36 A LIBERAL EDUCATION 



gines, 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 it ever was, 

 that the people perish for lack of knowledge. 



These members of the minority, with whom I con- 

 fess 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 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 igno- 

 rance 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 igno- 

 rance, class feeling, or prejudice. It is true that the 

 ignorance is of a different sort that the class feel- 

 ing is in favour of a different class and that the pre- 

 judice 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 union- 

 ism is the doctrine of the squires applied by the arti- 



