telligence, and love-devoted to the duty, because it is a duty-correcting what is wrong, encouraging and rewarding what is right-never weary in welldoing-not coveting favour, or applause, or admiration, or distinction, but calmly and constantly counteracting the tendency to decay inherent in all human things. Without this the best and wisest rules will have been framed in vain.

This spirit can never be created by Acts of Parliament and Orders in Council. It must originate and be kept alive by a personal sense of duty, and therefore will vary and fluctuate with the several individuals that from time to time have the management of the institutions, and with the natural fickleness of the public mind.

Admiring then, as I do, the generous ardour of those who take a lead in this appeal to the public, I cannot but suspect that they have both overrated the actual want of new measures, and that they are not prepared for that relaxation, when the excitement is over, which ever attends such proceedings.

In regard to the alleged want of schools, I must enter my protest against the exaggerated statements which I continually see made of this evil, as well as of the inefficiency of those schools which are now in action. In places where a dense population has recently been collected, unless the capitalists who con

gregate this population for their own enormous profit recognize the duty of providing for the religious instruction of the poor, there must be, and I grieve to say it, there often actually is a lamentable destitution. But that this is not the case even in the metropolis, except in certain districts of it, I confidently affirm. In some districts there is a concentration, as it were, of poverty and misery of every kind. To the relief of these districts the inhabitants of the richer parts, whether mercantile or not, who by resorting to the metropolis as a residence and spending their wealth there, create an immense population, ought surely to contribute, not only in their own immediate neighbourhood, but still more in the remote parishes which have not their due proportion of wealthy inhabitants, and of whose swarming population the conflux of rich families to the metropolis is the cause. They see them not, and therefore think they are not specially connected with them; and this makes it necessary that the truth should be plainly told, and their own duty forcibly pressed upon their attention. But the National Schools in the City of London, which are open to all the children of the poor, which are well taught and carefully visited, are not full. The number of children in most of them, is, I believe, less than it was many years ago. Yet there is no neglect on the part of the teachers, nor any absolute want of funds, although from the cause before alluded to there is a less abundant supply. But the novelty is passed away-and the interest

once excited in the neighbourhood becomes languid— and parents are negligent in sending their children when they find that no other benefit but that of instruction is obtained.

To this cause, the indifference and negligence and prejudice of parents, except some secular advantage is expected, must principally be ascribed the thin attendance at most of the National Schools in country towns and villages. Often the parents make a merit of sending their children, and expect to be favoured and rewarded for it-and threaten to remove them upon any offence or disgust, as if they were conferring a favour themselves by suffering them to remain. We may wonder and remonstrate and wish it were otherwise, but however much a school for the poor may flourish under the eye of a rich and benevolent neighbour, there is, alas! but one steadily operating cause in human nature on which uniform reliance can be placed-a sense of secular advantage. I do not say the poor are dead to all other motives; but this principle, like the great law of gravitation in the system of the universe, is the only one that can be reckoned upon as a constant self-acting power. There must be an external impulse from individuals, renewed from time to time, like that of muscular action in the animal body, or the motion once given soon dies away, and torpor gradually succeeds to a state of activity and energy.

Upon the duty of making religion the basis of general education, it is needless for me here to expatiate. It seems, indeed, to be admitted even by those, the tendency of whose plans we regard with most suspicion. But religion is a word of wide import. We of the Church of England mean not the same by it which Papists and Heretics and Sectarians of various denominations mean. Let me entreat you to enter into no compromise on this subject. Open the doors of your schools to all who are willing to come; but do not bribe them to come by a sacrifice of what you know to be sacred truth. Every attempt of the kind is abortive. It satisfies neither party; while it furnishes a weapon to our adversaries, and a means of undermining the Church when they are afraid to assail it openly.

A circular under an official form, though accredited by no name, has recently come to my hands, the object of which is to vindicate the plan lately condemned by the House of Lords, from the charges brought against it. The time would not now permit me to enter into a particular examination of this performance. It appears to me to be as deficient in all sound views of political philosophy, and even of that narrow branch of political philosophy which too often usurps its province-political economy, as it is in the weightier matters of religion. The examples taken from foreign countries, as guides for ourselves in this proposed work of National Education, have

no application to England. Almost all of them are the offspring of despotic governments, and involve compulsory measures, which in this country are impracticable, even if they were desirable. But in truth I suspect and I deprecate every experiment of this kind emanating from Government-I do not mean the Government of the day, but from any Government. The State has recognized a public instructor of the poor, the National Church. Let the governors and influential members of that Church be mindful of their duty; and if they offer instruction freely to the poor, they ought to be helped by Government, when the peculiar circumstances of any neighbourhood require it. We are the Almoners of the State for religious purposes. If other denominations of Christians apply for similar aid, let the State take care that it does not, by assisting them, indirectly assail the Church which it professes to maintain, and which, especially as regards the corruptions of Romanism, it is bound exclusively to maintain.

If the care of Government be extended to other objects besides moral and religious instruction, the Church does not claim any special favour. But I entertain serious doubts, whether it is for the public good that such matters should be under the control of Government-and whether they ought not to be left wholly to private competition, and to that desire of secular advantage, which is sufficiently strong to