o teach.
In general these men had only one qualification for their employment;
and that was their utter unfitness for every other employment. They were
disabled miners, or broken hucksters. In their schools all was stench,
and noise, and confusion. Now and then the clamour of the boys was
silenced for two minutes by the furious menaces of the master; but it
soon broke out again. The instruction given was of the lowest kind. Not
one school in ten was provided with a single map. This is the way in
which you suffered the minds of a great population to be formed. And now
for the effects of your negligence. The barbarian inhabitants of this
region rise in an insane rebellion against the Government. They come
pouring down their valleys to Newport. They fire on the Queen's troops.
They wound a magistrate. The soldiers fire in return; and too many of
these wretched men pay with their lives the penalty of their crime. But
is the crime theirs alone? Is it strange that they should listen to the
only teaching that they had? How can you, who took no pains to instruct
them, blame them for giving ear to the demagogue who took pains to
delude them? We put them down, of course. We punished them. We had no
choice. Order must be maintained; property must be protected; and, since
we had omitted to take the best way of keeping these people quiet, we
were under the necessity of keeping them quiet by the dread of the sword
and the halter. But could any necessity be more cruel? And which of us
would run the risk of being placed under such necessity a second time?

I say, therefore, that the education of the people is not only a means,
but the best means, of attaining that which all allow to be a chief end
of government; and, if this be so, it passes my faculties to understand
how any man can gravely contend that Government has nothing to do with
the education of the people.

My confidence in my opinion is strengthened when I recollect that I hold
that opinion in common with all the greatest lawgivers, statesmen,
and political philosophers of all nations and ages, with all the most
illustrious champions of civil and spiritual freedom, and especially
with those men whose names were once held in the highest veneration
by the Protestant Dissenters of England. I might cite many of the most
venerable names of the old world; but I would rather cite the example
of that country which the supporters of the Voluntary system here are
always recommending