the distinctions which the free acquisition and the lawful enjoyment of property must always create, will soon vanish, and all classes be united in the enduring bonds of sympathy and gratitude, when the rich (I include all who have the leisure or means to bestow) shall understand and feel that it is their paramount duly to improve the physical and elevate the moral condition of their fellow-beings, or, to express nearly the whole in one word–to educate the poor.
Let those on whom the burden ought to fall willingly assume–cheerfully sustain it, and there will be no further obstacle to the action of the legislature, no further difficulty in organizing a system effectual, permanent, universal.
- ↑ The Working Classes of England.–Mr. C. Butler, in a speech in Parliament on a late occasion, said:–“Whenever I contemplate the condition of the working classes–the deep and dark gulf that separates them from the knowledge and sympathies of their superiors in fortune, the utter ignorance in which we are of their feelings and wants, the little influence which we have over their conduct, and the little hold which we appear to have on their affections–I shrink with terror from the wild passions and dense ignorance that appear to be fermenting in that mass of physical force.
THE BIBLE.
A nation must be truly blessed, if it were governed by no other laws, than those of this blessed book; it is so complete a system, that nothing can be added to or taken from it; it contains every thing needful to be known or done; it affords a copy for a king, and a rule for a subject; it gives instruction and counsel to a senate, authority and direc-
