PREFACE.
I have been requested by several gentlemen interested in the education of the poor, to issue in the form of a pamphlet an Address on Compulsory Education, which I recently gave before the Church of England School Teachers' Association for West Kent. The President of the Society, J. G. Talbot, Esq., M.P., a gentleman well known for his zeal and self-denying labours in the extension of religious education, has been pleased to accept the dedication; and so far as it regards the absolute necessity of some system of compulsion to render the education of our country national in fact, as well as in name, he cordially endorses the opinions I have expressed. As a national school master, I feel fully convinced that large numbers of children, notwithstanding the Education Act, will grow up in ignorance, and many more through the irregularity of their attendance will still receive an education unworthy of the name, unless some scheme is adopted to make attendance at school universally compulsory. One object of the following address was to show how such a plan could be devised without interfering with the management of our existing denominational schools.
