system of emigration for a certain portion of the provisionally liberated, to Western Australia, and special treatment for prisoners under life sentences,' will, he confidently believes, while reforming the offender, deter others from offence, by rendering crime an unprofitable pursuit.

With the following triumphant figures we must close our article. On January 1st, 1854, Ireland had in her convict prisons 3,933 convicts, besides 345 under detention in county gaols, and several hundreds in Bermuda and Gibraltar, subsequently discharged in Ireland. These numbers have steadily declined, until on January 1st, 1861, there were only 1,492 in the convict prisons, none in the county gaols, and but 30 in Bermuda and Gibraltar. Of 1,462 tickets of leave issued during the last five years, under 7 per cent. have been revoked, although the conditions of the licences are stringently enforced. Of the whole 89 revoked, 30 were for irregularities not criminal, and many of the holders have again been conditionally released. Only 114 persons who had ever been convicts were sentenced in Ireland during 1860; and of these, some had been discharged eight or ten years before, and consequently had never undergone the new treatment.

With such testimony to its success patent to all, can we marvel to learn that the government of Oldenburg has made the Irish convict system the law of the land; that an association of eminent foreign jurists having started a weekly paper at Leipzig for promulgating sound views on prison reform, give a prominent place to that system; that the venerable Professor Mittermaier, at Heidelberg, has for years past made its principles familiar to his students and readers; that Baron von Holzendorff (Professor of Law at the Berlin University), lecturing upon it at Hamburgh, was received with enthusiasm; and that a meeting (not the first) to consider it, held lately at Berlin, has resulted in its adoption in the Prussian prison of Moabit? No; we reserve our wonder for the apathy of England, who, abandoning her post in the van of social improvement, leaves the prison discipline of Ireland to find imitators abroad, while her thousands of unreclaimed criminals reproach her civilization-while their crimes spread alarm through the land, and augment her fiscal burden by millions!

*The term convict, as used in blue books, differs from the legal meaning of the word. In the language of official men a convict is a criminal sentenced to transportation or penal servitude; but in legal acceptation every person is a convict who is adjudged by a court of criminal jurisdiction guilty of any offence known to the law. It is hardly necessary to explain that when it is said that there are no convicts in the Irish county gaols, it is not meant to state that these contain no convicted prisoners of any kind, but merely that all sentenced to transportation or penal servitude have been removed to the government prisons, where they are under the control of the Board over which Captain Crofton presides.

ᎪᎡᎢ,

The Present State of National Education.

21

ART. II.-On the Present State of Education amongst the Working Classes of Leeds, and how it can be best improved. By James Hole, Hon. Sec. of the Yorkshire Union of Mechanics' Institutes.

THER

the

HE return of the parliamentary session regularly and naturally reintroduces us to an agitation upon the subject of primary instruction as the basis of national education. This is at once the most important and the most difficult of the social questions with which we have to deal; and whilst its importance forbids us to let it sleep, its inherent difficulties, requiring most serious thought and searching inquiry, ought to prevent dogmatism and uncharitableness as to the proper mode of dealing with it on all sides.

Forty years ago the only schools existing in this country for the children of the working classes were a few Lancasterian schools, attended principally by the children of Nonconformists, a few national (Established Church) schools, and the now almost extinct dame schools. The public school buildings were generally either rooms in buildings erected for other purposes, or the merest brick and mortar shells, open at the roofs to the slates; with brick floors, occasionally covered with sawdust in winter, a few desks fastened to the walls and supplied with shallow beds of sand to teach writing in, the tip of the first finger serving the purpose of pen or pencil.

The teachers were too often men who had failed at other occupations, who could not work and to beg were ashamed,' and so took to teaching, not because they were fit for the task, but because they could very well do with the pay. Even these schools met with much opposition. It was feared that to teach workingclass children to read and write, would unfit them for their worldly duties; and it came within our own experience to hear a national schoolmaster rebuked by a trustee for attempting to teach the meanings of words, and rudely reminded that if he taught the children to read their Bibles and to write their names he would do quite enough. The Bible was the only reading-book in national, and selections therefrom the chief one in Lancasterian schools. It is a fact, that in the nineteenth century a manual of arithmetic was published by a learned divine, an excellent person, for the use of national schools; in which, in order to give children a reverence for sacred things, the sums set were drawn from historical statements of numbers in the Holy Scriptures.' There were twelve

patriarchs, twelve apostles, and four evangelists; add the patriarchs and the evangelists together; subtract the apostles; what is the remainder?' Solomon had so many wives and so many concubines; add the concubines to the wives and state the result.'

Subjected to the opposition of rich obstructives, and with such teachers and such materials for teaching, no very brilliant result

could

could have been hoped for, even if the teachers had been freed from all anxiety except in connection with their proper work. But the school pence (where any were charged) had to be eked out by voluntary' contributions, which had often to be collected by the teacher himself, who was obliged frequently either to leave his pupils to be taught entirely by monitors no older than themselves, or else to turn out and beg the bread at night, in the form of subscriptions, which he had earned during the day. Of the dame-schools perhaps the less said the better: the children were intended to be kept out of harm's way, and if they got no injury it was well; but when twenty-five or thirty tender infants were crammed into a brick-floor kitchen constructed for three or four persons only, and at the time of life when frequent change and motion were most requisite, were forced to sit still for three hours at a stretch, it is impossible not to see that a large amount of infant mortality is thus accounted for. Our infantschools of the present day are nurseries and playgrounds; the dame-schools of the past were prisons and places of torment; and it was a common sight, in working-class neighbourhoods, for children of three or four years of age to be dragged along or beaten to school, much as the worst members of society are now dragged by policemen to prison. True, there were not many old towns or cities without grammar-schools,' founded by good and pious souls for the benefit of poor students; but most of these date from a time when all learning was included in the 'dead languages,' and, alas for human frailty! they had dwindled, through generations of selfappointed trustees, till many schools existed only in name; and where any life remained, education in one of these free schools,' besides being valueless for commercial purposes, generally cost more than it would have done if paid for elsewhere. We recollect one such school where a head master and a second master, with good salaries, had, for a considerable number of years, only one pupil; whilst since the appointment of the Charity Trustees' Commissioners, the same school, having added English and commercial instruction, now suffices for hundreds of boys.

But the education spirit was abroad; earnest men were at the work; and about twenty-seven years ago, the late James Simpson, of Edinburgh, and Thomas Wyse, M.P. for Waterford (now her Majesty's ambassador at the court of Greece), traversed the country lecturing and holding public meetings in favour of national education. This movement was supported principally by the nonconformist bodies, and by persons who were unattached to any religious denomination; and many petitions to Parliament for 'national unsectarian education' were adopted and presented. The partisans of the Established Church held counter meetings, and petitioned to the effect, that if any national scheme were adopted

Revival of Education.

23

adopted it should be in accordance with the principles and forms of the Church as by law established. This agitation was continued with more or less vigour until 1839, when the Government, unable to see its way to the adoption of any comprehensive scheme, established a Committee of the Privy Council, to which, after the adoption of certain Minutes' or rules, was confided a grant of 20,000l. for distribution in aid of the voluntary efforts of the various sects of religionists who were willing to comply with the terms of· the Minutes.' Of course so important a measure met with much opposition, principally from the Nonconformist body, which, either from a clearer perception of its own principles, or from some other cause, had begun to change its tactics, and to announce that education was out of the range of governmental duties. This opposition exhibited its greatest strength when Sir James Graham, in 1843, introduced into Parliament the Factories Education Bill, obliging all factory owners, who employed children under thirteen years of age, to provide for their instruction during a certain number of hours per week, thus originating the system of halftime working. This Bill was denounced, not only as introducing the Government into a department which belonged to parents alone, but also as an unwarrantable interference with the laws of political economy and with the rights of property. Nevertheless, the Bill became law, and it is doubtful if its greatest opponents are not now thankful for their defeat; for although many factory schools have been but sorry shams, yet there have been and are noble exceptions, and many thousands of persons owe what instruction they have obtained to this system; and those factory owners whose schools are well conducted freely admit, that the conduct of the children who pass through the schools to the mill, as compared with others who are above the school age, and whose education has been neglected, well repays them for any inconvenience occasioned by the operation of the law.

The parliamentary grants, commencing with 20,0007., went on annually increasing, notwithstanding the objections of the dissenting bodies, who said to the Government: You tax us for the support of schools in which doctrines are taught of which we do not approve-which are, in our estimation, false; you thus violate our consciences and take away the means which ought to and which would otherwise be devoted to our own schools; you put a premium upon false teaching, and you pay that premium with our money.'

The reply of the Committee of Council was: You also can get aid on the same terms as others; if you choose to submit to the conditions here is money for you,' not, apparently, seeing that two wrongs cannot make one right; and that, if it was wrong to take the money of the Nonconformist to teach doctrines, which, in the estimation of the contributor, were false, so it would be equally wrong

for

for the said contributor to accept money extorted from a religious opponent to teach his own creed with. Many other objections were urged against the plan of the Committee of Council, some of which were against State education' in toto, and others against the details of the Minutes.' The bodies already spoken of repeated that Government ought to have nothing to do with religion; that it was a question for the parents of children alone, thus assuming that education must be essentially dogmatically religious. They also sympathized with the political objection, that, to subsidize teachers throughout the country was to teach dependence on Government instead of self-help was to raise up a grand system of centralization which might end in a system of espionage or a cruel despotism. On the other hand, the recipients of the grant advocated its extension and improvement, for they agreed with the opponents, that, to aid voluntary effort by a money measure only, was to give most help where it was least needed, and to give none where it was most necessary; an argument which induced an alteration and increased the discretionary power of the Committee of Council over the grants.

The growing importance of the education question, and the many difficulties surrounding it, induced Mr. Samuel Lucas, of Manchester (now of London), to put forth, about 1847-8, a scheme for secular instruction,' to be supported by local rates, and managed by local authorities elected by the ratepayers.

The secular instruction was to be given in free schools' during the regular school hours, but times were to be set apart during which the various ministers of religion might assemble such as would voluntarily attend for doctrinal religious instruction. This scheme was adopted by many leading men, and an association, called The Lancashire Public School Association,' was formed, and afterwards transformed, at the request of adherents from various parts of the country, into The National Public School Association.' When a considerable amount of popularity had been gained, another organization was started by supporters of the Minutes called The Manchester and Salford Committee on Education.' The plan of this Committee was to take 'the Minutes' for a basis, and to levy local rates in aid instead of depending wholly on children's pence and the aid of the Government. In common with the National Public School Association, they wished to generalize education, but on the religious or rather on the various religious bases instead of on the secular. The advocates of national education at any price,' amongst whom was the late Joseph Brotherton, M.P., tried to effect a compromise between the two schemes; but notsucceeding, the rivals made their appearance in Parliament in the session of 1852, and were sent to the same Select Committee, which Committee was reappointed in 1853, and

not