The

Give to

checking a spirit of dissipation than by diffusing a taste for literature. true way to attack vice is by setting up something else against it. women, in carly youth, something to acquire, of sufficient interest and importance to command the application of the mature faculties, and to excite their perseverance in future life;-teach them that happiness is to be derived from the acquisition of knowledge, as well as the gratification of vanity; and you will raise up a much more formidable barrier against dissipation than an host of invectives and exhortations can supply.

It sometimes happens that an unfortunate man gets drunk with very bad wine -not to gratify his palate, but to forget his cares: he does not set any value on what he receives, but on account of what it excludes; it keeps out something worse than itself. Now, though it were denied that the acquisition of serious knowledge is of itself important to a woman, still it prevents a taste for silly and pernicious works of imagination; it keeps away the horrid trash of novels; and, in lieu of that eagerness for emotion and adventure, which books of that sort inspire, promotes a calm and steady temperament of mind.

A man who deserves such a piece of good fortune may generally find an excellent companion for all the vicissitudes of his life; but it is not so easy to find a companion for his understanding, who has similar pursuits with himself, or who can comprehend the pleasure he derives from them. We really can see no reason why it should not be otherwise; nor comprehend how the pleasures of domestic life can be promoted by diminishing the number of subjects in which persons who are to spend their lives together take a common interest.

One of the most agreeable consequences of knowledge is the respect and importance which it communicates to old age. Men rise in character often as they increase in years,-they are venerable from what they have acquired, and pleasing from what they can impart. If they outlive their faculties, the mere frame itself is respected for what it once contained; but women (such is their unfortunate style of education) hazard every thing upon one cast of the die ;-when youth is gone, all is gone. No human creature gives his admiration for nothing; either the eye must be charmed, or the understanding gratified. A woman must talk wisely, or look well. Every human being must put up with the coldest civility, who has neither the charms of youth nor the wisdom of age. Neither is there the slightest commiseration for decayed accomplishments:-no man mourns over the fragments of a dancer, or drops a tear on the relics of musical skill. They are flowers destined to perish; but the decay of great talents is always the subject of solemn pity; and, even when their last memorial is over, their ruins and vestiges are regarded with pious affection.

There is no connexion between the ignorance in which women are kept, and the preservation of moral and religious principle; and yet certainly there is, in the minds of some timid and respectable persons, a vague, indefinite dread of knowledge, as if it were capable of producing these effects. It might almost be supposed, from the dread which the propagation of knowledge has excited, that there was some great secret which was to be kept in impenetrable obscurity,-that all moral rules were a species of delusion and imposture, the detection of which, by the improvement of the understanding, would be attended with the most fatal consequences to all, and particularly to women. If we could possibly understand what these great secrets were, we might perhaps be disposed to concur in their preser

:

vation; but believing that all the salutary rules which are imposed on women are the result of true wisdom, and productive of the greatest happiness, we cannot understand how they are to become less sensible of this truth in proportion as their power of discovering truth in general is increased, and the habit of viewing questions with accuracy and comprehension established by education. There are men, indeed, who are always exclaiming against every species of power, because it is connected with danger their dread of abuses is so much stronger than their admiration of uses, that they would cheerfully give up the use of fire, gunpowder, and printing, to be freed from robbers, incendiaries, and libels. It is true, that every increase of knowledge may possibly render depravity more depraved, as well as it may increase the strength of virtue. It is in itself only power; and its value depends on its application. But, trust to the natural love of good where there is no temptation to be bad-it operates nowhere more forcibly than in education. No man, whether he be tutor, guardian, or friend, ever contents himself with infusing the mere ability to acquire; but, giving the power, he gives with it a taste for the wise and rational exercise of that power; so that an educated person is not only one with stronger and better faculties than others, but with a more useful propensity—a disposition better cultivated and associations of a higher and more important class.

In short, and to recapitulate the main points upon which we have insisted-Why the disproportion in knowledge between the two sexes should be so great, when the inequality in natural talents is so small; or why the understanding of women should be lavished upon trifles, when nature has made it capable of higher and better things, we profess ourselves not able to understand. The affectation charged upon female knowledge is best cured by making that knowledge more general; and economy devolved upon women is best secured by the ruin, disgrace, and inconvenience which proceeds from neglecting it. For the care of children, nature has made a direct and powerful provision; and the gentleness and elegance of women is the natural consequence of that desire to please, which is productive of the greatest part of civilization and refinement, and which rests upon a foundation too deep to be shaken by any such modifications in education as we have proposed. If you educate women to attend to dignified and important subjects, you are multiplying, beyond measure, the chances of human improvement by preparing and medicating those early impressions which always come from the mother; and which, in a great majority of instances are quite decisive of character and genius. Nor is it only in the business of education that women would influence the destiny of men ;-If women knew more, men must learn more—for ignorance would then be shameful -and it would become the fashion to be instructed. The instruction of women improves the stock of national talents, and employs more minds for the instruction and amusement of the world;-it increases the pleasures of society by multiplying the topics upon which the two sexes take a common interest;-and makes marriage an intercourse of understanding as well as of affection, by giving dignity and importance to the female character. The education of women favours public morals; it provides for every season of life, as well as for the brightest and the best; and leaves a woman when she is stricken by the hand of time, not as she now is, destitute of every thing, and neglected by all, but with the full power and the splendid attractions of knowledge, -diffusing the elegant pleasures of polite literature, and receiving the just homage of learned and accomplished men.

VOL. III.

25

ON THE EXPEDIENCY OF A LEGISLATIVE PROVISION FOR THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE.*

Some worthy persons, how deeply soever they may be impressed with the importance of universal Education, are disposed to question the expediency of Government interfering with the instruction of the people, and that on two grounds:-They are suspicious of Government, and afraid of entrusting it, with so powerful an engine of authority and influence; and they rely upon the general maxim of modern policy, which prescribes the rule of leaving the concerns of the people as much as possible to their own care. Now, we conceive that both these objections to a system of National Instruction, countenanced and supported by the State, are founded upon most fallacious grounds-and we shall take them in their order.

An

1. Admitting that a superintendence of the education of youth were likely to give the Government some increase of influence, it would by no means follow that this price was not a cheap one for the benefit purchased, unless it were shown that any other means existed of securing the same benefit; and this consideration belongs to the other head of the argument. established religion and endowed church certainly arms the civil magistrate with no small power-a power wholly foreign to the purposes of supporting a hierarchy, and only arising incidentally out of the means necessary for accomplishing those purposes. The expediency of such an establishment has accordingly been denied by many, who had never witnessed, or not duly reflected upon the numberless evils of unlimited fanaticism, and the great risks of the people receiving no religious instruction, or at least such instruction as could hardly lead to any religious improvement, were they left entirely to the tuition of their own stipendiaries, at all seasons of private and of public fortune. But no man has ever denied the advantages, nay the necessity, of providing for the administration of justice; and yet it may safely be affirmed, that the Judicial establishment of a State, in the present liberal-minded age, furnishes as much of what Mr. Bentham terms the Matter of Influence to its government, as the hierarchy itself: for we believe that Lawyers have, in most enlightened countries, succeeded to no little portion of the sway once enjoyed by their predecessors, the Priests. But there is another and a most important circumstance to be taken into consideration. Not only may checks be devised which shall control the interference of the Government, and confine its operation within certain limits; but the principal portion of the influence thus acquired is over the minds of children, whose ripened understandings will easily shake it off, if indeed time does not silently efface its impression and above all, it is never to be forgotten, that the natural effect of the system is to increase, beyond all calculation, the power and energy of the people generally, and especially to furnish, in each individual instance, the very antidote most adapted to counteract any tendency which the mode of tuition might have unfriendly to perfect independence. All considerations of patronage being put out of view for the present, because means may be devised of removing any such dangers, it seems obvious, on the one hand, that no very great harm can result from the Government, or the establishment connected with it, generally superintending the manner in which the first rudiments of learning shall be conveyed to children; and,

* The New Plan of Education for England.-Vol. xxxiv. page 220. August, 1820.

on the other, that the progress of popular improvement will, by the great and certain supply of instruction thus obtained, be so accelerated as indirectly to counteract a far greater weight than can ever be gained by Government through the direct operation of such a cause. Let the people but read and write and cipher, and they must think for themselves and it would, in our humble opinion, be quite as unreasonable to complain of the power which the superintendence of their education may give to their rulers, as to be alarmed at the chance of their knowledge leading them into habits of insubordination. Such fears on the part of the Governors have now happily been removed. It will argue very little for the good sense of the governed, if any considerable portion of them fall a victim to the opposite alarm, and still less for their candour, if they make an outcry of this description without really feeling the alarm.

2. The other objection to Government interfering rests upon a plain misconception or perversion of the principle which it professes to proceed from. Nor are similar errors at all uncommon among shallow and half-read economists, in dealing with that principle. It is indeed one of the evils which have flowed from its great simplicity and easy application. Before the time when the science of political economy was purified and simplified by the labours of the French theorists and of our contrymen Hume and Smith, a considerable stock of learning, and a great familiarity with details, was required to set up as a political speculator. When the change took place, which was found mainly to consist in rejecting the officious interference of the Government with men's private concerns as useless, or repudiating it as pernicious, every sciolist who had turned over a few pages of the great works where this principle is unfolded with infinite practical knowledge and much nice limitation and qualification, thought he was at once master of the whole science, and could settle all questions belonging to it, by merely saying, if a Frenchman, Laissez-faire-and if an Englishman, Leave things to themselves. How many persons have we heard thus disposing of all nice matters of national polity by crying out, Adam Smith, and adding, things will find their level-persons who had no knowledge of things, and hardly knew what level meant !

But the same error has pervaded men considerably above this description of shallow talkers. The first province and proper office of the doctrine in question has not been sufficiently regarded; still less has it been observed with what material guards and modifications its original patrons always promulgated it. This principle originally was never meant to extend further than to the laws by which capital is distributed and accumulated. Its import was, that every man being the best judge of his own interest, and that interest being necessarily the same with the interest of the community, as far as the augmentation of national wealth is concerned, the State ought to leave the employment of his industry, skill, and capital, as much as possible, to himself, both because he has a right to choose for himself in this respect, and because he will in general make a far better choice for himself, that is, also for the state, than the state can make for him. But neither Adam Smith, nor any one else whose authority is worth mentioning, ever dreamt of prescribing the same neutrality and abstinence to the Government upon all matters of public concernment. On the contrary, they all admitted very ample heads of exception, even to the application of the rule as far as regards capital itself. Smith, as is well known, went so far as to approve of the Usury laws, although Bentham has since most satisfactorily erased this chapter from

the catalogue of excepted cases; but the Navigation Law of England, and indeed of Holland, has never been allowed to be absolutely founded on false principles, although it be by far the widest deviation from the general rule ever made, and in a matter of the greatest importance. The excuse given for it by Dr. Smith seems still to be admitted, that there are other things which deserve our care beside the increase of wealth, and that defence is more important than riches. This seems to satisfy men's minds that the Navigation Law was beneficial at the time, although unquestionably we have adhered to it long after it had ceased to do any thing but mischief in every way. But who ever dreamt of carrying the principle so far as the persons do with whom we are at present contending? They might as well talk of leaving the settlement of disputes between individuals to the private settlement, the domestic forum, of arbitration. They might contend that the demand for justice, like every thing else, would produce a sufficient supply of the article; that all the useless machinery of civil courts might thus be dispensed with, its attendant patronage taken from the government, and its heavy expense saved to the people; and that the only necessary interference here would be, by compulsory process, to compel appearance and execution. Then, why the crowds of lawyers that blacken the gates of Themis's temples? Why degrees in the Civil, and Canon, and Common law? Why not let every man conduct causes before the arbitrators-as there is no fear of suitors employing bad counsel, any more than unskilful and unjust referees.

An hundred such instances might be added: but upon this matter of education let Adam Smith be heard for himself. In his Fifth Book, he expressly devotes one Part of the three into which the Chapter upon the Expenses of the State is divided, to the subject of Public Works and Institutions; the other two discuss the defence of the nation and administration of justice ; and of the third Part, one article, and a very leading one, is, "Of the Expense of Institutions for the Education of Youth." In handling this subject, he displays great learning, and his accustomed sound sense. He shows very clearly how the work of education has often been marred by the mismanagement of the Government, and how many branches of learning might be better taught by private encouragement. But this remark is only applicable to those accomplishments for which the wealthy furnish the chief demand. He never for a moment supposes that the poor could be expected either to seek or to find the means of instruction in the mere elements of knowledge, without any aid from the State. Nay, he goes farther, and proposes that a national education should not only be provided by the State, but that means should be taken for compelling the people to take advantage of it. "For a very small expense, (says he,) the public can facilitate-can encourage— and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education (namely reading, writing, and accounts).-Wealth of Nations, Book V. Chap. I. Part 3. Art. 2. He then recommends the means which he thinks best adapted to these ends; the establishment of parochial schools, with part of the expenses paid by the public, and part by the scholars; and the exclusion of such as cannot read and write and cipher from corporate rights, and "the freedom of setting up any trade either in a village or town corporate." We question, after this, if the authority of Adam Smith will be with much confidence appealed to a second time upon the present occasion.

But it will be said, that authority ought not to usurp the place of reason: and the opinion of Smith may be combated, by his more rigid followers