The Express.
London, England, 1846-11-04 00:00:00

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QT. LUCIA.—LOAN at 6 per Cent.—WANTED
1,3 the sum of £2,750, in stuns of £6OO or upwards, on Deben-
tures, secured on the revenues of the Crown colony of 6t. Lode,
redeemable et the end of 'even year. ;the interest pa) able in London
every six months, beginning the Ist July, 1847), under an ordinance
sanctioned by her Majesty's Government. App'!eatlens to be sent to
Messrs. J Manyet and=4.Lawrenoe Yountney.lane, of whom
further may be

THEATRE ROYAL COVENT GARDEN.-
Y. ANNUAL SERIES of OONCERTS.—For one
month only.—The New grand Military Quadrille, entitled THE
BRITISH ARMY, will be performed for the third time TOIS EVEN-
ING, Wednesday, November 4.
In order to render complete the grand and novel effects introducvd
in this piece of musie,M. Jollies has (by the kind condowcz.sion of the
Military Authorities, succeeded in engaging (entirely in addition to
his own complete and numerous °rehears),
FOUR DISTINCT MILITARY BANDS.

Ireland should not be reclaimed by tenants, and why
the existing landlords of a district should not fortu a
society, such as that of which there are excellent
samples in Ireland. Money raised by presentment
could never be more certain of return to the landlord,
than funds so employed; no levy could be more
gratifying to the landlord, more useful, or more re-
demptive to the present population. Leases should
be of a remunerative length, with a certain
surety of compensation at its clmie ; the crops
naturally raised on those soils hitherto uncul-
tivated, would be those furnishing food to the
poor. The kind and rotation of crops might be
stipulated in the lease. And thus might at once be
created relief for immediate famine, increased supply
to meet future scarcity, a diminution of the supply of
labour, and of the competition for land; and, in short,
a remedy for the chief evils which beset the country.
We regret that nothing of this kind has been at-
tempted; and fear that the result of the enactments
and measures of this year may be confined to the
mere temporary staving off of famine. All these
improvements and drainages, for which the land-
lord is exhausting the mortgageable resources of his
property, may indeed improve his rental, but will add
little to the stock, which is to provide the poor man
in future years with food and with employ.

THE November number of the British Quarterly
Reriew contains an article on Popular Education in
England, at once sound and seasonable. It should
have a peculiar value for that well-meaning, and, we
trust, daily decreasing class, who are inclined to
over-value the existing means of popular instruction,
and to exaggerate, in the same proportion, the dangers
of state interference with education.
The article is laborious in its examination of
'authorities. It does not use its statistics unbolted.
Moreover it does not take all its authorities from the
same side of the question. Trojan and Tyrian, school-
inspector and statistical society, Dr. llooK and BAP-
TIST NOEL, lend their aid to the writer's conclusions.
Such opinions are generally used as counter-weights.
In this case they work together to make up an over-
powering testimony.
The results are startling. We give some of them,
for the behoof of readers who have not access to the
review. But we recommend the entire paper to all
who have the means to purchase it, and a real dis-
position to learn what is to be done for education, and
how the work may best be set about.
Lord KERRY'S returns, the reports of the Manches-
ter Statistical Society, and those of the Rev. BAPTIST
NOEL, aided by independent arithmetical calculations
lead to a remarkable conclusion. Reckoning the
total population of England and Wales at 14,100,000,
and the one-fourth of that population between the
ages of four and fourteen as 3,600,000, of this latter
number something less than a third are to be
.found ix
day sdiools, considerably less than a third in Sunday
schools only, AND NEARLY ONE MILLION
AND A HALF IN NO SCHOOL WHATEVER.
Taking, however, five years instead of ten, as the
educational period, this will leave us with a million
and c quarter of souls thrown 'Ton society rrery ten
years, •" who have never had a place in any day.
school; the great mass of whom, we may be sure,
cannot even read their mother-tongue, and who will
take along with them all that unfitness for a right
discharge of their social and religious duties, which
is ever implied in such absence of instruction."

Take another result pointed out by the reviewer.
The ltegistrar-General of Marriages has returned
nearly HALF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND rf ALL
nausea as unable to write their names. Of course, as
the marksmen and the markswomen belong to the
lower classes, this gives much more than NIL' of those
classes as unable to achieve even us much penmanship
as is implied in a signature.
The general conclusion is an appalling one. Yet
we cannot shrink from it. In England and Wales
we Aare a population, neatly the ha(niteltieh is unable
to write, and about a third unable to read ; that is,
unable to do either to any useful purpose. So much
for the numbers wider instruction.

The quality of instruction is next considered. Oa
the intellectual part of this head we will not trouble
our readers with extracts. The conclusions of the
reviewer arc the conclusions of every man who has
examined the subject widely and without bias. The
average elementary instruction in our schools is a
mockery of all that deserves the name. Deduct the
few superior schools with duly qualified masters ; set
aside the few exceptional scholars, whose thirst for
knowledge carries them over the most formidable dif-
ficulties and supplies the most paralysing defects, and
what is the elementary education of our poor ? A
little imperfect reading—often only in the book where
it was laboriously and unwillingly acquired—the New
Testament; a little writing, in the majority of cases,
on the slate only ; a little arithmetic, seldom going
beyond the first four rules, and leaving the principles
even of these unmastered. This is all. Here the
pursuit of knowledge stops short of any one end that
the pursuit should have in view. And even this pre-
tence of teaching deals only with the means of edu-
cation, reading and writing. Its ends, which /lading
and writing may or may not subserve, arc left not
unattained merely, but unthought :of. The National
or British and Foreign School pupil, in a majority of
cases, finishes his brief course of training unable to
read a book, to writo a letter, or to work a sum in
compound division. As for the habit of reading, the
practice of letter-writing, or facility in arith-
metical calculation, they are neither attained
at :shoo], nor are the foundations for an
attainment of them laid there. No good will be done
for education, until the miserable inefficiency of our
present schools and systems is recogn ised and repaired.
As to the moral training of such schools, we may be
tolerably sure to find it on a level with the intellec-
tual. The children are in the alphabet of ethical as
of intellectual tuition—or, rather, they have not
reached even so far. The notion, that school is a
place for training to habits of industry, foresight, and
purity, is, in most cases, as little present to the mind
of masters as of scholars.

The connexion between religious and secular instruc-
tion is much insisted on by many of our most zealous
educators. The severance of one from the other, which
the mixed school would render necessary, is, in the
eyes of many, a fatal objection to the plan. Child of
Churchman and Dissenter must not sit on the same
bench, because they cannot read out of the same
catechism. The connexion is thought so important
that many w ould prefer no education at all to educa-
tion merely secular. In fact, the whole question of
national education turns on this pivot.
What is the quality of the religious instruction
thus fiercely struggled fur, thus sternly insisted on ?
Let us borrow an extract from the report of the Rev.
BAPTIST NOEL :
It caw in their understanding of the Scripture., daily read, that I
regretted to And the most advanced children of the National schools
iori extremely defective. Nut only were they often ignorant of the
principal facto recorded in the Bible, hut they could not wearer even
the simplest questions upon the chapter.' which they had most recently
reed. Nor was their religion. ignorance lessened be their knoalmhpj
of the catechism. I ocverol tines exam.nixl the first class upon a
pxtion sit tbc catechism, and I never once found them to comprehend
it Indeed, to those who consider how they generally read the
Scriptures and repeat the catechlom, their ignorance appears to be
a very natural result. Usually the first clam reads one or two chap.
tern of the Bible daily to the master or monitor. In the fir-t case,
they would probably hove ouch short questions on what they read as
the general 'superintendence of the school would allow—in the other
none. It Ls to the monitors aim that the catechism to daily repeatmt;
jhe etio repeating It again and again, till the preserilnd li.df-hour is
comleted. Both In reading the scripture, to the monitors, and in
repeating the catechism, the children showed a marked inattention
and iroasineas, =manfully varied, when the master's eye an. not
upon them, by tokens of a roguish roerrime.t. With the very best
intentions, these who have adopted the system of the National •School
bociety have, in many caste, admitted into their school. nothing for
the elder children except the Bible, and wall volumes of extracts
from it, and the catechism, and the effects seem to me most
unfortunate. AU the books on subjects with which children
are moat familiar being excluded from the school, that thirst
Gorr variety which for the wisest purposee ha, been implanted by
the Creator in the minds of children, lading no gratification, their
faculties are stunted in their growth, and they sink into an inert list-
lessneas. Nothing can exceed the contrast between the eagerness of
the children in a well-taught school, and the apathy manifested in
moat of these national school.. But this to not the worst effect of
making the Bible the only class book. Being thtm made the medium
through which reading and spelling are taught, it becomes aseociated
in their minds with all the rebukes and puniohnients to which bad
reading, or false spelling, or inattention in class expooes them: and it
is well if being than used for p7oses never designed, it eo not las-
MliOntintitectr're rnlnr7:l:an:t:geotrihetethiy7“bGlacotosatraoinino.olcgthinthlatehtresc/iisscredkroo':lethrocanndr:.4:Vir:re7;
1001 scarcely coy such thing. Very few masters issfracr nay of
children ors reliffpfa ofamavois wed go•weely