An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance | Page 3

interests; but it
would degrade its sacred character by talking of any such matter. But
Christianity must have leave to decline the sinister compliment of such
pretended anxiety to preserve it immaculate. As to its sacred character,
it can _venture that,_ on the strength of its intrinsic quality and of its
own guardianship, while, regardless of the limits thus attempted in
mock reverence to be prescribed, it steps in a censorial capacity on
what will be called a political ground, so far as to take account of what
concern has been shown, or what means have been left disposable, for
operations to promote the grand essentials of human welfare, by that

public system which has grasped and expended the strength of the
community, Christianity is not so demure a thing that it cannot, without
violating its consecrated character, go into the exercise of this judicial
office. And as to its right to do so,--either it has a right to take
cognizance now of the manner in which the spirit and measures of
states and their regulators bear upon the most momentous interests, or it
will have no right to be brought forward as the supreme law for the
final award on those proceedings and those men. [Footnote: A censure
on this alleged desecration of religious topics, which had been
pronounced on the Essay (first edit.) by a Review making no small
pretensions both religious and literary, was the immediate cause that
prompted these observations. But they were made with a general
reference to a hypocritical cant much in vogue at that time, and long
before. That it was hypocritical appeared plainly enough from the
circumstance, that those solemn rebukes of the profanation of religion,
by implicating it with political affairs, smote almost exclusively on one
side. Let the religious moralist, or the preacher, amalgamate religion as
largely as he pleased with the proper sort of political sentiments, that is,
the servile, and then it was all right.]
It is now more than twenty years since a national plan of education for
the inferior classes, was brought forward by Mr. (now Lord) Brougham.
The announcement of such a scheme from such an Author, was
received with hope and delight by those who had so long deplored the
condition of those classes. But when it was formally set forth, its
administrative organization appeared so defective in liberal
comprehension, so invidiously restricted and accommodated to the
prejudices and demands of one part of the community, that another
great division, the one in which zeal and exertions for the education of
the people had been more and longer conspicuous, was constrained to
make an instant and general protest against it. And at the same time it
was understood, that the party in whose favor it had been so inequitably
constructed, were displeased at even the very small reserve it made
from their monopoly of jurisdiction. It speedily fell to the ground, to
the extreme regret of the earnest friends of popular reformation that a
design of so much original promise should have come to nothing.
All legislative consideration of the subject went into abeyance; and has
so remained, with trifling exception, through an interval in which far

more than a million, in England alone, of the children who were at that
time within that stage of their life on which chiefly a general scheme
would have acted, have grown up to animal maturity, destitute of all
that can, in any decent sense of the word, be called education. Think of
the difference between their state as it is, and what it might have been if
there had at that time existed patriotism, liberality, and moral principle,
enough to enact and carry into effect a comprehensive measure. The
longer the neglect the more aggravated the pressure with which the
subject returns upon us. It is forcing itself on attention with a demand
as peremptory as ever was the necessity of an embankment against the
peril of inundation. There are no indications to make us sanguine as to
the disposition of the most influential classes; but it were little less than
infatuation not to see the necessity of some extraordinary proceeding,
to establish a fortified line between us and--not national dishonor; that
is flagrantly upon us, but--the destruction of national safety.
As to national dishonor, by comparison with what may be seen
elsewhere, it is hardly possible for a patriot to feel a more bitter
mortification than in reading the description, as recently given by M.
Cousin, of the state of education in the Prussian dominions, and then
looking over the hideous exhibition of ignorance and barbarism in this
country; in representing to himself the vernal intelligence, (as we may
rightly name it,) the information, the sense of decorum, the fitness for
rational converse, which must quite inevitably