The Express.
London, England, 1846-11-20 00:00:00

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LONDON, FRIDAY, NOV. 20.
iha,rth3holfeeefibfrselert
Amorso the many replies which have appeared to
arguments
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miMr.
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which
ihrchtes WATSON Doctor Homes pamphlet, that recently published by
mattere
lace
s
church aotrissthuee :stathtee
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should educate the people, but whether both should
perform their respective duties in a matter which
both have at least partially neglected. He says, that
the Church of England responsible for the educa-
tion of the youth of the country, and thus at once
throws upon the Church the entire blame of the vast
amount of ignorance, and consequent demoralisation,
which even the darkest statistical tables but feebly
indicate. That the Church did in its canons arro-
gate to itself the exclusive privilege of teaching, is
matter of notoriety. The 77th canon declares that
"no man shall teach, either in school or private house,
but such 89 shall bo allowed by the bishop or
ordinary of the place, under his hand and
seal. The 78th ordains that where a curate is
willing to teach, " for the better increase of his living,"
a license to teach "youth of the parish he serveth
be granted to none by the ordinary of the place but
only to the said curate." And the 79th adds the pre-
cious injunction, " They shall teach the grammar set
, forth by King HENRY VIII., and continued in the
'times of King EDWARD VI., and Queen ELIZABETH,
of noble memory, and none other," under pain of being
"suspended from keeping school any longer."
Are these canons enf,,reed, or would it be possible
to enforce them ? %tint, then, do they prove ?
Simply this : the Church, by enacting those canons,
emphatically declared that some superintendence was
necessary ; and by. neglecting those canons, virtually
confessed its own inability to exercise such superin-
tendence. Mr. WATSON writes as if a system of edu-
hafuhlkPeepeP:ll;ialtsanlyidt.rethmelanNr,
cation was about, for the first time, to be called into
existence. Such is not the case : we have a national
education, though one so utterly disorganised that it
can hardly be called a system. The youthful mind of
England is no tabula rasa, no blank sheet of paper :
voluntary and involuntary agencies are constantly
tracing upon it ineffaceable characters; and we only
demand that the writing should be words of national
blearing and not of national curses.
Mr. WATSON has used a multitude of words to
disguise the consequences of his own reasoning from
himself. He claims for the Church supreme control
over all " literary and secular education." Of course,
professional education is included : lawyers and phy-
sicians have souls as well as other people, but it by no
means follows that the Archbishop of CANTERBURY
is therefore the persan best qualified to choose a lec-
turer on feudal law, or a professor of anatomy. The
Bishop of LONDON is said to be one of the best of our
Greek scholars, but we should consult a Mabommedan
in preference, were we seeking for a teacher of Arabic
—or a Hindoo, if disposed to learn Sanscrit. Mr.
WATSON'S unlimited proposition is sheer non-
sense; and yet it would be fatal to his argu-
ment to allow that his proposition has any
limits. 'fhe exemption of professional education
includes all secular education ; for no secular education
is worth a straw which does not prepare youth for
the profession or occupation they are destined to
follow. The vice of English education is, that its
means are not thus adapted to its end; and this vice
more or less pervades all our schools, though it is
most sensibly felt in the schools designed for the edu-
cation of children in the lower grades of the middle
classes.
Mr. WATSON exclaims against the separation of the
doctrinal and practical in morals, and says that an
attempt is made to separate moral discipline from re-
ligion. There might be some force in the objection,
if anybody contended that school discipline was Co-
extensive with the whole of moral discipline, and in-
cluded all its duties and obligations. It no more
does so than military discipline. He might as rea-
sonably complain that drill-serjeants taught the
goose-step without reference to the next curate ; that
general orders are promulgated without any reference
to holy orders.; and. that Dundee. Regulattons are not
interleaved with the Book of Common Prayer. The
soldier's discipline and the student's are alike moral,
both being designed to form habits—habits which in
the one case are useful in the army, and in the other
useful in the school. But who except a WATSON
could dream that the practical drill of the soldier or
student was likely to alienate either from doctrinal
morality? The army dote not include the whole
moral life of the soldier, nor the school that of the
boy ; but the serjeant and the professor have only to
deal with so much of that moral life as is brought
within the sphere of their professional contact.
It is idle to talk of drawing a distinction between
religious and secular education ; they are distinct—as
distinct as any two parts of the same whole can be—
es distinct as reading and writing, ph sits and mathe-
matics, or a literary and industrial education ; if they
were not distinct, they would not have different
names, and they would continue to be distinct, even if
taught under the same roof. It would be impossible
to combine any one of the three creeds with teaching
a boy the use of the plane, the saw, or the hammer,
and it would perplex Mr. WATSON to connect the
shortest of the thirty-nine articles with the instruction
of a girl in the use of her needle. They have,
indeed, many points of contact, but contact does not
constitute identity. Mr. WATSON'S argument is pre-
cisely similar to that by which the Papal usurpations
were justified in the middle ages, when, from the
connexion between religion and the moral existence
of society, it was inferred that the government of
Christendom should be a theocracy.
Mr. WATSON and his fellows confound the pro-
hibition of doctrinal instruction in school with the
exclusion of religion from education ; just as if the
whole education of youth was worked out in the
school, and no part of it accomplished in the home
or in the place of worship. But our Prayer Book
expressly declares that the religious education of
youth, to a certain extent at least, should be con-
ducted in the church itself. A rubric annexed to the
catechism enjoins, "The curate of every parish i
diligently, upon Sundays and holydays, after the t;
second lesson at evening prayer, openly in the church r.•
instruct and examine as many children of the perish
sent mato him to he shall think convenient, in some'
part of this catechism." In the early part of dile'
century it was the custom in youth of
of Irelank. ,
for clergymen to catechise the youth of their congrvs ,