But, were there even no difference in this respect, as there is surely a great deal, are we to reckon for nothing the disparity of civil and religious constitutions?
Your Lordship, I dare say, will not suspect me of a bigoted adherence to any mere mode of civil or ecclesiastical regimen. But is it all one, whether a young boy, who is destined to be a subject to the crown, and a member of the church of England, be inured to the equality of republican governments, and of calvinistical churches? It may be well for men of confirmed age and ability to look into both; but would you train up your son in a way that is likely to indispose him, right or wrong, to the institutions of his own country?
Besides, are there fewer prejudices, think ye, in the men of other churches and governments, than our own? or, are their professors and institutors of youth more free from popular errors and blind attachments, though of a different sort, than the tutors and masters of education in our country?
Nay, consider with yourself, my Lord; is there not as much tyranny in the administration of some they call free states; and as much restraint and persecution in the principles of some they call free churches, as can fairly be charged on the monarchy or church of England?
So that what you could expect to gain by preferring these foreign schools of learning to your own, I cannot easily imagine. All that is worth acquiring in either, you have, at least, an equal chance to meet with at home: and what should be avoided, may, nay must, with more probability, be encountered abroad.
But your Lordship, perhaps, would confine your young traveller to no one seat of learning; and have it only in view to convey him hastily, under the wing of a tutor, through many a famous academy, without settling him in any. This, I must confess, is the way to keep clear of prejudices; but, whether any solid instruction, or just science either of men or things, is to be gathered from so cursory an education, your Lordship will do well to consider.
LORD SHAFTESBURY.
You have done me the favour to imagine many projects and designs for me, which I was too dull to entertain in my own thoughts. But, if the education of a young man of rank and quality cannot be carried on without the assistance of academical instructors, I would much sooner trust him to the care of such as the more free and liberal genius of certain foreign Universities has formed, than submit him to the tutorage of those priestly guides, to whom our narrow and slavish institutions have consigned the province of education, in our own country.
MR. LOCKE.
Your Lordship now indeed speaks out very plainly. Your objection, then, is to Clergy-tutors; and you think it absurd and even pernicious to commit our noble and liberal youth to the care of churchmen. You would rather see them in lay-hands; in the hands of philosophers, properly so called; who, indifferent to every thing but pure truth and reason, are in no danger of imbibing wrong principles themselves, and are therefore under no temptation of instilling any such into the minds of their followers.