Mr. Disraeli made a characteristic speech on Tuesday, at the
sixty-first anniversary of the foundation of the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor, in which he said that he deplored the resolve of the State to retire from all concern in the religious education of the people, which it would no longer either supply or regulate, more on account of the State itself than for any other reason, because to his mind this policy tended to the weakening of the State, and to the degradation of the science of government into the mere practice of police. He hoped, however, that the Church would step into the gap caused by the abdication of the State, and make an effort to promote the union of religious with secular education, not only among the poor, but amongst the middle and higher classes, for to all alike without religious knowledge "history is a maze and science a bewilderment." No doubt great means would be required, but "means were merely relative." The speaker had often seen how much easier it was to obtain aid for a great object than for a small. Mr. Disraeli thought all parties in the Church might work together for the end of such a society as this. And so they may, if the Society itself does not take a party tone. One of its recent circulars was conceived in so sectarian a spirit as to have alarmed (not unnaturally) many of its warmest friends.
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