a National Education Establishment. 701 



this state, various cooperating ameliorations would be introduced, till 

 society gradually, and without those violent revolutions which must other- 

 wise inevitably take place, attained a form more conducive to general hap- 

 piness than that which now exists. 



VIII. Olijections. — These of course will be innumerable, but we shall merely 

 indicate the answers to such as we consider will be reckoned the greatest: — 

 1. Teaching all Ranks the same Things. — This on the face of it seems 

 unreasonable, if not absurd, and we admit it would be so, if it could be 

 proved that any degree of instruction could be given to the children of the 

 poor that would prevent them from earning their daily bread when they 

 became men and women, or that would not in some way or other con- 

 tribute to their happiness. It must never be forgotten, that with respect 

 to the individual, " all knowledge is pleasure as well as power," and that 

 with respect to society, the effect can only be obtained by operating on in- 

 dividuals. If a high degree of education would not prevent the poor from 

 working for their bread, we maintain that it would give them more enjoy- 

 ment while so working; because they would feel themselves, in all things 

 but property, on an equality with the rich ; and we maintain also that an 

 instructed poor man will be better able to gain his bread than an ignorant 

 one, on the principle of "knowledge being power." With respect to personal 

 accomplishments, independently altogether of knowledge, every one will 

 allow that they tend to humanise the feelings and soften the manners in the 

 higher ranks. Why should they not also have the same eiFect in the lower? 

 The idea of this degree of education and accomplishment raising people 

 above their condition in society, and unfitting them for the most humble 

 and laborious offices, was the great outcry a few years ago ; but it is already 

 become obsolete and hardly worth answering. When all are highly edu- 

 cated, education will then cease to be a distinction. No man whether 

 learned or ignorant labours but from necessity, or to attain some greater 

 good. No unambitious man or woman, surrounded by plenty of every thing, 

 ever did or ever will labour. Men do not labour because they are ignorant, 

 but because they have wants to be supplied. As long as these wants con- 

 tinue, therefore, they will labour, whatever may be their state of ignorance 

 or of knowledge, their rudeness or politeness. So far from it being the 

 interest of the higher I'anks to keep the poor in ignorance, their true in- 

 terest, nay, even the preservation of their property depends upon educating 

 them to the utmost. If they remain without education, they will multiply 

 in such numbers, as to eat up the rent of the lands in poor rates j if their 

 minds be raised to the level of those of men of property and rank, they will 

 still multiply, but they will be restrained by elevated sentiments, and a more 

 enlightened self-love, from acts tending to their own degradation. 



Education and polished manners will never unfit a man or woman for 

 any station in society, when they cease to be distinctions; and experience 

 has shown that in so far as individuals of the very lowest classes have been 

 educated above those with whom they were surrounded, they have fulfilled 

 the duties of their station better. Many examples might be given ; but it is 

 only necessary to refer to the difference in the character of the disturbances 

 in the manufacturing districts at the present day, and their character in 

 former years. 



The nature of society is such that there always will be a lowest class, and 

 different degrees between that class and the highest ; nature has formed 

 these differences in our physical and intellectual capacities, and by no effort 

 of man will they ever be overcome. But as they are aggravated by wealth 

 when joined to knowledge, and by poverty when joined to ignorance, so 

 the introduction equally among the rich and poor of the equalising prin- 

 ciple of knowledge, will reconcile the one class to the other; not only by 

 approximating them, but by showing the poor in what the difference between 

 them and the rich consists ; what may be referred to skill, and what to 



