The Press.
London, England, 1858-05-08 00:00:00

fittraturt.

i•ansacti ma of the National Association for the
Promotion of Social Science. 1857. Inaugural
Addresses and Select Papers. London : J. W.
Parker and Son.
IT has been remarked that there is nothing in
which authors so often trip as in the titles of
their books. Apparently it is easier to talk
"about a subject and about it" through three
hundred pages than to denominate it correctly
in three words. The contemplative man, to whom
the title of this book opens a prospect of contri-
butions to the Social Science, strictly speaking—
that is, to the discovery of the principles upon
which society is based—will be disappointed by
its contents ; and the practical man, to whom the
name of science is distasteful, will be reassured
when he finds that it contains scarcely any
scientific discussion, and is mainly occupied with
the exposure of actual social abuses and the sug-
gestion of actual remedial measures. To reassure
the practical reader still further, we may observe
that not only have the contributors to this volume
no scientific end in view, but that the style of
most of them suggests a comparison with the
most unscientific thing in the world, which we
take to be a debate in Parliament. here and
there a Mr. George Combe and a Mr. Robert
Carter indulge in a few theoretical speculations,
but these are exceptional cases, and are in fact
irrelevant digressions, for the very reason that
they endeavour to be contributions to the Social
Science.

We ourselves have not been more displeased
than the practical reader will be at discovering
this misnomer. A real treatise on the Social
Science might or might not be a good thing, ac-
cording to the philosophical ability displayed in
it ; but a company of Englishmen and men
of business dealing with hard facts and planning
practical reforms are pretty sure to deserve atten-
tion. Our countrymen thus occupied are in their
glory. Then their inborn respect for the fact
shows itself; then no idle novelties seduce them ;
they deliver no imposing but questionable oracles;
then they are modest without affectation ; they
waste no words, but say just what they mean
with a bluntness and slovenliness delightful to
contemplate. Caput artis decere. Neatness is
better than slovenliness, and so is a new coat
better than a rusty one, yet we choose the rusty
one to work in.

The matters which it most becomes a man to
understand are not the easiest to get information
about. Social abuses in the time of the Stuarts
may be studied in a hundred books accessible to
every one : social abuses in the reign of Queen
Victoria men commonly remark only so far as
they suffer from them ; and even those who seek
for information cannot readily procure it. The
highest commendation is therefore due to those
who undertake year by year to explain to us in a
series of short, readable papers what is rotten in
our State, what wants mending, what has been,
is being, is going to be, and ought to be, done to
mend it.
The papers in the present volume are reduced
under five heads,—(l) Jurisprudence and Amend-
ment of the Law, (2) Education, (3) Punish-
ment and Reformation, (4) Public Health, (5)
Social Economy. We shall confine our remarks
on the present occasion to the papers on the sub-
ject of Education. There have been three great
educational movements in this country. The
first commenced shortly before the Reformation,
and began to decline at the end of Queen Eliza-
beth's reign. To this we owe the free grammar-
schools. The second, commencing near the end
of the seventeenth century, produced the charity-
schools. The third, belonging mainly to this
century, has produced a variety of new educa-
tional institutions, and is perhaps destined to
produce something far more important,—a
national system. The Rev. John Day Collis
discusses the free grammar-schools in a par
which seems to us superficial and unsatisfac-
tory. " Taking these schools as a whole,"
he says, " the average amount of educational
" training which they have imparted to the
" youth of England has been incalculably great
" and invaluable." It may be worth while to
oppose to this panegyric the sentence of the pre-
sent Head Master of Rugby:—" More than 700