It was answered, first, that the commercial principle of supply and demand, unless supplemented by the benevolence of individuals, could not be expected to educate the people except by very slow degrees; that education must create the demand for educa that children of the lower classes in large towns, unless assistance or stimulation came to them from without, had at present no more chance of receiving instruction than if they were living in Africa. And the nation would lose incalculably by delay in edu cating the masses; for nothing would so greatly- increase its power and prosperity, so materially improve the condition of the humbler classes, as the education of the whole people. The importance of voluntary agencies was admitted; but why was the state to be precluded from at least co-operating with them? The state, it was said, had a greater interest in educating the people than any of her citizens could have; and, moreover— this was the real question—could undertake it more successfully. Voluntary agency, it was maintained, was too slow, too uncertain, too spasmodic in operation, to be per manently and solely relied upon in a matter of such great national concern. The friends of state action confidently appealed to the experience of foreign countries as showing the superior efficiency of state education, and pointed to the effects which government stim ulation, on a limited scale, had had at home. It is now several years 'Since this contro versy was at its height. The voluntaries have since that been nequi&cing in the inter ference of the state with education; and recently, several of their foremost men have frankly admitted that they hail been mistaken, and that the state, by what it has done for education, has made good its claim to the regulation of it. The course of political events has recently added greatly to the importance of popular education; and at present it may be said that there is practically no opposition upon principle to the control of education by the state.
There have always, however, been obstacles to the establishment of a national sys tem more formidable than the opposition of private bodies, and these are well-nigh inev itable.
The most important of them are those which are concerned with the place, if any, to be assigned to religion in the school instruction. Upon this matter there is a conflict of opinions which seems almost irreconcilable. A party, which is in numbers, and which is respectable from its activity and intelligence, holds that the state should give nothing but secular instruction; that religion is beyond its province, and should not be taught within its schools; that, indeed, with a population divided into numerous sects, a practicable scheme of state education embracing religion cannot be devised. To this party a portion of the English voluntaries now seems disposed to ally itself. There are others who believe it possible to teach an undenominational Christianity in schools; who desire that the state schoolmaster should confine himself to this; and that dogmatic teaching should be left to the religious bodies. A third party hold that dogmatic teach ing should be given in state schools; that religious teaching, to have any value, must be dogmatic; but that arrangements might be made for the religious instruction of children by persons of their own persuasions; and, at any rate, that children should be exempted front the religious instruction given in a school if their parents should so desire. The
most numerous body of all are satisfied with the system of aiding denominational schools which now exists; because they approve of schools being, as for the most part they now are. under clerical supervition, and fear that by any change the influence of the clergy upon education would be weakened. Among the managers of church of England schools fault is scarcely found with more than one point in the old substitute for a system; there was an incessant agitation against the " conscience clause," which the state has placed among the conditions of its aid, stipulating that religious instruction should not he given contrary to the wish of the parent. Between the denominationalist and the secularist there is a difference which scarcely admits of compromise, and is a serious hindrance in the way of any national system. The former is naturally opposed to any scheme for supplementing the denominational system—for the purpose of educating the classes which this system does not educate—unless it include religious teac:eng.
The question of religious instruction has been found a troublesome one in nearly every country where the state regulates education, and there is nothing more instructive, in foreign experience, than the ways in which, in different systems, this difficulty has been disposed of. Next to this, the most important thing to be observed is the parts which, in different systems, are assigned to the state and to the locality respectively; for it is unquestionable that there are some dangers attaching to state education, when the influence of the state is predominant, and that the function of the state in education must be carefully defined. By the mere selection of schoolbooks, the state could pow erfully influence the rising generation; and in Austria, and, it is said. in France also, the school has been made use of as an instrument of state policy. With a popular gov ernment, however, there is not much risk of it being used for sinister in this country we are in more danger of having recourse too little to the powers Of the state titan of trusting it too much. The possibility of making education compulsory is another matter upon which foreign systems of education throw much light: we are per haps more interested in noting how far indirect methods can be resorted to for compel ling attendance at the schools. Upon the limits of the instruction which should be attempted in schools for the poorer classes—a subject which has been much discussed in connection with the Revised Code of 1861—and upon the results of government regula tion of the middle and upper schools also, there is much to be learned from the foreign educational systems. We begin with State Education in Holland.