The Sun.
London, England, 1839-05-31 00:00:00

justice, if you refuse—but you will not refuse what God
and the Constitution grant.

We regret to say that the Liberals were yesterday
defeated in their motion in the Common Hall,
for an address to the QUEEN. We shall not seek
to deny that Toryism is making some progress in
the Corporation of the City of London. Com-
posed as that is of some of the most renowned
jobbers of the empire, who dread Corporation Reform
at the hands of the Ministers, and who have
recently been terrified by the prospect of a
Police Bill, we are surprised that the Corporation
should so long have given its support to the Libe-
ral party. Everybody knows that the Ministers
have grievously offended the Corporation by hint-
ing at the possibility that the City might be better
governed than at present, and the jobbers have
taken the earliest opportunity of revenging them-
selves, by giving a vote which they thought would
spite the Whigs. They have succeeded ; but we
doubt whether they have thereby added to the
vitality of the Corporation.

At the great meeting of the Clergy and their
friends, held at WILLIS'S Rooms, on Tuesday, it
was stated that there is a great want of " well
qualified schoolmasters," and the National Society
therefore proposes now, in the year 1839, to " found,
without delay, an Institution under the direction of
a Clergyman, a graduate of one the Universities,
for the purpose of receiving into training a
number of young persons, who wish to be-
come teachers ; and also a limited number of
adults who, having been properly educated else-
where, desire only as heretofore, to obtain
opportunity for practice in the art of teaching."
The National Society, by proposing now to do this,
gives a solemn sanction to the utility of such an es-
tablishment. Now, one part of our case against
the opulent Clergy of England, always living in
peace and fully protected, is that such schools as
this, which they propose at present to establish,
have been in full operation in Germany for many
years. Our Priesthood intend to establish one of
them here at present, because other parties have
talked of a model school, and a normal school ;
and the Clergy and their friends hasten now, as they
did in 1811, to do something like good, in order
to take away the credit from others. At that time,
to cut in on the British and Foreign School
Society established in 1808, they got up their Na-
tional Society for Education in the tenets of the
Established Church, never having budged one foot
or moved a hand in the good cause of general edu-
cation before ; and now, because the Committee of
Privy Council proposes to establish a normal
school, and because that has been of late recom-
mended by Mr. WYSE and others, they are anxious
to forestall them. Why did they not do something
of the kind before, when such a model has been in
existence in Germany for many years ? An in-
stitution called the Seminary, for forming and
teaching schoolmasters, was established as early
as 17M, very nearly a century ago, in Ha-
nover. The founder was a humble man of the
name of BOTTCHER, who endowed it with his
whole property, but he was assisted by Dr. GOET-
TEN, the first Court Chaplain and Consistorial
Counsellor, who was the principal man to organize
the school. Some of the most distinguished mem-
bers of the Hanoverian Church have been teachers
or members of this school, and contributed to pro-
mote its improvement.
" It consists," says the writer of Travels in the North
of Germany,' a book published in 1820, "of two distinct
parts, a school for children, and a school for schoolmasters.
In the first, 500 boys and girls of different ages, divided
into classes, are taught reading and writing, grammar,
arithmetic, church music, knitting, sewing, etc. etc.
The persons who are instructed so as to qualify them
to teach others, are divided into two classes. The first is
composed of young men who wish to becoine teachers, the
second of the best of these young men selected after some
months' examination and study, awl destined to be the
future schoolmasters of Hanover." In the spring
of 1813, thirty-three of the former received in-
struction."-4' The second or superior class amounting
to thirty, selected as ssesisionsdi, devolt- eaebssaistly in the
house and have lodging, food, and bed linen, found them,
and when any of them are employed, as the oldest and best
amongst them are, in instructing the children of the semi-
nary, of whom, in fact, they are the only teachers, they re-
ceive a small gratuity of Is. Bd. per week. "---" Both these
classes of young men are taught those things which they
are afterwards to teach to others, and they are taught, and
severely, and much practised in, the best known methods
of teaching."—" Each in turn plays the master part with
the others."—Since the establishment of the seminary it
has educated or improved the education of more than 2,000
persons wlr have been employed in teaching others.
There is no better method for improving a whole people
than this of instructing schoolmasters, and the good is
therefore incalculable which has been accomplished by this
establishment of the illustrious Boucher. "—"The institution
has been the parent and the model of many similar in many
parts of Germany. There is scarcely a capital town, and
certainly no kingdom or country on the north of Germany,
which has not at present a seminary."
Here, then, is the proof that such a college or
school for teaching schoolmasters, as our Clergy
are now only thinking of forming when they are
urged on by the deeds of others whom they cannot
suffer to surpass them, has been established in
Germany for almost a century, and had diffused its
blessings over that country for many years before
the National Society, under the auspices of the
Clergy, had come into existence. If any contriv-
ance for the improvement of manufactures had
been in general use in Germany half a century
ago, would our manufacturers have neglected to
import it into this country? But our Priesthood
are the manufacturers of education, they insist on
having a monopoly of it, they have long had such
a monopoly; they contend, and millions of fools admit
their arrogant pretensions, that they only can teach the
people ; and here is a proof that a great improve-
ment has been in existence in a neighbouring coun-
try, with which ours was in continual communication,
for nearly a century, and our education monopolists
never dreamt till now of importing it.
That of itself is a proof of their gross negligence.
It remains to be added that the good work which
they neglected, was much promoted by the humble
and poorly paid ministers of Germany, exposed to
the calamities of war and foreign invasion, while
our well-protected, largely-paid Priests did nothing
but feed themselves and encourage the persecution
of those who did no: profess their creed.

" The two inspectors of the seminary," says the writer
we have already quoted, "must have been educated for the
Church, and some of the most respectable members of tha
Church have filled these situations. The present curator
of the seminary (a person who, without receiving any
salary, is the chief of the Establishment, who examines the
accounts and answers for the conduct of all the inferiors to
the Consistories), and who is the first dignitary of the
Church of Hanover, once filled the place of Inspector to
the seminary, rose to eminence, like many of his brethren,
by the useful labours of teaching charity children. In fact
whatever opinion may be formed of the education of the
north of Germany (and every body admits that It is ex-
cellent) the clergy of that country deserve most of the
praise of the censure which may belong to it. They have
needed no rich bishoprics to stimulate them to perform
their duties, and they afford a shining proof, that large
money emoluments are not necessary to make a set of men
either useful or dignified."

The comparison we wish to establish is betweci

the services of our own enormously paid and arro-
gant Priesthood, and those of other countries, in
promoting general education ; and here is a proof
that they, while our country has far outstripped other
countries in most of the useful arts and many of
of the sciences, they are nearly a century behind the
Clergy of the north of Germany, according to the
practical admission conveyed in now proposing to
do here what has there been done so long ago.
It was perhaps the misfortune of the An-
glican Church that it had a different origin
from the Lutheran Church. The Anglican Church
was set up by the secular power from no very

pure motives, and was not in its origin popular. It

•-• • •
always relied more on the Prince than the People,

more on the Court and the Aristocracy than on the

nation, and was upheld more by the power of the

- -
Government than by popular support. Republican

. . . _ .
Presbyterianism, and the more monarchical Lu-

theranism, defied both Pope and Prince ; they were

established in opposition to the secular power and