| | | | | said a delighted hearer once the Reverend Rowland-Hill, | as he was coming out of the vestry, after sermon; ~~ | replied the preacher, gravely. . Here was wit and | wisdom and sanctity all in one. There is nothing more dangerous | for frail mortality than praise. To be praised by others at any time, | but especially in public, and with a display, is to be led into a sore | temptation; to praise ourselves, is to turn our fairest sanctity into | sin, and to confound our healthy reason with one of the most | cunning sophisms in the Devil's logic. All men offend, more or | less, in this point; but in a pre-eminent degree all corporations, and | all public dinners, whatsoever dishes they may spread out to the | | general stomach seldom fails to sauce them bountifully with the | copious liquor of self-laudation and self-glorification. Saints and | sinners, clergy and laity, kirkmen, with and without a manse, | however diversely they may feast together in all other respects, | agree in this, that they are very prone to praise themselves, | exceedingly apt to turn the banqueting hall into a multiplied | echo-chamber of their own deserts. It is the deepest-rooted instinct of | the old Adam, that will not be eradicated by human hands; we | must even be content that it shall exist, only not without an | occasional protest. Here, for instance,

"Auld Scotland"

| has been going on for a century and a half or so, speaking to | herself audibly, and to all the world, about her established church | and her parochial schools, her parochial schools and her | established church and her parochial schools, asseverating stoutly, | right and left, that by virtue of these things, and these things only, | Scotland has attained to be, what it unquestionably is; (!) the most | moral and the best educated nation in the world: ~~ when, in the | midst of all this billowy tide of self-gratulation, it happens | accidentally that a good Christian merchant in Glasgow, or a pious | missionary in Edinburgh, looks into this or the other most obvious | settlement of swarming humanity at the very parish church door, | and finds that not one-third of the best educated people in Europe | can spell sense out of their Protestant Bible, and not one half of | them ever were taught to lisp a prayer. Here was a discovery! here | was a rottenness laid bare in the midst of our proud architecture of | sounding plausibilities, which not one Stow and one Chalmers, but | a whole parliament of such men were required to bring back to | soundness. And, in the meantime, while the stench of these | putrefying sores is yet strong in the nostrils of men, what happens? | The model school of ecclesiastical Christendom, the patron | establishment of Europe, the Kirk of Scotland, falls to pieces! ~~ | stands, to say the least of it, as the mere fragment and shell of what | it was; while, at the same time, government inspectors, and visiters | of Dick Bequest trusteeships, go about the country telling us (as | smoothly as they can) that our parochial schools, also, are weighed | in the balance and found wanting; that, instead of being the most | perfect and normal institutions of the kind in Europe, they are, in | many respects, the most imperfect and abortive; so narrow, in | many cases, that the best way to enlarge them is to pull them | down; so crazy, here and there, that, like an old shoe, though much | vamping may make them better, it never can make them good; in | short, that our educational institutions require, not merely a reform, | but a revolution; that we must change all our principles, and all our | habits, and learn to take off our hat to the "Dominie," not to the | Duke and the D.D. To such conclusion the reiterated echoings of | inane self-laudation have led the reflecting men of his generation. | SCOTLAND, we have at last found out, with her established | church and her parochial schools, is

"a half-educated nation, | both in the quantity and quality of her educational institutions and | truly we, . | The great leading feature of our Scottish system of parochial | instruction, has been from the beginning, and is now, exclusive | aristocratic influence, and ecclesiastical control. To bring before | the public eye a few important facts with respect to the practical | working of this system, is the subject of the present paper. As, | however, the principles on which that practice has proceeded may | not be so well known to our readers beyond the Tweed as it is to | ourselves, we shall, in the first place, jot down a few historical and | legal points, which may serve as nuclei to the English reader, | round which the variety of practical detail will conveniently | crystallize itself. | In the first place, then, we, acknowledge with gratitude that we | owe our educational reputation, such as it is, altogether to our | Presbyterian church, to our ultra-Protestantism, as the fashionable | phrase now runs. This, indeed, is only natural; for, while Papists | and Puseyites may consistently content themselves with the | education of the clergy only, the assertors of private judgment, | who allow of no statutory mediator between the individual | understanding and the Bible, must , if they will not give up their | distinguishing principle, consider it a great public duty to train up | every individual member of a Protestant state to such a pitch that | he shall be able to judge of the evidences of Christianity, and to | read the Bible with discrimination for himself. It is not sufficient | for a true Protestant, as it is for a Papist or a Puseyite, that he shall | get the Church Catechism by heart, and say his prayers at the | appointed time and place, according to the sacerdotal formula, but | he must read and study the Bible; a book | which is not one book, but many books ~~

"according the | Scriptures daily,"

with judgment and discrimination, as well | as with love and wonder,

"whether these things are so."

| A consistent Protestant presbyter, therefore, MUST educate the | people; he must believe schools to be a necessity to pulpits, as the | foundation of a building is to the superstructure. It is delightful, | accordingly, to find in what a right hearty and honest spirit the | matter of education was taken up by Knox and our early reformers. | There is much in the following well-known scheme, (composed by | Knox and others, so early as 1560,) which the ripest educationists | of the present day are only now beginning, in the most imperfect | and fragmentary manner, to put into practice. | | | | We do not quote this extract, of course, to express approval of | every thing contained in it; but it conveys to the English reader a | clear insight into the origin of our present system of education in | Scotland, as a thing essentially attached and subordinate to the | church; as a thing which the church regarded as substantially a part | of itself, and which owes its existence, in its present shape, mainly, | if not exclusively, to clerical recommendation and exertion. When, | therefore, the churchmen of the present day urge eagerly their | ancient claims to an exclusive control and jurisdiction in the matter | of schools, they advance a plea which, however impolitic, | pernicious, and unjust, is not altogether so unreasonable as many | which the impertinent ambition of that class of men continually | urges them to prefer. For not only have they a direct and strong | interest, and a manifest vocation, to mould the juvenile mind, as | such as may be, after their peculiar fashion; but they can point | historically to deeds done, and say, this garden I have redeemed | from the waste with my own space, ~~ this well I have struck out | of the rock with my own hammer. Have not I, therefore, a good | title, the only good title, to the continued property and | supervisorship of it? This is the language which the church has | been accustomed to hold; and, without stopping at present to | analyse it accurately, and expose its sophisms, we shall merely | observe, that so far as it states the deep obligation which Scotsmen, | of all denominations, owe to the Presbyterian Scottish Reformers, | in the matter of schools, it states a truth, which only an extremely | ignorant, or an extremely ungenerous, mind would wish to gainsay. | As a matter of history, it is undeniable, that our parochial schools | owe their existence, and their preservation, to the Presbyterian | church; that they were, and had been de facto, | long before they were de jure, part | and parcel of the national church. We are not, therefore, to be | surprised if, in a well-known act of parliament, (1699 c. 22,) | entitled, an "act for settling the quiet and peace of the CHURCH" | ~~ not as act for settling the order of schools | and universities ~~ we find the following clause: . | Schools are here treated by the statute law, as what they were by | the practice and custom of the land ~~ | institutions created by the influence, and dependent on the power | of the church. Does any person wish to understand this | concatenation and subordination of church and school better than | he can do by the dead letter of an old book? let him look to the | Free Church of Scotland ~~ a church only a year old. That church | has already one hundred and twenty-two schools, besides a large | normal school; and it has a theological college, soon to be | extended into a secular university. These things it has: what it will | have after such brave beginnings, no heart that believes in human | nature can doubt. We see, therefore, before our eyes, bodily, that | there is a virtue in a church to create a school; and if to create, then | also to command it: for surely I have a right ( | prima facie at least) to command my own creature; and as it | now is with the Free Church, and the Free Church school, so it | anciently was with the parochial schools of the Establishment ~~ | ECCLESIASTICAL CONTROL belonged to | the very essence of their constitution. | So much for this influence, ~~ what we may, by way of distinction, | call the main and originating, the positive and plastic influence, | that created and sustains the parochial system in Scotland. The | other influence, that of the aristocracy, was at first merely | secondary and accessory, and has long been more negative and | obstructive, than positive and creative, in its operation. The | schools could not be erected and maintained, of course, without | money: the aristocracy, with that unscrupulous greed which has | ever been characteristic of them, had seized on all the public | patrimony of the country, the church lands: there was no money | for schools or schoolmasters, except what these men could be | forced to refund out of their iniquitous spoils. Hence came | aristocratic influence. The church and the schools were both | dependent on the good will of the aristocracy, by a necessity base, | indeed, but strong, the necessity that makes a man's sublimest | thoughts, and most heavenward aspirations, daily dependent on his | | stomach. The aristocracy had to supply a body to that educational | soul which had come out from the church; and the history of | Scotland, for three hundred years, loudly testifies, that in | proportion as the soul was large and vast in its projects, so the | body was meagre and crippled in the means which it supplied for | their execution. | The system of joint aristocratic and clerical administration, which | distinguishes the parish schools of Scotland at the present day, was | finally settled and arranged by the act of King William 1696, c. 26, | entitled, an "act for settling schools." But as the provisions of his | act were afterwards improved and extended by an act passed in the | year 1803, (43 Geo. III. c. 54,) entitled, "an act for making better | provision for the parochial schoolmasters and for the better | government of the parish schools in Scotland," commonly called, | the Schoolmasters' Act, we shall , in the few following points of | jurisprudential detail, refer exclusively to the latter statute. | The burden of providing a school and a schoolhouse for each | parish, is laid by this act on the heritors; the right of electing a | schoolmaster is given to a meeting composed of the landed | proprietors and the clergyman of the parish, of which meeting the | clergyman is a sort of permanent convener: and the right of trial of | qualification, of suspension and deposition of the schoolmaster, as | of a general superintendence over the schools, is given to the | presbytery. These are the general features of the act; but to a | person who studies it carefully, two things strike him through the | whole with extraordinary prominence: namely | The extreme niggardliness of the educational provision | made by the heritoes, and the extreme jealousy of exclusive | jurisdiction and supervision on the part of the church. We are, in | the first section, for instance, told, ; and in sec. II. where | provision is made for two schoolmasters in very large parishes, the | salary of each teacher is fixed absolutely at the minimum of £16; | and ! Can any thing more niggardly be conceived? Men | who possess whole parishes and counties and islands, grudging | ?32 to a brace of schoolmasters; and with this paltry pittance, | refusing him a stone wall to shelter him from the Highland snow, | and a bit (

"one fourth part of a Scots acre"

) of moor | ground for a kail yard! O fie! fie! if this be the generosity of our | Scottish nobles, let no honest man be of their council. These men | boast of their pedigree; and truly shabbiness has been entailed | upon them from the days when they vexed the righteous spirit of | John Knox even until now. But this is not all the magnanimity of | the Scottish aristocracy in respect of education. This large salary | of ?16 is not all to come out of the

"game preservers'"

| pockets; they are to have , one half of the sum. O | tales ! and what boon do the poor | tenants for their share of this burden? Are they to have any | voice in the election of the poor half-starved

"Dominie",

| to whom they are to commit the education of their own children? | No! they are to share the burdens but not to share the privileges. | This is the law of aristocracy. The heritor may elect whatsoever | creature he chooses, by himself, or , ~~ that is to say, by | every miserable jobbing attorney whom he may choose to employ | to lift his rack-rents, ~~ the absentee heritor who is racing at | Doncaster or living riotously at Naples, the man who has no | interest in the parish, except the negative interest to save the half of | £16, or perhaps only the half or the quarter of that yearly, ~~ is to | have a voice in the election of a schoolmaster, while the | respectable, industrious, intelligent tenant, is to have none. No! | not even the half of a voice; but he must pay the half of the salary. | Call you this justice, masters, not speak of | NOBILILTY? | We shall now make one or two extracts from the act of Parliament | to show the extent to which ecclesiastical control and | superintendence is maintained over the schools. In sec. 16, it is | enacted that the schoolmaster elect shall appear before the | presbytery, within whose bounds the parish is situated, and | . Then sec. 18 enacts farther, that ; and sec. 19 | farther enacts, that, . And finally, sec. 21 enacts, | | | These extracts are sufficient, without comment. It does not require | much penetration to see what they mean. In the original erection | of the schools, in the periodical election of the schoolmaster, and | the provision for his comfort, the heritors, that is to say, the landed | aristocracy, are the ruling and almost exclusive power; they are | constituted into a permanent local board to determine the quantity | and quality of education to be given in the school; and the | presbytery of the bounds acts in the double capacity of an | exclusive local board of educational inspectors, and an exclusive | court of local jurisdiction. The question now remains to be asked, | What peculiar claims the parties possessing these exclusive | privileges have to possess them? What peculiar aptitude the | persons, on whom the performance of such high duties is laid, here | to perform them? And then another, and the most important | question, How have these parties actually exercised these | privileges, and performed these duties? | In answering these questions, the first and most obvious remark to | be made is, that any parties claiming an exclusive privilege, must | make out, not merely a strong case of right and interest to interfere | on their part, but a strong case of want of all right and interest on | the part of all other persons. Now, this is manifestly both a hard | and a harsh thing to do; and the consequence is, that for twenty | claims of exclusive privilege that are set up by ecclesiastical or | other corporations, not one of them will stand ground for a minute | before any bar, except the bar of the corporation itself, and those | who are dependent upon it. Such claims, in fact, do generally | imply, not merely an overweening conceit, and an ignorant | self-satisfaction, on the part of the claimant, but a disposition | essentially ungenerous and base towards all other claimants. To sit | and hear an argument of a amenable General Assembly, in favour | of university tests, or any other exclusive privilege, is indeed a | sorry sederunt. The ears of the auditor are circum-undulated | grandly with a magnificent swell of awe-inspiring sounds ~~ such | as church and state, morality, religion, humanity, Christianity, and | what not; and yet, through all this voluminosity of plausible | words, a little child may see there is nothing in the logic or rhetoric | of the long declamation, but an undue appreciation of self, and an | undue depreciation of others. This is unquestionably all that need | be said on the question of university tests, that has lately received | so much discussion in Scotland. Public opinion and public | practice have long ago decided against them; and does it stand | otherwise with the schools? Assuredly not. The well-deservings | of the Presbyterian clergy of Scotland, in respect of the parochial | schools, have been already stated in this paper, and most gratefully | acknowledged; but these well-deservings, be remarked, though | they establish the claims of the clergy to have much to say in the | superintendence of national education, are very far from founding | in them any right to say all. And the fact is the reasonable part of | our churchmen are now so thoroughly convinced of the | insufficiency of the act 1803, as respects educational | supervisorship, that they have, though not without considerable | opposition on the part of some bigoted brethren, submitted to the | imposition, first of the one, and then an additional inspector of | schools appointed by the crown. This is a confession of the | strongest kind, that the exclusive privilege of the presbyteries has | not proved salutary. How, indeed, could it have been otherwise? | If, as Solomon says, , shall a Scottish corporation of | presbyters say, that in respect, not of matters scholastic, matters | that can be only secondary and subordinate to them, they will | manage matters best when they systematically exclude the advice | and co-operation of all other classes of men, and specially of | persons who have made education, in all the wide variety of its | matter and method, a professional study? It is too gross a | proposition to be stated. And yet, as we have seen lately in the | resolutions in favour of university tests, carried with only one | dissenting voice in the Kirk Assembly, nilil | est tan turpe quod nom fecerit aliquis cleriourum . | Generosity and largeness of heart, are certainly not clerical virtues. | Churchmen are a narrow-chested generation. We return them, | therefore, our most heartfelt thanks for this small boon of | tolerating state inspectorship of schools. To speak honestly, we | did not expect even this from them. But much more remains to be | done; much, we fear, that in the present temper and position of | church parties, neither will be done, nor can be done. It was, it will | be remarked, in the capacity of Presbyterians, that our clergy | exerted their influence to get schools founded and maintained in | every parish of Scotland; it is to the body of Presbyterian clergy | that Scotland is indebted for all the good that has hitherto resulted | from these institutions. It is the whole body of the Presbyterian | clergy, therefore, and not this or the other section of them, that are | entitled in justice to prefer a claim for a large share (of course we | do not say an exclusive share) in the control and administration of | them. But this plain sentence of common equity, that section of | the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, called the Established | Church, never would hear; did not hear after the original minor | dissents in the last century; does not hear now, after the great | dissent of the Free Church in 1843. The pious Presbyterian men, | who headed and who head these dissents, had, and have, as just a | claim, in nature and fact, to have a voice in the management of the | NATIONAL parish schools, as the Presbyterian men, pious and | not pious, who did not dissent. For there is no crime, before a truly | Protestant government, in dissent; there may be, and there often is, | a great virtue. None but a Puseyite can consistently gainsay this. | What shall we say then, if, from the management of the | Presbyterian schools of this country, from | | the dignities and emoluments, however small, of Presbyterian | schoolmasters, a large section of the most pious and zealous | Presbyterians of the country are, by the monopolizing law of 1803, | excluded? We can only say, that these monopolizers have law in | their favour, but not justice; that injustice of the grossest kind is | committed by the national schools ~~ schools intended for, and | originally used by, the great majority of the nation ~~ being given | over as private property to one section of those who profess the | national religion. For the national religion of Scotland, parties may | require to be reminded, is not the Establishment or the Free | Church, the state-paid churchmen or the voluntaries; not patronage, | and a manse and glebe, but Presbytery and the Shorter Catechism. | Wherever these things are, there also the Church of Scotland is. | The church of the Duke of Buccleuch has no more right to an | exclusive supervisorship of the parish schools of the nation, than | the church of Janet Frazer. If Janet Frazer has a son of pedagogic | propensities, he has as just a title to a school-house, and 16 pounds | a-year, as the son of one of his lordship's flunkeys. | These remarks may be enough for the ecclesiastical element in the | system of our national schools. With regard to the laic element, we | have already expressed our opinion, that there is no hint of justice | in giving the exclusive control of these matters to heritors: we now | add, that much less is there any propriety or expediency of any | kind. The heritors are persons, in nine cases out of ten, who have | the least personal interest in the well-being of the parish school. If, | indeed, there were an act of Parliaments, (as we think in policy | there ought to be,) compelling heritors to reside two-thirds of the | year on their estate, or else to pay a heavy fine, for local and | parochial purposes, then the heritors might have some substantial | interest in the school of the parish to which they belong. But some | of them, we well know, possess whole parishes and districts, and | live in London or in Paris; and even of those who perform their | social duties to the nation of which they are a part, by living at | least one-half of the year on their estates, how few are there who | send their children to be educated at the parochial schools? The | parochial schools are, in fact, so miserably provided in all respects, | the schoolmaster is systematically kept so much beneath the level | of what is called gentlemanship in this country, that no heritor | would send his children to the parochial school, where he is within | reasonable reach of a good burgh academy. Moreover, if the | heritors are to act with the clergy as an educational board in each | parochial district, it were but reasonable that they should perform | their important public functions in their own persons, and not in | that negligent fashion which the act allows, . What is | this, as we already stated, but to surrender the important local trust, | with which they are honoured, to any perking creature of an | attorney in the county town, who may happen to pay a visit to the | parish once a-year for the purpose of collecting rents? But the | truth unfortunately is, and must be repeated, that, of all men in the | parish, the heritors and their factors are precisely the persons who | have the least interest in improving and elevating the school of the | district. It never can be improved, in the first place, except at their | expense; and as they are generally persons of expensive habits, and | often in debt, it is obvious they will not, in many cases, be apt to | look on the poor schoolmaster's claims with more complacency | than on their wife's dressmaker's account, or their own tailor's bill. | We come to this conclusion, therefore, on the whole matter, that | neither clergy nor heritors can prefer any valid claim to an exclusive direction of parochial education in | Scotland; and no sane man will wonder that it should be so. Both | heritors and clergy have something else to do, than to attend to | education; the heritors, those of them who are not altogether idlers | and vagabonds, are busy with county politics, with agricultural | improvements, or with steeple-chases. The clergy are busy with | sermons, and sick persons, and with Lord Aberdeen's Bill. Human | beings truly are not of that calibre of conscience, or texture of | brawn, to be wisely intrusted with any great public concern in a | merely secondary and accidental way. Education is a great public | concern; and, like other concerns of the like nature, can be safely | intrusted only to official and responsible persons, specially | exercised in the principles and in the details of the department over | which they are called to preside. It has been the grand practical | mistake of his country, a radical error of wide-spreading malignity, | to imagine that anybody | is good enough for a teacher, and that | anybody | may take upon himself, as a light and secondary matter, the | important business of superintending national education. We | would commit the patronage and superintendance of parochial and | other schools in every country, to a local board of office-bearers, | specially appointed and paid for that purpose; these boards should | consist not of clergymen only, or heritors only, but of persons of | influence and intelligence generally; to be elected not by the crown | exclusively, or by the church exclusively, or | by anybody | exclusively, but by different bodies having interest, so as to | prevent the possibility of their becoming mere instruments of | church or state partisanship. From such local educational boards, | clad with official authority, and subject to official responsibility, | no sane man would wish to exclude the clergy; on the contrary, we | would come willingly forward, and welcome the pious Christian | men of all denominations, and beseech them to join with us, in the | noble and arduous work of education reform; we wish to exclude | no person of piety and intelligence from co-operation in this grand | national work; and it is precisely because we, as lay-education | reformers, are conscious to ourselves of no mean jealousy towards | the established clergy, or any other churchmen, that we cannot | comprehend why they should wish to exclude us. Party spirit, | indeed, purse and pedigree, lord it so tyrannically over nature, | truth, and justice, over human feeling and | | Christian principle in this country, that any such subapical scheme | of co-operation as we are projecting is not likely soon to take | place. Perhaps without a smart shock of a REVOLUTION, neither | this nor any other social change of importance, will be carried | through in this most factious and foolish land. Nevertheless, | though folly and faction may bawl in the market-places, reason and | moderation must make a protest. If the crime must be committed, | you honest reader, and I, may at least wash our hands, and be clean | . | We now come to the question of fact, How have these privileged | parties, the landed aristocracy, and the clergy, actually exercised | their exclusive rights, and performed their self-assumed duties? ~~ | But this part of the subject we must reserve till next month.