ment, what would ancient Albion now be, and what would have been the gianthood of its intellect !*

And it is the clear obligation of every man who loves his God, his neighbour, and his country, to advance the benefits of education. There is no method of benevolence more requisite, more useful, more enduring. It affects universal interests. "The wise child" is the future patriot and saint. The spirit is touched and moulded when it can be most easily shaped and directed. "The golden bowl" is filled from "the fountain." You lay up an inheritance of principle and of example for a boundless hereafter.

But while it is our social, as well as our individual, duty to extend these advantages, Christians are found in other bonds. They are collected into churches and communities. A new power accrues from this relation. Their influence is greatly multiplied. Every measure of well-doing commends itself to them in this capacity. To gather pecuniary income for secular charities is very appropriate and honourable to them: but religion is their first care. They are set for the defence and diffusion of the gospel, at home and abroad. And is not education, comprehensive as it is of all temporal and eternal good, a work which they should encourage? Have not many of our churches and communities forgotten this purpose and betrayed this trust?

Among the resources which will be most effectual in the maintenance of education, is the true indepen*Tacitus. Agric: Vit:

dent feeling of the poor. Parents, who know what is the happiness of education, who, in consequence of it, have acquired the principle and habit of virtue, will always prize the opportunity which may present itself of bestowing it upon their children. For this, however scanty may be their means, they will cheerfully contribute. "Out of deep poverty they will abound to the riches of liberality." It is a dubious policy to make any school entirely free. But be that as it may, the time is coming when the plea of an apparent necessity shall not be urged. The negligence and apathy which gratuitous offers are often designed to cheat, shall not be known. And then shall be created the true fund of education. It may be aided still, — but not as an alms. The free-will offerings, the cheerful payments, of the poor themselves, will form a store of wealth. It will be of the best kind. It will be followed by the most living influence. There is nothing visionary in the hope. Six years have passed since it was put on record, that 1,120,000 children attended the day schools of the country, besides the pupils of endowed schools. How many of these paid for their education? We find no less amount than this, that 730,000 were thus self-sustained, nearly double the number of those who had depended upon assistance from others.

It is impossible to express the injury which may be done to the moral feelings of the country, by the governmental provision for its wants.

A sense of sur

feit, sickly and depressed, follows such a course of preparation. Let hunger seek its food to enjoy it. Let ignorance feel its need of instruction to pursue it. The cases, indeed, are not parallel. The one is instinctive and essential to merest life: the other is intellectual, and knows no such gnawing pang. But the lesson is the same. Man values nothing but that for which he must deny and exert himself. Give to any people the means of gratuitous education. Make it known

and declare it urgent. Your first difficulty will be its general disesteem and slight. The parent thinks it a favour to accept it for his child. He feels in its acceptance a certain degradation. It is a pauper-dole. He does not educate! He, by the discipline of his family, acquires no self-respect! Or, should it be enforced, his position is not raised. its motive and design.

He is the more jealous of Simple benevolence falls not

within the scope of governments. Why does it now offer aid? What does it now propose? There are great searchings of heart. Is it to raise the national mind to independence? Is it to kindle it with the

inspirations of freedom? may be assured that, in this country, education at the cost of the State, or rather by the exaction of the people, will never be welcomed as a boon. Coercion cannot be supposed in such a case. Let the officer of police be seen dragging the peasant's child from its home to school, let the recusant parent be declared to be under the forfeiture of all relief from the

We may be advised and we

funds provided for the poor, and a revolution would not wait an hour's delay. What was the odious ShipMoney to this? "The Village Hampden" would be warranted to rise, and his "dauntless breast" could never know a more approved courage. We could not wish to survive that overthrow of patriotism and of liberty. We should have lived long enough to have been spared the spectacle of our people's shame and our country's ruin!

That "bold peasantry," which we signalise as our "nation's pride," is yet to be understood. Treat men as just and generous, and you both awaken those emotions and confirm them. Oppress them and think of them as a servile tribe, and you will verify your estimate. Against constant scowl and taunt, no class of men can long contend. Deprive virtue of its rewards, and it dies. Forbid any room for its exercise, and its attempts are wanting. The working of the Poor Law, a noble institution in itself,-has pauperised the feeling of the humbler class. Once the bounty upon idleness, a sudden check in its administration has driven the industrious to despair. A medium, a juste milieu, is required. Local government will be the safest and kindest correction. Let not its strings be pulled from afar, by an invisible and irresponsible divan let each Union be its own centralization. And then shall our hardy, patient, noble, character appear again to the nations. The people shall reflect it. The olden race shall be seen. Yet not rugged in hardi

ness, not sullen in patience, not reckless in generosity, as were their fathers. Knowledge shall but complete the strength. The granite may be as solid, though it is polished. The gold may be as sterling, though it is wrought. And in nothing shall we hail that return, that perihelion, of the national character, more than in its recovered independence. We believe the day is not distant, when the blessings of education shall be so universally appreciated that the very poor, out of the retrenchments of frugality and the savings from vice, shall proudly send forth their offspring to the school which they have assisted to build, which they love, in some leisure moment, to inspect; and which shall only be the more commended to their support, when their children shall no longer attend it, that it made them the good servants and the useful relatives whom their dim eyes still fondly watch, the comforters of their sinking age and the heirs of their humble name. The earnings of the poor have long since been the absolute life-resource of Christianity: we depend upon them, more than any other auxiliary, for the prop of general education.

It has been nobly said by Bacon: "Antiquity deserveth that reverence, that men should make a stand thereupon, and discover what is the best way; but when the discovery is well taken, then to make progression. And to speak truly, antiquitas sæculi juventus mundi.* These times are the ancient times, when

* "The old age of time is the youth of the world."