skilful use of the service of the church, the season of the year, and of all such occurrences and situations as are capable of receiving a religious turn; and such as, being yet recent in the memory of our hearers, may dispose their minds for the admission and influence of salutary reflections.

My Reverend Brethren, I am sensible that the discourse with which I have now detained you is not of that kind which is usually delivered at a chancellor's visitation. But since (by the favour of that excellent prelate, who by me must long be remembered with gratitude and affection) I hold another public station in the diocese, I embrace the only opportunity afforded me of submitting to you that species of counsel and exhortation, which, with more propriety perhaps, you would have received from me in the character of your archdeacon, if the functions of that office had remained entire.

CHARGE VIII.

SUNDAY SCHOOLS.

REVEREND BRETHREN,

THE absence of your chancellor from the kir dom upon a mission connected with the interests of le ning and with religious inquiry (and for this reason excused by his diocesan, as I hope it will be thought excusable by you), has led me to supply his place upon the pre

sent occasion.

aws,

I know of no late alteration in our ecclesiastic or in the state of the church, which requires to be noticed; but I think that there is a new and growing opinion which, if it should come to prevail in the public mind, would be injurious not only to the ends proposed by the establishment of a national church, but to the general improvement of civilized life: and that opinion is, that it is not for the advantage or safety of the state that the children of the poor should receive any kind of education, or be even taught to read. This opinion I have found by experience to have been taken up of late-not as a pretence to fence off from subscribing to Sunday or charity schools; not merely as a doubt thrown out at random, but advanced politically as a grave proposition. Did I believe that there were any just foundation for this opinion, I can only say that I should lament it most extremely; because it is in the highest degree both dishonourable to human reason, and

to

wh

disparaging to the institutions of social life; it, in fact, insinuates that the bulk of mankind can only be governed by the suppression and debasement of their intellectual faculties; and it likewise insinuates that the institutions of civil life rest for their support upon the ignorance of the greatest part of those who live under them. Both these opinions I believe to be false; and yet they are both implied in the doctrine of those who weld alarm us with the danger of instructing the poor. t has been said, that when the poor are once taught ad, bad books may be put into their hands :-to it might be sufficient to give the answer which has ften been given; namely, that not only liability, but proneness to abuse, adheres to every faculty, to every attainment, to every energy of our nature. But in te case before us, a more particular answer may be redned to the objection; which is this-Let parents and masters be what they will, they always wish to have their children and servants good. I think that this admits of few exceptions: consequently the books which co e into the hands of young persons, so long as they are under the superintendence of others, will generally be of a kind favourable to virtue-and these are the books which influence the disposition, because this is the time of life when deep and strong impressions are made.

In after life, bad books can always be met by good ones. If we should concede to the adversaries of education the superior activity of those who circulate noxious writings to that of those who wish to diffuse wholesome knowledge, or the avidity and relish with which one sort are received more than the other, the consequence would only be diversity of sentiment; and this is agreeable to experience. When men read and

think, diversity of opinion ensues,-more perhaps than might be desired. Where men neither read nor reason, there is little diversity of opinion at all. Now what I contend for is, that amidst diversity of opinion, though it be an evil, public authority can support and maintain itself. The ascendancy which necessarily belongs to it, added to the reasons which strike every man in favour of order and tranquillity, will usually confer upon it strength sufficient to meet the difficulties which arise from diversity of sentiment. I have said that where the bulk of the common people are kept in profound ignorance, there is seldom much diversity of sentiment amongst them: whilst, therefore, government continues in possession of this sentiment all is well-but how if this sentiment take an opposite direction? how if it set in against the order of things which is established? It then actuates the whole mass, and that mass moves with a force which can hardly be encountered. This is the case of most real danger, and this is a case most likely to arise where the common people are in a state of the greatest ignorance.

It has been alleged as another objection, that any intellectual attainment which others have not, though it were only the being able to read, indisposes the person who is conscious of it for bodily labour, for submission, for the offices which the poor are required to perform. The answer is, that were there any truth in the observation, of which I doubt extremely, it would form an objection, not to the instruction of the but to the imperfectness and partiality with which that instruction is communicated. I should be glad to see the day when every child in the kingdom was taught to read; and then, besides other advantages, there would be an end of the pretence for this objection.

poor,

I know not whether the opinion we are considering may not have arisen from the extraordinary events which have taken place in the age in which we live; but I am convinced that these events lead to a conclusion the very opposite of that which is thus drawn from them. The transactions nearest to us and the freshest in our memory, are those of our sister kingdom. And what do they teach us?-If ignorance could have secured the quiet of a country, Ireland had remained at rest: for in no country of Europe were the poor in a state of lower degradation, or under a more complete absence of every species of rational education. The friends of public order in that kingdom bewailed this circumstance, both as the source of the calamities which they endured, and as rendering the evil almost impossible to be remedied. When the people were once deluded, the delusion was incurable: such was their ignorance, that they were not only liable to be practised upon by the grossest impositions, but there was no way of setting them right; no approach could be made, no access could be gained to their understanding; no argument could be addressed to them but at the point of the bayonet. Let the case of Ireland, therefore, stand for ever as a warning against the system of ignorance.

The convulsions in France did not arise from any care that was taken to teach the poor. I believe that in no civilized country, Ireland perhaps excepted, was the education of the poor more neglected. The genius of the religion tended to interdict reading and books to the common people, and the ancient government did not counteract that tendency. We have seen the consequence—a sentiment hostile to the established government spread amongst the people, and that happened, which we have already said will happen under

VOL. VII.

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