Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions | Page 8

this is because men know so much!" Such certainly forget that for every defaulter in a city there are hundreds of honest men, who receive and render justly unto all, and hold without check the fortunes of others. So Mr. Drummond argued in the British House of Commons against a national system of education, because what he was pleased to call instruction had not saved William Palmer and John Sadlier. But the truth in this matter is not at the bottom of a well; it is upon the surface. Where it is the habit of society generally to be ignorant, you will find it the necessity of that society to be poor; and where ignorance and poverty both abound, the temptations to crime are unquestionably few, but the power to resist temptation is as unquestionably weak. The absence of crime is owing to the absence of temptation, rather than to the presence of virtue. Such a condition of society is as near to real virtue as the mental weakness of the idiot is to true happiness.
Turning again to the discussion in the British Parliament of April, 1856, we are compelled to believe that some English statesmen are, in principle and in their ideas of political economy, where a portion of the English cotton-spinners were a hundred years ago. The cotton-spinners thought the invention of labor-saving machinery would deprive them of bread; and a Mr. Ball gravely argues that schools will so occupy the attention of children, that the farmers' crops will be neglected. I am inclined to give you his own words; and I have no doubt you will be in a measure relieved of the dulness of this essay, when you listen to what was actually cheered, in the British Commons. Speaking of the resolutions in favor of a national system of instruction, Mr. Ball said: "It was important to consider what would be their bearing on the agricultural districts of the country. He had obtained a return from his own farm, and, supposing the principles advocated by the noble lord were adopted, the results would be perfectly fearful. The following was the return he had obtained from his agent: William Chapman, ten years a servant on his (Mr. Ball's) farm; his own wages thirteen shillings, besides a house; he had seven children, who earned nine shillings a week; making together twenty-two shillings a week. Robert Arbor, fifteen years on the farm; wages thirteen shillings a week, and a house; six children, who earned six shillings a week; making together nineteen shillings. John Stevens, thirty-three years a servant on the farm; his own wages fourteen shillings a week; he had brought up ten children, whose average earnings had been twelve shillings weekly, making together twenty-six shillings a week. Robert Carbon, twenty-two years a servant on the farm; wages thirteen shillings a week; having ten children, who earned ten shillings a week; making together twenty-three shillings a week. Thus it appeared that in these four families the fathers earned fifty-three shillings weekly, and the children thirty-seven shillings a week; so that the children earned something more than two-thirds of the amount of the earnings of the fathers. He would ask the house, if the fathers were to be deprived of the earnings of the children, how could they provide bread for them? It was perfectly impossible. They must either increase the parent's wages to the amount of the loss he thus sustained, or they must make it up to him from a rate. Then, again, those who were at all conversant with agriculture knew that if they deprived the farmer of the labor of children, agriculture could not be carried on. There was no machinery by which they could get the weeds out of the land."--London Times.
The light which this statement furnishes is not hid under a bushel. The argument deserves a more logical form, and I proceed gratuitously to give the author the benefit of a scientific arrangement. "If a national system of education is adopted, the children of my tenants will be sent to school; if the children of my tenants are sent to school, my turnips will not be weeded; if my turnips are not weeded, I shall eat fat mutton no more."
After this from a statesman, we need not wonder that a correspondent of Lord John Russell writes, "That a farmer near him has been heard to say, he would not give anything to a day-school; he finds that since Sunday-schools have been established the birds have increased and eat his corn, and because he cannot now procure the services of the boys, whom he used to employ the whole of Sunday, in protecting his fields."--London Times, April 13th, 1856.
Now, I do not go to England for the purpose of making an attack upon her opinions;