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    tury , stood in the highest rank among the men of intellect and literature in the world , can only be accounted for by general causes ; and is one of the most interesting facts in the history of human kind . The following list , made at the moment from memory , and of course very imperfect , will , nevertheless , suggest to our readers convincing evidence that it must have been a fine system of instruction to which so great an amount of intellectual superiority can be traced .

    We shall place at the head of the list of the men of eminence , educated among the Protestants of France , the first name , perhaps , of his age , Bayle ; then followed Beausobre , Basnage ( Jacques ) , and Basnage ( Henri ) , Lenfant , Barbeyrac , Claude , Dacier , Lefevre , Le Clerc , Saurin ( Jacques ) , Saurin ( Joseph ) , Abadie , Daille , Bochart , Rapin , Laplacette , Pelisson , Jurieu ; a catalogue which it is not easy to parallel , and which leads decidedly to the conclusion , that a system of education , equal to , if not better , than existed any where else in the world , was at that time established among the Huguenots of France ; for it is not the mere number of the men of eminence

    which deserves to be considered , but the proportion which they bear to the population which produced them . If Catholic France , with a population ten times as great , or England , with a population five times as great , produced an equal number of eminent men , the fact would bear but one-tenth in the one case , and one-fifth in the other , of the wonderful character which belongs to the production of so much talent among the Huguenots of France .

    Circumstances have , in several most important , respects , been more favourable to England than to other countries in Europe . One of the most remarkable results of the peculiar circumstances of England has been the raising up of a middle class , placed sufficiently above poverty to be exempted from those continual cares and toils which preclude the exercise of intellect , and sufficiently below that degree of opulence which substitutes the influence

    of wealth for the effect of personal qualities ; a middle rank , more numerous , compared with the whole population , than any other country , perhaps , has ever possessed ; a middle rank , whose energy and ingenuity have been the exclusive source of all the power and all the glory of England ; and to whom the community must look for all that hereafter is to improve their happiness , and maintain their rank as a portion of the human race .

    Another result of the peculiar circumstances of England , which also we pronounce on the ground of irresistible reason most fortunate , is , that a very great and a continually growing proportion of her population are Dissenters from the Established Church . On the importance of this fact it is not at present our province to enlarge . We mention it in conjunction with the fact immediately before adduced , of the amount in England of the middle rank of the people , of whom the Dissenters form a very great proportion , in order to remark the lamentable coincidence of both in one fatal mistake :

    we mean , the neglect of education ; that unaccountable contentment , which up to this moment they exhibit , in the want of the means of imparting to their youth the higher branches of instruction , and all the more eminent distinctions of the human mind . Remarkable enough it is , that the middle classes , and the Dissenters , though they have displayed the strongest spirit of rivalry with those to whom

    they look respectively as objects of competition ;—the men of the middle class striving to approach , or to equal those of the higher class in the possession of wealth , and all that distinguishes it , the magnificence of their establishments , the elegance of their mode of life , even their share in the Legislation and Goyernment of the country ; the Dissenters striving to exceed ,

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• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1827, page 163, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1794/page/3/