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stages , any peculiar powers of benefiting society whicK the individual possessed , cultivated to their highest vigour , and prepared to do their utmost for their possessor and for mankind . This would
prevent the good gifts of God from running to waste , as they now do so shamefully . All professions are overlaid with members whose souls are not in their work , while those who would do it with their intellectual and moral might , are elsewhere bound and tasked , toiling like galley slaves at an oar they hate .
The Rev . E . Irving , before he went quite mad , described hell as a place where porters would be compelled to make verses and poets to carry burdens . If the world be not quite so bad as this , it is not far short of it . If a good scheme of universal education , nationally provided and enforced , would not at once remedy the whole evil , it would yet , in many cases , show the absurdity so strikingly , as to insure correction to a considerable extent . This
is too great a subject to treat incidentally . We can only observe en passant , that our notion of national education is , that it should be the same , and the best , for all classes ; and that the extent and direction of its higher branches should be contingent on the demonstrations of peculiar aptitude in the pupils . In such a matter , sufficient liberty of action would be left to parents and guardians , if they had their proportionate influence in the appointment of the teachers of their district . There would be then some chance
of knowing what children really were . The seeds of genius would not be trampled under foot and perish in the sterility of poverty , ignorance , and ceaseless toil ; nor springing up , be trained to artificial and fruitless uniformity , by the blind mechanism of conventional teaching . It might still happen , that an excellent actor would be condemned to become a very miserable and mischievous
parish priest ; that he whom education had shown nature to have made a clever engineer , would deface the world instead of adorning it , by working as a legislator ; and that another Purcellshould there ever be another—would carry a musket without even getting into the band of his regiment , or sit at a desk ten hours per diem , copying the number of notes ( not his own ) in a ledger .
But at any rate , nature would have a better chance of fair play than at present . All men come into the world with some capacity to serve their fellows ; and by such a plan it would better be known what that capacity was . We could still , if we pleased , uphold our ancient institutions and forms of society , and rights of
property and parentage , by acting in despite of nature . But we should , at least , see more clearly what we were doing . That would be much towards our ceasing to do it . The most progressive and the happiest condition of society , must undoubtedly be that in which every man does the work for which he is best qualified Purcell did this . But what-if Purcell had been the son of a lord , or of a tinker ? The spirit within him might still have been strong ; but as in the one case he must have gone to Oxford or Cambridge ,
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292 Henry Purcell .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1833, page 292, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2614/page/4/
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