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    national education be a good . It is possible to imagine a state of society in which the labouring man , submissive and contented under some paternal rule , might dispense with any further light , than such as nature , uncorrupted by varied wants and restless competition , might afford him . But if that golden age ever existed , it is manifestly gone in this country at least , for ever . Here , the press is hotter , the strife

    keener , the invention more alive , the curiosity more awake , the wants and wishes more stimulated by an atmosphere of luxury , than perhaps in any country since the world began . The men who , in their several classes , were content to tread step by step in the paths wherein their fathers trod , are gone . Society is no longer a calm current , but a tossing sea ; reverence for tradition , foT authority , is gone . In such a state of things , who can deny the absolute necessity for national education V

    In the foregoing paragraph the fair translator is doubtless indulging in a little irony at the expense of the angry Tories , to whom the gross ignorance of the community has proved a' golden mine in which they were at liberty to delve without let or molestation , turning all to their own profit by dint of impressing dogmas upon the imaginations of their slaves , who ' trod step by step in

    their fathers' paths / never deeming that they were men and women of the same flesh and blood , and capable of all , even the highest enjoyments , arrogantly monopolised by their taskmasters . It is a glorious cause of triumph that all reverence for such * tradition , ' for such' authority / has for ever passed away .

    The translator is rather too severe on the popular ignorance which has erected the c laissez-nous faire * of the French into a standard maxim of popular policy . No reasoning being can doubt that a government of wise men could do much towards changing the face of a nation from evil to good , simpl y by the enactment of rules and regulations , and the establishment of institutions tending to enlighten the ignorant ; but it must not be

    forgotten , that the mass of a community is apt to judge of governments according to their actual practices , and not according to their proper duties . And is it not a fact , that hitherto almost invariably , whenever an English government has interfered with the private affairs of the people , it has produced the same mischief by the prevalent fondness for over-legislation as has been produced

    by the proneness to war and conquest , and the consequent brutality in all international transactions . < By their fruits shall ye know them . ' Figs do not grow on thistles ; and when a truly wise a > id benevolent government shall have existed some years in England , it will be time enough to reproach the people for making the maxim of a particular period a standard for all time . It is an

    unquestioned fact , that the English people have made progress in all that is beautiful in humanity , not by the aid but in spite of their rulers ; and judging by our present sample of the national wisdom in public council assembled , it must be to the working of the popular inind that we must look for the continuation of popu-

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    720 On the Objects of Popular Education .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1834, page 720, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2638/page/46/