st in
this, that the great body of the people should be rescued from ignorance
and barbarism. I mentioned Lord George Gordon's mob. That mob began,
it is true, with the Roman Catholics: but, long before the tumults were
over, there was not a respectable Protestant in London who was not in
fear for his house, for his limbs, for his life, for the lives of those
who were dearest to him. The honourable Member for Finsbury says that we
call on men to pay for an education from which they derive no benefit.
I deny that there is one honest and industrious man in the country who
derives no benefit from living among honest and industrious neighbours
rather than among rioters and vagabonds. This matter is as much a matter
of common concern as the defence of our coast. Suppose that I were
to say, "Why do you tax me to fortify Portsmouth? If the people of
Portsmouth think that they cannot be safe without bastions and ravelins,
let the people of Portsmouth pay the engineers and masons. Why am I to
bear the charge of works from which I derive no advantage?" You would
answer, and most justly, that there is no man in the island who does
not derive advantage from these works, whether he resides within them or
not. And, as every man, in whatever part of the island he may live, is
bound to contribute to the support of those arsenals which are necessary
for our common security, so is every man, to whatever sect he may
belong, bound to contribute to the support of those schools on which,
not less than on our arsenals, our common security depends.

I now come to the last words of the amendment. The honourable Member
for Finsbury is apprehensive that our plan may interfere with the
civil rights of Her Majesty's subjects. How a man's civil rights can be
prejudiced by his learning to read and write, to multiply and divide, or
even by his obtaining some knowledge of history and geography, I do
not very well apprehend. One thing is clear, that persons sunk in that
ignorance in which, as we are assured by the Congregational Union, great
numbers of our countrymen are sunk, can be free only in name. It is
hardly necessary for us to appoint a Select Committee for the purpose of
inquiring whether knowledge be the ally or the enemy of liberty. He is,
I must say, but a short-sighted friend of the common people who is eager
to bestow on them a franchise which would make them all-powerful, and
yet would withhold from them that instruction without which thei