University of Virginia Library

III. EDUCATION

Another topic treated by Colquhoun marks the initial stage of controversies which were soon to grow warm. Colquhoun boasts of the number of charities for which London was already conspicuous. A growing facility for forming associations of all kinds, political, religious, scientific, and charitable, is an obvious characteristic of modern progress. Where in earlier times a college or a hospital had to be endowed by a founder and invested by charter with corporate personality, it is now necessary only to call a meeting, form a committee, and appeal for subscriptions. Societies of various kinds had sprung up during the century. Artists, men of science, agriculturists, and men of literary tastes, had founded innumerable academies and 'philosophical institutes.' The great London hospitals, dependent upon voluntary subscriptions, had been founded during the first half of the century. Colquhoun counts the annual revenue of various charitable institutions at £445,000, besides which the endowments produced £150,000, and the poor-rates £255,000.[44] Among these a considerable number were intended to promote education. Here, as in some other cases, it seems that people at the end of the century were often taking up an impulse given a century before. So the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, founded in 1699, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, founded in 1701, were supplemented by the Church Missionary Society and the Religious Tract Society, both founded in 1799. The societies for the reformation of manners, prevalent at the end of the seventeenth century, were taken as a model by Wilberforce and his friends at the end of the eighteenth.[45] In the same way, the first attempts at providing a general education for the poor had been made by Archbishop Tenison, who founded a parochial school about 1680 in order 'to check the growth of popery.' Charity schools became common during the early part of the eighteenth century and received various endowments. They were attacked as tending to teach the poor too much -- a very needless alarm -- and also by free thinkers, such as Mandeville, as intended outworks of the established church. This last objection was a foretaste of the bitter religious controversies which were to accompany the growth of an educational system. Colquhoun says that there were 62 endowed schools in London, from Christ's Hospital downwards, educating about 5000 children; 237 parish schools with about 9000 children, and 3730 'private schools.' The teaching was, of course, very imperfect, and in a report of a committee of the House of Commons in 1818, it is calculated that about half the children in a large district were entirely uneducated. There was, of course, nothing in England deserving the name of a system in educational more than in any other matters. The grammar schools throughout the country provided more or less for the classes which could not aspire to the public schools and universities. About a third of the boys at Christ's Hospital were, as Coleridge tells us, sons of clergymen.[46] The children of the poor were either not educated, or picked up their letters at some charity school or such a country dame's school as is described by Shenstone. A curious proof, however, of rising interest in the question is given by the Sunday Schools movement at the end of the century. Robert Raikes (1735-1811), a printer in Gloucester and proprietor of a newspaper, joined with a clergyman to set up a school in 1780 at a total cost of 1s. 6d. a week. Within three or four years the plan was taken up everywhere, and the worthy Raikes, whose newspaper had spread the news, found himself revered as a great pioneer of philanthropy. Wesley took up the scheme warmly; bishops condescended to approve; the king and queen were interested, and within three or four years the number of learners was reckoned at two or three hundred thousand. A Sunday School Association was formed in 1785 with well known men of business at its head. Queen Charlotte's friend, Mrs Trimmer (1741-1810), took up the work near London, and Hannah More (1745-1833) in Somersetshire. Hannah More gives a strange account of the utter absence of any civilising agencies in the district around Cheddar where she and her sisters laboured. She was accused of 'methodism' and a leaning to Jacobinism, although her views were of the most moderate kind. She wished the poor to be able to read their Bibles and to be qualified for domestic duties, but not to write or to be enabled to read Tom Paine or be encouraged to rise above their position. The literary light of the Whigs, Dr Parr (1747-1825), showed his liberality by arguing that the poor ought to be taught, but admitted that the enterprise had its limits. The 'Deity Himself had fixed a great gulph between them and the poor.' A scanty instruction given on Sundays alone was not calculated to facilitate the passage of that gulf. By the end of the century, however, signs of a more systematic movement were showing themselves. Bell and Lancaster, of whom I shall have to speak, were rival claimants for the honour of initiating a new departure in education. The controversy which afterwards raged between the supporters of the two systems marked a complete revolution of opinion. Meanwhile, although the need of schools was beginning to be felt, the appliances for education in England were a striking instance of the general inefficiency in every department which needed combined action. In Scotland the system of parish schools was one obvious cause of the success of so many of the Scotsmen which excited the jealousy of southern competitors. Even in Ireland there appears to have been a more efficient set of schools. And yet, one remark must be suggested. There is probably no period in English history at which a greater number of poor men have risen to distinction. The greatest beyond comparison of self-taught poets was Burns (1759-1796). The political writer who was at the time producing the most marked effect was Thomas Paine (1737-1809), son of a small tradesman. His successor in influence was William Cobbett (1762-1835), son of an agricultural labourer, and one of the pithiest of all English writers. William Gifford (1756-1826), son of a small tradesman in Devonshire, was already known as a satirist and was to lead Conservatives as editor of the The Quarterly Review. John Dalton (1766-1842), son of a poor weaver, was one of the most distinguished men of science. Porson (1759-1808), the greatest Greek scholar of his time, was son of a Norfolk parish clerk, though sagacious patrons had sent him to Eton in his fifteenth year. The Oxford professor of Arabic, Joseph White (1746-1814), was Son of a poor weaver in the country and a man of reputation for learning, although now remembered only for a rather disreputable literary squabble. Robert owen and Joseph Lancaster, both sprung from the ranks, were leaders in social movements. I have already spoken of such men as Watt, Telford, and Rennie; and smaller names might be added in literature, science, and art. The individualist virtue of 'self-help' was not confined to successful moneymaking or to the wealthier classes. One cause of the literary excellence of Burns, Paine, and Cobbett may be that, when literature was less centralised, a writer was less tempted to desert his natural dialect. I mention the fact, however, merely to suggest that, whatever were then the difficulties of getting such schooling as is now common, an energetic lad even in the most neglected regions might force his way to the front.