AliDCATlON OF THE WORKIKO CLASSES. ^ 



which it has been their lot unfortunately to exist. Let us hope that 

 ere many years shall have passed adequate means will be in operation 

 to fully meet this demand. But in every means that may hereafter 

 be devised to accomplish this end, it must (in my opinion), in order 

 that the entire amount of benefit may be derived, be compulsory upon 

 parents sending their children to school. This may at first fall strange 

 upon the ear, accustomed as we are to be told of our national liberty— 

 that an Englishman's house is his castle, and so forth ; but these ideas 

 will speedily pass away when the subject is fairly investigated. Proofs 

 sufficient have been shewn that this plan works admirably in Prussia ; 

 indeed the system would be ineffective without its operation. The 

 ignorance of parents, with its allies of bigotry and superstition, would 

 have to be combated ; for it is impossible to convince them, unless by 

 experience, of the barriers which these present to the improvement of 

 their condition in any way. They are not in this case the proper 

 judges ; content, from many years of habit, to be encrusted with the 

 vice and misery in which they were reared, they in fact believe that 

 their state is the happiest that can be found, and they must be looked 

 upon in the same light as lunatics, who, when confined, consider 

 themselves aggrieved, as being incapable of exercising a right judg- 

 ment upon what most intimately concerns them. The most effectual 

 plan to teach the children of this depraved class would be to make it 

 compulsory upon the parents, by fines and imprisonment where neces- 

 sary, to compel the regular attendance of their children at school ; 

 this regulation would by its own working do away in time with its 

 necessity. The mind being thus roused from its state of torj)or, 

 would revel in its awakened vigour. Proud of what by diligent cul- 

 tivation it had attained — conscious of the superiority at which by its 

 means it had arrived — no external appliances would be required to 

 compel the parent to send his offspring to school ; but, as we have 

 seen is the case in Prussia, they would be wishful to send them 

 even before the time the law made it compulsory. Every 

 possible inducement should be held out to the children ; in- 

 teresting and instructive lectures should be given — say on astronomy, 

 geography, chemistry, history, the arts, &c., illustrated where possi- 

 ble by diagrams and experiments. In a case, I am informed, where 



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