The Sun.
London, England, 1866-03-31 00:00:00

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Yr. Bright on the Education of the Poor.

Mr. Bright presided yesterday at the annual con-
ference of Sunday-school teachers of Lancashire,
Cheshire, and Derbyshire, which was held at Roch-
dale, and was very numerously attended. The hon.
member was received with great applause.
Mr. BRIGHT-I find myself this morning in a
very unusual position, and I think I owe it to the
meeting to explain how it happens that I am here.
It comes, I am afraid, rather more from what may
be termed my good nature than my good sense.
(Laughter.) Some months ago, my friend, Mr.
Pollitt, asked me if I would take the chair at the
Sunday-school conference that was to be held here
on Good Friday. I had no idea of the magnitude
of the occasion or of the gravity of the duty, and
as I knew that he was a very zealous man in this.
good cause, I, in an unguarded moment—(laughter)
—consented. In fact, I was very much like some
unfortunate men in business, who thoughtiessly put
their names to a bill at three or six months' date,
with a vague notion that it will never become due.
(Laughter and applause.) But there is nothing so
sure to come due as a bill—(laughter)—and there
is nothing much more sure, I suppose, to require
fulfilment than the promise I made to- my friend
Mr. Pollitt. (Applause.) I feel that I have no
right to be here from any participation I have in
the labours of those around me ; for I am con-
nected with a small sect which until within the
last few years has not done much in Sunday-
school teaching ; and, more than that, I have bad

a good deal of hard work—(hear)--it may be M a

more conspicuousbut not, certainly, in a more noble
field than that in which you are engaged. (Ap-

plause.) But if I have not laboured with you, I can
say with the most perfect honesty that I have
strongly, and all my life, sympathised with your
labours, and on more than one occasion I expressed

my sense of the immeasurable obligation which
this nation is under to the teachers of its Sabbath
schools. For I may say, without any wish to corn-

Aliment those who are engaged in this work, that
believe amongst all the agencies which are now a'
work with a view to redeem our people from the bar

barism which seems constantly contending for the
mastery of our race that there is not one which de-
serves a higher place than the agency of Sunday
schools. And probably, if I were to look over all
the districts of the country, I should scarcely find
one in which this agency had been more actively em-
ployed and with greater result than in this town and
district where we are now assembled. I have no
accurate figures with regard to the number of Sun-
day schools, taken as a whole, or the scholars at-
tending them, in this town and neighbourhood, but
I am informed that, in connexion with the Sunday-
school Union, taking this town as a centre, and ex-
tending eastward as far as Littleborough, southward
as far as Milnrow, northward as far as Whitworth,
and an equal distance to the west—perhaps a circle
of five miles in diameter—there are not less than 50
schools, with more than 1,700 teachers, and more
than 12,000 scholars. And if I were to add to these
whatever schools and teachers and scholars there are
connected with the Established Church and the
Roman Catholic Church in the same district, pro-
bably I might add one half to those numbers. Ex-
tending our view from what is done in this neigh-
bourhood, and looking over all the 'country, I am
told—but I don't give it with any pretence to per-
-feet accuracy—that there are no less than 200,000
teachers, and there are not less than 2,000,000 of
Sunday scholars. It is impossible by any stretch of
the imagination for us to take in any fair picture of
the vast effort which is involved in these numbers.
It may be said, shortly, that the agency of the Sun-
day school covers all the country, and fertilises,
although it may be in many parts with but a
feeble rill, almost every corner of the land. But
when we are looking at it in the mass, we cannot
help but perceive that all this labour is car-
ried on under difficulties of no common kind.
You will recollect that the Sunday school is a
school only for one day out of the seven—that during
that day it does not occupy on the average more,
I suppose, than from two to three hours, and that
in the schools, as far as what is ordinarily called
education apart from religious training, almost the
only branch that is much attended to is that most
important of all—that of reading. I presume that
not a few of this vast number of children who attend
Sunday schools have very little of any other teach-
ing and of any other training. They enter, not all
of them—perhaps only a minority of them—for the
most part ignorant, and the labour of bringing them
on even in the first steps in their course of learning is
the heaviest labour of all, and seems at times almost
insurmountable. But I believe that that minority,
if it be a minority, who enter the Sunday schools
wholly untaught, is constantly, and I hope rapidly
lessening. (Hear, hear.) I find from the return
of the published census of the country, that whilst
in 1851 the number of scholars, as far as could be
ascertained, in all the schools in the country—l am
not apeaking now of Sunday schools, but of all the
ordinary schools of the country—was 2,297,000 ;
in 1861 that number had increased to 3,150,000.
And, therefore, it follows inevitably that in the ten
years there had been added to the number of chil-
dren going to schools 800,000, and that the number
of those who come totally ignorant to Sunday
schools must to some large extent have been dimi-
nished. But still, whatever we may allow on this
point, I am quite sure that the obstacles to any
great success are very great, and I fear that, after
all the labour that is bestowed, the feeling must
come home to Sunday school teachers very often
that there are difficulties in their way which are
absolutely inluperable ; and it is only by the devo-
tion of the teachers, by their continuous labours
extended often over many years, and by the per-
severance of the scholars, that anything really is
done that tells upon the mental, and moral, and
religious condition of the country. By all who
have been living in this district of the country
during the last half century I think it will be uni-
versally admitted that the whole spirit of the work-
ing classes has been touched and moulded by the
influence of these schools. (Applause.) It may be
said, indeed, of them—if I may quote the words of
a very pious man who lived near 300 years ago—
George Herbert—whose poems some of you may
possibly have seen—in speaking of the Sunday, he
says :

The week were dark but for thy light,
Thy torch doth show the way.
(Applause.) And I think those words may be well
applied to the agency of the Sunday schools in this
district. But leaving out all that has been done,
and not confining ourselves to the one day in seven,
but looking to the seven days, how much more re-
quires to be done ? I should like to give one illus-
tration of it to this meeting, because I think there
are facts which cannot be too prominently brought
before the public. There is an institution in Man-
"ester called the Manchester Education Aid Society.
It alras at assisting the children of those who are not
able to Pay for their schooling to attend school. It is
a society not long since formed, and can make but
very little 'Way in the midst of the ignorance of a
large portion of the
population wherein it works. I
regret to say that, only two days ago, one of its
zealous friends..
most man revered and beloved
who knew him--Ed
by those ward Brotherton, was
carried to his grave. I have reason to believe that
his illness and his death were occasioned by a visit
which he paid to a family of the very Poorest class,
whose habitation at the time was
filled with There remainan
atmosphere of typhus. in Man-
chester thousands who will mourn his loss, and
may seek long to find again such
Aid Society ch a friend.
(Applause.) Now, this Educational
tells us that in every 100 children that are liv-
ing with parents or guardians who are not at
work, there are 40 at school and 60 not at
school. They say that everywhere a majority of
the children between the ages of three and twelve
years are found to be neither at school nor at
work. They state that they have made a most
accurate canvass of a considerable portion of Man-
chester and Salford, and judging from what they
have canvassed of the whole, they come to certain
conclusions which are positively appalling. In can-
vassing a tenth part of Manchester and Salford
there were found " 7,055 children of all ages above
three, who were neither at school nor at work, and
5,787 of these were between three and twelve.