history for the purposes we are now considering, and of higher influence, are the additions to our self-knowledge which are poured in upon us from twenty-four hours to twenty-four hours by the daily press. A file of the “Times” for the last thirty years contains the biography of the nation for the last thirty years. In this we find, not only what our sovereigns and their ministers—what our statesmen and diplomatists—what our generals and admirals have been about, but the social history of the nation as well. There is not a crime of which we are not here presented with a record—not a suggestion for social improvement which has not here found its exponent. Mr. Cobden has said, and truly said, that it is far better for an Englishman to read his copy of the “Times” daily, with attention, than to give himself up to the study of Thucydides. The time has come when we should seek to turn this accumulated knowledge into account.
Now, Last Week, there was a great meeting of the Social Congress Society at Glasgow. The chair was occupied, as of right, by Henry Lord Brougham. The English nation owes a debt of profound gratitude and veneration to this extraordinary man, who now, in his eighty-second year, is labouring steadily and efficiently in the cause which he advocated in evil days—now sixty years ago. When the day comes—may it be a distant one!—when Henry Brougham is summoned away from amongst us, let it never be forgotten that, at a period when to advocate such a doctrine was almost supposed to savour of treason and sedition, Brougham was the steady advocate for the Education of the People! Upon this point he would not listen to suggestions of half-measures or compromise. “Let there be light,” was the first command breathed by the Deity over the chaotic mass which was destined to be the theatre on which the human race were to play their part. There was to be light for all—not for a few. Kings were not to have midday to themselves,—the great ones of the earth the dawning and the twilight,—whilst the great mass of mankind, the millions of the earth, were to hew their wood and draw their water when the glorious sun had sunk below the horizon, and to delve and dig and labour in the dark. It is not enough that another man sees for me. I must see for myself. But what is physical by the side of intellectual darkness? Blind John Milton was still the foremost man of his day. Henry Brougham—we speak of him by his name as he was known in the heyday of his life, and the full vigour of his manhood—treated with scorn the notion, that in proportion as you educated a people they became unmanageable. What do we hear now of Nottingham frame-breakers, and rick-burners, and Captain Swing? The Schoolmaster has taught these poor people better things. The last symptom of the disease—and the disease is ignorance—which has come before us of late, has been in the illegal association of workmen to prevent their fellows, by violence and intimidation, from taking their labour to market upon their own terms. The Schoolmaster has work before him still, and will do more to purge the minds of the labouring classes from this foul error than all that can be accomplished by the magistrate and the judge. These can only vindicate the law when it is broken—the Schoolmaster will root out from the minds of the people all desire to break it. Education is the great safety-valve and necessity of our time, now that the masses are pressing for a share in the political government of the country, and will not much longer be denied.
The great feature of the meeting of last week, over which Lord Brougham presided, was the delivery, by Sir James Kay Shuttleworth, of an address, and as might well have been expected from the position he has so long occupied, the point at which Sir James Shuttleworth chiefly laboured was to give a fair statement of the present position of the country with regard to education. In Great Britain we are now a population of 22,000,000. One in eight ought to be at school for full time or half time till the age of 13. Deduct a fourth part as being children belonging to parents willing and able to educate them at their own cost, and 50,000 pauper children educated in workhouses, and we have still to secure a sound elementary education for 2,000,000 children. The local cost of giving this education in the year 1859 was in Great Britain 1l. 7s. 1½d., or at the rate of 6¾d. per week for 48 weeks in the year. The sum derived from subscriptions, endowments, and school pence was as follows:
|
The Government pays
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
|
£413,673 |
|
Subscribed by middle and upper class
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
|
841,614 |
|
Working men—school pence
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
|
759,394 |
|
|
£2,014,681 |
Sir J. Shuttleworth’s statement was to the effect that, upon a very meagre estimate of the sum required to give a sound elementary education to those 2,000,000 children, at least another 1,000,000l. per annum would be required. He does not seem to take the Ragged Schools into account.
Of course, one of the great difficulties with which we have to contend is the tendency amongst the lower classes to remove their children from school as soon as they are of an age to contribute at all to their own support, and the support of the family. The only remedies we see just now for this evil are, that school hours should be so arranged as to give opportunities to these little labourers to devote a certain portion of their time to education. If they can learn to read with tolerable ease, and to write to a certain extent, they will at any rate have acquired something, and the rest must be left—and may with perfect confidence be left—to themselves. At any rate, all that the State and the community can do will have been done. A second remedy is, that every person who, by his station or position, can exercise influence over others, should reckon it his duty to press upon them the necessity of educating their children according to their degree, and help them in their efforts to do so. It is calculated that a criminal, beginning as a young pickpocket and ending as a convict of mature age at Portland or elsewhere, costs his country 300l. for his mere maintenance, independently of the damage he may have inflicted upon society in the course of his vicious career.