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perience of the management of children. Parents of the quickest sensibilities and warmest affections mourn and distress themselves about every little bodily pain and accident befalling their children, but appear to be quite blind and insensible to the danger of evil associations and of bad habits, of the blighting of the noblest faculties, and the deforming growth of the low and criminal ones; they seem to have less dread of the sure sorrow and suffering that must come to them under such circumstances than the dwellers on the brink of craters have of earthquakes. Such is their conduct in this respect that in the light of common-sense it might be supposed that the object and end of parental rule and nurture was to produce models of vanity and vice, bravos of shame, and leaders of crime.

When we smile at the absurd folly of the bird that, to escape danger, hides its head in the sand, ignorant that it has only shut out the view of the enemy, it would be well to ask ourselves whether, in the most important acts of our lives, we are much wiser than the unreasoning ostrich? For it would seem that we are for ever running away from our real enemies, and blinding our eyes with the dust and rubbish produced by the wear and tear of the machinery of life, leaving all that is vital to take care of itself.

But education and training are not only neces

sary to develope the true ends of our being, they are essential also to the supply of our every-day wants, for whatever employment in life a man may have, he will fulfil its duties better and more successfully in direct proportion to his intelligence, and the goodness of his moral character. So true is this, that it may be confidently affirmed in the case of any healthy man or woman in want, that the cause of their indigence is either ignorance or vice; and as the want of education and the acquirement of vicious habits are generally due to the defect of early teaching and training, so every pauper is a living reproach to his parents, or to the community in which he was born and reared for his helplessness-a reproach which is greater still when, in addition to a pauper, he becomes a criminal.

If such be the importance to individuals and to society of teaching and training the minds of children, and as at that age the responsibility of the work rests, not upon them, but on their parents or in default of parents on the community-it becomes an important question to every responsible subject in the State, as well as to the State itself, to ask, how the duty is performed.

CHAPTER II.

The Evidences of Deficient Education and Training in the Country.

"Sunt lachrymo rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt."

COMMON-SENSE would lead us to expect that ignorance would be allied to want. Man is introduced into the world under conditions wholly different to those of the animals beneath him; the latter need to follow only the instincts of their nature to live and prosper, but man requires sources of warmth that must be obtained not by instinct but intelligence; and in few parts of the world could he survive without employing the same intelligent faculties to procure and prepare his food and shelter. His fearfully and wonderfully made organism exposes him to more disorder and disease than other creatures; and not instincts, but years of intelligent observation, deduction, and induction have led him to adopt the various

remedies that in so many instances cure those diseases.

It follows that in direct proportion to the elevation and cultivation of his intellect by personal and transmitted experiences, so are his abilities strengthened and multiplied for obtaining the means and appliances of life.

Common-sense, moreover, might predict that as population increased and the arts of civilised life extended, so the standard of intelligence in the masses must be raised if it were expected to keep pace with the increased demands for skilled labour. Otherwise the members of the community whose subsistence depended on labour or service would be put to great disadvantage in the competition for employment; if they were not trained and educated up to the requirements of the times, it must follow that the incompetent will be left behind to languish in idleness and want-the waiters upon charity; or they will become the enemies of law and order, wretched in themselves and scourges to society-paupers in the first case, criminals in the second.

The old excuses for pauperism, that of an overstocked labour market, and of the introduction of machinery rendering human labour unnecessary, are not often repeated now, the fallacies affecting them are too apparent. On the contrary, it is pretty generally acknowledged that the progress

and prosperity both of a people and a nation are associated with a tolerable density of population, that poverty and barbarism, on the other hand, are attached to a sparsity of people. Competition is useful to all, and the same intelligence and probity that will do well where occupation is possible will give to the subject of them the enterprise and ability to migrate to other fields in the rare instance of a really over-stocked labour market.

Machinery, so far from being an impediment to employment, is the artisan's and labourer's best friend; for, like an irresistible plough, it goes through the field of labour, turning the hard and unproductive soil into new and fruitful gardens of industry, performing for him the rudest and least grateful tasks, and leaving to him the higher, the more agreeable and remunerative ones. Locomotion by steam, and telegraphy by electricity well illustrate these results of machinery. Within the last thirty or forty years these two instances of harnessing machinery to human labour must have given employment to thousands for every hundred men engaged in that kind of industry before, and not only multiplying in this marvellous proportion the number of the employed, but at the same time elevating the character of the employment, and making it more remunerative.

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