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ART. IV. THE MISCELLANEOUS WORKS OF
THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D., late Head Master of
Rugby School. Collected and Republished. London:
Fellowes, Ludgate-street, 1845.

THE Volume before us is an acceptable addition to those
previously published, and will be to many readers wholly
new. Few, except the author's immediate friends, can
have been able to follow him in country newspapers and
fugitive pamphlets, and none but classical scholars are
likely to possess his edition of Thucydides, from which two
essays are now extracted. The prominent subjects of the
new volume are political, and as such alone we shall here
notice them, especially since we have already given so large
attention to the other sides of Arnold's mind in religious
and ecclesiastical relations.

For many reasons, we hope, these essays will be read with greater interest and profit, and much more extensively, than at the moments of original publication. In the hurry of political contest, men do not listen with impartiality, and numbers make it a rule not to open their ears at all to arguments from an opposite side. The crises of excitement are now past; yet most of the maladies remain, and calm search for a cure is more called for than ever. Statistical and other facts have been made notorious in later years, which give us great vantageground in exploding false theories and vain remedies; meanwhile, Arnold's political and ecclesiastical opponents have learnt that his religion was unaffected, deeply-seated, and pervading his whole man; that his charity embraced their persons, where it deprecated their proceedings; that his public spirit zealously aimed at the support of Order, Law, Authority, Property, and Noble Rank, as essential means for blessing the mass of the community with Independence and Freedom, Knowledge and Goodness. On topics which concern the welfare of the labouring population, we are encouraged to believe that few voices would at this moment be more widely heard by the English nobility and gentry, than Arnold's; and there is a spirit in this volume which will leave its echo in many bosoms.

Miscellaneous Works of Dr. Arnold.

417

Among the hundreds of able men who have conducted education in our Public Schools and Universities, it is hard to find a second, whose energy and deep public interest so overflowed to sympathize with those millions of his countrymen who never came under his eye. Nay, among the far more numerous body of active and zealous men, whose exertions carried the Reform Bill into a law, it is equally difficult to find any who, like Arnold, sagaciously discerned its imperfection as a legislative measure, and its inadequacy to remove the miseries of the country, had it been made ever so perfect. In the midst of that great excitement, Arnold maintained that the Reform Bill did not embrace a sufficient number of classes in the representation;-a fact which, we think, has been long since brought to light. His own scheme added to the Bill a plan for the representation of the agricultural and manufacturing labourers, and of the monied and commercial interests as such (pp. 153, 154). Yet we do not say that any of the calamities and disorders which have since occurred would hereby have been obviated; for we hold it as undoubted, that the grievances of our labourers are, as Arnold declares, social, far more than political; and they are too ignorant themselves to know how to remove them. On this subject he has the merit of having strongly uttered his voice, before the name of Chartism was heard; before Mr. Oastler, Thomas Carlyle and Lord Ashley had commenced their various careers; and while as yet the masses of Birmingham were shouting for "nothing but the Bill." Arnold's historical acquaintance with Greece and Rome had at an early time showed him that the nature of our present crisis is, the struggle of Rich and Poor; and how untractable such a disorder generally proves, unless large social and pecuniary concessions are made on the part of the rich. To this topic he addressed himself in the end of the excellent Essay on the Social Progress of States, prefixed to his first volume of Thucydides. The danger incurred from masses of men living in towns, without organization, without property, in no close contact with a superior class, animated by the pride of freedom and the brutal ignorance of slaves,-haunted the soul of Arnold as a ghastly apparition. We think he has much overrated both the ignorance and the ferocity of 262

our town workmen; yet if there be over-painting, there is still too substantial a truth in his representations. Once more; while no man could more vehemently desire na- . tional education in its widest and highest sense, and while (we think) he would not have shrunk from rather despotic measures to overbear dissenting scruples,* he broadly lays down-what we heartily wish that legislators for Ireland as well as England would learn-that the first and most necessary education is that which arises from the possession of property, which in itself (as he quotes with approbation from Mr. Laing, p. 480,) teaches and exercises many political and moral virtues; and is an essential preparation for culture by books. From Greece and Rome, Arnold had imbibed the belief that every freeman ought, if possible, to be a freeholder; and that when, through political mismanagement or public misfortunes, a large mass of freemen have been degraded into the dependent condition of slaves, without such a certainty of food and covering as the slave enjoys, true wisdom and expediency, as well as national justice, demand a large sacrifice on the part of the richer classes, in order to restore the poor out of their depression. He had no idea that the effects of long misgovernment and ruinous war, the evils of which are 66 neither local nor temporary," (p. 497,) could be got over by the comfortable orders without any self-denial,-by a mere political rearrangement; and we earnestly hope that his declarations will be re-echoed in the ears of the rich, that (in a political, though not in a legal sense,) they have to make restitution for the past, and must not grudge pecuniary sacrifice. In this spirit every humane man, every patriot, and every prudent calculator, should approach the great question of the Condition of England: nevertheless, we will add, so vastly do the real resources of this country, in our judgment, transcend any thing which Arnold imagined, that we are far from believing that the rich would ultimately lose by what might seem a splendid generosity. Our persuasion is, that if they acted in the spirit of Faith, aiming to do good, and forgetting self, they would first raise the poor, and next thereby be made richer themselves. There

He more than once, if we remember, rather insolently compares tenderness towards men's aversion against a State Religious education, to "consulting thieves whether we are to have gaols and constables."