at in any public measure
for helping on the education of the people, Government [should]
abstain from introducing the element of religion at all into
their part of the scheme.'

What, then, should be the course taken by the promoters of
public schools, in accordance with the principles enunciated
by Dr Chalmers? It appears to me to be clearly this: to make no
provision whatever for, or rather directly to exclude, all
religious teaching within the walls of the school, and to
leave, in the words of the fifth resolution, 'the duty and
responsibility of communicating religious instruction' in the
hands of those 'to whom they have been committed by God, viz.
to their parents, and, through them, to such teachers as they
may choose to entrust with that duty.'

This was the course pursued by the Government of Holland in the
early part of the present century; and I suppose no one will
venture to call in question the morality or religion of the
people of that country, or to throw a doubt upon the success of
the system.

It is as an ardent friend of National Education, both in Scotland
and England, that I have ventured to make these few observations.
I desire to throw no obstruction in the way of any movement
calculated to attain so desirable an object. It may be that I am
mistaken in supposing that it is intended to convey religious
instruction, in the public schools, of a kind that will be
obnoxious to a minority; and if so, the design of the authors of
the resolutions will have no more sincere well-wisher than, Sir,
your obedient servant,

SAMUEL LUCAS.

LONDON, _February 4, 1850_.

CHAPTER SEVENTH.

General Outline of an Educational Scheme adequate to the
demands of the Age--Remuneration of Teachers--Mode of their
Election--Responsibility--Influence of the Church in such a
Scheme--Apparent Errors of the Church--The Circumstances of
Scotland very different now from what they were in the days of
Knox.

Scotland will never have an efficient educational system at once
worthy of her ancient fame, and adequate to the demands of the age,
until in every parish there be at least one central school, known
emphatically as the _Parish_ or Grammar School, and taught by a
superior university-bred teacher, qualified to instruct his pupils in
the higher departments of