A LIBERAL EDUCATION; AND WHERE TO 

 FIND IT 



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 recognized. 

 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. No- 10 

 body 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 a semifossil state, he keeps his 

 thoughts to himself. In fact, there is a chorus of voices, al- 15 

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

 trine that education is the great panacea for human troubles, 

 and that, if the country is not shortly to go to the dogs, every- 

 body must be educated. 



The politicians tell us, " you must educate the masses be- 20 

 cause 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- 

 est infidelity. The manufacturers and the capitalists swell 

 the chorus lustily. They declare that ignorance makes 25 

 bad workmen ; that England will soon be unable to turn out 

 cotton goods, or steam engines, cheaper than other people; 



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