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Untitled Article
mendation of what Mr . Lancaster imparts ; none of the young persons educated in his seminaries having been charged with a criminal offence in any of our courts of justice .
13 . After observing that the expence of furnishing the means of religious instruction , is very trifling in the schools of Dr , Bell , Mr . Bowyer proceeds in the
following strain , " This brings me to the consideration of one of the additions to , or rather alterations of , the original system upon which the person above alluded to , rests his claim to the merit of invention . And the real and undeniable merit of
his haying first presented this most useful method of teaching to the ocular observation of this country , by his early , laborious and extensive practice of it , gives him so fair a title to th . e gratitude and esteem of the publ' -c that I enter with great reluctance , on a statement
which must imply a censure on any part of his proceedings ; but the danger with which , in my view of them , they menace our church establishment , lays me under an imperious necessity of communicating to you , as its appointed guardians and watchmen , the nature and cause of such my apprehensions . ' *
Irrational fear magnifies its object ; persons under its influence are seldom distinctin their perceptions or conclusive in their reasonings ; and it is for his readers to say whether this be not our author ' s situation ?
For what however is Mr . Lancaster censured ? Whence the apprehended danger ? Why truly , the founder of the Borough Road school employs reading cards and tables , and saves the expence of binding and stitching ! Therefo re ^ * ' we ~ mu 6 t at once renounce all
expositions pf the church catechism , arid all tracts of q . similar length . " 14 , 15 . To this aovel and not viry per *
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spicuous objection , we oppose the single fact that Mr . Lancaster * !* press furnished one of the schools in the metropolis with the church catechism , printed after the manner of his own cards . Now .
plainly , what is done in one instance , may be done in all : and they who require this catechism to be exclusively taught , may thus engraft it on th <* system of Lancaster , wkh the same facility as on Dr . Bell ' s .
So unfounded are Mr . Bowyer ' s fears and insinuations I He appears indeed , to be as ignorant of this part of his subject as he is inaccurate in another ; since to the semicircles in the Lancastrian
Schools he assigns a diameter of nine or ten feet , instead of one of less than half that l en ^ h . 1 b . But contemplating Mr . Lancaster as a dissenter , —and " The very head and front ef his offending Hath this extent , no more '—
— here , exclaims the Official , < c new difficulties and dangers arise . Jf Accordingly , having described the situation and duty of dissenters in respect of the
education of their own children , he complains of those members of the established church , who * would voluntarily send the children of the poor by hundreds to be educated by dissenters , or at least under the effectual controul of a
dissenter . " ( l 6 ) . In his statement he is right , but faulty in his conclusion . When churchmen and dissenters unite in a scheme of general benevolence , without compromising their several tenets , it i » unjust to say that the children of the poor are educated by dissentt-rs .
* 7 . " Ij : seems / ' observes JWtr . & 0 W- ? ycr , « we arc totfrifer the ckildrfa 4 f
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* Mr + Bowyer and Dr % Marsh on Education . 47
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1812, page 47, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1744/page/47/
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