in.] A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 25 



and the capitalists swell the chorus lustily. They declare that 

 ignorance 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 ? 



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 savour 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 the doctrine of trades 

 unions as applied by the squires, and the modern trades unionism 

 is the doctrine of the squires applied by the artisans. Why should 

 we be worse off under one regime than under the other ? 



Again, this sceptical minority asks the clergy to think whether 

 it is really want of education which keeps the masses away from 

 their ministrations whether the most completely educated men 



