CHAPTER THIRD.
Parties to whom the Educational Franchise might be safely extended--House Proprietors, House Tenants of a certain standing, Farmers, Crofters--Scheme of an Educational Faculty--Effects of the desired Extension--It would restore the National Schools to the People of the Nation.
It is the right and duty of every Government to educate its people, whatever the kinds or varieties of religion which may obtain among them;--it is the right and duty of every parent to select, on his own responsibility, his children"s teacher, and to determine what his children are to be taught;--it is the right and duty of every member of the commonwealth to see that the commonwealth"s money, devoted to educational purposes, be not squandered on incompetent men, and, in virtue of his contributions as a ratepayer, to possess a voice with the parents of a country in the selection of its salaried schoolmasters. There exist, on the one hand, the right and duty of the State; there exist, on the other, the rights and duties of the parents and ratepayers; and we find both parents and ratepayers presenting themselves in the aggregate, and for all practical purposes in this matter, as a single cla.s.s, viz. the _householders_ of the kingdom. But as, in dealing with these in purely political questions, we exclude a certain portion of them from the exercise of the _political_ franchise, and that simply because, as cla.s.ses, they are uninformed or dangerous, and might employ power, if they possessed it, to the public prejudice, so would we exclude a certain proportion of them, on similar grounds, from the _educational_ franchise. In selecting, however, the safe cla.s.ses of householders, we would employ tests somewhat dissimilar in their character from those to which the Reform Act extends its exclusive sanction, and establish a somewhat different order of qualifications from those which it erects.
In the first place, we would fain extend the educational franchise to all those householders of Scotland who inhabit houses of their own, however humble in kind, or however low the valuation of their rental. We know not a safer or more solid, or, in the main, more intelligent cla.s.s, than those working men of the country who, with the savings of half a lifetime, build or purchase a dwelling for themselves, and then sit down rent-free for the rest of their lives, each "the monarch of a shed." With these men we are intimately acquainted, for we have lived and laboured among them; and very rarely have we failed to find the thatched domicile, of mayhap two little rooms and a closet, with a patch of garden-ground behind, of which some hard-handed country mechanic or labourer had, through his own exertions, become the proud possessor, forming a higher certificate of character than masters the most conscientious and discerning could bestow upon their _employes_, or even Churches themselves upon their members. Nor is this house-owning qualification much less valuable when it has been derived by inheritance--not wrought for; seeing that the man who retains his little patrimony unsquandered must be at least a steady, industrious man, the slave of no expensive or disreputable vice. Let us remark, however, that we would not attach the educational franchise to property as such: the proprietor of the house, whether a small house or a large one, would require to be the _bona fide_ inhabitant of the dwelling which he occupied, for at least a considerable portion of every year. The second cla.s.s to which we would fain see the educational franchise extended are all those householders of the kingdom who tenant houses of five pounds annual rent and upwards, who settle with their landlords not oftener than twice every twelvemonth, and who are at least a year entered on possession. By fixing the qualification thus high, and rejecting the monthly or weekly rent-payer, the country would get rid of at least nineteen-twentieths of the dangerous cla.s.ses,--the agricultural labourers, who wander about from parish to parish, some six or eight months in one locality, and some ten or twelve in another; the ignorant immigrant Irish, who tenant the poorer hovels of so many of our western coast parishes; and last, not least, all the migratory population of our larger towns, who rarely reside half a year in the same dwelling, and who, though they may in some instances pay at more than the rate of the yearly five pounds, pay it weekly, or by the fortnight or month. We regret, however, that there is a really worthy cla.s.s which such a qualification would exclude,--ploughmen, labourers, and country mechanics, who reside permanently in humble cottages, the property of the owner of the soil, and who, though their course through life lies on the bleak edge of poverty, are G.o.d-fearing, worthy men, at least morally qualified to give, in the election of a teacher, an honest and not unintelligent voice. And yet, hitherto at least, we have failed to see any principle which a British statesman would recognise as legitimate, on which this cla.s.s could be included in the educational franchise, and their dangerous neighbours of the same political status kept out. There is yet a third very important cla.s.s whom we would fain see in possession of the educational franchise,--those householders of Scotland who till the soil as tenants, whether with or without leases, or whether the annual rent which they pay amounts to three or to three thousand pounds. The tillers of the soil are a fixed cla.s.s, greatly more permanent, even where there exists no lease, than the mere tenant householders; and they include, especially in the Highlands of Scotland, and the poorer districts of the low country, a large proportion of the country"s parentage. They are in the main, too, an eminently safe cla.s.s, and not less so where the farms are small and the dwellings upon them mere cottages--to which, save for the surrounding croft or farm, no franchise could attach--than where they live in elegant houses, and are the lessees of hundreds of acres. And such are the three great cla.s.ses to which, as composing the solid body of the Scottish nation--to the exclusion of little more than the mere rags that hang loosely on its vestments--would we extend, did we possess the power, the educational franchise.
In order, however, to render a franchise thus liberally restricted more safe and salutary still, we would demand not only certain qualifications on the part of the parents and ratepayers of the country, without which they could not be permitted to _vote_, but also certain other qualifications on the part of the country"s schoolmasters, without which they could not be _voted for_. We would thus impart to the scheme such a twofold aspect of security as that for which in a purely ecclesiastical matter we contended, when we urged that none but Church members should be permitted to choose their own ministers; and that none but ministers p.r.o.nounced duly qualified in life, literature, and doctrine, by a competent ecclesiastical court, should they be _permitted_ to choose. There ought to exist a teaching Faculty as certainly as there exists a medical or legal Faculty, or as there exists in the Church what is essentially a preacher-licensing Faculty. The membership of a Church are unfitted in their aggregate character to judge respecting at least the literature of the young licentiate whom, in their own and their children"s behalf, they call to the pastoral charge;--the people of a district, however shrewd and solid, are equally unqualified to determine whether the young pract.i.tioner of medicine or of law who settles among them is competently acquainted with his profession, and so a fit person to be entrusted with the care of their health or the protection of their property. And hence the necessity which exists in all these cases for testing, licensing, diploma-giving courts or boards, composed of men qualified to decide regarding those special points of ability or acquirement which the people, as such, cannot try for themselves. In no case, however, are courts of this nature more imperatively required than in the case of the schoolmaster. Neither the amount of literature which he possesses, nor yet his mastery over the most approved modes of communicating it, can be tested by the people, who, as parents and ratepayers, possess the exclusive right to make choice of him for their parish or district school; and hence the necessity that what they cannot do for themselves should be previously done for them by some competent court or board, and that no teacher who did not possess a licence or diploma should be eligible to at least an endowed seminary supported by the public money. With, of course, the qualifications of the mere adventure-teacher, whether supported by Churches or individuals, we would permit no board to interfere. As to the composition of the board itself, that, we hold, might be determined on very simple principles. Let the College-bred teachers of Scotland, a.s.sociated with its University professors, select for themselves, out of their own number, a dean or chairman, and a court or committee, legally qualified by Act of Parliament stringently to try all teachers who may present themselves before them, in order to be rendered eligible for a national school, and to grant them licences or diplomas, legally representative of professional qualification. Whether a teacher, on his election by the people, might not be a second time tried, especially on behalf of the State and the ratepayers, by a Government inspectorship, and thus a check on the board be inst.i.tuted, we are not at present called on to determine; but on this we are clear, that the certificate of no Normal School, in behalf of its own pupils, ought to be received otherwise than as a mere makeweight in the general item of professional character; seeing that any such doc.u.ment would be as much a certificate of the Normal School"s own ability in rearing efficient teachers, as of the pedagogical skill of the teachers which it reared. The vitiating element of self-interest would scarce fail to induce, ultimately at least, a suspicious habit of self-recommendation.
Such, then, in this matter, is our full tale of qualification, pedagogical and popular, of the educators of the country on the one hand, and of the educational franchise-holders of the country on the other. And now we request the reader to mark one mighty result of the arrangement, which no other yet set in opposition to it could possibly produce. There are in Scotland about one thousand one hundred national schools, supported by national resources; and, of consequence, though fallen into the hands of a mere sect, which in some localities does not include a t.i.the of the population, they of right belong to the Scottish people. And these schools of the _people_ that extension of the educational franchise which we desiderate would not fail to restore to the _people_. It would put them once more in possession of what was their own property _de facto_ at the Revolution (for at that period, when, with a few inconsiderable exceptions, they were all of one creed, the ministry of the Established Church virtually represented them), and of what has been _de jure_ their property ever since. But by the ministry of no one Church can the people be represented now. The long rule of Moderatism,--the consequent formation of the Secession and Relief Churches,--the growth of Independency and Episcopacy,--and last, but not least in the series, the Disruption, and the instantaneous creation of the Free Church, have put an end to that state of things for ever. The time has in the course of Providence fairly come, when the people must be permitted in this matter to represent themselves; and there is one thing sure,--the struggle may be protracted, but the issue is certain. Important, however, as are our parish schools, and rich in a.s.sociations so intimately linked to the intellectual glory of the nation, that, were they but mere relics of the past, the custodiership of them might well be most desirable to the Scottish people, they represent but a small part of the stake involved in the present all-engrossing movement. It seeks also to provide from the coffers of the State--on a broad basis of popular representation, and with the reservation of a right on the part of the people to supplement whatever instruction the State may not or cannot supply--that fearful educational dest.i.tution of the nation which is sinking its tens and hundreds of thousands into abject pauperism and barbarous ignorance, and which neither Churches nor Societies can of themselves supply. It is the _first_ hopeful movement of the age; for our own Free Church educational movement, though perhaps _second_ in point of importance, only serves irrefragably to demonstrate its necessity.
It is, we repeat, to the people of Scotland, and not to any one of the Churches of Scotland, that our scheme of a widely-based and truly popular franchise would restore the Scottish schools. Mr. George Combe is, however, quite in the right in holding that religion is too intimately a.s.sociated with the educational question, and too decidedly a force in the country, to be excluded from the national seminaries, "unless, indeed, Government do something more than merely _omit_ the religious element."{7} All is lost, Mr. Combe justly infers, on the non-religious side of the question, if the introduction of the Bible and Shorter Catechism be not _prohibited_ by Act of Parliament; for, if not stringently prohibited, what Parliament merely omits doing, a Bible and Catechism loving people will to a certainty do; and the conscience of the phrenologist and his followers will not fail to be outraged by the spectacle of Bible cla.s.ses in the national schools, and of State schoolmasters instilling into the youthful mind, by means of the Shorter Catechism, the doctrine of original sin and the work of the Spirit. Nay, more; as it is not in the power of mere Acts of the Legislature to eradicate from the hearts of a people those feelings of partiality, based on deep religious conviction and the a.s.sociations of ages, with which it is natural to regard a co-religionist, more especially in the case of the teacher to whom one"s children are to read their daily chapter and repeat their weekly tale of questions, _denomination_ must and will continue to exert its powerful influence in the election of national schoolmasters popularly chosen.
And as there are certain extensive districts in Scotland in which some one Church is the stronger, and other certain districts in which some other Church is the stronger, there are whole shires and provinces in which, if selected on the popular scheme, the national teachers would be found well-nigh all of one religious denomination. From John O"Groat"s to Beauly, for instance, they would be all, or almost all, Free Churchmen; for in that extensive district almost all the people are Free Church. In the Scottish Highlands generally, nearly the same result would be produced, from, of course, the existence of a similar const.i.tuency. In Inverness, and onwards along the sea-coast to Aberdeen, Montrose, St. Andrews, and the Frith of Forth, the element of old dissent would be influentially felt: the great parties among the people would be three--Establishment, Free Church, and Voluntary; and whichever two of them united, would succeed in defeating the third.
And such unions, no doubt, frequently _would_ take place. The Voluntaries and Free Churchmen would often unite for the carrying of a _man_; and occasionally, no doubt, the Free Church and the Establishment, for the carrying of a _principle_,--that principle of religious teaching on which, in the coming struggle, the State Church will be necessitated to take her stand. To the south of the Frith of Forth on to Berwick, and along the western coast from Dumbarton to the Solway, there would be localities parcelled out into large farms, in which the Establishment would prevail; and of course, wherever it can reckon up a majority of the more solid people, it is but right and proper that the Establishment _should_ prevail; but who can doubt that even in these districts the national teaching would be immensely heightened by a scheme which gave to parents and ratepayers the selection of their teachers, and restricted their choice to intelligent and qualified men? Wherever there is liberty, there will be discussion and difference; and the election of a schoolmaster would not be managed quite as quietly under the antic.i.p.ated state of things, with the whole people of a parish for his const.i.tuency, as in the present, by a minister and factor over a social gla.s.s. But the objection taken by antic.i.p.ation to popular heats and contendings in such cases is as old as the first stirrings of a free spirit among the people, and the first struggles of despotism to bind them down.
We ourselves have heard it twice urged on the unpopular side,--once when the rotten burghs were nodding to their fall, and once when an unrestricted patronage was imperilled by the encroachments of the Veto. There will, and must be, difference; and difference too, Scotland being what it is, in which the religious element will not fail to mingle; but not the less completely on that account will the scheme restore the Scottish schools to the Scottish people, as represented by the majority, and to the membership of the Free Church, in the _de facto_ statistical sense and proportion in which the Free Church is national. It will not restore them to us in the theoretic sense; but then there are at least three other true original Churches of Scotland, which in that respect will be greatly worse off than ourselves,--the true national Cameronian Church, the true national Episcopalian Church, and a true compact little Church of the whole nation, that, in the form of one very excellent minister, labours in the east.
Meanwhile, we would fain say to our country folk and readers of the north of Scotland: You, of all the Free Churchmen of the kingdom, have an especial stake in this matter. Examine for yourselves,--trust to your own good sense,--exercise as Protestants your right of private judgment,--and see whether, as Christian men and good Scotchmen, you may not fairly employ the political influence given you by G.o.d and your country, in possessing yourselves of the parish schools. There will be deep points mooted in this controversy, which neither you nor we will ever be in the least able to understand. You will no doubt be told of a theocratic theory of the British Government, perfectly compatible, somehow, with the receipt of educational _grants_ from which all recognition of the religious element on the part of the State is, at the express request of the Church, to be thoroughly discharged, but not at all compatible with the receipt of an educational _endowment_ of exactly the same character, from which the same State recognition of the same religious element is to be discharged in the same degree. You will, we say, not be able to understand this. The late Dr. Thomas Chalmers and the late Rev. Mr.
Stewart of Cromarty could not understand it; we question much whether Dr. William Cunningham understands it; and we are quite sure that Dr.
Guthrie and Dr. Begg do not. And you, who are poor simple laymen, will never be able to understand it at all. But you are all able to understand that the parish schools of your respective districts, now lying empty and useless, belong of right to you; and that it would be a very excellent thing to have that right restored to you, both on your own behalf and on that of your children.
{7} "The sixth resolution [of the Educational Manifesto], in which the opinion of Dr. Chalmers is quoted, that Government [should] abstain from introducing the element of religion at all into their part of the scheme, must, as here introduced, be presumed to mean, that in the Act of the Legislature which shall carry the views of the resolutionists into practical effect, nothing shall be said about religious instruction; but that power shall be given to the heads of families to manage the schools, and prescribe the subjects to be taught, according to their own convictions of what is sound in religious and useful in secular instruction. But this would leave the religious rights of the minority completely unprotected. Government must do something more than _omit_ the religious element: it must limit the power of the majority to introduce this element into their schools to the injury of the minority."--_Letter of Mr. George Combe on the Educational Movement._
CHAPTER FOURTH.
Objections urged by the Free Church Presbytery of Glasgow against the Educational Movement--Equally suited to bear against the Scheme of Educational Grants--Great superiority of Territorial over Denominational Endowment--The Scottish People sound as a whole, but some of the Scottish Sects very unsound--State of the Free Church Educational Scheme.
"Whereas attempts are now being made to reform the parish schools of Scotland, on the principle of altogether excluding religion from national recognition as an element in the national system of education, and leaving it solely to private parties to determine in each locality whether any or what religious instruction will be introduced into the parochial schools,--it is humbly overtured to the Venerable the General a.s.sembly of the Free Church of Scotland, to declare that this Church can be no party to any plan of education based on the negation of religion in the general, or of the national faith in particular," etc.
Such is the gist of that "Overture on Education" which was carried some three weeks ago by a majority of the Free Church Presbytery of Glasgow. It has the merit of being a clear enunciation of meaning; of being also at least as well fitted to express the views of the Established as of the Free Church courts in Glasgow and elsewhere, and a great deal better suited to serve as a cloak to their policy; and, further, by a very slight adaptation, it could be made to bear as directly against State _grants_ given for educational purposes, if dissociated from the religious certificate, as against State _endowments_ given for the same purpose, when dissociated from statutory religious requirement. It is the religious certificate--most anomalously demanded of denominations diametrically opposed to each other in their beliefs, and subversive of each other in their teachings--that const.i.tutes in the affair of educational grants the recognition of religion on the part of the State. Educational grants dissociated from the religious certificate are educational grants dissociated from the State recognition of religion. The fact that the certificates demanded should be of so anomalous a character, is simply a reflection of the all-important fact that the British people are broken up into antagonistic Churches and hostile denominations, and that the British Government is representative. And that men such as those members and office-bearers of our Church who hold the middle position between that occupied by Mr. Gibson of Glasgow on the one hand, and Dr. Begg of Edinburgh on the other, should see no other way of availing themselves of the educational grants, with a good conscience, than by getting rid of the religious recognition, only serves to show that they are quite as sensible as their opponents in the liberal section of the enormous difficulty of the case, and can bethink themselves of no better mode of unlocking it. For it will not be contended, that if in the matter of grants there is to be no recognition of religion on the part of the State, the want of it could be more adequately supplied by sects, as such, denominationally divided, than by the people of Scotland, as such, territorially divided; seeing that sects, as such, include Papists, Puseyites, Socinians, and Seceders,--Muggletonians, Juggletonians, New Jerusalemites, and United Presbyterians,--Free-thinking Christians, Free-Willers, and Free Churchmen. Nor can we see either the wisdom or the advantage of any scheme of Government inquiry into the educational dest.i.tution of a locality, that, instead of supplying the want which it found, would merely placard the place by a sort of feuing ticket--destined, we are afraid, in many instances to be sadly weather-bleached--which would intimate to the sects in general, that were any one of them to come forward and enact the part of school-builder and pedagogue, the State would undertake for a portion of the expenses. We suppose the advertis.e.m.e.nt on the ticket would run somewhat as follows:--"WANTED BY THE GOVERNMENT, A CHURCH TO ERECT A SCHOOL. TERMS LIBERAL, AND NO CERTIFICATE OF RELIGIOUS TEACHING DEMANDED. N.B.--PAPISTS, PUSEYITES, AND SOCINIANS PERFECTLY ELIGIBLE."{8}
Leaving, however, to profounder intellects than our own the adjustment of the nice principles involved in this matter, let us advert to what we deem the practical advantages of a _territorial_ scheme of educational _endowments_ over a _denominational_ scheme of educational _grants_. At present, all or any of the _sects_ may come forward as such, whatever their character or teaching, and, on fulfilling certain conditions, receive a.s.sistance from the Government in the form of an educational grant; whereas, by the scheme which we would fain see set in its place, it would be only the more solid people of _districts_--let us suppose parishes--that would be qualified to come forward to choose for themselves their parochial State-endowed teachers. And at least one of the advantages of this scheme over the other must be surely obvious and plain. _Denominationally_, there is much unsoundness in Scotland; _territorially_, there is very little.
There exist, unhappily, differences among our Scottish Presbyterians; but not the less on that account has Presbyterianism, in its three great divisions--Voluntary, Establishment, and Free Church--possessed itself of the land in all its length and breadth. The only other form of religion that has a territorial existence in Scotland at all is Popery, and Popery holds merely a few darkened districts of the outer Hebrides and of the Highlands. It would fail, out of the one thousand one hundred parish schools of the country, to carry half-a-dozen; and no other form of religious error would succeed in carrying so much as one parish school. There is no Socinian district in Scotland; old Scotch Episcopacy has not its single parish; and high Puseyism has not its half, or quarter, or even t.i.the of a parish.
That Church of Scotland which Knox founded, with its offshoots the Secession and Relief bodies, has not laboured in vain; and through the blessing of G.o.d on these labours, Scotland, as represented by its territorial majorities, is by far the soundest and most orthodox country in the world. A wise and patriotic man--at once a good Scot and a judicious Churchman--would, we think, hesitate long ere he flung away so solid an advantage, won to us by the labours, the contendings, the sufferings of reformers, confessors, martyrs, and ministers of the truth, from the days of Melville and of Henderson, down to those of the Erskines and of Chalmers. He would at least not fail to ask himself whether that to which what was so unequivocally _substance_ was to be sacrificed, was in itself _substance_ or _shadow_.
Let us next remark, that the Scottish national schools, while they thus could not fail to be essentially sound on the territorial scheme--just because Scotland is itself essentially sound as a nation--might, and would in very many instances, be essentially unsound on a denominational one. There is no form of religious error which may not, in the present state of things, have, as we have said, its schools supported in part by a Government grant, and which may not have its pupil-teachers trained up to disseminate deadly error at the public expense among the youthhead of the future. Edinburgh, for instance, has its one Popish street--the Cowgate; but it has no Popish parish: it has got very little Popery in George Square and its neighbourhood,--very little at the Bristo Port,--very little in Broughton Street; and yet in all these localities, territorially Protestant, Papists have got their religion-teaching schools, in which pupil-teachers, paid by the State, are in the course of being duly qualified for carrying on the work of perversion and proselytism. St.
Patrick"s school, in which, as our readers were so lately shown, boys may spend four years without acquiring even the simple accomplishment of reading, has no fewer than five of these embryo perverters supported by the Government. Puseyism has, in the same way, no territorial standing on the northern sh.o.r.es of the Frith of Forth; and yet at least one Free Church minister, located in one of the towns which stud that coast, could tell of a well-equipped Puseyite school in his immediate neighbourhood, supported in part by the Government grant, that, by the superiority of the secular education which it supplies, is drawing away Presbyterian, nay, even Free Church children, from the other schools of the locality. On the territorial principle, we repeat, schools such as these, which rest on the denominational basis alone, could not possibly receive the support and countenance of the Legislature. And let the reader remark, that should the Free Church succeed in getting rid of the anomalous religious certificate, and yet continue to hold by the denominational basis, something worse than mere denomination would scarce fail to step in.
The Combeite might then freely come forward to teach at the public expense, that no other soul of man has yet been ascertained to exist than the human brain, and no other superintending Providence than the blind laws of insensate matter. Nay, even Socialism, just a little disguised, might begin to build and teach for the benefit of the young, secure of being backed and a.s.sisted in its work by the civil magistrate. Further, should the grant scheme be rendered more flexible, _i.e._ extended to a lower grade of qualification, and thus the public purse be applied to the maintenance and perpetuation of a hedge-school system of education,--or should it be rendered more liberal, _i.e._ should the Government be induced to do proportionally more, and the school-builders be required to do proportionally less,--superst.i.tion and infidelity would, in the carrying out of their schemes of perversion, have, in consequence, just all the less to sacrifice and to acquire. According to the present arrangement, a schoolmaster must realize, from salary and fees united, the sum of forty-five annual pounds, and be, besides, furnished with a free house, ere he can receive from the Government a grant on its lowest scale, viz. fifteen pounds;{9} and whatever judgment may be formed of the proportion in which the State contributes, there can be no question that the general arrangement is a wise one. Sermonizing dominies could be had, no doubt, at any price; and there can be as little doubt that, at any price, would the great bulk of them turn out to be "_doons hard bargains_;" but it is wholly impossible that a country should have respectable and efficient teachers under from sixty to eighty pounds a year. The thing, we repeat, is wholly impossible; and the State, in acting, as in this arrangement, on the conviction, does but its duty to its people. The some sixty or seventy pounds, however, would be as certainly realized as under the present arrangement, were it Government that contributed the forty-five pounds, and the denomination or society the fifteen and the free house; and this, of course, would be eminently liberal. But what would be the effects of so happy a change? It might in some degree relieve the Free Church Scheme from financial difficulty; but would it do nothing more? There are Puseyite ladies in Scotland, high in rank and influence, and possessed of much wealth and great zeal, who are already building their schools, in the hope of unprotestantizing their poor lapsed country, spiritually ruined by the Reformation. The liberality that might in part enable the Free Church Education Committee to discharge its obligations at the rate of twenty shillings per pound, would be a wonderful G.o.dsend to them; seeing that they would have little else to do, under a scheme so liberal, than simply to erect schoolhouses on the widespread domains of their husbands or fathers, and immediately commence perverting the children of the nation at the national cost. It would be no less advantageous to the Society of the Propaganda, and would enable it to spare its own purse, by opening to it that of the people. The Socinian, the Combeite, the semi-Socialist--none of them very much disposed to liberality themselves--would all share in that of the Government; and their zeal, no longer tied down to inactivity by the dread of pecuniary sacrifice or obligation, would find wings and come abroad.
Surely, with such consequences in prospect, our Free Church readers would do well to ponder the nature and demands of the crisis at which they have now arrived. Our country and our Church have in reality but one set of interests; and a man cannot be a bad Scot without being a bad Free Churchman too. Let them decide in this matter, not under the guidance of an oblique eye, squinted on little temporary difficulties or hypothetical denominational advantages, but influenced by considerations of the permanent welfare of their country, and of their abiding obligations to their G.o.d.
But why, it may be asked of the writer, if you be thus sensible of the immense superiority of a territorial scheme of educational endowments over a denominational scheme of educational grants,--why did you yourself urge, some three years ago, that the Free Church should avail herself of these very grants? Our reply is sufficiently simple. The denominational scheme of grants was the only scheme before us at the time; these grants were, we saw, in danger of being rejected by the Free Church on what we deemed an unsound and perilous principle, which was in itself in no degree Free Church; and last, not least, we saw further, that if the Church did not avail herself of these grants, there awaited on her Educational Scheme--ominously devoid of that direct divine mandate which all her other schemes possessed--inevitable and disastrous bankruptcy. But circ.u.mstances have greatly changed. The Free Church is no longer in any danger from the principle which would have rejected Government a.s.sistance. There is now a territorial scheme brought full before the view of the country; and, further, the Government grants have wholly failed to preserve our Educational Scheme from the state of extreme pecuniary embarra.s.sment which we too surely antic.i.p.ated. Salaries of 15 and 20 per annum are greatly less than adequate for the support and remuneration of even the lower order of teachers, especially in thinly-peopled districts of country, where pupils are few and the fees inconsiderable. But at these low rates it was determined, in the programme of the Free Church Educational Scheme, that about three-fourths of the Church"s teachers should be paid; and there are scores and hundreds among them who regulated their expenditure on the arrangement. For at least the last two years, however, the Education Committee has been paying its 15 salaries at the reduced rate of 10, and its 20 salaries at the rate of 13, 13s. 4d.; and those embarra.s.sments, of which the reduction was a consequence, have borne with distressful effect on the Committee"s _employes_. However _orthodox_ their creed, their circ.u.mstances have in many instances become _Antinomian_; nor, while teaching religion to others, have they been able in every instance to conform to one of its simplest demands--"Owe no man anything."
There were several important items, let us remark, in which we over-estimated the amount of a.s.sistance which the Scheme was to receive from the Government; and this mainly from our looking at the matter in the gross, as a question of proportion--so much granted for so much raised--without taking into account certain conditions demanded by the Minutes of Council on the one hand, and a certain course of management adopted on the part of our Education Committee on the other. The grant is given in proportion to salary of one to two (we at present set aside the element of fees): a _salary_ of thirty pounds is supplemented by a _grant_ of fifteen pounds,--a salary of forty pounds by a grant of twenty,--a salary of fifty by a grant of twenty-five,--and so on; and we were sanguine enough to calculate, that an aggregate sum of some ten or twelve thousand pounds raised by the Church for salaries, would be supplemented by an aggregation of grants from the Government to the amount of some five or six thousand pounds more. The minimum sum regarded as essentially necessary for carrying on the Free Church Educational Scheme had been estimated at twenty thousand pounds. If the Free Church raise but twelve thousand of these, we said, Government will give her six thousand additional in the form of grants, and some two thousand additional, or so, for the training of her pupil-teachers; and the Church will thus be enabled to realize her minimum estimate. We did not take the fact into account, that of our Free Church teachers a preponderating majority should fail successfully to compete for the Government money; nor yet that the educational funds should be so broken up into driblet salaries, attached to schools in which the fees were poor and the pupils few, that the schoolmaster, even though possessed of the necessary _literary_ qualification, would in many cases be some twenty, or even thirty, pounds short of the necessary _money_ qualification, _i.e._ the essential forty-five annual pounds. We did not, we say, take these circ.u.mstances into account,--indeed, it was scarce possible that we could have done so; and so we immensely over-estimated the efficacy of the State grant in maintaining the solvency of our Educational Scheme.
We learn from Dr. Reid"s recent Report to our metropolitan church court, that of the forty-two Free Church teachers connected with the Presbytery of Edinburgh, and in receipt of salaries from the Education Committee, only thirteen have been successful in obtaining Government certificates of merit. And even this is a rather high average, compared with that of the other districts; for we have ascertained, that of the six hundred and eighty-nine teachers of the Free Church scattered over the kingdom, not more than a hundred and twenty-nine have received the Government grant. There are, however, among the others, teachers who have failed to attain to it, not from any want of the literary qualification--for some of them actually possess the parchment certificate bearing the signature of Lansdowne--but simply because they are unfortunate enough to lack the pecuniary one.
That which we so much dreaded has come, we repeat, upon our Educational Scheme. The subject is a painfully delicate one, and we have long kept aloof from it; but truth, and truth only, can now enable the Free Church and her people to act, in this emergency, as becomes the character which they bear, and the circ.u.mstances in which they are placed. Let us not fall into the delusion of deeming the mere array of our Free Church schools and teachers--their numbers and formidable length of line--any matter of congratulation; nor forget, in our future calculations, that if the Free Church now realizes from 10,000 to 12,000 yearly for educational purposes, she would require to realize some 5000 or 6000 more in order to qualify her to meet her existing liabilities, estimated at the very moderate rates laid down in the programme. The 5000 or 6000 additional, instead of enabling her to erect a single additional school, would only enable her to pay in full her teachers" salaries.
And so it is obviously a delusion to hold that our Free Church Educational Scheme supplies in reality two-thirds of our congregations with teachers, seeing that these teachers are only two-thirds paid.
We are still some 5000 or 6000 short of supplying the two-thirds, and some 6000 or 7000 more of supplying the whole. And even were the whole of our own membership to be supplied, the grand query, How is our country to be educated,--our parish schools to be restored to usefulness and the Scotch people,--and Scotland herself to resume and maintain her old place among the nations?--would come back upon us as emphatically as now. Judging from what has been already done, and this after every nerve has been strained in the Sisyphisian work of rolling up-hill an ever-returning stone, it seems wholly impossible that we should ever succeed in educating the young of even our own congregations; and how, then, save on some great national scheme, is a sinking nation to be educated?
{8} The following portion of a motion on the educational question, announced in the Edinburgh Presbytery of the Free Church on the 6th of February last, is specially referred to in this paragraph:--
"That the successful working of the present Government plan would be greatly promoted by the following amendments:--
"1_st_, The entire omission in all cases (except, perhaps, the case of the Established Church) of the certificate regarding religious instruction, and the recognition of all bodies, whether Churches or private parties and a.s.sociations, as equally ent.i.tled to receive aid.
"2_d_, The adoption of a rule in proportioning Government grants to local efforts more flexible, and admitting of far more liberal aid in dest.i.tute localities, as compared with those which are in a better condition.
"3_d_, The inst.i.tution, on the part of Government, of an inquiry into the dest.i.tution confessedly existing in large towns, populous neighbourhoods, and remote districts, with a view of marking out places where elementary schools are particularly needed; and the holding out of special encouragement to whatever parties may come forward as willing to plant such schools.
"That the preceding suggestions, if adopted, would go far to render the present Government plan un.o.bjectionable in principle, and also to fit it in practice for ascertaining the educational wants of the country; but that a much more liberal expenditure of the public money would seem to be indispensable, as well as a less stringent application, upon adequate cause shown, of the rules by which the expenditure is regulated."
In bringing the motion forward in the following meeting of Presbytery, the clause recommending the "entire omission in all cases of the certificate regarding religious instruction" was suffered to drop.
{9} Such are the proportions laid down in the official doc.u.ment for Scotland of the Committee of Her Majesty"s Privy Council on Education. We understand, however, that the Government inspectors possess certain modifying powers, through which the Government grant is occasionally extended to deserving teachers whose salary and fees united fall considerably short of the specified sum of forty-five pounds.
CHAPTER FIFTH.
Unskilled Labourers remunerated at a higher rate than many of our Free Church Teachers--The Teaching must be inferior if the Remuneration be low--Effect of inferior Teaching on the parties taught--Statutory Security; where are the parties to contend for it?--Necessity of a Government Inquiry--"O for an hour of Knox!"
That higher order of farm-servants which are known technically in Mid-Lothian as "sowers and stackers," receive, as their yearly wages, in the immediate neighbourhood of the house of the writer, eighteen pounds in money, four bolls oatmeal, two cart-loads of potatoes, and about from twenty to thirty shillings worth of milk. The money value of the whole amounts, at the present time, to something between twenty-three and twenty-four pounds sterling. We are informed by a Fifeshire proprietor, that in his part of the country, a superior farm-servant, neither grieve nor foreman, receives eight pounds in money, six and a half bolls meal, three cart-loads of potatoes, and the use of a cow, generally estimated as worth from ten to twelve pounds annually. His aggregate wages, therefore, average from about twenty-four to twenty-six pounds ten shillings a year. And we are told by another proprietor of the south of Scotland, that each of the better hinds in his employment costs him every year about thirty pounds. In fine, to the south of the Grampians, the emoluments of our more efficient cla.s.s of farm-servants range from twenty-three to thirty pounds yearly. We need not refer to the wages of railway navvies, nor yet to those of the superior cla.s.ses of mechanics, such as printers, masons, jewellers, typefounders, etc. There is not a printer in the _Witness_ office who would be permitted by the rules of his profession, to make an arrangement with his employers, were he to exchange piece-work for wages, that did not secure to him twenty-five shillings per week. To expect that a country or Church can possibly have efficient schoolmasters at a lower rate of emolument than not only skilled mechanics, but than even unskilled railway labourers, or the "stackers and sowers" of our large farms, is so palpably a delusion, that simply to name it is to expose it. And yet of our Free Church schoolmasters, especially in thinly-peopled rural districts and the Highlands, there are scores remunerated at a lower rate than labourers and farm-servants, and hundreds at a rate at least as low; and if we except the fortunate hundred and twenty-nine who receive the Government grant, few indeed of the others rise to the level of the skilled mechanic. Greatly more than two-thirds of our teachers were placed originally on the 15 and 20 scale of salaries: these are now paid with 10 and 13, 13s. 4d. respectively. There are many localities in which these pittances are not more than doubled by the fees, and some localities in which they are even less than doubled; and so a preponderating majority of the schoolmasters of the Free Church are miserably poor men: for what might be a competency to a labourer or hind, must be utter poverty to them. And not a few of their number are distressfully embarra.s.sed and in debt.
Now this will never do. The Church may make herself very sure, that for her 10 or 13 she will receive ultimately only the worth of 10 or 13. She may get windfalls of single teachers for a few months or years: superior young men may occasionally make a brief stay in her schools, in the course of their progress to something better,--as Pilgrim rested for a while in the half-way recess hollowed in the side of the Hill Difficulty; but only very mediocre men, devoid of energy enough of body or mind to make good masons or carpenters, will stick fast in them. We have learned that, in one northern locality, no fewer than eight Free Church teachers have since Martinmas last either tendered their resignations, or are on the eve of doing so. These, it will be found, are superior men, who rationally aspire to something better than mere ploughman"s wages; but there will of course be no resignations tendered by the cla.s.s who, in even the lowest depths of the Scheme, have found but their proper level. These, as the more active spirits fly off, will flow in and fill up their places, till, wherever the 10 and 13 salaries prevail,--and in what rural district do they not prevail?--the general pedagogical acquirements of our teachers will present a surface as flat, dull, and unprofitable as ditch-water. For what, we again ask, can be expected for 10 or 13? And let the reader but mark the effect of such teaching. We have seen placed side by side, in the same burgh town, an English school, in which what are deemed the branches suitable for mechanics and their children, such as reading, writing, and arithmetic, were energetically taught, and a grammar school in which a university-bred schoolmaster laboured, with really not much energy, especially in those lower departments in which his rival excelled, but who was fitted to prepare his pupils for college, and not devoid of the cla.s.sical enthusiasm. And it struck us as a significant and instructive fact, that while the good English school, though it turned out smart readers and clever arithmeticians, failed to elevate a single man from the lower to the middle or higher walks of life, the grammar school was successful in elevating a great many. The principle on which such a difference of result should have been obtained is so obvious, that it can scarce be necessary to point it out. The teaching of the one school was a narrow lane, trim, "tis true, and well kept, but which led to only workshops, brick-kilns, and quarries; whereas that of the other was a broad, partially-neglected avenue, which opened into the great professional highways, that lead everywhere. And if the difference was one which could not be obviated by all the energy of a superior and well-paid English teacher, how, we ask, is it to be obviated by our Free Church 10 and 13 teachers? Surely our Church would do well to ponder whether it can be either her interest or her duty to urge on any scheme, in opposition to a national one, which would have all too palpably the effect of degrading her poorer membership, so far as they availed themselves of it, into the Gibeonites of the community--its hewers of wood and drawers of water.
Never will Scotland possess an educational scheme truly national, and either worthy of her ancient fame or adequate to the demands and emergencies of an age like the present, until at least every parish shall possess among its other teachers its one university-bred schoolmaster, popularly chosen, and well paid, and suited to a.s.sist in transplanting to the higher places of society those select and vigorous scions that from time to time spring up from the stock of the commonalty. The waking dream of running down the ignorance and misery of a sinking country by an array of starveling teachers in the train of any one denomination--itself, mayhap, sufficiently attenuated by the demands of purely ecclesiastical objects--must be likened to that other waking dream of the belated German peasant, who sees from some deep glade of his native forests a spectral hunt sweep through the clouds,--skeleton stags pursued by skeleton huntsmen, mounted on skeleton horses, and surrounded by skeleton beagles; and who hears, as the wild pageant recedes into the darkness, the hollow tantivy and the spectral horns echoing loud and wildly through the angry heavens.
It is of paramount importance that the Free Church should in the present crisis take up her position wisely. We have heard of invaders of desperate courage, who, on landing upon some sh.o.r.e on which they had determined either to conquer or to perish, set fire to their ships, and thus shut out the possibility of retreat. Now the Free Church--whether she land herself into an agitation for a scheme of Government grants rendered more liberal and flexible than now, and dissociated from the religious certificate, or whether she plant her foot on a scheme of national education based on a statutory recognition of the pedagogical teaching of religion--is certainly in no condition to burn her ships. Let her not rashly commit herself against a third scheme, essentially one in principle with that which the sagacious Chalmers could regard, after long and profound reflection, as the only one truly eligible in the circ.u.mstances of the country, and which she herself, some two or three years hence, may be compelled to regard in a similar light. The educational agitation is not to be settled in the course of a few brief months; nor yet by the votes of Presbyteries, Synods, or General a.s.semblies, whether they belong to the Free or to the Established Churches. It rises direct out of the great social question of the time. Scotland as such forms one of its battle-fields, and Scotchmen as such are the parties who are to be engaged in the fight; and the issue, though ultimately secure, will long seem doubtful. And so the Free Church may have quite time enough to fight her own battle, or rather her own _two_ battles in succession, and, when both are over, find that the great general contest still remains undecided.
For what we must deem by much the better and more important battle of the _two_--that for a statutory demand on the part of the State that the Bible and Shorter Catechism should be taught in the national schools--we are afraid the time is past; but most happy would we be to find ourselves mistaken. The Church of Scotland, as represented by that majority which is now the Free Church, might have succeeded in carrying some such measure ten years ago, when the parish schools were yet in her custody; just as she might have succeeded seven years earlier in obviating the dire necessity which led to the Disruption, by acting upon the advice of the wise and far-seeing M"Crie.{10} But she was not less prepared at the one date to agitate for the total abolition of patronage, than at the other to throw open the parish schools on the basis of a statutory security for the teaching of religion. In both cases, the golden opportunity was suffered to pa.s.s by; and Old Time presents to her now but the bald retreating occiput, which her eager hand may in vain attempt to grasp. Where, we ask, are we to look for the forces that are to a.s.sist us in fighting this battle of statutory security? Has the Establishment become more liberal, or more disposed to open the parish schools, than we ourselves were when we composed the majority of that very Establishment? Alas!
in order to satisfy ourselves on that head, we have but to look at the decisions of her various ecclesiastical courts. Or is it the old Scottish Dissenters that are to change their entire front, and to make common cause with us, in disregard, and even in defiance, of their own principles, as they themselves understand them? Or are we to look to that evangelical portion of the Episcopacy of England, with whom _Establishment_ means _Church_, and the "good of the Establishment" a synonyme for the "good of the Church," and who, to a certainty, will move no hand against the sister Establishment in Scotland? Or are we to be aided by that portion of English Independency that has so very strangely taken its stand equally against educational grants and educational endowments, on the ground that there is a sort of religion h.o.m.oeopathically diffused in all education--especially, we suppose, in Lindley Murray"s readings from the _Spectator_ and Dr.
Blair--and that, as the State must not provide _religious_ teaching for its people, it cannot, and must not, provide for them teaching of any kind? Scientific Jews are they, of the straitest sect, who, wiser than their fathers, have ascertained by the microscope, that all meat, however nicely washed, continues to retain its molecules of blood, and that flesh therefore must on no account be eaten. We cannot, we say, discern, within the wide horizon of existing realities, the troops with which this battle is to be fought. They seem to be mere shadows of the past. But if the Free Church see otherwise, let her by all means summon them up, and fight it. Regarded simply as a matter of policy, we are afraid the contest would be at least imprudent. "It were well," said a Scotch officer to Wolfe, when Chatham first called out the Highlanders of Scotland to fight in the wars of Britain,--"It were well, General, that you should know the character of these Highland troops. Do not attempt manoeuvring with them; Scotch Highlanders don"t understand manoeuvre. If you make a feint of charging, they will throw themselves sword in hand into the thick of the enemy, and you will in vain attempt calling them back; or if you make a show of retreating, they will run away in right earnest, and you will never see them more. So do not employ them in feints and stratagems, but keep them for the hard, serious business of the fight, and you will find them the best troops in the world." Now, nearly the same character applies to the Free Church. To set her a-fighting as a matter of policy, would be very bad policy indeed. She would find out reasons, semi-theological at least, for all her positions, however hopeless, and would continue fixed in these long after the battle had been fought and lost, and when she ought to be engaged in retrieving her disasters on other ground, and in a fresh and more promising quarrel.
But if the Free Church does enter into this battle, let her in the meantime not forget, that after it has been fought, and at least _possibly_ lost, another battle may have still to be begun; nor let her attempt damaging, by doubtful theology, the position which a preponderating majority of her own office-bearers and members may have yet to take up. For, ultimately at least, the damage would be all her own. Let her remark further, that should her people set their hearts pretty strongly on those national seminaries, which in many parts of the country would become, if opened up, wholly their own _de facto_, and which are already their own _de jure_, they might not be quite able to feel the cogency of the argument that, while it left Socinians and Papists in the enjoyment of at once very liberal and very flexible Government grants, challenged _their_ right to choose, on their own responsibility, State-paid teachers for their children; and which virtually a.s.sured them, that if they did not contribute largely to the educational scheme of their own Church, she would be wholly unable to maintain it as a sort of mid-impediment between them and their just rights, the parish schools. They would be exceedingly apt, too, to translate any very determined and general preference manifested by our church courts for the scheme of educational grants, into some such enunciation as the following:--"Give us to ourselves but a moiety of one-third of the Scottish young, and we will frankly give up the other two-thirds,--the one-half of them to be destroyed by gross ignorance, and the other half by deadly error."{11}
There is at least one point on which we think all Free Churchmen ought to agree. It is necessary that the truth should be known respecting the educational condition and resources of Scotland. It will, we understand, be moved to-day [February 27th], in the Free Church Presbytery of Edinburgh, as a thing good and desirable, that Government should "inst.i.tute an inquiry into the educational dest.i.tution confessedly existing in large towns, populous neighbourhoods, and remote districts, with a view to the marking out of places where elementary schools are particularly needed," etc. Would it not be more satisfactory to move instead, the desirableness of a Government Commission of Inquiry, 1_st_, into the educational condition of all the youth of Scotland between the years of six and fifteen, on the scheme of that inquiry recently conducted by a Free Church Educational a.s.sociation in the Tron parish of Glasgow; 2_d_, into the condition, character, and teaching of all the various schools of the country, whether parochial, Free Church, or adventure schools, with the actual amount of pupils in attendance at each; and 3_d_, into the general standing, acquirements, and _emoluments_ of all the teachers? Not only would the report of such a Commission be of much solid value in itself, from the amount of fact which it would furnish for the direction of educational exertion on the part of both the people and the State; but it might also have the effect of preventing good men from taking up, in the coming contest, untenable and suspicious ground. It would lay open the true state of our parish schools, and not only show how utterly useless these inst.i.tutions have become, from at least the sh.o.r.es of the Beauly to those of the Pentland Frith, and throughout the Highlands generally, but also expose the gross exaggeration of the estimate furnished by Mr. Macrae, and adopted by Dr. Muir.{12} Further, it would have the effect of preventing any member of either the Free Church or the Establishment from resorting to the detestable policy of those Dissenters of England, who, in order to secure certain petty advantages to their own miserable sects, set themselves to represent their poor country--perishing at the time for lack of knowledge--as comparatively little in need of educational a.s.sistance. But we trust this at least is an enormity, at once criminal and mean, of which no Scotchman, whatever his Church, _could_ possibly be guilty; and so we shall not do our country the injustice of holding that, though it produced its "fause Sir Johns" in the past, it contains in the present one such traitor, until we at least see the man. Further, a State Report of the kind would lay open to us, in the severe statistical form, the actual emoluments of our own Free Church teachers. We trust, then, that this scheme of a searching Government inquiry may be regarded as a first great step towards the important work of educating the Scottish people, in which all ought to agree, however thoroughly at variance in matters of principle or on points of detail.
It is of mighty importance that men should look at things as they really are. Let us remember that it is not for the emergencies of yesterday that we are now called on to provide, but for the necessities of to-day,--not for Scotland in the year 1592, nor yet in the year 1700, but for Scotland in the year 1850. What might be the best possible course in these bygone ages, may be, and is, wholly an impracticable course now. _Church_ at both these earlier dates meant not only an orthodox communion, but also that preponderating majority of the nation which reckoned up as its own the great bulk of both the rulers and the ruled, and at once owned the best and longest swords, and wore the strongest armour; whereas it now means, _legally_ at least, merely two Erastianized Establishments, and _politically_, all the Christian denominations that possess votes and return members to Parliament. The prism seizes on a single white ray, and decomposes it into a definitely proportioned spectrum, gorgeous with the primary colours. The representative principle of a Government such as ours takes up, as if by a reverse process, those diverse hues of the denominational spectrum that vary the face of society, and compounds them in the Legislature into a blank. Save for the existence of the two Establishments--strong on other than religious grounds--and the peculiar tinge which they cast on the inst.i.tutions of the country, the blank would be still more perfect than it is; and this fact--a direct result of the strongly marked hues of the denominational spectrum, operated upon by the representative principle--we can no more change than we can the optical law. Let there be but the colour of one religion in the national spectrum, and the Legislature will wear but one religious colour: let it consist of half-a-dozen colours, and the Legislature will be of none. "O for an hour of Knox!" it has been said by a good and able man, from whom, however, in this question we greatly differ,--"O for an hour of Knox to defend the national religious education which he was raised up to inst.i.tute!" Knox, be it remembered, was wise, prudent, sagacious, in accordance with the demands of his time. A Knox of the exact fashion of the sixteenth century, raised up in the middle of the nineteenth, would be but a slim, long-bearded effigy of a Knox, grotesquely attired in a Geneva cloak and cap, and with the straw and hay that stuffed him sticking out in tufts from his waistband. "O for an hour of Knox!"
The Scottish Church of the present age has already had its Knox.
"Elias hath already come." The large-minded, wise-hearted Knox of the nineteenth century died at Morningside three years ago; and he has bequeathed, as a precious legacy to the Church, his judgment on this very question. "It were the best state of things," he said, "that we had a Parliament sufficiently theological to discriminate between the right and the wrong in religion, and to endow accordingly. But failing this, it seems to us the next best thing, that in any public measure for helping on the education of the people, Government were to abstain from introducing the element of religion at all into their part of the scheme; and this not because they held the matter to be insignificant,--the contrary might be strongly expressed in the preamble of their Act,{13}--but on the ground that, in the present divided state of the Christian world, they would take no cognizance of, just because they would attempt no control over, the religion of applicants for aid,--leaving this matter entire to the parties who had to do with the erection and management of the schools which they had been called upon to a.s.sist. A grant by the State on this footing might be regarded as being appropriately and exclusively the expression of their value for a good sec