8._12.

INTRODUCTION.

(2.) Whether by teaching no religion a creed is not as arbitrarily taught as if Calvinism, or any other form of ism, were inculcated P 1 or (3.) Whether, even if a majority of the public be against an alteration of the law, it be not the duty of a Government not to obey public opinion, but to mould it ? a and 3 It suffices for my purpose to believe— (1.) That there should be on the part of a State great care that the utmost consideration be shown towards the religious feelings of all ; 3 (2.) ff That no form whatever of merely secular instruction will satisfy the great majority who believe that education without religion is impossible 4* ;" (3.) That there will be, if there be not already, " a strong reaction against allowing sectarian jealousy to cause numbers of the population to grow up without the simplest elementary knowledge 5 ;" and

(i) "A Lady Prison-Superintendent." — "Sunday at Home," April, 1886, p. 219. (j) Mr. Ruskin, in replying to an article in the " Spectator," of 13th March, 1886, entitled " Education and Discontent," writes to " The Pall Mall Budget," of 18th March, 1886, as follows : "Sir, —Will you permit me in your columns to ask the editor of the ' Spectator,' with reference to the article on education in his last Saturday's issue, whether ho has ever chanced to notice anything that either Mr. Thomas Carlyle or I, his pupil, have written on the subject during the last thirty years ? and farther, what he, the said editor, understands by the term ' education' ? I know of nothing that has been taught the youth of our times except that their fathers were apes, and their mothers winkles; that the world began in accident, and will end in darkness ; that honour is a folly, ambition a virtue, charity a vice, poverty a crime, and rascality the means of all wealth, and the sum of all wisdom. But Mr. Carlyle and I knew perfecty well all along what wouid be the outcome of that education. And I shall bo extremely glad to know what else was expected from it by tho members of the School Board.—l am, Sir, your obedient servant, John Ruskin." And see " P.M. Budget," 1 April, 1886, p. 6. For comments on this letter see " Journal of Ed.," July, 1886, p. 272. But, contra, see— (a) " Board Schools and Criminal Statistics," " Saturday Review," 6 Feb., 188G, p. 187. For instance, " Nor can it be maintained that history supports the hypothesis of a necessary connection between ! education and morality." Again, "It would ap- I pear that even the highest intellectual culture by no means necessarily brings good morals, not always, perhaps, good manners, in its train. ... In other words, there has been an increase of crime, j but a diminution of apprehensions and convictions ; and this points, not te any decrease of criminals— rather the reverse—but to an increasing skill in avoiding detection. .. . The utmost that can, with any sort of plausibility, be argued in this respect for Board schools, is that they cannot be proved to have retarded moral reform," p. 188. (6) " Ten Years in Clerkenwell Prison."—" P.M. Budget," 13 May, 1886 — thus: "The School Board has varied the crime rather than decreased it." (c) On education promoting crime see " The Century " Mag., April, 1886, p. 939. (d) For statistics of illegitimacy in Scotland, notwithstanding that " for the last 300 years there has | been a school in every parish, and tho Scotch have been (according to the ' Pall Mall Budget') the best educated people in Europe."—See "P.M.8.," 7 June, 1886. (e) Art. " Education and Discontent," " Spectator," 13 March, 1886," and " University Education represented by Irish Universities." Transactions as above, p. 445, and discussion in respect of University Education in Ireland. "It was not the business of the University to teach theology at all. If they wanted religion, let them go to their respective priests or ministers." —J. W. Joynt. Transactions, as above. Again, "Ho confessed that, in the matter of University education, he was an ab- 5 solute secularist." —Prof. Richey, p. 461, Transac- | tions. |

1 " The most bigoted and sectarian of all sects are the unseetarians themselves."—See Rev. Dr. Haughton, address Nat. Soc, So. Assoc., Dublin, Transactions, p. 463, 1881. 2 See (a) "Principles of Political Economy."—J. S. Mill, 6th ed. p. 562 ; and (6) " If the masses of the people bo called upon to vote laws, they will either educate themselves or bo educated."—M. de Laveleye, "N.0.," Sept., 1885. " Recent Progress of Democracy in Switzerland," p. 512. (c) At the Afrikander Bond Congress, held at Grahamstown (Africa) this year (1886), it was resolved " that the franchise in the colony for blacks and whites should be raised to £50, with an educational test." " P. M. Budget," 29 April, 1886, p. 2. (d) On "Public Opinion," see "P. M. Budget," 13 May, 1886. " The most developed in mind are the most plastic."—H. Spencer. s " We never can admit that a ruler can be justified in helping to spread a system of opinions solely because that system is pleasing to the majority."—Lord Macaulay, Essays, &c, 1885, p. 495; and note, p. 496, " Falsehood, though no match for truth alone, has often been found more than a match for truth and power together." 4 Cardinal Manning: Arts, in " N.C.," "Is the Education Act of 1870 a just law," &c, Dec, 1882, and Vol. Jan.-July, 1883. "A Christian people can be perpetuated only by Christian education. Schools without Christianity will rear a people without Christianity. A people reared without Christianity will soon become anti-Christian. Where, then, will bo Christian England?"—Cardinal Manning. See " Daily Tel." (Lond.), 10 Nov., 1885. On the grievances of the Roman Catholics, and on a proposed remedy, see Art. by Visct. Powerscourt, as above. And for Cardinal Moran's recent denunciation of system, see " Aust. Times and Anglo-New Zealander," 26 Mar., 1886, p. 13. On the practicability of undenominational scripture teaching, see remarks by ex-Bishop of Melbourne, 26 Nov., 18S5, as above. For instance, "It had been argued that undenominational teaching of scricturc was impossible, but the experience of the Mothercountry, where such teaching had been given with great success since 1870, was a conclusive answer to that objection. The teaching of religion had proved a factor in the large towns of the colony, and in the country districts it had hardly existed at all. As many as 4,000 teachers were required for the secular education of the school children, and it was impossible for the 700 ministers of religion in the colony, 170 of whom were in Melbourne and the suburbs, to spare sufficient time to attend to the religious instruction of the children in the day-schools, &c. The true remedy for these evils was to adopt the recommendation in which both sections of the Education Commission concurred, viz., to let undenominational religious instruction bo given in the State schools as a regular part of the course, and to add to the Education Act a conscience-clause for both teachers and scholars." — See "Aust. Times and Anglo-Now Zealander," 26 Feb., 1886. Lord Norton. See "Times," 3 Oct., 1884; and see "Aust. Times and. Anglo-New Zealander," 20 Feb., 188G, p. 2G.

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