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

1.100

diate. They tell us that we have 2,000,000 oat of
4M00,000 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 split 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.