700 Outline of a Plan for 



to provide for, and enforce the education of, all children within their juris- 

 diction, to the extent of reading, writing, arithmetic, drawing, geometry, and 

 natural history*; to provide competent teachers, who should, with their 

 assistants, deliver evening lectures for grown-up people; and to oblige 

 every child, not incapacitated by distance, disease, or rank, to remain at 

 school from its sixth or seventh to its fourteenth or fifteenth year. So 

 much information is to be obtained from books, and books are now so 

 abundant, that it would be a great point gained if all were taught to read and 

 understand works of science before the age of puberty, and had an oppor- 

 tunity of attending the evening lectures of the parish afterwards. It would 

 also be a great point, to communicate to all some knowledge of vegetable 

 culture, and a taste for a house and garden. To communicate a taste for 

 architecture, we would place some thousands of miniature bricks under a 

 shed in the garden, and offer small premiums for the best-contrived ground 

 plans, the most ingenious miniature bridges, farm buildings, &c. (See Des 

 E' tahJissemens four I' E'ducation Puhlique, &c. p. 53.) What is powerfully 

 desired will sooner or later be attained; and if an ardent desire for a cot- 

 tage and garden were general among the youth of the laborious classes, if 

 they could not procure that gratification here they would emigrate. 



VI. Expense. — This, in the first instance, we would leave to every parish 

 to raise by loans and rates, as it chose. 



VII. Immediate National Advantages. — An immediate advantage would 

 result to the population in remote parts of the country, from having a 

 learned and intelligent man, a library, a museum, a botanic garden, and 

 a course of lectures intelligible to all classes, established among them. Even 

 the labour required to build the proper school-rooms would produce some 

 immediate effect; and we may observe that government ought to remit the 

 duties on all the materials used in the construction of these buildings, which 

 •would encourage the erection of ample and substantial edifices. On all 

 books and other articles purchased for the school, during the first year after 

 its erection, all duties should in like manner be remitted. 



But the grand advantage to the country would not be fully experienced 

 before another generation, when it may fairly be presumed that the entire 

 mass of society would be reformed. In the mean time, in the advances to 



* Drawing is taught in all the Lancasterian schools in France, and is 

 found almost as useful to most mechanics, carpenters, smiths, masons, &c., 

 as writing. The great use of natural history and comparative anatomy is, 

 that it humanises and softens the heart. If boys were acquainted with the 

 wonderful structure of insects, and of other animals low in the scale, they 

 would not be found sticking pins into flies, or tormenting cats; nor, when 

 men, would they treat those noble domestic animals, the horse and the ox, 

 with crudty. Would any naturalist break the tail-bone of the ox, joint b}' 

 joint, as is now sometimes done inSmithfield, to urge the animal forward? 

 To instruct youth in natural history is the true way of effecting the 

 objects of Mr. Martin of Galway's bill for preventing cruelty to ani- 

 mals. A knowledge of the anatomy of the human frame, which might be 

 readily obtained at an easy expense in every parish school in the empire, 

 by means of the admirable models lately invented, would, by showing the 

 fearful manner in which we are made, induce even the most robust to be 

 more careful of his health. A very slight knowledge of some of the first 

 principles of chemistry, attraction and combination for instance, would be 

 of the greatest use to every class of society, even to cooks ; and we would 

 have all taught something of agriculture and gardening, because, we think, 

 in a more perfect state of society than that which now exists, almost every 

 family, and especially all those who do not live in large cities, will possess a 

 house of their own and a small portion of the earth's surface. 



