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power which still has force to pluck ' the slavish hat from the 

 villager's head.' This class now stands in the way of the com- 

 plete realization of the free school system in England." 



The vast pauperism of England, especially among the farm 

 laborers, is largely due to the want of free schools. The facts 

 and figures, both in regard to illiteracy and pauperism are 

 appalling. The saddest sight to me in England strangely con- 

 trasted with her glories and beauties many and great, of which 

 every Englishman is justly proud, was the low and wretched 

 condition of her illiterate masses. Lest any just statement 

 from an alien may seem exaggerated, I will quote from those 

 to the manor born, for these facts from the lips of Englishmen, 

 prove the evils of ignorance, if not the value of universal edu- 

 cation. Rev. Dr. J. H. Riggs of London, who, in his zeal to 

 prove our free schools a failure, quotes my description* of a few 

 of our worst school-houses and poorest district schools, as if 

 they were of general significance, and proclaims that ten weeks 

 serves for the training of teachers in the Normal School of 

 Connecticut, and that some of the schools of Maine are kept 

 open but three or four weeks in the year, with kindred exag- 

 gerations and caricatures, unworthy of reply, and who finds 

 almost everything English superior to anything American, is 

 compelled to say, "English pauperism is a problem and a por- 

 tent which seldom makes a due impression on an Englishman, 

 Its monstrous character and dimensions are so familiar to us 

 that they seldom strike us as monstrous. This vast and com- 

 plex evil, this ulcer in the body politic, in its character and 

 extent in this country, is absolutely a unique fact, because 

 there is nothing comparable with it in the world besides. The 

 number of persons annually in receipt of pauper relief is 

 upwards of a million. The annual cost of poor relief is 

 £7,886,724 (nearly $40,000,000). Abjectness and reckless- 

 ness form the main element of the pauper's home. His cot- 

 tage may consist of three rooms — the common room filled with 

 litter and discomfort, and two bed rooms for all the inmates, 

 parents and children, lads and lasses and often a male lodger, 

 so that neatness and decency are .precluded. Too often the 

 cottage is even worse, a wretched double cell, where penury 

 * As found in several Reports of the Board of Education. 



