ch. 12, it is declared that "this realm is under one sovereign king, to whom the whole body politic, distinguished into two members, the spirituality and the temporality, ought, next under God, to yield a natural and humble obedience." *

Such, then, being the lawful, and, we might add, the natural and necessary distinction between powers ecclesiastical and temporal, or as we now, though somewhat faultily, speak, Church and State, there can be no difficulty in determining the proper functions of each power in the matter of education; and Mr. Boone would seem to have determined the question in his own mind, for he says (p. 67)" Our first wish is, that the ecclesiastical establishment and the educational establishment should be really one;" a wish which he could hardly for a moment entertain if he did not consider it as the peculiar province of the spiritual power to manage education.

Having made these preliminary observations, we may proceed to state, that we have been much gratified as well as instructed by a perusal of the work before us. The style is remarkably forcible and vigorous, and carries the reader over the ground with ease and rapidity: moreover, if the movement is agreeable, this is not merely because the mechanism is good, and the structure of the sentences flowing and natural, but partly, if not principally, from a spirit and energy which is the consequence of our author's thorough acquaintance with his subject, and from a happy ability of putting what he has to say in prominent positions and striking lights. Mr. Boone professes to treat of school education, which he defines well to be "whatever goes to form the national and individual character a mental, moral, and in some degree physical training." However, because the mass of the community will of necessity be under the hand of the schoolmaster for a comparatively speaking very short period, he confines his remarks to what concerns that season only.

After having observed upon the inefficiency of statistical reports when taken as grounds for argument, partly as his reason for not dealing much in them himself, and partly by way of exposing the unsound deductions which have been made in certain quarters from such pretended facts, (a part of the treatise written with much point and ability,) Mr. Boone proceeds to take a survey of the general state of education, placing himself upon great and evident facts, such, namely, as that education is not what it ought to be or might be, particularly in regard to the middle classes, an observation which has very recently been fully brought before the notice of the public; and he justly observes, that it is a "strange anomaly" that persons who, according to our constitution, are entrusted with so large a share of "political power, should be so much overlooked." He pays a proper tribute to those whose exertions have remedied, or rather begun to remedy, these defects; and shows that, however much education may fall short of what it should be, still the mischief is now as nothing when compared with what was the case some years ago.

This may be called the preliminary matter. The account of the body of his treatise we prefer giving in his own words.

* Quoted from Nicholl's Defence, Part ii.

The great agents which we propose to take under review are, 1. The state; 2. The church; 3. Societies; and, 4. Private individuals. Our business is to discover, if we can, the true province of each; and the cardinal truth which we aim at demonstrating is, that the largest amount of benefit will be received, not by excluding any one of these agents, or by selecting any one of them as the sole fountain of good, but by blending them all in the right proportion and degree.-P. 34.

The province of the State is then discussed, and the reasonings of those who maintain that it is the duty of the State to take the whole management of the education of the country into its hands, are examined and answered with great acuteness and success.

The argument from "necessity" is quickly disposed of, Mr. Boone having shown in the former part of his treatise that other agencies besides the State are fully competent to the task, and therefore that there can be no necessity for the state to engross it.

He next comes to the argument from the success of State education on the continent and elsewhere, which he defeats by showing the absurdity of endeavouring to adopt tyrannical (we do not use the word offensively) institutions in a free country; but it may be well to give the author's sentiments in his own words, especially as they present a fair specimen of his peculiarly happy manner of illustration and of argument, which, without being angry or provocative, is remarkably keen and caustic.

We do not say whether the English are right or wrong in cherishing this disposition, [a disposition, that is, to self-government,] but we believe that it exists, by whatever disadvantages it may be accompanied. Nay, we very much doubt whether the staunchest patrons of State Education would consent to accept from the Government any system of education but the one which they should themselves suggest to it. They are quite willing that the State should adopt their scheme, and enforce it upon the country at large; but if the State sought to enforce and universalize a different scheme, can we believe that it would meet at their hands with approval, or even with acquiescence? For instance, if the Government proposed to levy an annual tax of two millions of money for the instruction of the whole people according to the principles of the Church of England, how would they receive that proposition? And yet it would be at least as reasonable as that the Educational establishment should rest upon a principle contrary to the principle of the Ecclesiastical establishment-so contrary that the two could not co-exist ten years in their efficiency and integrity. What these philosophers want is, that the State Education should give the tone to the country, but that they should give the tone to the State Education. They would be the State; at least they would circulate the coin from their own mint with the State's image and superscription. The ministers are but to be the puppets, while the wires are really to be moved by, perhaps, the veriest crotchet-mongers of the day.

But the reasons are as obvious as they are many, why Prussia is no exact model for England to copy; why each country must legislate with reference to itself; and why a kingdom, where the executive is strong in proportion as the deliberative elements of the constitution are few and faint, can be hardly a guide for another kingdom, where the executive is comparatively slow and feeble, because the entire people is enabled and accustomed, either actually or virtually, to express its opinions with a most uncontinental freedom and latitude, and may almost be said to constitute a great deliberative assembly.

The system adopted in North America makes, perhaps, a somewhat nearer approximation to that which is suitable for this country. It does more to combine the authority of the Government with the free energy of private citizen

ship. To a number of gentlemen, as trustees, is committed a power of supplying schools, and all things necessary to their maintenance; and, in some of the States, of assessing a rate upon the inhabitants of the town and district, or even resorting to a certain kind of compulsion. Throughout the Union, the duty of making an ample provision for the tuition of the whole people is fully recognised. It is calculated by our Transatlantic brethren that the cheapest of all outlays is the money spent in sound religious and general instruction; that the amount of national crime and national pauperism is thus sensibly diminished; that what is spent upon education is saved in what must otherwise be spent upon police; and that if there be a sufficient number of state schools, there will soon be little need of state prisons. But the Americans, we must bear in mind, have this immense advantage, that in a thinly peopled territory, and amidst institutions but of yesterday, they have only one process instead of two; they have only to construct, without the preliminary embarrassment of having to consider what they must undo, and what they must leave. It is a less arduous task to build Washington than to improve London.-Pp. 38-40.

The other arguments, as the supposed advances which the national mind must immediately make if the civil power undertakes the education of it, or those advantages which some persons imagine will be derived from uniformity in the methods of instruction; or again, the security for a good and a permanent education which it is thought that the interference of the State might bestow, or the equally chimerical notion that it will tend to heal religious differences, these are all fully discussed and answered. On the last point Mr. Boone remarks,—

But others will allege that no such plan as we have been combating, was ever in their contemplation. Their plan, they would tell us, is that those points of Christianity, which are common to all denominations, should be taught in common, and those other points alone, on which different opinions are held by different sects, should be reserved for separate instruction. But there are two grave objections. Such a plan, it is evident, must expel the distinctive tenets of particular communions from its regular course of education. It therefore offers a premium to those who believe least. They whose religion has in it the largest share of omissions and negations, are the most favoured; for they find all that they require, and nothing more: whereas the members of the Establishment, whose creed is, from the nature of things, most positive and most extensive, see the door shut upon its special characteristics by order of the State. Again, the patrons of this plan can never carry out for that is the everlasting phrase-their own principle to its full extent. They cannot, we repeat, include all children, without excluding all religion. For, alas! if all children are to be admitted, there can remain to them nothing, or almost nothing, of religion in common. The question, therefore, occurs after all, Where are we to stop? where is the line to be drawn between the admission and exclusion of children whose creeds are different? And then the more that are included, the more reason, perhaps, have they who are shut out-the Jew, for instance, the Unitarian, the Rationalist, the Deist, the Pantheist, to complain of the injustice which they suffer, and the stigma which is cast upon them.-P. 61.

We think no apology needful for concluding this part of the subject in the author's own impressive language.

The design, then, of an Educational Establishment, founded on a system which would concentrate all power in the Government, and which must be directly and perpetually at war with the Established Church, is one, in which, for the sake of stable and settled religion, for the sake of sound and comprehensive instruction, for the sake of the general progression of the national intelligence and the general elasticity of the national mind, reason and conscience will not suffer us to acquiesce. Nor, we confess, is our dislike of the

design at all diminished, when we think of the persons from whom it emanates. For-to put other considerations quite aside-its inventors and patrons involve themselves at every step in a monstrous mesh of astounding inconsistencies. They are in general the noisiest advocates of liberty; and yet they would introduce coercion of a very stringent and extraordinary kind; and impose fetters, in comparison with which all shackles upon the body are really insignificant. They are in general the staunchest friends of the Voluntary principle; and yet here they insist upon a scheme, which treads upon the neck of Voluntaryism, and drags it in the dirt. Their hatred is intense against the notion that the State should bind upon the country particular canons and articles of religion; and yet they would have the State bind upon the country their particular canons and articles of education: although it is manifest that a positive revelation, which comes down in a complete and perfect form from the Divine wisdom, and which a single volume can contain, is far more capable of being framed and fixed in a series of defined propositions, than a multifarious, fluctuating, unsettled, progressive science, which man must work out for himself; such as education is, and must for generations continue to be. They complain, with acrimonious bitterness, of tithes and church-rates; although these can scarcely be called a burden upon the present holders of property: but, without the shadow of a scruple, they would lay an education-rate, taxing churchmen for schools, which, out of their own funds, they must build other schools to oppose. In short, they would allow the people to be free almost to license, save where they intend themselves to be dictators: and they look with a stern moroseness upon every project, which will make all pay, as they allege, for the direct benefit of only a part, save where they see a prospect of carrying on their own operations with the public money. Penurious and democratical in all besides, for their own purposes they would be the most despotic tyrants and the most extravagant spendthrifts.—Pp. 65, 66.

It needs no comment to point out the spirit and force of these eloquent remarks, the truth of which will be, perhaps, more generally felt and acknowledged every day.

Our author having shown that the State is not to engross the entire management of schools, and to become the Instructor-General to the nation, proceeds to lay down what those points are in which, according to his opinion, the State may profitably interfere, namely

1. By giving periodically a general, systematic, and considered digest of the statistics of the question-collecting, in short, condensing, and circulating information.

2. By making parliamentary grants.

3. By "evincing interest" in the whole proceeding-patronising, that is; and by "legislating in cases where, without some new law, the obstructions to improvement are insuperable."

We venture to suggest, that this power is hardly legitimate; and we are almost disposed to question the policy of it; as it would be easy for the civil power to interpose, where and when it pleased, simply by declaring its interference necessary.

Mr. Boone proceeds next to the discussion of a most important branch of his subject-namely, the province of the Church in the matter of education. It is well known to our readers that the canons require every schoolmaster to have the bishop's licence, without which he may not exercise the calling of a teacher; and the requisition is both reasonable and religious. For as a schoolmaster has the formation of the scholar's mind, it is necessary that they who are entrusted with the

moral training of the community should have a veto at least upon his appointment. Assuredly it is the bishop's office to see to the adequate Christian instruction of all who are baptized, if not of all who are born in his diocese. But how is he to do this, unless he is enabled to provide Christian teachers, by ordaining an efficient and pious priesthood; and to prevent the teaching thus given from being undermined, by denying to infidels or irreligious persons the power of contaminating the flock, and of mixing tares with the good seed at its sowing?

This right and reasonable and religious view of the case is put forward, though not pressed, by Mr. Boone, in the following words :

Even the legal question might be raised. Some among the most eminent of our jurists have been inclined to stretch to a very great length the authority of the Church. It was a dictum of Lord Eldon, we believe, that "all schools were of ecclesiastical cognizance," and that "no one could by law teach school without licence from the bishop." We can only refer the reader to the sixth volume of the Term Reports, page 490; and also to the case of Jones v. Gegg, in the seventh volume of the Modern Reports. The subject has been argued, partly with reference to the ancient foundation grammar schools, and partly with reference to schools in general: and more, perhaps, might be made of it, "than is dreamt of" in modern philosophy. In the first case specified, namely, of "The King v. the Archbishop of York," it was contended that the power of licensing a schoolmaster, or withholding a licence, then claimed by the archbishop, "rested on the ancient ecclesiastical law, on the recognition of it by the statute law, and on the authority of the two cases of Cox and Rushworth." The remarks made at the time by Lord Kenyon, may serve as evidence, that some jurisdiction ought to exist and be exercised; though to what extent, and whether by the Church or the State, different minds will differently determine. "Whoever," said his Lordship, more than forty years ago, "will examine the state of the grammar schools in different parts of this kingdom, will see to what a lamentable condition most of them are reduced, and would wish that those who have any authority or control over them, had been as circumspect as the archbishop of York has been on the present occasion. If other persons had equally done their duty, we should not find, as is now the case, empty walls without scholars, and every thing neglected but the receipt of the salaries and emoluments. In some instances which have lately come within my own knowledge, there was not a single scholar in the schools, though there were very large endowments to them." Evidently it was Lord Kenyon's opinion that the heads of the Church had authority and control at least over the grammar schools; and that it was both their business and their duty to exert that authority by superintending the schools, and conforming them, as far as possible, to the wants of the day.-Pp. 74, 75.

We shall close our notice with an extract which will clearly and concisely convey our author's opinion of what is practicable at the present moment. Having quoted some passages from Sir Robert Peel and Dr. Chalmers, in which the former asserts that the State should provide any additional "funds that might be necessary for educational purposes, and strenuously urges that the Church should not be debarred from providing education at least for her own members," our author proceeds

Of the three plans, then, which are now for practical consideration, namely, an educational establishment running parallel with the Church establishment; an educational establishment counterworking the Church establishment; or the plan of the State affording assistance to all parties and denominations, in a certain determinate proportion,-the Church, since she cannot have the first,