its staff; its vassals or its stipendiaries. In what are they distinguished from the clergy? Or let the contingency of the argument be allowed. Thousands of good men would not forego the opportunity of usefulness. But they must remember that this opportunity is purchased; that they, in improving it, avail themselves of a lavish national expenditure, given with the design of alluring their co-operation. Personally they are not paid; but money from the exchequer, which atheists must support, really helps them.

We have, until now, allowed the possibility of this distribution of education into these classifications, strictly secular and strictly religious. Can it be? We have endeavoured to answer whether it ought. We think that if it could, it would leave religion at a disadvantage, in disparagement; a something over-ruled, postponed, thrust into the corners, to be taught as it can. But we ask, what kind of lettered culture that must be, in which religion is impounded, held in abeyance, passed by, not to be spoken and thought, legally suppressed? Is it to be Godless,' even to the word? Is not revelation to be assumed? May no reverence be shown to our Master and Saviour? Are we not to know that there is a Holy Ghost? This has been attempted, and always in vain. Owen could not accomplish it in his parallelograms. The British and Foreign School Society avouched the principle. Long since it has abandoned it. Its system is very generally purely evangelical. It is passing through its ordeal now for this dereliction of its own pretensions. It can make no defence. It always was so. The Christianity which is common to all who maintain belief in the Trinity has all the while been inculcated. The blame is not for any hypocritical, underhand, breach of compact and pledge. It was an inevitable result. In the nature of things it could not be prevented. Religion is so large a thing, that it pervades all. All run into it. It is the universal ganglion. How was the good man to keep his mouth as with a bridle? Was he never to make his children wise unto salvation? We deny not an alternative. The irreligious will be most admirably qualified for not teaching religion. They who are the least impressed with its truth and power will best yield to the restraint. Public opinion should foster such men. The eye of society should search for them through all its ranks. Let them schedule their indifference and unconcern. Let their certificates be very distinct upon these points. Let all be placed beyond suspicion. But if religion seeks conversion to itself, apathy has a zeal, and infidelity a proselytization. If schools be saved from the partialities of the gospel, may they not be abandoned to opposite influences? It is not probable

that masters and scholars will retain this equilibrium in all their intercourse with each other, that this neutrality can be preserved. The disturbance may not all be on one side; it may vibrate in the extreme direction. Nature may take the place of God, and Fitness of obligation.

Should it be replied, that this distribution is not of itself deemed most feasible, but is a succedaneum, a pis aller, a last resource, all the circumstances can admit, our answer is above. If always impossible, in these circumstances it cannot be less. It can bring no relief. If always to be deprecated, as a slight and relegation of revealed truth, these circumstances cannot amend the case. Our objections go far deeper than any modification of circumstances can reach.

In the question of a government system, we ought clearly to understand what is meant. What is the government? It may intend fifteen, or more, gentlemen who give advice to the sovereign, and carry on the necessary execution of the state. It may denote the legislative chambers. The former have no real power, no revenue, no senatorship, except as they belong to the latter, or obtain their consent. This cabinet, or parliament, or both, must originate and administer such an educatory system. Now are they most in sympathy with the people? Are they most conversant with the economics of the poor? Do they truly know in what condition the humbler classes of society are to be found? Are they the most religious orders which sit in those high places? Do they generally embody the advantages of education themselves? We speak not evil of dignities. But we could not accept their ideas and uses of education. We remember that as long as possible they have ridiculed and opposed it. We could not give it them to mould. The advent to power of better and wiser men changes nothing. Most of these are wiser and better out of office than in. These are only the shiftings of the scene. They who climb to the giddy pitch may far more speedily be hurled from it. Every administration will think first how it may consolidate and distinguish itself. Every parliament exists under the dread of dissolution. We cannot look thither for the true theory of education. They were not appointed to study it. It is not their mission. We are compelled to believe that there is not an equal number of men, possessing the same advantages, so thoroughly ignorant of it. The blunders, too grave to be amusing, commonly enunciated by them when speaking on this and its cognate questions, must satisfy us that wherever wisdom is to be found, theirs is not the place of understanding.

But while we must distrust every such state-measure o national education, we might see an additional argument

against it in the manner after which ordinary measures are conducted. Boards of council look imposing from the distance. At present there is but one which is concerned with the immediate question. That cannot be brought under doubt. It is a portion of the Privy Council, with the Lord-President at its head. But it is a most unconstitutional self-authority. It amounts to a Bureau and Portfeuille. Even under it, controlling only a small influence, the grossest statements and the meanest acts have passed. When, however, the centralization of Somerset House shall be remembered as the mildest nurse of poverty, and the most searching avenger of abuse,-there must be a far larger table of commissioners at Whitehall, with thousands of dependents throughout the country, cycle and epicycle, to glen and cliff, all looking to their gain from their quarter, all subservient and sycophantic, all suddenly though insensibly inspired with official mystery, all turned into monuments of silence, with icy finger on the lip, all somehow rendered incapable of marking grievance and ill. It is a common remark that every thing is worst done by government,-contracts, buildings, outlays. The truth is, that only is worst done which it attempts, if it does not belong to it: whatever belongs to it, it only can do, and, in doing it, proves its perfect efficiency.

We are now prepared for the converse of the argument, that it is the duty of the state to educate the people. Some even have gone so far as to assign to it other duties more elementary. Woe to any people who look to government for its bread! The Dorset standard of ration, and the Curry draught which Arundel's lord prescribes, may be lavished at the outset,-soon to be most rigorously shortened and pinched. Perhaps no one averment is more heedlessly uttered in our day than that the education of the people falls within the province of government, that it is responsible for it. This must be determined by various enquiries. Was government selected as the contrivance for it? Itself the creature, even to its forms, of the popular will, when was this purpose committed to it? Is not the light which bursts upon us altogether new? If it be maintained that government, in the abstract, ought to educate, you must frame it for this end. Our government never designed it, never meditated it,-never could, from its want of all adaptation, addict itself to it. Every species of education has been independent on it. The venerable founders of our constitution made not provision for it. Its delicate as well as massive architecture rose to their plan, and beneath their jealous oversight: this conception was never wrought into it.

If we would learn the inspired estimate of government, we find its only emblem is the sword: to protect and to punish. Magistrature is for the terror of evil doers, and for a praise to

them who do well. Overt acts alone come into its jurisdiction. We suppose it is rather too late to deal with the sophism, which is itself but a few years old: that whatever is the individual's duty must be that of the community, and that whatever he ought to do in a personal, he is bound to do in a collective, capacity. It is the duty of parents to clothe and nourish their children can this be devolved upon a representativeship? It is the duty of every man to support, according to his ability, all the charitable institutions around him. Is it required of a government to undertake their support? As well might it be argued that whatever a man was under obligation to do in his domestic relation he must persevere in doing when he sits on the committee of an assurance office or a sanatory board.

All will admit that the parental education is the most simple, natural, and inceptive. Here scripture is peremptory: 'the nurture and admonition of the Lord' is urged only on them who can thus early and tenderly undertake it. Many parental duties must be left to the instinct of that relation. The formation of character and habit very greatly depend upon it. It is not a perfect institute, but it is the best which can be imagined. Any disturbance of it is the evil of evils. It may be abused, for our nature is sinful; but to interfere with it, is by the worst means the worst.' It can only, by any show of reasoning, be argued that this should be superseded by government, when it is neglected, and when it is abused. But this is a delicate dilemma. It may not be attended to at all. It may be attended to for an ill purpose. This is not general, for long since society had then been prostrated. If but partial, and even rare, it must be adjudged whether the espial, the surveillance, the dictation, will not be direr injuries to independence and freedom than any of the anterior carelessness and perverseness can be. In every family there is an informer: every domestic transaction is overhauled. If, however, no household can discharge this claim aright, if, in every instance, government should espouse this claim as its own, then a universal title is made out, all dwellings alike must open, and all families alike must submit. It is not the failure of other parties in performing the task, it was never properly theirs. An usurped right is resumed. That which had escaped its natural bounds, now flows in its proper channel. Government contains in itself the solemn fee. It is the heavenconsecrated teacher. But then it must teach all. It will find it necessary not to neglect the noble: what title has he to an independent, voluntary education? All, on this hypothesis, ought to be educated for the welfare and support of the state: their whole cast of thought should be bent to it. A Venetian jealousy should be exercised. To curb the lavish spirit may be

more required by policy than to raise the vile. To seize the supposed source of honour and power may be more demanded for the public safety than to lay hold of the inert and abject mass. This is legitimate consequence. If it be bound to teach any, then all if not all, then none.

Every argument which defends a national system, supposes that it is thus comprehensive. It must be everywhere, throughout the land. The population is counted for the due proportion of scholars. None are known of, nor cared for, who are not brought into these returns. A certain honesty cannot be denied the proposal. It would swallow up the whole education of the country. There is occasional exception and hesitation-a shuffle and a blush-but this is what it means, and what, if pushed, it cannot conceal. We cannot act more fairly in contesting a principle than to shew the consequences whither it will lead us because it may not have been fully tried, and because it may not be fully explained. If it can only be evil in its working, if it must operate noxiously, we have the best reason to disown it.

Now such a system generally professes the 'unitive' design. It would make all think alike. Its aim is, if not a level of degree, a level of kind. The thoughts, the categories of thought, the predicaments of thought, shall be the same. All shall be straightened as by the schoolmaster's ruler, and transcribed from his copy. He shall decide what may or may not be asked. But he must be normalised himself. He must be fashioned to a model. He shall only be taught particular things. The compress and tourniquet are set on his mind. He can only be suffered to think one way. His restriction is the most imperative. The desired result depends upon it. All schools will be filled with the same books. All teachers will be imbued with the same spirit. And under their cold and lifeless tuition, the national spirit, now warm and independent, will grow into a type formal and dull, one harsh outline with its crisp edges, a mere complex machine driven by external impulse, with its appendages of apparent power but of gross resistance. If any man loves that national monotony, thinks it the just position of his nature, can survey the tame and sluggish spectacle with delight, he, on the adoption of such a system, has his reward. If, however, in the view of the patriot it shall seem the lie to human greatness, the check against human improvement, the shackle on human freedom,-if he shall see in it the rust which corrodes and eats out all the highest elements of human character and motive,-then, though it should be pleaded for its practical ease and convenience, must he brand it with contempt, and denounce it with

execration.