The Sun.
London, England, 1870-09-22 00:00:00

ments on which devolve the executive functions of the State,
should partake as little as possible of the ephemeral cha-
racter of the transient administrations of the day, or of
the capricious and arbitrary nature of the legislation of
the assembly from which these administrations are taken—
that the executive departments should be permanent, easy
of approach, and impowered to pronounce through their
chiefs final decisions on questions submitted to them. Yet
in proportion to their merits will be the rapidity of their
absorption of the minor though cognaie powers now en-
trusted to local bodies, and I acknowledge that I look
with the utmost jealousy on all progress in this direction.
No one is more aware than myself of all the in-
conveniences and drawbaoks attending the petty in-
trigues by which local and municipal action is almost
always encumbered. I have played a certain part on that
stage, and have had personal experience of the mischief
arising from them ; but still, with all this full in my re-
collection, I must own that I dread the tendency to a'
change which shall, by degrees, induce my countrymen to
avoid the trouble of administering their own affairs, and
to withdraiv themselves from the annoyances and labour
of the parochial, municipal, and other duties connected
with the localities in which their lot is cast, to deprive
them of the best school in which they may fit themselves
for duties and offices of a higher class, and to inflict
on the central government, many which it can but most
inadequately discharge, and, above all, whilst leaning
on it for . every petty detail of local administration,
shall tempt them to blame it for every trivial shortcoming.
Seeing what has been done in foreign cities, both in the
way of artistic and sanitary improvements, it is difficult
not to contrast unfavourably the condition of our large
towns with those of corresponding importance on the Con-
tinent, and to forget the price at which these improvements
have been purchased. Like the persons mentioned by
that charming writer, Miss Edgeworth, who pestered her
father, the :great machinist, on the subject of some me-
chanical invention of his, and on being told that it would
not work, always asked whether it could not be made to do
so by a spring ?—so whenever anything in their theories par-
ticularly difficult, disagreeable, or dangerous, must be met,
minds of a certain class are ever ready to call on the
Government to supply their own lack of ingenuity or
courage. This " Government" means, in plain English, a
chief of department who can be but very partially informed
as regards local wants and circumstances, deriving his
knowledge of details from virtually irresponsible subordi-
nates, and liable in acting upon their recommendation and
in accordance with thilf strict traditions of office, to come
to decisions-from which no appeal lies, save to himself. To
my mind, the line to be observed by the central authority,
is interference only for the purpose of enfoicing obedience
to the law, not with the processes by which the end is to
be effected, though it may assist in the character of
arbitrator in promoting harmonious combination for
public purposes, and in preventing the clashing of selfish
interests so warmly contended for in the late discussions
upon this much debated matter. Yet, the measure now be-
come law must be considered rather as a preliminary
preparation for the fulfilment of a scheme, than
a scheme itself. It has not proscribed religious,
though it has dogmatic, teaching in the schools
hereafter to be created by rating, and the
Country must be congratulated on having brought to bear
the practical good sense of the nation on this all important
point, at a moralist when the authors of the measure might
have been induced to yield to pressure in the opposite direc-
tion. Holding the conviction that education in its proper
sense is the fostering and directing the growth of the
spiritual as well as the intellectual part of man's nature
(though I am somewhat loath to repeat what many will
consider an universally acknowleged truism), I esteem
it a miserable mistake to look on instruction, which
is only conveying information, as satisfying the real
requisites of society in this . matter, which ought to
be the fitting of the man, not only for the discharge
of the duties of the station allotted to him here below,
but for the far higher one he ought to aspire to here,
after—the education of the whole man, not merely the
cultivation of the intellect ; cultivate, manure the soil as
you will, unless the light and the dew of Heaven fall upon
it, poisonous fungi and loathsome weeds will be your only
crop. "-Intellect alone is a poor moraliser" (I quote from
a pamphlet which many members of this society have
doubtless read). " The answer given to an English M.P.
who inquired of the governor of a large Prussian prison
if there were many uneducated inmates," was :
"We have not one unable to read and write, whilst
many of the prisoners are highly educated ; "
mark the word, " knowing for example, three or four
languages." Let me quote, too, the exclamation of a
Prussian philanthropist :—' What in the world does it
profit a State to have thieves who can write, and thieves
who can cypher ? they are only the more dangerous." In
the midst of the storms of debate, and the obscurity of
the future of the education movement, one bright ray of
light has cast a cheering gleam on this question, and that
is the determination shewn by. the people of England that
their children shall not be deprived by law of the benefits
of religious instruction in the schools they will
be compelled to pay for. I am sufficiently
narrow minded to be convinced that there is
not a sect which really believes in Christ whose
doctrines would not form a better foundation for a man's
life, than a mere set of philosophic axioms, which,
asserting no hold over the heart, impress them-
selves but very feebly an the ordinary under-
standing. The sermon on the Mount taught by
mere human authority in the same way as the philosophy
of Greece, would, I doubt, have as little influence over a
man's conduct, as that exercised by the wisdom of the
Athenian sages, or the Maxims of Confucius. That philf,-
sophy has failed to essentially ameliorate or elevate man-
kind, whilst the Christian religion, in spite of, and even
perhaps through the very antagonisms which have
sprung up in the midst of the Christian Church, has had
a power for good, to which leaving out other proofs of a
more general and cogent description, I hope our meeting
here to-day is A true, though perhaps a feeble testimony.
The question of compulsory education, properly so called,
can hardly be said to have received a solution anywhere,
and I may well hesitate to express an opinion upon it.
In the crowded state of the population of this country,
the difficulty of providing the means of subsistence is so
great, and with regret it must be confessed, the ignoring
of the advantages of instruction so common, that compul-
sory measures would be severely felt ; and the
more so from the entire freedom hitherto enjoyed,
and in this direction too often misused by the people at
large. A great impulse has been given to the
education of a particular class by holding out the chances
of obtaining Government employment to all who arrive
at a certain degree of attainment. The plea for this is
that it enables Government to obtain the greatest amount
of talent for public purposes, and to prevent the admis-
sion to these posts of unqualified individuals through
private interest. I entertain very grave doubts
as to the good effect, either to the GOvernment
or to the individual, of this measure, and not
less as to the advantages derived from it by the community
at large. The competitive examinations, now the only
mode by which entrance is to be obtained through the
straight and narrow gate which admits to Government em-
ployment has two great disadvantages—firstly, that of
being in itself a very unfair and unjust test as regards the
candidate himself ; and, secondly, of affording no proof of
his real fitness for such employment. With respect to the
first, it must be obvious that the candidate's success
must depend quite as much on the attainments of his
fellow-competitors as on his own ;. it is complicated by
the great variations unfairly introduced year by
year into the standard by which those attainments are
estimated, whilst there is on the part of the examiners
a natural and ever-inereasing propensity to raise
their requirements. The result is that a practice has
been introduced too well known by the title of cram-
ming; that is, gorging the memory with knowledge which
the mind is not required nor enabled to digest, so that
success becomes a matter of memory rather than of intel-
lectual power. As to the second point, the candidate who
is successful too often brings to the service of Government
a mind and body exhausted by premature exertion,
to whom the drudgery of the petty duties of official
routine is disgusting, the more so .as he is conscious of
being fitted by superior attainments, if not by superior
intellect, for far higher posts and occupations. These
duties, are, therefore performed grudgingly, and without
spirit, and relinquished for any employment holding out
brighter proipects than the niggardly pay doled out by
the parsimony of Government to its servants.
I will not dwell on the cruelty to the candidates rejected
in competition from no fault of their own, and yet on
whom the disappointment of failure and a certain stigma
must rest, than which there are few things harder for the
young to bear, or more injurious to their characters. I
shall not enter further on the subjects to be mooted in the
Educational Department in the Congress, but we shall all
I am sure agree that one of the principal objects we should
aim at is the affording to those who are anxious to acquire
knowledge the means of prolonging their education, and
adding to their stock of information, by providing facilities
for a progressive course of studyi and this I hope will be-
come one of the points of discussion prominently brought
into notice. Yet, in treating this question, it must ever
be remembered that after all the acquisition of mere
abstract knowledge plays but a minor and subordinate
part in a man's life, and that it is in proportion as that
knowledge fits him for the peculiar post he has to fill,
that it is really a solid and substantial benefit to him.
The education of a man whose position in the world
indicates political life as his proper sphere, or upon
whom the cares and duties of great possessions are to
devolve, must evidently, if it is to be successful in
fitting him for his career, differ in many respects from
that given to the man intended for a special pro-
fession. The foundation, however, of both must be
identical in one point, namely, the creation of habits of
steady application, and to this end, whatever may be said
against their exclusive use, qassical studies, as well as
mathematical, are at least good, though thorny introduc-
tions. We often hear the dangerous classes spoken of.
The dangerous classes in my eyes are not only the idle and
vicious, which can be kept under control by the common
energy of a decently administered executive, and from
which little but occasional outbreaks are to be appre-
hended. Still less that of the industrious labourer,
artisan, or mechanic. It is rather that of a
highly instructed class, raised in its own esti-
mation above mechanical labour by its superior
acquirements, finding every avenue to advancement
thronged and impeded by its own daily increasing num-
bers, and without any outlet to its powers and its
energies, whilst its sufferings are rendered more acute by
its sharpened intelligence. This is, as far as I have been
able to observe, the class whose discontent is most perilous
to the commonwealth, and I think that your atten-
tion may .be drawn, not in vain, to the dis-
cussion of methods by which these sufferings