568 EDUCATION. 



in time of peace. It might be employed in public buildings, in pub- 

 lic roads, in viaducts and aqueducts, in the production of public stores, 

 and in every thing publicly useful. It might be so employed and 

 merit better pay than at present, possess more than present com- 

 forts. 



No officer can be qualified to take an army into the field unless 

 he be a good mathematician and a good geometrician, unless he can 

 measure men and ground with his eye, and form geometrical figures 

 with men, ground, and surrounding objects. Military deploy is a 

 science peculiar to itself, and on particular occasions it might be of 

 great importance that every soldier should be a scientific man. 

 Hitherto no science has been studied or thought necessary for the 

 army but that of the engineer. But why might not every soldier 

 be trained an engineer? Such a training may occasionally, in active 

 service, be turned to a good purpose. If the duke will take this hint 

 and get it acted on he may soon find better men to compose the 

 British army. He may thus find a full, useful, and rational occupa- 

 tion of the time of the men, leaving them, at the proper time of their 

 discharge, all the better qualified to return and become useful mem- 

 bers in civil society. 



Every thing turns upon this question of education. What is man? 

 First, the creature of an organization which may be viewed as a 

 series of propensities or passions; and then the creature of the cir- 

 cumstances by which he is surrounded in society. If the second be 

 bad, the first is thereby made worse. In no part of the history of 

 man can we find that he has been justly trained and dealt with. It 

 may be truly said of him that he has been born into a hostile world, 

 has been trained by example in a spirit of hostility, passes through 

 life cursing his fellows, and quits it in lamentation that man is not 

 better trained, or trained to more good. 



There is a stupid notion, expressed by men who have very little 

 knowledge, that other men are not to be made better, but to be 

 made worse by knowledge. Yet they claim their little possessed 

 as an advantage, a superiority, and a qualification to rule. It was a 

 prevailing notion, forty years ago, that the working man should be 

 kept ignorant, for the purpose of forming an army. What a satire 

 on the then government ! Hence have arisen our floggings and other 

 brutalities, which sink us in comparison below any other people of 

 ancient or modern times. In England every domestic animal is 

 protected from violence except the human being. The human being 

 is forbidden by law to oflTer violence to any animal in common use; 

 but man is here encouraged by law and custom to whip his fellow 

 man in shreds to death ! This cannot be civilization. And even 

 now our counlry is disgraced by the ignorance and resolution of its 

 rulers maintaining that such a torturing system of death is essential 

 to the discipline and good order of the British army ! 



We think favourably of the duke of Wellington ; for, as far as 

 his knowledge helped nim, we have always thought him an active, 

 consistent, and efficient minister. It is, however, clear that he has 

 not sufficient knowledge, that he is not the man to take a lead as a 

 minister in the present day , for he does not appear to hold any idea 



