GOVERNMENT PLAN OF EDUCATION.
Few subjects had engaged the attention of the country more than that of popular education. The government resolved upon an enlarged scheme, and submitted their views to parliament. The plan was essentially in the interest of the Established Church, and had the appearance of being intended not only as a means of proselytizing dissenters, but also to disparage them. No measure could be more adapted to aggravate the differences between the two great sections of English Protestants. An opposition was awakened among all the dissenting communities of the most hearty nature, and the government sowed the seeds of distrust of the whig party, which their old abettors, the dissenters, have cherished to this day, although ten years have since elapsed. It is unlikely that the Whigs, as a party, will ever regain the confidence of the Protestant dissenters of Great Britain. The whig government showed its usual inaptitude to perceive the real state of public feeling among the lower strata of the middle classes, and the unhappy faculty of making unpalatable measures, as mal apropos as possible in the time and mode of their introduction.
Lord Lansdowne introduced the measure to the lords. Upon certain minutes emanating from the privy council the government based their measure. It comprised a system of educational grants, and of school inspection, which virtually consigned the education of the country to the custody of the clergy of the Established Church. In the lords the measure of the ministers passed with little question; in the commons numerous and stormy debates ensued. Mr. Macaulay, on the one hand, and Mr. Bright, on the other, threw some acrimony into these debates, but probably the former never appeared to less advantage in parliament, nor the latter to more advantage than in this discussion. Government succeeded in disarming the Roman Catholic members from opposition by a private understanding that, although by the minutes of the educational committee of the privy council then under consideration, they were debarred from any grant, separate minutes would afterwards be introduced in their especial behalf. There was also an understanding with the Wesleyan Methodists on the principle of the grants to their schools, the inspection to be exercised, and the selection of pupil teachers, which disarmed the opposition of that numerous and energetic body. The Unitarians were also conciliated by the explanations which were offered to them, and that body was so extremely anxious for the spread of education, that they were ready to accept a position of great denominational disadvantage, in order to see the extension of some plan that would conduce to the mitigation of popular ignorance. The Congregationalists and Baptists, Presbyterians and Friends, and various other bodies of Methodists who adopted the voluntary principle, were beyond conciliation. They boldly demanded equal rights for all, and perfect freedom of education. This large class of persons were much maligned by the Earl of Surrey, when he consented to have Boman Catholics excluded from the minutes, because, in his opinion, if they were placed within the circle of advantage which the government was willing to accord, all the dissenting sects would assail them with an increased and perhaps successful opposition. The objections of the “voluntary dissenters,” and more liberal sections of churchmen, were unaffected by theological considerations; they desired that their schools should be protected from government interference, and remain uncorrupted by government patronage, and they objected to the unconstitutional authority, as they deemed it, exercised by the privy council. No public man out of their own party ever had so much intercourse with those classes as Lord Brougham, who, at the same time, understood them so little. His lordship affected to “live and move and have his being” in an atmosphere of liberality and enlightenment too high for the earnestly religious men of the country to attain. From this elevation he looked down upon their conflicts with an affected compassion, which if meant to cover his disdain was very unsuccessful, and it brought out more prominently his lordship’s thorough ignorance of the tone and principles of these classes, many of whom had studied the merits of the whole question with far more undivided attention, and not less capacity, than he had.
Lord Lansdowne could not introduce a more comprehensive plan, but he admitted the impossibility of his so doing, because society was divided into two great classes, churchmen and dissenters, who loved education much, but controversy more. Never was a sentence uttered in parliament where the religious feelings and opinions of the people were concerned, even by Lord Brougham himself, more unfounded in fact. The assertion was certainly true of a great many, both churchmen and dissenters, but there was a far greater number of each who loved education very much, and who did not regard controversy with any favour—men of strong conscientious principles, and of deep and earnest piety, who were not prepared to sacrifice their opinions to any government, or to any view of expediency, whatever the end proposed.
Instead of making these classes the object of his constant sneers, Lord Brougham would have rendered more service to his country, and have been more just, had he honoured their scruples, and devoted himself to the production of some scheme which, whether successful or not in passing the legislature, would have laid the basis of an ultimate acceptance by its respect for the religious rights of all. No plan of education will ever gain acceptance in England, so long as there is freedom of discussion and religious liberty, which recognises either a sectarian or a state ascendancy in education. As the Bishop of Oxford once said, as to the feasibility of a compulsory system of education—“We are too free a people for such a scheme ever to be carried out amongst us.” Carlisle showed his philosophy and accuracy of historical knowledge when he described the Roundheads and Cavaliers as honest, earnest men,— heroes, because nobly true to the principles they had espoused, and fearless of all consequences in their avowal; but that eloquent writer showed, like Lord Brougham, his ignorance of the classes of men which, in the present age, succeed to the opinions of Roundheads and Cavaliers, when he declares that there are no such men in the England of to-day. They are now as earnest and more numerous: let the same circumstances call them forth and they will be found. A superior civilisation, a clearer understanding of the principles of civil and religious liberty, a more tolerant temper now prevail, but there is as much conscientiousness still; and now as ever, in this and in every land, men, deeply imbued with the principles of Christianity, will be found ready to bear the testimony of the advocate or the confessor, as events demand. The spirit evinced by Lord Brougham pervaded, to a less extent, a large number of the members of both houses, and produced impressions amongst the numerous classes thus contemptuously treated, which worked deeply into their hearts, and influenced for many a year the votes at elections, and the general feeling of the people towards the great historical parties by which parliament had been divided.
The government carried its measure; £100,000 was devoted to educational purposes on the plan provided by the minutes of the Committee of Education of the Privy Council. The discussions so long existing on the question of education received, however, a new impetus, and became more acrimonious than before. A very large party was gradually created favourable to a national system of secular education, leaving the religious care of the scholars to denominational supervision. A very large class of earnest men became still more devoted than ever to the voluntary system of education, and prodigious efforts were made to promote it. It was found, however, that the expense was such as to defy voluntary efforts, except as sustained through a long period, while the deficiency to be met was urgent and extensive. To carry out any government system that would at all meet the necessity, and respect the scruples of all classes would also entail an enormous burden upon the nation. In the debate on the question to which this section refers, Mr. Duncombe depicted the heavy public burdens that would be thus imposed: Mr. Macaulay exclaimed, “A penny a-head.” Mr. Duncombe’s retort, that this statement was a romance was merited. Mr. Macaulay could never have examined the financial bearing of this great question thoroughly, or his acute mind must have discovered the fallacy of the opinion he so rashly hazarded.
The discussions in and out of parliament brought to light a vast mass of statistics as to the crime and ignorance with which the worthful elements of society had to contend. The alarm felt by good men in the result of these revelations strengthened the hands of government in passing the bill. Objections were raised by many in view of the magnitude of the evil to be encountered, and a sense of responsibility in connection with some immediate and extensive action. The reverend Doctor Guthrie, on a different and subsequent occasion, eloquently expressed what was at this juncture so generally felt:—“When men die, corruption commonly begins after death, but when nations die, it always begins before it. And as in that man’s gangrened extremities, and swollen feet, and slow circulation, I see the heralds of death approaching,—in these godless masses, sunk in ignorance, lost to the profession of religion, and even to the decent habits of civilised society, I see the most alarming signs of a nation’s danger, unless remedies are promptly applied, the unmistakeable forerunners of a nation’s death. Unless early, active, adequate measures are employed to arrest the progress of our social maladies, there remains for this mighty empire no fate but the grave—that grave which has closed over all that have gone before it. Where are the Assyrian and Egyptian monarchies? Where is the Macedonian empire? Where the world-wide power of Rome? Egypt lies entombed amid the dust of her catacombs. Assyria is buried beneath the mounds of Nineveh. Rome lives only in the pages of history, survives but in the memory of her greatness, and the majestic ruins of the ‘Eternal City.’ Shall our fate resemble theirs? Shall it go to prove that Providence has extended the same law of mortality to nations that lies on men—that they also should struggle through the dangers of a precarious infancy; grow up into the beauty, and burn with the ardour, of youth; arrive at the vigour of perfect manhood; and then, slowly sinking, pass through the blindness and decay of old age, until they drop into the tomb? Under God, it depends upon ourselves whether that shall or shall not be our fate. Matters are not so far gone but it may yet be averted. A great French general, who reached the battle-field at sundown, found that the troops of his country had been worsted in the fight; unskilful arrangements had neutralised Gallic bravery, and offered the enemy advantages they were not slow to seize. He accosted the unfortunate commander; having rapidly learned how matters stood, he pulled out his watch, turned his eye on the sinking sun, and said, ‘There’s time yet to gain the victory.’ He rallied the broken ranks; he placed himself at their head, and launching them with the arm of a giant in war, upon the columns of the foe, he plucked the prize from their hands—won the day. There is no time to lose. To her case, perhaps, may be applied the words, which we would leave as a solemn warning to every worldly, careless, Christless man, ‘Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.’”