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Untitled Article
arising ) be discharged by the minister who is a stranger even to their persons ? Looking only at the obligations which attach to the ministerial character , we must confess that the non-residence of the clergy is not merely a defect in any ecclesiastical system , but presents at first the appearance of a strange and almost unaccountable anomaly . This anomaly , however , exists in our church , and exists to a great extent . " In a similar strain is an article proceeding from a similar quarter , published in the last number of the Quarterly Review , on the State and Prospects of
the Country . Numerous are the points in which the Reviewer tells his readers a reform is necessary . No novelties , it is true , proceed from his pen . What he says , hundreds have said before him . But truths which are almost worn out by iteration amongst the friends of improvement , look fresh and new and assume a pleasing aspect , in the hands of those who have previously frowned upon them , yet have the power to giye
them effect . On this account , because we rejoice to see truth in the possession of those whose influence has been shewn in effectually excludin g and proscribing the very principles they are beginning to espouse , we welcome the appearance of the article to wnich we have now adverted . Exceptions to our approbation , it is true , we might make ; and one , to prevent our being misunderstood , we must make ; we allude to the absurd and
exploded notion which the Reviewer gravely maintains , that " education and reading have been pushed too far among the lower classes . " The phraseology is somewhat ambiguous . " Too far , " for whom ? For the lower classes ? That is impossible . For those who are interested in the continuance of prevailing abuses ? That is very true , and a reason with the truly benevolent for carrying it still farther . The time has not yet come to talk of the over-education of the people when so many thousands of our
fellow-subjects are destitute of its advantages . Far distant is the day , we fear , when we shall be able in truth to say that education is sufficiently extended . When all are instructed in the elements of knowledge , and especially in the principles of duty , then will be the time , and not before , to moot the question of over-education . Let every child and every adult in the kingdom know not only how to read and write , but , in addition to these things , as much else as possible , and by that time , having had some
experience of the effects of education on the people at large , we shall be in a condition fairly to estimate the amount of danger which over-education threatens . In the mean time , the fear of too much knowledge appears to us like the fear of too much virtue , or too much light , or too much piety . For the welfare of man , the larger and richer the amount of these blessings that he has in his possession the better . The education of the people is no longer an experiment . Facts , that no one can question , declare its value . Report after report we have had from various institutions for the education of the children of the working classes , setting forth the important truth that scarcely any of those who have been submitted to the sacred influences of knowledge , have afterwards been found to violate the laws . The Lancasterian school in Manchester has given education to 14 , 000 , and out of these
only six had been committed to the town goal . But , say the opponents of education , crime has increased , though education has spread . It has : in spite of education , so baneful is the influence of the abuses which the government has allowed to prevail , that crime has increased to an alarming / extent ; and , notwithstanding all the efforts of the friends of education , crime can hardly be diminished till our institutions have undergone a
Untitled Article
388 The Watchman .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1829, page 388, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2573/page/20/
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