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 NATIONAL EDUCATION 
 
 PUNISHMENTS
 
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 SPOTTISWOOUK AXii CO., >K\V-.sTUKKT S<iUARB 
 
 AM) lAUl.l.VMKST blRKKT
 
 A PEW THOUGHTS 
 
 NATIONAL EDUCATION 
 
 AND 
 
 PUNISHMENTS 
 
 BY THE ET. HON. 
 
 SIE C. ADDEELEY, K.C.M.G., M.P. 
 
 LONDON 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 1874
 
 -'lUC '
 
 NATIONAL EDUCATION 
 
 AXD 
 
 PUNISHMENTS. 
 
 PART 1. 
 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 In this discussion I am not about to touch on what, to 
 the disgrace of our public men, at this moment would 
 be generally expected under such a title. I am not 
 intending to criticise the present demand of soi-disant 
 educationists, that we should sacrifice all religious 
 teaching in order to get national education out of the 
 hands of the Church and of the religious denominations 
 which have chiefly provided hitherto the national schools 
 of the country. I beheve that the Church, whose national 
 influence and successful energy has done so much in 
 the cause, has incurred this blinded jealousy so late as 
 only to expose the impudence of the attack. The self- 
 stigmatized ' League ' has already ceased to attract 
 serious attention, except so far as it serves for the 
 embarrassment of its party. It gains no sympathy from 
 the great aggregate of religious non-conformity, every 
 
 B
 
 2 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 section of which has too earnest a sense of educational 
 necessity to reject assistance from any quarter. How 
 many soever may recruit the League out of the reli- 
 gious democracy, all denominations unite in requiring 
 some religion to be taught to children whose brief 
 and scanty education is more or less supplied by 
 the State in loco parentis. No body of Dissenters 
 would prefer that from ten thousand parish schools 
 all religious teaching should be banished rather than 
 left, with the security of conscience clauses, in even 
 the Church's hands, whatever danger they may anti- 
 cipate from dogmatic teaching to the prematurely 
 polemical intellects of ploughboys. Mr. Bright may 
 assert that all the great educational work of the 
 last forty years should not be supplemented, but 
 superseded by what would seem more national to his 
 mind. I suspect the nation is too sensible to throw 
 away the practical work that has been done, and tax 
 itself for a theoretic substitute, suggested by jealousy ; 
 and that the Church is more in earnest, and far stronger 
 in the nation's affections, than Mr. Bright imagines. 
 He may desire to root out its establishment, and with 
 that view draw false parallels between it and the 
 establishment of a small minority in Ireland : he may 
 even be ready to root up the ancient parochial system, 
 solely that the Church may fall with it ; but he must find 
 some stronger argument than that every phase of non- 
 conformity ought to be put on a par with the original
 
 National Education and Punishments. 3 
 
 institution. On such a principle he must assert that 
 all opponents should have an equal right to recognition 
 with the supporters of every national institution they 
 may object to. There are non-conformists, indeed, who 
 boast that the aggregate of their divisions equals in 
 numbers the body of the Church. The only com- 
 mon factor of such an aggregate is Separation — in itself 
 hardly constituting a Christian bond. But the ' League' 
 place themselves in antagonism mth the Church and 
 with all the religious denominations which have been 
 the supporters of national education, and prove the 
 falsehood of their claim to be educationists by being 
 ready to kill the child simply to spite the mother. 
 
 What, however, I wish to bring under public atten- 
 tion is a very different point in relation to National 
 Education ; namely, the advance we have made in the 
 last forty years, since the nation has shared the under- 
 taking with the rehgious bodies who began it, and the 
 possibility of our having gone somewhat wide of the 
 strict limits we had first in view — the education of 
 children of the working class. I would suggest, if that 
 be so, that we should consider whether the elaborate 
 machinery we have provided might not, perhaps, be 
 utilized on a still wider scale, and enabled to offer 
 education to a higher class at their own expense, while 
 it should still afford to the class first contemplated 
 all the assistance which the little education they have 
 time for requires. The elementary schools in that 
 
 B 2
 
 4 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 case would be avowedly made suitable to the middle 
 classes who now irregularly use them, and to such of the 
 working class as show talent to justify a prolonged 
 education for a higher station, while the ordinary 
 childi'en of manual labourers would receive in a better 
 way the educational bounty of the nation. 
 
 In testing whether there be any surplus power in 
 our educational apparatus, I consider what the best 
 schools do under our present system. It is said by 
 those who wish to decry the voluntary efforts which 
 have led the way that the existing schools are bad, and 
 that the ministers of religion have been the cause of 
 detriment to them. I am far from thinking that all 
 that has been done has succeeded in making education 
 what it should be, and I doubt if School Boards will 
 succeed better ; but the question I wdsh to raise is, 
 whether the present system, when fully carried out, 
 with teachers, schools, and apparatus according to its 
 assumed standard of excellence, is not in advance of 
 its given work, and if so, capable of doing more. 
 
 It is high time for this country to reflect on 
 the great strides it has taken during the last forty 
 years, in reform of National Education. We must re- 
 member that a few vigorous and enthusiastic thinkers, 
 and bold theorists, have had an immense, and almost 
 controlling, influence in this matter over the Govern- 
 ments which have prevailed during most of that time ; 
 and they have, for weal or woe, led the country's
 
 National Education and Punishments. 5 
 
 action on this most vital subject in a groove, the 
 direction of which we can now trace clearly, and if 
 good w^e should pursue vigorously, but if in error we 
 cannot too soon correct. For forty years we have 
 abandoned the laissez-aller principle ; we have con- 
 demned the principle of free trade as inapplicable to 
 the subject of education ; we have empowered the 
 Government, and largely appropriated public money, 
 to bring a high artificial pressure to bear on the 
 elementary education of the people. 
 
 Let us test our work by the principles which essen- 
 tially belong to it, and by the programme of our first 
 undertaking. The course we have run can be briefly 
 recounted, and at all events is highly creditable to the 
 generation which devised, and has achieved it. No 
 man has his name more thoroughly interwoven through- 
 out its history, though many others occur to one's 
 mind as deserving of signal honoiu-, than Sir James 
 Kay Shuttleworth. 
 
 Of his ' Four Periods of Pubhc Education,' (Long- 
 mans, 1862), he thus recorded the first, dating 1832, 
 ' Our present means of mstruction for the labouring 
 population are confined to Sunday Schools, and a few 
 Lancastrian and National Schools.' The Church, and 
 some Dissenting bodies, and private individuals, fur- 
 nished the first scanty supply to this great national 
 want, and offered a slight counteraction to the demoral- 
 isation caused by long defect of moral influences on
 
 6 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 the hardening lot of labour. The State left the entu-e 
 nation to find its own education, and cared not for the 
 numbers who went without any, or with only what 
 private charity might give them. 
 
 Parliamentary Eeform awakened more thought 
 about the condition of the people who w^ere to be 
 enfranchised. 
 
 In the second period, dating from 1839, came into 
 existence the Committee of Council on Education, with 
 its great machinery, power, and results, raising the 
 standard of school agency, and setting up training 
 institutions for masters and pupil-teachers. School 
 Inspectors also were then appointed, as the chief secu- 
 rity of reform. Minutes of Council regulated, on 
 Parliamentary authority, the distribution of public aid, 
 by Treasury grants, to voluntary undertakings for 
 national education. A higher standard of teaching 
 was required, and the rehgious was specially indicated 
 as the most important part of instruction. ' Eehgion,' 
 said Lord John Eussell, writing officially, as Secretary 
 of State, to Lord Lansdowne, as President of the 
 Council, on what he considered the first object — a 
 normal school — ' was to be combined with the whole 
 matter of instruction, and to regulate the entire system 
 of discipline. In any normal or model school foiu: 
 principal objects should be kept in view ; namely, 
 religious instruction, general knowledge, moral train- 
 ing, and habits of industry.' Eights of conscience, and
 
 National Education and Punishnients. 7 
 
 the principle of religious liberty were unfortunately 
 soon made pretexts for opposition, and the bugbear so 
 introduced has ever since obstructed progress. 
 
 It became necessary for the State as a neutral body 
 to pay over its aid to local committees of management, 
 whether Chiuxh or Dissenting, and to leave the provi- 
 sion of religious instruction to the Clergy, or licensed 
 ministers of the parents' persuasion. The primary 
 idea of a fit candidate for training as a master, how- 
 ever, appears still to have rested on moral and rehgious 
 considerations, by the rule that — ' dihgent enquiry 
 should be made as to previous habits and associations, 
 quiet disposition, fondness of education, and sense of 
 religious responsibility.' 
 
 Industrial instruction was considered an important 
 part of the work of a model school. The education of 
 the poorer classes seems always the aim in every part 
 of the undertaking. 
 
 All this indicates what was the original idea of the 
 system which the third period, 1846, simply extended 
 and developed. The chief addition during this period 
 was a separate training school for masters of work- 
 house and prison schools. 
 
 The fourth period, beginning in 1861, is marked by 
 the emanation, from a Eeport of a Eoyal Commission, of 
 the notorious Ee vised Code. The Council Minutes on 
 Education had first been codified in 1859, during my 
 Vice-Presidency. This was a much revised edition.
 
 8 National Education and Punislime7its. 
 
 Parliament had become alarmed at the increasing 
 charge for education on the public revenue, and its 
 tendency to an indefinite increase. (' Eeport of Educa- 
 tion Commission,' p. 542). The principle of Treasury- 
 subsidy to the voluntary support of schools by parents 
 and promoters was maintained. The Commissioners' 
 suggestion of drawing assistance from county rates was 
 entertained, but not adopted. A half-time alternation 
 between work and schooling, for children in mines and 
 factories ; special grants for evening schools ; and 
 better application of endowments, were the chief new 
 provisions of the Eevised Code ; but the principle was 
 first introduced of measuring the Treasury aid to 
 school managers by tests of standard minimum results 
 of instruction, ascertained by Government examination. 
 The vindication of the Eevised Code was based (says 
 Sir J. Kay Shuttleworth, p. 577) on the denial that 
 the existing system, secured adequate results, the fail- 
 ure being attributed to misdirection of efforts, the 
 teachers being thought above their work. ' Hitherto,' 
 said Mr. Lowe, in moving the Estimate for 1861, 'we have 
 been hving under a system of bounties and protection ; 
 we prefer a httle free trade.' ' The teachers must be 
 subject to the law of supply and demand, the managers 
 must make the best bargains they can.' The attaching 
 Treasury aid to a condition of specified results of 
 instruction was strongly condemned by Sir J. Kay 
 Shuttleworth, as tending to lower the education alto-
 
 National Education and Punishments. 9 
 
 gether to the specified minimum standard, and to 
 diminish the required staffs of pupil-teachers, ' Eesults 
 hitherto,' he said, ' have consisted in getting rid of pre- 
 vious barbarism and brutish incapacity to learn, teaching 
 the first elements, training teachers, gaining a fij'st moral 
 influence ; and on these results the Commissioners had 
 favourably reported. National education does not de- 
 pend on the school training of one generation.' (p. 580.) 
 In short he thought much had been done which the 
 change would not promote. 
 
 A fifth period has followed Sir James's publication, 
 signahsed by the last Education Act of 1870. Then 
 was at last adopted the recurrence to local rates, and 
 the institution of School Boards, so long resisted on the 
 score of the unequal incidence of local charges. But 
 it was thought necessary to supplement the deficiencies 
 of voluntary agency, by all means, to national com- 
 pletion. The step was most eagerly urged by those 
 who most escaped the local charge, and who also were 
 bent upon getting education out of the hands of the 
 Church, though Mr. Forster honestly kept deficiencies 
 only in view. The resort to local elections and support 
 was sure to stir up more religious strife ; and it may 
 be doubted whether, if necessary for towns, tliis dis- 
 advantage was compensated in the country, where, as 
 Mr. Cobden liberally observed, the Church has always 
 the wealth, and generally the will, to educate the poor. 
 The State, however, was bound to see education made
 
 10 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 co-extensive with the nation, and the supplement has 
 added vigour to the vohuitary foundation. 
 
 Such is the history, in brief, of National Education 
 in this country during the last forty years. I come 
 now to consider what has been the nature of this work. 
 ' It is possible,' said Mr. Forster, in introducing the Act 
 of 1870, ' with measures of this kind, that, with the best 
 intentions to do good, we may have been doing harm.' 
 It is possible that the education of the poor having 
 been adopted as a great national undertaking ; com- 
 mitted to a department of State administration ; made 
 a topic of Parliamentary oratory, and, by its necessarily 
 religious aspect, exposed to the keenest controversy ; 
 may have shot over or aside its mark. Some have 
 already ridiculed the disproportion of the machinery 
 to the work, as using artillery to shoot at sparrows. 
 A great agency seeks to justify and glorify itself by 
 great achievement, and few can merge themselves 
 simply in their work. When also an ordinary matter 
 becomes the subject of rival theories, and party 
 polemics, it is very hkely to lose its own simplicity. 
 
 What has this country really taken in hand, or had 
 in view, during these forty years of debate, experiment, 
 enterprise, and large expenditure, on National Educa- 
 tion ? What is our National Education ? In the first 
 place, what is Education ? It is generally defined as 
 the art of preparing youth for the business of life. 
 The business of life is the occupation which comes
 
 National Education and Punishments. 11 
 
 naturally and fitly to everybody's position, circum- 
 stances, and capacities. Some line of life is open to 
 every one in this country whatever position he may 
 be born in ; and to rise from a lower social posi- 
 tion to a higher is freely open to all. A vigorous 
 and high-spirited youth will seek so to rise ; but 
 that is not the object of education, commonly as it is 
 mistaken to be so. The object is not success in any 
 immediate work, but its result on character by the 
 spirit in which it is done. The object of om^ present 
 passing life, we have the highest authority and in- 
 stinct to know, is the traming of character, and testing 
 of principles, and proof of submission to the Divine 
 will in daily accountable work, as in a school for futm-e 
 permanent hfe. For this object work must be well 
 done. Everybody, therefore, must have some work ; 
 and, if it fit him, it is equally good for the common 
 ultimate purpose whatever it be. Whether servile work 
 or princely, whether laborious or suffering, the end 
 which gives it value is the same. A ploughboy leaving 
 school prepared for honest and intelligent ploughmg, 
 is in the hio'hest sense as well educated as a gentleman 
 proportionately well prepared to take his higher social 
 position ; and an artizan who has been brought up 
 to skilful and faithful business is as well educated, 
 though he may be far less instructed or accomphshed, 
 as a Minister of State similarly prepared for his depart- 
 ment, and better than one conducting it ill. Indeed,
 
 12 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 we are divinely taught to know that the humble 
 labourer's post is the best adapted for the highest 
 education of character, both for present and future 
 life. It has been lately well said, that ' The true edu- 
 cation is that which assumes that everybody has need 
 to conquer selfish nature, selfwill, idleness, and all that is 
 contrary to his welfare ; and to rise out of it. Whatever 
 teaching most sets him on this must be the best for the 
 citizen, and the man.' (Maurice on ' Eepresentation 
 and Education of the People,' p. 188). How many mis- 
 take the means for the end, the making a livelihood or 
 acquiring knowledge, for the Hfe which is to be formed 
 by such occupations ! ' Is not the hfe more than meat ? ' 
 But the preparation for life by education must deal with 
 the means by which this common end is to be accom- 
 plished ; and first with the development of faculties, 
 and acquisition of elementary knowledge. 
 
 I will only consider the education of boys. That 
 of girls, equally or more important, must differ much 
 in kind and process. 
 
 The preparation of boys for the business of life of 
 coLirse depends on their position in hfe. There are 
 three classes in the community — the first, that of 
 manual labourers, whose boys must leave school for 
 their business at the early age of twelve or earher. 
 During infancy, according to Aristotle, the body is the 
 chief subject of education, and the art of educating lies 
 chiefly in presenting what is good to the opening eyes
 
 National Education and Punishments. 13 
 
 and ears, and keeping what is bad away. So tliat, in 
 the first stage of infancy the culture of all being chiefly 
 physical, the mental school- work of the labouring class 
 must be confined to the short interval between the ages 
 of five and twelve, at the utmost, during which but 
 little stock of knowledge can be soundly given ; but the 
 means of acquiring it may ; and the main object of 
 education — moral discipline, sense of right, moulding 
 of character, and development of faculties — can be most 
 efiectually secured in this prime season of impressibility. 
 The second class in the community consists of those 
 whose schooling ends, and business of fife begins, about 
 the close of Aristotle's second period of education, at 
 the age of eighteen. These are the children of higher 
 artizans, tradesmen, and men of the smaller professions, 
 and their schooling can include a great deal more of 
 mental culture and of acquisition of general knowledge. 
 Lastly, there is the upper class, who have sufficient 
 wealth to be able to continue their children's schoohng 
 throughout their nonage, and to defer their entrance 
 on the proper business of their lives till youth has 
 reached maturity in manhood. Their proper business 
 is the highest socially, and in the nature of attendance 
 on the wants of others less wealthily endowed, and of 
 serving on public duties which others cannot afibrd 
 time to discharge. Their general training, previous to 
 the exercise of specific occupations, ought to be more 
 extensive and complete ; but only the bhndness of
 
 14 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 human pride makes men of the two former classes 
 envy this social eminence, as if there were intrinsic 
 worth or any ultimate advantage in it. Hence the 
 common error of judgment which estimates the object 
 of schools to be the education of children out of rather 
 than in the station in which each of them happens to 
 be born. 
 
 It should be borne in mind, in all considerations of 
 this subject, that the actual schooling of all classes is 
 much the same at its outset, though the wealthier 
 classes have higher ideas, and more refining influ- 
 ences, presented by circumstances to their minds. 
 It is the shortness of schooling, and the earlier 
 apprenticeship to the business of life, that makes 
 the chief difference of education in each class. All 
 schooling, however, though properly general in its 
 nature, should bear some special reference to the 
 business which is to follow. One moral advantage 
 which the shorter school-time has over the more 
 complete, is that the earlier entry on the duties of life 
 ripens character sooner, but this is counterbalanced by 
 the subsequently stagnant monotony of most ordinary 
 industrial employments. Business, however, is itself a 
 powerful educator, if faithfiilly followed, after the 
 education of school is over. 
 
 I will now consider what the National Education 
 which this country has lately undertaken has been 
 meant to include.
 
 National Education and Punishments. 15 
 
 It is the interest of the State that sufficient and effi- 
 cient education should be accessible and received by- 
 all the youth of the nation, so that no children should 
 be growing up into citizens without the necessary 
 training for an honest and industrious discharge of 
 tlieir proper duties. How much of the poverty, and of 
 the crime in any country comes from permitting 
 children to lose the early culture wdiich God has made 
 necessary and due to them all, and to grow up igno- 
 rant of the simplest elements of social duty ! The 
 burden of heavy poor rates, the loss of self-respect and 
 vigour in a great mass of the people, the caging up and 
 -waste of industry in costly and degrading prisons, the 
 national crime of punishing the infraction of laws 
 w^hich have never been taught — these and many more 
 public misfortunes — are directly the result of such 
 neglect. The education of children is, indeed, a 
 natural obligation on their parents ; but, failing that, 
 becomes the necessity of the State, It matters not in 
 wdiat rank of life, the State must, for its own safety, fii'st 
 encourage, next enforce, and lastly undertake, this pa- 
 rental obligation. We are not considering the indirect 
 education, powerful as it is, which consists in the 
 influence of institutions and national habits, even upon 
 children ; but actual schoohng — the training of chil- 
 dren's minds and bodies under the care of teachers. 
 
 In the old Greek Eepublics the State undertook the 
 education of all free citizens. In Sparta some parents
 
 16 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 only, as a special favour, were allowed to elect, or educate 
 their children out of the hands of the State. Lord 
 Brougham derives the word ' education ' from this fact, 
 the Eomans having allowed the same kind of option 
 to parents. In this country we adopt the converse 
 principle, and impose on the State the education of 
 children in the last resort, only out of the hands of 
 incorrigibly negligent or incompetent parents. In the 
 development of English institutions, on the tabula rasa 
 of America, primary educational establishments were 
 provided for all, all being considered socially equal. 
 There, however, practically, higher academies and 
 endowed colleges have sprung up for the use of the 
 wealthy, which unfortunately incur the sectarian jealou- 
 sies we feel so much at home. 
 
 In England, the Legislature interferes by requiring 
 efficiency in all, including the higher, education ; of 
 which there has been ample recent proof in the several 
 Acts and Commissions relating to educational endow- 
 ments, universities, colleges, and public schools. The 
 idea that Government is concerned only with police 
 supervision, and preservation of peace, is certainly not 
 entertained by this nation. The State looks after its 
 interest in general education, but never losing sight 
 of the first parental obhgation, and when that fails, 
 making the cost still fall, if possible, on the defaulting 
 home. 
 
 The ordinary National Education which the State
 
 National Education and Punishments. 17 
 
 lias systematically iindertakeu to aid during the last forty 
 years in this country, is that of the labouring class who 
 cannot wholly support the charge, and of the desti- 
 tute and neglected ; chiefly, and solely till the Act of 
 1870, through private and religious agencies. There 
 must always be a class unable to defray wholly, and 
 some wholly unable to defray, the cost of a sound 
 education for their children, however sanguinely we 
 may hope that English labourers are not always to 
 hang upon the verge of poverty, but some day may, 
 with more saving habits, become more independent 
 and proportionately more capable and desirous of 
 their cliiidren's education. The increase of skill and 
 mechanical invention engaged in industries tends to 
 tliis happier state of things. There are, however, now 
 a large proportion of manual labourers, not to speak of 
 the more indigent, who could ill afford even the thirty 
 shillings a year per child, to wliich low amount the 
 large scale and skilful management of national under- 
 taking have reduced the cost of a sound elementary 
 education. For them specially the fourth clause of 
 the Code declares that the Treasury grants in aid of 
 education are intended. The Parliamentary Education 
 Vote is distinctly stated to be taken " for the promo- 
 tion of the education of children belonging to the 
 classes which support themselves by manual labour," 
 Such has been the express language also of all official 
 documents and speeches in debates on the subject, from 
 
 c
 
 18 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 first to last; and Mr. Forster, in moving for the 
 latest Education Bill (February I7tli, 1870), was 
 precise in laying down the same limitation. In 
 arguing against making education free, he said, ' the 
 middle class would step in — tlie best portion of 
 the working classes would step in — the cost would 
 be alarming, and not only unnecessary, but mis- 
 chievous. Why should we reheve the parents from all 
 payments for the education of their children, so far as 
 they are able to pay ? ' 
 
 Lord Granville, in introducing the Eevised Code to 
 the House of Lords, February 13th, 1862, said, ' the 
 sons of the middle class are just those for whose in- 
 struction the country ought not to be required to pay.' 
 
 Mr. Lowe, in introducing the Code to the House of 
 Commons the same day, said, ' When we are estimating 
 what we will do, what money is to be spent, what 
 establishment we should support, and so on, we ought 
 always to bear in mind that we are making arrange- 
 ments for the very poorest children, the children of 
 parents who laboiu" with their hands, and that, of these 
 children, seventy per cent, are under ten years of age, 
 and eighty per cent, under eleven.' 
 
 For the lower stratum of wholly destitute, and hope- 
 lessly, or even wilfully, neglected children, a special 
 class of boarding schools is provided. The main public 
 provision in this country for daily elementary education, 
 hitherto in co-operation with private vohmtary agency,
 
 National Education and Punishments. 1 9 
 
 is for the encouragement of poor working parents to 
 give proper schooling to their Httle children till the 
 early age at which they must go to work. 
 
 Such being the avowed principle of our present 
 system, the State coming only in aid of parental 
 duty in case, and on the score, of necessity, we should 
 not carelessly, or without dehberate adjustment, in- 
 fringe this self-supporting principle. If we allow 
 ourselves, under the profession of merely aiding, to 
 undertake ; or, in offering help in need, to relieve the 
 able ; we set up a principle and pursue a widely different 
 practice. However good the practice may be, the viola- 
 tion of principle may do infinite miscliief, weakening 
 the sense of parental responsibility, and pauperizing 
 a large portion of the community through the very 
 path opened for their elevation and independence. 
 
 Even in aiding those intended, so long as the prin- 
 ciple is that of aiding only, the charge left on the parent 
 should be as high as he can afford, the whole cost being 
 kept down to the standard of the education befitting 
 his children, lest he take it to be as valueless as it is 
 made needlessly cheap to him. 
 
 As the Poor Law only offers a last resource 
 against destitution, and refuses to charge the industry 
 of the country with the sustenance of the idle, yet 
 acknowledjj^es a rio:ht to five even to those who have 
 been criminally neghgent of providing for themselves; 
 so our principle of public aid to national education has
 
 20 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 been that of a last resource to poverty, but still offer- 
 ing a rescue from moral starvation, even to the crimi- 
 nally neglected, recovering as much as possible fi'om 
 the parent the charge wliich he has thrown off from 
 himself, and inllicted on others. 
 
 In voting educational aid to the working class, 
 hopes have always been entertained of the supply 
 gradually creating the demand which may ultimately 
 find the means of efficient self-support : and when 
 Parliament became alarmed at the increasing estimates 
 for education, the reassuring prospect was held out 
 that the expenditure would so bring about its own 
 reduction. The parallel drawn between physical and 
 moral destitution is faulty exactly in this particular, 
 that a painful craving creates a natural demand in 
 the one case which has to be artificially produced in 
 the other. The fear of physical death, too, in the 
 former, has no parallel in the distant and hazy fears of 
 moral death in the latter. The want of education itself 
 prevents all appetite for it, and deadens all sense of its 
 necessity. The self-interest, as well as the humanity, 
 of others must ehcit the first sense of a need unfelt 
 by its sufferer, but injurious to all. Professor Leone 
 Levi well suggests that getting the most intelHgent 
 working men themselves on the new School Boards 
 will be the surest way of interesting them in the 
 work, just as Boards of Guardians have educated 
 their constituent ratepayers.
 
 National Education and Punishments. 21 
 
 Under a sense of public necessity, this country 
 has undertaken to aid the education of the working 
 class, wliile insisting on the higher classes providing 
 for themselves, ' The education of the common people,' 
 says Adam Smith (Book 5, Chap. 1) ' requires, in a civi- 
 lized and commercial society, the attention of the 
 public more than that of people of rank and fortune, 
 who are eighteen or nineteen years of age before they 
 enter on business, and have full time and means to 
 acquire every accomplishment, and by their mixed 
 employments have their understanding more exercised, 
 and have many incentives to excel, and a feeling of 
 shame at inferiority.' 
 
 'And now,' says Maurice ('Eepresentation and Educa- 
 tion,' p. 184), ' is the time when the condition of these 
 classes must be faced, when all that amazing develop- 
 ment of manufacturing industry and power, wliich 
 must otherwise derange all pohtical calculations, must 
 be contemplated in reference to this question of educa- 
 tion.' 
 
 If then the schooling of children of manual 
 labourers up to the age of twelve, or as Mr. Forster 
 stated, February 17th, 1870, 'the great majority of 
 whom are under ten years,' is the important, but 
 limited work that we mean by National Education, let 
 us consider what can be well taught to that class of 
 childi'en in the given time. Evidently moral disciphue, 
 training of mental faculties, and moulding of character.
 
 22 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 must be the chief part of the education so limited, and 
 the actual communication of knowledge cannot be ex- 
 tensive, though the thirst and means for some future 
 acquisition may be given. 
 
 There is often much confusion in considering the 
 working class as the same in m^ban and rural districts. 
 This confusion caused nine-tenths of the controversy in 
 Parhament on the extension of the franchise, and so 
 puzzled even the prescient Scotch in the extension of 
 their early education laws to modern towns, as almost to 
 have illustrated the fable of the hare and tortoise in their 
 educational race with the English. But the schoohng 
 of any cliildren which must merge in the apprenticeship 
 of hfe at the early age of twelve cannot either in town 
 or country achieve much in the way of learning. It 
 may do much in the more important function of forming 
 character by discipline and influence, awakening thought 
 and conscience, and presenting higher ideas, and a finer 
 sense of right and wrong to minds exposed to grovelling 
 circumstances and depressed by narrow means. 
 
 The object, however, being to educate children 
 in a lower line of hfe, out of which any may rise, 
 but in which they have to begin life, it would be 
 a fault in the system if it aimed at compressing 
 for them an amount of learning which could only 
 be well accomplished in the longer years at the 
 disposal of chikben in a higher social position ; nor 
 should they, with this view, be kept buck from the
 
 National Education and Punishments. 23 
 
 business for which they are being prepared. It is 
 clearly wrong to attempt to keep ordinary children of 
 the working class at school after the age at which 
 their proper work begins, and there are some kinds 
 of work which, to be ever done handily, must be 
 begun very early. The mischievous result of tax- 
 ing other classes to keep the working class out of 
 work must be the upsetting of divinely appointed, 
 and necessary social order : the educating, by the 
 artificial stimulus of large pubhc expenditm-e, a par- 
 ticular class out of, instead of in, the condition of 
 life in which they natiu-ally fill an important part of 
 the community must upset the social equilibrium. 
 That the greater part of the population should find 
 themselves not only free to rise by industry out 
 of the lower level, but forced up by an education 
 supplied them from the industry of others, would be 
 a state of things sacrificing to intellectual experiments, 
 impossible to maintain, the ordinary interests of well- 
 ordered society, and the gradations which are meant 
 to dove-tail all classes together. The object of edu- 
 cation is not to enable men to five othermse, but to 
 live together well. 
 
 Our earhest Parish Schools were chiefly intended to 
 offer access to learning to youths of humble origin 
 showing superior natural capacity. The great mass of 
 laboiu:ers' children were not, in the days of those 
 foundations, contemplated. ' The Eeformation (says Sir
 
 24 Natio7ial Education and Pimisliments. 
 
 J. Kay Shuttleworth, p. 438) gave birth to the idea 
 that a certain amount of learning was indispensable 
 for all those earning their bread by manual labour.' 
 The idea, in that more religious age, was that some 
 teaching was requisite for the whole nation to take 
 an intelligent part in the rites and services of the 
 National Church. The school endowments were mainly 
 intended for the middle class, but secondarily for 
 such of the lower class as could make use of them. 
 The schemes of the Endowed School Commission, if 
 properly carried out, might revive their original use, 
 and, with the educational provision now made from the 
 Treasury, might extend it to what the advancing in- 
 telligence of the age requires above former times. 
 
 The whole lower class is now the object of national 
 education. The progress of science and invention, 
 and the greater skill and mechanism introduced into 
 manufacturing and agricultural industry, demands a 
 much higher standard of primary education for 
 labourers of all kinds. Skilled work itself is an intel- 
 lectual education, amazingly quickens the intellect, 
 and forms character, after schooling is over; and 
 requires, and consequently elicits better schooling 
 in preparation for it. We have wisely met this 
 growing demand by what is called the half-time 
 system, splicing the apprenticeship of industry with 
 the instruction and disciphne of school. Night schools 
 also serve to engraft the specific on the general
 
 National Education and Punishments. 25 
 
 training, and to keep up the flow of the cultured sap 
 through the after-growth of hard and busy life. 
 
 To revert to the question what, on our present 
 plan, can or should be taught at public elementary 
 schools ; by bearing in mind that the main education 
 in such early childhood is discipline, and rejecting 
 fictitious crams of knowledge, we shall find the ques- 
 tion simplified. 
 
 All allow that the principles of religion are the 
 first things which, in some way or other, should be 
 taught to children. As Mr. Gladstone says (' Homer,' 
 ii. 43), ' Abstract truth will not sustain itself among 
 men, but requires a teaching organ,' and these schools, 
 for the children of the poor, give the first teaching 
 to the great mass of our population of essential 
 truths which will die out without them. The bug- 
 bear of proselytism conjured up by religious jealousy 
 would drive this primary instruction to take its chance 
 in some separate way, or in no way. I do not be- 
 lieve that the narrow egotism which hides behind the 
 protest that national means should not be used to 
 promote special dogma, will ever prevail upon prac- 
 tical Englishmen to exclude religious teaching from 
 their National Schools. Even if the present denomina- 
 tional system, which has done so much, ever merges 
 in a common public provision by rates, from which 
 the Eoman Catholics will certainly seek freedom 
 for themselves by a special self-support as in Canada,
 
 26 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 I feel sure that the general principles of the Christian 
 religion, and the Bible, will never cease to be the 
 substratum of our national teaching. Ireland may 
 long continue characteristically satisfied with the neu- 
 trality of a national system wliich teaches at the 
 public expense in contiguous parishes that the Pope 
 is infallible and Antichrist, and pilgrimages sacred and 
 absurd. If England were to substitute an uniform for 
 a denominational system, neutrality would have to take 
 a more definite form, nor ever sink all religion to zero. 
 
 School Boards wiU always be, as was predicted, 
 the focus for rehgious fighting, even if they could be- 
 come, like schismatics in Scotland, all agreed in creed 
 and catechism. Keligious strife is not really religious, 
 but personal ; or, as in the case of the English historical 
 horror of Saracen and Pope, more pohtical than doc- 
 trinal. 
 
 The simple arts of inteUigible reading and writing 
 may be sufficiently taught even to the remotest village 
 boy before his earhest summons to the farm ; and a con- 
 siderable advance may be made in common arithmetic, 
 especially now that metric tables are hung up in every 
 school, accustoming the national eye to easy cal- 
 culation, and discovering a possible escape from the 
 inveterate tyranny of complicated tables. 
 
 For the exercise of reading, much better books 
 might be prepared than those now used in National 
 Schools, which are desultory collections of fragments
 
 National Education and Punishnieiits. 27 
 
 about Abraham, the Hippopotamus, New Zealanders, 
 and Captain Cook, or scraps of poetry, without any 
 completeness or consecutiveness. Where so httle 
 knowledge can be acquired, there is all the more 
 reason for combining with mere practice in reading as 
 much of information as possible, in such a course as 
 will draw out and interest the mind, and arrange itself 
 in the memory. An easy course of history, geography, 
 study of nature and domestic arts, would train the 
 httle boys' minds in consecutive study and thought, 
 and give them an intelligent interest in subjects they 
 would usefully continue reading about afterwards. 
 Such a course would differ in extent and kind in town 
 and country schools, according to the usual difference 
 both in quickness and intelhgence, and in dura- 
 tion of schooling, between children so differently cir- 
 cumstanced ; but Lord Brougham's famous Eesolution 
 for extension of national education, moved in the 
 House of Lords in 1835, did not go beyond proposing 
 ' that the insufficient kind of instruction then afforded 
 to the poorer classes, being for the most part confined 
 to reading, writing, and a httle arithmetic, might be 
 extended to the elements of the more useful branches 
 of knowledge.' Useful knowledge may be communi- 
 cated in the process of teaching to read as easily as use- 
 less knowledge ; and elementary drawing may be made 
 a part of the art of writing, as not confined to letters 
 only, but, especially in this illustrative age, extended
 
 28 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 generally to describing ideas on paper ; and, fortunately, 
 in the best and most numerous schools, that is Church 
 schools, good music is cultivated for Church services, 
 and so the most humanising, refining, and elevating of 
 all means of children's education is, with the smallest 
 consumption of time, introduced into the little curri- 
 culum which the Treasury subsidizes for the w^orking 
 classes. How much may be done in the way of mental 
 development, even in this little curriculum, under the 
 most depressing circumstances, for working boys before 
 the age of ten or twelve, is well described in an 
 eloquent passage of a pamphlet by the Hon. Edward 
 Twisleton on the common schools of Massachusetts 
 (1855, Eidgway, p. 20) — 'Those who have had much 
 experience of our workhouse schools can attest that, 
 even in purely agricultural unions, a rapid development 
 takes place in the faculties of the children when a 
 first-rate schoolmaster has charge of them, and a trans- 
 formation is then witnessed more beautiful than any 
 which chemistry can effect, when the dull eye, cowed 
 look, and slouching gait of the untaught and neglected, 
 are changed into the bright countenances and erect 
 demeanour of happy children under a sympathetic 
 teacher, who engages their affections while he culti- 
 vates their understanding.' 
 
 The training colleges, of course, aim at a higher 
 course of study, it having been the main consideration, 
 throughout all this forty years' effort, to raise the
 
 National Education and Punishments. 29 
 
 standard of teachers. Teachers always should be more 
 highly educated than those they have to teach ; and, in 
 this case, they are drawn from the same class, detained 
 for prolonged instruction, and devoted to special train- 
 ing in the art of communicating to others the influences 
 they have so acquired. 
 
 The point I am in all these remarks drawing ulti- 
 mate attention to, is the possibihty of our work having 
 transgressed its programme and first intention, or gone 
 aside of it ; and, if such be the case, the best use to 
 make of any excess, and the rectification of any error, 
 or timely prevention of any harm accruing from it. 
 
 I confess, I think, that there are traces of the aim 
 having been missed in some cases, and overshot in others. 
 The proposed assistance having been expressly directed 
 to the poor, many of the poorest still go without it ; 
 some who have it are not of the class intended, and 
 are pauperised by so receiving it ; and some, who are 
 of the class intended, are artificially forced out of their 
 natural relation with those at whose expense they 
 receive it. The symptoms I see of these unfortunate 
 results are as follows : — We are only just beginning 
 now to compel the waifs and strays about our streets 
 and lanes to come to our school provision. Schools 
 are not fairly opened to them. The industrial schools 
 and reformatories are not even yet embraced within 
 our education department, but treated as something 
 outside it, and as exceptional places of magisterial and
 
 30 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 police detention, not as schools. Pauper cliildren are 
 not yet always admitted to national schools, but 
 stamped as an inferior class, to be considered separately 
 from the avowed provision for the poor, of whom they 
 are the poorest. The separate and private institution 
 of Eagged Schools proves that the national charity is 
 being received by some who would be offended by 
 even the remotest contact with its principal objects ; 
 and that the original idea of public provision for the 
 poor has never yet been fully embraced. 
 
 Then, again, many labourers' children, educated by 
 this private and public benevolence, that is, by volun- 
 tary subscriptions and taxation of the community, are 
 kept, or tried to be kept, at school, by zealous managers, 
 past the age at which they should go to work, and be 
 earning their own and their parents' means of indepen- 
 dent subsistence. Their instruction is pressed, prolonged, 
 and crammed, for the very meagre satisfaction of the 
 charitable undertakers, beyond ' preparation for their 
 business in hfe,' i.e.^ their education. The conse- 
 quence is, that labourers' children are often made dis- 
 satisfied with their lot in life, or kept from entering 
 upon it till too late to take well to it. Sometimes 
 their work is depreciated in their own estimation, and 
 seems a degradation from the education and aspirations 
 they have received. Thus many have been forced 
 up for a higher lot, at the cost, mainly, of those 
 just above them charged with the education of
 
 National Education and Punishments. 31 
 
 tlieir own childi^en also ; but whatever natural opening 
 there should be for all capable of socially rising, this 
 artificial hoist makes no such provision, but only- 
 raises expectations, which it leaves its proteges to 
 realise as they can. Indeed, it seems to me that society 
 is getting unnaturally choked in its centre. The rich and 
 noble are economically putting their sons to trade, and 
 the labourers' are being charitably trained for clerkships. 
 Extremes are meeting in the means — our body politic 
 will have neither head nor legs. Far be it from me 
 to say that the children of manual labourers are 
 generally too highly educated, or that many are not 
 grossly uneducated, or that the standard of minimum 
 results of instruction in our national schools, pre- 
 scribed by the Privy Council, are too high ; but I have 
 seen many instances of the system being worked, and 
 tending to work, so as to overlay the apprentice- 
 ship for which it is meant to prepare. Children of 
 agricultural labourers, for example, I have observed 
 disgusted with agriculture, and go to it with aversion, 
 or ask for a shop-boy's place instead, at a neighbour- 
 ing town, as more respectable, or as giving more scope 
 for amusing reading and inteUectual tastes acquired at 
 the over-prolonged school ; just as in the higher class 
 a prolonged University hfe will give distaste for the 
 hard entrance on a civil engineer's apprenticeship. A 
 ploughboy, listless at his work, with a song-book in his 
 hand, and sighing for something less monotonous than
 
 32 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 ploughing, and more mentally exciting and convivial, 
 whicli does not offer itself, may be a misappropriation 
 in the community less dangerous and offensive than the 
 former adscriptus gleba^, still he is a misappropriation ; 
 and, if a clerkship is found for him, the rank socially 
 above him have been taxed to force him up, and to 
 crowd them, leaving a vacancy unfilled below. I 
 have heard it said by learned men, judging from their 
 own ideas of school-learning as the sole means of 
 human perfection, that they heartily hope that the 
 instruction given may make the poor discontented 
 with the filth and vice in which many of them have 
 lived. Such discontent is indeed to be desired, and is 
 an essential element and symptom of the improvement 
 in view, and of a capacity to rise by it ; but it is a 
 perversion of all true ideas of learning to identify such 
 discontent with a contempt or dislike of labour. Filth 
 and vice, moreover, are not the characteristics of the 
 homes of those who make use of our national schools 
 so much as of the lower class who are still practically 
 excluded from them. Mr. Mundella may tell the House 
 of Commons that every boy in an elementary school in 
 Saxony can read Schiller, and, to our disgrace, the same 
 cannot be said of Shakspeare here ; but I confess that, 
 unless he was unintentionally comparing totally different 
 classes of children, I prefer the English to the Saxon 
 elementary schooling. We must not struggle against 
 the necessity of early labour, in the case of the great
 
 National Education and Punishments. 33 
 
 majority of the population, nor attempt to effect, 
 unavowedly, and without adaptation, any dijETerent 
 education from that to which our education grants are 
 expressly restricted. The Education Commissioners of 
 1861 tndysay, "Independence is of more importance 
 than education, and if the wages of the child's labour 
 are necessary, either to keep the parent from the poor- 
 rates, or to reheve the pressure of severe poverty, it 
 is far better it should go to work at the earliest age 
 at which it can bear the physical exertion than 
 that it should remain at school.' I do not at all 
 agree with expressions made use of recently by Lord 
 Aberdare ('Times,' Oct. 11) that 'it was a painful 
 reflection that children of masses of the population 
 had such limited time for general education — that 
 what we (the upper class) dreaded for our children was 
 the bitter portion of the majority ; and that we should 
 seek to repair the injustice of fortune.' All this 
 is wholly misappreciating the value of learning, and 
 its relation to the common highest object of hfe, and 
 the beneficent gradations which unite society. The 
 attempt to get labourers' children more general in- 
 struction than their early call to business fairly admits 
 of, tends also to a system of ' cram ;' and the Com- 
 missioners observed that ' they carried away from the 
 common schools an amount of instruction that gives 
 little hope of their retaining, long after they have left, 
 what they learn.' 
 
 D
 
 34 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 Another symptom I see of our national educa- 
 tional apparatus having outgrown its first intention, 
 and that is, that trained masters have not unfre- 
 quently set themselves up for higher employment, 
 with indignation at being reminded that private and 
 public charity have been training them to teach 
 the children of the poor. The clergy find some even 
 of the Church teachers asserting a rivalry and in- 
 dependence of tliem in their parishes wholly unsuited 
 to the spirit and object of their work, though cer- 
 tainly more suited to the salaries attached to it, 
 which now in many cases exceed the professional 
 incomes of the clergy. There may indeed be no 
 objection to their assuming to themselves a profes- 
 sional status, which may even be useful in many ways 
 to the country, provided they will keep to their work, 
 and not, by being ashamed of it, prove themselves 
 unworthy of it. Quotations were made by Mr. Lowe, 
 in moving the Eevised Code, Feb. loth, 1862, from 
 their corporate manifestoes, which show that there 
 .were some of them then deviating widely from their 
 prescribed position, and assuming even a threatening 
 attitude of aggressive combination. A considerable 
 percentage of trained masters have always gone 
 away to other professions. All this is symptomatic 
 of the training having somewdiat missed its mark, 
 and yet a very sound and perfect training is essen- 
 tial to the object even in its present limits. The
 
 National Educatmi and Punishments. 35 
 
 Minutes of Council of April and June 1839, estab- 
 lishing the first model, or normal, college, are in 
 tenns contrasting strongly with the teachers' mani- 
 festoes just referred to. The selection of candidates 
 for the office of teacher is directed to be guided ' by 
 diligent enquuy, under direction of the Committee of 
 Council, concerning their previous habits, attainments, 
 gentleness of disposition, fondness for the duties of 
 an educator, together with a sense of the secular and 
 religious responsibility of the office.' (Shuttleworth,252). 
 The training of teachers is certainly not superfluous, 
 nor exaggerated in the present system of national educa- 
 tion, restricted as it is to the education of poor little chil- 
 dren. Higher education has its teachers trained in the 
 Universities. The national education as now provided 
 for the poor, requires, as its first requisite, w^ell trained 
 masters ; and there is a special formation of character 
 necessary for such schoolmasters, which, indeed, was 
 the chief object in view in our educational reform. 
 Amount of knowledge is not the chief requisite. The 
 practical art of teaching, and especially of teaching 
 poor and neglected children ; the faculty of influence 
 springing from self-disciphne ; the simplicity, self- 
 denial, and modest respectabihty suited to his lot ; have 
 always been held up as of primary importance in a 
 national schoolmaster : and those have shown little 
 acquaintance either with the history or nature of this 
 work, who argue that since the test of minimum 
 
 D 2
 
 36 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 results of teaching has been made the measure of 
 pubhc aid, we should look only to this test, and not to 
 training, in accepting from any quarter masters for our 
 National Schools. 
 
 The Inspectors also soon showed signs, not un- 
 natural for men of high University standing, of 
 weariness of the smallness and monotony of the task 
 assigned them. Their Eeports luxuriated at large over 
 the wide field of educational philosophy, and they 
 compensated themselves for the drudgery of daily 
 examinations of poor little children by assuming a 
 corporate function of influence over national policy by 
 instituting debates, passing resolutions, and issuing es- 
 says from their official head-quarters in Downing Street. 
 The subsequent addition of sub-inspectors to their staff 
 has mitigated the disproportion between the rank of 
 Inspectors and the work of ordinary inspection ; and 
 the recent reduction of the number of Chief Inspectors, 
 by ceasing to attach separate inspection to schools of 
 every shade of religion, has diminished the excess of 
 machinery for the purpose. No doubt tlie rank of the 
 officers, the zeal and rivalry of theorists and orators, 
 the national hobby-hunting, and the dangerous licence 
 of bye-legislation in this department, have all tended 
 to carry the work over its first intended limits. 
 
 One might trace further symptoms of over-action, 
 even in small detail. Excessive ingenuity appears in the 
 very school apparatus. No boys at Eton or even at
 
 National Education and Punishments. 37 
 
 Slough require to be raised on graduated platforms, one 
 above another, in order to be examined. The desks and 
 seats for wiiting go through as many new fashions as 
 ladies' dresses, and one is told by a first-rate master 
 that the fittings of ten years ago are now useless for 
 educating this peculiar class of children. Adam Smith 
 said of schools in his day (Book 3. chap. 5) — ' There 
 are no public institutions for the education of women ; 
 there is accordingly nothing useless, absurd, or fantas- 
 tical in the common course of their education.' Now, 
 that there are JSTational Schools for poor girls, the 
 apparatus for teaching them is more elaborate than 
 any used in privately educating girls of a higher class. 
 
 If, then, there are indications of our national 
 education having, like Mr. Peabody's lodging-houses, 
 worked somewhat out of first intentions, the question 
 is, shall we try to bring back the working of our plan 
 to its first intention, or shall we rather make up our 
 minds to extend its avowed scope ? 
 
 If it is the working, and that only at its best, rather 
 than the scheme itself, that has exceeded its preten- 
 sions, and if the tendency of all national undertakings 
 of ordinary work is to exceed the first idea, and 
 to do things more largely than was called for, it 
 would be a pity, and a mistake, to restrict the scheme 
 because of its elasticity. There are no specific re- 
 quirements in the Education Code which would bear 
 diminution — alas, how httle are they all fidfilled ! If,
 
 38 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 on its basis, those national schools which fully act upon 
 it assume more than they were meant to do, still the basis 
 is no more than sound elementary schooling requires, 
 and to go back from it would be simply to undo our 
 whole reform of previous defects, both of teachers and 
 teaching. It may, therefore, be oiu- best or only course 
 to utilize to its utmost capacity, and carry out on a 
 larger scale our national system, making it professedly 
 available for the middle classes, now much in some such 
 need. This would be to revive our old grammar 
 schools, expanded to present demands, or to adopt 
 the common school system of New England. Let all 
 above the labouring class, who can and will, make use 
 of the national schools, paying the full cost of their 
 education ; while the charitable aid now supphed 
 by subscriptions, rates, and Treasury grants, may 
 enable, as now, or even better than now, those who 
 cannot afford to pay the whole cost, or any of it, to 
 avail themselves of so much of the education as their 
 circumstances will permit, and the cleverer ones to 
 rise to the higher stage. This would not be adopt- 
 ing the New England system in its freeness to all ; 
 but it might meet the present demands of the middle 
 classes of this country, where a comprehensive edu- 
 cation rate would not bear the same aspect of equal 
 freedom as in America, and it would avoid the 
 evil of a partially free education being, as now, 
 unduly taken advantage of by others than those for
 
 National Education and Punishments. 39 
 
 whom it is charitably voted. It would, indeed, 
 be ODly doing avowedly, more soundly, and more 
 completely what we are already doing partially, and 
 inconsistently with our professed principle. I think 
 our Schools of Art, in the Kensington Department, 
 have gone beyond this point already. 
 
 The large expenditure, and debt, which the School 
 Boards under the last Act are already incurring, ai'e 
 additional reasons for coming to some distinct under- 
 standing as to what we are undertaking. 
 
 Has London, for instance, already borrowed three- 
 fourths of a milhon to enable the lower middle class to 
 educate their children at half-price, leaving meanwhile 
 many of the poorer sort uneducated ? 
 
 The more the ' deficiencies of education ' are being 
 estimated, the more important becomes a definition of 
 the kind of education meant. Without such definition 
 no true estimate of the work to be done can be made, 
 and we may seek improper means for supplying the 
 mistaken deficiency. If only the children of the work- 
 ing class between the ages of five and twelve are under 
 consideration, even after raking up thousands of tho^e 
 still left wild in the streets, the deficiency of school room 
 would appear much smaller than if the whole number 
 of children in London of school age, deducting only such 
 as are in private schools, were the basis of calculation. 
 
 So, also, if we are content to have education supplied 
 to the poor by voluntary undertakings aided by public
 
 40 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 money, the deficiency of school room must be much 
 less than if the insane idea is to be adopted of 
 ignoring the existence of such schools, and providing 
 new schools for all, i.e. superseding all that has been 
 provided, instead of supplementing it. 
 
 Of course, the subjects to be taught would have to 
 be increased beyond what most of our present national 
 schools embrace, if they are to be made generally 
 available for the middle, or lower middle class. 
 The course of instruction at a New England com- 
 mon school, open to all classes, includes natural 
 and mechanical philosophy, book-keeping, sm-veying, 
 chemistry ; studies connected with trade, commerce, 
 manufactures, and agriculture ; pohtical economy, and 
 moral science. 
 
 Om' present colleges would serve to train masters 
 for quite as much of such instruction as our lower 
 middle class would want, and the standard for the 
 labourers' class, going away early to industrial em- 
 ployment, would rise with the general elevation 
 of the school. Our schools would not, however, 
 attempt so much as the New England common schools, 
 which offer education to all. But the effect of in- 
 structing the sons of tradesmen and the sons of working 
 men in the same school would be to raise the whole 
 curriculum. In America, from feelings of equality, 
 the sons of no class would like to be inferior to the 
 sons of any other class of the same age.
 
 National Education and Punishments. 41 
 
 Our present system has been described by its Minis- 
 terial administrators in all recent debates as still a 
 tentative process, as if we were yet trying oiu' way to 
 a more satisfactory general organisation of primary 
 national education. Some, including Mr. Gathorne 
 Hardy, have expressed a decided wish that classes 
 should be mixed in our national schools. There might 
 be some danger of the higher class absorbing the chief 
 attention, to the neglect of those for whom the system of 
 pubhc aid has been primarily instituted. This danger 
 is recognised even now, when to so limited an extent 
 small farmers and tradesmen mix their children with 
 those of labourers, with the additional injustice of 
 their not papng the full value of such extra attention. 
 Forty weekly ninepences per annum, which is the ut- 
 most payment now demanded from the farmers or 
 tradesmen using national schools, is a price at which 
 they could not get elsewhere the education given. 
 It is deskable, at all events, to correct the present 
 anomaly of a national institution being to a con- 
 siderable extent indiscriminately used on special elee- 
 mosynary terms. It should wholly rest on public 
 foundation open to all, or the privilege of the poor 
 should not be taken by the rich. It is time to cease 
 halting between two principles, and to terminate the 
 idea of a tentative process. Shall we do so till we 
 have a Minister of Pubhc Instruction, and a distinct 
 Department ?
 
 42 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 It is also important that any National Department 
 should responsibly embrace all the subjects coming 
 properly within its designation. The Education De- 
 partment of State should have within its cognizance 
 all the education to which the State contributes. 
 This last consideration reminds me of what I named as 
 the worst defect of the present system. Far worse than 
 educating more or less gratuitously some who should, 
 on the principle of the system, provide for them- 
 selves, or over- schooling others who ought not to be 
 kept from work, is the dropping out of the Educa- 
 tional Department altogether of many of the chief 
 objects of its institution, namely, the most destitute 
 and neglected children of all. This scattered nursery 
 of future citizens are either untrained, or training 
 themselves as criminals in the streets, and, when 
 caught, placed, not in national schools, but in pauper 
 schools under the Poor Law, or in Reformatory and 
 Industrial Schools under the Police. This separate 
 treatment of the destitute and neglected frustrates the 
 main object of their education, which should be to 
 divest pauper children of the feelings of paupers, and 
 to obliterate the stain and sense of early crime. 
 If we set up a department at all for national educa- 
 tion, that the whole people may be fit citizens of a 
 civilized community, what more insane proceeding 
 than to educate the most degraded apart from it, in 
 an abiding destiny of degradation and dependence ;
 
 National Education and Punishments. 43 
 
 and to relegate children reared in crime to a criminal 
 class during all their childhood, branded, and detained 
 in custody from the industry to wliich they should 
 be put out ? Humanity, justice, and national interest, 
 concur in condemning this blot in our national educa- 
 tion. 
 
 Special pauper schools, and schools in workhouses, 
 are now a confessed departure from any sane principle 
 of National Education, and the children of paupers 
 are gradually getting admitted into national schools ; 
 indeed, the last Act, which makes it a condition of out- 
 door relief that the applicant's children under a certain 
 age shall go to school, must in many cases correct this 
 first error in principle. 
 
 The children which charity has lately collected 
 into ' ragged schools ' are really the primary claimants 
 for a share in the education grant. The children of 
 indoor paupers have no homes ; those of outdoor 
 paupers have no means of education ; these ragged 
 children have generally homes the reverse of educa- 
 tional, or rather educational in all that is most in- 
 jurious to themselves and others. They abound, as 
 if in mockery of our legislation, in the immediate 
 neighbourhood of the Houses of Parliament. The 
 new compulsory educational enactments may bring 
 them into some sort of nationally recognised schools : 
 but to put these httle ones in their proper place in the 
 world which they have been brought into by no
 
 44 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 fault of tlieir own, either their homes should be 
 forced to reform, or they should be taken away from 
 them, and boarded and lodged in industrial schools, as 
 the very first responsibihty of national education. 
 
 Of industrial and reformatory schools, Parliament 
 is being only gradually brought to recognise the true 
 meaning. They are really the same institutions; 
 and, whatever the legislature or managers intend, they 
 are used by magistrates, practically, in common. They 
 take as boarders, and for industrial as well as scholastic 
 training, children generally who have been from in- 
 fancy thrown on the street, without any care, control, 
 or honest employment. Some of these children, so bred 
 for thieves, are caught in delicto, and sentenced to be 
 punished. The right idea of reformatories and indus- 
 trial schools is that, after punishment if crime has 
 been committed, all children not at school should be 
 sent to school, and to a boarding-school if in want of a 
 decent home, on the supposition that want of parental 
 care and of schooling caused the necessity of these 
 institutions. It has been a great mistake looking 
 upon post-penal schooling as itself a prolonged penal 
 treatment, and therefore no concern of the department 
 of National Education. 
 
 This consideration is no mere sentiment, but one 
 of great practical importance. It is rather an old 
 Home Office sentiment that a child whom their officers 
 have caught in a crime should be kept by them as a
 
 National Education and Punisliments. 45 
 
 criminal all his childhood, no matter what mischief must 
 be the consequence of such unnatural education. The 
 fact is, that the true idea is not even yet fully enter- 
 tained which led us to depart from the former practice 
 of treating child criminals with the same judicial and 
 penal processes as adults. Wlien we left off placing 
 little children at the bar of the higher Courts, and 
 hanging, transporting, and imprisoning those convicted 
 — when we reflected that a flogging by the constable 
 under the magistrate's order would be more suitable 
 treatment for most criminal children ; and that 
 ordinary schoohng was the true requisite after sufficient 
 punishment — we still could not wholly divest our 
 minds of the old connexion of ideas. Having decided 
 to punish child criminals as children, and then send 
 them to school, we now confound the school with the 
 punishment. Up to this hour it is the disgrace, folly, 
 and mischief of our law that neglected children com- 
 mitting a theft, or less crime, may be penally and 
 degradingly treated for six years ; and kept away from 
 their proper industry, and impeded from getting em- 
 ployment, for the formal completion of this monstrous 
 sentence. So slow and still imperfect is our escape 
 from former errors ! 
 
 The two descriptions of schools for neglected 
 children, Industrial and Eeformatory, the one theore- 
 tically for the unconvicted, the other for the convicted 
 of overt proof of their neglect, are, fortunately,
 
 46 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 used indiscriminately by magistrates, conviction being 
 often abstained from, or, on the other hand, in the 
 words of one of our best stipendiaries, ' trumped up,' 
 in order to get the young scapegrace to an industrial 
 school or to a reformatory, whichever happens to 
 be the best suited to the case. These institutions 
 have been till recently the only resort for directly 
 compulsory education, though little used by the loud- 
 est declaimers for more ; and it is the opinion of some 
 of the best masters of them that the effect of compulsory 
 schooling in them is not encouraging for the adoption of 
 a compulsory system generally. At this moment, in Bir- 
 mingham, there are thirty or forty parents every week 
 summoned under the new Act, and fined, or imprisoned, 
 for neglecting the schooling of their children ; and the 
 small proportion of such cases found capable of adjudi- 
 cation, scarcely compensate for the odium attached to 
 education by the process. The chief resentment of 
 compulsion is felt as against the over detention in 
 schools of children capable of earning something towards 
 the living of the family. Compulsory industrial school- 
 ing is more reasonable as making those who will 
 not work, but live at large, i.e.^ in thieving, com- 
 pelled to labour, rather than fining their parents, or 
 quartering them also on public support. But it is 
 part of the mistake involved in the penal view of 
 reformatories, that children, judicially sentenced to 
 many years' confinement in a reformatory, are on that
 
 National Education and Punishments. 47 
 
 account kept at school often long after they are 
 quite prepared and able to get out to proper work. 
 If reformatories were properly considered post-penal 
 schools, their inmates would, as those of other 
 schools, be put out to work as soon as the master 
 pronoimced them fit, and to be trusted, and having 
 proper work, which would then be more access- 
 ible, offered them. The retaining children, particularly 
 of this inferior class, at school to the age of sixteen or 
 seventeen, the period of schooling of the next class 
 above them, even though some industrial occupation is 
 made part of their education, is most detrimental to 
 the children, irritating to the parents, and burdensome 
 to tlie already injured public, by adding the lost 
 earnings of the children to the poor-rates. 
 
 There are certainly child-criminals whose natural, 
 or inherited, vice, developed prematurely by neglect, 
 leads them into such serious and repeated offences 
 against the law that they must be treated more as 
 adult criminals than as children. Happily the reforma- 
 toiy and industrial schools, imperfectly as they have as 
 yet been allowed to fulfd their purpose, have so ex- 
 tensively broken up the gangs of lawless children, who 
 formed the nurseries of crime in our towns, that there 
 are very few such desperate young villains left as we 
 had to deal with under our more vicious sj^stem twenty 
 years ago. The first kindly influence they met with 
 awakened their consciences, took the edge off their
 
 48 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 boldness, and made them mistrust their comradeship ; 
 and there has gradually been less material out of which 
 such precocious crime can grow. Such as we still have 
 to deal with, quihus malitia supplet cetatem^ must no 
 doubt be treated as adult criminals; but the great 
 mass of the children who are now caught in crime, 
 should, after suffering punishment suited to children, 
 be sent to bond fide school, and, together with pauper 
 and other nmtureless children, be considered not a 
 separate caste, excommunicated fi'om national educa- 
 tion, but some of the chief subjects for it. 
 
 I brought this subject, which I cannot incidentally 
 treat here at length, before Parliament, May 10, 1872 
 ('Hansard,' vol. 211, p. 608), and I think I was un- 
 satisfactorily answered by the argument that criminal 
 children as a different species must be educated differ- 
 ently, and should be kept under penal discipline, as 
 permanent criminals during their education, and there- 
 fore under the Home Office, which should not be 
 confused with the Educational Department. The fact is, 
 that certain excellent persons have got these special 
 schools, though publicly supported, in their own 
 management, and are afraid if they are recognised as 
 national schools they will lose them. The monstrous 
 old notions about the treatment of criminal children 
 also, against which the Juvenile Offenders Act was a 
 protest, are not half exploded, and the first redressive 
 policy in amendment of it is therefore only half 
 carried out.
 
 National Education and Punishments. 49 
 
 PAET n. 
 
 PUNISHMENTS. 
 
 The consideration of such mistaken views of re- 
 formatory schools, as if they were educational prisons, 
 leads me naturally to the other branch of my subject, 
 namely. Punishments ; among our present ideas of 
 which we shall find the exact converse of the former 
 mistake, the viewing prisons as penal schools. 
 
 We have been led quite as much astray from 
 sound principles in our theory of punishment as in 
 that of education. We have so confused the two ideas 
 as to have actually transposed them. If education is 
 'the preparation of youth for the duties of life,' the 
 correlative idea of punishment, as the corrective of its 
 failiu'e, should be the bringing back those who have 
 erred from duty, and deterring them fi'om repeated 
 error. We are attempting to prepare children for the 
 duties of life in the way of punishment, and to correct 
 violation of duty by a reflective course of education. 
 We are using prisons for schools, and schools for 
 prisons. 
 
 Punishment originally was taken to mean an inflic- 
 tion of vengeance in satisfaction for an offence, but came 
 
 E
 
 50 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 to be considered, in a more Christian spirit, as pain so 
 salutarily attached to wrong as to be hkely to prevent 
 its recurrence. It is essential to the curative function 
 of punishment that it should be painful, which alone is 
 enough to distinguish it from the persuasive process of 
 education; and being a reactive process, and unnatural, 
 the less of it for its purpose, the better. It should also 
 be exemplary, and closely connected with the offence, 
 not extending years away from its point of application. 
 Education and Punishment bear much the same relation 
 to each other as food and medicine. Those who would 
 either use reformatory schooHng as penal discipline 
 during the whole of childhood, or prolong imprisonment 
 for a course of education, make mistakes hke feeding 
 children upon medicine, or treating a sickly person 
 with a regimen of solid food. 
 
 The theory entertained by the 'International 
 Penitentiary Congress,' held in London 1872, was 
 that punishment should be continued till the criminal 
 showed proofs of an entire moral cure. Some went 
 so far as to add to reformation of character, in 
 their idea of punishment, the teaching of some kind 
 of industry. Pain, or any deterring quality, was 
 thought a secondary requisite in punishment, and 
 moral influence the primary consideration. A prison 
 was represented as being properly a place for train- 
 ing in better manners, leading a criminal through a 
 gradual recovery to renovated hfe. It seemed so
 
 National Education and Pimishments. 51 
 
 sensitively desired by these philosophers that pun- 
 ishment should bear no semblance of vengeance, or even 
 of retribution, that they would strip it almost of any 
 reference to the crime for which it was imposed, 
 except as being the incident of entrance on a special 
 course of education. In this view children caught in 
 crimes should never be whipped, but punished with 
 reformatory schoohng — that is to say, children of the 
 poor, but those of the upper classes may be whipped 
 when they do wrong, and resume their ordinary school- 
 ing. An adult criminal, upon whom educational 
 punishment has repeatedly failed, is not thought to 
 afford any argument against this theory, but is classed 
 as a variety of the species called a ' recidivist,' for 
 whom a still longer training in prison is prescribed, 
 or, if he be incorrigible, perpetual imprisonment. Why 
 should a fruitless remedy be set up for repetition for 
 ever, or the education of a long imprisonment cease 
 faihng when continued still longer ? ' Weak things 
 grow weaker yet by lengthening.' The theory of 
 perpetual imprisonment (it would never be practically 
 carried out) can only be rational as offering a substitute 
 for the extreme severity of death. The educational idea 
 of punishment, therefore, ends in the extreme of that 
 severity which it unwisely rejects at first. May we 
 not also mistrust the scientific principle of an edu- 
 cational process which culminates in an equivalent to 
 death — the true ultimatum of the deterrent principle, 
 
 E 2
 
 52 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 "when nothing short of incapacitating can stop the 
 recurrence of crime? 
 
 The history of these mistaken notions about punish- 
 ments in this country, it is not difficult to trace. 
 
 In the early part of this century the excessive 
 severity of the law was rapidly leading to its non- 
 execution. When capital punishment was attached to 
 the crime of stealing five shillings from a shop or person, 
 or forty sliillings from a dwelling-house, juries would 
 not convict, and extreme severity ended in practical 
 impunity and increase of crime. A great reaction in 
 penal legislation ensued. Sir Samuel Eomilly and others 
 got, with great difficulty, through Parhament repealing 
 Acts ; and transportation to the Colonies, which had 
 been recently adopted as a punishment, was substituted 
 for death in a long list of cases. The growth of our 
 Colonies, the enterprise of emigration, and increased 
 acquaintance with the outer world, soon rendered 
 transportation inapplicable to purposes of punishment ; 
 and we had to think seriously how to devise a highest 
 kind of secondary punishment to be carried out at 
 home. The selfishness of human nature w^as then 
 evinced. We had first got rid of troublesome 
 criminals by hanging them; when that became, not 
 so much an abhorrent, as an impracticable sentence, 
 we got them removed far enough beyond the sea 
 among our colonists, to prevent the possibihty of their 
 troubling us again. That resource failing, and we
 
 National Education and Punishments. 53 
 
 having at last to bear among ourselves tlie con- 
 sequences of our own disorders, we took the next 
 best mode of riddance, and immured as long as 
 possible in dungeons the troublers we could no longer 
 transport or hang. The express pretext for long 
 imprisonment was, that it was a substitute for trans- 
 portation, and should, therefore, be of the same dura- 
 tion ; as if any of the successive shifts through which 
 transportation wriggled to its final failure — simple 
 deportation, or assignment to colonial service, or 
 Government-hiring at convict stations, or semi-free 
 settlement at the antipodes — were convertible processes 
 with prison-discipline, term for term. Fortunately, 
 the terror of such dangerous neighbours, kept in any 
 way at home, was so great that it gave a great spur to 
 national education, and to the study of the philosophy 
 of punishment, but unfortunately mixed uj) the two. A 
 new process of imprisonment was invented, called Penal 
 Servitude, beginning with cellular confinement, and 
 gradually training a criminal through public works, 
 and final surveillance, into fitness for recovered liberty. 
 I may refer for detailed history of these changes to 
 a little tract of mine, published by Parker, 1863, 
 entitled ' A Century of Experiments in Secondary 
 Punishment.' Eeform of penitentiaries, separation 
 of prisoners, increase of chaplains, and schools in. 
 prisons, were some of the chief features of the ad- 
 ministrative improvement. But all this resulted in a
 
 54 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 system of prison discipline of unreasonable length, 
 fanciful treatment, and more of an educational 
 than of a penal character. Long did this mode of 
 punishment exhibit its curative impotency by undimi- 
 nished numbers and atrocity of crime, until Eeforma- 
 tories, and Discharged Prisoners' Aid Societies, made 
 the first effective impression ; the one by keeping the 
 nursling criminal out of prison, and educating him, 
 after befitting punishment ; the other by intercepting 
 the otherwise inevitable relapses from an ineffective 
 punishment in prison. 
 
 Long imprisonment can neither be educational, 
 nor penal, in any true sense. Prisons should cer- 
 tainly be clear of all possible influences in the way 
 of additional corruption of the subjects placed in 
 them for correction. That such an abuse should ever 
 have existed » as it largely did in the days before 
 Howard's great work of philanthropy, is a blot in 
 our national history. But the education which can be 
 given to a prisoner during incarceration is a very im- 
 perfect and unnatural process, and its fruits are gene- 
 rally morbid and unreal. Still all that can be done 
 educationally during imprisonment, however imperfect, 
 should be done, so far as it can be done incidentally, 
 without interfering with the primary object of penal 
 treatment. As a penal process, prolonged imprison- 
 ment confessedly breaks down. Sir Walter Crofton, 
 ■when asked at the International Congress what part
 
 National Education and Punishments. 55 
 
 of liis Irish systeDi was afflictive, answered ' the com- 
 menceraent only.' The rest as educational loses the 
 penal character, though just penal enough to spoil the 
 education. Its very length disconnects it from the 
 crime for which it is intended to be a punishment. 
 Punishment in the nature of training, extended over a 
 space of time sufficient for the formation of a new 
 character, is in no true sense punishment at all. It is 
 the substitution for punishment of the very worst kind 
 of education, in the worst possible place and circum- 
 stances for education, where the subject is artificially 
 caged up from all contact with any tests or exercise of 
 the principles of action ; weakened rather than fortified 
 for the renewal of temptation. As to any deterrent or 
 exemplary effect from a sentence to ten years' manipu- 
 lation, in a hazy psychological experiment, the criminal 
 class looks too little beyond the present to feel any 
 alarm at such a prospect. Besides, it takes generally 
 the man's whole remaining hfe, or the best part of it. To 
 spend a hfe in curing it, is at least wasteful. A myste- 
 rious destination to the antipodes might, in the last cen- 
 tury, have had some geographical terror about it, but the 
 distant prospect of a great part of remaining life being 
 spent apart from life, in hope of a reformed old age, is 
 altogether too vague to be recognized as a punishment, 
 or even appreciated as coimtervailing, for any specific 
 crime. Such protracted and experimental modes of 
 punishment break down, also, in the most essential
 
 56 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 requisite, certainty. They become notoriously as vari- 
 able in execution as indistinct in meaning. No one 
 believes in them, or fears them, a bit more than 
 he understands them. They are not ignotum pro 
 temjico, but have an attractive charm of speculation 
 about them. Municipal laws, as natural laws, are 
 most observed which strike the quickest, and surest. 
 The lingering and indistinct, no matter what the end, 
 are least regarded. 
 
 Forestalled liberation under surveillance is another 
 part of the parody of transportation by imprisonment 
 at home. Earher liberation to be earned by industry 
 and good conduct, and a lingering connection with 
 Government after liberation, were featm^es of experi- 
 ment in settling criminals as exiles in new countries. 
 The experiment in exile settlement is ill travestied in 
 police tutelage at home. 
 
 As to sm'veillance ; after years of it we find the 
 old criminal turn up again, perhaps having been ham- 
 pered by the dogging policeman himself, or the haunt- 
 ing vision of him, from getting any employment. This 
 precaution will soun be found as utter a delusion as 
 the myriad collections of photographs of every prisoner's 
 last grimace on leaving prison. 
 
 All these long detentions, artificial employments, 
 gradual release by Avay of training, and postscript of 
 watching and guarding, are in nature inappropriate to 
 the idea of penal infliction. Punishment must be 
 more concise.
 
 National Education and Punislunents. 57 
 
 For a first offence one may hope the culprit need 
 not require a whole ciuTiculum of education for his 
 correction. For a thorough criminal, such treatment 
 does not appeal to any motives still actuating him. 
 There is no chance of gaining any response to such an 
 appeal, under the circumstances. The hope of response 
 attaches only to the refined mind which offers the appeal. 
 One cannot refine a thorough criminal by assuming 
 him to be refined. Mrs. Howe of Boston, proposed 
 to the Congress to address a criminal, ' You are made 
 in God's image, don't dishonour it.' Such an appeal 
 to the greater part of criminals would at best only turn 
 them into hypocrites. It is true that a pious and 
 discreet chaplain may, even in hurried ministrations 
 to five hundred criminals constantly recruited afresh, 
 exercise much individual influence for good ; and indus- 
 trial occupation, though forced, may sometimes break a 
 man into regular employment, who has gone wrong by 
 a loose and idle hfe. This amount of good may be 
 incidental to a course of punishment ; but prison is not 
 a place directly available for educational purposes, 
 which can indeed be with difficulty incidentally con- 
 nected with it. A cell is an exhausted receiver of all 
 the healthy atmosphere of surrounding life in which 
 alone true character can be formed. 
 
 Let no nation be flattered into supposing that it 
 can make up for neglect of national education by 
 attaching it to punishment. Discipline and awakened
 
 58 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 conscience may prevent crime, but where law is broken 
 wliich has never been taught, the unprepared lectm'e 
 falls unheeded on a senseless ear. ' Criminals,' as Sara 
 Coleridge says of children, whom in many ways they 
 resemble, ' care more for what you do to them than what 
 you say to them. You can only appeal to reason and 
 conscience through what means you have, and by such a 
 medium as is applicable to the mind appealed to.' To 
 coarser motives coarser appeals are needed. 
 
 The &st object of punishment is deterring, and the 
 last incapacitating, from recurrence of offence. The 
 first requires something repulsive, to turn the evil will, 
 and the last something to extino-uish its action alto- 
 gether in some dead or living sepulture. In both pro- 
 cesses the peccant motive must be met, or the object is 
 simply missed. 
 
 A deterring punishment appeahng to higher motives 
 may sometimes necessitate a long detention in custody. 
 During such custody, the best possible moral influences 
 are due to the prisoner, and in the interest of all ; but 
 as a deterring process it must itself be repulsive. The 
 new attractions to virtue must attract to some other 
 place, and not to prison again. Punishment should 
 present equivalent counter-motives to those of the 
 crimes. Coarser cases indicate as the most effective 
 counter-motive to a brutal will, the brute fear of bodily 
 pain. In these cases the coarseness of the remedy is 
 compensated by its effectiveness, and by the shortness
 
 National Education and Funishmenis. 59 
 
 as well as completeness of tlie treatment. There need 
 be no long detention for the purpose of such punish- 
 ment. Among the various kinds of crime, some cases 
 may be only susceptible of cure by a course of hard 
 labour. But in all cases the shorter the punishment 
 the better. 
 
 Most criminals, we must recollect, necessarily come 
 from the lower classes. The rich are seldom tempted 
 to break the laws of property or order, though they 
 may be the chief offenders against the moral law, in 
 final and higher account. The usual motives to vio- 
 lence or theft of the lower classes are not to be met by 
 long appeals to higher sentiments. It is only the most 
 degraded who fall into such brutal crime as the lash 
 most effectively deters from. Ordinary men falling 
 first into ordinary crimes may be deterred from their 
 repetition by a short period of deprivation of liberty, 
 during wliich absence of bad company, unpleasant food, 
 forced regularity, and painful labour, may effectually 
 nauseate the appetite for crime. The difficulty in this 
 kind of punishment is in devising penal labour for a 
 man whose ordinary lot is labour, which may scare 
 him from crime and not disgust him with labour. 
 
 We know how variously magistrates interpreted the 
 term 'hard labour' before the Act of 1861. The 
 Berkshire magistrates, judging by their own activity, 
 interpreted it as doing nothing, and offered work as a 
 reward. It is generally agreed now that the labour
 
 60 Naiional Education and Punishments. 
 
 of prisoners should be made profitable, and wliere 
 there are hand-trades in the neighbourhood this can 
 easily be done. Looms, for instance, can be put in 
 cells. The industry of prisoners, if we must keep 
 so much of the productive power of the country 
 locked up for prison-training, ought to be made to 
 pay the cost of their training to the honest industry 
 on which they have already depredated. At present, 
 only in the best Government prisons is anything like 
 half of that cost so recouped. At Wakefield 8/. is 
 recovered from the average annual cost of 20/. ; to 
 which the cost of the deserted family, thrown on the 
 poor rates, should be added. The teaching of a new 
 trade in prison, however, is said to spoil more tools 
 than the teaching is worth, and the object offers a bad 
 inducement to lengthen imprisonment. 
 
 Imprisonment may, no doubt, be made deterrent 
 punishment in the way of hard labour in cells, 
 with discomfort, and unpalatable dietary, for much 
 shorter terms than are now used. Very rarely need 
 the present extreme term of two years' imprisonment 
 be resorted to with a greater use of these accessories of 
 severity ; and the longer terms of penal servitude are 
 capable of reduction with increased efiect, if the treat- 
 ment were made more afilictive and disagreeable. 
 We may greatly shorten the requisite periods of im- 
 prisonment on the deterrent principle, by wholesome 
 afflictiveness, so as to be more efiectual against repetition.
 
 National Education and Punishments. 61 
 
 of crime than the long courses of educational training 
 prescribed by educational theories. What I call 'afflic- 
 tiveness ' is severe labour, and withholding of unneces- 
 sary comforts. As it is said that the shortest way to 
 an Enghshman's heart is down his throat, so may 
 the readiest means of affecting the heart against evil 
 be found in the same easy direction. The absence of 
 all ordinary condiments, for instance, from a prisoner's 
 food may make his prison diet distasteful without 
 injuring his health ; and the hard bed is another simple 
 mode of making prison-quarters repidsive, apphcable 
 to most cases of strong and healthy criminals, just as 
 fasting and asceticism have been made conducive to 
 religious discipline all over the world. The desire 
 for luxuries is the chief incentive to theft among 
 those who possess the common desire 'svithout the 
 means of its gratification. The town gamins first 
 theft is often made to pay for some coveted indulgence, 
 and the Sunday orgies are the seed-plot of many cri- 
 minal lives, as multitudes have confessed. Where 
 simple gratifications constitute so much of the zest of 
 life, they offer an easy means of making imprisonment 
 shorter, and yet more effective, by connecting it with 
 their withdrawal. 
 
 A consignment of any man to punishment for 
 a great part of his existence is not the correc- 
 tion, but consumption of his life. It were better 
 to revert to the directer mode of doing practically the
 
 62 National Education and Puninhments. 
 
 same thing, and put him to death. But a vast pro- 
 portion of the locked-up sinews of the country might 
 be restored speedily to its productive power, if we 
 would apply to crimes more suitable, simple, and 
 effective deterrents. 
 
 All brutal crimes are terminable best by corporal 
 chastisement. This, say the most practical of our 
 prison governors, is the only punishment for which 
 a large class of criminals will never come again. Can 
 there be a more decisive testimony to its superlative 
 merit for the cases in point ? Do any fear its brief 
 accomplishment might let loose bad criminals too 
 soon upon society again ? Surely better let a hundred 
 of the worst loose so cured, than one uncured by a 
 fruitless course of penal education, only wearing a 
 mask to dodge the still more corrupting espionage 
 of the police, while he resumes his crimes. Corporal 
 punishment, say objectors, is brutalizing because it 
 appeals not to the human heart. But what if there is 
 no heart to appeal to ? A brutal crime naturally sug- 
 gests something brutal in the punishment which is to 
 meet it. Can we punish a heartless criminal at the 
 moment of his outrage by attempting to give him a 
 new nature ? What would be thought of a physician 
 saying to a patient, ' You have contracted a foul disease 
 by loathsome habits, but the most effectual remedy is 
 so disgusting that I cannot insult you by prescribing 
 it? You should hve better.' The garrotter breaks
 
 National Education and Punishments. 63 
 
 an old gentleman's jaw, and knocks out his eye, in 
 order to secure to himself his watch. When flogged, 
 the craven roars "with only half the pain he ruth- 
 lessly inflicted on the poor old gentleman, and will 
 never dare to incur the pain again by repeating his 
 violence. Nay, he may be led to reflect on the dis- 
 agreeable wages of sin, and to tliink of better employ- 
 ment. Is he brutalized by having had his only motive 
 worked upon which would turn him from brutal crime? 
 Fear is often the beginning of wisdom, and more 
 criminals reformed from brutal life have acknowledged 
 this than have shown good efiects from prison educa- 
 tion. Even those who think that moral suasion is 
 the primary means of punishment allow that there 
 must be a last resort to fear ; so that the question is, 
 w^hen that last resort becomes necessary ; and may 
 not the last resort be wisely anticipated in cases to 
 which intermediate treatment offers scanty promise 
 of success? We have been already much informed 
 upon this question by experience. There were 
 several instances at the beginning of the present 
 reign of men led by a morbid desire for notoriety to 
 shoot at the Queen. No sooner was flogging made 
 the punishment than this crime ceased ; that is, the 
 punishment proved itself to be the right one. There 
 were others who, from a low appetite for mischief, 
 mixed probably with the same prurient vanity, had a 
 mania for damaging works of art. The mere threat of
 
 64 National Education and Punishme^its. 
 
 an ignominious infliction of pain stopped the further 
 progress of this barbarous propensity. In both cases, 
 imprisonment had been found only to feed the 
 peccant vanity, and suggest to kindred minds the imita- 
 tion of the crime. Common sense and general opinion 
 seem to combine with experience against the sentimental 
 objections to corporal punishment. When I introduced 
 the Act for flogging garrotters speeches were mostly 
 against me, especially those of the Government ; but 
 when I divided the House, the numbers were three to 
 one in my favour. The result has amply justified the 
 Act. I may add that the delegates from other coun- 
 tries to last year's Congress, who stated that their 
 Governments had abandoned corporal punishments, 
 were forced to confess that many inventions of practical 
 torture were necessarily resorted to for cases in which 
 other kinds of discipline proved valueless. There was 
 the German coercive chair ; the Swiss strait-jacket, and 
 douche-bath ; the American yoke, and iron crown. 
 
 I come then to this conclusion, that if we would 
 give up trying to use prisons as schools, and substitute 
 correction for education as punishment, we should 
 attain much greater public security, and increased 
 prosperity. We should empty our gaols of half their 
 present contents, and economize capital and labour. 
 The improvement would go on in an increasing ratio, 
 as there would be fewer ' recidivists,' and first offences 
 would be more summarily disposed of.
 
 Natnmal Education and Punish men fs. 05 
 
 1 should propose to extend the Garrotting Act to all 
 cases of brutal assaults, especially on women and chil- 
 dren, malicious injuries, rapes, indecent exposure, 
 wanton mischief, and the like. Almost all boy crimi- 
 nals I would have consigned to the constable's care for 
 immediate whipping ; never let any under the age of 
 sixteen go mto a prison at all, except, as I have said, 
 the few, and growing fewer, quibus malitia supplet 
 (ptateni. 
 
 In Stafford County Gaol, where the Boy-ward used 
 to contain forty or fifty, I find reformatories have re- 
 duced the average number to six or eight ; but, on my 
 lately visiting it, I found every one of these cases were 
 such as a whipping would have more suitably, and effec- 
 tively, dealt with as the schoolmaster confessed, who was 
 vainly trying to make a proper school arrangement 
 with so few and such unequal pupils in the ward. In 
 Warwickshire boys are sent to gaol for throwing 
 stones in the streets, being found lodging under hedges, 
 or bathing in a canal. If not frightened out of their 
 wits by the isolation of a cell tliese little prisoners 
 become heroes in their own and their comrades' estima- 
 tion ; losing all true self-respect in early life, and 
 escaping a whipping at the sacrifice of all proper occu- 
 pation and education. A whipping, which tlie philo- 
 sophers think so degrading, would stop their downward 
 career at its outset, and reinstate them better boys, and 
 more cared for, at home ; and for such chilch-en with- 
 
 F
 
 C6 National Education and Punishments. 
 
 out a decent home, a reformatory oflfers both education 
 and lodging. 
 
 Still, after emptying the ' Juvenile Wards,' shorten- 
 ing imprisonments, substituting corporal chastisement, 
 and discharging men scared from repeating crime, 
 there would remain many prisoners necessarily subject 
 to long terms of detention. There are cases of aggra- 
 vated but not brutal, and incorrigibly repeated, crimes, 
 necessarily requiring long imprisonment, as the only 
 possible punishment for them. There are the frauds 
 and felonies which cannot suitably be punished by 
 corporal chastisement, or adequately scared from by 
 short imprisonment, which are now punished by long 
 terms of penal servitude, and there are habitual and 
 inveterate offences. Besides, I say nothing of the 
 highest criminals, and the incorrigible, who must be 
 put out of the way permanently. 
 
 Sad is it that the most desperate and dangerous 
 criminals can only be punished by being long and at 
 great cost quartered on the community, whom they 
 have already so grievously injured. The redress society 
 receives for such men's outrages is, their withdrawal 
 from, instead of forced adcUtion to, the strength and 
 productive labour of the country ; and that for the 
 best part of their lives they should be housed, fed, 
 clothed, and attended at pubhc expense, the wife and 
 children supported as paupers, the household industry 
 broken up ; and finally, if. after causing all this, they
 
 National Education and Punishments. 67 
 
 survive the pimisliment tliey so inflict as much as 
 sujETer, they may be turned out again upon the so 
 avenged commuuit}^, old, estranged from all their 
 belongings, and rendered unfit to work on their own 
 account. All will allow these are great drawbacks to 
 the merits of any system of correction. If it must be, 
 it is at least a good reason for reducing the number of 
 cases coming within it, and treating as many as 
 possible in a more summary, and a juster way. 
 
 There is nothing in this view detracting from the 
 great merits of Sir Walter Crofton's achievements. 
 He has done wonders with the law as it stands, and 
 with the system he has invented from it, and he would 
 be able to do much more if pubhc opinion would carry 
 Parliament further in the direction in which Sir 
 Samuel Eomilly with difficulty drew it, and if the idea 
 of reformatories, and discharged prisoners' aid, which 
 Parliament only half-accepted, could be more fully enter- 
 tained. His Irish success, however, must not be taken 
 too readily, as proof that the same could be achieved 
 in England ; which, alas ! is more fertile of the coarser 
 crimes. The chief crimes in Ireland come not from 
 sordid motive. Their burglaries are not for pelf, but 
 arms ; their murders are half-political acts, half-reli- 
 gious; even their bloodiest atrocities come of senti- 
 ments more barbarous than malignant, and bespeak 
 rather a total want of civilization than of corrections 
 suited to a civilized community. Sir Walter allows 
 
 F 2
 
 68 National Education and Punisliments. 
 
 that it was under a panic caused by the cessation of 
 transportation setting loose very dangerous criminals 
 on tickets-of-leave, that he devised his ' Mark ' system 
 of gradual training from prison to liberty. Sir Walter's 
 general principle seems to be that most offences 
 spring from wild and idle hfe, averse from regular 
 employment ; and if criminals can only be trained 
 into liking labour, they will be cured. His first stage 
 of training is afflictive incarceration, calculated both to 
 scare outsiders from a like career, and to make the 
 wretch himself fmd out that forcibly having nothing 
 to do is worse than willing labour. Then comes a 
 stage of gradual amelioration, spurred on with hopes 
 of reward ; which, however, Sir Walter allows to be 
 so artificial a treatment as not to be wisely continued 
 too long, lest it should unfit a man for subsequent inde- 
 pendent life-work. Then comes the last step to free- 
 dom, when employment is associated with profit and 
 pleasure, two ideas somewhat incompatible with punish- 
 ment. In this process prison disciphne is supposed 
 gradually to fade away into reformed free life. It 
 might be better to separate the part of real punishment 
 at the commencement of this process from the sub- 
 sequent curriculum of training ; insisting on the educa- 
 tional sequel being undergone after punishment is com- 
 pleted, as a preparation which the safety of society 
 requires for readmission to its circle. This would 
 be adopting for adults the reformatory principle, and
 
 National Education and Punishments. 69 
 
 it would partake of the nature of charity hke a dis- 
 charged prisoners' aid. 
 
 Discharged Prisoners' Aid Institutions slioidd be 
 made general all over the country ; and if supervision 
 of discharged criminals is to be continued at all, they 
 should be allowed to report themselves to such insti- 
 tutions, instead of to the police who can never be 
 their trusted friends and guides to honest living. If, 
 in spite of such friendly assistance, men will go wrong 
 again, they must then re-enter police and penal 
 treatment. 
 
 The chief object being to reduce the needless 
 number of people kej)t in prison, by shorter and more 
 deterrent punishment, nothing in this view requires 
 more consideration than the triviahty of some of the 
 offences for which persons of all ages are now im- 
 prisoned. As many as two thousand and fifteen were 
 sent to Stafford County Prison last year for non- 
 payment of fines, varying from a few pence to five 
 shilhugs. Probably, there were costs increasing these 
 amounts ; but the system of paying officers by costs, 
 instead of salaries, only aggravates the miscliief. 
 Again, the intention of Parhament to rescue debtors 
 from imprisonment has been evaded by the County 
 Comis committing for contemj)t. Five hundred such 
 commitments took place in a recent year at Stafford. 
 The most enlightened magistrates in several recent 
 ■Quarter Sessions have drawn attention to many other
 
 70 National Education and Punuhnieiits. 
 
 improper commitments, and the dangerous conse- 
 quences, both direct and indirect, can hardly be 
 exaggerated. They shut up industry and demorahse 
 character. 
 
 It is a serious consideration for the makers and 
 administrators of the country's laws, with the sanctions 
 of which they are seldom likely to come in conflict 
 themselves, that their own superior position may lead 
 them into folse views of the application of those 
 sanctions to others, so that they may corrupt those 
 who come under the law, even in the act of enforcing 
 it. Benevolence itself may err, like cruelty, in mani- 
 pulating punishment so as to lose its effect, and 
 increasing crime by causing its repetition. Philosophy 
 experimenting on others, is apt to be fanciful and un- 
 practical, and the ideal criminal is prescribed for by 
 doctrinaires with recipes which prove poison to the 
 actual sufferer. The selfishness of man, also, more 
 eagerly seeks a riddance, than a painstaking correction, 
 of what troubles him. So it is a slovenly exercise 
 of national superintendence to mix up the work of 
 popular education and punishment, to post-date the 
 one and ante-date the other in primary consideration 
 of personal relief from trouble, and recklessly inter- 
 change both the process and the place appropriate to 
 each — to throw youth for its first tuition into penal 
 discipline, or to invite too late repentance in schooling 
 aged criminals. Imagine a magistrate who has poached
 
 Natiomd Education and Punishments. 71 
 
 for amusement with impunity iu his school days, 
 thinking nothing of ruining a young labourer, I mean 
 not a game-thief, by sending him to prison for a like 
 indulgence of a common instinct of prey. What of a 
 philosopher sentimentally objecting to inflict a short 
 severity, which would have deterred a man from crime, 
 and restored him to industry and the support of his 
 family ; and preferring to break up his home, and turn 
 him out, after many years, the weak-willed morbid 
 creature of long-continued prison drill. Some magis- 
 trates ruthlessly brush the bloom of modesty, nature's 
 safeguard of viilue, from a boy's mind by the most 
 kindly meant schooling him in a gaol ; others, with 
 mistaken care, detain a boy from industry in a refor- 
 matory, to the injury of his home and means of Hveh- 
 hood, by way of correcting the evil home and the boy's 
 indiscipline. Such are the dangers, even with the best 
 intentions, of maladministration of the law. 
 
 What we want is a true principle both of National 
 Education and Punishments, clear in application to 
 whom and to what ; and each process directed to the 
 object in view, and distinguished one from the other. 
 For want of this there is great perversion and waste of 
 education, and great numbers are needlessly, and even 
 mischievously shut up in prisons ; many of those most 
 in need of education go without it, while others not 
 needing help appropriate their provision, and many 
 have education first offered them in the place of 
 punishment.
 
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