The Sun.
London, England, 1847-04-19 00:00:00

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LONDON, MONDAY, APRIL 19, 1847.

At a moment when the subject of national educa-
tion is occupying so large a space in the public mind,
it is reasonable that we should revert not merely to
the general neglect of which we have been guilty
towards the nation at large in regard to its intellec-
tual culture, but likewise to every act of positive
injustice that can be laid to our charge in relation to
this important topic. And, perhaps, there is no point
spun which the British Legislature could now-a-
days be more prominently and successfully assailed,
for not having acted up to the requirements of an
enlightened age, than that presented by the refusal it
has ,continuously given during the last seventeen
years to sanction the admission of Dissenters into our
Universities. That the Parliament, previous to the
Relief Bill of 1829, should have maintained the pro-
hibition, as enforced by the Universities, against the
Roman Catholics and Dissenters, is not so much a
matter of astonishment ; but its perseverance in the
same course, after the Roman Catholics had been
admitted to a participation in the highest civil privi-
leges in the State, and after the
passing of the
Reform Bill, which caused its spirit of improve-
mentporate bodies
to light upon all the
or. redounds
a the empire, the Universities excepted,c
neither to its honour,
ju
i
liberality. Owing to the right which wasicecl nor
on behalf of the State to impose civil disabailmitied
s
upon subjects whose religious tenets differed, in par-
ticular forms, from those of the Established Church,
and owing to the apprehension entertained that to
abandon this right would weaken, if not subvert, the
religion of the State, the Relief Bill was kept in
agitation for half a century before it became the law
of the land; but, although opposed to the opinion of the
Legislature, public opinion continued steadily to
rise, till at length its full tide set in, and forcibly
swept away the main barriers of religious persecu-
tion. 'Without troubling themselves to deny it in the
abitiitict; 'people at large justly conceived that
the right,iach had, been put forward as being in-
herent in the State;
,had, in the nineteenth century,
and ins respect to Roman Catholics, practically
resolved it4elf into i‘ alpolitic and unjust exercise of
- Nzti
.9.

power, and they generously repudiated the notion that,
by opening the portals of the Constitution to millions
of their fellow-countrymen, against whom they had
so long been closed, the religious welfare of the com-
munity would be in any wise affected. And
thus was a great advance made in the cause
of religious liberty. The idle fear which
was suffered to infect the mind of the Legisla-
ture, that the people could not be intrusted
with a large increase of political power, without en-

..„
dangering the balance of the Constitution, unjustly
I deprived the middle classes for half a century of
those rights and privileges which, it may almost be
said, were wrested from the aristocracy to be finally
embodied in the Reform Bill. Our modern Magna
Charta and the Relief Bill owe their success entirely
to the " pressure from without." As Lord MEL-
BOURNE
said, in 1837, " every institution is unwilling
to reform itself;" and this remark is peculiarly ap-
plicable to the Universities. Nevertheless we are
persuaded that the same external influence which
secured the two great measures to which we have
adverted will, whether the Legislature shall choose to
act promptly and judiciously or not, suffice before
long to induce Parliament to take into its own hands
the reformation and improvement which is so much
needed in the leading Universities of the empire.
The House of Commons will this week have an
opportunity of reconsidering the whole question, and
of determining whether it is right to permit the system
to continue of excluding Dissenters from the honours
and privileges which Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin
are empowered to confer. On Thursday next Mr.
CHRISTIE will re-open the discussion. We heartily
wish him success. He ought, and, no doubt, will

feel emboldened in persevering with an object which,
for its benevolence and enlightenment, entitles him to
a large share of public gratitude, when he remembers
that the present Prime Minister and other
eminent statesmen have seconded his past exertions
for rendering our ancient and influential seats of
learning really worthy of the British nation. Cer-
tainly, at no time so much as the present, could the
undoubted grievances of the Dissenters, so far as
sound policy is concerned, be more opportunely re-
moved. Rightly, or wrongly, the Dissenters are just
now strongly excepting to the Govrnment plan of
education, and mainly on the ground that the
patronage to be created by it will not be inconsider-
able, and that the Church will come in for the lion's
share. Whether, under all the circumstances by
which the vexata quostio of national education is
environed, the objections to Lord LANSDOWNE'S
scheme be well or ill-founded, yet, seeing how un-
justly the Dissenters have been treated by the Univer-
sities, whose authority is wielded almost entirely by
clerical members of the Established Church, and
seeing also how much the Dissenters have done for
education, despite of the frowns of power and
the existence of miserable and narrow-minded
prejudices, it assur'dly is not unnatural, to say the
least, that they shoull look with no favourable eye
upon any plan of education of which they conceive
the tendency would be to impart additional strength
to an institution that has hitherto proved itself so
inimical to the progression and development of their
civil and religious liberties. Neither is it to be ex-
pected that this feeling of hostility will abate till full

ustice shall have hem meted out to the influen

religious communities that exist in this country with
out the gala of the Church. Our Universities shoul(
be forwith re-organised, and have their laws re

modelled in accordance with the rights of con

science and principles of religious freedom.

Talk as we may about the advisability of pre-
venting the corruption of our populous cities by the
poisonous systems of intermural interment, of ne-
glected drainage, and of forgotten ventilation, there
are other causes of corruption—of social and moral
corruption—which call yet more loudly for a legisla-
tive interference. Sanatory measures, however com-
prehensive, cannot affect these causes. National
education, however liberal in its distribution of
knowledge, cannot sufficiently counteract their bane-
ful influences. Poor-laws, however generously de-
vised, cannot tend to their eradication or even their
abatement. We mean, of course, the brood from
which come juvenile offenders—those swarms of
young creatures which infest the rookeries of
this vast metropolis—children in years, but aged
in wretchedness, and poverty, and ignorance,
and vice, and degradation. You may see them
whenever you so list," on a summer day, when in the
blessed sunshine and warm air, misery itself will
sing, dashing in and out of these closes, careering
over the open ground, engaged in their rude games,
arrayed in flying drapery, here a leg out and there
an arm." " Their thin faces," continues the same
writer—one who has watched the brood with a
heart melting in his bosom with compassion, "their
thin faces," he says, " tell how ill they are fed; their
fearful oaths tell how ill they are reared; and yet
the merry laugh, and hearty shout, and scream of
delight, as some unfortunate urchin, at leap-frog,
measures his length upon the ground, also tell that
GOD made childhood to be happy, and that in the
buoyancy of youth even misery will forget itself."
The name of this deplorable class is Legion. Visit
the poorest districts of any large town, but especially
of the capital, and you will see this crowd of chil-

dren—the spawn of poverty and vice—sprawling in the
gutters, crouched on the doorsteps, clusteredin the car-
riage road, and scattered. over the pavement. They are
laloated with unwholesome living ; they are emaci-
ated with want ; they are ugly, sallow, dirty, ragged,
wretched, sickly, despicable. Here is one of them,
taken at random, and sketched NI ith the truthful
pencil of the benevolent writer we have already
quoted :—" Poor fellow ! it is a bitter day ; he has
neither shoes nor stockings ; his naked feet are reJ,
swollen, cracked, ulcerated with the cold ; a thin
thread-worn jacket, with its gaping rents, is all that
protects his breast; beneath his shaggy bush of hair
he shows a face sharp with want, yet sharp also with
intelligence beyond his years." That is no in-
dividual portrait, it is the portrait of an
entire species—it is a faithful delineation of
those deplorable atoms of humanity that are
warmed into life in the foulest corners of
our larger municipalities. They are as plants that
sprout up into noxious and poisonous brambles if
neglected—but which, if transplanted and tended,
would flourish, would bloom, would give a whole-
some and abundant fruitage.

What we have here remarked is applicable
to England, to Wales, to Scotland. How
immeasurably more applicable, therefore, must
it be to the famishing and miserable millions
of Ireland. 'When it is proved by statistical
evidence that such is the multiplicity of those
abandoned children, can we be amazed at the fre-
quency of crime, at the crowded state of our penal
settlements, at the thriving trade in justice carried on
in our criminal courts, at the busy occupation of
our turnkeys, and the practised skill of our hang-
men ? With such plentiful supplies of seed strewn
so lavishly over such a congenial soil, can we be in
any manner surprised at the extent and frequency of
the harvests ? Alas ! it is the parable of the tares
and the thistles again—neglected in the spring-time,
and torn up only when they have effectually choked
the barley.

For the diminution of evils which are at length re-
cognised to be so enormous, strenuous efforts are now
being made by every earnest and practical philan-
thropist. Ragged schools are starting into existence
in many despised localities, and, honour to those
gentle and intrepid women, honour to those ardent
and self-denying men, who for the sake of our com-
mon humanity brave all the filth, all the stench, all
the noise, all the suffocating and sickening in-
fluences of those wretched dens where the forlorn and
callow young are gathered under the wings of a
benignant knowledge! Reformatory establishments are
rising into life simultaneously, and still wiser and still
ing blessings amongth
better establhhments (if that be possible) are distribut-
where the outcast cshilal_e_
theh poverty-stricken of Glasgow
and Dundee, in
children receive
t h o s e I nbdoudsitlryi a
al
sSicvhe
lo lass,
mental nourishmenbetingThefreecatdvantagcs have been
springing
and are still
unassisted enterprise; they adre byprivate and
spon-
taneously from the charity of
heart. Beautiful as the endeavours aretbe therefore,popular
they are necessarily weak and, to a very considerable
give efficacy to
extent, ineffective. It requires the potent and
centrated impulse of Government to
these struggles against ignorance. There is a ne-

cessity for the stretching forth of the arm of the