ENGLISH SUNDAY SCHOOLS. 383 



after travelling all night, was set down in the metropolis of manufac- 

 tures. It was a busy and animating sight ; and the noble piles dedi- 

 cated to manufacturing processes, and the splendid ranges of ware- 

 housing, bespoke unbounded wealth in the proprietors of these mag- 

 nificent establishments. I found many large buildings devoted to the 

 education of the lower ranks Sunday schools, mechanics' institutes, 

 halls of science, &c. ; but was grieved to discover that the same 

 radical error prevailed here, as in the town I had been inspecting. 



I soon remarked, as I had previously done in other countries, that 

 when men are brought together into large masses, the average of 

 intelligence is of a higher standard than amongst a scattered popu- 

 lation. The error, in the present instance, consisted in seeking for 

 the fulfilment of the ends of education in mere intellectual cultiva- 

 tion ; hence the same mischief had arisen which I had seen in a 

 district inhabited by agriculturists, modified by the superior informa- 

 tion of the town population. The same division of interest between 

 employers and the employed ; mutual distrust and dislike these 

 being exhibited, not in the destruction of property, but in a far more 

 dangerous form. Some years past 1 was informed such had been 

 the case, when the workpeople were chiefly composed of parties from 

 the provinces : now, however, since they had become a fixed and 

 defined body of men, their attempts to improve their condition were 

 the result of deep and well-devised schemes. They leagued them- 

 selves together by unions, embracing several millions of hands, bound 

 down by oaths to an organized plan of steady and unflinching re- 

 sistance. They compelled their masters to keep up one permanent rate 

 of payment for labour, while the universal complaints of the lowness 

 of profits, and foreign political changes, with the incessant applica- 

 tion of mechanical contrivances to supersede human power, rendered 

 such permanent rate of wage utterly impossible. Thus, for want of 

 proper education and moral subordination, the vast body of manu- 

 facturers were upon the point of a social crisis, which threatened the 

 most lamentable consequences to the entire nation. Those well- 

 meaning people, who had been the apostles of education, had just 

 crossed the threshold, and either misunderstood or were ignorant of 

 the mighty power they had given, and had forgotten or shrunk from 

 the task of directing it into its proper channel. They left the multi- 

 tude to be guided by designing demagogues, after having furnished 

 them with weapons. Thus I found that the operative manufacturer 

 was, in many instances, a bad man, a bad servant, a bad husband, 

 father or son, and a discontented citizen. His leisure hours were 

 passed in complots to injure his master in listening to the ravings 

 of some furious political scoundrel, or in reading trash of equally 

 poisonous quality, furnished him for the small price of one half- 

 penny. Imperfect and ill-judged education and cheap literature 

 were leading him headlong to his ruin ; and his lot would have 

 been happier, and his country safer, if he had been kept in the most 

 profound ignorance, and had never seen a printed book. 



It will probably be urged against me, that I am an enemy to the 

 diffusion of education. This would be a mistake: there is no man 

 living more anxious than I am to see the people instructed ; but I 



