and in that of France, the men who were loudest in demanding the most unlimited liberty for themselves, in thought, word, and deed, have no sooner been in possession of power, than they have laid the severest restrictions upon the thoughts, words, and deeds of all except themselves and their own party. There is no danger of our tending toward the same extreme; but we shall err wickedly and perilously on the other side, if we allow the evil, or any evil which we possess the means of controlling, to take its course uncontrolled. Children are daily to be seen, in hundreds and thousands, about the streets of London, brought up in misery and mendicity, first to every kind of suffering, afterwards to every kind of guilt, the boys to theft, the girls to prostitution, and this not from accidental causes, but from an obvious defect in our institutions! Throughout all our great cities, throughout all our manufacturing counties, the case is the same as in the capital. And this public and notorious evil, this intolerable reproach, has been going on year after year, increasing as our prosperity has increased, but in an accelerated ratio. If this were regarded by itself alone, distinct from all other evils and causes of evil, it might well excite shame for the past, astonishment for the present, and apprehension for the future; but if it be regarded in connection with the increase of pauperism, the condition of the manufacturing populace, and the indefatigable zeal with which the most pernicious principles of every kind are openly disseminated, in contempt and defiance of the law and of all things sacred, the whole would seem to form a fund of vice, misery, and wickedness, by which not only our wealth, power, and prosperity, but all that constitutes the pride, all that constitutes the happiness of the British nation is in danger of being absorbed and lost. The sternest republican that ever Scotland produced was so struck by this reflection, that he did not hesitate to wish for the reestablishment of domestic slavery, as a remedy for the squalid wretchedness and audacious guilt with which his country was at that time overrun. No sooner was a system of parochial education established there, than a change began to operate. The roots of that huge overspreading evil were cut, and Scotland, which was then as lawless and barbarous as Ireland is now, became the most orderly part of the British dominions. The growth of manufactures, the abuse of distillation, and the infidelity with which some of the Scotch schools have spawned during the last half century are great counteracting principles, whose influence must be lamentably felt. These principles are common to both countries; and the striking advantages which Scotland possesses on the score of general morals can be ascribed only to two causes, its parochial education and the management of its poor. We have before us a Table of the pro portion portion of persons committed for criminal offences in different parts of Great Britain to the population of those parts, formed upon an average of the five years from 1805 to 1809. In London and Middlesex it was 1 in 854; in the midland circuit 1 in 5414; in Scotland 1 in 19,967. That there is any thing better in the Scotch character than in our own, we should not acknowledge, nor would they pretend; the difference can only be caused by the care with which the people are trained up in moral and religious habits, -this being, perhaps, the most important part of policy, and without which all other measures of good government are imperfect and insecure. The Utopians understood this well:-‘ summam adhibent industriam, ut bonas protenus opiniones, et conservandæ ipsorum Reipublicæ utiles, teneris adhuc et sequacibus puerorum animis instillent; quæ ubi pueris penitus insederint, viros per totam vitum comitantur, magnamque ad tuendum publicæ rei statum (qui non nisi vitiis dilabitur, quæ ex perversis nascuntur opinionibus) afferunt utilitatem.' The quack in politics, like the quack in medicine, prescribes one remedy for all the maladies of the commonweal: it is a sure criterion of quackery to do so. Education alone will not do every thing, but it is the base upon which every thing must rest, and unless we lay the foundation here, we are building upon sand. Are we contented with our institutions, civil and religious? have we risen and thriven under them, with God's blessing, and by their means? have they been tried and sifted in controversy, proved and approved by experience, purified, and matured and sanctified by time? why then do we omit any possible means of engrafting them upon the hearts of every succeeding generation, of amalgamating them with their moral and intellectual being, 'That generations yet to come might to their unborn heirs Religiously transmit the same, and they again to theirs!" So well are the Jesuits aware how much depends upon laying the foundation deep, that they insist upon having their pupils left wholly to their care during the whole time of their education: the progress and happiness of the young student, not less than the discipline of collegiate life, require that he should not be removed, even at the times of vacation.' So it is said in the terms of the college which the Jesuits have established in Ireland. The same principle was laid down by the founder of the Methodists as a fundamental law for his school of the prophets. A catechism was prepared by Buonaparte's orders, to be generally used throughout his extensive empire, wherein the chief principle inculcated was the duty of a devoted obedience to the Emperor. Wherefore should we be less wise in our generation, when the means required for accomplishing a better end are as unexceptionable as the object? Little more than the due observance observance of good laws and customs is necessary here; and this may be accomplished by well-directed zeal and benevolence, without any legislative interference. Let us suppose that the suggestion of the committee were adopted in some parish where the circumstances should be favourable to its adoption, and that instead of relieving poor families by an allowance for the maintenance of their children, it were determined that the children themselves, above the age of three years, should be taken, educated, and maintained. Whether every child so supported would, by the time it attained the of fourteen, have indemnified the parish for the whole cost of its maintenance and instruction, is a subordinate consideration. Locke supposed that this would be the case, and so did Berkeley. That they might do so is certain, and the obstacles would arise not from the children themselves, but from the difficulty of finding fit persous to direct their industry. But however much the economical part of the scheme might fail, the greater object would be accomplished, that every child would be instructed in its duty, trained up in orderly and decent habits, and taught some useful employment. Mr. Courtenay has discussed this subject with that good feeling and good sense which distinguish his Treatise upon the Poor Laws. The instruction and maintenance of the poor in charity schools, is not a speculative project for bettering the condition of society; there would perhaps be no question but that a residence at home, with affec tionate and independent parents, would in that point of view be preferable; but the question now is, whether, where that independence has been destroyed, and the virtuous feeling greatly endangered,-where the parent is unable to feed his child and incapable of teaching him,-the state may not ensure a moral education to the being which it preserves. It is not proposed to compel the separation of the child from the parent, where the parent undertakes to maintain it; or, in all cases, to prohibit the public authorities, from assisting the parent without that condition. It is simply intended to enact, that when a parent declares himself unable to maintain those whom the laws of nature have made dependent upon him, his neighbours should have a right to say to him, we will not supply your deficiencies, but we will protect your child against the effect of your neglect." 66 'The measure is assuredly one of the mildest which we can adopt if we retreat at all from the present system. It may, indeed, be deemed too little of a reform, and censured as a solecism against the simple "and powerful policies of nature;" inasmuch as it involves, equally with the present mode, the undertaking to feed all the children of the poor. 'It is much for the law to say, that no man's child shall starve;-it is certainly too much, that it should also provide that the child shall be subsisted in the mode most agreeable to the parents, and so that no more inconvenience shall be sustained on its account, than if the parents had fulfilled fulfilled their natural duties towards it. To enable them to do this, by an adequate addition to their income, is to put a pauper in a better situation than any other member of society, since some inconvenience, deprivation, or degradation follows in almost all but the very highest ranks, the birth of a numerous family. Inconveniences, and afflictions indeed, of the very nature of the present suggestion, are felt by parents in the middling classes; many of the public establishments, of which persons of moderate incomes are desirous of availing themselves, require separation at a considerable distance, and submission to rules offensive and irksome. At an age somewhat later, a banishment to distant and unhealthy climes is often the only resource. Few fathers can ensure to their children a continuance in the rank of society in which they were born. In the case of the very poorest, there would be no lower degree but actual starvation; that the law attempts to prevent,— not because this lowest class has a right to be exempted from the general inconvenience, but because in such a case, the evil would be more severe than humanity, allows us to contemplate. 'Yet I cannot but think it most probable, that much less of misery would be sustained by children in the proposed schools, than the most liberal administration of the Poor Laws would otherwise prevent by money payments. Large as are the sums allowed, there is still unquestionably much of squalid poverty, and much suffering from disease amongst numerous families in general. In the schools, attention would doubtless be paid to the health and personal cleanliness of the children, and much more of filth and misery withdrawn from the habitations of the poor than the pecuniary allowance now averts. The inexpediency of the proposal might perhaps fairly be grounded, rather upon its mildness and consequent inefficiency, than upon the harshness of its pressure upon the people.'-pp. 54-56. Even in an Utopian parish it would only be needful to suppose a regular inspection of the school by the salaried overseer, or the select vestry, and a little of that notice and that attention toward the children, on the part of the clergyman and the wealthier inhabitants, which kind hearts could find a pleasure in bestowing. A parish where this measure should be adopted and properly conducted, would not find itself burthened with too many children in the present generation, and in the next, the number of those who required its aid would begin sensibly to diminish, for the Saving Banks will then have a visible effect, and they who have been thus trained up will acquire a spirit of independence, a habit of industry, a sense of prudence, and a feeling of principle which will prevent them from marrying till they have some provision in store. Away then with all silly theorems concerning population,—the battology of statistics, with many words making nothing understood.' Population cannot be discouraged, and must not be interfered with by legislative regulations-you might as well attempt to regulate the seasons. The one thing needful is to give the lower classes that knowledge knowledge and those principles which shall make them understand that moral restraint is a duty, and that their duty and their interest are the same; teach them this, and put within their power the means of bettering their own condition, (which the Saving Banks will do,) and there may perhaps be more reason to apprehend, as in the educated ranks of life, that marriage will be thought of too late, than too early. Give us an educated population,-fed from their childhood with the milk of sound doctrine, not dry-nursed in dissent,-taught to fear God and honour the king, to know their duty toward their fellow-creatures and their Creator,-the more there are of such a people, the greater will be the wealth and power and prosperity of a state for such a people constitute the strength of states,— Ου λίθοι, ἐδὲ ξύλα, ἐδὲ Το suppose that we can have too many such inhabitants while tracts of improvable land are lying waste at home, or while any portion of the habitable globe is in possession of wild beasts, or wilder men, is to suppose that statesmen will always be incapable of deriving lessons from the past, and of making provision for the future. As if there were no means whereby human policy could provide for the most inevitable and most obvious consequence of improved civilization! As if we were living without God in the world, and that Providence, which regulates inscrutably, and yet with perfect fitness the proportion of the sexes, (that single and universal fact being a perpetual manifestation of its presence,) had not made the earth capacious enough for all the creatures whom it was intended to support! And let no man be deluded into an approbation of this plerophobia, by the mistaken notion that it affords an unanswerable objection to the theories of equality, and all visionary schemes of revolution founded upon the perfectibility of man. It is not by a treatise upon statistics that this spirit is to be laid, though you were to read the book backward instead of forward, according to an approved form of exorcism. He who should trust to this argument would do worse than if he leant upon a broken reed: he would find the weapon turned against him; an Agrarian of three hours standing in the school, would beat (and brain him too if that were possible) with his own staff. But such families as would require the proposed support for their children are happily as yet by far the smaller part of the population, and their proportion will diminish as the condition of the people is improved by better education, better morals, and the temporal benefits which these will produce. There is a much more numerous class of children upon the next step in society, who are supported by their parents in the proper course of things, but whose VOL. XIX. NO. XXXVII. instruction |