A LIBERAL EDUCATION 37 



or steam engines, 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 confess 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 it 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 ignorance 

 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 ignorance, class feeling, or prej- 

 udice. It is true that the ignorance is of a different sort — 

 that the class feeling is in favour of a different class — and 

 that the prejudice 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 protec- 

 tionist theory is the doctrine of trades unions as applied by 

 the squires, and the modern trades unionism is the doctrine 

 of the squires apphed by the artisans. Why should we be 

 worse off under one regime than under the other? 



