The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1839-06-21 00:00:00

NATIONAL EDUCATION.

The house resumed the debate on national education, which
had been adjourned from Friday night ; and now, as then,
the interest of the discussion fell lamentably short of the
importance of the subject.
Mr. WYSE began. He contended that Lord Stanley, as
the introducer of the national system of education in Ire-
land, was bound by analogy to support the present proposal
for education in England. And after dealing with the gene-
ral subject in a zealous but decorous manner, he concluded
by deprecating any cry of no-popery.
Mr. COLQUHOUN, in a very able speech, disproved the
analogy between the circumstances of England and of Ire-
land, and recommended au adherence to the system of grants
already acted on in England. He believed that the church,
the Wesleyans. nay, many of the other dissenters, would
steadfastly resist any grant which should be coupled with a
condition entitling a board of Privy Council to introduce its
caparicious improvements into the schools.
Mr. C. BULLER said' that education should be regarded,
not as a mere charity to individuals, bat as a measure of
precaution and security to the whole state, against the dan-
gers of the wild spirit now in fermentation among the igno-
rant masses of physical force. Yet, when the Government,
tardily awaking to a sense of those dangers, proposed a re-
medy, the whole Conservative party had risen to bar their
progress with the 39 articles. That party objected to all
Bibles but one ; and the consequence was that the people
were to read none at all. Education, in that large sense
which ,imports the whole bringing up of a child, should
doubtless be founded on religion ; but religion had nothing
to do with mere instruction in certain useful branches of
knowledge. The student of law or of medicine never in-
quires about his instructor's theological opinions, and a
Conservative parent does not scrutinize the religious senti-
ments of the master who teaches French and music to his
daughters. The danger of leaving all education exclusively
to the church was peculiarly urgent now, since the progress
which the new Oxford doctrines had made among the clergy
—doctrines which he viewed with the greatest alarm, as
checking the liberty of conscience with hardly less of coer-
cion than that religion which the Oxford theologians the
most reviled.

Mr. AcLANn-pleaded earnestly for the connexion between
national education and national religion. The real question
was, should we have a minister of public instruction, or
should we have an established church. The toleration act,
and other modern statutes of religious relaxation, had made
no diflerence in the ancient legal and constitutional right of
the established church to the general seperintendence of edu-
cation. The hon. member then went at great length into a
variety of details, tending chiefly to show the extent of the
services which the clergy of the established church had done
for education throughout a vast proportion of all the parishes
in England.
Dr. LUSHINGTON rejoiced that the day was past when
the principle of national education had been opposed. He
imputed extensive misrepresentation to the opponents of the
government plan, and was particularly indignant against the
Wesleyans for objecting to tax the Protestants towards the
advancement of the Popish faith, when they were so ready to
tax the Papists for the exclusive support of the Protestant
religion. He combatted the doctrine that the church is en-
titled to the general superintendence of education, and en-
deavoured to explain away several of the objections against
the government plan, which were, in his opinion, mere mis-
representations. The learned gentleman, however, spoke
with a warmth and vehemence so little suited to the grave
and solemn character of the subject, as to injure, not a little,
the effect of his argument, and invest it with a colour of par-
tisanship. When he concluded, the debate was again ad-
journed.