It is also by means of the body that the children of tire poor will have to get their bread. They should be taught to know this as a fact, as a simple piece of information, which involves neither merit uor demerit, neither honour nor dishonour. For such exorcises of tire body as they are likely to be called to, they ought from an early period to be pre pared while at school by an industrial training.
This remark comprises much more than n demand of bodily labour from the young. It involves such a course of instruction as may best prepare them for their future occupations. There is no pursuit fu life— riot even that which is most mechanical—which does not depend en, or is not connected with. certain principles; for all manual labour is only the carrying out and realisation of results for which science has prepared the way. It is equally certain that there is no labour which may not be lightened or relieved by knowledge. A good education therefore would make the labourer acquainted with the facts and principles on which his art is bullt and thus enable him to enjoy the rational and sustaining pleasure of working understandingly, with a view to a given result, and labouring therefore in a mariner fitted to improve his character as a roan as well as his efficiency as a workman.
But no improvement can be expected in popular education until a better race of teachers is provided. Great as is the deficiency of schools, yet if they were filled with competent instructors, the chief evil would be remedied.
In the houses too of the working classes, particularly in the manu facturing districts, a change is most desirable. Whatever time may ho occupied in school duties, there are many hours which a child spends during which tho educator has no influence over him ; and these aro the very times at which the young are most susceptible of impressions ; when the moral and intellectual capacities open to surrounding influences, and receive them readily and retain the impression deeply. In the actual state of things then, the real educators of the young are their parents, their brothers and sisters, their playmates, their casual companions—in one word, their home. No small part of these evils results from the employment of females in mills and factories. In the ordinary state of society all that should be peculiar in a female's education would be left to her mother. But among n large part of the manufacturing classes there are not inothers who could give any thing approaching to the requisite education. There is then no other resource but the school. It is altogether impossible that the
labouring classes, at least of the manufacturing districts, can ever be happy until a new and improved race of mothers appears. In addition, therefore, to the educational requisites already mentioned, it is necessary that there should be a sufficient number of girls' , schools in winch the ordinary arta of domestic life—baking, cooking, sewing, knitting, making and mending, should be taught. This matter is of vital interest to the working man, and therefore to the country, for it matters little what the labourer e earnings are, what his own intelligence is, if he has not a thrifty, kind-hearted, sensible, and industrious wife.
Among the changes desirable on the part of the parents is the existence of a disposition to provide out of their own resources suit able means for the education of their children. That it is their duty to make this provision when they have the power is unqueationable ; and although it is too much to expect at the present, yet something may be done towards it, and the complete fulfilment of the claim may be looked to man ultimate end. There is nothing but their own exer tions which can bring to the labouring classes all the good which education can convey. The charity of education, like charity of every kind, tends to lauperise those whom it aims to benefit : and so long as the education of the poor depends on the efforts of rival and conflict ing parties in religion or in politics, it is impossible that the power thus gained should not be used in order to further the opinions and interests of the several parties. In the meantime the people are regarded and treated as instruments for a purpose, and their education is shaped and varied not by a regard to what is absolutely best, but to what is conducive to the ends of the party which directs it. it is true that some good has resulted from the efforts of individuals and societies by which such education as the poor have received has been conducted during a century. It is equally true that these voluntary exertions have in many cases sprung from pure and enlarged benevo lence. Still they could not under the circumstances fail to. be ac companied by a large amount of sectarian arid phrty feeling. At the present hour this is peculiarly the case. The church is arrayed against dissent, dissent is arrayed against the church, iu competition for the largest share in the education of the children of tho poor; and the rivalry is in greater or less activity through every city and village of the kingdom.