this state, various cooperating ameliorations would be introduced, till society gradually, and without those violent revolutions which must otherwise inevitably take place, attained a form more conducive to general happiness than that which now exists.

VIII. Objections.-These of course will be innumerable, but we shall merely indicate the answers to such as we consider will be reckoned the greatest:

1. Teaching all Ranks the same Things.-This on the face of it seems unreasonable, if not absurd, and we admit it would be so, if it could be proved that any degree of instruction could be given to the children of the poor that would prevent them from earning their daily bread when they became men and women, or that would not in some way or other contribute to their happiness. It must never be forgotten, that with respect to the individual, "all knowledge is pleasure as well as power," and that with respect to society, the effect can only be obtained by operating on individuals. If a high degree of education would not prevent the poor from working for their bread, we maintain that it would give them more enjoyment while so working; because they would feel themselves, in all things but property, on an equality with the rich; and we maintain also that an instructed poor man will be better able to gain his bread than an ignorant one, on the principle of "knowledge being power." With respect to personal accomplishments, independently altogether of knowledge, every one will allow that they tend to humanise the feelings and soften the manners in the higher ranks. Why should they not also have the same effect in the lower? The idea of this degree of education and accomplishment raising people above their condition in society, and unfitting them for the most humble and laborious offices, was the great outcry a few years ago; but it is already become obsolete and hardly worth answering. When all are highly educated, education will then cease to be a distinction. No man whether learned or ignorant labours but from necessity, or to attain some greater good. No unambitious man or woman, surrounded by plenty of every thing, ever did or ever will labour. Men do not labour because they are ignorant, but because they have wants to be supplied. As long as these wants continue, therefore, they will labour, whatever may be their state of ignorance or of knowledge, their rudeness or politeness. So far from it being the interest of the higher ranks to keep the poor in ignorance, their true interest, nay, even the preservation of their property depends upon educating them to the utmost. If they remain without education, they will multiply in such numbers, as to eat up the rent of the lands in poor rates; if their minds be raised to the level of those of men of property and rank, they will still multiply, but they will be restrained by elevated sentiments, and a more enlightened self-love, from acts tending to their own degradation.

Education and polished manners will never unfit a man or woman for any station in society, when they cease to be distinctions; and experience has shown that in so far as individuals of the very lowest classes have been educated above those with whom they were surrounded, they have fulfilled the duties of their station better. Many examples might be given; but it is only necessary to refer to the difference in the character of the disturbances in the manufacturing districts at the present day, and their character in former years.

The nature of society is such that there always will be a lowest class, and different degrees between that class and the highest; nature has formed these differences in our physical and intellectual capacities, and by no effort of man will they ever be overcome. But as they are aggravated by wealth when joined to knowledge, and by poverty when joined to ignorance, so the introduction equally among the rich and poor of the equalising principle of knowledge, will reconcile the one class to the other; not only by approximating them, but by showing the poor in what the difference between them and the rich consists; what may be referred to skill, and what to

chance; what may be overcome, and what is inevitable. It will be an immeasurable advance in the happiness of the lower classes, to know that in the rank of mind they are on a level with the higher classes, or even nearly So. When men once know exactly what they are, they will know what they have a right to expect, and how to realise and maintain these rights.

So far from knowledge and refinement of manners unfitting men and women for being servants, and for filling the very humblest situations in life, it is a fact not to be disguised, that all cultivation of this kind tends to tame, humanise, and domesticate; and in consequence of this quality in education, and the great difference which exists in the natural capacities of individuals, our conviction is, that if all were highly and equally educated till the age of puberty, there would be a greater difference in the qualifications and capacities of men and women for employment than at present, and, in consequence, a greater number of persons fit only to become docile domestic servants, and common out-of-door labourers, than at present. As a proof that this theory is correct, we may refer to the effect of high and equal education among those classes of society where it obtains. Of 500 country gentlemen, and 500 country ladies, who have all gone through the same education, are there not a number who, if they had had their bread to gain in the world, would not have succeeded in trade or mechanics? What could these have done but become servants? At all events, let none suppose that people labour hard, or are servants, because they are ignorant; it is because they cannot help it.

2. Teaching no particular Religion. This will not hinder parents from teaching their children whatever religion they choose. As children of all sects and parties are to be taught in these schools, it would evidently be wrong to infuse into them the peculiar tenets of any. This principle, indeed, is recognised by the School Society of Ireland (p. 84.), and by various other domestic and foreign institutions. Natural theology we would certainly teach them, and this is the firmest foundation for true religion. Morality would be taught on the principle of utility; because its rewards and punishments, though confined but to this life, are certain and immediate, and admit of neither doubt nor escape.

3. Forcing Parents to send their Children to School.-This, it will be said, is contrary to the spirit of liberty which prevails in this country. We admit that it has this appearance, but we deny that it is so much so in reality as several other existing laws. All civilisation is founded more or less on an infringement of liberty; and the infringement we propose, as compared with others, may be called one of the most salutary that ever were made. It has been mentioned to us that it would be less obnoxious to pass a law, rendering it illegal, after a certain year, to employ any person who could not prove that he had been at school till the age of puberty, or who had not a certificate indicating that he had attained a certain degree of school education; but though we should prefer this law to none at all on the subject, yet we think the preventive system of legislation greatly to be preferred. We know that this system has worked well for thirty years in Germany; and we know also, that the comparative absence of crime in the great cities on the Continent, is very much owing to the exercise of this system in the police. At the same time, let it be recollected that our object, in recommending an obligatory law, is merely to give an impulse to the scheme at its commencement, and that we do not consider it an essential part of our system, but only an essential part of its commencement.

Such is a mutilated outline of our plan, which will be found more at length in a separate tract, a few of which we have distributed among our friends. We ardently desire that the government of the country would take this subject into consideration; but as we can form some idea of the difficulties which any minister who attempted to introduce our plan would have to contend with, our chief reliance is on the public press. The actual pro

gress which has been made in general education in the South of Germany, and the influence which this has had in raising Bavaria, the most backward and priest-ridden state in that empire, to the first rank in intelligence and prosperity, is but little known either in France or Britain. When it is, it will then be seen how very far we are behind. We hope something, also, from the example of France*, which is making extraordinary exertions in general education. The best security for the progress of any one country is the progress of the countries by which it is surrounded. It is but reasonable in us to desire that the plan should have a fair chance of working its way among thinking people, and that the labouring classes, being thus able to form some idea of the immense importance attached by others to the education of their children, might be induced to take the subject into consideration for themselves.

But how, it may be asked, can the poor take the subject of education into consideration when they are without bread? This is certainly an afflicting question; but we shall not answer it further in this place, than to state that our plan provides that where parents cannot pay for education, payment shall be made by the vestries as in Germany. (Mag. Nat. Hist., vol. i. p. 483.) If the children are without food and clothes, these also must, even in the existing state of things, be supplied by the parish. Thus, if we are not providing the poor with bread, we are at least taking none from them, while we are laying the foundation of prosperity to their offspring.

Considerable improvement might no doubt be made in the parochial management of the poor of this country; and the hired servants and labourers of occupiers of land might be rendered much more comfortable at very little expense or trouble, if vestries and landed proprietors could take a more enlightened view of their own interest: but the general question of bettering the condition of the labouring classes on a great scale, can only be considered as similar questions in political economy. If the labouring classes are suffering from want of employment, it is because the supply of labourers is greater than the demand; because in labourers, as in every thing else brought to market, there will always be an alternating superabundance and scarcity. This seems a harsh mode of treating the subject; but, we are afraid, it is the only mode that does not promise much more than it can perform. Even under a high and equal education system, the same alternation must unavoidably take place to a certain extent; but the difference in its effects would be this, that, in times of superabundance, voluntary emigration would be immediately resorted to till the balance were restored. If all were highly educated, or even so far educated at school in their early years as to be able to work out their own education after the age of puberty by reading, human existence, even in its lowest form, would be of a far higher and more refined kind than at present. Whoever lived at all, would live well and be happier; because he would have more wants, and more means of supplying them. Thoroughly and effectually create the wants and desires, and the means of gratification will as certainly follow as effect follows cause. An educated population would never submit to live on potatoes and lodge in mud hovels, as in Ireland; or on bread made from chestnuts or Indian corn, and lodge in the open air or in sheds without windows, as in some parts of Italy. If such a population could not find bread and meat and comfortable dwellings in one country, they would find them in another; or they would go to another, where they could create them. Such, in fact, are the nature and progress of civilisation in as far as it has hitherto gone.

The extraordinary effects produced in Britain by the recent and rapid improvements in machinery, have produced a corresponding extraordinary

See Lasteyrie's Journal d'E'ducation, in 8vo numbers, monthly, and Bulletin de la Société pour l'Enseignement E'lémentaire, also monthly.

glut of unemployed population, which it is unquestionably the duty of the government to attend to in some way or other. There is abundance of employment for this population, in the high garden cultivation of lands now under the plough; in the cultivation of waste lands; and in the execution of great national works, roads, canals, drainages, &c. But what would be the consequence of such a general stimulus to production? Unless the children of the people so employed were highly educated, so as to produce voluntary emigration among them whenever it became necessary, the evil would in a very few years be greatly increased. We confess, however, that we should wish to see the superfluous population so employed, and their children so educated, rather than that they should be compelled to emigrate. With the high degree of education to their offspring of which we have given an outline, we would take our chance of the results; and more especially as before any great addition could be made to the population, a reduction of the national debt, free trade in every thing and especially in corn, free and greatly facilitated intercourse with every other country, an increased population in these countries, and in consequence an increasing demand for our manufactures, must have taken place.

ART. XI. Cultivation of Waste Lands.

IN The News, one of the most spirited of the London Sunday newspapers, the leading article for October 4. argues the advantage that would result from a general enclosure act, and selling on long credit, or letting at very low rents, the enclosed land, in moderate portions, to the superfluous population. It seems there are upwards of 8 millions of acres of waste lands in the Scotch and English counties; or more probably, according to the writer, 10 millions of acres, and 4 millions in Ireland. Yorkshire alone contains 600,000 waste acres, and 100,000 unemployed and half-starved artisans and labourers.

To encourage the cultivation of these lands, for which there is, without doubt, abundance of capital in England, the writer proposes that all the lands so brought into cultivation, with the erections on them, and the materials used in forming these erections, should be left untaxed and untithed for 20 years. Unquestionably this degree of encouragement would soon effect the culture of the lands, and as the writer is aware, it would also reduce the rental of lands in cultivation at least one half. This he says, and we entirely agree with him, " would be a great good in itself: as, in the lowering of prices, it would advance the pecuniary capacity of the country to increase its consumption of agricultural produce (an inadequate proportion of which promotes disease and imbecility), and of our home manufactures; while it only took away from the rich the glitter and gewgaw of high life, now become so excessively artificial as to cease in its resemblance to any thing originally and substantially English. It is their excessive wealth which has created that eternal craving for foreign indulgences in our aristocracy, and which leads them to reside abroad, more than the desire of knowledge and the study of European life, which were the original inducements to travel. The rentals of land must come down: if they do not fall from one cause, they will soon tumble from another. The unnational and antisocial plan of emigration, encouraged by the great landowners, will never meet the difficulty they seek to remove, viz. the growing pauperism of the country: for, as far as it now operates, it is injurious rather than beneficial, inducing the removal of industry and capital, more than of poverty and idleness; it is even taking away from the country, to the direct injury of the landowner himself, the marketable demand for farms”

"In proportion as any country possesses extensively and finely cultivated land, it holds the basis of all real wealth. The abundance of wholesome food for the people is the best security of their allegiance and their content. Comfort is the greatest anti-radical principle in Europe. You may trace its operation on all the rats of distinguished life. Let the powers that be duly consider the admirable properties of this specific, which never fails them among the comparatively great; and weigh well the advantages of administering a larger proportion of it to the middle and lower classes. They would soon find their account in such a policy."

"A general enclosure act, under the advantages which we have named, would give seventy thousand additional yeomen and farmers to the state; there would be a general break up of unprofitable speculations in commerce; and men of capital would take their own workmen from the unprofitable loom to the remunerative plough."

The fact noticed in the above communication, that the emigration to other countries, which is at present going on, is one of "industry and capital" instead of "poverty and idleness," is of some importance; but, as it appears to us, nothing like so great as the writer seems to imagine. Till the price of transport be so reduced as to come within the means of all, or till experience has rendered emigration unattended with difficulty, in even the humblest labourer, the good which will result from it will certainly be much less than it otherwise would be; but we must not forget to take into account the demand which the capital thus carried abroad will create there for British manufactures. It might even, we think, be argued, that this capital will do more good to Britain, when employed in her colonies, than when employed at home, more particularly if commerce, and especially that in corn, were free, so as to render our manufactures sufficiently cheap to meet the competition of other countries, now manufacturing as well as we, and rapidly accumulating capital.

It is not very likely that the landlords of the country will voluntarily consent to a measure, which, if brought fully into operation, will reduce their rentals one half; but they may possibly be compelled to do it. In the mean time the poor now out of employment would be benefited by passing a general enclosure act, and taking all tithes and taxes for 20 years from portions of land not exceeding 5 acres, and dwelling-houses and offices not exceeding five rooms, and a two-stalled cow-house with the usual appendages. This would at once bring a very considerable capital into activity, and the produce of the soil, being chiefly consumed by the occupiers and their families, would not have much effect in lowering the rentals of lands now in cultivation. The objection to the plan by political economists will be, that the cottagers so settled, by bringing up large families, will greatly aggravate the existing evil at some future day; but in answer to this we would say, raise the taste of the children of these cottagers by a high degree of education, and if this will not prevent the evil, it is certain it will do all to alleviate it which human government can do. An overflowing educated population must, at all events, be less dangerous than an overflowing ignorant population.

But the principal object that we have in view, in noticing this suggestion for a general enclosure act, is, to propose that if any such act should be passed there should be a clause in it providing for breathing places round all towns and villages, of extent in proportion to their population; another for allotting workhouse gardens to parishes, also in proportion to their population; and a third for gardens to Parochial Institutions. Were the common to be enclosed not situated near the town, village, or workhouse, the allotments ought still to be made; because opportunities of exchanging such allotments for others more conveniently situated to the village, the workhouse, or the Parochial Institution, might afterwards occur. VOL. V. No. 23.