224? General Education. 



hazard, in committing every tiling to fortune, and working in tlie dark. A 

 defective and ill-arranged education is apt to generate the vices of irregu- 

 larity, want of method, and indolence, instead of their opposite virtues: 

 order springs from order, as certainly as each kind propagates its kind. 

 {Ed. Rcv.,'^Se\>t. 1828, p. 70.') 



Very few gardeners have had a regular education to the extent which is 

 here contemplated : it behoves them, therefore, to make up for the de- 

 ficiency by a regular course of self-instruction at their leisure hours, begin- 

 ning with the lesser things, and ascending to the greater {Encyc. of Gard., 

 part iv. book ii. chap, ii.) ; and, above all things, taking care that they are 

 thoroughly educated in their profession, and in moral conduct and manners. 



The Mental Imjirovement of the great Bodi/ of the People, by the Society 

 for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. — However well meant the efforts 

 of the Useful Knowledge Society may be, " it is said, they are producing a 

 serious mischief, which will, in no long period of time, alter the face of so- 

 ciety. We are far, say those objectors, from urging the old exploded argu- 

 ment; that the common people will cease to work, if you teach them to 

 read or to think, and to take a delight in learning; and from pressing the 

 still more chimerical apprehension, that learning will puff them up, which 

 it assuredly never can do, when it is no distinction. But there are fears of 

 a very different nature, they contend, and which deserve serious attention. 

 The poor will work, and, as regards one another, they will not be elated, 

 because they will rise equally m the progress of improvement ; but they will 

 fill a new situation as regards their superiors ; they will no longer give rank 

 and property their due respect ; the distance will be removed, which made 

 it easy to confront them ; and the body of the people, being now better in- 

 formed than the upper classes, as they are incalculably more numerous, the 

 union of physical and moral power must shake the whole order of society, 

 and may destroy its frame entirely. Hence, say these reasoners, although 

 a certain share of knowledge may be both safe and wholesome to the people, 

 it is unnecessary for their sakes, and will prove unsafe for the state, to give 

 them a complete education in matters of science, and other liberal branches 

 of knowledge. 



" We admit the inference deduced, if the fact here assumed were cor- 

 rectly stated. The assumption is, that the people are to acquire a liberal 

 education, or improve rapidly, while the upper classes must remain igno- 

 rant, and stand still. If this were the case, — if it were necessary that the 

 line should be drawn to exclude the rich from the pale of knowledge, as 

 it must needs be to exclude the mass of the people from that of wealth, — 

 if, in a word, there were any thing to give the body of the people a mono- 

 poly of the power which resides in knowledge, as they already have, and 

 must always have, that which resides in numbers, — it is manifest that 

 there would be an end of the present state of society altogether. But this 

 is not only unlike the truth ; it is the reverse of the truth ; and nothing 

 but a degeneracy and self-abandonment, utterly inconceivable on the part 

 of the upper classes, can ever make it approach to the truth. The easy 

 circumstances in which they are happily placed, give them such an enviable 

 command of their time, that they can always, with hardly any sacrifice, far 

 outstrip, in mental improvement, their less fortunate neighbours. The daily 

 labours of the working classes affix narrow limits to their studies ; and al- 

 though they may well, within these bounds, and without encroaching upon 

 their hours of needful toil or repose, cultivate their faculties, store their 

 minds with knowledge, and elevate their tastes above low pursuits, they 

 can never hope to rise as high in these respects as [)crsons whose time is 

 almost entirely at their own conmiand, and whose wealth gives them a thou- 

 sand helps to learning." 



After noticing the thirty-four treatises published by the Society uj) to 

 August, 1828, and comprising a mass of information, nearly equal to that 



