586 
of 400.” 400 pagodas are equal to 
about 175]. sterling. Of the expence of 
books, nothing is said; but there appears 
to have been one book for each boy. The 
books consisted of spelling-books, testa- 
ments, bibles, Spectator, arithmetic, 
grammar, Enfteld’s Speaker, &c. AS 
each boy had one (the old method of 
teaching), many must have been in use, 
and the consumption great in propor- 
tion, Itappears, although no accurate ac- 
count of the expences is given, that, were 
the rental charged with the salary of the 
masters, and school-books, the total could 
not be less than 2201. per annum; and 
if the masters were boarded in the estab- 
lishment; as well as paid their salary, the 
expence migh be double that; and it 
appears mo; shan probable it was so. 
Contrast this with a boy of seventeen, 
managing a school of three hundred 
boys, at 601. per annum, as is the case 
at this time in one of Laneaster’s princi- 
pal royal ‘schools. Contrast again Dr. 
Bell’s school at Madras, at its highest 
pitch of economy, with Lancaster’s school 
in the Borough-road, Southwark, where 
nine hundred boys were educated last 
year for 156]. about 8s. 6d. each.. The 
expence of education in Bell’s school, 
from 1). to 2I.; in Lancaster’s, from 
$s. 6d. to 7s. per annum. With what 
face, then, can Dr. Bell claim the origin 
of the economy of this plan? 
A srand*requisite in Lancaster’s new 
way of education, is not that monitors 
simply be appointed to teach classes, but 
that it shall be prescribed them how and 
what to teach; that it reduces mental - 
labour to mechanical and systematical 
exertion. Now, in looking over Dr, 
Bell’s book, I find nothing of Lancas- 
ter’s mode of spelling, whereby from one 
to five hundred boys may spell the same 
word at the same instant of time. Ido 
uot find in any of Dr. Bell’s books, but 
in particular the first, a single word 
about the great and important invention 
of Lancaster, whereby one book will serve 
to teach a whole school. I find no- 
thing on the art of teaching arithmetic. 
Dr. Bell practised the old method of tu- 
ition, yet has the effrontery to claim the 
new, by one sweeping claim; on Lancas- 
ter’s plan, a boy who knows nothing 
about arithmetic, can teach it with ma- 
thematical certainty. In his system of 
tuition, the method how to teach reading, 
spelling, writing, and arithmetic, are well 
defined, and any child may do the work 
oi the schoolmaster, In Dr. Bells there is 
Lancaster's and Belt’s Plans of Education. [June 1, 
\ fe ; * 7 5 ‘4 , ~* 
nothing of these things; he has a prac- 
tice of writing in sand, an Indian prac- 
tice, and a borrowed one; he has, too, a 
method of spelling, which is very dwbé- 
ous as to its utility, and relates to teach= 
ing children ta read every syllable ‘* syl- 
la-ble by syl-la-ble,” in the re-nown-ed 
and. bi-got-ted  Afis-tress Trim-mer’s 
Spelling book,” y 
Another observation, and I have done. 
Dr. Bell is a Scotchman, and so amI; a 
native of a country where education is 
general as “ the dew-drops which ‘cover 
the-earth, and diffusive as the light which 
visits us from heaven.” Probablyf-hls__ 
pedigree were traced, he owes every 
thing he possesses in the world to his wa 
education, and the education bestowed 
by the laws of his country on his ancés- 
tors. Perhaps he would only have been, 
a cypher withuut its benefits for hnnself, 
Asa Scotchman, and a man firmly at- 
tached to my native country, I think Dr. 
Bell is a disgrace to it, by his hecoming 
an advocate fur keeping the poor in ig- 
norance, | 
Through every edition of his book, he 
represents that the children under his 
superintendance at Madras were chil- 
dren of the vilest description, imbibing 
from their mothers ‘* maxims which are 
the source of every corrupt practice, and. 
an infallible mode of forming a degene- 
rate race; the boys in general stubborn, 
perverse, and obstinate, addicted to ly- 
ing, trick, and daplicity:’’ but before he 
left Madras, he represents the gchool as 
giving to society “an annual crop of 
goood subjects ;” many of them rescued 
from the lowest state of depravity and 
wretchedness.” (See page 31, third edit.) 
Of these outcasts of society he taught 
(see the list of boys who are teachers, 
page 57) thirty-four boys, im his first class, 
the first eleiuents of astronomy, grwnmar, 
book-keeping, vulgar and decimal arith- 
metic, to read the Bible, Spectator, and 
Eufield’s Speaker ;.the second and third 
classes (twenty-five. boys each) were: 
taught grammar, and read the last-uamed 
books., Thus eighty-four boys, out of 
two hundred of that class, whom he con- 
siders “ dvomed to the dtudge of. daily 
labour,” were taught even the elements 
of science by himself, and were among. 
those who “ yielded annually a crop of 
good subjects.” With this strong fact of | 
education before his own eyes, and the, 
work of his own hands, as well as the ex- 
ample of his own enlightened nation be- 
fore hun, what does he say of the educa- 
\ tion 
