2 72 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Newton and certain university developments (such as the foundation of 

 various chairs) destined to bear fruit in later days — was asleep, while 

 primary education was poor indeed. It was, however, living and awake 

 and so led on to the great revival of the nineteenth century. 



Three new causes united with the new foundations and the charity 

 schools to produce this revival. The first was the Sunday 

 School system, tried by John Wesley in Savannah in 1737, but 

 only introduced into England in 1763, made a national system by 

 Eobert Kaikes, of Gloucester, in 1780 and brought to London about 

 1785, when the Sunday School Society was founded. In 183-1 there 

 were about 1,500,000 children with 160,000 voluntary teachers in the 

 Sunday Schools of England and Wales. The secular work done by 

 these schools was most valuable. In Manchester we find that in 1831 

 Sunday Schools were open for secular instruction for five and a half 

 hours on Sunday and for two evenings in the week, and that the 

 ages of the scholars varied from five to twenty-five years. Manchester 

 in those days was still writhing under the scourge of universal child 

 labor, and the Sunday Schools did work that secured the social salva- 

 tion of thousands. In Mr. Benjamin Braidley's Manchester Sunday 

 School there were 2,700 scholars, taught by 120 unsalaried teachers, all, 

 save two or three, former scholars. The self-sacrifice to be found in the 

 Manchester of those days perhaps more than balanced the sorrows 

 involved in the policy of the Manchester school and David Eicardo. 

 The second cause to which I have referred was the introduction of the 

 monitorial system between 1798 and 1803, by Andrew Bell, a clergy- 

 man of the established church (who subsequently founded in 1811 the 

 National School Society), and Joseph Lancaster, who received the close 

 support of King George III., and from whose work sprang in 1814 the 

 British and Foreign School Society. These two men worked with im- 

 mense vigor at their task and quarreled with no less energy. Their 

 quarrel for precedence as the discoverer of the monitorial system was 

 taken up by the political parties of the day. The tories or church party 

 supported the claims of Dr. Bell, while the whigs and dissenters rallied 

 round Mr. Lancaster. The system was in itself a bad one. It was 

 the parent of the modern pupil-teacher system and gave permanence 

 to the lamentable practice of employing untrained teachers. We may, 

 therefore, believe that the quarrel for precedence was unimportant. 

 It had, however, two vast issues. It created the modern religious or 

 denominational controversy which has had such a marked influence 

 on the development of primary education in England, and it also 

 brought education into modern politics. 



The third cause to which I have referred above is this connection 

 between education and politics, a relationship which has evolved the 

 elaborate educational system that found its completion in the educa- 

 tion act of 1902. The earliest legislation on the subject of national 



