INDEX TO TABLES. 2 Tables exhibiting the character of the education given in the Normal schools of Zurich and Lau sanne 3 Tables showing the state of primary education in the cantons of Berne and Neuchatel 6 Tables showing the state of primary and secondary education in France 1 Table showing the state of 24 of the 33 great Normal schools of Prussia 3 Tables showing the state of primary education and of crime in the Austrian Empire 2 Tables showing the state of primary education in Holland 1 Table showing the state of primary education in 2, Tables showing the comparative state of the edu- Table showing the attainments of the children in the schools under inspection in the Midland Counties of England Table showing the high amount of weekly fees required of poor children attending village schools in the north of England Table showing the gradual increase of the expenditure on the poor since 1835 119-121 136 137 141 226 Table showing the number of Normal schools for 284 319 354 357 400 CHAPTER I. PREFACE. The necessity of adopting immediate measures for the Development of Primary Education in England and Wales. We are now on the eve of a great change in our commercial legislation,-a change which will affect the policy of the world. We are about to recognize the truth, that as every country possesses advantages for the production of certain of the necessaries and luxuries of life, each ought to employ to the utmost its peculiar powers, and avail itself of those possessed by others. We have at length discovered, that to pursue any other course is to waste labour; to lessen the quantity of its produce, and thereby to increase the price of that produce; to diminish the number of consumers; to deprive them of many comforts, decencies, and means of civilization; to make supply uncertain and variable, and thereby to introduce unhealthy speculation; and to expose the labouring classes to constant anxiety and occasional suffering. We have discovered, that to refuse to buy is to refuse to sell; and we have further discovered, that our folly has been contagious, that our own commercial selfishness has operated, not as a warning, but as an incitement, that our protecting duties have been met by retaliatory tariffs, and that we have to suffer from our neighbours' absurdity and cupidity, almost as much as from our own. We are therefore obliged, for the sake of our commercial and manufacturing existence, to open our ports to all countries; to invite free and unfettered competition, and to say to them, whatever commodities you can produce better or cheaper than we can, bring them hither, and exchange them for those which we can produce better or cheaper than you. It is hardly necessary for me to show how mighty a stimulus we shall thus give to our manufacturing industry and to our commerce.* It is hardly necessary to say, that for every additional quarter of corn, that for every extra article of foreign produce, which we import into this country, we must export an additional equivalent in some of the products of our own industry; that our exports must increase in exactly the same proportion as our imports; that if it be true, that we shall introduce for home consumption the immense quantities of foreign grain, which some fear and some hope, it necessarily follows, that we must export quantities of our produce equivalent to them in value; that if the poorer classes of this country will be able to procure their food at a cheaper rate, they will have more to spend on clothes and other necessaries, Several of the Swiss manufacturers assured me last autumn, that if we took off our protective duties, their trade would be ruined, as they had the greatest difficulty in competing with us even at the present prices. The Swiss have no coal, no iron, no sea-ports, the wages of labour are very high, and their cotton is brought to them by a long and slow over-land journey, or by boats propelled against the strong and rapid current of the Rhine. Yet, notwithstanding the manifest disadvantages of their situation, they have hitherto had a very good trade with Italy and the Levant, owing entirely, as they assured me, to the prices of our manufactured articles having been raised by unnatural legislation. 10 the products of our own country; and that as the price of our manufactured articles must in the end be diminished, as they are produced on a larger scale, we shall be better enabled to compete with rival manufacturing countries. There is scarcely any tract of country in the world so adapted to manufactures as our northern counties. Their coal-fields, lying at so small a distance below the surface, furnish them with the first necessary of manufactures at a cheap rate; their hills attract the clouds of the Atlantic and provide them with a never-failing supply of water from the mountain streams, for their bleaching, dyeing, and printing operations; their proximity to great ironmines enables them to obtain the materials for their machinery, at a price little raised above that at the mine's mouth; whilst their vicinity to the sea, their harbours, their numerous canals and their railroads, afford every facility for the importation of raw materials and the exportation of manufactured goods. The progress of those districts in the last fifty years has been very remarkable. The population of Lancashire, which in 1801 amounted to only 672,731, had increased in 1841 to 1,667,054; whilst that of Yorkshire, which in 1801 was 858,892, had risen in 1841 to 1,591,480! The number of vessels, which paid dock duties in the port of Liverpool in 1751, was 220, and their tonnage was 19,176 tons; but in 1840 their num bers had increased to 15,998, and their tonnage to 2,445,708 tons! But the most astonishing proof of the growth of our manufacturing resources, in the production of cotton and woollen goods, iron and hardware, watches, jewellery, leather, linen, silk, glass, earthenware, paper, and hats, is, that the total quantity of our exports are at least FOUR times greater at present, than they were fifty years ago! If such is the progress, which our commerce has made, notwithstanding foreign hostile tariffs, occasioned partly by our own legislation, what will be the limit to its future prosperity when we have, by opening our ports to the world, diminished the number of the protective tariffs of other countries? With the vast markets of the East, as yet almost unexplored; with the markets of the agricultural States of America and Europe inviting exchange; with the gradually-increasing demands of Africa and South America; and with the improvement in the home market, consequent on the improved condition of the labourers, we may safely predict, that great as the progress of our commerce and the development of our industry has been in past years, they will be still more remarkable in the next half century. But what will be the necessary accompaniment of this extension of our commercial system? A still greater accumulation of masses of labourers, and a still more rapid increase in the numbers of our population, throughout all the mining and manufacturing districts of the kingdom. Who can say what their numbers will amount to in another fifty years? But are we prepared to increase this population, without attempting to change its character? Is it safe, to say the least of it, to multiply indefinitely a population improvident, ignorant and irreligious? Is no danger to be apprehended from a recurrence of slack times, and from the impossibility of employing a multitude of untutored beings, few of whom have thought of laying by anything against a time of scarcity? Sad omens for the future condition of these districts show themselves, in the irreligion and disaffection, in the immorality and degradation, and during times of bad |