The Sun.
London, England, 1839-06-03 00:00:00

Z-1)„c

LONDON :
MONDAY, JUNE 3, 1339.

If we thought that the Spectator's advice were
likely to have any weight with the Ministers, we
should think it our duty to caution them against
attending
to what our Contemporary says on the
Proposed grant for education. The Spectator urges
the
Ministry to proceed with their plan, and
to throw the onus of rejecting it on those
who are the enemies of education. Un-
fortunately for this advice there are not a few of
the friends of education, in a general sense, who
are opposed to the Ministerial plan. The Metho-
dists, for example, are not hostile to a species of
education, though they have taken most unwar-
rantable methods to prejudice the public against
the plan in question. In the Hertford Reformer,
a Whig paper, there is an article condemning
the plan, said to proceed from some person
who speaks the sentiments of the Independents.
Whenever the question of a National System of
Education was brought forward in the House of
Commons, of which this is a beginning, Mr.
WYsE has never found many supporters. The
Petitions against the plan are already most nume-
rous—we have as yet seen but two in its favour.
However excellent, therefore, the plan may be,
there is not the least chance at present, whatever
may be its fate when better known, of being gene-
rally supported.
The bulk of the Whig party would, we are
aware, vote for it if brought forward by the Minis-
ters, but the majority of the country gentleman
connected with that party must be indifferent
to its success. At the same time, some Members
of the party connected with the Methodists and
other Dissenters, or dependent on the opponents
of the scheme for their seats in Parliament, would
be compelled to oppose the Ministers. By only a
few gentlemen, such as Mr. HuxtE, Mr. WysE,
Sir WILLIAM MOLESWORTH, Mr. GROTE, Mr.
SLANEY, &c., would they be zealously supported
ill the House of Commons, and if they per-
severe in bringing forward the scheme they
will most certainly be defeated. We should
say persevere—in the name of righteous-
ness, in the name of liberality, persevere—if
only the Tories in both Houses of Parliament
were opposed to it ; but when we find the
scheme receive only a lukewarm support from
any Liberals, while it is opposed by some, to
persevere in it would he foolishness. The Mi-
nisters would break their heads against their
own friends.

The plan is a novelty, and its merits are not
known to the public. They require time to fami-
liarise them with it ; and, tai they approve of it, it
would be most injudicious to press it forward.
However deplorable may be our system of educa-
tion ; however shocking and disgusting the immo-
rality and ignorance of the parsons' congregations,
still, if the Representatives and leaders of the peo-
ple, in Parliament and .out of Parliament, are ad-
verse to the proposed improvement, the Ministers
ought not to destroy the Ministry in attempt-
ing to force it on an unwill;ng and un-
discerning public. In our opinion, M inisters
should withdraw the plan for the present. We do
not know that the advice of the !Spectator is insi-
diously meant to taunt them into committing an act
of folly, but if it were so meant it is excellent ;
though now that they are warned they will not, we
hope, rush into ruin.
What we should venture humbly to recom-
mend to the Ministers is at once frankly to give
up their present plan, and concoct a grand and
comprehensive scheme of national education, if
they are resolved to meddle with the matter at all,
and make it an object of public discussion. Let
them encourage the Press to explain to the public
the defects of our system, and the numerous ad-
vantages conferred on the north of Germany by
the excellent system there established, and which
would be conferred on England by their plan. Let
them make the people first heartily ashamed of
the present costly, inefficient system. Let them ex-
pose the negligence, the bad faith, the knavery
of the priests of all denominations, who are
leaguing together to resist the secular power and
preserve their dominion over the public mind ; and
when the nation is able, by a knowledge of the
defects of the present system and the advantages of
a better, to form a sound epinion on the subject,
and not before, let the Ministers recommend the Par-
liament to give such a scheme the force of law.

Why should England remain deprived of the ad-
vantages which Scotland and Germany have en-
joyed for ages, and which Ireland has lately re-
ceived ? Whv should we not have schools for
chilling schoolmasters, and teaching the most essen-
tial of all arts, that of instructing youth, such as
Germany has had for nearly a century ? It is a
deep and indelible disgrace to England that she
should have allowed the excellent system which
exists in Scotland, and the still more improved
system which exists in Germany, to have prevailed
at her own door, or in the territories of her. Royal
family, and should have taken no steps to adopt
either.

We have received various communications con-
radicting the reports inserted in Tory Journals
about the reception given to her MAJESTY last
week, both on her way to Windsor, and at Ascot
Races, but it is a work of supererogation to insert
them. We believe no Sovereign was ever more
enthusiastically cheered by subjects than the QUEEN
was on those very occasions when these disappointed
and disloyal Journalists say she was received
with dead silence, or with cheers without
enthusiasm. The Observer says with perfect
truth—" \\Te challenge any man, the oldest
and best acquainted with Ascot Races, to point to
any year, or any occasion, upon which more raptu-
rous enthusiasm towards the Sovereign was exhi-
bited than upon the recent appearance of her Ma-
jesty among her loyal subjects. If we did not fear
to damp the ardour of these loyal subjects, we might
be tempted to say that it had been carried even to
excess. Scarcely could that. Illustrious Lady take
her seat, when loud cries of " The Queen 1" "The
Queen 1" were raised, and her Majesty had again to
present herself—when three deafening cheers were
given, and the one cheer more had scarcely subsided
when the call was again made for her Majesty to
come forward and gladden her subjects."
The same papers state that when Lord MEL-
BOURNE was recognised at Ascot he was assailed
with hisses and groans. Now the fact is, that not
the slightest mark of disapprobation was shown
from any one individual on the race-course, and
that not more than one person (anti
that person was in the Stand, among the Tory gen-
tlemen) attempted to get up a cry, which totally
failed. Would it not be more prudent on the part
of those who have been disappointed by the late
negotiations to remain silent than to invent lies ?

The formation of a Society for bettering the
condition of the native inhabitants of British India,

is an undertaking highly creditaLle to the public
spirit and philanthropy of all concerned in that
most charitable undertaking. How necessary is
such an institution to the amelioration of the mise-
ries of the people of India, our columns of this
'Jay furnishes ample proof, in the Report of the pro-
ceedings at the meeting of the infant Society, held
on Saturday at Devonshire House, Hounsditch,
which we recommend to the careful perusal of
every reader of The Sun. Never before, per-
haps, were the actual sufferings of the native
population so vividly pourtrayed, as in the eloquent
speech of that indefatigable advocate of the op-
pressed of every clime and colour, Mr. GEORGE
TuomPsoN. His heart-rending descriptions of
the plundered and oppressed natives, under the aw-
ful visitations of famine and pestilence, cannot fall
coldly on the ear of a nation responsible to Heaven
for the almost annual recurrence of these calamities ;
and we do not doubt but that when the people of this
country are made, through the labours of this So-
ciety, fully acquainted with the enormities of which
the East India Company and the Government
have been guilty in India, there is not an individual
in the kingdom who will not raise his voice in exe-
cration of such cruelties. Like the Jewish rabble,
shouting for the crucifixion, the bulk of the people
of England knew not what they did in sanctioning
she plunder of India by a corporation of public
robbers. The love of conquest, a thirst for gold,
and a sectarian hatred of idolaters and idolatry,
blinded them to the enormity of the commission of
any and every outrage against the natives of India,
on the part of the servants of the East India Corn-
pany. Happily, however, there are found among
us a few persons who acknowledge not the prescrip-
tive right of evil ; who dare stand up in defence
of the oppressed in every part of the world ;
and who have the moral courage grounded
on their innate conviction of the purity
of their motives and the success which will
ever attend the charitable labours of the just, to
assume the mighty task of correcting evils resulting
from centuries of commingled anarchy and despo-
tism. To the zeal of a Society is the nation in-
debted for the abolition of slavery—that glorious
triumph of human liberty; to the efforts of
Societies do we owe the religious freedom pro-
claimed to the world by the abolition of the Test
and CorpoLtion Acts, and the passing of the Ca-
tholic Emancipation Bill ; and we fervently trust
that it will yet be recorded that the benevolent in-
terposition of a Society saved British India, and
subsequently raised it in the scale of civilization
and happiness to an equality with the most favoured
country in Europe.
We are very sensible that by the thousands who
feel persuaded that active benevolence should not
travel in search of objects of charity abroad, leaving
masses of moral and physical misery unalleviated at
home, the infant institution will not be regarded
with much sympathy. It would certainly not be
difficult to show that there are some millions of
human beings in the British isles in a state of
wretchedness not greatly exceeded by the miseries
endured by the most neglected of the native
population of India, and that a Society, with
the leading members of the Society of Friends
at its head, might, and undoubtedly would,
greatly ameliorate the condition of the sufferers.
What infinite good, it may be said, might not be
done to the poor of Ireland and Scotland by such
a Society, having for its object the reclamation of
all waste lands, by means of an improved cottage
system ? How many bad, or what is almost tan-
tamount to the same thing, how many indifferent
landlords would be induced to study the happiness
of their tenantry, and. the improvement of their
estates, were they convinced that there was a tri-
bunal whose verdict none dare set at defiance,
without incurring a brand of moral infamy ? Such
a Society would do much to putify the moral !
atmosphere of our cities by finding em- !
ployment for the idle, and discounte-
nancing the pursuits of the dissolute. Where, it
may be asked, in the wide region of British India,
is squalor to be met with more heart-sickening than
may be witnessed in many districts of this great
metropolis ? Agra cannot exhibit scenes of sin
and suffering more afflicting than is to be met with
in St. Giles 's ; and within sight of the very Palace
of our QUEEN and our assembled Legislators in
Parliament is a district—Tothill-fields--which few
will imagine to have been exceeded in depravity by
those cities upon which the Heavens rained fire
and brimstone. Whitechapel, Spitalfields, and
the Borough are the receptacles of more
misery than the most active benevolence
could relieve in many years, without
mense sacrifices of time, labour, and money. The
Liberties of Dublin swarm with a population in the
lowest state of human wretchedness ; and, accord-
ing to the Report of Parliamentary Commissioners
of Inquiry, two millions, or more than one-fourth of
the population of Ireland, endure far more than a
fourth of every year the horrors of famine,
while inhabiting a country capable of yieldinc,
sus-
tenance for twenty millions of people I
But admitting the full force of these arguments,
they only demonstrate the necessity of increased
philanthropical exertion on the part of the benevo-
lent. They show how much remains to be done
by those who seek to counteract the evils produced
by the crimes and profligacy of the by-gone Govern-
ment of this country, both at home and abroad.
_ _

They likewise fearfully illustrate the certainty with
which the poisoned chalice of the oppressor is re-
turned, sooner or later, to his own lips, and he is
made to drench himself with the hitter potion
which he prepared for others. Thereis,therefore, a
moral retribution—a humble and an atoning acknow-
ledment of the guilt of this country towards India,
in the formation of this Society, which we have no
doubt will operate to the extension of its support
even among those who are most desirous of con-
fining all charity to the fireside. In its success a
double end would be accomplished ; it will alleviate
an incalculable mass of human wretchedness, and
it will remove from the character of Great
Britain the stain of a remorseless neglect of
her plundered and oppressed Colonial subjects.
Countless and cruel have been the wrongs
nationally inflicted by England upon India ;
and in the eloquent language of Mr. THOMPSON,
addressed to a meeting of the Aborigines Protec-