THE HIGHEST CLASSES IN GREAT BRITAIN. 599 



government upon no foundation whatever but his own shallow brain ; 

 and so on. All was unsound and extravagant hypothesis; all these 

 geniuses shut their eyes to the multitude of facts that beset them on 

 all sides. I asked a senator the details of an important government 

 measure, and he referred me to the Record-Office, assuring me that he 

 was engaged upon a plan for regenerating the nation, and that he 

 attended the senate merely to vote for his party. I inquired from a 

 noble lady the best mode of conducting a household, and she called 

 up her housekeeper. I asked an extensive landed proprietor the rate 

 of wages, and the average of rents he sent me to his steward. I 

 asked a noted financier as to the fluctuations of capital, and he re- 

 ferred me to his book; and thus I soon found that information was 

 held cheap, or rather as something too mean for attention by the very 

 parties who, in the natural order of things, ought to have been the 

 best-informed. Amongst all the lectures and discussions, nothing 

 bearing upon the actual springs of society was ever broached ; nothing 

 calculated to teach men how to live, so as to benefit themselves or 

 their kind ; nothing which could make them wiser men or better 

 citizens. I was thoroughly tired, and resolved to make a tour 

 through the provinces, and see with my own eyes the state of litera- 

 ture and education amongst the middle and lower classes, and was 

 told that I should find much to admire from the impulse which both 

 these had recently undergone. 



GENERAL REMARKS ON THE EDUCATION OF THE 

 LOWER ORDERS. 



THE question which I asked of every body likely either from 

 station or intelligence to answer it, was, " Is your population be- 

 coming moral, religious, contented, and consequently happy, by 

 means of the education and literature you afford it?" 



The only answer I received to my numerous queries was, that 

 men must surely be benefited by being able to read, and by having 

 literature brought within their reach : very true, but surely you 

 would ascertain that this literature reached them at least, and had 

 not its place usurped by immorality ; you would never forget to find 

 them such reading as might prove acceptable, and which bore 

 strongly and designedly upon their position : to teach men to read 

 and to think, without directing their reading and thinking into proper 

 channels, is to put arms into their hands without explaining their 

 proper use, and turning them out upon society to do good or evil as 

 it may chance. So far is your inferior order of population from 

 being satisfied and contented, that I find it, both manufacturing and 

 agricultural, burning with desire to change the existing order of 

 things ; and as " the hewers of wood, and the drawers of water " 

 must constitute in all countries the numerical majority, it does 

 appear to me that you have signally failed in accomplishing the 

 only true end of education, that is, to make mankind wiser and 

 better. It has been said with considerable truth, 



" That just experience tells in every soul, 



That they who think must govern they who toil." 



