town; but no information was afforded as to the number of children educated at these humble seminaries. The state of education in England was the more reprehensible because the Scotch for nearly two centuries had enjoyed the opportunity of adequate education. A Scotch Act of 1633 had compelled the landowners to provide schools in every parish. The school-house was usually a very humble building; the schoolmaster was only allowed 221. a year. But, though the education was cheap, it was efficient, and accessible to the ignorant inhabitants of the remotest district.1 Miserable as was the quantity of education at the disposal of the poor, its quality was still more deplorable. The returns for a single county may again be quoted as illustrative of the educational condition of the whole of England; and Bedfordshire, which stands alphabetically at the head of them all, may be conveniently chosen for the purpose. Bedfordshire, in 1815, contained a population of 70,213 persons; 6,707 of these were returned as poor. There were forty-two endowed and ninety-four unendowed schools in the county, educating respectively 2,066 and 1,914 children. But of the 136 schools, which were thus provided in the county, no less than forty-six, or more than one-third, were kept by 'dames;' and only ten, or less than one in every thirteen, were on what was then called the new plan the only plan which afforded a reasonable prospect of a decent education to the children attending them. Nor do these figures convey any adequate idea of the educational destitution of the county. Bedfordshire was divided into 125 different parishes. Five of these were comprised in the town of Bedford; and ten were linked together for educational purposes. There ought, therefore, to have been 116 educational centres in Bedfordshire. But in fifty-two out of these 115 centres there 1 See Brougham's speech, May 8, 1818, Hansard, vol. xxxviii. p. 593. СНАР. II. СНАР. II. were no schools. The poor, therefore, in nearly onehalf of the entire county were entirely destitute of the smallest opportunity of educating their children. They had not even the doubtful advantage of sending their unfortunate children to be imperfectly instructed by an old dame. Some of the upper classes were unfortunately disposed to regard this state of things with considerable complacency. They imagined that it was a political error to educate the children of the poor; that education only tended to make the poor discontented with their lot; and that poverty only ceased to be tolerable when it ceased to be ignorant. Many members of the upper classes, indeed, expressed by their practice a noble dissent from these selfish and vicious opinions. Benevolent ladies and gentlemen endowed or supported schools in their own neighbourhood, excepting, by a genial inconsistency, their own dependents from the doom of universal ignorance to which they condemned the rest of the country. But the endowments were, in many cases, shamefully perverted from their intended uses; 1 and the upper classes in general thought that the poor should not be taught at all, or that they should receive, at the utmost, a moderate instruction in the tenets of the Church of England. More children attended the Sunday schools of Bedfordshire than all the other schools put together; the clergy probably considering that a defective knowledge of Jewish history was of more importance to their flock than reading, writing, or arithmetic. The poor, indeed, were sensible of their own ignorance, and earnest in their anxiety for greater facilities for educating their children. The poorer classes are desirous of having the means of education,' was the refrain which was raised in almost every parish in the kingdom. With a few slight exceptions every authority, who filled up a return 1 Instances of this will be found in Hansard, vol. xxxvii. p. 599. II. for the Committee of 1818, admitted that no sufficient CHAP. means were available for the education of the poor. With still fewer exceptions, every authority agreed in stating that the poor were themselves conscious of their want, and desirous of terminating it. In one respect, indeed, the educational position was gradually improving. The quality of the education supplied was becoming better. A new system of instruction was gradually taking root in the country. Dr. Andrew Bell, to whom this reform was mainly due, was born at St. Andrews in the middle of last century. Entering holy orders, and becoming chaplain to Fort St. George at Madras, he benevolently occupied himself with the education of orphan children in the Military Asylum at that place. A dearth of teachers compelled him to avail himself of the services of his most promising pupils, and he consequently introduced the system, which has since been universally adopted, of pupil teachers. The plan succeeded so well that Bell became satisfied that it was universally applicable; and, on his return to London in 1797, drew attention to the merits of his scheme in a small pamphlet. The pamphlet attracted little notice till, in the following year, Mr. Joseph Lancaster, a dissenter, opened a school in Southwark on Bell's principle. Lancaster's undoubted success attracted the enthusiastic support of the dissenting community, and the Lancaster schools were immediately established in considerable numbers. Nothing could have been more favourable for the cause of education. Reputable churchmen were perfectly willing that the poorer classes should grow up in profound ignorance of the most elementary subjects; but they were not willing that they should be instructed by the emissaries of a rival sect. The spread of the Lancaster schools led to the establishment of Church schools, organised by Bell, and an immense impulse was given to 1 Encyclopædia Brit., ad verb. Bell; Wilberforce, vol. iii. p. 66. СНАР. Vaccination. the cause of popular education. The British and Foreign School Society was established by the dissenters in 1807, the National Society by churchmen in 1809, and dissenters and churchmen have thus an equal claim to the merit which belonged to the improved system. The Church may fairly claim that the new system was founded by one of her own children; the dissenters may fairly reply that it would have never been adopted but for the energetic example of a benevolent dissenter. There is some satisfaction in reflecting that religious animosity, which has brought so much evil on the world, and which in the sequel so frequently interfered with educational reform, was the first great stimulus to the spread of education. Deep, then, as was the gloom which overshadowed the land, the dawn of a better day was breaking on the horizon. Romilly was pleading the cause of the criminal classes; Bell and Lancaster were practically demonstrating the possibility of educating the poor. The recollection of what Howard had done, the knowledge of what Mrs. Fry was doing, were introducing new and beneficial reforms into the management of prisons. These improvements were directly benefiting the most miserable classes in the population. Another great man had just made a discovery, which was as grateful to the rich as to the poor. Among all the diseases which ravaged the population none was more fatal, and none was more dreaded, than the small-pox. During the last thirty years of the eighteenth century ninety-four persons out of every thousand who died within the limits of the bills of mortality died of the small-pox. At the close of the eighteenth century, Edward Jenner, a doctor in Gloucestershire, was struck by the accidental observation of a country farmer, that a pretty dairymaid was in no danger of the small-pox, because she had had the cow-pox. On Collated from the statistics in Porter's Progress, p. 39. pursuing his enquiries he discovered that the farmers in his СНАР. II. It may be necessary to supplement this sketch of the The Army. state of society in England with some account of the British army and of the British navy in 1815. The triumphs which the army had achieved, under the Duke of Wellington's guidance, both in the Peninsula and in Flanders, had 1 Porter's Progress, p. 39. 2 Mackintosh, vol. ii. p. 322. |