The true lover of liberty will jealously examine all the plans and measures of government. He will seldom find himself called to help it, and to weigh down its scale. He will watch its increase of power and influence with distrust. He will specially guard against conceding to it any thing which might be otherwise done. He would deprecate its undertaking of bridges, highways, railroads. He would foresee the immense mischief of its direction of hospitals and asylums. Government has enough on its hands,-its own proper functions,-nor need it to be overborne. There is a class of governments which are called paternal. They leave nothing of mental responsibility and action to their subjects. They exact a soulless obedience. A down-trodden people becomes indifferent to all but the wants and lusts of life. It is then called happy. Nothing breathes and stirs. Self-reliance is destroyed. The song of liberty is forgotten. The monument of heroism finds no plinth. And when such governments tamper with education, the tyranny, instead of being relieved, is eternized. The light would have broken in: they refract and colour its earliest ray. A revolution of thought would have arisen they are ready to bind it hand and foot in subservience to their own base uses and crushing blows.

The accession of power and patronage to that government which establishes such a national system of education, can scarcely be guaged. Thousands, and tens of thousands, of employès, start up at its bidding. Pædagogues, secretaries, inspectors, cover the land. Sumless is the swarm of petty officiaries. Buildings must be raised, and here is favour: masters must be chosen, and here is suffrage. From the nature of the case, the favour and the suffrage will be confined to few. But government has raised, by all these means, new influences. The schools are barracks, and the dependents upon them are troops. What behest cannot be accomplished! What power may not be wielded! What command must not be gained! Nor, as Dissenters, can we fail to foresee the patronage which will thus accrue to the Established Church. It is preponderant in all governmental influences. Its civil character, its splendid revenue, its powerful alliance, will exceed every means of counterpoise. We know, who will be the functionaries of the Metropolitan executive: we know, what will be the conformity of the principal teachers: we know, how every other religion will be overshadowed. One mighty mechanism will be forged to sustain the state with mercenaries, and the church with hypocrites.

It may be supposed, by those whose minds seem simplified to unsuspecting innocence, that an electoral power will always regulate the control of government, and keep up a healthy popular supervision. It is hopeless. You might as reasonably

expect that the children may carry their own favourite teacher. If the population be dense, there may be disputed election at first. Even this right, in such an instance, we do not quite approve. But its difficulty will soon open the way for trustees. Now 'the powers which be' are strong. No fortress, no military hold, is equal to trusteeship. They may fear no result. Magistrates and clergymen will find no difficulty when the population is sparse. It will be the power of the potter over his clay.

If it be imagined that we unjustly impeach government, that we impute to it these deliberate ends, we are wronged. Being a body of men for the day, they have no right of place, 'they have their exits and their entrances.' We can feel for them no disrespect. We hold them in honour. But it must be the natural temptation of every government to absorb all into itself. Our constitution is one congeries of doubts, pledges, recognizances, disclaimers. It confides in none. It binds monarch and subject alike, making them equally accountable to each other, covering the entire community from the greatest to the least with a very mainprize. It gives no man credit for truth and integrity: he must stake his pawn, he must stand his trial. This is the universal condition and liability. We can, therefore, yield no apology to the state for thinking that it is more inclined to do too much than too little, that it is very easily deceived and abused, that it is almost sure to err where it is not guided by opinion from without. We must maintain that they best befriend and animate it, who, restraining churlish diffidence, withhold as firmly uniform flattering,-who test all its acts, and are keenly jealous of all its interferences.

We cannot but believe that, were any national system of education superinduced upon this country, it would produce a great depression in the present rank and species of education. Children would be drawn from a far more intellectual treatment to that which was coarse and unthinking. While it is only just to allow that some would be advanced, that in many cases a better quality would be introduced, we are most surely convinced that, on a general scale, all would be lowered. Competition among the teachers could obtain no scope. They are only suffered to think as their superiors decide. And then the evil is far wider and more searching than the good. When some schools, and some masters, and some pupils, excelled, there was incentive, there was a constant progression. There was the kindling of genius. There was the shooting forth, in rich luxuriance and heavy cluster, of every fruit of inquiry and invention. But when the better is sunk to the inferior, though with the advantage of raising in part the inferior to the better, the life of education is extinguished, and the refuse is but the laid-out and draperied

corse.

The justification of any system, like that which we consider, is the hope and the attempt of laying hold upon a portion of our people, not educated at all. In the purlieus of our cities may they be found. In the great seats of our manufactures they almost possess whole districts. They are not the children of operatives and artizans. They belong to a continually deteriorating, dilapidating, class. The parents are outlaws in spirit. Their grudge is against law and order and security. They are sullenly conscious of neglect and wrong, and they would avenge themselves. It is impossible to imagine the hiding places in which they lurk, and how they herd like adder-knots, festering in vice. They send forth their offspring to prey upon society. Who can reach this pitiable fragment? We find errors in the statistics, which include these forlorn children,—many very palpable, but this fragment, as if broken off from all, is still frightfully large, and more deadly than a volcanic projectile. Voluntary benevolence is the only means of overcoming this evil. It is a cause to be searched out. The mission which pursues it must be inspired by that of Him who came to seek and to save that which is lost.' The Ragged School is the noblest of institutions. Here ferocity and selfishness are softened by the kindness, and the reason, and the piety, of those who devote themselves to the work amidst all its disgusts. The high-bred, the delicate woman, the accomplished noble, contend cheerfully with all the squalor and all the defiance. Open a government school. Can you gather these outcasts? Could you admit them in their tatters? Will you bribe them and their parents, for you must pay them instead of being paid? Is it in the common nature of instructors, appointed and salaried, to conduct these schools in the only temper which is true to them? The only children whom a national system could embrace are those that are now in the course of education: a national system could barely touch one in a hundred of those who are not now educated. In the case of children in poor-houses and prisons, we willingly allow the right and duty of those who superintend them to educate. But this supposes a virtual orphanage. There are none others to do it for them. It is not necessarily an education of which we can approve. Nothing can justify any sectarianism in it, for the rates are paid by all. If Christian philanthropists might be permitted to conduct it, it would be far more correct and efficient.

A system of national education would not find favour with many, except that they suppose that it will supply deficiency, assist feebleness, and stimulate sloth. They see complacently what is doing: they hail this that it may do the rest. But a system is universal,-where there are any to teach, there will it be

present. It will take little account of what preoccupies the space. There are sufficient interests to urge it on. Now can legislative and eleemosynary schools coexist? Say that the first will stand by its power, that the second is secure in its principle. That power will succeed in a certain degree, by more imposing pretensions; it may be by a more perfect gratuitousness. We shall be charged with inconsistency, with palinode, if we do not maintain the triumphant success of that principle. But we have never vaunted its operation. There is a depraved, selfish medium, between that and its effect. We are firm in our conviction that there is none other scriptural principle for the extension of moral good. We are ardently assured that God will recognize none other. Prophecy lends a glorious testimony to its success. Of itself, working alone, working upon our nature, we despair. We know the innumerable causes which shall outwork it. It is only a general confession, yet in our mind it ascends to a moral certainty, that when a school can be secured free from cost, independently of subscription list, innumerable defaulters will be reported. The latter school will absorb the former: the avowed motive of those who withdraw their voluntary support will be, at first, the superfluousness and invidious collision of two similar institutions: but the real motive is, the reluctance of all, save when the voluntary principle is clearly and sacredly allowed, to support of free-will that which is sure to be supported though free-will forbear; to give, to the same cause and at the same time, compulsory and spontaneous contribution. Unless we may hope a peculiar visitation of the Spirit, we can only dread that when such a state system is once set up, the liberal will feel the strong temptation to devise liberal things no more. We speak not as dissenters: we have talked more than our fellow-religionists of what is voluntary; they have often outdone us in the practice. None have more honoured themselves in this than the members of the Established Church. If our dread be construed into a low view of human nature, we confess to it: if into a faint reliance upon loud professions, we do not eschew it.

It may be affirmed, that government is not bound to teach its subjects all that it may be advantageous for them to know; but it should see to it that they have the instruments of knowledge. By these would be understood-reading, writing, arithmetic. Even here would not be perfect unanimity. By many it is only thought desirable that the industrious classes should learn to read, for the sake of perusing the Bible. This, then, on the tacit admission that all literary and religious education must be divided, does not come within the scope of a strictly literary initiation. Writing has its enemies, as a very incon

venient capacity. What may not be written! And then as the power of deciphering the character follows that of writing it, what may not be read! Arithmetic may crowd figures upon the mind beyond the simple occasion of counting wages, and induce the sordid desire of their rise! The study of maps may carry the ideas, of those who wonderingly gaze at them, out of their own parish! The use of the globes is downright revolutionary! What have the vulgar to do with fractions? or clodhoppers with the stars? We anticipate furious discussions on all these points. But state-education is now taken up as a matter of police. This is a strange pretext. It may only be bad terminology. The purport of the allegation probably is, that government should prevent crime. Were it a question of adults, we greatly doubt if the attempt does not invariably foster it. The means of its anticipation are necessarily identified with a low consorting in the scenes, and among the practices, of vice. The functionaries employed have rather provoked than suppressed it. Something has been spared until ripe for punishment. In numberless instances it is impossible. The thought was not declared but by the deed. Is this new regulation of police, as to the young, designed to detach the children from their parents? Can this be done? What pastors are to teach them religion? How are they to acquire even its morals? If they already are juvenile offenders, they must be punished. Multiply penitentiaries. Let the government which must punish, extract from harsh discipline and imprisonment a moral reform. With punishment, alas, can only police commence. Nothing proposed by national education meets their previous case. Early, indeed, must you apply prevention if you regard the mendicant, pilfering, infants, who prowl abroad in our streets.

And truly, all that has been premised leaves at large the question on which all other questions hang. If government be under the obligation to instruct the people,-if it can claim the right as well as the duty,-then it is bound to enforce national® education. We have never denounced what is called religious persecution; for if the state possessed the imprescriptible title to establish a religion, it follows that it is authorized to see that it be believed and practised. We state hypothetically the most absurd notions that ever entered the human mind. But consequences drawn from absurdity cannot be less absurd. Now, what shall be the sanctions of an educational law? Destitute of sanctions, it can be no law. Will you begin with the parents? Will you make it compulsory on them to send their children to school? By brute force? Shall the dens of iniquity be searched, and their little ones be dragged thither? Or shall another order of penalty be substituted? Apply such