denominations more deeply involved, than in those relating to national Education, in reference to which a false step on the part of the legislature will be with difficulty retrieved." These persons, my Lords, may be considered as representing the party to whom I have alluded, and the first step towards the accomplishment of their objects, seems to me to have been taken, and the general outline of their plans to have been sketched, in the scheme put forth by the Committee of Privy Council.

With respect to the part which the Clergy have taken in this great question, they have frequently, but not in express terms in this night's debate, been charged with being opposed to the general diffusion of knowledge. My Lords, no persons are more sensible than the Clergy are, of the evils which flow from ignorance, and of the duty incumbent upon them, as upon every enlightened Christian, to do all in their power towards removing the cause of those evils nor can it be truly said of them, that they have been negligent or remiss in the performance of that duty. The Most Reverend Primate has already stated in detail, the exertions which have been made by our Reformed Church in the cause of Education; but I think he has not mentioned the precise increase of the means of Education which has been effected during the last twenty years by those exertions. By the returns made to Parliament in 1833, the total number of children in the kingdom receiving daily education, was 1,276,947; of whom, the dissenting schools contained 51,822, or one twenty-fourth of the whole: and the increase, since the year 1818, was 671,248, from which if one twenty-fourth be deducted, there will remain 643,280 additional scholars, the fruits of the Church's efforts during the abovenamed period.

The Dissenters, therefore, being somewhat less than one-sixth of the population, (if the Wesleyans be deducted, they are less than one-seventh,) are educating one twenty-fourth of the whole number of children receiving daily education. In Sunday schools, which by the way had their origin in the Church, the disproportion of numbers is not so great. Compare then, my Lords, the million of children who are now receiving education in schools connected with the

Church, with the total number educated in any schools, before the time when that great impulse was given to the public mind, which led to the formation of the British and Foreign School Society and the National School Society, and you will not be disposed to charge the Church with supineness in the work of Education; certainly not the Clergy, who have been at all times the most liberal contributors to Schools, in many cases supporting them entirely at their own expense, and almost universally devoting their time and talents to the superintendence and management of their Parochial and Sunday Schools. A just tribute was paid to the disinterested and useful labours of that excellent body of men in a speech delivered nineteen years ago, in another place, by a noble and learned Lord, who has devoted so much of his time and great abilities to the subject of education; a tribute, of which I am sure he will not now be disposed to retract a single word. But I know it will be said, in answer to these statements, It is all very true; we admit the correctness of your numbers; we acknowledge that you have a great many schools, and a respectable roll-call of scholars; but what is the education which you give them? It is a worthless, and bad education." Now, when we proceed to inquire a little more particularly into the grounds of this charge, we find, that the badness of our education consists principally in this, that we devote too much time, as they think, to religious instruction, to the study and explanation of the Bible, and too little to the objects of instructing the children of the poor in those branches of secular knowledge, and those mechanical arts, which may be useful to them in after life.

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My Lords, we are content to bear this imputation. We acknowledge that we hold the great object of education to be, the training up of immortal beings, admitted by baptism into a special relation to their Maker, to a meetness for fulfilling the duties of that relation. We hold it to be more beneficial to them, and more incumbent upon us, to give them a knowledge of God and of themselves, of their duties and their destiny; to form their habits of thought and action by the rules of truth, and holiness, and

charity, than to imbue them very deeply (and yet we would imbue them as deeply as a due attention to the more important object may permit) with that secular knowledge, which they will be sure to acquire for themselves, if they find it to be serviceable in promoting their advancement in life, and securing to them the world's advantages; a knowledge, which, if not sanctified and guided, in its use and application, by the restraints and motives of Christianity, may be, nay, rather, my Lords, will be a curse to them rather than a blessing. Yes, my Lords, I use the words deliberately and advisedly, a curse rather than a blessing. For let me not be told, that the acquisition of knowledge, of whatever kind, cannot, under any circumstances, be otherwise than beneficial to man as a reasonable being. If, my Lords, we bear in mind that man is not only a reasonable being, but that he is therefore a moral and accountable agent, we shall see, that a broad ground is laid for restricting and qualifying that position. That the acquisition of knowledge, commonly so called; that knowledge, which sharpens the wit of man, exercises his faculties, and stores his memory, while it leaves untouched the conscience and the heart, that this does not of necessity benefit the person who acquires it, we learn by the testimony of fact. That education, unsanctified by religion, is evil in its tendencies, and injurious in its results, is the conclusion of sound reason, confirmed by experience. What, my Lords, is the state of the case in France at the present moment? What are the fruits of that system, which takes present utility, and not religious duty, for its mainspring and regulating principle? Do we see anything there, which should encourage us to give that prominence and value to mere secular education, which are given it by the supporters of the Central Society? Many of your Lordships are probably acquainted with the Educational Statistics of M. Guerry, and with the extraordinary results of his very careful and minute inquiries; results which may well shake, if they do not overthrow, the confidence of those who look upon education, as they understand the term, as the grand panacea of all the evils, moral and political,

by which the country is afflicted. His words are these:"While crimes against the person are most frequent in Corsica, the provinces of the South-East, and Alsace, where the people are well instructed, there are the fewest of those crimes in Berri, Limousin, and Brittany, where the people are the most ignorant. And as for crimes against property, it is almost invariably those departments that are best informed which are the most criminala fact, which, if the tables be not altogether wrong, must show this to be certain, that if instruction do not increase crime, which may be a matter of dispute, there is no reason to believe that it diminishes it." It is strange, that the writer, who is an acute and sagacious person, should wholly overlook the cause of this surprising anomaly. It is at least strange that any Christian should overlook it. The cause is neither more nor less than this, that the education, of which he speaks, is a purely secular education, wholly untinctured with religion. I know, my Lords, that the government of France desire it to be otherwise; and I believe that they are making efforts to supply this fatal defect in their system of education; but it has not yet been supplied. To prove this, I need only quote from a Report made to M. Guizot by one of his agents, who says of the Schools in France, "As to moral and religious instruction, there is none at all." The same result is deduced from the educational statistics of America by De Beaumont and De Tocqueville; and the same cause exists, or nearly the same, namely, that religious instruction, at least that religious instruction which deserves the name, forms no essential part of the established system of education. I state, upon authority which cannot be called in question, that of their own reports, that in America, which is held up to us as a model in this respect to be imitated, and where the governments in different states interfere to make education in some measure compulsory, moral improvement has by no means kept pace with intellectual training. The Second Report of the Massachussets Board of Education, at the head of which is a person of distinguished ability and learning, Mr. Everett, speaking of the

constitutional rule, that no books shall be used in the Schools which favour the tenets of any particular sect of Christians, and of the existing scarcity of such books, announces the publication of a series of religious works intended to form a school library. "One series for children, another for maturer readers." "Each book in the series is to be submitted to the inspection of every member of the board; and no work can be recommended but upon their unanimous approval. Such a recommendation, it was believed, would form a sufficient assurance to the public, that a sacred adherence would be had to the principle which is embodied in the legislation of the commonwealth, on the subject of schoolbooks, and which provides, that school-committees shall never direct to be purchased, or used, in any of the town schools, any books which are calculated to favour the tenets of any particular sect of Christians:" and therefore a series of constitutional books are in preparation, which are to teach religion in the general; and if they are to teach any religion worthy of the name, and yet to be free from all peculiar doctrines, I shall be curious to see them. Appended to this document is another Report from the Secretary of the Committee, Mr. Horace Mann, who discloses, without intending it, the results which have followed from a secular education. "In my report of last year," he says, "I exposed the alarming deficiency of moral and religious instruction then found to exist in our Schools. That deficiency, in regard to religious instruction, could only be explained by supposing that school-committees, whose duty it is to prescribe school-books, had not found any books at once expository of the doctrines of revealed religion, and also free from such advocacy of the tenets of particular sects of Christians, as brought them within the scope of the legal prohibition." (Indeed, my Lords, I should have wondered if they had.) "And hence they felt obliged to exclude books, which, but for their denominational views, they would have been glad to introduce. No candid mind could, even for a moment, accept this as an evidence of an indifference to moral and religious instruction in the Schools, but only as a proof that