The Sun.
London, England, 1839-10-29 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS. 1

PROM THE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
(From the Morning Chronicle.)
The correspondence between the Bishop of Exeter
and a clergyman (published in Woolmer's Exeter and
Plymouth Gazette) curiously illustrates the Right Rev.
Prelate's godly simplicity, accommodating spirit, and
general friendliness towards national education ; qua-
lities of which some of our Contemporaries rather pre-
maturely thought they had discovered glimpses in his
correspondence with Lord John Russell. We say pre-
maturely ; for although the Bishop " stooped," if not
" to truth," yet to civility, the anguis in herba was,
nevertheless, apparent. His Lordship's horror of Po-
pery does not extend to the alleged practises (in argu-
ment) of the Jesuits. His object was not to allow the
question of National Education to advance, but to steal
a march upon Lord John Russell. The proposition
that the Bishops should be admitted to a conference
with the Committee of Privy Council to devise mea-
sures for carrying into effect some plan of national
education,!the Church being its " guardian and admin•
istratrix," is a remarkably cool assumption. Its ten-
dency is at once to destroy the nationality of education.
And how much of education it would leave, without
the nationality, is very questionable. No Dissenter or
Roman Catholic would confide the instruction of his
children to such guardianship ; nor has the " National
Society" borne such fruits as will dispose any real
friends of popular instruction to concede a monopoly
to its exclusive culture. If the proposed conference is
to produce any satisfactory results, it must be much
more 'comprehensive. Other sects have a right
to be heard, and to watch lest the legal-
ized religious liberty of their members be
:Infringed ; and the main interest of all, that of uni-
versal education, will assuredly need protection
a mid such a council of jarring ecclesiastics. It will be
much more satisfactory to the country for the Commit-
tee of Privy Council to pursue its own course, without
calling in any clerical advisers at all. By the Bishop's
last correspondence it appears that the " National So-
ciety" has determined against opening any of its schools
to the Government inspectors. The utmost it will con-
cede is, that its own inspectors (if any) should be subject
to the approval of the Committee of Privy Council, in
those cases where the school has been " built or sup-
ported with aid from Government." We confess we
cannot imagine how any party, disposed to deal fairly
with the subject, should thus make a point of honour
of resisting the right of inspection. If to a con-
siderable extent the system be a dishonest pretence,
the prevention rather than the diffusion of instruc-
tion ; if the scholars chiefly exist in paper returns
and the :swelling arithmetic of reports and anniversary
orations ; if the majority of the children leave what is
misnamed school in a state of deplorable ignorance, and
with no single attainment rendering them the better
qualified for discharging the duties and reaping the
enjoyments of civilized life ; if the proper work of
early tuition be postponed to mere proselytism and the
verbal repetition of forms without mental comprehension,
then, indeed, we can very well perceive why un-
qualified resistance should be offered to the visits
of inspectors, whose impartial reports must subject
the futility and hollowness of the system to me-
rited exposure. The resistance then becomes per-
fectly intelligible and natural. But in a society sin-
cerely and zealously striving to do its part, and to do
its best, in the great work of training the rising ge-
neration of a mighty empire, such resistance is as ut-
terly incomprehensible as it is obviously pernicious.
The formal opinion of the Bishop, subjoined to the
decision of the " National Society," by no means re-
moves the feelings which that decision is calculated to
excite. He first limits the right of inspection to
schools towards " the erection of which the Govern-
ment has contributed." Why the " erection" rather
than the support ? Why should a shilling of public
money be granted without evidence of utility ? There
is no virtue in old walls to screen jobbery and ineffi-
ciency ; although the Bishop seems to think so. How
numerous may be the class of schools which this reser-
vation would shelter, we know not ; but we cannot
overlook the readiness thus evinced to limit the safe-
guard of instruction within the narrowest possible
bounds. But still, it may be said, there are limits
within which even the Bishop of Exeter has concetied
the important point of governmental inspection. And
so it does appear at first ; but we must not be too
hasty. There is a " secondly" to come, in which
it is contended that the report must include reli-
gious instruction. Of course it follows that religion
will be the main object of the inspector's attention ;
and from that it follows that he must be the delegate
of the ecclesiastical authorities. By so simple a pro-
cess may a national security be transmuted into a
clerical job. The Bishop is one of those who are
determined, if possible, to keep down the amount of
popular instruction. One of his objections to the pro-
posed report is, that they would stimulate teachers too
much in the communication of " secular" knowledge to
the children, and render them, as he says, " unduly
eager to exhibit a good appearance before the world, in
those particulars which are thus prominently brought
into public notice." Now, is not this a worthy would-
be " guardian" of National Education ? What may
not be expected from the co-operation of one
whose grand objection to a measure is, that it
would be efficient ? It is worse than idle to
dream of co-operation from such quarters. They will
yield no co-operation, but such as that of Judas with
the Apostles. There can be no compromise with them
but the compromise of the object itself. No concession
will win their forbearance towards national education,
unless it be the concession that the people shall not be
really educated. The Bishop only speaks for himself
in this " opinion ;" and as we see that he objects to the
Bishop of Chichester naming an inspector, we trust
that many of his brethren would hesitate to join in his
avowal that, for the people, he loves darkness rather
than light. Reports that should relate only to secular
instruction would, according to the Bishop, produce
an impression unjustly disadvantageous towards
" the very best schools ;" by which he',explains himself
to mean those " which shall make the Bible, and
illustrations of the Bible, the foundation on
which history, botany, and geography, &c., may
well be a superstructure." The best schools for the
Bishop's purpose, of preventing " secular" instruction,
they must be undoubtedly. A more profane and de-
grading use of thefloly Scriptures, or a more barbarous,
incoherent, and useless mode of teaching science in
schools, can scarcely be devised. His plan is to tell
children of the hyssop that springeth out of the wall in
Judea, but say nothing of the grain that ripens on the
broad lands of Britain ; expound the rude machinery
by which, in Palestine, they watered their cattle and
grounds, but let the steam-engine abide in mystery ;
make them familiar with the genealogy of Jeroboam,
the son of Nebat, but pass by the Tudors, the Stuarts,
and the Guelphs. The Bishop is not a fool ; he
does not really imagine that modern education can
be thus conducted. He does not suppose that
when the Bible shows how the Israelitish youth
were trained in the history, laws, and sciences of their
time and country, any respect for the Bible is evinced
by excluding from education those of our own country,
and deriving all from those of Judea. The Bishop
knows better,but he perceives that this singularly ineffi-
cient and preposterous method of " secular" instruction
would not inspire any undue eagerness in teachers, and
hence his preference. We suspect the devisers of this
notable plan would, were it established, speedily find
that they had outwitted themselves. The Bible is the
guidance to another world, but it was never meant to
supersede all secular knowledge in this world. The
children taught to find it in their geography, astro-
nomy, and history, might reasonably think of finding
other things also, and of imitating those Puritans who,
more than any other body upon record, realised this
modern educational theory. They took the field, with
the Bible in one hand, the broadsword in the other, and
soon lopped away all such rotten branches as Bishoprics
of Exeter. For religious knowledge the Bible may be
all-sufficient, notwithstanding the Oxford doctors ; but
for peace in this world, and making the most of its
good things, there must be the admixture of secular
knowledge. Any evidence of sincere approximation
towards union in the fleet public duty of a state we should
welcome with cordial gladness. But hostility is most
of all to be dreaded when admitted into counsel, and
entrusted with administrative power. Much better is
it to rely on an efficient plan, gradually extending itself
as its worth is understood, than to set up an imposing
and hollow system, one in which the reality of Na-
tional Education is evaporated into the smoke of pub
lie delusion.

(From the Morning Advertiser.)
We adverted at some length on Saturday to the dis-
creditable conduct of the Church of England, in incar-
te.”ating Mr. Thorogood in gaol for refusing to pay a
few shillings of Church-rates. Is the Church the only
blameable party in this matter ? To the Church alone
attachev3 the odium of having instituted the prosecution,
which teiminated in the imprisonment of Mr. Thoro-
good ; but ,after that imprisonment took place, another
party comes io for its share of the blame. The moment
Mr. Thorogood was consigned to one of the cells of
Chelmsford gaol, it was The duty of the Dissenters to
have " moved heaven and eartli"—we do not like the
phrase, but in the present case we have particular rea•
sons for using it—to effect his liberation. Have they
done this? Have they done anything at all ? To
their shame be it spoken, they have allowed Mr.
Thorogood to suffer an imprisonment of eight months'
rd.ration without making any effort to procure his
release. If they had been true to their principles
a, l_ Dissenters they would have made the walls of
Parliament rive- again with their remonstrances against
an act of such flagrant oppression, and would have de-
manded, in
fThehomrseoglovoecsi a vlve .
oies-.of thunder, the liberation of Mr.
'the of being biash
to think
dktehscaetnmdaenntisvhoof
tchlaeinpi to
Pu-
ritans of the honourseventeetb century--a body of men who
were inspired by the noblest feelings, and actuated by
n o
who,f /Ths
the loftiest principles ,a body
who were an ho-
tour to the human race, a
worth, have never been surpassed in
we point
blush, nt of moral
we re-
peat, to think that the descendants Of such men should
be so craven-hearted, and so indifferetit to the •
principles