128 ON THE EXPEDIENCY AND MEANS, &C. 



creating a dearth and famine that has ended in all the excesses and 

 debaucheries of this spiritual want. 



The fashionable-dressed vices of the wealthier population now 

 appear in their naked deformity ; ingenuity and worldly wisdom 

 are retroverted into bare-faced robbery and theft in a thousand 

 forms ; the polite circumventions of intrigue are turned into vio- 

 lence ; and vices which, in the higher grades of society, appeared 

 as comparative virtues, are denunciated in the lower classes as crimes 

 against religion and law. The statistical amount of crimes commit- 

 ted in this country is alarmingly greater than in any other nation ; 

 while the testimony of travellers exhibits a fearful odds in poverty, 

 suffering, and crime. 



If the government will not educate the people, bad circumstances, 

 temptations and evil companions will educate them, for man cannot 

 merely vegetate, either he will learn to do good or evil. In vain is 

 the voice of religion and reason turned to the ear of a people mo- 

 rally deaf, in vain do the humane try to repel the tide of habituated 

 evil ; the remedies they propose are suitable but not adequate in 

 power, and while individuals or parties may swell the list of con- 

 verts, bad and depraved education is moulding and manufacturing a 

 whole generation in the indulgence and practice of every vice. 

 Amid the general bouleversement the rulers and governors of this 

 kingdom are busied in court intrigues and senatorial squabbles ; or 

 in their utmost efforts stretch not beyond a municipal corporation 

 bill, or the levying a new impost. Let them be assured, God who 

 is in heaven judges them already, and hereafter will convict them 

 of the sins and crimes of a people to which by their neglect of a 

 good and wise and impartial national education they are acces- 

 sories.* 



* And it is pity that commonly more care is had, yea, and that among 

 very wise men, to find out rather a cunning man for their horse than a cun- 

 ning man for their children. They say nay in word, hut they do so in deed: for 

 to one they will gladly give a stipend of two hundred crowns by the year, 

 and loth to offer to the other two hundred shillings. God, that sitteth in 

 heaven, laugheth their choice to scorn, and rewardeth their liberality as it 

 should ; for he suffereth them to have tame and well-ordered horses, but wild 

 and unfortunate children ; and therefore, in the end, they find more plea- 

 sure in their horse than comfort in their children — Roger Ascham's School- 

 master, p. 206-7. 



(To he continued.) 



