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. 



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 har- 

 mony, 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 be- 

 cause they are going to be masters." The clergy join in the 

 cry for education, for they afhrm that the people are drift- 

 ing 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. 



