The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1838-02-02 00:00:00

NATIONAL EDUCATION.

(From the Morning Herald)
We trust that no.plan of national education, coming
from such a personage as Lord Brougham, will ever re-
.ceive the sanction of the House'of Lords. If the tree is
to be judged by its fruits, and we have the highest an
thority for saying that it should, the " tree of know-
, ledge,";-planted by such hands, is not one from which the
~country will ever gather any wholesome fruit. Every
reform that Lord Brougham has yet originated, or had
much to do with, has been a blunder or a failure. His pre-
sent position is still less favourable to any sound and Judi-
cious view of public questions than his former one., As a
.vvhig,.and afterwards a whig-radical, he might have been
disposed, even with all his constitutional temperament
for dabbling in mischievous innovations under the name
of reform, to preser7e a few remnants of our ancient
and unrivalled system of mixed government which gave
_England its once glorious pre-eminence in the world;
but now he is an avowed radical ; he has taken Waklev's
powders and "goes the whole hog." Will the House
of Lords allow such a politician as this 'to dabble with
the education of the people, and thrust his crude, ab-
, surd, and mischievous _theories on the
.country as the
emanation of deliberate wisdom ?

There is no question that a political party exists in
this country, and that though not a very numerous, yet
a very-active one, whose efforts are constantly directed
to the unhallowed task of unclaistianizing the people.
The House of Lords went too far already in yielding to
that mock-liberalism, when they sanctioned the whig-
radical marriage and registration acts, the power of which
impoSes in certain cases upon clergymen of the Church
of England. the duty of violating the canons which, it is
also their duty to obey—while the latter, by disconnect-
ing the-naming of the poor man's child from the baptis-
mal rites, strikes at Christianity in its very source. We
hope the House of Lords, which on other occasions,
more especially in resisting the attempted destruction of
the.lrish Protestant Church, has deserved so well of the
country, will not allow any more measures conceived in
a similar spirit of false and demoralising liberalism, come
from what quarter they may, to receive their sanction,
and go forth clothed with the authority of law, to un-
settle the Christian principles of the people and under-
mine the best institutions of the country.
Any plan of national education, which is not essentially
a moral and religious one—any scheme of that sort of
which' the Holy Scriptures are not the corner-stone, will
inevitably produce more mischief than good. The sim-
plicity of ignorance is better than a vicious knowledge
—virtue and contentment may co-exist with the former,
but the latter begets nothing but disaffection, turbulence,
,and disorder; it breaks down all veneration for things
,established, and induces a blind presumptuousness in
:disturbing, for the sake of untried theories, or through
a malignant passion for destruction, the very frame-work '
of society. We have seen enough of this of late tears
—the people were led astray by the delusions and sor- ,
ceries of false prophets. Those of a better nature have
renounced their errors, and abjured the doctrines of the
political impostors. Those who sought change to gra-
tify a malevolent feeling or a selfish vanity have become
desperate through disappointment. The last elections
in Great Britain threw up the barriers of conservatism
round the national institutions. The assailants of those
institutions, whether they proceed by open assault, or by
sap and undermine, willrneet, we hope, in the House of
Lords at least, not only the courageous but, the vigilant
sentinels and guardians of the altar, the crown, and the
public liberties. Insidious liberalism, with its education
plans, must be exposed and defeated, o► all that has been
hitherto clone to preserve the religion and morals of
England will have been unavailing.

PREMATURE INTERMENT.--As James Denham, the sexton
of Southowram church, was engaged in attending to his duties
in the church-yard the other day, the box which affords a tern.
porary shelter to the minister during the reading of the burial
service fell over, and knocked him into a grave, enclosing him
Within its narrow limits ; but, assistance being at hand, he was
speedily rescued: one of his arms was broken by the accident.
Halifax Guardian.

A fox, which had nn doubt been driven by stress of weather
to seek its food out of its usual haunts, was seen, on Friday last
by numbers of
.people, in a field in the rear of Bailey Hall,
near this town ; nor did it appear to be much disconcerted by
the halloos of the spectators, as it very leisurely turned its tail
to.theirilitintS.—A hare was seen in a garden near to Salem
chapel esterday morning; and so far from displaying its na-
tuiat timidity, it continued to feed upon the leaves of a few
plants, even after a stone had beep thrown at it, accompanied
by`it skou L—Halifax Erpreet.