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ART. VIII.—1. A Letter, addressed, by permission, to Sir Robert Harry Inglis, Bart., M.P. By HENRY WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, M.A. Vicar of East Farleigh.

2. Correspondence [of the Rev. G. A. Denison,] with the Secretary of the Committee of Council on Education.

No person acquainted with the public course of events amongst us, with respect to education, for some time past, can fail to observe one leading tendency in it—and that is the tendency towards the establishment of what is called a StateEducation.' We do not say this tendency, because it exists, will be successful; but, that it exists everybody sees. In fact it is quite impossible that it should not, under the circumstances of the country. The mere fact of an increasing population is enough of itself to cause it. Voluntary contributions become a feeble support to such a vast work, and the pecuniary aid of the government becomes necessary. But if the government gives pecuniary aid, it has a natural right—nay, it is its duty, to see that its money is properly and usefully spent. Here, then, the interference of the state comes in; and when once the state does interfere, though for ever so confined and specific a purpose, its interference has a necessary tendency to grow: a finger once in, the whole hand struggles to follow; and in the exceeding difficulty of confining any specific functions to their own line and groove-for an ingenious arguer is never at a loss to find a connexion, and will soon educe a whole educational empire out of a single right such as that of inspection-the state advances from one claim to another, and extends its power.

Moreover, all permanent boards, committees, councils, all regularly constituted gatherings of human heads, have insatiable self-aggrandizing propensities. The fact that they have one department in their hands, is an argument that they should have another. They make it a simple addition sum. Cabinets come under this remark; they like adding to their departments of labour, duty, and influence. As soon as they have brought one field under their superintendence they want another. This is what we mean by the centralizing principle: when a body exists with important functions and offices, upon a law of moral gravitation, other functions and offices from time to time gather about it. Indeed, it is a most curious and interesting trait in human nature-the zeal with which individual members of any body, corporation, committee, cabinet, will always try to enlarge the powers of that body they belong to. A person might suppose beforehand that only generous people, and those

who were absorbed in social sympathies, would thus work for the honour and power of the bodies to which they belonged: but this is not the case. The most selfish people will do so as well. Men identify themselves with the system and society to which they are attached: the elevation of the latter is their own elevation; its enlargement theirs. They feel a swelling and expansion of the internal self, when the body to which they belong prospers and grows. How else can we account for the unwearied cupidity and uniformity of self-aggrandizement which characterize the policy of some great nations. One individual statesman and another comes, but the policy continues the same. Every individual statesman in succession carries it on, with as much ardour and zeal as if it were the aggrandizement of himself or his own family for which he was working. How does this come about, but from the cause, that the nation, or rather that concentration of the nation-the government-of which all these individual statesmen are members, is identified in their own imagination with themselves; and that they feel a personal interest in its aggrandizement. Thus with respect to cabinets-it does not signify to what political party statesmen belong, whig or tory, radical or conservative, all, one after another, like increasing the influence and the functions of the cabinet. The cabinet is their club, as

it were; they are proud of their club. In whatever predecessor and successor may differ, in that they agree; they are cabinet-men: they follow up one another's policy so far as regards the exaltation of the cabinet. Indeed, who can deny the pleasure which there must be when half-a-dozen men find themselves sitting round a table, debating about the affairs of the nation. There they are the nation, the actual collective personage herself:-0 Dea certa! They feel themselves inspired with a sense of calm and undeniable importance. They are within the penetralia, into which nobody else can come ; and all the world outside is waiting for what they in that conclave do. Why, it is an admitted fact in human nature, that ten common-councilmen cannot meet together to debate about sewers, without feeling a mysterious dignity; and many a person dates from that attendance those exalted impressions of the destiny of the human race, which ever afterwards haunt him. And how much must this pleasurable enlargement of mind be increased in the case of a board to which the affairs of the nation are submitted? Every statesman makes much of the cabinet, and wants it to grow. And thus, first by one addition, and then another, the cabinet does grow. Thus the Home Office has grown considerably of late years, and corporations are more under its power than they were. The new poor-law is another

department of influence it has got; for the Poor-law Commission, view it as you please, is virtually a branch of the Home Office. Thus stipendiary magistrates have got a place in different towns; and every body feels and knows, that though the collision has not yet come, there will be one some day or other between the great unpaid' and the Home Office. Thus two or three years back Sir James Graham wanted to get the medical profession under the control of the Home Office. We do not say that this extension of cabinet influence is not often wanted, and often useful; we only notice the fact that it does so extend. The state of things may invite it in many instances, but the answer is never a reluctant one; there is an appetency for expansion which works from within it. In England, indeed, this cabinet-propensity receives considerable checks from the press, and from parliament. The popular and free tone of debate in the House extracts a quid pro quo from the growing portfolio. The more departments of work a minister has on his hands the more cross-questionings he has to answer. He is baited and teazed. This operates more or less as a drag on the extension of cabinet control. For it becomes a question whether it is worth while to have the power if you are to pay thus for it. But the cabinet-animus still pushes on, and is only modified, and not subdued.

Moreover, on the European field, one cabinet sets an example to another. If the cabinet of this or that country has large powers and wide functions, the cabinet of another country thinks it ought to have the same; otherwise there is a standard of cabinet influence set, to which it feels it does not come up. A sort of generous emulation prevails among the different fraternities. On the education question this feeling, if it tells at all, must tell powerfully upon the cabinet in this country. For this collective personage must really say to itself on this question -we are sadly behind-hand. All the great cabinets of Europe have national education in their hands, as one of their departments of work, except ourselves. All, except the English one, have their portfolio of public instruction. We are behind the rest of the world here. An English cabinet naturally feels somewhat tender on this point, a little ashamed; it would rather not be the fox without the tail; it would not be sorry for some opportunity of attaining an equality with its European rivals on this head.

We have been giving reasons of a general kind, why an English cabinet might easily be supposed to lean, as far as its own wishes were concerned, toward a system of state education; the reason, viz., that cabinets, like other permanent boards, always wish to get every thing they can into their hands; and

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would wish to have education, as they would like to have any other addition to their domain. But besides this, there is a special reason which operates in the matter of education; education being connected with the subject of religion. The theory indeed of the political liberal disclaims, on the part of civil government, any wish to interfere with the religious ideas of a nation, or any individuals in it; and accurately distinguishes between the end of civil government, which is simply secular good, and the end of a religious society or a church, which is moral and spiritual good. But it is observable that his practical line, when in power and office, is one which does considerably interfere with religion. Having a decided bias against one kind of religion, and for another, his system of State-education enables him to encourage the one at the expense of the other. We will explain.

There is a strong tendency in a certain class of political minds to view religion as simply subservient to the purposes of a nation's temporal and political welfare. It may be said that this is only a particular aspect in which they view religion, and that their situation obliges them to view it in that aspect. But the truth is, this aspect of religion, though it be only an aspect with some minds, approaches, in the case of others, to being vitally, substantially, and positively their idea of the use of religion-their one idea. For such minds are in this difficulty-a worldly and materialistic character, confirmed in them by the unceasing activities of a political life, gradually confines the whole scope of the thinking faculty in them to this present visible system of things; and prevents them from realizing, from believing practically in a future state. On the other hand, the existence of the religious principle stares them in the face as a fact, an undeniable fact in the world. What are they to do with it? They are obliged to find a province and a purpose for it; and not realizing for it an eternal province, they assign it a temporal one. They make religion a part of the order and mechanism of this present visible system. Its tendencies under proper management, are seen to be useful, to be salutary. It allays discontent, it reproves violence, it smooths the inequalities of the social system. It does good work on the side of quiet and order; as other natural principles do in promoting activity and progress; and just as in the moral system refuted by Butler, the principle of conscience took its place, as one of the principles and affections of our nature, and no more; so in this theory, religion takes its place as a useful element, along with many others, in our character, as members of the social system. The very ultimate scope of the religious faculty is thus forcibly inverted and bent straight inward, upon that very world, from

which it naturally looks directly away; religion is made something physical, terrene: and a whole style of language which rises up on the subject, positively imbeds it in time, and connaturalizes it with the tangible and visible world. Take the spirit, for example, of the following passage:

'Bacon well knew to how great an extent the happiness of every society must depend on the virtue of its members; and he also knew what legislators can, and what they cannot do, for the purpose of promoting virtue. The view which he has given of the end of legislation, as the principal means for the attainment of that end, has always seemed to us eminently happy, even among the many happy passages of the same kind, with which his works abound. "Finis et scopus quem leges intueri atque ad quem sanctiones et jussiones suas dirigere debent, non alius est quam et cives feliciter degant. Id fiet si pietate et religione recte instituti, moribus honesti, armis adversus hostes externos tuti, legum auxilio adversus seditiones et privatas injurias muniti, imperio et magistratibus obsequentes, copiis et opibus locupletes et florentes fuerint." The end is the wellbeing of the people. The means are the imparting of moral and religious education; the providing of everything necessary for the defence against foreign enemies; the maintaining of internal order; the establishing of a judicial, financial, and commercial system, under which wealth may be rapidly accumulated and securely enjoyed.'-Macaulay's Essays, vol. i. p. 394.

If it be said that this passage only regards religion in its political aspect, and does not commit itself against its other aspects, such a defence may be true in the letter; but it is obvious what the general bias and substantial spirit of such philosophy is. Such the end which a certain class of political minds theoretically or practically assign to religion. And accordingly, they encourage, and give their special countenance and praise to that kind of religion which appears most in harmony with this object, and most to exclude other and more transcendental ones. They prefer what they called the common and neutral religious ground-the ground on which all religions agree to any particular religious creed whatever. They prefer, that is, a negative, latitudinarian religion; that being the one which, in their opinion, contains most sense and least sentiment; exhibits the pacificatory side of religion, or its use, without the zeal, or its abuse; gives the mind much consolation, and never any pain; and, in short, is the proper religion of a practical man.

Now this kind of religion a system of State-education affords means for encouraging. The simple exclusion of the subject of religion from the school at which education was given would do this to a certain extent. For though the scholars might get the most dogmatic religious instruction from the most zealous religious teacher elsewhere, still the entire separation of such instruction from his main line of education would create in the scholar's mind a sense of unreality