be wrought by indirect influences. Now, I prophesy that if the County Board system. or any modification of it, be adopted, those influences will be forthcoming. Teachers and managers will then have so direct and immediate an interest in the matter that their wits will be sharpened to meet the difficulty, and nothing will be left undone to secure the co-operation of parents. In a word, there may no doubt be some inconveniences and difficulties attendant on the establishment of County Boards, but the proposal has much to recommend it. It is, what English institutions generally are, a happy compromise. It recognises local responsibility; it does not destroy free action; it preserves private sympathy and interest; it secures a definite rudimental result; it leaves room for more advanced processes and systems where they can be had, and for a central supplementing agency. Whether it will ever be put to the proof is another question, but at all events it deserves to be fairly and fully considered by those whose business it is to plan and legislate for national education.

If things are to go on as they are-if the existing provisional system is to receive no modifications or improvements-then has the country paid a handsome sum of money for a very unnecessary and superfluous illustration of the uselessness of Royal Commissions. Here we have a very able and elaborate Report, full of interesting matter, and containing many striking facts and several important suggestions. Let us hope that some practical use will be made of it. All hasty and illconsidered action or legislation is indeed to be deprecated. As Lord Granville said lately in the House of Lords, some time must be allowed to elapse before the subject can be most effectually dealt with. But the delay should not be too long; not longer than is necessary to let the question work in men's minds, and to enable public opinion to find adequate expression through the usual channels. In the meantime, however, there is a feeling that things are unsettled, and that feeling is injurious to the cause of education. Practical men want to see the educational question settled. I would hope, therefore, that ere long decided action will be taken, and that the chariot-wheels of the great Reformer of Education, whoever he may be, will not tarry. H. G. ROBINSON.

IV. RECIPROCAL NATURALIZATION.

2. THE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL THE COMPLEMENT OF THE
INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION.

KANT mentions, in the introduction to his essay on perpetual peace, that a certain meditative and sarcastic Dutch innkeeper had a churchyard painted over his door for a sign, with the inscription, "eternal peace." War, said Heracleitus of Ephesus, is the father of all things. The train of reflection which is suggested by the Dutchman's sign and

the saying of the Greek philosopher,-from the very opposite poles, as it were, of time and place and circumstances,-has been forcibly recalled to us by the only objections, in point of principle, which have been made to the views which we advanced, and the measures which we advocated, in our previous paper on Reciprocal Naturalization. As we anticipated, these objections have come chiefly from France; and it is consequently no less an act of international courtesy, than it is in accordance with the systematic prosecution of our inquiry, that we should respond to them in the first instance, before we attempt to remove those practical difficulties which alone have been urged by our critics on this side of the channel.

But, in order that we may do so in a manner which shall be intelligible to those of our readers who may not have perused our former paper, it is necessary that we should re-assert the position which we took up, and briefly refer to one or two of the leading arguments by which we endeavoured to maintain it. Our notion then, stated generally, was, that by promoting intellectual and social relations of a more intimate kind than now exist between the inhabitants of any two given countries, those mutual misunderstandings which we believed to lie at the root of national, just as of individual quarrels, would be removed in the case of these countries more effectually than by any course of diplomacy, however enlightened, or any union of mere material interests, however close. The idem velle atque nolle, we maintained, would become a firmer bond of friendship when it proceeded from the heart, than when its source was in the pocket; when it was a sentiment of affection, than when it was a calculation of self-love. We were far from ignoring or depreciating the political advantages arising from a union of material interests, such as has been brought about by the late commercial treaty between France and England, and is sought to be promoted and impressed on the mercantile mind of both nations by what are called "international exhibitions." Such a union of material interests was one side of the general scheme of Reciprocal Naturalization. But such a union of material interests is constantly exposed to the risk of being undermined by groundless jealousies, and torn to pieces by irrational passions. Such jealousies and passions have a thousand times silenced the entreaties of self-interest, just as they have drowned the voice of reason and of justice. The whole history of the relations of France and England, in the past, is a history of their action; and, even at this hour, the loss in time and energy, and health and virtue, which they occasion to the inhabitants of both countries is incalculable and almost inconceivable. The existence of this giant evil we assumed as incontestable, and our endeavour was to show, first, that it had its source in ignorance of each other's character and objects and motives, rather than in any real conflict of national interests or incompatibility of national character or disposition; and second, that this ignorance admitted of being removed, or greatly mitigated, by international arrangements chiefly of an educational kind. If a considerable number of Frenchmen, of the class who now receive the higher

instruction in France, were to complete their education in England, and if a corresponding number of Englishmen, of the same class, were to pursue their maturer studies in France, frequenting, in either case, the public educational institutions of the country in which they respectively resided, and thus coming in contact with its influences and associations in early manhood, we contended that they would not only be bound through life to the country of their adoption by many ties of affection and sympathy and individual interest, but that they would, at all times, be able and willing to interpret the one nation to the other. It was not in the great crises of the history of either nation alone, or chiefly, that we anticipated advantages from this mutual interpretation. In tranquil times, in the normal conditions of society, the press and the senate, the rulers and the ruled, would be guided by sounder information to juster opinions and safer rules of action. At the dinner-table and the fireside, conversation would be guided by facts, and moulded by feelings which are now rare in England, and, we fear, still rarer in France.

Such, in the merest outline, was the political, or inter-political aspect of our scheme. As regarded the individuals by whose instrumentality these public benefits were anticipated, we contended that, far from being sufferers for the common good, they would, in mere human development, be the greatest gainers of all; whilst under proper regulations there was no need that their material or worldly interests should be sacrificed. An early training in two nationalities was, we contended, the surest, if not the only sure means of attaining the advantages, moral and intellectual, which are commonly sought by all that laborious and irksome linguistic teaching and costly locomotion, in which the earlier years of the most favoured portion of the youth of England, and to some extent of France, are usually spent. For what are the real objects aimed at by these expedients? Are they not a widening of the range of vision, a sharpening and rectifying of the mental eyesight, by accustoming it to a larger and more varied prospect of the field of human life. To substitute the absolute for the conventional point of view was, we endeavoured to demonstrate, the only means of rendering human experience an object of instructive and fruitful contemplation; and this, we maintained, could be accomplished by living contact with foreign life far more certainly, easily, and thoroughly, than by any other expedient that had ever been proposed by mankind.

Even mere word-teaching, whatever its value might be, stood in a similar position. As regarded modern languages the fact was obvious; and we were willing to assume that the languages of antiquity were studied and taught with equal success in both countries.

Now, the objection which is made to this reasoning by our friends in France, and which, probably, will, at first sight, commend itself to friends in England, rests, as we have said, on the principle which suggested his sign to the Dutchman, and his saw to the Greek. "Your endeavour," we are told, "is to destroy the tares of international misunderstanding by plucking up the wheat of wholesome, united, and, as such necessarily, somewhat repulsive and defiant national feeling.

In your zeal to save us from the possible horrors of war, and the present evils of taxation, you are willing to expose us to the still greater evil of losing, or at any rate lowering, that national spirit in which so much of our strength, and energy, and virtue consists; that spirit to which, as exhibited by the two nations to which you have applied your reasoning, mankind at large is so extensively indebted for their achievements in the field of human progress. Man, believe us, is a struggling and fighting animal, strong only in the spirit which rivalry imparts. Let us close our national ranks then, and confine ourselves to the development of our national character, and the improvement of our national institutions. Let us struggle, and compete, and fight if we must, rather than lie down together in listless, and profitless, and objectiveless peace. France for the French, and England for the English! The emblem of peace is the grave; war is the father of all 'hings!" Now, we were so far from intentionally leaving out of account the large element of truth which is exhibited in this view of human nature and history, that were we persuaded that the consequences of our proposals would be to obliterate separate national life, or to diminish the pride, and strength, and joy which that life experiences in vindicating its peculiar and distinctive tendencies, we would gladly forego the advantages of safer international relations, and even of increased international aid in the pursuit of universal social development, rather than purchase them at so dear a price. Every nation is the arbiter of its own fate, the custodier of its own fortunes. It contains within it its own centre and its own goal; and the true object and function of war is to remind it of these facts, and to force upon it the feeling of its selfdependence. Bad as war is, defensive war at least is better than the listless inaction, the national lethargy out of which it often, perhaps generally, arises-it is the cure and not the disease. It is forgetfulness of this fact which, in all times and places, has rendered the arguments of the advocates of "peace at any price" ridiculous to others, and has led to their being regarded, even by their authors, as little better than a speculative pastime. The "Peace" of Aristophanes is a satire on war, in which he is not half so confident of his ground as in his ridicule of Socrates in the "Clouds." The "perpetual peace" of Kant is a brochure to which there is no reason to suppose that he attached the same importance as to any of his larger works. Plato throughout is the advocate not of peace, but of righteousness; and, to make a wide leap, even Mr. Bright would probably forget that he was a Quaker, if he saw any prospect of his principles being carried out to their legitimate results. Above all, Christianity, which is essentially the religion of love to man, is uncompromising in its opposition to the doctrine of 66 peace at any price.' The Prince of Peace himself has declared, that He 66 came not to send peace but a sword," and an apostle has told us, with Plato, that "the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated."* With such autho

* A friend has called our attention to what is surely very significant of the Christian view on this subject, viz., the absence of any specific petition for peace in the Lord's Prayer. It falls, of course, under the more comprehensive heads, "Thy

rities before us, even if our own reason did not affirm their dicta, we should scarcely venture to dissent from the creed of our fathers, that

"Oftentimes a wicked peace
Is well exchanged for war."

But how far does this admission carry us? Does it follow that because war is not the worst of human evils, it is not the saddest and sorest of human remedies. The sword is the surgeon's knife applied to the body political; the bayonet is the instrument with which the foulest humours of humanity are discharged. But thankful as we may be for the surgeon's aid in our extremity, does any sane man court the extremity which calls for his aid? The proposition that war, with all its accompaniments, preparations, and possibilities, is an evil, second only to the evil which calls it into operation, an evil consequently to be avoided by all reasonable sacrifices, is a proposition too obvious to merit that we should support it by a single word of argument.

But what are "reasonable sacrifices?" for if they have limits we must define them, if we would arrive at any positive result. Above all, we must say whether the loss of our distinctive national character be, or be not, contained in the price which we are willing to pay for tranquillity. Now here it is necessary that we should draw a distinction, for it is upon this distinction that the whole force of our argument hinges. There is a national character for the preservation of which every honest citizen of every honest state would lay down his life with joy; and, on the other hand, there is a national character for which no one but a fool would contend, and which it is the object of all civilisation and all education to obliterate. The one is the distinctive moral life of that community, it is truth, justice, and righteousness seen in the particular light in which alone that people, by its natural temperament, and its traditions and circumstances, is in a condition to see them. It is the right and the power of seeking social development and perfection by its own road, the road which God and history have indicated as the only one which it can tread with confidence and hope. The other is mere prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness: it is social falsehood, in short, in the peculiar form which falsehood has assumed in that community, from the imperfection of its development and the peculiar twists in its lot, whether these have originated in temperament or historical accident. Our answer to those then, whether in France or in England, who accuse us of attempting to root out national feeling, is that it is against the latter, not the former phase of it that our attack is directed; that it is when waged in defence of the latter and not the former that we would strive to avoid the consequences, by removing the causes of war. That this spurious and irrational nationality still lingers both in France and in England, that kingdom come," and "Thy will be done;" and it is in this way that we reconcile its omission with the special blessing attached to peace-makers in the Sermon on the Mount. It is not said, Blessed are the "peaceable" (eipηvikoi), those who let ill alone for the sake of avoiding strife, but Blessed are those who make peace (eipηvotocol), those who remove the causes of strife, by advancing Go 's kingdom and doing His will.