The Sun.
London, England, 1859-11-08 00:00:00

NATIONAL EDUCATION.

(From the Times.)
Mr. Disraeli, though he has taken service under
the territorial aristocracy, is, after.nll, a man of the
people ; and Lord Stanley, though always taking up,
the cause of the people, has been bred in the tradi-
tions of the governing classes. This important dif-
ference shows itself, as it could not fail to do, in
their treatment of popular education at the Man-
chester soiree. Mr. Disraeli gives his chief atten-
tion to the facts of the case; to the spontaneous
growth, the rapid increase, and the federal union of
the institutions under review ; to the proved fact of
late competitors and prize-winners being of the
class of mechanics ; and to the sort of law of Eng-
lish society that everybody made his own position,
whatever it might happen to be. This he observed
to be illustrated, not only in the House of Com-
mons, and in every assemblage of men, with a place
in the political world, but in the widest scale, in
the mutual relations of the most ordinary men.
The moral he drew from this fact was that schools
and mechanics' institutions, though founded by the
people and fostered by the aristocracy, though in-
creasing and multiplying, though possessing and cir-
culating large libraries, still are useful only as they
are used, and depend on the spirit and energy of the
individual members. Nothing can be imagined
more helpless than a youth with scarcely a smatter-
ing of education dropping into a reading•room
without object or guidance, and making a faint effort
to find in the books and papers around him some-
thing to fill a void or fix a vagrant imagination.
There must be something to do, and this want is
'partially supplied by, papers, examinations, and
prizes. Such is the train of thought very naturally
pursued by the man who, rising out of the
literary class by mere force of mind, has become
the acknowledged spokesman and leader of our
English country gentlemen. Lord Stanley seems
to rest on the shortcomings of the movement. The
system, he seems to think, ought to work well, and
do what it professes to do. It ought to be more
comprehensive ; it ought to embrace more minds
under its influence ; it ought to make more and
better scholars. They ought to smack less of their
origin. This won't be done unless the State takes
the matter in hand. The State will never do this
unless the people make it. Gontlemen and suc-
cessful manufacturers will never go out of their
way to help the working man to tread on their
heels, so they must be compelled to do their duty.
The-State, then, is to do the work, and to do it
well. It must be a man's own fault if he Las not
the very best education that he is capable of re-
ceiving. This is the American plan. There is no
reason why we should not have it, except that the
British people don't appear to value education, and
therefore don't expect the State to keep an army of
schoolmasters, as they do of soldiers, sailors, police-
men, revenue officers, ind other public servants.
Such, more or less expressed, seems to be Lord
Stanley's view of the question.
Lord Stanley is not content with maintaining
that every child should have the cpportunity of
education. They who advocate an Established
Church, Reformatories, a costly system of secondary
punishments, pauper schools, and other modern
institutions, would probably go along with him so
far. He goes further. The education of which he is
speaking is that which mechanics' institutions were
founded to give, and that which it was designed to
encourage by the examination of several hundred
candidates and the distribution of more than a hun-
dred prizes on this occasion. The only institution
that would answer this purpose would be an Ecole
Polytechnique, ramifying into every village, every
lane, every alley and court in this kingdom. Even
what has been done in the course of this century
has taken much education out of the hands of a very
deserving and very useful class of teachers, and in-
troduced a State competition strangely at variance
with all our notions of free trade. But Lord Stan-
ley would appear to make education altogether a
national affair. The people themselves are to be the
instruments of their own disqualification, for they
are to force upon their rulers a compulsory system
—compulsory as it certainly would be in the teachers,
and in the matter of the education. No doubt, in
the abstract there is much to be said even for this.

It is still the law of the land for every man
to frequent his parish church, and listen every
Sunday morning and evening to the preacher
whom a college, a bishop, a Lord Chancellor, or the
Auction Mart may have assigned to him. The
ancient law of the land still retains the odours
of papacy and feudalism. It supposes a sacred
polity and a patriarchal regime,,and only confesses
in a whisper that it is unable to carry them out.
But it sticks to them all the same, and in theory
everything is done for the Englishman, including
the salvation of his soul. On this theory there is
no reason why we should not lave one great public
school, the lower classes to be filled from the cot-
tage, and the higher to be draughted eventually
into the Bench of Bishops, the College of Physi-
cians, the staff of the army, and so forth. But, as
the theory is impracticable, it becomes a question of
degree. The degree of education tc be offered to all,
the mode of the offer, and what securities are to be
taken for a proper use of the boon are matters for
which experience is the best and only rule. When
it is considered that, in addition to an immense
number of ancient foundations, public institutions,
and private establishments, the State is rapidly ap-
proaching an annual subvention of a million ster-
ling to the schools for the poor, it is evident that
the State recognises Lord Stanley's doctrine up to a
certain degree. He is strongly of opinion that it
ought to go much further, and that the work before
him, now done by voluntary institutions, ought to
be done by the State. The examination papers, the
judges, the prizes, the whole concern, ought to ba
national. The people themselves should insist on
the matter being taken out of their incompetent
hands.

Such a doctrine, we humbly 'conceive, ought not
to be advanced without more explanation than
has been given in this instance. As Lord Stanley
must have been prepared to encounter with indiffe-
rence the popular jealousy of State interference and
central management, it would, perhaps, be vain to
insist on it now. But one consideration is simply
sufficient to fix very low the standard of instruction
that any State can presume to offer. The educa-
tion that is offered to all must first suffer some in-

jury in being thus adapted to all, and then to a
large portion of the scholars be offered in vain.
Even in a village school it is only one in three or
four, if so many, that will really feel and under-
stand the Gospel history, the manual of religious
truth, and the few other simple things that make
up its little stock of learning. Even this must be
cut and dried, broken into questions, condensed into
manuals, divided into heads, and made as formal
as a tax paper. There is no help for it, when you
have to deal with the simplest and rudest minds,
and your instrument is a schoolmaster of the com-
mon sort, who has simply left one trade for another.
But even this simple lore, this elementary disci-
pline, is too much for most of the children. It en-
ters at one ear and goes out at the other. It is for-
gotten, or only remembered to be worked some day
into some religious system very different from that
with which it was first associated. What, then,
would be the result if the State attempted to offer
to everybody a high degree of education ?
The only result we can imagine would be
an unwieldy system, professing much, doing
very little, all kinds of instruction impove-
rished and vulgarised, and, after all, lavished in
vain on careless and impenetrable natures. As things
now are, if a youth has talent, or that energy which
is talent, he is sure to find opportunity. lle teaches
himself; he is taught; his own efforts conspire with
the aids he finds or procures ; the result is a man
not only educated, but able to turn his education to
account. He enters the school with the key of
knowledge already in his hands. He has the thread
that guides him through the labyrinth. The school,
or the office, or the kind friend—nay, the mechanics'
institute, only adds a superstructure to a basis
already existing. He seeks knowledge because ho
has it. He brings to India the wealth of the Indies.
All this is the ordinary and natural course under a
state of society which only abounds in opportunities;
and does not grasp at all and attempt every thing.
Lord Stanley may only wish to increase opportuni-
ties, and make the State somewhat more of a school-
master than it now is. He may wish us to feel our
way. If so, he ought to explain; for when he in-
vokes the aid of the Lancashire people he certainly
seems to promise them something very different
from anything now in the land.

EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY.—The election for the
office of rector will, it is expected, lie between Mr. Gladstone,
M.P., and Lord Neaves, one of the judges of the Court of
Session, the other names mentioned having been with-
drawn. The election will take place on Saturday next, be•
tween 11 and 1 o'clock, the voters (matriculated students
having class tickets for the present session) being divided
into hundreds, and voting in different class-rooms, and the
Professors conducting the poll. At 1 o'clock the Professors
will assemble in the Senate-ball, and the different lists will
be examined, and a certificate, signed by the Principal, will
be posted up declaring the result of the election. The con-
stituency, it is expected, will number from 1,200 to 1,400.
On Saturday last the Sonatas Academicus unanimously
made choice of Professor Christison to represent them in
the University Court. This Court, in which is vested the
practical government of the University, will consist of eight
members—viz., the Rector, and an assessor to be appointed
bi him, an assessor appointed by the Chancellor, the Lord
Provost of Edinburgh (Mr. F. Brown Douglas), the Prin-
cipal (Sir David Brewster), the Assessor of the General
Council (Mr. Maitland), the Assessor of the Senatus (Pro-
fessor Christison), and the AsSessor of the Edinburgh Town
Council (Bailie Grieve). The first three offices have to be
filled before the Court is constituted.
THE EASTERN FISHERIES.—The recent boister-
ous weather has rendered the prosecution of the herring
fishery on the eastern coast both difficult and dangerous.
The quantity of fish taken has, of course, diminished con •
siderably. Prices have remained firm at £l3 to £l5 per
last (10,000 fish).