find in this invaluable little work, because we heartily hope they will procure it and study it most carefully for themselves. We may add, in conclusion, that it is dedicated to the English Jesuit Father Provincial, and introduced by a weighty preface from Archbishop Manning.

Popular Education at Home and Abroad; being Extracts from the Reports of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the State of Popular Education in England, and of their Assistant Commissioners, on Popular Education in Germany, the United States, Canada, Holland, Switzerland, and France. London: Burns, Oates, & Co. 1869.

I

RELAND will not very long occupy the whole attention of Parliament;

and whenever it can spare time to think at all about England, national education will be one of the first, probably the very first subject discussed. There has long been a general feeling, that something must be done, and now there is hardly a newspaper without a report of some active proceedings on the part of those who are labouring to introduce compulsory secular education. They have the great advantage of being the assailants, and the assailants of a system which no one can unreservedly defend; for that which now exists notoriously fails to secure education for all children, and fails exactly in the places where there is most to be done. It is essential, therefore, that those who feel, that the plans of the party already in the field would be mischievous, should be prepared with counter plans of their own. Mere objection seldom holds its ground long against a definite and positive view, especially where there is a real evil to be met; and if those who desire to maintain denominational education would successfully meet the present agitation, they must have a clear notion of what they want, and especially of the changes which they are ready to introduce into the existing system.

Nothing, therefore, can be more seasonable at this moment than the pamphlet before us, which gives us the opinions of many trustworthy men as to the defects of the present system, and the means by which they may be met; and also puts within our reach, in small compass, the results of experience in every country in which compulsory secular education has been tried. No man who cares anything about national education should be without it. It gives us, in sixty-three pages, the parts bearing on this subject in six huge volumes, published by the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the subject. The first eleven pages consist of extracts from their Report, explaining what has hitherto been done to assist the education of the poor by Parliamentary grants, i.e. that Government has acted not by founding or maintaining schools, but by giving assistance to those who have founded and who still keep them up; and the results which have been obtained. The Parliamentary grant has assisted 9,388 schools, which contain 1,101,445 scholars and 32 training colleges. Government has expended on education £4,400,000, which have been met by about £8,800,000 raised by voluntary contributions. "Its system of inspection has raised the standard of educa

tion, and by the careful training of its teachers, and, above all, by the introduction of pupil teachers, it has supplied the best means for teaching in schools." The Commissioners then give reasons why they think the system should not be superseded by any of those proposed instead of it, and especially why they object to a local rate in support of schools. All they say on this subject is well worth study. It is hardly possible to give any just conception of it by extracts. Indeed, the pamphlet before us, being compiled evidently with great care and by a person thoroughly acquainted with the subject from a work of huge dimensions, there is hardly a word in it which can be omitted without loss, and we would therefore earnestly refer every reader to the pamphlet itself.

But we would specially call attention to the pages which follow the extract from the Report. From page 14 to page 38 we have extracts from the Reports made to the Commissioners by assistants, whom they were empowered to send to examine into and report upon the state of education in other countries. The great value of these is, that the argument in favour of compulsory education has hitherto been, thatit has been tried and has answered in other countries. An appeal is made to experiment; and these few pages enable us to see how the experiment has worked, and what are its results.

First, comes Germany. Mr. Pattison, Assistant Commissioner to report on German schools, shows that everywhere in Protestant Germany, and especially in Prussia, there is a strong movement against mixed education, and that, in fact, although great attempts were made by the Government many years ago to introduce secular education, it has been found to work so ill that there are now very few secular schools left. In the Rhine Province the Code Napoléon and the system of secular schools were both introduced when that province was held by France. It is remarkable, however, that although the Code is "retained as a cherished possession by the inhabitants of the left bank of the Rhine, the schools have almost all become confessional schools, and this without any legislative enactment, but by the mere current of circumstances. The commune still remains a civil corporation, with the obligation of building and maintaining both church and schools for the inhabitants within its boundaries, but the preference of confessional schools is now so decided, that Protestants and Catholics have invariably separate schools. In a parish where the Protestants are in a minority, for example, they will build and endow their own schools, and then oblige the commune to pay for it, and to contribute to the master's salary. They retain the right, all this while, to send their children to the original, or Catholic school, as it is there called; for the school, though legally common, has become Catholic by the secession of the Protestants." According to Mr. Pattison, therefore, the schools in Prussia, though professedly "mixed," are, in fact, " denominational," a state of things with which we are familiar in Ireland.

The next report is by Mr. Fraser, on the "common schools" of the United States. The theory of these is (or at least originally was), to teach a sort of general Christianity, without the peculiarities of any one Church or sect. This was the plan naturally adopted by a nation in which no one form of

Christianity prevailed, while yet there was a very strong feeling in favour of Christianity, a feeling, the strength of which so much surprised De Tocqueville. Practically, they have become mere secular schools, although, as a sort of acknowledgment of the original intention, some part of the Holy Scriptures is read every day, and "almost everywhere provision is made for opening the work of the day with prayer." But all men agree that these are mere ineffectual forms. Mr. Fraser says a general feeling is rising against these schools, as having, in truth, no religious character, and as not efficiently preserving even the interests of morality; which threatens the permanence and stability of the system." There is a general preference for parochial schools, i. e., schools connected with particular religious congregations or societies. He adds, "I confess to a doubt whether, in the course of another quarter of a century, all will go as smoothly with the common schools of America as it has gone for the last twenty-five years; whether, like many another ancient institution, they may not be put upon their trial, and even forced to yield to the restless reconstructing tendencies of the age." He quotes "The Report of the State of Massachusetts," showing that "parents withdraw their young children from what they fear to be the corrupting influence of the public schools." After a testimony to the Catholic schools in Lower Canada, he sums up: "mixed schools, with religious instruction occupying a definite place in their programme, are a phenomenon hardly to be met with on the American Continent. No compromise and no comprehension have yet been discovered sufficiently skilful to appease, or sufficiently tolerant to embrace the mutual jealousies of Christian communities. It was so in the United States; it was so, though less prominently, in Upper Canada; it is so still, though in smaller proportions, here (in Lower Canada). It looks almost like a law of human nature that it shall be so everywhere."

Mr. Matthew Arnold reports on the schools of Holland. By a law of 1806 a public school could not be denominational. All were to train children "for the exercise of all social and Christian virtues," but no dogmatic instruction "was to be given by the teacher or in the school;" the Minister for the Home Department, however, was charged by the law to see that the Ministers of different communions should take on themselves "the religious instruction of the children of their persuasion." The plan, it was boasted, worked well. The success was praised by M. Cousin. But, lo! it turned out that this succsss was only because the schools, while professing to be only "Christian," were taught the established Protestantism of Holland. And when, in 1848, all religious denominations were put on terms of equality, the system at once broke down. The law was plain. The schools must not be denominational. But as soon as this law was practically enforced, the more religious Protestants found that they were utterly irreligious; in fact, they had hitherto been as religious as any Protestant schools could be, but then they were not really "mixed;" they were made practically "mixed,” but they at once ceased to be in any sense "religious." The system is now being changed, and what will succeed does not yet appear. Mixed schools have evidently no chance.

On the French system, Mr. Arnold reports most favourably as to economy,

efficiency, &c. He says it is "religious, not in the sense in which all systems profess to be more or less religious, in inculcating the precepts of a certain universal and indisputable morality. It inculcates the doctrines of morality in the only way in which the masses of mankind ever admit them, or their connection with the doctrines of religion. Here it coincides with the systems of England and Germany. Morality, but dignified, but sublimed, by being taught in connection with religious dogma. This is what the French system makes the indispensable basis of its primary instruction."

Our own opinion as to the degree to which this just principle is really carried out by the French system does not agree with Mr. Arnold's. We believe it is very different in different parts of the country. We are sorry to say we know schools immediately under the Government, the teaching of which is decidedly anti-religious. This, however, does not affect the principle. It still remains the fact that the schools maintained by the French Government profess to be religious. Mr. Arnold's testimony to the contrast between the "sisters' schools" and lay schools is decided. He ends: "Is it then impossible, I perpetually asked myself, for people no longer under the world's charm, or who have never felt it, to associate themselves, and to work happily, combinedly, and effectually, unless they have first adhered to the Council of Trent?" As to Switzerland, he gives a very curious account of the tyranny of the "Liberals" in the canton of Fribourg, where they obtained power owing to the war of the Sunderbund. Happily the first free election deprived them of it.

As to the general results of these reports, it appears first, with regard to compulsory attendance, that in Germany the attendance is as good in the few states where the law does not exist as in those in which it does. Moreover, as soon as circumstances have arisen in those states in which schooling is by law compulsory which cause any real difficulty, and might be supposed to show the benefit of the compulsory system, there it has at once broken down. Upon this subject the experience of the district of Saxony in which the cotton manufacture has been introduced is very important (see p. 42). In Prussia also, "all who have to do with the elementary schools agree that their great difficulty" is to secure the regular attendance of the children whose names are on the books. The causes which prevent regular attendance seem to operate much as they do in England (p. 44). "In Würtemberg there is a party who contend for the abrogation of compulsory school attendance. This party do not take their stand on any abstract principle of protection of liberty to the individual, but on the observed effect on the practice of Government administration. They maintain that if compulsory attendance ceased to be law, the schools would be as well attended as they are now."

Attendance is compulsory in four cantons of French Switzerland, and not in the fifth (Geneva). Mr. Arnold reports that the attendance is better in Geneva than in the others. He gives in detail the obstacles which hinder regular attendance, and one would say he was speaking of England. As to the canton of Vaud, he sums up: "Not that primary instruction is unprosperous. On the contrary, it is most flourishing. What I say is, that the making it compulsory by law has not there added one iota to its prosperity. Its prosperity is due to the general comfort and intelligence of the population,

where these are equally present (as in Geneva), the prosperity of education is equal, though there is no compulsion. Where these fail, the compulsion of the law is powerless to prevent the inevitable check inflicted on education by their absence."

In France and Holland education is not compulsory. In the United States, Mr. Fraser reports: "It would seem that the condition of schools in America, as respects both the percentage of attendance and the period of attendance, is no better than, indeed hardly as good as, the average condition of those in England."

Our readers must excuse the length of these extracts. The general result is, that compulsion could not practically be brought to bear in a state of society like ours; that mixed schools, to teach a sort of common Christianity, are a delusion: they have in all cases resulted, and no doubt always will result, in one of two things—either in mere secular schools of an anti-religious and immoral tendency, or else in schools virtually denominational under the pretence of being mixed.

Secondly, as to a school-rate, the objection felt by thinking men of every variety of religious opinions is, that effective as it would be in securing the universal establishment of schools, it would be fatal to their efficiency; for English custom would require that schools supported by local rates should be subject to local management. But local managers will be sure to wish to limit both the standard of teaching and the expense of the school. A more serious objection is, that the religious character of the school could not be maintained.

The Commissioners, while objecting on these grounds to "the peculiar form of parochial rating," propose "that the public assistance given to schools should be derived in part from local taxation." The pamphlet does not explain this recommendation, an omission which we regret. What the Commissioners recommend is, that while the grant for the central government should depend only on the number of children in the school, there should be an additional subvention from the county-rate, to be granted for results upon the report of inspectors to be appointed by a local board. We greatly doubt whether any system of supporting schools by local taxation will be found free from fundamental objections. After all, the objection which will, we think, be most generally felt in England is, that rate-supported schools could not fail to destroy the great system of schools already existing, and which we owe to the benevolence and religious convictions of our country. Nothing could be more consistent than this with English customs. It is of a piece with those hospitals "supported by voluntary contributions," by which foreign travellers are struck as one of the most remarkable characteristics of England. To extinguish this great system which has already succeeded, in order to try one which has indeed been tried in many countries, but of which it seems at least doubtful whether it ever did, in any country, obtain permanent success, would be to carry mere theory to the wildest extreme.

We heartily trust then, that English Catholics at least will unite as one man to demand the continuance of the present system in all its main features. The extracts from the evidence given before the Commissioners by Mr. Allies suggests, we think, the only really important change which it needs; that is,