inculcated in any particular school, should be allowed to receive the secular instruction exclusively, lies open, we think, to two or three important objections. For in this country there will not be found very many instances of guardians hostile to the dogmatic instructions, but willing to subject children to the general religious 'temper' of the school. The 'good' of general education' would not, then, be obtained. Or if obtained to a wider extent than we expect, it would, in such circumstances, be connected with evils unavoidably resulting from the exemption of a few children from the routine of religious instruction understood to be given in the institution. And, after all, the desirableness of this routine is anything but a settled and unquestioned fact. We much lament that Dr. Hamilton has treated it as ascertained and generally allowed. None would have been more ready than ourselves, to examine with all possible candour any arguments from such a man, in favour of maintaining in all scholastic engagements a formal and visible connexion, or association, between the dogmas of revelation and the dicta of philosophy, the religious faith of the christian and the political faith of the citizen, the duty of reading and writing and the duty of believing. Our present opinions may be wrong: but they are formed from respectable data; they are strengthening; those who adopt them are multiplying; and it can hardly, therefore, be commended by us, that in such a work as that before us the opposite to them is gratuitously assumed. Our author evidently believes that in time, nearly every place of worship will have a day-school as its necessary appendage. We think so too; and if this plan be not what we should have devised as the fittest for popular education, we do not so object to it as to oppose its accomplishment. But we earnestly plead that all the education given may be general.' We should deem it a duty for each congregation to select a teacher of their own faith and temper. Nor would we prevent, but rather encourage, scriptural instruction, if limited to its more secular elements, such as its historical and geographical matters. have no conscientious objection to prayer, or the use of doctrinal catechisms, or the delivery of a sermon, didactic or hortative, as part of the usual proceedings of each school. If they could not be employed at other times, we should even plead for their frequent employment in the school, and reconcile ourselves as we could to the loss of the 'good' of 'general education.' But we should think this loss a great one. In making our schools partly sectarian,' by connecting them with our respective chapels, and adopting a few correspondent regulations, we shall unavoidably sustain it to a great extent; and we are sorry for it. We deprecate the loss of all the good,' however; and we

do not see that we are bound to suffer it. A day-school is not a boarding-school and if it be a well understood arrangement, that day-schools, though kept on chapel premises, are not instituted for instruction in the chapel doctrine, but for general education,' they will have in time something of a 'general' aspect, and the national character will be correspondently invigorated. Meanwhile, those for whose sake they were, perhaps, originally opened, the children of the congregation and their near connexions, will have ample opportunity of acquiring religious knowledge. Scarcely one of them will be found, not in habitual attendance at the Sunday-school and chapel. Many of them will be the objects of christian solicitude at home. Every teacher, too, worthy of his office, will make it part of his system to instil by private efforts, wherever he can do it wisely, and with honour, those great principles, on the heart's reception of which he believes the salvation of his young disciples to depend. And inasmuch, moreover, as the teacher is supposed to be a man, whose 'temper' and general conduct will throw over his professional pursuits the consecrating atmosphere of the christian spirit; while in innumerable poems and readinglessons the christian morality will necessarily be exemplified and enforced; we are sure that the school will bear quite enough of a religious character to refute the stupid insinuation, that because it has neither creed nor catechism it is infidel; and we think that, considering the children will not attend for more than four hours a-day for three years, on an average, as much of that time will be spent in learning religion as ought to be so used.

We entirely concur with our author's recommendation of carly instruction in dogmatic christianity and in the principles of protestantism, supposing the fire-side or the Sunday class the scene where the instruction is imparted. We must extend the recommendation, and in all its force, to the principles of dissent; were we methodists, we should say of methodism. It surprises us a little that Dr. Hamilton should not have widened his recommendation thus; but we refer to an earlier part of this article for the explanation. If we do not echo his eulogy of catechisms, it is not from disapprobation of catechetical methods and forms, among other means of religious education;' but because what we think their chief value, their use as a textbook, depends so much upon the teacher's skill and power. Of his other recommendations, we must direct particular attention to the following; that the etymology of the vernacular language be taught, and well taught; that grammar learning, in the full sense of the phrase, be revived; that facilities be multiplied for the refinement of taste;' that the 'industrious classes receive

a political instruction;' and that care be taken to 'imbue them with the taste, and to furnish them with the means, of selfeducation.' We wish that Dr. Hamilton had urged on his readers the importance of educating the domestic and social feelings of the poor. He has written on giving them a political instruction' much which is equally applicable to instruction in the more private relations of life. The rich springs of happiness and comfort which exist in the heart's feelings towards its kind, and especially towards those of its own house,' are not, we are persuaded, matters of vivid consciousness to the great majority of our people. To become such, moral education is needed; quite as much as for the formation of a contented subject. To the remarks on a political instruction' we shall advert again when commenting on the next chapter. We merely add at present, that they, with all his remarks on the topics enumerated, and on others too, are no less forcible than of an aspect beautifully proper.

It was necessary for the completeness of the essay, that it should enumerate and discuss the benefits to be expected from general education. Perhaps, too, though the desirableness of education is not openly impugned,' nothing but 'shame seals the lips' of many, who would impugn it if they durst encounter the mingled indignation and ridicule they would certainly provoke. Besides, there are thousands who rank among the most liberal promoters of general education, but dread and deprecate the introduction of aught that can be called political into the working man's curriculum. Dr. Hamilton has, therefore, devoted his fifth chapter to the consideration of the advantages arising from the education of the people;' and a very able and triumphant chapter it is. The arrogance of those who would monopolize knowledge is exposed; their objections to the general circulation of it are destroyed; and the ruinous loss to which they would subject their country, themselves as well as those whom they would hold fast bound in ignorance, is demonstrated. We have to regret here, as everywhere, that the outlines of the author's scheme of thought are not more definite. Where he speaks, too, of the 'justice of educating the poor,' of their 'claim upon us,' and of its being 'just to explain to them the fitness of certain arrangements embraced in our great constitutional polity,' we feel painfully that no answer is provided to the questions, Whose is the duty? To what class of offences will neglect belong? Where is the tribunal of ap peal for redress? A hundred and fifty pages afterwards, indeed, we find a distinction drawn between social duties and political; and the assertion made, that many a social duty exists apart from the ruling power.' A little earlier, too, on p. 235, it is said, that 'the basis of much specious theory on this attributed duty,'

of states,' (the education of the people) 'has been the admixture of public and private obligations.' And we think it amply proved in the latter part of the volume, that 'this attributed duty' is both unwisely and unjustly attributed. But when we read, on p. 103, the mere justice of educating the poor is apparent from that equal obedience which is required from all by our laws, each subject being supposed to know them;' and, on p. 106, 'shortsighted is the policy that meets only present difficulties. Government is properly a profound science, a generous guardianship, anticipating danger, grappling evil, guiding opinion, exploring futurity; this last rassage following immediately upon a paragraph descriptive of the 'indiscriminate and phrenzied ruin of the framework of society,' which popular ignorance must irresistibly effect; we are forced to believe that the writer of these remarks was not, while writing them, indisposed to recognize the education of the people, at least to some extent, as a duty of government, and to suggest modes for its performance. That it is not we who are hypercritical, but he who is morbidly distrustful of first principles, and fearful of definitions, is evident enough when different parts of his volume are collated.

But it is time for us to turn to one of the most important discussions on which Dr. Hamilton has entered, and which arise in relation to popular education. He had recommended, in the fourth chapter, that the people should receive a political instruction. He adds

'If government be, in any sense, an arrangement for their benefit, and a trustee for their security, it ought to be shown in what manner it acts on their behalf; a foundation should be laid for their confidence. If apparent wrong be done them in any legislative measures, they have a right to be satisfied that it is not real, or that, if real, it is indispensable ... A government has no arcana; it is a great social regulation-a strict convention. . . It is only a relative thing. Not a thought can it legitimately bestow upon itself. Its strength, firmness, revenue, are of the people, and for the people. . . Throw all light over its frame and working; make the people parties to it; let them appreciate the use of every principle, and every adjunct; invest them with a beneficial interest in all; while they sit by the fire,' let them know what's done in the Capitol,' and your commonwealth is imperishable.'-pp. 76, 77.

'What was Socialism,' he had asked too, on p. 32, but the loud want of the multitude excluded from great social advantages? What is Chartism, but the importunate resentment of the multitude proscribed as politically nought? It is far better, in all such crises, even in popular commotions, to heal the wrong than to punish the remonstrance.'

He now adds, on pp. 90, 91

That the tuition of the labouring orders must produce its effect

upon the whole structure of society, is not denied. . . Any suddenness of movement, however, need not be feared; it is impossible. But the question occurs-is society rightly based? and would not this pressure upon it, which can be only intellectual and moral, be advantageous?. . . The depression of any is to the benefit of none.' Again, on pp. 93, 94, 95, he says—

Graver judgments are pronounced. It is foreseen that the growing intelligence of the workers will constrain organic changes in the polity of the empire. The word ought to be defined. New distributions of the same power cannot constitute organic change. Popular suffrage is an element in our constitution. It may be enlarged, just as the peerage has been increased, without any vital revolution. .. A free government, will reflect, of necessity, the opinions and refinements of its people. It is not an unnatural inference, that those classes which are not now deemed sufficiently enlightened to bear a part, and exercise a responsibility, in the management of the state, will, when thus prepared, find their way, and it is hoped, their welcome, to political immunities. . . . There would be no organic or vital revolution. The strict principle of our constitution would only be more emphatically declared. It is true, that pecuniary qualification now exists for the enjoyment of certain rights. But it is simply thus assigned, because property is supposed to be a pledge of information. There is no partial right given to any class of society, which is not a trust intended to be executed for the whole. Property was thus, again, considered the index of a moral ability to undertake such trust. We need not blame our ancestors for this appointment; it was not only the best, but we have not found out a better. . . But if knowledge and virtue, which humbler circumstances have been thought to discourage, and almost to preclude, can establish their existence in those circumstances, or in spite of them, then, surely they may claim equal respect, though unclothed with their ordinary ensigns. It is then, also, that the question may arise which we are not called to settle-whether these attributes, apart from other secular investitures, should or should not, give a potential voice in the direction of public affairs. It may be fitting, or it may not. However it may be determined, the poor are in a better frame of mind to receive the decision. The alternative must rest upon the unreasonableness of any political change, as deducible from their intellectual and moral change. Then, if unreasonable, the more reasonable the parties contemplated in it, the more readily will they see that unreasonableness. But if contrariwise, then the reasonable change must be yielded. Can it be safely or honestly refused, an instant beyond the evidence that it has become desirable and just?'

Lastly, we find on p. 267

'A literate qualification for electoral rights in the commonwealth must be condemned. The man has not sinned, but his parents. The stimulus comes too late for personal improvement.'