proved too much. If his paper statistics are to be relied upon, all the children in the country are already educated, and more than all. Now, we know that this is not the case. Every one of us, and particularly those who are public men, know full well that there are greivous and extensive deficiencies on all hands; but Mr. Baines, by his previously-written statements, confutes himself. He says that in 1818 the proportion of scholars to population was 1 in 17; in 1833 it was 1 in 11; and in 1846, 1 in 8. So that, if it were only 1 in 8 now, little more than half the children could really be educated; because if all were educated, it would be 1 in every 4 of the population. So that his statistics are contradictory. It shows the folly of depending upon paper statistics in preference to the evidence of our own senses and our own practical experience. Again: if we take the day scholars only as those who are receiving anything like an effective education, we shall again find that half the juvenile population are uneducated. Now, the day scholars in England and Wales in 1846, according to Mr. Baines, were 1,876,947; the whole of the children educating in Ireland at schools of all sorts, was 633,946. Assume, further, that two-thirds of the juvenile population in Scotland were in progress of education (i. e. 400,000), and it would make a total of 2,900,893, or not quite half the children in the country receiving anything approaching to an effective education, being, in fact, 3,346,927 without any education.

Mr Biggs read to the meeting the following statement drawn up by the truly excelleet and indefatigable Minister of the Domestic Mission, Leicester, Mr. Dare, as to the state of Education in that Town :

"The average age of admission at the Church and Dissenting daily schools is from five to seven years; and the average time of remaining at school is scarcely more than two years. An experienced teacher informs me, that, from extensive inquiries over a wide rural district, he finds that the attendance at National schools is less than a year. The old charity day-schools in this town are the most effective, as the pupils are not admitted so young as above stated, and are obliged to continue a certain period. The average time of remaining at Dissenters' day-schools appears to be less than two years: in numberless cases children are at school only a few weeks.

"There is room at the British Boys' and Girls' Schools for at least one-third more than attend. This is advanced as an argument by the Dissenters that there is a good supply of educational means. But to me this is the strongest proof that there is something defective in our present state of education. The causes of this nonattendance may be found in the poverty and ignorance of some parents, and in the depraved habits of others, who care nothing about the welfare of their offspring.

"At the Domestic Mission and Ragged Schools, the attendants consist of adults of both sexes, and children of all ages. Their attendance is very uncertain and irregular. There is great need of such institutions, but that only shows the lamentable condition of our population as regards their mental culture.

"All the teachers of the schools for the lower classes give it as their opinion that there are more children who do not attend, than who do attend school. This is no doubt the case, as the preceeding statements abundantly prove. There ought to be 12,000 at effective schools, staying there from seven to ten years. There are not 6,000. staying there for five years.

"What more need be said? Is it any wonder that neglect costs much more than we expend on education? or that gaols, dungeons, and silent systems, burden the land?

"What is the remedy? Purely secular, i. e. unsectarian education, compulsory attendance, a certain portion amongst others of industrial schools, where the branches of staple trades requiring juvenile labour may be carried on, a legalized rate, and elective or municipal local boards, to overlook education, as other departments of social polity are overlooked, and evening schools at the same places, to instruct the adult, and carry forward the rising generation to something worthy of the name of education."

At a recent meeting at Manchester of the Lancashire Public School Association, Mr Watts observed, "that in the New England States, 1 out of every 4 persons was in progress of education, while in Manchester (containing a population of 300,000), including every class of schools public and private, there were only 21,000, or 1 in every 144." So that, if all were educated in New England, there must be one educated to two uneducated in Manchester. In Mr. Hill's valuable work on National Education (1836), again, he found that Mr. Dunn (Secretary of the British and Foreign School Society), was "of opinion, that if the provision for educating the poorer and working classes should remain in its present imperfect state, not more than one-half of the rising generation will ever learn even to read, with sufficient ease to use the power with comfort and pleasure to themselves." So, with respect to London and its neighbourhood, the British and Foreign School Society estimated in their report for 1833, that not less than 150,000 children were growing up in London without education. In the Barbican district, with a population of 18,000, not more than 300 children were supplied with gratuitous and effective daily instruction. In Bethnal Green (a povertystricken district), with a juvenile population under fourteen years of age, of at least 12,000, not more than 2,000 enjoyed the advantage of daily instruction. In St. Pancras (with a population exceeding 100,000) there was not provision for more than 3,000 children.

With respect to Ireland the evidence was very brief, but very conclusive. The return of the population as furnished by the Commissioners, of Public Instruction in 1834, was 7,943,940; or, in round numbers, 8,000,000. Divided by 45, this would give 1,766,431 children as receiving instruction. Instead of which, the returns of the commissioners for the following year, showed that in all the schools in Ireland, the number of scholars of all kinds was only 633,946; leaving 1,132,485, or two to one, growing up without education.

In a small volume entitled "Lectures on the Social and Physical Condition of the People, especially in large Towns," by various ministers of Glasgow (published 1849), he had found an account of the state of education in Norfolk. In that county there were 750 parishes, more than two thirds the number of the parishes in Scotland. "Their average population (it was said) appears to be little more than 500 souls, and the churches lie so close to each other, as to ap pear at every turn of the road, or the coast. Yet the Educational Inspectors appointed by the Church of England in their Report, state Very few of either sex can read or write. An opinion prevails, that those who remain of the preceding generation, more com

monly possessed these acquisitions. A female has officiated as clerk in a parish, for the last two years, none of the adult males being able to read. In another parish, the present clerk is the only man in the rank of a labourer who can read; and in another of 400 souls, when the present school was established two years ago, no labourer could read or write." From Porter's Progress of the Nation (1843) much valuable yet painful information was to be gleaned, as to the deficiency of education in this kingdom. In Monmouthshire and Wales, in 1839, 48 males out of every 100, and 69 out of every 100 females, were unable to write their names. In the counties of

Chester and Lancaster (same date) 40 per cent. males, and 65 per cent. females were unable to sign their names. In the whole of England and Wales, out of 367,894 persons married during 1839-41, there were 303,836 who could not write their names: that was 122,458 men, and 181,378 women who had to make their marks! Out of these numbers, the per centage of those who could not write was greatest, with one exception, in the agricultural counties, and smallest of all in the metropolis.

In March last (1849) a meeting was held at Manchester of the Lancashire Public School Association, at which Mr. Watts stated that out of 12,000 children in Salford, only one-third were receiving a satisfactory degree of education; and that out of 60,000 in Manchester, only 21,000 regularly attended school. So that in Salford 8,000, and in Manchester 39,000 children, were at this very time growing up in ignorance, the raw material of pauperism and crime, the future denizens of our workhouses and prisons. Upon the foregoing and similar facts, Mr. Potter makes the following forcible and just remarks:

"If one tithe of the expense that has been incurred to so little purpose during the present century in punishing criminals, had been employed for preventing crime, by means of education, what a different country would England have been, to that which our criminal records show it to have been." And again: "It would be difficult to conceive, if we had not the facts before us, that any nation calling itself civilized, and boasting itself to walk in the light of Christianity, could have so totally neglected the all important subject of education, as did the Rulers of England up to the beginning of the present century."

Still further to show the extent of ignorance in this country, and its connexion with crime, the Mayor made further quotations from Porter's Progress, from which it appeared that in the six years, 1835 to 1841 there were 14,241 males, and 3092 females, under sixteen years of age, committed for trial in England alone; and that in those same six years, there were committed for trial in England and Wales 143,591 persons (male and female), of whom 129,441, or more than 90 per cent. were uninstructed persons. The proportion of offenders in England and Wales in 1841 was 1 in 573 of the population; while in Scotland it was only 1 in 742, a difference in favour of the latter, which it was fair to attribute in great part, if not entirely, to the more general spread of instruction in that country, as compared with England.

At one Middlesex Sessions, Mr. Serjeant Adams stated that no less than 500 children between 7 and 12 years of age, had been summarily convicted as reputed thieves, and that all the magistrates could do for them was to send them to prison for six weeks, or two

months, at the expiration of which they must return to their old pursuits again, to gain a subsistence. In the agricultural districts, the children went out to work at a sadly early age, sometimes having to tend the sheep very soon after 6; while, it was found in the northern circuit, that of those who did attend school, the average age of the boys on entering school was seven years, 10 months, 2 weeks, and 6 days; of their leaving, 8 years, 8months, and two weeks, showing an average stay at shool of 9 months, 3 weeks, and 1 day, a stay so short as to produce no useful results. Mr. Watkins concluded his report on a part of the northern district (in the neighbourhood of Leeds) in these words:-"I think it would be no exaggeration to state, that half the whole number of children in these places have no instruction at all; that they live almost like the beasts that perish, and it must be feared die like them.”

He now came to the Charity Schools. It appeared that the education given in these schools was quite as good as at the day schools; but he objected to its being bestowed as charity. It was a right and a duty. Every child had a right to education, in the same way that he had a right to look for food and clothing from his father; and if the father were too poor or too indifferent and depraved to perform this duty, then society was equally bound as a duty to step in and see that the child was educated.

To the assertion that a plan of universal education would increase the Rates, the local taxation, Mr. Biggs rejoined, and suppose it did, who would have the question of the education of the children of the working classes to be argued on so sordid a ground? Who would set money against the inestimable advantages of education? Take the case of Negro Emancipation as an illustration. We paid £20,000,000 to effect that righteous object, i. e. we were paying £666,000 interest on the sum, and should have to pay it for ever. And was there a single person present who would, if he could, take back his portion of that sum, because all had not been effected that we hoped for from that measure? But the rates would not be increased. A great saving would be effected by the decrease of juvenile depravity, by the lessened gaol and police expenses, by the lessened expenses of prosecutions and transportations; while there would be, in addition to the consequent greater security of property, a vastly improved state of morality among the people, As he had already said, he wanted to see our money spent on school-houses, and not gaols.

The last objection was one which was very strongly urged the other day at Manchester by Mr. Hugh Stowell, who, he believed, was a minister of the Established Church, "that education without religion is valueless." As though the Lancashire Educators and their supporters, any more than Mr. Stowell, doubted the value or importance of religion in the proper formation of character. The chances were, that all the Lancashire reformers Mr. Stowell has addressed, had as great an anxiety for the Christian religion as himself: the difference between them was, that Mr. Stowell and those who supported him, would only educate those whom they could induce to be educated upon peculiar or sectarian principles. All those beyond the pale of the particular faith to which he or they belonged, would be abandoned to utter and hopeless destitution. Proselytism would be the first consideration, and education secondary. The Manchester educationists, on the contrary, would educate

all the population. They would give all the population a daily education for a series of years, at the same time that they would leave to the parents, or the minister, or the Sunday-school teacher (if he still chose to labour in his vocation), the inculcation of any sectarian views of revealed religion, which he or they considered to be important. The Lancashire Plan would not exclude religion; it would only exclude those sectarian views of it, on which collisions or disagreements might arise. The Bible might be used as a school book, or selections be made from the Bible, in which all sects and parties could agree, in which all the moral and religious duties of our common Christianity could be introduced. All this might be matter of arrangement when the educational committees met. "By secular education," said the Manchester patriots "we propose to teach everything from the Scripture which is not theological, or which does not favour the tenets of any religious sect." So that those who object to, or would call this proposed system of education a worldly or godless education, might bring the same accusation against the majority of day schools as at present existing. It was an ad captandum way of dealing with the project, which was unworthy of any candid or ingenuous mind.

I have now, I trust, satisfactorily shown the value of Education; the duty of Society to Educate; the deficiency of Education in England; the deficiency in Leicester; the superiority of a National plan over isolated efforts; and the superiority of the Lancashire Plan to what is called the Voluntary System in Education. I now read to you the following conclusions at which I have arrived :— That there is an awful deficiency of education in this country, both in quantity and quality.

That thousands are growing up without any education whatever, children of vice and crime, future tenants of gaols, workhouses, and penal colonies.

That it is our duty as Christians and citizens, by any and every exertion, to prevent the continuance of this great social evil.

That the present machinery for education is not adequate to educate ALL the population, that therefore new means ought to be devised.

That none are so effective as a National plan like the American or Lancashire plans, where education is everywhere supported by local rates, and managed by local authorities popularly elected.

That nothing stands so much in the way of the entire education of the people, as the mutual distrust and strong sectarian feelings of Churchmen towards Dissenters, and Dissenters towards Churchmen, and it some instances towards each other.

That in order to overcome these feelings, higher and more enlightened notions of duty must be encouraged, and above all CHARITY must be exercised towards each other.

I appeal to all fathers who are anxious for the education of their children; to all patriots who wish to preserve our free institutions; to all philanthropists who wish to leave the world better than they found it; to all capitalists who are anxious for the security of property; to all working men who are anxious to rise in the scale of of Society, and to give their children an education which shall qualify them to do the same; and to all Christians of all grades and sects and contrarieties of opinion, to merge all minor and sectarian differences,