The Sun.
London, England, 1852-10-29 00:00:00

supply of elementary works, which will henceforth be
furnished to eleemosynary places of tuition at some-
thing less than the trade price, upon this one simple
condition, the, the charitable efforts in each particular
locality shall respond in earnest to the generous pro-
position of the Government. We are anxious that
this may be clearly understood. It is but right, in-
deed, that it should be thoroughly comprehended.
Without pretending to be punctiliously exact in the
i proportions, we may contrive, in one or two words,

. .
to afford the public a simple and familiar illustration.
Everybody, of course, knows well enough that in-

struction necessitates books, and that books necessitate

a rather formidable item of expenditure in every large
establishment. Anxious to obviate as much as pos-
sible the difficulties presenting themselves in this
manner as obstructions to the spread of enlighten-

ment, the Ministry have determined to supply a por-
tion of the funds required in the purchase of works of
an educational character, and, beyond this, to furnish
the works themselves at a rate so extraordinarily mo-

derate, that it could alone be secured by the interpo-
sition of Government. Supposing, for example, that
the guardians of some particular charity school are

desirous of procuring volumes, the trade cost of which
would be little less than 2001, in the aggregate, these

volumes will be placed within their reach fur
say 901., with this additional assurance, that

301. of the 90/. will be advanced out of

,he National Exchequer, if the reme'_ning 601

be only subscribed by the benevolence of the locvi
congregation. Assuredly we may be allowed to eulo-
gise this as a most humane and generous provision;
a provision which reflects the highest credit upon the
Cabinet ; one, moreover, which we doubt not, must
be responded to by the faithful of all denominations
throughout the country with alacrity, and even en-
thusiasm ; a provision which augurs admirably for
the still more rapid advance of the great educational
movement, while it animates our confidence in the
sublime hope of the moral as well as the physicvl
development of civilization.
Subsidiary efforts are, meanwhile, being strenu-
ously attempted in a variety of quarters—efforts
which must inevitably prove beneficial to a nearly

miraculous extent, if only enforced by perseverance

In spite of the detestable taxes upon knowledge,
cheap literature is no longer exclusively pernicious.
Periodicals issued at the weekly cost of twopence, or
of a penny, or even in one recent, and we may add,
respectable instance, a halfpenny—supply the very
poorest classes of the community with wholesome
information, insinuated sometimes under the alluring
guise of mere amusement. CIIAELES KNIGHT began
the good work years ago, in his Penny Magazine,
and that good work is nowadays thriving marvel-
lously well in a thousand directions, though in none
so appreciably as in the household Words, scattered
among the hearths of the population by the hand of
CHARLES DICKENS. The printing press, in short, is
doing silently for the cause of education what has
been left undone by the Cabinet, and noisily talked
of by the Legislature. Meanwhile, this unsystematic
and almost unconscious, but at the same time most
effectual, and most beneficent development of the
intellectual capabilities of our generation is being
aided—nobly and assiduously aided by some of the
most distinguished men of the age, by some of the
more eminent students of statesmanship,and some of the
most shining lights of our national literature. Scarcely
any intelligent observer can have forgotten the grace-
ful tributes paid in this manner, not so very long ago,
to the popular aptitude to receive instruction, by the
liberal-minded and gentle-hearted Earl of CARLISLE
—upon those occasions, we mean, when he presented
himself in the capacity of a lecturer, before the indus-
trious mechanics of Yorkshire. Elsewhere, in our
impression of this evening, will be found a somewhat
remarkable instance, that the same intellectual
appetancy of the multitude has not appealed in vain
for sympathy to the large heart and comprehensive
genius of the most accomplished man of letters of the
reign of VICTORIA. It is well, too, we think, that
the public should conn with especial attention at this
juncture, the elevating and humanizing principles in-
culcated in Sir EDWARD BHLWER LYTTON'S oration
upon Knowledge. Delivered within the walls of the
OLD SHIRE HALL at Hertford, that oration has
already resounded as far as the metropolis, and will
be re-echoed, we doubt not, very generally through
the rest of the United Kingdom. It comes to the
people as a timely warning against the dangers that
should be avoided in their ever-active and indefatigable
search after information. It reminds the reflective,
moreover, of the precise value and importance of what
;s designated knowledge, and in doing so illestrates,
by the happiest and drollest metaphor imaginable, the
absurdity of allowing either Knowledge or Liberty
to become the curse instead of the blessing of hu-
manity, the ruin instead of the palladium of our insti-
tutions. What could be more delightfully unanswer-
able upon this point than the observation ?—" Know-
ledge and Liberty are designed to be the safeguards
and the directors of our social system. (Hear, hear.)
You approve that definition ? Pardon, then, a very
homely illustration. We do not fear the watch-dog
while he guards the fold and directs the flock; but we
look at him with very great suspicion when we meet
him foaming at the mouth, and rattled out of his wits
by the noise of a tin canister tied to his tail.
(Cheers and laughter.)" There is, alas ! but too much
truth in the exquisite wit of the next allusion, when
the orator continued—" Look, for instance, at France :
for the last eighty years they have made such a slat•
ter about all the grand results to be expected from
liberty and enlightenment, that enlightenment and
lfterty have been frightened away by the din—
(cheers)—and men in that country seem more disposed
to get rid of the watch-dogs altogether, than to run
the risk of having them driven into madness by the
hollow clang of that everlastiny canister." Magnifi-
cent, indeed, and encouraging is the contrast glaring
upon the general recognition from that subsequent
reference made by Sir BULWER LYTTON to the posi-
tion of things in this country, when towards the close
of his remarkable oration he alluded to the legacies
bequeathed to Englishmen by their glorious fore-
fathers—those legacies, he exclaimed, which have
been " a literature more splendid than that of Greece,
au empire more colossal than that of Rome, and a
political constitution which still towers aloft in majestic
symmetry, because the depth of its foundation has
allowed for additions to its structure"—a sublime and
truthful image, which celled forth, as it deserved, the
loudest acclamations. Addresses of this thoughtful
and elevated charecler cannot but influence most
benignly that intellectual development which is, of all,
the peculiar characteristic of the present generation.
Grateful are we then, grateful must be every intelli-
gent and humane observer, on recognizing the efforts
thus made by Genius to smooth the difficult pathway
of Education to the People —to strew it with the
blooming apophthegms of philosophy—to glorify it
with the divine light of experience—and, by so doing,
to render the advance of Civilization subservient, in
the most effectual manner, to the diffusion of Chris-
tianity.

If Catholics wish to gain political rezp.sct and in-
fluence, they must be consistent and generous.
When they first started their Religious Equality
movement a few weeks ago, we admonished them
that a mere selfish Irish Catholic agitation would
never do. Englishmen can understand the politicians
who would, in any,new move, endow all sects equally,
or those who, like Mr. Jour' BRIGHT, and the more
consistent Dissenters, object to all State endowments
of religion, but they do not understand men whose
only object, while clamouring for equality, is to enrich
their own sect, under the fiction of restoring property
to its original uses. Englishmen understand also the
men who carry out their principles most fully where
they have most power to do so; but not those who,
with all the legislation and Government of a country
in their hands, falsify every principle which they
avow when they are a minority. ;We warned our
Catholic friends, in particular, that unless they in-
terfered actively on behalf of THE MADIAIS, then just
sentenced to a barbarous imprisonment at Florence,
their noise about religious equality would be esteemed
as mere cant. We reminded them that every Eng-
liQh Protestant, of whatever sect., must feel, when
two worthy individuals were sentenced to a felon's
punishment simply for reading the Bible and be-
coming Protestants, that it was not only cruel
persecution, but a gross insult upon his own
faith. The Prussian Charge d'Affaires did so
feel it, and Demonstrated. And if the Catholics feel
ho deeply the prohibition to assume territorial titles