himself as earnestly and as vigorously as any, have been manufacturing according to their best wisdom for the last twenty years. Some of them, considering that he is primarily responsible for the steady fall of salaries which has lightened their way during the last four years, will like his joke as little as they did the results of his policy. The truth of the matter is, that we scarcely recognise the extent or character of the class of the population which supplies us with these uneducated children. Mr. Edmund Potter, M.P., estimates that out of the 21,000,000 in England and Wales, there are 4,000,000 of the lowest class of the population. It is made up of "about one million of paupers; about half-a-million of the loose and dangerous class; another million always on the verge of pauperism from poverty of employment and ignorance; the remaining million probably composed from the class of irregular workers who are dependent upon seasons for chance employment, and who have neither earnings nor savings sufficient to pay for wholesome food or decent dwellings." "There is a second class of four millions-our poorer paid working-classes, unskilled workers, handicraftsmen, and agricultural labourers, who strive to live decently, and many of whom do struggle to obtain some scraps of education for their children, either through charity schools or by means of the Factory Acts. Their receipts per head for their families, apart from rent, may not much exceed 2s. or 2s. 6d. weekly." These two classes, with the exception of the best portion of the second, balanced by the worst portion of the third four millions of skilled artisans and high-paid workmen-give us some eight out of the twenty-one million people in South Britain whose education will not be touched by anything short of compulsory legislation. This is not the place for an argument based on any recent political changes; but it is simple madness to rest a society like ours on an uneducated mass of eight millions of people, enfranchised or unenfranchised. The giant buried beneath the mountain will awaken some day, and push the solid fabric which people have been content to pile on his forgotten grave into hideous ruin. 66 A well-known episcopal authority has told us recently that only philosophers of Laputa get excited over these things. Since the beginning of the world there have been "louts,' and it is hopeless, or almost impious, to wish to change this appointed order." If this be the bitter sense in which our spiritual teachers echo their Master's words about the poor whom we “have always with us," the Christianity of the nineteenth century is not of the same spirit as Christ was. people of England will take nobler counsel. If a little indig The a dis nation mingles with the sorrow with which one sees tinguished prelate advise the nation to resign itself contentedly to the decrees of Providence in favour of "louts," we must not forget to ask whether the schemes of his philosophers of Laputa be really liable to his objections. Like many less eminent persons, he tells us that compulsion is un-English, and his argument is simply this-that the state of English society is such that it cannot be applied here. It is a serious difficulty for us to understand how it should be that the state of German society, or that of Swiss society, should be so essentially different as to make that possible, practicable, and easy there which is impossible in this country. The Englishman comes of the same stock as the Prussian; he is as capable of education, and not less accustomed to solve practical problems. The Prussians have several great cities; they have manufacturing districts; they have thinly-peopled agricultural tracts. No doubt, we have vagabonds, and paupers, and criminals; but the Prussians are not without these common luxuries of high civilization. It is true that they have been accustomed to a little more government, but it is not clear that anything they submit to would be impossible in England. When the Prussian school system was introduced into the Rhine provinces after the Napoleonic wars, a universal cry went up that compulsory school attendance was "Un-Rhenish." That word of fear conjured up all the spectres that do service to the magic name "Un-English" at the present time. But a short experience laid them effectually and for ever. Our readers had better judge for themselves from a brief account of what we might hope to see introduced into England, based on the practice in Saxony, as Mr. Pattison described it eight years ago, whether compulsory attendance might not be enforced in an English town or village. To begin with, we should not propose compulsory school attendance for children under six. Where the mother is not compelled to leave home for work, it seems to us that little or no advantage is got from infant schools. The wives of the best of our artisan classes have no wish to part with their children before that time, and the child can scarcely be sent to school by itself unless there is an elder brother or sister to take care of it. There are many cases where real good may be got from infant schools; but a compulsory law implies that there are none where it cannot. It is certain that the parents of the middle and higher classes would not think of such a thing for their own children, and it is not possible to pass a compulsory measure which does not deal impartially with all classes of the community. In the second place, we might very well adopt the limitation admitted in the Workshops Acts. Wherever no school exists within a mile of the house or workshop, the compulsion of these Acts ceases. The same provision should be applied in the case of any measure of compelled attendance. Such a law would press for a long time most severely on thinly-peopled agricultural districts, where the distances between home and school must often of necessity be considerable. The relaxation would apply accordingly just where the strain would be greatest. Whatever authority is trusted to supply the schools that may be found requisite, would obviously take into account as the first element in the question the number of children in its district escaping obligation under such a provision. In the mean time the compulsory law would be, gradually but surely, brought into operation over the entire country. We have specified six as an inferior limit-partly taking the example of Prussia, partly from the natural circumstances which appear to us to point to the same year as the Prussian practice. We should frankly accept the upper limit fixed by the Factory and Workshops Regulation Acts, and cease attempting compulsion at thirteen. No compulsory law ought to try to secure more, at least in the first instance, than the indispensable minimum of education, and the difficulties in the way are sufficiently formidable to induce us to make the pressure on individual freedom and the interference with social and economic facts as slight as we can. We should be contented, therefore, with a compulsory attendance for all children between six and eight, the age at which children's labour begins to be regulated under the existing law, and a half-time attendance (properly organized, and of a very different kind from the miserable makeshifts that in many cases do duty for it at present) for the five following years between eight and thirteen, for children in the receipt of wages for labour. For other children it is a question whether the age of thirteen be not too high to fix as that before which full-time employment should in no circumstances be permitted. It is one on which medical evidence must be decisive; but we should have been disposed to think that a child who had never engaged even in half-time work till twelve, would be as fit physically to enter under the conditions of labour prescribed for "young persons"-i.e., those above thirteen, as a child of thirteen who had spent thirty-six hours a week in manual labour for five years previous. We should be disposed to accept full time for four years, after the two from six to eight which are common to whole and half timers. The half-time and whole-time weeks of children obtaining intermittent employment could be reckoned in the same proportion. It would obviously be easy to do precisely what is done in Saxony about dropped days. Whenever a child is absent from school without sufficient excuse, that absence is simply added on to the end of the obligatory school time, and he cannot earn full wages until he has worked it off. The half-time system is frankly adopted; and the half-time attendances—which are made, however, only in schools where there is a special master, and an organization of the school specially suited to them-are reckoned as equal to full-time ones towards the obligatory period. The Saxons go on the principle that the child, if he is not working, need not be allowed to run about the streets idle. We should require full-time attendance in the same way for the whole of the thirteen years, except that after twelve, when the child has found employment of any kind—even at home, where a girl is often needed to help her mother-it should be allowed to accept it, just as if it had passed thirteen. It would be easy, if it were desired, to fix a standard of attendance-say 400 in a year of 440 attendances-which should be received as complete before dropped days began to be counted up so as to provide fair working room for the law on the one hand, and the necessities of homes and of casual labour on the other. These are details which are introduced here rather to show how possible it might be to overcome the imaginary practical difficulties which are continually alleged. A cast-iron rule, no doubt, might be bad enough to apply, especially at first; but there is no reason why we should not be able after a little to report, under a reasonable application of compulsory powers, what Mr. Pattison does of "Chemnitz (e. g. the centre of the cotton manufacture), where the inspector assured me that he could take upon himself to say that there were no children within the school age who were not attending school in some form or other;" and where, at the same time, "Those who have been accustomed to think of the German compulsory education as an absolute and unyielding law, may be surprised to find that it is capable on occasions of making the fullest concessions to the employers of labour." It is easy to make the rough and ready statement which many root and branch reformers are in the habit of making about the children of the lowest stratum of the population. Mr. Lowe says that, in his view, they were subjects for the policeman rather than for the schoolmaster. He means, no doubt, to advise us to apply and extend the provisions of our Industrial and Reformatory Acts. Unfortunately, the expense involved is simply enormous. These children cost about 20%. a-piece a year. If we suppose them to belong to the one million always on the verge of pauperism from poverty of employment VOL. I. E and ignorance, and to the half million of the loose and dangerous class, there are 250,000 of them, and it will take just 5,000,000l. per annum to apply these Acts. With the worst cases it is no doubt necessary; but we see no reason to doubt that if the children of these classes had the benefits of a plain education secured them by the provisions compelling their attendance, their condition in after-life would be nothing like so helpless and hopeless as it is at present. Let no parent be permitted to plead poverty in excuse of his child's absencethat is to say, let him plead it freely in excuse of his own payment of fees. The local school authority must decide on his claim; but whether he is adjudged to pay or not to pay, his child must attend school. There is only one alarming consequence which is really involved. Arrangements to cover the entire area of England-to secure that no one shall escape the law of the State except for sufficient reason-will require a small regiment of clerks, and millions of papers and returns. The age of the child is already registered, and the registrars of births might do a good deal of the necessary work. When a new family comes within a district, the policeman of the beat must inform the registrar, or equivalent officer or clerk. It would become his duty to ascertain the number and ages of the children; to tell the parent of the number, situation, and denomination (if any) of the schools within a certain radius, and to require him to select one and send his children to it within a short time. The schoolmaster must inform this officer of the attendance, and the abhorred policeman need never appear on the scene. A good deal of detail trouble is involved, and a considerable expenditure must be incurred for office work, without which no system of compulsion can be carried out-but there is nothing un-English in that. A little cloud of clerks rises up after the passage of every act of parliament; and if the new educational clerks should be rather numerous, they would be worth their salaries if they gave us an educated people. We offer a single suggestion about them. Let them be made out of retired schoolmasters; let us use the places to reward good men worn out, perhaps, as teachers by the exhausting work of thirty years' elementary education, at the same time with a pension, an occupation for which they are simply the most competent people who can be found, and a sense that in their age as in their youth they are doing something to advance the education of their countrymen. They would do the work as no other clerks could or would do it; and there is nothing of greater importance in working such a law than the conscientious and thorough performance of the infinitude of executive details that can neither be seen to nor surveyed by the superior administration. |