Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN
 
 WHAT STOPS THE WAY? 
 
 OK, 
 
 OUE TWO GEE AT DIFFICULTIES: 
 
 WITH SOME 
 
 HINTS CONCERNING THE WAY. 
 
 BY WILLIAM ELLIS. 
 
 SMITH, ELDER AND CO., LONDON. 
 
 M.DCCC.LXVIH.
 
 TO STATESMEN, LEGISLATORS, AND 
 PHILANTHROPISTS. 
 
 IN venturing to submit the following pages for your 
 consideration, I am particularly anxious to obtain 
 the attention of those among you who concur in the 
 opinion that "posterity" has some claims upon us, 
 or that we have some duties to perform to " posterity " 
 besides those generally thought of. 
 
 It has been contended, with great force, that we 
 are not justified in imposing upon our children and 
 children's children the burthen of a Debt principally 
 contracted by our fathers and grandfathers, and that 
 the least we can do is to make arrangements for 
 progressively diminishing the amount, while rigidly 
 abstaining from making additions to it. In the 
 
 1CS9359
 
 same spirit it has been insisted that we are bound, 
 in our consumption of Coal, to have some regard to 
 the limited quantity, as far as can be ascertained, 
 at man's disposal, and to the probability of his 
 continued dependence upon that limited quantity 
 for an unlimited time. 
 
 When we are admonished to practise self-denial 
 so as not to hand down to our descendants the 
 burthens which we inherited from our ancestors, and 
 not to exhaust a patrimony of fuel, moderation in 
 the use of which will be attended with but little 
 inconvenience, while the want of it would be the 
 cause of severe suffering, it is implied that we are 
 bound to have a care for whatever is likely to affect 
 " future well-being." 
 
 But if we are bound to care for the well-being 
 of those who are to come after us, while using the 
 coal accessible to us, and in dealing with encum- 
 brances charged upon the estate which we have 
 inherited, we are also bound to attend to their well- 
 being in whatever we may be contemplating, whether 
 to do or not to do. And it may be added, that in 
 proportion as our present conduct is likely to affect
 
 future well-being, so does it behove us to be strict in 
 our watch upon that conduct. 
 
 I cannot, I think, be wrong in assuming that all 
 persons who are impressed with a sense of the duty 
 which we owe to our remote posterity, not to leave 
 them without an adequate supply of coal, must be 
 equally, if not more, impressed with a sense of the 
 duty which we owe to our posterity, near as well as 
 remote, not to leave them without an adequate supply 
 of food, clothing, and shelter. 
 
 To secure a provision of coal, while neglecting to 
 secure a provision of those other essentials of well- 
 being, would be a scant performance of the duty 
 owed to posterity. And to me, there is known but 
 one method of performing this duty satisfactorily, 
 and that is, by being at the pains to gift posterity 
 with intelligence, industry, skill, economy, and 
 trustworthiness. With these qualities, there will 
 be no lack of the other essentials of well-being. The 
 gift of coals to a posterity without these qualities, if 
 it were possible, would be of small avail. But it 
 would be impossible, inasmuch as coal, in common 
 with the other necessaries and comforts of life, is
 
 procurable only through the agency of industry a'nd 
 intelligence in combination. 
 
 How far the universal, or nearly universal, preva- 
 lence of these qualities can be brought about, it 
 would be premature to affirm in the present state of 
 our own intelligence ; but whatever other means may 
 be resorted to for the purpose, foremost among them 
 must be Education, or a general teaching and training 
 of the young. I confess that I am one of the hopeful 
 one of those who believe that, when we are once 
 thoroughly roused to a sense of our duty in this 
 respect, there is no reason why education, in the 
 proper sense of the term, should not be provided for 
 all children. 
 
 There are people in abundance, I am well aware, 
 who deny that education can ever be provided for the 
 whole of our children. But the impossibility of 
 doing many things which have since been accom- 
 plished, has so often been affirmed, that I must avow 
 my unwillingness to relinquish the hope of seeing 
 education almost universal, even in our own times, 
 merely because it is pronounced to be impossible. 
 There is less ground for despairing of universal
 
 education than there was, three years ago, for despair- 
 ing of the connection of Europe with America by an 
 Atlantic Cable. For the attempt to accomplish the 
 latter work had been made and had failed. Whereas 
 the attempt to accomplish the former has yet to be 
 made. It will be time enough to despair, when the 
 whole of that superabundant wealth, now appropriated 
 by a few to frivolous display, shall have been diverted 
 to education and found to be insufficient for the 
 purpose.
 
 
 PART I.
 
 WHAT STOPS THE WAY? 
 
 OR, 
 
 OUR TWO GEE AT DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 AMONG thoughtful men it is now generally agreed 
 that Education ought, if possible, to be provided for 
 every child without exception : understanding by 
 education " a course of teaching directed to impart 
 the knowledge requisite for good self-guidance, 
 combined with a course of training directed to form 
 habits and dispositions which will lead to conduct 
 in harmony with the knowledge acquired." 
 
 There is very little doubt felt at the present day 
 that a much more comfortable state of existence is 
 enjoyed by this generation than was enjoyed, or 
 
 12
 
 4 WHAT STOPS THE WAY? OE, 
 
 was apparently attainable, by the generations which 
 have gone before. It is seen, also, that this more 
 nomfortable state was prepared by the progressively 
 increasing attainments of successive generations, and 
 by the application of these attainments to improve 
 their own condition and that of their posterity. 
 Quite as little doubt is felt that, to maintain an 
 equally comfortable state of existence, the attain- 
 ments of the past, with dispositions to use them 
 as efficiently, must also be maintained. To improve 
 upon this state, and especially to bring participation 
 in the comforts enjoyed by a few more within the 
 reach of the large masses which have hitherto been 
 shut out from it, efforts must be made, not only to 
 increase attainments, but to impart them universally. 
 Hitherto, what ought to be done in these respects 
 has been left undone, or done very imperfectly. 
 Some of the consequences of this neglect of duty 
 are to be seen in the numbers of the destitute who, 
 besides suffering themselves, are causes of pain and 
 misery to others. And of all the questions now 
 agitating society, there is none upon which the 
 attention of advanced thinkers is more earnestly
 
 OUR TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 5 
 
 fixed than, How a diminution of the numbers of 
 destitute in the future may be brought about. 
 
 Suggestions, projects, and efforts, the main pur- 
 pose of which is to diminish as well as to relieve 
 destitution, have been the theme of much discus- 
 sion ; and many which have been warmly advocated 
 by some, have been vehemently condemned by others. 
 But however various the judgments in other respects, 
 in one there is a near approach to unanimity. 
 Whatever else may be omitted, education for the 
 young is not to be dispensed with. No efforts to 
 relieve those who will suffer from neglect of education 
 can compensate for it. 
 
 The occurrences of recent times afford some 
 striking examples in confirmation of the truth of 
 this statement. 
 
 The appearance of Cholera among us, and the 
 desire to mitigate its virulence and prevent its 
 extension, have called forth great efforts to supply 
 the more urgent wants of the afflicted, and to provide 
 means for better ventilation and cleanliness. While 
 medical men are all of one mind that our principal 
 security against cholera and other epidemics is
 
 6 WHAT STOPS THE WAY ? OR, 
 
 abundance (continuous, not intermittent or spas- 
 modic,) of wholesome food and clothing, and airy 
 dwellings, with cleanliness and sobriety ; the visita- 
 tions of the missionaries, who devote their lives to 
 the solace of their suffering fellow-creatures, disclose 
 to us scenes of squalid poverty, filth, and dissipation, 
 with six or more families crammed into a single 
 tenement scarcely capable of affording decent accom- 
 modation for one. Both missionaries and medical 
 men are driven to confess that, with all their 
 exertions, they can do little more than mitigate 
 the intensity of suffering and check the spread of 
 disease. As to prevention for the future, by raising 
 up a population with greater means at their com- 
 mand, and better habits and intelligence to turn 
 their means to account this will be looked for in 
 vain, unless education can be made to do much 
 more than it has done, or is doing. 
 
 The agitation occasioned by the demand for some 
 amendment in our system of Representation, may be 
 accepted as another symptom of the feelings of 
 dissatisfaction and uneasiness which pervade society. 
 Whether with or without reason, the Government is
 
 OUR TWO GEE AT DIFFICULTIES. 7 
 
 held to be more or less in fault when, one after 
 another, crowded and filthy districts, the eviction 
 of helpless tenants, the ill-provided casual and sick 
 wards of poor-houses, low wages, and want of employ- 
 ment, are made the theme of complaint. Our House 
 of Commons, it is said, really determines who is to 
 govern the country; and then it is asked, Whence 
 come the members of parliament, the majority of 
 whom direct and control the administration which 
 leads to, or fails to prevent, such deplorable results ? 
 The complainants who ask this question demand an 
 extension and altered distribution of the constitu- 
 encies which return members of parliament. Accord- 
 ing to them, no surprise can be felt at the miserable 
 shortcomings of legislators who gain their admission 
 to parliament through the disreputable practices, less 
 than the hundredth part of which can alone have 
 been exposed to view : the practices exposed, to 
 adopt a happy expression, being but " the sample of 
 a very considerable sack." " You wish to extend the 
 constituencies," retort they who shudder at the 
 thought of conceding what is demanded, "but you 
 omit to show how you would alter them for the
 
 8 WHAT STOPS THE WAY ? OR, 
 
 better. The present electors are not more shame- 
 less than the classes from which you propose to 
 draw your recruits, who, we suspect besides, will 
 have little regard for the rights of property and 
 freedom of contract." The evils complained of, and 
 which cannot be denied, are evidently beyond the 
 reach of mere electoral manipulation. They are 
 unendurable. But whether they are to be got rid 
 of under the auspices of a parliament constituted as 
 at present, or of a reformed parliament, the con- 
 stituencies need the influence of something better 
 under the name of education ; and the new representa- 
 tives, if they are to be improvements upon their 
 predecessors, must come under similar influence. 
 
 Some reference may also be made to the indus- 
 trial derangements and disturbances which occur so 
 frequently and cause so much suffering. Banks, 
 financial associations, and commercial establishments, 
 supposed to be conducted by respectable and ex- 
 perienced men, suspend payment. Many of the 
 shareholders in them, protected by limited liability, 
 are utterly unable to fulfil the "limited" engage- 
 ments which they have entered into. Great con-
 
 OUR TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 tractors, who had made themselves dependent upon 
 such institutions for a supply of capital, are com- 
 pelled to close their works and to discharge their 
 labourers, and actually receive praise for their prompti- 
 tude in stopping payment. While some workmen 
 are thus suddenly discharged, others discharge 
 themselves because they cannot agree with their 
 employers. While some workmen seek better wages 
 and more congenial employment in other trades, in 
 other parts of the kingdom or in foreign countries, 
 others strive to drive away foreign workmen, or their 
 own countrymen attracted from a distance by the 
 hope of bettering their positions. Others, again, 
 refuse to work in conjunction with improved 
 machinery, and combine against the workmen who 
 are prepared to take to it. The sufferings of tenants 
 from dilapidated, ill-provided, and unwholesome 
 dwellings are notorious ; and it is equally notorious 
 that well-disposed landlords are often deterred from 
 making improvements and introducing conveniences, 
 by the ignorance and recklessness of those who 
 would have to use them. And nobody who travels 
 much can fail to observe what excuses are provided
 
 10 WHAT STOPS THE WAY? OR, 
 
 to railway managers for their backwardness in 
 adding to the comforts of the rail by the thought- 
 lessness, or worse, of the passengers who are to enjoy 
 them. Legislators may grant rights and guard them 
 by penalties ; but the benefit to be derived from 
 those rights must depend greatly upon the conduct 
 of those who are entitled to them, and of those who 
 ought to respect them. And to secure this conduct 
 the Legislator can do little if not assisted by the 
 Educator. 
 
 In this state of feeling, it may reasonably be 
 inquired, why the education admitted to be indis- 
 pensable is so inadequately provided. And, if we do 
 not mistake, there are two circumstances which will 
 nearly, if not entirely, account -for this omission 
 without imputing any intentional disregard of 
 duty : 
 
 1st. The imperfect and mistaken notions which 
 prevail concerning the education desirable for the 
 young, causing education to be partly, if not wholly, 
 withheld, while it is given in words or appearance : 
 the very schools and teachers helping to conceal 
 the void which would otherwise be unendurable.
 
 OUR TWO CHEAT DIFFICULTIES. 11 
 
 This class of obstacles to real education may be 
 designated as " verbal illusions." 
 
 2nd. The impediments placed in the way of 
 education, thus imperfectly conceived, by persons 
 under the influence of those peculiar views of religion 
 which give rise to so-called "religious difficulties." 
 Using the word " religion " in this peculiar sense, 
 these may be called " religious illusions." 
 
 Any attempt to estimate the influence of these two 
 illusions, whether in producing misery or preventing 
 improvement, had better be deferred till their real 
 character has been examined a little in detail. 
 
 Verbal Illusions. 
 
 In relying upon education as a probable cause 
 of improvement, it is obvious that care must be 
 taken to distinguish between the well-educated and 
 the ill-educated, no less than between the educated 
 and the uneducated. Vast must be the difference 
 between an education conducted specially with a 
 purpose to make the young capable and desirous 
 of promoting the general well-being, and one seem- 
 ingly regardless of that purpose, but mainly directed
 
 12 WHAT STOPS THE WAY? OR, 
 
 to impart a limited number of qualifications, acci- 
 dentally, as it were, and remotely connected with 
 such a purpose. 
 
 To look for similar consequences from two pro- 
 cesses so very different, though called by the same 
 name, would be as irrational as to expect similar 
 crops from farms, and similar rates of sailing and 
 steaming from vessels, irrespective of the different 
 processes at work under the names of agriculture 
 and navigation. 
 
 While it is confessed on all sides that a large 
 number of the young are all but excluded from 
 school education, it is suspected that the number 
 of the destitute is much larger than the insufficiency 
 'of education, as regards its quantity only, will 
 account for. A low state of vitality and its conse- 
 quences would be expected from an inadequate 
 supply of food and other necessaries and comforts ; 
 but if that state was lower than could be accounted 
 for by the deficiency of the supply, a cause or causes 
 would have to be sought for that portion of the 
 effect unaccounted for. And it might be found that 
 some of the objects which were relied upon as
 
 OUK TWO GEE AT DIFFICULTIES. 13 
 
 conducive to health were actually undermining the 
 constitutions of those who had struggled to get at 
 them. As water sparkling with the organic matter 
 which it holds in solution may be fatal to those 
 who slake their thirst in it ; as diseased meat may 
 poison those who venture to appease their hunger 
 with it ; as mere quantity of food, irrespective of 
 its quality, is no security against atrophy : so 
 that which is administered to the young under 
 the name of education may suppress or misdirect, 
 rather than develop and guide aright, their latent 
 powers. 
 
 School education, as conducted in these days, 
 and screened from the influences of home and of 
 society outside the school, is almost exclusively con- 
 fined to instruction, in certain technical matters, 
 such as reading (grammar included), writing, and 
 arithmetic, and discipline chiefly directed to secure 
 the order necessary to enable the instruction to be 
 conducted with tolerable efficiency. 
 
 Where reading, as in most schools, is not carried 
 beyond one language the native language little 
 care is taken to connect the words spoken and
 
 14 WHAT STOPS THE WAY? OR, 
 
 written with the objects, qualities of objects, phe- 
 nomena, conduct and causes of conduct, according 
 as the words used may refer to one or more 
 of such matters. When the young, conscious of 
 their ignorance of the meaning of the words which 
 they pronounce, ask for enlightenment, how often 
 are they not assisted to another word which, while 
 it professes to answer, merely reconciles them to, 
 and confirms them in ignorance, instead of helping 
 them out of it. Their ignorance is hidden from 
 them, and they are consequently unconscious of any 
 necessity for the efforts which they might otherwise 
 make for its removal. And where reading is ex- 
 tended to other languages, ancient or modern, as 
 little care is taken to do more than connect one 
 language with another, still omitting to bring the 
 language into close and intimate relation with the 
 matters spoken or written of, so as to make sure 
 that they shall be thoroughly understood. 
 
 Under such a system, except so far as it is 
 departed from in practice, or is counteracted by what 
 is going on outside the school, the memory is the 
 only faculty cultivated. Inquisitiveness and thought-
 
 OUR TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 15 
 
 fulness are left to slumber ; and the desire to search 
 for and understand the grounds on which praise 
 and blame ought to be awarded, or one line of con- 
 duct preferred to another, is scarcely felt because 
 seldom called forth. 
 
 One can easily account for this unsatisfactory 
 mode of dealing with language in our schools. After 
 printing had been invented and its multiplying 
 powers reinforced by successive contrivances, it was 
 manifest that the first step towards making any 
 sensible impression upon the prevailing ignorance 
 of the masses must be to teach them to read and 
 write. It was often overlooked that two methods of 
 teaching to read might be adopted, one leading to 
 much other knowledge, and the other leading to 
 contentment with little beyond familiarity with arti- 
 culate sounds and their visible symbols. 
 
 Instruction in reading and writing, even con- 
 ducted after the latter of these fashions, may open 
 access to knowledge closed to all who are strangers 
 to those arts. But is there any reason for expecting 
 effects from word-knowledge thus acquired similar 
 to those from word-knowledge acquired through the
 
 16 WHAT STOPS THE WAY? OE, 
 
 observation and study of the objects and phenomena 
 of daily life ? 
 
 A facility of declaiming or expatiating upon 
 subjects imperfectly understood must be a stumbling- 
 block in the way of acquiring the more perfect 
 knowledge in which the dechinier is wanting, and 
 of which his ignorance is hidden from him. And 
 a habit of reading without realising the import of 
 the words and propositions which the eye rests upon 
 and the lips pronounce, so far from helping on to 
 knowledge, needs to be overcome before much pro- 
 gress in knowledge can be made. 
 
 If the question were put Ought the young to 
 be prepared to become thoughtful men ? few whose 
 answers would be worth caring for could be expected 
 to say that they ought not. But, granting that 
 " thoughtfulness " ought to be striven for as a 
 general characteristic of our race, it would be unsafe 
 to assume that the best method of inducing it will 
 be adopted. The state of mind indicated in the 
 following sentence is not at all uncommon even 
 among earnest friends of education : " People must 
 be taught to read before they can be taught to think,
 
 OUK TWO GKEAT DIFFICULTIES. 17 
 
 and they must learn to think before they can discern 
 truth from error." 
 
 That a writer, deeply impressed with the import- 
 ance of the power conferred upon mankind by the 
 capacity to read, should have been seduced into an 
 admission that reading must take precedence of 
 thinking, is just conceivable. That he should not 
 withdraw it the moment the claim to this priority 
 was questioned, is beyond comprehension. The dis- 
 cussion, of course, is closed at once if by reading 
 be meant the capacity to connect, not merely visible 
 with audible signs, but both with the things of which 
 they ought to be signs. To teach reading, thus 
 understood, reading and thinking must go together ; 
 or if one is to take precedence of the other, that 
 one must be thinking. A teacher of the present 
 day, intent upon inducing thoughtfulness in his 
 scholars, could not fail to teach them to read in 
 order to enlarge the field wherein their capacity for 
 distinguishing truth from error may be exercised. 
 Thoughtfulness is to be exercised upon objects, their 
 qualities and relations numbers, forms, magnitudes, 
 weights, colours, sounds, tastes, smells, distances, 
 
 2
 
 18 WHAT STOPS THE WAY ? OK, 
 
 positions, transformations, structures, successions, 
 velocities, certainties, and probabilities. Reading 
 helps to bring before learners, at suitable times and 
 in the requisite abundance, these subjects whereon 
 to exercise their thoughtfulness. A teacher, there- 
 fore, who might omit to teach to think while teaching 
 to read, cannot omit to teach to read while teaching 
 to think. It may be open to question whether the 
 course generally pursued in studying, and reading, 
 and " coaching " for. degrees and honours, where 
 what are considered superior and more difficult 
 attainments are aimed at, is really that which leads 
 most certainly to thoughtfulness and practical ability. 
 The capacity to report and reproduce what we have 
 heard and read is not only useful, but actually indis- 
 pensable for many most important purposes. But 
 to reproduce the words, and propositions, and 
 opinions from a book, is not necessarily to master 
 the import of them ; to separate the grain from the 
 chaff, to distinguish between truth and error clear- 
 ness and confusion assimilating, and making part 
 of oneself, the good, the true, and the clear. Pos- 
 sibly, examinations might be so conducted as to
 
 . OUR TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 19 
 
 elicit what is thought as well as what is remembered 
 by those who have attended lectures and read 
 books. 
 
 The evil inflicted or the good left undone by 
 allowing word-teaching to occupy in schools the place 
 of real teaching, of which words form a very small 
 though an important part, is hidden from many by 
 the corrective administered in the world outside the 
 school. 
 
 Whatever may be the system under which his 
 school instruction has been conducted, if a boy leave 
 school with habits of application and obedience, a 
 desire to learn and to improve in skill and capacity, 
 the works of the field, the factory, the ship, the mine, 
 the laboratory, the shop, and the counting-house, 
 introduce him to quite a new line of study and 
 practice. He soon finds that, besides reading, he 
 must understand instructions, in order to follow 
 them. He must connect the words that meet his 
 eye or fall upon his ear with the objects signified, 
 or the particular work to be executed. In what 
 are called the learned professions, the correction 
 of an understanding contracted and enfeebled, rather 
 
 2?
 
 20 WHAT STOPS THE WAY? OK, 
 
 than expanded and strengthened by words their 
 slave rather than their master, is not so certain. 
 Hence the amount of medical, legal, and theological 
 jargon which too often vitiates the conclusions, and 
 weakens the efficiency of physicians, legislators, and 
 divines in their several callings. 
 
 But it would he a great mistake to assume that, 
 even in industrial life, the corrective of the mischief 
 sustained through mere word-teaching in school is 
 co-extensive with that mischief. The words "pro- 
 perty, master, servant, employer and employed, 
 capitalist and labourer, wages, salary, high and 
 low wages and prices, borrowers and lenders, 
 interest, profit and rent, money, banks, benefit- 
 societies, partners, co-operation and competition," 
 will, most of them, be not quite new to the young 
 even at their entrance into service. They will not 
 have been long at their work before matters will be 
 discussed, proposals will be made, advice will be 
 tendered, decisions will be formed, orders will be 
 given in their hearing, in which they cannot fail 
 to take the most lively interest. The words above 
 mentioned will be made to represent various mean-
 
 OUE TWO GEEAT DIFFICULTIES. 21 
 
 ings. And the statements and assertions adopted 
 with one meaning of these words, will be repeated 
 in the same words to which different, conflicting, or 
 contradictory meanings have been affixed. 
 
 The matters here referred to may come to the 
 notice of the young in a desultory manner in the 
 first instance. Their acquiescence may not be asked, 
 nor their concurrence in any proposed course of 
 action sought for. In the end, however, the young 
 will have. to form their resolutions, individually or 
 collectively, in harmony with the conclusions which 
 they will be led to adopt. They must decide upon 
 some line of conduct, right or wrong, or more or 
 less so. There is one escape from this dilemma. 
 For, as the result of no education or of an educa- 
 tion in which thoughtfulness had not been evoked, 
 they may fall into a beaten track ready prepared 
 for them, passively abide in it, and work and live 
 all their lives from hand to mouth, leaving to others 
 the responsibility as well as the remuneration of 
 thinking for them. Thinking beings, through lack of 
 assistance in their early years, may go astray; but 
 thoughtless beings must go astray. The first
 
 22 WHAT STOPS THE WAY ? OR, 
 
 may rush into want and misery; but the second 
 must inevitably, though imperceptibly, glide into it. 
 
 A few examples will help to illustrate the kind 
 of questions which cannot fail, sooner or later, to 
 be submitted to the young when their school-days 
 are past, and to demand their consideration. And 
 their conduct will depend, partly at least, upon the 
 answers which they give to such questions. 
 
 How do you propose to make provision for 
 yourselves and those to whom you are attached or 
 who, you feel, are dependent upon you, both in 
 the present and the future? 
 
 Your wages, or salaries, or the remuneration for 
 your services, by whatever name it may be called, 
 must be small at your outset. By what exertion 
 may you expect to receive increase of remuneration ? 
 While it remains small, does this smallness relieve 
 you from the obligation (self-imposed) of so far limit- 
 ing present expenditure as to make a beginning, 
 however small, of provision for the future ? 
 
 While your remuneration continues small, in 
 proportion to your physical wants and aspirations, 
 if not to your producing powers, your employer
 
 OUR TWO GKEAT DIFFICULTIES. 23 
 
 may be earning large profits. Will that be for your 
 advantage ? Or he may be unsuccessful and verging 
 towards insolvency ; in which case you could scarcely 
 expect to extract increase of remuneration from him. 
 But might you not from the thriving employer ? 
 
 Your large profit-earning employer might antici- 
 pate, not only your application, but your wishes for 
 advancement. You might, while proudly conscious 
 of your worth as a servant, be sensible of your 
 employer's generous appreciation of that worth. A 
 different combination of feelings on both sides might 
 arise. "The rapacious greediness of employers," 
 and " the tyranny of capital," might be complaints 
 of the employed, because their applications for 
 increased remuneration were unsuccessful. It is 
 not pleasant to be told, still less to know, that 
 thousands of workmen would be glad to occupy your 
 posts, some to enter upon employment, and some to 
 shift from the employment which they had to a better. 
 
 It ought not to be expected that the young 
 will escape from being called upon to act in the 
 midst of such a conflict of feelings and opinions. 
 Can they be insured against unwise action, if not
 
 24 WHAT STOPS THE WAY ? OK, 
 
 forearmed with clear conceptions of the limits beyond 
 which the greed of capitalists and the resistance of 
 labourers cannot make themselves felt ? How other- 
 wise can they judge whether any, or how great 
 inaccuracy, is involved in the metaphorical expression 
 "tyranny of capital?" A general increase of 
 wages is impossible without increase of capital. 
 Does capital become more tyrannical as it increases ? 
 If so, does the " tyranny of capital" complained of 
 conduce to decrease or to increase of wages ? 
 
 The rates of wages earned by large masses of 
 labourers are notoriously less than what are indis- 
 pensable for comfort, or even decency of existence. 
 Foiled in attempts to obtain the desired increase, 
 many have turned their attention to the profits 
 earned by employers, and schemes have been devised 
 for the purpose of diverting some portion of the 
 apparently excessive profits to swell wages con- 
 fessedly insufficient for the labourers' wants. Co- 
 operative societies, building societies, and other 
 organizations, by which it is hoped that the products 
 of industry may not only be increased but distributed 
 on other principles than those which preside over
 
 OUR TWO GEEAT DIFFICULTIES. 25 
 
 their division between capitalists and labourers, have 
 arisen out of tbe wide-spread feeling of dissatisfac- 
 tion at the deplorable insufficiency of the wages 
 which, it seems, can possibly be earned in the 
 larger number of employments. 
 
 A wide range of subjects is here presented to be 
 inquired into, or which ought to have been previously 
 inquired into, before judgment can be formed or 
 action taken safely upon such schemes. Looking 
 at the arrangements of society, as they certainly 
 now are, and have to be conformed to, and, in 
 respect of some of them, as they probably ever must 
 be, here are a few facts concerning which verbal or 
 intellectual illusions cannot prevail without danger : 
 
 The number of the employed compared with that 
 of employers must ever be large. Rulers, judges, 
 officers of the army and navy, farmers, and adminis- 
 trators in general must be few compared with those 
 who act under them ; although the smaller num- 
 ber are taken, with rare exceptions, out of the 
 larger. It does not follow that the number of non- 
 capitalists is equally large in proportion to the 
 number of capitalists. Indeed, it is not plain that
 
 26 WHAT STOPS THE WAY ? OE, 
 
 eventually there need be any non-capitalists, ex- 
 cepting the very young and some few incapacitated 
 by accident and disease. 
 
 After taking every care not to misconceive the 
 future, by assuming that it is to be a copy of the 
 actual present, rather than the improvement upon 
 it which the future may be made, it still seems 
 unavoidable that the great mass of the young will, 
 in any state of society, on leaving school, be thrown, 
 sooner or later, entirely upon their own labour for 
 support. How are they to become capitalists ? Is 
 there any other method than that of saving that 
 of learning to derive more satisfaction from the 
 sense of having guarded against future privation, 
 than from some present f but inferior indulgence ? 
 
 If it be plain that the acquisition, preservation, 
 and increase of capital depend upon the industry, 
 intelligence, skill, economy, respect for property, 
 docility and fidelity, in combination, of those who 
 own and direct it and of those who act under 
 them, is it not also plain that, whatever else may 
 be attempted to promote well-being or to ward 
 off destitution, no efforts must be spared to secure
 
 OUR TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 27 
 
 a prevalence of these qualities ? Let the distribution 
 of the fruits of labour and capital be on what 
 principle we will, the amount to be divided, and 
 consequently the share of each, must be insufficient 
 wherever these qualities are deficient. 
 
 By the aid of good teaching in the schools, 
 especially if accompanied by example and encourage- 
 ment at home, the young will become almost 
 simultaneously earners and savers, and will have 
 clear conceptions of the purposes of earning and 
 saving. The foundations will have been laid of 
 habits of industry and economy. The little fund 
 in the savings'-bank will have grown out of self- 
 denial in sweetmeats, oranges, toys, and other 
 trifling enjoyments. The young who start as labourers 
 under such happy auspices are, very early in their 
 career, capitalists as well as labourers ; but they are 
 conscious, besides, that their earning powers are not 
 what they hope they will become, in time, by appli- 
 cation and practice. Can any better course be 
 suggested than that they should, with the advice 
 and assistance of their parents and friends, seek 
 for employers willing to buy their labour, small as
 
 28 WHAT STOPS THE WAY ? OK, 
 
 its worth might be at first, to place them under 
 experienced workmen, and to give them opportunities 
 of improving in industrial capacity: and of thus 
 making their labour more productive, and either 
 better worth purchasing or better adapted to enable 
 them, with the assistance of their own savings, to 
 dispense with selling it ? 
 
 In due course, the time arrives when each 
 labourer has to consider whether he had better 
 continue to sell his labour and lend his capital to 
 be employed by others, or whether he will turn 
 employer, with or without the co-operation or joint- 
 stock effort of others like himself. Can he expect 
 that others will be disposed to enter into partnership 
 with him if he has no capital ; or will he, having 
 capital, be disposed to accept others who have no 
 capital as his partners? The difference is great, 
 whether a labourer have no share in a joint- stock 
 company or co-operative society because he has no 
 capital, or because he elects to continue working for 
 wages and lending his capital. In the latter case he 
 may be not merely a thriving man, but one of the 
 more thriving. If it occurred to him that the
 
 CUE TWO GEEAT DIFFICULTIES. '29 
 
 co-operation of a partner might greatly add to his 
 chances of success in some business within the 
 compass of his means, and if he were not disinclined 
 to share his expected profits with a partner who had 
 no capital of his own, could he avoid reflecting upon 
 the probable character of the man say, not less than 
 twenty-five or thirty years of age who possessed no 
 capital? Would he not ask: Has not this man 
 already worked and earned? and if he has, where are 
 his savings ? and what proofs can I obtain that such 
 a man is not deficient in good industrial qualities as 
 well as in capital, which is seldom to be met with 
 disjoined from some of these qualities ? 
 
 The process of borrowing requires consideration. 
 Habitual lending implies habitual borrowing. The 
 young, it may now be assumed, are familiar with the 
 reasons for saving and lending; and they are en- 
 couraged and exhorted to lend. Ought they to 
 borrow ? or who ought to borrow ? If it be granted 
 that the young ought to save in order to guard them- 
 selves and those dependent upon them against future 
 want, it is also granted that they ought not to 
 borrow, at least in order to spend or consume. To
 
 30 WHAT STOPS THE WAY ? OR, 
 
 borrow in order to spend or consume is a practice 
 always to be avoided, seldom justifiable. To have 
 become dependent upon borrowing for the purpose 
 of keeping off starvation, indicates previous mistake 
 or misconduct. While to lend, therefore, is a duty 
 in those who cannot superintend the employment 
 of their own capitals, to borrow is a privilege which 
 ought to be used only by those who can employ 
 capital advantageously. Hence it is a matter of 
 caution and duty combined, for lenders to lend only 
 to capitalists who can turn to profitable account the 
 capitals which they borrow. 
 
 Buying on credit is, unfortunately, a practice too 
 familiar with many of the young before their school- 
 days are over with the young who are supposed to 
 be receiving a high order of education, although it 
 may not be much more than instruction in word- 
 knowledge of a somewhat pretentious character. The 
 virtues are talked and written about not understood, 
 nor felt, nor practised ; taught, if that expression be 
 admissible, in such a manner that some could only 
 be practised by disregarding others. Their teachers 
 may be lights to the young ; but they act towards
 
 CUE TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 31 
 
 them as candles act towards moths they serve not 
 to guide, or warm, or save, but to seduce and singe, 
 or destroy. 
 
 The functions of bankers have been called into 
 play to supply the wants of lenders and borrowers. 
 Lenders seek perfect security and the highest rate of 
 interest consistent with security. Borrowers, who 
 desire to be trusted on account of their capital and 
 character, wish to obtain loans at as low a rate of 
 interest as possible. But for bankers, they might not 
 readily become acquainted with each other's wants, 
 or be brought into contact. Bankers (that is, asso- 
 ciated capitalists) come forward and notify to lenders 
 " Here we are, ready and anxious to welcome 
 you as lenders, to give you security, and also to 
 guarantee to you the rate of interest which we shall 
 agree upon together. We will relieve you from the 
 task and risk of searching for security, not easily 
 to be found by you without our assistance, or from 
 the necessity of foregoing interest through the non- 
 employment of your savings." The banker, having 
 borrowed capital from lenders, becomes himself a 
 lender to other capitalists whom it suits to pay for
 
 32 WHAT STOPS THE WAY ? OR, 
 
 the use of capital not their own. The excess of the 
 rate of interest at which the banker lends above 
 that at which he borrows, constitutes the fund out of 
 which he pays the expenses of his establishment, and 
 obtains compensation for his risk, and remuneration 
 for his labour. The ultimate borrowers of capital 
 employ it productively, and are able to undertake 
 to pay a certain rate of interest in anticipation of the 
 larger rate of profit which they expect to earn. 
 
 In schools, the fundamental principles, on the 
 application of which the well-being of society de- 
 pends, should never be lost sight of. In the world 
 outside, they should never be disregarded, being 
 unmentioned as too obvious to require notice, 
 although to neglect to act upon them would be 
 inexcusable. As the frame of the ship is kept open 
 for inspection in the building-yard, though covered 
 in previous to launching for use, so in school, the 
 conditions of well-being are kept in view, in order 
 that ever afterwards they may be felt to be present, 
 covered up though they be by the phraseology to 
 which the arrangements of society have given rise. 
 
 There are very few transactions in life in which
 
 OUR TWO GKEAT DIFFICULTIES. 38 
 
 the use of money is not directly or indirectly in- 
 volved; and there is scarcely another word in the 
 English language which has so often been made the 
 subject of fallacies, contradictions, platitudes, and 
 misconceptions. Wages, and interest, and incomes 
 from all sources, are paid and received in money. 
 Merchandise is estimated, and loans are made and 
 accepted in money. Bankers are borrowers and 
 lenders of capital. If they were not lenders, they 
 could not pay interest for the capital which they 
 borrow. On the other hand, the total of their 
 borrowings (in addition to their capitals) must be the 
 extreme limit of their lendings. The young can be 
 kept in the dark concerning the quantity of money 
 likely to be in the custody of bankers, only by want 
 of capacity in teachers. It would be a gross exag- 
 geration to say that bankers collectively possessed 
 in money one-tenth of the capital measured in money 
 which their books show them to owe to their cus- 
 tomers. When the annual statements inform us 
 that the deposits in the savings' banks of the king- 
 dom amount to 40,000,OOOL, need the young be at 
 a loss to understand why a few thousands suffice to 
 
 3
 
 34 WHAT STOPS THE WAY? OK, 
 
 represent the number of pounds in their posses- 
 sion ? 
 
 There are times when borrowers, partly from 
 ignorance, imprudence, and unconscientiousness, are 
 unable to fulfil the engagements which they have 
 contracted, except by applying for an increase of the 
 loans which they have been in the habit of receiving 
 from their bankers. But bankers are distributors, 
 not creators of capital, and cannot, therefore, even 
 if they would, provide capital on all occasions, when 
 resorted to by would-be borrowers, who have con- 
 tracted engagements for the performance of which 
 adequate precautions had not been taken. The 
 young who are not trifled with in the name of 
 education, may have a glimpse in the school of what 
 in mercantile life it is needful they should clearly 
 apprehend : that, while the institution of banks 
 facilitates the transfer of capital, from the hands 
 of those who can employ it less conveniently or 
 profitably, to the hands of those who can employ 
 it more conveniently or more profitably, no excuse 
 and no security is offered for negligence or ignorance 
 in the use of credit, or for disregarding the golden
 
 OUR TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 35 
 
 commercial rule, of contracting no engagement the 
 means of performing which will not come to hand 
 with as much certainty as the applications for its 
 fulfilment. When the young see plainly that without 
 the use of credit insolvency is impossible, and how 
 it is avoidable if credit be used intelligently and 
 scrupulously, that to accept or indorse bills of ex- 
 change or promissory notes, or to become guarantee 
 for others, or to become liable for calls on shares 
 in any industrial concern, is quite as much use 
 of credit as to borrow or buy on credit, or to 
 contract to deliver what is not in your possession ; 
 when to them ignorance, negligence, and fraudu- 
 lence in the use of credit are the only causes to 
 which insolvency is traceable they will be more 
 securely protected against their own future insol- 
 vency or against loss from the insolvency of others, 
 than when, with a sluggishness of understanding 
 engendered by habitual word-shuffling, individual in- 
 solvencies are assumed to be satisfactorily accounted 
 for by "scarcity of money," "tightness of the 
 money market," " drain of gold," " Peel's bill," 
 made up into sentences sinning against no rule 
 
 32
 
 36 WHAT STOPS THE WAT? OK, 
 
 of grammar and every rule of sense, in company 
 with denunciations against bank directors for with- 
 holding accommodation, applying the screw, making 
 money artificially scarce, and putting up the rate of 
 interest. 
 
 As before observed, the larger portion of man- 
 kind are not destined to be employers of labour 
 or administrators of capital. They will be lenders 
 or investors, not borrowers of capital, and may, 
 therefore, be free from the risks while debarred 
 from the profits attached to the use of other people's 
 capital. But they who would be lenders or investors 
 of capital only must be on their guard not to 
 become partners in concerns more or less hazardous, 
 under the notion that the only difference between 
 buying shares in joint-stock companies and buying 
 Government annuities, is that the former yield a 
 higher rate of interest. As for the still greater 
 delusion of acquiring shares, whether by subscrip- 
 tion, purchase, or inheritance, of which the fourth 
 or even only the tenth part has been paid up, 
 imagining a property merely to have been acquired, 
 that had better be dispelled beforehand by a little
 
 OUE TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 37 
 
 elementary instruction at school, than by unexpected 
 calls, with or without a winding-up in Chancery. 
 
 Over and above the knowledge and capacity for 
 good self-guidance in earning and keeping the means 
 of comfortable existence, those for making the best 
 use of means will not be lost sight of by teachers 
 who aspire to make education as efficient as possible 
 in securing the future well-being of the young. The 
 facility with which the young may be trained to 
 almost anything, justifies the assertion that the 
 future of the young depends much more upon 
 the conduct of adults in regard to them than 
 upon anything else. And this is quite in keeping 
 with the admonition to the young, as they 
 outgrow childhood, that nobody can do so much 
 for them to determine their own future characters 
 and conduct as themselves : the chief business of 
 educators being to raise up in their pupils, concur- 
 rently with a capacity for good self-guidance, a sense 
 of the duty of self-discipline which they owe to 
 themselves. 
 
 The habit of seeking in a provision for the future 
 a large part of present enjoyment, or a compensation
 
 88 WHAT STOPS THE WAY ? OR, 
 
 for present abstinence, leads to a just estimate of 
 the future advantages that may be reasonably ex- 
 pected from the application of present means. It 
 helps to form a state of mind prepared to discrimi- 
 nate between penuriousness or exaggeration of the 
 future advantages to be derived from present self- 
 denial, and lavishness which sacrifices the future for 
 the sake of present indulgence. The limited expe- 
 rience of the young, aided by what they have heard 
 and read, is quite sufficient to enable them to per- 
 ceive that there is no more marked characteristic of 
 the progress of man from barbarism to civilization 
 from a lower to a higher state of being, than a 
 growing capacity to make the consciousness of pro- 
 viding, and of having provided for the future, occupy 
 its true position among the sources of present enjoy- 
 ment. 
 
 Some of the effects of developing this capacity, or 
 sowing the germs of this capacity, in the young, 
 through education, deserve to be thought of. It will 
 be asked, or at least it ought to be asked : " As years 
 roll on, as capital accumulates, and the desire of form- 
 ing new domestic ties is awakened and strengthened,
 
 OUB TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 89 
 
 will the future husbands and wives, fathers and 
 mothers growing up from the young so educated, 
 be improvements upon their predecessors ? Will 
 health and comfort be more common in their homes, 
 and will pinching want and its train of temptations 
 be more effectually guarded against ? Will the 
 children born in happier homes, and looking up with 
 love and reverence to well-conducted parents, give 
 hopes of becoming healthy, happy, and well con- 
 ducted men and women ? Above all, will the parents 
 themselves be deeply impressed with a sense of the 
 duty of providing for the education, as well as for the 
 feeding and clothing of their own children ? and will 
 this sense of duty, instead of wasting itself in sen- 
 timent and words, be exemplified in conduct, through 
 a preparation of the means without which duty may 
 be talked of but cannot be performed ? 
 
 If caution be needful in admitting effects of causes 
 not yet extensively tried, it is no less needful to 
 prevent our excluding effects as impossible, merely 
 on account of their grandeur as compared with all 
 known previous effects. As the daily effects of 
 steam power and magnetic power exhibit to the
 
 40 WHAT STOPS THE WAY ? OK, 
 
 present generation how mistaken their forefathers 
 were in their anticipations, so the future daily 
 effects of an education which, besides exercising 
 the memory on words, shall educe thoughtfulness 
 in relation to things and conduct, may convict this 
 generation of similar blindness in regard to educa- 
 tion power. There is wherewithal to encourage 
 those who look forward hopefully to the effects of 
 education as it ought to be, and to admonish those 
 who speak of it disparagingly and refuse to give 
 it a trial. 
 
 A just appreciation of the influence for good of 
 education properly understood, would scarcely be 
 formed if some thought were not bestowed upon 
 the changes of disposition and conduct that may be 
 expected from it in reference to the uses of property. 
 The distribution of property, as it has hitherto 
 been seen anywhere on this earth the accumulation 
 of it by a few, and the deficiency of it, approaching 
 to utter destitution, with many, the profuse and 
 luxurious expenditure of a few, and an expenditure 
 by many so small as to exclude the possibility of 
 health and decency, are topics too familiar to call
 
 DUE TWO GEEAT DIFFICULTIES. 41 
 
 for more than recognition. The prevailing style of 
 living among the wealthy in the midst of privation, 
 cannot be reflected upon with unmixed satisfaction 
 even by themselves. It may be given into it may 
 be submitted to it may be conformed to it may 
 be revelled in, but it cannot be justified. 
 
 Was the taste for this style of expenditure 
 acquired through the education of the past ? May 
 a different taste be the result of an altered educa- 
 tion in the present and future ? These are not 
 idle questions. The words " pity," " charity," 
 "benevolence," are not unknown in modern educa- 
 tion. The precepts " give to the poor," " protect 
 the widow and the fatherless," and " instruct the 
 ignorant," are familiar to most ears. Are the 
 lessons in which these words and precepts are to 
 be found, learned as if they were habitually exempli- 
 fied in conduct, or ought to be, or could be; and 
 if not, why not? It will not be a misuse of time 
 to draw a contrast, if possible, between the effect of 
 word-pronouncing and that of conduct-teaching on 
 the use of property. 
 
 The boys in the school may, for this purpose,
 
 42 WHAT STOPS THE WAY ? OR, 
 
 be assumed to have examined and learned and 
 become familiar with the qualities in themselves 
 by which they may hope to earn and possess 
 wealth. The case of boys born to the possession 
 of wealth sufficient to raise them above the necessity 
 of earning their own living may be passed over for 
 the present. Their number must be comparatively 
 small. The qualities through which wealth is to 
 be earned being known, the question arises Will 
 all possess these qualities, and through life, and 
 in an equal degree ? The answer to this question 
 is not beyond boys whose thoughtfulness has been 
 cultivated. All will not possess these qualities in 
 an equal degree. Some will be pre-eminently gifted. 
 Some will break down through natural infirmity, 
 accident, or disease ; while the majority will possess 
 these qualities in greater or less proportion, but 
 not pre-eminently. How will they stand in regard 
 to the possession of wealth, when arrived at years 
 of maturity? There is no escape from the conclu- 
 sion that, while a few will have become possessed of 
 superabundance, and the masses of sufficiency, there 
 will also be a few partly or wholly dependent upon
 
 OUR TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 43 
 
 others, for even the bare necessaries of life. It is 
 quite within the scope of boys' understandings 
 properly cultivated, to infer all this for themselves, 
 and at the same time to recognise the impossibility 
 of assigning to each individual the position which 
 he is destined to occupy as a man. They can 
 also recognise the direction of thought and conduct 
 which ought to be cultivated among them all, before 
 the eventual position of each can be determined, 
 to mitigate the sufferings of the less favoured few, 
 or, in other words, to secure, as nearly as possible, 
 the general well-being. When thought for incapable 
 and indigent adults is extended from them to their 
 children who, but for other intervention, would be 
 left to become the victims of ignorance and vice, the 
 duty owed to them by society, and particularly by 
 its more wealthy members, appears too plain to be 
 misapprehended. The imperfect appreciation of 
 the duties of man to man, and to society, and of 
 the intense gratification which may be drawn from 
 the contemplation and discharge of those duties, as 
 the result of past education, must be expected to 
 neutralize to some extent, and for some time, the
 
 44 WHAT STOPS THE WAY? OR, 
 
 impression upon the young made by instruction 
 conducted in this spirit. A good teacher's faith 
 in the ultimate success of his efforts will not be 
 shaken by a counteraction which can be no more 
 than temporary. 
 
 Granting that it should be the aim of an educator 
 to impress upon the minds of his pupils some such 
 opinions and aspirations in regard to the use of the 
 property which they might hope to earn, what ought 
 to be his aim with pupils apparently born to the pos- 
 session of property, independent of any effort to earn 
 it, is self-evident. He might excuse his want of success 
 with them on the plea of the benumbing influence 
 upon the young of the knowledge that they were 
 destined to possess property, however little they 
 might strive to deserve it. But he would not deny 
 that it was his duty to do his best to overcome this 
 benumbing influence. The effect produced by modern 
 word-teaching upon the inheritors of property, in 
 determining the application of their riches, may be 
 judged by what is to be seen around. There is 
 not much room for doubting whether they who 
 conduct it would, on the completion of their work,
 
 OUR TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 45 
 
 and the termination of their career, have as much 
 reason to be proud of the epitaph " CIRCUMSPICE " 
 as the architect of St. Paul's Cathedral. 
 
 The vastness of the difference between word- 
 teaching and conduct-teaching wherein words are 
 used as auxiliaries, would not be fully appreciated 
 unless one more example of misuse of language 
 were added to those already cited. In the discussions 
 to which the attempt to substitute conduct-teaching 
 for word-teaching has given rise, the word " religion" 
 is often to be met with. This word, in one of its 
 acceptations at least, is the name of some of the 
 deepest and most powerful and humanizing con- 
 victions. To say that religion exercises no influence 
 over conduct, would be to say what is notoriously 
 at variance with universal experience ; and there 
 are few who would not be shocked as well as startled 
 to hear it maintained that the influence of religion 
 was not for good. If religion inspires and sanctifies 
 good conduct, it must favour good teaching, i. e. 
 good-conduct teaching. It must condemn neglect 
 of teaching or word-teaching, which, in one respect, 
 is worse than neglect of teaching, since it hides the
 
 46 WHAT STOPS THE WAY ? OE, 
 
 omission by covering over the space which might 
 otherwise be seen to be unoccupied. The misuse 
 of language by which religion is represented as 
 sanctioning the worst of conduct, or conduct which 
 neglects the teaching and training of the young 
 indispensable for their future good conduct, is only 
 one of the many forms in which religion has been 
 made to appear, not to promote, but to obstruct 
 human improvement. It may well be suspected 
 that, of all the enemies of religion, none can be 
 so dangerous as he who represents it as sanctifying 
 or conniving at neglect or perversion of education ; 
 and that, of all the friends of religion, none can be 
 better employed than he who unmasks enemies 
 plotting against mankind in its name. 
 
 There is no word in our language more used 
 than " religious " to indicate qualities with which 
 the interests and happiness and improvement of 
 mankind are identified. A strict watch ought to 
 be kept over words of this kind. They must not 
 be prefixed to men or measures, or doctrines or lines 
 of conduct which ought to be detested, resisted, and 
 prevented, because they lead to human misery or
 
 OUK TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 47 
 
 degradation. Can a man be " religious " who does 
 mischief or obstructs improvement who concurs in 
 measures which help to retain others in ignorance, 
 misery and vice ? If he justify his concurrence in 
 measures leading to such baneful consequences on 
 religious grounds or scruples, must not this per- 
 version of the word " religious " be classed with 
 our other instances of verbal illusions, or of that 
 corruption of the meaning of words intended to 
 denote nothing but what is good and true and holy, 
 by which they are rendered unfit to be applied to 
 matters deserving our love, our approbation, or our 
 reverence ? 
 
 Religious Illusions. 
 
 A very inadequate estimate would be formed of 
 the extent of the mischief committed of the bad 
 things done and the good things left undone, in 
 the name of religion, if some of the tricks and 
 proceedings resorted to by certain professors of 
 religion, to prevent and pervert education, were 
 left unnoticed. 
 
 It cannot be too often insisted upon, that in
 
 48 WHAT STOPS THE WAY ? OK, 
 
 proportion to the reverence felt and cultivated for 
 religion, ought to be the care taken to preserve 
 it pure and free from the contaminations to which 
 it may be exposed, through the ignorance and mis- 
 conduct of many who wear the garments, use the 
 forms, and act in the name of religion. 
 
 Incredible as it would be, were it not so noto- 
 rious, there is a difficulty, known by a strange 
 misnomer, as the "religious difficulty," which has 
 hitherto been a great hindrance in the way of making 
 education as efficient for good as it might be. The 
 verbal difficulty, to which attention has thus far been 
 confined, has acted by causing the precious hours 
 and limited powers of application of the young 
 to be exclusively bestowed upon words, whether 
 addressed to the ear or to the eye, in their relation 
 one to another, neglecting the more important use 
 of them as exponents and registers of objects and 
 their constituents, of phenomena, of thoughts, and 
 of principles and rules of conduct. When educators 
 shall have embraced in their thoughts all these 
 subjects as matters on which the young ought to 
 be instructed by them, and the structure of language
 
 OUR TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 49 
 
 besides as a means of communication, the influence 
 of education upon well-being must be vastly in- 
 creased. At all events, education is not to be 
 despaired of as a preventive of destitution, till it 
 has been brought to act more directly in forming 
 intelligent views of conduct and greater conscien- 
 tiousness and strength of character. 
 
 The religious difficulty, so far as any meaning 
 can be attached to that expression, would seem to 
 act in diminishing the quantity rather than in 
 deteriorating the quality of education. But sup- 
 posing it to act in both directions, precedence may 
 be given to the consideration of its influence upon 
 the quantity, since its quality must be of small 
 consequence to those who are excluded from educa- 
 tion altogether. To judge of its action, however, 
 in either respect, the state of the public mind, as 
 it is at the present time, requires to be taken into 
 account. 
 
 There is a growing feeling that no child ought 
 to be suffered to grow up deprived of the benefit 
 of some education. The number of religious sects 
 and subdivisions and shades of sects is great, and 
 
 4
 
 50 WHAT STOPS THE WAY? OR, 
 
 mixed up with them are numerous individuals who 
 hold themselves aloof from all sects, and decline 
 to frequent any of their churches, chapels, temples, 
 or meeting-houses. It is very common for the 
 members of each of these classes to insist that their 
 own peculiar tenets shall be included in the course 
 of school instruction given to their children, and 
 it is still more common for them to refuse to 
 subscribe for the school education of children whose 
 parents will not permit them to conform to church 
 doctrines which differ from their own. 
 
 Nor must it be overlooked that wealth is very 
 unequally distributed among the different sects. 
 Comparatively, it is heaped up in masses among 
 the communicants of one or two, while among 
 others, wealth beyond the bare necessaries of life 
 is rare. The wealthiest one of all the sects, besides, 
 has contrived to appropriate to itself a life interest 
 in an enormous amount of state property, and is 
 exceedingly jealous of the admission of any other 
 sects to obtain facilities for instruction by means 
 of this property. There is a sad misapplication 
 not to say maladministration of funds, even with
 
 OUB TWO GEE AT DIFFICULTIES. 51 
 
 a view to the sectarian education of the children 
 of their own members ; great want of vigilance in 
 keeping watch lest any misappropriation of the 
 funds in their trust should prevent the extension 
 of education to all the children of parents in com- 
 munion with them, but no lack of vigilance to 
 prevent any of their funds straying so as to swell 
 the deficient educational resources of the poorer 
 sects. 
 
 The low state of civilization as yet attained 
 presents to us numbers of children whose parents 
 are incapable of supplying them with education, 
 and also many more whose parents are insensible 
 to the call of duty in this respect. And the 
 difficulty of grappling with so formidable an obstacle 
 to universality of education might be rendered 
 almost insuperable, by a disposition to leave educa- 
 tion unprovided till sectarian susceptibilities and 
 incompatibilities can be reconciled. 
 
 The numbers of children shut out entirely from 
 education have been decreasing steadily for many 
 years, partly from a growing and improved sense 
 of parental duty, and partly from an indisposition 
 
 42
 
 52 WHAT STOPS THE WAY? OR, 
 
 among those who come forward to act as parents 
 for other people's children, as far as education is 
 concerned, to see their efforts frustrated in the 
 name of religion. 
 
 An occurrence of thirty years ago will serve to 
 illustrate the kind of conflict of opinion which has 
 heen and still is surging to and fro between ordinary 
 humanity and sectarian scruples. A man connected 
 with no sect was applied to by his neighbours to 
 co-operate with them in establishing a school for 
 which there was much need in a popr and increasing 
 neighbourhood. He expressed his readiness to join 
 in their good work, apprising them, at the same 
 time, that his religious views differed probably from 
 those of every other member of the committee which 
 they had so far formed. They and he, however, 
 worked comfortably, if not cordially, together : he 
 waiving some of his objections, with the conviction 
 that an indifferent education was better for the poor 
 children than none at all, and they loth to be 
 deprived of funds not easily to be obtained elsewhere. 
 The money was collected, the school was built, the 
 master was appointed ; and lastly, a little before
 
 OUR TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 53 
 
 the day for opening, a member of the committee 
 proposed, among other regulations, that the master 
 should be instructed to ascertain and, if necessary, to 
 enforce the attendance of every child frequenting the 
 school at some church or chapel. The proposal was 
 seconded and about to be adopted as a matter of 
 course, when the committee-man above-mentioned 
 interposed, and reminding his fellow committee- 
 men of the avowal which he had made on joining 
 them, asked : "If, with my views of religious truth, 
 I was so circumstanced that my children must either 
 be admitted to the school now about to be' opened or 
 debarred from education, or flung back upon such 
 education as I could contrive for them at home , 
 should you say that they stood more or less in 
 need of admittance to our school, than the children 
 of parents whose views of religious truth differ from 
 mine or agree with your own?" The answer of 
 course was " more in need." " I can understand," 
 he continued, " that my children, on account of their 
 parents' (in your eyes) religious obliquity, would 
 be objects of pity to you. But if their father 
 countenanced their declining to frequent either
 
 54 WHAT STOPS THE WAY ? OR, 
 
 church or chapel, or purposely and on principle 
 kept them away, would you show your consideration 
 for the pitiable condition of these children by 
 shutting the school-doors against them ? " The 
 proposed instructions to the master were withdrawn, 
 and he was simply requested to use his influence 
 with the children and their parents, in order that 
 what they held to be religious duties should be 
 performed. 
 
 An opinion has been gaining ground, of late 
 years, that the various religious sects might be 
 brought to concur in some plan by which that 
 portion of religious instruction in which all could 
 agree should be given in school, leaving the other 
 portion to be given by the parents and guardians, 
 or the special teachers appointed by them. The 
 disgrace, it is felt, is great enough to have children 
 left uneducated that is, to grow up to become 
 victims of ignorance and destitution without adding 
 to the disgrace by making it appear that the denial 
 of education is occasioned by "religion" in any 
 shape or disguise. 
 
 Is it possible to eliminate from each sect's
 
 OUR TWO 'GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 55 
 
 religion that which is peculiar to it, and leave a 
 residuum of that which is common to them all ? 
 And if it be, may not all religious people be invited 
 to concur in such a scheme, leaving no excuse for 
 anybody to stand aloof from contributing his aid 
 towards saving the young from the consequences of 
 growing up in ignorance ? And will not an appeal 
 to all the sects for their acquiescence in, or at 
 least their earnest consideration of, the proposal 
 be strengthened, if it can be shown that the portion 
 of religion common to all is not only the most 
 important, but also the most teachable and under- 
 standable ; while the portions peculiar to each sect 
 are not only the least important and the least 
 teachable, but are scarcely understandable except 
 by persons of mature age, after years of special 
 preparation ? 
 
 In answer to such an invitation it may be 
 objected by some that the scheme is impracticable, 
 and that religion does not admit of being subdivided 
 in such a manner as to teach one portion to all in 
 common, and the other portions separately to the 
 different sects according to the requirements of each.
 
 56 WHAT STOPS THE WAY? OB, 
 
 The interest at stake is far too great to justify the 
 acceptance of this objection without examination. 
 Representatives of all the sects must be summoned 
 to listen to the particulars of a scheme which will 
 provide education in such a manner as to leave 
 none uninstructed. It will be open to them to 
 state their objections to the particulars of the 
 scheme, but not to condemn it to pronounce 
 upon its impracticability as a whole, leaving its 
 details unexamined. 
 
 After what has gone before, the elements of an 
 education desirable for all the young, whatever may 
 be the creed or sect of their parents, need not be 
 particularized with much minuteness. The object 
 is to prepare them to become useful and happy 
 members of society, which they will not be unless 
 their labour be worth purchasing, and at such a 
 rate of wages as will admit of their procuring 
 an adequate supply of necessaries and comforts. 
 Labour will be worth purchasing in proportion as 
 the labourer is intelligent, industrious, skilful, and 
 well-conducted. When he receives his wages, he 
 must apportion them partly to the wants of the
 
 OUR TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 57 
 
 present, partly also to the claims of the future. 
 The labourer will he unequal to the task of this 
 apportionment, if not alive to the claims of the 
 future. Surely it must be felt that teaching and 
 training, to make of the young men and women 
 approaching as nearly as possible to this pattern, are 
 imperatively required of the adults who have the 
 care of them. Can that be called religious educa- 
 tion from which this kind of instruction is 
 excluded ? 
 
 If the education of the young were conducted 
 in sectarian schools, each denomination would 
 insist that its own particular views of religion 
 should be embodied with the other instruction indis- 
 pensable for forming capable and well-conducted 
 labourers. But each denomination is opposed, 
 more or less, to the special religious instruction 
 insisted upon by others. Some demand that the 
 Bible shall be read in the school. Others contend 
 that school-children are quite incapable of under- 
 standing it, and therefore of reading it with profit. 
 Of those who wish to make the Bible a class-book, 
 some contend that it should be explained, and
 
 58 WHAT STOPS THE WAY? OR, 
 
 others that no explanation should be attempted. 
 Again, those who require reading and explanation 
 to go hand in hand, cannot agree among themselves 
 what that explanation is to be. Some say that 
 every word in the Bible is the inspired word of 
 God ; while others would consider it irreverent 
 to the Deity and cruel to children to represent 
 doctrines and narratives as of divine origin, many 
 of which are contradictory and monstrous emana- 
 tions, not from the perfection of wisdom and 
 goodness, but from ignorant, sanguinary, and super- 
 stitious people. It would be vain to attempt an 
 enumeration of all the matters upon which the most 
 uncompromising antagonism is to be seen. There 
 are people who, in defiance of the accumulated 
 evidence of the contrary, still inculcate the all- 
 sufficiency of prayer; although, in most people's 
 judgment, the efficacy of prayer is conditional. 
 But they, again, are far from being of one mind as 
 to what the conditions of efficacy are. Some say 
 that they are to be found in the state of mind of 
 him who prays ; others in the work by which 
 prayers are accompanied. Some rely upon the
 
 DUE TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 59 
 
 contrite heart ; others upon the clear head, the 
 vigorous will, and the ready and skilful hand of 
 him who prays. Others, again, seem to abandon 
 prayer, if only momentarily, saying " to labour is 
 to pray." Some insist upon infant, others upon 
 adult baptism ; some upon sprinkling, others upon 
 total immersion. Some think posthumous punish- 
 ment not God's ordinance ; while others wrangle 
 over its duration, some pronouncing, almost with 
 relish, that it will be unendurable and yet eternal, 
 and that few will escape it ; and others, unable to 
 reconcile such seeming atrocity with Divine good- 
 ness, conniving at the notion that its duration will 
 be circumscribed within limits more or less narrow, 
 acting as a kind of purgatory, the end of which is 
 to be perpetual bliss. Neither is it settled among 
 the sects, who may expect and who may not expect 
 to escape Divine wrath ; the best of men, according 
 to this world's judgment, being in great peril, and 
 the most atrocious criminals not precluded from 
 hope of escape. Some proclaim repentance to be 
 the one thing needful for salvation; others watch- 
 fulness to avoid occasions for repentance.
 
 60 WHAT STOPS THE WAY? OR, 
 
 In a state of society, the individuals, classes, 
 and sects of which are thus at variance one with 
 another in many respects, and who yet have so 
 many common wants to be provided for and so 
 many common duties to perform, the proposal to 
 do that in which all might concur does not seem 
 so unreasonable as to deserve to be met with 
 violent opposition and dislike. As regards children, 
 there is no difference of opinion that it behoves 
 adults to do their best, individually and collectively, 
 to provide them with food, clothing, fuel, and 
 shelter. Deprived of these, they would perish ; and 
 they cannot provide themselves. But when children, 
 in their turn, become adults, they must provide not 
 only for themselves, but for their children also. To 
 do this, they must be capable of doing it; and 
 capable they cannot be, unless they shall have been 
 educated when children. Hence, to provide the 
 young with education to keep them from future 
 misery, is as much a duty as to provide them with 
 food and clothing to save them from present death. 
 This latter duty is recognized, at last. Not only is 
 it accepted as something beyond question that
 
 OUR, TWO GKEAT DIFFICULTIES. 61 
 
 children must not be suffered to die of starvation, 
 but similar care is also taken of incapable adults. 
 
 It cannot be said, even now, that this duty is 
 adequately performed, but there was a time when 
 it was not recognized. And if history had not 
 recorded for our edification, we might imagine the 
 opposition that was made to the efforts of those 
 who first attempted to awaken their fellow-men to 
 a sense of this duty. In those days, there were 
 perhaps no millionaires, nor that great variety of 
 sects now to be seen in the world. But if there 
 had been, what would be our verdict upon one of 
 those millionaires who had answered to the appeal 
 in behalf of hungry, naked, houseless, perishing 
 children, by parading the religious scruples which 
 prevented his joining in the effort to prevent starva- 
 tion, till precautions were taken to inculcate his 
 own narrow sectarian faith or professions of faith ? 
 
 To people in the habit of judging conduct 
 whether acts or refusals to act by its conse- 
 quences, not according to the rapidity with which 
 they follow, but according to the good or evil, near 
 or remote, interwoven with them, the iniquity of
 
 62 WHAT STOPS THE WAY ? OE, 
 
 leaving children to grow up uneducated appears 
 much more flagrant than that of leaving them to 
 perish unfed. What, then, must be thought of a 
 millionaire of these days surrounded by children 
 for whose education there is no provision, who 
 declines to co-operate with others awakened to a 
 sense of the enormity tolerated and connived 
 at, and anxious to redeem the errors of the past? 
 Before condemning him, we should be both curious 
 and desirous to hear his justification. But would 
 our condemnation be less or more severe when we 
 learned from his own lips that it was " religion " 
 which inspired him with the "holy" thought, not 
 only of withholding his support from the effort, 
 but of exerting himself, covertly and openly, to 
 frustrate it? 
 
 Surely it cannot be, that this proposal to separate 
 from the creeds of all sects the vital part in 'which 
 they all agree, so that those portions in which they 
 disagree may no longer be obstacles in the way of 
 providing education for all children, is opposed, nay 
 execrated as it is, because if acceded to, it would 
 remove all plausible excuse for declining respect-
 
 OUR TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 63 
 
 ably and piously to assist in relieving society 
 from a prospect of suffering in this life which, 
 but for improved and extended education, might 
 be warranted to be nearly as lasting as that pre- 
 dicted without warrant for a life to come. 
 
 In the great struggle, the beginning of which 
 was probably the beginning of society itself, but 
 never perhaps so intense as it now is, not for 
 mere existence, but for enjoyable existence, it has 
 been at last discovered that such existence is 
 unattainable without education. Is there any diffi- 
 culty in the way of this education which can be 
 properly characterized as " religious " ? Can the 
 luxurious expenditure of a few, and a dearth of 
 educational means, co-exist in a religious com- 
 munity? And if so, what is the religion which 
 entitles such a community to be considered 
 " religious" ? 
 
 The more a word appeals to the feelings of 
 reverence and benevolence the main- springs of our 
 best conduct, when controlled and guided by intelli- 
 gence the more careful should we be not to allow 
 ourselves to be drawn into vile, cruel, or debasing
 
 64 WHAT STOPS THE WAY? OR, 
 
 courses by those who use it ignorantly or dishonestly. 
 If "religion," rightly understood, mean anything, 
 it means something which inspires us to make 
 greater efforts than we should make without it to 
 improve the condition of our fellow-men. People 
 tell us that it means much more. Be it so. Let 
 us not, however, neglect to repeat what your high- 
 flying, all-embracing verbal-religionists seem disposed 
 to overlook, " Don't forget that it does mean Tender 
 care for little children." 
 
 The " religious" opponents of universal education 
 are full of tricks and contrivances to reconcile them- 
 selves and others to their apathetic toleration of 
 that which covers the land with poverty and vice. 
 In order to be exposed, they must be followed into 
 all their shifts and windings. No sooner is it pro- 
 posed to teach in common those portions only of 
 religion in which all agree, and to leave to separate 
 teaching, according to the consciences of each sect, 
 those portions in which sects cannot agree with one 
 another, than they resist the proposal without 
 offering a substitute in its place. Resistance on 
 behalf of the destitute against those who would
 
 OUR TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 65 
 
 feed them with bread and water, clothe them in sack- 
 cloth, and shelter them in a refuge, would be highly 
 commendable in men prepared to supply them with 
 plenty of wholesome food, clothing, and shelter ; but 
 atrocious in men who would leave them to perish, 
 after having driven off the charitably disposed who 
 were tendering relief, however insufficient. But in 
 this way do some act who profess to act in the name 
 of religion. Spiritual destitution, by their own 
 confession, rages around them. If they have not 
 connived at it or overlooked its existence, because 
 engaged in other pursuits more congenial to their 
 " religious " temperament, they have failed to prevent 
 it. Strangers offer such relief as they can afford 
 all that they can give, but less than they could 
 wish. Are they to be warned off in the name of 
 religion ? Is it becoming, to proclaim that there 
 shall be no partial relief for spiritual destitution, 
 while omitting to afford the complete relief insisted 
 upon ? 
 
 Let us re-state the " religious " difficulty which 
 stands in the way of education. The impossibility 
 of bringing the young of all denominations together, 
 
 5
 
 66 WHAT STOPS THE WAY? OK, 
 
 and instructing each and all in the dogmas peculiar 
 to each, is universally acknowledged. In the face 
 of this impossibility, it has been suggested that 
 religion should be divided into two parts one in 
 which all concur, and the other in which one or 
 more of the denominations cannot be brought to 
 concur. It so happens, that the part in which all 
 denominations concur is that which bears directly 
 upon the conduct indispensable for well-being. It 
 is the practical and secular part, as distinguished 
 from the transcendental and ritualistic. "All or 
 none," say the victims of religious illusions ; and 
 thus masses of children are shut out by " religious " 
 people from all religious instruction. 
 
 Evil has been thought and spoken of that portion 
 of religion in which all sects concur, without which 
 worldly well-being is unattainable, and to which 
 education ministers by preventing ignorance and 
 incapacity, the chief causes of misery. Names, not 
 of evil import in themselves, but used invidiously 
 and disparagingly, have been applied to that part 
 of religion which, in combination with education, 
 has special regard to the concerns of this life. The
 
 OUR TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 67 
 
 education has been called " secular," and the wisdom 
 which it teaches has been called " worldly." 
 
 The sound of these words excites a kind of 
 " holy " horror in some well-disposed but feeble- 
 minded people, analogous to the indignation felt 
 by the old woman who was, in reproachful tone, 
 called an " isosceles triangle." Something terrible 
 is supposed to be meant by them. People who are 
 neither well-disposed nor weak-minded affect, when 
 it suits them, to participate in this horror. A few 
 moments, therefore, will not be ill bestowed upon 
 the consideration of what these words really mean. 
 Evidently, as often used, they have been intended 
 to express directly, or to convey indirectly and 
 covertly, censure or disapprobation. In Dr. Johnson's 
 Dictionary it may be seen that the word " secular " is 
 used in four different senses : 
 
 1. Not spiritual. 
 
 2. Eelating to affairs of the present world. 
 
 3. Not holy. 
 
 4. Worldly. 
 
 Unless the third signification here given " not 
 holy" be confounded with "unholy," not one of
 
 68 WHAT STOPS THE WAY? OR, 
 
 these meanings makes the word " secular " attach 
 any stain 'or reproach to the occupation or conduct 
 to which it is applied. 
 
 Every industrial and domestic employment, every 
 act, every profession, is secular. In some respects, 
 the theological or clerical profession might be 
 considered an exception. But even in that, spiritual 
 efficacy would be very small if not aided by secular 
 attainments, the acquisition of which calls for much 
 secular effort and support. Admitting that the 
 special vocation of the clergy is to prepare them- 
 selves and others for a life hereafter, their labours 
 cease in this life, and their influence over a life to 
 come ceases with this life. Prayers for the dead, 
 even, must be offered by the living; and those 
 who utter them will hardly deny that they became 
 competent to utter them through much secular 
 preparation, without any disparagement of the 
 spiritual assistance which accompanied it. 
 
 The men engaged in all these secular employ- 
 ments could not have become proficient in them, 
 and could not supply the public with commodities 
 and services in their several " states of life "
 
 OUR TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 69 
 
 without much secular preparation. Again, as a 
 preparation for becoming capable and well-conducted 
 men, boys need good secular education, and as a 
 part of it require, at a very early stage of their 
 development, to get a firm hold of the conviction 
 that they must learn, practise, put forth their 
 strength and bridle in their desires, so as to attain 
 a knowledge of what they ought to do, skill and 
 readiness in doing it, and a determination not to be 
 seduced aside from that which they know they ought 
 to do. Because the education which leads to this 
 character of disposition and conduct is secular, and 
 is called secular, is it the less religious ? Does any 
 education deserve to be called religious, in which 
 this secular portion is omitted ? Whatever else 
 may be needful to make education fulfil all these 
 requirements, the education from which such secular 
 elements are excluded is irreligious. To omit 
 conduct-teaching and to substitute word-teaching 
 in its place to neglect to form and exercise the 
 understanding is more than " not holy," it is 
 " unholy." To load the memory with words, 
 regardless of their meaning or want of meaning,
 
 70 WHAT STOPS THE WAY? OB, 
 
 and to accustom the lips to sound them, is to shut 
 out the young from some of the chances of escaping 
 the damage likely to be done to them in the name 
 of religion. Supposing, then, that education in 
 which the secular elements are exclusively attended 
 to may be called " not holy," that in which they 
 are omitted or ill attended to must be " unholy." 
 
 Some years ago, it was objected by one of our 
 so-called religious men, after listening to a lesson 
 meant to be a sample of conduct-teaching as already 
 described, " You teach worldly wisdom." The 
 teacher thus addressed, so far from defending 
 himself against the intended imputation, said, 
 " Granted, I accept your expression. And will 
 you tell me wherein worldly wisdom is opposed to 
 heavenly wisdom?" Your "religious " man is more 
 practised in making than in parrying thrusts. His 
 security depends upon his reputation for invulner- 
 ability. That gone, his feebleness is exposed. He 
 is armed for aggression and mischief, not for 
 defence. After turning over in vain all the stores 
 of his capacious theological memory, he was obliged 
 to confess that worldly wisdom, " properly taught,"
 
 OUR TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 71 
 
 is not opposed to heavenly wisdom. " I don't say 
 that I teach worldly wisdom properly, but I wish 
 and mean to do so," rejoined the teacher. " And 
 I will be grateful to you or to anybody else for 
 pointing out where I am misled, so that I may 
 correct my mistakes and teach what I intend 
 worldly wisdom." The man of "heavenly wisdom " 
 having no corrections to offer, the teacher asked if 
 he might understand that, in his opinion, worldly 
 wisdom properly taught is not opposed to heavenly 
 wisdom. That he admitted was his opinion. " May 
 I ask further," continued the teacher, "whether 
 worldly wisdom is not an essential part of * heavenly 
 wisdom ? ' " Again he was at fault. From what he 
 had heard, he was aware that worldly wisdom, so 
 far as it had been expounded, meant knowledge 
 how to acquire and apply wealth, and that without 
 wealth charity was impotent and almost meaningless, 
 since it would be impossible, without wealth, to feed 
 the hungry, to clothe the naked, to shelter the 
 houseless, to cure the sick, to teach the ignorant. 
 " Worldly wisdom " was but a weapon drawn from 
 the clerical quiver, powerless to wound when striking
 
 72 WHAT STOPS THE WAY ? OR, 
 
 against one armed with worldly wisdom, or with 
 common sense and common humanity welded 
 together. 
 
 Some instruction may be gleaned from a little 
 closer examination of what is implied by " heavenly 
 wisdom," as thus invidiously contrasted with 
 " worldly wisdom." Can it be shown that " heavenly 
 wisdom " or the " perfection of wisdom " ever 
 disregards human well-being, or teaches how human 
 well-being is procurable independently of worldly 
 wisdom ? To scorn or disparage worldly wisdom 
 is to scorn heavenly wisdom, or ignorantly to misap- 
 prehend it. It may be said that, since human 
 well-being is dependent upon heavenly wisdom, we 
 ought to long and labour for heavenly wisdom 
 above all things. But long as we may, if we would 
 reach what we long for, we must labour in the right 
 way. Heavenly wisdom is worldly wisdom made 
 perfect, and is approachable by man only through 
 secular or worldly means. If we would learn 
 whether a man had attained heavenly wisdom, or 
 how near he had approached to it, must we not 
 search for and examine the secular or worldly signs
 
 OUR TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 73 
 
 by which his claims to heavenly wisdom can alone 
 be judged ? Has he, from his youth upwards, been 
 working and learning and applying his knowledge 
 so as to make himself a benefactor, according to his 
 opportunities, of his fellow-men ? Or has he been 
 satisfied, like a beast of the fields, to accept such 
 fruits of other people's labour as were bestowed upon 
 him, and to consume and enjoy them, undisturbed 
 by the agonizing cries of multitudes living or dying 
 around him? Heavenly wisdom, or as near an 
 approach to it as can be made by man, might be 
 conceded to the first, but must be denied to the 
 second. It must also be denied to the millionaire, 
 who only shows signs of consciousness that misery, 
 the consequence of ignorance, is spreading unchecked 
 around him by the "religious " efforts which, in his 
 " dismay," he makes to oppose those who would 
 introduce education to check it for the future. 
 
 Teachers who think that knowledge is requisite 
 as well as earnestness to fit them for their vocation, 
 and that a little modesty and diffidence may be 
 advantageously combined with both, will be con- 
 scious that " heavenly wisdom " is more likely to
 
 74 WHAT STOPS THE WAY? OE, 
 
 be improperly taught than " worldly wisdom." It 
 will be obvious to them that one safeguard against 
 this greater danger is to confine themselves to 
 teaching heavenly wisdom through its subordinate 
 worldly wisdom. Worldly wisdom is human, prac- 
 tical, and definite. Heavenly wisdom is nothing 
 if it be not all that and something besides. 
 
 Heavenly wisdom stands related to worldly 
 wisdom much as religion stands to goodness. Good- 
 ness admits of being judged of through conduct 
 through the conduct of man to man and to society. 
 The former cannot be separated, in man's limited 
 capacity, from the latter, without danger. To 
 attempt to teach, to inculcate, to enforce "religion" 
 regardless of goodness, would be to spread ignorance, 
 superstition, and desolation over the land. All 
 history bears witness to the evils inflicted upon 
 the world, not by religion, but by men acting in 
 its name. There is no abomination, no species 
 of atrocity, which has not been perpetrated by men 
 in that holy name. Let us of this generation 
 beware lest we add to the iniquity of suffering 
 children to be deprived of education, by pretending
 
 OUR TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 75 
 
 that it is religion which necessitates our doing so. 
 As commerce has been relieved from the restrictions 
 imposed upon it in the name of "protection," so 
 let education be relieved from the obstructions 
 placed in its way under the pretence of helping 
 it on by "religion." Ignorance and pauperism 
 have taken deep root among us. Education is 
 invoked to eradicate them. Its aid is seen to be 
 indispensable. Conspirators are plotting against it. 
 They must be resisted; and not the less watch- 
 fully and energetically because "religion" is their 
 pass-word. 
 
 To return to the point from which we started: 
 It is admitted that there are vast numbers of people 
 among us ill-lodged, ill-clothed, and ill-fed, and, as 
 a consequence, suffering greatly from disease and ill 
 health, as well as from want. Grieved as we may 
 be to be compelled to make this confession, we 
 cannot, in the present state of our knowledge, 
 affect to be surprised. For we know that ignorance, 
 drunkenness, improvidence and dishonesty prevail 
 widely, and that these failings and vices always 
 bring want and misery along with them. We' also
 
 76 WHAT STOPS THE WAY? OK, 
 
 know that there is but one means of preventing 
 the growth of these failings and vices, and that 
 is Education, or a course of instruction which will 
 impart to the young the knowledge necessary for 
 good self-guidance, combined with a course of dis- 
 cipline which will impart to them the disposition 
 to act in harmony with what their intelligence 
 recommends. 
 
 There is no occasion to discuss here whether 
 any or what efforts, besides those comprised under 
 the head of education, are called for in order to 
 prevent the continuance of like misery. It is 
 sufficient for our purpose to state that, what- 
 ever efforts may be made to avert future misery, 
 education must form a part of them, if they are not 
 to be vain. 
 
 The tendency of the times, happily, is to concur 
 in these views, although as yet they have been very 
 partially and imperfectly acted upon. For this 
 backwardness in making conduct keep pace with 
 conviction some, if not a sufficient, excuse has been 
 offered. Attention has been called to the "verbal 
 illusions " which have permitted a shadow or phan-
 
 OUR TWO GREAT DIFFICULTIES. 77 
 
 torn to be passed off as the substance or reality 
 of education, and to the " religious illusions " which 
 have induced some well-disposed people to obstruct 
 all education, because they could not force upon 
 others, in combination with education, what was not 
 considered and would not be accepted as religion 
 under its name. When these illusions are dispelled, 
 as they cannot fail soon -to be, efforts will be made 
 and vigorously followed up, and no relaxation in 
 them endured, till education will have become as 
 certain for each child as its very existence. 
 
 What arrangements or organization ought to be 
 adopted by the Government, or by society at large, 
 to supplement the efforts of individuals, or to com- 
 pensate to children for the absence or negligence 
 of their own parents ; whether there is to be a 
 general rate, or local rating, or no rate, voluntary 
 effort stimulated by a higher spiritual instruction 
 being all - sufficient, may be considered on some 
 future occasion. This much may be hazarded here 
 without any danger : Clearer conceptions of what 
 ought to be aimed at by education must take pre- 
 cedence of increased efforts to extend it, if the good
 
 78 WHAT STOPS THE WAY? 
 
 expected from it is to be realized. Let clearer 
 views concerning education once be made to prevail, 
 all fears for any want of its adequate extension 
 may be dismissed.
 
 PART II.
 
 HINTS CONCERNING THE WAY. 
 
 A KEEN sense of difficulties in the way is quite 
 compatible with a very imperfect knowledge of the 
 way itself. Of the two, however, a knowledge of 
 the way is by far the more important. Having done 
 our best to point out, in order to remove, the difficul- 
 ties, our task would be incomplete if we left off 
 without giving, or attempting to give, some clearer 
 and more precise indications by which the right way 
 may be distinguished from the many wrong ones 
 which have led, and are still leading, to a journey's 
 end very different from the one hoped for. We now 
 propose to make the attempt, though at the risk of 
 some repetition. There is less blame in telling the 
 wayfarer his way more than once, than in neglecting 
 to tell him at all. 
 
 6
 
 82 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 Whither would we go ? and whence do we start ? 
 We wish to arrive at a healthy and vigorous maturity, 
 with knowledge and a disposition to act so as to 
 promote the general well-being, since with that 
 knowledge and disposition each is best able to 
 secure his own well-being. We start from infancy, 
 feebleness, and ignorance. How small a proportion 
 of those who have started can, hitherto, be said to 
 have reached .the desired end ! How many have 
 broken down by the way, and how many have left 
 ignorance to be landed, not in knowledge, but in 
 prejudice and superstition obstructors, not pro- 
 moters, of well-being ! 
 
 The incidents of the way were at one time 
 thought to be beyond human cognizance and control, 
 and the means available for securing a speedy and 
 safe arrival were little understood. Wiser thoughts 
 and more knowledge are now dawning upon us. 
 But there is much to be done to raise our practice to 
 a level with knowledge long familiar to a few, to 
 say nothing of the knowledge lately added to our 
 former stores and generally accepted. 
 
 While the various operations of industry are
 
 THE WAY. 83 
 
 proceeding in their regular course, efforts are being 
 perpetually made by a few among us to find out and 
 adopt new methods by which better results may be 
 attained with the same, or even with less labour. 
 When we consider the results of these efforts, we 
 cannot but be struck with the magnitude of the 
 success which has attended them. And when we 
 consider the energy with which similar efforts are 
 persevered in, we cannot but be struck with the 
 confidence felt by those who make them that many 
 better methods of production have yet to be discovered 
 and applied. 
 
 Until exception is taken to the conclusion that all 
 these efforts are highly commendable, and that the 
 results achieved are a great blessing to mankind, it 
 might be assumed that nobody could view them with 
 other feelings than those of delight and gratulation. 
 But exception has been taken. It has been objected, 
 and not without some appearance of reason, to 
 people who are in the habit of pointing with 
 unmixed satisfaction to these triumphs of industry, 
 that large masses of mankind seem to derive little, 
 if any, benefit from them. Granting, it is insisted
 
 84 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 that more of the necessaries and comforts of life 
 are produced, the enjoyments derivable from these 
 sources are as completely shut off from a large 
 portion of society as if they existed for nobody. 
 
 In the presence of surrounding facts, there 
 certainly is no escape from the admission that an 
 increase of wealth in this country, steadily pro- 
 gressive for many years, has been quite compatible, 
 thus far, with an undiminished number of individuals 
 suffering, in some of its many forms, from the conse- 
 quence of insufficiency of shelter, clothing, and food. 
 If it be true that while the population of this island 
 has increased from ten to twenty millions, the per- 
 centage of paupers has diminished from eight to five 
 per cent., not only will our pauper population be 
 greater, but possibly, being more closely crowded 
 together, their sufferings may be aggravated. The 
 contrast, also, between their unimproved state 
 and the improved state of others, is painfully 
 conspicuous. 
 
 Nor are we allowed to confine our attention to 
 the strictly pauper class, when estimating the extent 
 of privation which is compatible with the great increase
 
 THE WAY. 85 
 
 of wealth consequent upon greater industrial capacity. 
 They who are most intimately acquainted with the 
 dwellings and modes of living of the much larger 
 numbers that are on the verge of pauperism, con- 
 stantly in danger of being driven upon the rates, 
 describe their suffering as more intense than that 
 of the actual paupers. 
 
 Year after year, as first one calamity and then 
 another adds to the extent and bitterness of the 
 suffering from ordinary privation, when the inter- 
 vention of charity on a larger scale than usual is 
 brought to bear, the confession is wrung from us, 
 unwilling as we may be to make it, that charitable 
 contributions are unequal to do more than effect a 
 trifling alleviation of the suffering crying for relief. 
 
 Nothing short of a well-founded conviction that 
 a state of society in which a large mass of paupers, 
 with a larger mass of poor verging upon pauperism, 
 is a part of the inevitable future, as it is an 
 unquestionable fact of the present, can justify our 
 turning aside from the consideration of the means 
 by which the destitution hitherto present among us, 
 the relief of which has ever been beyond our
 
 86 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 resources, may be prevented or greatly diminished 
 in the future. 
 
 If at the end of the last half of this century, the 
 population of this island is to he again doubled, as it 
 was in the first half, and the proportion of paupers, 
 were, beyond all present appearance, to be reduced 
 to three per cent, we should still have a largely 
 increased mass of pauperism, with a corresponding 
 increase of those living on the verge of pauperism. 
 
 The probability of such a future, not to mention 
 the possibility of a worse, can hardly be contemplated 
 without a shudder by those who wish to look 
 forward hopefully. But is such a future pre- 
 ventible ? and if so, by what means ? An attempt 
 to point out some of the means which seem available, 
 although as yet unused or less used than they might 
 be, will furnish at the same time an opportunity for 
 judging whether the sad future seen to be possible 
 may be prevented. 
 
 A clear perception of our present position in this 
 country, as compared with the past, what has 
 made it as good as it is, and what may have 
 prevented its being better, will prepare us to
 
 THE WAY. 87 
 
 enter upon the further inquiry which may be 
 needful. 
 
 We have not far nor long to look for some of 
 the causes which have enabled us to live in our 
 present numbers and with our present comfort. 
 While the island and the elements of power and 
 fertility inherent in it are much as they were 1000 
 years ago, the capacity of its inhabitants to turn 
 these elements to account usefully for man has 
 been steadily on the increase from century to century. 
 And during the last century the progress has perhaps 
 been as great as during the previous nine centuries. 
 This increased capacity of man is resolvable into his 
 increased knowledge, and his increased aptitude in 
 applying his knowledge, and in using what he has 
 been able to produce. But when we call to mind 
 the number of ill-conducted, ignorant, and incapable 
 people who form a considerable portion of our whole 
 community, can we fail to recognize that, while we 
 are as well off as we are in comparison with the 
 past on account of our improved capacity, we are 
 as ill off as we are compared with what we might 
 be on account of the incapacity which still adheres
 
 88 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 to so many of our number ? How has this advance 
 of capacity in the majority been brought about ? 
 and why has it not been imparted universally ? 
 Can it be said that the attempt has been made, 
 but in vain, and hence given up in despair? We 
 have no evidence that the attempt has been made. 
 We have not, therefore, that reason for despair. But 
 even had it been made and failed, our experience 
 in other lines of effort would warrant our expecting 
 future success through renewed efforts better directed. 
 Let us examine the state of the case more 
 minutely. The aggregation of individuals which 
 constitutes society is made up of adults passing 
 on to decay and death, and of infants advancing 
 to adolescence to take their places. If we ask 
 whether the new-born children will inherit the 
 capacities of the adults whom they are destined to 
 replace, must not the answer be that their capacities 
 will depend, partly at least, upon the efforts made 
 to impart them ? And when we see numbers 
 ungifted with such capacities, we must suspect that 
 the efforts to impart them have not been generally 
 made, or that the efforts have been ill-directed. It
 
 THE WAY. 89 
 
 is worth inquiry whether there be not a wide scope 
 for making more as well as better effort. 
 
 The efforts required are on behalf, not merely 
 of a part but of the whole of the children, and the 
 only quarter to which we can look for these efforts 
 is the adults. The neglect of adults to make these 
 efforts, or the misdirection of their efforts, must 
 be followed by those invariable consequences of ill- 
 conduct want and suffering in some of their many 
 forms. On the other hand, a wide prevalence of 
 want, in conjunction with filth and ignorance and that 
 course of conduct which society is perpetually striving 
 to repress, makes one more than suspect that the 
 teaching and training requisite to impart the capacity 
 of good self-guidance have been omitted. 
 
 The attempt to classify the prisoners convicted 
 at our various criminal courts according as they 
 can read and write and cipher, or read only, per- 
 fectly or imperfectly, or not at all, is evidence of 
 the direction in which thoughts are running concern- 
 ing the causes of crime. And additional evidence 
 is presented to us when we read in the Times a 
 description of the frightfully neglected state of the
 
 90 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 children of drunken and utterly degraded parents, 
 under the head "How CRIMINALS ARE MADE." 
 
 People who have never seriously considered the 
 subject, and who are inveterately addicted, by mere 
 force of habit, to affirm that good conduct and ill 
 conduct each spring from congenital goodness or 
 badness of disposition, would be somewhat startled, 
 if not utterly depraved themselves, at hearing that 
 they were supposed to be capable of treating, or 
 rather ill-treating, their children in accordance with 
 their own expressed convictions. They feel, if they 
 do not know, that whatever differences may exist 
 among children at birth, their characters and attain- 
 ments will be greatly influenced by the circumstances 
 in which they are placed after birth. 
 
 In claiming effective teaching for all the young, 
 it is assumed that, without such assistance, children 
 will not grow up into intelligent men ; i.e. into 
 men knowing, at least, what they ought to do and 
 not to do as good members of society. And in 
 claiming effective training, it is assumed that 
 children will not, without such assistance, grow up 
 into well-conducted men ; i. e. into men intent
 
 THE WAY. 91 
 
 upon seeking their own enjoyment in those ways 
 alone which promote or, at all events, do not disturb 
 the enjoyment of others. Some adults, let us hope 
 very many if not most adults, know what all people 
 ought to do and not to do; they know that this 
 knowledge can be imparted to most children ; and 
 they know also that most children may be trained 
 to take pride and pleasure in doing some things, 
 and in refraining from doing other things, according 
 to the good or evil consequences which they have 
 learned will follow from them. 
 
 While some, perhaps the more important, part 
 of the teaching and training of children may best 
 be conducted in their parents' homes, another part 
 is much better conducted in schools, or in appro- 
 priate buildings, where the children are gathered 
 together in numbers under experienced and specially 
 instructed teachers. The remarks already made are 
 our justification for assuming here, that all children 
 ought to gain admittance to some such school. Let 
 us now endeavour to give a condensed description 
 of the state of intelligence and disposition in which 
 they ought to leave it, when summoned to take
 
 92 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 their share of the work of life. Nothing need be 
 said by us about those attainments which everybody 
 admits ought to be possessed by all without exception 
 such as those of reading, writing, ciphering, &c. 
 Our attention shall be concentrated upon the state 
 of intelligence and disposition upon the state of 
 consciousness inducing and directing efforts which, 
 amid all individual varieties, ought to be a common 
 characteristic. "With matters such as the following, 
 all ought to be familiarly acquainted, upon whatever 
 other matters they may be allowed to be ignorant 
 or imperfectly informed : 
 
 1. The earth, or that portion of it into which 
 we were born, has become what it is, through a 
 long succession of years, by human labour, can 
 only be maintained as it is by equally well applied 
 labour, and can only be improved by better applied 
 labour. He who omits to do his share of work, 
 according to his strength and capacity, whatever 
 may be the customs and arrangements of society, 
 lives by the labour of others, and is in striking 
 contrast with him who strives to do his share of 
 work, and is besides inspired with the ambition
 
 THE WAY. 93 
 
 of contributing by his labour to the maintenance 
 and solace of the incapable. The first is one of 
 the encumbrances, as the latter is one of the 
 mainstays, of society. Were all men of the latter 
 description, great progress would already have been 
 made towards banishing destitution. 
 
 2. The earth has been made a so much more 
 comfortable abode for man than it ever was before, 
 by the superior knowledge and skill with which 
 he is able to direct his labour. A man incapable 
 of bringing to bear a fair share of knowledge and 
 skill, in combination with industrious habits, how- 
 ever deserving of our pity he may be on account 
 of the neglect of others in which his incapacity 
 may have originated, is also an encumbrance, because 
 incapable of replacing what he consumes. He who 
 is ever striving to extend and improve the know- 
 ledge and skill with which he performs his work 
 is one of the saviours, upon whom society relies 
 to be sustained against the idle and ignorant who 
 would pull it down, and to be helped forward to a 
 brighter and happier future. 
 
 3. Not only must our ancestors have worked
 
 94 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 intelligently and skilfully, but they must have 
 abstained from consuming the whole of the products 
 of their industry, in order to make the earth as 
 comfortable a place of residence as possible for their 
 children and children's children, as well as for 
 themselves. He who uses the products of his own 
 industry and those which he has inherited in this 
 spirit, shows himself worthy of the good bequeathed 
 to him by transmitting it unimpaired and, if 
 possible, improved to those who are to come after 
 him. However pressing the wants of the present 
 may be, the attempt to satisfy them must be regu- 
 lated by a due consideration of the wants of the 
 future with the means likely to be available for 
 satisfying them. The products of industry may 
 be so consumed as to inflict damage, as well as 
 to build up health and strength and ward off pain 
 and sickness. Drunkenness and gluttony are names 
 given to two of the forms of this pernicious kind 
 of consumption ; and unthrift serves to denote 
 that kind of consumption which leaves unheeded 
 the claims of the future. 
 
 However inexplicable and intolerable the unequal
 
 THE WAY. 95 
 
 shares of enjoyment from the products of industry, 
 and however capricious the distribution of work 
 allotted to each may appear whether they may be 
 hereafter accounted for and justified or altered no 
 pains ought to be spared to cause these great truths 
 to stand out clearly, and to be impressed deeply upon 
 everybody : whatever other causes must concur to 
 make this earth a comfortable residence for man, 
 they will avail but little without his own intelligence 
 and good habits. He must be possessed of indus- 
 trious habits, with knowledge and skill to give 
 them the best direction, and with a capacity of 
 deriving a large part of his present enjoyment 
 from the contemplation of what he has put and 
 is putting aside for the future. 
 
 Turning, for a moment, from the young, who 
 have to be taught and trained in the observance 
 and practice of precepts based upon these truths, 
 to adults, with whom we must deal as we find them, 
 we cannot but observe how many there are who act 
 as if these truths were unknown .to them ; how many 
 there are who acknowledge them who confess that 
 they are undeniable, and yet ignore them in their
 
 96 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 conduct. As if ignorance would not supply the world 
 with a sufficiency of misery, the ignoring or non-use 
 of knowledge is brought to assist in adding to misery 
 in the present, and in perpetuating it in the future. 
 Without the admonitions and warnings derivable 
 from attention to these facts, many difficulties and 
 obscurities might impede the progress of those who 
 are bent upon interpreting the book of life so as 
 to extract from it trustworthy rules of conduct. 
 
 4. Let the earth be ever so well prepared for the 
 reception of new-comers, the possession and control 
 of the products of industry must be vested in adults. 
 Very little observation, however, suffices to convince 
 us that many adults are not possessed of any portion 
 of these products ; and among those possessed of 
 some, are many who have much less than will suffice 
 for a comfortable and healthy existence. These 
 inequalities of distribution, on the shift as they 
 perpetually are, present themselves to our eyes as 
 plainly as the heavenly bodies above and around 
 us and their movements. How long the inhabitants 
 of earth remained in ignorance of the laws which 
 regulate the latter, and by what means that
 
 THE WAY. 97 
 
 ignorance has been removed, is pretty generally 
 known. Men are still very ill-informed concerning 
 the former, and talk and write and act accordingly. 
 By applying our knowledge of the means by which 
 ignorance concerning the movements of the heavenly 
 bodies was got rid of, we shall be assisted in the 
 efforts necessary for getting rid of the ignorance 
 which prevails concerning the apparently capricious 
 distribution of wealth. 
 
 5. However capriciously possessions may seem to 
 be distributed, an incessant movement is observable 
 from one set of hands to another. They who begin 
 their career without wealth, come into possession, 
 some by inheritance, some by gift, and some by the 
 sale of their services or work. In all these ways 
 wealth is voluntarily surrendered to them by its 
 previous possessors. There are other modes of 
 attempting to obtain wealth from its possessors 
 against their consent by fraud or by force. But 
 these attempts are resisted by society are forbidden 
 by laws, and the public force prepared to secure 
 obedience to them. The laws which declare who 
 shall be entitled to possession confer the " rights 
 
 7
 
 98 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 of property." The laws by which those rights are 
 guaranteed against the interference of others not 
 declared to possess them, constitute what is called 
 " protection of property." Laws for the protection 
 of property would avail but little in any community 
 where the majority did not feel respect for property, 
 whether its security were guaranteed or not by law. 
 Indeed it is difficult to conceive how laws for the 
 protection of property could ever have been thought 
 of, or, if thought of, enacted and enforced in any 
 community, till some of its members had acquired 
 feelings of respect for property, and many more 
 had become sensible that such feelings ought to 
 prevail. 
 
 Feelings of respect for property are not the 
 creations of law. They are the creations of judicious 
 teaching and training teaching to explain what a 
 miserable horde of savages men must be without 
 respect for property, training to cultivate habits 
 and conduct in harmony with feelings of respect 
 for property. Respect for property is no more to 
 be expected without judicious teaching and training, 
 than intelligence, industry, skill, economy, and
 
 THE WAY. 99 
 
 sobriety. Deficiency of respect for property implies 
 deficiency in the other industrial qualities, and hence 
 deficiency of wealth and its consequences. Kespect 
 for property, in perfection, implies reliance of the 
 larger part of mankind at one period of their lives, 
 and of a considerable part during the whole of their 
 lives, upon the exchange of their labour for the 
 means of subsistence and enjoyment. 
 
 6. As the future existence of a community in 
 undiminished happiness depends, among other 
 things, upon the continued replacement of the 
 wealth consumed, and as its existence in increased 
 happiness, or with a diminished intermixture of 
 misery, requires that the wealth consumed should 
 be more than replaced, it is obviously desirable 
 that some of the possessors of wealth should keep 
 both these purposes in view. Our lot being cast 
 in an age when the work of forming society has not 
 been imposed upon us, but rather that of adopting 
 and, if needful, of improving one ready formed, our 
 first step, in this state of circumstances, should be 
 to observe what has been and is being done in order 
 to meet the wants and requirements of all parties. 
 
 72
 
 100 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 Very little observation suffices to bring to our notice, 
 that some of the possessors of wealth buy services 
 and labour from those who are willing to sell them, 
 and pay to other possessors of wealth for the use 
 of the wealth which they are willing to lend. The 
 possessors of wealth, besides, unite together, some- 
 times in small, sometimes in large numbers, to 
 undertake works which could not otherwise be done 
 so well, if at all. These industrial customs and 
 arrangements seem well adapted to suit 
 
 a. Those who, having no wealth, are glad to 
 
 exchange their labour for wealth. 
 
 b. Those who, though having some wealth, prefer 
 
 to lend it to be employed by others, so that 
 their whole time and thoughts may be 
 devoted to the acquisition of more knowledge, 
 skill, and experience ; whether to make their 
 labour and services better worth buying, or 
 to qualify themselves to buy and direct the 
 labour and services of others. 
 
 c. Those who have a capacity and inclination 
 
 for guiding the labour and services of 
 others, and who can attract the wealth of
 
 THE WAY. 101 
 
 others, whether by loan or by association, 
 to aid their own efforts to replace with 
 increase the wealth consumed. 
 The names which are given to these contracts 
 and to the parties who make them are of secondary 
 importance. Of course they should be learned, and 
 be well used after they have been learned. But 
 what is of primary importance is, that all should 
 ask and be able to answer to themselves, whether 
 it be desirable that such contracts should be made 
 should be sanctioned should be approved and 
 encouraged ; or that they should be barely tolerated 
 and permitted, or even be condemned and forbidden. 
 If the answer be in favour of these contracts, it 
 follows that, when made, they ought to be faithfully 
 performed. For it is plain that the parties who 
 enter into these engagements do so in the expectation 
 that the engagements will be performed. And 
 expectation, when society is no longer in its 
 infancy, is the offspring of experience, which has 
 taught us that although breaches of contract are 
 not unknown, they are few when compared with 
 the number of contracts faithfully performed. If
 
 102 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 experience had taught us differently, it would have 
 taught us at the same time, that the contracts were 
 much fewer than they would be if their performance 
 could be more confidently relied upon that less 
 work was done, less wealth produced, and less 
 well-being secured. Honesty, trustworthiness, or 
 fidelity in performing engagements, must therefore 
 be added to the other industrial qualities requisite 
 to maintain an advanced state of society and to assist 
 in its further advancement. It need not be asked 
 when people ought to begin to be honest, or what 
 services of adults are requisite on behalf of the young 
 to secure an early growth of honesty. 
 
 7. There are some consequences frequently com- 
 plained of and deeply to be deplored, which have 
 hitherto followed, if they have not resulted from, 
 the industrial arrangements and customs just men- 
 tioned. Some, who sell their labour and services, 
 earn enormous incomes ; and others cannot earn 
 the means of even decent subsistence : not to 
 mention the rates of remuneration between these 
 extremes, little adapted to the relative wants of 
 those who receive them. If employers were com-
 
 THE WAY. 103 
 
 pelled to distribute the wages-fund at their disposal 
 among the labourers, not according to their estimate 
 of the producing powers, but according to the 
 wants, of each labourer, or rather if it were vainly 
 attempted to compel them to do so, what hopes 
 would there be of the increase of our insufficient 
 store of wealth, or even of its replacement as fast 
 as it is consumed? When the wages-fund is 
 distributed according to the producing powers or 
 industrial qualities of each labourer, insufficient 
 wages imply either a deficiency in these qualities 
 or an insufficient wages-fund. "Be possessed of 
 these qualities," say employers to labourers, " and 
 we will seek to buy your labour. Come without 
 some or all of them, and we must decline to give 
 you more than it's worth, or to buy it at all." If 
 blame attach to anybody for the prevalence of 
 insufficient wages, does it attach to employers who 
 are ready to pay well for good service; or to 
 others, whoever they may be, who connive at the 
 rearing of children into men, miscalled labourers, 
 since their labour is worthless ? ' 
 
 Some of the conflicting opinions current, with
 
 104 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 the opposite lines of conduct to which they give 
 rise, ought not to be left unnoticed. There are 
 labourers who strive to place limits to the quantity 
 of work which the more expert are capable of per- 
 forming. Labourers striving in this way are in 
 opposition to employers who distribute the wages- 
 fund at their disposal, on the principle of giving 
 to each labourer wages proportioned to the estimate 
 which they form of his producing power. Labourers 
 striving in this way attempt to impose limits upon 
 production, while employers are intent upon making 
 the labour which they have purchased as productive 
 as possible. The first, whatever countervailing 
 advantages they may secure, impede the growth 
 of the future wages-fund, whereas the second are 
 aiding it : employers or payers of wages doing that 
 which will conduce to higher wages in the future, 
 labourers or receivers of wages doing that which 
 will keep down future wages. 
 
 "Workmen who can in the same time produce 
 twice as much as the larger number of their fellow- 
 workmen, and forbear from putting forth their 
 strength to earn double wages, have been held up
 
 THE WAY. 105 
 
 to admiration as " self-denying men." But is self- 
 denying commendable, irrespectively of its purpose ? 
 Let us compare two sets of capable men, each intent 
 upon self-denial for the good of other workmen and 
 of society. One set refrains from doing more work 
 than the less capable. The other set does its work 
 as well and as quickly as possible ; but instead of 
 consuming, saves and transfers into capital the extra 
 wages awarded to the extra work, i.e. it adds them 
 to the wages-fund. Both sets are equally self- 
 denying, so far as they abstain from diminishing 
 the wages-fund. But the latter adds more to the 
 wealth of the community by the full exercise of its 
 industrial capacity, and puts itself in the way of 
 the improvement which generally follows from such 
 exercise ; while the former shuts itself out from 
 that means of self-improvement and of adding to 
 the wealth of the community. 
 
 Epithets conveying praise and blame must not 
 be allowed to take precedence of reason. They 
 must wait upon it. A workman ought not to be 
 discouraged in his efforts to obtain as large wages 
 as possible by imputations of selfishness, or to be
 
 106 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 flattered into slackness of effort by the laudation 
 bestowed upon his self-denial. Whether a man 
 be thrifty or miserly cannot be decided by the mere 
 knowledge of his abstinence from consuming wealth, 
 but by the knowledge besides of the purpose for 
 which he abstains. 
 
 Limits ought to be placed upon the quantity of 
 work undertaken or performed, but not for the 
 purpose of producing little. Considerations of health 
 and comfort ought to be kept in view. The use of 
 wealth being to promote well-being, intentionally to 
 sacrifice the well-being of others in the pursuit of 
 wealth, is an act of atrocity ; to sacrifice one's own, 
 an error of judgment. One of the functions of 
 reason of the capacity of self-guidance, is to enable 
 men to judge for themselves the quantity and quality 
 of the work which they ought to undertake. 
 
 The distinction between a protracted strain and 
 a temporary strain upon the powers, is obvious. The 
 latter may frequently be endured without hurt. And 
 besides, in the performance of social duties, man 
 learns to think and act for the society of which he is 
 a member, and not for himself apart from society.
 
 THE WAY. 107 
 
 He braves contagion, encounters clanger, mans the 
 pump, launches the life-boat, and confronts the 
 burglar and invader. 
 
 Capacity for good self-guidance, aided at starting 
 in life by the experience and advice of elders, is the 
 one thing needful to enable each individual to seek 
 and select the best among the numerous and various 
 kinds of work in which he sees others engaged around 
 him. All that is required of him is, that he should 
 work to the best of his ability in whatever he under- 
 takes. It is open to him to change his employment 
 if he should have made a wrong selection in the first 
 instance, or if accident or ill-health should partially 
 incapacitate him. He must also be prepared to 
 accommodate himself to the changes which may be 
 introduced into the line of employment chosen by 
 him, or to shift to another. There is work for the 
 strong and the feeble, for the hardy and the delicate, 
 for the clear-sighted and the blind, for the adven- 
 turous and the quietly disposed. Not any one of 
 these is shut out from useful employment, if he 
 be possessed of the industrial qualities. There is 
 work which asks for every superiority of organiza-
 
 108 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 tion and accommodates itself almost to any inferiority, 
 whether of the eye, the ear, the voice, the taste, or 
 the touch. There is continuous and intermittent 
 work work at sea and on land, at home and abroad, 
 by night and by day, in town and country, in the 
 open air and under cover, sociable and solitary. 
 Certain customs and arrangements, the results of 
 past experience, have established themselves in 
 various kinds of employment. Many of these may 
 be open to improvement. Many must make way for 
 others, rendered necessary by the introduction of 
 better methods of production. One step towards 
 discovering and adopting the best industrial organiza- 
 tion, is the acquisition by each individual of the 
 capacity of good self-guidance, Avhereby he may 
 select the kind of employment most in accordance 
 with his tastes and powers, and throw himself into 
 it with the twofold purpose of excellent results in 
 workmanship and of self-improvement. Others 
 equally reasonable combining their efforts with his, 
 will scarcely fail to bring about that organization 
 which will most conduce to the productiveness of 
 industry and the well-being of the industrious.
 
 THE WAY. 109 
 
 8. However much the arrangements and combi- 
 nations of industrial life may be modified, it is 
 difficult to conceive how some such relationship as 
 that between employers and employed can ever be 
 superseded. The former have capital, partly their 
 own, partly lent to them by others, with which they 
 desire to earn profit, and which they cannot earn 
 unless they attract and engage the services of 
 labourers. It may be assumed that employers, as a 
 rule, are intent upon earning for themselves as large 
 profits as possible, with the capitals and efforts 
 which they choose to devote to the business of pro- 
 duction. They are liable to mistakes, and will 
 occasionally be thwarted, but they will aim at this 
 result to the best of their ability; and so far as 
 they succeed, these other results will also be 
 attained : 
 
 a. The largest possible addition will be made 
 
 to the wealth of the whole community. 
 6. Encouragement will be given to all labourers 
 disposed to improve and apply their pro- 
 ducing powers ; because .employers, in their 
 efforts to earn as large profits as possible,
 
 110 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 will distribute the wages-fund at their dis- 
 posal among labourers according to their 
 estimate of the producing powers of each. 
 
 c. Capital will be transported to labourers, 
 
 wherever they may be found capable and 
 ready to work under it profitably to 
 employers ; or, if capital can only be em- 
 ployed to the best advantage in places 
 where labourers are not, or not in sufficient 
 number, labourers will be attracted to the 
 capital. The efforts of employers and em- 
 ployed equally tend to bring about that 
 combination of capital and labour which will 
 lead to the largest production of the com- 
 modities most desired ; the first seeking the 
 largest profit, the second the largest wages. 
 
 d. The best forms of union between capital and 
 
 labour will be promoted by the efforts of 
 those capitalists whom it does not suit to 
 employ their capitals, to lend their capitals 
 to employers who can at the same time give 
 good security with the highest rate of 
 interest : employers who can afford to give
 
 THE WAY. Ill 
 
 the higher rate of interest being those 
 
 who can earn the larger rate of profit, or 
 
 employ labour most judiciously. 
 
 It ought not to be kept from the notice of pupils, 
 
 that these propositions are utterly irreconcilable with 
 
 certain opinions widely current in the world ; and it 
 
 is desirable that the propositions which alone can 
 
 warrant such opinions should be clearly stated, so 
 
 that there shall be no mistake as to the necessity of 
 
 abandoning one or the other set of propositions. 
 
 Capital and labour, capitalists and labourers, 
 employers and employed, according to what has 
 been represented above, are mutually attracted towards 
 each other. They thrive or fail together. In oppo- 
 sition to this, the produce of capital and labour has 
 been represented as a fixed quantity, to be divided 
 between employers and employed. Whence the 
 inference, that the larger the share of the one, the 
 smaller the share of the other; that wages rise as 
 profits fall, and profits rise as wages fall ; and that 
 capital and labour, although unproductive apart, 
 come together as antagonists. It is easy to conceive 
 how a feeling not the most friendly, a struggle
 
 112 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 breaking outi nto bitter hostility, might grow out 
 of this mode of viewing the relative positions of 
 employers and employed. People under the influence 
 of such views may challenge their adversaries to 
 deny, that a struggle is perpetually going on between 
 employers and employed. Their adversaries, demur- 
 ring only to the use of a term which implies 
 ill-feeling, will admit that each party has constantly 
 in mind, the one to obtain as good wages as possible, 
 the other to obtain the greatest producing power 
 at the lowest wages. Obstacles, familiar to everybody, 
 prevent the ready coming together on all occasions 
 of the employers who can offer the best wages and the 
 labourers who can offer the best and most suitable 
 service, so that between the two the largest addition 
 may be made to the future wages-fund. Nevertheless, 
 the tendency of the efforts of each is to bring 
 together the labourers who can tender the service 
 required, and the employers who can best pay for it, 
 and best turn it to profitable account : the struggle, 
 if the term must be used, being rather of labourer 
 against labourer, and employer against employer, 
 than of employer against labourer.
 
 THE WAY. 113 
 
 Before dismissing the thought and the language 
 in which it is expressed, the case of employers or 
 associations of employers who grind down their 
 lahourers, ought to be examined in all its bearings. 
 There can be no difference of opinion that the 
 state of mind attributed to employers by those who 
 use the word " grind " is detestable. But, while 
 admitting its bad moral effect upon labourers, are 
 we prepared to trace any other bad effects to it ? 
 The grinding down of some labourers cannot be 
 accomplished except by leading to the employ- 
 ment of more labourers out of the same wages -fund, 
 or by leaving some of the wages-fund unemployed. 
 If the former, whence came the additional labourers ? 
 How happen they to be attracted to such an employer ? 
 Could they not do better for themselves elsewhere ? 
 Or what would they do, if this employer had not 
 got some surplus fund at his disposal by grinding 
 down other labourers ? But if the employer, through 
 grinding down his labourers, is left with a portion 
 of his wages-fund which it does not suit him to 
 employ in his own business, he will lend it, should 
 he be intent upon increasing his gains, or he will
 
 114 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 consume it for his personal enjoyment. The wages- 
 fund, however, is not diminished hy his lending it 
 it is only applied by some other employer who 
 supplies wages to some other labourers. The wages- 
 fund is diminished, if the employer consume what 
 he succeeds in holding back from labourers by 
 grinding down their wages. Apart from the odious 
 state of feeling, which may be reprobated without 
 disturbing our judgments, a grinding employer can 
 do no more than alter the distribution of the wages- 
 fund, unless he follow up the grinding down of his 
 labourers by consuming what he withholds from 
 them. The damage which he will do, or the good 
 which he will omit to do, will be through the 
 expenditure of that which had better been added 
 to the wages-fund. And our disapprobation of his 
 conduct must be extended to that of all who indulge 
 in profuse or luxurious expenditure, instead of 
 making greater contributions to an insufficient 
 wages-fund. 
 
 Grinding, or niggardly, or shabby employers will 
 probably not be those who contribute most to the 
 growth of the wages-fund, since they will not attract to
 
 THE WAY. 115 
 
 themselves the more efficient labourers, nor conciliate 
 the most zealous service from the inferior labourers 
 that they are compelled to put up with. Employers 
 having the control and direction of capital, and 
 being the organizers of labour, with a wider experi- 
 ence than the labourers whom they employ, may 
 be looked upon as the parties upon whom reliance 
 is principally placed for the maintenance and growth 
 of the wages-fund. Not to them, however, ought 
 we to look exclusively. For an adequate wages- 
 fund in the future, as a means of future well-being, 
 we need the joint efforts of capable labourers and 
 capable employers, who follow up their efforts by 
 judicious abstinence from consumption, or by 
 economy. 
 
 Very opposite judgments will be formed of the 
 doings, whether of labourers or of employers, according 
 as the whole or a part only of the consequences are 
 foreseen. 
 
 Labourers transfer their services from a district 
 or employment in which they are not wanted or 
 little wanted by employers, to another in which 
 they are much wanted. To judge rightly of the 
 
 82
 
 116 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 propriety of this proceeding, we must consider the 
 effect upon themselves, upon their fellow-labourers and 
 the employers whom they quit, upon society at large, 
 and upon the employers and the labourers already at 
 work in the district or business to which they transfer 
 their services. The migration of the labourers might 
 be judged very differently, according as the last effect 
 only or all the effects were considered. 
 
 The migration of the labourers might originate 
 in their own energy and anxiety to better themselves, 
 or it might be instigated by employers offering to 
 bear the charge of their removal and to pay them 
 tempting wages. The efforts of these employers 
 to earn profit will appear mischievous or beneficial, 
 according as we view the whole or part only of the 
 consequences to be expected. 
 
 Employers introduce new arrangements or new 
 contrivances which enable them to obtain much 
 larger results with the same wages-fund, or the same 
 result with a portion only of their wages-fund. A 
 displacement of labourers will occur. Some will 
 be unable to adapt themselves to the new process, 
 and must seek wages elsewhere. Some can only
 
 THE WAY. 117 
 
 be made available in an inferior capacity. Others, 
 some of whom perhaps were strangers at the time 
 of the old and inferior methods, receive higher wages. 
 Meanwhile, the same wages-fund enables the employer 
 to earn a larger profit and add greatly to the previous 
 wealth. According as the introduction of new 
 machinery is viewed in one or all of its bearings, 
 it may be spoken of with detestation as superseding 
 the labourer, or with delight and admiration as 
 aiding labourers to produce more, and thus increase 
 the future wages-fund. 
 
 A number of labourers, at some former time in 
 advance of others, or in some particular class of work, 
 the custom in which has been to limit the entrance 
 of new-comers, are in receipt of higher wages than 
 are earned by labourers in no respect their inferiors 
 in other employments. They cling fervently, not to 
 say blindly, to their advantages. They insist upon 
 maintaining these advantages by the continued exclu- 
 sion of interlopers. It should not be overlooked, 
 that while one consequence of their combination may 
 be to secure for a time to themselves a rate of wages 
 above that which equally competent workmen can
 
 118 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 earn elsewhere ; another consequence is to shut some 
 of their fellows out of an employment which they 
 would gladly obtain, and also to risk the transfer by 
 their employers of their capital to places where as good 
 or better workmen may be obtained at lower wages. 
 
 "With the utmost efforts of employers and 
 labourers, individually and collectively, to obtain 
 for themselves the employment and service most 
 remunerative and congenial, it is hardly to be 
 expected that all, without exception, will be well- 
 suited. But while each is anxious to do the best 
 for himself the employer to earn the largest profit, 
 and the labourer to get the highest wage at the work 
 of his selection and each is liable to be thwarted in, 
 or to be shut out from, or to fall short of his expecta- 
 tions, can any line of conduct be devised or suggested, 
 whether to secure success or to mitigate disappoint- 
 ment, more likely to be efficacious for the good of all, 
 than the cultivation of those qualities which enable 
 us to become capable producers, and which prepare 
 us to make the best use of our earnings, whether 
 they be equal to, or more or less than, what we had 
 hoped for ?
 
 THE WAY. 119 
 
 An examination into the doings of employers 
 and employed, and their influence, whether for good 
 or evil, upon each other, would be inconiplete 
 without some reference to the origins of each. 
 Were they the same or different ? In some respects, 
 at least, their origins were the same. Both 
 employers and employed, if we look back a few 
 years, had been infants and children, as they now 
 are men. When did they begin to split, as it were, 
 into two divisions ? Not, certainly, till their school 
 days were over. Did they branch off at once from 
 school ? No. Very little inquiry enables us to learn, 
 that they who now occupy the position of employers 
 were, with few exceptions, in the earlier part of their 
 career, among the employed, preparing to become 
 competent for the position of employers. And here 
 it deserves to be noted, that of the young upon whose 
 education the greatest time and expense are bestowed, 
 by far the larger part are destined to rank among the 
 employed, rather than among employers in other 
 words, to occupy the professions. 
 
 Boys destined to become employers leave their 
 schools mixed indistinguishably with those destined
 
 120 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 to remain permanently among the employed. They 
 begin their industrial career together as the employed. 
 As years pass on, the separation begins ; and here it 
 behoves us to notice the conditions under which the 
 separation takes place. How many employed must 
 there be for one employer ? Whether we look at the 
 farms, the factories, the mines, the railroads, the 
 building-yards, the warehouses, the banks, or the 
 counting-houses, everywhere we see the employed 
 numerous, the employers comparatively few. We 
 also see why these proportions are likely to continue ; 
 and why, therefore, the young should have their 
 ambition pointed to something more conducive to 
 their happiness less likely to end in disappointment 
 than the position of employer, which must be 
 unattainable by most of them. 
 
 There is another matter which commends itself 
 to our attention. Well-being and contentment are 
 within, as eminence and distinction are beyond, the 
 reach of the many. Success is in store for all, with 
 rare exceptions, who start in life duly prepared and 
 directing their efforts to obtain the first. Failure is 
 equally in store for those who strive to obtain the
 
 THE WAY. 121 
 
 second. Although employers form, necessarily, a 
 small class compared with that of the labourers, 
 admission to it is far more probable than admission 
 to a distinguished post among labourers. All the 
 professions require a special course of instruction 
 and preparation, extending far into adult-life, during 
 which the means of subsistence must be obtainable 
 without earning. And the necessity of earning, long 
 before adult-age is arrived at, is, and perhaps ever 
 will be, the lot of the many. 
 
 Employers, however, do not exclusively or even 
 generally rise from the ranks of the specially 
 educated. They rise from the ranks of those who 
 early engaged themselves to employers under whom, 
 while earning wages, they might develop into capable 
 men, whether to remain among the employed, or to 
 become employers. Every one who acts up to the 
 rules of conduct indispensable for success in any 
 line, has more than once during his industrial 
 career the opportunity presented to him, directly 
 or indirectly the question is put to him expressly 
 or tacitly will you join employers or remain among 
 the employed ? They who disregard those rules of
 
 122 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 conduct have no such opportunity presented to 
 them : they are excluded from the rank of employers, 
 and barely tolerated in that of the employed. The 
 option is given, not to the incapable, but to the 
 capable that is, to those possessed of the industrial 
 virtues and, one of their fruits, capital. Will you 
 persevere in earning wages and receiving interest 
 on your capital? Or will you, either separately or 
 jointly with others, employ your own capital ? The 
 majority of those who have this option continue 
 to be labourers or wages-earners. The minority 
 embark as employers or profit-earners. There is 
 not more wisdom, more wealth, or more well-being 
 in one lot than in the other. The artisan's lot does 
 not compare unfavourably with that of the small 
 shopkeeper; nor the lot of the highly paid official 
 in a bank or large joint-stock company, or of him 
 who has attained eminence in one of the professions, 
 with that of the head or chief partner of the most 
 thriving of industrial establishments. 
 
 A teacher, master of the information of which 
 a mere sketch or outline has been given, will not 
 be likely to forget that his younger pupils can have
 
 THE WAY. 123 
 
 done but little more than obtain a glimpse of that 
 world in which he is preparing them to act their 
 part. Certain fundamental principles, which they 
 are quite as capable of understanding as their elders, 
 with some of their simpler applications, and the 
 rules of conduct growing out of them, are what alone 
 he will attempt to teach at first. Progressively with 
 the knowledge which he unfolds before them and 
 which he assists them to make their own, their 
 reasoning faculties expand, not only to the conception 
 of its importance, but of its insignificance compared 
 with that wider knowledge desirable for them, and 
 of which their mental habits and discipline are to 
 prepare them to obtain a command.* 
 
 While the highest perfection and the widest 
 extension of knowledge with its applications must 
 be reserved for later years, the scope for that which 
 is communicable within the limits of school years 
 may be wider than is generally imagined. 
 
 * A specimen of what the writer considers the best method of 
 imparting the kind of instruction "set forth the fruit of many 
 years' experience in teaching may be found in a little book 
 entitled "Progressive Lessons in Social Science," published by 
 Smith, Elder & Co.
 
 124 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 It will have been observed, that in the preceding 
 expositions and illustrations of the kind of work 
 awaiting the young, and of the conditions to be 
 attended to in undertaking it, all considerations 
 arising out of the use of money have been excluded, 
 or more properly deferred for a time. This has 
 been done in order that those conditions which 
 are quite independent of money, and if hidden 
 are not superseded by its use, may be clearly seen. 
 Once clearly seen, they are not likely to be for- 
 gotten. When learners are in the way of investi- 
 gating for themselves the circumstances which 
 determine the rates of profit, interest, and wages, 
 and their fluctuations, they will be on their guard 
 against the false appearances under which these 
 phenomena are frequently presented when spoken 
 of in money-language. Wages, profit, and interest 
 are measured, and received, and paid in money, 
 but they are not money. And the fluctuations in 
 them are independent of money, although apt to be 
 distorted in appearance; sometimes hidden, sometimes 
 diminished, and sometimes magnified to the eye 
 unskilled to distinguish them through that medium.
 
 THE WAY. 125 
 
 Wages being paid and received in money, it 
 may happen that, while money-wages remain un- 
 altered, the portions of wealth or commodities 
 obtained by the labourers will vary greatly at different 
 times, because prices fluctuate. Here these questions 
 intrude themselves : Why do prices fluctuate ? and 
 within what limits will fluctuations range? Can 
 they be foreseen and provided against? And how 
 may conduct be modified, both before and after a 
 fluctuation, so as to mitigate unfavourable conse- 
 quences, should there be any? 
 
 Upon the right solution of these questions hangs 
 no small part of our daily comfort and of our 
 security for the future. And the process of solving 
 them, preceded as it must be by systematic pre- 
 paration, is among the most improving of intellectual 
 exercises. The student attempts their solution under 
 great disadvantage, if he have not already familiarised 
 himself with questions arising out of " division of 
 labour," " interchange," and " fluctuations of value ; " 
 and if he be not already impressed with a sense 
 of the excellence of the arrangements by which the 
 more experienced employer assumes the risk as well
 
 126 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 as the direction of the labour which he purchases, 
 while the less experienced labourer receives his 
 wage, governed in some measure by the employer's 
 estimate of its worth, but paid out of capital, and 
 not affected by the profit or the loss to accrue 
 eventually to the employer. As the wages and 
 other items of cost are disbursed in money, the 
 profit or loss to be realised can only be ascertained 
 after the products of labour and capital have been 
 sold: and as many of these products can be sold 
 only at a day far distant from the first outlay of 
 capital, the probable future price has to be estimated, 
 and the consequences of mistaken estimates and 
 unexpected contingencies to be provided against. 
 
 Again : employers still calculating money pay- 
 ments and looking forward to future prices, have 
 to decide whether they will persevere in the modes 
 of production in operation, and go straight and 
 direct to the production of what they intend to 
 supply and sell; or whether they will defer awhile 
 the return looked for, and contrive or aim at some 
 intermediate means by which, at a later period, they 
 may hope to derive a greatly increased profit.
 
 THE WAY. 127 
 
 These two methods of production are going on 
 simultaneously under the direction and at the risk 
 of the various employers witness the agricultural 
 produce, minerals, and manufactured articles brought 
 to market, and the means of transport and com- 
 munication provided; and also, the immense outlay 
 for more effective machinery, railways, steam fleets, 
 magnetic telegraphs, factories, &c. However large 
 profits may be eventually, they have to be planned 
 and risked for long beforehand a work only to 
 be embarked in safely and conscientiously by 
 capitalists who, while looking for profit, are prepared 
 for occasional loss and disappointment. 
 
 With rare exceptions, employers rise out from 
 among the employed. All the employed are no 
 more fit to be employers, than they are to be 
 physicians, surgeons, engineers, or architects. 
 Those who are fit, thrive and assist others to 
 thrive when they become employers. Those who 
 become employers when they are not fit, lose 
 and suffer, and mislead others into like suffering. 
 But the younger employed, likely to become qualified 
 as employers, would mar and not improve their
 
 128 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 prospects by hastening out of one grade into another, 
 before they had saved capital out of their wages, 
 and had acquired knowledge and aptitude by observa- 
 tion, reflection, and practice. These truths may be 
 glossed over or pushed aside by teachers who have 
 never thought of tracing to their source the insuffi- 
 cient wages and destitution too common around 
 us. Words without definite meaning are employed, 
 unknown to those who use them, in the place of 
 words which have a meaning. " Competition " is 
 affirmed to be the cause of evils which originate 
 in incompetency, in some of its many forms ; and 
 " co-operation " is recommended for their cure. 
 Very few questions suffice to expose the hollowness 
 of the sound " competition " thus used. And to 
 suggest more co-operation to a world only checked 
 in its efforts at co-operation by the deficiency 
 of the industrial qualities indispensable for 
 success, and perpetually suffering from attempts 
 at co-operation without those qualities, indicates a 
 perversion of judgment which would be incredible, 
 had not bad teaching and want of teaching made 
 it so common. Can men deficient in the industrial
 
 THE WAY. 129 
 
 qualities be brought to co-operate successfully? 
 Will men possessed of those qualities fail to 
 co-operate wherever co-operation is likely to be the 
 best form of industry, and to co-operate success- 
 fully? 
 
 Opportunities, as it has already been pointed out, 
 are presented to all who have accumulated capital 
 to become employers, with or without partnership, 
 with or without borrowed capital. Most are deterred 
 from availing themselves of these opportunities, 
 conscious that they have not the administrative 
 aptitude essential for the successful direction of 
 capital, and that they can do better by selling their 
 labour. Some decline to quit the vocation in which 
 they have acquired or are expecting eminence 
 artists, authors, lawyers, physicians, surgeons, 
 engineers;, and others. They prefer the remunera- 
 tion which their services command, and the interest 
 on the capital which they invest or lend, to the 
 chance of any profit which is likely to accrue to 
 them from becoming employers. That some of 
 the comparatively few who become employers, 
 and assume the management of large establish- 
 
 9
 
 130 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 ments, should realise large profits is no more than 
 might be expected : a rare combination of industrial 
 qualities being nearly as sure to command success as it 
 is needful to justify the expectation of success. But 
 even they who eventually quit the ranks of the em- 
 ployed, to assume the responsibilities and reap the 
 fruits of a successful direction of capital and labour, 
 serve a long apprenticeship to qualify them for the 
 work. The refinements of modern industry which 
 have grown out of the division and subdivision of 
 labour, and the capacity to organise and concentrate 
 upon one purpose the varied knowledge and skill of 
 many labourers, are not to be mastered by every- 
 body, nor by anybody without great application. 
 
 In looking back upon the joint efforts of em- 
 ployers and labourers employers to engage the 
 best labourers on the lowest terms and to earn 
 the largest profits, and labourers to sell their labour 
 for the highest wage ; it is impossible not to 
 see that the struggle between employers and 
 labourers is neither the only nor the principal 
 struggle observable in the industrial world. It may 
 by the more clamorous, and may draw down the
 
 THE WAY. 131 
 
 more marked attention. But the silent and in- 
 cessant struggle between employers and employers 
 to earn the largest profit, and between labourers 
 and labourers to get into the most desirable employ- 
 ment at the highest wages, are the agents most 
 effectually at work to promote a distribution of 
 profit proportioned to the capital and administrative 
 talents of each employer, and a distribution of 
 wages proportioned to the producing powers of each 
 labourer. There is one form of struggle the only 
 effect of which must be to diminish the future 
 wages-fund, and to curtail future wages and profit 
 a suspension of work occasioned by a disagreement 
 between employers and employed consumption 
 without replacement, and machinery, labour's potent 
 auxiliary, transformed into an encumbrance during 
 the period of suspension. 
 
 It is highly instructive to search for and trace 
 out, through all the daily transactions of buying 
 and selling and the fluctuations of prices, the 
 influences at work to preserve and distribute the 
 wages-fund, whether viewed as a whole or in its 
 parts, in order to secure its being available for the 
 
 92
 
 132 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 requirements both of the future and the present. 
 Each labourer must look to himself for such manage- 
 ment of his wages as will make them serve for his 
 future as well as his present wants. The inter- 
 vention of money enables him to disengage his 
 attention from the special commodities which he 
 may require for his future use, and fix it upon his 
 savings as so much money put aside wherewith to 
 buy them, whatever they may be, and whenever 
 wanted. Upon each employer must devolve the 
 duty of so managing the capital under his charge 
 as to enable him to carry on his works and meet 
 his engagements, whether the time when he will 
 be able to reimburse himself for his outlay be 
 remote or near. He is greatly assisted in forming 
 his estimates by having a medium like money in 
 which to make them. He pays wages in money, 
 relieved from all care as. to what portion of the 
 wages-fund his labourers will draw upon with their 
 money. The business of supplying labourers with 
 the commodities which they will demand in exchange 
 for their money is taken up by, and distributed 
 among various employers and sets of employers, each
 
 THE WAY. 133 
 
 preparing for the supply of particular commodities. 
 The preparation of these supplies is interfered with 
 by numerous contingencies, more or less unexpected, 
 which have to be provided for. Vicissitudes of the 
 seasons and changes of tastes and habits cause some 
 commodities to be produced and to be asked for in 
 very different quantities at different times. Through 
 such occurrences, the stores of particular commodities 
 might accumulate in excess, or threaten to be unequal 
 to meet future wants till more could be brought 
 forward ; or people might suspect that such surplus 
 or deficiency was probable. In the case of a surplus, 
 or suspected surplus, the anxiety of holders to get 
 rid of it leads to a fall of price. In the case of 
 a deficiency or suspected deficiency, the anxiety of 
 consumers to get as much as before, and of holders 
 to keep back wherewith to meet the future demand, 
 occasions a rise of price. A fall in the prices of 
 particular commodities enables consumers to par- 
 ticipate in their abundance. And a rise in their 
 prices forces upon consumers some economy of 
 consumption. The united efforts of all parties, 
 aided by the admonitions of the rise and fall of
 
 134 
 
 HINTS CONCEKNING 
 
 prices, tend to maintain the wages-fund, as a whole 
 and in all its parts, at a level with the requirements 
 of the future. 
 
 The insight into the phenomena of industrial life 
 desirable for the young to possess, and possible also, 
 before they are summoned to actual work, may be 
 carried to yet greater perfection. Instruction in 
 the uses of credit, may follow upon that in the uses 
 of money. The advantages of borrowing and lending 
 have already been touched upon. To bring the two 
 parties in these transactions together, and to afford 
 facilities for the making and completing of contracts, 
 a class of employers called bankers has sprung up. 
 By their intervention, large values measured in 
 money are paid and received, or settled for, without 
 the actual use of money. Bills of exchange are also 
 used to do away with the expense and risk of trans- 
 mitting money to pay for imported commodities, 
 while a like sum would have to be received in pay- 
 ment for commodities exported. A mastery of the 
 principles involved in these various uses of credit is 
 quite possible, without any thought of acquiring the 
 familiarity or skill only to be obtained in the
 
 THE WAY. 135 
 
 counting-house. Unfortunately, considerable apti- 
 tude in counting-house work is to be met with, 
 disjoined from a knowledge of principles, or even 
 from the suspicion that any principles are to be 
 sought for or acted upon. 
 
 It will not pass unnoticed in the schools that, 
 with the use of credit and its advantages, have 
 been introduced bankruptcies, closing of works, and 
 industrial derangements in many other forms. To 
 guard against these calamities, there is only one 
 precaution that can be safely relied upon, or rather 
 which cannot be safely omitted. As bankruptcies 
 could not occur if credit were not taken at all, so 
 neither would they occur if credit was not taken 
 beyond a certain limit. Where credit is given as 
 well as taken, the borrower incurs the responsibility 
 of trusting to others capital not his own, as well 
 as his own. The principles to be observed in the 
 use of credit, by those who would not risk security 
 and a fair character in the struggle for wealth, may 
 be made plain and intelligible in schools. The 
 application of the principles in business where 
 borrowing and lending, or buvinsr and selling on
 
 136 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 credit, are mixed up in daily transactions under a 
 variety of forms, lias to be learned with the help of 
 those who have already acquired experience in busi- 
 ness. There can be no doubt that familiarity with 
 the principles previous to leaving school must be a 
 safeguard to any one about to enter into business, 
 and a help to him to judge, while serving his time 
 in a subordinate capacity, how far the business to 
 pass before his eyes is conducted in the observance 
 or disregard of them. Perchance, this familiarity 
 may enable him to seize the opportunity and enjoy 
 the gratification of warding off ruin from those who 
 employ him : or, if they will not listen to him, of 
 extricating himself from the ruin in which he 
 might otherwise be overwhelmed. 
 
 To turn our thoughts back again upon the 
 young who are continually leaving school : With 
 rare exceptions, they are destined at starting to 
 enter the ranks of the employed. They are to 
 form, if the expression be admissible, self-acting 
 parts of a highly complicated piece of machinery the 
 latest result of all the improvements and refinements 
 arising out of the adaptation of successive advances in
 
 THE WAY. 187 
 
 every branch of knowledge. Are they to be prepared 
 or unprepared, well-adapted or ill-adapted, to perform 
 the functions expected of them, both for their own 
 sakes, and for the smooth and effective working 
 of the machinery of which they are to be self-acting 
 parts ? In other words, are they to be imbued with 
 all the feelings, actuated by all the desires, and 
 incited to all the exertions, likely to be inspired 
 by a keen sense of the characteristics which dis- 
 tinguish good from bad conduct, and a thorough 
 appreciation of the rules which ought to be observed 
 by all men in their intercourse with one another 
 and with society ? or are they to be turned adrift; 
 unprepared or ill-prepared, to steer their course in a 
 world which, to the cultivated understanding, is one 
 of order and of connected sequences, but to the 
 uncultivated, one of chance, confusion, and chaos ? 
 When once that portion of society which gives a 
 tone to the whole is deeply impressed with a sense 
 of the cruel suffering sure to fall upon the young who 
 are sent forth without the preparation indispensable 
 for good self-guidance, can it any longer be withheld ? 
 or who will connive at its being withheld ?
 
 138 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 The probable career of the young who, from the 
 beginning, can see the light and walk in the light, 
 has been sufficiently indicated. The actual career 
 of those who, never having seen the light, walk 
 in darkness, is sufficiently notorious. According to 
 their own interpretation of their cruel destiny, they 
 serve, they slave, they receive the miserable pittance 
 doled out to them by one who gains countless wealth 
 through their labour ; and, let the necessaries of life 
 be ever so scarce and prices and profits ever so 
 high, the money given to them for their labour 
 remains as before, and therefore still less sufficient 
 to supply their wants; they toil that their masters 
 may enjoy. Is it surprising that labourers so placed 
 and so instructed strive to shake off the despotism 
 which seems to crush them? or that they should 
 ask Is the tyranny of capital to endure for ever ? 
 Is the money-power really irresistible ? Could it 
 continue to reign supreme if the labourers were 
 united against it? What could capital do without 
 labour ? Is it not mockery for employers, rolling 
 in wealth as they are, to pretend that they cannot 
 afford to pay decent wages to those who work for
 
 THE WAY. 139 
 
 them ? And if, as they say, other labourers would 
 be glad to work for them on the same or lower 
 terms, cannot those intruders be driven away or 
 deterred from coming ? If employers cannot afford 
 to sell what the labourers produce for them at the 
 prevailing prices and pay the wages demanded of 
 them, cannot they raise their prices ? Would it 
 not be more humane to lift prices up than to press 
 wages down ? But if, through disunion or mis- 
 management, labourers are foiled in their attempts 
 to bring the capitalist to terms, can they not form 
 co-operative societies among themselves ? Possessing 
 the labour, if, instead of working for a master, they 
 work for themselves, will they not add the profit of 
 capital to the wages of labour and retain both? 
 The answers pointed to in these questions are 
 obvious. The action taken upon them is seen in 
 the perpetual efforts in a wrong direction to obtain 
 redress for imaginary wrongs ; and the consequences 
 are, indifferent wages, wide-spread destitution, and 
 discontent embittered by the failure of their efforts 
 to improve their position. Ever and anon, com- 
 binations to obtain the unobtainable, and co-operation,
 
 140 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 regardless of the qualities of those who co-operate, 
 especially where credit is taken and given, end in 
 frightful involvements and ruin ; without teaching the 
 sufferers, too much blinded by prejudice to be able 
 to trace their sufferings and disappointments to their 
 real sources, how to guard against the recurrence 
 of similar calamities. 
 
 The rules which ought to govern the expenditure 
 of all who are inspired with the wish to act well 
 their part in life, will already have been touched 
 upon incidentally more than once in the previous 
 part of the course. The thoughts, then imperfectly 
 developed, admit of being brought out separately 
 and more distinctly with great advantage. Pupils 
 who have made the information so far set forth 
 their own, will perceive, as it were instinctively, 
 that habitual expenditure on credit is either infamous 
 or conducive to infamy. It not only disregards 
 the practice of economy, but squanders the savings 
 of others. Expenditure with a due regard to the 
 claims of the future, and of the engagements con- 
 tracted towards others, can scarcely be a subject of 
 praise, except among a people fatally addicted to
 
 THE WAY. 141 
 
 the disregard of those claims. It is but the appli- 
 cation of wealth to the ultimate purpose for which 
 it was produced. When expenditure is incurred 
 for other objects, whether for works of benevolence 
 or for ostentatious display and luxurious indulgence, 
 our approbation and esteem, or our condemnation 
 and disgust, will be determined according to our 
 estimate of the good or bad judgment and good 
 or bad feeling with which the expenditure seems 
 to have been made. Nothing more need be said 
 concerning expenditure for other purposes than 
 those of benevolence ; and as respects expenditure 
 for purposes of benevolence, it may be observed 
 that they who incur it have reason to rejoice, if 
 the wealth which they expend is as usefully con- 
 sumed as that which is expended by employers for 
 the sake of profit. These latter, it must be borne 
 in mind, are, to the best of their ability, the 
 encouragers of industrial virtue. When those who 
 engage in works of benevolence assist in rearing 
 up capable men who, but for their interposition, 
 would never acquire qualities enabling them to earn 
 wages, they may be said to rival, if they do not
 
 142 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 surpass employers in the good which they do. At 
 all events, they complete the good which employers 
 leave unfinished. Together, they supplement each 
 other's work; the one supplying the industrial 
 qualities, the other encouraging the industrial 
 qualities when supplied. 
 
 The probable influence for good of the kind of 
 instruction and the method of imparting it, thus 
 slightly sketched, might be greatly underrated if 
 one more topic an all -important one, were left 
 unconsidered. Filial obedience is universally ex- 
 pected and insisted -upon. Education without 
 obedience, both at home and in school, would be 
 education in name only. But obedience, to be of 
 real service to parent or teacher in his efforts to 
 form the understanding and character of the young, 
 must be founded upon affection and reverence. It 
 will not otherwise be spontaneous. The parent 
 will be a sharer in any respect inspired by the 
 teacher, since it will be felt that the teacher's 
 services are provided by the parent's care. Children 
 coming from good homes to good schools, will be 
 more than mechanically obedient. They will be
 
 THE WAY. 143 
 
 quite capable of appreciating the difference between 
 good and bad parents, and the advantages which 
 they enjoy in being so cared for. The transition 
 is short from the filial to the parental duties. The 
 same train of thought which inspires affection, 
 reverence, and docility, leads to the desire and effort 
 to become worthy of calling forth in others like 
 feelings of attachment towards themselves. Children 
 who know what they owe to their parents, will soon 
 learn what it behoves them to try that their children 
 shall owe to them. 
 
 The case of those children whose parents, even 
 with the best intentions, have neither the means 
 nor the intelligence to do their duty in the full 
 sense of the term, is neither to be overlooked nor 
 evaded. Such parents, sad as may be the con- 
 sequences of their incapacity, stand excused in the 
 eyes of children whose dawning intelligence is 
 awakening to the fact that the history of man is 
 the history of his progress from a lower to a higher 
 state of civilization from less knowledge and worse 
 conduct to more knowledge and better conduct ; 
 and that ignorance and ill-directed conduct, excusable
 
 144 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 in a past generation, would be highly reprehensible 
 and scandalous in generations to follow. 
 
 It is plain that a good state of society, or a state 
 of society in which well-being prevails as widely as 
 possible, is unattainable without the aid of good 
 parents. A course of instruction and discipline 
 which omitted anything necessary for fitting the 
 young to become good parents, must either be ill- 
 judged or incomplete. There are two questions 
 which children, whose previous instruction has 
 prepared them to apply the test by which good 
 and bad conduct are to be distinguished, will be 
 quite capable of understanding, even if they should 
 hesitate a little in answering them : Who is a good 
 parent? and when must a child begin to be a 
 good parent? This much concerning a good 
 parent they will know, he must be industrious, 
 intelligent, provident, and trustworthy; and to 
 possess in perfection the qualities corresponding 
 with these epithets when a parent, he must begin 
 to acquire them when a child. They will know 
 also, appealing to the proofs by which we determine 
 whether men deserve the epithets applied to them,
 
 THE WAY. 145 
 
 that he is not a good parent who has not been 
 thoughtful beforehand to be provided with the means 
 of feeding, clothing and sheltering his children, till 
 he can send them forth able to obtain those means 
 for themselves. And he cannot ' be said to send 
 them forth in this state, unless they are able to 
 discriminate between what they ought and ought 
 not to do, and have been trained to act up to those 
 rules of conduct which they know to be right. 
 
 There is a large class of kindly-disposed persons 
 who feel acutely for the destitute and suffering, too 
 numerous everywhere both in town and country. 
 They are active in administering such comfort and 
 relief as they can contribute and collect, and would 
 gladly unite with others to prevent like misery in 
 future, could they but see the possibility of doing 
 so good a work. They are quite aware for who 
 can be blind to it? that much of the destitution 
 which meets their eyes at every turn is traceable 
 to ignorance, improvidence, drunkenness, and dis- 
 honesty. But they have never been impressed with 
 the belief, nor inspired with the hope, that these 
 sources of misery can be dried up, or even sensibly 
 
 10
 
 146 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 diminished. Zealously and lovingly, therefore, do 
 they toil to mitigate the effects, giving little heed 
 to the causes which produce them, and still less to 
 the remoter causes in which the proximate causes 
 originate. 
 
 When the indifferent quality and insufficient 
 quantity of teaching and training are suggested to 
 them as causes of the misery which they recognise 
 and deplore, they listen incredulously, if at all. 
 Their minds are preoccupied with visions of educa- 
 tion as they have heen accustomed to see it; and 
 they have no faith in the extension of that which 
 falls so short of what is claimed of it where it is 
 at work, which has disappointed the more zealous 
 of its promoters, and has too often justified the cen- 
 sures of those who attribute evil, rather than 
 good effects, to it. But for the seriousness with 
 which they consider all proposals that bear, or 
 are meant to bear, upon the improvement of their 
 fellow- creatures, they would be disposed to laugh at 
 the suggestion of an attempt to start the rising 
 generation from school, on their career in life, 
 possessed of the knowledge and turn of thought
 
 THE WAY. 147 
 
 above set forth, and animated with the desire of 
 acquiring the further knowledge requisite for their 
 successful guidance, and full of determination to 
 act upon it. 
 
 "When the end in view is grand in the extreme 
 the realization of a state of well-heing in the future 
 of which history supplies no example ; when the 
 means of accomplishing it have been carefully 
 studied and partially used with success, the passive 
 or even the active resistance of the incredulous will 
 not be much heeded. The incredulous have, from 
 age to age, smiled superciliously upon attempts 
 which have nevertheless been crowned with success. 
 And there is no exaggeration in stating that our 
 modern means of communicating were, as results 
 to be accomplished, apparently far more unattainable 
 fifty years ago, than a state of society in the future 
 from which destitution, as we now see it, will be all 
 but banished. They who have fears about the 
 capacity of the young to receive and assimilate the 
 knowledge required for good self-guidance, may lay 
 them aside. Everywhere children are to be seen 
 acquiring a knowledge of matters far more abstruse 
 
 102
 
 148 HINTS CONCERNING 
 
 and mysterious, although less indispensable for their 
 well-being. The only obstacle in the way of carrying 
 out the improvements so urgently called for in 
 education is the want of qualified teachers. When 
 the teachers of youth have the needful knowledge 
 at their command, it will not be long shut out from 
 their pupils. 
 
 The thoughts of some, who witness the apathy 
 with which many parents regard the education of 
 their children, turn to the intervention of Govern- 
 ment ; and the very suggestion of such intervention 
 is received with dismay by others, who cannot bear 
 an approach to what they call "compulsory educa- 
 tion." To them it may be remarked that, before 
 much good can be expected from more general 
 education, clearer views must prevail concerning 
 what is comprehended under that word; and when 
 they prevail, it may so happen that all room for 
 controversy about compulsion in education will dis- 
 appear. Children must be cared for. They must 
 be fed, clothed, and lodged; and when there are 
 not parents at hand to perform those duties towards 
 them, they cannot be allowed to perish from want.
 
 THE WAY. 149 
 
 In like manner, children must not be allowed to 
 grow up to be pests of society criminals, paupers, 
 Arabs, roughs, or savages ; at least, so long as 
 there are means under our control for inter- 
 fering to prevent it. And be it borne in mind, 
 children shut out from judicious teaching and 
 training cannot grow up to be useful members 
 of civilized society. 
 
 It has been said, and truly, that he who makes 
 two ears of wheat grow where one only grew before, 
 is a benefactor of his country. And, as ears of corn 
 are sought for only because from them we obtain 
 our flour and bread, the same might be said as truly 
 of him who causes two loaves to be produced where 
 only one was produced before ; or, more generally, 
 of him who doubles the supply of anything or every- 
 thing which ministers to the comforts and enjoyments 
 of mankind. If they who add to the productiveness 
 of industry who make our store of wealth larger 
 and larger deserve to be considered benefactors of 
 their country, how much more deserving of that 
 honourable distinction will they be who shall give 
 such a tone to education, and arrange so well for
 
 150 HINTS CONCERNING THE WAY. 
 
 its being brought home to every child, that all who 
 live in the midst of this large accumulation of wealth 
 shall at least be decently provided with food, clothing, 
 and shelter ? 
 
 THE END. 
 
 London : Printed by SMITH, ELDER AND Co., Old Bailey, E.C.
 
 By the same Author. 
 
 Just published, in Eight Parts, Price One Shilling each ; or in Four 
 Volumes bound in Cloth, 2s. Gd. each, 
 
 PHILO-SOCKATES, 
 
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 other Advantages besides those of 
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 On Posthumous Rewards and Punish- 
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 On Duty and Conscience. 
 
 On Public Spirit. 
 
 On the Desirable and the Practicable.
 
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