, in whose judgment all this legislation is a step in the
wrong direction, false in principle, and consequently sure to produce
evil in practice.

The arguments employed by these objectors are of two kinds. The first
is what I will venture to term the caste argument; for, if logically
carried out, it would end in the separation of the people of this
country into castes, as permanent and as sharply defined, if not as
numerous, as those of India. It is maintained that the whole fabric
of society will be destroyed if the poor, as well as the rich, are
educated; that anything like sound and good education will only make
them discontented with their station and raise hopes which, in the
great majority of cases, will be bitterly disappointed. It is said:
There must be hewers of wood and drawers of water, scavengers and
coalheavers, day labourers and domestic servants, or the work of
society will come to a standstill. But, if you educate and refine
everybody, nobody will be content to assume these functions, and all
the world will want to be gentlemen and ladies.

One hears this argument most frequently from the representatives of
the well-to-do middle class; and, coming from them, it strikes me as
peculiarly inconsistent, as the one thing they admire, strive after,
and advise their own children to do, is to get on in the world, and,
if possible, rise out of the class in which they were born into that
above them. Society needs grocers and merchants as much as it needs
coalheavers; but if a merchant accumulates wealth and works his way to
a baronetcy, or if the son of a greengrocer becomes a lord chancellor,
or an archbishop, or, as a successful soldier, wins a peerage, all the
world admires them; and looks with pride upon the social system which
renders such achievements possible. Nobody suggests that there is
anything wrong in _their_ being discontented with _their_ station; or
that, in _their_ cases society suffers by men of ability reaching the
positions for which nature has fitted them.

But there are better replies than those of the _tu quoque_ sort to the
caste argument. In the first place, it is not true that education,
as such, unfits men for rough and laborious, or even disgusting,
occupations. The life of a sailor is rougher and harder than that of
nine landsmen out of ten, and yet, as every ship's captain knows, no
sailor was ever the worse for possessing a trained intelligence. The
life of a medical practitioner