The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-03-16 00:00:00

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how it happens, that such
the Evening Hymn, when

e is one so well suited to it_
)Itl Burgess " informs us, that for the last two years th
tors and assessors have had to be postponed
this town, in consequence of the ab-
formed officers." Our correspondent
s expected, that after the passing of the :Muni-
Reform Bill, the public business of the town would be
wed principle; and supposes this is a

prof the impiroyement

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TUESDAY

TORNING, MARCH 16, 18

We expr

ssed our of

nion, when the Govern-

meat - scheme of education, or rather of affording
assistance to education, was first promulgated, that
it did not merit the character of a bold and com-
prehensive measure, such as we should have desired

to receive. It afforded 'an ample acknowledgment
of the Tact that the extension of education by the
aid of the, state is calculated to promote the im-
proved. morality of the people ; and that, as dimi-
uishiliff crime and the cost incurred by the country
ir

s punishment, it was worthy of the serious
attention of Government as an economical measure.
But it stopped short of recognising the duty of the
state to take care that every class of the community
should be placed within reach of a religious educa-
tion.. It was a satisfaction to us, however, that the
funds of the people were not to be lavished upon a
merely secular system, from which all religious
instruction was to be excluded.
Still, with its faults of omission, we saw no
trace of any faults of commission, unless it be a
fault, as. undoubtedly it is, that, by the operation
of the plan of the Education Committee of the
Privy Council, we may be called upon as a nation
to be mixed up in the spread of opinions opposed
to Christianity, provided any voluntary contribu-
tions are made by infidels or semi-infidels. We
are bound by the minutes of the council to con-
tribute to the support of secular schools, to the
spread of the Romish heresy, or even to socialist
schools, if two thirds of the sum required for the
establishment and maintenance of such schools are
previously raised by voluntary efforts. Perhaps
the fear of its operation in this last direction is
not very imminent. The question of principle is
mainly involved, The general operation of the
scheMe, we feel assured, will be to extend educa-
tion. combined with religious teaching : and al-
though a portion of such teaching would undoubt-
-edly he sectarian, we were content to put up with
this feature of it in consequence of the benefits to
accrue to the community as a whole.

With such concessions ready to be made by
churchmen for peace's sake, we were certainly not
prepared to see the measure meet with such virulent
hostility which has been manifested towards it by
a portion of the dissenting body, of whose views
Mr. Edward Baines, junior, of Leeds, appears to
be the principal mouthpiece and organ. Some
disappointment upon the subject we might have
calculated upon, remembering the course taken by
thii party in opposition to the education clauses of
the.factory bill. Any thing so wild, however, so
factious, so utterly irrational and mendacious as
the agitation evinced at a meeting in opposition to
the scheme, held in Leeds on Monday last, we
never could have anticipated. A few specimens of
the resolutions passed and the language used by
some- of the speakers will probably startle our
readers.

The first resolution, moved by a Mr. Alderman
Car butt, states—
"That in the opinion of this meeting the measure of
the Uovemment in reference to education is unconstitu-
tional in its form, calculated to produce a dangerous ex-
tension of the influence of the Executive, destructive of
'the freedom of education, and likely to be highly preju-
dicial to the independence of the national character ! and
that on these grounds it is the duty of the people to give
it the strongest opposition."

Of course the " freedom of education" means
the voluntary system ; but how the working of
that principle is to be destroyed by a measure
which affords assistance by the state only when
voluntary efForts have already been put forth to
the extent of two thirds of the cost and main-
temince" of any school to be so aided, is really past
Gni comprehension. Perhaps, however, we may

over the real gist of this dissenting opposition
from a portion of the speech of the same gentle-
man. After admitting that the measure might be

worked with perfect fairness in large towns, where
each religious body could urge
.its claim, the
speaker urged that—

" There were vast districts in this country, and perhaps
by far the greatest majority, where the case was very dif-
here the community was small, and where there

was not the means of establishing a school for each deno-
mination, where there was only a church school, and
where the children of dissenters were obliged to go to a
church school if they got any education at all. What
must be the effect ? Their children were forced to be
educated by the church clergyman, they were instructed
in the church catechism; they were dependent upon the
clergyman for the means of obtaining a situation in a
normal school or a situation under Government. (Hear,
hear.) It is easy to imagine what must be the effect of
such a system upon those children and their parents.
Supposing no dissent to exist in those districts, and sup-

Do4ny a dissenting minister to go and preach there,
rvhat chance had he of making any progress whatever so
long as the children and their parents were so much
under the control of the church clergyman I (Hear.)

It is fairly to be presumed from the above, that

the dissenting body would be content to leave the
population, in those districts so unfortunate as to
be tleficient in religious dissent, uneducated alto-
her than have them brought up in the

gether, rat

obnoxious doctrines inculcated by the clergymen of
the established church. Their favourite voluntary
system, they confess, would fail in such districts.
'Whether the utter want of education and the de-

based nature of beings so deprived of education
would assist the efficacy of dissenting preaching

cannot say

But it is not t true that the voluntary system is so

ent as it is repiesented to bein our large
towns, or that ignorance is materially decreasing
tlvoughout the country.
The last report of the Registrar-General shows,
that of the men married in England in
_the year

1844,-89,337 signed their names, and 42,912
mode their marks in the book ! Of the women,
only 67,176 wrote their names, and 65,073, or 49
out of every 100 made their marks !
In the letter to the Dean and. Chapter of St.
Paul's, published last year by the Rev. H. Hughes,
he shows that in the vast parish, with its 160,000
inhabitants, to which the document referred, there

were only 3366 children in the various parochial
day schools. The number ought to have been
14,000, to have amounted to an adequate supply !
The City Mission Magazine of last December
states, as the result of an actual investigation of

ta te of the parish of Greenwich, that out of
5305 children of poor parents, in that parish, as
166 are growing up without any proper
edUCation. The average daily attendance of poor
children at school, is only 1300. In Deptford, out
of 4718 children of poor parents, only 1040 are in
the habit of daily attendance at school.

many as

These are but'a few instances, out of multitudes
hat inight be adduced, to show that "voluntary
!forts have not proved sufficient to furnish educa-
icin for the children of the poor.
Mr. Baines believed that "a worse measure than
his was never proposed to this country. It went
o.the root of the notional character of Englishmen!"

e presume that the preservation of that root is
be achieved alone by the spread of dissenting
aventicles and schools. Another gentleman

ted that

le held it not to be' ti

duty of any government to
th anything the public themselves could do ;
ther it were clothing, trade, religion, or education,
tie public could do it infinitely better than anybody else
could do it for them. More than that, it was an inter-
ferftnce with the prerogative of parents. It was an in-
terference with the inscrutable decrees of human nature
and divine Providence : and as it had been properly
stated that whenever a government undertakes, or at-
teMpts to do that which a parent ought to_ do himself,