a National 'Education Establishment. 70S 



gress which has been made in general education in the South of Germany, 

 and the influence which this has had in raising Bavaria, the most backward 

 and priest-ridden state in that empire, to the first rank in intelligence and 

 prosperity, is but little known either in France or Britain. When it is, it 

 will then be seen how very far we are behind. We hope something, also, 

 from the example of France *, which is making extraordinary exertions in 

 general education. The best security for the progress of any one country is 

 the progress of the countries by which it is surrounded. It is but reason- 

 able in us to desire that the plan should have a fair chance of working its 

 way among thinking people, and that the labouring classes, being thus able 

 to form some idea of the immense iiaportance attached by others to the 

 education of their children, might be induced to take the subject into con- 

 sideration for themselves. 



But how, it may be asked, can the poor take the subject of education 

 into consideration when they are without bread ? This is certainly an 

 afflicting question ; but we shall not answer it further in this place, than to 

 state that our plan provides that where parents cannot pay for education, 

 payment shall be made by the vestries as in Germany, {Mag. Nat. Hist., 

 vol. i. p. 485.) If the children are without food and clothes, these also must, 

 even in the existing state of things, be supplied by the parish. Thus, if 

 we are not providing the poor with bread, we are at least taking none from 

 them, while we are laying the foundation of prosperity to their offspring. 



Considerable improvement might no doubt be made in the parochial 

 management of the poor of this country; and the hired servants and la- 

 bourers of occupiers of land might be rendered much more comfortable at 

 vei-y little expense or trouble, if vestries and landed proprietors could take 

 a more enlightened view of their own interest : but the general question of 

 bettering the condition of the labouring classes on a great scale, can only be 

 considered as similar questions in political economy. If the labouring 

 classes are suffering from want of employment, it is because the supply of 

 labourers is greater than the demand ; because in labourers, as in every 

 thing else brought to market, there will always be an alternating super- 

 abundance and scarcity. This seems a harsh mode of treating the subject; 

 but, we are afraid, it is the only mode that does not promise much more 

 than it can perform. Even under a high and equal education system, the 

 same alternation must unavoidably take place to a certain extent ; but the 

 difference in its effects would be this, that, in times of superabundance, vo- 

 luntary emigration would be immediately resorted to till the balance were 

 restored. If all were highly educated, or even so far educated at school in 

 their early years as to be able to work out their own education after the 

 age of puberty by reading, human existence, even in its lowest form, would 

 be of a far higher and more refined kind than at present. Whoever lived 

 at all, would live well and be happier ; because he would have more wants, 

 and more means of supplying them. Thoroughly and effectually create the 

 wants and desires, and the means of gratification will as certainly follow as 

 effect follows cause. An educated population would never submit to live 

 on potatoes and lodge in mud hovels, as in Ireland ; or on bread made from 

 chestnuts or Indian corn, and lodge in the open air or in sheds without 

 windows, as in some parts of Italy. If such a population could not find 

 bread and meat and comfortable dwellings in one country, they would find 

 them in another; or they would go to another, where they could create 

 them. Such, in fact, are the nature and progress of civilisation in as far as 

 it has hitherto gone. 



The extraordinary effects produced in Britain by the recent and rapid 

 improvements in machinery, have produced a corresponding extraordinary 



* See Lasteyrie's Journal cV E^ ducation, in 8vo numbers, monthly, and 

 Bulletin de la SocUte pour f Enseignement E'lementaire, also monthly. 



