line, that, as they are taxed for these public
buildings, they have a right to get as much of
their money back as they can, forgetting that if
THIRD AGE. 91
every taxed person did the same, there would be
no palace built ; ā not but that we could spare
two or three extremely well ; ā or might, at least,
postpone some of the interminable alterations
and embellishments, with an account of which
the nation is treated, year after year, in return
for its complaisance in furnishing the cash. Let
their Majesties be nobly lodged, by all means ;
and, moreover, gratified in the exercise of tastes
which are a thousand times more dignified than
those of our kings in the days of cloth of gold,
and more refined than those of monarchs who
could make themselves exceedingly merry at the
expense of their people. The test, after all, is ā
"What is necessary for the support of the admi-
nistrating body, and what upholds mere pomp ?
These are no days for public pomp, in one
sense, the time for it is gone by ; in another
sense, it is not come ; ā that is, we ought now to
be men enough to put away such childish things ;
and, we cannot yet afford them. Two or three
noble royal palaces, let alone when once com-
pleted, are, in my mind, a proper support to the
dignity of the sovereign. As for half-a-dozen,
if they do not make up a display of disgraceful
pomp, the barbaric princes of the East are greater
philosophers than 1 take them for. Yes, yes ;
let the sovereign be nobly lodged ; but let it be
remembered that noble lodgings are quite as
much wanted for other parties.
" Mr. 's motion teas lost 'without a
division?
92 THIRD AGE.
Aye : just so. The concentrated essence of
the people, as the House of Commons pretends
to be, must put up with a sordid lodging, however
many royal palaces England may boast. They
are not anything so precious as they pretend to
be, or they would not so meanly exclude them-
selves from their right. They might just as
faithfully consult the dignity of the empire by
making the King and Queen live in a cottage of
three rooms, as by squeezing themselves into a
house where there is neither proper accommoda-
tion for their sittings, nor for the transaction of
their business in Committees, nor for witnessing,
nor for reporting their proceedings. I thought
my wife quite right in saying that she would never
again undergo the insult of being referred to the
ventilators ; and I have determined twenty times
myself that I would despise the gallery so utterly
that I would never set foot in it again : vet to the
gallery I still go ; and I should not wonder if my
wife puts away, for once or twice, her disgust at
inhaling smoke and steam, and her indignation
at being permitted to watch the course of legisla-
tion only through a pigeon-hole and a grating.
The presence of women there, in spite of such
insults, is a proof that they are worthy of being
treated less like nuns and more like rational
beings; and the greater the rush and consequent
confusion in the gallery, the more certain is it that
there are people who want, and who eventually
will have the means of witnessing the proceedings
of their legislators. But all this is nothing to
the importance of better accommodation to the
THIRD AGE. 93
members. Of all extraordinary occasions of
being economical, that is the most strange which
impairs the exertions of the grand deliberative
assembly of the nation, ā the most majestic body,
if it understood its own majesty. ā within the
bounds of the empire. Why, ā every nobleman
should be content with one house, and every
private gentleman be ashamed of his stables and
kennels, rather than that the House of Commons
should not have a perfect place of assemblage.
I verily believe that many a poor man would
willingly give his every third potato towards thus
aiding the true representation of his interests. It
would be good economy in him so to do, if there
was nothing of less consequence to be sacrificed
first. But King, Lords, and Commons are not
the only personages who have a claim on the
public to be well housed, for purposes of social
support, not pomp.
" Yesterday morning, Andrew Wilson under-
went the sentence of the law, Ā§c. Ā§c. Though
only twenty years of age, he was old in guilt,
having been committed for his first offence, ā
throwing stones at the police, ā when he was in
his thirteenth year. He is supposed to have been
for some time connected with a gang of desperate
offenders-, but nothing could be extracted from
him relative to his former associates, though the
reverend chaplain of the jail devoted the most
unremitting attention to the spiritual concerns of
the unhappy man."
So this is the way we tend the sick children of
04
THIRD AGE.
the great social family, because, forsooth, with
all our palaces, we cannot afford a proper infir-
mary ! As soon as symptoms of sickness ap-
pear, we thrust all our patients together, to make
one another as much worse as possible, and when
any one is past hope, we take credit for our hu-
manity in stuffing him with remedies which come
too late. To look at our prisons, one would
think that we must be out in our Christian chro-
nology. That among the many mansions of the
social edifice, room cannot be found for those
who have the strongest claim of all on our pity-
ing Jove and watchful care, ā what a scandal this
is may be most fully comprehended by those who
have passed from the loathsome confusion of the
greater number of our prisons to the silence and
rigid order of the very few in which a better
system has been tried. There are persons to
press the argument that while many of our honest
poor, in London and in the factory districts, are
crowded together, six or seven families in the
same apartment, it cannot be expected that the
guilty should be better accommodated. But
these same honest poor, ā trebly honest if they
can remain so under such a mode of living, ā
may well be as glad as other people that the
prisoner should be doomed to the solitude which
their poverty denies to them. These same honest
poor are taxed to pay for the transportation of
multitudes of the guilty, and for the idleness of
all : while the incessant regeneration of crime
through our prison methods affords but a melan-
choly prospect of augmented burdens on their
THIRD AGE, 95
children's children for similar purposes. In this
point of view alone, how dearly has the public
paid for the destruction of this Andrew Wilson,
and for the offences of the gang he belongs to!
Committed in his childhood for the childish fault
of throwing stones, kept in a state of expensive
idleness for want of an apparatus of labour,
thrown into an atmosphere of corruption for
want of room to insulate him, issuing forth as a
vagabond to spread the infection of idleness and
vice, and being brought back to be tried and
hanged at the nation's expense, after he had suc-
cessfully qualified others for claiming from the
public the expense of transportation, ā would not
the injured wretch have been more profitably
maintained through a long life at the public ex-
pense i Would it not have answered better to
the public purse to give him an establishment, on
condition of his remaining harmless ? If no
Christian considerations are strong enough to
rouse us to build new jails, or to transmute the spare
palaces of the educated and the honoured into
penitentiaries for the ignorant and forlorn, there
may be calculable truths, ā facts of pounds, shil-
lings, and pence, ā which may plead on behalf of
the guilty against the system of mingled par-
simony and extravagance by which guilt is ag-
gravated at home, and diffused abroad, and the
innocent have to pay dear for that present quiet
which insures a future further invasion of their
security. Every complainant who commits a
young offender to certain of our jails knows, or
may know, that he thereby burdens the public
96 THIRD AGE.
with a malefactor for life, and with all who will
become criminals by his means. What wonder
that the growing chances of impunity become a
growing inducement to crime ? There is no oc-
casion to " provide criminals with port wine and
Turkey-carpets ;" but there would be more sense
and better economy in this extreme, ā if insula-
tion were secured, ā than in the system which re-
mains a reproach to the head and heart of the
community. Ah ! here are a few hints as to one
of the methods by which we contrive to have so
many young offenders upon our hands.
" John Ford, a publican, was Jined for having
music in his house, fyc. ^c."
" Two labourers, brothers, named White,
were charged ivith creating a disturbance in the
neighbourhood oj'the residence of Sir L. M. N. 0.,
who has lately enforced his right of shutting up
the foot-path, Ā§c. Ā§*c."
" The number of boats which jiassed under
Putney Bridge from noon to sunset on a Sunday
in summer, was computed by the informant of
the right reverend bishop to exceed, fyc. <^c.''
" The witness stated that he saw the two pri-
soners that morning in the Albany Road, Regent's
Park, selling the unstamped publications which
were now produced. He purchased a copy from
each of them, and took the vendors into custody.
The magistrates committed the prisoners to the
House of Correction for one month each, and
thrust the forfeited papers into the fire. The
prisoners were then removed from the bar t laugh-
ing:*
THIRD AGE. ' 97
" On the discussion, last night, relative to the
throwing open of the Museum, ue have to ob-
serve, fyc. 8fc. ,i
" The prisoner related that his dog having, on
a former occasion, brought a hare to him in a si-
milar manner, the gaynekeeper had ordered the
animal to be shot. The prisoner's son had then
contrived to secrete it ; but he could assure the
magistrates that the animal should be immedi-
ately sacrified if he might be spared the ruin of
being sent to prison.**
Considering that one of the great objects of
government is the security, and another the ad-
vancement, of the people, it seems as if one of
the expenses of government should be providing
useful and innocent amusement for the people.
All must have something to do in the intervals of
their toils ; and as the educated can find recrea-
tions for themselves, it behoves the guardians of
the public to be especially careful in furnishing
innocent amusements to those who are less fitted
to choose their pleasures well. But where are
the public grounds in which the poor of our large
towns may take the air, and exercise themselves
in games ? AVhere are the theatres, the mu-
seums, the news-rooms, to which the "poor may
resort without an expense unsuited to their
means ? What has become of the principle of
Christian equality, when a Christian prelate mur-
murs at the v;oor man's efforts to enjoy, at rare
intervals, the green pastures and still waters to
which a loving shepherd would fain lead forth
K
98 THIRD AGE.
all Lis flock ; and if any more tenderly than
others, it would be such as are but too little left
at large? Our administrators are careful enough
to guard the recreations of those who, if deprived
of them, are in the least danger of being driven
to guilty excitements. The rich who can have
music and dancing, theatres, picture-galleries
and museums, riding in the parks, and walking
in the fields any day of the week, hunting and
boating, journeying and study, must also have
one more, at whatever expense of vice and misery
to their less favoured neighbours, and at whatever
cost to society at large. Yes ; their game must
be protected, though the poor man must not
listen in the public-house to the music which he
cannot hire, nor read at home almost the only
literature that he can buy. He must destroy his
cherished dog, if it happens to follow a hare ; and
must take his evening walk in the dustv road if a
powerful neighbour forbids him the quiet, green
footway. Thus we drive him to try if there is
no being merry at the beer-shop, and if he can-
not amuse himself with his dog in the woods at
night, since he must not in the day. Thus we
tempt him to worse places than a cheap theatre
would be. Thus we preach to him about loving
and cherishing God's works, while we shut out
some of them from his sight, and wrest others
from his grasp ; and, by making happiness and
heaven an abstraction which we deny him the
intellect to comprehend, we impel him to make
trial of misery and hell, and by our acts do our
best to speed him on his way, while our weak
THIRD AGE. 99
words of warning are dispersed bv the whirlwind
of temptation which we ourselves have raised. If
the administration of penal justice be a grievous
burden upon the people, it must be lightened by
a practical respect to that higher justice which
commands that the interests of all, the noble and
the mean, the educated and the ignorant, be of
equal importance in the regards of the adminis-
tration ; so that government shall as earnestly
protest against the slaughter of the poor man's
dog for the sake of the rich man's sport, as
the prophet of God against the sacrifice of the
poor man's ewe-lamb for the rich man's feast. If
bible-read prelates preached from their hearts
upon this text, we should never have another
little boy supposing that he was to be a clergy-
man, because he went out shooting with his
father. Would that such could be persuaded to
leave their partridges and pheasants, and go east
and west, to bring down and send home the
winged creatures of other climes, wherewith to
delight the eyes of the ignorant, and to enlarge
his knowledge of God's works ! Meantime, the
well-dressed only can enter the Zoological Gar-
dens ; and the footman (who cannot be otherwise
than well-dressed) must pull off his cockade be-
fore he may look at that which may open to him
some of the glory of the 104th Psalm. We are
lavish of God's word to the people, but grudging
of his works. We offer them the dead letter,
withholding the spirit which gives life. Yet
something is done in the way of genuine homage.
See here ! ā
K 2
100 THIRD AGE.
" Yesterday being the occasion of the annual
assemblage of schools in St. Paul's * * under
the dome * * children sang a hymn * *
crowded to excess * * presence of her Ma-
jesty, Sfc. 8fc."
And here follows an account of certain uni-
versity prize-givings. We are not without public
education, ā badged, ā the one to denote charity,
the other endowments.
If education were what it ought to be, ā the
breath of the life of the community, ā there would
be an end of this childish and degrading badg-
ing. At present, this prodigious display of white
tippets and coloured cockades under the dome of
St. Paul's tells only that, because the whole of
society is not educated at all, a small portion is
educated wrong. There is less to be proud than
ashamed of in such an exhibition ; and though
the stranger from a comparatively barbarous
country may feel his heart swell as that mighty
infant voice chaunts its hymn of praise, the
thoughts of the meditative patriot will wander
from these few elect to the multitudes that are
left in the outer darkness. Till the state can
show how every parent may afford his children a
good education, the state is bound to provide the
means forit; and to enforce the use of those
means by making a certain degree of intellectual
competency a condition of the enjoyment of the
benefits of society. Till the state can appoint to
every member a sufficiency of leisure from the
single manual act which, under an extensive divi-
sion of labour, constitutes the business of many,
THIRD AGE. 101
it is bound to provide the only effectual anti-
dote to the contracting and benumbing influences
of such servile toil.
Till knowledge ceases to be at least as neces-
sary to the happiness of the state as military skill
was to the defence of the Greek Republics, the
state is bound to require of every individual a
certain amount of intellectual ability, as Greece
required of her citizens a specified degree of mili-
tarv skill. Till all these extraordinary thingl
happen, no pleas of povertv, no mournful refer-
ence to the debt, no just murmurs against the
pension list, can absolve us from the obligation
of framing and setting in motion a system of
instruction which shall include every child that
shall not be better educated elsewhere. Not that
this would be any very tremendous expense.
There is an enormous waste of educational re-
sources already, from the absence of system and
co-operation. Lords and ladies, squires and
dames, farmers' wives, merchants' daughters, and
clergymen's sisters, have their schools, benevo-
lently set on foot, and indefatigably kept up, in
defiance of the evils of insulation and diversity of
plan. Let all these be put under the workings
of a well-planned system, and there will be a pro-
digious saving of effort and of cost. The pri-
vate benevolence now operating in this direction
would go very far towards the fulfilment of a
national scheme. What a saving in teachers, in
buildings, in apparatus and materials, and, finally,
in badges! There will be no uniform of white
caps and tippets when there is no particular glory
K3
102 THIRD AGE.
to be got by this species of charity ; when none
can be found who must put up with the humi-
liation for the sake of the overbalancing good.
When the whole people is so well off that none
come to receive alms at the sound of the trumpet,
the trumpet will cease to sound. The day may
even arrive when blue gowns and yellow stock-
ings shall excite pity in the beholders no more,
and no widowed parent be compelled to struggle
with her maternal shame at subjecting her comely
lad to the mortifications which the young spirit
has not learned to brave. This last grievance,
however, lies not at the nation's door. It is charge-
able on the short-sightedness of an individual,
which may serve as a warning to us whenever
we set to work on our system of national educa-
tion. It may teach us, by exhibiting the folly of
certain methods of endowment, to examine others ;
to avoid the absurdity of bestowing vast sums in
teaching plain things in a perplexed manner, or
supposed sciences which have long ceased to be
regarded as such, or other accomplishments which
the circumstances of the times do not render
either necessary or convenient. It may lead our
attention from the endowed school to the en-
dowed university, and show us that what we want,
from our gentlemen as well as our poor, is an
awakening of the intellect to objects of immediate
and general concern, and not a compulsion to
mental toil which shall leave a man, after years
of exemplary application, ignorant of whatever
may make him most useful in society, and may
be best employed and improved amidst the inter-
THIRD AGE. 103
courses of the world. Let there remain a tribe
of book -worms still; and Heaven forbid that the
classics should fall into contempt ! But let scho-
lastic honours be bestowed according to the sym-
pathies of the many ; the many being meantime
so cultivated as that they may arrive at a sym-
pathy with intellectual toil. With the progress
of science, the diffusion of science becomes ne-
cessary. The greater the power of the people
to injure or rebel, the more necessary it is to
teach them to be above injuring and rebelling.
The ancient tyrant who hung up his laws written
in so small a character that his people could not
read them, and then punished offenders under
pretence, that his laws were exhibited, was no
more unjust than we are while we transport and
hang our neighbours for deeds of folly and malice,
while we still withhold from them the spirit of
power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Bring
public education to the test, and it will be found
that badgery is pomp, while universal instruction
is essential "to the support of the state.
A pretty new church that ! But I should
scarcely have supposed it wanted while there is a
new Methodist meeting-house on one side the
way, and the large old Independent chapel on the
other. The little church that the lady is sketch-
ing before it comes down, might have served a
while longer, I fancy, if the necessity had been
estimated by the number of church-goers, and
not of souls", in the parish. Whatever may be
thought of the obligation to provide a national
scheme of worship after the manner in which a
104 THIRD AGE.
national scheme of education is certainly a duty, ā
however the essential circumstance of distinction
is overlooked, that every member of the state
has, without its assistance, opportunities of wor-
ship, while such is not the case with instruction, ā
whatever may be thought of the general question
of an ecclesiastical establishment, ā it is not pre-
tended by any that its purposes are answered by
the application of its funds to the augmentation
of private fortunes instead of the religious in-
struction of the people. Time was when he who
presented to a benefice was supposed to confer a
benefit on the people connected with it. Now
we have the public barter of such presentations
for gold ; and whether most regard be always
paid to the qualifications of the candidate or to
the gold he brings, let the face of the country
declare. Meeting-houses springing up in every
village, intelligent artizans going off to one class
or another of Dissenters, while the stolid race of
agricultural labourers lounge to church, ā what
does this tell but that the religious wants of the
people are better met by the privately-paid than
the publicly-paid church ? The people are not
religiously instructed by the clergy, as a body.
Look into our agricultural districts, and see what
the mere opening of churches does for the popu-
lation, ā for the dolts who snore round the fire in
the farm-kitchen during the long winter evenings,
and the poor wretches that creep, match in hand,
between the doomed stacks, or that walk firmly
to the gibbet under the delusion that their life-
long disease of grovelling vice is cured and sent
THIRD AGE. 105
to oblivion by a few priestly prayers and three
days of spiritual excitement ! Look into our
thronged towns, and search in its cellars and
garrets, its alleys and its wider streets, how many
dwellers there see the face of their clergyman,
and have learned from his lips the reason of the
hope that is in them, ā if such hope there indeed
be ! They hear that he who holds the benefice,
i.e. is appointed their benefactor, is living in
London, or travelling abroad, on the funds which
are derived from the people, and that a curate,
found by accident or advertisement, is coming to
do the duty. He may be a religious instructor,
in the real sense of the term, or he may not. If
lie be, no thanks to his superior, no thanks to
the state, no thanks to the university that bred
him ! For aught they know or trouble them-
selves about, he may be more ignorant than
manv a mechanic in his flock, and more indolent
than the finest lady who carries her salts to her
cushioned pew. He might have the same virtues
that he has now if he were a dissenting minis-
ter ; and nobody disputes that nowhere does vir-
tue more eminently fail of its earthly recompense
than in the church. Nowhere do luxury and in-
dolence more shamelessly absorb the gains of
hardship and of toil. The sum of the whole
matter is, that in the present state of the church,
the people pay largely for religious instruction,
which it is a chance whether they obtain. If the
same payment were made by the people direct, ā
without the intervention of the state, ā they would
106 THIRD AGE.
be sure to demand and receive an equivalent for
their sacrifices. If the people be supposed inca-
pable of thus providing for their own spiritual
wants, it behoves the state to see that those wants
are actually provided for, so that more than half
the nation may not be compelled, through failure
of duty in the establishment, to support a double
ministry. No power in earth or heaven can ab-
solve the state from the obligation, either to leave
to its members the management of their own
funds for religious worship and instruction, or to
furnish to every individual the means of learning
the Gospel and worshipping his Maker. The
first is a plan which has been elsewhere found to
answer full as well as any we have yet tried. The
last can never be attained by merely opening a
sufficiency of churches, and leaving to men's
cupidity the chance whether the pulpit shall be
occupied by an ape or an apostle.