218 .Retrospective Criticism. 



.gentleman than to any other of attainments superior to yourself, or otherwise more eminent, 

 whether by fortune or fame. Your wild, your unjust scheme of " equal education," and your 

 trembling anxiety " to guard, above all things, against any thing like a hierarchy or an oligarchy 

 creeping into the system," speak sufficiently that your rancour has a wider range than one or two 

 individuals, and would not stop short of turning the world topsyturvy. If an attempt at such a 

 revolution be made in the field during your lifetime and my own, I should be happy to meet you 

 there ; but, mark me, we will have no child's play — one or both shall go to hell or heaven. 



In the mean time, however, I will attempt to convince you of your folly by words, hoping that 

 they may render blows unnecessary : and, first of all, let me take your mad scheme of " equal 

 education." I have called it unjust, because it casts the burthen of education and maintenance 

 the poor's children, till they become fifteen or sixteen years old, upon the parish ; which is under 

 no moral obligation to grant such indulgence, in like manner that it is under no tie to maintain 

 those who are able to provide for themselves. But it is unjust in another pointof view, inasmuch 

 as it would deprive sin of its sorrow, which was affixed to it in mercy by that Voice, which no less 

 mercifully spake midst lightnings and thunder. Poverty is a most salutary check upon the evil 

 which produces it ; and it would be no mercy, but cruelty, to attempt to remove that check until 

 it shall have prepared man to act with prudence from higher motives than the inconvenience of 

 beggary, for we should thereby increase the evil. In whatever proportion the wants of the im- 

 provident are supplied, in still greater proportion will that Supply be needed ; and any endeavour 

 to prevent the consequence of existing imprudence would prove as fruitless as the attempt to 

 extinguish a raging flame with oil, or check the occasional overflow and abrasion of a river's 

 banks by damming up the current, which sooner or later would burst its bonds and devastate all 

 the country to which it had before been a source of fertility. 



To the species of injustice already shown, another may be added ; namely, " teaching no par. 

 ticular religion," which you defend with something of ostentatious shrewdness, by saying (most 

 truly, I confess) that " this will not hinder parents from teaching their children ivhatever religion 



principles. Education in arts and sciences may polish, but cannot make man better or happier 

 For a proof of this you need only walk abroad some evening in a large city, and you may have 

 ocular demonstration of the fact. You seem to think that " high education" is only another 

 term for happiness, when you assert that he who might be highly educated after your scheme 

 " ivould live well and be happier; because he would have more wants, and more means of supply. 

 ins them." A wiser man than you, Sir, has said that " a contented mind is a continual feast ; " 

 but you say that a craving mind is a continual feast ; and would affirm the summit of luxury to 

 be the summit of happiness. Pray, have you heard of such a place as Greece and Rome? If 

 you have, I do not suppose that if they were to rise from the dead to warn you against luxury, 

 that it would open your eyes to its evil consequences. 



But you may say that " reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, drawing, geometry, anatomy, 

 physiology, vegetable culture, the care of live stock, natural philosophy, political economy (!), morals, 

 and natural theology, with a knowledge of French, and the rudiments of Latin" might, with the 

 assistance of " dancing, singing, music," &c, so humanise youth as to give greater facility to- 

 wards their reception of a "saving faith." I reply, look to the effects which those circles of 

 sciences and accomplishments have already had in such respect. Christian principles, Sir, are not 

 often imbibed on the lap of luxury ; and it is not amidst numerous appliances to ease and comfort 

 that the " one thing needful" is solicited ; and without it, however you may seem to consider it 

 of secondary importance, all the wealth of this world is but as dross, and the knowledge " foolish- 

 ness." In the patriarchal age, it was not amongst " the cities of the plains " that purity of life 

 was most predominant ; but in pastoral districts, where wants were few and less easily supplied 

 than there. It was not amongst the luxurious that Christ selected his disciples, any more than 

 it was from " the cities of the plains " that God chose the man with whom to renew his covenant 

 of mercy in a more early age. It was not in fertile plains that the first Reformers of the Romish 

 Church found their followers, but amongst the Alps and the Pyrenees, where rugged nature still 

 preserved the truth of better times; and it is to poverty and bleak nature that Scotland owes its 

 superiority in morals and education, as well as every other country under similar circumstances 

 of religious and civil government. Amongst mountains and valleys the terrors and mercies of 

 Jehovah are more visibly displayed, and their contrasts so exhibited as to force one to " Look 

 through nature up to nature's God." It is there where we may have the best illustration of the 

 vengeance of the Gospel, as the " live thunder leaps from crag to crag ; " and it is there where 

 its mercy is most amply portrayed in the smiling valleys. But with the sublimity of nature and 

 my present subject there is no relation, the principal aim being to prove, that so far from education 

 without religion being conducive to happiness, it has a contrary tendency ; making men sinful, 

 and therefore miserable : and how far that object has been attained is for you to judge. It is my 

 decided opinion, however, that unless man's affections be previously or simultaneously cultivated, 

 any attempt to produce happiness by the education of the mind must frustrate its own end ; and 

 I consider that it would be worth the while for all advocates of gratuitous education, however 

 unobjectionable in system, to deliberate whether it would not be more preferable to devise "some 

 plan by which the poor may possess means for their own elevation, rather than be dependent on 

 the rich for that purpose. What is easily got is, most generally, lightly esteemed ; and that 

 which is dearly bought and hardly earned seldom fails to be highly prized. Let me not be mis- 

 understood, however; I would still let charity have her pleasure in beneficence, where it was 

 deserved ; and would only banish that false charity which has already got so mixed up with our 

 institutions, as though there should be permanent need of her aid, the supply being so excellently 

 adapted to create a demand. 



Before I conclude this letter I must not fail to remark on the self-congratulatory feeling with which 

 you talk of rents coming down one half, and landlords not consenting, but compelled to it. You 

 have written a book on agriculture, and know; or ought, at least, to know, the expenses of culture 

 and probable produce of a given quantity and quality of land. Now, if you are acquainted with 

 such like matters, I would have you to select a piece of ground, and ascertain the rent and taxes, 

 and, having deducted all expenses of tillage and taxes, to see how much produce, after such de- 

 duction from the whole, remains for the landlord. Then you may compare his money-rent with 

 the natural rent of produce, and I shall be much deceived if his money can buy for him as many 

 comforts or days' labour as the produce ought naturally to command. I am, &c. — 0. Near 

 Lancaster, Hecembcr, 1829. 



Music, Dancing, and Singing, as branches of Education for the Labouring Classes. 



