28 SEPTEMBER 1872, Page 16

POSSIBLE EVILS OF THE SCOTCH EDUCATION ACT.

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.")

yon allow me, as one who took part in the agitation against the Scotch Education Act, to explain briefly the Radical

ground of my opposition, and so to indicate the great danger looming ahead in the working-out of that measure ? It was per- sistently asserted at the time, in newspapers attached to the ruling political party, that that opposition proceeded from two sources, viz., the bigotry of a narrow section of the Free and the conserva- tism of the Established Churches. Judging from the result, such must have been the impression of those also whose conduct directly determined the character of the Bill. For, in the face of large petitions from the body of the people throughout Scotland, it was. passed subsequently as it was introduced, and the old Parochial system was superseded by the novel English scheme of Local Boards- subordinate to the Central Board or Privy Council Department. Undoubtedly the fidelity of the Scotch Members of Mr. Gladstone's- Government is too strong to be shaken by anything short of a revolutionary crisis, and the fiat of the Lord-Advocate easily prevailed over every other consideration. They readily repeated the imputations of interested motive thrown out against the agitators against the Bill, while the conjunction of Dr. Begg and' the anti-Union party in the Free Church with the leaders of the Establishment rendered those imputations credible to all who did' not look under the surface of the opposition.

Sir, on my own behalf, and on behalf of many of my brethren- who joined that movement, which was, in fact, the only practi- cable way of manifesting our dislike to the Bill, I desire to say that we did so on thoroughly broad and democratic grounds. As an offset to the advantages of a compulsory clause (the desirable- ness of which nobody denied), the following serious dangere seemed to threaten us :— 1. The loss of £100,000 paid in salaries to the schoolmasters,. a burden hitherto most justly and cheerfully borne by the land.

2. The introduction of the Revised Code in its most offensive features into every parish school.

3. (As a necessary consequence of those two positions) a distinct line of demarcation between the children of the poor and of the rich—a distinction not yet known in Scotland—and the ultimate degradation- of the most intelligent and independent working-class- in the world.

4. The reduction of the standard of attainments in our Universi- ties and learned professions, two-thirds of whose members are- from the ranks, and go straight to the university from the parish. schools.

Our fears are about to be verified. Mr. Lowe, in his speech at Anstruther, defended the main principle of the Revised Code in- terms which, when duly weighed, may well alarm every true demo- crat in Scotland. He maintained precisely what I have urged, against the Education Bill on several platforms in this district,— that the poor shall receive the necessities of intellectual life, the bread and water, the workhouse fare, the three R's, leav- ing to those who can pay for it the luxury of the higher- culture. It is an old story to Educational reformers, this. They know, witness Sir John Lubbock's attempt to improve the Code, that it too well embodies the plutocratic Liberalism of the present Whig platform. Under the mechanical habit of enter- ing the Government Lobby, the Scotch Liberals have tamely wit- nessed and aided the invasion by this idea of a country whose edu- cational history roots itself in the very opposite principle, whose- educational system was based by democratic Presbyterianism on an equal right of all to the benefits of knowledge. The new Education Act is thus conceived in a spirit and embodies a prin- ciple as thoroughly aristocratic as any law of feudalism.

Meanwhile, the evil has been done. To suppose that the Edinburgh Board will essentially alter the Revised Code, and adapt it to Scotch requirements, is a vain dream, for the old and the new systems are incapable of amalgamation. The salaries or the teachers, and the maintenance of their schools and school- houses, have been generously returned to the landowners, and con- stitute a capital bribe to the House of Lords. In a few months, Local Boards will be working out the demoralising regulations or the Privy Council, and employers of labour will gladly hail the restriction of their ambitious workmen to the beggarly elements: Pauper schools will rise out of the ruins of the good old parish schools, and respectable members of the middle-class will shrink from sending their children to mix with gutter Arabs, caught up by the policeman and run in. The religious difficulty—a difficulty absolutely non-existent in Scotland until created by Whig parti- sans under the pretence of destroying it—will be a fertile source of sectarian division in every little community. Latin and Greek will be abolished to Mr. Lowe's heart's content. And in due time, in a few generations, the children of the wealthy will be nob only materially, but intellectually the born superiors of their poorer brothers and sisters. All this may not happen in feet, but in reason it is the conclusion of which the new Act and the Revised Code are the premisses. It may please the commercial Whigs and political economists of the II'Culloch school, but it will satisfy no one who desires social as well as political equality.— I am, Sir, &c.,