About the country, politics have given place to peaceful dis-
cussion on practical aesthetics. At Manchester, John Bright and Henry Cole have been amicably discussing the arrangements for the exposition of industry in 1851; at Leeds and Sheffield, Roe- buck has been in friendly discussion with Mahon and Carlisle, on the objects, pleasures, and advantages of self-instruction by study in Mechanics' Institutions.
. It is delightful to witness these sportive dialectics, these con- vivial essays in moral philosophy ; only a little curious to see the diversity of sentiment. Mr. John Bright does not much value the exposition of industry as such, but only as a means of bring- ing foreigners together, by way of auxiliary to the Peace move- ment ; and he is particularly jealous about the composition of the Committee : while Mr. Cole opines that " the Prince " has done well not to enter upon the details of his plan at present ; in which we quite agree. Lord Mahon holds that the student should fix his attention on some particular branch of study, and make himself master of that,—as if every reader should qualify himself to be a writer ! Lord Mahon seems
to think that Mechanics' Institutes should be peopled by Mahone. Mr. Roebuck, on the other hand, concludes that men should skim the whole round of knowledge, to get at it for its own sake ; knowledge being "the salt of life." This is not far from the truth : men in general should study the art of reading—that is, acquire knowledge enough to understand the relations of things, and to have a cultivated faculty of judgment. Lord Carlisle thinks, as Chief Commissioner of the Board of Health, that good. drainage conduces to clear and calm intelligence in the student ; and as Minister, that cultivated intelligence conduces to social order. Per contra, Mr. Roebuck proclaims the discovery of " a new element "—" the people," and warns the amiable Cabinet Minister that the people are obtaining political knowledge and will govern themselves. This delusion is as ancient as Mr. Roe- buck's new element—we no sooner hear of a " people" than we- hear of a "republic" self-governing: now self-government is good and true in the moral sense ; in the political sense it is all but a contradiction in terms. However appointed by general suffrage and supported by popular sanction, government is a function of concentrated authority. However appointed, the government governs: the people retain the faculty of judging; and if they make any way in the encyclopmdiacal curriculum suggested by Mr. Roebuck, they will judge all the better.
But there is a further fallacy at the bottom of all these learned. institutions for " the million "—the notion that the mass of the people can be made what is called intellectual. That is neither pos- sible nor desirable: the bulk of the people are not only not culti- vated in intellect, but they are not endowed with those peculiar qua- lities which make men studious and reflective; the greater number will always acquire their opinions and convictions at second-hand, through the labours of the higher intellects ; whose proper func- tion it is to execute that branch of divided employments for the public at large. The bulk of the people has always been best governed by those who united intellectual powers with practical wisdom in council and the art of appealing to the affections and trust of the multitudes who are not intellectual. That is not an imperfect but a typical condition of human society : and very fine it may be made, with large-hearted, unpedantic wisdom in the leaders. From these considerations, we are consoled for the fact that the Mechanics' Institutions and Athenaeums do not ex- tend themselves to embrace the whole population. They may do their work without that impossible and not desirable extension : we must try to make them perfect rather than universal ; " the million " wants other training-schools. Meanwhile, these fes- tive polemics promote good fellowship among the several circles of the intellectual classes, and tend to perfect the very useful institutions which they grace.
