cation for their children, and so ready are gratuitous and respectable teachers to give their services in effecting the object, that some gentlemen have stated to the committee that they conceive nothing more needs be done than erecting buildings, &c., leaving to private benevolence the task of providing for the current expenditure. We doubt however the propriety of this scheme; for, to say nothing of its being a tax upon the benevolent to compensate for the indolence or avarice of others, we fear that on a national plan it would be found fallacious, and impossible to be carried into effect. So extensive a system is too gigantic for the grasp of private charity; for though both funds and gratuitous teachers may at the present moment be procured in many places without much difficulty, this is by no means the usual case in remote parishes; and besides, it should be recollected that the new system of education, on which the practicability of the whole scheme depends, is not applicable to gratuitous teachers, who, whatever their benevolence, cannot attend more than Sunday schools, and will not of course be at the trouble of apprenticing themselves to learn the new system. Yet even were both funds and assistance equal at the present moment to the demand, there is no security for their permanence; the novelty will soon wear off, and with it the public enthusiasm will too probably subside.

We dare not therefore trust to casual benevolence however great, or to transitory feeling however warm and sanguine. It becomes the piety and dignity of the country to take the design into its own hands, and to promote, with the public purse and the public influence, a scheme at once so national and magnificent as that which is now proposed.

In case the expense should still be thought enormous, various alleviations might be mentioned; but, not to weaken the argument, or fatigue the reader, we will notice but one: namely, the more general adoption of the new system into schools already established. Even where the object of these endowments extends only to education, units might be converted to tens by this substitution; but where board or clothing, or both, are added, the argument is still more powerful. The money that clothes one child would educate many; and, in arguing on a large scale, it is not unimportant to remark that the sort of uniform adopted in charity schools is no stimulus to emulation, therefore not the best mode of encouraging education. Half the sum judiciously expended in other ways would produce much greater effect: for the most simple reward will be an excitement to exertion in a school when that reward is honorary; but neither child nor parent thinks it any great credit to become a candidate for the badge of charity and dependance,

We are fully aware that in many cases the charters of endowed charity schools are in verbal opposition to such a change of system; yet we cannot but think that, had the founders been alive at the present moment, they would have been among the first to adopt the new improvements in education, in order to produce the greatest possible good by their munificence. The chief difficulty in carrying the change into execution would be the ignorance or obstinacy, and sometimes, we fear, the fraud or self-interest, of trustees and guardians. It is clearly ascertained that, were all the present charitable endowments for education (we of course except the Universities and Public Schools) duly applied under the powers of the new system, scarcely any thing more would be necessary for general instruction. The sums bequeathed or collected for charitable education are prodigious; and we can only say that we lament to think how little fruit arises in many instances from such laudable but oftentimes illjudged endeavours.

The plain fact is, and we have already adverted to it, that we place little trust in the skill and energy of ordinary parish officers for entering properly into the plan, and cordially giving effect to the benevolent intentions of the public. Without making our censure too severe or indiscriminate, we think we have seen endowed charity schools, of the details of which the wardens and trustees knew little more than that a reasonable portion of beef and beer (metamorphosed by modern courtesy, and at the expense of the school funds, into fish, fowl, and port-wine) is to be duly consumed once or twice a year, or oftener, by the gentlemen aforesaid and their friends, for the benefit and glory of the founder and the institution. If therefore the proposed system is really intended to be made as great a blessing as its benevolent advisers imagine, something must be done to interest the respectable inhabitants of each parish, and to allow them a voice in the management of the concern; for if the whole is to be made a mere job, and the school-account is to be smuggled in as an ordinary item in the dull routine of parish business, we are quite confident that all our schemes and all our predictions will end in disappointment. The benefits which have been mentioned as arising from free or cheap schools have been closely and invariably connected with private and disinterested exertion. The teachers have been either gratuitous, or paid by voluntary contributions. The gratuitous teachers in particular, being chiefly respectable persons, have evinced a personal interest in the morals and welfare of the poor, and have exerted themselves to discover those motives and inducements which were best calculated to act upon their minds. If any individual has become cold and indifferent to the subject, he has soon resigned his place,

and others have voluntarily stepped in to fill the gap;-but when once a salary is attached, as of course there must be in a national plan, officers will not always drop off as fast as they cool, but will often be retained by self-interest long after their ardour and exertion have subsided. It will therefore be highly necessary to check this obvious tendency by suitable measures, and to make the system as far as possible provide for its own decays and dilapidations. The public must assist with money, and buildings, and school masters; but to benevolent and respectable persons on the spot we must still look to make the system efficient, and to check its natural tendency to deterioration. The poor will readily give their concurrence, or their weekly contribution, if properly applied to by a committee of disinterested and humane neighbours, who will be at the pains of explaining the object and pointing out its utility; but the appearance of a parish officer, with his common place apparatus of an ink-horn in his button-hole, and an unintelligible schedule of his object in his hand, will destroy the whole effect, and render the poor suspicious of the design of a proposal which they will scarcely believe to be disinterested and benevolent as long as it assumes the shape of a mere official communication.

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Fifthly. We have thus inadvertently entrenched upon the remarks which, had our space allowed, we had intended to make under the last proposition; which was to show the necessity of a parliamentary inquiry into the general management of charitable funds and donations for the public education. The discussion would require an article of itself, and we can therefore only say in general, on the authority of indisputable evidence, that such an investigation is indispensably necessary. Mystery is as much written on the brow of many of our public charities and corporations, both lay and ecclesiastical, as of Babylon herself, and even a committee of the House of Commons found some difficulty in obtaining plain answers to plain questions, and. still more in procuring the exact charters, records, and by-laws by which our charities are governed. Examination may be unpleasant, but while it is general it cannot be invidious; at all events it is necessary, and must be endured. That charitable funds have been in some instances suppressed, in others diverted from their destined objects, and, in still more, wilfully or unconsciously misapplied, is beyond all question, and the certainty of the fact furnishes a constant argument for vigilance and legislative inspection.

We fully agree with the Honourable Committee that parliamentary agents would perform this service in the best and cheapest manner; and we trust that the whole of the new plan, if adopted, will be placed by the legislature immediately

under their own revision and control. The fewer middle-men the better. Even individuals in public offices and dignities are not usually the best visitors; they are not always acquainted with scholastic details; their time also is usually too much occupied to allow of their making much sacrifice of personal attention; and thus not only do abuses easily find admission, but when once received generally become strengthened by the forbearance or want of local information of each successive visitor. But in Parliament the case is very different; for we suspect that there will always be found in St. Stephen's Chapel some individual who, for whatever reason, makes it his solace to detect other men's errors and delinquencies, and to expose them to the most glaring light. Now though so much thunder and lightning is not always very pleasant at the moment, yet it serves to cleanse the atmosphere, which is sometimes so dense and noxious as to need at least a hurricane for its purification. The House of Commons is also the best judge of the successive changes in the temper and manners of the people, and is therefore best qualified for new-modelling from time to time the proposed institutions for popular instruction. Universities and similar bodies move too slowly and cautiously to lend themselves, even when desirable, to the prevailing spirit of the times; so that nothing but the active and immediate superintendance of the Representatives of the people will be able, we conceive, to keep pace with the progress of information and national feeling, so as never to suffer the schools to become obsolete in their regulations, or many years behind the general march of the community.

That there is constant need of Parliamentary revision may be ascertained from the actual circumstances of several even of our first public schools, and the changes which they have silently and imperceptibly undergone; for if in establishments of great notoriety, and in which the masters and trustees have been usually persons of unquestionable integrity and prudence, innovations the most important have occurred, we cannot but expect innovations under the ordinary guardianship of common vestries and parish officers. We do not of course impute any blame to the respectable individuals who conduct our public schools, when we state that in many of them the will of the founder in some of his most important stipulations has gradually become a dead letter. The public schools of the metropolis are as ably and as virtuously managed as any in the kingdom; yet the examinations before the Committee prove that even in institutions as respectable as Westminster school, the Charter-house, and Christ's Hospital, the foundation deeds of the institution are far from being literally followed in some of their most characteristic and proper regulations.

With regard for instance to the qualifications for admission, (for we cannot go into details, though having said so much we feel bound in some measure to justify our remark,) there is at Christ's Hospital an express and even modern rule that " no children who have any adequate means of being educated or maintained" shall be admitted; and in consequence the petitioning parent or guardian is obliged to sign, in formá pauperis, a testimonial to that effect, and which must be backed by a certificate equally strong and unequivocal from the minister, churchwardens, and three respectable parishioners. Yet amidst all these averments, which we fear are too often viewed as mere matters of form, is it not notorious that the children, not only of respectable, but even of opulent parents find admission to the charity, and succeed in course to college exhibitions and other privileges of the foundation, thus depriving indigent merit of what was intended exclusively for its advantage?

At Westminster school it is expressly laid down in the statutes that there shall be admitted on the foundation "no heir whose inheritance may now be, or, at his father's decease, may hereafter be, above the amount of ten pounds;" but how far the spirit of this and similar rules is kept up may be determined by an inspection of the honourable names that dignify that foundation.

Nearly the same remarks apply to the Charter-house; though happily the farce of testifying the poverty of the parents is not at present acted; but each individual governor is allowed, in turn, to place a child on the books without any restriction as to the condition of its parents either by the by-laws, or by the control of his fellow governors. The forty children thus elected are supported entirely by the house, and, to complete the privilege, there are many valuable exhibitions at College, with various Livings, some of which are of the yearly value of 1000%. or 1200l.; so that each governor has the power of providing for his own children and dependents, whatever be their character and qualifications. We say nothing of these practices as they affect the dignity and popularity of the established church; nor do we deny that much public benefit is gained by having schools of this description for the middle and higher classes of society; and we are certainly far from wishing to see our first-rate schools relapse into mere hospitals and alms-houses. But, however excuseable or even expedient may be the plan of thus conducting matters at the present day, we can safely venture to affirm that such was not the original intention of Thomas Sutton, the founder, in obtaining as the charter states, licence, power, and authoritie unto hym the saied Thomas Sutton to founde, erect, and establish an hospitale and free schoole, and other the goodlie and charitable uses by hym intended in the saied house." When

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