70 
Education as connected with Agriculture. 
supply very large subsidies for the instruction of the labourer's 
child. There is, therefore, no reason why in every village or 
district in England a thoroughly good* elementary school should 
not be maintained at a cost of from 6rf. to 9c?. per week, ac- 
cording to the number of children ; and this cost may again be 
reduced by a half or more by (1) the State grants, (2) voluntary 
subscriptions, or (3) the industrial earnings of the children 
themselves. A school of 50 to 100 children thus maintained 
would offer to a master taken from the middle classes a higher 
proportionate salary than most curacies do to the sons of the 
gentry ; and if those elementary schools, instead of being as now 
exclusively assigned to a dependent class, were so constituted 
that the children of the employers might use them without injury 
or loss of respect, then the masters of these schools, being them- 
selves of independent parentage, would look to promotion and 
higher salaries in the more important public boarding-schools 
to which some of their elementary pupils would proceed, and 
where the bulk of the middle classes would be educated. 
All who take an interest in the welfare of the English labourer 
must rejoice at the attention that is now turned to the improve- 
ment of their dwellings. But a still more important improve- 
ment of the home must accompany the improvement of the 
house. The true degradation of the labourer is his lack of self- 
respect. His sense of the value of those belonging to him should 
accompany the sense which improved wages and dwellings will 
give him of his own value to those in whose service he is placed. 
To turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and, by conse- 
quence, the hearts of the children to the fathers, is the true 
method of " making ready a people for the Lord," which phrase 
implies all, and more, than is commonly meant amongst us by 
improvement. Writing in pages that may be read by some of 
the most powerful employers of agricultural labour in England, 
I shall be pardoned if I express myself warmly on this subject, 
and claim for it a more serious attention than it has yet received. 
The parish school should be the special charge of every good 
farmer quite as much as of the clergyman or the squire. It 
should be the subject of his thoughts and of conversation with 
his neighbours ; for, whatever may be the value to him of other 
machinery or inventions, let him be sure that there is none that 
will more affect his prosperity as a farmer and his satisfaction as 
a man than this machine for the cultivation of his labourer. 
Let him determine to assist in making it work, constantly, 
easily, and efficiently. Let him consent — I do not say con- 
descend — to take the requirements of his own younger children 
as a gauge of what his labourers' children also should receive. 
Let him ascertain, not illiberally yet with practical economy, 
