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they were directed, the utmost success for which the author dares to look, will have attended his humble labours. A new combination, for a beneficial end, of existing constructions, is an invention entitling to the royal patent. Every one is welcome to claim for himself, or any one else, any such stray idea, if he detects it in the following work; all the author asks is the use of it." Notwithstanding this modest declaration, many valuable original suggestions are to be found in the work.

In the first chapter Mr Simpson discusses the effects of ignorance on the condition of the labouring population. Of this class he describes successively the physical, intellectual, moral, and religious condition. "The physical condition of the whole class of manual labourers," he truly observes, "is much worse than it might be rendered, and rendered by themselves, if they were more enlightened than they are." By neglecting ventilation, cleanliness, and properly regulated exercise, their health is seriously injured, and their enjoyment of life diminished; and when to all this, says Mr Simpson, is superadded the curse of ardent spirits," the physical degradation of the manual labourer is complete." To crown the evil, the ruined constitutions of parents descend to their children, whose treatment during infancy, being dictated by ignorance, is eminently calculated still farther to destroy their health.

The intellectual condition of the working classes is next des cribed. This, says Mr Simpson, "we can scarcely expect, after what has been said of their physical, to find much more advanced; it is in truth very low, and this I fear with fewer exceptions of importance. Who has not felt and deplored, in his intercourse with nearly the whole class, even what are deemed the most 'decent' and respectable, the mass of prejudice, superstition, and general ignorance, which he is doomed to encounter? The working man rarely knows how to better his lot in life, by rational reflection on causes and consequences, founded on early acquaintance with the simpler principles of trade, the state of particular employments, the legitimate relation between labour and capital and between labourer and employer, the best employment of surplus earnings, the value of character, the marketable importance, to say no more, of sober and moral habits and intelligence, in short, on any practical views of the circumstances which influence his condition. On the contrary, he is the creature of impressions and impulses, the unresisting slave of sensual appetites, the ready dupe of the quack, the thrall of the fanatic, and, above all, the passive instrument of the political agitator, whose sinister views and falsehoods he is unable to detect, and who, by flattering his passions and prejudices, has power to sway him, like an overgrown child, to his purposes of injustice, violence, and destruction. He is told in

the harangue from the waggon, and he believes the demagogue's hypocritical slang, that his class, because the most numerous, are the most enlightened, and generous, and noble,—that they ought to make the laws, and rule the state; nay that their will ought to be law, as their judgment is absolute wisdom. The poor man who believes this, will believe any thing, and will act on his belief as a ready instrument of violence. Witness the peril of the merely accused, but yet untried and unconvicted, who chance to fall into his hands, and a single hint in the street will raise the mob against an innocent person; witness, too, the eager destruction of machinery and property, and the mad burning of food. Can we forget, moreover, the fury and violence with which benevolently offered medical aid in the cholera was repelled, under the impression that the doctors induced the disease to obtain subjects for dissection, and went the length of poisoning the water!"

Though we readily grant that this may be an accurate picture of the state of the mere rabble or scum of the working population in every part of the country, we cannot but regard it as much overcharged in relation to the great body of operatives in Britain. We believe it to apply literally to many of the cottonspinners in large manufacturing towns, such as Manchester and Glasgow; but, on surveying the tradesmen and mechanics of Scotland and, we are inclined to add, of England too-it will be found that they have a much larger proportion of shrewd ness and sagacity, and are by no means so much the creatures of impressions and impulses, the unresisting slaves of sensual appetites, and the passive tools of every political quack, as Mr Simpson represents them to be. He admits, indeed, the existence of numerous exceptions; but if we know the condition of the labouring population, he mistakes the exceptions for the general rule. In describing the moral and religious degradation of this class, he seems to us to fall into the same error. There can be no doubt, however, that in religion and morality, the lower as well as the higher orders are still lamentably deficient, and that the improvement of their education is loudly called for. The inefficiency of the labours of the clergy is well commented on in the following sentences.

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"For none of our wants is so much provision made as for our religious. There is error somewhere. Far indeed is it from my thoughts to impute blame to the excellent men who are labouring to excavate the people from the mass of heathenism in which they are so firmly imbedded.' They have no power over an erroneous system, and one not of their own creating. But the application of their part of the process is premature. It is as if the metallurgist were to attempt to melt the gold before it is worked out of the vein; education is the only excavat

ing process; preaching, in its utmost conceivable perfection, is a defective engine for the purpose; purely doctrinal preaching is utterly impotent.

"If education shall elevate, as it will be shewn that education alone can, the intellectual and moral, and, by necessary consequence, improve the physical, condition of man, education is the human means which must greatly aid in preparing him to receive religious impressions in their genuine spirit, and to apply them to their intended practical ends. Before the sower went forth to sow, the soil was prepared. This previous preparation is so plainly pointed out in the parable, that it is surprising that any one can lose sight of it. He was on his way to prepared ground, when some, seed fell by the uncultivated way-side. He did not expect to prepare the soil, by the act of sowing the seed, else the seed would have taken root by its own virtue on the bare wayside, and risen and ripened even among the thorns. I shall have occasion to return to the important subject of a legitimate use of human means; these are, in truth, God's means, for they are the working of the faculties which He hath bestowed that they may be employed, and as such must be perfectly reconcileable with a rational and scriptural view of spiritual influences, which some sincere but over-excited Christians regard as direct miracles. Alas! that their effects should be so little visible, and so limited! What the desiderated educational preparation shall be which will aid in furnishing the impulses to Christianity, not only for Sunday, but for every day of the week, will appear when I come to treat of Infant Education."

The author then adverts, to the glaring deficiencies of the present course of instruction, and to the grievous error of those who regard knowledge of reading, writing, and ciphering, as of themselves the marks of a well educated man. We cannot follow his excellent remarks in detail, and shall simply mention the conclusion at which he arrives; which is, that "if a national system of education is to stop at reading, writing, and ciphering, it would save much trouble, and often disappointment, not to attempt it at all." In this sentiment we fully concur.

Having discussed in the first chapter the condition of the "manual-labour class," Mr Simpson proceeds, in chapter second, to shew the effects of imperfect education on the condition of what are generally regarded as the "educated classes." The moderate amount of really useful and practical knowledge which ostensibly well-educated individuals most frequently possess, and the selfishness, pride, and incolerance which prevail amongst them, are strongly remarked upon; after which the author notices, in his usual happy style, various other signs of barbarism yet existing around us. "A catalogue of our social defects," says he, "all referable to the education wherewith we are mocked, might

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be expatiated upon to the extent of a volume; the remnants these, of barbarism which still clings 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 ene mies! 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, fox-hunting, horse-racing, betting, gambling, prize-fighting, 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 befell' 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 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 chace,' or the proprietor of a pony which can trot sixteen miles an hour!"

In the same chapter Mr Simpson points out the effects of ignorance in producing bad health, and in leading to false views of the aim of life. Its operation in the latter case he exemplifies by referring to the pursuits of young men born to large for. tunes, who have succeeded in minority to their paternal estates, and, on attaining majority, are entitled to pursue happiness in their own way. "It is quite lamentable," says he, “to observe the humbling, 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 posi

"I say engrossing claims; for I grant that killing game is as legitimate as killing mutton, and do not quarrel with a subordinate and moderate resort to the field by those whose main avocations are more useful and dignified. It is a healthful exercise; I cannot concede to it a higher merit."

tively false views have been implanted in their minds by a perverted education." A very instructive case of a young man of this description is then detailed, but to this we have room only to allude.

Among the causes of the evils which afflict the upper ranks, the author rightly considers the absence of any thing like adequate moral training as one of the most prominent. He shews that moral education has long been appreciated and recommended by philosophers, though it is only now that their advice is beginning to be followed. Milton and Locke both advocated moral training. The latter, in his "Thoughts concerning Education," says: "Learning must be had but in the second place, as subservient only to greater qualities. Seek out somebody (as your son's tutor,) that may know how discreetly to form his manners: place him in hands where you may as much as possible secure his innocence, cherish and nurse up the good, and gently correct and weed out any bad inclinations, and set. tle him in good habits. This is the main point, and this being provided for, learning may be had into the bargain." Lord Kames also has the following excellent remarks. "It appears unaccountable that our teachers generally have directed their instructions to the head, with very little attention to the heart. From Aristotle down to Locke, books without number have been composed for cultivating and improving the understanding : few in proportion for cultivating and improving the affections. Yet surely, as man is intended to be more an active than a contemplative being, the educating of a young man to behave properly in society, is of still greater importance than the making him even a Solomon for knowledge."

Mr Simpson is a decided opponent of the sacrifice of so many years to classical education as are generally devoted to it. He fully discusses the advantages claimed for it by its advocates, and successfully points out its bad effects in a moral point of Of his remarks on this subject our space will admit only a short specimen :-"The advocates of the dead languages uniformly avoid, or at least mistake, the true ground of the controversy. They expatiate on the absolute merits of classical literature, but never dream of comparing it with the education which it excludes. When the question, however, is set on this latter ground, it is capable of great abridgment; for, though we should grant much of absolute value to the actual attainment of classical accomplishment, the experience of centuries has demonstrated that it is of value to so few of those who are forced to pursue it, that the patient repetition of the error from generation to generation, the unquestioned duty of each oblivious father to enter his son in the classical curriculum, as he was entered by his son's grandfather, in which he is to devote years to what is ex

VOL. IX. NO. XLI.

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