276 Uncertainty and Inequality of Voluntary Aid. one-half would of course have to be added to each of these sums. This grave deficiency, in the annual resources of Schools from School pence, might obviously be compensated, if the guardians of the poor were required to pay at the rate of twopence at least, per week, for the education of every child whose parents were in receipt of out-door relief, or who was himself thus dependent. The parent or nearest friend might select the School, provided that he were at liberty to withdraw the child from any matter of instruction to which he might on religious grounds object. Thus, with respect to these and other indigent classes, necessity compels us to seek other means of support for Schools, besides those of voluntary contributions. The resources derived for public education from subscriptions, collections, and School pence, have in other respects a common character of uncertainty. They are liable to be affected, by those crises in manufacturing and agricultural prosperity, which, while they compel the capitalist to retrench and to limit his charities, render the condition of the labourer full of anxiety, if not of suffering. Such crises are attended with the failure of firms, the breaking up of manufacturing establishments, diminution of employment, reduction of wages, or complete destitution of work. They sweep away like a flood the result of years of labour and anxiety. The School perishes like the manufactory, and can only be again restored by slow and painful efforts. Even in the fairest periods of prosperity, the School income derived from these sources is precarious. Dr. Hook1 graphically describes the humiliating course of canvassing for subscriptions, which has become the most harassing, but unavoidable, duty of the clergy. The in 1 Letter to the Bishop of St. David's. A Christian State has collective Duties. 277 spectors report the undue sacrifices made by parochial ministers, from small stipends, to support schools in rural districts. Even many laymen who are most earnest in promoting, by large subscriptions and personal exertions, the education of their poorer neighbours, feel that it is an evil that this charge should fall on themselves alone; for, by exhausting their charitable resources, it limits within a narrow circle that influence, which might otherwise be wide in its sphere like the light. Every statesman is conscious that, to tax the benevolent only, is the worst form of inequality, in the incidence of public burthens. One earnest man often thus bears the charge of a whole parish. A generous landed proprietor supports the School, which educates all the children of a purely manufacturing population, none of whom are his tenants or dependents. Or, an enlightened mining or mill proprietor may found and support Schools, in which the children of the occupiers of farms and the labourers in the same parish are educated, without any adequate contribution from the owners of the soil. These inequalities ought not to exist. It is not sufficient to answer, that they will cease when all men are actuated by a sense of the duties of their station, as members of a Christian commonwealth. Such a form of society has great collective duties. A Christian government cannot permit its citizens to be cradled in ignorance; nurtured by bad example in barbarous manners; brought up without faith and without hope: rude and miserable, the support of sedition, the prey of demagogues, the element of popular tumults, the food of the gaol, the convict ship, and the gallows. A Christian commonwealth cannot wait till the indigent are in comfort; till the Arabs of our great cities are settled and at rest; till the corrupted and ignorant are so far weaned from gross sensual indulgence, as not to waste the School pence of their children on beer, spirits, and tobacco. Nor can it postpone its aid until the physical condition of every part of our labouring population is such, as to enable 278 State cannot submit to Dictation of Minorities. them to provide for the instruction of their children without suffering. If the recklessness of the desperate; the sensuality which is the characteristic of a rude material life; the ignorance which no school has corrected; the apathy never disturbed by faith; the dark despair never penetrated by a ray of spiritual hope, are not fruitful sources for School-income; are the wretched to be denied the remedy for these evils, because of some barren speculation as to the province of the State in Education? Is society to continue to pay upwards of two millions 1, annually, for the repression of crime, and five millions for the relief of indigence; because, though this outlay is derived from compulsory assessments, the consciences of a minority would be afflicted, if a remedy for these chronic social distempers were purchased by the same means? It is the distinction of arbitrary governments that, when directed by a powerful intelligence, they afford prompt and efficacious means for the execution of the measures which a provident wisdom dictates. Nothing would so certainly discredit representative institutions, as that popular minorities should obtain a collective power, to obstruct the civilisation which they are incompetent to establish. Yet the question of National Education in the United Kingdom has exhibited the lamentable spectacle, hitherto, of such minorities triumphant over the collective will of the nation as represented in Parliament. Are we then to be governed by minorities, or by the three Estates of the Realm? A wise government cannot permit the education of the people to pass entirely from its influence, into whatever hands are ready to attempt to mould the youth of this country to their own ideal. Shall the priests of Johanna Southcote, at Ashton-under-Line, and the Mormonites, throughout our manufacturing and mining districts, be free to build See the School in its relations with the State, the Church, and the Congregation, pp. 18, 19. Also Appendix C. ibid. Doctrine of Voluntary Party analysed. 279 and maintain Schools, and the government of a Christian state be excluded from every form of interference? Yet such is the doctrine of the purely voluntary party. According to them, Christendom itself, could it be organised into one great empire, ought to have no collective power to rescue the ignorant heathen of its peoples, from the brutish sensuality which is without God. It If we may analyse such a formula, these are its elements: All remedial agencies by which the condition of mankind may be improved, through the medium of their intelligence or moral nature, are so inseparable from the relations of conscience to the spiritual world, that they can only be the acts of individuals, or of voluntary associations. Therefore, Government, because it may not interfere with conscience, is excluded. from all action, excepting that of the repression of crime and the relief of suffering. The State has not only no collective religious character, but, inasmuch as the true basis of all morality is religion, it has no essentially moral character. It protects persons and property, and upholds the national security for economical or prudential, as distinguished from moral, reasons. is the soldier, the policeman, the bailiff, the sheriff's officer of the national will, and that will is directed by whatever morality and religion exist in the nation. But the State has no morality, just as it has no religion. It is not even a moral agent, but only the agent of a moral nation. The Government may not, therefore, employ any moral machinery. Colleges and Schools are institutions, which develope the intelligence, and so 66 mould the mind of the nation," and because of this power, they are instruments of tyranny, when promoted or supported even partially by the State. Education is, therefore, the function solely of individuals and voluntary associations. This is the doctrine of the voluntary party. It is nothing, in the appreciation of its advocates, to say that it is impracticable. Who could repeal the 280 Government has Moral Responsibilities Royal Grants, Charters, Acts of Parliament, Collegiate Statutes; large public endowments derived from national resources, and the facilities afforded by law, which represent collective acts of the national will for the promotion of public education? They exist; shall they be annulled? Are the buildings of the universities and endowed Schools to be transferred to the voluntary party, and their resources absorbed into the national revenues, like those of the monasteries, or employed to saturate the appetite of greedy courtiers and placehunters? If this cannot be done, can the voluntary party satisfy the nation, that they are competent for their task, by building Schools in every parish, and supporting them in complete efficiency, from purely private benefactions, and the pence of the poor? I have shown how hopeless such an enterprise would prove. The intelligence and wisdom of the nation are equal to the imposition of a sufficient amount of taxation, for this object, by the forms of law. But the poorer classes are not so civilized as to do their part in this work; nor have the middle classes shown, that they could, within any reasonable period, forget their intestine strife, or make separate effectual efforts for this end. But to prove this doctrine impracticable, is nothing to its advocates. Their motto is, Fiat justitia, ruat cælum. Those wedded to impracticable abstractions are generally blind to the consequences of their dogmas. What is a century of indigence, crime, and heathenism, in comparison of a rigid adherence to a pure theory? Magna est veritas, et prævalebit. The ultimate triumph of their truth is enough, though millions may suffer, through an age of delay. An empire may waste its resources on forms of repression and relief, the greater part of which might have been converted into remedial agencies, but empires are only police and not moral agents. They may perish from the want of morality. Such a fate is better than any height of prosperity, pur |