Total...... 12 13 12 12 12 5018 2947 1612 1335 2071 was appointed Chairman, and Mr. Marling, on motion of W. S. Lee, Esq., Secretary. The scrutineers also adopted the following resolutions in regard to the election :— 1. That voting papers be received, if in the form in Schedule A, and folded. 2. That any doubtful votes be laid over till the others have been disposed of. 3. That no person be allowed to vote in two capacities. 4. That no Public School Teachers' votes be admitted, but those of persons who were entitled to be on the Inspectors' lists as made up on 15th July. 5. That in the case of two votes from one voter being received, the first opened and recorded be held the legal vote, and the other be cancelled. 6. That the voting papers be destroyed by the scrutineers. 7. That none be admitted to be present at the opening and recording the votes except qualified voters, as the Act prescribes. 8. That no interruption of the proceedings be allowed on the part of any person present. 9. That the hours of opening and recording the votes be from 9 to 12 and 1 to 5 each day, until the close of the election. ONTARIO TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION. The annual Convention of the Ontario Teachers' Association was commenced on the 11th inst., in the theatre of the Normal School Buildings. Professor Goldwin Smith occupied the chair. Mr. McCallum read the Scriptures and offered up prayer. Mr. A. McMurchy, Secretary, read letters from Dr. Ryerson, Dr. Snodgrass, Dr. Fyfe, and Professor Young, expressing regret at their being absent from the meeting. The Secretary moved, seconded by Mr. J. B. Dixon, "That the hours of meeting during this Convention be from two o'clock to five in the afternoon, and from 7:30 to the hour of adjournment-the morning being left for committees for the different sections of the Association to do their work." Carried. very rich treat indeed. Professor Goldwin Smith, who on coming forward was loudly cheered, then delivered the following address : At the evening session Mr. J. B. Dixon, 1st Vice-President, took the chair at half-past seven. The chairman, in introducing Professor Goldwin Smith to the meeting, remarked that it was scarcely The counties which gave a decided majority for Mr Smith were, Smith to their notice. Those who were present last year, as well as necessary for him to make any remarks in introducing Professor Halton, Wentworth, York, Peel, Middlesex, Huron, Kent, Welling-those who were not, knew well what to expect; they all expected a ton, Grey, Bruce, Lambton, Brant, Haldimand, Lincoln, Lanark, Grenville, Durham, and the cities of Toronto, Hamilton and London. The counties which gave large majorities for Dr. Sangster were, Stormont, Dundas, Glengarry, Carleton, Frontenac, I stand before you this evening as a truant, and almost as a culHastings, Lennox and Addington, Ontario, Victoria, Waterloo, prit. When you did me the honour to elect me President of your Welland, and the cities of Kingston and Ottawa. The counties Association I was meditating, as I warned you at the time, a visit to which were pretty evenly divided in their votes were, Perth, Elgin, England, but I did not expect to be absent more than six months. Essex, Leeds, Northumberland, Prince Edward, Simcoe, Norfolk My stay in England was prolonged by the dissolution of the British Parliament, which came upon us unawares, and scattered over the country, the friends whom I had expected to find in London, so that I had to wait till the elections were over and my friends returned to town. Even without that excuse, however, a man might have been pardoned for lingering in England when I was there. In the spring and early summer the beauty of the garden-like landscape is at its height, the greenness, which is its special charm, is most intense, and of late years, since such a marvellous tide of wealth has poured into England, the magic touch of the millionaire has added the last finish to the trimness of the fields and crowned the slopes with the multiplied mansions of a luxury which still has enough in it of the old English taste to delight in the enjoyment of nature. The returns in regard to the vote for Inspectors' representative dom those of historic monument and association. And nowhere are are as follow: the charms of historic monument and association stronger than in No. of votes No. of votes No. who spersed with academic lawns and groves which everywhere meets for Mr. Mills. did not 12 The scrutineers appointed to conduct this election were: Dr. Hodgins, on behalf of the Chief Superintendent of Education; Joseph Sheard, Esq., High School Trustee, Toronto; Walter S. Lee, Esq., Chairman of the Publie School Board, Toronto; Alex. Marling, Esq., an officer of the Council of Public Instruction, and F. J. Taylor, Esq., of the Department. At a preliminary meeting of the scrutineers, Dr. Hodgins, on motion of Joseph Sheard, Esq., your eye as you look down from the dome of the Radcliffe Library in Oxford; in the almost equally glorious line of houses of learning which seems to muse along the green banks of the quiet Cam; in that ancient school, the eldest of English grammar schools and the first fruits of the English Renaissance, founded by the princely prelate, William of Wykeham, beneath the shadow of the immemorial fane which holds the ashes of Rufus and those of the Saxon kings; in that younger but still venerable counterpart of Wykeham's work, Eton, with its grey courts and its expanse of lawn overshadowed by secular elms, stretching along the side of the Thames; while covering the opposite height, rise in their majesty the historic towers of Windsor, with the memoirs of the Round Table, and with that romantic chapel in which the victors of Crecy and Poictiers sat among the companions of the Garter. It would be difficult to imagine two monuments more symbolical truly Christian among all the equivocal forms of the mediæval of the quiet advance of education with its beneficent agencies, saints; Anselm, who by Christian firmness in the maintenance of amidst the storms of politics and war, than Eton, founded by that principle, combined with Christian gentleness, charity, and meekunhappy but gentle and pious King who, unable to grasp the sceptre ness, conquered Norman tyranny, impersonated in the Red King, of his warlike sire, perished discrowned amidst the wars of the and his less savage but hardly less terrible successor; Anselm, beRoses, and Magdalen College, Oxford, the loveliest of all the homes fore whose holiness the Conqueror himself had bent in reverence, of learning, which was founded at the same time by the Chancellor and whose presence William had desired at his bedside when the of Henry the Sixth, William of Waysflete. Stand in the quadrangle end of his life of battle and crime drew near; Anselm, the first of Waysflete's College, and as your eye feeds upon its matchless thinker of his day, and the precursor of the School Philosophy, was beauty, you will be brought into the fullest communion with the also the great educator of his time, and the great reformer of educaspirit which fed the camp of learning and education amidst the tion. As Abbot of the great Norman Abbey of Bec, before his darkness and the tempests of the centuries that are past. elevation to the Archbishopric of Canterbury, he had been as assiduWhen shall we in Canada have such monuments of ancient grand-ous in the good work of teaching and training the young in the eur and beneficence, such treasures of noble memory as these? school which formed a regular part of the monastic community, as When shall we, in this bleak, though by its children well-beloved, in directing souls, regulating the monastic system, or solving high land of promise, be able to point to an Oxford or a Cambridge, a problems of theology. And he may be regarded as the father of Winchester or an Eton? We are as far, no doubt, from the posses- that gentler mode of treating the pupil which we now acknowledge sion of such shrines of history as our landscape, in which the giant to be the better one, and which he strove by precept and example pines rising in their monumental grimness, remind us that but yes- to introduce in place of the brutal severity which had prevailed in terday all was primeval forest, is from the trim and finished beauty Anglo-Saxon times, and it seems was still in the ascendant. His with which the culture of centuries has invested the English fields. faithful friend and biographer, Eadmer, a medieval Boswell in his But if we have not the glories of the past, we have hopes for the reverent minuteness, has left us an anecdote of this educational future, rich if we are true to our country and to each other. We reformer of the eleventh century, the fragrance of which has not have not only hopes for the future, but we have immunities at the been lost by lapse of time. An Abbot, a very religious man, was present hour. If preceding generations have not bequeathed to one day deploring to Anselm the difficulty of making any impresus storied monuments and ancestral fanes, neither have they be- sion on the boys in his monastery. "Do what we will," he said, queathed to us those legacies of evil, those masses of debt material" they are incorrigible. We beat them, without ceasing, day and and moral, those burdensome traditions, those consecrated obstruc- night, and they only grow worse. "You beat them without ceastions to progress which sit heavy on humanity in the old world. If ing," said Anselm. Pray, how do they turn out when they grow we have not the finished landscape and the abodes of wealth with up?" "Dull and brutal," was the reply. "You are unfortunate,' their costly gardens and patrician deer parks, neither have we the said Anselm, "if with all this trouble you only turn men into union workhouse, which in England grimly obtrudes its prison-like beasts." "What are we to do?" cried the Abbot, in every possiform on the fair scene. If we have not the palaces of London neither ble way we try to force them to improve, and all is of no use." have we the leagues of want, squalor, and misery which lie close to Force them! Tell me, my Lord Abbot, if you were to plant a tree the palace gate. We have a rough piece of land, not yet perfectly in your garden and to tie it up so all sides that its branches could stumped or stoned, but unmortgaged and darkened by the baleful not spread, what sort of a tree would it be when in course of time shadow of no upas tree of the past. you gave it room to grow? Would it not be good for nothing, a I was made sensible of this fact, as soon as I set foot in England, mass of entanglement and crookedness? And whose fault would by finding myself in the midst of a controversy, so bitter that it that be but yours, who had put such restraint upon the sapling? might almost have been called a petty civil war, about a question And this is just what you do with your boys. You plant them in the deeply interesting to our profession, which has now been for many garden of the Church, that they may grow and bear fruit to God. years happily settled in this country, and here troubles us no more. But you so cramp them with fear, and threats, and blows, that It was the great question raised by the late Public Educational Act. freedom of growth they have none. And thus crushed in spirit Public education was in fact struggling to emancipate itself from they gather in their minds evil thoughts tangled as thorns; they ecclesiastical control, while the High Church ecclesiastics and the cherish those evils thoughts, and doggedly repel all that might corparty allied with them in politics were striving to prevent its eman- rect them. Hence they can see in you no love, kindness, or tendercipation. It can hardly be said that anything deserving the name ness towards them; they cannot believe that you mean good by of popular education existed in England previous to the great poli- them, but put down all you do to ill-will and ill-nature. Hatred tical and social movement which set in, when the French war being and mistrust grow with their growth, and they go about with downover, interest in domestic questions revived, and the most conspi- cast eyes, and cannot look you in the face. For heaven's sake, why cuous result of which was the Parliamentary Reform Act of 1832. are you harsh with them? Are they not human beings of the same Education, no doubt, there had been, and education, to a limited nature as you are? Would you like, in their place, to be treated as extent, of the poor; and this from very early times. To the clergy, you treat them? You try by blows alone to mould them to good. in the fruitful age of faith, was due the first commencement of that Does a craftsman fashion a fair image out of gold or silver by blows which afterwards, in the hour of mistrust, when growing doubt alone? Does he not with his tools now gently press and strike it, threatened their authority and their endowments, they fiercely and now with wise art still more gently raise and shape it? So if you fatally opposed--a remark which may be extended to the general would mould your boys to good, you must not only bow them down relations of the medieval clergy to the progress of civilization. by stripes, but with fatherly kindness raise them up and help them." Christianity was a religion of light, and in the early Anglo-Saxon "But," the Abbot insisted, "to form strong and serious character times, while the conversion of the nation was still going on, we find is our aim." "And a right aim," said Anselm; "but if you give an the mission centres, the centres also of learning and education. The infant solid food you may choke it. For every soul its fitting food. Church, in fact, in those days, was the School. Theodore of Tarsus, The strong soul delights in strong meat, in patience and tribulation; Archbishop of Canterbury, in the seventh century, has left a name not to wish for what is another's; to offer the other cheek; to pray honourably connected with the improvement of education as well as for enemies; to love those that hate. The weak and tender in God's with the extension of Christianity and the organization of the service need milk; gentleness from others, kindness, mercy, cheerChurch. The great missionary Bishop Wilfred also had constantly ful encouragement, charitable forbearance. If you will then adapt under his care a number of boys, the sons of men of rank, till they yourselves both to your weak and to your strong ones, by God's reached the age of fourteen, when he required them to decide grace you shall, as far as lies in you, win them all for God." The whether they would become soldiers or priests. The Church of heart of my Lord Abbot, according to Eadmer, was turned; he fell Ireland, too, sent not a few labourers into the harvest of English at the feet of the great teacher, and mended his educational ways. education, as well as of English conversion, in that bright dawn of Anselm's language in the conference is, of course, tinctured with Irish civilization, which was destined so soon to be overcast and to asceticism; but on the whole this scene, enacted eight hundred be followed by so dark a day. King Alfred, the Christian hero, and years ago between two figures in the garb of the remote past, is the preserver of Christian civilization in England, from the sword wonderfully near to us at the present day. If you wish to realize of Danish paganism, was also the great restorer of education and it, and at the same time to make a pilgrimage to one of the early rebuilder of schools. Fable-alas! it is only fable-connects him seats of learning and education, go, when you chance to be in with the foundation of the first school at Oxford. The court itself England, to the old historic city of Gloucester, where you will in his time was invested with a splendour brighter than the vulgar find a Benedictine cloister, though not that in which Anselm pomp of kings, by becoming the great place of education. In the taught, nearly in its pristine state, adjoining the cathedral, which age succeeding the Conquest, education could hardly hold a place at was itself once the Abbey Church. That cloister was the scene the court of the fierce Norman sovereigns, but we find it, with much of all those parts of the monk's life which were not passed in the besides which needed such shelter in these wild days, beneath the church or the chapter house, and among others, of his studies, tranquil roof of the Benedictine cloister. Anselm, perhaps the most his literary works, and the instruction of the novices and the children who formed the school attached to the monastery. It was lution. roofed, but otherwise exposed to the weather, and the monk had to provided for his superannuated grenadiers, by making them schoolFrederick the Great, at the end of the Seven Years' War, brave the hardships of a sedentary life all the year round in the masters. open air. More than once a chronicler tells us that he is obliged to overthrown by Napoleon, in the hour of calamity and shame, that It was when the army of Frederick the Great had been break off his work for the winter, because his fingers are nipped by Prussia, feeling the need of something stronger than an army to the frost. Some of our mediævalists look back, or fancy that they redeem her from the depths into which she had fallen, first abolook back, wistfully to those times. It is a pity they cannot put on lished serfdom and then instituted the great system of public the magic shoes of Hans Andersen's tale, and be transported for one instruction which has carried her from Jena to Sedan. But in the day back to the Middle Ages. One day's experience would probably main, the fact remains indisputable that public instruction as a satisfy their desire. ence of religion, which appeals to an open Bible, and to reason, as duty and as a policy has been intimately connected with the prevalthe interpreter of its pages. High honour is due to the Monasteries, and especially to those of the Benedictine order, for the services thus rendered by them to education as well as to learning in the darkest hour. But their pupils, all told, must have been few in number, and of these, while torious, and drew with it the general love of education which has In the land of John Knox, the Reformation was completely vica few were scions of the lay nobility, the bulk, and probably all made Scotchmen what they are the world over, as well as the polithose taken from the poorer classes, were destined for the ecclesiastical Liberalism to which even at the present moment of Conservatical order. That order, indeed, was far more comprehensive than tive reaction in England, Scotland remains true. But in England, it is in modern times; it included not only the priest proper, but all as in France, the issue was doubtful. France, even after the defeat the intellectual professions, the lawyer, the physician, the literary of the Huguenots, did not lose all traces of their spirit or sink eccleman, the architect, the artist, the mechanician-every one, in short, siastically and mentally to the level of Spain; while in the English but the soldier, the trader, and the tiller of the soil. Still it was hierarchy and in the monarchy and aristocracy, which were allied limited compared with the mass of the population, which remained with it, as the monarchies and aristocracies of France and Spain in a state of total ignorance; among the consequences of which we were with the hierarchy in those countries, there was preserved may reckon the blind and sanguinary fury of labour movements in some of the doctrine and temper of the Church of the Middle Ages. the Middle Ages, such as the insurrection of the villains under Wat The spirit of education which touched with fire the lips of Milton, Tyler, which strongly contrasts with the generally peaceful and belonged in the main to Milton's party; with the Puritans it conorderly, though sometime erroneous, contests waged by the better quered, with them it fell; with them it went into illustrious exile, educated mechanics of the present day. Even among the nobility and founded in New England the first common schools. The State and gentry elementary education was very scarce, and most of the clergy of the Church of the Restoration were almost as indifferent English nobles might have said, with Old Douglas in Marmion:- to public instruction as the State clergy of Spain; the only proofs "Thanks be to Heaven, no son of mine, But the they gave of anxiety about the subject were Acts of Parliament, passed under their influence to prevent Dissenters from educating With that great movement of the sixteenth century which, from their own children, the last and most infamous of which was the the prominence of the religious element in it, we call the Reforma- work of the infidel Bolingbroke, pandering to the passions of fanatition, but which might more aptly be termed the revival of huma- cal ecclesiastics. nity, came the spirit of national education. Of the first efforts in the early part of the nineteenth century. George III. expressed a This apathy lasted through the eighteenth and that direction the honour may be ascribed to enlightened Catholics, pious wish that every poor child in his dominions should learn to to William Wykeham, and after him to the group of which Sir read the Bible-we may be sure he meant with a political commenThomas More was the noblest man in England, while Erasmus was tary of a very orthodox kind; but no public measures were taken their leading spirit in Europe; but these men, though, when the to give effect to the King's desire. About the only places of popular religious crisis arrived, they shrank from schism, and clove to the education were those Dames' Schools, which have furnished themes ancient faith, belonged intellectually, and not in that respect alone, to every painter of English peasant life, from Crabbe to Wilkie, to the Reformation. A number of grammar schools, of which and in which a decrepit old woman who knew nothing, taught the Christ's Hospital is the greatest and most famous, founded by the children of the peasantry all she knew. After the great French war, young Protestant King Edward VI., and still bearing his name, are however, the mind of the nation being turned again from that morat once the first fruits of the newly-awakened spirit of national tal conflict to its own affairs, the current of reform, long icebound, education in England, and the proofs of the connection of that began to flow, and the cause of popular education as well as that of spirit with the spirit of the Reformation. This connection it is im- political improvement was taken up with accumulated energy and possible to doubt, and it may be admitted even by a Catholic with- fervour. Wesley had done something by his school at Kingswood, out necessary disparagement to his religion; for a Church which and still more by showing his sense of the importance of the subject. can herself teach all truth needs not the aid of the human intellect, Bell and Lancaster had done something by agitating educational perhaps naturally mistrusts it, and therefore has comparatively questions, as well as by devising the monitorial system. little interest in education; while a Church which appeals to reason motive power came from that revival of the spirit of progress in the and to private judgment, must of necessity educate; and this irres-nation, after the long period of reaction caused by antagonism to pective of the abstract truth of the doctrines of either Church. continental Republicanism, which was so strong, so tempestuous in Which are the educating nations? Scotland, New England, Ger- its character, so powerful in its effects, as almost to receive the name many, Holland, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Canada. of the English Revolution. Which are the non-educating? Spain and her colonies, Portugal, been, had not the obstinacy of the aristocracy and the clergy quailed A revolution, in fact, it would have Italy, Austria, Belgium Belgium, in spite of the existence in her before the advent of civil war. Brougham, thundering in the van of a large manufacturing element, which generally carries with it at once of political and educational reform, was the master spirit activity of mind. In the case of Spain, the facts are eloquent. By and typical man of the day. With stentorian voice and vehement its last census not a fifth of the population can read. But even this gestures he enforced upon the national mind the necessity of public amount of progress has all been made since the beginning of the instruction; he once spoke in Parliament on the subject for seven century, prior to which time, we are told to be able to read was in hours. At his bidding, and that of the age of which he was the men very rare, in women immoral; and the growth of popular embodiment, the schoolmaster went abroad, Penny Cyclopædias education has proceeded at exactly an even pace with the demolition were published, Mechanics' Institutes rose, enquiries into educaof political despotism and of ecclesiastical intolerance. If, in parts tional character commenced, and everything betokened the advent of Catholic Germany, and in Ireland, we find popular education, of educational revolution. At the same time the clergy of the State this is traceable in the case of Germany to the influence of Protes- Church, seeing that education must come, and that it might fall tant neighbours, in the case of Ireland, to the direct interposition into bad hands, met their danger in the best and most creditable of a Protestant power. It is true that the Jesuits were good educa-way, by exerting themselves in their parishes, and with great effect tors; so great as to extort from Bacon the exclamation, tales cum for the improvement of the Church schools. Those were days of sint, utinam nostri essent, "they are so excellent that I would they hope as all days of revolution are; young men dreamed dreams and were ours;" but Jesuit education was the offspring, as well as the old men saw visions. It seemed that a Reformed Parliament and antagonist of the Reformation: its object was not to enlighten, but Public Instruction would make new heavens and a new earth. It is to influence and to re-convert, and with a view to that object its a beneficent illusion; for if we could see beforehand how limited pupils were selected. No Jesuit was ever a hearty friend to popu- the results of our improvements would be, we should hardly exert lar education. We need not press the case too far. That vast ourselves to make any improvements at all. extension of popular education in recent times, which is one of the most momentous facts in the history of the nineteenth century, is first scene on which this spirit of educational reform displayed itself Singularly enough, or I would rather say naturally enough, the traceable, no doubt, to other causes besides religious emancipation. in practical legislation was Ireland. Whether it be in education, or Even in Prussia, public instruction was comparatively little cared police, or the Church, or the land law, England is always ready for for in the interval between the Reformation and the French Revo-radical reform-in Ireland. Cromwell saw the value of Ireland as a field of experiment; he called it a clean paper on which he could complication of integuments favourable to vigour and rapidity of write measures of improvement, which in England vested interest action. and rooted prejudice could not suffer him to introduce; and, per About this Education Act, however, a deadly controversy had haps, the usefulness of the smaller island in that respect is not yet arisen, and when I landed was raging through the whole nation. exhausted. In 1831, while the Parliamentary Reform Bill was The first public occurrence which I witnessed was the opening of a still struggling through the House of Lords, and forty years before School Board school at Liverpool, by Mr. Forster, the framer of the the first English Education Act, Ireland received a measure of Act, who took the opportunity of delivering an elaborate vindication national education based on the principle of combined literary and of his own policy, which had been denounced by his friend and late separate religious instruction, the funds being supplied out of the colleague, Mr. Bright. He spoke ably and instructively, of course, national revenues. The immediate author of this measure was the but he failed to explain what I wanted specially to hear explained late Lord Derby, then in the heyday of his youthful Liberalism, and how it came to pass that this great measure of educational pacithreatening to send the King to Hanover if he would not assent to fication had set the whole nation by the ears. Hostile parties were the Reform Bill. Between Ulster Orangemen on one hand and facing each other all over the kingdom in grim array. School Board Paul Cullen on the other, national education in Ireland has had a elections were being contested with an animosity at least equal to hard life, and so have its administrators; but though much bruised that shown in elections to Parliament. A storm of controversy was and battered by the shillelaghs of both parties, it has survived, and raging, and charges of immorality, fanaticism, and bigotry resounded has no doubt largely contributed, with measures of political justice, on all sides. The Liberal party was torn with intestine division, and a kinder and more generous treatment of Irish questions and you could not mention Mr. Forster's name at a Liberal meeting generally, to produce the improvement in the condition of Ireland in the north of England without calling forth a storm of hatred. which may now be happily regarded as an unquestionable fact. When the general election came, the clergy of the State Church In England itself no measure could be carried. The religious raised with one voice the cry of, the Church in danger, which, blenddifficulty, or a difficulty of a very mixed character, by courtesy ing with the equally vociferous cry of, the beer barrel in danger, styled religious, stood obstinately in the way. First the Whigs produced the issue of campaign cards, exhorting the voter to vote tried a measure on the secular principle, and failed, then the Con- for the national beverage and the national religion. There had not servatives tried one on the State principle, and failed also. Sir been such an uproar since the church mob burned Dissenting meetJames Graham held out to the Dissenters what he called his olive ing-houses, after the acquittal of Dr. Sacheverel. If you asked branch, which the Dissenters took, and belaboured him over the what the specific cause of war was, especially between Mr. Forster head and shoulders with it till he dropped his Bill. In the meantime, and the Liberals, who thirsted for his blood, you were told that it however, a system of aiding schools with public money, and in-was the twenty-fifth clause. The twenty-fifth clause enables School specting them through State inspectors under the auspices of the Boards to pay the fees for children whose parents are too poor to Privy Council, was introduced nominally as a tentative policy, and pay at denominational schools, if the parents prefer them, and under the astute and aspiring management of Sir J. Kay Shuttle-under it a sum of about $25,000 had been expended in a whole worth it grew yearly to larger proportions, and more deeply com- year. Obviously this was merely the pretext, it was not the real mitted Parliament and the nation. Parliament all the time behaved occasion of the fray. It was at most the symbol of the momentous with what Englishmen think, the perfection of practical wisdom; it difference of principles which was convulsing the nation. The real voted, with eyes shut, the annual grant, and refused to discuss its question at issue was that of clerical ascendancy in education, with principle or to entertain any question connected with it. At last its political and social corollaries, and beneath the question of the magnitude of the grant and the obvious tendency of the tenta- clerical ascendancy in education again lays the question of the tive policy to become definitive, brought the question to a head, State Church, the just solution of which, in this country, has brought and in 1858, a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the subject of with it educational peace. popular education was issued under the chairmanship of the Duke I suppose that all who acknowledge, as I for one do, the paraof Newcastle. That Commission spent three years in its enquiry, mount importance of religion to men and nations, would rejoice if investigating through its Assistant Commissioners the state of edu- we were so settled and so united in our religious convictions that cation, not only in England but in other countries, and among the religion could be effectively taught in our common schools. Perrest in the United States and Canada, where the Assistant Commis-haps it will be so hereafter-perhaps the cloud of doubt and persioner was Mr. Fraser, now Bishop of Manchester. The Commis- plexity which has now for two centuries, since the days of Spinoza sion reported, and the materials for legislation were before Parlia- and Hobbes, been gathering over the religious firmament, will ment, but Parliament still shrunk from facing the question, and break up, and the sun of faith, hidden for awhile behind that cloud, the only immediate result was a revised code of minutes issued by will beam forth again, and diffuse over the world, now chilled and the Privy Council. For ten years more the subject remained in darkened by its absence, a brighter, more perfect, and more abiding abeyance, and the ancient reign of ignorance was left unmolested day. Such is not only my hope, but my firm conviction, though I among great masses of the population. At last came an event which know, and it has been part of my duty as a student to examine the overcame both intolerance and bigotry, and surely heralded the truly formidable objections which philosophy, historical criticism, legislation of 1870. The Tory aristocracy, under the guidance of and science have raised. But though certainty and unity of faith Mr. Disraeli, resorted to the desperate policy of appealing from the may come again, they have not come yet; and for the present, commore intelligent and well-to-do portion of the working classes, munities like ours, which feel education to be a necessity, have to which was mainly Liberal, to what is called in the polite obscurity respect religion without undertaking to teach it; they have to let of a learned language, the residuum, in the vulgar tongue the dregs the common school do its own work, and the Church and Sunday of the people in the large towns. This policy was carried into effect School do theirs. The school is not irreligious because it does not by the Conservative Reform Bill of 1867. Then Mr. Lowe cried in teach the catechism, any more than any other organ of instruction, fear and anguish, "We must educate our masters," and a Liberal say any commercial or military instruction, is irreligious on the Government having come into power, with Mr. Forster, Arnold's same ground. There is nothing opposed to religion in reading, son-in-law, as the Minister of Education, the Education Act of 1870 writing, or arithmetic any more than there is in book-keeping or was passed. drill. The cry of the State Church party in England, was that the That Act retained the Denominational Schools with which Go- secularists would make the children clever devils. But knowledge vernment had entered into partnership under the Privy Council does not in itself make a devil, neither does ignorance make an angel; system, while it rendered a conscience clause imperative in all at least it has not made angels of the people of Calabria or Mexico. schools in which religious instruction was given, and did away with I do not deny, that in certain countries where the clergy have tried denominational inspection, the system of treating all the schools as to crush education, education has unhappily assumed a somewhat national, and making the provinces of inspectors purely geographi- hostile attitude towards the clergy and their teaching. An Italian cal. At the same time it introduced the supplementary principles once said to me, "I like to see the schools rising; every school of local responsibility, under the form of school boards elected by shuts up a church." But this statement was peculiar to a native of the ratepayers, which are bound, where the school accommodation a country where the church has been the enemy of the school. is found deficient, to supply the deficiency by erecting distinct schools Again, there may be special defects in an educational system-it of their own. The Central Government, besides the function of may be too ambitious, too showy, too superficial, and it may breed inspection, is invested with the power of compelling the locality to in its pupils faults of character corresponding to these bad features of act where there is a proved deficiency of accommodation. In School the institution. No doubt such is the tendency of the school system Board schools, no catechism of any religious sect is to be taught. in many parts, at least, of the United States, and perhaps we are Thus the system is a some what complicated mixture of the national, not free from the danger here; but these defects we may hope to the local, and the denominational, of the secular and the religious. An admirer of it complacently remarks that England is the country of compromise and amalgamation. But we have also heard of a Dutchman arrayed in a dozen pair of breeches, who did not find that remove by wise measures of educational reform. So far from fighting against the church, a good school in a country like ours fights with it, for it is directly and indirectly a potent organ of morality. The school and its master or mistress may not be formally concerned with religion, but in a country like ours, they are not severed or win the ancient world? Established and enslaved to the secular estranged from the religious community around them. The spirit power in later times, has it not almost lost the modern world? Perof that community is present with them; they feel and transmit its secutions, religious wars, exterminations of the Albigenses, Spanish influence; it pervades the character and tone of the teacher, the dis- inquisitions, massacres of St. Bartholomew, penal laws, and opcipline, and all the moral agencies of the school. Mr. Forster said pression of Nonconformists, whence did they come but from the in his speech at Liverpool, that it would be very shocking if a alliance of the Church with the State? Of these atrocities and infateacher, in rebuking a child for telling a falsehood, could not appeal mies, which have done more to discredit religion than the attacks to the interest of the child's soul. Well, but I suppose a Christian of ten thousand atheists, not Christianity, not even fanaticism was teacher, like a Christian employer, can rebuke a lad for falsehood the cause, but fanaticism combined with self-interest, and armed by in a Christian way, without reciting the Athanasian Creed or the the Government with the sword which Christ had bidden Peter put Westminster Confession. Thus apart from any direct religious up into the sheath. Depend upon it, mere excess of religious feelteaching of a neutral kind which you may be able to introduce, and ing, even when carried to the most irrational lengths, has not so which perhaps is not of much value, there is a religious as well as a much to answer for as is supposed; ambition and interest had more moral element in the schools of a Christian country. Such, I sup-to do with the crimes of Innocent III. and Torquemada. They pose, has been the general view of the question taken by the states- talk of a nation being godless, because it has no State religion. If men and the people of this country; and the result is a system of God is the God of mercy and justice, what nation could be more public education, or if you like to mark the absence of direct reli- godless than Spain under Philip II or than England when it had gious teaching by a difference of name, public instruction, in this Baxter and John Bunyan in prison? They talk of the support young country, which having been ably administered, works with afforded by a State Church to the Government. What has been the almost unbroken harmony and smoothness, while in England, with support afforded by the State Church to the Government in Engall her experience, and all her statesmanship, public instruction is land? The estrangement of the whole mass of Nonconformists, that an organized Pandemonium of political and sectarian contention. is, of the most vigorous, energetic, and when they have been let We are twitted with not having solved the problem as regards the alone, the most patriotic portion of the people, the division of the Catholics. We have not solved the problem as regards the Catho- nation in the face of the Armada by the persecution of Nonconforlics, because, as regards the Catholics, the problem here and every-mists, a great civil war, Ireland in a state of chronic rebellion, and where is unsolvable. They, under the authority of their spiritual now, when a democratic franchise has been conceded by the profligate guides, have taken up, conscientiously as I do not dispute, a posi-strategy of a party, an almost impossibility of getting the nation to tion of antagonism to modern civilization, and even to nationality unite in framing that indispensable corrective of democracy, an and civil society, so far as they are embodiments of the modern efficient system of public education. As to unity of belief, which spirit. There is nothing for it, therefore, in their case, but either to it is the professed object of establishments to produce, where can use force, of which nobody in this country dreams, however it may be less of it than in that knot of ecclesiastical cobras which I saw be under the iron rule of Bismarck, or to let them take their por- the other day wreathing their angry folds, and raising their menaction away in peace and use it, subject to State guarantees and pro- ing heads against each other? There is far more of unity in our per secular instruction, in the way their consciences enjoin. I freedom. Our religion is far more truly national than that of an think it will very likely be found that by adherence to this mild Established Church, which includes only half the nation, and wars and comprehensive policy, though we have not extinguished, we upon the other half. Here no wall divides Christians, Protestant have minimized Catholic resistance to public education. In this Christians at least, living or dead, from each other. Our clergy, the respect, also, if the foreign Jesuits will only refrain from troubling Protestant clergy at least, unite in all good works, in Christian us with their alien intrigues, I believe we shall all do well. philanthropy and alms-giving. In prayer for national objects, in But at this happy result, we could never have arrived if we had national thanksgiving and penitence, whatever be our dogmatic not, in accordance with the growing opinion of the most enlightened differences, we can all kneel down together. I dare to affirm, too, portion of mankind, and with the decisive experience of history, that religion, though unencumbered by the fatal patronage of the adopted another great reform. Canada could never have had a State, affords to the Government here a more effective support than harmonious system of public instruction, she would be now either it does in England with all its lordships, and its mitres and its stalls. without a system at all, or like England, full of dissension and em- To support Government religion must be strong; to be strong it broilment, if like England she had retained her State Church. The must be sincere; to be sincere it must be free. State Church is the radical cause of their difficulty in England. If Therefore, I think England will have to follow the example of you have a privileged clergy, that clergy will try to rule; it will try Canada; and why should she not? These Colonies, though they are to rule in public education as well as in public religion. And it can yet young and perhaps rough, though they have not as yet the rehardly be blamed for so doing. The only good ground, the only finements or the history, the hierarchies and the grandeurs, are ground not morally detestable, which the State can have for select-they not the leading shoots of the race? Are not their tendencies ing a particular church, clothing it with national authority and to the less adventurous body of the race which has remained behind endowing it out of national revenue, is that the doctrines of that the natural index of its own future ? Church are certain truth; and if the doctrines of a Church are cer- Education is a well-worn theme, and to lend any new interest to tain truth, and recognized as such by the State, why should they its generalities, especially before a professional audience, is beyond not be taught to all the children of the nation? On the other hand, my skill. I thought I should weary you less by speaking of an the unprivileged and oppressed Churches will be always in an episode of its history in the land most intimately connected with us, attitude of jealous self-defence; they will expect aggression every- which has fallen immediately under my observation, but not so where; they will regard and rightly regard what the State does for immediately under yours. Europe for the last century has been public education, and what it gives to that object, as done and full of convulsions, the terrible harbingers of a new order of things, given in the interest of the privileged Church. The Public Educa- it has been full of political and social conflicts-of revolutions, that tion Act in England has in fact been a vast re-endowment of the like a whirlwind have laid low temple and throne, of wide-raging and Anglican Church. Harmony, therefore, will be impossible; every murderous wars. And revolution and war alike have too often left new regulation will be a fresh apple of discord; a 25th clause, or any behind them nothing but moral and physical ruin, desolated fields, other straw, may be the pretext, but the real source of contention, exhausted energies, shattered hopes, political despondency, and endless and incurable, will be ecclesiastical domination; the real prostration and reaction, such as we see in France a hundred years struggle will be between religious privilege and religious justice. after that hour of promise and of transport when she undertook As a member of the Education Commission of 1858, I voted for the with exulting confidence, not only her own regeneration but the voluntary system, rather than for State aid with a State Church, regeneration of the world. Yet, through all these storms and and with a State Church I am not sure that I would not vote for amidst all this havoc, popular education, gradually and gently, but the voluntary system still. surely spreading, like the dawn amidst the cloud-rack of a tempestuous sky, is effecting a peaceful revolution, which will be followed by no prostration or reaction, and the fruits of which will never pass away. It is easy, of course, to see the reason of the alliance between political and ecclesiastical privilege. It is easy to see why the party of political reaction goes to the polls with the clergy of the State Church. Perhaps it is not difficult even to discover a thread of con- Yes, you have a great mission. Exaggerated things, no doubt, nection between our national beverage and our national religion. have been said about the office of a teacher, as well as about every But it is difficult to understand how any one who has no interest other office. The influence of the school has been unduly magnified at heart, but those of religion and of the community at large, can in comparison with the influence of home. The importance of think it his duty to uphold a State Church. The words of the school education has been unduly magnified at the expense of that founder of Christianity, who said that His kingdom was not of this which we receive from society, from our calling, through all the world, may be glossed over or distorted like other inconvenient various avenues of knowledge and natural improvement in our after texts of Scripture; but how can the evidence of history be ignored? life. The importance of knowledge altogether has been magnified at Christianity, unestablished and free, in apostolic times, did it not the expense of character, the formation of which must be the main |