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carried or not, it is the duty of those who have at heart the good of this country and of its institutions, so powerful for good or for evil, to strain every nerve to get it done, or at all events to free themselves from the responsibility of not doing it, and throwing it on those who oppose them.
And now I will pass from this to the second part of my subject, which is, as I told you, the education of the middle and upper classes. And first, I will endeavour to explain to you what I conceive to be the business of education. It seems to me, if one can form an abstract idea of what ought to be taught, that it is to teach a person everything important to know, and, at the same time, to discipline his mind. But as the period during which education can be communicated is very short, we must qualify that view, I think, by saying that the business of education is to teach persons as much of that which it is important they should know as can be taught within a limited time, and with reference to the ordinary faculties of mankind, and that also in so doing care should be taken to discipline the mind of the pupil as far as possible. That is what I conceive to be the object of education. Well, that being so, you see a question arises of very great difficulty—What is it most important that persons should know?—and till we can answer that question, we cannot satisfactorily solve the question which I am now proposing to consider—What is the education that ought to be given to the middle and upper classes of this country? We must invent for ourselves a sort of new science—a science of weights and measures; of ponderation, if I may coin a word—in which we shall put into the scales all the different objects of human knowledge, and decide upon their relative importance. All knowledge is valuable, and there is nothing that it is not worth while to know; but it is a question of relative importance—not of decrying this branch of knowledge, and praising and puffing that—but of taking as far as possible the whole scale of human knowledge, and deciding what should have priority, which should be taught first, and to which our attention should be most urgently directed. That is a problem, you will allow, of most
