THE EDITOR'S PORTFOLIO.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume I, Issue 11, 21 May 1842, Page 44

THE EDITOR'S PORTFOLIO.

. EDUCATION OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. ' '{Continued from our last."] : ,It can .scarcely vhe averred that any .considera-, •bte portion of the church-going of the "educated class" have more practical week-day Christianity than that which was predicted of the manual-labdur class. If we should ask any of the firet how much of what they listen to on Sunday influences their views and acts in life, they would be sorely puzzled to answer the question/ Yet there are no institutions of pubhe instruction, both as supported by state estaI blishments and by the zeal of private associations, more largely endowed than the ecclesiasi tical, no part of our well-being more cared for. What is the cause of so small a harvest from so immense a cultivation? Why does not the seed so plentifully sown fructify and produce ? There is (but one answer to this question— We ABE NOT A MORALLY EDUCATED PEOPLE. There is a barrenness of soil among us, where genuine Christianity refuses to take root; there is a worse, there are the thorns of an inherent selfishness, which choke it; tares pre-occupy the whole field, and the husbandmen sow in vain. As was predicated of their efforts to excavate the lower classes from the heathenism in which they are embedded, our religious guides address themselves to unprepared minds much higher up in the social scale. Yet, if a stranger to the actual religious condition of the " educated " were to hear our talk upon the subject, he might mistake us for a religious people : if he contemplated our animosity, division, and violence in the matter, although he might miss the spirit of Christianity, he could not fail to be struck with our zeal, each for his own dogmas, and for their substitution, by the force of indirect persecution for all others; dogmas, too, so often adopted yesterday for others as dogmatically maintained the day before — " As if religion were intended For nothing else but to be mended."

Nay, he would see religious feeling running into the most extravagant credulity and fanaticism among us ; and, if he did not know that that melancholy extreme is capable of a physiological explanation, as in actual disease of the brain, which sees visions, hears voices, and dreams dreams, he might conclude that we are an overreligious generation. But the indifference and the enthusiasm have alike their origin in an imperfect education, in unprepared, uncultivated feelings, which, according to the predisposition and temperament, are either roused to success by the mere sympathy, the hysteria of a diseased enthusiasm, or are not stirred at all. A catalogue of our social defects, all referable to the -education wherewith we are mocked, might be expatiated upon to the extent of a volume ; the remnants these of barbarism which still cling to us and our institutions, customs, habits, and manners. I will venture to enumerate a few of these. We direct yet, for example, an evil eye to our fellow-men in other communities, and speak of our " natural enemies." We are disgraced by national jealousies, national antipathies, commercial restrictions, and often offensive war. We have our game-laws and criminal code also to account for. Brought to the standard of sound ethics and reason, there are many of our customs that have as little chance as these of escaping the reproach of barbarisms, which an educated people would disown; cruel rural sports, for example, foxhunting, horse-racing, betting, gambling, prizefighting, duelling, and excessive conviviality. The character and engrossing claims of rural sports, as they are called, will astonish a future better-educated age. Such an age will scarcely believe " the butcher work that then befel," the unsparing slaughter of all that is furred and feathered and finned, in field and flood, " on mountain, moss, and moor;" they will discredit the graft of the hunting stage of the race upon a civilization, at its lowest, immensely in advance of that stage ; they will reject the story that the boast of the Iroquois and the Esquimaux was also the distinction of the most polished ornaments of our drawing-rooms, namely, the havoc of their unerring aim, the life they have extinguished, the blood they have shed, the "head of game" they have gloried over as trophies spread out dead before them, and the larders which' they have outdone the butcher in stocking. All is not right in our habits of thinking : in other words, in our own education, — when our "elite" can claim, and multitudes can accord, a certain distinction to a " capital shot," the victor in what the Olympics knew not — a " steeple chase," — or the proprietor of a pony which can trot sixteen miles an hour.

I know the ready answer to such strictures on rural sports, and that answer implies the very educational vacuum which there is so much reason to deplore. It is of great importance, it is said, to our own rural population, that the aristocracy should pass a reasonable portion of their time in the country. They are the spoiled children of excitement, and if you withhold that in the country, they will seek it in the capital, in pursuits and pleasures infinitely more debasing and more ruinous to health and fortune. Look at Paris. Is an educated aristocracy here spoken of ? Is it indeed so, that in the alternative of their urban or rural excitements, the objects are so low ? Is it indeed so, that, without the slaughter of its innocent animals, which, spread a living poetry over its fields, our " better classes " find no attraction in the country, no delight in '* the green fields of England in the merry month of May," no luxury in the roses of June, the pride of July, the mellowness of autumn, that they indeed — " Renounce the boundless store

Of charm* which Nature to her votary yields, The warbling woodland, the resounding shore, The pomp of "groves, and garniture of field*,

All that the genial ray of morningjgjldt^ And all that echoes to the song of evfen*, ' All that the mountain's sheltering bosom rfhiekfo, And all the dread; magnificence of Heaven fv Can we have -a more rousmg proof -than ftfr of a defective, nay,* a }>erverted education i i say perverted,' for the barbarism *is actually inculcated. The vacuum is filled by precept and example with images of rural slaughter; the young idea is taught to shoot most carefully) and the tender thought assiduously reared, which longs for manhood and bloodshed. The spirit of severity, and even cruelty and blood, of our criminal code, has with no small reason been imputed, in some respects, to this remnant of the hunting stage of society. -, '" The evils suffered by society from ignorance of the human faculties and their right ajlpication, will be more obvious when we come to inquire what the faculties and their relations are ; it may suffice,* at present, to say that happiness is rarely, if ever, attained, and that the preponderance of selfish feelings, which are incapable of rational, satisfaction, verifies the truth that "all is vamtv.and vexation of spirit." Ignorance of physical and organic conditions of health produce disease, while it transmits the consequences in weakened constitutions to offspring. The selfish desire of wealth brings together, in matrimonial alliance, the predisposed to disease and insanity, and bitter domestic suffering is the consequence. The same desire of wealth, added to ambition to rise above others, regulate or rather derange the whole system of life, and there is not one ray of light but disregarded Christianity to guide in a direction more consistent with real happiness. This is ignorance of the moral conditions of human weal. An enlightened friend of the author's once asked an excellent young man about to embark for India, what views he- entertained of life, aud the objects of his own existence. The question was new to him : he had been " welL educated," in the common acceptation of the* words, but he had never conceived that life had any higher aim than to acquire a fortune, marry, rear,a family, live in a fine house, drink expensive wines, die, and go to heaven ! There was no provision in this for reaping enjoyment from the higher faculties of his nature; he was not aware that these had any other function to perform than to regulate his conduct in the pursuit of the gratification of his inferior feelings. This is the condition of mind in which almost all young men of the upper and middle classes of society enter into active life ; and nothing can well be conceived more disadvantageous to their success and happiness. Those who are what is called religiously educated are not more fortunate ; because no sect in religion has yet addressed itself to the duty of teaching the nature of man the value of pursuits in hie, the institutions of society, and the relation of all these to the religious and moral faculties of man. Without understanding these, no person entering upon active life can see his way clearly, or entertain consistent or elevated views of duty, and the true sources of happiness. : This deficiency in knowledge is remarkably exemplified in young men born to large <lfortunes, who have succeeded in minority to IBeir paternal estates, and, on attaining majority, are, by law, intitled to pursue their own happiness in. their own way. It is quite lamentable to observe the humble, the debasing course they almost always adopt. Rational views of themselves, of human nature, and of the institutions of society, would be invaluable to such individuals; but they have no adequate means of obtaining them, while positively false views have been implanted in their minds by a perverted education. I grant the case to be an extreme one, of a young gentleman of large fortune, not destitute of talents and good feeling, and regularly subjected to all the appliances of deadlanguage education at school and college, who, on the day of his majority, was declared a free man, with power to choose the most likely road to real happiness. What did he do ? He established, of course, a stud of hunters, a pack of hounds, and a whole armoury of fowling-pieces — galloping and blazing and slaughtering being universally held inseparable from wealth and rank, in the present state jof civilization. Coachdriving, either of private four-in-hand vehicles or the public conveyances, is no longer sanctioned by general approbation, as suiting the age* nevertheless, our hopeful bad a trial of coach-driving. From this he was diverted by matrimony, and post-nuptially took to another gratification of his faculties, of rather an original kind : he placed cats upon a float in the middle of a pond, and sent dogs to swim in and attack them ! This last occupation would have been disdained by a young nobleman of immense possessions, who, at a feast in honour of his majority, manifested the best natural disposition, by acknowledging that he had always been taught, and had always felt, that the great duty imposed upon him by his rank and fortune, was to do good. — Necessity of Popular Education as a National Object.

[To be continued.']

We beg to inform our friends residing at thi Port, that copies of this paper can he had of Mr. Moorf*

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