64 
Education as connected with Agriculture. 
remainder in that formed by the help of the State for the labourer. 
It is also still an open question, though not likely long to be so, 
whether public opinion will acquiesce in the permanent esta- 
blishment of those subsidiary examinations which the Univer- 
sities have recently undertaken for the middle class, or whether 
it will adopt the proposal to establish, in connexion with the 
different counties, a new educational system with its own public 
schools, colleges, and university. In either case we may hope 
that a standard will be gradually fixed both for general know- 
ledge and for special studies, which will remove the existing 
uncertainty of object and irregularity of method, which are 
equally injurious to the teacher and the taught, to the school and 
the home. 
The effects which such a definite standard would have upon 
the English farmer's family can hardly be overrated. When once 
it becomes recognised as the rule, that all the sons of the family 
should complete their education by obtaining a degree, the habits 
of the household would be regulated accordingly ; and the mere 
necessary arrangements for study would open in the seclusion 
and frequent leisure of the farmer's home prospects of domestic 
order and happiness hitherto almost unknown. Such an object 
alone, without reference to the means of its attainment, would 
insure this. For equally the holidays of the schoolboy, the 
vacation of the collegian, or the daily pursuits of the home- 
student would have this effect, which would also extend indirectly 
to the female members of the family. I have long considered 
that such a degree, whether conferred by the present Universities, 
or as resulting from the successful establishment of a new county 
system, was the first requisite for raising the tone of the middle 
classes. 
Its primary object, however, would not be to affect them in their 
homes, but to fit them for leaving the parent hearth and entering 
upon the world. Those who had obtained it would have a pass- 
port to educated society ; and whatever their special profession 
or occupation, would be entitled to the freer intercourse with 
members of other professions and pursuits, Avhich is among the 
most valuable of the social and intellectual privileges that a man 
can possess. Such an acquisition would have the happy effect 
of making the future farmer more at his ease with both the 
gentry and the labourers ; because a man who has attained an 
honourable status, which others recognise as well as himself, is 
set free from many embarrassments which await any one whose 
education is doubtful and position undefined. 
Though I have no pretensions to write on purely agricultural 
subjects, I cannot forbear to point out the importance, merely 
with a view to agricultural progress, of increasing the farmer's 
