a class of schools, the pride, the ornament, the blessing of the country, where a greater portion of good habits, personal application, and real instruction are united, than in any other description of schools within the reach of the poor: from these have issued numerous useful and some illustrious characters, whose latter glory eclipsed their humble origin, but which ought rather to have displayed the excellent public institutions to which they owed some of the elements of their greatness -- -we mean the parochial subscription charity schools, whose anniversary in this metropolis, at least, of those in its vicinity, presents one of the grandest spectacles which any country can afford: the sight of which has transported many an illustrious foreigner, and elicited the interesting exclamation, that he no longer wondered at our 'national greatness!

Recently has appeared the system practised at New Lanark, 'which may well boast considerable originality; but which we neither hope nor expect to see generally adopted.

Of this system, the present publication is an "Outline." It consists of a "Dedication ;" an "Introduction;" a statement of "general Principles;" " an Outline of the details of the plan ;" and an "Appendix;" each of which we shall briefly examine.

The "Dedication" is addressed to the father of the writer, and although short, breathes that filial affection, gratitude, and veneration, which we could earnestly wish more generally characterized the rising men of the present day; while its concluding lines evince, with what enthusiasm this gentleman enters into his father's views.

"And it gives me pleasure to know that you are about to commence a more perfect experiment where practice may uniformly accord with principle; because I believe this to be necessary to prove to the world, that your principles are indeed founded in fact and in true religion.

"But its success will scarcely create in my own mind a stronger conviction than I already entertain of the certainty and facility with which poverty, and vice, and misery, may be gradually removed from the world."

We would only remark on this last paragraph, that if such be the virtues of this system, it possesses an efficacy which even the Christian system, during the eighteen hundred years of its operation, has never produced.

In the "Introduction" we are informed the system is unique, and it is rightly judged that "some particulars regarding it, may, therefore, prove interesting, as exhibiting the results produced on the young mind, by combinations, many of them new, and almost all modified by the general principles on which the system is founded."

We are also properly reminded that the experiment has hitherto been

"Merely a partial and imperfect one; and the results thence obtained, however satisfactory, not as those which a system of training, rational and consistent throughout, may be expected to produce, but only as a proof-an encouraging one it is presumed-of what may be effected even by a distant approximation to it, under the counferaction of numerous prejudices and retarding causes."

These "retarding causes" consist of the "counteracting influence of an association" with their parents, "who have not received a similar education;" the children remaining in school five hours only; the difficulty of procuring teachers, who, to the requisite fund of knowledge, general and particular, should unite all the various qualifications of habits and of temper, so essential to a teacher of youth; the permission granted to the parents to withdraw their children from the school, to send them to the manufactory at ten years of age, thus occupying them at a period when their improvement, from their ripening powers, would be greater; and their partial availment of the only substitute, the evening school; the previously formed "bad habits and improper dispositions of the children;" and lastly, the incompleteness of several of the arrangements of the system itself.

We have considered it but candid and just to present this analysis of Mr. Owen's introduction, before we enter into an examination of the general principles.

These general principles appear to us to be two: the rejection of all artificial rewards and punishments; and the substitution of kindness for severity, in the modes of government and methods of teaching.

"All rewards and punishments whatever," says this writer, "except such as Nature herself has provided, and which it is fortunately impossible, under any system, to do away with, are sedulously excluded, as being equally unjust in themselves and prejudicial in their effects.

"By natural rewards and punishments," it is, in another part of the work, said, we mean the necessary consequences, immediate and remote, which result from any action."

We confess, until we came to this passage, we were not aware, from the peculiar phraseology employed, what these natural rewards and punishments could mean; but, as they are mere necessary consequences of actions, of course, they are, ever have been, and ever will be, common to every system; and our author must have been superhuman if he had not made this exception.

The only advantage therefore that this system can pretend

VOL. II. PART I.

P

to, in this respect, must be the superior influence it possesses, in inducing actions, from which will result happy consequences: i.e. Nature's rewards.

"If happiness be our Being's end and aim,'" it is added, "and if that which promotes the great end of our being be right, and that which has a contrary tendency be wrong,-then have we obtained a simple and intelligible definition of right and wrong. It is thus: whatever in its ultimate consequences increases the happiness of the community, is right; and whatever, on the other hand, tends to diminish that happiness, is wrong; a proposition, at once clear in itself, and encouraging in its application; and one which will scarcely be rejected but by those who are unaccustomed to take a comprehensive view of any subject, or whose mind, misled and confused, perhaps, by words without meaning, mistake the means for the end, and give to those means an importance, which is due to them only in as far as they conduce to the end itself, the great object of all our pursuits, and the secret main-spring of all our actions.

"Every action whatever must, on this principle, be followed by its natural reward and punishment; and a clear knowledge and distinct conviction of the necessary consequences of any particular line of conduct, is all that is necessary, however sceptical some may be on this point, to direct the child in the way he should go; provided common justice be done to him in regard to the other circumstances, which surround him in infancy and childhood. We must carefully impress on his mind, how intimately connected his own happiness is with that of the community. And the task is by no means difficult. Nature, after the first impression, has almost rendered it a sinecure. She will herself confirm the impression, and fix it indelibly on the human mind. Her rewards will confer increasing pleasure, and yet create neither pride nor envy. Her punishments will prove ever watchful monitors: but they will neither dispirit nor discourage. Man is a social being. The pleasures resulting from the exercise of sincerity and of kindness, on an obliging, generous disposition, of modesty and of charity, will form, in his mind, such a striking and ever present contrast to the consequences of hypocrisy and ill-nature, of a disobliging, selfish temper, and of a proud, intemperate, intolerant spirit, that he will be induced to consider the conduct of that individual as little short of insanity, who would hesitate, in any one instance, which course to pursue. He would expect what appeared to him so selfevident to be so to every one else: and, feeling himself so irresistibly impelled in the course he followed, and deriving from it, daily and hourly, new gratification, he must be at a loss to conceive, what could have blinded the eyes, and perverted the understanding, of one who was pursuing, with the greatest difficulty and danger to himself, an opposite course, pregnant with mortification in its progress, and disappointment in its issue; employing all his powers to increase his own misery, and throwing from him true, genuine happiness, to grasp, for the hundredth time, some momentary gratification, if that deserve the name, which he knew by experience would but leave him more dis.

satisfied and miserable than it found him. And his surprise would be very natural if he were not furnished with the clue which can alone unravel what appears so palpably inconsistent with the first dictates of human nature. That clue would enable him to trace the origin of such inconsistency to the system of education at present pursued, generally speaking, over the world. Artificial rewards and punishments are introduced; and the child's notions of right and wrong are so confused by the substitution of these for the natural consequences resulting from his conduct, his mind is, in most cases, so thoroughly imbued with the uncharitable notion, that whatever he has been taught to cousider wrong, deserves immediate punishment, and that he himself is treated unjustly unless he is rewarded for what he believes to he right; that it were next to a miracle if his mind did not become more or less irrational; or, if he chose a course which otherwise would have appeared too self-evidently beneficial to be rejected.

"The principles that regulate the instruction at New Lanark, preclude any such ideas. A child who acts improperly, is not considered an object of blame, but of pity. His instructors are aware, that a practical knowledge of the effects of his conduct is all that is required, in order to induce him to change it. And this knowledge they endeavour to give him: they show him the intimate, inseparable, and immediate connection of his own happiness, with that of those around him; a principle which, to an unbiassed mind, requires only a fair statement to make it evident; and the practical observance of which, confers too much pleasure to be abandoned for a less generous or more selfish course."

Although mankind agree in pursuing happiness, yet are their views of it exceedingly diversified; therefore, although we were to assent to the truth of the proposition in italics, yet, it by no means follows, that we should also agree in what the happiness of the community does consist. We have heard homely parents, when apologizing to teachers for their children's imperfections, remind them that "we cannot put old heads on young shoulders." The consequences of a course of action are frequently beyond a child's discernment, and more frequently beyond his concern, notwithstanding explanation after explanation; he is occupied by the concerns of the present moment, and the maxim of his conduct is, let the morrow take thought for itself. But we feel two objections to this reasoning: the one is, that this system makes the happiness of the community the standard of rectitude, rather than the revealed will of the Great Creator, which, if regarded, will insure that happiness just in that proportion; and the other is, that it proceeds evidently upon the presumption that man is not a fallen and consequently not a depraved creature: hence the child is compared, in another part of the work, to a traveller before whom a good and a bad road are

situated, and we are assured, he will, if duly apprized of the consequences, prefer the former. We can only say it is more than our first parents did, although cautioned by their Creator. It is more than thousands now do who prefer the much frequented road to ruin, to the more solitary path to happiness, notwithstanding the reproofs of affection, the suggestions of conscience, and the example of fellow travellers.

It appears to us, there is considerable inconsistency in this. reasoning. In the first place, it is allowed to be a fortunate circumstance that natural rewards and punishments cannot be done away with, yet, towards the close of this passage, the clue "which alone can unravel" the want of success in modern education, is pronounced to be the evil effects resulting from artificial rewards and punishments. If these remarks convey any meaning, they insinuate, that these censured rewards and punishments counteract the beneficial operation of natural rewards and punishments: then, to use Mr. Owen's language, they must do them away.

If it were possible that some aged anchorite, who had not witnessed the state of society for half a century, could see this last-quoted passage, he must conclude, that it was a blessing for him to have escaped from men, unless he could live at New Lanark; he must expect that artificial rewards and punishments, seeing they have been so long in operation, had demoralized the world; and that scarcely a virtuous youth could be found who had come within the contagion of their influence. How would he be surprised, however, if impelled by sufficient curiosity, to find that in all the schools to which we have referred, here are children, as well informed and virtuous as any at New Lanark! because, in addition to these natural rewards and punishments, as far as children are influenced by them, there are also artificial rewards and punishments, which have reformed many a vicious youth, and exceeded the most sanguine expectations of the affectionate teacher who adopted them.

But, it seems desirable, more particularly, to investigate the influence of these denounced rewards and punishments which are said to be "equally unjust in themselves, and prejudicial in their effects."

"All rewards and punishments whatever, except such as Nature herself has provided, and which it is fortunately impossible, under any system, to do away with, are sedulously excluded, as being equally unjust in themselves, and prejudicial in their effects,

Unjust, as, on the one hand, loading those individuals with supposed advantages and distinctions, whom Providence, either in the