THE education supplied by primary schools may be considered as embracing not only that of young children, but that of the children of the poor in general. The consideration of it | involves the whole matter of what is generally termed "Popular Education," comprising the Sunday-school, the Day-school, and the Infant-school.

The theory of the English church establishment supposes that the youth of the country are directly or indirectly under the care of the clergy for the purposes of education; and there was a period in which none but the clergy were engaged in the business of instruction. Owing to various circumstances, however, combined with the increase of population and the spread of dissent, the very scanty provision made for the education of the people became insufficient for that purpose, so that towards the end of the last century an opinion became prevalent of the urgent necessity both for the extension and the improvement of the means for the education of poor children. The result was the commencement in England of a series of efforts which have led both here and abroad to the most beneficial results.

Raikes, of Gloucester, is generally considered the founder of Sunday-schools, but other persons preceded him in the benevolent effort to make the Sunday subservient to the education of neglected children. The Rev. Theophilus Lindsey, shortly after he had taken possession of his vicarage of Catterick in Yorkshire, in 1763, employed in this way a portion of each Sunday. Mrs. Cappe, in her 'Autobiography,' says, "At two o'clock, before the commencement of the afternoon service, Mr. Lindsey devoted an hour alternately to catechising the children of the parish and to expounding the Bible to the boys of a large school to the number of about 200. After evening service Mr. Lindsey received different classes of young men and women in his study for the purpose of instruction; and Mrs. Lindsey, in like manner, in another apartment, had two classes of children, boys and girls alternately." Mrs. Cappe, wife of the Rev. Newcome Cappe, of York, then Miss Harrison, " endeavoured," she observes in her Life, "to imitate at Bedale the example which I so much admired at Catterick. I established a sort of Sunday-school there, collecting together a number of poor children, whom I assisted in learning to read, giving them books, &c., teaching them Dr. Watts's shorter catechism, together with his devotional hymns, and endeavouring to give them such general instruction as might enable them to read their Bible with more intelligence. I had no place in which to receive them but the back kitchen, which being small we were exceedingly crowded; but they grew attached to me, and liked to attend; and in order to prevent confusion, I divided them into classes, which succeeded each other; so that on the Sunday I was occupied by a succession of children nearly the whole day, except the time which was spent at church."

In the year 1769 a Sunday-school was commenced by Miss Ball at High Wycombe, Bucks. She was a lady of great piety, and very earnest in doing good. Her custom was to assemble as many as 30 or 40 children on Sunday morning, in order to hear them read the Scriptures and repeat the Catechism and the Collect, preparatory to going to church.

The idea of Sunday instruction was communicated to Mr. Raikes by the Rev. Mr. Stock, curate of St. John's, Gloucester. The following is Mr. Stock's own account, in a letter dated February 2, 1788:-"Mr. Raikes, meeting me one day by accident at my own door, and in the course of conversation lamenting the deplorable state of the lower classes of mankind, took particular notice of the situation of the poorer children. I had made, I replied, the same observation, and told him, if he would accompany me into my own parish, we would make

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some attempt to remedy the evil. We immediately proceeded to the business, and, procuring the names of about 90 children, placed them under the care of four persons for a stated number of hours on the Sunday. As minister of the parish I took upon me the principal superintendence of the schools and onethird of the expense. The progress of this institution through the kingdom is justly to be attributed to the constant representations which Mr. Raikes made in his own paper (the 'Gloucester Journal') of the benefits which he perceived would probably arise from it." The following is a copy of the inscription on a handsome marble monument, erected several years ago in the chancel of the parish church of St. John the Baptist by a subscription of the inhabitants of the parish, written by the Rev. F. T. Bailey, the present rector and Mr. Stock's successor :-" In memory of the Rev. Thomas Stock, A.M., rector of this church, who first suggested the institution of Sunday-schools, and, in conjunction with Mr. Robert Raikes, established and supported the four original Sunday-schools in this parish and St. Catherine's in 1780. He died December 27th, 1803, and was interred in St. Aldate's church."

Mr. Raikes's views may be gathered from the following paragraph which he inserted in the Gloucester Journal' of November 3, 1783:-"Some of the clergy in different parts of this county, bent upon attempting a reform among the children of the lower class, are establishing Sunday-schools for rendering the Lord's-day subservient to the ends of instruction, which has hitherto been prostituted to bad purposes. Farmers and other inhabitants of the towns and villages com. plain that they receive more injury in their property on the Sabbath than all the week besides; this in a great measure proceeds from the lawless state of the younger class, who are allowed to run wild on that day, free from every restraint. To remedy this evil persons duly qualified are employed to instruct those that cannot read; and those that may have learned to read are taught the Catechism and conducted to church. By thus keeping their minds engaged the day passes profitably and not disagreeably. In those parishes where this plan has been adopted we are assured that the behaviour of the children is greatly civilised. The barbarous ignorance in which they had before lived being in some degree dispelled, they begin to give proofs that those persons are mistaken who considers the lower orders of mankind as incapable of improvement, and therefore think an attempt to reclaim them impracticable, or at least not worth the trouble." For nearly 30 years Raikes survived to witness the growing effects of his benevolent undertaking.

The "National Schools" took their rise from the impulse given by Dr. Andrew Bell. He was a native of St. Andrew's in Scotland. After having gone through his studies at the university of that place, and taken holy orders in the English church, he proceeded to the East Indies as a chaplain in the East India Company's establishment. Becoming superintendent of the Male Asylum at Madras he was struck with the Hindu mode of writing in sand, and other peculiarities in tuition, which on his return to England he made known by several publications. The advantages of the methods which he recommended were ultimately acknowledged, and the system was adopted; but a similar project having been set on foot by Joseph Lancaster, a controversy arose, which eventually led to the formation of two societies, namely, the National Society, and the British and Foreign School Society, the former of which is chiefly supported by the Church Establishment, and is designed to further popular education in connexion with teaching the doctrines of the English Church; the second, which is chiefly supported by dissenters, offers

ment fell to pieces for want of a proper director. He died at the age of 80, after having reaped no other reward for his labours than his own inward satisfaction.

If the conviction were universal that the children of the poor ought to be educated, the devising of a suitable method of instruction would be comparatively easy. Undoubtedly those who admit the utility and necessity of educating the poor are a large, a powerful, and an increasing body. But even of those who take part in the promotion of popular education, there are many who act rather from compulsion than choice, who would not advance the cause if they could retain their social influence without doing so, and who consequently must not be expected to do more for it than their own party interests may seem to require. And if, on the one side, there is a large body of persons who wish to educate the people because it is for the general interest that they should be educated, and from the assurance that there is no evil which may not be feared from ignorance, and no good which may not be anticipated from a well-educated community; there is on the other side a considerable number of persons who desire to resist the diffusion of popular education. "It is impossible," says the assistant poorlaw commissioner, Edward Twisleton, Esq. (Reports on the Training of Pauper Children, 1841), "to shut one's eyes to the fact that a certain portion of the upper and middling classes harbour a rooted distrust of any plan for the education of the poor. In discharge of my ordinary duties I have often had an opportunity of seeing this feeling manifested in an undisguised form. . . . . Amongst many small farmers and some of the gentry, unwillingness to educate the poor is openly defended by argument; and a merchant of a seaport town gravely assured me, not long ago, that an agricultural labourer was very little above a brute, and that to educate him would merely have the effect of rendering him dissatisfied with his situation in life."

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A correct description of what the advocates of popular education mean by that term would be the best answer to many current objections, and the general tenor of these observations may perhaps do something to that end. Many persons confound education with instruction, whereas instruction is only an instrument in education. Education is the leading out, the unfolding, the training of all the human faculties under such an instrumentality and with a view to such ends as the capacity of each individual, his position in society, opportunities, and prospects may justify or require; and it seems difficult to understand how such a discipline can be injurious either to the individual himself or to society. Experience however has decided this question. The authority whose words have just been given emphatically declares “ there is reason to believe that half the pauperism and crime which prevails in the world arises from the corruption of stagnant ignorance and from defective moral and religious training, and that to remove and remedy these causes of vice is the only expedient which affords the least prospect of success for promoting the moral health of the rising generation." The following quotation is from the Report of the Inspector of National Schools, the Rev. Edward Field (Twenty-ninth Report of the National Society for 1840, p. 144) ::-"Let it not be forgotten, that the persons most actively employed in the agricultural riots of 1830 were uneducated and ignorant in the last degree. From two adjoining parishes in Wilts, fifteen agricultural labourers, I was told, were at that time transported for life. It cannot, I fear, be doubted that the materials for such an explosion yet remain in some of the rural parishes of Dorset and Wilts. Those materials are poverty and ignorance, which may again, whenever the match is applied by artful and designing men, spread waste and terror through the land. At present, in the parishes alluded to, the poor labourers know not (and how without instruction should they know?) either how to better their condition or to bear it. On the occasion of the last assizes the following important and valuable remarks are reported to have been addressed by Judge Coleridge in his charge to the Grand Jury at Devizes:- Having disposed of the calendar, he would now advert to a subject connected with the county. He had before him a comparative table of the

committals in the different counties in England from 1834 to the present time; and he found that in Wiltshire in 1834 there were 384 committals, and that in 1839 there were 428. This was not a very large increase, considering the increase of population; but still it would have been more pleasing to have found a decrease. He had then looked to see in what manner these parties had been educated, and he found that out of the whole 428 only 32 could read and write well. This spoke negatively pretty strongly in favour of education. It was not therefore an unfair inference, that, if they increased the amount of education, they might probably diminish the number of those who made small attempts on the property of others. There were 250 who could read and write imperfectly, but reading and writing imperfectly was no education at all; they could read their Bible to very little effect; a very large proportion must be in the very beginning of education. This showed how desirable it was to advance the sound and religious education of the poorer classes.' Such remarks from such a quarter must help to shake the prejudices which still unhappily remain in some places against the education of the poor."

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There is also most valuable testimony in Evidence of employers of labourers, on the influence of training and education on the value of workmen, and on the comparative eligibility of educated and uneducated workmen for employment,' given in the Report to the Poor Law Commissioners on the Training of Pauper Children,' 1841. Albert Escher, one of the firm of Escher, Wyss, and Co., of Zürich, employing from six to eight hundred men in their machine-making establishment at Zurich; employing also about 200 men in their cotton-mills there, and about 500 men in their cotton-manufactories in the Tyrol and in Italy, these men being of different nations, Swiss, Germans, French, English, Scotch, &c., states, "As workmen only, the preference is due to the English, because they are trained to special branches; as men of general usefulness, I should prefer the Saxons, because they have had a very careful general education, which has rendered them fit to take up any employment to which they may be called.... The Scotch get on much better on the Continent than the English, which I ascribe chiefly to their better education, which renders it easy for them to adapt themselves to circumstances. Knowing their own language grammatically, they have good facility in acquiring foreign languages. They have a great taste for reading, and always endeavour to advance themselves in respectable society, which makes them careful of their conduct and eager to acquire such knowledge as may render themselves acceptable to better classes. . . . . The Dutch are, like the English, quite specially trained, but their education is not of a very high order, but very sound, and decidedly superior to the English. It is an education in which economy and domestic and public respectability of conduct are particularly enforced; and we have found them to be particularly honest, economical, orderly, and trustworthy men. . . . The English are in conduct the most disorderly, debauched, and unruly, and least respectable and trustworthy of any nation whom we have employed (and in saying this I express the experience of every manufacturer on the Continent to whom I have spoken, and especially of the English manufacturers, who make the loudest complaints). These characteristics of depravity do not apply to the English workmen who have received an education, but attach to the others in the degree in which they are in want of it. Refinement produced by education would be beneficial to workmen, for in the present state of manufactures, when so much is done by machinery and tools, and so little by mere brute labour, mental superiority, system, order, punctuality, and good conduct-qualities all developed by education—are becoming of the highest consequence. . . . The uneducated English workmen at Zurich were so disagreeable as lodgers, having such disorderly and bad habits, spoiling the rooms, emptying vessels out of the windows, offending people in the streets, contravening the police regulations, that they found it difficult to get lodgings, and are obliged to pay more for them. Some of the best description of the English workmen-one of the most superior, to whom we gave 57. a-week wages, had so lowly

...

bred a family (he came from Oldham, where they are notorious for want of education) that his salary scarcely sufficed for his expenses do not take so high a standing as foreign workmen who only receive 50%. a-year... . I invariably find that the best educated of our workmen live in the most respectable manner at the least expense, or make their money go the farthest in obtaining comforts. Of the English, the educated workmen are the only ones who save money out of their very large wages. The most educated of our British workmen is a Scotch engineer, who has a salary of 31. a-week, of which he spends about one-half; he lives in very respectable lodgings; he is always well dressed; he frequents reading-rooms; subscribes to a circulating library, purchases mathematical instruments, studies German, and has every rational enjoyment. We have an English workman, a single man, also of the same standing, who has the same wages, also a very sober person; but as his education does not open to him the resource of mental enjoyment, he spends his evenings and Sundays in winehouses, because he cannot find other sources of amusement which presuppose a better education, and he spends his whole pay.... What pilfering we detect among our work people is invariably amongst the class which is lowest in education."

Joseph Kempson, of Philadelphia, cotton-manufacturer, states that they do not like to take English workmen in the New England factories, because they are so dissipated and discontented. They are noted as the greatest drunkards in the country, and are much worse educated than Americans of the same class. Schools in the United States are encouraged, because they are regarded as of the greatest importance to the welfare of the community. William Fairbairn, Esq., of Manchester, states that a preference is always given to workmen who have received the best education; that in all questions respecting wages the best educated are the most reasonable in their demands and the most peaceable in their behaviour; and that the educated are more sober and less dissipated than the uneducated. Another employer, who had provided schooling for upwards of 200, stated in private conversation that at first the expenditure was given chiefly from a desire to make the people happy; but he subsequently found that, had it all been done simply as an investment of capital, it would have been a highly profitable one; adding, that he would not as a pecuniary speculation take less than 70001. for his set of workmen, upwards of 800, in exchange for the uneducated and uncultivated workmen of another manufacturer opposite.

The Select Committee of the House of Commons on Education, 1838, declared that "to the neglected education of the children of the working classes in populous places is to be chiefly attributed the great increase of criminals, and conse quently of cost to the country." From returns to parliament the committals for crime in England and Wales were in

That is, in 20 years (from 1810 to 1832) the committals increased fourfold, while the population increased only 32 per cent. The increase in 1840, as compared with 1839, was 11-22 per cent., a large increase, especially when it is considered that it follows an increase of 5.8 per cent. in the preceding year.

The following very important evidence on the effects of knowledge and ignorance was given before the Educational Committee, 1838, by John Corrie, Esq., a magistrate residing near Birmingham, and chairman of the West Bromwich Union :

"At the time the Union was made, the returns of the population of the West Bromwich Union were 34,000, grounded on the census of 1831, and I believe there are now upwards of 40,000.

"From what little experience I have had as a magistrate and as chairman of the Union, I should say that education for the humbler classes is greatly wanted, lamentably wanted.

"There is very little education of any sort; that which there is is of the most elementary kind-reading and indifferent writing most of those (and especially the young) who come before the magistrates, and before the Union Board, are unable either to read or write; they have no knowledge of moral obligation, or very little; many of them have never been at any place of worship.

"The neglect of any education, moral and religious, is the source of much crime and cost to the country in consequence, and to the district in which they live.

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"I have no conception of any other means of forcing civilization downwards in society except education; there is a slight surface of civilization; those in certain circumstances have a little education, but the mass have none."

In answer to the following question, "Do you not think that, if a tolerable education were provided for the humbler classes, they would be more likely to enter into those provident societies which have been so much spoken of lately; savings' banks and benefit societies, for providing against sickness and those other calamities which are incident to the situation of the poor?"-he says, "The educated classes have the benefit of all the recorded experience of the past to guide them: these poor people have no recorded experience; their own feelings, or the little experience of their fathers and mothers, is all they have to guide them."

And to the question, "Do you think it would be beneficial to them, and that they would be much more likely to enter into these provident societies, supposing the means of education were afforded?" he replies, "I have no doubt on the subject whatever."

Dr. J. P. Kay, 1841, thus speaks of the effect of education on pauper children: "Ignorant of all that is good, but trained and practised in all evil; unintellectual, debased, and demoralized, the work of instruction and reformation sometimes appeared almost hopeless. But the rapid improvement of the children under a system of religious and moral teaching and of industrial training; their general decency of deportment; the proofs they afford of the influence of sound principles; and the apparent state of comfort in which they live-the simple result of cleanliness, discipline, and regularity-attracted observation, and are now beginning to excite a feeling of jealousy out of doors."

It is only very recently that correct notions respecting the actual state of popular education in this country have begun to prevail; and even now, in cases where its deficiency in amount is acknowledged, there often exist very erroneous opinions of its value. These false ideas are to be mainly attributed to the fact that no means have existed by which a knowledge of the general state of education could be acquired. The statistics of education are quite a recent study; and even now, although something has been done by Parliamentary Committees, by "The Manchester Statistical Society," and other similar institutions, by "The Central Society of Education," and by the "Committee of Council on Education," still there are no means by which exact information on this subject can be obtained with respect to the country at large; and all that can be done is to present some facts ascertained in relation to particular places, from which a rude idea of the general condition may be deduced, and to make a rapid review of the quality of the education that is given.

The Parliamentary Committee on Education (1838) state it as their opinion, that as regards the children of the working classes it would be desirable to give education to them from the age of three to thirteen; deducting from this number all the children of the rich or middle classes, they conclude that daily school education should be provided for one-eighth of the population. They proceed to report that in five parishes in London, situated along the Strand and round Charing-Cross, some sort of daily instruction is afforded to about one in fourteen of the population, instead of one in eight." In Bethnal Green, they state, "there are from 8000 to 10,000 children for whom no means of daily instruction are provided. In that parish thousands are growing up uninstructed in their

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duty to God or man. . . . In this populous parish less than one in twenty are under daily education." They furnish Table A in Appendix.

In regard to the most important of the places mentioned in the preceding table, the details are worked out to other interesting results in Table B, taken from the same Report.

The Christian Instruction Society caused a district in London, near Barbican, to be visited, which contains 4577 children, of whom 3299 were not receiving any education what

ever.

Another district examined by the agents of the London City Mission contained 812 children under twelve years of age, and of that number only 65 were receiving education. They have stated generally also, that in thirty-four districts they found many thousands who went to neither day nor Sunday-schools; and that they found 2744 adults who confessed that they could not read a letter. In the parish of Bethnal Green, out of 14,000 children, 4820 were educated, whilst 9180 had no daily education; and, deducting the children who are receiving an education which scarcely deserves the name, there are less than 3000 who are properly instructed. By Table Cit appears that in the four places to which it relates there are 32,697 children between five and fifteen years of age not at tending any school whatever.

The agricultural districts are no better provided with the means of education. In the county of Kent the Central Society of Education caused eight parishes near Maidstone to be investigated, and they report that, of 262 children above fourteen, 111 can neither read nor write; that, of 1300 children under fourteen years of age, 728 did not go to school; of these 728, 372 only attended day-schools; 513 children are returned as playing in the streets. In the Tendring Union, in the county of Essex, out of 706 children only 88 could read and write, and not more than 109 frequented a day-school. Of 2440 children in the Hay Union, in Herefordshire, 612 only could read and write, and 1038 attended no school. In the locality where, in the year 1838, the fanatic who called himself Sir William Courtenay raised a tumult which ended in the loss of his own life and the lives of several of his deluded followers -at Herne Hill, out of 45 children above fourteen, only 11 were, on investigation, found able to read and write, and, out of 117 under fourteen, but 42 attended school, and several of these only occasionally; out of these 42, not more than 6 could read and write;-at the villa of Dunkirk no school whatever existed, though it comprised 5000 acres of land, and had a population of 700 persons; at the village of Boughton, out of 35 children above fourteen years of age, 7 could read and write; of 119 under that age, 32 attended school. In February, 1840, Mr. Seymour Tremenheere, assistant poor-law commissioner, reported on the state of education in that part of Wales in which the Chartists under Frost made a sudden rising; he supplies the following table, which shows the nume ber of common day and dame-schools in each of these parishes respectively; the number of children frequenting them, and the proportion they bear to the whole population.

clesfield district, including a population of 129,541, the number of children educated under the care of the Established Church is not more than 7 per cent. on the gross population; in the Liverpool district, including a population of 257,284, it amounts to no more than 6 per cent.; and in the Manchester district, including a population of 504,672, it falls to 5 per cent. on the gross population. Returns of children not educated in connexion with the Church are only approximations to the truth. Of the parishes or districts from whence returns have been received, the gross amount of population being 1,694,981, it appears that there are—

being at the rate of rather more than 9 per cent. under education in connexion with the Church, and of rather more than 6 per cent. under education in schools unconnected with the church. It must be remarked that these returns include schools of all kinds; and that the proportion per cent. would have been very much less if the number had been given of those only who receive daily education. The Diocesan Report for the Diocese of Peterborough (1840) speaks thus

"The Board has also ascertained that there is a lamentable deficiency in the amount of church-education, both daily and Sunday, for the poorer classes. Thus, in Leicester only oneseventeenth of the population, as calculated according to the census of 1831, is receiving instruction from national or other parochial schools in any direct and recognised connexion with the Church. A like deficiency is seen to exist in other places of a smaller size and population, as e. g. in one parish of 6491 inhabitants the proportion of children receiving churcheducation to the whole population is one-seventeenth; and in others as follows:

Another circumstance brought to light by the researches of the Board is, that "there are no fewer than eighty parishes, nearly one-third, that is, of those from which the returns have been received, where there is at present no daily church-school for the education of the poor; and amongst these cases there are instances of parishes with 3000, 2000, several of 1000 inhabitants, and from eighteen to twenty with a population varying from 500 to 900.

"Nor must it be supposed that the wide field for education in this county has been filled up by the different denominations of dissenters. Such a supposition would be altogether erroneous; for, although the returns which the Board have received with regard to dissenting schools are not nearly so full and explicit as they could have wished to possess, yet do they nevertheless abundantly warrant this conclusion at least, that three-fourths of such schools are only Sunday-schools, and that there seems to be no machinery whatever among them for any general and regular system of daily instruction."

The Report for the Diocese of Salisbury states "that besides parishes of small population, there are some with a population of above 600 destitute of any school; and a few even much larger, where the education is altogether insignificant; and that above 20,000 children attend Sunday-schools only." The last Report of "The National School Society," in the "extracts" which it gives from applications made to it from all parts of the kingdom, supplies the following and other similar facts:-"Immense educational destitution in this populous parish, 20,000 souls without a single national school:” “The condition of this large parish, now estimated at above 100,000 souls, is, in respect to the want of schools, most deplorable; at least six school-rooms are wanted: " "There is only one small