Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-07-06 00:00:00

The rich, influential, and educated classes in
India, are in favour of British rule, and took no
part against us. It was not the rioters, but
their victims, who received protection and
asylum from the natives. All this seems
encouraging, and helps us better to estimate the
true state of the case. We hardly expect to
hear that the mutiny has spread. We rather
expect soon to learn that it has been concen-
trated and hemmed in at Delhi, and extinguished
there. Reinforcements were advancing from
many sides, and soon the mutineers would be
crushed. Still we cannot think that all the
blame is on the side of the misguided soldiers ;
probably our authorities and commanders may
have something to confess. At any rate, here is
a voice for Army Reform coming to us all the
way from India, as we had lately many sad
voices and warnings from the Crimea. We
shall revert to this topic. At present we only
ask—is it quite safe for us to have a native army
of a quarter of a million of men, with arms in
their hands, living almost idle, while our
European soldiers mixed with them scarcely
number twenty thousand men. We know,7pro-
verbially, what idle hands will do. Labour is
not a curse but a blessing to mankind ; for
whether it be men or women, Europeans or
Asiatics, children or soldiers, idle hands that have
nothing useful to do will manage to get into
mischief. We must have Armyißeformfor India
as well as for England.

A FEW days ago we published a letter headed
the " People's Education," in which the writer
urged the expediency of having the Corporation
Schools of Liverpool placed under Government
nspection. Our correspondent is right in his
estimate of the advantages which would result
from such connexion, and we are glad to find
that what we have already written on this subject
has called forth the letter in question. The
Educational Conference held in London, in the
early part of last week, did not disguise the
fact that there is at the present day a very great
amount of parental indifference on the subject.
This we showed arose from the imperfect
character of the Education imparted in the
shcools for the humbler classes. And we also
threw out the hint that if we would desire to
get rid of this much to be regretted parental
indifference, we must set about raising up a race
of really qualified and efficient Teachers—male
and female, who not merely know what to teach
but how to teach. So far back as 1835, the
Rev. Dr. Bryce of Belfast, a gentleman who has
made the theory and practice of education a
constant study for forty years, declared before a
Committee of the House of Commons, that all
that was required to promote and improve the
education of the people, was the production of
a race of Educators worthy of the name. What
vine trnp ;n 1 RM. ;a no leas a matter of fate, :-
1857. It may be said that we have numerous
training institutions throughout the country,
and that our proposal is not requisite. We
grant that there are such establishments in
England, some in Scotland, and one national, in
Ireland. But while general scholastic knowledge
is carefully inculcated, and practical education is
attended to, we maintain that there is a lamenta-
ble deficiency both in the quantity and quality
of the "Philosophy of Teaching" communicated.
Without this latter we hold no man or woman
can be a real and successful Educator. True
they may impart instruction which will remove
their pupils from mere ignorance, but their suc-
cess in the realms of intellect, when endeavouring
to draw forth, expand and exercise its powers by
daily practice, will only resemble the prescrip-
tions of the medical quack who administers one
general cure for all the ills to which human flesh
is heir to.

The truth of this remark will become more
apparent, if we reflect that intellectual educa-
tion is the foremost part of the teacher's duty.
He has to draw forth, cultivate and expand, as
the very term education implies, all the powers
and faculties appe►taining to intellect ; in other
words, mind being the teacher's province, his
great duty is to cultivate it to the utmost limit
of which it is susceptible. Now, all who have paid
the least attention to the operations of mind are
aware that it resembles the works of a watch;
it has wheels within wheels, which a:t and re-
act upon each other. Hence it is that the trade
of watchmaking is an exceedingly nice and deli-
cate one. A blacksmith may be a very good
judge of the steel which composes the main-
spring, but his rough hands could not adjust the
disarranged verge, or the injured lever ; nor
could we find the most illiterate individual in
society willing to place a dirty watch, with a
broken spring, an injured pinion, or a loose
screw, in the hands of the blacksmith for the pur-
pose of being repaired. Now, if the human mind
like the watch is a piece of complicated machi-
nery, which none can safely operate upon
without being fully aware of all its powers
and faculties and modes of operation. It fol-
lows then that none but those who have studied
mind, and witnessed its operations as far as the
communication of knowledge is concerned, is fit
to be ranked, or recognised as an Educator of
youth. Before any university of repute, issues to
surgeons a deploma of competence, the student
must attend a course of clinical lectures ; that
is, he must go to the patient's bed side, hear the
laws of anatomy and pathology explained, and
see the case, under consideration, treated accor-
ding to the medical principles propounded by the
professor. If such a practice were adopted in
the mattq' of education, there would not be so

much cause to complain of the imperfect educa-
tion of the people, or of indifference on the part
of parents, as to the attendance of their children
at public schools.
On considering the letter of our correspondent,
respecting the Corporation Schools, we would
call the attention of the Town Council to the
matter. The masters and mistresses of the
Corporation Schools, are reputed to be able,
intelligent, and painstaking. If so, we presume
each and all would readily ag:ee to undergo an
examination, and thereby have their schools
placed under Government Inspection. Thanks
to the liberality of the Town Council, the
teachers of the Corporation Schools are most
munificently paid; they do not want nor stand in
need of Government aid, but the junior teachers
do; and, moreover, the fact of the schools not
being under Government Inspection, many a
young and promising teacher, for want of the
usual certificate, is deprived of the power of getting
a situation elswhere. The Schools are admirably
adapted for the purposes of training establish-
ments. We hope that something will be done in
the matter. It is an important subject, view it
as we may, and therefore press it upon the atten-
tion of the Council. We do not ask for any
aid for these Schools, but simply that the junior
teachers should be examined by her Majesty's
Inspectors of schools, and, if qualified, obtain
the necessary certificate of competency.

To us it was quite refreshing to find our old
and esteemed friend, Mr. WILLIAM RATUBONE,
in his proper position, once more, on Monday
evening, advocating, as he has ever done, the
interests of those who are npt in a position to
plead for themselves. None have deplored more
deeply than we have, the circumstances which
led to the temporary isolation of such men as
WILLIAM RATHBONE, GEORGE HOLT, and HUGH
HORNBY, from public life. That such men,
endowed as they are with the highest order of
talent, and overflowing with philantrophy and
benevolence to all around them, should have on
one, and only on one subject, played false to
their principles, is a subject of the deepest
regret. In fact, their absence from the Council
Chamber, on the present emergency, is a cause
for public sorrow. On that one question we
differed with them; but then the question was a
vital one, and demanded at our hands that all
friendship and sympathy, which interposed be-
twixt us, and the discharge of a stern matter of
duty should be cast aside. In an evil hour,
these, our most esteemed and valued friends, the
friends of the human race, in fact, became facina-
ted by the blandishments of the Pike jobbers,
and, although, no jobbers themselves, yet the
spell was so complete that their noble minds
became enveloped in an aqueous mist. The Pike
was presented to their imaginations in all the
rflowinv colours in which its most deeply
designing and largely interested partizans
could depict it; unfortunately, in the singleness
of their hearts, these gentlemen believed that the
concoctors of this infamous job were as honest as
themselves, and, acting on these impressions,
they were led to commit a great wrong—not only
to the public, but themselves. We allude to this
subject with reluctance—we might almost say
with repugnance—and if such a thing were
possible, we would willingly ignore it altogether,
and blot it out firom the tablet of our memory,
—that is, however, impossible.

The next best thing we can do is to rejoice
at seeing WILLIAM RATHBONE, the zealous ad-
vocate of the Pike scheme, making common cause
with its able and most talented opponent,
J. R. JEFFERY, in the interests of humanity.
This was a re-union worthy of the arena, and the
object they met, to advocate. Never was the
cause of the working man pleaded with greater or
more disinterested earnestness than it was on
that occasion, and the sentiments enunciated
from the platform of the Concert Hall,
will resound throughout the length and
breadth of this and other lands. We had
the right men in their right places for once.
Sympathy for the poor we have ever had
amongst us in some shape or other. Our
numerous charitable institutions, endowed as
they have been by the wealthy and well-disposed,
prove that the last and greatest deed of their
founders, was an act of generous sympathy for
their fellow men—all honour to their memory.
Man, in his original state, is not, in reality, a
savage. All our experience has gone to prove
that however barbarous nations, tribes, or races
may have been represented, yet their evil propen-
sities have only been called into action by
circumstances, not by inclination. Take the
testimony of our most eminent travellers from
BRUCE or MARCO POLO, down to ALBERT
SMITH, and they will prove that, in every
country, in every clime, the human heart
melts at human suffering. Surely our own
ought notto be, nor is it an exception, But some-
,
thing more is wanted than the mere giving of
alms to meet the monster evil—poverty, and its
concomitants; wretchedness, and crime.
Individuals may be relieved from much suffer-
ing by individual exertion, and that this is done
to as great an extent in this as in any other
country in Europe, no one can doubt, but when
we find that the curse of poverty is upon us, not
in an individual, isolated, or local sense, but as
one embracing the length and breadth of the
land,—not numbering its victims by thousands
merely, but by millions, it will be at once ap-
parent that mere individual exertion, however
wisely or liberally directed, must of necessity
prove -utterly abortive in oopeing with such a