The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-03 00:00:00

anything else which I wish to point out to my fel-
low-countrymen. Foreigners invariably remark—
and I beg you to pardon me for what I am going to
say; it may be unacceptable, but it is true—fo-
reigners remark thg.t though in England there
is perfect liberty—a man may say anything he
pleases, so long as he do not injure his neighbour,
and may do what he likes so long as he do not
injure his neighbour—there is no great potentate

—(laughter)—to
8a 3;11 shall not print, you
shall not speak, youy shall not think ; any man
may speak, think, and do what he likes, so long,
as I have said, that he do not injure his neigh-
bour.
Yet the foreigner remarks that between
the various classes of Englishmen there is a
greater chasm and a greater separation than there
is in any country on the Continent ; that the labour-
ing man in England is not in any way a companion
for, end has no means of consorting with, the gen-
tleman ; and it is true. The gentleman, also,
although he may be kind in his behaviour, though
he may be a good man in all his relations of life,
Yet he shrinks from the bench of the labouring
man. Why is that ? It is because the labouring
class of this country is not endowed with the win-
ning manners that the labouring classes of other
countries possess. They are morose, they are sus-
picious ; I may say they are a repulsive set of people.
Not that they have not all the capacities of the other
class—for they have all the capacities of some of
their wealthy and happy brethren ; but the pecu-
liarity is that they fancy themselves a class apart,

having no communion with and no share in the
society of their well-to-do and happy brethren.
Nov, I want to break down this barrier of separa-
tion; I want to make the labouring man in all
things—in his character, in his manners and his
intelligence—quite equal to any man in the coun-

try. You, sir, and your fellows are laying down
the groundwork of that equality which will make
Englishmen indeed " a band of brothers," which
will make them present a front such as the world
cannot put down, which will make them, indeed,

the leaders of mankind. (Cheers.) Weil, my
friends, I tell you all that this is within your reach.
Now, we are told, our much-esteemed friend here
has told us this evening, that the little people, the
quarrymen, go to work at seven years of age. This
is a mistake on the part of parents. (Hear, hear.)
It is throwing away their capital, it is living
upon their capital. If you sent your children to
school until they were of the age of twelve, and
then had them back after they had gained the
means of acquiring knowledge of an elementary
character, the education given them would be far
richer for the poorer class of men than if they were
sent to work when seven years of age. On an oc-
casion like this, however, I cannot enlarge further
upon this topic ; bat I would beg to impress on the
minds of my fellow countrymen, the labouring
classes, that their own interests ought to impel
them to have their children educated in the best pos-
sible manner. (Hear, hear.) Now, sir, I will en-
deavour to address myself to those who are striving
to educate the class by whom they are surrounded.
There are some things now that I think I can say
to you, though I dare say you have heard it before,
but I will say it again on the present occasion—

something which may prove a solace to you, and a
solace to those who hear me. The great difficulty
you have in educating the people is that the fathers
take their children from school too early, but if they
were told, by allowing their children to remain at
school until the age of 12, what advantage they
could acquire from the habit of reading, what great
use and what great pleasure they could obtain by
acquiring the habit of writing, ani what great ad-
vantage they could obtain by acquiring the first
rules of arithmetic, every one of them I think, would
say with us that it was a great point gained.
(Cheers.) Now, sir, it happens that amongst my
friends one who is very enthusiastic, one who has
paid great attention to the subject of teaching, with
his friends has endeavoured to find out whether the
hours of instruction might not be greatly shortened,
and I moved, sir, in the House of Commons for this
return, which I believe was printed by order of the
House of Lords. This is a return containing an in-
quiry into the advantage of what is called the
"short time" system in teaching. My friend and
his friends thought that the time of children was
occupied too much in teaching and that their minds
were strained and overburdened, and that they did
not learn nearly so much as they would if halt
the time were employed in teaching them,
and they advised the adoption of the short time
scheme—taking half the usual time for instruc-
tion, and the other half for drilling them as
Volunteers are drilled and as sailors are drilled.
They employed these means, and the consequence
was that the children who spent half their time in
scholastic instruction learnt quite as much as those
who spent their whole time at it, and that they freed
themselves from awkward habits by means of the
Volunteer and naval drill. Now, I wrote to my friend
when I was first spoken to on this subject, asking
him to tell me what he thought on the question, and
he wrote me a letter which, with your permission, I
will read. It is very instructisse and very amusing.
The hon. gentleman then read the letter of his friend,
in which the writer said that the systematic inflic-
tion of punishment, mental as well as bodily, insepa-
rable from the old plan of teaching, was altogether
wrong. He made it a rule to discharge any groom
who whipped his horse, for where one required
punishment 99 out of 100 were spoilt by it, and so it
was with children. Schoolmasters in the half-time
schools and schoolmasters in some of the best schools
in the land never used corporal punishment. With
respect to the reduction of long hours of study, he
was of opinion that after too long a period of seden-
tary confinement the attention of the pupil would flag.
A good teacher would adapt his lessons to the capa-
city of the "child, and would make the value of the
lesson sustain itself by the interest he infused in his
manner of teaching. When the voluntary attention
of the scholar flagged, when coercion was required to
keep up his attention,;then it was time to stop. The
writer proceeded to mention what he had been told
by Sir. Edward Hay, who had great acquaintance
with children, respecting a small school which be
had visited. The hours were reduced from six to four,
and the system of drilling had been adopted, and
during the first year of the new plan the number of
non-attendants:on account of illness wasbut one-tenth
of the number formerly. The reduction of the long
hours was the reduction of great weariness, and the
consequence was that the number of malingerers, or
those who shammed illness, was very great. The
scholars were not now so desirous of escaping from
school as formerly, and did not wend their way to
school with such gloomy forebodings of punishment
as before. The children, the writer continued to say,
should have just enough of lessons to give them a
relish for play, and just enough of play to give them
a relish for their lessons. The physical and mental
exercises should be so adjusted as to stimulate each
other. One point (continued the writer) to be en-
forced in connection with the half-time school sys-
tem is that instead of sacrificing the domestic eco-
nomy to: the school, the school adapts itself to the
domestic economy. Children cannot too soon be got
into the moderate exercise of the business of life,
and the half-time system, if it is properly alternated,
should have reference to the actual business and
duties of life,while the elementary instruction should
make the children cheerful and happy. The first ob-
ject is to enable children to read to their parents at
night, and
every boy who has acquired the necessary
education 18 thus in a position to derive all the plea.
sure and ad vantage that reading gives to the reader.
penny weekly newspaper brings them the
world for the whole week. However bad
of he
be, it must be admitted that
newspaper
impression Thennt:a tYs thet
ent on the worst impres-
the worst
cannot but be an improvement 8173:0yn conveyed in the worst paper
sr
ieoand conveyed
the newspaper by t
he
it would be much
alnd if you get them to
vreogicuel'ar
better than listening to the
Then the writer conversation of idle,
dissolute, or brutal people.
rro-
ceeded to say
that wherever wsp
tended to do with such obsolete and perni-
cious ideasnapers went, they
as witchcraft. (Laughter.) No family
away
who read a weekly newspaper, would believe in
oughtwitchcraft.fam i l y tcoi rtel circle. encouraged
n I
wlli as a means of cheering the
tinued Mr. Roebuckle)llteSo:depens ebyera°;mes schooleens
established by Mr. Ottery,
a clergyman of the
,
Church of England, who has a cure
atWindsor, and
vocal
tarhle a music
cwuosani was