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ESSAY

ON

"THE EXPEDIENCY AND THE MEANS OF ELEVATING TIE
PROFESSION OF THE EDUCATOR IN PUBLIC

ESTIMATION."

BY THE AUTHOR OF

THE PRIZE ESSAY " ON THE MEANS OF PROMOTING
THE LITERATURE OF WALES."

LONDON:

H. HUGHES, 15, ST. MARTIN'S-LE-GRAND.

1840.

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DEDICATED

(WITHOUT PERMISSION)*

TO THE CENTRAL SOCIETY OF EDUCATION.

GENTLEMEN,

THE ensuing pages owe their birth to an advertisement which appeared in a London Paper offering a premium of One Hundred Guineas for the best essay on the expediency and the means of elevating the profession of the educator in public estimation. It will be superfluous to tell you, Gentlemen, or even the public, that this essay had not the good fortune to be the successful one, and it is merely published in order that the public may have an opportunity of judging whether the recommendations and suggestions it contains are all or any of them likely to

* I have dedicated this essay without permission, that none of the sentiments expressed in it, or the views which it unfolds may be chargeable upon the society.

I have no acquaintance with any of its members, nor do I know how far there is an agreement in our opinions. That there is some difference, I am bound to suppose from the fact of Mr. Duppa, its honorary secretary being so anxious to free himself and the society from the imputation of Atheism or Deism; because by repute the society did not join a religious to a civil education. Should the charge be preferred against myself, I shall feel in no wise disconcerted by it. Every man is entitled to his own opinions, and I claim for myself that liberty which I am willing to concede to others. We can harm none by our opinions-our actions alone can beneficially or adversely affect society.

promote the object desiderated by the Central Society. Such as are crude, others may perfect.Such as are not likely to further the design, will of course be rejected; and those only be adopted, which appear to have been well considered by the writer, who, in justice to himself is bound to acknowledge, that ill heath and other pressing avocations have not enabled him by reading, and researches into the opinions of other writers who have treated the subject, and into the practise of other countries to form so correct a judgement, as more extensive reading, and deeper research might have enabled him to do.

At the present moment education engrosses no inconsiderable share of public attention. No uniform plan-none at least likely to meet with general concurrence has hitherto been suggested. Religion is the stalking horse, and will remain so, while the church and state remain united. When Jonas was thrown overboard, the vessel lightened of her guilty burden, bore steadily its course before the wind. The tempest subsided to a breeze, and the boisterous waves changed into gentle and murmuring ripples. Once get rid of religion, by which is meant useless creeds and abstruse formularies of faith, (useless only so far as they are unintelligable to the infant mind, and are little likely to be productive of any moral or practical good-to exercise an abiding influence upon the giddy and thoughtless mind of youth, if to them indeed intelligible) as little understood by the teacher as the scholar, and in no wise tending to store the mind with useful or practical

information-let religion so much of it at least as is embodied in the catechisms of different sects be foregone and separated from a question with which it has no proper connection, and the vessel of education lightened of sectarian prejudices will no longer have the dread of foundering upon breakers -or of being shipwrecked in the storm which antagonist spirits invoke. I for one can view without any feelings of jealousy or alarm, a national system of education based upon the principles of religious exclusion-without the least apprehension that the doctrines of the Trinity or any other which the State religion holds essential to salvation will be in the least degree impugned or weakened, if they are not specially taught. Nor do I think that the foundations of the Establishment will be at all injured by the adoption of a system of education from which the bible as a class book will be excluded. Its base must be weak inded if such slight assaults can overturn or injure it,—if the affections of the people at large are likely to be alienated from it by a comprehensive and liberal scheme of national education. A member and a minister of the establishment, I cannot be supposed to harbour feelings, hostile to its stability, for, should it fall, in its fate will my own fortunes be involved, more or less. I am free to confess that I am so far a Papist, as not to deem it decorous to make that name which a Heathen philosopher never uttered without pausing, so common in the mouths of children; I cannot bring my mind to consider that it will beget in them a reverence for that Being, whose awful name is so often hackneyed

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