Laing tells us, is "the interference with men as free moral agents, the substitution of Government enactments and superintendence in the most sacred domestic affairs for self-guidance by conscience, good principle, and common sense, the reduction, in short, of the population of a country to the social condition of a soldiery off duty, roaming about their parade-ground under the eye and at the call of their superior, without free agency or a sense of moral responsibility. Moral effects in society can only be produced by moral influences. We may drill boys into reading and writing machines, but this is not education. The almost mechanical operations of reading, writing, and reckoning, are unquestionably most valuable acquirements but they are not education; they are the means only, not the end-the tools, not the work in the education of man. We are too ready in Britain to consider them as tools which will work of themselves; that if the labouring man is taught to read the Bible, he becomes necessarily a moral, religious man; that to read is to think. This confounding of the means with the end is practically a great error. We see no such effects from the acquisition of much higher branches of school education, and by those far above the social position of the labouring man. Reading and writing are acquirements very widely diffused in Paris, in Italy, in Austria, in Prussia, and Sweden; but the people are not moral, nor religious, nor enlightened, nor free, because they possess the means. If the ultimate object of all education and knowledge be to raise man to the feeling of his own

moral worth, to a sense of his responsibility to his Creator and to his conscience for every act, to the dignity of a reflecting, self-guiding, virtuous, religious member of society, then the Prussian educational system is a failure. It is only a training from childhood in the conventional discipline and submission of mind which the State exacts from its subjects. It is not a training or education which has raised, but which has lowered the human character. This system of interference and intrusion into the inmost domestic relations of the people-this educational drill of every family by State means and machinery, supersedes parental tuition. It is a fact not to be denied, that the Prussian population is at this day, when the fruits of this educational system may be appreciated in the generation of the adults, in a remarkably demoralized condition."—p. 166.

After stating that female virtue is one of the best tests by which to judge of a nation's morality, this observant writer asks, "Will any traveller, will any Prussian say, that this index-virtue of the moral condition of a people is not lower in Prussia than in almost any part of Europe?" He tells us, that in 1837 there were 2,983,146 females in that country, between the ages of sixteen and forty-five, and that of these one in every seventy-five had been the mother of an illegitimate child. This would give one to every 382 of the entire population. England the proportion of illegitimate children for the year 1830 was one in 693. The numbers are as follows:

Hence we see that this particular crime which wherever it abounds must, from the amazing influence of woman, demoralize the whole of society, was nearly double in Prussia what it was in England; and Mr. Laing also tells us, that this vice most abounds among the middle classes, where it is least prevalent among us. We boast that in England a good female education almost in every instance prevents any violation of the rules of propriety. Were all the cases mentioned above thoroughly investigated, we query whether it could be found that a single female among our countrywomen, who had received a proper education, had been led astray; but in Prussia, the females, who have received the best training that the Church and State propose to give, and who have been instructed in schools held up as a pattern to all Europe, are the most guilty. We grant that our peasantry are not so well versed in reading, writing, &c., as the people in Prussia; and that of course, in these respects they can bear no comparison with the

In

middle classes in that country; and yet the daughters of our ignorant labourers and operatives are far more moral than the educated women in the middle ranks in Prussia. Literature is good, but morality is better; and if we must choose between the two, by all means give us the latter; for we would much rather have our rough, unlettered peasantry, than the educated, but immoral inhabitants of any of the continental states.

According to Prince Puckler Muskau, himself a Prussian, there are other particulars in which his nation is below ours. For he has stated, "in one of his late publications (Sudöslicher Bildersaal, drei theil, 1841), that the character of the Prussians for honesty stands far lower than that of any other of the German populations.' He gives no statistical data for his opinions, but as a Prussian, he would scarcely come to such a conclusion, if it were not generally believed in Germany."-Laing, p. 167. In England, notwithstanding all that has

dation; for he who owes his respectability to a riband, a star, a cross, or even a coronet, or a crown, is the most indigent of all paupers.

The fact that the whole male population of Prussia is educated in the art of war, and that the nation is a nation of soldiers, is a proof that both liberty and humanity are little studied by these belligerent citizens. Liberty is unknown in the army, and is allowed by all to be incompatible with military discipline, and as a consequence there is no free man in Prussia. Then a nation trained to the work of bloodshed and slaughter, ready to avenge itself for every supposed injury, and waiting to procure for itself fame by sweeping its enemies unprepared into eternity, can lay no claim to civilization, in the proper sense of the word. And the suspicion which has prompted it to cultivate this malignant spirit shows that it looks upon its neighbours as hordes of barbarians, whose propensity to plunder and blood can only be kept in abeyance by the dread of the sword. These citizen warriors also always stand ready to do the bidding of the Government on their own brethren. In 1834, when Berger, the pastor of Hermannsdorf, in Silesia, and others, refused the new Church service prescribed by the king, the military was sent to cure their heterodoxy, and each recusant peasant was punished by having ten or twelve soldiers quartered in his house. The persons who enjoin such cruelty, and the tools who sell themselves to trample liberty and conscience under foot, can lay little claim to the name of education.

When the late king died "2,966 individuals suffering for their religious or political opinions, were pardoned. They had been torn from their families and homes, imprisoned, condemned, banished, because they presumed to remind their sovereign of the natural and constitutional rights of the people, and of the royal promise to restore those natural rights to a representation in the legislature-a promise given in the hour of need, and broken in the hour of prosperity." The common citizen who acted thus treacherously and cruelly would be shunned by his species, but Prussia may thus trample on her own children, and stand ready to trample upon others, and yet be held up to Europe as a pattern of what can be effected by Government schools!

The immense number of Government functionaries necessary to keep the people from going astray, and the care with which the press is guarded, demonstrate that the Prussians are not an educated people. Welleducated citizens could go from place to place without a passport; might be allowed to move about freely without the superintendence of a policeman; and to read what books and newspapers they

please. In England and America men can do these things without any danger to the common weal. But the Prussians are still, it seems, in a state of imbecility as regards mind, and in a state of barbarism as regards morals. For he who does not know how to think for himself, and cannot be trusted with his own liberty without injuring himself or injuring others, is either an infant, an idiot, or a savage. Before we can say one word in favour of Prussian education we must see the people liberated, that we may know how they will act if left to themselves to exercise their own free agency.

But

There is nothing in which the dignity of a people shows itself to greater advantage than in religious fidelity. Of all martyrs, those who have died for the truth have been the noblest; and even when the creed has been an erroneous one, we have admired the constancy of its advocates, though we may have known their sentiments to be wrong. while Christian fortitude is admired by all, there is nothing so despicable as ecclesiastical subserviency. We presume that the vicar of Bray never had an admirer. The Nonconformists in former years, and the ministers and people of the Free Church of Scotland in our own day, whether their sentiments be approved or not, have, in the stand they made for their principles, erected for themselves an imperishable monument. But in Prussia attachment to any one standard of doctrines rather than to another seems to be almost unknown; for in 1817, when at the command of the king the new Church service was introduced in all the Protestant places of worship, "out of 8,950 congregations, 7,750 are said to have acquiesced, and to have adopted the new ritual." People whose minds are reduced to this state of mental and moral obsequiousness, have been injured rather than benefited by their national education. In Prussia, the psalms they shall sing, the prayers that shall be repeated, the text to be preached from on particular days, and the length of the sermon, are all fixed by royal authority, and both people and priests tamely submit. Like parrots they are willing to articulate what prayers the State may teach, and to keep both praying, singing, and preaching within the prescribed limits of "one hour." To worship God anywhere but in a church was prohibited, and made criminal in Prussia by an edictal law, dated the 9th of March, 1834, and yet we find only about 600 persons leaving this ungodly land that they might enjoy the freedom of worship.

"If to read, write, cipher, and sing, be education, the Prussian subject is an educated man;" but, "if to reason, judge, and act as an independent free agent, in the religious, moral, and social relations of man to his Creator and to his fellow-men, be that exercise of the mental powers which alone

As France has frequently been held up of late as a pattern of Governmental wisdom in her normal schools, and system of national instruction, it is important that we should endeavour to ascertain what is her real educational condition. Much light is thrown on this subject by Mr. Laing, in his "Notes of a Traveller," and especially in a late work by an unknown author, entitled "France, her Governmental, Administrative, and Social Organization, exposed and considered, in its Principles, in its Working, and in its Results." From this latter publication, we will now adduce a few facts.

Here we have the same system of centralization and despotism that we found in Prussia. Education being employed to enslave the people, and in fact to accomplish, under the refined names of schools and learning, what in darker ages and by barbarian rulers was effected solely by physical or brute force. The tyrants of old, and in some foreign nations now, give their subjects the alternative of slavery or death; but not a few modern despots educate their people to be slaves; and both religion and secular knowledge are doomed to perform all the vile drudgery which formerly was effcted by arms, tortures, 'dungeons, and executions. Tyranny is now under the form represented in the book of Revelation: it has the "horns of a lamb," but it speaks" as a dragon." For many years it was imagined that despotism and education were incompatible; and in our own country, not thirty years ago, it was stoutly maintained, that neither the Throne nor Christianity would be safe if the people were taught to read. But thanks to Prussia and other continental states, the delusion has been dispelled. It is now well ascertained, that of all the instruments that have ever been invented by political or ecclesiastical "craftsmen" to enslave the people, national education can be made the most effective. To this discovery, we owe Lord Ashley's motions, and the Bills of Sir James Graham.

"" -Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes
Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros,"

is now become an axiom in despotism; and it is almost universally allowed that the

effectually and permanently tame the people into voluntary slavery than either the policeman, the soldier, the gaoler, or the executioner. Physical bonds are always galling, and he who is chafed by them will, if possible, burst his fetters; but the intellectual and moral slave is lost for ever. The world is actually, at this day, more threatened by systems of national education, than it has ever been by any other form that tyranny has assumed. Let these plans succeed elsewhere, as in Prussia and France, and liberty will be entombed without the least prospect of a resurrection. Education is the hope of the world; but make this genius of universal emancipation the slave of tyrants, and nothing remains but the blackness of despair. Polished despotism and civilized servility are the direst curses that can visit the earth. Where these exist and reign, liberty, morals, and religion must of necessity expire. The French were originally called Franks, because of the spirit of freedom that was predominant among them. Charlemagne and others, however fond of absolute power, were in some degree controled by the manly and independent minds of their followers. Generals and chieftains, in those days, knew that if they infringed on the liberties of those whom they commanded or led, not only their power but their personal safety was in danger; but in our day the people have had the State schoolmaster among them, and he has reduced them to the most abject obsequiousness. A bold, courageous, independent spirit now would be as great a prodigy as a learned soldier in the dark ages. That these sentiments are well authenticated, the following facts will demonstrate.

The Imperial Decrees of France in 1806, 1808, and 1811, organized the Imperial University in that spirit of despotism so characteristic of their author, Napoleon. These decrees continued in force during the Restoration, the only change being the substitution of clerical for military direction. the Revolution of July, M. Guizot, who has been twice minister for that department, has introduced another alteration, and the bigotry of the Restoration is now transformed into an absolute doctrinarian servilism."

"Since

"The minister, or, as he is styled, the 'Grand Master,' has a general staff of eight councillors and fourteen general inspectors." "The University is divided into twenty-seven academies: at the head of each of these is a rector, with two, three, or four inspectors; and besides these, there are eighty-seven inspectors of primary schools."

"The instruction is divided into four classes the primary schools, where reading, writing, and arithmetic are taught; the secondary schools, where the pupils learn the elements of Latin and Greek; and such schools are established in every chief town