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Untitled Article
of Commons , and the appointment of a committee to consider the subject of national education , are tokens , among many others , that the present is an auspicious moment for inviting the attention of the English public to that highest and most important of all the objects which a government can place before itself , and to the great things which have been accomplished by another nation in the prosecution of that object .
The value of M . Cousin ' s Report does not consist in the details ., though without the details it would be comparatively of little interest . It throws no new or unexpected light upon the means of educating a people ; it simply enables us to realize the fact that a government exists virtuous enough to will the end . The machinery
is no other than that which common sense suggests , and would suggest to any government animated by the same spirit . Schools for ally without distinction of sect , and without imposing upon any sect the creed or observances of another ; the superintendence shared between a Minister of Public Instruction , and local committees of a
most democratic constitution , ( a fact perfectly accordant with the spirit of the Prussian government , whose municipal institutions are among the freest in Europe ;) and finally , that without which the remainder of the system would be of little value , schools for teachers . In all this there is nothing intricate or recondite ; what is memorable is not the conception , but that it has found hands to
execute it : that the thing is actually done ; done within two days ' journey of our own shores , done throughout a great country , and by a government unrivalled in the art of doing well whatever it does at all , because surpassing all other governments in the systematic choice , for whatever it wishes done , of the persons fittest for doing it .
The spirit which has accomplished this , with us is still to be created ; and in the hope of contributing to the creation of such a spirit , Mrs . Austin has employed herself in rendering M . Cousin ' s Report accessible to the English reader . * Constituted / says she , * as the government of this country is , and
accustomed as it is to receive its impulses from without , ( a state of things approved and consecrated by the national ways of thinking , ) it would be contrary to reason and to experience to expect it to originate any great changes . This is not recognised , either by governors or governed , as any part of its duty . It is to the public mind , therefore , that those who desire any change must address themselves /—u . viii .
The preface , from which the above is an extract , well deserves to be separately printed and widely circulated ; by the force and conclusiveness with which it combats the shallow opinions and groundless feelings which oppose themselves in this country to a national education , and by the happy union which it exhibits of an earnest spirit and a conciliatory and engaging tune . If , as from a speech of the Lord Chancellor a year ago we niight suppose to be his opinion , it were enough that schools exist , and it
Untitled Article
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1834, page 503, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2635/page/43/
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