The Sun.
London, England, 1850-02-15 00:00:00

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LONDON, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1850.

Cordial, and be it said to the honour of the House
of Commons, unanimous was the consent yielded last
evening by the national representatives, when Mr.
EWAItT moved for leave to bring in a Bill fur enabling
town councils to establish, not only museums, but
public libraries. When this most excellent and
judicious measure shall have passed through its
different stages in the Legislature, another great step
will have been taken in the way of popular education.
For, if the opinion of EDWARD Gunton be correct, an
opinion referred to yesterday by the Honourable Gen-
tleman the Member for Dumfries, namely, that self-
education, that is to say the education which
a man gives to himself when he has left the
porch of the academy for the market-place, is better,
is more efficient, is far more important than the edit-
cation acquired from the instructions of a teacher—.
then is a Bill of this simple character, to a consider-
able extent preferable to some more ostentatious
measure, involving the expenditure of millions of the
public moneys in the construction of national schools
and universities. By opening to the working classes 1
libraries stored with the treasures of ancient and mo-
dern literature we shall be holding out indeed
an irresistable temptation from ignorance. The
fascination of knowledge will soon manifest
its influence among the more populous classes
of the community if we only afford those classes
an opportunity of developing their intelligence.
To do this nothing more effectual can scarcely be
conceived than the very scheme which the Member
for Dumfries last night found himself empowered by
the Committee of the last session to submit to the
consideration of the House for the acceptance of the
British Parliament. Are we desirous of appreciat-
ing the force of the innate tendency to accumulate
fact or fiction from literature—this tendency which
first evidences itself in each and all of us in the
inexhaustible curiosity of childhood—let us observe
the avidity with which the wretched catchpenny
periodicals of Holywell-street (that Grub-street of
the present generation) are bought up and devoured.
The curiosity of infancy, just mentioned as being the
first testimony of the innate yearning of our race for
information, is, in truth, so remarkably manifested in
all classes and conditions of society, from the palace to
the cottage, in the garrets of Whitechapel and in the
drawing-rooms of Belgravia, that we might with
perfect .correctness designate Childhood a walking
and thinking Catechism—consisting wholly of ques-
tions
and wonderment. As the offspring of the wealthy
and the well-to-do grow up, this wholesome hunger
and thirst of the intellect after the aliment of know-
ledge is directed by judicious teachers into proper
channels for its acquisition ; whereas the unfor-
tunate children of the over-worked and the desti-
tute are abandoned to the accidental teachings of the
streets—those peripatetic schools of depravity. There,
from the shop-windows, stored with the last num-
bers of the cheap publications—the veriest garbage of
literature, licentious in tone, and reeking with the
grossness of the depraved imaginations from which
they have emanated—the child of misery learns first
of all to acquire that taste for the lowest species of
romance, the melodrama of literature, which is con-
firmed into a passion by the tawdry scenes witnessed
from the twopenny gallery of some squalid suburban
theatre. These are the real nurseries of crime, the
hotbeds of felony—where the outcasts of the ') op u-
lation, incited :to all kinds of infractions of the law,
from petty larceny to homicide, by the pages that
delineate a burglar in the light of a hero—furnish
occupants, for the hulks and victims for the hangman.
To counteract, in some manner, the pernicious influ-
ence of such allurements to vice, should be among
the foremost aspirations of the political philan-
thropist,
and to effect this the most readily and
effectually no better project could be adopted
than the supplying of the masses of the people
with es, ame food for the mind in the
chap f
04,..„..
Att. Let the people have access to i
p abli‘;'libra 'ties
, anal their will soon prefer the mental I
aliment they cbtein there'f*the fori products of some
ricketty hand.ptes4—prQd\icts for the intellect, more,
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