men's controversies--if there were no high ends to be promoted by us for times after us, the drama of life would become a contemptible jest, and we should turn from the strife of public discussion to the pleasures of lettered ease and abstract speculation.

Constituted as we are, both in our individual and our national capacity, it is a necessary consequence of our education and our institutions, that the signal to act should be invariably accompanied by a thousand differences as to the means of action. Parties are so engaged in these disputes that they know little more of the fate of the main battle than a regiment in the midst of dust and smoke knows of the fate of a campaign. It is a peculiar characteristic of the English people, that they, of all mankind, are most energetic in the attack and defence of questions of detail, and least used to act from general motives on a general survey of the whole question. But this very quality of the English character has imparted a strength to English institutions, which no ingenuity or speculative contrivance could ever have conferred on the productions of the most gifted minds. Nothing springs up in England with the sudden vigour of tropical vegetation; but while the soil is turned a thousand times about the root, the trunk of our oak continues its sturdy growth.

We look down on the ebullitions of narrow minds, the mischief of party, the virulence of polemics, and the coarseness of transient motives with indifference, because our belief in the existence of more enduring and more noble elements amongst us is unshaken: if we have alluded to the existence of these disorders, which force themselves on our notice, it is chiefly to disclaim all sympathy with them-nay, more, to protest against the discouraging construction which some men put on their proximate consequences. In our last number we drew a melancholy picture of abortive exertions and increasing evils, in our notice of the present state of the African Slave-Trade; but we do not for a moment question that the moral assertion of the iniquity of slavery, and the great moral battle fought by the Abolitionists, has raised the tone of national feeling, touched the conscience of England with a deeper sense of her duties, and achieved results of a moral

importance hardly secondary to that main object of the suppression of the Slave-Trade, which is unhappily still so remote. In like manner, the objects of the most enlightened friends of education may be far from their accomplishment— perhaps they will never be completely attained; but already we find cause for rejoicing in the effects of these discussions. Within the last few years, and especially within the year which has just expired, we have seen the revival of a spirit in some of our institutions which gives us the best assurance of their safety, and the best promise of their extension and improvement. We have seen, especially in the Church, symptoms of that best kind of reform, which starts from a return ad principia; and we can pardon much of her jealous hostility to all external interference, in consideration of the knowledge she shows of her position, and the readiness with which she meets the exigencies of it. It is the peculiar characteristic of a country blest with wise institutions, that however they may be overgrown with the rusts of time, they are susceptible of applications, of which their authors-if any can be called the authors of what has grown with our growth-never dreamed.

With particular reference to the Education-question, the position of the State, or rather of the administration in whose hands the exercise of the powers of state reposes, is at present in many respects less favourable than the position of the Church. The Church exists in the country mole sud, and as long as it exists at all, its course of action is prescribed and its powers are determined, not so much by the men who compose it, as by the nature of its constitution. A political board on the contrary, can hardly meet to discuss any question without asking itself whether it exists at all. Its powers may be great to-day; they may be transferred to other hands tomorrow; and the solidity of the measures of statesmen depends, of course, on their sense of their own security. But however unequal and dissimilar may be the resources and elements of the two bodies, we have recently seen them both obey the great necessity of the time, and turn a serious attention to the improvement and extension of schools for the people. We belong to those (if there be any who are con

of either camp) who believe that the Church has been actuated in what she has done, and is about to do, for the promotion of education, by an earnest and enlightened sense of her paramount duty. We regard the establishment of the Diocesan Boards for the improvement of the national schools, and the exertions made to increase the contributions to public schools with great satisfaction; but while the Church was setting to work to perform her own functions more effectually, we are by no means inclined to approve the resistance she opposed to her fellow-labourers in the vineyard. We are not more convinced of her zeal and piety, than we are that the projects of the Government for the education of the people were conscientiously, and not improperly, conceived to promote that end. They were not designed to disparage the simultaneous exertions of the Church, or to insult her by hostile measures, which could only recoil on their promoters. They contained no reasonable cause for the extraordinary aspersions and attacks by which they were met and repulsed.

The magnitude of those misrepresentations proves the innocence of the scheme. Fiction would hardly have been so largely drawn upon if facts had afforded a stronger position. The protestant parishes of Suffolk were thrown into a paroxysm of pious dread by the anticipated arrival of popish pedagogues. The total suppression of the Authorized Version was confidently predicted; and the local Bible-societies were speedily to be closed by the rural police, or converted into receptacles of the Douay superstition. Peripatetic atheists were to act as the assistant-commissioners of an infidel board. Thomas Paine or Jeremy Bentham were to be read instead of the lessons of the day, and street-ballads committed to memory in lieu of Dr. Watts's hymns. extent of the British empire gave rise in a number of pious minds to a torturing consciousness of the diversity of its hundred creeds: and rather than pursue a course which could end in nothing but Mithra or Mohammed, Buddha or the Pope, Socinianism or Juggernaut, the whole land petitioned that the Chartists should remain uncorrected by instruction; that the people of Kent should be allowed to

The

ing some thirty schoolmasters per annum to as many parishes should be utterly abandoned; and that no schoolhouse should be built within five hundred yards of the sacred outworks of the Church of England. In a word, the government were accused of seriously projecting whatever was most difficult and useless; of insincerity, when they had roused the formidable storm which met their traduced and distorted measures, and of hostility to the church, whilst they were intending to avail themselves of her ministry in their training establishment, and were actually replenishing the funds of national schools all over the country.

These delusions and misrepresentations are gradually drawing off, like a dark, stagnant vapour, which concealed the ground on which the structure was to be planned and raised; but as they linger in some well-meaning minds, and are still kept alive by the press for party purposes, we shall here introduce the most sensible and spirited reply made by Lord John Russell to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Its language is as clear and manly, as its principles are religious, reasonable and decided.

"Whitehall, August 31, 1839. "Sir,-Having laid before her Majesty the loyal and dutiful address of the Commission of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland on the subject of national education, I feel it to be due to the Commission, no less than to her Majesty's government, to inform you that serious misapprehensions appear to prevail on the subject of this address.

"The Commission state, that the system declared to be for national education is to be conducted by a board whose powers are undefined in their exercise, and seemingly arbitrary and irresponsible.'

"The fact is, that the system proposed is not declared to be for national education, but for distributing any funds voted by parliament for the purposes of education in Great Britain; that these powers are strictly defined by the order in council, and are limited to the distribution of such funds; that so far from being seemingly arbitrary and irresponsible, these powers are exercised under the same control and responsibility as any other powers exercised by her Majesty's counsellors and advisers.

"The Commission state that, according to a prominent feature of the plan, the ministers of the Established Church, and indeed all ministers of the gospel, are interdicted from any share in the superintendence of the national schools.'

"There is no such prominent feature in the plan. Schools placed un

tinue under such superintendence, and will receive aid from the grant of parliament as they have hitherto done.

"The Commission state, 'that according to another feature of the plan, a separation is drawn and ordered to be kept up between religious and secular instruction; so that the peculiar truths of the gospel shall be excluded from the course of education in the national schools.'

"This evidently alludes to a plan at one time in contemplation, not for a system of national schools, but for one normal school. But the plan at that time proposed was founded on the basis that the holy scriptures should be read in the school, and that religion should pervade the whole course of instruction.

"To the plan now proposed the observation is totally inapplicable. The Commission describe it as a supplemental proposal on the plan, that ministers of religion should have access, after the ordinary school business is finished, to give religious instruction to children whose parents belong to their congregations.

"This description is founded on an entire misconception of the plan at one time proposed; but as that plan is not now in contemplation, it is needless to enter into its details.

'I can assure the Commission, that under the authority of the Committee of Privy Council no change will be effected in the parochial and bible school system, so long the boast of Scotland, and that the Committee have neither the wish, nor the power, to promote any scheme for separating religion from the knowledge and business of youth.

"It cannot be the opinion of the Commission of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, that while commerce and manufactures are adding yearly to the numbers of the people, no additional efforts should be made to secure the rising generation from that ignorance of the word of God, and that indifference to his precepts, which are the unhappy consequences of our present inadequate provision for education, nor should the danger be disregarded, that while we are guarding against the deadly errors, whether of Popery or Socinianism,' a race of artisans and labourers may grow up, by whom every form of Christianity is alike unknown and unheeded.

(Signed)

"J. RUSSELL."

"The Rev. Henry Duncan, Moderator, Edinburgh."

It is not proposed, on the present occasion, to prolong the discussion of the principles enounced, and the theories defended, in the works of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Maurice, reviewed in our last number. We then expressed a high opinion of the productions of those excellent and able men; and we pointed out some of the more important inferences suggested by those books to our minds. But whilst the discussion of these great principles is going on,