STATE EDUCATION: A NECESSITY. 639 



The voluntary plan has been tried by England ever since the 

 island came under one rule. And this mode of application was not 

 only not interfered with, but actually encouraged by the state. Im- 

 munity from certain punishments was granted to the man w^ho could 

 read. Even this low species of education was rewarded by the state 

 with the title of " clerk, though neither initiated in holy orders nor trim- 

 med with the clerical tonsure." (Blackstone's " Commentaries," vol. iv, 

 p. 366.) And, after this long reign of voluntary effort, encouraged for 

 centuries by the state, and supplemented by the cooperative principle, 

 the nation is now driven to assume the dutv, as it has ever had the 

 right, to control the educational system demanded not only by the 

 parentage but by the whole people. Private efforts, individual and 

 associated labors, all personal benefactions, and various national foun- 

 dations, have severally exerted the voluntary and in part the coercive 

 methods of education, and, under the most effective operation of them 

 all combined, the national illiteracy has not been diminished, but is 

 rather increasing with the growth in population. How, then, can this 

 system, or, properly, no system, be relied on ? With it, can England 

 apply to practical demands the education which the slow growth of 

 the ages has made ready for her hand ? It is less a question how 

 to create, than how to apply the knowledge now ready for the hun- 

 gering masses. 



Mr. Herbert objects seriously to state education, because " forced 

 payments taken from other classes place the workman under an obli- 

 gation ; that, in consequence, the upper and middle classes interfere 

 m the education of his children ; that under a practical system there 

 is no place for his personal views." 



Now, it is hard to see how a tax for the education of the chil- 

 dren of the workman should be more likely to create a feeling of 

 obligation toward the tax-payer than w^ould necessarily exist in any 

 other case of taxation for the support of government, standing on 

 the same legal foundation as a tax for education. Why should the 

 feeling of obligation oppress the royal ^family, to know that royalty 

 is upheld by a forced levy upon the property of the lords and 

 landholders of the realm ? It is certainly not such a feeling of de- 

 pendence as the royal family wishes to discard. Royalty can cer- 

 tainly endure the strain quite as long as the tax-payers desire to 

 continue the relation. But the feeling of obligation does not, in fact, 

 exist between the w^orkmen of England and the class taxed for educa- 

 tion, while in this country, from the nature of our political society, 

 it is not only unknown, but an impossible thing. 



Labor, in all departments, physical and intellectual, working as a 

 unit, produces a reservoir of wealth. This reservoir of wealth is 

 leisure, a fund common to all, in which all are interested to the extent 

 of their w^ants, natural or artificial. In the production of this com- 

 mon capital, the laborer, in the first form of production, is an essen- 



