The Press. — London, England, 1856-11-15 00:00:00

1.100 diate. They tell us that we have 2,000,000 oat of 4 M00,000 children uneducated, and they taunt us with the comparison of what has been done for education in New England, in Switzerland, and in Prussia, in each of which States about one iu six of the population is at school ; while we have only one in 81. Now, with reference to the first charge, my answer is that it is not true. Undoubt. edly, there are still a fearful number of children who ought t) be at school and are not. But that there are 2,000,000 children who art. not at school and never have been at school is not true. The figures in the census on which this assertion is founded prove nothing of the kind. They only indicate that there were 2,001,090 children between five and fifteen who on the c.maus day were not at seiool. A child way have been to school from five to fourteen, and be a very well educated child ; and if during his fifteenth year the Registrar• General comes and finds that he has lett school down he goes among the 2,(0t),('09 children whose uneducated condition is a disgrace to the civilisation and Christianity of England. Well, then, they hold up America and the Continent as our models, and tauntingly show us the far larger proportion of children who in those countries receive the blessings of education. Now, the returns on which the alleged superiority of America is founded have been shown by minute calculi'. lions to be far too untrustworthy to be the groundwork of any comparison whatever. As to the continental States, the case is simply this--ln England we do not interfere with a parent's right to deal with his children as he thinks proper; abroad the children are driven to school by the police. Lord Cecil then alluded to those parties who desired this system to be changed : The three parties who ed►ocate a school rate, headed by Sir J. Pakington, Lord J. Russell, and Mr. Milner Gibson respectively, complain, and with some truth, that this rule entirely overlooks poor districts where people can't help themselves, and stingy districts where they wiil not; anti therefore they say, " Abandon your present sys tern of only meeting private contributions by proportional grants of your own. Come forward as the educators of the nation. Wherever a school languishes raise it to effi ciency by your grants ; wherever there is no school build one ; and do th a irrespective of the private contributions you may receive." And, in order thoroughly to superintend the enormous taxation and the enormous expenditure which such a scheme would bring about, they propose that the money should be raised by local rates and expended by local committees. Nos, I do not deny that the evil of which they complain exists; but I certainly do not believe that it is so serious, or at all events so permanent, as it has been represented to be. In some few cases undoubtedly there are places absolute y too poor to support a school. In far more cases the apathy of the proprietors and inhabitants prevents a ache 01 being set up. The latter evil will yield to time, to the tit,rowth of enlightenment, to the deepening conviction whic h is now spreading through all classes, that alike for happiness awl for order, for the material great ness of the nation, and for the moral elevation of the in- dividual, it is ititl ispensable that ignorance should be driven, in town and country alike, from the cottages of the poor. And the diflic ult.) , arising from the utter poverty of some districts may be met by special regulations wherever it is aszertained to exist. Be this as it mar, these evils, whatever their intensity, are as nothing compared with the confusion and the utter peril alike to religion and education which an abandonment of the Privy Council rules would involve. To desert that system is at once to bring ourselves f ce to face with the religious difficulty— the great legislat. Tre problem of our day. As long as you only give to peop' e in proportion as they help themselves, you run no dangelr of seeming to prefer one denomination t) another. You follow a rigid, unbending rule, whose erity no one can di sprite, and whose application no one can mistake. The State does not create, the State does not manage a single school; but it aids every one, what ever its creed, in proportion to the zeal which its pro moters evidence by their contributions. But the moment it deserts this safe ground and proceeds to build schools, or to become the managers of schools, the insoluble ques- tion lit once arises—to what sect shall those schools belong. and what form of religion shall they teach? Here it is that Sir J. Pekin gton, Lord J. Russell, and Mr. Milner Gibson spli t off from each other. They are unani mous on the other points we have gone through—in opposing the voluntars es, in decrying the Privy Council system, in their advocac y of local school rates and school committees—but on the question of religion they cannot agree ; and it is their irreconcileable differences on this point which will probably fora long time prevent the Legit lature from listening to their schemes. Sir J. Pakington proposes to meet the dffficulty by giving to the ratepayers themselves the right to decide by a majority the religion to which any new school built from public funds shall belong. Lord J. Russell. who is frightened by the ex ample of the many American schools which have glided from liberality into irreligion, thinks to secure Christianity by simply insisting that a certain amount of Scripture shall be daily read, and leaves the rest to the ratepayers to settle. And Mr. lU. Gibson cats the knot by excluding religion altogether. Regarding Lord J. Russell's and Sir J. Paking tnn's ~olution of the religious difficulty as practically the same, the noble speaker argued at some length against the advisabilimy of leaving it to the rate payers to choose the religion by the vote of a majority, remarking upon the unseemly contention which was sure to ensue, and expressing his belief that if Sir J. Pskington's measure were to pass it would cause more irreligion and more demoralisation by tenfold than all the ignorance which it was in tended to remove ; and he believed that at last religious men of all parties in very despair would unite in a resolution to exclude this bone of discord --religious teaching altogether ; and so this compro. THE PRESS. mise would sink down into becoming that very secular system which it was intended to avert. Noticing, next, the arguments of the secularists, as enunciated by Messrs. Bright, Cobden, and Milner Gibson, the noble lord said he was bound to admit thus much, that it the theorists who cry out against the present admirable system should succeed in overthrowing it, sooner than accept any of the per nicious compromises proposed by Sir J. Pakington and Lord J. Russell—sooner than surrender for the Church of England the right of teaching her own creed, unmutilated end pure, wherever she teaches at all, he, for one, would vote for the secular system. He, however, must not be understood by this to say that he approved it, but only that it seemed to him less dangerous than a system of compromise. The evil of it lay in the fact that a real, pure, secular system, which should absolutely confine itself to the inculcation of secular knowledge, was an impos sibility. If it did not teach religion it would teach infidelity. After dwelling upon sad illustrating this point the noble lord concluded thus : The present system, and with it the question whether religion shall be taught in our schools, is now on its trial. Its enemies are numerous, and clamorous out of all pro portion to their number. For a long time they have held the language as if they, and they alone, represented the true public opinion of the day. They have treated their opponents as a mere knot of antiquated bigots, who in heart were indifferent to education, and they have eren threatened us with the overthrow of the Church establish ment it' we continue to oppose their views. A recent de. cision of the House of Commons has caused them to abate their tone. That assembly—not ordinarily a very bigoted body on questions of religion—being called on by Lord John Russell to consider some resolutions which embodied the views of the theorists who drew their educational in spirations from Germany, refused contemptuously, by a majority of 10'2. even to look at them. Since this vote it has become pretty apparent that for some years, probably until the next census, the existing system will not be in terfered with. Now, therefore, those who support it are on their trial before the country. If it fail now it will fail for ever; if it succeeds now, religious teaching will be im pregnably established in our schools. Now, therefore, is the time for exertion. There are periods in the history of States and of systems when the destiny of generations seems crowded into a few short months or years; when the choice of exertion or neglect is a choice that once made can never be recalled ; when the energy or the sloth, the li erse.ty or the niggardliness of a few men during a short period are pregnant with the weal or woe of generations and centuries to come. Such a crisis with respect to education is the present. On the zeal during the next four years of all who are concerned in education throughout the land— on the heartiness with which clergy and laity in each indi• v &nil parish work for the great cause, will depend the final settlement of the question whether religion is or is not to be a primary element in the instruction of the young. My firm belief is that the existing system will come tri umphantly out of the trial; that it will be shown by the unanswerable evidence of practical success that voluntary benevolence, aided but not fettered by the State, is the best engine for giving to the masses that instruction which will not only prepare them by secular teaching to fight their way through lite, but will give them that better know ledge which will tit them for performing a Christian's duties and gaining a Christian's hopes. Faint anb aintaligence. THE COURT OF INQUIRY appointed to investigate the disputes long pending between Mr. Triscott, the storekeeper of the Royal William Yard, at Plymouth, and Captain Nias, the superintendent of the yard, having made their report to the Lords of the Admiralty, their lordships have decided that it was necessary for the interests of the puldic service that Captain Nias should no longer retain the superintendence of the yard. Captain Nias has therefore been superseded, and Captain R3bert Craigie has been appointed in his place. From Captain Nias' well-known cha racter in her Majesty's service, there can be no doubt that the Court and the Admiralty have done their duty to the country and vindicated the service. LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR Joux Hot; 8.C.8., colonel of the 2nd (or Queen's) Royal Regiment, died last week. Sir John Holes death will, coupled with those of Lord Hardinge and the late General Jones, create a vacancy in the list of general officers, by which Colonel Greaves, late on the staff in Ireland, becomes a major -general ; Lieut.-Colonel Alves, of the depot at Preston, colonel; and Major Hinekey, of the 69th Foot, lieutenant-colonel. MARRIED AND SINGLE SOLDIERS are henceforth in Chatham garrison to have separate rooms, the Sec retary of State for War having decided that the sum of 6,000/. be expended there in the erection of suit able buildings for the married troops. THE GERMAN LEGION has again been the cause of some disgraceful riots in Portsmouth, ending in the death of one of the corps, who was stabbed by a fellow-soldier. The riot occurred last Saturday night, and was of so serious a nature that the authorities marched in on Sunday morning the entire corps SATURDAY, from Browndown, embarked them at once on board the Cape transpoit ships, and sent them at once out to Spithead. A great number of stragglers were left behind, but strong pickets scoured the town and country day and night, and succeeded in capturing them. On Monday the private Winkhler underwent an examination at the police court on the charge of having murdered his companion by stabbing him in the groin, and was fully committed for trial. A COURT OF INQUIRY to consider the nature of the charges preferred by General Beatson against General Shirley will shortly assemble. The court will report its decision to his Royal Highness the General Commanding-in-Chief, when, it is antici pated, the order for the court-martial will be pro mulgated. The last of the witnesses arrived in England this week from the East. GENERAL. W. J. BUTTERWORTH, C.R., expired at his residence, Millmead-house, Guildford, on Tues day, the 4th inst., after a lingering illness. The deceased general recently resigned a most distin guished and honourable post, that of Governor of Prince of Wales' Island, Singapore, and Malacca, which he held from the year 1843 to 1R55. THE GENERAL COURT-MARTIAL which tried Lieut. Deane, 22nd Regiment, reassembled at Portsmouth, yesterday, to reconsider their finding. CAPTAIN JASPER HALL, 4th Foot, late aide de-camp to Sir William Codrington, died suddenly last week from apoplexy, at Aldershott. The deceased was third senior captain of his regiment, and was for a considerable period previous to the fall of Sebastopol employed on the staff at Scutari. LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIR COLIN CAMPBELL has left London to inspect the depot battalions at Glasgow, Stirling, and Fort George. FOUR HUNDRED OF THE GERMAN LEGION weie di:- banded on Saturday a'. the Colchester camp, and were sent to Harwich for embarkation to Hamburg. The men left in camp are selling blankets to trades men in the town, under the representation that they are their own property, whereas they are marked with the broad arrow, and belong to the Government. All purchmirs ure liable to be prosecuted. AN ABSTRACT of the naval force in commission on the Ist November shows the following:— Number Stations of Ships. Guns. Mer. East Indies, China, and Australia 27 389 4,098 Cape of Good Hope .. 7 77 947 West Coast of Africa South east Coast of America West Coast of America .. North America and West Indies 28 502 5,940 Mediterranean Lisbon Plymouth Portsmouth Sheerness IVoolwich Pembroke 2 Cork .291 4 09 748 Particular service lO 843 100 Surveying service ll 61 568 Yachts Unappropriated and tilting out .. 15 :18t1 4,714 Paying os' 9 173 1,869 24) 4.612 45,426 Ordered home .. 24 423 4,21 M Total 264 5,037 49,644 A comparison of these figures with those represent ing the naval forces in commission on the Ist of January shows that, since the ratification of the peace, a reduction has taken place equal to 61 sail, 1 .194 guns, and 13,691 men. illoneg glarket anb piltg FRIDAY EVENING. THE return of the Bank of England for the week ending the tith inst. shows the following ci.anges compared with that for the week preceding : Decrease in Circulation .. Decrease in Public Deposits Decrease in Other Deposits Decrease in Government Securities 14.5,102 Decrease in other Securities Decrease in Bullion . . Increase in Rest Increase in Reserve bullion in Both Departments Circulation, including Bank l'ost Bills 21,119,214 Although the Bullion still shows afalling off, and although it is only just above 8.900,0001. exclusive of the coin in reserve, the general features in this return are good enough to satisfy us that the position of the Bank is rather better than worse iu comparison with its state last week. Thee main improvement consists in the addition to the Reserve, combined with the diminished amount of Private Securi• ties. The unfavorable aspect of it is the fact that in order to maintain its reserve the Bank has been obliged to sell securities. The Public Deposits show a decrease ; and the continued demand for money is still making serious inroads upon the Private Deposits. The profit to which money can now be turned out of doors, by lending it at call, will, we anticipate, farther reduce this item next