AN ARGUMENT FOR EDUCATION.

Marlborough Press, Volume I, Issue 1, 6 January 1860, Page 4

AN ARGUMENT FOR EDUCATION.

The following, from a speech of Lord Macauley, is worth reading : “ A hundred and fifty years ago, England was one of the best governed and most prosperous countries in the world ; Scotland was, perhaps, tho rudest and poorest country that could lay any claim tb civilisation. The name of Scotchman was then uttered in this part of the island with contempt. The ablest Scotch contemplated the degraded state of their poorer countrymen with a feeling approaching to despair. It is well known that Fletcher, of Saltoun, a brave and accomplished man, a man who had drawn his sword for liberty, who had

suffered proscription and exile for liberty ; was so much disgusted and dismayed by the misery, the ignorance, the idleness, the lawlessness of the common people, that he proposed to make many thousands of them slaves. Nothing, he thought, but the discipline which kept order, and enforced exertion, among the negroes of a sugar colony —nothing but the lash and the stocks could reclaim the vagabonds, who infested every part of Scotland, from their indolent and predatory habits, and compel them to-support themselves by steady labour. He, therefore, soon after the revolution, published a pamphlet, in which he earnestly, and, as I believe, from the mere impulse of humanity and patriotism, recommended to the estates of the realm this sharp remedy, which alone, as he conceived, could remove the evil. Within a few months after the publication of that pamphlet a very different remedy was applied. The parliament, which sat at Edinburgh, passed an act for the establishment of parochial schools. What followed ? An improvement, such as the world had never seen, took place in the moral and intellectual character of the people. Soon, in spite of the rigour of the climate, in spite of the sterility of the earth, Scotland became a country which had no reason to envy the fairest portions of the globe. 'Wherever the Scotchman went — and there were few parts of the world to which he did not go —he carried his superiority with him. If he was admitted into a public office, he worked his way up to the highest post. If lie got employment in a brewery, or a factory, he was soon the foreman. If he took a shop, his trade was the best in the street. If he enlisted in the army, he became a colour-sergeant. If he went to a colony, he was the most thriving planter there. The Scotchman of the seventeenth century had been spoken of in London as we speak of the Esquimaux. The Scotchman of the eighteenth century was an object, not of scorn, but of envy. The cry was that, wherever he came, he got more than liis share ; that, mixed with Englishmen, or mixed with Irishmen, he rose to the top as surely as oil rises to the top of water. And what had produced this great revolution ? The Scotch air was still as cold, the Scotch rock as bare as ever. All the natural qualities of the Scotchman were still what they had been, when learned and benevolent men advised that be should be flogged like a beast of burden to his daily task. But the state had given him an education. That education was not, it is true, in all respects what it should have been ; but, such as it was, it had done more for the bleak and dreary shores of the Forth and Clyde, than the richest of soils, and the most genial of climates had done for Capua and Tarantum.

“ Now, are we in a condition to perform the inductive process, according to the rules laid down in the Novum Organum. We have two nations, closely connected, inhabiting the same island, sprung from the same blood, speaking the same language, governed by the same legislature, holding essentially the same religious faith, having the same allies and the same enemies. Of these two nations one was, one hundred and fifty years ago, as respects opulence and civilisation, in the highest rank among European communities, the other in the lowest rank. The opulent and highly civilised nation leaves the education of the people to free competition. In the poor and half-barbarous nation, the education of the people is undertaken by the State. The result is, that the first are last, and the last first. The common people of Scotland —it is vain to disguise the truth—have passed the common people of England. Free competition has produced effects of which we ought to be ashamed, and which must lower us in the opinion of every intelligent foreigner. If we look at the matter in the very lowest point of view, if we consider human beings merely as the producers of wealth, the difference between an intelligent and stupid population, estimated in pounds, shillings, and pence, exceeds a hundredfold the proposed outlay. Nor is this all. For every pound that you save in education, you will spend five in prosecutions, in prisons, and penal settlements.”