known that it was then that Joseph Lancaster, a young
Quaker, started his first school in Southwark, which was so successful that he established a number of other schools, and was assisted by a Committee formed in 1804, which subse- quently developed into the British and Foreign School Society. Lancaster's schools gave Biblical instruction without any sectarian bias. Nevertheless, he was fiercely attacked as "a Goliath of schismatics"; and on March 30th, 1809, Dr. Bell, the founder of the "National School" system, wrote to the chaplain of the Archbishop of Canterbury:-
" It cannot be dissembled that thousands in various parts of the Kingdom are drawn from the Church by the superior atten- tion paid to education out of the Church. The tide is setting ' fast in one direction, and, if not speedily stemmed, it may run faster and faster."
The result of clerical alarm was the foundation of the " National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church." Surely for the sake of the Church and religion you will correct the error made. Your whole article is extremely one-sided.—I am, [We must adhere to our statement of well-known historical facts. Dr. Bell became superintendent of the Madras Male Orphan Asylum in 1789, and started his monitorial method in that school. On his return to England, he introduced in 1798 his method into the Protestant Charity School of St. Botolph's, Aldgate, and in 1799 into some industrial schools at Kendal. On the other hand, Mr. Lancaster's first regular school—" a sort of shed, erected to hold but 100 lads "—was started in 1801, though it is quite true that Mr.
Crossley has stated that Mr. Lancaster, at the age of twenty, in 1798 began to hold a school in his father's workshop in Kent Street, Borough. The controversy as to the person who started the monitorial method is, however, a trivial one. The method was in use in English Church schools as early as the reigns of Elizabeth and James L The really vital fact is that Dr. Bell's voluntary-school movement was taken up at once
by the Church with immense earnestness. The number of children in Church schools of this type increased from forty thousand in 1813 to about a million in 1834. The glow- ing tributes paid by Mr. Brougham (a Whig) are the best evidence of the self-sacrifice of the clergy in the cause of education.—THE WRITER OF THE ARTICLE.]
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