But this is a most fallacious argument, and is liable to be refuted by the very considerations to which its supporters appeal. The exertions which charitable persons have made in England for promoting education, as well as for all other benevolent purposes, are far above our praise. Nevertheless, such efforts must have their limits; and we suspect those limits have of late years been reached. The fact that the British and Foreign School Society never has at any time had an income of 1500l. a year, even on paper, speaks volumes on this head. Besides, such resources are fluctuating and uncertain in their nature; and nothing can be more obvious, than that such a variable supply is ill adapted to meet a demand which either is or ought to be made constant and regular.

The grand total of children educated in any way, even in the scanty measure dealt out by Sunday schools, is thus only 750,000. Now, the lowest estimate of the means of education for any country, requires that there should be schools for one-tenth of the population; but from the Digest it clearly appears that a larger proportion is requisite, especially if we include the means for all classes, high as well as low. Mr. Brougham reckons rather more than one ninth; but, taking one-tenth as the scale, it thus appears that there are only the means of educating seven millions and a half of the people in England, leaving no less than two millions without any education, and three millions without the only effectual education, namely, that obtained at Day schools. Let us shortly compare this with the state of other countries, where popular education is supposed to be well attended to.

In Scotland, taking the average of twelve counties, the population of which is 636,000, and making no allowance for the education of the upper classes, or for private tuition at all, there are schools where between one-ninth and one-tenth of the population are taught. In Holland, by the Report of the Commission of 1812, at the head of which was Mr. Cuvier, it appears that there were 4,451 schools, where 190,000 children were instructed, or one-tenth of the population. In the Pays de Vaud, about one-eighth of the people attend the parish schools; and not one person in sixty is to be found who cannot read. France presents a very different picture. The report of the Commission in 1819 gave the numbers attending schools at 1,070,500, or 1-28th of the population. Yet the exertions making in that country may well excite our admiration. In two years, the numbers had increased from 866,000; the proportion in 1817 having been only 1-35th. The zeal of individuals being powerfully seconded by the Government, in a very few years France will be as well educated as Holland. Wales appears to be much worse off than England; there are not schools, even including

Dame schools, for above one-twentieth-that is, there are only the means of educating half the people of the principality.

The inequality with which the education of which we have been speaking is diffused through the different parts of England, is a very striking circumstance; and affords perhaps the strongest of all arguments against leaving matters to themselves, or relying entirely upon the charitable exertions of individuals. In the four northern counties of Westmoreland, Cumberland, Northumberland, and Durham, the average is about one-tenth; in Westmoreland it is as high as one-seventh or one-eighth-being superior to the Pays de Vaud, and consequently the best edueated district in Europe. In Wilts, and Somersetshire, the average is one-eighteenth, or one nineteenth; in Lancaster and Middlesex one twenty-fourth. But before the establishment of the new schools in Middlesex, it was as low as one forty-sixth. This fact, respecting such a county, is truly deplorable. Calculating, as we before did, for the whole country, it thus appears, that at the present moment, there are not the means of Education for one half the people in the metropolitan county; and that, but a few years ago, there were three-fourths of that population destitute of those means!

The Lancaster Society, or, as it is now called, the British and Foreign School Society, has long been familiar to our readers, through the pages of this Journal. We, from the earliest period of the controversy to which the opposite plans of the two Institutions gave rise, have expressed our decided opinion in favour of the system which professes to teach the poor reading and writing, without distinction of sects, and to open schools in which all forms of worship, and all shades of faith, may indiscriminately unite in bestowing the inestimable benefits of education, alike necessary to make good disciples of the Church, and good followers of the Sects. But it never appeared to us at all maintainable, as some professed to argue, that the National Society would not be productive of good in places where there was room for the exertions of both societies, that is to say, in all places of a certain size, where the exclusive plan might be adopted in one school for the education of churchmen, and the universal plan be pursued in another for sectaries as well as churchmen.*** The truth is, that the New System of Education is only adapted to great towns; and in those there will always be abundant room for the execution of both the plans, without any risk of their interfering with each other. But the National Society have wisely and liberally been rendering their schools more and more accessible to conscientious dissenters from the Establishment; and the value of such concessions is not to be lightly spoken of by sectaries, when it is recollected how much more ample the means of the one Society are than those of the other.-Giving all praise to both

those Bodies, let it be again remarked that their labours are necessarily subject to fluctuation, and limited in extent.

It seems to us self-evident that those two excellent Institutions will commit a great error if they do not now confine their operations to the Metropolis. They have propagated the method, and, thanks to their zeal and skill, it is sufficiently known, to render any further expense ill-judged, except for local purposes. London, with a million of inhabitants, for only one half of whom there exist the means of education-London within their reach, before their eyes, spreads out to their humane and enlightened view a scene of ignorance, vice, and misery, which might appal others, but ought to encourage them. It affords an ample field for all their exertions; and they may rest assured, that the glory of reforming such a community, or of putting it in the way of being reformed, is far greater than that of most imperfectly, and indeed nominally, superintending the improvement of the whole kingdom.

But if this remark applies in some measure to both Societies, how much more cogent is its application to that whose very name reminds us of the degree in which it is rising, from excess of humane and expansive zeal no doubt, against all fitness and moderation! The British and Foreign School Society, is founded in that very London which we have been describing as in absolute want of schools, and more destitute of them than any portion of the Island. Meeting in the very worst parish of all this metropolis, in St. Giles's, where they cannot boast of more than the pittance of revenue already so frequently deplored, they listen to reports of the progress which they are making with the new method-in St Giles's?-in any part of London ?-in the Country?-in Ireland? No; but in France-Spain-PolandRussia-Finland-even on the shores of the Euxine and the Caspian! Not that we undervalue such a large philanthropybut we maintain it to be far from being appropriate to the means of the society, or judicious in the ignorant state of their immediate neighbourhood. Then, is the statement quite free from ridicule which represents the Society as educating, or even aiding in the education of France, when there is a most regularly arranged Association there so fully adequate for the purpose, as its labours above detailed, during the last four years, have shown it to be? But the British and Foreign Society may be the parent of this Gallican Association. We do not say that there has been no connexion between them; we believe that the labours of Lancaster, and of the two Societies in this country, and the success of the system here, have had a most beneficial effect in stirring up the spirit now prevailing among our neighbours, and in directing their zeal in a right course. But we can hardly allow it to be seriously maintained, that the French Society is a branch or a shoot of the British and Foreign Society, when we recollect

that in all its Reports the name of Bell is uniformly coupled with and placed before that of Lancaster; and that the French writers deny to both our countrymen the merit of the invention, which they ascribe to their own pious and enlightened fellow-labourer, Father de la Salle, who flourished a century ago.

2. Observations on Mr. Brougham's Education Bill: showing its Inadequacy to the End proposed, and the Danger that will arise from it to the Cause of Religious Liberty. 8vo. pp. 32. 6d. London. 1821.

3. A Letter to Henry Brougham, Esq. M. P. on certain Clauses in the Education Bills now before Parliament. By S. BUTLER, D. D. F. A. S. Head Master of Shrewsbury School. pp. 24.

1820.

4. A Defence of the British and Foreign School Society against the Remarks in the Sixty-Seventh Number of the Edinburgh Review. pp. 48. 1s. London, 1821.

5. Plain Thoughts on the Abstract of Mr. Brougham's Education Bill. By a Plain Englishman. 1s.

\ 6. An Appeal to the Legislature and the Public, more especially to Dissenters from the Established Church, of every denomination, on the tendency of Mr. Brougham's Bill for the education of the poor; to augment the poor's rate, to interfere with the rights of conscience, and infringe on the spirit of the Toleration Acts. With some remarks on its probable effects, in injuring Sunday Schools. By JAMES BALDWIN BROWN, Esq. LL. D. of the Inner Temple, Barrister at Law, and one of the Committee of the Protestant Society for the protection of Religious Liberty. pp. 99. Westley.

7. Christian Remembrancer, March, 1821. Art. Opposition to Mr. Brougham's Bill.

[Eclectic Review-March, 1821.]

MR. BROUGHAM, by his persevering labours in the cause of general Education, has well deserved the gratitude of his country. Had popularity been his sole object in those labours, he could not have adopted a more honourable and virtuous method of earning it. The most disinterested patriotism could have dictated no course of senatorial exertions of higher utility, than those which have had for their object to drag to light the abuses of Public Charities, and to extend the benefits of Education to all classes of the community. Thwarted, misrepresented, vilified as he has been by those whose interests were endangered by inquiry, and those who are secretly hostile to Popular Education, it should seem to have required no ordinary firmness and energy, to bear right on in the prosecution of his noble enterprise, and even when, as in the case of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, meanly defrauded of the fruits of his exertions, not to have abandoned, either in disgust or in despondency, the cause to which he had pledged himself. We have no personal acquaintance with Mr. Brougham; he is said to be in his temper

and manners warm and impetuous, and is charged with having been very rude to Dr. Wood, when Dr. Wood displayed a reluctance to satisfy the inquiries of the Education Committee,an offence never to be expiated in the sight of Dr. Wood's brethren: however this may have been, nothing could be more fair, and candid, and conciliatory, than the whole of Mr. Brougham's parliamentary conduct in reference to the matters in question; and he has shown at all times the utmost solicitude to have the measures he has brought forward, freely and fully canvassed before they should receive the Legislative sanction.

From the very outset in his investigations, he found himself violently opposed by the established clergy. The circumstance of his being an early member of the Committee of the British and Foreign School Society, would have been of itself sufficient to mark him out to their suspicion and professional antipathy; while, as a reformer, he must have calculated on drawing down upon himself no small share of odium. He was well aware that the cause of Education had been adopted by the Nationalists merely as a defensive and precautionary measure; adopted with reluctance and by constraint, to meet the exigencies of the times; and that towards that class whose exertions to promote popular education had rendered those defensive measures necessary, there existed a deeply rooted feeling of party animosity. We think it impossible that Mr. Brougham should not have anticipated the opposition and personal hostility which he was doomed to meet with from this quarter; but it is possible that he may not in the first instance have justly calculated the potency of that opposition, and that he too sanguinely imagined himself strong enough in the goodness of his cause, to achieve a great national good even in spite of those whom he could not hope to conciliate. If so, he has long since discovered his mistake, and repented of his imprudence. And the dilemma in which the discovery must have placed him, was, indeed, a trying On the one hand, to have renounced his long cherished legislative project, deeply impressed as he was with its utility and importance, on account of any obstacles which opposed its success, would have been chargeable on pique, on a deficiency of public spirit, or on a pusillanimity unworthy of his character. On the other hand, to attempt to realize that project, with both the administration and the arrayed powers of the Church against him, was but to court defeat, and to oppose insuperable barriers to his future political advancement. There remained but a middle path; a difficult one, indeed, to tread with consistency and honour: it was to gain over by conciliatory overtures the opponents he had seemed to defy, and to submit to have his measures tutored and modified in order to purchase their concurrence. We think that Mr. Brougham deserves to have credit VOL. III.

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