A LIBERAL EDUCATION: AND WHERE TO 

 FIND IT 



(1868) 



THE business which the South London Working Men's 

 College has undertaken is a great work; indeed, I might 

 say, that education, with which that college proposes to 

 grapple, is the greatest work of all those which lie ready 

 to a man's hand just at present. 5 



And, at length, this fact is becoming generally recog- 

 nized. You cannot go anywhere without hearing a buzz 

 of more or less confused and contradictory talk on this 

 subject nor can you fail to notice that, in one point at 

 any rate, there is a very decided advance upon like dis- 10 

 cussions in former days. Nobody outside the agricul- 

 tural interest now dares to say that education is a bad 

 thing. If any representative of the once large and power- 

 ful party, which, in former days, proclaimed this opinion, 

 still exists in a semi-fossil state, he keeps his thoughts 15 

 to himself. In fact, there is a chorus of voices, almost 

 distressing in their harmony, raised in favor of the doc- 

 trine that education is the great panacea for human trou- 

 bles, and that, if the country is not shortly to go to the 

 dogs, everybody must be educated. 20 



The politicians tell us, " you must educate the masses 

 because they are going to be masters." The clergy join 

 in the cry for education, for they affirm that the people 

 are drifting away from church and chapel into the broad- 



47 



