Excerpt from National Education: Remarks on the Speech and Plan of Lord John Russell

The change proposed, therefore, must be regarded as a radical and vital change, - a change of principle, affecting the character of our English institutions. I can look upon it in no other View than as taking the great and sacred work of education out of the hands of the people, and com mitting it to the Government and Parliament. It is true, the schools to be built and maintained by rates are proposed to be placed under the management of local committees appointed by the rate-payers. But the intended appointment of a Minister of Education for the House of Commons, the agency of the Committee of Council on Education, that of the inspectors and sub-inspectors in their employment, the large expenditure of public money, and the determination which lord john russell's measure (if carried) would evince to enforce education by penalties, all prove that henceforth the superintendence of the education of the whole people would become one of the ordinary and, acknowledged duties of the Government.

IT behoves the people, then, well to consider, whether they are disposed to entrust the work of training the young to the Government, whether any necessity for so great a change has been shown, - whether the vast educational agencies which have done so much within the last half century have come to a stand, - whether freedom is so bad a system, and parental responsibility and religious zeal are such inadequate motives, as to compel us to surrender our dearest interests to official management, whether Government has evinced such wisdom, care, vigilance, and energy in the discharge of its other duties as to prove that it will be the best of educators, - whether especially a work involving the duties and interests of religion may be fitly handed over to Ministers of State and the Bench of Quarter Sessions, - whether the principles of legal compulsion and governmental provision and control, once adopted, may not be extended to other matters of the utmost importance and delicacy, such as religion, the press, industry, and family arrangements, - whether changes like these, from voluntary to official management, are conducive to the independent Spirit, the self-relying energies, and the moral welfare of the nation, - and whether the working classes of England are so destitute of natural affection and common sense that they neither are now, nor can ever be expected to be, fit judges of the proper duration of their children's education.

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