facility of learning is incalculably augmented to children of every class, and a vast saving of time secured, even to those whose circumstances may put economy of money out of the question; while the facility of teaching is so much increased, that, within almost any given time, an indefinite number of instructers can be provided. This method, which, from its regular form and successful, experimental improvements, we may well denominate a practical system, having, from the first, attracted considerable attention, has of late (owing, in some degree, to certain hostile demonstrations on the part of the bigoted and persecuting classes of society) increased in popularity, and shown signs of spreading, we would fain hope, over the whole empire. It is with the view of contributing our aid to so great and good a work, and of recording the history of the system, that we now again bring this subject before our readers, after an interval of three years; during which, the new doctrines have been working their way, through the affected contempt of some, and the feeble and forgotten resistance of others.

We have, on former occasions [see Select Reviews, vol. I, page 73] explained the principles of this plan of education, and traced their operation in practice; and we refer the reader to those articles, and to the excellent writings of Mr. Lancaster and Dr. Bell themselves, for a full elucidation of the system. We purpose, at present, to consider the questions connected with its more general diffusion; and it is with unfeigned regret, that, in the outset of this inquiry, we find ourselves involved in a controversy, which we heartily wish we could avoid, on every account; from our respect for the excellent persons engaged on both sides; from a natural dislike of all such disputes; but more especially from an appre

hension, that the great cause itself may suffer by a protracted discussion among persons, who, having the same benevolent object in view, should exert themselves in perfect harmony to attain it.

The subject now before us, the extension of popular education, gives rise to two distinct questions. It has, unhappily, been contended by some persons, that no good can result from promoting the instruc tion of the bulk of the community. They have even pretended to foresee a variety of evils, as likely to originate in the greater diffusion of knowledge; and, combining with their fanciful anticipations of danger, views of past events just as fanciful, have not scrupled to raise apprehensions of anarchy, tumult, and revolution, from the progress of information among the people. The first question, then, and one of a preliminary nature, is raised by those persons; and, should their objections be successfully obviated, there follows, of course, the inquiry as to the best means of diffusing education; which involves the matters in dispute between the patrons of the different plans now under consideration.

The general objections to educating the poor need not, surely, detain us long. Had they not received a higher sanction in the authority of some eminent statesmen, than they usually claim from the character of their ordinary supporters, we should willingly have left them to their fate. They are certainly not of a modern date; and the following passage from Mandeville will show that they are not purely of clerical origin. After expatiating upon the uses of poverty in society, and the necessity of keeping up, by all possible means, the stock of poor people, this licentious writer proceeds: "To make society happy, and people easy, under the meanest circumstances, it is requisite that great numbers of them should be igno

rant, as well as poor. Knowledge both enlarges and multiplies our desires; and the fewer things a man wishes for, the more easily his necessities may be supplied."* Now, were it not trifling with our readers to answer such positions, we might observe in passing, that his two arguments in favour of ignorance and of poverty, are altogether at variance with each other; for, the more contented a poor man is, the less will he work; and you have no surer way of getting him to labour, than by multiplying his desires; that is, by enlarging his knowledge. Dr. Mandeville always supposes, like his orthodox followers in modern times, that, by increasing the knowledge of a poor man, you give him, not merely new desires, but new supplies, without labour, both of those necessities which he always had, as well as new gratifications of his newly acquired desires. In this strain he proceeds: "The welfare and felicity of every state and kingdom, require, that the knowledge of the working poor should be confined within the verge of their occupations, and never extended (as to things visible) beyond what relates to their calling. The more a shepherd, a ploughman, or any other peasant, knows of the world, and the things that are foreign to his labour or employment, the less fit he'll be to go through the fatigues and hardships of it with cheerfulness and content." The answer to all which is so singularly apt, in a subsequent passage of the same work, that we shall save our own time by placing them together. "A man," he observes, "who has had some education, may follow husbandry by choice, and be diligent at the dirtiest and most laborious work; but then the concern must be his own; and avarice, the care of a family, or some other pressing motive, must put

him upon it." It is, no doubt, exactly so. The pressing motive of want alone could make any man work as a day-labourer; nor will all the learning of the schools lessen that motive, unless knowledge shall somehow or other acquire the property of filling the belly or covering the back. Nor, again, is it educated men alone to whom Dr. Mandeville's remark applies, unless he can also show that, without reading and writing, a man cannot tell whether or not he wants food and clothing. And then, if it be said that a learned peasant will neither do without eating, nor work to gain his bread, it must follow, that the love of labour, for its own sake, is natural to man, and that it requires deep learning to make him prefer plenty and ease.

But let us look to his other arguments; for it does so happen, that this pious author has anticipated all the topicks which have lately illuminated some of our pulpits, excepting the common addition of the French revolution, which is, now-adays, added to every argument against improvement, as regularly as the money counts, or the names of two distinguished legal characters, are to certain parts of a record. Dr. Mandeville pursues his reasoning thus: "Reading, writing, and arithmetick, are very necessary to those whose business requires such qualifications; but, where people's livelihood has no dependence on these arts, they are very pernicious to the poor, who are forced to get their daily bread by their daily labour. Few children make any progress at school, but, at the same time, they are capable of being employed in some business or other; so that every hour those sort of poor. people spend at their book, is so much time lost to the society."§ To which the answer is obvious: Either instruct children at so early an age,

#Ibid. p. 258.

§ Ibid. p. 257.

that the loss of their labour is not worth the trouble of reckoning; or, if you teach them when they might be employed in earning their subsistence, take care to let their parents maintain them all the while; and educate no one for nothing, unless his parents can, at the same time, afford to support him. This check will affix limits, within which the gratuitous assistance of the higher classes never can, by possibility, either diminish the industry of the lower orders, or in the smallest degree derange the general structure of society. And let it be observed, that this remark presupposes no material benefit to be derived from the education of the children in question; nothing to be communicated which is worth the value of their labour.

The reverend author, whose work we are consulting, then brings forward another, and one of the most favourite of the modern topicks: "Reading and writing," he says, "are not attained to without some labour of the brain, and assiduity; and before people are tolerably versed in either, they esteem themselves infinitely above those who are wholly ignorant of them; often with as little justice and moderation, as if they were of another species.”* To this also, the answer very commonly given, seems quite irrefraga ble; that if all men were well educated, no one would be vain of his acquirements, any more than any man is, in this country, vain of wearing a hat; which, nevertheless, is, in some countries, a distinction confined to the prince; and, of course, an object of great vanity. Akin to this, is the notion, that the education of the poor would be hostile to subordination; an argument much used in the present day, and mixed up with the "French revolution;" but fully expounded by our venerable author, although without that

* Id. Ibid.

addition: "When obsequiousness and mean services are required, we shall always observe, that they are never so cheerfully, nor so heartily performed, as from inferiours to superiours; I mean inferiours, not only in riches and quality, but likewise in knowledge and understanding. A servant can have no unfeigned respect for his master, as soon as he has sense enough to find out that he serves a fool. When we are to learn or to obey, we shall experience in ourselves, that the greater opinion we have of the wisdom and capacity of those that are either to teach or command us, the greater deference we pay to their laws and instructions. No creatures submit contentedly to their equals; and should a horse know as much as a man, I should not desire to be his rider."t But, surely, it does not follow, that, because the poor learn something, the rich may not learn more. Nor, even if it did, would there be any proof given, that his learning must needs make a poor man despise his equals in knowledge; for, by the argument, they are only put on an equality. However, we utterly deny the whole of the facts on which this argument rests. As long as a man cannot live without labour, he will work, and no longer; whether he be ignorant or well informed. As long as servility is necessary to some men's livelihood, they will obey others who can support them. As long as servility is conducive to the fortunes, or supposed interests of some men, or to their gratification, they will truckle and fawn to their superiour, we much fear, without inquiring exactly whether he is their equal in learning or abilities. It is truly lamentable to see how far a theory will carry some people. Had Dr. Mandeville lived in a cloister (we ought, perhaps, rather to say a hermitage; or, at least, a convent where there was no supe

riour) we might have expected to 'find him alarmed lest the progress of learning should level the distinctions of rank, and knowledge bear

away their just influence from wealth, nobility, and power. But he lived in the world of squires and parsons; of patrons and poets; of dowagers and physicians; to which class he himself belonged; nay, he was born in the country of burgomasters, and passed a great part of his life in a land of bishops, priests, and deacons. But what shall we say of those who reecho his doctrines from the very centres of patronage and dependency? who, having reached the heights of society, by bowing down their knowledge and talents before wealthy ignorance and titled imbecility, cry out to the multitudes, over whose heads they have thus crawled. "Beware of knowledge, for it begets pride !" who feeling one should hope, painfully feeling how requisite to their progress abject submissiveness had been, and how useless mere merit, all of a sudden, and without without changing their own humble nature towards such as are still above them, begin to feel, or to affect, a dread, lest the scattering of a little know ledge should absolve men from the necessity of cringing; reduce the office of a courtier to a sinecure; and people our levees, cathedrals, and counting houses with Spartans, and Catos, and Andrew Marvels!

We lament to find Dr. Bell* among the followers of Mandeville. We do not impute to his writings the intentions of that licentious author, or the immoral tendencies of his works; any more than we do his eloquence, his wit, or his acuteness. But we find the same foolish alarm about the dangers of knowledge to society; with this further exception,

that as Dr. Bell is friendly to a cer tain portion of education, nay, has been one of the most useful promoters of the new system; when he comes to boggle at the excess, and to draw lines of distinction between reading, which is innocent, and writing and arithmetick, which are pernicious, he exposes himself to a charge of inconsistency, perhaps, not to be paralleled in the history of feebleness and bigotry; a charge from which his intrepid predecessor is wholly free. "It is not proposed," he says [p. 90, 3d ed.]" that the children of the poor be educated in an expensive manner, or even taught to write and cipher. Utopian schemes [Utopian our readers will recollect, always mean modern, or French] for the diffusion of general knowledge, would soon realize the fable of the belly and the other members of the body, and confuse that distinction of ranks and classes of society, on which the general welfare hinges, and the happiness of the lower orders, no less than that of the higher, depends." "There is a risk," he afterwards adds, " of elevating, by an indiscriminate education, the minds of those doomed to the drudgery of daily labour above their condition, and thereby rendering them discontented and unhappy in their lot." Now, passing over the manifest absurdity of supposing that all this can arise from writing and ciphering; whilst from reading to any extent, the worthy author apprehends no danger; does he really think that the influence of the belly over the other members, is founded in matter of opinion, or of fancy? Let him look once more into his Roman history (in reading there can be no danger; though we see now there may actually be some in writing) and he will find that he has

made a slip, of which Mandeville never would have been guilty. The limbs, puffed up with pride, mad, as it were, with too much learning, mutinied against the belly. But how did their rebellion end? Why, they were speedily, for all their learning and pride, starved into implicit obedience. And, to make the blunder of Dr. Bell still more unhappy, this fable was expressly introduced by the orator for the purpose of showing the necessary and natural dependence of the lower on the higher ranks, a purpose which it effectually served. Comparando hinc," says Livy, "quam intestina corporis seditio similis esset vice plebis in patres, flexisse_mentes hominum." [Dec. I. lib. 2.] It is thus that the fable of the belly and the other members always will be realized. And admitting (what it seems somewhat extravagant so constantly, to assume) that the natural effect of knowledge is folly and discontent, until it shall also have the effect of feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, we may feel quite secure against its either promoting idle. ness or revolt.

To all fears of the tendency which the diffusion of knowledge may have towards injuring the character of mankind, one answer has often been given, which seems absolutely decisive. Those fears, if well founded, go infinitely too far. They go to prevent all books from being published; all pictures from being exhibited; all discourse from being held among men, without the presence of the civil magistrate. Immoral or seditious books may, it is very true, be read by the people, if you teach them to read; but, then, so may improper discourses be heard, and improper pictures gazed at. And unless every one of them is kept equally ignorant, it signifies nothing to restrain a few, or even the greater number; for one man may read and tell; and they who repeat may make it worse; and, un

less every book containing free discussion is prohibited, it is of no use to keep the multitude on short allowance of reading; because the few they do read, may do all the mischief. Nay, the less a man reads, the more likely he is to be misled by plausible errours, or injured by unsound morality; so that what is so safe to the well informed, that no legislature could think of suppressing it, may, to the ignorant, be dangerous in the extreme. And, accordingly, the evils which are now not unfrequently occasioned by the daily press, are owing entirely to the ignorance of the community.

As it is not our design, here, to enter at large into a question so trite, and, one should hope, so well settled as the present, we have only occupied ourselves in replying to the arguments most commonly urged against popular education, taking them where we could find them, both best stated and urged by a writer whom there was little danger in attacking. We shall not detain the reader with many words upon the positive benefits to be expected from a more general diffu sion of knowledge. We should almost be contented to put the ques tion upon one issue: Are talents equally distributed among the different orders of the community? or, is it contended that persons of a certain yearly income engross, among them, all the natural genius of the human race? We apprehend, that the most devoted slave of aristocracy will scarcely maintain the affirmative of the latter question. If, then, among two millions of persons, in the lower ranks, who now receive no education at all, there are a certain proportion of fine understandings, utterly buried, and for ever lost to the world, for want of cultivation; would it not be worth while to give all that brute matter a certain degree of attention, for the bare chance, that, in the mass, some vein of exquisite lustre may be made to