NATIONAL EDUCATION. 



75 



enterprise, and consequently in demand for labour. The uncer- 

 tainty of employment makes large numbers of the lower classics 

 unthrifty. While employment is plentiful and wages are high 

 they are wasteful, and do not think of the possibility of a time 

 coming when things will be different ; or if such a thought occurs 

 to them at all, they heed it not. They have no position in society 

 which they care to maintain, and they know that, if things come 

 to the worst, society will not let them starve. The tendency of 

 this is to increase the pressure of circumstances on those who pre- 

 serve their self-respect, and draw the weaker down into the rising 

 flood of indifference. 



Emigration has been proposed as a remedy ; but its relief could 

 only be for a time, and is even then unsatisfactory. Any remedy 

 to be effectual must be directed to the promotion of more order in 

 society. Many of the old regulations, which tended to maintain 

 the permanence of the relations of its members, and prevent occa- 

 sional strains from shaking them loose, have passed away, and we 

 have not replaced them by measures appropriate to our circum- 

 stances. 



When our attention is directed to the increase of the stability 

 of society, by finding some means of giving its members more 

 character, the first thing which strikes us is the position of the 

 children, and the fact that a great many, while their minds arc 

 being formed, are deprived of the conditions necessary for a healthy 

 development, and it seems obvious that the first thing to be done 

 is to take steps to afford them such conditions. More than a 

 million — that is, more than one-seventh — of the children of Great 

 Britain, if not more, are destitute of education ; and according to 

 the report on the state of education in Birmingham, Manchester, 

 Leeds, and Liverpool, by Messrs. Fitch and Fearon, recently pre- 

 sented to Parliament, it appears, as tlie Times says, "to be no 

 exaggeration to say that half of th(> children of those four large 

 towns are not educated at all." 



Is it not, then, the duty of the State to secure^ the education of 

 these neglected children ? No persons have a right to take upon 

 themselves the duty of parentage without first seeing that they 

 will be able to give their children a fair start in life ; but there is 

 no fault more commonly committed than the disregard of tliis, and 

 consecjiK^ntly we have, as previously shown, a large number of 

 pjirents who are unabl(> or unwilling to fulfil duties towards their 



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