EDUCATION OF THE LOWER ORDERS. 601 



mischief, you have armed them to turn their swords against your 

 own breast ; and if you will have it that cheap literature must be 

 supplied them, my opinion is, that in the crusade which they will 

 shortly commence against you and against themselves, they will do 

 well to carry the broadside for a banner, and their primers and 

 spelling-books as shields. 



It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that my opinions have been 

 coldly received, and excited the ire of many of the champions of the 

 existing order of things. I trust, however, that these pages will 

 serve as beacons to my own countrymen ; and when they are resolved 

 to educate the working classes, they will begin and prosecute the 

 noble purpose in a way that it may attain its legitimate ends. No 

 sound knowledge can be acquired by thrusting a succession of 

 detached facts upon the attention of the learner; and this is one 

 strong objection to the system of getting up tracts. The Latin adage 

 " cave ab homine unius libri," shows that the ancients were well 

 aware of this fact ; and I remember to have heard that the hand-loom 

 weavers of Lancashire, men of sedentary habits and stinted means, 

 have produced some of the profoundest mathematicians and the best 

 practical botanists of the day : and it is also well known that those 

 who have distinguished themselves by literary and scientific attain- 

 ments in every inferior station, have been men of "one book." 

 What good can result by crowding upon the artisan a rapid series of 

 loose sheets full of diversified and opposite information, experience 

 must decide; but I do not hesitate to say that no substantial know- 

 ledge will be derived from them. One book is sufficient for the life 

 of a common labouring man ; and he will derive more advantage 

 from its daily perusal, than from an ocean of picture-books, and let 

 that book be the Bible, or some other containing a code of morals ; 

 but first teach him the use of it, and then he will love it " cave 

 ab homine unius libri ! " 



NATIONAL SONG. 



When Sir John Barleycorn was free. 



BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE PILGRIMS OF VVALS1NGHAM. 



THEY were merry days for England, 



In cottage and in hall, 

 When Sir John Barleycorn was free, 



And paid no tax at all. 

 When Sir John Barleycorn was free, 



We 'd neither want nor woe ; 

 For he filPd each manly heart with glee, 



And cheer'd both high and low. 



