{10} To demand of that Parliament which carried the Reform Bill the repeal of the Patronage Act, instead of enacting, on her own authority, the Veto Law.
{11} "I see," said Knox, when the Privy Council, in dividing the ecclesiastical revenues of the kingdom into three parts, determined on giving two of these to the n.o.bility, and on dividing the remaining part between the Protestant ministry and the Court,--" I see two-thirds freely given to the devil, and the other third divided between G.o.d and the devil: if the end of this order be happy, my judgment fails me!" Our church courts, if they declare for the system of denominational grants, in opposition to the territorial endowments of a scheme truly national, will be securing virtually a similar division of the people, with but this difference, that G.o.d"s share of the reserved moiety may be a very small share indeed. And can it possibly be held that the shame and guilt of such an arrangement can be obviated by the votes of Synods or a.s.semblies? or that, with an intelligent laity to judge in the matter, the "end of this order" can be other than unhappy? The schools of the Free Church have already, it is said, done much good. We would, we reply, be without excuse, in taking up our present position--a position in which we have painfully to differ from so many of the friends in whose behalf for the last ten years we deemed it at once a privilege and an honour to contend--did we believe that more than six hundred Protestant schools _could_ exist in Scotland without doing _much_ good. Of nothing, however, are we more convinced, than that the good which they have done has been accomplished by them in their character as _schools_, not in their character as _denominational_. We know a little regarding this matter; for in our journeyings of many thousand miles over Scotland, especially in the Highlands and the northern counties, we have made some use of both our eyes and ears. We have seen, and sickened to see, hordes of schoolboys of ten and twelve years bandying as nicknames, with boys whose parents belonged to the Establishment, the terms of polemic controversy. "Moderate"
has become in juvenile mouths as much a term of hatred and reproach in extensive districts of our country, as we remember "Frenchman" used to be during the great revolutionary war. Our children bid fair to get, in their state of denominational separatism, at least religion enough heartily to hate their neighbours; and, we are afraid, not much more. Now, it may be thought that the Editor of the _Witness_, himself long engaged in semi-theological warfare, ought to be silent in a matter of this kind. Be it remembered, we reply, that it was _men_, not children, whom the Editor of the _Witness_ made it his business to address; and that when, in what he deemed a good cause, he appealed to the understandings of his adult country-folk, he besought them in every instance to test and examine ere they judged and decided. He did not contemplate a phase of the controversy in which unthinking children should come from their schools to contend with other children, in the spirit of those little ones of Bethel who "came forth out of their city" to mock and to jeer; or that immature, unreasoning minds should be torn by the she-bears of uncharitable feeling, at an age when the points really at issue in the case can be received only as prejudices, and expressed only by the mere calling of names. And seeing and knowing what he has seen and knows, he has become sincerely desirous that controversy should be left to at least the adult population of the country, and that its children of all the communions should be sent to mingle together in their games and their tasks, and to form their unselfish attachments, under a wise system of national tuition, as thoroughly Christian as may be, but at the same time as little as possible polemical or sectarian.
{12} To the effect that there are a hundred thousand children in attendance at the parish schools of Scotland.
{13} "We are aware," says a respected antagonist, "that Mr.
Miller is no Deist; his argument, nevertheless, rests on a deistical position,--a charge to which Dr. Chalmers" letter is not liable to be exposed, in consequence of its first sentence, and of what it recommends in a Government preamble." If there be such virtue in a preamble, say we, let us by all means have a preamble--ten preambles if necessary--rather than a deistic principle. We would fain imitate in this matter the tolerance of Luther. "A complaint comes that such and such a reformed preacher will not preach without a ca.s.sock. "Well," answers Luther, "what harm will a ca.s.sock do the man? Let him have a ca.s.sock to preach in; let him have three ca.s.socks, if he find benefit in them.""
CHAPTER SIXTH.
Our previous Statement regarding the actual Condition of the Free Church Educational Scheme absolutely necessary--Voluntary Objections to a National Scheme, as stated by the Opponents of the Voluntaries; not particularly solid--Examination of the matter.
Our episode regarding the Free Church Educational Scheme now fairly completed, let us return to the general question. The reader may, however, do well to note the inevitable necessity which existed on our part, that our wholesome, though mayhap unpalatable, statements respecting it should have been submitted to the Church and the country. The grand question which in the course of Providence had at length arisen was, "How is our sinking country to be educated?" We had taken our stand, as a Scotchman, in behalf of the Scottish people; and as the belief seemed widely to exist that our own Free Church scheme was adequate, or at least nearly so, to the education of the children of our own membership, and that our duty as Scotchmen could be fulfilled, somehow, by concentrating all our exertions upon _it_, it had become essentially necessary that the delusion should be dispelled. And so we have showed, that while our scheme, in order fully to supply the educational wants of even our own people, would require to exist in the proportion of _nine_, it exists nominally in but the proportion of _six_, and in reality in but the proportion of _four_,--seeing that the _six, i.e_. our existing staff of teachers, amounting to but two-thirds of the number required, are but two-thirds paid;--in short, that our educational speculation is exactly in the circ.u.mstances of a railway company who, having engaged to cut a line ninety miles in length, have succeeded in cutting forty miles of it at their own proper expense, and then having cut twenty miles more on _preference_ shares, find their further progress arrested by a lack of funds. And so it became necessary to show that the existence and circ.u.mstances of our Free Church schools, instead of furnishing, as had been urged in several of our presbyteries, any argument _against_ the agitation of the general question, furnished, on the contrary, the best possible of all arguments _for_ its agitation; and to show further, that the policy which brought a denominational scheme, that did not look beyond ourselves, into a great national engagement, in the character of a privateer virtually on the side of the enemy, was a most perilous policy, that exposed it to damaging broadsides, and telling shot right between wind and water.
Let us now pa.s.s on to the consideration of a matter on which we but touched before,--the perfect compatibility of a consistent Voluntaryism with religious teaching in a school endowed by the State, on the principle of Dr. Chalmers. The _Witness_ is as little Voluntary now as it ever was. It seems but fair, however, that a principle should be saddled with only the consequences that legitimately arise from it; and that Voluntaryism should not be exposed, in this contest, to a species of witchcraft, that first caricatures it in an ill-modelled image, and then sticks the ugly thing over with pins.
The revenues of the State-endowed schools of this country--and, we suppose, of every other--are derived from two distinct sources: from Government, who furnishes the schoolmaster"s salary, and erects the building in which he teaches; and from the parents or guardians, who remunerate him according to certain graduated rates for the kind of instruction which he communicates to their children or wards. And the _rationale_ of this State a.s.sistance seems very obvious. It is of importance to the State, both on economic and judicial grounds, that all its people should be taught; but, on the adventure-school principle, it is impossible that they should all be taught, seeing that adventure schools can thrive in only densely peopled localities, or where supported by wealthy families, that pay largely for their children"s education. And so, in order that education may be brought down to the humblest of the people, the State supplements, in its own and its people"s behalf, the schoolmaster"s income, and builds him a school. Such seems to be the principle of educational endowments. Now, if the State, in endowing national schoolmasters, were to signify that it endowed them in order that, among other things, they should _teach religion_, we can well see how a Voluntary who conscientiously holds, as such, that religion ought not to be State-endowed, might be unable to avail himself, on his children"s behalf, of the State-enjoined religious teaching of any such functionaries; just as we can also see, that if the State _forbade_ its schoolmasters on any account to teach religion, a conscientious holder of the Establishment principle might be perhaps equally unable to avail himself of services so restricted.
We can at least see how each, in turn, might lodge an alternate protest,--the one against the positive exclusion of religion by the State, the other against its positive introduction. But if, according to Chalmers, the State, aware of the difficulty, tenders its endowment and builds its schools "simply as an expression of its value for a good secular education," and avowedly leaves the religious part of the school training to be determined by the parties who furnish that moiety of the schoolmaster"s support derived from fees--_i.e._ the parents or guardians--we find in the arrangement ground on which the Voluntary and the Establishment man can meet and agree. For the State virtually wills by such a settlement--and both by what it demands, and by what it does _not_ demand, but _permits_--that its salaried functionary should stand to his employers, the people, simply in the relation of an adventure schoolmaster. The State says virtually to its teacher in such circ.u.mstances: "I, as the _general_ guardian of your pupils, do not pay you for their religious education; but their _particular_ and special guardians, the parents, are quite at liberty to make with you on that head whatever bargain they please. Fully aware of the vast importance of religious teaching, and yet wholly unable, from the denominational differences of the time, at once to provide for it in the national seminaries, and to render these equal to the wants of the country, I throw the whole responsibility in this matter on the divided people, whom I cannot unite in their religion, but whose general education I am not on that account at liberty to neglect." On grounds such as these, we repeat, Voluntaryism and the Establishment principle may meet and agree.
There can be little doubt, however, that there are men on both sides sparingly gifted with common sense: for never yet was there a great question widely and popularly agitated, that did not divide not only the wise men, but also the fools of the community; and we have heard it urged by some of the representatives of the weaker cla.s.s, that a Voluntary could not permit his children to be taught religion under a roof provided by the State. Really, with all respect for the cap and bells, this is driving the matter a little too far. We have been told by a relative, now deceased, who served on shipboard during the first revolutionary war, and saw some hard fighting, that at the close of a hot engagement, in which victory remained with the British, the captain of the vessel in which he sailed--a devout and brave man--called his crew together upon the quarter-deck, and offered up thanks to G.o.d in an impressive prayer. The n.o.ble ship in which he sailed was the property of the State, and he himself a State-paid official; but was there anything in either circ.u.mstance to justify a protest from even the most rabid Voluntary against the part which he acted on this interesting occasion, simply as a Christian hero? Nay, had he sought to employ and pay out of his private purse in behalf of his crew an evangelical missionary, as decidedly Voluntary in his views as John Foster or Robert Hall, would the man have once thought of objecting to the work because it was to be prosecuted under the shelter of beams and planks, every one of which belonged to the Government? Would a pious Voluntary soldier keep aloof from a prayer-meeting on no other ground than that it was held in a barrack?--or did the first Voluntaries of Great Britain, the high-toned Independents that fought under Cromwell, abstain from their preachings and their prayers when cooped up by the enemy in a garrison? Where is the religious Voluntary who would not exhort in a prison, or offer up an unbought prayer on a public, State-provided scaffold, for some wretched criminal shivering on the verge of the grave?
Now the schoolmaster, in the circ.u.mstances laid down by Chalmers, we hold to be in at least as favourable a position with respect to the State and the State-erected edifice in which he teaches, as the ship-captain or the non-commissioned missionary--the devout Voluntary soldier, or the pious Independents of Cromwell"s Ironsides. He is, in his secular character, a State-paid official, sheltered by an erection the property of the State; but the State permits him to bear in that erection another character, in relation to another certain employer, whom it recognises as quite as legitimately in the field as itself, and permits him also--though it does not enjoin--to perform his duties there as a Christian man. Though, however, the objection to religious teaching under the State-erected roof may be suffered to drop, there may be an objection raised--and there has been an objection raised--against the teaching of religion in certain periods of time during the day, for which it is somehow taken for granted the State pays. Hence the argument for teaching religion in certain other periods of time not paid for by the State--or in other words, during separate hours. Now the entire difference here seems to originate in a vicious begging of the question. It is not the State that specifies the hours during each day in which State-endowed and State-erected schools are taught; on the contrary, varying as these hours do, and must, in various parts of the town and country--for a thinly-peopled district demands one set of hours, and a densely-peopled locality another--they are fixed, as mere matters of mutual arrangement, to suit the convenience of the teachers and the taught. It is enough that the State satisfy itself, through its inspectors, that the secular instruction for which it pays is effectually imparted to its people: it neither does nor will lay claim to any one hour of the day as its own, whether before noon or after it. It will leave to the English Establishment its canonical hours, sacred to organ music and the Liturgy; but it will set apart by enactment no pedagogical hours, sacred to arithmetic or algebra, the construing of verbs, or the drawing of figures. If separate hours merely mean that the master is not to have all his cla.s.ses up at once--here gabbling Latin or Greek, there discussing the primer or reciting from Scott"s Collection, yonder repeating the multiplication table or running over the rules of Lindley Murray--we at once say religion must have its separate hour, just as English, the dead tongues, figuring, writing, and the mathematics, have their separate hours; but if it be meant that the religious teaching of the school must be restricted to some hour not paid for by the State, then we reply with equal readiness that we know of no hour specially paid for by the State, and so utterly fail to recognise any principle in the proposed arrangement, or rather in the objection that would suggest it.
As to the question of a separate fee for religious tuition, let us consider how it is usually solved in the adventure schools of the country. The day is, in most cases, opened by the master with prayer, and then there is a portion of Scripture read by the pupils. And neither the Scripture read nor the prayer offered up fall, we are disposed to think, under the head of religious tuition, but under a greatly better head--that of religion itself. It is a proper devotional beginning of the business of the day. The committal of the Shorter Catechism--which with most children is altogether an exercise of memory, but which, accomplished in youth, while the intellect yet sleeps, produces effects in after years almost always beneficial to the understanding, and not unfrequently ameliorative of the heart--we place in a different category. It is not religion, but the teaching of religion; not food for the present, but store laid up for the future.
With the committal to memory of the Catechism we cla.s.s that species of Scripture dissection now so common in schools, which so often mangles what it carves.{14} And religion taught in this way is and ought to be represented in the fee paid to the teacher, and is and ought to be taught in a cla.s.s as separate from all the others as the geography or the grammar cla.s.s. Such is, we understand, a common arrangement in Scottish adventure schools; nor does there exist a single good reason for preventing it from also obtaining in the Scottish national schools. If the parentage of Scotland, whether Voluntary or Establishment, were to be vested with the power of determining that it should be so, and of selecting their schoolmasters, the schools would open with prayer and the reading of the Word--not because they were State-endowed, but because, the State leaving the point entirely open, they were the schools of a Christian land, to which Christian parents had sent their children, and for which, on their own proper responsibility, they had chosen, so far as they could determine the point, Christian teachers. And for this religious part of the services of the day we would deem it derogatory to the character of a schoolmaster to suppose that he _could_ receive any remuneration from the parents of his pupils, or from any one else. For the proper devotional services of the school we would place on exactly the same high disinterested level as the devotional exercises of the family, or as those of the gallant officer and his crew, who, paid for but the defence of their country, gave G.o.d thanks on the blood-stained quarter-deck, in their character as Christians, that He had sheltered their heads in one of their country"s battles, and then cast themselves in faith upon His further care. We would, we say, deem it an insult to the profession to speak of a monetary remuneration for the read word or the prayer offered up. Nay, if either was rated at but a single penny as its price, or if there was a single penny expected for either, where is there the man, Voluntary or Free Church, that would deem it worth the money? The story of the footman, who, upon being told, on entering on his new place, that he would have to attend family prayers, expressed a hope that the duty would be considered in his wages, has become one of the standard jokes of our jest-books. We would, however, place the religious teaching of the school on an entirely different footing from its religious services.
We would a.s.sign to _it_ its separate cla.s.s and its separate time, just as we would a.s.sign a separate cla.s.s and time to the teaching of English grammar, or history, or the dead languages. And whether the remuneration was specified or merely understood, we would deem it but reasonable that this branch of teaching, like all the other branches which occupied the time and tasked the exertions of the teacher, should be remunerated by a fee: in this department of tuition, as in the others, we would deem the labourer worthy of his hire. We need scarce add, however, that we would recognise no power in the majority of any locality, or in the schoolmaster whom they had chosen, to render attendance at even the devotional services of the seminary compulsory on the children of parents who, on religious or other grounds, willed that they should not join in the general worship. And, of course, attendance on the religion-teaching cla.s.s would be altogether as much a matter of arrangement between the parent and the schoolmaster, as attendance on the Latin or English cla.s.ses, or on arithmetic, algebra, or the mathematics.
While, however, we can see no proper grounds for difference between Voluntaries and Free Churchmen, on even these details of school management, and see, further, that they never differ regarding the way in which the adventure schools of the country are conducted, we must remind the reader that all on which they have really to agree on this question, as Scotchmen and franchise-holders, is simply whether their country ought not, in the first place, to possess an efficient system of national schools, open to all the Christian denominations; whether, in the second, the parents ought not to be permitted to exercise, on their own responsibility, the natural right of determining what their children should be taught; and whether, in the third, the householders of a district ought not to be vested in the power, now possessed by the heritors and parish minister, of choosing the teacher. Agreement on these heads is really all that is necessary towards either the preliminary agitation of the question, or in order to secure its ultimate success. The minor points would all come to be settled, not on the legislative platform, but in the parishes, by the householders. Voluntaryism, wise and foolish, does not reckon up more than a third of the population of Scotland; and foolish, _i.e._ extreme Voluntaries--for the sensible ones would be all with us--would find themselves, when they came to record their votes, a very small minority indeed. And so, though their extreme views may now be represented as lions in the path, it would be found ultimately that, like the lions which affrighted Pilgrim in the avenue, and made the poor man run back, they are lions well chained up--_lions_, in short, in a _minority_, like the agricultural lion in _Punch_. Let us remark, further, that if some of our friends deem the scheme proposed for Scotland too little religious, it is as certain that the a.s.sertors of the scheme now proposed for England, and advocated in Parliament by Mr. Fox, very decidedly object to it on the opposite score. Like the grace said by the Rev. Reuben Butler, which was censured by the Captain of Knockdunder as too long, and by douce Davie Deans as too short, it is condemned for faults so decidedly antagonistic in their character, that they cannot co-exist together. One cla.s.s of persons look exclusively at that lack of a statutory recognition of religion which the scheme involves, and denounce it as _infidel_; another, at the religious character of the people of Scotland, and at the consequent certainty, also involved in the scheme, that they will render their schools transcripts of themselves, and so they condemn it as _orthodox_. And hence the opposite views entertained by Mr. Combe of Edinburgh on the one hand, and Mr. Gibson of Glasgow on the other.{15}
{14} It is not uninstructive to remark how invariably in this matter an important point has been taken for granted which has not yet been proven; and how the most serious charges have been preferred against men"s principles, on the a.s.sumption that there exists in the question a certain divine truth, which may be neither divine nor yet a truth at all. Wisdom and goodness may be exhibited in both the negative and positive form--both by avoiding what is wicked and foolish, and by doing what is good and wise. And while no Christian doubts that the adorable Head of the Church manifested His character, when on earth, in both ways, at least no Presbyterian doubts that He manifested it not only by inst.i.tuting certain orders in His Church, but also by omitting to inst.i.tute in it certain other orders. He inst.i.tuted, for instance, an order of preachers of the gospel; He did not inst.i.tute an order of popes and cardinals. Neither, however, did He inst.i.tute an order of "religion-teaching" schoolmasters; and the question not yet settled, and of which, without compromising a single article in our standards, either side may be espoused, is, whether our Saviour manifested His wisdom in _not_ making use of the schoolmaster, or whether, without indicating His mind on the subject, He left the schoolmaster to be legitimately employed in an after-development of the Church.
Indeed, so entirely in this matter is the Free Church at sea, without chart or compa.s.s, that it has still to be determined whether the religious teaching of her schools be of a tendency to add to or to diminish the religious feeling of the country. "I sometimes regretted to observe," says Dr. Reid, in his Report on the Schools in connection with the Free Presbytery of Edinburgh, "that [their lessons in the Bible and Shorter Catechism] were taught rather too much in the style of the ordinary lessons. I do not object to _places being taken_, or any other means employed, which a teacher may consider necessary to secure attention during a Scripture lesson; but divine truth should always be communicated with solemnity." Now, such is the general defect of the religious teaching of the schoolroom. Nor is it to be obviated, we fear, by any expression of extra solemnity thrown into the pedagogical face, or even by the _taking of places_ or the _taws_. And there seems reason to dread that lessons of this character can have but the effect of commonplacing the great truths of religion in the mind, and hardening the heart against their after application from the pulpit. But some ten or twelve years will serve to unveil to the Free Church the real nature of the experiment in which she is now engaged. For our own part, we can have little doubt, be the matter decided as it may, that experience will serve ultimately to show how vast the inferiority really is of man"s "teachers of religion" to Christ"s preachers of the gospel.
We shall never forget at least the more prominent particulars of a conversation on this subject which we were privileged to hold with one of the most original-minded clergymen (now, alas, no more) our Church ever produced. He referred, first, to the false a.s.sociation which those words of world-wide meaning, "religious education," are almost sure to induce, when restricted, in a narrow, inadequate sense, to the teaching of the schoolmaster; and next, to the divine commission of the minister of the gospel. "Perverted as human nature is," he remarked, "there are cases in which, by appealing to its sentiments and affections, we may derive a very nice evidence respecting the divine origin of certain inst.i.tutions and injunctions. For instance, the Chinese hold, as one of their religious beliefs, that parents have a paramount claim to the affections of their sons and daughters, long after they have been married and settled in the world; whereas our Saviour teaches that a man should leave father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the wife leave father and mother and cleave to her husband. And as, in the case of the dead and living child, Solomon sought his evidence in the feelings of the women that came before him, and determined _her_ to be the true mother in whom he found the true mother"s love and regard, I would seek my evidence, in this other case, in the affections of human nature; and ask them whether they declared for the law of the Chinese Baal, or for that of Him who implanted them in the heart. And how prompt and satisfactory the reply! The love which of twain makes one flesh approves itself, in all experience, to be greatly stronger and more engrossing than that which attaches the child to the parent; and while we see the unnatural Chinese law making the weaker traverse and overrule the stronger affection, and thus demonstrating its own falsity, we find the law of Christ exquisitely concerting with the nature which Christ gave, and thus establishing its own truth. Now, regarding the commission of the minister of the gospel," he continued, "I put a similar question to the affections, and receive from them a not less satisfactory reply.
The G.o.d who gave the commission does inspire a love for him who truly bears it; ay, a love but even too engrossing at times, and that, by running to excess, defeats its proper end, by making the servant eclipse in the congregational mind the Master whose message he bears. But I do believe that the sentiment, like the order to which it attaches, is, in its own proper place, of divine appointment. It is a preparation for the reception in love of the gospel message. G.o.d does not will that His message should be injured by any prejudice against the bearer of it; and that His will in this matter might be adequately carried out, was one of the grand objects of our contendings in the Church controversy. But we are not to calculate on the existence of any such strong feeling of love between the children of a school and their teacher. If, founding on the experience of our own early years, we think of the schoolmaster, not in his present relation to ourselves as a fellow-citizen, or as a servant of the Church, but simply in his connection with the immature cla.s.s on which he operates, we will find him circled round in their estimation (save in perhaps a very few exceptional cases) with greatly more of terror than affection. There are no two cla.s.ses of feelings in human nature more diverse than the cla.s.s with which the schoolmaster and the cla.s.s with which the minister of the gospel is regarded by their respective charges; and right well was St. Paul aware of the fact, when he sought in the terrors of the schoolmaster an ill.u.s.tration of the terrors of the law. And in this fence of terror we may perhaps find a reason why Christ never committed to the schoolmaster the gospel message." We are afraid we do but little justice, in this pa.s.sage, to the thinking of our deceased friend; for we cannot recall his flowing and singularly happy language, but we have, we trust, preserved his leading ideas; and they are, we think, worthy of being carefully pondered. We may add, that he was a man who had done much in his parish for education; but that he had at length seen, though without relaxing his efforts, that the religious teaching of his schools had failed to make the rising generation under his charge religious, and had been led seriously to inquire regarding the cause of its failure.
{15} Mr. Combe, however, may be regarded as an extreme man; and so the following letter, valuable as ill.u.s.trating the views of a not very extreme opponent, though a decided a.s.sertor of the non-religious system of tuition, may be well deemed instructive.
The writer, Mr. Samuel Lucas, was for many years Chairman of that Lancashire Public School a.s.sociation which Mr. Fox proposes as the model of his scheme:--
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SCOTSMAN.
SIR,--In your paper of the 26th ultimo, I observe among the advertis.e.m.e.nts a set of resolutions which have been agreed to and signed by a number of parties, with the view of a national movement in favour of an unsectarian system of national education. It is perhaps too early to say, that though the names of some of the parties are well known and highly esteemed in this country, yet that the names of many who might be expected to be foremost in promoting such an object are wanting.
I cannot, however, help thinking, that some of these may have been prevented from signing the doc.u.ment in question by some considerations which have occurred to myself on the perusal of it; and as a few lines of editorial comment indicate that the project has your sanction, you will perhaps allow me briefly to say why I think the people of Scotland should give to it the most deliberate consideration before committing themselves to it.
Agreeing, as I do most fully, with a large proportion of the contents of the resolutions, I regret that its authors have made an attempt, which it is impossible can be successful, to unite in the national schoolhouses, and in the school hours, a sound religious with an unsectarian education.
What is a _sound religious education_? Will not the professors of every variety of religious faith answer the question differently?
I think it was Bishop Berkeley who said, Orthodoxy is my doxy; heterodoxy is another man"s doxy. So it is with a sound religious education. What is sound to me is hollow and superficial, or perhaps full of error, to another.
If it be said that the majority of heads of families must decide as to what is sound and what is unsound, I must protest against such an injustice. The minority will contribute to the support of the public schools, and neither directly nor indirectly can they with justice be deprived of the use of them.
It appears to me that the authors of the resolutions are flying in the face of their own great authority, in proposing to introduce religious instruction into the public schools. It is true that Dr. Chalmers proposes that Government should "leave 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;" but he was not then contemplating the erection of national schools by the public money, but schools erected by voluntary subscription, which the Government might be called on to a.s.sist.
His opinion on the right action of Government in the present state of things is clear. He says: "That in any public measure for helping on the education of the people, Government [should]
abstain from introducing the element of religion at all into their part of the scheme."
What, then, should be the course taken by the promoters of public schools, in accordance with the principles enunciated by Dr Chalmers? It appears to me to be clearly this: to make no provision whatever for, or rather directly to exclude, all religious teaching within the walls of the school, and to leave, in the words of the fifth resolution, "the duty and responsibility of communicating religious instruction" in the hands of those "to whom they have been committed by G.o.d, viz.
to their parents, and, through them, to such teachers as they may choose to entrust with that duty."
This was the course pursued by the Government of Holland in the early part of the present century; and I suppose no one will venture to call in question the morality or religion of the people of that country, or to throw a doubt upon the success of the system.
It is as an ardent friend of National Education, both in Scotland and England, that I have ventured to make these few observations.
I desire to throw no obstruction in the way of any movement calculated to attain so desirable an object. It may be that I am mistaken in supposing that it is intended to convey religious instruction, in the public schools, of a kind that will be obnoxious to a minority; and if so, the design of the authors of the resolutions will have no more sincere well-wisher than, Sir, your obedient servant,
SAMUEL LUCAS.
LONDON, _February 4, 1850_.
CHAPTER SEVENTH.
General Outline of an Educational Scheme adequate to the demands of the Age--Remuneration of Teachers--Mode of their Election--Responsibility--Influence of the Church in such a Scheme--Apparent Errors of the Church--The Circ.u.mstances of Scotland very different now from what they were in the days of Knox.
Scotland will never have an efficient educational system at once worthy of her ancient fame, and adequate to the demands of the age, until in every parish there be at least one central school, known emphatically as the _Parish_ or Grammar School, and taught by a superior university-bred teacher, qualified to instruct his pupils in the higher departments of learning, and fit them for college. And with this central inst.i.tute every parish must also possess its supplementary English schools, efficient of their kind, though of a lower standing, and sufficiently numerous to receive all the youthful population of the district which fails to be accommodated in the other. In these, the child of the labourer or mechanic--if, possessed of but ordinary powers, he looked no higher than the profession of his father--could be taught to read, write, and figure.
If, however, there awakened within him during the process, the stirrings of those impulses which characterize the superior mind, he could remove to his proper place--the central school--mayhap, in country districts, some two or three miles away; but when the intellectual impulses are genuine, two or three miles in such cases are easily got over.
We would fix for the teachers, in the first instance, on no very extravagant rate of remuneration; for it might prove bad policy in this, as in other departments, to set a man above his work. The salaries attached at present to our parish schools vary from a minimum of 25 to a maximum of about 34. Let us suppose that they varied, instead, from a minimum of 60 to a maximum of 80--not large sums, certainly, but which, with the fees and a free house, would render every parochial schoolmaster in Scotland worth about from 80 to 100 per annum, and in some cases--dependent, of course, on professional efficiency and the population of the locality--worth considerably more. The supplementary English schools we would place on the average level maintained at present by our parish schools, by providing the teachers with free houses, and yearly salaries of a minimum of 30 and a maximum of 40. And as it is of great importance that men should not fall asleep at their posts, and as tutors never teach more efficiently than when straining to keep ahead of their pupils, we would fain have provision made that, by a permitted use of occasional subst.i.tutes, this lower order of schoolmasters should be enabled to prepare themselves, by attendance at college, for competing, as vacancies occurred, for the higher schools. It would be an arrangement worth 20 additional salary to every school in Scotland, that the channels of preferment should be ever kept open to useful talent and honest diligence, so that the humblest English teacher in the land might rise, in the course of years, to be at the head of its highest school; nay, that, like that James Beattie who taught at one time the parish school of Fordoun, he might, if native faculty had been given and wisely improved, become one of the country"s most distinguished professors. In fixing our permanent castes of schools, Grammar and English, we would strongly urge that there should be no permanent castes of teachers fixed--no men condemned to the humbler walks of the profession if qualified for the higher. The life-giving sap would thus have free course, from the earth"s level to the topmost boughs of our national scheme; and low as an Englishman might deem our proposed rates of remuneration for university-taught men, we have no fear that they would prove insufficient, coupled with such a provision, for the right education of the country.
We are not sure that we quite comprehend the sort of machinery meant to be included under the term Local or Parochial Boards. It seems necessary that there should exist Local _Committees_ of the educational franchise-holders, chosen by themselves, from among their own number, for terms either definite or indefinite, and recognised by statute as vested in certain powers of examination and inquiry. But though a mere name be but a small matter, we are inclined to regard the term Board as somewhat too formidable and stiff. Let us, at least for the present, subst.i.tute the term Committee; and as large committees are apt to degenerate into little mobs, and, as such, to conduct their business noisily and ill, let us suppose educational committees to consist, in at least country districts or the smaller towns, of some eight or ten individuals, selected by the householders for their intelligence, integrity, and business habits, and with a chairman at their head, chosen from among their number by themselves. A vacancy occurs, let us suppose, in either the Grammar or one of the English schools of the place: the committee, through their chairman, put themselves in communication with some of the Normal schoolmasters of the south, and receive from them a few names of deserving and qualified teachers, possessed of diplomas indicating their professional standing, and furnished, besides, with trustworthy certificates of character. Or, if the emoluments of the vacant school be considerable, and some of the neighbouring teachers, placed on a lower rate of income, have distinguished themselves by their professional merits, and so rendered themselves known in the district, let us suppose that they select _their_ names, and to the number of some two, three, four, or more, submit them, with the necessary credentials, to their const.i.tuents the householders. And these a.s.semble on some fixed day, and, from the number placed on the list, select their men. Such, in the business of electing a schoolmaster, would, we hold, be the proper work of a committee. In all other seasons, the committee might be recognised as vested in some of the functions now exercised by the Established presbyteries, such as that of presiding, in behalf of the parentage of the locality, at yearly or half-yearly examinations of the schools, and of watching over the general morals and official conduct of the teacher. But the power of trial and dismission, which, of course, would need to exist somewhere, we would vest in other hands. Let us remark, in the pa.s.sing, that much might come to depend ultimately on the portioning out of the localities into electoral districts of a proper size, and that it would be perhaps well, as a general rule, that there should be no subdivisions made of the old parishes. There are few parishes in Scotland in which the materials of a good committee might not be found; but there are perhaps many half, and third, and quarter parishes in which no such materials exist. Further, the householders of some country hamlet or degraded town-suburb, populous enough to require its school, might be yet very unfit of themselves to choose for it a schoolmaster. And hence the necessity for maintaining a local breadth of representation sufficient to do justice to the principle of the scheme, and to prevent it, if we may so speak, from sinking in the less solid parts of the kingdom. A parochial breadth of base would serve as if to plank over the unsounder portions of the general surface, and give footing to a system of schools and teachers worthy, as a whole, of the character and the necessities of a country wise and enlightened in the main, but that totters on the brink of a bottomless abyss.
The power of trying, and, if necessary, of dismissing from his charge, an offending teacher, would, however, as we have said, require to exist somewhere. Every official, whether of the State or Church, or whether dependent on a single employer or on a corporation or company, bears always a twofold character. He is a subject of the realm, and, as such, amenable to its laws; he has also an official responsibility, and may be reprimanded or dismissed for offences against the requirements and duties of his office. A tradesman or mechanic may go on tippling for years, wasting his means and neglecting his business, untouched by any law save that great economic law of Providence which dooms the waster to ultimate want; but for the excise officer, or bank accountant, or railway clerk, who pursues a similar course, there exists a court of official responsibility, which antic.i.p.ates the slow operation of the natural law, by at once divesting the offender of his office. And the State-paid schoolmaster must have also his official responsibility. But it would serve neither the ends of justice nor the interests of a sound policy to erect his immediate employers into a court competent to try and condemn: their proper place would be rather that of parties than of judges; and as parties, we would permit them simply to conduct against him any case for which they might hold there existed proper grounds. A schoolmaster chosen by a not large majority, might find in a few years that his supporters had dwindled into a positive minority: parents whose boys were careless, or naturally thick-headed, would of course arrive at the opinion that it was the teacher who was in fault; nay, a parent who had fallen into arrears with his fees might come to entertain the design of discharging the account simply by discharging the schoolmaster; and thus great injustice might be done to worthy and efficient men, and one of the most important cla.s.ses of the community placed in circ.u.mstances of a shackled dependency, which no right-minded teacher could submit to occupy. What we would propose, then, is, that the power of trial, and of dismission if necessary, should be vested in a central national board, furnished with one or more salaried functionaries to record its sentences and do its drudgery, but consisting mainly of unpaid members of high character and standing,--some of them, mayhap, members _ex officio_; the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, let us suppose--the Princ.i.p.al and some of the Professors of the Edinburgh University--the Rector, shall we say, of the High School--the Lord Advocate, and mayhap the Dean of Faculty. And as it would be of importance that there should be as little new machinery created as possible, the evidence, criminatory or exculpatory, on which such a board would have to decide could be taken before the Sheriff Courts of the provinces, and then, after being carefully sifted by the Sheriffs or their Subst.i.tutes, forwarded in a doc.u.mentary form to Edinburgh. It would scarce be wise to attempt extemporizing an official code in a newspaper article; but the laws of such a code might, we think, be ranged under three heads,--immorality, incompetency, and breach of trust to the parents.
We would urge the dismissal, as wholly unqualified to stand in the relation of teacher to the youthhead, of the tippling, licentious, or dishonest schoolmaster; further, we would urge the dismissal (and in cases of this kind the corroborative evidence of the Government inspector might be regarded as indispensable) of an incompetent teacher who did not serve the purpose of his appointment; and, in the third and last place, we would urge that a teacher who made an improper use of his professional influence over his pupils, and of the opportunities necessarily afforded him, and who taught them to entertain beliefs, ecclesiastical or semi-ecclesiastical, which their parents regarded as erroneous, should be severely reprimanded for such an offence in the first instance, and dismissed if he persevered in it.
We would confer upon the board, in cases of this last kind, no power of deciding regarding the absolute right or wrong of the dogmas taught.
The teacher might be a zealous Voluntary, who a.s.sured the children of men such as the writer of these articles that their fathers, in a.s.serting the Establishment principle, approved themselves limbs of that mystic Babylon which was first founded by Constantine; or he might be a conscientious Establishment-man, who dutifully pressed upon the Voluntary pupils under his care, that their parents, though they perhaps did not know it, were atheistical in their views. And we would permit no board to determine in such cases, whether Voluntaryism was in any respect or degree tantamount to atheism, or the Establishment principle to Popery. But we would ask them to declare, as wise and honest men, that no schoolmaster, under the pretext of a zeal for truth, should with impunity break faith with the parents of his pupils, or prejudice the unformed and ductile minds entrusted to his care against their hereditary beliefs. Should we, however, do no violence by such a provision, we have heard it asked, to the conscientious convictions of the schoolmaster? No, not in the least. If he was in reality the conscientious man that he professed to be, he would quit his equivocal position as a teacher, in which, without being dishonest, he could not fulfil what he deemed his religious duty, and become a minister; a character in which he would find Churches within which he could affirm with impunity that Dr. Chalmers was, in virtue of his Establishment views, little better than a Papist, or that Robert Hall, seeing he was a Voluntary, must have been an unconscious atheist at bottom.