trade, in the sufferings and turbulence of their existing population, left, as they are, to grovel in their ignorance and improvidence, with opportunities of education afforded them, so totally insufficient, that all Europe cries shame.

Even if we suppose the education given in our present schools to be tolerably effective, yet the tables given at the end of this work, will shew, how little it is diffused in the most populous of these districts; but when we consider in addition, the defective character of the instruction given in these schools; the miserable education of the schoolmasters; the number of schools, which fall under the denomination of dame schools or of private schools, i. e. schools undertaken generally by poor, illiterate men, as a means of earning their bread; and when we consider, moreover, how badly all the schools are provided with books, maps and necessary apparatus, we shall comprehend in some degree, the insufficiency of the means provided for the religious education of our poor. The reports of our inspectors show, that those districts, which have been the most disorderly and rebellious are universally those where the grossest ignorance prevails.*

In assembling masses of workmen, there are always two special dangers; a low state of intellect, occasioning improvidence, and an absence of religious feeling, producing immorality and insubordination. It is possible to avoid the danger caused by the improvidence of the poor, by a high intellectual culture; whilst, at the same time, from want of the restraining principle of religion, the dangers arising from turbulence and immorality may be left to increase. And so vice versâ, by the influence * See the extracts given in the third chapter.

of a religion capable of captivating an uneducated people by its exterior forms and ceremonies, the dangers resulting from disaffection may be avoided, whilst those springing from improvidence are left to augment. But in our country we have neither restraint. Our operatives and agricultural labourers are wholly uneducated, and the forms of our religion are essentially unfitted to influence an uneducated people. The Romish forms of worship exert an empire over the minds of the ignorant, by their imposing observances, but the cold exterior of Protestantism repels all but the intelligent worshipper. Hence it happens, that in our towns and in all our manufacturing and mining districts, the poor are almost without religion. They are neither to be found in Churches nor Chapels. To bring them there, we must either educate them or else introduce the pageantry and spectacles of the Roman Catholic worship; and as the latter is neither desirable nor practicable, how does it behove us all to join in effecting the former? To leave them as at present to multiply, without anything beyond a mere pretence of education, conducted by poor, illiterate and untrained teachers, unwatched, ill paid and most indifferently assisted, and at the same time to stimulate the already overgrown masses of this country, is a blindness, which would be inconceivable in any of the ordinary affairs of life. If Government is not prepared, despite all factions or sectarian opposition, to give a religious education to the people, nothing can justify its having suffered our manufacturing system to grow to its present dimensions, still less its preparing as at present to develop it still further. And let it not be answered, that Government has, in some degree, made preparation for the education of the operatives, by preventing children

attending the mills, until they are eight years of age, and by requiring them to attend schools. What is the character of the Schools? In very many cases so poor, and so bad, that they do much more harm than good. What more important and more difficult task is there, than that of a schoolmaster, and yet what office in the country is supposed to require so little preparation? Any one has been thought fit for it, and the consequence is, that the great majority of those schools, which are not mere dame schools, are conducted by men, who, so far from knowing how to give a religious education, are often hardly capable of teaching the merest rudiments of secular knowledge. Is it not a striking commentary on the comparative interest felt by the English and by foreigners in the religious education of the people, that while in the poor country of Switzerland, with only 2,300,000 inhabitants, there are THIRTEEN large and very complete Normal Establishments, for the education of the Schoolmasters and Schoolmistresses of the schools of all the different sects; in the whole of Lancashire and Yorkshire with their 3,258,534 inhabitants, there is only ONE small Normal School, and that ONE only open to Masters belonging to the Established Church! In very truth we are wholly unprepared for the present and the future of those districts. The accumulation of our masses and the increase in the number of towns is no evil in itself, but rather a benefit, inasmuch as it offers extraordinary facilities for the improvement of the people. Civilization can never be so fully developed in the country as in the towns. But to us, this accumulation is an evil fraught with certain danger, so long as we leave its worst influences to operate and so long as we refuse to avail ourselves of the extraordinary opportunities it

presents for the advancement of all the real interests of the people.

But to turn to the agricultural districts: Little as we really know of the actual state of their education, the reports of the Inspectors show too clearly, that, however miserable the instruction of the poor may be in the towns and great mining and manufacturing districts; that of the agricultural labourers is still worse provided for. The dame schools, so inefficient for any thing else than to give a distaste for school, are still more disproportionate, as compared to the numbers of those conducted by masters; whilst of these latter, scarcely any of their teachers have received even a decent training. In fact, except where an intelligent landlord or a benevolent clergyman has provided one, a good school is scarcely to be met with in these districts. And yet what is the era that is opening on the hitherto secluded country parishes? We are rapidly transforming all England into one mighty commercial city. Steam conveyance is bringing all parts of this island into immediate connection with one another. The whole kingdom will soon be reduced to what was but yesterday the size of one of its smallest counties. It will soon be no more troublesome or more expensive for the poor of our most remote counties to visit the metropolis, than it was fifty years ago for them to undertake a journey of twenty miles. I heard a landed proprietor of one of the western counties say a few days since, "I hate the railways, they will sadly alter the character of our peasants and disturb the quiet of our country districts." It is but too true, they will indeed alter their character. They will infuse a life into the peaceable clowns, which they have long wanted, but which will be most dangerous unless we prepare

them for it? Are we prepared to see the energy of the north infused into the peasants of the south, without giving them the means of directing and controlling it? But even then, if we can make our population religious, they will still be in danger of constantly recurring distress unless we can make them provident. And unhappily we have long had institutions and habits of administration, which appear almost designed to destroy frugality and prudence.

We can all remember the alarm, which was felt at the steady increase of our expenditure on the relief of the poor from 1826 to 1834, prior to the passing of the New Poor Law. What shall we say, when we find, that notwithstanding all those measures, which have been so much condemned by some as too severe, the funds expended in the relief and maintenance of the poor, have gradually and continuously risen from 4,044,7417. to 5,208,0277., and notwithstanding the great improvement in commerce in 1842, 1843, and 1844, and the greatly increased demand for labourers of all kinds in these years, that the funds expended in 1843 exceeded those expended in 1842 by 386,5297., whilst the expenditure of 1844 was only 231,9347. less than in 1843! The gradual increase of these funds is best exhibited by means of the following table, extracted from the Poor-Law Reports for the years 1844 and 1845:

Amount of money expended in relief and maintenance of the Poor in England and Wales.