264 EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. 



But, when we consider how large a portion of the English people are 

 engaged in agricultural pursuits, and are of necessity thinly scattered 

 over the rural districts, and the intellects of their children left to 

 languish in the Sunday-school and the dame-school, under the super- 

 intendence of a lazy or bigoted pastor, or of an incomptent matron 

 and we unhesitatingly assert this to be the fact with respect to three- 

 fourths of the superficial area of England we may naturally draw 

 the conclusion that little, very little has been done for national edu- 

 cation. 



We offer in proof of what has been alleged respecting the dames' 

 and common country day-schools those schools we mean in which 

 reading, sewing, and at best some few silly and inefficient lessons in 

 writing are taught some extracts from a report not very long ago 

 published by the Manchester Statistical Society. Females, or old 

 superannuated labourers whose good fortune it is that they themselves 

 know how to read, are usually acknowledged by the agricultural po- 

 pulation as the best calculated to do the work which they might, but 

 cannot do themselves ; and, as the demand for educational labour is 

 not sufficient within their limited sphere for.the supply of their wants, 

 they of course, as might be expected, enlarge their very limited in- 

 come (averaging 18/. per annum) by shop-keeping, washing, 

 mangling, and other rather unacademic employments. Listen to 

 the report where it speaks of the poverty-stricken state of the 

 schools visited by the Committee to whom we have above alluded. 



" These schools are generally found in very dirty, unwholesome rooms 

 frequently in close, damp cellars, or old dilapidated garrets. In one of these 

 schools eleven children were found in a small room in which one of the 

 children of the mistress was lying in bed ill of the measles. Another child 

 had died in the same room, of the same complaint, a few days before, and no 

 less than thirty of the usual scholars were then confined at home with the 

 same disease. 



" In another school all the children to the number of twenty were squatted 

 upon the bare floor, there being no benches, chairs, or furniture of any kind in 

 the room. The master said his terms would not yet allow him to provide 

 forms ; but he hoped that as his school increased, and his circumstances 

 thereby improved, he should be able sometime or other to afford this luxury, 



" In by far the greater number of these schools there were only two or three 

 books among the whole number of scholars. In others there was not one ; and 

 the children depended for their instruction on the chance of some one of them 

 bringing a book, or a part of one, from home. Books, however, are occasion- 

 ally provided by the mistress, and in this case the supply is somewhat greater, 

 but in almost all cases it is exceedingly deficient. One of the best of these 

 schools is kept by a blind man, who hears his scholars their lessons, and ex- 



" 3131 or 5.7 per cent, of the population attend Day or Evening Schools only. 



3410 or 6.2 attend both Day and Sunday Schools. 



6344 or 11.5 attend Sunday Schools only. 



12,885 or 23.4 per cent, of the population. 



** Of these, about 2,235 were found to be either under five or about fifteen years of 

 age, leaving about 10,650 as the number of children between the ages of five and fifteen 

 under course of instruction. The total number of children between these ages in the 

 borough of Salford being computed at 13,750, it would thus appear, that 3,100 (equal 

 to 22J per cent, of the whole) are receiving no instruction whatever." 



