of Edinburgh, Session 1870 - 71 . 
313 
Id that same year, 1856, there were 2,943,251 children of school 
age in all the Prussian provinces. Of these, 2,828,692 were in 
attendance at elementary schools, public and private. Of the 
remainder, 114,559, many were in attendance at the lower classes 
of grammar schools and real schools, which are open to pupils of 
nine years of age ; others were being educated at home ; a few 
were doubtless invalids, or physically or mentally incapacitated ; 
the residue, which must be small, represents the children of itine¬ 
rating families who manage to escape getting upon any school 
register. Even if we suppose that 100,000 children escaped school 
attendance altogether, that would give less than three and a half 
per cent, on the entire population of school-going age. But the 
proportion for most of the provinces is nothing like so large. Out 
of the recruits that joined the Prussian army during the past year, 
it is true that exactly three and a-half per cent, of the troops had 
never had any schooling. But the great bulk of the unfavourable 
returns is made up of recruits from Posen, a Polish province which 
has been called u the Ireland of Prussia,and from the natives of 
East Prussia, whose vicinity to the frontier facilitates their evasion 
of school attendance. From the province of Brandenburg, only 
one-eighteenth per cent, of the recruits had not attended school. 
On the whole, the law of compulsory attendance in Prussia may 
be said to be perfectly efficacious in producing the result at which 
it aims, and it appears to be very seldom complained of. Even in 
the political disturbances of 1848, this law was not put forward as 
one of the grievances against the Government. The law is 
thoroughly in harmony with popular custom ; and just as in this 
country it is a matter of course for the well-to-do classes to send 
their children without any exception to school, so in Germany it is 
equally a matter of course for the peasant and the labourer to send 
off his children every morning to the school which the community 
has provided. Day schools throughout Germany (as in Edinburgh) 
are the rule for rich and poor alike, and there is an air of equality 
given by the spectacle of rich children, as well as poor, going off 
each day to their respective schools. 
The Schuhwang, or compulsion to attend a particular school, is 
of course relaxed in favour of the rich. The parent applies for 
exemption, stating his reasons, and naming the school (generally a 
