of Industry, British Progress in Popular Education
is halting and partial. And the chief obstacle is not a want of means,
nor even niggardliness; for the Nation is wealthy, sagacious and
public-spirited. I think the influential classes generally, or at least
very extensively, realize that a well managed system of Common Schools,
supported by taxation on Property, would save more in diminishing the
burthen of Pauperism than it would cost. I believe the Ministry feel
this. And yet Mr. Fox's motion looking to such a system was voted down
in the House of Commons by some three to one, the Ministry and their
reliable supporters vieing with the Tories in opposing it! So the Nation
is thrown back on the wretched shift of Voluntaryism, or Instruction for
the poor and ignorant children to be provided, directed and paid for by
their poor, ignorant and often vicious parents, with such help and
guidance as self-constituted casual associations may see fit to give
them. The result is and will be what it ever has been and must be--the
virtual denial of Education to a great share of the rising generation.

For this suicidal crime, I hold the Episcopal and Roman Catholic
Priesthoods mainly responsible, but especially the former. If they would
only stand out of the way, a system of efficient Common Schools for the
whole Nation might be speedily established. But they will not permit it.
By insisting that no Nationally directed and supported system shall be
put in operation which does not recognize and affirm the tenets of their
respective creeds, they render the adoption of any such system
impossible. They see this; they know it; they _mean_ it. And nothing
moves me to indignation quicker than their stereotyped cant of "Godless
education," "teaching infidelity," "knowledge worthless or dangerous
without Religion," &c. &c. Why, Sirs, it is very true that the People
need Religious as well as purely Intellectual culture, but the former
has been already provided for. You clergymen of the Established Church
have been richly endowed and beneficed expressly for this work--_why
don't you_ DO _it?_ Why do you stand here darkening and
stopping the gateway of secular instruction with a self-condemning
assumption that your own duties have been and are criminally neglected,
and that therefore others shall likewise remain unperformed? Teach the
children as much Religion as you can; very few of you ever lack pupils
when you give your hearts to the work;