The Express.
London, England, 1852-06-15 00:00:00

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Toodosaow—Manting. 33. Almon. ILSMA.

LONDON, TUESDAY, JUNE 11

Tug proceedings in parliament yesterday were
important and interesting. In the House of Peers,
Lord M %t.MEaurltY announced that the government
intended to abandon the Extradiaon Bill; in the
Commons, Lord Jou,: Itussr.t.t. went through a cri-
tical examination of the ministry and of them official
acts—a task in which he was seconded by Lord

PALMERSTON and several other speakers.
Lord JoliN ltessEti's speech adds another to the
many difficulties surrounding Lord DERBY. The ex-
premier showed very clearly the utter incapacity of the
present Foreign Secretary for the position he occu-
pies—pointing out how miserably Lord NIALMESBURT
has committed himself. To the Austrians our pre-
sent foreign minister was most humble—to Tuscany
must insolent, and in the eyes of all most
weak and inefficient. He has put Mr. MATIIER
wrong ; Mr. ScAntErr wrong ; himself wrong ;
and—worse than ull—lie has put England wrong.
Hut the MATHER t.rpthli'did not close the case against
Lord Maur and his colleagues; for in justification,
as it were, of the sketch shadowed out in the columns
of yesterday's Daily News, the leader of the opposition
went from the Foreign-office into other departments
of our administration, pointing as he went to the
mistakes and sins of each. On the subject of Tory
Muynouth trickery he showed how hypocritical a
part hail been recently played, and innuated how
thoroughly such a line of proceeding must result in
failure. Passing from pope to
.protestantism, he
exposed the Derbyite proceedings in connexion with
the National Society, pointing out how the house
had been canc.i upon to vote the usual large sum of
public money before one word of explanation
was given about the unauthorised change intended
in the rules under which that money was about to be
spent. The intolerance that suggested this last pro-
ceeding could only obtain its way by the exercise of
trickery, but trickery formed no obstacle in the
eyes of a DERBY cabinet. Other points were touched
upon—as our report will show—and the sum total of
the speech makes a heavy case against a ministry
already bankrupt in character, aced almost entirely
destitute of public sympathy.
Of all the points touched by Lord JoItN RUSSELL,
none is now of more importance than education.
Indeed we arc inclined to exclaim, "In the present
state of the world, give us education at any price."
Whilst the contest is raking fiercely, who shall
have the control of the education of the people, the
substance of education itself seems in danger of
being forgotten. Churchman is battling against
dissenter for religious supremacy over the child :
meanwhile, public attention is drawn off from what
it is that he ought to be taught. The true objects of
education—what schools should aim at, what the
scholars should be trained to be—are matters but

little thought of in the heat of the ecclesiastical

contest.

Lord DERBY threatens us with a most unblushing
monopoly of popular education in the hands of
the church: it ought to be a sufficient preservation
against such an infliction that the parochial clergy
were the sole instructors of the mass of the nation

for a long series of years, and that till aroused by
the interference of the laity and the state, they
allowed the intellectual condition of the people to re-
main in a state which was a disgrace to civilisation.
It is not in the nature of things that the clergy at
large should understand what sort of culture it is
that the nation wants. Letting alone an amount of
prejudice and bigotry hardly possible to be avoided,
their professional one-sidedness must prevent them
from taking a comprehensive view of 69 large a
matter. If a boy can read his Bible, repeat his ca-
techism, and write decently, the clerical conscience
will be easily satisfied, and think that the church
has discharged its duty in training him to become a',
mein' member of society.
Few persons, even of those who are most Ing.
MO in the cause of education, have distinsdy
asked themselves the question, what they would liana
the bulk of our population taught, supposing that
every facility was furnished them for accomplishing
their aim. 'feeding, writing, some arithmetic, •
little history, and a certain amount of religious know-
ledge are all that most people propose to teach the
poor. Reading and writing are not education but
instruments only for obtaining it. Arithmetic,
within the narrow limits of ordinary teaching,
involves but little mental culture ; history and re-
ligious instruction, on the contrary, are either highly
educating or of small value, according as they are
communicated with intelligence and skill, or by the
starving process of a mechanical routine. It is not
the imparting of even the most important truths
which of itself educates, but the training of the mind
to use its faculties—the teaching it to exercise its
powers with judgment and success—the accustoming
it how to set about acquiring the information it needs,
and turning it to account when acquired, and the
skiing it with truths and principles whose value it
Ms hunt to appreciate by a direct insight into their
matwre and power.
No sane man would wish to see the rising genera-
tion of the poor grow up without religious culture;
mad it is a foul calumny to impute to the promoters
of
so-called secular education any desire to omit reli-
gion from the training of the people. Bat instruc-
tion in moral and religious duties alone will seldom
adaeste; the young mind receives it passively with
we wal appear/kitten, and with but small exercise of
it.swisrefimiling in comprehending it. It is not for
tie lake of teaching religion and morality that
=hub are elderly needed; they are best taught
t#lWa Lb WW•tity of home. Exhortations at school
am against the tone of domestic life, and
the every day influences of parental and
meld example. And even if the state of morals for-
hiffa the hope of religious culture at home for the
riming tinily, at any rate it is preposterous to
=tie seteelar schools with an undervaluing of
elm a large portion of time is every day
est apart for the express purpose of furnishing an
.Iv:city for inculcating it.
What is it that makes a Scotchman thrive in
whatever part of the globe he may find himself?
How comes it that he is ever quick to seise with in-
stinctive sagacity on every resource which presents
itself to his industry; that he insinuates himself
into every opening ; that he wins when others lose;
that be is ever on his legs? Why is it that so many
philosophers, linguists, poets, generale, merchants, are
coastantly emerging from the vast nursery-bed of Scot-
land's peasantry? 'These aro fruits ofa long develop-
ment of intelligence, of mental activity long sustained
throughout a whole people, of an incessant inter-
change of intellectual life, of wit sharpened by wit
in the daily intercourse of even the humblest society.
It is this intellectual vigour, this power of using the
mind's energies, of gathering up information and
turning it to account, which should be the object of
all education—of the lowest as well as the highest.
Yet even our be,t schools are miserably inefficient
for accomplishing this purpose. How few are tho-
roughly aware that the chief instrument in develop-
ing the mind is not knowledge or books in them-
selves, but the living teacher, the man who is capable
of making the acquisition of any information, how-
ever trivial, an intellectual exercise, of teasing the
learner to see for himself the import and the bearing
of what he claims, of stimulating thot, by the
pleasure which invariably accompanist &s pweep-
tion of truth, by a living act of intelligence. How
many of our parochial clergy possess this high gift
of teaching ? How many even know what a good
schoolmaster ought to be
But if truly able teachers aro rare, at least our
schools ought to select such subjects for instruction
as are best calculated to promote mental activity, and
at the same time to impart such knowledge as shall
extend the resources, and be likely to advance the
welfare of the poor. Biography, history—not the dry
bones of naked facts and dates, but an acquaint-
ance with human and divine, its laws, emotions,
affections, motives, as manifested by the deeds of the
human race—a knowledge of the physical laws of
the globe, of the character, climate, and productions
of foreign lands, of the manners and serial state oil
fl Y. 47 inhabilints—thew sari similar soldiers are
invaluable for the poor, cannot be mastered without

calling forth a large amount of intellectual exertion,
and would supply an ample fund of amu>ement, nod,
still more, nu immense power of dealing with the
contingencies of iile. Our pour selusils scarcely at-
tempt an) thing of the kind : yol thew aro subjects
whit ii might easily lx• brought uthin the retch of
the most uncultivated understandings. And not only
so: if handled by a really earnest man, they are capable
of communicating lessons of the highest morality and
religion far beyond the more systematic training in
religious doctrine, which is so commonly, but so
erroneously supposed to make the deepest impres-
sions on the heart and conscience.
But the circumstances of our times give a claim to
the poor for a kind of education which, hitherto, has
been almost completely neglected. Almost every
trade in succession feels the pressure of superabun-
dent labourers, thrown out of employment by the
excessive in‘rease of population, and still more fre-
quently by the shifting. of commerce, or the revolu-
tions created by the wonderful march of
The railway strips the honickeeper and the harness
maker of his wages; the threshing-machine has sent
for a while many a poor man to the workhouse ; the
steam-plough and the reaping machine threaten to
supersede much manual labour; excess of numbers
lays the working tailors prostrate at the feet of
the sweater ; a casual discovery, or the im-
provement of foreign rivals, may deprive
our artisans of extensive markets, and de-
stroy the demand for a vast amount of
special labour. No foresight, even of the wisest
amongst us, much less of the poorer classes, can pre-
dict the extent, the direction, or the proximity of the
changes which impend over the market of labour.
The poor are exhorted to avoid a too rapid multipli-
cation ; and economists assure the world that in the
end the inventions of science lead to an augmented
demand for labour. These are sound and true doc-
trines; but it is equally true that the transition is
attended by a severe intrction of suffering, and not
unfrequently by absolute ruin to particular classes.
No resource of -legislation or social benevolence can
wholly avert the ovil ; but if there is one duty which
is plainer than another, or one policy more expedient
than another, it is clearly the duty and the policy of
furnishing the poor man with every practicable re-
source for extricating himself from overwhelming
calamities which are at once certain, and yet not to
be foreseen. He must be no longer kept in helpless
ignorance.
Lord DERBY may juggle, and sectarians dispute,
but Education—National education— must bo had.