The British Press; or, Morning Literary Advertiser.
London, England, 1820-06-29 00:00:00

,
• ,
Try
• .44 1•04

4.,e7W-"

'noisy Members; how it woe made op it was
she less necessary to say, be,:astse that might
be mated in one of ton k.F.s, which it would
yet be Werill.ery to frame to it. It we% noon
the information thus brought_ before Parliament,
and which exh•hited in—'apie, or rather in dif-

fervent sieves, the state. of 'Education in every
--tavoisey. 'any, town. and part of England. and
vittilleihewed not unly the ns of education put-
-10044S tateh, but its defer** sad the disposition of
Atte iiihabitants, and their iv won* to Avail themselves
tv4f !Itte adventages of places. f ins4ruction, that the
-plan which 'he meant to submit was; founded as a
peached mreeere. When his Isle much-respected
, friend, Mr. Whitbread, had pro Posed a plan many
scare since very different from his (Mt. Bronghern's).
it was objected to by Mr. Perceval, for want of
• previnue inquiry. He said, let there be a Com-
mittee to inquire into the actual state of educatiou,
:yid then when we have discovered its defects, Irt a
niesaure he proposed applicable to the circnmetance•
and remedying what is deficient. His (Mr. 11.'s)
Wan was founded on that information which was
• aerated hs Mr. Perceval ; and if it were necessary,
he c.,tehl prove by a remarkable instance how dan-
gerous it was to propose any plan in the absence of
• .formation. He had in his hand nn" Essay on Edit.
• coif Ts." published by the late Dr. Colquhoun its
In('. lie thought. on the whole, that Gentle-
Mat, .49 a very lively and agreeable writer, but
that when be treated of political subjects, he had
here frequently very wide of the mark.--(Hear.)
But never in ally of his speculations had he been so
snort, sa is when he entered OR the rubjeet of edu-
cation. First of all, he laid down that there were
• two willow of poor children without the means of
education in England and Wales, sod fifty thou-
• said. in London. Now it did so happen, that there
were her two millions of poor children in existence
in this kingdom of that age when education was rip.
heable to them ; for the proportion of all unedu-
cated children to the whole population was consi-
dered toseeterith—so that a population of 20.000,000
',rook, be necessary in order that there should be
2.000,000 of uneducated children in else. But if
the poor children only were taken into account,
taking these at one-half of the whole number,
tbea, to justify the calculation, a population of
aa 4100.090 would he required for England rind
Wales.—(l-leur, and a tuageS.l—Mr. Brougham
tli• in faeces-deal to inatssice other errors which ap-
t rand in Dr. Coltpilloures Inset, for the purpose
f.i.rwtog the danger of proposing measures
1.1 an lent-twice of the subject. Bin there
was uric material difficulty in the opinion of
mane in general education, and it was, or had
nn ui jectioss that instruction was detrimental
ta ;he lower order.; and lie could not avoid advert.
tez to the dangerous purposes which agitators had
tinmed the expression he had just used. They
aeolit have the people believe that the term de-
graded them ; but the words, lower orders, as every
• OOP knew, were applied to the poor not with any
' such unesit, lint by way of diatioction from the rest
of secirty, as that House was called the Lower
House, without supposing its dignity thereby at all
• impaired. But let them abstain from using the
• terms, and say the humbler classes, or the poor.
• Bat with respect to the difficulty he bad men-
buried, he said it was a very great folly to assert
that education spoiled the poor, and rendered them
bad subjects; sod he wisher! to chew how very re-
•
can't -that objection was. He thought that the force
of it had riot been felt either in early times, or re-
- ceeitly, to any extent; and hr believed that the
prevalence of suet% • feeling was limited to the ten
years between the commencement of the French
-eavelittion and the peace of Amiens. The Hots.
oral Learned Gentleman then, in support of this
t?sition„ produced instances from the history of
- tiotland, Scotland, and France, to prove the lire-
.. valecce of general education in these countries in
*try early tinier, and that legislative provisions had
been adopted in them for that purpose. lie then
quoted a sentence from a bull of Pope Benedict,
so the year 1734, a rather intolerant era lit the
itotet*fi church, issued for the purpose of
pieparing instruction for the poor, which con.
tamed the fullowing words ignorantia
Goodson arigine moiorum. prcesentini is illis (pi
egestate oppressi stint. et qui elements Chris-
lie.-2 refigionis persape ignorant." He alluded
ta the formation of the Society of the Peres
(.16etiens in France by La Sidle, about live years
-berate the revocation of the Edict of :Setae, and
cited the declaration of the Lieutenant of Police of
Paris lei 1738, that since the ignorantine schools had
been planted in the Faubourg St. Antoine, the police
Led 'cost him 30,000 francs a-year less.—incur.) Hon. and Learned. Gentleman then adverted
to A'. Mandeville's censure. of charity schools.
wiser, he said, that the minds of the people were
debauched by being taught high church wilt-
ciples. That writer's antagonist had replied—
', Go into them all. and pull them down if yuu
god an thing there of this excessive loyalty."
So he (Mr. Brougham) said to those who cum-
iiharted of the unsound opinions alleged to be
totaght at schools in Lancashire, let Ulm be
esamined, and, if the charges were true. be shut
up.. The present Pope seemed to have some sound
views on the subject of education. Here Mr.
iffortglians read a quotation from what we under-
stood to be a circular letter from Rome to the-
Catholic Clergy of Ireland, dated the c... 9111 Sept.
lto. stating in substance. that every effort ought
to he wade to keep any the youth from those
eetrioli where auauthorisral versions of the Scrip-
tures were read ; that to detest the scheme, of the
mivereary. no plan seamed better calculated than to
establish schools where what was goul miglit be
teught. in which object his Holiness besought the
brellireu to labour by day and by night. This was
lira authority for maintaining the advantages of edit-
s:riling the poor, and be was glad it was so good a
ia'. He now came to a new topic. Let it
not he thought that be wanted to teach the
lino any thing improper fur their intuition—
Friends of his seemed to imagine that he
SaraLed•to teach them Greek and Latin and fluisions.
.13;al tar from it ; on that subject he was of opinion
that for the poor all the languages
kosown in Europe were not to be compared ni point
of &Wit with the kirowlerige of one mechanical art.
Hair, hear, hear.)--Ile theu cited the passage
from that writer. au which he said, that though a
thglliat Light pride himself an the possessiun
of 11. the Imagoages lute which Babti had split
*slag Set a be were iiptersati a the Ennis
t.