influence the disposition, because this is the time of life when deep and strong impressions are made.

In after life, bad books can always be met by good ones. If we should concede to the adversaries of education the superior activity of those who circulate noxious writings to that of those who wish to diffuse wholesome knowledge, or the avidity and relish with which one sort are received more than the other, the consequence would only be diversity of sentiment; and this is agreeable to experience. When men read and think, diversity of opinion ensues,-more perhaps than might be desired. Where men neither read nor reason, there is little diversity of opinion at all. Now what I contend for is, that amidst diversity of opinion, though it be an evil, public authority can support and maintain itself. The ascendancy which necessarily belongs to it, added to the reasons which strike every man in favour of order and tranquillity, will usually confer upon it strength sufficient to meet the difficulties which arise from diversity of sentiment. I have said that where the bulk of the common people are kept in profound ignorance, there is seldom much diversity of sentiment amongst them: whilst, therefore, government continues in possession of this sentiment all is well-but how if this sentiment take an opposite direction? how if it set in against the order of things which is established? It then actuates the whole mass, and that mass moves with a force which

can hardly be encountered. This is the case of most real danger, and this is a case most likely to arise where the common people are in a state of the greatest ignorance.

It has been alleged as another objection, that any intellectual attainment which others have not, though it were only the being able to read, indisposes the person who is conscious of it for bodily labour, for submission, for the offices which the poor are required to perform. The answer is, that were there any truth in the observation, of which I doubt extremely, it would form an objection, not to the instruction of the poor, but to the imperfectness and partiality with which that instruction is communicated. I should be glad to see the day when every child in the kingdom was taught to read; and then, besides other advantages, there would be an end of the pretence for this objection.

I know not whether the opinion we are considering may not have arisen from the extraordinary events which have taken place in the age in which we live; but I am convinced that these events lead to a conclusion the very opposite of that which is thus drawn from them. The transactions nearest to us and the freshest in our memory, are those of our sister kingdom. And what do they teach us?—If ignorance could have secured the quiet of a country, Ireland had remained at rest: for in no country of Europe were the poor in a state of lower degra

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dation, or under a more complete absence of every species of rational education. The friends of public order in that kingdom bewailed this circumstance, both as the source of the calamities which they endured, and as rendering the evil almost impossible to be remedied. When the people were once deluded, the delusion was incurable: such was their ignorance, that they were not only liable to be practised upon by the grossest impositions, but there was no way of setting them right; no approach could be made, no access could be gained to their understanding; no argument could be addressed to them but at the point of the bayonet. Let the case of Ireland, therefore, stand for ever as a warning against the system of ignorance.

The convulsions in France did not arise from any care that was taken to teach the poor. I believe that in no civilized country, Ireland perhaps excepted, was the education of the poor more neglected. The genius of the religion tended to interdict reading and books to the common people, and the ancient government did not counteract that tendency. We have seen the consequence-a sentiment hostile to the established government spread amongst the people, and that happened, which we have already said will happen under like circumstances when they did move, they moved in a mass. Here, therefore, is a second instance against the system of ignorance.

The ignorant system has for ages been the prin

ciple of the Turkish government: so much so, as till within a very few years, to forbid the introduction into their dominions of the art of printing. Yet the countries subject to that government have, more than any others with which we are acquainted, been the scenes of insurrection and disturbance. This, therefore, though not properly a modern, is another and a third strong instance against the system of ignorance.

I do not compare our country with foreign nations; but if we may compare one part of the island with another, it is understood, I believe, that there is no part in which reading is so universal as in Scotland; yet I never heard that any danger arose from thence to government, or any loss of public industry in the various branches of manufactures which are carried on in that country.

Reading also is much more general in the northern than the southern parts of the island. Has any inconvenience been from thence perceived, any disadvantage to the state, either political, moral, or commercial?

From instances we pass on to authorities.

The government of Russia, though notoriously a despotic and jealous government, has, in the hands both of its present and late sovereign, applied itself industriously to the erecting of village schools, and to other methods of promoting (at least as far as

reading) the education of the very lowest order of its subjects.

The present king of Prussia, as tenacious as his ancestors of the prerogatives of his station, has nevertheless imitated his neighbour, in supplying what he found and considered as a defect in this respect in the economical institutions of the country, and has formed various regulations and provisions for that purpose.

The proprietors and planters of estates in the West Indies have, by a resolution of their assembly in several of those islands, lately established a fund for the procuring of clergymen from England, for the purpose of instructing the children of negroes.

The late General Washington, who appears to have bent his mind to the subject of public education with peculiar attention, made provision in his will both for the education of the poor children of his neighbourhood, and the neighbourhood of his estates, and also for the education of the young slaves until the period of their legal manumission should arrive.

These are all so many concessions in favour of the expediency of educating the poor, and carry with them an answer to those who imagine that they see in it danger to the stability of government. The last two instances are particularly strong, because if education was not deemed to disqualify children for slavery, it cannot be inconsistent with any, even