1832.] A Project for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance. 133 



originally vanquished. " Fas est ab hoste doceri," was their maxim. 

 Let the foes of education but follow the same line of policy, and it is 

 highly reasonable to expect that the same good fortune will be their 

 guerdon. As the partizans of knowledge combine their lights, so would 

 we counsel those of ignorance to unite their opacities to unite them 

 skilfully and methodically perhaps we might be permitted to say sci- 

 entifically with one grand object constantly in view : the distribution 

 of the greatest possible quantity of ignorance amongst the greatest pos- 

 sible number of persons, which might be called, to adopt an expression 

 from the Benthamites, THE GREATEST-IGNORANCE PRINCIPLE. 



It was once an hypothesis of astronomers that night was caused by 

 certain dark stars, supposed to rise at sunset, and irradiate the earth with 

 darkness, precisely in the same way that the sun irradiates it with light. 

 However this question be determined, it is certain that intellectual night 

 is capable of being produced in an analogous way. An ignoramus may 

 do as much to obscure and perplex any given subject as a philosopher to 

 elucidate and explain it. It is notorious that speeches, books, and ser- 

 mons are as valuable instruments of communicating error and folly, mis- 

 information and non-information, as the opposite elements. This is matter 

 of daily experience, and we have only to read the parliamentary debates, 

 or look over the booksellers' catalogues, to get as many instances as we 

 like. Now we are prepared to shew that not only is ignorance suscep- 

 tible of propagation, but of propagation by system, or in other words, by 

 means of societies and institutions similarly constituted to those which 

 Brougham and his myrmidons have established, and are daily establish- 

 ing, for the diffusion of knowledge. If a single ignoramus (as nobody 

 denies) is often so mighty at overshadowing the topic he treats of, 

 whether it be scientific, political, or moral, the effect to be expected from 

 a college of ignoramuses, or any similar institution for collecting, as it 

 were, into a focus all the rays of darkness in the kingdom, must necessa- 

 rily be prodigious. And why should not the conservative party have 

 their mechanics' institutes, their circulating libraries, their societies for 

 the diffusion of useful ignorance, &c., as well the reformers and radicals? 

 A mechanics' institute, provided with a proper lecturer, would answer 

 just as well for inculcating the baneful effects of machinery, or the bless- 

 ings of the corn-laws, as the opposite doctrines. The member for Preston 

 has delivered philippics without number against threshing-machines and 

 harrowing-machines ; and we see no reason why, if adequately salaried^ 

 he might not lecture the labouring classes once or twice a week to the 

 same useful purpose. We seriously suggest this to the Tories, as the 

 most effective way of employing the talents of their new auxiliary, Mr. 

 Hunt. In like manner Mr. Sadler what might not his profound igno- 

 rance of the true principles of political economy accomplish, if, instead 

 of being dissipated in replies to the Edinburgh Review, it was uniformly 

 and steadily brought into action from some professor's chair, endowed by 

 his noble patron the Duke of Newcastle ? The abilities of Mr. Goul- 

 burn might in the same way be turned against those of Sir Henry 

 Parnell. What a glorious obscuration a course of public lectures by the 

 Ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer would shed over the whole science of 

 finance ! Why, he would involve it in such a night that the knowledge 

 of the Irish baronet, which now shines so conspicuously in his late pub- 

 lication, would look like a star of the twelfth magnitude, or require the 

 eye of a Galileo to discover it. In the next place, nothing would be 



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