128 Z4Y SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS. [in. 



are drifting away from church and chapel into the 

 broadest infidelity. The manufacturers and the capita- 

 lists swell the chorus lustily. They declare that igno- 

 rance makes bad workmen : that England will soon be 

 unable to turn out cotton goods, or steam engines, 

 cheaper than other people ; and then, Ichabod ! Ichabod ! 

 the glory will be departed from us. And a few voices 

 are lifted up in favour of the doctrine that the masses 

 should be educated because they are men and women 

 with unlimited capacities of being, doing, and suffering, 

 and that it is as true now, as ever it was, that the people 

 perish for lack of knowledge. 



These members of the minority, with whom I confess 

 I have a good deal of sympathy, are doubtful whether 

 any of the other reasons urged in favour of the education 

 of the people are of much value — whether, indeed, some 

 of them are based upon either wise or noble grounds of 

 action. They question if it be wise to tell people that 

 you will do for them, out of fear of their power, what 

 you have left undone, so long as your only motive was 

 compassion for their weakness and their sorrows. And, if 

 ignorance of everything which it is needful a ruler should 

 know is likely to do so much harm in the governing 

 classes of the future, why is it, they ask reasonably 

 enough, that such ignorance in the governing classes of 

 the past has not been viewed with equal horror 1 



Compare the average artisan and the average country 

 squire, and it may be doubted if you will find a pin to 

 choose between the two in point of ignorance, class 

 feeling, or prejudice. It is true that the ignorance is of 

 a different sort — that the class feeling is in favour of a 

 different class, and that the prejudice has a distinct 

 favour of wrong-headedness in each case — but it is 

 questionable if the one is either a bit better, or a bit 

 worse, than the other. The old protectionist theory is 



