PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 83 



June 19th. — Mr. H. Woollcombe's Lecture on the 

 Evils of Ignorance. 



On this evening the esteemed president of the Institution de- 

 livered an impressive lecture on the " Evils of Ignorance.'^ He 

 treated the subject with that dispassionate and temperate judg- 

 ment v^rhich has always been stamped upon the views and opin- 

 ions which he has promulgated in the Athenseum. 



We cannot better give a summary of this interesting paper 

 than by abstracting Mr. Woollcombe's concluding observations, 

 wherein he embodied much of the substance delivered. He stated 

 that the enquiry was, whether a state of ignorance or one of know- 

 ledge is best adapted to render our population generally happy and 

 our political condition orderly and peaceable. Opposite parties 

 charge their opponents with producing dissatisfaction and discon- 

 tent in the minds of the poorer classes and thereby inducing 

 disorder and misrule in our political state. The lecturer's ob- 

 ject had been to show that, in the progress of civilization, mankind 

 cannot remain in ignorance; that wherever the Christian religion 

 is unshackled by the government, education must prevail — the 

 people must be instructed. No one can point out a Protestant 

 country wherein the people have been kept in ignorance. The 

 Roman Catholic and Greek Churches have kept their people in 

 ignorance, and we cannot observe any thing deserving of com- 

 mendation in the old state of France, or in the present condition 

 of the people of Spain, Portugal, Austria, those of such Swiss and 

 German states as belong to the above communions, the population 

 of Russia or Greece itself; 



The lecturer was aware that, if the argument could be brought 

 to this point, further discussion would be at an end. But a 

 question might be asked : is there no evil in Protestant states ? 

 no one, however, would attempt to say that education could 

 wholly eradicate evil ; the enquiry was how the mass of evil might 

 be diminished, and whether knowledge or ignorance were best 

 calculated to effect so desirable an end. Why evil exists in our 

 system and why its prevalence throughout our system is so abso- 

 lute were not subjects of investigation suitable to the present 

 occasion; that being solely how this tendency to guilt is best 

 counteracted. The lecturer here observed that he considered it 

 essentially necessary to state, once for all, that in speaking of 

 education he invariably meant to be understood as advocating a 

 religous education, this, being the first, greatest, and all important 

 object, ought to be essentially a part of education, he made this 



