ple. That his calling is useful, that his
calling is necessary, will hardly be denied. Yet it is clear that
his services will not be adequately remunerated if he is left to be
remunerated by those whom he teaches, or by the voluntary contributions
of the charitable. Is this disputed? Look at the facts. You tell us that
schools will multiply and flourish exceedingly, if the Government will
only abstain from interfering with them. Has not the Government long
abstained from interfering with them? Has not everything been left,
through many years, to individual exertion? If it were true that
education, like trade, thrives most where the magistrate meddles least,
the common people of England would now be the best educated in the
world. Our schools would be model schools. Every one would have a well
chosen little library, excellent maps, a small but neat apparatus for
experiments in natural philosophy. A grown person unable to read and
write would be pointed at like Giant O'Brien or the Polish Count.
Our schoolmasters would be as eminently expert in all that relates to
teaching as our cutlers, our cotton-spinners, our engineers are allowed
to be in their respective callings. They would, as a class, be held in
high consideration; and their gains would be such that it would be
easy to find men of respectable character and attainments to fill up
vacancies.

Now, is this the case? Look at the charges of the judges, at the
resolutions of the grand juries, at the reports of public officers,
at the reports of voluntary associations. All tell the same sad and
ignominious story. Take the reports of the Inspectors of Prisons. In
the House of Correction at Hertford, of seven hundred prisoners one half
could not read at all; only eight could read and write well. Of eight
thousand prisoners who had passed through Maidstone Gaol only fifty
could read and write well. In Coldbath Fields Prison, the proportion
that could read and write well seems to have been still smaller. Turn
from the registers of prisoners to the registers of marriages. You will
find that about a hundred and thirty thousand couples were married in
the year 1844. More than forty thousand of the bridegrooms and more than
sixty thousand of the brides did not sign their names, but made their
marks. Nearly one third of the men and nearly one half of the women, who
are in the prime of life, who are to be the parents of the Englishmen of
the next generation, who are to bear a chi