The Press. — London, England, 1856-10-18 00:00:00

OCTOBER 18, 1856. THE BISHOPS OF LICHFIELD AND SODOR AND MAN UPON EDUCATION. AN influential meeting was held at Lichfield on Tues day, in support of the National Society for the edu cation of the poor in the principles of the Established Church. The Bishop of LICHFIELD, in opening the pro ceedings, referred to the origin of the National Societe, now established forty five years, as the first step in favour of public education upon sound principles : It could not be denied that there was a great need of an establishment for imparting sound and liberal instruction to the poorer classes, because it had been proved by expe rience that even the most provident and prudent of the lower classes of society were unable to educate their chil dren without assistance. In rendering that assistance he thought it was highly necessary that the education imparted should be conducted upon principles clearly laid down and defined. Indeed he believed that no education could rest upon a good foundation which was conducted in any other ,de. There might. be the communication of a certain amount of knowledge upon a certain number of subjects, but all experience had shown that, if that knowledge were not communicated upon fixed principles and with definite objects, it was, in point of fact, no education at all. As a Churchman he believed that the principles of the Church were sound, that her doctrine was evangelical, her order primitive and apostolical, and therefore he believed that the National Society acted wisely in bringing up the chil dren intrusted to its care in the principles of the Estab lished Church. There was nothing uncharitable or illiberal in such a course. Other persons could educate their chil dren as they liked, and he did not grudge them the liberty t which they were fairly entitled. All that he asked was t tat the national Church should have the means of edu e ding her children in her own principles, because he be lieved that those principles were sound, and would be highly advantageous when carried into the practice of daily life. The Bishop of SODOR AND MAN next addressed the meeting. The right rev. prelate having laid down as essential principles of success in such an under taking, unity, submission to authority, and faith, pro ceeded to make a few practical observations upon the question of education : In the first place, he could not help remarking that, up to the present moment, education, whatever it was in prin ciple, had been a question more of discord than of unity. Indeed, as they went ou in their struggle to educate the people, it appeared to him that the greater their efforts were the more apparent was the danger of disunion in the general cause. As an example, he would take the society which was now before the meeting. For forty-five years the National Society had existed as a means of educating the people, and it had done its best to expend its money in the erection of schools, in which certain principles were taught. All who had accepted its aid had pledged themselves to teach the children committed to their care the principles of the Established Church, and the clergy who superin tended the schools were bound by their ordination vows to teach the principles of religion according to the formularies of that church. It might be thought that in so simple a case all strife and controversy would have been avoided, but even within the fold of the Church herself a controversy had arisen as to the mode and manner in which the princi ples of the National Society should be carried out in con nection with the formularies of the Established Church. Indeed, it appeared to be a question whether they ought not to open their arms to all, and whether, forgetting that they were the representatives of the Established Church, they ought not to abandon their principles for the sake of drawing in those who belonged to other communions. For his own part, he believed that their formularies were in thamselves evangelical because they were scriptural, and he saw no necessity for departing from the principles exhibited in those formularies in order to please those who dissented from them : He believed that the demand had been a demand not of religious principle, but merely a political demand set up in order to cause trouble in the work of education. From past experience he was enabled to tell the meeting that this very question of the necessity of abandoning the Church formularies in order to attract the children of Dis senters into their schools had been thoroughly tested years ago in &district much agitated by'politi cal discussions as well as by religious strife. Years ago he remembered having a discussion with a very sincere and sound member of the Church as to the expediency of abandoning the Church formularies and the catechism for the sake of drawing in those who dissented from their communion. They sat up discussing the question nearly all night, and at length went to bed, both corivinced that they were right. On the fol lowing suantiog he (the Bishop of Sodor and Man) decided upon trying use experiment in his own school, which was situated in a large manufacturing district sur rounded entirely by Dissenters. The mode which he adopted for testing the question was to decline to admit the children of Dissenters unless the parents personally re :rested their children to be taught the Church catechism. The experiment was entirely successful, Whenever there was an impediment placed in the way it was human nature to try and get over it, and it had been so in this case. TheDissentera finding that their children would only be received on certain conditions finally accepted the condi tions, and sfter trying the experiment for three months he found that the proportion of children admitted into the school at the request of Dissenters was nine out of ten. He therefore thought he was justified in saying from ex perience, that an education based upon the principles of the Church of England might be so conducted as to attract THE PRESS. those who, from ignorance and religious or political dis union, kept away at present. There was no necessity what ever for abandoning the formularies of the Established Church. The right rev. prelate then alluded to the estab lishment of the Church of England Educational Society as an effort, supported by most unwarrant able statements, to divide the supporters of the National Society. The National Society had con sistently gone on its course, yet he believed that un less they had something more in the work of educa tion than sound arguments to maintain them, sound principles to guide them, and money to enable them to build schools, they would fall short of a satisfactory result : The children must not only be taught to read and write, not only have instruction in all those elementary branches of philosophical science which were now, through the Government money, forced upon the children of the poor, they must not only have the principles of the Church im pressed upon them, but they must have beyond the know ledge imparted that which seemed sadly lost sight of in the present day, namely, the influence of the mind and heart of the teacher. In fact, the teacher himself ought to be the minister appointed by God to be the instructor of the children of the poor. Hitherto they had erred in concluding that the money expended in the erection of school, and in the training of teachers was all that was requisite, with the terms of union, to educate the children of the poor. They had erred, and they were now reaping the fruits of the error. They assumed, and with manifest truth, that the Church was by divine appointment the teacher of the members of that Church ; and they also rightly assumed that, as there was a visible Church, so there must be an apostolic commission. T;18 terms of that apostolic commission, if they were truly attended to, were these,—" Feed my lambs ; feed my sheep." But how had they practically carried out that commission '- In their Prayer Book they had not only evidence of their Protestant feeling, but the curate had positive direr- Bons, at an appointed time in the service, to catechise those brought to him for instruction. But what had really been done ? Undoubtedly the sheep had been cared for, and the apostolic commission had been recognised in the matter of preaching sermons to those who, being grown up, could be interested in questions of theological discus sion. But the poor children, the lambs of the flock, had, by the selfishness of the sheep, been driven from their appointed mode of public service. The appetite of the elder members for excited sentiment bad been pandered to, and the children had been sent into schools, where he wished he could see with honesty and truth they had re ceived that spiritual instruction which had been denied them at the time and place appointedjby the Church for their training. Now why was this? Whenever catechis ing was spoken of it was met by the grown-up people in the congregations with the remark, "Oh es, it may be in the rubric, and it may have been once done ; but it is so uninteresting, it is done so badly." And yet these very people did not see that the argument applied just as much in connection with the apostolic commission as to preach ing. The congregation might just as well say that they would desert all the churches unless all the clergy were gifted with eloquence and could excite and interest them in the pulpit. He believed that the clergy, as a body, had done wrong in abandoning the practical spiritual direction and influence of the children of the poor to teachers and superintendents. Whatever they might say in public or private—whatever formularies they might use, and what ever hooks they might teach from, he was satisfied that they would never get that spiritual effort which the Churclt herself looked for as the evidence of a sanctifying faith, except the man, the living instrument, thought less of his pulpit work than of the practical and influential striving and struggling to educate the poor. He was glad to see the children parse grammatically the most difficult ques tion which the Government inspector chose to teaze them with, and that they had an acquaintance with history and geography ; hut that did not altogether satisfy him. What he wanted to see, above all, was those efforts of Christian teaching which reached the heart and affected the faith. They ought to have the influence of education rather than the intellectual efforts of teaching. The meeting was subsequently addressed by the Dean of Lichfield, Archdeacon Moore, and the Rev. Canon Lonsdale, son of the bishop of the diocese, and the proceedings were then brought to a close. AGRICULTURAL MEETINGS. THE BRIDGNORTH AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION held their third annual meeting last week in the town. The show was well sustained in all its departments, and in the number and quality of the stock exhibited there was a decided improvement over previous shows. The usual dinner took place in the evening at the Town.hall, under the presidency of Mr. M. G. Benson. Covers were laid for 110, and among those present were Viscount Newport, M.P., Mr. Henry Whitmore, M.P., Mr. John Pritchard, M.P., Mr. Wolryche Whitmore, &c. The CHAIRMAN, in proposing the toast of the evening, referred to the great progress made of late years in the practice of agriculture, and stated that there were at present 400 agricultural Associations in England, a vast proportion of which had been started within the last fifteen years. There were in addition no less than 150 farmers' clubs, at which subjects appertaining to the cultivation of the soil and the breeding and rearing of stock were dis- 991 cussed. Turning to the "politics" of agriculture, he said that two important questions had occupied the attention of the Legislature during the last session, oue having reference to tha collection of agricultural statistics, and the other as to whether England could produce sufficient corn for its own population. As regarded the latter, he did not think the problem would be satisfactorily solved in the present generation. If the population remained stationary, he thought wheat enough for home consumption might be grown in this country; but as the Population in creased with the improved system of cultivation he much doubted whether it could be done. There were 11,000,000 acres in the country not cultivated which were capable of producing cereal crops, and he thought that the land now under cultivation might be made one-third more productive. In reference to the subject of agricultural statistics, though he was strongly opposed to any inquisitorial prying into the private affairs of the agriculturists, he thought the measure a wholesome one, and cal culated to benefit the farmer as much as anybody else. He thought the late bill went a little too far, and that it would have been better had it provided for " divisional " instead of " parochial " returns. On the Government devolved the responsibility of providing food for the people, and he trusted that means would be devised for putting them in posses sion of this necessary information. The chairman then alluded to the condition of the agricultural labourer, who, in many instances, was badly housed, and his children ill-educated. He strongly im pressed upon the landowners the importance of im proving their labourers' cottages, and eloquently en forced the duty devolving upon landlords and occu piers of the soil to aid in providing a practical and sufficient education for the children of their labourers. Mr. W. WHITMORE (who for many years repre sented Bridgenorth in Parliament) proposed " The Health of the Members for the County." Viscount NEWPORT briefly replied to the toast. In reference to the late bill for the compulsory adoption of the system of agricultural statistics, the noble lord stated that he, for one, most sincerely rejoiced at the fate of the bill : In his opinion, the bill was hastily conceived and objectionable in many particulars. In the abstract he entirely approved the principle of agricultural statistics, as he conceived that the acquirement of statistics in any form must be useful in a civilised country; but he veotuted to think that the information should be obtained by a voluntary, and not a compulsory, mode. Ile thought the return should be confined to large items, without entering into smaller details, and that the inquiry should be conducted by means of local authority and local arrangements, made by those for whose benefit it was made, and from whom it was intended to collect in formation. Mr. PRITCHARD, M.P., replying for the " Borough Members," agreed with the chairman in his remarks on the value and importance of agricultural statis tics, but he despaired of their being obtained in any other way than by a compulsory mode. Mr. EVAN DAVIES, in proposing the " Health of the Labourers," made a few remarks on the unpracti cal nature of the instruction given in the district schools. Alluding to a recent examination at the Quatt school, at which he admitted that the pupils showed great proficiency in geography and grammar, he said : But, gentlemen, I very much doubt if one in ten of them could tell you whether a cow gets up on her fore or bind legs first—if one in twenty could tell on which jaw of the cow the nipper teeth are placed—if one in fifty could tell the difference in the masticating process of the cow and the horse—if one in a hundred could explain the germinating process of the wheat, barley, and oats, which it will be their province hereafter to scatter upon the ground—or one in a thousand describe the nature and habits of those insects and fungi which infest and destroy those crops which they will be called upon to cultivate and protect ; and whilst I have no doubt many of them could solve a problem of Euclid, and have travelled over the ass's bridge, yet I very much doubt if one of them could tell at what angle a furrow should be laid to expose the greatest amount of surface to the action of the harrows, and the ameliorating effect of the winter frost. Again, with regard to the girls, I have no doubt they acquitted themselves well in the knowledge of those things which would fit them for the parlour, but I very much doubt if they were well up in those things that would fit them for the kitchen and the brewhouse. I very much doubt if any one of them could tell the principle on which the milk is extracted from the cow, or describe the process of turning that milk into cheese and butter ; and surely, gentlemen, these are things that the future labourers and labourers' wives should not be ignorant of; but I have little hopes of improvement here until the entire class of books in our agricultural schools are for gotten and a new compilation takes place, not only for labourers, but fur farmers, laud agents, ay, and landlords themselves. THE DUTIES OF FARMERS TO THEIR LABOURERS were adverted to by Mr. Whitbread, M.P., at the meeting of the Bedfordshire Agricultural Society, at Woburn, last week. Ile said : I know of no man whom I think better qualified than Lord Leicester to speak on the welfare of the labouring M .