lied with teachers, and can be of use to those only who have already
learnt something in the day schools. The interval from one Sunday to the
next is too long for an ignorant child to remember in the second sitting
what it learned in the first, a week before. The Children's Employment
Commission's Report furnishes a hundred proofs, and the Commission itself
most emphatically expresses the opinion, that neither the week-day nor
the Sunday schools, in the least degree, meet the needs of the nation.
This report gives evidence of ignorance in the working-class of England,
such as could hardly be expected in Spain or Italy. It cannot be
otherwise; the bourgeoisie has little to hope, and much to fear, from the
education of the working-class. The Ministry, in its whole enormous
budget of 55,000,000 pounds, has only the single trifling item of 40,000
pounds for public education, and, but for the fanaticism of the religious
sects which does at least as much harm as good, the means of education
would be yet more scanty. As it is, the State Church manages its
national schools and the various sects their sectarian schools for the
sole purpose of keeping the children of the brethren of the faith within
the congregation, and of winning away a poor childish soul here and there
from some other sect. The consequence is that religion, and precisely
the most unprofitable side of religion, polemical discussion, is made the
principal subject of instruction, and the memory of the children
overburdened with incomprehensible dogmas and theological distinctions;
that sectarian hatred and bigotry are awakened as early as possible, and
all rational mental and moral training shamefully neglected. The working
class has repeatedly demanded of Parliament a system of strictly secular
public education, leaving religion to the ministers of the sects; but,
thus far, no Ministry has been induced to grant it. The Minister is the
obedient servant of the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie is divided into
countless sects; but each would gladly grant the workers the otherwise
dangerous education on the sole condition of their accepting, as an
antidote, the dogmas peculiar to the especial sect in question. And as
these sects are still quarrelling among themselves for supremacy, the
workers remain for the present without education. It is true that the
manufacturers boast of having enabled the majority to read, but the
quality of the reading is appropriate t