The Sun.
London, England, 1861-08-15 00:00:00

jurisprudence we must record a very important
statement and motion of our colleague, Lord Clan-

ricarde, upon Irish judicature and judicial. proce-
dure in comparison with the English, and he has
since extended it to proceedings at sessions. A com-
mission was appointed in consequence ; but, inde-
pendent of all inquiry, and whatever legislative
measure may be its result, it was manifest that the
department of Judicial Statistics, which was estab-
lished in England with so great advantage to the
progress of our legislation, might be extended to
Ireland ; and having offered this suggestion, which
the noble marquis entirely approved, I have had the
satisfaction of learning that the Government lost
no time in acting upon it, to the great benefit of
our judicial system. In coming to the next depart-
ment—Education—our attention is first of all
arrested by the great event which has happened
since our last meeting, and to which our unwearied
exertions have most essentially contributed—the
repeal of the paper duty, the heavy tax upon know-

[edge in every one of its various branches. That

gross and glaring anomaly in our legislative as well
as administrative proceedings has now ceased. We
can no longer be charged with, at one and the same

time, paying for schools to teach and raising the
price of the books taught—of encouraging the peo-
ple to read, of patronising authors and multiplying

- --
readers, while we make it unprofitable for the for-

mer to write and hard for the latter to read. The

effect of this most salutary change has been imme-
diate, and it has been great. Over what an

ample field its operation extends may be
seen by this—that one daily penny paper has
a circulation of 8),000, and a halfpenny
weekly journal, with excellent cuts, has been
established, and already issues above 8,000. My
complaints made at the Liverpool meeting can
therefore no longer be urged, and a prodigious
benefit has been conferred upon all the departments
of knowledge by the steady perseverance of Mr.
Gladstone in carrying this great measure against
the most formidable resistance both in Parliament
and beyond its walls, Of that benefit we of the
National Association have our full share, along
with the gratifying reflection on the part we took
in obtaining it. The good thus bestowed seems to
be free from all admixture of evil; for the alarm felt
by some, affected by more, at the cheap newspaper
press is really groundless. The bulk of readers,
always influenced by the more rational and better
informed part of the community, will entirely dis-
countenance and prevent those outrages upon all
taste as well as truth and decency which we have
seen in the press of some countries—of one particu-
larly, so gross as almost to pass belief. But the
character of the people must not be judged as if
they could approve of such things. We might as
well charge the French countrymen of Lavoisier and
Lafayette with being robbers and murderers be-
cause the daily papers of Marat and Herbert
preached wholesale pillage and assassination, as
hold the countrymen of Washington and Franklin
answerable for the sins of their press—a compound
of slander, fraud, and bluster. So the incomparably
lighter excesses with which our journals may be
chargeable in the heat of factious controversy are
never more than passing and temporary, giving
way to the predominant good sense and good taste
of the community. The solid benefit obtained by
the multiplication of cheap papers, and works of
all kinds, is real and permanent, and a subject of
just congratulation, if it were for nothing more than
their tendency to free the public from the monoply
of the established papers, and the domination
which that monoply has its wonted effect in
producing. But our proceedings touching educa-
tion have been successful in other directions. At the
Bradford meeting the vice-president over this de-
partment was Mr. Chadwick, so well known for
his invaluable services on the Poor Law Commis-
sion 30 yearsago, and without whose aid and agency
that great measure of practical social science, the
New Poor Law, could never in all probability have
been prepared. At Bradford he communicated to
Mr. Senior, one of the Education Commissioners,
who attended our congress, the result of the discus-
sions in the department over which he presided upon
the important subjects of reducing the time con-
sumed in teaching at schools and of forming those
schools and unions so as to lessen the cost and in-
crease the efficiency of instruction. The commis-
sioner requested him to examine these points in
detail when the congress broke up. He did so, and
collected a most valuable body of information, by
visiting the schools in the manufactories of the West
Riding, conferring also with school inspectors and
with medical men. His report was, unfortunately,
too late to be inserted in that of the commission ;
but it has since been moved for in the House of
Lords, and is presented, with his letter to Mr.
Senior. It may be considered as an event in the
history of education, and it is quite certain to occa-
sion extensive improvements, increasing the num-
ber of children taught, lessening their labour, and
making it conducive to the health both of the body
and mind. I certainly regard Mr. Chadwick as
having rendered to education a service equal to that
which the amendment of the Poor Law owes him.
On the former occasion I gave him what I deemed
his due commendation, speaking as a Minister of
the Crown, in the assembly over which I presided.
I knew him not personally, nor was I aware that
he then belonged to the newspaper press. Pane-
gyric is never popular; and mine was not soon for-
given ; I don't know if the subject of it was as-
sailed; I well remember the author of it was pretty
severely and pretty generally.
" Satire is sure to find a willing ear,
And they who blame the sneerer, love the sneer.
But righteous tributes no emotion raise,
And those that love the virtues, hate the praise."
In this con;ress I hope that my motive may plead
in extenuation of the fault, and I may be pardoned
for being dull by the consideration that I have been
just. A further and an important advantage has
been gained by the last congress for the interests of
education. The progress of popular instruction had
been grievously obstructed by the separate and
oftentimes conflicting proceedings of its promoters,
attached, and conscientiously attached, to different
sects of religion, acting in opposition to each other
though if brought together, and to a clear under-
standing, they might from their honest zeal for a
common object, have been led to co-operate, or, at
least, not to conflict. This great step was made in
the Congress at Glasgow. For the first time the
leaders of the Established Church party, of the
Free Church party, and of the United Presbyterians,
met together and maintained their respective views
before the members of the association. The result
was the formation of a representative committee (of
the chief denominations), whose labours there was
every reason to expect will lead to a reduction of
the points of difference, and a removal of the main
obstacles to progress. Both at that meeting and at
Bradford the important advantage was gained of
bringing the ecclesiastical school-teachers in more
full communication with the laity, and with the
professors of sanitary science. It would be improper
to leave the great subject of education in the coun-
try where we are now assembled, without mention-
ing a fact that has been reported to us on good
authority, and even under the influence of preju-
dices which it rather thwarted. In Scotland it is
found that thelrishmen educated at the larger na-
tional schools are, in consequence of their great
steadiness, sobriety, and. general trustworthiness,
preferred
etno e din
theuc a tme da
nSucfoatecthomrieens forao thed our places
Scotland
of Irishhave a
ofthe
greater countrymen
of
number educatedsimil similar
at complaintthe col-
leges being successful candidates for
Indian civil
service appointments. In our sanitary department
considerable progress has been made. The quaran-
tine committee have brought their labours to a
close, and presented an elaborate report. It has
been communicated to the Board of Trade, which
had formerly directed to be laid before Parliament
the answers to our queries; and it has laid this
report before Parliament, which has ordered it to
be printed. The information collected, and the sug-
gestions made, are admitted to have essentially im-
proved the sanitary condition of our mercantile
marine. The report will be read by the learned
secretary of the committee, Dr. Milroy. The dif-
fusion of sanitary knowledge is a most important
part of the duties of this department ; and as the
association has from the first desired and accepted
the co-operation of women, the council have no
k doubt in affiliating the Lady's Sanitary Swab