society's work, and is then best discharging its duty, when it does most to contribute to the moral well-being of the people over whom it is appointed to rule. If, therefore, society is bound to help itself, Government is no less bound. to be of use in the matter. Neither society at large, nor society as compacted in a form of Government has anything to lose by the spread of enlightenment. In the language of Bacon, "the conceit that learning should undermine the reverence of laws and government, is assuredly a mere depravation and calumny, without all shadow of truth. For, to say that a blind custom of obedience should be a surer obligation than duty taught and understood, is to affirm that a blind man can tread surer by a guide than a seeing man can by a light. And it is without all controversy that learning doth make the minds of men gentle, generous, maniable, and pliant to Government; whereas ignorance makes them churlish, thwarting, and mutinous; and the evidence of time doth clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous, rude, and unlearned times have been most subject to tumults, seditions, and changes."

The world has indeed known a time when the existence of the soul after the dissolution of the body was, either generally unthought of, or disbelieved; in those days there were, without doubt, some grounds for supposing that if a man could carry burdens and obey his master, all was as it should be; but now, when the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and the knowledge of a future state, are truths which are imbibed almost with the atmosphere we breathe, what shelter can any man find for saying that the children of the poor need no mental cultivation? If a parent can be proved to have brutally used his child in a physical sense, whether by excess of punishment, or by withholding food, our law steps in to defend the child and compel the parent to perform his parental duties; and shall it be said that it is less brutal to starve the mind than to neglect or abuse the body?

Either the argument that the State has a right to assert the personal rights of the child, in a physical sense, must fall to the ground, or it must be admitted that the mental rights of the child, similarly demand recognition.

There are some, indeed, by whom I have been confidently told that it is far better for a man in humble life to know no more than how to do his daily labor; but I am happy to be able to add, that such reasoners are scarce, and I may well presume that the world can afford to see them scarcer. While the public purse is drained,-while police offices are crowded, and gaols are filled,-while human bodies are hung, and human souls are cast away, still does that portion of society, which reflects not upon the mode in which its neighbours live, descant with complacent ignorance on the absence of a necessity to open the windows of enlightenment that the darkness of the human mind may be dispersed.Some," they say, "must be rich, and some must be poor, and there is no use in making people discontented by teaching them to think,-in fact the less they think, the happier will they be;" (they take care, however, to educate their own children, which is apparently insincere,) and with this loose logic wags the wisdom of the worldly-wise; as, but for the invention of printing, its waggery would have continued since the days when it was written, "How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough, and that glorieth in the goad, that driveth oxen, and is occupied in their labors, and whose talk is of bullocks? He giveth his mind to make furrows, and is diligent to give the kine fodder. The smith also sitting by the anvil, and considering the iron work, the vapour of the fire wasteth his flesh, and he fighteth with the heat of the furnace; the noise of the hammer and the anvil is ever in his ears, and his eyes look still upon the pattern of the thing that he maketh; he setteth his mind to finish his work, and watcheth to polish it perfectly; so doth the potter sitting at his work, and tyrning the wheel about with

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his feet, who is alway carefully set at his work and maketh all his work by number; he fashioneth the clay with his arm, and boweth down his strength before his feet; he applieth himself to lead it over, and he is diligent to make clean the furnace; all these trust to their hands; and everyone is wise in his own work. Without these cannot a city be inhabited; and they shall not dwell where they will, nor go up and down: they shall not be sought for in public counsel, nor sit high in the congregation: they shall not sit on the judges' seat, nor understand the sentence of judgment: and they shall not be found where parables are spoken. But they will maintain the state of the world, and all their desire is in the work of their craft."

Nevertheless those who would keep the people in ignorance, would have them frequent churches, obey the laws, and elect fitting representatives to make those laws :-how `shall the people understand the preacher, how shall they respect the laws, how shall they know what senator to support, if they are unable to think and to read?

One feels indisposed to argue seriously with those who would so much insult their Maker as to throw back with scorn his highest gifts; but yet, I will quote for their edification, the following eloquent passage from a speech made by the Bishop of Manchester, in August, 1851 :—

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"We are told, and every day and hour's experience too fatally confirms it, how great is the want of education. I grant it; but I will not use those general but too fine arguments in support of it, as that it is cheaper to pay the schoolmaster than the gaoler. I will not ask you to accompany me to the cells of the New Bailey, to the prison-house of the penal settlement; nor will I ask you to go into the streets and see the nightly wanderer plunged into such an› abyss of degradation and wretchedness that she dare not hope for salvation,—starvation and misery being the inevitable consequence of any change in her unhappy situation. I.

will not call upon you to reflect upon the bitter experience of those who have lost the opportunity of education until their only school was in the gaol, which only served to show how much they had fallen; but I ask you to consider what is due to yourselves. You are men who are Christians; some of you are fathers and husbands; all of you are members of society, sharers in one common hope, and though we may differ in opinion, yet, I trust, we all believe and remember that we may meet again hereafter. Look at the situation of the children of the lower classes; look at those who are crowding our streets wherever we turn. Are they not every one of them heirs of immortality? men born like yourselves, with the same hope as yourselves ?"

Viewed religiously, therefore, education may be asserted to be good; viewed politically also, seeing that ignorance produces crime as surely as the seething scum rises to the surface in boiling water, it is as manifestly good; and viewed equitably, it is equally necessary, seeing that many crimes are mala prohibita, not mala in se, and it may be fairly called the duty of the State to express intelligibly the penalties it chooses to exact; and those penalties, moreover, cannot be understood if the people remain ignorant. Lastly, viewed financially, education may also be pronounced good, for it is only by a studious and diligent people that the resources of a country can be satisfactorily brought out.

But, having determined that society or government should bestir itself in promoting education, we have yet to define the mode in which education should be bestowed.

I think it is susceptible of proof that as education is the common right of all, and is to be defrayed from the common fund, it should be supplied from the public purse only so far as it can be supplied to all in common, without distinction of favor, party, or creed; that it should be given on the system usually called General or National Education. To do more than this, is to beg a question which the world at large has

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not yet conceded, and, in explanation of which, the Divine Word has not yet been successfully interpreted or acted upon; whoever claims a right to force his own creed upon an unwilling subject, merely because he himself is conscientiously convinced that he is right, must of necessity allow the same privilege to every body else, who is equally zealous; and thus in acquiring dominion for himself, each person is compelled to admit that dominion to be untenable on grounds of justice and charity. "Taking the whole world, how much," says Locke, "is possessed by truth and orthodoxy. Though it is by the last alone (which has the good luck to be everywhere,) that error and heresy are judged of; for argument and evidence signify nothing in the case, and excuse no where, but are sure to be borne down by the infallible orthodoxy of the place. Whether this be the way to truth and right assent, let the opinions that take place and prescribe in the several habitable parts of the world, declare. I never saw yet why truth might not be trusted to its own evidence. I am sure if that be not able to support it, there is no fence against error, and then truth and falsehood are but names that stand for the same things."

It is not consistent with justice, or any sound principles of charity or economy, to inculcate any doctrine merely because there can be found for it some zealous partisan. But if you exclude one man from the personal triumph of spreading his particular views, you must exclude all from the same sectional advantages. When I say all, I do not of course mean that so small a minority as one, or two, or even ten per cent. of the entire population can expect the large remainder to forego the general belief. Nor can any general principle be supposed to be yielded on such slight grounds, or such apparent shortcomings. As far as mere zeal is concerned, the followers of the unfortunate man Thom, in Kent, or of Joe Smith, the Mormonite, in America, might have