ordered to serve a customer, or look after the haymakers; and learns practical life much sooner than any gentleman's son can possibly do. If the view that has been here opened is a right one, parents ought to beware how they withhold from their sons, if sufficiently strong and healthy, the advantages of a public school. The democratic character of the nobility of England, the democracy of the aristocracy, if I may be allowed so to call it, is very much to be attributed to the gregarious education they receive. In this manner, her public schools form a part of the constitution of the country. If they produce some vice, and a good deal of rudeness, they subdue pride, selfishness, and conceit; they create emulation, friendship, a love of truth, and a manly strength of mind. Let anyone watch the education of a youth of high expectations in Spain or Italy: he will see him followed everywhere by a servile flatterer, under the name of a preceptor, learning nothing but the varnish and the falsehood of the world,-the idol of his parents, and the torment of their friends. Men of sense, who have undergone this dangerous ordeal, all speak with envy and admiration of the public schools of England.

Let it be granted, however, that more may be taught by private tuition. I am far from agreeing that, for this reason, the boy of the private tutor will have any advantage over the boy of the public school. His knowledge will be out of place; his exertions of mind will fail of their effect, because they will not fit in with the minds of other men. His superiority in some branches of learning will be unheeded, and his inferiority in others will make him ridiculous. Upon the whole, there is perhaps no point from which a man can start, in any profession or pursuit, so advantageous as a complete and thorough knowledge of what is known by other young men, among whom he wishes to excel.

It being conceded that a boy of high expectations ought to be brought up at school, I am not disposed to contend that the education of our public schools is exactly what is right, or that it is all that is right. These schools were instituted at a time when all knowledge was contained. in the Greek and Latin classics, and no sound opinion or polished taste was to be found out of the learned languages. From this groundwork, however, the moderns have raised a prodigious edifice, both of science and of literature, of the whole of which our school education, from eight to eighteen, takes no notice whatever. The first thing, however, it must be admitted, is to learn how to learn: Il faut apprendre à apprendre;' and for this it is requisite that the first thing taught should be difficult to acquire and be retained when it is acquired. I know nothing so good for this purpose as the Latin grammar. Boys, it is said, do not understand it. They do understand, however, that a nominative case goes before the verb; and they come in a short time to learn where each part of speech must be placed, and how it depends upon another. If Mr. Locke is right in his estimate of the importance of words, this is a point of great consequence. And who can doubt that he is right? It is to a dogged application to the Latin grammar perhaps that the precision of men, when compared to women, in this country, is in great part to be attributed.*

The Latin grammar learnt, easy prose, then the poetry of Virgil, some arithmetic, the Greek granmar, Homer, some geometry, and a little geography, might come in their due order. Above all, I would make boys learn faithfully an abridgment of the History of England, and of the first and last volumes of Blackstone.

* I hear with pleasure that the masters of our public schools

have agreed upon an improved Latin grammar. (1864.)

French should be learnt early, in order to acquire the pronunciation, and because it is the general language of Europe; German and other languages, as far as it is possible. It will be sufficient to lay a foundation for learning, at a more mature age, those parts of knowledge that are likely to be sought voluntarily, and may be acquired easily.

I know not whether it would be practicable to introduce improvements of the kind I have mentioned into our great public schools. If the masters should. resist, what could be easier than to make a foundation for a certain number of boys, with the qualifications of being the sons of poor officers, who might afterwards choose their profession; and to institute at the same place a school where education might be conducted in a manner suitable to the knowledge of the present age ?*

As it is at present, there is no doubt that women of the higher ranks have much more knowledge and information, when their education is attended to, than men have. But I cannot see any reason why our boys should not, while they have the advantages of public schools, at the same time be taught to do a sum in the rule-of-three, and make themselves masters of the fact that James I. was not the son of Queen Elizabeth.†

*This is done to some extent at Wellington College. (1864.)

All the improvements suggested in this chapter, written forty-five years ago, are either

made or making, and the process will be greatly accelerated by the excellent Report of the Public Schools Commission. (1864.)

CHAPTER XXVI.

POOR-LAWS.

'Generally it is to be foreseen (provided) that the population of a kingdom, especially if it be not mown down by wars, exceed not the stock of the kingdom by which it is to be maintained.'--Bacon.

THERE was nothing, perhaps, in the whole state of England, which forty years ago was more threatening to its tranquillity, and the permanence of its Constitution, than the administration of the poorlaws. The perversion which had been made of them from the original meaning of the statute of Elizabeth, had at length fallen most heavily upon those who thought to draw from that abuse a selfish gain.

The statute of the 49th of Elizabeth seems to have had its rise in a general increase of idle poor throughout the country. The notion that this increase was owing to the dissolution of the monasteries is now given up; it having been clearly shown that the same complaint was made in Spain about the same time.* It is more probable that the introduction of legal order, and the cessation of internal war not long before, both in England and Spain, threw upon society a great number of vagabonds, who were accustomed to live by vagrancy and plunder. The Act of Elizabeth directed that the old and impotent should be provided for, and that the strong and healthy should be set to work. The first of these two directions is the law of a tender and humane people, and will, I hope, ever remain upon the statute-book of England. The

6

*This important fact was first brought to light in the Edinburgh Review.'

second direction is not equally easy of execution. A few casual beggars, indeed, might be provided for in this way; but when, from stoppage of trade, or any other cause, there exists a superabundant population, it is manifest that any work which could be done by the unemployed, would only be augmenting the stock of a market already overflowing. When this was found to be actually the case, the overseers, instead of furnishing work, supplied the unemployed with money. With the fluctuations of commerce, the issue of a fictitious currency, the vast increase of taxes, and, above all, in the years of scarcity during the great war, a new difficulty arose:-men who had large families found themselves unable to support them, although they were themselves employed, from the very low rate of wages compared with the price of food. Instead of a rise of wages, the natural and obvious remedy for such an evil, it was agreed that a certain sum of money should be paid for the support of each child at the house of his father. In this provision, introduced under the pressure of temporary distress, the farmer saw a means of reducing the price of labour. Having the market of labourers overstocked, and therefore at his command, he refused to give to the unmarried labourer more than was sufficient to support life; he gave the same to the married labourer, and paid out of the poor-rates the exact sum necessary for the subsistence of the labourer's children. By this scheme the ignorant employer thought he had reduced the price of labour to the lowest possible: and there have not been wanting men of enlightened minds disposed to exalt the scheme as the perfection of rural economy. The natural consequence of such a scheme, however, was in the first place to lower the character of the labourer: to make him pass his life in dependence, and see himself, instead of being able to rear an industrious family from the savings