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EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. 



IF, thirty years ago, the question had been mooted in a society of 

 men taken as an average of the educated and intellectual part of the 

 English community, whether it were expedient or not that the 

 lower or operative classes of the English people should be taught to 

 read and write, and such other branches of knowledge as would 

 make them efficient members of their class, we doubt not that the 

 jealousy of inferiors, inherent, as it would seem, to human nature, 

 would have prompted a negative reply. At the present day, we are 

 happy to say thanks to the exertions of many high-minded men, 

 and more than all to Lord Brougham, whose highest praise and 

 claim, notwithstanding his encyclopedic genius, to the respect of 

 historians is that he was the patron of popular education in no 

 company except that of a few clergy and country gentlemen of the 

 old school would the negative side of the question be defended ; 

 so changed is the feeling of the educated classes with respect to this 

 momentous subject. 



It cannot be denied that much has been 'done to diffuse useful 

 knowledge, and that knowledge has been really diffused and is still 

 in course of diffusion,* that the press has found the current setting in 

 that direction and has answered to the call, and that many great 

 schools, expressly for the lower classes, and on a very large scale, 

 have been established by public bodies and private individuals, and 

 been really and gloriously useful in different parts "of the country. 

 All that has been done should be gratefully acknowledged, and the 

 names of those who have aided in putting the great machine at work 

 should never be forgotten. But still enough has not been done, much 

 remains still to be done ; and it must be done undoubtedly ere the 

 English become in time of peace that really great and influential 

 people which the success of their arms made them during the linger- 

 ing years of a continental war, in which the administration of those 

 days involved us. In the towns which boast of a large population, it 

 is true that a large portion of the operatives have been enabled to fur- 

 nish to their children, either at no expense, or at an expense immea- 

 surably below its value, an education of a kind very superior to that 

 which the confined means of private, unmonied, and uneducated in 

 dividuals could furnish ; for in such places there has been a demand 

 sufficient to call philanthropic exertions into play on a large scale. f 



* We do not wish it to be understood that we are here advocating the cause of the 

 "Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge." So gross a monopoly as that at- 

 tempted to be set up by that body, whose committee boasts a large proportion of do- 

 nothings and say-nothings, with a few really great and working men interspersed, 

 could not wholly succeed. Where is that dullest of all dull periodicals, " The Journal 

 of Education ;" and when will the next volume of " Entertaining Knowledge" ap- 

 pear ? Alas, poor Yorick ! 



f That this remark, however, must be taken with some reservation, the following 

 calculation, made by the Committee of the Manchester Statistical Society, with regard 

 to Education in the borough of Salford, will abundantly prove ; and an extension of the 

 enquiry into the state of other towns would be equally conclusive. 



