102 REPORT—1 848, 
Progress and Character of Popular Education in England and Wales, as 
indicated by the Criminal Returns, 1837-47. By Josrru FLetcuer. 
The equability between the proportion utterly uninstructed in the commonest arts 
of scholarship, in and out of gaol, in the kingdom at large, is equally found in many 
of its provinces, but there is a double deviation from it which indicates a general 
cause of extensive operation. In the least educated districts, the proportion wholly 
uninstructed among the persons committed for trial is Jess than among the popula- 
tion at large; while in the most educated districts, the proportion of the wholly un- 
educated among the persons committed for trial is proportionally above the average. 
As this appears, in the southern parts of England, chiefly by comparison between 
the metropolitan and the midland counties, it might admit of complete explana- 
tion by supposing that many of the most ignorant and dissolute of the rural popula- 
tion, finding their way to the metropolis, there entered the latter stages of an un- 
happy career. But this will not explain the relative excess of the totally ignorant 
appearing in the criminal calendar of Rutlandshire, the only one of the midland 
counties remarkably advanced in popular education, nor the coincidence of the like 
phenomenon with the superior instruction of the East and West Riding of York- 
shire, of Cumberland, of Northumberland and of Durham. Migration of the poor, 
ignorant and depraved info these regions appears to beveryimprobable; neither is there 
any conceivable emigration of such persons to account for the proportionate defect of 
the wholly uninstructed in Monmouthshire, South Wales, or Cornwall, or in the 
whole of the most ignorant and densely populated of the manufacturing counties of 
Cheshire, Lancashire, the West Riding, Staffordshire, and Worcestershire. In other 
words, the proportion of the wholly uneducated in gaol is Jess than the propor- 
tion of the population at large equally in the most purely agricultural districts of the 
south and east, and in the most purely mining and manufacturing districts of the 
north and west, which are respectively the most positively ignorant and criminal ; 
while in the most instructed counties, whether of the north or the south, and 
whether metropolitan, agricultural, mining, or manufacturing, the converse is seen. 
The only explanation of this fact which suggests itself to my mind is, that there 
is no less difference in the quality than in the amount of instruction given in the 
most and least instructed portions of the kingdom respectively; and that is only a 
degree of careful uprearing of the young, far higher than that which can be tested 
by the lowest attainments in reading and writing, that is alone blessed to the good 
end of righteous living in a Christian hope. It is the abstraction of a greater. num- 
ber of the instructed from the criminal calendars of the better educated districts 
which there throws the proportion of the totally ignorant into excess; and the in- 
ferior character of the instruction given in the worse educated districts, which per- 
mits a greater number of the instructed to appear before the criminal tribunals, to 
the reduction of the relative proportion of the wholly ignorant comprised in the 
calendars. Thus regarded, these figures tend greatly to strengthen the impression 
which I have derived from other sources, that around the moderate amount of really 
efficient instruction, and really Christian training which prevails even in our best 
educated districts, there exists a wide margin of spurious schooling, without any 
good effect either upon the intellect or the heart; and that in the remotest of the 
agricultural, as of the mining and manufacturing districts, it is this doubtful twi- 
light that generally prevails, with no compensating superiority of vigorous education 
among the middle and upper classes. Hence it results that the difference in the 
amount of education, in any rational sense of the term, between one portion of the 
kingdom and another, is far greater than that indicated by the varying proportion 
which the marriage registers show to be unable to write at all; whileas yet we have 
no test that, for the population at large, will check against the gaol returns of those 
who can read and write imperfectly, ‘‘and read and write well.”” If we had a test 
of the latter range of scholarship for each county, in the population at large, it is my 
conviction that it would furnish far stronger evidence in favour of good education, — 
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