The Express.
London, England, 1846-11-23 00:00:00

apthcee means to their ends : and the intercennue
ofmunicipal authorities is merely sought to prevent
tke misapplication of means in their several localities.
We are as anxious as Mr. BRIGHT can be that there
should be as much voluntary exertion as possible;
but we are anxious to suped such organisation si
will prevent these exertions from being wasted.
The hon. member went on to say, " He must confess'
that his leanings—and it might seem an Irishism to
say so—inclined him both ways at once. His lean-
ings,would at first sight draw him towards any sys-
tem which would seem to offer the chance of edu-
cating the people, but his leanings in favour of the
voluntary principle would incline him to say it would
be better that the people should educate themselves."
Now there is nothing anomalous in a mind being
inclined "both ways at once" when the ways are
not opposite, but as nearly as possible coincident ;
but, suspecting antagonism where none really ex-
isted, Mr. BRIGHT falls into the error of asserting
that the voluntary principle involves the education
of the people by themselves. Beautiful as such
a theory of mutual instruction may appear, it has
the great fault of being physically impossible
education is conducted. and must ever be conducted,
not by the people generally, but by a
ss class of persons
milled teachers, schoolmasters, profsors, lecturers,
&e. ; and for this reason we insist that means should
be adopted to ensure the proper qualifications of the
members of this class for the important functions they
have undertaken to discharge, and that they are
willing as well as able to perform them. In fact,
Mr. BRIGHT'S inference from the voluntary principle
would involve the condemnation of all voluntary
exertion. The Lancasterian schools of Manchester
are in direct opposition to the principle that the people
should educate themselves, for they entrust that
education to persons nominated by a private society.
The interference of a committee is as much at variance
with Mr. BRIGHT'S rule as the interference of the
State ; and the cheers with which such an aphorism
was received only prove the truth of what we have
laboured to inculcate, that the subject of national
education is much more talked about than thought
about.
Mr. BRIGHT declared that " the voluntary prin-
ciple was sufficient to found schools adequate to the
increase of the population." If we eves grant this
very doubtful assertion, we must still assert that
founding schools is a very different thing from giving
education. The report of the Statistical Society of
Manchester, on the state of the schools in their own
borough, with which no doubt Mr. BRIGHT is well
acquainted, shows that there are schools which are
seminaries of vice and academies of evil ;—that there
are teachers who not only do not educate, but who do
far worse—that is, mis-educate : and if the voluntary
principle leads only to the multiplication and exten-
sion of such schools, then its application to education
must be considerably modified.
Mr. BRIGHT speaks as if national education meant
nothing mole than gratuitous instruction. It sounds
very like what he is pleased to term " an Irishism"
to call that national which is in truth most limited
and partial, or to suppose that the education of the
nation means only the education of the poor of the
nation. We know that this is a very common and a
very mischievous error; it has led us to provide for
the poor, and to neglect the class immediately above
them, by which the poor is employed, and the conse-
quence is that the children of the employed are, in
in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, better edul
cated than the children of the employer. The advocates
of national education do not ask for a gigantic scheme
of gratuitous instruction, including all classes, which is
the chimera assailed by most of our modern Bellero-
phon; they do not ask " that what voluntary effort
can effect should be placed in the hands of Govern-
ment," but simply that Government should come to
the aid of voluntary effort and accomplish what it is
unable to effect, the responsibility of public func-
tionaries for the discharge of public duties. Let
schools be built and let masters be endowed by pri-
vate benevolence, but let care be taken that the
schools do not degenerate into nuisances or jobi, and
Mr. BRIGHT need not go very far to find examples of
schools that have become both one and the other ;
and let care be taken that competent masters should
be chosen, and that their duties should be efficiently
performed. It is our opinion that more money frompub-
lie and private funds is perniciously wasted in non-
education, and, what is infinitely worse, in mis-
education in England, than would defray the ex-
penses of a sound system of education twice over.
Before Mr. BRIGHT further indulges in his visions of
voluntary optimism, we should like him to examine
some of the cheap boarding schools of Yorkshire, and
a few of what are called the private commercial
schools of his beloved Lancashire. If ho is satisfied
with the average state of things he will find in these
establishments, we can only say that he is more
tolerant of abuses than we have ever taken him to be.
It may be said that we have construed Mr.
BRIGHT's propositions too literally, and have evinced
somewhat of a spirit of literal and carping criticism ;
but it is of loose and vague habits of talking o:i the
subject, that the friends of national education have
most reason to complain. Can anything be more
vague and loose than to commence by rightly
defining national education to mean the education
of the nation, and then to reason upon it as if it
meant nothing more than the gratuitous instruction
of the poor? Of course, a speaker who does so,
naturally falls into the error of objecting to that which
no one has proposed, and confuting that which no one
has asserted. He finds antagonism where no opposi-
tion exists, and suspects himself of " Irishism " when
he only listens to the dictates of his own common
sense. When we ask the Government to do anything,
he replies that the State ought not to do everything,
and represents the issue as between all and nothing.
We repeat, that the only practical question before
the public is one of limits; all have duties to
perform, and the matter to be settled is, how each
should perform these duties without disturbing the
functions of the others. Let not the State interfere
with the voluntary system, nor the voluntary sys-
tem interfere with the functions of the State; each
has enough to do in its proper sphere, and we would
rejoice to have assurance, that what each has to do
I would be well performed. To the friends of the
voluntary system who have taken extreme views on
this subject, and to Mr. BRIGHT, as the most dis-
tinguished of their advocates, we recommend a con-
sideration of the following aphorism of JOUFFROY
"Principles are true only within their natural limits,
and those who endeavour to render a dogma absolute
in all its applications, are really impressing it with
; the character of falsehood."
of I

THE monopoly of the salt trade, exercised in Bengal
by the Company's government, is, upon economical
principles, utterly indefensible. It is an ungraduated
poll-tax, by which the same sum is exacted from the
Roorest and wealthiest members of the community.
So long as a salt tax existed in this country, the
family of the Duke of NORTHUMBERLAND and the
family (equally numerous) of the poorest peasant on
his estate, paid pretty nearly the same amount into
the Exchequer on account of the salt excise. The
peasant in Bengal, under the pressure of the salt mo-
nopoly, has to expend nearly one-sixth of his earnings
upon salt for his family. After all, the consumption
per head of salt in Bengal is a little less than half the
consumption per head in the United States, and a
little more than half the consumption per head in
Great Britain. Yet the insipidity of rice, the staple
food of the Bengalee, would naturally prompt him to
use the universal condiment in larger quantities than
either the Englishman or the American.
The salt, too, which is used by the peasantry in
most parts of Bengal is of the worst quality. The
humid atmosphere and muddy soil of the shores axe
unfavourable to the manufacture. In some districts
the stranger can scarcely recognise salt in the black
and filthy article presented to him. The monopoly,
productive of so much privation, discomfort, and even
, loss of health, extends over forty millions of people;
1 and by the vile poll-tax it establishes, more than a
I million is annually squeezed out of a very poor

people.
To protect itself in this extortion, the Anglo-Indian
government excludes the best and cheapest salt of the
world, by a duty amounting to about twelve hundred
per cent. on the prime cost of the article. The salt
of Warwickshire contains only 12 parts of impurities
to 988 of pure muriate of soda, the common salt of
Cheshire only 164. and the rock salt only 102. The
next salt in point of excellence is that of St. Übes,
prepared by solar evaporation, and it contains 40
parts of impurities to 960 of pure muriate of sods.
The supply of salt in Cheshire seems quite inex-
haustible. Some alarmists have calculated that in
two thousand years, or thereabouts, the supply of coal
in England may be exhausted, but no one has yet
, ventured to fix a term for the exhaustion of salt.