A LIBERAL EDUCATION 



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. 



And, at length, this fact is becoming generally 

 recognised. 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 discussions in former days. Nobody outside 

 the agricultural interest now dares to say that education 

 is a bad thing. If any representative of the once large 

 and powerful party, which, in former days, proclaimed 

 this opinion, still exists in the semi-fossil state, he keeps 

 his thoughts to himself. In fact, there is a chorus of 

 voices, almost distressing in their harmony, raised in 

 favour of the doctrine that education is the great 

 panacea for human troubles, and that, if the country 

 is not shortly to go to the dogs, everybody must be 

 educated. 



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 broadest infidelity. The manufacturers 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 en- 



