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perous, the mass of the labourers must be left without sufficient time for even such a secular education as is sufficient to fit them to be intelligent members of their class. And this perhaps will in part account for the fact, that there is so little (difference in the number of those who can write now, and fifty years since.[1] They cannot be kept at the national school now a sufficient time to do them any permanent good, and when they leave they are so absorbed by the pressure which civilisation causes, that they lose in a short time the little they did know. Now perhaps, some may think it no very serious evil that they cannot write; but what do they know of the creeds, of the Parables, the Old and New Testament history, the Psalms, &c? Or again, of the Church, her divinely-appointed institutions, the sacraments, divine services, or ministry? They are distressingly ignorant on all these subjects, and that, too, in spite of the thousands that are spent yearly in national education. And why is this? because the Church has left the employers uneducated, has suffered them to seek instruction where they chose, regardless of the injury that must ensue to society. Whereas, when the seventy-seventh, seventy-eighth, and seventy-ninth Canons, relating to schoolmasters, were in force, you could scarcely have asked a poor person about his faith without obtaining an intelligent reply. There were no national schools then, nor could the people read or write, but their masters had received a Church education, and this, though scanty, found its way effectually to their dependants. While, therefore, we spend all our strength upon educating the poor, our forefathers spent theirs on those of the middle ranks; for besides requiring schoolmasters "to be licensed by the Bishop, to give guarantees for their faith and morality, and to take their scholars to church on Sundays and holidays,"
- ↑ Our parish register gives the following statistics. Of the first forty signatures, commencing at 1800, thirteen make their mark; of forty signatures in 1836, only nine make their mark, showing a great increase of those who can write; while of forty signatures in 1846, fourteen make their mark; showing a rapid decline. In 1800, there was only a very indifferent Church school kept in the belfry; in 1836, the present national school had been at work only seven years. We have now the best masters and mistresses that can be obtained; but it is doubtful if we shall succeed in stopping the decline which these particulars disclose. If religious knowledge could be tested in the same way, the same results, it is to be feared, would appear.
