Mr. Talbot has replied to the Home Secretary and the
Spectator at the same time, but we cannot see that he makes out much of a case. He says that he never said that the children of the poor when possessing great capabilities ought not to have the means of raising themselves to the higher walks of life, but only said that education beyond reading, writing, and cyphering unfitted working- men for the hard realities of life, and often became a curse instead of a blessing. What is the difference between the two statements ? Mr. Bruce would, as we imagine, give every poor child the highest education he was capable of receiving, and Mr. Talbot would not. The Lord-Lieutenant of Glamorganshire must moreover permit us to remind him that he prefaced his remarks on education by saying " education fills no man's belly." At least, if he did not, the Times forged the words, for we cut the sentence out of its report. Reporting is gone to the bad, we acknowledge, but its badness is not in the direction of inventing quotations from Cobbett.
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