The Sun.
London, England, 1839-09-23 00:00:00

14WENING EDITION.

A LETTER ON NATIONAL EDU-
CATION TO THE DUKE OF BEDFORD, K. G.,
FROM LORD BROUGHAM.

This Letter has just issued from the press and
cannot fail to excite the liveliest interest among
Churchmen and Dissenters, and indeed among all
classes of the community. It announces the im-
portant fact that he who has fought the good fight
for the last thirty years, who has laboured in season
and out of season to establish a system of universal
instruction independent of the control of the Es-
tablished Church, has yielded to " inevitable neces-
sity," arid given up the contest in despair. Lord
Brougham states at length his reasons. "We
have been completely defeated," he says, " and de-
feated without any hope of a favourable reverse of
fortune another time, in the attempt to carry any
plan of education in which the Established Church
shall not be consulted, that is to say, shall not have
some deference paid to its claims beyond those of the
different sects—some superiority assigned to it above
the level on which all sects are to be kept ;" and
expresses his conviction, from the result of the de-
bate on the subject towards the close of the Session,
that " some such acknowledgment the Church and
the Lords are fixed in their determination to have,
a.nd that both will be satisfied with a very moderate
one." God grant that his conviction be well
founded, and that the Dissenters and all the friends
of unshackled education, except himself, be wrong
in entertaining the belief that the Church and the
High Church party, who rule in the Upper House,
will not be satisfied with any moderate acknow-
ledgment. It would, however, be only a waste of
time to discuss the plan till we know what are the
moderate views of the Church, and we shall there-
fore rest satisfied for the present with giving copious
extracts from this important document. His Lord-
ship thus commences his letter to the Duke of
Bedford :

" BROUGHAM, SEPT. 6, 1839.
" In the correspondence which we lately had
upon the great subject of National Education, I
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private and of political friendship, but as a fellow-
labourer for thirty years in promoting the Improve-
ment of the People, by undermining, if we could not
at once overthrow, the empire of ignorance,--their
most tyrannical oppressor ?—I say nothing of per-
sonal obligations, both because I am addressing one
who has long since forgotten them, and because
the present token of esteem would be but a poor
attempt at repaying them.
If the person to whom I write is appropriate, no
less so is the moment I have chosen for writing. Af-
ter many
_years of anxious expectation that some-
thing would be done by a Liberal Government for the
Education of the People, whose freedom used to be
the chief object of the party's desire, a plan was pro-
pounded, good, certainly, as far as it went—for to
such acause, tothe relief of such necessities, the very
smallest contributions must be acceptable—but of
so very trifling a kind compared with the exigency
of the occasion, that it had nothing like a claim to
be called even a half measure, unless that, like all
half-measures, it excited as great opposition among
adversaries as the boldest scheme could have called
firth, and failed to rouse the least interest among
friends. The House of Commons voted a small
sum for schools, and the Government pro-
posed to spend it upon establishing a single
seminary for training teachers, but very un-
necessarily stated the rules of the intended in-
stitution in a Minute of Council, which alarmed
the Established Church, in my opinion most
groundlessly ; whereupon the small scheme was
sit once abandoned, and the great clamour spread
wider and raged louder than before, until intended
in a vote of the House of Lords condemning the
principles of the plan by an almost unexampled
majority, the Commons themselves having only re-
fused to concur in the sentence by a bare majority
in a very full House.
" A. few days after this most mortifying event—
mortifying to you and me, and all who think with us
that the true principle of Education is to give the
people secular instruction in which all sects can join,
and leave the important task of spiritual instruction
to their several religious teachers—l once more
brought forward my plan of Universal Education,
and was opposed by one of the Whig Prelates, a most
respectable and learned individual, who had voted
with us on the previous occasion, but whose only
objection to ray plan was its not giving the Church
any control over popular instruction and who there-
fore had all along felt, and even thought, with our
1 adversaries, while he voted with us the week before.
Lord Melbourne expressed himself favourably to my
Bill, which, indeed, had been originally digested and
framed in concert with Lord John Russell ; but he
suggested very naturally that the period of the Ses
'ion seemed to point out the expediency of delaying
it until next year, and to this I acceded—not per-
haps at the moment quite expecting to see, after that
day, some score or thereabouts of new measures in-
troduced by the Government, and which no man
had ever heard of before, instead of being, like my
P 13114 ultimately pressed on the consideration of
arliament, after lying for years on the table, and
being for years discussed in the country. However,
fearful of cooling whatever zeal for the subject might
exist in any quaiter, I did comply with our friend's
desire, and, everything considered, I do not regret
a step by which I really lost nothing for the Bill,
beyond a division that would have left me in a mi-
nority—with the Government support, no doubt,
but still in a minority.
" Between the division upon the Archbishop's mo-
tion and the debate upon my Bill, a private belt im-
portant meetin3 of our friends had been held in the
same place in St. James's-street, where, thirty years
ago, I had presided and had proposed the formation
of the British and Foreign School Society, of which
You have always been the head, and always the muni-
ficent supporter. Undismayed by our recent defeat,
and steadily adhering to our principles, we resolved to
persevere in promoting by private exertions, that sys-
tem of Universal Instruction (unminglecl with secta-
rian considerations) which we saw daily less hope of
obtaining from the wisdom of Parliament. The fast
Wfriends of our cause, the Duke of Sussex, Lord John,
. Allen, a man among a million, the truly venerable
J. Costar, Joseph Foster, T. Mills, W. Tooke, and
many others, were present ; but I name some of these
Ai among the most eminent in the religious world,
order, for the thousandth time, to show how
silly the cry is that we care little for religion, be-
,,c.,'-'se, in truth, we consider religion of so inestima-
uiy important a nature, that it can never be made
the subject of compromise and concession ; and that
therefore it cannot be taught to children of one sect
by professors who belong to another. Resolutions
were entered into for establishing training and
model schools ; and a very large subscription was
immediately made to effect this object. But while
I joined in these proceedings most heartily, I tookoc-
casion to unfold my general views, both on the subject
at large—on that we all were agreed—and on the pre-
sent position of our question, which was likely to
create more difference of sentiment ; and touching
the practical inferences to he drawn from recent
occurrences, I broached those opinions, which
form a main subject of the present communica-
tion, and which I have of late repeatedly canvassed
with the friends of Education. They were briefly
but distinctly adverted to when I soon after
moved the second reading of the Bill, and again,
when I last addressed the House of Lords on the
subject. I earnestly desire your best attention to
them. I most anxiously implore every real friend
of Education to think seriously of them ; and I
amsure that, in proportion as any one shall feel
deeply impressed with the importance of edu-
cating the people, and shall be resolved to pursue
this,_ paramount object with absolute singleness of
neart, so will he be disposed to dismiss from his
n'ind any consideration of party and of sect, and,
regardless of all victory, save the trimnpit over
gno ranee
be found and rice, will cono
best calculated speedily toer about hathisll
Most blessed consummation. in
bringw'la t ey
distinguish
I have now rehearsed the circumstances which
tne present moment from all former
periods in the history of our cause. They are of a
mixed.o nature ; of very various hue ; some calculated
t inspire us with hope,—some to damp our ex-
pectations,—none, I fondly trust, to fill tr. with (le"
Voodencycertainly all, without exception, fitted
rouse our best exertions,
tQ r
Calmly, though '
anxiousl upon the course which it
now behoves us to h Y.' and make us deliberate
old in a somewhat new posture
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