The Sun. — 1846-10-14 (London, England)

CHRONICLE.—The country has awakened, has reflected, and is now speaking out aloud. When the Church as the only instrument of education was insisted upon, there was a degree of supineness in England that ignorance scarcely explained, and bigotry imperfectly excused. The difficulties that encumbered the teaching of an English alphabet to an English pauper were (and are) such as would excite the wonder of a Kiekkahoo or Potowhottamie Indian, if he could be brought to understand them in the whole fulness of their absurdity. That there must be some trouble in the matter he would conceive ; since he might suspect that in respect to spellingbooks and schoolmasters alone there would be the price of much tobacco and many beaver skins expended. This he would see at the first glance. Proceeding in his reasoning, he would measure the value of the commodity against the price. Here, whether he agreed with his teacher or not, he would at least infer that the learning was worth something—some beaver-skins and some tobacco ; though not so many or so much as the vendor of the alphabetic mystery might demand. His doubte, however, upon this point would be converted into either confusion or contempt, when the further explanation was made to him, that unless taught by certain men, and in a certain manner, the power in question of understanding alphabets was not only worth no tobacco and no beaverskins, but that it was absolutely prejudicial and perilous, and that in England it was not imparted to people at all, because parties were at variance as. to the conditions under which it should be communicated. Neither was (nor is) there any teaching of the duties of education by the way of example. Upon such matters numerous writers, good and bad, had appealed to Government, with illustration in all its forms ; with the whole artillery of examples from the continent, and with encomia upon foreign education. It was upon these points, and the like of them, that Holland and Prussia were quoted and over-quoted by the German, and France and Switzerland by the Galilean school of amelbrationists. Nevertheless, it was just the lesson that we were predetermined not to learn, either from Prussia or from France, from Holland or from Switzerland, from Turkey or from America—in short, from any portion of the habitable globe whatever. Grave men in shovel-hats denounced it both in speeches and in charges, agricolous squireens denounced it in post-prandial orations, bitter Dissenters denounced it in petitions, and stripling clergymen groaned over it at visitings and at tea-tables. It was a lesson which we were determined not to be taught. Now if these things at the present moment are changing, and that after the rate and fashion that opinions on the bread monopoly took to change, to what must we attribute the alteration? To whatever it may be attributed, it is not referable to an indifference upon religious subjects. Church subscriptions, anti slavery meetings, Exeter-hall statistics, all join in the acquittal of the present decennium of lukewarmness upon points of spirituality. It is neither more nor less than commonsense acting upon palpable facts. It is a clear comprehension of what is best calculated for the maintenance of the public happiness. It is the deliberate determination that the welfare and existence of a great country shall be guarded against the mischief's of popular ignorance, and the suicidal economics of deluded poverty. As such we value the review in question, as much for the evidence it affords as for the arguments it supplies. Those who have faith enough to expect regeneration from a Stanley Ministry have not faith enough to believe in a permanent state of ignorance, or in the sufficiency of priests to remove it.