The Sun.
London, England, 1856-11-12 00:00:00

LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 12, 1856.

LORD ROBERT CECIL,

M P., ON NATIONAL

EDUCATION.

STAMFORD, Nov. 7.
Last night our borough member, Lord R. Cecil, addressed
a ',lige audience in the lecture-room of the Mechanics' Insti-
tution in this town on the subject of "National Educa-
tion." His Lordship commenced as follows :—I cannot
flatter myself that the subject which I am now about to
submit to your consideration is a new one; bat then I can
console myself with the reflection that no subject that I
could have selected would be new nowadays. This subject
of national education is at least a practical one; it is one
in which many who hear me are probably personally in-
terested ; it is one that within the last few years has at-
tracted more attention and has excited more political die-
cnssion than any other of purely domestic interest. Its
history is indeed brief. It is almost entirely confined to
a description of the Educational controversy in the middle
of which we now find ourselves. But its importance
to all of us is enough to give it an interest. In an
age when national greatness depends not on numbers
or on territory, but on intelligence, the development
of intelligence is a duty the neglect of which will
hazard our national position. In a day when thought, not
force, is the ruler of mankind, and when in domestic govern-
ment numbers are more powerful than wealth, it is of the
most vital importance to the stability of our institutions
that that thought should be sound and those numbers en-
lightened. But before I proceed I must apologise for the
misuse of words. When I talk of the education of the
people I am free to confess that I do not mean what I say.
What I really mean is the instructionef the people. Though
it seems a paradox to say so, schools and schoolmasters have
really vary little to do with the education of the young.
To educate the young is really not so much to cultivate'
their intellects as it is to train their hearts, to mould their
habits of feeling and of action in accordance with the pre-
cepts of religion. The cultiire of the memory and the rea-
son, which is the work of the schoolmaster, is not educa-
tion ; it is mere instruction. And yet I must continue to
call it education, in spite of this apology ; for the habit
of thus misusing the word has become so inveterate with
speakers and writers—it boasts such high official sanction
-it has so embedded itself into all our habits of thought,
that I Should only be making myself unintelligible if I
affected a more accurate phraseology. Yet, I cannot but
think the distinction involves more than a question of
snore verbal correctness ; it seems to me productive of most
serious evil. It leads us to expect at the hands of our
schoolmasters results which they cannot possibly produce,
and to which they can only very partially contribute ; and
then we decry, and perhaps abandon, our system, because
it does not answer our unreasonable expectations. We
call our school instruction education, and then we expect
from it that moral training and moral renovation which
only the real education can supply. But real education
cannot be done on the school bench, under terror of the
school cane, by help of school books and black board.
If do le at all, it must be done elsewhere than at
school. It must be the result of the influence which
breathe around the daily life in a well-ordered home ;
of a mother's affectionate care anti tender vigilance ; of
holy lessons instilled and fostered under the genial warmth
of that soft religious sympathy which speaks, not in cate-
chisms, but from heart to heart; of that which teaches
more than words can teach—the daily example of a parent's
virtuous life. So far as these exist the child will have a
real education, If this were general, we should indeed
effect what we seek in vain from our school instruction—
the extirpation of profligacy and crime. But how should
we look for such results from the exercise of the school.
master's craft ? In his own sphere he can inculcate that
intellectual knowledge of Christian truth which must be
the basis of a hearty, living faith. He can dispel many a
mist of prejudice and error which in other times—aye, and
even in our own—has led men into foolish, suicidal crimes,
such as riotous strikes in the manufacturing and .machine
burning in the rural districts. And he can awaken a taste
for that intellectual amusement which is the best defence
against idleness, and, therefore, against vice, of which
idleness is generally the forerunner. But, what right
have we to expect of him that he should mould the
habits or convert the heart? What opportunities do we

giro him, what instruments do we put into his hands to fit
him for so high and arduous a work? Ha sees a child five

hours a day during five days in the week. He sees him
not alone, but in a class. Of the personal intercourse from
which alone practical influence springs there is not an atom.

He speaks to him possibly a dozen times in the course of the

day, and his sole intercourse consists in dinning into his
memory certain secular or religious lessons. But morality,

contentment, temperance, piety, are not lessons that'can be
learnt by the heart. Undoubtedly, learning is a preparation

for these virtues and a support to them when they are se-

quired; but of itself it is ritterly powerless to influence the
eonduct. If therefore, in the strenuous efforts we are mak-

ing, and are bound to make, to promote the spread of know-
ledge among the people, we imagine we have discovered a

panacea for making them good citizens and good Christians
we shall find ourselves grievously mistaken. I believe that

we are to raise the social condition of those classes with

whose degradation our country is so constantly taunted,

the se2ret is in the elevation of their homes. If, instead of
the squalid misery by which an English labotiring man is

so often repelled from his home and almost driven to the
pot•houso, we would substitute cheerfulness and comfort,
more would be done to make him temperate'and contented

than by the best school instruction that could be given. Do

not lot me be understood for a moment to deny that Intel-
lectual enlightenment will be a valuable agent in social ele-

vation. On the benefits of religious knowledge it is needless
to descant; and secular knowledge, by the tastes with

which it preoccupiesthe mind, will be a strung counterpoise

to the attraction of the public house, while it enlists the
motives of an enlightened selfishness on this side of industry

and frugality. That knowledge will help much to purify all
on whom it shines Ido not dispute. But in the present
tone of public opinion there seems to me a danger of think-

lug, it will do all, and I fear that this delusion has been not
a little fostered by the practice of giving to school teach•

.ug the name of education. However, as I have said, since
bho world is pleased to call it so, I must submit, for the

sake of clearness, to do the sane. The noble lord then
sketched the history of education iu this country. it
scarcely dates, he said, beyond the present century. The
Sunday schools, iuseed, reach (sack as far as 1702. But
there was uo organised system of daily popular education
till the National Society and the British and Foreign School
Society were formed at the beginning of the century, the
distinction between the two societies being that iu outs the
teaching was purely Church teaching—in the other, it was
simply biblical instruction. These two great societies for
40 years have been growing r.,pidly in strength. They hare
roused the feeling of the country to the necessity of educa-
tion ; they have been the channel for this benevolence of
thousands. So rapidly did they work, so promptly did the
liberality of the people and the zeal of the religious'
bodies respond to their call, that the number of scholars
in England and Wales increased between the years 1818
and 1833 from 674,000 to 1,216,0j0, or nearly double.
In 1833 the subject began to attract the attention of
the Government. it was felt that the State had a direct

interest in fostering these benevolent efforts ; though, hap-
pily, it was felt, too, that the State's function was to assist,
not to manage education. Accordingly, a series of Parlia-

montary grants were 00[13010110A, and iu conjunction with
the two societies the Privy Council has made a number of

udicious regulations, hasmailitaiued collegesfor the traili-
ng of schoolmasters, and has instituted a machinery of

inspection by which an enormous stimulus has been given

to education in this country. The numerical proof of its

success may be found in the census. Between the years
1,333 and lesl the schools have increased from 30,00 to
46,000, and the scholars from 1,200,00 J to upwards of
2,n00,003. Whereas in 1833 there was, on the wnole of
the population, one person out of every 114 at school, in
1851 there was one out of every 8 1-3 d; and I may add
incidentally that so strongly had public feeling been en-
listed in the cause of education that Sunday schools had
increased in a still greater proportion. One in every
was at a Sunday school. With respect to the quality of the
education encouraged by the Privy Council, I believe it is
generally admitted that, as a rule, inspected schools always
stand higher in point of elnciency than any others .round
them. Strong in these results, the system has rapidly
gained favour both with the Legislature and the public.
The public approbation is shown by the increasing num-
ber of schools which submit to the inspection, of which at
first there was so much jealousy; and the Legislature has
displayed its confidence by the more substantial token of
au annual vote, which has risen gradually from 10,0001. to
450,0001. Bat in a day when unanimity is so rare as to be
esteemed rather as a sign of torpor than of life it would be
unnatural if there were not considerable exception to be
made to this general confidence. Accordingly, we find that
several classes of theorists, seine of them objecting from re-
ligious scruples, some of them bitten with German or Ame-
rican fancies, express their disapproval in no meeeured
terms; and their indignation is not diminished by the fact
that the Legislature has recently declined to listen to their
complaints. After briefly adverting, ea passant, to
the importance of the self-instruction furnished by mecha-
nics' institutes, rural libraries, and other kindred i nstitu-
does, his lordship returned to the educational contioversy
and to the attacks that are made upon the Privy Council
system. Its assailants he divided into two classes —thew
who think it has done too little and those who think it
has done too much. Those who think it has done too much
are the advocates of the pure voluntary system. The other
oassailantsnParliament—namely, of t existinghe
the
sY6ein who press their schemes
advocates of a school rate,
Lao©
nothing
in common with the supporters of volun-
taryism. On the contrary, their proposal arises fro the
conviction that State aid is not curic4 farcough. Ihay

are not satisfied with the present system. They see, they
cannot but see, that education has increased with strange
and unexampled rapidity under the protection Of the
Privy Connell system. The force which propelled it ex-
ists still; the limits of its progress have not been reached.
If the reto of its increase be maintained it will
probably before the next census cornea have pro-
vided for all who are now destitute of the means of educa-
tion. But this is not enough for the theorists of whom I
speak. They will be satisfied with no success that is not
immediate. They tell us that we have 2,0 0,000 out of
1,00;),000 children uneducated, and they taunt us with the
comparison of what has been done for education in New
England, in Switzerland, and in Prussia, in each of which
- tares about one in six of the population is at school,
while we have only one in S!.. Now, with reference to
the first charge, my answer is that it is not true. Un •
doubtedly there are still a fearful number of children who
ought to be at school and are not. But that there are two
millions of children who are not and never have been at
school is not true. The figures in the census on which this
assertion is founded prove nothing of the kind. They only
indicate that there were 2,000,000 children between 5 and
15 who on the census day were net at school. A child may
have been at school from 5 to 14, and be a very well edu-
cated child ; but if during his 15th year the Registrar-
General comes and finds that he has left the sehool down he
goes among the 2,000,000 children whose uneducated con-
dition is a disgrace to the civilisation and Christianity of
England. Well, then, they hold up America and the con-
tinent as our models, and tauntingly show us the far larger
proportion of children who in those countries receive the
blessings of education. Now the returns on which the
alleged superiority of Americais founded have been shown
by minute calculations to be far too untrustworthy to be
the groundwork of any comparison whatever. As tei the
continental states the case is simply this : —ln England we
do not interfere with a parent's right to deal with his chil-
dren as he thinks proper; abroad the children are driven
to school by the police. Naturally enough, therefore, their
schools fill better than ours. I will now invite your atten-
tion to the specific proposals with which the advocates of
a school rate, discontented with the present state of things,
urge us to supersede it. The Privy Council has always
rigorously adhered to the rule of dispensing its funds
without favour, simply in proportion to the efforts in b -
half of education which the applicant in each case should
have made. Those who have made great exertions re-
ceive large aid ; those who have done little are helped
little. Now, the three parties who advocate a school rate,
headed by Sir J. Pakington, Lord J. Russell, and Mr. M.
Gibson respectively, complain, and with some truth that
this rule entirely overlooks poor districts where people
can't help themselves, and stingy districts where they will
not ; and therefore they say, " Abandon your present sys-
tem of only meeting private contributions by proportional
grants of your own. Come forward as the educators of the
nation. Wherever a school languishes, raise it to efficiency
by your grants; wherever there is no school build one ;
and do this irrespective of the private contributions you
may receive." And, in order thoroughly to superintend
the enormous taxation and the enormous expenditure which
su,•h a scheme would bring about, they propose that the
money sould be raised by local rates and expended bylocai
committees. Now, Ido not deny that the evil of which
they complain exists ; but I certainly do not believe that i

is so serious, or at all events so permanent, as it has been
represented to be. In some few cases undoubtedly there
are places absolutely too poor to support a school. In far
more eases the apathy of the proprietors and inhabitants
prevents a school being set up The latter will yield to
time, to the growth of enlightenment, to the deepening
conviction which is now spreading through all classes, that
aliie for happiness and for order, for the material great-
ness of the nation, and for the moral e:evation of the indi-
vidual, it is indispensable that ignorance should be driven,

in town and country alike, from the cottages of the poor.
And the difficulty arising from the utter poverty of some

districts may be met by special regulations wherever it is
ascertained to exist. Be this as it may, these evils, what-

ever their intensity, are as nothing,compared with tha coo-
fusion and the utter peril alike to religion and education

which an abandonment of the Privy C,mcd rules would
involve. To desert that system is at once to bring our-

selves face to face with the religious difficulty—the great
legislative problem of our day. As long as you only give to
people in proportion as they help themselves you run no
danger of seeming to prefer one denomination to another.
You follow a rigid, unbending rule, whose equity no one
can dispute, and whose application ao one can mistake. The
Slate does not create, the State does not manage a single
school; but it aids every one, whatever its creed, in propor-
tion to the zeal which its promoters evidence by their cop-
tributions. But the moment it deserts-this safe ground and
proceeds to build schools, or to become the managers of
schools, the insoluble question at once arises —to what seat
shall those schools belong, and what form of religion shall
they teach? Here it is that Sir J. Pakington, Lord J. Ras-

sell, and Mr. M. Gibson split off from each other. They
are unanimous on the other points we have gone through
—in opposing the Voluntaries, in decrying the Privy Coun-
cil system, in their advocacy of local school rates and school
committees, but on the question of religion they cannot
agree; and it is their irreconcileable differences on this
point which will probably for a long time prevent the Le-
gislature from listening to their schemes. Sir J. Pakington
proposes to moot the diffieulty by giving
to the ratepayers
themselves the right to decide by a majority the religion to
which any new school built from public funds shall belong.
Lord J. Russell, who is frightened by the example of the
many American schools which have glided from liberality
into irreligion, thinks to secure Christianity by simply in-
sisting that a certain amount of Scripture shall be daily read,
and leaves the rest to the ratepayers to settle. And Mr. M.
Gibson cuts the knot by excluding religion altogether. Re-
garding Lord J. Russell's and Sir J. Pakington's solution of
the religious difficulty as practically the same, the noble
speaker argued at some length against the advisability of
leaving it to the ratepayers to choose the religion by the
vote of a majority, remarking upon the unseemly contention
which was sure to ensue, and expressing his belief that
if Sir J. Pakington's measure were to pass it would
cause more irreligion and more demoralisation by tenfold
than all the ignorance which it was intended to remove ;
and ho believed that at last religious men of all arties in
very despair would unite in a resolution to exclude this
bone of discord—religious teaching
altogether; and so this
compromise would sink down into becoming that very secu-
lar system which it was intended to avert. Noticing, next,
the arguments of the secularists, as enunciated by Mesa's.
Bright, Cobden, and Milner Gibson, the noble lord said he
was bound to admit this much, that if the theorists who cry
out against the present admirable system should succeed in
overthrowing it, sooner than accept any of the pernicious
compromises proposed by Sir J. Pakingtoa and Lord J.
Russell —sooner than surrender fur the Church of England
the right of teaching her own creel, unmutilated and pure,
wherever she teaches at all, he for one would vote for the
secular system. He, however, must not be understood by
this to say that he approved it, but only that it seemed to
kim less dangerous than a system of compromise. The evil
of it lay in the fact that a real, pure, secular system, which
should confine itself to the inculcation of secular knowledge,
was an impossibility. If it did not teach religion it would
teach infidelity. After dwelling upon and illustrating this
point the noble lord concluded thus : —This is no question
of speculation or theory. It is a practical one, which con-
cerns all who have money to give or influence to exert.
The present system, and with it the question whether reli-
genioenmsihesalairbeentuamugehrotnisand
n,
ou
clam
our
schools, is now on its trial. Its
us out of all proportion
to their number. For a long time they have held the language
as if they, and they alone, represented the true public opi-
nion of the day. They have treated their opponents as a i
mere knot of antiquated bigots, who in heart were indif-
ferent to education, and they have even threatened us with
the overthrow of the Church establishment if we coutinue
to oppose their vies. A recent decision of the House of
Probably
o f 102 ,
:ra
Commons has caused them to abate their tone. That as-
sembly not ordinarily a very bigoted body on questions
of religion—being called on by Lord John Russell to con-
siderwrrehefostiosl
refused
drewi:o;n theirtewhichm e
rio pt neuumse
contemptuously,
embodied the
p rmajority
ob viey views
until the
s
fromthe
inspirations
even to look at them. Since this vote it has become
pretty apparent that for E 0 VI 3 few
theoristsa
erm somean y:
next census, the existing system will not be interfered with.
Now, therefore, those who support it are on their trial
before the country. If it fail now it will fail for ever ;if
it succeeds now, religious teaching will be impregnably es-
tablished in our schools. Now, therefore, is the time for
exertion. There are periods in the history of States and of
systems when the destiny of generations seems crowded
into a few short months or years ; when the choice of
exertion or neglect is a choice that once made can never be
recalled ; when the energy or the sloth, the liberality or
the niggardliness of a few mon diving a short period are
pregnant with the weal or woe of generations and centuries
to come. Such a crisis with respect to education is the
preseet. On the zeal during the next four years of all
who are concerned in education throughout the land—on
tho heartiness with which clergy and laity in each indivi-
dual parish work for the groat cause, will depend the final
settlement of the question whether religion is or is not
to be a primary element in the instruction of the young
My firm belief is that the eaisting system will come tri-
umphantly out of the trial; that it will be shown by the
unanswerable evidence of practical success that voluntary
benevolence, aided but not fettered by the State, is tho best
engine for giving to the masses that instruction which will
not only prepare them by secular teaching to fight their
way through life, hut will give them that better know-
ledge which will fit them for performing a Christian's
duties and gaining a Christian's hopez (The noble lord
was freclueetly applauded, closedandi
hie laddressIaddress amid
the a;Gbartations of the assembly.)