Education of the Lower Orders; Give us funds, and I will undertake to say, that in three years there shall not be a child in the metropolis to whom the benefits of education shall not be offered.' What then may be the amount of the funds necessary for this great purpose, taking the number of children who are at present destitute of these benefits, as stated by the committee, at 130,000? One master in the school upon the Madras system is fully competent to the superintendance of one thousand children. Suppose the annual expense of each school to be £200, which is making a liberal allowance for the master or mistress, (persons whom it would be miserable economy to under-pay,) the yearly sum required for educating every poor child in London would amount to £26,000. If it were necessary to raise that sum by a specific tax, is there man or woman throughout England upon whom it might be levied that would not cheerfully pay the assessment for this specific purpose? Against such a grant there would be no dissenting voice, not even from the most rigid economists, not even from the most acrimonious opposers of every ministerial measure. In a few years it might be reasonably expected that a sum equal to the annual charge would be saved in the expenses of criminal justice; it is even more than likely that there might appear a positive saving to the state." We spare neither expense nor pains,' says Lord Sheffield, 'to meliorate the bread of our cattle of every sort; surely it would be a nobler object, and worthy of our utmost diligence, to meliorate, by education when young, the character of the most depraved of our own species. At present, a great part of all the rent of the land is employed in rearing the offspring of improvidence and vice;' -it may be added, and in rearing them to be as improvident and as vicious as their parents. But the remedy is obvious-Dr. Bell's discovery for the multiplication of power and division of labour, in the great business of education, has been so timed, that it may hereafter be appealed to as one among the many impressive facts which prove that as new circumstances of society occasion new wants, provision is always made for them in the order of Divine Providence. Schools might be established throughout the whole kingdom upon his system, with the utmost economy. Nor is there any difficulty now in forming arrangements, nor any hazard of delay, and loss from inexperience. The mechanism is ready, tried, proved, and perfect. There exists a society under whose auspices it may immediately be put in action with an absolute certainty of success; and the benevolent inventor, never weary in well doing, is yet able to direct the machine, and see the consummation of his long labours, the reward and final triumph of his most disinterested and honourable life. It has not unfrequently been observed that minds which have laboured under long derangement have had an interval of sanity vouchsafed them before death, the bodily disease whereby reason was overpowered disappearing as the bodily powers gave way. If the education of the poor be provided for without delay, upon a national establishment, the well known wish of our Sovereign may so soon be accomplished, that he may possibly yet live to understand its accomplishment, and bless God before he dies. Truly may it be said of that statesman, whoever he may be, by whom this great object shall be carried into effect, 'Beato è ben chi nasce a tal destino.' A national establishment of such schools might be made serviceable in another way, by licensing the school-room for a place of worship,—as is done at the central school of the National Society in Baldwin's Gardens. It has been forcibly said by Sir Thomas Bernard, that it is mere mockery to give the name of accommodation to the space which is left for the poor in the aisles of our churches in London and Westminster,'-an accommodation, as he elsewhere observes, improper, indecent, and unfit for the sacred and solemn service thus attended, and such as, even if decent in itself, would not be adequate to the admission of one hundredth part of those who ought to have seats in their own parish church.' When, therefore, we spoke of the wrongs of the poor, the word was neither lightly nor unwarrantably used. It is said among the precious fragments of King Edward, that when prayers had been with good consideration set forth, the people must continually be allured to hear them ;'-instead of this, a great proportion are actually excluded, for all the churches in the metropolis, with all the private chapels and conventicles of every description added to them, are not sufficient to accommodate a fourth part of the inhabitants, upon the present system of conducting public worship. This great evil has at length been taken into consideration by the legislature, but in aid of the legislative measures which have been so properly provided, it is evident that a considerable diminution of it may be effected by licensing the proposed school-rooms, and it might perhaps be advisable that some regard should be had to this consideration in their dimension and structure. Supposing that government should take those comprehensive measures for educating the poor, which they are called upon by every motive of duty and policy* to delay no longer, there appear only If any, says Sir Henry Wotton, shall think education (because it is conversant about children) to be but a private and domestic duty, he will run some danger, in my opinion, to have been ignorantly bred himself. Certain it is, that anciently the best composed estates did commit this care more to the magistrate than to the parent ;-and certain likewise, that the best authors have chosen rather to handle it in their politics than in their economics, -as both writers and rulers well knowing what a stream and influence only two obstacles to be overcome. A great number of the children belong to Irish parents, and perhaps the futility of attempting to conciliate religious differences by courting with concessions those whom it is hoped to soothe, was never more completely evinced than by the evidence which has been given concerning the Irish Free Schools in St. Giles's. These schools were founded by the exertions of Mr. Ivimey, a distinguished minister among the Baptists, a body of Christians having among their ministers both at home and in the East, men of such true zeal, piety, erudition, and eloquence, that they may justly be considered as doing honour not to their own denomination only, but to their age, their country, and their Christian profession. The schools were established upon what is called the liberal principle of introducing no creed, catechism, or confession of faith,-and the children were left to attend such places of worship as their parents might profess, and to be instructed in their peculiar modes of worship by their own clergy. What has been the effect? The Bible is used in the schools, and the Roman Catholic clergymen will not allow this. The parents,' says the master of the school, entirely approve of it, and wish their children to be taught to read the Scriptures; but the Catholic priests oppose it, and threaten the parents to deprive them of their religious privileges, if they suffer them to read the Scriptures;— and they have done so in many instances. The violence of the priests is incessant-they go from room to room, endeavouring to persuade the parents not to send their children. As soon as the plan and design of the schools were made known, their opposition immediately commenced. One of the priests entered the school room, and demanded permission to teach the Roman Catholic catechism in the school. This was objected to. The Sunday following he preached against the schools, addressing a Roman Catholic congregation, and the effect of the sermon, says the master in his evidence before the Committee, was, the windows of the school house were broken, my wife and I pelted with mud, and a few days after my child so beaten as to become a cripple, and remain so to this day. The usual epithet whereby we are designated is, the Protestant Bible School, as a term of reproach.' * If influence it hath unto government. That which must knit and consolidate all the rest, is the timely instilling of conscientions principles and seeds of religion.' The Roman Catholics in London have an Association for Sunday Schools,-and the reader may be edified by the title under which it has been instituted, and by some of its rules. It is called, A Spiritual Association in honour of the Most Holy Trinity, and under the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for the Relief of Souls in Purgatory, and Instruction of the Ignorant.' All monies acquired by this Charity, from subscriptions or otherwise, shall be destined to provide that the holy sacrifice of the Mass be offered for the intentions of the Society, and for the support of the School. At the death of any member, Mass shall be said three times for the repose of his (or her) soul: Masses shall be said every month for the deceased members of this soda If the circumstances of this case be strictly as they are stated, (which there appears no reason to doubt,) the conduct of the Catholic priests will be censured by every discreet member of their own communion. There seem, however, no means of removing the obstacles which such bigotry presents: but it relates only to the children of Irish parents, and whether the intolerance of the priests, or the interest and common sense of the parents, shall preponderate, must be left to themselves. All that could be done by positive law would be to provide, that no parents shall receive relief for a child above a certain age, unless it were certified that such child was in regular attendance in some school or other. The shallow arguments for leaving out the national faith in a system of national instruction have been already exposed in this journal;—this fact alone might confute all declamation in behalf of that insidious scheme. A school is established, wherein expressly in condescension to the Roman Catholics, no catechism is taught, and the Roman Catholic priests insist that their catechism shall be introduced. It is not because of their zeal for their own tenets that we condemn these priests, it is for the manner in which that zeal is displayed, and their intolerance of all other communions; this indeed is the indelible character of their corrupted church, though undoubtedly there are some among its members who have emancipated themselves from such bigotry, and are men of true Catholic charity, in the true Catholic sense of the expression. The matter of religious instruction is settled, as it ought to be, in the schools of the National Society: the principles of the national church are taught there, but no question is ever put to any children concerning their religion; the consequence is that they are strictly and truly schools for all; many are dissenters, and dissenters of every description; one third,' says Mr. Johnson, in his evidence concerning the Central School, if not one half; and at this time we have seven Jews.' Upon this point there is no obstacle to be apprehended from any quarter except the Roman Catholics. There is one of a different kind arising from the habits of the depraved poor. In the parish of St. Clement's Danes, the rector says, where there are a great many mendicants, the children of these wretched people cannot be got to the Sunday Schools, because they get more by begging ou Sundays than on any other day lity in general. The standing intentions of this Society shall be-1st. The soul most in need.-2d. The deceased members.-3d. The welfare of the living subscribers. A member may enter the names of his departed parents or friends on the books of the Society, and such deceased persons shall be deemed members of the same, and partake of its spiritual advantages, as long as their subscriptions continue to be paid. The Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary shall be said daily for the intentions of the Society, and on no account whatever be omitted.' The Association was formed in 1810! in the week: the more children they have, the more success they meet with in begging, and they keep them in that way.' Two children employed in begging about Great Russell street were recommended to a Catholic free-school in St. Giles's; they were soon removed, and when the master inquired of the mother why she could not let them attend, she made answer, God bless you, sir, these children earn eight shillings a day for me.' It appears by other evidence that some children are let out to beggars at halfa-crown a day, and others sent out by their parents, and punished if they return without bringing home a certain sum. The notorious existence of this evil is another proof how totally the Poor Laws have failed to produce the object for which they were enacted. The parents are receiving relief from the parish for every child who is thus miserably employed, and the children are kept in a state dirty beyond description,' wilfully made loathsome and wretched, for the purpose of imposing upon the charitable; many of them undoubtedly perish in consequence of diseases produced by the cold and sufferings to which they are thus inhumanly exposed,-and they who perish in childhood by this slow murder are happier than those who live through their hardships to be trained up in filth, falsehood, blasphemies, obscenities and crimes of every kind. The greater part of the money which their parents obtain both from the parish, and the humanity of individuals, is generally spent in spirits. I have known them,' says an overseer, in his evidence, 'come up to the table at the workhouse and take a shilling, when we were sitting there to relieve them, and just as they were going out they would say, "I will drink your health with this!" to the officers as they were sitting round the table.' From this abuse of the funds which were intended to alleviate human wretchedness, this waste of private and public charity, it has followed as a natural, but not therefore a less lamentable consequence, that adequate relief is not and cannot be bestowed in cases of real misery; the meritorious sufferer receives no more than the worthless and culpable, and sometimes is confounded with the impostor. Hence those shocking instances of persons dropping down in the streets, or crawling to brick-kilns, and dying from inanition, cases which make us shudder when we read of them, which can scarcely be regarded About two years ago,' says Mr. Finnigan, in his evidence before the Committee, there was an old woman who kept a night-school, not for the purpose of instructing children to spell and read, but for the sole purpose of teaching them the street language-that is, to scold; this was for females particularly. One girl, according to this curious declaration to me, would act the part of Mother Barlow and the other Mother Cummins; these were the fictitious names they gave. The old woman instructed the children in all the manœuvres of scolding and clapping their hands at each other, and making use of the sort of infamous expressions they use: this led them into the most disgraceful scenes. When these children met, if one entered into the department of the other the next day, they were prepared to defend their station, and to excite a mob.' otherwise |