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    and often successfully , their competitors of the Church in their influence on the minds of the people , and in all the qualities and appearances which are calculated to gain that influence;—have never yet shewn any considerable disposition to excel , or even to equal , the higher ranks and the Church in

    the means of education . To constitute this a subject of rational wonder , it is not necessary to suppose either that the means of superior instruction provided for the higher ranks and the priests of the establishment are good , or that one or the other make a good use of them . The supposition would want much of being true in either case . But it is true , that the higher ranks and the Church have

    institutions which profess to teach the higher branches of education ; and that the middle ranks and the Dissenters have no such institutions . At this we are not contented to wonder , we are indignant and mortified ; and if we did not think that the time was come when the reproach would be blotted out , we should be grieved beyond what we can easily express . This neglect , or rather this self-abasement , is not to be excused on the pretext that the youth destined for the business of ordinary life have not time to devote to the higher branches of instruction , and are without the means of defraying the expense which it requires . The pretences are groundless . The time which is now wasted in learning but little , would be amply

    sufficient for the learning of much . It is not the want of years , at the age of fifteen or sixteen , which hinders a young man from understanding a difficult subject , but the want of the previous training which his years , had they been well employed , would have amply afforded . The years which are now given to a most imperfect education by the sons of the middle classes , the years which are spared from the money-getting occupations to which these young persons are destined , or mi g ht be spared with little disadvantage , in the most sordid sense , either to their parents or themselves , would suffice to lay

    the foundation of a good education ; an education which would initiate them fully in the mysteries of science , which would give them a taste for mental pursuits , endow them with the power of unravelling intellectual complexities , and prepare them to improve the reach and the force of their minds , not only by every moment which , during the whole course of their lives , they could spare for study , but by the intellectual observation of the very objects about which their business is conversant , and the events , ordinary or extraordinary , which are passing around them . And with respect to the supposed difficulty of expense , one of the great

    objections to education as now practised , is , that it is not only bad , but more expensive than the best education has occasion to be . Where the resort of pupils is considerable , a moderate fee to the professors constitutes an adequate reward ; the use of a public library diminishes greatly the expense of books ; the cost of living to pupils within a certain distance of the seat of education would be reduced to its lowest terms , by their living , as in

    populous towns would most commonlv be the cane , in the houses of their Barents : lous towns would most commonl y be the case , in the houses of their parents ; but even where they could not live in the houses of their parents , if collegiate living were not a part ( always a noxious part ) of the order and disci pline of the seminary , each pupil might provide accommodation for himself on as

    economical terms as his circumstances should require . The poorest would associate in the halls of instruction with the most opulent of their fellows , would partake with them in the reception of those ideas and the acquisition of those habits and tastes which would enable them in after life to place themselves on a level with the most exalted of their species ; and in retiring to a modest apartment and simple fare , they would more naturally feel a

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    164 Scientific Education , «

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1827, page 164, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1794/page/4/